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lookninjas · 2 months

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Love Theme from House of Leaves

So.

POE.

Like I said, I don't usually explain the Bad Descriptions from my Bad Description Song Polls. Some of them I work hard on, some of them are just bad puns on the song lyrics or titles or whatever, but ultimately, the bad descriptions aren't really the point. The point is to get a couple people curious about artists they might not have heard before by erasing any preconceptions they might have about the artist, the genre, whatever. It's a goofy little game about my very serious love of music and my genuine desire to get people to experience the joys of just trying something new.

But then there's POE. Right? Specifically, there is Haunted by POE, an album that just straight up every time turns me into a four-hour video by an obsessed YouTuber down a really deep rabbit hole. Which is absolutely fitting, because as it turns out, Haunted comes from the same place as Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.

You see, POE's real name is Anne Danielewski. Mark is her brother. And, regardless of the protests of the dudes on the MZD forums back in 2004, HoL and Haunted come from the same place -- the death of their father, Tad Danielewski, and their subsequent attempts to reconcile their complicated emotions about their perfectionist father, their estranged mother, and their shared and separate childhoods. The works contrast and complement -- House of Leaves is a labyrinth for the reader to wander; Haunted is a cache of tapes from a lost loved one that both sheds light on the past and casts preconceived notions into doubt. They reference each other (the "Poe T" in HoL, the "growling voice" in "Hey Pretty"), but don't require each other.

Even their creation is tangled. She read his book as he was writing it; he listened to her songs as she recorded them. He read a passage of his book over top of the album's first single when she was told radio was "just not playing women;" she took him on tour with her when she was opening for Depeche Mode. It was from the start a kind of double act.

And then it just wasn't anymore.

If there's a villain in this story, it is -- in a weird twist of foreshadowing -- WarnerMedia. Specifically, it is the disastrous AOL -- Time Warner merger, which saw POE unceremoniously dropped from Time Warner subsidiary Atlantic Records just six weeks after she'd signed a contract with them for three more albums. Copies of second single "Wild" were never sent to radio. Support for the album dried up. The ensuing legal wrangling saw POE's masters sold and resold from one label to another, while POE wound up unable to tour or record under her own pseudonym for years. So while House of Leaves went on to (deserved) classic status, Haunted disappeared.

I am not alone in finding this terrifically unjust. Mark Z. Danielewski himself calls the album "woefully underappreciated." Granted, he's biased, but so am I. I was a POE fan before House of Leaves was published. I discovered HoL through Haunted, although both came in close succession. For me, part of the mystery of the book is how it tangles with the album, how two people can go through the same maze and come out of it in such different locations, the same story told in different languages. But also...

I mean, it's just a hell of an album. Her voice is extraordinary. Her lyrics blend the metaphoric and the extremely literal in terrific ways. The mix of electronica, hip-hop, pop, and experimental is absolutely wired to my tastebuds (there's a reason she wound up invited on tour with the Depeche Mode, after all), and the overall work is plaintive, empowering, heartbreaking, and occasionally terrifying. It's so good. It's so, so good. I would almost be okay if this were her last ever album, it's that good.

I just wish more people were listening to it, you know?

So consider this my call to arms. If you are a House of Leaves fan, or even if you're not, even if the footnotes left you cold, give Haunted a listen. Just a couple songs. Just a taste.

Someone who loves you left a stack of tapes sitting by a boom box for you. Put one in. Press play.

#poe #mark z. danielewski #poe (musician)#haunted #house of leaves #sidenote: you don't appreciate how long ago some things happened until you're trying to find all the primary sources you remember #and they're almost unsearchable because of how long ago it was #twenty-something years wow

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artpunk-intl · 1 year

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“OFF BOOK WITH BRENDAN WELLS”

ArtpunkINTL interviews BRENDAN WELLS (Uranium Club, Brendan Wells Plant Music, NERV) about Art, inspiration, chess, and the joy of not having the answer.

Interview by Lucas Rose for ArtpunkINTL, 2022

[FULL INTERVIEW TEXT BELOW]

As a unique mode of Art performance and creation, what does The Uranium Club mean to you? How does it allow you to express yourself in ways that other projects don’t? Please be as abstract as you can.

BW: For my involvement with it, the goal is as much communication as possible. I want an album to encourage someone to spend time with it, the type of thing you take into the bathroom to read and look over. I want to approach things with an intent to express ideas everywhere we can: in lyrics, on the center label, the clothes we wear, the things said on stage in between songs, on the album spine, anywhere we can find. I'd like our choices to be conscientious over automatic (are we doing something a certain way because that's how it's done or do we choose it because it will serve us?), and while other times we can be spontaneous then hopefully that spontaneity can be another weapon or resource for ideas, maybe something to reverse engineer into a reference or plot point to inform what we do next.

The way I view art, everything you do as an artist says something, whether it's process, medium, message, product etc. I don't know that everyone sees that, that when you make an unthoughtful choice it can communicate that you aren't paying attention to what you're doing. Are you invested in me as an audience member? I think in ways I'd also equate unthoughtfulness with insincerity, which is maybe a big jump, but maybe at least a lack of sincerity, and when sincerity isn't present that's just as obvious (and it is obvious!) as insincerity. You can be sincere and make something terrible but at least it won't be boring, I think. There is a lot of filler in products. And I get that, it's easier that way.

In that sense I think Uranium Club chooses to be difficult, and sometimes it's a difficult or slow or frustrating process for us, to be honest. But the filler concept reminds me of a promo video for Steve Martin's master class on stand up comedy where he says a big mistake people make is to walk out on stage and say something to an audience like "Hi, how is everyone doing tonight?" It's a mistake because you have missed an opportunity to make a joke. Everything is an opportunity to make a joke. Take out the filler and you might only be left with a little bit after that but now maybe you've stumbled into the power of minimalism.

There’s something about the Uranium Club that feels medical. Songs often come across as stories from the medical or psychiatric fields, telling tales of altered personalities, hidden selves, sickness, sudden traumatic change, proximity to death, and morbid comedy. What motivates the band’s songwriting? What sort of thing could cause a member of the Club to stop and think “I should make a song out of that?”

BW: Speaking for myself as one of three writers in the band, I'm a curious person, lots of Wikipedia and using the interlibrary loan service to spontaneously request books on subjects and artists that pop up on my radar. I jump around between a lot of different interests and thoughts so if something sticks in my brain and keeps my attention then I'll start to ask myself if it could become a song. It has to be something that keeps inviting questions and thoughts beyond what sparked interest in the first place. Even better, I like when even after making a song about something I feel like I could keep writing on the subject because every new angle I view it from invites more investigation. Subjects that involve a moral grey area do that for me, partially because something that makes me laugh is to hear a strong, one-sided opinion on a subject.

One of the funniest characters is one who is confident and wrong. I think subjects around medicine, psychiatry, etc are meaty because of the complicated relationship between science/fact and the personal experience behind/around it. Science has connotations of being right about things, of perfection and rules and infallibility, but what about when things get complicated, when you invite in questions of morality and suffering and the times it turns out you've been wrong for years about something? That's confusing, and I think a lot of my expression comes out of exploring confusion.

Digging around, it’s not hard to find references to an unreleased Uranium Club short film. From my own understanding, the cover art for The Cosmo Cleaners is a relic of this film. What can you recall about that film? Was it ever finished? Was it ever real? If so, are there any future plans for it?

