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ato-matsuri · 3 years

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On Agartha

Been a while since I’ve written a long text post, most of all one about Fate. It honestly inspires a lot of rambling in me, after all. But I don’t think, this time, it’s due to its good writing, the emotions it makes me feel, or anything good. This, my friend, is about Agartha. I should probably prelude that this contains a metric shit ton of Agartha spoilers. If you haven’t seen Agartha, and you’re actually wanting to see the story -- scroll past. But, having played through Agartha completely and rested on the story for a bit, I think I want to repeat what everyone else has for ages lol.

Agartha, on paper, is incredible. A subterranean world built off fantastical story off fantastical story, made by a woman known for her ability to weave story after story, within stories, on the fly, and from a database of every possible Arabian Nights tale. Where the fear Scheherazade has due to Shahryar's endless abuse and fearmongering has stretched even to men as a whole due to literal years of having to survive Shahryar. Where the only leaders were queens, where the only rebellion force was a man so horrifically corrupt that he'd easily fall for the tricks she played. Her intent -- to reveal magecraft forever, removing any power magecraft has, saving her from ever having to fight and face kings -- and die -- ever again. That... sounds pretty good when I describe it that way, huh? Now if only it were executed with any modicum of sense.

From the beginning, Agartha's writing struck me as remarkably odd. It was like I was watching someone desperately try to emulate Nasu's writing style -- but had absolutely no idea what made Nasu's writing so good. Its exposition dumps, rather than being interesting, ended up being thoroughly boring -- as they focused on the mundane, like the fact that moss glows to light up the landscape -- instead of the magical implications of a world like Agartha even existing to begin with. Albeit, with the mystery of Agartha at that time, we can safely assume that there wasn't much to focus on, but then why spend so damned long talking about this stuff?

The worldbuilding, while passable, feels fairly flawed in execution. The idea of a world made the way Agartha was could've made for some interesting commentary about the way men treated (and still do treat) women in modern society, but Agartha not only misses the point, but tumbles head-over-ass into the uncanny valley and makes the whole thing sound like a continent-wide BDSM session. There's barely any actual subtle or well-done symbolism to showcase misogyny in this way -- and while hyperbole can serve a good point at times, the hyperbole combined with the strangely sexual writing of these segments makes it feel less like commentary and more like a badly-done doujin.

For example -- El Dorado was as simple as it gets. Men are slaves/breeding machines/whatever. The whole 'breeding machine' thing is played off extensively, even with Penth -- a minor at this stage, mind you -- comments on using the protagonists as such breeding machines. I'll come back to this later, because this serves as another point.

Ys was a fucking cool concept -- a world ruled entirely by rampant consumerism and chaos. Men, in this world, are still second-class citizens, pretty much the playthings of the women around them. I say that Ys is the best kingdom comparatively, as it was at least more bearable than its other kingdoms, but it still felt weirdly sexual in its writing tone. Of course, following tone, Dahut (who I'll get back to later) smashes men constantly, and is very keen on fucking Guda as well, following a trend. It's played for comedy, mostly, but it's still uncomfortable as all hell. Even so, I note it's more bearable because it's a very slightly more subtle take on the whole 'misogyny' allegory -- these people are using men for basically whatever they want, and tossing them away after. I'd compare it to a few true crime cases of people who murdered, or assaulted women for no good reason at all, purely out of a want that was either denied (for good reason), or that the want itself was to inflict harm. While the allegory still does feel unintentional here, it's at least slightly less unintentional. It was probably mostly just by accident due to Agartha's generally uncomfortable writing style, but the allegory here feels a little more potent when it's not so blatantly a BDSM fic.

I hate the Nightless City, despite it again being a cool concept. A 'utopia' where speaking out at all means death -- where men are in concept free citizens, but in practice fall victim to the law if they look at someone funny. Again, in concept, great allegory. The law does not treat men and women the same -- and while it differs depending on the case which is preferred, the vast majority of the time, women are pretty much shafted by the legal system (see Brock Turner), especially in very conservative areas. Cases can be made for both genders being shafted, of course -- but for the purpose of this allegory, picking out the prejudices of the legal system against gender is a fair critique. But, like everything else Agartha does, these neat ideas fall flat in practice.

They barely touch at all on the allegory, and nobody seems to even realize it in the cast, making me further believe the allegories aren't intentional at all. In due fact, it's as if the writer didn't even realize that this could be read as an allegory. The men's plights make some sense, as they were yoinked out of nowhere into a world that hates them. But the Servants and Guda don't think about it at all past the 'wow men are slaves that sucks' -- barely even considering that this could be an allegory the world's creator made due to their own horrific circumstances. They do point this out, but to my knowledge, it's very late -- when Scheherazade's called on her bluff, only then is it ever mentioned, and only in passing at that. If anything, the fact they point this out so close to the ending makes the ending itself that much more insulting. But before I get to the ending, I think there's something else about Agartha that sets the scene for just how awful it is -- and that's the way the characters are written, and the dialogue that comes of it. For this, I'll split it up into the characters who portray this the most. I'll even describe their personalities in Agartha's context.

Guda: Crouching pervert, hidden Mash stan. A few non-sequiturs of Guda complimenting Mash despite the mood being completely broken by it. Guda's incapable of taking a situation seriously in Agartha, even when the world's basically due to be changed forever. They keep cracking jokes, creeping on Astolfo/d'Eon, and other such things even when people are literally dying all around him. For that matter, I clearly recall the scene where -- for no real reason -- Guda just changes gears with Mash in tow, and starts trying to decipher d'Eon's gender. There's absolutely no real context to this, nor any reason for Guda to do this. Further noted is the fact Guda has worked with d'Eon before, and should've probably realized d'Eon's situation by this point. The Nasuverse has always been a bit, er, behind on gender norms and such, but it's so prevalent in any scene with d'Eon it hurts -- especially in that particular scene.

Astolfo: Oddly enough, the most tolerable person here (sans one other person). Agartha's refusal to take itself seriously works remarkably well for Astolfo. And while Astolfo isn't exactly written well here either, the fact that Astolfo's always been a bit loopy makes them seem, well, more in character. They're responsible for some of the funnier moments in Agartha, with their input composing approximately 3/4 of the, like, seven or eight funny moments in Agartha proper. Even so, Astolfo's appearance sometimes hurts Agartha as much as they help it, probably since Astolfo is a bit of the reason Agartha won't take itself seriously.

d'Eon: Deserved fucking better. The previously mentioned scene was the worst offender by far in my eyes, with it coming out of fucking nowhere. d'Eon's paired with Astolfo as a buddy and fighting partner, which itself could've made for good material -- instead, d'Eon is constantly dragged into Astolfo's fanservice-y gimmicks, and d'Eon themselves are pretty often creeped on by Guda. I'd go out on a limb to say that d'Eon's implied dislike of gendered clothing (see the maid outfit) made their scenes wearing such outfits far more uncomfortable, especially with how distinctly sexual the Agartha humour is. I just hated it.

Columbus: I can't fucking believe I'm saying this, but Columbus was the funniest character in Agartha. And I don't even think that was intentional. Something about how unabashedly horrible he was caught me completely off guard -- I thought he'd end up sort of like Napoleon at a glance, someone whose Spirit Origin was completely changed due to Europe's collective worship of the dude -- but holy FUCK was I wrong. Something about the hilariously cursed faces Columbus pulls, combined with his loud-and-proud irredeemable evilness, made him a blast to watch -- and an even bigger blast to beat the shit out of. His, uh, toothy grin still cracks me up even a few weeks after playing it.

Penthesilea: One of a very large amount of people who really deserved better. She barely ever shows up -- and when she does, she voices her desire to turn Guda and co. into a breeding machine/slave (recall she's like. 16?), and pretty much throws the whole 'reasonable-ish zerk' thing out the window instantly, because Agartha decided to forego decent writing in favour of 'funny berserker hates achilles haha brrrrrr,' therefore losing pretty much all the characterization they could've given her. The lack of 'alternate views' that show her in greater detail make this far worse, which I'll go into later.

Dahut: God, wasted potential out the asshole! A woman who made an entire world that fucked around and needlessly consumed stuff, she's the epitome of such a belief. But that's all she is. I'd be able to forgive this awful writing if Scheherazade, who 'implanted' Drake onto Dahut, was a bad writer -- but she's fucking Scheherazade! Dahut's a completely flat character, who constantly tries to bed (and kill) Guda, and generally likes the idea of needless consumption. That's literally it. Again, could be explained if Dahut had difficulty keeping control of Drake's body and conscience -- but this isn't explored either! She's just a walking, talking missed opportunity.

Wu: God, look at her design. Do I even need to say more?! She falls under the same problem that the other rulers do -- shallow characterization, no opportunities to flesh them out, etc.

Scheherazade: She could've been so fucking amazing. Scheherazade's story is one ripe with interpretations the Fate series so loves to utilize -- and on paper, her character is amazing. It'd only be natural for someone like Schez to be this deeply traumatized after so many days on death's door -- not many could really get through that okay. The incredible storyteller who fears death, kings, and unconsciously, men as a whole -- creating Agartha as a subtle way of ensuring none of them harm her while she prepares her ultimate plan of revealing magecraft to the entire world. However, as with the other Agartha characters, she becomes cripplingly one-note. Bringing her fear of death above all else, she comes off as an unreasonable asshole, constantly freaking out about death and preserving exclusively herself to a fault. While one could argue it's partially due to a Pillar's influence, Phenex doesn't seem to have a hold on her at all -- it's a basic alliance, and nothing more, as the ending shows us. It just leaves her as a one-note death avoider, with no other character traits at all. I'd go into further detail, but I'm saving that for later.

Fergus: God fucking damnit, man. A literal child version of Fergus, who the entire cast constantly expects to sexually harass every woman in sight. He's a one-note flanderization of Fergus, just without the one character trait Agartha gave Fergus. It just makes him... boring, a character whose only character trait is his refusal to hit a woman. Like... Come on. The fact the entire team is so sure this literal child will start trying to hit on women is just uncomfortable to witness, and the fact he slowly starts gaining these traits feels less like him 'meeting his fate' as Fergus, and more like Agartha wants an excuse to sexually harass more of the cast.

The Fucking Ending I'm giving this its own category, because of just how much of a punch to the face it was. In short -- the plan to reveal magecraft is revealed, more jokes are made, bla bla bla. Agartha can't keep a serious mood at all. ...But the final few scenes take it to a whole other extreme.

Wu Zetian comes out of nowhere despite being squashed by Megalos earlier, stuffing Phenex into a pit of her weird water shit, placing Phenex in a state of 'life and death.' Child Fergus then sac's his own Spirit Origin to summon Fergus inside himself(???), thus gaining the power of Caladbolg to weaken Phenex enough for the player to destroy. ...However, Child Fergus just summoned Fergus inside his own body. So, what happens when you put Agartha!Fergus, a one-note sexual harasser, into the body of a child? You get the final scene of Agartha. For some reason, I guess you need more help from others to take out Phenex. To this end, Fergus decides to convince Schez to join their side. I'd like you to recall that FGO!Scheherazade is implied to have the trauma of Shahryar's abuse, sexual and physical, burned into her memory -- not just the whole death thing. In every form of the story, Shahryar abuses her in such a fashion almost nightly. It's to the point where Schez' first line of defence, and much of her skills, are as much oriented around storytelling as they are charm and seduction (moreso the former than the latter, albeit), because her defence mechanism was that as much as it was storytelling, to keep her abuser happy. This is a part of why Agartha is the way it is -- to keep such men away from her. Hell, there's not a single King in sight, save technically Fergus, and Chaldea's d'Eon and Astolfo. Fergus knows this. Hell, he heard this being called out. He's well aware how terrified she is. So, what does he do?

SEXUALLY HARASS HER. He claims she has to live to have kids. That men and women have to live to have kids. He claims that she should live, because he'd smash her. ...Now, that's insulting enough -- moreso, that it's played dead serious. Nobody even as much as calls him on such a shitty persuasion tactic, and nobody even mentions how awful it is to sexually harass a woman who'd been sexually assaulted at best for the better part of almost three straight years. AND IT. FUCKING. WORKS.

SCHEHERAZADE. IS IMPLIED. TO BE INTO IT.

And because of this, she's swayed to join the heroes and seal Phenex away for good -- giggling about how Fergus' worldview was partially correct even as she fades away. The epilogue features Fergus, sexually harassing Scheherazade ON SIGHT -- calling out 'tits on my 12:00' or whatever, as Scheherazade darts off. However, Schez isn't avoiding him due to trauma. She's avoiding it because, while she's into it, she doesn't want to 'die' so fast. This fucking ending highlights among the biggest issues with this damned Singularity. Even Blavatsky coming out of fucking nowhere to Deus Ex Machina a grail and help into Guda's hands -- despite seemingly being slaughtered by Columbus in a (admittedly a bit funny) way to get the base of the Resistance -- means nothing to me compared to the blatant slaughter of two characters at once. Fergus is a total horndog even outside of Agartha's reach, but he even notes he respects his partners' consent, and doesn't overstep his bounds if he makes them uncomfortable. Scheherazade isn't exactly trusting in the slightest, least of all in Agartha - she barely even begins trusting Guda due to Guda treating her with actual respect. Even then, she isn't actively prostrating herself for Guda in that sense, very likely due to the fact that's more of a defence mechanism to her rather than something she'd enjoy, due to extreme trauma. Albeit, Fate writing does leave the possibility in the air for Guda specifically, but that's very likely just due to Guda being Guda and being careful to treat her properly and help her than anything else (and also the whole 'self insert harem' thing, I guess, but that's a hell of a lot easier to ignore esp in contrast to Agartha) And yet, we see that epilogue, that butchers both of them in one fell swoop so badly that I almost ended up hating both of them. Agartha's biggest problem is that it tried to be deep and intriguing, while having the writing quality of the goddamned Valentine's events. It picked all the right characters to have an incredibly intriguing storyline, and fell flat because the author decided that playing sexual harassment, d'Eon's everything, and even the most serious scenes for comedy was more important than telling a story even half as meaningful as the chapters before it. Lo and behold -- to my knowledge, Minase wrote it. Of course he did. He chose the best, the most interesting characters he could find, and made them so fucking one-note that the story lost all its charm in moments. He chose to emulate Nasu without understanding what made Nasu's writing so good. He chose to make Agartha a laugh fest despite simultaneously trying to make it 'deep.' He chose to fall head-over-ass over a possibly interesting allegory into misogyny and fall right into sexualizing it to the point of feeling like a femdom BDSM fic. And go figure the only character he did decently was Christopher fucking Columbus. I have a hatred for Agartha I can't reasonably place anywhere else. Prillya was just as shitty, but I ignored it, because Prillya itself wasn't great, so of course the crossover sucks too. Valentine's events written by him weren't great, but whatever, it's a Valentine's event. Septem, written by someone else, was similarly not great. But it wasn't insulting. It simply wasn't great, and had a lot of wasted potential. But its ending wasn't out of character to the point of being insulting. Its story didn't make incredible mythological and historical figures too infuriating to like anymore. It didn't almost ruin entire Fate characters for me. Not the way Agartha did. I should probably contextualize that Scheherazade is among my favourite mythological figures. I introduced myself to her through Magi (lmao) due to further research into the base stories -- as well as a favourite Magic: The Gathering card, Shahrazad, which forced you to play a game within your game, like how Arabian Nights featured stories within stories.

Even in Fate outside of Agartha, I liked her. Her design didn't make much sense to me considering her character, but whatever, I didn't need to think too hard of it. It's just a design, and despite my hatred of Penth's design, I still love Penth as a character, so I can handle Schez. But Agartha painted her in such a way that all the subtlety and interesting parts of Schez went completely out the window. No longer was there any hidden references to the aftereffects of her life beyond 'i dun wan die,' and there was hardly an ounce of sympathy or kindness in her bones at all. While her being an anti-hero made some sense, especially as she was only a normal person with far above-average storytelling prowess, there was a point when she stopped being a 'good, but terrified person' and started being a complete asshole. And Agartha was that time. If it weren't for her Interlude, which redeemed her considerably, and Ooku, which did wonders for her character despite being written by Minase (as I believe Nasu was overseeing him at that point), I very likely would've never gone for her at all, despite my love of the myth. In Conclusion This rant is just to say that Agartha is bad. Horrific. Insulting, even. At every step where it could've been good, it tumbled head-over-ass into the most insulting, uncomfortable shit you could imagine. It failed to take itself seriously, and paced itself like a comedy event, but simultaneously acted as if it expected its audience to take it seriously. Like a clown brigade deciding to take on Les Mis, it loses all of its punch when every few lines is interrupted by a jab at Fergus, sexual harassment, or something that comes close to being cool before suddenly turning into a badly-timed joke, or suddenly becoming laden with dialogue so sexual it feels straight out of a porno. It's aggravating, awful, and with only brief reprieves of bareable comedy in between long, long lengths of hellish text and awful characterization. The only good part was the gameplay -- which, laden with interesting mechanics not seen elsewhere, was legitimately fun. My take? Avoid all Agartha cutscenes and plot, and just play the gameplay. The gameplay's fun, and if enjoyed on its own, would probably make for a far better experience than observing the story surrounding it. But good gameplay doesn't make up for a horrible story, especially in a game where plot is as important as it is in F/GO. Agartha's a pile of shit in my eyes, but that's ultimately only my opinion, and nothing more. If others have an opinion counter to mine, that's completely fine -- and don't let this analysis ruin your fun with Agartha if you enjoyed its plot. To be frank, I'd be happy if you enjoyed it where I could not. And if you think my takes are misinformed, or if I missed a spot (or overreacted to a spot), that's what the reblogs and comments are for! I'm definitely not the kind of dude who has the final say in matters like this -- this is only what I picked up. Thank you for reading!

#fate grand order #fate #f/go #fate/grand order #mash kyrielight #agartha #agartha fgo #tldr i hated it lol #agartha spoilers #rape tw #rape cw

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akatsuki-shin · 3 years

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Review: 狼殿下 Láng Diànxià (The Wolf)

I’m finally done marathoning this show in the past week, so I thought I’m gonna write my comments on this drama here.

Summary: As a teenager, Ma Zhaixing, daughter of Kuizhou City Governor, Ma Ying, met a young boy at the mountain near her hometown who was raised by the wolves. A severe misunderstanding caused the boy to be implicated of murder and the two were separated, with the boy falling off a cliff, thinking that Ma Zhaixing had betrayed him, and Ma Zhaixing, with her leg broken, continued to live her life ridden with guilt.

Eight years later, the boy, who was apparently saved and adopted by their Emperor, Chu Kui - given the title Prince Bo (Bo Wang) - encountered Ma Zhaixing again after her family was suddenly massacred by an unknown assailants in the middle of the night.

However, their relationship was no longer as how it used to be and the two were tangled in the political conflict between the warring nations.

Main Cast(s):

Li Qin as Ma Zhaixing

Wang Talu as Bo Wang

Xiao Zhan as Ji Chong

Xin Zhilei as Yao Ji

Kuo Shuyao as Yelu Bao Na

Ding Yongdai as Chu Kui

Lin Yowei as as Chu Yougui

Notes:

This review contains my personal view on the drama and does not represent the entire audience

There are spoilers

THE GOOD(S):

1. Action

Realistic, believable action and fighting scenes, both in small and large scale. A few weren't exactly perfect, but the majority of it is more than good enough to cover for the flaws.

Bo Wang's solo fights, his duels with Ji Chong, and Ji Chong's first battle in the forest (when he and the bandits were trying to kidnap Bao Na) were among the best; those are super cool and intense. They do use quite a lot of CGIs, and while it isn't exactly marvel (as in, you can tell it's fake), the visualization and movement are quite smooth so it doesn't disturb the atmosphere and our watching enjoyment.

Though, I'm a bit sad that Ji Chong's eagle, Zhui Ri, turns out to be a CGI, as well. It looks so real, I thought they were using a real bird. :'))

2. Supporting Characters

With the exception of the two main leads and a few other characters, I can say with confidence that I love the characters of this drama.

The charming, smart, and kind-hearted second male lead, Ji Chong.

The loyal Night Fury Trio - Wen Yan, Mo Xiao, and Hai Die.

The spoiled princess Yule Bao Na, whose first impression was nothing less than annoying, but grows to be the most lovable, supportive girl ever that makes me want to keep rooting for her.

They also have two of the best father characters I've ever seen in awhile, the King of Jin and Ma Ying.

Even a considerably minor character, like Grand Supervisor Shi, was nothing less than lovable, especially when he scolded Ji Chong like a worried mother after the latter finally returned home in seven years.

3. Music

The Wolf has some really beautiful soundtracks, and the songs are placed perfectly in every corresponding scene

4. Cameraworks

This is something quite technical and to be honest, I'm also not an expert in this. But I think the cameraworks in this drama were really good. The angle, how they switch the focus when taking certain characters in a certain scene further emphasizes the atmosphere, and it often serves as a great shot to the breathtaking outdoor sceneries where they shot this drama.

5. Visualization of how the story starts and ends

Xing-er and the Wolf Boy playing in the forest of Wolf Mountain.

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THE BAD(S):

1. The Main Leads' Relationship

Generally, the big plot and conflict are actually pretty interesting. The politics, the wars, the betrayals, how the opposing sides are trying to trick and outsmart each other are all a classic that we've often seen in many historical dramas and movies. Personally, I never get bored with this theme as long as it is executed perfectly and I think The Wolf executed this in a good way.

Unfortunately, the main pairing ruins this for me and this ends up becoming the biggest flaw that destroys the enjoyment of watching this drama.

