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trulycertain · 4 years

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I’ve just finished Hearts of Stone for the first time (I got the expansion packs last birthday, thanks Ma), and cor, I’m... still a bit dazed. That was one of the best experiences I’ve had with a game for a long time. Heck, in some games that would’ve been the main campaign. It truly feels like a work of passion.

The negative, to get it over with

I had some issues with the portrayal of the Ofieri. The people we see are monsters, mages, mystics and enemy guards. The first Ofieri person you meet is... a toad monster you kill. And then the next ones are your jailers.

And you might say that Temeria and Redania are full of yokel stereotypes - I mean, the “How often should I beat my wife?” NPC line is a clear nod to that kinda thing - and plays on Slavic mythology, folk tales, and fairy tales, and Ofier is the nod to the Arabian Nights... but we don’t get many Ofieri characters, nor clear examinations of those tales. Instead we’re quietly directed back to Robin Hood and Beauty and the Beast homages (which I adore, but). And one of the first introductions you get to their pseudo-Arabic language (which doesn’t feel as researched as Sapkowksi’s cod-Welsh Elven, but I don’t know about Nilfgaard’s language) is a Redanian guy calling it “gargling.” *wince* After the interesting, often nuanced takes on pseudo-Slavic culture and the fantasy non-human racism, I found that a bit frustrating.

And yet... In some ways, it feels like CDPR were aware of this. Because you don’t actually have to kill the rest of the Ofieri guards, and then the next people you meet from Ofier are scholars and thoroughly nice dudes. (And... merchants, which is another stereotype on its own, but maybe I’m reading too much into that and reading British biases into it.) And gosh, I find it interesting what little we see of Ofieri scholarship and spirituality, and runeworking/smithing as prayer. It’s like a mix of Islamic Golden Age mathematics - but with languages instead - and humanism, maybe with some Pagan influences. It’s really, really beautiful, and it’s clearly had some thought put into it. Also interesting is the interlinked duchies/city-states sort of system that the merchant nods at, which I’d love to know more about.

OK, so... maybe this is easy for me to say as an English lass who looks like a flour explosion in a snowstorm, but it feels wonky (to say the least), but... not ill-intentioned. If anything, the portrayal of the Ofieri is rather less biting than portrayals of other countries, though those portrayals also feel less.. loaded. I’m not sure what to think, to be honest. I had some issues with how strongly the pack tries to force you into romance with Shani and makes it a bit all-or-nothing. I wish I’d been able to buy her a drink or give her a nice rowan garland (actually, seriously, I need to draw her in that flower crown, it’s lovely and she was adorable) even as a friend, as a way to say goodbye, rather than just... buggering off and leaving her there sad, and failing a side quest to boot. Framing the romance that way made it very clear that “oi, you’ve made the wrong choice,” even if you had your reasons. And when you talk to her later, it’ll still treat things like you romanced her.

The Order of the Flaming Rose didn’t do much. Yay, fancy bandits. But... thanks for the armour, guys? Made a fair bit of cash off that, nice of you.

The positive (my favourite bit)

Shani! I haven’t played the first game or the second (I’ll... get there), so I hadn’t met her before. She’s wonderful. And much as I love Yen - and stayed faithful to her, though I was sitting there thinking, “Would books Geralt do this? I’m really not sure” - I liked how in contrast, Shani often gets into the thick of it with you. I also love a) doctor characters b) characters who put their calling above all else and have such strong purpose. She’s kind and wry and I was seriously tempted to romance her. I also like her admitting that it was a “make the most of the time we have” thing, and that it probably wouldn’t work long-term. I appreciate that honesty and again, that sense of purpose. Much like Triss, she’s not dropping everything for Geralt, who has his own crazy timetable and travels to deal with. That straightforwardness is lovely.

And also... god, I really like her friendship with Geralt. Even if you don’t romance her, they’re so comfortable with each other, and it’s so clear how happy he is to see her. They relax around each other and she knows how to gently poke fun. Seriously, I can see why people liked her and wanted her back.

“And now I have nowt.” Bloody hell, is Olgierd von Everec actually written with Northern dialect as well as voiced with the accent? Is the dashing rogue... Yorkshire-accented? God, they must be Polish, Northerners almost never get to be upper-class or smooth in British media. (Even Sean Bean had to go posher for GoldenEye.) Nice to hear the language spoken properly. I always admire the localisation when I’m playing Wild Hunt; it’s beautifully thought-out and detailed. And yes, Von Everec was an absolute jerk in a lot of ways even before the wish, but... a well-written, nuanced one. Also, considering some of the lasses we see in Skellige: sometime, I’d really like to have seen a female character along similar lines somewhere (one Geralt couldn’t bonk), though I know that won’t happen. (No more Geralt games. ;_; )

“A man must have some moments of madness from time to time. Tells him he’s alive.”

Iris! Goodness, I hesitated for nearly ten minutes over That Decision, and I still feel sad for her typing this post up on my couch, having finished the expansion an hour ago. I think it adds even more that I’d purchased “Starry Night Over the Pontar River” by Van Rogh (I can’t believe they even did that). I played Geralt as genuinely loving her paintings. (And seriously, speaking of assets, that Iris/Olgierd marriage portrait is lovely.) She was as complicated as her husband, though she got less screentime - and some part of me would have gladly trapped Olgierd in a painting and brought her back into the world, but I also know that necromancy in The Witcher doesn’t work like that. A very romantic-fairy-tale take on the tortured artist trope.

I even found Vlodimir interesting. I was glad that Shani called him on what was basically fancy sexual harassment and told him to keep his hands to himself, and he was clearly a real shite in life, but... yeah, even I felt rather sad for him after the dressing-down he got from O’Dimm. And to be honest, he does have some bloody hilarious lines. This series excels in “likeable bastard” characters.

I get shades! And I’ve been going round with the Mastercrafted Wolven Armour and those, doing the look I fondly call Douchebag Geralt, ever since. CDPR’s nerdery. It wasn’t particularly immersion-breaking, and it made me cackle. “Merchant With A Pearl Earring”? “Witness me”? “Geralt: The Professional”? “The Professor’s Glasses”?

All the optional NPC dialogue. You can doom yourself by not researching enough. You can never find the runewright. You can miss half the wedding party dialogue. You can miss things like the Van Rogh painting and the sad, rather interesting story of Vesemir and his lover (and the Viper Armour!). The game always rewards you for being interested in the story, and thorough (you are playing a detective, after all), but because it was smaller, they’ve also made HoS so dense and all that’s here in abundance.

“Delight in the world and all its glorious creations.”

The furious pace. It’s a rollicking, rip-roaring adventure. A frog prince! An old friend/lover! A political plot! A storm! A deal with... something not-good that may or may not be The Devil! A shirtless tied-up action-movie fight with five dudes! Dueling a reluctant immortal! Characters from distant shores! A horse race through the streets of a village! A Guy Ritchie-esque heist movie nod to Robin Hood! Getting possessed by a ghost and sitcom/rom-com hijinks while fishing for boots, herding swine, and retrieving fire-eaters! Haunted mansions and tortured artists and interesting grief and depression metaphors! A Seventh Seal-esque game of wits with something very old and very unkind! O’Dimm promised a big adventure... he wasn’t wrong. And it probably sounds like they’re throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks... and yet, it all makes sense and ties in beautifully. It’s really well-written and thought-out, and balances a touching story with CDPR clearly wanting to give you your money’s worth and take you on the best journey they can.

Gaunter O’Dimm. The one thing I did think was that they’d be more vague about who/what he actually was. I was surprised at the more overt things like the crossroads deal, and the Oxenfurt scholar. But I immensely enjoyed his character, and that trippy finale was fantastic, even if I spent everything after the first second or so muttering, “It’s a REFLECTION, oh my god Gaunter you have commitment to your theme, please let there be a mirror in the house.” (And it’s also kind of perfect that one of the main spectres who attacks you in his realm is a Hym. Punishment for misdeeds, the guilty conscience... I’m seeing a theme here.)

Treasure hunts and new armour.

“Like your new gear, Roach?” We got to see a bit more of Geralt's fondness for this Roach (not sure what number she is, to be honest) and that he treats her well.

Lots of quiet but intense, lovely Geralt moments. The kindness with which he treats Shani, and his quiet, wry joking around with her in comparison to Vlodimir’s crudeness; the fondness and understated grief with which he speaks of Vesemir, and finally getting to hear a bit more of what he thinks about his mentor; the guilt he feels over being pulled here, there and everywhere on adventures and how many people he’s left behind; more stuff on “Witchers are heartless bastards because mutations” and how untrue that actually is; his steadfastness about trying to avoid bloodshed in the heist; how he doesn’t like to see Vlodimir tortured, even if he is... Vlodimir. Course, I play Geralt as a (pragmatic, blunt) goody-two-shoes, so it might be different if you play him bloodthirstier, but there were some lovely not-blank-slate-protag moments. CDPR get that the characters are why people come to the games; I adore playing a game where “go to a wedding reception” and “have a snowball fight with your daughter to cheer her up” are missions.

I’d be interested to see anyone’s takes on this pack, because I was so busy trying to avoid spoilers when it came out (and I think I might have been knee-deep in Fallout 4? Not sure) that I missed most of the stuff on it. But it was full of fascinating characters, wonderful performances, some really sad, achey complex themes, and pulpy adventure. I spent... too many moments trying not to cackle in joy. And much as I tried to be a completionist and do base-game sidequests remaining after the main story and drag it out over several days, I spent enough time on this expansion that Geralt’s beard grew back and my backside went numb. So. Even with its imperfections, probably one of my favourite gaming experiences of all time. So.

...God, and there’s another, slightly bigger expansion to go. I’m not sure I’ll survive.

#tru plays the witcher #hearts of stone #the witcher #the witcher 3 #long post

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3wisellamas · 5 years

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Hey, remember my pet cracktheory that Darrell is a clone of Laserblast, or is somehow connected to him in some way? I finally cleaned up and sorted out my full list of weird things I’ve noticed that they both have in common, or that otherwise support that, or are just weird about this stupid robot in general. Because I wasn’t fucking joking about there being a lot of it. Probably not gonna actually amount to anything, especially with not much series left, but meh. It’s fun. Enjoy.

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Appearance/Body:

(Okay, I admit most of this section was pretty much killed by Darrell's canon human form in OK AU, which looked NOTHING like Laser at all. But just in case...)

-Identical body shape/proportions to LB/SF, with wider torso/hips and very thin waist -- maybe a little smaller because he's a teen (and a robot)

-Very close head shape to LB/SF/PV: square jaw (when it’s not exaggerated to make him cuter), similar rectangular shape and proportions if you include the braincase (since it would normally be inside his skull)

-LB's mask looks a LOT like Darrell's head, with the entire top half and most of the sides of his head covered and with circular ear...things

-That mask also tends to be quite expressive, almost functioning as a single eye sometimes

-Their big heavy boots are also kinda similar (Though honestly Darrell's boots look slightly more like Chip Damage's...)

-LB is based off of the superhero Cyclops, and Darrell is literally a cyclops

-Only robot that really seems to have an organic, human brain, and has human feet too along with Shannon -- even for just the feet, someone's DNA has to be cloned to make him, and not necessarily Boxman's.

-Darrell can grow stubble, according to that one tiny joke shot in Let's Watch the Boxmore Show; his face may be organic just like his brain and feet. Also worth noting, the specific spots on the side of the jaw where LB's/SF's stubble shows are covered by metal for Darrell -- when comparing Darrell and LB, each character's most distinctive visible features (one eye and brain, cheek stubble) are covered up on the other!

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Costumes:

-Darrell seems to enjoy dressing up as a HERO -- when he's in cowboy mode he plays a sheriff, and when the bots play Golden Statues he always plays the museum guard, both specifically hero roles!

-In fact, the costumes in general -- he definitely likes pretending he's someone else, rather than just being fashionable like his siblings.