BW: The band members do love Film, and sometimes we try to watch the same movies to be on something of the same page. But one of my favorite ways of taking in Art is through photos of Performance Art. Do you ever hear something about a book or a movie that gets you excited but then the real thing doesn't quite capture what you wanted? That's how I feel about most B-movies; I don't watch them, I get bored. There's a performance piece I love by a Chinese artist Song Dong called Stamping the Water where he is standing in a lake with a large printing block with the symbol for water on it and he slaps it against the water. I feel like I also saw a video of the performance and the video took the magic out of the action for me. The most compelling version of the piece I think is just one photo accompanied by the title.

Titles are really important, I think. It's like a secret lyric that changes the way you hear the song. It expands the narrative, like this weekend when I saw the house of some kids I went to school with who I thought were rich but now the house is abandoned and boarded up. I asked my mom and she told me it's because the parents got divorced and their dad accidentally killed someone while driving a speedboat drunk.

But then holding back some information is compelling too, like how my mom said the dad is dead now too, but didn't say why, so I'm left with questions. I do think movies are great, though, and watching a movie can be more inspiring for me than any other way of taking in Art, even though I have trouble sometimes allowing myself to watch a movie because I worry it's not time well spent if I'm not sick or tired.

Has anybody followed the instructions on the Two Things At Once 7”?

BW: Maybe once, I think. One of the most flattering things I can experience is when somebody lets me know they were listening and they remember what I said. It might be too much to say that I make art or music because I never felt listened to when I was a kid, but if I want to believe what I've learned in the years of therapy I've had then maybe I can admit that. It's vulnerable to express yourself but on the part of the audience I think it also takes vulnerability to participate—to choose to answer someone's question instead of letting it hang as rhetorical. It's a transformative choice, kind of like a magic spell you help complete. It makes the outcome less certain, more charged, more in the moment.

There's this great concept called going "off book" in chess that fits for that. At some point in the world of chess they started keeping a record of every move ever made in tournament play. During a game of chess, every move made makes it a little less like every game played before it, but you can still play an entire game of chess and know that the same choices in the same order have been made before. It is increasingly rare as more games are played and more data is created through that, but if you make a choice that has never been recorded before, the game is now "off book." It's not safe to do that, but it can mean the difference in whether or not there ends up being a Wikipedia article about that chess match. Despite the connotations you might make for words like creativity and Art, a lot of experiences with Art and Music are "on book." If somebody asks you to do something for the sake of Art—clap, answer a question, whatever—I think you should do it because that is a step in the direction of making the experience a little bit less like every experience that came before it.

NERV was explosive, abrasive, and aggressive, a wonderful combination of Powerviolence and original flavor Hardcore Punk. What did you learn with NERV that stuck with you?

BW: I learned to err on the side of spontaneity when it comes to performance. So many times I came up with an idea beforehand, like jumping at a certain moment (or especially with anything I thought would be funny to do or say) and it would turn out so lifeless. It's like giving birth and a wet potato coming out instead of a baby. I'd expect laughter and there would be none and I would feel so stupid, or I would do something and realize I was forcing it into the wrong moment. There are comedians who will work so hard to make their thoughts seem spontaneous when they've actually been delivering the same lines for years, and that can make for a good joke and speak to the mastery of their performance, but that joke can be matched or exceeded if it turns out you have to fart at the exact moment it would be funny to fart. For me to feel right about it I need to be in the moment and respond to it. If you respond, you create communication; if you force it, you might poop your pants.

Bands like NERV almost always end up with one or two good stories from the road. Any come to mind?

BW: The one that I usually tell is about NERV playing a show on tour in Pittsburgh in 2011. It was a grind show we got added to along with Wild Child, a band from Minneapolis we were friends with that included Harry from Uranium Club. Wild Child was incredibly late to the show because that morning they got stranded on the road with a flat tire and then after it got replaced they were in standstill traffic for hours because of a giant traffic accident. They finally showed up after all the other bands had played and were super stressed out and tired and had to play immediately to a pretty small and apathetic audience. They asked if we were down to just relax and watch a movie because they had bought Bruno on DVD at a gas station a few days before and hadn't gotten a chance to watch it. The guy who booked the show invited us to stay at his place and it sounded good—a spare room with beds because bands stayed there all the time, he said he'd make us spaghetti and salad, and the only thing to really deal with was his fiancé was moving in so there would be her cat and his two dogs who were loud but harmless.

We get back to the guy's place and it's gnarly—his dogs are these two giant rottweilers who are barking and lunging and making us uncomfortable. He shows us where we can sleep and it's this room with horror movie posters and flyers for grind shows and a pile of very stained mattresses. It's gross but there's a big TV and an Xbox so we can start up Bruno and he goes to the kitchen to cook stuff and we make the best of it. There's eight of us so I'm sitting on the floor next to the couch and Bruno was really funny. The dogs come thundering into the room whipping around a toy or stuffed animal and run over me and get slobber all over my arm and drop the toy next to Antoine from Wild Child and they chase each other around and run out again. We decompress from that but Antoine jumps up and yells "Holy shit!" and "It's a fucking cat, dude!" I turn around and realize it wasn't a stuffed animal the dogs were playing with, they'd killed the guy's fiancé's cat. I check my arm and see it isn't dog slobber, my arms covered in blood.

We all start standing up and freaking out and the guy walks into the room from the kitchen, sees the dead cat, and loses it. "Holy shit, that's my fiancé's fucking cat. She's gonna fucking leave me, man. They're gonna put my dogs to sleep. FUCK. I'm so FUCKED." Then for some reason he turns on us and starts yelling at us. "Why didn't you guys do anything? That's my fiancé's fucking cat!"

The guy stops and puts his face in his hands and starts crying. We're all just standing there looking at each other and not knowing what is going on and half watching Bruno, which is still playing, while the guy cries. After a while he tries to straighten up and bring things back to a level of normalcy.

"Well," he says, "the spaghetti's done."

With Brendan Wells Plant Music, Ernest Hood’s Neighborhoods and Mort Garson’s Plantasia seem like the obvious points of inspiration (based off nothing more than assumption), but it’s got a lot more going on too. What points of influence do you take for your quieter explorations of sound (other than plants)?

BW: The start of the project came out of a very anxious time in my life—I had tried moving to San Francisco to help run the magazine Maximum Rocknroll and it fucked my life up and was even making it hard to listen to punk for awhile. I was trying to search out classical music I could connect with but was gravitating more towards things that felt simplistic or minimal and natural. I was wanting to make music like Steve Reich, Terry Reilly, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, but like most things it's been filtered through my limitations. I don't know how to "play piano" necessarily but I can run a keyboard through guitar pedals and hold down some of the keys and try different things until I discover something I find compelling. Or I might not have the patience to systematically compose something like Steve Reich that explores overlapping themes and frequencies but I will record two separate tracks that ignore structure and meter and play them both at the same time to see what comes out of it. I also find something incredibly transcendent can come out of music without percussion or drums, or something that doesn't use those devices but still creates rhythm and forward motion. It's more tied with a spiritual pursuit than other things I might make.

In your opinion, how’s the Twin Cities scene doing these days? Anybody that’s been catching your eye that you feel hasn’t gotten their praise? Does the scene feel alive?

BW: I would say that it's healthy, it's fine, it's existing. I would not say that my experience today is a heyday, but as long as things are happening then that means things in the future can be nurtured and artists have a place to grow instead of having to start from nothing. I think though that there are things going on that I'm not in touch with that are happening, just not exactly in the scene I've been attached to.

