#but i basically have the entire pre-plot history stuff down which is so cool

[astrowarr]

(slaps the roof of my roomies zombie apocalypse au) there are so many political nuances in this bad boy

[scandalsavagefanfic]

Hello! I am a huge fan of ur writing. I've loved everything I've read of yours. I've read alot of what you've posted, except for a couple of the tags that are squicky for me (so I'm very thankful you tag very thoroughly). No judgement for the squick, it's just not for me. & when I'm having a bad day, I usually just go thru ur ao3 and find something to reread. I think about Therapy's Bruce & Jason every damn day. While I obvs appreciate ur darker more "problematic" content (I really vibe with some of the themes you write about bc of my own trauma, & so it's very cathartic to read about in a fictional setting), I am truly a sucker for ur more happy content. The Happily Ever After verse also lives in my head rent free. Idk more wholesome stuff just seems more special when you write it. Anyways. I would die for you. But the point of this ask is cause I'm curious as to why you don't like Urban Legends? I'm sorry if you already talked about it here or on twitter and I missed it. I was just wondering because I really enjoy your take on things and would love to hear why you dislike it. I've been enjoying it so far personally, but I am always open to DC comics criticism.

Aw thank you so much! I'm so flattered by everything you just said. You're so sweet ❤❤❤❤❤

I haven't talked about Urban Legends here or twitter (I haven't been very active in either place lately. Just a lot going on and no energy 😔) but I'm happy to do it here.

Before I start though, I just want to add a standard disclaimer and make it clear that if you like it, there's nothing wrong with that and you don't have to let me ruin it for you lol. Like what you like.

That said, since you asked...

I said this when I was talking about it on discord, that there is a difference between hope and expectation. I always hope that a new story centered on Jason (or anyone really, but things have been especially egregious for Jay for 15 years) will be good or at least treat the character with a minimal level of respect (to be honest, the bar is super fucking low). But my expectations always temper my hope, to keep it from getting unrealistic. Because my expectations are based on experience.

The long history of Jason Todd, since even before his resurrection, has been one of retroactively trying to make him "a bad seed" in order to absolve Bruce of any responsibility in his death.

I don't even expect DC or their writers to start honoring the fact that Jason was not an angry, reckless Robin (and less of the later than Dick or Tim and definitely Damian). There plenty of ways that retcon can be folded into his history and be compelling and sympathetic. And if they're going to stick with that retcon, I'm only asking that they do it in one of those compelling and sympathetic ways because Jason was 15 when he died, heroically, in one of the most selfless acts in comics, to save a woman who literally handed him over to be brutally murdered. He was 12 when Bruce plucked him off the streets, he'd been homeless and fending for himself for at least two years. I personally think that Jason's story hits harder for him and Bruce if their original, canon relationship, of Jason as starry-eyed and eager to learn and absolutely devoted to Bruce and Bruce to Jason, is preserved. But Jason's origins does leave room for a meaningful interpretation of him as angry and frustrated at the lack of meaningful results of Bruce's methods.

And that's really where my irritation at stories like Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer and Batman The Adventure Continues has it's roots.

Every time one of these stories comes out, I think (or hope, rather) that this will be the one that remembers and respects the origins of the Jason and the Red Hood, that takes into account the changed sensibilities of comics readers in the 30 years since Jason's death and the subtle, 20 year, retroactive campaign to make him the "bad Robin". The "born bad" trope is played out and literally no one likes the message it implies. That some kids are just bad eggs and there's nothing parents or the adults around them can do. Especially when it's played as the kid's fault. If Jason's time as Robin is going to be characterized by anger, then it should be rooted in anger at the social injustices he witnessed as he grew up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, area and the horrors he faced raising himself when every day was a battle for survival. There are topical, meaningful, stories to tell with that backdrop.

But those are never the stories we get.

⚠⚠ Spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer ⚠⚠

I'm particularly disappointed in Urban Legends because for the first issue, it looked like that was the kind of story we were going to get. I was put off by the first flashback of Jason being mesmerized by Bruce's guns, and I got that feeling in my gut that it was a bad sign. Jason depicted as impatient and overconfident and the scene with the guns is heavy-handed foreshadowing that got my spidey-sense tingling. I had a inkling then (in the first three pages) of how this story was going to play out, but it was early and I could still see many narrative paths that could lead to a satisfying story. My concerns were soothed somewhat and the little flame of my hope fanned, with the flashback of Alfred scolding Bruce, with Barbara's concern for Jason. A bit of worry returned with the way Jason ruthlessly pursued an addict who didn't appear to be a dealer and with the ending of the issue. The stuff with the addict sat wrong with me but the ending was tempered some by how despicable Tyler's dad was written. The scene was clearly set so that the reader could sympathize with Jason's decision and the scene with the addict could be brushed aside as a side-effect of comics over-the-top need for constant action, so I still held hope.

Issue 2 made me uncomfortable and it's where my hope starts to take a backseat to my expectations. I can dismiss Jason's self-deprecating internal monologue as unreliable narration, except that the flashback reinforces his thought process to explicitly show that it's not unreliable narration, and should be taken at face value. Jason faces physical abuse at the hands of his mother's drug dealer and when the flashback continues later, Jason kills the drug dealer. To be clear, this is a pre-Bruce Jason. His mom is still alive. He's like... 10. He kills this guy for shoving his head into a wall and implying Jason's mother paid for her drugs with sex. This is a scene that serves a single purpose. To show that Jason has always been prone to violence.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is the small chance the drug dealer might not be dead. But the story obviously wants the reader to think he is, and it hasn't done anything to change that yet.

Starlin already did this story with The Diplomat’s Son in 1988 and he did it infinitely better. AND that’s still technically canon. So now I’m supposed to believe that Jason lost his cool bad enough to kill two douche bags before his sweet 16? Like it’s totally normal for abused kids raised in poverty, who’ve led hard and heartbreaking lives to just... haul off and kill people? That’s bullshit, and when taken with the Jason in the third issue, who is little more than an idiot thug, this story is really doubling down on some fucked up stereotypes.

Which brings us to the most recent issue. I went into this installment with very low expectations. I thought this story was going to be about Jason, through this experience with Tyler, a young boy with a similar background to Jason's, coming to the realization that Bruce's way is the best way and that Bruce did his best by Jason.

That would be annoying (in no small part because it takes increasingly absurd levels of plot armor to keep Bruce's no kill rule relevant, let alone irrefutably right). But I can probably live with that, if only because maybe if Jason officially falls back into line with the Bats crusade, maybe I'll get stories that treat him with respect, stories that don't relegate him to comic relief, dumb brute, or a background body with no lines in a story about the Joker burning Gotham (like Jason would just fucking stand there quietly for that).

And that may still be where the story is going, Jason realizing Bruce is right.

But holy shit do I not have the right words to describe how fucking insulting and gross issue three is.

From start to finish--including the flashback--Jason is written as cruel and fucking stupid. Like straight up dumb.

The entire issue is Bruce explaining the fucking basics to Jason like it's his first day. And Jason flies off the fucking handle and terrorizes a doctor he knows isn't a part of making the Cheerdrops, beats the shit out of some random addicts, and finally, when he can't accomplish anything on his own because he's a dumb brute he calls Barbara for help and rushes in with no information where he's promptly incapacitated and must now wait to be rescued by Batman.

This panel is the least of the issues sins but I can’t screenshot the entire story but it’s representative of the tone for the whole issue (and retroactively tainted the prior two issues).

This is beyond insulting. The only conclusions Jason comes to in this issue are the ones Bruce leads him to by talking to him like he can’t make the simplest connections. And like... in this story Jason can’t make the simplest connections.

This (and the Jason throughout the entirety of this issue) is a far cry from the Jason we fell in love with in Under the Red Hood, who was competent and strategic and intelligent enough to seize control of Gotham’s underworld from Black Mask (who’s no fucking slouch, he’s the first and only person to unify organized crime in Gotham) AND elude and manipulate Bruce until the time and place of his choosing.

This is a far cry from even the Red Hood and the Outlaws Jason who is competent enough to fight the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (among very dangerous and skilled others) and smart enough to create antidotes for mind control nanotech viruses.

As he should be, by the way. Jason Todd is one of the best, most comprehensively trained fighters in DC’s stable of non powered vigilantes. He’s not irrational or hot headed. He’s pragmatic, tactically minded, and patient. He’s a detective. Right now. Has been since he was 12. Bruce doesn’t have to make him one because he already is. 

Jason is not a stupid thug who uses his fists because his brain doesn’t work. And I can’t tell you how so very exhausted I am by this narrative. 

This is actually the most egregious example of Jason’s skills and intelligence being not just undermined but dismissed entirely. Even Morrison’s Jason had some degree of competency. 

The one, single redeeming factor of this story is the art. It’s beautiful. And Marcus To is a godsend he seems to be one of only a couple of artists who remember that Jason was a child when he was Robin and I’m literally only buying this book because of him. 

Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to come out so... um... passionately lol. I’m just very very tired. My intention with this isn’t to ruin it for you, if you like it, that’s fine. 

But this issue shot this story to the top of my "Vehemently Despise” list. 1) Batman: Urban Legends (Cheer), 2) Battle for the Cowl/Morrison’s Batman and Robin, 3) Batman The Adventure Continues.

I hope the next issues somehow salvage this dumpster fire. But I’m not expecting it.

(Damnit. That sounded harsh again. To reiterate, I’m not trying to judge anyone who enjoys it, I just personally hate it and you asked me why lol 😅)

[pixelgrotto]

Remixing a tomb plus a highway to hell

Last month I finished DMing Tomb of Annihilation for one of my D&D groups. It’s a campaign that sees heroes adventuring to the land of Chult to stop big bad lich Acererak, who’s made a device known as the Soulmonger that’s emanating a Death Curse and screwing up the world’s resurrection magic. It’s also a spiritual successor to Tomb of Horrors, one of the classic deathtrap dungeons of tabletop RPG history that came about because D&D creator Gary Gygax wanted to screw his players over for opening doors wrong. In short, it’s certainly one of the more memorable adventures for D&D 5e, but the version of Tomb of Annihilation that I ran for my players was actually extremely remixed and hacked apart, as is the case with every official Wizards of the Coast module that I run. 

There were a few reasons for this - my players were coming into this campaign fresh out of Curse of Strahd, and everyone was level 8. One of the players had died early on in Curse of Strahd - in the very first session we played, hilariously enough - and was temporarily sustained by the mists of the Shadowfell only to collapse upon returning to the material plane. With this in mind, I felt that it would be a great twist to have the party venture on a quest of resurrection only to learn that resurrection magic throughout the world had stopped working due to Acererak’s nefarious plans.

Additionally, I wanted to give my players the chance to try out alternate characters if they so desired. In the name of grand ambition, I decided to have my players create two sets of characters, and wove a homebrew story, dubbed “Fiends in Waterdeep,” that would run analogous to and eventually intertwine with Tomb of Annihilation. The first set of characters - consisting of some of the veterans who had survived Curse of Strahd - would investigate the streets of Waterdeep, which was suffering from an invasion of devils and demons that seemed unconnected to Acererark’s dark doings. The second set, consisting of new level 8s, would venture to Chult, the vaguely African-inspired landmass in the south of the Forgotten Realms, to track down the source of the Death Curse. After progressing through seemingly unconnected storylines, at the end of the campaign the disparate plot threads would mesh. The Waterdeep explorers would travel to the Nine Hells only to learn that the fiend invasion was caused by the abduction of the Queen of Hell’s newly born infant - a soul-devouring mass of flesh that could open portals into other worlds with its burps and farts - while the Chult expedition would delve into the jungle to find Acererark, smash the Soulmonger and free the aforementioned child. 

In short, I basically made a complicated D&D adventure even more complicated by layering my own story on top of it and running two campaigns at once. I think I was looking for a challenge, and oh boy, I got one. I probably won’t be undertaking something like this ever again, because it required a lot of planning hurdles on my part. For instance, my players and I usually gamed for about 5-6 hours at most, which meant devoting 2 and a half or 3 hours to both sets of characters. If one battle lasted too long or a social interaction went south, I’d have to adjust this timeframe accordingly, and every DM knows that players will always defy your expectations in one way or another, so there was a lot of improv on the fly to make sure that our sessions stayed well-paced. 

