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1d-discourseoftheday · 3 years

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💙 Tues 5 Jan ‘21 💚

Is today's biggest story really a pair of socks I mean WHY NOT am I right, that may as well happen! With impeccable timing, as the fandom and the world went bananas about Ho-livia WildStyle (a drag queen name for the ages right there), the first of the limited edition TPWK socks that people ordered basically on blind faith (you fully couldn't tell what they were going to look like at all on the website, and now we know why lmao) have arrived with a bang: they seemed to come with either blue or pink hearts, but in fact it turns out you get one of two color combos, either pink and white or, uh: BLUE AND GREEN HEARTS. I'm not one to carry on about like jeans and a green shirt or what have you but this is a CHOICE, and if the antis don't have performative burnings of their evil larrie merch honestly WHAT is the POINT; the resale market of the limited edition socks is already booming though so there's always that option, if either side can bear to conduct business across the divide. My question is, did they really time it to play out this precisely on purpose? Unlikely tbh, but if that's a thing they're capable of I have some THOUGHTS about the way other Harry merch takes like 4 months to arrive...

Larrie socks aside however, the real discourse continues to be about you-know-what, with the players out there fanning the flames wildly. There's too much nonsense to bother with it all (the quoted sources in the articles directly contradicting each other's stories also makes it difficult) so let's just... *spins wheel*....okay I landed on 'tabloids say Harry's wedding speech talked about his girlfriend Olivia' here goes. Sjksdfjks WHY would you be talking about your girlfriend of three weeks in a speech for your close friends' wedding, OMG, how uncomfortable and inappropriate is that?? Imagine if any of this were real, that Harry ('I'd take my time and make sure a thing was serious before telling people about it', end quote, I mean that's ALSO a stunt quote (oh the layers) but just pointing out that it's contradictory) starts dating his co-worker who just got out of a huge relationship and is also a famous person with presumably an interest in privacy, and immediately the two of you get to work setting up a big reveal to happen right away (even in a weird fantasy world where any of this is real the possibility that JEFF AZOFF'S WEDDING had the paps present for any other reason than to do EXACTLY what they were told is flat impossible- what pap or celeb outlet can afford to be on Jeff's bad list?!) and then he casually writes her into his speech (a guy who's so anxious and shy about public speaking and what to say that he begs people to write speeches for him and practices endlessly) uh huh, sure Jan. There are so many things about this that are ludicrous, but more to the point, none of the things they're saying hold up to scrutiny any better than this. There just isn't any point in taking them that seriously though; Harry is a closeted artist and, just like the many queer artists that came before him who he repeatedly reminds us are his icons, he both lets us know all day every day in a million ways that he's queer, and also plays the industry game and winkingly gives the press their Straight Guy Harry fodder. You don't have to like it, or indeed anything at all in this world, but people do need to accept that whether they like it or not is neither the point nor anyone (including Harry)'s responsibility to respond to or do anything about.

Like I said I can't cover every detail but! I always have a little space for the absurd: today, our best entrant is the possibility that the whole wedding we saw was a sham– fans ask, was this public spectacle Jeff and Glenne's actual wedding? Listen if anyone would be up for it it would be this crew, and if they did stage it I'm sure they had a good laugh! Suspicion has been cast on Glenne's dress (allegedly an untailored 2018 off the rack number), the small guest list (wouldn't they just wait and have a huge event?), and the fact that they invited paps there at all. It would make the no explanation robe pics EVEN FUNNIER though if you imagine that was for our benefit but left totally unadressed (undressed). ANYWAY Don't Worry Darling filming is back in business and Harry was papped some more today, out for a casual not at all pap walk hike with a work associate and multiple items of his own merch (including an unreleased hoodie design.) On the topic of DWD, sometimes a different perspective can be interesting-- for example considering whether Harry is the point of all this at all? Or is he but a bit player in the real DWD publicity drama, an elaborate and very public dramatic reconciliation between Olivia and her ex husband? Either way, he's neither a clueless dupe, a helpless pawn, or anyone's 'boy toy', so please: can we rein in the hand wringing and pointless Olivia bashing a bit?

Let's talk about something else shall we? For example! Liam's setlist, just released for the upcoming LP Show Act 4. Look at that song selection! Fireproof! Strong!! Through The Dark!! More exciting 1D faves! Plus Slow and Home With You off his EP, NICE, singles and more, it looks awesome. The Hugo Man fragrance relaunch is less exciting, featuring the dopiest possible articles full of chat about his skin care routine (oh shucks I'm just manly man, I don't have one at all... *names two products and refers to 'multiple moisturizers'*), trademark accidental candor (“I’m quite tired!”), and of course trying to describe a fragrance, always an entertaining gymnastics (“every time I spray it, it kind of takes me back to being on that rooftop in Berlin”), but also there are manly new pics of Lia.

