#anyway you all have been subjected to too much of my purposefully shitty art and i am sorry

[aphelea]

...a concept

[aforgottenballad]

Feelings on Sally Face Episode 5

Under a read more for obvious reasons, includes heavy spoilers and potentially triggering subjects. 

Disclaimer: I might miss-remember some parts of the story or have missed a piece of lore that would settle minor complaints. I am however disappointed in the ending as a whole and in some of the very harmful tropes included in it. But I’m also just some dude online with an opinion, and you can stop reading at any time. 

Rant under cut. 

Alright ya’ll. I’ve had a couple days to digest the ending to Sally Face.  While playing, I genuinely enjoyed some elements of the game. The chapter started on a dark but nearly hopeful note. Neil and Ash were still working to bring the cult down. It seemed likely Sal would be resurrected. Todd had apparently escaped the hospital, and that had potential to be either a very very good or very very bad thing. Maple was possessed by whatever fucked up the souls of the other apartment tenants, but hey! At least her and Neil weren’t in on the cult like so many fans predicted. Unfortunately, this series has a way of getting darker and darker as it progresses.  First thing that bugged me was the lore drop about how the cult was founded.  A Native American tribe. Right. Because why wouldn’t Indigenous peoples be in a story without being part of some mystical occult backstory, portrayed as mysterious historical props who worshiped something dark and evil instead of being portrayed as human beings. 

But I continued. I really enjoyed playing as Ashley and getting some insight into her character. I enjoyed the task of planting the C4 in the temple... catacomb... thing. We get to see Travis again! I was excited that a lot of us were right about him being indoctrinated but also working to fight the cult from the inside. We knew he had some good in him after all. 

When Ash tries to resurrect Sal, we get even more insight into her character, and unfortunately a lot of it is “Grieving, distraught, and full of self-blame”. I want to hug her.  Sal’s spirit is apparently revived by those pyramids, and he can dimension warp. We meet Jim, or what’s left of him, and he doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore but agrees to help Sal anyway. This is, narratively speaking, weird as hell. His entire character arc for four episodes was “Loved his family so much he sacrificed himself to save them”, and suddenly he’s just some glowy dude attached to Magic Spirit Tubes who doesn’t give half a shit. I guess it makes sense as a way to wrap up why he’s been able to drift between worlds but... if he doesn’t care about any of that anymore why help Sal? And what about Rosenberg? Is she like Jim, or do we just have to assume she’s magical because her family helped found the cult? (Explained in an easter egg later on, because this game doesn’t just drop its lore. Not even the CRUCIAL lore. You have to achievement hunt for it.) Sal can enter various doors in the House In The Void to step into alternate realities, and this was my favorite aspect of the game. Each door has a different art style, and I really liked seeing these alternate realities. Steve probably worked the hardest and longest on drawing out and coding these scenes. I genuinely applaud the man for the work put into this endeavor I’m assuming all by himself. 

Meanwhile, Ash tries to unbind Larry’s soul from the tree house he died in, which doesn’t work. Did we ever find out why his body was never found? No? Ok that seems important.

After each puzzle, Sal’s body is restored a little bit at a time, but even after turning on all the pyramids and solving the mysteries behind all three doors, he can’t make it back to the “real” world. So Ashley kills herself. Or tries to. Because apparently that’s the only way to complete the ritual, and also because she feels really bad about not unbinding Larry’s soul and about not fixing Sal. Again, I want to hug her, but I have to watch her hurt herself instead, cause Steve doesn’t let us have nice things.

Okay, so this is a gorey game. We know. But one of the BIGGEST no-nos suicide prevention networks will tell you when consulting them about mental illness and suicide in media is NOT to show a graphic suicide in progress. Steve is aware a lot of his fans are A) Young teens to young adults B) Struggling with mental illness. 