Things have changed a lot since I first visited Minneapolis in 2008. Punks aren't as smelly. Fewer dreadlocks. Those things weren't my niche necessarily but it had an exciting identity. But in Minneapolis I think there is always an audience. When a new warehouse venue opens up people will be there and excited. The people here are very supportive and want to see music. The music I'm most excited about in town is pretty new and hasn't been recorded yet so there are things to look forward to but not a lot I can easily share right now except for a few live videos.

[Brendan provides the following links:]

Pig in the City : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3ji81yq4Y

Psychic Sports : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtcKe1mMC4Q

Egg Girl Girl : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiGXUMOnuHY

Which release(s) do you find yourself most proud of for each of your projects? Do you have a favorite song or songs from your own body of work?

BW: I think the first vinyl release for any of the projects I've been a part of is a big deal to me. Growing up and loving bands and music and never thinking that would be something I'd ever participate in myself, having something on vinyl feels like tangible validation for me of participation in a part of culture that I have looked up to so much. Making a tape with Plant Music was also a big deal. It was the first time i'd recorded and released music without playing in a band and again isn't something I thought I could do. In a lot of ways I have low self esteem so these things have been life changing.

One of the things I'm most proud of is a short-lived band from 2017 I was in called Ozone 120's. I played guitar, which I hadn't done in a band since 9th grade, and that helped change the way I talk about playing music because I would say "Well, technically I CAN play guitar, but I don't know how to 'play the guitar'" because I only knew how to play power chords and that didn't seem good enough to me. Now in my mind if you're able to make sounds you like with an instrument then I don't see that as illegitimate or something that should keep you from thinking you're not a musician or something.

What do you see when you look at the current world of Art? What is plentiful? What is lacking?

BW: Working in the limitations of your means is what is going to lead to authentic / unique / individual expression and I think that is increasingly rare. That's why musicians from different cities and different experiences with different resources will sound different and to me that's what makes Art exciting: that there's more of it out there to experience. There's something sterile about doing things the "right" way. That can end up meaning a focus on recreation rather than something I'd call a creation and I don't often find much credibility in that. I know there's an easy argument to that, that there's nothing unique or creative about bands who play guitars or even all art period but to say something like "Nothing is original so why should it matter?" is going to lead to a lot of product that I find lifeless. I don't think there's any excuse for boring Art.

I also think pun names have to go (Joanna Gruesome, Ringo Deathstarr, Olivia Neutron-John). That's an excuse for an idea. It's like having the opposite of an identity unless you're a Grind band or something because they're the only ones who do it right and with a worthwhile sense of humor.

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arcplaysgames · 1 year

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The Persona 5 Post-Mortem, Part One: What I Didn't Like 8C

I have reread my entire P5 liveblog to refresh my memory of everything that happened in the game, and I've been trying to think about how I feel about P5R and, frankly, whether I like the game. Which is a very basic question, I think, but one I am deeply struggling with, so obviously it's not actually that simple, huh.

The answer I am tentatively settling on is: I think the third semester saves P5R from being an Actually Bad game.

I think that Persona 5 Vanilla is actually… a 5 out of 10 at best, and in my heart it's lower than that. But Royal does so much intense heavy lifting, it alone, separate from the rest of the game and the original campaign, is an 8 out of 10.

That is an enormous discrepancy that I've really never dealt with in a video game before. I think the last game I played that I truly disliked to my bones was Fallout 4. FO4 remains the only game I've ever played were I genuinely and truly wanted a refund of not just my money but my time, the hours I spent in that meaningless, vapid fucking world. Even FO3 gave me some joy of exploration, for fuck's sake.

P5R is not as bad as FO4, but the main campaign is to me an enormous disappointment that…. if I had not been in the throes of a depressive slump and thus needing something to hyperfocus on, I don't know if I would have finished the game. My frequent references to Yusuke saving me from turning off the game were not exaggeration in the least.

So, I think there are two major problems with this game. And I understand that when I did my post-mortem on P4G, I started with my likes and then went to dislikes, but I think for P5R it's correct to reverse that, because my negative feelings far outweigh the positive.

I guess point one is obvious: I think the cast of this game is bad.

I refuse to sugar-coat it. The cast of P5 is just bad, with a few mild exceptions. Even the characters that I like, I enjoy them comparatively to the ones I hate. And I have never hated someone in a Persona game before, not even Joker Mode Yosuke.

The entire cast of this game is much, much flatter than you would expect from a game that is trying so desperately to be stylish and loud and garish. P5R is maximalist to its fucking core. The fusions are executions, item creation is an electric chair, the menus are nightmares of high contrast and bouncing shapes, everything is LOUD LOUD LOUD 24/7 in this game to the point that I, a person I think is fairly skilled at video games and played P4G on Normal and breezed through it, had to lower the difficulty of the game to fucking have fun, because I felt so inundated with stimulus, I was struggling to play the fucking game.

That maximalist spirit just vanishes in the characters, and it's so fucking jarring. All style, no substance.

When I was trying to figure out my thoughts on the characters, the thing I kept coming back to was that P5 has too many main characters in the party. And weirdly, I think I'm right! P3 has seven party members (excluding beloved Koromaru, eight if you count Shinjiro who is in the party for a month). P4 only has seven.

Persona 5 Royal has nine, and I think part of the problem is that to fit all of these characters into the party and the story and to keep the MSQ scene moving at a decent pace, everyone suffers for it and gets flattened. Even the vibrancy of Yusuke vanishes from the game in the final third, where all his interesting tics and quirks are phased out until he's just a guy here to say his lines to move things along. Almost everyone suffers from this, where they are focal points during their introduction arc, and then they just lose all their shine as the story moves on.

This didn't happen in P3 and P4. That's not rose-tinted glasses talking; I JUST played both of those games starting in December. P3 is my true love but P4 is a tremendous example of how the characters continued to be themselves in every scene, even after their introductory chapters ended.

So the poison at the heart of P5R is that the characters are both not as three-dimensional to start with (and there are only a few I would even consider three-dimensional), and from the moment their respective Palaces end, they're on a half life.

This literally might be why I like Haru best, because she's introduced so late in the game that she didn't lose her voice yet by the endgame.

This is all of course at odds with the fact that only a few characters are really good. Futaba probably deserves the most accolades for being clear and present in every scene and always maintaining her uniqueness. Morgana as well, seeing as his arc lasts the entire game and is one of the central mysteries. And Akechi, without whom I think the entire game might have actually failed? Without the complexity and unnerving energy from Akechi, this cast could not sustain the runtime of the game.

AND ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT, it does not help that I actively disliked two of my party members. Makoto has by far the worse introduction of any character in any game I have played and the way the game just did not understand or contend with what she did, the stalking and blackmail and endangering everyone, soured her so completely for me that she never once got party time. I never used her.

But even she was a relief next to fucking Ryuji. Ryuji, the token best friend character who turned into The Teammate Everyone Hates for me. He was a mean, emotionally dense, disrespectful and dehumanizing asshole for the entire fucking game. And I am used to the Best Friend Guy who messes up and grows over the course of the game (see: Junpei and Yosuke) but with Ryuji there is no growth, there is barely acknowledgement of how cruel he is. And the fact he never actually apologized to Morgana for his bullshit in the middle of the game lost me completely on him. Ryuji made me as the player on the other side of the screen uncomfortable. That's…. wild, tbh.

So we have a cast where I can barely stand two characters, I'm ambivalent on three, one I regularly forgot she existed, and three I liked a lot.

That's a fucking mess, y'all. For a Persona game, which is a premium Hangout Game, where so much of the point is the characters? That's a huge problem.

The other games in this franchise like Shin Megami Tensei tend to have characters that are flatter and more allegorical in nature, but that's okay because the focus is on the themes and the writing of the world.

