Maevemuses - Blog Posts
Was watching a reaction video to the Predator Badlands trailer, and one of the people reacting said something along the lines of, ‘I don’t care about predator culture, I don’t want to learn a single thing about them. I just want them to be mysterious alien hunters.’
Okay, but isn’t this way of thinking precisely what has been suffocating the franchise for the last decade? We never get anything new or anything interesting because film makers keep sticking to the same old formula in order to keep the predator species ‘mysterious’. Well, I hate to break it to you folks, but an alien species that has appeared in seven films has ceased to be mysterious a long time ago.
Leave it to Jensen Ackles to somehow make a misogynistic boomer fuck boy inexplicably charismatic.
Nintendo: Maintains the msrp at $70 for Breath of the Wild (despite it coming out almost 10 years ago), does not include the DLC for the switch 2 edition (making you pay an extra $20) and then charges you for the graphical upgrade ($10), making the total purchase approximately $100.
Bethesda: Remasters Elder Scrolls Oblivion using all new assets, gives it a pretty visual overhaul with nice lighting, upgrades the gameplay and leveling system, gives us new animations and records new voice lines all for the price of $50 (not to mention the DLC is included in the base price).
Yeah, I know who's getting my money this year.
Politics? In my Devil May Cry?
Okay so here are my personal opinions on Netflix's Devil May Cry
*Spoilers ahead*
So starting off I will say that I am a casual Devil May Cry fan (and have been for many years). I am also aware that this Netflix series is non-canon and I know that they were planning to go in a different direction with their own take on the Devil May Cry story and its characters. How it all panned out though? Personally, I think I walked away from this Netflix series a little less than lukewarm on it. Now I didn't outright hate it, but it fell pretty flat for me.
But, I want to be fair and start out with the things I liked.
I really liked the White Rabbit, both as this season's villain and as a character. My favorite part of the entire show was his backstory episode. I loved the direction of the story telling and the art. It was kind of jarring watching that episode to be honest, in a good way! I felt like I was watching an entirely different (and better) show for those 10 minutes. I felt like the White Rabbit was strangely the character that we as an audience had more of a chance to connect with over the others.
I really liked JYB's performance as Dante. He did a great job, even though my brain is so used to hearing him as Nero. I think JYB was definitely going for a younger (and less experienced) Dante and I think it worked well for the show!
Cavaliere Angelo (despite being mostly glaring CGI that stood out like a sore thumb) was pretty cool.
The plasma demon was also pretty cool for a side character demon guy.
I enjoyed Enzo when he wasn't being an exposition machine and just had some opportunities to banter with Dante. I think their occasional banter was the only time in the show I chuckled (outside of the last line in the season--that had me rolling because Vergil being unironically lame always makes me cackle💙)
The action scenes were fire!!🔥
Baby Vergil and Dante!! They were so cute! 😭💖
And now onto the things that made the show fall flat for me:
Lady. I'm sorry, but I just didn't vibe with the direction they took her. Lady doesn't need to swear every other line. She also doesn't need to posture like she's compensating for something. I understand that they may have been leaning hard into her standoffishness that she had at the beginning of DMC3, but outside of a few moments of self-reflection (which really didn't amount to much in the end) that's all she really was. Seriously, it felt like the show's creators were trying WAY too hard to make her "cool". My guy, listen, there is no need for that nonsense. Lady was already cool.
I sadly didn't laugh very much during the series. I don't know, the humor just didn't tickle my funny bone for some reason. Dante's one liners in the games usually do, but it just didn't hit the same in this series.
The whole dumb southern president and the rich, evil VP who pulls all the strings and runs a secret organization of demon hunters was pretty uninspired in my opinion. And I don't know, maybe it's just that the timing was bad given all the political insanity that is happening in the world currently, or maybe the show just focused way too hard on these characters/themes, but I just didn't enjoy any of the political and social commentary parts of the story. Especially since it came at the expense of time for us to get to know and explore the characters.
Despite this show’s promotional material leading us to believe it was about Dante and his family, this season felt like it was mostly dedicated to Lady and her squad/evil boss. All of which are characters that are very blatantly tied to the show’s political message and subsequently, making me care for them far less (sorry Lady, I loved you in the games, but not here). It's not a good sign for the likability of the characters when I ended cheering when Lady's squad was taken out. "Finally!", thought I, "They can stop focusing on these randoms and give us more Dante screentime!"
Branching off of this, did anyone else feel like Dante was a secondary character in his own show? Cause it did to me.
