#I popped off on the effects imo

[moghedien]

so one thing I really like about The Last of Us is how they're using jump scares. more specifically, how they're not using them.

because there are so many moments where a jumpscare can easily be slotted in for a cheap and easy reaction, but they never really go for that. moments where there is a sudden sound, its always something like an object being stepped on or something other than the actual scary monsters. and those sudden sound don't ever immediately translate into a sudden scare

instead, they draw out the scary shit so much. they show you so many glimpses of clickers and the scene drags on before it finally jumps out. by then you know its going to happen. even when Joel steps on glass while they're trying to sneak off, the clicker doesn't immediately jump out. they give you a few seconds to process what happened and realize what it means and THEN it jumps out

like it really shows you how much care they're putting into the tone and the building of tension by how they just flat out refuse to resort to cheap moves during scary scenes, and its really effective imo. because they don't give you the release of the scary thing popping up and being done with it. dragging it out makes it so much more anxiety inducing

#the last of us #the last of us hbo #tlou spoilers

[bryce-bucher]

500 CALIBER CONTRACTZ Post #12

Dialogue!!!11:

The main thing I did over the past week or so was put together this dialogue system. The system itself was fairly easily to implement, and I think the only interesting part of the process to share is how I went about making the UI. As per usual, I wanted to have a cool mechanical feeling ui, but at the same time a friend of mine suggested an AOL instant messenger inspired chat window. I loved both of these ideas so I decided to combine them into a screen that pops up and contains the aim-like window. The modeling process for the screen was similar to how I went about making the other two bits of ui that are on screen in the above photos, but I decided to include a VGA port.

VGA PORT:

I didn't originally plan to include a VGA port, but I was in the middle of researching monitors and accidentally left a window open on my computer that just had a big photo of one and I went "wait a minute.". With my final two braincells I suddenly decided to slap together a model for the port which I ended up being proud enough of to, for some reason, make an entire section for it.

Sorry if any of the above sentences read horribly. I am going to need a third braincell if you want this stuff to be coherent. Anyway, Blender is so cool. Using the array modifier to make all these lil squares for the holes in the port is just such a satisfying process. I've come to really like makin pre-rendered assets like this.

New Movez:

This is actually a pretty big inclusion, and I probably should've ranked it in my mind above the VGA port. I added some new movement options to the game!

Firstly, I added this melee move where you swing the back of the sniper forwards to propel yourself a bit. It is mainly useful as a bunnyhop that allows you to conserve momentum.

Next up I added this kick that happens if you melee while in the air. It's basically just the one from mario64. It lets you gain a little bit more height and distance. It also becomes way more effective if you have a lot of momentum. A good tool for correcting jumps and reaching new heights.

Finally, we have the big schmovement slide. This slide gives you a huge burst of speed that you can jump out of in order to send your self flyin. Surprisingly, it didn't really break any of the level design and ended up being a really fun addition imo. In order to perform it, you have to do a ground pound and then melee as you hit the ground. Also, I feel like I basically stole this from pseudoregalia. Played through that recently and it has been a good source of inspiration.

Nova!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

This is a cameo skin I've been really excited to finally make myself put in the game. Anodyne 2 is a really important game to me, and I love it much. I'm really happy tha folks at analgesic let me put her in here, and I'm p happy with how her model came together. If you haven't peeped the Anodyne games I highly recommend them. The first one was a major inspiration for parts of Fatum Betula.

Conclusion:

Lately I've been playing this game way too much. It has made it impossible for me to tell if it is fun or well designed. Some problems cropped up during playtesting that ima need to address, and I hope that it all comes together into something that one could say is "fun and cool". I think takin this weekend off is gonna do my brain good. Oh yeah also I feel like I should advertise that I'm still doing commissions if anyone is interested. Anyway, have a good 1 and enjoy urself.

#screenshotsaturday #indiegamedev #gamedev #indiedev #game development #indiegames #lowpoly #y2k #y2k aesthetic #indie game #3d platformer #3dplatformer #sniper rifle #50 caliber 3d platformer #500 caliber contractz #50 cal #anodyne #anodyne 2

[tiny-brass-bot]

Hi! I saw a post where you had a game made in godot with old school rendering, do you maybe have any tips on how to make godot render a game like that instead of its normal rendering method?

I'd be right happy to!

I'll try to make this concise lol, I always end up overexplaining and then getting lost in the weeds. Buckle up, it's a loooooot of little little things that all add up.

First off, you should decide which look you're going for. N64 and PS1, the two consoles I'm emulating, both had drastically different specs. (plus, there's plenty of other early 3D systems I've not even touched!)

The N64 had texture filtering (textures were interpolated aka "blurry"), it had floating point vertex precision (points moved correctly), it had perspective correction on its textures (no warping)

The PS1 had no texture filtering, no floating point vertex precision (vertices snap and pop around), affine texture mapping (textures warp weird). I also think the color space they operate in is different? Don't quote me

So you can go hard one way or another or pick and choose what you think looks good! We don't have anywhere near the hardware restrictions they did in the 90s so go nuts.

RESOLUTION

To get a low resolution window, I set the window size of the game and the window override size to different amounts

In green is actually how big the window is on my screen (4k monitor) and in red is the retro resolution I want. If you set the stretch mode correctly (an option a little further down the Window tab) then it'll make the pixels big

COLORS

Now the PS1 had the capability of showing you over 16 million different colors, but it could only display 50,000-150,000 at a time, so in order to get more fidelity out of it, the engineers implemented a dithering effect to better blend the otherwise sharp edges between colors.

I used this shader to achieve the dithering effect. If you don't understand shader languages, that's fine. There are a few different pre-built ones for looking like the PlayStation 1 out there.

TEXTURES

Textures for the PS1 could be as big as 256x256, but they were typically 128x128. And they would squish everything a model needed into there usually, at least with like player models and objects and such.

As mentioned, if you're not good with shader language don't worry. There are countless resources out there that people will either let you use or teach you how it works. But I'm gonna touch on it a little bit here.

PS1 textures had no pixel filtering, so you could see individual pixels.

This is what determines that in the shader code. If you want it to look like the N64 (blurry lol), the proper hint is "filter_linear". Note that it won't be 1:1 with N64, cuz they used bilinear filtering (which kinda sucks and causes weird quirks) whereas now you'll only find linear or trilinear filtering. It's a negligible difference imo.

PS1 textures also were only saved using 15 bit color. I'm told that Photoshop's "Posterize" filter set to 32 can achieve this, but don't use photoshop if you can help it. I use GIMP, and while a newer version might have a posterize filter, or there may be a plugin out there, my version doesn't so I cluge it a little.

Change your color mode to "indexed", set color dithering to how you like it, and the number of colors in the palette to a number to get a good result. Usually I'll do 16, 8, 32, but occasionally I'll cheat and do a non-multiple-of-8 teehee >:3c

You can change it back to RGB after to make further editing easier.

LIGHTING

N64 and PS1 both implemented vertex lighting, as opposed to the more modern and (now) ubiquitous per-pixel lighting. Godot as it is right now (4.2 i think?) claims it has vertex lighting that you can set as a shader property but they're lying and it doesn't work yet.

