Total posts: 6,549
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@RationalMadman
All the more reason not to draw attention to it, particularly by trying to bring in moderation to address it.
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@RationalMadman
He's allowed to quote whoever he wants in the way he wants. We're not going to police how he chooses to do so. If you want to set the record straight, that's up to you.
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@badger
1. Fullmetal Alchemist is the best anime. That belongs here only insofar as I never talk about anime with anyone. But it just is. The whole mad scientist thing. The atmosphere. The magic system. The way the homunculi are inserted into a government conspiracy by means of that magic system thereby permeating the whole story, from the boys' original sin to world's end. Really, I'm just a little bit in awe of how the whole story coheres. It's an entire world spun out from a sin, no departures from that. I think it's one of the most impressive pieces of worldbuilding in all media.
I'm not sure whether you're referring to the original series that aired in 2003 or Brotherhood, which aired in 2009. I think the first series handled the early elements of the story better, while the latter did far better in progressing the story and sticking the landing, which comes with the territory of the first being anime original for much of its run while the latter had the finished manga as source material. There's also a movie extending beyond the 2003 anime series, which has some great elements but stands apart from any source material.
All that being said, Brotherhood rates among my favorites (the 2003 series is still really good, but I wouldn't rate it nearly as high), though I wouldn't say it's my absolute favorite. It's probably the most solid anime series I've seen and it deserves the love it gets. I've heard that the live action adaptations have been frustrating,
2. Wheel of Time is some of the most disappointing shit I've ever seen in my life. First three episodes - excellent. I really was excited for the show. The magic was a bit iffy, but trollocs were awesome. The fade looked a bit cartoony but serviceable. Then what the fuck happened. Nynaeve, Lan, and Moraine are ruined beyond repair. The warders are all gay. The Amyrlin Seat is a lesbian. Women can be dragons. Everyone has spent this entire first season crying. Everyone. Crying. Nynaeve is just ruined. That was a fun, fighty character, not the mopey girl this show has made her. Rosamund Pike spends 15 minutes an episode making that dumb, drawn face, supposedly hiding emotions, she just looks so dopey. Lan couldn't be more effeminate if they tried. He spent the first 5 books made of stone. I mean, it's just so much crying. Logain is also a manlet, but it doesn't even matter. Why has everyone spent every single episode crying. I am so disgusted with this show.
Another example of a series that just doesn't seem to get what it's drawing from, unfortunately. I read all of the books, I love the series, and I was pretty disappointed with this adaptation. From the beginning, I had problems, particularly as the story was pretty clearly rushing the material in ways that I didn't feel were necessary. The narrative arc juggles elements of the first three books (and some beyond that) in ways that are frustrating since they've skipped elements and moved things around in ways that end up making the series nonsensical. Many of the characters do not behave like the characters from their books. Like, from the very first episode, they just decide to introduce a wife for Perrin who serves no obvious purpose. They barely characterize her at all before hard fridging her and letting her death weigh on Perrin throughout the rest of the series.
I didn't actually have huge problems with their portrayal of Moraine, personally. Lan and Nynaeve's relationship moves way too fast, and the latter is a lot more frustrating than she should be. The Amyrlin Seat is actually canonically bedfellows with Moraine, so that wasn't a surprise. In general, I don't mind the dour feeling of the series as a whole, but the series spends so much time suggesting that who the Dragon Reborn might be because it wants to keep up that mystery that it gives no time to actually explore what the Dragon is and how the actual Dragon Reborn contends with that. It's incredibly frustrating that almost all of the history of this world, which is so important to the narrative, is drained out of this adaptation. There's no sense of scale, the Forsaken never appear, the entire concept of ta'veren is only hinted at being important without actually explaining anything...
Honestly, the series just feels like a carbon copy of fantasy tropes utilizing the pieces of this world. It's frustrating to me because what makes the series work is everything they left out. It's superficially there, but there's no depth to it at all, and given how they ended the series, I don't see things getting better in S2.
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@Athias
I, too, thought that the recent Bleach Live Action was quite good. It was charming and funny and left the impression of a Bleach property. It felt like I was watching Bleach.
I was actually pretty delighted with it. Went in expecting to hate on it, and found myself enjoying the experience quite a bit. Thought they had solid takes on Rukia and Renji, in particular.
If only these studios would understand that these changes are okay here and there so long as the audience is left with the impression that they're watching the property on which the adaptation is based.
