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completelyordinarycat · 1 year

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Compiling my TFTR end notes so they clog up the fic less but tbh it's mostly for sentimental reasons. Fun Facts:

Chapter 3:

Harry rambling about the Pale as a way to talk about wanting to disappear is based on a real conversation I've had.

Chapter 4:

I used Korean as a Seol language because it's the Asian language I'm most familiar with. I speak neither Korean nor French fluently (I don't speak French at all) so please correct me.

For reference, I switch between sounding out, anglicised, and characters to indicate the way characters are hearing language and tonal differences.

I am a white person, so I'm not in any way the person to be talking about experiencing racism but it felt wrong to ignore the place that has in DE and Kim's story especially and it's role in cop work especially. I work a lot with people who speak English as an Additional language, so I've tried to respect the bravery it takes to speak a language like English when you aren't fluent, and base that conversation on actual ones I've had. While I've tried to be actively anti-racist from a narrative standpoint, I won't do that perfectly.

The fire, and its cause, is based on one where I've lived that I won't go into for obvious reasons.

Eomma is based on my Italian great-grandmothers.

Chapter 5:

if you see me misspelling characters names: no you don't. I learned via this fic that they aren't columbinimus clouds, which is the best spelling I can offer for what I spent my life reading and pronouncing. Plus side: every spell check I'd laugh because I'd get to remind myself it's spelled with CUM not COL.

I find it really, really hard to keep real life geography straight let alone in-game stuff. I'm taking Messina to be an Italy stand in because it's literally a city in Sicily, which is where my family is from, so when I saw it in the game I was like bwuh??? If that's wrong let me know and I'll change it.

The reference to culturally insensitive ads is a reference to a real pizza place where I live, as well as various chain Asian food places with actually completely racist ads.

Chapter 6:

Had Harry been not caught up in his own stuff, Katya's song choice would have been more illuminating to him than any other piece of information thus far. But there was a reason Judit said that sometimes we get caught up in the little internal things that drive us (b/c its foreshadowing) which is what Harry and Katya do. Idk if you’ve ever had a fight with someone that, while it has valid points, you think back on later and are like oh. That wasn’t really about that at all, was it? They’re both still learning about how to do healthy relationships.

Having a character whose entire character trait up until this point is being secretive meant I had to do so much exposition I would have rather included earlier ughhhh.

The entirety of the case discussed is plotted out in full despite being only mentioned briefly.

I never name male perpetrators because in reality they always get the headlines when their victims don't and it pisses me right off.

I am ACAB and continue to be (and yes, ACAB includes all these characters and the RCM) but what Katya and Liza are implied to be doing is a form of the PEACE method including focusing on establishing known factual events.

Some of the city's reflections of love are inspired by me re-reading this answer at the time of writing. I think "If you found love right now, you would run it straight into the ground in seconds," applies to Harry though he's not at a place where he's ready to understand what that would mean in this fic, imo.

I had to remind myself how to do medical notes for this and they may or may not be accurate, idk. They're meant to obscure information, though, so non-accuracy works in this regard. I'm a suicide attempt survivor so I tried to be sensitive about this. For a disclaimer, I’m not a medical professional and my work lies in health advocacy, hence how I know a lot of this. You can tell, because I abbreviated a medication which is one of the first things they tell you not to do but hey, it was on purpose. Here is a translation:

TW for domestic violence, attempted suicide (with potential context as to a method), abortion and miscarriage:

“02:00 5mg/h AC bolus pushed via NGT. 10ml/h IV saline bag replaced.

03:40 PT semi-conscious but non-responsive, pulling at NGT. IV sedative admin.

5:30 RR 27, HR 114, BP 160/110, other VS normal. ECG shows sinus pause reduced but bradyarrhythmia remains.”

This is basically not that important really lmao. I could have skipped it, in retrospect, but I think it gives some nice context to say that Katya is okay, health wise, in that moment. In summary: she’s being given activated charcoal via a naso-gastric tube which is a common treatment for some kinds of overdoses (and why you shouldn’t use activated charcoal tablets/toothpaste if you’re on prescription medicine!). She’s sick and her heart is being a bit funky, but she’s okay. You can say this is why Katya refers to this as a “heart attack” rather than what it is.

“Emergency Department (ED) admission 23:39 by neighbour for suspected overdose (OD), no known next of kin. Blood alcohol level .32, suspected drug use. Became physically aggressive when asked if deliberate OD, requiring intramuscular sedative. Transferred mental health ward 00:48. History: childhood Pale Related Acquired Brain Injury. 3xED presentation for gun shot wounds and stab wounds relating to RCM work. 2x presentation for injury relating to suspected assault and battery, patient denied intimate partner violence and left against medical advice both times. 3 pregnancies and 0 live births: ED presentation following miscarriage after fall; ED presentation for miscarriage after suspected assault and battery; ED presentation relating to suspected termination of pregnancy haemorrhage requiring blood transfusion and overnight observation.”

Again, I’m hoping no one is learning how to take case notes from this. I re-wrote this a million times, no lie, and if I saw this on someone’s records I would probably be like UM WTF. But for storytelling purposes, it got the job done lmao. I hope the original gets across what I wanted to get across: that something really significantly bad happened in Katya’s past that explains her motives and behaviour. I wrote it with the intention that Harry has just gotten enough information to want to push, but not to know that he shouldn’t. Having said that, you could make the argument that he should have known at the very least what the abbreviation for Assault and Battery is, so if he knew, would he have pushed anyway? Canonically, I think the answer is yes because even a high-empathy Harry can be remarkably tactless on a fail. Which is why I think this interaction is fun(? Oh wow I’m a freak) because it’s pushing (fanfic) Harry’s assumptions of himself and his goals. His stated goal is to do good, but he actively doesn’t do that in this scenario (though, neither was Katya, tbf).

In his defence, he’s right but he’s also kind of wrong. Yes, Katya’s background makes her empathise with this case a lot more, but the other implication that Harry misses is that she was actually involved with the case to some capacity while it was ongoing, and therefore she feels responsible

If you care about the OCs at all: Katya, as a mirror to Harry, has been going through a parallel to Harry's plot and she's really going through it. At the end of this chapter she is off-screen having her own "I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore" moment. We only just get to glimpse it.

Chapter 7:

Mee's Kitchen is a reference to a beloved take out place where I live, and again I'm sticking with Korean stuff because I'm most familiar with it.

Harry feeling like he has no control and slapping himself and being terrified of that is based off of my entire life lmao but particularly a few years ago when I started to slap myself without consciously deciding to do it. Then I 1. started dealing with some of my mental health stuff, and 2. started being treated for ADHD, and, surprise, it happens less now and when it does I don't freak out about it. Harry is very flippant about it, which I was too for a long time. I have a lot of body-focused repetitive behaviours and repetitive behaviours in general and no one has ever formally told me if that counted as one of those or not. I don't like to call out specific things as me obviously projecting but I also wanted to be clear that if you also have those kinds of behaviours, there's nothing wrong with you and don't listen to a guy in a fanfic. Talk to someone about it if you're worried. <3 I tagged it as self-harm because it seemed to cover all bases.

Chapter 8:

This was a hard chapter to walk the line on and if I wasn't doing the poetry chapter title thing, it would be titled "What if Rigorous Self-Critique Was More Helpful and Less An Opportunity to Hate Yourself into Self-Destruction, and Therefore Allowing Your Shitty Behaviour to Continue." And I never want to demonise addiction or mental health struggles and I hope I don’t. In my own experience to do better you do need to face up to things you've done that you’re not proud of. No joke, a lot of this fic is me exploring the idea of restorative justice and how and when we can forgive someone, especially when that person is a victim too. But I also don't want to woobify Harry and I recognise that I could have gone harder on this and that's a flaw in this work. Very few things destroyed me in DE like Rigorous Self-Critique. My reaction to reading it was physical horror and I still remember how it felt. And I just couldn't play that out to its extreme in this. It would be too much of a tone shift, for one. And for personal reasons, I just couldn't. Also, In editing this chapter, I removed a bit of context I didn’t fix. Specifically, there is no doubt in my mind that Harry is abusive towards Dora and I realise I may have presented it as if to imply he wasn’t. Harry was specifically asking about sexual violence, and that is what Jean investigated. I may fix this in the future, when I’m in a better headspace.

I love to write bi-Jean being no-homo, I don't know why. Jean constructs intricate rituals to allow himself to hear that he is loved.

Other fun facts, grabbed from my notes:

MoralIntern/Coalition politicians declaring that homo-sexuality no longer existed in Revachol is based on a comment from a politician where I live who said that there were no gay people in his state. It’s also very inspired by real life anti-homosexuality laws stemming from racism and colonialism and eugenics.

This fic works from the assumption that Dora ended that cycle of untreated mental illness and abuse by leaving as soon as she realised what was happening, by virtue of having a better education and resource access through being middle class. She is my idealised version of myself here haha. So the question becomes less, is Harry a bad guy? But what can Harry do to make sure he doesn’t continue a cycle of violence that probably pre-dates him by centuries?

I also can-opened myself writing this fic because I was like, why do I write stories about people being at their worst and still being loved? And my brain was like, because it’s the kind of story you needed to hear when you were at your worst, that it’s still possible to be loved, and never heard. And then I had a little cry :)

If you think that Harry is a bad and an irredeemable man, you’re totally valid! Maybe I will write a fic about that at some point.

