Recently, I saw some news that a game called Detention was getting a Netflix series. It’s a horror title, and I generally avoid the horror genre, so normally I wouldn’t give this a second glance. But, this title is Taiwanese, and I’m Taiwanese, so I looked further into it. I kind of regret doing so. It’s really, really depressing. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Spoilers ahead.
I have a blanket spoiler warning on the Reviews section of my site, but since we’re in the Updates section, I’m going to go ahead and say this again: spoilers ahead. A bit of background – Detention takes place in the 1960s in Taiwan. Historically, this falls in the White Terror period of Taiwanese history. In 1949, the Nationalists in China (you’ll hear them referred to as the KMT, or Kuomintang) were in a civil war with the Communists. The Nationalists lost and fled to Taiwan, where they took over the island and hoped to use it as a base to retake the mainland. The ruling KMT placed the island under martial law, fearing communist infiltration – this is the White Terror period, and it would last until 1987. From here, several people will compare the White Terror to the Red Scare going on in the United States at around the same time, except that’s not entirely accurate. The KMT were wary of communist infiltration, sure, but they were also keen on ruling the island and stamping out any perceived threat to their new rule. They killed/arrested numerous people – anyone suspected of opposing the KMT or suspected of having the potential of opposing the KMT. Imagine if, beyond what Senator McCarthy did, he took over the US government, installed military police throughout the nation, and eliminated anyone he and his party deemed a potential threat to his rule, communist or not. The White Terror was way worse than the Red Scare was, and the Red Scare wasn’t exactly a nice time. Detention takes place in a high school in rural Taiwan. As was common in Taiwan, there was a military presence in school and people were encouraged to go to the authorities with any information on potential anti-KMT activity. A second-year we’ll refer to as Wei is sitting in class when his teacher, Ms. Yin, gets a call from the KMT military instructor Bai asking about some list. Wei falls asleep and wakes up at night – the class is gone due to a typhoon about to hit. The player controls Wei as he tries to leave while wondering why nobody woke him up or something, and finds a girl sleeping in the auditorium. He wakes the girl up and they leave the school to find (1) the only bridge out of school broken and (2) the river underneath the bridge now composed of blood. They retreat back to the school, having no recourse, and Wei decides he will go to the principal’s office to use the phone, hoping to reach someone. The girl introduces herself as Ray and says she’ll wait in the classroom for him to return. This is normally where I’d call them both morons for not just, you know, going to the principal’s office together, but as we’ll see, that’s not entirely applicable here. For now, know that as soon as the player leaves the classroom, the surroundings change to some sort of static-space and the scene fades to black. The player now controls Ray, who wakes up back in the auditorium. Behind her is Wei’s corpse, hanging upside-down from the ceiling. Now it’s her turn to try to figure out what the hell is going on. She explores the school, finding clues and solving puzzles, all while something continually reminds her that she’s repressing some memory of the past. By the end of the game, the player will have found out that Ray was once a popular and talented student at school. At home, her once loving and stable father became an unstable alcoholic who spent his time cheating on his wife for reasons that are never explained. The rapidly deteriorating situation at home caused Ray no small amount of grief, and her school performance took a massive nosedive. She was referred to the school counselor, Mr. Chang. She and Mr. Chang proceeded to enter a romantic relationship, which, as you can probably tell, is all sorts of problematic. Ms. Yin, the teacher from before, discovered this, and confronted Mr. Chang for entering a relationship with a student. Ray overheard their conversation and, sometime later, Mr. Chang broke off their relationship. Overcome with rage and despair, Ray decided to find some way to get revenge on Ms. Yin. Before we continue, here are Ms. Yin’s exact words: “Did you forget about us? Remember, we were in the same boat…” This seems to suggest that she and Mr. Chang were once in a relationship, which would further cause Ray to want to get rid of her. Many people interpret her words differently: see, Ms. Yin was the head of a secret book club on campus where she and her students would study books banned by the KMT. Note that these texts weren’t necessarily pro-communist texts – these were any and all texts that might promote free thinking, which is a big no-no under a totalitarian government. The player would eventually find that Mr. Chang was the one supplying these books, so people interpret Ms. Yin’s words as referring to the book club rather than to any relationship between herself and Mr. Chang. For me…I never really could tell. To be honest, “we were in the same boat” is a confusing sentence to me. It’s in the past tense and “in the same boat” figuratively means being in the same situation, but this doesn’t line up with them talking about a currently existing book club that they’re both involved in. I actually thought it might mean that Ms. Yin and Mr. Chang were literally in the same boat that sailed from China to Taiwan during the KMT’s retreat, but if that’s true, I’m not really sure what exactly that would mean. Anyway, Ray somehow found out about this book club. Wei was a part of the club, and Ray convinced Wei to give her the club’s list of books. Ray then handed the list to Bai, causing the entire club to get arrested. Ms. Yin managed to flee the country, but Mr. Chang was executed and the students were sentenced to 15 years jail time. For all Ray knew, however, all of them had been executed – these trials (I’m using the word very loosely) weren’t all that public and/or transparent. Her guilt at causing this drove her to commit suicide by jumping off the school roof. Ever since then, her soul has been trapped in its own purgatory/hell – Ray’s ghost is repressing her personal trauma at and memory of her actions, so she’s caught in this cycle of waking up in this hellscape, re-discovering the truth, and repressing it again out of trauma and guilt. So to recap: the only real scene we’ve seen up to now is Wei being in class when Ms. Yin got called out to discuss the list. Everything else is Ray’s spirit hallucinating. This is why Wei going off alone to the principal’s office actually isn’t the two being non-savvy idiots. Before we continue, here’s one thing I’m confused on and nobody’s been able to give me an answer. The book club list is literally just a list of books. It implicates nobody. The only reason Bai knew to go after Ms. Yin was because Ray specifically told Bai that she found the list on Ms. Yin’s desk. In particular, this shows that Ray was only interested in implicating Ms. Yin – she got the list from Wei, but she didn’t actually want to get Wei in trouble. Ray also didn’t know Mr. Chang was involved – if she did, she wouldn’t have gone through with the plan as she wouldn’t want to get her love(r) in trouble. So I ask – how did Bai know whom to arrest other than Ms. Yin? Ms. Yin wouldn’t give anyone any information; furthermore, she fled the country very soon after Bai confronted her, meaning the authorities wouldn’t have had much opportunity to ask her any questions. So…this is traumatic. This is so sad on so many levels. Though a horror game, the ghosts/monsters aren’t the scary