#this is why I say team black characters suffer more from lack of character development | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thimbil · 3 years

Text

Having some thoughts about the references and inspirations used for the Bad Batch’s designs.

So Boba Fett is my absolute favorite character and Temeura Morrison was perfect casting. I went to see the 2008 TCW movie in theaters because I was so excited to see him again, even if he was animated. You can imagine my disappointment. Whoever was on screen was not Temeura Morrison. You could sort of see a resemblance if you squinted and didn’t think too hard about it. They replaced Temeura with Racially Ambiguous G.I. Joe. If I didn’t know better and someone told me the animated clones are space Italians from the moon of New Jersey I would buy it. One Million Brothers Pizzeria and Italian Bistro. Not that there’s something wrong with being space Italian, I just don’t think it’s the right choice for the Fetts. The design got slightly improved by season 7 but it still bugs the hell out of me.

I did eventually get into the show later and (of course) got invested in the clones. Unfortunately, they were largely sidelined by the Jedi storylines. Out of the two new main characters created for TCW, Ahsoka definitely got more development and focus than Rex. When they announced The Bad Batch, I was excited to see a show specifically devoted to the clones… at least that’s what it said on the tin. We have all seen what lurks beneath those stylish helmets.

Jango Fett, you are NOT the father.

So who is?

Based on interviews with Filoni, it sounds like the Bad Batch was a George Lucas idea. And like all his ideas, it’s super derivative. The original trilogy directly lifted elements from sci fi serials, westerns, and samurai movies, more specifically Kurosawa films like The Hidden Fortress. For The Bad Batch character designs, the influence is obviously American action and adventure movies.

Now let’s get specific. Bad Batch, who’s your daddy?

Hunter

Sylvester Stallone as Rambo in First Blood 1982. That bandana has become an integral part of the iconic action hero look. You see a character wearing one and it’s a visual shorthand for either “this character is a tough guy” like Billy played by Sonny Landham in Predator 1987, or “this character thinks he is/wants to be a tough guy” like Brand played by Josh Brolin in The Goonies 1985 or Edward Frog played by Corey Feldman in The Lost Boys 1987.

Hunter’s model is closest to the original clone base. If you look closely you will see the eyebrows are straighter with a much lower angle to the arch. His nose is also not the same shape as a standard clone like Rex, including a narrower bridge. It’s certainly not Temeura Morrison’s nose. Remember what I said about space Italians? It didn’t take much to push the existing clone design to resemble an specific Italian man instead of a specific Māori man. The 23&Me came back, and Hunter inherited more than the bandana from Sylvester.

Crosshair

The long narrow nose, the sharp cheekbones, the scowl. That’s no clone, that’s just animated Clint Eastwood. Not even Young and Hot Clint Eastwood from Rawhide 1959-1965. With that hair, I’m talking Gran Torino 2008. The man of few words schtick and family friendly toothpick in lieu of cigar are pure Eastwood as The Man With No Name from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns A Fist Full of Dollars 1964, For a Few Dollars More 1965, and The Good the Bad and the Ugly 1966.

In a way, this is full circle because the actor Jeremy Bulloch took inspiration from Clint Eastwood for his performance as Boba Fett in ESB.

Wrecker

In an interview Filoni lists the Hulk as an (obvious) inspiration for Wrecker. Ever seen the old Hulk tv show from 1978? Well take a look at the actor who played him, Lou Ferrigno. Would you look at that. Even has his papa’s nose.

You could make the argument that Wrecker was influenced by The Rock, an appropriately buff ‘n bald Polynesian (Samoan, not Maori) man. But look at him next his Fast and Furious costar Vin Diesel and tell me which one resembles Wrecker’s character model more.

Tech

Tech is a little trickier for me to place. If he has a more direct inspiration it must be something I haven’t seen. That said, his hairline is very Bruce Willis as John McClane in Die Hard 1988. His quippiness and large glasses remind me of Shane Black as Hawkins from Predator 1987. In terms of his face, he looks a but like the result of McClane and Hawkins deciding to settle down and start a family. Although, Tech’s biggest contributors are probably just everyone on TV Trope’s list for Smart People Wear Glasses.

And finally,

Echo

Oh Echo. Considering he wasn’t created for the Bad Batch, he probably wasn’t based on a particular character or movie. But if I had to guess, his situation and appearance remind me a lot of Alex Murphy played by Peter Weller in Robocop 1987. However, Robocop explored the Man or Machine Identity Crisis with more nuance, depth, and dignity. Yikes.

The exact tropes and references used in The Bad Batch have been done successfully with characters who aren’t even human. Gizmo from Gremlins 2: The New Batch 1990 had a brief stint with the Rambo bandana. I could have picked any number of characters for Defining Feature Is Glasses but here is the most cursed version of Simon of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Suffer as I have. Marc Antony with his beloved Pussyfoot from Looney Tunes has the same tough guy with a soft center vibe as Wrecker and his Lula (also a kind of cat). Hell, in the same show we have Cad Bane sharing Cowboy Clint Eastwood with Crosshair. I actually think Bane makes a better Eastwood which is wild considering Crosshair has Eastwood’s entire face and Bane is blue.

So we’ve established you don’t need your characters to look exactly like their inspirations to match their vibe. So why go through the trouble and cost of creating completely new character designs instead of recycling and altering assets they already had on hand? Just slap on a bandana, toothpick, goggles, and make Wrecker bigger than the others while he does a Hulk pose and you’re done. Based on the general reaction to Howzer it would have been a low effort slam dunk crowd pleaser.

But they didn’t do that.

So here’s the thing. I like the tropes used in The Bad Batch. I am a fan of action adventure movies from the 80s-90s, the sillier the better. I am part of the Bad Batch’s target audience. Considering what I know about Disney and Lucasfilm, I went in with low expectations. I genuinely don’t hate the idea of seeing references to these actors and media in The Bad Batch. I don’t think basing these characters on tropes was a bad idea. If anything it’s a solid starting point for building the characters.

The trouble is nothing got built on the foundation. The plot is directionless, the pacing is wacky, and the characters have nearly no emotional depth or defining character arcs. They just sort of exist without reacting much while the story happens around them. But I can excuse all of that. You don’t stay a fan of Star Wars as long as I have not being able to cherrypick and fill in the gaps. This show has a deeper issue that shouldn’t be ignored.

Why do the animated clones bear at best only a passing resemblance to their live action actor? In interviews, Filoni wouldn’t shut up but the technological advancements in the animation for season 7. So if they are updating things, why not try to make the clones a closer match to their source material? Why did they have to look like completely different people in The Bad Batch to be “unique”? Looking like Temeura Morrison would have no bearing on their special abilities and TCW proved you can have identical looking characters and still have them be distinct. In fact, that’s a powerful theme and the source of tragedy for the clones’ narrative overall.

Here’s Filoni’s early concept art of Crosshair, Wrecker, Tech, and Hunter. (Interesting but irrelevant: Wrecker seems to have a cog tattoo similar to Jesse’s instead of a scar. Wouldn’t it have been funny if they kept that so when they met in season 7 one if them could say something like “Hey we’re twins!” That’s a little clone humor. Just for you guys 😘)

None of these drawings look like the clones in TCW, much less Temeura Morrison. Let’s be generous. Maybe Filoni struggles with drawing a real person’s likeness, as many people do. But he had to hand this off to other artists down the line whose job specifically involves making a stylized character resemble their actor. Yet the final designs missed the mark almost as much as this initial concept. Starting to seem as if the clones looking more like Temeura Morrison was never even on the table. It wasn’t a lack of creativity, skill or technical limitations on the part of the creative team. I don’t think there is an innocent explanation. They went out of their way to make the final product exactly how we got it.

This goes beyond homage. They could have made the same pop culture references and character tropes without completely stripping Temeura Morrison from the role he originated. It was a very purposeful choice to replace him with more immediately familiar actors from established franchises and films. It wouldn’t shock me if Filoni, Lucas, and anyone else calling the shots didn’t even think hard or care enough about the decision to immediately recognize a problem. And I don’t think they believed anyone else would either. At least no one whose opinion they cared about. Those faces are comfortingly familiar and proven bankable. They are what we’re all used to seeing after all. They’re white.

Lack of imagination, bad intentions, or simple ignorance doesn’t really matter in the end. The result is the same. Call it what it is. They replaced a man of color with a bunch of white guys. That’s by the book garden variety run of the mill whitewashing. There’s no debate worth having about it. For a fanbase that loves to nitpick things like whether or not it’s in character for Han to shoot first or Jeans Guy in the Mandalorian, we sure are quick to find excuses for clones who look nothing like their template. Why is that? If you don’t see the problem, congratulations. Your ass is showing. Pull your jeans up.

#star wars #the bad batch #unwhitewashtbb #wrecker #crosshair #tech #hunter #echo

252 notes · View notes

indigobackfire · 2 years

Note

The fashion question back to you! But I want to ask about Indigo and Phoenix. What’s their style? You can include Jacob as well, of course, but if it’d be too much or you don’t have a clear idea for him yet, that’s fine too :)

Also, please, take this question however you wish. You don’t have to make collages or anything – unless you want! Then go for it!

Thank you so much for sending the question back 💖

I didn't have to but, I don't if you ever used it, I spent my early teens on Polyvore day and night making collages and I forgot how fun (and tiring) they are so I made it for each! Polyvore closed years ago, so b4 anyone asks, I did them on Medibang with PNGs from Tumblr.

I focused more on them during Hogwarts years, but I hope to make a post for their fashion as adults.

Indigo's Style

So this isn't half as much as I really wanted represented here xD due to the confinement of the space and png availability. I made one for her more academia side and one for her colorful self.

As general style rule Indigo will avoid anything tight or that shows too much skin, she wants freedom of movement. I'm sure I didn't convey her witchy vibes enough, nor her 70s influence, but soon I'll make another set.

She also doesn't vibe with blue, pink, nor with black. Yeah, no matter how gloomy she's feeling. But her favourites are red, green and orange brown.

Phoenix's Style

Here, I suffered with the lack of good male clothing pngs and my laziness xD.

Though I focused on his more yellow and neutral side, Phoenix has a passion for the colorful as well, with inspiration from the preppy fifties, with some boldness from the 60s/70s especially with clothes handed down from his late (biological) father.

Anyway, I think I did convey his very cozy good boy vibes, he's milk and honey, breeze on a hot day type of person.

I had been so long staring at screen doing his, my head began hurting, I had to lay down before moving on to Jacob, reason why his has less stuff than the others. Also I don't think I planned the space right 🙈

Jacob's Style

His collage is the most chaotic but that's pretty resonant with his character, not as much red as I'd like for him nor as punk as his style really is.

You right, I still have very little on my Jacob, but searching trinkets and clothes I actually got inspired x). Anyway, I like to think there's a before and after the vault Jacob in matter of style, I'll say more below, but can get experimental with his style, despite his laziness to put any effort into it.

And I'll talk under the cut just to avoid being huge x)

I don't think I can't explain Indigo's style as whole all at once so I'll divide by her Hogwarts years.

1st

Indigo is trying to drive her image away from Jacob, better yet, her mother is doing it for her, the colors are toned down and very basic, but it's inevitable the resemblance. She spends most of her time in complete or half uniform.

2nd

Now determined to explore the vaults, she invites the 'Jacobness' in, she's purposefully looking for him not just literally but figuratively. She's wearing jackets and shirts he left behind even if they definitely don't fit her right yet. She's got a classic colorful 80s girl style out of class and isn't afraid to call attention to herself. A time to be experimental with her hairdos.

3rd

Starting to develop her own style while being influenced by Rowan, trying to mix her new nerdy side with remnants of her brother.

The year she slowly starts growing, she has her first period, she gains weight, she's well, confused in herself. The colors are a tad toned down in comparison to the previous year. Tho, as the year progresses, since the current curse has to do with fear, she subconsciously seeks in her fashion saturated, happier and bolder colors.

But when she joins the gryffindor quidditch team, it enforces that red, burgundy color palette.

4th

Despite the exercising and duelling training, she continues to gain weight due to stress eating. Lucky for her, she continues getting taller which helps hide some of the weight gain, but her ever changing body does influence in the types of clothes she picks.

Since Rakepick is around now, she wants to be defiant - strong colors, oversized shapes, leather details and footwear, bringing back those Jacob clothes she had.

Also with the start of her friendship with Barnaby and with more of Aspen's influence, she begins wearing more and more plaid patterns to represent her Scottishness.

Another year of fun hairdos, especially considering her approximation to Tonks.

5th

As Rakepick's apprentice she's more and more inclined to dress with confidence.

She's dating Barney and he influences her fashion / As well as spending more time with Rakepick - she adopts the habit of wearing jewelry, a belt for her utilities, a lot more red and green, she begins putting her hair in place.

In the matter of hair, here is where it becomes like I usually draw (or try to), with hormones flourishing as well as her Legilimency, her hair has a growth spurt and becomes very thick and voluminous.

On opposite route to the previous year, she's stress starving, due to pressure because of the Curse and working in kitchens makes her lose her appetite. Therefore she's colder than usual, fluffy coats and a brown leather jacket and a tartan wrap Barnaby gifted her become ever so present in her daily wardrobe.

She's wearing saturated colors but also lots of brown, she associates the color to maturity and is how she wants to appear to her friends and, especially, to Rakepick. Red also becomes prevalent with the feelings of love.

For the first time she's putting actual effort into looking pretty for a boy.

6th

In here Barns has broken up with her for seemingly no reason and this takes a tool on her fashion for most of the year. She's not putting effort at all, dark colors patternless mourning the loss of her relationship as well as the departure of both Rakepick who she was beginning to grown fond of, as well as Jacob.

But with Jacob back around after a while, it's his style she's back at mirroring, tho most clothes she and Phoenix had borrowed had to be returned, she still keeps many he doesn't want anymore or that don't fit his new weight.

Then later, Achilles, whose fashion is similar to Jacob's but closer to what the 90s will bring with a renewed side of punk. She's also trying to make Barnaby jealous with Achilles so a bit more revealing clothes, blacks and strong greens - which doesn't last long since Achilles himself tells her how this isn't her.

Even then, she's not certain who she is.

7th

I'm not sure what will happen this year cause I don't feel like following canon and I've got so many ideas.

But it's a confusing year to her, while things have an air of settling down, the future feels unsettling. While she takes hold of her Legilimency, her self confidence doesn't follow. She's not sure of herself or her purpose and it reflects in her fashion.

Except, this is the year of true reconciliation with Rowan which brings her back those times of their third year, resurfacing with her nerdy academia side, this time with accents of leather and darker colors.

7.1

Yes, she stays another year cause she fails her NEWTS spectacularly.

The year of nostalgia with the golden trio coming along, therefore vintage, 'childish' patterns and styles, also trying to blend into the background because she really doesn't want to be there.

Preference for brown and burgundy, mostly trousers instead of skirts, hats and beanies more often used. And plaid, lots of it.

Phoenix

Phoenix never worried about fashion, he wears what mom buys and that's good. He also grew up with Jacob's hand-me-downs as part of his wardrobe ever since he was a baby, consequently paralleling his brother's style, not to mention always being a few years outdated in relation to the other kids.

But even after Hogwarts, his best friend is Rowen, not popularly known for being a fashion king himself.

Even with growing older, Phoenix is a Veela, naturally beautiful and charming so he often relies on that more than style - even though, sometimes, not even his pretty face can help his dweeb fashion.

What I wasn't able to add to the collage was Ismelda's influence on his style. Not only he has the boldness of dying a strand of his hair turquoise, he begins wearing black!!! Mostly stuff that used to belong to Jacob, but it does start seeping into his fashion slowly the longer he stays with her, though without ever losing his soft essence.

Jacob

Considering Jacob was a teen during the late 70s, he got caught in the beginning of the punk movement, taking inspiration from Vivienne Westwood, Sex Pistols, Blondie, Bowie, and well whatever media he could access at the time.

But also the classics, bell bottoms, weird patterns, bright colors along with plaids, and very funky hair.

After the vault, he loses the body he had along with his confidence, he used to be stocky and reasonably tall, but now he's skinny, cold, and feeling very unsexy. He's opting for dark colors, uninspired combinations, beanies and gloves. Though he doesn't realize straight away, he does use a wrap around his shoulders much like Rakepick does.

Also, even though he's not very sporty, he like sportswear, jerseys, baseball caps, and cool basketball sneakers.

#indigo silverwood #phoenix nobleworth #jacob silverwood #hphm #headcanon #sorry for taking so long #i wasted so much time just scrolling pinterest for inspo #and in the end didn't use anything since I had a huge file of pngs saved specifically for something like this #hopefully not the last thing I post on fashion cause I really enjoyed it #beezcreatez #fashion #missnight0wl #ask

21 notes · View notes

smokeonshadows · 3 years

Text

We need to talk about the Bobbseys

Strap in, kids. This is going to be...a lot.

To put it bluntly, the way the Bobbseys were handled was messy, unnecessary, and probably the worst thing about an otherwise great season.

It's really disappointing because the Nancy Drew writers have already proven themselves to be not only good writers, but also socially conscious writers. They actively and publicly aim to be inclusive in their storytelling, so I think it's fair to hold them to that standard.

There was a lot of potential in the Bobbseys–they're a morally ambiguous brother-sister team of codependent twins from a rough/tragic past who sometimes lie, cheat, and steal in order to make ends meet. This is interesting, this is full of possibilities as to how they could fit in with the Drew Crew, and, most of all, this was a great opportunity to have complex representation of the south asian community that subverts popular stereotypes (model minority, traditional upbringing, perpetual foreigner, etc.). Amanda and Gil would've been great characters in their own rights...but instead they were used as nothing more than cannon fodder for an unnecessary, half-baked love square with low key racist undertones.