"Childhood sweetheart turns enemies" is something we've seen pretty often, and it's not something bad. If anything, when they finally fixed the misunderstanding and reconciled, it would be the climax, the best part of the entire development.

But The Wolf sadly dragged Ma Zhaixing and Bo Wang's relationship to the point that it became annoying.

When Bo Wang first discovered that Ma Zhaixing has never betrayed him in the past, the scene when he rescued her from the kneeling punishment at the palace was so moving I was almost in tears, more so because it finally looks like they can rebuild their relationship despite Ma Zhaixing still hasn't figured out that Bo Wang was the Wolf Boy from her childhood. It should've ended right there. Maybe later, they could add a plot where Ma Zhaixing would finally find out the truth.

But no, they just have to keep switching between love-hate-love hate right to the last few episodes. At this point, there was no more character development, no more relationship growth. It's just a purely unnecessary drama that makes Bo Wang look inconsistent, that strips Ma Zhaixing of any character development that she should've had as the main character of the story.

And speaking of relationships, although Ji Chong being paired up with Bao Na was the best conclusion for the two of them, the development was way too fast, it looks like the drama team is just forcefully pushing it to happen as soon as possible.

At the point where there are only 3 episode left, they didn't have to add that bit of drama between Ji Chong and Bao Na, because 1). They weren't the main characters, 2). The story was nearing its climax, why would you slow down the pace for an unnecessary drama of two side characters?

It almost looks like Ji Chong and Bao Na are taking the spotlight from the main characters. It would've been perfectly fine to end it when Bao Na was accompanying Ji Chong at the bonfire after he let go of Ma Zhaixing to return to Bo Wang; the audience would understand that these two would end up together, and the closing scene where Ji Chong invited her to travel the world with him can still be shown without the intervening drama.

2. The Main Leads’ Hero Complex

Both Ma Zhaixing and Bo Wang keep sacrificing themselves for others and putting themselves at the bottom as if they have no value. It might look heroic the first time they do it, but since they repeated this pattern way too often, it looks to me like they're playing victim instead.

What's more?

Whenever they're about to sacrifice themselves 1). They would always put a burden on the side characters who genuinely love them by asking them for some "one last favor"', 2). They would just end up being saved by the others after all those big talks.

But of course, all of the other characters ideally will still cry for them every single time they're about to do this whole sacrifice thing.

This is seriously the first time I'm watching a drama where the main characters barely have any character development from start until the end.

In fact, I think the main character of this drama is supposed to be You Zhen, the fourth, youngest prince of Yang. He was ever only a supporting character here, but he's got the most character development among others and if you've been paying attention to his story from start to finish, you'll see that is very fitting to be the main character of a political/war drama:

"An innocent, youngest prince who was doted on by his three brothers, but this brotherhood was severely broken by a misunderstanding caused by their own power-thirsty father, and after many struggles and suffering, he found out the truth, fought for the truth, and became the last surviving member of the royalty who would finally govern his people in peace."

3. Inconsistent Character(s)

First of all, the second female lead, Yao Ji.

From the drama's opening, to the first few episodes where she appears, it feels like we are getting this super big villain vibe from her. I really thought she's going to be one of those people the main characters would have to defeat, or maybe turn into an unexpected ally, later near the climax.

But no, she was only strong in the beginning. For the rest of the story, she was only a woman who actually loves the main male lead and wants to keep him safe.

Secondly, Chu Yougui.

What even is his motive to be a villain?

First, he wants to frame and kill Bo Wang because he thought Bo Wang caused their eldest brother's death. But this has since been proven to be wrong because their father, Chu Kui, was the one who set up his own eldest son's death (for whatever reason I don't remember because I don't think the drama ever told us clearly). And then when he was brought back later, suddenly he wanted to overthrow his father and become the King? Just where and how does all this motive come from?

It would've been fine to make Chu Kui the main villain because he's been portrayed as such since the beginning, the power-thirsty tyrant who would stop at nothing to gain authority and glory.

4. Some Technical Things

Ma Zhaixing kept wearing that keepsake of a bell on her belt, even during undercover missions. How come she doesn't get caught?

Ji Chong keeps accidentally hearing everything over the wall in the most perfect timing far too many times

Also, there are many instances where the characters could travel so fast between places, you'd think they are all living in the same town

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My Verdict: 6/10

Honestly, I almost drop it before I'm even halfway through... o(-(

It has great concept. It has interesting conflict. The actors all did amazing job, I have no complain about their acting. But the execution is just ugh...

#The Wolf #Review #Wang Talu #Li Qin #Xiao Zhan #Drama Review

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fae-fucker · 3 years

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Review: There's Magic Between Us

by Jillian Maria

A diehard city girl, 16-year-old Lydia Barnes is reluctant to spend a week in her grandma’s small town. But hidden beneath Fairbrooke’s exterior of shoddy diners and empty farms, there’s a forest that calls to her. In it, she meets Eden: blunt, focused, and fascinating. She claims to be hunting fae treasure, and while Lydia laughs it off at first, it quickly becomes obvious that Eden’s not joking—magic is real. Lydia joins the treasure hunt, thrilled by all the things it offers her. Things like endless places in the forest to explore and a friendship with Eden that threatens to blossom into something more. But even as she throws herself into her new adventure, some questions linger. Why did her mom keep magic a secret? Why do most of the townspeople act like the forest is evil? It seems that, as much as Lydia would like to pretend otherwise, not everything in Fairbrooke is as bright and easy as a new crush…

I received a digital copy of the book in exchange for a review.

And here it is! Nearly a month late because I’m bad at time :)

But hey, that means the book is already out and you can go get it! Wee!

Also, here’s my review of Jillian Maria’s other book, The Songbird’s Refrain.

This review contains no spoilers aside from stuff that you can probably assume from the blurb, such as the existence of the fae and magic. Duh. Anyway, onward!

So, I’m gonna be straight with you fam, not that I can be anything else, but to spare any potential author their feelings and maybe prevent them from reading the review, not that that would happen, I hope:

This book was not for me.

Now, that doesn’t mean it was bad. Far from it, I think it’s pretty much exactly what it’s advertised as and anyone who thinks they might enjoy it will defo enjoy it. It’s a polished work of art that’s professionally written and presented, on par with and often above a lot of traditionally published stuff, and if you want a fluffy magical sapphic YA romance, this is for you.

But it wasn’t for me. Or, at least, I don’t think I’m the target audience. I enjoyed reading it, don’t get me wrong, but my enjoyment was always lukewarm, like I wasn’t quite getting the full experience. And that’s more on me than the book.

I won’t structure this review the way I usually do, mainly because I feel like my problems with the book are all intertwined and stem from the same source, which is ... I’m not sure? Genre? Target audience? Intent? All of the above?

The writing still carries the same sort of easy-to-read style that was present in The Songbird’s Refrain, though the main characters’ voices are obviously vastly different.

Overall, I liked the writing on a technical level, and I’m once again impressed with the author’s ability to avoid swear words, though Lydia is a bit more of a potty-mouth than Elizabeth was.

Lydia has a clear personality and voice, and one of my problems is that maybe it was a little too clear at times.

I know how that sounds, but it could be a side-effect of the book’s target audience being teens. Both Lydia and Eden have extremely defined and spelled-out character arcs. Lydia is too reckless and spontaneous and needs to chill, Eden is too chill and calculating and needs to let loose. A fine concept in theory, a good mirroring for a romance, but here, its execution feels a bit like a checklist? It’s basically spelled out for us how one influences the other, the character acknowledge their own flaws and at the end note how the other has changed them for the better, rounded them out. It didn’t feel very natural, and I thought it would’ve been better to leave that stuff implied since it was already pretty obvious.

It doesn’t help that both Lydia and Eden are far, far too mature for any sixteen-year-old I’ve ever met. They both recognize and acknowledge their feelings as irrational and apologize exactly for what they’ve done wrong, which sure, maybe is feel-good and a positive influence upon a teen reading this, but for me just felt a bit unrealistic. My favorite part of the book was when Lydia and Eden had a fight and Lydia stomped off all pissy and Eden refused to apologize later. It showed them being teens, individuals, idiots, flawed people who are growing up and learning to deal with their emotions. And then it’s somewhat undercut by them both having perfect apologies afterward where they know exactly what they did wrong just based on intuition? Like, complete with “here’s what I did wrong and why that was bad of me.” Idk, maybe JM was a better person as a teen than I was.

I really can’t say a lot about the other characters. The heroes of the story were all defined and had motivations and flaws of their own, while the antagonists were either a faceless mob, a faeceless mob (get it?), or just a dude who shows up in the last chapters and then is immediately dealt with. Compared to the antagonists in TSR, these guys felt a little underwhelming. They were set up from earlier in the story, of course, but their inclusion still felt a bit last-minute instead of a natural progression and integration into the fabric of the story.

And, again, I get it. This isn’t about the villains or that conflict. This is about the love story and the familial bonds and everything else comes after. Which is fine, but not something I personally found very compelling.

I think my favorite character was Eden, because she was cranky and awkward and flawed to a degree that felt right. She made mistakes but had her reasons, she was unlikable at times, and she felt grief and remorse.

I also liked Lydia’s mother, who, despite being in fear or pain for a lot of her on-page presence, still loved her daughter fiercely. She felt a lot like a real parent, even if her and Lydia’s relationship was a bit too saccharine for me to fully get behind.

Now let’s talk about the plot, or rather, the pacing, which was my other big problem with the book. The first third is very slow, my dudes. It may have contributed to why it took me so long to finish the book, a lot of it is just Lydia faffing about. The book is very light on magic stuff in the beginning, and it would’ve been fine if it didn’t do a whole 180 at the end and turned into a low-fantasy menacing mystery, complete with the vague threat of a human-fae war. I would’ve liked to have seen less Lydia and Eden faffing about and more of that magic plot, and while I understand that the focus of the first third was character-building, it still could’ve been done with a more balanced spread of plot vs character interaction.

But here’s where my personal tastes cloud my judgment. I’m not a young teen, so maybe I don’t see the value in more compassionate and understanding teen characters who could serve as role models. I’m not a WLW, so maybe I don’t see the value in two girls faffing about looking for a magic stick in the forest. I’m not a fluff-enjoyer (whatever the proper word for that is), so maybe the universally loving and positive characters just don’t land as well for me.

I can’t say that I hated this book, because I didn’t. In fact, I really enjoyed the latter half of it. I thought the fae were cool and interesting and felt disappointed there weren’t more of them in the story. Despite my grumbling, I do still appreciate what the book tried to do with the comfortable and loving family relationships between the characters and their relatives. I can see how this could help other readers and make them feel seen or perhaps soothe them when they don’t have the same thing in their lives.

I can see what this book was going for. I respect it, and I respect the work and effort and love put into it. It oozes from every word like a warm, sweet sludge.

But I’m covered in goop now. And my hands are all sticky.

This wasn’t for me. But maybe it can be for you. If you want to read a sweet, magical and well-written gay YA romance, this is for you. It was specifically made for you, made for someone who craves this but doesn’t see enough of it. This book is important for what it represents and for what it is. And I hope with all my heart you love it as much as it deserves to be loved, as much as it loves you for reading it.

#book review #book recs #there's magic between us #TMBU

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destiny-smasher · 3 years

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My personal 2020 GOTYs

1) Hades

This game, dudes. THIS GAME. A fraction of the budget, a fraction of the dev team size, reportedly HEALTHY development schedule and management...and imo it offers at least some of everything I want out of a single player video game. I have poured over 60 hours into this and I see myself putting in some more over time and ALL of the time I have spent has felt rewarding and edifying. Clever design, smart writing, organic voice acting, sharp gameplay, and all done at a fraction of the resources of these big budget, bloated games. You love to see it.

2) Final Fantasy 7 Remake (Part 1?)

I went into this year not caring much about this game at all. FF7 was a game I played as a teen, enjoyed, respected, and moved on from pretty easily. This Remake, so far, has done more than I could’ve expected in terms of actually REMAKING a game. It’s literally a new adaptation, and I as pleasantly surprised at just how hard it went. From realizing the world of Midgar into something so full of detail and plausibility, to reiterating and doubling down on its postmodern anti-corporation themes, to making Barret the character I loved the MOST somehow?? Combining everything I love about real-time RPG action with a tactical strategy element long missing from the genre, reimagining and fleshing out characters and concepts into something deeper and more meaningful...I’ve never considered myself a huge FF7 fan but this game was really something, and I absolutely cannot wait for more (and praying they do my girl Yuffie justice). I’ve been super skeptical of Nomura as a director given...the mess that has become Kingdom Hearts, but as it turns out, when he has others to reign things in, some surprisingly nuanced stuff for an anime game can come out of it. It has its flaws, to be sure, but it’s still the most enjoyable experience I had with a big budget game this year.

3) The Last of Us Part 2

I feel conflicted over this one in particular - I feel Neil is not longer a director I respect the way I did back with the first game. I feel Naughty Dog is falling victim to all of the late capitalist issues plaguing big budget game dev. But I also love this game. It’s much more flawed than the first, but that’s mainly because it’s more ambitious and complicated. It’s THE most flawed game on this game, honestly, but overall as a game I am compelled to respect its writing, its gutsier decisions, its art direction, acting, presentation, etc. It’s an impressive game and the most technically impressive game I played all year if not all generation. Props where they’re due, but at the same time, I think this game was poorly directed and I love it in spite of issues with its production, rather than because of some strong vision. That’s the big Sony bucks, I suppose, matched with a dev team willing and apparently somehow able to fulfil what they want to create. I still get the impression there was a bit of ‘design by committee for a mainstream audience’ kind of shit going on - how could there not with something this big? - and as a result I think the game is a bit bloated. Shave off about 3-5 hours from a few spots and it’d be a more focused game, and maybe I’d feel more edified and satisfied rather than weirdly conflicted. Even so, a huge accomplishment and I hope to see more games tackle premises as ambitious as this down the road.

4) Bug Fables

This game technically launched last year but it debuted on console in 2020, and I didn’t play it until then. This is as close to a follow-up to old school Paper Mario as it gets, while simultaneously doing a lot to forge its own identity and even improve on the formula presented in the previous games. Its rough around the edges but that’s mainly because it’s an independent game, and it’s amazing just how well the dev team was able to reproduce the scope and details of this specific subgenre of RPG, all while continuously implementing new game design elements and multiple features that make it feel more modern in its direction. Fantastic stuff, I’m still not even finished with it because I’ve been taking my sweet time, though I intend to finally finish it this month, and I have to say, it’s quite a special game in my opinion.

5) Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Absolute banger of a multiplayer game, really love the presentation, the concept, the overall execution, the way the team has been updating the game every month or so in response to feedback and implementing new content. So good to see the battle royale genre FINALLY pushed beyond just...arena shooting. Can’t wait to see where else this game can go over time.

6) Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Somehow this one slipped my mind when I first wrote this up, despite having poured well over 100 hours into it this year. I think part of it is that New Horizons did a lot of things I’ve wanted the series to do for so long, and yet is still far behind in terms of so many other things I wish they would do. Quality of life things prevent me from really re-investing into it, and yet despite that I have to admit it REALLY sucked me in for a solid few weeks and I continued to play off and on for months. It was the perfect game we collectively needed right when it came out and graphically I can’t think of how to really improve on that style. A really relaxing getaway I needed earlier this year, though like with previous AC games, I don’t find myself going back to it as much as I’d think I would.

7) Going Under

A surprise hit for me, this rogue-like swooped in from ‘heh that looks amusing’ to ‘oh wow this is legit just a great game.’ Its weird visuals, funky 3D gameplay, and surprisingly sharp storytelling make for a rogue-like unlike any other and one totally near the top for me.

8) Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Squeezed this in just this past week or so, and this one also satisfied me greatly. I wish we’d see more big budget open-world games like this -- laser focused, not wasting any time, and not being repetitious aside for completionists. So cool to see another team’s take on Miles after how much I fell for Into the Spider-verse, and very glad the team both homages that movie while subverting some expectations fans of the film might have, all while continuing to adapt Insomniac’s take on Spider-Man from a couple years ago.

9) Demon’s Souls (Remake)

As a big fan of FromSoft who never got too far into this one originally, it’s been great to visit it as if it’s a new Souls game with an alternate art style. And a very clean art style it has. This was a good pick to be remastered because many, even FromSoft fans like myself, missed out on it, and it feels unique from its predecessors while still showing a solid foundation they’d go on to build from.

10) Crash Bandicoot 4

An amazingly well done follow-up to the original trilogy, this game GETS what makes old school Crash games good, and it improves upon things in a number of ways, from making Coco the alternate hero, bringing back old faces in new lights, going ham with the visuals both in raw art and unique filters when replaying stages, and giving incentive for completion with so many great costumes. Well done, great old school platforming with modern design sensibilities.

Honorable Mentions:

CrossCode

This also technically launched before 2020 but I didn’t play it until this year, and I don’t think it hit consoles until this year. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect going in, just remembering that I had enjoyed the demo well enough. This game delivers in most ways you could want from an indie game, with an expansive world of sidequests and RPG growth, a flexible combat system that can be nailbiting and engaging, and old-school dungeon designs with lots of environmental and elemental puzzles that really ask a lot of you. All of this capped with a surprisingly great narrative with characters I grew to love, including a much needed protagonist with a unique identity unlike any in games that I’ve played, as well as extra bits of detail and production values invested at JUST the right moments where the story needs it the most. It feels a bit tedious at times and part of me wishes more of the sidequest content involved direct interactions with the named, recurring characters, but it’s still one of the most impressive and well-done indie games I’ve ever played.

Katana ZERO

Razor-sharp game design, this one. It’s a brief but intensely focused experience that feels like the video game equivalent of a slick, experimental indie film. Could do with some more replayablity for those who want it but what’s here is just damn good and I gobbled this game down like a fantastic, hand-cooked meal at an atmospheric dive bar barely anyone knows about.

Necrobarista

Haven’t quite finished it yet but this is definitely one of the best visual novels I’ve ever experienced just due to how hard it goes on presentation and pushing for a more cinematic and thoughtful vibe than any other VN I’ve ever experienced. The characters and writing feel ripped out of an early 2000′s webcomic, for better and for worse, but all the same, it’s some fantastic stuff and it’s so refreshing to see a game set in Australia tackling a well-worn genre by giving it a new spin.

Slay the Spire

Another personal pick since this released in 2019, and I’m not quite sure which consoles it hit or when, but I didn’t get into it until early this year, and was totally hooked. Fantastically addictive, probably the most well-design deck-building rogue-like I’ve seen, certainly one of my favorite deck-building games in general. Apparently I’ve sunk 50 hours into it this year, more than most on this list, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that number spikes up again at some point.

#personal #GOTY #long post

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firstpuffin · 5 years

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Smitten with the concept, not with the execution.

I want to start things off with a question: have you ever been invested in something, a television show, movie, video game or other, and not known why? Something like “this is boring, why do I continue with it?” I absolutely do and want to explore this with you.

See, I have a whole shed-load of things that I “enjoy” despite the execution not being to my taste. The horror video game series “Five Nights at Freddie’s” is not at all my normal cup of tea, the final chapters of the pseudo-horror game “Bendy and the Ink Machine” were disappointing and sci-fi game “Nier: Automata” is not what I like in my gameplay; but I bloody love them.

Same with the “The Flash” television show, the “RWBY” web-animation and even the “Star Wars” universe as a whole. I continue to persist with The Flash despite being pretty sure that my brother dreads my running commentary of its flaws every week; I may not keep up with it but I do eventually catch up with RWBY despite its execution being…lacking, and I feel that nothing in the Star Wars franchise quite lives up to what exists in my head, although it stands head, shoulder and even waist above the others in this paragraph. So why do I keep up with these stories that I apparently can’t talk badly enough about?

Cause I do love them.

As the title says, I love the concepts behind these stories. Five Nights at Freddie’s (frequently shortened to FNAF because, let’s face it, the title is a pain) is a game where you do the same few things again and again, all to try and prevent being scared; the gameplay is far too tedious for me to play myself and honestly, I’m too much of a coward to actually do so. But the lore woven into the games has captured my heart: murdered childrens’ souls stuck in animatronic bodies that are protective of other children and incredibly violent to adults? It’s so sad, largely because it’s so terrifying and there is more added to the story with each game, cumulating in a sad tale that actually doesn’t quite compare to that in my head (although put that down to preference). It captured my heart, and more importantly my mind.

Bendy and the Ink Machine starts with a man returning to the animation studio where he used to work, where he helped to bring to life the game’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse (the titular Bendy) only to find that Bendy may have literally been brought to life by ink and madness (and magic). The game is beautifully unique in its design, with backgrounds and items and everything seemingly having been hand-drawn. There are tapes to be found that tell the individual stories of animators, voice actors and even caretakers who were caught up in the chaos, tapes to be collected while avoiding the demonic and malformed beast that was supposed to be Bendy.

I’ll be brief with Nier: Automata, but this beautiful game with beautiful music explores ideas of machines and emotions and life, at least within my own mind (I never finished watching someone else play the game so I can’t say for sure). The Flash had my heart from the beginning, all through the boring soap opera drama and plot contrivances, just because I love the concept behind the world that it was set in. RWBY is much the same, although it didn’t have me from the beginning; there are little details in RWBY that could become something amazing, but that are unfortunately overshadowed by poor dialogue, trite characters and unfulfilling season-long “stories”.