part. This is the story of a broken family, a troubled girl, an ethically dubious romance, and a tragic betrayal. These are all real, human…things, for lack of a better term. And you know the totalitarian fascist regime that allowed this to happen in the game? That was real. If you want to get into the supernatural, consider this girl reliving this torment again and again. Without pause. An old lady appears to say that Ray can’t enter the afterlife, meaning she’ll be forced to stay as this tortured soul forever. That’s dark. That’s bleak. That’s gut-wrenching. She did something terrible, yeah, but an eternity of torture? Well, there is the ending. There are 2. At the end of the game, a shadow version of Ray will appear and ask 4 questions. These 4 questions are essentially a test to see if the player understood the story. In-game, they’re asking whether Ray remembers her actions, because her repressing her memories is what is causing her to remain in the hellscape. If the player chooses the correct responses – the ones that accurately describe Ray’s actions and motivations, that means in-universe Ray is correctly remembering her actions and motivations. Otherwise, she’s not. If she doesn’t, she ends up next to this hell-river-thing where visions of Wei, Ms. Yin, and Mr. Chang inform her that she must repeat this cycle again. She appears in the auditorium, now filled with people applauding her, and she hangs herself. If she answers the 4 questions correctly, the shadow version responds, “You. Are me.” The game fades to black (without that hell-river-thing and the hanging) and we see a middle-aged man walk into the school – the real school in the present day, which is this abandoned ruin full of graffiti. This man is Wei, now out of prison on amnesty after the end of martial law. He enters the classroom in the school and sits at a desk, and Ray’s ghost appears sitting in front of him, reflecting a scene they had in their past – sitting together, talking in peace. Before we continue, I need to make a reference to “I am thou; thou art I.” If I ever get back into the JRPG mood, I want to play a Persona game. They look fun. I’ve tried to determine what my Persona would be, given how introspective I usually am, and the Internet tells me Fenrir, Daredevil, Zorro, and Takemikazuchi. What that means, if anything, I have entirely no idea. With some levity complete, let’s go back to the depression. The second ending – the “true ending,” seems to suggest that Ray finally breaks the cycle as she has come to face her past. That said, the old lady and the dialogue I mentioned appear in this ending, suggesting that even thus, Ray is still condemned to remain a wandering soul, unable to go to the afterlife. It might have to do with the fact that she killed herself – Eastern attitudes on suicide are pretty unforgiving. I’ll note that in the last sequence of the game, where Ray is following the shadow around, she also sees middle-aged, present Wei. The school also looks like it’s breaking apart. This suggests that, at this stage, Ray is close to breaking out of her hellscape – the Wei she’s seeing is the real Wei, walking around the school, so her ghost is now seeing reality and not its own tormenting illusions. That means if she answers the questions correctly, she fully breaks out, meaning the scene at the end of the true ending, with Wei and ghost-Ray sitting in front of each other, is ghost-Ray fully in the real world, able to see and interact with reality (she’s still dead, so a ghost, but at least she’s not in the illusion-hell anymore). It’s also interesting to look at Wei himself. He seems to care a lot for Ray. The movie adaptation (yes, there is one and no, I’m not watching it – like hell I’m going to subject myself to a fresh new version of this story) has him full-on crushing on her. Wei’s journal entry about getting out of jail is fairly focused on Ray, and the game sets him up as the symbol of Ray’s escape from her cycle, since he’s the playable character of the true ending. To be honest, I think the two have some sort of supernatural connection, since there are a few things Ray sees that only Wei should see and vice versa. Remember that old lady? She’s a supernatural being – you see her if you die playing as Ray. Wei shouldn’t see her. But he does, in the true ending. Ray also sees 2 scenes in the final sequence – Wei talking to Ms. Yin at the book club, where Ms. Yin reminds him to keep the club and Mr. Chang’s involvement a secret; and Wei burning the banned books along with another club member in an attempt to destroy the evidence after Ray’s betrayal. Ray didn’t witness either scene in life, but they’re all things that Wei experienced. Some of the notes Ray finds later on would only make sense if Wei left them for her, such as the newspaper clipping about Ms. Yin dying abroad and her remains being brought back to her hometown per her last wish. You also find that clipping in Wei’s notebook in the true ending, suggesting further that Wei left that for Ray’s ghost to find – this would help Ray get over her past, since remember that as far as Ray thought, she’d literally gotten all of the book club executed. I think for my own sake, I’m going to believe Wei brings Ray out of the school (it’s getting torn down anyway) and finds a way to grant her peace. When he dies, he brings her with him to the afterlife, where they can be reborn in a better life. Because this one sucked. A lot. Also? I blame Ray’s father for a lot of this. His turn to alcohol and cheating tore his family apart, sending Ray down her initial spiral, which led to her being sent to Mr. Chang, and so on. It’s also implied that Ray got the idea to turn the government on Ms. Yin from her mother, as her mother hired a PI to track her father, found he was accepting bribes, and used the information to turn him into the police as revenge for what he did to her. The game doesn’t ever tell us why Ray’s father did all this; Ray says a few times her father used to be warm and loving, so I get that my judgment is based on incomplete information, but cheating on your spouse? That’s not something I’m going to overlook. There’s more I could say about Detention, but maybe I’ll defer to some other time. This is long as it is. As part of my recent nostalgic games binge, I replayed Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, a game I first played in 2003 or so. At that time, I didn’t know of the game’s “World’s Most Difficult Trick,” an optional puzzle hidden in a volcano, but this time, I did, and I went for it. The puzzle isn’t unique to Lufia II; instead, it’s a real-life sliding block puzzle known as Klotski, Daughter-in-the-Box, Huarongdao, and a bunch of other names throughout the world. The goal is simple: get the 2x2 block to the bottom center. You can only slide blocks around – no rotating blocks, no leaving the 5x4 board area, and, of course, you can’t move blocks through one another. The 2 white squares are empty. You have 4 1x1 blocks (orange), 4 2x1 blocks (green), a 1x2 block (probably the most difficult block to get past – this is the red one), and the 2x2 block you need to get to the bottom center (blue). I don’t know about people in general, but this was hard for me. It took me ~ten hours in total. Ten. Hours. It wasn’t 10 straight hours – I have a day job I need to be working at, after all – but it’s still a long time. Encountering a problem I can’t solve generally makes me more and more determined to solve it, which can be good or bad depending on how you look at it. One time in grad school I decided to try to solve a biphasic theory equation, found I didn’t know how to deal with mixed boundary conditions, and proceeded to spend an entire weekend looking up resources and raiding the school library until I solved the equation. Note this wasn’t required for the class I was taking. Anyway, I