#which imo is already a critique for me but

[spikeinthepunch]

i dont mean to just be bitching about baldurs gate right now-- i am actually enjoying it-- but an issue i am feeling rn in terms of writing, and i am not sure if thisll change as i go on (i am not far at all) is your companions not really reacting to some pretty seriously choices you make

minor but not huge spoilers. at the very early part i started making actions towards a mind flayer, that after multiple steps (like reading its mind, trying to get closer, trying to detach) no one was doing anything, they just watched. and after those multiple actions, i died. like, my character was standing there for at least a minute or more, was not moving and got closer, and everyone just let me. and vague spoiler, later on there was someone who was supposed to help me but instead tricked and poisoned me-- there were multiple steps of conversation and i really would have expected an interjection bc the thing was a plan to help *all* of us, but no one questioned this persons method that she did not explain at all, they just stood there

they have piped up a few times! but im just surprised they didnt pop up in those far more dangerous and consequential moments. like maybe they should have had their own passive checks to react differently at least, idk.

[randomness-is-my-order]

from the start, i’ve mainly been praising the show and have spoken against the minor nitpicks but i think some constructive criticism won’t go amiss. i’m always going to advocate for praise + critique but since literally all my posts praise the show (character-work, writing, directing, cinematography, literally all aspects) i’ll focus on the main issues i have with it for this one.

i’m only saying this because i do think there is merit to the conversation: yes, i agree with many other people saying the show has a very real lack of tension. the stakes are established, potential horrific consequences are alluded to, but the instances in which the action needs to take place falls short. i wanted to see percy and annabeth and grover SHOWING their inexperience through stumbling on traps (which would automically raise the tension in both medusa’s lair and the lotus casino), i wanted them to make mistakes and quick-think their way out of it. sure, there’s something to be said about conveying annabeth’s intelligence but aunty em was a great way of highlighting percy & annabeth’s dyslexia by having them be unable to read the signs. the statues could have been removed from the yard–a move that would show medusa’s intelligence instead. similarly, the fun of the lotus casino was about the creepiness that slowly and steadily builds on the backdrop of this harmless kid carival like setting. percy, annabeth and grover’s intelligence and knowledge has already been built in other obstacles so seeing them actually fall for well-set traps seems to me like a much more nuanced portrayal of the kids, their capabilities but also their weaknesses. speaking of, i was waiting for one moment of annabeth making some mistake, showing some flaw. i think it would have been cool if she was the one to lose her drachma given that she was undoubtedly jostled hard while clinging to the cerberus. grover already felt like he messed up after the lotus casino and having percy reassure annabeth after her drachma screwup would really nail in that yeah she’s intelligent and wise but she is also just 12 and she can be a bit reckless too.

honestly, i’m a sucker for flaws. i love my emotional percabeth bits to death but would i have rejoiced just as much had both of them been a little more unempathetic towards each other and been at each other’s throats for a few more episodes? yes.

i love show grover and his earnestness and savagery in manipulating a god but do i love my little coward goat boy who slowly but surely proves himself to be capable and brave? who keeps asking for food at the most inopportune moments but really has percy’s back at the end of the day? who is severely unconfident but slowly learns to trust himself more? yes! i just feel like the grover we have now was my imagining of grover in book 2-3. we never got to see his major flaws so i’m just wondering what kind of upward arc will he have and will it be as impressive as the books.

i really really appreciated that percy’s impertinence was actually something he paid a price for. it will make his continued rebellion against the gods that much more intentional. that said, i would have liked percy’s relative ignorance of the mythic world to still remain. having sally make him so prepared that he sometimes manages to know obscure greek stories sort of blends their roles in the trio. yes, each one of them is layered and there is no one super rigid position they must adhere to but this is storytelling on television at the end of the day, the characters should have unique traits to distinguish themselves. for me, percy’s intelligence was about his presence of mind and deductive reasoning which the lotus casino scene in the book beautifully portrays. similarly, his knowledge was less about facts he knew and more about the street smarts he had acquired. in some way, annabeth and percy have a weird overlap in characteristics (show annabeth feels as sassy as show percy which is not the book dynamic imo).

i don’t see these as minor nitpicks btw – i think show portrayals have changed these characters through small changes and while that is okay, it also leaves room for improvement before it is too late. there are many considerations to be made–percy’s grief, annabeth’s tackling of complex feelings about the gods, grover’s guilt, ofc. but it’s, i think, a valid critique of the show that the main trio’s dialogue and actions could be made more faithful to the books.

also, i think the direction can be more dynamic, especially in exposition-heavy scenes. there are ways to make info-dumping fun and i’m sure the directors are more than capable of exploring these options moving forward.

there are many more smaller things i would point out but i don’t want to make this longer that it already is. many people handwave alot of the critique saying that the show is for children to which i say: children’s media doesn’t mean lesser quality media–the books were literally made for children yet on tv, many scenes are sanitised, very little left not on-the-nose. i have myself mentioned how certain scenes could be impossible to film with 12 yr olds (medusa beheading) without harming them mentally in some way so i appreciate the clever sanitization there. but the action sequences do need much more edge and that’s okay to acknowledge. the show we have now is great but it is absolutely not without flaws and normalising discussion about the flaws is only going to benefit the show moving forward.

and lastly, rick might be the author of the books but there is no rule that once you like an author’s work, you will have to like all of that author’s writing. just because rick made some final decisions does not take away the fandom’s rights to question those decisions and critique the screenwriting. there is seriously no use putting him on a pedestal–and i say this as someone who adores his writing in pjo.

let’s let the fandom breathe a little. let the mild, politely conveyed critique become commonplace as much as the ardent praise because i think that’s the balance we need to ensure that season two delivers on all the fronts that season one was unable to.

that’s all. thanks for reading lol. have a nice day. :))

[ouidamforeman]

R.e. discussions abt the new Good Omens season being polarizing on whether it’s good or bad writing, I think just saying it’s bad writing is weird and dismissive of what actual problems someone would have with it, and is just dismissing what it’s trying to do because it wasn’t to your taste. I think it more or less succeeded in doing what it wanted to do, which is an entirely different metric of judgment than whether or not you LIKED the effect of what it was doing. Regardless of what issues I personally have with it, I still think overall it effectively did what it set out to.

The thing is, it reads less like a traditional season of television and more like half of a novel. It’s weird. It’s directionless and meandering not because it’s poor storytelling but because I genuinely think it’s doing those things on purpose for other reasons. This is a single chunk of a larger story and I believe the overall purpose of season 2 isn’t to like, actually have a big plot or complete character arcs? If I look at it solely from where it is and what it’s presenting to me and let go of my preconceptions and expectations it appears that this season is just trying to put a few plot set pieces in place for the continuing story, and to nestle those plot pieces in a nonlinear narrative solely focused not on character Development but on character exploration and revelation. I feel like that’s why the actual moving plot this season was a very basic mystery, because it isn’t really the point? The actual story events are just backdrop for revelatory character vignettes, and I think that if this piece of storytelling was part of a novel that included whatever season 3/the actual story conclusion is going to be then people wouldn’t have nearly as many criticisms about the writing as they do when it’s presented as a season of tv. That’s also why it reads so fanfiction-y imo. My honest opinion is that s2’s biggest flaw that isn’t something incredibly subjective is that it’s let down by the fact that it got trapped in needing to present itself as a television season with all the baggage that medium has and not something more unconventional that would be kinder to its weird beginning-of-a-novel-ish meandering. Is this something a season of tv SHOULD do? I don’t know. Is this a fucking weird piece of television story wise? Yeah. Is it now officially a different story from the original novel? Absolutely. Does it have flaws, maybe even flaws that amplify the issues already present in season 1? Yeah. Does it accomplish what it sets out to do though? More or less yeah, I genuinely think so. Now if any of that translates into “badness” for you that’s fine. I think it was an immense risk to do this kind of thing for a tv season and it’s not going to click for everyone. But that’s fine. This is a bizarre and novel-y piece of tv media that’s just sort of doing its own thing, and whether you think that’s bad or not is secondary to how interesting that is I think. I just wish the criticism was more engaging with it instead of judging it, because I think what’s happening here is both much more simple and much more complex than most people are implying with their critiques. It’s much more interesting to meet it where it is imho, even though I do strongly wish it didn’t have to be released in this technically incomplete form.