The old consoles could only handle like, 2 lights though so it doesn't matter much.

The real star of the show, and in my opinion the one thing that makes a game most look like the 90s is the inclusion of vertex colors.

By multiplying the color of your texture by its stored vertex color, you can do all the shading yourself!

Plus you can reuse textures like crazy just by coloring them differently. The N64 also made heavy use of vertex colors by forgoing a texture on models entirely and just painting them using verticies. The only textures on SM64 Mario are his eyes, stache, hat emblem, buttons, and sideburns. Everything else is done with vertex colors.

Here you can see this level from my Crock Land with no vertex coloring, with some of the vertex colors only, and then with the two combined.

Rare loved this. Look at how colorful that cliffside is in Jungle Japes. It makes it so much more interesting than just a brown cliff face. Plus you can see the vertex coloration instead of textures at work on DK and the Gnawty.

My go-to example for PS1 is always Spyro, what a gorgeous game. All of those colors there are not made by a light or an environment. They're hand painted babey! Also! With spyro! The skyboxes are actually just huge domes made up of vertices that are colored in different ways! That's how they can look so colorful and "hi-res".

There's plenty more you can do, like adding a CRT filter or a little bit of chromatic aberration which I haven't gotten into yet.

The way I've learned all this is just by being curious as to how the old consoles did their thing, and slowly accruing the knowledge over time. There's still infinite stuff I don't know too.

I hope that helped! And wasn't too longwinded or confusing! Like I said, it's all about piling up tons and tons of little things, small details, weird graphical quirks that really bring out the retro 3D feel for me.

And I didn't even get into the modeling side of things! That's an entirely different "color-of-the-sky"-sized post though.

I'd be happy to re-explain or explain more about any of this!

#indie game dev #game development #retro #low poly #ps1 #n64 #tutorial #godot engine #indie dev #lowpoly

[beautifulpersonpeach]

BPP what is your honest view on Jimin biases?

***

A lot of y'all are down bad for that man. Down something horrendous my goodness.

Not that I blame you though.

*

Btw, I was watching fancams with friends again last night and we played this one:

How does he move the way he does? /gen. You can see the strength he infuses into every move, down to his fingertips when he dances.

Do you see that form?

(???)

There are many dancers in k-pop who impress me, some I'd place in the best dancers globally, but Jimin is easily the top ranked in nearly every category IMO, no matter the context. He's a real artist. It's not in him to half-ass a performance, no matter his condition. He gives his all and that's something that both inspires and troubles me about him.

I don't even bias him and Jimin induces some insanity in me from time to time. It's just what he is. Nobody who pays attention to him can react normally to him, everyone gets drawn disproportionately to him. Imagine how tiring that must be for him to know sometimes. And no offense to Jimin biases but I genuinely believe you have to be a little bit off kilter to be able to commit to being chosen by him.

Because Jimin is the sort of person you need... space to love.

Jimin is..

Jimin uses whatever misalignment is in you, eases his way into you to fix that offset, remove that imbalance. The way he is... when you fall under his effect it's like he takes up space inside you. As though he deserves and will take nothing less. In my honest opinion that's one way I perceive him. But then you open your eyes and realize the man is the softest marshmallow, a kind and truly measured person with exceptional emotional and practical intelligence. A Slytherin to the bone, a living shape-shifter, so attuned and sensitive to everything.

And he doesn't really demand anything. He's just so loved people want to commit to supporting him. His charismatic idol persona is just as attractive as his naturally shy but mischievous personality off the clock. It really doesn't get much more perfect than this for any celebrity ever.

Like, sometimes I wonder if Jimin goes to bed at night fearing he might one day destroy k-pop. In real practical terms. I wonder if Jimin agonizes over the fact that he's the most dangerous person in the industry. Knowing him, he probably doesn't but it's still something that as I've said before, needs to be said.

(Between you and me, I think he's yet to come to terms with it. Poor lad.)

Anyway, Jimin biases are actually in love with the man and I'd like to present some evidence both as a self-confession, and in support.

Exhibits

(...)

*

(Do you remember where you were the first time you noticed he has a dimple?)

*

(His look for this shoot is criminally underrated. He had easily the best chic styling for any idol in 2021.)

*

(Orange, yellow, and bright mustard are all good colours on him.)

*

(Yeah.... he's something else.)

*

Alright, now that I've answered this one, that's enough of the Jimin bias asks for now. I'll be ignoring all the rest for the next while.

Remember to keep streaming. :)

#jimin #park jimin #bts #bangtan

[mermaidlighthouse]

Why I think Izzy’s death was actually necessary despite me being sad about losing my favorite* character…

So I am once again looking to reframe a moment/scene involving Izzy around Ed because as much as Izzy was his own character (with a wonderful redemption arc) his function in the narrative imo is as an extension of the Blackbeard persona and therefore Ed and his perception of himself

Ok so this is gonna be long but I think it’s necessary to frame this properly

Izzy and Ed’s relationship is one of misery loving company and instead of finding ways to legitimately pull each other up and heal from whatever brought you to that place it turns to one of toxicity where you either repress the trauma (Ed never telling anyone that he killed his father, that he feels like a monster) or express it in ways that only perpetuate the misery. At this point that constant cycle of misery is so familiar it can be difficult for the participants to recognize what they’re doing to themselves and each other and it’s difficult to not fall back into those patterns.

So while Izzy is making strides and having his arc, instead of saying to Ed maybe don’t go looking for darkness when you’re standing in the light, don’t look for trouble or problems that don’t exist just because that’s what you’ve come to expect he says maybe you’re just a mopey twat and there isn’t a fuckin storm, when Ed does apologize for his leg Izzy’s only response is fuck off.

They can’t communicate with each other effectively and it’s already caused issues. When Izzy tells Ed to listen to the feeling of throwing away the trappings of Blackbeard, Ed does but he has also been told by Izzy that Ed isn’t good enough so why would Stede want him now that he’s not gonna be Blackbeard. I think Izzy meant well and had the right sentiment but the fact is that the damage of what they do to each other has already been done. Izzy doesn’t just represent the devil on Ed’s shoulder, he’s the voice in his head telling him he’s worthless without Blackbeard.

So could the narrative have just said Izzy went off on his own or went with the crew in the end? imho no they couldn’t because in order to have a healthy relationship with Stede, and just to be a generally well adjusted person Ed needs to love himself and the constant knowledge that his self loathing can just pop up out of nowhere (something explicitly shown as an Izzy staple) won’t allow him that freedom. (I recognize this isn’t how self development/self esteem works irl but this is a dark comedy rom com just let some things be hand wavy.)

Sometimes the best way to help each other grow and be whole is to recognize that you need to let the other person go. That’s true for BOTH of them.

Izzy dying was the only way they could finally communicate honestly without the jibes and the looming Blackbeard of it all they could just talk to each other as family as people who love each other (this is not my ship and I have a serious issue with the lack of nuanced takes on love in this fandom but that’s a separate issue).

