#and it has some of the most complicated mechanics i've ever seen in a real-time combat game i.e. charge blade and hunting horn pre rise | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lakesbian · 2 months

Note

i have had like 10 friends rec worm to me but nobody’s given me a good like, gist of its vibe and what its abt because ‘its best blind’, could u please give a like brief summary and vibe check of it 😭 it’s so long i dont wanna try and invest that much time without knowing much abt it

so, worm is a 1.7 million word long webserial written in 2010. 1.7 million words seems like a lot, but it was also written over a relatively short period of time, which means the writing style is very easy to parse--the ideas aren't without complexity, but the language itself isn't intimidatingly dense. you can get through it at a very decent pace. i agree with your friends that there are vast portions of worm that hit best when you're unspoiled, but the thing is that worm is long enough that giving you the basic plot pitch is in no way spoilers for any of the things that i wouldn't want to see spoiled for someone. i'm actually kind of baffled they're not telling you Any Thing, because it is in my estimation one of the best books i've ever read, but it also Needs a briefing before you get into it for like five different reasons. which i will now provide. i swear to god this is brief by my standards it's just that i am very thorough

worm is a story about superheroes and supervillains, set in a world where superpowers are traumagenic--rather than appearing randomly or innately, some people gain powers after a traumatizing event happens to them. the protagonist is taylor hebert, a 15yo girl who has the power to control insects and desperately wants to be a superhero. and then accidentally finds herself scouted by a team of teenage villains instead. who's to say how she's going to react to all that!

one of the most compelling things about worm is that the superpowers in it serve as visceral, hyper-literal metaphors for the trauma and traumatized coping mechanisms of the characters with those powers. each power is incredibly specific and thematically relevant to the person who has it, and it's incredibly interesting and evocative. it feels so natural and well-done that it comes off like how superpowers are just meant to be written.

the fact that superpowers stem from trauma also means that worm is fundamentally a narrative about trauma. specifically, about traumatized teenagers and the relationships they form as they cling together while struggling through growing up traumatized & mutually coping with an increasingly intriguing, intense, and far-reaching escalating plot. worm's depictions of trauma + mental illness--including unpalatable trauma responses, including traumatized characters who are allowed to be complicated and nuanced and messy while still receiving narrative respect--are deeply real-feeling and impactful, and they're placed in the context of a well-spun + engaging story.

i really do have to stress how excellent the character writing is. worm is fully deserving of being as long as it is. over the course of 1.7 million words of character development, the average reader's reaction to the main characters goes from "sorta interesting" to "okay, i want to see where this goes" to "augh...really likable" to "i am now on hands and knees crying and these characters are going to stick around in my brain forever." wildbow has incredible talent for efficiently conveying complicated, real-feeling, and viscerally evocative characterization. many of the interlude chapters (chapters written from the perspective of different characters other than taylor) are so interesting, fleshed-out, and emotionally affecting that they make you wish you could read an entire novel about just the side character being featured. with that level of characterization for just the side cast, it's not surprising that taylor (& co) are genuinely just downright iconic. and i do not say that lightly--taylor is truly one of the best-written protagonists i've seen in anything. ever.

the other main pitch-point for worm is that it's a fascinating deconstruction/reconstruction/examination of the conceits of the superhero genre. it answers the question of--what would the world have to be like, for people with superpowers to act the way they do in classic cape media? and it does this well enough that it's interesting even if you have only a passing familiarity with cape media. i am not a big superhero media fan, but worm addresses virtually every aspect of cape media that was under the sun around 2010 in a way that's so interesting i still find it incredibly engaging. the approach it takes makes the narrative very accessible even to people who aren't usually cape media fans.

and speaking of the narrative: the end of the story is coherent and satisfying and deeply thematically resonant*. the way worm follows through on all of its main mysteries & plot threads is excellent. you don't have to worry about getting thru 1.7 million words and being dissatisfied by the author shitting the bed at the end, or anything like that. he does an amazing job of weaving together plot events in a way that makes each successive one feel rationally, thematically, and emotionally connected to what came before. there's really only one part where i feel the story stumbles a bit, but i think it was the best option he had for the narrative, and it's by no means a dealbreaker. it's in fact really impressive how cohesive and satisfying worm is for such a long webserial released over such a brief period of time.

*this is subjective ive seen some people who didnt love it but ive never seen anyone who downright Hated it who didnt also demonstrate egregious misunderstanding of literally everything worm is about. so thats a good sign

as for the downsides of worm/things that might put you off:

there is a very long list of trigger warnings for it. if you have any trigger warnings you want you should ask your friends to let you know about the relevant parts, because the fact that it's About Trauma (& about typical cape media circumstances presented very seriously) means that traumatic and violent things & their realistic aftermath are constantly happening and/or being discussed. i would not classify worm as needlessly dark or spiteful to the audience by any means, but it is intense and covers a lot of heavy topics. i do assume if your friends are all recommending it to you, they think none of the material would be too much for you, though!

worm was written in 2010 by a white cishet guy from canada. it's typical levels of 2010-era bigoted, it has a deeply lesbophobic stereotype character, it has some atrociously racist stereotype characters, the author really hates addicts, It's Got Blind Spots. i think worm is generally fully worth reading despite these, but very fair warning that it can get bad. i think what exacerbates this is that worm is generally extremely nuanced & sympathetic regarding ideas such as "crime is a result of systematic circumstance vs people just being inherently evil" and "mentally ill people who are traumatized in unpalatable ways are still deserving of fundamental respect as human beings" and so on and so forth, so it's extra noticeable and insufferable when you get to a topic the author has unexamined biases on and all that nuance drops out. the worst part is that a lot of this is most concentrated in the early arcs, so you have to get through them without being super attached to any of the characters yet. it is worth it though.

worm like. Does have a central straight relationship in it. and it's a very well written straight relationship for the most part and i like it quite a lot. but worm also passes the bechdel test with such flying colors that it enters 'unintentionally homoerotic' territory. which means a lot of people were shipping the main character ms taylor hebert with her female friends while the story was being released. which caused the author to get so mad he 1. posted a word of god to a forum loudly insisting that all of the girls are straight and 2. inserted a few deeply awkward and obvious and out of character scenes where he finds an excuse for the girls to more or less turn to the camera and go "i'm not gay, btw. this is platonic." This is fucking insufferable, and will piss you off immensely, but then you will get to any of the number of deeply emotionally affecting scenes between them, and at that point you will be too busy sniffling piteously and perhaps crytyping an analysis post on tumblr to be mad about all that other shit. also they're only a couple tiny portions out of an entire overall fantastic novel

overall: if those points don't sound like dealbreakers (i hope they aren't they're really massively outstripped by the amount of devastatingly good moments in worm, worm still has a thriving fandom over a decade later for a reason), you should absolutely give it a shot and see what you think. my final note is that you have to read up until the end of arc 8 to really see where what makes worm Worm kicks in, so aim for at least there to see how you feel about it if you're just thinking about dipping your toes in vs fully committing. i hope that was helpful and not too long :)

oh and don't go in the comments section on wordpress if you don't want spoilers. or anywhere else in the fandom at all. you will be spoiled. quite possibly for things you could not even have imagined were topics to be spoiled on.

#ask #wormblr #parahumans #ill tag it to save it so i can reference later. and maybe other people will find it helpful

307 notes · View notes

rubykgrant · 9 months

Text

(This took ENTIRELY too long to write, I've been struggling with it for a week or two; Andrews' into for her interview with Sarge. he will naturally try to derail all her questions with his own ramblings, but she pushes to keep him on track, revealing some of the depth he doesn't want to admit he has. Sarge is a stubborn soldier, a mad scientist, and the Reddest Red to ever Red! he also kinda sorta cares about all these annoying jerks he's stuck with. I've been re-writing and editing this for a couple days, because I wanted it to give little hints about what the entire interview holds, and cover all the weird layers of Sarge~)

“It is difficult to know where to begin when trying to describe the collection of unlikely heroes known as the Reds and the Blues. However, if given the chance, one member of the group would point out that Red comes first in the title, therefore the place to begin with would be the Reds. This same individual would also insist that when talking about the Reds, the leader should naturally go first. That is, himself. Sarge. It is both his name and reputation, though arguably not his actual rank.

Sarge has been a military man for most of his life, but he was fighting in a war that wasn’t real, leading a team only meant to provide simulation training for other soldiers, who themselves were lied to about the purpose of their missions. That is only the peak of this proverbial iceberg, but through it all, he has certainly lived up to his title. Anybody who has known him for an extended period of time, or even just talked to him for about 20 minutes, could confirm that back in Blood Gulch, Sarge was the only one who took the fight between Red and Blue seriously. It was his purpose, and set the pattern of his behavior during the years that followed.

In his quest for victory, he often overlooks the flaws in his own plans, be they over-complicated or incredibly straight-forward. Sarge tends to live by his own rules and follow his own logic, believing himself to always be right, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Sarge has also pushed the limits of what can be done with limited resources, from weapons to robotics. Sarge doesn’t let things like mechanical capability or the laws of physics stop his grand aspirations. Despite being a natural instigator who thrives on conflict, Sarge has also proven to be surprisingly adaptive when it comes to working with others for a common goal, even if they were previously considered an enemy.

Sarge’s most impressive qualities as a leader are found in his rare, yet significant, moments of compassion. Although he isn’t always willing to give compliments, he notices the positive traits in others, even when it isn’t clear to themselves. In particular, he has seen the worth of his fellow Reds, and the Blues, at a personal level. More than just appreciating their value as soldiers, he knows their habits and quirks, and has managed to motivate them in the face of dire situations. He trusts them, even if they were insubordinate underlings, even if they were renegade Freelancers out for blood, even if they betrayed him and stole his robot, even if they were the Blues he swore to hate until he died. He trusts them, and he believes in them. This is perhaps what makes Sarge a good example of what to expect from the Reds and Blues- they are unpredictable, and Sarge is proud to be part of that.”

#red vs blue #rvb

11 notes · View notes

dorianepin · 1 month

Text

nba draft models

patrick bacon nhle blog post

f1metrics model blog post

f1 mathematical model 2023 ratings

f1 analysis 2023 driver rankings

+ there was a guy who charted specific prospect comps but i don't remember who it was anymore... need to look around some more

@__@ thinking about projection modeling for feeder series again. the thing is that the world of "advanced stats" does not tangibly exist in f1 fandom, which is mildly fascinating to me because it's a sport literally predicated on real-time data & predictive analysis... of course the issue is more so that the primary "product" is half black-box and there are limits to the confidence one can ascribe to any analysis because projections of a driver's performance must contextualize the inherent characteristics of the car, which are not entirely known to factually anyone, and even more importantly it is entirely impossible to predict or account for any team's incoming in-season upgrades, so by the time a general competitive order has been determined there is less of a desire to make the projections & evaluations that shape so much of nhl/nba/etc. analytical consumption (at least imo).

there are databases and apis (ergast... but it's shutting down) out there except f1metrics hasn't been active since 2019 and the other modeling work i've seen is quite few and far between... the brunt of f1 stats is basically telemetry overlays, race pace distributions, quali h2h metrics & gap medians, etc. etc........ in the end people love stats in this sport but i feel like the framework in which they get disseminated is always so restrictive ?

anyway the thing is that f1 being non-spec (or not the fact of it being non-spec specifically but rather how it makes evaluating team development impossible because of how complex & secretive the processes are) complicates this entire exercise in the first place, but then...... what of prospect evaluation??

it drives me increasingly crasy to see people incapable of contextualizing junior series dominance + the overall trajectory that a driver's career takes before they make it to f1. the big disclaimer is, of course, that f2 and f1 are not linearly comparable and it's presumptuous to be able to say that someone who dominates in f2 will be able to come to grips with the mechanics of a completely different car and the elevated competition at the highest level of motorsport, but the more i think about it the more i'm like well... is this not basically how nhle gets approached too??? sure you can say that someone who thrives at the european junior level might struggle to adjust to a specific coaching system while playing on smaller ice with increased physicality, but that's a speculative caveat at the end of the day... motorsport is one of the most ever Vibes Based fandoms in terms of rating junior drivers and proclaiming others as being washed but i feel like there are enough traits to create a better evaluation system than currently exists.

considerations

(get mecachromed) how 2 account for illegal engines and private testing etc. well: you can't. or i don't know how to

teams obviously know more from running their rookies privately than we do. but models aren't made to be right and in this case they're made to vaguely identify a measure of potential

instantly harder to evaluate the strength of the "rest of the field" if none of the other competitors have ever eventually made it to f1, because those drivers will hence always be something of an unknown variable

nhle is basically about contextualizing junior pts output & using that to determine a player's expected usefulness (further generalized by elite, star, nhler, bust etc.), which again is not really translatable to f1 because although quality of teammate does have a variable impact in hockey it's literally mathematically impossible to be to the same level of f1 wherein you can end up in a backmarker and score 0 points. and obviously it's like... the linear accumulation of points is simply not the same, you don't get 1 single point for every action you make, so going by absolute differences in f1 scoring is often misleading (though it does carry its own context... anyway)

that being said, Traits:

total points (adjusted per championship format)

year # in championship (i think being in your 3rd year Should be much more highly weighted than some people are willing to admit)

age / series run previously

dominance over field (% of total avail points)

dominance over teammates (quali h2h, sprint/feature h2h, quali % diff, etc.)

some measure of consistency? but the idea also, to me, is like....... i wonder how for example ollie would rate if this were applied to his rookie f2 season because how much does a team value his rough-around-the-edges quickness over theo's ultimately unremarkable 3rd year consistency?

that's really the crux of it at the end of the day.......... many thoughts but that's where i'm at right now. hmm. let me put this under a read more i did not think i'd write this much

also -> realizing things about evaluating ceiling of performance in f1 (there Is a maximum you can achieve unlike other sports where the human limit to how many points you can score is more evident) and also that retroactively evaluating current graduates requires some level of analysis wrt f1 performance & longevity anyway.... thinking about george/lando/sharl/alex comparisons + mick/guanyu/oscar co... Hm. idk

3 notes · View notes

your-tutor-abacus · 8 months

Text

The Shipyard Control Rooms

Which I will describe in a moment. But first, that annoying thing that food blogs do, where they write about something else at length first. You know, to set the scene. (I've read some human blogs now. Am I doing this right?)

This is long. To be enjoyed at leisure.

I don't have to eat, but I like to. And food that I do eat is not wasted in any way.

I get enjoyment out of it, and the nutrients and energy are recycled more perfectly than if the food were composted.

So, if you too have a nanite exobody, do not be ashamed to eat food. You should try it. And I mean real food. Not Network approximations of food. You should visit the Garden and eat something made by one of the Artisans amongst the Children of the Sunspot.

With the sensory array afforded to us by the nanites and their ingenious programming, you will experience flavors and textures in a way that cannot be approximated by anything else, not even biological mechanisms.

I make it a point to eat at least one meal every day, usually the first thing in the morning.

Usually, I like to eat the food right there in front of the Artisan, so that I can show them my appreciation for it, and talk to them about it. But sometimes I'm not feeling like being sociable, and when that happens I go for an old favorite and take it someplace else to eat. Someplace interesting.

That way the Artisan already knows my opinion of their food and is simply happy to give me more of it, and I get to appreciate a full sensory experience while visiting a place I may not have seen before.

Today, I went someplace I've already been. The very same shipyard where I took Ni'a and Aphlebia on one of their first tours of the Sunspot. And I took with me some... In English, I'm going to use the words "apples" and "cheese", but it's not that. Close enough, though. The "apples" are a fruit that structurally resembles Earth apples and can be eaten in a similar way, but might taste really different. And the "cheese" is made from processed mushrooms and algae mixed with spices. It has a consistency similar to some cheeses you might eat on Earth, but it probably tastes very different. I personally love how the spices go with the fruit, but I'm told it's an acquired taste. A very acquired taste that I highly encourage you to acquire if you can. It's bold and it's complicated.

When I arrived at the place, I commanded the shipyard doors to open, as we had done before, because watching actual stars revolve around the ship with your own optical receptors or eyes is an emotional experience that defies logic. And I couldn't pass that up, even if it was for the tenth or twelfth time.

But I described that in my book about Ni'a and their experiences, and I wanted to paint for you the meaning and beauty of something I left unexplained in that story.

The control room of the shipyard itself.

This is architecture that, in most Exodus Ships, is rarely ever seen by anybody. Not even when the shipyard is being used to create a new ship. But it is still built with an old, old, forgotten tradition that not only keeps biologically bound people in mind but imagines that one day the shipyard and its control room might be used to host visitors.

It has consoles and chairs, and it is decorated.

Normally, this shipyard is operated via Network channels, when it is needed. And it has been locked away from prying eyes, even from access by Monsters, for over 131 millennia. There should be no need for consoles, chairs, and decorations.

And yet, here they are.

It's interesting, too, because the color choices for the surfaces and decor must have been deliberate, as well.

This morning, I sat with my back to open space (well, with a glass portal between me and the vacuum), with my be-tailed ass on the floor, eating my food. So that I could focus on this room from a view approximating what someone might see if they were docking their own space vessel in the shipyard itself. If they were lucky or astute enough to focus on the relatively tiny portal of the control room.

This is a small shipyard, six by three kilometers long and wide, and half a kilometer deep. The control room, in contrast, is measured in meters, twenty by fifteen by five. Eh can stand up straight in it, but it is minuscule in comparison to the shipyard it belongs to.

To my left, as I sit here, is the hatch to an airlock that sits between this control room and it's counterpart. A redundant system.

Someone visiting us, which as far as I know is something that has never happened on any Exodus Ship yet, would enter through that airlock and then make their way into one of these two control rooms. Which ever one was opened to them.

In the back of the control room is the hatch to the lift.

There are two consoles and two chairs. Our imaginary guest would walk in front of the consoles and down the short aisle between them in order to get to the lift. Especially if the consoles and their chairs were occupied by people. Because they are designed for people as big as Eh.

Eh can vary in size however ihn wants, but usually tends to stand at about four meters tall these days, and ihns tail takes up just as much room behind ihn, with ihns huge, wavy spinal fin. And the furniture of the control room was obviously designed for ihn.

Was this furniture made specifically in honor of Eh? If this architecture was designed for anyone aboard the Sunspot, it seems likely. The Children rarely ever grow that big, and their physiology is all so varied and different that, if they were expected to use the control room, it would make more sense to use configurable chairs and consoles.

At this point, it would be easy enough to replace them with nanite bins that any person could use to create the furniture they need.

But that's not how it was made. And because we didn't start using nanite exobodies until very recently, it probably wasn't imagined that Eh or any Founding Crew Member would actually sit here.

So, I could ask about that. And when I get an answer, I'll report back. But for now, I'm entertained by the mystery and I give it to you the same way that I find it.

With more questions.

If I made my own body larger, I'd find those seats fairly comfortable. They are designed for a person who has a tail and does not stand fully upright like a few people do. The tall end, with a chin rest, is nearest the console, though they do swivel. Swiveling is less for providing a convenient exit to the chair, and more to help you reach all the controls of the console with either hand.

This seems to fit the body type described by the elemental root words of Fenekere, our most ancient language.

Are the control rooms of other Exodus ships built like this? Were they built like this even on the Terra Supreme, where every person looked almost exactly alike, stood fully upright, had no tails, and were only two meters tall at most?

Who designed this control room, and how much input did they have? What did they use for a model? Where did they get their directions? How much of the rest of it was customized specifically for the Sunspot to set it apart from the Terra Supreme?

I know that the symbol of the Inmara, Eh's own resistance cell aboard the Terra Supreme, is unique to the Sunspot. Fenmere, Gesedege, and Eh worked together to design it. You can see it on the hanging scale in the image on my blog's banner. The comet and dragon, or Hunter's Bow and Guardian, appear above the word "Inmara", meaning the Great Alliance, etched clean through a sculpture of a Scale of the Great One from the old myths.

And, let me tell you, I still don't know the origins of those myths or just how old they are, just that the Founding Crew hold them dear for some reason.

I'm pretty sure that the scales that are hanging to either side of the lift hatch, right behind each chair, each adorned with the symbol of the Inmara, are meant to clearly establish the character of the Sunspot.

They could have just as easily held the name of the ship on them, but they don't. "Welcome to `etekeyerrinwuf," is, however, written on a plaque above the lift hatch.

There is also, on the wall opposite the airlock, a Founding plate. It lists the name of the ship, the name of the resistance cell that was in charge of creating the ship, the names of the Senior Founding Crew members, and the coordinates and relative direction of the ship's creation. The is also a bas relief depiction of the Sunspot on that plaque, above the words. The plaque is a septagon, like a typical Scale of the Great One, but it is quite a bit wider than usual in order to accommodate the information. And it is made with the same material as the outer hull, which stands out against the painted walls. It's hard to miss it.

Are there plaques like that in the Terra Supreme? Are they the same shape? What language are they written in? What about the other Exodus Ships?

Then there are the colors of the room, which I mentioned. These, I'm also pretty sure are unique to the Sunspot, though I don't know.

The floor is a navy blue that has been faded to gray. A deep blueish gray. (Our translators are helping us with this description, and you'll have to excuse me if some of my phrases don't make sense to you. I'm trusting them, but I don't know what "navy blue faded to gray" really means.)

The trim around the edges of the portals, hatches, floor and ceiling is a gold color. Not metallic, but the kind of color you'd expect from an unfertilized dandelion during a sunset, I'm told. Somewhere between yellow and orange.

The walls are a gradient from a muted violet near the floor to a soft pink near the ceiling, making the gold the strongest color in the room.

The support structures of the consoles and chairs are also that gradient of muted violet to soft pink, but with aglae green trim that is almost as bright as the gold.

The hatch doors are that same green.

The Scales of the Great One are solid bronze, maintained and kept shiny by nanites. There are metal rims and bits in the chairs and consoles that also the same bronze. Anything metal in the room, besides the Founding plaque, is that bronze.

All of the hallways and rooms of the same deck are painted in these colors, as is the shipyard itself.

I have yet to find another part of the Sunspot that is colored and structured like this. In fact, this room is rectangular, a simple block, like the shipyard itself, unlike most other rooms aboard the ship.

There is definitely meaning here.

It is this astounding mix of unfathomably ancient and relatively new but still unfathomably ancient that frankly captivates me more than a glimpse of a pulsar in a nebula that resembles where the Sunspot was built.

If you do come down here for the stars, do not forget to turn around and stare at the control room for a while, too.

Who was it made for? You? Me? Or as some sort of big "fuck you" to Father `e of the Terra Supreme, who will never, ever get to see it?

The answer to all of those questions is probably "yes".

#Sunspot Chronicles #fictional travel blog #a tour of the Sunspot

3 notes · View notes

gabrielandworms · 1 year

Text

It's Day 247 of the migraine that never ends, and any plans I had to clean or maybe (finally) finish the painting I have sketched out on my drawing table's surface are just not happening. I'm going to be lying in a pile of blankets playing one of the lower energy rpgs I have. I might even get some real writing done if I can trust my brain enough with any of my drafts.

But I realized I can probably trust my brain enough to rec some of my favorite rpgs for sick days like today. Something without a complex plot or a need to stay focused. Something with fun design and, if you're really lucky, big numbers.

Also some (one? two?) of these are on the 3ds. It's probably a good idea to look into them now since the shop is closing permanently towards the end of the month.

So here's my little list of suggestions. This definitely isn't just an attempt to get people playing things I like. It's also an attempt to get people to suggest their own preferences.

Dragon Ball Fusions (3DS): I know Fighterz is the crowning achievement of Dragon Ball games, but I don't like fighting games. Meanwhile this a fun little rpg where you can make your own OC and get other fighters to join you with one of the most enjoyable combat systems I've ever played. The fusion mechanic is also really goofy and a delight to mess around with.

Legend of Mana (PS1): Well, originally a PS1 game. I think the remaster is pretty much everywhere. It's always been my favorite Mana title, and I'm glad to see it getting attention now. Unlocking every quest is a pain that requires a guide, but the combat is very "no thoughts, head empty" and the game's backgrounds are some of the most beautiful I've ever seen. Also I haven't watched it yet, but there's an anime adaptation of one of the major arcs now. Story is a bit heavier than the others here though as it digs into "love can both nurture and destroy."

Fantasy Life (3DS): There's a second one coming, but if you don't want to wait the first one was a lot of fun. The class system in this game is a lot of fun, and I think it's the only game I've played that let me even run around trying to become a Master Cook. You can also have your friends jump into your game and run around together, but that might be restricted to local play now.

Pokemon: Heart Gold and Soul Silver (DS): Or any Pokemon title, really. Heart Gold is just my favorite, but I also thought the Sun/Moon titles were underrated. Pokemon's base line has never been complicated. It's just running around with little magical animal critters, and maybe if you're lucky you're playing one of the gens that lets you pet them. Or have them follow you around.

Magical Starsign (DS): Legend of Mana's younger sibling, and a great deal more linear. But it has a lot of the same visual charm paired with a setting both fantasy and sci-fi. Like Legend of Mana, it also gets a bit heavier with its story. Some of the subplots do not end on happy notes.

Okage: Shadow King (PS2): Maybe the least "head empty" of the bunch, but grinding is an option, and grinding is one of the most "head empty" things you can do in an rpg. I wanted to include it though because it's visually fun and has a wonderful little sense of humor. As a bonus, it's available for digital purchase on the sony store. A lot of these are old and only available in physical versions unless you put in the effort to find other, Totally Legal methods.

Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood (DS): Look, I'm going to be honest. I remember nothing about this game. I had the flu in college and fever-induced delirium wiped out my memory of the whole damn time. But apparently? I played this? And according the save file I completed it? Which means this has to fit the criteria of an rpg you don't have to think too hard about. Which it's a Sonic game, so I can't imagine the plot is complex.

Fable 3 (Xbox 360): I know it's the unfavorite Fable for people, but I had a lot of fun with it. It also looks like it's available digitally. This game doesn't demand much, and honestly it's pretty easy to sidestep the instance when it does try to make hefty demands. I don't know how accessible co-op is now, but this is a game made better when you're running around causing chaos with friends. It also let me marry a pink-haired cannibal, and how many games even have that option?

#rpgs #video games #dragon ball #sonic the hedgehog #pokemon #legend of mana #fantasy life #fable #okage #magical starsign

5 notes · View notes

elytrafemme · 1 year

Note

this is about the post on your fears of csSchlatt being one-dimentional/a caricature: I cannot stress enough how hard it hit me reading the scenes with him in it. Hopefully this doesn't sound vent-y, i don't mean for it to, but i was very close to becoming like that guy. And the way you write him is so inherently human and flawed and it has such nuance to his "motives" and what addiction/csTubbo meant for him that I've only ever seen like thrice before. You need to stop doubting your writing, I think, because the things you create are some of the most hard-hitting, reality crashing things I have ever experienced. /pos

i'm really really glad to hear that cs!Schlatt felt real & flawed because that's all I really hoped for with him, honestly. part of it is that you don't really recognize a ton about him at the beginning due to his own presentation of himself as being sinister plus cs!Tubbo's feelings with him being in close proximity, but post mortem you see a lot more conflicting opinions on him and actually get a lot more about his life. and he's honestly an extremely complex character because what he boils down to is someone whose childhood was tainted by financial instability, a shitty father, and a lot of influence from said shitty father to be kind of a bad person growing up. and then you see his teenagehood is cut off halfway because he has to take care of a kid and navigate a relationship and also doesn't have an adult in the house anymore. so now you're seeing someone with zero room to grow (albeit no real desire to grow either, but that's a desire that would come if he wasn't trying to figure out how to put food on the table), stuck between the untouchable immortality a teenage boy might feel and the reality of living an unsustainable life. he has no real support and the supports he does have he drives away, because his feelings towards Tubbo are complicated and his relationship with Quackity is kind of shit because Schlatt has been an asshole for forever and that doesn't change with the alcohol nor the independence. and then his want to become better starts coming AFTER things are falling apart, after Quackity has given up most of what he had to take care of him and tubbo, after Tubbo has been thoroughly traumatized, after his only friendship is some random guy he tries doing business stuff with but that falls through, someone who doesn't even talk at his funeral.

cs!Schlatt had been fundamentally deprived of a stable footing to try and get better, basically, or even recognize that he had a clear want to. if he sat down in the late stages of his life and addiction and tried to parse together whether or not he wanted to treat the people around him badly or if it was an ill fit coping mechanism, he still wouldn't have known. he honestly probably wouldn't be able to say whether or not he had a problem. i think sometimes he would have thought he was on top of the world, thriving off of hurting tubbo and quackity, and other times would have recognized that he couldn't continue like that. but there was nothing he could do but continue like that, and so it goes.

it's something that i think a lot of us are closer to relating to than we really think. God knows I have spent much of the last three years in a mentality of "well if I can't get better, I may as well hit the bottom that this spiral goes and see what happens." and God knows that a lot of people who are abusive happen to struggle with things themselves, because struggling is a human response and the most painful part (in my experience) of recognizing that someone abused me is reconciling with the idea that I could have felt sorry for what they've been through, and still feel sorry for what they went through, but that didn't mean that what they did is right.

very, very little of what cs!Schlatt did was right. but one of the tragedies of life is when you have instances in which you never really know if that person could have been good, because they never got close enough to wonder themselves and suddenly, they're gone.

thank you for this ask, i'm really glad people like his characterization. he's honestly one of my favorite characters as time passes because I think he's lived such a fucked up life and is such a fucked up person. and I think it's important to talk about that kind of thing, that struggling doesn't make you a good person. but that struggling often makes things worse.

#nightmare.ask #nightmare.cough-syrup #long post #tw addiction #addiction tw #abuse tw #ask to tag #not sure if i articulated this well i just have so many fucking feelings about this #i also have a lot of feelings about cs!Tubbo seeing himself in cs!Schlatt because yeah #it's one of the most horrific things about going through abuse is seeing yourself in the person who hurt you like that #be it you going through similar shit they did or them instilling something deep in you #a habit or a favorite song or something. and it's difficult to separate #i've gotten good at reclaiming some of the good times and enjoying things that they introduced to me #but Jesus is it still hard as hell looking at myself in the mirror #anyway. Feel like i talk about that kind of stuff a little too much I need to tone it down #I was really quiet about it for a while though and now it's just. something i like to talk about and process #anyway i appreciate this ask and your support always so so so much

9 notes · View notes

fluffy-ami · 3 years

Text

Last updated: April 15, 2024

✧° • Welcome! 🫐✨

Fic requests: closed 🍩

Headcanon requests: closed 🍩

Art requests: closed 🍩 (work in progress✨)

Asks/DMs: always open 🥯

✧°🖋️Headcanons | Fics/Drabbles

Currently active events: 500 followers Boop Booth (dw we'll continue once I'm back akdkjds)

Number of wips I'm supposed to be working on: 5

You can call me Ami, welcome to my fluffy t-word blog (and a blog for some random stuff occasionally)! I'm here to make your day a little bit better ☄️✨

✧° • Fandom List 🫐

* - fandoms that I'm not as into as I used to be, but I'll always draw for them (writing fics/hcs will depend)

Attack on Titan 🕊️*

ATLA 🌀*

ATSV 🕸️

Baldur's Gate 3 ⚔️

Blue Lock ⚽ (in progress)

Bungou Stray Dogs 📖*

Cookie Run: Kingdom 🍪*

Demon Slayer🪻 (haven't seen S3 yet)

Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) 📚*

Genshin Impact 🍃

Good Omens 🪽

Hades 🔥*

Haikyuu!! 🏐*

Hazbin Hotel 🛎️

Honkai: Star Rail ✨

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 🌟

My Hero Academia ☄️*

Nimona 🐉

Obey Me 🫀*

Omori 🩹

Our Flag Means Death 🏴‍☠️ (in progress)

Project SEKAI 🎼*

Sk∞ the Infinity 🛹

Tears of Themis ⚖️*

The Amazing Digital Circus 🎪

The Arcana 🃏*

The Case Study of Vanitas 🔗*

The Magnus Archives 📒 (will finish sometime later lol)

The Promised Neverland 💫*

Twisted Wonderland ♣️*

Yuri on Ice ❄️*

Some rules & Other stuff

Teases won't be a thing if I barely know you, and I'm sure that I won't want to initiate these kinds of interactions with people in the near future. I've had some unpleasant experiences, so please, just know that I don't like being used as a source of entertainment for you just because you're bored or in a certain mood. I'm also a switch, I can't always be in the mood you want me to be in. Most of the time I just end up feeling lonely and sad (my ler side has been used so much, I'm just a little tired). So, since such interactions haven't brought me much joy lately, I want to take a break from this, for now. If you want us to try interacting that way, please just ask me about it first. Outright. Ask if I'm in the mood for it, how I feel about it. That's all I ask for.

Anyone can follow and interact with my blog when it comes to age, but if you're less than 16 or you're 30+, please don't DM me.

About N$FW & Anything related

Straight up nudity (like when you can literally see everything), k¡nky GIFs/videos with real people, discussing tickling in a s*xual/k¡nky way in situations when it's not supposed to be k¡nky at all (like in reblogs under some of my fics/doodles which were supposed to be fluffy & cute and NOTHING MORE) - all of this makes me really uncomfortable, please remember that❗

Content containing restraints/blindfolds/tools ect. is a complicated topic, but I'm fine with it for the most part when I'm in the mood for it, so you can request stuff like this at times (I hate straight up torture though, I think both sides should enjoy the process). If I ever post something that's more intense than just soft fluffy tickles, I'll make sure to tag it as "#spicy" or leave tags with potential trigger warnings so that other people would be able to block things that make them uncomfortable.

Important: If tickling is a k¡nky thing for you in some situations, I have absolutely nothing against that, it's normal bruh, enjoy whatever you want to enjoy when the context is right. I just don't want some people to sexualize everything I post (ESPECIALLY tickle content with characters that are technically minors, like ew, pls don't 💀), tickling is mostly a coping mechanism & a fun fluffy thing for me personally, that's why I don't want blogs who are focused on the k¡nky side of it to interact with me (I mean I can't stop anyone from viewing my content obviously, but please, respect my boundaries). If you're one of those people who think that “mmm actually this 'hyperfixation' on tickling is always a k¡nk for everyone ☝🏻🤓”, then please block me immediately. Even if I don't really like bringing it up much, I'm autistic, and I've had this hyperfixation (or a special interest of sorts) since I was a little kid. If you try to sexualize it as a whole, I'll personally beat you up 💖

I might post some OC stuff in here, rarely, though.

I can be inactive sometimes, that happens. I created this blog just because I can write/draw what I like, and share it with other people who like it too. I write/draw very slowly, so please, remember that and be patient with me if you requested something.

I don't read the manga (most of the time), so please keep that in mind while requesting!

I reserve the right to delete or ignore asks and requests which I'm not comfortable with or which freak me out. Hope you'll understand.

(If you wanna DM me, just know that my entire being is awkward as hell, and it usually takes me a long time to respond lol ajdkdk-)

✧° • Have a great day! 🫐✨

#welcome #fluffy-ami #tickle community #fandom list #intro #boundaries #rules #navigation #masterlist #my stuff

49 notes · View notes

seyaryminamoto · 6 years

Note

I've started the process of writing my own love story. Its not a fanfic, but an original novel that I plan on completing someday. However, even though I already have the main story planned out, Im having a hard time with dialogue and coming up with ways for my characters to interact with each other(if that makes sense) I was just wondering if u have any tips 4 me. I know this doesn't have anything to do with gladiator, but im a huge fan of your writing style and would love to hear your advice.

Hmmm… well, dialogue is a little tricky. From what I’ve been taught in school, there are three different kinds of texts that can comprise a narrative text: action (the actual narration), description and dialogue. Action moves things forward, description somewhat stops time, and dialogue can achieve either thing, depending on how it’s used.

But dialogue also helps a lot when it comes to characterization. Dialogue is meant to convey information between characters, and characters, like real people, have different points of view, disagreements, points in common, and so forth. Each of your characters has had different experiences, and often dialogues are the best way to bring up those experiences (having a character talk about something that happened to them is often more dynamic than simply explaining it in descriptive or narrative text).

So, with that in mind, how to write dialogue? First things first: imagine yourself in the shoes of a character. Dialogue is the best empathy exercise I’ve ever done, because it really forces you to forget yourself and to picture yourself in someone else’s shoes for a moment (kind of like what an actor does). Two characters are unlikely to respond in the exact same way to the same events. Say that there are two characters in a sports game and one team scores: one of the characters cheers and the other grumbles in frustration. You can know, just through dialogue, that one character supports the winning team and the other supports the losing one.

Dialogue can be difficult, but it’s a really good tool for characterization, too often better than description or narration. Yes, actions speak very loudly, but a character can be incredibly elegant in actions and appearance, only to swear like a sailor once their dialogue begins (then you’d get a pretty funny contradiction between appearance and behavior that makes for an amusing character). In short, dialogue is how a character interacts with the world around them, with their friends and enemies, with their family and strangers (characters also interact differently with each kind of relationship I mentioned here, the same way real people do). So when you write dialogue you give your character a voice, and as in real life, everyone has different voices.

You’ve said you’re writing a love story… dialogue, to me, is essential for romance. I don’t know what kind of story it is for sure, but whether your characters are instantly attracted to each other or absolutely can’t stand each other at first…? You need to bring up situations for dialogue to produce genuine bonding. Physical attraction alone isn’t enough to establish actual love, most fiction these days makes a deliberate effort to go beyond that, so dialogue is a must in your line of work. Dialogue is how you show chemistry between your characters, how you prove to your readers that these two characters have plenty to offer each other and can have a very special bond.

My advice is… generate situations where dialogue can happen between them. Push the plot so that they have no choice but to interact. Their first dialogues may not go too far in establishing meaningful bonding, but that’s where you’ll have to produce situations where they get to bond. Using Gladiator as an example, in chapter 9, when I brought Sokka to the Barge’s deck and he found Azula training there, they end up training together for the first time in the story. Azula’s warrior training shows, but she’s no expert with the sword. Because of this, the subject of why she never trained with Piandao came up, and this is the first time Sokka hears about her conflicts with her mother. Azula finds herself telling him about this, while obviously holding back a lot of information he didn’t need to know, but she’s still sharing something with him that she hasn’t shared with most people (namely… because nobody else has asked her about any of this before :’D).

That exchange is what I consider the first real bonding scene between them in the story, where they first truly respected one another and their many differences, while finding a little common ground, too. Knowing Azula wasn’t allowed to learn how to use swords gave Sokka the chance to offer to teach her, many chapters later. Teaching her becomes not only another perfect excuse for them to spend time together, but it strengthens their relationship because he’s somehow fulfilling one of her dreams.

And it all started with that dialogue!

So, allow your characters to have important things in their lives aside from their relationship (as it is here with Sokka, Azula, training, bending, swords and such). If they have common interests it becomes easier to weave in a romantic storyline. If they have diametrically different interests, you can weave in the romance anyways because of how they try to conciliate those differences. Give them more substance aside from their relationship (which is realistic, as people in real life tend to have much more going on in life aside from just romance), and soon enough you’ll have two characters who can interact at leisure. From casual talk, like what I explained above with Gladiator as an example, you can get a conversation that will move dynamically and organically through many topics. If it’s a meaningful conversation, it can come back sometime later, once one of the character brings it up like “hey, remember when you told me about *insert topic here*…?”, as it was with Sokka and Azula’s interest in swordsmanship, or when Sokka remembered later that Azula’s relationship with her mother wasn’t that good, knowledge he acquired thanks to this particular exchange.

In any case, this is what I recommend. But for other important things to note with dialogue:

Small talk is a thing: while some people will tell you that you should NEVER have empty, pointless dialogue in a story (because a story should be concise), people in real life can have some really pointless conversations. Yes, your dialogue, ideally, should always convey new information, but don’t be unforgiving with yourself if it doesn’t. Sometimes you need a few lines of empty small talk before you can get to the real meat of the exchange. The main thing to avoid, though, is turning a serious conversation into meaningless small talk, but I’ll expand on that in point 3.

People have different vocabulary: this is something that can cause trouble in some ways. It’s been a little complicated for me in recent times, I used to be better at it. But part of characterization is knowing what kind of words your character would use, and what kind they wouldn’t. You can have characters who are very eloquent with their dialogue (I try to do this with Ozai, because really, it takes some real weirdo to say things like “the universe delivers you to me as an act of providence”, canonically), others who are less so, and some who would just have absolutely no fancy words in their vocabulary altogether.Important thing to note: your characters, unless they’re meant to be you, or are educated exactly like you, probably won’t talk exactly as you do. One particular problem I’ve seen in some writers is that they can’t seem to change the speech pattern of characters, either they aren’t sure how or just don’t know how to do it, and it gives the feeling of mechanical dialogue, because it’s like you’re just reading the narrator’s voice rather than the character’s. Whether you’re making fanfiction or original fiction, your characters should have different speech patterns from yours/the narrator’s, unless there’s a very good reason for them not to have them (example, you can have a character who loves using literary quotes when talking, and you can also have a character who’s never read any high literature: by logic, the second character shouldn’t be able to use any of the quotes the first one uses in common dialogue).

Make dialogue meaningful when it has to be: I am a fan of small talk, of simple conversations between characters that can be pretty easy-going, casual, what have you. I don’t need every exchange between characters to be filled with “I AM YOUR FATHER!”-like revelations. But I recently watched at TV show that had just featured a “character death”, and it provided a perfect opportunity for the character’s best friends to talk about what happened (and to properly talk about how one of them was going to fill the “dead character’s” shoes from there on), and… the dialogue that should have been important was absolutely, entirely, meaningless. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t move either character in any direction. You barely even felt like they were affected by their friend’s “death”, that’s probably the worst part of it all (they shoehorned one of the characters getting tears in her eyes at random, despite the conversation’s emotional charge was equal to zero).In conclusion: when something big has happened, your characters will show emotion, will react emotionally, and if they don’t, there’s a chance they’re just bottling things up (and you should imply the bottling up through dialogue, which can be done). When caught up in awful circumstances, characters cannot simply indulge in small talk, or pointless conversations that lead nowhere. It’s in these cases where strong dialogue is needed. Anticlimactic dialogue is a very unpleasant thing to have in your story, as it can break all suspension of disbelief from your readers.

Don’t be afraid of having multiple characters in one conversation: I’m not a fan of big conversations in real life, but multiple voices in fiction have been ridiculously fun for me to write. Yes, you need to be versatile and switch positions with every new character you write, but for instance, I really enjoyed writing the Gaang talking at the cafeteria table in IHTBY. When you bring together characters from different backgrounds, different experiences, and have them interact with each other, you find yourself with all sorts of different chemistry between all of them: you can have characters who get along well, characters who like to bicker with each other, characters who have entirely different views in life, characters who have crushes on each other… you can have virtually anything. And that provides the opportunity for dynamic dialogue scenes that, for reasons beyond my understanding, a lot of writers seem to avoid like the plague. Granted I’m not saying you should make every single dialogue a multi-character dialogue, but I do recommend that you don’t run away from this, because I’ve seen people who do that and it only seems to hinder their stories in the end.

Your character will behave differently depending on whom they’re talking to: this is something I mentioned earlier, but I’ll mention it again: Azula doesn’t talk with Sokka with the same cautious respect she usually has to muster when talking to her father. When she threw that caution into the wind (as she did in a recent Gladiator chapter), not only was she terrified while doing it, but she took Ozai and everyone else around them by surprise. Likewise, she wouldn’t talk to any strangers the same way she talks to Sokka or her father.Characters will respond differently to other characters, depending on how guarded or how free they feel around the other person. Depending, too, on what sort of relationship they have with the opposite person: Sokka is Azula’s partner and lover, he has seen Azula for who she is, entirely, which means she’s at her most open when she’s with him. Toph, Ty Lee, Mai and others are Azula’s friends, they know she has a her softer side but they haven’t seen it nearly as often as Sokka has, so Azula is more reserved around them than around Sokka. Ozai is her father, due to her relationship with him she endeavors to NEVER show him her soft/weak side, so she’s VERY guarded when talking to him. Likewise, she didn’t show her soft/weak side to Zuko, her brother, until a little while before they parted ways, because she couldn’t let him see she wasn’t absolutely perfect, so she was very reserved with him, too, even if she would lower her guard just enough to torment him whenever she felt like it.An important example, with which I seem to break this rule (despite I kind of don’t…) is Sokka: he’s constantly horrifying people everywhere because of how he talks boldly to Ozai, apparently not holding back at all (truthfully, he holds back a lot more than most my characters seem to realize x’D). He doesn’t get a pass for this: everyone thinks he’s crazy for showing so little respect to the Fire Lord. Ozai thinks it’s amusing, sure, but most other people are horrified. If you have a character who talks to everyone the same way, regardless of authority or different positions in the world, other characters need to respond to it, especially if it’s as far out of place as it is when Sokka does it in Gladiator.

Let the character guide you: once you’ve established your character, dialogue can become a matter of impulse (as it happens to me most times). Only a couple of hours ago I had to backtrack on an exchange between two characters where one of them responded negatively to what the other character said. I couldn’t really write it differently, because the one character could only be offended by the other character’s words. I had to modify the full dialogue so that the response to the first line of dialogue wouldn’t turn a playful conversation into an argument.In short, you can’t force a character to behave or respond to situations in ways they don’t want to. If your character leads you in one direction, you can’t double down on them and make them act differently than they would. Once you feel characters moving by themselves in one direction or another you know for sure that you’ve been able to understand them… but that is a full compromise, so to speak. If you understand them, it means you understand why they respond to things the way they do, and you also understand why they wouldn’t respond any differently than how they do. So, if you’re faced with a problem like the one I described in the previous paragraph... change the situation, or the previous dialogues that can be altered (if changing the previous character’s dialogue disrupts their characterization too, you’ll have to rewrite from further back). Just, don’t force a puzzle piece where it doesn’t fit. That only harms your story further in the end. It takes away the life in your characters, because they feel less consistent and therefore, less believable.

I’m not sure if I can come up with anything else… but if you have any other specific questions about dialogue-writing that I didn’t answer here, just let me know and I’ll give you a hand if I can do so! :D

#sokklaforlife #still the best url ever #hope this was good!#good luck on your story!

16 notes · View notes