Verner Vogel thoughts...

verner vogel is such a great villain. like yes, a good character in general, but agh what a fantastic villain.  let me try and parse it into words and coherent sentences hang on.  (obviously, spoilers for the game “Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One” below)

the "dork"ening

whenever i remember isobel is a companion you can cart around with you in elder scrolls online, i'm always reminded of the huge deal they made about her when high isle was being advertised. she's voiced by laura bailey, who not only is a prolific voice actor but also voiced the fandom-favourite follower, serana, in elder scrolls v skyrim.

before coming out, zos and any advertising surrounding isobel would always describe her as a "dork". it felt a little weird, hearing the specific use of the word "dork" again and again without further elaboration. Isobel is a "dorky" companion. What does this mean? Is she socially awkward? Is she overly obsessive with becoming a knight? Does she know niche factoids about select special interests?

No. none of those things are the case.

Oh, okay, so what does it mean then? What's isobel's deal, what's she about, what's her personality?

Nothing!

So why the continuous description of "dork"?

WELL. Seems like "dorky" is the new "quirky" shorthand for not actually writing a character.

Which is so weird because isobel has TONS to work with! Her introduction/recruitment quest shows character, shows all sorts of things:

But then when you bring her around exploring with you, all adventurer-like (because the game only sees your character as some nebulous 'adventurer'), all that potential is washed away in favour of worshiping the ground you walk on, and we get the absolute. worst. lines. of nothingness.

like this! :

"I can't wait to explore this place! I know, I know. I'm strange."

This single line will not leave my head. It rots me. It rots me to my very core.

In a game centered on exploring where the writing deliberately refuses to see you as anything other than an adventurer who explores, with a function like the companion system where the entire premise (even IN THE WRITING) is you are joined by an npc to explore and the npc knowssss exploration is what they signed up for and is always the exact reason they join you at all...

the writers decided isobel should make this quip about being quirky because she likes exploring.

In a vacuum, the sentence is fine. Hell, it even has the whisperings of potential characterization like "Oh, why do you think that's strange?" and "you're so quick to dismiss it like people have told you you're a weirdo for voicing it before". But we don't get that here. This sentence by itself does. not. work. here. It does not work for the game, for the mechanics of companions, or even the individual "reason" (it's always the same reason) this particular character is exploring with us. That's literally what we're doing right now in this screenshot, we're exploring! This does not work!

Instead this line reads as self-congratulatory and out-of-touch with reality (on both isobel and the writers' parts)... which could be an interesting path to explore, but that's not what the writers intended with this. They intended this line to set isobel apart and above the crowd as an explorer... in a game about exploring.

Honestly it reminds me of the serana line that drops a lampshade on her backstory, making the character come off as "i'm not like other girls" and written by an idiot. That's what this line feels like. It feels like a window into the writers' brains when making this character: like they feel they're breaking new ground and making this character oh so special, when instead they're just playing with cardboard.

I haven't adventured long enough with isobel to unlock her friendship quests (but i have an idea of what circular path they'll go), and there's just so much more about her writing that turns me right the fuck away. It's honestly so disappointing (especially after all the hype-mongering) when we get tidbits of an interesting character who just loves the thrill of adventure and has a big major crush on tolwife lyris. It's a huge letdown.

okay realtalk? i much prefer live action garp. he's a better (and more interesting) character.

i was only exposed to animu garp, so take that how you will, but him showing up after a bajillion episodes post water 7, out of fucking nowhere, AFTER going through a bunch of worldgov bullshit getting robin back and all i wanted to do was fucking never see marines ever again... out comes this tie to luffy who's like 'welp guess i'm fighting you now, lol JK not really, gonna wreck this property, let's continue this fight in a few days when you get your new ship'.

it's-it's so fuckin annoying-anime-trope #658. he comes out of nowhere, contributes nothing, interrupts the flow, serves his singular meta purpose in the most clumsy slapped-on way possible, then leaves, no lasting impact, nothing.

