i had considered leland as a victim of something bob represents rather than a literal spirit, but i never clocked that he too was probably a victim of abuse and another turn in the cycle of violence. strangely i had also taken that quote among his final words as figurative and not literal, but it is really chilling hearing him say it with that new context

Great video. Unearthing the complexities of human connections, the exchanges of power, trauma, confusion, how these things intersect in the nuanced and murky shades of grey. Using these two shows as vehicles to explore these themes was really genius. I think it’s important to recognize that no one is either a martyr, or demon, solely.

This was a great video, the comparison drew me in but I love the discussion on Laura particularly. Very interesting

Great work at finding ways to bridge these characters & their traumas. Your personal experience adds an impressive additional dimension!

This is exactly what Night Country missed. The supernatural elements are linked to the meta content not a belief in otherworldy spirits.

I think Adric got a raw deal here! He got blown up!! Do you think that his arc could have been extended? Would he have come back, given how he’s stayed with the franchise??

im a mexican with undocumented parents who had to go through hell during the election period in 2016 and a lot of trumps presidency and i really had no issue with the majority of the game. i felt the racist characters were pretty realistic, yes it was corny but a lot of racists are corny LOL. i may be completely biased cause i see my sister and i in sean and daniel but idk. im glad you brought up the white saviors and the police. never noticed that! it IS weird that they force the “police can be good” and the “white people can be good” shit down our throats. there should have been more latinos on the team. again, i loooove the sibling dynamics and it really was a highlight for me that kept me playing!

Have you watched similar mecha anime like the fafner series and bokurano? Curious to hear/read your comparison on these shows with Eva.

“Not everything is gay” but it’s fun to making everyone gay lol

every time I re-watch this show I find new things to talk about w my friends

Nick Nobody made a video smearing me as a predator over my crush on Reimi Sugimoto & other underage characters. A sex abuse victim commented asking he not compare my waifu hobby to her sexual abuse.

been obsessed with life is strange forever im so excited to see new videos about it

Train or spill the blood? The ideas about how having blood racing through your veins brings together so many in Vampyr-fascinating historical details built into the game.

I'm very curious about what you've got to say here as someone deeply critical of Vampyr and especially it's so called "romantic subplot" which to me felt like "man meets woman, what else do you need?" Something I despise in all media. Develop it or bin it.

so excited for this

I absolutely love the video and these movies. Never really noticed how similar their themes were before, thank you for pointing this out for me lol!

Hey, this is excellent. More, please!

Nice vid!

always a pleasure to find a new video essay channel

Scariest time of life-everything is possible but you have to make it happen. Terrifying indeed!

Hey I come back a year after I watched this video just to tell you I really like this essay and I never thought of this theme in Madoka Magica :)

25:39 watching this again and about ten minutes before this my internet dropped, and i just sat there watching the circle loop round, and round, framing casey's face in the dark. we were both motionless. i have not seen We're All Going to the World's Fair and i may have done myself a disservice by reminding myself of it with this video, but by your analysis of it i think it really settles into the same dissociative, murky, anxiety in the unreality of the internet that i've been steeped in this past year or so.

this was so amazing. It put into words so much of what ive been feeling, particularly regarding the eva fandom. people should check out your channel!!

Where do you think Rust is now? I’d love his story to continue.

I havent finished LIS2 bc its so triggering for me. It takes me back to when my parents straight up abandoned my little brother and me when i was 15 and it was always a struggle to keep him fed and comfortable and safe from the world around us the ppl tryna take advantage. It makes me so depressed whenever i play it and the adjacent Capt Awesome story..

It's probably bc that's how [mst] ppl view incarceration- if you get arrested, you did it. Even if you're innocent and acquitted many times, you're still viewed w suspicion just for being that close to the system.

Great discussion and gave me a lot to think about. Crazy that I'm still learning more and more about a more than 10 year old show.

Very cool vid.

It's hard to reckon with TLOU2 Part II in it's great sympathy for the oppressed or general even handedness and Neil's rabid Zionism.

There's absolutely a reading that could be made that his maximalist worldwearness is from seeing beyond the veil and not his worldly traumas.

In a scean with the two inspectors, he said that the time repeat itself for the pleasure and amusement of beings that transend our comprehension…sorry for my English.

