Invisigal in my eyes is literally a predator for the forced kiss she does on Robert in the locker room and literally everything else she does to him.
And I’m not saying you can’t still like Invisigal. I’m just saying I don’t comprehend why anyone would, and I truly have no interest in hearing any arguments in defense of her.
And with harassment being on her criminal record, yk what? Sure! Give us a story about someone with that kinda dark past truly learning from their mistakes and wanting to become better. But goddamn I don’t think that’s what the creators of the game really envisioned and certainly didn’t achieve with Invisigal.
"So it's okay when Flambae is an asshole to Robert, but not when Visi is?"
Whenever Flambae is an asshole to Robert, it's portrayed as him being just that: An asshole. The game never tries to justify it when he goes too far. There's no guilt-tripping Robert/the player whenever they push back. With Visi, fighting back against her in any way immediately gives you a penalty by making it less likely to get her good ending. Because it supposedly shows that you don't believe in her. Her insults and her physically assaulting Robert are played entirely for laughs. It's just to add to her being a quirky Bad Girl that the player is supposed to find funny for her out of pocket comments and desirable because of her dangerous edge.
Flambae's actions almost always have immediate consequences. When he picks a fight with Robert/Mecha Man in the Crypto Night, he's ridiculed, then loses either a tooth or his eyebrows when he tries to escalate things to a physical brawl. When he bullies Water Boy and brushes off Robert rightfully calling him out for his shitty behavior, he gets clocked in the face with trash and is denied payback by Blazer showing up at just the right moment. If Robert tells the Z-Team he's Mecha Man and Flambae tries to attack him, he's blocked by Golem, then has his flames put out in a humiliating manner by either Malevola or Water Boy. There's no such thing for Visi. Any consequences she suffers are revoked almost right after she suffers them. Sometimes the game actively pressures you into saving her from the consequences of her own actions because you wouldn't want her to become a villain again, would you? Flambae is treated like an adult and suffering the logical ramifications whenever he fucks up. Visi is treated like a teenager who doesn't know any better, even though she's just as much of an adult as the rest of the Z-Team.
The context behind Flambae's animosity serves to add to him as a character. The reason he hates Mecha Man is because Mecha Man permanently maimed him during their last confrontation. Before knowing that Robert is Mecha Man, he still behaves antagonistic toward him, but unless directly provoked never actively murderous. We also see that there might be more underneath the jerk-facade when he helps Robert in the gym. Yeah, he's being a dick about it, but he has a point that Robert shouldn't train without a spotter, especially when doing something as potentially dangerous as weightlifting. When he finds out Robert is Mecha Man, he's furious, sure, but after he takes some time to cool off he largely gets over it. The most he does is punch Robert in the face once. And he even shows some awareness that attacking Robert wasn't right when later, during the boardroom meeting, he acknowledges that the Z-Team could very well have kicked him for this but chose to give him a second chance and let him stay. Visi's backstory reveal only makes her behavior look worse. She's the one who blew up the Mecha Man armor, almost killing Robert, and she supposedly quit the Red Ring and joined the Phoenix Program out of shame and a desire to repent. Plus, she knows Robert is Mecha Man from the start. But with that added context, her malicious behavior only looks worse because she's acting like this towards the guy whose life she ruined. If she feels so sorry for what she did, then why does she feel the need to insult Robert at every turn, violently assault him whenever she feels like it and make his job harder by being just the worst hero in his roster?
I feel the "Invisigal SA'ed Robert" discourse that floated around on tiktok and twitter stems from a very watsonian reading of characters' actions and really unfairly acts as if the many brushed over moments of crossed boundaries and lowkey sexual harassment & assault in the game are actual features instead of bugs of the game from a writing team that has questionable view on sexual harassment as a writing device.