His main character suffers from depression and anxiety and this fact has resonated with hundreds of fans. It’s irresponsible to purposefully include a graphic suicide attempt, but he did it last chapter, showing a gunshot suicide’s aftermath, then he did it again with Ashley. Call me a wiener if you like, point out the graphic scenes from earlier in the game and call me a hypocrite for not being upset by that, but you have to admit the Spongebob-close-up-shot look to those scenes have a totally different feel. Speaking as someone who actually has a pretty thick skin, but is concerned about the fans who might be in a worse place or who could be as young as 12, that was fucked up. 

Anyway, Ash’s attempt doesn’t take, because she’s struck by magic lightning, which infuses Sal’s soul into her. Now her arm is one of those stretchy sticky hands, but with bio luminescence and the ability to kick cultist ass. I actually thought this part was really cool, and was super ready to go on a cultist smacking spree. But again, we can’t have nice things and before we get to do anything badass we have to look at gruesome imagery again. 

You get to see Void Larry, who is now old and a wizard or something, but first...

Surprise! Maple and Neil are dead! Not just dead, but hung up from hooks covered in blood! And naked! 

Hey?? Hey Steve????? You know how they’re both POC?? And that lynching imagery is EXTREMELY NOT GOOD?!!????

“Two white people are hung up with them” YEAH? WELL WE’VE NEVER SEEN THOSE CHARACTERS BEFORE. THEY’RE JUST RANDOM PEOPLE.

I’ve seen people arguing “The white characters go through terrible things too” but it’s still really fucked up that by the end of the game, every. Single. Person of color. In the game. Has died. Gruesomely. It’s a gorey, dark, bleak game, and white characters die as well, gruesomely; but not all of them. None of them that are named are shown strung up, naked. That’s fucked up. That isn’t okay. 

There are also a total of three gay characters in this game. One is Todd, who goes through the standard “bad bad stuff” the game is used to, is the white one, and he survives. One is Neil, one of the aforementioned people of color who died horribly and who only really existed to be Todd’s boyfriend and therefore a source of angst for Todd when he dies. The third is Travis, another man of color, and an abuse victim, who dies to fulfill his character arc as an abuse victim, which is also really shitty to see over and over again as an abuse survivor. 

Look, I know Steve pulled a lot of inspiration from old TV shows and horror series that probably weren’t all “politically correct”. I know it’s always been kind of an edgy and dark game. I know Steve probably didn’t think about the repercussions of all his narrative choices. But I also know he actively ignored some people offering to educate him on issues he has no experience with. I know he worked hard on this game, by himself, but we as fans have paid him and waited for years and it isn’t selfish or ungrateful to be hurt and disappointed. He knows his audience is diverse, he knows a lot of us were attracted to the game because of a gender nonconforming main character, a main character who struggles with mental illness, a cast that isn’t 100% white and conventionally attractive. Of course he didn’t need to change the plot for us! It’s his game, his vision, but the least he could have done is research how to not actively hurt and alienate a good portion of us.  I don’t think anyone is bad or racist for still finding solace in the characters and in what the story was before this, I’m not attacking you personally, whoever is reading this. I, personally, still have loads of Sally Face art in my queue, I still have active role plays going on, my Sal wig is sitting like 8 feet away waiting for the next time my friends want to take cosplay pictures. I still enjoyed playing the game for the most part. Without this game I wouldn’t even know most of my current friends. It’s just really shitty how it ended like this, and a lot of people I talk to daily either feel too sick to even talk about the game anymore after seeing people like them treated like trash by the narrative or try to focus on the good things they got out of just being part of the fandom but don’t feel comfortable supporting the developer anymore. 

Even if there wasn’t all these hurtful tropes packed into the game, and yes, even after unlocking the epilogue, the game just feels cold. It feels rushed, probably because of how much time went into the alternate dimension gimmick. I wish Steve had at least consulted people over the script. It felt like not only did he pour all his work into experimenting with the mixed media, he also just took whatever expectations the fans had and went somewhere completely different just to have his story be “unpredictable”. That isn’t always a good thing. Plot twists, downer endings, dark and scary imagery, all of these things can be done beautifully, but in this case it felt like he just wanted the series to end. The game didn’t subvert expectations, it fed into the harmful stereotypes and tropes all the fans were so hopeful it wouldn’t. 

