talking about cross-media storytelling, I'm now wondering if you watched any of the other star wars shows! (since you seem to know who ashoka is and she's appeared in a bunch of them.... haha)
Short answer no.
Longer answer is that I've of course seen the original Star Wars movies, and the prequels (I didn't hate them, I just resented the fact they encouraged changes to the originals), and I saw the first of the sequels. That is the extent of my first-hand Star Wars knowledge.
However, in university I had friends who read the books, and one who obsessed over every media she could find (her birthday's 4 May, so I think she felt obligated 😅). One of my internet friends is big into Andor, and told me about the sequels. So I know the basics of most of it.
I think Ashoka's story is a powerful one, but it's all too wrapped up in the broad canon, so it's not for me.
The only Jedi I'm actually invested in is Obi-Wan, and I still haven't watched Kenobi, either. Pretty sure that's my next watch...
I am a sucker for stories where people come together to fight for the things that matter to them. So while the first half of the season didn't get to me, the last four episodes just shot through me with everything they had.
So, basic storyline: Reunited again, Din Djarin and Grogu are on a mission to redeem Djarin after he took off his helmet in season two. In doing so, he also guides Lady Bo-Katan to her own 'redemption', and inspires her to unite the tribes and retake the assumed-destroyed world of Mandalore. Along the way, Moff Gideon also returns, combining the Mandalorian Beskar armour with jedi powers (remember, technically it's biology, not magic) and cloning technology to create super soldiers in his own image to restore the Empire.
Mostly, the season is about the restoration of the Mandalorians as a united force, drumming in the message it's been playing with the whole series and the book of boba fett about people being stronger together.
Bo-Katan doesn't quite pull off the message drop when she says it, but I appreciate the intent.
I have read that apparently the season isn't considered the best, and I get that. The first half was just okay, as it put Djarin through his many humiliations to remind us Bo-Katan is worthy of her throne and the sword he accidentally claimed, set up the plot and stakes of everything. There was an entire episode devoted to world building for the New Republic, which--if I gave a damn about the broader canon--I would have been right into except that I do not care about the broader canon and so it mostly was an hour spent reminding me a slimy character exists and continues to be slimy.
But then Din Djarin and Grogu were allowed to return to the covert and the Mandalorians began their rise and I was absolutely locked in.
I don't really care too much about Bo-Katan, but I appreciate the theme of a lady and her knight, and I am a big fan of seeing someone remember their values and fight for them. To see the Children of the Watch come together to rescue a foundling, reminding Bo-Katan of who the Mandalorians are and can be, and then her gathering the tribes, and even Djarin's pledge of fealty... and Pax's sacrifice, fighting to the end so everyone else can escape...
This is the Way, indeed.
I also really liked how the series showcased each of the main characters' talents. Djarin is an ace pilot, solid warrior, and skilled diplomat (when he wants to be), which makes him the perfect bounty hunter and forward guard for the Mandalorians. Bo-Katan is a leader and strategist, but struggles on her own because she was destined to be alongside others. Grogu is still young, but he is going to be a strong barrier warrior, able to protect and guide those he fights alongside. I won't be surprised if he grows up to learn from the Armourers one day.
And the Armourer remains the absolute best I still adore her every moment on screen.
And the ending! The adventure continues, but now we have a place to rest and be with our tribe between tasks. The samurai-cowboy can sit on his porch and watch his son grow.
It was good. It was a good show. I liked it, and I cannot wait to see the next adventure.
Or, more accurately, the Book of Boba Fett and then two episodes of the Mandalorian and then a crossover episode.
You know, when people told me you didn't need to watch all of Boba Fett to keep up with The Mandalorian, I didn't realise they were being serious.
So let me be clear: if you are just in it for The Mandalorian, do not watch the first four episodes of The Book of Boba Fett.
Jeebus kriminy.
To give it its respect, the Book of Boba Fett is the (Star Wars) story of Boba Fett, who has given up mercenary work to take over his old boss' criminal territory. The real power behind the throne His right hand is the inimitable Fennec Shand, former assassin turned enforcer. Together, they become a new force to protect Tatooine.
It draws very heavily on Japanese yakuza myth. Boba Fett is literally referred to as the daimyo. They talk about families, and they run on syndicate politics. However, it's not quite mythological, and it's certainly not like the real yakuza. It's still playing with the western samurai tropes of the Mandalorian.
Again. To give it its due: it is well crafted. The muppets are back, the various crime lords look great. I still love Fennec Shand.
She should have been the main character/mob boss my god.
There was a good theme that it was trying to do, which is 'you won't last long without a tribe'. And it had some nice ideas drawn from yakuza myth tales about a crime lord gaining his power through taking in the unappreciated and petty criminals to make a loyal family. And that does tie in nicely to The Mandalorian's theme of strength through connection, so I wanted to like what they were doing.
But.
Ugh.
Okay. So consider my notes to self as I was watching:
what is this white saviour Tom Cruise bullshit and from a Maori actor what the heckins
didnt this guy work for the empire for most of his life how is he so bad at handling mini bosses
Boba Fett is not intimidating enough for this
Fennec please just tell him to sit down while you fix this
Boba Fett is captured by the Tuskens, and earns their respect by saving a kid from a monster, then proceeds to master their way of fighting, and then saves them from their greatest enemy by teaching them his superior skills.
Uh huh.
But they teach him of honour and family and jesus christ I hate this trope. They send him on a literal vision quest and then he leaves to fulfil his destiny or whatever.
He then saves the dying Fennec Shand, as seen in The Mandalorian, and announces he's going to be A New Kind Of Boss Who Does Things Right and Fennec's like, yeah, sure, why not and becomes the hyper competent sidekick as he fumbles his way into a war with other crime bosses who don't respect him.
That's episodes one through four.
Episode five is Din Djarin limping along without Grogu and trying to use the dark sabre despite not wanting it or what it represents. The dark sabre finds this displeasing and so makes his life difficult. The Armourer says his spear (ie, HIS GOOD WEAPON THAT HE FIGHTS WELL WITH AND SUITS HIS CHARACTER) is a danger to all Madalorians and melts it down, but she recrafts it into chain mail for Grogu so we'll forgive that. She also finds out about him taking off his armour and banishes him until he can atone.
Episode six is Luke Skywalker training Grogu to be Yoda 2.0 and realising that's maybe not a great idea. It does not draw attention to Luke's own attachment issues while pointing out Grogu's. Din Djarin tries to give Grogu the shirt but is stopped from seeing him by Ahsoka, who gives him a guilt trip while being all jedi-wise or whatever. To avoid tempting Grogu with his dad's presence, Ahsoka gives Luke the shirt, and he gives Grogu a choice: become Yoda 2.0 or go be a magic mandalorian.
That's basically what happens in those two episodes. Boba Fett does not even appear in episode five and I don't remember him doing much in six.
So you go into episode seven, and yeah, okay, maybe if you haven't watched the first four episodes you'll be confused about who all the characters are, but you are sure as heck not missing any investment.
Which is so frustrating, because once again, the characters are SO GOOD. The various people that Boba Fett aligns himself with are really good, solid characters that deserved good stories and development. I want a series where they have time to flourish and be properly explored.
But Boba Fett is just... not compelling enough to carry that series.
He's trying to be heroic, but he doesn't have the passion. He's trying to be ruthless, but he's not scary. He is kind, but he's trying to be a goddamn mob boss, come the hell on. He should be killing people based on vibes and recruiting the people his victims were beating on. His heart of gold needs to be seen in small moments, not presented as a guiding principle. It just...
It didn't work.
And then, even if you're just watching it for Mando and Grogu...
Din Djarin was not at his best in this show. He was fine, but by the end of it, he really is just the magical child's dad, there to kill time until Grogu could step in and show off.
And I'm willing to put it down to him being messed up and an apostate and all that, but it just...
But the scene where they reunite was very sweet. Djarin literally stopping in the middle of a chaotic destructive chase sequence to go "ohmygod my boy hi oh you got my gift oh you're so wonderful and here and you make me so happy" before remembering they're all about to die was probably my favourite part of the whole damn show.
Seven episodes. That did not make the central character look impressive or worthy of his outcome. That didn't really do anything that entertaining, or impactful, or...
Because I want to go see the movie, I have given in and am re-watching The Mandalorian.
I am enjoying myself immensely.
For those who have somehow missed this, The Mandalorian is a (Star Wars entry) TV series about a bounty hunter who follows a religious creed known as The Way. One of his bounties is a small child from a very long-lived species, and they quickly become bonded.
Over the series, we discover many things, such as The Way being "The Way of the Mand'alor", which is a warrior religion, and our hero (Djarin. Generally seems to prefer being referred to as The Mandalorian and/or Mando, likely because of said creed) is from a very insulated and effectively denounced hyper-orthodox sect externally known as the Children of the Watch. They consider themselves the only true Mandalorians, a religious issue our hero has to deal with as he meets other less orthodox Mandalorians and finds them worthy of respect.
We also discover the child (Grogu) is strong with The Force. He is a survivor of Anakin's massacre, and his trauma means he's been repressing his powers for fifty-odd years. But he should be returned to 'his people' so he can become a jedi. This is a problem because he loves and respects Mando, but... y'know... duty and whatever. Also, he was probably taught Mandalorians are bad, but he doesn't seem to care about that. HIS Mandalorian is THE BEST PERSON EVER (even if he denies Grogu frog eggs), so how dare you.
Meanwhile, evil forces want to use Grogu for his powers. Dun-dun-dun da-dah-dun dah-dah-dunnnn.
As you do.
I loved it when I first watched it, because
A) you didn't have to know basically anything about Star Wars because the Children of the Watch don't typically care about anything but the creed, so anything important has to be explained to Mando anyway.
B) Mando is awesome, exasperated, and comes across as very cool until you realise his stoic silence is actually social awkwardness. That made me love him, because I love characters who don't know what to do with themselves.
C) Grogu is hilarious and sweet.
D) REAL MUPPETS. CGI is there too, but there are SO MANY MUPPETS.
E) GOOD FEMALE CHARACTERS. Cara Dune and Fennec Shand, UGH, my love and adoration.
F) Super cool discussions of religion and politics and morality while ultimately coming down on 'you gotta be able to sleep at night'. Which. Which.
Anyway.
So the one and only reason I stopped watching is because I resent having to engage with additional media to understand an original piece. So when season two of The Mandalorian ended and it went "now go watch this series about Boba Fett" I promptly went "NOPE" and stopped.
Because I don't care about Boba Fett. I kind of cared about him in the prequels, but that was because he was a small and confused child who watched his father die. I didn't care about him in the original trilogy. I barely cared about him in the Mandalorian. It annoyed me greatly that I was expected to watch four episodes of him doing... whatever... before Mando and Grogu's story could continue.
But I want to see their story play out and I hear the movie's good fun, so here we are.
