Cuphead, Outrage, Shaun and Jen, and I, Hypocrite

What’s this? This isn’t the content usually on this blog! Why the sudden shift?

...No real reason. Just felt like doing it. I felt an urge, a need, to dive into the muddy waters of  

Response articles. We’re gonna be looking at a response video to a response video on a controversy

that shouldn’t have existed.

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Yeah, OK I’ll back up. Originally, this chain of events started with an outrage over people “slandering” 

the hot new video game, Cuphead, with accusations of racism, ableism and the likes. This got many 

Gamers whipped up into anger, and you may have heard of this outrage bubble a while back. Later, 

noted skull enthusiast Shaun and Jen did a video on this, and concluded that this outrage was born of 

very little, and was most likely a fabrication in order for people to keep the outrage going. A rather good

video, worth a watch.

This is where a channel titled “I, Hypocrite” comes in. A lovely chap who’s made videos such as:

Clearly, nothing wrong here. Anyway, he made a video responding to Shaun’s previously mentioned 

video, titled "Debunking Shaun's Manufactured Manufactured Cuphead Outrage". And in order to 

complete this mad cycle of responses, I figured, why not have a go at it?

Before we get into it, a few disclaimers. I have not personally played Cuphead, although at this point 

the game itself is hardly relevant to the discussion around it. I will not be covering every single point I, 

Hypocrite makes in his video. Several times it devolves into insults, movie clips, and unrelated 

tangents, so for the sake of time I will be sticking to his main arguments. Finally, I’d highly recommend 

you watch Shaun’s video, again, for the sake of clarity here. I’d also recommend you watch I, 

Hypocrite’s video, if you want to see his full argument and assurance that I’m not taking him out of 

context.

So, to begin, he first tackles Shaun’s overview of an AlphaOmegaSin video. Shaun makes the point 

that AOS is making a big fuss over people calling Cuphead “Racist and Ableist”, however, no single 

person is ever cited as saying it. It’s always “these people” who are saying it, at least, in the Alpha 

video. This is a setup to the point of the whole video, and Shaun uses it as a launching off point to 

discuss the strange lack of anyone specific claiming these things.

In order to refute this point, I, Hypocrite, makes a point of going through Twitter and finding people 

who are actually calling Cuphead racist. He pulls up a couple of tweets and threads, and claims that 

this shows that there are actually people calling Cuphead racist. He says, and I quote: “If only there

were websites known for this kind of behaviour, that we could maybe go to, and run a little search...

I guess it would behoove us to do 5 f***ing minutes of research, wouldn't it, Shaun?"

Now this is, honestly, a rather silly point to make, and it’s indicative of the larger issue Mr. Hypocrite 

will keep encountering: he keeps flat out missing the point. He hears Shaun say “Who is calling 
Cuphead racist?” finds some people using the word racist in relation to Cuphead, throws them up, 
and laughs, thinking he’s defeated Shaun already. Thing is… he’s missing the larger point.

When Shaun says “AOS is whipping his audience up over nothing”, well, that’s what he’s saying. The 

point is that Alpha (and later Ian Miles Cheong and CheekiScrump) never provide a good and proper 

source for their opposition. Alpha never points out any specific tweets or anything, and *that* is the 

point. Thing is, if you look hard enough, you can find people saying bloody well anything on Twitter. I 

could find people making a serious case for the earth being totally hollow, but a few disparate people 

on Twitter does not an opposition make. What Shaun is asking of these people is “where are the 

legitimate, well thought out arguments?”, "Who are you mad at?", and so on and so forth.

The other, larger point I want to bring up is: how would the viewers of the Alpha video know? How 

would the people who read the Scrump article know? None of these folks ever cite a specific person. 

This is the second area in which I, Hypocrite misses the point: the video is overall about these figures 

making people angry at nobody. Watch to the very end of Shaun’s video, and you’ll see that the overall 

point is this “outrage at nothing”, and that very much applies even if there are some people doing it on 

Twitter. How would the audiences know? No people were ever cited as saying it. Hypocrite is missing 

the point, and trying to play “gotcha” without thinking of the video as a whole.

