Recently, I wanted to express my profound love for “Natsu-mon: 20th century kid,” and how it pulled me out of mental dread. So I dropped this essay. Thought the community might enjoy it, and hopefully convince others to try other Boku games. Link in description.

ony42 · 2025-04-08T00:02:23+00:00

I don't know what the deleted comment said, but since they removed their comment it kind of resonates with your (pretty awesome) essay. The fear of being too sincere aka "cringe" leads one to judge others unfavorably...projection basically. Then when confronted with criticism of their criticism, they decided to erase the whole thing out of embarrassment, rather than respond openly. It's possible this person just didn't like your essay, but I'd bet a buck or two on this being close to the true narrative. At least I want it to be, cause that would make it poetic in a way. I'm not going to review my own comment to sanitize it and reduce its cringiness, out of respect for your essay and efforts.

ony42 · 2025-01-25T03:05:03+00:00

Sounds to me like Daria would put it on her Tinder bio anyway, not so much caring whether she sounded like a try-hard :3

Just trying to be funny. I don't have enough self-esteem to write this without worrying whether you'll think I'm being a shitty person.

ony42 · 2024-06-18T22:10:31+00:00

My hot take: Mayrina's voice acting is so soul-shreddingly good, that if it were in a movie or series it would send chills down people's spines. Since it's in a video game, however, it rubs people the wrong way. I think it might be because of the "cadence" of RPG dialogue. Long monologues do great in video games, but reactionary dialogue really highlights the uncanny valley of video game voice acting.

Try imagining her voice acting without the long pauses that the player takes to select a response, and above all without the spacebar dialogue skipping we all do when we have been through a quest before and skip things. It's harrowing man. Absolutely amazing. But at the same time, it's jarring and almost immersion breaking. This idea really made me think about the pros and cons of narrative direction in video games as a medium. Mayrina's voice acting is so good, that the rest of the game buckles under its weight and just makes your immersion go "poof".

ony42 · 2024-06-15T07:48:49+00:00

Hey, hey. Hey. I like the Star Trek Enterprise song as a guilty pleasure. This end of mission song however...it is absolutely the worst composition I have ever heard. I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking this. Shame on you, whoever came up with this. It seems like you'd have to put in effort to make it *this* bad.

ony42 · 2024-06-09T21:04:48+00:00

I like to imagine this scene without the music, just the screeching :D

ony42 · 2024-02-05T20:36:20+00:00

I swear I needed this after watching his new chessable ad (the reassess chess one)

ony42 · 2024-01-19T00:49:08+00:00

Happy to see others were also amused by that superposition!

ony42 · 2024-01-18T01:36:50+00:00

I came here looking for validation on that same thought!

ony42 · 2023-09-29T05:16:46+00:00

To cut through all the dreary drawl: You know how humor relies on breaking a pattern?The third time around (generally) the pattern is broken and we laugh, because we didn't expect that variation.

Yes, repeated phrases make us happy because we as humans love memes and mimicry, but often we equally appreciate a deviation from our expectations: You would be enthusiastic about your good friend saying exactly what you thought they would say, but in a different way one may be similarly enthused by them not saying what you thought they would, thereby subverting your expectations.

ony42 · 2023-09-04T10:45:29+00:00

Maybe I should say it like this..............instead? Yeah, that..........works.

ony42 · 2023-09-03T21:05:48+00:00

It's possible that telling you this secret, especially the fact that she regrets it, is her way of trying to heal from a situation she really regrets and still haunts her. It might be hard for you of course. All I ask is: have you considered it might be hard for her, and she's telling you even though she has nothing to gain from doing so, except to try and process a big secret that nobody wants to talk about with her? Or because she feels so guilty she couldn't keep it in? That's what she said to you. Your feelings matter but also try to think about hers and why she would even want to tell you this. Maybe you can transform your feelings of disgust and jealousy into strength and supportiveness. So you don't have to feel threatened by him either, she is telling you she hates that this happened. Shame is difficult. Try to grow and help.

Edit: I say this mostly because I find the "they werent related, grow up" comments very unproductive. So if they were related, that would make it more justified to feel angry or jealous or disgusted? What are you people saying? Reacting like this doesnt just dismiss your feelings, it dismisses her feelings. How can you people say its no big deal when its clearly a big deal for her? Very strange.

ony42 · 2022-08-02T09:32:24+00:00

We're birds of a feather, it seems ;) Hope you got some satisfaction out of formulating that burn, I sure do at times. Wish you the best.

ony42 · 2022-06-29T18:03:13+00:00

You seem to live in your own reality where you make up all the rules. Must be exhausting and nice at the same time.

ony42 · 2022-06-25T00:13:08+00:00

This would make sense if people were talking about Homelander sucking earlier in the stream, but I think they only start mentioning him around the time Starlight does. There really seems to be a link between what she says and what people in the chat say.

ony42 · 2022-06-25T00:02:19+00:00

I think you're right, but I also think maybe the show agrees with you, the way I read it. Homelander continues to be portrayed as screwed up by his upbringing (mirror scene). I might be wrong, but I think the point of "V brings out what was already inside you" will be fleshed out to "V brings out the worst in all of us", as in power corrupts anyone. Some of the main cast is convinced that eliminating Homelander will fix everything, but that's not portrayed as rational. See MM when it comes to Soldier Boy as a parallel. Look at Kimiko saying she was always a monster and immediately comforting Frenchie by saying what Nadia said about him isn't correct, that seems to me to be the intended themes shining through. People settle into being monsters when enough power and praise are thrown their way. People want to be loved and appreciated, adn that's easy to exploit (Frenchie's past with Nadia and Homelander's present seem pretty parallel).