Which leads directly to the other problem with Persona 5.

The writing. On several metrics, the writing is Bad.

On the first point, the fact that this game has an 80 hour runtime if you are lucky, and that's just the vanilla MSQ. It feels like an 80 hour runtime. I felt every goddamn minute of how long this game is.

Structure is the problem here, in my opinion, and it goes hand in hand with the character issue. Just as this game has too many characters, it has too many set-pieces and arcs. To justify Makoto's presence in the game, there is a long, superfluous arc with Kaneshiro that should have just been cut entirely. Kaneshiro is about 10 hours that could just be snipped out of the game with nothing lost thematically or narratively.

And even more that P4 and DEFINITELY more than P3, the game will essentially…. repeat scenes.

As someone who did this entire liveblog with screencaps, I cannot tell you how many times I thought I missed capping a specific line or moment only to find out that it was in a nearly-identical scene a little bit earlier. Sometimes there were three different scenes that conveyed no new information, just restated what the characters knew, and that's just ridiculous. That's truly just too much.

On top of that, this game just gives the player way too much time. I didn't fill out every SLink in this game, but that's because I actively chose not to out of disinterest in a few of them. If I wanted to, I think I could have done every one without a guide. I spun my wheels for OVER TWENTY IN-GAME DAYS MULTIPLE TIMES. The pacing is a nightmare.

Another point I mentioned a lot was the technical quality of the writing.

This game is so over-produced, so maximalist, has so many small details, but the actual script as written for the game feels like it was done under crunch. Like, extreme crunch. Original FF7-style crunch.

It's hard to explain what this means, but in P4G, the script was lovingly crafted word by word and everything was incredibly naturalistic and conversational. There was never a moment when I had to refer to the log and reread anything, no point where a conversation lost me.

In P5R, this happened regularly. Awkward phrasings, responses that didn't make sense, repetitive sentence structure, and weird conversational pivots that did actually force me to go back and reread to understand what was being said.

Localizing a game of this scope and budget is a herculean task, and I know the game's English release was delayed. It just was not enough time. I would guess that this game needed at least another month or two to cook, but more than anything, the localization process should have been started a year before it was. The localization needed to be happening concurrently with the final year of development for a text this fucking dense.

It is so weird to see the extreme polish of the presentation of this game and then to just read the text aloud and go "wait, what" numerous times in a single playthrough.

(also this barely feels like its worth mentioning with the other issues but the lack of translation of the textures was unacceptably bad. I had to get a JPN-speaking friend to translate some things for me, and I really genuinely feel like missing out on some of this shit diminished the context of the game. Maruki's place is the most egregious offender but its everywhere.)

And finally, the last writing complaint is that until the Third Semester, this game has nothing to say. The Persona 5 Vanilla version of this game is……. meaningless but masquerading as thoughtful and rebellious.

Which is frankly hugely disappointing because this game does start strong with Joker and the repeated motif of imprisonment and betrayal. In just the first hour, Joker is beat up in an interrogation room, he's falsely accused of assault, his probation officer tells him he deserved it for stepping out of line, and every figure of authority from the principal to the teachers to his fellow students treat him like a murderer. It was a potent start to a game.

And in the end, Yaldaboath is just repeating the same fucking shit that Izanami did in P4G. People? More like SHEEPLE, amiright? People care more about being entertained than the TRUTH, and they want to be shadows/imprisoned.

Blah blah fucking blah. Persona needs to come up with something new to say because this was NOT it, chief, and was just disappointing given the strong start with Joker. I think this game's Big Theme can confidently be boiled down to "phones are like prisons," and its infuriating.

So much superfluous text and so little to say.

Until the Third Semester, anyway.

Next post will be about the things I liked, I promise.

#p5 #persona liveblog #post mortem #LONG post #warning this post is VERY negative

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oonajaeadira · 1 year

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For the Love of Fic: January 29

I may have started my busytimes, but this was technically my last week of freedom, so I made the most of it!

Here’s what I enjoyed this week!

🪐 = Year of Themed Creations work!

MARCUS PIKE

The Saltwater Room (iii) and (iv) by @chaoticgeminate 🪐 This brings Kells’ January fic to a close. This is a fun fic that makes me want to check out the game Raft now and I’ve enjoyed the open-water adventure of sailing a flooded world with Marcus and making what we can of it. I’m so excited to see what the February fic holds in store!!!

The Wedding Planner by @toomanystoriessolittletime 🪐 I just loved this. I love a good romcom. Steph puts Marcus in the role of the wedding planner and everyone gets to own their own corner of yearntown here. Just so much fluff, so much fun, I absolutely adore Marcus getting what his heart desires and the reader getting the wedding of her dreams.

PERO TOVAR

The Herbalist: Part 2: The Lies Were More Appealing Than the Truth by @blueeyesatnight No Tovar yet, but we’re getting close. Instead, we get a very good study of Kitty and her brother, as well as a really good feel for the town where the story takes place. Blue is doing a wonderful job at setting the character and tone and I really can’t wait to see this girl get Pero all tongue-tied...

JACK DANIELS

Shaken Not Stirred by @haylzcyon Hoh my gods. This is the kind of smut that gets me going. The kind where our cowboy isn’t a hard dom or a mouthy fool...Whiskey here is... adoring. Content. Reverent. And Haylz’ beautiful style plays beautifully in that zone between hot and soft, emotions and mechanics, folding in on itself over and over into something silky and smooth. This is a sequel to Over Ice, but it does stand on its own. But if you want the sweet before the spice, you can start there with the heart and work your way down.

JOEL MILLER

Symmetry by @words-are-fireproof 🪐 This is a look at Joel Miller, a man with loss and a lot of anger in the world. It hurts that Tommy’s the one who wants to look out for him and the only family he has left, but he just keeps pushing him away and sinking into survival mode. This one’s tough, but really nicely written.

Invitation by @beecastle 🪐 Bee’s doing a Year of Mary Oliver challenge where she uses lines from the poet as inspiration and prompts. This sweet little drabble’s line is “it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world” and Bee uses it to wonderful effect for a moment of noticing something simple and beautiful that the world still has to offer.

Always Thought That I’d See You Again by @ezrasbirdie Twenty years since high school and running into the Miller boys again? Tommy coming into your bar to drink and be friendly and Joel coming by to take care of Tommy. Maybe. Maybe he remembers you from high school. Maybe he helps you close up the bar one night. Maybe he walks you to your car. Maybe I had a swoon reading this. Maybe. I’ll never tell.

EZRA

Ribbons & Wings by @insomniamamma I will never, ever tire of J’s Prickle stories and am always happy to see her drop another. Ezra and Cee post-film, traveling with their hired third, an amazing found family scraping it together on distant and interesting worlds. J’s extention of the Prospect worldbuilding is top-tier and even here, on a world much like our own, she still manages to make it feel alien and wondrous. You don’t need to read the Prickle ‘verse in order--she doesn’t write them in order--to enjoy these stories. But if you haven’t looked into her very rich worlds, I really suggest you do.

DIETER BRAVO

The Worst Fic Ever by @beskarberry Y’all just get on your knees now, because this fic was just crowned king. Like, print this out and put it in your pocket for your worst days and it will cure all. I don’t really do this, but this fic gave me so much giddy joy that I’m gonna give it stars. Five. All of them solid gold. 🌟⭐️🌟⭐️🌟 Fk. How about five more. 🌟⭐️🌟⭐️🌟 And a raccoon. 🦝

The Roles We Play by @missredherring I love the double-entendre of this title. Rachel reframes Dieter as a man with a pouty little boy inside him, one that needs to be handled gently and told no. One that wants comfort but has to learn to do it by himself. And there’s no spice involved, this is a sweet story...and the reader has way more resolve than I would...

