#i think my main issue is that the plot and gear designs keep going further away from the setting of 1.0/2.0 and hw

[bsecco]

now that it's early access for the next one I feel comfortable saying that regardless of it was Good or Bad endwalker did make me stop playing completely after playing near consistently since 2014 or 2015 lol. there were almost zero decisions made for that expansion that I liked. Is this how world of Warcraft players feel

[shihalyfie]

The paradox of the relationship between Takeru and Hikari

The issue of the relationship between Takeru and Hikari has been a question of interest since the series first aired, and especially after 02, which prominently depicted them constantly hanging out together and clearly having some kind of relation to each other...and yet, strangely, very rarely having a real heart-to-heart or even talking to each other much at all. The constant juxtapositions of them standing next to each other all of the time in both the series and in external media, combined with the fact they’re so associated with each other in terms of being Adventure returnees and with Digimon partners with similar evolutions, makes one almost mentally geared to associate them with each other, and yet we never really get to hear what they think about each other in the entirety of Adventure or 02′s running.

Part of this is because Takeru and Hikari are the two most “difficult to read” characters in the 02 team -- Hikari because she compulsively suppresses any selfish or negative feeling she has, and Takeru because he covers up his problems with a smile and pretends everything is okay, until it’s not. And, as it turns out, that “gap in communication” exists between the two of them as well; in the web of 02′s relationships, it’s a strange mix between being “comfortable around” each other, and yet not truly knowing each other...

Disclaimer before we continue: With some exceptions related to unambiguous canon depictions, I try to write my meta about relationships between characters in such a way that both shipping readings and non-shipping readings are possible in most cases, and my main reason for this is that I very strongly believe that even if you do ship the pair in question, it’s rather reductive (and not very fun) to stop an analysis at “anyway it’s because they’re in love” or something and not go any further. If you don’t care for Takeru/Hikari as a ship, I hope you can take this analysis as-is, and if you do happen to ship it, I hope you can take my analysis of the gaps in their relationship as “things they would have to consider and overcome for such a relationship to be possible” (i.e. a possible fanfic prompt?) and not me trying to dismiss the ship as inherently possible or impossible.

A second disclaimer: A lot of the important key points below are heavily dependent on how they were presented in the Japanese version of 02, especially in regards to the key 02 episode 13. The American English dub took a very large number of liberties with a lot of the below aspects, so if you are reading this with only that version as a reference, please be aware that there may be significant differences for the sake of avoiding confusion.

Hikari didn’t get to spend much of the series with the rest of the Adventure group, having been a “latecomer”, but once she enters, it’s rather interesting how much Takeru doesn’t socialize much with her. Granted, part of this was because of the circumstances -- there was a lot to be done, and Hikari had a cold relapse not long after they’d entered the Digital World -- but you’d really think Takeru would be interested in at least socializing with someone who’s actually his age, and yet we don’t get any real depiction of doing so outside of discussing important matters. It’s not to say that they never had any kind of conversation offscreen, but by the time we get to the end of Adventure, we have zero scope of what they actually think of each other.

By the time we get to 02, it turns out that this is probably by design.

First of all, we very quickly learn that the two of them did not keep up between Adventure and 02 -- they’re meeting each other again for the first time in a long time, and the last time they did meet was when they were much younger (probably their last meeting being the one depicted in the flashback in 02 episode 27). This is understandable considering that, up until the beginning of 02, Takeru lived in Sangenjaya and not Odaiba, meaning that it wasn’t like they’d have opportunities to meet up much in real life either, but the point is that this is how little contact and how little involvement they’d had in each other’s lives up until this point.

So, once the plot of 02 kicks off and the two of them become active as Chosen Children again, the two of them end up hanging out a lot. So much that Daisuke starts accusing them of having something between them. And the two of them never say anything to really firmly deny him, which of course only makes him more confused and upset, until 02 episode 17, when the concrete connection between them is established to the rest of the 02 team, and it’s properly disclosed that they were part of a whole adventure back in 1999 together.

Takeru knew Hikari before, and she’s still the one he knows the best out of this team, and on Hikari’s part, Takeru understands the nature of “being a Chosen Child” in ways the others don’t, and both of them had that formative experience that the others don’t understand. But 02 is a series that’s not only about relationships, but also about the differing nature of relationships -- it’s true that, having known each other well beforehand and also being all-around decent people, the two of them would certainly have an extra level of investment in each other’s welfare, but...

In 02 episode 13, we learn that as much as Takeru knows Hikari, he doesn’t really know her, and on Hikari’s part, she’s still incapable of communicating the extent of her thoughts so that he can.

The conversation between Takeru and Hikari behind the school in this episode is the first time we get to really see an opportunity for the two of them to bare their actual emotions, but nothing that can be called a "conversation" is had between them. Hikari is still plagued by a compulsive desire to not be a burden to others, including the idea of “burdening” her brother, and, when Takeru finally prompts her on what’s going on, she says nothing that properly clarifies what she’s going through, nothing but a cryptic mention of the “sea”, a statement that she "might be going away”, and a reference to her brother having always protected her beforehand. Takeru takes it as a sign that Hikari’s become overly dependent on Taichi, and snaps at her angrily -- a persistent symptom of him being unable to regulate his emotions properly -- and, unable to handle it, runs off awkwardly, leaving her alone to eventually be taken away. Later in the episode, Takeru reflects that he’d basically just doomed Hikari by his own actions, and with his last words to her having been something awful.

Ultimately, some degree of progress is made in that Hikari realizes that Takeru reaching out to her earlier makes him someone she should be reaching out to for help -- in the end, nobody in the 02 group had yet been able to reach out to her emotionally because of how closed-in she was, and the only people she truly trusted with her feelings up until that point were Taichi and Tailmon. So in other words, Takeru is another person she can finally “trust” with her feelings and welfare. But while Takeru is finally able to connect to her in some sense with this, when the two finally close off the episode and return to the real world, everything ends in complete silence. They do not say a single word to each other. They’re getting by with a sense of “inherent trust”, and their disconnect was resolved with that alone this time, but this problem hasn’t been fully solved yet and will be rearing its ugly head again by the time we get around to the Jogress arcs.

And so the two of them return back to their “comfortable with each other” status quo -- but, again, 02 is a series that portrays relationships in a very multi-layered and multifaceted form, and being comfortable around someone still doesn’t necessarily merit emotional closeness (for instance, Ken was pretty clearly indicated as being “comfortable” and straightforward in terms of working with Miyako in 02 episodes 25 and 33, but there’s no doubt that Daisuke’s the one who was more properly addressing the things he emotionally needed most at the time, which could arguably be said to be exactly why Ken was having a hard time adjusting to him at first). We see them “go off together” to do...completely mundane and practical things, like discussing why they’re still able to come to the Digital World in 02 episode 22, or trying to have their Digimon partners evolve on their own in 02 episode 24 -- they’re not having any kind of emotional heart-to-heart, they’re just there.

When you look at the wider picture, you can see that Hikari and Takeru’s relative comfort around each other at this point is largely because they’re still not comfortable being alone with anyone else yet. So far, they kind of had a bonding (not really bonding) session back in 02 episode 13, and they hadn’t had anything of the sort with anyone else, and they’re still the only people who understand certain things relevant to the adventure in 1999 that the others don’t. They’re both still ridiculously closed-in and guarded, and not trusting anyone with their feelings -- they can’t even trust each other with their feelings -- so they’re getting by on hanging out with each other because it’s either that or go off to be completely alone. As the two most “emotionally isolated” people in this group, there’s a wall between them and the others, and that wall is only slightly thinner between each other -- and you can even imagine that they’re willing to hang out with each other because they won’t be bothering that wall and causing intimidation.

And by the time we roll around to 02 episode 31, we learn that, this whole time, nothing has improved. Takeru sees that something is going on with Hikari, but does and says nothing -- perhaps because he’s not sure what to say, perhaps because he’s afraid of lashing out at her again, whatever it is -- but he can’t and won’t speak to her nor address her feelings.

In the end, the person who does establish that ability to “communicate” with Hikari is not Takeru but Miyako -- an aggressive, in-your-face, overly honest person who gets straight to the point and refuses to hold back, whose messy personality causes Hikari to become assertive in handling her and allows Hikari to finally vocalize one of her truly sensitive feelings, and who’s able to use her immense emotional sensitivity to identify what Hikari needs and break through to her.

But just because Miyako ended up being the person Hikari needs to move on past this issue does not mean Takeru’s role wasn’t important, nor that Miyako coming into Hikari’s life means that all of her relationships are inferior or pointless -- rather, a recurring element of 02′s portrayal of relationships is that everything has a ripple effect, and that “opening up” one person’s heart allows them to open up to others as well (see how Daisuke reaching out to Ken eventually helped him reach out to the others in the group, how even in this very same episode Miyako expresses that this experience helped her understand Ken better as well, how Daisuke’s experiences end up giving him a healthier relationship with the rest of the group, how Iori and Takeru’s Jogress ordeal helps them both become better at reaching out to Ken...). Unlike how they’d both closed off 02 episode 13, Hikari and Takeru end this one by talking -- with Hikari’s newfound confidence from her dealings with Miyako allowing her to more openly speak what she’s thinking with Takeru.

One thing you might notice is that after 02 episode 31, Takeru and Hikari are never seen going off on their own together for the rest of the series -- because, again, their “latching” onto hanging out with each other at the exclusion of anyone else was because they were that isolated from everyone else, but not anymore! Hikari starts to hang out more with Miyako as the two of them become more comfortable hanging out after the events of said episode; after all, Miyako had come to understand the real reason why Hikari “keeps so much inside” and that she needs to actively reach out to her, and Hikari is able to properly trust Miyako with her feelings, meaning that now that Hikari is starting to open up, she doesn’t need to fall back on her “truce” with Takeru to get by. Which ends up leaving Takeru rather alone for the following set of episodes. Well, seemingly alone, but...

...he’s not truly alone, because this is also where Iori realizes that there’s a lot more going on with Takeru and that he needs to make a proactive effort to understand him, and it doesn’t take long for Takeru to realize what Iori’s doing (especially when Yamato tips him off that Iori asked about him in 02 episode 35). Once again, very much unlike Hikari, Iori is straightforward and to-the-point, and is much better at cutting through all of the complicated layers Takeru puts up in an attempt to cover up his emotions.

The rest of the series has them in significantly more emotionally tense situations than before, and while the fact they end up spending the rest of the series with their respective Jogress partners instead of each other is partially sheer pragmatics, it’s also how the two of them start taking a more active role in actually checking on the others’ emotions and communicating with them in regards to their feelings. This is a huge deal -- compare this to back in 02 episode 13 when they were practically the only people willing to have this kind of serious, emotional conversation with each other -- and said attempt at a serious conversation exploded in their faces. (The other time one of them had made an attempt at something vaguely resembling a heart-to-heart during that time was 02 episode 11, which also resulted in Takeru blowing up explosively.) But here they’re capable of communicating clearly and openly and making their positions known in a way that gets through to their respective Jogress partners’ issues, without being stifled by anything.

But, again: just because they don’t “go off together” anymore doesn’t mean they stopped being important people to each other or comfortable around each other -- it’s just that now they’ve stopped wandering off together for the sake of blocking themselves away from others, and no longer trapped in this strange, paradoxical relationship of knowing-but-not-truly-knowing each other they had all the way back in 02 episode 13. The relationship they had back then was something built off of coping mechanisms, and not something you could truly say was healthy, not when their communication was stilted and Takeru had snapped at her so badly -- but both of them learning to open up more and be more honest with their feelings means that they may well have an actual healthy dynamic going forward.

And for all it’s worth, we learn that they’re still on very good terms by the time of Kizuna, getting breakfast together in the opening -- but it’s left ambiguous if their reason for doing so like this was because they still have a penchant for particularly hanging out together, or whether it was just circumstance because they were free to get breakfast after the Digimon incident (they act independently for the rest of the movie). Moreover, their relationships with the others in the 02 group are still going strong, because as per the drama CD, Takeru’s happy to hang out with Daisuke like it’s nothing and actively join in to reach out to Iori (it’s said Daisuke was approaching Iori “first” despite Takeru being there, so both of them were hanging out independently and decided to pick up Iori together), and Hikari comes in with Miyako, expressing a very firm intent to hang out with her for their trip, and ultimately it’s established that them not being with the rest of the group at the time of the movie was sheer scheduling circumstance and not necessarily them going out of their way to operate away from them.

So in other words, whatever relation you can say they have at this point, or their ability to get along, is not based on them falling back on each other as an unhealthy coping mechanism of silence, but one carried out in a more genuine manner.

[takerfoxx]

Notes on Restless

A day overdue, but here it is! My thoughts on writing Restless.

Restless is, in many ways, the most important arc in the story, not because it is the most plot or character significant (though it definitely is very important to both), but because it was one of the first, if not the first story arc I planned out, and have been cooking up in the back of my mind and working toward ever since this story started. And, as indicated by the title, it is one big reference to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Restless, which is my favorite episode and also featured all of the main characters trapped in their little dream worlds.

What can I say; I like dream sequences!

In fact, and I know I have mentioned this a few times already, but it bears repeating the first chapter of this arc was literally the very first scene I thought up for this story, back when I was still in post-episode 9 depression and wanted nothing more for Kyoko and Oktavia to reunite somewhere and be happy together (well, the story definitely gives us the former, but, um, not really the latter, because I am still a sadist). If memory serves, my original vision had the two of them and Mami relaxing in a fantasy-world hot spring that had a bunch of big crystals everywhere (because I like crystals), only for them to be interrupted by the sound of something moving nearby, and, upon inspection, they would find the doll version of Charlotte watching them.