So then, onto his next major point, where he moves to people calling Cuphead ableist. Hypocrite takes 

the same general tactic from last time and applies it to this point, finding people calling Cuphead 

ableist… on… Shaun’s video?

I do hope you see the issue here. It’s rather unfair to take Shaun to task over things people have said, 

y’know, after he posts his video. Because that’s when Youtube comments are posted. You can’t make 

a comment before a video exists. Just, find better sources for your “gotcha” attempts, at least, please. 

He proves nothing by only citing comments in the future. Perhaps he was attempting to make the point 

that the sentiment was out there? Even that stretch falls flat, as the comments he cites are quite 

reasonable, levelheaded expressions of disappointment with the lack of accessibility in the game. Not

much "outrage" going on here.

OK, next up: Hypocrite tackles the “game journalists are bad at games” point. He starts of by saying 

“We know game’s journalists are biased against difficulty because of this tweet from one journalist 

saying he’d stay away from Cuphead”, and then he goes through like, a few examples of people

working in games criticism who were bad at other games?

To get that 2nd point out of the way: no, a couple of games writers being bad at a couple of other 

games proves nothing, and has nothing to do with Cuphead. You’re gonna need to cite people being 

bad at Cuphead to make this point, which, of course, he never does.

Ryan Bloom's tweet is pictured here from Hypocrite's video.

Right, so, about that tweet he cited earlier. He cites one Ryan Bloom, the chief editor at a website titled

"Gaming Illustrated." What's funny about this is that I went through the site itself, and only found a
couple of articles that talked about Cuphead. What's in Your Box: Cheer to Greg is an article that says
Cuphead "lives up to every single bit of hype it built" and "Cuphead is a must have". Another article, 
Cuphead E3 Preview: Disneyesque Death Trap, gives it a "best of E3 award" and the author claims
they "can't wait to play it". This doesn't seem to be a site biased against Cuphead, in fact, it's 
praised it quite highly. Not a brilliant example of "biased journalists".

Alright, so, finally, the final point of this video, and if you could see me typing this out, you’d see me 

giggling in anticipation. I, Hypocrite makes a, how shall we say, very silly mistake here, one that reveals 

to us that he has barely looked into this issue at all.

His point here comes directly from the argument before, that games journalists are bad at games. He 

then takes an offhand comment from Shaun about “beating the game fairly easily”, and extrapolates 

from this that the real outrage from Gamers is that journalists are making a somewhat easy game 

sound much harder, and lowering the bar for the medium as a whole. And I quote: “It's not good enough
to say 'well, this game's really f***ing hard but that's OK, we like it anyway' if the game isn't actually
that difficult."

If you know anything about Cuphead, you are probably giggling just like me at this. He has 

fundamentally misunderstood this entire debacle. This whole outrage was about “Games Journalists 

are bad at games, Cuphead is hard, how will they be fair to it?” Cuphead, is, pretty universally, known 

as a hard game. That little comment Shaun made? That was a joke leading into his next statement, 

where he sarcastically talks about how it qualifies him to talk about it. You want more concrete proof 

that capital G Gamers think it’s hard? Here’s CheekiScrump referring to the game as difficult:

Obviously he's a bit off the mark here.

And I hope this speaks for itself in the end. This counterargument that I, Hypocrite has made fails to

look at the full issue, and is based of extreme amounts of extrapolating to shape the issue into

something he can use better, in his head. He misunderstands Shaun's points. He provides barely 

relevant evidence to his own points. And overall, he has crafted a very scattered, pointless video, that

proves nothing and is a great case study in how not to refute an argument. 

Thanks for reading, everyone. If you liked this stuff, I may be doing more, so look forward to that. 
Anyway, I hope you have a lovely day, and take care.

Xenoblade 1 Vs. Xenoblade 2's Opening

So… Xenoblade 2 has not gotten off to a great start for me.