I love Jean now :)

I was like haha what if I make the chapter titles a poem from the city to Harry and immediately regretted it because I'm bad at poetry :)

#tftr #my writing

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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02′s influence on Adventure

You’re probably reading the title and going “...what? Isn’t 02 the sequel to Adventure? How would a series be influenced by its own future sequel?”

The thing is, assuming that Adventure was written in a vacuum and everything in 02 a retrofit runs very contrary to how both series were produced, and how this kind of anime is produced in general -- Adventure and 02 share almost identical staff members, and were separated only by a real-life single week in airing time. 02′s existence was not a sudden last-minute decision that was tacked on at the end! In fact, Adventure being extended to a second series was decided seven months into its production, right around the end of the Tokyo arc (sometime around the third cour). Despite it being a rather tonally different series, 02 is really just Adventure’s staff...writing more.

This means that by the time production had moved to Adventure’s final arc, the staff was very aware that they would be on for another year writing a sequel to this anime -- which thus likely became the fuel behind many of its creative decisions, made specifically to pave the way for 02.

The ending

Yeah, so, this ending. You know this really famous ending? The one that’s had such an impact on franchise history that a lot of later things have even tried to imitate it in some form? The one that everyone cites as one of Adventure’s most famous scenes (for good reason)? This ending only exists because of 02. You know what actually would have been Adventure’s ending if 02 hadn’t existed?

The 02 epilogue.

The ending that we now know as the “02 epilogue” was actually decided on before recording for Adventure had even started. (They weren’t even sure about finalizing the character personalities yet!) All of the most substantial details about that epilogue -- the series actually being the adult Takeru’s novel, everyone in the world having a Digimon partner, and, as it seems, even Yamato and Sora getting married -- were decided on before 02 was even in the picture. Most likely, the only material difference would have been that the four characters introduced in 02 (Daisuke, Miyako, Iori, and Ken) and their partners wouldn’t have been involved, but everything else would have roughly been the same as the “epilogue” we know now. (This especially makes sense when you consider that one of Adventure’s major influences was the movie Stand By Me, which is extremely culturally influential in Japan as a “childhood summer adventure story”, and involves a similar timeskip epilogue with one character growing up to chronicle the story as a writer.) All of this was basically intended to tie into Adventure as a narrative of “a story of humanity’s evolution”, so this ending was envisioned as the “natural conclusion” of the story of Adventure as a whole. If anything from the original Adventure ending would have been retained in this hypothetical scenario of only Adventure existing, perhaps the sentiment of “parting” at the end -- but then it would still be followed by a timeskip epilogue 28 years later and everyone in the world having a partner.

But then it was decided that a second series would be made, and at some point they decided it would be a series set three years after the first, resulting in: this.

What this means is that Adventure’s ending was only ever intended as an ending for a single chapter in the overall Adventure series narrative. A lot of people like to pose 02′s existence or epilogue as something that “undid” Adventure’s ending, as if it was supposed to be some “ambiguous bittersweet” ending about whether they ever met their partners again, but...that ignores the real-life context of Adventure and 02′s production, where Our War Game! (which depicted an easy reunion with their partners, went out of its way to cameo Miyako in advance, and, for all intents and purposes, practically spoiled Adventure’s ending by depicting them as separated at all) screened before Adventure’s last episode aired, and there’s also the Adventure mini dramas that depicted more incidental meetings (and despite the constant fourth wall breaking and absurd crack content in them, yes, they’re intended to be taken as canon).

Again: in real life, the first episode of 02 aired one week after the last episode of Adventure. Even the real-life audience was likely well aware that this wasn’t going to be the end (and if they weren’t, they certainly would be when the promotional trailers for 02 started airing right after Adventure’s last -- and that’s assuming you missed all of the promotion appearing in real life beforehand, including at the end of Our War Game!’s screenings). The production staff all knew, because they’d already been working on 02 for months now -- they postponed their originally intended ending just to make this new one, after all!

So yeah, this line isn’t supposed to be just a vague “oh, maybe they’ll meet again” in an abstract poetic sense -- it’s completely literal, because it’s hinting at said gate opening again one real-life week later.

From both a story perspective and a real-life audience perspective, this ending was never meant to be seen as ambiguous.

Takeru and Hikari’s character arcs

02 often gets an accusation of being lacking in the character development department (one that I seriously disagree with and have been working very hard to counter), but this accusation especially gets levied often at Takeru and Hikari, who are often said to be “flat” or “kind of just there” in 02 (which, again, I object to; more on this below). This is often rationalized as a theory that the writers didn’t know what to do with them because they’d already been in Adventure, but...this, again, assumes too much that Adventure was written in a self-contained vacuum and anything in 02 was just an addition done after the fact.

There’s actually quite a bit of evidence that the last cour (or at least a significant amount of it) was written with the idea that Takeru and Hikari were going to be starring in the next series in mind.

This is especially pretty apparent when you get to the last episode, where Takeru and Hikari are conspicuously the ones to leave off on the most confident “we’ll meet again” notes, compared to the other six. Of course, they do it in their own respective ways (Takeru and Patamon resolve to make it happen, while Hikari cryptically acts like it’s already bound to happen, borderline prophetically), and maybe you could chalk it up to the fact that they’re the youngest and therefore most naive of this group...but, again, remember: 02′s first episode aired one week after this one, where we would immediately be treated to Takeru and Hikari following up on this. Given that, you can basically see this as a wink and a nod: “yeah, these two have a story that’s not over yet.”

And as much as I may sound like a heathen to the fanbase by claiming this, I would actually say that it’s the opposite of the above claim: Takeru and Hikari both have pretty unresolved arcs by the end of Adventure compared to the rest of the other kids, and in fact are fleshed out more in 02. It’s honestly kind of a stretch to say that they “already got development” in Adventure -- Takeru still has a ton of unresolved issues with his family and trauma and emotional behavior that aren’t properly addressed to nearly the same degree as how the older kids have their core issues brought to the forefront, while Hikari really was only around for less than half the series, and not only is her main problem of emotional suppression told purely from Taichi’s mouth and not her own, we also get no real follow-up on how she intends to work past that.

Those are some pretty huge things to leave unresolved at the end of a series that’s known for its focus on individual character development, and considering that the premise of 02 involving an older Takeru and Hikari was likely finalized around the middle of the last arc of Adventure, it’s easy to believe that they decided to deliberately hold off on resolving Takeru and Hikari’s issues in full so that their story could be told in the next series. And, indeed, while their characters being built on “being difficult to read” makes their development not quite as visible as some of the more eccentric personalities in the 02 cast, their respective Jogress partners (Iori and Miyako) more openly discuss and get to the bottom of their issues that had been lightly displayed or hinted in Adventure but never truly been addressed.

A lot of things that were not in Adventure

Adventure was admittedly kind of written as they went along (they didn’t even originally plan to have Hikari as the eighth child at first), so it’s hard to tell exactly what was planned and what was a later addition (and at what point things were added), but considering that the 02 epilogue was one of the first things planned in the entire series, as part of “a story of humanity’s evolution” and tying into a really long theory about partners doubling every year, it’s probably at least safe to say that a lot of the worldbuilding and lore was determined very early.

02 added a lot of lore dumps about Digital World mechanics and things related to the overall state of Chosen Children, which have been said by many to be retrofits to justify a buildup to the 02 epilogue, but, again -- the 02 epilogue was supposed to be for Adventure, so it’s very likely that these lore aspects were intended for Adventure as well! This is especially because it’s been outright confirmed that there were at least certain things originally intended for Adventure that ended up in 02, or at least were in 02 because they felt Adventure didn’t sufficiently cover it:

The kids’ home lives. As famous as the Tokyo arc of Adventure is, it only covered about a quarter of it -- the rest of it was the kids stranded in another world, separated from home! It’s specifically 02 that went into all of the things like school life, family life, daily life in Odaiba, and everything closer to the real world -- basically, everything related to family backgrounds that was very likely to have been in the planning documents for Adventure but never made it.

The (in)famous 02 episode 13 (or, at least, something like it) was intended for Adventure. As much as there’s common speculation that this episode was intended to be some giant subplot that got canned, from what we’ve heard from the staff, the truth actually seems to be a lot more mundane -- Adventure was a series very big on “oddities about the Digital World that have no real explanation” (see: phone booths), and when you reframe it in Adventure’s context, it’s likely that Dagomon and the Dark Ocean were intended to be yet another of those as part of its wider lore about the multiverse, to make you think “the heck was that?” but never get any real answer to. (And while it’s unclear whether the original theoretical Adventure version of this episode would have still involved Takeru and Hikari, if you want to put a tinfoil hat on and entertain that theory, it lends even further credence to the idea that their respective character arcs were deliberately held off for 02...)

Given that, and thinking about the 02 epilogue as the eventual goal for the series, you can also easily imagine a lot of 02-introduced things leading up to it as probably also having been baked into Adventure’s lore:

You know how 02 had a subplot about Chosen Children proliferating all over the world, as a lead-up to everyone in the world eventually having a partner? This was part of a “doubling every year” formula that’s been referred to a few times in background staff testimony. If you inspect this formula, this means that there were eight other Chosen Children besides Taichi and his friends, chosen between 1995 and 1999. Now, remember how Adventure episode 52 briefly touched on the bombshell of Chosen Children existing before Taichi and co., before never addressing it again? Considering all of the above facts, it’s very likely that’s intended to tie into that formula -- and, perhaps, had 02 had not existed to continue the subplot about “more Chosen Children”, Adventure would have taken more initiative about explaining the concept of Taichi and his friends not being the only humans with partners, and led it into their originally intended epilogue.

