I will now have to headcanon the "ALL AROUND ME ARE SUPER HOT FACES" explanation for my issue because the idea of a pretty average looking Chicagoan dude looking at a rotting horsegirl zombie with thoughts of "mmm baby" makes me laugh. Harry Dresden has less standards than Papyrus.
harry with awful standards is a BEAUTIFUL HEADCANON. IT'S ACCEPTED. Spoiler holy shit i never even thought of that and now I'm even more annoyed. GAAAAAAAH WHY DID THE LASCIEL THING HAVE TO BE SO BADLY DONE harry has bad standards. the standards are "is female."
Spoiler: *cracks knuckles* Okay so. Changing the medium and presentation, as the switch from 2D to 3D does, is going to necessitate some changes to how scenes are handled. Some of the problems caused in the cutscene are the result of game-mechanical changes that have excellent gameplay reasons for being how they are- for instance, I'm fairly sure Meteor's animation being streamlined and shortened is because they're trying to keep all the spell animations about the same length so it's not a massive production every time Rydia casts it later in the game (particularly since with the ATB system, long animations can sometimes be game-breakers for savvy players). My thesis here is basically that they picked the wrong things to change. First, some things I'd change back to how they were in the SNES version: Put the ledge back. It's going to require adjusting the camera more, but the characters' movements don't make much sense without it there, and gives the setting more of a distinct feel than "random blank room." (The sprites are ambiguous, so I'm just going to make the executive decision that it's a ledge with stairs up to it and not a pit in the floor with a bridge over it.) Tellah shoves/smacks Cecil out of the way. My best guess for why they changed this is ease of animation and not having to move the camera, but come on, guys, this is one of the pivotal scenes of the game, cut corners somewhere where it doesn't shoot characterization in the foot. Similarly, Cecil tries to follow Golbez when he starts to leave, and maybe even puts his hand on Golbez's shoulder. The camera in the existing DS version spends most of the scene other than the fight and the animated bit with Golbez and Cecil locked in one position. Again, I assume they did this for ease of animation, but it definitely hurts the scene, because it requires everyone to be crammed into a small space and not move very much. I'd probably have it in the same place when Cecil is handing over the crystal and talking to Golbez, then behind Tellah and facing Golbez as Tellah comes forward, maybe a brief shot of Cecil stumbling back after Tellah hits him, then back to the side view while Tellah is yelling at Golbez. To get around the gameplay presentation issues in the Meteor sequence, what I'd do is only have Tellah's opening barrage in the fight interface. Since the DS version cut the Bio off his string of spells, he actually uses exactly his MP total worth of spells before Meteor, so I'd show his MP going down with each -aga, leaving him at 0. Meteor, however, wouldn't use its standard battle animation; it'd get a rendered scene shot to look as impressive as possible, rather than happening in the battle interface. Thus, no damage numbers to look Not Worth It next to Tellah's previous DPS. If it was doable, I'd like some visible property damage from Meteor in the cutscene afterward, like scorch marks on the floor. After Meteor goes off, Golbez stumbles forward and hits Tellah, knocking him down, while Kain collapses in the background. This is more or less what it looks like happens in the SNES version, and fixes the problem I forgot to mention in my first rant where Tellah collapses face-first and is lying on his back later (I guess Cid and Yang could have rolled him over, but still.). Golbez then collapses to one knee. Camera is pointed forward at Golbez through this. For the next bit of dialogue it can go back to the side view; Golbez stands back up before telling Kain to come with him and noticing that he's out. The entire sequence after Golbez knocks Cecil back is a mess. What I'd probably do is cut to Cecil collapsed on the floor after hitting the wall, then have the camera focus on Golbez's feet as he walks ominously toward him. Shot of Cecil struggling to get up and failing, then the shot of Golbez standing over him and going "?!" The camera switches to a side view and it's still for a second. Then focus on Cecil as he asks why Golbez isn't killing him, and have the VA read the line like he's in pain and has had the wind knocked out of him. The back-and-forth "Golbez talking->Cecil's face" bit is fine, but rather than the rotating aerial camera during "But how-?" I'd probably go back to a Golbez closeup. Golbez's flounce is also fine (other than Cecil's pose looking more like he sat down for storytime than like he got thrown across the room), but rather than Yang and Cid running across the room to Cecil I'd go back to the SNES version's blocking, with Cecil slowly getting to his feet and limping over to them. Cut the freeze frames of Tellah's body and everyone running over (since they're already there), and then the rest is relatively inoffensive other than Cid's voice acting and Tellah's character design.