The story is so good. At its core, it's about responsibility and personal choices, and figuring out what really matters to you. All of the characters have that moment and have to make that choice, again and again, in big and small moments.
Cara shooting the imperial pilot for taunting her about her destroyed planet was chef's kiss good
The actors are all great. This is the series that made me appreciate Pedro Pascal because of first his vocal acting, but also, when you realise how awkward Djarin is under the armour, his non-verbal as well. It actually shines through once you know to look for it - the little head-tilts, the stiffness of his shoulders and how he shifts his weight. He's a highly skilled and incredibly trained warrior, but he's also just... a sheltered, awkward, worn-down guy trying to look out for the people who matter to him. It's a complicated character played extremely well, especially given that it's all behind a mask.
Also the difference between him and Joel, despite them having similar driving goals is soooo very delicious and well done.
As per all Star Wars media, it's sci-fi but it's also a mish-mash of other genres, which makes it easier to get into. Main line Star Wars is fantasy, but the Mandalorian is a Western. He's a Cowboy in his actions, but he's also very Samurai in his code. The lone wanderer, the lost samurai, the phantom... it's all bundled up in there.
The Way is fascinating. I refuse to go read more about it, but a religion based on warrior culture and tribal connection, where honour is not in glory but in creed? And where Djarin takes it toward the end? Mm. MM. Crunchy.
And the political undercurrents. Of course there's the usual Star Wars fascism versus idealism, but the show goes out of its way to point out that heroes mean nothing to the people who suffer because war breaks out around them. It literally stares into the eyes of bystander children and asks what they care about a war when they're just trying to grow up.
Beyond that, like I said, I love the female characters. Don't get me wrong, the final episode "look! Strong female characters that don't need no man!" sequence was a bit much, especially because they literally forgot one of Bo-Katan's followers existed in order to do it, but Cara Dune as the kick-ass soldier turned marshall, Fennec the former assassin turned bandit-king's right hand, the ARMOURER?? The Armourer is so mysterious and elegant and strong. I love her.
I did not like Luke's cameo. I'm very glad they got Mark Hamill back (I am never unhappy to know Hamill is involved in anything) but that CGI de-aging... guh. Gyah. I hate it. It's so creepy.
But that was the only icky bit, so we deal. They mostly had muppets, which have their own problems and I accept them, so double-standards woo.
But more than anything, it's just fun.
It never takes itself too seriously, which I put down to Jon Favreau, who is one of my favourite showrunners. Even when it's action heavy or emotional, there will be those beats to pause and let humanity shine. Like Mando occasionally just sighing when he sees another round of enemies, Grogu just not reading the room, or Cara's BFG getting jammed and everyone around her finding it a tad pathetic (Fennec's vibe of "could you please get it together, we're trying to siege here" was so very strong), it not only adds that edge of realism (I am a strong believer in people laughing in the middle of a good sob) but lets the audience breathe and remain more invested.
So here I am, at the end of season two... about to watch a series I don't want to in order to continue the story I do want to watch.
Yeah, I'm late to the party again. But such is the beauty of streaming, in its best state. You get to be late when you want to be.
Baymax! is a short six-episode series based on Big Hero 6, and specifically the health care robot Baymax. Hiro is still around - he's just being a PhD student while Baymax wanders the streets helping every living thing that expresses discomfort in his general vicinity.
It's sweet. It's simple. It's kind.
The fact every episode is dedicated to health care workers is so nice.
The characters are vibrant and yet so real. From the older lady with her pain and regrets, the young girl who isn't ready to grow up, the young man who's so tied to family legacy that he can't find who he is.
The cat who yearns for love and affection but does not want to be touched.
Baymax is still very much in beta - he still can't read a situation and is still mostly taking direct routes to achieve goals, and Hiro really needs to address his prioritisation of self-charging, but in a lot of ways, that just makes him a better representation of real health care professionals. The final line of the series (this isn't a spoiler, it's just wonderful): "I am satisfied with my care" hits beautifully.
The stories are very simplistic but also insightful. The infamous one about the girl getting her first period is an absolute standout for me. She knows exactly what's happening to her, and she WOULD know how to physically manage it if she'd been prepared for it, but the point is that she wasn't MENTALLY ready for it. And that's an amazing story that I haven't seen in media before!
She wasn't unprepared because she's too young, but because she saw what happened to her family member when people found out she'd gotten her period. Suddenly she wasn't a girl, she was a young woman, and the unspoken implication is that suddenly she was a sexual object and THAT is what this girl isn't ready for. She doesn't want to have to deal with that, or think about it, or change who she is to fit the mould of a young woman. She wants to stay a kid where gender doesn't matter.
It was just A) a good, new approach to 'baby's first period', and B) handled so well by all the surrounding characters. Periods are things that happen, and you just gotta deal with them.
The episode was also the strongest fantasy of the series: everyone in the world of Baymax is helpful. And well meaning. For no reason other than to be kind.
It may not be realistic, but sometimes that's what you need. It was very much what I needed this week.
This was a lovely comfort watch and I recommend it.
So I watched the movie, then read the book, and I very much still like the movie of Cold Storage.
I liked the book too, but I am of the personal opinion that the changes they made, particularly regarding Travis, were solid but subtle adjustments, and they were good adjustments to make.
But let’s talk about the story first.
So. The story is this: NASA sent an organism up into space. It came back down changed. It came back down BAD. Everything-eating cordyceps bad. Luckily, it came back down east of Esperance, which is basically a big empty hunk of unhabitable rock except in the areas where the government says “Oh yeah, here have some land, sorry ’bout everything” to indigenous people, who try to habitate with varying amounts of success. In this instance, they were doing… arguably fine… until they tried to clean up some space junk and the organism found them.
The American government realised they screwed up and locked the organism away underground in… Kansas? I think it’s set? Anyway. Decades passed, and the government sold off the storage without clearing out the organism, which had been quietly eating itself free.
All this despite several people saying “hey. Maybe keep an eye on this thing. It’s like, world endingly bad. Hey. Maybe do something about it. Hey. Maybe worry a little. Hey.”
Basically, Cold Storage is a hilariously dark and horrifically realistic depiction of what happens when the government just does the bare minimum: bad things inevitably happen.
Enter our three protagonists: Robert(o in the book), Travis, and Naomi. Robert(o) is the (now retired) government agent that locked the organism away once upon a time. Travis and Naomi are security guards at the now privatised storage facility. On a less-than-ordinary night where their jerk boss decides to be even more of a jerk than usual, and the father of Naomi’s child decides to be even more of a moron than usual, Travis and Naomi less-than-coincidentally meet for the first time, and the organism manages to break containment, dragging Robert(o) back for One Last Job. Everything quickly escalates.
It's not as funny as the trailers made it seem. The book is, because of the narration, but the movie is more… cynical dark humour. It’s dry and snarky as hell, which is probably why I liked it more.
It is a very good time, however.
I like the dark humour of it, and I really loved the movie versions of the characters. The book ones I just liked a lot, which I’ll get into in a minute. But overall, the whole thing is a nice balance between cynical realism and the absurdism of… well, real possibility. Terrifying things are entirely possible, if all the wrong things align at once.
But the beauty in that is that sometimes, all the right things can align too, and you can end up somewhere wonderful.
In the story, this is shown through all the terrible things and coincidences and implausible possibilities all happening on one night, creating a recipe for disaster, while also perfectly aligning everything for Travis and Naomi to meet and get to know each other in a situation where their best selves can shine past first impressions.
The book, I think, does a better job of showing that contrast, because it actually puts a lot more emphasis on Travis and Naomi’s romance. Because it spends a lot of time in Travis's overworking and highly romantic head. But I don’t actually think losing that aspect is a bad thing.
Because like I said, I liked the movie characters better. I felt a lot better about Travis and Naomi’s future in the movie. In the book, I couldn’t help but feel like Naomi was actually going to end up a bit toxic, while Travis was never going to grow into anything better. In the movie, I felt like they’d be good for each other in the long term. She'd be his stability, he'd be her emotional support, they'd be partners.
All because of tiny little changes.
In the movie, Travis isn’t a creeper. In the movie, Naomi seems to like her daughter. In the movie, Travis doesn’t like holding weapons and doesn’t know what to do with them. In the movie, Naomi occasionally notes that she’s wrong about things and it doesn't feel fake. They’re both just that little bit softer, and sillier, and their relationship feels better for that.
Another thing I think the movie does better for these two is that it really does feel like a first date. They’re getting to know each other, and it’s a bit messy. They both nearly screw it up while trying too hard, in very different ways. Naomi pressures Travis, Travis gets too heavy, they disagree, and they find something in each other worth pursuing. It’s sweet.
The book makes a lot about the start of their relationship seem… icky. Like, don’t get me wrong, I do adore book!Travis for being a hopeless idiot, but… godDAMN boy that was all creepy. I don’t care if she forgave you, it was creepy. And so was orchestrating the meet-cute. Watching her on the cameras. Movie!Travis did the camera thing, but that was very clearly more of a “yeah, my coworker is here and doing stuff. Oh, she’s pretty, I like looking at her. Anyway, back to my audio book about learning to say no to people.”
I also like that the movie let the women be more central, too. Trini. I love Trini, and I love that she didn’t just bail out in the film. Abigail is awesome, and in the movie she didn’t have to rely on a hot friend’s desperate boyfriend to get stuff done. These were GOOD CHANGES.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shame that Roberto got white-washed, but the fact he wasn’t constantly making reference to women’s relationships and analysing their attractiveness and self-worth was a GOOD CHANGE, folks.
Also Liam Neeson in his ‘I am too old to be doing all this’ phase is still funny to me.
But yeah. Change or not, the overarching chaos theory message of it all only comes back to me in hindsight. And it makes me feel squishy. It’s not something I noticed when I was watching, or reading, but I think it’s why both the movie and book end left me feeling hopeful.
Because in a world where a million little coincidences can create the perfect cocktail for disaster, so too can a million little coincidences create the perfect environment for something wonderful.
Which is a nice thought these days.
You just need to encourage the right kind of environment, and let it grow.
I had to call a break because real life has demands, but I have THOUGHTS. FRUSTRATED THOUGHTS.
I am belatedly watching Stranger Things. Season one, season two , and season three previously discussed.
Okay, I am halfway through season four, and even if it wasn't a joke around the internet, I would still think Steve is an incredible goddamn mother because if I was him, I would have slapped his child upside the head so many times by now. Jesus Christ, Dustin.
Alright. Quick plotline recap:
Eleven has lost her powers and moved with the Byers to another state. Hopper is alive and in a Russian prison for Reasons. We are so shocked he didn't die, really. Meanwhile, a psychic serial killer is on the loose in Hawkins and is absolutely not an analogy for teen suicide must be stopped before it can kill Max, who is mourning her abusive step-brother's death, and the only one who can stop it is Eleven, who again, has lost her powers and is now realising she has severe memory loss.