Problematic elements

I've already talked about the racist undertones in previous posts, but in a nutshell, Gil is portrayed as being controlling/aggressive/domineering (particularly towards Nancy and Amanda) and it's a stereotype that south asian men (and I'd say black and brown men in general) are misogynistic, aggressive, and otherwise abusive towards women. This portrayal is made even worse because he's meant to be a foil for Ace, a soft/gentle/sensitive/emotionally stable white guy who Nancy is obviously meant to be with. And for Amanda, she's also portrayed in line with the stereotype of asian women being very submissive (particularly to their male counterparts). I don't think any of this was intentional, but it's just not a good look.

This problem could've at least been somewhat alleviated if Gil and Amanda had been written as fully fleshed out characters who were going on their own journeys and were consequential to the story, but that didn't happen.

Stereotypes aside, another problematic aspect of the Bobbseys is that they both fall into the unfortunately common trope of being the character of color that the white character has a superficial relationship with and leads white character to realizing that they should actually be with this other white character who's been there all along.

Even when they have roles in the episode apart from being superficial love interests, oftentimes they don't do much aside from being useful for getting the Crew from point A to point B of a mystery.

Underdeveloped relationships

Was I the only one who found the resolution of the Nancy x Gil relationship in the season finale to be a bit abrupt?

While I appreciate that they showed how seemingly small transgressions within relationships can actually be red flags and that a situation doesn't need to escalate to full-on physical abuse in order to count as domestic violence, I found that the moment when Nancy has this realization and then breaks up with Gil lacked the emotional weight befitting that situation. I think this was the case because Nancy and Gil barely had a relationship. There was attraction and sexual tension, they hooked up a few times, but it was never shown to be a real relationship. It's not just that we didn't often see them together, but with or without him, Nancy didn't think much about Gil or what he thought of her and, more importantly wrt the breakup, we aren't shown all the ways that his treatment of her affected her sense of self or the way she operated. Nancy's relationship with Gil was inconsequential, so the stakes were low.

And yes, casual hookup situations can also turn abusive, but from a narrative standpoint, the way this particular situation was portrayed, it was given both more and less weight than it should've been given. It felt like the writers wanted the breakup to be big and impactful but they not only didn't work for that payoff, they also wanted to resolve it quickly so they could move onto more important plot points (the breakup was at the beginning episode and Nancy never mentions it or even hints at any emotional fallout from it ever again).

(Amanda was done dirty)

Actually, if anything, the big dramatic breakup should've been between Amanda and Gil. Even with her severely limited screentime, almost every time we do see Amanda, we are reminded of how close she is with Gil, how badly he treats her, how much she values his opinion, and how smothered she feels by him. And it sucks that we never actually get to see Amanda make the realization, stand up for herself, and confront Gil. All we see is Ace encouraging her to break away and then cut to her living her best life post-sibling breakup.

In the end, it's as if Amanda's pain and suffering was made to be less about her and more about Nancy/being evidence that Gil is not good for Nancy. Again, not a good look.

And Amanda and Ace's relationship is also underdeveloped compared to the impact that the writers seem to want it to have. Like, I don't understand why Ace would give her a pseudo-ultimatum ("I'll prioritize you if you prioritize me") at this stage of their relationship. Yes, they do seem to be more of a relationship than Nancy x Gil, but it always felt like they were very much in the budding romance stage. While he does talk about her when they're apart, we still rarely saw them interact with each other outside of the context of Ace needing to use Amanda's connection at the hotel or to her father or brother in order to help solve the mystery. And we don't learn more about or see a different side either character through their relationship with each other.

Poorly executed, unnecessary love triangles

The whole point of having a love triangle is to raise the emotional stakes.

It's always been my belief that if you're going to have a love triangle, you need to commit to it. That means making both legs of the triangle equally viable, developing both romantic options and both relationships equally.

As noted in the sections above, this was not the case with either love triangle, which makes the whole thing feel cheap and unsatisfying. Like I said in a previous post, I think it would've been more powerful if Nancy had two really great options, but in the end chose Ace because that’s what her heart really wants no matter how great the other guy is.

Anyone with a healthy understanding of love and relationships would choose Ace over Gil. It's no contest, no real choice, so it adds nothing to the conversation, it says nothing about Nancy or her feelings for Ace. It's inconsequential, the emotional stakes are practically nonexistent.

Literally, I feel like if you took the Bobbsey love triangles out of this season, Ace and Nancy would still end up in pretty much the same place wrt their feelings for each other. I mean, yes, the whole jealousy/green eyed epiphany thing did play a role, but the relationships with the Bobbseys featured so little and were so underdeveloped that it would be more or less the same as one of them flirting with a background character every once in a while.

And Nace still didn't end up together after all that! It's hinted that for some reason, Ace will be stringing Amanda along next season while he pines for Nancy. Which is exhausting.

This is really what we sacrificed two perfectly interesting characters of color for. I'm upset.

#nancy drew cw #gil bobbsey #amanda bobbsey

89 notes · View notes

dgcatanisiri · 3 years

Text

Tried to make a brief summary of the issues of Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of queer men and how it relates to why we’re (broad use here) upset with the Legendary Edition failing to provide better representation than the originals, and it kinda turned in to what amounts to an open letter for BioWare.

So, what the heck, here it is.

A little personal background. I spent my high school life completely in the closet. After graduating, I had a new computer and the opportunity to play a new game. The game chosen was BioWare’s Jade Empire. Still a fairly recent release, and I was a big fan of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, also by BioWare. So, being a young gay man, still uncomfortable and uncertain of who I was, I was very excited when I got to play this game that would allow me to play a gay romance, a romance that featured two men. I burned through two playthroughs of the game within less than a week, enjoying that rush of acknowledgement that yes, gay guys could be the hero. It was a massive affirmation for me at the time, something that said that my sexuality was not going to prevent me from being the hero, which legitimately was a message that I felt like most media was giving me to that point, because gay men barely appeared in anything other than guest roles for an episode or two on a TV show, but certainly not in video games. That game, that experience... I’ve said for years that it had cemented me as a BioWare fan for life.

If I say that now, it is a statement with a few caveats.

The history of the failure of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 to provide any male/male romances is well documented. I was excited, very eager to romance Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect 3. But even then, I noticed that there were things that were lacking in the romance. It was noticeable, for instance, that the basic dialogue between male Shepard and female Shepard was unchanged, if either was starting a new romance with Kaidan. The thing that always felt... WRONG about that was that if I’d had the option to begin a romance with him in the first game, I would have. Yet there’s not even a bit of dialogue that even references that inability, no comment of “I didn’t think you were available,” or anything of the sort, nothing to say that, say, Shepard was interested in Kaidan at the time, but didn’t believe he’d be receptive, didn’t want to damage their friendship, something of the sort. There was even a cut in the romance scene, where female Shepard will sit in Kaidan’s lap before being lifted up and carried to the bed, but with male Shepard and Kaidan, just fades to black. And then in the Citadel DLC, while all the other pairings walked in to the casino arm in arm, male Shepard and Kaidan are leaving plenty of room between them. There’s also the absence of any cuddling as they return to the Normandy.

To say nothing of the lack of Steve Cortez during the story segments of Citadel – he is not part of the big team entrance to the apartment, just spontaneously appears in the lounge room. He doesn’t participate in the briefings, and he is not a casino date, despite being part of the assembled team. Cortez also suffers from the fact that his romance spends so much time on how he needs to move on from the death of his husband, Shepard can come across as predatory towards him, trying to push him out of his grief and his pants. Due to the lateness of his arrival in the story, in game three, as opposed to game one or two, there is significantly less time to establish him as a person – beyond his past as a pilot and the death of his husband, we gain almost no concept of his personality or personal history.

I bring all of this up to help set the stage of what was expected when Mass Effect Andromeda was nearing release. Mass Effect had been full of problems of representation of queer men specifically (not that they were perfect on the count of female/female relationships either, because there’s plenty to talk about there, but as I’m not a lesbian or bisexual woman, I don’t feel comfortable talking about their experiences for them). While there were flaws, Dragon Age, what is often considered Mass Effect’s sister franchise, HAD managed to provide male/male romances in every iteration of that franchise.

In fact, considering that Dragon Age’s most recent installment, Dragon Age Inquisition, had been put out with a lot of fanfare about the first gay male companion, who was considered rather popular in the fandom, and the game itself receiving the Game of the Year award that year, indicating that, if there was any risk in the business sense of providing representation of queer men, it was negligible at most in the bottom line of that game, the attitude of a lot of gay men in the lead up to Andromeda’s release was some variation of “okay, Mass Effect has been flawed, but BioWare’s learned from their past mistakes, and they’re coming off the heels of a hugely successful game that had a gay character whose gayness was front and center in his storyline... We can expect that things will be fine, and we don’t have to worry.” That was the dominant attitude I found in a lot of my queer-oriented spaces.

But we started getting uncomfortable as the developers remained cagey about romance options in Andromeda – there were Twitter responses to “we’re concerned about Mass Effect’s history of gay representation, we would like to know about the options” that came out as “we checked and yep! They’re there!” These responses came across as flippant and even tone-deaf – the reason that the question was being asked was because of prior failures to be included, and not simply a desire to get all the details before launch.

As the trailers started coming out, the questions continued from the fans, and the response from the developers... continued to be uncomfortable. When asked directly for a listing of romances prior to release, the response was that the developers wanted players to learn as they played, that “the fun is in experiencing it!” This was a specific response when it was learned that the romance options could be flirted with regardless of orientation, but they would shut it down. Despite the fact that the trailers DID include content from certain romances – specifically, the male Ryder/Cora and male Ryder/Peebee romances.

This was uncomfortable for a lot of queer players like myself because it spoke to a lack of consideration of what it is like to be queer. In many places, it is a serious question of safety to even put yourself out there to find a partner, to flirt with someone openly unless you are already certain that there is a chance for a positive response. There are places where a queer person flirting with the wrong person can get them harassed, assaulted, even killed for doing so. Even in the safety of a virtual construct of video games, these are honed instincts that queer people have developed. And no matter how many times we would say this to the developers, no one seemed to understand. Likewise, the fact that the trailers felt free to show off heterosexual romances, but not queer ones felt... questionable.

Then, finally, firm details started coming out, and... There were problems. Early data-mining said that there was an even split of romances between orientations. But there was a bit of discomfort around the reveal that the gay characters, Suvi and Gil, were limited to the ship, rather than being companions who would accompany Ryder on missions. There is a history of companions being given more involved storylines and involvement than secondary characters. It also didn’t help the disappointment from queer people who’d been eager for Cora or Liam as romances, who were firmly established as straight (Cora herself had a popular lesbian following).

That discomfort increased when it came out further that, ACTUALLY, Jaal would not be available for Male Ryder. This caused a lot of upset. Now it was a case where there was NO M/M squadmate romance option. This on top of the group of fans who were uncomfortable with the idea that, in a sci-fi series, gay men couldn’t romance an alien, while this had become a staple of the series, considering Liara, the character from a species described as equivalent to Star Trek green-skinned Orion girls, had been available for straight men and lesbian/bi women from ME1, and straight women got in on the act with Garrus and Thane in ME2, on top of straight men also getting Tali.

This got worse when the achievement listing for the game was released and there was an achievement for “romancing three different characters.” Meaning that it was absolutely impossible for a gay man to play the game and get this achievement without playing a sexuality other than his own.

This is why I led with my experience with Jade Empire, why it was so affirming to me. Because to hear all this, ten years later, to see what had been so affirming to me a decade prior be functionally dismissed, be shown to take a secondary position at best... It hurt.

And the game proper did not help that feeling at all.

So first we meet Gil Brodie. Engineer of the Tempest. One of the first things we learn about him is that he has a close friendship with a woman named Jill. And then he immediately tells us that one) she is a fertility specialist, and two) she “says [he’s] part of the problem” because he won’t have kids the natural way. This is immediately setting off red flags to me – I can think of plenty of my friendships where we give one another grief for various things, but I would never think of introducing any of them to someone else with that fact. So my reflexive thought in this situation is “what kind of a friend is this really?”

And then, as the game goes on... This is the only thing that Gil’s conversations involve, the prospect of having kids. We do not learn much more about him, just have him talking about considering the idea. The lock-in for his romance requires Ryder to meet Jill, who Gil again says that she will talk his ear off about his “civic duty” to reproduce, a fact that makes those earlier red flags wave higher and more furiously, because who DOES that to a total stranger? And this is passed off as being “charming.” This leads to the culmination of the romance, where Gil says that Jill has decided she wants to get pregnant and she wants Gil to be the dad.

There’s... A LOT going on here, so let me work through this. First, one of the few things Gil says as a bit of establishing his character is that he is impulsive, that he joined the Andromeda Initiative, the journey from the Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy without really thinking through what it would mean, that it was a one-way journey with no way to back out once he’d gotten there. So this is already saying to me that this is not a person who really SHOULD be a parent, at least at this point in his life.

We also get a couple of emails from him in-game that paint him as putting in thirty-six hour workdays into the engines on the Tempest, that he cares about and puts a lot of time into those engines. So when I think about him as a father, I see him having to give up something he’s deeply passionate about to do it, because the Tempest is certainly no place to raise a child – they can’t exactly put a playpen in the cargo hold, for example.

This would be one of the first things that I would think of as a discussion element, but... it’s not there. All that we get is a couple of casual comments about how Gil should know that bringing a child into the world is a big thing, something that shouldn’t be done lightly. But this is framed as Ryder questioning Gil’s fitness to be a parent at all, rather than questioning if he’s thinking this through and having considered this enough to be ready to take on this responsibility, or if it’s even something that he even wants.

Because that’s the other big thing here – this is not Gil’s idea. This is not something that he makes clear is his desire. No, it’s Jill who has decided that she wants to get pregnant and use Gil’s sperm. For all that he matters in this whole thing, he might as well be a turkey baster. He’s basically an accessory in his own story, because he goes in to this with all the passion of a math equation: “The Andromeda Initiative is a colonization effort. Therefore, the idea is to have babies. Therefore, I should find some way to reproduce.” This isn’t him having a passion or desire to have kids, just it being “something you do.”

This is, genuinely, a failure to understand the character who was being written. Gil’s writing reeks of having been written by someone who does not know what they are talking about. There is an element to the gay experience that is not innate but learned. When we realize that having children is not a thing that will just happen, that if we want this to happen, it will require a lot of additional steps, there are many who will simply say “this isn’t for me, this is more work than I’m willing to put in to for this.”

Now, Gil could have been someone who had decided it was worth it, but that butts up against the idea of him being impulsive, that he doesn’t think things through. There is no time given to focusing on the reason he decides this is the right choice for him, to the point that many players felt that this was not Gil’s decision but something that Jill was pushing, that she expected him to jump on her command. Because we have so little of Gil, as a character and an individual, but plenty of him talking up her, this “friendship” feels toxic to many.

Just about everyone I have ever spoken with about Gil is deeply uncomfortable that literally, the only way that he will not have a child at this point is if a romanced Ryder stops him – if I am playing a game where I don’t romance him, I actively just stop interacting with him at a certain point so that this never comes up, because this does not come across as happy. It comes across as forcing a gay man into a heteronormative experience to satisfy some traditional idea of “man and woman, raising kids.”

And, as the cherry on top, if you do tell Gil that you’re not comfortable having kids – a very real thing, whether gay or straight – then, unlike other romances, Gil and Ryder do not share a kiss at the finale of the game. And, during the last conversations on Meridian, the only thing Gil even brings up is Jill being pregnant, whether or not it’s his child.

This is what “representation of gay men” amounted to in Mass Effect Andromeda. A homophobic story that was about a gay experience written by someone who is not a part of this community and does not know or understand the experience personally, going through the motions of development when really, all that is cared about is the end result. To say that most of the gay men I know who have played this game find this homophobic is to undersell the point.

It doesn’t help that, of all the Tempest romances, Gil also clocks in with the least amount of romance exclusive material – a few flirts, the romance lock in and scene, and being able to stop Gil from having kids. Other than that, his friendship and his romance are virtually identical.

Speaking of, the romance scene consists of a make out session that fades to black, before coming back in with Ryder and Gil, shot from about shoulders up, briefly wrapping up their conversation that preceded the fade to black. This is noteworthy when the heterosexual romances between Ryder and their human love interests, as well as Peebee and Jaal, the former having a similar body model to naked human women, just blue, and Jaal, who is naked at other points in the game, have much more involved romance scenes – Cora’s in specific received special attention.

All of this, individually, may have just been reflective of time crunch and other external pressures – we all understand the realities of game development, that for all the ambitions that go in, when the deadlines are nearing, something has to give. But taken collectively... The kindest question is to ask why all of the “give” happened in regards to the gay man?

The end result with Gil honestly feels like he was written in response to the bad faith arguments that had come up in the period after the name for the game was revealed and it was made clear that the game would follow a colonization effort. There were a contingent of people who said that “there shouldn’t be gay people coming along, a colonization effort needs to reproduce.” This is a bad faith argument from homophobes, trying to justify why they don’t want gay people in “their” games. In answering their question, the question they only “ask” in order to explain why they don’t want to have gay people in the game without saying that, it comes across as catering the gay content for a heterosexual audience. It should go without saying that this is a bad position to take.