Obviously that scenario’s gone through a lot of fine-tuning, especially when it comes to Charlotte. And the crystals got moved to the end of the story after the hot spring had been removed, but hey, they still made the final cut. Regardless, I did settle on a finalized version some years ago, and the final cut came out more-or-less exactly as I envisioned, down to Mami and Charlotte going off alone for some, ah, quality time.

The only new addition was Jerky’s little scene and the Sayaka/Oktavia flirting sequence, and, well, that happened. I honestly don’t know if I’m even allowed to say much about it without getting into trouble with someone, even though I wrote it, but let’s just say the time has come to finally kick things into high gear on that end.

Okay, so onto the dreams!

Kyoko’s dream was of course the one I came up with first, and yet ended up being the shortest. I guess it’s because while she’s white-hot mess of issues, she’s at least a straightforward white-hot mess of issues, and honestly, it came out more-or-less how I initially planned years ago, with very little addition.

Now, Mephisto gave us a pretty clear breakdown of what the individual girls’ dreams meant thematically when she started torturing them directly, but it bears repeating that Kyoko’s dream was mainly dealing with her poor reaction to loss (the concept, not the meme), specifically the loss of Sayaka to Oktavia, and her stubborn and yet misguided quest to bring Sayaka back at any cost.

We start with a perfect repeat of her dream from waaaaaaaay back from chapter five, when she was first waking up from being drugged. I was originally just going to begin with the continuation, but it had been so long since that chapter that I just copied and pasted the original dream so we can have it in its entirety, which included the all-important image of Sayaka dissolving into silver fishes.

From there it’s mainly Kyoko’s singleminded quest to find Sayaka at any cost. And from there, we see her think that she’s found her time after time, only to be disappointed, from thinking that Madoka was Sayaka (and it’s a shame that they never interacted more beyond that single episode, as they had a good dynamic), to nearly catching the silver-fish Sayaka only to have her torn away, to finally finding the fake fish-faced conductor Sayaka, further establishing her inability to accept Oktavia as not being Sayaka. The hole that her father left in her heart and how deeply she misses him even with what he did does come up, but she abandons catching him once Kyubey makes it clear that doing so is impossible, as well as showing that while she still loves her father, part of her still does not forgive him and she truly believes that he went to Hell.

Also, was that the first time I’ve had Kyubey show up and have original dialogue? Because it might be!

Mephisto’s first appearance has her occupying the same role that she would in everyone’s dreams, that of a surly gatekeeper. She’s a bouncer in Kyoko’s dream, a ticket-taker/ride operator in Sayaka’s, a hostess in Mami’s, and a receptionist in Charlotte’s. And in each one, she lets the dreamer pass while making it clear that doing so is probably a bad idea. Her design was a lot of fun, though there truly is no significance to her rainbow dreadlocks, punk-rock aesthetic, or denim outfit, other than I liked the way they looked. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Annabelle Lee and the dockengauts have very short appearances in the nightclub, as despite all the pain they’ve put Kyoko through, she is still so singleminded in her pursuit that she considers them nothing more than obstacles to be overcome, which Annabelle Lee would probably be annoyed to hear.

As for Mami’s weird striptease, well, Kyoko is just now having to grapple with her own budding sexuality, and it stands to reason that Mami would have been an early crush for her. The “ending” though shows that while she’s more-or-less okay with Charlotte, she is still very aware of how Mami died.

Like Annabelle Lee, Elsa Maria would have the same role in everyone’s dream, the same role she had in Annabelle Lee’s feverish dream during the Help arc, that of the person who points the way to what the dreamer is seeking while still advising against it, which is always ignored. Though don’t read too much into her working with Mephisto in the end, as it’s not the real Elsa Maria and Mephisto is still the one in control.

And what better place for Kyoko, now Ophelia, to start her quest to find Sayaka for real than the same train station that she originally lost Sayaka in?

Anyway, while this chapter came out basically as originally envisioned, there are a couple things that I wish I had included, firstly a scene where Kyoko loses her necklace while being swept along by the current for Sayaka to find it later, and to have the sound of the crying child from the beginning to continue throughout the whole chapter, showing that she still hadn’t forgotten her quest to find her sister, as impossible as it might seem now.

Sayaka’s dream had largely to do with her and Oktavia’s issues with personal identity, and the dichotomy that Oktavia feels at all times, but translated through Sayaka’s eyes. In fact, bits and pieces of both their personalities are present through the circus (and given that Rumia’s dream took place in a circus in Imperfect Metamorphosis, it does just seem to be a recurring theme with me). The whole knight in shining armor for Sayaka is obvious, as is her sense of righteous justice as what Lily did. But her dynamics with the various characters that she comes across, her memories in general, her growing attraction to Kyoko, and her annoyance at being addressed incorrectly is all Oktavia.

It’s the two Kyoko encounters I want the highlight. The first at the shooting gallery shows that while Oktavia does love Kyoko, she is getting quite fed up with the constant nicknames in place of her actual name, while the second in the dunking tank shows her growing concern that Kyoko’s dogheaded persistence is only going to keep getting her hurt until there’s nothing left, as well as show her growing sexual attraction to Kyoko as she is progressively more stripped.

Mami and Charlotte’s brief appearance was in part to get them on the dream, and so show that that while Oktavia cares for them deeply, she’s not nearly as worried about them as she is Kyoko, hence why they’re here so briefly. Also, them pushing Ticky Nikki around in a stroller, aside from being Nikki’s only appearance this whole arc, was also a tip of the hat to the original Restless episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Giles’s dream had him and his girlfriend pushing a stroller around through a carnival in the middle of a graveyard.

The Freakshow was a mixture of the traumatic monsters both Sayaka and Oktavia had to encounter, from the various witch familiars and to Gertrud, the first witch Sayaka ever saw, to the witch form of Charlotte, who traumatized Sayaka deeply, to Brooklyn, who briefly showed up earlier and was sort of Oktavia’s nemesis in The Heist and targeted her specifically, which left a mark.

And that whole business with Annabelle Lee “pouring” Kyoko into the tank was to lean more into dream logic, where deeply personal fears tend to be translated through nonsensical imagery. I’ve had plenty of dreams where I’d “lose” a close friend or family member because they got turned into a jar of dried corn or something and I’d just be so devastated and obsessed with turning said corn back into my loved one, and it’d be very serious and emotional, and it wouldn’t be until I had woken up that I’d realize, “Dude, dried corn?” Plus, her guilt about stabbing Annabelle Lee was a reference to Sayaka’s own increasing guilt when she realized that she wasn’t the shining hero she had wanted to be.

The clown dance is pretty self-explanatory, in that Sayaka spent so much time killing witches and treating them like monsters only to become a witch herself. Plus, given how quick her downfall was, it serves to reason that she would think of herself as a clown. Plus, I just like Lily as a character, and wanted any excuse to use her as much as possible.

The whole bit with the train station acting as the loading gate for the roller-coaster is also fairly obvious. That’s where Sayaka became Oktavia, hence the cart turning into the wheelchair, or the coaster track leading into Oktavia’s barrier. I’m honestly not too thrilled about the coaster going through Genocide City, because while having it make an appearance makes sense, since it’s literally Oktavia’s first memory, but if I recall, I had the hardest time settling on a location for the rollercoaster to ride through before heading into the castle. I tried Freehaven, the outside of the high school, and returning to the circus itself before just settling with Genocide City, which honestly was chosen mainly because the deadline was coming up and I had to go with something. I guess it works though.

There really isn’t much to say about the reversed Kyoko/Oktavia fight, as it’s literally just a perspective flip of their final battle. Incredibly important and significant as it embodies the entirety of Sayaka’s aspect as the “Monster” of her dream and hammered in her connection to Kyoko? Absolutely. Has much that I can explain that isn’t literally sitting right on the surface? Nope.

We do get Mephisto basically spelling out Sayaka’s contradictory identity in her final days though, in which she was the valiant knight she always wanted to be, she was the damsel in distress that Madoka and Kyoko tried and failed to rescue, and she was the monster holding that damsel captive. No doubt that part was inspired by the meme of the Dragonborn princess paladin who was hired to rescue herself from herself.

From there, the “Monster” is slain, and the cute mermaid Oktavia von Seckendorff is born, the only time during her own dream that she makes a full appearance. She then is treated to a montage of Sayaka’s memories, but of course, they mean nothing to her.

However, I would like to point out what amounted to the payoff of a joke I had set up literally years ago. Readers of all my stuff might remember that way back in Rhapsody of Subconscious Desire, another story that took place in a dream world, Kaguya Houraisan was split into two identical copies of herself, called Head and Body, who encountered Oktavia swimming around in a large aquarium, who in turn shot them a rude gesture and swam off. Here, we finally see the inverse of that scene, which is why a couple of previously unseen twin girls showed up with no explanation.

Next is where the dreams start to converge. Oktavia finds Kyoko’s necklace (which, again, I wish I had included in Kyoko’s dream. Maybe in time I’ll go back and edit it in) and meets the silver fish’s from Kyoko’s dream, absorbing them and turning fully into the princess and, as a result, Sayaka Miki finally returns in full.

Funny thing about that.

At this point, I didn’t know how much the whole Sayaka thing would play out, and originally she would just be Oktavia in a dress. But after having Sayaka’s memories intrude again and again, I thought, “Huh, wouldn’t it be fun if she just became Sayaka again for a short time? Have a weird inverse of the Oktavia situation?” and went ahead and did it.

This choice led to…major consequences.

Mami’s dream is next, and despite being the one that I literally had planned out the least ahead of time, ended up being the most fun to write. Naturally, her dream dreams with her immense guilt over having been Kyubey’s poster girl for so long, helping him ensnare several innocent girls into his scheme as well as kill them off herself when they became witches. Also, it served as a little nod to Candeloro’s job as a baker in WN. Anyway, the whole thing was heavily influenced by Sweeney Todd, in that victims are misled into doing something they think is innocent, only for them to be gruesomely murdered and sent off to be turned into food.

The world of candles is just something I thought would be neat imagery, so infer from it what you wish. However, it is interesting to note that Mami is the only one to have a dream that features Annabelle Lee as the persistent antagonist that she is, showing up over and over to antagonize her. There wasn’t an intended reason for this, but come to think of it, with Kyoko focused on her endgame, Oktavia just wanting her friends to be safe, and Charlotte obsessed with what was lost, Mami would be the one most living in the nowness of their situation, convinced that she is finally in Hell for her sins.

In the restaurant, Mami is indirectly guilt-tripped by Shizuku for essentially abandoning all of her responsibilities to help Kyoko, and is then given a choice: abandon her quest and stay with her loved ones, or continue on with her “duty” despite all warning signs, thereby sealing her own destruction. Charlotte even goes so far as to beg her directly to not go on, but Mami refuses, saying over and over again that she is, “On the clock,” signifying how being a magical girl essentially took over her entire life after her parents’ death, and how full she threw herself into it to shield herself from her own loneliness.

And from then on, her fate is sealed.

While descending the long staircase, the father of Mami’s occasionally mentioned former crush Ryu Hagane shows up to chastise her for throwing her life way in making her contract, and then Mami’s actual love Charlotte shows up on the big TV to remind Mami of what she was now throwing away, and curiously, when she brings out the doll version of herself, it’s not to remind her of how Charlotte kill Mami (though the worms coming out of the doll’s mouth shows that Mami still hasn’t forgotten), but to remind her of how Mami had tried to kill Charlotte upon their first meeting, as her own guilt is more powerful than even the trauma from having her own head bitten off. Annabelle Lee emerges again, and in the process, the staircase is destroyed. Mami’s choice was made. There is going back.

Sure enough, when she enters the classroom, the marionette corpse of Kazuko Saotome (a reference to how she was killed and eaten in the Oriko timeline, in addition to just being very creepy) spells out to Mami’s face what an idiot she was for trusting Kyubey, how many lives she had ruined by doing so, finishing with Homura showing up to basically say, “I told you so.”

Annabelle Lee attacks again, and Mami is sent into a montage of battles she has fought since their disastrous adventure begun, but with each of her assailants being replaced at the last second by one of her friends, showing that even after forgiveness, she still feels like she’s their murderer, as well as driving home the point that in all of her battles to defend herself over the course of this story, she was still just fighting and hurting other magical girls, and regardless of which side they were on, they were all still victims of the same scam.

Annabelle Lee is finally defeated and put down, but there is no victory, only horror at what Mami had done. She flees, but finally finds herself in the Hell she always felt that she deserved, pursued by the zombified corpses of all the monsters that had defeated her, from Lily, who had stolen her mind and made her commit atrocities, to the wild girls, whom she had slaughtered, to the Worm, whom had killed her in her arrogance.

She escapes, but that just leads her back to the bakery, signifying that no matter what, the second she had made that contract she had been doomed. It didn’t matter if she was leaping through the sky in an extravagant outfit, effortlessly defeating monsters with her magic, or if she was sinking into her own despair with a darkening soul gem, it was all the same. She was just food for the Incubators, to be chewed up and discarded, thrown into the mouth of the Worm and run down by the same vehicle that had killed her parents.

She then wakes up in the hospital, reliving a twisted version of when she had been recovered from the car wreck that had taken her parents, taking her back to her first sin that still haunted her: only saving her own life with her wish and letting her parents die. And thus, she is turned into the same monster she had spent the last few years fighting: the witch, Candeloro.

The whole bit in the hospital was a twisted version of what it must have been like for the original Mami to wake up in the hospital and learn that her parents had died. No doubt Mephisto’s dream doctors would have continued to further twist the knife had Ophelia and Sayaka not violently intervened (which gives us a rare case of blood instead of mist). And Candeloro is brought into the party, and with a Cyberpunk reference no less!

