#like the only major gripe i have with the ending is one (optional) scene that happens if you do A Certain Thing earlier in the game

[doomboogie]

Got through Ch 1 and Ch 2. Trying to even out my thoughts with gripes and praise but uhh so far mostly complaints. It feels very FFXV in a lot of ways that I don’t think are great! Nothing super coherent or clear yet in the critique department

My concerns were immediately founded . I hope this game can make me at least tolerate Zack since he’s obviously gonna be a major part of it and I’ve never been a fan. Remake made me change some of my reception to other characters so it’s certainly possible!

Repeating NPC dialogue still sucks, but that’s not unique to FF. Still annoying.

Zangan is interesting and I’m really wanting more of him! I like his design a lot.

Don’t like the addition of Aerith chiming in on “You asshole!” when Cloud goes through Tifa’s room, I liked when it was just Tifa in the demo.

😞 they removed the sheet music from Tifa’s piano.

The audio mixing is still bad. The music is way too loud, even when manually adjusting in the options settings. Voices get drowned out

The acoustic guitar rendition of Tifa’s theme is really cute

I don’t mind the yellow shelf paint, because the game is already so visually busy it really needs to paint to stand out

As one half of my favorite YT video gamers, ChipCheezum, said: there is a level of nuance given to Sephiroth here that he usually isn’t given, and it is very refreshing to see

Pacing is a bit slow while crawling in the village. By a bit slow I mean way too slow

Cutting the camera away from Tifa showing her scar just made the scene funny, idk why they did that

Literally laughed out loud at the weather warfare conspiracy. I get that magic exists in this world but lmfao, yeah, Wutai controls the weather. Great cover story Shinra

I see a mysterious freak with a kind disposition and dying cough and I latch on, so Broden’s inevitable doom will break my heart.

I usually like remake Aerith fine but Christ she is very aggressive in her flirting and there’s no option to tell her no. I don’t care about the love triangle and never have so it’s just exhausting.

I spent all of Ch 2 with Red and Barret as my party because I got so tired of the romance shit with the girls in the opening scenes. Doesn’t seem to matter tho because party members never really say anything unless there’s a side quest they care about.

Red’s fun to play, I like his spins a lot! He still does the standing up roaring animation on battle end which is cute, and he rides a chocobo like a human shaped person which is also cute.

Animations are slow and overbearing. Not quite rdr2 levels but still enough to be annoying.

There’s a few seconds after moving from something or getting up from a bench when you cannot enter the start menu or save menu and it trips me up every time.

MAI. Is certainly a character. I turned her voice off (and by extension Chadley) because the one introduction was too much. Chadley is fine, Chadley is good. I did not need a worse version of him chittering in my ear during combat. It’s like they saw how (some) people like Purah and wanted to make their own.

There’s a lot going on mechanics wise and I think maybe there’s too much. Crafting, synergy moves, weapon abilities, folios, equipment leveling, materia, all on top of the combat system. I do not think this game needed crafting, tbh.

Fuck queen’s blood and fuck the side quest chain for it. Sorry Tifa, I’m not helping out this bartender because i don’t like this card game and your favored side quest requires me to play it.

The field and combat versions of Hollow are great, really liked those.

Fuck those moogles, man.

I hate the overfilled open world! Society has progressed past the need for open world in everything! What took 10 minutes in the original is now 10 hours - I don’t see how people can consider that a good thing when most of that time is wandering around doing fetch quests and gathering crafting materials. Unfortunately the only way to find out which quests are actually interesting is by playing them through. A burst pipe leading to a fast approaching energy crisis? Sounds interesting, too bad fucking Kyrie ruins it. A farmer’s cows are harassed by a monster? Sounds boring as fuck, but it leads to a questline shedding light on Junon’s history and Broden’s past, both of which are interesting and relevant to the story!

#rebirth posting #FF7R tag

[emblemxeno]

JP vs. Localization in Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation

(Okay, for real this time lol)

Again, here’s a link to my sources post.

Fortunately, this route follows suit in terms of good localization quality after Conquest. It’s the shortest out of all the posts, since I don’t really have a lot to talk about. Mostly subtle line changes, references and a few key points of information that were cut out. I also went through Hidden Truths and Heirs of Fate to see if I could add stuff from those on here, but there were no big problems that I found.

Once again, the main part of this post will all be put under the cut. If a chapter isn’t covered, it means I didn’t think there were any differences worth talking about.

I’ll use localized names for characters and locations, unless I feel the need to do otherwise.

I’ll be using she/her when referring to Corrin in this post. (I flipped a coin to decide the gender lol)

Also, note that after Chapter 14, the translation of this route on Fateswartable ends, so I mostly relied on the English patch done by Serenes at that point forward. (I also used PegasusKnight.com as a reference to fall back on if I needed it)

Chapter 7

-A minor gripe I have with localization. The JP version compares Touma (Valla) to hell constantly. To jump ahead a bit, I believe in the JP versions of the End of All Sky/Land/Below tracks are even called The End of All Roads Heaven/Earth/Hell. The Vallites are also often called demons in the JP version, and Anankos himself is known as the ‘Invisible Demon Dragon’.

Another cool thing I just thought of too, is a connection to a popular Japanese short story. Zelda fans might be familiar with the story, “The Spider’s Thread”, which inspired the Ancient Cistern dungeon in Skyward Sword.

The beginning of the story has Buddha walking through paradise (heaven), before coming across a pond. The pond is filled with crystal clear water, and covered with water lilies/lotuses. As Buddha gazes further into the pond, he begins to see the depths of hell.

Sound familiar? “Azura is walking through Hoshido, before coming across a lake. The lake is filled with crystal clear water, and when she gazes into the lake she sees the fallen kingdom of her birth. Valla, the kingdom associated with water lilies/lotuses in the game, has been turned into hell itself.”

This association loses its meaning a bit when the comparisons to hell are a bit toned down, as well as when the Buddhist inspirations were kind of supplanted in favor of Greek renames. It’s not supremely important to the plot as a whole, but it’s something interesting I wanted to bring up.

-In the JP version, while explaining what happened in Valla, Azura eventually says “Using the art of manipulating people’s souls, he (Hydra/Anankos) made the people kill each other.” This bit of the people killing each other was cut in localization.

Chapter 12

-In the JP version, when Corrin asks Flora if she knows anything about dragons, Flora says “Sorry, I don’t know…The ancestral dragon of the Ice Clan has already perished and isn’t part of the legend. I don’t know what role it plays, sorry…” Localization makes her response “I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything... They've been gone so long that we don't even have tales of dragons in the Ice Tribe. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more assistance...”

So, the JP version explicitly says the Ice Dragon is dead (I believe Fates’ second artbook mentioned this as well), whereas the localization only says the First Dragons have been gone for a long time.

Chapter 16

-There’s not really much of a problem that I have with what Ryoma says about Corrin “having leadership qualities at a young age” but I wanted to do comparisons regardless cuz the word choice might lead one to different conclusions. In localization, Ryoma says this:

Ryoma: Huh... So she told us the same thing... I don't think it's in Corrin's nature to lie. And there's a leadership quality about her that just attracts followers. I remember being jealous of her as a child, in fact. Even at such a young age, she displayed the characteristics of a ruler. Silly to be jealous of her, right?

In the JP version, Ryoma says this:

Ryoma: Oh... So, she told you the same thing. …Corrin isn’t one to tell lies. She’s been like that since childhood. She’s always genuine and honest... She has this mysterious appeal that draws people to her. Seeing my younger sister with the qualities of being a ruler... Honestly, it makes me feel envious. …What a ridiculous thing to say, right?

Again, I don’t necessarily have a problem with how it was localized, but some might. The localization version might have people think that Corrin somehow was a fantastic leader at such a young age, but JP is more clear that it was about the qualities she had at a young age that would be valuable as a leader.

Chapter 19

-A minor gripe. In the localization, Azura says that Anankos uses his magic to send Vallites to Nohr and Hoshido to stir up conflict. In the JP version, she says he uses magic, along with the help of a body of water. That’s why whenever you fight Vallites outside of Valla proper, there’s a body of water nearby; Hoshido’s lake (and the ponds shown in Hinoka’s CQ battle which are in the capital) for Chapter 5, the sea for BR chapter 11, the burning falls for BR chapter 21, and the city for Rev chapter 13. Similarly, the consequences of being a victim to the curse are described as “turning into sea foam” in the JP version. Localization as a whole kind of toned down how much water has an influence on the story.

Chapter 23

-Probably the pettiest gripe I have lol. As Arete is fading away from Azura’s arms, Azura has a different reaction in localization and Japanese. In localization, Azura says “Mother? Mother!” while a voice clip of her in-battle pain cries plays. In the JP, she says  “*Sob... Sob*…! Mother... Mother...!”, while a voice clip of her crying plays. Her crying voice clip I don’t recall hearing anywhere else.

This is one of the few times in the you get to see Azura express a heavy and heartfelt emotion, since her rough childhood caused her to remain guarded and stoic around everyone. The equivalents to this scene in other routes is her death scene in Birthright, and her crying with Corrin over Ryoma’s death in Conquest; a normally unflinching and aloof character breaking down is a rarity, and indicates that the cause of it is something to take note of for the character as a whole. Localization softened this aspect, and I take issue with it, despite it probably seeming trivial to most other people.

Chapter 24

-When Corrin is questioning the phantom Mikoto, an exchange happens. In localization, part of it goes like this:

Corrin: But this can't be... Are you truly my mother?

Mikoto: I am. Even as a puppet of Anankos, my spirit at least remains my own.

Corrin: I... I believe you.

In the JP version, it goes like this:

Corrin: It can’t be... …Are you really my mother?

Mikoto: Yes... I became an Invisible servant, controlled by the Invisible King... Even so, I am your mother.

Corrin:  …………

Again, a minor thing that I don’t personally have issue with, but replacing Corrin’s silence with an admittance of belief could make some believe she has “reverted” back to being too naïve.

Chapter 26

-While Gunter is relaying his past, an exchange happens. In localization, it goes like this:

Gunter: I ask myself that, every day. I cannot understand the minds of royals. To you all, we commoners are little more than pawns in your schemes... Or weeds to be killed on a whim.

Corrin: That's not true...

Xander: Is that how people view the royalty?

Ryoma: Such an impression would easily breed powerful resentment...

In the JP version, Corrin, Xander and Ryoma don’t say anything. They just remain silent.

Endgame

-Not a major problem so much as a general thing about the game, but I can think of like... at least three memes that Treehouse inserted into the localization. Now I like memes, but there is no better way to date your media nowadays. One of them was Kana’s “That’s dragon for I love you” which tbh, is kind of cute and isn’t the most well known meme so I guess I can let it slide. Another is Felicia saying “I had one job!” when she messes up in the dining hall, which isn’t that big of a deal since the dining hall is very optional.

The last one I can think of is why I put this specific grievance here, and it’s during Corrin’s speech before facing Anankos.

Corrin: We won't back down! This is my... This is our destiny! Ready your weapons! Fight for your friends! With the Seal of Flames... With the Fire Emblem on our side! We fight for our world!!

Yeah, she says “Fight for your friends” which is everyone’s favorite Ike line from Brawl. Now, this isn’t even a totally inaccurate translation either, but it kind of just... makes the moment funny for the player when it’s supposed to be commanding and serious I guess.

But yeah, not the most important issue by far, but something I’d thought to mention. Hell, it’s not even that bad compared to how they made Peri’s, Effie’s and Hisame’s quirks into exaggerated and tired jokes. And the Beruka-Saizo support. Never forget.

-When Azura and Corrin are by the lake and discuss the latter’s plans to rule, Corrin says this in localization:

Corrin: I'm going to make Valla a wonderful place! In honor of the true last king and for Queen Arete. And everyone who fought... I promise to make them all proud.

In the JP version, she says this:

Corrin: I’ll make the Invisible Kingdom (Valla) into a great land. For the previous monarch, Queen Shenmei (Arete)… And for all of my allies who fought beside me. I promise.

So, JP version only mentions Arete as the reigning monarch of Valla. Which makes sense, cuz unless there was some wild “keeping the bloodline pure” shenanigans in Valla, Arete being the Queen keeps in line with what we know about the rest of Valla’s history. Arete was royalty from birth, as was her sister Mikoto. Arete is the one who passed down Lost in Thoughts and the pendant to Azura.  

#fire emblem #fire emblem fates #fire emblem if #fe14 #corrin fire emblem #azura fire emblem #ryoma fire emblem #xander fire emblem #hinoka fire emblem #camilla fire emblem #takumi fire emblem #leo fire emblem #sakura fire emblem #elise fire emblem #hoshido #nohr #valla #meta #treehouse localization #stop calling the route revelations that's not the name gdi

[skeletonmob]

The Pirate’s Fate - Severely Undercooked

The Pirate's Fate is a visual novel written by T.F. Wright and illustrated by Volkenfox. It's not very good. Well, I guess that gives the wrong impression. It's not completely horrible and it's not the worst visual novel I've ever played, it's just . . . a hot mess. Visual novels are primarily story based, usually with player choices leading to branching narratives and the occasional minigame thrown in. As such, writing is extremely crucial for a visual novel, and the story of The Pirate's Fate is severely undercooked.

I bought it on a whim about a year ago, intrigued by the premise. I played it a handful of times then, and a handful of times more recently to refresh my memory. The premise is, in a world of anthropormophic animals, a spice merchant by the name of Mila is rescued by the Dread Pirates, consisting of Darious, Leeko, Morgana, and later Tam-Tam, after her ship sinks. The group then rope her into their quest to find a series of enchanted coins, which have the ability to transform a person into whatever they wish.

(using images off google because I forgot to take my own)

This is a really interesting premise for a story, and one that's very suited to the branching narrative of a visual novel. The problem, however, is that this is used less to flesh out a fictional world, or put our characters in intriguing scenarios, and more so used to show of the creator's barely disguised fetish. The story's too excited to turn Mila into hulking amazon warrior or give Tam-Tam tits the size of Mt. Everest, that many of it's more interesting ideas aren't given room to breath.

To give you a better idea, during the intro, you find a coin inside a griffon's cave. Afterwards the primary antagonist, Rourkie, holds you hostage and demands you hand over the coin. You have a set of three options to choose from, and from there the story branches out. I chose the second option, which I believe was to feign compliance and then attack. My playthrough then went as follows, Morgana died, we recruited Tam-Tam, visited Circe's island, visited a beauty temple, visited haunted house isle, had an audience with the queen, met someone named Steamchaser, visited a matchmakers shop, and finally the story ended in a mysterious library. I stopped early because I realized I was about to get an ending I saw before, so my total run time was about and hour and 37 minutes. Excluding the intro, all proceeding scenes last about 11 minutes, and with the amount of stuff that happens, that's not enough to flesh anything out.