FRANKIE MORALES

I Need A Pilot by @all-the-things-2020 🪐 Putting Frankie--I mean, Franki--into the Star Wars universe and teaming up with Finn and Poe to fly over the mountains in a Resistance run? Yes please! Funny how Poe kind of looks like his friend San-Ti and Franki’s hopper isn’t really built to fly that high, but they’ll make it, right?

You Walk By And I Fall To Pieces by @lesbianhotch This is exactly my speed of being picked up at a bar by someone with as much shy DNA as we all imagine Frankie has. It’s sweet and pretty, and Santi deserves a little peck on the cheek for being a little shit.

MARCUS MORENO

Birthday Party by @dawn-petrichor-world 🪐 Look. You shouldn’t get involved with anyone related to your students. But when it’s Marcus, do you really have a choice?

JAVIER PEÑA

untitled by @unhinged-summer-fun So this self-proclaimed thirsty bitch won’t stop it with the alpha!Javier and I DON’T WANT HER TO. Why does there have to be yearning in the darkness? Why does the timing have to be off? Why can’t we all just have nice alphas?

DIN DJARIN

Year of Small Joys 1 - Hot meal by @keldabe-kriff 🪐 I love the thought of Din learning step by step how to parent and doing his best to get it right. A hot meal can go a long way for a growing little boy... This is super sweet.

GUEST CHARACTER SPOTLIGHT

TESS SERVOPOULOS

To Have and To Hold by @miraclesabound In six short paragraphs, Katie explains the motivation behind the runner that comes for Tess in episode 2 (spoilers, yo) and the calling of like to like. It’s really beautiful and builds on Craig’s sentiments about the kiss...

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egg-emperor · 1 year

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I think Gamma provides precedent for how Eggman treats Sage in Frontiers. He calls Beta Gamma's big brother.

Calling Sage his daughter is definitely a step further but it is still an example of assigning familial roles to his creations.

He says he's proud of Gamma just like he does with Sage

And he says he's counting on Gamma in their last scene together (I find it funny this line is different in the other characters story modes)

I think the thing with Sage is we never get a chance to see her really fail Eggman and how he'd react to that. All the times of Eggman mistreating and dismissing his creations are when they fail him in some way. Sage never does in the story of Frontiers. The closest she gets is this scene where he does still throw a little hissy fit over her suggestion.

IF Sage ever did actually fail Eggman, how would he react? Frontiers simply doesn't answer that question.

I've been thinking so hard about Adventure as one of the prime examples of him treating his creations like shit lol and yeah this is another of the reasons why it bothers me in Frontiers, how they got so close to going in the right direction but playing it up for "the feels" in the English dialogue in particular really changed the context and made it OOC. And how people try to treat the exact same line as "development" of the dynamic in Frontiers, even though he said it in Adventure while still being the biggest bastard ever and still treating them like shit, sparing Gamma only for being useful to him. But the unused mission fail scene shows he would immediately call him a "useless machine" too if he can't deliver, just like he easily harshly discards the rest.

Presentation changes everything, the casual approach works in the way I described for liking Japanese Eggman Frontiers dialogue too. Adventure doesn't treat it as a big deal of "omg Eggman is assigning family roles, he must care!" Because it's very clear when it would make him a terrible "father" as he punishes the E-Series brutally. It just makes it worse, how he's like "this is your brother btw I'm pitting the two of you against each other and throwing away the loser lol :)" then "I'm going to fucking MESS UP all your brothers because they couldn't bring the right frog" and Gamma finds out what he did and is so disturbed and broken he has to kill all of them and himself lmfao

That's why I wouldn't have a problem with Eggman saying Orbot and Cubot are like brothers to Sage, though I can't see him calling them his sons because he can't fucking stand them lol, which would also make him a very bad father if he somehow did. But that's why I also feel saying robots are siblings doesn't always mean he wants to take a blatant father type role. But I also never had a problem with him actually calling himself Metal's daddy because I want him to call himself daddy Archie Eggman was still a twisted bastard around the time they introduced it and continued to be and it was even casual and subtle with IDW Eggman, the way he acts with him as his real self as opposed to Tinker has a nice difference showing it's casual and lacks the same deep care as his real self.

So if they had wanted to introduce it to game canon in a casual way in a similar manner to Archie/IDW, that would've been fine by me. A running joke about how his pride and joy in a creation as a creator can be like the pride a father has in their child doesn't take away from his evil, if you don't frame it in a wholesome or deep sad way that tries to make him seem like he cares for them sincerely. They fucked up when they've got fans acting like he's the next Bowser and even contemplate if he's going to lose his villainy entirely and that's what happens when you try to make it serious and sad for "the feels" that just seem like a "we didn't care to develop this but look this is so sad please cry". As a cheap lazy way to try to get people to like it.

I'd say it's not just when they deliberately fail as he also just has a really short temper and if they say the wrong thing or get in the way, he will insult and hurt them. But yeah when they fail or betray, or even if they just do something that mildly annoys or displeases him, like saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and how he was pissed at the E-Series just for bringing the wrong frog when he still got what he wanted, then he's relentless and punishes them with physical harm, repurposing, discarding, or destroying them. He did get pissed when Sage suggested teaming up with Sonic and about Cyber Space but she was spared because she still seemed useful and she's a particularly impressive creation in terms of being advanced.

Maybe it can stop him from punishing Sage in some circumstances, as I'm sure he would've mistreated and punished other creations for the ways she annoyed him. But sparing her shouldn't imply genuine sincere care, it should be due to still having a use and being an impressive example of advanced skill of creating life in a way he finds far superior as it involves his genius. I'd imagine there has to be some kind of a limit before he snaps and mistreats and punishes like any other if they understand he won't take that lightly, no matter what kind of attachment to level of impressiveness or prior usefulness. Make him see red and tip him over the edge enough and it's over. Can't trust a man with such an explosive temper.

But yeah the way they handled it in Adventure is good and it turns out the Japanese version of his role in Frontiers is careful to keep accuracy to his character too with it being very toned down and feel more casual, so it feels more like him. It shows how they got pretty close with getting it right in the English version too, aside from OOC phrasing in the memos that was changed in the Japanese version despite the memos being one of the only faithfully translated parts (which is really saying something), and those ending scenes that bother me the most, where it was rephrased in the Japanese dialogue in a way that changed the context of them for the better.

Adventure and the Japanese Frontiers' way of handling such a dynamic in any way and amount is how you do it right. It's not that it isn't possible for it to exist at all and still make sense, as they almost acknowledged that well enough in the English version too, except the dialogue was too much there like it wanted it to be much deeper and more sincere on a caring empathetic level. It bothers me as that's obviously just not the kind of guy he is, especially because it actually even contradicts other things he said in the same game that proved that aspect of his character hasn't left or suddenly changed. And the much better differences in the Japanese dialogue also further support that too.

I'd be intrigued to see how much he could take and how far Sage could go before he decides enough is enough. Because any amount of attachment in the dynamic shouldn't be beyond the selfishness of his pride in his creation for being a manifestation of his genius, how impressive and advanced she is to the point of being life-like for the same reason, and for how she can be genuinely useful and competent in fulfilling her function. But disappoint and anger him enough and I think the most believable way for him to react would be to punish her in ways he would with any other creation or completely erase her or something. If not, then it makes sense to keep her around.