Charlotte’s dream comes last, and in my opinion, is the most multi-layered. The bulk is focused on how bitter she is at having her perfect life with her wife stolen away and how many people she resents for it, her own feelings of helplessness at being unable to prevent it, and also it addresses her own guilt at having killed Mami to begin with and how much she fears the return of the Worm that did it, but also she seems to be the only person that has some subconscious awareness of how Homura is timelooping them over and over again, forcing them to relive the same torturous sequence of events (probably has something to do with Homura being the one who killed her after she ate Mami).

In the first loop, Mami is taken by Annabelle Lee, and Charlotte is totally helpless to stop her. This is pretty obvious: Annabelle Lee has been a thorn in her side since day one. It was because of her that they were ambushed in Cloudbreak and forced into their horrible adventure. And more directly, it was because of Annabelle Lee that they fell into the Etherdale to begin with, leading to them all being enslaved by Lily and Charlotte and Mami being forced to commit atrocities.

Also, it’s hinted that the city that Charlotte is forced to march through is the same one Kyoko had been following her father through in her dream, indicating that their minds are already crossing over.

The second is a little more complicated. Yes, Charlotte and Kyoko are on better terms. Yes, they’re getting along. Yes, Kyoko apologized and they bonded. But if it weren’t for Kyoko, then none of this would have ever happened. If it weren’t for Kyoko, Charlotte wouldn’t have lost her home, wouldn’t have been targeted by Reibey, and wouldn’t have to suffer being pursued by dockengauts and valks, two creatures that she has an acute phobia of. So there is still some hard feelings there.

The third is when Charlotte is forced to confront something about herself, that no matter how many people she blames, her own actions still played a part as well. Now she is the one riding the Worm. She is the one who cost Mami her life. And in the hospital, it was her misguided wish that cost her her mother, whether she knows it or not, as well as why she became a witch in the first place.

Couple notes about the hospital: first, the cheese slices do signify how Charlotte threw her wish away for something as stupid as cheesecake, but are also another reference to the original Restless, in which a man carrying cheese slices shows up in each of the characters dreams, just to be weird.

Also, Charlotte’s magical girl outfit was in part inspired by a 4koma MamiLotte doujin from before The Rebellion Story, in which Charlotte becomes human again and crushes on Mami big time. And her outfit consists of a double-breasted coat and skirt. Also there were parts taken from the character notes from Walpurgisnacht, in which one of her familiars is an early draft of Human!Charlotte, before Nagisa had been designed, and she’s depicted holding a staff topped with the wrapped candy charm.

The final loop is where Charlotte fully becomes Nozomi (a name I think I just took from another fanfic that gave her that name) and finally defeats the Worm, this time ridden by Homura Akemi. After all, Homura Akemi is the one resetting things over and over again, forcing Charlotte to relive the same terrible events over and over. And as for that rooftop meeting…well, explaining that would be telling, so infer what you will.

The next chapter is mainly spent playing catch-up, gathering all the characters together and pushing toward the final battle with Mephisto. Here, things get less symbolic and more character based, so there’s a lot less to explain. Ophelia’s path of destruction through Sayaka’s carnival and Mami’s school are basically in line with lucid dreaming, in that once you know that you’re in a dream, everything just feels so much less solid, leading Ophelia to take down the ravaged versions of Brooklyn and Annabelle Lee with ease. Also, that scene with her talking to the dying Lily was an American Gods reference, which featured a similar scene.

So let’s talk about the big thing with this chapter. Let’s talk about Sayaka.

Originally the plan was to go straight from Charlotte’s dream to the fight with Mephisto, but then I realized what a bad idea that is. I mean, Sayaka was back! It’s something that’s been hinted and talked about all through the story’s run, but now it’s actually a thing. The original Sayaka Miki, the one that fell into despair and became a witch, is now back, and without having merged with Oktavia and gaining her memories. She’s thrown literally into the middle of things, during the gang’s weirdest adventure yet. And, it should be noted, her most recent memory is literally sitting with Kyoko in the train station, right before she became Oktavia. That is one hell of a bad day.

Obviously she reacts poorly, and who can blame her? And give her credit, she pulled herself together pretty quickly. However, she did pick up very quickly on Kyoko’s feelings for her. And why shouldn’t we just start saying it? It’s obvious to everyone! But obviously, as short as it was, Sayaka’s brief return will have major consequences that will play out over time.

Anyway, obviously everyone else has their own identity crisis. Mami turns fully into Candeloro, which provides a measure of relief from her own shame, while Kyoko as Ophelia is the rare witch that remembers everything while still sticking fully to her witch identity.

As for Charlotte, her case as Charzomi is easily the weirdest, with her constantly shifting back and forth between Charlotte and Nozomi, and her own memories fading in and out, forcing her to work extra hard to stay focused. It’s been suggested that this might serve as a metaphor for gender fluidity, and while this wasn’t the intention and thus I can’t speak to its accuracy, I can see and support the applicability. Still haven’t worked out what the long-term consequences of that will be, but I do want this to play into her future character development.

The walk up the tongue was mainly me realizing that the fighting was going to start soon, and Sayaka was going away right after, so I had one last opportunity to make the most out of her presence and I was determined not to waste it.

So we ticked off the boxes on everything we ought to address with her. She cleared the air with Charlotte over having to watch Mami get eaten. She finally got to hug Mami (well, Candeloro anyway) and got everything she wanted to say off her chest. And with Ophelia, she naturally wants to know more about exactly what Kyoko has been getting up to with Sayaka’s other self.

Sayaka again confronts Ophelia about how she feels about her (or, well, Oktavia, or maybe Sayaka? It’s weird), and naturally she is kind of freaked out by it. Remember, from her point of view, her relationship with Kyoko had been nothing but antagonistic. Whether Kyoko had been attacking her or trying to help her, Sayaka always resented her presence, so now suddenly being dropped into the middle of things and learning that her one-time rival now has a thing for her? Well, can you blame her for getting a little freaked out?

Also, it’s worth pointing out how the script had been flipped with everyone’s new identities. Now it’s Ophelia and Candeloro with the witch names, while Sayaka still thinks of them using their old names, causing them discomfort, but she has no problem calling Charzomi whatever because they had just met and she didn’t care.

And then we get to the fight, and of course it has to be a pro wrestling match. I’d also like to point out that there were a lot of songs I wanted to use for this chapter but was unsure of where to put each one. Originally the climb up the tongue was just going to have generic thrash metal playing the background, while Mephisto’s entrance theme was going to start with Mr. Sandman, only to transition into Bad Reputation (which is Ronda Rousey’s RL entrance theme), but then I was like, I should put Welcome to My Nightmare in there somewhere. And then I remembered that Cult of Personality is a thing, which is also CM Punk’s entrance theme, so I finally decided to move the first three songs to the tongue scene and have CoP as Mephisto’s entrance music.

And finally, we come to the last chapter. The magical girl fight scene was another one of those checklist things I wanted to have so long as I had Sayaka around. That way, I could actually build some real KyoSaya moments to make the KyoTavi angst all the more potent, as Sayaka realizes that she is developing an attraction to Kyoko as they fight side-by-side, letting me recreate that magical little moment from The Rebellion Story in which Sayaka basically confesses in the middle of the battle, complete with Charlotte ruining the mood.

I’ll admit, I kind of skimped out on Mephisto’s witch design and didn’t give it as much thought as I could have, but that part was never important. The important part was to recreate a classic witch fight and let the girls interact during it. I am proud of the Charlotte’s Web joke though.

What happens next is to establish that it doesn’t matter how hard they fight or how smart they are, they simply cannot beat Mephisto now. She’s taken complete control, enough to flick them through their various personas on a whim turning them into Puella Magi, then to human!witches (basically the Walpurgis Nights girls), then to full witches, then to the classic squad from the bulk of the story (bringing Oktavia back briefly), then to vanilla humans. It doesn’t matter. Mephisto has them, and can do whatever she wants.

From there, she separates them again and subjects them to a condensed version of their previous dreams, with the same themes but different imagery. Kyoko is subjected to a sermon about her poor responses to loss from her dead father, as he really lays into her over how much damage she had done. And I gotta admit, even I felt pretty bad just for writing that scene. Because I know torturing Kyoko is kind of this story’s MO, but damn.

Sayaka is a little more nuanced. Yes, the identity issues from her own dream are brought up, but it’s more focused on a new issues: mainly, now that Sayaka is back, she not only has to grapple with all the weirdness that she’s been thrust into, but also with essentially having been replaced. We see the vision of her friends getting along happily without her, the friends she had pushed away and alienated having moved on without her, Madoka basically having replaced her entirely with Homura. Of course this is not reflected in reality, as by this point in the world of the living they probably haven’t even found Sayaka’s body yet due to the time difference, but it is definitely that Sayaka would easily believe.

The next part is basically the whole reason for bringing Sayaka back in this manner. Mephisto then shows Sayaka a real memory that of Oktavia spending time with Kyoko, Mami, and Charlotte and being loved and accepted by them.

Sayaka’s character arc in the original series was driven by her letting her insecurities cause her to overcompensate and destroy herself, and Oktavia has largely been characterized as what Sayaka would be like if she didn’t have those insecurities. Sure, she’s had the shadow of the original Sayaka hanging over her, but for the most part this hasn’t seemed to bother her much, aside from getting annoyed at being called the wrong name, but it’s been taken for granted that sooner or later being thought of as Sayaka instead of herself by Kyoko was going to come to a head.

But here we have one of those happy unplanned gold veins, something I hadn’t planned on doing but am thrilled gets to happen now: we have Sayaka being forced to come to terms with living in Oktavia’s shadow.

Yes, they’re the same person. Yes, Oktavia is just Sayaka with her memory wiped and many of her self-destructive issues cleared away. But as WN demonstrated, it’s not as clear cut as that, and there is still some degree of separation between the two. And the infamously self-loathing Sayaka would most certainly be messed up by being confronted by a version of herself that people like and enjoy being around, that doesn’t feel the need to prove anything. And this is coming right off the heels of her realizing that she might have feelings for Kyoko after all (even if that is in part because of her empathetic connection to Oktavia), only to have it thrown in her face that it was Oktavia that Kyoko really loved, when she herself never did anything other than push Kyoko away. Granted, she had good reason for doing so, given that the first thing Kyoko did was try to kill her, but the point stands.

The Kyoko/Oktavia dynamic has always been messy due to Sayaka’s constant presence, but I kind of feel that that was unfair to Sayaka herself, as she deserves better than just being a memory, and I wanted her to have an actual voice in the whole deal, to be able to express her own feelings about it, even if it does complicate an already incredibly complicated situation.

Anyway, the next bit is pretty self-explanatory, with Mephisto further twisting the knife by replaying Sayaka’s last conversation with Madoka and really driving home what a wreck Sayaka had been at the time. Remember, from Sayaka’s point of view, that whole moment was only a few hours ago, at most!

Mami’s was very interesting, because the whole trial bit is self-explanatory, but it’s actually a reference to the bizarre trial that made up the final episode of the classic mindscrew TV show The Prisoner, which featured a jury wearing masks, the plaintiff sitting on an ornate chair on a raised platform, witnesses being pulled out of steam-filled holes, and an extended singalong of Dry Bones. Granted, I mainly knew about it because Reboot, one of my favorite shows, also referenced it in a dream episode of their own, but I liked that episode, and wanted to rip it off.

For the witnesses, we first get the expected faces from the show itself, but we also get a few new ones. Brooke Alexander was already named once before when Mami was reflecting on the various girls she had trained, Janice Goldberg was made up specifically for this scene, but we also get Michiru Kazusa, from the really weird spin-off manga Kazumi Magica, who was established as having a past with Mami. Kazumi Magica had its problems, but I did like a lot of the characters (i.e. The Twins), so this seemed like a good time to bring in another one.

Charlotte’s dream is the most straightforward, as it’s basically just her first dream condensed into a claw machine. What I wanted to put focus on was that Charlotte is the one character that knows who Mephisto is, as her role as the team scholar who does the most reading, she would actually have heard of the Ideal Witches, and thus would really understand just how much trouble they were all in.

And at the end of each segment, Mephisto gives each of them the same offer: submit willingly and be given a pleasant fantasy while Mephisto digests their souls, or continue to resist and get digested anyway, only in eternal torment. And her offer would give them each what they wanted the most. Kyoko wants her loved ones back, Sayaka wants to be loved and appreciated, Mami wants forgiveness, and Charlotte just wants to go home. And in light of what they were facing, can any of them be blamed for wanting to take Mephisto up on her offer?

Enter Jerky.

Jerky was a ton of fun to write for, and judging by the overwhelming positive response to his segments, bringing in the baby space raptor was a good idea. Like I’ve said before, his bits were one big love letter to Raptor Red, a novel by paleontologist Robert Bakker which tells of the life and times of a female Utahraptor from the Utahraptor’s point of view. And the nice thing about Jerky is that he’s smart enough to know the does and don’ts, but simple enough to be uncomplicated. He’s an animal. An exceptionally smart animal, but still an animal. He knows that he loves Kyoko and is loyal to her, he’s been made to understand that he can’t let Charlotte, Mami, and Oktavia see him, and he knows that Kyoko’s skin is softer than his and he needs to be careful, but beyond that he couldn’t care less of their various issues. It’s refreshingly simple.

As such, when confronted with a complete inexplicable threat such as Mephisto, something well beyond his ability to comprehend, he’s worried, he’s scared, he doesn’t know what to do, so he defaults to his predatory instincts.

When in doubt, start biting.

And it does the trick, because something that needs to be said is that while the Ideal Witches are powerful, they’re not omnipotent. Mephisto needed to lure the girls in and submerge them fully in her dream in order to control them the way that she did, but in the real world, she was vulnerable once she had manifested fully, allowing Kyoko to break free long enough to fire the final shot.