In this route, Darious feels guilty about Morgana's death. Circe then manipulates that guilt and transforms him into a bear. That alone could carry an entire story, it's a strong if tropey character arc. But after he transforms, he has a heart to heart with Mila, and that's it. All of Darious' guilt vanishes in that one scene, and then he gets possesed by a ghost later on in order to keep the plot going. A similar thing happens on other story branches as well. In one of them, Tam-Tam is transformed from a female lizard into a male rabbit, and she's just kind of cool with it. She still identifies as female, and the conversation in the scene afterward posits her views on gender and identity, and that's it. The rest of her crewmates are totally okay with this development after this one conversation, and nobody reflects on their own gender identity beyond this.

In other branches, you find a coin that allows you to go back in time and change the past. When Darious gets possessed by the ghost, you have the option to go back in time to try and prevent this from happening. If you do, Darious ends up dying instead of Morgana, who's declared herself captain. There's a scene between Morgana and Mila discussing what happened, and that's it. Morgana isn't freaked out that her crewmates come from an alternate timeline. Nobody finds this weird. Nobody wonders what happened to the original crew she had, because she clearly wasn't sailing alone. Nobody posits about what they would've done if they were using the coin. It's just 'wow! time travel exists!' and the story moves on. Again, just like with Darious' potential character arc, this could carry the entire story. There's already a shitload of movies, books, and games based around time travel, but here it's just a plot device.

The world building also suffers from this as well. New settings and characters are introduced and then hastily thrown aside to continue the story. At the beauty temple, we get a lore dump about how the religion of the island is centered around beauty and physical appearances, but we never look beyond that. We never get to look at the surrounding town or talk to anyone else except the two characters that give us the lore dump.

In one route, Leeko gets transformed into the world greatest baker, and the rest of the gang concoct a plan to use him to gain access to the queen's coins. He'll be hired as the head baker, then after gaining her trust, then the gang will kidnap her and hold her for ransom. Aside from being a stupid plan (why couldn't you sneak in and steal the coins while the queen was distracted?), we don't see Leeko meeting the queen or gaining her trust, it just skips right over to her being held for ransom. There's also multiple times where character's say things along the lines of 'We've been searching for these coins for months'. Like, no, it's been five minutes, and skipping scenes like these only make that worse.

The other major gripe I have is that characters die for no reason. In one route, Mila, Tam-Tam, and Morgana have been captured by the queen and are going to be executed. While it's not shown, Leeko is meeting up with Steamchaser, and he agrees to use his magic to help Leeko out. A similar scenario happens on multiple routes, and no matter what, Tam-Tam is executed. Why, though? Like, in this moment, it would make sense for someone to die, but from a big picture perspective, was it really necessary? I can't think of a reason why she needed to die, other than dramatic stakes, and I don't think the story would suffer if she didn't. Also, Steamchaser uses his magic like a minute after Tam-Tam is carried off, could Morgana and Mila not have stalled for time?

Again, this isn't the worst I've seen. The main cast is great, the banter Morgana and Tam-Tam give are some of my favorites. The music is good and so is the voice acting. It's interesting to see the story branch out and wonder what ending you'll get. It's interesting to see what the characters transform into. But none of this excuses the fact that the story consistently fails to properly set anything up or follow through on it.

#the pirates fate #indie game #indie dev #game review #visual novel #furry #volkenfox #tf wright #leeko #tam tam #darious #mila #morgana #writing

[millennialdemon]

Coming off of true trainwrecks the likes of Mars of Destruction and Skelter Heaven, I actually came out of Dark Cat with a sense of respect and gratitude for its competence. 

For the uninitiated, Dark Cat is a notoriously bad OVA from 1991 that you will see listed in many Worst Anime Ever countdowns. It follows 2 brothers, “dark cats” Hyoi and Rui, who investigate supernatural happenings and purify evil with their somewhat undefined powers of shapeshifting and increased strength/agility. The majority of the story in the OVA is about a school girl named Aimi, who is pining after her childhood friend Koizumi, who since the rejection and sudden death of his crush, has been suffering a depressive episode and ignoring her. Hyoi and Rui sense dark forces are manifesting at the school, and they keep an eye on Aimi while fighting off the increasingly brazen appearances of demonic enemies.

A monstrous ex-dark cat named Jukokubo is revealed to be manipulating Aimi with his dark powers, and Hyoi and Rui fight him, but not before Aimi succumbs to the evil magic -- as well as her own violent jealousy and overprotectiveness of Koizumi -- and transforms into a horrific tentacle monster that kills seemingly everyone in the school.

In the end, Koizumi realizes that Aimi was in love with him the entire time, and doesn’t fight her when she engulfs him completely. Apparently this act of selfless love was enough to purify them both, and although they do indeed die, their souls are “light” and able to ascend. This throws a wrench in Jukokubo’s plan to prove that humans are The Worst, so he turns tail and leaves his boss fight against Hyoi, threatening to return again. In the epilogue, Hyoi and Rui reflect on the mission and wax poetic about the nature of humanity while crossing a busy street.

… Ehm… happy ending, yes?

Now then: there are actually quite a few things I enjoyed about Dark Cat, and they are all very simple things that I had come to miss after days of watching other entries from the Bottom of the Barrel.

It had a narrative, and was -- mostly -- comprehensible in its storytelling, as rushed as it may have been. There was an undeniable presence of an art director, something I’m not convinced was present in a few of the other similarly rated titles I have seen. Some of the shots were noticeably well composed and even clever, and required an artistic vision and some decent effort to create. The animation wasn’t awful, the designs ranged from serviceable to genuinely charming (I like the subtlety of Hyoi and Rui’s cat-like features!), and I liked that the characters actually emoted. It wasn’t as generic as I expected and took some risks, even if they didn’t pay off and left it with a reputation of being “too grotesque to be enjoyable”.

I can understand the common criticisms of the gore and body horror being poorly animated, but I won’t decry it for existing and “being ugly”... of course it’s ugly, it’s body horror reminiscent of The Thing from The Thing. (Now would be a good time to warn people not to look this OVA up, unless they are sure they are okay with body horror and gore of this calibre. Tentacles with teeth and spines rip out of people’s skin from the inside and deform their hosts, it is quite awful! I would also include a warning for trypophobia -- there are shots where the mutations form clusters of holes on the skin.) The body horror in Dark Cat being disgusting and making my skin crawl isn’t a fault -- I think it’s the intended purpose. Though I will concede that:

The phallic imagery of the horrific flesh mutations, particularly that of the teacher who attacked Rui, was… bizarre, considering that otherwise the OVA isn’t particularly dark in tone or otherwise sexually graphic.

Perhaps having grotesque body horror is completely unexpected in a story about two bishounen teens (?) who can turn into cats and fight ghosts. 

Yes, Dark Cat, the OVA put on Worst Anime Ever lists for being a grotesque spectacle, is just as commonly placed on those lists for being a dumb anime about guys that can transform into house cats and who fight supernatural entities with not so amazing powers. This is a gripe I’ve seen in a few popular reviews, but there was no point during my watching experience that I thought, “Man, these teens are pansies, they don’t even turn into big scary lions or anything! What’s the point, it’s practically a power-down! cinemasins ding” because I don’t go into anime expecting every single male character I see to be Big & Strong & Cool, because I uh… don’t have brain worms I guess? I don’t know what to say about this criticism really, other than people who watch a lot of shounen have very strange hang ups about super powers. 

Otherwise, it seems the biggest reason Dark Cat is lauded as One of the Worst -- perhaps even ahead of the silly concept and nauseating gore -- is actually because of the abysmal english dub. It’s my honour to say that I didn’t watch the dub, so it doesn’t factor in at all into my impressions! 

So in the end, perhaps my only true gripes with Dark Cat are:

Despite having no particular issue with body horror and gore existing, the extent of destruction and graphic death gave the OVA a bit of a snuff film vibe.

The conclusion to the story was quite bad. 

It could be surmised by the brief plot outline I wrote earlier that Dark Cat isn’t a very complicated story. Demons and ghosts exist and wreak havoc on emotionally vulnerable humans, and supernatural soldiers try to mediate between the realms by purifying tortured ghosts and saving those dragged into darkness by evil entities. These beats are common in the supernatural genre of anime, but Dark Cat’s handling of its tragic morality tale left me more confused than anything.

Koizumi didn’t do anything wrong -- he shouldn’t have had to die for the sin of not reciprocating Aimi’s feelings, nor for developing depression after the rejection and death of his classmate and crush. Aimi… did things wrong, but was nevertheless the most compelling character in the OVA. Throughout Aimi was kind, patient, and forgiving when it came to being treated badly by Koizumi. In the finale however, it is revealed that Aimi was the one responsible for Koizumi’s crush’s death, assumedly having murdered her out of jealousy or out of revenge on Koizumi’s behalf for hurting his feelings. Prior to this, the first students to be killed by the tentacle monsters just happened to be the ones that had bullied Koizumi in class earlier that day -- implying that Aimi was getting revenge on them, as well.

It was with these revelations that I started to wonder: Why not just let the flesh monster manifest as a direct result of Aimi’s negative feelings? Aimi confessed to murdering Koizumi’s crush before the events of the OVA -- would she have done so if she wasn’t being influenced by the malignant force set on her by Jukokubo? I feel that her arc would have been much more interesting without the introduction of a non-compelling and badly designed villain like Jukokubo, because then we would know it was all her. Even if she was influenced by forces exacerbating her pre-existing jealousy and rage, that is a more satisfying option than having a big dumb green cat of a villain to trace everything back to so neatly. 

And really, what did Jukokubo do in the story beyond take the spotlight, and the blame, from Aimi? He had some previous relation to Hyoi and Rui, but it’s not developed at all, and his ideological rivalry with Hyoi was trivial. Hyoi could have come to the same conclusions about holding out hope for humanity without Jukokubo there to insist he be a guest to debate on his political podcast.  

The lack of accountability regarding Aimi is a part of why the resolution to her conflict with Koizumi feels so wrong -- he succumbs to her feelings because he realizes the evil was born from her suffering, and he feels that he has to sacrifice himself to make up for unknowingly hurting her so much that she turned into a monster from hell. In the end she is absolved via being purified and getting to die with her spirit entwined with Koizumi’s, and he apologizes for having not recognized how he was hurting her. 

Aimi kills his crush, kills his bullies, and ends up -- inadvertently, at least -- killing almost all of their classmates, because she was tilted about her childhood friend not realizing she had romantic feelings for him. And when Koizumi learns all of this, he apologizes and dies with her, and this is proof of humanity’s goodness? The dark clouds part and the rain stops and Aimi and Koizumi ascend in a heavenly ray of light, because he decided, while she was devouring him, that he was wrong to ignore his murderous best friend’s love for him?

I guess it’s fine -- it was probably mostly Jukokubo’s fault anyway, and everyone was just an unfortunate victim of his meddling… 😒

Other than the bad writing, the string of deaths that happen in the finale when the monster lets loose in the school are quite uncomfortable to behold. Deformed student bodies are splayed and strewn around classrooms, and the bullies are rendered into unrecognizable mounds of pulsating flesh in their homes. The violence of a fight against a monster like this, I can handle, but the graphic images of helpless death were difficult to stomach. And in this OVA, there is no miraculous reversal of the demon’s damage once it is purified -- there is no implication whatsoever that everyone who died isn’t still just as dead as Aimi and Koizumi in the end. 

The main thing I was actually worried about when I watched Dark Cat was that there would be sexual assault, thanks to reviewers griping it for “generic hentai tentacles”. I am relieved to say that there is none, at least not insofar as deserving a comparison to actual porn. There is sexual content scattered throughout the horror scenes: The occasionally phallic appearance of the tentacles, shots of the tentacles coming down from under skirts, and there is one shot of nudity when Aimi’s shirt is ripped open as she transforms, though I would say it’s too horrific and ugly to be sexualized or otherwise considered “fanservice”.

What is the point of the hits of sex imagery in Dark Cat? I have no idea. This isn’t Alien, it isn’t about the horror of sexual assault or the violence of creation -- though the main horror of the scene where Rui is ambushed by the teacher seems to be that she uses magic to seduce him, only to reveal a very phallic tentacle from her mouth that she means to kill (or infect…?) him with, which can have multiple, potentially offensive readings… it is a one off, however -- and there doesn’t seem to be any moral posturing about it as is often seen in slashers. I couldn’t parse any sort of consistent STI allegory regarding the plague of tentacles upon the student body, despite how many summaries I have read that describe the tentacles as that, a “plague”. 

… I realize I am probably the only person on earth to give any aspect of Dark Cat’s production this much thought. To sum up: It seems to just exist for the shock value. Considering the extent of disgusting imagery already present a la The Gore and Deformation of Human Bodies, I don’t think this OVA benefitted from featuring some explicit looking tendrils, beyond cementing its abhorrent reputation.

Is this all to say that I think Dark Cat is a good OVA? No, of course not. It’s tone deaf, and tasteless, and has awkward pacing and bad writing. But compared to the utterly soulless and artistically devoid works the likes of Skelter Heaven and Mars of Destruction, I would say the fact I was able to write this much about Dark Cat is testament to that fact that it at the very least, contains content -- and some of that content was like, decent! Skelter+Heaven was such a mess it was all I could do to understand the sequence of events, and Mars of Destruction was so bland I literally have no posts about it on the blog despite watching it more than once. Psychic Wars was a snoozefest I barely finished that similarly has no mention on the blog, and Hanoka’s production gimmick couldn’t save it from being a totally forgettable romance story. 

Therefore, Dark Cat is the best worst title I have seen thus far, by virtue of being executed with an average amount of competency for an OVA from the early 90s, and for having a balance of good and bad elements that gave me something to hold onto and mull over after viewing. 

3/10.

Oh, and I loved the bad 80s insert songs.  

#:Dark Cat #dark cat #2138 words later the verdict is. It was ok

[popculturebuffet]

The Color of Friendship Review (Commissioned by WeirdKev27): A World of People

Happy Black History Month! Another day, another comission from longtime supporter of the blog Weird Kev and like a good chunk of his-non duck asks, he asked me for something outside my usual wheelhouse. In the past this has meant an episode of the short lived fox show whoops in which we found out how Santa dealt with the end of the world, didn’t know how doors worked, and interacted with some characters so thin you could remake the episode with just Mick Foley in a santa suit and carboard cutouts playing the characters lines and it’d be about the same, and earlier this month Sorry Wrong Meeting, an episode of a sitcom i’d never seen an episode of the Jeffersons about the KKK. So unsuprisingly his big comission for Black History Month was the 2000 Disney Channel Original Movie, The Color of Friendship. 