In the name of pacing, I also stripped much of the fat out of Tomb of Annihilation, which is largely composed of a really long hexcrawl. D&D 5e’s hexcrawl exploration and survival rules have never been particularly good, in my opinion, and the rules in the book expect you to roll LOTS of random encounters and deal with stuff like inclement weather, mosquito attacks, hunting, getting lost, etc. I incorporated some of this stuff (the hunting, since we had two rangers in the party), but I pre-rolled all of the random encounters and potential locations the party could go ahead of time, getting rid of some of the ones I didn’t like, and largely handwaved stuff like getting hopelessly lost. Reddit explorations have revealed that by far and large, everyone running this campaign does the same thing - particularly for higher level players trying to get through the jungle without feeling like they’re wasting time. (And from my firsthand experience with Out of the Abyss, there’s nothing worse than going through multiple D&D sessions and feeling like you haven’t accomplished much.)

My approach to streamlining Acererak’s deathtrap lair at the end of the campaign was similar. I skimmed through the entire dungeon with all of its bajillion floors (which could take an average group months to get through) in favor of using the 10 rooms that I liked the most, which was more than enough. Tomb of Annihilation, while probably fairer than Gary Gygax’s Tomb of Horrors, is still in my opinion full of wacky stuff in the final dungeon that just isn’t my cup of tea for D&D, including one trap that can get characters stuck in real-world Victorian London. (Okay, that’s cool on paper, but to actually run it as a DM, especially when your players are in the final hours of their adventure? I’ll pass.)

Additionally, I made Ras Nsi - the warlord-turned-yuan-ti - into more of a developed NPC who was actually willing to help the players slay Acererak. In the book, he’s very much a Darth Maul-type bad guy who looks cool but has a minimum of characterization. This is because Tomb of Annihilation leans into the stereotype that Ras Nsi and the rest of the yuan-ti are all merciless bastards with inscrutable plans, and while this may be fine if you’re familiar with the Conan the Barbarian serpentfolk tropes that inspired the yuan-ti, it’s not great if you’re trying to build a believable world with compelling characters. Much has been written about how Chult stumbles at portraying a fantasy Africa - largely by depicting the characters as foreign saviors and the Chultans as relatively helpless - and while some of this was alleviated in my game by the fact that one player’s character actually was Chultan, I still felt it was necessary to give some of the indigenous races a chance to help undo the curse that, after all, was first and foremost affecting their land.

Switching gears, when it came to the accompanying Fiends in Waterdeep homebrew story, I recycled some material from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, which I’d previously run for two different groups, and also took inspiration from the Wizards of the Coast module Descent into Avernus. At the time of planning, Descent Into Avernus was the most recent D&D hardcover, and all the reviews I’d read painted it as cool in concept but a major pain in the butt to run in reality. So, I decided to use only the nifty bits - a journey into the first layer of the Nine Hells via Mad Max-style tanks powered by souls - and mixed it with my own tale that was influenced by a profile of Fury, the dragon queen of hell, that I’d read in the third-party 5e supplement Legendary Dragons. It turned into a mildly amusing story about Fury warring against her ex-husband Asmodeus, and the players ended up serving as therapists in what amounted to an interplanar lover’s spat. I’d recently started therapy when I came up with the campaign concept, so this is probably one of those unique instances where real life truly influenced art. And hey, the unpredictable whims of all-powerful, world-shaping deities make for great adventure hooks, and judging by how Greek mythology seems to have re-entered the modern zeitgeist these days (I’m thinking about Hades, one of the most popular indie rougelikes out there, as well as that Netflix series Blood of Zeus) it seems like I was on the nose!

In the end, this two-tiered campaign lasted roughly 70 hours and climaxed with all sets of characters reaching level 10. Acererark’s Soulmonger was smashed, the feud between Fury and Asmodeus smoothed over, and after enduring the eerie mists of the Shadowfell, the hot temperatures of Chult and the flames of Avernus, the story of these motley players - who’d started questing with me back in 2018, and endured a move to online games in the era of COVID - came to a gentle end. I’m a believer in the reality that campaigns don’t necessarily need to last forever, and with real life throwing some of my players (and myself) a few recent curveballs, this seemed like a solid finale point. A consistent campaign running over two years is in many ways a dream for a lot of D&D players and DMs, and I’m glad I got the chance to make it happen.

[horrordirtbag]

freddy vs jason appreciation hours

This gon be a long ass post, summary at the bottom

Okay so basically this movie gets shidded the fuck on and y’know what I think too harshly. I think it did an amazing job bringing all of our slasher wet-dreams to life. And that’s one thing I really wanna stress throughout my incoherent internet rambling: bringing to life our fantasy. Cuz, y’see, I used to think this movie was garbo like many others, until like 4 years ago when I was watching it during a Halloween marathon, and I looked up from my computer and just saw Freddy and Jason, two of my favorite characters of all time, on the same screen together, beating the living shit out of each other. All my issues with it just kinda melted away and I really appreciated what I was looking at, and since then it climbed from the bottom of my list to easily in my top 5 for both franchises.

The fact that this movie even got made is a miracle. I’m just grateful that we even got to see this match brought to life at all. Just overcoming the rights issue between two major companies was a major hurdle to cross. Once that was settled, they could have just slapped together any shitty old movie they wanted and made a gazillion bucks no matter what. The title alone, Freddy vs Jason, would sell tickets, even if the actual movie was just two hand puppets smacking eachother for an hour and a half. But, no. New Line acquired the rights to Jason around 1992, and they immediately began work on the crossover. The only reason they made Jason Goes to Hell was because they had to wait for Wes Craven to finish New Nightmare first. That’s 11 years of development hell. They went through 10 scripts before they found one they liked, not to mention an innumerable amount of pitches. That’s an incredible amount of effort for a cheap slasher film. They spent thousands on the project before it even went into pre-production. Michael De Luca, the president of production at New Line, was an extreme fan of both franchises and really wanted to get it right.  New Line Cinema get’s a lot of flack for it’s treatment of the Friday franchise, and yeah, when you send Jason up his sisters coochie and into outerspace I can see why, but after reading more into the companies history with Jason, I don’t get the impression it was all cynicism. Even if you think the final product is dookie, you gotta give them some credit for the amount of dedication they put in for this project. And, you gotta remember, even though they produced far better films, Paramount was pretty much ashamed of their creation and ditched it as soon as it began making them less money.

Now I’m gonna talk about some of the actual problems with the movie itself. The main two are also both directed at our maggot-infested son. If you’re as much of a raging fan as I am to the point where you write essays for like 10 people to read on a website that hates tiddies you already know what I’m talking about. Let’s start with the fear-of-water debacle. This part pisses off the Friday camp, and for good reason. Any quick look at the past 10 movies shows you it’s just not true. Jason practically exists in water. He’s like the human version of Godzilla. But, in reality, Jason was never afraid of water in the movie. The screenplay writers have confirmed that it wasn’t a fear of water itself, but of drowning. And, well, we know that Jason shouldn’t be afraid of that either, being chained to the bottom of a lake for years on end’n all. But, even then, it’s not quite that simple. What Freddy is doing is exploiting Jason’s subconscious mind and the memory of the last time Jason ever felt fear: when he was a child, drowning. This is why Jason reverts back to a child, and then Freddy returns to the memory of his drowning in 1957. Ronny Yu went a much more metaphoric route in portraying this, but you can still kind of make it out. If you notice, even Jason seems surprised at his sudden refusal to chop through the stream of water. It’s not like he didn’t see it before he pulled his arm back. And, then, immediately after, we see Jason wading through Crystal Lake dragging a body, and at the end of the movie raises out of the water in New Blood fashion. So, it’s clear that even in the same movie, Jason was never intended to be afraid of water. Now, let’s talk about our gift-from-god Kane Hodder. As much as I love the final film, I hate how New Line treated our star man. This is the one thing I can’t really defend about the movie. No one still really knows why Kane was dropped, everyone involved just pointing fingers at each other, probably because whoever really did make the decision is afraid of Kane’s tree trunk arms. Even Sean Cunningham and other people deeply involved with the project were shocked they didn’t use Kane. For my two cents, I don’t think it’s one person or one specific reason to point to, but rather a whole bunch. In large part, I think Ronny Yu not being a fan of the franchise prior has a lot to do with it. He just didn’t realize that Kane was so beloved by the fanbase. Ken Kirzinger said that he initially auditioned to be stunt coordinator, and Ronny immediately asked him to play Jason, saying something around the lines of “you’re exactly what I’m looking for.” I can see why New Line would want someone with no connection to the franchises, as to bring in a fresh take, but for something like this, which is pretty much just a fanboy movie, it would have been better to grab someone who was also a fan. As to why New Line didn’t tell Kane Hodder they were going with someone else, I dunno. We probably will never know who was responsible for that lol. As disappointing as it is, I think Ken did a fine job (although I think he was a little too stiff), and I don’t think we should dismiss the entire film for it alone. This post is getting way longer than I anticipated. If you’re still here, hi, I hope your day is going well. Those art the only complaints, though, of course. Something I hear often is that the final fight is fantastic, but the rest of the movie sucks. I can’t really argue with that since it’s really vague, but I can say that, to me, the rest of the movie is great fun. Even if Freddy only has one kill, he has plenty of screen-time, all pretty good (and the one kill he does get in is great). And Jason’s stuff is all great too. The cornfield rave, the hospital chase, all good shid imo. But really that just comes down to personal taste.   Another thing I can’t really argue about are the characters being bland. Yeah, not much to say there. But honestly, I don’t think they’re terrible by any means (Kia dropping the f-bomb is tho). I have a feeling this complaint comes more from the Nightmare camp, since that series is home to much more compelling characters. Being more of a Friday fan, it just doesn’t bother me. 11 movies in, I’m used to bland characters lmao. Although, I do think Mark was a pretty interesting character. His relationship with his brother is pretty great.  One strange phenomenon I also see is that Freddy fans tend to complain that it feels too much like a Friday the 13th movie, while Jason fans say it feels too much like A Nightmare on Elm Street movie. And it’s not just me, either; this is also discussed briefly in Dustin McNeill’s fantastic book Slash of the Titans: The Road to Freddy vs Jason. If anything, this just feels like a testament to how well the movie blended the tones of both franchises.  The movie does also get too silly at times, but I think they did a decent job of reigning Freddy’s goofiness back to, I’d say, Nightmare 4 levels. Which is alright by me. nOW ONTO THE GOOD SHIT, We’re almost there. I swear. As I just mentioned, the movie masterfully blends both franchises. The movie has the plot of a Nightmare film, with Freddy pulling the strings, but has the bodycount (and characters lol) of a Jason film. Just because the plot is very Freddy oriented doesn’t mean Jason is left in his shadow, and just because Jason gets most of the kills doesn’t mean Freddy doesn’t get his time to shine either (the movie has plenty of Nightmare sequences, even if he only kills one). Complaints about Freddy only getting one kill are odd to me, since that’s the entire point of the movie. Jason is stealing Freddy’s kills. The ending, really, symbolizes what I mean. It’s the best possible way to end it. Jason rises from the water, holding Freddy’s head, making you think he’s the victor, but- nope! Freddy winks at the camera, and then the Nightmare jingle plays, mixed in with Jason’s iconic ki ki ki ma ma ma, perfectly balancing both franchises.  I’ve seen people complain about the ending, but I honestly think it’s genius. If you had Jason win, Friday fans would be mad; if you had Freddy win, Nightmare fans would be mad. Instead, not only is it really cool, but with the ending we got, the viewers themselves are allowed to decide who won, no answer being particularly wrong. To this day, people still debate who came out victorious.  Beyond that, the plot itself is such a great way to bring both characters together. Previous scripts had such convoluted ways of doing so, some involving the Apocalypse, some going meta like New Nightmare, and some just making no fucking sense at all. The Shannon/Swift draft does such a great job of keeping it simple. I love the idea of Springwood covering up Freddy’s existence, rendering him powerless. Not only is it the closest anyone’s ever gotten to actually defeating Freddy, but it also presents to the viewer a complex moral dilemma. Locking the kids away in Westin Hills is horribly cruel, unable to even see their family, but at the same time, if they didn’t, more kids would die at Freddy’s hand. To me, it’s really interesting.  The final thing I have to say, is that it’s just a boat load of fun. You can’t not have a fan orgasm watching the final battle (although they really shouldn’t have had Laurie interrupt the fight). It’s literally everything I ever wanted lmao, and I’m just eternally grateful that we got to see this match play out on our screens rather than just our minds before Robert Englund got too old. Again, seeing two of my favorite characters ever on the same screen is just awesome. In my opinion, I think it’s the best crossover-versus movie out there.  Some people just don’t like the movie and that’s fine, you can’t please everyone. I’m just dishing out why I love it so much, since it’s so vastly regarded as one of the worst of the series. You don’t see too much love out there for it, so I thought I’d spice it up.  TL:DR, I think this movie was such a wonderful love letter to the fans, and while it’s far from perfect, I think people really need to give it a second chance and look at it from a different perspective. It wasn’t made cynically, it wasn’t disrespectful to Jason, and it did a great job of bringing our fanboy and fangirl fantasies to life.