...On top of not making any sense unless you’re able to 100% all the puzzles. And even when you do, it feels like all the bad stuff happened for no reason. The ending doesn’t conclude anything. Even when you unlock the epilogue, all it tells you is that a third of the world has died and that the main cast haven’t accomplished much besides “Trying to help”. Sal and Todd have powers now, but that isn’t elaborated on much. Larry’s spirit is missing, if he even exists in any plane at all anymore. It doesn’t even mention what’s going on with Ash.  It just feels like nothing mattered. 

[nunaya-business]

Hi, Let’s Talk About Some Controversial Shit Yeah?

So lately people have been telling Horikoshi Kohei to go kill himself, because they’re trying to be a shitty version of Shane Dawson exploring conspiracy theories that have no right to exist. I don’t even know where to fucking start, but since I’m not a YouTuber, but I’m a writer, I decided to ditch my phone for this one, and am currently typing this shit out on my laptop. Yes, that is how pissed I am.

A new decade and a new start to the shittiness that was 2010-2020. More and more people of the LGBTQ started coming out of the dark and trying to accept who they are to the chagrin of assholes who have no business in their lives anyway. I feel like there’s been a lot more racism here than there was from 2000-2010, or maybe that’s just me. I think it’s because people are getting more vocal with their opinions as the earth goes to shit. We are slowly killing it after all. Not only is there more racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ pricks, and people prejudice against other religions (the prejudice against Muslims is a big one. Poor Muslims, it’ll be okay, Brookie’s on your side), but there are now people who don’t like freedom of speech, or the right to write a story, and people who are just plain pussies because they don’t wike dere wittle feewings huwt 😥. 

I could write for hours about all of those subjects. But since I’m an aspiring writer myself, I picked the right to write. What do I mean by that? I mean the right for an author of any kind to write their story, their way, without these little pussies coming around and being like, “bro can you not mention the Mongols breaking through the Great Wall of China? Yeah, because I’m from a Chinese family and I don’t want to be reminded of my ancestor’s tribulations even though it was 800 years ago. Thanks”. Let me break this shit down like I’m in debate class and my entire University grade depends on me winning this “argument”.

Writing is an art. Duh. People don’t write because they had a good life, I don’t care what anyone says. Writers write because it relieves stress, allows them to get their feelings out in a healthy way, take them away to their own little world in their own special way to escape the hell they’re living through, lets them vent the dark desires and thoughts they may have, and get their opinions out there when they feel like no one listens. Writing is a cure for depression for some people. It’s a healthy kind of drug that doesn’t make someone overdose (unless they’re like me and write’s for hours on end losing sleep and starving themselves just to write an idea down before they forget it). 

People write about what they can’t speak. My mom has this saying “say it forget it, write it regret it”, and in certain contexts that saying is a good moral to have, but that’s not always the case. My mom and I watched the movie “Her” the other day and (spoilers) at the end of the movie, the main character Theodore, who’s a writer, writes a letter to his ex-wife. He writes about how they met, how they grew up together, how they grew to be the best of friends, then lovers, then built a trust they couldn’t replace, and the sorrow he felt when the relationship started crumbling. Joaquin Phoenix did an amazing job lamenting about the character’s past, most likely because he’s been through a lot too, and the character did an astounding job putting his words to paper (or in this case email) and getting out years of stress and sadness so that he can start loving life again.

The point of me describing that scene was to show the impact writing has on some people. It’s the escape they need and sometimes the emotions they feel put into a context where they can explain it all they want without having to waste a breath.

