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slapegg · 8 months

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Some thoughts about… Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name

Some thoughts about… Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name LaDGTMWEHN! Yakuza 6.5? Or just how about… That New Yakuza Game

It's back to the brawly Yakuza type games! LaD1 had its RPG fun and I absolutely hated the Judgment games, so it's good to be back in Kiryu's shoes! …Because I've totally forgotten all the bad and frustrating parts of the brawler games and Gaiden is very happy to reintroduce me to them.

The game's beginning has a good sense of mystery for who the new characters are, but before the end of the first chapter, you'll find out where in the franchise story this game is taking place and you'll immediately know where it's all heading and everything kind of falls apart. Just about everything could have been avoided if Kiryu and Bad Guy 1 just stopped trying to out-aggressive each other. There's a scene where they sit down and talk to each other and you as a Like A Dragon player know what both sides want, but they're both acting like jerks so everything falls apart. Kiryu's being aggressive and not listening to the bad guy and the bad guy is being super aggressive and not explaining his plan. And that's a large chunk of this game's story. Characters being cryptic, not listening to each other, or testing each other for kind of no reason outside of generating fake drama for end of chapter cliffhangers. The ending of 6 was pointless. Everybody immediately knows who Kiryu is and that the story of his death was bunk. And I mean just about everybody. Kiryu doesn't use a disguise, change his hair, anything. He's hilariously bad at playing dead. The only person that doesn't know Kiryu is still alive? Daigo. Because Daigo remains the absolute dumbest and most useless mob boss ever. With Kiryu gone, how has somebody not just walked up to Daigo's HQ, laid out a trail of candy leading to a box, and trapped Daigo in said box?! Our new tale start off in Yokohama, parallel to Ichiban's story in Like a Dragon. They straight up put Kiryu next to Nanba and Ichiban's tent with them inside but prevent you from interacting. They have a cheesy reason why the owner of the Survive bar isn't around that day so Kiryu can't recognize him. But none of it feels natural or adds anything to Kiryu or Ichiban's stories. Outside of getting Kiryu to LaD's big reveal moment, which was covered sufficiently in LaD, nothing here expands on LaD's story, provides new revelations, or reframes what you've already seen. You now know where Watase got his suit he was wearing during the big speech. Exciting? Gaiden also has probably the least interesting "main" villain the series has ever had. He has no personality other than "he's evil", he barely has any connection to Kiryu and what connection he does have is a pointless reference, and he's barely involved with any of the game until a flourish of action at the end and even then he's mostly sitting back and sending minions after you. This series is usually so good about making its antagonists interesting. You have people with deep connections to Kiryu in Yakuza 1, people that are dark mirrors of Kiryu in Yakuza 2, or just world class jerks that you love to hate in Yakuza 0. Then there's this guy and… I kind of forgot he existed for half the game. The second "main" bad guy at least has some personality and an attempt at a motivation, but I likewise felt very little about having to face off against him or his reveals. But I will hand it to the game, "Continue the Debauchery" is probably one of the greatest missions prompts I've ever been given. The series is always at its funniest when it takes these yakuza bad asses and makes them the most lovable losers, like weeping over being given a halfway decent meal. Complaints about the story, yes, but The Ending! We'll talk about that later in a non-spoilery way, but man… The Ending…

Despite being a shorter game, Gaiden really delays the exploration. Every time you think you'll be able to explore, they lock the streets down and take you to a new place automatically. You think you're ready to start engaging with the main secondary gameplay loops, well too bad! Go back to the main location because we said so.

There are lots more enemies in combat this time around. It's pretty danged impressive they got so many active characters on screen for a PS4 game without any performance issues. I had resigned myself to expecting that this was really just a PS5 game that would chug along on my base level PS4, but this thing runs great. But gameplay-wise, the extra enemies ares bad. The prior gameplay was already bad about trying to get Kiryu to focus on a single enemy and now there are more of them. Good luck trying to pick up weapons on the ground or focus on a particular high threat target because Kiryu will zip around the field to grapple with an enemy you can't grapple instead of picking up something at his feet or fly past everybody to attack nothing rather than the enemy in front of him or you'll burn a Heat move on a mook enemy instead of the guy aiming a gun at you. The camera is in really close so you wind up getting hit from behind a lot, and you'll have to spend a lot of time in fights fiddling with the camera trying to keep everybody on screen. There are really twitchy physics in fights now. It doesn't really affect gameplay, but expect a lot of terrible ragdolling, enemies stuck in objects, trying to pick up a big weapon (like a potted plant) and that sending Kiryu spinning around, or just Kiryu popping up into the air a bit because he touched something on the ground. Kiryu can't block for nuthin' any more. Every other enemy attack breaks his block and enemy attacks seem to magnetize to you, so even if you dodge them, they still hit. This led to me ignoring a lot of features with new moves and equipment to focus on the few things I knew usually worked. In Yakuza fighting style, just use the charged light punch; it gives you a bit of super armor and breaks enemy blocks. In Agent style, just use the grappling wire and punch people on the ground or use the running punch. Use Heat moves on bosses. That solves the vast, vast majority of fights in this game. Gadgets in Agent style should have been the big change to combat but they're kind of useless for the majority of the game. With how long it takes to activate the gadgets, their limited use versus just punching a dude makes them a waste of time. Sometimes they just don't activate. Am I not holding the button down long enough or are they not working? They only seem to work if you're standing totally still. You know standing still, the thing you're usually doing in a fight, right? You can't string them together or do fun combos with them because of that. In cutscenes, Kiryu does all kinds of fun things with the grappling wire, but in combat it can only toss grunt enemies or grab items (when the game feels like it and probably not the item you intended to grab; sure I was aiming at that sword on the ground but grab that traffic cone instead, thanks).

Your inventory changed again too. You can't carry weapons around anymore. It's purely down to whatever is on the ground or an enemy drops. Instead of having a total item count limit, you're limited on how many of each specific item you can hold. No more stocking up on an inventory full of the best energy drink, but now you can have dozens of lesser energy drinks and food. It doesn't seem to matter in the end from a balance perspective because there are so many different kinds of food items that you can still just gluttony your way to victory, so it's a weird change. I steadfastly refuse to accept the idea that Kiryu would drink Mountain Dew. Product placement has gone too far!

The Cabaret is back, but it's not the fun one from Yakuza 0 where you're running the business as the manager, it's the lame one where you go on fake dates as a customer. Only now they're live action scenes with bad audio so it's extra creepy. The only draw to the mode seems to be that they hired a famous Vtuber as one of the models, but other than her mentioning she does streaming on the side and her slipping into the voice a few times, I'd have never known that was Coco as the actress. But I don't follow any Vtubers so I'm guessing I'm not the target demographic here? And again, I steadfastly refuse to accept the idea that Kiryu understands what streaming is. Product placement has gone too far!

Being a small game, Gaiden pads out its run time by forcing you to do side stuff to progress in the story. The Coliseum is mandatory and you have to do side stories to raise your Akame Network rank in the main city. It just features pointless padding to artificially extend the length of the game. The grind is on the slow side and not particularly fun because the things you have to do to raise your rank are mostly fetch quests with lousy rewards. Money and Network points are real slow to gain and upgrades are expensive so you stay weak for a long time. Getting enough Network points to buy enough stat and gadget upgrades takes longer than the game's actual storyline. If the whole point of this is to be a small side story to link 6 and 7, why force the grind by padding your numbers out? You'll be stuck doing the same Coliseum battle over and over just to make money if you want to see all the fighters you can hire, try the different costumes, upgrade all your gadgets, or upgrade all your stats. Some example numbers. The highest paying short and repeatable Coliseum fight pays out 3 million yen. The highest tier of health upgrades totals 30 million yen. The highest tier of attack upgrades totals another 30 million yen. It costs 30-40 million to hire all the fighters you don't get from substories. The best piece of equipment costs around 50 million yen. You're required to spend a million yen each just to complete some of the basic quests. And that's ignoring all the other dozens of upgrades you can buy, dozens of other pieces of gear or cosmetics, and dozens of lower tier fighters. So yeah, not a great grind. For the activity log, the numbers are super padded out. Take 100 photos, but you only need to actually do maybe 10 for the story and quests, so you have to waste another 90 pictures. Win 30 Tournament class fights in the Coliseum, but there are only 12 different fights so you're going to repeat them multiple times.