I think capturing the spirit of the anime is something that these studios aren't really interested in doing for the most part, which boggles the mind. They're more interested in triggering nostalgia receptors than they are in really getting at the core of why a given anime is loved.
And I agree as well that the prospects of a One Piece Live Action (though limited as my knowledge on the series as a whole may be) are looking bleak.
As someone who has largely kept up with the series, I can say that the casting looks good for this, but I can't fathom a way they can do it well. So yeah, bleak is right.
I'm sure the same is true for another beloved anime of mine: Yu Yu Hakusho which NETFLIX plans to release next year, I believe.
Yeah, I heard about this one, too. Loved the series, and unfortunately I suspect they won't do it justice, though it's not outside of the realm of possibility that they could manage a decent adaptation. Not optimistic, though.
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@Athias
I agree. I think the effort to make adaptations is built on a desire to capture nostalgic fans, which works to the point of getting someone in the door, but fails miserably if the adaptation is not suitably faithful to the original. It's been a struggle, to say the least, for any studio to adapt a live action version of any anime (the only one that comes to mind as well done is Rurouni Kenshin, as you said, though I will say that I was surprised at how decent the recent Bleach movie was), and I don't think that's going to change. With the recent effort to adapt One Piece, in particular, I just don't see studios getting this right - I mean, that series thrives on cartoony visuals, I can't fathom how they convert them to live action without it looking awful.
And therein lies the rub with this specific kind of adaptation (anime to live action): it really can't be faithful to the original. I think what these creators don't understand is that the medium matters. It's part of the reason why so many Disney live action remakes of animated classics just don't work. You lose something in the translation. The expressiveness is necessarily limited. The vibrant coloring is diminished. There's less fluidity to the motions. And all of that is just for anime that doesn't utilize aspects that defy basic human physiology. This could have theoretically been a passable adaptation even in live action, but it would still be weak compared with the original. Of course, it wasn't passable at all, and that has everything to do with their willingness to bastardize so many of the characters, themes and narratives from which they took the names and basic boiler plates. I agree that it would have been better if it had been it's own thing, but then this probably never would have been made in the first place... and we'd probably be better for it.
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@Polytheist-Witch
I am open to discussing this issue should you reach out to me.
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@Wylted
Post 62 pretty much confirms I would probably be in a better position to influence whiteflame's decisions than RM, and the only real power of the president is persuasive power.
Alright, let me clarify this as well.
RM is probably one of the few other people on the site that has been in personal contact with me for a rather long period. He has exclusively done it through the site, but we've had similar discussions. I wouldn't set you two apart so far in that regard. I've known you longer, but that doesn't give you greater influence over me. If you want to claim that direct communication over a prolonged period = a better position to influence me, that's up to you, but you both have that.
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@RationalMadman
I'm not sure who I'll be voting for in the election. As for my relationship with Wylted outside of the site, I'd say it's cordial. Just some frank discussions on some personal and general topics, some of which we have agreed on and others not. We've known each other for quite a while, since he joined DDO at the same time that I did. In that sense, I know him better than most users and he has more experience communicating with me personally than most users.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Depends on who is involved. Would really want more people to be engaged next time, but I enjoyed the concept.
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Well... that happened...
I don't know what either Earth or Supa were planning this game, and maybe part of the problem here was just that Supa was absent for so much of it. Strange choices on their parts when they were involved didn't help. Still don't think it was the smart choice to sabotage during Mission 1, but maybe that's just me.
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@oromagi
Alright, so this seems pretty basic to me. It's possible that someone on that four person team is still playing us in hopes of taking the game in the last two missions, but I doubt it. A Spy refusing to take advantage of an opportunity like this just doesn't make sense to me.
As such, this result suggests that the other Spy is Ragnar (was Supa). Oro gets to pick the team this time around and I'm good with any set of three out of the four that were on this mission.
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@RationalMadman
I think you meant to say that you will always res-read Pie this game no matter what, but fine, I guess I'll just go along with it regardless of where this goes.
I vote yes
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@RationalMadman
Couldn't say what his reasoning is, though given that his most recent posts were admitting that Earth had outed himself as a Spy, I would hope that he's changing a lot of his preconceptions if he is Resistance.
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@RationalMadman
Much as I had my suspicions of Supa, I think Earth's vote should at least somewhat allay them. I find it hard to believe that, at this stage in the game, Earth would actively vote for a team that excluded his Spy partner.
