i3asil

[i3asil]

Armored Core 6 - My addiction and Playlist

I LOVE ARMORED CORE. This is not even a question. As a Gundam Fanatic and a T'au lover, AC is the natural thing for me to love. I was just never able to play the PS only Titles since, well I never owned a Sony Console. But AC6 on PC has taken over my life in between Baldurs Gate 3 Sessions. And since friends asked me to, I ended up recording the Replay Missions and Uploading them to Youtube. Just be aware of Story Spoilers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ7Cnz96aFQ&list=PLVPcfHQ65S4AlLsUJgPBOURiopukczWGV&index=9 So why do I love Armored Core 6? Because its Souls... but without the fluff? No Open world to constantly backtrack through. No constant looting. Just pure, constant, combat and soulsy difficulty. The bosses are AMAZING. Especially since there is no level up system present. Meaning, you can't just fail and go somewhere else to level or grind and go back later. No. There is none of that. You either git gud and do this mission of the boss fight, or you don't. And believe me, even if you struggle against a boss, theres enough youtube cheese tutorials out by now if you need an easy mode. However, honestly? It is SO satisfying to finally beat a boss with the mech you built yourself. Especially since every weapon is unique and everyone will find their own niche favorite weapons to use. As for me, I'm a dirty Missile Ship person. Pressing a button to let hell rain upon enemies feels INCREADIBLY satisfying lol. Anyways. May the Fires of Rubicon be with you!

[i3asil]

DnD Dice! But... Long?

Hey! I've been working on a random project for a while now. Which is making LONG Dice. Players wanted something other than the usual round-ish dice we are used to, so... I decided to take some Inspiration from old dice sticks.

The STL files for 3D Printing are available here!

Feel free to check them out! :D

[i3asil]

First own Home experience!

Hey! So I moved out. Woot woot. Its a pretty little place that was freshly done about two years ago. And its... really inexpensive. Comes with the area being not the most prestigious but its cheap and the home is nice! Moving in was a hassle... but the bigger hassle was moving out. I looked at the 20+ Moving Boxes and went “That’s insane, I’ll never need them all.” Except I did. Its a tricky thing of, you will never fill the entire volume because it will reach a weight at which you can’t carry it anymore. So what should’ve been 1 box, usually gets split into 3 or 4... So what was my first experience here? COOKING. Ugh. people who know me, know that my taste buds are about as screwed up as can be. So I’m standing there thinking “What the fuck do I cook?” Ended up making Tamagoyaki ( Japanese Rolled Omelette ). And after a week of eating purely that... well, lets just say that special square pan stays in the shelf as I’ve seen and eaten more than enough for months lol. The second experience? WASHING! Clothes to be exact. And, I was scared that the typical “Oh you set the wrong degree and now everything shrunk” or “you put a red shirt among white ones and now its all pink” But... at least so far ( knock on wood ) no woopsie! Though I’m genuinely too lazy to iron >.> I’m just folding it up neatly and stuff it all into the shelf for now....  Third? Well, there’s no third yet. Just slooowly getting used to living by myself and having to spend at least 1-2 hours everyday on chores. But its nice. I much prefer this. it may be freedom come at a price, but its better than no freedom at all.

[i3asil]

Dungeon 23 - Day 3? Room 3&4! Update

Heeyyyy... soo, as some of you may have noticed, I took a break and missed some days. Woopsies. But it was much needed and probably is already wise to say that I won’t be tracking days in a row anymore. Just days in total, and also the amount of rooms. I won’t do a daily room, but closer to maybe once a week or so? We’ll see how long I can keep this up really, since I am very busy. ----

Last time we left off, the party fought against goblins, some of which escaped into a deep pool of water in the second room. Now they are faced with the choice of going down the leftmost or the middle room. And today? We’ll probably get to both! Deciding to follow the middle path first, which had been marked by a coin. The party stays in formation and travels with care. Not much longer however, and they stumbled into a room that appeared to be … manmade? The walls were made from stone bricks and gaps filled with some sort of mortar. It was curious, yet further reinforced their fear that they had not been the first here. The walls were as usually covered in moss and wet from dampness. However the floor was - for the most part- clean. Unlike before, it had no support pillars or walls within. Just one empty room, albeit a tad smaller than what they were used to till now. To their luck, they saw no monsters in the immediate vicinity, and also no further pathways that forked from this room.