02 episode 33 involves Miyako visiting Kyoto and learning that there may be certain similarities between Digimon and Japanese youkai, to the point where they might be related somehow, despite predating digital technology. (The concept is revisited in Mimi’s track in Two-and-a-Half Year Break and the Adventure BD drama CD, both of them having been written after 02.) The thing is, the idea that Digimon and other similar entities actually existed prior to digital technology, and that said technology only allowed it to manifest physically in the real world, also is heavily tied to the original concept of Digimon partners being a manifestation of a part of the human’s soul, and therefore having a partner being a part of human evolution -- which is, again, heavily tied to the original intent behind the epilogue. So it’s very likely that this, at the very least, was one of the original lore points behind Adventure -- and if 02 had not existed, it’s possible that Adventure might have tried to cover it as part of a lead-up to that epilogue, rather than ultimately deferring it to 02.

This is, of course, speculation -- I’m not a member of staff, so I can’t speak for them -- but I do think it’s important to consider that while 02 was a tonally different series, it wasn’t just a sequel tacked on at the last minute, and rather just (mostly) the same staff learning three-quarters of the way through that they would have more time to continue this narrative, and reorganizing things to figure out what they wanted to do now and what they wanted to touch on if they had more time. Really, this whole narrative of “02 being a bunch of random additions they came up with and retrofit” seems to almost be the opposite of what actually happened -- while some of the ideas behind 02 were certainly created later, it’s less that Adventure was some ideal perfectly crafted story and 02 an addendum, and more that they had so many things they wanted to do in Adventure that couldn’t fit and used 02 to vent more of those out:

One of the concepts behind the prior series was for us to pack in as many interesting things that we’d seen, heard about, or read about as we could into it, so for 02, we thought, what else could we put in beyond even that?, and so we looked over what we needed to have, and put in all the things we could so that they wouldn’t be left out, and the story became a multi-layered one, overlapping and accelerating. It was to the point that, after we’d gone through 02‘s story, the scriptwriters told me that they’d worn everything they had out to the ground. In any case, we put everything we had into it back then.

Which means that understanding 02 is actually very retroactively important to understanding Adventure -- Adventure’s own writing was influenced by the knowledge that 02 would be part of its story, and 02 itself carries a lot of vital facts and story points from Adventure’s narrative that didn’t fit in the first 54 episodes, and, in real life, they were both written continuously as one story over the course of over two years. It’s also because of this that I seriously warn against seeing either series in a vacuum too much -- because both series are very deeply tied to each other, perhaps more so than a lot of people want to admit.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #shihameta

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cybernaght · 3 years

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Lost Tomb Reboot aka Reunion: The Sound of Providence Season 2

I swear I wasn’t actually planning to write this thing, instead just opting for random picture spams of the season, starting with every time this show got Zhu Yilong’s Wu Xie wet, because that was a trend I had not expected and kind of lived for.

All that will still happen eventually, but here’s also my five cents on the season, because it is very very important for you to know just how worthy of love it is.

You see, Season 1 was silly and fun, and definitely, undeniably, enjoyable.

Then Season 2 swooped in, and completely won my heart. I cannot even express how much I adored it. Everything about this show is extremely extra in the best possible way; it is likely to have been the most charmingly over the top thing I have ever seen.

(Vague spoilers for : specific monsters, narratively significant moments, fate of the certain characters, including the protagonist.)

Some of it comes from the pace, which speeds up dramatically early in the season, and only slows down marginally to allow characters some breathing room. It’s not just gripping because it makes you want to hit play on the next episode, it also keeps you engaged because you can’t wait to see how the next wild set of events may be resolved and then topped. At about episode ten I was questioning how they could possibly produce a sense of further escalation. At episode twenty, I was wondering if anything can top dramatic impact of whatever was occurring only two thirds of the way through the season.

I need not have worried: every single incredible character moment, every mind-boggling turn of the plot, every single bizarre threat would be blown out of water by the next one.

Partly, this seemingly has to do with the writers attempts to ground the material. I am not sure what the novel contained, but I can discern that it was something along the lines of ghosts, ghouls and various supernatural circumstance. But when you are told “this is a curse”, your reaction is naturally to go, “ah okay, so curses are a thing, and this is one of them, gotcha”. When you are told, “this is a heavy metal poisoning combined with a neurotoxin affecting the victim’s central nervous system and making them violently hallucinate”, your reaction is to question whether this is how metals, toxins, poisons, or, indeed, central nervous systems work in any version of reality.

The show does this a lot. From human shaped swarms of killer moths, to flying brain-penetrating eels, to probably my favourite monster of the moment: the murder clams.

Seriously, I cannot stress enough that this show has murder clams. They move with their clam mussels. They jump with their clam shells. They will murder you in cold blood.

There are ancient “laser corridor” style set-ups, there are shapes made out of fog recording its memory, there are group hallucinations generated by the sound of thunder, there are Mission Impossible style full face masks. There is a character who walked off a gun wound and sarin gas poisoning in order to die in the arms of his lover who looks like his dead sister. And by “looks like” I mean, “played by the same actress”.

There is a whole character of Doctor Churros, who saves our hero from imminent death by washing his lungs with oil.

This, I suppose, ultimately, is how The Lost Tomb Reboot (Season 2 in particular) lures you in. It turns what I saw as the show’s fault in season 1 into its biggest strength by establishing the world in which nothing is too outlandish and everything is possible. It so thoroughly breaks your expectations barometer, you grow to willingly accept whatever is thrown at you.

The most beautiful thing about all of it, is that the fun and games and moments of barely controlled hysteria do not lower the stakes whatsoever. Moreover, somehow this show makes me believe that it could just about do something as irrevocable as, perhaps, killing off the protagonist

You know how you can watch, say, a super hero film, and then the “all is lost” moment happens, and you kind of have to struggle to care because you know that they will pull through. It’s curious to see how that happens, but you don’t doubt for even second that it will. Well, when that moment arrived here, I found myself between ugly sobbing, and going into speculation overdrive to try and figure out how the Reboot would deal with that. By then I have seen that show be an high octave action movie, a supernatural mystery, a horror thriller, a buddy comedy and a spy flick: it was not a massive stretch to imagine it turning into a revenge tragedy.

Wu Xie dying had been building up since episode one, so you had hours and hours and oh-so-many hours to brace for it, and when the tragedy does not strike, the relief is visceral.

Despite all the moments of hilarity (whether intended or otherwise), despite the chaotic turns of the plot, despite how utterly off the charts this show is tonally, when it matters, the narrative is pulled together in a way which not only makes complete sense within the world of the series, but is meticulously set-up, satisfying resolved, and delivers lovely emotional impact. Considering that the moral of the story is a very common “live in the moment”, paired up with “greed is bad”, it was surprising how much resonance its delivery actually created.

Ultimately, however, this show is about found family, and, more specifically, about Wu Xie’s ability to create this family for himself and for every single member of it. He starts as one of the trio, and ends as one of a large group of old allies, new friends, and people he has graced with so much kindness that they follow him until the bitter end.

Lost Tomb Reboot ensures that you get to know them all, and it’s pretty damn hard to not love this misfit group of adventurers in its entirety.

(The only thing I could say is that I wish the series spent more time making sure the viewer knows and likes Zhang Qiling, but it seemingly had little purpose for him apart form sweeping in as an avenging angel every now and then. I get that he is a well established character in the series, and that his whole thing is being deadly and enigmatic, but considering that you got to know the other two legs of the famous Triangle so well, it’s a shame that this one was reserved to mostly being Xiao Ge Ex Machina. It would have been nice to know what he was about apart from “really damn cool”.)

Bai Haotian remained my favourite character. She is cute, sweet, romantic, and, for the lack of a better word, “girly”. She is not shy about her crush on Wu Xie, and is prepared to do a lot of reckless, dangerous things for him. None of the above undermine her intelligence, cunningness and authority. Xiao Bai is a young woman in a position of power, and she absolutely knows how to handle herself; for every time she is a damsel in distress, she gets to be the rescuer. For every time she puts herself in needless danger, she learns to collect herself and plan ahead. For every time she is bossed around, she turns and takes charge. Her journey is not the centred around getting the guy, but around discovering her self-assertion; she finds her place within his team not by being a romantic interest, but through her personal strengths.

My absolutely favourite moment for her came when an antagonist used her affection for Wu Xie to get an upper hand on her, and she gets restrained, knife to her throat. Xiao Bai swivels away, knocks the attacker out and goes to town kicking him, to a great astonishment of this team, as she states that liking someone does not make her weak.

And it doesn’t. Being in love has nothing to do with weakness or strength. Being a young, and excitable, and a woman does not equate to weakness either.

I’m not saying that this show is a feminist manifesto, because it is definitely not that. Every other prominent female character suffers a pitiful fate in service of creating motivation for the men of the story. But it does spend a lot of time making sure you, the viewer, know its heroes well enough to mentally befriend them. And if this means giving the female lead complexity, I cannot possibly be mad at that.