And you all at least know vaguely about Star Wars, but it’s the idea of the prequel’s Jedi Order that has me enthralled. I love the idea of an order of warriors, so feared for their combat prowess that they don’t actually need to fight; warriors who could kill you with a telekinetic thought and yet refuse to on principle, yet have enemies who share this power but without the same scruples. And Lightsabers. Lightsabers are cool.

There is so much to love about Star Wars that unfortunately a lot of the media never seems to embrace, instead erring on the side of convenience.

As an aspiring author I find all of this fascinating. FNAF and Nier Automata are examples of fascinating stories locked behind gameplay that I’m not interested in, although in the case of the former I do believe that the head-cannon that I developed was actually better than the real story (both of which I have forgotten by now). Nier Automata’s story may be better than my own ideas but as I said, I never finished watching the story.

Bendy, Flash, RWBY and Star Wars are cases of poor execution though. Spread over five chapters, Bendy started strong but lost what it was that made the early chapters good, going from tense atmosphere to just hit everything with a pipe. The Flash tv show is a victim to its medium: it’s meant to be something for people to watch as they relax in the afternoon with drama, relationships and just a hint of excitement; it was never meant to be a superhero show like the early seasons of Arrow and they are so focused on what I just mentioned that they didn’t put the same effort into being consistent or even all that compelling to someone like me. Not saying that I’m a higher quality viewer, just that I want different things.

RWBY is a real disappointment to me though, with the most important flaw being the forced climaxes without any real story. I’m not interested in the action when the season doesn’t seem to have led up to it and the best thing I can say for it is that each finale at least feels like a mid-season finale. But I will give it this: season three started (started) to change this for the better.

Finally, Star Wars (primarily the cartoons) is a problem because it ignores its own rules. Jedi are supposed to be reverent towards the Force, not using it trivially and never to injure; watch any Star Wars cartoon that follows the Jedi and you will see them regularly and callously attacking with the Force. Another weakness would be the lack of rules regulating the Force.

Any good magic/superpower system has rules or else there is nothing it can’t do and it would seem that there is nothing the Force can’t do. So, if the Jedi apparently don’t follow their own rules on using the Force then what’s the point of lightsabers other than as a symbol? They could crush armies with a wave of the hand; weapons can be torn out of one’s grip and enemy Jedi thrown through walls.

Imagine a completely independent group who are such capable warriors that they never need to fight. They stroll forward and armies give up. So much can be done with a concept like this and to a writer like myself I would love to have free reign with it.

And that’s that. So what would I do with these series if I had the power? FNAF is a hard one for me to give suggestions for because as I said, I’ve forgotten, but Bendy and the Ink Machine is easier. As I said the later parts became an action game with fetch quests that nobody asked for, so get rid of the quests, reduce the enemies and retain the disconcerting atmosphere. I’m not asking for anything the creators haven’t proven themselves capable of. Nier is another one that’s hard to give suggestions for as, as I said, I don’t yet know the whole story; what I can say is that it’s the androids and the possible exploration of their humanity (and why they are designed to be so- and I can’t believe I’m using this word- “thicc”) that has me so fascinated.

The Flash is a victim to its audience so rather than an improvement, I’ll mention what I’d like to see instead: a superhero show. This may seem like an odd thing to say about what is ostensibly a superhero show but it’s really more of a soap opera (which, btw, got it’s name from radio operas being sponsored by soap manufacturers); a real superhero show wouldn’t defeat the best one episode villain yet off camera while instead focusing on character relationships. I mean, way to give a side-character the chance to prove themselves, but at least let us see it. RWBY needs to either give up the idea of series long storylines and slowly build a larger story up, or to better plan each series so that it naturally leads to a climax.

And finally, Star Wars needs to set and explain the limitations of the Force; doesn’t need to tell us everything, just what it can’t do or if there are means of defending against it. If a Force user can block another Force user, then we need to know that so we don’t just complain about Jedi battles not being who can put the other through a wall first. And finally, I’d love to see people treat the Jedi appropriately, with respect and fear.

So that’s it. I love these stories for what I think they could be, but what they are honestly puts me off. It’s a shame, but as an (aspiring) author I’m hoping that I can somehow use these as inspiration for my own (and most importantly unique) stories.

-Note= And no, inspired by does not mean ripped off; break any story down to its bare bones and it will look identical to (and stolen from) almost every other story.

#first puffin #opinion #web series #rwby #television #dc television universe #the flash #cartoon #star wars #movies #video games #fnaf #five nights at freddy's #nier automata #bendy and the ink machine #fiction #stories #storytelling #thosetagswilldofornow

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tev-the-random · 4 years

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A casual Sonic Forces rewrite + some headcanons, because why not

Part 1 – Infinite and Episode Shadow

Just a warning: none of the images used here belong to me! They all belong to SEGA – the game screenshots, the official art and the comic pages.

Next Part ->

I have yet to see the Sonic Movie, because the universe seems devoted on not letting me do so, for some reason. Being as desperate for Sonic content but as determined to not receive spoilers from the movie as I am, I decided to go for the next coolest thing: writing really long and random posts about a game that came out three years ago and no one cares about anymore.

This shall be fun!

(Update: as of posting this, I have finally watched the movie! But I don’t want to throw this away, so I’ll post it anyway. We can have a nice talk about the movie later.)

*“Fist Bump instrumental” intro plays*

*“This is Our World: a New Hero” plays in the background*

I’m the type of person to always try and see the best in every game, and Sonic Forces is no different. Despite its obvious flaws, I love this beautiful game! Mostly the concept of it is one of the coolest things I’ve seen this last decade, but the execution… lacks on a few things. I mostly just fill in the gaps with my imagination and enjoy it nevertheless, but, upon going through the tag and seeing that some of my concerns were shared by other people, I decided to try my hand at rewriting Sonic Forces juuust a tiny bit. Just for fun!

For this first part (and I have no idea how many parts we should have), I’d like to share some of my ideas about…

*Infinite’s Theme plays in the background as I try hard not to sing along*

Oh, my poor jackal boy, what do we do with you? Despite being so heavily promoted and having an undeniably awesome theme song, Infinite’s backstory and general development throughout the game came out as lacking, having the self-proclaimed edgelord become a laughingstock amongst most fans. Nevertheless, I still love Infinite, and it saddens me how much wasted potential he had; it’s like they were trying to write a really interesting character, but gave up halfway through.

So yeah, let’s talk about it. And let us begin with his origin story.

I believe you are all familiar with this scene:

I… I want to defend my boy here, I really do. But honestly, the way this was portrayed, it just sounded like he was throwing a childish tantrum. It seems as if his entire motive for becoming a villain was “Shadow beat him and called him weak”; dude, you’re not the only one: Shadow does this to basically everybody who’s ever crossed his way! We’re not given a reason as to why Infinite gets so bloody offended, nor are we given a reason why we should care.

So, how can we fix this? I think we should firstly focus less on “I’M NOT WEEEEAAAAK!!! URRAAAAGHH!!!” and more on:

It doesn’t need to be – and I don’t even think it can be – as sad of a situation as the Rivaille Squad in Shingeki No Kyojin or anything, but I believe that showing us that Infinite lost something important would already do wonders to his backstory.

The simplest way – that is, the way that doesn’t majorly change how things go, but does give the jackal a clearer motive – to do this would involve the ever so humble inclusion of two new cutscenes and one new in-game battle, plus a few tweaks to some already existing scenes.

Episode Shadow begins not with the usual reading introduction, but rather, with Shadow’s voice. “I was a couple of months before the Doctor took over the world. The first time I encountered him… I didn’t know what he would become.” Then we open with what used to be a couple of months prior (aka where they presented Infinite’s memory, aka where they screwed up), so we’ll go through things in a chronological order instead of having a flashback inside of a prequel, because that’s confusing AF.

Now, instead of starting the Mystic Jungle level immediately, we should get a small cutscene: Shadow gliding through the jungle, cool camera angles/lighting and all – maybe something similar to the opening scene of Episode Shadow in Sonic 06? –, on his way to invade Eggman’s base as a voice coming from the hedgehog’s communicator reminds him about his mission (yep, that’s some subtle exposition to the audience so we don’t think Shadow is there just because). My idea for said mission would be the simple task of retrieving a Chaos Emerald (yeah, remember those?) from Eggman. Nothing too serious; just another day, another emerald stolen like usual; we’ve seen this before, there’s no need for a long dialogue.

As the black-and-red blur crosses the screen, the camera pans to a group of people hiding above in the trees: Squad Jackal. Infinite is not among them. One of the jackals asks “where’ the boss?” to which another one replies that he’s on the other side of the base/talking to the Doctor/whatever and they have no time to waste; their mission is to take down the intruder and protect the base. We get something in the lines of “the boss is counting on us. Expect no mercy, show no weakness. Let’s go!” and the camera fades out as the squad drops from the trees and runs after Shadow.

I believe that having the phrase “show no weakness” – or any possible reference to “I’m not weak”, really – appear earlier as seemingly common and then have it become something the character gives a lot of importance to due to consequences and parallels sounds a bit more interesting than having Infinite’s inferiority complex come out of nowhere.

The Mystic Jungle level plays as usual, except the dialogue in the background doesn’t say that “the Defence Squad has already been completely annihilated”, but rather that “the Defence Squad is on the case. They’re the best mercenaries there are, Shadow won’t stand a chance!” because Doctor Eggman is naive like that.

Once we reach the end of the level there’s another change: a boss battle against Squad Jackal. You see, we don’t want to hear the squad was taken down like some sort of lazy exposition, because it feels incomplete; we want to participate, we want to be the protagonist and see with our own eyes just what is Infinite’s squad. This gives faces and voices to something that will become an important plot point instead of just telling us “yeah, this happened or whatever”. This could also play as some sort of sympathy point for Infinite, because we, while in control of Shadow, took down his squad; it makes the villain’s animosity towards Shadow and his general anger at least a bit more understandable.

The idea is that this battle should play as some sort of field fight – that is, differently than most boss battles in Sonic Forces, this is not a racing track where you attack your enemy while running, but rather a large secluded area, much like the one we get in the fight between the Custom Hero and the DeathEgg Robot –, where squad members would attack individually in different patterns before going for a group attack. The individual jackals would have both projectile (perhaps something like a wispon, knives or some Eggman invention to keep it family friendly enough?) and close-ranged attacks, while the group attack would consist of this mass of wild jackals changing at you, trying to run you over. The opportunity windows could be either the moment when the opponents switch or band together for the group attack.

(I don’t know, maybe some of you can think of better ways to fight the Jackal Squad? This is just a random idea! I’d like to hear different ones!)

Once the fight is over, we get another cutscene: Shadow stands among the fallen jackals – don’t worry, they’re… sleeping… yeah, there’s no visible blood, they’re not dead… except they’re totally dead – and looks around for a second or two. His expression is indecipherable, and he soon leaves without saying a word – one might say he feels bad for them, or maybe he doesn’t give a damn; we leave that open to interpretation. Not a moment passes and we get to see the leader of the squad arriving at the scene. The camera moves in a circle around him as he looks at his fallen comrades in shock. How did this happen? They were the strongest, how could his whole squad be dead? This is a rather touching moment, where Infinite sticks his sword (because in his origins comic he used to have a super cool red sword and I want to pretend we have a reason for it not existing in the game) to the ground; there’s a feeling of anger and vengeance going on as we get a closer look at the last standing jackal. He clenches his fists and faces the direction of Shadow. “Expect no mercy, show no weakness,” he says in an infuriated, strangled voice. He starts to run and the camera fades out.

(Look at his sword and his squad, man. I do wish we could have seen them in the game…)

When the camera fades in again, we get that exact same cutscene from the game. Blah blah, “destroyed my squad”, blah blah, “ultimate mercenary”, a legendary ass whooping and Infinite falls to the ground, weak, pathetic and defeated.

Now, I’d like to add just a few lines to their dialogue, because this:

Doesn’t really sound like Shadow to me. I mean, man: you beat this random guy to the ground, called him worthless and pathetic out of nowhere and then you just leave? I know Shadow is rather apathetic and he’s supposed to be savage and all, but this just felt kind of out of place…

So instead of going full rude mode, what Shadow actually says is:

‘You’re part of the Defence Squad, aren’t you? Why would a bunch of mercenaries work for the Doctor? What is he hiding?’

‘The doctor paid well enough to not have his secrets spilled,’ Infinite retorts while trying to get up. He’s too hurt to do much, but he’s still willing to fight. He looks at Shadow with fiery eyes as he continues, ‘My squad… you took them down like they were nothing… why wouldn’t someone as strong as you be a mercenary?’

‘Mercenary work is for the weak,’ the hedgehog states matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve sworn to protect, not to follow the dirty line of work you did.’

This blows Infinite’s mind and he simply stares at Shadow, dumbfounded. He murmurs, ‘weak? How dare you, I’m not… We’re not weak! We’re the squad o-’

‘Where’s the Chaos Emerald?’ The jackal’s statement is completely ignored. However, Infinite is having none of this, so tries to attack Shadow once again in a fit of rage, only for the hedgehog to give him a signature roundhouse kick free of charge.

(Image merely illustrative)

‘What a waste of my time,’ Edgelord Number 1 says, aware that he’s not getting any useful information from this. He steps closer and Edgelord Number 2 flinches, ‘here’s some advice: don’t show your face around me ever again, or else I will finish you.’

And with that, Shadow teleports away, leaving Infinite to his existential crisis. He wasn’t able to avenge his friends; he wasn’t able to protect the base; heck, he wasn’t even able to hold his title of ultimate mercenary! How useless of a leader was he? Were mercenaries truly weak? Everything they’ve done… was it all worthless? Show no weakness… what did it even mean? They were all defeated, and Infinite can’t shake the feeling that he’s to blame for it. Wasn’t he supposed to be the best?

‘What is this? I’m…’ He looks at his hands, which are trembling ‘I’m shaking? I flinched? I... We failed… How pathetic… All because…’

Infinite stops as if he’s just gotten a moment of clarity. He then gets up and starts walking inside Eggman’s base. ‘I’m not weak,’ he says in a decided, chilling whisper; it’s almost scary. The view is set at the entrance, right in front of the jackal so that he starts blocking the light from the outside as he slowly walks towards the camera - while saying in that scary voice, “No mercy, no weakness”.

(I can totally see Liam O’Brien delivering this line perfectly…)

Then the last expository narrating happens about the same, except that Shadow narrates it – giving continuity to the fact that he was the one who started narrating this episode for a reason I will talk about later –, so we change a few words to match his speech more; it’s all in the third person and very husky and brooding, but with a subtle note of dread (oh, if only Jason Griffith would voice it… No disrespect to Kirk Thornton, but he just doesn’t hit Shadow’s perfect voice like Jason did; for me, at least. His Orbot voice is fantastic, though).

Now, instead of having Infinite looking forward for a few seconds before he gets the Phantom Ruby out of nowhere and places it in his chest very anti-climatically, we’ll do something different: as soon as he puts on the mask, he starts walking away, and we change settings to a dimly lit room, where we see Infinite from behind, fitting the frame perfectly. Following the beat of the background music, the camera changes to a close shot of his masked face as he’s holding the Phantom Ruby, which is glowing, reflecting on his mask and giving us a beautifully red-lit scene; it’s possible to hear very low, indiscernible whispers coming from the jewel. We then hear a small, evil chuckle from the masked jackal – he already sounds rather different from the guy who stuck his sword to the ground in honour of his friends earlier. The screen goes black, the whole “I was… Reborn!” thing dramatically happens in Infinite’s echoing voice and the not-flashback is over.

(I know this last part was quite specific and oddly detailed, but I had the scenes very clear in my head I wanted to try conveying how intimidating it looked to me o3o)

Ok, now that that’s done, prepare yourselves for an intermission. And by that, I mean prepare yourselves for a long analytical commentary on what I just wrote.

*”This is Our World: Phase 2″ plays in the background*

(Who is Shadow working for again? I don’t even know, man…)

Shadow isn’t just the guy who called Infinite pathetic. He’s the guy who killed Infinite’s squad (his friends) without any apparent remorse – and to be hypocrite as to say he’d sworn to protect when he just did something like this (yeah, Infinite doesn’t know any context of Shadow’s life, so of course he doesn’t understand what he meant); the guy who ruined everything he had going with his new job as leader of the Defence Squad; the guy who put him several levels under what he thought he was; the guy who questioned his entire way of living and the guy who put him under a lingering threat; “don’t show your face around me ever again” feels more intimidating now. Not only that, but, despite how Infinite might hate Shadow, he recognizes him as strong, admirable even – “why wouldn’t someone as strong as you be a mercenary?” Remember that Infinite himself is a mercenary; to actually acknowledge someone would be good at something you’re good at, specially someone you don’t like, has to be a sign of admiration, albeit a frustrating one. All of this puts a lot more of weight on how Infinite thinks of Shadow and why being stronger than the hedgehog is so important to him.

I made it so that “expect no mercy, show no weakness” is something like the Jackal Squad’s motto, their philosophy. I like to think it means that they should never count on someone’s mercy, for their enemies won’t spare them; they should always go into battle aware that they might actually be fighting for their lives. At the same time, they should always stand their ground and never let anyone think they can take advantage of a squad member. This is what the jackals live for. But seeing as Infinite’s world has just been shattered and he failed hard on everything, he revises his mentality. “No mercy, no weakness” is what he’s going for now, as he wants to be above everyone, he wants to effectively be the strongest and for people to know that; he will be the one who doesn’t spare others, and he won’t be weak at all. Never again would a failure cost him that much, for never again would he fail.

To have Infinite place the Phantom Ruby on his own chest in Episode Shadow contradicts the opening scene of the main campaign. Remember the episode is a prequel to Sonic Forces’ main game, so it shouldn’t be completely detached from it; things must make sense when put together. As the main game begins by showing us Infinite inside of a tube in Eggman’s lab, we can assume one of two things: he’s either a robot/biological experiment created entirely by the scientist, or he’s a guy who’s been experimented on, thus Eggman was the one who placed the Phantom Ruby on him. With this in mind, it wouldn’t make sense to show us Infinite doing something if you’re going to tell us that he couldn’t have possibly done it on his own. But to have him hold the ruby as someone who deeply desires its powers and who listens to its ominous whispering? Not only does it line better with the aforementioned scene, but it also makes Infinite seem more prone to the ruby’s power (instead of just… you know, “random angry dude”).

As this intermission has gone on long enough, I’ll only make a brief commentary on the Phantom Ruby: I like the idea of the ruby being somewhat alive and exerting influence over Infinite. Now, I won’t say it’s the kind of influence where it justifies his horrible behaviour or the awful things he did. It’s less “mind-control” and more “that best friend who always encourages you and never calls you out on your bullshit”. Its grooming Infinite’s ego and just nudging him to keep making bad decisions, to keep shutting himself in this new reality where he’s all powerful and above everyone else. So it’s the jackal’s pride, spite and grief, along with Eggman’s overall encouragement and the Phantom Ruby’s influence all put together that, in a general sense, make Infinite what he is. (I can go into more detail about this idea once I make a Part 2.)

Mission Accomplished: “angry bitchy boy turned edgy, OP and unimpressed” changed his status to “tragic boy turned edgy, bitter and extremely power-hungry”.

Intermission’s over, let’s get back to the story!

With Infinite’s backstory slightly redone (or rather, shown under a different light), I could stop right here. But I don’t want to, oh no! I say we take this a few steps further and just finish Episode Shadow! Yeah, I told you this was going to be a long post.

*”Battle with Infinite: Second Bout” plays in the background*

Ok, now we cut to a few months later, where Episode Shadow would originally begin. Rouge comments that Omega was on recon mission in that “unknown base of operations that seems to be totally outside the chain of command for Eggman’s army” (whatever that is supposed to mean) when he spotted an unidentified masked person with strange energy readings and an unknown battle ID. Omega reported a “large scale troop” and… that’s it, he just stopped talking. Rouge then talks about that “new weapon” Eggman was supposedly developing and sends Shadow to the base to investigate along with Omega. She makes a remark about how they should get the entire Team Dark together for this (“It should be fun”), but Shadow dismisses the idea, saying that he’s enough on his own. “Omega said the same thing. You two go together like chilli and hot dogs.”

We can keep this at the whole “dialogue on screen” thing. I don’t really mind and it sure spares the budget.

The City stage plays as usual, except the dialogue in the background changes a bit, because Team Dark bickering (or just talking in general, I love this team so much) is my jam.

‘E-123 Omega here. Extermination proceeding without incident. No problems to report.’

‘Omega!’ Rouge exclaims, ‘Why have you stopped responding earlier? We- wait, extermination? This is supposed to be a recon mission, what are you doing?!’

‘I was spotted. Priorities conflicted; therefore I decided to eliminate the enemy altogether. New Mission Objective: Defeat Eggman.’

‘But you can’t go making a scene like that!’

‘See, this is what happens when you send the giant killer robot for this kind of op,’ Shadow sasses. And I’ll imagine Jason’s voice for this too, thank you.

‘I have several reports of recon missions where you retaliated, Shadow.’

‘I might have to join you boys soon enough. I turn my back for five seconds and this happens…’ Rouge comments in a tired voice.

Omega is ready to start robotically recounting the reports of failed recon missions where Shadow retaliated, but he is suddenly cut by static and the vague sound of the Phantom Ruby. Rouge tries to contact him again and we get small bits of his original lines here – “All sensors offline”, “Casualty report”, “Unidentified system intrusion. Emergency withdrawal!” and “I am E-123 Omega, the most powerf-sjfpstswq”, that stuff – before his communication is completely cut. Shadow asks something like “what’s going on?”, but his communication with Rouge is cut as well. We play whatever’s left of the level in silence (except for the sweet background music).