Yet, it was this safe feeling, that made this room feel so uncanny for the party once again. They checked for traps and had a look around the room, but found nothing of interest. Though some party members exclaimed that this room did feel quite cramped compared to the previous ones. Upon mentioning that, the others felt even more uncanny about this room. They could’ve sworn it looked bigger before. Perhaps it was just the brick pattern that threw them off. It was not long however until someone very observant noticed that the walls had shrunk several bricks. There were twenty bricks from either side of the entrance to the side walls, but now only seventeen remained. The others didn’t believe that person at first, but out of curiosity kept an eye on the walls this time. Indeed, the walls moved inwards. It seemed so slow to them, that they didn’t think it was even a trap, surely whoever created this room would’ve made it shrink sooner, right? Well, they soon had their answer, as from the mortar of the walls slimes formed and began attacking the party en-masse. They were not strong individually, or even together, but were tedious to fight and cornered the party. The drawn out fight would bring the walls ever closer, making combat more difficult, and the tighter it became, the higher was the pressure to leave this place. For DnD Purposes, you could start out with a sizable room and shrink it every round by 5ft in a direction while increasing the number of slimes that come from the walls. If the party fails to exit the room before the walls either cover up the exit or the party is squished, it could be game over! Luckily for our party however, they managed to slay their way past the slimes in the nick of time and escaped it. Once in the pathway out, the slimes didn’t follow them and were observed to return into the walls. What an odd room, they thought and returned to their central ‘base’ room. After a short breather, they decided to follow the only path left. The unmarked path to the left. On the other side however, they were only greeted by a door. A large double door in fact. It had a face of a beast carved into it, half on one, the other half on the second. The door however, was not the only thing that bugged them. To the left and right of the door, the room seemed to stretch for quite a bit. Like someone dug around the room inside this room which could be entered through this door.  The walls were just of natural cave, no more bricks, yet clearly had never formed naturally. The strongest party members tried to break or even open the door forcefully. But failed. Soon, they decided to get back into formation and decided to go (east) right of the door, keeping the wall to the left of them at all times so as to not get lost. A member even painted signs and markings on the wall with the glow moss paste as a safety measure. Along this path, they came across small pocket rooms dug into the walls in which skeletons and zombies hid. The party fought off these encounters one by one, but the stretch was long and although the enemies themselves were also far apart and not that strong, it tore at their sanity to not know where they were headed. At long last, they reached a corner. However, were immediately confused by it. There was a mirror facing them. It may have been old and dusty, but it was a mirror none the less. Not understanding what it was, they moved past it and after several more encounters further north of this corner they found another mirror. Now this had become even more curious than before but not knowing what to do, they went around the corner west. There, around where the door was on the opposite end, they found two angel statues and an inscription in front of them. Luckily they had someone who could decipher the language ( just pick any language that a singular party member can speak for the sake of testing their attention ) and it went as following. “What one cannot see, is not to be meddled with.” It was unclear really, and they didn’t know if it was a warning or a tip of some kind. But it wasn’t long until they saw the angels had gems for eyes, and their hands were loose. By accident a party member would turn a hand, causing the eyes of an angel to light up and shoot a ray of light forward. Following this light behind them, they saw that it reflected off a small mirror within a brick of the wall, pointing the laser down the path they came from.  Then it clicked. They made the second angel also light it’s eyes, and indeed another light ray went down the other path. Now, with tedious caution, they party would go down the path they came from, and move the mirrors in such a way that it would reflect the rays of light to the next mirror. Then, from the other side, after many small encounters, they did the same there. Now, back at the entrance the lights crossed but didn’t point to the door yet. The door, they could tell, had carved out eyes, which was likely where the light was supposed to go, but without a way to reflect it... they thought long about this and eventually came to use their weapons. Reflecting the light with their metal weapons they could point it at the eyes and after a rattle from the door, it would open up ever so slightly. A brave member stepped forward to check, and indeed, the door could now be opened...  But what is INSIDE? Well! That is something to be found out next time :P I decided to attach an image of the Dungeon this time, since it this particular “Mirror Room” is always a tricky one. I kept it VERY simple and didn’t go into full visual detail for the map image. But feel free to use this as an idea. :D Thanks for tagging along!