-LB and SF both hide their eyes, and may have something unusual/distinctive about them, especially with Laser because of his eye-based powers. LB!SF in particular would hide his if there was something that might immediately get him recognized as his former identity. Perhaps only having one eye (hence the visor acting as one on occasion like I pointed out)? (We got to see behind LB's mask once in Gar's fear sequence in Face Your Fears, with one red eye showing where the mask was broken, but there it did look like he had two. However, Gar would never have seen what was ACTUALLY under there...)

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Habits/Personality:

-LB was an anti-hero, willing to do some fucked-up things in the name of good, while Darrell is an anti-villain, who focuses more on just doing his job, having fun, and trying to make his father happy than crushing the heroes out of malice

-Darrell's also just a terrible villain in general. Of course, he's directly killed another villain (or tried to anyway), and his idea of doing the most evilest thing was reporting Boxman's lies to the board and stopping him, AKA doing the RIGHT thing -- even with the betrayal, not very villainous of him, huh?

-Weird shared oral fixation? There's a very unusual emphasis on food/mouth things with Darrell (his lowkey obsession with eating, spitting Boxman into the spitoon in his office, brushing his teeth), and LB's trademark was always having that lollipop in his mouth.

-Hugging soft cute animals, like Rippy and Fink

-Darrell writes in concrete in You're Level 100, and LB does the same using his eye laser in Glory Days (in the POINT theme song)

-Neither one is a big fan of new members of their respective teams right away. LB refused to take junior members with him in both Glory Days and Let's Take a Moment, and doesn't seem to think much of them in either episode at all, aside from Silver Spark (and then, he still left her behind as one of his lookouts). Darrell...just freaking HATES new siblings at first, having a problem with every single one he gets, at least the ones we've seen (we didn't get to see his and Mikayla's introduction). He's also like this to siblings he considers inferior to him, to a point -- he and Shannon both got pretty jealous when Boxman started praising Jethro's "new moves."

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Boxman stuff:

-Timing is correct, Darrell and the others were created right after LB disappeared according to Lad and Logic, since Boxman only drew the first three members in his original plans to attack POINT, and Gar was already building the plaza by the time Boxmore was opened. This means the Boxbot quadruplets and KO were actually born around the same time, making them all 6-11 years old, roughly the same amount of time that's passed since the Sandwich Incident.

-Boxy was obsessed with POINT at that time (and still is, since he's kept the coordinates for POINT HQ memorized), and possibly LB himself (given his later attraction to PV)

-Boxman may also have some POINT tech and connections of his own? First off, access to a huge supply of glorbs, the easiest and closest source of which Foxtail and Carol have been protecting and heavily monitoring, and are normally very hard for non-heroes to get their hands on. Second, those boxes he sends the robots to attack in might use the same wormhole tech as POINT Prep's bus, since it looks a little similar both in transit and emerging at its destination, plus its driver sounds exactly like Ernesto. And speaking of Ernesto, that one time he straight-up drew a POINT drone as part of a family portrait…

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POINT stuff:

-There were six members of POINT before the Sandwich Incident, and LB was one of the original three, and seemed to function as co-leader alongside Foxtail. There are six Boxbots, and Darrell was one of the original four, and kinda leads them in battle alongside Shannon, especially once he becomes CEO.

-And coincidentally, the original six members of POINT also share colors and in some cases roles with the Boxbots -- Shannon and Foxtail are orange, Greyman and Ernesto are purple, El-Bow and Jethro are blue, Rippy and Raymond are green, Silver Spark is...difficult but her hair is pretty distinctive and works with Mikayla for yellow, and of course, Darrell and Laser are red. The robots' colors and relative ages even match POINT'S senior/junior members, with Greyman, Laser, and Foxtail representing three of the older Boxbots, and then Rippy, Silver Spark, and El-Bow representing the two newer ones and Jethro, who only recently was able to show his true personality/potential.

-"Junior Members" = "Junior Deputies"

-"Code Vermillion." I made an entire post on this a while back, but to summarize, Vermillion is a bright, slightly orange-y red, and in most episodes is Darrell's exact color. And Vermillion, as a red pigment, tends to darken over time into purple and black -- and SF and PV have connections to both glorbs (which Code Vermillion refers to), and to LB as well.

-Darrell has a bunch of weird similarities to Chip Damage as well, who is basically Laser's replacement at POINT, minus being the Charisma discipline rep: Robots made right after LB got iced, green powers, special limited-edition costumes/POW cards, similar dark gray boots, the remote controls (Wisdom class blackboard for Darrell, Final Exams for Chip), possibly both made with actual brain tissue (The flashback to Chip's creation had a brain on one of Greyman's screens), etc. Also, a dumb one, but...remember those Double-Dipped (KO and TKO?) Laser Chips (self-explanatory), that are "probably just a limited-edition" (Darrell).

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Other assorted weird things:

-Darrell’s laser eye attachment shown in Stop Attacking the Plaza -- still being worked on in the episode (and it looks like it has been for a while, since it had been some time since Boxman was in that specific lab...), but used by a Big Darrell in the opening, where it produces a very similar (green) copy of LB's beam.

-Darrell is right-handed, in a left-handed family -- he's shown eating with his right hand in Stop Attacking the Plaza while everyone else is using their left, looks like he’s wielding a lightsaber right-handed in Plaza Film Festival, and draws with his right hand in Villains Night In. Left-handedness is often associated with villains in fiction, so he may not be a full one? (Definitely not as sinister as the rest of them, hehe.) Though, some instances of Darrell using his left hand too, and other bots using their right, so I dunno how strong this particular point is.

-Line to keep an eye on: "Just reboot yourself into a new body! I do it all the time for funsies!" from Rad Likes Robots. Related, Darrell reboots by exploding himself, which is how LB may have "died" and took on a new identity (if he's SF)

-Weird shit from Let's Not Be Skeletons: Potato demonstrates a skeleton remote wearing a cowboy hat, and in addition to turning people into skeletons they remove powers, just like that red orb, and they also left Rad's and Enid's boots intact for some reason. Darrell's also one of the biggest customers of the remotes, using his foes' weapons against them ("What do you say we snag more of them before they fall into the wrong hands? We could even use them against our foes!")

