#are all very structurally similar to each other - and the way that dialogue and scenes play out and come to conclusions

[dramadramallama]

Love Supremacy - brain rot part 1

So I have a problem. I enjoyed the first half of Love for Love's Sake without knowing I would get absolutely bowled over by the second half. I have so much to say holy fuck, I'm all over the place.

Unfortunately for everyone, my brain has been love supremacied, and I'm unable to move on. The show has a high rewatch value. It’s full of details; big, important ones, and small, insignificant ones, but they all add a lot of weight to the story. I need to exorcise my thoughts for my own sake. I guess if I have to intellectualize it somewhat, I really liked the show cause it’s perfectly balanced in terms of structure, and its themes. Judging from the amount of notes I have made on this show on my second watch, it’s safe to say it’s got some substance. It cleverly uses a mise en abyme, “a story within a story (within a story)” to really stack all those layers, and answer an age-old, quite difficult question: “what’s crucial to a happy life?” Dialogues, scenes, characters, and motifs all echo, mirror, and circle back to one another, giving the story enough dimension to avoid banalities.

Simply put, the thesis of the show is surprisingly philosophical, with universal themes. It posits that life is neither fate nor chance, and the answers are in mundane details of life. "Happiness is hidden somewhere in each of our days."

It’s obviously about love; a double love story even. Myung-ha learns to love someone else, and himself too. It's about life, and it's about death, new beginnings, and everything in between. The show made me feel like this, and like this, and like this, and...

▶️1. Mirrors/Symmetry

2. Fate, Free Will, and Happiness

3. Game/Reality

The story structure is very symmetrical. Circular almost. I LOVE IT, I EAT IT UP LIKE A HUNGRY, GRUBBY GOBLIN. Things begin where they end, elements keep repeating themselves like a series of mirrors.

By going through the game, Myung-ha finds himself on the other side of the mirror: he is supposed to find his own happiness, and will to live.

Yeo-woon is introduced to the audience as a sad side character in someone else’s story, victim of his “fate.” He almost perfectly mirrors Myung-ha: his background is eerily similar to his. He was raised by his (recently deceased) grandma, with an absent mother and a dead-beat dad. He’s lonely, unhappy.

When Myung-ha first meets him, Yeo-woon is resolutely standing on top of a building, about to fall or jump, which directly parallels Myung-ha's own suicide. In this new iteration of life, in this “game,” he saves Yeo-woon from hurting himself, which is the start of his own salvation. Saving Yeo-woon, the poor guy who didn’t get his happy ending, is saving himself. Yeo-woon is like a version of him right before he lost control of his life, after his grandma died, and he felt abandoned by all. It’s the core of the game, and the core of the drama, but Myung-ha (and we, the audience) can’t understand it right away.

Several details, in retrospect, show that he is the driving force behind this "game", and that it’s, by lack of a better term, both a test (as in, an exercise, a learning mechanism) and a Test (as in, an exam you don't wanna fail.) Myung-ha’s main, most important mission is to “make Yeo-woon happy.” Which he happily and enthusiastically tackles. He does what we all do: he takes a liking to the character most relatable to him. Time and time again, the way he reacts when presented with someone who struggles the same way he did is very telling.

He provides comfort. The comfort he lacked in his own life. (distant sounds of my heart shattering.)

But Yeo-woon isn’t the only one mirroring elements of Myung-ha’s life. Sang-won is a careless, tough-looking student, who seems slightly directionless. He picks fights easily and has a reputation at school for being “crazy.” He also smokes and rides a motorcycle (both illegal lol). His mom having abandoned Myung-ha, it’s also relevant to note Sang-won doesn’t seem to have a very good relationship with his own mother, and craves her attention. Although, he is your typical badboy, he is overall nice, sensitive, and has good intentions.

Myung-ha himelf appears to have been quite the turbulent student, with his own “mad dog” nickname. He, just like Sang-won, knows a thing or two about school fights, also drives a bike (lmao 100% sure he didn’t wait to have a license to drive though). Although he berates Sang-won for his rebellious side, with the patronizing tone of someone who’s done it all before, he shows genuine care.

Finally, Kyung-hoon. To me, he’s like another facet of Myung-ha’s personality. An absolute sweetheart, without friends, but always ready to help, and open to be befriended. While Myung-ha seems nonchalant about speaking badly of himself, he cannot stand it from others. He makes him his friend on the spot.

Once again, he provides like-minded friends the safe space he probably would have liked as a troubled, most certainly depressed teenager. Of course, it turns out Yeo-woon hates himself the most too (and by extension, dislikes everyone else.) It's the first clue for Myung-ha to realize some self-love might be the answer.

As it will become increasingly clear, Myung-ha has no issues protecting, providing for, and loving others, but fails to realize he should do the same for himself to achieve balance, and maybe, a little bit of happiness. The journey to get there makes him care for someone else the way he should care for himself, love someone else, like he should love himself. 

The last episode does a wonderful job of confirming what seemed to be threaded through the whole show, and explaining very clearly, in no uncertain terms, what it was all about.

However, the interesting aspect of this “mirror world," is that all of them, and Yeo-woon in particular, flip the script, in more ways than one. They all are a reflection of Myung-ha's life, but transcend their condition of “fictional character.” They’re not virtual. Yeo-woon is not made of something unreal, and he’s not a messed up copy of someone else. He has his own needs, desires, and quirks.

I don't think I can name them all here, but one of my favorite circular storytelling moment happens when Yeo-woon parallels Myung-ha by running to "find his fave." That moment in ep 8 counterbalances the one in ep 1.

Nothing is written in stone, and both of them set off to build their own happiness, against fate.

#love for love's sake #lfls #love supremacy zone #love for love's sake meta #the number of rambling sections i had to cut out #i'm feral :( #there's a part 2 and 3 coming too like i need help

[martianbugsbunny]

In all the videos I've watched about the modern character structure of Disney princesses, I've seen people say that Rapunzel, Anna, Moana, Asha, Raya, Sisu, and Mirabel are generally very samey characters in terms of personality traits and movement styles. But I have yet to see someone say that in Frozen 2, Elsa took on some of those traits, and my horribly capped evidence is under the cut.

Alright, to start with, let me explain a little bit more. Elsa in her debut movie is very restricted and repressed, that's true, but she's also by nature elegant and graceful. Once she figures herself out a little bit more, and she's comfortable in her skin, these aspects of her don't go away, in fact I think they're enhanced by her new confidence and self-assurance. Anna, by contrast, is clumsy and a little awkward, and that's not all down to her upbringing, either. It's who she is, and the contrast between them makes both of their personalities pop. It also makes them realistic, because in human beings and in sisters, you will not have two people who are identical in nature.

However, in the second Frozen movie, Elsa moves and gestures more like Anna. More like the new cookie cutter of the awkward (I hesitate to say "adorkable" because I'm utterly sick of the word at this point, but it's kind of apt) Disney girl.

This is the worst cap I have but watch this little scene where Elsa is startled and her powers activate is one of thee most egregious examples. The entire sequence of movements she has here feels completely detached from her; it's more like the way Anna would move than the way Elsa would move.

This. this is from the scene where she tells Anna she woke the spirits and decides to go to the forest. There is no universe in which the woman from the first Frozen movie would make these faces.

These are from the scene in Ahtohallan where she's watching her past. The cringe, once again, in the way it's animated, feels incredibly alien to her character. The little dance and the facial expressions when she comes across ice!Weaselton are incredibly Rapunzel, I think, but not very Elsa.

This one is the least offender in the bunch. But I still think in this particular scene, where she's doing the typical-of-modern-Disney thing where she's talking to the cute animal friend made to sell plushies, she doesn't feel quite right. The whole "they're all staring at us, aren't they" bit of dialogue contributes to the off-ness of the scene.

Now, allow me to present exhibit B: some of the expressions that I'm comparing her to.

You can see how similar they are, right? All of these to each other but also to the caps of Elsa? It's become the new style to just have all the characters making these faces. It's weird to see it all on them (particularly when it makes no sense for Raya, Asha, and Moana, but that's besides the point) and it's even weirder to see it on Elsa, a character who did not originate with this trait.

Here are a couple of caps of Elsa from Frozen. Her facial expressions are distinct from Anna's, because they have different personalities and would express their emotions physically in different ways. Elsa has a reserved grace and a boundless joy by the end of the movie and it shows through in the way she smiles, the way she frowns, the way she moves. Who she is, is indicated by her movements, which is an individual being and not a standard model.

Now, I'm not dunking on any of the other princesses listed here. I love most of them. I'm emotionally invested in their stories and I cry during their songs and I spend hours sketching them. But do I think I could love them just a little more if they each moved a little differently and their cores were expressed in their physicalities? Yes, I do. I also think it might force Disney to develop their individual personalities better if they weren't just falling back on standardized traits, because more specifics in one department might lead to more in others.

Anyway, that was my little thesis....kay bye.

#disney #disney princesses #elsa #anna #rapunzel #mirabel #moana #raya #asha #sisu #frozen #frozen 1 #frozen 2 #animation #disney animation #martianbugsbunny opines

[sarucane]

OFMD Spiral Parallels 11: Party Time Part 1

Intro: One of my favorite things about OFMD is the spiral narrative structure that connects Seasons 1 and 2. Using all the tools of the medium--dialogue, staging, music, costuming, even audio layering--scenes and moments from Season 1 are echoed in Season 2. But when these repetitions happen, meanings are shuffled, emotions are stronger and truer, and transformation is showcased above everything. The first season plucks certain notes, then the second season plucks the same ones--but louder, and then it weaves them together to create a symphony.

---

Breaking this up because damn they really brought it to this de/re-construction.

So, both these sequences start in similar places. Ed and Stede gain access to worlds they've been longing to join. Then that changes from access to approval and validation.

But the worlds are so fundamentally different, the reasons they're entering them are so wildly far apart, and their relationship with each other has changed so much, that, while the story hits the same emotional beats, the plot, meanings, and outcome are wildly different.

In the first season, Ed has been longing for a dream of this world since he was very young. He gains entrance to it through a combination of illusion and authenticity: he tells likely-true stories, but (whether he's aware of it or not) the impression he gives is that he's lying in an unusually entertaining manner. So he fits right in: they're all liars here, under their white makeup and pretensions.

Stede, on the other hand, enters the top of the pirate world through authenticity. He killed Ned Lowe without any expectation of something like this happening: the bastard just needed to die, basically. The approbation of this world as a result is an exciting side effect.

When each partner gains unexpected acceptance in that world, they do so by literally displacing the attention on the other. The party starts as focused on Stede, then turns to Ed as soon as he seems more interesting. Ed assumes the pirates want his autograph, but then it becomes clear they're interested in Stede and don't even recognize him.

In some ways, this is positive. Stede doesn't like this world, and Ed hasn't enjoyed being Blackbeard for years. But it's still an uncomfortable change.

The thing is that in the first season, Stede knows that this world isn't going to keep treating Ed well. But in the second season, Ed thinks this is a world where Stede could succeed, and maybe should succeed--and if anything, Ed's holding him back.

Later posts in this series:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd s2 #ofmd spoilers #ofmd meta

[empty-pizza]

concluding thoughts on gideon the ninth and a revised pecking order of the characters

I've sat on it a few days, and I've basically cornered my thoughts on this book and convinced them to reveal themselves to me. Some of this will basically be reiterating what I said in my last few posts.

Overall? I liked the book, and I feel like I'll like the series overall, but I don't love how the book climaxed and concluded. But those complaints don't feel like they're with the series as a whole or what direction it'll go in; they just feel individual to this book. Like when a great series has a weak arc but the aspects that make the series overall strong still shine through; just that specific plot could have been better. I'd call the book a 7/10 overall where it could have been an 8 for me if it stuck the landing better.

The vibes were strong and the characters were all around good. There's nobody I found uninteresting, nobody who had too much screentime relative to how interesting they were. Everyone served their roles well, and everyone has at least something interesting about them to dig into and think about. The book had a quick pace overall — not necessarily relative to other fantasy, so much as relative to the kinds of stories that feel to me like they inspired it, which are primarily VNs.

The inspirations are vague enough that I feel like I couldn't prove that Muir was trying to write something similar to Umineko or Zero Escape, but it just feels derived from them to me. It feels like I could very easily imagine the VN version of this, just in terms of vibes and scene structure. But Muir chose to write this as a novel, and that's interesting. It means that it doesn't dig into the characters as much, doesn't have as many extended scenes of long conversations. But fuck me, as much as some of those VNs are good they really can be unnecessarily long-winded and need some editing down. So it's also nice to read something like this which doesn't waste your time.

Because of that, if the characters were weaker, it would have felt like we never understand them well enough. But Muir gave basically every character a distinct and interesting personality. The book was very deliberate in what scenes it gave us of each character; it was plotted very well such that the plot progressed cleanly and different characters' goals were progressed, but we also got just enough of each character to get a proper view of them. I don't say a complete view, because I feel like for some of them there's way more to learn in future books. Plotting a story isn't just about getting from Point A to Point B, but stopping everywhere you need to, and it feels like the stations this book cared about stopping at were all for the sake of showing us almost every relevant character's dimensions. Nobody was throwaway.

Particularly, Gideon, Harrow, Palamedes, and Camilla all felt standout. They're the kind of characters that just immediately pop off the page. That you don't need to be sold on, because the reason they're worth reading about just comes through so clearly. It's an aspect of character writing that's very hard to get right. There are authors who write people with tons of believable nuance and realistic dialogue/emotion (and this is not to say that's not present here), but then there's authors who create characters that you're still going to remember years later. Muir is great at the latter skill.

Part of my disappointment with the ending is about expectations. I knew it was partially inspired by murder mystery stories going in, and then it gave me a great locked room setup and a lot of potential culprits for me to suspect. I enjoyed thinking about that, but it feels like the book didn't necessarily care about answering that to the extent I hoped for. It gave us a culprit, but not as much for how the murders were committed, since the answer is mostly just "Cytherea is strong af and could do those things."

Dulcinea being the culprit is a great reveal for the story, but not enough for an answer to the mystery, for me. It's one building block that needed two or three others in concert, but instead of working together with them, it's a building block that's covered in spikes so you can't put anything next to it. Cytherea being so strong answers the questions of how she could commit the murders so thoroughly that there's no room to actually give any more answers beyond that.

Part of this is the inherent struggle of writing a story that's both a mystery and action fantasy. They have competing needs for narrative resolution and balancing them while delivering on both is extremely hard. The reveal functions; it is both an answer and someone to fight, and it leaves no holes. It's just not as satisfying as I wanted.

Another aspect of my disappointment comes, again, from my own expectations. I've heard it's inspired by both Umineko and Homestuck, and those both give a constantly expanding experience, where the scope and the very nature of the story keeps revolutionizing itself and transcending what you could have possibly expected early on. I'm always hoping for more stories that will do that for me. And I have heard that crazy shit happens in the later books of Locked Tomb, which I'm looking forward to. But within Gideon's own plot, I don't feel like it gave me that experience. In an indescribable way, I like plots that resolve in ways you didn't even think a plot could resolve. Where it becomes more complex than you thought it could be before. Instead, Gideon's plot resolved by simplifying; it reduced itself to a standard "here's a very strong person we need to beat in a fight" that is not bad but I think the story could have done more than. Gideon sacrificing herself for Harrow's lyctorhood is still the perfect resolution to those characters' relationship (even if the execution failed for me because I don't think the fight scene was good at all) but it was ultimately there to resolve something fairly simple.

Also Cytherea just wasn't that interesting sorry. Maybe the simple conflict of the end could have worked better if I thought she was interesting af, maybe she's more interesting on reread or with context from later books but, eh. Everything interesting about her, to me, is mostly in the vein of lore questions for the future, not her own character.

Maybe I would have liked it more if the conflict with Cytherea was longer; if it was less a quick sequence of fights to take her down, and more a recontextualization of the story from a murder mystery to, say, a survival slasher horror story. That would probably lengthen the book too much, but if length wasn't a barrier I think an Act or so of that could work really well. It'd give space for Cytherea to be more interesting and could just be a bit more unique structurally.

Anyway, pecking order.

Ianthe. I expected great things from her and she still exceeded my expectations. Winning the entire thing without going into most of the labs because she was smart enough to figure it out from the tests is simply too fucking cracked. Unbelievable. She absolutely deserved the right to gloat at them. She might not have won the fight at the end, but she's still the winner in our hearts. Also, she got rid of Naberius.

Harrow. Still brilliant, still strong, and a lyctor in the end. She may be angsty and self-hating, but she kind of owns it, now, and that made her stronger. One time I saw a painting in my university's library where the woman in it was kinda beautiful so I said in a discord server "hey I accidentally fell in love with a woman from a painting" and someone said "lmao just like locked tomb" and I think they were referring to the girl Harrow saw in the locked tomb and you know what I think that's a baller reason to live.

Cytherea. She kinda got glonked in the end, and I think her plan in the context of the overall Lyctor and Emperor situation might end up being lamer in retrospect, but she's still a Lyctor, did the murders, planned this whole thing, and almost clowned everyone.

Camilla. She's a tough cookie.

Palamedes. Look, he's very smart, and I think I'd like him more on reread when I know I can trust him and don't have to suspect him as a potential culprit. But he also simped for someone so fucking hard that he killed himself to blow up the woman who killed and replace the object of his simping. That honestly almost turns itself around and makes his simping give him points instead of taking them away. Almost.

Gideon. Self-sacrifice to save another, when nothing else will work, is pretty baller. Harrow's current strength is in part founded on Gideon's strength and that gives her points. She did some pretty good sword moves, in the end.

Colum. Stood up for himself in the end and fought hard. Asserted dominance over Silas, if nothing else.

Silas. I'm genuinely not sure if him not even using his keys puts him higher or lower on this list. He stuck to his principles and I respect that. But also, lmao.

Isaac and Jeannemary. Did their best, for a couple of kids. I think Isaac's dying move would have genuinely been badass if it wasn't against something ten weight classes above him.

Judith and Marta. In the end, they actually did something. It was a dumb thing to do and exactly what Cytherea wanted someone to do, but they did do something.

Magnus and Abigail. Just not quite enough.

Protesilaus. An empty corpse is better than what comes next.

Naberius. What is there to say, that I did not already say in the prior pecking order? What more proper fate could he have faced, than being consumed by another? Shit. Fuck. He got vored. Yeah he's at the bottom here. Except...

Coronabeth. Oh, dear, sweet Coronabeth. You put yourself here, in the end. By your fundamental nature, you should be better than Naberius. And yet you were so submissive, so subvervient, so reliant on your sister and hoping to be needed by her, that you wished you could have taken his place? Come on now. Pick yourself up. Hold yourself to a standard, even a low one. All you have to do is choose to not be jealous of Naberius for literally dying, and you'll go back up above him. Here's the thing. I actually fucking love characters like this. In many action fantasy stories, my favorite character is always the one who is weak as fuck and knows it, who has to work hard, fueling themselves off of pure desperation, to become useful and worthwhile and able to survive. Usopp from One Piece. Wangnan from Tower of God. Shinsuke from Sengoku Youko. I believe Coronabeth has the potential to join characters like this. All she has to do is start rebuilding and start working on herself. She's got something to prove and that's as interesting as a character can get. And that's the main thing I hope for, when I start the next book, later this week.

#pizza reads locked tomb #the locked tomb #tlt

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Littlewood

[ID: The start screen of the game Littlewood. It shows a scene of the game’s village, restored and with many of the villagers standing on a square. At the bottom are the title of the game as well as a few buttons to play, change options or quit. The game’s artstyle is colorful, low resolution pixel graphics, and the menus are light brown. End ID.]

Well this one isn’t too unknown, but I just finished it and am typing a review for Steam anyway, so... :D

At first glance, one might think it’s similar to Stardew Valley, and of course, as with all those type of sim games, there are some similarities. But, after having finished it, I have to say, it’s not, not really. The goals are just too different.

Most of all, this is not a farming game. It’s a “follow the red line to rebuild a town according to requirements while grinding for money and materials” game.

You meet new people, they move into your town when you build their houses, and along the way you unlock new structures you can upgrade. The world is rather small, your town, a few destinations you can travel to, as well as two randomly generated dungeon maps. Mostly you run around, raise skills and gather materials, to build and upgrade and unlock new stuff.

[ID: The character creation screen. It has the options hair style, hair color, skin tone, outfit and personality. End ID.]

Positive Points

Stress free. There is no time, but every action costs energy. You can walk around, talk to people or decorate for as long as you want each day. Early on, the available energy might seem a bit low for all the things you want to do on a day, but there really is no downside to time passing. Later, you get a tool to have limitless energy.

Character generation is basically hair and clothes, and a way to change them can be unlocked in the game. The only thing you’re stuck with is your name, skin tone, and the town’s name. The personality is, I believe, only used for the town square statue.

I’m not sure it’s even possible to mess up permanently. Resources are technically infinite (if sometimes heavy rng based), and tearing down objects gives the used resources back. I guess you could cook with a rare fruit before you’ve planted it and hate yourself in the following hours until you find it again.

This is very subjective, but I enjoyed the obligatory card mini game very much, once I got the hang of it.

The game’s wiki is perfect, and has all the information you could ever want.

You can shape your town as you want, raising hills or creating lakes and rivers. You need to fulfill the villagers’ requirements, but after unlocking the rewards, you can technically move their houses as well.

[ID: The village as you start out. It’s all empty meadows with sandy paths, hills and a few small lakes. The only building is the player’s house, in front of which the player stands. The NPC Willow is dancing in front of it, happy about the player waking up. End ID.]

Neutral Points

There isn’t really a conclusion to the story. Which is kinda fine, I’m not playing this for the story.

Similarly, the NPC personalities aren’t that deep. Every character has a couple of quirky dialogues, but they repeat constantly, are not subtle at all, and I think even the marriage dialogues are all the same.

I spent the first I don’t know how many hours having to take care what I spend my money on, and it was fine. Then I reached 2-3 milestones pretty quickly and from one moment to the other, money was no problem anymore. Unlocking a vegetable that sells for a nice amount so I could get a few thousand per day - nice. Unlocking selling each cooked dish for 3000 no matter what, so I am swimming in money after a week - meh.

There isn’t that much freedom. Every villager wants exactly one set of furniture, and their house at a certain spot, and exactly one set of objects next to it (as in, right next to it, touching it). You only have room for a set amount of vegetables, fruit trees, animals, namely three of each. In my opinion, it does give the game some structure and a tangible goal, but also lowers the replay value.

If going for achievements, you should start the timegated ones - flower breeding, villager quests) early on.

There’s three save slots, as well as cloud saves.

[ID: The endless forest, a randomly generated area with green grass and lots of pine trees and weeds. The player is talking to a bee monster in a field of yellow and white flowers. The monster, called Beeford, says: Please don’t hurt me... I’m just a low-level bee monster! I don’t drop any rare  items! End ID.]

Negative Points

Oh, the grind. There’s two different kinds: For items, and for achievements.

For items, there are a lot of special items you can get while doing an action. Chop down a tree, have a chance of acorn. Most of those are fine, you can farm them by just doing that action over and over and over. Some are less fine. Super rare, super random, needs a wiki to figure out where they might drop.

I spent a substantial amount of late game time just checking the fully upgraded (and therefore offering any item in the game) merchants each day. That’s not fun gameplay.

There are several achievements that require you to do a huge amount of chopping/mining/fishing etc. The fishing one was the most obnoxious one. It took me half a (real life) day after finishing all the others just running around, fishing each spot dry each day, sleeping, repeat. And I already did do the fishing trip each day way before that, as well as catching every fish I came across in the forest and mine while doing the other ones.

Keybinds cannot be changed. This was the main reason I did not buy it on desktop PC, because I hate that. It also didn’t like my controller/the steam deck much, not being able to move with the d-pad, and not recognizing the x button to turn chairs, but that was easily fixed with the deck’s configuration tool. I am not sure if the windows version has the same issues.

[ID: The same town, much later, in fall with an orange color scheme for grass and trees. Now there’s lots of houses, to both sides of a river, and some on top of the hills. There’s sparkly purple stones on the ground, two birds around a bird bath and a bird house, two cats, a few colorful flowers and more decorations. End ID.]

I bought this with two expectations in mind:

I knew it was grindy, most of the reviews on steam mentioned that. I was actually looking for a game with a bit of grind, to brainlessly play a day or two before bed, making progress without having to think.

I wanted to play it on the deck, where I knew I could rebind my controls.

Considering that, I did get exactly what I wanted. It took me about 50h to 100% the game (well... I got all the achievements, and leveled all the skills up, but didn’t bother maxing all relationships or dating all villagers or beating them in the mini card game.) The game isn’t overly expensive to begin with, but occasionally goes on sale for 20-50% off.

Things I wish I had known before:

All recipes use two ingredients, but you can just slam the bar full and the game will prioritize undiscovered recipes with the ingredients you picked.

There is a stat page in the menu, showing you progress on the “do x” achievements (I forgot, ok).

Anyway, I’ve already written too much, and if you’re into that kind of games, this is a good one.

#Littlewood #salad-games

[anonymousmythicalcreature]

For the ask game: top five changes you'd make to DBH, if given the chance.

Turns out doing my top 5 overall changes was kinda impossible, so I cheated a bit and instead came up with 5 changes I'd make that I don't think I've talked about much before (or expanded versions of things I do know I've talked about) and then ranked those against each other.

#5: Either combine Gavin and Captain Allen together, or alter their character designs so they're more visually distinct

Currently, there are two things that visually distinguish these characters from each other: face shape/structure and clothing. Combined with the fact that these two characters never appear in a scene together, and take actions that make complete sense combined with the other's actions and personality, these two become very difficult to tell apart when you have some level of face blindness like I do.

Yes, this is a confession that I didn't realize these were separate characters when I first got into DBH. This is also a confession that I thought the scar on Gavin's face was just another piece of fanon for about a year, until I sat down and stared at his character model a bunch and realized that, yes, he did have a very faded scar across his face. The scar would absolutely work to distinguish them if it were made more visible (meaning that it would have to be from a more recent event).

#4: Make Luther a part of the hug at the border when all of Kara's family survives

This is just kinda awkward the way it is now in canon, with him standing there watching while Kara and Alice hug. Plus, they've already got a hug animation for all three of them for the ending where they all make it out of the camp alive, so... what's the problem with reusing it here?

#3: Let the player know from the start that Amanda and the Zen Garden are programs in Connor's head

Right now, this plot twist feels like it's there for the sake of having a plot twist in Connor's story rather than the plot twist actually doing something. I think there would still be sufficiently high tension during Connor and Amanda's conversation in Last Chance Connor without this plot twist being present -- topics such as Connor's similarity to deviants, Amanda being based off of Elijah's mentor, and Elijah's various non-answers in Meet Kamski would still be on the table, and dialogue options about the stone and the previous Connors' graves in the Zen Garden (should you have looked at them previously) could potentially be added in to round things out (with Amanda giving some very deflective non-answers in response). I think this would create a stronger focus on Connor being manipulated and Connor's relationship to deviancy during this conversation, because right now the options present feel... kind of random and like they only connect to Meet Kamski rather than to Connor's story at large -- and considering that this is the chapter where Hank makes one last appeal to Connor's deviancy by bring up his previous actions and it's the one where Connor attempts to find Jericho's location by using all the evidence he's gathered in his previous investigations, I would really like this conversation to also tie a bunch of things together in Connor's story.

#2: Let Connor find out about Cole little by little throughout his chapters with Hank

I know I've talked about this before, but to rehash that: currently, Connor finds out about Cole in Russian Roulette through a photo in Hank's house, which brings up Cole's name, as well as his dates of birth and death, in Connor's system. Then, should Connor and Hank meet in Battle for Detroit, Connor also knows how Cole died and that red ice and an android were involved... with no explanation as to how he got this information. This could be done by having Fowler mention something in Waiting for Hank or Last Chance Connor, having Hank avoid certain places (such as the hospital or the site of the accident) when him and Connor drive to someplace, and giving Connor the chance to cross-reference these pieces of information with police and medical records in his head during some of his investigations instead of dealing with whatever the actual investigation is. This mechanic would be required for Connor to unlock the option about Cole in Battle for Detroit, and would give Connor software instability while also running down the timer on the current investigation (remember here that the preconstruct/reconstruct abilities involve slowed time passage, not no time passage, so I have no reason to believe that this mechanic would work any differently). This would make Connor's investigations more difficult by forcing the player to balance out finding evidence about what happened to Cole and finding evidence for Jericho's location, both of which would be required to get the Survivors trophy when going down Connor's deviant path. This would also make it more likely that players would run out of time on investigations, which is currently one of the rarer outcomes for these chapters.

#1: Get rid of the Demonstration Kiss with North

In the demonstration, all the remaining members of Jericho are being held at gunpoint by human members of the US military, and will die unless you do something to convince the president (also a human) not to kill you. Kissing is one of the options you have if Markus and North became lovers in Freedom March and North is still alive at the end of the demonstration.

North deviated because she couldn't take being used by humans in a nonconsenually romantic/sexual manner anymore in a context where we know from the events of The Eden Club that a human absolutely could injure or kill an android.

This means that the demonstration kiss is basically just North's backstory, but worse... yet the aftermath is somehow still just as happy and celebratory and good as the aftermath of the sing option.

I don't really think there's anything that can be done about this except to just not have this option... with North. In a version of the game where Josh or Simon were romance options, I would be fine with Markus doing the demonstration kiss with one of them, because then no one would have a trauma that's getting completely recreated in a somehow worse way that's then brushed off like it's nothing.

#1: Either combine Gavin and Captain Allen together, or alter their character designs so they're more visually distinct

Currently, there are two things that visually distinguish these characters from each other: face shape/structure and clothing. Combined with the fact that these two characters never appear in a scene together, and take actions that make complete sense combined with the other's actions and personality, these two become very difficult to tell apart when you have some level of face blindness like I do.

Yes, this is a confession that I didn't realize these were separate characters when I first got into DBH. This is also a confession that I thought the scar on Gavin's face was just another piece of fanon for about a year, until I sat down and stared at his character model a bunch and realized that, yes, he did have a very faded scar across his face. The scar would absolutely work to distinguish them if it were made more visible (meaning that it would have to be from a more recent event).

#dbh meta

[neoyi]

Pokemon Pokemon Pokemon.

Part 1: https://neoyi.tumblr.com/post/701862985957801984/i-cannot-believe-the-school-principal-is-pulling-a

Part 2: https://neoyi.tumblr.com/post/702995488069287936/look-i-get-you-and-your-teachers-can-bond-to

Part 3: https://neoyi.tumblr.com/post/704016193905950720/god-would-someone-please-hug-avren-this-poor-kid

Okay, you know what game? You got me with that plot twist! You son of a gun!

This is endgame territory, so spoilers galore! More under the "Keep Reading."

To my surprise, Area Zero was very... pristine. I was kind of expecting dark tunnels, rocks, and/or caverns since it's a giant crater, but that's a stupid way of thinking that.

Why wouldn't life grow there after thousands of years of untouched nature? Of course there would be waterfalls and grass and Pokemon roaming around. It's also restricted, rarely touched by humans, so it wouldn't have many manmade structures either. It's weirdly kind of unnerving, but never let it be said nature isn't full of surprises.

Also the battle music here is a certified banger.

It's so damn cool to see Pokemon from distant past or in my copy, the distant future. Like we've seen glimpse of the former through fossils that can revive certain prehistoric Pokemon, Jurassic Park-style, so this is a bit of a step. My biggest disappointment is that I wished they could have teased this a bit more!

It's established a few of these past/future Pokemon have snuck out from Area Zero and into other parts of Paldea, and we do see a couple of them in their Titan forms. But imagine traveling around the world at any point past the tutorial, collecting Pokemon, and suddenly you run into one that looks like a robotic version of an already pre-existing one.

Maybe it's a new variation! Maybe it's a weird science experiment! At first, you don't know the answer, you just accept it as a type of Pokemon because they're all unique and varied like that. It's only when the plot reveals at the end after hours and hours and hours of playtime that you realize that no, these aren't natural and not of this time period.

How cool would that have been?

In any case, I think seeing new Pokemon that came from different time period is a stunningly novel idea. Man, I don't know how, but I really want to see more Pokemon from the distant past or future. I mean, Legends Arceus did something similar with Hisuian varieties that existed centuries past. Maybe we can get a Pokemon game in the distant future that elaborates on this or something.

I'm kind of used to Nintendo games not having voice acting, so the lack of doesn't bother me nearly as much as it does for others, but I agree scenes like these where you're controlling the character as your companions talk really could have been weighed favorably through spoken dialogue. Especially because the dialogue box is automatic and can be missed if you weren't paying attention.

Nemona, Penny, and Avren are constantly talking during your journey down Area Zero. You get to know bits and pieces of their personal lives that haven't been spoken for up until now. I ended up really enjoying this portion because it makes sense for them to just now talk about their lives - none of them know each other.

Prior to this, they were all students who just happened to go to the same school. Several times, Avren speaks of Nemona in a rather unapproachable, somewhat disdainful manner (presumably due to her ace status and rich background.) Then you have Penny who just came back from essentially a nearly two year suspension and have since largely kept to the sidelines. These are kids with completely different social and influential background that in any other circumstances, would be unlikely to join together if it weren't for you, the player character.

So you have these kids trying their damnest to work together in spite of the general what the fuckery going on Area Zero, and their vastly different upbringing. One of my favorite part is when Penny talks about her embarrassing father because he had the audacity to give her adorable nicknames ("Pen Pen"), something Avren envies greatly because he doesn't get that from his old man. In another conversation, Nemona has to emphasize that she's not some spoiled, rich kid and prefers battling to being pampered.

Like I love the way Penny speaks because she's abrasive and has no filter since she's been somewhat asocial and subtle. Or how Avren tries to boost his skills because the poor kid wants validation.

It adds a hell of a lot of depth to these characters and their growth, as well as an added complication of having to work together in a dangerous mission when they've barely been more than an arm's length away from each other. By the end of the game, you don't just have a group of loyal friends, you have a group that's just beginning a friendship. And that's beautiful, man.

MY BOY GETTING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

So I thought Professor Turo didn't connect Avren for years because he had successfully traveled to the future and couldn't return home. I figured he found a way to communicate, but that was the extent of what he could do. That's why he needed his son and PC's help in gathering the necessary materials as well as powering Miraidon back up in order to rework the time machine so he can safely return home.

But that's not what happened and what really did blew my goddamn mind!

Fuck you, man.

#pokemon #pokemon scarvi #neoyi talks

[less-than-hash]

This is a very broad question, but you've gone from working on crunchy RPGs (Deadfire) to working on immersive sims at Arkane (Deathloop), so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the similarities and differences in the approach to writing you have to adopt for the genres?

Sure!

There are a few shifts, and not all of them came with genre. One of the biggest actually came during Deadfire’s development, when we determined that we were going to fully voice the game. In games like Tyranny and the original Pillars, a lot of the dialogue was relatively baroque, often broken up with descriptive text, and usually quite long per node.

This does not work well when everything’s voiced. It’s hard for actors to get their mouths around, and the attention and stamina necessary to go through long lines (and control performance across them) can be difficult to maintain. Meanwhile, as soon as you get into descriptive prose, you’re breaking up what the player’s hearing, separating it from what they’re reading, muddling both. Which is (in part) why you might note that a lot of the Deadfire DLC dialogue tends to be shorter per node than in the base game and use a lot less description. 

For me, a major aspect of the shift from Deadfire to "DEATHLOOP” was about tone and style, since the latter aims to be much more modern and widely comic than the Pillars games. It took me a few months to shift gears, to learn to write in the language of “DEATHLOOP”. It was probably the minicom conversations that finally made things click for me, giving me a sense of how far I could push content.

Meanwhile, part of the player fantasy in Deadfire, is creating and embodying your own character, so the goal for the player options is to provide an array of possible responses that allow the player to express their character (AKA roleplay) without shattering the fiction. Colt, on the other hand, is a tightly defined character. There’s a little reactivity in how he responds based on player action, but it’s pretty limited. 

There are some significant structural/mechanical differences, however. For instance, we have a lot of crosstalk in “DEATHLOOP”, where characters are speaking at the same time, interrupting and overlapping one another, which is generally not even possible in dialog in the Obsidian RPGs. This requires thinking of scenes a bit more like a screenwriter than an IF writer. Except...

...you have to write most scenes in most immersive sims with the assumption that they can be interrupted at any time. Ideally, the characters then fire a bark appropriate to the interruption (hearing a noise, spotting Colt, or the like). So we spent a lot of time thinking in terms of our systems and how we might create barks that interplay with them in ways that made the world feel more alive. The response of an enemy to seeing the shimmer of an invisible player is different from that of one hearing something explode in the distance.

There’s a little of this in Deadfire, but it’s pretty limited. 

In text, we tried to keep the notes in “DEATHLOOP” short(...ish) and provided even shorter summaries that called out the most important info in each document, both because the game doesn’t pause (it’s multiplayer), and because it’s an action game first and foremost. There’s also an... intimacy?... to the perspective of the notes in “DEATHLOOP”. Every note in that game has a reason it exists, a concrete bit of narrative (sometimes shallow or silly, but always present). Fantasy RPGs are a bit more flexible with this; there’s a player assumption that the world is full of books to read that exist primarily to be read by the player. That’s something we wanted to avoid in “DEATHLOOP” (even if it existed to an extent in the Dishonored games). 

I’m not going to dig too deeply into the Floaty Words (tm) here, except to say that there’s a little overlap between them and points of interest in Pillars (when you click on a part of the scenery and get a short text description), in that they both exist, at least in part, to deepen and call attention to aspects of the visible game world. Our word count limits on Floaty Words were much tighter than Points of Interest, and the tone much more specific and abstract.

Finally, there’s a fair amount of story that can be told through exploration and the environment in first person that would require text in isometric. We don’t, for instance, have to spend words describing Egor’s bedside bookshelf full of clocks because the player can stick their nose right up against it. We don’t have to describe in text what a pair of Wenjies are doing, because the player is able to watch those characters move around and interact with the environment. That stuff still has to be thought about and implemented, and as a tool it can be both empowering (and immersive) and limiting (every animation costs money). Hope that was informative!

And yes, I’m contractually obligated to style the title “DEATHLOOP” every single time.

(But not really.) <3 <3 <#

#narrative design #narrative #gamedev #Pillars of Eternity #deathloop

[ninewheels]

I don't think I've posted about this before (way back when I first had the idea) but here's my pitch for an Eternal Darkness TV series:

One season for each of the three Ancients that Pious can align himself with. Each season has the same basic plot and structure--Alex investigating Edward's death, finding the Tome and reading about past incidents until she's ready to fight the Ancient--but the details change.

The season premiere would always be about Alex coming to the mansion and searching the place until she finds the Tome, and then we see how Pious aligned himself with an Ancient. The Ancient would be different each time of course, but so would other things. The scenes would play out the same way, but the dialogue, the way things are filmed, little visual and aural touches, would all change to suit the given Ancient's modus operandi. In particular, the characterization of Pious would shift in such a way as to emphasize why he would pick which Ancient over the others. I'd want these details to be subtle enough that if you went a long time between seasons you might not notice them, but prominent enough that if you watched the seasons close together, you wouldn't feel like you were watching the same episode over again.

From there, the season would unfold with each episode focusing on a different chapter of the Tome, but each season would feature entirely different chapters. (Seasons would probably be about 6-8 episodes total.) The ten other player characters from the game would be spread out over the three seasons, and be complemented with newly-created characters, drawing partially from cut chapters from the game. New settings should be added, and we probably wouldn't visit the same place twice in one season--the feeling of revisiting a location and being surprised by differences could be done across seasons rather than over a single run of the story. Unlike the other characters, Edward would probably get an episode every season because he's important enough to warrant it, and because his possession of the Tome is how it enters the story in the first place. I wouldn't want to rely too much on the "subtle changes to the same scenes" gimmick, so his episodes would probably all have very different versions of how he found the Tome.

I'd want the tone of each season to shift slightly in accordance with its Ancient as well. Each play-through of the game couldn't change the game mechanics, but we could achieve a similar effect to that in a TV series. The Chattur'gha season would lean more in the direction of action-horror, like a zombie movie, where the feeling of fear mostly comes from constant overwhelming physical danger. The Ulyaoth season would introduce magick and focus on characters trying to understand the threat they're up against, which they only can to a limited extent, but the horror would be in just knowing how out-matched they are in the bigger picture. (A problem I have with the game is that everything is a bit too clearly-explained and grounded in literal terms; I'd try to fix that.) And the Xel'lotath season would hardly include any fighting at all, but be rooted in psychological head-trips, constantly keeping the characters and audience uncertain of what comes next on a moment-to-moment basis. The seasons would probably go in that order as well. Chattur'gha is a simple introduction to the story, Ulyaoth elaborates a bit on the cosmology and lore, and Xel'lotath should definitely be last because it's easier to undermine audience's expectations when they've had two seasons to form some expectations.

This shift in tone would also inform which characters are in which season: Michael Edwards and Edwin Lindsey, for instance, would be perfect for the Chattur'gha season because they're tasty in a fight. If an Edward Roivas episode were in only one season, it would be the Ulyaoth season because he's the one collecting all this information and passing it to Alex. Maximillian Roivas would be talked about in the other seasons but his episode would be in the Xel'lotath one since it's all about his complete mental breakdown. The nature of the final confrontation with Pious and the Ancient at the end of each season would also change in nature to suit the theme.

Finally, shameless self-promotion: if you enjoyed this why not check out my Let's Play of Eternal Darkness. It's eight years old now and it was only my second LP, but I revisited it recently and I actually think I did an all right job, which is not something I easily say about my own work. That link is to the subtitled LP, which I did first. There's also two versions I did with voice commentary, (one without commentary cut from the cutscenes, one uncut) but I never felt I was very good at that. Maybe that's just because I don't like my own voice and verbal ticks. Anyway, I'm working on getting better at it.

#Eternal Darkness #Eternal Darkness Sanity's Requiem #Alexandra Roivas #Alex Roivas #Mantorok #Edward Roivas #Pious Augustus #Silicon Knights #Tome of Eternal Darkness #Chattur'gha #Xel'lotath #Ulyaoth #Nintendo #also since this is all pie in the sky anyway my ideal casting would include #Florence Pugh as Alex and Mark Rylance as Edward and Willem Dafoe as Pious

[rickie-the-storyteller]

Happy Storyteller Saturday! What would you say is your favorite part of your writing process? How do you create your characters and once you do, what is your favorite kinds of scenes to write with them?

Happy Storyteller Saturday to you too!

There is a lot I enjoy about the writing process... I love the initial brainstorming of ideas of places the story could go... I also love to create characters and develop them into people. Something that I like to do (and have been doing for my Steph's Crew series) is come up with the main story, come up with a structure, and then think about potential conversations that my characters might have in each of those stages/moments in the story before I actually do any writing. I've posted some of the dialogues of my Steph's Crew story, and once I've posted all of the conversations in order, I'll get to posting the actual chapters.

My process when it comes to creating characters kind of varies? I'll be 100% honest with you - for my main character Steph, I used a character generator that I found online lol. That was about a year ago, when I first got the idea for this story. It gave me a good starting point: I got a name, age, basic backstory and a few rough ideas for a personality. A lot of stuff from there has been added, removed, or changed around... I feel like I'm better at developing characters than I am at creating them. Starting is the hardest part.

I get a lot of inspiration from my life, actually. I put a little bit of myself in every character I write. I mean, they aren't all like me, but they all represent different things to me. So for example:

Stephanie

Passionate, argumentative, knows what she wants and fights hard to get it

Cares deeply about her friends and wants to protect them

Gives good solid advice, learns through experience

Tends to hold on to the past (and can hold a grudge for an insane amount of time lol. I don't think I'm as bad as her, but still)

Bret

Really wants to do and be better, but struggles a lot with the process

Can be quite careless and thoughtless, but always ends up regretting it in the end

Deeply sensitive (though he may not seem like it at first glance)

Super creative and artistic

Loves music

Elise

(Probably the most similar to me lol.)

Major bookworm (down to her obsession with reading fantasy novels late into the night. She refers to it as her "fantasy-novel-before-bedtime time" when Bret calls her in the middle of the night to ask her for help with something)

Curious af (always wants to know more, always asking questions)

Kind of quirky and awkward, but owns it lol

Introverted, with a quiet confidence

Smart girl (really good student, works really hard and genuinely gets passionate about learning)

Tries hard at everything, kind of a perfectionist

Cares super deeply about her friends, and wants to help everyone out all the time

Used to be in a choir, but stopped (partially due to a toxic environment)

Super close with sibling (for her, it's Adam, and in my case, it's my younger sister, Hannah. She's my absolute best friend!)

She has this inexplicable (to some of the others lol) crush on Bret (bless his overly chaotic soul), and eventually ends up getting with him. Could be me subconsciously giving her my bad boy phase (I used to be into that aesthetic, but I grew out of it lol)

Dylan

He's black

Lives with a younger sibling and a single parent

Comes from a broken home (divorced parents)

Tends to bottle his emotions

Doesn't feel comfortable about sharing his problems sometimes

Alice

Sarcastic sense of humour

Very insecure, and has this tendency to compare herself with others (in her case, her genius twin sister Mary)

Uses humour as a coping mechanism sometimes (uses it to mask her insecurity)

Puts pressure on herself to be perfect (or at least make up for the areas she lacks in)

Feels bad when she fails, but is determined to improve and tries hard to change and be better than she was before

Yeah, these are all the ways that my characters are like me. I think it's fun to incorporate little pieces of your life into your writing (whether its just general stuff, or really specific things like the fantasy novel thing. I actually used to do that lol).

I don't know if I have a specific favourite type of scene that I like to write for my characters... mostly I just like it when they have good chemistry together, and when a conversation flows in a satisfying way that showcases all their individual personalities well. Like, I love to incorporate a bit of banter, some joking and teasing. I love the more lighthearted scenes. And I have included some romantic subplots in this story as well because I love love❤️️ (I enjoy writing the lovey dovey scenes, but it's slightly awkward for me, too, since I seriously lack experience in that department, so I don't really know if I'm capturing it right. It's fun, though).

Hope this answers your question! Thank you so much for the ask.

#rickie-the-storyteller #storyteller saturday #writerblr #writing #character development #original characters #steph's crew #character asks #ask game #ask

[daisyachain]

I read Haruhi Suzumiya as a reaction to Evangelion specifically. Am I wrong? Maybe! Eva used and/or started a lot of real common tropes in anime/manga/light novels. The points I’ve got in my favour is that Nagato is explicitly a Rei clone (Ayanami and Nagato both being the names of battleships according to TvTropes). The jargon and mysterious vague organizations draw a more tenuous link (The Organization and the Data Thought Entity ring of NERV or SEELE). Kyon for his part is an anti-Shinji, an aggressively cynical and genre-aware protag instead of the most naive boy alive.

[[MORE]]

If Haruhi is an Eva parody, we’ve got a pretty easy Yuki = Rei and Haruhi = Asuka love triangle. Mikuru is harder, but Mikuru (big) has elements of Misato. Taniguchi and Kunikida are pretty clearly Toji and Kensuke. Random classmates whose names I always have to look up. Leaving, drumroll, Koizumi as Kaworu. No explanation needed there.

The closest Haruhi Suzumiya has to a running plot is Kyon and Haruhi’s romance. They butt heads, they barely seem to like each other, and every arc has to end with them reconciling or making some kind of choice that brings them closer together. Similar to Shinji/Asuka it kind of fills the role of Only They Can Deal With Each Other. Except it’s actually a fun little friendship instead of a dumb annoying godawful mess because I hate Eva and it’s a pain to even think about. They’re literally destined to be together via time loops and the very fabric of the universe as woven by Haruhi.

Only, the love polygon that was such a big part of the Eva (especially the fan response to Eva) is integrated into Haruhi despite the foregone conclusion. Disappearance is an in-universe KyonYuki AU. Kyon has to accept Yuki’s feelings and reject her advances to save the day. Kyon being horny for Mikuru is a recurring (annoying) plot point where an excess of attention or kindness towards her triggers whatever plot-driving conflict with Haruhi that is going to happen in that story.

So the closest thing to a recurring plot in Haruhi is the Kyon/Haruhi romance, and one of the major recurring complications (after Haruhi being an unmanageable nuisance) is Kyon straying from Haruhi. Both of the female SOS brigade members are threats to the endgame that Kyon has to deal with to win the day. Except—there’s a third SOS brigade member! Koizumi.

Koizumi’s a parody as much as a character played straight just like everyone else. He’s the soft-spoken ambiguously motivated bishie that starts with Kaworu but trickles down through a series of White Haired Anime Boys. Canonically he’s got a crush on Haruhi and handles it through OHS-prohibited levels of passive aggression and insinuating that Kyon is into her.

That’s not the whole story. There’s a running gag of Koizumi borderline flirting with Kyon like Kaworu does in his scenes. So! Just because of who he’s parodying, Koizumi is as much implied to have a thing for Kyon as Mikuru. Which means that following the structure of Haruhi, there has to be an arc where Kyon and Koizumi’s friendship is tested and leads to Kyon definitely choosing Haruhi over him. I don’t think it’s happened yet, because Koizumi never gets his own spotlight. Also hard to do, since Koizumi likes Haruhi as much as Kyon. The romantic conflict goes two ways.

What does set Koizumi apart from the girls isn’t his unavailability as a romantic interest, it’s the role he has in the plot. Mikuru, Haruhi, and Yuki rarely chat with Kyon. Mikuru is classified, Haruhi decrees instead of conversing, Yuki doesn’t say anything ever. Leaving Koizumi to handle most of the dialogue Kyon has with another person. He’s got a strong presence throughout the various stories despite not getting his spotlights (like Mikuru and Yuki) because someone has to talk about all the cool math stuff the author found in his old textbooks that day. He doesn’t need a colour story because he’s always there.

The closest thing we get to a Koizumi episode is the Surprise arc. It’s been a while since I reread, but I remember the climax being Kyon and Koizumi storming the school to rescue Haruhi from the anti-SOS. There’s no conflict separating them at any point in the arc, Koizumi isn’t ever tempted to join the anti-SOS or whatever. It just doesn’t line up with Yuki or Mikuru’s roles. I don’t think that there are ever going to be more Haruhi Suzumiya books after that one 2020 bunch, they’re just a silly few parody novels that occasionally have some adventure or puzzles. Still, it’s so obviously making fun of Eva that it feels wrong for it not to close the circle and have a short Kaworu story. For old times’ sake.

#kelsey liveblogs haruhi suzumiya

[beneditahipolito]

Brainstorming - 2nd Idea Mood Board

One-Sided Romance

As for my second idea, the narrative can begin in two different ways: either the couple is having an argument, throwing tantrums and getting pretty intense OR with the girlfriend/boyfriend (one of them) crying or very down after the break-up. Both of these two initial scenes are then followed by a montage with cuts to different moments and flashbacks in their relationship, fading into each other with a black screen, trying to find the same rhythm of a heartbeat.

Once again, this is the mind map I made to structure my idea in terms of: inspiration, genre, characters, locations, soundtrack, dialogue and, of course, a simple overview of the narrative.

Inspiration & Genre: A piece about the highs and lows of a one sided romance choreographed by The Carberrys on TikTok. Also inspired by "Marriage Story" and "Euphoria" (argument between Nate Jacobs & Cassie Howard).

1st Inspiration: Short film by The Carberrys (on TikTok).

This short single filmed clip depicts, in a choreographed form, the positive and negative aspects of a one sided love communicated through movement and a constant change of scenario. The characters' closeness and overall lighting and atmosphere is what I first pictured when thinking of the film opening, especially since romance and drama are my favourite genres.

2nd Inspiration: "Marriage Story" - Noah Baumbach.

This film, directed by Noah Baumbach, gave me an idea of what to film for the argument scenes, as well as a few of the happy ones, however, my film opening will be between two relatively young people, in the beginning of their 20s.

3rd Inspiration: "Euphoria" Season 2, Episode 4 - Sam Levinson

Comparing this scene with the "Marriage Story", the couple is much younger, around the end of their high school years, but the acting is almost equally as aggressive. The one aspect I want to take from it is that they seem comfortable enough with each other to wear more intimate clothes, Cassie, the girl, having her hair all messy, Nate in his underwear, etc. As for what inspired me for the narrative, that is the way they break into the argument.

Characters: A couple or very close friendship, could be opposite or same sex.

The couple/friendship being very loving and happy - Film: Boy Meets World

Arguments and tense moments (couple or friendship) - Film: A Marriage Story

Setting/Location: At home and public spaces like the park or a restaurant.

At home, here specifically it's the kitchen.

Public space: park or a garden.

Public space: restaurant or coffee shop. (Pictures from Pinterest)

Dialogue: overall the conversations are muffled, whether they are arguments and discussions or happy moments, like laughter. Mostly overtaken by music - soundtrack.

Soundtrack: As for the soundtrack, like previously mentioned, it is mostly over the conversations between the characters. If the film opening begins with the negative memories of the relationship (still not set in stone), the melody will be more aggressive with a strong electric guitar with a loud drum beat, mimicking a heart beating throughout the montage of the negative memories, that then calms down and where the beat suddenly stops at the end of the scene and the character, which is heartbroken/sad or even extremely upset (angry), opens their eyes. I think Olivia Rodrigo's song genre perfectly depicts the "teenage" angry feel and so I will try to create a similar song melody for this film opening.

Anger/Strong beat song inspiration: bad idea right? - Olivia Rodrigo

Second Inspiration: good 4 u - Olivia Rodrigo

#Youtube

[world-cinema-research]

Final Course Essay - Grant Montoya

Of all the films we were able to watch this semester, these chosen four best illustrate my personal insight into the evolutionary process films have undergone in the past decades. Each are similar in structure I'd say, but each are very different in which aspects are most highlighted or worked on.

The oldest of the bunch (Five Easy Pieces) was released in 1970 and is a part of the American New Wave film era. Many films from the seventies undermine their own narrative goals by mixing irrelevant plot details and stylistic choices that clash with the main story. This is seen in the character dialogue, atmosphere, and plot, and these creative choices have seemed to be inseparable from the way movies are created. Having picture along with words and audio simply allows directors to integrate challenging things!

Here, the character lead Bobby Dupea says this: "Where the hell do you get the ass to tell anybody anything about class, or who the hell's got it, or what she typifies! You shouldn't even be in the same room as her, you pompous celibate!" We never see the spoken-to character again. This happens more than a few times throughout the movie.

"I felt that the character that I was trying to write the movie about should be about a man who was condemned to search for the meaning of his life- and not a very happy search at that."  - Bob Rafelson

Five years later emerges the film Deep Red, a film that is best described as “the underrated Jaws that didn’t quite make it.” This was near the end of the New Hollywood Cinema Era, entering the blockbuster era. In the film we see an increased use of associative horror methods, especially touched up by the director because it is his natural style. We see this in the music cueing, imagery, scenery, and other subtle conventions.

This article informs us in short that Deep Red was a transitional film in Argento’s career, bridging the gap between his earlier gialli and his later leanings towards the supernatural in features like Suspiria, Inferno, and Phenomena. The thing I like most about this film is how it reflects the daring nature of directors of the era, mega franchises haven't been established yet, and the notable, most-referenced flicks of today were still in the making. A simple slasher of a movie such as this is true to the director's vision because there wasn't much to replicate or steal from.

In the mid-eighties, the VHS era was in its mid-life and Blue Velvet was there to endear audiences with its strange vibe. The power of music was harnessed in this film, and like Argento, the power of association via the resurfacing of images, audio, etc. was apparent in the directing of the film.

Frank Booth - "Have you ever been to pussy heaven?"

Out of all films, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions were most prominent from here onward, in this instance there was a strong presence of inescapable masculinity, roles that were inflated and satirized in the most general way concerning characters that were supposed to be part of a thriller/mystery film. 

1986 was one of the most progressive years for the feminist movement, with protests that aimed to keep abortion and birth control legal. “The largest march for women’s rights in U.S. history occurred on March 9th in Washington, D.C." Although Blue Velvet wasn't based off of this event, the transformative years of the US and the arrival of a new digital age probably gave filmmakers a lot of inspiration and motivation to implement these new themes into their movies...

Finally, enter Punch-Drunk Love, the newest film I have watched in this class (2002). I think it perfectly epitomizes everything that even the modern age films today are trying to go for, which is relatability with elements of surprise. The style, lead, and visual chops of the films today are praised more so than the content of their character or the deeper message of the movie. Punch-Drunk Love lands itself in a healthy midrange, while even referencing a one-off event concerning a man 4 years from its release.

"In 1999, the civil engineer from California catapulted into fame after he earned a whopping 1.2 million airline miles by taking advantage of a Healthy Choice mail-in promotion by purchasing a ridiculous amount of pudding." The idea of a single man taking advantage of a coorperation is a wacky instance of the situations we can find ourselves in, in a super modernized world.

While the artsy side of films grew, you still expected a more polished narrative than from something many years before it. To me, the cultural model of Indulgence vs. Restraint is followed but through a more personal way, as the film represents the journey of a person who cannot thrive in an indulgent society. I do not think necessarily that my chosen films nationally represent cultures, however, I can see how this could be the case if my film selections were a bit different and held those discussions.

"Punch-Drunk Love captures the contingency at the heart of post-romance romance. Instead of the layers of expectation habituated into institutional engagements of two subjects meeting, there is the accident of the event of love within which various parties are arrayed with various affects and desires." Even here, the author of a critical evaluation of this movie does one of the deepest dives beneath the surface of any critical resource I've seen yet. After I read this, I wondered just how much I was missing or under appreciating the films I had watched once and got nothing from. To what extent are directors pouring meaning into the meaningless side events in a film? How much have I misinterpreted?

After taking the same writing approach for a couple of months now for many different films, I see now what the course has aimed to achieve and I think it has done so in the best way, a way that only social media could allow. Firstly, social media gives the sense of being a free writer, or making observations of your own volition. The effect is an easy writing process that feels natural, and sometimes I go beyond the expectations and answer my own questions. By collecting critical, historical, textual, and contemporaneous events for a film and listing them out on a platform with your thoughts, it’s clear that a greater understanding of the film era landscape, people involved, deeper messages, technological limitations, and style of contemporary films will be learned about. Feedback from classmates is the cherry on top.

The way I see things, movie discussion, as well as music discussion, will seemingly never be an interest that the majority will partake in. I never hear about the use of Tumblr outside of this course, and I have never had an account before it. There are many independent media discussion forums on the internet, and I think the best hope for a film buff would be to find a niche online and contribute what they can in their little corner of the internet. In critical discussion of film, people not only sharpen their writing skills but also immerse themselves in cultures old and new; it is simply a learning experience like no other.

#Youtube

[bluesadansey]

I’m not really in the mood to start watching something new even though I technically have a lot I want to lol, so on a whim because I feel like it I’ve started a TVD rewatch attempt let’s see if I follow through! (I’ve only seen the whole show (like 7.5 seasons I didn’t see all of s8) once but I’ve seen majority of s2-3 eps multiple times and a select handful of s1 4 and 5 eps a couple times each and most s6 eps twice since I did a rewatch of just that season in December (technically I did not finish it but that wasn’t about my follow through I just didn’t have hbomax access for a while and by the time I had it back was focused on other things again) 

so anyway. notes I took rewatching the first couple episodes (my plan rn is to Not lb in the format I sometimes do because I think I’ll exhaust myself/my commitment, instead will try to either write some notes during or takeaways directly after watching the eps when I feel like it and share intermittently) 

Pilot 

-Elena Bonnie and Caroline are all so pretty here such pretty faces and pretty shiny hair all around 

-really enjoy how cynical Elena is even as she’s trying to put on a brave “today I will smile and it will be believeable” face. especially her talking about people’s reactions to hers and Jeremy’s grief and the “the rest of the world has moved on” quote near the end I can (unfortunately) relate to a lot of this so much more than the first time I watched the show :(

-Caroline’s immediate interest in Stefan + “it’s not going to happen” I do lol knowing how this all plays out :) 

-Bonnie’s ‘psychic’ ness so cute but also her predicting happiness… ironic not in a happy way. This being one of the episodes if not the episode where she’s happiest I think… 

-Bonlena moments are very cute in the pilot 

-running up the hill wasted on a boring moment in the pilot is so funny, but I do really like it ending with (in a sense) the first steferine moment 

-so much bad and poorly aged dialogue. obviously. but then glimmers of really good dialogue out of nowhere 

-I do sort of wish Damon’s crow powers had been a consistent thread. I don’t remember it being a thing after early s1? Would have been so funny 

-Vicki was a standout to me rewatching this. Knowing what happens to her is so sad… Matt should have died instead of her and She should have been around for the whole show fr 

-Jenna is an angel 

-the dialogue is worse than I remembered overall but I’m going to say the visuals/effects are better than I remembered? 

-also I actually rewatched the Pll pilot a couple days ago so was struck a bit by the similar structure of some things, they both open with the blonde girl who is killed/missing (only for TVD it’s a random girl we have no attachment to, for Pll it’s obviously Alison who is a Presence. and then it’s much later in the TVD pilot that we see Katherine who is the char with Alison haunting status for chars in s1), the focus on the liars but especially Aria/Elena’s attempts to move on from grief general quotes about moving on from the past, similar structuring to some of the Aria&Mike/Elena&Jeremy scenes. the funeral at the end of the Pll ep v Vicki being taken to the hospital at the end of TVD. There are others 

-it also was very funny to me that they stress the “passion” of SE vs Matt and Elena in the pilot considering that is going to become a tag line for DE

The Night of the Comet 

-Elena and Stefan waking up and both thinking ‘wow it’s so weird how I see color/am not as depressed as usual. and it’s all because I remembered what it’s like to be horny’ is hilarious sorry

-I am mad at that teacher I was mad on Elena’s behalf last episode now I’m mad on Jenna’s! Leave Jenna alone 

-the way Damon put his hand on Elena’s back/shoulders in their first meeting to guide her + general manner towards her like makes me uncomfortable. Which I guess is the intention at this point 

-Jenna looks so good I need her 

-when Elena is telling Jenna about Stefan being on the rebound and her responding that “at least it’s another woman wait until you date a guy with mommy issues or cheating issues or amphetamine issues” find this hilarious because Stefan DOES in fact have mommy issues as we will learn, and the show treats his blood issues as metaphorical addiction issues. cheating issues no but his whole transference deal with Katherine-Elena is maybe not so different you could make the argument? like it’s not that but there’s emotional dishonesty in a way. 

-also I just enjoy Elena and Jenna so much as a duo.

-I really like Bonnie’s outfit passing out Night of the Comet fliers with Elena 

-Bonnie touching Stefan and getting bad vibes if such a mood 

-there’s quite a bit of language iin these two episodes that’s aged badly but Caroline’s “druggies are the biggest attention whores” (paraphrased) line about Vicki particularly egregious 

-Gravity playing in the SE kiss is so funny because I first watched this pre Community so now I have the Paradigms association. lol

-but also Stefan’s “it was epic” line my brain made an association to Leronica “I thought our story was epic” and SE could Never be what Logan x Veronica is smh so I was a little offended 

*Also watched Friday Night Bites but actually watched most of that while working out and didn’t take notes. And I have reflections but, not that there isn’t plenty to be said about this episode but I’ll take a pass rn* 

#s speaks #s rewatches tvd #I feel good about this decision I think it’s time. And I do think I’ll follow through! #I might take breaks but am *feeling* it / committed #(convo with Maze about how we’d both like to rewatch legacies but are also scared to might have triggered it. #I’m not quite ready for that but I think I’m finally ready for this)

[georgewfmpyear2]

Just like with determining what skills the player has equipped I wanted to have an easy way of determining who the speaker of a line of dialogue is without getting messy with structures and I decided to try it in a similar to how I set up the skill system by using strings. I thought that the best way to determine a speaker would be to use the first letter of a string to say whos speaker, if I put a capital A it would be the author speaking and if I put a capital W it would be the wizard speaking.

I created a simple function that takes in a string as an input and then uses get substring starting from index 0 and at length 1 which means that the new substring will just be the first character and then check if that character is a W, if it is a W then speaker is set to wizard and if not then speaker is set to author. it then turns the given string into a character array, removes the first index, and then turns it back into a regular string and then gives that as the dialogue output and gives the speaker as the speaker output. I then append the two outputs together and print them on screen to see if its working which it has.

What this system means is that I can have a structure that consists entirely of string arrays and nothing else since the speaker of each line is determined within the lines themselves instead of needing to do it through separate variables in the structure which I think could get messy.

I very quickly brought this system on screen by creating a new widget with one text element for the speakers name and one text element for the dialogue, both simply being binded to the variables speaker name and dialogue respectively, with a small difference to dialogue I'll mention later.. I put in a custom event which takes in speaker name and dialogue as inputs which it then sets to speaker name and dialogue within the widget itself. It then also sets current dialogue index to 0, this integer is used to make the dialogue appear on the screen one letter at a time by setting the on screen text to be a substring of current dialogue, with its length set at current dialogue index so another letter will appear each time it goes up. The Boolean dialogue displaying? is then set to true and the custom event next dialogue index runs. This checks if dialogue displaying is true, waits a very short duration and then increments current dialogue index by 1 which means the next letter will appear on screen. It then checks if current dialogue index is equal to the length (how many characters it has) of current dialogue. If it is then dialogue being displayed is set to false and if not then the custom event runs again for another letter to appear.

I changed the dialogue manager to be a pawn class so that it could take input from the player and then added an event from when the right spell input action is made since that's tied to the right mouse click for when spells are being used in other parts of the game. When the right mouse button is clicked it checks if dialogue is being displayed in the widget. If true then it runs the end dialogue event in the widget which sets current dialogue index to the length of current dialogue and sets dialogue displayed to false, ending that current line. If dialogue displayed if false meaning that the line is already over, it checks the length of the conversation array(this includes all line for the current scene) and if the player hasn't reached the end it runs the start dialogue function which is the same as it was at the star but instead of giving speaker name and finished dialogue as outputs it runs them directly into the new dialogue custom event in the widget. If the player has reached the end of the conversation it runs the function with a blank string as the input so no more dialogue appears on screen.

This is the quickest I've ever set up a dialogue system and code wise its the cleanest and most efficient one I've set up and I don't think I'll have much problem at all creating longer dialogue moments out of it since I can just give one string array for each conversation rather than needing at least two arrays to determine the speaker of the line and other things. The next main problems with the dialogue system will come from the visual elements, the models and the subtle animations which I will start working on quite soon.

[im-the-punk-who]

i think the thing i struggle with the most in my writing is that i’m an incredibly formulaic person in reality but I love writing that feels spontaneous. I often feel like I am trapped in a pattern of writing and struggle to both express the idea behind what I am writing and the act of writing itself as its own form of expression.

#i think that is whats been the most difficult thing about this exchange fic - and why im having such trouble writing recently #all of my writing feels like it falls into the exact same pattern but i keep putting myself into the same position #because of the way that plots form in my head and scenes construct themselves #are all very structurally similar to each other - and the way that dialogue and scenes play out and come to conclusions #all seem very similar right now and its something im realyl struggling as i continue to hone my writing #that ive found a strategy and style of writing that works well and that i realyl think is quite good - but that i feel im using too often #and so is becoming so formulaic and almost monotonous to write adn i feel like it would be #not boring but unsurprising and less organic to read yknow #anywho milo struggles to write lmaooooo #personal post