In the end, everyone escapes, but not unscathed. Kyoko especially had been scarred even further, in part from the dream of her father, but also from having to watch Sayaka basically die again, leading to her reaching what very well might be her breaking point. Mami’s slipping deeper into depression, having been forced to once again confront all the damage she unwittingly did as a magical girl, Charlotte is fully fed up with everything that had happened to them. And Oktavia? Well, now that it’s been shown that Sayaka Miki can and has come back, suddenly her own identity issues are going to become worse. She’s really going to have to grapple with Sayaka being an actual person with a legitimate claim to her body, especially since when Sayaka came back, she effectively traded places with Oktavia instead of merging with her. That’s gotta be scary.

At the very least, Kyoko did not reject Oktavia. In some way, she does understand that Oktavia is her own person, and she’s coming to respect that. But there are some deep wounds having to do with Oktavia’s creation, and they’re both going to have to come to terms with a great many things in the days to come.

And at the very end, it’s shown that Mephisto is weakened but still alive, and she’s pissed! We also learn that one of the girls did accept Mephisto’s offer before she was defeated, so that’s definitely going to come up later. And we meet the rest of the Ideal Witches. Obviously there is more to come with them, so I will say nothing further.

Anyway, I guess that’s it. Feel free to message me if you want anything explained further, or just make your own interpretations. Either is fine.

[betweenfictionandfact]

Virtual Museums in the Time of COVID-19

In these awful times, everyone is looking for something to keep themselves busy during self-isolation. The “virtual museum” has been offered as one from of edutainment, a way to enrich the mind and pass time when you become sick of binge-watching shows and movies.

Museums have been working to digitize collections and increase accessibility for a while now, designing them to be educational tools or a way for people to access the museum even if they can’t physically visit. Right now, that means all of us, so let’s become armchair museologists, exploring foreign museums from the comfort of our own homes.

The Book

The Pergamonmuseum in Berlin can be found on many lists of online exhibits to visit, and by happy chance I had only just reread a personal favorite that would fit perfectly with the ancient collections in the museum.

Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner is an epic journey told from the point of view of the runaway slave Kamet and the soldier Costis sent to save him as they escape through the fictional Mede Empire, culturally very like ancient Babylon. The book is the most recent in the series Queen’s Thief, following a thief who becomes king of the fictional world Attolia, heavily inspired by classical Greece. 

Ever since I visited the Pergamonmuseum years ago, I will admit that I think of their displays every time I read this book. But how does the virtual experience compare to the physical?

Attolia and the Mede Empire

Historical Greece and Anatolia

  The Museum

Run through Google Arts and Culture, the virtual Pergamonmuseum has a simple design and intuitive interactive layout. You are greeted first with a header image of the famous Ishtar gate and a few happily browsing visitors.

Click here to follow along

  Underneath is a small introductory text, much like the type that would stand before the entrance to an exhibit. You can choose to read more of it by clicking a button, or you can continue scrolling down to the “stories” or exhibits, much like when a visitor chooses to stroll past the text panels. Scroll a bit further and you can see all 1,591 digitized objects, either organized by topics or pictured individually. At the very bottom is access to a “museum view,” a 360 scan of a room.

At any point you can, of course, share your experience on the social media platform of your choice.

The Pergamonmuseum actually houses three smaller museums, the Classical collections, the Museum of the Ancient Near East, and the Museum of Islamic Art. I’m going to focus on the first two, as they would cover the cultures in Turner’s books.

The Virtual Tour

“Monumental: Highlights in the Pergamonmuseum” is the first exhibit, an overarching tour of the museum’s scope by focusing on a few of the most impressive parts of their collections – reconstructed monuments. These pieces are large enough to walk past or through in a way that lets the visitor truly experience the scale and aesthetics of these ancient cultures.

But how do these very large displays translate to a digital format?

Pergamon Altar is the highlight of the virtual museum. Most of the exhibits focus on it, using the high-quality photos and videos taken in anticipation of the exhibit closing for renovations. Google used a camera to create a 360 experience of the room, which the first exhibit uses to “walk” the visitor through the room, zooming in on details and providing context through pop up text. If you want to explore it yourself, you can take control of the view much as you would Google Streetview.

This high tech interactive gives a life-size sense of scale, allowing you to feel as if you are looking up at the tall steps and large friezes. The sculptures of gods, goddesses, and monsters are marvels of artistic talent, robust and detailed in a way that reminds me of a pivotal scene from the first book, The Thief, when Eugenides finds a room where his gods sit as still as statues, a held breath away from speaking.

“Moving” into the Museum of the Ancient Near East, the online exhibit brings the visitor to a more vibrantly colored reconstruction – the blue and yellow bricks of the Ishtar gate and processional way. The first “slide” has a video pop up with a video about the history of the gate and the city of Babylon. When I accessed the site, the full screen option wouldn’t work. Technological glitches are an interesting issue to consider in accessing the virtual museum. What if certain sections crash and interfere with the narrative of the exhibit?

  Despite the small screen, the video recreated the experience of an audio guide. The narrators create a word picture of the gate while you look at pictures of it. They explain the meanings behind the symbols and emphasized that any visitor Nebuchanezzer’s Babylon would have understood at a glance. The symbolism of gods and goddesses are a reminder of a time when the pantheon of gods lived vividly in people lives as images and statues everywhere, just as in the classical world Turner builds in her series. These books feature gods and goddesses that step out of stories and into the plot to help or hinder her main characters. In Thick As Thieves, she drew from the mythology of the Ancient Near East and the Epic of Gilgamesh to create the heroes Immakuk and Ennikar that interfere throughout the plot.

The video and the close up photos afterwards show the details in the relief carvings of lions, a symbol of Ishtar, which made me realize that the seemingly ridiculous scene in the book when Kamet and Costis hide from soldiers in the den of a lioness might have actually been a hint that this ferocious goddess was another force protecting them.

Having been to this display in the actual museum, the experience is rather awe-inspiring. To walk through this massive gate and along a very long corridor, all lined with ancient tiles and then to find out that this was only a small portion of the entire structure is boggling. Especially impressive is to imagine the time conservators spent piecing together this mammoth puzzle. In the virtual museum, however, the scale of the piece isn’t as emphasized as the detail work. After some digging, I did find a 3D image of the gate on the page for the Berlin Museum Island page.

  The Collections

Below the exhibits are thumbnails for all 1,591 objects that can be explored digitally. As a visitor, you can go through collections organizing the objects by cultural source (i.e. Iraq, Iran, Syria) or by theme (water, textiles, and lions, oh my!).  My eye was drawn to the clay tablets. In Thick As Thieves, Kamet recites from the tablets of the epic of Immakuk and Ennikar. In ancient Mesopotamia, letters and important documents were written in cuneiform on clay. The ones highlighted at the virtual Pergamonmuseum were inventories of goods and horses or letters from kings, rather than poetry, unfortunately.

Collection of Clay Tablets

  You can also go through all of the objects, choosing to organize them by viewer popularity, by time in an easily navigated timeline, or, bizarrely enough, by color. This allows the visitor to engage with the objects in a way quite unlike a usual museum visit. You view the objects in sometimes surprising combinations that cross cultural lines and the usual organizational categories.

I chose to see all chocolate brown objects together, which yielded a combination of detailed textiles and clay imprints from cylindrical signets. They are two very different mediums from different centuries, but you can see some similarities in the symmetry and angles on the textiles and carvings.

  The details for the objects are, however, limited. Other than names and accession numbers, some objects didn’t have any other information while others had a paragraph or two. I wonder if the objects were chosen by the practicality that they were the best photographed. So, the important collections for a virtual museum become the ones that are the most visual.

  Thoughts

The virtual museum was certainly an entertaining way to pass the time here in quarantine. The overall experience became meditative in the way walking through a museum becomes very quiet and calm, although I found after a while the same reading fatigue as hunching to look at text panels in person.

Trying to view the entirety of a museum through my laptop computer screen, the different cultures and topics encompassed within it began to blur together. Unlike a physical museum, where a visitor moves through discretely different rooms organized geographically or by clearly defined topic at a walking pace that allows the mind to shift gears, the virtual museum has a speed to it. You click through topics and it’s easy to switch between topics or go back to check. You can draw lines between displays that might otherwise be at other ends of the museum building.

These blurring of lines might not be what the website designers intended, as the exhibits are more neatly outlined, but the experience certainly fits with the world of the Queen’s Thief series, which is, after all, not a true historical fiction. Megan Whalen Turner drew from classical Greek, Near East, and other Mediterranean cultures to create her world, but she pulled details from several different centuries to do so. Viewing the virtual museum, where it is easier to hop across timelines, did help me understand the setting for the books better, and gave me an aesthetic language for imagining the Mede Empire.

  Further Reading

Interview with Megan Whalen Turner

Map of the world of Queen’s Thief

Virtual Pergamonmuseum

Pergamonmuseum website

The Queen’s Thief Series

Other Virtual Museums

  New in #QuarantineLife I want to explore #VirtualMuseums with the #Pergamonmuseum #Berlin #ClosedButOpen #SMBforHome #StayHome #HowDoYouMuseum #queensthief #attolia #ThickAsThieves #ReturnOftheThief #worldbookday Virtual Museums in the Time of COVID-19 In these awful times, everyone is looking for something to keep themselves busy during self-isolation.

[destiny-smasher]

Kingdom Hearts 3 impressions

So, uh, I will ONLY be talking about stuff up until the very start of the second World, and only AFTER the break. Kingdom Hearts 1 was an incredibly important and influential piece of media when I was growing up. I was writing fic based on Smash Bros. just before KH rolled onto the scene was like, “Yo, Disney and Final Fantasy, BAM, fuckin’ random? fucking RADDDD” and I was all about it. You had FF characters remixed with OCs remixed with Disney characters, and the villains were all crossing over to form the League of Bad Cartoons, it was a great time. And then Nomura realized his gamble was a win and decided to waste the next 15 years of everyone’s time shoving in every trope he liked, every IDEA that felt “cool” together into a mish mash of whatever the hell this “narrative” has become. Suffice it to say, I’ve got beef with Kingdom Hearts as a “story.” It just occurred to me today that a big part of this is thematic/tonal.

But it’s also VERY rare, maybe even unprecedented, for a piece of media like Kingdom Hearts 3 to come around. For years, then months, then weeks, then days, I told myself, “It’s not real, that game doesn’t exist, I won’t believe it until I’m literally playing it” and just could not be bothered to be hype or interested, if only because Nomura’s “vision”, from my perspective, warped something I admired in my youth into a fucking train wreck, leaving me very little to feel emotionally invested in outside of Aqua and by proxy the two lads she is trying to protect. (also I GUESS I’m slightly invested in Axel/Xion/Roxas.../Namine? for similar reasons now that I think about it?) Well, guess what? Kingdom Hearts VERY WELL might be real, and I very well might be about three hours into it. And for all of the beef I have with the plot, I am fucking relieved that those three hours have felt/sounded good, as a video game. NOW we’re gonna talk about the first World. --