I couldn’t find much on the making of the film, which dosen’t entirely suprise me as at the time this came out, Disney was releasing around 10 a year and whlie that stopped shortly, it still was a whopping 6 a year for some time, ocasionally more ocasionaly less, slowly dwindling down to the two of year we have now. Though it’s still an ongoing concern and has been since the channel started in 83, closing in on 40 years ago, so it’s still impressive Disney hasn’t just outright phased them out. Then again the popular ones make them a lot of money and some like High School Musical and the Descendants Trilogies have broken out so big they’ve lead to spinoff books, tv series in the latter’s case, and all that stuff making them money hand over fist. So making some cheap movies that MIGHT end up making them rich and usually star people that are already on shows they have or were at one point is a no loose proposition, especially now they add an extra release to the Disney Plus callender twice a year. And while the library has it’s gaps and i’ve griped about them enough.. I will say it’s stil la damn good library and it’s nice to be able to watch a film like this, as the dvd was LONG out of print and likely horribly expensive, and while renting it was an option, it would’ve chipped into what I got commissioned for the film. Still would’ve done it it just would’ve sucked to loose money on the deal, if only two bucks, for something I had no control over. Still would do that over adding it onto the comission fee. Point is stuff that’s not been easy to get for some time is now just a few clicks or taps of the remote away, and having the VAST majority of disney’s long and storied history from theatrical to dcom to weird tv oddities like.. this thing

I don’t know what Fuzzbucket is, and frankly I don’t want to know.. I mean I will for a comission or something but i’m not going to go out of my way to find out what that thing is and if it can give me scabies through a telvision screen despite being fictional and proabably long dead. At least I tell myself it’s long dead so ic an sleep at night without worrying about that thing breaking into my house and watchnig me while I sleep changing “SOON JACOB, SOON”. So yeah while you’ll hear me complain about the gaps in DIsney Plus’ library a lot on this blog. 

I will give credit where it’s due, and what is on there is pretty expansive and now includes the Muppet Show, which I give them full credit for as that probably took a LOT of work and money to make happen. Plus WandaVision is fucking fantastic, especially now i’m finally all caught up. 

But while as I said I couldn’t find much on the making of the film I did find a bit on it’s inspiration: It was inspried by a short story wrtten by Piper Dellums, a writer, poet and activist, and daughter of Ron Dellums. Dellums is a notable congressman who fought against apartheid and constantly fought for a bill to divest from South Africa, something that SHOCKINGLY, Ronald Regan tried to veto because he was a racist disney anamatronic what did you expect, and all in all seemed pretty awesome. He sued Bush SR to try and prevent Desert Storm, in his earliest days in office had an exibit near his phsyical office of vietnam war crimes to try and hold them acountable and in general seems to be a fascenating, hardworking man who constantly and religiously fought for the people and against war. 

The story was a real life account of the Piper’s experince housing a South African Student, Marie, who the Delums Family expected to be black.. but turned out ot be white. During Apartheid, south africas racist as hell and horrifying goverment system of segregation that wasn’t abolished till the 90′s. As expected she was racist, but as a proudct of the horribly racist country she came from and much like with her fictional counterpart in this film, slowly grew to realize how fucked up her homeland was and by the time she went back, became an activist She and Piper were very close but her story ends tragically as eventually Piper stopped hearing from her after she was arrested and despite attempts to talk to her.. it was clear by the silence, and by the fact Piper visited South Africa post-aparthied to help and likely would’ve seen her.. that she was likely quitely killed by the state. But her story thankfully lives on, so join me under the cut to see how a 20 year old disney movie aired during black history month handles this difficult real life story, racisim and the 70′s. 

The Cast: Quick bit about the cast since I usually do this for first episodes of an animated show and wish i’d done so for my other film reviews so far. Though to keep things simple, i’m only doing the main four cast members, especailly since frankly outside of Mahree’s parents the rest are more supporting roles that don’t have a lot of screen time and in hte case of the south african embassy workers, are just there to be racist card board cutout villians.  Piper, who keeps her name from real life is played by Shadia Simmons, who eventually retired from acting to become a High School and Acting Teacher. During her career she was in a bunch of Disney Channel Original Movies, including the first two Zenon Movies, and was in a major role in a bunch of live action childrens shows: I Was A Sizth Grade Alien, Strange Days at Blake Holsely High, and Life with Derek, the only one of which i’ve seen and even then barely so I can’t comment on the rest of her work. Simmons does a decent job in the film, and does shine in the more dramtic scenes, not the best part of it but certainly not bad at all. 

Lindsay Haun plays Mahree, and had more of an acting career after this one, having a small recurring role on True Blood as Hadley, while also directing some smaller films. Haun is easily one of the two highlights of the movie and the best of the two main tween actresses by a mile. More on that in a bit. 

Next we have Carl Fucking Lumbly as Congressman Ron Dellums. Carl has had a long and storied career and the fucking is because of what I best know him from: Playing the Martian Manhunter Jon Jonzz on Justice League. And let me not undersell it: his version of Jon is waht made me LOVE the character, still do to this day, being the first time I encountered any version of Jon and the one I still love the most, a stoic man who tries to adapt to a world he feels he can never be a part of, adding shades to his stitled demeanour to show off his emtitons and in general being the heart and soul of what made this verison work and made me love the character with his performance. He’s done other stuff too including Cagney and Lacey, Doctor Sleepand what have you.. but he’ll always be Jonn to me and that’s not a bad thing in the slightest. Unsuprisingly he’s the other standout here. 

Finally we have Penny Johnson as Ron’s wife and Piper’s Mother Roscoe,  who played Captain Sisko’s love intrest on Deep Space 9 and was one of the leads on castle. Haven’t seen either of those but she does seem awesome and does a terrific job here. 

Moving on to the film itself.. it’s really fantastic. It has some awkwardness and goofy bollocks as you’d expect from a disney channel original movie in 2000, but it handles a really heavy subject, race relations, gracefully and clearly with the goal of educating an audience with a lot of white kids in it about race. So I can praise what it does right i’m going to be handling the parts that are a bit wobbly first so I can get to the good stuff

Awkwardness and Goofy Bollocks:

First the out and out criticism: The films TV Movie roots show in places, as this film lacks the polish these films would have later this decade, with the film barely having an opening title sequence and just sorta throwing you in, though to their credit it does open with the utterly awesome Back in Love Again, because 70′s. 

That slaps and that’s an undeniable fact. What’s also an undenaible fact is the film dosen’t try the hardest to be very 70′s in it’s sets and what not, though it does do it a little with the clothes and that not being the case with Mahree is intentional, as her family while wealthy is from another culture and one literally and metaphorically behind the times. 

I will also say Shadia Simmons is a decent actress, but is mildly weak in comparison to the other 3 in the leads, but its more the result of putting a pretty standard child sitcom actress up against two experinced actors who know what their doing and one whose about as experinced as her, but simply has a LOT to work with and goes above and beyond. It’s less that she’s bad and more that she’s simply not as good as what’s around her, and in general I tend to go easier on child actors since it’s not an easy job for a grown adult much less a teenager, it’s very pressurey and there’s a reason a LOT of them bottom out as they get older or retire all together. 

I will say though that Piper’s brothers are awful and I feel are only there because she actually had brothers. The actors try, i’m not pinning this on them but writing wise their just two little shits who contirbute ntohing of value to any scene their in, being generally way to young to get into the heavy topic at hand, and mostly being there for unfunny shneanigans. They aren’t in the film too much otherwise they might’ve ruined it for me, but if Shadia struggles a bit agianst sttronge perofrmances imagine who younger actors with the stage direction “Be the bane of my existence” and you’ll MAYBE see the problem. 

The film also loves cheesy time passing montages, including an actual factual shopping montage, easily the goofiest, but it’s something you’d expect from a dcom and helps lighten the mood. That’s a running theme outside the brothers there really isn’t anything too silly.. until the last act.  See in the last act, the film tackles the real life death of Steve Biko, a South African activist against apartheid who was captured by the state and very transparently murdered in jail. with the government claming he killed himself which no one bought because why would they, and it sparked riots worldwide and finally got the US to take Apartheid seriously according to the film. Though as I mentioned earlier Regan did not in case you thought the republican party being terrible and deeply racist was a brand new thing. It was not. Guys like Tucker Carlson and Former President Trump are a symptom, not the disease.. though they certainly look and feel like some form of plauge. Point is Mahree is breifly taken by the embassy.. whose staff who take her feel like the Disney Channel Original Movie form of Nazi’s. The heavy accents, the way they compose themselves... I half expect an elderly indiana jones to show up to whip the piss out of them. And dont’ get me wrong, the only diffrence between these pricks and a nazi is the fact they don’t call themselves nazis, this isn’t a nuanced horrifying racist to be scared of but a saturday morning cartoon version. 

While  white supremacists in real life can be cartoonishly evil, again see trump and carlson, it does kind of undercut the seriousness and nuance of things to have your villians be cold, cackling cutouts who are 5 seconds away from saying “You are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor take her away” to our heroine, especailly since Mahree’s reaction to being taken away and confusion at everything and at being treated like a prisoner by her own people are very painful and very well acted.   I do get showing them as monsters, because they were, but given Mahree’s father who as a south african police man was DEFINTELY ONE and even outside his racisim doubts and downtalks his own daughter, still feels like an actual person, if not a GOOD person, they could’ve done better and did in the same film. 

But that stuff aside.. I really can’t find much that’s honestly that silly or bad and as you can tell what little I did was more a product of being a tv movie. So now i’ve got the negatives out of the way

This Film Is Pretty Good: It truly is, for a lot of reasons. But the biggest is the nuance. It could’ve been easy to just have Maree as some racist kid needing to learn a lesson who was openly cruel and easy to jeer at.. but the film went iwth the reality: that she was instead an extremley privlaged and insulated girl who simply NEVER knew better. To her her very racist and segregated world is just the way the world worked for her and she dosen’t even consider when the Dellums come to pick her up minus Ron these aren’t servants and her own servant’s words fall on deaf ears, as the poor woman tries to make it clear how miserable her life is and how much she deseprately wants this child to do better. Marhee is never actively malicious even when, due to the shock of her all black host family, she baricades herself in Piper’s room. It’s obnoxious sure and CERTAINLY hurtful and the film makes no bones about it and Piper rightfully calls her out on it. The film dosen’t let her get away with any intetnional racisim like that and after Piper calls her out, she realizes she’s been selifsh and makes a genuine effort. And even then the film makes a good choice in not making it an easy road to realization. Mahree makes a genuine effort in the first place not because of any big revelation or anything, but because she simply hears her dad in her head telling her she’d give up after a week and that, coupled with Piper’s words, makes her see herself as a selfish brat. Even after she’s floored by a mall where black and white people stand side by side aand casually talks about horrors like ID Cards like i’ts a GOOD thing, because that’s what she’s been taught by her dad. That black people are happy being told where they can and can’t go when no they weren’t they simply had no chocie in the matter. And while we do see early on when an asshole at a restraunt assaults a waiter for an accident that Mahree clearly isn’t okay with the more horrifying side of things, she still dosen’t quite grasp WHY that happened, simply that it’s something that does reguarly she dosen’t like. It’s excellently, and unsuprisingly called back when they visit an ice cream place in the states and something similar happens.. but the guy takes it in stride, even ordering a sundae, to Maree’s confusion. 

It’s what makes the film work and all the more striking: As Roscoe makes clear to Ron, whose admant about nto having a racist in the house, this is not her fault. While the film makes it clear Mahree’s behavior at first was not okay and her prejudiece is not okay, it also makes it VERY clear she’s a product of a terrible system and terrible parenting from people who choose to benneift from the system instead of challenge it. She’s only like this because she hasn’t had a reason to ever think diffrent and just took her parents at face value and no mater the country, this is something that sadly happens far too often: Someone hating a group or thinking discrimination is okay because that’s how they were taught and that’s all they’ve known and the only way to change that is to challenge that opinon and try to get them to have some empathy and see the other way and as this film shows it’s a struggle.. and at the end of the day while the Dellums make a concentrated effort, Maree is the one who has to realize what her parents taught her is bad and her country is inherently flawed and NEEDS to change, just like ours did, and STILL badly needs to. 

And that’s where the nuance kicks in as the good congressman is understandable in not wanting a racist in his house... but his wife is equally right that Maree is not some easy symbol of his hatred towards south africa, but a girl who grew up knowing nothing more than the fucked up system, and eventually he comes around, realizing , especially after she apologizes for him even thinking she’d use a racial slur on piper after a very powerful conversation with the two and piper accidently saying she used the South African N Word, almost accidently getting her friend thrown out, that she simply hasn’t been outside her shell and gently guides her to keep reading roots, even letting her take it with her if she wants back home. The film shows the full pain of the situation  but also shows change is posisble. Again it’s not easy, Mahree has a panic attack waiting in an almost all black line in school and it’s shown to be as horrible a thought as it is., but she DOES change and it comes off as real, as someone realizing the system they grew up with is broken and needs to be fixed and she can’t just sit back and let it. 

What makes this happen, besides the aformentioned kidnapping by saturday morning cartoon racists, is Piper confronting her after a friend from south africa forces Piper to acccept that while her and Mahree are friends, Mahree might not seee her as equal and Piper in turn in a heated argument and easily Simmons best performance of the film, that things are broken and wrong and that her “firend”, her nanny/servant back home, is not happy. It leaves Mahree crying and Ron telling her the honest truth: Change was, and again still is but this was 2000 and while we should’ve had this talk disney channel wasn’t ready for it, needed to make things better here.. and tha’ts what south african’s doing> Fighting for equal rights at last. It’s some powerful, heavy as hell stuff you woudln’t expect from a line of movie that also include a robot house, before that was an actual thing, a merMAN dad MerMan, a boy slowly turning into a leprechaun, and at least two diffrent movies centering around wacky kidnappings. It’s a nuanced and hard look at race, as hard as late 90′s jsut turned into the 2000′s disney could get mind, aimed at kids and the film, whiel stilted really has my utter praise. It’s genuinely moving, well acted and teaches a valuable message that while not eveyrone can change.. it dosen’t hurt to try and help them, as well as the equal message that change start with YOU. someone has to WANT to be better and learn and actually let other people in to help them. And I wont’ lie and say this is the most naunced or subtle film.. at time’s it’s about as subtle as a ralph wiggum throught he window

But sometimes you don’t need to be. It also taught kids about apartheid, not me as I barely saw the film, but many learned of something ghoulsih that had barely ended at the time of the film’s release, something I only learned about as a teen via bloom county and a diffrent world, which has an utterly awesome apartheid episode “A World Alike”. Seriously check it out if you have prime, as it shows that america isn’t the only country with a deep history of ingraned racisim. And was it an easy way to have an anti racisim narriative without fully confronting america’s own racist history? Yup. Just.. yup. Can I blame Disney Channel for it when they clearly, while equipped to tackle racisim, weren’t ready to tackle something that dense or heavy, and while Proud Family later would there’s a diffrence between a 20 minute one off episode of a cartoon and 90 minutes of film? Yeah. For what it is and for what the time period is, I applaud this film taking on such a heavy topic with grace. Some goofyiness here and there yes and some lack of subtly.. but still grace. For what it is is, it’s pretty good and i hope to show it to my nieces one day soon. It has i’ts heart in the right place and thus has a place in my heart. See you next rainbow. 