It's not well known that after the end of the Dalek invasion of Earth, Susan became a minister in the British government, as did David! susanandromana.blogspot.com

#SaveTheOA

Amazing video, thanks for covering in such depth and not just going "violence bad". :)

your analysis and the quotes from The Last of Us Part II during the sociopolitical differences section hits different if you frame it under the game's allegory for the israeli perspective of their occupation and attitudes to violence. emmanuel maiberg wrote about it for vice around the time the game dropped. the essentialistic groupings/tribalism of Part II and how it structures the cycle of revenge is baked in colonial justifications of occupation and worse. while Part II omits colonial omnipresence/legacy by making the wlf as vulnerable, striving, and 'necessarily' violent as the seraphites, Assassin's Creed Origins appears to do the inverse and emphasise the power disparity present in the struggle for liberation from a colonial power.

People, let’s share this one & get more traffic moving in this direction! Good job!!

I wish I could have found this video sooner. You are one of the very few people who discusses the revenge theme in depth and analyzes the difference it was portrayed in other media. I have my take on this subject. I have said this before and at this point I sound like a broken record, but I cannot emphasize enough on this very topic related TLOU 2 so here I go once again. The people’s reaction/perception of the revenge theme that was portrayed in the game was particularly fascinating, disturbing, and informative. Many people reacted negatively of Ellie sparing Abby and goes on the tangent of “because revenge bad…” or “Its okay I forgive you…” blah blah blah. One of the main reasons why was because many felt Joel’s death was left unavenged. What is so fascinating about these people’s comments and their tones of hate/bitterness reflects on how we perceive revenge in general (on the scale that involves taking away somebody you love). I have done some additional thinkings and analysis since I wrote the last essay comments and will add them now. What I said before is that a lot of people reacted this way with all those comments is because many people are too used to what I call “glorified/romanticized revenge stories”. Basically the revenge journey was portrayed as a glamorous/heroic endeavor and that the villain to kill is genuinely an evil individual who has the “they deserve to die/suffer” mentality. Something that add to this mentality that we often experience is the villain’s presence and threat. Often times these villains in these stories present actual threat to the hero or a certain group of people so there’s often a practical side of enacting vengeance upon them. Those tropes are what makes those typical revenge stories so easy to indulge. Additionally, tropes like the hero go badass mode and slaughter the enemies in their way with intense action scenes and gore/violence makes them the icing on the cake. Our desensitization to violence and gore also contributes to our indulgence. These romanticized revenge stories don’t really make us consider the consequences for the heroes which often result in the walking away scot-free or riding off to the sunset, generally on a good note and make us feel satisfied. For revenge stories that DO explore the various consequences for the audience, they’re often either drowned out by the actions/violence displayed or that the heroes are emotionally stoic/numb to the violence (which was not the case for Ellie/Abby), or sometimes the consequences are the afterthought after when the heroes completes the deed. We have already had SO many stories that makes the revenge stories glorified in movies and games already. Movies like Conan the Barbarian, Licence to Kill (007), The Crow, Gladiator, Kill Bill (1-2), Inglorious Basterds, True Grit, Django Unchained, John Wick, The Equalizer 2, The Expendables 2, Death Wish, Rambo: Last Blood, No Remorse, Wrath of Man, The Northman and most likely Monkey Man. Games includes God of War (1-3), GTA 4, Dishonored, Sleeping Dogs, Watch Dogs, Prototype 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and Sifu (initially). Some of these examples don’t really delve into the consequences of their actions or the consequences are an afterthought/drowned out by actions. Naturally, we enjoy these kinds of glorified revenge stories because they are EMOTIONALLY APPEALING and CATHARTIC, which brings to my next point. These revenge stories often serve as power fantasy for escapism, soothing our fears/vulnerability and appeals to our egos. Most of the examples I listed above do just that. One of the reasons why so many people find TLOU 2’s revenge approach so controversial was because it did not intentionally make us feel powerful. This was already demonstrated after Abby kills Joel. The real change and growth for Abby was when she chooses to help Lev and Yara. Vengeance did not make either Ellie or Abby powerful, only further damage to them emotionally and their relationships (something a lot of people seems to have a hard time to accept). There was nothing wrong with indulging with romanticized revenge power fantasies (I know I enjoy occasional good old fashioned glorified revenge stories), so you might ask what’s wrong with these formulas. Most people might say nothing, but I beg to differ. Typical glorified revenge stories formulas has left us some potentially altering effects in terms of perceptions. These stories are telling us that revenge is the answer, its cool to slaughter your enemies standing in your way in a stylish fashion, and you will find peace if you kill the person who enacted the injustice against you. The problems is that this typical formula in revenge stories can give us false misleading notions of how humans’ psyche works. But a further potential problem can arise is when people think that glorified revenge acts (killing the wrong doer anyway) can be replicated in real life. If something unfortunately as catastrophic as what happened to you like those examples or like Ellie/Abby, here are my questions. Is real life revenge glorified like movies/games? Will I feel better if I kill the person who wronged me? Will I walk away without consequences (external or internal)? If yes, then ask yourself “Do I want to find out? Can I afford to find out? If you ask me, I pray we don’t. No matter who you are, where you are, your circumstances, I hope you don’t find out. And unfortunately in the real world, there were already too much people who had to find out the hard way. While the desire of vengeance is a very human feeling, it is not an experience that we should ideally experience (especially with the desire to kill the wrongdoer for killing a loved or a situation with similar gravity).