I understand people having beef with this more antagonistic garp in the live action, but holy fucking shit is he ever a breath of fresh air. Here lies a goddamn CHARACTER with so many layers that are constantly showcased. Here lies a character with PURPOSE, with SO much purpose, who is written so beautifully into the narrative to fulfill so many needs. Live action garp sold me on his stupid horrible tough 'love' attitude (it's not boring trope bullshit, you can actually see the trauma behind it, the horrible reasoning), sold me on coby and helmeppo's story, sold me on actually giving more than zero shits about world-happenings away from the strawhats.

what would be really cool is if Mephala, the webspinner, oversaw cause and effect.

Mephala, the one who has all the threads laid out in front of her, knows where they all go, how they connect, the daedric prince who delights in the domino effect of a single action, is the daedric lord covering not fate, but the cascade of possibility.  (because fuck fate, that’s old and done and boring).  Mephala, the plots-within-plots daedra whose sphere is obscured to mortals, can see the big picture, whatever that big picture might look like, through any of its changes and alterations.

that’d be neat.

a little pet peeve i have, and i only really realized it’s a pattern, is how many hetero dude writers don’t seem to know how romantic relationships work...

(and this is coming from an aromantic person, so if even I know, you know it’s bad)

it’s what happens whenever writers try and push the wolverine vs scott for jean’s affections angle, but it’s also everywhere (i was re-watching justice league unlimited and it’s here with hawkgirl vs vixen for green lantern’s affections). There’s this treatment like the two characters pushed to have a rivalry against each other are somehow on equal footing...... when in reality one of them is already involved with the object of the rivalry.

when wolverine was like “oh, she chose you” to scott, in the x3 movie, it means absolutely nothing because DUH, OF COURSE. THEY WERE ALREADY DATING, LOGAN. OF COURSE SHE CHOSE HIM, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.

some house thoughts

tw: harry potter talk.

because fuck harry potter and extra eXTRA fuck rowling

my sister and i have been thinking about this for over a decade, so i thought i’d finally jot down our changes to the houses of hogwarts.

the houses originally started off with the characteristics of “hero protagonists”, “evil mcevil nazi-flavoured villains”, “smurts i guess”, and “uh... bystanders, whatever”... because rowling is a hack.  with the franchise going into exponential expansion mode, the need for actually giving all the houses some sort of characterization outside of ‘the ones rowling cares about, the bad ones, and the ones she doesn’t care about’.  Eventually we got a skeleton of>

it’s bullshit. and lazy. and dumb.  so here’s what kait and i came up with (and no this isn’t an attempt to fix anything, there’s no fixing this, nor should anyone fix anything touched by the actually evil mc-horrible rowling. this is... ‘hey look what we thought up. look how easy it is to make shit interesting and still work’.  this is what we would have done, but also fuck hogwarts and harry potter, because we wouldn’t have created this mess in the first place). (under the readmore. it’s a looooooooooong one)

i keep seeing posts from people about ‘ohh, the media you consume doesn’t say who you are uwu’ and ‘stop judging people for their interests, they have no say in who that person issss’... and i shake my head and breathe out a tired sigh.

they do though.  what you choose to consume and integrate into yourself, where your interests lie, is dependent on who you are, and as such also reflects who you might be to others. and that’s a neutral statement with layers and layers of situations, connotations, and complexities to it.

it’s obvious, of course who you are as a person is going to determine what you like and dislike.  big fat duh.  you can always tell something about where a person stands on any given issue or interest.  that’s how humans and identities work. It’s ridiculous and unfair to get mad at someone who sees what you are engaging with and by association wants nothing to do with you.  It does not matter if they avoid subject x for more political systemic serious reasons, or if it’s personal taste.  Expecting everyone to drop their biases and standards and boundaries just because you don’t want to be ‘judged’ for thinking about insert-media-here is childish, ridiculous, and delusional.