TLDR I think ppl pointing at this season and calling it bad writing are partially not actually engaging with it on its level and partly confusing objective badness with personal taste. Regardless of whether you LIKED what it tried to do or not it was at least trying to do something, something that it mostly succeeded at, and that’s all i can really comfortably judge a piece of art on

[txttletale]

I was a member of a trotskyist organization for about a year, before I left due to life circumstances. I was a left-liberal before, and this group radicalized me. they were staunchly anti-ml, anti-anarchist, and i have been considering the org as perhaps not quite so good, especially since i find myself agreeing with all that you have to say. if it contributes to having a nice time on the computer, i would like to hear your criticisms of trotskyism and/or modern trotskyist orgs?

alright so i have a few different critiques of trotskyism and trotskyists--both theoretical and practical. the primary theoretical critique i have based on trotsky's own writings is that the idea of 'permanent revolution' is completely idealistic nonsense. it rests on incorrect assertions that marx & engels made about the global nature of socialist revolution--assertions that were already visibly incorrect when trotsky was pushing the theory of permanent revolution, not just with the benefit of hindsight. ironically, a lot of the things about the USSR that trotskyists love to criticise the most (the process of collectivization, socialist adventurist interventions) are things that trotsky was the fiercest advocate of all for!

i also think in practice a lot of trotskyite organizations in the imperial core--having defined themselves in huge part by their opposition to the USSR--have historically served as useful stooges for imperialist interests. whether they like it or not, the more energy they dedicate to their public and vocal criticisms (however correct, mind!) of socialist states, the more amenable and compatible and non-threatening their positions become to imperialist hegemony. this is (imo) even sillier in the present day, after the tragic¹ dissolution of the USSR; trotskyite tendencies are positioning themselves against something which no longer functionally exists as a global political force. relitigating the Evils of Stalinism (as a matter of political line and not as a productive conversation about what modern socialist movements can learn from the failures of the USSR) seventy years after the fact is a political project founded on shadowboxing.

finally, in my personal experience, i have found that trotskyist orgs are much more sectarian and unwilling to work or communicate cross-tendency than anarchist or ML orgs. again--this is partially because a lot of 'trotskyism', especially in the modern day, has less to do with anything that trotsky wrote or did and more to do with performative rejection of the USSR (which, i cannot stress enough, no longer exists!). but like, i've seen more ML-anarchist cooperation in actual organizing on the ground than i've seen trotskyist cooperation with either of those tendencies. a lot of the major ones i've had any experience with also tend to have longstanding and entrenched organizational issues.

tldr: permanent revolution is a silly idea, trotskyist orgs have tended to align with imperialist foreign policy, modern trotskyist orgs tend to be hypersectarian newspaper sale platforms with entrenched leadership issues

¹ i'm still planning to make a full post about this at some point but you do not have to be a late Soviet apologist or a marxist-leninist or even a socialist to recognise that the collapse of the USSR and the resulting period of shock therapy caused mass amounts of human suffering and tragedy btw.

[ukyou-kuonji]

Actually I’m already so frustrated at all the anime dudes saying Suzume is “the same as Shinkai’s last two movies” “It’s just another girl meets boy romance” or that “Shinkai only does one thing”.

First of all, his last three movies could not be more different thematically, and all of them feature very different relationships and characters. Just because they feature romances and weather phenomena does not mean the content or the narrative arc of these films are the same.

Second of all, even if they were, the people I’ve heard say this keep up with things like marvel, dragon ball, and each new battle shonen of the season. Clearly Shinkai being “repetitive” is not even an issue even if he was. Y’all like the same thing when it’s action or adventure media.

Which brings me to third of all, the way these fans inherently value action media and take time to analyze each corporately churned out film in intense detail but write off Shinkai just comes across as being unaware of their own preferences. Just say you don’t personally like romance films, there’s nothing wrong with that, I promise. It doesn’t mean it is a bad film. They’re trying to critique art but being completely informed by their own personal bias. Imo a personal bias which, once one tries to intellectualize it, reveals itself as a personal bias which on some level subconsciously is informed by the patriarchal background noise of our society which insists stereotypically masculine interests/media/art be taken seriously, while stereotypically feminine interests/media/art (here the romance genre) are more easily written off.

Fourth of all, you are not cooler for disliking a popular director.

Fifth of all, it’s not even girl meets boy this time. It’s girl meets chair.

[angelsdean]

okay continuing my critique on 1x09 Home and how it just fell flat for me narratively, despite having a really good concept in theory, I have to talk about Missouri and her interactions with Dean. To be clear, this is NOT a knock on Missouri as a character, but about the writing choices made throughout the episode with how she speaks to Dean in juxtaposition to how she interacts with Sam.

First off, this is a Kripke episode so, all my criticism is directed at that man !!! So, throughout the whole episode they made the choice to have Missouri be harsher to Dean than Sam. There's a lot of this "teasing scolding" thing she does with him, which I probably wouldn't complain about this in any other circumstance because it's clearly supposed to function as comedic relief, but in this episode specifically it feels tonally off and misplaced. Like, they're coming back to their old house where something very traumatic happened. The episode should feel heavy for them (which, the fact that it doesn't is something I've talked abt already and my main critique). Dean is the one with actual memories of that night and that house and Missouri would know that and would know that it would be harder for him to face that house than Sam, so I really do not get Kripke's choice to write her treating Dean harsher than Sam in this ep.

Like almost every interaction w/ Dean is some kind of teasing or dismissing comment. And again, a lot of them are harmless and wouldn't even bother me IF it weren't this episode where it's clear this is supposed to be hard and traumatic for them (but Dean specifically!!) Like just starting off with the "you were a goofy looking kid" and "if you put your foot on my coffee table i'll whack you with a spoon" like…tonally these comments just feel out of place. The goofy looking kid one just doesn't make sense to me since John went to Missouri just days after the fire, and 4 yr old baby dean was not ? goofy looking ? That's the sort of comment you make when you're talking about the awkward pre-teen stage or something, imo. The foot on the coffee table comment just seems unnecessary to me and once again trying to go for that comedic relief angle but it just falls flat for me in the context of this ep.