To give Izzy some grace here I would like to point out that his story can also be seen as one that tells the audience that toxic people in your life or people you have complicated relationships with are allowed to grow on their own and make positive changes for themselves BUT that does not mean you have to accept them back in your life, you are not required to give them space after they’ve wronged you. You can celebrate their growth but you don’t owe them anything. Ed can recognize that Izzy has changed but he was never going to fully excise Izzy from his life he’s too familiar and too much a darkness to hide in and it would have created more toxic situations. So yes Izzy had to die.

*I always mean favorite side character because my favorite character is EdStede/StedeEd. If you don’t love them, together and separately then you don’t love the show because this is their story

#yes I still cry whenever I watch this scene #I’m also masochistic enough that I added Du Gamla to my playlist #and I cry about that too #this may end up just being for me but I needed to get it out of my head #izzy hands #the new unicorn #edward teach #ed teach #blackbeard #stede bonnet #the gentleman pirate #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #ed x stede #our flag means death #ofmd season 2 #ofmd s2 #ofmd

[deliciousdefendorinternet]

comparing the writing in the first film overall with the writing of the Third so people can Hopefully see what my problem is with TBT.

first off lets start with the two films big emotional music numbers that are meant to showcase meaningful character Growth that being "" True Colours ""

and "" Better Place "" now the main Difference between these two is that despite what some negative reviews of the first film said at the time Branch's character Arc wasn't literally just wrapped up in this one song like Bro zone's was in TBT.

True Colours was the climax to Branch's arc but it wasn't literally the only piece of Branch's arc throughout the film we had small hints under his uncaring exterior that he was actually a good guy who just wasn't good at showing it.

like the fact he saved Poppy from those spiders and when he tried to help her come to terms with Creek's supposed death even if his way wasn't 100 percent perfect.

and of course after finally opening up about his grandmother he showed more signs of trying to change for the better helping Bridget by giving her his love poem to say to Gristle Jr.

afterwards attempting to join in on the Snack Pack's happy screaming over Creek still being alive and even pulling a little High five Joke on Poppy showing clear effort of attempts to change beforehand.

he also attempted to comfort Poppy and the others when they opened the locket and Creek was gone and they assumed he was dead and all this leading to True Colours which was the big moment for his Arc.

Bro zone didn't have any of this before hand instead all their moments prior to Better Place are either them being Jerky or its mostly comedic gags with not real flashes of posotive character moments for them that could help with their Arc.

anyway back to True Colours despite technically getting what he said he wanted at the start of the film ( that being for the other pop Trolls to finally stop seeing the world as all cupcakes and Rainbows and finally see the Dark sides of things )

he was actually disheartened to see them all this way and worked to help them get out of this state which he was all too familiar with.

anyway one thing that makes True Colours work better than Better Place imo is

1. Branch still has agency in the choice their all about to die and well his choice to try and lift up the other people's spirits doesn't effect that at all.

I find it very powerful how he still chooses to be happy in that moment and tries to lift the spirits of everyone around him despite the fact that for all he knows his worst fear is about to come true their all about to be eaten by Bergens aka the very thing he's spent most of his life terrified of.

but with Better Place his Bros don't have agency so it isn't a meaningful character moment their literally imprisoned and forced to take part in the Harmony in order to save their own lives its not even just about Floyd anymore.

its sorta like if Branch only sang True Colours to lift everyone's spirits because he needed them to all have access to their longer Hair Powers so they could lift the lid on top of the cooking pot in order for them to escape.

kinda lessens the impact of the scene a bit doesn't it? 🤔🤔🤔🤔

and as I said before True Colours would be a cute scene on its own but if it was literally the only scene that was meant to show Branch's character Arc and growth then yeah it would still fall flat imo but it isn't because the movie made sure to have lots of other little moments.

showing Branch making the effort beforehand so True Colours was just the final result and not literally the only action taken in his Arc.

unlike Better Place where

1. the Bros Agency was taken away so they literally did the Harmony for selfish reasons and

2. it was the only moment meant to show their character Growth which just isn't how character Arcs work.

you don't get to have characters showcase a whole bunch of flaws and frankly crappy behaviour and then have their Arc be wrapped up with a single action that isn't even all that noble no character Arc works that way.

the writing of the first film understood this and did a Fair amount of it Right but TBT didn't understand this at all.

I'm not an Expert writer but this is all fairly Basic stuff so yeah. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

#Youtube #trolls #trolls branch #trolls brothers #trolls band together #trolls bro zone #trolls brozone #trolls 2016 #Trolls #Trolls Branch #Trolls Bro zone #dreamworks trolls #dreamworks trolls 3

[kingsandbastardz]

@bbcphile asked about Di Feisheng and neurodiversity and it's something that's been on my mind for awhile, so here we go.

100% thought DFS was on the spectrum when he first popped up on my screen. Cue Leonardo_DiCaprio_pointing.gif I related to so, so many of his behaviors.

Trauma/ptsd can often create symptoms similar to autism/adhd/etc due to how it fucks with your brain

Autism/adhd/etc are often co-morbid with ptsd and trauma due to abuse, bullying, increased sensitivities and higher risk taking behaviors that lead to impulsive decision making which then leads to higher rates of death.

Thoughts regarding why I think so:

1. Hyperfixation/special interest being his obsession with fighting only LXY

2. Extremely high masking - as in almost 24/7 except when alone, in front of Wuyan and possibly LLH. He doesn't have any of the perception, motor skills or speech issues some people on the spectrum have. This means he can fine tune his social skills as much as needed. He's incredibly opaque through the entire drama. His behavior is completely different from how others perceive him, how he portrays himself, what information is known about him. There's a solid disconnect between himself and what is revealed to the rest of the world. I strongly suspect he's the type that makes scripts for every social interaction he has with others and behaves based off that.

Masking at that level for so long means it's basically you. Until it's not. It's internalized. It's hard to differentiate between the you that is a mask vs you the unmasked weirdo that wants to sit on the floor all day in your underwear because it's grounding and limits sensory input.

Masking is also exhausting. He runs off to be by himself as soon as he is able. He stays in locations where he can be alone and limit sounds.

3. LLH's behavior with DFS: Yes, it is due to closeness, past history, and also unexplored emotion, but that doesn't explain the bonkers level of accommodation and lack of vitriol toward a man he spends many episodes believing killed his brother. Yes he was emotionally burnt out after 10 years. He could have been playing along to get DFS to work with him (which he didn't need to because he soft-poisoned him with asura grass - the stuff that doesn't have weird side effects like killing a person. Contrast that with wuxin huai JLQ and SGD use)

But that isn't all there is to it - he fully believes DFS wouldn't try to kill him seriously. When arguing or trying to convince him of anything, he doesn't hide the truths he hides from everyone else. He barely exhibits anger toward him beyond that one early "Do you still refuse to admit it?"

Imo he's like this because he knew DFS well enough to know that being angry won't work; he believes DFS thinks differently enough he there may be a disconnect in understanding the source LXY's anger. Considering how happy and clingy DFS was when he first showed up, I don't blame LLH for thinking this way? DFS certainly didn't share any information regarding his suspicions. More on DFS' style of logic later. He communicates with DFS a certain way because he knows:

DFS is very good at spotting lies. This is both autistic or trauma-related behavior in ppl who are very good at masking. He's hyper vigilant to begin with and pair that with him likely being very experienced at picking apart micro expressions, context vibes, logic holes, etc at high speed -- high masking individuals that create personal scripts for their interactions will often do this as a defense, to create a convincing enough set of behavior to 'behave like a person' with the rest of the world.

DFS will so strongly act on decisions based on the information he accepts that it's imperative he has as much of the needed info as possible. This speaks on a lot of experience interacting with DFS. LLH behaves this way because he doesn't want what happens when he doesn't.

4. Sensory issues: Specifically pertaining to sound/noise and food. He complains repeatedly about how noisy FDB and Su Xuayong were. In the women's mansion arc, the signaling beacon was making enough noise that it bothered him so he goes and pulls it out.

Using other preferred sounds: His preferred locations of the waterfalls or the top floor of the Lotus House makes me think of ambient noise machines where people play certain nature sounds to drown out other sounds and relax to. (again, grounding and sensory control)

He was very likely lying about his sense of taste to LXY to avoid rudeness, but there are multiple scenes implying some form of disordered eating. And there is also a scene where he comes in randomly and takes FDB's bowl of rice and walks out without taking anything else. It implies he may actually have certain food preferences even though there are other cases where he eats fine like at the grave robber banquet where he pretended to be someone else. So imo one partial possibility for this, aside from trauma, is autistic eating issues: not being able to eat in certain locations, having preferred tastes or textures, not wanting to combine their foods, eating very little. One common preference is for carbohydrates or processed foods - aka bread or rice. I know someone who's Special Food was chicken. They wouldn't have a problem having it very meal - but as an adult, understood that wasn't something they could always do.

5. Logic that makes perfect sense to him but not necessarily to others:

looking for LLH by flying to and investigating every single mountain peak until he found him (in a savant level display of power and skill)

end goal of wanting to be with LLH and fight him repeatedly forever (special interest, desire for repetition and a routine)

kidnapping QWM for LLH is totally not a bad thing since he wouldn't hurt her and is strong enough he can guarantee her safety

he doesn't communicate with LXY about his suspicions regarding Shan Gudao's death - which most sect leaders would have lead with. He didn't see this information as important to share until a purpose for it popped up later on.

his special interest takes priority over everything else: handing over control of the sect to JQL in favor of the Guyin map, Dongahi battle full of death and destruction and all he thought about was the dual

well, until his priorities change. The entire drama is his single-minded quest to heal LLH -- but it's still linked tightly to his special interest of fighting with LXY.

also "my only rival is LXY, let's fight fight fight fight"= "I only want to fight LXY" but framed in a manner that people of jianghu will immediately understand. But that's not actually what he wants. Here is a prime example of a communication issue where he's created a presentation of this strong fighter - he walks and talks like one perfectly - so LLH and everyone else is of course convinced he wants to be number 1 swordsman. That is the language he's using to present himself. And he wants to know this because, why wouldn't he want to measure himself against a benchmark? However his end goal isn't just to be number one. He wants to be able to fight and win and lose and win and lose against LXY and only LXY.

possible: won't kill women or even engage with them seriously if he deems them too weak, but will still fill his organization's leadership with them and give them huge amounts of power --- this logic doesn't make sense to me, but clearly does to him??

6. He shows love by allowing people in his personal space (LLH, Wuyan, etc) or sharing his hyperfixation (fighting). So him doggedly trying to get LLH to fight him? Well. Also whining to Wuyan every day for years about LXY? He's... sharing his special interest! Wuyan, feel loved! Also, another common form of showing love for autistics are doing things for people -- and dfs' love language is clearly acts of service.

7. One can argue he's a bit on the savant level of skills, but without typical disabilities. Also he's high masking enough that any disability he does have, you wouldn't see it at all. -- ok this might just make him a regular genius, then.

8. DFS' strict adherence to his own code of honor regardless of what anyone around him is doing

9. Need for routine or repetitive behavior - one can argue that martial arts being a special interest of his would actually make a ton of sense because it's about training over and over and over again until it becomes instinct. Daily training for years and years. You never stop. And you do it in quiet spaces away from people or places that can cause sensory issues.

10. Argument for some form of alexithymia: This one is a reach - as there's no evidence of this. But as it's often co-morbid with autism, I think could be an interesting internal reason for his ability to mask. As in, unless it's a very big feeling or a very large event, he may not recognize his own trauma as trauma. His bar for what is 'bad' is somewhere in the basement of hell, and every other traumatic event are just things that happen. He may not actually recognize fear. He chases happy things because at his age, he knows what anger, sadness and happiness are -- because they have easy to parse physical manifestations.

EDIT: I wasn't very clear up top - but I consider severe trauma to be a form of neurodiversity due to the long lasting and sometimes permanent changes it makes in a person's brain (especially when young and the brain is still being formed). So when I say I think it's possible for dfs to be neurodiverse, I'm referring to a range of things. Autism is very difficult to separate from ptsd/trauma for the reasons above, and will often manifest in the exact same ways with overlapping patterns of behavior. Any one of these things or many of these things collectively can exist without someone being neurodiverse.

Anyway this is just off the top of my had. I have this under a cut so I'll add more later as it comes they mind. (I think this gets called moral stubborness? Something like that?)

#you need quite a bit of evidence to create plausible support so this is mostly me going off what I see and vibes #like i said trauma can result in much of this behavior as well and we know how traumatized dfs is #di feisheng as someone on the spectrum #just one possibility #meta #di feisheng #my royal ramblings #mysterious lotus casebook

[legionofpotatoes]

All other criticisms of modern Star Wars aside, the thing that gets me the most is how every single story is being written to fit into some Avengers-level grand finale that just isn't laying a solid enough foundation to make it worth the wait. Regardless of whether the individual stories are good or bad, what makes them fall so short, imo, is that there's usually no real payoff within their own runtimes (unless you count cheap callbacks or loose promises of More, which you shouldn't)

Like, I already knew halfway through Ahsoka that we were in for a cliffhanger and it's just like...alright, guess we'll see how this ends in about 5 years? Even Mando, which had a great first season and was poised to stand on its own two feet and ride off on a rootin' tootin' bounty huntin' adventure, has ultimately become yet another dusty path on the road to the current Big Plot with an indeterminate due date. That's not deliciously addictive media, it's a dry-ass carrot on a spindly little stick, lol

Of course, this is a problem that many franchises are happily getting cozy with lately because everybody wants to have their own Infinity War / Endgame moment, but I guess it seems a bit more egregious with Star Wars because, ironically, it used to work best because it had less overall focus. Like, sure, we had concurrent movies, animated series, and games, but they were always happy to do their own things and tell their own stories with definitive conclusions. Now it all has to funnel into the Big New Plot and, man, I honestly just can't bring myself to care when it feels like an endless waiting game

I definitely need to get around to watching Visions at some point because, every time it pops up, it sounds like the lifeblood that Star Wars sorely needs atm

Yeah the setup-and-payoff a-to-b type dramatic clarity that seemed so entrenched into the very bones of cinematic grammar - up to around the emergence of streaming, wink wink nudge nudge - is sorely missed in star wars atm. sure maybe downsized writers rooms fidgeting with limited series formats instead of doing actual seasonal TV has something to do with it, but even that is probably such a small piece of the larger issue that spins all this longform storytelling bullshit ferry wheel around.

Another part is certainly chasing the MCU business model of it all like you said. Carrot on a stick is verbatim how I've often described these things myself, the endless promise of another promise of another promise instead of forming a complete thought with a beginning and an end. servicing the plot before story at all costs. another part still is reverence towards the aesthetic trappings of the source material instead of its themes, trying to nail the exact texture of tatooine's huts and dial in the perfect balance of lightsaber choreography and pay homage to a thousand iconic shots before articulating something true in the text.

And like it's an endless laundry list, this confluence of capital-I Issues both industry-scale and creatively-driven that seem to be flaying the skin off the bones of whatever star wars even "is" nowadays. no one can answer that in the context of billions of dollars made off toys and storylines centering around this one moment in fictional history about sons and fathers and empires and rebellions. so they just keep twisting in the wind filling in any gaps within that period. I don't know nonnie, it's all so bleak. ahsoka and obi wan and even mando tbh. as charming as season 1 was, it truly felt like it coasted on its incredible restraint to avoid muddying its aesthetic with cameos, and lucked into effective storytelling as a result of that utterly unintentional alchemy. that's obviously well and truly gone now as its true optics have reared head.

what star wars is by itself is such a pointless discussion, right? andor argues it's a perfectly functional heightened universe that can support incredibly nuanced and dramatically charged stories of grassroots rebellion and the bureaucratic strain of fascist regimes. visions argues it's a world beholden to the force, an endlessly mutable and elegant metaphor that can support infinite monomyths and fairy tales. both are equally fantastic at executing on their takes, despite being in diametrically opposite extremes of interpreting the source. so it's not really about that at all, why the other stuff sucks this bad.

they're just bad at the craft of it, that's really it. whether it's auteur worship or business decisions rotting that fish down, it still rots all the same. maybe the new writers' guild contracts can shift the winds a little, because I was so securely done with star wars and then the aforementioned 2 shows came and affected me. so, so profoundly that I'm back on the hook again. like a lil sucker!

#long post #anon #asks #boy howdy forgive me mister baby yoda for I have engaged in star wars discourse again #this will definitely not backfire on me as it never before has.

[dyke-pollinator]

(this ask is a get-out-of-jail-free card to infodump about osrs)

OSRS is by far the best mmo as far as I'm concerned. You can do literally anything in it. It's so simple. Its just a little medieval fantasy point and click RNG simulator. But that simplicity is what makes it so addicting.

You can literally just do whatever the fuck you want on it. The game doesnt hold your hand at all, and while I can see how that would be overwhelming for new folks getting into the game, its an aspect that keeps me coming back.

It's kind of a single player mmo. Like sure there's content to do with other folks, and it can be social at times, but like your account is yours. Everything takes such a long fucking time in that game, especially if you're playing as any type of Ironman account, that the game feels more personal.

Like I don't play nearly as much as some folks that I know and I still have nearly 5000 hours of in game time on a single account and its not even in the late game yet.

Like sure these stats are pretty decent for an iron, but I haven't even started going most of the end game content like Raids, CG, Nightmare, ect.

No only that but I legitimately that the osrs content creators are some of the absolute best gaming content on Youtube. By far. It is insane what some of these people do with the game, all because of how much of a sandbox it is.

Even if you know nothing about osrs or Runescape in general, I would HIGHLY recommend checking our SoupRS on Youtube and watch his Gielinor Games series. All of them. Start with the first season, and watch them all if you like it. Its like a survivor style game with challenges, voting, bannings, and testimonies, all through the lens of osrs.

Settled is one of the funniest motherfuckers on Youtube and has multiple videos about region locked accounts that are still easy to understand for folks who have never played the game.

Jeporite has a NorthernUIM series that leaves me in hysterics every video.

J1mmy is one of those content creators that turns everything he touches into something good. I cannot praise all of his videos enough, including the ones he makes that arent related to osrs. However, his osrs F2P series is one of my favorites.

Hannanie is a trans woman content creator that just makes some of the most off the wall insane videos I've ever seen. Seriously, she made a fucking 21 part series about cutting fucking trees in this game and managed to make every installment a banger. Hannanie is a treasure and everyone should know her content.

Imo the only gaming content on YT that comes even close to osrs is probably Minecraft, but that is mostly because you can do so much modding that the content stays fresh.

Also look at my silly little pets:

I promise you I spooned the shit out of every single one of them.

Rock Golem at 89 mining, Groot at 86 farming, TWO fucking rex pets before 140kc, 42kc thermy.

Plus with the RuneLite client, you can make your in game interaction as customizable as you want. My whole client is fucking Miku themed lmao. The community has made so many amazing plug ins for this game including a full HD client with dynamic lighting effects, increased GPU distance rendering, ect.

OSRS is a great fucking game and you should definitely be playing it. I will take full responsibility for the thousands of hours that you lose to it. I could go on but this post is already a lot longer than I was expecting it to be.

As an aside: Ironman does something to you. Why do I have 117k Light Orbs in my bank? Idfk might need em. 20k gold tiaras? Just in case. 10k snake skin? You never know when something might pop up. Hoard Everything.

#osrs #runescape #old school runescape #osrs youtube #I may be a bit burnt on the game now #but it always pulls me back in eventually #honestly this post may have been what gets me over the burn out #cause now I just wanna play #I #This is what happens when you want an info dump from me #You may need some kind of autism to play this game however

[gunpowder-arti]

On Colors, The Void Sea, And My Gripes With Rubicon

(or: i have decided to make a post detailing one of my pettiest gripes with downpour, because there is nothing stopping me from doing so. enjoy)

so. the void sea. we all know it, we've all seen it. lore, themes, motifs, etc etc. the meaning of it all has been discussed countless times by those more qualified than I, so today, i will take a somewhat different focus.

The Void Sea (and the associated Echoes) have a very distinct color palette of black and gold.

[images taken from the Rain World Wiki]

[images by me]

the pale gold is a stark contrast to the dark, almost blue-black* (*in the Void Sea, the black is actually tinted gold-to-red, but it's so dark you can hardly tell). It fades from almost white to a pale yellow to a golden orange, and then to a dark purplish tone before fading, again, into nothing. or, at the top of the void sea, it stops at golden orange, fading out into a golden brown.

It is bright without being oversaturated--it is distinctive, eye-catching, and very fitting for what it is.

And then Rubicon comes along and throws all of that out the goddamn window.

[images by me]

the red.... doesn't work. it's too bright, too saturated. it doesn't even look bad, necessarily (although i do find--especially in rooms like the last image--that it looks a bit off when combined with a very dark desaturated foreground and the void light effect [i'm not sure what it's actually called]), but it's not... it's not the void palette. it doesn't look like what the void sea should look like. i mean, just look at rubicon's "void fluid":

[image by me]

it's bright piss yellow with bright red-orange undertones--nothing like the pale gold of base-game void fluid. it's too saturated, too reddish. it's not how the void sea is depicted anywhere else.

...dare i say (and this just speculation on my end), rubicon's bright red palette specifically resembles the common pop culture image of christian hell. considering the region's acronym being hr, for 'hell region', i doubt this is pure coincidence.

i don't think i need to say this, but rain world is, crucially, not a christian game. to lean so heavily into popular culture's image of christianity's hell (which, tbf, i have my own issues with, but yk yk) is, if nothing else, perhaps the most boring direction Rubicon could have been taken in.

(tangentially, i also believe rubicon should've felt like more of a fever dream overall, but that is not the point of this post.)

when i see rubicon, i don't think void sea, i think minecraft nether. this is, imo, a poor design choice.

now, i love downpour. i love saint. i even love rubicon, as much as i have my gripes with it. this is not meant to insinuate anything about downpour's devs, etc etc etc. this is all just a discussion of some particular details i would've done differently, were i in charge of designing this region. if you disagree, that's fine! i'm just some guy making long posts about slug game, not like... an expert, or anything.

#no id #rain world #lore pearl #analysis #rubicon #saint #void sea #downpour crit #? i guess

[just-jokes]

Building off of that previous thread, IMO the most interesting interpretation of Mario canon is "all the events depicted are canon, but the games themselves may not be".

By that, I'm talking about the way a lot of the games have an element of diegetic storytelling: Super Mario Bros 3 frames itself as a stage play, Paper Mario frames itself as a storybook, Super Mario 64 has a cameraman following Mario around, The Thousand-Year Door frames itself as a stage play inside a storybook, and so on. I think that the most fun way to interpret this is that those games are depictions of popular media in the Mario universe which are, themselves, dramatized and/or sanitized versions of Mario's actual exploits.

Mario is canonically a major celebrity in his own universe; no matter how far he travels, half of everyone he meets recognize him on sight, and media depicting his adventures are likewise popular in-universe (in Mario Odyssey, you can visit a movie theater showing a screening of the original Super Mario Brothers). Even in the sports games, he's shown to have more sponsorship deals than even the most prolific IRL athletes.

So basically, here's my headcanon: when it comes to games like TTYD, all the major events actually happened. Peach was kidnapped by a crazy cult of astronauts, Mario did travel to Rogueport and all those other locales, he did befriend all those characters, and so on...

However. The real story didn't go exactly as depicted in the game. The epilogue points out that, after the adventure ended, Madame Flurrie and Doopliss went on to star in a stage production based on the adventure, and I submit that after that, someone went on to produce a best-selling illustrated novel (and/or pop-up book) based on the play. All of the "paper" bits were either added for comedic effect, or are cleaning up a messy part of the story to make it more palatable for a wider audience. Consider the black chests: in the game, they're treated as a bit of a joke, "cursing" Mario with the ability to fold himself up into a paper plane, boat, and so on, which allows him to bypass otherwise insurmountable obstacles. But what if the reality was a bit darker? What if, when the "real" Mario found the chests, the curse was a little less "ha-ha funny" and more "body horror-y"? Obviously, that would be a no-go if you want to publish a book for all ages, so it got bowdlerized into what we see now.

#paper mario #discourse #super mario #spoilers #paper mario spoilers #headcanon #paper mario headcanon #mario headcanons #paper mario: the thousand year door

[celticcrossanon]

Hello Celta,

You and Mad World Tarot are the only two tarot readers that describe and pick up on Haz brattish energy. She did a reading on January 24th, that looked at the political fallout from the Jamaica pop up visit. Right away she picked up Haz energy, RX KOW, the ruckus fire starter. It was the last stand, the BRF and Haz, 9 of Wands. Granny PROMISED me I’ll be King of the Commonwealth. As an aside, is this why Charles asked his mom specifically if she can declare him head of the commonwealth?

Anyway in answer to the question, Will Haz face any consequences, he emerges as the Prince of Wands, facing away from the situation and leaving the tarot spread. So he faces some loss, and is reduced in rank since he enters as the RX King of Wands and leaves as the Prince of Wands.

I think the Foreign Office and the British government are spitting bullets, particularly Rishi Sunak. They cannot be happy with this. When William was sounding the alarm during and after the Caribbean tour, the other BRF family members were mocking of him. Now they know the malicious Sussex squad is a reality, and were behind those attacks. I honestly hope the government does take action, even if Charles doesn’t. And what a time to do this, when the king and the POW are out of commission on medical leave.

Hi Anonymous Retired,

I think that Jamacia stunt has quite a few political implications. I hope the government does take some sort of action on it. As to what they do, I will leave that up to them.

I think the timing was deliberate. I think it was a clumsy PR attempt to show how loved the Harkles are by the Commonwealth Realms and therefore they should immediately be back in the BRF, especially in the current time of need. Too 'pushy' for me, and manifestly untrue, as if the Harkles were that loved and that important they wouldn't be in the 6th row in the movie theatre. The photo with the Prime Minister is another case of PR spin, I think, although it has been somewhat effective imo.

The Head of the Commonwealth of Nations is a symbolic position that is voted on by all the Commonwealth Nations. It is not something like a patronage that King Charles can hand over to Harry.

"Head of the Commonwealth

His Majesty King Charles III is Head of the Commonwealth.

The role:

is an important symbolic one

has no maximum fixed term

is not hereditary, and future Heads will be chosen by Commonwealth leaders."

from https://thecommonwealth.org/about-us

As for 'King of the Commonwealth', no such position exists or will ever exist. The King of the UK is the Head of State of the Commonwealth Realms, but that position goes with being the monarch of the UK. It is not something that The King can peel off and give to whoever he likes. That is like saying that The King could make Harry the Defender of the Faith or any other position that is tied to being the monarch of the UK.

If the other members of the BRF are just now waking up to the Harkle malice and their use of their extreme fans to manipulate the media, then all I can say is that it has taken them a while. I was appalled by the lack of support from the BRF for Prince William and Princess Catherine during their Caribbean Tour, and I hope it comes back to bite them hard in the future.

[thedreadvampy]

btw about Neil Gaiman I periodically agree with the 'Neil Gaiman is annoying' stuff bc I feel like both he and Amanda Palmer seem like people who I would go insane stuck in a room with bc we have very different ideas about art and suchlike. and I also do think that the career trajectory he's on lately is cynically redoing his greatest hits and pretending that was the dream all along when it clearly was not. which is at best meh.

having said which

as far as I can tell by far the most common complaint about Neil Gaiman is "Snow, Glass, Apples is problematic/gross/it's got incest and rape and frames the child as the aggressor"

which strikes me as a weird complaint to pull out of a 40 year body of work tbh when that short story is pretty clearly coming from a place of 'how far can I push this'. like you don't have to like the story. I don't really like the story. but it is. a horror story.

like and this is the thing with particularly 90s alt horror right? a lot of the interest is in transgression and sitting in the worst possible perspective and seeing what happens if you pull those strings. like I really like Clive Barker for example but there's a good chunk of his short stories that I'm like I'm not picking up what you're putting down Clive this seems Kinda Off. but that willingness to write some trite or Bad Message horror fiction that doesn't land is imo a side effect of being willing to try writing uncomfortable and unpleasant fiction at all. which is what horror is for, among other things, it's for creating discomfort as a form of catharsis or engagement.

like I am not a huge fan of the type of sex-horror that pops up in a lot of Gaiman's work and other contemporary horror writers - to me I don't find it upsetting or horny it just ends up feeling kind of edgy and tryhard - but I'm also a bit like. it does seem like a lot of people's beef with Neil Gaiman is that In The 90s He Was A Horror Writer

and this approach to Problematic Horror in Snow, Glass, Apples I find kind of microcosmic of how The Discourse often approaches art in this kind of 1:1 way. if you write a story which seems to line up with rape apologia it can only be because you agree with it. if you write a story about transphobia you're a transphobe. if you write a story that makes me genuinely uncomfortable you're attacking me.

but artwork, especially art like horror that's not necessarily trying to provoke enjoyment as its main response, is necessarily hit and miss. and if what you're shooting for is discomfort then whether it works, falls flat or goes too far incredibly depends on your audience. and making good art - as in art that makes its audience think, art that opens the audience up to discomfort and catharsis and sticks with them and changes them - requires the space to experiment and tbh the space to fuck up. like they aren't all going to be winners and they certainly aren't all going to work for you as a singular audience.

personally I don't see the appeal of Snow, Glass, Apples, less cause it's nasty and more cause it's hack. ooh an edgy monstrous version of a fairy tale where there's lots of rape and cannibalism? you're soooo original Neil. but like. that's fine. I don't really vibe with like 70% of Neil Gaiman stuff I've read but I still like Neil Gaiman because the stuff that works for me really works for me.

idk I think there's a lot of folk on this website who shouldn't interact with horror cause they clearly aren't interested in being horrified. that's not everyone who dislikes Snow, Glass, Apples, but it's a real undercurrent to a lot of the criticism and tbh this kinda vibe is shit for art. making standout art What Is Good also requires being ready to make art which stands out for the wrong reasons. sometimes they'll be the same art to different people.

#red said #not to Cancel Culture this but isabelle fall springs to mind in a lot of how folks talk about stuff like this #like she wrote a transgressive piece exploring her own negative feelings about transness and her anger around a transphobic trope #and she made something which i found really resonant and interesting #and she got torn apart for it because it Might From Some Angles Agree With Transphobia #and I'm not making a direct comparison. because i think attack helicopter is a really GOOD story and i think SGA is gratuitous and hack #but that's the thing right? transgression and discomfort and speaking about unpleasant things in an openended way are KEY #to making art that engages directly with your own pains and angers and discomforts #and that's hard to mediate tbh. but it's also very necessary. #i think as well thinking about Gaiman this is also a thought I've often had about Amanda Palmer #who over the years has written a lot of songs about things i find genuinely uncomfortable or offensive. #and i can engage with 'it's fucked up to tell your ex they transed their gender At You' or 'your partner's suicide is not about you' bc yeah #but #you can't celebrate someone for making confessional music then get mad because you don't like everything they confess #if you only take about your socially acceptable thoughts it's not really confessional is it? #if you only talk about discomforting things that people are comfortable hearing about its not really discomforting #and you can only really discern what's Good Transgressive and what's Damaging Transgressive through doing i think #so if you want challenging art you are going to have to get some art which challenges you and you go hmm no i still disagree #is what i think #so yeah you can hate the artwork but when an artist is specifically setting out to make challenging art it's weird to hate them #for making 50 pieces of art you like and 1 you hate

[timberwind]

The pop-sci takeaway from the Apollo program is always "if we'd only kept building more Saturn Vs we'd be on Mars by now!", which is of course very tempting to believe - it's an iconic rocket, undeniably very cool. Unfortunately the truth is, imo, more along the lines of Saturn V being a historic mistake from the start; the post-Apollo stagnation was assured more or less the moment we agreed on taking the fastest route - a big booster lofting the whole mission at once.

So it's like, launch cost is almost entirely dominated by the fixed cost of infrastructure - this is why Shuttle became such a white elephant by the way, the original hopeful cost figures were predicated on a twenty-to-fifty a year flight rate. We achieved, at best, nine (and then more or less immediately after the Challenger happened, but this is a whole other tangent). Saturn V had two real payloads - the Apollo missions, and Skylab. In the absence of sustained 1969 mission cadence and all the enormous funding commitments that entailed, the huge fixed infrastructure of Saturn V would have rusted on the Cape Canaveral coast most of the year waiting for a single mission, even if they hadn't closed the production lines before the first piloted Apollo mission even launched.

How could this have been different? Plausibly we could have gone with an EOR (Earth Orbit Rendezvous) or even split LOR (Lunar Orbit Rendezvous) plan, much like the original plans proposed by Von Braun at the pre-NASA Army Balistic Missile Agency - flotillas of smaller Saturn 1B (~20t to LEO) or Saturn C3 (~50t to LEO) launches carrying the crew module, the Trans-Lunar-Injection stage, the lunar lander, and propellant for all of the above to staging points in Low Earth Orbit, where they'd be put together like god's own lego set and sent on their way. This, notably, would have allowed two things - one is amortization of the launch infrastructure over more flights, which also allows for learning-curve cost reduction as tooling gets better at handling successive launchers. The other is amortization of the enormous fixed cost of a space launch complex and it's concomitant "standing army" of technicians and their support staff over a great many launches. Notably, unlike the massively oversize Saturn V, those launchers would also have had the ability to cost-effectively launch other payloads during 'off season' - commsats, military birds, weather satellites, space probes, whatever - more cost effectively, driving down the effective cost of a single launch yet further.

This would all be water under the bridge, of course, if it hadn't convinced everyone since that we simply can't do missions to the Moon without a hundred tons of throw weight to LEO - after all, that's what the sole example looked like! One study carried out by the 2000s Augustine Commission (a government advisory group founded in the wake of the Ares Program's failure to produce a big new rocket), found that even then we could have achieved lunar missions with only slightly upgraded versions of the existing EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) fleet and some orbital aggregation. This was unfortunately discarded in favor of yet another big rocket though. I guess that's just the way things go, but it is unfortunate imo!

#text tag #I have similar thoughts on Shuttle I suppose but with very different takeaways

[classpect-navelgazing]

do you have an analysis where you talk about why you disagree with what canon has to say about classpects anywhere? i looked but tumble isn’t exactly the greatest at searching for stuff. i’m just curious to know what the issues are with what was said in canon

Sure. Though I don't know if I'd say I "disagree with canon" so much as I think the more someone tries to give us a straight up, clean answer on it, they're probably an unreliable source. My source is canon, but more holistically.

For me I think this started two places. First: I just..... don't really buy the idea of Pages being the Slow Burn class. I never bought it, honestly? As soon as I figured out how Jake English manages people and their expectations of him to get what he wants, it threw into question the whole concept of the class. Because Jake is the second most emotionally intelligent character in HS after Karkat, but he uses it for himself rather selfishly instead of for a greater cause. When Jake subtly or subconsciously tries to bend the story to his will, he's remarkably effective.

So, of course, I looked at Tavros. What does Tavros Nitram want? Well, he wants to have fun, to progress at his own pace, and to kind of do his own thing. I found it very interesting how the people around him sort of bent to what he wanted. No one stopped Tavros from dreaming on Prospit. He didn't do anything to get those mechanical legs, which he textually wanted, other folks took care of that for him. No one really stopped Tavros from playing the game (both FLARP and SGRUB) the way he wanted to. Aradia enables his allegedly bad class choice, Karkat orders Vriska to save his life, and when Vriska wants to force Tavros to play her way, Kanaya interferes. It's all very cohesive to me in a way that I genuinely do not know if the creator intended, but the pattern is absolutely there.

So, whoop, Pages Are A Slow Burn gets tossed into the garbage where it belongs.

The other one that really made me go "huh" is Calliope's Active/Passive thing. From the moment I read it the first time, I was like "i'm........ not sure that's a thing" and on every subsequent reread and relisten, I became even more certain she's just theorycrafting and its not borne out in the actual text. Which, frankly, fits into Calliope's whole thing of being a proxy for fans, particularly their speculation. She outright says to Dirk she gets carried away with her theorizing.

Like... for me its the Prince thing. I flat out don't think Princes are "The Most Active Class," at all, full stop. The idea is kind of silly to me. Eridan wasn't fucking Super Active, he just became extremely potent when he finally went off. And Dirk, similarly, is the king of Hurry Up And Wait. When shit pops off, he acts with incredible effectiveness, but the rest of the time he's zoning the fuck out, white lying about how cool he is, and fishing.

Same with Seers on the opposite end. Am I meant to take seriously the idea that Rose Lalonde and Terezi fucking Pyrope are the most passive class, nah. No sell. I literally and actually think I could make a better argument that Witches are more passive than Seers.

And then I just... don't agree with Calliope's verbiage of the classes. Dirk was not a destroyer of heart/soul, his most dramatic and effective moments in the story are harnessing his aspect, and in the conversation where Calliope tells Roxy her verbiage, even she says its a little esoteric and hard to grasp.

Calliope's trying to apply very firm wording and delineation to something that Terezi much earlier calls a "hyperflexible mythology." That reading of classpect frankly bears out a lot more, imo.

Which just led me to the conclusion that: all the stuff Calliope says, its her opinion. What I am interested in is action. What do these people do, what do they think of their aspect, how does it manifest.

My conclusion was basically: fuck passive/active, this is all about your role in the narrative. Which, in my opinion, fits very well into the two ways HS is structured: as a video game (the vernacular, the commands, the literalization of abstractions like inventory and leveling up), and as a stage play (the acts, the curtains, the intermissions).

#chromaticroses #ask arc #hs meta #homestuck

[deliciousdefendorinternet]

what are some episode ideas your hoping to see in the next tv show? assuming we do get one.

a few of mine would be.

an episode where JD and Bruce are shown still Butting heads with each other loads in present day annoying the other Bros a lot. and maybe during a Hike out in the woods or something something happens which results in JD and Bruce getting cut off from the others and being lost. leaving them stuck together in the middle of nowhere bickering over the right ways to do things with JD using all his survival skills he picked up but Bruce at first stubbornly refusing to go along with what he says given he doesn't want to admit that following JDs lead might for once be the most logical thing to do in a situation. anyway the episode could lead to them opening up to each other a bit more about their lives after the breakup. Bruce could tell JD about the effect he had on his self confidence and how difficult it actually was for him to learn to relax and not stress over every little thing he did after having him micro manage him for years. and JD could tell him more about his time he spent away from society in the 20+ years basically having no one but Rhonda for company maybe in part because he was too afraid of getting close with people and then ruining things with them like he did with their family. it'd just be good to have a little episode focused on their Rocky dynamic imo.

an episode where Branch is ill and his Brothers try to take care of him. a few other people have had this idea and someone even did a cute fanfic involving Both Kismet and Bro zone fighting over the best way to take care of Branch. but yeah I think the idea simply involving Bro zone coming around one day to find Branch so ill he hasn't left his Bunker and while he acts like its no big deal his Brothers insist on staying with him to look after him. somewhat confusing Branch but he agrees to it since he's too tired to argue with them and over the course of the episode they all lightly bicker and disagree on the right way to take care of him. while also annoying Branch with how much they mess around in his Bunker maybe not putting things back in their right places. I like to imagine this all culminates in Branch getting annoyed with them all and questioning them on what their even doing there and why they're all being so weird. kinda surprising the Brothers as they say looking after someone in the family when their sick is just normal to them. and I like the sad angsty idea of Branch not realising this and being confused by his Brothers behaviour throughout the episode since he's always just dealt with this stuff on his own in the past. kinda making his Brothers a little somber when they Realise this like they knew he'd always been independent but not to this extreme extent that he literally didn't have help even when he needed it.

this isn't really so much an entire episode idea as it just a single plot point I could imagine happening early on. that being at the start of the show Bruce is obviously only just staying in Pop Village for a short night or Two given he has to get back to Vacay. but as a plot point and an easy way to keep all the Brothers in one place for the first season I'd have something happen towards the end of the episode that makes Bruce change his mind and decide to stay in pop village a bit longer after talking it through with Brandi and making sure she'd be fine to cover while he's away. maybe something happens that makes him see things are still pretty complicated between all the brothers and he decides he should stick around a little longer until their in a more stable place.

an episode where same as the popular fan idea Floyd is shown to be claustrophobic and panics after coming out of a small space still having issues from his captivity tho he tries to hide it from other people. but it could be a nice chance for Branch to recognise what's going on with his Brother and try to talk to him about it. tho maybe after some poking and prodding Floyd ends up saying something along the lines of him suddenly having flashbacks or something. feeling like he's right back in that moment feeling helpless and like there's nothing he can do in the face of these towering giants tho Floyd thinks Branch might not understand. and this could be when he tells him exactly how their Grandma died and how helpless he felt witnessing the whole thing as a kid and how he still sometimes is reminded of that day just by ordinary everyday little things. it'd be a kinda cute bonding moment I think.

I've said before I can easily imagine an episode just focusing on Bruce and Branch as well given their vastly opposing personalities. since Bruce tries to be laid back and carefree and of course Branch is so high strung and particular especially tv show Branch. plus Bruce is probably the most Traditionally "" Normal "" out of the Brothers so I could imagine him having problems with crazier Tv Show Branch. like imagine him going over to Vacay to spend more time with Bruce and his kids only for Bruce to be weirded out to see Branch playing a game with the kids involving them having to run around lots tiring themselves out. all so Branch can at the end collect their sweat in his Jars to restock his supply in his Bunker. and when Bruce questions him on what the hell he's doing he says that his kids larger size means their sweat fills up his stocks much much quicker and easier. making it more efficient to use their sweat than his own 😂😂😂😂 and tv show Branch just continues to do stuff like this unnerving and annoying Bruce more and more to the point he eventually asks him to leave using the excuse that he's making their customers uncomfortable. and I like to think later on when talking to Brandi she'd kinda chew him out a little over it pointing out they were seen as weird at first simply for being together. I'm not really sure exactly how this episode would end but I like to think Bruce would see that he kinda just wanted Branch to fit a certain more normal idea he had of his brother. making him realise he's somewhat acting like JD used to. anyway those were a few general ideas I had for episodes I'd like to see if we do get a third show what about you what sorta episode stories would you like to see?

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