(Oh yeah, this happened or whatever…)

Now, I know the next scene is a screen dialogue again, and I know I just said I don’t mind it, but watching this:

… Is so bloody uncomfortable. This feels dumb. This is so dumb. I feel like they robbed us an epic scene in exchange of some awkward reading with absolutely no context. What the hell is “!” supposed to mean?! What did Infinite do?! If I wanted to imagine the action scenes all on my own, I’d spend my time daydreaming! What, did they not know what to do here so they just threw in some random lines to fill the gap between this and the next level?!

… Sorry, I got a little carried away. This simple scene frustrates me a lot by not existing. So yeah, we’re throwing in a cutscene.

(I just noticed how salty this post is getting. This was not my intention at all, I still love this game, oh dear…)

Shadow reaches the edge of the city and encounters a dark silhouette hovering just above the flames that cover the ground; there’s debris scattered everywhere. The figure has its back turned, and the world seems to glitch ever so slightly around them.

‘The world’s most powerful robot is no more a challenge than crabmeat. Even the Doctor’s most daring designs can’t compete with my power… It is without peer,’ the figure chuckles to themselves.

Shadow starts approaching silently, analysing the situation. Despite this being Omega’s location, he can’t see the robot.

‘Wonder how easy it would be to end this entire planet. Don’t you…’

Suddenly, the voice speaks close to the hedgehog’s ear:

‘…Shadow?’

He turns around to see that the unknown person has appeared behind him, which throws him off. The hedgehog takes several steps back and puts himself in a fighting stance.

It’s hard to see past the jackal’s mask, but he seems amused as he looks down on Shadow. Twistedly so.

‘How wonderful to see that our not-so-tall, dark and brooding guest has arrived. I’ve been waiting for you, Shadow~’

‘Tell me what you did to Omega. Now,’ the agent demands.

‘Oh, come now, Shadow. Our long-awaited reunion and still you spout such nonsense.’ Infinite floats down to stand a few meters away from his enemy.

‘I don’t know you,’ Shadow states. The masked jackal tilts his head, but doesn’t say anything, so he asks again, ‘what have you done to Omega?’

‘Only what is ought to be done when someone stands in your way. Weaklings like E-123 Omega are of no consequence, don’t you agree?’

‘The only thing of no consequence is that big mouth of yours.’

Shadow launches himself at Infinite, who easily avoids his attack. The jackal starts laughing manically.

‘Ah, I suppose you would think so,’ he states. ‘After all, it’s not so funny to be the one losing the battle, is it? I am Infinite. You say you do not know me, and yet I remember you so very well… I’ve lost all I was, I’ve become what I am because of you. Savour that thought as I return the favour.’

Guess what happens? That’s right, we get another boss battle! I think it’s only fair that Infinite gets to have his rematch with Shadow. Besides, it establishes a comparison with the “old” Infinite and how much stronger he’s now – from Shadow’s perspective, that is.

I have no idea how this battle would play out. Maybe something similar to his second battle in the main story (no, don’t worry: we’ll talk about the exceeding amount of Infinite battles in the next part), with the 2D layout. Let’s say Infinite is surrounded with his Red Cubes of Doom while he’s not attacking, so you can’t touch him. Maybe he makes the fire glitch and get closer to you at some point. Maybe he makes clones and you have to defeat each of them to get to the real guy, I don’t know! Tag your ideas, I’d love to see them! ^^

Anyway, once the battle’s over and Shadow “wins” (because Infinite is not defeated, he’s just done with this fight), the jackal might say something in the lines of “I suppose I’ve let this duel go on for long enough. I have other matters to attend to, Shadow the Hedgehog.”

We get back to the cutscene and Infinite is glitching a bit, quickly recomposing himself, laughing. Shadow is panting.

‘What’s the matter, Shadow? Can’t take down a measly jackal anymore?’ The masked one says sarcastically. ‘It seems like I’ve overestimated your strength. You’re no fit to be a mercenary at all.’

There’s a beat and Shadow realises what this is about. He looks at Infinite, frowning. ‘It’s you… Defence Squad Jackal…’

Infinite stares at the hedgehog. He doesn’t seem to be as amused anymore. His golden eye’s glowing under his mask, and so is the Phantom Ruby on his chest. A tense background music plays as Infinite answers dryly:

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve spared you, but now you’re going too far. It’s time to finish this! Chaos Spear!’

The spears of light simply go through Infinite as if they didn’t exist. Shadow goes for a spin dash/homing attack/kick to the face or whatever you can think of, but the masked villain glitches out of the way with ease and lands an almost perfect copy of Shadow’s roundhouse kick.

The hedgehog glides across the floor, almost falling over. Infinite scoffs.

‘This new “me” has limitless power. I have no mercy; no weakness! I am the true ultimate force that will tear this world apart, and what may have worked to bring me down before…’ the jackal starts floating again; thousands of red cubes start dancing around him and, as he raises a hand, they all group in the sky not far above them. ‘… No longer does.’

(Why yes, this is a reference to Mephiles the Dark and that time he destroyed the Sceptre of Darkness!)

Infinite throws his “Take THIS!” and Shadow does the “!” – which is him frantically trying to get out of the way as the thousands cubes of doom come crashing down on him.

The screen goes black.

Scene ends.

The Virtual Reality level should play as usual from there. I don’t even want to change the background dialogue, because I really like it: it’s confusing, it’s weird, it’s unsettling and it slaps Shadow in the face in a way that we rarely see. I love it! (Although, I do think the gameplay should have a tiny little bit more of 3D parts. We love Green Hill, but we also love the freedom to move on more than two directions when playing as the Ultimate Life Form. But it’s cool)

After that, we could get another cutscene (we’re full of cutscenes, huh? Well, this is a hypothetical rewriting with a hypothetical budget. Also, Episode Shadow is more of an exposition episode anyway). In this cutscene, we would start with some shots of different known locations: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Crisis City, Mystic Jungle, Kingdom Valley, Babylon Garden, you name it! And all of these places are somewhat “corrupted”; they’re glitching out, full of those red cubes, and there’s just this ominous atmosphere in them, as if they’re abandoned, desolated despite looking roughly the same as ever. We then see a black-and-red blur cross the screen, and a short narration takes place:

“I’ve been here for longer than I can remember. This… alternate reality, this fake world. There seems to be no escape. Rouge and Omega talk to me occasionally…”

We see Shadow leaning against a wall. His communicator plays only white noise, then Rouge’s voice comes in; it’s strangely echoed as it calls out to him. Shadow throws the device far away and sighs.

“… They’re fake too. No matter where I go, no matter how much I run…”

Shadow is skating through Pumpkin Hill or something, when the world suddenly starts to glitch out massively; we hear the Phantom Ruby’s noise and suddenly, we’re on the ARK.

“It’s like this place was made to torture me. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.”

‘I’ve moved on from this a long time ago,’ Shadow says to the void of the Universe as we hear gunshots in the distance. He’s not being completely truthful. ‘Putting me through this scenario dozens of times changes nothing. Don’t you have anything more creative at this point?’

There’s silence, except for the shouts in the Space Colony. A voice calls out to Shadow, and he promptly ignores it, albeit with a pained look in his eyes. He’s visibly tired, almost hopeless, if one could ever describe Shadow the Hedgehog that way.

He sighs.

‘Alright, how do I get out of this one?”

We then get a start of a short level in the ARK. Don’t worry, it’s not one of those hellish mazes that usually haunt every ARK level there ever was; this is more straight forward, with doors closing all around you so that you know where you shouldn’t go, and some G.U.N. robots trying to kill you, simple thing.

The catch happens when you’re halfway through the level: as you’re crossing a long corridor, the game begins to “crash” – in the sense of you losing control of the character, the visuals beginning to glitch and the soundtrack going weird, all in a way that makes the soul leave the body of the player for a terrifying four seconds of “HOLY SHIT, I BROKE THE GAME”. But nope, you didn’t break the game: the Phantom Ruby is trolling you. We soon find that out as the signature noise plays and the glitching effect on screen disperses to show a new scenario: Mystic Jungle. The real Mystic Jungle. Congratulations: you get to play in a totally different zone for the rest of the level.

‘My head…’ Shadow murmurs to himself. ‘That was too quick; this can’t be right, it- ugh, why is it so bright here? Where are all the red things? This place seems too normal… is it… am I back in the real world?!’

We then finish the level, get our nice score and head to the last scene of the episode.

Shadow is going through the jungle, taking in everything that isn’t an illusion. He passes by a red sword stuck to the ground and leans against a tree, still a little out of it, still struggling to believe that anything is real anymore. The hedgehog then takes his communicator – surprisingly intact; hadn’t he thrown that away? – and tries to make contact. There is static for a moment, when suddenly…

‘Shadow? Oh my- Shadow, is that you?!’

He’s startled for a moment, but so relieved to hear Rouge’s normal voice again.

‘It’s me, Rouge. What’s the situation? Where’s Omega?’

‘Omega? We lost contact with him months ago; the Resistance says he must have been shut down after the Doctor took over!’

Shadow raises both his non-existing eyebrows in surprise, barely holding a gasp. He then frowns.

‘Shut down? Resistance? What do you mean “the Doctor took over”? What the heck happened?’

‘What happened? What happened?! I should be the one asking you that! You’ve been offline for six months! Everyone keeps saying you’re working with Eggman and Infinite, and I couldn’t contact you or Omega, I thought… I thought we’d lost you for good…’

‘Nonsense,’ Shadow states. We start hearing voices in the distance, and the hedgehog starts looking around while still talking ‘I’ll tell you the details later, it’s long story. What’s the current situation?’

‘Shadow…’

The (Tired) Ultimate Life Form spots something from behind the trees. Still in hiding, he looks closer only to see the Custom Hero holding the prototype Phantom Ruby they just found and talking to Tails and… Classic Sonic, much to Shadow’s confusion.

‘… We’re at war.’

Shadow takes a moment to process what’s just been said. He doesn’t even pay attention to what Rouge says next (neither do we, as the background music starts getting louder than the bat’s voice). He still watches the avatar, Tails and Classic Sonic as they leave; he focuses on the Phantom Ruby.

‘Meet me in the City. I’ve got a lot to tell you,’ Shadow says.

And with that, he leaves, the scene fades out and Episode Shadow is over!

*”The Light of Hope: Menu Version” plays in the background*

Now, a few more analytical notes before we close this ridiculously gigantic thing:

The immediate reason why we have Shadow being stuck in the Virtual Reality for six months is to indicate to us why he doesn’t show up earlier in the main game. It’s not like he was being useless this whole time and just decided to show up whenever it was most Ex-Machina of him; much like Sonic, he was trapped by the enemy. A mental trap that put Shadow on survivor mode for months without any way of communicating with anybody; with twisted versions of his friends trying to get to him and remind him that, hey, they’re still out there, probably in high danger; with these illusions mocking him, reminding him of painful memories, isolating him in familiar places… I say: if you want to emotionally hit a character, hit them hard. And this experience is bound to leave Shadow with some emotional scar, alright.

(Ever heard of conveniently coming out of nowhere?)

Shadow is bound to lose his sense of reality and sometimes it should be hard for him to acknowledge that this is the real world. I hope I can showcase some of his reactions in the later parts of this o3o

The Virtual Reality isn’t all glitchy by mistake. No, no: Infinite is perfectly capable of making a “perfect copy” of the real world, but he doesn’t want to. He wants Shadow to know this is a fake world and to know that he’s completely trapped in it while his real friends and allies are out there doing who-knows-what in a world run by the enemy. He wants to throw Shadow off-balance as much as he can, because he’s spiteful and doesn’t just leave the hedgehog to the side without a second glance.

In the game, Infinite says that they didn’t really have time to tune his power yet, so we can tell putting Shadow in the Virtual Reality was more of a practice of sorts. But man, I think this is too much of a cool concept, so I’ll say Infinite did put his power to the test before all of this; because Eggman, sir: you don’t simply throw your super-secret, amazing, unparalleled weapon in the battlefield without testing it first. This is something that can be inferred, it doesn’t need to be directly told, it just- I’m telling you this right now, ok?

I know Shadow is supposedly “over” this conflict with what happened in the ARK and it probably feels over-used to add it in again, but… it’s a thing the games haven’t tackled in such a long time, I feel like this would be a nice call-back. Besides, Infinite would want to know what would bring distress to Shadow; what happened in the ARK isn’t exactly a secret, especially if he’s working with Eggman. And Shadow can be as “over it” as he wants: it’s still a scar that will never truly leave him. Even if he watches it happen dozens of times, it’s still at least a little bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

ALTHOUGH! I also think this ARK level could be easily replaced with some other random level if you want to argue that Forces happens in Mobius or something, where Gerald and Maria and G.U.N. maybe never existed and whatnot.

What brought Shadow back, you ask? Well, it probably has to do with a certain someone spontaneously activating a Phantom Ruby. Maybe the avatar was thinking of Shadow and how it’d be nice to have him on their side again? Maybe they were thinking of undoing Infinite’s evil deeds? Maybe the raw power of the Phantom Ruby prototype being suddenly activated by the Custom Hero just crashed something another Phantom Ruby user did, like magnetic waves interfering with each other? Who knows?

I also find it important to show the Custom Hero here not only to show that there’s a connection between Shadow’s sudden freedom and their actions, but also to establish the tiniest amount of early familiarity between Shadow and the original character. Then maybe (maybe) I’ll give them a bit more of interaction in the main game, because it’d be nice to have a cool interaction with Shadow; and as endearing as his smile after the avatar does their thing with the sun of destruction is, it feels like it comes out of nowhere, if you think about it…

(I mean... Does he even know who we are?)

Infinite’s sword stuck to the ground goes completely over Shadow’s head, as he has no idea what that is or who it belonged to or what it means. It’s really just there for the viewer to reminisce the beginning of the episode and have a slight existential crisis.

When playing the main campaign, we get some pretty convenient information from Shadow once he finally shows up. Episode Shadow should give us a sense of how he knows those things. Want it or not, he did spend a long time studying the Phantom Ruby’s power far more closely than anybody else – well, maybe Sonic spent almost as much time as Shadow in a similar state, but that’s something to cover in another part.

The fact that Shadow is the one narrating this entire episode is supposed to allude to him telling Rouge exactly what happened during those six months he was gone. But if you want to read it as him talking to himself in the Virtual Reality as he slowly descends into madness, then be my guest!

I don’t know if it’s noticeable, but I’ve tried to tune Infinite’s cheesiness down a bit. I don’t think I can rid him of it entirely – after all, he is somewhat of a pompous, edgy, over-the-top character in general; he’s a full-on drama queen 24/7 and the only character cheesier than him is Sonic. Now, what we do with Infinite is to at least give a base to what he says. Also, I wanted him to sound a bit more like he lets the power get to his head. Oh well, I surely hope we’ll be tackling more of Infinite in the future!

Episode Shadow is extremely short, even for a DLC. I mean, it’s about only 20 minutes long – even less, if you’re good at it! With the addition of the cutscenes, the small changes, the boss fights against Squad Jackal and Infinite, and the added levels, the episode shouldn’t get overwhelmingly longer, but longer enough for it to feel more satisfying!

And with that, we’re done! I hope you enjoyed this massive thing. Despite me really liking Sonic Forces, I do think a few things could be improved. It’s not like it will happen, but rewriting is a lot of fun!

And why, no: I don’t take myself seriously.

#Sonic Forces #Episode Shadow #Sonic the Hedgehog #Infinite #Shadow #Rewrite #Headcanon #Character Analysis #Word count: why do I even bother?#phew that was a lot #I'm so tired

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tacitcantos · 4 years

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Why 2019′s Twilight Zone is Boring

Though 70 years old at this point, the original 1950 Rod Sterling Twilight Zone is still one of the creepiest and smartest works of speculative and weird fiction ever committed to TV. It’s a series that poses strange questions and offers even stranger answers, a series that’s moody and atmospheric and thought provoking, a dark parable that’s gone on to inspire other works of weird fiction.

It’s no wonder then that there have been so many attempts throughout the years to revive it: a movie in 1983, a series in 1985, and another series in 2002. Each has been greeted with varying levels of critical success, but none have been as culturally impactful as the original.

The 2019 remake... won’t be breaking that tradition.

Don’t get me wrong, the new Twilight Zone has a distressing amount of quality and talent involved. The cast is solid throughout, and the only reason certain episodes work at all is the powerful performances of the actors involved. There’s also a nice push for racial diversity in the cast, and sometimes in the themes of a few of the episodes like Replay and The Traveler.

The visuals of each of the ten episodes are gorgeous and moody, and the music wonderful and atmospheric and reminiscent of the discordant jangles and strings of the late and great 2013 Hannibal tv show. It’s a lot of quality to be draped on a fundamentally flawed structure.

To understand the fundamental flaw in the new series, we have to go back to the original Rod Sterling Twilight Zone. And the thing that has to be understood about the original series is that it’s not science fiction despite looking like it on the surface.

Science Fiction

Though there are dozens of definitions of science fiction, at its core one of the key aspects of science fiction is that it introduces a technology or technologies we don’t have in the modern day, and it explores and maps out the impact and implications they’d have on individuals and society.

For example, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov is interested in the implications of what sentient artificial intelligence means for our understanding of personhood, how an AI would define and think about itself, and how society would go about trying to control it, leading to the three laws of robotics for which the book is most famous.

This definition of science fiction is also why something like Star Wars, at its heart, is not science fiction despite having a lot of the trappings of it. It has a lot of technologies that don’t exist in the modern day, but it’s not interested in the impact of them. It has lightsabers because they’re cool, not because it wants to speculate about how they would change warfare.

Even the implications of the force, the speculative aspect of its universe that’s most critical to the story, isn’t really explored. How does the force change the universe? You get mystical samurai cops, and that’s about it. Nothing about the force is actually key to the functioning of the star wars universe. You could take it out and the movies would be a lot less fun, but the universe wouldn’t really be changed. This isn’t to disparage Star Wars: I love Star Wars, but despite its trappings it’s fantasy, and to say it’s science fiction just isn't accurate.

Parable

Much like Star Wars, despite its trappings The Twilight Zone isn’t science fiction. But it’s not fantasy either. The Twilight Zone is a much older and simpler form of story. It’s a parable. Each episode is a self contained story of right and wrong, with the strange or impossible element there to hammer home a message, not be explored.

All three of these genres we’ve talked about, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and parable, have strengths and weaknesses unique to them. One of the strengths of a parable is its clarity. There’s right and wrong, and not a lot else to be said. Almost by necessity, parables have to be streamlined and simple in structure. In a parable there’s a message or lesson and the story is really just a vehicle to illustrate it.

The parable of the boy who cried wolf doesn’t go into the emotional underpinnings of why a boy would consistently sound a false alarm over and over again, because it’s not important. Did he have an abusive childhood? Was it a metaphor for trying to escape abuse and the unwillingness of society to listen? Is the wolf symbolically his abuser? The parable doesn’t care and it isn’t important to the point it’s trying to make; don’t sound false alarms or no one will pay attention to you when the threat is real.

Simplicity of Structure

The original 1950’s Twilight Zone understood that simplicity of structure was key to a successful parable: each episode was a half hour in length; just long enough for setup, twist, and falling action. You can tell this simple structure was key to the Twilight Zone’s success because most of what people remember about any given Twilight Zone episode is the ending.

And while having such a simple structure might seem restrictive, I’d argue that not only is it the most effective way of telling a parable, but that there’s a lot of freedom in structure, that the simplicity of the structure allowed Rod Sterling and the other writers to grapple with issues other shows on TV couldn’t at the time, and allowed the episodes to breath in the grace notes.

And exhibit A in my argument is the new Twilight Zone.

Where the original Twilight Zone was a half hour, the 2019 incarnation is twice that length at an hour. And while I’m sure the writers and producers thought that was a great chance to expand and tell a more complete and complicated story than the original show, what it actually does is put the episodes in an uncomfortable limbo. They’re too long to be able to embrace the simplicity of the original show, that structure of setup twist and falling action, and too short to really be able to explore the core concept and theme of each episode. There’s a reason most movies aren’t an hour long, and that’s because it’s simply not a conducive length for telling a good story. With each episode of the New Twilight Zone I found myself bored around the thirty minute mark, impatient for the twist out of curiosity but not really invested in the characters or plot.

Not All Men

Episode 7, Not All Men, is a good example of the problems the extended run time of the new Twilight Zone can cause. The core concept is that there’s a meteor that falls and causes all men in the area to become violent. This is sort of a dumb concept to begin with, but not completely doomed. The main character even goes through some growth. She starts the episode unassertive and meek in the face of the patriarchal hierarchy of the company she works at and ends it standing up for herself against male harassment:

This isn’t an inherently bad arc, but it’s execution is pitiful, without enough weight for we the audience to become invested in. We never get any real indication of why the character starts the way she does, what her life experience has been to shape her into who she is, and there’s no sacrifice or growth involved in her change.

If the episode was longer it could’ve delved into that material, made the main character a fully realized and three dimensional person that we could’ve become invested in and root for, but as the episode stands she and her growth are more perfunctory than anything else. She’s meek, she runs from agro dudes for a bit, then stands up for herself.

The twist of the episode also isn’t worth waiting a whole hour for. At the climax of the episode it’s revealed that while the meteor makes men more violent, it’s not an overriding urge: the episode implies that the affected men didn’t resist simply because they wanted an excuse to inflict violence. But, because the twist comes so late, its not really given enough time to breathe and be explored in a meaningful way.