spoilers for the Red Dead Franchise if you haven't played it. The most well-done revenge quest for me is RDR. Because it's never the explicit message of the games but once you realize and make the connection it recontextualizes so many decisions from the first game. Looking at just the first game it seems a story where john is forced to kill his former brothers in arms in a false belief that in doing so, he may escape the chains of his past. Still, the government kills him because he is still a remnant of that past that he tried to escape. At the end John's son successfully avenges his father. Similarly, in RDR2 John avenges Arthur. But Arthur never believed in revenge and actively discourages it throughout the game. And his warnings come to fruition in the credits (which most people skip since its over 1/2 an hour) when we see that it was John's revenge on Arthur's killer that brought the government down on him. This recontextualizes Jack's revenge which once seemed like a happy ending and makes it an utter tragedy where bother Arthur and John died to give Jack a chance only for him to waste it and likely end up killed in a similar way to John. This becomes even more interesting when you compare it to Red Dead Revolver which is the most straight forward revenge quest ever that treats the act as a good thing.

oh HELL yes, youre the most underrated channel i follow

Pretty good you earned a new subscriber

I've always loved the concept of the multiverse. I can't even count how many times I've already mentioned it in the comment section of various videos. That's why I like to fantasize about how the multiverse is real and canon in these franchises, like VOCALOID. In my opinion, it's the perfect explanation on why VOCALOID characters all have different personalities in different songs. Every song could just be another universe featuring a counterpart of the character.

"Trans women, in general, are the pioneers when it comes to most electronic music" that's a awfully strong statement...

Let's not forget a lot of songs are also about being broken enough to cause suicide for example rolling girl

A beautifully made interpretation of Vocaloid and its community, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your opinions on how much of a positive impact this community has made over the years. Vocaloid has offered me continuous solace throughout my life, alongside methods to express myself as an individual when confidence in my own abilities failed me. As a trans man, I have always had an intensely complicated relationship with my feminity, but characters like Miku have taught me to embrace parts of myself I was too scared to love unapologetically. So many talented producers have perfectly encapsulated feelings I couldn't even begin to explain within their music, the technological opportunities Vocaloid has continuously provided have only enhanced that. I know I will have dark days in the future, and that I may face doubts about myself and my capabilities, but Vocaloid has always reminded me that I won't be facing it alone. It's beautiful how something so fundamentally fictional can help propel so many real feelings into the world.

I'm procrastinating grad work so the background tracks here are: 1. Freely Tomorrow 2. Matroyshka 3. Lost One's Weeping 4. Hello/How are you? 5. Magnet (love the use of this one here) 6. Servant of Evil 7. Shikabane no Odori 8. Just Be Friends 9. Freely Tomorrow 10. Hello/How are you?

Really good video! After briefly flirting with vocaloid in middle school I've finally been letting myself really get into it now like 10 years later. It really is such a cool and unique tool for self-expression in music, being able to put the emotion of words and singing out there for everyone to hear without having to do it with your own voice is so cool and has enabled some of my all time favorite music to be created

2:51 Wait woah, is Crusher trans? I didn't know that! Epic if true, I used to love her songs when I was young and still do, she has inspired me to use Vocaloid ahah

I've been in this fandom for years. I started at 10, and I fell in love with it because I felt it spoke to me. I suffer from severe anxiety and into my late teens, I struggled to both read and write something on many occasions, and I felt like I wouldn't lead up to anything worth living. Lost ones weeping,MyR, and ect. Felt like me, someone who suffered but still was able to reach me, a child that needed to hear them express and explain what I was feeling in words I couldn't. I had internet friends that I can never forget how much they helped me through this fandom. I'm going to my first vocaloid concert in May in full cosplay something my 10 year old self only dreamed of and wouldn't even thought she'd have the confidence to do.

watching this really has motivated me to finally write the script to the machigerita-p video essay ive been wanting to write for years, but itll probably come after i write and publish a few more as i know that subject is incredibly niche.

Awesome video