So, that’s Gil. What about Reyes? Well, Reyes himself is bound to a single planet, which, again, points to a minimizing of how much content he will even get, since his content can only be accessed on this single planet. Likewise, Reyes, as a character, is someone who falls in to several old, tired tropes with regards to bisexual men – he is a shady, untrustworthy character, in this instance literally a criminal, meant to be evocative of the “dashing rogue” archetype. This is a characterization that has often been BioWare’s go-to with regards to bisexual men, because we see this archetype drawn on in Jade Empire’s Sky, Dragon Age Origins’ Zevran, Dragon Age 2’s Anders, and even elements exist in Dragon Age Inquisition’s Dorian (even if he is a gay man). It’s a well that BioWare has frequently tapped when it comes to a romance option for queer men, to the point that it starts to feel like BioWare in general believes that this IS what queer men are.

There’s also the questionable portrayal of Reyes that leads to a description of the trope “the depraved bisexual,” an explicitly bisexual character who uses sex and sexuality as a manipulative tool, that they treat others as simply there to be their toys. Over in Dragon Age Inquisition, one of the romance options was specifically NOT made bisexual in order to avoid this trope, but Reyes himself seems to be a candidate for that trope all the same.

All this, and, again, the romance options for gay men were unequal to those for everyone else. This prompted the campaign #MakeJaalBi – Jaal was, notably, the character initially assumed to be the bisexual male companion, and on release, his romance was heterosexual exclusive. But datamining revealed that there was code for him to be romanced by male Ryder. Indeed, on release, it was noteworthy that Jaal could not even be flirted with by male Ryder. Liam had a distinct turndown for male Ryder, a couple of them, depending on when Ryder flirts with him. Jaal had no such turndown.

And this worked. BioWare released the patch for Andromeda that gave Jaal a bisexual romance. However, this was the only change that Mass Effect Andromeda received in regards to the issues of the romances before support for the game ended. While it was seen as an improvement, it was also questioned why this was the only change, when... Well, I spent the better part of two pages outlining the problems of Gil’s portrayal.

(I feel I would be remiss to not mention there was also a character, Hainley Abrams, who would, upon interacting with her, proceed to deadname herself to Ryder, as if that is the only way to establish that a transgender person is trans. This was also changed in a patch after the trans community complained, and, in conjunction with the above, led more than a few people to wonder if the Andromeda script had been looked over by any queer sensitivity readers, given the earlier issues with Gil. This does go out of the scope of everything else in this discussion, but it is worth mentioning.)

When Mac Walters says players will talk about how Shepard is each of theirs, that every individual player approaches Shepard as being “their” Shepard, he isn’t wrong. He says the characters, and the relationships we have with the characters is the heart and soul of the series, he isn’t wrong. And yet... When I play the trilogy, my heart and soul are being torn apart, because I do not get to see myself in the trilogy. I am not there in this story, at least for two thirds of the way. And in that third that I am there, I feel like I am cared about less than my counterparts who are heterosexual.

The idea that “making” characters available for same sex romance changes them is like saying that there is some inherent difference in a person because of their sexualities. While it’s true that the experiences of queer people does offer different perspectives on matters, it does not fundamentally alter the person, the individual that we are. It does not change our heart and soul. Restoring the bisexuality of characters like Jack, Jacob, Ashley, Thane, or Tali is not changing who they are. Making Kaidan bisexual in ME3 did not change who he was, and restoring a romance between him and male Shepard in ME1 would not change him either.

Every game has some cut content surrounding queer content specifically, and a great deal of that content is specifically for gay players like myself. I said at the beginning that I once thought of myself as a BioWare fan for life, but that now comes with caveats. The caveats are pretty simple – while the games produced by BioWare once felt affirming, now they feel like they’re only grudgingly allowing me to be there. That if I must be there, I should just take the scraps I’m given and be content with that, rather than being treated as an equal.

I like to think that this is not the message that the people at BioWare wish to impart to their players. I like to believe BioWare’s statements of wanting to be an inclusive and welcoming environment for their players, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, orientation, whatever identity and label one chooses. But based on the experience of the last four games, of the Legendary Edition perpetuating the homophobia of over a decade ago... I have a hard time believing that.

BioWare games once made me feel like I was equal to the straight heroes across my media. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way about their games anymore. Not when, after having the opportunity to restore the bisexuality of Kaidan – of multiple characters, really – in the Legendary Edition, I am still being told that offering representation for people like me is something that only comes grudgingly.

And if that’s what I see now... What does it say about what the future of the franchise will offer? If every game in this series involves fighting for content that, in particular, heterosexual players will see offered as the rule, what motivates me to want to continue to be invested and involved in this franchise?

#bioware critical #dg rants #another angry queer rant #make mass effect inclusive #make mele inclusive #makemeleinclusive

36 notes · View notes

kim-ruzek · 3 years

Text

The unit beyond Hank Voight: or how Intelligence should look if/when Voight is written out

Finally, part two. This was very fun to write and I'm glad I actually did it before season nine airs (I'm cutting it late I know!!!). I've had how I'd want the show to do this in my head for the longest time-- although, I'll say, I technically get to the root of this further into the meta, after the second header. So if you don't want to read it all and just my general thoughts, you can just skip on down to that! But I hope you read it all!

In this fandom, as a whole, no matter what ship or characters are our faves, we've all be debating whether or not it's right to still have Voight as the lead, or if they should write out his character.

If we break it down, take out all the nuance and the external and internal factors, I say yes. But if we don't, it's much more complicated than that.

I watch Chicago pd primarily for Burzek, that is why I decided to emotionally exhaust myself with a new show. But I liked that it was set in Chicago, and it lent into all the bad/darkness of Chicago, and not just on the streets, but the cops (even if they can and should do better there, because it's still very much on the side of bad cop propaganda).

And like it or not, Voight is a big part of that. People call him an anti hero, and by definition, he is, but I struggle to like addressing him as such. But the way that he is, his characterisation, it is woven into the very essence if the show, into the unit, into their dynamics and group chemistry.

This is why it's a complicated matter, that should Voight be written out is not a simple question with either yes or no as the answer. Or, at least, not just a yes or a no.

Taking Voight out of the unit isn't like taking out Jay or Kevin, or any of the others. The other team members are easily replaced. Of course, their specific dynamics and chemistries will never be replaced, it's a sign of a badly written character and storyline if it is. But they are, in the grand scheme of things, replaceable. It is as easy as having Jay transfer one episode and introducing a new detective the next. (The only other exception, I should mention, is Trudy. You get rid of Trudy and you'll just get a desk sargeant as a replacement, with none of that chemistry in any way).

Voight is different. He's the lead-- and leads are always harder to move out a show without it crumbling-- and he's the literal leader of the unit. Every dynamic within the show is interlinked through Voight's character even if Voight has no impact on the dynamic. And so you can't just write him out one episode and then introduce a sparkling new sargeant the next-- especially if the sargeant is a pre-existing character.

A lot of this fandom wants Voight gone asap and Jay as sargeant immediately after. That's just unrealistic and honestly it would be a bad move on the show's half to do so. In general, I don't want Jay to be sargeant. Not even for the reasons I'm about to list-- well, not just them-- but for personal ones. However, if it's in a few seasons time, I'd be more up for that, if the show gave time to improving his character-- even if I'd still grumble to myself about it!

As I said, removing Voight's character and immediately replacing it would already be a bad idea because of how much the show's dynamics are mixed up in him. Jay being the replacement would fuck this up even more, because he's already got his own dynamics with his unit.

Jay is definitely a leader type character. He was brought in to be. I could see him being a sargeant, and he's definitely the 'big brother' of the unit, even if they're all around his age. He definitely can have a clear head and is tactical and has that aura that people would be comfortable following his lead.

But he's also ignorant, impulsive and selfish. People say he'd make a good sargeant because of his morals-- but they're very much surface level morals. It's actually why I can see what drew him to joining the military, not just that want to leave, but he's clearly got a good-bad black and white line drawn in his head and this is what makes the military attractive to him.

Jay always thinks he's in the right. And technically, on the surface, he is. But he misses the nuance and he gets very caught up in his black and white view. This is what also makes him impulsive. He mentally, clearly, orders people into the good and bad categories in his mind and then he's pretty rigid in them-- jumping to conclusions.

He's got a good heart, but he doesn't take much time to stop, think and learn. Like with the racial issues prevalent and blm, he's only got a surface understanding and he does not make any effort to get a deeper one. Mainly because he doesn't realize-- because he thinks a lot of himself, in his black and white view. He is "good" and he cares that people suffer and therefore he thinks he understands.

He does not.

Say what you want about Adam-- and I'll be leaving my own personal biases out of this-- but even if you say he has a worse understanding than Jay, he's better because he makes more of an effort. He gets that he doesn't understand, and he's brash and vocal when he shouldn't be, but he also listens. And he tries to learn, he really, really does.

Jay doesn't. And Jay's also from canaryville. He went to Catholic school, Catholicism was clearly very prevalent in his life growing up. His father was an emotionally closed off man. He went to war. He's got his own biases but he's got this basic understanding and thinks that's that.

It's not. And it's barely okay with his current position in the unit, and it would be definitely not okay if he was their leader. Especially if he did what the greater part of the fandom wants, and leans on Hailey. Which let's face it, he would, because Jay doesn't think he has anything to learn and what he may think he does he thinks he can do it on his own, that he doesn't need to ask Kevin for guidance.

And yeah, Kevin is "only" an officer (and I'll get back to this point). Jay's got the higher role. But Kevin has been a black man, living in Chicago... Oh yeah, all of his life. That trumps promotions and titles, especially when Kevin has also been a cop for a lot of his adult life and has raised two kids in this racially charged city.

And then there's the fact that-- and most of this is because the show refuses to show the team bonding-- he's actually quite isolated from the team. We rarely get to see his supposed friendships with them, and this would affect how he can lead them and how they can follow. The dynamics would be off and it would be filled with conflict and, at times, be like a herd of sheep without their shepherd.

So, Ree, you ask. How should the show move on from Voight?

The show has been incredibly short sighted when it comes to Voight. He's been a problematic character from the literal start, and now we're reaching a point that a lot of the fans want him gone. And since the most vocal are the upstead and Hailey stans, I do believe the show will be thinking of ways to do this.

In my opinion, this should've been built up from season five, from when the reform storyline began. Instead, the show just shaved some aspects away from Voight's character.

He has changed a great deal, has grown a lot. I don't see what happened with Roy as a sign he can't change, because everyone's journey has back and forths. Especially when Voight likes to have control when people are hurting his family, he sees himself as their protector, but not as a bodyguard, but as an executioner.

And so I think the show will do two things to eventually write him out-- either promote him, or have him retire. But even this isn't simple and needs a lot of build up and work.

The show should've seen that Voight's days are potentially numbered and set up things so it's easy to slot his exit in place. For example, they should've kept consistent with having a captain in the precinct, even a lieutenant. This would have pre-existing roles for Voight to slot into easily, so they can still have his character around but let other characters get promotions or take on more work.

This would also help set up for retirement. Because even if he just retires as a sargeant, we already have other leader characters in the show for the others to bounce off-- instead of just introducing someone new. This would also help a sargeant Jay storyline, because then he'd have bosses to report too, making it very much seem that he is just the next link in the chain and would help balance out those dynamics.

Although, in a way, I don't blame them for not having foresight in season five. For other reasons but also-- because back then we also had Antonio and Al. We had a more layered and diverse unit. Instead, now we have the dad and the five children. Antonio would've made a good next sargeant, especially if we introduced a lieutenant role. Because I can see him aiming higher and helping to groom Jay into his replacement. Especially if Al was still around as a nice wall to bounce off, although it'd still be okay if we didn't.

Antonio would also be a good stepping stone because he had well developed relationships with every member of the unit. Well, apart from Hailey, but if they went down this route, they could've nurtured a dynamic there.

It would've also helped if they replaced their characters when they wrote them out. I get why they didn't. Al leaving made the partners even numbered, Rojas was after Antonio. And I wonder if covid affected their ability for season eight. But it's still the massive problem-- they keep trimming the fat, when it's unnecessary and not believing that maybe they should fix that.

And of course. They're all young. Even when they did bring in others, they're still young. And officers. And that would be okay, if they actually bothered promoting Kim, Kevin and Adam.

The unit's dynamics and feel is already off because of the lack of diversity in characterisation, race and age. And the show is doing nothing to fix this, and Voight should not leave until they have. Especially when against popular belief, history actually shows that Voight doesn't like blank slates, but people whose core characteristics fits what he wants his unit to be.

So: what does life after Voight look like? Well, hopefully, a more racially diverse group, with more age differences, different dynamics and friendships explored, Jay (and Hailey) being called the fuck out on their biases, more out of unit bosses dynamics to stop it being so insular and a happy ending exit for Voight. Because let's be real here-- Voight is not going to be written out by going to prison.

Even if he deserves it because one-- the unit would not survive that and they'd be repercussions for all and two-- realistically, as he was in prison once, the brass would not let this happen because how it would reflect on them.

In this day and age, they'd rather force him to retire quietly than publicly admit they got him out of prison and now is putting him back in. It may not be right, but realistically, they'd cover their ass first.

#ree has thoughts #that no one asked for #chicago pd #hank voight #jay halstead #<- bc i talk A LOT about sargeant jay

14 notes · View notes

kouhaiofcolor · 3 years

Text

2020's finally over. Can we not go into 2021 pacifying texturism w "It's just hair" tho?

It was "just hair" until Black Women started exercising the freedom to discover the unique needs & maintenance beneficial to our hair. Then as soon as non black women got wind of it & the nerve to lurk on platforms the natural hair community was uprising thru, nowadays you've got all these non black women bandwagoning & hashtagging literally everything under the sun w/ this fake ass inclusiveness, advocacy, relatability & support for textured hair. Like all women have suffered oppression around wearing their real hair 😒. Like all races of women have been socially targeted in blatant discriminations against their hair texture, complexion, & how acceptable they are or are not together. I hate the "All Hair (Matters/Is Beautiful/Is 'Good Hair')" clout bc it talks over & totally overwrites the foundational issue around hair & toxic femininity that, at its misogynoir core, has always been that textured hair is unprofessional, unkempt, unmanageable, & ugly. Colorism also erases the initial creators of the movement — which were Monoracial Brown & Dark Skinned Black Women; put some respek onnat, period. Straight hair is not oppressed; wavy hair is not oppressed; all hair is not oppressed. Black hair is. This "all hair is good hair" bullshit is so monotonous & inconsiderate bc its almost like a passive aggressive refusal to acknowledge what antiblackness imposed on Black Women alone. None of you non black know what it's like in depth to be the descendants of a race of ppl who's features, traits & harmless existence have always been insulted, hated & envied by the whole world. Esp not all at once. That is something totally unique to us inflicted & imposed by everyone else since the beginning of time. So why be out here chasing clout under tags & movements & in spaces you are no real part of? Why wanna be a part of the Black Girl Experience that bad? Yall have identities in everything outside of us. Why vulture off of this like you even have reasons to be there? We were investing in ourselves & trying to teach generations of Monoracial Black People how to manage their hair texture & develop cathartic habits thru self care. Nb ppl ruined that.

Looser hair textures have omnipresent representation & acceptance all, over, the, world. There is no lack of being seen, romanticized or exemplified for having texture 1a-3b hair; esp on the prevalent basis around colorism we see regularly on social media & on tv. Yet what remains of the community as it stands is today the furthest thing from textured or Black at all. At this point we owe the decline (if not death) of the natural hair community to the parasitic latching of non black women, the infiltration of "pick me's" & antiblackness generally — but I still be feeling like even that's not direct enough. We're talking ab something authentic & wholesome for Monoracial Black Women created by us for us being straight up sabotaged by races of women the cause was totally irrelevant to & in regard of. Bc that's how cosmetic industries have been towards us for centuries. Bc we were always excluded & thought of least & last. By other women. By all other women; don't get it twisted. So we set out on figuring ourselves out. Doing research on our own. Incorporating self care & beneficial habits in our lives to nourish & feel better ab ourselves & disprove the racist shit non black cultures & ppl either ignorantly surmise, make up or project ab Black Girls. That includes Black Men too in case yall thought yall were safe. Yall are some of the most toxic & prevalent faces behind colorism, antiblackness & misogynoir among black ppl specifically.

But anyhow. At first a lot of the initiation of the vulturing in the nhc light skinned women were the face of. Esp w the clout around having 4c hair amongst the beige-est, most ambiguously or straight up non black individuals, good lord. Then it went mainstream for huwight ppl, whom enevitably invited themselves, & following were the masses of non black women looking to pillage for themselves while the community was being swallowed by the crowdedness & irrelevant content being put out there (specifically on YouTube, Twitter & Instagram) by "hair gurus" of the light skinned, biracial or non black texture 1a-3b variety. Hair gurus who literally may as well've fallen from the sky & met social media stardom overnight based on their hair texture & complexion alone they're so brand new. Hair gurus who aren't even in the community for legitimately informative reasons or purposes unionized in Blackness. They're whole natural hair niche be — as a favorite natural of mine put it — manipulating textured hair into a sort of submission to appear or behave like looser textures do. They'll swear by 'game changer' products they both mention & only use like once & insist you should invest in a $30 8oz. bottle of clarifying shampoo or a $35 cowash if you want your hair to behave & look like theirs. Again, mind you, these types of individuals casually claim having texture 4 hair when they're anything but, just for the attention it brings from both ppl who will gullibly follow their every word & who know what kind of scamming to look for & won't.