So if it comes down to whether it's Oro or me, I guess I'll leave it at your discretion to determine how best to sus that out. Personally, I think Earth's choices narrow it down to Oro or Pie, and I suspect that regardless of the choice we make, we're going to find ourselves with a split between two possible candidates if most of us aren't on the same page about who the likeliest two candidates are. Even if we shifted out Oro for Supa, which I'd still support, that gives a theoretical Pie Spy the opportunity to sabotage and blame it on me. I'll be left off the next team, he'll be on, game over. As such, my hope is that I'm right about Oro being the Spy, since his being off the team will guarantee the success of Mission 3.
I appreciate your being open-minded at this stage, especially considering how important this particular mission is. Of course, without active discussion, this is mainly just about how a few of us think anyway. It might not matter if we're on the same page if both Earth and Supa are just not participating, so we might have to wait for replacements before we get anywhere.
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@RationalMadman
If you replace out pie for supa, you are the biggest fool of the game.
I still think Pie is more likely to be Resistance based on previous evidence, but we should try to glean everything we can from Earth's vote.
For Mission 2, Earth rejected three different proposals that all included Pie and Oro, swapping out the third member for me, Supa or RM. So, at least for that round, that suggests to me that he didn't want Pie or Oro on the team. It's unclear why he didn't want them on the mission, but the third member didn't seem to matter so much as the fact that one or both of these two were on the mission.
He then suggests Earth, Oro, Supa and me for this round, one where the Spies have an opportunity to sabotage with limited PoE and where the Spies really have to get something going. We know Earth's a Spy, but it's an open question whether he'd assign the other Spy to this mission.
Finally, he votes for a team with Pie, Oro, you and me. He didn't care whether I was on the team when Supa, me and you were being swapped around in Mission 2, so that rules me out. We know you're Resistance, so that rules you out. That just leaves Pie and Oro. I believe it's Oro, but I'm not going to reject the possibility that my previous reads of Pie were wrong. Earth wanted either Pie or Oro off of Mission 2 for some reason, and now he wants one or both of them on the team for Mission 3?
Maybe I'm looking too deep at Earth's behavior this game, but he's our only basically confirmed Spy at this stage. His decisions should give us some direction. If you don't like replacing Pie with Supa, I'm fine with replacing Oro, but either way, I'm looking to figure out which of the two of them Earth has been focused on when making his decisions.
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I'll step off my vote for a bit to consider. Shift WF's vote to null for the moment.
Based on both Earth's decision and RM's response to it, I'm much more firmly in the "Earth is a Spy" camp.
I can't fathom why Earth, as part of the Resistance, would support a team with RM on it, who he would be certain is a Spy. Seriously, the only way that anyone should still be considering the possibility that Earth is Resistance is if they're assuming that he either just forgot the results of Mission 1 or just didn't care anymore and was willing to vote yes on anything. I'll note that his team and Pie's both include Oro and me as their shared features, which may suggest that one of us is a Spy, and though it's a strange choice for him to assign both Spies to the same team, I'd say that that is a plausible choice for him at this stage. Given his "Yes" vote on Pie's team, I'd say that that lends credence to my view that Oro is likely the other Spy.
That being said, I'm still absolutely fine with this team since, even if it is Oro, we will get confirmation of it from the results of this Mission. Right now, I'd say that Earth's vote puts Oro as the far more likely other Spy when compared with Supa. The only option that makes me second-guess myself is that Pie might still be playing us. We'd get "confirmation" that Oro is the Spy from having him on this team and include Pie on the next Mission, giving him the opportunity to sabotage and win it for the Spies. It would make sense that Pie decided not to sabotage Mission 2 to give himself cover. So, personally, I'd rather replace Oro or Pie with Supa and see what happens, since I believe that would be more telling.
Still, I'm not super opposed to this team choice, just considering whether it's the optimal one.
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@Vader
RM is likely spy
What brings you to this conclusion?
He was on the first mission, which failed, and then was on the second mission, which succeeded. I could see the case being made that there's value in that strategy, since the goal would be to wait for the 4 person mission when it's more difficult to figure out who sabotaged the mission. Doesn't seem like a choice that RM would make, but if you see some reason why RM is likely to have done this, I'd be interested in hearing why.
Earth is possible res
I mind less that you are sus of RM than that you're somehow sus of both Earth and RM (clearly a little less of Earth), and that you chose to place both of them on your suggested team. It's not that it isn't possible that Earth and RM are a Spy team, but considering that it immediately put both of them on notice after Mission 1 failed, I'd have a hard time believing that either of them would sign onto that mission, much less that one of them would actively provide the team as the one to be voted on.