Substories are super verbose and not really funny. There are a few fun ones, but they mainly just go on for too long for too little payoff. Kiryu does finally have a bit of genre awareness about his quests now. He's been through this enough times that when a lady invites him up to a hotel room, he now knows it's a scam from the start. Still hasn't learned to chase down a villain slowly hobbling away from the scene, but Kiryu's getting there. Stroll N Patrol tasks for your basic missions are very fetch quest-y. Usually, you have to run to a point, take a picture, and then run back to the person that gave you a quest. Or, the person wants a specific kind of food so you have to go to shops until you find it and then run back to the person. A person wants to see you wear a specific outfit, so you run to a taxi, load into the second city, run to the Boutique, change your clothes, run back to the helicopter, load to the first city, run back to the mission giver, collect your paltry payout, run back to the taxi, load back to second city, run to the Boutique, change out of the awful oufit and back to your normal one, run back to the helicopter, and load back to the first city (there are multiple quests that require this process and the Boutique in the second city is the only place you can change Kiryu's outfit despite having two bases in the first city). The sort of filler thing that pads out the game but doesn't do anything meaningful. The payouts are usually bad too. You'll do a task for somebody and get paid less for the quest than what you earned from winning one of the four street fights you got into along the way. Or you get paid less than it cost to complete the quest. A person wanted to see a particular outfit, that outfit costs 1 million yen, and your reward for completing the quest… 75K yen. You can get requests before you're actually able to finish them. Some of them are kind of vague so you don't know if you're not figuring out the request properly or if that thing just isn't available yet or you're locked out of because the story has restricted you to a specific time of day/location.

Karaoke is weirdly hard in this one. I was getting 95s and 99s in Like a Dragon and here I'm struggling to hit 90 for the quests. The controls for Pool are still garbage. Trying to identify pieces in Shogi still requires digging through menus. The casino games still beg the question of why you're playing casino games in a non-casino game game. Pocket Circuit's back though. The core gameplay is the same but the shop is a pain now. Instead of buying parts with money, everything costs a unique currency you can only get by winning races. So if you buy the wrong parts and need to respec your car, you might not be able to even afford the parts you need to win the next race to get points. You can't sort the shop and all the parts are jumbled together, so it's frustrating to try to compare similar parts because they're spread out in the store. You can't check what you own in the parts store or buy parts from the car customization screen, so you need to walk back and forth between the race lady and the parts guy to check things out. It was so much easier when parts just cost money because you came back at the end of the game, bought everything in one purchase, and then the customization menu is grouped by part type. You knew you owned everything and like parts were grouped so they were easy to compare. Is your car falling off the track because your build is bad or just because RNG is screwing with you, well now it's hard to experiment so it's going to be that much worse.

LaDGTMWEHN isn't a bad game, it's just feels… unnecessary? Unfulfilling? If you're just a fan of the RPG style of LaD and you're thinking of trying this one because it ties into Ichiban's story, I'd probably say to ignore it. This is for people that played Yakuza 0-6 and just want one more brawler out of Kiryu. It's not Yakuza 5 levels of bad, but I'd place it around the "worse than Yakuza 2/around the level of Yakuza 3" level on my grand scale of things. Middling main story, middling substories, and worse combat, plus slow progression from padded upgrade/inventory costs. If you wait for a deep sale and go into it expecting nothing more than nostalgia/fan service for the franchise, you're in the right headspace for it. If you go in expecting more, you're going to be disappointed.

But the ending! The writing, the animation. Just absolutely knocked it out of the park. Between this ending and LaD's, they are nailing these dramatic endings full of the best animated ugly crying you have seen. To put Kiryu in a situation that is both so kind and so emotionally devastating and to see that man just break down. You are a monster if you don't tear up at the end.

Some bonus thoughts on… Infinite Wealth demo The story hook is okay but not particularly exciting. Ichi is looking for his mom, who we were already told was dead in the first game, but now she's not. Kind of retroactively makes her story from the first game less interesting. And seeing that Kiryu is stuck just doing another mission hurts the ending of Gaiden. The voice acting is really bad! Ichi is awesome again, but holy cow, who approved that new voice for Kiryu!? It's terrible! I know it's some Youtuber I'd never heard of before, but c'mon. The villain in the demo is really bad too. You hear Ichi speak and it's "ah yes, that's a voice actor" and then Kiryu or the bad guy speak and the gap in quality is through the roof. LaD1 had an absolutely stellar cast, what happened? Here's to hoping I can assemble the old crew and ignore the new ones? Or maybe a mixed audio where I can make the old cast use English voices and the new cast use Japanese? This is seriously dampening my desire to play the game. Who wants to play an RPG that's dozens of hours long if you don't want to listen to the characters speak? They seemed to have made the combat system more complicated but not necessarily better. Lots more buttons to press. So many features seem dependent on character positioning and what you're near but within a few seconds, everybody has moved around so it seems like a bonus thing that's neat when it happens but would be too much of a hassle to plan around. I already found scavenging items on the map tedious by the end of the demo. Briefcases, stuff under cars, stuff in dumpsters, shaking trees, items on the ground. The city looks huge too. A big thing I loved about the Yakuza games was how compact the city was. They took an open world map and squished it down to a few city blocks so everything was super dense and exciting. But this just seems like a regular open world map now. The new Crazy Delivery mini game isn't fun. The trick system is annoying. I thought it would be more Crazy Taxi but it's mainly picking up items and doing tricks with a lot of starting and stopping. All in all, nothing really sold me on needing to play the game. I 100%'d LaD1 and played through the story mode twice, but this demo left me feeling pretty uninterested. I'm sure I'll play it eventually, but it kind of seems like a wait a year for a deep sale deal rather than a must play.

#yakuza #ryu ga gotoku #like a dragon #the man who erased his name #kiryu

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drama-tically · 3 years

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episode 35 of the long ballad!! 😭

to be honest I’m more invested in Hao Du and Le Yan compared to Changge and Sun and like this episode!!

i can’t

hao du hiding behind the fields like some shy boy because he thinks leyan’s still mad at him.

that entire scene and conversation between them. and then he suddenly stalks up to her and mini rants about how he’s unsure to act around her.

and then leyan thanking him for letting changge go and all of a sudden he starts smiling again i– HAO DU IS SO PRECIOUS

and omg him calling wei-i’m the most irrelevant character in the story-shuyu over so that leyan can confess to him after her asking him about confessing to someone you like. his face 😭😭

*smiling through the pain*

and then the three of them go back to walk in the fields again, hao du trailing behind wei shuyu and leyan. and then leyan stops walking and is about to confess, hao du at the back being the third wheel.

and then she looks at hao du.

and hao du turns around and sadly walks away. brooooo

broooo i–

#i feel the aggresive need to gif that first part #that scene of hao du and leyan at the fields in the beginning #brooo #i can't #they're so cute #but also #leyan why do you like shuyu #he's so irrelevant #he doesn't even do anything #he's the most useless character in any drama i've ever seen #you could delete his character from the drama entirely and it wouldn't even make a difference #also not leyan assuming shuyu accepts because he didn't deny it 😭✋🏼#he didn't even have the time to respond #then again he plucked that flower out of her hair like as if trying to be romantic #but leyan obviously couldn't see that he wasn't trying to be romantic and misunderstood the whole thing #my hao du i feel for you #the long ballad #text

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alectology-archive · 2 years

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omg bff why do you not like brandon sanderson's books? (im asking both bc im curious and also in hopes that you will rant your heart out)

I let my thoughts cool for a while before answering this sjdhwifhskf because his books just make me so mad. I've tried to organise my thoughts but I haven't really succeeded so it's mostly a compilation of all my annoyances with him. This is partly a me-problem in the sense that writers who’re only good at plot (which is mostly the case with him) just do not work for me at all. In my list of priorities good plot is ranked a lot lower than interesting thematic explorations and good prose (but he also sucks at characterisations - most of his characters are carbon copies of one another with slight differences, which means I don’t really end up liking any of them).

I’m going to put the rest of the rant under the cut because this turned out longer than I expected although I was typing this on my phone during class today-

His writing style is just really brash and lacking elegance or nuance - plus he has the most boring prose I've ever come across, maybe? I very much think he needs to step back and stop publishing so many books with such large wordcounts when most of his exposition turns out to be pretty useless. I just HAVE to drop a couple of quotes because some of them are such an eyesore, full of nonsense fragments and repetitions.

He stared northward.

At the black and silver clouds.

He’d never seen their like before. They blanketed the entire horizon to the north, high in the sky. They weren’t gray. They were black and silver. Dark, rumbling thunderheads, as dark as a root cellar at midnight. With striking silver light breaking between them, flashes of lightning that gave off no sound.

LIKE.

War had come to Andor in the still of night. The approaching refugees would soon discover that they’d been marching toward danger. It was not surprising. Danger was in all directions. The only way to avoid walking toward it would be to stand still.

