Watching all my favorite Shakarian fanart blogs start to put out Baldur's Gate 3 content is

Gosh I don't know how to put it

Something about the continuity of interests in fandom spaces and roads that diverge only to come back together again after all this time.

Somehow, I know a little something about you and, conversely, you know something about me because we've been brought together by the same stories, pieces of art, and relationships in media not once, but twice

Mouth words, memory times

More thoughts on how to resurrect the Indiana Jones franchise post-Harrison Ford

Perhaps a proper, modern television show would be a good way to bring back a younger, but adult Indy (with perhaps flashbacks littered throughout). You can also get away with a lot more content (definitely aim for TV-14) and characters who are allowed to be flawed. Relationship dramas are serialized storytelling's forte in a way that is disappearing more and more from blockbuster films. Complicated characters are better left to television, as the audience expects and allows for it because of the nuance and depth the serialization affords. The complicated, messy story of Abner and Marion is a story best left to being explored only after the characters have some real complexity and development. It also wouldn't be forced to play to the mass audience of under-13s that makes modern PG-13 often meaningless. In comparison, TV-14 actually pushes up harder against its limits regularly--not just violence, but also with innuendo and sexuality minus nudity. The amount of historical-style, pulpy violence, not to mention potentially comically gruesome deaths, in Indy would also necessitate the rating. Indiana Jones might be niche enough at this point with an audience veering towards adults who grew up with it (Gen-X and the older end of Gen-Y), while Gen-Z has little awareness of it, that Disney wouldn't be forced to make it a total kiddie property. It's not the same situation as back in the early '90s with Young Indy being aimed at older kids who had recently seen Last Crusade in the theater. They could reboot it for television with a young adult Indy who potentially could grow into a fully adult version. And I wouldn't try too hard to not step on the trilogy's toes with the timeline. Just let it live in its own developing continuity.

Use of long-running supporting cast (parents, Remy and returning guest stars aside) would also be a big difference from Young Indy. Characters like Belloq (could potentially go from friend to antagonist, akin to how Smallville handled Lex), Sallah, Henry, Brody, Abner, Marion, etc... could actually be around a lot more than just for an adventure here or there. These are all characters Indy had clearly known for years. Actually put the show into a seasonal, serialized format that isn't a new cast every episode. You could also stick around in locations a lot longer this way, which would help with budget.

Another thought I've had since watching an absolute ton of fantasy/sci-fi dramas in the last few years is that the influence of Indiana Jones is actually pretty apparent in a number of pretty famous characters, sometimes overtly and sometimes a bit more subtly. Harrison, Indy or Raiders in general are outright name-checked in quite a few places, often by scrappy action hero types who tend to take hard beatings (the kinds of characters who should've died a hundred times over) while in situations they're way over their heads in or literally impossible odds they can't win. Like Indy, the intended prize isn't won at the end and, outside of a few gruesome baddie deaths, the shady, corrupt or evil barely get a dent. Fox Mulder and Dean Winchester are two characters who name-check the comparison overtly and you can see the writers and actors both having the influence in mind. It's obviously a male fantasy, too. The influence on The X-Files and Supernatural is definitely there. Supernatural is chock full of biblical MacGuffins (not to mention having angels and demons as most of its recurring supporting cast), so it would be a hard comparison to avoid. Raiders came up in the WWII Nazi submarine episode with a piece of the Ark onboard (it's subsequently a show to raid for Indy ideas, because they pretty much mined everything biblical), for example. The X-Files likewise was dealing with shady government officials and pretty blatantly copied the huge warehouse of government secrets loaded with alien relics (and then repeated the Cigarette Smoking Man's warehouse reveal with the tunnel of filing cabinets stretching on forever). Mulder was also very much a one-man army a lot of the time when it came to the alien conspiracy (no offense to Scully). Moments like him climbing/riding the tops of sky rides, trains and escaping the spaceship were total Indy-esque moments. Sam and Dean had literal God-tier levels of plot armor keeping them alive (repeated resurrections included). Angel is another one that, unlike Mulder and the Winchesters being very human, is a supernatural character (subsequently his level of pain tolerance and durability is at the level of regular impalement, defenestration out of skyscrapers and being set on fire), but the comparison still holds because of how often he's getting decimated and fighting forces way beyond his pay grade. Wolfram & Hart, the Shanshu and seeking redemption with the Powers that Be, like the mytharc conspiracy/alien takeover and literal God a.k.a. Chuck, is another endless, unwinnable fight that is so far beyond all the protagonists that there's no win/happily ever after and they'd be lucky just walking away from it with nothing. Angel also name-checks Indy with a blatantly Indy-inspired fantasy dream episode (Awakening in season 4) with Angelus making a crack about the Raiders fantasy. George Lucas actually visited the Angel set back in 2000 and was interested in how they were making mini movies every week and doing some pretty huge stunts on television. David Boreanaz had lunch with Lucas and has talked about it a few times over the many years. I mean, these are all shows starring action-oriented leading men and writing staffs of relatively similar age. Mostly Gen-X males with a few Baby Boomers (more so on the writing staff) with an audience that's primarily Gen-Y but appealing to a pretty broad age range (and probably a lot more female than originally intended!). Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford films in general were very formative to that generation. Harrison Ford is the ultimate leading man action star to a certain generation. Gen-Y got their familiarity with all of that by being the original home video/VHS generation and subsequently a lot more familiar with retro media (including things that were made before they were born or around that time) than Gen-Z. '80s movies have a lot of currency and familiarity still with Gen-Y, even if Baby Boomers were the stars of them and Gen-X were the ones who saw them in theaters. Gen-Y fangirls absolutely dominate the fandoms of many iconic television supernatural/sci-fi franchises (many are admittedly aging franchises). The WB/CW have catered to this group of fans for the last two and a half decades. If you're going to be reviving the character as a mid-20s-to-30s version (if the show lasts long enough, it probably will be stepping on the trilogy's toes timeline-wise by the end), I'd absolutely be aiming for this same audience and their tastes. They're also the audience who would be most receptive to and familiar with the character, IMO. If I were going to reinvent Indiana Jones for the television landscape, I would definitely be looking at those sorts of shows that have influence from the character already in their DNA. I think for the target audience, they'd definitely need to be aiming it at the same fanbases. Young Indy mostly tried to avoid stepping on Raiders' toes (despite Temple of Doom and Mask of Evil already making it ludicrous) by limiting the amount of supernatural elements, but I think a show would have to go all in on it. Indy would have to be transformed a bit in regards to trying to line him up with a character who would still be skeptical after all he's seen. Young Indy ended up forced into being a straight period drama with educational elements, which is very counter to what the audience wanted. There are things to keep from that approach (meeting historical persons, being a WWI veteran and witnessing history could absolutely be mined as backdrops to the stories), but the supernatural elements would have to exist in a revival now to get the audience who I think would be most receptive to it. While I would aim for a serialized drama format that would mean the globetrotting wouldn't have to completely change locations every episode (have it instead in arcs with some bigger MacGuffins and baddies perhaps crossing entire seasons), it's true that there would probably have to be more location filming than good, ol' Vancouver, but Disney is one of the few who could afford it (though Covid certainly would throw a wrench in it and political situations could potentially kill off certain locations). There's only so much green screen that Indy could get away with, though I imagine that a fair amount of it would have to be used for period piece reasons alone. There are a lot of modern intrusions even in historically-intact cities (Eastern Europe comes to mind as having a lot of its architecture intact and is affordable to film in) and around iconic landscapes to paint out. But at its core, it probably would need to bulk up its focus on the relationship dramas. Indy tends to have a girl at every port and to a degree you would introduce some of these love interests, but there's still a lot of relationships of every kind that could be developed and serialized. Certainly throw in a few femme fatales and tragic losses, given the Smallville-esque situation of there being an inevitable Indy/Marion endgame that should be kept--it thus becomes about the journey when it's a set conclusion. Absolutely have a strong recurring cast of Henry and friends new and old. The films actually have a lot of characters that Indy didn't just meet yesterday and could be developed to a huge extent. For a show to work now, there'd have to be a lot more connectivity to how often the recurring cast appear. Young Indy had a lot more of an anthology format with little chance of us getting attached to most of the revolving cast outside of a very tiny few. That's the biggest thing I'd change. You need characters to become regulars beyond just Indy if it were revived for modern cinematic television (the true successor to the film serials of the '30s!) in a way that isn't necessary for film installments.

I feel like I can’t write anymore (xposted from my DreamWidth.)

Wait, that's not quite right. I'm afraid I could never write in the first place. I've always been jealous of people who can crank out decent fanworks within days or hours of new content, or the resurgence of a dormant fandom of any particular franchise. I have only ever done this once or twice, and both times it has arguably been my best work. In both cases, they practically wrote themselves. All my best work is like this. All of my best work has consisted of one page character studies, or drabbles. Any multichapter fanwork I have ever attempted has petered out after chapter four or so. It's hard. Any kudos or good comments I get make me feel self conscious. I had one popular fic for like three minutes in 2009 in the Watchman fandom, and I had anxiety attacks over it. I kept getting "OMG PLZ CONTINUE" and I was like "I can't, the first chapter of this fic was a response to another fic, it wrote itself in one night, and all my attempts to build from it feel false and hollow, like I'm writing badfic of that first chapter." I feel like I was never a writer in the first place. I have never been a writer. I have a ton of notebooks and an entire google drive full of notes but no finished stories from any of those notes. My last serious attempt at a fic was for Jupiter Ascending, and that was four whole years ago. Just thinking about starting to write again fills me with anxiety. I can see full, whole, finished stories in my head, but am completely at a loss as to how that translates into a finished work. I need to examine why, and it all comes back to this - I feel like maybe I have internalized a lot of the stuff I was told about fanworks when I was younger, by people I trusted - that it's literary masturbation. It's appropriative. It's a waste of skills and time. It's shameful, and only flaky, sad little unfulfilled nerds writing self insertion stories do it. People who have come up since the aughties may not be able to relate to what things were like before LOTR and Harry Potter caused the fanfiction phenomenon to be mainstreamed, much less what has happened since with the SuperWhoLock and MCU fandoms. Before that, fic writers were pigeonholed as pathetic late bloomers and horny spinsters and housewives cranking out Kirk/Spock smut, or Duncan MacLeod/Methos porn, or speculating on what a married Mulder and Scully or Benton Fraser and Ray K/Ray V would be like, etc. What is the unofficial name for works like Twilight, and its even more maligned offspring, 50 Shades Of Grey, which began as a Twilight AU fic with the names searched and replaced? Housewife Porn. There are fans who still remember what things were like before the internet, when fic only came in home-produced zines sold under the table at conventions. There are folks on Tumblr who have commiserated about these dark times, and who even talk about the aughties/1990s fanfic like it was a billion years ago, which feels crazy because I still remember it all like it was yesterday, and it makes me feel weird to be considered an Old Timer.  There are people who talk about My Immortal like it was whole decades ago, guys. That's weird. It just feels weird. And because the Mary Sue phenomenon was so reviled, people went to extreme lengths to avoid writing Sues of the own, or to be accused of doing so. They lambasted the Sues among them. People were policed and harassed and ostracized because they broke a social convention in their fanfic - because everyone else was afraid it would reflect badly on us all, and bring our whole side down. It wasn't until 2008 when controversial LJer Paperclipchains wrote an entry in the LJ comm fanficrants (which has been long since deleted) which, when summarized, boiled down to "I think writing Sues is maybe not a capital offense, but instead might be a phase people go through. Maybe people have to write a bunch of badfic before they get to the point where they are writing goodfic, and we shouldn't flame them for that. Maybe not all self inserts or OCs are necessarily Sues, and maybe we should all just chill out and rethink this whole thing. Maybe we should all take several seats and just let people create and have fun," that it really crystallized for me that perhaps here was something awfully toxic going on with how the fic writing community policed itself, and maybe that I had internalized it a lot. But I think it may be too late, that the damage is done. How do I undo it? Every time I try to start a new fic, The Little Hater in my head says "Why can't you just *enjoy* consuming media? Why do you have to appropriate it? That's lame. You don't want to be lame, do you?" And I'm not even lying, my blood pressure shoots up a little. A new Matrix sequel was announced a week ago and I feel like I should already be cranking out reams of fic, but I can't. And I wasn't able to even back when the Matrix fandom was active - which is fifteen whole fucking years ago, what the fuck. How do I work around this?

