#this game & franchise has me in a chokehold you have no idea

[pen-in-hand]

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[rv2xlga]

another rant: hey guess who's back!

was and am still going through some hyperfixation moments but persona5 will always stands strong for some reason?? no clue what sorta chokehold that franchise has on me but i homebrewed our old 3ds and now im playing q2 on it (rando side note but i might get my own computer soon!) its all fun and games.... a bit but i was playing through some of it and now i have things to say! more shit to talk, how exciting

i should be doing my homework yes, but i find it interesting the clash of games because each persona game is literally so different and they are all so of the time. persona as a franchise taught me that video games are rly nothing special and the person franchise is like the least of that like all the games are just what everyone else is doing at the time even from the first one ToT but i think the 90s cunt that the personas serve in the first 2games couldve been such a staple for the later games and no, the chokehold of being trendy and relevant and like..."relatable"... very embarrassing so again, its interesting to see those all clash. i love persona 3 a lot because i genuinely believe that out of all the persona games, that one is truly the best. i havent seen the 1st one yet and i will never in my life ever say persona 4 as it is objectively not the best one but i think the 3rd part just has the best ending and the best sense of everything all the games offer and offered afterwards in one and i appreciated it alot for that and it was such a beautiful ending like when i finished it, it was such an experience i truly felt i could move on from how disappointed i honestly was with the fifth part but to further my point, i love the way they summoned personas in the third part even if it was uhm. violent. i think it had a charm and such a sense of uniqueness and it brought up a lot of bigger questions about how we view ourselves, our "personas" and the way they get affected by society which all play into the people we are and become and all that.

i think one reason i rly hate the fourth game is because of just that. the game talks about the person you "truly are" or whatever by literally feeding into societal norms and pushing the made up "laws" that are placed on human emotions that are so vast and complex to even have one think about. its so ridiculous and not that persona3 really does a better job at that either but i think the whole gun thing and the implications/substance that could be dissected within that is again, what gives it its charm. for example, shinjiro and strega's story was there to introduce how difficult it was to control one's persona, that you were practically being held hostage and it almost was like a separate entity within oneself. now, i dont personally like that all that much because again, its still you and the way the game handles it feels very action movie early 00s were the plots always just. divert completely somehow but again, the implications are what save it. i know shinjiro's storyline was nothing of that sort at all but all the scenes with mitsuru and akihiko and even ken bring in such a different perspective. we see this emo loner (lol) who basically does drugs to control all the crap thats going on inside of him and we see the way these two smart kids who've always had it relatively easy in that aspect pressure him and handle what he goes through all in the wrong ways. it feels almost like an allegory for growing up, pretty straightforward but i feel like that sense of realness is what the rest lacked. no more queerbait, no more fan service, yea theres quite a lot of it in persona3 definitely but hey, we all know high school sucks and a lot of it... isnt pretty. the whole idea that you need to find a way to handle the mental and control that "being" inside of you is done soo much better than anything in persona5

i know that technically, the way they handle the personas in persona5 is much better with the whole outfit thing and even with anything and everything, i think the way they handled akechi's personality thing was pretty well considering.. many things ToT but it just feels so too the nose, nothing about it feels special. it doesnt give us suicide allegories (lmao) it doesnt give us any genuine stories. i feel like even though so many of the individual character plotlines are so heavy, like ann's (hello??) and akechi's are so real and terrifying in a way that that happens to so many people constantly, just all of them really and none of them ever really make you feel like something deep for them, yk what i mean? i cried so much for ken and shinjiro, it was soo embarrassing but it made you feel so much for ken, even if that whole situation was very unrealistic, i think the way they handled it in the beginning was wonderful. nobody ever really said anything or suspected much but ken was going through so much all at that time, shinjiro was always there for him but never said anything either and of course, with nothing to stop it, time took its course and things ended the way they did. as tragic as it was, those were the consequences that followed him through the cracks of no confrontation. even to aigis dealing with her robotic brain lol and her lack of emotion, lack of humanity towards the world. such an unrealistic situation but the implications made it what it was, aigis is such a staple for us neurodivergent folks and i know autistic people love her lol. her character meant so much to me because i related so much to her rather than i did with futaba, who is actually a human being