If it's "just hair", how come so many of you that are non black are riding the wave? If it's just hair, why have so many of you found refuge in using the hashtags & participating/contributing uninvited? How come so many ran to get a seat at the table w Black Women only to kick them to the side the more popular it became if its just hair? How come nobody was calling it natural hair before Black Women created the nhc & started growing their own? Why was there no natural hair community before Black Women coined it, reminder, for ourselves? If it's just hair, how come so many ran to youtube to begin w to start channels for their own non-textured journeys? If its just hair, why is the nhc so damn obsessed w defining curls & length than overall health & gradual growth? If its just hair, why are white girls anywhere near this? Yall are the most out of place of anyone, honestly. Even if you're curly. Why do light skinned girls get to both represent textured hair & "good hair"? How does that even make sense? Thats just putting monoracial black girls in isolated boxes they're not even allowed to be symbols of or in. If its just hair, why's it so unheard of to see the roles of Black female characters in just ab anything played by actual Black Women? If its just hair, why have so many non or partially Black women worked in ignorant succession to water down & essentially wash out the Monoracial Black Women vital to the community's relevance at all? I really do not get the involvement of non black women in this movement at all — esp when culturally you have no reason to call your hair natural. There are no & have never been prejudice notions around having or growing texture 1a-3b hair. There's nothing oppressive ab it, either. Yall have gotta stop w that. You've already made a mockery of something that was supposed to be beautiful by making yourselves comfortable in & hijacking our space itfp. Theres far too much misrepresentation of textured hair to keep up w now. This is why i say the nhc (as well as culture vulturing generally) has just become nbwoc copying white women copying light skinned women copying Black Women, bc the audacity is unreal.

Its not just hair tho. To those it applies to, yall proved that the minute Black Women started going public w their growth journeys. The minute conversations ab "shrinkage this & 4c that" broadened & went mainstream. Yall couldn't move all at once fast enough when you realized you weren't as special as you thought & had always been told — esp w melanin at its modern value. Now all yall either "natural", seeking black men for either casual sex or cultural infiltration via fetishised reproduction, certain you have texture 4 hair or know the best tips for a DIY silk press 🤭😂 yall can't sit w us. You don't belong here. I'm calling yall out on allll the bs around this "All Hair Matters" garbage, cus yall are now sputtering the same shit while literally wearing your own non black hair in black styles. Be consistent. Make some fucking sense. I don't wanna be part of this fake ass girl squad propaganda that says every other woman never looked at Black Women's hair like it was bottomest of the barrel, foh. We're not on the same team & yall know it.

58 notes · View notes

in-starkestday-in-bannerednight · 3 years

Text

The Avengers refuse to unify & the MCU suffers for it.

Before y’all get your panties in a bunch hear me out. The Avengers lack scenes and moments that explore unity/coming together for the sake of camaraderie as opposed to ‘defeating a threat’.

The directors and screenwriters of the main Avengers films focus so much on team drama we almost never see the team just operating like a group of friends; I mean where they ACTIVELY comfort each other, help with an issue, laugh and create memories, goof off or even just have heart to hearts that aren’t in a life-threatening fight. The Avenger who represents this potential most is Cap aka Steve Rogers.

In every solo Cap movie, there are clear scenes of connecting, hanging out, and exploring relationships outside of the “job”. First Avenger: -Steve bonds with the rag tag group of Howling Commandos (hell he HAND picked them, drank with them, etc.) Winter Soldier: -Steve attends the veteran’s meeting that Sam hosts. They talk about goals and Sam’s crush. Later we see Sam, Nat, and Steve all chilling having breakfast. And of course Nat cracks jokes with Steve on a road-trip to his old army base.

Civil War: -Steve reassures Wanda about trying to save as many people is better than saving none -Natasha goes to Peggy Carter’s funeral just to support Steve -Peter Parker in Germany goofing off -Steve and Tony ACTUALLY try protect each other during the olive branch scene -Steve writes a letter to apologize & reaffirm he will have Tony’s back

But this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential. Drama isn’t the one stop-shop for keeping an audience engaged. If the creative team ALLOWED the Avengers to be seen as friends & colleagues, it could lead to a more UNIFIED and tied together MCU. Not just cameos, but meaningful appearances that boost the plot or character arcs more than simply offering fan service. My biggest example of this is Black Panther. In Black Panther, it’s already been established Steve regularly visits Wakanda to see Bucky. And in Infinity War, it’s implied Steve & T’Challa have a respected friendship (although we never see evidence of that at all!) So HOW do we SHOW that without taking away any of the existing plot in Black Panther?

One scene.

After Erik Killmonger arrives in the throne room/challenges T’Challa, let’s say he’s held in custody. What if Steve is visiting Bucky (who is unfrozen and working through therapy) and he goes to visit T’Challa, who is visibly conflicted and needs to blow off some steam. So he invites him to one of their sparring matches, where he’s been teaching new forms of martial arts to Steve. During this T’Challa shares the revelation of a lost family member turned villain.

Steve offers his OWN experience with that EXACT SAME revelation via Bucky dying and resurrecting into Winter Soldier. Yet he never gave up and ultimately saved Bucky. This relates deeply to T’Challa because Civil War is how all 3 met each other and that film ends with him saying he’s done letting vengeance consume him, and if he can help one man find peace he will.

So this visit from Steve inspires T’Challa to try reasoning with or including Killmonger into the royal fold. This doesn’t work, sparking the challenge where Erik wins, and the film goes on as intended. But in this ONE scene,

T’Challa teaches Steve new fighting moves, and STEVE teaches T’Challa about fighting for someone else, not against them. This establishes clear trust with personal problems being shared and a support system between the two men. A single scene that develops a relationship, explores characters thoughts and unifies two people together. These are the scenes missing from the main Avengers films and these scenes need to be more existent in solo films as well. They build a connective tissue better than “references” and cameos do for the MCU. Why get excited for a piece of dialogue when you could have a whole SCENE? So stop always having the Avengers argue and squabble. Even the Guardians of the Galaxy do a better job of showing friendship.

24 notes · View notes

kob131 · 3 years

Text

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byjiwECylIE

So EruptionFang made a video about Raven Branwen.

Considering his last video I watched (his Volume 8 Episode 2 Breakdown) was basically him shitting himself continuously because he’s STILL bitter about his headcanon being disproven, I don’t have high hopes.

But who knows, maybe he’ll make a good point.

0:00 - 1:24 “In RWBY, other characters get torn down to make Team RWBY look better, like the show only wants you to like Team RWBY! No one gets to be fleshed out or understood by the show! It’s SOOO disrespectful!”

...

*SMASH!*

Sorry, that was the sound of me faceplanting so hard I smashed a desk in half.

Really, Team RWBY never rises up and only other characters get torn down to make them look good? Yang never had to develop from being reckless as all hell to actually using her head in a fight? Blake didn’t have to get over her own fears and learn to accept help from others? Weiss didn’t have to struggle against her own personality to become a better person overall? Ruby didn’t have to struggle against the world itself and her own worldview to keep going?

This shit that is OBSERVABLE IN THE FUCKING SHOW didn’t happen? Sure, and there are two Adams. Even by the example you visually give (Avatar The Last Airbender)- Team RWBY still rose up like Team Aang did.

And don’t give me that ‘other characters get torn down!’ bullshit. The Ace Ops weren’t made to look bad to make Team RWBY look good- They failed because of their own personal flaws that were already established before that fight (Harriet’s recklessness, Elm’s temper, Vine’s detached attitude, Marrow’s disconnect). And Adam wasn’t torn down AT ALL: he remained the same damn character throughout his appearances and failed through his own failures born from his character.

And funny how you talk about other character not getting developed and yet ignore the Ace Ops’ boss. What’s wrong? Oh yeah, Ironwood IS developed (EXTENSIVELY. As in, we know more about his thought process, reasoning and actions than even WEISS, let alone Blake, Yang and Ruby.) so he just becomes a walking debunking of your OPENING ARGUMENT.

Not even past the intro and I’m already pissed.

1:46 ‘Any character’s righteous revolutions-’

Which didn’t exist, was disproven in the first episode and completely ignores BASIC writing tropes (like ‘Villians LIE’).

But please, keep talking about your delusions.

1:56 ‘There is an inescapable bubble Raven is in by both the audience and the characters!’

Spoiler Alert: It’s a bubble Raven HERSELF made in the first place.

‘A bubble that she’s a coward and cares about no one but herself.’

True and effectively true. I’ll explain WHY later.

(Nothing to say about the ‘Meeting Yang and Raven’ part, moving on)

8:37 - 8:51 *quotes Shane’s letter, portraying it as a cruel choice to ignore the Volume 2 stinger scene.*

So now we’ve moved on to tearing off chunks of Monty’s corpse and Shane’s grief to use for his own headcanon. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone using this- partially because it’s always using an emotional connection to Monty to manipulate the audience. Partially because this was a DUMB decision.

Where the FUCK would Raven fit into Volume 3? Even the section EF takes from is about a fight that everyone agrees wouldn’t have fit into Volume 3 at all and served no purpose and this is the ONLY mention of Raven. Combine this with how Volume 3 is structured (where Raven can’t do anything that Qrow didn’t already do), how ambiguous the final scene of Volume 2 was, the Mary Sue accusations against Yang at this point and Raven’s revealed personality- She wouldn’t WORK in Volume 3. Just because Monty had the idea doesn’t make it a good one. Fuck, he BROUGHT ON Miles and Kerry BECAUSE he knew he wasn’t a writer and his last contribution (Maidens) was BY FAR the worst aspect of RWBY which proves that even more.

EF, you’re bitching that Raven wasn’t shoved into a Volume already overstuffed and lacking in time and resources. With NO purpose and contradicting her personality.

Congrats on encouraging bad writing.

10:43 ‘It doesn’t make sense that in introducing the maidens and making Raven one, they cut her attacking Pyrrha to get her Maiden powers!’

Yeah- nice headcanon. Too bad your own quote says they didn’t know the purpose, Shane’s letter never says the purpose either and you even say it’s speculation. Also too bad that we’re suppose to SYMPATHIZE with Raven on some level later on and a large part of why Cinder isn’t portrtayed as sympathetic is that she KILLED Pyrrha, Raven’s theoretical target. Thus Raven’s attack would make her even MORE unlikeable.

‘B-but it changes the context of what we know, like Yang’s search for her!”

And how?

“Through her message to Yang, which was hostile and angry!”

... Really? The message of “I won’t save you again” is angry and hostile? It seems more matter of fact to me, informing Yang she won’t help her again not out of anger or dislike but through her worldview, which would be disconnected from her emotions on the surface.

Qrow’s words never include an insult or attack on Yang, like calling her weak or mocking her. You can INTERPRET it as hostile and angry but that depends on the subjective worldview of the person. The actual words and message don’t carry hostility or anger. They carry apathy.

‘B-but it splits her character in two-!’

Oh my god, did you SERIOUSLY try to pull another ‘Two Adams’ on me?

Raven DIDN’T HAVE a character to spilts in those two appearances. We knew nothing about her as a person. Her saving Yang and that supposed talk could have been for and about ANYTHING. That’s why there were so many theories: NOTHING was known. And nothing about those actions inform her character without context, which Volume 2 never gives.

This ‘first Raven’, like CJ Black’s ‘First Adam’, DOESN’T EXIST. It’s just a headcanon you refused to accept as being debunked.

‘W-well, Raven still looked after Yang when her arm was cut off!’

In bird form. And only bird form. And never directly interacts with Yang. All in a form Yang DOESN’T KNOW she’s in. Suffering from problems RAVEN HERSELF caused. WITH A FUCKING PORTAL TO HER AT ALL TIMES.

‘B-but her actions say that she DOES care!’

I knew PRECISELY what arguments you were gonna make the moment I started this video. Because they’re the SAME DAMN SHIT I’ve seen to defend Raven before. And let me go ahead and tear it down now: Raven being around in bird form means NOTHING. Without Yang knowing it’s her, it is meaningless. It’s WORSE than nothing because it demonstrates that Raven could have been with Yang throughout her life with no apparent cost to her because SHE WAS ALREADY DOING IT. And it means she watched Yang struggle with her abandonment and the toll it took on her family and ESPECIALLY Yang and did NOTHING to fix the problem.

Even ignoring the portal thing, taking this one scene in a vacuum- her looking at her depressed daughter and then fucking off paints her as either so lacking in empathy that she can’t be bothered to help HER OWN CHILD or so ill equipped to be a parent she makes TFS Goku look like...well, Taiyang. With CONTEXT, (still ignoring the portal thing), she CAUSED this depression by scarring Yang all those years ago and made Yang’s life worse for it. With the portal, she couldn’t even do the barest of minimum standards.

You can try to portray this as beautiful all you want: Nothing is shown stopping Raven from actually BEING A PARENT FOR ONCE before this and after this, we KNOW it wouldn’t be difficult in the slightest and she STILL chooses to not help. It’s one of the worst cases of parental apathy I have ever seen and fuck you for trying to bitch out the creators because you chose to IGNORE CONTEXT.

‘Instead of making it so Raven abandoned Yang because of her Maiden powers, they instead chose to abandon her role as a mother!’

You mean they had a character make a decision that completely fits with how the audience would perceive the character at this point?

Everyone, consider what we know about Raven. She’s Qrow’s twin sister, meaning she’s logically just skilled and strong as Qrow is. She’s also a Maiden, something that gives characters an IMMENSE amount of power separate from their normal abilities. She has a decoy so no one knows what she actually is. She has a portal to and from Yang at ALL times. She’s as strong as the strongest non-Maiden character shown so far, IS a Maiden bolstering her power beyond the Maidens we DO know of and can instantly be there for Yang at any time in her life and get away if someone tries to go after her, which makes no sense if it’s about her being a Maiden because she has a DECOY for this thing.

And yet, with all these things working for her, giving her every advantage that DEFIES the common trope EF is pushing- Raven still ditched her, ditched her a second time and couldn’t even be bothered to give her deeply apathetic message herself. And now supposedly, Raven would suddenly become a mother to Yang...and we’re expected to feel happy about this.

Yeah, no. People would be outraged that Raven got off scot free. In no part

“Everyone keeps being hostile and angry with Raven, who is also being hostile and angry. This means that the other guys are just pidgeonholding her into this role!”

Yes, a trend that Raven HERSELF causes. Qrow is hostile towards her because she tried to act as though she cared about her family to Qrow, a character shown to be a loyal person, but ignores her own DAUGHTER when it’s supposedly about family. Yang is hostile towards Raven because she knows Raven could have been there for her but chose not to, all while she NEEDS to find her ACTUAL family. Even Taiyang’s look at the end of Volume 5 makes sense as if she’s there, that means she’s likely running from their daughter, whom she has failed as a parent YET AGAIN despite Taiyang giving her a generous interpretation.

Raven is being forced into a role SHE MADE FOR HERSELF.

“This isn’t how it was at the beginning of the show. Yang and by extension the audience is sad and curious while Raven and Qrow are angry and toxic.”

Again, you ignore context.

Yang knows NOTHING about Raven and was abandoned by her. Of course she’d be sad and curious.

But Qrow is different. He DOES know Raven, saw first hand what her actions have done to his family while being the type of person who would HATE this and Raven is actively being manipulative while also avoiding him as he asks for help in SAVING THE WORLD.

Later on, Yang finds Raven...after learning that Raven had every chance in the world to be there for her and chose NOT to. All while Raven exudes arrogance and a selfish pride in being a ‘prize’ for Yang to work towards.

Then Raven proceeds to use her as BAIT, abandon her, try to turn her against the family that HAS been there for her, insults the father and uncle who loved and cared for her- all for more power...that wouldn’t even solve the problem Raven has. She stabbed her own brother and daughter in the back...for nothing. Because of her own flaws, something Yang fought against and overcame making her more mature than her MOTHER.

And after all that, she is given one last chance to truly show her love for Yang: to help her and join her. To go with her and put herself at risk for Yang’s safety or at least taking the Relic so Salem will target her instead of Yang. And what does Raven do? Abandons her AGAIN.

Abandons her to run off near her ex, the man she left with a child and a broken heart. She uses her connection to him to run away from her responsibility as a parent, running away from THEIR DAUGHTER. The girl he raised up without blaming Raven for anything, instead trying to paint a good picture of her in Yang’s head.

No shit people are hostile or unhappy with her- She keeps FAILING.

‘Oh hey, they made her an antagonist and thus EVIL! The writer’s CLEARLY think that there’s no way a parent who abandoned their child can be anything other than EVIL!’

... Then how come they portray her as conflicted and sad in the finale of Volume 5?

Much like how Adam’s unmasking fundamentally BREAKS his previous arguments of ‘HE EVIL!’ because it helps humanize Adam and give him pity and sorrow, the same is done here with the finale and Raven’s final actions so far. If Raven were evil, she wouldn’t have tried justifying her actions. Salem, Tyrian and , actively evil characters, don’t act like Raven. And they certainly don’t show regret or sorrow for their actions or conflicts about the results. This goes AGAINST how people perceive evil, even in the show itself.

So if she’s supposedly EVIL, why is her climax all about aspects that are fundamentally incompatible with how evil is portrayed in the show?

Answer: Raven’s not portrayed as evil. She’s portrayed as FLAWED, with actual negative flaws that cause her grief and pain like any normal character. EF is just throwing a fit that a ‘character’ he likes isn’t being treated as positive.

