#in the same way that I relate/compare every piece of media with themes of fate or free will/identity or ancient mystery plots to noir

[musical-chick-13]

Do the people know about Id: Invaded. Do they know. Do they know about unhinged murder anti-hero of all time Akihito Narihisago and ultimate sad wet cat villain man Tamotsu Fukuda. Do they know about feral danger crime-solver girl Koharu Hondomachi who referred to the destruction of an entire dimension world in someone’s head as “pretty.” Do they know about the series’ exploration of the themes of what it means to be “broken” and to choose hope and self-improvement and how to really define the term “evil.” DO THEY KNOW ABOUT HORRIBLE YET TRAUMATIZED MURDER LADY NAHOSHI INAMI AND HER PATHETIC (COMPLIMENTARY, AFFECTIONATE) RELATIONSHIP WITH HER BOYFRIEND AND MURDER ACCOMPLICE

[limeinaltime]

Some doodles for the hyopthetical Nope sequel/side story because I won't be talking about it a lot. I do not kill my cringe, I kill the part of me that cringes.

Kind of reworked Black Spade and renamed her Blackjack, because that's a more fitting name (and way more fun to say). She's the scariest thing in the skies of Southern Cali, but there is one singular person who has gone unscathed so far just because she knows how to not set Blackjack off, and everyone else who does kind of has it coming.

Media also seeks out the families of the victims or instigators of tragedies without any real sympathy or respect for what they're going through, and the Star Lasso Experience is one hell of a tragedy. Jupe definitely has family and is a pretty well-known child star thanks to the Gordy incident, so I'm sure he and the rest of the Park family have been harassed over the years for more about the story and their relationship with the child star himself.

Maya is Jupe's distant hypothetical cousin, a recluse who lives out in the country, running a small farm business and generally living a simple life compared to the attention and fame her cousin chased. She doesn't understand why Jupe suddenly starts contacting her about selling her horses (Maya also works with a few and learned to ride as a kid) until after the new of what went down in Agua Dulce reaches the mainstream news and the media starts asking her about her relationship with her cousin. Which is awkward, since the two were never close to begin with and Maya hasn't seen him ever since Jupe made it big as a kid. She only knows about him, and eventually his wife and kids, through the TV. While frustrated upon piecing together what Jupe was attempting to do, she is still upset, mostly at the fact that she'll never get to know her famous cousin for real and that she took any chance of doing that for granted. It's not a big void in her chest, but it still exists anyway.

Blackjack isn't a newcomer to the farmland; she's been there for a while and figured out that the presence of these humans brings more food so she leaves the farm itself alone. While Maya's parents got to ambitious with business and tried to make Blackjack into an attraction, Maya just does her job and doesn't look at the sky when there's a weird cloud hovering overhead, which is what's ultimately saving her from suffering the same fate as her parents. The two have a symbiotic relationship, in a way, and while Maya thinks about how cool it would be from time to time, she's always known that Blackjack can't be tamed or controlled. The news of the Star Lasso Experience only hammers that in further.

Being an older UAP, Blackjack's not as afraid of humans, especially Maya, so she'll sometimes lose her cloud disguise and come down to observe whatever's happening at the ranch or eat whatever network is stupid enough to ignore the warnings Maya's set up to keep Blackjack from eating people. Maya doesn't look at her, but has gotten used to having a giant black disk big enough to eat her house hovering over her from time to time. The isolation Maya lives in can get a bit lonely, so it's nice to have company every once in a while, even if that company could easily make her suffer the same fate as her cousin and parents.

There really isn't much to say about this AU. There could also be some commentary on how far media will go to get the story, on things like true crime podcasts being disrespectful towards families trying to move on from the tragedies... there's no real story, but I think it fits with the themes this movie's set up. I'm also going to slap in that Maya is the provider of the horse feed Haywood Ranch uses and no one ever finds out that she's related to Jupe until later just because I think it's funny.