[trainsinanime]

Carmen Sandiego vs. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

The two Netflix shows I binged this weekend were Carmen Sandiego and She-Ra and the Princess of Power. In both cases, I had never watched or played any of the original content, I just heard good things (generally true) about these shows here on Tumblr.

What I found fascinating is that She-Ra arguably ticks more of the boxes of stuff that I want, but I overall ended up enjoying Carmen Sandiego a lot more. This post is basically just me thinking out loud trying to understand that. As such, the usual disclaimers apply: This is only my opinion, not a fact. Nor do I mean to say that She-Ra is bad. It's still a good show, and easily beats Voltron. On the other hand, Carmen Sandiego isn't perfect either, and it doesn't reach the level of, say, The Dragon Prince or, off Netflix but on the subject of reboots, Ducktales.

First of all, She-Ra is in many ways more interesting, because the show has much more human drama elements. Especially the complicated, messy relationship and conflict between Adora and Catra is great. Carmen Sandiego has nothing similarly dramatic. She-Ra also deals with topics like growing up, diplomacy, friendships and so on.

Carmen Sandiego, in contrast, is a very straightforward cartoon, with very clear good guys, very clear bad guys, and no moral grey area to speak of. Yes, Carmen does things that are illegal, but it's for a good cause and she looks cool while doing them, so it's okay, the show tells us. Her relationship with her former classmates also lacks depth and nuance by comparison. Sure, there's a lot of "how could you?", but no moment where either side doesn't know what to do with the other.

Style

What does Carmen Sandiego have that She-Ra doesn't? The most obvious thing is certainly style. She-Ra doesn't look bad and has some good character designs, but the overall style is fairly standard fairy tale planet threatened by evil machinery. There are hardly any things that feel like fresh new ideas, visually speaking. On the other hand, Carmen Sandiego has a gorgeous glamorous South Park Art Deco style, where every single frame is very obviously that show only. And look at those frames! The careful choice of color palette to give every scene and every episode its own visual identity while remaining true to the overall style is just amazing. Maybe that's superficial, but there's a reason why these are animated shows instead of podcasts.

Also, maybe that's just me, but I love classic James Bond, by which I mean anything pre-Craig (you heard me), and similar things. Hell, even Jason Bourne has more similarities than differences. Carmen Sandiego taps right into that whole aesthetic, and I just love that. Even if the trains are not very good represenations. Oh, it's a cartoon you say? Well, they had no problem drawing that old Peugeot 309 or the old Range Rover perfectly, now did they? I did choose this URL for a reason, folks.

Needs more Ca-Characters

Carmen Sandiego also has the good sense to make its best character, Carmen herself, the hero of the show. No matter who is around, Carmen is always the most interesting person in any scene. In She-Ra, the best character is not She-Ra but Catra. Catra is constantly conflict, smart but angry, hurt by Adora and missing her. Her relationship with Adora is portrayed as both very important and providing much needed warmth to both of them, but also as being dysfunctional in a lot of ways. That's awesome! When we get to see it.

Sadly, most of the time, the focus is Adora and her new friends, a group that is literally called "Best Friends Squad" and has all the narrative depth and drama you would expect given the name. Meanwhile Catra is off growling in the distance. I honestly don't care much about Bow and Glimmer. Glimmer at least has a bit of a conflict with her mom, but Bow doesn't get any conflict, backstory or personality; he doesn't even get a name of his own and is instead just called after what he's holding most of the time.

I'm obviously exaggerating here, and it's not like e.g. Carmen Sandiego's Zack with his "I like most food but not all food" is really much better. But in Carmen Sandiego, that relationship is a fun friendship on the side, not the emotional core of most episodes. It's no coincidence that the best episode in She-Ra is the episode that has no Bow and Glimmer, and is instead all about Adora and Catra and the history of their relationship. Honestly, if the show had been all about Catra, with Adora doing her thing somewhere in the background, this post might well have been the other way around.

Carmen Sandiego, meanwhile… look, let's not beat around the bush: Carmen is sexy as hell. I don't mean just the amazing character design and fashion style: There's also the amazing voice acting, body language, and most importantly her entire demeanour. I think I'm kind of in love with her; the only question is whether that makes me too emotionally compromised to do this comparison, or whether it proves that CS is winning. What I do know, from looking at Tumblr, is that my response seems to be the default one that most people have when seeing her.

That aside, Carmen is also just plain fun. In a world of "I don't know if I can do this, and if yes, how", it's nice to have a protagonist who knows she's awesome and has full confidence in her own abilities. I don't mean to diss the "how do i become hero" thing, I really loved Into the Spider-Verse (make no mistake, that's on a whole other level), but damn, it is nice to have someone who is that suave. I think this ties back into my love of James Bond, because this is very similar; only this time, the prettiest lady is not a mere love interest, but the awesome main character.

Adora generally lacks memorable attitude, she doesn't seem to view her job as something that's fundamentally fun, and she doesn't really do much to differentiate her from most other Luke Skywalker wannabes out there. Though the few times when she does, e.g. the intense preparation for the ball or the arm wrestling matches with the annoying captain guy, are awesome.

The writing's on the wall

Ultimately, a lot comes down to the stories the shows tell and how they tell. And in that regard, it seems at first like She-Ra has the edge: The stakes are high and there's a strong overarching plot, while in Carmen Sandiego, the entire planet is not under threat and nobody would notice if you reordered a few of the interior episodes.

But I cannot help but feel that Carmen Sandiego maybe tries to do less, but is way better at doing what it wants to do. Its clear focus is one of its biggest strengths (apart from all the other ones). The show never hesitates to go straight for the things that it is awesome at; the heists, the action, the adventure, and the odd geography fact. In contrast, She-Ra has a lot of things that don't feel fresh or interesting. Going to a village, defeating the big bad there, then recruiting them for the rebellion? Going off in search of a training montage? Realising that you shouldn't only rely on your superpowers? Realising that your strengths lies in your friends even if they're generic and boring and seriously does Bow have any sort of background at all? I've seen that before and done better in things like Avatar: The Last Airbender (why don't more people compare Catra and Zuko? It's because it's too obvious, isn't it? That's the only explanation that makes sense to me).

Ultimately that's what this all comes down to: Stronger visuals, stronger characters, and a laser-like focus on the things that make it awesome all serve to make Carmen Sandiego the show that I'm obsessed with right now, and She-Ra just another show that I watched and generally liked.

Not everything's a competition

While I am talking about both shows: I've seen people argue that Carmen Sandiego and She-Ra have very similar premises, with the girls who grew up in an evil school, then left once they realised they were in an evil school. Personally, I'm a big fan of that trope, and while I think it has its issues, there's nothing wrong with more of that. But Adora and Carmen aren't really that similar besides following a (fairly mild version of) that generic background plot. In particular, Carmen as the master thief for chaotic good and Adora as the honourable warrior are on two completely different paths (though I could totally imagine them being friends), and the resulting stories are completely different.

By the way: My favourite incarnation of this sort of background right now has to be Violet Evergarden, where the brainwashed child soldier does not become an amazing child soldier for the side of good, but instead a professional love letter writer. It's poignant, beautiful, and I'm never going to stop telling people to watch it.

[creative-type]

Building up to Arlong Part I

“Just wait ‘till the Arlong arc.”

I think anyone who’s been in the One Piece fandom for any length of time has read some variation of the above sentence. It’s almost universally agreed that the Arlong arc is the tipping point from the series, elevating One Piece from okay to great. Detractors, newcomers, and the generally curious are all told to hold off their judgment until seventy chapters into the series, which seems like an absurd amount of time for a reader to get hooked.

In an interview with several of Oda’s former editors (English summary��here, about three-quarters down the page) it’s stated that One Piece met some initial resistance in Japan among the staff at Shonen Jump, with some of the editors not seeing the appeal and others having to convince them of its “awesomeness”. 

It’s hard to imagine the manga garnering such a reaction today, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that One Piece is Oda’s first serialized work. He had been an assistant and written several one shots, but he’d never had to put together a long-form story before. He was learning and growing as an author and artist as he went along. 

Just compare the art in these two pages

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Both are establishing shots of new locations, one of Usopp’s hometown and the other the Marines setting Luffy’s first bounty. The amount of detail outside the marine base blows the idyllic hills of Syrup village out of the water. It can be jarring to see how sparse early One Piece panels are when you’re more used to the cluttered, chaotic pages of later chapters.

But I think it would be impossible for Oda to make the jump from “meh” to “this is amazing” without some proper buildup. Early One Piece arcs contain bits and pieces of what makes the series so beloved, and as each arc progresses Oda takes what he’s learned and adds it into an ever-improving whole. So let’s take a look at these early chapters and find the diamonds scattered among the rough.

Romance Dawn

Chapter 1 is arguably the best crafted stand-alone story in these early chapters. That makes sense. As a pilot chapter for the series I’m sure it was written and rewritten dozens of times for maximum effectiveness, and I think it gets across everything it needs to without belaboring the point.

Romance Dawn is a glimpse of the quality that Oda would later produce on a more consistent basis. The characters are fun and have hidden depths, the art is simple but dynamic, and the bait-and-switch where Shanks doesn’t initially beat the crap out of the mountain bandits is a surprise considering the genre. And if haki was indeed planned from the beginning it’s also the first instance of Oda’s famous foreshadowing ability. 

Considering future backstories it’s a little surprising that no one important to Luffy dies, but the familiar themes of inherited will, dreams, and sacrifice are present. The lack of uber-tragedy sets Luffy apart from a lot of protagonists and fits with his lighthearted, carefree characterization and the more whimsical nature of the series, while still hinting at the darkness that exists within the world. 

Alvida

Chapter 2 is also a stand-alone story, but it’s much more generic. Following a common trend during these early chapters, it’s more focused on establishing Luffy as a character than any of the antagonists, and world building is minimal. Alvida is so boring that Oda completely repurposed her design and personality when she was reintroduce in Louge Town, and at this point Coby is a walking, talking foil to Luffy with little to no personality of his own. 

There are a couple of things to note, though. One, Luffy’s characterization is remarkably consistent to what we see later in the series. Here we see him smile as he faces death, while later in the chapter Luffy insults Coby and calls him a wimp in a scene that’s reminiscent of his interaction with Shirohoshi during the Fishman Island arc. He also doesn’t help Coby until Coby stands up for himself, subtly enforcing the idea that Luffy is not a hero. 

Second, we can see the embryonic form of Oda’s later paneling and page layouts. The above scene reminded me of a picture I pulled for my analysis of Chapter 218.

You can’t see it here, but in Chapter 218 Oda tilts his panels to match the rocking of the Going Merry, using an unconventional panel format to convey the chaos the Straw Hats are experiencing while also giving the eye an easy path to follow.

Chapter 2 has the “fade to black” Oda commonly uses when transitioning scenes, but the format is the traditional three lines of (mostly) rectangular panels. Despite the huge whirlpool you don’t get a sense that the situation is dangerous.

Also note the sheer amount of information conveyed in the sequence from Chapter 218 compared to the Chapter 2 despite them sharing basically the same layout. There are four separate panels of the same whirlpool - adequate enough in showing the passage of time, but visually kind of boring, which sums up the art in general during these early chapters.

Shells Town 

The Shells Town arc shares a lot of the same flaws as the Alvida encounter, but has the benefit of a longer page count, which is helpful in fleshing out the story. Coby starts to grow into his own, and Zoro is introduced. The focus is still on establishing Luffy’s ideals as a pirate and Morgan is a one-note villain, but the world is starting to grow, namely with the complex morality of the marines.