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While I’m still chewing through this monster of a game: one thing stood out to me instantly: 

the story of Xenoblade 2, to be charitable, is pretty horrendous right now. Or at least, it’s gotten 

off to a really bad start plot and pacing wise. So, in perhaps an unfair (yet cathartic) comparison, 

I’m gonna compare Xenoblade 2’s opening hours against Xenoblade 1’s! Spoilers ahead, we’ll be 

going until the main character gets the signature blade of each game. Without further ado, here we 

go!

(Oh and here are some links to videos documenting these openings)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEOr95_ahIY&list=PLpVpBRIlzWuAYEtHYRKU_umVtbs0wu7I4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir_dwZ0nedo

So both games open with a sweeping shot and some exposition of the world and the myths behind 

it, and right away Xenoblade 1 is making things far more dynamic and interesting. We actually see 
the two titans clashing, and we see the myths in action. Xenoblade 2 just has a shot of the clouds, 
and then we go straight to Rex’s daily life. It’s just so much less engaging than opening on a shot of
2 massive beings locked in a grand battle, you know? We don’t see any of the world or the
backstory, we’re just told what’s what over what may as well be a blank screen for all it’s making
me care.

These two plots diverge here, as 2 jumps straight into daily life, while 1 quickly zooms in on a grand 
battle, where the basic controls are taught to you as you control Dunban using the Monado. This 
battle scene is actually really good storytelling. We learn about the Mechon, the fact that there is a 
raging battle between the Homs and Mechon, how the Monado is the only blade that can easily 
dispatch them, a bit about Dunban and Dickson, a cliffhanger for Mumkhar’s fate… I think you get the
idea. This scene sets a lot up and fleshes out the world, and more importantly, uses the scenario to 
engage you with and expand on the world rather than just talking about it.

You can definitely see the impact of this when both games start to expand on their quiet, daily life at 
first, with Rex and Shulk (one year after the battle). Xenoblade 2 has to kind of awkwardly introduce 
new things and exposit a lot, while Xeno 1 is more free to expand on your current knowledge. 
There’s a military base, of course because the Mechon are a threat. Shulk is studying the Monado, 
obviously, because it’s so powerful. It’s little things like that that make the story flow so much more 
efficiently during the more slow, paced parts of it.

Xenoblade 2 is, by comparison, much more rushed and choppy. We never get a sense of the world 
around us, as we’re confined to tiny areas like a trading hub or a ship for hours of the game. Rex is 
thrust all over and back and forth for the sake of plot and exposition, never feeling like it’s totally 
natural. There’s no drive to the plot, no characters are being firmly established.

These are where the two stories somewhat diverge. Xenoblade 1 then follows Shulk in a bit more 
daily life, then he and his friends go on an errand, and while they’re out the mechon attack Colony 9. 
Meanwhile in Xenoblade 2, Rex is offered a job, takes it, and while on the job he’s betrayed and killed.
I’m gonna be looking more generally at them, now.

So to lay out how Xenoblade 1 does it better, well, basically everything? It’s the little details, like the 
mechon attack instantly being a huge deal in your head due to the battle from before showing how 
deadly they are. It’s in the voice acting, which is snappy and metered, with a good sense of feeling 
natural and flowing. It’s in the tension and engagement, which never slows down and makes you 
attached to these characters fending for their lives.

Xenoblade 2 has none of this, and suffers as a result. You’re never given clear direction and focus, 
and always kept in the dark. None of the characters get enough development besides maybe Rex a 
little. Perhaps this was the point, but it leads to a story with little drive and motivation, giving you 
nothing to care about. The world is constrained to tiny ships, not grand and open for you to explore 
until after the first chapter.

Also whoooooooooooo boy the voice acting is some of the worst I’ve ever heard how did this ship 
seriously it’s so awful

Finally, to drive my point home, let’s compare the big climaxes of both prologues: when the
respective protagonists get the signature blade of their games. Xenoblade 1 has a dramatic battle, 
where our protagonists attempt to save their town. Shulk mysteriously is able to use the Monado and 
see into the future, and then tragically, Fiora is killed, despite their best attempts otherwise. It’s a 
scene that builds up character, foreshadowing, and genuine, real emotion and tragedy. Go watch it 
for yourself, I can’t do it justice.

