#a spiritual successor to my fuck it we ball post

[starstruckodysseys]

uh, yeah, i have rizz *carefully unloads riz gukgak from my backpack*

#a spiritual successor to my fuck it we ball post #dimension 20 #d20 #fantasy high #riz gukgak #sorry this post has been in my head for weeks and i HAVE to get it out #i didn’t know what rizz was when people first started talking abt it and all i could think about was riz. the ball. my boy

[johnnyutah]

*zones out in the shower thinking about the ocean’s eight sequel “ocean’s nine” written by soderbergh and directed by olivia wilde and scored by david holmes, which starts immediately after eight and follows the eight women through their separate post met-lives until debbie gets a new job from a mysterious shadow investor (julie andrews, possibly an old friend of rose weil (or daphne kluger’s grandmother) but the twist? this job is OVERSEAS so they go to europe, (mirroring the plot of the sequel ocean’s eleven, ocean’s twelve) visit a psychic played by tiffany haddish (mirroring robbie coltrane’s role as matsui & also reuben’s visit to the psychic, both in 12), meet the famous thief gaspard lemarc’s understudy (catherine zeta jones reprising her role as isabel lahiri (there is an exceptionally funny joke about amita/mindy here. oh fuck wait should emma thompson be the mysterious shadow investor)) who is introduced to them by none other than rusty ryan himself, who makes sly comments about danny’s “death” but doesn’t confirm or deny anything (that reveal is for ocean’s ten (the triquel to ocean’s eight and spiritual successor of ocean’s thirteen, completing the star wars-style series)) and then leaves after his brief cameo. (my personal little petty revenge for “it’s not their fight”.) another cameo is saul (friend of emma/julie’s investor character?) but not with linus this time, matthew damon knows what he did. also andy garcia gets a cameo (but he is styled exactly the same way as his character in mamma mia, and it’s unclear if he’s actually playing terry benedict the eccentric hotel owner and involuntary philanthropist or if he’s really supposed to be fernando, the island hotel owner. that’s up to you the audience. call it a fuckin easter egg.) the b-story of the movie is lou’s reunion with her old flame played by viola davis, who used to help them with heists back in the day but gave the game up when lou ghosted her. debbie is (reasonably) jealous until viola turns on them, still raw from the years of heartbreak. debbie and lou make out, and so do tammy/daphne, constance/nine ball, and then briefly debbie/amita. but anyway that was all a given because, you know, gay rights. the main story is of course a heist!!! the heist in nine revolves around several small thefts in a series that leads up to the nine women meeting lahiri, ranging from petty thievery from a hotel safe to stealing the original recipe for a famous fragrance (i got this idea from a truly inexcusable looney tunes spinoff my half-sister made me watch but i think it works) until finally they are... NOT apprehended like the boys (and tess) in twelve, because deborah is more prepared than daniel and was playing the long con the entire time, and we discover that all the thefts were connected to form One Big Heist, and at this point i have run out of hot water several minutes ago and i don’t want to have a really bad utilities bill because it’s hard out here for a renter so i get out of the shower*

#op #oceans

[leviticus101st]

Heroes in Crisis Critique

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13409994/1/Heroes-in-Crisis-Critique

I wrote a critique on the garbage Event Comic Heroes in Crisis. I wanted to post my critiques here.

Ch.1 

Let’s just jump to the basic story issues.

1: The Pacing

The storyline was originally supposed to be five issues and it got stretched out to nine issues. It should have stayed at five, probably less than that.

Out of those nine issues, only three of them actually matter to the plot. Issues 1, 8, and 9 are the only issues where the murder mystery plot goes forwards. (I feel like I’m being generous with issue 8, because that one just reveals that it was Wally who did it and that Booster cloned him…..I don’t know how he did that, but he did it.)

All the other issues? You can just skip them. They mean nothing, kinda like this story in general now that I think about it.

2: The Artwork

Much like RWBY with it’s animation, this is one I’m sure some people will disagree with me on.