Me when I’m trying to desperately say something #deep (he does manage to write thoughtful stuff. But he also fails a lot of the time and he needs a better editor.)

Outside the palace, the Asha’man line was finally weakening. They’d given him the better part of an hour, blasting back wave after wave of Trollocs in an awesome display of Power.

When I talk about him prioritising Drama and Plot over thematic importance, this is what I mean, essentially? One of the main themes RJ’s books deal with is that war is a tragedy, but instead of trying to maintain the spirit of that, he delves into how Cool the asha’man look killing the enemy’s armies and dedicates a whole book - a memory of light - to endless war sequences that I don’t quite understand the need for... at all.

I've only read mistborn, his WoT instalments and parts of the way of kings so I can only speak for them, but mistborn was generic-YA-bad and the way of kings reads like a person who doesn't know how to write trying to desperately write fantasy so I had to drop it early on (I'm still trying to read it, but college has been keeping me very busy, unfortunately so I'm trying to prioritise Good Writers instead because I can tell that reading his WoT instalments has rotted my brain and ruined my prose. ugh). I've also seen people describing the experience of reading his books as interacting with a textual translation of video games (in a not-good way) and I agree, honestly!

What I hate MOST is that he specifically instructs readers how to feel about characters doing certain things instead of trying to steer them towards those conclusions. He lets you know that you’re supposed to hate x character and sympathise with y character instead of letting you decide yourself based on their prior motivations/actions in the story. I hate it when an author tries to spoon-feed everything to me and tries to force me to feel about certain stuff in a way that they specifically want me to - such writing also means they’re probably a bad writer if they feel the need to clarify to the T why I’m supposed to feel a certain way.

Again, mistborn is one of his earlier books and I don't know if he's improved since, but there's also a bunch of fridging in his books, a sense of female caregivers being put on a pedestal, and female characters undergoing a character arc to embrace their femininity (while they previously rejected it) which means I have a harder time trying to believe he actually enjoys writing female characters. The 'how dare the oppressed subclass hate it's oppressors' thing he keeps pulling repeatedly in his books will never stop infuriating me either.

Also he is not funny and I wish he'd stop trying to be funny because I feel like throwing my book against a wall whenever I read what is supposed to be a ‘humorous’ passage. Shallan Davar bless you, the fandom loves you but I may never just because you get the brunt of his ‘funny’ dialogue:

“Well,” Shallan said to the captain, blushing but still eager to speak, “I was just thinking this: You say that my beauty coaxed the winds to deliver us to Kharbranth with haste. But wouldn’t that imply that on other trips, my lack of beauty was to blame for us arriving late?”

“Well…er…”

“So in reality,” Shallan said, “you’re telling me I’m beautiful precisely one-sixth of the time.”

“Nonsense! Young miss, you’re like a morning sunrise, you are!”

“Like a sunrise? By that you mean entirely too crimson”—she pulled at her long red hair—“and prone to making men grouchy when they see me?”

He laughed, and several of the sailors nearby joined in. “All right then,” Captain Tozbek said, “you’re like a flower.”

She grimaced. “I’m allergic to flowers.”

I’m sighing for a thousand years.

#it's also the homophobia thing and the mormon thing mostly #see I have my own beef with grrm but he knows to Write at least lol #I can't say the same for BS - he just doesn't read like a person who really knows how to write #sure he's creative. but he's not translating it well into a written medium.#asks #willowycreatures #text #brandon #<- I know I have a lot of his fans following me at this point so you're welcome to filter my rant tag #sanderson critical

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slashingdisneypasta · 3 years

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Favourite Animated Hero/Villain Relationships... As Wallpapers

(For no reason)

Made with BeFunky, PixlR, kissthemgoodbye and animationscreencaps.

Nala and Scar, The Lion King: I just think it has so much potential. Both Scar and Nala are very strong, popular Disney characters separately and in relation to Simba but we get very little interaction between the two- despite these three frames telling us theirs a story. The way he looks at her? Not Sarabi, not any other lioness-the lighting suggests her. Nala. The only real scene we have between them is from the Stage Musical, in The Madness Of King Scar, when Nala goes to him to try talk some sense into him, and he's losing his mind and tries to get her to be his mate, and she's absolutely disgusted.

Nala was close to Simba as a kid, so there's a good chance she spent time with his favourite uncle. She knows Scar- he's not just some creep making her uncomfortable. This is who used to be her best friends Uncle, who's now her useless King. For damn sure she's heard rumours about him, whatever they may be, from other lionesses that may have grown up with him, and its just very curious what she must feel and think about him.

I think they could have had a very interesting Villain/Hero dynamic, like that of Hades and Meg and Jafar and Jasmine.

Zoey and Scott, Total Drama; Revenge Of the Island: I just think they know each other so well. Zoey might actually know Scott best out of everyone in the whole show, including Dawn and Chris. He knew her from being a people pleasing, unsure little home-schooler to a feral wild child with a bow and arrow that challenges him- and that change was in no little part, Scott's fault, too, and I find that so fascinating when it comes to villain/hero bonds. The hero becoming better because of the villain. Owing their improvement, to the person they hate the most. And the villain knowing that perfectly well and being frustrated that they cant manipulate the hero the same way they did before, because of their damn self.

Now, we don't get a lot of interaction between them in All Stars unfortunately!! But I'd love to have seen more of them Not-Quite-Hating each other but also being Definitely-Not-Friends... Sort of allies? Zoey knowing that Scott is not the one she has to worry about right now (That moment when he's getting flushed and warns ZOEY, specifically ZOEY, because there is NO ONE ELSE THERE HE COULD BE WARNING, that Mike isn't who he says he is lives in my mind rent-free) and Scott knowing the same, what with Mal running around. I would have been on the edge of my seat!

Sinbad and Eris, Sinbad; Legend of the Seven Seas: These two are very similar to Hades and Meg. A flirty, manipulative God playing games using an emotionally constipated, sarcastic mortal they definitely have horniness for as their pawn. I really love that here, despite the gender swap of the characters (Making the woman the dangerous, powerful villain and the man the manipulated anti-hero with demons swimming around in his head), their positions don't change from what Hades and Meg had going on. The creators didn't make Eris any less of a powerhouse or make her feelings for Sinbad anymore then lust and they didn't make Sinbad the dominant ones in their conversations- ever.

They also just have great chemistry.

Drake Mallard and Jim Starling, Ducktales (S2.Ep16. The Dark Knight Returns): AHH, oh my god. Okay. Jim just absolutely hates, Drake. Of course. Drake is the new, brighter, better version of him that they've decided is his replacement- and he couldn't control it. He had no say. In his mind Drake stole Darkwing Duck (His character, who he put all of himself into. His life) from him and he is heartbroken, because (Specifically in this scene I've used) he knows now that he wont get Darkwing back; Its not going to happen. There's nothing he can do.

And losing hope- that is what truly destroys Jim Starling. So he hates, it Drake.

But on the other hand- Drake loved Jim. Jim was his idle. Of course, now he knows that Jim is just a pathetic, needy, narcissistic person and when he figured that out he felt betrayed- but I still think he'd be happy to find out Jim is alive.

Just- they- They're so similar yet so so different and that's what makes them close, and that's what causes all the heartbreak.

Milo Thatch, Lieutenant Helga Sinclair and Commander Lyle Rourke, Atlantis; The Lost Empire: Look at them?? Poly goals XD Sorry- seriously, though. Milo is just such a nerd and they're constantly in equal parts amused and frustrated by him. Helga is able to look at him and think = Cute, but it drives Rourke crazy and that what bubbles over in the end.

Jane Porter and William Clayton, Tarzan: Oh, he is so patronising. If he would pick his head a smidgen outta his ass, he would see what a total BAMF Jane is. He treats her like she's silly, like she's hysterical, like she's weak- but that just so happens to be everything she's not. I don't think she ever really trusted him. She wasn't taught to make herself smaller for a mans benefit, her father never subscribed to that kind of thinking, so she saw Clayton for the kind of... off person, he was. I love how they hated each other (He was much more her villain, then Tarzans I think, seeing as she had to deal with him more. Same with Meg and Hades and Jasmine and Jafar) but they matched XD Like, I know Clayton was wearing yellow so he would match Sabor- but then why did they put Jane in the exact same shade? Its interesting.

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partywithponies · 4 years

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hi! i've only ever seen the bbc version of father brown and i've never read the books (i know, i'm so sorry), but i'm super curious about the different versions of father brown and you seem like an expert on each adaptation, so i was wondering if you'd be willing to give me a rundown of sorts on each version/series? i know it's a lot to ask and i may be opening the floodgates here, but there's not a ton of info online elsewhere and i'd love to learn more! thanks either way. ciao!