We also get our first taste of Oda’s specific brand of Tragic Backstory (tm). Zoro’s flashback is arguably the weakest of all the Straw Hat’s. The pacing is rushed and I personally find the segue in and out of the present day to be a little jarring, but the bones of it is sound even if the execution is iffy. 

The fight against Morgan doesn’t last long, but outclassed as he is, he at least puts up a better showing than Alvida. There are some neat camera angles and perspective tricks that Oda uses that sell Luffy’s flowing, so-long-as-it-works-I’m-going-to-do-it fighting style. 

Again, this is but a taste of things to come, and short as it may be the Morgan fight is fun. Oda has said he gave Luffy the gum-gum fruit to help keep things from ever getting too serious, and reading these early chapters I believe it.

Orange Town

I would call the Buggy arc the first “standard” One Piece arc. At fourteen chapters it’s decently long by East Blue standards. It’s is leaps and bounds better than anything we’ve seen thus far, and we have the flashy bastard himself to thank.

Pre-comic relief Buggy manages to straddle the line between menacing and likable. One thing I do appreciate about One Piece villains is that they’re generally not given an excuse for their evilness (a trend that is admittedly starting to reverse post timeskip). We are never told why Buggy, Kuro, or Kreig set out to be pirates, and frankly we don’t need to know. Buggy is given a reason for his animosity towards Shanks, but it’s never used as a justification for his more jerkish behavior.

And he is a jerk. A clever, reasonably powerful, flashy jerk, but a jerk all the same.

With this added characterization, Buggy has the honor of being the first charismatic and memorable villain of the series, and is also the first instance of camaraderie within an enemy organization. In all honesty, I think the only thing separating Orange Town from the Cocoyashi village is emotional stakes. Buggy’s opinion notwithstanding, there is no Tragic Backstory (tm). The little dog comes closest, but the effectiveness of Shu depends entirely how much one cares for sad animal stories (I am immune, and subsequently don’t much care about Laboon either).

More importantly, it’s here that we see the first primitive instances of Straw Hat interaction, and some of the stuff that happens when Oda lets all the different personalities bounce off of one another is pure gold

Also Luffy shoves an old man face-first into a wall for his own good. I feel like that ought to be mentioned every time someone tries to call him a hero.

But the thing that really stands out in Orange Town when placed within the overarching plot is Oda’s burgeoning skill at playing the long game in regards to his storytelling, specifically in regard to Nami.

The Alvida, Morgan, and later Gaimon’s arcs are largely self-contained little stories that serve to flesh out Luffy as a protagonist. When Zoro was recruited the audience was informed of his history and character motivation almost immediately. During Nami’s first conversation with Luffy in chapter 9 we learn that she’s 1) raising 100,000,000 berries to buy a village, 2) loves money and tangerines, and 3) hates pirates. We don’t learn the reason for any of these things until her backstory is revealed in chapter 78.

There are obvious parallels to Robin’s recruitment much later, but really this is Oda something does quite often. Vivi and Law were both around for awhile before the meat of their stories were told. Having someone familiar around for big conflicts helps give a face to the nameless masses. It would have been really hard for Oda to make the reader care about the average Joe in Cocoyashi village without having a pre-established connection in the form of Nami, and it would be really hard to care about Nami if the audience hadn’t been given the time to get to know her first.

By waiting so long to let Nami develop as her own character, the emotional stakes missing from Orange Town are fully present during the much-beloved march to Arlong Park. The latter cannot exist without the former.

I said in the opening that 70 chapters is an absurd amount of time to get hooked into a story, but in some ways I can completely understand why it would take that long. One Piece isn’t built on slick one-liners or “cool” characters. It’s fun and goofy and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Hints of future intrigue and mystery are strewn along like bread crumbs down a path, organically delivered as the world unfurls bit by bit. There’s a methodicalness to it that catches the reader by surprise, yet makes perfect sense as the crew goes from island to island.

Orange Town is just the beginning of this in action, but once again this is getting pretty long. I’ll finish the road to Arlong Park in another post. Thanks for reading :)   

[keegames]

Sonic Forces Review: Chains of Future Past

Ah, Sonic Forces. To many, it’s the OTHER Sonic game to come out this year. A few previous articles have mentioned my history with the series, and I promised a review of this game, so without further ado, here goes.

Sonic Forces is an odd little game, in that it seems it was made to please all types of Sonic fans. The core of the gameplay of both Modern Sonic and your custom character (more on that later) is the tried-and-true racing-platfomer-hybrid first used in 3D Sonic by Sonic Unleashed and then adapted into Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. However, it also features levels starring Classic Sonic similarly to Generations, and it has a few levels based on Genesis Sonic zones (though with more changes to their aesthetics than Generations; more on that later). It also features an attempt at a more serious (some would say “edgy”) story, similar to that of the Sonic Adventure games, and a create-a-character feature sure to appeal to the series’s more imaginative fans. The premise of the main plot is even similar to the SatAM show and the early Archie comics. Unfortunately, it would be a lie to say that all these discrete elements come together strongly. Still, despite its flaws, there’s a lot of fun to be had in Sonic Forces. Hopefully this lengthy write-up gives you a better idea of the game’s pros and cons.

Gameplay

Sonic Forces features four gameplay styles that the player is shuffled between across its various stages (30 main stages/boss fights, plus 13 or 14 short secret levels that are entirely 2D platform challenges based on singular level gimmicks). Unlike other Sonic games that feature multiple gameplay styles, however, three of the four styles control relatively similarly with a single core mechanic differentiating them (or, in the case of “tag team,” not differentiating them).

Let’s start with Modern Sonic. Modern Sonic, in terms of abilities, is most similar to his Colors incarnation, featuring a double jump and a boost that is only filled by either collecting Wisp Capsules or destroying enemies. His levels swap between 3D and 2D smoothly. Unlike Colors, he can perform the Quick Step (a short shift to the left or the right) at any point with the shoulder buttons, though like Colors, a few context-sensitive sections have him do this with a push of the joystick to the left or right as well. He also has the stomp and slide moves. Strangely, his drift ability is completely absent, which you may miss in a few parts of Metropolitan Highway, but generally won’t worry about otherwise. Like the previous games of this style, Sonic takes turns kind of wider than you’d expect from most 3D platformer characters, but it’s managing his momentum and movement in that way that makes this style unique and interesting. Set aside the assumptions put in place by Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot, and you’ll be well on your way to mastering the game and blazing across the land.

Now, the custom character. You can choose your character’s gender, animal species, a few different head styles, eyes (shape and color), colors, voice, and victory pose. These options are relatively basic, which fits because Sonic characters don’t have much body variety anyway. Each species also has a special ability, but these are generally minor (wolf attracts nearby rings, rabbit has longer invincibility when hit, bird has a small double jump, etc.) You can still make some goofy looking faces with the right eyes, but the real meat of the customization is in clothing. Doing just about anything in the game will unlock more and more clothing pieces, from shirts to pants to jackets to capes to hats to glasses to shoes to kneepads to monocles to masks and more. There’s tons of this stuff and you can make some ridiculous creations. It’s actually one of the most fun things in the game.

The custom character’s basic controls are basically identical to Modern Sonic, though they lack a double jump unless you make a bird. Notably, however, they lack the boost, meaning that, though you still get moving at good speeds, you won’t quite be running over everything in your path. The custom character’s main form of attack outside of homing attacks is your equipped Wispon (Wisp weapon). Each of these serves two purposes: a regular attack that you can do at any time, and a special ability that you can perform when you pick up the corresponding Wisp. There are a variety of attacks and abilities, but they’re not all created equal by a long shot. For example, the Burst Wispon gives you a flamethrower that you can hold to torch enemies in front of you. This is one of the best ones due to not affecting your movement; you can run and jump freely while spraying fire, so you don’t lose momentum. Comparatively, the Lightning Wispon is an electric whip that forces you to either stop or move forward awkwardly while swinging (though its arc is pretty wide), and the Cube Wispon forces you to stop completely and attack twice to actually destroy enemies since its first swing traps them in cubes. (Destroying cubed enemies gives you extra rings, though, so at least it can get you more points than other Wispons.) Generally, you’ll find yourself annoyed by Wispons that stop your movement. One notable Wispon is the Drill, which gives you a powerful, super-fast charging attack that you keep your momentum from afterwards. It’s perfect for speedrunning.

The Wispon abilities that are activated from the item also vary. Burst lets you do a series of jumps until its meter runs out, Lightning allows you to dash along trails of rings and enemies, Drill grinds you across the ground and up walls, Asteroid makes you invincible for a period of time, etc. Some of these are good for finding alternate paths and hidden Red Rings throughout levels, while others are mostly utilities for making your life easier. Custom character levels are usually similar in layout and feel to Modern Sonic ones, apart from the changes made to make Wispons relevant.

Classic Sonic is the third character, and easily the worst. His levels are fully 2D, and on a basic level, he works like he would in Mania, right down to him having his Drop Dash. However, he just feels WRONG. Jump momentum is screwy, momentum when not rolling doesn’t work right, and he just generally feels like a brick with Sonic’s moves. Even without Sonic Mania’s release this year, he’d seem kind of off; with it, he’s just embarrassing. That said, his levels are designed competently apart from his final level, Iron Fortress, which is a giant pain in the ass, thanks to a forced autoscrolling section full of death pits. Classic Sonic is absolutely the worst part of Forces, and hopefully SEGA decides to re-hire the Mania team to appeal to Sonic nostalgia rather than trying and failing to make this sloppy gameplay style work. (Forces was in development before Mania, so it was likely too late to cut him out by time Mania started, so I give a slight pass in that sense.)

The fourth type of stage isn’t technically a new character; rather, it is Tag Team stages, where you control both Modern Sonic and your custom character at the same time. Controlling two characters at once is done very simply, as you are essentially controlling one character with both sets of abilities. There are the least of these stages compared to other characters. One notable thing about them is that there are very few 2D sections, with only one that lasts more than a few seconds. They also feature a “Double Boost” mechanic, where at certain pre-determined points you’re asked to mash a button, and after a few seconds, Sonic and your custom character rocket forward for a certain amount of time, running over enemies and gathering rings. It’s basically just a scripted sequence where you can rack up points, but it’s amusing to see your own creation as Sonic’s new best friend as the game’s cheesy vocal theme plays and you run over tons of enemies.

Notably, the game no longer has lives; you are instead awarded a bigger score bonus at the end of levels for dying less. Since previous 3D Sonic games already hurt your ranks for dying mid-level, having to spend lives to restart at checkpoints or retry levels would be a waste anyway. I’m not one to say that lives should be completely eliminated from games (and in fact I think Sonic Mania was better for having them, despite some complaints I’ve heard), but in this case they wouldn’t add to the experience in any meaningful way.

Level Design

Though level design is technically part of gameplay, it’s important enough in Sonic especially to need its own section. Since Modern Sonic, custom character, and Tag Team levels mostly hit the same design beats, I can talk about their design relatively interchangeably.

With pre-release footage, people were worried that levels were too short and too linear, with little to no shortcuts or things to do beyond blasting forward for a little bit. I can confirm, however, that the levels showcased pre-release are generally some of the least interesting, for whatever reason. Many of the levels have cool shortcuts and paths taken through either well timed jumps, sidesteps, homing attacks, or Wispon ability usage. Like previous Sonic games in this style, there’s more platforming in 2D than 3D, but generally rocketing your way through these levels, optimizing your performance, and finding the paths to take to collect all the Red Rings (there are five hidden in each level) is a lot of fun, with a single consistent caveat.

Many of the levels in Sonic Forces feel too short. This is less of a criticism of the actual time spent in each level, and more of a criticism of their pacing. Each level, consistently, feels sort of like two thirds of a level; each one seems like it should have a third section that brings together all the mechanics and layout techniques the level introduced and fully bring them to their conclusion. Instead, each time you get to where you think you’re about to reach that, the level ends instead. The thing that makes this especially sad is that what’s there tends to be a LOT of fun. You’ll be ripping through cool, interesting landscapes and you’ll wish you could do it more than you end up doing. As much fun as I ended up having with this game, I couldn’t help but feel a little short-changed from time to time.