[nbapprentice]

You said a while back that while Supergiant games (Bastion, Transistor, Hades) was mostly okay, you had some words about them. I was curious as to what those words were, since Hades' full release is soon.

okay. alright. ive been playing hades lately so i definitely want to give my two cents (or dollars by the size this is gonna get). but let’s go Step by Step

the good: i want to throw a whole Endorsement over supergiant games with the art direction and its characters, which is what keeps me coming back again and again, and what i can assume is that most people are attracted to. 

gameplaywise, they have a Format they stick to which has become their staple, not to their detriment but to their advantage, like... gameplay tropes, so to speak, that they stick to (such as the addition of special conditions that give a disadvantage in exchange for more long-term rewards)

i fucking adore that they take one concept per game, go for it, and when they’re done they are Done; they don’t bother with sequels, they don’t want to run things to the ground and i fucking respect that. They have their themes, and they stick to them (to various degrees of success).

that said, like every piece of media, they are not perfect and this has to be analysed and spoken about

CONTENT WARNINGS: genocide and ethnic cleansing, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, suicide, and mentions of incest, and a general Spoilers warning

bastion: touches on ethnic cleansing, and not in a way i’d say is satisfactory. our narrator and one of our Sympathetic characters is one of the men who worked on a world-ending weapon meant to use against the Ura (a group of people coded as East Asian) which after a bit of googling is literally called “the final solution” if there was ever a war between the Ura and the Cael (who feel like rly tan white people to me). jesus fucking CHRIST.

we also meet more Ura other than our two named characters and we have to kill most of them. so that fucking blows.

the game tries for “being a genocidal monster will get you fucked up and blown up” which duh, but i feel we shouldn’t have had a person responsible for war crimes be one of our friends no matter how bad he feels about the whole thing, or the people victim of war crimes become villains in the latter half of the game. zia’s father could’ve taken ruck’s role ez pz.

transistor: the weakest of their games, imo; the lore and writing are fairly flimsy and i did not come out feeling Satisfied, especially because it had this rly good build-up that did not pay off. not to mention... their villains? 3/4 were gay people. lol. two married guys (not even explicit, you only realize by their shared last names) and the ps*cho lesbian trope (iirc she wanted to kill the protagonist’s lover or something). the female protagonist also ends up killing herself to live forever in a digital paradise with her dead lover. it’s. god. 

very Aesthetic, GORGEOUS music, interesting gameplay; had potential, i do not feel like it lived up to it at least as far as the story goes.

pyre: now this one. this one’s BEEFY. where transistor felt flimsy, pyre is rich; lots to sink your teeth into, rich in lore and loveable characters, again w the beautiful music, themes of cooperation and togetherness. my favorite of the cast is volfred sandalwood, the only Black (or, well, Black-coded) revolutionary i’ve ever seen portrayed with this amount of sympathy.

onto the bad: they literally have a Class of character named “Savage”; there’s the “mystical mentally ill person” trope; there is an overwhelming amount of explicit m/f pairs (one of them being. a romance that formed in a single day and then both of the characters were somehow willing to risk it all for each other? PLEASE) while the only hints of gayness are... hints. especially when Jodariel (another of my favs) is teased to have feelings for the player regardless of gender then only gets an ending with a male character with whom she has nothing in common 🙃

hades: and now. this one. music: gorgeous. character designs: spectacular (aphrodite is straight up naked but it’s so... natural and casual, it doesn’t feel sexualized at all). voice acting amazing. character interactions charming and endearing. as a greek mythology nerd, it was nice to see them go for the obscure shit like Zagreus at all, NOT portray Persephone and Hades as a loving couple, AND portrayed the gods as the bunch of petty assholes (some more benevolent than others) that they are. imo they’re too generous with their portrayal of achilles but i’ll allow it.

and finally... it seems all those criticisms about having all the gay characters hidden in the shadows paid off, cuz we got (aside of patroclus and achilles) a bisexual polyamorous protag. Holy Shit! and it’s not even playersexual, romance whomever you want shit without the routes recognizing each other: he explicitly talks about how he’s thinking abt them both (though it’s like “yeah usually mortals take one lover but gods love many huh” polyamory is a human thing too bro!!!!!)

and this is where it all goes, well, at least vaguely downhill lol. ok so the incest warning i gave up there? well. it’s not... outright incestuous. but it has some ugly implications. i want to emphasize: the characters never refer to each other as siblings, nor do they treat each other as such (thanatos, in fact, only recognizes hypnos as his brother, and megaera only sees the other furies as her sisters), but they were all raised by the same woman, Nyx... zagreus and thanatos even grew up together (im assuming megaera didnt meet zagreus until he was fully grown).