A new song Niall co-wrote is coming out! The JC Stewart song, Break My Heart, will be out this Fri! Charlie Lightening posted pics from a year ago on the Walls music video set, featuring an intent Louis in the sun (and fashion voter underrated excellent Looks), and Louis commented on Dave Allen's post (“top man!”)-- the famous boxer is offering to help friends through lockdown by facetiming 3or 4 people a day for home workouts, damn, and also aww. That shitty Doncaster secondary school turned out some really sweet dudes, against all odds tbh. With Los Angeles experiencing some of the worst COVID surges we've seen since the beginning of the pandemic, Grammys organizers have elected to postpone the (already limited) ceremony. Originally scheduled for Jan 31 it is now TBA, tentatively for March. Harry's stalker, who menaced him in and near his London home in 2019, is being charged with violating his restraining order by attempting to contact Harry via social media, Global Fund for Women thanked Harry for donating, and HLDaily and other accounts were suspended for posting pap pics, always a risk, but one trick potato Jeff is on the job; HSD is back up and running, cause they can't have a proper stunt season without their most faithful mouthpieces. Niall continues to vote for himself on twitter threads about what to listen to in the New Year.

#1ddiscourseoftheday #everyone loves a powerful successful woman as long as she never ever visibly does anything to try to promote her interests #yes this is about extremely bad takes about Olivia Wilde and what she should or should not do #and what forms of publicity are okay and which are not for her to utilize to promote her film #you don't succeed in Hollywood by refusing to play the game!#Harry and Olivia are adult professionals doing something silly and not particularly time consuming #that has zero impact on their actual personal lives but is extremely effective for achieving their goals #it's just not that serious #hopefully he's tapping her professional relationship with John Frusciante to get Louis an intro lol #everyone freaking out about the reports that he already met her kids sjsjskaj I don't usually believe the Sun but like YES OFC HE DID #IT'S HARRY he probably had their names penciled in for tattooing by day two on set omg I'm sure they LOVE him #they'll be on his book subscription list forever now #but I do have something to say about the way people think buying Harry (or whoever's) merch or tickets or whatever #means they get a say in what that person should do because they're OWED something #and how it relates to the idea that sex workers sell their bodies rather than units of their time #both are wrong. You get what you pay for and nothing more- you get a show or a product but you don't get a controlling interest #in the case of Harry or of a sex worker part of what you purchase is the carefully crafted illusion of friendship and intimacy #but it isn't real #I realize this is terrible example to use because this fandom is virulently puritanical and anti-sex work and sex work adjacent jobs #see: 'eleanor doesn't have a job' 'beards don't work' 'get a real job' etc etc #but guess what that's THE WORST TAKE so I will continue to ignore it and act like I'm talking to people with better takes #until it's true #anyway I was personally favoring Wilde-Styles but that one's for you Amanda #long post

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tamgerines · 5 years

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KH3 First Impression and Complete Thoughts

BACKGROUND: i've played kh1, com, kh2, bbs, 2.8, and a bit of khux. i've watched coded and 3d on yt, so i know the story relatively well. this is an impression of my first playthrough. i did my run on standard mode and watched the secret ending on yt. i mostly did this for story, so this will have my initial impressions based on my run that will not cover extra content like the phone mini games and cooking. my opinions are subjected to change if i ever do any later playthroughs. pls, feel free to disagree w/ me.

!!! WARNING: THERE WILL BE A LOT OF STORY SPOILERS!!!

AUDIO:

Music: utada is queen!!! that opening song!!! also i kept noticing how lit the songs are in each world esp frozen??? and aqua's. worth a replay just for the soundtrack alone.

Voice Acting: everyone sounded great for the most part. sora’s va have certainly improved and sounds less strained. his vanitas voice has suffered significantly though lolololol. i think i read that someone called it a wannabe dark knight voice? the organization sounded incredible, w/ my fav being xemnas, marluxia, and larxene. the disney and pixar va’s are incredible w/ my fav probably being randall in monster’s inc.

some ppl did not get vas like xaldin and laxeaus. and phil in hercules. which were all very disappointing bc in the scenes that they were in, they would just stand around woodenly, and it’s very noticeable.