-When we first saw TKO's power manifest in You're Level 100, it was while KO was trying to defeat a giant superpowered Darrell. When we first saw TKO in physical form in Face Your Fears (as KO's "evil burp"), he was sent out to defeat a giant superpowered Laserblast head. When we next saw TKO in, well, TKO (as his true self for the first time), he defeated another giant superpowered Darrell!

-Really dumb one, the letter right before C and D is B, so the acronyms LB and LCD may be a thing?

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Turbo/SF/TKO connections, just in case those turn out to be related to Laser as well:

(Under the cut, since this is long enough already!)

-SF hints that negative emotions, particularly anger, fuel Turbo powers. Darrell has quite a few jealousy and anger issues in general -- "Gets flustered by petty insults," HATES new younger siblings (or existing siblings showing him up and getting more of dad’s attention), etc -- and seems to be way more capable of mayhem than usual when running on these emotions. They even gave him the power to defy his programming and (attempt to) kill Boxman!

-He can also have his power boosted by a ton in a very short amount of time, from level -4 up (down?) to level -100 and able to destroy the plaza in one shot, and for as brief as that level -100 thing was he STILL has yet to be topped as the most powerful villain in the entire series! But, Boxman doesn't do it often -- even regular Big Darrells are implied to NOT be that powerful normally. Perhaps he's holding Darrell back for a reason?

-A lot of emphasis on his brain, similar to TKO: the visible brain is obvious, he has the most noticeable hivemind, and he pilots Big Darrells from inside their braincases similar to how KO and TKO controlled Big KO (even the name's similar!) in TKO's House

-Also, he doesn't have to glitch or change colors with his mood like Shannon does, he can make decisions and go against his programming all on his own -- perhaps he runs mostly on that meat brain? Or maybe his brain is actually a mass of pink glorbs like Jethro got in I Am Jethro that unlocked his intelligence and potential?

-SF's speech to KO in TKO: "Everyone holds you back because they're afraid of your raw, natural ability. They want you small and nice, blissfully unaware of your true potential." Darrell in Lord Cowboy Darrell: "Nobody's gonna hold me back." Shannon to Darrell in Plaza Film Festival: "Where do you think you got all that natural talent?"

-TKO ultimately came out of wanting recognition from his boss. LCD ultimately came out of wanting recognition from his boss.

-That VERY noticeable purple glow in the "I'm the Daddy now!" scene in Lord Cowboy Darrell. Like, to the point it seemed specially painted for emphasis, rather than the normal animation.

-Also, Junior is pretty heavy evidence that Turbo powers do not necessarily = purple, as Junior's powers were all green (and so were Chip's Turbo-ish powerups!) Darrell also has green powers (that even carried over to his human alternate in OK AU, despite Shannon and Raymond getting Enid’s and Rad’s exact same powers and colors), and is sometimes surrounded by Turbo-esque greenish lightning when he's angry, the best example being at the beginning of Legends of Mr Gar after being trash talked (remember that he can't take petty insults; he was PISSED there!)

-(If it looks like I’m insinuating Darrell’s secretly got more power under the hood than even he realizes, I absolutely am.)

-Darrell still has his dark hooded cloak from the pilot, which looks a little like SF's.

-Darrell's the only one who wasn't invited to Junior's funeral, and doesn't give half a shit, instead using it as an opportunity to betray people and take on a new identity. Possibly like LB faking his own death, therefore not attending his own funeral, and taking on a new identity as SF?

-Sneaking through the vents = sneaking through the pipes (SF, maybe how LB survived given that pipe in Let's Take a Moment)?

-Weird broken halo imagery shared between both Darrell and SF in TKO. (Not my observation actually, pointed out by @david-yells-about-cartoons ) Darrell's cloud halo thing in that episode also looks almost exactly like the clouds swirling above KO as he shoots a power fist for the first time at the end of Let's Be Friends…

#ok ko #ok ko let's be heroes #ok ko darrell #ok ko laserblast #ok ko shadowy figure #emtheories

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hxh-or-die · 5 years

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ok so if for some reason some of yall havent seen it yet, a bitch got called out, like it was pages long, and while a lot of it was super exaggerated, sometimes even downright incorrect, i can admit when i’ve slipped up so imma make 1 post and 1 post only about this situation because lets face it i was practically asking for a callout post even if i didnt think i was

(sorry if this sounds salty but i’ve had it up to here with these people and their bullshit)

im sorry for calling the admin aphobic when they are in fact, ace. in the past i’ve seen “no ace discourse” on blogs used as another way of saying “i think ace people are fake but i dont want hate” but i see now (and can fully understand) why it would also mean “im fucking sick and tired of hearing about this so dont ask me about it”. were other ppl in the server saying some shit that was pretty aphobic? yeah. but calling the admin aphobic was a misunderstanding on my part that i blew way out of proportion and im sorry for it.

i literally say in this blog’s about that i never once took a screenshot of yall’s venting or selfies, or art, or anything that either had to do with personal info or yall having a good time. i personally didnt think yall saying u used to not be antis constituded as venting and if it does im sorry, but know that im not here to make fun of ur traumas. i’ve been through some rlly tough shit that i prefer not to talk about like, ever, and i know how hard it is to go through on a daily basis.

im sorry for mistaking your reporting people for whitewashing characters for complaints about aged up killugon. yall were talking about these things one on top of the other and i misread the chat. whitewashing is a serious issue and im not about that shit.

for people who claim im taking things out of context yall sure seem to do that urselves, claiming that i think ppl who make money off of child porn arent pedophiles when we both know very well that was about haikyuu artists who draw nsfw. please dont put words in my mouth

im sorry that my not yelling at ppl for calling themselves “enby” is considered a cis person talking about subjects she doesnt know about but i’d rather not put my foot in my mouth and tell nonbinary ppl that they cant use certain terminology for themselves

killua having implied romantic feelings does not automatically mean he’s gay coded. first of all, that shit is meta, nothing more, nothing less, and him arguing with 2 of the 5 recurring female characters doesnt make him automatically gay. its totally cool to headcanon killua as gay, i do myself, but calling him bi aint homophobic when its not even canon.

