Mastodawn

Karel P Kerezman Dec 21

@ami_angelwings Macros the Black, Raymond E Feist's Riftwar series (and its nigh-endless follow-ups).

He's gone! No, he's back! He's dead! Well, maybe only partly dead! Oh for pity's sake, Feist. Let your mentor-with-mysterious-ever-changing-backstory GO.

I love Jerhro Dec 21

@ami_angelwings

Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Completely removes the narrative impact of the sacrifice and the deeper magic excuse makes no sense. I have no idea why it would even be written into the story like that.

West Bennett Dec 21

@JethroTullFan632 @ami_angelwings because Aslan was a metaphor for Christ who was risen again.

sbszine Dec 21

@ami_angelwings Somehow Palpatine returned

四 Dec 21

@sbszine @ami_angelwings Agreed. Hands down both the worst and most disappointing movie I’ve ever seen.

Never have so many people been able to write a better story than the official one. Almost every pitch I’ve read has been a lot better.

Manic Emo Dream Ghoul Dec 21

@ami_angelwings I honestly can't think of anyone being brought back ever worked for a fiction ever, with exception of being brought back from dead is part of the setting so everyone in that verse does it.

Cassandra is only carbon now Dec 21

@ami_angelwings Fringe, every single time Olivia or Will died and it just got reset immediately. I truly stopped having any kind of emotional investment after going through that cycle a few times.

The Book of Kels Dec 21

@ami_angelwings

Batman when Darkseid killed him, 100%

@ami_angelwings Kill the main characters!

But for real though... I think they played up the stakes too much for the end of post-ARR (the banquet), and because it's a MMO, they have to backpedal on everything which just makes it feel really bad. Nanamo should've just died.

And after Heavensward, they just keep doing fakeout deaths, especially in Shadowbringers.

As much as I like Y'shtola, she should have been left in the lifestream for using Flow again (I didn't even care for her apparent sacrifice because I just knew the writers would bring her back right away, and they did, without even giving her a further handicap).

Arguably Thancred should've died fighting Ran'jit, but I guess his reconciliation with Ryne makes up for it.

@ami_angelwings The Exarch/G'raha should've been left for dead. I liked his character, but then we get G'raha back in the Source and his personality got a 180 degree change. He's just the Warrior of Light's ultimate fanboy and it's just kinda icky.

I barely knew the starry-eyed G'raha; we were only together for the Crystal Tower raids which wasn't really that long. I knew the Exarch more, but like, the Exarch part of his personality has completely vanished.

And I heard in Endwalker, they mass-sacrificed the Scions only to bring them back right away. Lol, okay.

I rather they just don't bother with fake deaths if they can't afford to kill off characters. It makes me care for them even less.

midnight posting Dec 21

@rgbunny @ami_angelwings It’s part of why I quit. The main ensemble ended up with permanent plot armor and so the story wrote itself into a corner.

On top of that, most of the classes have been normalized to a common denominator, and the game takes zero risks with world building or dungeon design.

The game has taken its final form as a Final Fantasy theme park with a weak visual novel story with fetch quests tying it all together.

midnight posting Dec 21

@rgbunny @ami_angelwings I sometimes wonder what 1.0’s vision for the game would have been if it hadn’t been a half baked technical disaster.

@trashwizard I also quit after finishing Shadowbringers too, for a lot of the same reasons.

I'm someone who only started last year, so I can't say much about the prior changes, but it's still rippling forward to this day. I had so much fun learning black mage until 7.2 lobotomised it, and I also didn't like the changes to the Sunken Temple of Qarn for the sake of duty support.

I also didn't like the direction Shadowbringers took the story. ARR may be a slog, but I did enjoy all of the worldbuilding and politics. It made the world feel larger and more alive than it is. In Shadowbringers, the focus is all on you and everything in the story exists to facilitate your excursion around the First, which makes it all feel really hollow.