OH BOY YOU’VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE ANON

OKAY SO

As briefly as possible:

The books:

Proof people who complain about the BBC show being “too political” don’t actually know the books at all

Father Brown straight up calls capitalism “evil” and “heresy”

Chesterton says that millionaires dying isn’t a tragedy

Inspector Valentin betrayed us and broke my heart, ACAB I guess

Since every police officer he befriends lets him down in some way, Father Brown’s only real friend is Flambeau, who he goes absolutely everywhere with. They only go on holiday with each other. They’ve been all over the world with each other. I love they

Book Father Brown pretty much never does his goddamn job. We literally never in all the books see him giving mass or taking confession. The closest we get is when he gives an impromptu sermon after seemingly coming back from the dead, where he literally only says "You silly, silly people. God bless you all and give you more sense." then runs away to send a telegram. Useless priest. I love him.

Book Flambeau is. Incredible. Amazing. Iconic. None of the adaptations have been able to fully capture book Flambeau’s true energy, for he is a walking contradiction who contains multitudes. If all the onscreen Flambeaus fused into one being, THEN you’d have something vaguely resembling book Flambeau.

Book Flambeau is MASSIVE. He’s at least 6′4, he’s broad shouldered, has huge hands, and his super buff. He can just. Pick people up and throw them. He can knock people unconscious with one punch. He fills doorways when he stands in them. He terrifies most people just by drawing himself up to his full height. He also has a very short temper and a very short patience.

He’s very agile and athletic and can move silently, despite his size. He’s also a master of disguise, somehow. (Explain, Chesterton. Explain. Is everyone in this universe apart from Father Brown, Flambeau, and arguably Valentin massively stupid? Actually don’t answer that I’ve read these books)

Book Flambeau has a habit of flinging people full-bodily down flights of stairs when they anger him or threaten him or Father Brown. Book Flambeau also carries a walking cane with him literally everywhere that has a sword concealed in the handle, plus book Flambeau insists on taking pistols on holiday with him, even when he was just going for a peaceful fishing holiday in the Norfolk Broads. King.

(Which all makes it so iconic that Father Brown, described as tiny and meek and sensitive, saw this man when he was still a hardened criminal on top of all this and said “THIS ONE I LIKE THIS ONE. I JUST THINK HE’S NEAT” and went off on a jolly through London with him.)

Flambeau’s past is extremely mysterious. We no nothing about his family or his childhood or where he’s from or why he turned to crime. We know he used to be a soldier, and a part of him misses it. We know he used to fight duels semi-regularly, and liked them to be fought the very next morning after they were organised. We know he always used to make sure to visit the dentist on time, even when he was a hardened criminal. (King of good teeth.) We know he was in a gang at some point. We know he was a student at some point. We don’t know what he studied, but we know he knew Leonard Quinton in “wild student days in Paris” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). This is literally all we know about his past before he met Father Brown. The man is a riddle wrapped in an enigma. (That’s why Flambeau is so big. He’s full of secrets)

(Fun fact: in the book universe Flambeau is famous and popular in America, so you could say that in universe Flambeau is America’s Favourite Fighting Frenchman.)

Flambeau also loves cats and children, believes in fairies, likes pointing out rocks that look like dragons, and likes giggling and mucking about on the beach with Father Brown. A baby.

One time Father Brown called Flambeau “full of good and pure thoughts”, but I don’t think that’s quite true, Father. I think Father Brown just has endless faith in Flambeau.

Another thing I think is really neat is that it would’ve been so easy to have Father Brown be the genius and Flambeau his dumb muscle sidekick but that’s not the case at all! They’re both geniuses and they’re both each other’s sidekick, and in fact it’s Flambeau who’s the famous professional private detective, Father Brown is just an amateur. Father Brown is often defined by his connection to Flambeau rather than vice versa, both in the text (the text will frequently refer to them as something along the lines of “Flambeau and his friend the priest”, and on two separate occasions a long list of Flambeau’s possessions is ended with “and a priest”), and in universe (Father Brown himself is massively famous in America in universe largely because of “his long connection to Flambeau). I don’t know I just think it’s neat.

One time a man threatened Father Brown with a gun and Flambeau just beat him unconscious and then Father Brown and Flambeau just drove away and left him unconscious on the path. It was awesome.

(I’m sorry I rambled about Flambeau for so many words I just. Really really like Flambeau you guys. Father Brown and Flambeau are like two separate crime drama character tropes, the hard boiled cynical P.I. and the cosy eccentric amateur detective, but together as a double act, and I just think that’s really cool.)

Father Brown himself is if anything even more mysterious. He’s just “Father J. Brown, formerly of Cobhole in Essex, currently London”, and he’s “Flambeau’s friend”, and that’s all. That’s all he needs to be.

I also really really love Father Brown himself. I love that he’s allowed to be cheerful and optimistic and childish without any of this making him less clever, and in fact he’s shown time and time again to be cleverer than grumpy cynics who are scornful of childish things. Like, the whole giggling childlike thing isn’t even some kind of act, he’s a genius who understands true human nature, and he also really really likes puppet shows and building sandcastles who telling fairy stories, he really does get a “childish pleasure” from seeing Flambeau swing his sword-stick, and he really does have “strong personal interest in tomfoolery”. I love him.

I must share my favourite book quote about Father Brown himself: “But neither of them is very like the real Father Brown, who is not broken at all; but goes stumping with his stout umbrella through life, liking most of the people in it; accepting the world as his companion, but never as his judge.” uwu uwu uwu I’m cry.

Chesterton just subverts all the expectations character wise, the cheerful bumbling priest is a genius, the violent criminal is a true hero, the noble police officer is a corrupt self-serving murderer. It’s great. We stan. 10000000/10

(I’m not very good at being brief, am I?)

Father Brown, Detective (1934):

The first movie! It’s completely ridiculous. I love it a lot.

It was released just at the start of Hays Code, which, among other things, stated that crime and immorality should not be glorified or glamourised, and all crime and immorality must be seen to be punished by the end of the film. In practice in the case of this film, this means two things:

Paul Lukas!Flambeau is the only Flambeau to actually go to prison (and stay there).

He’s by far the Flambeau who deserves it the least. Lukas!Flambeau never hurt a soul. He just wanted to be loved. #FreeMyBoyHercule

Okay but in all seriousness. There’s a reason I call Paul Lukas!Flambeau “Himbo Flambeau”. Where other Flambeaus are violent or dangerous or geniuses, Lukas!Flambeau is just a big dumb idiot who respects women and has a great sense of humour and writes all his letters in the third person like Elmo for some reason. I would die for him.

At one point Flambeau in disguise is talking to the police, and when the police criticise Flambeau, disguised Flambeau says “Oh but I assure! I have read many things about this Flambeau! He is a fearless, handsome fellow!” The absolute idiot. I adore him with my whole heart.

The film is set in London, like the books, but an idealised Hollywood version of London, i.e., almost entirely unlike London.

Walter Connolly!Father Brown is also entirely lacking in braincells. Look at these two idiot men:

I love them.

Oh oh! And the most important thing, the thing that carries over into most other adaptations? NEW ORIGINAL CHARACTERS!!

This movie invents a few characters that weren’t in the books, but the most important ones are Mrs Boggs:

She doesn’t really add much to the plot but she’s funny and I love her so I’ll forgive it.

She’s Father Brown’s housekeeper, she’s basically just the fussing maternal female character archetype who fusses around in the background, but she does it well and plays it with charm so I’ll allow it.

(Honestly this whole film is just. Not *technically* good or original, but just so charming and with so much heart that I unironically adore it.)

She tries to make Father Brown drink his milk because it’s good for him even though he doesn’t like it, and keeps checking back in on him to make sure he’s drunk it, it’s literally like a mother and her small child.

She objects to policemen in the presbytery because of their “big muddy boots on the carpet” but is fine with just letting Flambeau in whenever despite the prevailing rumour in London being that Flambeau killed a man. We stan a queen of having priorities.

When Inspector Valentine summons Father Brown to the station, Mrs Boggs pops up in the background, assumes Father Brown’s being arrested, and says “Oh dear, I knew it!” and it makes me giggle like an idiot every time.

The other, more important original character invented for this movie is my girl Evelyn Fischer:

I love her, I would die for her, she’s flawless.

She’s basically your typical bored and rebellious young aristocrat, but she has a chaotic streak that I adore.