#the color of friendship #disney channel #dcom #disney channel original movie #black history month #black lives matter

[freelancerfeels]

Damn, an original post? On this blog? Is this real life?? Thoughts on Zero below, there are some spoilers so be warned. This was meant to be my attempt at a critique but honestly it just turned into a long winded rant full of stuff other people have probably complained about already. I apologize in advance for the overall negative tone, but after watching the first 2 episodes twice I’m a little disheartened at the moment.

Alright, so I guess the good things first? The warthog racing scene aside, the visuals are pretty good! The fight scenes, especially involving the villains look impressive. The characters movements are smooth, the physics don’t seem too wild (depending on how you feel about teleportation); so overall I like it.  It’s good to see Wash and Lina again, it seems like the former made a full recovery despite his injuries which I’m a big fan of. Shotgun wielding Carolina in Ep 1 is certified BDE, and my boy copped a sweet promotion to Major in the offseason. So far I’m enjoying our antagonists; they look fuggin sweet, the dynamic between Phase and Diesel is amusing, and Zero gives off a mysterious leader vibe I can get behind. I’m sorry to say that’s about where it ends for me though. I have a laundry list of complaints so if you’re not interested in that I would stop reading here.  

I’m fairly indifferent towards Shatter Squad. The rivalry between East and One just feels like Carolina and Tex all over again, only with less animosity. Axel is the cliche team dad, Raymond is the awkward yet-to-prove-himself rookie, and West is the gritty, battle hardened team leader who doesn’t take any lip but cares deep down blah blah blah. It honestly feels like the writers have forgotten what made RvB so good in the first place. The first five seasons were literally just some idiots fucking around in a canyon with the occasionally plot line thrown in. It wasn’t the most visually impressive thing, but the characters were endearing and that made up for it.  The new cast just feels kind of cheesy and stereotypical, maybe that’s just me though.

Some of things I really hate? How about Wash immediately getting fucked up, tortured, and kidnapped. The poor dude literally just got over a TBI from the last season and they’re already using his suffering to advance the plot again. I’m really worried that we’re going to see either him or Lina get killed off and that would just wreck me. How about the complete absence of the Reds and Blues? I understand that some of the VA’s are gone and the others are busy running the company, but at least mention them. They’re the reason the show has made it this far; to just completely ignore them, especially after the character development Donut went through in S17, is mind boggling. There’s also not even a single whisper about Locus, Kimball, Dylan Andrews, Jax, or the cosmic powers we’ve just spent multiple seasons getting to know. They had so many options to bring back characters people really liked and they just dropped the ball. Like where the fuck is Huggins???

 Another thing that bothers me is the seemingly complete departure from the Halo universe. Have we just completely forgotten about the UNSC? You know, that one organization that PFL and Charon Industries were specifically shown as having ties to for like 11 seasons. What the fuck is AOD? At what point were Wash and Lina recruited into this new super secret squirrel program? There’s no continuity from previous seasons, which is fine if you want to take the show in a new direction, but then why use 2 characters who have been around for the past 12 and 9 seasons respectively? There’s armor, monsters, and weapons that have never existed in the Halo universe suddenly appearing from thin air. For some reason Agent East is able to move at inhuman speeds, not from armor enhancements like Carolina, but due to some unspecified experiments performed on her by some unmentioned till now organization only known as Starlight Laboratories. The  disregard for previously established canon details is just aggravating, and the way they just dumped these new things on us without any explanation feels cheap.

My last gripe for today is about the appearance and movements of the characters when they’re not fighting. The head movements when speaking are stilted and jerky, which didn’t seem to be an issue in previous seasons. One would think that with the fluidity of the fight scenes two characters simply chatting wouldn’t look so stiff and unnatural. The shadows and saturation in some scenes (warthog race) just look awful as well. Not to mention the appearance of the regular “soldiers” in the first episode. ACU-esque digital camouflages were out of style in the 2000′s, let alone the 2500′s.The voice acting also doesn’t really do it for me either, especially for Shatter Squad. In their defense, even Shannon and Jen seem a little off this season. The only characters I’ve enjoyed listening to so far have been Phase and Zero, the rest just don’t seem to mesh with their characters. 

To close this massive bitchfest I guess I’d just like to say it doesn’t feel like RvB anymore. Maybe it’s because RT has grown into such a giant soulless shell of what it once was. Maybe it’s because the people in charge of the show have forgotten where it’s come from and what we as fans enjoyed about it. Maybe it’s because all good things must eventually come to an end. Or maybe it’s just because I’m jaded.  What I do know is that I miss the Reds and Blues, I miss the dynamics that have been established over the past 17 seasons, and I miss how Wash and Lina had become members of their fucked up little family. Part of me wishes they had just pulled the plug and given all of them a happy ending in S17. I’d like to believe that the issue here is just me being cynical about the show going a direction I don’t agree with and that things will get better. At the end of the day, I’m just one salty person behind a keyboard and I hope that you guys are enjoying this season more than I am. 

Also, I still miss CT.

#rvb0 #rvb critical #rvb spoilers #im really sad about this season and venting

[svtskneecaps]

i’ve been enabled

here’s the sitch on the goddamn harry potter hogwarts mystery app game

it fucking sucks

here’s my main issues in a handy list i’ll go down later:

the gameplay

energy

art / visuals

the story

the writing

the choose your own adventure like elements (technically gameplay since there isn’t much else l m a o)

and i have receipts for most of this stuff. fun fact, i’ve been taking videos of all plot relevant events since year 1.

some context:

i’ve played up to year 3 myself. i have watched up until the very beginning of year 5 in someone’s youtube series (will bits? that was his main character [henceforth referred to as MC]’s name, however that was a year ago and it was in the background like a podcast so the details are sort of fuzzy. i have not played the game since march (it’s september, ish), but i’m loading it up as i type this just to get a feel for it

idk whether to assume my audience has or hasn’t played the game. i’ll keep my complaints as clear as possible.

i’m mainly an author so the storytelling sections are where i’m really going to pop off, since that’s something i have the most experience with and passion in, but i’ll be touching on everything else because compounded it’s all pissing me off lmao

[a couple hints at spoilers for maybe an event in year 1, and year 3, but nothing major]

let’s start with: THE GAMEPLAY

there isn’t any

literally. there’s like. zero gameplay.

you tap some highlighted figures, and then sometimes you get to trace a little shape, and sometimes you get to play rock paper scissors to fight somebody (they did manage to make duelling slightly better but it’s still not good by any standard)

sometimes you get to choose between three dialogue options, but those have barely any impact on the story or on your character. any impact they have is limited to a couple stat points, or maybe some house points, or like. some event at the end of the year. but like barely any make any real serious difference (but i’ll touch on that more later)

and then there’s the factor of stat points (and this gets kind of mathy, so feel free to skip to the bolded sentence)

for those who haven’t played the game, you have three stats (empathy, courage, and knowledge) that you can level up by taking classes, 1, 3, or 8 hours, for various rewards

back when i stopped playing, i had gained 8914 points in courage. if i recall correctly i was only about halfway to leveling up that stat. if you take an 8 hour class, you receive consistently 200 stat points, with a possibility of extra rewards that i can’t count for since those are randomly generated.

to get those 8914 points, i would have had to take 44.57 8 hour classes (while 8 hour they only take about 7, counting for the 2 hours it takes my energy to recharge to full). with 44.57 classes taking 7 hours each, to get halfway to level 24, i would have had to have done:

THIRTEEN STRAIGHT DAYS OF GRINDING, ASSUMING THAT ALL I HAD BEEN DOING WAS CHECKING ON THE HARRY POTTER HOGWARTS MYSTERY APP

and again, I WAS ONLY LIKE HALFWAY TO LEVELLING UP

I AM BARELY BEGINNING FOURTH YEAR. I AM NOT EVEN HALFWAY THROUGH THIS GAME.

i think they’ve fixed this now; it said i had 8914/1550 courage and when i got stat points it fixed itself and jumped me from level 23 to 28, so thanks for that jam city.

but it doesn’t change the fact that the grinding is fucking horrible and i’ve done my fair share of hours, and who knows what it’s going to look like when i get to a higher level again

the energy

yes, i know it’s an app game. i know they want my money. but holy FUCK the energy recharges disgustingly slowly, and every bit they expand my energy bar is an insult

“here, have another energy capacity!” they say, and then add to the amount of energy it takes to complete a task at the same time, so now shit just takes me even damn longer

it’s an insult. don’t think i didn’t fuckin notice jam city.

since it’s an app game, naturally, energy requires paying real world money or the (semi) rare in-game currency to get more if you blow through your bar. they want your money. i know they want my money, but it doesn’t make me any less disappointed by how damn blatant they’re being. app games like bakery story probably also want my money, but at least those are still fun to play.

the art / visuals

now i’m not an artist. nor am i a 3-d modeller. but if solo indie devs and 10 men teams can make video games that have to have models with a much fuller range of motion (since there’s ACTUAL GAMEPLAY and not just little cutscenes of characters moving around) and that don’t make me sick to watch, then jam city working on a HARRY POTTER GAME should be able to (jk rowling fucking sucks but her books have brought in so much goddamn money that they can afford to pay their devs enough to make the game look good; in this case i’m not entirely sure where the blame lies)

there’s like. 10 motions characters can use while in the cutscenes and talking. like 10. and i can recognize every one of them, and there is not a single motion unique to a character. the characters are something i’ll touch on later in the storytelling sections, though. just, please god give them SOMETHING even SLIGHTLY different. like make two versions of a couple of the crowd animations at LEAST, so that when people celebrate at the end of the year there’s not twenty people in the shot doing the same “pump my fists in the air in celebration” motion at the exact same time. PLEASE.

sometimes animations in story events and classes sync up too, which is. beyond distracting. like it’s completely immersion breaking and i mean please, please jam city, if you haven’t fixed that please fix it. please.

the animations that roll in flying class are fun, ONCE. when you’ve seen them eight hundred thousand times because you’re grinding up your courage stat, they get hella boring. all of the classes are like this to some extent but flying is the biggest offender since those were the longest animations. if they haven’t implemented a skip button since i last played it, they should. they fuckin should.

also the fertilizer animation in the greenhouse scenes is gross. you pick up a deformed cone of dirt with your shovel like a slice of cake and then shove it clipping through the edges of a pot, where it disappears without a trace. i hate it. jam city please make the game look good.

if you still play the game please tell me it looks better; i’ll be playing through a couple things after i post this but it’s hphm. it’s gonna take me a goddamn long time to hit all the points and confirm whether what i complained about has been fixed or not

also also, wearing dresses is so distracting, especially while dueling. the way the dress flexes around your legs is like you’re wearing clothing made from jello and when my character does the idle animation her hands clip through her skirt, and there’s all kids of glitches with hair where it clips through outfits (and why in the fuck do the necklaces float a full foot from the character’s body)

the storytelling

alright there’s a lot to cover so strap in

i’m not mad about the story having some of the same beats as harry potter. whatever, right? if it worked, it worked. having a big climax at the end of the year just works well for storytelling. having a school bully antagonist also works well for easy storytelling (it’s kinda cheap, but whatever works, right?) it’s what you DO with the archetypes you use that makes or breaks your story

jam city broke it

i don’t know how to organize my thoughts so here’s a bulleted list

it is very clearly obvious they wrote this as they went along (ex. a previously unseen character pops up in year 3 and was supposedly the best friend of your greatest enemy in previous years) and didn’t think to fix the plot holes

there’s too many goddamn characters (i love them, but with a big cast comes a whole host of problems [I WRITE FOR A KPOP GROUP WITH 13 MEMBERS, I HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE WITH THAT], and we’ll get there)

there’s too much goddamn filler for the sake of forcing us to spend time and in-game energy (yes i KNOW it’s an app game and they want our money but THEY COULD BE A LITTLE MORE SUBTLE ABOUT IT)

what honestly pisses me off the most about it is that IT COULD BE GOOD

IF THE STORY WERE GOOD, I WOULD FUCKIN IGNORE ALL OF THAT OTHER SHIT

but it’s not, and here’s the biggest gripe i have:

none of the choices you make matter. none of them. to the point where it’s immersion breaking at BEST

for example, while my MC is a hufflepuff, i know a lot of people play in slytherin. scenes where snape gets upset with your character and takes away house points no longer make sense for a slytherin MC, because snape would be infinitely more likely to give you three years of nightly detentions, or pitch you off the astronomy tower, than he would be to take house points from slytherin

honestly, they should have waited. if they wanted to put choose your own adventure elements into the game, they should have planned out every single one of those story arcs in detail, and THEN released the game. they could leave some of the more basic choices in and those choices only mattering for short term effects wouldn’t irk me as much as it does right now because THERE WOULD BE CHOICES THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE.

your very first choice over how you felt about your brother’s disappearance only matters for what wand you get (which i immediately forgot which really says something about the impact of that choice :)))) ). no matter what you pick, you still end up chasing after him for the rest of the game, so who cares?

story beats don’t land different based on your house. you could absolutely play it that merula hates you regardless of your house, that’s fine. just remember that if your MC is slytherin and lives in the female dorms, she probably shares a room with merula. which makes things fucky for all kinds of reasons, none of which jam city addresses in the current game, as far as i’m aware

also, there’s the deal with rowan

rowan is a character that goes into your mc’s chosen house no matter what (and as rowan changes pronouns with your player, i’ll be using “they” [or “she” as my player is a she and that’s what i’m used to; i’ll try to refrain but i might slip up occasionally] ). as far as i can tell, rowan’s personality remains the same no matter what house you’re in. they don’t try to play up the traits that match the house, rowan is just usually a sweet bookworm. why would the hat have put them in gryffindor? rowan khanna for me has never seemed to display any gryffindorish traits; or at the very least, no traits that should be prioritized over, say, the ravenclaw traits they have VERY STRONGLY (since rowan fills a sort of hermione role; rowan knows things about things and is your go to for research)

can we just put rowan in ravenclaw? sure, it would make it hard for fans in different houses to communicate between each other about the story for a time since certain sequences of events would play out differently, but here’s the thing:

if events play out differently based on your choices, people will want to play your game multiple times to get every ending

that’s the fun of a choose your own adventure game. if events play out distinctly differently if you’re a hufflepuff or a ravenclaw or a slytherin or a gryffindor, then people will want to play through the game four times at LEAST, once for each house, to get all the fun pieces of story (WHICH MEANS, they’ll be spending more and more time and using more and more energy, so you can make the same amount of money off people buying energy and watching the ads and maybe MORE while being able to cut out some of the more shitty pieces of filler)

in the current version, your house is just, what color are your robes and who is your prefect. i haven’t watched anyone who wasn’t a hufflepuff, but i’m sure that certain scenes and conflicts play out the exact same no matter what house you’re in

as an example, your house should affect how the duelling confrontation in year one should have gone. snape and flitwick should have different dialogue based on whether you’re a slytherin, or a ravenclaw, or a gryffindor, or a hufflepuff. snape fucking hates gryffindors, so he should be far less lenient against gryffindors, and on the flip side he should be battling between himself with how strict to be if you’re a slytherin; maybe he hates your guts because of a grudge against your brother, but you’re still in his house and we all know snape plays favorites. flitwick should be more disappointed if you’re a ravenclaw, because that’s his house and he had higher expectations for you. neither of them have many ties to hufflepuff that would skew the confrontation in a drastic direction, but had this been the first version of the game, then the confrontation that plays out in the current version we have would work fine for hufflepuff; you’re one of flitwick’s favorite charms students and he taught you this skill, and he’s disappointed to see you use it in this way, but not nearly as much as if you were one of his own

