#magsnalysis

"ranjit sucks as a villain why is he randomly so strong and then you just beat him in a duty" bc hes thancred and ryne's villain not the wol's. you meet him in the same duty you meet ryne for the first time and thancred again. he has the same color palette as thancred. he's so strong because he's the terrifying insurmountable abusive father of ryne's childhood. he's what thancred could become if he doesnt let his failure to protect minfilia go. you can't beat him until thancred defeats him, accepts his faults, and resolves to be a better father to ryne. did we not see the fatebreaker boss.

i'm maybe like an hour into metaphor refantazio's demo but the fantasy book that the main character has is so interesting. like at first i rolled my eyes bc like, the picture it uses is obviously supposed to represent our world and its ridiculous to think that just because we're all human we don't have discrimination but then i was like oh, its a fantasy of our world. its not a realistic depiction because its a fantasy for the characters in universe. just as metaphor refantazio is a fantasy for us playing the game. if the characters saw the game we're playing they'd probably go "thats so inaccurate we have other types of discrimination thats not being shown here". we are both having fantasies of each others worlds. thats a fun concept i like what theyre doing with that

theres something really special to me about hiyori getting the last words of the wano arc. like momonosuke was sent to the future but hiyori had to go through all twenty years of suffering under orochi and kaido, having to smile and flirt with the man who killed her father every day, dealing with men who felt entitled to her body, trying to help as many people as she could from her position. so it feels right that she is the representative of wano in that moment, telling orochi that he was meant to burn, with everyone saying it with her as the storyteller retells the story. and she even does it in a way that honors her father and his death, by making a pun

tangentially related to that last post to the motherfucker who said "strohl would be the main character of the game if not for will" metaphor refantazio is a story about racism told from the perspective of the lowest possible social class. strohl is from the highest possible social class. it wouldn't WORK if strohl was the protagonist because there would be literally no conflict people would vote for him because he's clemar. and secondly there wouldn't be a story because strohl has zero reason to care about the throne or the prince until he meets will. he doesn't even know that louis burnt down his village until the captain tells him again AFTER AND BECAUSE he meets will. just because strohl talks more than will does not mean he is main character material!!

ok mega disclaimer that this is not shipping discourse and i really do not care if you ship gelphie or fiyeraba do whatever you want im not your mom but my controversial opinion on wicked is that i like gelphie as much as the next person which is to say i think its a fun ship but the thing is even if All That hadn't happened i don't think a relationship between them would have like. lasted very long. glinda is at her core a coward who upholds the status quo because it benefits her, and elphaba is a person whose existence challenges the status quo. like that scene where glinda announces that shes changing her name to glinda as like, a protest against the treatment of animals is so telling about her character because it just does not matter. changing her name is not a political action. it doesn't effect any policy. it does nothing to actually help any animal. it has no effect on anything other than glindas personal life, and in the following scenes she still defends the wizard even after hearing that he and morrible are the ones spearheading the discrimination campaign against animals. she doesn't even do it for good reasons (in the movie at least ive listened to the musical but ive never seen it in person) she does it because fiyero and elphaba are bonding over something that she has very little idea of or experience with and she wants to look good. elphaba meanwhile must challenge the status quo whether she wants to or not. her skin color will always mark her as the other and she sympathizes with the animals because she is in the same position. unlike glinda she does actual activism when she and fiyero save the lion cub. unlike the name change this actually helps someone- the lion cub is able to speak and live freely because they save him. and unlike the name change its from a place of good intentions. glinda cares about looking good, elphaba cares about doing good. fieryo is also interesting in this respect because he comes from the same shallow, self centered place as glinda does, but unlike glinda, he changes as a person after witnessing what happens to the animals. glinda saw dillamond being harassed, she saw him being arrested, she saw the lion cub in the cage, and she still decided the status quo was more important than the rights of animals. fiyero also saw the arrest and the lion cub, but seeing that and helping elphaba free the lion cub changes his worldview completely. hes no longer dancing through life, he realizes he should use his privilege to help others. ultimately fiyero and elphaba get a happy ending together because theyve inspired each other to change and grow as people, and glinda doesn't because she realizes her actions have caused harm too late for her to be happy with elphaba

a lot of people have pointed out that metaphor refantazio makes zero attempts to be subtle about its themes of antiracism and bigotry but to be honest i think that works in it's favor. so many other games do that thing where they both sides an issue in an attempt to be morally complex. like bioshock infinite tries to be like "here's a oppressed racial underclass trying to free themselves....buuuuut they're gonna murder a bunch of people if you help them!!!" and it's just like, hey you just added the murder part in so you could pretend there's two sides to racism when there's not. metaphor does not do that. metaphor shows you the problem, goes you know that's a problem, there's no excusing it, do something about it. which is really refreshing to see

a thing i am appreciating about metaphor refantazio is that will has brown skin. it feels like a lot of the time when people do fantastic racism they will still make their fantasy racial minority have white features, like theyre going "look, white media consumer, wouldn't this be fucked up if this happened to YOU???" without ever considering that poc might also be there too. also it really reinforces how much of a minority the elda are, given that (at least in grand triad and martiro, im only 15 hours into the game lol) all of the npcs are white. even among the minorities hes a minority.