The artwork for HiC was done by Clay Mann and it’s highly moody and detailed. The problem with it is how the women are drawn.

I briefly went over this in my ‘If Dragon Ball was a comic book’ story, but comic books have a problem with making women look as skimpy as possible. That is especially evident here.

The women’s outfits (Except for Wonder Womans.) look like they’re squeezing into every crevice of their bodies. Batgirl’s costume is especially bad in that regard. (Her confessional has her showing her skin. To be fair, she was letting out how the Joker shot affected her, but that’s not much.) Other than the women’s tight outfits, the artwork is pretty good.

3: The Mystery itself

HiC is a mystery story, but you could be forgiven for thinking it was trying to be a buddy cop movie. This is part of the pacing issue. While the plot will advance eventually, the mystery is not what does it. It’s just wacky circumstance. A good mystery story gives both the heroes and the audience the clues as the story progresses. Leading the hero to the most logical conclusion and the audience can have fun trying to put the pieces together.

HiC does not do that. As I said, most of the issues don’t push the plot and we don’t get clues to the fact that Wally West is the killer.

The reveal of Wally West being the killer ruined any chance of this story being taken seriously. There was NOTHING foreshadowing it and the one clue that was found doesn’t match up with it.

They say Batman couldn’t identify the wounds on the corpses because they were inflicted post mortem. Post mortem wounds are easy to identify because those wounds don’t bleed. This is ignoring actual facts!

4: Shock Value

Lots of good characters are dead by the first issue. This ruins any illusion of tension. Moving on.

5: Character Assassination.

I’ll get into specifics a later chapter, but everyone in this story acts nothing like the characters they’re supposed to be.

7: Wally West’s plan

Step one was to mail Lois Lane tapes that has tons of personal information of other people to upload.

Step two was to use the Speed Force to resurrect Poison Ivy.

Step three is to place himself from somewhere in time where everyone he accidently  killed everyone.

Step four was to kill himself.

It feels like a spiritual successor to Identity Crisis alright. Accidental murderer with the dumbest scheme and dumb retcons along for the ride.

These problems are pretty bad, but if it weren’t for what I’mma talk about next chapter, I would just think it was bad.

Ch. 2

(Disclaimer: This will be a very angry analysis. This issue spikes a lot of anger in me. So this will have a lot of anger and swearing.)

Mental health is important. I’m not going to lie about that. People go through their struggles in life and they have their own issues to go through.

That is the reason that this story exists. Hell the title itself, Heroes in Crisis, is reflective of that. It’s Tom King saying that heroes have their own struggles and that they should get help for it.

If I could ask Tom King one question. Just one. It would be this. 

HOW THE FUCK DO YOU MISS THE POINT THIS BADLY?!

This story does an atrocious job of portraying mental health. To understand what I mean, allow me to discuss what Sanctuary does for its patients.

In my story, I went out of my way to show therapists in the story to show that the heroes were getting real help. That is not how the actual comic does it.

The AI in the story I showed briefly to make sure everything was okay? In the comics, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman created it using their best personality traits to help the heroes. 

If that AI was made of their best traits, I’d hate to see their worst. The AI? It insults the patients of the Sanctuary, constantly belittling them for not ‘getting over’ their traumas and pain.

Any actual therapists will tell you that is a very terrible idea. I know WHAT King was going for, tough love, but that is not how you’re supposed to do it. You’re supposed to be supportive of the patient, let them ease into their treatment. YOU DON’T INSULT PEOPLE AND TELL THEM TO GET OVER THEIR TRAUMAS! It’s wrong!

I wish that was all I could talk about with this, but there is so much more stupid shit in this regard.

You see the AI’s treatment for the patients is to force them to relive their most traumatic moment. 

Do I need to explain why that is the dumbest fucking thing for a therapist to do? I feel like it would be an insult to you guys if I explained how fucking stupid that is.