I've seen so many people say they dislike Invisigal because she sexually assaulted Robert in that locker scene, which is what happened, but I feel like that misses the crucial part of how what she did was not and never was intended to be that. It supposed to romantic, the crescendo of her ongoing character arc, a show of how Courtney is still conflicted, jaded, and bad at emotions but still wants to show she cares about Robert and therefore redemption despite being kicked off. She wanted her love to be known but not judged, and honestly it's quite impactful to see Courtney taking the cautious first steps of being vulnerable.
But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this scene actually is romantic and that the writers succeeded in conveying this. The big red flag that goes off when you see this is unignorable and it weakens, if not destroys, the original reading of the scene. but still the take away from this scene was obviously not supposed to be 'Invisigal is predator' and her coming off as that is an consequence of a writing team who plays extremely fast and lose with sexual assault and doesn't give it the respect it deserves.
Same thing with Malevola, I've seen some many say 'I like her and she's pretty cool, but she sexually assaulted Robert in that one scene so idk,' ignoring the fact that scene is so obviously not intended as that and the flaw here is not the character but the author who is puppeting them to act out their sexual harassment comedy. Obligatory characters are not real and autonomous and it's just as important to understand doylistically why that act as they do as watsonian as to not end up misnterpreting the authors purpose and therefore the story.
(also mandatory disclaimer, you can still dislike these characters even if you know these scene aren't supposed to be characterization moments. Unintended flaws are still flaws and still will rightfully impact your understanding of a character. Truly if your icked out by these characters it's the fault of the writers for forgetting that their characters' actions characterize them and you probably shouldn't make characters you're supposed to like grope their coworkers)
Ultimately, It's frustrating that these conversations have never went past heated rants directed at pixels instead of truly digging deep on why this happened. Nobody really wants to have an earnest conversation about (male) sexual assault, and it's depictions in media. We just all hate invisigal. That's the only point here and it is so frustratingly surface level and stupid.
and ngl? it's very telling that people have preferred to direct all their criticisms at the fictional women who can't defend herself instead of even an ounce of it at ADHOC who wrote her to be that way.
Thoughts on Dispatch? Even though embarrassingly I liked the game, I do have to agree that some of their writing decisions were not...great.... Especially with how the Black female characters get treated both by the game and the fandom.
Oof okay.
In case this isn't clear, DISPATCH SPOILERS under cut.
So I watched my partner play through Dispatch as every set of chapters dropped. I very much enjoyed the first chapter, and I actually had high hopes that it would really be an interesting game. It started in the LA area and seemed like it would be a great game to discuss the "legacy mentality" that often leads people into danger and forsaking the lives their predecessors fought for.
I remember thinking that the detail of Prism being a black woman from Flint, Michigan was very intentional and would surely be brought up later. Surely. Surely they would discuss the water cri-
Anyways, I didn't have an issue with the first few chapters. Sort of.
I did not like Invisigal from the moment she was introduced and she said that Robert had a "dad bod" despite the man looking like he eats half a meal a day. Especially since she's older than him, which reminds me, her age was weird to me too. She's 27...which doesn't make any sense given her personality and also general appearance. But what if, let's say she was...17? All of a sudden her personality makes more sense. All of her sudden her "neglected" ending could have a stronger context, and her entire relationship with Robert becomes recontextualized. But there's no way they aged her up 10 years to make her legal to lewd out the way they do in the game, but didn't change any of her original writing. No, this is purely conjecture. Pure. Conjecture.
A lot of my initial shock began with the "illusion of choice" mechanic they rolled out. When my partner played, the first time we saw the horror of this in full effect was when we were forced to choose between Sonar and Coupe. Of course we thought that, surely, saying nothing would be a choice in itself. This is Robert telling Blonde Blazer that he won't give up on his team. This lack of choice will mean something.
And then Sonar went bye-bye.
I don't like MoistCritikal in any capacity so it was nice not to hear his voice for a while. But obviously we were shocked. The game just made the choice for us,,,and we would soon realize that's actually what the whole game is about; having a very OBVIOUS CANON it wants you to follow and punishing you for not following it. I'm aware of the notion that this is a classic "Telltale" phenomenon. I hate it.