AND NOW PEOPLE WANT TO PLAY THE GAME MULTIPLE TIMES TO GET ALL THE DIALOGUE, WHICH MEANS MORE TIME, MORE ENERGY, AND MORE MONEY, JAM CITY, ARE YOU HEARING THIS??? MORE MONEY!!!!! IT’S A WIN WIN FOR EVERYONE

while we’re at it, change jacob to match his house. if you’re still gonna make him have the same house as the MC, make him match it. from how all the characters describe him that bitch is as slytherin as they come, if you’re gonna make him a hufflepuff with me then give him a clear, hufflepuff motive god damnit

finally,

the characters

there’s too many.

the problem with a big cast is no one gets enough screen time and some characters end up getting shunted to the side. that’s just what happens. you HAVE to zero in on four or five side friends and let the rest of them slip to the side. looking at my friends menu there are 17 characters you can befriend, not including hagrid, the quidditch crew, dobby, talbott, and chiara (since those are, as far as i know, unlocked via side quests, which are... fine. i don’t have any particular gripes about the side quests except for the thing with lupin being twice the size of tonks which, if you’ve read the seventh book i don’t need to explain how weird that is to you)

and BECAUSE there are so many, a lot of them have to be defined by one trait. ben is a coward, rowan’s clever and booksmart, penny has her hand on the school’s pulse and makes potions, liz likes creatures, charlie fuckin loves dragons, tonks likes pranks (seriously that’s her whole personality), andre likes clothes, barnaby is a dumb jock that likes creatures

like, traits are fun. but if that’s ALL THEY HAVE, that’s when things get a little fucky

how many of these characters have dimensions? i’m in year 4 chapter 4. the first screen recording of the game i took was on december 5 of 2019, and assuming i played about a minimum of 8 hours a day (”““played”““) until the final screen recording [may 20, 2020] before i dropped the game for about six months (i know for certain it was more than that, since i had some kind of activity going on at just about all times for at least a month of that, but i’ll take the generous estimate), at bare minimum that makes 1344 hours i spent playing this game, or about 56 days (keep in mind, this is a LOW estimate)

in those 56 days of gameplay, i don’t know ANYTHING about the characters other than their utility in my quest. i don’t know penny’s favorite color or even her favorite potion to brew, or how and why she started and when [there’s a reveal in third year that i watched someone play through, but i don’t know if i ever played through it myself; i don’t have any screen recordings of the event]. i don’t know anything about ben or his family aside from the fact that he’s muggleborn. i know some basic facts about barnaby’s family, and that he’s tough and likes creatures. rowan grew up on a tree farm and i have a vague recollection of her mentioning siblings. do we know anything about them?? do i know anything about how the characters interact with each other?? are barnaby and liz friends? they both like creatures. do they talk to charlie?? do ben and penny hang out while we’re not there? are ben and jae friends?? are jae and charlie??? DO THESE CHARACTERS EXIST WHEN THEY AREN’T NEEDED FOR THE CURSED VAULTS???

why in the fuck don’t i know these characters?? why don’t we know anything about tonks other than her affinity for pranking?? there’s a sharp bias in who the writer’s favorites are (they like the characters with angsty pasts they can twist around; what do we know about ben aside from his blood status? and he’s been around since first year; he’s the second friend you unlock. i know more about barnaby and i’ve known him for a much shorter time)

if you separate the routes, you get a chance to zero in on certain characters and actually develop them. if you’re a gryffindor, you befriend ben, charlie, and jae much more quickly and they make up the closest of your friends, along with rowan, if jam city is determined to keep their tutorial character constant across all plotlines (i still think rowan should be solely a ravenclaw, but i’ll allow rowan’s house to change so long as their personality shifts to emphasize certain qualities in order to match the change in house; your house should not just determine the color your robes are)

if you’re in slytherin, maybe you befriend barnaby in place of ben in the original game, or maybe there’s an arc where you clash heads with merula (who can still be an enemy even if you’re both in slytherin; merula doesn’t like competition and the MC is exactly that) and the rest of the slytherins in your year find themselves caught in the middle; maybe there’s an arc where your MC finds themself totally alone without allies due to the conflict between them and merula (might i suggest year two, while coming up on the climax of the year?)

hufflepuffs get to focus on tonks and penny much closer. ben can also be in this plotline, but he shouldn’t take center stage (characters should cross over plotlines, but only take center stage in one, aside from perhaps rowan if rowan remains constant). maybe chiara can get implemented into the main plotline to fill out the roster, and if not, diego caplan can get implemented earlier (i haven’t met him yet and know nothing about his character)

and ravenclaws get the ravenclaw characters BUT YOU GET THE POINT, i don’t want to bore anyone by repeating myself; this is long enough as is

what i’m saying is, these characters all have a different enough base that each route will be different just by focusing on different characters; ben and jae will respond to a situation much differently than penny and tonks might, which would ALREADY shake up the storyline of each house based on which house you choose in the beginning, and then characters overlap plotlines so you could leave hints in each route to the other characters’ unique backstories and motivations that leaves the player wanting to get to know the rest of your WELL DEVELOPED CAST (((MAKE SURE THEY’RE WELL DEVELOPED OR THIS WILL NOT WORK)))

WHAT I’M SAYING IS, THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD

if they put more effort into the story then maybe i would have gunned through the hufflepuff route so quickly and then restarted to go through all the rest of them. if you want people playing your game for longer then THAT is the way to go

yes, it will take time. yes, it will take effort. but you know what?

IT’LL ALSO MAKE YOU A FUCKTON OF MONEY FROM PLAYERS PLAYING EACH ROUTE IN FULL AND THEN PLAYING THEIR FAVORITE ROUTES AGAIN SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR

anyway, what i’m saying is, i hate this game so much because of the potential it had to succeed, and the potential it had to be a really good game. even if they didn’t change the gameplay much, even if they didn’t change the models, i could get past ALL OF THAT if the story was interesting

so uh. jam city, if you’re reading this, please. i will let you take away all of my days of playing this. i will let you render all of my progress obsolete and send me plummeting back into my first year at hogwarts to go through the game again, if you JUST, MAKE, MULTIPLE, ROUTES!!! MAKE MY CHOICES MATTER DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!

i’m also willing to let you use the ideas i posited here without credit or payment. because that sounds like a legal hassle and i am far too lazy to deal with that sort of thing, i just want to play a good game. please. please give me a good game to play.

also, make energy take 3 minutes to recharge. please.

so uh

TL;DR : i hate this game. and i wish i didn’t hate this game.

#harry potter hogwarts mystery #hphm #idk if i want to bother making this show up in the tags but i did put a lot of work into it #i'll try lmao #penny haywood #rowan khanna #charlie weasley #ben copper #fuckin idek what else to tag #bill weasley #andre egwu #barnaby lee #not kpop #shut up vic #seriously vic shut up it's a harry potter mobile app it's not that deep l m a o #tulip karasu #talbott winger #the ladies love talbott i gotta tag him lmao #oof i'd tag jae but like i'm 80% sure somebody in kpop has the exact same name and i don't want this showing up in those tags #but uh it might anyway just cause i tagged it with 'not kpop' #so uh #sorry? i did try #liz tuttle #i didn't even namedrop half these people #merula snyde #ismelda murk #is that enough tags #can i stop now #i'm gonna stop now #thanks for enabling me guys

[otp-armada]

I am not looking forward to these flashbacks. 

To date, we’ve had four onscreen kisses shared between Bellamy and Echo with additional, smaller moments of other forms of intimacy. I’d rather the show refrain from adding more tally marks to the count. 

If humans were gifted with the capacity for purging unwanted memories, then all this discomfort would be a moot point. I suppose there’s always alcohol as a fallback option, but not even the prospect of temporary amnesia is worth destroying my liver. Turning to alcohol to drown my B/E-related sorrows would probably qualify more as self-harm than self-help.

I’d much prefer to cut directly to an imminent breakup scene without the pomp and circumstance of an agonized Echo’s trip down memory lane. 

If anything, supplying us with visual evidence on how happy they were together is an even sadder remark on the state of B/E’s fragility, knowing it took 0.001 seconds for the mere mention of Clarke’s name to bring it all to ruin. No collection of past happy moments shared on the Ring erases the fractures in their relationship that occur between them afterward, originating with the revelation of a still-living Clarke. I'd be an absolute fool to believe otherwise. 

But if Jason deems a tour of their greatest hits as necessary to the story, I trust his judgment. Showing us B/E's origins as their romantic relationship begins to fall apart in real-time brings it full circle, and it lends gravitas to the story he's telling with Echo. With this particular arc, the bigger picture is still Echo's evolution. It's not about B/E.  

Once season 7 started, there was a visible shift in how Jason utilized B/E.  Whereas seasons 5 and 6 primarily used B/E as the third leg in a love triangle designed to keep a pining Bellarke apart, season 7 uses their master-spy dynamic to bolster Echo's development almost exclusively. Post-season 6, Bellarke is so primed to get together, one honest admission of mutual feelings without Echo as an obstacle and BOOM. Canon couple. 

Echo has a more extensive role than girl-to-be-dumped, and I'm not upset over it. She gets to stand up as a character after the majority of her life has been marked by slavery for her crown, and I'm not upset over it. As indemnification for the loss of her relationship, this orphan-turned-soldier is finding her place in a supportive, loving family while developing a sense of identity and independence, and I'm not upset over it.

I would’ve preferred Jason found a way to take her on this path without B/E remaining intact this far into the final season and theoretically for the foreseeable episodes. I would always choose to end them sooner rather than later, given a choice. But I understand why Jason didn't. 

Echo can’t very well outgrow a master-spy complex if there is no master to her spy. And as much as I hate it, the romantic aspect of B/E is a believable, convenient tool to keep this complex in place until her story comes to fruition. Would Echo act so extremely in service to a recent ex-boyfriend who left her for another woman? Probably not. As far as I can tell, the pinnacle of her arc is the moment she realizes she has to break free from Bellamy. So narrative structure demands B/E stay together, however technically, long enough for her to break those chains. 

I was initially excited about the flashbacks, if only because I took them as a sign of an impending breakup. But the timing doesn't pan out. Aside from the logistics of Echo and Bellamy presumably on separate worlds, and with her thinking him dead, we've only just reached the point where Echo might start to ask herself those hard questions she's been avoiding. She must have noticed a change in her relationship. Between Psychosis!Emori, B/E's 6x04 fight, and Anomaly!Roan, she's had enough cause for doubt. But I think she's suppressed any urge to reflect upon it for a number of reasons. Love. Continued hope they'll last. War. A mission to save him. It took a lot of meticulous maneuvering to corner Echo to this point. Now that we're here, I don't think Jason would pull a reverse Uno card in a 40-minute episode. It seems more likely that he will let her continue to stew in her emotions. Either she'll keep sinking until she hits rock bottom, or she'll start learning how to swim. 

Jason could always prove me wrong. And if I am, I'd never be happier for him to do so. If I'm not? It's at times like this when I am reminded of the resolution I made at the end of season 6- rest easy in the comfort of knowing B/E will meet its inevitable end but do not try to speculate when that might be. Attempting to discern the specifics of "when" brings one only misery. 

Jason’s signature sometimes-too-fast, other-times-too-slow pacing, is often liable to tempt one into ripping their own hair out. That being said, I’ve seen enough of this show to trust in his ability to tell a damn good story. Faith in his competency for the craft just requires on our part, the patience of a saint. 

If nothing else, it isn’t my story to tell, so I’ll just have to suck it up and find a way to deal with any disappointments I may feel. Or I can try to find the value within the story told. It's a better alternative than to be left bitter. No promises, though.

Maybe Echo’s actions against the Disciples aren’t reprehensible, considering the people she’s killing are those complicit in kidnapping and torturing her people. But Orlando was a good, honorable man whose naïveté convinced him to play for the wrong team, yet helped our heroes when he didn’t have to. Not unlike Shaw, whom Echo sold to Diyoza to fulfill her mission. But I assume “We are not his people” is residual mistrust leftover from Ryker’s betrayal of her. She miscalculated the feelings of one possible defector before, she won’t make the same mistake twice. 

If she was able to save Bellamy in the end, I’m sure she’d be able to justify the spilled blood it took to get there. But Orlando suffered at her hands for nothing, and she may not be overly concerned with morality, but she cares for the people she grows close to. Unless the episode proves otherwise, I’d like to think Orlando’s fate will weigh heavily on her. 

They may not have been close. But five years in close quarters with only a few people akin to friends for comfort, it'd be hard not to feel the slightest bit attached.

Those of us who believe in Bellarke know Echo is the third-party obstacle in a love triangle. But what is far more interesting is the role she played in the seasons-long Blake siblings struggle. 

Echo was persona non grata to both siblings following her and Octavia's mountaintop fight. Six years later, she highlights the difference in the siblings' maturities. Whereas Bellamy has learned to embrace empathy and forgiveness with open arms, Octavia is cold and unyielding. On a more personal note, B/E represents Octavia's persistent unwillingness to respect Bellamy as his own person, with needs and wants independent of her. 

After her soul searching on Skyring, I thought she had buried the hatchet, as per her lack of vitriol in her 6x12 conversation with Bellamy, and enthusiastically joining forces with Echo in 6x13. Maybe she did. But Octavia has also proven herself an unreliable narrator, and Hope feels indignation on her aunt's behalf. Whatever the case, there's a reason why the dialogue keeps referencing Echo and Octavia's hostile history. And I think it's building to a head in 7x07. 

I think mutual love for Bellamy is healing the divide between them when Echo is at her most fractured. She's isolated from Bellamy and the rest of Spacekru. Left in pain and seeking retribution as Octavia did, which, as we know, is where it all went wrong for the latter. Octavia, more than most, is in the best position to empathize with what Echo is currently feeling and how pain can destroy her if she lets it consume her. 

If Octavia can remind Echo she's not alone, if a former enemy can convince her she belongs and welcome her with open arms- as her brother did before her- it might do well in healing some broken piece inside of her. And it would be a roundabout display of Octavia's newfound maturity. This is good for both of them. This spiral she is in will require her to look inward. Since her fixation with Bellamy is partly what landed her in this mess, absolution cannot come from him. She can only find it in herself if she wants it. But I'd be glad if Octavia can help see her through it. This is what I mean about seeking value in the story told. We're so concerned about Octavia calling Echo family, about the possibility of it legitimizing B/E, it doesn't occur to us that it's about the characters themselves. And B/E is only a vehicle used to bring us there. It's easier to see when not consumed by automatic seething rage, as typical of our fellow Bellarke compatriots, for anything remotely associated with Echo.