She sneaks out of her family’s mansion to go to a seedy underground club/illegal gambling ring in Soho (I mean I assume it’s Soho, a seedy part of London in that general vicinity, at least. I’m not about to get bogged down trying to understand the geography of London according to Hollywood), flirts with a bunch of strangers for fun, then when the police raid the place and everyone else is panicking she stands stock still, cheerfully says “Oh goody, I shall probably get my name in the papers!” and has to be physically dragged out of the building by Flambeau.

Later on Flambeau breaks into her bedroom in the middle of the night and she’s just very calmly like “What are you doing?”, and even when she finds out it’s Flambeau, a man widely believed to be dangerous and violent, instead of being scared, she calls him an idiot right to his face.

She forms the third part of the main trio of the movie with Father Brown and Flambeau (RIP to Valentine, demoted to tertiary character in a loose adaptation of the one (1) story where he was the main character lol) and together the three of them share a single braincell and have to take turns with it, while Mrs Boggs fusses in the background at the trio’s increasingly bonkers decisions.

The movie ends with Father Brown and Evelyn sharing an emotional farewell with Flambeau through the window of a police car and promising to look after each other until Flambeau’s released, wow poly rights.

The Adventures of Father Brown (1945):

The adaptation there’s the least amount of information about, but I’ve done my best to find everything I can find on it.

An American radio show made towards the end of wartime, it’s a bit of an odd one, and believe me Father Brown adaptations have gone some odd places.

Only two episodes survive, or at least if more do survive then whoever has them is being very selfish and hoarding them to themselves because only two episodes are publicly available anywhere, and the audio quality of those is a bit dodge. (Though that is to be expected, they do appear to be home recordings, from 1945. Honestly we should be grateful to even have two full episodes.)

If the actors I’ve found are the right people, this show featured by far the youngest Father Brown and Flambeau, at the start of the show the actor playing Father Brown was only 36 and the actor playing Flambeau was only 27. They’re BABIES. (Honestly I’d like to see more age variation in Father Brown adaptations, as I have extensively rambled about before, the characters have literally no canon ages in the books, I think people ought to be a little more imaginative instead of always building on the adaptations that came before, even if it is really cool to see traces of all the previous adaptations in each new one that comes along. It’s something I haven’t noticed as much in adaptations of other golden age detective novels, but the Father Brown adaptations do seem to be stuck in some kind of game of “yes, AND” with each other. I would REALLY like to see an adaptation where Flambeau is older than Father Brown though, it's just something we've never had before despite there being literally nothing in the books to suggest this can't be the case, and I just think it'd be neat.)

This show is really really painfully American, in a real old fashioned "golly gee whizz mister" kind of way, to the point it almost feels like a parody, and I honestly find it kind of endearing.

Even Flambeau frequently slips into a very American accent to the point that my affectionate nickname for him is "The All-American Flambeau", and it's great. He's great.

Honestly I could accept the accents and the slang, for some reason the only thing that really threw me was Father Brown referring to money in cents and nickels.

Needless to say, this adaptation is not set in London. It is instead set in Generic Unspecified Smalltown USA. It's fine. This is fine. I already have so many films and shows set in London, I can swallow my London pride and let America have this.

It's hard to get a real grasp on characters from just two episodes, but I like this Father Brown and Flambeau, even if they are a little overly serious, and even if Flambeau doesn't really do much. He may be a bit serious and a bit useless but All-American Flambeau stays up late anxiously waiting for Father Brown to get home safely and it's very sweet. What a good boy.

All-American Flambeau also carries handcuffs around with him for some reason? But no weapons? Why is All-American Flambeau one of the few Flambeaus not to have a gun? Oh well, he's still sweet.

The 1945 radio show also gives us some original characters, but they're very much side characters and not part of the main plot and it's very hard to get a good grasp on a character from just a few minutes of audio from just two episodes but here's what I could gather:

Nora is another fussing housekeeper! She seems younger and less maternal than Mrs Boggs, but I don't know if that's just because the whole cast was on the younger side. (Could the radio station not find anyone over the age of 40? Were they in short supply in 1945 or something? Ah well.) She seems dedicated to helping Father Brown get some peace and quiet that he never goddamn gets because someone always goes and gets themselves murdered. In both surviving episodes a knock at the door disturbs Father Brown’s rest, Nora opens it professionally, sees it's Flambeau, and immediately drops the professionalism and is immediately like "oh it's only you", so I can only assume every episode started this way. I do hope so.

Father Peter is a junior priest who answers to Father Brown and takes over his duties on his days off. He's implied by the dialogue to be considerably younger than Father Brown, Nora, and Flambeau, but if their actors are anything to go by then they're not that old themselves, and though Father Brown seems to talk to Father Peter like he's a literal child, he is still a priest so I very much doubt that's the case. He seems sweet and harmless, but he's only in one of the surviving episodes and only in that towards the end and mentioned briefly at the start, so it's hard to judge completely. It's highly unlikely that the reason he's not even mentioned in the later surviving episode is because he turned out to secretly be an evil murderer, but, this being a Father Brown adaptation, not entirely unfounded. (But no, he's probably just a sweet boy who exists to have exposition delivered to him.)

Father Brown/The Detective (1954):

The Alec Guinness movie! The one haters of any of the other adaptations complain that adaptation isn't more like, but in my humble opinion, actually the worst adaptation.

Like, I don't hate it! The cast is mostly stellar actors and if I just saw it as a movie on its own, it'd probably be fine. But as a Father Brown adaptation watched in context of the books and the other adaptations, it has a few issues imo.

Most glaringly it has Tone Issues. This film cannot decide if it's a comedy or not. The original posters certainly marketed it as one (see above) and half the cast are noted comic actors who were famous at the time for comedy, goddamn SID JAMES is in it, but the entire third act is played painfully straight, half the cast is mugging for the camera and trying way too hard to be funny while the other cast is giving extremely serious and subtle performances, like. I have no problem with a Father Brown adaptation being played for laughs, and I have no problem with a Father Brown adaptation being played for drama, both can work beautifully, but just PICK ONE, PLEASE

All of my other gripes with the film are very petty and nitpicky, this film calls Father Brown and Flambeau "Ignatius Brown" and "Gustav Flambeau" even though Father Brown has the canon first initial "J" and Flambeau has the canon first name "Hercule", and I hate it a lot. "Ignatius and Gustav" is the second worst thing any Father Brown adaptation has ever done to me.

My other petty nitpick with the movie is that it makes Flambeau literal nobility. The man is a duke. In my opinion Flambeau should always either have a completely mysterious past or be a nobody who came from nothing, someone who grew up with land and title and many servants and a family coat of arms, living in a whole entire castle with his family name and coat of arms engraved into the side of it, growing up and stealing from people, is a whole lot less sympathetic in my opinion. Like to be fair his parents are dead which is sad I guess and his castle has seen better days, but dude. You still own a castle. People who live in castles do not get to lecture other people about materialism.

THAT SAID, Peter Finch is still the best thing about the movie. I love all Flambeaus dearly, even the ones that are little bitches. He’s a bit of an emo “oh woe is me” sadboy, but he’s very charming, and actually good at disguises and being undercover, get dunked on Lukas!Flambeau.

Guinness!Brown likes to feed ducks and Flambeau calls him “the angel with the flaming umbrella”, which makes my inner Good Omens fan who loves finding parallels between Aziraphale & Crowley and Father Brown & Flambeau go 👀

There is one really good scene, in the Paris Catacombs. And by “good” I mean “really really bafflingly gay”:

I truly, truly do not understand how this scene was written, directed, acted, filmed, and edited without ANYONE saying “hey lads does this seem a bit gay to you?”

Father Brown, literally lying on top of Flambeau and pinning him to the ground, whispering: “I would like to set you free.” Flambeau, softly, gently smiling while his face is literal inches away from Father Brown, who is still pinning him to the ground: “Ah, now I begin to understand what you are.”

What the fuck, you guys. What the entire fuck. This scene keeps me up at night.

ANYWAY

This film is also not set in London. It is instead mostly set in a rural English village, and partially in Paris and partially in rural France. Paris is fun but I miss London.

This film also has some original characters. I should probably talk about them.

This is Lady Warren:

She’s Father Brown’s friend, and she’s a Lady, and that’s all I can really tell you.

She’s very well-mannered and dignified and sophisticated.

She gives me the vibe that she exists solely because the writers decided they needed a female character but then remembered at the last minute they had no idea how to write women, so as a result she is almost entirely irrelevant to the plot. I don’t want to say I don’t like her, because she’s done nothing wrong and it’s not her fault, but like. Why is she here? Poor thing, she deserved to be plot-relevant, really.

She lives in a big mansion and owns some very nice things, and she gets annoyed when she invites Father Brown to lunch but he just stares blankly into space thinking about Flambeau the whole time. (Mood honestly FB. Me too.)