when they unlock their personas, you dont see struggle, you dont see will. its tough, having to accept who you are and continue to brace through it. even being shot a bullet to the head, yukari for example, was still scared to accept herself even if she knew what life had in store for it. she didnt want to relive that trauma with her father and know the truth but she knew that she had to if she wanted to move forward and be the better person. like idk it just means so much more. again, you dont see that same struggle and the costumes dont even reflect who they really are and even if it could, you would never know. mind you i never finished any of the confidants but damn i managed to learn so much of the p3 characters and connect with them only through my first playthrough and that says enough. even doing ryuji's confidant (which i love btw omg) i slowly started to let go of that love for him and his story with the dirt they pay him afterwards its just so lazy. i love that concept from the 3rd game, even the way they handled arcs in p2 was better, i dont like they way they acted about the personas but i feel like that combination into the 3rd part that focused on all aspects was something that DEFINITELY shouldve been kept and NOT turned into whatever persona4 was good lord!

ok so thats all i have to say for today, ill been either knocking out (and severely regretting it in the morning) or drawing for a bit...then knocking out! life is such a mystery sometimes amirite (cries my eyes out) rough week, but q2 has been fun so far much better than starting q1, i am never going to be free from p5r chains! lord have mercy on my soul! heres some pictures i took of the 3ds to accompany this horrifying rant :')

like the whole determined line.. ugh i love it! it really encapsulates what the whole persona thing stands for! like yes! this is about us discovering our true selves! us becoming better people! us embracing who we are through the power of connection to the world around us! like ugh, yes life is beautiful how did you know??? i love it..... persona 3 you will always be famous... and you too femc you deserve better every redditor who calls her a pedo is like. omfg get a hobby (a job and wife too while youre at it) i bet you call naoto a woman you fuckass loser smh

[sapphire-weapon]

I remember you saying you disliked ID and particularly how Leon was written. While I'm far less familiar with RE compared to you, I thought I'd ask for you to elaborate and go more in depth as to why you thought Leon specifically was poorly portrayed. I actually enjoyed ID and him. Was it a masterpiece? Well, no. It's a video game CGI film. I first came away thinking it was pretty bad, but I learned to enjoy it for what it was.

I found most characters pretty straight forward about who they are what they wanted to do. Claire needed a LOT more screentime, they fucked her up via laziness imo. Leon was fine. He was very cringe inducing (shudders on behalf of Shen May), but I thought it was a good insight to the chokehold that his duty has on him. How he struggles with making the most ethical choices, guilt and how it impacts his relationships with other people. Did ID do this particularly well? Not exactly, but I looked for it and found it.

I HARD agree that Death Island tops it all though. It had a solid story, a great villain, gave Jill a phenomenal comeback (cough, minus the sexist anti-aging bullshit that all RE women are forced to face), we saw Leon getting his shit wrecked (which I personally found funny as hell) and it was actually FUN to watch. It stuck out to me as a film that anybody, particularly those unfamiliar with the franchise, could easily follow and piece together, which other adaptations didn't do. To me, they only felt like "hey, fans who like these characters will GET it, others won't understand the appeal", but maybe I'm wrong.

Anyways, apologies for the novel length ask, I hope you're kind enough to indulge me, lol. Wishing you a wonderful weekend. (Apologies for grammar mistakes, girl I'm high as shit and just really, really enjoy talking bs with other fans, lmfao! I'm the Mr. X anon.)

I didn't say he was poorly portrayed in Infinite Darkness. I said his voice seemed inconsistent and, as a result, gave me the impression that he was going through wild mood swings at varying points of the show.

