#not to revive a dead horse

[freaky-flawless]

I don't have a strong opinion on the Jack and Sally dolls as I'm not a fan of the franchise itself, but I am a little irritated that they could give Jack a completely unique and accurate body and head sculpt but couldn't be bothered to give Elvira even slightly bigger tits.

[kittyhasskittles]

Chapter 1 is such a vibe in Red Dead,also just felt like drawing Aura's cute little Colter outfit,and the bonus of Arthur Morgan and his blue coat.

(I accidentally got his first horse killed in my first run so um-yeah it don't exist in my current game-:| )

[magicalgirlsirin]

the elysian realm: well written, poorly directed

NOTE: this post is an elysian realm critical look by a relative newcomer to hi3, i dont really have the grace of having played it as it came out. i enjoy the elysian realm, but in my opinion, its absolutely a mess with regards to storytelling.

Part 1: so no theme?

When I titled this post, I meant it quite literally. There's plenty of stuff within Elysian Realm that is well written, I'm not here to argue that it isn't (with some small caveats). Most characters are interesting and engaging, and have a wealth of available text to further their depth. The real problem here is that all that detail and work isn't in service of anything. There is no theme to the Elysian Realm, no point of narrative, no common through line. Elysia introduces us to the realm, implies there's a point, that the 'unfinished lives' of these 13 trailblazers is going to go somewhere, and then waffles the plot all the way from the initial game mode through Elysium Everlasting, with a final cinematic which I will get to later for my thoughts on why it doesn't work.

The initial game mode that kicks off the story is just oddly paced. The first chapter is relatively fine, just serving as an introduction to the realm and its mechanics both in and out of universe. One of the first questions I had was just "why does kevin have a weird basement paradise with ai copies of his mostly dead friends and then also a version of himself and hua who are still very much alive" and I'm loathe to report that the realm never bothers answering this question or elaborating on why it exists. At risk of sounding like HoC, it really is a meaningless diversion with pointless people existing redundantly.

The second and third chapters, however, are unforgivably bad. I realized upon reflection they were probably heavy focus on Mobius and Aponia respectively because their suits were debuting at the time (or something to that effect) but it feels like such an agonizing detour to focus on them with seemingly no other motive. Learning about the two furthers my understanding of the Flame Chasers as a unit, I Guess, but doesn't illuminate anything about the realm or even Elysia.

I will get back to Elysia.

Part 2: No really, why is Mei here?

Another major problem with the Elysian Realm is that Mei pretty much ceases to be a character. Even though she's the point of view, she barely expresses any of her own opinions, thoughts, or even basic input outside of rebuffing Elysia's attempts to flirt with her. Sure, she still has some snark and sass to her, especially when interacting with Kevin, but outside of that I can barely remember anything important she does. Which is crazy! I could easily describe any other contribution she's made to various chapter sets/arcs within the game, but the Elysian Realm is absolutely dead air.

This ties into the fact that the realm has no theme, there's not a point, so Mei isn't going on a character journey. You could argue that Elysia is influential to Mei's arc for gifting her the power of origin, but that's not really... character growth. Mei becomes origin because she accepts the blessings* and ideals of the Flame Chasers, but because she didn't learn dick or shit in the actual realm, everything kind of just rings hollow. Mei functionally is meant to be a stand in for you, the viewer, to self insert into the realm and imagine that you're the one interacting with everyone, which is such a disservice to Mei.

*I want to briefly sidebar to curb the misconception that Mei was given the power of origin because she collected all the signets, or that the point of the realm was to find someone to collect them all to have that power passed along to them. Mei getting the power is unrelated to the realm's existence as far as I'm concerned, given that Hua says this:

I trust that Hua is telling the truth here, mostly because she has no reason to lie to us. What this does leave us with is, unsurprisingly, still no answer on the purpose of the realm. Vague handwaving of Kevin saying that Mei has earned the right to "seek answers" only for the narrative to do a weird slight of hand where Aponia goes "now you get to know Elysia's secret because you defeated me kyaaaaa" is not the point. I doubt Kevin allows people into his basement for the possibility of finding out some dead chick from 50,000 years ago that no one outside of WS would actually know by name was secretly a herrscher.

Speaking of which.

Part 3: The Elysia was always a herrscher reveal is dumb

I know this is the most contentious part of the discourse™ when it comes to Elysia, but I cannot understate how stupid it is. I can accept retcons of herrscher order, begrudgingly but yes I will concede if the game wants to commit to it. What I cannot concede to is the game saying that Elysia was born a herrscher.