‘Volume 4 wasn’t where we got our first impression of Raven, it was Volume 2 and 3!’

And what impression could you get?

That she’s strong...and that’s it. At least, that’s it for positive traits. Raven is strong because she scared off Neo and that’s all the positive traits we have of her.

Everything else is negative. She apparently doesn’t care enough about Yang to stay around in any capacity for whatever reason. She refuses to see Yang and is largely apathetic towards her. She can be there for Yang but chooses not to. And her own twin brother Qrow doesn’t really like her.

The things we saw of Raven then paint a picture of someone who doesn’t care about Yang in any meaningful way. Even though I’ve chosen to ignore the portal thing, I really shouldn’t because she showed the portals off since Volume 2, meaning since her physical introduction she ALWAYS had a path to Yang but never chose to. EF acts as though these aspects of Raven didn’t exist before Volume 4...when the barest minimum of thought shows them in before that.

‘Their biggest mistake was the Volume 2 end credits scene since it goes against everything they wanted to do with her as a character!’

Yeah...and you argue for including it even though your own source shows that the other writers KNEW this issue.

‘The first impression we got of her was her saving Yang’s life and then confronting her!’

Yeah, and guess what? Those are not inherently positive. She could have saved Yang to manipulate her and use her as a pawn for all we knew. For as many positive interpretations you can give for these actions, I can give a negative interpretation. All because these actions lacked context at the time so it was neither positive nor negative.

The context dictated what these actions were. And context defined them as ultimately positive...but flawed. Which you conflate with malice.

‘The Volume 2 scene was meant to be a kicking off point-’

For what? Once again, the scene is not inherently positive. Raven never shows care or love for Yang in that scene, all she shows is a desire to talk (which without context of what she says, what it means, what her intentions are, how informed she is and how she uses this opportunity- makes it neutral.)

After this you do this cartoonish ‘oh they changed direction!’ thing without a single shred of evidence beyond a letter made by a grief madden man which doesn’t even say what you are saying. You keep assigning direction to something without a clear direction.

‘So how do you address her Maiden plotline with her Yang plotline?’

You make it about her personal failing of trying to use power to hide her cowardice, show that she lies to herself as well as others to justify her actions and show how she fails? Like how they showed that her ditching Yang lines up with how she refuses to take action until backed into a corner, gets confronted repeatedly with her flaws as her daughter (someone far weaker and less informed) keeps going and the show forces her to see how she’s being cowardly?

‘Don’t do one.’

... Translation: ‘i didn’t like what the show did so I’m gonna do selective remembering to make it look like nothing happened. ... What? I did it with Adam.’

Regardless of how you feel about the plotlines- They were BOTH addressed. It wasn’t dropped, it wasn’t forgotten- It was resolved as I have shown multiple times here.

And here at 20:33 I’m ending this. It’s pretty damn clear that Erup-Cole is just ignoring whatever doesn’t fit his view. Instead of taking a look at what happened and trying to understand the pattern that comes, he’s making up a pattern and patchworking it together through cherry picking.

I see that he hasn’t changed from his Adam tantrum, because this is the EXACT SAME VIDEO, just stretched out and about Adam’s MILF form. And I do mean ‘Adam’s MILF form’ because I don’t think a character with such superficial similarities to him getting the same treatment is a coincidence.

Cole, you can’t try selling me something with THIS much bullshit. It’s like trying to serve me a maggot infested steak and telling me it’s well cooked. You’re full of shit and no matter how much you try to hide it, it won’t change.

Your headcanons are not canon and it’s your fault you take such offense. Deal with it.

18 notes · View notes

blue-bird-lamentation · 3 years

Note

this the story post: melohax[.]tumblr[.]com/post/639167543643340800/warning-spoilers-ahoy-only-read-this-if-youve the game has like so many secret scenes it shocked me

Thank you so much for the link!!!

I really liked reading it. I tried to skip the hikikomori route part as I will try to calmly play it, but I‘ve read a few and, as a person who saw that seen of a man trying to cut a tree and saying “you’re not my son” it intrigued me a lot what kind of information I will get from there.

I’m still puzzled and still didn’t try to see what would happen if I collected the wrong letters and if I has opened the door to Mari.

I went far on this answer and wrote a lot of random topics that are also mentioned in that post and other things I remembered too. It’s still too messy, but my memory is fresh and I decided to write about what I was thinking, even if not organized. Sorry for using your ask, but I was inspired by the link, which I think it’s a very interesting reading. I’m also sorry for the mistakes and I may come back later to correct them. There are so many fascinating things in the game, and so many others I haven’t yet explored, besided I feel good writting all of this as it is kind of asfixiating to thing about it and not having anyone to discuss it with.

This game was a rollercoaster. I knew from the begining that the cute artstyle and the pastel colours in the begining were deceiving, especially when you start in a weird whitespace room and take a knife. Omori as a black and white coloured character among the other paster colours also felt weird.

One really interesting comment I received from my brother when he watched me playing a bit, in a fight, was “oh your character is the real neutral one, the others seem happy” while all of them were in neutral mode. Also his happy expression was scary and he was the one who got to maniac aside from villains (at least for me). The fact he has a knife intrigued me a lot if I should really fight but at first it looked like there were no consequences (aside from feeling tremendously bad for being called bunny killer. Also about these little enemies, it’s interesting how many of them were bunnies when the person we find who has a bunny is Aubrey, which is also the girl from the group that is now “against us”, at least most of the time in the real world).

Also about the knife, there are two other moments that totally hit me:

- the suicide in whitespace, which could foreshadow his suicide in some routes, but is also the means to wake up;

- Kel and Aubrey in the real world who call us out for bringing a knife, which, since the begining, was the correct thing to do.

I really wonder a lot about his family and their decisions.

It’s been 4 years. I wonder if Sunny’s mom ever put him into some kind of therapy, I wonder if her absence was on purpose because she wanted him to say goodbye to his old friends one last time. I wonder if Kel’s visit wasn’t a coincidence. I wonder if Hero coming back was also part of a last chance to bring Sunny back. I don’t know if the other route answers it, but seeing the notes and messages that mother leaves, she seems to be worried about him. I would say a mix of worry and fear, so there must be some strong reason why she’s not there besides going to buy some furniture or whatever.

Saying this, I think only Sunny’s parents know more or less what happened, but not from their son’s mouth, from autopsy report perhaps. The house was adapted to the changes: no family picture, as opposed to what I saw in Kel’s house (and I wonder if it’s only because of Mari or also with his father too as described by the cutting tree scene. I had thought this was directed to Omori and not to Sunny, but this is also part of the dream realm, so it could be Sunny’s interpretation to the end of his parents marriage which was related to Mari’s death), Mari’s bed is gone (which made the scene when she knocks the door even creepier. I never got to open the door because I was scared, but I’m also curious). Also about the 4 years, I liked the detail of the 4th floor sign in Last Resort, which was resting there on the floor, as the number is also cursed because it symbolizes death.

I find fascinating how the complexity of the situation is represented in the dream world. His team is composed by his old friends, which are human. Mari and Basil are also human but they weren’t totally present. Mari is the safe point and overprotective of Omori, but she is also the element who encourages him to face his fears. As he faces his fears, he unravels more information about what he repressed, also helped by the presence of the blackspace Basil. But it’s ironic as the more he unravels, the more corrupted the story seems to evolve, but also the more they lose the main purpose of rescuing Basil, which is more evident in the deeper well.

I believe the human figures are the most important to him, and then there are the elements that combine real world figures with fantasy, as the candyshop girl and the fiction space boyfriend. Each story is fascinating but it also makes you lose focus on what you were supposed to do. And in my case, there was a point where I just wanted to wander around in these stories because I was to afraid to face the real story that was masked by this fictional colourful world.

These olde friends represent perhaps what Sunny never wanted to have lost, but also what he does not want to face.

When Sunny woke up in the hospital, I first followed the kids, and no, that wasn’t the right path. That was the safe path, where there is no confrontation with reality. As it was when Sunny was with company. I think it is Aubrey who says he doesn’t like to be alone, and well, that was me the whole game, imploring to not be left alone, because once the character was alone, his world seemed to be corrupted by the black space, which was also a stepping stone to reach the truth, the dark truth.

And I really like how this is all Sunny’s mental effort, which, I would say, it’s helped by him leaving his house and meeting his friends once again, as well as facing Basil one more time.

I was really sad with how the story developed. What started I was assuming it was a facing your fears story, transformed into an overcoming someone’s death, which at first I thought it would be Basil’s, to go to Mari (which was a total mystery to me why had she died (my ingenuity believed it could have been some traffic accident or something else) at first), to go to save Basil again, but now with some dark remarks about the character himself. In the middle of this development, first time the character wakes up, it is clear that the dream world character is not the same as the real world one, age wise, but is part of him.

I had written that at first I was reluctant about the fights, but well, they were necessary to me to face the villains of each arc. But at the same time thery were never too difficult (I think the most difficult part to me was to be strong enough for the Dino Dig and the rest was pretty easy). When, at the end Sunny had to face Omori I was shocked. So, the guy I had been training which was very seemingly sadistic, did I simply train him so that if Sunny wanted to face his trauma, he would hunt him with his strenght? Like the stronger I made him, ther bigger the reluctance to overcome the past. And while this sadistic character seems to be what I would compare to a Chara in Undertale, to me it was the harsh self conscious, critical part of him who could never forgive for what he had done. And which was also manifested as the monster surrounding him and Basil. It was their perception that what they had done was unforgivable, but at the same time neither of them wanted to carry that burden alone: Sunny “forgot” it, Basil manifests it by making those toxic remarks like “you aren’t going to leave me alone again, are you?”.

I don’t know if we get to see more of Basil’s backstory but he also got me curious. I think that what both of them did was bad, but given what happened between Sunny and Mari, it was really hard to know how to face it. I don’t think it makes them willingly villains, but scared children who were very self conscious and didn’t know what would happen if people found it out.

However, hadn’t Basil been there, Sunny would have been found right away next to Mari’s corpse. So I wonder what led Basil to propose such idea and to make Sunny’s burden heavier, which made him ambiguity of his disappearance with the will to save him as a friend.

I don’t think it was an ill intention, but Basil created excuses to protect Sunny because he was important to him and to the group. As the photo album showed, Sunny was the younger element, seen as the baby of the group, and he was shy, but he loved his friends even if he looked the most expressionless.

I think these elements awoke in him the need to protect Sunny from the darkness that lied ahead his actions, but he didn’t realise how heavy of a burden that would be. At the same time he probably had some issued regardin expectations and self worth which probably told him that they could never be tied to such a cruel action, even if it was accidental.

In my perspective he didn’t see the dark shadow surrounding Sunny at the time, but he engraved the memory as an act not commited by Sunny but by something surrounding him, pretty much like when he started attacking him at the end.

I like to think that, good ending wise, the malevolent side, Omori is not necessarily a potential evil that was always within Sunny, but the self guilt and lack of self worth. The fact the Sunny wouldn’t leave the house and didn’t even take good care of his health shows it. He is self destructive, because guilt consumes him, not a person who needs to apply suffering in the outter world for his own satisfaction. The whole struggle is within Sunny and not ot become a bad person per se.

Some of Basil’s dialogue was too much for me, mainly when he kept repeating for Sunny to not leave him. However I totally understand why. Sunny covered the what had happened while Sunny had to live those years knowing what they had done, as if he was the only one carrying the burden.

It’s a real complicated story where everyone was the victim.

It was so hard to see how sad and angry Aubrey was, and how she had to make new friends to overcome, how alone she was all the time. How Kel kept being such a good person, however had to move away because he didn’t know how to face the others, afraid of being misinterpreted. Hero’s pictures with Mari break me everytime. “A match made in heaven” Basil had written in the description of one of the photos. The fact that he is the element in the group that cooks, but 4 years later he had given up. The fact he can’t face Mari’s grave. The way Kel describes his struggle over Mari’s death. The way he didn’t make new friends in college, although he says it was lack of time. Basil is completely broken and can’t even touch the camera anymore and tries to “destroy” the old memories, which Aubrey discovers. Sunny’s parents, as their life turned upside down. And probably everyone around was too afraid to know how to act around them.

I really like how despite everything, the human figure that Sunny creates of Mari is forgiveful and so cheerful. Mari is such a good influence that wants to help him overcome the trauma for himself (especially when she helps him overcoming the fear of drowning and calls him Sunny for the first time. The ways she asked for his forgiveness for pushing him so hard into playing the recital. It is still part of Sunny’s dream but it’s so in Mari’s character. I believe this part is also connected to the scene where we see her saving Sunny in the real world).

I will end this text here. I will eventually come back to it, and to the omori tag, because this is certainly a very good game with a lot of space for debate and reflection.

#omori #omori spoilers #tw: knife #tw: suicide

8 notes · View notes

garazza · 4 years

Text

Action Comics #1023 Review

“The House of Kent: Part 2″

Action Comics #1022 “House of Kent: Part 1″ Review

Hoo-boy.

I actually appreciate this recap page, I really do, but it just rubs me the wrong way. I’m not sure if it’s the content of the recap that pisses me off or if it’s for the fact that they literally just took a page from the previous issue and slapped in some new dialogue (see Bendis’ Man of Steel mini for this to be taken to the extreme).

Most likely the latter, but there’s a good argument for the former because reading objective statements about what Bendis has done tends to do that. I guess what they could be going for is for something similar to when Svengoolie comes back from commercial break and it’s a still from the movie with Sven’s face superimposed somewhere and he makes a quip about the movie before it starts back up again.

But I digress. It fills me in on what’s been happening in the book and that’s what I needed it to do.

The art really goes down in quality since last issue. Romita, Jr.’s pencils aren’t as good, Janson’s inks are heavier and a lot more boring, and Anderson’s colors are bland and flat and not as lively. There are a few good spots and I’ll point them out, but they’re infrequent, and overall, the quality of the art is much more similar to the art in the Metropolis Doom arc than it is to last issue. This leads me to believe that editorial only gave the art team enough time over the pandemic-induced break in publishing to produce one good issue before forcing them back into a deadline where Romita, Jr.’s work is not as good and tends to suffer.

Red Cloud attacks and attempts to kill Jimmy Olsen instead of Lois Lane to send an even greater message to her and Clark.

For those of you that don’t know, the Invisible Mafia speak in code to avoid detection by Superman’s super-hearing and meet in areas surround by lead to hide from his supervision. In the beginning of this confrontation, no one says anything that Superman would respond to if he hasn’t already tuned it out, which is why Lois says out loud her nickname for her husband to get his attention.

It’s a sign of affection for them and could be utilized for such a scenario, but I don’t see why she had to say his nickname over anything else to get his attention. Maybe because since he revealed his identity to the world his real name is being said a lot more often in non-criminal ways, so he doesn’t respond to it as much as he has in the past. I’m not sure if I’m trying to come up with a rational excuse for what is actually a writer’s weird and out-of-character creative choice or if it’s what an actually competent writer intended for a discerning reader to infer and get joy from a successful analysis.

Regardless, it’s what got Superman’s attention at the end of Superman segment in the last issue. I don’t think what was supposed to be conveyed with those panels last issue was accurately conveyed by the art. Either Romita, Jr. didn’t sufficiently depict (but still beautifully rendered) what Bendis had directed him to draw, or Bendis had poorly directed Romita, Jr. in what he wanted him to draw. With this added context, however, these panels do make a lot more sense, but only with the added context. Without it, the scene is a little unclear.

You can clearly see the change in art with the two issues side by side like this. This issue, the art just doesn’t look as good. It’s just kinda blegh. It accomplishes what it needs to convey the story, but in a very boring and unspectacular way.

Also, this panel is very Harry Potter to me. Superman’s more subdued face is similar to that of book!Dumbledore in Goblet of Fire, but the almost hyperbolic dialogue is more akin to that of movie!Dumbledore. It’s very dissonant.

I really want to hate the humor of this panel, but it’s just so fun, so I won’t.

This is a really cool panel, one of the few standout moments, but I have issues.

First, I may have enjoyed the humor in the last panel, but Bendis’ attempt at humor with Jon here just makes me want to cringe. Whenever Bendis makes Jon talk, it just pisses me off and makes me want to stop reading.

Second, I see what they were going for with the glowing eyes, but this is some more of that dissonance between the art and the writing. It actually looks quite menacing, but the dialogue has a more humorous tone. Also, the actual effect for the glow is just two red circles, making their eyes look more like flashlights than radiating energy. I also want you to keep this moment in the back of your minds, I’ll refer back to it in a second.

I think the dissonance is the result of the Bendis-speak, where some of the characters are quippy, but other characters are playing the situation straight and are reacting accordingly to the incorrect behavior. There’s nothing wrong with a superhero comic being light-hearted, but it just doesn’t quite fit here. All the right ingredients are present, but they’re not all in the right proportions.

Another panel I really like. The smoke and its color are really well done, especially in contrast to the all black silhouettes except for their back logos of the Supers.

The eye glow effect looks much better here. It’s simple yet powerful.

I don’t know how important this revelation is actually supposed to be, so I’ll defer to the depiction of the comic instead of playing the fool and acting upset about something I’m ignorant about simply because I’m not a fan of the writer.

This moment is cool and all, but I don’t think Conner has super-breath. He doesn’t actually have the powers of Superman, he uses his tactile telekinesis to mimic some of the powers of Superman.

The “extreme high-velocity super-speed” was this issue’s first indication that Bendis might not know anything about this character he has stewardship over, but that can just be chalked up to Superman not remembering the powers of Conner. We don’t know the upper limit of Conner’s tactile telekinetic flight, nor should we care, it’s supposed to be a fun line.