-Basil

[i3asil]

Happy New Year! :D

[i3asil]

Dungeon 23 - Day 2

So, before I get to continue I just wanted to get some questions out of the way first.  “Basil, will this become a full fledged story?” - No. The focus on this really isn’t the story or the party. But the actual environment. I occasionally mention thoughts and ideas but only because these are potential things a DM can use when their Party makes checks. “I saw at least 3 typos! How dare you?” - Well. No real excuse here. Yah, I’m human and I don’t really have time to proofread everything I write on Social Media posts. So while I try to keep things accurate, the occasional mistake happens. Now onto the next room! Last we left off, the party took a long rest in the first room of the dungeon. A large and empty room, yet it left them to consider their next paths. Hints leading to water and possible greens and other hints leaving them to be aware of either another person, or a whole party. They decided that since there was no clear ‘best’ path to travel along, they would simply begin with the right most path. One where another party member figured out that the water came from, and they also found a golden coin akin to a breadcrumb marker in front of it. With a torch in hand and narrow formation they followed the path. It was a narrow and the floor became more and more slippery as they continued. Not only that, but it appeared that the moss formed more densely the further they went. Eventually though, they saw a light on the other end of this pathway and halted in their steps. They could not yet make out what kind of light it was. Whether that of candles or torches, or that of a magic spell, perhaps even daylight itself? Either way, knowing that they might not be alone in this dungeon, they continued to tread carefully with their guard at full alert. Closing in on the end of the pathway and entrance to the next room, their view opened up and their eyes were immediately drawn to the moss. Not just any moss. No, it was the source of light that had worried them so much. Bright illuminecent moss grew in patches on every thinkable surface. After a small breather they dared to actually move inside the room, yet kept their formation tight to observe. Similar in layout to the last room, it appeared to be rather large, several full sprints across in every direction. However, their view was blocked by many pillars and small walls. Not only that, but in some places dense vines obscured their vision. Near the middle of the room, the moss appeared to be riddled with large bushes. Those with sharper eyes could make out that these carried berries of some kind. The atmosphere itself could only be described as a dampness although the smell of green that filled this room was a pleasure to many.  Feeling safe and welcome here, they loosened their formation and moved along the outer walls, to try and sneak a peek at what was on the other side of the room, which was hard to see due to the previously mentioned pillars, walls and vines. As they did, their every step was followed by a small rustle, as the floor was practically a complete moss carpet. They grew used to this rustle fairly quick. Once around the corner, they saw a small pool of water in the ground, above it, stalactites from which water dripped down into. As their eyes moved up, however, they could tell this was not the only floor. Right above, there were ridges along the wall with more bushes, some small stone bridges even stretching from different pillars. Yet, before they could take in the whole view, they were jumped by a group of Goblins. Now, for DMs, you can pick whatever starting enemy you’d like of course. However I chose goblins here due to their green skin blending in nicely into the plant life and their small bodies can also hide easily. At first, they saw 4 (1 for each Party Member). Once the party slew about half, another four appeared behind them from bushes and moss. A two phase encounter designed to test strategy from the party as well as how well they would protect the squishy members, such as the wizard. Depending on the party you can obviously reduce the amount of goblins here, though I will say that I generally start them off at level 3 so this kind of encounter is usually alright for anybody. Fending off the goblins with a few close calls for their lives, the morale of the goblins would falter after only about two were left standing, diving into the pool of water. The Party, exhausted from this fight, had never seen a goblin swim or dive for that matter. But this now held newfound curiosity. Where did this pool lead to? Could the party also dive after these goblins? And what kind of paths would they face? Could they even hold their breath for that long? And where would they come out at? Was there a whole horde on the other side, that would now be alarmed? With little time to think, they stood guard at the pool waiting for possible reinforcements. Afters a few hours passed, nobody came. Although they didn’t feel safe, they decided to leave the pool of water for now, and look for what they could scavenge. Quickly finding out that the berries within the bushes were edible and that the moss when plucked would still glow. A smart party member would use a mortar and pestle to grind the moss to a mush, and use it as paint to write on walls where they had been. Mainly, as a test for now, as they had no idea how long this ‘paint’ would glow for. They also still had no idea if the water was entirely safe to drink yet either, but had little choice in the mater as their rations already began to run low. After a brief refill of their water skins they returned to the first room, deciding it best to look at the other pathways next. Once returned, they broke off a few stalactites and mites to wall off the pathway they just went to, to hopefully not be ambushed out of nowhere in case the goblins did return in the future. Now they only had one more choice before them. Follow the middle path, which was signed by a coin. Or to go down the leftmost path which was left untouched. Through which path would they travel next?