When I first heard that Olympus was gonna be the first World in KH3 I was disappointed and BAFFLED. We’re visiting that place a THIRD time? And why THAT World? Turns out, there’s actually some substantial thematic relevance and that’s actually A-OK, not to mention that starting with a familiar world after ALL OF THIS TIME is not such a bad way to kick things off. First off, structurally, I actually really enjoyed the way this world played out. Two of my biggest problems with KH as a video game series have been that worlds feel like empty, vacant, haunted houses, and that said worlds are usually small and linear with a lot of pointless backtracking. Olympus fixes all of this. There are NPCs. Actual fucking PEOPLE in this world. Sure, they’re just people in danger, calling for help, but they’re THERE for once! And they have vocies! EVERY line of dialogue (except for like one “plot” moment) has actually been voiced so far! About time. Also. This World is not as linear as most KH Worlds. In fact, it help more open and dynamic than ANY World in any KH game so far, not to mention it featured three, THREE (wtf) unique and distinct types of settings. The city, the mountain, and Olympus. Nice. ALSO also. The music. We’ve been here before. We KNOW that Olympus theme from earlier games. And as you traverse the city, up the mountain, you hear this more sweeping, movie-like version, and it’s like “oh whoa nice” aaaaand then you get TO Olympus and it KICKS in, the old song, up to modern snuff. That was great. That was a thing that really helped convey “Kingdom Hearts is back, baby.” The World was big, compared to typical KH worlds. It had multiple nooks and crannies to explore, side-paths to go down, treasure to find hidden away. There is a LOT of verticality. Running up walls and seamlessly hopping over things in the environment makes traversal more enjoyable than it ever has been. Even though a lot of the World is technically a linear path it’s not structured like a path. Going off and exploring rewards you with items and the like, and the World is big enough to actually feel like you have places to poke around in. Having said this, WHY is there no...map? Like. You literally COLLECT Maps from Chests like you used to. But near as I can tell, there’s no way to pull up an actual MAP, to seer where the main path is, to see where the side paths are. It’s boggling. Maybe the game has the option hidden away somewhere but if so, that’s just silly. And if there’s just no actual map option at ALL that’s just...baffling. There were barely any load times for how much SPACE there was to navigate, and things looked very shiny and pretty, and ran at a smooth 60 fps MOST of the time. Tech specs aren’t everything, but when your brand is built on “looking pretty” it sure af helps when you bring scale AND a smooth framerate to match. It’s weird, and a bit jarring, sometimes in a good way, to see all of this stuff rendered in modern tech. Stuff looks...a little too plasticy a lot of the time, (which actually ought to pay off when we get to Toy Story?) but the environments so far feel rich and vast and detailed all at once in a way we just have never seen the series, because we’re basically jumping from PS2-level tech to PS4. So that difference in production is more noticeable for the wait -- I just wish things looked a bit more...I guess cel-shaded? Like the original trailer. Things (specifically, characters) look a little too flat/plasticy at times, for how pretty things are. Combat seems to be as flashy as ever and I’m sure I’ll feel differently as I get further in and unlock more options but it’s still too easy, simple, and mashy for my tastes. I am HOPING we get more moments that require quick reflexes and specific tactics like the harder moments of older KH games. The amusement rides mechanic is...weird. It’s given NO context in universe. And they last a little too long/feel too overpowered for how easy they are to utilize. Similarly, there are frequently seemingly random party-member tag-team attacks that...just seem like “press triangle to win” moves. I wish they entailed more interaction, and/or felt less common/random. I like the IDEA of these kinds of moves, especially ones that change your controls/method of attack for a few seconds (like Hercules’ team attack) but the execution makes them feel too cheap and easy to abuse, with combat that’s ALREADY skewing on the “too easy” side for the genre. I like the “form change” for keyblades, and that you can swap keyblades in the middle of a fight. Really hoping this allows for some good tactical stuff later -- buuuuut that would also require the game to ASK OF ME to do more than “mash X,” which KH as a brand typically does not do... Characters SPEAK in reaction to gameplay moments, when you initiate things in the environment, etc. It’s a nice touch that makes them feel more like characters in an RPG. Donald and Goofy are ALWAYS in the party, alongside the Disney member(s). NICE. Maybe KH3 is putting its best foot forward, but overall, I was pleasantly surprised with Olympus. It single-handedly corrected MOST of the issues I’ve ever had with Kingdom Hearts level design. I only hope the momentum keeps going. Moving on, Gummi Ships. What little I played is easily the best they have every been. I love having an open world with optional places/fights to explore, while still giving me those shmup-like bursts of action. The Gummi Phone seems like a fun mechanic, and taking selfies/photos makes SENSE for this game because of how visually detailed it is -- but the pleasant surprise was how I took selfies with Donald and Goofy and they REACTED to it, starting to pose and commenting on it. On the other hand, the loading screen being nonsensical “social media” posts from KH characters...I don’t like it thanks go away. x’D I’ve spent only a few minutes in Twilight Town and INSTANTLY I am so much more enamored than I ever was in previous games. Not just due to the bump up in visual fidelity, but also because -- GASP -- NPCs??? Are you trying to tell me this is an actual TOWN that people LIVE IN?? Holy shit, Kingdom Hearts, I never knew! For all of this stuff I liked, though, KH3 is still...a KH game. Which means after you get through the intro, after you gear up to land in Olympus, the game flashes the title: “Kingdom Hearts II.9″ ...no. Just no. Fuck. Stop doing this shit. Whenever an Organization 13 member (or EX member) shows up and starts speaking all cocky in riddles like the flamboyant anime jackass they are, whenever Mickey starts dead-ass blathering about weird nonsense whenever the plot HAS to acknowledge “oh right Sora golly gawrsh ya FURRGOT this random bullshit a-FYUCK better shove this expository throwaway dialogue right in here before we go n’ furrget again!” whenever Kairi continues to be irrelevant and invisible after ALL THIS TIME whenever Rikku has to say some obligatory thing about his darkness or his copy of himself or Ansem or whatever whenever the plot informs Sorta/Dornold/Goffy about another convoluted ridiculous THING that we already know about and they MAYBE already know about because it is OBLIGATED to because this game’s entire purpose has become to “wrap things up already Nomura” I am reminded of the freshly opened scar on my heart from how much SHIT this series has dragged itself through for...what? Nothing worth all of this, IMO. Thankfully, these moments feel less and less pressing in KH3′s opening hours than they certainly could be, though I’m sure the closing hours of the game -- once they’ve tidily gotten all of that silly, inconsequential DISNEY CONTENT out of the way (even though that’s the BULK of the game environments and HALF of the series’ identity/purpose) -- those closing hours will surely be packed to the gills with all of this crazy crap. Maybe by then I might finally care enough to finally get the catharsis I’ve waited over a decade for. I dunno. I’m just relieved the game looks, plays, sounds, and feels as good as it does so far. EDIT: almost forgot to mention this since it hasn’t actually come up yet BUT I picked up a BUNCH of “ingredients”??? Like. FOR COOKING??? Which is one of my all-time favorite mechanics in a video game?? (thanks Paper Mario) So I’m at LEAST excited to see what THAT is all about.

[ocgear]

Devlog #6 Writing, Music, and Art

Hey y’all! I wanted to give an update since I’m pretty sure everyone thinks I’m dead ^^;

For quick updates on the project: OCG is being produced in two parts now. Part 1 will contain the many mysteries that the world of OCG has to offer and part 2 will be a sort of answer arc. The first draft of OCG part 1 is written and I’ve been hard at work revising and editing the prologue and chapter 1 of the script. For part 1, there is roughly 6-7 chapters of planned content. I’m hoping that at the end of the day, Part 1 will resonate with you, the reader.

Covid has been extremely hard on my ability to complete the project. I won’t get too personal on a devblog, but my health and finances were impacted. I apologize for the delays and this account’s inactivity. I feel like I'm letting down the people who want to read OverClock Gear and I just want to let everyone know that I'm still committed to working on the project and that despite the inactivity, I'm still working hard to improve every aspect as much as possible.

I'd like to share some of the things I learned along the way so that maybe future devs can learn something from my struggles.

WRITING:

As a warning, I want to say that none of the following are hard rules of writing. These are just things that I've observed as a writer and as a consumer.

Probably the most challenging part of a Visual Novel is writing a script that works with the format. The rules for VN writing are different from traditional novels and screenplays as many elements will be shown on screen but usually not enough to get a full sense what's going on. This is more of an opinion, but I feel that the descriptions should supplement the action and we should pick and choose when to show with sprites instead of describing. This is especially true when considering dialogue and internal monologue will make up a majority of the script akin to a movie.

It's not to say you should ignore everything you know about writing, however. There's still things about structure and character arcs that are useful.

Speaking of characters, balancing your cast is also a challenge. Every character is fighting for enough screen time to develop enough for the reader to care. As I'm writing OCG, I am trimming down and trying to give each cast member enough time to breathe while keeping in mind the characters' backstories and motivations. There's also the delicate balance between backstory and current events to keep in mind. I think it's especially hard to figure out how to reveal backstory without dumping a history lesson on the player.

There's also the issue with paragraph length for display purposes. VNs have a unique format that breaks down text into easily digestible chunks. However, overutilizing the space can sometimes make the reading experience worse.

There are a lot of things to consider visually too when writing your script. I've had to think about the actual space that they occupy so that chain of events make sense. Since there will be visual elements to the story, I need to try to figure out how those elements fit in too as I'm writing. For instance, how characters will appear, do gestures, and different CGs that need to appear are crucial to the format and needs to be considered.

From a general storytelling perspective, I've been toying with the idea of including gameplay. However, I realized that in trying to do so, I'd have to create a bunch of excuses to play the minigame which would be:

1. Unsatisfying without enough stages to challenge the player

OR

2. Disrupt the story to challenge the player

I think that if I wanted to have gameplay, I should plot out the game in a way such that the story fits the gameplay and not the other way around. Since I'm working on a primarily story driven experience, I won't be including any minigames that would take the player out of the experience. However, I have ideas for games that could take place in the world of OverClock Gear. Those are sitting in the vault until I release OCG part 1.

There's also something interesting I learned about twists and keeping people engaged in stories. Maybe this is something of a beginner's trap, but when people say a character isn't interesting it's usually because a character doesn't have anything meaningful to say or do, or they're simply floating through the story without influencing it. Giving a character powers and an award winning backstory isn't really enough to make someone interesting in a story. Giving a character flaws also doesn't make them automatically interesting. It's how you tie all these traits into story and their impact on other characters that make it interesting.

In today's day and age, readers have become more critical and perceiving than ever before, so it may seem like you'd need to hide more information to make your twists have impact. But I think it's better to show some of your hand. Twists also need room to breathe. They need to be logical but unexpected. A reader needs to convince themselves that it was possible through several minor clues leading up to the event. But balancing what to show and what to hide is a challenge in itself. Through showing off my script edits, I came to the conclusion that setting up expectations is a lot more satisfying than trying to make everything a mystery. Readers seem to get frustrated when the mystery leads nowhere in a story for an extended period of time. However, that's not to say every mystery should be revealed in a quick fashion. I think it's a balancing act, one in which we have to reveal what we can to keep the reader engaged while hiding the bigger stuff behind the curtains. In a way it's like slight of hand: We try to misdirect the audience with "true" events in the story and then blow them away with something they never saw coming.

An example of a bad twist from a scrapped project that I did several years ago: The main character meets a super secret organization who protects her from a military government. One of the people who protects her is a commander in that organization and seems to know a thing or two about the MC. However he is shot and killed before anything could be revealed.

There are elements that we can anticipate from the scenario: The MC is caught up in some crazy conspiracy with rogues and the military. However, the characters don't come off as interesting because they aren't given room to breathe. The organization became a device to set up the premise of the story. The commander doesn't impact the story and basically anybody else could've stepped in to save the MC. The MC isn't given time to bond with the commander and as such the twist at the end doesn't come across as earned.

These are just some thing that I've been thinking about as I've been consuming media and writing. There are too many games and fictional works that I've ruined for myself by being too critical. But through this, I'm hoping that the final script for OverClock Gear will be something I can be proud of.

Art:

I'm studying animation production to try to incorporate some of that knowledge into my VN. I want to be able to create a more immersive experience and make my VN more visually appealing. Some works that I really like are Muv Luv and Phoenix Wright. They're both unique in their presentation and utilize different parts of visual media that make them stand out.

The Muv Luv team are masters at using dynamic camera movement to craft visual spectacles. Despite the sprites being mostly non-moving, the way they are tweened and the few pose changes they have are combined with the camera in a way that almost makes them feel alive. Even in the first cutscene of Muv Luv Alternative, the parallax effects and strong camera angles help to sell that cinematic feel that isn't really found in any other VN's I've read.

Phoenix Wright's sprites are a joy to look at. The animations are done with such strong key poses that I sometimes forget the game's animations were meant to be limited. In the modern day, there are many tools that are used to create smooth looking animations with complex actions like 3D models or Live2D. I'm honestly not a huge fan of Live2D animations as it often looks as if a puppeteer is handling the rig. 3D also presents the issue of having to create specialized rigs that can handle weird scenarios like foreshortening. For example in Dragon Ball Fighter Z, there's a lot of model distortion in cinematics that is pretty complicated for someone with no 3D expertise. Facial expressions are also a huge part of making visual novel character appealing which can be difficult to do well on a 3D model. Not to mention, to emulate a 2D style, the frames need to be displayed at 24fps which means chopping frames in-between the interpolated keys. It can be a lot of work to create something that closely resembles "Anime". There is also a charm in a more traditional approach to animation that I think more visual novels should employ. Though I recognize that for complicated sprites, a traditionally drawn 2d animation isn't practical at all, I want to use the idea of strong key poses to create more lively sprites as well as play with depth to further immersion.

There are some more ideas that I have for creating a better visual experience, but I don't want to go into too much of a tangent ^^;

Music:

I went back to learn more about music theory and I came across some great videos that emulate the Japanese video game/Pop style. If you're curious, you can check out Gavin Leper's channel on YouTube. That being said, something I realized about music in Visual Novels and Film in particular is that sometimes the music should accompany the dialogue or actions in the work instead of overpowering it. There are moments when elevator music is important and when it's important to use a swelling emotional piece. Not everything in life "goes hard" and I think that also applies to music in stories as well. Music in games is also designed to loop in contrast to film where individual pieces can be created for specific scenes. This adds an entirely new thing to think about since it needs to be repeatable without getting annoying. I don't really have a clean answer to this, but to observe songs from games you like and see how they transition from the end to the part that loops.

This was a long post and there's so much more I want to talk about but I'm trying to stay productive and get the script done. For anyone else struggling with finishing their VN, "Finish the Script" by Scott King is an excellent book. Wishing everyone the best!

- OCGDev

[entergamingxp]

CrossCode Review — Cross Out Some Time to Play This Gem

July 16, 2020 11:00 AM EST

Radical Fish Games has risen the bar of quality in terms of the experience you can get in a retro-inspired indie game with CrossCode.

Having initially passed on the PC release of CrossCode back in 2018, when it was announced that this indie title from Radical Fish Games was coming to consoles, I knew I wasn’t going to make the same mistake. Having now seen it through, boy, oh boy, am I glad I didn’t skip out this time around because CrossCode is without a doubt one of the most expertly-crafted retro-inspired games I have ever had the pleasure of playing.

“CrossCode is without a doubt one of the most expertly-crafted retro-inspired games I have ever had the pleasure of playing.”

The alien world of Shadoon plays host to players of CrossWorlds, a futuristic melding of an MMORPG, LARPING (live-action role-playing), and Disney World. Players who log-in, take control of a body, known as an Avatar. You play as Lea, an amnesiac, and mute Avatar seeking her past while working to discover the secrets of the Ancients of Shadoon. Lea won’t need to uncover the mysteries, though, as she will be able to party up with a cast of endearing and bombastic characters to aid her, both inside and outside the game.

I loved the one-sided small talk between Lea and your first party member, Emilie-Sophie de Belmond, a Pentafist (think a Monk/punchy class) who goes by the character name Emilienator. Even though Lea has a limited vocabulary in which to respond, Emilie has no issue going on about whatever is on her mind, from beating you in races through dungeons or how she got chewed out at work for being late to a meeting. Who looks in their spam folder in their email, seriously? I also found the justice-seeking Apollo, a fellow Spheromancer that strives to keep players honest and punish any that may be cheating in CrossWorlds, to be hilarious. He’s your stereotypical exaggerated hero of justice, but Radical Fish Games’ writing prowess takes him so much more fun than his similar archetype peers. He will challenge Lea multiple times throughout the story, pushing Lea and making sure she stays on the up-and-up.