listen, admittedly i havent read autumn’s au, my adhd allows me to sit down and read a fic maybe once in a blue moon and only if im really pumped for the fic in question. should i do more research on shit and listen more to trans folk and people of color? yes, absolutely. and im sorry my opinions of yall clouded basic things like that. im not entirely informed but i do know for a fact that autumn’s fiance is non binary and she has been asking for their input, i cant say much more than that for obvious reasons but i think its important to know.

for the last time me liking a character or liking their appearance doesnt mean i condone their behavior its not that hard to understand. these are fictional characters harming no real people. illumi is an absolute piece of shit and an awful awful human being and i can’t wait to see him perish, and me liking his design doesnt suddenly make me okay with any of the shit he’s done or think its okay to do irl.

you wanna know why i liked that post of yours so recently? because i was checking my blog for messages bcos yannow, sometimes ppl dm this blog and that gifset of rowlet showed up as a recommended post and since all of yall change ur blog themes and urls every other week u can understand why i didnt automatically realize it was one of yall. u can bet i’ll never make that mistake tho bcos wow you ur almost as bad as i am about jumping to conclusions. like theres a reason i didnt follow yall unless u followed me first and its not because i secretly loved ur blogs or smthn

im never touching this blog again. im putting this all behind me and im never touching fandom discourse again. if u need me ill be scrolling through my dashboard of things i enjoy seeing and editing hunter x hunter away from yall with my multifandom friends who dont even know what a fucking killugon is thank you and goodbye.

#not 2 be an emo again but #thanks for the memories even tho they werent so great

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vastderp · 6 years

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Okage: Shadow King is such a great little game.

been replaying Okage: Shadow King this past week or two and it’s both better and worse than I remember. worse in that oh my lord they released this game too early and it’s buggy as fuck. better as in HOLY SHIT WHAT A GREAT STORY.

spoilers obviously.

like the part you play is fairly boilerplate RPG, but shit’s just... weird. the world is tiny, supposedly having been spared from a global catastrophe 300 years ago. roaming monsters all look like something a child would draw, except finished by a professional. There are monster paintings that are just crayon scribbles on a framed canvas. There is a floating anteater hanging from a party balloon. it has a scribbly checkered pattern that is only partly colored in, also with crayon.

NPCs are not named, they’re “classified” by their roles in the story. every now and then a list comes from the King of all the new “classifications” for the inhabitants of the world, telling them what they are. So they’ll be called stuff like YOUNG MAN WHO BELIEVES IN JUSTICE (and who can never shut up about Justice) and SLEEPY TOWN MANAGER (who was merely drowsy until he got "classified” at which point he couldn’t stay awake anymore to do his job).

the world is small and simplistic and the people are very limited, to the point of sometimes seeming to be sleepwalking. The NPC who watches over the nonfunctional train station is completely brain-fried, because there is no train and no purpose for him to fulfill but hey somebody needed a stationmaster for the train station scene. who is that guy? who was he before he was given his incredibly vague role? did it erase everything else about him? is that why he doesn’t know if he’s met me before?

half the people you talk to seem like fully realized individuals being mind controlled into playing a role. funny thing, that!

even the villains are just doing what a little voice told them. they got “classified” as an Evil King, and boom! evil powers! now the Hero has to go fight them! your character’s family are assholes who have sold your soul to the evil Shadow King (stan for short) in exchange for Stan reversing a pig latin curse on your older sister.

this matters because if your sister is forced to speak in pig latin, she will be “classified” (quotation marks are always around that word per game styling) as a comic relief girl and it will ruin her marriage prospects. we’re told “classifications” matter a lot in this world, as you will see for yourself later. something as simple as being “classified” as a different fictional character trope can and will result in your life and your actual personality changing to match it. It’s played for laughs, but imagine if you were a STRESSED-OUT SOPHOMORE and you went on a bad weekend pub crawl and got “classified” as a STUMBLING DRUNKARD three days from final exams.

anyway, your character has no “classification”. he’s so forgettable it just never happened, i guess? which makes him a perfect vessel for a power-drained demon king that needs to parasitize a person’s shadow to live. so, there you go. your job is to beat up the demons that stole Stan’s power, get him back to his full strength, and then... i dunno, watch your swordswoman companion and newly separated Stan fight to the death, probably. that’s what they plan on doing, anyway. and that’s what you’re told is the plot of the game. but nope, that’s just how you get to the plot. see, the fucked-upness of the world gets more and more apparent as you go. at first you can write it off as the gamemakers screwing up (this is a very rough game, so that is understandable) but it’s more than that.

after a while of truly lousy dungeons, hilarious dialogue and goofy monsters, there is a “joke” that you can hear from various NPCs. This joke is actually not a joke at all, but people can’t stop laughing long enough to tell the whole thing to you. the story is actually very sad, but because it’s “classified” as a joke, people are compelled to laugh at it and think of it as funny.

the story is about a parent turtle and its baby turtle. one day the baby turtle is playing in the safe little yard its parent made for it, and gets lost. while it’s looking for the baby, the parent comes across a pebble that looks like its baby, and takes it home all happy that it’s found its child. the real baby finds its way home, only to see the parent has replaced it with a damn rock. the parent turtle refuses to admit the pebble isn’t its real baby, because if it admits to its error, it would look stupid. deep down, the turtle knows the pebble isn’t really its child, that the real baby is out there somewhere alone because the parent can’t put aside its pride admit it’s been fooling itself all this time.

that’s basically a fairy tale about a narcissistic parent, isn’t it? it’s also the story of the big bad of this game, who made your world into a toybox for his daughter to play in, until she disappeared into it. not to worry, he made a pebble doll that looks just like his missing child and enchanted it to seem alive. don’t remind him it’s not really her. just don’t.

so.

this game has been pretending up til now to be a cheeky parody of the RPG genre with weird details that makes no sense. now we find out another reason why things are this way: the shitty enemies, the dazed and “classified” NPCs, the weirdly non-threatening child’s drawing monsters, all of these things are the creations of the big bad, and they look this way because they’re meant to be safe, fun game pieces for a little kid to play with.

