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You know, the thing is, I really like comedies.
But not so much slapstick comedies -- the sort where it's nonstop wacky hijinks of a (usually) physical nature; I like shows and comics and whatevers that don't take themselves too seriously, and can, in fact, step back from themselves and laugh. Anything that strikes me as taking itself too seriously tends to bore me, or else drive me to imagining more humorous scenarios -- it is, ultimately, why I can't follow a whole lot of "epic" stories. I get ... bored, honestly, with the nobility and the drama and the RAW HUMAN SUFFERING AND AWE; some is good, some is often very good, but after a while, I get tired of it. I think Tolkien may be the only one who's ever pulled it off in a way that I don't eventually feel like mocking it. :\
On the other hand, I like a comedy that has darker elements, too. I don't mean just black humor or its ilk; I mean stories that are lighthearted and funny on surface viewing, but as soon as you scratch a bit deeper, there's a whole seething mass of things that could go wrong, will go wrong, or already have gone wrong. I like characters like this, too -- know me long enough and it's laughably easy to predict who my favorite character in something new will be: I like the "good" characters, the cheerful ones, the happy stupid ones that maybe the other characters are sometimes irritated with -- but who also have a darker core, something rotten inside all of the bright. And honestly, it feels more "real" to me (maybe I just have a skewed sense of reality? Errr) for a character to start light and progress to darker, rather than a character that starts dark and lightens as time goes on. It's possible, it just seems less likely.
I love a story where the characters can be laughing and stupid one moment, and in the next find themselves in a world of hurt and unhappiness -- but that ultimately, in the end, they pull together; I like a good dose of funny in my wooby. (Granted, I am not very good at this myself; my humor, such as I have it, is a physical humor: people laugh at me more because of how I saw things and how I look as I say them, or at the things I do, rather than what I say. Sadly, I am not a clever person, though someday I would LIKE to be.) I ... often cannot read WAFFy fixit stories, because everyone's so interested in the sentimental tugging of the heartstrings, and just as it is with unending angst, I get -- bored, in a way. And it's not that I don't think some characters DON'T deserve hugs and cuddlings, or that I think an awkward joke should be thrown in to jar the mood; it's just ... maybe it's that I prefer teasing and banter instead?
On that note -- Doctor Who is totally my new favorite show (well, one of several). The Doctor is so incredibly cute and enthusiastic you just want to FUZZLE him, but there are times when that blacker uglier part of him comes out, and it's absolutely fascinating to see.
And so here I must make a confession: I have not beaten Final Fantasy XII. I watched a roommate play it all the way through, and felt no desire to play it to the end myself to see it again. I've heard a lot of people enthusing about it, talking about how sweet it was, how wooby, how something, but it felt -- flat, to me. It didn't feel like enough payoff for the big ending that the game seemed to be promising for, and like a lot of it, I just felt it was short of delivering even half of what it promised.
And yes, I know there are going to be people who argue -- it's subtle! you can't expect it to be handed to you on a plate! But please don't tell me that. Maybe this is my own pretension, but I'm pretty certain I understand subtle, I get subtle -- and frankly, FFXII felt less like "subtle" and more like they sacrificed character for plot, and plot for mindless level-grinding -- and this is when I enjoyed the battle system and found the whole fighting monsters bit to be a lot of fun. Maybe it's just a thing with Final Fantasy games, but SO MUCH of the level-grinding felt extraneous, and like chunks of it could've been cut out to focus more on characters. As it was? I came out of the game still not really LIKING anyone enough to carry that beyond the game.
Final Fantasy XII is actually a good example of a story I think took itself too seriously -- yes, there was a huge political plot going on; yes, there was world-changing historical what-have-you. But frankly? I felt like too much of it got lost, yet again, with the level grinding, and ultimately it felt less subtle to me, and more of a "here, we are going to throw nuggets of cool stuff at you, NOW TAKE THE BAIT." It was very much a story of grand heroics and noble ideals unfortunately twisted, and ... in the end, the story didn't feel very human to me at all. And that's where it lost me; it was obsessed with the big picture to a degree where the small things -- the human elements that would make me sympathize and want these characters to win -- was lost. I look at Ivalice and see this richly-textured, fascinating and painstakingly-crafted world with so much potential, and yet ... the characters hardly seemed to take joy in their own world, so focused they were on their military and political goals, and it felt like a waste to me. Everyone still felt like charictures at the end -- ones I grew to not be so annoyed with as when I started, but still ... I don't know. I never felt like they really grew out of their original stilted roles.