digress. The first day, after about 3 hours of sliding blocks around and failing miserably, I went to sleep for the day. The next day, I spent around 2 more hours failing and decided I needed to change my approach. At that point I noted that at any given point, the number of possible moves is very small – about 2-4 or so, and one of those moves is simply the reverse of the last move you made. It adds to the frustrating aspect of the puzzle – you make a string of moves, each move the only possible move you can make, and get to a dead end, at which point you have no choice but to revert the entire string because there’s nothing else you could’ve done differently throughout. But at the same time, it means the number of possible configurations of the board is also small, meaning it’s possible to write a computer program to solve it by simply trying out every possible move until it succeeds. I thought of doing that, but decided against it since (1) I might as well spend brain power solving the puzzle directly rather than spend brain power constructing computer code to do it and (2) I’d also need to make the program spit out a string of moves leading to the solution, which I felt would be extra work. There was another way I could exploit the small number of possible moves/configurations, however, and that was to predict the end configuration of the board and move backwards from there. If I predicted an end configuration, tried to slide blocks around, and reached a dead end, I would know that configuration was impossible to reach. Otherwise, I could eventually revert the board back to its initial configuration, and if I recorded my moves in-between, I’d have a set of moves that led from end to beginning (and thus beginning to end, as all I’d need to do is slide the blocks in reverse). Because the board has a limited number of possible configurations, predicting the end configuration wouldn’t be hard and, because the game has a limited number of possible moves at any given time, I’d very quickly run into a dead end if I chose an impossible end configuration. By way of example, let’s assume that the end configuration consists of the blue block approaching the center from above as so: Slide the blue block down one and you win. But, if you try to slide blocks around from this configuration, you’ll quickly hit a dead end, meaning this cannot be the end configuration as it’s impossible to get here. After going through a small number of possible end configurations, I concluded the blue block needs to end up sliding in from the right or from the left (and those are equivalent, given the symmetry of the board – the moves would simply be mirrored) and went from there. It took another 4-5 hours, but I eventually got a set of 77 moves leading from my predicted end configuration to the initial configuration, solving the puzzle. There’s likely a more optimal solution with fewer moves, but I didn’t (and still don’t) care – I solved this puzzle FROM HADES and that’s all that matters.
Moral of the story: sliding block puzzles suck and I hope I never see one ever again. I’ve just completed my fourth playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I went through Crimson Flower first, then Azure Moon, then Verdant Wind, and now I’ve gone through Crimson Flower again to have a playthrough on even footing with the other two, as now I have NG+ features unlocked and have enough experience and knowledge about game mechanics that I can play the game properly, e.g. I don’t waste instruction points trying to teach Petra black magic for no reason. I don’t think I’ll ever play Silver Snow. Besides me hating the idea of going through this game YET AGAIN, from what I know, Silver Snow is the same as Verdant Wind, except less. So this marks the last time, hopefully, that I talk at length about Fire Emblem: Three Houses. On Verdant Wind I talked about Azure Moon a few months back, but I never discussed Verdant Wind. In short? I like Verdant Wind. It feels like I’ve assembled your classic “ragtag band of misfits” and now we’re going to go save the world. I don’t need to listen to Dedue and Gilbert go on and on about how their lives revolve around Dimitri. I don’t need to listen to Hubert do the same thing with Edelgard. I don’t need to listen to Hubert insulting and/or threatening everyone around him. I feel like I could get along with and talk to the Golden Deer characters. I mean, sure, Lorenz sucks, but unlike the 3 characters I mentioned above, he’s not plot-critical. Verdant Wind has one of my favorite missions, the Battle of Gronder, which also appears in Azure Moon, except here the mission makes slightly more sense. Dimitri attacking Claude’s forces along with Edelgard’s makes more sense than does Claude joining the battle for no reason in Azure Moon. Verdant Wind also has the attack on Shambhala, another one of my favorite missions for just how unique it is. It was also so satisfying to put an end, directly, to those goddamn purple fuckers. And the final battle felt so very epic, even though the premise came out of exactly nowhere. I also love the cutscenes in Verdant Wind. They’re idiotic if you think about it, but I found myself forgiving the idiocy just because the action shots were so cool. There’s one where Nader greets Claude by shooting an arrow at him; Claude shoots his own arrow at Nader’s arrow, deflecting it mid-air. It’s unrealistic and stupid (yes, let’s greet someone by shooting an arrow at him and possibly killing him if he’s the slightest bit distracted, or sleepy, or sick, or pretty much anything), but it just looked so cool. I had way more fun with Verdant Wind than I did with Azure Moon. If I really had to pick a canon route, it’d be Crimson Flower, but Verdant Wind is probably my favorite route gameplay-wise. A compilation of statistics because…I’m weird, get over it Now that I’ve gone through all 3 routes, I’m going to make a few trivia comparisons. First, in every playthrough I recruited everyone I possibly could, but I only ever fielded 12 characters per route, since the final battle of each route has a deployment limit of 12. I tried to assemble plot-relevant teams: Black Eagle Strike Force (Crimson Flower):
In Azure Moon, I grouped the characters that were most likely to want to defend the nobility status quo along with the most Church-aligned characters. I named this team the Holy Knights of Faerghus. Holy Knights of Faerghus (Azure Moon):
For Verdant Wind, I called the team the Much Better Strike Force because I feel like in-universe, Claude would agree to that just to annoy Edelgard. This is a mish-mash of characters who didn’t quite belong in the other houses, in line with the theme of “ragtag band of misfits.” Much Better Strike Force (Verdant Wind):
Some trivia:
I calculated a stat score for everyone, where the stat score is the stat divided by character level. The stat doesn’t include item, skill, or food bonuses, but does include class bonuses. And here come a bunch of graphs that I still can’t believe I spent time compiling and making. Finally, I took the average of each stat for the three teams.
I have entirely no idea why I did all this, but whatever. It's been fun. Now, after ~500 hours, it's time to put this game away for good. I’m going to write another random thoughts post about some unrelated topics on my mind lately. So I’ve been hanging around a fanfiction subreddit to try to promote my Resident Evil fanfiction (shameless plug: here or here) and also to talk about writing with like-minded people, and something I’ve noticed is how the community seems to struggle with people saying they’re clearly amateur or bad writers because they write fanfiction rather than original works. Now of course, this is absolutely idiotic. At the same time, I was in the midst of a nostalgia trip about Dragon Ball Z, when I realized these two topics are related.