Deponia Doomsday and Meta: Responding to Gripers in Game?

I haven’t finished Deponia Doomsday and I don’t know spoilers. However, I can already say: the fourth game’s opening is fucking brilliant. So brilliant that apparently I have to write this longass analysis nobody asked for. XD

I love when game creators subtly go meta. In-game they might respond to fans’ criticism or make teasing jokes about previous parts of franchise gameplay. For instance, the first Mass Effect had a terrible driving system with the M35 Mako. That gets referenced in ME 3 when Vega and Cortez argue about what vehicles drive best. ME 1 had frustrating elevator travel with awkward conversations, which Garrus jokes about in ME 3′s Citadel DLC. ME 3 dialogue lovingly pokes fun at imperfect parts of the first game, all while embracing it as part of the universe.

Then I got to Deponia Doomsday. Doomsday’s introduction feels like a hysterical middle finger at people who didn’t appreciate the third game’s ending.

And goodness did that ending bother some people. 

Which isn’t surprising, I suppose. Killing the main character in your story can upset some fans. I feel sad about this because I believe this was *THE* right ending for the story. That’s not the focus of this analysis, but in short: Rufus getting a perfect ending in paradise would have felt contrived and unrealistic given the rest of the story’s atmosphere... not to mention... can you imagine Rufus settling down and chilling... with what he’s like? Rufus was a character never meant to have a perfect ending, and there’s far more heart, emotion, and power in a death. After ALL this time being an insensitive megalomaniac... Rufus does a purely selfless act... an act which ends up being his last. Damn. That’s cool. I cried. It’s a brilliant, perfectly chosen ending. It made me love these games more.

Obviously, this ending didn’t please everyone. I’m sure Daedalic Entertainment noticed that.

I suspect - but haven’t confirmed - that for those who enjoyed the series, they:

Tried to find in-story loopholes, etc. in the ending, and thereby argue a way wherein Rufus wasn’t dead.

Tried to pester Daedalic into making a fourth game... despite the fact that Deponia was CLEARLY envisioned as a trilogy from the first game’s release. And despite the fact that it’s hard to make a sequel when your protagonist’s dead.

Enter: Deponia Doomsday.

I was leery of this concept. I could tell Doomsday was working with time travel, alternate universes, and the like... bringing us into an AU where Rufus isn’t dead. I feared Doomsday would retcon what was THE most potent and heartfelt point of the entire series. You can’t bring Rufus back to life! You can’t erase his sacrifice! That would take away all the power of the moment retroactively! It’s a shame when stories do that, undercutting what was once great moments... simply to pull a story beyond when it should have ended, and make more money. Deponia was meant to end at three with Rufus’ death... as much as I’m someone who always enjoys more content from my fandoms, this seemed like shaky and unsatisfying ground to tread.

The opening to Doomsday has entirely assuaged my fears. I shouldn’t have worried about retconning great storytelling points... because if anyone knew that the ending of Goodbye Deponia (#3) was The Right Ending... it was Daedalic themselves.

Repeatedly in Doomsday’s opening, the writers pound in the point that Rufus is DEAD and that’s FINAL. They WILL NOT retcon what happened in Goodbye Deponia and they WILL NOT sacrifice the integrity of the story they’ve written.

They get this point across in many ways, but the two most prominent are Goal’s introductory speech and the first Huzzah song.

Goal reflects over what transpired in games one through three:

The end was never our creation. It was there, all this time. All we did was tempt it - the same way a surfer tempts fate, or tempts a shark by trying to outswim it. A for effort.

We crafted spears against beasts, built walls against spears. Ladders against walls and towers against ladders. After that, we built boats, ramparts, chimneys, shaving-foam-pie catapults, and when all our trash threatened to swallow even our highest spires, we built... a spaceship. Powered by nothing less than the destruction of our own planet.

The preparations took decades. What was meant to be an ark became our home. My home. Elysium. None of us ever thought there were thousands of clueless survivors down in that trash. Our bastion of hope became a herald of doom for Deponia. 

Fortunately, the tables turned. One of those clueless people foiled the plan. He saved Deponia and all who were left behind. And he saved me. By falling for me... literally. 

The end.

Oh? You don’t like this ending? Still hoping for something more upbeat? Well... it’s like I said. Endings and sharks: don’t tempt them.

Though... I got to admit... even after all this time I keep asking myself: If I was able to turn back time, what would I change? What would be the better ending? Or do I just want it to never end?

There’s so much to appreciate about the opening. 

First, it’s a rhetorically well-crafted speech, where even the oddest earlier lines of dialogue come around again (ex: tempting sharks) to focus on one point: the end is the end, even if Goal might want to imagine otherwise. 

Second, the speech provides a nice recap for the first three games.

Third, it’s the perfect set-up for what Doomsday is about: an alternate timeline than the main trilogy. From a writing perspective, Goal’s monologue gives game players an introduction into the concept of what Doomsday explores. Even without knowing anything about how other fans might have reacted, this addresses to every player what’s important about Deponia’s story: Rufus’ death was a concrete irreversible end, but we can still explore an alternate timeline of “what if.” It solidifies the ending of Goodbye Deponia, makes it clear there’s no retconning the emotions and events of Rufus’ death, while at the same time opening doors to another adventure with our idiotic anti-hero.

That’s damn meta already. But considering that maybe the writers were aware of fans’ mixed reactions to the third game’s ending, this speech could also be a way to address the controversy.

Goal’s speech might be from her perspective, thinking humanity’s poor actions trashing their planet led to the inevitable conundrum she’s in today. However, the ideas of tempting fate and unavoidable endings are also applicable to game playing fans who wished for a different trilogy conclusion. 

It’s not just that Goal sees the ending as inevitable. It’s that the writers, from the storytelling standpoint, see the ending as inevitable, too. “It was there, all this time,” Goal says, and they say, too. Rufus’ story was intentionally, unwaveringly written to end like this; the entire series was structured to build to this end, from its foreshadowing to its tone to what makes sense for effective plot arcs. There might have been some “tempting fate” on the writers’ part by what they chose to include... but ultimately... this had to be the ending for the story to work.

Tempting fate would be trying to goad the writers into a different ending... but trying to make something different could make things worse, no? Careful what you wish for, anyone? Endings and sharks: don’t tempt them.

And then, right in her speech, Goal asks, “Oh? You don’t like this ending? Still hoping for something more upbeat?” It’s like she read peoples’ Steam reviews on Goodbye Deponia’s “disappointing” conclusion. And when she goes on to muse about what she might have changed, she wonders if it’s that she wants it “to never end” - as though fans just want to have more and more and more Deponia games, not a trilogy with a definite, uncontinuable brick-wall end.

As if that weren’t enough to drill the point home, we have the opening tune, too. Every single lyric is meta as fuck.

You old amaurotic pinhead! Act like this thing is not dead, and didn’t Run into a brick wall at full tilt already Let me help you fill that gap in memory Living in the waste Was not to your taste But soon you will gaze Truth straight in the face: That all rivers run eventually to the sea

At this stage it’s evident: There will be no happy end Suck it up, princess! No one cares for your tears! It’s over! I’ve no damns to give For second thoughts that you’re stuck with: Looking for loopholes and wondering “what it?”

This again serves multiple purposes! 

The singer has always been the in-game “narrator” of Rufus’ life: he chronicles the past of when their fathers “dwelt in a world filled with rubbish and stink.” He mentions historians, lost records, and the like, so we know that, for the bard, Rufus is a historic figure. The bard’s reason for singing the song? The person he lives with is throwing a fit “about dirty dishes congesting the sink” or other minor household slovenliness; the bard’s trying to deflect his fault in not cleaning the house by talking about when things were worse on a planet of literal trash. It’s trying to guilt his house-sharing listener into being appreciative they live in a more clean environment than the Deponians did. So when the bard tells his listener in the fourth game that they’re an “old amaurotic pinhead” who “act[s] like this thing is not dead,” it’s probably because he’s still being harangued, despite the fact that he “close[d] [his] case; there’s nothing left to say” and went “off now for reals” (got kicked out of the house?). Purely from the perspective of the bard, he’s frustrated that this old dispute is still being brought up - it’s beating a dead horse for which he’s got “no [more] damns to give.”