So, this was it. This was the Lost Tomb Reboot. It brought me a ridiculous amount of joy and I will miss it a lot.

And yes, the picture spams will be 100% an excuse to rewatch at least some of it.

PS. Said spams miiiiight be gif based if I figure out a way to colour correct the damn things.

#lost tomb reboot #reunion: the sound of the providence #review of sorts #now with gifs #the gifs are bad though

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some-creep · 4 years

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CREEP RANKS EVERY SONG IN NIER... AUTOMATA (mostly) BY TITLE

Because, like, no one played Gestalt. Also this game has more songs.

Significance Like. I guess. It’s a title you can use. What is significant? We don’t know. The characters don’t know. They are struggling to find out. We all are. What is meaning? What really matters? I don’t know but we’re all crying. 8/10

City Ruins – Rays of Light / Shade Plays in the ruins of the city. Exactly as advertised. Sounds sad like you might imagine. 9/10

Peaceful Sleep This is the Resistance camp right? Peaceful things don’t tend to happen there honestly. At least not as we keep going. Sounds like a sleepy JRPG town though. Ok title for the mood it gives. I like this song a lot so I’m cheating and giving it more points than I know it deserves as just, like, a title. 8/10

Memories of Dust Sand is dusty. What memories? We’re making them. Cool title. Sounds like a YA novel though. 9/10

Birth of a Wish Genuinely often get confused with the Silent Hill 2 bonus story Born from a Wish whenever I try to remember what this song is called. This Cannot Continue / 10

The Color of Depression This is like… a really cool title. Thanks. That Scanner boy is not gonna live the happy family life you all for some reason keep suggesting he is. Bad things are gonna happen to him. He dies anyway. 11/10

Amusement Park Yeah. I guess. We certainly are in the amusement park level. Creep why does this one rank so much lower than City Ruins which was also just “name of location”. Amusement park is not a cool title. City Ruins is a cool title. 7/10

A Beautiful Song Would you say Simone has girlpower? Would you say Simone successfully used her girlpower to kill and consume countless androids and also turn them into near lifeless weapons and body jewelry? 9/10

Voice of No Return Sad title. Sad song. Exactly as advertised once again. I feel sad listening to the Automata OST most of the time. Is this quest complete in the camp? I think so. Anyway it’s really sad. I love to cry. 11/10

Grandma – Destruction Um so this is like. Genuinely a horrible title. It reminds me of the title of a darkweb video which I will say no more on. This song is REALLY good its a shame this title is so… uh. Bad. It’s just bad. 1/10

Faltering Prayer – Dawn Breeze / Starry Sky This is another really cool title. This game is about like… life after god. I’m not here to get thematic. I say in a list entirely about if the song fits the theme. Anyway this is a cool title. The song again… sounds sad. One of them is a music box which I love. Cheating again. 10/10

Emil’s Shop EVERY DAY’S A SALE. EVERY SALE’S A WIN. 12/10!!

Treasured Times The fact this plays after Emil’s shop on the OST is the biggest tonal whiplash in the world. This song makes me feel an emotion I cannot describe. It’s something like sadness but not quite. This isn’t a review of the songs, just the title. But reading the title makes me feel that emotion too but stronger when I think about it. I don’t know. 9/10

Vague Hope – Cold Rain / Spring Rain Good title… Thematically very appropriate. Not COOL like some of the others but it feels right feels canon. I like it. It’s just the city ruins quest complete song but it also plays in one of the fucking… DLC fights. That makes me extra sad. 10/10

End of the Unknown Which unknown was ended. Genuinely think when this plays I had more unknowns than knowns. This song sounds like every song from the Gestalt DLC. 6/10.

Pascal At least Automata has far fewer “named after a character” songs. They just have named after a place songs. I love Pascal so if I give this a low score he might be upset. 8/10

Forest Kingdom It really… the forest huh. Random but one of the songs in Code Vein does a vocal thing that always reminds me of this song for some reason. That has nothing to do with this game or this songs title at all I just wanted to tell you. Long Live The Forest King / 10

Dark Colossus – Kaiju This song is also in Gestalt. It’s cooler here. More stakes. Song title suggests less stakes though? That’s kinda weird. Because of this it loses points. I’m sorry. 7/10

Copied City Dude I left this one off the list when I first typed it out lol. Someone not to @ anyone told me this was based on Nier’s village. Lie to me again. I don’t know what City is being Copied. One of them. It reminds me more of the Cathedral City from DoD3. Which is a bad horrible game that I completed 100%. 8/10

Wretched Weaponry Not to be confused with Wretched Automatons. Is this like, a remix? My ears don’t work so I don’t know. Don’t inform me because I love being stupid. Anyway, in the narrative it makes sense. It’s a good, cool title. Song is softer than the title would suggest. 9/10

Possessed by Disease COOL SONG TITLE. Thank you. This plays… somewhere. Uh. Hm. I’ve 100% completed this game like three times. 9/10

Broken Heart You think you’re gonna hear a sad song? SURPRISE. Sinister as hellllll. Subverted expectations baby. MCU take notes. I’ve never seen a movie in the MCU. Loving the dark tones in this. Broken heart but the emotion isn’t just sad. GOOD STUFF. 10/10

Mourning Again. You think it’s gonna be sad? But BOOM. It isn’t. I mean it still is, but in a dark way. These aren’t song reviews. These are title reviews. But if a title suggests one thing and delivers another that’s still a valid point right? I don’t know. Hey wait isn’t this just Shadowlord’s Castle? Yonah / 10

Dependent Weakling Well, it’s no Song of the Ancients – Fate, but it’ll do. In all seriousness, this is like, a great song title for Eve’s boss battle. Y’know, because he relied so heavily on Adam and all’a that. Maybe a little on the nose. Maybe a little rude. Eve sucks / 10

Rebirth & Hope Sounds hopeful. Plays during ending A where we see a Rebirth cos 9S super doesn’t die. This song is literally 30 seconds long why am I even bothering. Oh, right, because it’s on the OST at all. 30 second songs / 10

War & War Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room. It… sounds like a war room song. A preparing for a big battle song. Once again, exactly as advertised. Plays before a big battle. It really thematic naming! Peace was never an option. 8/10

Crumbling Lies Words cannot express how much I adore this song. First of all, title is on point. It’s the song that plays when you get to Route C. Literally the moment I fell in love with the game. The Bunker is destroyed, which, again… maybe it’s a bit on the nose. I don’t care. This is the perfect song title to the perfect song. I will die on this hill. 12/10

Widespread Illness Red Eye except it’s robots now. Very thematically appropriate. Everyone is dying. There’s nothing you can do to cure it except kill them. They’re incredibly infectious. Zombie Virus but with Robots. Can you tell I don’t remember what it’s called? I’m writing this at 1am and I’ve decided it’s funnier if I don’t look anything up. Sounds very somber… I like it. 9/10

Fortress of Lies Not to be dramatic but when I read this English title I was like MMMMMMMNNN because like. I get it. It plays in the Bunker. Which… is built on lies. Again. Incredibly on the nose but when I learned what the song was called I just fucking DIED the first time. I’m stupid. I don’t care. 11/10

Song of the Ancients – Atonement Another song I died when I learned the title of. Devola and Popola in that game have nothing to atone for. They are atoning for sing they did not commit. Punished for the crimes of another set of Androids, possibly thousands of miles away. It’s not fair. They have nothing to atone for. They’ve done nothing wrong. 12/10 crying creeps.

Blissful Death FUCK. This one plays in the Devola and Popola like. Text Adventure part. Which is just. I love it so much. No one dies in that though. Well… maybe someone does. It’s not impossible that Popola hurt someone. It’s suggested that, maaaaybe she did. No one stops. No one Stops.

Emil – Despair Emil’s life has quite literally only been despair. Please don’t bully him with your song titles like this… 9/10

Alien Manifestation Vintage meme of that guy from the history channel with the impact font that just says Aliens. This game has aliens, I will give you that. They’re all dead though. I guess the machines are aliens but. Eh. Wait doesn’t this play in the castle? There aren’t even aliens there what the fuck. 5/10

The Tower There’s a tower. This plays there. Thank you. Also the name of a tarot card I think? That could be cool if I knew a single goddamn thing about tarot cards. I don’t. 6/10

Bipolar Nightmare Cool flying section. Has anyone found Grun skip yet? Because the bounty for that was like. A lot of money. Vaguely a cool song title. I kinda like it. Although for some reason it reminds me of The Evil Within’s Japanese title, Psychobreak. So I think I like it less because of that. Not the worst title, but maybe the lowest of the COOL EDGY song titles. Fucking love the piano part in this one though. 7/10

The Sound of the End Really super cool and sexy song title. 2B is going to die but she can’t let anyone else get hurt because of it. She’s already done so much damage. This song is really dramatic sounding. The title is dramatic. Love this one a lot. The actual playable segment is kind of a struggle. But I think that’s the point… 10/10

Weight of the World / End of YoRHa I once got into an internet fight because I said this song is about every character except 9S because of the line “I’m only one girl”. I was corrected that the Japanese version is basically EXCLUSIVELY about 9S. None of this is relevant at all I just wanted to remember it. I still do not like 9S. Thematically a brilliant title. Everyone feels like they must do so much… but you cannot bear the weight of the world alone. Ending E legitimately makes me cry. Whenever I think about the messages from other players supporting me? It’s a lot. What the fuck. 12/10

#nier #nier automata #long post #creep ranks

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projectnaga · 7 years

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a 21st anniversary, a 1st anniversary, and the state of the translation

Well, here we are. It’s the 14th of May, 2017. It’s the 21st anniversary of Genealogy of the Holy War’s original release, and the first anniversary of the release of its first complete translation.

