which is slightly hypocritical of me considering I've been an enabler for
I actually just got done mentioning this to Ni, but I feel like I haven't been fair to the mods by approaching just them with the tonal issues, as it's part of a game-wide issue, both from players and mods. In some ways, I think this is why the way Dragon does things rubs so many people the wrong way - he might have the tone of the show down pat, but since nobody else really has as solid of a grip about it, he still sticks out like a sore thumb, a tall poppy that needs to be cut so to speak.
Nemesis/Antithesis was kind of a hot mess for the reasons you mentioned as well as the criticisms levied toward Dragon - it basically felt like a long con perpetrated by Zetta and the princesses, or in a meta sense by Dragon and the mods, and I don't think a lot of us have gotten over that.
As I'd said to Ni privately, I think the issue is threefold. The elephant in the room, the problem that can't really be undone without gutting the game and starting anew, is that Ni's design for the setting is rife with horror in both the "cosmic" and "fridge" senses, because there's explanations for everything, you just may not want to hear them.
The second problem stems off of that: There's explanations for everything, and people keep digging. I think part of the plummet back into darkness honestly was the repeated dives into Calice's world, which just picked apart a small scratch further and further until it became a gaping hole.
But at the same time, the mods could have denied further dives at any time - after all, it's been proven that powers aren't always consistent, especially ones as nebulous as JA's and Dandy's. I think at the moment what we need to do is dial the explanations back into a drip feed, and worry less about "why are we here" and more on "what do we do now". All in all, I've always seen MLJ as a game about taking a tangled, messed up life, and making something beautiful out of it. That's partly, I think, why I have faith that this game can recover, because the meta-issues dovetail almost ironically well into the theme overall.
+0.5
I actually just got done mentioning this to Ni, but I feel like I haven't been fair to the mods by approaching just them with the tonal issues, as it's part of a game-wide issue, both from players and mods. In some ways, I think this is why the way Dragon does things rubs so many people the wrong way - he might have the tone of the show down pat, but since nobody else really has as solid of a grip about it, he still sticks out like a sore thumb, a tall poppy that needs to be cut so to speak.
Nemesis/Antithesis was kind of a hot mess for the reasons you mentioned as well as the criticisms levied toward Dragon - it basically felt like a long con perpetrated by Zetta and the princesses, or in a meta sense by Dragon and the mods, and I don't think a lot of us have gotten over that.
As I'd said to Ni privately, I think the issue is threefold. The elephant in the room, the problem that can't really be undone without gutting the game and starting anew, is that Ni's design for the setting is rife with horror in both the "cosmic" and "fridge" senses, because there's explanations for everything, you just may not want to hear them.
The second problem stems off of that: There's explanations for everything, and people keep digging. I think part of the plummet back into darkness honestly was the repeated dives into Calice's world, which just picked apart a small scratch further and further until it became a gaping hole.
But at the same time, the mods could have denied further dives at any time - after all, it's been proven that powers aren't always consistent, especially ones as nebulous as JA's and Dandy's. I think at the moment what we need to do is dial the explanations back into a drip feed, and worry less about "why are we here" and more on "what do we do now". All in all, I've always seen MLJ as a game about taking a tangled, messed up life, and making something beautiful out of it. That's partly, I think, why I have faith that this game can recover, because the meta-issues dovetail almost ironically well into the theme overall.