VISUALS:

mostly a+. environments are beautiful. water and frost textures are amazing!!! you can really feel that waterga and blizzaga. fur textures in monster's inc. could use some work. little details like the sails moving in potc rly make the worlds come alive. this could be a me prob, but environments in certain worlds make it very hard to see map markers, treasure chests, and disney emblems (which are supposed to be hard to find, but still). mostly in tangled.

strangely enough, this is the only game where i prefer in game graphics to cgi. it's already highly expressive and there's something creepy and uncanny about the cgi esp in the final fight. and it's mostly bc sora's thin chapped lips throughout the entire game suddenly becomes full.

DESIGNS:

i don't love everyone's outfit or sora's outfit changes in this game besides toy story. this is something i alrdy knew going in, but i've always felt like the outfits in kh1 and 2 rly suited each of the character's personalities. and this is not just destiny trio but even chars like roxas, the twilight town kids and the hollow bastion crew. the move towards a uniformed look makes no sense to me like is it to unify the key bearers as one force against the organization? i could understand why destiny trio was wearing plaid but why the twilight town kids also? by the end of the game, almost everyone was wearing black and it's just boring to me. like there's a right way to do uniform while retaining characters' individual looks, and that's the wayfinder trio in bbs. in this game, not so much.

an aside, but i'm sort of disappointed in the hud moving to 3d too. the 2d portraits have always been part of kh so it's kinda a bum to see it go away.

i don't love the lvl designs but it might also be due to a narrative and pacing issue that i'll expand on. any case, vertical maps are a challenge to figure out. i don't consider myself bad at directions but there are so many moments, esp in hercules and tangled where i would be like where the heck do i go next (and i have the map) only for me to look up and find a shotlock teleport point (and this isn't so much a thing that heightens the difficulty but a time waster).

lvls and bosses in previous kh games have always been known for their gimmicks and mechanics, but in this game particularly i found it to be more tedious? and this mostly applies to frozen: who the fuck designed frozen? who the fuck thought it's a good lvl design to have sora climb a mountain, get kick off it twice, and climb it again as good lvl design? who?

all the disney bosses started blending together for me bc they're literally all giant monsters and rly easy. i think the mistake here is the fact that the disney worlds are put back to back whereas in kh1/2/bbs you have the interruption of original worlds and an actually playable important parts to the main story, in this game all the important storyline in radiant garden are locked in cutscenes interspersed throughout the game between finishing disney worlds.

a lot of ppl might disagree w this, but i miss the cinematic reaction commands and limit attacks. we still have them but i find them to be on a much smaller scale in the form of drive finishers and situation commands, but i find them to be less imaginative in kh3 in order to be less """"disruptive""" to the gameplay. i've always found cinematics charming in previous games as a way to show sora interacting with his party members during combat. little things like beast putting a hand on sora's shoulder, aladdin leaning on him, or riku bumping his fist have a way of making the friendships he forms feel organic. outside of link commands/ summons, in this game, he........just throws a lot of ppl around or is thrown around?

GAMEPLAY:

already sort of went through parts of it in the previous section, but overall combat was smooth. i love how mobile sora is in this game. the improvement to his running speed and addition of all the mobile skills like dodge roll, super slide, flow motion, blizzard skating, etc. makes combat feel fast paced and juking so easy.

magic is super improved on ever since 2.8 and feels satisfying to use esp bc i feel like ur given a lot more mp now and with the ability to save the last of your mana for cure, it feels like you're not always budgeting your magic.

underwater combat was smoother than i expected.

it's a mistake putting almost all the commands on the triangle button. there's so much options you can do in combat and you'd mean to activate one thing, but then an attraction flow comes out and you just want to die. it gets a bit easier as i went on and got more used to the controls, but in general, i still think it's a mistake to not to have an ability or something to disable certain features like in kh2 fm.

gummy ships continue to be a thing. why. i don’t like how i have to turn the camera myself now ;;;.

i'm not a speedrunner or anything, so i can't say too much else about fighting. the physical combos to me did feel like he was spinning a bit too much tho.

STORY: oh, fucking boy.

i'm not mad, i'm not disappointed, and i'm not even surprised. i already knew that post bbs, kh has already departed far from the franchise i loved as a kid and still today, at least story wise. but let's walk through it.

Disney Worlds: the disney worlds was literally a retelling of their movies. and unlike in kh2 and bbs, where visits to disney worlds were split into two parts, with the first part following the disney story and the second part being heavily tied to the main kh story and thus having original content, the disney worlds in kh3 only get one long visit. and the integration of kh into disney was just done so poorly. remember how kh villains used to kidnap princesses? remember how they used to actually conspire to take disney characters' hearts and turn them dark? remember, you know, when they were still evil and actually interfered with the worlds? in almost every world in kh3, an org member just comes says vague menacing things to sora, calls him stupid, and then leaves. yeah. and oh, maleficent and pete looks for a black box only to not find it, and leaves. AND THEY DON'T DO ANYTHING ELSE FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

the pixar worlds + bh6 were the only ones with any actual new content and they feel so fresh. i esp loveeeeeeeed toy story omg. the script was so good, funny, and heartwarming. the pixar consultants should have helped kh all the way tbh.

like previous games, there's an attempt for each disney world to thematically tie into the main kh story. in this game, it was as heavy handed as ever, probably even more so.