God, it still feels so weird saying that. Complete. Not only did i actually do it, but it’s actually in the game and people are actually playing it now. i swear, it was only days ago that i was still puttering away at the earliest drafts in some dim corner of tumblr, just as a lark. There’s something surreal and heartwarming about seeing people play my work en masse. Thanks, people.

After the first release, we published five updates in relatively quick succession up until July, at which point we just.... stopped. And stopped. So what happened?

Full disclosure: it’s squarely my fault. Honestly, it’s getting kind of embarrassing. DDS has put in plenty of work since then and has a nice fat stack of bug fixes and assorted technical cleanups ready to roll out, and at this point i’m literally the only thing holding back the stack. i’ve still got a lot of work that i want to do on the script for the next iteration and i’m still chipping away at it at a very slow rate. i keep setting targets for finishing up, then promptly letting those targets whizz by. Hell, about a month ago i genuinely planned to have everything done in time for another anniversary release to be plausible, and as you can plainly see that did not pan out at all. It made sense up until February, being that university was still a thing i had to contend with, but now? Yikes.

What needs fixing, then? As far as i’m concerned, a hell of a lot. my first pass over the game was, in hindsight, not particularly careful. Working on Genealogy was very much a learning process - i’d certainly never done anything like it before - and it’s as much of a mishmash as you’d expect of a product of somebody whose expertise and translation philosophy slowly evolved throughout it. Before we launched i certainly made efforts to straighten things out and retranslate, relatively speaking, the worst parts at that point (hello, chapter 1) from scratch, but it really came down to the wire so a lot was missed. The current product certainly gets the job done, but i can’t help but wince at screenshots: all the flaws of my work are suddenly blaringly obvious to me much too late.

And you know what? Genealogy deserves better, and not by virtue of being a particularly special game or anything, but because anything i work on deserves better. If there’s only one thing i’m good at, it’s holding my own feet to the fire and demanding stupidly high standards of my work. At the risk of sounding like a pretentious wanker, i can’t say i fancy the idea of settling for anything short of clear, tonally and conceptually accurate encapsulations of the text and narrative, expressed in as natural and readable a manner as i can muster. i’d like to think i accomplished that with the majority of the game, but i can’t sit back until everything is up to scratch.

So, what’s coming up, then?

Tweaks to Genealogy

Fun fact: i am really, really not good at keeping notes on what needs changing and what has changed. It’s kind of hilarious in the saddest possible way. Every time i keep meaning to but then something catches my eye, then something else, and it’s all so fast that i don’t even think to record it and before long i’ve forgotten what i’ve just tweaked. Either way, some of the most prominent incoming changes (that i can actually recall) include:

Lex, i’m sorry to say, did not fare particularly well in my first pass; i did a pretty bad job with portraying his tone and nuances, including literally his first block of dialogue in the entire damn game. Thankfully he’s the only character who got substantially distorted like this, but fixing him up was a top priority. Just about every speaking role he has has been redone from scratch.

The majority of reworking is proving to be in the first generation chapters. Honestly, i’m not surprised; being the first part of the game i did left them much more prone to error than the rest of the game. There’s still a fair few second generation corrections, but still.

boy shitting howdy i used the word “geez” a lot and in hindsight it drives me up the wall. at the absolute minimum that’s been reduced heavily

Probably the biggest amount of legwork involved is tidying up the epilogue’s map narration grand finale, specifically ensuring that the individual parts actually cohere properly when the game combines them in any outcome. The way English grammar is structured makes this somewhat more difficult than it was in Japanese, and it’s probably the biggest reason why i’ve been slacking off. While we didn’t do the worst job in the world as things stand there are plenty of rough spots which i need to sand out. Thankfully the script itself is still sound for the most part, so it’s just a matter of presentation.

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that we absolutely plan on doing Thracia 776 next. I’ve been planning on translating it for several years now, DDS has already done some preliminary hacking work on it (pictured above), and these days i have the fortune of having a lot of friends on hand with a vested interest in seeing Thracia done properly. It just makes sense, y’know?

As some people might know i started work on the script of Thracia a few years ago, but i’ve sort of let it slide for a while because of other commitments. Once i’m done sorting out Genealogy, i’m absolutely climbing back on that particular horse. i’d rather not make any hard time commitments for myself or anyone else since that would be a great way for things to end horribly, but considering i’m now much more experienced at this and have much more in the way of assistance and support in my favour, i get the feeling it’ll be a smoother project than Genealogy. At the very least, whenever we launch, the script will certainly be less bumpy than Genealogy’s was on this day a year ago.

Other stuff?

iunno. probably not, idk. we’ll see what happens

In conclusion

Really, in hindsight, i can’t believe how stupidly lucky i've been to have had the chance to work with such talented people on this. First, to have friends like amielleon and gringe who were willing to advise me on the translation and writing processes and, once or twice, step in to compensate for my shortcomings; then to work with hackers as talented as DDS and Azimuth, who as far as i’m concerned went through absolute hell to make my vision for the finished product a reality. Did i deserve all this? Probably not, but holy hell am i glad it all happened anyway.

okay maybe i should dial this back a bit

And if you’ve played it, thanks to you too! There’s still nothing quite like seeing my work being played by other people out in the wild (specifically, by people i don’t know who most likely weren’t coerced into playing it by my self-aggrandising shenanigans). If you haven’t played it, well, why not give it a try sometime? At the risk of overselling myself here, it’s a good translation for a good game.

#fire emblem

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jacksgamediary · 7 years

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What I’ve been playing lately

Hey there, internet, especially the three of you reading this. I’ve wanted to start a game diary for a while now, chronicling my experiences through different video games (and who knows, maybe tabletop games and other stuff too) as I play them. I love using Letterboxd to keep track of what movies I watch when, and as far as I have seen, there’s nothing out there as good for video games. So I started this tumblr instead. Because playing games is a series of unique experiences, more so than with passive media like film and TV, I figured it would be a fun and hopefully worthwhile experience to not just keep track of what games I play, but also how I experienced them.

I’m already in the middle of a few games right now, so I thought to start things off I’d write up a short post detailing what I’ve been playing recently and my thoughts on them.

Let’s start with my most recent playthrough:

The Turing Test (Bulkhead Interactive, 2016, PC version)

This is a game I’ve had my eye on for a while, since it encompasses a lot of things I love - science fiction, puzzles, first-person exploration and environmental storytelling - but I didn’t get around to playing it until a kind user over at the /r/GiftOfGames subreddit sent me a Steam key. (Awesome subreddit, go check it out if you have some spare Humble Bundle keys that need a loving home.)

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the experience - it felt a lot like a cross between Portal and The Talos Principle, with a lot of philosophizing about artificial intelligence and the nature of free will, and the player moving from room to room solving puzzles with laser bridges and balls of electricity and whatnot. The story was pretty much your standard “AI gone rogue, and also it’s in space” plot, albeit with a few clever twists I didn’t see coming. Gameplay was pretty standard first-person puzzle solving a la Portal and the dozens of games it inspired, and while it was fun and challenging, it wasn’t terribly original, and the puzzles started to grate on me after a while. I wanted to get on with the story but had to force myself through the last couple puzzles to make it to the end.

Ultimately, The Turing Test wasn’t really anything we haven’t seen before, but it was still largely very well executed and enjoyable. If this sounds like your kind of thing, I certainly recommend it. Favorite part: all the extra-challenging optional side puzzles that reward you with more story details.

Grow Home (Reflections/Ubisoft, 2015, PC version)

Grow Home is delightful. It’s a gorgeous game with a clean, low-poly art style and some unique platforming gameplay. You play as a robot named B.U.D., who is the best. He makes silly robot noises.

Your goal is to grow this giant plant from one floating island to the next and climb it until you can reach your spaceship. Gameplay consists entirely of walking, jumping, climbing, and (almost always accidentally) falling. To climb, you push the right stick in whatever direction you want to go and alternate pressing the left and right triggers, which lifts and sets down each hand. It can get tedious after a while, but has the advantage of making you really feel like you’re climbing, since it’s an actual gameplay challenge and not a throwaway “hold forward to climb” mechanic. Plus, there’s nothing more thrilling and satisfying than falling from a vine, reaching terminal velocity, and saving yourself from certain doom at the last second with a well-timed grab of another vine.

All the while, your AI protector M.O.M. is cheering you on with little messages of encouragement, and making comments about the plants and animals you meet along the way. SPEAKING OF WHICH:

He is my friend. My adorable sheepy friend. We will be together forever.

It’s a pretty short game, and the controls can be a little unwieldy at times, but overall I had a great time. Recommended.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions, 2014, PC version)

Pictured above: an orc who was born in the darkness, molded by it, and when Mordor is ashes, you have his permission to die #goodjoke

I got Shadow of Mordor for like $4 during the Steam Summer Sale a few weeks ago, hopeful for a worthwhile experience but not expecting much. For the first couple days though, I was pleasantly surprised, and played it pretty much non-stop (or, whenever I could). I liked the Arkham-style combat (I’ve played all the Arkham games and completed Arkham Knight to 100% three times over), the open-world setting, the option to be stealthy, and some of the abilities you gain over time - especially the teleport-to-an-enemy-a-hundred-feet-away ability. That was cool.