However, Doctor Who has already caused me to stay up far past my bedtime, debating with a roommate where certain Major Events fit into the space-time continuum, whether something that happens "outside of time" will fit itself back into the linear flow, and if it does, how does it and where does it and what family structures might have existed with the Time Lords and how the hell do the Daleks keep surviving, please let me know. XD
Also have decided that David Tennant's sheer enthusiastic joy about getting to play his childhood idol/hero? Cutest thing ever, among other cutest things ever.
I need icons for Shounen Onmyouji and Doctor Who now. D: ... I suppose it's a good thing the weekend is coming up, though holy crap I need to clean and pack for MOVIN'S.
But not so much slapstick comedies -- the sort where it's nonstop wacky hijinks of a (usually) physical nature; I like shows and comics and whatevers that don't take themselves too seriously, and can, in fact, step back from themselves and laugh. Anything that strikes me as taking itself too seriously tends to bore me, or else drive me to imagining more humorous scenarios -- it is, ultimately, why I can't follow a whole lot of "epic" stories. I get ... bored, honestly, with the nobility and the drama and the RAW HUMAN SUFFERING AND AWE; some is good, some is often very good, but after a while, I get tired of it. I think Tolkien may be the only one who's ever pulled it off in a way that I don't eventually feel like mocking it. :\
On the other hand, I like a comedy that has darker elements, too. I don't mean just black humor or its ilk; I mean stories that are lighthearted and funny on surface viewing, but as soon as you scratch a bit deeper, there's a whole seething mass of things that could go wrong, will go wrong, or already have gone wrong. I like characters like this, too -- know me long enough and it's laughably easy to predict who my favorite character in something new will be: I like the "good" characters, the cheerful ones, the happy stupid ones that maybe the other characters are sometimes irritated with -- but who also have a darker core, something rotten inside all of the bright. And honestly, it feels more "real" to me (maybe I just have a skewed sense of reality? Errr) for a character to start light and progress to darker, rather than a character that starts dark and lightens as time goes on. It's possible, it just seems less likely.
I love a story where the characters can be laughing and stupid one moment, and in the next find themselves in a world of hurt and unhappiness -- but that ultimately, in the end, they pull together; I like a good dose of funny in my wooby. (Granted, I am not very good at this myself; my humor, such as I have it, is a physical humor: people laugh at me more because of how I saw things and how I look as I say them, or at the things I do, rather than what I say. Sadly, I am not a clever person, though someday I would LIKE to be.) I ... often cannot read WAFFy fixit stories, because everyone's so interested in the sentimental tugging of the heartstrings, and just as it is with unending angst, I get -- bored, in a way. And it's not that I don't think some characters DON'T deserve hugs and cuddlings, or that I think an awkward joke should be thrown in to jar the mood; it's just ... maybe it's that I prefer teasing and banter instead?
On that note -- Doctor Who is totally my new favorite show (well, one of several). The Doctor is so incredibly cute and enthusiastic you just want to FUZZLE him, but there are times when that blacker uglier part of him comes out, and it's absolutely fascinating to see.
And so here I must make a confession: I have not beaten Final Fantasy XII. I watched a roommate play it all the way through, and felt no desire to play it to the end myself to see it again. I've heard a lot of people enthusing about it, talking about how sweet it was, how wooby, how something, but it felt -- flat, to me. It didn't feel like enough payoff for the big ending that the game seemed to be promising for, and like a lot of it, I just felt it was short of delivering even half of what it promised.
And yes, I know there are going to be people who argue -- it's subtle! you can't expect it to be handed to you on a plate! But please don't tell me that. Maybe this is my own pretension, but I'm pretty certain I understand subtle, I get subtle -- and frankly, FFXII felt less like "subtle" and more like they sacrificed character for plot, and plot for mindless level-grinding -- and this is when I enjoyed the battle system and found the whole fighting monsters bit to be a lot of fun. Maybe it's just a thing with Final Fantasy games, but SO MUCH of the level-grinding felt extraneous, and like chunks of it could've been cut out to focus more on characters. As it was? I came out of the game still not really LIKING anyone enough to carry that beyond the game.
Final Fantasy XII is actually a good example of a story I think took itself too seriously -- yes, there was a huge political plot going on; yes, there was world-changing historical what-have-you. But frankly? I felt like too much of it got lost, yet again, with the level grinding, and ultimately it felt less subtle to me, and more of a "here, we are going to throw nuggets of cool stuff at you, NOW TAKE THE BAIT." It was very much a story of grand heroics and noble ideals unfortunately twisted, and ... in the end, the story didn't feel very human to me at all. And that's where it lost me; it was obsessed with the big picture to a degree where the small things -- the human elements that would make me sympathize and want these characters to win -- was lost. I look at Ivalice and see this richly-textured, fascinating and painstakingly-crafted world with so much potential, and yet ... the characters hardly seemed to take joy in their own world, so focused they were on their military and political goals, and it felt like a waste to me. Everyone still felt like charictures at the end -- ones I grew to not be so annoyed with as when I started, but still ... I don't know. I never felt like they really grew out of their original stilted roles.