YOU DON’T JUST FORCE PEOPLE TO RELIVE THEIR TRAUMATIC MOMENTS! ‘I have an idea! Let’s make our patients go through the very thing that caused them to need us!’

You can’t even make the argument that it’s a form of Immersion Therapy, because you don’t just throw the thing that causes a person's traumas in their faces! Let’s do an example real quick. Let’s say you’re treating someone who was traumatized by their abusive parents, then you invite the parents. Needless to say, it won’t end very well.

There’s another big problem in the mental health aspect. The other treatment.

Another thing the heroes do in the Sanctuary is a confessional booth, where the heroes confess their problems to a camera. One big problem with this.

People don’t just confess their troubles like that unless it’s urgent and it’s usually to another person. They don’t just speak out their traumas to a camera. It requires a lot of probing by the therapists. What’s sad is that problem is the least terrible about that, but it does lead to another massive issue.

A big plot point is that Lois Lane got some tapes from Wally. Lois being a very kind soul respects the privacy of the heroes and-NAH! She uploads them to the Daily Bugle.

You do not do that! Uploading someone else’s private information like that without their consent is wrong. Especially here, where they’re superheroes with secret identities. They’re loved ones are now in danger because of this.

It’s even a plot hole. They state that the tapes will be destroyed after they’re made (Let’s ignore how pointless that is and how some therapists keep tapes for future reference. Why would you record it if you were just going to get rid of it afterwards?) and Wally got the tapes that were destroyed somehow. I don’t get it either.

That’s all those issues from the actual story, but now let’s talk about a little something King himself said in regards to the killing at the Sanctuary. He stated that the killing was supposed to reflect school shootings.

For the sake of fairness, I know what he means. He’s referring to the tragedy itself. 

Now to piss on fairness, because seriously, what the actual fuck?! First of all, Wally killing the heroes WAS AN ACCIDENT! Mass shootings are never accidents, they take someone holding a gun to a school and willfully opening fire.

Secondly, it’s highly distasteful to pull that shit for this story. Especially now, when there are so many mass shootings in the US. 

Third, there’s a bullshit assumption that mass shootings are caused by the mentally disabled. The truth of the matter is that mass shooters are either self entitled assholes, racists monsters, or both. So this comparison is total shit and completely harmful in this age of mass shootings and attention to mental health problems.

Fourth, and this one is one that many people have pointed out, it’s really dickish to say that you’re going to die or become a mass shooter because you’re metnally disabled or someone trying to get help for your problems.

Lastly. If this story was about mental health, the issues people face because of mass shooting misblamed, then this would be the most relevant and important comic of our age. But it's not! It’s a poorly put together mystery story that barely touches on mental health. 

And you want to know the most fucked up thing about all of these things I’ve discussed?

All of the horrible things I’ve talked about or portrayed as good in the story. Uploading someone’s private info, torturing them with their own traumas, and not doing any real work to help the mentally unwell. It’s portrayed as the right thing in the story. I can’t begin to think about how this hurts people who actively seek or attend therapy.

What was King thinking?! And before you say the editors and executives messed him up, Tom King himself has openly admitted that the only thing he didn’t decide on was what characters would be the focus of the story. Everything else? All him. This is how he thinks mental health should be handled.

I’m frankly very disgusted with this story and I pray to God that nothing like it ever happens again.

Take care of yourselves. 

https://www.mentalhealth.gov/get-help/immediate-help

Ch. 3

I wanted to use this last chapter to give my final thoughts and a chance to talk about things I haven’t had a chance to talk about.

Overall, HiC is terrible. Character work on the whole is terrible. The pacing is absolutely atrocious. And it’s just a distasteful mess.

One thing that always baffles me is the choice of characters for the story. Booster Gold, Harley Quinn, Batgirl, and Blue Beetle. These characters have nothing to do with mental health, so why have them? Harley is the closest to that, but she got over the Joker long ago.

The comic also suffers from the humor. It’s terrible and does not fit with the comic’s tone.

