The marriage conflicts in It Takes Two reminds me of the parent/child issues in Mitchells vs. Machines, where it felt like the writers believed they were creating a reciprocal, mutual conflict but 90% of it was the dad/husband sucking a bunch.
I think it's part of Sitcom Dad Syndrome: if your tendency is to give white guys slack and to look on everybody else with suspicion of benefiting from unearned slack, it's easy to miss that your Patriarch is just an awful person.

Like, the game play in It Takes Two seems really well designed for creating synergy and teamwork, and the level design is great, the artwork is great, but the actual relationship stuff...
I think what they were going for is a couple that just drifted apart without realizing it or acknowledging it, so no Bad Guy in the relationship per se, but. That's not how it comes across.
"May is never home because she's always working, so she doesn't have time to take care of the house or take our daughter to appointments..."

Okay, why is she responsible for all that on top of her actual job?
I liked Mitchells vs. Machines and I am enjoying watching people play It Takes Two. Possibly my standards are too low because Fictional Dads/Dudes are just so often like this, but both of these projects I otherwise like.
It's like otherwise decent writers just don't know how to make an actual "Guess we've both got a lot to work on, huh?" relationship between a man and anyone female, because they don't have a realistic idea of what problems on both sides looks like.
And, like... Cody blaming May for his garden's failure because she didn't "support his passion" and Horny Dr. Lovebook taking his side on that just reminds me so much of how MvM tried to make "Well, Katie's not interested in her dad's hobbies, either." an equally big problem.
And it's like... Cody, your wife works for a living. Stay-at-home parents are workers and their work is important, but if you want to have a garden *because you like gardening*, don't base your happiness on her wanting you to do it.
And Rick... yeah, kids are easier when they're at the point where they think whatever you think is cool is cool because you're their whole world, but she's still your kid when she grows up and starts doing her own thing. You are, at no point, her kid. It's *not* equal.
Anyway. May is not a good communicator but as a counterpoint, I wouldn't want to communicate with Cody, either.

But communication is required to realize that, ideally before you get married and have a child.
Right? And when he was basically forced to, he saw how much influence he and the stuff he loved had on her art.

Like, I think with MvM, part of it was the movie was from the daughter's perspective and so I think for most of it we were supposed to be seeing him as the problem because she saw him that way (because he was) but then she had the breakthrough at the end.

And her breakthrough was, "Wow, I also don't care about my dad's woodworking or bands or whatever anymore, I guess it's my fault he smashed my computer because he doesn't like my cartoons."

And his was like "Oh my kid who keeps seeking my approval actually looks up to me a lot."
Yes. And like his deep understanding of magical fantasy tropes, from imaginative play with their daughter, was that if her crying about their divorce triggered the initial transformation, making her cry again about anything would undo it?

I keep thinking "No, I'm probably being unfair because I've spent ten hours snarking about him with other people as we watch these VODs." and then I remember a major arc of the game involves them trying to murder a sapient toy their daughter loves so she'll cry, on his insistence
It's a plan that makes no sense, that multiple NPCs comment on the inherent cruelty of, and it only exists because of a 100% off-the-cuff asspull by Cody who wants to prove that he's an expert on something, since his wife's engineering knowledge keeps coming in handy.
And yes it's kind of funny watching the two bumbling doll people insisting to other toys that they're not bad parents they just have to make their daughter cry for magic reasons. I get the humor in the situation.
I don't know how the game ends (nor am I asking; DO NOT SPOIL) but I really hope they "patch things up" in the sense of learning how to communicate with and about their daughter but still divorce because they are not good together and May can do/deserves better.
Right? And the movie made it so that smashing (or at least ditching) their tech was the right move, just like carrying his favorite size/brand/style of screwdriver, and just like him smashing the computer and overriding her travel plans saved humanity.

For all the Real 90s Kids who are really confused about this thread, this is the It Takes Two I'm talking about. Yes, there's more than one It Takes Two. Why? Because it takes two.