[i3asil]

All the writing advice in the world doesn’t mean a thing in the face of “Just write the story you want to read most.”

The advice and ‘What Not to Do/How To”s come to supplement that statement and make the story you want for yourself better, not to snuff it out.

Bc I can guarantee you every single one of your favorite stories contains a number of those “tired old tropes” or an amount of “cringe” that you either never noticed due to it being well executed, or bc it simply didn’t matter in the bigger picture. The same goes for design. Hades game is a great example, bc every single one of those designs is dripping in “no-no, that’s a sparkledog (sparklegod)” bs. Zagreus even has mismatched eyes. They’re all fucking amazing though! Don’t let the “rules” stop you from making something awesome that brings you joy.

[i3asil]

Dungeon 23 - Day 1 - Full Text?

Sooo, I heard about the Dungeon23 ‘challenge’ ‘game’ and its really cool. You sketch up a dungeon and think of stories and rhyme or reason to it. At least that’s what I gathered from it. Once per day. And at the end of the year, you might end up with a full mega Dungeon. Cool idea right? However I’m not really that great with sketching stuff like that, especially since I feel its still simpler for me to write than to draw, especially at the level of detail I’m thinking of. So here’s my take, I won’t do this every day, real life is awful after all, and I won’t make a sketch for the dungeon either. I will use words to describe each room and the thoughts behind the rooms. Even in DnD I greatly prefer the Theatre of mind over a grid map. Though I’ll always have a grid map handy in case the party really needs one. So here goes! Considering this Dungeon is going to end up being huge, I’m imagining a big adventure taking place only within this dungeon. Which means, that there will likely be its own inhabitants and own ecosphere of sorts within it and it will also be scaling in difficulty over time... meaning we will start with simple stuff for the first room! Our party of brave adventurers has reason to enter the dungeon. What for, you ask? Be it a nearby city that wants a monster within slain, or a guild that wishes for them to loot it clean. The reason is ultimately up to you. In this case, some members of this party had heard tales and children’s songs about this dungeon. Of the many riches and the great vastness within. Supposedly, the entry leads to a whole new plane of existence, explaining its size. However barely anybody is daring enough to set foot into it. And those have? Well, they have not been seen leaving. Intrigued by their sense of adventure they stand in front of it’s gates. A large double door of stone slates, cut into a mountain side. It would take a giant to open them, one would think. After thoroughly checking and double checking their gear and rations, they each place their right hand against the doors. Coarse stone, and slimy at touch. Water would run along the surface and moss already decorated it. As if by magic, the doors opened by themselves, revealing an empty darkness behind them. An audible gulp later, the party walks inside, and once past the doors, they shut closed behind them. Here they were, surrounded by pitch black. Some had night vision and could roughly make out the sizable first room, but for those who didn’t have night vision, the party lit torches from their dungeoneering packs. Once set aflame, everyone could see.  The surrounding walls were of the same stone as the mountain and the doors. Brown and at some places very smooth. Some parts looked like they had been dug out by hand, though most was a natural cave. By pure chance, they heard a sizzle come from their torch. Looking up at it, they noticed that water drippled down from the rather high ceiling. Even a full grown Orc would have no issue standing here. Out of curiosity, or perhaps even fear, a party member turns around and tries to leave. Yet there was no more door. A surprise to all, they didn’t even move from where they entered, how could they have lost track of the door? Was it magic after all? Close