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smokinsid · 12 days

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Alright, alright, let's talk about SotO. Keep your chin up. This'll be long, but as fair as I can make it. It's not all negative, but it's not all positive either. My hope is to just be real about it. Feedback welcome. Blast me in reblogs if you don't agree, I'm genuinely eager for the conversation.

The kryptis are emotion. It stands to reason that this would be a story focused on emotion. How the commander feels about this or that. How the world reacts when you put your emotions into it. That's pretty cool, and after a decade of more and more personal-feeling dragonslaying, separating us from our friends in order to deep-dive into our Commander's own heart is a really cool move. I have to give credit to what was intended.

There's a sense the entire time of throttled execution that I want to talk about. The story is, at all times, not bold enough to deliver the emotional payload it wants. It's not big enough, bad enough- and it's not a question of stakes, either. I advocated for a lower-stakes jaunt into exciting but less apocalyptic territories at the end of EoD.

Eparch is not a threatening villain. The reveal that he lied about his army and manipulated the stakes was... contrary to what we saw in the map, in one hand- and in the other hand, a deception that undermined him as a threat right before approaching his throne.

I recall when he was first revealed wishing that he was just, physically bigger. Not like Cerus. Like Primordus. I wanted him to be speaking to us from that precipice at the arena and then suddenly loom into view, towering over the columns, taking up the horizon. If he's so full of the strength of others, let him grow huge from it, so I can feel the scope of what he's taken and feel small in his presence. I play Asura- at no point did I feel like I could not beat his skinny ass to a pulp with my own class abilities and absolutely no help.

His timer in the fight still running while he's in his Dipshit Cowardice Bubble did not impress me, and I still beat the clock with like 60% of the limit to spare.

He's weak, he's anonymous- he's revealed only to immediately clam back up in his tower while everyone else continues to just talk about him- and if I'm being perfectly honest, the best parallel for him is our old pal, Zhaitan.

Zhaitan loved to send bits of itself as far as it could reach, while the dragon itself remained in Arah. In some ways I liked that- it was the traditional dragon that hunted goats in the countryside and hoarded treasure, but with a necromancer's minion-mastery twist.

Now imagine falling short of Zhaitan, that much-reviled old lizard, in terms of story delivery. Sure, we fight Eparch toe to toe, but he's weak. If Lonely Tower had released at the beginning of SotO instead of now as a flashback, it might've helped us better understand and respect him as a threat, much like how we had the entire personal story past Claw Island to understand Zhaitan.

But we didn't. So to continue looking at this parallel, we see a relatively short, strained jaunt to Zhaitan, with a couple of hairpin turn deaths to sting us emotionally (they fall flat, alas), and suddenly a Big, Easy Fight against a Guy Who Sucks.

Do you remember the Asura woman in the personal story- if you let her spouse die, she never speaks to you again, even in later expansions? Remember Tybalt, Cieran, and Forgal? That stuff hurts good. This NPC won't talk to you because you let her down and broke her heart. These characters grew to love you in ways that, especially for the time, were uncommon for characters in MMOs. That's the kind of thing that this truncated expac didn't have time for.

And let's reflect on IBS while we're at it. I'm never going to stop laughing at it sharing an acronym with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but it genuinely felt like the best they could do working in Bellevue, WA, in the midst of serious covid restrictions. They even went back and re-voiced a chapter that it wasn't safe to voice at the time, remember that? It spoke to an interest in doing their damnedest to deliver the best product they could. And it was good! The final fight couldn't be what they wanted it to be, and I'll always laugh at "so, this is Pact justice?" but it was compelling, at least.

We spend a lot of time in SotO standing still. Selecting a dialogue option and listening to NPCs read their lines. Now, I love Peitha and could listen to her talk all day, but so much of what you should know as the player in position of Wayfinder is stowed away in text-only books and collections. Maybe that's a budgetary constraint. Voice acting is expensive. I don't mind reading, personally- but I didn't, because I was already spending so much time standing around!

I'm not one of those people that thinks of my player character as a killing machine or some kind of mercenary being deployed by the higher echelons to do the practical job of killing a way to the boss. Sid is a radio DJ. Enid is a physicist. Rucks is a troubadour. These are conversational, curious characters who are absolutely invested in what's happening in the world around them.