If my heart and mind weren’t chanting “BELLARKEBELLARKEBELLARKE,” there’s a good chance I’d be able to better appreciate the complexities B/E gives to the development of the four characters it directly impacts. 

Our side of fandom has made lots of accusations about B/E since 5x01. It’s a forgettable, physical relationship worth little to Bellamy. B/E is unhealthy for reasons x, y, and z. We generate a different example in every episode. Click slideshow for more details. But the fact of the matter is, much of this isn't true. Until Echo went postal, B/E wasn’t unhealthy. Bellamy just had a greater love for Clarke. Up until their ending scene in 6x04, there was nothing they couldn’t come back from together, if both committed themselves fully, no more walls. It's not a particularly popular train of thought among us, but Jason absolutely could've written B/E as an endgame pairing. And all it would take to deliver a final killing blow is the inclusion of a single damning scene.

We can gripe over the length of time they've stayed together. But, in spite of what most people think about every new B/E development and Bellarke separation, Jason has never actually dropped an ax on Bellarke. Hope persists.

Jason is responsible for the development of dozens of characters, major plots, and dozens of smaller subplots. But our fandom reduced the story chiefly to Bellarke's romance. Our villains are those who stand in their way. Namely Echo, the only outside love interest to be an official obstacle. We fashioned Echo as our enemy. In lieu of removing her from the narrative (which is not in our power to do), we've done everything within our purview to diminish her. If Jason won't treat B/E and Echo as the jokes we know they are, we'll do it ourselves. Minimizing her role in the story makes it a hell of a lot easier to erase a character we'd rather didn't exist for our preferred ship to advance.

Lord knows how many times we've claimed she has no story. That absent relevance or substantial bearing, she's there simply because Jason is partial to her for some elusive reason. But the reality is, we never looked for her story because we wanted to be able to claim its inexistence. We wanted to be able to say she's frivolous to the story, and by extension, to Bellamy. We want to be able to dismantle B/E when it appears Jason doesn't. Except he is and has been doing so since day one. 

Months ago, on a whim, when I was feeling benevolent towards Echo, I wrote a long post HERE giving her the benefit of the doubt, and I said:

In the grand scheme of the story, I think this is the purpose Echo serves, to represent the part that says, “We’re all human. No matter what tribe we belong to, we fight for the same reasons. We love the same way. When you leave allegiances aside, when you see someone for who they are at their core, an enemy today can become a friend tomorrow.”

True peace, a series-long running theme for our heroes, begins with embracing former outsiders like Echo and Emori. Easy to lose sight of this when focused on ship wars. 

It is perfectly acceptable not to love all the components of a story. It is understandable to focus your attention on those select segments you find appealing. But a tunnel-visioned mindset lands you in trouble when you become resentful at the reminders that a story is a composite of more moving pieces than just the parts you like. And when you forget that screentime allotted to developing those pieces ahead of what you favor is permissible. Everything on a show has its time, all in due course. 

On the other hand, B/E shippers overinflate their ship's significance. They take canon and twist it to say, "Look at how strong B/E is, Bellarke could never. B/E is endgame, and Blorkes are delusional." Their conclusion of an epic love is another bias-based fandom interpretation that doesn’t hold water, either. 

I think the reality of B/E lies somewhere in a muddled middle of these two extremes. 

One last point, and I'll get off my soapbox. Despite what the melodramatic diatribe in my opening paragraph suggests, B/E is never as atrocious as fandom makes them out to be. Greater fandom treats anything remotely associated with B/E as the next great catastrophe. And as it turns out, it never really is.  

 Tagging @sometimesrosy, because I think, after years of combating opinions you don’t agree with, it might be a refreshing change of pace to know some of us do have more balanced views regarding B/E. If I do say so myself.

#hmmm how i tag this in a way that will land me in the least amount of hot water? #the 100 meta #with a side order of #fandom wank #long post #the 100 #bellarke #b/e #c/b/e #the 100 season 7 #my post

[tanstar]

Rambling about RE2R and RE3R’s cut content part 2

Read part 1 here.

Part 2: RE3R

So I’m gonna be honest, I really like RE3R. It’s narrative and characters are 10/10 for me, something I haven’t been able to say about RE in a long time (honestly my biggest gripes with re5 and 6 are the complete wasted potential of their narratives and characters). I’ll go more in depth about it later but yeah I’ve got no complaints about the story or characters. My problems with RE3R come down to it’s length, level design and the utilization of Nemesis. So let’s get started.

spoilers ahead 

Cut/altered/new content:

Live select options were cut in favour of a cohesive narrative and characterization (which have been expanded upon greatly), Jill’s apartment is now explorable, Nemesis ambushes Jill at her apartment and her escape is now playable, the graveyard is gone (though there is a nod to the graveyard at the start of the rpd section), the clock tower interior and its puzzles are gone (it’s exterior is used for the boss fight against Nemesis form 2 like the original), no water puzzle, the gravedigger has been merged with hunter gamma as a common enemy type, Uptown is now a linear setpiece that cannot be revisited, there are fewer Nemesis encounters, Nemesis item drops aren’t as worthwhile as the original,  there’s a new boss fight with Nemesis as he wields a flamethrower, tram has been changed to a subway train, fetchquest for the tram has been cut, Mikhail is now fully conscious for his entire appearance, new character Dr Bard included with new vaccine subplot, fetchquest for the gems has been made optional instead of mandatory, Mayor Warren’s statue is no longer fetchquest related and can be found before crossing the bridge to the clock tower, battery fetchquest for the construction site elevator has been changed to fuses for the underground storage facility elevator, Nemesis destroying the helicopter has been moved to the beginning of the game, Brad is still bitten at Bar Jack but heroically sacrifices himself rather than act like a huge coward, Brad is not killed by Nemesis, Brad infects Marvin (which ties in well with both og re2 and RE2R surprisingly), Racoon city in general has been redesigned to look like an american city instead of a japanese one, Stagla still explodes but cannot be entered, the zombie horde at Stagla has been moved to the hospital in a tower defence sequence, Drain Deimos and Brainsuckers have been merged, no leeches, no spiders or crows, new enemies the pale heads and parasite zombies, construction site and power station have been merged, once Jill has been infected Carlos takes her to the hospital instead of the chapel iside the clock tower, likewise Carlos doesn’t wait for 2 days before deciding to find a cure instead it takes him around 12 hours to find Jill and he immediately looks for the vaccine, hospital has been expanded, underground storage facility replaces the park, dead factory is merged with a new lab area, Tyrell is now an actual character and dies to Nemesis intead of an explosion, final boss is now reliant on Jill operating the rail gun herself rather than coercing Nemesis in front of it, iconic STARS line has been moved from the final boss fight to a chase sequence, the confrontation with Nicholai has been moved to the climax of the game, Nicholai is implied to be working with Wesker instead of Umbrella and of course the alternate ending with Barry was cut.

So RE3R does cut or alter the content of the original but in most cases it does try to replace whatever was cut. Also regardless of cuts, re3′s narrative has been expanded upon with character arcs and lore tying it to the rest of the series, that alone justifies this game’s existence for me. As much as I love the original, its bare bones plot and narrative structure (a result of being a sort of choose your adventure game) as well as the fact that it started as a spinoff game and the fact that its last three levels were added last minute (hence the vaccine plotline coming out of nowhere) really don’t do it any favours. I still enjoy the original story and characters but I think the remake did a better job at both these things. 

So I had some major problems with the writing for RE2R in both terms of the overall narrative (there is no cohesive overlapping narrative between our two leads) and the portrayal of certain characters (Leon and Ada), so what did I think of RE3R? It’s good. It’s really good actually, the acting is probably the best in the series tbh. Jill’s ptsd from the mansion incident and how it has made her distrustful but also self sacrificing is so interesting. This is perfectly displayed when she agrees to help the UBCS, she knows she shouldn’t help them, that Umbrella is out to get her but with civilian lives on the line she decides to fulfil her duty as a STARS officer and help out. But she isn’t just abrasive or snarky, she shows she is still a very caring person too, this can be seen in her interactions with Brad, Kendo and even Dario, she wants to genuinely save all three of them but things just don’t work out that way. Carlos is great, way better than his original incarnation and I say that as someone who likes that version too. He’s a great support character for Jill and also acts somewhat as a foil for her character and his arc about learning of Umbrella’s wrongdoings is handled well. I think everyone can aggree that Carlos and Jill’s dynamic is fantastic, the growth of their relationship feels very organic and genuine. I never expected to care about Brad so much, in the original he’s just a huge coward who exists to be killed by Nemesis but now he actually feels like a person and someone who Jill valued. Also holy shit that scene where he bites Marvin is so much more narratively fulfilling than his death by Nemesis. Mikhail’s expanded role as captain is great, as is his death. Tyrell actually gets to be a character this time around and I actually hoped he’d somehow survive. Dr Bard is a total scumbag and his inclusion finally explains the vaccine’s creation as well as adding to the overall corruption of RC via Umbrella. Nicholai’s a total ham and a dickhead, I mean this in a good way I would describe all my favourite RE villians this way (the Weskers, the Ashfords, Salazar, Carla Radames, Jack Baker). And form 1 Nemesis has some fun dramatic flair that I enjoyed. Also I will defend the choice to remove Barry from the ending, I really like Barry but it was the right decision not to involve him as it would really work against the game’s narrative and Jill’s character arc.

Now onto RE3R’s level design and structure and in my opinion it should have borrowed more from the og re3′s level design way more. What we have isn’t bad but it could’ve been much more. The streets being redesigned was inevitable to me, I really enjoy the aesthetic of the original but it looks very Japanese and RC is supposed to be a US city, so this change doesn’t bother me. The linearity does. The streets should have been more open and you should have been able to return to Uptown to explore (adding back in a fetchquest would justify this), this would give way more opportunities for Nemesis to stalk the player. What’s strange is there is a mod that opens up Downtown to be almost completely explorable and Nemesis’s AI can actually track you throughout it’s entirety, why bother programming him that way if the intention was to make the area more linear? When Nemesis does show up in the remake he’s great but he should have been present way more, he’s like the opposite of Mr X in RE2R. Mr X follows the player semi randomly around the RPD for a while but he is pretty toothless as a threat (seriously, you can out walk him), Nemesis on the other hand is a genuine threat but is only semi random for an incredibly short portion of the game. Expanding the streets would fix this issue. The park could’ve been an explorable area before the RPD, I personally don’t mind the park being cut but i know a lot of people do. They should have implemented more puzzles. I also think the clock tower should have been explorable and if I’m being honest I think it was supposed to be, it’s referenced in the subway and then we get the pamphlet before crossing the bridge, I think it was cut for time.  I think a lot was cut for time and I don’t think it’s M2′s fault, i think Capcom is the problem here and all you need to do is look at RE2R and all of its cut content for proof. 

Honestly if this game had just reintegrated some more of the original games levels and structure I think it would have been a 10/10, I still enjoy what we got I just want more! I hope we get DLC in the future and there’s certainly ample opportunity, we could have a ghost survivors scenario with Brad escaping Nemesis, we could play as Nicholai as he collects data on the outbreak before the main game, a dream sequence of Jill exploring the clock tower, Tyrell could cut through the park as he makes his way to the hospital and of course I hope we get Mercenaries mode. I guess time will tell.

#resident evil #resident evil 3 remake #resident evil 3 #re3 #rant

[the-nagakenny-archives]

Dr. Jim Meets Kenny

((OOC: This is from an RP I did a looooong time ago with Dr. Jim’s creator. Enjoy! :D))

Jim couldn’t help but over the data in his head as he traipsed through the jungle scenery, following a district trail in the forest floor. There had been rumours of course, locals recounting tales of a half man half snake, one that would do no harm to his 'victims' other than leaving them rather forgetful and merry once they had been deposited back to civilisation. But then there was one account from a visiting doctor that caught his interest, it told in great detail of one of the tourists he visited with, disappearing and then returning just as the locals had described. 

The patient had come back perfectly healthy and unharmed, yet exhibited drowsiness, a cheerful and relaxed disposition and a dotted memory of what happened to them. The only thing the subject remembered vaguely was encountering a 'friendly guy', one which looked at them in the eyes before they found themselves lost in a sea of rippling colours. 

Jim was more than eager to entertain his mind as he worked in the research camp with counter theories, perhaps this myth was a hallucination linked to the flora they had been gathering to examine, as they had found that some of the samples contained a few different hallucinogens. But why such a specific, recurring vision? There must have been some logical explanation. Yet another thing to keep his busied mind up at night. That was until... he saw it. Or rather, him.

It was by complete and total change, but when Dr. Jim was preparing some of the samples to be placed under the microscope, he saw him. At first he saw something moving through the underbrush, the tail of a large snake, then as he was backing away in fright to give the creature a wide berth, he looked up and saw what exactly that serpent tail was connected to. The initial shock had rendered him silent and still with his breath caught in his throat, which worked to his advantage, as the figure didn't seem to notice him staring. The bloody thing was moving at a considerable rate, so he didn't have the time to absorb the details, but he was certain. He had just witnessed the snake man of the stories slither by, making some very noticeable tracks in the grasses and decaying leaves coating the forest floor.

Was there a chance of catching up? Very unlikely, but what if he did? What if he found the creature exhibiting the ability the witnesses described, or at the very least, demonstrating whatever characteristic that would result such amazing stories? What if he caught just another glimpse to confirm he saw it in the first place? Now, he promised himself he wouldn't wander too far from the camp, and he would not go doddering off unprepared. He double checked and found he had already taken the necessary precautions against the jungle pests, and ever since he's edge-running days he's never even thought of leaving the house without some form of protection. In this case it was his nomad pistol hidden away under his coat, but he'd never even consider harming another person or creature unless in the name of self defence. 

So many questions, the curiosity was intoxicating enough to quell his gripes and fears of being in such a wild and untouched place. However, the heat was becoming exhausting to bare and he'd forgotten how long he'd been walking. Perhaps it was time to start to turn back?

Then suddenly, in no direction he could pinpoint accurately, he heard it.

Jim stopped for a moment, his face lighting up in confusion as he began to look around for the source. Was that humming? Well, that was certainly a development. He doubted it was any of his travel companions, following the trail he had put quite a distance behind him and the camp. That and if he were honest, whether they were engrossed in their work or just... to be frank, acting rather stuffy, he really didn't seem them as the 'whistle while they work' sort of fellows.

"O-Oh my word..." He murmured quietly to himself, not sure whether to be excited or terrified.

Either this humming was an anonymous third or the snake in question. After listening for a moment he noticed the sound was travelling away from him, prompting him to continue following. He out on his best effort to be stealthy, but even living on the fringes of the City could only teach a lemon so much to be like a peach. He would on occasion still not see the odd branch and produce a slight noise while stepping on it or sometimes stumble slightly, producing a not so silent curse from the doctor.