this is complicated even worse by the fact that they tried to trick zagreus into believing Nyx was his mother. he realized pretty early on this was not true but like... adoptive mothers, anyone? granted i can believe that bc of the attempt at deception that probably ruptured any attempt at actual familial closeness, and it’s not like hypnos and thanatos saw zagreus as their brother at any point, so they were p much aware of the truth too. with the fact that thanatos even looks like goth miles edgeworth (im not kidding you can google him up right now its literally edgeworth in a cowl) i rly feel they were aiming for Childhood Friend Anime Rival Man than the “surprise kiss bc ur not actually related <3″ shit. zagreus never once refers to nyx as his mother in-game, and also refers to thanatos and hypnos as her sons, never his brothers.

so yeah, like. if one’s feeling generous, zagreus and thanatos are more of a “my father is emotionally closed off and neglects me so my best friend’s mother basically raised me” kind of situation... just pulled off in, perhaps, the worst way possible (why didnt they just say Zagreus was told Hekate was his mom, that’s such an easy fix? or that he was born of nobody other than Hades??? [gestures at athena])

but then, the gods. aaaaaaaahhhhahahahh the gods. demeter shows up! and she calls zeus, hades and poseidon... her foster-brothers. which somehow would make the persephone thing less fucking awful, apparently. they really. really really did not need to do that. she could’ve just said “my fellow gods” or whatever. or my “god-brothers” or something, to pretend it was just a weird god alliance thing??? i dont know but implying that foster family isn’t family is just... bro, the dynamics still exist.

Don’t Like That.

i even contacted supergiant games over this. they reassured me they were even trying to avoid the incest of the original myths bc they didn’t want to mess with such a heavy theme. i believe them... but i really think they didn’t think this through. compared to something like fire emblem fates this is nearly benign, but the implications don’t look good :/

tl;dr of the tl;drs: i admire their artistic philosophy and the heavy emphasis on fresh gameplay, characters and their relationships; i appreciate that it seems that they listen to criticism?; i don’t appreciate that they didn’t think to at LEAST talk to adoptees when making a game about family.

[curemoonliite]

The Amane Twins—An Analysis

(A bit of background here—I was an English major in college, and sometimes I come across a piece of media that really makes me want to scratch my “overanalyze everything” itch. This time, it just happens to be a gacha game.)

Magia Record, the Madoka Magica mobile game, greatly expands the universe by creating magical girls that fulfill standard anime tropes, but with their own flair. Yachiyo is the aloof and troubled magical girl, Ria is the lovable narcissist, Momoko is the tomboyish older sister type, and so on. But what has really piqued my interest throughout my gameplay is the way this formula works with Tsukuyo and Tsukasa Amane, whom even the game itself refers to collectively as “the Amane twins” or “the Amane sisters” more often than not.

These two are members of the Wings of the Magius, a quasi-cult-like organization, and tend to fulfill the role of “creepy cultist twins.” Compared to the other Magius members, they’re not particularly competent, but the way they’re characterized is nevertheless striking. The twins’ closeness is inspired in equal parts by horror movies and by incest-themed anime. The game often makes a point of teasing a ship between them, from mechanics (the buffs the two give to each other) to story (one is rarely seen without the other). But is this just pandering to a certain crowd, or does it, as many things do in PMMM, serve a darker narrative purpose?

Here’s my take on it: Tsukuyo and Tsukasa are in love. And that’s the worst thing that could have possibly happened to either of them.

Before the Magius

The only real details we get of the Amane sisters before they joined the Wings of the Magius comes from their in-game side stories. Consistent with their characterization throughout the game, the twins’ stories are practically interchangeable—each come from a different end of town (richer/poorer), each are overworked and abused by their single parents, and each are told, above all, to never investigate the other side of their family. The other side is a disgrace, the rich and the poor can never coexist, so the status quo should be upheld at all costs. Then they meet by chance at a shrine, and everything changes.