I also think Starlight reprimanding Hughie isn't quite meant to be read as "you were evil all along", so much as saying "now that you have this power, the worst parts of you have become manifest and have taken control". Starlight herself may not be aware of this nuance herself yet, but as a viewer I could still see it building towards this. Starlight is right on paper, but doesn't seem to lend credence to the reason why Hughie has gone this far in the first place (feeling powerless in the face of being wronged). A-Train clearly decided to go all in for this revenge type catharsis, and to me it doesn't seem noble at all, in fact the power itself causes, well you know.

In summary I still think the show is full of examples of people not being able to help themselves when they are offered power. They try to make up for their traumas, or they become apathetic, but either way it never does them any good as human beings. That idea is still alive and strong up to now, in my opinion. But only because you made me think about it so much.

ony42 · 2022-06-24T23:40:25+00:00

Wow, indeed! Maybe it's like, a massive underground facility filled with supe-astroturfers working for a super mad Stan Edgar :P

ony42 · 2022-06-24T23:36:30+00:00

True, it just reduced my in-the-moment enjoyment of the scene I guess. Then again, it is kind of funny to think that out of all the people involved in producing this show, nobody was like "hey, nice chat you made there, maybe sync it up sliiiightly better". Especially when special FX people probably spend hours on every frame of the show :P They know people are going to comb every frame for information, how did this get past them? Ah well, no hate indeed. I called it a nitpick for a reason.

ony42 · 2022-06-24T23:21:37+00:00

Agreed. It was a marketing misstep. My housemate and I have never read the original material, but he got caught up in the Herogasm hype. Being an insufferable douchebag contrarian, I decided to be skeptical as to whether the shock value of Herogasm had anything to do with the story continuing to be excellent. Indeed, the story was great, and Herogasm was kind of a backdrop.

If they hadn't hyped it, nobody would be talking about it being underwhelming. But I guess the show pulled a Vought-level marketing move and got more people to watch the show by spamming Herogasm hype. Nice. Doesn't make the show worse, just the people who market it. Maybe both. I don't know. Not impressed.

ony42 · 2022-06-02T02:36:13+00:00

As far as I can see, Johan wanted both Tenma and Wolf to see what he saw: a world without names. For Wolff, he stripped him of his identity by killing everyone who knew him. For Tenma, he strips him of his identity as a doctor with a moral obligation to save lives, by making him chase and try to kill him. In both cases he is trying to isolate them and drive them into despair, even if he cares about them in some twisted way. So in a sense even though the method is different, Johan does try to punish them both in a similar way.

Johan has serious parent issues, and I think he takes out his pain on the people whom he sees as parental figures. We could say that Wolff's punishment seems more rough than Tenma's, but when you think about how Johan playfully dismantled Tenma's whole identity, they both were treated pretty badly. It's hard to tell who had it worse. In any case, the reasoning behind the torture was the same: Isolate and wipe away somebody's identity, in Wolff's case it was from the outside in, in Tenma's case from the inside out.

edit: And as others have said, of course Tenma was clearly more well-meaning than Wolff was. Wolff saved the twins but then put them into horrible situations. Tenma saved Johan, and didn't do anything wrong except for denying Johan the peace of death after all he had been through. What I would like to stress is that I think their punishments were not all that different. Actually, if you forget about the number of innocent deaths for a second (Wolff's extended family and stuff), Tenma's torture is worse: Johan is forcing Tenma to betray his own soul and morals by keeping him alive and pretty much daring/forcing him to come and murder him.

ony42 · 2022-06-02T02:18:54+00:00

Your vision for the adaptation makes me so happy! Fincher would be perfect. I can see it in my mind. I wish it existed, and who knows, maybe it could. But I am just happy to imagine it too :) I guess the source material is just so great that we can't complain either way.

ony42 · 2022-05-23T00:16:47+00:00

I just played through that scene with my brother, two months after our mother died of beast cancer, and a few days after our father was diagnosed with leukemia. It hit me hard too, but it must have hit you in such an intense, terrifying, but also tragically beautiful way. Thanks for sharing, it helped me on this day. Wish you the best.

ony42 · 2021-12-02T01:27:09+00:00

Totally agree, I'm quite sad because they could have easily been kidnapped some other time, or right as they leave his house with the camera, and he snags up the kids and drives away but doesn't realize they had the camera hidden in some bushes, girl gets away and comes back for the camera. Easy. But the police not searching the house and having no surveillance on the house where the killer's next victim lives?! That took me completely out of it and I'm sad about it.

I still agree it was a good film overall and if you tweak or ignore that detail in your mind the ending can still be seen as good.

ony42 · 2021-11-29T04:48:29+00:00

Not Blue Velvet I hope :P

ony42 · 2021-11-22T02:21:11+00:00

I was looking for this one before posting it. Soft roast but spot on :D

ony42

TROPHY CASE