And then this trend continues with saying Dean's not the sharpest tool in the shed (reinforcing this perception the narrative has of painting Dean as the "dumber one") Dismissing him using an EMF reader and saying it's "amateur", despite the fact that the EMF works perfectly fine and does, in fact, alert to the presence of spirits. Every time Dean asks questions or voices an objection Missouri dismisses him or explains things to Dean in a patronizing way and it's notable because she doesn't act this way with Sam at all. Then later, when the house is a mess from the poltergeist, Missouri tells Jenny the mom, not to worry about the mess because Dean will clean this all up, and snaps at him specifically to get to work.

And again, it just feels really weird and misplaced. And I'm fully directing my criticism at Kripke and asking WHY. What was the reason? It also feels like a lot of these interactions were playing into stereotypes of the "sassy" black woman which is just very :/ Like idk I'm just not sure what Krikpe's reasoning was for writing these interactions and for the clear juxtaposition in how Missouri interacts sympathetically toward Sam but dismissive toward Dean. Especially in an episode where I feel like it would have made the most sense to make Dean the POV character / central focus since he IS the one with memories and trauma of that house and that night.

I think the choice to make this the episode where they introduce Sam's psychic powers really took away from a lot of what the episode should have been about: going back home after the message of "you can never go home" and Dean swearing to himself he never would, and confronting that trauma and literally seeing their mother's ghost !! That should've been the focus IMO. Like they should've introduced Sam's visions in a different episode. Then had those visions take them to Lawrence, let the focus be on Dean, with Sam seeking help / guidance from Missouri on his visions as the side-plot. AND THEN, have Missouri continue to show up as a recurring character helping Sam with his psychic visions and also filling a Bobby-like role as someone they go to for cases / lore / information. Missouri says, "Don't you boys be strangers" at the end of the episode and then they don't see her again for over a decade !!!! Kripke, I am once again asking, WHY.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 3/5/2024

really fucking around in Breath of the Wild and not defeating Ganon, even though i think i am fairly well prepared, which is probably indicative of something or a metaphor for some larger issue. oh well! guess we'll never know!

listening

Rock the Jungle by The Daniel Pemberton TV Orchestra, off an album of music from and inspired by LittleBigPlanet, a video game i have never played. Daniel Pemberton is a remarkably prolific british composer who mostly does film these days but also does a lot of BBC stuff.

this is the kind of scrubby pad to the brain electronica i need sometimes. i think these are heavily filtered and processed kookaburra sounds? at about the minute fifteen mark it adds a rolling, rollicking bassline that is, as im sure we all know by now, fucking catnip to me. at about 2:20 it adds alarm blares that fade in and out of a sort of disco-y organ? it uses its five minute runtime pretty well imo. i think this was off the spotify discover weekly.

-

reading

T Kingfisher's The Clockwork Boys, recced by @rae-being-naughty lo these many months ago, and my library hold finally came in. the goodreads blurb is a remarkably accurate sales pitch so let's yoink that

A paladin, an assassin, a forger, and a scholar ride out of town. It’s not the start of a joke, but rather an espionage mission with deadly serious stakes. T. Kingfisher’s new novel begins the tale of a murderous band of criminals (and a scholar), thrown together in an attempt to unravel the secret of the Clockwork Boys, mechanical soldiers from a neighboring kingdom that promise ruin to the Dowager’s city. If they succeed, rewards and pardons await, but that requires a long journey through enemy territory, directly into the capital. It also requires them to refrain from killing each other along the way! At turns darkly comic and touching, Clockwork Boys puts together a broken group of people trying to make the most of the rest of their lives as they drive forward on their suicide mission.

i had a lot of fun with this! very pratchett-esque in its imperial critique through bureaucratic loopholes thereof, which is catnip to me, but i do think Kingfisher is simply better at writing women. the forger is an only child and it fucking shows.

i think if it were 5% more devoted to Humorous Bits and didn't have some nice character work between the forging accountant and the big sad blond paladin man, i would have gotten frustrated with it. i think it is simply more of a comedy than any of its blurbs suggest, and it can be difficult to ride that line between comedy and character growth through desperate acts without getting a little bit of whiplash. this is me being very depressed and a bit nitpicky though. the line "Time passed, like a kidney stone" is going to stick in my brain for a while. i already have the sequel on hold

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watching

if you do nothing else today could you please watch this car chase for me? ok thanks

Gunsmith Cats is a three-episode OVA that's a fancam of the american city of chicago and the cool girls that live and shoot and drive there, but let's just yank the MyAnimeList description

In the dangerous suburbs of Chicago, skilled bounty hunters Irene "Rally" Vincent and "Minnie" May Hopkins run Gunsmith Cats, a firearms store of questionable legality. One day, Bill Collins, an agent for the Chicago branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, blackmails Rally and May into working with him on a case. The stakes are high, but Rally’s gunmanship and May’s knowledge of explosives are unmatched. As Rally and May unravel the secrets of the case, the two will need to use guns and grenades while being faster, stronger, and better than everyone else in order to stay alive.

all three episodes are free (in really nice quality) on youtube. i pitched this to wendy as "rally is jigen lupinthethird's little sister" and her driving skills and marksmanship... i'm not sure who would win between them but i wouldn't like to live on the difference.

animators, historically, hate animating guns and cars, except for the masochistic ones who use it to flex. there are at least three shots in each episode where i want to stand up and hold my cat above my head and hoot like a fuckin tusken raider. in the first episode, there's a raid on a smuggling warehouse (you know, a warehouse) where the BATF agent and Rally throw each other their guns and have a really cool FALLING OFF A CATWALK back to back shootout. it's hard to describe. watch the episode. i wish there were more than three episodes.

this is an OVA that, aside from the requisite panty shot and WHOOPS my whole shirt tore (one of each per episode per girl) is fairly normal about women? rally and minnie are...roommates. that bicker and eat pizza. they have a cool network of other slightly shady women they interact with a lot, and the big bad for most of the episodes is also a woman. this isn't like a bastion of feminism or anything it's just neat. sort of middling on the ass portion of the Weeb Ass Shit scale. low on the weeb and shit parts too. again this is a fancam of chicago with cool girls

i watched this bc i was trying to use up kanopy credits and came across the precursor to this, Riding Bean, which i did not love for several reasons (the big one being the legitimately pedophilic lesbian relationship) but the creator took the concept of Rally out of that forty minute...experiment? and that led me to Gunsmith Cats. thank u ppl who put free anime on youtube

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playing

still futzing about in breath of the wild. fucking around with sidequests and a sudden need to at least discover all the shrines.

for example, i did all the labyrinth shrines. underneath the akkala labyrinth is the scariest room in the world, bc six of those fuckers are alive and they will all target you the instant you open that chest.

cannot be bothered with the eventide island shrine yet (the roguelike) bc it frustrates the hell out of me. did the thyplo forest one, which was extremely annoying bc it dimmed my whole TV screen (including the UI) instead of just dimming the game itself. im sure someone thought that would be such a cool detail but instead i found it extremely annoying and vey difficult to swap weapons or start campfires.

and then i trundled through a list of shrine quests, bc i apparently had TWELVE missing?? three were korok trials, one was eventide (apparently it only shows up as a quest if you are on the island or have finished it, bc if u die on the island it kicks you back to a pre-island save lmao) so for the others: three i just had to talk to people to officially start and then immediately complete the quest. remember when i was anxious about softlocking myself out of the jungle dragon shrine quest bc i went right there instead of talking to Kass? never fear, nintendo's got my back

"kay how did you possibly miss reading the giant stone tablet to start this quest--" i am not a clever woman. i go "oh i know what to do!!!" when i see the Orb and hare off without looking around further.