She flirts a bit with Flambeau in one very pointless scene that came the hell out of nowhere, went nowhere, and was never mentioned again. It was like the writers realised how gay the previous Flambeau scene was and suddenly tried to convince me this man is a hetero. Nice try, writers. You can’t fool me that easily.

The other main original character is Bert:

Alright, own up, whose bright idea was it to put Sid James in a Father Brown movie?

Bert is a smalltime criminal who’s a friend of Father Brown, who Father Brown protects from the police, but tries to convince to get on the straight and narrow by getting him as a job as Lady Warren’s chauffer.

This is would be fine, were it not for the fact he’s played by Sid James, who only knows how to play Sid James, and is just Sid Jamesing it up in every scene. I don’t have anything against Sid James. I like my fair share of Carry On films. But Sid James does not belong in Father Brown and I want to fight whoever decided he did.

Father Brown (1974):

LADS LADS LADS! It’s time for the first TV show, and it’s time for my favourite boys:

Oh! OH! How I love Kenneth More!Brown and Dennis Burgess!Flambeau. They’re just. So cute. My two special boys.

Not only that, but LADS! We’re finally back in London!

A gritty, dirty, London in the 1930s no less, with cool London buses and political unrest and grimy pubs and the constant threat of world war. Alexa this is so cool play London Calling.

In one episode Flambeau gets verbally abused by an anti-immigration right-wing zealot. :( My poor boy. :(

(But it’s okay, shortly after Father Brown witnesses this, the racist shows up dead in exactly the place Father Brown earlier said would be a good place to commit a murder. Now I’m not accusing Father Brown of murder, BUT)

This show made the bold but valid decision to skip Flambeau’s redemption arc and start the show when Flambeau is already a seasoned and respected private detective who’s lived in London and been Father Brown’s closest friend for many years. As a result this Father Brown and Flambeau are ridiculously domestic with each other. Look at this peak Old Married Couple energy:

Oh! I just love them.

I would love to know how Burgess!Flambeau’s redemption went down though, because Burgess!Flambeau is BY FAR the least repentant of all the reformed Flambeaus. He proudly boasts about his crimes, he still believes he “deserved to succeed”, he still proudly talks about how “daring and outrageous” he was, which begs the question of why did he stop at all? Literally the only explanation I can think of is that he’s literally only doing this for Father Brown’s sake, which. uwu

Oh GOD I love Burgess!Flambeau. Obviously I love all Flambeaus a lot, and choosing a favourite feels like choosing a favourite child, but let’s just say: if the Flambeaus WERE my children, Burgess!Flambeau would be quite spoilt. My ~ Daring And Outrageous ~ boy.

More!Brown and Burgess!Flambeau are both really really socially awkward, uncomfortable in crowds, and nervously say “oh dear” a lot. They really are ridiculously cute.

They also only giggle and joke and act silly when they’re together, when they’re apart they’re both sort of sad and quiet and withdrawn. (This makes episodes Flambeau isn’t in a bit harder to watch because Father Brown is just kind of lost and lonely without his emotional support Frenchman, with three notable exceptions: that time Father Brown infodumped about the mating habits of whales at the Father Superior for a solid minute, that time Father Brown met a dog and reacted with unrestrained delight, and that time someone mentioned former criminals in passing and Father Brown’s whole face lit up and he started gushing about how Flambeau was living in London now and doing very well as a private detective, completely unprompted.)

This show also brought back book!Brown and Flambeau’s habit of always going on holiday together! Wonderful! We love to see it!

This show is also the first time in the entire Father Brown franchise where gay people are overtly acknowledged to exist! And Father Brown is non-judgemental! A roman catholic priest written in the 1970s and living in the 1930s who canonically isn’t homophobic! I have no choice but to stan forever!

You remember what I said about liking to point out Good Omens parallels? WELL

Kenneth More!Father Brown and Dennis Burgess!Flambeau both live in London

Burgess!Flambeau lives in a brightly lit, pale walled, airy and spacious, modern (for the time) London apartment, while More!Brown prefers gothic architecture and lives in an old, grey, cramped, stone building absolutely full floor to ceiling with books

They go out for intimate candlelit dinners for two at very fancy London restaurants

Desperate people come to Flambeau because he “knows the game on both sides of the fence”

Father Brown responds with a quiet and miserable “oh dear” when asked to actually do his job instead of just watching plays and drinking wine

Father Brown calls Flambeau “my dear” at times and it personally kills me

I mean. I’m just saying. 👀

Now, isn’t there a third important character in the books?

Oh yes of course:

HIM! THE BASTARD MAN! INSPECTOR VALENTIN HIMSELF!

(Nobody understands him! IT’S NOT! EVIL!)

This show is the literally only adaptation to include the Valentin betrayal and I’m not gonna lie. It’s a very difficult episode to sit through, it’s far darker and grimmer and more depressing than you would ever expect from Father Brown, but my god it’s done so well. Especially considering the teeny tiny budget they clearly had, only four sets are used the entire episode and the whole thing takes place inside Valentin’s house, but even that adds a certain claustrophobic atmosphere and just. It’s done so well.

I think the entire budget went on gore effects because the decapitated heads in this episode are disturbingly realistic for the time the show was made and genuinely grim to look at. Not to mention the intense downer ending. Not to mention this was THE FINAL EPISODE OF THE SHOW

THE INTENSE DOWNER ENDING OF THIS EPISODE IS HOW THE WHOLE SHOW ENDED

God it hurts so much but I lowkey love it.

Father Brown Stories (1984):

The second radio series, and the first BBC adaptation!

Thrilling times for fans of actors being the right nationality for their characters, because after previously being played by a Hungarian, an American, an Englishman, and a Welshman, Flambeau is finally being played by a Frenchman, Olivier Pierre!

Father Brown himself is played by Andrew Sachs, Manuel himself.

Not gonna lie. It’s kind of hard to figure out how to explain the radio show.

We’re? Maybe back in London? Honestly it’s really unclear.

Pierre!Flambeau is kind of adorable. He’s described as looking like book!Flambeau physically, huge and buff and terrifying, but he has literally none of the temper or predisposition to violence.

Pierre!Flambeau doesn’t speak very good English at all, and oftentimes will react with “...What?” when he hears a strange English idiom or turn of phrase.

One time he says “Perhaps we should.. push on? SEE HOW I AM MASTERING YOUR ENGLISH IDIOMS” and it’s the cutest thing that’s ever happened.

To try and get better at understanding both the English language and the English people, Flambeau starts obsessively reading Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, massive giant adorable boy.

One time Father Brown gets complimented of being academically minded and well read, and then asked if Flambeau is also a keen reader, and when Flambeau tries to say no, Father Brown interrupts and proudly and earnestly says “Oh yes! Monsieur Flambeau is one of our top Lewis Carroll scholars!”, it’s honestly adorable.

This adaptation finally uses “John” as Father Brown’s first name, as it should always have been! I love it!

This series said FUCK Father Brown having a mysterious past and no former friends or relatives! Now he has siblings, and friends who knew him before he was a priest who still call him “John”!

Father Brown himself speaks in a very sweet and soft and wavering way that makes my heart melt.

Sadly and unfortunately, I have to acknowledge the final episode of the show, which is the top worst thing any Father Brown adaptation has ever done to me.

It’s. It’s a crossover. With Sherlock Holmes. Actual goddamn Sherlock Holmes is in it. I hate it. I hate it so much. “Elementary, my dear Flambeau” shut the hell up, if this Flambeau won’t fling you down a flight of stairs then I will.

I deliberately avoided all Holmes-related media for THREE YEARS only for the awful man to spring up on me in Father Brown?? How could you do this to me???

I’m going to yeet myself into the sun, bye everyone.

(On the plus side, the Sherlock Holmes episode does have one of Father Brown’s parishioners recognise Flambeau as “a close friend of Father Brown and a frequent visitor to his room” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), so that’s nice I suppose. I’ll still never forgive the writers of this show for putting me through this.)

Father Brown (2013):

YOU ARE HERE.

I kind of see the current TV series as a culmination of all the adaptations that’ve come before? I can definitely see echoes of all of them in it.

And it’s great! I really really love it. I love it a lot.

I think about it daily.

My one and only complaint I would have is that Flambeau isn’t in it enough. Not just because he’s my favourite, though I’d obviously not be fooling anyone who’s read all this if I said he isn’t.

And it’s not that I don’t love the show as it is, and find the one Flambeau episode a series always something really special, so I don’t know what I’d have the writers do, exactly.