Classic Sonic’s level design generally feels like a simplification of design you’d find in Sonic the Hedgehog 2; there’s nothing super special about it but it’s not bad either, apart from the aforementioned Iron Fortress. You’ll be more bothered by his actual control than with the levels.

The game also has its share of boss fights for each character, which range from “inoffensive” to “moderately fun,” though they’re never the best part of the game. The custom character probably has the best time with them, because using the Wispons to attack is more fun than homing attacking repeatedly, and some of them you can really speed up the fights with the right abilities. Unlike some other 3D Sonic games, they never really get frustrating, so I guess that’s a plus.

Graphics

Sonic Forces looks pretty nice. It varies by level, however. Forces’s take on Green Hill wasn’t quite as nice as Generations’s; it used more simple geometric shapes and less interesting foliage. Some of the other levels are much nicer looking, such as the Mystic Forest, Death Egg, Metropolis, and Empire Fortress stages. Many of the levels also have tons of action in the backgrounds, including giant robots, bombing runs, and in the case of the Empire Fortress stages, an all-out war. The lighting looks pretty nice, and the game runs at a rock-solid 60 frames per second on the PS4 version that I played. It won’t necessarily wow you, but it’s a game that looks pretty good.

Sound and Music

The game’s voice acting is cartoony and goofy, like you’d expect from a game about talking animals. Most of the levels have dialogue during them that advances the plot and describes action. There is an option to turn off all the in-level dialogue, which is useful when you’re replaying stages.

The music is pretty good, though not quite the series’s best. Each character has their own musical style in their levels. Modern Sonic generally has a mixture of guitars and synths in his levels. The compositions are cool, fast-paced, and sometimes kind of dramatic, but the lead synth in a lot of them isn’t quite idea. I still like a lot of the music, but I can understand it bothering you. The custom character has music characterized mostly by synths, other electronic instruments, and vocals. The lyrics are kinda cheesy, with the songs being about destiny, winning the fight, and other goofy things. You might find yourself singing along if you don’t take yourself seriously. Classic Sonic music actually uses Sega Genesis-styled instruments, though strangely enough it doesn’t sound like the kind you’d hear in a Genesis Sonic game. I can’t quite place the game I would hear these sounds in, though. A few are catchy and fun, but the others are pretty forgettable. Tag team stages have music similar to the custom character’s stages, but without lyrics (with the exception of one stage that reprises the game’s main hard rock vocal theme). They’re generally pretty forgettable.

Story

I can’t tell if Sonic Forces is taking itself seriously or if it’s being tongue-in-cheek about the series’s previous brushes with serious storytelling, but either way it’s pretty hilarious. Hearing goofy cartoon animals talk about the seriousness of war never stops being funny, whether intentionally or not. The story is always cheesy, going from an overly edgy cheesiness at the beginning to a more wholesome cheesiness near the end, where speeches about the power of friendship walk right out of your favorite anime into the dialogue. One notable bit of contrast is that, even in the serious parts of the story early on, Sonic himself is never particularly serious. He’s always chattering away and making wisecracks, which actually ends up being very entertaining due to everything else around him. If you only let yourself enjoy things that are legitimately good, you’ll probably be irritated, but anyone who can let themselves go and laugh at a B-movie atmosphere will have a lot of fun watching the cutscenes.

Replay Value

The game’s main story clocks in at only 4-ish hours over its 30 main stages/boss fights, but it doesn’t seem like it should really be any longer. It’s not particularly difficult to beat, either. There’s a good amount of replay value: like previous 3D Sonic games, you’re ranked on your score at the end of levels, so getting S ranks on every stage is one way to get a good amount of time from the game. Each stage also has five Red Rings to find, giving you a reason to revisit levels and find all the different paths. Once you’ve collected all the Red Rings in a stage, a set of Number Rings will appear, which have to be collected in order from 5 to 1 descending. And once you’ve collected all of those, a set of Silver Moon Rings will appear in a level, which must all be collected in a short period of time. Red Rings are the only of these collectibles that unlock extra levels; the others are purely for satisfaction, avatar items, and Trophies/Achievements. The extra levels aren’t particularly meaty; they’re purely 2D platforming challenges with either Modern Sonic or the custom character that are focused around singular gimmicks that don’t appear in the rest of the game. They’re fun enough, I guess, but they don’t really take advantage of what makes this kind of Sonic game special. Finally, the game has leaderboards for level times, though unsurprisingly they seem to be hacked to hell and back on the PC version. Since getting the best times in levels takes a lot of clever optimization, it can be a lot of fun to do your absolute best. If you’re not driven to better yourself, though, then Sonic Forces loses a lot of appeal, as a single playthrough will be over pretty quickly.

Conclusion

At its best, Sonic Forces is a fast-paced, fun action platformer where you’ll be blazing through cool environments and feeling the flow as you nail all your homing attacks, boosts, Wispon moves, quick steps, and slides. At its worst, you’ll be wondering why Sonic Team bothered to bring back Classic Sonic at all. Sonic Forces also doesn’t have much to offer in the way of exploration, nor is its main story all that long, so if you don’t like optimizing your performance then you’ll find yourself uninterested pretty quickly. Still, if you like the feeling of nailing every movement, Sonic Forces is a lot of fun, even if the levels feel like they should be a bit more fleshed out. If you already dislike the boost gameplay from Unleashed, Colors, and Generations, Forces won’t change your mind. If you enjoyed those games, or if you just have an open mind, most of this game can be a solid piece of entertainment. Plus, there’s a special joy that comes from dressing your cartoon animal up in completely ridiculous outfits. As a budget title (launching at $40), there’s a good amount of fun to be had in Sonic Forces, despite its issues. Hopefully Sonic Team takes the right lessons from this game and sticks to the fast-paced boost gameplay they’ve been building on and look to the future while leaving the imitations and celebrations of the series’s early days to the fine folks who made Sonic Mania.

Buy if:

you already like “Boost Sonic”

you enjoy optimizing your performance in short, action-packed challenges

you can stomach a couple of irritating bits

you enjoy chuckling at goofy, cheesy writing

Avoid if:

you’re looking for a solid Classic Sonic experience

you prefer longer games or exploration in your platformers

you’re not used to adjusting to controls that feel different from the genre standard

cheesy things irritate you

[benevolentgodloki]

Roleplaying Profile Meme: PLEASE REPOST, DO NOT REBLOG!  Feel free to add to any of your answers!  The purpose is to tell your partners about the way you write!  For the multiple choice ones, BOLD all that apply and, if you want, italicize if it’s a conditional answer!

– B A S I C S –

NAME : Pirate ARE YOU OVER 18?   Yes / No IS YOUR MUSE?   Yes* / No

* {what the heck is it with me and muses that are over 1000 years old I swear.}

ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU WRITE WITH ON THIS BLOG? No (anyone) / Semi (most people) / Yes / Highly / Private (mutuals only) ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU FOLLOW ON THIS BLOG? No (anyone) / Semi / Yes / Highly

{It may have been noticed that when I first started out I had my blog as ‘highly selective’, which isn’t particularly helpful for starting out ;D So for now I’m ‘selective’ and will very likely try to calm down soon with how much I take on as I’ve not even touched my ‘main’ blog since I started on this loser, oops. }

IF YOUR MUSE IS CANON, HOW MUCH TO YOU ADHERE TO CANON? Not at all / A little / Some / Mostly / Strictly / (OC)  

{I try to keep Loki ‘canon’, but, well, for me, roleplay is about playing with what you’ve got and having fun. It’s fantasy. If you want to have Loki in a situation that would otherwise be totally OOC then it’s my job as a writer to find a way for that to be believable. If I wanted to write Loki just for me and keep him strictly to one ideology, then what would be the point in me sharing him? You wanna ship him? Cool, we’ll see how that works out. You want him taking over the world? Sweet, I’ll find a reason. You want him fluffy or angsty or redemptive? I can work something out. I’m a sandbox, I’m not trying to write the next Marvel movie here}

WHAT POST LENGTHS DO YOU WRITE? One Liners / Single-Para / Multi-Para / Novella

{If memes require it I’ll do one-liners or novellas if doing drabbles etc. They’re circumstantial. I’m not against one-liners, it depends on what’s happening in a thread, but I also don’t want to clog up people’s dashes except for brief crack!}

DO YOU USE ICONS AND/OR GIFS? No / Gifs / Icons / Gifcons DO YOU WRITE ON OTHER PLATFORMS? No* / Yes

{I do write some instant roleplays with Will (araedi) on Discord but generally I find these highly stressful because I have this thing where I have to immediately respond to messages (thanks anxiety, you’re great) so I literally only play with Will and a side-order of rare chat instances - or in Cards Against Humanity!}

WHAT LEVEL OF PLOTS DO YOU WRITE? Unplotted / Open Ended Plots / Semi-Plotted / Fully Plotted Epics HOW QUICKLY DO YOU USUALLY RESPOND TO THREADS? Very Slow (more than a month) / Slow (3-4 Weeks) / Average (1-2 Weeks) / Fast (Less Than One Week) / Very Fast (Less Than Three Days)

{When I get back on track with my main blog, unfortunately my posting speed is likely to deteriorate drastically. At the moment I’m taking only a few days because my health’s keeping me from doing much but enjoying Loki and I’m buzzed enough about him to even post on work nights. In anticipation of me being a slow bean, I started this blog off with this very warning in my rules. I do have a thread tracker, however, so if you’re wondering where your reply is and it’s been anything up to a week, please ask in case I’m a dumb and I lost it <3}

WHAT TYPES OF THEMES DO YOU LIKE? (feel free to add!) Fluff / Angst / Smut / Action / Tragedy / Domestic / Family / Conversational / Hurt-Comfort WHAT GENRES DO YOU LIKE? (feel free to add!) High Fantasy / Supernatural / Science Fiction / Historical / Horror / Comedy / Romantic / Drama / Action / Adventure / Espionage / Everything

{I unbolded horror but it’s dependent. Written horror isn’t like visual horror, which is something I don’t do well with. I’m a total wimp. But I can do some pretty dark nasties with fiction. I’ll try most things}

ARE THERE ANY THEMES YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING ON YOUR BLOG? (not triggers) No* / Yes   DO YOU HAVE ANY TRIGGERS?  HOW DO YOU REQUEST IT TAGGED? No / Yes*

* {I’ll answer both these in one asterisk. My one trigger I don’t need anyone to tag because it’s very specific and unlikely to come up. If something of that ilk happens in our thread I’ll IM you to explain and it will entirely not be your fault so never worry :P I’m generally fine with most themes to write so if you’re looking for someone to try something out who’d normally say no, you can always ask.}

– S H I P P I N G –

WHAT TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? Romantic / Platonic / Familial / Physical / Sexual WHAT TYPES OF PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? Romantic / Platonic / Familial / Physical / Sexual

{So for Loki this one’s a bit more unusual. I’m up for varied things but some stuff requires first meetings etc. Romance will take chemistry and time (if at all, that dumb frost giant heart). Family can be pre-established if you’re playing a muse from the movies who is one of his family. I may consider AUs/OCs with other pre-established family members but plotting is key for that too. Some ships I lean more toward and may be more easily persuaded to just assume sexual things have already occurred or at the least flirting. It’s entirely muse and situation dependent basically.}

DO YOU HAVE OTPS? No / Chemistry only / Yes DO YOU HAVE NOTPS? No* / Yes / I don’t know

* { I don’t really but it’s possible? I’ve not got any on blacklist. I wouldn’t say I’m raring to go for Thorki (I don’t intend at this time to do so with my bestie Thor) but if you’re a Thor out there who’s just at their wit’s end unable to find semi-incestuous love, well, I won’t necessarily rule it out. I’ve even considered Helki because hot damn. I’m supposed to be talking about NOTPs where was I? Tbh I’m not a fan of Stucky. Each to their own. If I see too much of it on my dash I get a bit ‘ewww’ but hey if you love that, then you go love that! And that doesn’t affect Loki anyway. Basically if something feels good fictionally for me and him, I’m up for trying it)

WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION? - Heterosexual / Heteroflexible / Bisexual / Homoflexible / Homosexual / Pansexual / Demisexual / Sapiosexual / Asexual / Attracted to masculinity / Attracted to femininity / Attracted to androgyny

WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S ROMANTIC ORIENTATION? - Heteroromantic / Heteroflexible / Biromantic / Homoflexible / Homoromantic / Panromantic / Demiromantic / Sapioromantic / Aromantic / Polyamorous

ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WRITING SMUT? No / Selectively / Yes

HOW EARLY IN A RELATIONSHIP DO YOU SHIP ROMANTICALLY? Autoship / During Plotting / After A Couple IC Interactions / Several IC Interactions / Slow Burn /Depends on partner & muse

ARE YOU OPEN TO TOXIC SHIPS?