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@Vader
Edit: should've said "If you trust RM the most, that should mean that Earth is the obvious Spy in your book."
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@RationalMadman
I think whiteflame has outplayed us both and that supa and oro are absolute trolls, that's my genuine theory at this point.
I'll admit, it's gratifying to have you say this just because you think I have the skills to do that, though it would also mean that I literally told you what I as a Spy would do if I was on the team in Mission 2.
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@Vader
I put my team in the second round because I trust RM the most out the pile, I trust to a degree Earth, and have an unclear read on WF. If the mission were to fail, I'd know WF or Earth as spies
This doesn't make sense, dude. Mission 1 was sabotaged. If you trust RM the most, that should mean that RM is the obvious Spy in your book. There should be no question because one of the two of them sabotaged that mission. However, your choices seem to ignore that reality. Honestly, this explanation just makes me question whether you've been keeping up with what happened in the previous missions.
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@RationalMadman
WTF do you mean?! Oro didn't, Supa did.Oro dumbtold, Supa literally used a team guaranteed to fail.
They've both made strange choices. I'm not sure why Supa would have picked a team guaranteed to fail, but unless he's actively trolling us, that move doesn't make any sense. My guess is that he saw that we were going to vote against whatever he provided and chose a team that he knew wouldn't pass muster just to get our collective goats. Whether that's a Spy move or something else is unclear.
I also can't explain why Oro decided to vote no on that last setup. I get that he had previously stated that he disagreed with it, but anyone reading the previous posts would know that my decisions were automatically going through. Can't say that makes him an obvious Spy, but it definitely doesn't do anything to help my perception of him.
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@oromagi
Oro, it automatically passed because the alternative was for the Resistance to forfeit the game. Your voting no on this one when the alternative is to automatically hand the game over to the Spies is... a choice, I guess? I can't tell if you aren't keeping up with what's been said before (unusual for you), are voting this way on principle to let us know that you disagree (we already knew that), or if you just wanted to hand over the game to the Spies.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Alright, we're doing this then:
RM, Pie and WF
I'm less sure between Oro and Supa who is more likely to be a Spy, but we don't have to make that call this round.
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@Vader
WF RM Earth
I think this might be one of the worst possible setups, save perhaps Pie RM Earth. You're guaranteeing that there is a Spy on this team, and by doing that, you're also guaranteeing that we learn nothing new when the Mission is, inevitably, sabotaged. I can't fathom how this is a good choice regardless of the team you're on. It's a throw-away setup.
I obviously vote no.
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@RationalMadman
That is the single least likeliest spy team at this point considering where and when Earth hammered 'no' as well as how Oromagi has behaved to this team suggestion.Why do you not agree?
Consider it a gut response to what happened. It all smacked of Oro trying to put distance between himself and Earth. Not that Supa's been doing a great job this game, he's just harder to read based on what I've seen so far.
If this ends up as a 'no', put a team with you and pie both in it and I'll vote yes whoever you put third (unless it's Earth).
I'll guarantee that.
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@RationalMadman
I've already provided what I believe to be the likeliest Spy team of Earth and Oro, though Supa would rank close second to Oro.
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@RationalMadman
How else does one get reads in a game other than to wonder what they'd say and do in the other's shoes vs what the other says and does?I don't have a norm of you in resistance games to hold you against.
Dude, you're welcome to do the WIFOM thing as much as you want and claim what my choices in this game have been motivated by. I think my choices speak for themselves and when this game does end (or when I'm revealed as Resistance during the game, as the case may be), you'll find out that you've been digging too deep into possible motivations for my choices. And, hell, I'm giving you the opportunity to show how insightful you've been by voting "Yes" on your team, despite suspecting that this, too, will end in a sabotage. So I'm giving your theories a chance despite presenting different ones and clearly knowing that you are wrong about me. Let's leave it at that.
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@RationalMadman
Your logic throughout the game has been subpar, primarily with what you think spies will do with active vs passive moments. The most sensible reason, as a spy, for you to be pro-non-sab in outward writing is so that when it happens, you can say you wouldn't do it.If you are resistance, I just think you don't approach the game aggressively enough or realise that one fail vs one success is worth more than long-term deception especially in a first game on the site without previous metas or things.
A) I'm still getting used to the game. This is pretty similar to the kind of play I used when I started with Mafia, and it comes from hesitancy and still trying to understand how best to play this one.