All the Flame Chasers got MANTIS surgery. This is a fact. Elysia received it as well. Don't you think like, I don't know, literally anyone involved in the procedure would have noticed she has honkai radiation off her like a nuclear bomb? This is such a basic hole in logic and it feels like the game almost wants you to forget that this is a thing, but I didn't, I've spent the past 2 months digging through all the realm game mode text to come to this conclusion.

I also have grift with the fact that she was a previous era herrscher with sapience, since a lot of the tragedy of the previous era is because of the loss of humanity. Kevin was fucking devastated by the HoF emergence, because he hesitated. He saw Murata's face and thought she was still in there. But she wasn't. Kalpas lost Emile to the HoD. Mobius lost Klein, not only to her own over-ambition, but to HoL. Sakura lost Rin to HoC. All of these are essential to their stories, and it's because those herrschers were just mindless tools, godproxy emanators of destruction with no higher order thinking skills. Only a will to subjugate humanity.

Oh but actually Elysia is a sweet and special perfect girl who never did anything wrong, she didn't betray anyone, she was always the bestest girl who loved humanity and was a friend to everyone because she's so lovable and you should love her too ❤️❤️❤️

Yeah no I'm not doing that. I want to make it clear that I actually really like Elysia, and it doesn't take much to fix the parts of her story that have no logic or retcon themselves in the span of a chapter. She's very close to being well written, which makes it all the more frustrating that the narrative continually bends around her to make her have less flaws. Elysia is pushy! She's overbearing, and tends to needle at people whenever she notices something. She forces Mobius to try on clothes she likes but Mobi doesn't, she constantly flirts with Mei and calls their hangouts dates even if Mei doesn't seem interested, she's a little selfish and plays pranks, all of this stuff is very endearing! I just can't deal with the other things the game does to try and make me like Ely more.

Part 4: Even if I try to fix it, the realm is broken

I could sit down and outline ways to fix Elysia's writing, the way the realm's story is structured, and it would be fine and dandy in service of smoothing over the stuff I didn't like about it, but you know what it wouldn't fix?

Mei.

Yeah I think we all just keep forgetting about Mei being in here. The thing is that because the Elysian Realm is such a dead weight in canon, you almost can't make Mei go through character development because it wouldn't flow into Transcending Finality in a comprehensible way, and this post isn't about the problems with the final chapter set of Part 1 (although I do promise I have some complaints about the writing choices in there too).

The realm treating Mei as a self insert, and not really serving her arc either, is seen most obviously in "Because of You", the ending cinematic. One that famously doesn't feature Mei at all in the fighting. The ender for this arc is Elysia, because all things start with Elysia. It's Elysia Impact all the way down, except for the part where it has literally no bearing on the main plot.

And that's the problem, isn't it? The only thing the realm really does is augment our understanding of Kevin, and only barely so if you want to split hairs about how Sim!Kevin isn't our Kevin, given that there's a few stray dialogue moments that actually go against Sim!Kevin and most other characters insistence that Kevin is an immovable rock of a man.

So at the end of it all, what do I even say? I love the realm, obsessed to death with it, all the characters are my favorites, well written, absolutely dogshit in terms of story direction. I find this contradiction to be reflective of Elysia, a character who exists only as a vessel for whatever the writer/story director thought would be cool, instead of making it mean anything.

[vintage-tigre]

[sp3akfri3ndand3nt3r]

My horse died in Red Dead Online because I got trapped in a bounty hunter mission loop and I think it’s the closest I’ve ever come to turning to the dark side

[lesbianpegbar]

playing shadow of the colossus for the first time and i already know that this protagonist is gonna face just the worst consequences to their actions. sorry king i’m stringing you along on what i know is going to result in an ass kicking of cosmic proportions

[talentforlying]

WHY DID THE AUTHOR KILL YOU OFF?

DEATH AS REDEMPTION. some things cannot be forgiven. what a shame, then, that so many consider forgiveness to be the be-all, end-all of character redemptions. or that forgiveness in itself is the redemption. whatever sins you committed, whatever actions weigh your soul down, the author has decided that you cannot make up for it . . . and so they will not let you try. no, you will not even be allowed to try and put as much positivity into the world as possible. ( you cannot restore the balance, but surely you could do something? ) instead, there is only one thing to do: sacrifice yourself. you'll take a bullet meant for the hero, or tackle the villain off a cliff ( dooming you both ), or you'll use the last of your magic to get everyone else out safely.

when the heroes speak of your death, they will act as if you have undone all your wrongs, as if dying was the holiest gift you were capable of giving. i cannot help but wonder . . . how much more could you have done, if you had only been given the chance?