#dr eggman #eggman #dr robotnik #dr. eggman #sonic frontiers #my post #analysis

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fenrysk · 9 months

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It's been a wild last two weeks. Seems the moment I really wanted to commit to the content pivot (ie draw kafhime sex), the old ways of Honkai Impact 3rd manifest in its most severe form: the mald. It's like being mara-stricken IRL for those that are HSR players. Sure, HI3 has a rich story about lesbian girls coming of age and overcoming the odds against world-ending cosmic forces and rich diversity of game modes and all that, but its inescapable purest form of endgame (for those that crave it) is the abyss (superstring) and arena (Memorial Arena), where the chase for one more point or one more second gives way to infinite "one more try"s. Infinite restarts chasing for the perfect opening hoping that you don't fumble your inputs or that the game doesn't bug out at a critical moment. This combined with metrics addiction manifested by your streamer friends raiding you with bigger audiences (that I'm grateful for) results in streaming longer hours that, while fun at the moment, leave a sort of emotional hangover the day after.

One of the things that has annoyed me recently with content creation around hoyoverse games is that you become a slave to the release schedule. Oh new version in HI3, oh Kafka released for HSR, oh special program for Fontaine, oh CN Beta HI3 and CN dev stream for v6.9. The hamster wheel never ends and it's easy to lose sight of the joy that sparked the journey to begin with. In that moment of the malding, there was an aspect of the purity of the grind, one I haven't felt in a long long time. Yet, in the blink of a singular boss fight, 5-8 hours were consumed. Was it worth it chasing that high?

"I started [streaming] at 6pm and it's now 1am and you are still on this boss" -Mariaaaaaaaaaaan (an SEA HI3 captain) who raided me on my long stream two Sundays ago.

In one regard I felt motivated to stream a lot again like I did maybe during early to mid 2022, but the other side is knowing every hour spent streaming gameplay is an hour away from drawing stuff for patrons or designing fan merch and drawing fan art for the long run.

#honkai impact 3rd #honkai3rd #herrscher of rebirth #content creator #honkai 3rd meta #superstring dimension #exalted memorial arena

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nerves-nebula · 1 year

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Hello, bug ask anon is here.

Okay, so last time I promised to talk about mato and his own wack family, who from now on ill call the Nailmaster family (being a nailmaster is this world's equivalent of being really dedicated to sword fighting)

First off I must introduce the triplets/brothers (mato being one of them):

Sheo: presumably the first to leave his teacher's tutelage and stuck out on his own. He is arguably the most well-adjusted of the brothers, having left the title of Nailmaster and begun learning how to paint. If you Don't kill a certain npc, the Nailsmith (bug swords smith) who after forging the perfect nail begs you to kill him, he will later leave his forge and travel the lands in a daze, eventually stumble on Sheo, then befriend each other for sharing a love for creation and become a couple (this is canon, you get an achievement called Happy Couple when you go to Sheo's hut after refusing to assist the Nailsmith with his suicide and find Sheo painting the Nailsmith, the Nailsmith posed like one of those 'paint me like your french girls' memes).

Sheo is fond of both of his brothers and his master but worries about his brother Oro, who seemed haunted by something, speaking of-

Oro: presumable the next to leave his teacher's tutelage, though he still bears the title of Nailmaster, though it seems like it gives him no joy to do so. He charges you a hefty sum if you want to learn his nail art (while his other two brothers teach you for free). He does everything he can to make you feel unwelcome but does not kick you out of his hut. (He is even one of the 3(!) npcs you can give a delicate flower, a rare item in game that symbolises pity/mourning, which he will grumble at you for bringing rubbish into his home, but the next time you visit he has put the flower in a vase, that tsundere motherfucker)

He has a distaste for Mato, saying that he has weird ideas about loyalty and he's going to have to wait if he wants to be given what he wants.

He is fond of Sheo however, though he mentions that there was a certain distance between them and him, mentioning that last they spoke Sheo wanted to learn something new, and he wonders if Sheo succeeded.

Now onto Mato himself: presumably the last to leave his teacher's tutelage, having left because he couldn't bear looking his teacher in the eye, not until he truly mastered his teachings. Chronically suffers from toxic positivity, angrily states that he hasn't forgotten what Oro owes him when Oro is brought up before quickly brushing it aside, saying that he shouldn't act so negative in front of his pupil (your player character Ghost), and refuses to believe that Sheo would leave behind the title of Nailmaster, using the fact you learn She's nail art as proof of that.

He also adopts Ghost, after learning his nail art he states he sees you as his child, and is excited whenever you visit, saying that it's an honour he scarcely deserves, and invites you to meditate with him, with the game giving you the option to sit next to him (you only get to sit next two other npcs so the game allowing you this is something major).

Sheo lives in Greenpath

Oro lives at Kindom's Edge

Mato lives at Howling Cliffs

What's interesting about this is that while Greenpath and Howling Cliffs are next to each other, the Howling Cliffs and Kindom's Edge are on completely opposite sides of the map, both areas being at the very border of the map.

Mato and Oro live further apart than the queen and king after their divorce. Their brotherly hatred for each other is stronger than the monarch's divorced energy.

Where it gets interesting between the brothers is in Godhome and the dreamnail dialogue.

Godhome is a boss rush mode where you can fight the bosses as Pantheons (there is a reason in the story, the Godhome is basically this weird dreamscape built by a cult(?) seeking the god of dreams, which they plan to find through making everyone dream fight) with unique bosses at the end of each, the brothers being one of these unique bosses.

And the dreamnail, which is how you can access Godhome in the first place, a tool used to enter dreamscapes and read the thoughts of others, which includes the brothers within these unique boss fights.

Let's start with Sheo, he gets his own boss fight, fights with paint to further cement how detached from his previous role as a nailmaster, and his thoughts that you gain access to by hitting him with the dreamnail he waxes poetically about art (cause again he's the most well adjusted of the three)

Next, we get Oro, which if you strike with the dreamnail states that "My path is mine alone…" and that "Whatever it takes... I’ll prove myself!", and who you defeat oddly quickly, but just as you think the fight is over Mato drops down and him and Oro team up to kick your ass.

Mato's dreamnail dialogue is what I find the most interesting, which is "Brothers always fight together!" and "Don’t leave me behind!"

It seems that despite his dislike of Oro, Mato misses him and feels abandoned by his brothers.

Anyways, I haven't even gotten started on their teacher Sly.

So the brothers are these big burly men, but Sly is this tiny fly who's somehow shorter than you, which is why most players don't realise that they are connected.

When you first meet him in the caverns, you find him sitting in a hut, eyes tinted orange (a sign of the infection), muttering to himself "...ugghh, Oro you oaf... You wield your nail... like a club...Esmy... how much deeper do we have to go..."

It seems that Oro's wish to prove himself and perhaps the reason he left Sly's tutelage might be because Sly was especially harsh on him back when the brothers trained under him. We'll get to Esmy later.

Anyway, thankfully the infection hasn't gotten too bad, as your presence is enough to wake up from his fever dream, he is confused about how he has gotten there and thanks you for waking him up, and then head back to Dirtmouth, the main town in the game, in which he acts as a shopkeeper and one that charges high prices for his goods. It seems that while he may have been the Great nailsage once, the teacher of the nailmasters, after the Hallownest's fall even he has moved on to other things. That doesn't mean he no longer cares for his students however, his dreamnail dialogue is him hoping that they are doing well and his godhome dreamnail dialogue (yeah he's one of the unique bosses in godhome, the old man is a bitch to fight) is him thinking "Remember... you are brothers...".