Original Worlds: onto the meat of kh, the main story was rushed up until the end. you have a slew of disney worlds, then bam, they slam you with all the human bosses and the important story stuff.

the ‘awakening’ of roxas, xion, and ventus were very rushed. you literally have one moment they’re no there then two seconds of white screen and all of a sudden they’re there.

there’s a shit ton of shoehorned character redemption arcs: vexen, demyx, saix, eraqus, xehanort, xemnas, ansem. all were done either offscreen or by some miracle, they reached an epiphany after sora beat his keyblade into their heads.

the only death scene that i actually liked, that a lot of ppl complained about, was vanitas bc yes, although i thought his character had so much potential, it was at least a consistent and sympathetic death. bless him, born a villain die a villain. same with xemnas bc i loved his last speech.

xehanort was a shitty villain through and through. no one understood his motivation; it’s like nomura took a page from thanos’ guide of how to write villains, gave him some stupid ass goal to have a keyblade war to restart the world, and then just have him...get everything he wanted? his estranged friend comes back in ghost form for whatever reason and is just like ok we’re cool man even tho u took my student and indirectly murdered me and then gets taken up to heart heaven, like O K. and like what’s the most frustrating is that it’s implied they’re keeping him as a villain??? bc fucking ymx is like ooohh imma just go back to my own time via time travel. it’s too late for u sora hurdur.

and the younger members of the organization, the ones that we do know were in khux. we don’t get to know how they became nobodies and they don’t get a redemption??? really???

you can tell they tried, TRIED, hard to give everyone closure. and they miserably failed to close plot points. they actually opened more. who the fuck is the unnamed girl in lea and isa’s storyline? why the fuck did you mention her if you were going to play the pronoun game and not name her??? what the fuck was in the black box??? why are they looking for it when no one know what’s in it??? why the fuck was repliku inside of riku the whole fucking time??? why have org members be norted if they can still have agency and choose to betray xehanort??? why the fuck was BOTH sora and riku in different worlds in the secret ending????? ? ? ?

and tho i’m very glad that wayfinder and sea salt trios get their happy ending, the destiny trio had their characters assassinated. kairi was teased to become an independent character of her own and fight alongside sora, only to get shafted to become a damsel in distress, again, literally replaced by xion in one of the last battles, AND referred to as ‘motivation’ for sora by xehanort lol. sora, the guy who’s always going my friends are my power, ONLY grieves about losing kairi, accrediting all of his strength ONLY TO HER. riku, who spent the first game desperately trying to get kairi’s heart back, and who protected her from saix in the second, suddenly doesn’t give a shit about her and is just there as sora’s moral support. it’s so frustrating that nomura has the audacity to say that this series is primarily about friendship and then pull this shit lol. it’s transparent.

CONCLUSION:

i think for me, the quintessential kh trilogy has always been kh1, com, and kh2. as far as i’m concerned, the story should have ended there for destiny trio. and it’s like nomura said, how he feels more sympathetic towards villains now, i think nomura’s ideas have outgrown his main character.

sora’s journey worked in 1, com, and 2 because he had an overarching goal to find kairi and riku and return home. not everyone has to understand heartless vs. nobodies or dark vs. light but at least, anyone can understand the desperation of saving your friends. when that framework is taken away, sora’s goals and motivations become unclear; he’s a kid and has little reason to be caught up in xehanort’s plans, the keyblade war, or the organization’s agendas. and his failure to grow with the increasing complexity of the plot, to investigate for himself the bigger picture or even come into a similar realization of his own darkness/ balance like riku, makes him unfit; he’s a reactionary character instead of an active one. that’s why this game, being experienced from his point of view, felt mostly like a catch up to speed for sora and a set up to nomura’s next big thing instead of a genuine ending. i honestly don’t think nomura knows what to do with him and with kingdom hearts anymore.

kh3 is a game wrapped in nostalgia and promised something bigger than it could fulfill. and aside from better graphics and improved gameplay, the story wasn’t worth the wait.

#kh3 spoilers #my thoughts #i didnt mean for my ramblings to get so long but #yeah im im sad

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