Now, picture if you will, that you’re a writer down on your luck. You have an amazing story to tell and the audience in mind that you want to tell it to, but no one believes in you. They want to alter your story to suit a wider audience, but, you don’t give a shit about appealing to people, you’re telling a story that helped you and may help others too, no matter the money you might lose or recognition you’ll never gain. Imagine that you found a way to both appeal to a wider audience and tell that story you have in your mind’s view. It gets more popular than most media to come out of your country and helps you bring in more than enough money you need to survive. Suddenly people are falling in love with the characters you wrote in more ways than one. People are starting to call it a modern classic and then, you start getting letters from people all around the world telling you how much your writings helped them and that they’re living better lives because they were inspired or motivated by the words you oh so carefully put onto a page, with the art you spent hours, upon days, upon weeks on opening people’s eyes to what they’re capable of.

I may have put some personal shit in that last paragraph, but I was mainly talking about the subject of this... (essay?) Horikoshi Kohei. A man who never gave up because dammit, he had a story to tell and fuck anyone who doesn’t want to hear it. All that matters to real writers is that someone feels special because of the words you put together on a page. Horikoshi puts a lot of time and effort into My Hero Academia, and what does his fans do? They tell him to kill himself because he dared wordplay to get the names of some characters. Y’know it’s funny, I don’t hear a lot of Jews, trans, gay, or Polish people complain about the shit their ancestors went through 70 years ago during the Holocaust like they went through it as well, but I always hear about Korean, Chinese, and Black people (off the top of my head don’t @ me) complain about shit their ancestors went through from 70 all the way back to a thousand years ago. Not to say that everyone in those races do that. because they don’t. I’m sure a majority probably doesn’t give two flying fucks what someone writes as long as they aren’t being personally targeted or threatened. But go on Horikoshi’s Twitter once and tell me that you don’t see hundreds of his followers (mostly Asian) threatening him and criticizing his naming of his characters. If you’re Korean or Chinese and you find issue with the fact that Horikoshi named a mother fucking villain character after a place where your specific race was tortured and experimented on, decades before were even fucking thought of, please tell me why. If you feel personally attacked then you’re... (I don’t wanna use retarded because people will automatically stop reading and DM me about my word choice) doltish. That’s a fancy word for stupid by the way. Maybe if it were one of the heroes named that way then I would completely understand, but it’s not. It’s a fucking villain. 

But hey, what do I know? I’ve never been through shit. I’m just a plain, short and chubby little white girl with a big mouth that’s never been the victim of prejudice or racism. No one’s ever taken a look at me and judged me based on my ancestors or religious choices. No one’s ever made fun of my accent or the color of my skin, or the birth defect that effected my feet and slightly effected my hands. 

Oh by the way, my mom’s a closet Psychopath that wasn’t diagnosed because the rest of the family is too fucking psycho for anyone to notice her torturing animals at a young age. My dad was a Paranoid Schizophrenic with an undiagnosed Psychosis and severe PTSD (diagnosed) that grew up in a home with an abusive father and a mother that was too busy grooming her oldest son (take that how you will) to pay any attention to him. Not to mention she also killed him. It’s not like my dad’s dad was also a psychopath that purposefully killed my unborn brother and laughed when my mom miscarried It’s not like my life was at risk because there was people shooting at my house (where I lived with my grandfather) and I could hear the bullets bouncing off of the trees. It’s not like I was bullied when I was little leading to a brain injury that caused my memory to be fucked up and my speech to slur and stutter. Oh and I definitely didn’t have to start being a second mom to my brother, and an actual mom to my little cousin because my family doesn’t give a fuck how their actions effect others.

I didn’t have the worst life by all means. There’s a lot more people that I know personally that have had it way worse than I have. I’m just saying, don’t take shit so fucking personally. Grow some goddamn balls and stop telling people to go kill themselves because they named a character something you didn’t like. Stop bringing up shit from the past unless people ask about it, or you’re telling you life story. It’s 2020. It’s time to stop being pussies and act like functioning members of society. 

Oh and one last thing. Ya’ll are telling a man to kill himself while the corona virus is spreading like the plague. I think we should be more fucking worried about the fact that humanity could easily be wiped out thanks to the Chinese government silencing a scientist who know about the damn virus a year ago. If anything, we should be targeting them and Trump for being awful, not a poor mangaka that was just word playing with the names of his characters.