He pushed aside a few leaves, wiggled under a mossy log leaned against a tree and then found himself at a smallish clearing. He took a moment to look around while also producing a handkerchief to lightly tab away some of the perspiration forming on his brow, taking in the sights, sounds and smells as he did so. He could hear the faint rumble of a waterfall or river somewhere close by, the foliage in this place was particularly splendid as a result, not to mention the abundance of fruit. There was still a faint impression of the trail to follow, but it seems to peeter out and disappear.

What now? He wondered.

Meanwhile, resting well out of sight was the snake man in question. Kenny had sensed that there were humans in the jungle nearby, he could pick up their scent quite easily. He couldn't tell if they were dangerous as of yet, however; they smelled completely unlike the usual way tourists did, but also not like poachers or trappers at all. It was not a concerning scent, really, but Kenny had thought it best to maybe keep his distance for a little while before investigating further.

That was until he discovered that one of them was following him. He was pretending not to notice, going along his merry way and even humming to himself. He had also left an obvious trail for this person to follow, luring them a little farther away from where the majority of the humans seemed to be. When the time was right, he would shake things up a little and get an up close and personal with his pursuer. He so liked humans, and it would be nice to make another friend....and possibly snuggle a little as well. 

He had stealthily climbed up one of the trees, effectively eradicating his trail, and began doubling back a little bit through the treetop canopy, ceasing his humming--though he afforded himself a small, satisfied chuckle. He heard the human down below noisily making their way through the underbrush as they followed his trail to its end, and when he peered down he could just make them out: a male human with a tangle of dark wavy hair, wearing a long white coat with some necessary travel gear, looking very harried and uncomfortable too. He grinned to himself, and had climbed his way back down to the ground behind the hapless traveler, creeping his way through the jungle foliage without a sound--at first. When he got close enough, he playfully rustled a few leaves here and there to try to make his presence known, but kept himself hidden.

Jim noticeability tensed with a sharp gasp and spun around, but saw nothing just as Kenny anticipated. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable he backed away from the noise, only to hear another rustle not a few degrees away from where he was backing up.

"Oh Christ, oh no no no...!" He whined, sensing he could have very well lead himself into danger, he agreed with his earlier fears he couldn't help but feel thrust into a mild panic, falling back into the habit of biting the side of his hand to relieve the tension. But instead, he stood, he took a breath and tried to relax for a moment. He currently saw three options at this time: reach for his gun and shoot it off into the air to scare it away, back away from the scene slowly and abandon his quest.. or...

He opened his eyes and began looking about again.".....Hello?" He called quietly, looking for some hint of the subjects presence "I-I'm urm... I-I em... mean. No... harm?" He assured the empty space.

Kenny couldn't help chuckling again. Aw, poor guy was scared out of his shoes. He didn't want to spook him any more than he already was, so he switched tactics. "Oh, really?" Kenny piped up cheerfully from his hiding spot, a few feet away. "I was hoping that." 

Once again the small man visibly shrank at the sound of the voice behind him. His hand gripped the folds of his lab coat tightly, to the point of his knuckles turning a lighter shade, just not as pale as the shade his face was turning.

Kenny’s shaggy red-haired head had poked up out of the bushes somewhat, his brown eyes examining his quarry with innocent curiosity. "You some kind of doctor?" he asked him with a tilt of his head. He thought he recognized the kind of coat he was wearing. He started coming a little closer, slowly revealing the rest of him as he reared up from the ground; a strong, very muscular torso, completely naked, which would only be slightly alarming if he were human. However, in the place of legs, his body became thick, powerful snake coils, which were undulating lazily behind him in S-shapes as he slithered closer.

Jim turned around to see Kenny's approach. Now if the look on his face would be rather worrisome if it wasn't somewhat hilarious behold. Never had a face look so confused at whether it should exhibit silent awe or total abject terror. 

"YEs-??" He croaked, if he weren't clearly in his late 30's he'd sound like a teenager fighting his breaking tone. He cleared his voice and nodded quickly and fiddled with his hands "I-I mean -mean yes! I mean, I am. I MEAN! I-I am, a doctor and I mean yes I mean no harm--!" he sputtered pathetically as he backed up a step, it wasn't so much a case of sensing his fear but rather tasting it.

Well, this guy was kind of adorable. Kenny's eyes sparkled with good humor and just a hint of mischief. "Well, that's good," he remarked. "But you seem a little worked up, doc. I'm not going to hurt you. Try to relax a little, huh?" He chuckled pleasantly. "Here, I can help you." 

"A-Ah, I beg your pardon?" Jim muttered, then glanced down to his feet.

Kenny's tail had began to coil itself around Jim's legs, starting down near his shoes and slowly working its way upwards. Kenny himself loomed close, close enough for Dr. Jim to be almost able to smell his strange but pleasant parfum de snake-man, which consisted of cinnamon-y tree bark, earthy moss, and just a faint hint of masculine natural musk. "Yeah, just relax," Kenny repeated in a softer, slightly more soothing tone of voice.

“GzzZT!!" Jim hissed in fright at the sensation, he would have jumped a good few feet in the air if his boots hadn't been pinned. Trying to pull his leg up only resulted in him losing his balance. "W-Whh!" he wailed, wobbling and waving his arms to try and regain some centre.

"Whoa, careful there!" Kenny said with a grin. "You might fall over!" His coils firmly secured themselves around Dr. Jim's waist. "Really now, you're acting like I want to eat you or something!" he chirped cheerfully. It wasn't an unfounded fear, he supposed; there were a lot of snake-people who did eat humans, and he had the unfortunate pleasure of knowing a couple of them. He sure wished those jerks would stop. It really wasn't doing anything to help his ability to make friends.

Jim panted as he recovered from his near fall, his hands clutching onto the coil loop around his waist, only because there was little else to grab for stability. He noticeably shuddered at the notion of being eaten, looking back up to Kenny as he tried to politely push the coil off of his body.

"Well if that’s the case then y-you wouldn't mind letting go would you?" He queried, visibly distressed. "Be a friend and please let me go??" He gulped, grinning nervously. “Because honestly it’s wonderful you don’t see me as a threat or food but y-you’re getting a bit close for c-comfort--”

"Mmm, sure… in a second," Kenny lilted a bit slyly, his coil moving back into place around Dr. Jim's body. 

That mischievous twinkle was still present in his eyes. His body swayed lazily first to the left and then to the right as he looked Dr. Jim over.

"I just couldn't help but notice you're looking a little haggard, doc. Not getting enough sleep? I can usually tell if that's the case...

At the mention of sleep deprivation, Jim simply sighed and adopted a mildly peeved look. it wasn't the first time someone had taken note of the wear and tear he exhibited as a result of his sleep troubles, nor would it be the last he suspected. He went to speak but found himself interrupted again. “Well I--”

'Cuz I'm an expert on that subject, dontcha know." His tail tip playfully poked him on the nose. "Look at those bags under your eyes." 

The doctor’s face flinched at the poke, pursed his lips and shook his head. "I'm sure you have, if rumours are to believed, however I am fine--” 

Kenny simply tsked under his breath in mock disapproval. "Terrible, juuuuust terrible. Well, luckily, I've got just the thing to fix that."

Jim reflexibly closed his eyes with a sigh and tried to reorganise his thoughts. This was the most awkward situation imaginable. He’d just discovered a new lifeform, one that brought the very foundation of evolution into question, and only a minute in it was already critiquing his weary looks. What could he say to change the subject?

“Look- I'm sorting out my sleep pattern one space at a time, and I don’t see how that’s your business.”

Kenny took the opportunity and leaned forward into Dr. Jim's face, so close their noses almost touched (which wasn't surprising, considering the impressive length of Kenny's proboscis), and looked him straight towards the doctors eyes. A peculiar thing began to happen then; Kenny's eyes, which were a rich, dark brown color, changed suddenly into rippling whirlpools of bright, jaunty colors--orange, yellow, green and blue--that filled his entire eye and flowed in a continuous, hypnotic rhythm.

“Mind you it's not my fault if the creative hour seems to arrive long past--" Jim continued before he opened his eyes, which soon widened with surprise after finding his gaze met with two, beautiful, glowing orbs of spinning colours, only vaguely realising they apart of Kenny's face. "--Middd..... niiiight?......" He uttered, his voice becoming quiet.

Oh god. It was happening. Not only was it happening, he was getting a first hand experience.

".....O-Oh ...oh no....." Jim managed to utter desperately, already feeling drawn in after being taken completely by surprise.

Kenny's lips spread into a slow grin, his swirling eyes widening imperceptibly so that Dr. Jim could get the full span of them. "Oh yes," Kenny purred softly. "Don't be afraid. Juuuuust relax, doc." As his coils continued their way up, curling around Dr. Jim's shoulders, he began to croon in a slight sing-song voice, his eyes pulsing and whirling with a lazy, hypnotizing speed that matched his voice. 

"I just want to help yoooooou doc....with my special remed-eeeee....just face the facts, it's nice to relax....don't you think you can agreeeeee~?" Poor Jim was feeling lost, his eyes tried to follow one pulsing ring of colour, only for it to fade and be replaced with another. What on earth was happening? How was he capable of doing this? And... why was it so hard to look away? He tried but, he simply wouldn't move, he couldn't even blink long enough to stop it. He just stood still allowing the weight of Kenny's coils to secure his shoulders, his face frozen in confused surprise.

He just couldn't help it because it felt oddly ... good, so comforting to stare. It was then that his own eyes started to mirror the same effect. His own dark blue eyes shrank away and started to bloom into the same patterned rings, matching the pace of Kenny's own. 

"...H-how do you... do... this?" He uttered slowly, his efforts not helped by the fact that he secretly enjoyed a lovely singing voice, male or female.

Kenny chuckled softly and continued to sing in his almost lullaby-like lilt. "It's maaaaagic," he crooned, "Snake magic I learned as a laaaaad....it helps people sleep, so restful and deep....the best sleep that you've ever haaaaad~"

Kenny's tail slyly undid the knot in the doctor's tie and let it hang loosely, and then it slipped underneath the folds of his shirt collar, curling comfortably around his neck. All this talk of sleep was making his lids started to bob and flutter, if he were not being held in place he'd be teetering again. Kenny's coils gently squeezed him as their journey up Jim's body slowed. The slight squeeze made Jim’s eyes open fully again, the spirals whirling in his eyes picking up the pace. He quietly grunted at the gentle pressure applied to his body before he sank back down again. It was taking a good long moment for Jim to process what Kenny was implying, his thoughts were slowing and disappearing at a rate he could scarcely keep up with. If at all. The coils around him provided a perfect cradle for his body as it kept slackening and losing all stored tension. The spirals did most of the work but the soft crooning was certainly helping him, making him sigh as his head gently started to tilt to one side.

However a thought did manage to surface in his slurried mind. ".....mmaagic?.... h-hang on...." He mumbled softly, then suppressed a small yawn. "Ooh. Scuz me..." He sighed, his sight drawn effortlessly back up to Kenny and his spiralling eyes, his mouth forming a small smile or contentment... yet also amusement. "Idun thinkso… I-I think..." He whispered, now completely unaware of the fact that he was losing his mind.

"Hmm? What's that?" Kenny said with playful slyness. He cocked his head slightly as though he was trying to listen better. "You think....it's working? Oh, I think so, too. Yessssss, indeed." He chuckled deep in his throat. The tip of Kenny's tail slipped underneath Jim's dark bangs and petted his hair gently. 

The wavering doctor closed his eyes briefly at the sensation of Kenny's tail coiling around his head, his scaly skin was smooth and cool, providing some relief from the humid jungle air he had been contending with all day.

"Gosh, you're kind of a cute fella, doc," he purred, his voice low and cunning. "I like hugging you." 

"Oh, than' youu…” Jim barely replied, his mannerisms compelling him to reply to Kenny's complements. 

"But you should go to sleep now. Close your eyes.....go to sleep." His voice dropped down to a soft, sultry whisper, the colorful vortexes of his eyes dominating Jim's vision. 

A dull moan escaped Jim, Kenny's echoing words had brought him past sleepy and straight into downright sluggish. There was barely any space left between his lids to even see his swirling vision, they were just so heavy. It was as if every sleepless night he ever had was returning to him now, demanding compensation.

His coils gave Jim another comfortably tight squeeze. "Ssssleeeeeep...."

Then after that one last dominating squeeze, and one more whispering word, he was done. He didn't so much as drift off as he did pass out, his eyes slowly rolling back before his whole being slumped down completely in Kenny's coils, his head flopping down as he sank into darkness.

Kenny sighed happily at a job well done, the ripples in his eyes retreating and returning to their normal friendly brown color. For a moment, he contemplated what had just transpired between them; the doctor's questions had sort of gotten the gears turning in his mind. How was he able to do what he could do? He just always assumed it was magic of some kind. He was never really taught by the members of his old clan where his powers came from; they were just something all snake-people had and accepted. The doctor guy's comments, sluggish and somewhat slurred as they were, seemed to doubt this claim, though. Could he know something else about them? 

Kenny was deeply intrigued, but for now he would settle for some cuddles up in the cool, shady canopy with his new friend. With a low chuckle he climbed the nearest tree, carefully taking the coiled Dr. Jim with him, and snuggled up next to him. And Kenny heard no complaints from the doctor. There was not so much as a murmur when he was moved about, neither a moan when he was brought into the canopy shade and subjected to a cuddle. To be out of the warmth and into the shade was actually a great relief, and as soon as the two had settled down for the afternoon, it wasn't long until Kenny's guest began to snore softly, indicating that he was well and truly fast asleep.

#ask-nagakenny #story post #rp #hypnosis #coils #friends' ocs

[aqvarius]

Hi! Have you read Matsunaga's route? I think this time they're not as bad as before in locking crucial information behind paywall, but I probably only feel that way because I used the heart coupon at a right scene. Also that revelation at the end, I completely did not expect that! (Although probably players who spent coins will get it in advance?)

hello!! wow so i literally only just forced myself to read it for a walkthrough request so i’m so sorry it took me so long to get to this ask - i wanted to actually read it and have something more interesting to say rather than just answer quickly and be like “nope i haven’t read it” haha. honestly i was kind of blindsided by that because i really played it completely free bc i didn’t want to spend even one heart (i’m hoarding them for vip events and destind after i accidentally wasted a whole bunch on sentaro lmao). maybe because i didn’t use the coupon and played the most ‘basic’ version of the route, i really feel like the cohesiveness of the ‘side’? characters as plot drivers wasn’t quite there bc i ended up knowing nothing about matsunaga. the one thing that they didn’t hide which i appreciate is the ‘condition’ (although i’m assuming there’s probably a better reveal for it in the heart scene in the office which i think is chapter 17?)

cut for major but kinda vague (i hope?) spoilers

so uhhhh honestly because i picked literally all the free options, i literally never heard about matsunaga talking about his ex properly even ONCE. every time they even brought the concept of his ex up i thought it was just a plot device for the mc realising she actually has feelings for matsunaga, like the thing with hlitf mc and namba’s ex wife. i do imagine that there were maybe hints, as in those flashback moments that we see in ep 29 (esp the classmate thing), but tbh i kinda got annoyed that they would do that thing again where they refer multiple times to things that you only find out through heart scenes. if the thing with matsunaga’s ex was supposed to tie into the plot that well, i do think they should have introduced it as a proper device into the main route rather than keep basically everything about the ex hidden behind heart scenes and then SPRING that into that scene in ep 29. ANYWAY all my griping aside, i hope that we get to see hyogo in epi 2. i probably won’t read it either way bc there is literally negative romantic chemistry between matsunaga and dr mc but i would love to see hyogo and think it would be so interesting to see their dynamic!