A bit of background: the original Dragon Ball (not Z) is loosely based on one of the Four Great Chinese Classics, Journey to the West. The original, original Journey to the West was the chronicle of a monk, the Tang Monk, who traveled from China to India to bring back some Buddhist scriptures. Imagine if you took a cross-country trip and wrote about it. That’s pretty much what that was. Sometime after the Tang Monk wrote this, various authors expanded upon his story and added fantastical and religious elements, which is where we get the Four Great Chinese Classics version of Journey to the West. In this version, the Tang Monk isn’t even the main character; instead, it’s Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. The Monkey King was, well, a monkey, who learned incredible martial arts and mystical abilities and tried to take over Heaven. He was almost successful until the Buddha himself subdued him and trapped him under a mountain. Much later, the Tang Monk was setting out on his journey, and the Bodhisattva Guan Yin recruited Sun Wukong to be one of his disciples and bodyguards. She also recruited a pig and a river demon. The trio, along with a dragon in the form of a horse, travel from China to India, but meet many demons along the way who want to eat the Tang Monk. This is fanfiction. This is an example of authors taking an existing, popular story and adding their own creations. This is an example of those creations being way more ridiculous compared to the original work. And this is one of the Four Great Chinese Classics, which as the name suggests, is one of four novels considered the most important in the entire history of China. Clearly fanfiction is useless, right? I’m not done. Dragon Ball, as I mentioned, is based on Journey to the West. The main character, Goku, has Sun Wukong’s name (Son Goku is Sun Wukong is Japanese), his first weapon, his cloud-based method of transportation, and a very heavy monkey theme. Oolong is that pig I mentioned before. Literally (this time, though, the name’s different). Tienshinhan, the warrior with 3 eyes, comes from the novel. The Ox-King is the same. The setup of Goku and company journeying across the land in search of something (the titular Dragon Balls) is also reminiscent of the original novel. So here’s a fanfiction based on fanfiction that very heavily borrows from the original work while also making massive changes; indeed, as the story of Dragon Ball goes on, it deviates more and more from the setup of Journey to the West. Dragon Ball is also incredibly popular… …but it’s nothing compared to its sequel series, Dragon Ball Z. In Z, we find that Goku is actually an alien, his people are all hilariously stronger than are anyone on Earth, and they serve an even more powerful intergalactic overlord. And it gets more ridiculous from there. By the end of Z, just about any of the main characters could obliterate a entire planet if he chose and they’ve taken down an enemy who once defeated multiple cosmic gods. By the end of Dragon Ball Super, the storyline after Z, we have a being who can destroy multiverses effortlessly. So here we have a story that is arguably one of the most popular franchises to come out of Japan in history – and it’s a continuation of a work of fanfiction. And as a fanfiction, compared to the original work, it’s just so hilariously ridiculous it’s mind-boggling. So no. Fanfiction writers aren’t amateurs who need to rely on other works to get anything done. And even the fanfiction writers who come up with lunatic plots and characters compared to the original work can create something amazing. PS: I’m not actually suggesting people do what Dragon Ball Super did – it’s ridiculous in terms of power escalation and Goku pretty much obsoletes the entire rest of the cast from the original Dragon Ball, which is something I personally don’t like. My point is simply that fanfiction can be great and its authors have been well-accomplished and talented throughout history. Okay, good, I don't have Fire Emblem: Three Houses occupying my entire brain.
Last week, Capcom announced Resident Evil 8 (or, more accurately, Village: Resident Evil), which piqued my interest so I've been hanging out on the Resident Evil subreddit again. Given the rumors that RE8 began development as Revelations 3, starring Rebecca Chambers, a few people have wished wistfully for another game starring her. Now I love Rebecca and on a list of my favorite fictional characters, she's way up near the top. But I'd rather not see another game starring her and, in fact, the rumors that she was once associated with this upcoming title have me worried that she is somehow in the final game. Why? In one word: Vendetta. This is the third CG movie meant to expand on the RE universe and it stars Leon, Chris, and Rebecca. Notably, this is the first time Rebecca has appeared in any canon material since RE0/1. I love her personality and occupation as a scientist, rather than a combatant, in the movie, and that's about all I like about this movie. The villain in Vendetta is Glenn Arias. Some time before the movie, the government tried to kill him by bombing his wedding. He survived. His wife didn't. And he vowed revenge. In the middle of the movie, he kidnaps Rebecca, fits her into his wife's wedding dress, and reveals that she looks almost exactly like his wife, so he intends to force Rebecca to marry him. In other words, this movie is playing the damsel-in-distress trope with Rebecca in the straightest way I've seen in decades. Now there's the obvious subjective reason this makes me despise the movie, given what they did to one of my favorite characters of all time, but there's more to it. Let's first talk about gender in Resident Evil; specifically, gender in Resident Evil 1. The first game, released in the late 90s. Jill Valentine is the female lead...but the game never once emphasizes that she's female. It doesn't make it a point that "hey look we've got a female lead look at our attention to gender equality." The characters, her compatriots in STARS, never comment on her gender either. In my mind, this is what gender equality looks like. Gender isn't relevant. We don't emphasize how Chris is a male lead, or how he's great at X despite being male, or how he's great at X because he's male. We never make comments like that for male characters in general, because it's irrelevant compared to things like character development or character involvement in the plot. Jill's an elite member of STARS. She has an (admittedly unrealistic for literally anybody) amazingly accomplished military record. She's the goddamn Master of Unlocking. That's what the game tells us. That's what the other characters comment on - not her gender, because who cares. This is the attitude the first entry into this franchise took on gender. And now we have Vendetta featuring the damsel-in-distress trope so straight that Rebecca might as well be one of those trophy princesses from fairy tales. Next, let's talk about the plot. This subplot with Rebecca looking like Arias's dead wife is completely unnecessary except to allow the writers to fulfill some sort of weird fantasy. Imagine if, in the previous CG movie, we find that Svetlana, the main villain, has a backstory in which she's always been a lesbian, but she was always surrounded by men, so she grew up with the worst sexual frustration. At one point in school, she met a girl whom she crushed on, but then that girl died for some reason and left her heartbroken and even more sexually frustrated. And it turns out that girl's name was...Ada! And now when she meets Ada Wong in the movie, she's excited because she has the same name and resolves to kidnap her and brainwash her into being her lesbian sex slave! And Ada's helpless until Leon comes in to save her, which takes up the entire last sequence of the movie! It's a stupid subplot. It's a creepy subplot. It's something you'd expect to find in a porn parody somewhere, not in a canon movie. And it's completely, utterly unnecessary. The actual movie we have about Svetlana honestly doesn't tell us much about her. She's a power-hungry President. That's...about it. But that's fine - she's got some cool scenes and she fulfills her role in the plot. I've got no complaints. So just leaving Arias's backstory as him wanting revenge because the government killed his wife would actually already be ample backstory for him. We don't need this Rebecca subplot at all. There're some other reasons this movie is rock-stupid, like Leon going through exactly what Chris went through in RE6 with the drunken depression and history of his entire squad getting killed - really, you just lifted Chris's character arc wholesale from RE6 and pasted it onto Leon? Or the idea that the BSAA reverses the zombification of the victims at the end of the movie, something that raises all sorts of plot holes and fridge horror. Anyway, back to my original point: after seeing this abomination, I have little to no faith in the writers' ability to portray Rebecca properly in a game, so I'd rather just them move on to other characters and other plots. Just sort of...forget about her and don't mention her again. That would be more preferable than her arc in Vendetta, which is super sad coming from someone who absolutely loves Rebecca. Don't ask me why I keep coming back to this topic. I don't have an answer to that.