The second indication is that Conner is shown to have heat vision when his eyes glow alongside Clark and Jon’s. He only has heat vision when he wears special goggles or a visor. Again, he doesn’t have all the powers of Superman. Tactile telekinesis only covers so much of Superman’s powers. But this can be forgiven because it is a pretty cool image.

“Once Is Chance, Twice is Coincidence, Third Time Is A Pattern.” This panel is the third instance of Bendis’ lack of understanding of Conner’s character. If this was the only instance, this would be fine, but it’s not. The moment is cool, but it’s a bridge too far.

Refer to my review of the first issue for more of Bendis not knowing anything about Conner.

EDIT: Thanks to @thebartallenblog for pointing out to me that Conner does in fact start developing more Kryptonian powers outside of his tactile telekinesis in the 2003 Teen Titans book by Geoff Johns, so Bendis does in fact know more about the character than I give him credit for, which is more than I can say for myself in this instance.

Also, this moment goes on for way too long, almost two entire pages. Beautiful, the art of decompression and wasting reader’s time and money.

“Should I super-inhale?” Shut up, Bendis.

Also, why is Red Cloud is so fixated on Superman’s family instead of just Superman. Does the Invisible Mafia have something against his family as well? It was my understanding that they have it out for him specifically, anything that is ancillary to him is extraneous and not worth their time.

“Hey! It’s not my favorite super-move on a good day.” Then why the fuck did you even make him suggest it, Bendis?

I don’t know if loved ones referring to Lois as Ma is something Bendis has been trying to push as a character quirk or if it’s some sort of weird one-off. Either way, I don’t like it. It’s not bad in of itself, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not my thing and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Again, I’m not sure how significant Jimmy figuring out Red Cloud's identity is supposed to be to the plot and the narrative, but this seems to be a bit of lampshading from a writer who literally has no right to be lampshading.

Couldn’t give a shit about the plot, I’m just here to nitpick. Next.

Feels a bit janky in the art department, but the dialogue is surprisingly in character. They all feel like they have their actual voices. It’s a nice little moment.

I would address all the instances of Bendis making Jon talk, but that would make this longer than it already is, so I’ll only do it when it’s particularly egregious.

Red Cloud comes back and attacks not!Jon and I couldn’t care less. Kill the bitch. Please.

The next two pages are a lot of nothing, just a boat load of Bendis-speak.

I’m pretty sure this played out a lot differently and more humorously in Bendis’ head when he wrote it down and Romita, Jr.’s art makes it all the more funny but for all the wrong reasons.

Who’s his partner? Officer Tomasi?

You know when I said that one panel with Lois, Clark, and Jimmy was written really in-character? This panel with Conner and Jon is the exact opposite of that.

Red Cloud and Ms. Leone have a fun back and forth for two pages. It’s a good example of Bendis-speak working well.

“Black Label Club?” One meta-reference is enough, but two is stupid. I actaully feel a little conflicted nitpicking this, but Black Label is in such a weird place right now, so why reference it?

But “Clark Kent walked into a bar...” is a pretty bad ass line, very John Wick.

A very cool sequence, but it’s full of Bendis-speak and very decompressed.

Why the fake-out of the Superfamily executing a gangland-style shooting with Jon being the one pulling the trigger? I get it’s a story beat the narrative is supposed to hit, but still.

The reveal is pretty funny, shrinking the club, so it’s a little forgivable, but the set up and the pay off don’t quite match. It’s just another example of that dissonance I’ve been mentioning.

I know that “supersons” line was put there by Bendis as a deliberate dig at his detractors, so I’m not going to take the bait and get pissed. Nice try, big guy.

All in all, this issue was not as bad as I initially thought. It’s series of some really big highs and lows.

#superman #superboy #conner kent #jon kent #lois lane #jimmy olsen #red cloud #robinson goode #ms. leone #invisible mafia #brainiac 5 #clark kent #action comics #brian michael bendis

29 notes · View notes

cheryls-blossomed · 4 years

Note

I saw someone comment this as a criticism towards iris so I'm curious what you think. they said she/barry claim she's a good reporter but she's never actually had a successful story, and always calls barry or needs someone to help her clean up the messes she gets herself into on purpose. I'm a biiig fan of iris so regardless of criticism it doesnt change my opinion of her at all, but i'm still interested in your thoughts :)

Let’s be clear, if it wasn’t for Iris and the “messes she gets herself into,” Barry would still be unemployed.

Actually, I didn’t even know this was a criticism folks made, but I appreciate you asking me about it, nonnie, because hopefully I can dispel this as a bad faith (and utterly false) criticism of Iris. To do that, though, we need to talk about Iris’s journalism over the years.

Iris is looking for her story at the start of season 1, and she finds it when a mysterious super-powered hero begins saving people. She names him the Streak and starts her blog, where she records sightings of the Streak. Barry and Joe are literally trying to get her to stop writing, while Eddie pretends to Iris that he doesn’t even believe the Streak is real and that she’s wasting her time (Eddie writes him off as a hoax, all the while he’s trying to get Singh to allow him to create a task force to catch the speedster). She’s essentially on her own, but she continues to write about the Streak, later renaming him the Flash, and this lands her a job at Central City Picture News, where her mentor, Mason Bridge, writes her off immediately as an over-eager aspiring journalist. She has so many, well-researched stories she wants to write, but the editor of CCPN is more interested in what she can write about the Flash. It’s such an uphill battle for Iris from Day 1, when it comes to her aspirations as a journalist, and nobody is coming to help her out, exactly. When she gains Mason’s respect, he tasks her with researching Harrison Wells. Iris is intuitive and sharp, and when she meets “Sam” at the West house, she immediately goes into the archives of her blog, where she’d also recorded sightings of other meta-humans, and connects the dots that “Sam” is Ronnie Raymond. Iris’s blog also serves as a meta-human database, which we see Oliver and his team use, and furthermore, the information Iris gathers on the Burning Man which she gives to Caitlin is what Caitlin uses to locate Ronnie. From the very beginning, Iris’s meticulous research is what allows for huge positive plot developments to take place. Furthermore, it’s hers and Mason’s research on Wells that propels Barry and Joe’s investigation into the truth about who Harrison Wells is. While I am still incredibly peeved that what should have been Iris’s investigation is just unceremoniously handed over to Joe and Barry, neither Barry nor Joe would have known to even begin investigating Wells. While Cisco discovered the truth on his own, this was in an isolated timeline that was erased, a timeline that saw Cisco murdered for discovering the truth. Meanwhile, Iris compiles all the data of her research and is able to connect everything back to the Particle Accelerator, a conclusion she reaches on her own through her research. She later helps the team locate Grodd, because of reports she’s kept track of.

In season 2, Iris is still a journalist for CCPN. This is really the first instance of Iris needing Barry’s aid with a story, and it’s because she’s trying to take down an illegal eviction scam and gets caught in the crosshairs. Barry saves her, and she later writes the piece. That was all her; her own research, and her own story. Barry coming to her aid, while she’s in the thick of it, is pretty standard for journalists in superhero stories, and it really doesn’t diminish the fact that she exposed this scam on her own. (And honestly, who doesn’t love the trust fall scene?) She uncovers the truth about Wally on her own and confronts Francine about it. She later confronts the speed-racing crook, in her attempts to protect Wally, and while he threatens her, she has back-up, having recorded everything he was saying, wiring it all back to CCPN to protect herself. She refuses to write a negative piece on the Flash, when Trajectory attacks Central City, and instead proves to Scott that some people are always heroes no matter what. Iris’s determination as a journalist is what makes her successful, and we see that time and again.

In season 3, she is investigating Frankie Kane’s home situation, and she goes to interview her abusive step-father, where she discovers his physical and verbal abuse of Frankie. She also ensures the entire hospital is evacuated, while Barry goes to talk Frankie down. A clear visual representation of truth and justice working together to save the day: Iris using her investigating prowess and realizing who Frankie is targeting and then evacuating the hospital, and Barry going to Frankie and saving her. Again, there’s no one coming to get Iris out of the “messes she creates”; instead, she’s actively using her journalistic talents to help save the day. Is Iris sometimes reckless with her own well-being when she goes after a story? Yes. Iris blatantly lacks self-preservation. But that’s also what makes her so incredibly compelling as a journalist, because she has flaws, but she’s smart and determined and intuitive and heroic. In 3x11, she writes a big story on the illegal arms dealership she’d been researching and how Wally saved the day. Yes, Iris enlists Wally’s help on this case, but she’s the one who has been following through and doing all the research. She tracked the man selling the illegal arms down and busts him out. This is her story, and while Wally did come to her aid, once again, she originally enlisted his help, so that she wouldn’t just recklessly be walking into a trap. Iris was also struggling with her own future demise, and so her recklessness is understandable. We have to also allow her growth as a journalist, as well.

After the PTSD she suffered during season 3, Iris leaves CCPN, but she returns to journalism in the back half of season 4 after her time as the Flash imbues in her a newfound confidence and sense of fearlessness. She wants to write a piece informing the public about DeVoe, so that they can be informed, and she makes a compelling case to Barry as to why she wants to publish this article. And he agrees with her perspective. She publishes this, and the public begins reporting directly to her blog on sightings of DeVoe, which helps Barry and Team Flash track them. Her articles on the DeVoes are all from her own research that she’d been accumulating, and they have a profound affect not just in terms of the individual success of the story, but on protecting Central City and helping to save the world. AND her articles on her blog are what get Barry is job back at CCPD, and we should all listen to David Singh who says, “You can thank your wife.” Thank you, Iris West-Allen.

In season 5, she’s quite active in reporting for her blog. We don’t know necessarily the specifics of the stories that she’s writing, but we know she actively reports on meta-humans in the city. We see her at the crime scene in 5x02, where she asks David Singh for a quote, which he gives her, because he respects her integrity as a journalist (Iris’s articles on the DeVoes brought her much acclaim in the city as a whole). We see her investigating Ragdoll in 5x05. In 5x12, she officially launches the Citizen, and in 5x13, she immediately goes to follow up on an old colleague of Dwyer’s. This leads her to Dwyer, and she holds her own against him, stabbing him with her pen. She only calls Barry in the aftermath to inform him about what happened and that she discovered Cicada’s weakness on her own. Iris saved herself and discovered vital information to defeating Cicada.

In season 6, we see her investigating a lot more, and we see how her style of investigating has changed. She’s more meticulous now. She’s more careful now. She’s really come into her own as a journalist, and that’s the point of character growth. Folks can’t criticize her more reckless decisions in 2x03 and 3x11, without recognizing that Iris also has to come into her own as a journalist. She and Team Citizen do all the research on Black Hole and then successfully publish an explosive on Black Hole, implicating McCulloch Tech. Carver sends an assassin after Iris, but she escapes by herself, after going to meet her source. While injured, she realizes that Carver is behind Black Hole, and she successfully gets him to drop the defamation suit, by coming up with an elaborate, contingency plan. That was all Iris, by herself. She then pieces together the truth about Eva.

Iris has had much success as a journalist, from writing and researching lots of stories, particularly about meta-humans, in Central City. But her most successful pieces were (1) her original blog; (2) her exposure of the illegal eviction scam; (3) her exposure of the the illegal arms dealership; (4) arming the population of Central City with information on DeVoe; and (5) her exposure of Black Hole. For only two of these, did she need Barry or Wally to come to her rescue, but she did all the research for those pieces. The success of those stories are her own. And she didn’t get herself into a mess; she was in a dangerous situation, and she made the right choice of asking for help. For all the others, she never needed anyone’s aid at all. In fact, she was cleaning a whole lot of messes up. And those five stories are simply the ones we heard the most about; we know she’s had a lot of success as a journalist otherwise, and she’s constantly using her journalistic abilities to save the day (whether it was more direct, such as in the Frankie Kane episode, or more subtle, emphasizing how her journalistic abilities play a huge role in her ability to quickly recall information and stay calm in high-stress situations, such as in the Flashtime episode).

So yeah, I think that criticism is entirely false on all accounts. I also think there’s a lot of bad faith criticisms of Iris: the same folks that will call her a “Mary Sue” (a blatantly false character assessment, it’s not even funny) will also turn around and whine about Iris being reckless. Which is it? Is she so perfectly good at everything or does she have flaws? So, I would pay no heed to those people, because they are just looking to hate on Iris without providing any real or valid criticisms.

#anonymous #replies

7 notes · View notes

noxstellacaelum · 4 years

Text

Filtering Female Characters Through the Male Gaze

Female characters filtered through the male gaze: A (way) too long post about why we need a more diverse and inclusive approach to staffing showrunners, writers, directors, crew – heck, all roles -- in TV and movies.

Yes, I know I am not the first person here on this.

And note that while I have included a few tags b/c I talk about my frustration with Shadowhunters, Veronica Mars, the Irishman, Richard Jewell, and a few other recent shows/movies, I don’t get to this stuff until the very end, I appreciate that fans may not want to wade through the entire essay, which (again), is a bit of personal catharsis.

I recently had a random one-off exchange with a TV writer on twitter. The writer said that she had enjoyed the movie Bombshell much more than its Rotten Tomatoes rating would have suggested. She wondered if the disconnect between her experience/perception of the movie and that of mainstream reviewers might have been shaped by gender: Specifically, she observed that Bombshell is a movie about women, but most reviewers are male.

I have complicated feelings about Bombshell. On one hand, yes, there was and is a toxic culture at Fox News. Yes, Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly were victims of that toxic culture. But no, these women were not mere bystanders: They traded in the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia (for starters) that still characterize Fox News today. Why should these wealthy, privileged white women – both of whom spent many years as willing foot soldiers in the Fox News army -- get a glossy, Hollywood-approved redemption/vindication arc? On the other hand, I am glad that the movie makers made a film about sexual harassment, and that the movie presented Kelly, in particular, as an at least somewhat complicated character. This would not be the first time that a movie about women – especially complicated, and not always likeable women – has proven to be polarizing.

My ambivalence about Bombshell notwithstanding, the writer with whom I exchanged tweets is (not surprisingly, since she is in the industry and I am not) on to something when it comes to gender, character development and critical reception. It’s not just that Bombshell was about women, but reviewed largely by men; it’s that stories about female characters (real or fictional) often are filtered through the male gaze in Hollywood: On many projects – even those focused on female characters – creators/ head writers are male, directors are male, showrunners are male, and producers are male. This matters, because preferencing the male gaze impacts what stories about women get told, who gets to tell them, and how these stories are received inside and outside Hollywood.

First, though, the caveats. I do not mean to suggest that men can never tell great stories about women. Of course they can. I also don’t mean to suggest that being female exempts creators, writers, directors, showrunners, etc. from sexism or misogyny (or any other forms of bigotry, as my discussion of Bombshell suggests). There are plenty of women who prop up the patriarchy. Rebecca Traister’s work speaks to this issue, as does the work of Cornell philosopher Kate Manne. There is an important literature on the concept of misogynoir (misogyny directed at black women, involving both gender and race), a term coined by black queer feminist Moya Bailey, as well. Intersectionality matters in understanding what stories are told, who gets to speak, and how stories are received in and outside Hollywood. I also don’t mean to suggest that there are no powerful women in Hollywood. Shonda Rhimes; Ava DuVernay, Reese Witherspoon (increasingly, given her role as a producer of projects like Big Little Lies), Greta Gerwig’s work in Lady Bird and Little Women, and others come to mind. As I am not in the entertainment industry, I am sure others could put together a far more complete and accurate list of female Hollywood power brokers. And, finally, I appreciate that Hollywood is a business, and people fund and make movies that they think their target audiences want to see. So long as young, male viewers are a coveted demographic, we are going to see projects with women who appeal to this demographic onscreen.

Given these caveats, why do I think that the filtering of female characters through the male gaze is an issue? For me, it has to do with a project’s “center of gravity” -- that place, at the core of the project’s storytelling, where the characters’ agency and autonomy comes from. It’s where I look to understand the characters’ choices and their narrative arcs. When a character’s center of gravity is missing or unstable or unreliable, the character’s choices don’t make sense, and their narrative arc lacks emotional logic. Center of gravity is not about whether a character is likeable. It’s about whether a character – and the project’s overall storytelling and narrative voice – make sense.

When female characters are filtered through a male gaze, a project’s center of gravity can shift, even if unintentionally, away from the characters’ agency and point of view: So, instead of charting her own course through a story, a female character starts to become defined by her proximity to other characters and stories. She becomes half of a “ship” . . . or a driver of other characters’ growth (often through victimization, suffering, or self-sacrifice) . . . or mostly an object of sexual desire (whether requited or not). Eventually, she can lose her voice entirely. When that happens, instead of a “living, breathing” (yes, fictional, I know) character, we are left with a mirror/ mouthpiece who advances the plot, and the stories, of everyone else.

What are some recent examples of this? The two that I have mentioned recently here are Shadowhunters and Veronica Mars S4.

- With SHTV, I will always wonder what might have been if the show – which is based on books written by a woman, intentionally as a “girl power” story – had female showrunners. Would an empowered female showrunner have left Clary, THE PROTAGONIST OF A 6 BOOK SERIES – alone on an NYC street in a skimpy party dress, in November, with no money, no ID, no mother, no father figure and no love of her life, stripped of her memories, her magic, and chosen vocation, as punishment, after she saved the world? Would a female showrunner have sidelined Clary’s love Jace, and left him grieving and suicidal, while his family lived their best lives and told him to move on? Would a female showrunner have said, in press coverage of the series finale, that the future of the Clary and Jace characters was a matter for fan fiction? After spending precious time in the series finale wrapping up narrative arcs for non-canon and/or ancillary characters. And to my twitter correspondent’s point, I guess I am not surprised that mainstream entertainment media outlets didn’t call out the showrunners’ mistreatment of Clary, and by extension, Jace, and the obliteration of their narrative arcs -- and yes, I am looking at you, Andy Swift of TV line (who called the above-mentioned memory wipe “actually perfect”).