After a while, though, everything started to feel the same. It got repetitive pretty quickly, and while the nemesis system was really cool for a while, there wasn’t enough to differentiate each of the Uruks from each other, so it felt like a gimmick more than a real or personal narrative connection. On top of all that, the world of Shadow of Mordor seemed like a duller downgrade of the world I saw in Peter Jackson’s films and read about in The Hobbit, and the revenge-driven plot seemed really out of place for the LOTR mythos - not that I’m an expert or anything, it just felt tonally wrong. Plus, I really didn’t care about Celebrimbor and whoever the protagonist was. I don’t remember his name, all I remember is that he was Troy Baker. And I knew his wife and son for all of three minutes before they were killed off. Not the strongest introduction.

If you love open-world fantasy action games, or Rocksteady’s Batman games, you’ll probably like Shadow of Mordor. If you’re just a huge fan of LOTR, I’d guess that the plot would probably just make you angry, or at least annoyed. If you like hearing the dulcet tones of Troy Baker talking with a British accent to an elf ghost who sounds kinda like Hugo Weaving, you’re in for a real treat.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - DLC Pack 1 (Nintendo, 2017, Switch)

After hearing all the great things about Master Mode and the Trial of the Sword, I finally caved and bought the Breath of the Wild Expansion Pass. And the minute I entered Hyrule again with something new to do, I had this feeling of comfort and euphoria - like, “ah, it’s good to be home.” To be back in Hyrule with new goals and challenges ahead, it brought Breath of the Wild back to life in a wonderful way.

So far, I haven’t tried Master Mode, but I have collected every DLC item and cleared the Trial of the Sword (after several tries). The third and final set of trials was far more difficult than the first two, and it was only with a lot of patience and careful resource management that I was able to eventually complete it. (Protip: don’t move on to the next level until you’ve found every useful item in the room. And save your Ancient Arrows for the end. Also: when you get to the white-maned Lynel, that’s not the final level. Not at all.)

The Trial of the Sword was almost more of a test of endurance and strategy than a test of skill. It reminded me a lot of The Challenge caves from The Witness last year - which was my favorite part of that game - in that it was a long, arduous process full of trial-and-error and figuring out new strategies, and which ended with a feeling of utter triumph and joyous pride at my accomplishment. (For the record, The Challenge took me a lot longer and I found it much harder. Still can’t listen to “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” without getting a little anxious.) I’m disappointed that none of the DLC outfits are upgradeable - I really wanted to beat Ganon wearing the Switch t-shirt and Tingle pants - but they’re still nice to have.

If you loved Breath of the Wild and wish there was more to do, the DLC pack is worth it. Plus, there’s still the story DLC pack coming later this year, which you also get if you bought this one. Definitely worth the twenty bucks, if you ask me.

Welp, that’s it for now. Here’s a list of the games I’m currently playing:

Final Fantasy VII (I have some THOUGHTS on this one. So so so good)

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Maybe? Not sure if I want to finish it, I played a couple hours and got bored. Might just not be for me.)

VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Shovel Knight (my second full playthrough, this time on Switch; eventually I’ll play Specter of Torment and Plague of Shadows, too)

Sound Shapes

I also need to finish Luigi’s Mansion (which I borrowed from a friend like six months ago or something - sorry @nierlaw), Bastion, The Talos Principle, Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, all of which I’ve gotten at least halfway through but haven’t played in months. Plus, I’ve got a long list of games that I own but have yet to play, including Ico, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Spec Ops: The Line, Broken Age, L.A. Noire, Valkyria Chronicles, and Beyond Good and Evil. Thus is the struggle of a man attempting to be games-literate, whatever that might mean.

See you soon with a much shorter post!

#the turing test #grow home #shadow of mordor #breath of the wild #trial of the sword #video games #gaming #game diary #journal

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neathtorchlight-blog · 7 years

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Digre - The Way of a Pilgrim

Review by Chaucerian Myth

The advent of 8-bit Dungeon Synth has, in a way, been taking the scene by storm as of late. It seems a natural progression, as the aesthetics of the two styles often intertwine in the classic dungeons found in the NES, Commodore, and Sega Genesis games which invoke a sense of immediate and immense nostalgia.

In this regard, Digre works with the 8-bit element in a much smarter way than with pure nostalgia and retro aesthetic alone. Indeed, on The Way of a Pilgrim, the artist uses the 8-bit style to make listeners comfortable and immersed right from the beginning, without having to appeal to the explicit aesthetics and trappings of Famicom dungeons.

Rather, Digre tells a story inspired by the journeys of a religious traveler, something that clearly appeals to my own literary sensibilities. The first track, “The Anaphora for the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great” invokes an atmosphere of welcoming, but also of contemplative wanderlust, and acts as a perfect track for one on the precipice of a great pilgrimage. It is a more than fitting start to the journey, and the 8-bit aesthetic is somehow warm and exciting, comforting and anxious.

The second track follows the direction left by the first: to “pray without ceasing,” and so the second track begins, tense and pensive, in deep thought. However, the atmosphere is not forlorn, and the description (found on the album’s Bandcamp page) alludes to a “blissful state.” Certainly, the tense note which begins the track ebbs and flows throughout the duration, and, while not feeling exactly cheery, the tone turns to one of relative bliss, as suggested. This is a complicated piece emotionally, and it is pulled off very well by the artist.

Digre’s strong opening statements continue on the third track, regaling the listeners with an officer’s tale about resisting against passionate drunkenness. It is somber in tone, but not entirely or overwhelmingly. The melodies and harmonies build on each other, winding and weaving as the officer’s tale progresses. This is a very dynamic track, and the elements of a good story are present here, translated into song with an 8-bit palette which draws one in even more so.

The description of the fourth track is quite a bit more vague than the others, and so one is forced to draw their own conclusions from the song alone. This is not a bad thing, and the track certainly stands for itself on all accounts. The harmony and bass here are more gritty than the previous tracks, and there is buzzing present throughout the song, sometimes very subtle, sometimes very obvious. It feels as if the pilgrimage is definitely in full swing as of now, and the trekking has certainly commenced. Relatively long moments pass without the statement of a strong melody, but this only emphasizes the melodies when they do appear, and they are worth waiting for while the droning harmony invites stirring contemplation.

Track five: “Feast of Annunciation,” is, perhaps, my favorite on the album. It begins with bursts of noise that don’t completely let up throughout the track while bright, chimey melodies dance above, staying blissful and hopeful as the noise interrupts their song. This track details a journey through a rainstorm at night. It seems as if the droning noise would represent the rain, and the harsh noise bursts illustrate thunder. The effect works tremendously well, in my opinion, particularly in conjunction with the other elements of the song, which are catchy, tonally interesting, and structurally engaging.

On the sixth track, the pilgrim departs the church after the Feast of Annunciation. The song’s atmosphere is one of piety and austerity as the journey resumes, a perfect and fitting way to resume the pilgrimage. At times, the middle-ranged harmony drops out, leaving the bass and the main melody to interact with one another, welcoming meditations on heaven and hell before the Earth comes back into the picture.

“Candid Narratives of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father.” Thus begins the final track on the album, which is also the album’s longest. The song sounds, in every way, nostalgic, perhaps even wistful, as the pilgrim details their narratives. It is not entirely this way, however, there is also a joy in the melodies, a meditative and thankful nature present in the chords and drawn-out passages which blend together most interestingly, and sometimes harshly, due to the 8-bit timbre of the synths. The bass here is smooth, and the melodies are achingly heartfelt and spiritual. The track is definitely deserving of its length which has clearly not been needlessly inflated by maddening repetition - a common pitfall for artists in this genre. As such, the track passes by quickly, as if the listener is being told an engaging and pleasant story. It ends with the recitation of a prayer by what seems to be a child.

Indeed, the whole album is this way. Even at its most tense, The Way of a Pilgrim is pleasant and engaging. While not relying solely on nostalgia, there are certainly nostalgic feelings. The atmosphere is divided in many ways - and it grapples with many complicated emotional tones, doing so with subtlety and finesse. Never is the album heavy-handed, and never does it overstay its welcome. The result is something that is short and sweet, a short display of spiritual reflection that is as engaging as it is introspective and, at times, brooding. A powerful release.

#dungeon synth #famitracker #chiptune #8-bit #prayer #music review #chaucerian myth #digre #orthodox

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itsybitsylemonsqueezy · 7 years

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Okay, here it is, my thoughts on Gotham 3x19. Or more accurately termed, my complaints. I want to warn you right now, it’s just a shitmess of complaining, so if that’s not what you want to read, then PLEASE don’t, you’re under no obligation to do so. But I really needed to say these things for my own peace of mind, so here it is:

You remember how 3x18 ended right?

Here's my question: why didn't they go with that? Why did they have to redo it? Why did they COMPLETELY retcon tone? Why?

Because, I think we can all agree, what we had at the end of 3x18 does NOT match 3x19. So let’s start with that. And I have some theories about why it changed so dramatically, but first let me clarify what changed: the lighting, the framing, the music, the entire TONE of their confrontation is in a new genre. We VERY OBVIOUSLY change perspective and I’m not sure why, I’m not sure WHOSE perspective we had the first time or whose we have now, I'm not sure we’re MEANT to associate the change with any particular perspective, save that a change WAS made. The only things that didn’t change were the lines themselves and the blocking. Everything else was completely new.