It occurred to me that most of my comments have come from the Crimson Flower route of Three Houses, the first route I played through, and I thought I should talk about the other routes. So today, we'll discuss the Azure Moon route, which is in many ways the antithesis to Crimson Flower, as Edelgard is the main enemy of Azure Moon. On different viewpoints and first impressions First, I mentioned in my review that people are going to view Edelgard very differently depending on which route they play and, to go further, which route they play first. If we're looking at Edelgard from someone who went through Azure Moon first, she'd be far less sympathetic just by virtue of us not knowing much about her. She's the head of one of the other 2 houses that we don't really interact with and talk to - we can't support with her, so we have no insight into her thoughts or history, and we don't get to hear her opinions on the events of Part I. When she attacks the Holy Tomb at the end of Part I, she doesn't seem out-of-character as I complained so much about in my review because an Azure Moon player doesn't know enough about her character to make that conclusion. Hell, such a player might even accept, at face value, all the stuff I brought up about Edelgard being an idiot due to her actions as the Flame Emperor. For all the player knows, Edelgard is just so power-hungry she's incapable of rational thought. In Part II, it's established that she's the villain. We see her attack the monastery, lead troops at Gronder Field, have a dialogue with Dimitri in which she (1) refuses to end the war peacefully and (2) reveals she forgot him from her childhood, deploy Demonic Beasts (Agarthan bioweapons), and transform into a monster in the final level of the route. Without prior knowledge of Edelgard, none of these really question the notion that she's evil or at least antagonistic. But now let's look at it from the perspective of someone who played Crimson Flower first, like me. We know her backstory - she was experimented on by the Agarthans horrifically so they could implant a second Crest into her and, as a result, she believes someone must tear down the Crest-centric society and belief system on the continent because it leads to stuff like what she experienced. This is why she starts the war and why she opposes the Church. She's not doing this because she's power-hungry or she enjoys sending people off to kill others and die. Right before the battle at Gronder Field, she appears sad. An Azure Moon player would either miss that detail or be confused by it, but someone who played Crimson Flower before would know exactly why. Hell, compare her expression in that scene with Dimitri's memetic "KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM" line. When we kill Arundel and save the Alliance, we see her and Hubert taking some small joy in his death. An Azure Moon player would, at best, be again confused at why she's happy at the death of her uncle and a high-ranking member of her Empire. A Crimson Flower player would know that she has a history with the Agarthans (of which Arundel is a member), she pretends to be allies with them because she's powerless to do otherwise for the time being, and she fully intends to destroy them once she can. Someone killed Arundel? Excellent for her. Edelgard's dialogue right before she transforms into the Hegemon monster is (1) telling her subordinate to leave because she might be a danger to those around her after she transforms and (2) fighting through the pain of her transformation because she's experienced worse before. This doesn't fall in line with a power-hungry and remorseless tyrant. At this point an Azure Moon player would either ignore these details or be confused enough to declare the writers made her actions out-of-character. A Crimson Flower player? This all makes total sense. First impressions are important, and someone who goes through Azure Moon first, not knowing the significance of these details, will see Edelgard as a villain and have a difficult time changing that viewpoint even if that player goes through Crimson Flower subsequently. On Edelgard and Dimitri's conflict In both Crimson Flower and Azure Moon, Edelgard and Dimitri share dialogue where they clash on their ideals and views. These scenes are perfect opportunities for the writer to explore their conflict - a conflict of beliefs, of ideologies. They failed. In Crimson Flower, Dimitri asks Edelgard how much conquest and death she intends to wreak before she's satisfied. Edelgard responds with, basically "well you do the same thing in response," a terribly dumb answer. One might think, as I did, that she isn't interested in discussing her motivations with Dimitri in that scene, as she knows he won't listen anyway, but in that case, it would've been better for her dialogue to say, literally, "I could explain it to you, but somehow I don't think you'll listen anyway." Hell, just some ellipses would be better than her "no u" response. In Azure Moon, Dimitri requests a meeting with Edelgard and opens by asking her point-blank why she started the war. Here is an even better opportunity for her to talk about her history, her views on Crests, her views on the nobility caste system, her views on the Church and their propaganda...in this scene, she does have some reason to believe Dimitri will at least hear her out because Dimitri was the one who opened dialogue in the first place. She does none of that. Dimitri's dialogue isn't much better, either. His biggest and best argument is that all the war and death isn't worth whatever future Edelgard wants to usher in; in short, he doesn't believe the ends justify the means. He makes that argument maybe once, then goes on to say that humans are weak and require authority and faith, while Edelgard's meritocracy only favors the strong. This is a stupid argument because the world around them before the war already favored the strong - the strong being people with Crests. And also...between someone who believes humanity has the strength to forge its own future versus someone who believes humanity is too weak to forge its own future, which argument feels more compelling? Finally, Dimitri says that it would be better for the people to rise up themselves to change society based on their own beliefs rather than Edelgard forcing a change from her position of power. So wait...if