This also is a good moment of foreshadowing. Again, I haven’t played Doomsday to the end yet, but I’d drink Rufus’ espresso ingredient-per-ingredient if something terrible didn’t happen. In the image above, that looks like Elysium crashed. Rufus talks about how he had a dream where all his friends died. We see old!Rufus destroy the planet with him still on it. I’ve seen fan reviews claim that “Thought 3 was bad emotionally? 4 said ‘hold my beer’.” McChronicle freaks out that he alters the timeline wherein Rufus saves the planet, suggesting we’re now on a timeline where that might not happen. Deponia Doomsday sure as hell ain’t gonna to have some optimal, squishy ending. And this song here foreshadows that: “At this stage it’s evident there will be no happy end.” This game’s story is doomed from the start. And: “Soon you will gaze truth straight in the face: that all rivers run eventually to the sea.” It’s an idea that, you can go into AU territory all you like, you can want something else than the trilogy’s conclusion, it’s INEVITABLE that all alternates will lead to the same, bad-ending sea. The theme of inevitability and tempting fate strikes again.

So there’s all that.

But the bard, more than ever, sounds like he’s talking to game players. The lyrics make the most sense if you hear it as him addressing you.

Gripers in particular.

Every. Single. Line. Sounds. Like. He’s. Addressing. Controversy. About. The. End. Of. Deponia. 3.

You old amaurotic pinhead! Act like this thing is not dead, and didn’t run into a brick wall at full tilt already. As in, all the people who tried to act like Rufus wasn’t dead. These people couldn’t accept that the ending ran into a brick wall: that all the painful horrors happened, and that the ending cannot be budged.

Living in the waste was not to your taste, but soon you will gaze truth straight in the face: that all rivers run eventually to the sea. Dissatisfied players wanted a different conclusion. The bard’s telling them an alternate path wouldn’t have made them any more satisfied.

At this stage it’s evident: there will be no happy end. The ending of Deponia 3 and start of 4 have made it clear Deponia isn’t a story with a happy ending. To deny that would be futile: it’s clear from what everyone’s played that this is how the story’s supposed to go.

Suck it up, princess! No one cares for your tears! It’s over! I’ve no damns to give for second thoughts that you’re stuck with: looking for loopholes and wondering “what it?”  Fans can complain all they want. Fans can try to reinterpret the ending to try to explain how Rufus could have survived. But the creators know the truth: the trilogy’s over. It’s ended. It’s sad. Not accepting that means you’re not accepting the reality of the story!

I mean. Holy crap. It literally sounds like Daedalic told gripers, “Suck it up, princess! No one cares for your tears! It’s over! I’ve no damns to give.” IN GAME. Wow.

In fact, the fact that Doomsday exists at all is an interesting response: in some ways, the premise of the fourth game seems to be a “Careful what you wish for” phenomenon. That “if you guys reeeeeaaaalllly want something else and keep begging for something else, you’re tempting fate and you’re going to get an ending that’s even WORSE.” Similar to how Llamas With Hats became increasingly depressing as the creator was pestered to continue the series beyond what it was due, so also is the response here: you’ll get more content, but it won’t be the happy alternative that you wanted.

I don’t want to say that the creators are lashing out against people who didn’t like the ending. I think it’s just as tongue-in-cheek as everything else in the Deponia series: written with a little edge for humorous effect. They’re not addressing grumblers to be rude, but instead to be clear: they’re not changing the ending, and they’re not apologetic about what they wrote here.

Deponia Doomsday isn’t made with salt... the creators have come up with another story that’s a fun and worthy addition to the universe. They’re not making another game JUST as a response, but because they came up with something worth telling. However, given as they might have heard lots of complaints, or people trying to explain-away to a happier ending, or people begging for a fourth game... I would not be surprised if they’re intentionally addressing these things intentionally by inserting them in-game.

Now, this whole shpeel that I’ve looked at doesn’t have to be an intended addressal to grumblers. It can also be read as meta addressing any generic game playing fan who might have felt emotionally battered at the trilogy’s conclusion. It’s a simple acknowledgement that the third game’s ending would be reason to make someone emotional. It’s not something that’s attacking criticism, but something that’s discussing the nature of the story itself. Everything in Goal’s speech and the bard’s lyrics fit this bill. It doesn’t have to be the case that it’s any addressal to fandom reaction.

Still... to me it sorta feels like a response to gripers is in there. Not as the sole intention, but as part of it? I’m not saying this is an addressal to grumblers, but that it very well could be.

I suspect that this game’s introduction was written with an intent to handle all of the above I’ve talked about.

Nevertheless. Whether it’s one meta or the other, it’s a brilliant use of meta in Doomsday’s opening. It’s brilliant if it’s just talking about the in-game course Deponia’s led, and how that might make players sad. It’s brilliant if it’s actually meant as a meta response to mixed reviews. 

Love it.

Repeatedly, at the start of Doomsday, the writers get across EXACTLY this point: that the ending of #3 c-a-n-n-o-t be reversed. This has two brilliant effects:

It allows the story to explore an AU without retconning the emotions of the first game.

AND. As I said, it’s a middle finger at anyone who might not have liked this ending. It’s not a rude middle finger - it won’t turn away fans or anything - and it’s 100% in the game series’ character. But it’s a way that hits the point HOME that Rufus DIED and that is FINAL.

So for me, as someone who adores what the trilogy did, I couldn’t be more stoked at this meta start. It’s hammered, over and over and over, that the conclusion is what it is. It gives me a new adventure to explore without fearing a plot-irreverent, money-grabbing retcon. It’s amusing, it’s meta, it’s multi-faceted, it’s well-conceived.

Yeah. I shouldn’t have worried about the fourth game’s content at all.

Michael in the Mainstream: The Last Jedi review

It has been a year since I first saw this, and it has given me plenty of time to sort out my thoughts on it. This film was very divisive in my mind, as it has been to filmgoers at large; no two people seem to have the same take on it. Alex of IHE liked it and thought it got better with each viewing; Schaffrillas Productions thinks the movie is really stupid and fails at what it set out to do; and Doug Walker, AKA the Nostalgia Critic, is somewhere in the middle, saying it has some of the best Star Wars has to offer as well as some of the worst. And that isn’t even getting into fan response, with the ever-hyperbolic Star Wars fandom screaming for ages about how this is an utter travesty of filmmaking, and how the whole movie should be retconned, and so on.

Frankly, such hyperbole should just be dismissed entirely out of hand. If you honestly think this film is the worst Star Wars film, or even an objectively bad film in general, you either have lived a very sheltered life or do not know a thing about films or filmmaking. Now, does that mean I think this is a GOOD film? Well… no. I think I most agree with Doug Walker on this; the film has a lot of great stuff, a lot of stuff done better than every other Star Wars movie; but for every great thing, there is an unbelievably awful thing too, balancing out the movie into being a literal divisive work, with half the film being a great Star Wars entry and the other half being a stream of idiocy, fluff, and filler. And the most baffling part is it isn’t even hard to tell which parts are good and which aren’t the awful parts stick out uncomfortably. Say what you will about something like Jar Jar, he at least seemed somewhat plausible within the universe of Star Wars. But the casino on Canto Bright, and the weird space horses? It just feels too weird, too whimsical, too Harry Potter-esque for Star Wars.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As far as story goes, we have this: Rey is off trying to convince the cranky hermit Luke Skywalker to train her, though this is easier said than done, as Luke seems rather content with milking alien walruses and just in general being a hermit to want to help her out. Meanwhile, the rebels are being chased down by the First Order, with Poe desperately trying to take command of the situation and his commanding officer not having any of it, which leads Poe to send Finn on a mission to find a way to sabotage the ships. This leads to Canto Bright as they search for a skilled hacker. Meanwhile, Rey is finding out she has a very interesting connection to Kylo Ren. There’s a lot going on this time in the galaxy far, far away, and it becomes unclear if things will come out on top for the rebels this time around.

So, let’s talk about what works first. The movie’s greatest strength is certainly the cinematography; this is hands down, indisputably, the best-looking Star Wars film to day. There are so many gorgeous, beautiful shots, so many scenes made better by the fantastic camera work. The presentation in this film is just top notch, and so much in this film is just a treat for the eyes. And the beauty isn’t just the shots, the actual lightsaber duels we get are easily some of the finest in the history of the franchise, with Rey and Kylo’s fight against the Praetorian Guards, as well as the final duel between Kylo and Luke on the salt field, moments like this deserve to be held up among the best in all of Star Wars history.

Then we have basically everything involving Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren in this movie. The scenes revolving around these characters are the most engaging and interesting in the entire film. Luke especially is a fascinating character, Mark Hamill giving his all to the performance and showcasing the natural progression from a well-meaning but hotheaded young hero to a jaded, cynical hermit who has, like his master before him, put himself into self-imposed exile due to his failures. Rey and Kylo have an intriguing dynamic, and they get so much focus and development. A lot of the film focuses on Kylo, giving much-needed development, though unfortunately it does jettison a lot of what made him interesting in the precious film. Gone are his tantrums, struggle with the light side of the Force, and emulation of his grandfather… but in comes a performance from Adam Driver that I felt at some points emulated Javier Bardem’s from No Country for Old Men. Yes, Kylo Ren managed to be as terrifying and ruthless as Anton Chigurh.

But of course, there are a great deal of problems, namely anything in he film that doesn’t focus around the three aforementioned characters. Outside of the opening space battle, just about everything with the rebels is a tedious slog of a chase scene, with the First Order apparently never once considering speeding up a little bit to catch up with the rebel ships slowly running out of gas. Despite what some very sad, strange people on the internet might convince you, there’s no overtly political messaging in the dynamic between Poe and Holdo; the only thing there is just really poor writing, where two characters who should be smarter act ridiculously stupid for poorly defined reasons. It’s pretty telling when Leia, probably the only person in the rebellion with a cool head on her shoulders, gets taken out of commission for a large chunk of the film early on.

The film also wastes a lot of characters that were built up to be more important than they ended up being. Phasma is unceremoniously killed (or maybe not) after an extremely brief battle, to the point where reading this sentence will probably take more time than her appearance onscreen in this film. The hacker that Finn and his new partner rose find on Canto Bright, portrayed by Benicio Del Toro, seems like he might end up an interesting morally ambiguous figure, and up until his final appearance he offers some interesting characterization, but then he stabs Finn and Rose in the back and vanishes from the film. Still, neither of the previous examples are anything compared to what happened to Snoke, the mysterious evil emperor figure who corrupted Ben Solo into becoming Kylo Ren. Some have said they didn’t find Snoke interesting to begin with, and that his death wasn’t too bad of a move, but on the same token there is so little revealed about him despite the fact that he is integral to a major character’s backstory that he ends up feeling like a missed opportunity. The fact that he is played by Andy Serkis only compounds my irritation; why get such a fantastic actor to play a wasted character like this? I have much the same feeling towards the disrespectful usage of Max Von Sydow in The Force Awakens; pointlessly tossing great actors into minor, throwaway roles is utterly depressing when you think of what their talents could have added to the story.