Even that standard can be waived occasionally, judging from how often he stops to talk about Marcone's pretty green eyes. And the description of Thomas as "the forgotten Greek god of body cologne." (I have a friend who's decided that literally every Jim Butcher character is bi, because this sort of thing happens a lot.)
Perhaps his type is beautiful men and any woman with a pulse, however negligible it might be. And even then, now I have no idea how attractive Marcone or Thomas might be.
Yeah, I think his type is "existing nearby." Thomas is a sex vampire therefore super hot Marcone, idk. (my headcanon is absolutely bi!harry. you can pull that from my cold dead hands. )
(Incidentally, does my theory where in a parallel universe our FFX's story is an OC-insert fixit fanfic written by someone who was emotionally devastated by canon go in this thread? :::PPP )
must write analysis of tori as having magical ocd and why magical disorders can actually be entirely fine and in fact more than fine I get kind of cranky about throwing things like that via fantasy elements entirely under the bus of NO BAD ALWAYS.
I still think ghost!Aradia is an allegorical depiction of severe depression. Aradiabot too, but less so.
Sleep is a fucking lie that people talk about to make themselves feel better so let's write this thing. Yes. The thing being Torisen from Kencyrath totally has fantasy OCD and a defense of magical or fantastical forms of mental illnesses. I am not going to describe what Kencyrath is because I've already done that. For some context regarding Tori though he is Jame's twin brother and his role as Tyr-ridan is to be That-Which-Creates. Currently he is the Highlord of his people and he is a constantly nervous and often heavily bigoted man, though he is rather nurturing and does honestly want the best for people. Tori is just a fucking barrel of laughs and constant joy and were this some sort of modern setting he'd probably be a goth. He also probably has OCD. Specifically of the pure-o variety. For those not familiar with that term pure-o or primarily obsessional OCD is that which is basically entirely centered around intrusive thoughts. The sufferers of this variety don't have the overt rituals commonly associated with the disorder in the media and instead our lives are ones of our brains constantly replaying the same very distressing thought over and over again. However pure-o people do often have rituals of a more covert and subtle fashion. This often involves avoiding stimuli that triggers certain thought spirals. I spent a good few years avoiding coins entirely and would always leave change in tip jars if I could because coins would trigger intrusive thoughts about eating the things and choking to death, as an example. So our boy Tori. The Kencyrath books tend to be divided into two or three main narrative strains. The bulk of the books are Jame chapters, but there exist primarily Tori or Kindrie focused chapters are well. The prose, while still very much Hodgell's voice, is tailored around the particular character who is being focused on. This I feel is especially evident with Tori. While all the characters will have their thoughts presented in italics, this seems to happen most often with Tori. He also most often has the most repetitive thought strains. Several key phrases, sentences, or conversations will be repeated in his chapters verbatim. One of the more common phrases that runs through his head is "She's gelded you, boy," for example. A conversation between him and his sister has also been repeated several times in Tori chapters, though it has also shown up in Jame chapters. Here is said conversation: "Father says it's dangerous to teach you anything. Will the things you learn always hurt people?" "As long as I learn, does it matter? "It matters to me. I'm always the one that gets hurt. Father says you're dangerous. He says you'll destroy me." "That's silly. I love you." "Father says destruction begins with love." I'm not sure how many times I've read this conversation. It's definitely been far more than once though. It's to the point where I have the thing memorized just about due to sheer frequency of its being repeated. Specific bits of it, the last line in particular, are also frequently repeated in Tori's thoughts, though they've also shown up in Jame's thought strains. The important thing however is that these thoughts are very frequent and very formulaic. They follow a set wording and pattern. Frequency and repetition of thoughts is key with pure-o and Tori has this down. Frequency isn't all there is to it though. Intrusive thoughts are by their nature unpleasant and painful. They're intrusive, after all. We've said it here before but there are reasons it isn't called obsessive-compulsive fun and cake times. Tori does find his thoughts unpleasant. He's frequently mentioned as feeling nervous or otherwise upset. The line about him being gelded tends to accompany Tori feeling particularly shit about himself, and they follow his self-esteem straight into the fucking ground. The conversation there meanwhile tends to accompany Tori being afraid of his sister. An example in the most recent book being a letter Tori read, that he only read part of to his friends and servants. The rest he kept to himself due to it troubling him. The gist of this section concerned that his sister may end up stealing away his mindbound Kendar through sheer force of charisma. He doesn't at all take to this well, and he's been frequently upset with