A Brother's Roast i missed bc i forgot to talk to everyone in Goron City after defeating rudania, didn't run across Test of Will (the Goron challenge in the Gerudo highlands) bc i forgot to look off that side of the tower and was very focused on gliding into the labyrinth at the right spot, and didn't run across Guardian Slideshow on the far south beaches bc i hadn't explored there yet.

A Stolen Heirloom was deeply annoying. i had four out of five quests complete to unlock this, but there is an unmarked side quest where you have to go into this lady's house at night to figure out she wants fireflies. maybe she has some ambient daytime barks about this? i have never heard them. this was a little obtuse. also i don't love the stealth in this game. this game's stealth really works when you are well out of detection range bc u have a sniper bow, and i find it works less well for me when i have to follow a target. no i haven't finished the korok stealth trial either.

non-shrine nonsense:

ive been using Stasis as a sort of VATS equivalent. in fallout, i like to hit VATS every once in a while just to see who's out there. how many radroaches are nearby. this also highlights most interactable things which i think is nice of the game

gerudo town stuff: i missed this sand seal racing challenge by SO little the first time which annoyed me so much, it took me six more tries to beat the damn thing. i am very charmed that they actually put in a garden for the kid who was trying to grow a garden!

some beach vegetation mysteries: im really baffled by this singular hearty radish growing in full sun in what is essentially sand with a dusting of palm bark. all the other hearty radishes i have seen are in deep forests with partial sun and lots of leaf litter. what the hell is this then. plus a neat little unique sea wrack? korok circle instead of the usual lilypads.

i didn't know this game knew how to do rainbows at all, let alone double ones!

i will leave you with my many attempts to make stamina potions.

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making

making things requires both the perfect levels of anxiety (too little anxiety and im out doing normal people things, too much anxiety and i shut down, a medium level means im frantically making things to distract myself. we are at the high end of medium) and some level of income bc i inevitably need one or two things to finish projects. eg we are at the level of anxiety where i am only able to do simple things like repainting a whole bunch of big frames for my maps (procured when i had money) but i need more matboard. so they are sitting, 90% finished, in my office closet.

garden update: more than half my bush beans came up with no leaves and promptly died, which could be due to any number of things but im choosing to believe it's bc my bestie's five year old planted them a little too deeply. so it goes. all the sweet peas are fine, all my normal peas and most of my regular climbing beans came up. a little annoyed bc only a third of my nasturtiums came up even after soaking them for 24h as recommended. the shit i Bought (tomatoes, marigolds, mint, rosemary) is doing fine. the spinach and dill i planted are doing fine too, although the spinach also had about a 50% germination rate. this does mean i don't need to thin them but. Hm. yanno?

[persephone-s-moon]

Asian Lost Boys Personal Names!

Personal names tend to vary from culture to culture in terms of usage, but essentially it's someones "Asian name" as opposed to their English name. They're typically used by family members and, on occasion, very close friends because (in my experience) using them is intimate. The characters will still HAVE their English names, but The Lost Boys and family members (the Emersons and the Frogs) will Mostly refer to each other by their personal names.

DISCLAIMER: I'm Taiwanese, therefore I'm more savvy to East Asian cultures, particularly Chinese and Japanese. If anyone who is more knowledgeable about Filipino, Hmong, Thai, Indian, or Vietnamese cultures sees something they want to critique/has more culturally accurate suggestions, I encourage messages/comments/replies!

David: Huang Zhao-Yi

Culture: Taiwanese, of Chinese descent Loose Pronunciation: Hw-ah-ng Sh-ow-yee Surname: Huang, meaning "yellow, to fall through" Personal name: Zhao-Yi, Zhao meaning "bright, luminous" and Yi meaning "happy, joyful, harmony" Notes: I was originally going to name David "Hou Yi" after a mythological Chinese archer because OG Hou Yi destroys 9/10 of the original suns (long story) and there's a version where he and his wife Chang'e become immortal/gods, but there are so many different versions of the story that I decided against it. I also decided that I wanted him to be a Farm Boy™ and naming him after a god seemed a little strange imo.

Paul: Paolo FACUNDO LIWANAG

Culture: Filipino Loose Pronunciation: Pow-low FAK-OON-DO LEE-WAN-AG Personal name: Paolo, meaning "small" Surnames: FACUNDO meaning "talkative", LIWANAG meaning "light" Notes: A lot of Filipino names are Spanish or Italian with biblical roots because of colonization in the 1500s, so I wanted to keep his personal name semi-similar to his English name since it was already biblical. Honestly I could've left it as "Paul" but what's the fun in that? I'm not too sold on his surnames so they might change later and I may try to find a Tagalog name instead for his personal name, we'll see.

Marko: YANG Vam Meej

Culture: White Hmong, from Laos Loose Pronunciation: YANG Va Mae Clan name: YANG, associated with the ram and bear Personal name: Vam Meej, meaning "to prosper, succeed" Notes: Hmong names in particular are a Struggle for me since most of the Hmong people I know are second generation like me and either don't really know their personal names or we're not close enough for me to ask. I am familiar with the concept of clan names though. Marko's name is definitely subject to change in the future (I might pick a clan name more associated with birds just for fun who knows).

Dwayne: Khemkhaeng LUANG

Culture: Thai Loose Pronunciation: Kehm-key-ng LOO-ANG Personal name: Khemkhaeng, meaning "strong" Old personal name: Kasem, meaning "happiness, pure joy" Surname: LUANG, meaning "royal, venerable" Notes: It's common for Thai people to change their names after something either significant or bad happens to them, hence Kasem. I'm only making note of it to alleviate confusion in the event that I decide to do some stuff regarding backstories, no one will refer to him as Kasem otherwise. Also, surnames are still relatively new to Thailand and they were only introduced in the 20th century, so Dwayne gets a shorter surname in comparison to modern Thai surnames (which are required to be unique, hence the longer modern surnames) since I have him and the other boys being born in the 1880s.

Star: Ruchika Chawla

Culture: Indian Loose Pronunciation: Roo-chee-ka Chow-la Personal name: Ruchika, meaning "shining, beautiful, desirous, brilliance" Surname: Chawla, meaning "rice" Notes: I found the name Ruchika and immediately thought of Star ngl, I didn't even consider other names for her. It was like love at first sight. I think a lot of stuff with Star just clicked when I was doing research for her name and design, it just suited her so well. I did have her surname written down wrong in my personal notes so I'm glad I didn't post her character sheet immediately lmao

Laddie: Nino HALILI DEL ROSARIO

Culture: Filipino Loose Pronunciation: Nee-no HA-LEE-LEE DAY ROSE-ARI-O Personal name: Nino, meaning "little boy" Surname: HALILI meaning "successor", DEL ROSARIO meaing "of the rosary" Notes: I went so back and forth on his surnames it's not even funny, but I think I'm happier with Laddie's surnames in comparison to Paul's. "Nino" felt really obvious and clicked really well just like Star's name did, though I did consider a few other names that I don't have written down anywhere. Nino was just superior because he's simply a little guy.

