#but the level to which I sensed? let's just say about on a scale with HughNate which is THE otp & nate being the special fave | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sebbyisland · 10 months

Text

A One-of-a-Kind Affection: Skip to Loafer 53

This chapter revealed a LOT about Shima’s character so let’s break it down because oh my god. OH my god.

As was implied in the last page of the previous chapter, Shima is seriously put off guard by his conversation with Fumi. He can’t get over her comment: “Mitsumi-chan isn’t good at anything besides studying, is she?” She directly contradicts how Shima views Mitsumi, and thus prompts him to reevaluate his feelings.

To him, Mitsumi “has this image of always being right.” Keep in mind, Shima has already seen Mitsumi at her worst— from the very beginning, when she got lost in Tokyo! Shima has been there when Mitsumi failed, struggled, or was embarrassed with herself, and each time he only saw the girl who could pick herself up and run towards her goals, loafers in hand. He not only watched these things happen, but tried to give her a helping hand when she needed it, whether it was to encourage her, or help smooth out an awkward social situation. When Shima says Mitsumi “has this image of always being right” he doesn’t mean she is literally always right, but something with much more depth. Shima thinks Mitsumi, as a person, is fundamentally always right and good. Even when she fails. Even when she struggles. These are all things that make up Mitsumi, and therefore are always good (this guy. i can't).

The thing is, Shima himself is not even aware of just how highly he thinks of Mitsumi. He can acknowledge Mitsumi’s strengths and weaknesses, but unlike, say, Fumi, her closest and longest friend, he can't conceptualize objectively seeing Mitsumi's traits as anything other than positive. He likes her personality to the point it borders on putting her on a pedestal. This discrepancy between his opinion on Mitsumi and another close friend of Mitsumi causes him to question who IS Mitsumi, if not what he's been thinking this whole time?

To verify, he asks his friend Mukai, who basically repeats Fumi's words. Now Shima knows this is not a question of who is Mitsumi as a person, but who is Mitsumi to Shima?

(Shouout to Mukai for really helping Shima reach this critical break-through!)

When Mukai brings up the possibility of romance, Shima leaps to reject it because he is uncomfortable with romantic attraction itself.

Besides Mitsumi, romantic attraction always came from people who didn’t really know him and/or didn’t really care to know him. This had the opposite affect, and made Shima feel lonely and unloved. Unlike the most of the people Shima has dated, he actually really likes Mitsumi-chan as a person. There's an emphasis on liking her as a person because these are things he sees as absent or optional in romantic attraction. To describe his feelings for Mitsumi as romance discredits Mitsumi and what she means to him, which is why he asks with a frustrated expression, "Why does it always come back to romance?" Why does "liking someone a lot" have to be romantic?

Mukai hears this and recognizes that Shima seems to see “liking someone as a person” and “liking someone romantically” as separate things, so he tries to compare notes as to how he views romance vs how Shima views romance. On a scale of liking someone "a lot" to "not really" Shima places romance at the very bottom! Romance doesn't mean shit in comparison to friendship, or whatever it is he feels for Mitsumi. This makes sense because, again, Shima understands romantic attraction at best as a surface-level understanding of a person, and at worst as a detriment to the relationship(see: his parents). So there's no way he can like Mitsumi romantically AND as a person.

Mukai explains to Shima that he sees "liking someone as a person is a baseline," which aligns more closely to the common social perception of relationships. You start with liking the general vibes someone has, and then you becomes friends, and then becoming lovers is like the peak of a relationship's level of intimacy and affection. What's interesting is that both boys are correct about their perception of love. Even though Shima doesn't fully agree with Mukai, talking with him provides a new perspective on romance that Shima didn't consider before. Now he can finally consider that romance can add to a realationship's existing intimacy, not detract from it.

For most of the people in the story, as well as the audience, this might seem obvious, but for Shima this is incredibly novel and important, because it means that

Liking Mitsumi romantically doesn't mean he stops liking her as a person

Romantic attraction is another form of intimacy, not a performance or surface-level interaction.

When Mukai describes Mitsumi's feelings as a "one-of-a-kind" affection, he means it in a conventionally romantic way. Shima, on the other hand, understands Mitsumi is one-of-a-kind because he's never had a relationship or feelings like he does with her. He knows Mitsumi cares about him as a person, but before his conversation with Mukai, he didn't consider how romance can be another way of showing that you care for someone.

Romance between his parents only showed how much his father didn't care about his mom. Romance with the girls from school only showed how much they didn't really care about him. But Mitsumi fell in love with Shima because she cares about him, not despite of it. This is completely foreign territory for Shima. If romantic love is also a form of intimacy, then how is that any different from regular platonic love, or best friends? What does romantic attraction even look like?

As Shima recollects all the moments with Mitsumi that are dear to him, he wonders if what he viewed as "caring for someone as a person" were also romantic. Is it romantic to save extra food for someone else to have? Is it romantic to bring someone a souvenir when they go out of town? Is it romantic to teach someone how to hold a crab? These questions don't really have clear cut answers. Only Shima is able to decide what these things mean for him.

I want to bring your attention back to this crab, though. Besides being an adorable little crustacean, Shima's interaction with the crab directly parallels his journey trying to recontextualize romance.

In this scene, the crab is symbolic for romantic attraction. Shima awkwardly holds the crab Mitsumi gives him and expresses that this is an unfamiliar situation for him, just as receiving romantic affection from Mitsumi is a new and concept for him. Mitsumi is content with being able to share the crab (her feelings) with him and getting an honest answer back. The large panel that zooms in on Mitsumi looking down at the crab in Shima's hands draws attention to how content and happy she is spending time with Shima. It further emphasizes that their relationship, romantic or platonic, is about simply enjoying each other's company.

Even though Mitsumi tells Shima how to hold a crab, he ends up agitating the crab, which then pinches him and leave. I interpret this as when Shima initially started dating Mitsumi, he ended up treating it haphazardly, which caused Mitsumi to catch-on and break up with him. Finally, when Mukai, the person Shima was recently discussing romance and Mitsumi with, asks him about the crab, Shima responds in a daze, "I don't know," mirroring how currently, Shima doesn't know how he feels about romantic attraction, or how it might apply to him.

Furthermore, through the depiction of Mitsumi in Shima’s perspective, it’s implied the reason the crab pinches him is because he was focused on Mitsumi, and not holding the crab properly. This reflects the critical miscommunication from when they were dating. Shima was so concerned with protecting his prior dynamic with Mitsumi that he didn’t consider what committing to a genuine romantic relationship would require from him. He didn’t, or rather couldn’t, commit to a relationship as much as Mitsumi did. Mitsumi knew that she didn’t deserve that kind of stress, so she asked to remain friends.

Thanks to Mukai, however, Shima can start to understand that romance is a real option for his own feelings about Mitsumi, and it won't detract from their friendship if it is the case. It's this level of self-awareness that allows Shima to get flustered by Mitsumi getting physically close to him as they look at the crab.

I would even argue that it was the panel I have pictured on the left, with Mitsumi's smile, that is the moment Shima started getting flustered, since that panel is positioned to be in Shima's eye-line point of view, and takes up the majority of its page.

What is Shima thinking in this moment? He has 0 thoughts. Brain empty. Only one-of-a-kind feelings for a girl who he thinks is always amazing<3

I wanna reiterate this is truly such a special moment for Shima because while Mitsumi has always been a special person to him, he now understands that he thinks so because of his PERSONAL feelings. In caring for Mitsumi, Shima is able to care more about his own feelings. It’s a lovely payoff to all of his progress in understanding himself as an individual. He can discuss his personal life with Mukai, a friend who he previously kept at a distance. He can l stand up for himself when he thinks he being mistreated by an old friend. And he can even defend the people he cares about when other’s are inconsiderate to them. This is all part of Shima’s growth into becoming a fully realizing individual, and I’m so glad he’s been given the space to clumsily process all of this while remaining a true friend to Mitsumi.

TL; DR:

Shima truly adores Mitsumi and has only just realized that he likes Mitsumi to a different degree than what would be expected from a friend

Shima has been nonchalant about romance thus far because he didn't think romance was really about genuine intimacy, especially based on his past experiences

The narrative presents Shima's interest in Mitsumi as romantic attraction while taking great care in showing how romance has different meanings for different people and is not always the most important or intimate aspect of a relationship

#NO BECAUSE I CAN'T FUCKING DO THIS ANYMORE #skip to loafer #skip to loafer 53 #shima sousuke #skip to loafer manga #seb out #ON PRIDE MONTH ?!?!#AROACE SHIMA RIGHTS LETS GOOOOOOOOO #ወሬ

342 notes · View notes

jinnie-ret · 5 months

Text

oddinary house pt 7

siren!seungmin x reader

genre: horror

content warnings: death

word count: 2.4k

summary: y/n is entranced by the voice of a siren before she is swept away in the odds of possible revival

ODDINARY HOUSE MASTERLIST

MAIN MASTERLIST

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

"Paint a pretty picture for me

Swim in the depths

You'll forever be home

If you paint a pretty picture for me

We'll give you everything

If only you'd see..."

"Who are you?!" Y/N shook her head, blinking out of her trance as she realised she was no longer with Felix and instead heading towards a lake, black swirling water creating dark paths around a scaly figure half submerged. His voice was beautiful, Y/N knew that, anyone knew that, and it wasn't long until she was under his spell again, her feet involuntarily moving forward until she stood right at the edge of the short pier that rested two metres above the body of water with an evil aura around it.

"You'll be ok,

You'll be alright.

I'll lay with you here til it turns into night

If you paint a pretty picture for me.

Don't make it so easy we'll give you a fright."

"I just knew I'd be seeing you soon," his sweet voice echoed around the garden, birds suddenly darting from the trees and off to somewhere else, as if his voice was startling. But even though Y/N deep down felt a sense of unease, she couldn't let her anxieties get the better of her here when he was somehow keeping her calm with his smooth butter like words, that gently fell off the tip of his tongue so perfectly.

"Your voice it's..." Y/N couldn't find the words, slowly sitting on her knees at the edge of the pier, where there would have been a slight creaking under her weight had she still been alive.

"Perfect?" his charming smile shone even brighter than the sheen of water decorating his scaled skin, more clear than ever when he swam closer.

"No it's..." Y/N slowly felt her trance wearing off, yet she was still lost for words, maybe not because of his gorgeous melodies but maybe more because of his stunning appearance.

"No? How about beautiful?" he smirked again, floating right beneath her now.

"Well yes but..." Y/N rubbed her head frustratedly, just wanting to get rid of the mind fog that had taken over. Was this part of limbo or was it because of the man... mermaid in front of her?

"But?! It's enchanting isn't it ghostie, you just had to find me," he chuckled, a richness in his tone that shook her more out of her trance as he teased her.

"I-I don't get how I got here," Y/N shook her head, shifting slightly to sit with her legs dangling over the edge.

"Well I assume because you're dead," he shrugged nonchalantly, as if he had better things to deal with, though he couldn't hide his intrigue with their new resident. He never could.

"What?" Y/N turned to him, now annoyed.

"Don't tell me you didn't realise you died, Changbin hyung really should have picked a smarter one..." Seungmin sighed, disappointed if he was dealing with someone that could not meet his level of intelligence.

"I mean how I'm stood in front of you right now!! I know how I died you dickhead!" Y/N kicked the water, splashing the merman in the face in pure exasperation.

"Well that's not a very nice thing to say now, is it?" he rubbed the water out of his face and hair, which seemed counterproductive considering he was in the lake anyways.

"Ugh you're insufferable," Y/N facepalmed, she still didn't know why she was here, and all that was happening was he was getting under her skin.

"Actually I'm Seungmin, and you're more untameable, I should say, my dear..." Seungmin smirked, turning to swim away.

"Untameable? Wait, wait... Seungmin! What do you mean?"

"Normally they are still under my trance by now, but you, darling, seemed to have broken out of it, unique indeed," Seungmin swam around on his back, conspiring how it possibly could have happened that she managed to do so.

The sudden scuffling of small feet hitting against the ground and then wooden pier caused Seungmin and Y/N to turn around and look at the chupacabra which morphed back into Jisung.

"Woah, ok, that was, wow, creepy," Jisung nodded, hands resting on his hips as he referred to the two of them turning around in sync, like it was some horror movie. He had seen worse things though.

"Jisung, you reek, I told you not to come to my lake," Seungmin wrinkled his nose, all he could smell from Jisung was blood and dead animals from the sacrifices he'd make.

"Jisung, why are you here?" Y/N ignored Seungmin's comment and looked at the man who was out of breath, holding up a finger momentarily before he spoke once again.

"The ritual. It's, it's ready," Jisung caught his breath, gesturing Y/N to come with him quickly.

But as she stood, she realised just how weak she felt. Even with her soul trapped in limbo, it was making it more difficult for the entity she had become to move around. Her glow was brighter, but she had lost her spark.

"Any time now, Y/N!" Jisung tried to hurry her to move yet she still wasn't able to.

"I-I, can't, my arms, legs... so heavy," Y/N winced, and Jisung panicked as he saw it in her face that she was genuinely trying.

"This is not good this is not good... Seungmin I swear to god if you-!" Jisung growled through gritted teeth, one moment away from wanting to jump into the lake himself and throttle the siren.

"You won't sacrifice me, you need me too much," Seungmin hauled himself out of the lake, waiting a moment for his delicately scaled tail to shift into a pair of legs instead. He hopped up onto the pier and rushed next to Y/N's side.

"Yeah, what are you gonna do that's so helpful?" Jisung rolled his eyes and tapped his foot rapidly, time was ticking.

Seungmin simply turned away, ignoring the rambles of the chupacabra before his voice made Y/N's head turn towards him straight away.

"Don't you want to come with me?

You're hurting dear,

I feel your fear..."

Seungmin began to sing and Y/N's eyes heartbreakingly welled up, understanding the situation she was in would either revive her, or cause her to be a ghost forever.

"... It's time to move or pay your fee,

You're hurting dear,

I feel your fear."

Han's eyes widened as Seungmin's words prompted Y/N to start moving upwards, the glow around still getting brighter, but they had time, now that the siren was helping. Y/N's body didn't even seem to allow her to walk, she was floating, the only awareness about her was through her eyes.

"Let's make a change,

Need to make a change today.

Don't be afraid,

Your fate will rearrange today."

And with that Han raced back to the circle for the ritual, each one of the other residents of Oddinary House gathering around it. Seungmin brought Y/N's glowing figure closer and closer, and the closer they got, the more and more the candles flickered wildly, sensing the presence of the soul it would be connecting back to its shell.

Felix flew in, his ethereal wings extending outwards one last time as he took his position next to Changbin, handing him a small satchel to hold onto, which he was given a respectful nod in response. Although, he still couldn't hide his small frown remembering that no one had told him that Y/N was here. And now they'd all be desperately watching her revival.

Hyunjin descended from the very place Y/N had fallen from, however this time, instead of falling to his death and landing in the circle like Y/N had when he pushed her, he gracefully landed, moving round to stand next to Minho whose nose was twitching, picking up on the scents of everyone as they were brought together.

Chan had managed to leave the reception area of the house, extending wires out of his arms to bring him to a halt at the edge of the candle lit circle. He brought them out of the ground just as a bat flew past him and landed onto the top of a small metal stand, which had been placed with purpose, also around the circle.

"Right, ok, umm, everyone's here, that's good, that's good..." Jisung wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers.

"Y/N is not here yet. Seungmin is not here yet," Chan scanned the circle and took note of what he could see.

"Shut up, Chan, he's bringing her now," Jisung glared at him, his anxiety and frustrations getting the best of him as he just wanted the ritual to go well.

"Sungie..." Felix shook his head, always the mediator.

"Just be quiet, everyone, we wanted Y/N here for a reason, yes? Give him some freedom to think in peace," Minho sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Nothing that guy doesss issss in peace, he literally killss animalsss every day," Hyunjin hissed, arms folded.

"And you killed Y/N, so this is on you, Jinnie," Jisung argued back, stomping his foot down.

"Yah! You nearly stomped on her body's leg!" Changbin warned.

"You'll be ok,

You'll be alright,

We'll lay here with you even if it takes all night."

Seungmin finished singing, bringing Y/N into the circle, and allowing her to fall to her knees once more. He took his place between Hyunjin and Chan, rubbing his throat slightly. It had taken a lot out of him, to bring her limbotic soul back from one end of the garden to the other.

"Ok, Y/N, I'm going to need you to try really hard, ok? Try really hard to move back into your body. I just need you to think really hard, and try and get back into position of how your body is laying, ok?" Jisung kneeled down next to Y/N, hoping she'd be able to do it. Yet his voice was so muffled through her brain fog.

Y/N felt exhausted. Is this how everyone felt before they moved on from limbo? Her limbs felt like they weighed tonnes, yet it couldn't deter her from her resilient mind.

"We can't move you now, Y/N, you need to do this yourself, just think, imagine yourself back in your body, remember the sensations in your feet, your legs..." Jisung's voice broke through now, the mind fog disappearing, just as quickly as everything turned to darkness.

Y/N didn't see anything for a while, until she did. The brightness that had previously been blurring the edges of her vision before wasn't there, but did that mean she died?

If it was anything to go by with the way her hand was tightly clutched with Jisung's, then no. She was very much alive, and breathing.

"Ji..?" Y/N mumbled, sitting up in the king sized bed she had been resting in. The bedroom was decorated in reds and golds, dark oak furniture bringing an elegant element to intertwine it all.

"Y/N... Oh good! You're awake! You're alive!" Jisung suddenly realised she was awake, but instead of offering her comfort, he cheered to himself. "Yes! I knew I could do it! In Hyunjin's face! That'll tell him!" he hollered, before swiftly morphing into his animalistic form and galloping down the hallways.

Y/N rubbed her eyes, taking a moment to appreciate the way she could wiggle her toes against the soft plush sheets on the bed. Loving the way she could feel her hair, see the goosebumps appear on her arms. She was back.

"Hello, Y/N," Chan was stood in the doorway, feet rooted to the floor.

"Hi, CB97," Y/N lazily waved at him, unable to hide her giddy mood at simply living again.

"Y/N. I thought we were more than that," Chan's head tilted to the left.

"Sorry, umm, Chan, haha... wait how are you up here?!" Y/N laughed before realising she had never seen him anywhere apart from the reception.

"Mr Yang has asked to see you now," Chan informed her.

"Why now? I don't get it..." Y/N felt her heart thudding, another oddly comforting feeling considering she could recognise her nerves getting worse.

"Please exit the bedroom and I will guide you on your way," Chan suddenly turned around before he had zoomed down the corridor in a flash, the door shutting behind him. Yet it almost tentatively opened again, as if reminding Y/N that she needed to have the all important meeting.

Safe to say, she struggled to find her feet, and not because of anything weird like a mishap with the ritual, no. But it was like a baby learning how to walk for the first time.

Using the walls of the hallway to support her wobbly legs, Y/N followed through as each door opened in her path, showing her where to go.

"You passssss the tesssst," Hyunjin hissed, a small smile on his face.

"What the hell man!" Y/N jumped, stumbling before grabbing onto a banister. "You trying to kill me again?!"

"You have ssssurvived, I wish you a great ssstay," he smoothly moved past her, leaving her momentarily stunned before she continued in the same path he took.

It wasn't long until she was guided towards a meeting room, a long dining room in that same dark oak from before, stretched across the room. The room was huge, making Y/N feel even smaller as she approached the table. A dusty chandelier hung right above the middle, and bookcases full of old books, or ones that had not been touched for years, were lined up against the walls.

Felix gave a small wave to Y/N when he saw her, and she couldn't help but wave back, before she was pulled away by a pair of furry hands belonging to Minho, who yearned for her scent to be next to him. She was sat between him and Changbin, the sandman patting her hand lightly and easing her nerves, the tiniest amount of golden dust lingering in the grooves of her knuckles.

On one side she sat between them, Han on the other side of Changbin. Opposite her, from left to right, sat Chan, Hyunjin, Seungmin and Felix. That left the empty chair at the head of the table. It seemed more regal than others, a rich air around it before a bat suddenly flew in.

"Ah! Stupid bat!" Y/N jolted in her seat, making Minho giggle and Felix send her a warning look, slowly shaking his head.

She didn't understand why, until the bat materialised right before her eyes, into an attractive young man.

"What, I thought you wanted to meet me? That's no way to treat head of house, now is it?" he chuckled, fangs peering out of his mouth.

tagged: @skz-streamer @kiraisastay @hannahhbahng @kpopmenace143 @sakufilms @hanjiquokkaaa @arloo00 @dunno-wut-to-do @splat00z @cheesemonky @his-angell @amararosesblog

#skz #skz x reader #stray kids #stray kids x reader #skz fluff #skz angst #straykids imagines #stray kids fluff #stray kids imagines #skz fic #oddinary house

102 notes · View notes

rottenshotgungames · 2 months

Text

I want to start talking about my personal game design philosophy

Stop Saying “No”

Let’s be honest here, you’ve written a hard limit into at least one of your games. We all have, I certainly have. It’s one of those simple yet effective pieces of tech (one that’s existed since the dawn of games) that can be introduced to bring an option in line with some other option, or to prevent a scaling into eternity, or some other third thing. Maybe skills have maximums, or you can only use a certain number of consumables in a combat, or an item can only be activated every other scene or round. Whatever it is, you’ve written into your game a rule that tells the players, “No. You cannot do this thing.”

I think we overuse hard limits. My goal is to convince you that hard limits, that the “No” you’ve introduced into your rules, is the game design equivalent of junk food: easy to use and bad in large quantities.

My argument boils down to two simple points:

Hard limits are frustrating and boring

Hard limits limit your design

In addition, I will be detailing three alternatives to hard limits:

Costs

Consequences

Balance

Hard vs. Soft

Before we begin, I want to clarify the difference between a hard limit and a soft limit:

A hard limit can generally be defined as, "A rule which expressly forbids or otherwise disallows something, either in a given circumstance or in general."

A soft limit, in contrast, can generally be defined as, "A rule which disincentivizes or otherwise indirectly limits something."

Alright, on with the show.

Hard Limits are Frustrating and Boring

This is what I like to call the, “What do you mean I can’t use my telekinesis to disarm that guy??? That’s fucking stupid!” Put simply, people like using their toys, and people dislike being told they can’t use their toys for whatever reason. Even if you haven’t had as vitriolic of a reaction as the one described earlier, I’m more than positive you’ve felt this way toward some rule in an RPG at some point. Even if a hard limitation is completely reasonable, it can still be frustrating to encounter; I understand why I can’t raise my Skill levels above my character level in Pathfinder, but it was still annoying and saddening the first time I heard it.

There’s this tweet from a while back, in which one Mr. Joshy McCroo (@riseupcomus) argues that any hard CC that fully prevents you from taking actions is inherently poor design as it does nothing but frustrate the person that it’s used on. This is the very same concept, and for the very same reason: it’s just not fun.

The fundamental reason for the frustration caused by hard limits is that they restrict player choice. When you introduce a hard “no,” you often remove an opportunity to create interesting decisions, and decisions are the foundation of play. Boredom with a system or a situation is spawned by a lack of choice, by a necessity to perform the same action over and over or an inability to do anything. When you give players a variety of tools that can each be used consistently—particularly in tactical games—they will use those tools in interesting, creative, and fun ways; if you restrict those tools, restrict the freedom to use those tools as desired, boredom and frustration can set in quickly.

Hard Limits Limit Your Design

This point is less objective and far more experiential / personal. This isn’t meant to demean opposing views or differing design philosophies.

As stated earlier, hard limits are simple, effective, and easy to use. If you come up against a design wall, such as an option being too powerful or players over-centralizing, it can be easy to just institute a rule that says “You can’t use this constantly,” or “You can only have this many Gizmos™️,” but doing so will often deprive you of an opportunity to innovate or otherwise improve your design sense.

For me, learning design was a serious process of Example and Trial. I’d use reference points (such as RPGs or Video Games that I really liked) to guide me through tough decisions, and when I didn’t have that guide I’d just write and revise until something fit. Eventually, I realized that growing as a designer and developing my own philosophy meant expanding beyond (even if ever-so-slightly) my influences, and the balance shifted from Example(60)/Trial(40) to Example(30)/Trial(70). For me, the fun of design is coming up against these kinds of issues and seeing if I can develop a novel approach or take a stale approach and spice it up, and I feel myself getting better every time I try.

Hard limits are easy to use and generally (relatively) easy to implement, as such they offer less opportunity for growth.

Some alternatives to hard limits, and why you might consider using them:

Costs

Two prevalent examples of costs are weapon ammunition and (≥2) times per Scene/Combat/Rest/Day abilities (both of these can be found in D&D 3e onward and many of its derivatives).

A cost is basically just a hard limit that's been a few steps removed, but those few steps manage to turn it into a soft limit of sorts. Costs fundamentally take a hard "No" and turn it into a "Yes, but . . ."

This is probably the easiest alternative to implement, which explains why it's kinda found everywhere. Even spell slots in the Dragon Game are a form of cost limitation. It's also just a generally strong solution, usually removing a significant amount of frustration and adding opportunities for resource management gameplay. However, if not implemented with care or consideration for surrounding options, you could end up with people carrying over 500 arrows at any given time or once more falling into a set rotation of combat abilities that they perform round-to-round (thereby negating the boredom fix).

Consequences

This is my personal favorite alternative.

A consequence, like a cost, is a "Yes, but" that disincentivizes an option or changes how a player thinks about using that option. There are two major differences between a cost and a consequence:

Costs are always negative in nature (you are spending something as part of doing something), consequences can be but aren't necessarily negative.

Costs always lead to a state that acts as a hard limit (once the resource is empty, you cannot do the thing), consequences do not directly involve a hard limit.

Two prevalent examples of consequences are taking damage for doing something (such as the Stress generated by Blades in The Dark's flashback mechanic) and gaining / losing affinity with a person or faction (a la Over War: The Night Comes Down).

The primary benefit of implementing a consequence is the interconnection with other mechanics. Costs are relatively self contained—usually only branching out to a currency mechanic, a weight mechanic, or a leveling mechanic at the very most—because the threat of a hard limit somewhere down the line is often enough to change how players approach a specific mechanic or situation on its own; consequences, on the other hand, necessitate an understanding of and interaction with other mechanics in the system because they literally cannot exist without them. If using a specific ability is going to give you a status condition—for example—that status condition inherently affects other mechanics and how you interact with them as well, changing how you think about that ability and its place in your toolset pretty substantially.

As an example, there's a Priest ability in Hollow Halls (my fantasy dungeon crawler) entitled Glimpse The Plan. Glimpse The Plan doubles the user's Believe proficiency (stat used for casting Parable spells), but also afflicts them with the Blind and Afraid statuses (which are both pretty bad). The Priest playtester quickly realized that if he was Afraid all of the time, then he effectively eliminated half of the consequences—and wouldn't ya know it, there's an option to become permanently Afraid at character creation to increase your health.

All of that being said (and my favoritism clearly on display), consequences can suffer from a difficulty of implementation. Some consequences, particularly the taking of damage, are really easy to throw about haphazardly and thereby suffer from the same "limitation of design" problem that hard limits do; but escaping those, adding consequences that are unique and create interesting choices, takes time and care and an awareness of how certain mechanics can and do interact. Even the easier-to-implement consequences can often take a few tries to fine-tune.

Balance

This is simultaneously the simplest and most complicated alternative. To balance something here means to compare an option to other surrounding options, weigh the value of each, and slowly tweak numbers until they're all in line with each other. Generally speaking, the easiest way to do this is to craft an option as a baseline and balance everything else around that option, but there are times where you'll create a more powerful ability that you don't want to change, thereby causing it to become the new baseline and so on and so forth.

This alternative involves a lot of trial and error, a lot of guesswork, a lot of testing, and a willingness to add, remove, and change elements of any given option. It’s time consuming, stressful, and incredibly rewarding. I don’t recommend going pure nitty-gritty numbers-hound in every situation, or even in every game, but—if used properly—this option can create an incredibly healthy and interesting environment of options.

The primary strength of numbers balancing is that you'll probably be doing it at least a little bit anyways. Unless you're part of the "balance is for pussies" crowd, some amount of balance work will be done on every option you introduce into the game. This is kinda just, y'know, the logical extreme of that process.

All three listed alternatives can be used with each other, even on a single mechanic.

Conclusion

I do not think that hard limits are inherently bad. I really need to make it clear that I DO NOT think that you should never use them (as much as that may be suggested by the title of this post). Sometimes you'll be on a serious time crunch, or you won't be able to come up with a suitable alternative, or it's the most thematically or mechanically sound option, so on and so forth. There are instances in which it will be appropriate, or even preferable, to use a hard limit—but that doesn’t make an over-reliance upon them any better for you or the people playing your game.

Honestly, what I want people to take away from this post is very simple: every design decision matters. Even seemingly inconsequential choices with limited impact can have profound effects on an important moment for some of your players, and as such are worth considering carefully.

Self-Promo

Hey, I'm Gio. I run Rotten Shotgun games. If you wanna support me, or keep up to date on my work, you can find me on Itch.io at https://rotten-shotgun-games.itch.io/

Otherwise, I hope y'all have a great night and a great day!

#game design #ttrpg #indie ttrpg #indie gaming #ttrpg community #tabletop #i wrote this while struggling with intense anxiety #my one published game doesn’t adhere very well to this part of my philosophy #the next one will lol #Footfall RPG

67 notes · View notes

that-stone-butch · 1 year

Note

Is Fallout 4 really that bad? As someone who enjoyed FNV, does it make sense to play it in your opinion?

i'm not going to say fallout 4 is a bad game in a vacuum, but it fails to be a fallout game as well as 1, 2, new vegas, and even 3 was at times.

it's not much of a play-your-way RPG. you don't build a character with attributes and skill points and whatnot; it's literally just your SPECIAL points *are* how you level up in fallout 4. the only thing you can do when you level up is spend your one perk point on either increasing a SPECIAL stat, or buying a perk that is gated by SPECIAL stat and level. no tagged skills, no traits, nothing. when building a character, fallout 4 does not respect your intelligence as a player enough to let you have a say over any of the fun shit. it's the antithesis of new vegas' character design and if you enjoyed that then you're in for a real sad time with f4.

additionally, it is mechanically focused on scaling procedurally. instead of being able to take on tougher enemies and score a better weapon like the progression of FNV, in fallout 4 the manner by which your weapons scale to the difficulty is by buying the 'more handgun damage' perk and maybe the 'upgrade weapons even morer' perk, which are both level-gated. this means that the game plays the same at level 10 as it does at level 40. it's just that Super Mutant Orc Man's hit bar is more health, and Perk Upgraded 10mm Pistol is more damage, so it evens out.

furthermore, the story is completely on-rails and the factions are like, really fucking hard to care about when all they have to offer is procedurally generated go to place X, kill all of the raiders/synths/super mutants/critters there, and retrieve mcguffin Y item, rinse and repeat.

while in fallout new vegas (2010), you can build your own character your own way, everyone's fallout 4 character is fundamentally mechanically the same, as well as literally being a voiced character with a set backstory, motivations, and quest line. in FNV you could be whoever you want however you want. in fallout 4, you have to be either Nate or Nora, with their prescribed heterosexual husband/wife, and their baby. if you don't care about this story, then fallout 4 is just an open world crafting game with very constricted mechanics.

i would say fallout 4 makes a sort of fun open world base builder if that's your jam, but if you're a fallout fan through and through it's mostly just worth playing to appreciate all the things that actual fallout games got right. and that's not worth $60 and hours of my time to me.

#ask #anonymous #fallout #fallout new vegas (2010)#fallout 4

327 notes · View notes

wayfayrr · 1 year

Text

I can't quite believe this was first in my drafts in feb and I've only gotten to actually writing it these last two weeks.

This fic was based off of five songs from spotify shuffling one of my playlists which was an idea inspired by @trulytiredhermit and then it kinda just went from there

the songs that I based it on were: To my enemies - Saint motel, stalker’s tango - Autoheart, meet me in the woods - Lord Huron, The red means I love you - Madds Buckley and Bitter water by the oh hellos

You know they say you're nobody until someone wants you dead, and I can't help but feel like it's morbidly accurate for everything that's happened to me recently.

That weird shadow brought me here for whatever, most likely because it wants my head for some reason. and then all of a sudden?

I'm one of the most important people to the heroes of Hyrule, brought here by fate for whatever reason and they all love me… although love might not be the best way to describe it. If you were to ask any of them they'd say "It feels so wrong it's right" Heh how ridiculous to be that obsessed, so I ran as far as I could, lost in a world that isn't my own and one that shouldn’t exist out of fiction. Those boys that I once cared for; who promised me they'd find me someway home, but talk is cheap after all and it's oh so effortless to lie when it brings you so many benefits.

The situation was so incredibly strange, I don't think there's any amount of time where I could've gotten used to it despite what they would say. it started, well I can't say normally as nothing about this is normal, but it started well. they were themselves, they were still sane. but then they started to slip letting me out of their sight, less and less and less until it was like I had to be in at least one of their line of sight at all times, they wouldn't let me talk about my home, wouldn't let me focus on things that weren't them always trying to justify it whether it was to me or themselves I could never tell. Perhaps it was both?

This little journey I’ve taken into the unknown?

Oh, I’ll go back changed, I wonder if those I cared about would even recognise me at this point. How long have I been away at this point, it feels like ages yet my phone says it’s only days. Well in the games back home the games always ran on a much faster time scale, it wouldn’t be impossible that I’m still running off of real-world time; if anything it makes more sense with how I’ve not needed to eat or sleep for days on end. I’ve never been away from the links for this long, not since I started travelling with them that is. They’re probably worried sick at this point; it’s probably only a matter of hours until they do manage to find me. Until Wolfie sniffs me out, Sky uses Fi to dowse for my signal, or even Wild traces me with his slate.

“[name]?”

And with that last thought it’s as if I’ve jinxed myself and my hiding spot. The one thing I can be glad for is that it’s Sky who found me, while his anger is terrifying it’s not on the same level as Time, Warrior or Light forbid if Legend was the one to find me. Sky is oh-so-nice compared to them, even if he is a yandere with a strange fascination, a near-obsessive infatuation.

he still treats me like I'm a person though, so there's that. He, I think if I were to end up with any of them it would be him.

"oh by Hylia, [name] are you alright? you've been missing for so long, we thought you were kidnapped, but by the looks of it, you've managed to escape them! even, even if it did leave you hurt"

his smile doesn't look right. he's lying, lying straight to my face...

but it's not like he's lying to me. No, it's like he's trying to convince himself that's what happened. His concern is sweet despite how misplaced it may be; I can't bring myself to break it to him that it's not what happened. Unless...

I couldn't, could I?

oh, but I could.

"link, I- I wasn't kidnapped. I was scared of how the others are acting, I didn't feel safe so- so I ran as far as I could"

This affected me more than I thought, seeing as I could barely finish the sentence without stuttering or coming close to bursting into tears, I hope he reacts the way I want him to and by the look of it, he will.

His face instantly fell when I said that, filled with pity and something else I can't quite put my finger on, the closest thing I can think of is pride but even that doesn't seem right, is, is he smug? Why would he be smug that I’m scared of the others when I…

“Oh my dove, you don't need to be worried now, I'm here. I'm the only one you trust after all; the only one of us you need. you're my betrothed, my one true love until the end of time"

his"betrothed", when did he- how would he- how didn't I realise? Is Skyloftian culture so different to my own? oh, what am I saying of course it's that different. why is he reaching for - the feather? he proposed when he gave me that earring, didn't he?

"I knew I made the right choice when I chose you as mine, we’re perfect for each other can’t you see? And I know I shouldn't love you, I know I shouldn't love you but I do and nothing will separate me from you again as long as I draw breath.”

And isn’t that the truth, that look in his eyes, that stupid lovesick look. I’m not a fool entire for I know exactly what it means. The idea that even if I somehow made it home…

He would find me.

And he would never let go.

How are you even supposed to respond to something like this? This declaration of ownership, that no matter what I do I’m his. To think how I idolised him when he was nothing more than a game character, how naive was I?

Even still I can’t bring myself to hate him, even if he’s a walking red flag. Even if he’s someone I should run from in fear - It’s still Sky, still the only one to welcome me with open arms, the only one to treat me ever so kindly when I was petrified of everything.

Part of me is telling me to leave, to do what's smart and practical. But another part is pulling me towards staying, following my heart even if it means taking a risk. I know I’d have regrets either way for I would be losing something I care for no matter my choice and I’ll need to say something soon to him, even if it’s a lie. I can’t bear to see him so worried, even knowing where that worry is from.

I don't know what the right choice is, but I know that I have to make a decision. And no matter what I choose, I'll have to live with the consequences.

#I got the songs from shuffle in feb????#IT'S MAY??#HOW MUCH TIME HAVE I LOST CAUSE OF COURSEWORK???#yandere linked universe #yandere linked universe x reader #linked universe x reader #link x reader #lu sky #lu sky x reader

179 notes · View notes

slavghoul · 1 year

Note

Slav, do you ever just get the feeling that Ghost is getting turned into everything it shouldn’t be? I have always frowned on gatekeeping things and exposure is good for a band’s success etc but it’s putting me in the mind of all of the various things in the world that were ruined by too many tourists. Like national parks getting trampled or famous statues being discolored after everyone needed to touch it. You know? To be fair I’m a chronic overthinker but I can’t help but feel like I’m witnessing it (the fan side, not the music itself) being twisted into exactly what Tobias would hate.

This response came out VERY lengthy, I apologize in advance.

To answer your question shortly: yes, I do feel that way sometimes. However, I would be hesitant to involve TF in this discussion because I don't know him on a level that would allow me to gauge his true feelings on any particular matter. If I were to say "I hate it when Ghost fans [blah blah blah], because he would hate that!" it would only be an attempt to justify my own opinion about something, not a genuine concern for his feelings. Implicitly, I would also be shaming other fans and making them think that they are enjoying the band "the wrong way" when in reality, they simply enjoy it differently than me. That's unfair because I have no right to dictate how others should perceive Ghost. Everyone's experience with the band is unique and personal to them, and I have no authority to infringe upon that.

I think the sort of disillusionment that you describe is a common experience when you're a fan of virtually anything and it evolves. There's no solution for it. It just is what it is. The question is, to what extent is it a result of the band "being turned into something it shouldn't be" and how much of it is simply due to our own personal sense of nostalgia?

If you became a fan of the band several years ago, you'll likely always look back on those times through rose-tinted glasses. No other experience will ever compare to the emotions you felt back then, because they were formative and unique to that time in your life. You may continue to enjoy the band, but it's unlikely that anything will be able to replicate the same level of excitement and anticipation you felt when you were first introduced to them.

Of course, it's true the band has evolved and there's no denying that the community has undergone a significant shift over time. If you had seen them in concert a decade ago, the majority of the audience were people in their 20s and 30s. You had an odd kid here and there and the occasional, let's say, 'senior citizen' headbanging, but majority were young adults. It made for a very different dynamic which was also reflected in online spaces in terms of what was being discussed, how it was being discussed, and what the focus was on. These days, Ghost attracts a much wider age range with a significant portion of their current fans being on the younger side, pre-teens and teenagers. That's fantastic actually, I am very happy that is the case and I welcome them all. However, being 30-ish myself, I simply don't enjoy things in the same way they do and I don't focus on the same things they do.

It's very easy to become jaded when that's the case because you start to feel like you're no longer part of the target audience, and that can be disheartening. I make a conscious effort to prevent that from becoming an issue for me because I love Ghost dearly. At its core, it is still the same band I fell in love with. TF is doing exactly the same thing he has always done, but now on a larger scale, obviously. It's not being transformed into anything it hasn't been before. It's a bit more commercialized, sure, but that's not a crime.

Basically, it's up to us to decide how we want to engage with what is being offered. You need to find a way of consuming Ghost in a way that is comfortable to you or else you may get disenchanted very fast.

At the risk of sounding like a giant dick, I will admit that I intentionally stay away from the fandom and don't follow anyone because.. man, it's actually impossible to say this without sounding like a dick.. because I don't see eye to eye with majority of other fans and it taints my experience if I see too much of what others are saying or doing. To reiterate the point I made earlier, it doesn't mean that others are doing anything wrong and I'm doing it right; no, we are simply doing it differently. I made peace with the fact that I can't control how others act and that's completely fine. I live in my own little Ghost bubble, which, although solitary, is a tranquil place. I decide what I want to see and what I want to share, and who I want to talk to and about what. That's my way of remaining levelheaded and keeping the thoughts you describe at bay.

Apologies for crafting a whole ass high school essay on this fine Friday evening.. if you know me you know that I think and talk a fucking lot, hehe. I don't even know if anything of what I said makes sense, probably not. If you're still reading, thank you and sorry!

222 notes · View notes

jadagul · 9 months

Note

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question. Why is it harder for larger countries to have citizens with a high median level of wealth? What makes it harder for a country with the US population vs, say, Japan? I can imagine obvious challenges, but also reasons why larger countries can make their median citizen wealthier more easily. Economies of scale, more chances for innovation that can later be widely adopted, strong institutions having outsized effects. Can you help me understand the logic more?

It's not a stupid question! It's a common but incredibly counterintuitive thing that comes up in statistical comparisons. The short version is: you get more variance with small samples than with large samples.

To start off, let's point out this isn't just theoretical. According to the IMF, the twelve highest GDPs per capita are in this chart:

(If you use a different source the numbers change somewhat but not dramatically so.)

If you rank countries by population, those are rank 122, 163, 118, 134, 162.5, 95, 99, 115, 3, 191, 169, and 103.5. The US is in position 3 and the next-highest is at 95 (out of about 200).

Conversely let's look at the ten most populous nations:

When ranked by GDP per capita, those come out at ranks 73, 127, 8, 98, 138, 144, 87, 128, 56, and 71.

And notice already this looks different: these numbers are mostly in like the middle half, whereas the others were almost all in the bottom half. And that makes sense based on the theoretical argument I'm about to make.

A big country has a lot of people in it. And more than that, it has a lot of places in it. And while those places all have a bunch of stuff in common (like being part of the same country), they also have a bunch of things different from each other. So you can think of the per capita GDP of a big country as, like, averaging together the per capita GPDs of all the regions in it. (And then the per capita GDP of a region is a weighted average of the incomes of all the people in it.)

If you look at a city-state like Singapore or Hong Kong, you're "averaging" together one city. And for a small country like Ireland or Luxembourg, you're averaging one city with a small amount of hinterlands. That means that if that one city is unusually lucky, the whole country is rich.

(And if that one city is unusually unlucky, the whole country is poor. The ten least populated countries on the list that have IMF data have GDP per capita ranks of 146, 119, 95, 9, 152, 60, 106, 16, 134, 52, which are all over the map. None of them are at the very bottom, and I assume that's because cities are richer than non-cities, in general. And also maybe a city-state that's also dirt poor gets swallowed up.)

And if you look at our list of richest countries, you can really see this effect. Ireland is a tax haven for the EU, and traditionally so is San Marino. Singapore is a weirdly-managed outlier city state, as is San Marino (and Hong Kong used to be). Qatar and the UAE are all drafting off of oil revenue, and for that matter so is Norway.

And to drive the point home, let's look at the list of US metro areas by per capita GDP.

San Jose beats every country in the world hollow. San Francisco is tied with the top entries on the list. And our tenth-richest metro area would place fifth on the list of countries by per capita gdp. (Contrast Paris at €60 and Berlin at like €42k, if my quick googling is right.)

And then to drive the point home, look at the top of the list. The richest metro area in the US isn't San Francisco or New York or Los Angeles (which at 18th and $86k doesn't even show up on that list up there, but would still put it at 8th in the world); the richest metro area in the US is some place called Midland TX. It's a small town that sits in the middle of a giant oil field, and as I understand it it's basically a base camp for all the oil work out there. So it has one thing going on, and that thing is super lucrative, and distributed across relatively few people; so it gets the top spot.

And that's why the richest countries are likely to be small.

#politics #economics #statistics

134 notes · View notes

the-pink-quill · 2 months

Text

Phee's Reaction to Non and Keng makes Perfect sense for the Character

And he's have felt very fairy-godfatherly if he had reacted any different.

Let's step back a bit, into Phee's shoes. Give up, for a moment, your omniscient knowledge of events as a viewer, and work only with the information and emotions of Phee, a 15/16 year old teenager. He's not an adult and not mature, so we will not judge his emotional response as such. He is also, far more privileged than Non, be it socially, financially, or in regard to his relationships with his family and his mental health. So, we shall keep that in mind.

Phee has no family pressuring him to prove himself, rather, from how politely his father talked to him in ep 9 despite having to cover for him in the accounts case (something which will anger any reasonable parent upon finding out their child was involved in illegal dealings), we can see he is fully secure in the knowledge that his father will back him up whenever he needs him to. His father probably also knows and is okay with the fact that his son is gay.

He is also charismatic, enough to wheedle into this friend group probably years after its formation and still have acquired enough authority to make them do something they didn't want to (the film) and take charge immediately after the fall of Por. He's also physically strong. That makes it extremely unlikely that he had ever been bullied or had to deal with bullying, and if you've never dealt with it, you don't know how hard it is for the victim.

Lastly, his family is not shown to be struggling and he is mentally sound (so far as we're shown).

Non is his boyfriend, who was, prior to the leak of the video, abnormally close to his teacher, enough for Phee to question Non about this. Despite reassurances, the doubt never went away. Phee asks Non, as any good boyfriend would, if he needs help, and Non says no.

And then the video drops. Phee is angry enough as is, as anybody, especially a teenager already frustrated with his boyfriend's secrecy would be, but then he catches him embracing the same teacher.

Again, I would reiterate that Phee is

1) a 15-year old child with the emotional and logical range of a 15-year old sheltered teenager,

2) not shown to be particularly taken with global scale activism which would be the only way he'd figure out, logically (and I would argue logic is not at the forefront of your mind when anger is the reigning emotion), that Non was being exploited.

Considering the response of the Thai public to the video and the fact that Keng wasn't immediately fired, the situation is not considered 'exploitive' by social standards. It seems to be taken for granted that the relationship was consensual. Coming from a country with similar values, let me tell you that students marrying their teachers is considered 'romantic' where I live. Heck, in my school, there was a teacher who flirted with some select students all the time, and was never fired. He was actually very popular, and it wasn't until years after I left school that I realized how problematic that was. It was not something we were taught, socially, was predatory.

Phee would have to be involved in global level activism, to see others from vastly different backgrounds talk about how problematic this behavior is, to realize that his perception of the situation was warped.

So, back to the video leak. Phee watches the video, and gets emotional fast. Despite his patience with Non thus far, he is not Buddha (if he were, he'd not have gotten involved in New's scheme). He sees proof of all his fears being proven true, and then sees, with his own eyes, further proof of the same. Of course he lashes out. Of course he leaves, because I suspect had he stayed, Keng would have gotten a lot more bruises, and not much talking would have been done.

Of course he says what he does to Non, from the innate urge to hurt him just how much he himself was hurting. In that moment, he may very well have used his knowledge of Non's insecurities and mental health issues to pointedly attack Non, because he is not thinking beyond his own hurt. And if you think you'd have reacted any differently, you're probably too old to remember what it felt like to be a teenager.

And of course he blocks Non.

If this were a reddit post, this is what it would read like:

"AITA for blocking my boyfriend after watching a video of him being intimate with his teacher, who he assured me repeatedly he was not involved with?"

Fill in the rest with Phee's knowledge of the situation (I do not think he knows about the mafia or the money he got from Keng or the true extent of the group's bullying; correct me if I am wrong) and tell me the replies, even from you, wouldn't be a resounding "Well Done!"

He finds out about a lot of things from reading Non's script, but the breakup was long before that. And I don't feel it right to blame him for a normal teenage reaction to his first relationship imploding in such a way.

Not when Chay from Kinnporsche was lauded for the same reaction.

#dff #dff the series #dff meta #dead friend forever #dead friend forever meta #dead friend forever the series #dff non #dff phee #pheenon #phee dff #non dff

30 notes · View notes

sapphorror · 3 months

Text

The relevance of chronology in IZ is dubious at best (in the show—it is flat-out non-existent in the comics), but I do kind of love to think about it regardless because there are so many weirdly specific points of internal continuity, practically and sometimes even emotionally, that we can't pretend there's absolutely nothing to examine there, even if the degree to which it matters is next to null. And anyway, I love a fool's errand.

So with that disclaimer I'd just like to talk about everyone's favorite organ harvesting episode and how much it kills me when examined in the context of an on-going continuity, because it's not just one of the most horrifying things Zim ever does across canon, it's really the first horrifying thing that Dib is present to bear witness to, at least on that scale. For all that NanoZim must've been scary and violating on a personal level, it was ultimately still a contained, targeted attack, and not even an unjustified one—not that Dib would consciously think of it this way, but Zim was acting in reasonable self-defense, he just chose to be really brutal and vindictive as he did so. Plus, Dib did come out on top of that encounter, so there were no real lasting consequences besides losing his evidence, which only put him back to square one. Basically, it was a great basis for forming a personal grudge, but it didn't really say anything about how generally malicious or threatening Zim actually was outside the context of their quickly-coalescing rivalry. Zim's only a monster at this point insofar as it's fun for Dib to have a dragon to defeat. The danger he poses does not yet hang over Dib's head like a guillotine.

Dark Harvest, though. In Dark Harvest, Zim shows just how capable he is of committing brutality on total bystanders at a mass scale under much less urgent circumstances without so much as a trace of hesitation or remorse—and by the end of it, Dib learns firsthand how severe the consequences for losing to Zim can actually be. Healed through the miracle of the status quo reset button or not... well.

And this adds a lot of context to why Dib spends the rest of the series so totally convinced of the danger Zim poses, even if most of the time that POV is extreme overkill. If he ever starts to doubt the necessity of his mission, just think about the time Zim stole a bunch of kids' organs, and that's irrefutable proof that Zim CAN accomplish terrible things if left unchecked. If he ever starts to doubt the morality of his intentions, just think about the time Zim stole a bunch of kids' organs (and would do so again!), and he can rest easy knowing Zim deserves every terrible consequence coming for him. If he ever forgets why he absolutely cannot afford to let his guard slip for even a second, just think about the time Zim stole a bunch of kids' organs, including Dib's, and now he remembers exactly why it's so important Zim's never allowed to gain the upper-hand. Even when he finally ditches Zim in Mopiness of Doom, it's not because he stops seeing Zim as a threat, it's that he's gotten too burnt out on single-handedly saving the world all the time to care.

(Gaz, of course, was there too and still thinks Zim is harmless, but Gaz also thinks expressing pain after having your entire lower body melted into off-brand bug spray makes you a whiner, so let's not put too much stock in her judgement here)

Even during Dark Harvest, Dib's immediate response upon finding Zim is to tell him this is totally beyond the pale, as if Zim might actually care—and while Dib trying to convince Zim he's acting totally unhinged isn't exactly unusual throughout the show, past this point he usually does so by appealing to Zim's self-interest ("stop trying to blow up the planet, you're still ON the planet") rather than any hypothetical better nature or good sense, can you even imagine. But that's exactly what he does here, reflexively or not, and that to me is a perfect demonstration of how this episode marks a radical shift in what Dib thinks he's up against.

And for some bonus meta? This also stretches into The Wettening in a really fun way, which is the second episode after Dark Harvest and the first with Dib. The sheer glee Dib takes in exploiting the new-found weakness for all it's worth, just because he can, makes a lot of sense in the wake of Dark Harvest and his new understanding of Zim as an out-of-control inhuman lunatic he has no idea how to stop. Seeing Zim vulnerable to something, openly afraid, and in obviously agonizing pain—well, humanizes would be the wrong word under the circumstances, but it cuts him back down to mortal size. He might be tough, and he might be terrifying, but he's not invincible. Even after Zim very unambiguously wins that fight and finds a way to protect himself from Earth's water, the important take-away is that there are things that can hurt him—Dib just has to figure out what they are. If Dark Harvest is the episode that shows Dib Zim is truly a monster, The Wettening is the episode to teach him even real monsters can be defeated.

#invader zim #dib #zade #zadp #meta #my meta #iz posting #natterings

50 notes · View notes

evelhak · 7 months

Note

Hey! So we talked about Kuroko and Haizaki, and now I’m curious in your vision of other Kuroko interactions.

Not shipwise, since I know you only do kagakuro, but in terms of dynamics, what are your fav characters to write Kuroko with?

Lets say, top 3 GoM and top 3 non-Gom?

Oh my friend how you're letting me go nuts again.

May I suggest you get a cup of your favourite drink and maybe some snacks?

Also how do you expect me to choose...? Hmm okay, to make things slightly easier for myself I'll exclude Kagami of course since I've been talking about them a lot already and I also believe I've talked about Momoi at length at least twice in relation to Kuroko so I'll define GOM in the strictest sense for this, but I also won't count either of them as non-GOM haha. I hope that makes sense.

Okay, not surprisingly, I'm going to start with Aomine. I love writing him with Kuroko particularly because when he's at his worst they are absolute poison to each other and they don't really even know it for lot of the time or at least understand why, and that makes for peak relationships drama. (It's complex and I love it.) They have a particular way of feeding each other's weaknesses. When Aomine is stressed out, average Kuroko's communication style and philosophy actually makes him worse in the long run. Also Aomine at his worst makes Kuroko worse. This is because Kuroko's weaknesses at his most stressed resemble some of average Aomine's weaknesses (anxious, lonely and pessimistic) while average Kuroko's optimism and understanding actually give Aomine more room to spiral down because what he's subconsciously looking for is pushback and someone he can trust to practically force him to get it together and average Kuroko is always going to be too accepting for that. However. Here's the cool part. Aomine at his best has some of the strengths of average Kuroko (loyal, secure, taking care of others) which is why when he's getting better he's drawn to Kuroko's typical idealism and particularly when Kuroko is getting worse, Aomine actually steps up, and can empathise with Kuroko at his weakest because while it's a rock bottom for Kuroko it's all actually pretty mundane to Aomine and he can stay quite level-headed about it. Meanwhile Kuroko at his best can direct the same qualities productively as Aomine at his worst does destructively (confidence, independence, stubbornness), and that's why at his best Kuroko appears like he has got the answers Aomine has been looking for after all, because Aomine is actually looking for trust but he needs hard proof for it unlike Kuroko who at his average is just able to trust that things will turn out alright for no particular reason. This is in a nutshell why I love writing the larger scale of their dynamic. It just makes for such interesting plot twists.

Also it's so God damn funny sometimes. Like, I was writing a scene where Kuroko is pretty significantly sick and Aomine is pretty significantly enlightened and although it was a rather serious scene in my story, I just happened to come across a song from some musical that illustrates the inherent comedy of their practically reversed dynamic a 100%.

For contrast here's bit from Kuroko's POV when he had to take care of drunk Aomine:

I just find them hilarious to write and they bring me so much joy.

Then, I suppose the next one will have to be Kise. I just love how they poke at each other's insecurities and how incompatible their communication styles are. You're probably seeing a theme here? I just love it when characters' personalities collide in a way that causes a lot of friction and ultimately provides opportunities for growth, so long as both are eventually willing to go out of their comfort zone. Of course it's only so satisfying because there's so much they can help each other learn, which is true here as well. Kise and Kuroko can both be particularly annoying to each other, because Kise has this habit of putting the burden of interpretation of how serious he is on the other person and that really doesn't work with Kuroko so he's often particularly dismissive of Kise. And while Kise seems like he's bothered by it I think he actually finds it reassuring because it means that with Kuroko he can be as goofy, flirty, needy and attention-seeking as he pleases with zero consequences because Kuroko just deflects it. Obviously Kise actually doesn't want the kind of attention from his friends that he gets from elsewhere, so at his core he doesn't actually feel rejected by Kuroko, he feels quite secure. Meanwhile, I think Kuroko secretly likes the attention he's getting from Kise, because everyone needs some attention. Kise is getting too much so he finds Kuroko relaxing and Kuroko is getting too little so he finds Kise refreshing. And annoying. Because Kuroko actually craves direct and genuine interaction the most, and that's why Kise's way of avoiding it can get really tiresome for him, meanwhile Kise becomes instantly self-conscious and evasive when Kuroko attempts to get some unambiguously genuine expression of feelings out of him (unless they're on the basketball court of course where it's suddenly okay to let things go to your feels). So, as I want to develop their communication I end up writing stuff where Kuroko is quite fed up with their shallow interactions and attempts to get more under Kise's skin, which of course is way too much emotional work for Kise. But it slowly gets better, of course.

A lot of their interactions for me are also based on how Kuroko needs more of Kise's easy breezy "do things for the heck of it and don't think about the deeper meaning" attitude while Kise obviously needs the exact opposite and Kuroko is a great person to make him think about what things he's just doing because it's easy and provides instant gratification, and which things he would actually find meaningful in the long run. Kise has opportunities to make Kuroko less serious and Kuroko has opportunities to make Kise more so. I think Kuroko very much dislikes any shallow or vain feelings that he has and rejects them, but Kise can help him be more comfortable with that part of humanity, while Kise is scared of his deeper feelings, and Kuroko can help him with that instead. So both can find that the feelings they dislike in themselves or make them anxious still have their place and it's better to get acquainted with them.

It takes quite some time for them to get to a point they can understand this because it's obviously not fun trying to consciously work on your insecurities, but when they get there it's really satisfying.

Now I kind of feel like showing this development. So, here are three scene's from Kuroko's POV. Although two of them are with Kagami, but they are talking about Kise.

First one is a conversation on the phone.

About ten chapters later with Kise:

And then about 20 chapters later:

I just wanted to show you because writing this kind of development makes me so excited. (The sport they're talking about is quidditch/quadball.)

The third place is a really tough one because I enjoy writing Kuroko's interactions with every GOM and I think the reason I'm going to have to pick Midorima is actually not because I inherently prefer him, it's because his interactions with Kuroko naturally happen more because he lives closer than Akashi and Murasakibara. But this is how it is because the more I write interactions with characters the more I begin to like them. Kuroko and Midorima are a blast because of their completely opposing conceptualisations of the world. The funny thing is that they might not actually be as opposing as they seem, it's just that they are looking at the same thing from different angles and describing it in language that leads them to believe they disagree more than they do. Yes they also have completely different strategies to getting where they want but maybe it's not as stark as they sometimes seem to believe. This is where the most friction in their relationship comes from and I have done my absolute best to be fair about it, because I am so much more likely to see things in Kuroko's way and I despise horoscopes. So I think another reason I like to write these two so much is that it challenges my objectivity in a particular way.

Anyway, basically Midorima describes fate as something that is above humans while Kuroko basically says you can make your own fate, if you really simplify it.

But. I have these song lyrics in my mind...

"You can plan a pretty picnic, you can pick the perfect time, but you can't expect the weather to be fine".

That thought is still true for both of them. They would both agree to that from their different perspectives. So their views are not actually complete opposites. Just their reactions and how they deal with it, are.

As funny as it sounds, Midorima is actually uncomfortable with the 'supernatural' or abstract unseen realm of things, and that's why he's looking at sources outside of himself to control his thoughts about that which is uncertain. Meanwhile Kuroko can just casually be like "hey what if a meteorite hit the bench" and "cool let's go look for ghosts I've never actually seen one" because he doesn't fear the uncertainty. He is the uncertainty. For Midorima that is his pressure point. Kuroko gets strength from the thought that anything can happen because he feels familiar with and in control of the uncertain, so he believes he can work it to his advantage. For Midorima the idea that anything can happen is daunting because it feels like it pulls the rug from under him and his hard work. He just genuinely doesn't understand that realm of things, much like Kuroko just genuinely doesn't understand cold hard facts and numbers. And that's why they have trouble understanding each other, because they are always approaching things so differently even when they desire the same conclusion.

Anyway. I wanted to do something with Midorima that I felt canon didn't really do. I wanted his way of thinking to get Kuroko off guard and even question his view of reality a little. I wanted Midorima to be able to foresee something about Kuroko because of his strange relationship with fate and I wanted Kuroko to dismiss it because he thinks his way of thinking is above Midorima's. And ultimately Kuroko would be wrong. I thought this would bring more depth to their relationship.

I'm going to show you one key scene in that plot to illustrate some of the tensions in their interactions. This is Kuroko's POV and they are at Suutoku's cultural festival where Midorima is doing fortune-telling from tea leafs.

Alright, that's it for the GOM. I wonder if there's a limit with post length...

Then the others.

Well, there's Ogiwara. And he was not so discussed in depth in canon that I have definitely developed some of his personality on my own. He was obviously contrasted with Kagami and Aomine a lot and explicitly said to have some similarities but the way I see him, he is also similar to Momoi and Kiyoshi in a particular and pretty defining aspect, and that is that he can control the emotional atmosphere of the room. So, while Aomine and Kagami have a lot of physical presence, Ogiwara and these other two characters have a lot of social presence. But the way I see it Ogiwara is also the least manipulative of these examples, pretty chill in the way that he has less of an objective, like it's rarer for him to try to manipulate things to a particular end although he generally could if he wanted to. And I think that's because he mostly just wants everyone to be happy and to have a good time, which aligns well with Kuroko's instincts, so it's no wonder if their friendship was a pretty uncomplicated one before shit hit the fan.

There's actually very little conflict between them in canon that has anything to do with them as individuals. However that's also what makes the relationship kind of stagnant and less interesting because when there's no outside force, then there's nothing about them as people that makes them push each other enough to create the level of conflict and opportunity for growth as there is with some other characters. In some ways that's refreshing, but only as a breath of fresh air. Basically in a story it just makes for nice filler. There isn't enough meat to write for an extended period of time.

That's why, if I wanted to keep Ogiwara in the story in any meaningful way, I had to make something up, and I do enjoy what I came up with. A lot. One key aspect is miscommunication that is due to the fact that although Ogiwara is socially very smooth he doesn't quite understand that Kuroko is actually significantly less so, probably because Kuroko still has emotional intelligence and the ability to match a more a dominant personality (I mean this in a broad sense, not like dominating or something) in a way that makes interaction feel smooth, because the other person is the leading force whether they mean to be or not because Kuroko can pretty much just make it so. (Like in Kagami's case it's more like Kuroko is redirecting a lot of Kagami's emotions so he's not actually dominating it's more like he's Kuroko's 'material' unlike Ogiwara who actually means to lead the interaction.) So, Ogiwara has a habit of implying things, hinting at things, speaking with gestures and believing that Kuroko understands what he's saying, but actually the implications go completely over Kuroko's head. For example, their whole promise: Kuroko didn't understand that more than anything, for Ogiwara it was about staying in touch. Of course facing each other in a game was important and exciting in and of itself, but Kuroko took that way more literally than Ogiwara meant it, and became so single-minded about this one thing he thought his friend wanted from him, that he actually kind of forgot about talking, which led Ogiwara to misinterpreted it as Kuroko not missing their everyday interaction as much as he does. Because Ogiwara thought the implication of their promise was totally clear, while to Kuroko it wasn't. It takes kind of a lot to start seeing why things that are totally clear to one aren't so for another, so they repeat this miscommunication several times and it stretches out into the future so much that it turns out Kuroko's view of their childhood is in some significant ways different from Ogiwara's view of the same events.

Writing more of them together I also found that Ogiwara sees Kuroko in a quite different way from most people and can sometimes say stuff that other people probably wouldn't say:

I'm not saying he's right or wrong, and out of context it may seem like he's undermining the fact that Kuroko didn't have much options, but it's more complicated than that, just too much to explain here. I just put this here because it's interesting contrast to write someone with a little bit different perspective to some things, because his key points with Kuroko have been so different from that of the other characters in the canon timeline which Ogiwara was mostly absent for.

A character whose interactions with Kuroko I actually write way less than I would like is Furihata. Because they have similar temperaments in ways pretty much no other characters do, and I feel they would make the kind of friends who are perfect for peer support and venting to, if either of them could just be a little more proactive about it, but that's the difficulty with a similar temperament, isn't it? It's not just my fault, it's not just that the story is already so bloated from these other relationships, it's that both of them are also going to respect each other's space too much and are generally the type to just sort of let things in relationships develop in their own time. Obviously they both have a lot of drive to make things happen when they need to, but when they don't need to, they are both the type to be more likely to just sit back and watch things develop. So circumstances would need to force them closer to get closer. So far such circumstances happen here and there but not that much. Most often it's Furihata needing emotional support and Kuroko being there, because he has already gone through the same thing. This happens several times in my writing. It takes a while for things to turn the other way around because Furihata is more likely to seek comfort from someone, and Kuroko is more reserved in that way, but once Furihata grows aware of their similarities and differences he also makes more effort to make sure Kuroko knows he can be relied upon too, which fits quite well with Furihata's growth into a captain which is part of my headcanon too.

This is probably his sharpest moment so far, after Seirin's darkest moment in my story. (Kagami's POV)

Then there's Yagi who practically counts as an OC because I've invented like 90% of his personality but I love him so I'm going to talk about him. Yagi is sort of like if Aomine and Furihata fused in some ways. His insecurities come from lack of experience and skills but he reacts to them in a similar way as Aomine to his overwhelming skills, feeling like he's alone and no one can possibly help him. He's more even-tempered and timid, but his negativity comes through in a passive-agressive way and he basically needs someone to kick his butt at all times and he punishes people emotionally if they don't. You can imagine this creates some very intense conflict with Kuroko whose gentle approach to helping Yagi integrate into the team just... doesn't work AT ALL because he's an even harder person for Kuroko to be tough on than Aomine. Kuroko can kick butt when it's Kagami or another openly aggressive person as long as they are not being vulnerable. But Yagi is like... Nope. Nothing is getting through because he wants someone to boss him around but you're supposed to figure that out on your own and Kuroko wants someone who will tell him what they need from him. Match made in heaven right. Well, still it's not hopeless once Kuroko does figure out which string to pull (with the help of Aomine haha). But yeah, it's a minefield. (Not to mention Yagi also starts out as homophobic.) But they do develop when Kuroko realises that he needs something new to help him stay out of sight and Yagi is exactly that because he's radiating negative, passive energy as much as Kagami is radiating positive, active energy so when Kuroko uses both of them he has a double cover as the neutral point between these two energies. But what makes this difficult for Kuroko to figure out is that while Kuroko is technically using Kagami to hide himself he's not using Kagami in a sense that he would need to control him. Kagami is doing what Kagami wants, and Kuroko is using that which Kagami would be doing anyway. But Yagi isn't going to do anything unless someone makes him. It is when Kuroko realizes that Yagi is actually begging to be used, that the game changes. Despite of appearing otherwise Yagi has basically zero ego. He just wants to be useful but he wants other people to tell him how. (Akashi should have used someone like Yagi not Mayu lol.) This was difficult for Kuroko to get, because despite of being as team-oriented as he is, being a shadow was still always a sacrifice for him. Had he been able to he would have wanted to be more "normal". And he still does have enough ego to want to create something for himself and be in control even if it's in a less traditional more subtle way, and he mistakenly believed Yagi would want the same. But Yagi doesn't have that kind of desire. Kuroko is willing to sacrifice himself. Yagi enjoys it. Yagi is a "soldier". Well, in this case, Kuroko is the trickster and Yagi is the rabbit= the star of the magic show who isn't actually doing anything but who things are being done to.

Or...? (Kuroko's POV)

I just love to play with metaphors.

I don't have the best action writing skills to get the most exciting games out of this idea (and a lot of it is probably so out there that it wouldn't even work) but I am actually very proud of how it plays in the interpersonal and metaphorical realm of the story.

Okay. That's it for now. Looks like I didn't run out of space. I hope I managed to keep you interested.

#knb #knb fic #TOTverse spoilers

48 notes · View notes

talenlee · 29 days

Text

3e: Sticks and Stones

ALright I’m up late and the thing I was working on didn’t work and I don’t want to fall behind on my schedule so let’s just belt out something about the ongoing grievance I have in how 3rd edition D&D treated spellcasters as a better class of people with their own higher standard of living because being able to rewrite reality at will is by no means a perk enough to justify not feeling bummed out.

Let me talk to you about sticks and stones powers.

First the origin of the term. The psionics system of 3rd edition was a beautiful beast and also a complete functional failure. Its presence was demanded implicitly by being a thing that existed in 2ed and people liked, while its exclusion from the core of content was demanded explicitly by being a thing that existed in 2ed and people hated. It was a sci-fi thing, unlike the flying airships and unsupported towers made of glass that the rest of the fantasy genre had going on inside it. The psionic system has two distinct forms; the version that launched in 3rd edition proper, and the followup version in 3.5.

3rd editions’ psionic system had a lot of things in it to try and make sense of things that seemed like they should exist in a story, which included an idea of psychic combat. That was where two psychic characters could give up their actions to tangle with one another in a sequence of paper-rock-scissors-laser-godzilla in an attempt to determine who had the bigger brain, who had dedicated the right resources to it, and crucially, who hadn’t decided to spend a few turns using their actual powers to do actual damage or inflict control. Seriously, psychic combat was a hilarious system because it was only useful for psychics who both wanted to fight one another and deplete each other’s power points. Just using powers on one another, like by say, using psychic powers to bombard the other person with lasers? A lot more effective. But don’t worry, there was also the silliness of psychic combat folding in the Illithid power Mind Blast which is a cone stun that lasts for 1d4+1 rounds, aka ‘probably enough to kill anyone or get away from anyone.’

Yeah, player characters could have Mind Blast, at a certain level. It was the only thing anyone ever bothered with in that system.

Along with that system was a collection of psionic powers that all relied on different stats to make sure the spellcaster had to feel rounded. They then could use these well rounded stats to cast psionic powers which were quite mediocre compared to magical spells of their level, and also because of those rounded stats, likely to fail. The entire system was built on ‘hey, here are nice ideas, why don’t we do this’ and the answer coming out pretty evidently in the first playtest.

Anyway, in the Expanded Psionics Handbook in 3.5, Expanded from the Latin meaning ‘not a pig’s arse’, the rulebook decided to instead make the psychic spellcasters into what they always were: spellcasters. Spellcasters needed things like a familiar stat structure, feat support, prestige classes that advanced spellcasting, powers that scaled, and of course, eventually, as with so many things in 3rd edition D&D, gear support.

The Expanded Psionics Handbook introduced the power stone and the dorje. A power stone is an item that has a single use application of a power in it, imbued by the caster at some point. If you can manifest the power in the stone, you can use the power stone. A dorje is a power stone, but a little waggly stick. The waggly stick could have lots of charges stored in it. That is to say, power stones and dorjes are fundamentally, scrolls and wands, as every other spellcaster in the core rules had at the start of the edition.

All psionic manifesters had a limited pool of spells – sorry, powers – they could cast – sorry, manifest. Anyway, these spellcasters were like sorcerers, who could only cast a few spells and that meant that these items that expanded your available spells were super useful. This also meant there were spells you didn’t necessarly want to know wth your limited choices, but you could spend some of your gold to expand on that. Spells cast out of dorjes and power crystals were cast as weak as they could be – minimum caster level, minimum stat, so for a 1st level power, it would be the duration, range, and effect of a level 1 caster’s version, and the difficulty class to use it would be a dc 10. Not great stuff for offensive powers, you want to be able to put oomph behind those yourself.

But say, Comprehend Languages? Or Knock? or Object Reading? Spells that just give you information and aren’t cast under time pressure for combat? Nobody cares about the difficulty of those. You might as well have those in these convenient forms and never bother learning them for yourself. In the process this creates the vision of a marketplace supplied by the small number of psions who do actually know those powers and learned them entirely to supply everyone else with them through dorjes and power stones, which is, at the least, a little funny.

This led to the term ‘sticks and stones’ powers; powers you didn’t need or care about in most situations but you’d stick some of them in your backpack for convenience when you needed them later. This meant that over time, psionic characters would have a swiss army knife of toys for every out-of-combat situation and it was for a time, criticised.

It was criticised, because it was encroaching on the wizard.

Yes, that’s right we’re back there! We’re back at it! Becuase the problem as described was the problem of one character having too much versatility, and in 3rd edition design, the character who had too much versatility was the wizard’s niche. Wizards had been crafting spells into spellbooks and onto scrolls at the end of every day since day one of 3rd edition. They even got the feat to do it for free! Their spellbook was the biggest, and had the most weird niche things! The game even had rules for wizards that pointed out how sensible it was for a wizard to develop their own unique versions of existing spells!

The whole point of stick-and-stones powers is that the powers systems had things that existed in two non-overlapping fields of play, and then expected you to spend the same limited pool resources between them equally even though one of them could get you shanked by a drunken gnoll.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#DnD 3e #Dungeons &amp; Dragons #Games

30 notes · View notes

whetstonefires · 10 months

Text

so the op of that anti-voting post DMed me just now, transcript follows:

slash-dot-com

even if all democratic systems were inherently always going to be "inadequate" i think our american democracy is severely flawed in glaring ways, its just literally antiquated and i think there are much better democratic systems. our voting system is not representative of the people either, which almost everybody admits, i'm not saying theres some nefarious mastermind behind it, but it is a design flaw, whether the flaw was made on purpose or on mistake. its easy to quit american democracy because it doesnt even seem to Want you to participate, like from so many factors its difficult to engage with it in any meaningful way

whetstonefires

yeah it's not a fantastic system

it's just also pretty pointless to try to punish it for that by leaving it in the hands of people who hate you

it won't get its feelings hurt and try to woo us back

i used to be really mad about how stupid and ugly it is but the more history i've studied and the older i've gotten the more it's been like, oh human society is a clown show always

slash-dot-com

but for several election cycles the popular vote nor the general will of the people have even impacted the people who are elected, the people who hate us are in power because the system is designed to benefit them

whetstonefires

i mean?? biden did in fact defeat trump, and the democrats did make gains in congress in both the last two cycles

slash-dot-com

my vote in my state genuinely does not matter in federal elections, in local elections yeah sometimes it does, but there needs to be an overhaul on our democracy and its election process so its more reflective of the people. currently its so broken that voting legit doesnt change anything

biden sucks

whetstonefires

he sucks less than trump tho????

like to a screamingly significant extent

slash-dot-com

i'm trying to make a more general and large scale point than one single election cycle and sitting president

whetstonefires

and i've made my counter point which is that not voting is not a constructive response to the problem

slash-dot-com

doing other things than voting is just as effective if not more so than voting, so not voting in a broken democracy isn't nonconstructive

whetstonefires

and in fact the broad tendency of idealists and leftists to be disengaged from the political process because it's dirty and inadequate, especially at the local level, is the *cause* of many of the systemic problems

doing other things can be constructive, but not voting is a non-action

and advocating against voting is a *harmful* action

so it's not constructive

the other things and the voting are independent of one another

slash-dot-com

thats just really ill conceived, i'm honestly just surprised by that response, you should really think more deeply about this. i'm not sure what you think this way of thinking and approaching politics is accomplishing

and then i couldn't send anything else (it was going to be a ?? because that didn't really follow naturally but before they said that i'd been typing a bit listing all the voting-related activism that it made sense to dip on due to alienation from the process, because energy and funding better spent elsewhere etc, but opposing voting itself was not in the same category) because they blocked me, which is just rude. you started this conversation man!

also i can't figure out how to make tumblr let me block them back.

so i made a post about it lmao.

i still don't know what positive good they think arguing against voting is supposed to achieve. like why is that a good use of energy.

#hoc est meum #i throw salt #little bit #politics #independence day

73 notes · View notes

hamofjustice · 8 months

Text

Hey it's the guy from that other rant about how Nemona, Arven, and Penny are getting ignored for no reason by DLC advertising in a game that's supposed to be about forming treasured unbreakable bonds with well-written sad kids who desperately needed friends and are presented as sort of Strength, Courage and Wisdom Trio by the ending, back with a new post now that one of the DLCs is out and haha I bet you know what I have to say don't you

What was the point of excluding Nemona, Arven, and Penny from The Teal Mask if there are three unnamed and generic-modeled but consistently written student NPCs present anyway, and the content is level 60-75, so you're clearly not intended to do it without finishing the game*? Not only do they not see you off or gain any new dialogue when you get home, they aren't mentioned or alluded to in any way shape or form. They're still statues standing in their rooms with one line of dialogue, the one thing I wanted DLC and updates to change the most. They never notice you left the country for a week.

* UPDATE: Apparently the DLC has level scaling even though the base game didn't, and it is accessible with 0 badges, and that is why there are no references to the preexisting story - it might not have happened yet. Fascinating. I guess that part holds less weight then and this whole post is a little less necessary. I'll leave the rest of the post unedited but it really did seem like this was designed as postgame content only regardless of when it becomes available. Guess not! So I guess, instead, the story got shot in the foot a little bit by the decision to make it available to new players instead of for no reason. I think they should have let it be postgame content, but, I'm a little less worried now. This makes sense within those rules. I guess.

Fanart like this is now coming out and getting tons of likes asking why this happened after six months of countless pieces of cute fanart like this all turned out to be for nothing.

As people are already realizing, it would have been really fun and logical for two of the three who don't really get along with each other yet (which is any combination of them, really, that's part of the fun, and part of why their stories should continue) to be forced to team up into an odd couple, while the third gets to know Carmine and perhaps build a rivalry with her. Wouldn't it be fun to see them talking about their own adventures they were going on, and how they were starting to get along, even if it was happening offscreen? (Because this DLC is focused on introducing new characters to set up for later and that's fine) Wouldn't it be smart to set up the group dynamic for Indigo Disc in advance as preparation for a return to Area Zero and that whole professor-haunted main plotline with a larger cast?

It's just giving me even more apparently-not-unfounded paranoia that yeah, we've never been shown the friend trio in new footage in a DLC trailer because not just Penny but somehow even Arven and Nemona are going to be completely irrelevant to a DLC about finding closure on Area Zero's story and going to a school all about top-level battling. Why else would they go this far out of their way to avoid including them as characters? This is like... active sabotage of their own story at this point.

... Could they really just not be bothered to model three characters in jinbei, and repeatedly shot in the foot their best story yet and all the setup they did for continuing it... over that? That'd be stupid, right? Unfortunately, I don't have the confidence in the company to put anything past them right now.

I just don't know how The Indigo Disc is going to carry the weight of everything they've set up expectations for it to do, unless it's like three times bigger than this little teaser of a DLC in terms of actual story and postgame battles, and most importantly to me, the postgame hanging-out that they very suspiciously also won't show the original friend trio for that we were promised by the story almost a year ago as a happy ending, that we haven't actually gotten to participate in on-screen at all, outside of the Ace Academy Tournament (whose music is perfect for that happy victory lap feeling by the way).

I'm afraid now more than ever that all of my happy thoughts about how this generation and these precious characters should be wrapped up and what should be in The Indigo Disc aren't going to happen, and... it'll just go unceremoniously into the trash can with the other generations after a few more months of trailers probably making it clear that despite all the sappy memories with your original group and the girl who calls the player character her treasure and her rival for life, the game is about Carmine and Kieran now instead of them joining the group, and it will be remembered as the half assed cash grab game and not the one with a big heart and deep character writing hidden in it, if they care THIS aggressively, out-of-their-way little about the reason the game has heart. Not that I don't like these new newcomers too, but. There was a different way to go about this.

Pokemon Masters and Pokemon Special and stuff will try their best to compensate and do the characters justice, but they're just fanfic writers like us except with a budget. The anime writers are forced to make the story about other characters, as if Nemona, Arven, and Penny's stories were something shameful or inappropriate they need to paint over, and not the saving grace for what was otherwise an embarrassing corporate product with good people stuck working on it.

It would have been so easy to integrate the three of them into this DLC, and it would've made the next DLC better to have done so. Literally just replace some character models and rewrite some dialogue. The Paldea students don't have festival outfits anyway afaik. We're talking romhack-level difficulty of implementation here. Come the hell on.

Between the contents of this first part of the DLC and how they've been advertising it so far, I cannot make myself believe Nemona, Arven, and Penny will be in the rest of generation 9. I don't want to get hurt by my expectations. I feel like they've been purposefully excluded, like TPC thinks there's something wrong with them.

... Anyone else feeling this?

#pokemon sv #pokemon scarlet and violet #the teal mask #the indigo disk #pokemon scarvio #no billy and o'nare don't count as a nemona mention they say repeatedly they run paldea realty and not the rotom phone company for a reason #that being said i stayed up way too late making absolutely sure they weren't her parents like everyone assumed #despite being white #nemonaposting #pennyposting #arvenposting

41 notes · View notes

class1akids · 5 months

Note

Did bakugo just say I can't defeat him by myself at the end of the chapter ?

I think you have to read it together with the panel at the end of the last chapter. To me, it feels like maybe what Bakugou was meaning there: "how could i have ever hoped to beat that?" and in this chapter the answer is "no way I could have done this alone".

I also understand it that Bakugou is not talking only about this last portion of the fight, which was more or less a one-sided targer-practice. AFO's monster form shows all the immense amount of power he gathered - but by the time he faces Bakugou, he's been weakened blow by blow by all the people who fought him (and all the people who supported them like Melissa building the AM suit or the Class B girls working with Mt Lady), and also AFO has been let down by the vestiges. Plus, Bakugou's victory is tied back to Yoichi and Kudou's will, who have started the chain that linked up to this moment.

These are just the events in the final fight that got AFO to the point where he's a child, where he's rapidly rewinding, where he's desperate because Shigaraki rejected him, where the ghosts of the past haunt him to irrational anger, where the quirk factors are rebelling against him. It's a nine-generation fight and a present-day group fight where finally all the stars align to beat him. It's the fight of the people AFO called "extras".

Bakugou simply gets to be the final link, the "killing blow". (Not literally, I don't think Bakugou is killing AFO technically). But that in no way shape or form is meant to mean that Bakugou could have faced him alone when AFO first rewound to prime form and soloed him. Picture AFO as a raid-boss in a video game, Bakugou as the DPS who goes down in the beginning of the raid, gets revived by the healers with a power boost just in time when all the other members of the raid party have been knocked out, and gets to land a final blow (which is still pretty cool because to achieve that, it still needs Bakugou's genius to quickly catch up to his new abilities and coming up with a good plan on the fly with his impeccable battle sense. I don't think just anyone could have done that - it needed a pretty special talent.).

Bakugou - because he was down for most this fight - probably has no idea exactly who contributed or how. He probably has no idea if his friends and other heroes are even alive. But I guess seeing All Might in AFO's clutches must give him an inkling that things went to shit at Gunga and that the heroes were literally throwing every last bit of resource they had at AFO, including the quirkless guy. Bakugou is simply the (last?) piece of the chain - linking poetically from the origin of OFA to OFA growing beyond its users thanks to All Might's Symbol of Peace and becoming not just a literal power-stockage for one person, but an ideal that links all the people together who want live up to those ideals. (Btw, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next chapter, AFO's final demise would connect back to Yoichi in some way. If Bakugou was Kudo's revenge, I think maybe the last laugh should go to Yoichi - in the vestige world - or the Yoichi stand-in, Tomura).

From Bakugou's perspective, last time he tried to stand up to AFO alone (in Shigaraki's quirk-erased body), he got dissed and badly beaten and died. He knows he had to be rescued, revived and he couldn't do it by himself (self-exploding sweat notwithstanding).

I think this is simply an acknowledgement of how at that point he was looking at it wrong - because of course nobody can beat this guy alone, and also it doesn't even matter. The important thing is that they can do it all together if everyone does their part. So I think Bakugou is now maybe at the point where he finally lets go of the idea of measuring his own heroism mainly through power-scaling lenses of his own quirk. Because Explosion is stronger right now than ever. And even at its strongest, it's nowhere near the level of AFO's accrued power. But Bakugou can still win, because he can unleash his power and AFO can't. It's about Bakugou's idea of the "perfect victory": trusting your allies, playing your part, connecting the chain and trust that someone will have your back when you are in trouble. It's also about acknowledging people who helped you, who taught you, who made you stronger (this is something Deku has always done, but we barely ever see it from Bakugou who used to believe that he alone was hot shit).

That's literally the theme of the entire endgame. Nobody gets a win alone - not Izuku, not All Might, not Bakugou, not anyone.

Some of the execution was not great, but I'm fairly certain this is the point HK is trying to make - everyone was essential. Bakugou never could have done a 1 v 1 against AFO.

And on the other hand, that's the villain's downfall. In the PLF war, it was the bonds the LoV built that saved them. But AFO's possession of Shigaraki left those bonds in a sorry state, left the LoV scattered, each member fighting only for their own goals.

#c1a asks #bakugou katsuki #bnha 409 #bnha manga spoilers #bnha meta #afo

42 notes · View notes