humanity is too weak to forge its own future, how are they to rise up? Moreover, "the people" aren't a hive mind - if there's going to be a revolution, someone needs to instigate and lead it. How many times did "the people" rise up to clamor for change in the 1000+ year history of Church rule? A history, might I remind you, of children being disowned/killed/married off politically all for the sake of Crests? Edelgard v. Rhea had sloppy execution and Edelgard v. Dimitri also has sloppy execution. I think these writers just don't know how to pit grey characters against one another - admittedly, that's not entirely easy to do compared to black-and-white good v. evil, but that just goes back to what I said in my review about this game being ambitious and falling short. On Dimitri's character arc I found the beginning of Part II fascinating in terms of Dimitri. At the end of Part I, he goes full-on murder-psycho-ax-crazy. In his backstory, his entire family was murdered around him in a place called Duscur. As the sole survivor, he knows the Agarthans were responsible, but he knows next to nothing about the Agarthans. So when "the Flame Emperor" appears, ostensibly allied with the Agarthans, she becomes his one and only target. His rage overflows because he finally has someone to direct it against, and he spends the first half of Part II obsessing over killing Edelgard and brutally murdering anyone else who gets in his way. It's rare in a game where the protagonist is "good" to stay with the hero after the hero falls to darkness. Usually when the hero falls, he just becomes the villain. So I thought this was a great setup for a character arc. ...And then it goes downhill. He spends the first half of Part II being outright hostile to Byleth and everyone else because he feels they're wasting his time. It's actually unsettling. But...why does Dimitri stick around in the first half? Shouldn't he just have stormed off to the Empire intending to kill his way to Edelgard himself? Why didn't he do that in the 5 years between Part I and Part II? He's obviously unconcerned for his safety and not thinking rationally...he has no reason to stay around the monastery. I think it would've made more sense for him to be missing for the first half of Part II (because he tried to fight the Empire himself) and everyone is trying to find him because he's the last hope for some reason. Halfway through Part II, Dimitri's father figure Rodrigue dies protecting him. He tells Dimitri to live for what he believes in as his last words, which partly snaps Dimitri out of his insanity. Umm...how? Dimitri believes in revenge. That's pretty much all he believes in. So he was already living for what he believed in. Why would Rodrigue's words have any effect? After Rodrigue's death, yet another death of a person close to Dimitri, Dimitri decides to one-man his way to the Empire after Edelgard (again, why he didn't try to do this before, I don't know). Byleth stops him and he asks her for guidance - why, I don't know - it's not like he was interested in listening to her before and I'm not sure how seeing one more person die due to an attack from an Imperial changed anything. Byleth tells him exactly what Rodrigue told him and that fully snaps him out of his insanity. Umm...what? How does repeating some words that should have had no effect snap Dimitri out of his insanity? The thing is that many compelling narrative pieces exist to complete Dimitri's character arc. Normally, the trope in this situation is the character realizes his dead loved ones wouldn't want him to hang onto his hate and obsession. Dimitri literally says he doesn't buy that, so the story has to go another route. That's fine - defying tropes can be good. So what could the writers have done? Well, let’s look at Rodrigue’s scene as he’s dying. Rodrigue shares a memory with Dimitri of his final conversation with Dimitri's dad, King Lambert, before Lambert traveled to Duscur. Lambert says that he thinks the diplomatic mission should be completely safe, but if he were to die, he has hope and faith that his son will grow up to be an upstanding man and king. Slight detour before we continue: if Lambert thought there was any possibility of danger on this mission, why the complete and actual hell did he bring his goddamn family to Duscur? Ahem. Anyway, wouldn't Rodrigue's last memory serve to show Dimitri that his dad wanted him to be an upstanding man and king and not a vengeful, hate-fueled monster? Dimitri literally believes his dad's ghost is haunting him and driving him to kill Edelgard, so Rodrigue telling him about his dad's actual feelings should've gone some way in dispelling Dimitri's delusion. The game doesn't address this. Next: Byleth has some parallels to Dimitri because her dad, Jeralt, dies in Part I at the hands of the Agarthans. Sure, Dimitri loses more people, so to speak, but the parallels of both Byleth and Dimitri losing a family member to some shadow organization and the only tangible target being Edelgard are still there. How does Byleth deal with this? She grieves and then moves on, becoming the one pillar upon which the entire route leans. How does Dimitri deal with this? "KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!" This juxtaposition can also go a long way in showing Dimitri that his motivation doesn't require him to become a monster. Byleth has the same motivation and she becomes the exact opposite of a monster. The game doesn't address this. Finally, Felix and Ingrid both have connections to a victim of Duscur: Dimitri's childhood friend, Glenn. Glenn was Felix's brother and Ingrid's fiancé. In one support conversation, Felix chews Dimitri out because he had to deal with his brother's death, but he chose to move on and focus on living his life the best he could. A conversation like that should've shown Dimitri that people close to him who lost one of the same people he did still grew up to become non-murder-psycho-ax-crazy-monsters. Since this is a support conversation, it's not in the main game, so the game doesn't use this in Dimitri's character arc. So...yeah. Dimitri's character arc. Great setup. Not very sensical execution. Lots of potential squandered in its conclusion. Three Houses had been on my mind way more than it should have. Sheesh - first I play Life is Strange and have to deal with that affecting me, and now this.