But of course, I have saved the worst for last: Rose Tico and Canto Bright. He two go hand in hand, as Canto Bright is where Rose gets much of her screentime and development with Finn. Canto Bright is a very odd locale, featuring a shiny casino and weird alien horses. The whole tone of the place is far too whimsical and jarring for the film it’s in, and it ends up badly clashing with the other scenes. It also ends up hogging a lot of screentime from the far more interesting and intriguing plot with Rey and Luke. The biggest issue, though, is how pointless the entire venture ends up being, as after all they go through, they end up failing miserably, which leads to a lot of the issues in the film’s final third. The whole thing ends up just being a pointless diversion from the more interesting plot and comes off as a way to pad out the runtime with hamfisted morals and glurge.

And then we have Rose, who, in this film anyway, is probably the least likable character in any Star Wars film. She is utterly bland and uninteresting as a character, which is a shame as her sister, a character with limited screentime who only appears in the opening before dying, was far more interesting in the few minutes she was onscreen than Rose is in her entirety. The biggest problem with Rose is that she almost feels like a fan insert character, with how she gushes over Finn at first and gets to kiss him at the end despite the two having rather mediocre chemistry. Said kiss also comes after a moment where she ruins a moment that could have been an excellent culmination of Finn’s character arc and been a hugely subversive and expectation-defying moment, and then utters the most vomit-inducingly bad line in Star Wars history: "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love." Nothing about this line works, makes sense, or does anything but make the viewer cringe hard. This is worse than Anakin’s comments about sand, worse than anything in the prequels really, and I don’t think this is hyperbolic in the slightest, since we have had over a decade and a lack of George Lucas involvement to fine-tune scripts and not deliver lines that sound like they belong in a Hallmark special.

Overall, the film absolutely fails to do what it sets out to do: deliver a subversive film that defies audience expectations. Nothing in the film really subverts or plays with audience expectations in a positive way; all of the big subversions come from characters acting as insanely stupid as possible, and they all come from a dull plotline that hogs the screentime from the far more intriguing plotline. The Rey/Luke/Kylo stuff in this movie is easily some of the best and most engaging Star Wars content to date, but it gets shoved aside far too often, and a lot of elements of it seem to be left hanging. Built up elements like Rey’s parents, Snoke, and Phasma are unceremoniously dropped in frankly insulting ways, and at the end of the movie everyone is basically at the spot they were at at the end of the first one.

And that, right there, is my true issue with the film: it all feels very pointless. The heroes accomplish next to nothing, and the overall effects on the franchise are utterly minor. This is a Star Wars film I could almost say you could skip when viewing them for how little it adds… but what little it does add is really good and essential. This is definitely a movie that home viewing will make better, since at home you can skip through the awful Canto Bright and rebel chase sequences to get to the good stuff. The lightspeed ram, the Praetorian duel, Luke and Kylo’s confrontation… all of that stuff is worth seeing.

Ultimately, the film is neither really good nor bad. It’s just a mixed bag that is not nearly as subversive or expectation-defying as a contemporary blockbuster film like Infinity War or even an older film like The Empire Strikes Back. What it does succeed at is delivering a visually stunning film with excellent character dynamics between the three big players. So, it is easy to see why the film is divisive, but it is impossible to see why people could possibly write the film off as the “Worst ever” or “a film so bad it should be retconned.” If you honestly believe this film is so utterly, irredeemably awful, I frankly don’t think your opinions on film are worth much. If you think the film isn’t so good but at least can find a few things to respect in it, well, I find that a far more respectable position than the blind, frothing-at-the-mouth hatred the film has gotten. It really doesn’t deserve it, though it also doesn’t deserve to be held up as the gold standard of Star Wars films either. It does contain some of the worst moments, if not exactly the absolute worst, in the history of the franchise, after all. But on the same token, it contains some of the absolute best, top ten or twenty best moments of the franchise as well. To write the film off or to praise it blindly as a masterpiece are equally foolhardy decisions.

The way this film wraps up leaves me wondering what could possibly be done for the next film; I have no idea where the series could possibly go, and it fills me with a sense of worry and of suspense. The future of Star Wars is uncertain, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned after being a lifelong fan of the franchise, it’s that Star Wars always finds a way to come out on top eventually.

What do you say when detractors of Super complain that modern Dragon Ball content is ruining the franchises reputation?

“Nice historical revisionism there, pal”

Here’s a little history lesson for you, anon. A lot of people like to forget this, or at least pretend it never happened, either because they didn’t discuss the show outside of Dragon Ball’s hardcore fandom and didn’t pay much mind to the backlash, or because they dismissed it as not that many people in the long run. 

But between around the time Dragon Ball Z finished airing in America and other western countries and about the start of the new decade, Dragon Ball Z was an internet LAUGHING STOCK among many circles

Hype backlash for the show set in hard, and it was frequently held up as “The epitome of everything wrong with Shonen anime”, a badly paced, no-depth, generic run of the mill show that was all about screaming and power levels. A relic of the past that had long been surpassed by dozens of other series that did all of it’s tropes better, but it was still to blame for all the other problems shonen anime had after it.

You couldn’t go into a lot of hardcore anime fan circles and say Dragon Ball Z was your favourite anime without being met with a lot of mockery and people assuming you had no taste. The show was looked down on as some lowest common denominator trash that had aged poorly and that mostly nostalgic dude-bros were into. Nothing a sophisticated fan of Japanese Animation would waste their time on.

We still see the effects of this backlash to this day, reflected in how a lot of people try to write off serious discussions and analysis of the franchise, insisting “It ain’t that deep!”

It’s this mindset that’s a big part of the reason why TFS memes took over the fandom to the extent that they did, since it became so socially acceptable to mock the series and the Abridged series was built on what was meant to be light-hearted riffing on the series and old fandom interpretations and memes but people thought they were seriously mocking the series, a lot of Dragon Ball fans over time just started going with the flow and treating Dragon Ball as a critically bad series that they still enjoyed. 

Basically, instead of actually trying to defend the series and actually making an effort to think critically about it, a lot of people just went “Yeah it’s trash, but it’s our trash! :)”

This sort of thing was mostly a Western thing mind, particularly an American reaction, in Japan Dragon Ball has always continued to be well regarded, same in Latin America and some other countries. But yeah, for much of the American-Euro centric internet for the latter half of last decade, Dragon Ball Z was just some overrated joke that wasn’t meant to be taken seriously because of all it’s well documented flaws.

You want to know what started a change from this?

Dragon Ball Kai. Arguably the thing that helped start off the modern era of Dragon Ball content along with the Yo! special.

Dragon Ball Kai addressed a lot of the series most infamous complaints. It cut out the majority of filler, leading to much quicker pacing and a more focused narrative, and had a much better, more faithful dub than either Z or Dragon Ball had. 

Suddenly a lot of people mocking Dragon Ball Z gave the franchise another chance and, seeing the story closer to what was intended with the manga, a lot of people started to look at the series in a more positive light again. And casual fans who hadn’t gotten to watch Z for a few years gained a better appreciation for it. And of course, it helped bring in a new generation of younger fans, both kids and teenagers who missed out on Z when it was airing.

Then we got Battle of Gods, which had a few detractors but in general was very well received. And then Resurrection F happened, and then Super’s announcement suddenly started up the hype train big time. 

And while Super floundered a bit at the start due to it’s poor production, over the course of it’s original arcs it started to gain more positive attention, bringing in new fans and bringing back a flood of casuals who had drifted off from the franchise for years. 

Dragon Ball became Toei’s number one most profitable franchise through merchandise revenue, to the point it’s now making them more than three times as much as One Piece. It got consistently good ratings for it’s timeslot besides that, and the dub gets good ratings by late night modern Toonami standards. And now the upcoming movie is generating so much hype that in Japan alone it’s advanced ticket sales are already more than double that of Resurrection F.

This isn’t even touching on how video games like Xenoverse and ESPECIALLY FighterZ, which is a huge hit among the fighting game community, have helped attract a lot of new fans who previously didn’t give Dragon Ball the time of day.

This and nostalgic appreciation kicking in has meant that over the course of this decade, Dragon Ball’s reputation has improved and a lot of the backlash to the series faded enough that it’s once more socially acceptable among much of the internet to gush about how much you love the series again and how it’s one of the best and most influential anime ever.

I mean, we aren’t at the point we were when Z first caught on in the West. Super is a popular series, but it’s not really as big as Z was, and there are still snobs who hate the franchise in general and problems in the fandom. Dear God, are there problems in the fandom. But frankly, Dragon Ball hasn’t been in as good standing as it currently is for years.

So to say that Super and other modern works have “Ruined” Dragon Ball’s reputation is a downright lie. Everything from Kai to where we are now with the franchise has been working to restore Dragon Ball’s popularity and brand.

Yeah, among the hardcore fandom modern Dragon Ball works have a lot of critics. But honestly, the people you see constantly harping on Super and the like online and calling it a franchise ruining abomination are a vocal minority at best.

Twitter Polls from Japanese viewers showed that the majority of fans liked almost every episode of Super that came out. Dragon Ball merchandise revenue is through the roof. And again, it got solid ratings and the movie is already on it’s way to be a big success.

As much as hardcore fandom loves to complain about every little detail of everything in the West, casual fans are routinely pretty positive about Super. The majority of people I talk to who like Dragon Ball but don’t have it as their primary fandom or people that only watched Kai when it was airing enjoy Super and think it’s fun. Super has plenty of it’s own fans who have only gotten into Dragon Ball recently, and plenty of longtime fans like me who love and defend it. I know people who’ve said that Super is what got them to start taking Dragon Ball seriously when it was previously just another series they sometimes watched.

And the last several episodes of Super were treated like a huge event throughout Latin America. It was aired in pubs and all kinds of public venues, including stadiums, in multiple Latin American countries, many of these gathering having crowds numbering in the THOUSANDS to watch the episodes, which were enormous hits. News channels were talking about the show and reporting on them, including discussing spoilers and plot synopsis. It was advertised like a high-profile sporting event.

That many people don’t get that hyped and go to that kind of trouble for a show they don’t enjoy.

Opinions about Dragon Ball aren’t unanimously positive. but I think hardcore fans who’re used to being waist-deep into the discourse around Super need to step back from the fandom now and again, because in general… modern Dragon Ball is regarded well enough, and Dragon Ball is all-around a well beloved staple of pop culture, even if it’s not as big and all over the place as in it’s heyday.