The supporting cast I enjoyed just as much as the main party. Sergey, who acts as your support from the real world, helps to repair your voice module, adding in new keywords for you to use and interact with your new friends. Whenever he would randomly pop-in, more often than not, I would find myself chuckling at his remarks and quips. Rather early on, you will find yourself a member of a small guild, the First Scholars, whose aim is to be the first to discover the final secrets of the Ancients. Run by the sweet and motherly Hlin, and her stoic second-in-command, Beowulf, I was surprised how much I came to love these characters the more I spoke with them and learned their stories.

CrossCode does a good job making the in-game world feel like a popular hustling-and-bustling MMO, even though it is a single-player experience. NPCs of various classes are often running around the different areas in the wild, while cities and other social hubs are packed with vendors and other faux players to further sell the vibe. You can also join a guild, tackle tough bosses, and make friends with exciting characters.

Much like a real MMO, there is plenty of side business that you get yourself into in-between your dives into the game’s various dungeons which further plot. Townsfolk and other NPC Avatars offer missions that range from your standard fair of fetch quests and monster-slaying tasks to logging the local fauna of Shadoon. Crafting in the traditional sense is absent in CrossCode and in its place you will be trading items at specialty vendor stalls. You can expect to spend time running through the wild cutting down plants and hunting down enemies, which is reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda series. Luckily the rewards for trading are worth it, as the gear you can get is far superior to the stock you can find in the shops proper.

“CrossCode does a good job making the in-game world feel like a popular hustling-and-bustling MMO, even though it is a single-player experience.”

CrossCode gameplay balances between fast-paced hack-n-slash combat with intricate puzzles. Encounters with even generic enemies in the wild can become tense clashes as mobs can consist of five or more at a time, each trying to kill you. In some of the more frantic matches, finding the narrow passages between the bullets and dodging my way to safety reminded me of a SHUMP.

Lea, as a Spheromancer, is far from being powerless and has plenty of options to fight back. As you progress throughout the game, you will unlock multiple skill trees that let you improve your stats and unlock new skills and abilities for your close-range, long-range, and defensive moves. A particularly cool aspect is that you have you can quickly swap between specific sub-trees and unique move options from the menu system, without the need to spend your points on both.

There is an added sense of intensity and urgency in combat with the inclusion of a ranking system. As you defeat enemies, a small bar will fill and once you fill it you will gain a rank. The higher your rank is ( which goes all the way to S-Rank), the more chances you’ll have to gain rare loot from enemies. This rarer loot is incredibly valuable as many quests and the gear you can trade for at the vendors, require them. As soon as a battle ends, a timer will begin counting down, and when it runs out, you lose your rank and have to start over. This means you will have to grind items and it’s a good idea to plan out a route around an area that will let you hit as many enemies as you can, as fast as you can. A trick I found particularly useful was to leave one enemy and start scouting out the next mob while your AI companions deal with the final enemy. This will give you some extra time to explore and track down more foes.

To throw another little wrench into the situation, increasing your rank and farming for items you will also be tempting fate. As long as you have a rank and are stringing encounters together to build it, you won’t have any access to the experience you are gathering and you won’t be auto-recovering between fights. Will you risk taking on that larger mob, netting a bunch of good drops, or should you call it quits and get that level-up that’s waiting for you? It’s a nice mechanic that just adds another layer to an already rich combat system.

When you aren’t fighting snowmen, hedgehogs, and bunnies, there is a good chance that you will be hopping around the landscape or racking your brain to figure out the solution to a puzzle. Before playing CrossCode, I wasn’t aware of how prevalent puzzles would be, but color me surprised when I realized that not only were puzzles a big part of the game, but they are very well-done. Most of the puzzles I found to be the perfect balance of challenge and inventiveness, thanks mostly to incorporating mechanics that involved bouncing balls off the walls and mirrors to hit targets. Running around the open-world has an aspect of puzzle-solving, too, as you will see various chests and items out of reach, and you will have to figure out how to reach them by jumping over pits and navigating walls and plateaus of varying heights. This incentivizes exploration in a fun way, and there’s a sense of satisfaction and surprise when you’ve found that hidden route or you discover a secret area that just appears when you get close to it.

For as good as the puzzles are and as tight as the gameplay is, what blew me away the most with CrossCode is how breathtaking the sprites and pixel art are. Players familiar with the RPGs from Square Enix’s golden age on the Super Nintendo will recognize the much of the inspiration here, stemming from titles like Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana. You will explore scorching deserts, wintery mountain peaks, dark, dreary mines, and advanced technological laboratories. Each location’s visuals are all done with such expert craftsmanship, that you could take a snapshot and hang it in your room, and it would look fantastic. Monster designs, especially the screen-filling bosses, are finely detailed and exude such personalities and charm. You’ll find yourself saying “awwww” the first time you see the cute bunnies before they then pounce to destroy you.

“You owe it to yourself to uncover the secrets Shadoon and CrossWorlds with Lea and friends in CrossCode.”

As you play, you will find more and more cute nods to other franchises that the developers clearly love. Items like the Phoenix Feather that come with descriptions that are a clear homage to the popular Final Fantasy curative item. Another that may seem familiar is the Salty Ice Cream that is, “Best enjoyed at sunset on top of a clocktower.” My personal favorites of these are the Metal Gears that are, “Just gears made out of metal, yepp,” and the Masterball, which “Heroes once used this device to capture legendary fiends.” I’m not going to lie, skimming the item descriptions turned into one of my favorite pastimes in this game, so be sure to check them out as you go, too.

The love that Radical Fish Games has put into CrossCode has resulted in a game that will be talked about as critically and with as much praise as other masterpieces like Shovel Knight or The Messenger. CrossCode’s mix of exciting exploration, chaotic yet tight combat, vast skill trees, and clever puzzles that all wrapped up in some of the most beautiful pixel art in the past decade is an experience any fan of RPGs should partake in. Some of the dungeons do go on a bit long, and I found it to be a little annoying at times (the first dungeon having ice physics was a bold choice). I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the exchange system with the item vendors and found myself wishing for a more traditional crafting system, but these small gripes did little to tarnish my overall experience. Every new area I found myself in or new items that contained a nod to pop culture or games from the past put a smile on my face.

In short, Radical Fish Games has raised the bar for retro-inspired indie games. You owe it to yourself to uncover the secrets Shadoon and CrossWorlds with Lea and friends in CrossCode.

July 16, 2020 11:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/crosscode-review-cross-out-some-time-to-play-this-gem/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=crosscode-review-cross-out-some-time-to-play-this-gem

[robertnsvg6529-blog]

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[ganymedesclock]

This may sound like a weird question, but if Yellow Diamond and Steven do interact, how do you think it would go? And a weirder question. how do you think a Yellow Diamond and Connie interaction would go; for some reason, I don't know why I am interested in the latter, but I am, you know?

I’ll focus for now on YD and Steven, mostly because I feel like the main avenue YD would acknowledge Connie and seriously pay attention to her at this point in the game is either through Steven or through the other Crystal Gems- most directly, through Rose because Connie is literally taking up Rose’s sword- and I think Connie would deserve better than that. Also because my thoughts on Steven and YD interacting ran long. 

I feel like if YD goes into the interaction knowing about Steven’s gem, and knowing he’s either Rose’s son, or, under the assumption he is Rose- she’s going to be deeply conflicted.

On the one hand: this is everything she’s been trying her absolute hardest to not think about. Everything uncomfortable about Earth, about the war, about loss, really comes right back to Rose. 

On the other hand, YD is too smart for the inconsistencies not to add up. She’s a scientist, a researcher, and kind of a perfectionist. She wants to box things neatly, and clearly label them- sort what’s important and what isn’t. Her pride hinges on it, but it’s also her main means of relating to the world. 

And Steven doesn’t box easily. He’s very much something new and unusual.

Considering YD as a character who’s going to develop, and a character who we’re going to explore- we’ve already seen her confronted with that kind of dilemma (confront the scary thing and gain new information vs. reject new information, but avoid the scary thing) and choose avoidance over knowledge in Message Received- it would both further explore YD as a complicated character, and serve the plot narratively, if at least tentatively, YD’s decision with Steven is geared more towards confrontation than avoidance.

Because that will require her giving Steven, at least in some manner, a platform to speak on. It’ll require her paying attention to him.

One of the main themes of SU is catharsis, in terms of how you only heal from bad feelings by letting them out. Crying Breakfast Friends isn’t just a joke on how much people cry in this show- the main times we’ve seen in-universe plots, the character cry as a resolution to conflict. Amethyst is weirded out because “why would you want to watch something about crying?” but overwhelmingly what we see, the universe of CBF is actually rather happy. In Cry For Help and the Steven Reacts short it seems to overwhelmingly have a cast that cares about each other, and wants to support each other. The introduction of antagonistic figures in a play-by-play parallel of The Return culminates in a negation of conflict and compromise specifically centered on the Jasper-analogue character (and people still think there won’t be a Jasper redemption….)

I stand firmly by the fact that Yellow Diamond is not evil. She’s done a lot of harm, and she is responsible for her actions. But it’s worth mentioning that thematically, YD occupies the role expected of the main villain. She’s Steven’s counterpart on Homeworld- not the only authority, but the main one, and the one who seems the most personally dedicated to trying to keep things running.

So what’s interesting? YD is staunchly anti-catharsis. Her only song so far is literally titled “What’s The Use Of Feeling?” and shows her trying to stifle her own emotions while encouraging Blue to do the same. She’s positively miserable- it’s damaged her job, her relationships with others, her emotional health, everything- but she is trying to respond by forcing down further and further on feeling nothing. The logic of the show, over and over again, is telling us YD won’t get anywhere until she allows herself to feel bad. Until she actually lets those feelings come out.

Steven is in the role of the main hero. This means that narratively, he’s matched against YD. And as the hero of this story, Steven is, at his most triumphant moments, the champion of the show’s morals: among them, catharsis. Part of this is that Steven’s drive to understand people often leads to him picking at and dredging up conflicts and feelings in their past (consider Horror Club, the initial falling out between Lars and Ronaldo would never have come to light, not LG herself been revealed, if Steven hadn’t been the main catalyst in bringing Lars to the lighthouse. He did it obliviously, but it still happened)

YD engaging Steven is going to challenge YD on the battleground of her own feelings and her desire to bury them. She’s going to have to confront Steven because he’s dangerous, because he’s a threat, because YD leaves herself no room to feel in her duty- for the good of all Homeworld, she has to face this new leader figure of the Crystal Gems or risk losing everything she’s worked for. And that confrontation means we’re going to see more things slipping through the cracks the way it did at the end of “What’s The Use Of Feeling, Blue?”

That whole interaction in That Will Be All between her and Blue gives us, I think, the main conflict in YD that Steven will be able to exploit to get past her determination to avoid Earth. Because as much as YD doesn’t want to talk about Pink, doesn’t want to talk about Earth- if she thinks it’s her duty, even if nobody else is actively telling her to go and do this, YD’s sense of responsibility will override her sense of avoidance, seemingly, every time. Now, this sets her up in an awful place because as we see in Message Received, YD’s determination to hear out Peridot’s report even though it was beneath her set her up in an awful place.

Basically, YD should not have been making that judgment call. She knows she’s an emotional mess when it comes to Earth. She’s too biased to possibly be an effective jury. Peridot calls her out on not being objective and YD has no rebuttal besides “It doesn’t matter, I’m in charge!” which is weak, and as a ruler praised for her logic, YD would know it’s weak.

Preceding Message Received with YD’s reputation wasn’t designed to go “ha ha, but YD is a liar and a hypocrite” because YD really isn’t a liar. When she doesn’t have a good reason for doing what she’s doing it’s painfully obvious and she doesn’t really sugarcoat it. If she’s annoyed about something, even when that something is as sensitive a topic as Blue Diamond’s grief, that she shares and empathizes with, people hear about it. 

It was meant to show us how much YD has crumbled on the subject of Earth. That YD’s rage against Earth is actually inconsistent with the core of who she is as a person. Of who she would be, if she wasn’t mired in grief and her own awful coping mechanisms, and seemingly, isolated from almost any earnest support. (Blue cares, it seems, but Blue also won’t contradict her even when they do disagree, and Blue is also too buried in her own grieving to provide any kind of good support for YD)

So where’s Steven going to come into this?

Like a wrecking ball, honestly.

Steven is carrying a massive amount of feelings and issues. It’s enough that, as people have pointed out, he’s turning to resources to help him sleep at night. But Steven is also the champion of ‘talk about your feelings’.

There is literally no way that YD can engage with Steven without him getting under her skin. There is no way YD can address or focus on who and what Steven is without touching that hurt. He’s everything she’d want to avoid, packaged in a way where her sense of duty draws a big neon arrow in that direction and says “you live to serve Homeworld. Your people need you. You have to go.”

Even in a direct fight, if I’m correct in my theories that YD is all attack- Steven’s power set is an incredible defensive tank. He inherits his powers from someone who was able to dig her feet into the ground and put up a shield and tell a planet-wide corruption bomb “nope,” and it didn’t hit her or the people right behind her. And I think Steven’s stamina would win out against YD’s attacking force, because it would make a very strong thematic implication here:

Steven is supported. He’s loved. He’s honest with himself and he lets those feelings out. Where he’s headed is overwhelmingly positive, even if it hasn’t seemed like that lately- his current distress are more or less a kind of growing pain because he’s becoming less and less complacent with the idea that the Crystal Gems and Rose were completely justified. Who he was in An Indirect Kiss could not have challenged Rose the way he did in Storm In The Room, and especially couldn’t have let her go like that afterwards.