Anyway, I've been a part of a few discussions on the plot and characters of Three Houses and I just wanted to put a few of my thoughts in writing. I want to reiterate how nice it is to see some people discuss complicated topics like morality - stemming from a video game. I believe video games can elicit thought just as much as can the more "traditional" forms of storytelling, such as books and movies, and this is a great example. Of course, there are the flame wars, but what else is new. Here are a few arguments that I've encountered that I've taken some issue with. Byleth and Sothis are still two separate entities despite merging I had several people take issue with my claim that Byleth becomes the goddess; instead, they interpret it as Byleth and Sothis still being different entities despite having merged after Solon traps them inside that nondescript dark dimension. I can see where they're coming from, but I'll also say the game makes it somewhat ambiguous and, at times, contradictory as to what actually happens. Sothis tells Byleth that they'll become one because of the merger and, as a result, she won't be able to talk to Byleth anymore - except she does, at the end of the five-year timeskip. She does so again if you S-rank her. Rhea tells Byleth that she's "been acting as a proxy for you," where "you" refers to Sothis, implying that she knows Byleth and Sothis are one...but then right afterward, she explains to Seteth that Byleth is a vessel for Sothis, which implies she thinks they're separate entities. I always interpreted it as Byleth literally becoming the goddess because she merges with Sothis. She doesn't have full goddess-level powers because, well, even Sothis doesn't have full command of her powers, given she's got heavy amnesia. Regardless of the interpretation, I still believe the writers dropped the ball on this plot point. One, we've got the ambiguity and contradictions as above. Two...Rhea never once asks Byleth for details on what happened. The girl she implanted Sothis's Crest Stone into just returned from a mission with heightened powers and a different, Nabatean-esque appearance, implying that something involving Sothis happened...but Rhea doesn't question it. Instead, she just decides to have Byleth sit on Sothis's throne in the Holy Tomb, a sequence that still baffles me because I have entirely no idea what Rhea was trying to achieve. Rhea says that "Saint Seiros" received a revelation from the goddess in that room. This is a complete lie, because Rhea is herself Saint Seiros and is Sothis's daughter. Sothis didn't give her a revelation - she was simply her mother until she had to destroy the Agarthans and heal the world, after which she went to sleep and was assassinated by Nemesis. Rhea raised an army against Nemesis all on her own. Let's suppose Rhea believed that Sothis would "fully awaken" and take complete control of Byleth upon sitting on her throne. Maybe she figured the throne would jolt her memory or something. This would necessitate that Rhea (1) knows Sothis has amnesia and (2) doesn't know that Sothis has merged with Byleth. Rhea doesn't know the former - the only time Sothis comes up in conversation between Rhea and Byleth is in their B support, and if Byleth mentions Sothis in that conversation, Rhea just gets confused and actually decreases support points. Rhea doesn't know about the merger, sure, but that just brings up my point that Rhea should've asked more questions after Byleth returns in Super Saiyan form. Let's suppose that Rhea does, somehow, know about the merger, and thinks that Byleth and Sothis are indeed one, but because of Sothis's amnesia (which she also somehow knows about), Byleth's memories are incomplete. She then hopes that Byleth sitting on Sothis's throne would restore Sothis's memories in Byleth's mind. This would mean Rhea does indeed see Byleth as her mother reborn - just her mother with amnesia. This would, in turn, reinforce my argument that Rhea trying to kill Byleth in the Holy Tomb is idiotically out-of-character. An interpretation I like came from someone who argued that, right when Byleth refuses to kill Edelgard, Rhea becomes completely and utterly taken over by PTSD. She no longer believes she's dealing with Byleth and/or Sothis, but has returned to 1000+ years ago, when she witnessed Nemesis kill her mother and her entire village. It's kind of like how a war veteran might come home but believe he's still at war. Alright, I'll buy that. It's better than the out-of-character business I hate so much. Edelgard's new social order is doomed to fail A few people believe that Edelgard's meritocracy will plunge the continent into a worse state than it was before because of corruption and rebellion from nobles who want to hold onto their power. As such, they conclude that the ending of Crimson Flower is the game's "bad end." Ehh, I don't really buy that. Corruption isn't unique to meritocracies. We actually see corruption in the aristocracy throughout the game, such as with Ferdinand von Aegir's dad. So if you want to say corruption will lead to a breakdown of society in the continent, you'd have to apply that to literally every ending in the game. Rebellion is similar, as in every ending, the continent is united under one banner. There are going to be people who want "independence," so to speak, and military conflicts will happen regardless of whether that banner is the Empire's, the Kingdom's, or whatever political entity Byleth/Claude/Rhea rule over. I will also note that Edelgard isn't interested in ruling over everyone - after she dismantles the Crest-centric, bloodline caste system and destroys the Agarthans, she's done. Petra, in particular, declares independence from the Empire, and in no ending does Edelgard oppose her. She'd be more than happy to let different regions break off to do their own thing if she knows that there won't be anymore Crest obsession and Agarthan string-pulling. This isn't necessarily unique to Edelgard, either. I'm basically just saying that the sociopolitical implications of Edelgard's ending apply just as much to the other endings, so calling her end the "bad end" would mean that you believe every ending to the game is a downer. If that's the case, sure. Edelgard is evil because she sides with and believes the Agarthans Alright, first of all, this seems to have eluded a lot of people, so I want to make this clear. Edelgard openly despises the Agarthans for what they are and what they did to her (and her siblings, and Lysithea, and many others). She doesn't side with them through choice; she sides with them because she needs to put on pretenses to survive. These people have wormed their way throughout the Imperial government, so if she just straight-up confronts them, they'd just destroy her. In fact, the reason she was able to take power so easily is likely because the Agarthans let it happen. Remember, her father had no political power because of the coup led by Ferdinand von Aegir's father. Ferdinand von Aegir's father was actually the one in charge of the Empire. It would stand to reason that, all else being equal, Edelgard ascending the throne would also render her without any political power. But the Agarthans experimented on the Emperor's children, hoping to create a powerful ruler that they could control. Once Edelgard, the sole survivor of the experiments, is ready to take power, the Agarthans propelled her to the throne to install that powerful ruler under their control. It's necessary for Edelgard to pretend to be under their control until she has enough power/influence/knowledge to strike back. In the Crimson Flower ending, that's exactly what she does. Even in Azure Moon, where Edelgard is at her most antagonistic, there's a short scene after you kill Arundel saving the Alliance, where she and Hubert characterize it as "a drop of joy." Arundel is actually Thales, one of the leaders of the Agarthans, which means that even Edelgard at her most "evil" hates the Agarthans and wants them destroyed. Next, people think she attacks the Church because the Agarthans fed her lies that she believes. Well, let's go through exactly what these "lies" are. First, she believes that Rhea is secretly a dragon who, along with other dragons, is behind the scenes manipulating the continent's people and history. That's true. Second, Edelgard believes the Church is upholding the Crest system, misleading the religious people in the continent, to further their own power. This is also true. Third, Edelgard believes the Heroes' Relics aren't gifts from the goddess, but are rather man-made weapons that people only believe are divine because the Church says so. This is true. The only statement Edelgard makes that I think is completely false is when she says