deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao
not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad
I'm so tired of that girl on tiktok saying her song sounds like it belongs in an 80s slasher film it literally doesn't it literally fucking doesn't it literally fucking does not it literally does not fucking sound like it could ever be in an 80s slasher film it doesn't sound like it could be an 80s song AT ALL much less one from a slasher film it sounds like very modern synthwave which is a 2010s 80s nostalgia music genre it does not actually sound 80s at all it sounds like you've never been near an 80s song in your life quite frankly but oh you saw an aesthetic board on pinterest and you know the stranger things soundtrack has synths!! go die
When I think about Mizuki in aini it’s like, I know something is just so off about her but I have trouble articulating it. It’s really frustrating cuz she was like my favorite character in the first game and when I play the first game I feel like I have a really good idea of who she is as a character. Like she acts strong and and hangs out with people much older than her and has to take on a fuck ton of responsibility but she’s also just a kid she cuddles with a rabbit toy she raises fish in the fridge she can be kinda gullible in the way that kids are and she doesn’t always understand more mature jokes. She acts sassy and hostile towards Date but she’s described as kinda and compassionate by Hitomi and she defends the weak and loves her friends deeply and thinks Aiba is cute. She pokes fun at Date for being grumpy at the shrine and then excitedly holds his hand and drags him over to the offering box to pray for his safety and she gets scared when there’s danger and she hugs Date for comfort but then tries to brush it off because she was taught to feel shame whenever she required basic attention and affection. She was hurt badly by her biological family and finds herself at home with Date despite her fears of him not caring for her. Like she’s a really solid well rounded character with strengths and weaknesses and her story makes me feel every possible emotion known to man
Then I play aini and I was soooo excited to see that Mizuki was gonna be a protagonist and that she had Aiba (its what made me buy the game immediately after finishing the first game lol) and then like. I honestly can’t tell you a damn thing about her character in aini. Like she’s the protagonist for half that game and I can’t think of any particular struggles she has as a character or like any moments where she stands out. It’s like, I know this is Mizuki she has the same basic features of that character but she’s not really given much? And anything new you learn about her is just like, retcons of her already established and well written backstory that just. Really didn’t need to be made and honestly they just kinda do a disservice to her character
Like first off there’s the Bibi twist which. Oof. I have some pretty complicated feelings about Bibi in general like okay. When she appears as the masked woman I was totally on board and thought she was really interesting and I was so prepared for her to be a favorite character her somnium is probably my favorite one in the game. And then she was revealed to be Mizuki. And it was revealed that we were playing as her for half of the B side of the story and we didn’t know it. Like, where to even begin. They stopped writing Bibi as her own character and she pretty much just became Mizuki except idk, she has a bigger grudge against Ryuki and has a heart condition I guess. And like I think it really speaks to how flat Mizuki was in this game if we can play as two completely different characters and have them be indistinguishable. Bibi shouldn’t be anything like Mizuki, they’ve lived completely different lives. And I hate the clone twist like good god I really hate the clone twist because IT ADDS NOTHING TO MIZUKIS CHARACTER OR HER CONFLICT. In fact it like, actively goes against her arc from the first game??? Cuz like half the point of Date and Mizuki’s relationship is there to show that family isn’t what you’re born with, it’s what you make. Both Date and Mizuki feel like their little family can’t exist because they’ve been taught, like most of us have, that biological family is the most important and real and valid way to have a family. You’re supposed to love and respect your biological parents because they MADE you, and Date has to live with the anguish that he can’t be Mizuki’s REAL father because they aren’t blood related. So like, to pull the rug away and go "oh yeah btw I guess Mizuki was adopted lol" it just completely erases what made her story so impactful to most people. And the clone reveal adds nothing like Mizuki doesn’t NEED this at all she wasn’t looking to discover the truth of her backstory because. There wasn’t any truths that needed to be discovered, we already know her deal and so does she. And her having a clone doesn’t really fit with the half to whole theme cuz like, she wasn’t looking for a fucking clone or like a secret sister or anything like that. It’s just stupid it’s so stupid