Things could always be better, yes. Hopefully the next Dragon Ball show has a good production so it turns out even better than Super, and maybe that’ll kick the hype for the series even further into overdrive. But as things stand, Dragon Ball’s reputation is safe.

It’s fine for people to not like Super and other modern Dragon Ball works, but there’s no need to go spreading a “The franchise is ruined! Dragon Ball is a joke now!” Narrative when that’s clearly not the case. 

all the posts collating reactions to The Empire Strikes Back or writing mock Rotten Tomatoes reviews to imply that the criticisms of this film aren’t worth paying attention to are just…so missing the point

exactly two works that said what ‘Star Wars’ was existed at the time of Empire’s release in 1980: Star Wars (not yet renamed ‘A New Hope’) and Alan Dean Foster’s 'Splinter of the Mind’s Eye’ (a sequel written in case Star Wars was a flop that could be filmed on a shoestring budget and without Harrison Ford. It’s Wild and puts the lie to the idea that Lucas had any idea where the Skywalker story was going; highly recommend)

in the year of our Lord 2017, The Last Jedi was released as the third film in a revival of a six film, single creative vision franchise, with the added baggage of over two decades of novels, comics, video games, and other media (the only thing ever fully expelled from canon was the infamous holiday special, which, honestly, had greater creative merit than some of the stuff that got to stay)

what’s the point? Expectations. No, not people who didn’t want anything to change and are Mad About It or whatever facile narrative the authors of those blog posts and reviews are using to explain why this film is probably more divisive than the goddamn prequels. The problem is that not only does The Last Jedi clash with decades of fandom, it is even at loggerheads with its sister films in this particular revival. and it doesn’t get the same benefit of the doubt that ESB got because that’s not how franchises and fandoms actually work. you don’t get to ignore everything that came before to tell your own story. they have to work together. 

Sure, not everybody read the EU (and trust me some of them are better off for it). But almost everybody saw The Force Awakens, most of them saw Rogue One, and a fair number of them, old and young fans alike, eagerly consumed the New EU content that offered glimpses into how the events of The Force Awakens came about and what mysteries were set up in what was effectively a reboot rather than a sequel. Generally, you know, regardless of how much you hate 'puzzleboxes,’ it is reasonable to expect that what one film sets up will have a payoff in the next, particularly when the first film takes such care to be sensitive to what the fans want (as JJ and Kasden did with TFA) - because while this is a money faucet for Disney, sure, there’s no point in bringing this franchise back without those fans (and of course, their kids) - and what they got from Rian and the Lucasfilm story team was…a confirmation that they had been wasting their time. It’s all well and good to pull the rug out from under the audience (as this film does incessantly) but it’s cynical bullshit to basically bait them with promo material and the preceding canon and then to deliver on basically nothing and expect everyone to just be okay with it. This film effectively penalizes the people who cared the most and spent the most time engaging with The Force Awakens and rewards people who may not have really been here for what Lucas was selling to begin with. As one review put it, it ‘does not care what you think about Star Wars’.

But when you set expectations as deliberately as Kennedy and the Lucasfilm Story Group did in JJ and Kasden’s TFA, it’s not great writing to blow them to pieces mid-narrative. It’s just lazy. the idea that Rey has no connection to the Skywalker line? a good idea, potentially, but clumsily executed, as it is played out less as an important revelation and more an excuse to not actually give any kind of answer to how Rey came to be Ben’s equal on the Light (or why she even is ‘Light’ honestly; I love Angry Rey but there’s seemingly no danger in her temptation) or where she got a skill set rivaled in this franchise only by literal Space Jesus Anakin Skywalker. Snoke is a one-noted villain; having him be betrayed by Kylo in the midst of his own villain arc? a very good idea. it belongs as the climax of the film, not the end of act 2 so there is no time for anything to breathe, just more never-ending crises and hardship.

Like, spare me the 'force visions are unreliable’ (Rey’s was unlike anything we had seen before, it wasn’t Anakin’s nightmare or Luke on Dagobah) bs; the film didn’t say that what Rey saw was wrong for x reason, it just pretended that it never happened and Rey didn’t say anything about it); spare me ‘our heroes have to fail and sometimes all the plans don’t work out’ we know that, we live in the real world of 2017 but while making your clever point you have wasted the presence of three extremely talented actors of color, and let down the audiences waiting for a chance to see people who look like them be the heroes for once. instead it turns out they didn’t actually matter all that much, but maybe next film! 

It’s not clever. It’s not visionary. It’s cheap, it’s cowardly, and it isn’t actually that original because the film leaves us exactly where we expected. Poe is the leader and Leia’s heir to command, Finn is a newly-committed Rebel brimming with unrealized potential, Rey is a Jedi character (amorphously defined) who we know exactly as much about as we started, Luke is gone, even if he went out in pretty spectacular fashion, Carrie’s death means that Leia will be leaving us soon, and Kyle Ben has become the big bad. That’s the only real development - Snoke’s death and Ben’s rejection of his redemption - and it’s buried under Rey, our erstwhile heroine, being a vehicle for the villain’s character development. The only character this film particularly cares about is a white fascist who gets every chance to be redeemed and rejects them while the film expects us to keep caring. 

So, yeah. People are mad. Not because of the same ‘the series is changed forever now’ shit that the haters of ESB were on about. Because the real changes? Ben being the real villain, the smallfolk of the galaxy being the source of light and conduits of the Force? I don’t see anyone complaining all that hard about them. 

the complaints are about the damage done to beloved characters for…not all that much of a payoff. the misuse and marginalization of the characters of color. the disdain with which the script treats the nostalgia of the Force Awakens. the unrelenting pace of the film that just grinds the Resistance (and the audience) down and just tells them to trust us, even as more and more and more is taken away. Rey’s parentage isn’t the only thing cast aside - promises of developments in Finn’s story - his identity, his potential to cause a revolt in the First Order, even his force sensitivity (you want a force user from nothing? how about a child soldier from a nameless family who as we are continually reminded used to be on sanitation crew) - are broken. Rey has her dream of family taken away…and replaced with…well the film doesn’t really bother to say because she’s a plot device for most of act 3. We don’t get to see her reject Ren and leave him. Because this isn’t her story; it’s his. Kylo is unconscious, so the scene is over. Tell me how that is a satisfying arc for our erstwhile protagonist? Poe’s character is completely uprooted from what we’ve seen before to make him an obnoxious hotheaded menace whose emotions threaten the survival of the Resistance if two old white women aren’t able to keep him in check. Rose says a lot and gets to do almost nothing. Luke…Luke is torn down to justify the fall of Ben Solo, never given the chance to establish a meaningful bond with his erstwhile successor, and is only given the chance to atone by acting as a diversion to give the others time to escape. he dies alone, a failure, even if he is at peace with how things turned out.

last year we were shown a movie in the wake of one of the more traumatic political events in the life of the people on this website where a diverse and sympathetic cast fight hard and are entirely wiped out. But their deaths come in a spectacular and charged finale that carries the desperation and grief and pathos through into the beginning of the story we know and love. it all feels worth something. Rogue One has its flaws as a film but it comes together in a way that The Last Jedi does not. In the end, what Jyn and Cassian and the others do is just enough to get the plans away, to start the sequence of events that will lead to the Empire’s destruction.

Here?

there’s just not enough left. not enough of the Resistance, not enough story, not enough hope. 

to have that hope repeatedly stripped away and cynically exploited through a narrative that drags the characters from crisis to crisis without bothering to justify itself or its role in the story (while retreading the highlights of Episodes V and VI without the emotional depth to back them up), and in so doing wears down the audience as much as the characters is not why I have devoted so much of my life and emotional energy to this series about space wizards and their galaxy-destroying family squabbles and eventual chance for redemption. for all his many, many faults, George Lucas understood that.

you can’t just talk about hope. sooner or later you have to see it. You have to feel that what you are suffering will be worth it. The text needs to tell you as much. it’s clumsy and cliched and it is necessary. In the Empire Strikes Back, after Han is captured and Luke is beaten, the turning point is Lando. Lando changes the course of the movie, rescuing Leia and Chewie, who rescue Luke. They live to fight another day, and at the end they are wounded but among friends. 

the moment in The Last Jedi where that could have happened was when Leia’s signal went out. How terrific would it have been if after being betrayed by a scoundrel the original scoundrel with a heart of gold, Lando Calrissian, arrives at the head of a fleet made up of all the alien races so inexplicably missing from the sequel trilogy so far, fending off the First Order long enough for the Resistance to escape with most of the survivors on Crait?

But Rian had to have one last twist of the knife. so nobody came. only Luke, and only as a distraction to buy time that ultimately cost him his life and reduced his legacy to giving everything to atone for his past sins. there is no Lando moment. there is no turning point, no moment where a larger victory is hinted at. and no, a single stable boy far, far away from the war is not the same thing. It makes an interesting point about the force and the metanarrative of Star Wars. It is not what this film needed after everything it put its characters and audience through.

and so at the end I’m not hopeful. I’m just tired. So, very tired. And I miss what made me fall in love with this series about space wizards and the Skywalker family in the first place

Wholesome Questionare Tag Meme

Tagged by @80sglamcowboy Rules are: -Post the rules -Answer the questions given to you by the tagger -Write eleven questions of your own -Tag eleven people

This is long as Hell, friends and I apologise.

One inquisitive bitch has asked me:

1. Name one person (real or fictional) that you think you could 100% take on in a fight

Foaming mouth guy from Avatar. He’s got no stamina, barely any health, no skill. He’s unfocused and weak and my noodley nerd-ass could take him. (Though I am a little concerned he has rabies.)

2. What’s your favourite snack rn

Grilled cheese w veggies, mustard, and grilled tofu w a side of ketchup made by my roommate. It’s honestly the purest thing.

3. Which apocalypse do you think you’d do the best in? (i.e. Nuclear winter/ robot uprising/ Too many vampires, etc)

O man. I love apocalypse movies and I love survival horror (that one episode of the X Files where they’re trapped in a cabin, anybody?). I also genuinely love camping and I’m a bit of a medical hobbyist. I also watched an unreasonable amount of prepper videos on YouTube. That said, as mentioned above, I am a couch potato weekling. Furthermore, I don’t do well in conflict so if the world hierarchy collapses into a power vacuum where you have to Orange is the New Black-style intimidate ppl for supplies, I would melt and die quickly.

My best bet, it would seem, is an Arrival-esque alien apocalypse where the ones who have enough patience and sci fi knowledge to communicate w aliens are at the top of the food chain. And worst case scenario it’s better for my ego to die at the hands of an alien than a human.

