feotakahari

I dislike a lot of the writing decisions in Octopath Traveler 2, but my least favorite is this whole thing about how beastlings were born without the capacity for evil. The conflict between the sinless beastlings and the sinful humans reminds me of the worst sort of Christian fiction.

I have concluded that there’s no innate human soul that you’re missing because you’re annoying. You’re not “failing at being human” because you make AI art or write Harry Potter fanfic or whatever the fuck.

As best I can guess, this fic author looked at Raine, and instead of going “this character isn’t a representative of ‘male’ or ‘female’ genders,” they went “this character is representative of a singular, distinctive ‘nonbinary’ gender.” So while a more bigoted author would divide all their characters into men and women, this author finds enlightened PC-ness in dividing all their characters into men, women, and people who present their gender the way Raine does. Maybe next we can try to get this author to understand the concept of “bigender.”

Article blurb says there’s a new “viral movement” where you don’t use makeup. I refuse to dignify this with a click.

You’ve established that [Character]’s fat and that makes her unattractive, and established again that she’s fat and that makes her unattractive, and by the way, she’s fat and that makes her unattractive. It reminds me of the way Harry Potter fics talk about fat people (who are unattractive, just in case you forgot.)

No matter what this word search game says, I refuse to accept that “cortège” counts as an English word. That’s fucking French. French, I say!

Time Magazine says people who want to live forever are neglecting their immortal souls. I say everyone involved in writing and publishing that article neglected their mortal brain.

I don't like how the fallen Chimeras still have recognizable personalities. It's like there's a switch in everyone's brain that says "kill everything that isn't an omnicidal wraith from beyond the veil," and you can flip that switch on without changing anything else about they talk and think. I think changing your motivations that much that quickly would leave you hollow and barely functional

--

It always interests me when a game has challenges it doesn't have achievements for. Soulstice asks you to get one Diamond rank on one level at a slightly high difficulty, then never asks for anything above Platinum again. It doesn't ask for any ranks on the highest difficulty--you get the achievement if you're capable of beating it at all. The Diamond ranks are still there, but pursuing them won't prove anything to anyone except yourself.

--

The Fiery Zealots are these cannon-tonfa thingies that look like what Death the Kid would use if he was a character in RWBY. So how are they the worst alt-weapon in the game? Shooting and bludgeoning with them hits different enemy weaknesses, and if you bludgeon, you shoot once or twice as part of combos. The enemies that are weakest to their bludgeoning attacks are resistant to their shots, so you have unremovable weak attacks as part of every ground combo. To shoot consistently, you need to do air attacks, but firing in the air knocks you and the enemy in opposite directions, so your combo finishers never freaking land. This is the problem with mapping all your alt-weapon attacks to a single button--I just want to consistently bludgeon or consistently shoot.

Thinking some more about why Magia Record frustrates me.

The original Madoka Magica feels disconnected from time and space. Anything could be happening in the larger non-magical world, but the characters can’t afford to worry about that, because they need to keep surviving all the dangers of the magical girl life. (One show heavily inspired by MM had a reveal that there was no outside world anymore—the area the heroes defended contained all surviving life on Earth.)

Magia Record doubles down on that by presenting everyone who isn’t a magical girl as a nameless, faceless outline. Magical girls protect and save them, but are fundamentally disconnected from them. But at the same time, it has to differentiate all these different girls, and it does so in the different ways they interact with the world. So for instance, one magical girl is a devoted member of what I think is supposed to be a Yakuza group, but she can’t have detailed interactions with the other group members because they’re not magical girls. There are all these points where there should be connections but aren’t.

Been a while since I've seen a straightforward jar of Tang story. Can't say I missed them.