a good chunk of the people on this website are adults: why haven’t you learned nuance and situational dependence in your judgements? What prevented you from learning that comparing ‘person a thinks ___ was lazily written, so doesn’t really interact with person b who lauds it’, with ‘person a avoids ___ because of its toxic messages, thus avoiding person b who exclaims nothing wrong with said messages’ is ridiculous, they’re not even on the same playing field.

i wish there was less obsession over appearing to be a ‘good person’ and more focus on genuine compassion and actually helping people who need it.

tl,dr: people don’t know what’s going on in your head (and vice versa), and will take whatever information they can to get a picture of you. that’s how humans work. your interests do speak to who you are and potential choices you may or may not have made. That’s how humans interact with the world outside our own minds.

(ps: read/skim/listen to hamlet because all the problems in that play have to do with the separation of the inner world of the mind {intention} vs the outer world we all have to live in together {action}). (pps: don’t read hamlet. i mean. if you like shakespeare or really want to read it, sure. i’m just tired and it’s something that popped into my head at the last second. and i like it. and it deals with this division.)

i fucking HATE the news’ usage of the word ‘controversial’ because 

it’s the news’ JOB to present blatant reality. the manitoban premier (governor for you american readers) and a cabinet minister didn’t state something ‘controversial’, they have been spouting racist colonialist apologia, saying ‘oh but residential schools weren’t so baaaaaaaaad thoooouuughhh’. 

there is nothing ‘controversial’ about this. it’s very clear. 

this pride month 2021

i’m so tired of the constant stupidity and re-writing of history and language-meaning in the lgbta+ community.

not to mention the implicit aphobia behind it.

kink is not and should not be a part of pride: 

just because it was acceptable in the past (because no support existed whatsoever, so we had to take shit when we could) doesn’t mean it was good, and it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable now.

i feel like cursing-jerry in that mcelroy clip = use your fucking brains FOR ONCE.

ps: stop calling yourselves slurs/stop normalizing the use of slurs as quirky identities when words with non-horrific histories (and contemporary uses, let’s be real with the q-slur) exist for a reason.

tvtropes-ing, just looking up fairytale stuff and eventually wizard of oz stuff, and then i stumble upon a connection someone made of fallout 4 to the characters of oz.  and my brain exploded.

and then i promptly proceeded to yell at my sister about it.

i just remembered the time i got reprimanded for tearing apart a shoddy ‘scientific’ journal.

we were supposed to be critiquing these random medical studies as an exercise in critical thinking and adapting knowledge in healthcare.  The study I was assigned looked like it was put through google translate and was just... so not up to standards for what should be in any scientific study, let alone one in the medical world- and i was pulled aside and told not to be so harsh.  Basically told not to critique, despite the wording and intention of the original assignment.

I’m remembering this again while thinking about the dangers of zero standards/professionalism in science, in healthcare, and how this little moment -which i thought was just idiosyncratic of this island- might actually be microcosm to the current world.

And that’s terrifying.

also, in other superhero comics news, i just read through all of the 2017 Mister Miracle series last night and it was actually decent! whaaaaaaaaaat.

like, i really don’t like tom king’s writing, but this comic was actually decent and an improvement on most of the tropes and pitfalls that mark king’s work.  It was good surreal horror, Mitch Gerads’ art in it is amazing and gorgeous, showed barda and scott at their best, and just fjasklf;dsa. I really like it ouo

(it’s very disjointed, and while it’s supposed to be, sure, since that’s the point, the reader is supposed to notice something’s wrong with reality, I’m talking in the way king does dialogue and his choices towards character actions and interactions. also, i appreciate the explorations into mental illness and how prevalent it is and how it’s there forever that this comic attempts, but because it’s king, the explorations are surface-level only and just implied rather than explicitly acknowledging anything of substance.  like the difference between giving mental illness the understanding, respect, and gravitas it deserves versus looking up symptoms on wikipedia and stopping there.  This comic has a lot of potential with its themes, buuuuuuuut doesn’t quite deliver. but i still liked it.)