together, the party moved forward with weapons drawn, ready for anything that may await them in this room. It was incredibly silent so far, aside from the water droplets running down the walls and the ceiling, and their footsteps which altered between a louder noise as they stepped on stone, and a muffled noise as they stepped on moss. Every sound echoing from wall to wall. Stalactites and stalagmites decorated the room, along with mosses of different shades of green. They could tell some small flowers and herbs grew within the moss, yet they had nobody with the Survivalist skills to really ascertain what was safe to eat, and what wasn’t. Even the water made them curious. After all, they knew their rations would only last a certain amount of time. After that, they’d either starve or die from drought, or they’d need to make use of the resources within the dungeon itself.  In hindsight, it was foolish of them not to bring someone with survival skills along. As big and empty as the room appeared, their vision was constantly obscured by multiple large pillars of the mountain that stood in the middle of the room, leaving gaps between. Each pillar roughly 20-30ft in diameter, while the room itself was roughly 200 feet squared. However, it wasn’t square. It was jagged and although sometimes uncannily even, they could tell that it was so far formed like a natural cave. They were careful to leave ‘breadcrumbs’ of pebbles behind them to orient themselves, and once they walked through the entire first room, they were assured that it was indeed safe. Without enemies, their stiffened shoulders could finally slump down. Walking along the walls, they could tell that they now had a painful choice before them however, There were three narrow paths to travel down into. Which path should they take? Would they be safe? Will they find food? These and many more questions buzzed inside their heads. They simply could not chose, at least not unanimously. They argued and decided to sit down near the middle of the room. Some leaned against a pillar, and others began taking small strolls not far from one another to look more closely at the walls and mosses. Inside this place, they couldn’t tell time. It felt like an eternity and yet it wasn’t.  Someone followed the water veins along the walls and ceiling, trying to see from where it came. Which lead to the right most path. Chances were good that they might end up finding some aquifer that way, along with edible plants. And were there is food and water, the others knew, there must be other creatures too. Near two pathways, another had found small golden coins placed in front of them. The rightmost and the middle path each one. Yet the leftmost path had none. Who had left these, they wondered. None of them, they concluded. So was there someone before them? If so, how long ago? The coins while slightly dusted and wet, seemed rather fresh. Though they had no clue what ‘fresh’ meant in there. It could’ve been hours before them, or perhaps even days. Which brought worry, if whoever left these behind was still alive, would they be hostile or friendly? On top of which, should they venture down the paths that had the coins? Or should they take the path without? What reason did those coins hold for those who had left them behind? Was it to mark off dead ends? Or for danger? Or perhaps they’d already fully explored the area already, and nothing of value was left to find? Also, did they already go down the path that had no coin? Which path would our party have the highest odds of meeting the coin placer? They’d mutter amongst themselves and think with reason and rationality, within a dungeon from all they knew, didn’t even have to follow the laws of physics. After all, the doors through which they entered, had disappeared. Which made them wonder, what if another party entered the dungeon? Would the door reappear? Would the new party even enter into this very same room? With a throbbing headache from all the thinking, they went to sleep, rotating in shifts to keep watch, leaving the issues to be resolved after they wake up, with a clearer mind. -Basil