Oh, also Will has realised he's in love with Mike, who is unconsciously screwing up his long-distance relationship with Eleven because testosterone and cultural expectations make teenage boys stupid.
If you pick and choose which of the seven different subplots you pay attention to, it's a remarkably clean and cohesive story this time.
But, once again, I think Stranger Things' biggest problem is that it was WAY too many characters and storylines. And the result of that is that the characters do not have enough quality development or connection to the story. Also you have unnecessary plot threads that don't actually add to the deeper story, and because you don't have the TIME, they also don't add a lot to the characters. It's just NOISE.
It's like… okay, actually, yeah, let's make this about Steve, why not. He's actually a good example.
It's well known that Steve was not supposed to survive season one, and it was only because Joe Keery was… himself offscreen AND that he made Steve so goddamn hapless ONscreen that he not only survived but became a so-called vital character.
But the thing is, Steve is… not vital to the story.
He's my favourite character because I'm a sucker for characters that can't handle or accept their best qualities, but he could vanish from the story entirely and nothing would be lost. In fact, I think Nancy would grow the hell up a lot faster if he did, because damn that girl needs to be slapped in the face with some irretrievable loss and right now Steve is so blatantly her backup plan and safe space, losing him would hit like a gut punch to the diaphragm.
And Steve is that to all the characters he interacts with, in fact. Dustin, Robin, Nancy, Max, all of them. He's the backup plan and the safe space. And because none of the characters in the series actually ACKNOWLEDGE what he's done for them, including Steve himself, they all think they can go charging off without concern for safety and mock him for being the one asking what the actual plan is. All through this season, Steve's been asking the sensible questions about what they're doing, how are they doing it, what they're looking for, what is the goal, and everyone's making fun of him and I'm just… "could someone please answer this boy's questions for ME, at least?"
But no, apparently Steve is just there to drive people around and get his face kicked in so the women and children don't get anything worse than a bruise. Yeah, I see you, paternalist narrative construction. You're not subtle.
Now, this COULD be really great story telling. Because the whole thing about a good support service is that you do not notice it until it fails. And you could do that so well by just… connecting Steve to the story more. Make him an actual foil for both Jonathon (who had to grow up too fast and became a shadow for his family) and Billy (who rejected his family and became a villain). Make him Max and Lucas's safe space in a way that her mother and his basketball team haven't been. Make him echo Joyce's mothering, but be the one who can be there for his entire chosen family to highlight how she isn't there for Jonathon.
Make Nancy mirror Hopper as the one who's too busy trying to be a hero to make genuine connections. Who's hiding away from her feelings and the person who makes her feel soft. Steve could be SO GOOD FOR NANCY'S DEVELOPMENT if you'd just USE HIM PROPERLY.
And then knock Steve out for half a season so he can't keep them safe. So they all have to grow up and stand up and appreciate the danger they're in.
I don't know, I'm kind of glad he just got eaten by the gate in the last episode I watched. Maybe he'll become important.
Because right now, Steve ISN'T important. Not to the broader story. He's important to Dustin, and is Nancy's backup boyfriend, but there are too many goddamn storylines going on to properly dig into why their development matters to this story of childhood and growing up and having the strength to be someone you're proud of. We have to keep jumping back to El, and Hopper, and Joyce and frikkin Murray who I have wanted to slap around since season one because they're carrying the conspiracy narrative.
It's a touch frustrating, is what I'm trying to get at. AND IT MAKES ME WANT TO WRITE ESSAYS.
So Netflix asks me if I'm enjoying Stranger Things and I can't answer it. I can only decide that I'm going to finish the season at some point and then I'll probably watch the last season because I want to see if they carry the growing up story to its completion.
But you know, there are some things I really am enjoying.
I have LOVED Jonathon this season, as much as he doesn't room to shine. I love that he was FUNNY, but it didn't detract from his actual character. Yeah, I can absolutely see this stupid kid that was promoted to parent at 14 and has a track record of not-great personal life choice decisions becaming a stoner and feeling trapped between protecting his family, being with the girl he's trauma-bonded to, and actually following his own desires. And he becomes competent when he realises his brother actually needs him. yeah, Jonathon = good.
I like that Robin is still kicking around, and she's become less snarky and jaded because Steve is giving her a safe space and that makes her messy and chaotic. I wish she wasn't fuelling Nancy's bad habits while playing sidekick, but if there was depth to that narrative Nancy's love triangle would be important so I will forgive it.
I like Will's story. It's sweet.
He can do better than Mike though, I mean, geez, that kid is a prat. I know he's your best friend and first love, but seriously, Will, you can do so much better.
Lucas and Max are quietly amazing and I want to hug them both.
I even don't mind Mike and El's subplot because even though I still think El shouldn't be in a relationship yet, the way their puppy love is growing and cracking is actually done really well and I find it so lovely.
And I just… that's what Stranger Things does well, when it tries.
It does stories of young people growing up and being both horrible and wonderful to each other SO WELL. It's so real. Nancy is a mess the way only driven young women can be. Max and Lucas are so lost and yet gentle. Jonathan is broken and glued together. Will is such a puppy, Dustin is such a brat, Mike is an angry little jerk, they're all so real and gritty and I desperately wish we could ignore the conspiracies and just focus in on these messy kids finding themselves through an insane magical realism story about a little girl fighting the bad men that want to use her.
Maybe we will, once the adults get out of Russia. Who knows?
I am belatedly watching Stranger Things. Season one and season two previously discussed.
Season three: in which romance ruins EVERYTHING.
But Steve and Robin exist so everything's gravy.
So. Season three. Would you believe I can actually elevator pitch this one?
A mindless beast got through from the other dimension before Eleven could close the gate, and its consciousness has been awoken because the Russians (we don't question, we just accept) have re-opened the gate in an attempt to figure out what the Hell the Americans did this time.
In figuring all this out, we have once again way too many plot threads because we have way too many characters.
Eleven and Max are bonding. Lucas and Mike are bonding. The bonding is happening because boys are dumb and girls are manipulative (narrative convention says so). I have less of a problem with this than I like to admit because they are fourteen (?) and trying to figure out this romance thing in an annoyingly realistic fashion. Also it's the 80s. And none of these four are good friends with Steve who would probably give somewhat reasonable advice.
The lovebirds being stupid fourteen year olds in love means that they are neglecting the only fourteen year old who is not in love, Will. Will is struggling with this. Will is also still fragile. Will was woefully underused this season and I do have a problem with that for reasons I will get into later.
Dustin went to camp and met a girl. He is also annoyed by the lovebirds (and Will), because none of them believe he met a girl, but the only reason that matters is because he is trying to contact the girl via radio and accidentally picks up a Russian radio signal instead. He takes this to Steve because he's annoyed with the lovebirds and Will.
Steve did not get into college. Steve has been forced to get a terrible job, but in typical Steve fashion is making the damn best of it because he is The Best Idiot Ever and we love him for a reason. Steve's co-worker is Robin, who is yet another female character that should be a Mary-Sue except Maya Hawke plays her too damn well. Robin speaks four languages, plays music, and is brilliant enough to translate a language she DOESN'T speak and decipher the Russian code enough that she, Steve, and Dustin uncover the whole Russian plot basically on their own. This leads to Steve getting beaten up again, but also to Steve and Robin getting injected with Sodium Pentathol and thereby becoming the best part of several episodes.
They also recruit Lucas's little sister Erica, who annoyed me because I can only handle so many Spunky Kids and Max brought me up to my limit last season. But I at least appreciated her being a little bitch ruining Robin's life. I wished she had stayed an annoying little bitch rather than become a central character, but what can you do?
Hopper has decided to ruin things with Joyce by deciding they should be romantically involved. I sighed at my TV a lot.
Hopper has also become an overprotective Dad, what with Eleven and Mike making out all the time. All three of them annoyed me a lot. I would have handled Hopper better if not for the aforementioned Joyce thing, but as it is he became a walking red flag the entire season and I had absolutely no time for any of it. More on this later.
Joyce has discovered her magnets are losing their magnetism and wants to know why. In doing so, she and Hopper find a Russian lab and kidnap a Russian scientist who in typical American media fashion desperately wants to defect from the Soviets and revel in AMERICAN FREEDOM.
Nancy and Jonathon have gotten internships at the local paper. Nancy struggles with sexism while also wanting to jump the queue and become the new Lois Lane. Jonathon wants to keep his head down and not make waves. This tests their relationship when Nancy discovers a weird disease that turns rats feral and then turns humans feral and wants to Uncover The Story but is shot down because she is a seventeen year old intern and (more importantly) a seventeen year old girl in the 1980s.
The disease is actually a part of the evil monster of the season, which is taking over humans in order to create a super bioweapon that intends to eat Eleven in retribution for closing the gate.
Oh, and Max's abusive older brother had been eaten by said bioweapon and is the face of the big bad.
There is SO MUCH GOING ON.
The day is ultimately saved by fireworks, the Neverending Story, and A Heroic Sacrifice.
I... confess I did not pay as close attention to this season as I might have, partially because I had other stuff going on and so didn't just sit down and watch this in one sitting and partially because so much of it made me roll my eyes.
Like seriously, Hopper as a whole was... not good this season. Between the entitlement, the aggression, the unnecessary violence, the fact he was always damn right about everything...? I do not like Hopper's construction, where he's this big, macho, violent man, and the narrative justifies him or writes his actions off as comedic overreactions. They're not. They're very real reactions and it bothers me that we are supposed to go along with or laugh at Hopper while Billy (Max's brother) is NOT funny and IS scary and the only difference is that he's a young, single guy, while Hopper is an older dad figure.
And don't come at me with Billy being physically threatening while Hopper isn't. He threatens, he yells, he guilts, he kicks things and breaks others. These are not funny and I don't -
Anyway.
The kids were... fine. I'm never as invested in the kids' stories as I should be, and this time was no exception. I did like how... real their interpersonal problems felt, though. The couples being obnoxious (with Mike and Eleven even being considered obnoxious by the other obnoxious couple), the single guy feeling left out, the guy who had been removed from the group feeling literally sidelined. Even the girls being stupid and then bonding - it felt good. Real. Innocent. Horrible like only young teens can be.
But I do wish Will was... he's overdue for some narrative use beyond being a victim. Especially when compared with Eleven, who was just CONSTANTLY stepping up and saving the day. I got so sick of her swinging between shivering in Mike's arms and standing up like a psychic brick wall. I kept wanting Will to reveal some power from his time in the other dimension beyond spidey-senses. But literally all he did was whimper, all season. He feels wasted, and it's disappointing.
BUT THEN THERE IS STEVE.
Steve, my beautiful idiot loser who is now searching for a purpose in life.
The show wants us to think Steve's pathetic, but as a grown up I would like to applaud Steve for actually putting in effort at his lousy job that he hates and resents. And for still flirting with girls. And for falling for another awesome, strong-willed woman that's too good for him. And being an absolute champion when she ultimately rejects him.