B) You can say it's subpar, I really don't care. I've got my own thoughts on how the Spies should behave depending on the circumstances. They haven't so far, and they likely won't going forward. Doesn't mean I'm wrong, it just means I don't think the same way they do. The reasoning you're giving for why that makes me a likely spy is entirely WIFOM.
Soyou would not advise Earth to hammer 'no' on the first team for WIFOM purposes?Why not? Even I would do that if I were Earth's partner in your shoes.
I really don't understand what you're getting at here. You're assuming how I would coach Earth if I was his partner, more WIFOM. Again, how you would behave doesn't indicate how I would, but I didn't speak to Earth and I honestly hadn't considered how I'd coach him, so it's interesting that you've thought about this so much.
I am not looking for active covering-up by spies.My theory is that Disc himself will have subconsciously been sloppier with the Spy's bio and only wanted to avoid blatant discrepancies.Pie's bio is the only non-orphan-type storyline, this seems so blatant of a sore thumb that I think it can't be the spy one.Your one, however, has precisely the kind of monotony and over-similarity to other's, especially mine, that it feels like Disc wrote it after writing the others and just tried to make it fit.
Yes, and part of my point was that examining where the mod could have been sloppy is a problem. I've made that mistake before, too. You don't know where, if anywhere, Disc would have placed discrepancies in our bios. By scrutinizing what he might have done and where, I think you're just getting lost in the weeds.
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@RationalMadman
Honestly, think what you want, but you're wrong here and the logic you're using doesn't fully track.
On the first point, I explained why my no vote was obvious when I responded to you in post #105. I didn't require any coaxing from you to do it, I just didn't feel the need to post a vote immediately and explained why.
On the second, I don't understand this whole point about Oro somehow "blindsiding" a theoretical Spy team of Earth and me. Oro hadn't suggested any agreement or disagreement with your line of reasoning against me before Mission One, which already led me to believe that he had his suspicions. In fact, several of you had laid out suspicions against me prior to this, so I would have been surprised to have been included on most, let alone all, of the lists for this mission.
On the third, I wouldn't call anything I've been doing as "full throttle active" - I laid out my thoughts in bigger posts and provided a small set of responses where I felt they were warranted. And, as I said above, I had my reasons for waiting to vote no. You've been watching closely to see how various people respond to given scenarios. So have I.
On the fourth, I had already given my perspective on Pie before he tried to shift his vote. Based on his behavioral responses before this, I felt no need to question why he tried to do this. But this one seems exceptionally odd for you to point out. Feel free to look back at my history with mafia. I tend to be more nit-picky about behaviors like this when I'm scum. Also, I did respond to your point about my bio here. It sounds like you're nit-picking small differences in our bios as a basis for establishing me as a Spy, which would be fine if not for the fact that you're just inferring what Disc would do with the cover stories he provides to the Spies, i.e. that he would build in distinctions that would make them clearly different from those given to Resistance members. I've made that mistake before in Mafia, scrutinizing specific information to the point where I'm scrutinizing the profiles to the point that I feel absolutely certain that I see a flaw that gives someone away. I've been wrong more often than not. If you want to make it here, be my guest.
On the fifth, I don't know what "moves" you think I'm making "very little sense" with, or why the lack of interaction sets me apart when I was hardly the only one to leave him alone during DP1.
But hey, you've already built a narrative and you clearly spent time on it. If you want to get screwed over by this assessment during Mission 3 when we have to pick all the Resistance members or we guarantee sabotage, be my guest. We're probably already in a bad way and I don't share your relative certainty that Oro is Resistance. Maybe I'll end up being wrong, too.
Regardless, I think at this point we need to do as much as possible to ferret out the second Spy, and I think this team could provide us with that information. What's more, if I'm right that it's Oro and he sabotages, then I'll be confirmed to be Resistance and we can move into the next phase with some solid information. Hence, I vote yes to the current team setup.
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@ILikePie5
Valid point. I guess the issue here is more with who we're going to choose for the next round than for this one. Like I said, I suspect that even if there is a Spy in this one, they will not sabotage this round. Whoever the other Spy is, they have more to gain by staying quiet this round than they do by sabotaging due to PoE alone.
Anyway, I'd like to at least get RM's take on why he's favoring Oro over Supa before I vote yes, but you can consider me locked in as a yes vote at the moment.
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@RationalMadman
Alright, I'll try to lay out my thoughts as best I can.
I don't care so much if you leave me off the team at this point. Based on my re-read-through of this thread and the previous one, it's pretty clear that Earth is the Spy, so I'm good with having RM on the team. So long as that's true, we have some wiggle room in the other selections (until the next Mission, where we'll have to select 4 people), so I'm fine being left out.