One scene that particularly comes to mind is towards the very beginning when Jason is trauma dumping on him, like... Leon is the one who initiates that conversation seemingly out of concern/empathy/genuine curiosity, and his tone starting out is one of like "hey lil buddy what's on ur mind we need to be able to work together on shit if we're gonna survive" and then like

out of nowhere, after Jason's story is over, Leon just like

snaps

for no reason? And starts shouting about how no one gives a shit about Raccoon City?

like

where the fuck did that come from and are you off your meds because you seem a little unbalanced like you might be off your meds

shit literally just comes out of nowhere, almost completely unprovoked, and I have no idea why.

So that's why my takeaway was: I don't feel like ID knew what they wanted Leon to actually be in terms of his placement in his character arc. Is he Mr. Supportive Man of Experience Who's Seen Some Shit? Or is he just full "fuck the police" angry mode? Because putting both not just in the same scene, but in the very same conversation, is just bad dialogue writing.

Like, Leon's character wasn't the problem. There was never a point where I was like "wow, that doesn't sound like him." It all sounded like him, but it sounded like him if you took his lines from the entirety of his character arc and just picked and chose at random which ones he was going to say.

It wasn't the character writing. It was the dialogue writing. Those are two different things. The character was fine. The dialogue was shit.

Infinite Darkness really could've used a first draft.

[ladystylestores]

Homebound with EarthBound | Ars Technica

EarthBound got a nice Nintendo Power push. But in retrospect, Nintendo of America, you could’ve tried a lot harder with this trailer.

Give me 10 minutes. I need to defeat five giant moles so the miner can find the gold… which I need to get $1 million and bail out the rock band… who can arrange a meeting with the evil real-estate-developer-turned-mayor I need to beat down.

My partner doesn’t get it, which I completely understand. When I first tried EarthBound, I didn’t either. The now-cult-classic SNES title first arrived in the United States in June 1995. And I, a nine-year-old, had no chance. I craved action as a kid gamer, and that largely meant co-op, multiplayer, and sports titles (a lot of NBA Jam, Street Fighter, and Turtles in Time). Nothing about EarthBound, particularly when only experienced piecemeal through a weekend rental window, would ever speak to me. As one of the most high-profile JRPGs of the early SNES era, it embodied all the stereotypes eventually associated with the genre: at-times batshit fantastical storylines; slow, s l o w pacing; virtually non-existent action mechanics.

Frankly, I wasn’t alone. Based on its sales, not many gamers seemed to understand EarthBound, and it’s not clear Nintendo did, either. What on Earth does the trailer above say to you? In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the company again and again (and again) tried to find a hit JRPG in the States without much success. Nintendo literally gave away games like Dragon Warrior—as a Nintendo Power pack-in—and still couldn’t find an audience. Even the heralded Final Fantasy franchise struggled initially, as Nintendo brought it stateside with a big, splashy map-filled box that no one seemed to care about in the moment.

But a quarter-century later, I can’t stop pushing the power switch on my SNES Classic to spend time with Ness and company. Part of it is me; I’m much older and, in theory, have more patience despite how things like social media and smartphones may be slowly destroying our collective ability to focus. People liked EarthBound better in 2013, too, when Nintendo finally re-released the game for the first time in decades on the WiiU Virtual Console. But part of my newfound appreciation is inevitably the timing of this recent play-through. The compounding pandemics of 2020 have changed the way we all approach the world; FOMO has all but evaporated. (Do I need to constantly doomscroll on Twitter to get all the depressing news as it happens? Should I plan a vacation so I can sit inside doing nothing particularly active somewhere more scenic?) In some ways, there is nothing but time, meaning an indulgent, leisurely, complex game suddenly offers a new value proposition.

More than any of that, however, all my time spent homebound with EarthBound—nearly 20 hours and counting despite a newborn and no work stoppages around the Orbital HQ—comes down to the game itself. To a subset of modern gamers, EarthBound‘s legacy may simply be introducing Ness to legions of Super Smash Bros. disciples. But on the 25th anniversary of this game’s arrival, it actually seems more suited for our current moment than ever.