#eiichi matsunaga #romance md: always on call #rmdaoc #romance md #love choice #love 365 #love 365 find your story #love choice SUCKS!! #voltage inc #otome romance #Anonymous #snow answers

[missjackil]

Season 8

I’ve seen a lot of discussion about Season 8 lately, most of you hate it, or at least the first half. Understandable really, it was a train wreck! I will go on record to say that yes, Sam was very OOC for not looking for Dean, but it’s canon, so we do have to accept it. 

I do think however, I may understand what Carver was going for with it. I’m not saying it was executed well, but from what all happened in the previous seasons, I think it was very important to establish who the brothers are to each other. Looking back through every season before this one, though there were some very good broments a lot the way, there were a lot of unnecessary fights, lies, insults and mistrust. How could they really sell to us how deeply they love each other while they keep hurting each other so badly? 

In this essay, I may come down hard on both brothers at times. Please dont take it that I hate either or that I’m a stan for one or the other. I love these boys... flaws and all, so if you’re okay hearing your fav isnt always perfect (whichever bro that might be) please continue :)

In the beginning of Season 8, we have this strange, awkward, and OOC clusterfuck that we all blame bad writing for. And it was, I agree, and so do Jared and Jensen, but they both love where it led and are proud of the finished product. 

I’ll start with the major OOC elephant in the room that is Sam not looking for Dean. He never really gives us a reason, even though later in the season he says that his whole world imploded, came raining down on him and he ran. We have to keep that as the only canonical reason as to why he didn't, so we only have headcanons to fill in the blanks. My main concern with it really is just that I am sure that Sam would have at least established Dean was dead for real, before moving on. There were no bodies, or even any blood, to indicate that Dean might be dead. I do believe that Sam would have or should have at least bought an Ouija Board , but then what could he do? Everyone he knew who could help him was dead. All the lore books they’d been using for 7 years were burned up in Bobby’s house. All that was left was Dad’s journal which had very little information in it. So he accepts Crowley’s words “You are in fact truly on your own”, fixed up the Impala and drove. 

I don't believe Sam was suicidal. Crushed yes, depressed as hell but he won't kill himself without helping people in some way. Same with Dean. They may have wanted to die and would welcome death many times, but they're selfless martyrs, they won't eat a bullet or drive off a bridge, unless it was for a greater good. So Sam didnt look for Dean, because “Dean wouldnt want that” as we saw how pissed Dean was at Sam in S4 when he thought Sam sprung him from Hell, Sam had to remember that.  Sam also knows he wanted Dean to have a normal life when he was gone, and Dean was nearly successful. Also, in the very same episode that Dean apparently died in, Bobby told them both upon leaving, “when it’s your time... go” So Sam most likely thought Dean would be proud of him if he moved on. That IS why Dean taught him how to fix the Impala a few years back right?

So Sam tries to move on. I hated Amelia, but I dont think we were ever supposed to really like her or “ship” them, we were supposed to feel the fakeness, how awkward and just wrong it was. Sam never looked content with her, even though once she stopped treating him like trash, he smiled a lot, he never seemed happy. She was nothing more to him than a grief partner and a physical distraction. He probably enjoyed playing house though, having a dog, getting a paycheck, but it wasn't really his life. 

Meanwhile, Dean is in Purgatory with Cas and Benny, fighting monsters every day all day for a year. And this isn't a bad place for Dean honestly, he even referred to it as his “happy place” later, but it wasn't home, and Sam wasn't there. So in addition to slashing monsters all day, Dean was trying to find his way out to get back to Sam and their life. 

Dean comes out and finally, he meets back up with Sam. The reunion hug was amazing! One of my favorites. they both looked genuinely happy to be with their brother again, but it was sadly short-lived.  When Dean told Sam he wasn’t dead, he was in Purgatory, you can see the color leave Sam’s face. Like “Shit, I fucked up, I should have looked for him.” and then comes Sam’s big reveal that he got out of hunting. Watch how he says this. He’s not hiding it, he’s kind of cheerful about it, not like when Dean came back from Hell and he knew he was doing something Dean would be pissed at, he may have THOUGHT Dean would be pleased that he tried to move on, but obviously, Dean was not. 

Im not blaming either of them for what they felt. They’re both justified in it. Sam felt like Dean would want this for him, and Dean felt like Sam was out there looking for him, or at least missing him terribly, and needed to get back. Imagine if you will, as each other's spouse. One goes off to war, goes MIA and is presumed dead, though no body is found. It may have been established beforehand that if anything happened to the soldier, that his remaining spouse is to move on with their life. However the soldier isn't dead, he’s a POW and he busts his ass for a year to try to get home. You bet he’s going to be pissed off when he gets home to see his spouse DID move on and didn't even ask for proof he was dead first. 

Now we have Dean angry with Sam, Sam feeling guilty, but not willing to take the griping, so he’s going to fire back, and start threatening to leave. We have known from day 1 that Dean doesn't want Sam to abandon him. But he feels like Sam abandoned him in Purgatory, and now he’s trying to abandon him in the real world. 

I feel like, at this point, Sam felt like he had the upper hand. He had the “Stop nagging me or I'm out” card, but he didn't know Dean had a card left to play either. He had the “Leave me and I'll replace you” card.  This takes us to when Sam met Benny. Sam had been looking at schools again, weighing his options, so Dean thought it was time to introduce him to Benny. 

Dean hadn't seen Benny since they got back, so had he and Sam been in good graces, I don't think Dean would have run out to help him when he called, or at least he wouldn't have been secretive about it, but they were on shaky terms and if Sam wanted to play emotional chicken with him, Dean can play this game too. There was no reason at all for Dean to have told Sam to meet him at the dock. Dean had his car, Sam had to steal one to get there. Sam rushes because he thinks Dean needs him, and now he’s not answering his phone, and Sam is panicking. Dean had told him he was on this hunt with a friend, but Dean doesnt have any friends right? Certainly none he can trust to have his back in a hunt right? Dean must be in trouble! However, when Sam gets to the dock, Dean is pulling up with this big dude. The camera focuses on Sam and Benny’s hands long enough for us to notice that Benny’s hand is bigger than Sam’s. Sam turns from pissed off brother, reluctant hunting partner, to jealous spouse in 60 seconds. He goes for his blade, he’s going to kill this bastard! Dean shakes his head.... “no”. Sam had no idea Benny was a Vamp at that point, he was going to kill his replacement. Dean got this, oh so smug look on his face “Go ahead and leave me.... but don't think I’ll be alone”.

I'm going to leave it there because I don't want to analyze the entire season. What I want to show you is that Carver must have wanted to deconstruct the entire relationship, look at each piece of it, and show it to us, and then put it back together by the end of the season. By the end of Sacrifice, we learned Dean doesn't want to be without Sam but is willing to let Sam go and live his normal life, but to do that Dean wants to go out saving the world so Sam and everyone else can be safe. Sam doesn't want to be without Dean, but he thinks he's lost Dean’s trust, and he’s been replaced by Benny, Cas and holds Dean back from doing what he wants, so he’s going to save the world, even though it’s going to kill him in the process. 

Dean had told Sam that he didn't burn Benny’s body when he killed him, and Sam said he understood, and he might need him later. 

So I hope you can see why I feel Carver did this. I for one knew that Sam and Dean loved each other, but I honestly didnt see this “nothing comes before you” type bond before S8. So he took everything, from the very root, in the beginning, and laid it all out on the table for us, before giving us this epic defining moment in the Church between Sam and Dean. Sam would rather die than lose his place with Dean, and Dean would rather kill them all and let the world burn than to lose Sam, 

So even though I think the beginning was poorly executed, I do appreciate what it was showing us and I love the finished product. There hasn't been a more defining season in the whole series. As much as you might hate S8, you probably wont ever put the church scene out of your mind, and what led up to it. So, in my humble opinion, rocky start Mr Carver, but well played 🙌

#spn #SEASON 8 #sam and dean #my meta

[msbeccieboo]

Arrow 7x08 brain dump

It wasn’t that bad!!

So like many I was a liiiittle bit disappointed this week. I really tried to recalibrate my expectations, but I think I was so pumped by the surprise fabulousness of last week and then the buzz online (so naive I know) of the advanced reviews for this week.  I was also doubly excited as it was the first time I was watching it via live stream (wow...all the adverts) rather than waking up super early to stream it the following morning (I’m in the UK).  I just think that we could've spent more time on the personal life of THE MAIN CHARACTER(S) after he had been in prison for half a year, but hey, live and learn.  Luckily I have ZERO hopes for the crossover so next week should be fine haha!

However, I have slept on it, seen everyone else freak out, and decided it could have been way worse, we got some quality Olicity fluff/angst content and Felicity is still the driving force of the storylines this year in both timelines so PositiveOutlook!Beccie is here!

So the episode...we didn’t get our shower shenanigans scene...*pouty face* (my review last week got flagged cos I wrote the ‘explicit’ s*x word twice, so all naughtiness shall hereby be referred to as shenanigans, until I get bored of typing shenanigans).  HOWEVER, the feelings of PTSD we got from Oliver in that scene, and throughout the episode, were great, and something I hope we continue to see and actually be acknowledged.  Oh yeah, and we got the FLUFFIEST SCENE TO EVER FLUFF!!  The zip!!  The mirror!!  The rubbing of the wedding ring!!  The RECITAL OF THEIR WEDDING VOWS!!!  HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!  Ahhh and then some bed shenanigans 😉😉 (which could have been a bit longer, really Beth, come on!!).

Source: oliverxfelicity

We all have Felicity, we all have!!  We have been starved and we just want some good foooood!!

Then there was the gala, with allusions to Oliver’s first meal *cough Felicity*, a smidge of Laurel side-eye (always fun), and a classic forever-rebloggable gif from Mrs Smoak-Queen:

Unfortunately the gala also came with NTA.  Rene bitching that they didn’t get an event thrown for them when ‘they’ caught Diaz...err excuse me now, who caught Diaz??  At least it makes a change from Curtis being the whiner of the episode!

Then we see the shit hit the fan with the break-in and Felicity’s reaction to it, or rather, Oliver’s reaction to Felicity’s reaction to it haha!  Oliver’s cry of “Felicity” before diving across the room to protect her (yes I swooned), was swiftly followed up with Badass!Felicity pulling a gun and shooting the intruder, like a boss!

Source: oliverfelicitygifs

Oliver is shocked and mad that she has a gun....huh? Why?  She’s protecting herself and her family in their own home, not, say, seeking out criminals and inflicting bodily harm on them willy nilly like some kind of....vigilante???!  How many times have we seen her knock a villain out before, except this time Oliver sees the anger, rage even, in her, and THAT is what could harm her, that is where his fear lies and that is what he is really concerned about.  This is followed up with a rather delicious Olicity angst scene, which may I add, WE ALL HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR.  We all wanted to see Felicity lose her shit over what Oliver did and show him how she has had to change because of it. The sad part was seeing the way Felicity sees her ‘old self’ as weak.  The important thing to see here is that this is how Felicity is feeling because of what she’s been through the past few months, not what the writers, or Oliver think.  Oliver's look of incredulity when she said that was a thing of beauty.  Girl you have never been weak, you are just scared and angry, and this is something that Felicity will come to accept over the season, I am sure.  Again, Olicity are walking in each others shoes, and Oliver will need to be her light this time and show her another way to channel these feelings than do something that she may regret later.

Source: oliverfelicitygifs

Their conversation continued at the end of the episode, which is where people are freaking out I think.  I’m not worried.  I found it annoying that they effectively ended Season 7a at this point of their discussion, but Olicity are not splitting up!!  The red pen mention... “I love you more than a human being should love another human being” *my heart*...then the notion that they are growing apart/moving in different directions, but Oliver is there asking how do they get back on the same page again.  Oliver will not let Felicity walk away again....Felicity won’t walk away again...they are acknowledging that they have changed/grown independently and will just need to learn to grow back together again cos they are endgame!!!! 

Oh and Emiko Queen is the new GA, and Oliver’s half sister...I am SHOCKED (I’m not shocked).  I did have a giggle that the charred remains of the Queen mansion were still stood there as full-mansion-sized charred remains ~5 years after said-charring 😂😂

Future timeline

So, on first appearances it seems that Maya is not our Olicity baby...apparently William doesn’t recognise her.  One of the first things I did think when we actually saw her interacting with William et al was how reminiscent of a young Thea she was...the only alternative option I will accept for her is that she is Thea's and Roy's...especially as Roy wasn't with them to meet her.  But her and William....totally had that ‘we have a secret’ eye-contact thing going on.  The season theme is legacy, why go to the trouble of casting a relatively well-known actress and hyping her up weeks and weeks before her first appearance for her to not fit into that theme in a major way?  Girl is a Smoak/Queen or a Queen/Harper or I’m out!

Also, it seems that they are trying to make us think that Oliver is dead in the future too....hmm ok then, Oliver and Felicity are dead and before she died Felicity was also evil and wanted to level the Glades...

(I think this is the first time I’ve actually used this gif!  Yay!)

Things I wasn’t keen on...

Dyla...I think I need to watch their scenes back cos I zoned out a bit there...why are they seeing Lizard boy??  Actually I DON’T F-ING CARE BE GONE ALREADY DIAZ!!!

When is Oliver gonna find out that Dig has been next to useless the last 6 months?  Cos there is no hint of him having the slightest clue...this would also help him to understand Felicity’s position better.

The Max Fuller storyline was just essentially to show Oliver working for the SCPD and using a different route of justice, so why did they need to spend sooo much time on it?

My main gripe with the episode wasn’t the way the Olicity angst was dealt with necessarily, but rather the lack of time dedicated to it.  I also think that the episode requires a re-watch as soon as I get home to fully digest and make sense of it.  Sometime recently I seem to recall @jbuffyangel saying something along the lines of, if you have to re-watch the episode straight away to understand it, it's kind of a crappy episode.  I would somewhat agree in this case, but we did get some goodies in there...I think I will enjoy this episode better when the season has finished and I can binge-watch.  That’s how I watched nearly the first 4 seasons of Arrow and those are some of my favourites (I didn’t even mind Ray upon binging!).

#arrow spoilers #arrow 7x08 #olicity #beccie's brain #arrow season 7