Simple Messages

This ties into another fundamental problem with the 2019 series, which is that it isn’t anywhere near as smart as it thinks it is. Often the idea or message at the heart of an episode is borderline offensive in how simple it is. By trying to avoid destiny you create it? Paranoia is bad? You should care about the suffering of others? Mind boggling. Truly.

They’re not bad messages, but they’re simple. And the television audience of 2019 isn’t the audience of 1959: the modern audience is more schooled and experienced with scifi and weird fiction. We’re not shocked or provoked into thought anymore just by the introduction of a weird element like your car coming to life and stalking you. It’s not enough.

This isn’t to say audiences of 1959 were dumb, but the discourse around scifi and weird fiction for even the casual tv watcher of today is a lot more complex than it was back then. We’re not in the 101 level anymore, more like the 103 level: we’ve seen the initial introduction of most ideas, seen them explored and challenged and subverted, and are now bored by those first two levels of discussion.

This is why the core message of an episode like Point of Origin, in which refugees from another world are rounded up and placed in concentration camps, falls flat. The episode follows a woman who’s privileged life is stripped from her when a government agency identifies her as an unwitting refugee from another dimension, and imprisons her in a concentration camp.

The episode’s message isn’t subtle: you should care about the suffering as others, you should treat immigrants as people: and that even before her fall from grace the woman should’ve cared more about the fate of her immigrant housekeeper and illegal immigrants broadly.

It’s not a bad message, and it’s one that a mind boggling amount of people nowadays somehow still don’t understand, but from a fictive perspective it’s too simple and trite to spark interest and engagement or make the audience think.

Preach Fatigue

And it’s also a message we’ve heard several thousand times. The way we consume information nowadays is different from when the original Twilight Zone first aired; the discourse around topics like immigration or gender nowadays is in many ways saturated and as an audience we suffer from a type of preach fatigue where we’ve been told so many times the given side of a given topic is bad or good that we’ve sort of stopped listening.

This wasn’t as much of an issue in 1960, and it especially wasn’t an issue with the Twilight Zone. Back then scifi and weird fiction wasn’t considered a mode of serious social commentary in the tv arena, which meant The Twilight Zone could lure audiences in for a fun and spooky time, their cognitive defenses lowered, and then sucker punch them with something deeper than what they expected.

That advantage of bypassing and audiences preach defenses is completely lost in 2019’s Twilight Zone. We all know that science fiction can effectively tackle big issues, and we know the deal with The Twilight Zone specifically: that it’s going to have a twist in the last act that makes us question our complicity in some social issue. Our preach fatigue hackles are already raised.

In 1960 the Twilight Zone was adding a new element to the discussion, but now, the social topics it was concerned with are are so heavily examined that to do truly do a comparable job, it needed to be way, way more clever than Point of Origin’s premise of "imagine its aliens instead of Mexicans". To be as effective as the original, 2019’s Twilight Zone really needed to tackle issues that are less clear cut than men having a choice in their violent behavior or whether illegal immigrants deserve basic human rights, issues that are less overtly preachy because they’re less discussed.

For example, Point of Origin actually has the kernel of a complex and interesting idea in it, it just doesn’t do anything in it. In the episode as it is now the main character’s fall from grace serves largely as a kind of gotcha moment of the irony in how the tables have turned, but in a better version of the episode her arc could be used to explore the idea that social lines are largely arbitrary and fickle, and that whether you’re part of a group or not can change on a whim.

It’s an idea that’s worth examining the facets of, the causes and effects of how and why and where social lines are erected, and one that’s more complex than Point of Origin’s trite message about how you should treat immigrants like people. There’s more material there for an audience to chew on and engage with, and one that’s less preachy and more thought provoking.

Metaphor and Censorship

Another element that made the Twilight Zone successful and relevant in 1959 but doesn’t really apply today, is the issue of censorship. In 1959 what could be portrayed on screen, and which topics could be explored was far less permissive than it is today.

There’s an interview with Rod Sterling right before The Twilight Zone first aired where he talks about being tired of clashing with sponsors and executives over what content and social issues his screenplays could include. One example he brings up comes from a teleplay on the Nuremberg trials in which the company American Gas insisted on an edit:

“In it as you recall, mention was made of gas chambers. And the line was deleted, cut off the soundtrack. And it mattered little to these guys that the gas involved in concentration camps was cynanide which bore no resemblance physical or otherwise to the gas used in stoves. They cut the line.”

“Because the sponsor was-”

“They did not want that awful association made between what was the horror and misery of Nazi Germany with the nice chrome, wonderfully antiseciptically clean beautiful kitchen appliance that they were selling.”

But just as with the point about the lack of complexity in it’s themes, the new Twilight Zone exists in a different era than the original. We’re at a point in television and fiction where creators don’t have to bow as much to advertisers or censors and can actually just say what they mean. Point of Origin doesn’t need to veil it’s message about immigrants and their demonization in scifi terms; it could just tell a story about real world immigrants and refugees. This doesn’t mean it has to be bereft of weird elements, those still have a valid role to play, but it does mean it can address the issues it’s about head on and directly, and I’d argue there’s value in that kind of clarity.

Some people will make an argument that veiling issues in scifi metaphors lowers an audience member’s kneejerk defenses and lets them look at an issue stripped of their preconceptions and prejudices. And there’s certainly a tradition of creators using weird fiction to try and accomplish that.

Rod Sterling himself spoke about it in several interviews throughout his career, though he seems to have been somewhat split on the utility of using scifi metaphors. At one point he said about audiences:

“You may have to tell them a story of prejudice in parable form in which they may step aside as third persons and cluck how awful we treat our minority groups but at least they know that it’s an evil, and they will recognize it as such. And by osmosis or some incredible process will somewhere along the line, be faced with a situation in which they too may have to exorcise a prejudice and be conscious of it as an evil.”

“Now on Twilight Zone for example, we made a comment on prejudice, on conformity, on intolerance, on censorship, but it’s easy to do it when you’re talking about Buck Rogers isn’t allowed to write his memoirs in the way he wants to write them so he puts on his backpack, his rocket pack, and he zooms over to the publisher. And they applaud and laugh and think how interesting. Now it may well be that the inner message never gets through, but I think peripherally it does get through.”

But in that same interview Sterling also emphasizes the need for clarity, immediacy, and hitting the audience where they live when discussing social issues:

“I think the- the purpose, the point of a dramatic show that’s used as a vehicle of social criticism is to involve an audience, to show them wherein their guilt lies, or at least indeed their association.

This latter point is the one I think is more valid. I’d argue that veiling real world social issues through weird fiction metaphors to make audiences think is a nice sentiment, it’s not a particularly effective technique, and often the metaphor simply goes over people’s heads.

How many red-hatted build-a-wall-enthusiasts watched Point of Origin and thought to themselves after; “yeah, you know what, immigrants aren’t so bad and we shouldn’t round them up into concentration camps.” I’d argue none. It’s far, far too easy for an audience member to simply think that sure, in this case what happened was unfair, but this real world case is different for x y and z reasons, no matter how insignificant those x y z differences are to the core situation.

Fundamentally, people are simply very, very good at ignoring and minimizing information that destabilizes their world view, and it’s relatively simple to do it with fiction. And none of the new Twilight Zone episodes are pointed enough to break through that cognitive barrier.

Get Out (Or In...?)

What’s ironic, is that for all that Jordan Peele shows up in the new Twilight Zone, his own movie Get Out is a far more effective blueprint of what the Twilight Zone should be, and a good contrast to it. To begin with, the scifi concept at the heart of it, that there’s an enclave of rich white people stealing black people’s bodies for themselves, is a manifestation of a complex and nuanced form of racism that often isn’t acknowledged or discussed.

Racism is generally thought of as a simple dislike or belief in the inferiority of another race, and while that’s accurate as far as it goes, racism can also fetishize or simply allow for superior traits in the othered racial group while still denying the people themselves their agency and basic humanity. It’s a form of racism that was one of the bedrocks of slavery, that as an institution it perfectly paired black bodily strength with white intellect, and you can see a modern expression of it in how until recenly most quarterbacks are white while the offensive line black, the black members serving as the muscle to the quarterbacks mind.

The racism at the center of Get Out is a far more complex and nuanced than Point of Origin’s message about treating immigrants like people. It complicates most people’s understanding of racism as the simple belief that races that aren’t their own are inferior, and makes us question our complicity and assumptions: as much as we don’t think other races our worse than our own, are we as careful about how we assume parts of them may be better while still not valuing their core humanity?

At 144 minutes, Get Out also not only has enough time to explore this idea, but also to breathe and build to its twist and flesh out its main character. Unlike Not All Men’s main character, Get Out’s main character is a real and multifaceted person with weight and history, and goes through a coherent character arc. We never get a concrete reason for why Not All Men’s main character starts the episode meek, which makes her blurry and poorly defined: by contrast, we’re shown Get Out’s main character was traumatized by what he feels was his complicity in his mother’s death, which gives his eventual overcoming of it real emotional heft.

The alternate ending of Get Out even threads his emotional growth through the themes of racism: despite having his body imprisoned, the main character is mentally free, an inverse of the fate he would’ve suffered at the hands of the Armitage family. Here’s director Jordan Peele explaining the scene:

“He beat the dragon, but more importantly for Chris when he says ‘I beat it’ he’s talking about his inner demon. And that was the moment he went back for Georgina after hitting her in the car, he defeated his personal demon of when he didn’t go and get his mother. So in a way he made the only decision that would free his soul. And even though he’s in prison like many black men are unjustly in, his soul is free.”

Get Out also has the advantage of being in a genre that, just like the original Twilight Zone, isn’t oversaturated with serious political commentary. While there are smart and socially intelligent horror movies out there, many people still think of them as dumb fun, and thus Get Out can effectively draw you in with the promise of cheap thrill before sucker punching you with depth and message.

Get Out has clear cut right and wrong, it’s not like we don’t know who to root for and who is evil, but these three elements together, a complex theme, a real character, and low expectations, save Get Out from the preach fatigue I talked about before and from which the 2019 Twilight Zone suffers so heavily.

Ultimately, 2019’s Twilight Zone feels like an outdated show, stiff and limited and slow. Worse, it’s boring, which is really the greatest sin. It’s stuck in an uncomfortable limbo both in terms of era and length; it’s mired in the past trying to emulate a tv show that’s sixty years old at this point while also upending its structure and replacing it with one that’s incompatible with what it’s trying to imitate.

#twilight zone #2019 twilight zone #new twilight zone #get out #jordan peele

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harperfinkles · 5 years

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My Ranking Of Every Barbie Movie

A few months ago I finally decided to watch every barbie in order. When I was a kid I loved barbie movies, but I stopped watching them after Princess & The Popstar came out, and I felt like I’ve been missing out ever since.

Here I present to you: My Ranking Of Every Barbie Movie!

Keep in mind that I’m basing this off of my personal enjoyment of each film, and not by how “good” it is. There are many movies here that are ranked high despite being objectively flawed, as well as there are movies ranked low despite being objectively good. My opinions are also subject to change, especially since some of these I’ve only seen once.

36: Barbie & Her Sisters In A Puppy Chase

This entire movie is a mess. Like most of the barbie & her sisters movies there’s no real plot. The events of this movie only happen because of bad luck, which is never a good way to kick off your movie. I also find barbie to be completely OOC in this movie. Her disorganization and lack of planning is something that isn’t present in any of the sisters movies. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy movies that humanize barbie and give her more flaws but there are way more creative ways to do it. It doesn’t help that her insistence to “keep positive!!!” and “be optimistic :)))” just robs this movie of any meaningful message.

Then after the frustrating mess that is the puppy chase itself, Chelsey STILL wins her dance competition despite the fact that barbie didn’t let her practice, and she cheated by adding her sisters and the horses to the dance. It’s unbelievably stupid. I don’t know how the writers of this movie thought we would buy into that. I’m probably never going to watch this movie again.

35: Barbie Presents Thumbelina

The main reason I don’t like this movie is because of the style of the Twillerbees. Unlike Mariposa (the only other movie that doesn’t have a barbie protagonist) their faces look inhuman in a way that makes it hard to relate to them. I would’ve much preferred if Thumbelina had just gotten the normal barbie face, just her body becoming smaller. Besides that I think the girl whose name I can’t remember is annoying, and I didn’t like Thumbelina’s plan to get on her good side to save their home. Both of their character developments were weak and unbelievable. Then once the parents were convinced to stop demolition the movie lost all of its dramatic tension. This movie isn’t ‘bad’ per say, just completely boring. Not I understand why I never rewatched this as a kid.

34: Barbie In Princess Power

This movie had so much unrealized potential, but fell apart due to its plot that went all over the place. The villain and his frog were extremely annoying, Kera’s friends were completely one note characters, and Dark Sparkle was so petty and unnecessary. The part that pissed me off the most was how Kera’s identity was revealed to everyone. First off Wes was forgiven for this way too easily, despite it completely making me lose what little faith I had in his character, and secondly her parents handled it so casually. It seemed more like she had gotten in trouble for sneaking out to go to a party than her being forced into getting superpowers and using them to fight crime in the city. Plus the animation was absolutely horrible. What is with Mattel and changing barbie’s model every new movie?

I really wish this movie was better. Barbie as a superhero is such an amazing concept, and it makes me sad to see it executed so terribly.

33: Barbie & Her Sisters In The Great Puppy Adventure

Another movie with the most annoying villains possible. They’re the core reason I couldn’t stand watching this. In addition to that I found that the treasure being under the big willow tree was completely predictable from the first ten minutes of the movie. And even though the puppies were quite cute, their voices were so annoying. There are also a few plot holes (if you can call them that) such as the metal detector app (it hurt typing that) and how the girls knew that scaling the wall of the cave would lead to where the elevator lead. Despite this I still liked learning about barbie’s childhood and all of her achievements, though her grandma was quite creepy.

32: Barbie & Her Sisters In A Pony Tale

This movie straight up has no plot. It’s the worst of the sisters movies in that regard. Many chunks of this movie felt like filler (such as the party scene), and the character conflicts were weak and contrived (such as Chelsey and Staci's). One thing that I really liked about this movie is Barbie’s character, but that’s pretty consistent with all the sisters movies that aren’t Puppy Chase. I also found the two french guys very annoying (is there any sisters movie with a good villain?).

31: Barbie: Fairytopia

I feel bad for putting this one so low, especially considering how high my placements of all the sequels are. It feels like information is revealed to quickly at the beginning and the rest of the movie is just boring. Elina is very interesting but she could use a lot more character development. The part about her being bullied for not having wings was relegated to cheesy dialogue and didn’t really amount to anything. Plus the fungi aren’t nearly as funny as they are in Mermaidia.

The main reason I’m not putting it lower is for nostalgia and setting up the rest of the Fairytopia series. Aside from that I also really liked the vibe of the one underwater scene, and the “friends you haven’t met” line was quite good. This movie is just a complete anomaly in the great track record of early barbie movies. You honestly don’t even need to watch it to understand the sequels.

30: Barbie: A Perfect Christmas

As a musical this movie really sucks. The only song that I actually liked was barbie’s one solo, and even her singing voice there really didn’t sound like her. There’s really no plot to this movie, but I did find myself enjoying the dynamic of the sisters a lot more than the other sisters movies (even though Skipper’s Arc with the concert came out of nowhere and stressed me out). The way Santa’s magic was shoehorned into the story really bothered me though.

29: Barbie Video Game Hero

The best thing about this movie is definitely the side characters. They all had nice designs and personalities, especially Bella and Chris. The concept of this movie is also so creative and fun that I actually enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I liked it mostly during the first two levels as well as the bonus one, but the last two really soiled it for me. The fact that there’s an open world game with no clear way to win makes no sense in the context of the rest of the game, and the Just Dance advertisements are absolutely cringey. This movie has a strong beginning but really falls behind in the second half. The last scene of the movie really made me want to rip my eyes out.

28: Barbie: Spy Squad

This movie really suffers from not getting the audience to care. The characters aren’t developed enough in the opening and the way the girls got their jobs as spies seemed too easy. The storyline felt too straightforward, and even the plot twist at the end was kind of cheap.

Despite this I still really enjoyed many parts of this film. For one the animation is amazing. I loved the character designs, especially Patricia’s. Speaking of her, I thought she was a pretty good villain, even if she was a little cheesy and her ‘redemption’ arc was very clumsy. I also thought Lazlo was sweet. A lot of modern barbie movies only go halfway with the romance because they don’t want to be seen as bad role models for girls, and a lot of the times the Ken characters just seem unnecessary. I thought it was a good idea to have him be the “love interest” of a non barbie character so his inclusion doesn’t feel useless, even if they never actually got together. It was also just really fun to see all the spy technology.

27: Barbie: The Princess And The Popstar

The placing of this movie is extremely unfortunate since I actually really liked Tori and Kiera’s characters. They both had spunk and I really like the tropes of the roundy princess and the celebrity who doesn’t find satisfaction in fame. The reason this movie is so low comes down to the terrible plot. It felt like they were trying too hard to make it similar to the Princess & The Pauper even though Tori and Kiera’s characters would much better suit a different plotline. The villains were just insanely frustrating and had such unclear motivations. The songs were also pretty bad (other than Here I Am), the Ken character is annoying, and the climax has barely any emotional weight since it wasn’t led up to properly. But hey, at least Tori/Kiera is a high quality ship. If it wasn’t for their relationship this movie would be much lower.

26: Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale

I love the set up for barbie’s character in this movie. She’s just been fired for the first time, Ken broke up with her, and she feels like her life is falling apart. She really reached a new layer of dimension with this movie, and she’s the best barbie as herself character in all of the movies. My main problem is the boring plotline with the flairies. Their character’s aren’t interesting and what they do to the clothing isn’t anything special. This movie also suffers from the boring villains. Barbie’s character is my main reason for liking this movie, along with the Ken plotline, even if it could be quite contrived.

25: Barbie: Star Light Adventure

This is a very weird movie. I had completely different reactions to it during the two times I saw this movie. The first time I thought it was very disappointing. The title said “adventure” so I was very surprised when the characters spent most of the movie training in the same location and we barely got to see any cool new locations. The pace was also extremely slow, especially near the beginning. The second time I started to appreciate the movie for what it is. The animation is absolutely stunning and I love what we saw of the creatures in this universe. Sa-Lee is definitely one of my favourite side characters, and the rest of the team was pretty cool too.

They also added a bunch of new things that I think are very unique to this movie. For instance I loved that barbie’s had telekinesis. She definitely needs more superpowers in future movies. I also liked that we got to see her parents.

My main gripe with this movie has to be Constantine. He was annoying for no reason and I think the movie would’ve benefitted from either having him be nicer and more of a character arc, or having him be a full villain who’s using the team for personal gain.

24: Barbie: Mariposa & The Fairy Princess

As a sequel this movie sucks. It doesn’t cover the same themes as the first movie, we don’t get Elina telling the story, the stakes are nowhere near the height as the first one was, and the characters in the first movie don’t get nearly enough screentime. Willa and Carlos’s part in this movie was underwhelming, but I’m especially annoyed by the fact that Rayna and Rayla weren’t even mentioned once. This all probably would’ve been different had the movie been made closer to the original, and I’m extremely confused as to why they waited to make it in 2013.

However if you disassociate it with the first movie it becomes way more enjoyable. I thought Catania was sweet and lowkey ship her with Mariposa (though it still doesn’t compare to the Mariposa/Carlos/Willa OT3). The crystal fairies themselves were an interesting addition to the universe and their designs were really pretty (I actually wish I was still into barbie at the time it was released just so I could’ve got some of the dolls). The increase in animation quality was also a plus. I’m also so happy that after the first movie Mariposa started running a library. It was such a natural progression in her character arc and it’s so perfect. There are still a lot of problems, such as a villain who feels utterly disconnected from the main story, clumsiness and miscommunication being repeatedly used as plot devices, and the annoyingness that are the puffballs. I’m still glad this movie happened and if you liked the first movie you should definitely check this one out too.

23: Barbie And The Secret Door

Oh boy is this one a mixed bag. It was actually the first "new” barbie movie that I saw, but it definitely did the trick of making me want to watch the other ones.

On the positive side this movie is so pretty. I love all the bright colours and the designs for Nori and Romy. Speaking of which, they were such great side characters, and an adorable ship! I especially like Romy since she was so funny and adorable. Plus, the “what’s a boy?” comment made me laugh. I thought that the world building aspect of this movie was really interesting, even if the animal designs weren’t the best.

On the negative side, I feel like the music was extremely disappointing. It got less annoying on my second watch through, so maybe I just have to warm up to it. I also feel like the villain was boring. This movie deserved a more serious antagonist, especially since we saw how terribly she affected the fairies and mermaids. I did overall like princess Alexa, but I’m kind of unsure about her arc relating to responsibility. I think a lot of modern barbie princess movies in general just aren’t as interesting as the ones that take place in the past.

22: Barbie: Dolphin Magic

What a cute movie. I loved Isla’s so much! She and Barbie were so adorable together. The dolphin’s themselves were quite cute too.

This is a very feel good movie, and it almost makes you ignore its flaws. The main thing that annoyed me is why couldn’t they just pick up the dolphin and put him back in the ocean? He’s not even that big, and there isn’t much distance that you’d have to walk with him anyway. The plot and villain aren’t that interesting either, and the sisters were sometimes annoying (such as Staci’s broken foot having no weight on the plot, and Treasure being absolute garbage). Barbie also seems a little too perfect in this movie, which isn’t even true for the rest of the sister movies and they’re all way lower on this list. I also laughed a lot when Barbie called Ken her “Friend”, since apparently romance is too inappropriate for a barbie movie. Still, if you ignore this and just watch all the Barbie/Isla scenes, the movie is really good.