And, in my opinion, 3x19 lost all of the tension that made 3x18 what it was. And perhaps that WAS because we were seeing it again, but the changes also very deliberately took the tension out, they deliberately softened the scene. And, in my opinion, that was a mistake. Because I think their confrontation deserved and warranted the tension we had at the end of 3x18. I think the narrative was built for that, was deliberately developed for an exciting climax and, more even than that, I think that end shot is one of the few perfect scenes in all of film. And I think they, the creators (writers, producers, directors, etc), not Robin and Cory I need to stress, butchered it for reasons I will get to later. And I’m upset about it.

Because their choice, from the get-go, to mute their confrontation changed the entire tenor and dynamic of this episode. And, again, I think it was changed for the worse. But even if we hadn’t seen that bit in 3x18, even if we walked into 3x19 without this pre-existing expectation, I still think 3x19 falls short.

Because isn’t it ODD Ed spends no time freaking out?

Ed accepts Oswald is alive and slips RIGHT BACK into a functioning relationship, or establishing a new one with new rules at minimum, like he's slipping on a fucking glove. And I DO have some justification for that but it's FUCKING WEAK and the thing is, the EPISODE doesn't support it. The episode does NONE of the emotional, intellectual work it was SUPPOSED to. The only reason I can come up with justification is I'm a fucking fan who spends all my time in Ed's brain working out how he thinks. The episode gives JACK SHIT about why Ed reacts this way and I'm FUCKING FURIOUS.

(Spoilers, this is the less edited part where I‘m just really mad about everything and swear a lot.)

So, in all fairness to the writers, you CAN justify Ed’s reaction by saying Ed straight up refuses to react/can't react. You CAN justify it by saying his game-playing is a coping mechanism (which it has been established to be, re: 3x15) so instead of having an emotional reaction to Oswald right there, Ed rejects it and instead defaults to an established schema in which he CAN cope and Oswald, for whatever reason, goes with it. So, to be as even-handed with my criticism as I can be, I can reverse engineer this to a point where it's plausible. But again I had to do that, the episode DOES NOT do that for you.

And, personally, I'm not sure it's really justified in Ed's PATENTLY SHITTY coping mechanisms that he'd be able to save himself this quickly. He’s never been able to cope effectively before, and we might chalk this up to progress, but... it seems unlikely to me personally. And, again, the episode does not justify this assumption, it provides no evidence that Ed is coping at all because we never see him react in the first place, and the previous episodes SURE AS SHIT don’t make the argument that Ed has developed a single dependable coping mechanism. So this progress would be fairly out of the blue. In 3x15, we see very clearly why Ed is playing a game, we understand it, we get a deep inside look at what he’s doing and why. And, sure, they didn’t have time to do that this episode and, sure, the title of the show is Gotham, not Nygmobblepot, all of that is true. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I will attempt to justify why the writers did what they did later, but first I need to explain why I'm upset with it.

So let’s recall, shall we, what Ed’s psychology was like leading UP TO this confrontation. Because it seems VERY CLEAR to me that the writers totally fucking forgot OR deliberately rewrote Ed on the fly and I’m not sure which is worse.

3x14: Ed murders Oswald, or, more importantly, he thinks he does, he believes it, with heartfelt conviction. It’s Kind Of A Big Deal.

3x15: Ed copes with having murdered Oswald, culminating in saying goodbye and embracing his new identity as The Riddler. Also Kind Of A Big Deal

3x16: We take a much needed break from Ed shenanigans. He, apparently, moves out of Oswald’s mansion at long last and begins work on an evil hideout of his own.

3x17: Ed takes his first stab at independent villainhood. His single goal is to find out who the Court of Owls are which... is neither really a success nor a failure. He DOES end up with the Court, but not through his own machinations and neither does he really get any information about them and in the end has to escape from them. I’m calling this a net failure.

3x18: He gets less than 24 hours to stew about his stymied ambition and first setback as a new villain before WHOOPS, OSWALD’S BACK, I GUESS INDEPENDENCE IS CANCELLED.

And, let me remind us, ED HIMSELF says his new identity is formed DIRECTLY OUT OF OSWALD’S DEATH. AND OSWALD. IS ALIVE.

And Ed. is. fine???

Forgive me if I feel this doesn’t fucking line up at all.

Forgive me if I think the BLIND FURY coming from Ed at the end of 3x18 was APPROPRIATE AND JUSTIFIED. Forgive me if THAT’S the version I wanted to see and I don’t understand AT ALL why they went with this completely unjustified, no-stakes, softened mess.

And when you think about it, all lined up like that, the retcon in 3x19 falls apart. You just have to wonder what the fuck they thought they were doing. Because it makes no fucking sense.

So, I'm sorry, I'm SORRY, but... THAT is my problem. THAT. Right there. The fact that they gave NO credit or justification to Ed's emotions. And I am BESIDE myself about it.

And it ruined the entire goddamn episode for me. Because you can't have... jesus fucking christ *headdesk* Nothing we just saw would have been happening if they gave a SECOND'S emotional honesty to Ed, but they didn't. And it's really upsetting because I LOVE the shenanigans of 3x19, I WANT to enjoy them, I just wish I could... :/ they just... they, the creators, fucked up for me, they fucked this up and I can't :ccc You lost emotional veracity and that's EVERYTHING to me. I'd rather have a boring shitty episode that was HONEST than this :ccc Because this BREAKS continuity for me :ccc breaks suspension of disbelief.

But I do have a feeling i know why it changed, why they went with this version. The unfortunate thing is they wrote and SHOT a goddamn perfect scene. But the suspense, the expectation, was so high, they got scared and they backed down. Instead of deciding to push the thematic tensions of darkness and angst, they rewrote it to something light that they could get away with, so they COULD write off this HEAVY, heavy scene as what we saw. Because the show IS for teens and it IS called Gotham, not Nygmobblepot, and I want to admit that. I want to admit that the creators have a different perspective and different priorities than I do and maybe it’s not fair to hold them to this. Maybe I am just being harsh, and bitter, and salty. And it’s true, I don’t run this show, they have to run it, and I believe they’re making the best decisions they can. I don’t want to sound like I hate them even though I disagree strongly with what they’ve done. They’ve got bigger things to worry about than this and... you know, maybe I shouldn’t hold it against them. That’s fair.

But at the same time... what they did was a retcon. What they did was not justified by the build up and it was a betrayal to Ed’s characterization. And, no matter how anyone else feels about that, it hurt me personally. And I’m entitled to that hurt. No one else has to agree or appreciate or even listen to me, but I get to feel how I feel. Just to clarify, this is my feeling, it’s not something anyone else has to agree with or listen to, you have every right to believe I’m full of it.

So I understand they might have had VERY justified reasons for this tonal shift and not dedicating the emotional time and energy they SHOULD have to this. I really want to give them credit and admit that my priorities are not theirs. And yet, at the same time, they had ALREADY dedicated two major episodes, back to back, EXCLUSIVELY to Ed’s emotional development about this. So why stop here, why not bring it home? It seems unfair to me and either stupid or cowardly. At the very best, that's realizing they set themselves up for failure and HASTILY backtracking and having to foil everyone's expectations. At worst, it was shitty showrunning where no one was paying attention. But that’s me being harsh.

Now, after having said ALLLL of that, they can still recover in 3x20. Again, I don’t want to sound like I’ve completely lost faith in the show. It is STILL possible that the writers planned this all along, even if I don’t like the way they’re doing this. (I think it’s a lot more likely they panicked last minute, but that’s neither here nor there.) So, here’s one theory about how 3x20 might go:

The only way (that I could find, you may find a different justification yourself) to justify Ed not losing his goddamn shit about Oswald being alive would be if he somehow doubted/wanted Oswald to be alive. Now, the evidence DOES NOT credit this, as it makes his whole goodbye speech moot (ANOTHER reason I am VERY PISSED OFF, but that is secondary from my theory.)

Let us assume that Ed harbored some kind of hope that Oswald was alive OR, alternatively, feared he really COULDN'T do this on his own. Either way, that means, when Ed sees Oswald, he experiences relief, thus justifying the entire episode. Now... this doesn't 100% fix it as the episode STILL fails to do any emotional credit by them. (Side note, which I might detail later, a LOT of really profound, heavy shit is said and it COMPLETELY SLIDES BY WITHOUT REACTION. Like, the shit IS said but NO ONE DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT AND FUCKING FUCK ALL OF YOU WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK). BUT, it at least allows Ed to be happy to see Oswald again and it justifies his trust and eager willingness to work with Oswald again.

And, here's the thing, I am FAIRLY sure this theory WILL be supported in 3x20. If I'm right, Ed will suddenly become Very Stable. He'll suddenly be making sense and functioning again. This is because of that RATHER IMPORTANT THING HE SAID, "I'm the Riddler and I became him when I killed you" MEANING he killed part of himself in killing Oswald MEANING he's whole again now that Oswald's back MEANING he's reforming around Oswald and will suddenly be Very Stable. Now, again, that line SHOULD have been WAY MORE IMPORTANT at the time, but... the creators did what they did and we have to live with it and do the emotional work ourselves if we are so inclined.