Michael: EMERSON Manh Tien

Culture: Vietnamese Loose Pronunciation: EMERSON Man Tee-en Surname: EMERSON, inherited from white father Middle name: Manh, meaning "first-born" Personal name: Tien, meaning "fairy, celestial being" Notes: I'll be honest, the main contibuting factor behind Michael's personal name was how he was almost named "Moonbeam" during his mom's hippie phase. I have this idea where their dad was white and insisted on using exclusively their English names, and Michael wouldn't initially like his personal name because it feels girly to him anyway, but he'd grow to cherish his name and culture after meeting the lost boys <3

Sam: EMERSON Trong Binh

Culture: Vietnamese Loose Pronunciation: EMERSON Ch-ung Bin Surname: EMERSON, inherited by white father Middle name: Trong, meaning "second-born" Personal name: Binh, meaning "peaceful" Notes: I think overall for the Emerson family I was most concerned with meanings, which wasn't necessarily the case for the boys. Sam is the most peaceful in the sense that he discouraged the Frog brothers from killing Marko, even though he failed. Like Michael, I think his personal name is something that he grows into when he starts making friends, but would use his English name when first coming to Santa Carla.

Lucy: VINH Lan Huong

Culture: Vietnamese Loose Pronunciation: VIN Surname: VINH, meaning "glory" Middle name: Lan, meaning "orchid" Personal name: Huong, meaning "pink rose" Notes: Naming Lucy after flowers just felt right. Let it be known that I have serious beef with hippies, but I feel like she still had a well-intentioned hippie phase and this just adds to it. In Vietnamese culture, women don't change their surnames after marriage (as far as I'm aware) which I think would be a contributing factor in her divorce with her white all-American husband.

Grandpa: VINH Mac Dieu

Culture: Vietnamese Loose Pronunciation: VIN Mac Dee-oo Surname: VINH, meaning "glory" Middle name: Mac, meaning "nothing, nonexistent" Personal name: Dieu, meaning "mysterious, subtle" Notes: Grandpa! Needed! A! Name! He doesn't have one in the original! I'm basically saying he's not subtle about his knowledge of vampires and he's not trying to be subtle, it's just that no one ever asked. I think I tried to pick older-sounding names for him but it's been a little while since I picked these and I don't remember if I'm honest.

Edgar: Kaeru Matsuo

Culture: Japanese Loose Pronunciation: Keh-roo Mat-soo-oh Surname: Kaeru, meaning "frog" Personal name: Matsuo, meaning "pine tree, life" Notes: I named the Frog brothers after the famous Japanese poet Matsuo Basho because their English names remind me of Edgar Allan Poe, so I thought it'd be kind of funny. Matsuo is the surname of the poet, but I felt that Matsuo suited Edgar more than Alan. The surname I picked for the Frogs was obvious, I don't think anything else other than some variation of "frog" would've worked.

Alan: Kaeru Basho

Culture: Japanese Loose Pronunciation: Keh-roo Ba-show Surname: Kaeru, meaning "frog" Personal name: Basho, meaning "banana tree" Notes: Alan got the pen name of Matsuo Basho, who also went by "Sobo" and "Tose". I debated on giving him Matsuo's true given name, which is Kinsaku meaning "to be happy" but Matsuo Basho is better known as Basho and it's much funnier for this very serious 15-16 year old to be named "banana tree".

Sorry if the formatting is weird, I'm trying to make it as reader friendly as possible on account of my own dyslexia. Please let me know if the blocks of text blend in with each other too much lmao

[andreabandrea]

HELLO, just wanted to let you know that me and a friend of mine liked your critique essay on UTY so much that we spent the good part of an hour quoting it and discussing it back and forth. it was that special kind of catharsis you only get seeing someone point out the same flaws you saw. sorry for the long ask, but i wanted to share a few of our observations on the character writing.

hard agree about the original characters not leaving a huge impression. as a fellow enjoyer of morally grey women i especially share your disappointment with ceroba. and while her (and chijin's) portrayal in the story brushing past their horrible actions is problematic like you said, i think the underlying issue is more structural.

you know that trope of the Male Hero with Dead Wife Backstory? the only way i can describe my impression of the ketsukane storyline is if they'd swapped the roles of who died in that trope, and STILL managed to give the male character more agency in the story than his alive wife. i mean what... is Ceroba's role in the story aside from acting as a postmortem extension of Chujin's. Who IS Ceroba by herself when she isn't being defined by her role as Wife and Mother. The main sign that this was overlooked, imo, is how it's taken for granted that Ceroba even takes up Chujin's will at all. I mean, she's a housewife who grew up as a farmer. Why on earth would she have the necessary expertise to even attempt something like that? Either 1) Chujin already did everything for her (which, once again, sure doesn't give her own actions much of any bearing on the plot) or it's just taken for granted that she would. Because Ceroba's character is Good Wife, and a good wife would fulfill her husband's last will. No need to question that.

In addition, it's like the writing didn't want to commit to her delusions and little character development. She feels that her daughter is alive and thinks she can save her—wait no that was a lie—wait it wasn't. The moment she's defeated she goes "Agh, what was I thinking!" out loud (which is already a questionable writing choice imo but i digress), and recognizes that sacrificing Clover for her plans is horrible... and then 5 seconds later Clover chooses to sacrifice themself to break the barrier and whoops nevermind she's suddenly the one getting the others onboard with the idea... wait. didn't she say she was making the serum because the humans would've only slaughtered them again if they broke the barrier? oh wait wasn't that also chujin again? whoops.

It's not a matter of things being contradictory—grief can be just that, which I'm assuming is what the story wanted to drive at—it's a about it being inconsistent. And the result is that she just rings hollow to me.

(post being referenced)

this is such a good analysis of why the Ceroba plotline doesn't quite work, and I'm so glad you shared it! you're right. it is super disappointing that her entire role is just to be an extension of her husband's character, and we don't know who she is outside of "the good wife" and mother.

regarding grief and inconsistency-- I think that stories ultimately need to be held to a higher standard than real life. Real life, obviously, doesn't follow a three-act plot structure and things can and do happen for no reason, and sometimes there is no closure, and so on. But everything in fiction is expected to be there for a reason-- this is why "Chekov's gun" exists. Ceroba's inconsistent feelings about sacrificing Clover or Kanako's current status could be seen as indicative of grief, but it also makes for a poor story.

I feel like the "Kanako is alive still maybe in Alphys's lab" plotline may have been dropped because this can't really be answered in a meaningful way and still line up with canon Undertale. Kanako can't be alive and fallen down because we don't see her in the True Lab in Undertale, but she also can't be an amalgamate because we don't see her in any of the amalgamates (because, you know, she doesn't exist in canon Undertale). I guess you could say she's in a Memoryhead or something? It's an interesting idea to show the grief of one of the families who sent a loved one to Alphys's determination experiment, but the way Ceroba flip flops back and forth and then ultimately stops talking about it feels unfulfilling.

I would have liked to have seen any sort of resolution that doesn't require a direct answer about Kanako-- maybe Ceroba feeling unworthy of facing Kanako again after what she did, at least not yet. Or Ceroba accepting that Kanako is likely dead and she was clinging to the belief that Kanako could be alive out of her own grief, and putting ultimately faith in Alphys rather than charging further into science that she doesn't- and doesn't want to- understand.