But my tools as a player for engaging with that world are the ten buttons at the bottom of my screen. You have to challenge me to play the game using those buttons, in order to hook me in and invest me. Kick my ass! Make me fight back! That's part of a great story, and I play all three cruise control classes- Necro, Engi, and Warrior. I want you to make me break bars and use my control effects and feel like I'm under threat so that when I win, it feels like winning!

SotO taught my foul little chain-smoking radio gremlin how to dab. It let me unlock a skyscale the easy way. It made me feel gay things for a twelve foot tall woman made of meat and nightmares. For these things I'll always be grateful.

With strictly tertiary stakes- a secret war on the fringes of reality- expressed through random invasions not much different from the random invasions from Joko's boys, a pinched story with lots of standing around, and a truly pitiful, downright un-respectable asswipe of a villain that makes Zhaitan look like a properly-told story, I have to say that SotO only delivered on its emotional payload in the small places.

The relationships between members of the Ward. The way Peitha grows close to you and comes to rely on you so personally. The banter, more than the beats- and that's as much a problem as it is something to be proud of. Some games don't deliver on character personality. In World of Warcraft: Legion, you got Khadgar being smarmy and Illidan being awful and hilarious- but these are integrated into the most important story moments. When Illidan opens the way to Argus right in the middle of the fucking sky, he has the biggest shit-eating grin you've ever seen on his face, because he knows that it's funny. He knows that he just did the craziest shit that Khadgar's ever seen, and Khadgar's been dealing with demons since the Second War!

So why not have that in our cutscenes? Something as simple as coming to the throne room to threaten Eparch, and seeing Peitha curl her hand around your Wayfinder's shoulder. Isgarren is basically our Khadgar, and he's also a big piece of shit, and he gets some good lines reminiscent of "A Wizard appears exactly when he means to," but we can lean more into that- rather than ask everyone around us if Isgarren is coming, why not... have him fail us? Have him tell us that we can call on him, and then we do, and then have him tell us no.

It's not about how these characters harm and help each other, is what I'm driving at. It's how they harm us, on the other side of the computer screen. You, the player, should be provoked into an emotional response because it's motivating! And if you think being motivated isn't a big deal, I want you to consider that the thing that provokes Kryptis portals to higher intensities are items called motivations.

Arenanet has demonstrated a fluency in the language of emotion, and made a valiant attempt at getting inside our player character's heart. But my take is that in doing so, they left the actual player out of the equation.

I can read to my heart's content, and there's good stuff to read. But I can do that without the game, as everything's transcribed on the wiki. If you want me to be part of your world and tug at my heartstrings, you've gotta provoke me.

And if you can't do that with your main villain, you need a new main villain.

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2 soto #gw2 soto spoilers #secrets of the obscure #eparch

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asteria7fics · 2 months

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1, 11, 14, 18?

Aaah thank you for humoring me!!

1.) The last sentence you wrote

From a one-shot I just started drafting like an hour ago hehe~

“He and Stan had been cast as Mercutio and Tybalt respectively, which would mean plenty of time would be spent practicing together.”

11.) A WIP you’d like to finish someday

I started a short story with some OCs a couple of years ago that I’d like to get back to, but it’s not as fun as writing goofy SP bs! It’s like a gay supernatural romance situation, very much not what I’ve been enjoying writing but I hope to finish it eventually!

14.) Where do you get your inspiration

Everywhere and anywhere. I’m pretty openly inspired by other works in the fandom (esp. the fic that’s with my betas right now!), but I also just enjoy writing about things that I find interesting! TSOB is a great example of this, as I already had a strong interest in the Trojan War before I got into SP, so it all just kind of fell into place for me!

Truthfully inspiration comes to me at the weirdest times, and usually from the weirdest things. That one private chef au I spitballed a while ago came to me from a silly little ‘would you rather’ game we play at my job, where we were asked if we’d rather have a private chef or a private masseuse. I think you can guess what I picked - and my coworkers definitely thought I was losing my mind when the idea came to me and I spent the next ten minutes furiously typing it out.

18.) If you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

A bit from chapter 26 of TSOB, when Stan and Kyle pass the church on their way to Stark’s Pond:

“Kyle wondered if it was considered offensive to step on [the shadow of the cross], so he took a big step over the shape as they passed. Stan didn’t, walking straight through the building’s shadow.”

I ended up reworking this part, which made this little tidbit awkward and not really fit in properly, but I still think it’s cute. It’s probably the only line I deleted from the rough draft that has any actual substance, truthfully. I mostly deleted little wordy, redundant bits.