the Church purposefully broke the Kingdom away from the Empire and then the Alliance from the Kingdom. I don't think the Church did that willfully - they just sort of let it happen and capitalized on it afterward. Edelgard wants to dismantle the Crest-centric social system. The Church created and upholds that system. So, she turns her blade against the Church. She's not doing this because the Agarthans fed her propaganda. She might pay lip service to that propaganda because, again, she's pretending to be allied with them for the time being, but her reasons are her own and are actually based in fact. You might not agree with how exactly she goes about using this information (i.e. goes to war), but portraying her as a mindless girl being manipulated is...incorrect. Edelgard could've just talked to Dimitri and Claude instead of going to war I agree totally with this statement and, in fact, believe this is one area the writers actually succeeded in. They specifically constructed Edelgard's backstory such that she (1) doesn't know the other two would actually be on-board with her plan and (2) never once considers that possibility. Her childhood saw her surrounded by 2 kinds of people. One, sinister enemies: the Agarthans and the political schemers led by Ferdinand von Aegir's dad. Two, people who could have helped her, but were unable to: her own dad and her siblings. She says that she learned at a young age that the only person she could ever rely on is herself. Her character arc involves realizing that she was wrong, because she learns to work with Byleth and her classmates to achieve her goals. So with this backstory, her going to the two heirs of the other nations, trusting them completely after first meeting them and telling them her plan/goals, would be out-of-character, and we all know by now how much I hate out-of-character writing. I'd take issue with it even considering that, had she done this, Dimitri and Claude would've pledged their support to her cause and they'd have revamped the social order without any conflict (except maybe with Rhea). Hell, they probably would've destroyed the Agarthans right away. Edelgard explaining the Tragedy of Duscur to Dimitri would've turned Dimitri's PTSD-revenge-insanity on, except this time, he'd be attacking the right perpetrators. Claude's penchant for information-gathering and tactics would've allowed them to outsmart and trap the Agarthans. We would get the happiest ending possible, but at the cost of plausibility in character motivation. I'll have to let you decide whether that would have been worth it. Personally, I'm a sucker for happy endings, so I would probably have just wished for Edelgard to have a completely different backstory to allow this to happen. But Three Houses isn't that kind of game, unfortunately. I do want to say that, while I do support Edelgard in-game, it made me very uncomfortable in Crimson Flower when I was part of the aggressors. Usually in video games, I'm defending against an aggressor, but Edelgard's army is the one that's actively attacking and invading other nations. I also felt terrible attacking the monastery afterward, with the Church characters lamenting that I'd just betrayed them. So I'm not totally on-board with starting a war and I absolutely get the idea that Edelgard should've found another way. It just so happens that she believed she couldn't. And barring her war, society wouldn't have changed on the continent. I recently finished Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and it surprisingly had a big effect on me. I find myself thinking about it a lot. I posted a longer-than-average review of it, but I had some extra thoughts that I thought I'd muse about here.
Let's start with Edelgard, who I said was a polarizing character. I've seen all sorts of commentary and interpretations on her character around forums and such. While many of these comments have some validity, something that speaks to how well the game did in creating a grey character, I've seen some say that she's "literally Hitler." Okay, this might just be 12-year-olds invoking Godwin's Law, but in the small chance that these people are trying to be serious...honest question. Do they know who Hitler was? I'm being serious here. Hitler wanted to elevate a "master race" above everyone else. Anyone not part of the master race would be subjugated or killed. Edelgard's goals of bringing down the nobility and creating a meritocracy are the exact opposite of that. Edelgard wanting to conquer/unite the continent by force doesn't make her Hitler. Second. Someone asked me how I would've handled Three Houses's plot, since I wrote so much on how much it failed. Well...short answer? I'd cut Claude, the Golden Deer, and the Leicester Alliance. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against any of them, but I think Claude's backstory has the least to do with the main plot of the game. He's someone I'd actually like to see star in a sequel, where the continent is united under one banner and comes into conflict with Almyra. Claude's backstory about wanting to open relations with Almyra fits right in here. So if I were handling Three Houses, the Golden Deer characters would instead be in one of the other houses. We'd either follow Edelgard's quest to unite the continent to enact social reforms or Dimitri's quest to defend the continent against Edelgard. In either case, after one of them wins, the focus would shift to the Agarthans. In Edelgard's route, she intended to destroy them from the beginning, so she does exactly that. In Dimitri's route, he would find out the truth of the Agarthans' involvement, realize he'd been played, and resolve to destroy them. I'd delete the Flame Emperor stuff, because that stuff is stupid. I'd also rework Rhea and make her a regular Archbishop rather than a secretly >1000-year-old dragon. She can still be fanatical. She could still be behind Sothis's awakening because that goal has been passed down from Archbishop to Archbishop or something. Third. Someone found it funny that I gave the game an A, but spent most of my time discussing things I hated. I do admit it's strange, so I guess I should list out some specific things I liked about the game. Let's see...I liked most of the characters. Raphael's so jolly, Ingrid and Leonie are both awesome tomboys, Shamir has these deadpan-Aubrey-Plaza vibes that I love, Bernadetta is Bernadetta... The soundtrack is great. Visually, the game looks amazing. The gameplay also allows for highly customizable tactics, since you can build your characters however you want. Build characters based on personal skills and stats. Pair characters that synergize with each other. Have Lysithea Warp Edelgard into the middle of a bunch of physical attackers, watch them all swarm her during Enemy Phase and do 0 damage each, and laugh. That last one doesn't really require any brainpower, but it's fun regardless. I also like the monster encounters. They're like miniature raid bosses and you have to position units and attack from different directions and coordinate. It's great. I think I will eventually replay the game, maybe once I figure out how I want to think about the plot so the idiotic elements don't drive me up a wall. I'll end with some statistics that I compiled for reasons I don't fully understand except that I'm weird, get over it. Kill ratio records Binding Blade: Lilina, at 69.9% Blazing Blade: Canas, at 86.6% Sacred Stones: Artur, at 88.1% (mostly due to Slayer, which does super-effective damage against monsters, and the endgame is pretty much all monsters) Awakening: me, at 86.0% Three Houses: Lysithea, at 89.7%, the grand record so far I've made 2 updates to the site: a review of Life is Strange and an update on the Mobile Spinoffs shrine. The Life is Strange review is long, but the game had a really significant impact on me, so it's a fairly unique review anyway. As for the Mobile Spinoffs, I finally added Pokémon Masters to the list. I had mixed feelings about the game when it first launched, but they've really improved the game and I think it's finally in a good place.
Keep staying safe, people. Please pay attention to CDC/NIH/FDA guidelines and not that guy saying to inject Lysol into your body to cleanse your lungs GODDAMNIT ARE YOU CEREAL. Over the past 2 months, I've been writing a Resident Evil fanfiction. It's a more traditional fanfiction compared to the stuff on this site, and I've finally completed it and put it on FanFiction.net and ArchiveOfOurOwn (the story's the same in both - just different platforms). The story also has its own TVTropes page. As always, I had fun writing it and I hope it's well-received.
I hope everyone's staying safe from COVID-19! |
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