The dispatching was probably the best part, but it didn't really matter. Nothing mattered except Invisigal who we could not escape. The choices involving her were always weird because there was no variety in them. You could never just outright tell her to "fuck off". I think that's just poor gameplay design in general. At minimum if you're going to have a variety in dialogue, there should be a positive option and a negative option, maybe even the neutral option. Every choice was bare minimum intrigue to whatever she was saying. I had no idea that scene of her at the beginning of the 4th episode was supposed to make everyone's brains leak out of their heads because it had no effect on me, and I'm a lesbian.
I think most of my critique can certainly fall over Invisigal. She was whiny and immature, constantly complaining about her powers being "villainous" while being on a team with a literal demon and a construct that was built solely to steal things. I did not like that her best friend was that construct, the youngest on the team and the one with the LEAST mental maturity. We were able to avoid most of the sexual assault scenes, but their existence is downright absurd. I know Berleezy was horrified, especially since he had already gone down the Blond Blazer route. We spent so much time on her and it did nothing. We chose to untie her in the end and have her fight in the final battle and she still became a villain because we neglected to let her have her way with us ig. We got Sonar back but who cares when Invisigal abandoned us.
Also I really take offense to the blatant ableism of the series. This notion of disabled people siding with a villain that enhances their bodies,,,don't like it. I'm asthmatic myself so as you can imagine I was especially irritated with Invisigal's reasoning and her ridiculous choices. Also, in spite of this message, there's several scenes where Robert and Invisigal brutally break the arms of that guy who's arms were disproportionate to his body and it just...put a bad taste in my mouth. Our girlfriend agreed it was just another example of performatively trying to make a point that they can't even hold up to.
Annnnnd let's see. Yea, the queerbaiting was tragic. We get one male kiss and it's clearly meant to be "haha look this alien doesn't understand humans so he does a gay thing. being gay is basically like being an alien" and I don't understand how people don't get that. This is elementary shit. Flambae says he's gay in like one vague dialogue choice, and while I think his sexuality could also be alluded to given his friendship with Prism, it's not enough. I have higher standards. I think it could have been really easy actually, to have two male love interests and two female love interests; Flambae/Invisigal and Blonde Blazer/Waterboy. Hell throw in Phenomenoman (or however tf you spell his name) and Prism.
But they chose not to. Instead they baited queer fans in their discord server with the tantalizing promise of representation just to not deliver. The Devs suck ass for that.
Last and certainly not least, the racism.
Immediately, I was very turned off by the fact this game predominantly took place in LA and we have no real Hispanic characters. Like, have you ever been to LA? Kind of hard to ignore.
Invisigal is racially ambiguous, don't like that. I know her name is Courtney but her concept art shows her with all these "vaguely east asian downright orientalist" dragon tattoos so I have no idea where they were going with her. All of their original names are terrible, and very white.
Flambae is...confused. He's from Afghanistan but speaks with a Spanish accent because he grew up in Spain, and his name was Chad. His original concept art was also white soooo that checks out.
Did not like how they handled the black characters. The Nicki Mirage joke? Funny! Prism has a split dye bob that's pink and blue, she's a pop star! That shit was funny! But then his white ass had to keep going and call her Cardi C...yea they always overdo it. Chase was, very disappointing. A male mammy to this dumb ass lil white boy, who ends up near comatose thanks to Invisigal's dumb ass, and this is after she assaulted him because he, rightfully, called her out on her bullshit. Most of his dialogue was just...very repetitive and didn't have much substance. Coupe was aggressive and antagonistic because of course, what else would black women be? Blonde Blazer was just cutely racist and we had to skip over that. And of course Royd is Caribbean so he has to be dumb, not really but yes he does. Big dumb guy, no social boundaries. Very original for sure. Great job guys, I think we got all the stereotypes covered!
All this to say that...
The game sucked. 0/10.
Edit: Robert’s age is estimated to be in his early 30s. I still don’t agree with him having a “dad bod” or the concept of him neglecting another grown ass woman.