Sci go apocalypses are just cleaner y'know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


4. Best and worst fandom you’ve been in? Or have you somehow managed to avoid fandom completely?

Worst has to be Steven Universe. I regret not just moving on after I got bored. Ah well.

(I also think celebrity/real ppl fandoms are a dead end.)

My other fandoms all have various pros and cons and it’s hard to pick a favourite.

Adventure Time has great fanart, great meta and ppl have yet to descend into Homestuck-ian chaos. That said, they’re quiet af. People also fixate way too much on the fake fanfic AU Fionna and Cake. I have yet to read a really good Bonny/Marcy fic and that is a tragedy (a few have come close tho). Bottom line for AT tho is that it’s my go to wholesome cartoonist fandom. I like that it has depth but that it’s generally very simple and fun and that the fans are mostly shut in animation adults.

AtLA/LoK fandom’s biggest pro is that it’s huge and you literally never ran out of quality content. I’ve even made a few friends via this decade old franchise. It’s also enjoyably rich and complex. One of my favourite (now inactive) blogs was one that connected world building and little background Easter eggs to real Chinese history and culture. That wAs so cool!! I defs think as a Chinese person it allowed me to connect to non-western culture in a socially acceptable way.

The downsides tho are many: it can be overwhelmingly complicated (esp as someone who knows jack shit abt Chinese history), people take it too seriously, The Great Shipping Wars, it’s so big it’s a little lonely, the show itself has so many flaws upon greater inspection you wonder why you wasted your time on anything related to it, it’s an Asian themed story created by white dudes who make fun of their fans, the best parts of the show were written by other writers but those same white guys get k the credit. Also as w any fandom related to POC culture, racism happens. Anyways most of you know this already. IMO the best thing to have happened do the fandom is korrasami. Now it’s just abt Asian lesbians ruling the world.

(Though I also thoroughly enjoy the Family Rivalry part of the fandom. There are so mNy dysfunctional families to choose from!)

Rick and Morty is technically speaking my newest fandom. It’s got a lot of obvious cons (pickle Rick sexists, Szechuan sauce racists, asfhkkh incest) but one other con is just how pedantic and overly analytical people are abt the world building. I can’t breathe wo being corrected. RM has a misleadingly complicated high sci fi aesthetic that begets the kind of overanalysing my brand of overanalytical nerdiness can’t handle. Too many alternate universes. It’s just too complicated.

However one thing I like is that conversely I can overanalyse the writing and characters’ psychology/relationships (which I LOVE) and ppl take me very seriously. (At least they used to.) it’s kinda validating to have your 3k word essay on an old man’s bedroom and what that signifies for his depression get over 1k notes.

Rm also attracts the fun, super talented animation crowd so there’s boundless fanart and memes. I never knew I would like a gravity falls crossover retirement home AU btwn Rick and Stan so much but the art is objectively gorgeous?? So ??

I really dislike the lack of attention the female characters get from fandom bc they’re all really great? Female rep is limited but both canon and fic really do their 2-3 tokens justice. Also the jerry hatred is getting old (that male aggression… Like… Calm down, Jake) but it’s a refreshing departure drom when Megg from family guy was the butt of the joke.

Harry Potter, one of the pillars of nerd society, has both changed my life and irreconcilably annoyed me to death. (W no thanks to the racist creator herself!) One can’t underestimate how huge the hp fandom is which offers you as many reasons to love it as reasons not to. Harry Potter’s canon has complex world building that’s also charming enough not to take itself too seriously and much the same could b said of fanon. To a degree. Certain corners of the fanbase are fantastic shitposters and meme-ers and can draw you back in like a black hole. Casually enjoying Harry potter imo is where it’s at. The fanfic is probably one of the most impressively vast. Strangers at Drakesaugh, believe it or not, still updates and not only that, I still read it.

Not casually enjoying Harry potter is, um, yikes? HP and Hunger Games love to insert themselves appropriately in real life political traumas and honestly the dedication of the fandom can be overwhelming.

The HP fanart corner of deviantart circa 2010-12 and @flocc HP comics however are the best.

Meet the Robinsons, Ye Olde Fandom, still stands to this day. (Thanks in part to me ngl) As Iroh might say, they are a proud people. MTR is so bizarre and tiny it’s the only fandom I was able to read EVERY fic summary in existence (ones published on obscure sites excepted). The fandom has never ceased to surprise me for better or worse and mostly due to its age range. The original movie was intended for 8-12 yr olds and their (jaded) parents which means that now, ten years later, the fans are anywhere between 12 and 25. It has approximately 20 pieces of professional-grade fanart and fic and I am downright serious abt the quality and thoughtful complexity of this minority of fanart. Like I shit you not some of it’s almost too dark. However, tragically, one can’t talk abt obscure Disney fandoms wo also mentioning the incest ships (this is what happens when middleschoolers have to resort to cartoons to explore their sexuality in an anti sex ed world), the disorganised crossovers, and the blinding lack of imagination. Nonetheless, that a fandom of any kind could sprout from a 90 min cgi movie before the recession, based off an obscure but objectively fascinating children’s book, is still impressive. The fandoms smallness can in many wars work to everybody’s benefit: it’s a tightly knit community w little to no drama. And lots of memes (that I mostly make) to enjoy sincerely or ironically.

I’m also going to mention, very briefly, the Twin Peaks fandom, most of whom, even the die hards, are v casual when it comes to fan content (I need more fic damnit). Nonetheless it’s a decidedly cool art kid crowd for an art house show and I really enjoy befriending twin peaks watchers.

5. What’s one hot food that you prefer cold? (or, alternatively, one cold food you like hot)

Is it snobby to say I like food to be the temperature God intended?

Like I like cold pizza and salad-y pasta but I wouldn’t mind if everything were room temperature as long as the food itself was well made.

6. ya like jazz? What music do you enjoy listening to? Can you recommend any songs/ artists from that genre?

I think in some contexts I can like jazz. It’s very cosy and nostalgic, it can make you feel like a grand dame stepping out of your limo into your martini filled mansion as records pop around you and your fur carpeted living room. I also occasionally like jazz covers and alternate genres of jazz like electro swing etc.

Generally though I also think jazz is a little antiquated and a little all over the place. I lean more towards the ambiguous minimalism of mellow techno music like Jonna Lee, Grimes, Björk, early Lorde, Yasmine Hamdan, Austra, TRST, etc

I mean I don’t stick to just one genre (I imagine most ppl don’t). I like alternative (Tori Amos, Regina Spektor, Joanna Newsom) and some musicians who seem to completely exist outside of genre like iMonster and the Gorillaz. Not to mention straight up pop like broods, Ellie goulding, lady gaga and Lana del rey. (I mean technically Ldr isn’t pop but u get the ideer)

7. What binge worthy show do you like?

So many man. There are so many out there! Twin peaks, Transparent, Love, Grace and Frankie, Adventure Time, House of Cards, Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty, Mad Men, Girls, Broad City, Black Mirror, Avatar TLA, 6Teen, Chowder, Over the Garden Wall, Flapjack, the first season of Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, etc

The list goes on. I’m a TV fiend.

8. What’s an old meme that you miss and wish would be brought back?

Always liked the Gothic [x town or whatever] meme. It was like a text post version of the cursed images meme. Currently I’m really enjoying the song from another room meme and I hope even after it gets old it’ll make a comeback.

9. Tell me your aesthetic



O man. That’s a can of worms! Okay. Deep breath.

I like futurism, of all kinds. I like strong lines and clear shapes. I like colour blocking and minimalism and glass and holographic LED neons. I like white Japanese urban tiled buildings. I like aliens and ruins and cubes and white and colour blocking and black. I like technology and aliens and Comme des Garçons and Issey Miyake. Rooms that are empty but for one light and one window and one plant. Love that.

I like the midcentury cubism and Mod and 30’s futurism. Clear and strong industrial shapes and curves and post modernist abstractionism.

I also love nature, I love most every Björk and Iamamiwhoami music video. I love the mountains and the forests and the desert and the winter tundra and most of all I love the water. A vast expanse of sky and sea w so many colours and textures. I love the 2000s and funny blob shapes and y2k’s obsession w secondary colours and shiny round things. Love pink. I am a grown adult who will never tire of pink. (Though I don’t really like when people overdo pink.) I love cursed image family photos taken with flash in a suburb. I love the grime and the sanitary aesthetic of suburbs and hospitals and brutalist office spaces. The fluorescent lights of the institution but with purple carpeting!

I love 70s mod and I love colorful 80s brutalism I like it when houses are shaped weirdly and they have carpets and polished curved wooden countertops and spacious nothingness where everything looks clean and cosy and bizarrely ugly and it all looks like an art gallery w too many plants.

I also really love maximalism and wood and detail and fur and velvet and embroidery and silk and windows and wood carvings.

I love 70s kitsch like John waters movies and Shrimps designer fake fur CDG17 where they just piled on knickknack after knickknack onto white dresses w food long trains. Toys and novelty items and lamps shaped like a woman’s leg in a fishnet stocking. (See also: most Tim burton movies, wes Anderson, Carrie fishers house)

An overwhelming mishmash of wool patterns with clean cubic 70s architecture and so many plants and windows and wallpaper and candles and cobwebs. Also really like witchy mourning jewelry and essentially every house in Harry potter. Love the unfortunately racist boho/hippie aesthetic. Any house designed by bill kirsch is a masterpiece. Woven baskets on the ceiling piles of hats and art supplies everywhere. Stuff!! Everywhere! Hidden passageways reading nooks fireplaces the Pink Palace from Coraline!

Everything!!!

I’m a cartoonist who’s a nerd for design so I like when concepts are taken to the extreme in a humourously charming and clear-minded way. Whatever aesthetic someone chooses, they should go all out and really dedicate themselves to the highest form of that aesthetic. It has to be perfect without being sanitary of fake. It has to be alive yet beautiful, frozen in one perfect moment.

10. Favourite time of day and why?

Dusk. I think it’s a nostalgia thing. I loved the hours before bed time as well the hours before dinner when it was getting dark and the sun was reflecting freaky colours along the horizon while I ran around the grass. It’s cozy but it’s spacious and adventurous. So many things can happen at dusk!