@trashwizard The complete glossing over consequences for the Eulmorans was shocking and disappointing; they were a pain for most of the MSQ up to this point and they are suddenly friends with us and totally good guys now.

These people came to Eulmore because they gave up. Even if we accept they were fully brainwashed (which Alphinaud says otherwise), they need to have some adjustment period before they help out.

And again, they didn't lose total control of their actions; they are culpable for the atrocities they committed to the bonded citizens, like pushing them off the upper decks of Eulmore (which is highly dangerous, if not fatal). But there's just a few quests where they say sorry and the bonded citizens are totally happy with them too.

@trashwizard The funny thing is the game even points out how quickly the Eulmorans changed their tone. Alphinaud likened his character development to the Eulmorans in 5.3, and I was like, yeah, the character development that took Alphinaud 3 expansions to go through took the Eulmorans 3 seconds. Great writing.

(I also heard the same happened to Garlemald in Endwalker; that's even more disappointing when we've been dealing with them for the entire storyline since 1.0.)

The post-game content isn't much better. What the fuck was even happening in Eden's Verse? "Two primals at once is dangerous, but let's do it anyway; not like I'm the one out there fighting lololol" and Ryne being the vessel for Shiva even when she's told it's totally unneeded. Why.

@trashwizard Ruby Weapon is said to have nigh impenetrable armour that no one can figure out how to crack, yet somehow the Warrior of Light got massively power crept at some point to just shatter that armour with their bare hands?

The writers forgot that we weren't the "chosen one" because we were super duper powerful, but because we could resist primal influence and absorb the lightwardens' light without turning. But suddenly, up against Ruby Weapon, we're suddenly super strong. How.

We went from needing deus ex machinas to save us to "yeah I can just punch through metal".

The story went downhill massively in Shadowbringers. If this is the best the game can muster, than yeah, I'm just gonna read something else that is more well thought out.

midnight posting Dec 21

@rgbunny Yeah, probably a good place to stop, then. EW had serious “walk for your lives” energy, and DT is an unhinged mess with a giant cat lady that inserts herself into every scene and the same tired crew slogging behind the WoL.

ShB at least had some gorgeous scene designs with the Crystarium and Il Mheg. EW has a great 8-man raid series going for it, but the main story was pretty disappointing for reasons like the “everyone died lol jk” one.

Thepi Dec 21

@ami_angelwings I've never watched/read Re:Zero but I'm lead to believe that Subaru's answer would be Subaru.

Charles T Dec 21

@ami_angelwings the retcon un-killing of Phillip Chancellor III in the Y&R was just completely and utterly silly. Gay actor Thom Bierdz played a man with a wife and kid who died in a drunk driving accident. This was retconned to him elaborately faking his death & hiding in Australia for decades *and sending another man to pretend to be switched at birth with him* because he was too chickenshit to come out as gay in Wisconsin 🤷

Thepi Dec 21

@ami_angelwings My serious answer is the entire Forerunner race in Halo. Huge 'wtf is all this shit for and who even were these assholes' mystery vibe going in with the massive ancient alien structures the series is built around, and showing us a real Forerunner in Halo 4 kinda just obliterated that.

hazelnot

Dec 21

@thepi @ami_angelwings it's not even the worst part, the worst part was making them be a different species to humans 😭

343/Halo Studios lore is a mess

NaClKnight 🧂⚔️🥊Dec 22

@thepi @ami_angelwings

Hell yeah. They work soooo much better as a cosmic mystery rather than another corner of "lore" to be painstakingly detailed and depicted.

Leo'Jet Ski Fuel'nardo Dec 21

@ami_angelwings Clone Saga era Aunt May. For once Peter doesn't lose someone to violence or soap operatic drama, their time just comes and he has to grieve and move on. Saying this loving what JMS did with her during his run, but all -that- was to give her something because she doesn't even serve the function she did back in the Ditko/Romita days. And her nephew is blatantly in his 30s, it'd be creepy if she did.