I had fun answering these!! Thank you for sending this ask! (っ◔◡◔)っ ❤

#ask Asteria #fic writer asks #I love answering questions truthfully #pls never be shy I swear I don’t bite

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rammypeaches-art · 3 years

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FINALLY FINISHED THIS! 🙌🏻 It took a lot of work, but I'm so happy with how this came out!

Also, important note - Dré is genderfluid/bigender! He uses both he/him and she/her pronouns, and her girlmode name is Déjà! Same person, different names! :3

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penmeetspage · 4 years

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Folks, I cannot BEGIN to explain how Extremely up my alley An Artificial Night was.

I like how Spike and Cagney and Lacey consistently know things are Wrong before anyone else?

The whole investigating scene, how it narrows from looking around and Detectiving to just focusing on scents. “Mold; old, dry dust. .Ash. Fire. Steel... blood and plastic and fabric softener and finger paint... a distinct tang of candle wax, freshly burned and not quite dry.”

Tybalt stops in the middle of an argument and goes “You’re still wearing my jacket.”

I appreciate that Toby has come round to the very sensible problem-solving method of Go Ask Lily. That is a good solution to many problems.

"What have you done to your hands?” ...”I burned them.” “And how did you do this immensely clever thing to yourself?” “I touched a window.” “Now, explain. When you’re done, I may ask you to explain again, this time using actual words, but we’ll see.”

This is so deliciously ominous. “There are things I may not speak of... This is such a thing. Where children go, why glass burns, how far you can get by the light of a candle--” It‘s so vivid. There is some Fairy Tale Bad Stuff going on and I am delighted.

Gosh, this keeps building, doesn’t it? Two from Katie’s house. Five from Tybalt’s folks. One from a human household. This is like the scene in epidemic movies where they realize it’s not just a couple cases in one place, it’s widespread, it’s A Thing.

Luna’s being real ominous but also being proper fairy tale poetic and I can appreciate that.

“If I say you can save your life and your heart by walking away from this, will it matter?” !!

love the juxtaposition of Toby’s “I didn’t want to go. I’m not a hero; I never have been. I just do what has to be done. But when you get right down to it, isn’t that the definition of a hero?” and then a page and a half later there’s Luna’s “I can’t stop you from trying. Heroes never listen. That’s why they’re heroes.”

“Once you’re on the road, don’t stop, don’t look back.” I’ve mentioned how much I appreciate the good’n’proper fairy tale stuff, right? we’re invoking old rules and I love it. cramming the orphean rescue stuff in right at the start.

(”Never rush anyone who’s personally witnessed continental drift.” !)

I’m kinda delighted how on the one hand I was surprised that the Luidaeg and sisters had had a go at killing Blind Michael, but on the other hand, knowing what we know/have seen of her character (not just her reputation) on some level I was almost not surprised? She’s good people, and she certainly gets hard choices.

ok, and this whole sequence-- “I couldn’t stop him. What makes you think you can?” --”Nothing, I’m probably going to die horribly.” ... “Why bother if you know you’re going to fail?” --”I have to.”

man, these rules are proper fairy tale prohibitions. I love this. You’ll go tonight, and you’ll go alone, and you won’t look back. Because the rules day so... You go alone. You can take any help you find, but you can’t ask for it. You fight with what you have and what you’re given; neither steal nor buy any weapon of any kind. You can take each road once, and only once...

That thing you only see once in a very long while, in just a few very good stories, where you fight kids’ monsters with kids’ weapons? That. I love that. “Blind Michael is a child’s terror. When you’re hunting bogeymen, you look for the nets you need in the stories you’ve forgotten.”

oh oh okay it gets even better: “Children’s games are stronger than you remember once you’ve grown up and left them behind. | They’re always fair, and never kind.” damn.

Wouldn’t want to visit, but what a world to go questing in!

I do like “when there’s nowhere left to run, take refuge in cockiness” as, like, a rule of thumb. a life motto. jack would be proud.

oh snap he has to play fair. He’s a kid’s nightmare and he plays games and he follows the rules and he has to play fair or it doesn’t count!!!

Quentin’s here!!

hi excuse me are those spear things the hunters have basically a game of freeze tag???

I don’t trust Acacia, but I do like her a bit. Insofar as she’s an old old lady in a wood who tests people on quests. And offers help “because you wouldn’t betray my daughter.”

That’s about half the book, right? Let’s call that half, this is getting long.

Part two to come.

#october daye #spoilers: an artificial night #shall after revive and freshly grow

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