11. You have the choice to live in any fictional universe - which one do you pick and why?

Harry Potter!!! You get the best of both worlds: magical, over-romanticised Victorian/medievalism, wish-fulfillment surrealism and wifi. It’s great. Likelihood of dying is so low, medicine is so advanced and even then ppls n°1 choice of lethal weapon (Avada Kedavra) is painless. Me and Luna could hang in her garden. I’d never have to pay for the subway again. I could live a nomadic life in a tent w infinite space. If you chose to live as a wizard amongst Muggles you’re basically god and you can cheat capitalism. Gravity is my bitch! And I’m not gna lie my dream house has always been a combination of The Burrow, the Lovegood house, and Shell Cottage.

My turn to pick your brain:

1 Favourite texture?

2 Favourite smell?

3 Favourite children’s book/children’s TV show? (I’m talking about the bizarre abstract ones for toddlers)

4 Best and worst prank you’ve ever pulled?

5 Weirdest beginning of a friendship?

6 When you’ve been in fandom for a while you start to notice you’ve a habit of staying in the same corners. What corner are you in? Are you part of the fluffy ship corner? The intense world building spec meta corner? The shitpost comic fanart corner? Etc

7 If you could invent a class that would be obligatory for all high schools across your country what would it be?

8 What’s the weirdest thing you’ve gotten at Halloween while trick or treating?

9 Weirdest family tradition of yours?

10 Describe your significant other (or your crush, or your dream partner or if you’re aromantic your fave person) through only TV references.

11 Favourite piece of dialogue in a movie?

I don’t know 11 ppl but nonetheless tagging: @that-guy-in-the-bowler-hat @skairheart @nochangenohope @eventheslightestrayofsunshine@autistic-jaredkleinman@phoenixkluke

…and YOU (if you were not mentioned above and so choose to accept this mission)

It’s never too late to make the big bucks.

“I want to be a superhero” was a line you’d probably expect coming from young children, but as the case with a large portion of society I didn’t really grow out of my superhero phase and here I was 22 years old still lining up at comic book stores waiting to get a new Batman comic. Today’s social society being receptive to anything that is a result of mainstream media production is said to be acceptable in social circles, such as if Marvel came out with a ‘Spiderman’ movie, it would be acceptable to go see it regardless of your Age or gender as it’s a ‘popular narrative’ providing content to the masses and is easily accessible. I feel if one tends to go further into this narrative like I did with superhero’s and try to get their means of entertainment through more unconventional means like comic books, video games, and animated cartoons, would lead people to have a negative perception about being overly attached or interested in content that might not be regarded as acceptable by mainstream media at this particular point in time. I do however feel like this is becoming more lax and people are becoming more acceptable of ‘geek’ or ‘nerd culture’ as the rise in popularity of ‘Marvel’ and ‘DC’ movies has led to superhero’s and superhero culture being a more common topic of conversation in society and the rise in mainstream actors playing superhero roles such as Robert Downy Junior Playing ‘Iron Man’ and Ben Affleck playing ‘Batman’ tends to help audiences feel more at ease and accept superhero’s as being more common place as acceptable medium in story telling. Boothe talks about the ‘Spime’ of a fandom which is ‘the lifecycle of an object from initial design through physical substantiation to final digital trace. It changes the ‘object’ from a purely physical entity into a lifecycle of technological transformation, and uses time as another dimension upon which an object can be measured’. Booth, P. (2105). Fandoms like Batman which started off with the comics in 1940 and has amassed success over a wide stream of media platforms such as comics, graphic novels, television shows, movies, video games and now even virtual reality immersion technology that allows you to become ‘Batman’. Transmedia therefore allows the franchise to develop a larger following across the world and allows people to find out information regarding the fandom at the touch of a button. This would have led Batman to develop a large fan following across many countries and fans of many generations that come together to enjoy it no matter the means how the do so. The spime of Batman helps it remain relevant across time and helps retain its popularity. I remember getting my first glimpse of Batman from my father showing me an old Batman movie staring George Clooney. My father exposed me to a fragment of the fandom thus including me in the ‘spimatic wave’ associated with the Batman fandom. When the voice actor who played batman for a little over ten years went to twitter to put up an idea to bring back the classic animated show for a reunion episode I was up in arms for the idea. He and the other members from the cast of the show used the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to try and obtain financial means from their most loyal fanbase in order to provide funding to create the content that would-be tailor made to the fanbase paying every dollar to make it happen. The success of the Kickstarter campaign is dependant on successfully utilizing the fan nostalgia and acknowledging the presence of a group of like minded people forming the batman fandom and supporting the project at multiple nodes in the production process. With such experiences I can add ground to Boothe’s views that Fandoms by applying certain theories of the Spime towards fandom through the appropriate mode of crowdfunding would lead to a more emotional and effective process of media creation.” Fandom is traditionally participation after-the-fact; the Spime allows us to see fandom as generative of meaning throughout the entire participatory process” Booth, P. (2105).

Being a media and communications student, my passion has always been to get involved in the journalism stream and eventually turn that into a career in sports writing. Basketball in particular had always been an area of interest for me and the opportunity to try and work in a career related to my passion was too hard to pass on and therefore I had been looking into what it took to become a sports writer in todays world. New means of media has led to the evolution of transmission of news and information regarding a player or a team in the National Basketball Association and writers have been quick to adapt. While most of the main story pieces that provide in depth analysis and detail regarding a situation, team or player are done via websites such as ESPN, Bleacher Report and Yahoo Sports, applications have also been developed so access on various devices becomes easier as migration to accessible devices had been a key goal of sports media to become commonplace among new technology. Breaking news on the other hand needs to be reported at a moment’s notice to the public which has led to the large-scale use of Twitter as a platform amongst sports media content creators. Twitter as a platform allows instant transmission of ‘viral sports news’ such as an immediate player trade between teams, a sudden injury or altercation or even a player spotted in public. It allows the content to be received and reacted to at the touch of a button. Live-tweeting updates during games has become popular via twitter and writers would tweet from arenas thereby relaying tiny details they pick up from team personnel, player huddles, in arena altercations that might not be seen or heard on TV. This unique information available almost instantaneously allows these content creators to have an advantage over traditional media broadcasts in terms of specificity of information they would be providing.  Lets take the example of ESPN’s senior sports writer Arash Markazi, Markazi has been providing quality content through his stories and coverage of Los Angeles based sports teams for over a decade and had built a rapport amongst avid sports fans as being a reputable source of information. When the twitter revolution happening in the sports coverage world. Markazi began posting snippets of interesting information along with his regular stories on twitter, these included some off the court content that sports fan started to get accustomed to. He once posted a video on his twitter of a then unknown blonde girl doing a ‘dougie’ which was the popular dance move of the year live at a basketball game and as you would expect the video quickly turned viral and led to media companies picking up the video and then fame and fortune hit. That blonde girl is now married to World series winner Justin Verlander and is named Kate Upton who became internet famous which further led to her mainstream popularity in the past couple of years all due to this little snippet on twitter by a sports writer. The power of media in whatever form is astounding. As a social media content creator in this scenario Markazi exercised his power over his followers by sharing content that was good enough to be mass distributed leading to it going viral and therefore creating a buzz over information that if created and distributed by someone without such a platform or standing might not have stood out. In Wasike’s study he talks about the usage of twitter by social media editors in order to entertain a particular audience, he describes Twitter as a form of media that is built for personalization of people’s messages since it allows individuals to create a list of loyal and committed followers who share a common interest in a certain social media editor. Therefore, leading to Social media editors reciprocating and accepting this connection by tweeting information relating about their personal life, humorous content, memes, in-transit activities, etc. Finally, most of the Social Media Editors would go ahead and specifically start to use personalized themes in their Twitter bio sections to gain a sense of identity amongst the clutter. Apart from providing personal information such as native home town, spouses and hobbies, it was common to encounter phrases such as; music junkie, foodie, hobby enthusiast and other quirky titles that would lead to the audience being able to relate to the editor and make them seem almost like a regular everyday person thus helping them garner that nativity amongst their audience. (Wasike, B. (2013).)

A long time ago in a land far far away, a lazy teenager who shared a name and a birthday with me once thought of a plan to get rich quick with minimal effort along with him friends and scoured the internet in hopes of figuring out how to achieve this masterful plan. After google highest paid internet jobs and doing diligent research we wound up on Felix Kjellberg who goes by the internet nickname of pewdiepie who annuals earns 12 million dollars a year by creating videos on YouTube that amass millions of viewers every day. Now what did ‘Pewdiepie’ do you may ask, does he create his own music or do stand up comedy or tell stories, well no its not what one might assume. He garners millions of dollars every year playing video games from home and people are inherently very interested to see someone else play a video game, sounds easy enough right? Wrong again, after going through a lot of his videos we figured out that it takes a special someone to be able to obtain such an audience and maintain it over a period of years. People log on everyday to see this man play games of different genres while using a webcam to show his reactions to various thing that happen within the game. Suspense and intensity during horror games, humor and quick-witted jokes during funny scenarios and all out just an uncensored commentary is what Felix delivers during his gameplay segments that turned from a hobby to more income than most corporate millionaires. The world is changing, and people like to be entertained without really putting in much effort and Felix allows them to enjoy videogames that they really might not have enjoyed quite as much with his unique style and humor and thus game me my idea for internet millions. Till today my total YouTube earnings amount to 12 dollars and 27 cents as compared to Felix making 12 million in 2016. He wins …. for Now. Aggire and Young refer to user generated content in there work where it is said even though the historical novelty of the active behaviour of an audience is unpredictable at the least, and the use of of participation terms with respect to  activities that pertain to the audience usually are open for interpretation, the ineractive possibilities offered by new forms of media are what is seen as interesting here, These are usually  facilitators of interaction amongst users in the onlie world that have endless possibilities with the content. (Astigarraga, I., Pavon, A., & Zuberogoitia, A. (2016)).

 References

Astigarraga, I., Pavon, A., & Zuberogoitia, A. (2016). Active audience?: Interaction of young people with television and online video content. Communication and Society, 29(3), 133-147.

Booth, P. (2105). Crowdfunding: A spimatic application of digital fandom. New Media and Society, 17(2), 149-166.

Wasike, B. (2013). Framing news in 140 Characters: How social media editors frame the news and interact with audiences via Twitter. Global Media Journal - Canadian Edition, 6(1), 5-23.

Top 5 Zelda Games

Well fuck here we go. This is going to be extra hard as far as my Top 5 lists this month go because of the sheer consistency across this franchise. Outside of a few titles that leave some fans less than totally thrilled like Link's Adventure, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, most titles in this series could conceivably recieve a perfect score depending on what kind of fan you are. And then even those 3 games could probably be argued somewhat convincingly for as well. And yet, we all have our preferences deep down, and in my heart of hearts I know my favorites. As a disclaimer, I'll just admit upfront I'm committing a cardinal sin by not including Ocarina, Majora's Mask OR a Link to the Past in my top 5. For many fans, that is heresy, but I quite simply didn't grow up with those titles and despite playing them later have never done the formal revisiting that I still owe them. So while things could change, this is how it stands now. So alas, let's get it started off right..