Seriously, that scene in the bathroom. I had heard tell of it. It lives up to the hype.
It's so quiet, and understated, and yet raw and real.
And how AWESOME is it that the best relationship in the series is 100% guaranteed platonic? Steve and Robin are amazing.
I also love that, even though Robin's the smart, capable one, their partnership doesn't actually feel one-sided. Steve very clearly provides support and (emotional) strength from the very get-go, and I think that's why The Scene works so well. Robin's so scared she'll lose this good friend she's made, that by being honest she's just going to get hurt, maybe even physically because this is the 80s, but she dares to trust and Steve not only honours that trust but immediately comforts and bolsters her up even higher.
We love Steve. And now we love Steve and Robin.
I think it's moments and characters like that that keep me watching. Because there's a lot about Stranger Things that annoys me. Narrative construction, the cast herd, the messy plotting and pacing... in the last few episodes of this series I swear I could have played a drinking game with every time someone comes in from left field to save someone's life and I probably would have died.
But then they have these... moments. These quiet, lovely moments that catch my heart.
It's good.
I'm not sure when I'm going to have time to get to season 4. Work is starting up again and my weekends for the next month will be mostly spent on research, but I will get to it.
See what world-shattering trouble Eleven can get into next time.
I can only hope for more Steven and Robin while we're there!
I am belatedly watching Stranger Things. Season One talked about here. Season two is now done.
I liked it better!
I mean, there were bits I could take or leave. I still have no emotional attachment to Eleven/Jane, and Hopper has officially turned me off, but I kind of liked Mike this season, and Will was adorable when he wasn't... y'know... possessed (applause to Noah Schnapp, that was some GOOD work, captain), and Lucas and Max are the kid!ship I was happy to see sail.
And Dustin. I want to squish him. The dance scene, ugh! My heart!
Anyway. Back to the start.
Story wise, season two is more straight-forward than season one. The gate to the other dimension is still open, bad things are coming through, and they're using Will to do it.
Eleven, who discovers her birth name was Jane, is still around and now being raised in secret by Hopper. They are both struggling with this because Hopper is not an emotionally healthy man and Eleven is a traumatised, emotionally and developmentally stunted, otherwise typical pre-teen girl. When Hopper gets mixed up in the Will situation, Eleven skips town to find her birth mother and then another escaped experiment child, who serves as a dark mentor or something. More on that plot later.
Nancy is continuing to figure herself out, starting with the fact that she's kind of not actually in love with Steve, who is continuing his maturation into a Nice Boy but generally failing at everything else. Nancy decides she will find growth and inner peace by revealing the truth of what happened to her friend Barb, and recruits Jonathon. Jonathon is no longer a creep but is a typical teenager so he and Nancy are currently suited for each other and fall in lust. More on this later.
Mike, Lucas, and Dustin meet a new girl in town called Max. She is a video game playing skateboarder with (we discover eventually) anger issues relating to domestic violence. Lucas and Dustin fall in love with her at first sight. She is not a Mary Sue only because Sadie Sink plays her so well. Mike hates her for not being Eleven. Max has a brother that will almost kill Steve later and probably would have orgasmed about it, he's that kind of messed up.
Oh, and Joyce has a new boyfriend who is The Best Man Ever, naturally played by Sean Astin.
...okay, maybe there's still too much going on, but it's easier to follow, at least.
That said, the story did... meander at times. It's the problem with having such a big ensemble cast, and trying to do so many different storylines. You either do none of them justice (looking at you Hazbin Hotel) or you have to occasionally abandon everything in favour of one (Kaos). But unlike last season, there was only one storyline that I think they could have dropped, and that's the whole Max element. But Max was important to give the boys some needed emotional development without crowding the Will scenes, so... eghhh...?
But SPEAKING OF EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT, let us discuss Steve Harrington. Poor confused boy who has no idea what's going on but is told to pick up the bat and does it. I love him so much. I love his whole character. This big, dumb idiot who is so full of heart and is gonna use all of it to take care of people. I cannot tell you how much I loved him putting his foot down with the kids, including whipping a towel off his shoulder and demanding a verbal acknowledgement. It was pointless in the end, but I loved it. And I loved how he handled the whole thing with Nancy. So graceful. Steve is the kind of male role model I want to see on TV.
Which brings us to Nancy. And by extension, Jonathon.
I continue to enjoy Nancy's story of a girl figuring herself out. It was told very naturally, too, with her fixating on her best friend's death as (frankly) a convenient reason for her discontent. I like that the story allowed her to be the one to screw things up with Steve, and that I felt real sympathy for her even as she did it. Her whole arc was very well done.
Weirdly, the only thing I didn't really like about it was the way she and Jonathon got together. Not that they did, or even the conspiracy theorist in the next room cheering them on (the 80s were not a healthy place), but... gonna be honest, I did not buy Jonathon being so experienced with sex as to jump into bed with her so confidently. That's not the vibe I got from him, and now I'm thinking about it, it kind of makes his creepiness from last season even creepier, somehow. Less innocently naive, more predatory, or something...
But as a story-driven relationship, it was much better handled than it was last season, and I'm good with that. There's an essay about character construction in Jonathon that I kind of want to write but I won't. Nancy's narrative construction has proven very good, and I am pleased to see it.
Probably the most clumsy aspect of the season, to me, was Eleven's story.
I admit my attention wandered during her story beats, but thinking about it, I feel like it's maybe... backward, somehow? She leaves Hopper, finds her mother, and then finds her 'sister', and we learn there's more like her out there. Okay, sure, but...
I don't know. I feel like she should have remembered and sought out her siblings first, and maybe that could have brought her to her mother? I think I know why they did it the way they did, and it's more about closing narrative loopholes, but... I dunno. It felt unbalanced, to me.
That said, while I didn't like how every other storyline went on hold for Eleven to meet and get to know her 'sister', I did kind of like the Chicago story.
We meet a cast of characters that I hated on sight, but ended up becoming intrigued by. I would have liked more of them. I feel like, in a different version of this show, we could very easily have had Eleven spend an entire season with them, building them up, getting to know them, exploring the darker aspects of strength, vengeance, and chosen family, contrasting her near-fall against Will being supported by positive family and friends through his inevitable descent into suffering. I feel like that could have been really cool.
Instead we have one episode. With some half-baked characters and a magical bond between two girls who apparently remembered each other from childhood except they forgot each other until five seconds ago. And, at the end, a ham-fisted scene with Eleven choosing not to kill one of her Bad Men because... reasons. Poorly explained reasons.
Narrative requirement, I suspect.
I'm not objecting. I like when my heroes have the option and decide not to kill bad guys.
But it just didn't make sense for what we know of Eleven. It was odd. It felt odd.
But that was just the Eleven section. Overall, most of the emotional plotlines of the season played out really well, really naturally, really smoothly. I believed them.
Steve and Dustin you odd-couple brothers from nowhere I adore you.
So yeah. Still not loving it, but I enjoyed more of it. I am hoping that season three continues the upward trend. We shall see.
Look, sometimes I'm late to these things on purpose.
In this instance, it's a combination of things. I didn't have Netflix when it first came out, some of the actors involved turned me off, I have a strong aversion to anything that revels in 80s nostalgia... so even though I love me some magical realism and schlocky horror, a lot of it just didn't feel like my thing.
But it's finished now and I had some time off, so I decided to give it a shot.
And I'll watch the next season. No promises for commentary on that one at this stage though. For season one, however, mild spoilers as ever...
So for those who know the hype but not the story: Stranger Things is the story of... well, uh... hm. Do you know, there is no clean and concise way to elevator pitch this series? Anyone who tries will likely be missing something.
Once upon a time, a girl with psychic powers (Eleven) being raised and groomed by a seedy government agency ripped a hole through space-time which allowed an evil beast to come through to our reality. It allowed the girl to escape (I think? I feel like I missed that part) before it attacks and drags a young boy (Will) through to its dimension.
The young boy has three friends (Mike, Lucas, and Dustin). They all play Dungeons and Dragons together. This is only important because it gives rise to convenient naming conventions throughout the show and sets the importance of party dynamics. Realistic DnD party dynamics are not required nor should they be mentioned.
Will and Mike have older siblings (Nancy and Jonathon), who are strangled by the red string but not actually together. More on these two later. Nancy is dating Steve, who is a jerk but played by Joe Keery so beautifully that he reveals himself to be just a Stupid Teenage Boy who will probably grow up to be a Good Man. Again, more on this later.
Nancy has a best friend that does not like Steve, because he is a horny teenage boy jerk. While trying to be responsible, Nancy's best friend goes missing too, eaten by the evil beast. Nancy then takes an interest in what is happening and recruits Jonathon who is partially interested because it's his brother that's missing and partially because he wants Nancy. Eye-twitch.
Will's mother (Joyce) does not cope with Will's disappearance. She is a single mother whose ex is a dick. She has prior history with the town sheriff Hopper. The two of them are the only Reasonable Adults in town and go about investigating Will's disappearance in their own ways.
While Mike, Lucas, and Dustin are looking for Will, they meet the runaway Eleven. They quickly realise Eleven and Will are connected somehow.
Eleven is being hunted by the aforementioned seedy government agency.
All of this involves Russia somehow.
I am probably missing some important plot points.
If I'm honest, I kind of stopped caring about several of the plot threads a few episodes in. Mostly Eleven's, who is the main character, so I think I have failed to be a good audience.
But seriously, I think the fact it took me that long to explain everything tells you the main issue I had with this show. There was just SO MUCH. So much going on and frankly I wasn't overly invested in most of it. None of it was boring, per se. It's a good show, well-written and well-acted, with reasonable production values for an early Netflix Original. I just... didn't care as much as I wanted to.
The storylines I was invested in were Nancy, Hopper, and by episode six I was on board with Joyce. I grew weirdly fond of Dustin. I could not give the slightest damn about any of the rest of the kids. Sorry.
Again, not because they were bad. I was legitimately impressed by the kids as actors and how they were written. But I didn't want to watch them. Their story of friendship and young love (platonic and not) was just okay.
Compare the story of Nancy figuring herself out through a stupid boy, losing her best friend, finding the strength to combat an evil she can't comprehend...?
Compare the story of a broken sheriff who lost his only child to an unstoppable illness rediscovering his urge to protect and serve by saving a kid from an unknowable danger?
Hell, even compare the story of a stupid teenage boy that was just trying to date a girl only to uncover a complicated and overwhelming darkness at the last second and having to decide whether he'll step up or run away? Seriously, I had a feeling I was going to like Steve the most but geezums that was a good last-minute character arc.
ANY OF THOSE STORIES. I would have preferred to stay focussed on ANY OF THOSE STORIES.