And the same thing that I think is going to drive her into conflict with Steven is also going to carry her beyond that. Her sense of duty. The fact that at the end of the day she really, genuinely, does want to do right by Homeworld. If confronted, in a way that she can engage with, the realization that she’s hurt them, I really do think YD would want to do better and be willing to work for that.

…Hopefully, also, YD loving herself would be in there somewhere but I’m just going to say at this point I would not really bet on it. 

[housebeleren]

Theros Beyond Death Odds & Ends Part 2

Just when I thought we’d gotten most or all of the info we were going to get on Theros Beyond Death before the holidays, a couple more tidbits were dropped. And the Magic community (and I) have thoughts about them.

Theme Booster Rares

First up, we have the announcement of the Theros Beyond Death Theme Boosters. Normally, I’ve given literally zero thought to these, but this time, there are changes. 10 rares, two of each color, that will be possible pulls in the Theme Boosters. Of them, a few seem potentially interesting for Brawl & Commander, particularly the three below.

Once these were previewed, the opinions came in rapidly, and from what I’ve seen, the feelings are generally quite negative, mainly regarding the distribution method. I confess that I am... torn.

On the one hand, I understand the theory behind these cards. Every set has some number of cards that are designed for Commander, and don’t particularly fit into the set itself. Think Clone Legion in Dragons of Tarkir or Indomitable Creativity in Aether Revolt. These cards are basically unplayable in Limited,  rarely find uses in Standard or other Constructed formats, and end up effectively being whiffs when opened in normal boosters. As Commander has grown in popularity, so has Wizards’ need to create more cards geared towards it. Putting these cards in the main set would warp Limited too much, so an ancillary product is really the main option that makes sense.

On the other hand, this contributes further to the issue I was mentioning in my last post, which is that it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep track of the cards in a given set and how to get ahold of them. Additionally, every card printed not in the main set has the possibility of being the next Nexus of Fate, not intended for major Constructed play that suddenly finds itself a $50 card as the lynchpin of a Standard archetype. We’re seeing this with Korvold, who’s spiked up in the last month as he’s found Standard play, and it’s likely that there will be more. If these cards end up being very limited in supply and the single prices are high, it’ll end up being a major feel bad.

I’ll just say for me, the jury’s still out on this one. If the supply of these is very small and I have to shell out more than a couple bucks to get the ones I want, it will be very frustrating. And let’s be clear, I am NOT at all interested in actually purchasing the Theme Boosters, just to end up with piles of Commons. (Seriously, you get SO MANY Commons. The chaff abounds.) But if they are readily available for reasonable prices, it may turn out that people are being too preemptively critical of this move.

Either way, I do think Wizards needs to do some simplification of the product lines. Shit’s getting confusing AF.

Theros Beyond Death Story

Thennnnn there was this little drop: Theros Beyond Death Story on Cards

In particular, “Note that for Theros Beyond Death, there are currently no plans for an ebook, so make sure to check out this page throughout preview season.”

And, as confirmed by the good people at Hipsters of the Coast, there are no plans for MTG web fiction either.

This is, to put it mildly, disappointing. After several years of solid story presentation with tight connections to the set design (Tarkir-M19, to be specific), this past year has been one misstep after another. 

A Brief Digression

First up in the past year, Guilds of Ravnica & Ravnica Allegiance have basically no story whatsoever, though the “life on Ravnica” bits of web fiction were enjoyable, if tangential. The greatest shame of this is that Django Wexler “The Gathering Storm” series is truly a fun read, and was well-integrated with the corresponding sets, but probably failed to get high readership due to the super-delayed and bizarre method of distribution. Fortunately you can read all of it HERE, and I highly encourage you to do so, because these were honestly my favorite MTG stories since M19.

Despite the lack of lead-in lore, War of the Spark had the benefit of having probably the most story-engaged player base Magic has had in years, thanks in large part to a truly outstanding and honestly game-changing trailer. Then it succeeded in squandering virtually all of it by presenting a mediocre book (which failed to deliver on a number of preset plot points, such as the Jace/Vraska mind-erasure scheme) and a set of cards that was largely incongruous with the corresponding book beyond the most rudimentary of plot points. 

Dack Fayden not getting a card despite being a major viewpoint character in the book? That card where Liliana confronts Bolas and defeats him with the Chain Veil that didn’t actually happen? And there are countless other similar examples. I get it, these things happen, and as has been pointed out many times, the timelines involved in MTG’s card set creation don’t line up well with the story timelines. 

But at the end of the day, it was unsatisfying. Magic is a brand, it is a business. And the end result of all the hype of War of the Spark? I felt let down, less interested, and less invested in the brand than I did before. To be absolutely clear, I have purchased less sealed product from Standard sets, participated in fewer draft events, and consumed less MTG related content since War of the Spark than in the 3-4 years leading up to it. And I know I am not alone. The story matters, because for huge segments of the playing population, it is a critical way in which we connect to the cards, aka the product. Without that connection, it becomes *just* a game, and there are tons of games out there.

These feelings were amplified by the complete absence of story from M20, an otherwise excellent core set, the decision to make the Wildred Quest (which I have heard is excellent) only available as an e-book (a format I do not typically engage with), and the total and utter clusterfuck that was War of the Spark: Forsaken. (Don’t take my word for it, take The Professor’s.)

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Which brings us to now. Theros Beyond Death is coming up. Standard, despite being better since the recent bannings, is failing to draw interest. Tournament attendance is down.

Magic needs story right now. 

Magic needs something compelling to remind its fanbase why this is a property worth being invested in. We have the imminent and triumphant return of one of Magic’s most beloved heroines and..... we’re not going to get any story for it? It’s just going to be the cards and some synopsis on the website? 

Why should I care?

Believe me when I say I would rather there be no story at all than have some poorly-written and problematic word vomit the likes of which we got this year. But I can’t help but reiterate how disappointing this turn of events is. My honest and sincere hope is that Wizards (and Hasbro) have learned that the answer doesn’t lie in trying to monetize Magic fiction through hastily-written books or by placing it behind paywalls. After this last year, I’m going to be very hesitant to spend money on Magic story going forward.

Instead, let people who love and cherish these characters write the story, give them time in advance to do it, then offer the story freely to the fans. Return to the method we had in the glory years of Magic’s story, which was really not that long ago, and the stories will monetize themselves. This is because the fanbase will be bought in again, and they will therefore be invested again. At least I will. 

Here’s hoping.

[adamrevi3ws]

Death Stranding

Death Stranding (A Hideo Kojima Game) is the first video game I have ever bought at launch. It is also, possibly, the utter definition of “there’s a lot to unpack here.”

For those uninformed, Hideo Kojima is a video game designer/producer/writer/director, (in)famous for making games with very fun gameplay and level design, touching yet blatant social and political messages, and extremely convoluted and goofy storylines. Most of Kojima’s games have been from the Metal Gear series, revolutionary stealth games inspired from his love of 80s action movies, with a plot that sounds like it was written by a conspiracy theorist. Death Stranding is Kojima’s first game since his rocky exit from Japanese entertainment conglomerate Konami, and the game’s release has been subject to much excitement over the years due to Kojima’s massive reputation to its mysterious plot. Well, it’s been out for nearly a month, and I can confirm that everything you’ve heard about it, good, bad, and weird, is true. But overall, I actually liked it a good amount!

I’m going to start with the bad news, so bear with me. As some may have already noticed, I am becoming quite the stickler when it comes to pacing and I am sad to announce that this has some of the worst pacing that I have seen in a video game in a WHILE. The story itself is fine. To put it simply, you play as a post-apocalyptic deliveryman in a (weirdly mountainous) America fractured and destroyed by antimatter ghost attacks. To detect the ghosts, you wear a baby connected to the afterlife on your chest.  Your goal is to deliver packages and reconnect America to what is essentially the internet. As goofy as that sounds, the problem isn’t with the story, but rather how it’s told.  After the initial premise is established, the plot of a solid 80% of the game is pretty barebones, in which you deliver packages and have small arcs around memorable characters. Then, the last 20% game is this dragging, convoluted 3-4 hour movie with the occasional mediocre “bullet sponge” boss fight or short mission objective thrown in. For some reason, Kojima decided to throw in at least 80 different major emotional beats in that segment, and most of them feel pretty meaningless because they probably should have put in much earlier. A lot of these scenes should have happened earlier in the more gameplay focused part of the game, where its frustrating cutscenes felt like they said so much without really meaning anything. In previous reviews I have also talked my irritation with moments where it feels like stories should have ended, yet they continue to move on, for better or worse. One of the biggest offenders of this is Season 2 of Westworld. I am sad to say that Death Stranding has approximately one million moments like this. When the story’s initial premise seems to come to a stop and you think the credits are about to roll, some random twist happens and BOOM it’s nowhere near done. Even when the credits happen, the game still dawdles around for 30ish more minutes until you reach a proper conclusion to the plot and the “real” credits. I’d like to remind you, however, the story itself is alright. A lot of the individual cutscenes are filled with great acting and directing (it feels weird as hell to say this about a video game) despite Kojima’s over the top and unsubtle dialogue, I just wish they were arranged in a cohesive way. This game deals with a lot of great and relevant themes, and despite my issues with pacing, I think Kojima manages to do a decent job of conveying his message to us by the end. I just hope he takes a class on plot structure before writing his next big game.

Since a good amount of this game is cutscenes made with elaborate motion capture technology, I’d like to talk about the characters. The people in this game aren’t just your run of the mill voice actors, but in fact some pretty big names you might have heard of. The main character is “played” by Walking Dead star Norman Reedus, while other important characters are played by actors Mads Mikkelsen and Léa Seydoux, and the likenesses of famous directors Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn are even major forces in the plot. While everything about these characters is goofy, ranging from names (DIE-HARDMAN), backstories, and dialogue, Kojima nevertheless does a great job of fleshing them out and using them to tell a relatively solid story about making strong connections in a difficult world. While I wouldn’t exactly say Kojima’s writing is subversive, he does a great job of developing characters further than the archetype they initially come off. Norman Reedus’ protagonist originally feels typecast as your standard edgy loner action hero, but the more you play as him, the more you realize he’s just kind of a quirky introvert more than anything else. Even the narrative’s “damsel in distress” unfolds to be something more than meets the eye. I think my personal favorite characters would be Léa Seydoux’ Fragile and Guillermo del Toro’s Deadman, and was frankly disappointed by Mads Mikkelsen’s relatively low amount of involvement in the game in comparison to that of others. For a game about making connections with others, Kojima does a great job of developing the connections between the protagonist (and you by extension) and Death Stranding’s ensemble.

Now, to finally answer the question that many of us have been asking for the past three years: what is it like to actually play the game? To put it frankly, it is a good game - but not a fun game. If you can make sense out of that and can find value in experiences other than the vague ideal of “fun” in video games, you might be able to enjoy this. I’m sorry about how pretentious that sounded but you have to trust me. Many have described Death Stranding as an “advanced walking simulator,” and I find that to be fundamentally untrue. Instead, it is rather an “every time you ever stumbled while hiking simulator”. Although you have the option to fight ghosts, bandits, and terrorists in your deliveries later in the game, the real enemies are the environment and the weight you’re carrying. Because Kojima has a hilariously incorrect idea of American geography, you barely run into any smooth or flat terrain. At the beginning of the game, getting nearly anywhere is an intense struggle against the elements, and in nearly every mission I somehow managed to slip, fall, get attacked, or lose myself in a river, or a combination of the four. This is why I said the game isn’t “fun”. Additionally, you’re carrying a LOT. Not only do you carry cargo, but also the equipment you need to traverse this extreme world, meaning you need to plan very carefully based on where you’re going and how much you’re carrying. Oh, let I should also mention that the cargo itself has certain problems, like conditions for proper delivery (keeping a pizza upright at all times) or issues with its weight, meaning this game is a literal balancing act. Death Stranding is very much “Man vs Wild,” except instead of drinking your piss like Bear Gryllis, you carry it on your back to throw it at ghosts (this is a real game mechanic I’m not kidding).

As daunting as that might sound, something about it pays off. I’m a sucker for good open-world games, and being able to soak in the absolutely gorgeous atmosphere combined with the sense of accomplishment you feel after making another delivery through another challenging wasteland is fantastic. Factor in the fantastic (although almost randomly occurring) soundtrack by Icelandic band Low Roar, and you get an almost meditative experience. And that isn’t even mentioning the cooperative element. One major game mechanic in Death Stranding is that, while not a proper multiplayer game, other players can leave behind essential equipment or build helpful structures for other players. I cannot count the number of times I was thankful for someone leaving a ladder for me to climb a towering cliff or building a bridge over an impenetrable river. I think I’m probably the most thankful for players who build “timefall shelters,” which allow you to protect your cargo from oppressive rain that would otherwise ruin their containers. This silent sense of gratitude and consideration for others is the core of Death Stranding, fulfilling Kojima’s overall message of choosing to connect with the rest of the world rather than isolating oneself. In some deliveries I might climb an entire mountain, find a motorcycle left for me by another player, and ride all the way down just to be stuck in a river that I can only traverse wearing an otter hood given to me by Conan O’Brien, and then another player could end up completing the same delivery in a completely different way. Death Stranding is the type open-ended of game where the stories and paths you make with others are equally important (if not more in my opinion) than the one you see in the cutscenes.

I don’t think Death Stranding will ever live up to the amount of hype it’s gotten over the years, and that’s perfectly fine. It is by no means a game for everybody, but if you’re like me and can make the grind through its slightly unappealing gameplay style and poor plot structure, you’ll find something quite unique and beautiful. I give it a 7.5 out of 10. Death Stranding, you’re pretty good!