I think Ceroba's lack of agency is especially reflected in her alleged friendship with Martlet. Sure, Martlet worked with Chujin, so we can reasonably believe that Martlet came to know his wife. But to my memory, we don't see them talk (outside of the true pacifist route finale, I suppose. We know that Ceroba releases Martlet from prison finally, but do you think she did that because they're friends or because someone had to reasonably let Martlet go eventually?). What's their relationship based on besides Chujin? Do you think they would have a bond going forward after the end of UTY? What are Ceroba's interests besides being a wife and a mom-- do you think Martlet would introduce her to making puzzles? Do you think they ever explored each others b

I think it could be argued that she has agency because she chose to experiment on Kanako when Chujin asked her not to, but I would argue in return that it's barely her own decision-- he left her no other way to really complete his work except to involve Kanako. How many other boss monsters are there? If we believe that this random guy could be a boss monster, then I suppose there could be more just out there, but that idea isn't explored-- and if there were more out there, then her decision to involve Kanako in the experiments only feels more foolhardy.

The inconsistency aspect is a great point, and I wish I had included that in my original post, haha. The problem isn't just that we don't get time to process Ceroba's plot and character development (supposedly-- I also think the "oh, what have I done?" aspect feels sudden and unsatisfying) after her boss fight, it's that she immediately changes her stance afterward. So, why did we have this fight to begin with? I remember when Clover was sacrificing their soul, I had this reaction like, "wait, they're really just going to hand it to her specifically after all that?" Lmao.

This is minor and very subjective, but another reason I like the "Asgore lost his wife and son" plot but don't like the "Ceroba lost her husband and daughter" plot as much (besides the whole Asriel & Chara storyline being much more impactful and related to Undertale's main plot than the Chujin & Kanako storyline) is that divorce is inherently just a million times funnier than a dead spouse. Toriel didn't die, she straight up left Asgore for a 3'4" short king she met through knock-knock jokes and then tells Asgore to go fuck himself in the pacifist ending. She's allowed to have agency and be someone outside of the (ex-)wife and the mom. It's awesome, and Ceroba's characterization (or lack thereof) feels like a step backwards in comparison.

Thank you again for sending this ask!

[blueskittlesart]

okay so feel free to delete this message for asking you about TP crimes. but I'm curious if you have any purely aesthetic thoughts about the Link + Zelda designs, as well as the Zora designs, in TP? like how do you feel about the designs on their own, even apart from your distaste for the general atmosphere + story. again feel free to ignore this for TP crimes and no harm done!

yeah ok. disclaimer for those who don't know. i don't like twilight princess and i think the art direction was almost as bad as the story. do not argue with me about this. let's get into it. link first

from a purely character-design standpoint I don't think this design is bad, but I don't think it's all that special either. it's very evocative of oot link, which I'm SURE was intentional based off everything else in the game. it does a decent job of complicating the outfit to the standards of tp's setting without going too overboard in terms of little details. the long hat looks stupid but i understand what they were going for. my biggest critique of the design itself is the desaturated color scheme, which I understand was present in the game at large but. I don't like it. I honestly do think that taking away the vibrance and colorfulness of loz takes a lot of the fun out of it. these games were originally for the NES. we're working off of 8-color pixel graphics. link's tunic should be eye-searingly green no matter how dark and brooding you want his story to be, because without that brightness and vibrance the games cease to feel like loz imo.

anyway. the real PROBLEM with this design, and with most of the art direction in tp, lies in how it was actually handled in-game. twilight princess was a game for the wii & gamecube, released in 2006. while advancements in graphics were GETTING THERE, the models were still relatively low-poly. The franchise had already seen a lot of success working with low-poly models in oot and ww, specifically because they leaned into the limitations of low-poly graphics and went for a more cartoonish, unrendered art style which made the blocky models seem purposefully stylized instead of limiting. twilight princess, however, did a complete 180 with the art direction and decided to attempt to HIDE the low-poly graphics behind over-rendered textures. this combined with the desaturated color palette of the character designs makes everything look very flat and lifeless.

in every close shot of link throughout this game i was constantly distracted by how awful the textures made the model look. the rendered folds of his tunic being slapped onto a flat surface, the rendering in his hair being an obvious coverup for the fact that it's one mass on the model with no physics, etc etc. the textures seldom rendered perfectly smoothly on the wii either, so the painted rendering would be strangely pixelated or blurry compared to the model's sharp edges. the game's lighting also seems to operate entirely in harsh black gradients, making the color and rendering choices on the model all the more obvious. Again, I understand that these are limitations of the medium the devs were working with, but i think that art direction that takes the medium into account and works WITH it instead of AGAINST it is almost always more successful than attempts to cover your ass after the fact, and i think that twilight princess could have been a more visually pleasing game if the art direction hadn't been so focused on covering the flatness of the models with hyper realistic textures.

onto zelda. again, we have a theme here of taking the oot design and overcomplicating it. i think the color choices are better here than they are with link, but i would have liked a brighter pink on her bodice. I also think that the dress's neckline was... pretty obviously a sexualization attempt. there's a reason men love this zelda. imo if they were going to keep oot zelda's shoulder armor they should also have kept the breastplate-ish piece in the middle and the high neckline from that dress. you cant say ooh look shes a swordfighter see she has armor!! and then leave her fucking jugular exposed. no wonder she got possessed by ganon immediately. other than my general complaints with the over-rendering i don't have much else to say about her tho. shes fine

the zora tho... this is where i start to get pissed off. HOW ARE YOU GONNA DESIGN A SPECIES OF FISH PEOPLE BASED ON TROPICAL FUCKING FISH AND THEN REFUSE TO PUT A SINGLE SATURATED COLOR INTO ANY OF THEIR DESIGNS. the way these designs could all be improved by about a hundred percent if you just TURNED UP THE GODDAMN SATURATION. GIVE ME A REAL RED. IM BEGGING. UGGHHHHHHHHHH. i also think the ugly rendering REALLY shows through on these guys because they don't have a lot of detail on them to cover it all up. someone needs to explain to these designers that you don't shade with black. like. god. the designs truly are not bad in terms of like creature design i dont think but they are so DESPERATELY in need of color that it's fucking distracting. color is not your enemy guys please

[trashratsaws]

Something I've been finding quite irritating about the lack of media and culture literacy we're seeing - because of course the least educated people speak the loudest I fear - is that it's almost forced me to become an advocate for art I don't particularly enjoy. I don't enjoy modern or contemporary art. I don't like it, I think it's overblown, and I think a lot of modern/contemporary movements are juvenile, underdeveloped, and crude. I will also defend modern and contemporary art until I die from white tiktok women who claim that they could make better art from the comfort of their upper middle class couches because apparently despite pretending to be cultured by going to the museums where modern art is housed and proclaiming to their thousands of followers that they have done so - which was a choice, by the way, they could have really gone to any museum that served their one-note tastes all the better - they simply cannot be bothered to do any sort of research or reading on what the modern/contemporary art actually means, how it was created, the backgrounds of the artists who create it, etc., or even to read the plaque next to the piece while they stand next to it making their videos about how lifeless and uninteresting they find it.

There is a huge difference between disliking something because you understand it vs. because you don't. Please for the love of god, if you're going to loudly dislike something, please be the person who dislikes it because you understand it, and spare me the trouble of trying to shout just as loudly that, well, yes, Jackson Pollock was the worst, but please leave his genre alone because you sound like quite the toad when you speak.