The story relies on retcons to a character’s history. Roy Harper is the best example. Roy got on drugs because of his depression and parental neglect, not injuries. I don’t know if that fits with his New 52 and Rebirth characterization.

One scene that captures the sheer stupidity of the comic is the scene where Harley Quinn(Who I feel the need to stress is a normal person with a baseball bat.) is able to single handedly fight off the Trinity. I’m dead serious.

Another Harley Quinn scene that is terrible is the one where she attacks Booster Gold while Batgirl and the Ted Kord Blue Beetle (BOOSTER GOLD’S BEST FRIEND!) watch as the crazy lady with a murder history attacks the good guy who’s been friends with them for years. Ted Kord says that he’s projecting a forcefield to protect Booster, so Batgirl (Who is part of the Batfamily who don’t kill unless necessary.) knocks him out to disable it and the whole thing is a joke. Lol look at that crazy lady try to kill the superhero.

Incase the last two paragraphs didn’t make it clear, I’m not a big fan of Harley.

First reason is that I find  her annoying. She just yammers on and on and it distracts from the story.

Second, she’s a mass murderer who gets off easy because she wanted to impress the wrong guy. I know it was abusive, but she still choose to kill people and smiled about it.

Third and this one is kind of petty, but it kind of annoys me that there are so many sympathetic and kind villains who deserve redemption and a happy ending WAY more than she does and they don’t get it. She gets off easily because she was in an abusive relationship, even though there are other villains who have been abused and they don’t get redemption or a ‘Worth so much more than you think’ speech. She wasn’t hypnotised or converted against her will to be evil, she didn’t grow up with parents who gave her a twisted perception of the world, she didn’t grow up in an abusive household to make her snap, her life was fairly good until the Joker came along. Hell, you can’t even make the argument that the Joker made her crazy. All he did was spout some obvious bullshit and she fell for it.

I’m sorry that I went off on that tangent. It just makes me made that so many other villains deserve a happy ending and don’t get it, but Quinn, who I feel the need to stress has a body count, gets one. Yeah.

Let’s talk about Booster for a bit. Booster Gold doesn’t have psychological issues, so he’s out of place here. I’ve read some of the stuff that built up to this and it doesn’t give the impression he got some, just that he’s kind of an idiot. (Also, couldn’t he have just time traveled to stop all of this or find something out?)

Wally being the killer was a terrible decision. He just came back and he’s made into a villain. For some reason, DC doesn’t let him be happy. (Again, favoring the psychopath who murdered lots of people have a happy ending.) They hate him for SOME reason, though nobody can figure out why. He’s brought back just to suffer in this crapfeast.

Another problem with Wally here is how out of character he is. Wally has shown to be one of the nicest guys in the entire DC Universe and he pulls the crap he does here. As I said, him killing the heroes was an accident. He puts together a plan to make up for it, that requires him to have computer skills he’s never been established to have.

The act that made him kill the heroes was a mental trigger of his family. (We’ll ignore the fact that that’s not how the Speedforce works.) He spent five days getting tapes to Lois (Guess being as fast as a dude who can outrun an instantaneous teleporter makes it hard to be a delivery boy.), teams up with a past/future version of himself, and then tries to kill himself. (For those of you who didn’t get my Identity Crisis joke, Jean had a smiliar stupid plan for a stupid reason.)

Oh and after the heroes talk him down from killing himself, Harley knees him in the nads. (The mass killer gets a happier ending than the guy who wants his family back.)

The Trinity are morons in this story, they don’t do anything that a smart person would do, can’t tell when a person dies of electric shocks or when wounds are afflicted after a person dies, and get curb stomped to make Harly Quinn look good.

Let’s just finish this. This story just sucks. The only redeeming thing about it is the artwork, even then, the females are drawn like they’re weird aliens who want to conquer us all.

This story is a pathetic, distasteful, harmful piece of shit. I don’t want to say ‘I hope everyone forgets it’ because we need to know just how garbage this kind of thing is. We need to know just how wrong something can be.