In that respect, among the 4 people who weren't on the first Mission, Pie seems the safest, I agree. My concern, then, is with the selection of Oro over Supa. I'm unclear on why that particular decision was made. RM, you've made clear why you're not picking me, but especially given Supa's relative absence compared to pretty much everyone else in this game, I have a hard time believing that he was at all involved in the decision to sabotage Mission 1, given that that happened so rapidly. It's possible that Earth made the decision by himself, but at least that's a reason why Supa stands out as the lesser of the two (Oro and Supa) in terms of likelihood to me.
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@ILikePie5
PoE. Posted my thoughts back in post #33. I’m lending less credence than I was to Supa’s not understanding how the game was working during both discussions, but I still feel that that is more likely to be the result of him not being a Spy.
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@RationalMadman
Unless you are saying Earth and myself are the team, can you give me one reason why you haven't voted no yet to the suggested team?
I was and remain interested in the responses to Oro's proposed setup. Throwing my vote in when it's rather obvious how I'm going to vote (I've already said that you and Earth being a team is the least likely option, and given that there are likely to be three Resistance members apart from whichever of you is also clean, I'm quite certain that there is a Spy on the current setup) seems rather pointless. Several of you clearly think I'm the Spy, so there's not much point in making my opinion known. Either way, I'd want to be on this mission, and since the general feeling I'm seeing from others is that I'm the Spy, I think that it will be interpreted through that lens.
That being said, it really doesn't matter how any of you perceive it. I know that that team is the wrong choice. I also suspect that, even if it is the wrong choice, the Spy will refuse to sabotage on this one in order to implicate the remaining member that is not on the team when they do sabotage in Mission 3. With this setup, if they choose to sabotage in Mission 2, then I'll be confirmed to be part of the Resistance. I don't think they'll want to further PoE in that way, but maybe the other Spy will surprise me. In any case, I'm still obviously going to vote no.
Whiteflame's is mimickery of mine in one way (even if it's true) as if Disc based it on mine and flipped it around not that WF made it all up... Yet, it's also generic and lacking like just fleeing, fleeing?
I can only speak to what my bio says. I certainly didn't have to be the first to post directly after you, and if my aim was to copy the basic tenets of yours, I think it's obvious that I would have wanted to put space between our posts. I'll note that it's still also unclear whether the bio reveals anything worth noting whatsoever. For all we know, the Spies have posted theirs verbatim, only modifying any portions that hint at what they are.
I will be willing to change to voting No if there is an agreement that me, pie and supa can enter as a team of 3.
Much as my suspicions have shifted towards Earth, at the moment, this is not a setup I can agree to implementing, and I don't think you'll get agreement from Pie, either. You might be a choice for Mission 3, but for Mission 2, I don't see you as a viable option.
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@ILikePie5
Really does seem like he's trying to deflect as much as possible.
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@Earth
You have something specifically against Pie. Presumably, that comes with some reasoning as to why you think he's a Spy. I'm assuming it's this:
I voted down Pie's team because pie proposed it.
However, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Pie isn't the only one who has proposed that someone should be on a given mission in this game. By that logic, you should be just as sus of Oro, who has also proposed a team for a mission and included himself on it. So, why does Pie stand out to you while Oro doesn't?
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@RationalMadman
Doesn’t say. I left out that I worked for him from 879 to 884, but apart from that, the details of my employment aren’t evident.
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@RationalMadman
Everybody pls tell about your bio PM
Alright:
- Only child in a minor aristocratic family
- Inherited estate at age of 21, but lost much of it due to economic issues, losing the rest to my uncle in a legal battle
- Fled provinces to avoid assassination attempt by said uncle
- Worked for governor of southern province until they were arrested for conspiracy against the Hegemony of Odigos
- Fled again for being implicated in that plot
- Currently a wanted fugitive who joined a secret anti-government movement among southern nobility, which merged with the Alliance of New Hope in 887.
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@RationalMadman
I don't agree that it was a smart choice. Earth being inactive may not be smart, but it's pretty usual for him.
In any case, we're both on the same page about excluding Oro, so this seems pretty minor.
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@Athias
Wanted to wait until more of your thoughts were posted before I addressed them.