No / Selectively / Yes

ARE YOU OPEN TO PROBLEMATIC SHIPS? (canon history, age difference, complicated, etc.) No / Selectively / Yes

ARE YOU OPEN TO POLYSHIPPING? No / Selectively / Yes

ARE YOU AN EXCLUSIVE SHIPPER? No / Sometimes / Yes

DOES CRACK SHIPPING EVER HAPPEN? No / Sometimes / Yes

DOES CROSSOVER SHIPPING EVER HAPPEN? No / Yes / Depends

Tagged by: @heartfractured Tagging: Anyone following me who wants to do this. I know that sounds lazy but half of you have already probably been tagged XD

[murasaki-murasame]

Danganronpa V3 Liveblog: Part 1 [Prologue]

So now that my several week-long adventure in trying to secure the necessary equipment to legally play this game has come to an end, I’ve finally gotten a hold of it and have begun playing it, so I’m going to start my liveblog!

For the sake of keeping my followers as spoiler-free as possible, I’m going to try and heavily tag these posts, and put about 99% of each post under a readmore. I’m also going to keep the labeling pretty vague for each post. My basic plan is to play each section of the game in one sitting [if we imagine each chapter being split into three sections of daily life, investigation, and trial] and then make one post for each of them. For now I’m going to label them with what part I played, for convenience, but I can’t help but be a little afraid about the possibility of there being some shift in structure later that might be spoiled via my labeling. We’ll see how it goes. If people want to completely avoid spoilers I guess they can just blacklist the tags and stuff, but I’m still going to try my best to avoid major spoilers, so the majority of these posts will be under read-mores.

This is going to be a pretty interesting experience for me, since even though I’m a huge fan of this series and have been following it for a few years now, I’ve only ever watched LPs of the game, so this is my first time actually playing one for myself.

Anyway I’m just gonna put my thoughts on the prologue under the cut since this is already getting long. [Fake edit: this got super long but mostly because half of it was me posting my initial reactions to characters and stuff, so with that out the way, maybe the rest of these posts will be shorter. We’ll see]

I don’t really wanna waste time talking too much about my history with this franchise and whatnot, so I’ll just get right into things and say that I have no goddamn clue what to expect from this game. I’ve almost completely managed to avoid spoilers on it, beyond what was shown in pre-release material. Well, mostly. There’s a few vague, context-less things I’m aware of, but I won’t say what those things are in case anyone is reading these posts without having played the entire game. [Though as a warning, I’m not gonna hold back on openly talking about every other part of the franchise that came before this]

I’ve heard that this game’s ending is ‘divisive and controversial’, but I have no idea how, and honestly that’s kinda been the trend with this series for better or worse, so it’s not really a surprise.

Thankfully I’ve also heard that this is maybe possibly the best game in the series so that’s cool! It’s not like I’m expecting greatness from it.

I’m really glad that I haven’t seen any LPs or anything besides the demo, because wow did things start off in a way that I wasn’t quite expecting. The whole beginning part was . . . bizarre. I got so thrown off by how everyone was wearing normal school uniforms. In general the whole way that things play out but then, like . . . loop back on themselves??? was really weird and unexpected. I feel like the game is already throwing out major hints about late-game twists, to the point where it all feels so ‘obvious’ that it’s probably some kind of misdirection. The whole shot we got of Kaede wearing some kind of science experiment helmet thing in particular felt like a ‘peeking behind the simulation’ moment, but DR2 already had a simulation twist, so the fact that they seem to be hinting at a similar thing feels like misdirection.

On the one hand I feel like I shouldn’t think too hard about it in case I guess the twist in advance, but on the other hand all of this signalling is so blatant and in your face that I feel like I may as well talk about it.

Even beyond the weird time-looping thing, there’s also a pretty heavy focus on the idea of amnesia and deja-vu [amnesia is pretty common for the series but the deja-vu element is interesting], and there’s some really interesting hints given out about the outside world, with references to stuff like the Ultimate Hunt, I think they called it, and how that apparently ties in with how everyone had forgotten their talents in the ‘first loop’, if I should call it that.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that this game is set in the Hope’s Peak Saga universe, since the first opening movie literally spells out that this game is a continuation of it, so it’s hard not to work with what the previous games set up story-wise to try and guess where the hell we’re at in this game.

I’ve always wondered how the whole concept of Ultimates would have been handled post-DR3, and how Hope’s Peak would function. It definitely seems like we’re hinting at the idea that something went pretty wrong down the line. It almost sounds like maybe the concept of being an Ultimate is, like, treated as a crime now, but it also feels like it might be another DR2-esque thing with how that game’s cast were all the Remnants of Despair who were in the simulation for rehab purposes. I don’t think it’ll be exactly the same sort of thing, though at the same time it’s also hard to believe that the whole Despair thing completely died out after DR3 so who knows.

It’s interesting to compare this with DR2, in how that game really started out as a legit rehab program of sorts that tried to hide the truth from everyone, while this game is upfront about the idea that this game’s cast are criminals who are being punished for something. So it’s kinda easy to guess that maybe they really are all criminals who’ve just been made to forget their crimes.

[Fake edit: I was just about to finish this post but I just realized that I forgot to point out how incredibly suspicious it is that the prologue is literally called ‘Ultimate Revival’, when we already had the weird time loop thing happen]

I’ll try not to think too much about the overarching plot until it becomes more relevant, but yeah to put it simply I’m already getting huge DR2 vibes from this set-up.

Anyway, enough talking about serious Speculation [tm] and Theorycrafting [tm], let’s talk about the stuff we’re all here for! AKA the characters and the flashy visuals and whatnot.

Just to get it out the way, I’m stuck with shitty dialogue audio quality because I had to import the US Vita version of the game because 1: I don’t own a Windows computer [and for some reason the Steam version is only on Windows even though the first two games are also on Mac], 2: I don’t own a PS4, and 3: I have an NZ PSN account but I literally cannot obtain an NZ Vita copy of the game because no online or retail distributors have it available, and because for some godawful reason the NZ PSN store only has the voice patches for it, and not, y’know, the game itself. So I’m stuck with the US version of the game since it was the only one available, and because the voice patch is treated as DLC, and DLC is region-locked, I can’t get the high-quality dialogue audio even if I wanted it. Which I do. It’s not THAT terrible, but it’s noticeably bad. Especially for certain characters, like Shuichi and Kaito. But I literally cannot do anything about it, so I’m stuck with it.

On the topic of voices, I still do like most of the voices, even if the audio quality isn’t great. A lot of the voices sound a lot more . . . plain, I guess, than I was expecting. I dunno how to explain it. I kinda like it. It makes them sound more like real people, though some of them sound like, well, middle-aged people trying to voice-act teenagers while barely bothering to try and sound like teenagers.

The music is still high-quality and sounds great. I still love this franchise’s music style. Most of the tracks in the prologue sound either similar to or the same as stuff from previous games, which is fine, but the Monokids track is . . . certainly something. Definitely in a similar vein as how weird Monomi’s track was in DR2, but this one’s less cute. Still good, though.

The game’s visuals are still on-point, though the image quality isn’t great at times. The colours are really vibrant, but things often seem really pixel-y when they’re even slightly far away. I think that’s just how the series looks in general though, and it’s just easier to forget since I’ve only ever watched LPs of them. I do really like the more dark and earthy sort of atmosphere and colour palete this game has compared to the other ones, though. The other games look great, but I like that they did something a bit different. I get what they meant by calling this game ‘psycho-cool’.

Getting to the characters, I like them already, though I obviously haven’t seen them in action much yet. Visually, I honestly think they’re one of my favourite casts in the entire series. It definitely feels like they had a bit more restraint in designing a lot of these characters, compared to earlier games, while still keeping the same DR character design charm. I don’t know how the hell this series’ character designer is still managing to churn out unique and interesting designs after so many franchise entries, but here we are.

Since there’s so many characters I think I’ll just address them one by one.

Kaede: First of all, it still makes me happy that we got a female protagonist for this game. It’s a nice detail. Secondly, I’m just gonna lay it out and say that I’m expecting some major plot twist relating to her identity. It’s not a difficult thing to assume after how DR2 [and DR0 I guess] had big plot twists relating to their protagonist’s identities, in different ways, but still, the writing’s kinda on the wall for this one. I don’t know if Kaede will end up having anything uniquely shocking about her compared to the rest of the cast, but still. The way the beginning scene played out, with the focus on her not knowing who she was, immediately made me suspect that she might not actually be ‘Kaede’, somehow. We’ll see. I honestly would not be surprised if she’s a ‘decoy protagonist’ and someone else is the real protagonist. Especially considering the fact that the first characters shown off were Maki, Kaito, and K1-B0, nearly a year before we saw Kaede, which makes me suspicious on many levels. Anyway, I really like her design. It’s been a favourite of mine since we first saw her. The yellow/white/pink-purple colour palette is really nice. And on a related note, the goddamn magical girl transformation she had when she got put into her main uniform was amazing and glorious and exactly the sort of bizarre thing I wanted to see out of this game. There’s not much to say about her personality thus far, but I like her. And I also like that she’s a pianist. It’s refreshing to get a DR protagonist who’s talent is something other than ‘hope’ or ‘literally nothing’. I guess you could count Ryouko and Chisa as DR protagonists with actual talents, though. But you get what I mean.

Shuichi: It really surprised me that he was immediately presented as being the secondary protagonist. Or, at least, the ‘helper’ character. I like how, in contrast to people like Kirigiri and Komaeda, he isn’t really doing this out of his own volition, and was literally just stuck in the same room as Kaede. Which is still kinda suspicious in and of itself, really. He’s really great, though. I was so worried that he’d be a complete copy of Kirigiri, but he’s really not, thus far. He’s honestly really adorable, with how humble and easily-flustered he is. I also really like his design, and how simple it is. I wonder how his role in the game will be, going forward. He’s definitely the helper/assistant/etc right now, but who knows if that’ll change. I hope he has a different role overall compared to Kirigiri, at least, to shake things up a bit. Oh, and before I forget, I’m already guessing in advance that he might actually be a girl, although that’s almost entirely based on him being voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in Japanese [and on that note, boy am I annoyed that on top of not being able to get the high-quality dialogue audio, I also can’t get the JP voice pack for the same reason :/]. He definitely sounds much more like a boy in English, so I’m inclined to think that maybe they weren’t trying to hint at anything by giving him a really feminine voice in Japanese.

Rantarou: I already adore this dude and I plan to immediately do all of his free-time events. OK fine I’ll do other people’s ones as well, but he’s the one I’m most interested in talking to. Partly because I’m really inclined to think that he might die relatively early on so I want to get to know him immediately. He at least comes across like the sort of character who might get killed off early as a big plot twist, to contrast with how mysterious and plot-important he seems right now. I don’t really know what to expect from his role in the story, but it’s hard not to get Komaeda vibes off of him, especially in the parts where he gets vaguely sinister. Thankfully his personality is already pretty notably different. He definitely seems like the character who’s probably most ‘plot-important’ other than Kaede and maybe K1-B0. It makes me wonder what his deal is, especially since he doesn’t remember his talent. I hope the inevitable reveal isn’t lame or anything. I also can’t help but wonder if maybe he’ll become some sort of love interest for Kaede, but I guess Shuichi would probably fit the mark better at this point. Who knows. I imagine that Kaede will have a love interest of some kind, since the other DR protagonists did. Anyway, I like his design as well. His outfit honestly seems like the sort of thing I could imagine a normal person wearing without it being weird at all. It’s neat. His hair looks mostly cool, like 90% of it does, but I can’t get over how weird those two upward-poking wavy bits at the top look. They’re so weird. Also, I’m still slightly thrown off by how deep and mellow his voice is, but it more or less fits his personality. I guess that in general his personality is a bit different than what I expected. I expected something a bit more fun and light-hearted.

