Latte's Fandom Shenanigans

Aw thanks! I guess with NEO, I was so tired of people just dunking it for not being the exact same as OG TWEWY when I was like "what the fuck, this is the best possible sequel you can make to something as insane as TWEWY" when I played the game. I think what really got me while I was on reddit was someone talking about NEO was, and I quote, "too experimental of a sequel for something like TWEWY" and I had to let the irony of that statement sink in for a full minute.

At that point, I was like "nah, screw this, Imma give the game the analysis it deserves."

I think the most impressive thing about NEO is that it inverts (get it? Like Inversion?) a lot of things within the original but not with the intent to foil it just because. There are certainly a lot of deliberate callbacks to the original in NEO (An0ther basically being Rindo’s CAT, Shoka sharing traits with both Neku and Joshua and even having Sakura in her last name, having the three weeks again, a full-on team structure as opposed to just duos, the ideals of Shinjuku vs Shibuya, etc), but the game puts forth its own unique twists on these concepts to have them fit within NEO’s themes and make them feel natural. Fret shares a very similar backstory to Neku when it comes to having dead best friends that shaped their personalities but Fret chose to cope with his grief in a different way and as a result, he has his own problems to deal with in contrast to Neku. NEO uses the skeleton of the original but aims to tell a story to add on to its lessons of human communication and reflect on the struggles of teens and adults alike in the modern era, and as a sequel to something like TWEWY, I think that’s the best possible call they could’ve gone with.

Maybe one day NEO will get its full due. It’s easy to forget (and it still happens in some circles) but back in the day, people just could not vibe with the original TWEWY, whether it’s for its controls, Neku’s confrontational personality, the surplus load of mechanics the game throws at you at a time, etc…

There were people who would dismiss the game on its face just based off of the premise/style alone and I remember folks on 4chan and other forums comparing Neku to Squall amongst other things. While TWEWY was critically acclaimed, it was also quite subject to criticism. And yet, as years go by, people would look more and more fondly on the game, try it out for themselves, and go "holy shit, this game is fucking rad." The way the game uses its mechanics to tell its story, the way the themes were detailed, the messages it expressed, etc…

I think NEO is in a similar position to the original in this regard not just by some people who are just experiencing the TWEWY IP for the first time but also fans of the original, funnily enough. Not that I necessarily blame them, given how NEO is a different game from the original in a lot of ways. Still, it’s both funny and frustrating to see people’s dismiss NEO’s strengths (combat, characterization, themes, etc) just for not being like the original when a lot of folks back in the day would dismiss TWEWY just for not playing like other games at the time.

Not that I don’t think that NEO is exactly free from criticism. I certainly have a lot to say about how it handles aspects of a New Day (namely Tsugumi) as well as some of its pacing but frankly, I don’t think the original is perfect either. And I’m okay with that.

Why? Because I love both games to the point that their strengths are enough for me to brush over the flaws they do have in spite of it all as well as the ways they approach storytelling and combat design.

I don’t think there’s ever gonna be another game like OG TWEWY. That’s just impossible due to how the game was made. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s gonna be another game like NEO for a long time either. And in a way, that makes it the perfect sequel to TWEWY.

Then about a week into their journey like

Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying

Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst

Legolas:

Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits

Merry: Frodo what’d he say

Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish

Merry: I mean you could do that but consider

Merry: you can only tell him ONCE

Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible

Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK

Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve

Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.

Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.

english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.

they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.

so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.

plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.

so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!

considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.

…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.

which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.

Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?

Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?

Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.

Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.

writing at 3 am allows you to think of banging lines like these

next is a screenshot of text reading:

There's a pause. A pregnant one. Weird phrase, actually. How'd it even get pregnant?

Mercifully, Sakura aborts it before it has time to grow limbs.

“I amsick will not to choir because i have a heache. i Hope its very and i am so sorry

love,

blue”

IT WAS ON THE DESKTOP. THIS IS WHAT I SENT.