Maxxi Dec 21

@ami_angelwings He wasn't really gone for that long but I believe Gul Dukat was meant to be out of Deep Space Nine after the federation takes back the station and they really should have left it like that. Everything he does after that point is so goofy and unnecessary

Ami Angelwings Dec 21

@bogpunk him having a mental breakdown in a holding cell should have been the perfect end to him

Ami Angelwings Dec 21

@bogpunk not that I liked the pah wraith thing in general but if you had to do it doing it with just Wynn made much more sense than having her be Dukat's lackey, but I don't think either of them needed a glorious anti Christ end. Wynn was just a slimeball politician masquerading as a religious figure who lucked into her position because the former Kai is on a neverending war planet and her competition had a scandal unearthed and then he died of Data brain

Maxxi Dec 21

@ami_angelwings I think DS9 had a recurring issue of Too Many Villains tbh. It would have been fine in a traditional format like TNG where they just show up periodically in stand alone episodes but DS9 had the cardassians, gul dukat specifically, the dominion (with the founders, the vorta, and the jem'hadar all having their own motivations at various times), the maquis, the pah wraiths, kai wynn, brunt, the klingons (with gowron specifically), and probably more that I'm forgetting, all having stuff going on concurrently in a continuing narrative. It felt a bit like the writers were juggling too much at times

Maxxi Dec 21

@ami_angelwings AND section 31!

Ami Angelwings Dec 21

@bogpunk there were way too many villains, every character needed their own villain

@bogpunk and evil kira

@bogpunk the breen added in at the very end

@ami_angelwings odo sometimes

@bogpunk I wanted that Odo heel turn to go longer dammit

@bogpunk I think they intended the occupation arc to last a season but couldn't figure out what to regularly do with the rest of the cast if they aren't on the station and it also hurt that arc, should have ended the season with retaking the station and Dukat leaving the narrative forever, then use the next season to wrap up the war

@ami_angelwings feels kind of like the battlestar reboot in a way. Ambitious arc that disrupts everything, and then the writers don't know what to do so they just turn it into christianity

@bogpunk sisko was more like Hercules than Jesus, Sheridan was Jesus in B5

@bogpunk also it's kinda weird that Joseph Sisko f-ed a goddess and it's kinda glossed over

@bogpunk oh also yeah the showrunners even admitted that the Klingon War was a mistake and they wasted a season making the Klingons the bad guys when they just ended up being good guys again, they did it for the DS9 is not TNG shock factor of "see the Klingons are bad again!" thing and had no idea what to do after that

Not surprisingly Moore would go on to make BSG

@ami_angelwings yeah it definitely felt like a ratings play tbh

@bogpunk that's something B5 did better than DS9 since they had a plan and mostly stuck to it, popular charismatic villains die and they stay dead, the death of Refa was shocking and very well earned, the actor even asked what he did to deserve being written out and JMS said because he played the character so well the death will have meaning

@ami_angelwings I really gotta watch that sometime

@bogpunk proof of how Dukat continuing made no sense is also when he interacts with Damar before they part, Dukat just doesn't care about Damar killing Ziyal and then they part friends even though Damar is on the brink of changing sides

@ami_angelwings I am glad Nana Visitor managed to talk them out of an episode where him and Kira sleep together at least. Even if the compromise was still probably the worst episode of DS9

hazelnot

Dec 23

@bogpunk @ami_angelwings the Battlestar Galactica reboot was created by one of the Deep Space Nine writers and was pretty much explicitly trying to do the same thing but even more with the religion stuff

I actually really liked it, even the controversial ending 😅

All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again.

VilhelmMattson Dec 21

@ami_angelwings

I know it would have never become a series that way but, Kazuma Kiryu after the first Yakuza game, He's retired from crime to raise his daughter, most of his friends &family are dead, it's not really a happy ending but every time they bring him back it just gets even worse, just leave him be.