- Likewise, with Veronica Mars, would a more diverse and inclusive writers room have made S4 Veronica less insightful and less competent than her high school self, or quite so riven with self-loathing, or quite so careless and cruel with the people in her life who love her? Would a more inclusive creative team have made S4 Veronica less aware of the class and race dynamics of Neptune, yet more casually racist, in her mid-30s, than she was in high school?

- There are so many other examples from 2019. Clint Eastwood falsely suggesting that a female reporter (who is now deceased and thus unable to defend herself) traded sex for tips from an FBI agent in Richard Jewell. Game of Thrones treatment/resolution of the Ceresi and Daenerys characters – where to even start. Martin Scorsese’s decision to give Oscar winner Anna Paquin’s character a total of 7 lines in the 3-plus hour movie the Irishman.

- And, in real life, I wonder whether a Hollywood that empowered and supported female creators would make sure that people like Mira Sorvino and Annabella Sciorra got a bunch of work while also making sure that Harvey Weinstein never again is in a position of power or influence. Same with female comics targeted by Louis C.K. Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose … the list is long, and Kate Manne’s work on what she calls “himpathy” is useful here.

To be clear, I am not saying that stories involving “ships” of whatever flavor, stories of suffering and self-sacrifice, and stories of finding (or losing) intimate relationships are “bad” or “wrong” or inherently exploitive of female characters. I don’t think that at all. I also don’t think that female characters have to be perfectly well-adjusted, virtuous, or free from bias, or that they should never be make bad choices or mistakes. I want female characters who are flawed, nuanced. I don’t mind lives that are messy, or romantic entanglements that are complicated. Finally, I don’t think that that faulty, reductive, or unfair portrayals of female characters is a new thing. Mary Magdalene was almost certainly not a prostitute, after all. And classicist Emily Wilson – the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English – has brought a hugely important perspective (including an awareness of how gender matters in translation) and voice to the translation and study of canonical characters and works.

At the end of the day, I just want female characters to be able to speak with their own voices, from their perspectives. I want them to have their own, chosen, narrative arcs. I want them to speak, act, see, and feel as autonomous individuals, with agency, and not just in reference to others. And, I think that more a more diverse and inclusive approach to staffing writers rooms and in choosing show runners, directors, and key positions in storytelling would help.

#shtv #veronica mars #clary fairchild #clary #jace #clace

57 notes · View notes

lesslymelissa · 4 years

Text

New Castlevania season surpassed the worst expectations and turned out to be so horrible, badly written and useless, that it makes you wonder how they even released this shit. First of all, it was a meaningless filler in a length of the whole season. The main plotline which they started since the first season didn’t move an inch. Then again, there was nothing to continue since Dracula has been killed. They could have adapted other Castlevania games about Alucard or Hector instead, but they chose to create a series original plot with Carmilla. And that was terrible decision, because without the game story Netflix writers could suggest only fanfiction tier development, and I mean fanfiction of the worst kind. There are absolutely nonsensical and disgusting pairings out of nowhere, that were made only for the sake of smut. They were tormenting characters, because that’s what many sadistic bitches like. And there was literally zero progression of the actual plot, since the writers obviously can’t make up anything interesting or original themselves. That was an awful pandering to brainless fangirls who only like smut fanfiction and don’t give a shit about personalities of characters or story. It’s very noticeable that the main screen-writer made comics before. He filled this season with typical and retarded cliches that teenagers consider to be ‘cool’, but they are pure cringe in reality. Needless nudity with random filler characters, accentuation on gore and constant dirty (and modern) cursing even from supposed to be nobles. All these things are just edgy banalities which can impress only kids and retarded adults who think that violence and sex make story ‘deep’ and serious. But they don’t. It’s a cheap way to catch attention for the lowest common denominator.

The most prominent example of useless filler shit was Isaac's storyline. Isaac is a token character for sjw to begin with. He is black and muslie (thanks for the reason to dislike this shitty character even more). It was absolutely needless information about his religion which they added only in the adaptation, because it’s trendy among sjw to defend muslies. Obviously there was nothing of sorts in the game and it added nothing to the plot. Like a token black character he was saved from everything first by Dracula himself, and in this season he turned into disgusting mary sue. He is absolutely evil - he literally wanted the destruction of all mankind and is a practicing satanist. How does it combine with him being a muslie and isn’t it offensive in itself I wonder? It seems the authors are braindead. A black muslie satanist, who is also presented as some kind of hero despite killing almost every passerby whom he doesn’t like. Is it a parody or something? But they were totally serious with this shit. Why the fuck does Isaac get away from everything even though he is turning people into hell monsters left and right only because they are ‘rude’ to him. He was acting like a touchy hysterical bitch. This scumbag already deserved to be killed, instead they are implying he could become some sort of a new messiah. What a load of bullshit. He had absolutely meaningless plotline with several long talks about nothing and fighting some random magician in the last moment only to get to a new magic mirror. Isaac is the most cringeworthy and disgusting character that an sjw screenwriter could possibly come up with. All about him is idiotic and pointless. It seems dumb writers went crazy from their Isaac wankfest.

Other characters didn’t get any important development too. Belmont and Sypha spent the whole season in random village which also added nothing to their story or the main plot, which is supposed to be a confrontation against Carmilla now. They just killed another completely generic hell monster in the end which was hiding in the church and that’s it. They were literally walking in circles around that church for several episodes doing nothing more. Very impressive progression and writing /sarcasm. That monster was only one of Dracula’s remaining servants, just realize how much the whole scale of the story degraded when the writers didn’t have game plot to rely on anymore. Reminds me of the Game of Thrones horrible ending after the writers run out of the books material. Belmont was completely overshadowed by Sypha, who became a pushy ooc mary sue in this season. Ridiculous considering that he is actually the main character.

But what I think was the most disgusting and nauseating are those horrible pairings the writers created for their revolting smut scenes. Of course all of it is completely made up filler, nothing like this was in the games. It was quite literally a writing on the level of horny teenage fangirls. The writers seem to think that if they are sadistic pieces of shit who like to torture characters that means everyone would enjoy it too. But most viewers are not sadists and always want a good resolve for their favorite characters. So, instead of giving Hector some kind of salvation and rescuing him from the captivity, which everyone wanted after the last season, those scum of a writers continued to make him suffer. They even turned it into some fetish it seems, alluding on making him ‘pet’ of new slut Lenore. That’s some shit straight out of garbage ‘kinky’ fanfiction. I can’t believe they actually showed this trash on screen. Hector is a main character of his own Castlevania game by the way. But here they constantly humiliate him and made him into a slave again, also forcing him into absolutely meaningless dirty pairing made only to show nudity. I don’t know who could like this shit except for brainless wankers and bitches who don’t care about characters themselves.

Another terrible bed scene involved Alucard with a pair of Japanese literally who characters. Again, random filler nobodies created only for a dirty scene with one of the main characters - that’s a textual definition of smut fanfiction writing. And they are showing it in a series, how much lower could they get? Needless to say, Alucard didn’t have any reason to suddenly get into bed with two suspicious strangers. All ‘development’ of their relationship consisted of them becoming his students. To which he also agreed unnaturally fast without a second thought. Why would he sleep with his students who he barely even knew? Just because he felt lonely? That motivation may seem alright only to retarded teenage fangirls and the writers on their level of intellect. Besides, Alucard isn’t even a full-fledged adult. He mentioned in the first season that his body matured very fast while he still was a child mentally. So they showed a sex scene with a child in a body of adult. That’s another level of low trash, it isn’t just morally wrong, it’s practically criminal. And why would Alucard even want something like this when he isn’t mature enough? He needed friends, not an orgy with some strangers. Absolutely horrible and revolting what they did with him, it’s also a disgusting OOC and complete lack of consistency and understanding of his personality. And of course it ended in the most stupid and edgy way possible, turning straight from obscenity into some retarded drama. What was their reason again for wanting to kill Alucard? Because he didn’t tell them how to move a castle? Why did they even need to move it? Also even if they wanted to make a trap for him, they could have locked those magical bracelets on his hands when they were lying on a grass together, for example. That disgusting scene was absolutely unnecessary. Filthy whores from Netflix writers team are making people feel disgust towards Japanese people after this nasty season.

Besides repulsive and smutty het pairings the authors also didn’t do any good with the only lesbian pairing they had. They could have left it to the viewers imagination whom they prefer to ship among the vampire girls. But instead they pushed for hypocritical tolerance again and forced their token white/black ship with Striga and Morana. Striga certainly has some lesbian vibes about her. But she could have make up a nice couple with Lenore. It would have influenced the whole plot positively, because then there wouldn’t be any disgusting humiliation for Hector. A pair with a strong warrior girl and a gentle cunning girl would have been very interesting and cute. They could even schemed against Carmilla together, they are smarter than her anyway. But instead we got another aggressive propaganda of tolerance with b/w pairing. Morana wasn’t interesting or nice, her only purpose was be a forced representation of the person of color in the group. Apparently even LGBT pairings can’t be free from this racial agenda.

Smut in this season was so obviously shown intertwined with boring and unimaginative battle to make a ‘cool’ edgy episode with violence and sex. Literally the level of what underage morons would consider impressive and exiting. That’s the most trashy, cheap and tasteless series I’ve seen. The writers deserve a slow and gory death on the stakes.

#castlevania season 3 #castlevania netflix #isaac laforeze

8 notes · View notes

xb-squaredx · 4 years

Text

Pokémon Sword and Shield: A Franchise Turning Point

The Pokémon franchise has been around for over 20 years, and in that time it has proven to be more than a passing fad and has carved out a massive multi-media empire. Outside of some rare spinoffs like the Pokémon Stadium games or the likes of Colosseum or Pokken Tournament, the series has stayed primarily on handheld consoles. For years fans dreamed of what a true, mainline Pokémon game could be like on a home console. During E3 2017 when Game Freak announced that such a title was in development for Switch, people got excited. The resulted games, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee were not quite the main leap people expected, instead being a strange hybrid of Pokémon GO and remakes of Pokémon Yellow. However, the announcement that a true new generation of Pokémon would hit the Switch in 2019 reignited that hype. While at first excitement was high, over time a dark cloud hung over the titles, Pokémon Sword and Shield. Controversies erupted over the announcement that not every little critter would be featured or transferable to the game, and as time went on any new announcement was met with pushback. Everything from visuals to new features was criticized all the way up to launch day. Now that Sword and Shield are in players’ hands, at the end of the day…how did it all turn out?

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

This time around, trainers embark across the Galar region, basically the Pokémon equivalent to the UK. I do like Galar as a setting; it has a ton of character, with probably the most interesting aspect to it that Pokémon battles are treated as a major spectator sport. If you want to join in the Gym Challenge, you need a sponsor, and your Gym battles take place in massive stadiums filled to the brim with roaring fans. It’s an interesting deviation from past games, even if the basic formula is about the same. The characters within Galar also have a fair amount of charm from your main rivals to the Gym Leaders, to the undefeated Champion. A lot of people give Hop, your main rival, a lot of flak, but I found he had a lot of hidden depth to him and he has a satisfying arc as the story goes on. As he loses to you again and again, he doubts himself and subsequent battles have him throwing in random Pokémon and strangely his signature partner, the adorable Wooloo, is absent. Once he gets his act together, however, he forms a pretty balanced team, and Wooloo’s back front-and-center. It was a neat moment of character growth shown off through gameplay. As far as Champions go, Leon has a lot more presence throughout the game than a lot of past Champions. His flair, his awful fashion sense, his inability to follow directions…it all made him a bit more endearing. Most of the Gym Leaders are pretty much just there as stepping stones, but they all are fairly memorable either for designs or flashes of personality. It helps that everyone gives you neato trading cards too!

Galar’s main claim-to-fame is the Wild Area, a huge collection of different biomes located smack in the middle of the map. It has far and away the largest collection of Pokémon within, with different monsters appearing depending on the weather or time of day. It’s a place you’ll be returning to time and time again, and it made a big impact. It’s the only area in the game with a controllable camera, for one, and rather than follow a linear balance curve, the Pokémon you encounter in the Wild Area are often far too strong to handle. You’re even forbidden from catching Pokémon if you lack a certain number of Gym Badges, so the place is full of Pokémon you can only really admire from afar until you’re “worthy” of getting them.

Take the Wild Area away though, and Galar feels pretty small. With only ten Routes in the game, Galar is among the smaller regions. Most Routes are very straightforward, not many branching paths or hidden goodies, and there isn’t any neat new areas opened up after beating the game either. The Wild Area, from a franchise standpoint at least, is pretty impressive, but looking at the game on the whole it feels a little lacking. That’s not to say Sword and Shield don’t bring in new mechanics to mess around with, but whether they make up for what’s been taken away is going to vary with people.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

Since the games went 3D, each region tends to have its own core “gimmick” to differentiate it with older titles. X and Y had Mega Evolution, Sun and Moon had Z-Moves and for Sword and Shield we have Dynamax. Something in the air in Galar can allow Pokémon to grow to colossal size for a short time, granting them extremely powerful Max Moves for its duration. While Dynamaxing seems cool at first, the spectacle kinda wears off after your first few uses of it (not to mention the animation lasts forever), and upon further inspection it’s not as great of an upgrade as you’d think. For one, a Dynamaxed Pokémon only gets a health increase, and all other stats stay the same. Abilities and their elemental types stay the same too, so it’s not a game-changer like Mega Evolution was and it really has more in common with Z-Moves. The Max Moves can be nice, as they’re usually a good deal more powerful when it comes to raw damage, and can come with nice side-effects, but it’s kinda inconsistent. The stronger Fighting-type moves actually become weaker as Max Moves, for one. On top of the base Dynamax ability, some Pokémon can use “Gigantamaxing” instead. This changes their look overall and grants them a unique G-Max Move, though considering how hard they can be to acquire I’m not sure it’s all that satisfying. It doesn’t help that rather than having a certain species of Pokémon capable of Gigantamaxing, it comes down to unique Pokémon themselves that have the trait and it can’t be passed down through breeding either. Overall, Dynamaxing has its uses but I highly doubt it’ll become a staple of the series and will likely be replaced with something else for the Generation 9 games, and I can’t say I’ll miss the mechanic much.

One big addition to the series is Max Raid Battles, found in dens littered all over the Wild Area. Teaming up with up to three other players, locally or online (or team up with awful CPUs if alone), your goal is to take out a permanently Dynamaxed Pokémon. You get a limited amount of turns and if you suffer more than four knockouts, the Raid will end in failure. Victory, however, enables you to get rare and powerful Pokémon, some even coming with really great stats and difficult-to-obtain Abilities, and it’s practically the only way to get Gigantamax Pokémon. The difficulty of the Raids increases as you progress through the game, however, and the Five Star Raids can be brutal. The rewards are great though, getting a lot of extra loot. Bonus moves to teach Pokémon, EXP candies that eliminate a lot of grinding, and more, even if the capture attempt fails. The one real issue with Raids is that some Pokémon can be pretty stingy with appearing in Raids, and you’ll have to use somewhat rare items, Wishing Pieces, to kick some Raids off. There are also the occasional connection issues, but I have more to say on that later.

Outside of these new features, there are the standard quality-of-life changes that each game has, though some can be harder to notice and appreciate than others. You can send Pokémon in storage out on Jobs, to get some neat rewards and some EXP for them, though I find them to be a bit underwhelming. Being able to swap Pokémon on the fly now is a godsend, and together with the EXP Share built into the game, it allowed me the freedom to switch up the monsters in my party and get newcomers up to speed quickly. Most games I barely bother with more than the maximum six, but the sheer variety of Pokémon in Galar let me feel more comfortable with constantly swapping around. On that same note, no National Dex aside, there’s a LOT of choices in Galar. Route 1 alone has over ten Pokémon you can catch right at the start, as opposed to the common mammal, common bug and common bird. It was nice to see some under-represented Pokémon make the cut, but I won’t argue with anyone bummed that their favorites aren’t allowed in. It is a regrettable decision overall, even if it might have been unavoidable here.

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t mention the story much at all because…there isn’t much of one. Pokémon as a franchise isn’t known for its storytelling, despite the Black and White and Sun and Moon games existing and having very well-done stories. Overall, Sword and Shield seems to focus more on characters than an overarching plot and that isn’t too bad overall, but it makes the eventual climax more than a little disappointing. Team Yell, our villainous organization this time around, are just a bunch of hardcore fans for another rival of yours, a girl named Marnie. The conclusion to their story felt very flat, and the eventual main problem involving the Legendary Pokémon is tacked onto the end of the game with little build-up. It doesn’t help that the main villain’s motivation doesn’t make sense. He wants to avert an energy crisis that’s 1000 years from actually happening, and for some reason he refuses to let you get your shot at fighting the Champion because apparently putting things off for one day is unacceptable. It’s just very sloppy. And honestly, “sloppy” can describe a lot of this game, sadly.