We can tell that Tsukuyo is the Ojou in these stories, and Tsukasa is more on the genki end, but their reactions to the other’s existence remain much the same. Both believe the other is a supernatural doppelgänger and refuse to believe at first that they have a twin. Through these stories, we also get to see the friends each has outside of the Magius—Mifuyu in Tsukuyo’s case and Kanagi in Tsukasa’s. Both end up going back to their friends initially once the class conflict becomes too much.

Narratively, there is a lot to unpack about Tsukuyo and Tsukasa’s class conflict. When they go through it, they act in ways that the Main Story never really shows. This is the first time we see them as fundamentally different rather than interchangeable. Rather than being able to complete each other’s sentences, they actually disagree. But instead of realizing that this is a healthy sisterly dynamic, the Amanes come to the mutual decision that acting this way will only tear them apart again. In their eyes, it’s now them against the world—so silly personality differences and the squabbles that come with them are no longer to be tolerated.

So sure enough, by the time Kyubey comes, their wish is the same. And that’s when their real codependency starts.

After the Magius

Cults, by their very nature, are isolating. Anyone who possesses beliefs outside the cult’s line of thought is labeled as dangerous, someone a member should no longer interact with. It should then come as no surprise that immediately after joining the Magius, Tsukasa severs all contact with Kanagi, the only real friend she seems to have. We don’t really get to see the impact this has on Tsukasa’s psyche, but chances are, it wasn’t good.

Tsukuyo and Tsukasa continually struggle to make friends within the Magius organization. Even though Tsukuyo’s friend Mifuyu is also Magius-aligned, she outranks both of them and cannot have the same relationship with Tsukuyo as she had before. Alina has nothing but bored curiosity towards them in the best of times, and outright murderous rage at the worst. Sure enough, the other is now the only one each other has—this time, for real.

If we are to read Tsukuyo and Tsukasa’s relationship as romantic—as the in-game narrative often encourages us to do—we are to read it as an absolute obsession, similar to how many read MadoHomu after Rebellion. But even in that case, the obsession is largely one-sided—as a goddess, Madoka is made to care about everyone, while Homura is almost exclusively single-minded towards Madoka. What makes Tsukuyo and Tsukasa worse—and would still make them worse even if they weren’t related—is that it is mutual.

Tsukuyo and Tsukasa are one. They cannot live without the other, no matter how hard they’ve tried in the past. Their deepest wish, as manifested in their Doppels, is to be the only two people left on Earth.

And they are not a fairy tale. They’re the lovers you might see in a particularly trashy YA romance—the ones who live for each other and no one else, who mope whenever the other is away, who consistently keep one another from developing as their own characters.

In the real world, we have a word for that. It’s called codependency.

So What Does This Mean?

Let me ask you, if you read a news story about a pair of underaged twins who:

were both abused by authority figures

were basically separated at birth

developed trust issues towards anyone who wasn’t them

ran away from home to join a cult

and fell in love with each other while inside the cult

How would you react? It’d be a media circus for sure. Plenty of people would be sickly fascinated with it, just as many would be disgusted by it, but for me, it’s just tragic. Not Romeo and Juliet tragic, but the type of tragic that makes you ask “where the fuck were the parents.”

And that’s a lot of the problem with the Amane sisters as people. Both are genuinely good, passionate about injustice and liberation in their own misguided ways. Neither led the other onto a dark path.

In short, Tsukuyo and Tsukasa’s relationship is the result of societal failure.

The doctor failed to tell each twin of the other’s existence. Their parents failed at creating a safe environment for them. And as a result, they failed to see their own worth.

That worth, and the trust they were never able to give, could only be found in each other’s embrace. And there’s something more fundamentally fucked up about the Amane sisters when you see them like this instead of just sisters who are a little too creepily close.

Is this what the devs intended from these interactions? It’s tough to say. For all we know, they might want us to glamorize it. But what we can say is that they’ve given us a ton of reasons not to. They’ve given us a tragedy every bit as dark as any Puella Magi’s, if we read between the lines a little.

The only way Tsukuyo and Tsukasa can ever be healthy, well-adjusted humans is if they leave the Magius and get some serious help. But unfortunately, such is not always the fate of a cult victim, or any victim of abuse.

Such is not always the case for a Magical Girl.