Take care of yourselves everyone. If you need help, go find some real help. Whatever you find will be better than HiC will ever do for you.

#Heroes in Crisis #critique #my fanfic stuff #DC Comics

[tiny-princess-catherine]

catherine’s super sick top 5 games of 2016 list: ultimate edition

1. Overwatch there isn’t much to say about overwatch that hasn’t already been said. it’s a blizzard game, it’s tf2 but fun, it’s absurdly gayer than anyone expected it to be, it’s a phenomenal multiplayer game that actually got me, PvP Hater Catherine, to play a game based entirely around fighting other actual people. it’s just Fun, and boy did we need some general good-time Fun this year. bonus points for introducing me to pharmercy, the ship that made me a dumbass shipper. god blizzard don’t make mercy fuck genji i’m going to be unbelievably mad.

2. DOOM (2016) anyone who has known me for more than two minutes knows how important DOOM is to me (basically, any installment that isn’t 3); i was literally playing doom 2 seconds before settling in to write this post. doom 2 is my favorite game of all time and it’s impossible to fathom anything that would ever dethrone it. bethesda’s absurd focus on displaying only the garbage multiplayer in the months leading up to release of DOOM 2016 made me extremely wary about how the game was actually going to play, but then the campaign proved to be a thousand times more enjoyable than anyone thought. they truly captured the balls to the wall, stop and you’re dead feel of the original games while updating it, making it modern, making it look amazing and made sure all the guns felt great to use. they gave doomguy actual characterization without having him say a single word, the hell environments were cool as shit, i even loved the bossfights. what a great fucking game. pity about snapmap; the only reason i’m not playing more of it is because the modding tools are basically nonexistent. unfortunate. 

3. Obduction again, a followup to one of my other Fave Games Of All Time; Obduction is a spiritual successor to classic adventure game Myst made by the exact same people, and boy does it ever show; Myst 1-4 were all great games but it was the first one that truly captured my imagination and gave me a love of exploration, so all i really wanted out of Obduction was to regain that feeling of exploring a foreign, empty world while solving puzzles, and boy did it ever deliver in spades. it’s a beautiful game with an intriguing story and supremely great voice acting, the puzzles are difficult without being “go look up a walkthrough, fucker” the way Riven’s were, the world is huge and intricate and god i loved this game. i hope Cyan sticks around to make more games like this.

4. Fire Emblem: Fates i’m not generally a tactics fan; my brain doesn’t work in that particular way, i always get focused on one or two units and fail to see the big picture and utilize a proper, grand strategy. thankfully, FE: Fates accommodates for people like me with casual mode, and i’m glad i gave the game a try; it rapidly sucked me in, made me love the characters despite the pisspoor overall plot, and made a tactics game truly Fun for me. i love that they tried to make most of the fights unique and gimmicky, forced me to keep using different characters in different ways, and the basebuilding aspect was simplistic but appealing. i’m also glad they let you be gay, even if it does lock you out of the avatar’s kid, but whatever; you know i sure as fuck married rhajat anyway.

5. Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma dark horse candidate, to be honest; i had never played any of the other Zero Escape games before this, so it was probably a bad idea to make the last game in the trilogy my first one. that said, i picked it up on a whim after watching my boyfriend play the first five minutes, and it’s an ultra good thing i did, because holy fuck i’ve rarely been quite so sucked into the twists and turns of such an absurd plot before (absurd in the good way, in case that’s unclear). the graphics were, uh, awkward at best, the voice acting middling, but the character writing and the overall ouroboros of a plot was super fucking cool and kept me literally on the edge of my seat for the two days it took me to play through. even without the background of the prior games, it was a phenomenal experience, and i’m mega hype for the remakes of the previous games to hurry up and release on steam so i can play them.

if other people would like to join me in writing a bunch of words about videogames i highly recommend you do so, it’s a fun thing