her and terrified that she is going to steal everything from him. And as if on cue the conversation he had with her about how their father said she'll destroy him comes up. Similar moments have happened earlier when he's been jealous of her going to military college and being well liked there and when Marc, a Kendar who is waiting to be bound to Jame, comes up. Bottom line though is that Tori doesn't like his thoughts. They scare him or frustrate him. He is also aware that they aren't always indicative of reality as it actually is. Or that they make him act cruelly or unfairly due to not being able to handle stress. People who suffer OCD are often aware that their thoughts are stupid and not true, and that carries over with Tori. An example being his treatment of his cousin Kindrie. Kindrie is, like the Knorth twins, are Shanir. For simplicity's sake the Shanir are like witches in Kencyr society, and are reviled and feared just as much as witches have been in the past in places likes Scotland. Kindrie's simple existence in his presence often leads to intrusive thoughts regarding "filthy Shanir" and his father's incredibly bigoted rhetoric. Unable to cope with this Tori has excused himself from his cousin's presence, looked at him hatefully, or even denied taking him on as one of his people even when he knew deep down that that was the correct thing to do. Correct or not Tori could not silence the thoughts of how gross and treacherous Kindrie was. He isn't always aware of the unreality of his thoughts though, as evidenced by his constant panicking about thoughts of his sister flaying someone alive. Even after having this revealed to be untrue however Tori still suffered from thoughts of her doing just that. His incredibly shit behavior towards her was at risk of being further exacerbated as a result. Now so far this all sounds like run of the mill mental illness, honestly. However I mentioned there was magical fantasy bullshit behind a good deal of this and there is. That magical fantasy bullshit is his father. Far from being content with traumatizing his son Ganth decided to go one step beyond. Ganth is now trapped within Tori's soul image, and is currently living behind a locked door in his head. Prior to Jame's having locked him behind said door Ganth ran freely throughout Tori's mind wrecking havoc. Functionally Ganth is capable of speaking and even while awake Tori is capable of hearing what he has to say. Ganth is also capable of possessing Tori entirely for short periods of time. For our purposes though we're more interested in Ganth talking and Ganth talks a lot. A hell of a lot. It is to the point where I'm not sure how much of Tori's intrusive thoughts regarding his father's abusing of him are just Tori or are Ganth repeating things a lot. Because Ganth is also highly repetitive phrase wise. Whatever the case is he is definitely a significant part of why Tori is as mentally ill as he is. Being cursed and having to deal with your dead father constantly calling you a failure and a coward just doesn't do good things. Ganth's freedom or lack of it in Tori's soul image also has some interesting parallels to how mental illness can show up. Prior to being locked behind a door Tori was significantly less stable. He had periods of avoiding sleep for literal weeks on end due to fearing his nightmares. The insults from his father in the narration also came in a greater frequency. Tori was known for being at risk of sleep deprived rages and strings of madness. He's ridden a horse to death, for example. It was to the point where others in the Kencyrath questioned his ability to lead because he was so known for being prone to going batshit. Tori was also far more openly violent in how he reacted to stress while Ganth was free. The incident that lead to Ganth being locked behind a door was not a pleasant one. Terrified of his sister and bogged down my intrusive thoughts Tori had a panic attack. His friend Burr attempted to calm him down but Tori lashed out at him physically in an extreme enough fashion that after things had settled Tori had to ask if he had killed Burr. There is also the fact that he began to ride yet another horse to death and was off on a quest to murder his sister just so his mind would stay quiet and he would "be safe". Seeing this as a problem and wanting to help her brother Jame locked their father behind a door in Tori's soul image. However this created another problem. While Ganth running loose was akin to mental illness that isn't being treated at all, Ganth being locked behind a door is very akin to mental illness being repressed and ignored. Tori is a ticking time bomb, essentially. While he's definitely far calmer than he has been in years Kindrie is very concerned about this situation. Soul images need to be dealt with by the person whose soul it is. This tends to involve facing the thing in question head on. Tori can't do this though because his father is locked up and Tori is too terrified to deal with the problem. He and his sister attempted to open it back up and deal with Ganth together, but unable to handle the stress Tori ran away from his fears quite literally. He is too scared of what this means and refuses to deal with the situation. And that could very well blow up in everyone's face is Tori gets panicked to the point of impulsively opening it just to get things over with or out of a self-destuctive ploy. I'm honestly not certain how the Ganth problem is going to be solved. Simply that I know that it must be in some fashion if Tori is to ever fulfill his role of That-Which-Creates, which he needs to. It is possible though that he won't be able to be chased out of his head entirely, which would be an interesting way of handling it. Similar to how the aim of treating OCD often isn't to "cure" the disorder as it is something innately there but more to deal with it and manage it. Tori's method of dealing with it may well be simply facing it head on and learning how better to handle his reactions to his intrusive thoughts that come in the form of his father. Though really who the fuck knows how it will be handled. Maybe it could be handled by Ganth being banished from his head entirely. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But none of us know right now. So Tori has magical OCD and there is a defense to be made. Magical and fantasy equivalents of bigotries and disorders have been criticized for a while now. And I get why. The metaphors can often be very clunky or present things that just do not work at all. At their worst they can be damn right offensive. I do however feel that Tori's deal shows that sometimes going "Well ghosts made them crazy" isn't always a bad thing. The reason being for that is how well his illness is portrayed. It's done damned well and it's scarily relatable to me. Especially regarding how violent his thoughts or reactions to them often are. Yes, I guess the threat of it being cured by just tossing Ganth out of his head with some sort of dance based exorcism exists and some might be iffy about that. And I can get why. But I feel that the realism behind Tori's situation outweighs that fear because it does something very, very important: it shows someone with pure-o. It doesn't just show someone with pure-o though. It shows someone with very unpleasant pure-o who isn't evil. In many other works his running off to kill Jame would be the end of things. Tori would be a villain and we'd have to put him down like the mad dog he is. That isn't the case with Kencyrath though. Tori is presented as an unquestionably heroic, if deeply flawed individual. He's also someone with pure-o in a stupid fantasy setting doing stupid fantasy things. I'm not just limited to media about the experience of OCD and how much it sucks in the modern world. I get someone with it in a fantasy series with magical kung-fu. I get to see someone like me running around with a sword and having magical door opening powers who talks to werewolves on a daily basis. And it's not like his mental illness isn't important. It is. It is thematically vital to his character. But OCD and its evils isn't the focus of the books, per se. It's a very important element, but it isn't mental illness fiction. And that's just very, very important to someone like me and possibly to others who read these books. Yeah his dead dad cursing him and living in his soul is probably a big part of why it's happened and why he has it but who the fuck cares. I get to have a sword and go on magical pony rides off to fight the forces of evil and deal with assholes trying to assassinate me because politics.
I also think Tori will still be OCD and anxious even without being haunted by his father. Also, that possession is terrifying because of what Ganth was and is, which is Worst Dad.
The WORST dad. Always yelling to the point where Jame is just casually like "He never had any time for us except to scream at us" and he murdered anyone that got close to Tori and his solution to "I don't want to be my brother" is "MURDER THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM".
Yes. Yes it does in fact. Because Tori has...issues with his father. Ganth was an exceptionally abusive father. As I said he yelled at them constantly. With Tori in particular he was typically insulting him. Nothing Tori ever did was good enough. He was always a coward and a failure and a whiner. Tori also basically had no friends outside of his sister because anyone who tried was murdered for it. And ever since Tori was about 8 he had been very, very aware of the fact that his father might kill them. In the short story that conversation is from he tells Jame that their father is going to kill them in a panic. This likely got much worse when Jame was chased away. Jame did not put up with her father's bullshit and did not fall neatly in line. Tori however did and his reaction to stress from his father figures has been to shut up and take the abuse until it stops. Jame was also the one person Tori was able to have any sort of closer relationship with even if she was a huge brat that did things like break his fucking nose in an attempt to learn how to fight from him. Tori is very focused on what his father says. Incredibly focused. Which makes sense. The abuse was nearly constant and not listening to father would net even worse abuse.
Addition to the list: I'm in the fake-final dungeon of Persona 4 and I have Thoughts about themes of escapism and power fantasy and how ridiculously meta all the culprit's snarking is.
Oh, and Persona 4 and environmental symbolism. That's another one. I have so many thoughts about Persona 4's use of environmental symbolism.
hey guys, remember when we were complaining about dresden files jenny greenteeth i reread summer knight it was much more embarrassing than i remembered. she's a sexy lady with green hair and teeth.
Suggestion: She is not actually sexy, Maeve just glamoured her to look sexy to Harry specifically because she thought that would be hilarious to watch. :::PPP