“classification” is not just a winking acknowledgement of the genre, it’s an actual magical force used by the big bad to create roles for living human beings who are effectively mind controlled slaves. that’s some dark stuff right there, if you look past the cutesy video game storytelling for a sec and imagine what that must be like for the people. it’s a simple story, hidden inside the decoy RPG plot, but damn if it isn’t good.

so, about the the small world you can explore in the game: it used to be a lot bigger, but it’s been cut out of the much larger real world by magic and turned into a sort of childproofed playpen full of colorful NPCs specifically “classified” (presumably from the residents of the part of the world that got isolated) for the intended player to encounter on an adventure plot.

You aren’t the intended player of the game, either. your protagonist is a random boring teenager who didn’t get “classified” at all, presumably because everyone, including the big bad, forgets he’s there. He was left off the list entirely, making him very useful to the opponent of the big bad, a former collaborator and “classification” worker who rebelled. this former collaborator is the same guy who originally spread the story of the turtle and the pebble to shame the big bad, by the way. to make the story go away, big bad tried to “classify” it as a joke. ok dude, you do you.

People who don’t get “classified” can act however they choose, it looks like. they don’t get stuck in the story like YOUNG MAN WHO BELIEVES IN JUSTICE, who can only stand on the sidewalk and talk about justice. somebody who wanted to fight the big bad, who’s always looking for gaps in the system to drive a wedge into, could really break the game if he could find someone who wasn’t “classified” to work through. he’s done it before (unsuccessfully) but this time around, your player character is that wedge.

and what a wedge he is!

imagine Link running all those endless, thankless errands in all his endless, thankless incarnations. saving babies, fetching cheese, herding goats, getting no real say in things but always doing the hard work--that’s you. now imagine Link literally fades into invisibility from being ignored so hard. that is also you. as in, your character will disappear from existence at one point when the big bad decides you’re ruining his daughter’s RPG adventure (more like because you make him remember that she’s just a doll and not actually his missing daughter) and writes you out of the story. it’s easy to do because your character’s main trait is that people don’t really pay attention to him. even in the game itself, this character is just your vehicle to play Okage: Shadow King and enact the choices you make. (this game gets super meta and i love it.)

big bad just emphasizes your overshadowed (eh? ehhhh?) nature until you stop existing at all.

while you’re invisible, you end up in the town of Triste, where ignored people gather. this whole sequence is just amazing--half the businesses are closed, or they’re open and you can hear music and smell food but no one is inside. a lot of people who are inside their homes won’t open the door and might yell at you to go away. some folks hang around outside and will talk to you. everyone is sad but happy to have this place to belong when no one else can see they exist. Triste is well-named (means “sad” in french). it’s basically the town of social anxiety, hesitation, longing and depression. and it’s amazing.

you can find a closed up house where, when you knock, a guy inside yells “I HOPE IT BREAKS! THAT TINY WORLD OF YOURS!” like. someone’s extra mad at the big bad 0_0

and oh hey by the way, while you’re exploring this beautiful village of forgotten NPCs, you run into the voice of a certain princess who got lost in the world her father made for her to play in who knows how many hundreds of years ago. turns out this poor kid used to play all sorts of fun games in the world, but she ended up in Triste. while the doll version of her has adventures, she can watch through its eyes, so she knows you despite never having actually met.

man, imagine being that poor baby turtle princess and having to wait around all alone in a town full of invisible sad people because your dad has replaced you, in his grief, with an enchanted doll. but now someone’s come to help her, someone who is also sad and alone because everyone’s forgotten them. your defining flaw as a character, your tendency to be neglected to the point of non-existence, is what allows you to connect with the lost princess. your sorrow brings you to a place where you can plan to make real change and fix your broken ass world. i fucking love that!

first you have to get people to acknowledge you so you will stop being invisible, and then you have to confront the big bad’s weird grief-crazy reign of terror, bring the real princess back from Triste, and end the “classification” system that keeps the world isolated and its people enslaved. somewhere in all of this, you will also presumably need to deal with the fully-powered Shadow King, but eh. later for that.

this is the ps4 version, so first i have to get the goddamn Q of Hearts for the platinum trophy. THEN we’ll deal with Stan.

#okage #okage: shadow king #boku to maoh #okage spoilers #spoiler #i love when the gameplay and the story fit together #like even the many many bugs and glitches are OK in the context of the story #it almost becomes part of the story when this janky ass game goes clunk #there beiloune goes again i says to myself #just as long as i can save without hitting that bug i'll be fine says i #oh no it's frozen again says i #curse you beiloune but at least i saved twice #you have to save twice to be sure not to erase your game #it's a rare bug but it's devastating if you only have one file current #and oh my god can the q of hearts just drop already

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ducavalentinos · 5 years

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Hey, what are in your opinion the best fiction and nonfiction books about the Borgia family? And why?

Hey anon!

It took me awhile to answer this because is always a tricky question for me lol. I think I’m rather picky when it comes to them, but also I’m constantly changing my mind. Anyways here it goes:

Best:

The Poisoner Mysteries, Sara Poole: So, I must say that the main character, Francesca, can be very annoying and completely unrealistic as a woman in the 14th. But these trilogy has been my favorite so far because the Borgia family is written amazingnly well. I was suprised actually! The writer achieved such a wonderful characterizion of Cesare, a rare balance of giving him his humanity, but also acknowledging his flaws. I adore her Cesare. Her Lucrezia is fine here, didn’t bothered me, she has great dialogues. And her Rodrigo is pretty much how I see him irl. Also there’s a lot of mysteries, which I love. I just had a lot of fun reading it, it was delightful.

Fuyumi Soryo, Cesare: Il Creatore che ha distrutto: I think is brilliant how Soryo showed that serious, historical fiction about the Borgia family can be done without resorting to old clichés and sensationalistic gossip, and still make it fun and entertaining. I’m grateful for the respect and dedication her and her team have showed towards Cesare. And I just love everything about her manga. The main character, Angelo, is great. The relationship he develops with both Cesare and Miguel is so so good! The Medici family is also great here. Lucrezia is adorable! Rodrigo is again, exactly how I see him. And last but not least, the drawings! especially the coloured ones are stunning. So much detail, it’s a work of art, really.