Anyway I lied before, so here are some avant-garde movements/artists/pieces I really like/find very interesting to do some more research on for yourself.

the Die Brücke (The Bridge, German expressionist group)

Mexican Muralism (Mexican artistic movement post-revolution of 1910)

Brasilia (failed Brazilian capital city with some crazy architecture. Also utopianism in general)

Neo-Dadaism/Post-modernism (generally cheekier movement than the abstract expressionists who took their work and mission far too seriously)

Marjorie Strider (woman pop artist who critiqued a lot of sexism in the art world with her work. See also The Girlies Exhibition)

Liberation of Aunt Jemima and Betye Saar

One and Three Chairs and Conceptual Art (this is the one people like to complain the most about)

Yayoi Kusama (particularly Narcissus Garden. Very good stuff)

Felix Gonzales-Torres (if you don't already know him. Tell me you can look at Perfect Lovers without crying)

Rhythm 0 (imo the single most impactful, raw, gut-wrenching work Marina Abramovic ever produced. Performance art. Devastating)

Shigeko Kubota (Vagina Painting. almost a direct fuck-you to Pollock's macho vibe)

Earth Art (exactly what it sounds like - work that relies on nature. The Lightning Field is on my bucket list)

[vashti-lives]

So like, I have a lot of complicated feelings about the whole discourse around comments and how people comment so much less than they used to but one thing I think people my age have forgotten and younger people have no idea about is that in the era of LJ and the height of ff.net there were A LOT more negative comments than there are today, at least as far as I can see.

For one thing, in the mid 2000s really fucking mean negative comments were so common there was a term for them "flames" and people would regularly mention them in the authors notes of their fics. "No flames or I will delete this story" "flames will be used to roast marshmallows and which Inuyasha and I will eat while laughing at you" "this story contains SLASH! that means boykissing!!! DON'T LIKE DON'T READ! NO FLAMES!!!!!!" etc. You get the picture. It was a different time don't judge. This happened more on ff.net than it did on LJ but it definitely also still happened on LJ.

If you've ever looked into the whole Ms. Scribe thing and puzzled over why anyone believed her, this is why. She was making shit up for fame and attention but lots of authors experienced similar harassment that was actually real. I know people like to be like ~in my day people knew how to use the back button~ but let's be real. Some people weren't using the back button they were going into the comment section to be homophobic and explain all about how you'd burn in hell one day.

I'm not saying nobody gets mean comments anymore but the fact that we don't have a special word for it now and people aren't constantly talking about it in their author notes strongly suggests it's less of an issue.

Even aside from that in 2024 we have commenting etiquette that just, didn't exist in 2004. Its commonly understood now that offering unasked for critique is bad but like, that didn't come out of nowhere. "Are people allowed to send critique to the author of any fic they read?" was an absolutely HUGE fandom fight that got hashed out again and again for years before finally settling on, "mmm let's not." In 2004 this was not a settled debate and imo leaving unasked for critique was much more common, and in fact people who were coming from closed forums and things like yahoo groups felt it was *good* etiquette to always leave critique because that's how it was done in their much smaller communities, which were often more focused on improving specific skills.

If it is true that people leave fewer comments now* we might be experiencing the reality that you can't have your cake and eat it too. The more rules we have about what kind of comments you can and can't make the more people at the fringes are going to decide its safer to just not comment because what if they do the wrong thing and make someone mad? Several years ago my dash was just awash with artists begging people to reblog their art and also awash with artists complaining about the tags people left on the art they were reblogging, it was extremely clear to me that this was a choose one situation. EITHER your art gets reblogged a lot and sometimes people say dumb shit or you shield yourself from bad tags and get a lot fewer reblogs.

There are a number of posts going around right now about how don't you know authors can SEE the comments you leave on bookmarks!! And I've often thought that the end result of this campaign is going to be even less engagement than people are already getting. It's not going to result in nicer comments in the bookmarks its only going to result in less bookmarks.

TBH I actually think getting less negativity in your inbox might be worth fewer comments? Like, I'm not sure fandom made the wrong choice here but I do think continuing to police the kinds of comments people leave is going to continue this cycle so if you really really want your readers to engage with your fic you are going to have to accept that some of those comments will be shit like "UPDATE PLZ" or whatever. I don't think there's a way to get less of the bad comments without getting fewer comments period.

*In addition to everything I've written above there is a part of me that thinks the biggest problem is just that AO3 has a hit counter and LJ didn't and so when people were primarily using LJ they just didn't know how many people read their work without ever interacting. Combine that with the fact that everyone is functionally writing for much smaller fandoms because there aren't mega fandoms like there used to be and you get authors who feel like they're getting less engagement without actually meaningfully getting less engagement, because their OFMD fic isn't getting the number of comments that their 2010s era SGA fic got. Even when they understand OFMD is tiny compared to SGA they don't have the hit counter for their SGA fic to see just how many lurkers there were. the ratio might actually not have been as far off as you think!

[phightinghottakes]

I see a lot of people saying that phighting story is bad bc the devs keep adding new stuff instead of expanding the pre existing lore, and while I do agree that having not a lot of lore available can be frustrating, u guys need to understand that phighting is in ALPHA. A lot of the world-building/characters are gonna be underdone at the moment because of this. The current plan from what I’ve read is to finish making 26 phighters before starting on story mode, which should reveal most if not all the lore. On top of this, soda is writing a comic to reveal a lot of other lore related things that won’t be relevant in game. Another thing is that last I checked (correct me if im wrong), phighting currently only has 3 DEVS working on the ENTIRE GAME. I think that’s crazy!!!!!!! the dedication to make a whole ass game with 3 people of this quality without getting paid just for funsies is insane!!!!!!

It’s ok to point out the worldbuilding flaws but I think it’s kinda annoying to point them out when a lot of the worldbuilding isn’t actually there. That’s like critiquing a half baked pie. It’s not finished yet!!!! And, personally I think it’s really cool and actually a good thing that they’re prioritizing the actual game instead of the lore. They’re adding new characters to make the game better, and the lore for all of them will be expanded eventually. Also also, if they were to finalize the lore now, they wouldn’t be able to add new stuff at all!!! Adding new characters is kinda the best thing they can do until they start on story mode. I think it makes perfect sense esp from a game developing stand point. Rushing them or telling them to work on lore is just kinda redundant and unhelpful. They’ll get to it eventually and I’d rather have a good game than sooner lore reveals. I think it speaks to the integrity of the devs (game development wise, ik soda defended a groomer 💀) for them to continuously put the quality of the game over the lore for it. Not saying you can’t have both but again, if they started finalizing and honing in on lore rn they wouldn’t be able to add new stuff later. also like,,,not trying to say u can’t criticize the game but at the end of the day this is their project, they can take their time with it and write the story however they want, and some of y’all need to sit the phuck down cuz I’m tired of seeing lectures attacking the devs for honestly good design choices. At the end of the day phighting is currently a pvp game, not a story game, so the lore shouldn’t be their first priority at all anyways?? And really, I hate when ppl say that bc I think we all know how much the writing can make or break a game and how important it is, but u guys are being way too serious about this, esp since the devs already plan on adding more lore. This level of criticism is srsly unjustified imo. Even if they gave up development all together (it is a passion project afterall), I still think they would’ve made a great game and it definitely wouldn’t have fallen into the issue of adding too many new features without expanding upon the main stuff. Everything added so far seems to just be improvements. This even applies to choices outside of the lore. ok this rant was long lol oops ily take care

Hate to break it to you but they canned story mode sorry

Now we have to get all the lore from my least favorite character (Broker)

[papakhan]

tumblr user papakhan how do you feel about the fallout show being canon? shady sands being completely destroyed kinda sucks imo but what do i know

oh I hate it, it's not canon to me not even a little. the only things I like about it are either strictly aesthetic or oneliners.