In Xenoblade 2 Rex is stabbed in the back, brought back to life, and then there’s a big fight.

I just… the problem with Xenoblade 2 is that it tries to be so straightforward, tries to be a fun 
anime game, but in doing so it forgets to include good, basic plot engagement and interest. I’m never 
given a chance to emotionally engage. I’m never given a good sense of the world. The game tries to 
build mystery by leaving me in the dark, but instead it gives the effect of just giving me nothing to care 
about. And when you compare it to Xenoblade Chronicles 1, well, it is absolutely no contest.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp: It's not Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is an experience where all the good in Animal Crossing is killed, and in its place is the cold, dark, stone cold comfort of money. It’s an experience that, if nothing else, has given me a new appreciation for what the good and proper games in the series do. Because if you’re looking for your next Animal Crossing, and a nice, relaxing experience, this is not it at all.

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Animal Crossing is a game founded on one core idea: living in a town. It’s never about the individual mechanics, or any one character. It’s all about that experience you get just existing there. Wanna spend a while bug catching? Talking to the neighbors? The game lays out many options and a few concrete goals, and then you just have at it and enjoy yourself.

Perhaps one of the most memorable aspects of that was the time element. Animal crossing works on a real time, year round system. Things take a day to make, so come back tomorrow! What’s important to note about this is that it’s remarkably healthy and respectful design. Unless you absolutely must get every collectable in every season, there is never any rush for anything, and the game lets you take as much time as you need. Every request and need for items is seasonal, so you’re always able to get what is required. Animal Crossing aims to coexist with you, not to have you keep up, not to show you what you’re missing, none of that. It’s a game series that greatly cares for and respects the player.

And from that, pocket camp gives us… checklists and timers. Huh.

Let’s start with the checklists. This undermines the entire point of simply existing in the world. Animal Crossing has always had tasks, but they were either very contextual, or very broad. “Go fill up the museum”. “If you’ve got a sea bass, could I have one?” They were always very gentle, never forced, always coexisted with the game proper, and totally optional.

The checklists in Pocket Camp are front, center, in your face, and painfully obvious. When a villager in the other games asks for fruit, you just have to keep that in mind. When a villager in this game asks for fruit, you’ll get a big notification for it, and it’ll say “⅓ ORANGES” and that just feels so, so artificial. It’s in your face, unavoidable, and not friendly to the player. These fun little requests turn into overt demands.

This feeds into my biggest complaint with the game as a whole: this doesn’t feel like a cohesive, complete world. There are checklists, there are levels, there are popups for the Real Money Currency all over the place. The world is a world with artificiality stamped all over it. Menus would appear in other games when it made sense. Looking through your pack, looking at a sign. Here, menus just pop up… because? It really takes away from the sense that this is a world, and adds to the feel that this is a game.

The timers don’t help with this at all. They front and center try to place how long things take in your head. It’s not this natural “oh, I’ll have it done tomorrow” or “wait a week” idea you have in older games. “This item will be finished in exactly 4 and a half hours, and by the way here’s a way to skip it” absolutely demolishes any semblance of a coherent, physical world to exist in.

Look, the point I’m making here isn’t that “microtransactions are bad” or “screw phone games”. The issue is that this game is trying to be a mini Animal Crossing, and failing miserably. Animal Crossing has always been first and foremost about the world, and this game kills any chance of having a world with timers and checklists hovering over everything.

I play Animal Crossing to relax, slightly influence a town, and just do whatever. I boot up Pocket Camp and am told to get 3 oranges and a squid. Pocket Camp is not the worst thing ever. But it is a story about how good game design can so easily die. It wears the clothes, it looks the part. However, Pocket Camp does not have the soul that Animal Crossing should.

Persona 4's Issues with Queerness

Alright. I think it’s time I finally did something on this. These sorts of issues have been near and dear to my heart ever since I figured out more of who I am, and I would be remiss to never bring these issues up. That is to say, I care a great bit about queer issues in media, and it’s why I really do mean it when I say: Persona 4 handles LGBT+ issues in a bad, phobic way. I want to talk about why.