What Mizuki needed was like, a new actual conflict that required her to overcome challenges and grow as a character. A lot of people, myself included, have complained about how her relationship with Date just isn’t talked about hardly at all, how he went missing for 6 years and they didn’t even get a proper reunion and the game kinda mocks you for wanting one. We dont get any context as to how Mizuki coped during that time like she was completely alone for the most major years of her life she was separated from the one person who was her real family and we don’t know what she felt during all that cuz the game refuses to talk about it. And there isn’t much indication that the adults care about this either, Boss maybe has a soft spot for her but that’s kinda the extent of it, she makes a joke that Date is probably off chilling in a hot spring in Atami so clearly no one is giving Date’s disappearance the weight it deserves. So like, we have this potential thing we could work with here like why is Mizuki a detective now and why does she care about this case? Because her dad was taken by tearer and has been gone for 6 years and she’s been all alone and she wants to find him and find out if he’s even alive and she wants to kick tearers ass cuz he tore (hehe) her family apart. And this can also give her an actual connection to Ryuki too like Ryuki is the one who betrayed Date and knew some shit about tearer and saw what happened to Date and he just never told Mizuki the truth and she’s spent all this time looking for Date so this would be like, pretty major conflict when it all gets revealed. And it actually gives what Ryuki did actual consequences that affect him cuz honestly the fact that no one seems to care that much about Date’s disappearance makes Ryuki’s guilt and depression seem completely fucking useless lol. So here we go, that’s some conflict for Mizuki to have and it gives her a personal connection to the case, we can add more to it but really even this alone is way more than what she’s given in the actual game. And I think just the big problem with her in aini is I think the writers were too afraid to do anything that could ruin her character or cause her to change too much so they just like. Didn’t write anything that could allow her to develop and instead just fucked with already established information about her which. I honestly don’t know how that is seen as better??? In what fucking world. It just feels really pointless to have even made Mizuki a protagonist to begin with since they don’t really do anything with her and lol I think the writers realized this so that’s why like. Ryuki gets all the character conflict but makes lowkey no progress in the case and the real investigation doesn’t happen until the Mizuki side cuz they needed to make up for the fact they didn’t write anything for her alskla
So yeah just to wrap things up, Mizuki just didn’t get to be a character in aini and she wasn’t given any interesting conflict despite how easy it would’ve been cuz the writers were too scared of doing anything with this character that could ruin her but dude. Dont fucking make her the protagonist then if you’re too scared of doing anything with her. Don’t piss me off like that
sooo glad we live in the universe where twdgs4 was rewritten to be about saving the school instead of the original lis2-esque on the road each-episode-is-a-new-location plot. really dodged a bullet there
dont know if it was due to the cuts and collapsing work environment (no budget for all the assets needed) or what but the school plot is just like the perfect setting for her to end her story. and we really almost got a plot about her.... just trying to make it back to her original house? oof
did you ever watch fargo? it has similar story beats to true detective, at least, season one (it’s another anthology type series, crime focused) there’s a dude in there who i think you’d get a kick out out of… very much quietly intensely batshit insane and Off™️ but somehow presents himself as the sanest one in the room. he’s rust cohle, in a way, but murderer, not detective
Thanks for the rec! Watched S1 over the past week or so. Was good but it frustrated me. Billy Bob Thornton Serial Killer was the highlight, you were right! He was very fun. What a weirdo.
I don't know if it was that I grew up in an area with accents like theirs so I was like, hyper aware They Are Doing An Accent, or that it was based on Coen Brother's work, but a lot of the characters felt... rather like caricatures? I don't know, something about it had a wall between me and it, where I wasn't immersed so they felt like We Are Actors On A Set Delivering Lines Really Well rather than I was in the moment, if that makes any sense. Maybe it was the monologues, Flannigan series can have the same affect to me.
Still, was a really good cast. I needed Martin Freeman to get his comeuppence like three episodes sooner, my god that man could just wiggle out of everything (SPOILER he sent his wife to get shot???? what the fuck is wrong with him. I was screaming SPOILER OVER). I always like it when Colin Hanks pops up in things. Allison Tolman and Billy Bob Thornton fucking carried the whole thing, they were the only two I didn't really get the I Am Delivering Lines With Emotion And This Thick Minnesotan Accent feeling.
Writing was generally tight, too. Good full circle moments and Chekov's guns, pieces came together in satisfying ways. Was fun to be rooting for Molly to catch her killers and for Billy Bob to fucking get Martin Freeman. I think it could have been one episode shorter, or skipped the time jump, to give the police a modicum more competence, they were killing me.
Idk if I'll watch the other seasons, I did enjoy it overall. Might check out the newest one because I'm a slut for Jon Hamm.
while i definitely get the appeal of Chelldos, in my mind is it's like 100% unreciprocated. GLaDOS spends both games w some complicated enemies to lovers thing going on, meanwhile Chell is just "can these damn robots leave me tf alone, i just wanna outta this damn building for fuck sake"