Not only is spouting mega reactionary and hateful right-wing politics with no actual critique of those themes like in the games (RE: shadow cabinet of corporations absolving the US government of nuke crimes which is literally what circlejerk antisemite conspiracy theorists believe, RE: guy named after a jewish holocaust survivor being an Enclave scientist and his rotting head is kicked around for like 5 episodes, RE: the one trans character being written as a cowardly "self-harmer" who hurt themself to get out of the military, I have so many more examples) but it also is totally disrespectful to existing canon and I'm not just talking about Shady Sands ""falling"" right when the first battle of hoover dam is happening. Mr House's character has been retroactively destroyed by making him part of the aforementioned shadow cabinet because now he looks like a total moron for fucking up the date of the platinum chips delivery, the show literally made him an idiot when in the game he was calculated and smart.

It's also written by people who just fundamentally don't understand the themes of the first game. Emil showed his ass recently where he basically proved that he thought the opening to fallout 1 where a unarmed civilian is shot and killed live on TV was supposed to be a comedy sketch we all laughed at. At this point people who trust these writers to come out with something good are honestly kidding themselves.

I'm pretty sure I was this already but I'm gonna become the most annoying West Coast games fan. 4s not even canon to me anymore, I don't give a shit. I only care about the games the Khans feature in

[arsonists-oatmeal]

I had finished watching Transformers: Earthspark yesterday. Got a few notes, spoilers below:

-"Malto-bots" awwwww my heart -shit starts ramping up after the halfway mark of the season. which is classic and I did not realize how much I missed that type of pacing -oh, hello body horror in a kids show, didn't expect to see you here! -did not expect to get as invested as I did in the human parts of the plot, like how the rest of humanity is reacting to the Terrans. I think for a kids show they wrote that bit pretty well -speaking of: its clear from the get-go that the whole Terran plot is allegorical to a lot of things. Immigrant families, biracial families, being a first generation citizen, etc. I've seen a lot of media try to use aliens as a plot device for "bigotry is bad", but very rarely have I seen it actually like, show how it hurts people and effects how they see themselves, and show that you have to shut that shit down if you want to be an ally, and not just tolerate your racist uncle, friend, etc. I think this show did a pretty good job of that. It had made parts of me feel seen and heard for the first time ever. -The way they handled the Starscream thing was kind of weak though, imo -Man i wish we got to see Hashtag having more moments with the seekers, she'd fit right in -Nightshade!!! I like Nightshade, I think some parts were a little on the nose (like how they're the only person who introduces themselves with their pronouns), but its not as some people are making it out to be. Idk if its just me but I also feel like they got sidelined more than the rest of the characters, which is suspicious. But anyways, every group needs a mad scientist character who can be slightly unsettling and I'm glad Nightshade is there to fill the role. -Ok i get this is a kid's show, and there was already more nuance than i expected (which was none) about the decepticons, but I do feel like they didn't make the final leap in logic here. -"Ok not all decepticons are bad, but we still wont stop surveilling and locking some of them up because they chose to do bad with their second chance". Has anyone here heard of the word "REHAB"?? -Megatron is cool. Cool theme, no comments there -Really liked the fight scenes as well, especially the shots of the transformers fighting it out in the background where the camera focuses on the humans running away. It really shows the scale of things. Small detail but the fact that we've got several bots using their inbuilt guns' recoil in fights is really cool! Megatron essentially did a rocket jump. One critique however is that nothing really looked like it had weight. -Also I wished that they kept Karan Croft as the lead antagonist till the end. Like idk, show that this whole oppression thing is systematic in nature. Could have had Dr. Meridian change sides given the fact that he was being put in a similar position to the transformers by the humans in charge (he was also fighting for basic resources to live after his first defeat). -Also this one may be unpopular: It looks like at the end the Terrans get their own symbol/badge. Which I think sorta breaks the whole "the war is over, there's no more sides and factions" things that they keep repeating throughout the show. It just feels like they've created a third faction now, and the continuing dynamic is now autobots vs decepticons vs terrans. Which, no. You're going to replace your war with another.

Overall, good show, 8/10, I think it fumbled the ending. I know im not the target audience here but also its not like kids are stupid.

Also representation matters. The choices of having the lead human characters be a non-white biracial family, having the first nonbinary transformer, having the terrans be allegorical, it may not mean anything to some viewers, but for others it could be the first time someone has actually acknowledged them, has said "I see what you've gone through and I know it to be real and I will take it seriously". The diversity in the show only serves to make it better

[goingdownorup]

Final thoughts on YCAO:

I’m not really expecting people to see this, but as a wrap up for any fic I write I usually like to come back and do my thoughts after the hype has kind of calmed down. This fic is on anon, but I figured I would continue my tradition even if it was just for me lmao.

Obvious spoilers for the fic if you haven’t read it!!!

I’ve seen a few people not happy with the boat boy ending, and with that, I say…good? I mean, not in a rude way, but that is exactly the emotion I wanted when finishing out their storyline. It was pretty clear imo that neither of them could get what they wanted completely. Joel and Etho wanted different things more than they wanted each other, which is why I think it hurts in the end that both of them realize that they really wanted everything. They can’t have both, and that sucks and that's how their world(s) work. Joel can have Lizzie and his world, and Etho can have Bdubs and his world, but they can’t have each other with that outcome. That’s the fact about their relationship.

I’ve seen a few people theorize that Grian could bring Lizzie and Joel back to the main world- which, yes, he could- but at least in my head, that’s not a possibility. Joel’s driving force in the fic was to get home to Lizzie, but it was also to get home. I don’t think, even with their relationship on the mend, that Etho or Joel consider each other home anymore. They’ve grown as people, in both a good and a bad way, and that’s okay! I want that pain of growing distant but the inability to because of an outlying source. Soulbounds are a bitch in this series lmao.

Speaking of soulbounds, Impulse and Bdubs, am I right? But seriously, the one part I put in Impulse’s POV was so self-indulgent but I love his character so much so I had too. As soon as my brain decided Impulse could see the strings I needed to write him. I really love the idea of ‘what could’ve been’ for Bdubs and Impulse. The two of them have already built up a perception of each other that eventually they could tear down, but would take more effort then either of them are willing to do at that point in their life. Maybe down the line they could be friends, and I like to think that with the fact that Etho and Impulse lean on each other more now that they eventually become better friends.

I won’t touch on Scar and Grian, or Ren and Marytn, since their stories are still getting written atm but Ren and Etho… my one critique with myself is not building their relationship up more. I think the impact would’ve been better if I really made the point that Etho and Ren were better friends then what I did. You live and you learn, and hopefully next fic I can keep my relationships more clear. (At least the ones I want to be clear lol)

I think the fic went over unreasonably well, people were overwhelmingly nice and it was such a good introduction to the fandom. Probably the second best if not the best reaction to a fic I’ve gotten tbh. My personal rating: 8/10 I’m proud of this fic

Link if you haven’t read it