I don't like how SOME people speak on Blonde Blazer, Prism, and Coupe.
Especially when Dispatch has just come out, the hate I saw on them is abhorrent.
Let's start with Blonde Blazer. She's your boss and one of your love interests, the other being Invisigal. A lot of people pick Visi and good on you if you do. You have your reasons for picking her, right? My problem is that a lot of people assume BB to be a secret villain which is weird because you have the option to romance an ex-villain who still needs to work out her problems.
They argue that BB leads you on (I have no comment on that but I never viewed it that way) plus, both her and Robert are drunk. You get the option to kiss her but she pulls away, apologizing for his mistake. Another argument is her breaking up with Phenomaman and I could understand what they're getting out but there are comics that came along with the deluxe. In her comic, it explains the reason why she broke up with him. It's because Phenomaman didn't see her as Mandy and only wanted Blonde Blazer. She wants to retire one day while he wants to keep fighting as a hero; two different ideals clashing.
Other than that, she's a good friend to Robert. She gave him his job, helped and saved him on multiple occasions. Even if you choose to put a pin in your relationship or you want to go on another date, she tells you to have a good shift. She walks away with a smile, she doesn't mind one bit! She's mature and kids with a heart of gold but we got people theorizing that Shroud is her father. I hope not because the way he is obsessed with her creeps me out. He respects her as an actual, true superhero but I just don't like the way he talks about her. And some of them say they'll still pick Visi even if she's a villain? Bro?
Moving on to the only Black members of the Z-Team, Prism and Coupe. I'm convinced we got Klan niggas in the fandom because you're hypocritical for hating on Prism. Saying she's aggressive but Visi PUNCHES YOU AND SOMETIMES OTHERS. AND SHE'S YOUR LOVE INTEREST?! This entire team are ex-villains, of course they're still going to be violent.
As of Coupe? It's just putting her against Sonar. I like both of them but when I learned Sonar was voiced by the big Moist himself? I knew Coupe was cooked. Fought tooth and nail to find YouTubers that keep her around. And SOME Sonar fans act weird if you keep Coupe around. "Where's Sonar?" "Why didn't you keep Sonar?" You got your reasons for keeping Sonar, people have theirs for keeping Coupe. With the interrogation scene in EP 7, they say Coupe acts out of character but it's very much in character! If you keep her around, you get to see she's a dork behind that exterior. A beautiful, murderous dork.
Unrelated but seeing Phenomaman made me realize we're getting the Invincible mfs. This is coming from an Invincible mf myself. I'm so glad he turned out to be a depressed Starfire.
Blonde Blazer's insecurity about her secret identity and the reveal during her date with Robert would've been 1000x better/more impactful if Mandy was chubby. Weight is a super normal thing for someone to be insecure about and the pressure to look a certain way has gotta be intense for a superhero, especially as the face of a major company.
Of course anything would've been better than finding out she's insecure about being a skinny, conventionally attractive, brunette woman who's an average height. I'm surprised her eyes didn't go from blue to brown.
I don’t think people would hate invisagal as much if the writers show the bullshit she does to Robert is actually kinda bad and not just silly hee hee hoo ha whoopsie daisy HR violations
Robert Robertson is genuinely the most bland boring man I’ve ever seen in the entirety of fiction, behind the viewer insert boy characters in those harem animes. he looks so disinterested about his own life, so I’m wondering how ya’ll are more interested in him than he himself. maybe I’d like him if he didn’t let the Z List Team step all over him like he’s a dirtied old rotting mat, but he has no spine which honestly makes it worse. don’t say “he’s so bland to the point he’s interesting” because i know that’s not it. Is it his scraggly voice? his raspy throat infectious voice? in which he sounds like he’s in psychic pain if he raises his voice an octave higher? and I can’t blame you Aaron Paul is a beautiful sounding guy but there’s only so much he can do with this brunette wet soggy excuse of a man