Take this as representative of my dislike of the inability to let characters have even a small victory at the end because by the next game that will just be reversed to bring them back yet again.

hazelnot

Dec 21

@ami_angelwings was never dead but, Phoenix Wright tbh

He wasn't supposed to be in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney at all but Capcom insisted they put him in and they ended up making the whole game about him, stealing the spotlight from Apollo, and then just came back as if nothing ever happened for the next two games

Manic Emo Dream Ghoul Dec 21

@hazelnot @ami_angelwings as a fan of Wright, I found Apollo and Athena both so much more interesting and just let them be their glorious selves.

Apollo especially, he's from Maya Fey degree of family fuckery, and somehow ended up Maya Fey level of not bogged down by that.

Hecco the Dolphin Dec 21

@ami_angelwings Sherlock lol
let the author rest, damn you

Hecco the Dolphin Dec 21

@ami_angelwings like Sherlock only survived because people kept begging, let him rest 😭

Hecco the Dolphin Dec 21

@ami_angelwings my anti-answer to this, the character whose inexplicable survival/return is entirely justified, is the Secretary General of the United Nations in Godzilla Final Wars

CT Dec 22

@SuperTaliaDX @ami_angelwings Same thing with Poirot. The curse of popular detective characters!

Null Dec 21

@ami_angelwings I could probably make an argument for Roboute Guilliman and the Primarchs to Warhammer 40K.
Mostly because I despise moves that keep trying to shine heroics onto 40K and promote any notion that the imperium can and should be saved.

The Little Wars Dec 22

@NullNowhere @ami_angelwings in defense of the blueberry, there have always been heroics in 40k. Gaunt's Ghosts were terminally heroic even though they had nothing to fight for and no hope of victory. Thats the only way to have plot and tension in the grim darkness of the far future. Hell, Talos is heroic most of the time and he's a Night Lord.

In terms of painting the Imperium as worth saving or possible to save, I mean, he has still got the great rift, as of his last book he is hiding under his bed so the necrons cant find him.

Maybe The Lion though. I like the new Lion, he has matured as a character, but I dont know if the writers have any idea what to do with him. He doesnt question if the Imperium should be saved, unlike Guilliman where it comes up every chapter

The Little Wars Dec 23

@NullNowhere @ami_angelwings worse than either primarch is the bringing back Constatin Valdor. They dont know what to do with the Lion but Dan Abnett has been arguing with Black Library about the lore for his last book in his Bequin books for like 3 years.

Jeffrey Dec 21

@ami_angelwings in the 70s Spiderman writers introduced a new villain. Jackal was a biology professor at NYU attended by Peter Parker. Jackal "cloned" Peter and Gwen Stacy, also learning that Peter was Spiderman. This saga dragged on far too long until it ended with Jackal and the spider clone dying in an explosion. Peter dropped the clone's body into an incinerator.

Couple decades later the clone returned with a new identity and nothing good has come of it since

Kevin Carson Dec 21

@ami_angelwings Jesus, in the Gospels. He had some interesting things to say before he died, but since coming back he's caused mostly trouble.

Vile Lasagna Dec 22

@ami_angelwings Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom was the most recent one.

Y'know... it's LoZ, it was obviously always going to happen but it is precisely the knowledge that the devs will never have the balls to go through with the story they wrote that diminishes the impact and meaning of her whole story in that game. She's a complete badass but the whole time you're just "yeah yeah, we know how this goes, whatever"

I sometimes imagine they just not doing that [+1]

Vile Lasagna Dec 22

@ami_angelwings and then she's this immortal guardian goddess watching eternally over Hyrule and being revered by its people for her sacrifice, her tale becoming legend, people doing pilgrimages to witness her memories.

And that is just such a powerful version of this story. Alas. all fanfic

Irenes (many)Dec 22

@VileLasagna @ami_angelwings yeah, absolutely. we've had that same feeling about it.