[jaredthegreek]

Review - Star Wars Comics (August)

A very busy month and it’s only going to get more busy as we move toward The last Jedi.  This month was mostly good, but like always there are a few titles that bring down the average score.  It will be interesting to check out all the new titles coming out the rest of this year and hopefully they will be of a higher quality than some of the less Star Wars series. 

AUGUST:

Darth Vader v2 #4: It is a bit of an exaggeration, but it feels like this book is 50% splash pages. The story continues with Vader wounded as his Jedi target attempts an escape.  Vader repairs his body and gives chase leading to another duel between the warriors.  This is a nice display of power in this issue and the ‘show and don’t tell’ aspects of the storytelling works really well.  In fact it is to the benefit of this book that we don’t get as much terrible Charles Soule dialogue.  The art for the characters looks great, but like the previous issues the backgrounds can sometimes just decline into color gradients.  Overall, this feels like a lost mission from The Force Unleashed, which is a good thing.  If you want more Vader killing everyone action this book is looking to be a good place to go.

Doctor Aphra #11: The chaos swings into high gear as this series keeps getting better.  Rur goes mad and begins a killing spree while Aphra learns that her droids have betrayed her.  All the various criminals are put into a life and death battle as Aphra tries to get everything back under control.  The ending was foreshadowed in a previous issue, but is still really great. The quality writing in this series makes it a joy and the expressive and well designed art only adds to the experience. This book looks great and the design for Aphra with the almond shaped eyes is a nice touch.  It cannot be stated enough that this is an impressively done series that is well worth the read.

Star Wars #34: This is one of those issues where you should probably pick up an alt cover as the main one looks terrible.  Despite that, this is a shift in the story of this comic as it turns toward Lando and Sana as the leads.  However, like the previous issue this is more of a filler story and doesn’t add more to the overall mesh of the universe.  At best you get some character development for Sana and at worst you wasted 22 pages of beautiful art to watch a weak smuggler adventure unfold.  The writing is good despite the story being bland. It comes down to strong dialogue that helps save what could have been a terrible book.  The art is amazing and it really makes it worth reading this adventure. The lack of an on going plot is bothersome, but perhaps all these side stories will have some kind of pay off further down the line.  Overall, it feels like this series is getting a little stale and it might be time for a story that leads into the development of Hoth as the rebel base and the conclusion of this volume of the comic.

Doctor Aphra: Annual #1: This was a weaker story for this series.  It works as a .lead into the current arc showing how Aphra started setting things up for her sale.  The other half of the book is Black Karrsanth telling his backstory to an odd set of reporters.  It is interesting to learn more about Aphra’s Wookiee companion, but it isn’t enough to make this a worth while expansion.  The art is great with some nice pencils and good coloring.  It helps make this story a little more interesting due to the framing and style of this book.  Overall, this is an average comic, but for Aphra this is a step back despite having the same writer.  However, as an annual it can be skipped and the current arc can still be enjoyed.

Poe Dameron18: The story continues as the two teams push forward.  Poe’s team learns about Oddy’s mission and attempt to rescue him. Meanwhile team btwo is taking the footage of the First Order being jerks, but stupidly give away their position. The story is passable, but the writing is a little bland and not very interesting.  The art is mostly good except for character faces, which still look like weird plastic faces with wrong emotions.  These are the same problems the book has had since issue one and will likely have until the final issue.  This arc has some potential, but it is moving slowly and probably won’t have much to offer when complete.  This series feels like it should have ended with L’ulo’s funereal as that was an emotional capstone for the series.  There is no real way to top that and the longer this drags on the less entertaining the whole mess becomes.

Rogue One #5: The penultimate issue follows the team as they land on Scarif and begin the attack to get the Death Star plans.  There are some clear changes in this issue from the movie including more dialogue from Jyn and Bodhi.  This issue showed a slightly different rebel team and sped up the time between arrival and assault.  That all came together to make this a quick read that sets up the final battle really well. The art is mostly good, but there are a few scenes were the detailing is lacking.  This isn’t that big of a problem as the faces are great and the framing is well done.  Despite the fact that this is an unnecessary experience, as the movie is available for purchase, it is an incredibility enjoyable comic that should be read.

Cassian and K-2SO - Rogue One #1: This is a prequel to a prequel that follows Cassian and his team as they try to steal some Imperial codes from a backwater planet.  Like most simple plans it goes awry and Cassian and his team are stuck in an Imperial trap.  From there K-2SO is found and things get a little more fun as the team attempts to make their escape.  This is a well written sidestory with some great K-2SO one liners.  The story is simple, but it feels like a ‘real’ rebel mission instead of an excuse to fight.  The dialogue is fine and the new commandos are interesting enough to not e boring.  The art is great and an edge above the main Rogue One series.  This is a great one-shot story that fills in a little background while still providing a fun adventure.  Hopefully we will see more of these one-shots with this creative team.

Star Wars 35: The sidestory adventures continue as Han Solo attempts to transport Grakkus the Hutt to a rebel prison.  Things go wrong and we see Han Solo think his way out of another Imperial trap.  It’s a fun story and works better than the previous two, but it would still be nice to move onto the hanging plot threads from over ten issue ago.  The ending features R2-D2 being chased by Stormtroopers implying that the next issue will give me my wish.  Despite this arc not being all that great, the dialogue is spot on.  You can almost hear Harrison Ford’s voice as you read his lines and the twists of the story work really well as a fun fill in adventure. The art is amazing as the inside of the Falcon looks movie accurate, characters look great, and the chase with the Imperials is vibrant.  This is easily one of the most fun issues of this series to come out in a while.  It’s nice to have a more light-hearted adventure and I hope this series can continue to stay on track.

Mace Windu – Jedi of the Republic #1: This new mini-series follows the beloved prequel character of Mace Windu during the Clone Wars.  Sadly this feels like one of the bad Clone Wars episodes.  The story follows Mace as he heads out on a recon mission with Kit Fisto and two red shirt Jedi.  The first part of the book is all long drawn out exposition and the second half is a messy battle scene and a really stupid ending.  The writing is weak at best, while there are a few fun exchanges it doesn’t make up for a bland story and the mostly banal dialogue.  It feels like the writer watched the prequel movies and tried to mimic that style of storytelling and dialogue.  The art is also heavily flawed.  The action scenes feel cluttered and messy.  Meanwhile, faces and body proportions look good half the time and horrible the other half.  While the idea of a Mace Windu story or other ‘Jedi of the Republic’ stories is a great idea and a good direction for the comics they need to be handled better than trying to match up with the dialogue and design of Attack of the Clones.  If you love the characters of Windu or Fisto then give this a skim otherwise it is better off skipped unless the quality has a shocking improvement in the next few issues.

[vileart]

Northern Dramaturgy: Joan Clevillé @ Edfringe 2017

Joan Clevillé Dance presents: 

The North 

The tale of a young man’s journey in search for meaning in an unpredictable environment blending dance, theatre and music

Conceived and directed by Joan Clevillé 

Dance Base, 5 – 13 Aug 2017 (not 7), 16.15 (17.15)

In this new work co-commissioned by Tramway and The Place, choreographer Joan Clevillé explores our fascination with the idea of North: the landscape, the light, the creatures that inhabit it, but also the people, the dark humour, the silence. 

Fresh from the success of their debut work Plan B for Utopia, The North creates a place with its own sense of time and space, where being lost is the norm, and letting go the only way to survive.  What was the inspiration for this performance? I was born in Barcelona, but after eight years of living in Scotland and working in other Scandinavian countries like Sweden, you could say that the Northern landscape, its people and stories have become a very important part of my everyday life. I am also fascinated by the complexity and subjective character of the idea of ‘North’, a notion which is always relative to where you stand and that keeps receding as you move towards it… The North we present in the piece is a place of the imagination. Rather than describing a realistic environment, I was interested in evoking a human experience, a sense of disorientation, of being humbled by an environment that is stronger than us and that forces us to let go in order to survive. Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? Absolutely! We have lost our communal spaces to discuss ideas, to come together as a community and share our questions and thoughts. A place to be inspired and challenged by others. To recognise our common nature and to share our vulnerabilities. 

Digital and printed media can certainly give us a chance to express ourselves and discuss issues, but it is something very different to physically come together in a theatre (or a church hall, a gallery or a public square) and go through a shared experience together. It is a completely different way of engaging your mind, body and soul. Performance is about sharing energy, it is physically palpable and that’s why it can be so powerful. How did you become interested in making performance? I started creating work quite early on in my career as a dancer. It was a way to develop my own movement vocabulary and find my own interest as an artist and a performer. Nowadays, it is more a way of learning about myself, of digging into my own soul and sharing what I find with others. It helps me to understand the world inside me, but at the same time, it is also my way to ‘act’ in the environment around me. I often feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the challenges we currently face, both on a personal and a global scale. Making performance is one of the few strategies I have to make a direct intervention, to attempt to bring change. I know from my own experience, that performance has a hugely transformative power and can have unexpected impacts on people’s lives. Is there any particular approach to the making of the show? I don’t feel like I have a particular method of making work. I didn’t have a masterplan before we went into the studio and I could have never predicted what the show has become. The creation process started with lots of reading and the study of art works and films related to the idea of North. We then spent some weeks researching in the studio with the dancers. I kept on swinging between very formal approaches (related to movement exploration) and more theatrical ideas. 

At some point the pendulum stopped swinging, and the work started to take shape. This is probably the most intense and critical part of the creation, where you have to manage the uncertainty of the process and trust that the piece will reveal itself. Once we had a draft or rough sketch of the work, there was a long process of crafting and interrogating the material further, working in details. Feedback from an outside perspective was really important at this stage. For this production, we were very lucky to work again with Dramaturg Advisor Ella Hickson.

She has an incredibly sharp eye and, as a playwright, her field of expertise is meaning. It was really useful to have her input in making sure that our ideas were communicating the way we wanted, and that the world and characters we were creating on stage were consistent with themselves. Does the show fit with your usual productions? Yes, I think that audiences from Plan B for Utopia will definitely recognise the choreographic language and dramaturgic approach in this work. However, I also feel that we have taken that language further. From my point of view, it feels more confident and mature, less concerned about pleasing and more connected with our own interests as a company. In any case, the piece has a different feeling: there is more space and intrigue in The North and the humour is darker and more surreal. The performers do not address the audience directly, but we watch them interact with each other as characters inhabiting their own world. An audience member told me it was like pressing her nose against a snow globe! What do you hope that the audience will experience? I hope that audiences will find themselves immersed in a world of its own (both familiar and disconcertingly strange), and that they get a real taste of a specific place, a place with its own sense of time and space. I also hope that they connect to the main character’s journey in search for meaning in an unpredictable environment. His journey reminds me very much of my own struggle in trying to feel comfortable with uncertainty… What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? I think constantly about the audience’s experience. Every detail matters to create this sense of ‘world’: from the pre-show music to how the dancers enter and leave the stage.

Of course, we also considered the rhythm of scenes within the full arc of the piece, and how the different languages (dance, spoken word, singing, puppetry) are introduced and intersect with each other. For me, it is important that the audience’s experience flows in an organic way, so we don’t notice the seams or the changes of gear. There is also a fine balance to strike between meaning (how much information we give to the audience) and abstraction. Although there is a ‘plot’ in the work, I didn’t want the audience to get too distracted with it. Hopefully there is still enough room for them to lose themselves and to connect with ideas/feelings/experiences that are beyond what can be said. Sourcing inspiration from film and literature, the company explores the concept of the elusive North through the tale of one man’s whimsical journey through a barren landscape. 

With original music composed by Luke Sutherland (former collaborator of Mogwai) and a striking lighting design by Emma Jones, Joan Clevillé Dance merge their characteristically playful style of dance and physical theatre with puppetry. The North will feature dancers Solène Weinachter (Lost Dog, Gecko, Scottish Dance Theatre), John Kendall (balletLORENT), and Eve Ganneau (Andersson Dance, Scottish Dance Theatre).  Following the world premiere at Dance International Glasgow in May, Joan Clevillé Dance will be bringing both The North and Plan B for Utopia, which has been selected as part of the British Council Showcase and Made in Scotland Showcase, to the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  Artistic Director Joan Clevillé said “The idea of the 'North' is different for everybody, depending on where you are geographically, and is also permanently elusive, as it always recedes as you move towards it. The North we describe in the piece is a place of the imagination, a liminal space in between places, somewhere between a limbo and a waiting room. There is definitely a Nordic feel to it, but it’s open, desolate and unpredictable. Rather than realistically describing one environment, which cinema is so good at, I am more interested in the human experience. I wanted to evoke a sense of disorientation, of being humbled by an environment that is stronger than us and that forces us to let go in order to survive.

I am thrilled to be coming back to Dance Base to present our second full-length production at the Fringe. It’s been amazing to continue our collaboration with the team of artists that created Plan B for Utopia. Our followers will recognise the playfulness and versatility of our performers, but this new work has an intriguing, almost cinematic feel, that we hope will take audiences on a completely different journey”. Joan Clevillé Dance is an independent dance company based in the city of Dundee, Scotland. Led by Artistic Director Joan Clevillé, the company’s practice is rooted both in movement research and experimentation with theatre and storytelling, challenging the conventional boundaries between genres. The company aims to create intimate works that are honest, original and thought-provoking, inviting audiences to share the performers’ enquiry about themselves, each other, and the world we live in.  Joan Clevillé Dance Company will also be performing their acclaimed Plan B for Utopia at Pleasance Two, Pleasance Courtyard 21st – 27th Aug as part of Made In Scotland Showcase and British Council Edinburgh Showcase.  

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