My parents had no idea what kind of game I was renting at age 9.

Nathan Mattise (yes, photographing his living room TV)

Excuse me, what is happening here?

This cop has watched way too much Elliot Stabler in his life.

Nathan Mattise (yes, photographing his living room TV)

At least the pro at the Onett Times captured the moment: “Police attack innocent boy!!” Evidently it was caught on videotape by a bystander and will air on the local news.

The Insane Cultists are obsessed with blue but really look like they prefer white.

Does Scientology involve beatdowns?

Nathan Mattise (yes, photographing his living room TV)

Why are the kinda crazy ones obsessed with having their name on the building?

Nathan Mattise (yes, photographing his living room TV)

A plot for 1995, a plot for 2020

If it’s been a while or (like me) you never bothered in the first place, EarthBound takes place in a not-so-subtly veiled version of the US, literally called Eagleland in-game. Our hero (whose name defaults to “Ness” but can be changed as you see fit) grew up in the sleepy and seemingly mundane suburb Onett. Other “numbered” suburbs like Twoson soon follow.

Things are not as idealistic as they first appear. In these shining cities on various hills, an alien called Giygas has landed and seeped an evil influence into everything. You have to fight Runaway Dogs and Cranky Bag Ladies now. And post-invasion, every town has developed a problem for you to work through, each feeling eerily prescient in 2020.

In Onett, for example, bad cops feature prominently. Even after you rid the town of a pogostick-riding gang called the Sharks, you can’t just leave Onett because Captain Strong and his police force instead threaten to beat you down for trying. EarthBound originally came out within years of the beating of Rodney King, and it features four cops ganging up on a kid. Captain Strong literally attacks you with submission chokeholds. Nine-year-old me must have been confused if I even got this far, but adult me did a double take as society continues to grapple with the tragic deaths of Black Americans like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and Elijah McClain at the hands of police.

The cops of Onett merely come first, but that’s far from the only blunt observation on American life awaiting EarthBound players. In Twoson, your future friend and squadmate Paula has been abducted by a religious cult called the Happy Happy Religious Group. The group obsesses over turning everything blue, but, uh, they resemble a much whiter real-world analogue and maintain a similar disposition toward others (“Your existence is a problem for me and my religion,” says cult leader Mr. Carpainter before he attempts to dismantle you). EarthBound‘s creator Shigesato Itoi may have again been responding to events of his day, as the Boss Fights Book on EarthBound points out the game was developed during the feds’ siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

But with their character design and dialogue (“I think those who won’t paint everything blue are opposed to peace,” another says), the Happy Happy Religious Group probably doesn’t remind players of David Koresh anymore. Instead, my mind wandered to a much different modern-day cult, draped in white sheets or Stars and Bars, that pushes red on everyone instead. (As EarthBound’s subtle commentary-cherry on top, Paula’s “pray” ability during battle proves unpredictable and often detrimental if used.)

These storylines, rich in social commentary, come up again and again, and I’m barely approaching EarthBound‘s halfway mark. In fact, I just arrived in the big city of Fourside where a “regular unattractive real estate” developer named Geldegarde Monotoli has risen up the political ranks to become mayor. The guy’s name has been emblazoned on a big skyscraper acting as a de facto city hall. He takes political and economic advice from a privileged, bratty neighborhood kid. And Monotoli tries (and apparently succeeds) at both forcing police to do his bidding and manipulating the media in his favor—The Fourside Post’s lead story when I entered town was “Over 70% of Fourside citizens support Monotoli.” Hmm. Perhaps, as Cord Jefferson (a writer on HBO’s Watchmen) recently put it on a podcast: “History is prescient. The things we touch on are just things that have been complaints of my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents.”

Listing image by Nathan Mattise (yes, photographing his living room TV)

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