Annie D

Before the Steam Deck came out the biggest misconception folks seemed to have was that it was functionally different from a portable computer, and Valve also seemed to struggle a bit with this based on an IGN Q&A I watched that was basically 20 minutes of "can it do x" and them going "it's a computer, so yes".

But folks, our Steam Deck has randomly stopped accepting input from our 8bitdo controllers despite still detecting them as connected through bluetooth and I have never been more acutely aware that this thing is just a little bastard computer!!

Enjoy???

great piece. a few thoughts on this dynamic, which i suspect is going to get worse before it gets better:

• judging only from the clips linked in the above piece, the "over-the-top elevated fantastical pulpy dialog" that exists to be cheesy so our hero can sneer at it just isn't good, and isn't having any fun, imo. there is absolutely such a thing as well-done schlock vs poorly done schlock, and if writer wants to have a snarky character who sits outside the conceded-as-schlock tonal range scoff at it, they need to earn that. good schlock is an art. otherwise you're just saying "who writes this crap??" and guess what, the answer is you and your audience's response will be to laugh at you not with you.
• afaict naturalism is one of the most undervalued qualities in pulp writing in games. characters speak in all manner of different ways and you might have the most ridiculous concepts and world imaginable but if you can make it sound like something a real human would think and say on the spot (99% of game dialog isn't a speech the character prepared), even if that character is a super extra MFer who needs to chill, you have done a magic trick and your audience will follow you pretty much anywhere you take things. the reason i had such a nails-on-a-chalkboard reaction to those forspoken clips was that the writing didn't even seem to be trying to make the rhyming queen a real person. love your characters enough to give them good material, even and especially the cheeseballs.
• i suspect the rise of [face visibly crumples getting this word out] whedonesque quippy dialog is actually in large part about negotiating new rules (in some cases, installing some new trapdoors) for naturalism in writing. this is the thing people rightly give the MCU stuff shit for: if your story has some unavoidably corny bullshit in it, just build some characters snarking about it into the script to firewall the cornball off from the bits you actually care about. but ultimately this is self-sabotaging, for the reasons the OP outlines. the point at which we coined a term for it is well past the point of actual audience fatigue with the concept, and that was like, uh 10 years ago now? so yeah we're deep in the swamps of sadness rn. again, love yourself, love your characters, enough to not assume your audience's natural reaction to them will be mockery.

For those who’ve not played FFXIV, Urianger is one of your compatriots in the main story, and initially principally distinguished by his mode of speech being impossibly archaic.

While all the dialogue in the game is prone to some unusually anachronistic phrasing the translators seem to love, Urianger is absolutely and thoroughly over the top, full of thees and thous and vocabulary that feels like it probably hasn’t seen print in centuries until now.

The thing is though… they always and absolutely commit to the bit. A few characters over the length of a very long game comment about him having “a way with words”, in a way that feels more in-character ribbing than ironic nod to the fourth wall.

Instead, over the course of the game, they build characterization out of this. You grow to realize that he’s just an awkward dude who has spent 90% of his life with his head in ancient books, and that he’s hiding behind the purple prose a lot because he’s ironically enough, not great at expressing his own feelings.

It also gives them this powerful tool, where whenever the story calls for someone to wax poetic, Urianger is there to drop a sonnet without it being out of character for anyone else … and they even let him win narrative bits this way.

What started at the beginning as kind of the “weird old dude” joke of the party… became a fan favorite as they just let him keep being him, keep building on it. And it’s ten times more believable to me that this group of friends just kinda love their weird goofball, because they see what the writers do, rather than what would certainly be the quipped approach of everyone constantly giving him shit for it and me the player wondering why these people are even friends.

This is the kind of power you give yourself when you respect your own work! How much more narrative power you gain when you give a shit!

If you can’t love your own work, even the weird or “embarrassing” bits… nobody else is going to do it for you.

Enjoy???

[Logan dons a X-Men uniform]
Wolverine: You actually go outside in these things?
Cyclops: Well, what would you prefer, yellow spandex?

I laughed at this line when I heard it ... 23 years ago.

Now I'm just tired.

Any joke will wear thin after this much repetition, and this one is now about as ripe as a drivetime radio DJ spouting another Austin Powers reference.

It comes from the same place it did then, I think: a lack of self-respect.

It was understandable in 2000. Comic book movies had a pretty lousy track record at that point: a couple of decent Batman and Superman flicks that nosedived in quality, and anything Marvel by this point was lucky to go straight to video.

But that constant self-consciousness is somehow more ubiquitous than ever, even as comic book movies have become such a consistent box office seller that the only reason Disney makes anything else is to try and drag out their hold on half the canon of Western fairy tale.

There's a point it just becomes sad. An entire ecosystem of self-defeatist media incapable of making any choices in confidence, of ever taking itself seriously even for a moment, as if it still thinks we're in high school and the pretty girls won't talk to it if they knew it liked games about wizards.

And as Austin points out, as a viewer, as a creator ... it begs an important question.

"If you can't even respect your own material, why are you making it? And why should I care about it, if you don't?"

Confidence is king ... and you can smell it a mile away when there's none to be had.

Enjoy???