1. Breath of the Wild

I'm going to be unoriginal in a way many fans will probably be going forward and some already are in that I'll just go ahead and throw all my support/fandom at this most recent title. Yet even for as hyped this thing is among fans, it's still a somewhat bold choice. How could the latest entry in a three-decade old series be the best? But it's pretty easy for me to pin-point why. It shakes up a lot of things in the series, especially the console ones while also adding in a lot of new mechanics inspired from recent triple-A mainstream games, all while basing the structure and openness around the very first tile of the game, and still retaining almost all of the tropes that make a Zelda game a Zelda game, while even re-energizing them as well. Instead of 4-8 big isolated dungeons, we essentially have 120 mini-dungeons scattered across the world. And the proper dungeons are excellent in that they are puzzle-box style, in the way some of the best Water Temples have been in the past, and that's the best kind of dungeon as far as I'm concerned. Then there are additional mini-gauntlets and trials scattered throughout the world like the special shrines such as Eventide Island, mazes or the deceptively deep Hyrule Castle. Also at play are the deep physics of a game like Portal with the emergent game-play and stealth of MGSV, the tower-system of Far Cry, the intensity and combat and a similar weapon system of/to Dark Souls and the openness of any number of AAA open-worlds. And yet it's largely more open than any of those due to the non-linear structure of the game, which is a call back to the OG. All of these elements are curated and designed cohesively and coupled with new mechanics like the engaging weapon-breaking and collecting system, a deep survival-horror/farming inspired cooking and crafting system, and a completely new sense of challenge compared to the other console games.

Things just really came together on this one. I could wax poetic about it until the cows come home, but it's quite simply a game that contains a multitude of ideas and systems that are the best I've seen in my 20+ years as a gamer. On top of everything is an excellent visual-style that helps make a rather complex game and world endlessly accessible and playable, and a lovely soundtrack to boot. It's quite simply a game-changer in every sense of the word and make me very happy to be a Zelda fan. There’s something really special about how weak and relatively unprepared you feel when you start off compared to the end when your rocking multiple Guardian spells, dope weapons, wands and bows and killing Lynels left and right. Plus it's not even over yet-- DLC for the win.

2. Skyward Sword- 

So my second one is a less unanimously hype entry, but for me it's one of the most playable Zelda games, and that's largely because I enjoy the motion-control so much, though I could see why some might consider it a bit gimmick-y though. For me it largely works and helps make this game the most kinetic-feeling Zelda game, along with the added stamina gauge and the Loft-wing flying (yep, I even like that). Combat in Windwaker and Twilight, while still being decently fun, can feel very cut-and-dry not to mention easy (though TP does end up getting deeper by way of sword techniques), but the fact that they were able to innovate the combat in this way so that the player themselves are truly holding the Master Sword in a way that Twilight only hinted at is a true success.The deeper item-collecting and bug-hunting along with the weapon upgrading make this one feel a lot deeper in terms of customization compared to the console games prior to this. And I also love the side-questing in this one which makes nice usage of the day/night-cycle. Even though the world-map could have been a bit more expansive, there ends up being quite a bit to to in and around Skyloft so that there's always stuff to entice you off the beaten and admittedly linear path.

The level and dungeon design is also ace, and even though it lacks a proper Hyrule Field area or expansive open-world- feeling between the actual terrestrial locales, for my money, the environments are infinitely more fun to explore and well-designed than much of the somewhat barren-feeling Hyrule of Twilight. All of this combined with fantastic music and my favorite visual style of any of the Zelda's and we have a winner. There’s just something about the gestalt of it all, the over-all package, that really come together for me. Lot’s of personality, beautiful locales and designs, fun questing and NPCs, great dungeons and unique new elements like the Loftwing-riding, motion-control and level-design make it an easy win. Also: Groose and Fletch ftw! 

3. Link's Awakening-

My first Zelda, and so one for which I have a lot of nostalgia. While other kids were having their mind blown by OoT, I was getting deep into this one, and that's just fine with me. This entry is like what Majora's Mask was for Ocarina except for Lttp in the way it tweaks a classic entry, presenting a weirder more fantastical take on a perfected formula. I also like this tropical island-y feeling for Zelda as opposed to the more strait-forward medieval-feeling world of LttP and it hints at the take on Zelda found in Windwaker. It is also rather light-hearted and from what I gather is the first time a Zelda game featured its now standard sense of humour. On top of all the solid dungeons and exploring to do (and a bonus dungeon included in the deluxe GBC version where you could attain a red or blue tunic), you have a cameo by Yoshi and Bow-Wow, a photo-shack, magic powder that helps transform a man trapped as a raccoon back to normal, 8 magical instruments, mermaids, a big trading sequence and a Wind Fish, all culminating in the revelation that Koholint itself is an island dreamt up by the Wind Fish himself (or is it..?). Yeah this game is bad ass. It also feels like the most Nintendo-y Zelda game in a way that Windwaker and now BotW also do in a way I can’t quite explain but has to do with the bright cartoonishing fantastic setting and aesthetic. And I'd catch a lot of flack for this, but for my money, this one's even better than LttP, but you didn't hear that from me.

4. Windwaker- 

LA isn't the last time Link would be so naval. Besides just sailing to Koholint, the hero takes to the seas once again in this title, and this time its actually a central part of the game. The big innovation that this one adds to the mix-- the sailing, charting and island-based exploration-- is the thing that makes this game so special. This is a huge departure from the strait-forward maps of older games, making the world that much more open and mysterious while also calling back to the grid-based exploration of the 2D titles in the way that each sector of yr map contains at least one island, so that it effectively combines the sense of openness and perspective you feel exploring a 3D Zelda Maps with a grid-based map like the old games. And while there could honestly be a bit more going on in this world, there's still a wealth of side-content, and while exploration isn't as seamless or incentived as it would be in BotW, there's still something really great about setting off to wander around the big blue. 

Beyond the fun of slowly filling up your map and controlling the wind to reach yr destinations, or just wander, the game is an aesthetic delight, sporting the vibrant cell-shaded graphics that ignited fan-boy wars the world over, while also making tons of die-hard fans of the style at the same time. It's presentation is quite simply gorgeous and would be an inspiration for BotW's look later. Beyond the unique and bold style, it's a joy to play, with some really solid dungeons and some of my favorite side-characters in a Zelda title (Medli and the bard guy). The last 2 dungeons are especially stellar, and the Celtic/Irish inspired music are as delightful as the visuals. While I rank this game pretty damn close to Twilight, it ultimately comes out on top because I like the over-all gestalt of it more. It has great flow and feels less linear, and the world is decidedly more engaging and packed with personality. Plus this is the only Zelda game that feels like its a blast of Vitamin-C in video game form. It's an all-around win.

5. Twilight Princess-

A few years ago I might have told you this one was my favorite, but that was before BotW kind of changed what we can come to expect from a console title. I now value innovation in this series more to than I used to, and since innovation might be this game's weak-point, it has suffered in rank slightly, but I'd be damned if I didn't still love it. While the only thing that is truly "new" to the series in this one is a wolf form (and Majora already had transformation mechanics in spades), it is otherwise an excellent take on the mythology of Zelda. In some ways, it is the most strait-forward high-fantasy take on the series, in many ways repeating a lot of the aesthetics found in LttP and OoT while playing up the "western high fantasy" aspect of them even more. In this way, this game has begun to ring just a bit hollow. It's just a bit too bland to be a top 3 Zelda. For all the nice touches like Midna's charisma, the nicely dark atmosphere and story and the expansive map, there is also something slightly under-whelming about it and that's why even though it's still one of my faves, its the last one here. The main reason it still makes it though is that it is still simply one of the most solid and consistent Zeldas. The visual style, though a bit tame, is excellently realized in many ways, especially in the remaster, with brilliant lighting and unique realism that we haven't gotten again in a title before or since, and which seems to aim at being the Ocarina of our minds, instead of the polygonal one we actually played in the way it presents a kind of deeper, more up-to-date take on that world, while being a bit less unique. 

The true x-factor though are the dungeons. I think this may be the most dungeon-y console Zelda of all time in the way that there are 8 of them, tying only with Ocarina for amount-- and they are largely very excellent. Some of my favorite dungeons like the Ice Mansion, the Sky Temple, the Lakebed Temple and the Temple of Time are sprinkled throughout this epic adventure, and these dungeons don't mess around. Again, they don't especially add much to the mix, but instead present an undeniable take on the infectious Zelda dungeons we have come to know and love (Though the mansion is a very unique environment). And that's why I think it feels like this game isn't messing around. Sure there's no game-changer like a sailing or bird-flying mechanic, and truly controlling your sword wouldn’t actually come until Skyward, nor does it boast being a full overhaul like BotW, but what is there is some classy-as-hell, tasteful Zelda-style gaming, not to mention it’s Dungeon-crawler’s heaven. The side-quests in later console games would be much improved and more fleshed out, and that's another weak-point when compared to Majora/WW especially, but the main game ends up being so substantial and rewarding that it doesn't matter. Truly a Zelda for all my dungeon fetishists out there. And, yeah, Midna rocks. 'Nuff said.  

runner-ups:

6. Oracle of Seasons- Still need to play Time but this was an excellent follow up to LA put out with the help of Capcom. An imaginative world that is a departure from Hyrule just like Link’s Awakening/Majora’s mask. Fun season-changing mechanic, the magical ring-mechanic and cool characters like the flying bear Moosh and the wizard Ralph make for a great Zelda outing (damn that disruptive Witch thief). 

7. Zelda 1- it’s dope. maybe over-hard by today’s standards but this thing is sick so what it is and how it plays as an early example of a non-linearly structured open and immersive fantasy world. Back in ‘87 you had to crack out the manual to find the 1-800 number Nintendo provided to people looking for hints because of the difficulty of finding your way to and into all the dungeons, but for those who followed the included map, this thing proved to reveal itself to one in time. Super fun, and the classic Zelda dungeon blue-print arrives fully and brilliantly formed. And this thing still holds up because of these dungeons, along with the freedom and engaging non-linearity. 

Ones I need to get around to playing ASAP: The Ocarina and Majora remasters on 3DS as well as Link Between Worlds apparently. Need a 3DS. Zelda II-- should give it a crack. Should re-play LttP also...~