WHY Y-COMM WHY

No game is without flaws, and Sword and Shield are far from the first Pokémon games to have their fair share of issues, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these games in particular are a victim of compromise. Game Freak doesn’t have the luxury of delaying games and polishing them up to a fine sheen, not when the multimedia empire has merch and anime to launch at the same time. I’m also certain that working on this game alongside the Let’s Go games AND Little Town Hero did them no favors. So there are areas in the game that lack polish. The story’s abrupt conclusion, the visuals in general, and Galar itself feeling a tad empty; these are all compromises that had to be made to get this game to ship on the date decided well in advance. I can sympathize with the developers here, and really they’re in an un-enviable position. But at the same time, I’ve been playing Pokémon games for over twenty years, and I kind of expect better, you know? Far too many times I have to shake my head and question why something is designed the way it is, or why it feels at times like the games are going backwards in quality. Problems that were solved several games ago rear their ugly heads again, and for this being a brand new generation and the “proper” debut on a powerful home console, I can’t help but feel that this is just a 3DS game that’s been blown up onto my TV.

NPC character models and the Pokémon themselves look fine, as does the sleek UI, but environments look kinda rough. The Wild Area itself, I say with no exaggeration, looks like it was ripped out of a GameCube game. Those trees are a meme, but at the same time, they also look that bad. Some of the main towns are pretty grandiose, be it the giant castle theme of Hammerlocke, or the steampunk designs of Motostoke, while others feel incredibly barren. It’s kind of intentional with Spikemuth, but I was more than a little disappointed with how small towns feel. While it’s great that HMs have been officially retired (starting from Sun and Moon), Galar itself feels like it has little to offer those that want to explore. You don’t get access to a way to cross water until near the endgame, but there are only a small handful of areas you’d need to backtrack to with that ability. There’s not even a Victory Road in this game, or a rough equivalent.

Sword and Shield, from a competitive standpoint, seems to be trying to make strides in breaking down barriers and allowing more casual fans to dip their toes into competitive play, which I really appreciate, but I think there’s still room for improvement. While on the one hand, it’s never been easier to tweak and customize your Pokémon to your heart’s desire, the game is still not as transparent on certain subjects. You can view a Pokémon’s Effort Values, extra points you can place towards stats, on their stat screen, but only if you hit the X button on that screen, and there’s no indication that’s a thing you can even do. I was more than fifty hours into the game before a friend even told me that! There have been some pretty major strides to reduce the time commitment however, so I have to give the game credit there. As far as game balance goes, having less Pokémon to choose from does inspire creativity, though from what I hear, a fair few Pokémon are a bit of a problem, but that’s no different than any other game. Honestly, even attempting to balance a game with so many moving parts and possible strategies is pretty admirable. I’m not deep into the meta of competitive Pokémon though, so I feel there’s not much I can add to the conversation. If there’s one thing I can’t defend however, it’s this game’s connectivity features.

Starting from the DS era, Pokémon has had online features, but Sword and Shield marks the first time that the Global Trade Station, or GTS, has not been available. This means it’s impossible to put up a posting for a desired Pokémon, or fulfill other’s requests. This wouldn’t be so bad if the way to trade with friends wasn’t such a chore. Rather than being able to freely select a friend and initiate a trade or battle with them, players must enter four-digit codes and HOPE the game pairs them up. This is in every way a downgrade from the past several games. X and Y released over SIX years ago and solved this very issue with the Player Search System. Y-Comm, as it stands, is an awful replacement and there’s not one thing about it that other systems didn’t do better.

If you connect online, the game will have “stamps” appear that show you what friends are doing, alongside broadcasting trade or battle requests from random people, but often those requests are out of date, and trying to join in will result in error messages, the requests fulfilled long ago. Trying to join friends in Raid Battles is an exercise in trial and error, and if online in the Wild Area, other players constantly appear within it and as a result the game begins to chug along. What could have been a neat way to interact with other players across the world results in the game becoming worse to play, so I mostly left it off. Connecting with others has always been a franchise selling point, way back to the days of the Game Boy Link Cables. To see this game drop the ball so severely is worrying. I care about this far more than the graphical issues, far more than the National Dex, and it makes me hesitant to try out the next titles if they can’t solve these issues and KEEP them solved.

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Pokémon Sword and Shield are not bad games; they’re in fact filled with charm and fun. I’ve logged over 80 hours into the game over the past few weeks and the hours flew by. There’s a lot of work that’s clearly been put into the game. The Pokémon designs and concepts this time around are really creative, for one. There’s the Applin line, dragons that hide in apples, and the abominations that are this game’s fossils; carelessly stitched together pieces of incompatible fossils resulting in a freak of nature. I love them. My heart goes out to Game Freak, because it’s clear people worked hard here, but this simply can’t be the game they wanted to make. I think Sword and Shield are turning points for the series, but it’s unclear if that’s a good thing or not.

For all the backlash and negativity surrounding these games, they’re still the fastest-selling Switch games ever. Many fans are pretty satisfied with the game as-is, and the real bitter pill disgruntled fans need to swallow is that…these games have no real reason to improve in quality. Think about it; sales aren’t down, and there’s not a true rival to these games anymore, so why would the hire-ups at Nintendo and The Pokémon Company give these games more time and resources? On top of this, remember that these games are only one part of the massive whole that is the Pokémon brand. Pokémon GO makes a frankly disgusting amount of money, the anime has been going strong for two decades, merch is in no short supply, and now we can likely add major Hollywood films to the list as well. If Game Freak was any other developer, behind any other franchise, they’d likely be able to delay the games to polish them up and add in content that would otherwise be cut, but they can’t do that when they MUST launch simultaneously with the anime, the card games, the merchandise, etc.

The series has been around for so long now as well, while many fans have likely moved on from the franchise, new ones are lining up to take their place. On top of that, there are Pokémon diehards that will likely always support the series. Pokémon is a constant for them; it’s almost like comfort food in game form. They’re not WRONG for feeling that way, and I’m kinda in that same boat. I knew going in that these games were going to be somewhat disappointing, but I still bought the thing! For all the rage directed at these games, many people still gave them their money, and I think the message has been read loud and clear: Pokémon can get away with cutting Pokémon, so it’s unlikely Game Freak will change course any time soon.

Now, of course, that’s one way to look at things. A negative way to be sure. It’s also possible that Game Freak can learn from issues they had with developing these games and push past them. As they get used to console development, to HD development, and get a better idea of what fans want, the next games might actually surpass all expectations. Pokémon as a franchise has always had feature creep to deal with, and Sword and Shield is clearly where it all boiled over. So maybe if they don’t have to worry about accommodating nearly 1000 critters in every single game, they can make larger strives towards higher quality. I don’t want to count them out, but at the same time, I won’t hold my breath either. I’ll always be open to what path this franchise takes, even if they stumble a bit to get there.

In the end, Sword and Shield feel more than a little rough, but there’s some real bright spots glimmering in what might be the franchise’s Darkest Day. The Pokémon themselves are still fun to use and capture, the characters and world of the games are still wholesome fun, and I’ll reiterate that pumping over 80 hours into this game didn’t feel like a chore and I was largely engaged for the entirety of that time. Here’s to hoping that brighter days lie ahead, and a few years from now we can look back at the Dexit controversy and laugh.

-B

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #zacian #zamazenta #applin #scorbunny #sobble #sobblesquad #grookey #nintendo switch #blog #review #xb-squaredx

18 notes · View notes

starfaring-princelotor · 5 years

Note

Ranting anon. I have a lot. I’ll try and split this into pieces. I wouldn’t say that Lotor was my absolute favorite character, but he was an enjoyable and interesting one. He was a more refined antagonist (not necessarily a villain) who had every capacity of being a great ally and friend. I won’t lie, I liked the idea of Allura and Lotor together, (1/?)

As a parallel to Zarkon and Honerva by being a Galra/Altean power couple that fought for good instead of evil. Lotor is clever and diplomatic and poised, so I honestly thought that he could help Allura cool down her impulsive nature and rash temper and help her become a good leader through example. (2/?)

But in the end, all we got was Lotor giving her an ego boost that in the end didn’t even matter because she dropped him like a hot potato in what feels like a forced “girl power!!” Moment. And I feel like that’s a big problem with how Allura’s character was handled. (3/?)

She’s meant to be this wise, kind, but fierce leader lady, but unlike say, Zelda (another warrior princess,) she doesn’t display the patience or level-headedness that Zelda does, despite people making numerous comparisons between the two. The argument that she’s inexperienced falls through halfway through the series at the very least. Allura never takes any steps to curb her temper or his pushy nature. (4/?)

And somehow no one calls her out on it! A big red flag for me was her reaction when Keith was revealed to be half galra and she just…turned fucking mean for no reason. And while Keith felt guilty for something he shouldn’t have felt guilty for, everyone else was…taking her side? (6/?)

And basically the matter is resolved by him mostly apologizing and her kind of mumbling a half-assed sorry. She was literally being racist to someone she called a friend right until she found out about his heritage. Despite him having done absolutely nothing to her. And no one called her out on it. That pissed me off. It feels like the paladins personalities suffered in order to make Allura look good. Like their moralities and personalities got tossed out the window to revolve around her. (8/8)

A forewarning to Lotura shippers, I never liked the ship in the first place, so if you are looking for validation about Lotura or even Allura herself, this rant is not for you. Allow me to pitch in my own two cents about myself, Allura, the Paladins, and the comparison referring to Zelda.

Anon, let me just say this first, I adore reading the asks you sent because all of it was basically the biggest problem I had with Allura the second she was revealed in Voltron. And the main reason for that? Was how she introduced herself by being a glaringly-obvious Princess-brat trope that does not think before she decides to speak. This was her first rash and impulsive act as a “royal” Princess.

This is why I have a hard time believing those who say Allura’s racism towards the Galra is valid because, I do not know about you, but being cryogenically frozen during the heat of war then waking up and thinking the main important thing to do is call someone’s ears hideous? What happened to “the war is still fresh in her mind”? And no, suddenly opening up a journal to remember “Oh, yeah, the war! Zarkon evil! I should be angry!” does not fly with me.

I am not saying her trauma is not real, only her reaction to it is slightly misplaced.

In any case, let us move on to the comparison of Allura and I being similar to Honerva and Zarkon. Oddly enough, I did not see this clicking at all in the show. Mostly because, in terms of what happened between them story-wise, Allura and I are more like Alfor and Zarkon. And this is just based off their relationship. Maybe I am a man who strives more for platonic relationships in shows aimed towards children, but I really did not feel the romance at all in Lotura.

Not even with the sickening way she suddenly started pining after me at the realization that I am half-Altean.

And this is the big point in the show. Zarkon and Honerva loved each other not because of their race, but because they just do. Alfor and Zarkon? They both use their power as royals to achieve a greater good. Except, in the case of Allura, she chose to commit unspeakable acts of betrayal based on feelings. Sounds oddly familiar to Alfor, no? Sacrificing all of Altea to ensure she lives? Because he is such a good father, pure of heart who must protect his daughter at the expense of not one, but two entire planets.

He loves her so much, he sacrificed his own people for her. That is why Allura is more like her father in that aspect. Both rulers let their feelings control their actions. Throughout the entire 8 seasons of Voltron, Allura has constantly gone either completely irrational or completely poised for the public, never in between. She does her self-sacrificing bit way too many times and, when she coincidentally lives afterwards, she puts herself on a pedestal as if she was right in her self-indulgent martyr actions.

Which she most certainly is not, because it is common knowledge that if you want to help people, you should be actively staying alive to do so. It is as though once she believed all “her” people died, she has no real purpose to stay around after her grand plan of eradicating all the “evil” Galra from space gets completed. I am sorry to say, or perhaps not, but she really does remind me of a terrible Mary Sue who can do no wrong. Alive or dead.

And this shit? Gets brushed aside or ignored by a majority of the Paladins. I will go ahead and blame it that most of them are all very, very young and lack the experience to speak out against those in charge. In fact, the only two who spoke against her in any sense were Shiro and Keith, even Pidge for family reasons. Shiro when he wanted to support putting myself on the throne and Keith? Well, that is a bit more complicated.

Anyone remember the scene where Keith kept telling Allura that he does not want to hear a lecture from her, and she does it anyways because she is just looking out for Voltron and emotionally guilting him is the best way to go about it? No? Oh, right, maybe it was because she acted like a mother admonishing him for “shirking” his responsibilities. I do not even need to go on about how much I heavily dislike one of the two female members mothering her teammates.

You know what would have been a great development here? If she supported him instead of “disciplining” him as if he stayed out past midnight. Maybe not even support him! Just be like “Okay, I know this is important for you, so tell us what we need to do to help you. We’re a team and as a team we will help you however we can.”

In this sense, Shiro was trusting Keith and doing the right thing by giving him the space he needed to find himself. Allura, on the other hand, was pushy and ultimately did not care at all for him as a person, but him as a useful Paladin tool. If he was so revered as the Black Paladin, then should she not be, I do not know, following his orders by the T? Or is her role as a royal, Altean Princess whose spirit is connected to Voltron more important?

And even before all this, she believes her and Keith are supposedly buddies now since she gave a half-assed apology for being a racist cunt to him. No one, I guarantee you, no one forgets racist comments, regardless of repaired friendships. Especially when her cold-shoulder and outright blatant ignorance is being seen as “Oh, it’s okay for her to feel like this! What do we know, we’re just humans from Earth who have apparently never read a history book.”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty details about why comparing Zelda and Allura are the same people, let me just say this concerning Allura’s hot-headed temper and unchecked racism involving a relationship with myself. That shit does not work and Allura should have taken the time to sort herself out before mixing in a “loving” relationship with an Altean and Galran man. I am all for equal support in a couple, but she did nothing to support myself as a person because she never saw both sides of my heritage.

Allura only saw Altean blood and hyperfixated on that alone. Which, do I even need to spell out how terrible it is to judge someone based on their appearance? Based on their race? Whether in a good or bad light, she once again goes from “I will not have some quiznaking Galra on my ship” to “Your mother was Honerva? You’re Altean!” mode. It is fine to be prideful, but she should have already known the dangers of being too prideful of one’s race.

Considering she is a royal, considering she was raised with political knowledge, considering her father and the Emperor of the Galra Empire worked together, Allura should have been aware of her Achilles Heel and understand her responsibilities.

Okay, now, Allura being like Zelda?

Alright, I only played a handful of LoZ games, but even I know that Allura is absolutely nothing like Zelda, even with both of them having the Princess title.

We already established that Allura is way too rash and irrational when under any duress. Even when shit is not going down, her way of thinking is very straight forward and linear, disregarding the bigger picture as a whole for her own closeted judgements. Allura has even ignored her royal advisor’s advice too many times to count, excusing her reasoning as “It’s the only way, Coran. I must do this.”

Zelda? Zelda does not, at all, follow Allura’s way of thinking. In fact, OoT has a similar plot to Allura and myself. Link skips 7 years of his life, wakes up to Hyrule being controlled by Ganondorf, and the Princess is MIA. Though, if any of you have played the game, then you know that the Princess was actively trying to save the kingdom. Not just Hylians, but Zoras and Gorons as well.

And the way she accomplished this was by disguising herself as Sheik. Not because she was a coward, but because she knew the importance that came with being a Princess, the next heir to rule, and the one who has the Triforce of Wisdom under her control. Key word here: WISDOM. Something Allura did not display at all in the show.

If we are comparing Zelda to any character, she is more like the exiled Prince than Allura herself. Both Zelda and myself have the wisdom and first-hand experience of suffering under active war. Both actively saved, or tried to save, those they came across. And both understood the political discourse that hurt everyone, not just one specific race. Everyone.

But if that is the case, then Link would be similar to Allura in the sense that they both woke up to disaster. The big difference between Link and Allura? Link would not have killed Sheik once he revealed himself to be Zelda. Not even because Sheik was being deceiving. Link would understand why Zelda had to hide for her own safety, because she was vital to the plan to restore balance to Hyrule.

Even if Link was miffed about Zelda not being truthful? He knows that, under no circumstances, can they chance the risk to kill her over his own personal feelings.

“But that doesn’t mean Zelda never curbed her temper!”

In Twilight Princess, when the kingdom was already starting to fall under evil clutches, Zelda teams up with Midna, an exiled Princess of the Twilight world. I can not imagine how helpless Zelda felt in the face of Zant overthrowing the kingdom, but did she go off and leave the citizens to suffer for all of eternity? No. She accepted aid from those who were willing, even the Princess of the other world.

And, on top of that, Zelda understood that Midna’s world and her own were like two sides of a coin. They must coexist with each other to achieve peace. In fact, I vaguely remember Zelda sacrificing herself to help Midna. Imagine that. Using your powers to help the “enemy” for the greater good. Tell me when Allura helped the Galra out of her own free will? Her own understanding that the Galra need her help just like every other race in the universe?

No, the BoM does not count. Not with her attitude shining through after her “Zarkon is in power because you guys are cowards!” spiel. Not when she begrudgingly helped save Warlord Lahn while simultaneously profiling him out of spite with “Did you buy those weapons or steal them?” And no, not when she built Sincline with myself with the intention to harvest unlimited quintessence then immediately turn around and aid in murdering me, the Emperor of the Galra Empire, over a weak accusation.

Overall, Allura really is the type of person to barge into other people’s problems, claim “I am here to help you all!”, then throw a hissy fit when people ask for specific aid rather than follow her “My way or the highway” attitude. Terrible writing or not, she was always like this since the very beginning. It is kind of like…she had many chances to improve, but she just made her own situation worse and refused to stop to reflect upon herself.

54 notes · View notes