Now my next point is that the show didn’t land emotional scenes very well (except for episode 6, the one good episode that wasn’t even trying to be dmc). For example, Enzo's act of sacrifice at the end for…seemingly no reason? It felt like it came out of nowhere. Dante was not on the brink of death when Enzo put himself in the line of fire. Hey Enzo, did you forget that this man can survive a literal bomb to the face? It honestly was so forced and so nonsensical and the "emotional" scene that it was trying to build ended up falling totally flat.
Final point: Vergil is Mundus’ lapdog now? Willingly? That’s quite off course for his character in the games. But I’ll keep an open mind to see where they go with his character. I’m sad to say given what they did with Lady, I’m not very optimistic.
Final, final point: Vergil’s devil trigger/Nelo Angelo design looks like it was still in the first draft phase. 😬
That's about all of my initial thoughts. Overall, I respect the show for trying to do its own thing and I'm glad that some folks had a great time watching it! For me personally though, this show was more of a miss than a hit. Maybe season 2 will be a bit more up my alley.
⚠️Netflix's Devil May Cry Spoilers ahead!!
How bout that ending huh?
"The sapiens and their armies, unaware of the storm they ride into. I am that storm."
*BURY THE LIGHT INTENSIFIES*
Wow. Nintendo's greed truly knows no bounds.
To be fair though, most video game companies have been flushing consumer friendliness and accessibility to their games (both past and present) down the toilet for years now. And let me tell you, nothing takes the wind out of my sails more than these gaming companies that want to bleed you absolutely dry just for a base (and sometimes even limited) experience of their games. Shame on the lot of them.
The villagers in Fields of Mistria have so much personality and lots to say! For instance, they each have interesting comments about the donations you make to the museum and will also comment on festivals and events. However, I do wish that they had some more unique comments during extreme weather like thunderstorms (maybe we will get typhoons and blizzards in future updates?). I'd love the villagers and LIs in Fields of Mistria to have unique reactions whenever they see the farmer out in bad weather.
It would be so funny to see LIs like March and Juniper scold the farmer for being out in the storm (while begrudgingly offering them shelter), or Hayden and Celine shocked to see the farmer outside during a borderline hurricane and telling them to come in so they can fix them up something warm. Balor is used to traveling through bad weather, so he'd be less worried but offer the farmer one of his trusty cloaks to help keep them dry.
"Live and suffer." Is the intention of that phrase meant to be a direct contrast to Vash's catchphrase "Love and Peace"?
Listen, I don't play Love and Deepspace (barely know anything about it tbh), but you're telling me that this dating sim has combat with giant space monsters, a plethora of otome tropes galore, gambling, clingy otome yandere men, AND A PERIOD TRACKER???
Shut up, that's genius.
I'm surprised that there's a wave of people that don't like Caldarus' design. Personally I really like it and I think it fits his personality and backstory (that we know of so far) very well. Caldarus is a curious, contemplative and mysterious, regal dragon god. He's also been asleep for a very long time and has been weakened by something (or someone) in the past that we have yet to discover. Of course he is on the frail side, the dragon man's been through it and he needs rest!! So yes, I think Caldarus' design suits him wonderfully.
I've managed to unlock Caldarus and good lord he's just too precious 😭💞 I've been interacting with him for a while now and he reminds me a lot of Yuzuki from Story of Seasons- Trio of Towns, who is also the most precious little bean in the world
This made me chuckle, but I must wail and bemoan the missed alliteration opportunity. Could have went with something like, "Anger Against the Apparatus"
Want to play some FOM so bad, but work has been kicking my butt this week.
Caldarus, I'm coming for you my sweet dragon prince, wait for me.
Binged Castlevania Nocturne in two days and ngl it made me miss the hot mess that was Alucard, Trevor, and Sypha's fantastic little murder trio.
Apologizing in advance for how feral I'm going to be once I see Vergil in the Devil May Cry Netflix show
For those monster x reader story connoisseurs out there, I am genuinely curious about something.
In the stories you read, do you prefer the monster be more like an OC (i.e., a character that is named, has a more detailed physical description, and has a backstory and unique personality) or a more generic monster (similar to the reader character, who is nameless but has some surface level physical or personality descriptions)?
Fictional otome man: is an emotional brick wall, probably super dangerous on the side, can be grumpy on a good day, acts like he's indifferent, plays it cool even when he's given a scrap of affection, has those tiny little moments when he breaks...
Me:
