#especially if certain groups of characters have a particular function

[bugeyedfreaks]

Unpopular opinion moment (that I’m sure will probably get me tons of unwarranted hate as per usual 🙄): I dislike fanart of older versions of the girls drawn with different body types. It’s slowly become a pet peeve of mine. Some of them are cool but overall I just think it’s unnecessary. I am not saying people who draw this are bad people or aren’t allowed to do it. I am not saying none of the designs look cool. I am just saying that I feel that it’s not in the spirit of who the characters are in terms of function and just misses something.

The PPG are essentially 1) triplets and 2) three parts of one unit. Having them be all these discordant shapes and heights based solely off of their personalities or whatever is a fun idea, but it breaks the harmony of their character designs and just makes them look like three separate people who have nothing to do with one another. …I mean, they do all have their own personalities and are separate people, but they’re essentially supposed to also work as one harmonious superhero unit (which is part of why their original individual designs are so simple). How they act is what differentiates them the most, and I’ve always liked those little touches in the show where they’ve shown those differences through acting instead of explicitly through character design.

I guess what I’m saying is that if there ever was, like, some official design of the girls when they were older, I would prefer them not to be, like… Fat, Thin, and Buff, or whatever. I’d like them to be Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup. 🤣 I’d just like to see a successful older design where the principle of their combined character function was maintained in a simplified, clever way.

[felixcloud6288]

Dungeon Meshi Series Overview Part 2

Part 1

With Part 1, I talked about Dungeon Meshi in a more professional, academic light. Now I'm going to talk more personal.

Starting off, Ryoko Kui's art style evolved some much over this series. In the earlier chapters, there was a certain awkward flatness to how she drew characters. She knew how to draw people, and she knew how to draw poses, and she especially knew how to draw food; but there wasn't a lot of detail that gave characters a 3D appearance and she didn't poses that showed movement and combat were somewhat awkward.

Now I'm only bringing this up so I can point out how much she improved as an artist as the series progressed. Characters became less sketchy, poses became more dynamic, and she put more detail and shading that added depth.

In fact, one of the hallmarks of her skill is that when she occasionally redrew panels from earlier chapters, she drew them similar to her old style (See chapter 75).

One distinct detail about Kui's art style is she put a lot of detail into hands. In particular, she often draws fingernails. I would argue that if you ever want to figure out if something was drawn by Ryoko Kui, check if the characters have fingernails. Not only did I find her drawing fingernails all the way back in the Dungeon Meshi oneshot, I also found her doing it in a collection of older one-shots she wrote called "Terrarium in Drawer".

Another aspect of her art style which isn't necessarily unique to her but which I noticed because it frequently caused me trouble when making posts is Kui often avoids standard panel layouts. Panels often have non-rectangular shapes, or will be laid on top of each other, or characters will stick out of panels. It's great for high-speed or high-energy events because the people in the panel will draw you toward themselves or the action in a panel can functional shove itself into what's happening. Unfortunately for me, most of the best images to screenshot were in these non-rectangular spaces.

Now I'm going to complain about something. This story hooked me because of how imaginative Kui is on monsters and the general RPG mechanics that are taken for granted. In chapter 0, mimics were shown as giant hermit crabs. And the thing that made me really start getting into the monster biology was when Laios said the snake part of the basilisk is the main body and the chicken is the tail.

If you've been following my readthrough, you've seen how wildly I speculate about monsters like how I speculated about what a basilisk's dietary pattern is, that Living Armors evolved to look like human armor because they kept mistaking adventurers for breeding colonies, that dryads have a human form so they can walk away from the main plant as a way to spread their seeds, and succubi are communal insects.

I wish there was a lot more of that. I wish these monsters were recurring and we learned more about them. As the series progressed, more of how the monsters worked became "It's magic. Don't worry about it." But I would love to know more. I'd love if there was a side story of a group of researchers studying monsters and giving us wacky random details about them. I love the story that was told, but the thing that initially hooked me was the fantasy biology and that became less and less relevant over time.

And speaking of my speculations, this series allowed a lot of room to speculate on things. And I made a lot of speculations. I managed to correctly determine that Marcille was a half-elf well before it was actually revealed. And I made plenty of wrong speculations as well. My favorite wrong guesses I made were Thistle was trying to resurrect Delgal, Marcille's staff would turn into a Dryad, and Asebi was a spy working for the western elves. Meanwhile, my favorite trivial speculations I made that likely have no definite answer are Laios and Falin were originally left-handed but were taught to be right-handed, Marcille would rather be a full-blooded Tall-man than an elf, and Shuro didn't know what an elf was before meeting Marcille.

Some little trivia bits while writing this series:

I had not read or watched prior to doing this and all I knew was what info had slipped into my view through osmosis. I knew Kabru existed but thought he was some weird unknown rival to Laios based on what people said about him. Because of that, I purposely pointed out every instance where he's on the cover while refusing to call him by name. Hence why some posts open with "It's that guy", "It's him again", and "It's the boy." I stopped when he and Laios actually started to become genuine friends.

Here's something most people reading my posts probably missed. Whenever I included a food screenshot, I used the same template where I named the dish, provided a description if necessary, then listed the ingredients and nutrition. I stuck to that template when describing Falin and Warg Skeletons, Senshi Casserole, Chilchuck Ruibe, Saltwater-Pickled Izutsumi, and Nerve-Clipped Marcille.

And since this is a manga about cooking, I think I should conclude with my favorite dishes in the series.

5) Freshly Stolen Vegetables and Chicken Stewed with Cabbage Accompanied by Plundered Bread (Chapter 9)

I like this dish because the ingredients list specifies that the items have to be stolen. If you want to make this, you cannot just get a cabbage, carrots, onions, flour, and a bread starter. You have to steal them. Otherwise it's just regular vegetables and chicken stewed with cabbage accompanied by regular bread.

4) Prayer to Ward Off Evil! Exorcism Sorbet (Chapter 11)

This dish gets brought up almost every time the party has to interact with ghosts. I also like it because of the ingredients. Like the previous dish, you can't just make it. You have to turn the Holy Water into an impromptu sling and beat up ghosts with it.

3) Crispy Mushroom and Egg Sandwich (Chapter 56)

I don't have any special notes on this one. I like egg sandwiches and I like mushrooms. I'd take Izutsumi's mushrooms and add them to my sandwich.

2) Succubus and Bicorn Brain Doria (chapter 60)

When I saw this, I really wanted to eat it. And I need to emphasize that I don't like shrimp. Succubus larvae aren't actually shrimp, but that's what they're supposed to look like. I'm also curious what horse brain would taste and feel like. I think this was the most nutritious meal in the series, owing primarily to the succubus milk.

1) Changeling Dumplings from Fairy Ring (Chapter 51)

This one is my winner because it's the most fun meal to have with friends. You pick a dumpling and get surprised by what you eat. You could take turns picking one and all get excited about what each person ends up eating.

back

[dynamicscommunity101]

How to Use power apps substring Effectively

Introduction

Making applications that are both user-friendly and efficient is crucial in the current digital environment. Effective string manipulation—especially when utilizing the power apps substring feature—is essential to improving the user experience with PowerApps. To help you manage text data more effectively, this article examines useful tactics and pointers for utilizing the substring feature in your applications.

Comprehending the Substring Concept of Power Applications

With the power applications substring function, developers can extract particular characters from a string according to predefined criteria. You may increase form usability, optimize data handling, and boost overall app speed by becoming proficient with this functionality.

Realistic Situations for Utilizing Power Apps Extracting Substring Data from User Inputs

Users supply data in a variety of formats in numerous apps. Utilizing the substring feature efficiently allows you to extract important data from larger text inputs, like precise details from longer text inputs or usernames from email addresses. This guarantees that the application handles pertinent data effectively and streamlines data administration.

Display of Dynamic Content

For users to get engaged, a tailored experience is essential. Custom messages or labels can be shown by utilizing the substring capability. One way to improve user experience with your app is to extract the first name from a full name input so you can greet people more personally.

Validation of Forms

Substring logic implementation can help with input validation. Substring approaches, for example, can help enforce standards such as phone number or product code format, so that the data obtained satisfies the needs of your application.

Preparing Information for Display Before being shown, raw data frequently needs to be converted. By using the substring function, you may extract and format information in the right ways, such as showing just the pertinent portion of a string or guaranteeing that product identifiers have a certain number of characters.

Managing Various Formats or Languages

It is essential to take into consideration various languages and formatting traditions when creating apps for heterogeneous user groups. You may make your apps compatible with a wide range of input methods by utilizing the substring function. This will guarantee that customers with diverse backgrounds can use your app with ease.

Best Practices for Using Power Apps Effectively Plan Substring The Structure of Your Data

Give careful thought to the organization and utilization of data in your application before putting substring logic into practice. Recognizing your location information must be extracted, together with how it will affect the user experience as a whole.

Test Using Realistic Circumstances

When creating your app, make sure you test it thoroughly with actual user input. This makes sure that your substring logic works as intended in a variety of contexts and helps spot possible problems.

Make sure it is readable and clear.

When using substring logic, make sure your code is clear. It can be easier to maintain and update code if variables are named clearly and have comments that make sense, even for you and future developers.

Aim for Performance Optimization

Think about how employing substring logic may affect performance, particularly in applications with a lot of data. Reduce pointless substring operations to improve the responsiveness and speed of the program.

Give User Input

Make sure users get prompt feedback when utilizing substring in forms or data processing. For example, giving clear instructions when an input needs to be modified or is inaccurate can increase customer pleasure and decrease frustration.

Summary

Making good use of the power apps substring feature can greatly improve the functionality and user experience of your applications. You can simplify data administration, build individualized interactions, and make sure your app fulfills user needs by comprehending its applications and putting best practices into effect. Any PowerApps developer can benefit from mastering substring techniques, which will eventually result in better user-friendly and efficient applications.

[pranay-bansal-digital-media]

Digital Media: Sources and Significance | Reader

1. Wolf, M.J.P. (2007) The video game explosion: a history from Pong to Playstation and beyond. Westport, Conn: Greenword Press.

In this article, the author talks about the timeline of video game history and how the video game landscape has evolved ever since the groundbreaking game Pong was released on 29 November 1972. He also talks about the growing influence of video games on other mediums like film and television and the use of video technology in games, leading to its gradual evolution.

I found this paper especially useful since the information on old/retro video games is often quite scarce, and it is generally extremely difficult to play older games because of the way the games industry has grown over the past few years. Getting to know about the different modes of exhibitions of video games apart from home games was quite interesting as they are often neglected nowadays.

2. Malkowski, J., Russworm, T.A.M., Everett, A., Soderman, B., deWinter, J., Kocurek, C., Huntemann, N.B., Trepanier-Jobin, G., Chien, I. and Murray, S. (2017) Gaming and Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

This paper reflects on the gaming industrial complex (GIC) as a whole and talks about the sexuality, race and intersectionality of gender in game narratives in the present world. Moreover, it delves into the increasing concerns about the influence of gaming when it comes to violence, misogyny and racism, which could also be a leading factor in the big shift in the gaming demographics in recent years.

In my opinion, it is extremely important, especially in recent times, to be aware of the type of narratives and characters portrayed in games, keeping the majority of the demographic in mind. Game designers have a responsibility to be conscious of the choices made when it comes to representation in games.

3. Andre, F., Broman, N., Hakansson, A. and Claesdotter-Knutson, E. (2020) ‘Gaming addiction, problematic gaming and engaged gaming — Prevalence and associated characteristics’, Addictive behaviours reports, 12, pp. 100324 - 100324.

This article discusses the psychological impact of gaming on certain groups of people and the different classifications these fall under. It delves into Gaming disorder and the potential risks involved with extreme use of video games, especially when it comes to it being a replacement for social interactions.

I was really intrigued by the data presented in the article. It is no doubt highly important to acknowledge these disorders as the current millennial generation often dismisses it as false rumours spread to prevent them from engaging in games.

I personally liked the article since it puts forward a real issue when it comes to the industry. Designers often make games as a cash grab rather than a passion project, which often leads to highly addictive idle games which are filled to the brim with micro transactions, leading to problematic and often addictive gaming.

4. Cargoes, N.G. (2016). RPG Mythos: Narrative Gaming as Modern Mythmaking. Games and culture, 11(6), 583-607.

In this essay, the author talks about narrative gaming in Role playing games and its relation to traditional narrative forms in order to understand how social interactions have changed with the advancement of technology. It also aims to understand the system around the so called “synthetic world” of video games.

I found it really interesting to think of video games as a form of storytelling similar to folklore and mythology, since these are one of the oldest ways for us to connect to our ancestors. RPG games have a very similar function and are constantly evolving, making them one of the most powerful forms of storytelling in recent times.

5. Jayasingha, B. (2022) ‘What is the Future of Gaming?’, ITNow, 64(3), pp. 8-9.

In this particular paper, Jayasingha discusses the evolution of gaming and where it is headed from here onwards. She talks about the next generation of games and the various and how gaming has been revolutionised on multiple fronts in the past few years. She also explains the metaverse and the huge impact it has had on gaming along with significance of the growing esports community.

I believe being aware of the various possibilities in which gaming can evolve in the future is of utmost importance, especially due to its current influence in contemporary media and the tremendous rate at which it is growing.

6. Hattie, A. (2018) ‘THE VULNERABLE SPECTATOR: Against Nostalgia’, Film quarterly, 72(2), pp. 81-84.

This article explores the growing interest in cinema from the 70s and discusses how rewatching these films can be interpreted as resisting historical narratives. The author says that integrating 1970s into contemporary cinema is seen as a form of active resistance.

This article was quite different from the rest of the articles that I explored for my reader. The author explores political and social dimensions in film culture in a very personal way. I believe it is critical for students to know about cinematic history and recognise the political landscapes of different eras. Film can be a lot more than entertainment and can even act as a medium for cultural commentary and also give the viewers exposure to diverse perspectives.

7. Akgun, B. (2020) ‘Mythology moe-ivied: classical witches, warriors, and monsters in Japanese manga’, Journal of graphic novels & comics, 11(3), pp. 271-284.

This article discusses the resurgence of female figures like witches and warriors during the 20th and 21st centuries and uses Japanese manga such as “Berserk” and “Soul Eater” as an example. The article explores the boom in popularity and the evolution of the representation of female characters, and how these archetypes are received in present times. It discusses the intertextuality between classical mythology and Japanese manga and the influence Japanese media has had in how we interpret certain characters.

I personally found it interesting how the article talks about the “moe-ification” process and sheds light on the gender dynamics in manga narratives. It also goes into the impact of female characters on modern storytelling trends. Understanding these trends and their social implications is crucial.

8. Chen, C.-S., Lu, H.-P., & Luor, T. (2018). A new flow of Location Based Service mobile games: Non-stickiness on Pokémon Go. Computers in Human Behavior, 89, 182-190.

This particular article explores the success of Pokémon GO and the impact it had on the mobile gaming industry. It highlights the significant smartphone penetration rate using Taiwan as the basis for its research. It delves into Location Based Service technologies and how it encourages players to step out and explore while also actively engaging with the game.

In my opinion, the article gives vital information on the different factors which contribute to the success of a mobile game, may of which can also be applicable to computer and console gaming. It gives valuable insights on media consumption patterns and the impact of technology on user engagement.

9. Collin’s, K. (2011; 2008; 2017;) From PAC-Man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media. 1st edn. Edited by K. Collins. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

This book delves into the history of the evolution of sound in video games, from the silent retro games all the way to the intense audio experiences of contemporary games. It explores crucial milestones in gaming when it comes to audio and sound and the advancements in sound chips, consoles and different video formats.

I believe it provides an overview of the evolution of game audio which is important to know about since sound is an integral part of contemporary gaming. It also explores the relationship between the gaming and music industries and how different mediums are interconnected in today’s time.

10. Lo, S.-K., Lie, T. and Li, C.-L. (2016) ‘The relationship between online game playing motivation and selection of online gaming characters - the case of Taiwan’, Behaviour & information technology, 35(1), pp. 57-67.

The article discusses the growth of online gaming industry and the part widespread internet access has played in it. It explores player motivations and categorises them into different types, and talks about how players influence the choice of non-playable in game characters.

I think the article is relevant since it delves into the integration of celebrities in virtual spaces and how this impacts player experiences. Understanding the different preferences and motivations of the players is extremely important to understand how game design and marketing works. I personally found it really intriguing how the article talks about the relationship between games and social dynamics, and the influence players can have on the decisions made by NPCs.

[jcmarchi]

A flexible solution to help artists improve animation - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/a-flexible-solution-to-help-artists-improve-animation-technology-org/

A flexible solution to help artists improve animation - Technology Org

Artists who bring to life heroes and villains in animated movies and video games could have more control over their animations, thanks to a new technique introduced by MIT researchers.

Their method generates mathematical functions known as barycentric coordinates, which define how 2D and 3D shapes can bend, stretch, and move through space. For example, an artist using their tool could choose functions that make the motions of a 3D cat’s tail fit their vision for the “look” of the animated feline.

Many other techniques for this problem are inflexible, providing only a single option for the barycentric coordinate functions for a certain animated character. Each function may or may not be best for a particular animation. The artist would have to start from scratch with a new approach each time they want to try for a slightly different look.

“As researchers, we can sometimes get stuck in a loop of solving artistic problems without consulting with artists. Artists care about flexibility and the ‘look’ of their final product. They don’t care about the partial differential equations your algorithm solves behind the scenes,” says Ana Dodik, lead author of a paper on this technique.

Beyond its artistic applications, this technique could be used in areas such as medical imaging, architecture, virtual reality, and even in computer vision as a tool to help robots figure out how objects move in the real world.

Dodik, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student, wrote the paper with Oded Stein, assistant professor at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering; Vincent Sitzmann, assistant professor of EECS who leads the Scene Representation Group in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and senior author Justin Solomon, an associate professor of EECS and leader of the CSAIL Geometric Data Processing Group. The research was recently presented at SIGGRAPH Asia.

A generalized approach

When an artist animates a 2D or 3D character, one common technique is to surround the complex shape of the character with a simpler set of points connected by line segments or triangles, called a cage. The animator drags these points to move and deform the character inside the cage. The key technical problem is determining how the character moves when the cage is modified; this motion is determined by the design of a particular barycentric coordinate function.

Traditional approaches use complicated equations to find cage-based motions that are extremely smooth, avoiding kinks that could develop in a shape when it is stretched or bent to the extreme. But there are many notions of how the artistic idea of “smoothness” translates into math, each leading to a different set of barycentric coordinate functions.

The MIT researchers sought a general approach that allows artists to have a say in designing or choosing among smoothness energies for any shape. Then the artist could preview the deformation and choose the smoothness energy that looks the best to their taste.

Although flexible design of barycentric coordinates is a modern idea, the basic mathematical construction of barycentric coordinates dates back centuries. Introduced by the German mathematician August Möbius in 1827, barycentric coordinates dictate how each corner of a shape exerts influence over the shape’s interior.

In a triangle, which is the shape Möbius used in his calculations, barycentric coordinates are easy to design — but when the cage isn’t a triangle, the calculations become messy. Making barycentric coordinates for a complicated cage is especially difficult because, for complex shapes, each barycentric coordinate must meet a set of constraints while being as smooth as possible.

Diverging from past work, the team used a special type of neural network to model the unknown barycentric coordinate functions. A neural network, loosely based on the human brain, processes an input using many layers of interconnected nodes.

While neural networks are often applied in AI applications that mimic human thought, in this project neural networks are used for a mathematical reason. The researchers’ network architecture knows how to output barycentric coordinate functions that satisfy all the constraints exactly. They build the constraints directly into the network, so when it generates solutions, they are always valid. This construction helps artists design interesting barycentric coordinates without having to worry about mathematical aspects of the problem.

��The tricky part was building in the constraints. Standard tools didn’t get us all the way there, so we really had to think outside the box,” Dodik says.

Virtual triangles

The researchers drew on the triangular barycentric coordinates Möbius introduced nearly 200 years ago. These triangular coordinates are simple to compute and satisfy all the necessary constraints, but modern cages are much more complex than triangles.

To bridge the gap, the researchers’ method covers a shape with overlapping virtual triangles connecting triplets of points outside the cage.

“Each virtual triangle defines a valid barycentric coordinate function. We just need a way of combining them,” she says.

That is where the neural network comes in. It predicts how to combine the virtual triangles’ barycentric coordinates to make a more complicated but smooth function.

Using their method, an artist could try one function, look at the final animation, and then tweak the coordinates to generate different motions until they arrive at an animation that looks the way they want.

“From a practical perspective, I think the biggest impact is that neural networks give you a lot of flexibility that you didn’t previously have,” Dodik says.

The researchers demonstrated how their method could generate more natural-looking animations than other approaches, like a cat’s tail that curves smoothly when it moves instead of folding rigidly near the vertices of the cage.

In the future, they want to try different strategies to accelerate the neural network. They also want to build this method into an interactive interface, enabling an artist to iterate on real-time animations easily.

Written by Adam Zewe

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

[gemsofgreece]

Hi! I was wondering if you could tell us about naming conventions when it comes to surnames in Greece? Are there certain type of names associated with a particular place or region? What are the meanings of some of the most common surnames? :)

Hello, yes, Greek surnames are a mix of conventions and messiness! There are too many things that could be said but a summary could be:

Greek surnames are gendered, which means that they have different endings depending on whether the bearer is a man or a woman. This is something that is not acknowledged to Greeks who live abroad where the family name remains unchanged. Take the Greek American actress Nia Vardalos for example. In truth, her father and / or brothers are Vardalos. She is actually Vardalou or she would be, if she lived in Greece. But most foreign states don't acknowledge such in-family name changes.

Greek surname endings typically follow the grammatical endings of standard nouns. The ending also depends on whether the surname follows the nominative or genitive grammatical case (as some surnames indicate a quality - nominative - whereas others indicate ancestry - genitive).

In Ancient Greece, there were no real surnames. The first name was followed by the father's name. The first surnames that could indicate a characteristic or a quality start appearing in Byzantine times. This was continued through Ottoman era. Nowadays, Greek surnames combine all this and can indicate origin from a certain ancestor, usually male but rarely also female, nickname, profession, quality, origin from a region, some personality trait, an appearance trait and anything else you can imagine. It's not unusual AT ALL for surnames to be humorous, ironic or downright offensive and families just learned to live with them!

Some endings are more common in certain areas than others. For example, a masculine surname ending in -akis is from Crete island. -idis or -adis appears in Pontic Greek surnames. -udis or -udas are from Macedonia and Thrace. -akos is from Mani. -atos is from Cephalonia island. -elis is from Limnos and Lesvos islands and the coastal areas of Asia Minor. -usis is from Chios island. The very famous -poulos is more often from the Peloponnese. More on this one later. Some Greeks have a surname ending in -oglu. This is a turkish ending, meaning "child-of". It indicates these Greeks had ancestors who came from Turkey during the population exchange in 1922.

There are also some endings that themselves indicate that the meaning of the surname is that of regional origin. Such common endings are: -ótis, -iótis, -ítis, -ianos, -inós, -éos. A villain in a famous Greek series was called Ares Patrinós. His surname meant some ancestor of his was from the city of Patras.

Some surnames have roots that appear to not have an obvious meaning. This is a consequence of the multi-ethnic and especially multi-lingual character of the Ottoman empire. Greek surnames that have roots that are not etymologically Greek might have especially Turkish or Latin but also Vlach, Arvanite, Slavic, Armenian or Jewish etymology instead. This could indicate that the ancestor had mixed ethnicity / descent or that this ancestor was active in some field or social group where that language was prominent in the empire as there were such lingual functional and class distinctions. There are also surprising etymologies that are of Medieval / Byzantine Greek origin, which have fallen out of regular use as standard words and therefore the surname's meaning isn't clear instantly. All surnames though, even those with non-Greek etymologies are Greek-fied which means that they get the Greek grammar endings and are inflected according to the Greek grammar. The only exception is the surnames ending in -oglu, which is probably because they end in an -ou- sound just like many grammatically Greek surnames, so there was no need to be modified too much.

The most common Greek surname ending you will ever hear is -poulos for men and -poulou for women. -poulos indicate being somebody's child. I.e a famous retired officer we have is called Katerinopoulos, which means "Katerina's child". So here we also see the relatively unusual "origin from a female ancestor" indication. I don't know if he has a daughter or a sister, but if so, they are called Katerinopoulou. Please note that even though the surname means "a woman's child" it is not only bore by the true child of that woman. The surname continued beyond the child and was bore intact by the child's descendants as well. So they are all Katerina's descedants, even if they are not direct children. A cute thing to add is that -poulos does not exactly mean a human child! It literally refers to a hatchling, a baby bird. So, if we are really precise about it, Katerina gave birth to a boy that became known around town as "Katerina's little bird". And then the nickname stuck and became his surname. And pouli means bird in general. It derives from the Ancient Greek πωλος (polos) through the Koine Greek πουλλος (poullos) and has a common PIE root with the Latin pullus. They all mean that; small young animal, usually bird!

The most common surname root you will ever hear has any of these in: papa-, pappa-, papado- . These can be both in the beginning of the surname (i.e Papandreou) or the end (i.e Protopappa). Papa- and all its forms indicate descent from an ancestor who was a priest (as Orthodox priests get married and typically produce A LOT of offspring). So, for example, Papandreou, which is also the surname of a very prominent political family in Greece, means "of Father Andreas". They clearly had an ancestor in the family who was a priest named Andreas (παπά-Ανδρέας / Papa-Andreas). The -ou ending is the genitive case showing origin, possession. When the surname is in the genitive case, it usually doesn't change between men and women as there is no gender changes in saying "of Father Andreas". So both men and women in this family are called Papandreou.

Given all this information, can you tell which is the ultimate most common surname in Greek? Well, of course it's ΠΑΠΑΔΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ (Papadopoulos, or Papadopoulou for women). Which means the "priest's wife's child little bird¨!!! There you go!!!!

Now have a caprice!

[gothprentiss]

i keep seeing people say the criminal minds reboot wasn’t necessary. this is a massive lol but also just the weirdest critique. beyond the general lack of necessity for any reboot (and the wider lack of necessity for most tv, especially formulaic crime procedurals which i think are probably quite bad for us culturally in ways that the true crime obsession is only highlighting), there’s not much on criminal minds that was happening because it needed to happen, because it furthered certain character arcs, or told an important story, or explored a topic worth exploring. in some ways, this is the first time i’ve seen criminal minds really have to justify its own existence.

on one hand, sure, the storyline is wildly fucking stupid and poorly conceived, serialized where it should be episodic, and too expansive to allow any individual episodes to probably be good on their own merits. but that’s also what criminal minds has been for almost all of its existence. the dynamics among the characters, on the other hand, are genuinely interesting. the show used to be genuinely terrible at reintroducing characters or exploring change, but that was because it never had to reintroduce them all at the same time, so you got (e.g.) the miserable and slapdash reintroduction of prentiss, or jj’s absence being poorly retrofitted seasons later; or you got the weird failure to appreciate the very high personal stakes of reid dealing with addiction, or morgan’s attempts to reconcile with faith. i don’t know if where we end up will be great in comparison— the show, because of reid, has had a sort of de facto main character for a very long time, and that old pattern is emerging around rossi and garcia (i suspect it’ll shift from him to her in the next couple of episodes but what do i know).

but the point is that this is the first time i’ve seen the show really actually evaluate itself. first, of course, the nearly defunded bau struggling to function and the question of whether the unit survives increased negative scrutiny naturally are figures for this season itself, especially as they try to get greenlit for more seasons. the bau racing to justify its own existence may pan out to merely be what it’s always been— the good agents versus the bad administrator, who will either die horribly or be shown the error of their ways— but it may also, along the way, involve the characters being given the space to properly explore both their purpose in the bau and what they want from life.

criminal minds has always struck me as a character-driven show which simply didn’t know this, or at least didn’t know how to deliver on this. given the season’s organization— the network of serial killers, dumb as it is, provides an overarching plot which could ostensibly meaningfully link together a series of disparate crimes— there’s space for each character to have an individual case/episode which explores them and their life, or for everyone to take stock and explore their options thematically. for example, 16x02 sicarius was the relationships episode; you can imagine a sort of progression through different facets of life from there. reboot press has said that the early episodes in particular are exploring the characters’ lives— part of this is literally just establishing where they are now, as we’ve seen. but the question of where they’re going, and the extent to which it will be as a group, seems entirely open. the season will almost definitely end with rossi’s retirement. it may not end with anyone else leaving, considering that they’re trying to get more seasons, but the show’s fondness for will-they-won’t-they cliffhangers suggests that the season might end with any of the characters poised to leave. penelope, for example, has carved out a totally functional life outside of the bau, one which she seems extremely reticent to give up. jj is on her, what, 11th? 12th? season of being torn between her marriage+family and the bau, and as the season opens with her early-onset empty nest syndrome, it’s not unimaginable that this might be the year she finally does it. maybe tara’s girlfriend will be trying to snag her an opening at the doj, where hours are more normal and safety is more assured. prentiss and alvez don’t currently have obvious outs, but with the potential impending dissolution or near-dissolution of the bau, each could be easily reassigned, and for a variety of reasons.

this is long. my point is that criminal minds evolution has, so far, first-season energy, which has genuinely regalvanized the show. it’s not amazing tv by any stretch, but it does feel both better and more thoughtful than the latest seasons were. i suspect it won’t end with any finality, but it’s quite well poised to, and regardless of how the season turns out it will likely have done more work exploring its characters as people beyond their work (i.e., establishing ground for finality) than most of the rest of the show combined.

[incorrect-koh-posts]

Can i ask how the hell should I use live journal? Like It's so confusing. Can you hint me something?

Hi :) Of course you can ask, I'm always happy to help! And I get you, livejournal is a bit archaic and hard to navigate. But once you understand the system, you're actually able to find stuff 😁

So, since it's me you're asking, I assume you're hunting for the old KoH fanfics from 2005. I'd recommend either googling something like "KoH fanfiction livejournal" OR simply going to the livejournal site and then using the search bar there (I'm reasonably sure it's somewhere in the top right corner).

With the search function, I wouldn't search for just "Kingdom of Heaven", because in that case livejournal hits you with everything that has that combination of words in it, which is a whole bloody lot (including some weird religious shit of the sort that also shows up regularly in our tumblr tag).

Instead, what I did to find those fics was to search for names of certain characters. Since most of them are quite unique, you'll already get decidedly fewer hits and will probably find some fic or other relatively quickly. What you can do as well is search for two character names (e.g. "balian king baldwin" or some such), which will also limit the field a little more. You'll probably still have some movie reviews or whatever among the hits, but it'll make it much easier to filter out what you were looking for.

There are I think two (?) groups I know of that most fics were posted to: one is koh_slash_fic and the other one is heavens_kingdom (which also has other stuff about the film in there, not just fics). Then there's also the_lepic, which is ... well, I suppose you can guess from the name - mostly slightly strange but amusing Baldwin smut. But there are some non-smutty and rather funny fics there as well: I remember a cracky one about Tiberias discovering that Baldwin IV likes to knit in his free time with particular fondness. That one was a hoot. 😂

Fair warning though: You might want to be a bit careful with livejournal nowadays, since it's owned by a Russian company. I'm not a tech nerd by any means, but I'd recommend at least using a VPN when hanging around on such sites. Can't be careful enough.

Also: The stories you're going to find are from the eeeeaaarly days of the KoH fandom - some of the fics were written even before the film was released. So a lot of this stuff is basically "omg Orlando Bloom as Balian is so hot, let's ship him with every available male character in the film, including his own father". And I mean, to each their own, but that's not really my thing. (Incest, that is. I love a good M/M fic as much as anybody.) Generally, there are many more PWPs on livejournal than on AO3 or FFnet. And the M/M ships sometimes have ... interesting takes on characterisation, especially in regard to Baldwin, who often comes across as oddly feminine. Which isn't to say these stories are bad, they're just very different from the somewhat newer stuff on AO3 or FFnet, where you usually see (female) OC x Canon Character pairings and surprisingly little slash. But I'm sure you'll find something to your taste!

Oh boy, this escalated quickly. I'm sorry for being so long-winded, dear anon, but I hope this helps! 😊

[inquisitorius-sin-bin]

So, with Chapter 3 of Ride or Die coming out last night, I kind of wanted to give a little no-spoilers outlook into some of my worldbuilding process. I feel really passionately about using this story to create an alien culture which feels rich, tangible, and unique enough to be its own separate entity. I especially want to avoid any sort of cultural appropriation or cheap indigenous stereotypes, which would be easy to fall into when you're creating groups of nomadic grassland peoples.

So why even do plains nomads at all? The surface of Utapau is described as an uninhabitable plain, wrought with hyperwind storms and dangerous wildlife, yet there are canonically groups of people that live there such as the Amani, and it is said to be the origin of the Pau'an species. So, I reasoned it wouldn't be impossible there were groups of Pau'an that actively chose to retain their cultural heritage and stay on the surface of the planet. And to avoid dangerous natural catastrophies such as hyperwind storms or wildlife, they would need to be mobile and not utilize permanent settlements.

Of course, there are going to be certain elements that are common to nearly every indigenous group of grassland nomads. Like your shelter is going to need to be some tent-like structure you can take down and carry with you. You're probably going to rely on some kind of animal mount to carry you and your possessions from place to place. But I can add little touches to make them unique, and not quite like anything we see on Earth.

In this post, I want to focus on one micro-element from the story: floor cushions. So far in this work, we've only met one particular clan. There are ten, and I describe in short detail some of the differences between them, but we'll see more when we meet other groups. This particular group has a lifestyle based on falconry, using birds to catch small game, fletching arrows, etc.. The leader of this group is married to a former member of a different group whose focus was on textile making in a process called "stitch-weaving". In addition, the closeness of the two groups is reinforced, because the protagonist was going out to trade with this weaving group when we contacted them in the story.

So these characters' particular environment is full of mostly textile furnishings and clothes, with a few leathers and furs mixed in. Specifically, there is a floor cushion, which is described as a "woven mat, stuffed with down feathers and grass". In my head, I'm thinking, these characters need to pack efficiently so they can live life on the move, so when they need to pick up, they simply empty their cushions, roll the mats into a compact shape for travel, and when they reach their destination, they fill them full of whatever material they have on hand. For this group, their falcons would catch other birds, giving them access to down, and obviously grass is abundant everywhere and gives structure to the cushion.

In contrast, we have a different character who comes from a group that specializes in big game hunting and functions as a standing army. We haven't met them yet, but their environment would be nearly the opposite, less woven fabrics and more emphasis on animal pelts, because that is what they have in abundance. It also makes sense, because big animals are dangerous and if you're fighting, you're going to need the protection that layers of leather offer. Their floor cushions would be more likely to be made of fur, and stuffed with material like Jamel wool and hair.

Maybe other groups would use a blend, or maybe there's a plant fiber available similar to cotton, but I like to put effort into making each group distinct from one another, and how those differences play into their political relationships. To me, it makes for a rich world that feels realistic, but not exactly like "space Mongolia" or "space Great Plains". And if you like this idea, I hope you'll give my work a read! I haven't gotten spicy just yet, so if that x reader fics aren't your jam, you don't have to worry about that just yet.

Anyways, happy reading!

[lacklusterhero747]

Mechanizing What Matters

As a Game Master, I frequently find that I have a desire to tinker with the rules of games, especially games that I love. Sometimes it happens because I find a particular game lacking in some area or other and think that I might be able to correct it. Other times, I simply encounter a mechanic in another game entirely that I become obsessed with and want to see it put to use. Especially if I feel like the second game in question is one I might be waiting a long time to actually get to play with any frequency. If at all.

This particular case definitely falls into that latter camp.

Generally speaking, I believe that game mechanics that step beyond the fundamentals–the engine under the hood that explains how you accomplish x or y task–should exist for two reasons: they should encourage certain types of behaviors from players that you, as the GM, wish to cultivate and they should reward the players for doing those things. A good example of what I mean that springs to mind was when I wrote my post, Hacking the Game, talking about changing the rules for Fabula Ultima. I mentioned how I wanted to change the way Experience points were awarded to better encourage a sense of exploration and goal-orientedness, as well as put a portion of the effort of awarding experience on the players themselves as they voted for one another to get awards as a means to encourage attentiveness and constant engagement.

Now, having fully read and digested the rules to Armour Astir: Advent, I again find myself debating the merits of flexing or changing the rules of Fabula Ultima once again, for the sake of cultivating a particular sort of experience I want to see at my table.

The Rule That Is: Bonds

In the game, there is a system for cultivating emotional attachments, or Bonds, between one’s character and other characters, or even nations, kingdoms, organizations, or religions. It’s a relatively simple mechanic, elegant in its design and I even find it somewhat cute. It’s functional and easy to understand and is a good entry point into the concept of mechanized emotional attachment if a particular player’s past experiences see them coming from a game that does not feature this kind of mechanic.

By default, you can have up to 6 bonds, all with varying levels of effectiveness based on their emotional strength, as seen below:

In raw game terms, a Fabula Point can be spent to Invoke a bond while making a skill check to represent how the relationship and its associated emotions spur the character onward, granting you a +1 to +3 to roll, depending on how deep that relationship is. Meanwhile, for Group Checks, if one or more of the Supporting Characters has a bond with the Leading character, the single highest strength Bond gets added to the group check as an additional bonus to the roll. A few other niche cases do exist, like the Darkblade class ability Heart of Darkness, which allows you to immediately create a Bond of Hatred towards a creature that puts in Crisis–below half HP–once per scene or the Rare Item Bow of Frozen Envy that allows you to recover 5 MP on a successful attack roll, so long as your character has a Bond of Inferiority on their sheet.

As I said above, it’s simple, elegant, and functional, especially the way it’s nested into the rest of the game’s rules. The mechanic and its text prescribes particular ways of thinking about the subject of your bonds and encourages you to see the increase of inherent strength of the bond as a deepening of the relationship's emotional weight and value…

Unfortunately, I also find it somewhat limiting and a little arbitrary. Obviously the six chosen emotions can be read in a number of ways, but one could argue that they’re also loaded terms, boxing a player into particular modes of thought about other characters or things. And I don’t know about you, but I have definitely felt both Admiration and Inferiority towards other people in my life at the same time. These do not have to be mutually exclusive concepts but for the purpose of mechanical game terms, they absolutely must be. Perhaps I’m just picking nits on this one, but I find the guard rails to be a little annoying, especially as a Game Master who has spent enough time running PbtA games for a group that is familiar enough with the concepts of bonds or Hx to grok what the game is shooting for.

Beyond that, Bonds as presented are entirely one way. You, as a player, can choose to form a bond towards another player character or an organization or concept, and there’s no expectation of reciprocity at all. Certainly, I can understand how that would make sense if your Bond was towards The Church or some other monolithic organization. Such a group might realistically have no reason to even know you exist, after all, but it feels a little sad to me that you might devote your characters emotions, good or bad, towards another player character or NPC, and see that effort go entirely unanswered. And yes, I know, sometimes life do be like that, but this game is specifically trying to model games like Final Fantasy or the Tales of X  series who’s feet are firmly planted in anime and arch genre tropes. These are stories where another character’s indifference towards your own shouldn’t just be a cavalier fact of life: You should be able to weaponize that shit.

The Rule I am Obsessed with: Gravity Clocks

Gravity Clocks in Armour Astir are similarly meant to represent your character's relationships and attachments, but they do so in a different and, I think, more mechanically interesting way. They do not simply measure how many emotions a particular bond or attachment has. The book itself states: they are countdowns to when a relationship is challenged, confronted or addressed.

A Gravity clock can be declared at any time (though you may only be part of 3 clocks at a time, as well as 1 for your Rival should you acquire one), so long as both parties feel that it is appropriate. They come in the form of a 6 segment Clock with a word or short phrase that sums up the relationship and starts empty, offering the relevant player (or players) a +1 by default, but can be increased to a maximum of +3 as the clock evolves.

Mechanically speaking, whenever you would make a move in Armour Astir that involves the other party of a clock, you may add the clock’s value instead of the normal trait or value and doing so causes the clock to advance. And then, when the clock is filled, some real cool stuff can happen:

And this doesn’t even begin to touch on how absolutely wild Rival Clocks can get.

The game frames Rivals as recurring characters who appear again and again to challenge specific players who have earned their attention. They don’t need to explicitly be foes that are gunning for a player in an antagonistic way either. They might be an ally with a competitive relationship, someone the player is trying to impress (or vice versa), and so on. No matter the case, however, they’re essentially treated as main characters with a Gravity clock tied to their Player Character Rival, and are represented textually by a Need (what their faction demands of them, what they are obligated to do, etc), and a Want (what they want from their counterpart), which is meant to help direction their fiction and also provides the Rival with a metacurrency called Leverage that the GM can use in a variety of ways.

When a Player Character interferes with a Rival’s Need or indulges their Rival’s Want, their Leverage Increases, and they gain 1 Hold. This Hold can be spent by the Game Master, at any time, 1-for-1 to do the following: 

Make the player character act in Confidence or Desperation (altering the way dice are rolled).

Ask a challenging question which must be answered.

Appear somewhere that they are not expected.

On the page, these rivals are represented like this:

As you can see, the idea of Gravity Clocks advancing in Armour Astir is inherently tied to your character advancing and growing stronger, but it also becomes something of a currency that can be used and/or discarded as the situation requires.

Additionally, the clocks themselves immediately establish a two way connection between parties that grows and evolves when either party of the clock leans on that emotional connection as a means towards success. Further, given the somewhat vague way in which the Gravity Clock can be named and defined, both parties are not required to name their clocks in the same way. What matters is that the emotional link exists between the two parties, but the way each party defines that link can be as varied and complicated as real social and emotional connections are between actual people: one player's Fast Friends clock could just as easily be another player’s Ally of Convenience clock.

Adapting the Mechanic

So, with both mechanics laid out, the question becomes how would I do it, if I decided to make the change.

On the most basic level, the amount of potential bonus a Gravity Clock can provide is equal to what a Bond can do. In that respect it doesn’t need any massaging. Spend a Fabula Point, gain the bonus from +1 to +3, advance the clock, and move on.

In terms of their function in Armour Astir, each time a character fills a Gravity Clock, they are granted an advancement, in addition to the other mechanical benefits of the clock filling. For those not familiar with PbtA games, an advancement is essentially the same as gaining a level. I find myself torn between wanting to keep as is, instantly granting a character in Fabula Ultima a level up, or reducing it to a mere sum of experience points (probably between 2 and 5). It is incredibly thematic for anime and games inspired by anime to have moments where a person’s emotional state pushes them to new, previously unknown levels of power. However, because activating the benefit of the Gravity Clock to add it to your roll as a bonus would also require the expenditure of a Fabula Point–itself is a means of gaining XP in the game–I fear it might cause players to level too quickly if I just simply handed them a level for improving their relationships. Doubly so because the Gravity Clock can be shared between two players and both of them would potentially be gaining the same benefits from filling that clock.

Additionally, Committing to a Gravity Clock–where you circle it and lock it in as stated above–comes with the ability to sacrifice that clock forever and instantly succeed as though you had rolled a 10+, PbtA’s best possible result, in exchange. This one I find less troublesome to think about how I would implement as a rule. I would likely treat it as though the players had rolled a Critical Success, with the player’s High Roll being equal to the maximum of the lowest of the two dice used in the test, should it happen to matter. In this way the players should be guaranteed their success, within the bounds of what they would normally be capable of, and would also be granted an Opportunity per the standard rules of Fabula Ultima (Which is really just a laundry list of additional things that you can have happen in addition to getting the thing you wanted from your check, like Unmasking the goals and motivations of the enemy or causing a Plot Twist!).

On the Rival Clock side of things, the only thing that would likely take some doing to figure out is the Confidence and Desperation mechanics. In Armour Astir, these cause you to treat 1s on a d6 as 6 if you’re acting in Confidence, or 6s as 1s if you’re acting in Desperation. This is a very powerful mechanic that can drastically change outcomes and the flow of the game and one that does not map directly to Fabula Ultima very well. Potentially, I suppose I lean in even heavier and cause the Hold spent to cause critical success or fumbles, but that seems too heavy handed. Alternatively I could just port over the function of the mechanics, but extend them to the additional types of dice used in Fabula, but without play testing who knows what unforeseen consequences that might have.

Finally there’s the Fabula Ultima side of the equation to consider. First and foremost, you can gain more Bonds in the game that Armour Astir allows for Gravity Clocks, even when including the Rival Clock. This is perhaps not so bad, if you consider you might now also be using those clocks to gain XP or Levels depending on my final decisions, but we also have to consider other factors. Many of the Class or Equipment based calls for Bonds in the game are specifically about Emotions attached to the Bonds, rather than their numerical value, and without those, some mechanics work less well, if at all. It’s a problem that could probably most easily be solved by simply adding tags to the clocks, so that they might read as “Estranged Siblings (Mistrust)”, but even that seems a little clunky. Perhaps just leaving things open to interpretation, which was the whole goal to begin with, would be best.Regardless, it leaves me with things to consider, and more than likely I’ll want to play a couple of Campaigns of Fabula Ultima through to completion before I leap to making the change. Play testing the idea would also be a must, of course, as I would still need to settle on what the exact implementation and benefits would be, but I think it could lead to some really interesting and meaningful role play if instituted correctly.

[uovoc]

Murderbot privacy

“SecUnit is a very private person, it doesn’t like to talk about its feelings” made me do a double take because I was like, SecUnit, who’s listening to you right now? Since when has it cared about privacy? Because while MB is a secretive fucker, it sure doesn’t extend that courtesy to others. And what I could figure out so far to explain this apparent hypocrisy is some more-or-less coherent stuff.

Summary:

MB conflates personal, private, and secret because these categories could not exist separately under the regime of surveillance and objectification inflicted upon it in the CR. This meant that the development of MB’s sense of personal identity was limited to its internal self. As a result, MB has a good instinctive grasp of the right to privacy regarding one’s emotions and internal state. However, its lack of bodily autonomy and background as a cog in the CR surveillance state have led it to regard physical privacy as a personal privilege rather than a right.

2200 words below the cut. I think about Murderbot a normal amount

Terminology

For clarity, the terms personal, private, secret, and privacy will be defined basically by their Merriam-Webster definitions. Personal will be used to mean relating to an individual’s character, conduct, motives, or private affairs. Secret is defined as kept from knowledge or view; hidden. Private will be used to mean 1) intended for or restricted to the use of particular person, group, or class. Privacy will be defined as the quality or state of being apart from company or observation; freedom from unauthorized intrusion. These are not comprehensive definitions, but for clarity’s sake they’re the ones I will use here.

The connotations that they carry in this analysis are:

Things that are secret are actively concealed. If something is secret, people are not aware of its existence. Secrets carry the implication of potential harm if divulged.

Privacy and things that are private are generally kept as such by social norms rather than active enforcement. The existence of things that are private may be known, but the details are limited to a restricted (trusted) audience. For instance, to quote Beatrice-Otter, “the contents of my underwear drawer are private, but not secret.” If you’re at someone’s house, you could technically go look in someone’s underwear drawer – it’s not like they can stop you – but out of the mutually agreed-upon respect for privacy and definition of what qualifies as private, you don’t. Things kept private tend to be done so for personal-emotional reasons rather than practical reasons.

These are limited definitions and not mutually exclusive. For instance, privacy can be enforced by gates and barriers like secrets are. These definitions aren’t meant to be comprehensive, but just to establish the meanings and connotations that I’m working with.

Privacy in the CR versus Preservation

Murderbot’s approach to privacy reflects the attitudes of the Corporation Rim. Preservation regards privacy more like a personal right and establishes it through primarily through societal norms, while the Corporation Rim treats privacy more like a personal privilege which individuals are responsible for securing and maintaining. In Preservation, freedom from observation is the default, and surveillance is the exception. To MBs annoyance, unless a space is singled out for security reasons (cargo spaces and high-traffic zones on the station), it’s generally left unsurveilled (residential areas, pedestrian corridors, most of the planet that we see in NE). Preservation also has cultural expectations of certain types of spaces being private. MB doesn’t share these expectations, as it notes in NE when it admits that its eavesdropping habit is “a little incriminating with the whole listening to private conversations in secured spaces and personal dwellings thing.” The specificity of “secured spaces and personal dwellings” makes this sound like something someone else said to MB that it’s now repeating, especially since it doesn’t agree that what others consider private conversations or private spaces are inherently off-limits to observation.

Unlike Preservation, MB sees privacy as a privilege rather than an inherent right, because it’s more used to the attitude of the CR surveillance state. In the labor installations that MB was deployed on, everything people did was observed by SecSystem at all times. If you wanted privacy, you had to pay for it, as MB notes in ES when it’s complaining about the lack of cameras in the fancy hotel that it books when it arrives. Even then, you might not get what you pay for, and MB take steps to secure PresAux’s own camera network that they later set up. In the CR, privacy is closer in meeting to secrecy, something that must be actively enforced and secured against intrusion. Corporate entities in the CR are motivated to erode personal privacy for profit in the form of datamining and workforce control. Privacy is thus a personal responsibility, since the surrounding environment is one that seeks to undermine it. This is the attitude towards privacy that MB is working with, and part of why it feels entitled to constant surveillance of its humans. In contrast, privacy in Preservation is a right maintained by the collective expectations and policies of the larger community. Station Security doesn’t exactly approve of MB setting up its own surveillance network, but nor does it do regular drone removal sweeps. MB expects privacy to be actively secured, and sees Preservation’s easily breached systems as the equivalent of leaving your valuables out on the lawn. If you don’t want to be surveilled, don’t go around being surveillable.

Surveillance exemptions

Instances where MB appears to respect the notion of privacy are sex/bodily functions, proprietary data, and feelings talks. However, out of these 3 categories, feelings are the topic where MB’s motivations align most closely with the human understanding of privacy. MB’s aversion to sex is more of an ick factor thing, since it repeatedly states that it finds human bodily functions to be disgusting. (I think touch aversion is also part of the sex-repulsed thing, but touch aversion aligns more with ick factor and also with lack of bodily autonomy, discussed below.)

Proprietary data is another topic on which MB appears to be on the same page as humans regarding “private” as being restricted to a particular group: it doesn’t tell the Mensah parents about Amena’s creepy date, and it removes the audio when it shows Indah the video of Mensah complaining about another councilmember. In both of these cases, there’s the potential for harm if the information is divulged: Amena would get scolded and possibly grounded by her parents, and Mensah’s relationships with the Council and Senior Indah would be damaged by her lack of professionalism. In a business context, proprietary data is information kept within a company because it would give your competitors an advantage, or because your competitors could use it to put you at a disadvantage – pretty much the same results, in the game of capitalism. Although both of these examples deal with personal-emotional information, the concept of proprietary data is closer to secrecy in its potential for harm and complete concealment of the information’s existence.

The third type of situation where MB appears to be on the same page as humans regarding privacy is people talking about their feelings. After Arada gets back from the Barish-Estranza negotiations, MB pointedly does not watch her and Overse make up because of the high likelihood that “they were having sex and/or a relationship discussion (either of which I would prefer to stab myself in the face than see).” Sex falls under the ick factor, but there’s a number of reasons the fandom collective braincell has pointed out for MB not wanting to watch people talk about their feelings:

MB exercising the privilege of not having to care about human feelings, as a formerly enslaved person subjected to human whims.

Secondhand embarrassment because MB would never talk about its feelings.

Related to the above, MB reflexively recoiling out of empathy because if it was in their position, it wouldn’t want someone listening in on its feelings.

Actually, now that I think of it, MB doesn’t go into great detail on why it doesn’t like watching humans talk about their feelings, unlike how it explicitly expresses its disgust for anything involving human fluids. Which is why I’ve got the suspicion that when it comes to feelings, MB does have a strong instinctive understanding of what it means for something to be private and, as a result, gets uncomfortable observing a moment that is not meant for others to see. MB has an easier time understanding how privacy applies to feelings rather than acts because unlike its body, its feelings are strongly tied to its concept of what is personal.

MB’s internal and external self

To paraphrase this one MDZS meta, MB’s body is not its own. MB’s sense of what is personal to it, or its sense of unique identity, applies more its internal self than its external self because of its former nonperson status in the CR. This informs what MB considers to be inherently private. While in the CR, its appearance and configuration were decided by the company. To be fair, humans don’t get to choose our original bodies either, but our bodies and the modifications we make to them tell a story of our personal background. The history inscribed in MB’s body, down to the logos etched on its structure, is that of a mass-produced piece of corporate equipment. MB does not have a particular attachment to its external appearance (“standard human”) because its appearance reflects the company’s choices rather than its own. (This changes after it gains the freedom to choose its own clothes and gets tabletop surgery from ART, discussed at the end.) Although MB’s configuration is what makes it a SecUnit, and being a SecUnit is an essential part of its identity, it’s not an identity that’s unique to MB.

For most of its life, MB’s actions have also been extensions of the company. Its actions have either been dictated by its clients and governor module, or it has had to pretend to be controlled by those things, which means making decisions which could conceivably have been issued with the governor module’s approval. MB is also used to selling its body, since it’s expected to literally sacrifice pieces of itself to keep its clients safe (an expectation it continues to hold). MB has been ship-of-Theseus’d to hell and back. The lack of both bodily autonomy and bodily safety due to its nonperson status in the CR means that MB considered its body to be neither private (restricted to the use of only one person) nor entirely personal (pertaining to its unique character).

As a consequence, MB doesn’t consider its external self to have the right to privacy. Although it doesn’t like being looked at, it’s reaction is to hide rather than ask people to stop. (This is also because MB isn’t used to exercising its personal preferences regarding other people’s actions, but that’s a different angle.) It doesn’t like it when Mensah walks into the security ready room, or when its humans and ART’s crew are watching it come out of involuntary shutdown on the deck, but it doesn’t tell them to stop. In general, MB doesn’t like being looked at because if it’s falling apart, it’s in a vulnerable state, and if it’s not falling apart, then being paid attention to used to carry the threat of abuse/incoming orders/being clocked as a rogue. These reasons are more about safety than privacy.

However, MB specifically doesn’t like people looking at its face are because its face shows its emotions, and its emotions are a reflection of its internal state and, by extension, its internal self. MB considers its thoughts and emotions to have the right to privacy because they are the aspects of itself that it has been able to control, and thus has been able to make personal. When Gurathin reveals its name, it grates out, “That was private.” On one level, Murderbot’s name is an honest expression of what it thinks it is and all the associated self-loathing and guilt. MB does NOT want humans to know its name because then they know how it feels about a topic truly important to it. On another level, its name reveals its self-deprecating humor, something a ruthless killing machine is not supposed to have.

Everything that MB considers personal, it has also needed to keep secret, because in the CR, it’s not supposed to be a person the first place. Conversely, the only reason it’s been able to have personal opinions and emotions is because it has been able to keep these things secret. Anything MB would have wanted to be private – restricted to a trusted audience – would have also needed to be secret because of the pervasive surveillance present in the CR, the nonperson status of constructs, and the fact that it had no trusted audience with which it could share private information.

Conclusions

MB conflates the categories of personal, private, and secret because these concepts could not exist separately under the regime of surveillance and objectification inflicted upon it in the CR. Anything in one category had to be able to fit into the others, which limited the development of MB’s sense of personal identity to its internal self. Although MB has good instinctive grasp of the right to privacy regarding one’s internal state, MB’s lack of bodily autonomy and its background as a cog in the CR surveillance state have led it to regard physical privacy as a personal privilege rather than a right.

Now that MB’s in a safer place (kidnappings by giant asshole research transports aside), it’s beginning to separate out those concepts a bit and allow things to be personal and private but not secret (its desire to be with ART, its affection towards Mensah). It’s also starting to allow things that are neither secret nor private to be personal (expressing preferences in its hairstyle, clothing, and aversion to physical touch), which can also be considered MB reclaiming its external self/body.

[shihalyfie]

Shiramine Nokia, and her role in Cyber Sleuth’s narrative

This one’s on request! Cyber Sleuth is quite the interesting game and a rather landmark entry in the franchise, mainly for being a love letter to the franchise and its long history itself, and for being the franchise’s very first work exclusively aimed at adults, meaning that it can explore different topics that wouldn’t normally be Sunday morning timeslot material, while also being a little more willing to assume that the people playing this are familiar with a lot of older parts of the franchise (not that it’s advisable to have complete lockout, but the game benefits greatly by not needing to assume lockout by default).

One of the ways Cyber Sleuth exhibits its “franchise love letter” status is by starting off the game all the way back at the franchise’s roots, before Digimon Adventure changed the game and everyone’s perception of Digimon and Digimon partnership, when the V-Pet lore was intertwined with Digimon as elements of hard sci-fi. As the game proceeds, the atmosphere slowly starts to resemble the more fantasy-like version of the franchise established by Digimon Adventure and its follower entries -- and that change is represented in none other than Nokia herself.

Before we begin: As anyone who follows my meta work has probably noticed, I generally prefer to have my analyses use tons of references and screenshots so that it’s easy to follow and the evidence is concrete, but Cyber Sleuth is a game, and it’s much harder to get those things without replaying the entire game, so I hope this won’t be too hard to follow despite being mostly text.

Nokia’s background and personality

If we want to apply the producer’s statements on Twitter, Nokia is 17 years old at the time of Cyber Sleuth, and has a backstory of having originally been a shy, bullied child who broke out of her shell thanks to the influence of her cousin (who, of all people, happens to be none other than Date Makiko). The flashback we get with Nokia in chapter 18, however, portrays her as just a fairly cheerful, go-getter child, but (although we only get to see her hair) she’s not quite as “flashy” or in-your-face as the description entails.

A possible hypothesis for rationalizing this all together comes from a what we learn about the process of memory wiping in Cyber Sleuth chapter 14: even if memories are extracted from the person, there’s some kind of residual memory left behind (the producer’s above statement also states that the same thing had even happened to Suedou). In Hacker’s Memory chapter 16, Arata confesses to Ryuji that the first Under Zero incident and Jude's loss to the Knightmon had re-triggered his trauma from having lost Yuugo years prior -- “not the memory, but the feeling.” So in other words, there was some feeling of loss that came after the loss of Yuugo that impacted those involved -- and it’s very possible that this deeply impacted and traumatized Nokia as well.

Assuming we’re still following this line of thought (since, again, this background point wasn’t actually in the game proper), Nokia eventually decided to break out of her shell thanks to Makiko’s influence, and become eccentric and assertive, and thus, the game begins.

While we’re here, I also want to point out that Nokia is also voiced by Han Megumi, possibly the Digimon franchise’s most notorious “promoted fangirl” who freaked out after getting to meet her childhood characters’ voice actors while cast as Airu in the Xros Wars crossover and ended up casted in a handful of major Digimon roles thereafter as a result. Which is not to say that her voice performance wasn’t also absolutely perfect for the bright and aggressive Nokia, but, you know...considering the below analysis, food for thought.

Nokia as a representative of “the conventional franchise”

Cyber Sleuth opens on a world where Digimon are largely seen as hacker programs, and even the hackers themselves only see them as non-sentient programs; there are ones like Chitose who treat them with empathy, but his attitude seems to be kindness towards them in a way not entirely unlike a family would treat a Roomba. Although he doesn’t admit to it at first, Arata himself also comes from this “world” of hackers, and we later learn that Yuuko herself is as well (via her “Yuugo” persona), meaning that, other than the playable protagonist, Nokia is the only “outside-context” person -- a completely ordinary civilian who’s gotten dragged into all of this.

Much like, say, the protagonists of Digimon Adventure.

With this background behind her, once she’s thrown into the world of hackers, she immediately has a “fateful encounter” with Agumon and Gabumon, instantly recognizable as two of the franchise’s most prominent Digimon (and complete with their Adventure voice actors, too). And I do especially bring up Adventure specifically, because while Nokia’s position in the game does end up taking in certain elements that roughly came around that era and possibly slightly predated it (mostly Digimon World and V-Tamer), Agumon and Gabumon weren’t particular mascots of the franchise until Adventure basically blew everything to pieces.

Right off the bat, Nokia does not have a single shred of doubt that Agumon and Gabumon are living beings and should be treated as such (again, much like the protagonists of Digimon Adventure; even Taichi in his “is this a game?” mode never doubted this). And they open up their meeting with this conversation:

Agumon: Umm, who are you? Nokia: It... It can talk?! It's so... so... so adoooooorable! M-M-M-M-My name's Nokia. What're your names? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

And on top of that, Agumon refers to Nokia as having a “familiar” scent. Remember this for later.

Nokia’s second encounter with Agumon and Gabumon in Cyber Sleuth chapter 3 involves her properly partnering herself with Agumon and Gabumon, and learning about the existence of the “Digital World”. Note that, for all intents and purposes, EDEN had been treated like the functional equivalent of the Digital World in this narrative up until this point -- cyberspace with hackers, coming from the network, it’s basically a “digital world” from top to bottom, and yet here Agumon and Gabumon are introducing the concept of a more fantasy-esque incarnation of a digital world. (And, in fact, despite EDEN being right there, many long-time Digimon fans playing this game often complained about how little you get to see the “Digital World” in this game, because of how associated that term is with something more fantasy-like.) So, again: here we have Nokia, who’s forming a partnership with Agumon and Gabumon as equals instead of recruiting them as hacker tools (even the protagonist wasn’t immune to this method), and being indirectly responsible for introducing the more fantasy-like concept of the Digital World that the modern franchise is currently associated with.

Nokia embarks on the conventional shounen anime character arc of starting off cowardly, but eventually learning to have her own inner strength, with her Digimon evolving in accordance to her emotions. And, eventually, in Cyber Sleuth chapter 8, she decides to form her own hacker team, called the “Rebels”. She ostensibly bases it off the old creed of Jude, having heard that they were a team that never caused trouble for others, but we later learn via Arata turning out to have been its former leader, and the even later portrayal in Hacker’s Memory of its spiritual successor Hudie, that this is an extremely rose-colored image of them -- Jude (and Hudie) was not a well-intentioned team by any means, but rather a sort of mercenary group meant to enforce the “freedom” of EDEN, often taking on shady jobs and “punishing” entities they considered to be causing chaos. But in this case, Nokia forms her team under the idea of legitimately fighting for justice and good will -- again, much like a Digimon Adventure protagonist.

In case the metaphor weren’t clear enough, Nokia decides that the members of her group will not be called “hackers”, but “Tamers” -- the same lingo used by the franchise to refer to a human who partners alongside a Digimon to help them get stronger -- and that she wants to promote the idea of humans and Digimon working in tandem (complete with emotional bonding exercises). For this, everyone looks at her weird, and yet her methodology, initially naive as it seems, keeps working, because Nokia’s natural charisma starts bringing people from different places together and making quite the formidable team. Everyone is perplexed by this, but perhaps it’s only natural, because Nokia has just independently invented the modern concept of Digimon partnership in a world where it did not exist. And this is eventually solidified by the Under Zero invasion in Cyber Sleuth chapter 10, in which Omegamon is finally formed (from sheer guts on her part).

Omegamon is yet another symbol of the modern franchise, but it’s important to remember that he hasn’t always been so; even his appearance in V-Tamer was as more of a tactical piece than any kind of game-breaker, but the impact of Our War Game! has led him to constantly make a resurgence in major franchise roles (maybe a little too much these days). However, on top of Nokia basically embodying the modern franchise itself by doing this, Nokia and Arata’s positions are an obvious reference to Our War Game! in particular, being Omegamon and Diablomon Tamers -- but they’re not seen directly fighting each other. In fact, Arata’s partner only ever reaches Diablomon when he’s at the highest point of his morality, so the reference is more ideological; Nokia represents the more idealistic and heroic side of Digimon, whereas Arata represents the more dirty-playing and cynical hard sci-fi side of it (remember that Diablomon himself was rather detached from the fantasy conflict of Adventure, being a mysterious entity that sprouted out of nowhere on the Internet and wreaked havoc). Moreover, Nokia’s usage of Omegamon embodies a theme that’s central to both Our War Game! and Cyber Sleuth itself as a whole -- while most people associate Omegamon with Taichi and Yamato these days, the original method of formation back in Our War Game! came from “bringing people from different places together”. Nokia managed to bring together a formidable army in a place where everyone else in the hacker world was trying to promote a dog-eat-dog philosophy, and the sense of cooperation is arguably making her stronger than anyone else.

(I should also point out that Nokia’s name is, obviously, a reference to the Finnish telephone communications company, and this has a lot of relevance to the game’s theme of connection, along with her phone Digivice...and, also, the method used to bring everyone’s powers together in Our War Game!’s spiritual successor, Diablomon Strikes Back. Feels a bit too on-the-nose here.)

In the second half of the game, when the world starts falling apart due to the Digital World portal opening, Nokia becomes one of most important people holding everything together as Arata goes off the deep end and Yuuko starts fixating on her own personal problems and revenge -- because she’s the one most in tune with treating Digimon as the living beings they are, she’s most active in advocating for them and helping them bond with humans, and and she’s the one making the chaos be a little less chaotic. The second half is basically the more fantasy-esque version of Digimon leaking into the sci-fi, with the sidequests progressively resembling your average Digimon anime monster-of-the-week episode, and holding that all together is Nokia, who becomes a vital figure in maintaining that fellowship by being in tune with the modern franchise’s philosophy.

Through all of this, Nokia ends up taking a role rather similar to a Digimon protagonist, which is highlighted very strongly in Cyber Sleuth chapter 18 when she ends up literally becoming the player character while the main protagonist is out of commission. During that time, Yuuko and Nokia learn the truth of what happened during the EDEN incident eight years prior -- and we also learn that the five children involved had an extremely conventional “first meeting in the Digital World” experience that could have been pulled right out of the first episode of a Digimon anime, with them having a lovely adventure meeting new creatures. And at the center of that “first contact” was none other than Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon themselves:

Agumon: Um... who are you? Nokia: Ahem! I am Nokia! And just who are you? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon’s meeting at the beginning of the game had been an (accidental) reenactment of their first meeting in the Digital World eight years prior -- and, in the flashback, Nokia invites them to go on an “adventure” with them. So in other words, Nokia getting involved in the hacker conflict at the beginning of the game was, unknown to all of them, her attempting to restore that beauty and idealism of the Digimon Adventure-esque philosophy and fun in a world where the Eaters had torn it away and EDEN had turned into a haven of cynicism and hacker battle royale.

In the end, the game’s conflict is only resolved by bringing everyone together; Arata has to be retrieved from the deep end, and Yuuko has to settle her deep-seated personal grievances. Everyone makes a promise to return together, in the sense of making things right and repairing the connections between them that had been cut in that incident. The final battle (momentarily) causes the playable protagonist to literally fall apart, and the one reaching out to them and sending her message to them at the end of the game is none other than Nokia herself -- again, in the absence of the game’s protagonist, Nokia is the one with the closest role, because in the face of the new world going forward, she was the one who contributed most to restoring its idealism.

Ultimately, all of this is especially because Cyber Sleuth works under one of the most terrifying imaginable premises for a fan of a kids’ franchise: “we made an entry for this, but for adults.” Many of us can testify that this kind of premise can go very well, or very badly -- the latter especially in the case of things that decide “taking the opportunity to do things that you can’t do on a Sunday morning kids’ timeslot” means “going out of your way to put edgy violence and sexy things and cynicism just because you can”, or, in other words, looking down condescendingly on its kids’ franchise roots with malice and deciding that something for adults means “more suffering” and not “issues that require more life experience to understand”. The reason the game ended up getting as much acclaim among longtime Digimon fans as it did was that despite being the franchise’s first venture into this territory, it did end up setting itself up as something that took that opportunity to do something new and unique that would have never made it into any of the prior entries (holy hell the doll quest) and yet never gave up on the idealism and themes of connection that make up the franchise at its core, and paid respect to everything that had contributed to all of that while it was at it.

And at the center of that is Shiramine Nokia, who is effectively the spirit of Digimon Adventure, condensed into a single character.

[jayoctodot]

The Silent Patient vs The Maidens

I will start by saying that I understand the appeal of these novels as page-turners. They are easy to read and if you want a twisty reveal at the end, you will probably be entertained and satisfied. That being said, I am SO CONFUSED by the near-universal adoration of The Silent Patient and the reasonably positive reception of The Maidens. The weaknesses of the two are strikingly similar, as well, which doesn’t give me much hope of seeing improvement from this guy, though I am intrigued to see whether he keeps repeating the same (apparently successful!!) patterns. These books were at least super fun to hate.

(For context, I read The Maidens for a bookclub I'm in, because several of the members had read and loved The Silent Patient, and one of them gave me a copy of the latter to read on my own time. I loathed The Maidens and then read The SP for comparative purposes. And because I'm a masochist, apparently.)

SPOILER WARNING! Do not read on unless you've finished both books (or unless you care not for spoilers). Sorry if it gets a bit shouty.

Here are the similar weaknesses I noticed in both:

PSEUDO-PSYCHOLOGY

-> Weirdly similar “group therapy” scenes early on where a cartoonishly unstable patient arrives late, disrupts the meeting by throwing something into the middle of the circle, and is asked to join the group after the therapist(s) speechify on the importance of boundaries (HA! None of these therapists would know an appropriate boundary if it kicked them in the ass) and debate whether to “allow” the patient to join. Both scenes are so transparent in their design to establish the credibility/legitimacy of the narrators as therapists, but instead both Theo and Mariana come off as super patronizing. The protagonists are less and less believable as therapists at the stories progress (though at least Theo’s incompetence is explained away by the “twist” at the end; Mariana, on the other hand, is confronted in the opening pages of the novel by a patient who has self-harmed PRETTY extensively, and rather than ensure he get proper medical attention, she essentially throws him a first aid kit and tosses him out the door so she can pour herself a glass of wine and call her niece... and it devolves from there).

-> Ongoing insistence throughout the narrative that one’s childhood trauma entirely explains the warped/dysfunctional way a character behaves or views the world, which is why the books go out of their way to give EVERY potentially violent character a traumatic childhood; when Theo insists that no one ever became an abuser who hadn’t been abused themselves, I wanted to throw the book across the room. (That is a MYTH, SIR. GET OUT OF HERE WITH YOUR ARMCHAIR PSYCHOLOGY.)

-> Female murderers whose pathology boils down to “history of depression” and “traumatized by a male loved one/family member.” Because, as we all know, depression + abuse = murderer!

-> The “therapy” depicted in both books is laughable and so so unrealistic, mostly because neither narrators function as therapists so much as incompetent detectives, obsessively pursuing a case they have no place pursuing (or skill to pursue - both just happen across every clue mostly by way of clunky conversation with all the people who can provide precisely the snippet of info to send them along to the next person, and the next… until all is revealed in a tired, cliched “twist”). Their constant Psych 101 asides were so tiresome and weirdly dated (also, the constant harping on countertransference got so ridiculous that at one point during "therapy" Theo literally attributes his headache and a particular emotion he feels to Alicia, as though the contents of her head are being broadcast directly into his mind... and I'm PRETTY SURE that's not how it works???)

CHARACTERS

-> Psychotherapist narrators with abusive fathers and pretensions of being Sherlock Holmes, which results in both characters crossing ALL KINDS of ethical lines as they invade the personal lives of everyone even tangentially connected to their cases (and, in Theo's case, violate all kinds of patient confidentiality. Yeah, yeah, by the end, that's the least of his offenses, but before you get there, it's baffling that NO ONE is calling him out on this).

-> All female characters are either elderly with hilariously bad advice, monstrous hulking brutes, or beautiful bitches (except for ~MARIANA~, who is Bella Swan-esque in her unawareness of her own attractiveness, despite multiple men trying to get with her almost immediately after meeting her. I'm so tired of beautiful female characters being oblivious to their own hotness. Are we meant to believe all mirrors and male attention have escaped their notice? If it’s to make them “relatable,” this tactic really fails with me).

-> All characters of color are shallow, cartoonish side characters, and most of them are depicted as unsympathetic minor antagonists (the Sikh Chief Inspector in The Maidens continuously drinks tea from an ever-present thermos, and his only other notable characteristic is his instant dislike of Mariana, whom he VERY RIGHTLY warns to stay out of the investigation that she is VERY MUCH compromising… the Caribbean manager of the Grove is universally disliked by her staff for enforcing stricter safety regulations at the bafflingly poorly run mental institution, because HOW DARE SHE. There's a very clear vibe that we're supposed to dislike these characters and share the protagonists' indignation, but honestly Sangha/Stephanie were completely in the right for trying to shut down their wildly inappropriate investigations).

-> "Working class" characters (or basically anyone excluded from the comfortably upper-crust, educated main cadre of characters) are few and far between in both stories, but when they show up, he depicts them as such caricatures. We got Elsie the pathologically lying housekeeper in the Maidens, who is enticed to share her bullshit with cake, and then a TOOTHLESS LEPRECHAUN DEALING DRUGS UNDER A BRIDGE in the SP. I kid you not, a man described as having the body of a child, the face of Father Time, and no front teeth, emerges from beneath a bridge and offers to sell Theo some "grass." I was dyinggg.

-> There are no characters to root for. Anywhere. Partly because they’re all so thinly drawn — and because we’re clearly supposed to view almost ALL of them as potential suspects, so they’re ALL weird, creepy, or incompetent in some way.

-> The flimsiest of flimsy motives, both for the narrators and the murderers. Theo fully would have gotten away with his involvement in the murder if he hadn't gone out of his way to work at the Grove and "treat" Alicia and his justification for doing so is pretty weak; his rapid descent into stalking and murder fantasy and his random ass decision to "expose" Alicia's husband as a cheater with a spur-of-the-moment home invasion and staged attempted homicide is ONLY justified if the reader hand waves it away as WELP, HE'S CRAZY, I GUESS (after all, he DID have an abusive father and a history of mental illness, and in Michaelides novels, that's ALL YOU NEED to become a violent psycho). I guess we're lucky Mariana didn't also start dropping bodies (because the logic of his fictional universe says she should definitely be a murderer by now... maybe that'll be his Maidens sequel?). But she especially had NO reason to randomly turn detective - and she kept trying to justify it by saying she needed to re-enter the world or that Sebastian would want her to (??), even though she had no background in criminal psychology... or even a particular fondness for mysteries (really, I would've accepted ANYTHING to explain her dogged obsession with the case. WHY were Sebastian and Zoe so certain she would insert herself into the investigation just because one of Zoe's friends was the first victim? WHY?). As for Zoe and Alicia, their motives are mere suggestions: they were both abused and manipulated, and voila! Slippery slope to murder.

WRITING STYLE

-> Incessant allusions to Greek tragedy and myth, apparently to provide a sophisticated gloss over the bare-bones writing style, which opts more for telling than showing and frequently indulges in hilariously bizarre analogies. Credit where credit is due — the references to Greek myth are less clunky in the SP, and I liked learning about the Alcestis play/myth, which I hadn’t heard of before - but OMG the entire characterization of Fosca, who we are meant to believe is a professor of Greek tragedy at one of the most respected universities on the planet, is just absurd. His "lecture" on the liminal in Greek tragedy is essentially the Wikipedia page on the Eleusinian Mysteries capped off with some Hallmark-card carpe diem crap. The lecture hall responds with raucous applause, clearly never having heard such vague genius bullshit before.

-> Super clunky and amateurish narrative device of interludes written by another character; Sebastian’s letter reads like a mashup of Dexter monologues and Clarice’s memory of the screaming sheep, but by FAR the worse offender is Alicia’s diary, where we’re supposed to believe she painstakingly recorded ENTIRE CONVERSATIONS, BEAT-BY-BEAT DIALOGUE, even when she’s just been DRUGGED TO THE GILLS with morphine and has mere moments of consciousness left… and even before that, she literally takes the time to write “He's trying the windows and doors! ...Someone’s inside! Someone’s inside the house! ETC ETC” when she thinks her stalker has broken in downstairs. WHO DOES THAT?)

-> Speaking of dialogue, the dialogue is so bad. Based on his bio, Michaelides got a degree in screenwriting, which makes his terrible dialogue even more baffling.

-> HILARIOUSLY rendered voyeur scenes where the narrators spy on couples having sex. Such unintentionally awkward descriptions. First we had Kathy’s climax sounds through the trees and then the bowler hat carefully placed on a tombstone before the gatekeeper plows a student. Again, I died.

PLOT/"TWIST"

-> The CONSTANT red herrings make for such an exhausting read. Michaelides drops anvils with almost every character that are so obviously meant to designate them as suspects in our minds. There is absolutely no subtlety in his misdirections.

-> The “crossover” scene between the SP and The Maidens makes no sense - when in the timeline does Mariana’s story overlap with Theo’s? They confer just before Theo starts working at the Grove, obviously (though Mariana appears to be the one who alerts Theo to the job opening there? Whereas in the SP, Theo has been obsessively tracking Alicia since the murder and had already planned to apply to work there?), but then are we supposed to believe that while Theo has been psychotically pursuing his warped quest to “help” Alicia, he’s also been diligently treating Zoe, so invested in her case that he repeatedly reaches out to Mariana to get her to visit Zoe and even writes Mariana a lengthy letter to convince her to do so??? And then a couple days after The Maidens ends, Theo is arrested???

-> But the thing I really did hate the most is how Michaelides treats his female murderers (who are both also victims themselves) as mere means to deploy a “twist”; there’s no moment spared to encourage our sympathy for Zoe, who was groomed and manipulated by the only trusted father figure in her life, and even after spending a decent amount of time getting to know Alicia via her ridiculous diary, where it’s so apparent that she’s been demeaned, objectified, manipulated, gaslit, and/or used by EVERY man in her life, she’s sent packing to spend the rest of her days in a coma… HOW much more satisfying would it have been for her to succeed in exposing Theo and reclaiming her voice? But no, she basically rolls over when he comes to finish her off (SPEAKING OF — ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THERE ARE NO SECURITY CAMERAS IN THIS INSTITUTE FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE????), writes one last diary entry, and drifts off forever. And then a couple pages of nothing later, the story is over. GOODNIGHT, ALICIA!

Both books kept me rolling throughout (by which I mean eye-rolling but also rotfl). Maybe I will check out his next effort — I’m morbidly curious what he’ll turn out. It does leave me wondering whether I should give up on thriller novels entirely, though. Are many of the weaknesses of these novels just characteristic of the genre? Maybe I'm just holding these books to unfair standards? I'm mostly only familiar with thriller films — many of which I think are amazing — but maybe you can get away with more in a film than you can in a novel.

...I really only intended to write a handful of bullet points, but more and more kept coming to mind as I wrote, to the point where subheadings became necessary. Whoopsie.

[nerdythebard]

#12: The Doctor [Doctor Who]

Brother, I disown you...

I don't know what my friend/chosen brother was thinking when he made this request... Actually, no, I know exactly what he was thinking! Well, no time to dawdle, let's do this Time Warp. Again.

Next Time: Before we return to the gods, I want to make a character very close to my heart. He is also a Doctor... only, word of warning, he's a little... Strange.

Well then... sigh, let's see the goals we need to meet to make the most brilliant alien in television playable in D&D:

Heroes Never Die: The signature ability of a Time Lord (and the most problematic), a way to cheat death and return to life. Yes, somehow we need to make a virtually immortal character in Dungeons & Dragons...

Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Even in his relatively serious regenerations, the Doctor is prone to flashes of randomness, acts of nonsense, mixing puns and physical comedy to often hide the incredibly fast and advanced brain processes.

Go-Go Gadget Galore: Do I even need to say anything? Besides his trusty TARDIS (which will not be included here, we're making the Doctor, not his equipment!), the Doctor also brandishes sonic devices of multiple varieties, psychic paper, the thing that goes DING, etc.

---

As you can imagine, finding the right race replacement for Time Lords wasn't easy. I'm definitely not using The-Movie-That-Does-Not-Exist solution, and making the Doctor... half-human, urgh. All we need to do is find a humanoid, almost-fossil race that can come back from death a limited amount of times.