Now... on the one hand, that I can accept. It was always a possibility that Ed WOULD never be able to function independently and would just have to stay latched to Oswald forever. But... what i wanted, and what Ed DESERVES, is the chance to make that decision for himself. Ed has not truly experienced independence yet, he has not had the chance to fail OR succeed at striking out on his own, so he DOESN'T ACTUALLY KNOW. Which prevents him from self-actualizing. Instead of letting him figure it out and making a conscious choice, thus enabling his character development, no, we gave him back a crutch and refused to let him develop. Which means, eventually, we'll have to do ALL OF THIS AGAIN the next time Ed craves independence. And like... fine, if he eventually decides he can't function without Oswald FINE, I accept that, but LET him decide! Just... PLEASE, GOD. Let him make a SINGLE CONSCIOUS DECISION. PLEASE.

And finally, in total fairness, it is a... remote possibility, but still a possibility, that Ed will recognize he feels better now that Oswald's back, but given it's Ed, Master of Repression, WHAT'S THE LIKELIHOOD OF THAT? Still... in fairness, I will admit that it’s an option, however unlikely.

Now I’m just... really sad. I’m really sorry to complain this much, especially about an ostensibly really nice episode that featured some great things. The premise just... didn’t feel justified to me and it bothered me. So... there, I'm done now, I truly hope I have not affected anyone negatively.

#some thoughts on Gotham 3x19 #complaining #Fair warning it is NOTHING but complaining #and I'm really sorry about it

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wombatlogic · 7 years

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Project 4

a horror/independent adventure game by lizardotaku (https://rpgmaker.net/games/9461/)

a review

So what is it?

Project4 is advertised as a a horror/adventure game, and it definitely leads towards the adventure side with a heavy dose of surrealism. It's inspired by the likes of HOME and OFF, neither of which I've played, so my perspective might be a little odd... especially considering I don't play many horror games to begin with. However! I do like "walking simulator" games so let's see what Project 4 has to offer. It's advertised as "shortish" (~2 hours) and "complete" which are both things I appreciate.

I'll try to make this spoiler-free.

Story

Project 4 opens with an intro story about a pair of twins who live isolated in a forest, surrounded by other children hunting rabbits. When the player takes control of Trost (Class: Actor) in a completely unrelated environment, my impression was that Project 4 is ruled by two different stories: a concrete one outside the game's environment, and a central conceit/metaphor story of the projects. The "real" story is updated as Trost progresses through each of the projects. Trost has an objective, and is oppposed to the projects and their worker denizens, etc. As the game continues, the story is wrapped up in the named engineer minions that populate the projects, but especially mystery characters like Emil that show up in each zone to support Trost. The relationships between the individual project managers (bosses, basically) are all interesting as well, especially the last two, Tris and Dell, which are unusual fights where Trost is the agressor. Each zone has a self-contained plot that plays out as Trost visits (and generally kills off half the project's residents), plus things like notes/logs that tie together a story between all of the projects, their former visitors, and dynamics between each of the project heads.

Then, after the last fight of Project 4, after Trost's rampage is finished, the concrete story from the beginning picks up where it left off to end the game. Confession time: I didn't fully get it. I spent a decent amount of time trying to understand how the narratives fit together (the conceit/metaphorical one inside the projects vs the one outside) but I couldn't parse the pieces. I could piece together who the characters were in the projects vs the characters in the conceit, but but by the end of the game, this wasn't new info. I felt like they're should've been a payoff at the finale, some sort of "Ah-ha!" revelatory moment where the meaning of the projects and the characters would take on a new light, but it just never came, even after I spent some time trying to refigure it out, including replaying the first half of the game or so.

My conclusion is that the timeline of the external, real story of Project 4 is wobbly and not really a linear narrative... more of a "master effect" feeling kind of thing. That's my biggest gripe with this game: the way the twins' story cuts into the projects' story heavily imply there's something crisp to be figured out, but really it's much muddier. Stuff I didn't understand includes an entire playable character "Blackmail" who shows up out of nowhere, the fate of Emil, the purpose of the big ghosty chase scene character, and generally what the linear timeline is to the story of Project 4. When for 90% of the game I think there's a deeper meaning to look for, and then in the closing minute, the meaning is just as vague or inscrutable as everything else... The rest of the story retroactively loses its impact.

Aesthetic

In short: it's good. My initial interest in this game was almost solely from its title screen. It reminded me a ton of an animated short titled "Rabbit" I remember from a ways back . Either way, the game doesn't quite pan out like that. Black and red aren't the themes here, more "vivid color" on black, and strong tonal contrast in general.

I'm not sure how much of this is an idea from the inspiration sources of Project 4 (HOME/OFF) but it's executed really well. The four titual projects each have their own color theme, emotion, guardian boss, NPC attitude, etc. The first project feels a little empty (the only events for the first few maps are stream traps), but by the time I got to Project 4, I was really into it. The intro to Project 4 is the high point of the game -- there's a neat panning and title drop for each, and the one for Project 4 capture this rainy, melancholy feeling much better than I can put into words. It's super nice.

The tiles all fit in with the themes -- they're straightforward and sometimes evocative. The tiny animations are very welcome, they make the game feel alive and they're subtle enough to be atmospheric without attracting too much expression. Facesets are also simple and effective, and the colors all match the project, a nice touch. I can't stress how much individual expressions helps convey the characters. Emil especially has an amazing faceset. The battle actors are (mostly) great as well. There are a lot of variants on the individual enemies, and towards the middle of the game, they start trending surrealistic. I definitely like the "strange" vibe vs the traditionally horror ones encountered in the second half of the game.

Speaking of surrealism vs horror, the few places where the game fails to live up to that title screen are when it tries to be a straightup horror game. There's an incongruous chase scene around midway that's not interesting, scary, or fun from a gameplay sense. The same character comes back later on and I still don't really get it. The disclaimered gore/language in Project 4 is alright -- it serves as a nice contrast with the environments anyway -- but it doesn't stand out too much.

Sound is a mixed bag. The menu stuff is generic enough except for the dialog scroll tick (nice). Music is from a variety of free sources and generally used well, although I don't like recognizing tracks in game from other places (such as with the Presence of Music) but it's alright. I winced everytime I heard scream.wav though.

Mechanics

Combat is not this game's strong suit. I've never, ever seen a single-character combat system work well in an RM game, or even an RPG, outside of roguelikes. And Project 4 is single character for the vast majority of the game. Worse, there's a single dominant strategy: spam the "PARALYZE ENEMY" skill. It locks down the enemy for a solid 2-3 turns, by which it's easy to paralyze other enemies on screen as well. It trivializes the boss fights too, as everyone is equally vulnerable. It also seems an odd design decision to have skills cost no MP - that would've put a limit on my paralysis spam, at least, although having no skill cost basically meant I was using an ability every turn rather than mashing the attack button like most RM games. At least there are no random encounters and the fights are relatively quick -- I didn't get bored.

There are a ton of items to be picked off the ground, mostly restoratives, and a character that sells healing items as well. None of these are relevant, of course, because paralyzed enemies do no damage, but even if they were, an issue: One of the items for sale costs 1 gpmoney. So I bought a hundred Fish Piece items at the first shop, thinking I was clever for finding an infinite healing exploit, aaand then never touched my fish stick stack for the rest of the game. Oh well.

Apart from combat, there's the one previously-mentioned chase scene (I had to restart three times but the solution is "hold the down arrow key") and a fishing minigame. I was pretty amused by having the game tell me the height and the weight of the keys I fished out of the sewer but I didn't exactly get why this game has fishing in the first place.

There are a few puzzles and timed maze sort of challenges, most of which are passable. I didn't appreciate a screenshaky one in Project 4 where I couldn't tell where the exit was, but the most egregious thing in this game is a "enter the code" type challenge at the end of the game, also in Project 4. It uses the Hero Name Entry system to take a passcode, and if it's incorrect, starts a battle. Okay, to start off the battle is trivial because all combat in Project 4 is trivial, but expect to fight this fight a thousand times because there's no indication that the passcode is a numeric passcode, or indeed any indication at all of how to figure it out. There are numbers in the surrounding room ("There are zero good reasons to trust anyone, not a single one") but they're vague, out of order, and include terms like "several" which apparently means 7. Anyway, even after basically reading instructions for this puzzle on the gamepage, I still had to cheat to figure it out. Just skip this one, seriously.

I'm not sure if Project 4 would be improved as a pure "walking simulator," without the combat. The violence is a theme, at least. I wonder if there's a good way to rethink the combat to make the single character fights interesting, but the rest of the gameplay cruft could be safely cut along with the straight horror elements (the chase scene, basically).

Conclusion

Project 4 is an interesting, unique, game. It's short enough where if you're still reading it's probably worth playing (). I only wish I could recommend it more strongly, but the conclusion just lacked the power to make the game memorable. I really did enjoy exploring the world of the projects, the purple Project 4 especially, but the whole thing almost seems like a "cargo cult" exercise in a surrealist game -- it has a lot of well done aesthetic elements there, plus some neat characters and an overall sense of mystery, but because that core story comes off weak, it's not possible to put meaning in any of those things. I can't decide if I want to see this game with a revamped/revised conceit with the story of the twins, or just some of these environments show up in a tighter, punchier game, but either way, I appreciate about half of what's here, even if it's only the nucleus of something that's really great.

#rpg maker #horror #surreal #game reviews

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