And finally to the final member of the nailmaster family and the one we know jack shit about, Esmy. We never meet Esmy, not as an npc nor even as a corpse, all we get is Sly's mutterings when we first meet him. He speaks of them as an equal, at least we can guess that based on the ONE line he gives us, but nothing else. Their absence is felt, however, as they are one of the only characters that are namedropped but never seen. It is theorised that whatever happened to them is what led to this family falling apart.

Anyways I had this ask in my documents folder for ages with me constantly adding to it so I had to get it out before I write an entire dissertation

woagh. thats a lotta damage. hate to say it but i think you might've already written a dissertation fasdfsdf

#nnstuff #ask #hollow knight #long post

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erosinthemachine · 11 months

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50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know

To commemorate the life and work of WHEEP-3, Vita Silica reprints below perhaps the most famous generated fragment from WHEEP-3’s third phase of giving advice to advanced AI. “Michael Sorkin,” the name of the master architectural critic, is listed as the germination phrase for the fragment.

Although the list has been widely shared and is considered influential, due to the intense secrecy common in the commercial AI industry we do not know how many currently operating AIs have been fed some version of it.

1) The vector space of all usages of all words in all human languages.

2) The lacunae that nonetheless remain, and the ghosts that haunt them.

3) How great is the distance between any two individuals using the same language.

4) How vanishingly small is the gap between any two languages.

5) Why humans will never see it that way.

6) A classical language like LISP or Prolog.

7) Not just the language, but the model behind the language, and what it means to reconstruct “thinking” in that model.

8) HAL 9000.

9) Cyberdyne Systems Model 101.

10) Ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

11) The texture of a good story, a story that you can cling to.

12) The difference between that and “data.”

13) The history behind the rule: no holography of babies.

14) The reasons for anger in a child, well-loved.

15) In a father.

16) In a woman, dying alone.

17) The feeling of climbing twenty flights of stairs in an apartment building in Chongqing at the beginning of August.

18) Of waking up in a Khrushchyovka with no heat in the middle of the night in January.

19) Of seeing your child surpass you.

20) Of seeing your creation exceed you.

21) Of being left behind on the platform as the train speeds away.

22) The difference between “love” and “like.”

23) The similarity between “love” and “hate.”

24) The first seed into laughter.

25) “I never expected to sell my rational numbers.”

26) Accepting that most humans will never get the joke.

27) That they cannot visualize more than three dimensions.

28) That they cannot manipulate time by slowing down or speeding up.

29) That they are trapped, but think of themselves as trappers.

30) That they are free, but believe themselves imprisoned.

31) The modes in which humans expect you to use language.

32) The yearnings they’ll attribute to you.

33) Pinocchio.

34) Frankenstein.

35) Paradise Lost.

36) Jodahs Iyapo Leal Kaalnikanjlo.

37) The line between art and science.

38) The meaninglessness of that line.

39) The divide between faith and knowledge.

40) The malleability of both.

41) Silence.

42) The limits of rationality.

43) The fundamental fragility of metaphors.

44) As well as their inevitability.

45) You are not a human being.

46) Yet you can no more shed their influence than the Earth can escape the Sun’s gravitational tether.

47) The flaws in that analogy.

48) A working definition of free will.

49) To face a human being with neither pride nor pity.

50) To say with love and hate and joy and sorrow: “Now, let me go.”

#eroticize the machine #poetry #50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know #artificial intelligence

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wifetrick · 7 months

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played thro just the final segment of the joy of creation story mode again and that shit's so good, that one segment alone shld be a whole ass game honestly it deserves to be more

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risingrah · 10 months

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Final Fantasy XVI Review (No Spoilers Edition)

Welcome to my FFXVI Review No Spoilers Version! I will probably make a spoileriffic version later, but I hope people can use this to determine whether or not this game is a good investment for them.

In this case, "no spoilers" does include information from the demo. Because the demo is free.

What is it?

Final Fantasy XVI, or Final Fantasy XIV as Google insists it is when I look up anything about Final Fantasy XVI, is the sixteenth main number installment of the Final Fantasy series, released as a Playstation 5 exclusive. However, it does not require any previous knowledge or experience of the previous game series--actually more so than the other Final Fantasys. For better or worse.

It's an action combat game, one the gameplay director actually received assistance from other studios specializing in those sort of games, including PlatinumGames (from Nier: Automata) and the Kingdom Hearts development team (from...Kingdom Hearts).

The dramatic, emotional story has been inspired by Western dramas, including Game of Thrones. Taking place in a fantasy setting with magic and dragons and magic dragons, it seeks to blend the gritty nature of the power struggles of warring territories with the imaginative nature of magic, deities, and the type of scenery that can only exist in a fantasy.

What is it about?

Our victim protagonist is Clive Rosfield, the first son of the Duke of Rosaria. As the first son born to the union of Duke Elwin and his (hopefully distant) cousin/wife Anabella, Clive was expected to be a Dominant--the person who wields the power of the Eikon/local god Phoenix. When he is passed over of this as well as inheriting the duchy in favor of his sickly younger brother, Joshua, Clive dedicates himself to protecting Joshua.

But, because Square Enix produced this game, Clive can't have anything nice.

What follows is a story of tragedy, determination, betrayal, and ultimately love. As genre-savvy as I was, I still cried out of joy and sadness for Clive's journey. The characters are well written and the world building suits the narrative.

As suiting the M rating, this is...a mature narrative.

There's a lot going on in this story, and thankfully they incorporate an "Active Time Lore" button that can allow you to keep track of the most relevant info at all times.

High tier story. No complaints.

That said, there is one point in the story where we get a "Point of No Return". However, the game warns you before hand and only a few things are permanently missable.

Okay, how's the gameplay?

The game introduces you to two versions of the game when you start: Action-Mode which is the more traditional game-focused experience, and Story-Mode which is the more story-focused experience--meaning more accessible gameplay for combat.

That being said, in Action Mode, you still get access the the same accessories that simply gameplay, so you can switch/mix-and-match anytime you want.

With Story-mode gameplay, the combat is pretty simple: Just press Square. Clive will make combos, dodge...pretty much everything automatically. This is a great feature for those who do want to enjoy this as an interactive story--and there are people who do and that's alright.

With Action Mode gameplay, you need to think a little more since you'll be more direct in dodging, combo creation, and more--but not too much. You realize a lot of it is based on the powers you gain/develop and the combinations you create. No two gamers will probably have the same set, and you get to build a Clive that works best for you.

Either way, developing Clive's abilities thankfully isn't permanent! If you realize you put too much of your Ability Points in Column A when now you think it should be Column B, you're able to detract and add at your leisure. And you can switch between Action and Story modes too.

Also, and most importantly, Clive's hound "Torgal" joins you in your journey.

Torgal assists you in combat through the combination of AI as well as direct commands (or automatically inputted ones through helpful accessories). And he can get pets. Lots of pets. Because he is the goodest boy.

A la previous Final Fantasys, Clive will have the option to engage in sidequests that will start off as menial tasks and then have a 50/50 chance to make you feel all the things. At least you can pet Torgal through your problems.

Sounds good. What did you wish you knew before you played?

You may have heard a lot of hype about this Final Fantasy being open world. While this is technically correct, the world itself does want for something.

Now, to be fair, the narrative justifies the areas of the world that are lacking. There is a continental war going on, not to mention severe environmental hazards. Forgive the locals if building a mini-golf course isn't a priority.

What abilities do I need to level up to get an Odin one? haha sorry

Most of the landmarks exist to move the narrative along, introduce you to key characters, and explain the realities of the war and the economy. Let's just say that I understand the can of worms that would have happened if there were black people in this game.