Also as much as I want Cody and May to split up, I have a feeling (NO SPOILERS STILL) that the spell will be broken by a kiss, because it's

1. A magical curse.
2. Made up by a little girl who loves stories.
3. Who doesn't want her parents to divorce.

How else would it work?
And I mean, Cody thinking "Our daughter's tears got us into this mess so they can get us out of it!" and missing the obvious True Love's Kiss would just be... him in a nutshell. So I both want and don't want this to be the ending.

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More from @AlexandraErin

10 Jun
"Why doesn't the media care about the president' sson"

Okay, I'll bite: what's a president's son?

A monarch's son might be a prince, might be the heir apparent to the throne.

A business mogul's son might be an heir.

What's a president's son?
I guess in the sense that "it happens every other century".

And, like, the political news media covering how much of a screw-up a current president's son is as though he were the crown prince or something just exacerbates that.

I'm worried about a lot of things on both sides of the aisle but I am not worried that Joe Biden is going to give Hunter the keys to the kingdom, and I don't believe you are, either.
Read 11 tweets
10 Jun
Despite being billed as a continuation/sequel and despite having some of the "Unlike that icky girl version a few years back, THIS ONE'S FOR THE REAL FANS" marketing hype pushed onto it, the best thing about this is the people who made it clearly know where/how the original sucks
I remember reading something from the people who made Voltron: Legendary Defender about how they weren't trying to be faithful to the original (either original) so much as faithful to the feeling of having watched it as a kid.
And that's the vibe I get from this trailer. It's not the 80s cartoon (which... doesn't hold up well at all), it's versions of that universe that could have lived in your mind, free from the need to maximize the number of collectable action figures you get out of a single mold.
Read 8 tweets
10 Jun
Once upon a time a comedian did a bit in a set that didn't go over well. Someone in the audience repeated the joke to another person, who also didn't get it. That person repeated it again to a man who, seeing the humor in it, died laughing.
The dead man's family went after the one who had told him the joke, who protested that seeing nothing funny in it, they could not be blamed for the fatal hilarity. The person who had first repeated the joke had the same excuse, and pointed the finger at the comedian.
The comedian's lawyer first argued self-defense, saying that it was their client's job to slay the audience and with the alternative being dying on stage... if a stand-up comic can't stand their ground, who can?
Read 6 tweets
10 Jun
So it's my birthday.

First birthday after my vaccination feels less real or like a birthday or milestone than my birthday during Quarantimes, I think because last year I was way more consciously doing things to mark "Yes, this is happening and it's my birthday."
On the plus side it not feeling like my birthday means it also doesn't feel like the anniversary of my last day with a living mother. Though maybe that's why I've been so blah/down lately, anniversary effect creeping up on me unnoticed.
....the Twitter profile balloons have never felt sadder.

Is it actually only one year since Jack made the Fireball cake? Is that possible? Did that happen in 2020? Time is fake, and out of joint, and an illusion. It's a fake, out of joint illusion.

Read 13 tweets
9 Jun
One of the many things I like about Dishonored 2's level designs is the way it begins and ends in the same place, though drastically changed, and how this highlights how the protagonist has changed as well.
In the first level, you're escaping from a room high atop Dunwall Tower and you have no supernatural abilities so you are limited to one survivable path down across the rooftops to the ground.
In the last level, you have the opportunity to scale those same roofs using your accumulated magical/superhuman abilities (and whatever game proficiency you've gained in real life) and it's completely different.
Read 10 tweets
8 Jun
Every once in a while I think about how Lois & Clark, a show that had almost no characters with superpowers outside of Superman, had two different unrelated ones played by the incredibly distinctive character actor Leslie Jordan.
I don't know how that happened but I think it was to the benefit of the show and the stories that he was cast in the part, as it was crucial in both cases that the character not actually be read as villainous despite being thrust into a supervillainous role.
His Invisible Man was Mr. Cellophane meets Henry Bemis, an overlooked man who made himself invisible and decided the best use of his power was to redistribute as many resources as a single pair of invisible hands could.
Read 22 tweets

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