21: Barbie: Fairytopia: Magic Of The Rainbow

Being introduced to all the different fairies in this movie was so much fun. I love all their different personalities and designs, especially Glee, Sunburst, and Lumina. Elina grew so much in this movie, and it truly is the perfect ending to the trilogy. The flight of spring was really cool too. The only real flaw this movie has is how clumsily Elina’s magic abilities are added in. It almost seems like she knew how to use it all along, even if we know she didn’t.

Also Dizzle is the worst. And that one apprentice’s wings being the braids in her hair was FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

20: Barbie In Swan Lake

This movie is definitely the most legitimately beautiful barbie movie out there. The colours are so nice, the dancing is so majestic, and I’d want to live in the forest any day. Odette is one of the prettiest barbie characters and I love her wardrobe. This movie also has two of the most iconic villains of my childhood who make me laugh every time I think of them.

Despite this I still don’t think this is nearly as good as everyone makes it out to be. First off, Odette’s character arc as the ‘chosen one’ wasn’t executed believably, and she wasn’t even that interesting. The romance was way too instalove-y for my taste (even Rapunzel had a more believable romance than this). The message of this movie was also really unclear in the Chelsey scenes. Overall it’s a great fairytale that I have lots of nostalgia for, but it doesn’t hold up as well when you really dig into it.

19: Barbie: Fairy Secret

I love how Barbie and Raquelle’s relationship is expanded upon in this movie. In Fashion Fairytale Raquelle’s motivations were confusing and she felt very flat. I love how we got to see them forced to work together despite their hard feelings and eventually come to forgive each other at the end once they got to the root of their issues with each other. It’s the ideal enemies to loversfriends scenario.

This movie is just really fun. Exactly what a barbie movie should be. Barbie’s stylist friends were great, and the Ken parts were pretty funny. I do overall like the worldbuilding, though Gloss Angelos looked way to small to even be classifed as a city, let alone the biggest fairy city in the world. It’s like 90% castle and 10% actual city.

In the end I always wish that Barbie, Raquelle, and Ken remembered what happened to them, and that’s the most frustrating part about this movie.

18: The Barbie Diaries

Despite being made by a completely different studio than the other movies (and having a downgrade in animation quality), this movie really holds up today. There’s a lot going on here, and it makes the plot seem way more complex than any other barbie movie. We also get to see into barbie’s head a lot more than any other barbie as herself movie, what with her fantasies that we got to see visualized. This movie is just the perfect blend of magic and normal life, and even if I do prefer the fantasy based barbie movies, this one will always hold a place in my heart.

17: Barbie And The 12 Dancing Princesses

There really isn’t much to be said about this movie. It’s just plain good. There’s nice music, a good plot, a great villain, a cute cat character, and a girl obsessed with bugs. What more could you want?

The only thing I don’t like is the wedding scene. It seemed quite out of place. Their relationship wasn’t that important to deserve the last few minutes of the movie.

16: Barbie And The Three Musketeers

Barbie sword fighting is all I’ve ever wanted in life. This movie really broke the mold for what barbie could do. Corinne is a great protagonist, and the other musketeers were great too (even if their personalities weren’t developed that much). I love how important their friendship was and how easily Corinne integrated into their group. This movie is super fun and just makes me want to scream “GIRL POWER” from the top of my lungs.

There were still some drawbacks though. The prince was annoying, I got so tired of that one sound effect that keep on repeating over and over again (if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about), the cat was way too immature, and while the villain was good, he was not subtle at all. The movie still had a solid storyline, and I loved how it ended with the girls going on another adventure. *sigh* If only this movie had a sequel.

15: Barbie: The Pearl Princess

Lumina is one of my favourite barbie protagonists. She just felt human in a way that not many others do (even though she’s technically a mermaid, not human). She was naive, but not stupid. I loved seeing her react to a world she hasn’t seen before. This movie had such a unique approach with her aunt Scylla. Her aunt may have done something completely wrong, and she admits to that, but Lumina doesn’t ignore the way aunt Scylla has cared for her and loved her over the years. She accepts her found family and her biological family at the same time, and lets her have a chance at redemption. In addition to that I really loved Lumina’s pre transformation outfit. It’s my second favourite barbie mermaid outfit next to Nori’s in Mermaidia.

I also liked how much the animals of this movie felt like active members of society, and had intelligence levels equivalent the mermaids. I’ve never really seen that in a barbie movie, at least to this extent. Kuda was a great animal sidekick who really felt like one of Lumina’s true friends. I also like how Spike looked dangerous but was a real softie on the inside.

There are a lot of other elements of this movie that I liked too, like how sweet Fergus was, and his love of botany. I liked the gag about Caligo thinking he’s being poisoned, and being paranoid about which cup he’s gonna drink from. Even if the Ken character wasn’t utilized much, I liked his dolphin friend. My only complaint is that the climax was a little messy, and I didn’t enjoy Caligo as a villain that much.

14: Barbie In A Mermaid Tale 2

This worked very well as a sequel to the original Mermaid Tale. Eris’s return as a villain felt very natural, and this movie continued to have Merliah feel like a genuine teenager with her own dreams and mood swings. The only reason it’s lower than the first one is because the plot isn’t as all encompassing and it doesn’t feel like Merliah’s life has changed as much as it did originally, if that makes sense. The plot also feels a little too fast at times, but the pacing doesn’t affect the movie drastically.

Kylie was a wonderful addition to the cast. She was mean, but you could clearly tell that it came from her insecurities about her own talent. I cannot emphasize how well her conflict with Merliah was developed. I loved their banter at the beginning and how they came to understand each other at the end, to the point where it didn’t matter who won the competition. It’s just.....SO GAY. I love it.

Speaking of which, Fallon and Hadley were both really cute in this movie too, more so than the first one. I just love how little men there are in the Mermaid Tale movies.

13: Barbie: Princess Charm School

Last time I watched this movie a few years ago I absolutely hated it, but after rewatching it again my opinion has completely turned around. The plot of this movie may still be very basic, and the supporting characters, Princess Isla and Hadley, were very one note, but it’s the strength of the Protagonist, Blair, that really makes this movie. I love seeing her determination in an environment she’s not used to, and how selfless she was even when she’s surrounded by selfishness.

Also can we appreciate how dark this movie was? Dame Devin literally MURDERED Blair’s parents in a car accident. It’s not like that hasn’t happened in any other movie, but in this one the tone just feels a lot more jarring.

I really appreciated Delancey’s character development. She seems so cold and unforgiving at the beginning, but as more information is revealed to her she changes for the better. She was raised in such a negative environment and I can’t help but be proud of her. Her friend Portia was also really funny too. I love the “YOU STOLE MY CAKE” scene.

12: Barbie As The Island Princess

Is there anything better than crazy island girl characters who talk to animals? I think not.

I love Ro’s animal family. Azul and Sagi are essentially Ro and Tika’s dads, and it’s adorable. Azul’s peacock sounds are just absolutely ridiculous, and I love it.

The music of this movie was also soooooo good. Words cannot describe how The Rat Song makes me feel inside. On a more serious note, I Need To Know is absolutely perfect. I love the visuals that go along with it. And just when you think it’s over, Ro’s part ends and Prince Antonio comes in AND IT’S SO PERFECT. Love Is For Peasants is also the best barbie villain song in any movie. “You need to stop reading those books. Filling your head with thoughts!” ICONIC. The soundtrack of this movie isn’t as good when listening to it outside of the context of movie when you compare it to stuff like the Princess And The Pauper, but it’s still really good nonetheless.

The romantic element of this movie was also really good. I think this is the first time on this list that I’ve listed the romance as a positive aspect. Ro and Antonio are just really compatible people who fulfill very essential parts of themselves when they meet. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I also love Tika’s development in regards to their relationship too.

The villain was pretty okay, but I especially love princess Luciana. She may be a romantic rival to Ro, but she’s a victim too, and she’s given a very sympathetic role in the story even if her mother is the villain. Her arc was very satisfying.

11: Barbie In A Christmas Carol

Not really a typical barbie movie to list as one of my favourites, but it’s a christmas essential for me. Having Barbie be Scrooge was a very risky move, but god, did it pay off. Eden was cruel, but her story is so sad. I always feel her fear when her aunt disrupts Catherine’s party. This is definitely another one of the darkest barbie movies.

Also, GHOSTS. Ghosts should have been in more barbie movies. They all had cool concepts and designs, mainly Aunt Marie and the ghost of christmas future.

Catherine was such a joy to see in this movie. She’s a very kind and selfless person, but her friendship to Eden puts her in conflict with that side of herself. Seeing her fulfilling Eden’s role in the vision of the future was actually kind of scary. It makes it all the more satisfying when Eden apologizes to Catherine in the end. I really love their friendship.

Christmas Carol was always one of my favourite christmas tales after I watched the Mickey version, and I think this movie did it justice (thought it was slightly less traumatizing than that, thankfully).

10: Barbie In The Nutcracker

Even though I’ve had a copy of this for the longest time I never really took the time to watch and appreciate it. And now that I have I’ve gotta say that this was a great start to the barbie saga. The producers still hadn’t settled on making barbie movies the way they’re known for now, and you can tell by the lack of female characters and a few of the 2D sequences, but the sense of adventure this movie has is so unlike any movie that came after. And despite the limited resources they had for animating it still ended up looking stunning. They animators had such a good sense of colour, and all the landscapes looked amazing.

Before watching this I always thought that The Magic Of Pegasus had the best (canon) romance of any barbie movie, but now I actually think that this may be better. Clara and Prince Eric have great chemistry and such a believable bond. The last dance scene was amazing and it so was heartbreaking when Clara was sent back to the real world. I love the scene when Eric visits Clara’s house and confirms that it wasn’t all a dream.

Also, I really appreciate Clara’s decision to stay in the magical world. So much media, including barbie movies, puts emphasis on people staying with their family and choosing more stable environments. What writers don’t realize is that that’s boring. We don’t watch movies to learn about people’s normal lives, and I’m so grateful that this story ended the way it did. So yeah, thanks writers.

There were also many scary moments here too. The rock monster is TERRIFYING. Maybe the reason I don’t remember this movie is because the rock monster traumatized me so much I had to repress it. The Mouse King was also quite creepy. I wish newer barbie movies committed to making scary villains like him.

9: Barbie In A Mermaid Tale

I probably have the most nostalgia towards this movie since it was always my sister’s favourite growing up. Now it’s one of the only barbie movies she’ll watch with me other than the sequel. I expected to not enjoy this movie as much since I’d kind of exhausted it by this point, but I guess I surprised myself.

As I mentioned in Mermaid Tale 2, Merliah feels like a genuine teenager. She likes her normal life and hates responsibility. Because of this her arc of deciding to save her people feels so much more genuine and poignant.

The world building of this universe is just so good. The plot with Calissa and Eris was great, and I love the scene where Merliah is picking out a tail. The world just looks so pretty and magical, even if magic doesn’t play a huge role in this film. The soundtrack sets the scene so nicely, and Queen Of The Waves is definitely one of my favourite barbie songs.

8: Barbie In The Pink Shoes

This is definitely a huge unpopular opinion, so I should get all the negatives of this movie out of the way first. The animation of the faces is extremely creepy, Kristin was very irresponsible to decide to change her routine up at the last minute, and she would’ve worked much better as a choreographer than as a dancer. Despite these flaws there’s still something about this movie that makes me love it.

For one, despite the creepy faces, the dancing animations were still pretty good. And even though Kristin’s arc wasn’t the best I still find her final dancing scenes (the one in the ice palace and the one on stage) to be so inspiring. Keep On Dancing is such an amazing song and it gave me chills the first time I heard it. The movie is also quite pretty. The ballet outfits aren’t as traditional as ones in earlier barbie ballets, but they still have flare and nice colours.

The movie is also really funny. It makes fun of the ballets it covers a lot. I love the “you don’t look a day over 16″ part. The two suitors especially, Hilarion and Prince Albrecht, were so funny. I loved how their petty jabs at each other turned into compliments when faced with adversity. Hayley was also pretty funny since she was the realist of the movie.

I think the irl characters were used very nicely in the ballet world, and I liked how when Kristin got back it turned out that everything wasn’t as bad as it seemed before. Tara wasn’t as mean and Madame Natasha wasn’t nearly as scary. That’s one of my favourite tropes in fiction.

7: Barbie & The Diamond Castle

Liana and Alexa are basically a married couple. There is literally no way to refute this. Their arguments are adorable and domestic, and they clearly love each other more than anything in the world. They may have their differences at times but when it comes down to it they know each other more than anyone else does and work together so nicely. Every aspect of their lives is intertwined so much that separation usually isn’t an option for them. My heart broke when they parted since I knew that that was how Lydia would defeat them. I cried when Liana came to Alexa’s rescue, and the movie ending with them going to back to their normal house instead of staying at the diamond castle was beautiful. Truly the best and purest barbie ship.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s talk about everything else. The plot of this movie is so unique. There is no other barbie movie that’s about music itself. The muses and their drama and betrayal with Lydia was so intriguing. Seriously, Lydia was a scary villain. I was terrified of her as a child. Liana and Alexa seemed like they’re helpless against her powers, and it feels all the more victorious when they defeat her. The last fight scene was truly epic.

I really appreciate how little Liana and Alexa care about the two twins. They’re my least favourite part of the movie, and even if they do start working with them later on in the movie it’s made very clear that they don’t care about them at all.

6: Barbie In Rock ‘N Royals

I really didn’t have high expectations for this one. It was after I had watched The Princess And The Popstar and Secret Door, which both gave me a bad feeling about barbie pop musicals. But this movie really came through and made itself my second favourite barbie musical movie, and my sixth favourite overall.

The only thing I disliked was Courtney’s weird facial design. That’s it. The rest of the movie is basically perfect.

The movie started off at a relaxing pace but I was never tricked into thinking it would end that way. I love the Camp Pop vs. Camp Royalty plotline. Finn and Lady Ann seemed simple at first but their past was revealed at the perfect time. Clive was hilarious and him becoming the real villain was executed so well.

Seeing Courtney and Erika react to the camps was a delight. Their friends were so quirky and nice to them, and the camps themselves were pretty fun too (UNICORNS). Them finally meeting at the beach was such a breath of fresh air. I could imagine them becoming great friends in the future (cough sequel cough). Erika was probably my favourite of the two since she just looked really cool and had a more interesting arc. I just love it when two groups of people who have seemingly nothing in common come together to achieve a common goal. Also I have a theory that Sloan and Princess Olivia were in love the whole time, and the competition was the first time they could smile around each other without being ridiculed by their peers.

Now, onto the music. My favourite song is probably Gotta Get To Camp. I was shocked at how good it was. The choreography was also the most interesting since it was the only time the characters spontaneously burst into song. When You’re A Princess is also such a bop.

This is definitely the first movie I’d recommend to any classic barbie fan who wants to try out some of the new ones.

5: Barbie: Mariposa & Her Butterfly Fairy Friends

This is probably the closest to a perfect barbie movie you’ll get. The protagonist is very relatable, the supporting cast is great, everyone has good development, the world is scary yet so fascinating, and the villains are amazing. Also it has a non barbie protagonist. Having Elina narrate the story was such a great decision. Mariposa really sticks out in the long list of barbie protags. Her transformation scene near the end was so great. It fits the theme of the movie so well and I think that anyone can get inspiration from Mariposa’s journey.

When it comes to characters everyone is so much fun. Carlos is another one of my favourite barbie love interests, even if the movie didn’t commit to the romance fully. He and Mariposa have their love of reading in common and they like each other for non superficial reasons. Willa is also adorable and sweet. It would be very interesting to find out how she and Mariposa met, since they’re so different, yet they’re close friends nonetheless. Rayna and Rayla are both quite interesting cases. When they first showed up I rolled my eyes and thought they’d be tossed out of the way very soon, but they continued through the story and changed as people. They gained respect for Mariposa, and vice versa. Henna was also pretty cool too.

The setting was so interesting too, more than any other Fairytopia movie. Every place looks like it has danger lurking, and he characters genuinely felt small next to the landscape. One of my favourite things in this movie has to be the absolutely horrifying Skeezites. I remember playing the DVD game as a kid and having nightmares about it later.

4: Barbie As Rapunzel

This is probably the scariest barbie movie. Unlike other scary ones like Mariposa and Diamond Castle there’s such an aura of misery and helplessness to this movie that is like no other. Gothel is the main reason for it. The tower just looks so dark and every scene in the normal world has such tension surrounding it. It makes me even more emotional when Rapunzel finally frees herself from the tower.

All the paintbrush scenes are integral barbie moments for any kid growing up. I remember being fascinated by her art, and by how hope came to Rapunzel in her worst moments. We don’t get a real answer to how the paintbrush came to be, but it doesn’t feel necessary. It’s just so beautiful.

I love the animal sidekicks in this movie too. Penelope is so adorable, and I love how she, like Rapunzel, found the courage in herself to stand up and disobey her father. And having a dragon be one of the good guys was a really risky move for the second barbie movie, but it payed off so well.

This was truly an ethereal movie.

3: Barbie And The Magic Of Pegasus

This movie definitely has the most riveting original plot of any barbie movie. Wenlock was a terrifying villain and Brietta’s story is so sad. Plus, barbie standing up for Wenlock’s wives at the end basically invented feminism. I love that it’s about an ice skating barbie, and all the skating scene were so fun too.

Shiver is also adorable. I had a lot of the dolls as a kid and the only things I have left from them are the Shiver toy and the Wand Of Light. Speaking which, that wand was so epic and pretty. The movie was just so aesthetically pleasing.

Annika is another one of my favourite barbie protagonists. Like Merliah, she genuinely feels like a true teenager who's rebelling against her strict parents, and she learns a great lesson. Aidan was also a great mirror for her and when I was younger they were my favourite barbie couple. They have lots of good banter and I really buy their relationship development. I especially love the ice dancing scene at the end.

This movie is a barbie essential for me. It represents so much of my childhood. I used to watch this movie obsessively and it’s just as good now as it was back then.

2: Barbie: Fairytopia: Mermaidia

This is kind of an odd choice for my second favourite barbie movie. This one used to be my #1 favourite before I rewatched the one coming. I was obsessed with mermaids and fairies as a kid and no other movie captured my imagination the way this one did. The land of Mermaidia is so pretty and reminds me of everything I dreamed about as a kid. It also gave me Nori, my favourite non barbie character in any barbie movie and one of my biggest childhood crushes. I love how her sass comes from her insecurities about Nalu, and how she and Elina start to like each other once they see past him.

Elina/Nori is also another contender for my favourite barbie ship. They have nice banter (and I’m sure by now you all know how much I love that) and I love the scene when Elina sacrifices her wings for a tail to save Nori (that’s totally my favourite scene in any barbie movie). I wish we got more of their relationship in Magic Of The Rainbow, but I guess that wouldn’t have fit with the movie. Oh well.

This movie works very well as a sequel, while also being better than the original in every way. We had the same villain, and we got to see a part of the Fairytopia universe that we only saw a glimpse of in the first one. After Elina got her wings it only feels natural that the possibility of her losing them again is explored, as well as the prospect that maybe she doesn’t need wings to be herself. And compared to the original movie the stakes have been raised much higher, we have more reasons to care about the characters, and it’s so much funnier. The fungi annoyed me in the first movie but in this one they made me laugh constantly. And this movie wouldn’t be complete with the amazingness that is opera Bibble.

This movie doesn’t have the best plot, but it doesn’t suffer from it either. It’s one of those movies that just makes me feel relaxed and at peace (other than the Depths of Despair scene, though at this point I’ve seen it enough that it doesn’t phase me as much anymore).

1: Barbie As The Princess And The Pauper

We all knew this was coming. No other barbie movie comes close to this classic. It’s gonna be hard to describe why I love it so much since everything that’s amazing about this movie has already been said a thousand times before, but I’ll give it a go.

Anneliese and Erika are amazing characters. They may come from different social classes but they both have the shared experience of not being able to fulfill their dreams. This movie is so good at showing you how trapped they feel, yet still their duty to their lives never waver. My mom has an interesting story about how she got into this movie. She initially thought that barbie would be a terrible role model for me and my sister until she saw The Princess And The Pauper. Anneliese and Erika are clearly very complex protagonists who have interests outside of romance and are active participants in changing their destinies and saving the kingdom. Especially with Erika, who decides to achieve her dream of becoming a famous singer before getting married to King Dominick.

This movie has a bunch of nice relationships too. Anneliese and Erika click with each other so well and respect each other’s troubles without downplaying their situations due to the class difference. The romances were both nicely developed too. Erika and Dominick may have fallen in love over the course of a day but I appreciate how much he likes her stranger side (like when he walked in on her singing to her cat lmao). Anneliese and Julian’s relationship feels especially believable since they’ve known each other for a very long time. I also really like that they waited for Erika to come back before getting married. OT4 goals.

Preminger is a barbie villain like no other. The rest of my top ten has been dominated by scary and serious villains, but Preminger is just so funny and dramatic compared to them all. He’s the only barbie villain that has became very well known in pop culture.

All of the songs in this movie are so iconic. I think that’s the biggest strength of this movie. I'm constantly listening to music and the soundtrack is a great way for me to take this movie everywhere I go. The Cat’s Meow is a beautiful song, Written In Your Heart feels so inspiring, I Am A Girl Like You is great character study, If You Love Me For Me is a beautiful and tender love song, How Can I Refuse? is an iconic villain song, and Free is a great introduction to the characters, as well as my number one favourite barbie song. Every song has something special about it and that makes it one of the most memorable movie soundtracks ever for me.