But it’s just. In literally every other version of Father Brown, Flambeau is the second most important character and the second main protagonist, and to have him in this show so little that some fans or reviewers call him a “minor character” and others call him a “recurring villain”, though I myself don’t see him either of those ways of course because he’s still Flambeau, it’s just kinda sad and painful, y’know?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being silly.

Hopefully he’s a regular in at least the final season of the show. If I don’t get my favourite partners in crime solving I’m rioting.

Anyway that’s my “””brief””” rundown on all the main versions of Father Brown!! I hope you liked it!!

#Anonymous #father brown #hercule flambeau #flambrown

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time-to-write-and-suffer · 3 years

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The soul stone war is a game that I've seen before and its on my list. Was wondering if you coudl tell more about how you feel about it, especially the villain romance if you chose that one.

Uuh, sure. I'll do it in a bullet list cuz it's been a while since I've played it and I can't really be bothered to put a whole coherent post together.

I should also encourage you to read some reviews on the Steam store page. They basically repeat a lot of the points I'm about to make.

The main character is a useless waif. Like, even if you pass the skill checks, there are multiple instances where you're forced to pass out, be injured, kidnapped, or otherwise victimized. They're so helpless and out of their element that it becomes hard to believe any of the much more capable and skilled people around them would ever find them compelling or interesting and consider them anything more than a burden. Yet you’re somehow also the most important person in the whole squad, and they keep protecting and helping you no matter how you treat them. Because hey, that’s the protagonist!

On that note, the romances are dull as hell. All characters are vaguely nice and friendly, some are just more snarky/broody than others. You can "friendmance" people, which is a good concept in theory, but in practice it involves your character being unaware of their own emotions. It further adds to how incapable and clueless they seem. Plus, it never becomes clear why any of the ROs would be romantically interested in the protagonist, especially when they have established connections with other people on the squad already. You’re playing a rando who just shows up one day, bumbles about uselessly, but then becomes the most important person ever to them. Sure.

The plot is filled with contrivances. The main one being that the main character is involved in it at all. They're basically forced into it despite showing no particular skills or talents, and the only excuse we ever get for them sticking around is ... uh ... the big-booby elf lady said they were cute. The author simply didn't bother coming up with a better reason for them to be involved, knowing that there would be one eventually that would justify it in the end, but giving us nothing to work with in the moment, no personal reason and no agency. It feels very cheap.

The world and worldbuilding are basically the most generic fantasy thing you can imagine. The author even answered some questions on their Tumblr about the political structure of the land as "You know Skyrim? Like that." Elements and character dynamics and even minor phrases and words are lifted wholesale from franchises like Dragon Age and The Elder Scrolls. One of the first things your character can say is a reference to Dragon Age, but it's never brought up again and we never get an explanation for what it means in this universe or why the character would say it. One of the first lines in your "own" unique world shouldn't be a tee hee cutesy reference to some other well-established universe.

The tone is all over the place. One moment you're joking around about something the big-boobied blond elf said, the next your character is being tortured by some werewolf woman or some god-entity, and there’s nothing they can do to escape, so you just sit there and have to endure all this torture porn. And then it’s right back to the repetitive jokes and snarky narration.

I’m serious about the torture porn. One of the MC’s backgrounds includes their transgender friend being murdered for being trans. Another includes your character almost getting sexually assaulted. The third involves your younger brother dying. There’s no reason for any of this to be included other than to show how dark and edgy this world is and how your character is running from their past or whatever.

Speaking of dark and edgy, the villain gets a lot of screen time, and it’s mostly him brooding about how evil he is while the narration creams itself over how hot he is, also. But the author acts surprised over how he’s the most popular character in the fandom, and deflects most criticisms for his route as “it’s self-indulgent” and “it’s a secret route just for me, I didn’t think anyone else would play it.” Bro why’d you put it there, then? With instructions in-game on how to reach it?

The writing is genuinely some of the worst I’ve read. I hate to use this word unironically, but it was cringeworthy at times. It’s supposed to be this epic fantasy, but most of the time it feels like it’s chasing the high of a found family in a video game squad, without actually knowing what makes those particular tropes work. It’s simplistic and extremely repetitive, relying more on character tropes and “tumblr meme” interactions than genuine character building and conflict. It also tries and mostly fails to be funny, but that’s more subjective, I guess. Take a shot every time the text goes “thank you very much!” and you’ll be out in a few clicks.

Pacing whomst? Everything happens in the span of like a week or a month, but suddenly your character and their RO are like, in love and all weepy about it? Oh no I almost lost you my dear darling baby, let me tearfully declare how important you are to me. Nevermind the fact that we met four days ago.

The villainmance is the only vaguely interesting thing in the story and it's pretty evident it's the author's favorite thing to write. They've said how it's just a "self-indulgent" thing that wasn't supposed to be popular (I do not believe a word of this), but it's by far the most interesting thing just based on the fact that it's not only the most plot-relevant romance, but it's also the one with the most stakes and drama and the most varied dynamics. There’s genuine, justified angst and emotion in the concept of it at times that is missing from literally every other interaction and grimdark moment.

That being said, I wouldn’t say the villainmance is healthy, so don’t go into it looking for that. The dynamics are way off-balance and a lot of the route in the first game is your character being attracted to the man who’s torturing them and wanting to be tortured again just to interact with him. If you’re into that, then you might be into this story, but if you’re not then you’ll be put off by it.

The Asian-coded character has a "yellow" skintone and is a half-dragon.

The reason there's transphobia in this world and the player can't be trans is is because the "gods" of this world don't want any mortals to have the ability to "change their gender" because that would make them too similar to the gods. However, nonbinary characters are fine, and you can play as one. Because as we all know, binary trans people are just out there "changing their gender" all willy nilly. That's how that works, right? While nonbinary characters are always born nonbinary and nobody assigns genders to their children in this world? Idk how any of this makes any sense but go off, I guess. This isn't in the actual game AFAIK but something I read on the author's Tumblr, so take it as you will. The actual transphobia is in the game, though. Because reasons.

Overall, it’s a lot of half-baked concepts, unfunny writing, and needless torture porn for the sake of torture porn. Plus it’s not even a whole story, it’s just the first part of a series/trilogy? Maybe it’ll get better as it goes, but I wouldn’t hold my breath tbh.

#eff plays

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pepperony3000-archive · 6 years

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I've been seeing lots of posts lately by people claiming to love tony stark, "but you can love him without putting down the other characters" and "but tony fans have their heads so far up his ass that they can't see his flaws". Posts like the first should be directed towards steve/team cap fans who take any opportunity they can to shit on Tony. Tony stans are simply responding with proof that team cap is also far from perfect. As for the 2nd, replace tony fans with steve fans for accuracy.

Honestly? I’m not really that interested in questioning the motivations of the people making those posts.

There are very few hills I am willing to die on, and that just isn’t one of them.

I can definitely see how they can be seen as a much more devious and passive-aggressive attempt from Steve fans at spreading Tony hate… but I’d really rather take it at face value.

And honestly? Neither side is innocent. I have seen a lot more nasty stuff coming from the Team Cap side of things, but that doesn’t mean that Team Tony has not quite often been equally nasty. I think Team Tony has much more valid criticism of Steve behind their nastiness than Team Cap does.For instance: From what I’ve seen Tony antis are say that Tony is a war profiteer and that’s how he made his fortune, while simultaneously claiming that Tony is useless because he’s only rich through inheriting a fortune. And neither one of those are factual. Tony isn’t a war profiteer, and if Tony anti’s looked it up they’d see that Tony isn’t one. And the second is partially true… Howard Stark was a millionaire, but through Tony’s genius and inventiveness he raised his wealth to billionaire status. Whereas from what I’ve seen, Steve antis say that Steve is hypocritical for being upset when people won’t share secrets with him all while keeping a horrible secret from Tony (as well as not telling him about the Winter Soldier problem in the first place… a secret that if shared would have kept a lot of hurt and drama from happening). And as much as it hurts me, because Steve legitimately used to be my second favorite character, Steve antis are not wrong in calling him out for being a hypocrite.

But it isn’t always Tony fans responding with proof that Steve is far from perfect.For instance: There’s a post that I genuinely do love (and have reblogged with my own commentary on it in the past) that is a bit passive aggressive towards Steve.Steve’s actions are nowhere near as impressive as Tony’s, but they weren’t really supposed to be. Tony fans really didn’t need to bring Steve down a notch. Steve’s fans are allowed to enjoy Steve’s Moment™ against Thanos as much as Tony fans are allowed to enjoy Tony’s.