The Doctor is a Human Revenant, a playtest race from Unearthed Arcana: Gothic Heroes. In-game, Revenant is an undead that came back to life to pursue a certain goal, whether it's vengeance, retribution, or to make amends. Putting some flavour into it, and turning it into a long-living, mysterious being who perhaps came from the Astral Plane to search for a way to save his home planet... why not? Regular Revenants get only a +1 to Constitution, but if we're using pre-existing race (such as Human), there's another set of rules. So, we get a +1 Constitution and +1 Intelligence, and we don't get to pick a skill or a feat. Not yet.

What's most important here is the Revenant's Relentless Nature feature. We are assigned a goal, a very specific one, that we must complete in order to achieve peace. Work with your DM on that one (the saving-your-home-world one from before sounds like a good start). Until we complete the goal:

If we are below Hit Points Maximum, at the start of our turn we regain 1 Hit Point;

We know the distance and direction to any creature involved in our goal (perhaps a fellow, once-friend Time Lord?);

When we die, we come back to life within 24 hours with 1 Hit Point. If our body is destroyed, we come back in a spot within 1 mile of our place of death (unfortunately, our equipment is destroyed);

BOOM! JUST FLAVOUR EACH DEATH AS A CHANGE OF FACE AND PERSONALITY, AND WE HAVE THE REGENERATION SYSTEM! HAH! YOU SEE THAT, BROTHER!?

Ekhm... back to work, then.

The Doctor is pretty far from home, so giving him the Far Traveller background seems like the right approach. We gain proficiencies in Insight and Perception skills, proficiencies with one musical instrument (perhaps a recorder?)/gaming set, we learn one language of our choice, and we get the All Eyes on You feature; our mannerisms and quirks definitely draw attention towards us and our group, but we can take advantage of that in order to fish for some information, secure an audience with the local nobleman, or... I dunno, snog Madame de Pompadour?

ABILITY SCORES

No surprise there, we start with Intelligence. We have a literal Big Galaxy Brain™ and we use it often, and only sometimes to show off. Follow that up with Dexterity, we're nimble and we're doing a lot of running, especially when being chased (plus, we've invented the Drunken Giraffe dance). Constitution is next, the Gallifreyan biology is significantly superior to that of regular Terrans.

Next up, Charisma. It usually works, sometimes it doesn't, but even then we're kinda adorkable. Wisdom is a little low, I think we all shall agree to that, the Doctor is a creature of whim. He gets lost in thought, has a hard time remembering to explain his logic to others. Finally, we're dumping Strength. Now, we're definitely physically stronger than humans, I just don't remember any particular feats of super-strength in the show.

Heck, you want even more Time Lord shenanigans? Ask your DM to implement the "every death/regeneration makes all ability scores randomly switch places" rule.

CLASS

Level 1 - Artificer: Once again, nobody is surprised we begin with the Smart & Techy One™ for the Doctor. Artificers were brought to 5e via Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. These magical tinkers have d8 Hit Dice, [8 + Constitution modifier] initial Hit Points, proficiencies with light armour, medium armour, heavy armour, shields, simple weapons, and optionally firearms (although that's definitely not the Doctor's style). We additionally get proficiency with thieves' tools, tinker's tools, and one set of artisan's tools we choose. We can't get the sonic screwdriver (although if you want one, hint to your DM about the existence of the All-Purpose Tool), we have all these tools to replace it with. Our saving throws are Constitution and Intelligence, and we get to pick two class skills: let's get History and Investigation.

Artificers start with Magical Tinkering, an ability to bestow harmless magical properties onto inanimate objects. We choose a Tiny object with no magic in it, and grant it one of the following properties indefinitely:

It sheds bright light for 5 feet and dim light for an additional 5;

Whenever tapped, the object plays a recorded message no longer than six seconds;

The object continuously emits a smell or a sound of our choice;

A static image (picture, lines of text, shapes, etc.) appear on the object's surface.

Artificers are also casters, so at the first level, we get Spellcasting. Our casting ability is, of course, Intelligence and the number of spells we can prepare is equal to [our Intelligence modifier + half of our Artificer level rounded down]. We also know how to cast rituals.

We start with two cantrips:

Magic Stone lets us imbue three pebbles with magic (or perhaps, in this case, kinetic energy?) for 1 minute. We can then use the pebbles ourselves, or give them to somebody else. On a successful hit, the target suffers [1d6 + our Intelligence modifier] bludgeoning damage and the spell ends on that particular pebble.

Prestidigitation is a cantrip of plenty varieties, which very well could be disguised as the Doctor's tinkering with his sonic screwdriver. It can be used to warm or chill food, clean or soil objects, or perhaps lighting and snuffing our small flames.

We start with two 1st-level spell slots, and we get three 1st-level spells:

Alarm sets up a secured perimeter, no larger than a 20-feet cube, for 8 hours. Whenever a create not-designated as safe while setting the spell, crosses its boundary, we get a signal informing us about the intrusion, which also wakes us up if we're sleeping. The signal can be set to inform only us, or everybody around.

Detect Magic informs us of any magical activity within 30 feet of us for 10 minutes (concentration). We sense magic lingering on objects, people, as well as locations, and we can determine the type of magic present (but not a particular spell, for example, we sense that a spell on the object is enchantment-type, but not that it's Power Word: Kill).

Identify is... pretty much the one function of the sonic screwdriver we've all seen. It lets us learn about an object we choose, including its magical properties (if any) and if it's affected by any spells. And it works on wood!

With a spell list like that, we can safely say

Level 2 - Artificer: We continue with the Tech Savvy Class, and we learn the Artificer's signature skill, Infuse Item. It lets us bestow magical properties onto mundane items. Similarly to Warlock's Invocations, Artificers have Infusions they can select and put into items. Starting from this level, we can infuse two items at once, and we get to pick four Infusions from the list. For the Doctor, let's pick:

Replicate Magic Item: Bag of Holding is probably the most useful infusion in the early game. The infusion does exactly what it says, and a Bag of Holding is always a good item to own (just watch out for the Bag Man!)

Enhanced Defence infusion puts some extra protection (+1 to AC) onto an armour or a shield.

Mind Sharpener is a helping hand for any spellcaster. The infusion put onto an armour, or woven into a robe, sends a jolt to re-focus the mind. When the wearer fails a Constitution saving throw to keep their concentration, one charge (out of four) of the infusion expends, to make them succeed instead. The charges are refilled at dawn.

Returning Weapon gives a +1 to attack and damage rolls of the weapon it's applied on and makes it return to the wielder's hand immediately after it's used to make a ranged attack. With the keyword "immediately", it gives your Rangers and other bow-users infinite ammunition with just one arrow.

We can also get one more 1st-level spell: Disguise Self changes our appearance for 1 hour, or until we choose to dismiss it as an action. The spell affects our body, clothing, and items we carry (including weapons). It is not a physical disguise, just an illusion woven around us; if we make ourselves thinner than we really are, and somebody was to touch the space where our regular body would be, they're going to feel the body, albeit invisible. For the Doctor, this seems like a combination of psychic paper and the Chameleon Circuit.

Level 3 - Artificer: At this level, we get the Right Tool for the Job feature. If we have thieves' tools or artisan's tools in hand, we can create any other set of artisan's tools.

We also get to pick our subclass, our Artificer Specialization. The Doctor is no alchemist, and we'll probably build Tony Stark at some time in the future, therefore we're picking Battle Smith. Those tinkers are masters of protections, being able to put up defensive mechanisms on the spot. Since the Doctor is a diplomat first, runner second, and combatant very close and reluctant third, focusing on support is a good option.

As a Battle Smith, we gain proficiencies with smith's tools, and we gain some more magic with Battle Smith Spells:

Heroism imbues the willing creature with bravery. Until the spell ends (1 minute, concentration), the target is immune to being frightened and gains Temporary Hit Points equal to our Intelligence modifier at the start of each of their turns (AKA every six seconds). When the spell ends, any Temporary Hit Points remaining are lost.

Shield creates an invisible barrier as a reaction to getting hit. It adds +5 to our AC until the start of our next turn.

Although a reluctant fighter, the Doctor as a Battle Smith also gets the Battle Ready feature. We gain proficiency with martial weapons, and when we attack with a magic weapon, we can use our Intelligence modifier instead of Strength or Dexterity for attack and damage rolls.

Finally, Battle Smiths get the Steel Defender. With our tinkering, we create our first companion, a steel defender; it is friendly to us and our companions and obeys our commands. With that, we got ourselves the one and only K9

Level 4 - Artificer: At this level, we get our first Ability Score Improvement! However, instead of upgrading our abilities this time, we'll grab a feat. The Telepathic feat from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will represent the Doctor's limited psychic abilities: we increase one of our non-physical abilities by 1, let's go for Intelligence. We can speak telepathically to any creature within 60 feet, but the creature cannot reply (unless they're telepathic too, of course). Finally, we can touch a Detect Thoughts spell once per long rest, without a need to expend spell slots. Give your target a good headbutt, and learn their surface thoughts.

We also get our final spell: Catapult turns one inanimate object that isn't worn or carried (and weighs from 1 to 5 pounds) and turns it into a remote projectile. The object flies in a straight line for 90 feet before losing its momentum and falling. If it hits a creature, they have to make a Dexterity saving throw or take 3d8 bludgeoning damage. Distract your pursuers with a head of cabbage flying at their heads.

Level 5 - Rogue: We say goodbye to the Artificer, as we move onto Rogue for the rest of the build. Rogues use the same Hit Dice as Artificers, so nothing really changes when it comes to our Hit Points. We already have proficiency with light armour and thieves' tools, but we can pick one class skill – let's pick Acrobatics for better running and parkour chances when escaping aliens and responsibilities.

Rogues start with Expertise, which lets us double our proficiency bonus (NOT ability modifier) for two skills of our choice: let's boost Insight and History, to best utilize our centuries of living. We also learn how to speak Thieves' Cant, a special system of phrases and signals used by other Rogues to communicate without revealing their secrets. Finally, we have Sneak Attack: once per turn we can add 1d6 extra damage if a) we have an advantage on our roll, or b) the target is within 5 feet of another creature hostile towards it. The attack must be done by either a ranged weapon or one with the finesse property (like a dagger or a rapier).

Level 6 - Rogue: We get Cunning Action, which let us turn some Actions we can do in combat into Bonus Actions. That way, we still have an Action to spare if we decide to use Dash, Disengage, or Hide. Considering how much running the Doctor does, it's good to have something else to do just in case.

Level 7 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack changes to 2d6.

We also get to pick our second subclass, our Roguish Archetype. Now, initially, I considered going Swashbuckler, as it combines nimble footwork and gives us some charm abilities. However, since we're going with the build that emphasizes support and actual combat as a last resort, we'll go with Inquisitive.

We start this subclass with Ear for Deceit, whenever we roll Insight checks to determine if a creature is lying to us, we treat each roll of 7 or lower as 8.

We also get Eye for Detail. This is mostly to be used in combat (or if your DM runs dungeons in Initiative Mode), as it allows us to use Perception or Investigation checks as a bonus action, where it would normally take an action.

Finally, Inquisitive Rogues get Insightful Fighting. As a bonus action, we can make an Insight check, contested by the enemy's Deception check. If we succeed, for 1 minute we can use our Sneak Attack on the target even if we don't have an advantage or the target isn't near another of its enemies.

Level 8 - Rogue: Time for another ASI! Let's raise our Intelligence by 1 point, and use the spare one for Strength.

Level 9 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack changes to 3d6.

We also get Uncanny Dodge. Whenever we're being hit by an attack, we can use our reaction to halve the damage dealt.

Level 10 - Rogue: Halfway through the build, and we get another shot at Expertise. Once again, we get two skills to which we can double our proficiency bonus. Let's go with Perception and Investigation.

Level 11 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 4d6.

We also get one of the better abilities in the game, Evasion. If we're being targeted by an AoE attack that would deal half damage on a successful Dexterity saving throw, we take no damage if we make the save. What that means is, we can now take a Fireball face-on, shrug it off and loudly proclaim

Level 12 - Rogue: We get another ASI. Let's improve our Dexterity by two points this time.

Level 13 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 5d6.

We also get another subclass feature. Steady Eye gives us an advantage on Perception or Investigation checks if we move no more than half of our movement speed on our turn.

Level 14 - Rogue: Time for another ASI. Let's focus on getting some more Hit Points this time, and get +2 points to Constitution.

Level 15 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 6d6.

At this level, we get Reliable Talent, which upgrades our abilities to almost anime protagonist-level. Whenever we make a check for a skill we're proficient in, we treat all rolls of 9 and lower as 10.

Level 16 - Rogue: We're getting one more ASI. Let's raise our Dexterity again, putting 2 points in it.

Level 17 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 7d6.

We get our final subclass upgrade for this build, the Unerring Eye. We can now sense illusions and magical tricks within 30 feet, as well as shapechangers not in their original form. We can detect there is an effect trying to trick our senses around us, but we don't know its nature (i.e. if we meet a creature that activates our sense, we cannot distinguish whether it's a Disguise Self spell, or a natural shapeshifting ability, or a Druid's Wild Shape).

Level 18 - Rogue: We get another one of the best abilities in the game, Blindsense. We can now detect the presence of invisible and hidden creatures within 10 feet radius of us.

Level 19 - Rogue: Our Sneak Attack becomes 8d6.

Our mind becomes more slippery with Slippery Mind. We gain proficiency in Wisdom saving throws.

Level 20 - Rogue: Our build's capstone is Rogue 16, which is also our final ASI. Let's finally cap Intelligence, as it should've been from the start when it comes to Time Lords.