Mario Puzo, The Family: It’s like a classic Borgia fiction, some people hate it, but I absolutely love it! If you must take advantage of all the rumors and misdeeds that surrounds the Borgia family, then I expect you should do it as masterfully as Puzo did it.

Sara Bower, Sins of the House of Borgia: I love it because 1) The main character is super relatable to me sorry not sorry lool, 2) Bower wrote Lucrezia so so well. A complex, well rounded character, that’s neither a victim nor a poisoner. Which it’s how I see her irl. Her writing is beautiful too. Those Cesare and Lucrezia’s letters had me dying!!!!! That being said, I must say that nowdays her Cesare feels ooc sometimes, and her Vannozza still feels rather harsh and unfair imo. But overall it remains a favorite of mine.

Françoise Sagan, Le Sang Doré Des Borgia: I actually haven’t read the book, but the book is basically the transcription of the tv series, which I watched and it’s my favorite Borgia adaptation! I don’t know how Sagan did it, but her Lucrezia is amazing and accurate and ughh what a queen!

Worst:

Jean Plaidy, Madonna of the Seven Hills/ Light on Lucrezia: OH MY GOD, these books are so cringely bad I think the only reason I was able to finish is because it was my first borgia fiction and even then, I suffered getting through with it. Everyone is ooc af. There is one or two good dialogues between Lucrezia and Cesare, but overall what a disaster! I still don’t understand wth the writer was thinking while she was writing that, nor how you can get the WHOLE family all wrong at the same time??? But yeah, I guess that happens sometimes idk lmaoo.

Sarah Dunant, Blood and Beauty: Listen, if you go to Goodreads, you’ll see how praised this book is. And I do admit Dunant is a good writer. However, she is on this side of my list for a very simple reason: she made me hate Lucrezia. Goddd, she tries way too hard to present Lucrezia as the good girl™, beacon of innocence and goodness, and what comes out of it is this incredibly annoying, dull and stupid character that made me roll my eyes each time I had to read her dialogues like: Oh no, more bullshit! can we just go back to Cesare and Rodrigo? their servants? Juan? Joffre? literally anyone would be more interesting to read than her Lucrezia istg. Also if you are a cesare x lucrezia shipper, just know that in order for Dunant to keep Lucrezia on this ridiculous and unrealistic pedestal, their relationship had to be sabotaged. So don’t be fooled by the hardcover copy, nor the lovely dialogues at the beginning, it gets bittesweet pretty fast. And as if all this wasn’t enough, I still had to read with my own two eyes Dunant claiming her book is as close to real life as possible. Just no. Unacceptable. I realized this ended up becoming a mini-rant, sorry anon! I just really loathe this book. It broke my confidence on Goodreads’s review system, that’s for sure.

Elena/Michela Martignoni, Cuore di Tiranno/Verdugo de Tiranos: Too sensationalistic and badly written. And it does have unnecessary violence against women. It would be one thing if they could back that up with hard evidence, which they can’t. All we have is a bunch of theories, so how their minds went where it did there is kinda disturbing imo. It’s not type of reading.

Dumas, The Borgias: Not so much for how he uses and abuses of all the Borgia alleged “sins”, but because his writing is very confusing. It’s too dry to be fiction, but it doesn’t work as non-fiction either because there are some dialogues sometimes. It’s weird and I couldn’t finish it.

Non-fiction:

So, I kinda answered this one here. I would only add that Woodward’s bio on Cesare is not too bad. I mean there were times I wanted to quit reading it, but his last chapters are ok and he offers a good amount of sources and evidence, which I always appreciate.

#ask answered #anon ask #house borgia #books #my thoughts #there are other books anon #but they're not good enough to enter best category nor so bad to enter worst imo #these are the main ones i think #i'm currently reading another one in french called la vie de césar borgia but i need to finish to really say what i thought #but it's ok so far #just know that borgia books both on fiction and historical are mess and it depends on how you see the family and personal taste i think #thanks for the ask!#i love talking about my beloved renaissance family #<333

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topmixtrends · 6 years

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IN HIS FASCINATING linked novellas The Garbage Times and White Ibis, Sam Pink exposes the absurdity hidden just below the surface of everyday life. In The Garbage Times, this takes the form of a deep dive into society’s underbelly to reveal the grime most people turn away from when walking down the street: homeless people defecating, rats scurrying, pigeons eating dirty food, drug addicts having illogical conversations. It is all there, and Pink won’t allow the reader to ignore it.

The Garbage Times is an homage to the randomness of life, the inevitability of shit, scum, and death, and the beauty that glimmers amid the filth. The story’s unnamed narrator is a man who deals with all manner of absurd behavior as he loads garbage, plunges toilets and sinks, and works as a bouncer at a bar. Despite the character’s peculiarities, readers will likely find his barrage of thoughts, explosive emotions, fantasies of violence, and bursts of tenderness easy to relate to. Most of us, Pink implies, are more like this “crazy” garbage man than we would like to admit as we “plunge” our way through life trying to get rid of the shit — pun intended.

The narrator is diligent in his job. Surrounded by rats and pigeons, he takes on each clog with vigor and an absence of fear or disgust, and this endless drive to clean up the messes of others — shit seems to be everywhere — takes on a hilarious cast. Throughout, Pink’s profanity-laced prose feels fitting, as it places the reader deep in the minds of characters choking on the so-called civilized world’s muck.

In counterbalance to the crassness and moments of violence that punctuate The Garbage Times, Pink’s narrator shows a deep, humanizing love and respect for women and animals. For example, when he returns home to his cat Rontel, one of his main companions, he thinks,

Inside my apartment, Rontel was lying on the stove — his eyes half closed, wagging his tail.

He went to meow but didn’t make a sound.

He stretched, knocking a metal burner off the stove.

“Come here, my little shithead,” I said.

I picked him up and kissed his head four times real quick.

In a really deep and gravelly voice, I said, “Rontel, you a handsome baby!”

He was blinking a lot and licking his snoot, staring up at the ceiling.