K1-B0: OK first of all I might eventually just start calling him Keebo because it feels more natural than typing a name that has numbers and stuff in it. I still love his name, though. It never stops being the silliest thing ever to me, that his name is literally just a robot-y version of the Japanese word for hope. It’s great. I’m still kinda surprised that he didn’t end up being the game’s protagonist, given that he was front and center on the game’s first poster. He’s even the only character shown on the limited edition box design for the game. So who knows what’s up with him. Either way it’s hard not to see him as being potentially plot-important, with how immediately different he is to everyone else. We’ll see. His design is still kinda amazing and I love it. There’s a lot of places where V3′s character designs show restraint and realism, but hahaha not with this dude. In terms of his personality, I’m still really surprised that he’s mostly kinda nervous and defensive and high-strung, while also being pretty desperate to appear normal while being really unaware of normal things. Which is a fine way to write a robot character, and I prefer his ‘over-emotional’ portrayal over the more typical ‘emotionless robot’ characters we usually get. My main concern is that the game seems to be framing him as some sort of joke about “““SJWs”““, and it’s just bizarre and out of place. I also don’t know how the heck we’re even meant to view it thus far, since his whole ‘I’ll take you to court for your robophobic comments!’ attitude seems like it’s meant to be a joke, but at the same time his whole intro scene involves Kokichi literally questioning and denying his identity because he’s a robot, and being really inappropriate and invasive in general, so it’s kinda hard to view his defensiveness towards ‘robophobia’ as some sort of a joke we’re meant to laugh at. I guess we’ll see how it gets handled in the long run. Also let me just say that I’m REALLY happy they didn’t attempt to put some sort of obnoxious voice filter on him to make him seem more like a robot.

Maki: As I said above, I’m still suspicious about her prominent placing on that first poster we got. It’s even the reversible cover of the game, which is why I got reminded of it. I’m really curious to see what her deal is. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about her yet, since she’s mostly quiet and cold to people, which isn’t really a personality type I like seeing. I could see her potentially being a prominent part of trials, though, since she seems like she’d probably be calm and logical and whatnot. Also just to be blunt I kinda want her to be Kaede’s love interest, or at least one of them. I’ve kinda low-key shipped them since I first saw them. But do I really trust Kodaka to give me a healthy and mutually-alive same-sex ship after how DR3 ended? Not really, lol. I really like her design, though, even if her personality is a bit meh thus far. The red and black looks really nice, and it contrasts well with the brighter colours of Kaede’s design. Although there’s something weird about how her mouth is drawn. It looks a little wonky.

Kaito: I’m even more confused about what the hell this dude was doing on that promo poster, especially after seeing him in person. He basically seems like the Soda of this game, but thankfully way less weird and creepy. He seems like a really great dude all around, even if he’d be a bit too, uh, intense for me to enjoy being around in real life. I’m also still kinda amazed that he’s an astronaut, of all damn things. I remember that one coming out of nowhere. His whole conversation about how he illegally cheated to become an astronaut and when he got caught they just decided to keep him on board anyway was amazing. It’s a pretty hilarious way to address and basically gloss over the question of how a high-schooler could possibly be an astronaut. Also, his design is kinda hilarious. The simple white/purple theme works really well, but jesus christ his goddamn hair is amazing. I love it. It’s so silly. It’s like someone took a normal hairstyle and then messed with it in Photoshop. I wonder what it’d look like if they ever try and make figures of him. But I unironically love that the inner part of his jacket has a space design on it. That’s a nice detail, even if it’s hard to see normally. I can also tell that some of his expressions are going to be hilarious.

Kokichi: I can already tell that this dude’s gonna be a major player in this game, especially in trials. To the point where I’d be amazed if he doesn’t survive for at least four chapters or so. I feel like he’s going to be such a central part of the trial experience that cutting him out would leave a bit of a void. He’s obviously going to be sorta Komaeda-y in how he messes with people but he never actually kills anyone or anything. I’m just guessing, though. I’m also basing this on the demo I watched someone play, where that’s exactly how it went. [Though on the topic of trials, it’s still interesting to me that Rantarou and K1-B0 were specifically excluded from the demo trial]. I don’t know if I’m a huge fan of his overall personality, though. He just seems a bit annoying for the most part, even if he’ll probably be pretty compelling overall, partly in a ‘love to hate them’ sort of way. And obviously I disliked how incredibly shitty he was toward K1-B0. That was unpleasant. His design’s cool, though. I like how he seems to be wearing some sort of a loose straitjacket. His huge checker-print scarf is also pretty neat. Not sure how I feel about his hair-style. It’s a bit odd. I’m also curious to learn more about his talent, since it’s hard to imagine him genuinely being what he says he is. I wouldn’t be too surprised if he’s actually lying about his talent.

Gonta: I love him so much but he’s so obviously going to die because the baras always die. That’s not a spoiler though. I don’t actually know if he’ll die or not. I’m just assuming that he will because every character of his vague ‘type’ have died previously. He’s great, though. I love how much of a gentle giant he is. He just wants to be a gentleman and everyone’s just immediately intimidated by him instead. But then again he does get genuinely scary whenever someone insinuates that they dislike bugs. So that’s a thing. The fact that his whole talent is about how much he likes bugs is strangely endearing to me. It feels like such a gentle, delicate, and studious sort of field that it clashes with his design in a fun way. Also he has Harry Potter-y glasses and that’s adorable.

Miu: She’s kinda already turning into a problematic fave of mine. I totally get why she’d be too much for most people, and I’d hate her in real life, but as a character she’s really fun to watch, and adds a lot to the group dynamic. I’m not really expecting much from her in the long run though, since she’s obviously meant to be this game’s fanservice-y and kinda dumb character. I can’t help but wonder if she has some sort of connection to K1-B0 though, or if they might develop one, since her talent as an inventor who knows her way with machines seems sorta fishy in a game with a literal robot character in it. Her design’s also pretty nice, though the weird BDSM-y equipment she has is kinda hilarious and bizarre to look at. I love her aviator goggles, though.

Kirumi: I already like her a lot, though it’s sorta hard to pin down why. I think it’s mostly to do with me really liking her whole aesthetic. The spiderweb/broken glass pattern on her dress in particular is really cool. The only weird part is that it’s kinda weird how her eyelashes are drawn visibly through her hair. It just looks strange. There’s not much to say about her personality, though her whole ‘I’ll do what people tell me to do’ attitude is very worrying given, you know, the situation they’re all in. I don’t exactly expect her to survive. Also I’m still a bit confused what the difference in talent is between her being a maid and Chisa from DR3 being a housekeeper.

Tsumugi: She’s unexpectedly funny but I feel like she won’t last long, so that kinda sucks. Her overall design is still by far the plainest in the game, but I like how it’s an intentional choice that’s contrasted by her personality. I appreciate that she’s not, like, super wacky or anything, but she’s still pretty hilarious. Especially her realistically surprised reactions to stuff other characters say. It’s also a really neat detail how when she gets excited about something and clearly starts forgetting things like social boundaries, her sprite gets bigger and bigger like she’s entering your personal space. It’s also an interesting concept to have a cosplayer character who’s just wearing a really plain and boring school uniform, and cares mostly about the actual production of the costumes. I can’t help but wonder if her talent will end up leading to her being able to disguise herself as someone else. That’d be a really interesting thing to use in a murder case. Also I seriously hope there’s a scene in the game where she’s just cosplaying as Junko for no real reason, and you’re tricked into thinking for a moment that Junko’s genuinely back in this game. That’d be amazing.

Korekiyo: I have no idea what to make of this dude thus far. He didn’t really get many lines outside of his intro scene. He definitely seems like the most ‘creepy’ character. I kinda like him, though. The way that he talks about the beauty of humanity makes me really curious to see how he reacts to the killings as they happen. It’d be a bit amusing if he lives for the entire game and just keeps being really fucking weird about the whole thing while everyone just averts their eyes. His entire design is incredibly weird to me, and it’s kinda hard to tell what they’re going for beyond ‘this dude’s incredibly super chuuni’. It doesn’t seem to fit his actual personality much. You’d think he’d be way more, well, chuuni, I guess. It also kinda surprised me when I looked at his profile and saw that, at least relative to average Japanese heights, he’s actually really tall. It’s kinda difficult to tell people’s relative heights in VN-esque games like this. Also, I actually think it’s really cool that he’s an anthropologist. It’s cool to see an actual academic field like this in the franchise. There’s not too many characters with talents like that. I hope he gives out lots of random trivia about anthropology-related things.

Himiko: She’s not exactly my sort of character, but I like her. I mostly like the little ways in which she’s handled differently than how you’d expect her to be. Like how the only fanciful part of her design is her witch hat, which isn’t very fancy itself, and how she’s really chill and mellow but also a little childish. Even when she’s trying to be bombastic, it’s pretty chill. Also her whole ‘magic is real’ thing reminds me so much of Beatrice from Umineko, and that just makes me immediately like her, even if they’re [presumably] very different characters.

Angie: I keep mentally grouping her and Himiko into the ‘short, cute girl’ category for some reason, even though they’re very different. She’s definitely very . . . unique, that’s for sure. I’m still thrown off by her accent. I get what they’re going for, but for some reason it just sounds sorta French to me, so it feels like they told her VA ‘put on a foreign accent’ without telling her WHICH accent to put on. I don’t know if her accent is necessarily inaccurate for the part of the world she’s from, but ‘French’ is my first thought upon hearing it, so it feels odd. I like it, though. It’s a unique voice. Her design as a whole is definitely really cool. I love how bright and cheerful it is, colour-wise. I like her bright and bubbly personality a lot, though she can be a little creepy at times, like in the whole ‘blood sacrifice for Atua’ scene.

Ryoma: Thus far he’s immediately my favourite ‘cartoon-y and unrealistic-looking’ character, compared to ones like Hifumi and Teruteru. For one thing, he’s not a perverted creep, so that immediately puts him about fifty levels above those two. I also genuinely adore the way that he acts and talks like he came out of some kinda detective noir film, and has a Dark Backstory [tm] involving him murdering mafia members with a goddamn steel tennis ball. It’s so melodramatic and angsty but so incredibly hilarious because he’s like a three-foot tall teenage tennis player dramatically talking about how he used his tennis-playing talent to kill, and that he’s now just an empty shell of who he once was. I love him already. If he gets killed off, that’d be a real shame. But his character type also never survives, sadly. I don’t have much else to say about his design itself, but I think he has a chain around his ankle like a stereotypical ball and chain put on prisoners and that’s just the icing on the cake of how amazingly emo his design is.

Tenko: Not gonna lie, I almost forgot she existed and had to look at the cover of the game to figure out who I was missing. She’s probably my least favourite character thus far simply due to me liking everyone else more, and also due to me just not being a huge fan of her design. It’s mostly just the way that her uniform looks like it’s five sizes too small, but her giant green hair ribbons are also a bit weird, and so is the weird DNA helix-y way her hair is braided. It’s a bit of a bizarre design all around. But I absolutely adore her facial expressions so much. They’re fantastic. I love how unrepentantly weird and gross some of them are. That fucking smile-smirk-grimace-thing she does when she first talks about ‘degenerate males’ is one of the funniest things in this game thus far. Although on that note, her whole man-hating thing is already a little grating. It’s not terrible, but still. Although it looks like the game might do some funny things with it, like how in the demo she couldn’t say which guy walked into the cafeteria because she just hates men so goddamn much that she basically blocked him out of her vision and then couldn’t remember who it was later. That sorta thing is amusing.

Monokids: I almost forgot to comment on these guys, but I may as well, since they’re a noteworthy new aspect of the game. They’re definitely very fitting for the franchise, but it’s almost overwhelming having so many variations of Monokuma running around. It was also really weird how it felt like half of the script in the prologue was just them talking, and the actual main characters just responding to them sometimes. I hope they don’t hog the screen-time that much for the rest of the game. I’m pretty interested to see what the hell their deal is, though, since presumably someone is controlling them, but they seem to be operating independently from Monokuma. I guess they might just be actual autonomous robots though. But still.