However, Doctor Who has already caused me to stay up far past my bedtime, debating with a roommate where certain Major Events fit into the space-time continuum, whether something that happens "outside of time" will fit itself back into the linear flow, and if it does, how does it and where does it and what family structures might have existed with the Time Lords and how the hell do the Daleks keep surviving, please let me know. XD
Also have decided that David Tennant's sheer enthusiastic joy about getting to play his childhood idol/hero? Cutest thing ever, among other cutest things ever.
I need icons for Shounen Onmyouji and Doctor Who now. D: ... I suppose it's a good thing the weekend is coming up, though holy crap I need to clean and pack for MOVIN'S.
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I had to really grow to like some of the FFXII characters. I have to admit that Laylah helped some, with her fiction. But I had the same feeling that there could have been a lot more characterization of folks put in there. Penelo and Vaan in particular, but all of them just didn't QUITE have enough development for me to really feel like I was seeing what they truly felt. I often didn't know what the characters were thinking, which can work, but didn't for me. It just made the characters seem flatter than they should have. And yes, yes, I think that everyone being Very Serious was partly to blame. It's hard to get to know someone when they're always focussed on something else and frowny faced with concentration and determination. Much easier to get to know them when they've had a few drinks and are smiling and chatting you up. The characters in XII seem to hardly have any time for that kind of thing.
I blame this on the story director guy leaving the project partway through. I think that there was originally supposed to be more plot. Something after the Lighthouse besides just the ridiculous "where the hell did THAT come from?" airship. They were TOTALLY setting up for the Occuria to come down on Ashe like the hand of god for not doing what they told her to, and instead the Occuria did NOTHING. Not even any MENTION of any response from them about Ashe thumbing her nose at them. That was a glaring plot thread just dropped unceremoniously. My guess is that after the lighthouse, perhaps after Bahamut, you were supposed to go to a new area or something and fight the Occuria, because they were going to destroy the world or something. :shrug: It's what _I_ would have written, if I were the story designer.
all that said, I did LIKE FFXII, but I felt like it could have been much better.
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And really, I do think it was the very serious/noble sides of the characters that made it hard for me to relate to them. I am not, by nature, a very serious person -- while I have friends who ARE, it's also because I've known these people long enough to, you know, get to know their characters! But with characters, if all I'm shown is their serious faces, I can't seem to get behind 'em.
HAHA I'M SO GLAD IT WAS NOT JUST ME. I kept expecting something more to happen with the Occuria -- but it seemed like, "okay, we do this one thing, and suddenly they're not able to control us anymore! yay!" just like that. It seemed rather overly pat. My roommate says that FF games have a history of randomly throwing in some overall arching manipulator halfway to the end, but it seemed to me that the Occuria were ... sort of clumsily handled.
I didn't dislike the game, and I did have fun playing it! I just ... don't get half of its popularity, errrr. ^^;
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Yes, yes, I desperately want someone to write the ending of the game. Like, where they deal with the Bahamut and then have to do something ELSE with the Occuria before they get to all the FMVness at the end.
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The only other FF game I've played is 9, and I remember actually enjoying it (except for the stupid card game, ahaha); it might've been cliche in terms of plot, but I really liked the characters, and that made the game overall a lot more fun for me.
Seriously, though -- the Occuria were supposed to be the "gods" of the world, right? The way it was being discussed, they were the sort who wouldn't let their control over Ivalice go that easily, and yet ... they did? What? And it doesn't seem like the Revenant Wings sequel is really going to go into that much either, just from the handful of rumors I've heard. Buuuuu.
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I liked 9 more than I thought I would! :) And the card game was...not bad, iirc, but I never played it when I figured out that you got NOTHING for doing well at it. :( Now, Triple Triad in FF8? Now that was a fun game. The coin-thing minigame in FFX-2 (yes i've played it and felt suitably unclean) was actually pretty fun, too. :)
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9 was cute, and right, and Zidane struck me as a fun hero, one who at least had no issues till they were introduced to him. XD ... also one of my secret fondly woobie moments is, in fact, when Garnet flings herself down the stairs at him, hugs him, and then starts beating on him. XD I've seen bits of FFX-2, and ... the battle system looked fun? But that was about the most I could really say, with how little I saw. XD I was just really bad at the card game in 9, which is probably a lot of my bitterness towards it. XD
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FF9 was the first FF where I really believed the love interest. I mean, the ending? Zidane and Garnet were so woobie for each other. <3
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The ending of 9 made me so happy. :D I thought it also did a good job of showing the full circle a lot of the characters made, especially Garnet. :D