Eleven legitimately could have been a glowing cube and I would have given her the same amount of empathy and felt the same emotion in response to Mike's crush on her. Wow. Seriously, kid, she is clearly socially and mentally underdeveloped it is not good for you to be getting your prepubescent hormones up on that.
Speaking of the various relationships between the characters... something I kind of loved was the relationship between Joyce and Hopper. I have a feeling it's going to become romantic eventually, but in this season, at least, I loved how genuinely platonic it was. These were just two grown adults who have known each other for a long time. They have history, and it's complicated, and messy, but at the end of the series, there's no doubt they can and will rely on each other. It felt good. Healthy, Strong. I am braced for it to sour over the next few seasons.
Another relationship I really liked in the end was Nancy and Jonathon. Which surprised me, because Jonathon bothered me a lot for the first half of the show.
I gave him a bit of a pass because, you know, grieving teenage boy that was clearly Dealing With Stuff from the start, but he is a kind of character that I don't like watching. Because I feel like we're supposed to be sympathetic to him, and the narrative is structured in such a way to... not even forgive but actually skate past his less than stellar moments. Which is problematic.
He's into photography, and while he starts it off like an investigation, he quickly turns into a bit of a creep with it. And it's only a couple of photos, the moment only lasts like five minutes on screen, and he gets 'punished' for it... by bad guys... so the narrative structures his punishment as something we should feel bad about... that's... I have a problem with that. Similar to the Mike and Eleven thing, there's something icky about that and it's on a meta level, it's just... something.
So I actually think Steve turning into a good guy at the end of the series did a lot to save Jonathon's character too. Because if he had 'won' Nancy in the end, the way I think the series originally intended him to do, I would have had a very bad taste in my mouth. It would have been bad for Nancy, who had been dating a stupid teenage boy jerk, to end up falling for a voyeuristic teenage boy creep. As it is, both Nancy and Jonathon are clearly still on their journey to discover themselves. They have time to grow out of their respective dismissive and creepy ways. Which is good. Healthy. I like that.
But these relationships were very much not the narrative focus of the story, and frankly...
I don't know. Stranger Things is a weird one for me, because there's a lot to talk about. I want to write essays and do research and dissect it, but I didn't... have fun? Not for most of it. I didn't find it a fun watch, but I think I found it a compelling watch.
The need for further research is clearly indicated. We will see what the next season brings.
The original VtM: Bloodlines was a game that didn't get finished upon release, has been patched and stitched by fans, and is therefore beloved despite its many flaws. Its sequel is a finished game that isn't nearly as ambitious, doesn't actually continue the story of the original in any way, and has terrible combat.
I love it.
So. Backstory.
The first Bloodlines is the story of the Fledgling, a screw-up that gets illegally turned into a vampire and only survives the night because the political environment of Vampire L.A. means killing them would be bad optics. So they are sent on multiple suicide missions, survive, and get caught up in a story that feels like the end of the world but is actually just the vampire elite investing too much in scary stories and screwing each other over. The best ending has the Fledgling flipping them all off and leaving town while Laughing Jack... laughs.
It's a wonderful introduction to White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade universe. You meet a bunch of major characters and the city of L.A., learn (and think you are taking part in) the overarching mythos, and revel in the dark comfort, sex, and adrenaline that the best vampire stories invoke.
But I mean it when I say the base game is broken. The development house literally shut down before release, and it only got on the shelves because the developers refused to let it die. It did not work. Fans had to patch it, and to this day, you can only play it if you download and install one of the fan patches.
It's also a product of 2004. All the women are scantily clad with painful jiggle physics, sex is everywhere and yet only women can be bisexual (I do not know how you would play a male Toreador and have it work for you), it loves a hacker, and the Asian stereotypes are off the charts. There's literally a demon-hunter Japanese schoolgirl who speaks like a weaboo from the era. I adore her, but she's offensive as heck. AND three-quarters through the game, it absolutely loses steam and becomes a massive chore to get through, to the point that I've actually only finished it once or twice despite having played it dozens of times over the years.
Twenty years later and I think... three different dev teams? We get Bloodlines 2.
Bloodlines 2 is the story of the Nomad, an elder vampire diablerist (cannibal, basically), and Fabien, the low-level vampire detective that has somehow ended up sharing the Nomad's head. They are in Seattle, and the only two connections it has to the original story is 1) a side character from the original story shows up for like five minutes, and 2) in some ways, you are the real version of the threat the original game characters thought they were avoiding.
Canonically, no one's even sure the last game happened, because Vampires lie and keep secrets, so while they know SOMETHING happened in L.A. twenty years ago... egh?
Technically speaking, Bloodlines 2 is better in that it's finished. The patches are small and what you would expect in contemporary game development. But despite twenty years, the methods of interacting with the world are remarkably similar to the old game. You walk up to people, and then get pulled into a one-on-one dialogue with barely-moving characters. Only enemies and pedestrians move. Those enemies and pedestrians have about... ten voice lines that they repeat ad nauseam? Most of the world is static, you interact with doors and elevators, and that's it. It also feels smaller than Bloodlines 1. The actual city is probably about as big as the four hub-worlds of Bloodlines 1, but time has made it feel smaller.
But the VIBES.
It's a snowy Christmas in Seattle, and so everything is dark and quiet and moody. My only complaint is that the game relies on the Nomad's super-senses, which you activate like Batman's detective vision, so I spent most of my time in the creepiest parts of the game in a bright orange and purple landscape looking for heartbeats, not crawling through the deep dark of Seattle's underground.
The characters vary between exhausted and over the top. You're thrust into a job that's beneath you and your abilities but you need to do to survive. Everyone is a scheming snake, including you, and the only one you know you can trust is the voice in your own head.
God, it feels good in the worst way.
And the VOICE ACTING.
Fabien and Phyre--the Nomad, who has a male and female voice--are all perfect. I will gush about Fabien in a minute, but Phyre.
I've finished the game as female Phyre, and now I'm playing as male Phyre. And let me tell you. They are both amazing. But I love the subtle differences between their characters.
Female Phyre is aggressive, blunt, impatient. Her words are polite and diplomatic, but she has an anger in her that runs hot even when she's calm. Her contantly shifting eyes are looking for attacks and exits.
Male Phyre smoulders. He is quieter, more methodical, and so when his fire does flare, it's an explosion you aren't quite ready for but should have known to expect. His constantly shifting eyes are taking in everything the world has to offer and trying to figure out where it will take him.
Both of them are exactly what you'd expect for someone who appears at moments of great change, in a world where Destiny is both fact and unknown.
And then there's FABIEN.
Oh, Fabien, my delightful mess. My baby. My beloved.
Fabien is twice-dead when the game starts. He's hitching a ride in the Nomad's head through unknown means. He's a detective and conspiracy theorist, turned in the 1920s because he was getting a bit too close to the vampire truth. He's malkavian, which means his head isn't quite screwed on straight, which in Fabien's case means he talks to inanimate objects and thinks they talk back to him. He gives them funny voices. He cannot focus to save himself. He knows he'd be useless in a fight, but he goes into certain death with only a shake in his voice and his knees because someone has to do something, even if he doesn't know what that something is.
I wasn't even halfway through the game before I realised I loved him. I left an important conversation and he didn't immediately pipe up with commentary. I panicked, thinking something had happened to him, but he just didn't have anything to say for a minute or so. But the reaction alone tells you how much I loved having my little popcorn gallery.
Every day, you dream of Fabien's past and memories, and while I can see it will become frustrating over several playthroughs because you're essentially just figuring out the story as Fabien, I did enjoy his sections the first time around. You're just walking around chatting to people and looking into their heads as you investigate serial killings. There's no danger, because you know Fabien has to survive... to a point. And Fabien is fun. He rambles, he loses focus, the people around him are basically always snapping their fingers to keep him on track or sighing in exasperation at having to deal with him.
More than once, when people insulted him, I--out loud--said "don't you talk about my boy!"
I don't know if that says more about me or Fabien, but the point is, he's great, and I wanted to keep him.
And that's... what I liked about this game. The characters. The emotions. The story wasn't anything to write home about, but I responded to it emotionally. I went into the final boss aggravated at the villain on multiple levels. I wanted to put them down.
Even though the combat still annoys me.
It's...
Look. It's also a problem with the first game. With the vibes of these games, I want to play them stealthily. I want to be unseen and dangerous as I silently save the world. And by the end, these games don't want you to do that. The first game needs you to end it literally guns blazing and sword flashing. This game needs you to end it with thrown explosives as you get swarmed by goddamn crowds that chip at your health.
But I will tolerate the combat to hang out with Fabien and drain that final boss dry.
So yeah. It's a good game. Not the most impressive, but the vibes, the characters, the mood. Is good. If you like vampires, or moody stories, check it out.
But still I dream of a country rich and clever,
with compassion and endeavour,
reaching out toward forever
and I'm still
Dreaming of the light on the hill.
For the record, even if you manage to find it, I don't really recommend Keating! the musical. It's a very biased view of a series of political events in Australia in the early nineties, and because we don't study our own prime ministers, I doubt anyone who wasn't in Australia at the time and at least my age or probably older would know any of the 'characters'.
But it's kind of fun, in a cheap, indie production sort of way. It has a point to make, and it generally makes it well, even if it does wear some very thick rose coloured glasses. And it's got a few good songs.
This is the one that sticks with me, though. It's been playing on repeat in my head these last... eight, ten years?
Seems a long time when I think about it.
Interesting times, they say.
I've been sick these last couple of months. Nothing serious, just a different cold-type things that show up when (I suspect - need to get a blood test) my iron runs particularly low and knock me off my feet for a few days. But it's the kind of cold that messes with your emotions and makes you want to cry at stupid stuff. I have burst into tears at, I kid you not, at the following:
The first five minutes of K-Pop Demon Hunters
A video of a kid playing violin really well and enjoying it
A story of a strange woman sitting Carissa Hendrix down and (correctly) telling her to break up with her wife
A video of a cow waking up and being upset because she doesn't know where all her friends have gone. They're literally on the other side of the hill and her human is actively trying to coax her to come join them.
I'm in that kind of a headspace, is what I'm saying.
I'm writing a fanfic just for me that may or may not get posted and will certainly not get read, I'm neglecting my studies, I'm getting annoyed when people try to do the right thing at work, I'm watching music flashmob videos... and I've been thinking a lot about the lyrics of this song.
So i thought I might share them with the void.
They're counting up the votes across Australia,
and counting down the seconds of my years.
Well, I've seen quite a few elections -
I know how to read projections.
I can recognise a change when it appears.
The people make the ultimate decision.
The system says they always get it right.
So though it seems like half an hour since I
Stumbled into power,
Now it's time for me to say
Goodnight.
But still I dream
of a country rich and clever,
with compassion and endeavour,
reaching out toward forever and I'm still
dreaming of the light on the hill.
You start off in your local council chambers.
You fight and dream until you reach your prime.
And if you should succeed,
by the time you get to lead, well...
you're pretty much exhausted by the climb.
You only get a moment in the penthouse
before you find you're standing on the sill.
And if you're sunk in ham and gammon
and it turns from feast to famine,
then you're lucky if you've had your fill.
But still I dream
Heads are high and hearts are heady,
Eyes are bright, and clear, and steady,
Full of promise that we're ready to fulfil:
dreaming of the light on the hill.
They're counting up the votes across Australia,
And this time it seems the verdict is severe.
Swan, McEwen, Fadden, Dickson,
Bass, and Paterson, and Kingston...
But it's Oxley with the message, loud and clear:
"Bring us back our comfy bloody country.
Take us back to simple days of yore!
Nothing alien or scary,
La-di-dah or airey-fairy,
Just put it back the way it was before!"
But I still I dream
That the stars will be aligning
And our fates are intertwining
Until every heart is shining with goodwill.
I spent the day binging My Adventures with Superman and I do not regret a thing.
For the uninitiated, this is the newest animated incarnation of Superman, casting the hero as a fresh-faced twenty-two year old who’s just entering the adult and superhero world, along with his college roommate turned co-worker Jimmy Olsen and their fellow intern: the intrepid Lois Lane.
I’ve never been a big Superman fan. I didn’t see the point in him, or his story, because he’s traditionally just an American power fantasy. I did like his world of cardboard speech in the Justice League cartoon, but it’s not like they ever actually explored that scenario beyond the Justice Lords, so I didn’t give a damn. He’s big and powerful and good. Yay for him.
But this series is not about a big and powerful man. This series is about Clark Kent, who is scared and lonely and filled with so much love that it warms everyone around him.
It is the first Superman story that I have ever been invested in. And the first eighteen episodes were everything I needed right now.
The last two not so much but we’ll get to that.
So. Quick introductions: Clark Kent has spent the last ten years of his life trying desperately to hide and avoid his powers, because he knows he’s too powerful and could hurt people. He’s avoided having friends or being anything special, despite a penchant for saving cats from trees.
Then he went off to college and his roommate was Jimmy Olsen, who quietly noticed Clark was insanely powerful and trying to hide it and basically shelved that as a closet moment because dammit, he liked this guy and didn’t want to scare him off. (Seriously, Clark and Jimmy are such a beautiful metaphor and I adored everything about them from Clark’s ‘coming out’ to their friendship episode to the fact that none of that made Clark any less scared that Jimmy was secretly disgusted by him. Chef’s kiss, really) Jimmy is a conspiracy theory vlog streamer who never would have gotten off the ground if not for Superman becoming a thing, but his conspiracy theories are literally just facts about the DC Universe people haven’t learned yet.
When they enter the workforce after college, they meet Lois Lane, who is a whirlwind of an adventurous reporter that likes three things: adventure, the truth, and nice guys that can pick her up one-handed. She and Clark fall for each other very hard and very fast, but she falls in friend-love with Jimmy almost as quickly.
This series is about the three of them settling into their adult lives and relationships, with all the trouble that and a superpowered alien secret identity entails.
I love that this series is more about Lois and Jimmy as it is Clarke. I love that while the antagonists are always the bad guys, the biggest threat to Clark is his own head, and that Lois and Jimmy are the only ones who have had any success in saving him from it. I love the consistently positive masculinity on display, and the rejection of hatred, and that the only real issue between the three protagonists is that they don’t always have time to actually be there for each other, even though they work together. I love that even the Kents have screwed up as parents a little bit, and no one is perfect. I love that there is just this supertext of ‘yeah so?’ about accepting people for who and what they are.
The animation is lovely. The 2D CGI is still a little conspicuous, but it’s getting better all the time and we roll with it. The music was good (gonna have to search out the theme tune), the direction is clean and the episodes are so well paced. It’s really nice to have a superhero show that starts from the start and doesn’t have to be dark as hell.
Also, Jack Quaid did a goddamn fantastic job of voicing both Clark and Superman, so extra props there.
It legitimately made me laugh several times, and I actually clapped at a couple of the character lines.
These two. Just… these two:
But mostly, I just… I liked the stories.
This is a Superman story I want to watch. And I kept thinking that this makes some of the tropes of Superman mythos make more sense. Like… I just kept thinking that when he meets Batman / Bruce Wayne, of course Clark is going to be suspicious as hell. Half his enemies are rich tech bros who use super-powered armour and advanced technology to ‘protect people’. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne would one hundred percent agree with Waller and her crew because yeah, One Bad Day and all that. But honourary magical girl that he is, Clark would absolutely be able to win him over with his heart and goodness, after Batman had spent the better part of a week trying to beat the hell out of him. And I want to watch that story! For the first time, I want to watch a Batman/Superman crossover!
I liked the anvilicious immigration story, and the reminder of that great myth of goodness and greatness and home being where you make it. I loved that the Kryptonians had an empire that got out of hand, and that was what led to their downfall. I loved the tech bros as villains, and I have always loved Amanda Waller as an antagonist and character for a reason.
I adored that the story was about an insecure mess finding strength through love. That he’s insanely strong and powerful, but unconsciously weakens himself constantly because he doesn’t really want to fight and he definitely doesn’t want to hurt anyone. That he becomes stronger always by wanting to help and protect others.
I love Lois. She's such a bitch but so well-meaning. So many times I had to laugh at her being terrible, and just how real she felt. She was great. And Jimmy being such a good guy but so ridiculous. The vlog's arc was fantastic, along with Jimmy's second season arc.
But then they brought in Kara.
I wanted to like her. I really did. She’s well done, she’s well acted, she’s a good story, but…
It was too early for it. The world and show wasn't ready for that level of stakes, and so the quick and clean resolution feel horrifically cheap. And I really didn't like its impact on Jimmy's character - it felt like a weird deviation from his actual arc to suddenly give him a love interest.
Also while I thought the justification for it was very sweet, the ending to the Black Mercy bit was just eye-roll worthy. The whole thing just felt… ugh. Lois gets what she wants by stealing, breaking into buildings, and bulldozing her way through arguments, and occasionally throwing her golden retriever boyfriend at people. And Clark loves her and I respect her for it! She did not need to punch apart a literal ceiling for a satisfying end.
Honestly, thinking back on it, that whole bit felt like weird lip-service. Jimmy and Kara flirting felt like something you'd expect from a sidekick, and Lois becoming the one who protects her partner with punches felt like something from an old comic. Maybe it was. I don't know, it just felt wrong.
But overall, I really did enjoy my day on the couch, and I will watch the next season. It felt like a balm, and it was just good fun to watch.
I never thought I’d say it, but yeah. I really liked that Superman show.
So for the last year few months, I've been replaying Dragon Age, trying to find the enthusiasm to buy Veilguard. I may have found it, but it's not for a positive reason. It's literally just because I want to finish a job once I've started it. I'm certainly not enjoying myself here.
Which has been my reflection on this playthrough. I stop enjoying playing Dragon Age somewhere around Act 3 of DA2. So today I'm here to try and figure out why.
The usual recap: Dragon Age is a multimedia franchise of which I have been playing the games for the last fifteen-ish years. It was originally Dark Age fantasy with slow burn, in-depth world building, but morphed Marvel-style into classic chosen one manipulated by and required to challenge gods type storytelling.
There are four games in the series:
Dragon Age Origins
Dragon Age II (yes, we know it's original)
Dragon Age Inquisition
Dragon Age Veilguard
Veilguard came out last year and basically ended the franchise due to low sales and questionable choices, generally accepted to be because of executive meddling.
It's not necessarily the executive meddling that lost my interest, though it certainly didn't help. The simply fact is that I just don't like Inquisition, and the fact that Veilguard is carrying on Inquisition’s characters and story meant that I wasn’t invested.
I'm still not emotionally invested - if I get it next time it's on special, it's literally just because I need to finish the job.
Which is a crazy thing to think about a franchise which begins with literally my favourite game of all time.
But this time, when I was playing Inquisition, a side character verbalised a thought I’d been having: the protagonist in Origins is a bright spot in a dark time. Which really highlights the fact that the other two are doing jobs.
Now this is weird, because the theme of Origins is Sacrifice. You are literally a character forced into a job that will kill you, and your entire life is now about stopping the advance of Demon Plague. Being a Grey Warden is the most thankless job ever, even in a Blight. You go from place to place reminding people of their obligations and having to solve their problems so they will just do what they promised they’d do. If any of the three is there to do an actual job, it is the Origins protagonist.
But the Origins protagonist isn't just doing a job, and they become the Hero of Ferelden for damn good reason.
In fact, they're kind of a bad Grey Warden.
Well, no. By the mission statement, they are absolutely excellent at their job: they stop the Blight, and they do it faster and more efficiently than any of their predecessors.
But by job description, a Grey Warden is never supposed to get involved. If they see something not related to their mission, they are supposed to walk in the other direction. And this is where the protagonist of Origins fails to be a good Grey Warden.
By the way the game is constructed, it behoves the player to Get Involved. It’s all XP and/or extra equipment to the player, but to the protagonist, they are constantly stopping to talk to people, getting a bit of their life story, learning about their problem, going out of their way to help people, for very little benefit.
There are so many side quests in Origins that have absolutely nothing to do with the Blight, and everything to do with helping individuals with names and lives and backstories that you learn. Even when you’re literally just taking jobs off a board, you get a good two paragraphs detailing the reason this quest matters, and usually another hundred words in the codex about the situation.
The Hero of Ferelden helps people.
This is something you don’t get in the other games, even though you still kind of do the same things.
Hawke picks up random things and returns them to their owners, but if you get names and backstory, it’s rarely more than a sentence or two. You don't care, you're just doing a quick errand.
And don't get me wrong: this can be put down to the fact it’s Varric telling Cassandra a story and neither of them care about Hawke doing this. But it's still how the game is constructed: when you’re playing Hawke, you are not given any motivation to care about anyone but your friends, family, and politics.
In Origins, I care about the guy the Warden just walked up to in a chantry and gave a conscription notice. He has a name, he has a sister who warned him this was going to happen, and this whole situation sucks for him. I know this. I do not know anything about the guy Hawke just handed Wentworth’s Sixth Finger to, but he gave me twenty silver so cool.
The Inquisitor meets lots of random people too, and does stuff for them, but the framing of the gameplay and how these events occur remind you that everything the Inquisitor does is to bolster the power of the Inquisition. They gain allies and propaganda fodder. That is what they’re doing when they help people. And they will never speak to any of those people again, even if they hire them as agents.
Because in Inquisition, people don’t matter – factions matter. Even the character ostensibly focussed on helping ‘the little guy’ actually only cares about them as a group of people. She doesn’t know or care about their names or why they do what they do, just that they’re working class and crushed underfoot. They represent something to her, and that's all they're supposed to be for you, too: a mission to achieve.
This playthrough, I realised that this evolution actually begins in Awakening, which is DLC for Origins. Awakening still had you run around and get involved with individuals, but it’s framed by this narrative that you are acting as Commander of the Grey, bolstering your lands for the honour of the Grey Wardens. You aren’t just doing it to help people, you’re doing it because you have to.
And so I like it a lot less. I enjoy it a lot less.
Starting with Awakening, I begin feeling like I’m checking off tasks because it's my job as the leader of a city. By the time of Inquisition, I am a politician doing the rounds so that people will die for me.
I always get emotional watching Origins' badly aged cutscenes of war and death. The characters have no names, but we see them with families, friends; we seem them be scared and show courage or determination. The guy who almost runs when he sees Darkspawn, but is stopped by the guy behind him. I’m always caught by that scene.
In Inquisition, I look at nameless generic soldiers getting killed by rocks and think about how their leader has no idea who any of them are, but will probably make some big speech about how sad and noble their sacrifice was.
And I am playing that leader.
And honestly, that’s how Dragon Age lost me: I stopped admiring the protagonist.
I can vividly remember, my first time playing Inquisition, I’d been going through it, feeling a little uncomfy but not sure why. I thought maybe I just wasn’t vibing with the gameplay or companions, or maybe I picked the wrong class, or something… and then I hit the Emerald Graves.
Now, I love exploring in Inquisition. I hate the crappy jump mechanics, but I love exploring and hiking around. What I didn’t realise until the Emerald Graves was that I felt weird planting my flag all over the place. It's just a game mechanic, a way to get more lore, it shouldn't matter, right?
And then I reached the place where the elves made their last stand.
The Emerald Graves is a beautiful forest, filled with trees, and we know from Origins that elves plant trees over their graves, and so we know the off-the-cuff line about how “they say every tree marks a fallen soldier” is probably true.
And there’s a bit in it that is an honour garden, and the game has you plant a flag on like eight different trees, getting stories about legendary heroes.
Elven graves. We’re just running around planting our flag on people’s graves.
It’s just a gameplay mechanic. The low-key canon protagonist of Inquisition is an elf. It doesn’t have to mean anything.
But that is the moment I realised just how much I disliked the Inquisitor.
This arrogant, self-absorbed, self-pitying politician.
Gameplay builds your character. In my mind, the actions you take to one hundred percent a game tell you what that character is really like.
To 100% Origins, you go out of your way to meet and know a dozen inconsequential people on your way to save the world from a problem you and your companions didn’t start.
To 100% DA2, you make a lot of money and flirt with a bunch of different people while trying to keep your friends and family safe, while two-thirds of those friends are planning wars.
To 100% Inquisition, you stamp your flag on and desecrate two lost civilisations and then ruin the fantasy their survivors have of their history, denying them the cultures they have built out of the ashes, because one of your companions made a mistake he couldn’t undo alone.
I just... don't enjoy that. Personally.
Part of this is an evolution of gaming – we’re all cynical these days and it’s almost impossible to find a game with an actual heroic character that isn’t made by Nintendo or features some kind of fuzzy animal.
But I would like one.
Real life is hard and depressing enough. Can I please have a protagonist saving the world in a way I feel good about, please?
So for the last year few months, I've been replaying Dragon Age, trying to find the enthusiasm to buy Veilguard. I may have found it, but it's not for a positive reason. It's literally just because I want to finish a job once I've started it. I'm certainly not enjoying myself here.
Which has been my reflection on this playthrough. I stop enjoying playing Dragon Age somewhere around Act 3 of DA2. So today I'm here to try and figure out why.
The usual recap: Dragon Age is a multimedia franchise of which I have been playing the games for the last fifteen-ish years. It was originally Dark Age fantasy with slow burn, in-depth world building, but morphed Marvel-style into classic chosen one manipulated by and required to challenge gods type storytelling.
There are four games in the series:
Dragon Age Origins
Dragon Age II (yes, we know it's original)
Dragon Age Inquisition
Dragon Age Veilguard
Veilguard came out last year and basically ended the franchise due to low sales and questionable choices, generally accepted to be because of executive meddling.
It's not necessarily the executive meddling that lost my interest, though it certainly didn't help. The simply fact is that I just don't like Inquisition, and the fact that Veilguard is carrying on Inquisition’s characters and story meant that I wasn’t invested.
I'm still not emotionally invested - if I get it next time it's on special, it's literally just because I need to finish the job.
Which is a crazy thing to think about a franchise which begins with literally my favourite game of all time.
But this time, when I was playing Inquisition, a side character verbalised a thought I’d been having: the protagonist in Origins is a bright spot in a dark time. Which really highlights the fact that the other two are doing jobs.
Now this is weird, because the theme of Origins is Sacrifice. You are literally a character forced into a job that will kill you, and your entire life is now about stopping the advance of Demon Plague. Being a Grey Warden is the most thankless job ever, even in a Blight. You go from place to place reminding people of their obligations and having to solve their problems so they will just do what they promised they’d do. If any of the three is there to do an actual job, it is the Origins protagonist.
But the Origins protagonist isn't just doing a job, and they become the Hero of Ferelden for damn good reason.
In fact, they're kind of a bad Grey Warden.
Well, no. By the mission statement, they are absolutely excellent at their job: they stop the Blight, and they do it faster and more efficiently than any of their predecessors.
But by job description, a Grey Warden is never supposed to get involved. If they see something not related to their mission, they are supposed to walk in the other direction. And this is where the protagonist of Origins fails to be a good Grey Warden.
By the way the game is constructed, it behoves the player to Get Involved. It’s all XP and/or extra equipment to the player, but to the protagonist, they are constantly stopping to talk to people, getting a bit of their life story, learning about their problem, going out of their way to help people, for very little benefit.
There are so many side quests in Origins that have absolutely nothing to do with the Blight, and everything to do with helping individuals with names and lives and backstories that you learn. Even when you’re literally just taking jobs off a board, you get a good two paragraphs detailing the reason this quest matters, and usually another hundred words in the codex about the situation.
The Hero of Ferelden helps people.
This is something you don’t get in the other games, even though you still kind of do the same things.
Hawke picks up random things and returns them to their owners, but if you get names and backstory, it’s rarely more than a sentence or two. You don't care, you're just doing a quick errand.
And don't get me wrong: this can be put down to the fact it’s Varric telling Cassandra a story and neither of them care about Hawke doing this. But it's still how the game is constructed: when you’re playing Hawke, you are not given any motivation to care about anyone but your friends, family, and politics.
In Origins, I care about the guy the Warden just walked up to in a chantry and gave a conscription notice. He has a name, he has a sister who warned him this was going to happen, and this whole situation sucks for him. I know this. I do not know anything about the guy Hawke just handed Wentworth’s Sixth Finger to, but he gave me twenty silver so cool.
The Inquisitor meets lots of random people too, and does stuff for them, but the framing of the gameplay and how these events occur remind you that everything the Inquisitor does is to bolster the power of the Inquisition. They gain allies and propaganda fodder. That is what they’re doing when they help people. And they will never speak to any of those people again, even if they hire them as agents.
Because in Inquisition, people don’t matter – factions matter. Even the character ostensibly focussed on helping ‘the little guy’ actually only cares about them as a group of people. She doesn’t know or care about their names or why they do what they do, just that they’re working class and crushed underfoot. They represent something to her, and that's all they're supposed to be for you, too: a mission to achieve.
This playthrough, I realised that this evolution actually begins in Awakening, which is DLC for Origins. Awakening still had you run around and get involved with individuals, but it’s framed by this narrative that you are acting as Commander of the Grey, bolstering your lands for the honour of the Grey Wardens. You aren’t just doing it to help people, you’re doing it because you have to.
And so I like it a lot less. I enjoy it a lot less.
Starting with Awakening, I begin feeling like I’m checking off tasks because it's my job as the leader of a city. By the time of Inquisition, I am a politician doing the rounds so that people will die for me.
I always get emotional watching Origins' badly aged cutscenes of war and death. The characters have no names, but we see them with families, friends; we seem them be scared and show courage or determination. The guy who almost runs when he sees Darkspawn, but is stopped by the guy behind him. I’m always caught by that scene.
In Inquisition, I look at nameless generic soldiers getting killed by rocks and think about how their leader has no idea who any of them are, but will probably make some big speech about how sad and noble their sacrifice was.
And I am playing that leader.
And honestly, that’s how Dragon Age lost me: I stopped admiring the protagonist.
I can vividly remember, my first time playing Inquisition, I’d been going through it, feeling a little uncomfy but not sure why. I thought maybe I just wasn’t vibing with the gameplay or companions, or maybe I picked the wrong class, or something… and then I hit the Emerald Graves.
Now, I love exploring in Inquisition. I hate the crappy jump mechanics, but I love exploring and hiking around. What I didn’t realise until the Emerald Graves was that I felt weird planting my flag all over the place. It's just a game mechanic, a way to get more lore, it shouldn't matter, right?
And then I reached the place where the elves made their last stand.
The Emerald Graves is a beautiful forest, filled with trees, and we know from Origins that elves plant trees over their graves, and so we know the off-the-cuff line about how “they say every tree marks a fallen soldier” is probably true.
And there’s a bit in it that is an honour garden, and the game has you plant a flag on like eight different trees, getting stories about legendary heroes.
Elven graves. We’re just running around planting our flag on people’s graves.
It’s just a gameplay mechanic. The low-key canon protagonist of Inquisition is an elf. It doesn’t have to mean anything.
But that is the moment I realised just how much I disliked the Inquisitor.
This arrogant, self-absorbed, self-pitying politician.
Gameplay builds your character. In my mind, the actions you take to one hundred percent a game tell you what that character is really like.
To 100% Origins, you go out of your way to meet and know a dozen inconsequential people on your way to save the world from a problem you and your companions didn’t start.
To 100% DA2, you make a lot of money and flirt with a bunch of different people while trying to keep your friends and family safe, while two-thirds of those friends are planning wars.
To 100% Inquisition, you stamp your flag on and desecrate two lost civilisations and then ruin the fantasy their survivors have of their history, denying them the cultures they have built out of the ashes, because one of your companions made a mistake he couldn’t undo alone.
I just... don't enjoy that. Personally.
Part of this is an evolution of gaming – we’re all cynical these days and it’s almost impossible to find a game with an actual heroic character that isn’t made by Nintendo or features some kind of fuzzy animal.
But I would like one.
Real life is hard and depressing enough. Can I please have a protagonist saving the world in a way I feel good about, please?
Quick overview for the uninitiated: Delicious in Dungeon (or Dungeon Meshi) is an anime following a small group of adventurers in a vaguely first-edition Dungeons and Dragons setting (except also very much not DnD, despite the pun) as they attempt to find one of their lost party members. To ensure they survive without money, and to indulge a kink of their leader, they resort to hunting the monsters of the dungeon for food. The show is very heavily influenced, to the point of affectionate parody, by cooking anime, with stillshots of the final meals and the original manga including mock-recipe and nutrient maps on said stillshots.