Persona has never been a series that’s historically very good with queer representation. The games I have the most experience with, Persona 3 and 5, basically don’t have any LGBT+ representation. Persona 3 has one off colour joke and one sort of maybe implied relationship, and Persona 5 has one horribly offensive gay couple and one maybe trans woman. So, generally, the Persona series has been pretty, how shall I say, overt, with its issues in these categories. Refusal to acknowledge our existence and bad jokes at our expense is par for the course, and sadly expected.

Persona 4 is a bit different. Ostensibly, Persona 4 has LGBT+ representation, and main party members at that! Kanji’s entire dungeon is basically shouting at you “HE’S GAY”, and Naoto presents as a man and is implied to be transgender at many points. So, uh, yeah, actual, positive representation? Yay?

...Everything I just said is a lie. Kanji is not gay, Naoto is not trans, and Persona 4 is not LGBT+ friendly. At all. Persona 4’s phobic tendencies are more insidious and not obvious on the surface at all, and what seems like positive representation gives way to tone deaf writing and very uncomfortable implications and statements.

So, to start, let’s talk about what Kanji and Naoto’s character arcs actually are. Kanji and Naoto are actually stories about societal roles, and the struggle to fit in and carve out a sense of self and place where others will accept you. Kanji struggles with his need to be a “real man” and be tough, at odds with his love of socially feminine activities like handicraft. Naoto wishes to be a great detective, but feels she cannot be taken seriously as a woman in such a position, and so presents as male to achieve her goals. Both of these characters go through understanding who they want to be, how they limited and misunderstood themselves, and how adhering to these societal expectations will only make them miserable.

Alright. Let’s look at Kanji. A large part of this disconnect between his idea of a “real man” and his interests manifests in insecurity in his sexuality. It’s pretty clear from his dungeon alone, it being a bathhouse, with his shadow being every stereotype of a gay man imaginable.

But, the thing is, he’s not… really… gay. For much of the story, Kanji has a crush on Naoto, who is, mostly, presenting male. But he still holds attraction to her after that is dropped, which, while you could maybe interpret to mean he is bisexual, absolutely reeks of the writers trying to rewrite him as straight, and trying to cast all that implication of him being gay under the rug. Kanji’s sexuality is a tool for the writers. Not a serious idea to explore, not a central character theme, his sexuality is a means to make him confused, and that is all. The fact that the game ever refuses to say the word “gay” is pretty telling. Persona 4 does not actually care about gay issues one bit. Persona 4 cares about making Kanji weird, confused, and othered.

There’s a lot of issues with this idea of just using being gay as a way to be confused. It calls up the ugly phrase many folks have heard from people: “Oh, you’re just confused”. It casts exploring one’s sexuality as an ugly, odd thing that you should ideally never do. Kanji gets more integrated into the group as he “grows out” of this phase thing, which is just, well. I hope I don’t have to explain why that’s a bit of an issue.

There’s the other half of this issue, which is that this is a dirty, dirty tease, and to just say “no he’s not actually gay” is honestly kind of insulting. The writers couldn’t have been blind, c’mon. This is a tease, whether they intend it or not, and to walk back on this is deeply troubling. And in the spirit of “a tease”... Naoto.

Naoto’s whole shtick is that she feels forced into presenting male due to what she wants to do in life. Which would be fine, except, pardon my language, holy shit, what a dirty tease this is. You have gotta know what you’re implying when you write lines about “body modification surgery”, seriously. Everything about her pretty much implies she’s being written as transgender than then, just… no. It’s this ridiculous thing that’s honestly pretty insulting.

To get to the overall point, all this leads up to one central idea: in Persona 4, being LGBT+ makes you the “other”. It makes you the weird social outcast, it makes you unstable inside, it makes you unaccepted. Characters find themselves in this game, but finding yourself means shedding that stuff, because that’s “weird” and “confusing”. Queerness is built up as this plot point, and a negative plot point at that.