Sun lit my room.

Pink’s fascination with animals continues in White Ibis, in which there is a sad, profound moment where the narrator sympathizes with a lizard trying to defend itself against the housecat Dotty, who is slowly killing it by batting it around:

This lizard was for real.

It looked up at her, gill things puffed out, like “All right, all right yeah, big tough guy, let’s have it. [wipes nose] You wanna pick on someone? Yeah ok, all right, pick on me, tough guy, go ahead and — ” but Dotty just mangled it some more.

She left it broken and mostly dead, on its back, barely breathing.

Since the lizard is suffering, the narrator’s girlfriend pressures him to kill it, and he does:

I smashed the lizard’s head with the heel of my boot. Its guts came out its side. Fuck. You tried. You tried. I get it. Sometimes you just gotta pick a place and say, “Right here. Here’s where it happens. Right here.” Gills out, boss, gills out. R.I.P.

The power, humor, sadness, and tenderness in Pink’s writing is haunting when he is at his best, as in this observation of a turtle at a laundromat aquarium in The Garbage Times:

Short bookcases with aquariums on them — turtles swimming in shallow water.

I watched this one turtle trying to swim through the aquarium wall as I dumped a garbage bag of my clothing into a washer.

The turtle made the same sideways swimming motion with both arms.

The same tap of the head against the glass.

Same tiny wave of water bouncing off the glass and coming backwards.

Each time.

Fucking shit.

This is the beauty of Pink’s work — he shows the simple devastations of containment, of beings (in this case animals) living without dignity but still striving toward hope, over and over again, as we all do, wanting things to come out all right. This is the heart of his message, the essence of his book: we will never stop trying to keep moving no matter how confined we are. No matter how random life is, we press on toward something intangible in the distance with only the will to live fueling us.

In this quest for life and dignity is an equally powerful desire to succumb to death. Its inevitability curls underneath each page, hides in each scene. Morbid readers will really dig this book. As will lovers of the absurd, though the magic of Pink is that he turns the absurd to a purpose. The novellas are hilarious and unabashedly honest in showing how bizarre life is, how unpredictable people are, and yet how each person craves love, dignity, freedom — the fundamental needs we all share. In its surreality and sadness, The Garbage Times leaves readers with an impression of characters living in the grime of the world, amid constant violence and despair, yet striving to rise above and make sense of it all.

Pink is a master of dialogue. He nails slang and the odd way people often misuse or mispronounce words, particularly folks who have been traumatized in some way or just talk funny. For example, in The Garbage Times, the narrator frequents a bar where he has a strange affection for the female bartender, who has a bizarre accent that he imitates good-naturedly:

“Stahhp! Quit maykin me laugh! Oh hey, watch [Regular] over dair. He’s doing the hair ting.”

[Regular] was a Vietnam vet who came in every day

[…]

he was whipping his long hair around, and hiking his pants over his huge belly, sitting at the corner of the bar with a group of people behind him.

His face was totally red and he was talking to himself.

The look on his face was so evil.

I laughed.

The novellas, as eccentric as they are, are grounded in scenes with a powerful sense of authority. And some of Pink’s lines are pure gold, encapsulating some universal truth or humorous insight, or both: “And all the animals headed back to their corners, to wait for tomorrow. Hiding from the things with real teeth and power.”

At the same time, Pink can get carried away. There are moments of overindulgence and repetition where the narrator will pick up a thought and run with it too long. But Pink’s audacity in taking risks is admirable. His style is purposefully messy — he is having fun writing and playing with how obsessive the brain can be. He thrills in breaking convention.

The conversational tone only adds to the humor of these novellas. Despite its odd formatting, the book becomes very readable once the reader adapts to its strange, galloping style. Pink takes the reader on an adventure, and there is a mysterious momentum at work in the voice-driven narrative, a Murakami-like invisible hand that guides these characters with a purpose to press on and preserve dignity, preserve authenticity, through a seemingly sordid, artificial world.

In White Ibis, the unnamed narrator admires the strange, titular bird that walks to and fro at the end of his driveway in Florida, the way it shoots judgmental glances and avoids direct contact with anyone or anything. It serves as a symbol for the narrator’s desire to be free of domestication, of playing along, but he’s torn because he wants to keep his girlfriend and maintain some sense of normalcy. So, while he struggles to get a job, attends parties, and carries on normal conversations, the pull of the white ibis strutting around and doing its own thing perpetually calls to him. When he sees it, he thinks, “I really wanted the white ibis to like me and to be my friend. And to its credit, it — seemingly — did not. Ok. Well. Hell, I understood.”

In pondering the nature of the ibis and all creatures that fight for survival, he articulates the theme that links the two novellas beautifully:

The peacock and other weird non-bad-ass birds like the white ibis seemed hilarious, given evolution.

I imagined all creatures at the beginning of time, right before it all begins, in private, devising their offenses/defenses and then coming out into an open field and revealing them.

Into the field of existence with means to survive.

Like hey, check this out, got a big horn on my face!

In the hands of a lesser writer, the narrator would rebel against being in a relationship and the story would implode with bickering. Instead, the young couple in White Ibis seems genuinely happy and in sync with one another, and she accepts his social anxiety as his to deal with.

White Ibis ends on a tender note. A Girl Scout troop holds a sleepover at the couple’s home, and while the narrator at first resists he ultimately enjoys the girls and their exuberance. He empathizes with their fears about being ugly as he is pressured into drawing their portraits (he is known as “the artist”), and as a result finds unexpected meaning and beauty in connection with other alienated humans.

Reading Sam Pink is an unpredictable experience. He hits varied tones and moods, and readers never know where he is taking them next. He’s been labeled “experimental,” but these novellas are just good fiction. He sucks readers in and makes them see the world as his narrators do. His stories are unique and true and impossible to put down — what more could anyone want?

Taylor Larsen is the author of the novel Stranger, Father, Beloved (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 2016). She teaches fiction writing for Catapult and the Sackett Street Writers Workshop and is co-editor of the literary website The Negatives.

The post The Things with Real Teeth and Power: Two Novellas from Sam Pink appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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