I didn’t watch it for several months because Tumblr’s manga community had presented the show as being one of those shows where everyone is queer and neurodivergent and it’s all about their struggles and love conquering all and I was just like “that’s cool, you have fun, kids”. I can't remember why I decided to watch it - I think I saw a Netflix trailer and decided I was bored enough to try it. But it is not that.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. Two characters are almost definitely autistic, one of whom is probably a lesbian, and the closest thing she has to a love interest is maybe bisexual, but honestly, despite being fifty years old, she’s probably too young to really know. Half-elves, man, they’re problematic. But none of that is the point of the show. In fact, it's mostly entirely platonic the whole way through. At most, the show is about self-acceptance, personal sacrifice, and the difference between what you want and what you need.
Also good nutrition.
There are a few things I love about it, one of which is my personal kink, which is worldbuilding and poking at the strangeness of a world until it makes sense. The characters are products of their environments and backgrounds, with prejudices and conceits that make sense to not only their backstories but also their respective ages (which is further problematised by their varying maturity rates and race profiles). The world itself is an evolving character, created by a flawed and (I suspect, haven’t finished the manga yet) sympathetic villain. It’s so juicy and good.
I also love (most of) the characters themselves and how they interact. With my favourite, of course, being the emotionally repressed father of three that looks like a fourteen year old kid.
Chilchuck is everything I love about the series in one character. He’s so complicated. He’s a half-foot, which is the equivalent of a halfling, and therefore always looks very young and cute, to the point that even half of the main characters see him as a child. However, because half-foots are the shortest lived race, he’s actually the equivalent of a fifty-something. Add to this that half-foots do legitimately seem to use teen vernacular out of habit, no matter how goddamn done they are with these frikking kids around them. Add to this that he became a married father of two when he was still the equivalent of a teenager, was immediately thrust into a toxic work environment where he was confronted with the fact his whole race is mostly considered greedy scum-sucking thieves at least positive and outright monster-bait at most positive…! ADD TO THIS that he is a self-sacrificing idiot that would rather the whole world—including his family—think he’s a vile, narcissistic, cheating coward than admit even to himself that he just can’t handle seeing people he cares about hurt and is trying to keep them out of trouble the only way he can.
And he’s the main character with probably the least amount of screentime, it absolutely kills me!
There are a few things I don’t love, however.
I don’t love Senshi. The dwarf hermit that enables the story by being an essentially dungeon-native with a love of cooking. The story starts off with him being the all-knowing, down-to-earth, reliable old man, which rubbed me the wrong way because he was also stubborn and self-righteous and the story seemed to be entirely on his side. But in the story’s defence, it does poke and prod at him, and showcase his prejudices, but at the end of the first season (and I think halfway through the story) I still mostly just tolerate him.
I watched in English, and… look. Look.
This is one of the few examples where I think subs not dubs might have worked in its favour.
Normally I don’t agree with that, because dubbers are not given nearly enough credit for their skills. Voice acting is hard, and dubbing even more so. Also, while the Japanese actors may be very good, they are not infallible. Sometimes, the reason you think they’re incredible is because you don’t understand what they’re saying and so can’t tell whether they’re good actors or not.
BUT. In this specific case. I think that last point might have helped.
Because there are long stretches of exposition and cooking narration in this series, told in quite monotone, matter-of-fact ways which are perfect for the character and tone of the series but are not actually that entertaining to listen to. And so I suspect that hiding behind another language may have really helped mask that. There are things that work in written form that just don’t in audio.
I wish the series could spend a bit more time poking at its characters. Especially Chilchuck. Seriously, this man’s instinct when confronted with his own good qualities is to stop moving. I love it so much. Marcille, the half-elf, is interesting to me because of her unique growth rate. Half-elves live to be a thousand, and she’s only fifty. She was still a toddler at thirteen. She thinks of herself as an adult. She sees the twenty-something tall-men (humans) as young teens. As the series goes on, she seems increasingly more like a seventeen year old to me. I want to know how much of that is intentional.
The actual main character, Laios… I want to understand his head more. It’s hard, because he’s clearly autistic and canonically struggles with other people’s feelings, and self-reflection, so in many ways I think he legitimately is as simple as he seems. But because of that, he’s one of the few prophesised kings/chosen ones that I find myself… not rooting for. His instincts entirely revolve around monsters, he doesn’t get humans, and I just… can’t see that working out for a king long-term without some serious infrastructure and look at me getting all political world-building again and I’m just not invested enough in Laios to explore it myself, so I want to see it happen in-series.
But it’s generally so good. If you’ll forgive the pun, it’s meaty and tasty and it’s so good. I think it’s what I needed. Unfortunately, the fandom isn’t what I wanted it to be, so I don't know how much fun I'll have with it outside canon, but I’ll be honest, that’s pretty appropriate for this series.
Sometimes, it’s not about what you want.
Sometimes, you just need to chew on what you need, and keep looking for what you want next.
Probably a good life lesson, all things considered.
Because dammit, I need to smile today and no one makes me smile more than these people.
Oxventure is an amazing group of people that play tabletop roleplaying games on youtube and spotify. They are Chaotic Good in the best way possible.
And I think we all need more chaotic good in our lives today.
Okay, first off, I must show my colours: I have been watching their parent channel Outside Xbox almost since it began, and they are actually why I got a Youtube Premium account (Youtube, you owe these people more than 2/3rds of my subscription). They are my background noise. So obviously I'm biased, but this post is about the Oxventure channel and why I love it.
Lately, they've been marketing themselves as an actual play channel, technically rivalling Critical Role, but I don't like to think of them like that. To me, Oxventure is more storytelling improv that happens to use tabletop mechanics as a prop. And the reason that's an important distinction is because Oxventure is at its best when it's being silly.
So. Some background.
Oxventure is, in alphabetical order, Andy, Ellen, Jane, Johnny, Luke, and Mike, and a host of guests when they feel the need. It began as a one-off milestone celebration on Outside Xbox where everyone but Mike (he had a Car Thing) played Dungeons and Dragons--most of them for literally the first time--on camera. Since then, it has expanded into its own channel with six series of varying prominence and many one-shots.
If you want to see them at their most condensed and I would argue truest form, I recommend DnD but everyone is a Kobold.
Their shows can run the full gambit from silly (the kobold shows) to high adventure (Oxventure Blades in the Dark) to wholesome (Tea-Time Adventures) to absurd (DnD but it's Pokemon) to emotional body-slams (Oxventure Deadlands) to quietly creepy (Oxventure Wyrdwood). But at its core, whatever series you're watching, Oxventure is about friends gathering together to have fun as they make their way in a world that seems a bit insane.
The original game/series/what have you is The Oxventurers Guild, which remains my favourite. Their motto (seen in Latin above) is "Everyone Should Have Thought Of Everything", meaning that they have a habit of just diving into things without thinking and then being shocked Pikachus when the consequences arrive.
The characters (and world) are a mess, but the thing that was most wonderful is that the group were learning how to play DnD on screen. They screwed up the rules, they lost dice, they forgot about feats... a running gag is that Mike, playing a paladin, has only the loosest concept of his own abilities and will randomly read his character sheet to discover something that would have been useful last session. Meanwhile Ellen made arguably the most powerful character, with what should have been one of the most powerful spells, and yet was the first knocked out in their PVP session because of a few unlucky rolls.
Johnny is an amazing first-time DM, too, because they just... let the group play. They run with the rules until the rules stop being fun. And that's what makes Oxventure so enjoyable for me.
I remember trying to watch a few Actual Plays after the first episode of Oxventure, and I can remember the exact moment I checked out. It was when a player made a joke, and the DM gave her a very direct Look and firmly informed her that if she didn't immediately take it back, there would be mechanical consequences.
Compare and contrast Johnny, whose attempt to show the Oxventurers Actions Have Consequences nearly ended with a bunch of evil skeletons realising that actually, they didn't realise how hard it was to avoid evil consequences so maybe they should cut the players some slack and stop giving such horrible consequence - wait! No! Bad bosses no make skeletons behave!
(We love the Sixty Skeletons, Flaming Skull Foreman, and Skeleton Donkey) (don't ask) (it only kind of makes sense in context)
But that's not all on Johnny - a lot of it comes down to the beautiful muppets that are the original players, and specifically Andy, Jane, and Mike, who have been a chaotic force of good online since they joined together to form Outside Xbox in 2009.
These three, and by extension all of Oxventure, are a little silly, always snarky, incredibly good at what they do but always beset by terrible luck and worse technology. They are also incredibly well-meaning (and hilarious) even when they're actively trying to be horrible (unrelated to this post but PLEASE watch their Hitman videos for further proof of this). And that carries through to their characters, who can be card carrying evil and yet still care so deeply about their friends that you can't help but love them.
An example of their chaotic competence is in an episode of their latest series Wyrdwood. There was a short of Johnny and Producer Zack talking about how Wyrdwood is a very creepy series starring the human equivalent of the Muppets, which is so true, but I would like to draw attention to a specific moment to prove my point:
In this particular episode, Johnny has created a truly terrifying scenario: trapped in mist with music playing beyond their hearing, the team are being picked off one by one despite specific measures to the contrary, until the characters played by the Oxbox trio are alone in oppressive danger. Things look dire. They know they're in trouble and helpless. It's only a matter of time before they're all gone.
They promptly spend the next five minutes flailing, yelling at each other, completely ruin Johnny's nefarious trap, locate their friends, and set themselves up to win the whole day while seemingly focussed entirely on figuring out which of them should be blamed for screwing up.
Even Johnny doesn't seem to know whether to be offended their whole scary vibe was just destroyed or impressed by how effortless the trio made it look, and I feel like that's the correct response.
And I think that's what I love about this series, and these people. They give me a kind of... exasperated hope for all of us.
I have to admit, when I first heard about Wyrdwood and saw the art, I was worried, because I thought Oxventure were going serious. But then, only a few minutes into the first episode, Jane uttered the immortal words 'Luck Pervert' to describe Luke's newest character and I knew we'd be fine.
These people are silly. They tell silly stories.
But they are stories about love, and friendship, and trying even against impossible odds, and making tough choices, and growing as people. All while you and the world around you are a complete mess and everything seems insane. You can still be better, and make the world better, even if it seems like you're just making more of a mess right now.
You watch, and you cringe, and you sigh and call them all 'absolute muppets', and then you cheer as they come up with some insane plan that shouldn't work and yet always, somehow, without rhyme, reason, or explanation... works.
They are silly, and they are heartfelt, and I suspect I will binge-watch the entire channel all over again this Christmas break.
Because while the Oxventurers' motto may be "Everyone should have thought of everything", the fact is no one has. So just go with what you've got.