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There it is. My take on how to play as the Doctor in Dungeons & Dragons. I believe I've covered most if not all of the important features the Doctor has, but let's see:

Let's face it, we're not a frontline fighter... we're not even a backline fighter. We support. With 14 AC (without armour), 151 Hit Points on average, and a +4 to Initiative, our job is to manoeuvre, around the battlefield and let our friends take care of the enemy, while we do other things. With Reliable Talent and Expertise we are great at sweeping the room for clues and hints, even if in the heat of battle. Thanks to Unerring Eye and Blindsense, our senses aren't that easy to fool.

Unfortunately, our Strength is not great, and that means some weapons are just a hindrance (unless we pick a finesse weapon, which replaces Strength with Dexterity). While we have late-game proficiency in Wisdom saving throws, throughout the earlier stages those might prove a little problem.

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And that is it for this build. I hope that you guys enjoyed it, and I'll see you for the next one!

- Nerdy out!

[shepsfavoriteblogonthecitadel]

Operator Notes (Incomplete)

Concerning my Tenno, Mallory Rathopport, because all I care about in this space ninja game is the characters! Even the ones I made up. I’ll update this post whenever it comes to mind, but I wanted to get it out!

Her wings are functional, and possibly a gift from a certain void entity- she can’t remember exactly when or where she got them, other than that she didn’t have them when she awoke. She isn’t especially graceful with them yet, but, after insulting Umbra until he threw her off a waterfall to force herself to learn, she can use them relatively comfortably to get around, even if it isn’t useful in a combat situation.

Overview

Mallory is a female Tenno who’s biologically 16, at least insofar as Tenno have human biology. She’s obsessed with science and discovery, and the Void in particular. She has some fairly extreme social issues, even for a Tenno, and is often ostracized due to being... morally questionable at times. She forms very close relationships, but has a very difficult time empathizing with people she doesn’t know, which can lead to problems.

Motives/Bonds

Mallory is near-fanatically loyal to the Lotus (or Natah, as she’s called in the universe where she’s the main character). Because she presents so assertively most of the time, she tends to gravitate towards mother figures. And the New War and the Ballas situation only made the bond stronger. It’s potentially unhealthy, but then, what about being a traumatized void demon isn’t?

Secondly- and she’ll never admit this directly, because it’s tantamount to Tenno treason- she genuinely misses the Orokin empire. She has a very idealized view of them that managed to persist through their terrible treatment of her and her former friends. She misses the stability of the Origin system, the easy social structures that didn’t force her to think about injustice, the prevalence of science and the ease with which you could fund a massive new project, the food, the golden decor schemes, the comfortable beds, the hope of the Tau system, all of it. She has an incredibly difficult time forming bonds with other Tenno because she subconsciously associates them with the downfall of everything that made her life stable. She harbors a massive amount of implicit and explicit bias against an enormous amount of people and groups because of this, and her inability to recognize systemic flaws- and her difficulty in caring about them- is her greatest flaw.

And, most importantly, science! The one thing about the Orokin Mallory will acknowledge she misses consciously is the work of the Archimedians. Now, science is a resource to be horded and pursued with absolutely no coordination with other scientists (of course, it was that way before the Old War too, but the Tenno tended to be in the center of things, so she wasn’t really privy to its failings and biases). Mallory desperately wishes she could just talk to Tyl Regor, or Alad V, or Ballas (before the New War, that is) without being on opposing sides, since it seems like such a waste, even for an immortal.

Besides Natah, there are a few others she’s close to, but none quite that close. I’ll ramble about them in a relationships subheading.

Gameplay-esque Stuff

Mallory tends to most readily volunteer for extermination and spy missions. She considers herself a bit of a stealth prodigy (she is, but no one is going to make her ego any bigger than it already is). However, she also has a bit of a sadistic streak, and her spy missions leave the infiltrated bases notoriously empty upon completion.

She vastly prefers bows over firearms, finding the act of drawing and shooting them much more viscerally satisfying than pulling a trigger. 

Relationships

Natah: The only person Mallory would readily die for (were she capable and it necessary). Natah is her one connection to life a thousand years ago before the Orokin empire completely collapsed, and, more than that, she loves unconditionally. They’re alike in that respect- if Natah cares about someone, she doesn’t care about their flaws, or their antisociality, or their thinly-veiled racism against a certain race of clones. Mallory adores the stability, even if she won’t admit it. Natah is, frankly, a tad concerned about this, but she usually has greater concerns, so she just tries to be there when she’s needed.

The Etrati: The group Mallory is probably closest to, Sentient adoptive mothers aside. She’s spent hours upon hours interrogating each of them for what little they remember about the first discoveries of the Void, and Albrecht himself- that, and the Infestation, which Mallory is determined to somehow communicate with. She’s also spent enough time just awkwardly hanging around Mother (I can never keep track of her actual name) that the latter managed to contact the Lotus, and was advised that it was probably best to not dissuade or encourage her too much either way. 

Mallory also has a not-so-secret crush on both of the Entrati children, which everyone but said children is aware of. It’s a subject of frequent joking between the Entrati and everyone else who visits the Necralisk. 

Solaris: The Solaris are notable for being the catalyst for Mallory to stop being so much of an elitist dick. Helping Fortuna was the first time she was forced to confront the day-to-day lives of the people incredibly unjust power structures hurt, and it shook her more than she’d admit. While the Solaris hold a healthy skepticism of her (not just for their standard reasons, but because they’re good judges of character), they’re warming slowly as she does them favors, motivated by guilt. It’s not clear how much her views on systems of power have actually changed, but she’d be delighted to strangle Nef if she ever got the chance. 

She gets along particularly well with the Business, and has made it her mission to discover as much about his past as possible. He hasn’t cracked yet.

Baro Ki’Teer: A bit of an unlikely alliance, this. One of Mallory’s hobbies is sitting wistfully in abandoned Orokin ships; ergo, it was inevitable she’d run into Baro on one of his expeditions eventually. I actually intend to write a short fic about their first meeting, so I’ll just say they’ve gotten used to running into each other. 

Not that Baro would ever give her a discount, no matter how many times she clears out a nest of Corrupted for him. 

Every Grineer: Her attitude and lack of sympathy towards the Grineer is probably Mallory’s biggest flaw. The Grineer in the Orokin era were near-mindless slaves- after a thousand years, they’ve become more violent, uglier, and more threatening. The attitude of disdain has stuck, unfortunately, and it’s only been exacerbated by Mallory’s slight newfound sympathy for the downtrodden, which has only made her avoid ever interacting with the Grineer. Suffice to say, Ms. Rathopport is a rare sight in Cetus. The Kuva Fortress is quite possibly her least favorite place in the system, and that includes the Zariman.

The Man in the Wall: Mallory is a bit of a weirdo here. She’s absolutely fascinated by her eldritch doppelganger, and wishes nothing more than that they’d stick around for her to ask them questions. Because of her unhealthily antisocial behaviors, the Indifference is essentially the only visitor to her orbiter (or the Drifter’s camp, whichever is the case at the time). She’ll talk with them idly and often, regardless of their lack of responses, and be secretly very disappointed whenever they leave. They never give her any information, though, and barely ever acknowledge her ramblings and questions, but Mallory likes to think they’re at least a little interested.

Also, she’s written self-insert fanfiction about herself and the Man in the Wall, which the latter party has absolutely read (omniscience is handy that way), but which neither person will ever acknowledge exists. 

[scriptstructure]

part 1 I have multiple alien planets, but the things is I want to to be similiar in earth as in 200 countries, 5000 ethnic groups, 6500 languages, varied climate/terrain/politics. Part of the story is still on earth and obviously as a whole, 99.9999% of stuff on earth isn't even getting used, but we know there is more and sometimes there are little hints. That is stuff we know from real life and generally doesn't need explanation. Example, a character says "We borrowed this from the Russians."

Part 2 Regardless of what is really important, what we know and doesn't need explanation is a lot because we figure readers generally understand--or they can google. Hell, there could even be lots of subtle culture references as well. Anyway, depending on the reader's knowledge, it can enhance the reader's understanding in various and subtle ways. But when I do things similiar in alien planets, it makes no sense and requires extra explanation to fill the details. So, basically useless.

Part 3 Thus it seems I'm unable to fully give the type of experience as when using earth as pretty much everything needs to be important to the story. Unless there's another way to do this so I can make my alien planets seem so much more than what's actually focused on without the needless exposition? It feels like at best I could try to mention a few things but it could never feel as vast as earth does. Perhaps maybe I just need numbers?

Reminder that if your question doesn’t fit in a single ask box, you should use /SUBMIT instead.

I have had a few questions in the past which are very similar to this one, [HERE] is about how to introduce invented elements of secondary worlds (stuff that doesn't exist in the real world but has been made up for the story), [HERE] is about how and why we might include extra details about the places that a character is visiting, [HERE] deals with establishing what a 'normal' day in an invented setting is like, and [HERE] is about ways of thinking about worldbuilding, and how much you need to know vs how much the characters know.

So it is a fairly common shortcut, in scifi writing, and scifi film writing in particular, to portray alien planets as kind of 'one thing' settings. Here is the desert planet, and there is the dessert planet, and over there is the Evil planet, and there's the cute jungle teddy bear planet moon. This can be useful if you're making a film or story where you just want the different worlds to work as shorthand for certain ideas 'shitty home world', 'the seat of democracy', 'the swamp where Yoda lives' etc.

But it is very simplistic, and obviously looking at Earth, as you've said, there's a vast array of different climates, cultures, people, languages etc. We do tend to simplify the way that we portray Earth in film and stories, as well--think about, say, Australia being largely signified by the Opera House/ Harbour Bridge, and the Outback™, or the UK being Big Ben and the houses of parliament, or the USA being a vast stretch of corn fields between New York and Hollywood.

So how do we effectively give the sense of a world being bigger than the particular spot that we happen to find ourselves in?

First off, you need to have background information about the world that you're building. If you know what the major cities are, what the main continents are, if your alien world has countries, or if it has a singular centralised system of government--or is it divided into city states? or is it divided into time zones? or is it divided into... etc

Think about how your characters conceptualise their world, and their place in it. Do they think about the world, with all its variety, as a single vibrant whole? Or do they think of 'us on this continent, and them over on that continent'?

How does trade work on this world? Do they have extensive trade networks among the various cities/ countries/ regions? Or do they rely on off-world suppliers for various things?

What kind of cultural exchange is common among these different areas, and what are the cultural touchstones that your characters might be familiar with, or interact with on a daily basis?

As with the examples I gave in the first linked post above, it is less about providing the readers with an exact view of how the politics and interactions of the various places function, and more about demonstrating what that means in practice for the characters.

Say there's a certain kind of fruit that is PROTAGONIST's mother's favourite, and she spends all day searching the hypermarket for one to surprise her mother with for her birthday, but turns out there's none of that fruit available because it's all from OTHER REGION, and there's a war on, or a volcano has erupted and interrupted trade, or the shuttle crews are on strike and so the fruit can no longer be transported down from the moon.

If your protag's favourite pop group is from a polar region and only produces music six months out of the year, because the other six months they have to work with their community to produce supplies for the long dark winter, that tells us something about the way that polar community is organised, and how it interacts with the rest of the world.

What else can we think about when constructing alien planets/ secondary worlds?

It can be difficult to think 'outside the box' of the culture that we're immersed in. It's very easy to slip into thinking that we're doing things the 'correct' way, and if someone else somewhere else does stuff different, that's weird, wrong, or sinister. Often it can be just a different way of doing things that gives the solution that the person is after.

I think it can be very helpful to read books about ancient history, especially stuff about societies that no longer exist, because a lot of the assumptions that we make about the way the world currently works are less useful when we look at ancient history. There are some extremely varied ways of approaching society and culture and a whole lot of stuff which isn't immediately obvious, but which we can understand by looking at the vast differences between ancient societies.

Well written history books can really help you get the sense of how societies form, and how culture develops, and some of the forces involved in cross cultural relations. Also, there are some great examples from the ancient world, of, for example, the various different Ancient Greek societies, and how each of them thought of themselves as 'doing culture the best', of their neighbouring hellenistic states of 'doing culture not quite as well' and of everyone who didn't speak greek properly as barbaric outsiders.

At the moment I'm reading Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors by Adrian Goldsworthy, and I think one of the things that has struck me as super interesting is the difference between how the Greeks vs the Persians organised their societies, and the way that they thought about and approached warfare.

So what are the basic questions we're working with?

-What is the protagonist/ focalising character's relationship to the world? Were they born on-world? Are they adult settlers? Are they traders passing through? Has the character travelled to other places on the world, or have they mostly stayed in their home city/ area?

-How do the protag/ focalising characters think of the other places in the world that they are not currently visiting? (ie, I am in Sydney, Australia, what do I think of Boston, USA, or Paris, France? Big cities with a Reputation, I probably know something about. Small towns or cities I may or may not be familiar with, depending on my life experience or interests)

-How do the material goods which are needed for daily life pass around the world? Are certain goods only available from certain areas? Are there Events happening which may disrupt supply routes? Are there cultural elements which may cause friction in trade?

-What kinds of cultural export or exchange happen on this world? Is there a particular city which is well known for its entertainment production? (Hollywood, California--movies, New York City--the print publishing industry) Does this mean that portrayals of the rest of the world are skewed by the perspectives of that place? (Remember, Australia is just a bridge, an opera house, and red dirt!)

There's always going to be a gap between what your characters know, or are aware of, and what is 'actually' happening in the world of your story, but as long as you have the information decided, and can write the world consistently and with sensory and suggestive details, the reader can and will pick up the puzzle pieces and fit them together.

It's a complex problem, but it's one that can produce interesting complex settings.

I hope this helps!