Although I do have to agree with you. Tony fans do have a much more realistic approach to Tony’s flaws than Steve’s fans to Steve’s flaws.Steve fans seem to think that “Follow Steve” = Right. That’s just the be-all-end-all. Steve is always Right, and therefore following him can never be wrong.And that’s just not how it works. It makes Steve less than human for one, because if a character is genuinely never wrong then… they’re really not much better than a mary sue/gary stu. (hmm… real question? why has there never been discourse on Steve being a gary stu? I don’t think he is, but now that I think of it I’m surprised it’s not been suggested before).Anyway… back on topic:Assuming that Steve = Right also ignores the number of mistakes he’s made, most obviously and jarringly in Civil War.Whereas Tony fans seem to really love how flawed Tony is. We tend to love his atypical personality, his eccentricities, his mistakes, his flaws.

And it’s that starting point that honestly seems to me to be the root of the problem in the two camps.One camp assumes that nothing their fav does can ever be anything but Right™.The other celebrates flaws but only when said flaws are recognized by the favorite in question. I think Team Tony would like Steve’s flaws if a) the narrative didn’t largely ignore them or b) if Steve wasn’t so self-righteous that he himself cannot see his flaws.

But honestly, as much as I dislike Steve as this point, I’m also not going to attack or hate on people who love him (even if they show that by hating on or attacking a character that I love, because there’s a difference between hating on a fictional character who doesn’t care and hating on a real lie person who does/might).

Steve fans are just as entitled to their own opinions as Tony fans are, even if I personally disagree with a lot of them.And honestly? So long as it’s not actively disgusting (looking at you, St rker shippers) I’m not going to waste enormous amounts of energy on it.

Anyway that got long and rambly and I’m not sure if it’s really what you were looking for in an answer, but it’s what I’ve got.

Edit: Please know that I 1000% stand by OP of the post I linked to, as well as the opinions expressed therein. But for the sake of being neutral, I chose to use it as an example.

#tony stark #steve rogers #i'm trying to be as neutral as possible here #i'm as neutral as somebody who doesn't really care for steve's actions can be #Anonymous #Ask me a question

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franeridart · 7 years

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hi. hello. this is a bit embarrassing but i'm trying to buy my bf a tablet sort of thing so he can draw his arts. he's been wanting one forever but hasn't rly shown me which one he wants. i want to surprise him n buy a good one worth the money n was just curious if you had any suggestions. i've looked into wacom products, but i'm just such a noob to these things n was hoping you can help... i understand if this is silly, you don't have to reply! ur just so amazing, ur opinion is trustworthy 😅☺️

Okay, so, this is just my opinion and since it’s based completely on personal experiences it’s gonna possibly be incredibly different from other people’s opinions, so I just wanna make clear from the start that this is a personal preference and isn’t in any way meant as an absolute truth

Anyway, as far as I’m concerned when you’re just starting out you don’t need anything fancy at all. As an aspiring digital artist your bf might have looked up tablets and cried tears of blood over how much he’d like a cintiq or anything similar, but my very personal opinion is that fancy stuff is gonna be pretty much useless to you and be generally a waste of money? You’re just learning, you don’t need anything more than the basics. My suggestion is that you pick something simple and easy to use - I own this wacom intuos, had it for a long while and I like it a lot, but there’s also less expensive options you can go for too that people seem to like just as much! I’ve lately read on my dash about the Huion H610, they say it doesn’t cost much at all but it’s just as good as the Intuos, that could be a good option for you~

Anon said: Hey!!! I was wondering if its ok to rb your oc art? I realized a lot less people rb those and i get anxious easily so... also i really don't want to disrespect either! But i always thought of rebloging as a way of saying "i appreciate your art" and i really really (really ) like yours (both the style and itself in general). (I hope you dont mind my bad english ha ha) i hope you don't mind this stupid ask! Im still kind of new to tumblr

It’s 100% okay!!!! *O* Thank you for liking them enough to want to reblog them ;A; !!!!

Anon said:i miss ur bokuroteru so much 😭💕 i love ur art but whenever i see ur header, i just remember ur bokuroteru comic and my heart cries storms for them to be seen again.

Aw anon I’m super happy you like my stuff for those three but as of now inspiration in that department is... super low... and tbh the haikyuu fandom is being incredibly unresponsive and non-vocal about their appreciation of fanworks in this period so even when I do have ideas for that fandom I sort of. Let them go. Or just sketch them out and never finish them.

Like, you know the whole deal about having to draw for yourself and not for others? That’s what I do 100% of the times when I’m starting a drawing, but to draw for myself I don’t exactly need to finish a drawing, you know? Sometimes there’s a scene I wanna see and I sketch it out in a super rough way and as far as my personal desire to see it goes I’m satisfied with that, and everything after that - the cleaning and lining and maybe even coloring - I put the effort in it because I want to share it with people. And the deal with the Hq!! fandom lately is that they don’t share my excitement for it. They either only like it, or don’t comment on it, or comment only to complain about this or that thing. In the worst case posting hq!! only ends up with people asking me to draw something else (ie I feel like drawing Karasuno so I draw it and post it and no one comments/rb/says anything about it but there’s 20 asks in my inbox asking me why I haven’t drawn any bok*ro lately)

When I think about posting stuff for hq lately I automatically compare it to posting stuff for bnha where I could draw a background character that appeared once 120 chapters ago and there’s still gonna be people that go “yes! that character!! I love that character!!! can’t believe there’s actual art for it oh my god!!!!” - that’s... that’s the sort of reaction that makes you wanna share stuff

I dunno, maybe I’m just expecting too much out of the hq fandom. But anyway, sharing for bnha makes me way happier and glad I decided to finish a drawing lately, so I guess that’s what’s happening there.

Anon said:Every time your soft doods art shows up on my dash I have to pause and take a deep breath and just thank god for all the good in the world because I'm blown away every single time

This is s o s w e e t oh my god ;A; thank you so much!!!!

Anon said:Johnny is a fucking angel dammit. Have you read the new DGM already?? I'm in tears. I love this manga so much. The frequency of the releases are killing me... it has such a great story and great characters. It needs more love

I did read it!!!! And yeah the fandom used to be way bigger, but honestly I’m glad it’s just the couple dozens people it is. Like a small town where everyone knows everyone else. No drama, no discourse. Everyone ships what they want and we all pass each other tissues to dry the tears. The only argument that happens regularly is people complaining about the relase schedule and the old fans telling them to let Hoshino live. A good place, this fandom’s a good place.

DGM was my playground for most of my experimenting as far as creating art goes, I really did reach in all directions with it through the years and it helped me shape myself a lot, so I really want it to stay quiet and nice and peaceful, that’s my dream for it haha smaller fandoms have a better chance to keep that freedom

Anon said: Oh man, I live for that Togata x Amajiki interaction

You talking about the color spread cause yes that was adorable!!! ;A;

Anon said:I look a little, and do you still draw Bakugo x Kirishima x Kaminari?

Sure, it’s still my main ship for Kaminari and my main ot3! Just wait for Denki to start being relevant in the manga again, I’ll probably fall headfirst into it all over again haha

Anon said:Your art is so wonderful you're wonderful everything's so wonderful i'm crying omg

SOB no anon you’re wonderful!!!!

Anon said:Due to my brain not wanting to cooperate with me (ever), Bakugou Katsuki is now Batsuki Katsuki in my head.

This is the funniest thing I’ve read today and I’m in t e a r s hahaha

Anon said:Artistic!Mina making pop art and colorful paintings :o what are ur thoughts

HELL YES that’s my main headcanon for Mina, she’s definitely an artsy girl!!! I like the idea of her sharing it with Bakugou t b h

Anon said:I'm still just repeatedly looking at your newest KiriBaku because hot damn.

I’m super glad you liked it!!!!!!! oh my gOD!!!!!!!

Anon said:Heyy please rec Kami comics please! I'm in a Kami art shortage and I currently can't find art as awesome as yours...

I’m so sorry I wish I could help you with this but I don’t know anyone who draws lotsa Kaminari either ;---;

#fran answers #about the tablet #personally i started with a tablet that wasn't a wacom #it was okay to learn the basics but it lasted maybe six months top #and then i had to change it #which is why now im sorta wary about giving my money to other brands #considering that after that i only bought two tablets #both wacoms #and technically i didn't even have to change the first one my family just bought me a new one out of the blue #so yeah people can say whatever they want about wacom but they ARE quality and durable #that said that experience with other brands happened over ten years ago #and the brand wasn't great anyway #so like it's totally possible that new brands are WAY better #check for the reviews! most people are saying they love them #so i guess if your budget is limited you CAN go for another brand #the one i linked is pretty damn huge too im #really tempted to buy it myself t b h #anonymous

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