I don’t think there’s really any point to me saying anything about Monokuma, since he’s not exactly a new character. But I can’t help but wonder who’s controlling him this time, if he’s not also an autonomous robot. Presumably it’d be an all-new character this time around, unless they somehow bring back an old character. But if it’s a new mastermind, will it be one of the main characters of this game? If so, how? If it’s not, then who would it be? I doubt that the mastermind would end up being a completely, entirely new character. I guess we’ll see.

Anyway that got really really long but oh well. I have a lot to say about this game already, lol. I’m really excited to finally be sitting down to play one of these games on my own terms, rather than just seeing someone else play it on Youtube. Even if it’s been a bit of a nightmare trying to get the necessary equipment to legally play it.

I’m very curious to see where my opinion falls in the long run, since this seems to be a very ‘love it or hate it’ kinda game. I don’t really have super high expectations though, at least after I disliked DR2′s ending, and I thought UDG was kinda weird, and I thought DR3 was a bit of a trainwreck. I love this franchise a lot, but it can also be kinda terrible at times, so I’m keeping my hopes in check for this one.

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 2: Thoughts on 4x01 Echoes

Mmmmkay, literally JUST finished watching 4x01. I’m very proud of myself because I completely avoided ALL spoilers and I’m not going to unblock tumblr until I finish this reaction post so I can write down my totally spontaneous and unadulterated thoughts.

My general reaction: I actually kind of liked it. I wouldn’t say I liked it as much as Seasons 1 and 2 and I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic about the season and frankly I still have a lot of complaints, most of which are so general I don’t think they’ll ever be resolved BUT I would undoubtedly say that 4x01 was better than 3x01 and I’m actually looking forward to 4x02; it looks like just the kind of plot I like: tense, self-contained, lots of delinquents.

(loooong reaction under the read more)

So some things I didn’t like first so I can get my negativity out of the way:

I never fully believed that either Jarod Joseph or Chelsey Reist were going to be regulars because I thought that people were reading a lot into kind of vague tweets but I wanted to believe it, especially with Jarod Joseph and honestly even though I don’t like Harper…they both deserve main status by now. I mean they’ve lasted this fucking long. I cannot believe Zack McGowan gets main status and Jarod and Chelsey don’t.

I don’t give a fuck about the Grounders. I don’t! I don’t care!! And I will never care. So all this Polis shit, Grounder politics, Echo yammering on, blah blah blah. I can’t follow it and I don’t even want to follow it. In my incredibly subjective opinion, it really weighs the show down.

Roan constantly sounds like he’s having a * Tina Fey voice * talking like this contest. I have no idea what his real voice sounds like but if this is at all a put on accent he needs to tone it down for realsies I cannot take him seriously.

Monty/Harper. Get it away get it away. (I’m not going to go into why I hate them but rest assured every reaction I write this entire season will have some variation of this point, if the episode in question features them as a couple at all. Having a canon NoTP is such a fannish burden so I’m going to whine about it at top volume all the time.)

NO MILLER. A TRAVESTY.

This isn’t entirely the show’s fault but I roll my eyes every time I hear L*xa’s name, like some kind of Pavlovian dog, so obviously I did a lot of eye rolling and now my eyes kind of hurt. In particular, Clarke’s overwrought sadness about her was just so… I’m done, I’m tired of it, I don’t care. I know I’m not being fair, because in the timeline of the show obviously L’s death is very close. But, first off, I don’t think Clarke loved her at all—I think she thinks she did but she did not, and I don’t think that line would even have been included if it weren’t for RL events. Second, and relatedly, I think that little scene with Abby and the Dramatic Single Tear TM when she hands over the chip were so clearly about appeasing fans and doing penance for daring to kill a lesbian that they took me out of the show. I wasn’t watching Clarke in Polis, I was watching Eliza Taylor acting on a set. I hope that’s the end of that, and we never have to deal with that shit again.

I didn’t like Kane’s line to Bellamy about eventually deserving to survive. I know why it’s in there, both in an in-universe and in a line-to-the-fans way, but frankly my initial thought is: all human beings deserve survival. It’s not like only good people should be allowed to live a radiation free life lol. And second, can we just leave him the fuck alone already? I’m done with the Bellamy dogpile. Let’s hope that shit’s done too.

Speaking of lines I didn’t like, Bellamy calling Clarke Princess is basically the definition of Do Not Want. It’s the sort of thing that, small as it is, makes me think that the writers don’t know their own creation and it makes me lose faith in them again. That name was an insult—it was always a fucking insult, it’s not cute, it’s not a pet name, and it has no place in the Bellarke relationship anymore. Such an unnecessary false note. (I probably seem/am disproportionately mad about it…but I hate it.)

I could have done without that last scene. It just looked so….fake. Again it just took me out of the show completely. Was it supposed to show us how dire everything is? I got that message the last 20 times lol.

The stuff I did like:

BELLAMY. There wasn’t enough of him, but he was A FUCKING STAR in the scenes he did get, especially the negotiation scene. Like I could list every line I liked and every moment I liked and that would probably be more proportional to the degree I liked them but it’s probably faster and more efficient to say that I loved it all. I loved that he and Clarke acted like (mostly) equal co-leaders. I liked that they looked to each other all the time, and had all of these silent eye-communication moments. I liked the scene with him and Kane and Indra before the meeting with Echo, I loved that Echo views him as the only Sky Person she’ll talk to, and I loved…basically all of it but I guess what I’m trying to say is I loved both how he handled the negotiation and that HE was the one doing it.

Indra was killing it in this ep too. I loved the hug with Kane of course. I loved her and Murphy in the pre-negotiation scene (“I never agreed to [guns].” / “That’s because you’re not stupid.”) (She and Murphy need their own show like I would watch it.) I like how she’s basically chilling with the Sky People now—like the little scene in the temple had such a cool collection of characters, I was digging it. (Except for Octavia…who I really don’t know what to make of this season yet so.)

Speaking of Murphy…. Okay, I wasn’t impressed by Murphy/Emori in Season 3 but I did like their scenes in this episode. Unfortunately, I was really looking forward to them joining up with the Sky People in Arkadia; I want to see another Grounder trying to find a place in Arkadia (since Lincoln was brutally murdered and all) and I want to see Murphy re-integrate himself because tbh he really is at his best when he has people to play off of. People who aren’t Emori. So I was a little bummed when they ran off into the night together because I really don’t care to watch the two of them in a vacuum and also…we already saw that? But anyway I did like their scenes in this ep so they’re in the positive column. I also like that we finally got an explanation as to why Emori took the chip.

I’ve had sort of mixed feelings about Jaha because I’m not sure whether or not I can follow his story line/character progression or not but I will say: I am 100% Team Jaha as of right now. I do think that, whatever he was on the Ark or in S1, his late S1/early S2 transformation was genuine, and he really is trying to be a good person who helps people. I hope he finds the salvation and the purpose he’s been looking for. And his role in the little ploy with Octavia and the shroud was great.

That whole sequence was probably the strongest in the episode. I think one of The 100’s greatest weaknesses at this point is the complexity of its various allegiances and all the old bad blood that’s been spilled everywhere. I haven’t seen S3 since it aired and so even as a pretty big fan I still find some stuff hard to follow—it’s hard to remember who betrayed who when and all this shit and even though some Obvious Exposition is peppered in to help us along, it’s not enough for me sometimes. But this spider web of interconnected relationships, both good and bad, is also an asset of the show and I thought that middle sequence, from the “we surrender” line to Roan waking up, really played all of that up in a good way. It brought a lot of characters and a lot of history together in a way that generally worked very well. I liked the shroud ploy (though omg the Azgeda warriors are dumb AF—how could Octavia just get up and walk around and no one noticed her? Like they’re all looking outward and no one’s looking at the big ol’ empty middle of the room? And then she, a child who lived sixteen very unhealthy years under the floor and has been on Earth probably less than a year with only a handful of months of warrior training if that is able to take out a whole room of the most fearsome warriors in the post-apocalypse? It defies belief I’m sorry). I liked the Griffins operating together. I loved the tension. (Lessened somewhat by knowing Roan would live, what with him being a main and all.) Loved the whole goshdarn thing.

Most of the Arkadia stuff was pretty eh but only in that there wasn’t much of it, and what there was, we’d seen before in promotional clips and stuff (though I will say: they did better with the promotional stuff this year; I think last year they gave away some of their surprises in a way that made the scenes ring very false on a first viewing imo). But obviously I loved my boy Jasper. I would have found his almost-suicide very hard to watch if I hadn’t known it was coming but as it was, I could be more detached about it. I wish we’d seen more of his room but what we did see was interesting (I have an obsession with the Ark/Arkadia sets okay): his art—not just Maya’s favorite painting but another one near the door; his goggles with the plastic over the eyes knocked out—like him, just a shell of their former selves; all his random tools on his desk like why does he have those?; his notebooks. And, oh, that he left a suicide note to Monty. And even just their small interaction at the door was great.

Also… while in a way I find it an odd beat for him to go from his last scene with Monty in 3x16 to almost killing himself in 4x01, mere hours later in the canon timeline… I believe it, and I’m glad that my previous fears, that the show would just forget what he’d gone through and do a Jasper re-set in the new season, can be put to rest. I liked and believed in his transition from really-ready-to-die, to well-the-world’s-gonna-kill-me-and-make-it-easy-might-as-well-enjoy-Earth.

But the best Arkadia scene was the one between Jasper and Raven. First of all because I FUCKING CALLED IT that Raven shouldn’t have the sort of coding/computer abilities that she has. I hypothesized that she might have improved her skills at some point during the S2-S3 hiatus because her disability lessened her ability to do legwork, but I also mentioned that it could have been ALIE which still means I WAS RIGHT BOOM. (I just like being right a lot okay.) Also the “upgrade” talk reminded me of Dollhouse. Which was exciting but also made me all bitter and mad because Dollhouse did the idea of artificial upgrades to your brain so much better. Made me feel inspired for my Dollhouse AU though so there’s that.

I don’t ship Jasper/Raven but I do friend-ship them and I hope they bond over having been ALIE-d.

Also speaking of being AlIE-d, I don’t think Harper forgives Jasper for what his chipped self did. And she probably shouldn’t honestly because my theory is still that ALIE pulled from the real feelings and thoughts of chipped people and maybe someday I’ll write a full explanation of why I think that—which isn’t to say that Jasper wants to hurt Harper but just to say that ‘pleading the chip’ isn’t as straightforward as all that. Still, even though it makes sense narratively, because I will pick Jasper over pretty much everyone this is sorta another reason to unfairly dislike Harper. If there is anything even remotely like a Monty having to choose scenario I will be very perturbed though.  (This isn’t something I especially liked or disliked, the thought just occurred to me while I was talking about Arkadia stuff.)

It’s pretty early to say anything about her at all but Unnamed Possible Priestess (Kenza??) is looking so promising. First, we know from the trailer she’s gorgeous and I’m always here for that. Second and to be less shallow for a second, Indra seems to know her, maybe, so that could be cool. And third, while I have yet to be impressed by Grounder religion, I am very curious to see if she’s going to be bringing in a different aspect to their spirituality. I don’t know her but I already want to see her go head to head with Roan.

I had a bit of a discussion/ramble with my mom yesterday when she was telling me a bit about the episode in a vague spoiler-free way and I was trying to explain when I like Clarke (when she’s a co-leader with a reasonably sized head, when she’s cunning and imaginative like in early S2) (early S2 Clarke is my favorite Clarke fyi) and when I don’t like her (when she’s arrogant, when she thinks she can do everything herself, when she doesn’t listen to others—basically season 2B Clarke and Clarke in parts of S3), and she said I thought I would like her in this ep. I was on the fence. I liked her with Bellamy. And she had moments that objectively I probably should have liked but I’ve just been so tired of her shit for so long it’s hard for me not to feel Tired Of Her in general. But… I guess I’ll say I think Clarke looks promising.

I kind of loved how at the end of the episode when Kabby were saying goodbye to their children and story-line heirs Bellarke, Abby says “Okay let’s do this” or some such, and then the first thing she does is hug Clarke. I know she means “okay, let’s accomplish the plan, which means separating, so I gotta say goodbye to my daughter first” but it looked a little like the “this” was hugging. Which is sort of sweet.

…Um wow I’ve written a lot and I can’t think of anything so I guess I’m done FOR NOW.

Looking forward to lots of delinquents, some hopefully cool tense scenes, more Miller and Bryan, and Clarke in a better outfit next time.