I also love the cats Serafina and Wolfie. They’re two of the best animal sidekicks in any barbie movie since they feel a lot like the human characters. THEY ALSO HAVE SO MANY BABIES IN THE END FUCKING GOD.

I hope you all enjoyed my ranking. Feel free to comment with your favourites and least favourites, just be aware that this is all personal to me and really says nothing about the objective quality of each of these movies.

#barbie #barbie movies

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everyone-needs-a-hoopoe · 4 years

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What was it that you didn't like about Amnesty?

oh thank you for asking!!! i was Musing late last night so i will share all my thoughts with you... i’ll start with the Big Nasty, move onto story criticism and finish with the stuff i really loved end up tying criticism and praise together because everything i liked came with a “but” regrettably. though its overall quality really suffered for its flaws, i’d still recommend amnesty even though i think i prefer balance.

(spoilers, duh!)

so... i don’t know what made justin drop all his brain cells and decide duck should date his teacher, who was already centuries old when she met him on the day of his eighteenth birthday. like, she met him when he was a teenager and she was at the very least already a middle-aged woman. she literally watched him grow up. even if that weren’t the case, you can’t just suddenly decide you’re on equal terms with someone who’s been your teacher for over half your life. it was seriously, deeply disturbing and it’s all the more disturbing that such a large chunk of the fandom thinks it’s “haha one of the only m/f ships i respect” and the same as magnus and julia’s relationship.

that plus the treatment of cops in amnesty was a real “the mcelroys are four straight white men” reality check. i can kind of tolerate the cops thing just because a couple of years ago i wouldn’t have found anything wrong with it either, but ducknerva was just genuinely disgusting. they all should’ve known better.

as a much more minor gripe, i am pretty frustrated that griffin still can’t wrap his head around having more than one single nonbinary character per story. i do love hollis though and i think they’re cute with keith. a little iffy on his only nonbinary character being a gang leader, but i think they’re so reasonable and ultimately heroic that it’s not as big of a problem as it could’ve been.

onto narrative criticism: minerva’s ending made me pretty sad for her, too. she’s been alone for centuries, only able to talk to one or two people, and now she follows duck to a place where it’s effectively the same. it’s good for duck to be there, but for minerva that was an awful choice, and it did her a serious disservice.

speaking of disservices to characters, ned’s death would’ve worked better narratively if they hadn’t tried to replace him with thacker. if the pine guard was down to two you would really feel his absence, and the others would’ve had so much more opportunity to work through their feelings about him and dwell on what he meant to them. obviously, on top of meaning clint would have to sign off for the rest of the show which wouldn’t have been any fun for him, the mcelroys have a lot of trauma around death which would’ve made it no fun for any of them to do that.

it would’ve been better not to kill ned at all. it didn’t make any sense that aubrey didn’t try to revive him when it’d already been established she could do that, but it also didn’t make any sense that a mixed success killed him in the first place. it was just very contrived and while the death scene was very well done it just didn’t work for the story.

and god, poor thacker. his relationship with mama was fucking delightful, his concept was awesome, they really did put in the effort to characterise him, and it didn’t work at all. there’s a reason it’s very firm writing advice to not introduce new characters more than a third of the way through the story; poor thacker embodies it. he was so good and i feel absolutely nothing for him. you did your best clint i salute you

the gulf between amnesty’s concepts and its characters is one of my biggest criticisms of it. the quell and sylvain, reconciliation, the horror elements, they were all fantastically done, and they feel a bit like they’re just concepts hovering in a void. hell, i think i like the pine guard as characters better than tres horny boys, but ironically the focus on storytelling over gameplay in amnesty made the world feel so much less unified than the world of balance. (doubly ironic considering the theme of bonds in balance??)

i don’t feel like the pine guard had enough relationship with each other, and i don’t feel like they had relationships with the world around them. i want to love danaubrey with the passion of a thousand burning suns but, despite travis deliberately seeking out scenes with dani... i just didn’t really feel it and that sucks. again, the concepts of dani’s arc were really cool, but her execution as a character just didn’t happen.

as my final note of criticism, a more fandom-oriented gripe: sternclay kind of annoys me. just from my quick sift through the tag yesterday i found it’s far far far more popular than danaubrey when stern’s character is nil and their chemistry nonexistent. like, it’s fine to have preferences and all, but m/m ships with minimal chemistry or presence in the story being infinitely more popular than canon f/f ships is a pattern i’ve seen repeated across countless fandoms and it’s exhausting. also fuck the fbi, stern’s cop ass does not have rights

anyway, to finish off with some things i liked that don’t have a “but” tacked on!

i’m soooo deeply in love with the motifs of terrifying technology, the beauty of uncorrupted nature, and the horror of nature corrupted. griffin really nailed those. the imagery of all that in amnesty is something i like about it more than balance.

sylvain and the quell are also one of my favourite things ever. entropy and creation portrayed not as enemies but as deeply in love with each other? that’s so fucking cool!!!! i’m really delighted by the quell taking the form of a sylph to reflect while its forces aren’t needed, too - it’s a really cool character concept and one that was executed well to boot.

reconciliation also was so fascinating and heartbreaking and horrifying and i loved every aspect of it. so fucking cool. i love explorations of well-intentioned evil, of calm and friendly and loving things that are just so unforgivably vile nonetheless. i love the exploration of preventative justice and how flawed and awful it is despite how it might sound good in theory. it was just so well done

i also love billy and i’m so glad he got a second chance - as heartbreaking as his death scene was, it also frustrated me that he’d never been checked in on before it, so his revival and his chance to reflect on what he’d done and try to make up for it was really, really good.

and that’s my thoughts overall! if anyone has any good amnesty meta i’d love to read it and see other people’s thoughts too

#hear it hurgling #taz amnesty #Anonymous

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jbeshir · 6 years

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Why I Think Rationalist Self-Help Is Broken

So I was asked, fairly reasonably, after in my previous post I said I thought I might have had a narrow escape from a self-reinforcing set of bad approaches to mental health and executive functioning issues, what approaches I was thinking of, exactly.

This is a list of approaches I think are wrong, and the consensus around them in the self-help parts of the rationalist community (e.g. all the praxis/gnosis type channels I’ve encountered on rat!Discord) is a big part of why I no longer frequent those spaces and now consider myself rat!adjacent, centrally an EA, and more likely to pursue skeptic communities or other communities to try to find ones whose flaws I am happier living with, rather than expanding engagement with rationalist communities. Although I insist, as an unrepentant Yudkowskian, the rationalist community moved away from me and not visa versa.

If you’re a rationalist with “post rationalist” leanings who doesn’t want to read a list of reasons why I think you suck right now, I recommend not expanding this post; I’m going to try to be as polite as I can about it all and stuff, but at the end of the day the topic of the post is the topic of the post.

So, the approaches I think are bad, some with particular justification and some just by correlation to the rest.

Drug addiction/recreational drugs as coping mechanism. A bit ago I commented “alcoholism is cool so long as you swap out the drug”, sardonically, and someone responded to say that actually, they endorsed that, so this is an actual point of disagreement.

I think the primary problem with using incapacitating recreational drugs as a balm within your coping mechanism is that it provides an extremely good avenue for escapism, which is a really tempting way to buy a balm for today at the cost of tomorrow. Additionally, I think it readily leads to a thing where people can’t function sober because their coping strategy is unavailable, and can’t function high because, well, they’re high. And yet there is a lot of “oh, you feel bad? Let me help you get some weed”. Arguments about handling existing addicts aside, this is I think probably one of the ways people move into a rationalist cluster and then decline because of “helpful” peers sharing their escapism.

I miss straight-edge LW-rationality where my willingness to countenance alcohol put me at the questionable end of the spectrum.

A bunch of stuff tied up in the assumption that normal friendship and relationships are impossible for many people in the community and therefore people should be grateful to have friends and relationships at all. This particularly leads to the idea of the whole “catgirl” thing where you can apply any kind of costs to the people around you so long as you’re a catgirl for them, because both they and you assume that they can’t get friends anywhere else.

This is not actually true! Being friends with people who are... a bit high maintenance is great, but you shouldn’t do it out of the feeling that they are the only people who will be friends with you. It’s not true. and people shouldn’t feel like they can be as high maintenance as they want so long as they play catgirl.

When I got over this, approximately concurrent with me starting therapy and reinforced by an increase in RL socialisation they encouraged at the time, I flipped out a little and quit most of the circles I was in for a bit. I don’t need to be friends with people who borrow hundreds of pounds from me and have no shame about not paying it back to have friends, and any interactions with people who think I do are going to involve them taking liberties. I’m back in parts I like now, but without the previous “I need to cling to this community” feel.

Most stuff involved in thinking about social status and auras, and social reality, more likely if it promises to be looking at social reality for “real” when everyone else isn’t. These things are real, but... the only way I can really put the issue is... “wow, autistics are really bad at distinguishing between good and bad social models”. If the models pick up on one dynamic that a naive model doesn’t, they’re adopted without question, no matter what other cases they get wrong. And boy, do they get things wrong.

“Sometimes an impression of a person having an effective aura picks up on evidence that you would consciously miss about them being competent” => “The halo effect isn’t a bias anymore, it’s actually the correct way you should be approaching your decisions, your feels of a person’s aura is a better assessment of their competence than any assessments you might make away from those feels”, is every rationalist talking about how their in person interactions indicate a person actually has brilliant models despite everything they ever wrote being evaluated as awful when actually analysed blind. And it is frustrating as hell.

Auras and social reality offer a tempting opportunity to be the holders of a cynical secret, but taking that opportunity in no way requires people to actually adopt better models, and since the matter is complex enough that adopting better models is genuinely hard, that generally doesn’t happen. More common is brazen self-justification; the more you describe the rest of the world as sucking and focus on that the less your flaws show up relatively. The more you talk about your version of social reality, the less you have to pay attention to actual reality.

(I vaguely associate this stuff with Vassar’s group? But by now it’s the default.)

Trying to invent their own novel forms of therapy instead of (rather than as well as) going to actual therapists.

I think trying to execute therapy without being a therapist would be fair enough just because therapists are expensive, but some effort to actually be aware of what therapy generally entails rather than just sticking the name “therapy” on any series of actions you think is helpful would be good.

Hypnosis for mental health assistance and anything involved in exploiting suggestibility. This is mostly correlational- I observe a very strong correlation between cultivating suggestibility and a tendency to lack direction and an internal moral sense. But I also observe a lot of enthusiasm and no results, which is sufficient in itself to be dubious of it as a strategy.

Internal Family Systems; there’s a definite thing of temporarily disassociating to regain functionality temporarily I’ve seen people do which... I guess worked for them, I don’t want to recommend it but I can’t discourage it either.

But reifying things you are conflicted over into multiple personalities seems in the many cases I’ve seen it to let you keep both sides of the conflict, and I think that’s often not a good idea. The part of your thinking which is saying “actually, I don’t want to have this trait” should not be satisfied by being split off into a different personality unit than the trait.

I’m not sure it is something that can’t work to actually make progress in internal conflict, but I don’t think it looks like it is working the way I see it tried. I hear actual therapists touch on the concept, but I’d assign a probability of 80% that they do it different in a substantive manner.

I think peer support centred around validation has a tendency to validate behaving toxically. This isn’t rationalist exclusive, but is a problem with its self-improvement channels.

Separated out so you can more easily say you hate this bit while agreeing the above is bad: I also think it has a tendency to validate inaction. You don’t need to do X because Y. It’s okay to spend your time high because Z anyway. As a throwaway thing from a friend to a friend, well, there are worse crimes than bending epistemology while being supportive. As a culture, gets a bit crab bucket-y.

Part of the problem, I think, is that these traits tend to overlap and seem to reinforce each other. Once you get into some you get a bunch of the rest, and then you can’t update out because of the mutual reinforcement. The stuff you hear against your weed habit? Clearly just people manipulated by state propaganda trying to increase their own social standing. The stuff you hear against social power? It definitely seems to help in whatever hypnotic/suggestibility stuff you’re playing with. Why go to a therapist when they don’t understand social reality? And such. I never particularly bought into any of them, and am quite glad I did not.

I’ll mention messing with self-identity as something which is more good than bad. It doesn’t work, I think, if you detach yourself from reality enough that you can sustain a positive self-identity without actually... being positive, which is a problem that exists. It’s often done very poorly. But it’s still better than the way people readily self-identify as negative things by default. People are at least aware that negative identity is much more self-fulfilling than positive, and if you let something negative in there that wasn’t definitely true by accident then it will tend to become true.

Also, while I now no longer agree with the part of it based on IFS, I like the rest of the Luminosity sequence as a “soft sequence”, based on novel ideas, which I think is good for self-improvement; it focuses on self-observation to gain a more accurate self-model, and I think this largely works and is positive.

(On the Hammertime sequence in particular, I’ve not read it yet.)

#rationality #rationalists #rationality community #discourse

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nightcoremoon · 5 years

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I think part of the reason why I hate horror movies is because of the overreliance on jumpscares and shock value and BWAH SUDDEN LOUD NOISES rather than on atmosphere, believability, tension, fear.

here's a list of horror movies from google and the reasons why I hate them, or why I love them, or that they're not actually horror movies.

A quiet place: haven't seen it yet but it's a thriller more so than a horror. thrillers can be scary though but then again so can comedies. and romances. 50 shades is definitely scary: it is psychological abuse after all.

Halloween: slasher film, automatically boring and shit. I'm including the entirety of the franchise here, by the way, and I'm also gonna be including Friday the 13th, nightmare on elm street, etc. They're all the same brand of sensationalist garbage. maybe the very first in each series could be redeemable but the mass volume of shitty and terrible CGI gorefests have ruined them forever. "oh no the scary unkillable monster is coming after us and he's gonna kill us in overly violent ways" 💩

Hereditary: I don't even give a shit it looks trite EDIT maybe it's okay but I don't give enough of a shit to bother to ~give it a chance~ because hey. that's what fucking horror games are for.

Insidious: boring, not scary, 0/10

Get Out: haven't watched yet but will because it's a cinematic masterpiece that defies genre conventions

Bird Box: IM SO FUCKING SICK OF HEARING ABOUT FUCKING BIRD BOX SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT BIRD BOX HOLY SHIT. It's just the goddamn happening by shyamagofuckyourself and it's an excuse to profit off of sensationalist suicide. oohh so spooky. eat my ass, boggart

It: too much bad cgi makes it a comedy. plus a bunch of kids say fuck a lot. good movie that's technically horror I guess but is it scary? nah.

Suspiria: I've never heard of this movie

Annihilation: same

Split: M NIGHT SHYAMALAN IS A SHITTY FILMMAKER and also it's ableist as fuck so

Mandy: google you suck none of these movies have any mainstream appeal

The Conjuring: 💩💩💩

Hush: ??? you know what fuck it I'm skipping the ones that don't matter

The Vvitch: 🙄 my mom's a witch, my best friend's a witch, I'm a witch. hey yeah maybe let's not buy into christian colonialism please? scary witches are boring as shit. gimme something actually scary. like Catholics.

The Nun: wait shit not like that! and by that I mean BORING AS HELL aside from the jumpscares. which are shit

The Babadook: clearly an LGBT movie, not horror

Cabin in the Woods: a parody and an excellent one at that. at least the gore is in homage, or hilariously over the top

Sinister: the fucking epitome of shitty jumpscares and shock value and lack of atmosphere and bad acting and bad plot and jesus fucking christ this is one of the worst and most boring movies I've ever had the misfortune to see DONT WASTE YOUR GODDAMN TIME

Saw: it's actually a thriller with Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Michael Emerson, and Tobin Bell. it's a campy cheesy low budget true to form horror film with adequate writing, good acting, AMAZING MUSIC BY CHARLIE CLOSER, and isn't over the top with gore considering it's all practical effects. top fucking notch but spawned a dozen terrible sequels.

Shaun of the Dead: it's a touching and heartfelt romantic comedy... with zombies, EXCELLENT CINEMATOGRAPHY, excellent acting, and sad parts that will rip your fucking heart out, stomp on it, and grind it to dust. literally one of the best movies ever made of all time, eat shit tarantino.

The Ring: eh, the original Japanese was better (Japanese horror is its own genre and not a part of this criticism, I actually really like original Japanese horror unfucked up by american audiences as long as it doesn't just gratuitously glorify suicide as Japan does), but this was still a really good mystery thriller with some really cool effects, and is the only movie that has ever actually scared me for real. even now I hate that there's a tv with a vcr right at the foot of my bed.

The Sixth Sense: shyamalan made a couple of good movies. this was one of them. but it wasn't a horror movie and if you didn't know the twist IT WAS A FUCKING AMAZING ONE. like, goddamn empire strikes back levels of supreme and god tier plot twists. it went a little overboard on shock value but compared to the rest of the COMPLETE BULLSHIT on this list (AND IN HIS OWN MOVIES) it really could've gone way further.

The Descent: goddamn claustrophobia. too much horribly cgi'd gore and terrible decisions to be truly enjoyable though. would've been a much better movie without the mutants and the middle finger to physics throat stabbing and the JUST FUCKING KICK IT YOU GODDAMN IDIOT and oh yeah the subtle misogyny. the first half was good tho

28 days later: shitty remake of a merely ok movie EDIT I was thinking of 28 weeks later, 28 days was actually okay I guess

Scream: did not age well but it's okay for being meta, despite the fucking torture porn of drew barrymore at the beginning. allowed for scary movie 1 though, so I'm glad it exists.

Paranormal Activity: PARANORMAL FUCKING ACTIVITY CAN EAT MY ASS, ITS SUCH A SUBLIME FAILURE OF EXECUTION. I WANTED IT TO BE GOOD BUT IT WASNT. oh well at least it inspired five nights at Freddy's. I'll go ahead and throw all shitty found footage movies under this one, including unfriended.

Blair Witch Project: a fucking pioneer of its time. a genre definer. truly scary. good movie. I'll go ahead and throw all good found footage movies under this one, including cloverfield.

The Shining: a thriller, not horror. but goddamn is it the scariest not horror movie ever made. Stephen king you magnificent bastard

Alien: goddamn fucking alien. science fiction masterpiece. director's a little creepy but eh, sigourney weaver kicks ass, and alien isolation is such a good game (despite its many flaws), and it's just so iconic in terms of sheer scope of concept. it's the same horror movie as anywhere else but in space, and I still can't fucking believe this was made in the 70s. this and Star Wars were FUCKING AMAZING, and the xenomorph? THATS ALL PRACTICAL EFFECTS BABEY. NO OVERRELIANCE ON CGI GUTS AND SHOCK VALUE HERE, ITS JUST PURE HORROR AT ITS FINEST. good movie. aliens was better. everything else... eeehhh...

The Thing: same as the descent but with men instead of women, and EVEN WORSE DECISION MAKING. IT IS UNBELIEVABLE JUST HOW GODDAMN STUPID EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM COULD POSSIBLY BE. and in the remake yeah the practical effects were mind blowingly fantastic and inspired dead space which I believe is one of the best horror games if not just best games or horror pieces of media if not just best pieces of media constructed. but the prequel? 🙄 no thanks

The exorcist: masterpiece of practical effects without an overreliance on jumpscares and gore

Jaws: it's Stephen fucking Spielberg in the 70s and one of the most influential horror films and just films in general

Hellraiser: okay I'll give all works by clive barker a pass here because goddamn is he a demented fucking genius if ever I saw one. if only Jericho was actually a good game, it could've been the next doom 3

Poltergeist: an actually good horror movie that depends on atmosphere and effects more so than jumpscares and gore? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP

Evil Dead: campy but misogynist. the sequel was a comedy so it's okay. the next sequel is also a comedy AND ARMY OF DARKNESS IS ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES EVER FUCKING MADE. FIGHT ME. and fuck the remake. sam raimi should've retired after spiderman 3. maybe even before that.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: honestly not bad. it was actually freaky and believable. rednecks really are fucking scary with all their inbreeding and terrible music and hatred of black people. I refuse to acknowledge the original and the sequels.

Psycho: eh, hitchcock's worst is still better than most of the shit on this list.

The Wicker Man: OH GOD NOT THE BEES! AHHGUBLAHH MY EYES! AAAAAHHHHH!!! fucking excellent comedy. but it doesn't have any naked ladies in it like the original did. oh well, can't please everyone.

Night of the Living Dead: THOSE ZOMBIES ARE BULLSHIT. ZOMBIES CANT USE WEAPONS AND THEY SURE AS FUCK CANT TURN YOU INTO A ZOMBIE BY STABBING YOU WITH A TROWEL. THEY HAVE TO BITE YOU. FUCK YOU GEORGE ROMERO. Also, dawn of the dead was just sensationalist garbage. "They tore apart a real pig carcass tho so it looked like real intestines" what? the fuck??? who gives a shit????? I watch movies to escape from reality, dumbass. I don't beat off to chopped up human carcasses. If I want a zombie movie I want the walking dead sans the soap opera bullshit and the racism and then "no one is safe and everyone will die" boring mentality propagated by twd and got and other things I used to like but no longer care about (because why should I give a shit about it if everyone could die? I can already be sad enough about all the real people I know who die. enjoying the pain of the deaths of those important to us is a privilege the cishets have). the walking dead seasons 1&2 was pure horror and the very best kind. don't give me boring contrivances. "but sheena, night of the living dead was a trope definer! everything in it was original!" yeah, you know what else is original? *farting noise* George Romero is just rob zombie without a rock band. his best work was fucking call of duty. that's pathetic. "maybe you just don't like gore" HEY YEAH SURE I DONT WANNA SEE UBER REALISTIC INTESTINES AND ORGANS IF THEY ARENT PART OF A MEDICAL DEAL SO IM JUST A BIG DUMB HATER. I'm the one in the wrong. fuck me, right?