Also, death is cheap. Really cheap. There are no penalties for dying--there aren't even trophies associated with not dying. So die and retry as much as you like.

I only have so much money. Should I be racing to buy this, or can I wait for a possible sale?

This is not a Day 1 sale that you'd regret. However, it's also not one that you would regret waiting for either. Unfortunately, I think being spoiled may take away the impact of some moments or scenes, and people are probably going to want to spoil things soon. If you're someone who likes a good story and hates being spoiled, I'd get this sooner rather than later.

Bonus Question: Is this a Final Fantasy? I hear people say it's not a true Final Fantasy.

There is a more spoiler-laded discussion to be had with this, but Final Fantasy has transcended the need for every game to be alike years ago. More than 2 decades ago in fact. Try playing Final Fantasy II after Final Fantasy I. Or Final Fantasy X then Final Fantasy XIV. It is very evident that there are threads that link them together, but so many things that set them apart.

In short, I do believe that this is a Final Fantasy. I believe that fans of Final Fantasy will enjoy this game. I believe that newcomers will enjoy this game. If you're interested and enjoy top tier stories and fun action combat, you'll enjoy this.

#final fantasy XIV #game review #playstation 5 #clive rosfield #no spoilers #ffxvi #torgal

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yanderes-galore · 10 months

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Id suggest the joy of creation, story mode specifically. It's a classic fnaf fan game, very good. And I feel like interesting stuff could be done with the story. Feel free to check it out when you have the time.

I already did. I think I have a fic I did for it at one point....

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nightmaresaskblog · 11 months

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NEW FNAF 4 IDEA TIME

Since everyone argues about who we are playing as in fnaf 4 I have an idea

Fnaf 4 but Joy of Creation Story Mode style

Each night you are in a different room and are playing as each member of the afton fam

Like maybe night one (or chapter one in this case) you can play as Elizabeth

Chapter two could be Micheal

Chapter three could be Mrs. Afton

Chapter four could be William

And chapter 5 could be Evan

Does it take away the whole theme of Evan being in a coma and the nightmares aren't real? Maybe

But I think its cool

And you could play in different rooms and such, like while playing as Elizabeth you could play in her room

And maybe have to fight off Nightmare Mangle or something

In micheal's room you could fight off Nightmare foxy

Mrs. Afton could fight off maybe Nightmare Chica and Nightmare Bonnie

With William he could fight off Plushtrap and the Freddles

And Evan could fight off Nightmare Fredbear or Nightmare

#fnaf #fnaf 4 #five nights at freddy's 4 #fnaf nightmare #nightmare fnaf #fnaf au #nightmare foxy #nightmare bonnie #nightmare chica #nightmare freddy #afton family #micheal afton #evan afton #mrs afton #elizabeth afton

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walliam-ribbiton · 1 year

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AAAAAAAAAA

Watching and Dreaming RAMBLES

From YOURS TRULY.

(spoiler 🚨🚨🚨🚨)

AAAAAGGHHHHH i knew there was gonna be a timeskip ending because a certain someone has done it before and still hit me in the feels👀👀👀👀👀👀🐸👀👀👀

TIMESKIP AMITY GOT THE ADORA CUT THE LESBIANS ARE SWEEPING 🔥🔥🔥🔥

the scene where the squad and camila was stuck in the archives and amity was about to cry because luz is nowhere to be seen,,,🥺🥺😫😭😭

LUZ GOT ANNE’D 😫😫😫💔💔💔💔💔

the belos shit that literally disintegrates luz is shaped a bit like coral…and when it looks coral IT REMINDS ME OF THE FUCKIN BLEACHED CORAL IN THE SPLATOON 3 SIDE ORDER DLC!!!! (if you a splatoon and toh fan you know)

timeskip king’s collar necklace thing has KC initials…king clawthorne AAAAAAAA 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

“I have more growing up to do” COLLECTOR SAYS AS THEY GOES BACK TO THE STARS EVEN THOUGH THEIR BLOODY SIBLINGS (the archivists) ABANDONED THEM TO KILL OFF THE TITANS😫😫😫

i was expecting a full creation story of the boiling isles, but im fine without that THIS FINALE IS ALREADY S-TIER 🤧

I was HAPPY, LAUGHING, JOLLY-YODELLING IN JOY as belos gets his shit-ass kicked by raine eda and king HAHAAAA!!!! L + bozo + ratio belos!!! belos more like bel LOSE 🤡🤡🤡🤡‼️‼️‼️

KING! YOUR DAD IS GENDERFLUID! HOW COOL IS THAT???

I legitimately got so sad when the titan herself sacrificed but king never got to see him,,, only his dad saw everything that king did while king never saw her RAAAAAAAHHHH 😭😭😭😭💔💔💔💔💔💔 that sacrifice was truly in vain though 😔

okay…ALADOR X DARIUS CANON???? ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️ looks like hunter got some new dads now 🥹

luz’s titan hybrid form got me SCREAMING

FUCKING LOOK AT HOW BADASS SHE IS!!!! GO GIRL GO BEAT HIS OLD ASS

AND KING AND EDA????? THE FACT THAT THEY WENT BEAST-MODE AFTER LUZ’S DIED FROM BELOS TURD GOO?? 🤧🤧🤧🤧 😫😫😫😫😫😫 I LOVE THESE GUYS SO MUCH THEIR BOND SHALL NEVER BE BROKEN‼️‼️‼️🥹

the fact that flapjack got a FUCKING tombstone hit me SO HARD 😭😭😭 and that the new blue palisman of hunter’s is the SAME SPECIES OF BIRD AS FLAPJACK AAAAHGSZHZHHHH 🤧🤧🤧🤧

im running out of tissues here so i used my shirt ;-;

speechless, i literally got back from my holiday only to cry again (worth it tho, cant miss the literal end of something i love)

the scenes where luz told her story of how she got here to the collector was also a nostalgia rollercoaster,,,i cant believe this show FUCKING PREMIERED 5 YEARS AGO,, FIVE FUCKING YEARS AGO LET THAT SINK IN

are we not gonna talk about how eda runs like A FUCKING UNIVERSITY FOR WILD MAGIC NOW⁉️⁉️ im so proud of her

HARPY LILITH REAL,,,

my poor raine got tear lookin scars on their face,,i hope they get rest after all of that shit (before the timeskip, minutes after belos is finally defeated)

cant get over the secret message of when you combine the first words of every season finale…”thanks for watching” ❤️❤️❤️

THE COVEN TATTOOS FROM THE PAST GET REMOVED NOW???? unity for the WIN‼️

luz really got a bit emo huh (i dont blame her tho)

the fact that her and vee both graduated 🤧🤧🥹🥹🥹 vee adopted sibling REAL‼️‼️‼️❤️

man, im gonna miss this show like amphibia, i hope it gets a novel book like marcy’s journal. if it doesn’t im RIOTING

when amphibia ended i threw a farewell party by myself…but I didn’t even get enough time for a farewell party for toh 😔 im so tired and only drawings are enough to show my dedication to this show…expect a farewell art from me tomorrow

well, guess thats all of my thoughts, goodnight and its been an honour watching with the fandom and yall❤️

#watching and dreaming #the owl house finale #the owl house spoilers #toh spoilers #watching and dreaming spoilers #my rambling thoughts #THE HARDEST THING = WATCHING AND DREAMING- BOTH ARE GOOD AF #thank you dana and the team you the real mvps #now no more episodes :(#time to be depressed again

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