Oh, Kanji’s not gay, he just likes feminine activities.

Oh, Naoto isn’t trans, she just looks up to male role models.

I’m sure you’ve probably heard those arguments before if you’re queer, or even if you’re not, you almost certainly know of them. They’re these destabilizing attacks on one’s identity, constantly doubting them. And this is basically exactly what Persona 4 says. To the game, you can have a story about defying society's expectations and being yourself, but for god’s sake, don’t put a gay person in there. That’d be weird.

I hope we can do better than this.

The Drums of Persona Shopping

This is going to be the most ridiculously specific thing I have ever written about.

I write way too much about Persona already. If you couldn’t tell, I do have a certain fondness for the series. A lot of what I love is the small stuff, where you can clearly tell effort and care was placed into even the tiniest of things. So, in the spirit of that, I’m gonna talk about the drum track to one song in Persona 5, specifically, Butterfly Kiss.

So, some background quick; if you haven’t played Persona 5 (how dare you), this is the song that plays when you visit Tae Takemi, the resident doctor and medicine shop of the game. It’s background music for your shopping, basically. So keep that idea of what it’s meant for in mind, and let’s dive right in…

...Into some drum terminology! Hehe. I promise, this’ll be quick and painless.

Hi Hat: The cymbal you see drummers tapping on all the time. I’ll be talking about two kinds of hits here, taps and crashes. Taps are quick and quiet, crashes are longer and louder.

Snare: You know that sharp snap of a drum beat you hear during songs? That’s the snare. You’ll pick up on it quick.

Beats: Count “1 2 3 4” over and over to yourself to the beat of the song. Congrats, you now have the skeleton of how drum beats are counted.

And that’s about it! Here’s the song, and let’s get going:

So, to establish the beat of the song that lasts until about 40 seconds in, let’s get our bearings. This beat can be quite chaotic at first, so to steady yourself, focus on the loud snare hit every few seconds. That snare hits on the “4” of the “1 2 3 4” beat mentioned above. To make it simpler: the beat loops after every snare hit. Now, in that timeframe is where we’re gonna focus.

The progression of beats (this isn’t tied to the 1 2 3 4, just fits in the time from 1-4) overall goes:

Crash - Tap Tap Tap - Crash - Snare - Crash - Tap Tap Tap - Crash - Snare

This beat almost breaths as it goes. It goes from the quiet taps, to the louder crash, to the loud BANG on the snare, then back to the crash, then the taps, and on and on it goes. It’s got this up and down rhythm to it that makes the song feel like it’s never standing still, even at the lowest, most calm moments. It’s really good beat variance, and most importantly, it never feels like it’s jumping around or being sudden, as a more casual, shopping theme should. It’s just good work all around.

Of course, the song can’t stay like this forever, and when shifting to the next bit (0:40), we’re going into steady triplets on the hi-hat. You’ll hear the snare every 6 taps, and 2 hits on the bass drum in between. Basically, the point of this part is meant to be a climax to the song of sorts, going smooth, steady, and high intensity, while keeping it not overwhelming by never throwing in any odd, off beat hits.

As the song comes off this height, it doesn’t quite go back into the beat from before right away. A variation of the earlier beat plays right after the high point (1:10). This version has the hi hat constantly going in the background at a much louder volume. As well, the snare hits much earlier and much more suddenly in this section compared to the first one. This is a sort of cool down period, taking a half step from the more intense part so it doesn’t jump up and down, keeping the smooth feeling of the song going.

And that’s basically all the differences in the drum beat throughout the song! These beats aim to create interesting, constantly changing beats while also trying to keep it from jumping around. To achieve this, the song keeps the individual, low energy beats breathing up and down smoothly, while relying on the high energy segments to carry it by themselves. In between these beats, it takes careful pains to make the transitions as smooth as possible. It’s a beat and song that never feels like it’s standing still, always feeling like it’s moving in a unique and interesting way. It’s just another feather in Persona 5’s impressive musical cap.