Don't Breathe: A FUCKING TURKEY BASTER FILLED WITH SEMEN. THATS SO STUPID I FORGOT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY. BEST CRINGE COMEDY OF THE YEAR :D

Tremors: legitimately great movie with a hundred shitty sequels. like saw but your faves win so you walk away filled with determination rather than sad and disappointed. enjoyment of tragedies are a privilege awarded to those who are neurotypical.

Zombieland: gore done right. the only casualty is mindless zomzoms and bill murray. good. granted it counts as a romance and a comedy but honestly last time I watched it I cried at the part where you find out buck isn't tallahassee's dog. god I love that movie. AND FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS IS THE MOST BADASS MOVIE OPENER EVER.

The Fly: Jeff fucking goldblum. amazing effects for good reasons. need I say more? the original doesn't exist because 1950s horror movies are all bad because all 1950s movies are bad. the 1950s should just be purged from america's records except for pleasantville.

All other Stephen king movies: hit or miss but mostly still good. although very few are actual horror.

10 cloverfield lane: more of a thriller like above's misery but still an amazing movie.

Peeping Tom: literally a movie about how creepy it is to fetishize the deaths of women WHILE LITERALLY FETISHIZING THE DEATHS OF WOMEN. like, come on man. how do you miss your own point so completely?

Invasion of the body snatchers: it's not horror and if it's made to be horror using gore it's shit. the whole thing is just an allegory to the joe mccarthy communism witch hunts anyway.

Cube trilogy: the ultimate b movies. so bad they're good. and it's such an interesting concept too!

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: fucking alien clowns come to earth to turn us into cotton candy by killing us using carnival fare. THIS IS THE GREATEST BAD MOVIE EVER MADE.

All horror movies based on horror video games: either irredeemably bad, or action movies

All creepy Netflix horror movies: wow any idiot with a camera and basic cgi skills can throw shit together to make a movie these days, huh

The Slender Man: I am literally too pissed off about this movie to insult it.

Marble Hornets, Tribe Twelve, the Slender Man movie on YouTube: triumphs of meta, editing, found footage, proof of concept, and story. Slenderman is such a malleable entity for a perfect horror experience, HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY FUCK THAT UP? YOUD HAVE TO BE INTENTIONALLY SABOTAGING YOUR WHOLE MOVIE TO FUCK IT UP AS BAD AS SOMEone who exclusively directs remakes... oh... oh no.

Wrong Turn: one mediocre movie and a dozen loathesome snoozefests coasting by on shock value

Troll 2:

oh god

they're eating her

and then

they're gonna eat me

...

oh my gooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

(Troll 2 is literally the worst movie ever made and I have to respect it for that at least)

but yeah, horror is just bad for movies. but for video games, though...

#long post

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beardycarrot · 5 years

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L.A. Noire is... interesting. It’s not a terrible game, but at the same time, I don’t know if I can call it a good game either.

You start off as a patrolman in 1946, and play through a few cases of police work as a tutorial. You’re then promoted to detective and work traffic cases, which lays the groundwork for the rest of the game, the meat of which you get into once you’re promoted to homicide. This is the most interesting part of the game, and what you would expect a noir detective story set in 1940′s Los Angeles to be about: investigating what appear to be copycat murders based on the Black Dahlia case, but with odd similarities that definitely make them seem connected.

Unfortunately, while this is interesting in concept, it’s absolutely unsatisfying. Since it’s spread out across multiple cases, and a case is only closed when you arrest the suspect, you have to keep arresting guys you know are innocent... destroying families in some cases. You eventually discover that the cases ARE all connected, because the killer leaves a series of clues leading you to him... and he turns out to be...!

Just some guy, actually. Yeah, just a bartender working for a temp agency that you talked to for a few seconds in the first homicide case. You don’t get any real explanation of his motives before chasing him through the sewers and killing him, and since having false arrests in so many cases would look bad, the police cover it up. That’s the end of that, and you move on to working drug cases.

This, unfortunately, is where the game’s real story comes into play. Half a million doses of army surplus morphine being shipped back to the US after the war were stolen, and... I honestly care so little about it that I’m not going to bother. You’re then demoted to working arson cases because your character has been having an affair with a jazz singer (you’re never told why), and it’s back to repeatedly arresting the wrong people. If you’ve been reading the newspapers that appear in some cases, you’ll know that the actual arsonist is a patient of the doctor involved with the morphine.

It turns out that the fires are being lit because the homeowners are refusing to sell to the housing project going up in the area, but then it turns out that the new houses being built are going to be burned down too for an insurance scam, but THEN it turns out that... maybe not...? Because... the housing project is in the same area that a freeway is being planned to run through, or something? The game doesn’t really attempt to explain itself on this point, and then you chase the arsonist through the sewers, kill him, and then die because... I don’t actually know, at some point someone did something to make the water level rise, which apparently results in a huge rush of water through the entire sewer system.

It’s not a BAD story... but you can’t help but compare it to the Black Dahlia cases. A psychiatrist deciding to exploit two soldiers he happened to meet to make himself rich isn’t nearly as interesting as a mastermind serial killer based on the biggest unsolved murder case of the twentieth century. THAT should’ve been the game’s main plot.

As for the gameplay itself.... eh. You investigate crime scenes and other places of interest by walking around, pressing A to examine objects whenever you get a magnifying glass prompt, and if it’s something important looking at parts of it more closely. Unfortunately, anything not directly related to the case is completely useless. In a game like Phoenix Wright, you can examine almost anything to get some witty banter between the characters; in L.A. Noire, you turn a beer bottle over in your hands and Cole says its unrelated to the case.

The real star of the show, however, is the interview system. You’re given a list of questions to ask, which I think is based on clues you’ve found or received from other interviews, and based on how the person responds you can choose to believe them, doubt them, or show evidence that proves they’re lying. Or, in the version I played, GOOD COP, BAD COP, ACCUSE.

Every character you interview uses facial motion capture of an actor, which is pretty cool. They even used a couple who are instantly recognizable, like Michael Gladis and Greg Grunberg. The idea is that you’re supposed to watch their faces to determine whether they’re telling the truth... but it kinda feels like a waste, since the signs aren’t little twitches at the corner of the mouth or their neck muscles straining or anything like that. Every character that I can remember has the same tell: being unable to look directly at you.

A downside of the motion capture is that it captures the whole head... but only the head. There are a few places where the animators weren’t quite able to match the movements of the body to how the head is moving, which is really immersion-breaking and kinda gross at times.

Depending on how well you do in an interview, you can receive clues that will help you out in future interviews or lead to small breaks in the case, but none of the interviews are actual fail conditions: you can get every question wrong and still progress through the game. Unfortunately, the game only tracks the number of questions you got correct, and not which ones they were, so all future dialogue plays out as if you did it perfectly. A memorable example of this was the police captain congratulating me on outing the Venezuelan consulate general as a sexual predator... which I neither did nor even assumed.

The third type of gameplay is the action set pieces, which if you fail enough times, you have the option to skip... that should give you a pretty good idea of their quality. These consist of chasing suspects on foot, chasing suspects in a car, or shootouts. The shootouts are the easiest, as your character can take a ridiculous amount of damage, you automatically heal after a few seconds of not being shot, you have unlimited ammo, and the areas they take place in are always conveniently filled with Gears of War-style pillars and chest-high walls. Foot chases aren’t exactly difficult... you can tackle the person if you get close enough, but you never will, because the game throws vehicles and pedestrians in your path to slow you down. You just have to follow the suspect for long enough, and they’ll eventually either tire out, take a hostage, or ambush you and force a fist fight. For most chases your character will draw his weapon, but even if he says “stop or I’ll shoot!” that’s not actually an option. Killing the suspect, and in some cases even just injuring them, can result in a game over... despite the game being perfectly okay with you killing people when the narrative says to.

The hardest are the car chases, largely due to the game’s driving controls. The cars accelerate and brake realistically, which is fine, but power steering wasn’t available on commercial vehicles until the 1950′s. What this means is that if you’re going above ten miles an hour, you have the turning radius of a tank. The computer-controlled cars, unfortunately, don’t seem to be as limited by this issue, and as with the foot chases they throw a lot of things in your path. While your partner will constantly urge you to case them at top speed with your siren blaring, the driving controls just can’t handle high-speed chases. The only way to consistently beat these sections is to drive slowly and carefully and just wait until the suspect gets hit by a bus, or whatever pre-determined end point the chase scene has. To give you an idea of how hard the vehicles are to control, I once lost a suspect because I’d somehow Austin Powers’d myself.

Finally, there’s the traversal. The game basically uses the Grand Theft Auto style of open world (which makes sense, as it’s a Rockstar game), but there’s never any reason to commandeer a civilian vehicle: you always have your partner’s car to get around in, and even if you do get a different car, half the time it will revert you back to your partner’s car when you enter the little cutscene that plays when you arrive at a location. Unfortunately, there isn’t much else to do in the open world; as this is a Serious Detective Game, there aren’t any side activities like bowling minigames or anything.

You can find a few rare vehicles hidden in police lockups that are marked on your map, or discover historic landmarks that aren’t, but everything else is just finding items scattered around the city that you can’t see from your car. Considering that any damage you do to vehicles or city property is deducted from your rank at the end of each case, it’s best to just fast travel everywhere and pretend that the open world doesn’t even exist... buuuut, the game only gives you a tutorial on how to fast travel on the twenty-third case. The game has twenty-six cases. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that the tutorial should’ve come much, much earlier.

I know that I’ve probably sounded largely negative, but again, it’s not a terrible games. Almost everything was poorly-executed and it should’ve been refined prior to release, but it’s not like it’s an unfinished or fundamentally flawed game... it’s just a lot harder to praise something when it’s completely average. If I were to give it a number score, with one being barely playable and not at all fun, ten being the best game I’ve ever played... I’d give it a solid five. Not a great game, but not a terrible one either.

...Oh, except for the fact that Switch port is absolutely abysmal, that would probably dock it a few points if I’m talking about the Switch version specifically. The pop-in of background details is frequent and distracting when you’re in areas that buildings aren’t blocking your view, characters’ heads will sometimes be a glitchy hair-colored texture for just a second when they first appear, you can see some extreme frame loss and slowdown while walking around on foot out in the city, and worst of all, the game crashes a lot. In my 393 hours playing the Switch version of Skyrim, the game crashed four times. In my thirty hours playing L.A. Noire, it had seven separate crashes.

#la noire #spoilers

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mejomonster · 2 years

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My very subjective opinions

Goodbye My Princess's biggest flaw when watching is rhe second romantic lead who wears white is jusy such an unattractive dick. He's not cute, he's not fun to watch. Both the princesses love interests are bad for her but at least the prince is fun to watch doing fucked up stuff and getting so in love he's ready to lose it

The Secret of The Three Kingdoms is FULL of gorgeous people, solid acting, and bi energy. I greatly appreciate the bi energy. And its even more impressive for having a fuck ton of compelling varied heroines who arent the traditional cdrama lead type, a balanced gender cast of leads, and canon ships you absolutely want to root for. I was completely enamored with all the main ships, and only side shipped more because the chemistry is so strong with nearly everyone (tan jiancis character I really shipped with the empress and emperor, the writing seemed to play with the idea of an emperor/Sima yi ship a lot).

The Kings Affection didn't have enough fights. I am an action loving kinda person, and had to give up on it. Still a cool concept though

Love and Destiny is the best traditional execution I've seen of a 3 lives 3 worlds story type, however the guy in charge of the wigs sucks at wig design and we all know it and it hurts an otherwise gorgeous show. The pacing is also a bit slow compared to other 3 lives 3 worlds setups I've seen.

Love and Redemption is my favorite multiple lives multiple realms xianxia by eons compared to other big contenders like Eternal Love and Ashes of Love. But LaR flips a lot of tropes and plays with a lot of norms and changes things, so it's originality is part of that. So worth watching. And rewatching. No dead time in that show.

Ice Fantasy is sexy and original in some ways, and I eat up its tropes. It's not totally unique but in a way it is and thats the fun part. Its like a good soap opera with the kind of niche fantasy tropes I look for that aren't super special but very fun when they're happening

Eternal Love should get some credit for the amount of queer characters (a couple, some very implied bi leads), when it didn't have to include any. But it really made a rather accepting fantasy world. It's no LaR, but EL set the normal standards of this story type and I'm glad that's part of the standard it set. I've got some major issues with certain character writing choices that seem stupid and ooc in some parts, but overall concept wise it had some compelling heroines, sympathetic heroes, and gave a traditional execution of this story types tropes in a relatively compelling way. I get why it got popular even tho I'm never gonna watch it again. That said -

Jade Palace Lock Heart - love the lead actress, but specifically in this role. I LOVE HER in this role. This was once described to me as like an anime in Qing dynasty and yeah that's the feel. It's serious but funny, romantic but horrific, realistic but fantastical. Historical aren't usually my taste but it's got a lot of everything and in thar way it's at least somewhat appealing. Also I like mean women. And I feel like a lot of the concubines in this show fall both into the vicious villaness portrayal that's sometimes in these kind of shows, but also get a lot of screen time where you're expected to see their pov and understand them even while they're depicted frankly as cruel. I like that approach.

Men with Sword - I know it's cheaply made, it's tragic, it's acted by a bunch of amateurs. Despite this I think it's so much fun like going to a passionate community theater play. It's gay as hell and political and full of action, all things I love. And some standout actors really give incredible performances (like Ian Yi).

#rant #mmm

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rickrakontoys · 6 years

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Pre-Infinity War MCU rankings

How I'd rank the current 18 movies, from my least favorite to most favorite, with some brief thoughts:

18. The Incredible Hulk (5/10): I barely remember this one... and I dont like Hulk's look here. Liv Tyler gasps all her dialogue. Ed Norton did an ok job I guess, but I didnt get much of a lasting impression.

17. Iron Man 2 (6/10): I remember being extremely annoyed by Tony and his behavior, and the blatant Avengers setups. Least we got War Machine out of this. Whiplash could have been great if he didnt have to share the villain role with Justin Hammer. (Also, without this mess, we wouldn't have gotten Jon Faverau's amazing film "Chef", which was made in response to his frustrations making IM2)

16. Thor: The Dark World (6/10): Forgettable plot and villain. Some chuckle worthy scenes. Not sure what else there is to say. You could tell the movie was butchered trying to fit Loki into the plot. There is barely any chemistry between Thor and Jane.

15. Thor (7/10): Decent intro to the characters and world of Asgard. But the movie looks strangely cheap, especially the New Mexico town. I never felt Thor and Jane could be a thing, despite their performances being good. The cast all around was terrific too (Hopkins as Odin is great). Loki was a great, tragic villain though. Thor breaking the bifrost is immediately undone by the Avengers...

14. Iron Man 3 (7.25/10): I enjoyed the deconstruction of Stark and common comic book tropes. What they did with the Mandarin was pretty ballsy and I respect that. I don't even remember the true villain's name... Having Tony deal with PTSD was also interesting.

13. Ant-Man (7.25/10): Surprising that this worked at all. Pretty fun ride, if a tad generic. Cool shrinking visuals. I look forward to the Wasp.

12. Doctor Strange (7.5/10): Again... plot is generic as hell. Forgettable villain. But very cool visuals. And I love the leitmotif and main theme music.

11. Avengers: Age of Ultron (7.75/10): I loved Ultron but felt he could have been a bigger threat. The middle of the movie plods... badly. Some wasted potential for sure. The third act action is comic book action nirvana. You could tell the movie was meddled with by the studio... I don't blame Joss Whedon at all for the film's shortcomings. He was obviously frustrated with it too.

10. Spiderman Homecoming (8.25/10): Gives us a great young spidey and a terrific villain. Seriously... Michael Keaton makes this movie work. The scenes with Peter and Tony are good. The supporting cast is good too. I wish they gave spidey a more memorable theme song for the movie.

9. Captain America: The First Avenger (8.25/10): I don't know why this movie resonates with me more than with other people. The look of the movie is gorgeous. The themes sincere. The music is wonderful. The performances are memorable. This movie showed us that Chris Evans was the perfect man to play Captain America. Hugo Weaving gave us a menacing yet charismatic Red Skull. One too many montages though. "The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan" is seriously catchy! Classic Disney songwriter Alan Menkin helped write it... no wonder!

8. Guardians of the Galaxy (8.5/10): How could a movie with a talking raccoon and a senient tree man be this good? Its all about the building of a family of friends, borne from people with broken pasts. Ronan is utterly forgettable, hence why I rank it here. The supporting cast is otherwise stellar. And the soundtrack... now thats how you integrate it into a movie's soul.

7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (8.75/10): Took the characters of the first movie to new places. Elevated them, broke them down, made them weep. The jokey dialogue can get grating. But thematically wonderful. Lots of small touches that gives life to even the most minor of characters. Everyone has an arc! Ego is a fascinating fellow, and seems genuinely likeable, until the revelation of his madness. The Sovereign are pompously silly and didn't amount to much of a threat (though I dont think they were supposed to be). The cinematography is sublime. The colors intense and vibrant. The soundtrack used impeccably. Just a wonderful piece of cinema. Others may disagree about it, but I rate it highly. It feels like a personal film by James Gunn.

6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (8.8/10): Truly great and heartfelt while being relevant to the current times. A movie that brought Cap to the modern age, while haunting him with a spectre of the past. It just works on so many levels. Alexander Pierce didnt leave a big impression as the villain despite being played by Robert Redford. Could have been more intimate exploration of Cap and Bucky's relationship. Despite being called "The Winter Soldier", the focus is more on the fall of SHIELD... At least this gave us Falcon and some cute chemistry between Steve and Natasha.

The TOP 5 were very hard to place...

5. The Avengers (8.8/10): That this movie worked at all is a miracle. That it was actually infinitely watchable is amazing. This was the sign that the MCU ahead was heading to good things. The cast was excellent together. The dialogue refreshingly snappy. It made Loki into a staple of the MCU. The Avengers theme was memorable. Lots of fan service without it being intrusive... the middle act can be a bit slow, but it is otherwise nicely paced and tonally even. The look of the movie can border on TV production values at times... but it manages to overcome any shortcomings by being so darn fun.

4. Captain America: Civil War (8.8/10): This movie broke down our well-known heroes and gave us a villain in Zemo that is mysterious, tragic, and understated. Revenge permeates the themes of the movie, but the true heart of the movie is friendship and Cap's desire to hold onto the final relic of his past, Bucky. Motivations are clear between most of the characters and neither side of the conflict is right or wrong. Some Avengers are just along for the ride, but everyone nonetheless has a moment to shine. New characters are introduced (mostly) seamlessly (T'Challa is woven into it naturally, Spidey... not so much but he leaves a great first impression). The airport battle was a fantastic bit of fan service fun before the gut wrenching emotionally driven climax. The final showdown between Cap and Iron Man was like watching two parents fight over a child. This is a comic book movie that had ideas, and though it didn't totally follow through on some concepts like the Sokovia Accords, it did give us an emotional rollercoaster that built upon our pre-existing attachment to the characters. This movie was a true culmination of all that came before.

3. Thor Ragnarok (8.9/10): This movie felt the most fun and thoroughly enjoyable out of all the MCU. It may not be thematically challenging or very deep, but it isn't trying to be. For pure intentions, it accomplished what it sought to: make a fast and funny Thor-Hulk buddy comedy, and reinvent the God of Thunder as a likeable, dunderheaded oaf. Hela seeths with sultry menace. Korg is simply a treasure. Valkyrie is a drunken badass. Grandmaster is.... Jeff Goldblum. The score is the best in the MCU, instantly setting the tone. Led Zepplin's Immigrant song used twice to great effect. Quotable, hilarious dialogue. Korg. Taika Waititi injected new life into the MCU after a few serious installments. This reminds me of the goofy "fun" episode of a series before the finale. I love this movie!

2. Black Panther (8.9/10, bumped up after my second viewing): Epic world building and a villain that outshone the hero for once. It may have its flaws in plotting and pacing (the first hour is meandering), but what it tried to do is highly admirable. The supporting cast is great. The look of the movie is utterly beautiful. The action scenes are the least interesting part of the movie oddly enough due to bad execution and dodgy CGI. It has plenty of ideas regarding Wakanda and its place in the world, and the duty to use great power to help others. Killmonger should have been the chief focus beside T'Challa... You can tell Ryan Coogler made this film with his full heart. This is the only MCU film to make me tear up. With a few tweaks it could have been the best of the MCU.

1. Iron Man (9.5/10): Nearly everything here works. Robert Downey Jr. is perfectly cast, and turned Tony Stark into a household name. There is genuine chemistry between him and Pepper. Obadiah Stane is a likeable yet menacing villain (Jeff Bridges playing a bad guy?! He's terrific at it!). The action scenes are exciting and not too overdone. The score is energetic (why isn't Iron Man's leitmotif from this movie used more often?!). This movie wasn't bogged down with setting up a universe. It was allowed to be its own thing. But from this success, all the rest followed.

#mcu #movie review #marvel cinematic universe #iron man #thor #black panther #doctor strange #guardians of the galaxy #antman #hulk #avengers #marvel

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