[bottomvalerius]

when Julian and Donna were dealing with plague shit, they insisted that Julian “hot box his plague mask” and he was out of commission for a few days off of one hit

[feluka]

certified jade curtiss song

[cleaverxfever]

"You must think I'm stupid? Huh?                                                                                    I must look stupid to you!  I can’t tell you everything... You helped me get out of this mess! You told me it would be exciting, didn't you?                     Well                                     I'm

                                              fucking bored!

 I'm done man                                                                                           I've had it!                                              I want back in!                                         And you can’t stop me!                                                This stupid game's not over!, YOU HEAR ME?"                     Semi selective / Active / Roleplay Blog for Hotline miami’s Biker / Divergent  Crossover/OC friendly / Semi literate RULES _ ABOUT 

[charlessmith]

@new-austin ARTHURS BEEN WHISTLING IN THE WOODS

[hatchetmode]

If you already gotten attached you have to play carefully, bc if your horse dies that thing stays dead. Had to learn that the hard way :(

oughh yes my friend told me that could happen !!! i've stocked up on horse revivers and have 3 on me rn ;u; i would legit be so crushed if my horse diiesssss

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

It was fairly common during the Classic Series for an Associate to take a fall and twist an ankle,

but that doesn’t mean the Revived Series hasn’t hit on that trope a few times.

[alexa-nowak]

I am so desperate for Arcana fandom revival, you can't even imagine

I want the whole tv series with the setting in that fancy world,to see Red Plague period for all characters,I want it all 🥲

I don't hold any hopes for the game itself at this point, but I definitely dream about some interesting lore additions,I would read a book about this universe

I literally just want something to bring this dead horse to life,to be honest

Hopeless dreams, absolutely hopeless

And I miss Julian 💔

[animentality]

@weavewithshadow pushed yet another durgetash brainrot specimen into my brain, which is...

what if withers didn't just instantly revive you the way he does in the game (which is total horse shit btw, but i'll talk about that later)?

what if you were, for all intents and purposes, dead, and your entire camp actually has a fucking reaction other than "knew you could do it buddy?"

what if that part of the story was treated with the actual emotional weight that it deserves?

SPECIFICALLY.

what if gortash is waiting at your camp to yell at your companions for letting you die?

like, "you made them a hero...and then you let them become a martyr. if they'd stayed by my side, i would've protected them."

he'd be fucking pissed. absolutely livid, that they let you sacrifice yourself, and they call themselves your friends. It's an utterly irrational reaction, because you made that choice, but he is furious nonetheless.

but then withers would bring you back, and you'd be naked and shaking and stunned to be alive again, and gortash takes off his no fear coat and covers you with it.

and then, gone is that smooth, unwavering confidence and unshakeable, haughty demeanor. he is suddenly shaking too, and he's realizing, he wasn't ready to lose you again.

and now that you're back, again, despite all odds, his emotions are too powerful.

especially after months of wearing that coat to keep his grief from consuming him.

and you know what, while i'm being soppy and stupid.

he falls to his knees, and takes their face in his hands, and he says, without his silly little preening nobleman voice, in an honest to GOD, rough, weak little gasp:

"you shouldn't have left me."

and you know he isn't talking about leaving him at wyrm's rock.

[shebsart]

this isnt gonna be coherent but thinking about Sandor and his relation to death..

he calls his horse stranger (just alone him identifying with the stranger, the seen-as-a-monster god of death and outcasts), constantly talks about how many people he has killed and how it gives him joy, keeps this "butcher" persona that thinks killing is necessary to survive even when its innocents, talks proudly if his sigil that was based on three dogs that died trying to protect someone,fights and kills a literal undead man-gets burned in the process- only for him to come back again lol (ok this ones kind of a reach but worth mentioning for the undead gregor parallelisms) , shows arya how to give the gift of mercy "that's where the heart is, thats how you kill a man" and he denies to dig him a grave.

and after arya denying him the gift of mercy(and goes on to train to become a death giver no less lol). and then "the hound is dead" but he is "revived" by a monk-like figure and becomes a literal grave digger.. almost like hes digging graves for all the people he has killed before, maybe its also like hes serving the stranger in a way. death has become from a violent act to a quiet state of being for him at this point of the story

also i like that he dies and starts over with a different identity figuratively while his brother dies literally and comes back with a different name( if you can call it coming back)..

i dont exactly know what to make out of this as a whole because i was having seperate thoughts but i love that its there and always loved the The Stranger part to his character.

bonus from his wiki because they remind me how much i love these books and how every character connects to each other and the story so seamlessly: