#mild discworld vibes

[anthurak]

Okay, so I want to talk more about the new Crescent Rose that we’re seeing in the RWBY x JL trailer.

Because it’s not just that this CR is a ‘basic’ scythe as opposed to the tricked out, transforming, ‘it’s also a gun’ version seen in the main series. When you look closely, despite the more flashy touches like the curved blade, this is clearly meant to not just be a ‘basic’ scythe, but an actual traditional harvesting scythe. It has the notable handle on one side, a wooden shaft and even a small pitchfork on the end of the grip.

This design is meant to evoke the look of a scythe as a farming tool as much as a weapon.

And given Ruby’s history, her association with Death symbolism and RWBY’s general use of fairy-tale motifs, I think this is REALLY interesting.

Like this is giving me ‘Bill Door taking up farming and battling New Death with his harvest scythe’ in Reaper Man vibes and I love that.

It’s impossible to say how much actual relevance this may or may not have in the special, but I think it’s a super cool detail for Ruby’s character.

#rwby #rwby x justice league #Ruby Rose #rwby rambling #Crescent Rose #rwby analysis #silver eyed warrior death symbolism #mild discworld vibes

[foemantic]

tag game!! tag 10 a few people you want to get to know better since there’s a “getting to know you” premise i’m forbidding myself to tag my longtime pals/Usual Tagging Squad and picking a few Treasured Mutuals i’ve talked to a few times or not at all but who i always super appreciate seeing around? no pressure! also if you just want to do this (mutual or not), do it and say i tagged you so we can get to know each other! :)

@wordache, @bisopod, @phasered

I was tagged by @airmanslament (who i would also have thought to tag if you hadn’t tagged me first ❤️)

relationship status: taken :)

favourite colour: to wear, black (mandatory goth answer)— for anything else, those really bright sometimes teal-y-leaning “tropical” blues (like... pantone 2393c)

favourite food: spam musubi

song stuck in your head: animal mask by the mountain goats (i’m developing a whole animatic i can’t draw)

last thing you googled: “calico jack” like the pirate because i was checking something i half-remembered reading years and years ago re: the crossed-swords jolly roger having been misattributed to him

time: 8:25 pm

dream trip: nara park in japan

last book you read: terry pratchett’s night watch

last book you enjoyed reading: the above but that was a reread because i’m reading the entirety of discworld again so if that doesn’t count, then i’ve been having fun with the locked tomb books?

last book you hated reading: uh! you know what, i don’t read as much as i’d like to these days, so what i do read is really thoroughly peer-reviewed stuff/recced to me by someone who knows me pretty well or who i know pretty well... so i genuinely can’t remember? i’ll come back to this if i do

favourite thing to bake/cook: i love cooking so much in general but i’m most content when i’m working on this one very specific simple cookie recipe i have that always goes over super well with people and immersed in the Ritual for it where i have a few drinks and a specific playlist going

most niche dislike: those wads of cotton or whatever that they stuff into pill bottles to keep the pills from breaking up? the texture is just so truly awful to me that i’d honestly prefer mild pain to having to touch one >:(

opinion on the circus: the general aesthetic and vibes are 10/10 and i’ve rolled up a few dnd characters that at least riff on it, the fact that historically, a lot of the ones that actually existed pretty often commodified the exploitation and abuse of the disabled/animals/etc is 0/10

do you have a sense of direction: absolutely none at all whatsoever, it’s rare that i don’t manage to get lost in a grocery store parking lot if i’m not explicitly reminded where the car is as i exit

#tysm this was fun! #<3 #airmanslament #praying the @s actually work for some reason they so often don't for me

[superchartisland]

Full Throttle (LucasArts, PC, 1995)

Point. Click. Point. Click. I had so much to say on the narrative and context of Discworld the game that I didn’t get onto how it implemented the player’s interaction with it, which had a bit of a twist on the template. There were no blocks of verbs on screen to choose from like Day of the Tentacle; not even a different cursor to show which action you intended like Sam and Max. There was just a cursor, and left click moved, right click looked, and double click did anything else contextually appropriate. The only remnant of the old text adventures was that when you placed the cursor on an object its name would appear above it. This minimalism was part of a wider trend. Full Throttle, an adventure from genre frontrunners LucasArts and a debut in charge for Tim Schafer, takes its stripping back of the form even further. The result is both a triumph and a crisis.

Ben, its tough biker hero, walks around a world totally unencumbered by on-screen words. This gives some more impact to some excellent visuals -- the moment when you first walk out of the confines of the bar it starts off outside and see him as a tiny figure against a vast rocky landscape is quite the vista. The textual aspect of the interface only comes in when you need to do something. Your cursor changes form when it’s over something you can interact with, and when you click the name of the object appears at the bottom of a circle surrounded by verbs represented in tattoo-style icons. A skull carries options to use his eyes or mouth, and below it are a fist and a boot. 50% of Ben’s possible actions carrying a suggestion of violence gets a message across fast, and it’s one the game runs with. The first puzzle solutions in the game being to kick the bar door in and grab the barman to threaten him is a fun kind of novelty set against the usually more mild-mannered LucasArts adventure hero.

As enjoyable as the action vibe is, there are functional issues with the approach taken. Pixel-hunting around the screen for the things you can interact with was an established bane for point’n’clicks, but normally at least when you found something you could see what it was. In Full Throttle you know when you’ve found something, but have to click and move your eyes to wherever the interface appears to work out what you have found, and if it’s the same thing you already found. This means that an object next to another one -- say, a small slot in a big door, as you have to find at one point -- is extremely easy to miss. This issue halfway replicates the worst puzzle by far in The Secret of Monkey Island, when after a whole game of objects each being differently named you were required to tickle a sleeping skeleton sailor’s feet by clicking on their feet, even though the text didn’t identify the feet separately.

Full Throttle’s interface is just one small part of its austerity. Compared to previous LucasArts adventures, and indeed Discworld, at any moment the number of things you can do is vastly smaller. Full Throttle just isn’t very interested in the typical point’n’click work of going around, taking in lots of small detail, making lots of little interactions, and making connections. Like its hero, it’s an action-oriented game of few words. By cutting back the number of possibilities you have to work with, it balances out some of the additional opacity of the (lack of) interface. Its story is a little silly, and it’s definitely not humourless, but it’s more focused on cinematic effect than any of its predecessors. It succeeds in telling a story very well, not least thanks to some excellent voice acting, including another Mark Hamill appearance. It suggests time and again that animation in the right hands was more effective tool than anyone had so far managed to make FMV recordings of actors.

For all that I like how it tells its story, though, there is something bizarrely self-negating about Full Throttle. Why would the proponents of an evidently successful genre be so keen on taking out so many of its distinctive features? The rise of FMV gaming that we’ve seen is a clue, though perhaps one of the most globally successful games I’m not covering is a bigger one. Myst did all of its exploration and puzzle solving without visible interface. Full Throttle was a bigger sales success than previous LucasArts point’n’clicks, the internet tells me (although I have a suspicion that may apply only in the US) but it didn’t save the genre from falling from the top. A group with honed storytelling skills can take an odd compromise and make it sing, but they can’t hide that its existence doesn’t really make sense.

Gallup compact disc chart, Computer Trade Weekly 29 May 1995 (chart for week to 20 May 1995)

#every number one #Full Throttle #LucasArts

[xxxdragonfucker69xxx]

walpurgisnacht weddings

You are one who has sold her soul to the devil.

You had a good reason for it, I’m sure. You burned for vengeance, or you needed something to get you through another night, or maybe you even felt some sick love for that old thing. You can hardly remember anymore, though you remember the moment vividly: a contract, a ceremony, a kiss. The devil is your husband now, and you are a witch.

It is Walpurgisnacht.

Tonight is the Witches’ Sabbath, when they gather to cavort with fairies and spectres and other dark powers. The devil himself will be here soon, and you will come before him. He will ask what you have done this year, and you will tell him. You will not be able not to speak. All the witches will take turns, and others may interject during your story to clarify what they did, but you will tell him everything. Those flashback stories comprise the majority of play in Walpurgisnacht Weddings.

To create your character, consider: your name, your appearance, and your relation to the villagers. Is your name something like “Agatha up on the hill”, or is it “Hildegard von Hexenhammer”? Are you gnarled and elderly, or unnaturally youthful? Do you live on the outskirts of society, feared and reviled, or are you the matriarch of half a dozen clans? You may name up to four Bonds, the things that you care about and the context in which you care about them.

Then divide 2 points between Familiar, Treasure, Curse, and Gift. Each of these is something your husband has given you, in return for your loyal service and many sacrifices. Familiars are demonic spirits in the shape of animals (or stranger things) to accompany and serve you. Treasures are enchanted objects, like broomsticks that fly and houses that walk. Curses are the meat and drink of many witches: they are the bad things you can do to other people. Gifts are things that are good for a short time, but either need continued feeding or make things worse when they expire. Any given one of these is on a scale from 1 to 3.

Familiar

A small animal which is intelligent and can talk but has no other powers. Overall loyal but may have its own agenda, such as plotting your downfall or stealing the good cat food

An intelligent and speaking animal with minor powers, such as sharing its senses with you or turning invisible or a larger animal with general utility such as a nightmare horse or black dog or a familiar in a stranger form, such as an impeccable butler or a speaking flame

A familiar that can, in times of need, manifest major powers such as growing tenfold and becoming invincible or retrieving your soul from beyond death

Treasure

A household object with minor utility, such as stones that suck away poison or mirrors that compliment and advise you

An object with major utility, such as a broomstick that can carry you cross the sky or a castle that walks of its own volition

An item of great power, such as a mirror that can scry across the entire kingdom or a cauldron that can raise the dead

Curse

Minor inconveniences, such as curdling milk or mild illnesses up to death of livestock and foretold death in certain circumstance, across a household.

Sickness and misfortune across an entire village or major problems, like being transformed into an animal or rendered invisible and inaudible, for a single person

A curse of terrible power, such as turning everyone in a castle into inanimate objects or drawing all of a town’s children to you and into the side of a mountain

Gifts

Preternatural skill for up to a year and a day, after which you must pay for more or youth while a certain condition is met or a certain sacrifice is upheld at least yearly

Healing of a life-threatening wound in exchange for another life or conditional immortality or other power

The granting of nearly any wish

At this point it may be useful to clarify the nature of Gifts and Curses. Each Gift or Curse is a specific ability: Curse 2 doesn’t grant you the ability to rain any sickness or misfortune on a village, it gives you the ability to specifically inflict chickenpox on the town or specifically turn someone you touch into a pig. If you want a new Curse or Gift or Familiar or Treasure, or if you want to increase the power of one you have already, you will have to speak with your husband.

Find an unholy place (your own house may do, if you have invested dark power in it). Wait until midnight. Draw the sigils, burn the incense, bleed the blood. Wait. The devil will come to you then. He will not appear in the circle, as you might have been led to believe. He will be sitting behind you, smoking a pipe, as if he had been there all along. Or you will hear the door shut, and whirl around to find him shedding his coat. His head may be that of a goat, or a flaming skull, or a flaming goat’s skull. He may be a tall and formless shadow, or a handsome young man. You’ll know him when you see him. You may speak with him then.

The devil is your husband, and he is your master, and he will make sure you know it.

You may ask him for something. He will ask you for something. (Gifts are particularly expensive, though if you are bargaining on behalf of another that person will pay instead.) Sometimes this will be something simple, like a drowned baby. Sometimes he will ask for something dear to you: one of your Bonds. He will reach into your heart and twist, and that Bond will become his. The love you had for your daughter will cool and shrivel into fear that she might surpass you. The dancing that brought you joy will recede in your mind until it is only an obsession, that you must prove yourself to be the best dancer around. After that you may consecrate this new pact in whatever form he deems suitable, or you may flee. It doesn’t really matter to him. He will laugh either way.

When the devil has taken all your Bonds, when you care about nothing that is not him, when the way you feel towards the world is only the way he feels towards the world, you are no longer a witch. You are no longer a person. You are a puppet on his finger, and at Walpurgisnacht he will take you away to be his bride forever.

At this point it may be useful to clarify something else: the devil doesn’t care what you do.

The priests and pastors and scared villagers think you delight in evil, and perhaps you do. They believe you must worm your way into your husband’s good graces by spreading chaos and misery, and maybe that is what you are trying to do. But even if, on Walpurgisnacht, you tell a story of adopting orphans and kittens and helping old ladies cross the road? Even if you tell him a story about sitting in your cottage all year and perfecting your cheesemaking technique? The devil will hear your story, and he will smile.

You don’t know what the devil wants. Surely he wants terrible things. Maybe you are causing those terrible things to happen, just by being a witch. There are many witches who believe this, and decide to embrace evil if they’re going to cause it anyways. But maybe he is content to know that one day you will be his. Maybe he doesn’t want terrible things at all.

Whatever you’re doing, it’s what the devil wanted.

like so many of these games idk if this is playable but i think its achieved the vibe i want it to and im perfectly happy with leaving it as unplayable art piece a la beginners guide

ive never watched ancient magus bride but i did like look it up on wikipedia and its kinda fucked up but i liked the atmosphere. other inspirations include howls moving castle and never quite free by the mountain goats, which i had on loop all through writing this

i tried to include something like discworld witches but in the end theyre basically antithetical to what this is about

someone told me to make a game about bargaining with the scorpion inside you and this is partially that

will wizardry week ever end? is there any end to the ways i can slice and categorize magic? no

#tatterpigs #tatterpigsgiving #walpurgisnacht weddings