I think we're agreed on most everything here. Both in terms of how it looks and sounds, the series fits pretty well, even if there's some jank here and there. I don't like that the intro sequence is full of spoilers, something that sets it very much apart from the anime where the intro was used to show off some of the animation and to symbolically represent many of the characters. It's hard to match the anime Tank! intro and I wasn't expecting that here, but the lack of focus on the characters, replacing it largely with scattered moments from the series, made it difficult to enjoy.
We're agreed on Mustafa Shakir, who not only absolutely embodied the character to the best extent of any of the main cast (too early to say with Edward, though I think the backlash against her portrayal was... a little too big considering we only got the single scene), but added to it in ways that I appreciated greatly. I know not everyone liked the fact that he has a daughter, but the whole fatherly Jet aspect really worked for me, especially that scene where he attends her recital remotely as a hologram and Spike is fighting goons in the background while he's dancing it up in the foreground. I do think they somewhat neutered his story by having his partner be the only obviously corrupt cop (in the anime, the police force because it was basically all corrupt, which put him in stark contrast to his former fellows), but his performance was spectacular.
As for the cons... yeah, you'll get no disagreement from me.
Vicious was the single worst part of this series, and that's saying something. I'm honestly not sure if you included enough "no's" to truly represent how bad of a move this was. In that anime, he's a phantom who haunts Spike, appearing at discrete moments to instill a real sense of dread into the series. In this, he's on screen so much that any enigmatic aspects of his character vanished in the first two episodes. He's whiny, got his position solely due to his father being what he was, and seems far too emotional to be the cold, merciless killer that the anime portrayed. It's especially frustrating because he's in every episode, even recruiting Mad Pierrot, meaning that his presence pervades almost every story beat of the show. Part of what I liked so much about the anime was that the events of the show would occur due to the cast's choices and mistakes more often than due to some kind of external meddling, but this takes so much agency away from them by making them targets of the Syndicate (or Vicious, specifically). They're reacting rather than acting.
I didn't so much mind the "Fearless" aspect, though it weirded me out every time they called Spike by that nickname (though Spike was actually his pseudonym and Fearless was the original name he discarded... what was his original name, anyway?). It's a boring way to do what they did much better in the anime, as you said, I just didn't care too much about it. More of a missed opportunity to be subtle (there are a lot of those) than anything else.
Don't care so much about the role reversals, either, though it does take the wind out of some characters' sails. Pandering though it might have been, it's a different take on the story and I don't mind that. I do mind that it disrupts the flow of the stories it's telling and takes away opportunities to really dig into Spike as a character and engage more in what separates him from Vicious. In that regard, though, Julia gets in the way far more often and in more glaring ways than Faye ever did. It is incredibly frustrating that she is turned into a character with no power whatsoever (in the anime, it was hinted that she was as much of a badass as Spike and Vicious in her own right), only for her to turn around and steal the spotlight at the end with next to no warning. Considering the sheer amount of background they give to Vicious and Spike's relationship in this adaptation, it's frustrating that the closure we get (if you can call it that) comes from Julia's gun.
That's not to say that I liked this portrayal of Faye. I personally don't mind lesbianizing her, nor was I perturbed by the changes to her outfit. What I did mind was that the lesbian aspects of her character were delivered in a scene that was more eye candy than anything else, and what's more, they were with a character we and she had just met rather than the result of any kind of built up relationship. I was frustrated that they almost entirely removed any reference to her being a femme fatale when she is one of anime's greatest examples, though I was far more upset that they almost entirely nixed her motivations. No reference to her gambling addiction. No reference to her being massively in debt due to medical expenses incurred while she was frozen and conned onto her thereafter. We get some allusions regarding her interest in her own background, and while those were good, we lose so much of what makes Faye Faye.
And I think that's generally my biggest problem with the series. They named these characters after their anime counterparts, but so many of these characters aren't anything like their anime selves. Gren isn't Gren in almost any way, having been turned from a soldier who suffered the ill effects of a drug and fights against the Syndicate into a sassy gay lackey. Annie isn't a motherly figure running a small store who Spike turns to very occasionally, but a large club owner who effectively runs an underground operation and helps the characters out every other episode. Julia isn't a Syndicate member, but is singer who found herself locked into a relationship with Vicious out of fear. And when it comes to characters that don't appear, the live action show only pays them lip service, like including Cowboy Andy on a list of outlaws rather than including him in an amazing comedic rivalry with Spike. The show is just full of missed opportunities built on trying to shake things up that just go nowhere, and the runtime is often padded with extras that do nothing to add to the story. It just feels like a simultaneously bloated and anemic story, with each coming up in all the wrong places.
I've already talked about Julia a bit, and I agree with what you've said of her. For me, what's most frustrating is the combination of her being a damsel in distress for 95% of the show and being someone who actively seeks power for the remaining 5%, the latter coming out of nowhere. For such an enigmatic and interesting character from the anime, she really loses a step when they shine a light on her the whole way through. I know much of this story doesn't follow the anime (she's certainly not with Vicious over so much of the story there), but part of what makes her so compelling in the anime is that we barely know her when she first arrives on the scene with a gun to Spike's head. With all the background they gave us, there was an opportunity to make her compelling in a different way, but they didn't manage it, especially when her complaint with Spike was that he should have fought his way into the Syndicate (likely an impossible task at any point in the series) to rescue her sooner. As for taking control of the Syndicate, even if we assume she could do it this way, she gave no indication as to her ambitions earlier. Throwing in a character trait at the last minute, even if it's borne out of not wanting to be afraid anymore, requires more than just a couple of throw-away lines, especially since it will obviously put her in the crosshairs of a lot of dangerous people. Before this scene, the most she'd done is plot to remove Vicious from the picture, which at least made some sense since he was so abusive. This may have been pandering, but I'd be fine with pandering if it was actually built up meaningfully. This was just trashy, and while it gave me some hope for a second season that would solidly diverge from the anime's plot, that's all it did (and the second season was cancelled anyway, so that's not happening).
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Alright, now that I've had an overnight to consider it, I would agree with RM that Supa is starting to look more like a part of the Resistance. The questions that he's posing don't look anything like what we would expect if he was on a team with someone else. That being said, we know that either Earth or RM is a Spy, and if it's the former, it wouldn't be too terribly surprising for Supa to just be out of the loop entirely because of a lack of communication. So, at minimum, I don't see a Supa-RM Spy team happening. Right now, Supa is the one person who I see as least likely to be a Spy.
I also think that it's unlikely that there is a Pie-RM Spy team, though I'm less confident in that one. RM was the one suggesting that, as a Spy, he'd have good reason to want to sabotage on Mission 1. I doubt that Pie would be on board with that, but Pie wouldn't have been in the driver's seat, so he may have posted about it being a "bad move" with the express purpose of distancing himself from the decision as much as possible. That being said, given the short time between the start of Mission 1 and the start of this discussion, I don't see it as all that likely that they were in chat together, as it likely would have led to at least some amount of argument between them.
All of this is focused on a possible RM Spy. It's a tougher call with Earth being the Spy, though right now, I'd say I'm leaning towards RM being the likelier of the two by a small margin. With that assumption (first to admit, it's based more on intuition than actual evidence), that would just leave me and Oro as possible Spy partners to RM, which means that I would advocate taking Oro off the current team and putting Supa on in his place. If I go by the assumption that it's Earth and not RM, then Oro would still be a plausible Spy among the remaining players (Pie's response to my suspecting him makes me think that it's not him, and Supa's being so uninformed still doesn't fit his normal play as scum in mafia, where he usually at least stays informed). There's always the possibility that Earth and RM are both Spies, though I'd say that is the least likely of the three and then it doesn't really matter who we leave off.
So, at least until someone gives me a good reason to change my mind, I'm voting no.
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Also, I'll consider the vote. At the moment, that looks like the best option, though my suspicions of Supa are slimmer than RM's. I have no trouble with Oro, I'm just thinking a bit on Pie.
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Alright, to start, I think it's clear that, at least for this round and likely for the next, both Earth and RM are off of any missions. By PoE, at least one of them is a spy and we have enough people to be able to test the rest, at least to some degree. It's going to be trouble going into Mission 3 because it's more likely than not that there is a spy among the people who did not go on Mission 1 (it's pretty unlikely that both spies were on that team), and 4 people have to be sent on Mission 3, meaning that we're likely to get a spy in that set if we don't scrutinize Earth and RM.
I will point out that, while Earth appeared to be a random pick in the last round, it was Pie who suggested him. Not saying that that necessarily puts Pie in the crosshairs, especially considering that Earth's response to RM suggesting a Pie/RM team was "Why?" Doesn't seem like the kind of response someone would give to having their spy partner put on the mission.
RM suggested himself, which could be a move for either side.
Just things to think about. It's late and I'm going to bed, so I'll pick this up in the AM.
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@RationalMadman
I'm not trying to exclude you from the game. I'm saying that this line of attack is not something I'm willing to get defensive about or turn around against you. It's your style. It's not mine. I don't hate you for it, but I don't have to play your game the way you want it.
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