[i3asil]

Merry Holidays!

I wish you all a happy Holidays! :D

[i3asil]

Writing Tips : Feature Creep!

Hey there! As I mentioned last time, I wanted to write about this in the future... and now is the future! Behold! Anyway, before we can get to the topic, we need to first establish what Feature Creep even is. Have you ever cooked something and found that you needed more pepper? And then Salt? And maybe a few cloves of garlic? And then this that and more and end up with a mess? Well its similar to this. Feature Creep is at its core, the underlying feeling of 'missing something' and 'wanting to spice things up' and 'adding more things' with the belief that it will make the end result better, while actually not only turning the project into a seemingly endless time sink, but also overcomplicating it and overall dragging it down and ruining it. Don't take this wrongly though, just like with anything in life, there is a balance of how many 'features' we can add before it becomes 'creep'.  Just like how much water you can drink before you die from drowning. As discussed in the previous chapter, we talked about how to pick a genre and stick with it and focus on it. Well, even Genres and Storylines have sub genres and sub-sub genres, and tropes galore to pick from. This is what makes writing so fun. The options are endless! However that is exactly why its important to reign it in and look at the red thread you intend to follow along and to watch out not to let side strands overtake it. Things you can do to control your feature creep is like I said last time, to plan out in advance. Think before hand of ideas and story lines you intend to include and try to stick to those ideas. Once you have this rough framework, you can start to add the 'bricks', the chapters, the scenes. These are what form the pillars holding up your building. You can be crazy with it, you can totally branch out a lot too! But it is important to be consistent! If you start slowing down the pace of the main story progression to tell several novels worth of side content, especially when it starts to embark on entirely new stories, you need to ask yourself "Shouldn't this just be a different story?" That is a VERY important question to ask yourself, truely. A story can have a lot of content in it, but it needs to be paced correctly and in a way to create worthwhile payoffs for the readers. If you take a lot of time on side content, make sure that when you get back to the main story, that you make it either longer than the side content or far better quality. Then there is also the talk of characters. How many characters do you need to tell your story? How deep do you need to go with them? Depending on the size of your novel, you can go wide easily. And it works quite often. ( Hey there GRR. Martin ) but if this is a very early project it might be smart to tone it down. To rather focus on a smaller cast and to carefully allow your readers to learn about each character with much needed time. I remember when starting to read A Song of Ice and Fire and after the first few chapters I already had to keep track of dozens of names and their importance. This is amazing for many, but also difficult to approach for others. Slowly adding more characters in a natural way is much simpler for people to follow. On top of that, there is the talk about detail. I remember during Literacy class in my school days, there were some novels where every page felt like a sack of bricks. A single fleeting moment described to such a detail that  despite the intent being that one can picture it perfectly, most didn't have the mental capacity to actually keep track of it all. The first few pages of one such stories described a man entering a living room, and going in depth down to the very fibre of a wallpaper. Now this WOULD be great if it was relevant at all, ever. But it wasn't. Try to use detail strategically. Your characters should be detailed, but even that can be sprinkled in over time. Go broad at first and add detail as you go on. And if you're writing a crime story? Detail the scene, what is important for this crime? Detail is a writer's weapon. Constant detail is like a data overload for readers, and it cannot possibly be kept in memory. But varying detail, going light and then eventually heavier on the more important parts, is important to give people a breather and also to essentially give them a sign that something is about to get important. That said, you can and should add detail in some random seeming spots simply to make the reader pay attention more often. Akin to a teacher selecting a random kid in the class to answer a question out of nowhere. Prompting attention is important to make sure a reader stays active. All too often rather calm moments can cause someone to "skimming" mode. So adding occasionally higher detail will limit this and also make it so that the important parts aren't spoiled by their detail alone. What’s most important here however is that this is all a VERY fine recipe and nearly impossible to balance. Even the best of writers struggle with the right way to control feature creep. Its fun to add new things. Adding new stories, scenes, chapters, playful things. Though it is something that everyone slowly learns how to do better and truely, the most important question to ask yourself is "When do I just write a new story with all this extra material?" Many stories from some of my Novels have already become their own Novel ideas, that is how much I can feature creep my writing. There is still much I could talk about and go even deeper into this topic, but this is some of the more easy to grasp gist I can try to explain to you. Thank you as always for your time! -Basil

[i3asil]

A very useful demonstration of the importance of sentence length.

[i3asil]

Writing Tips : Genres

Hey there! Today I will just talk a bit about how Genres work and what you as a new writer can do to implement them and to narrow them down.

You will likely throughout your life have figured out your favorite genres. Be it through reading books, or watching series and movies. If you haven't yet, don't worry, just try to list some of your favorite media you've consumed and try to look at 'what you liked' about it.

Basic things are liking comedy, or action, or mystery thrillers, or zombies. A lot of this has developed through Sherlock Holmes and the plentiful CSI series, or Marvel Movies and Cartoons, and Scooby Doo, or Walking Dead whatever. The list goes on to eternity. But what is important to note is that these follow central genres despite being filled with multiple genres at once.

What do I mean by that? Well. Even though The Walking Dead for example also has a lot of Mysteries and Fighting and Romance and sometimes Slice of Life. You wouldn't definite it by those Genres. You'd still definite it by the main theme of it. Human conflic- I mean Zombies. So when you start writing a story, have at least one Genre in mind, and make it the focus.

Just because you might've chosen your main genre to be a mystery/crime related one. Doesn't mean that it doesn't end up with different genres inside. Sherlock Holmes and other Detective stories for example. They can still have the odd moments of comedy in them without being a Comedy Genre, they can still have Action in them without being an Action genre, they can still have a random Zombie case without being a Zombie Genre etc. Because at the end of the day, the story still revolves around cases, and mysteries or crimes to be solved. So you can have 'sub genres' or rather particulates of genres appear within your story, but they do not immediately define your whole work. Merely a scene or piece of plot.

So why does this matter? You might say this is obvious but… not really… because a lot of people, myself included, have no clue what their genre is! Maybe you just have characters in your head and want to have them interact in a world. And you haven't really figured anything out yet. So you can't even follow any tropes of the genres yet ( which will be its own post I can assure you ). When I started writing Steam's Shadow, sure I knew I wanted it to be set in Steampunk Theme but I didn't know "WHAT" I wanted the characters to do yet. In fact I had dozens of "first chapters" written and plotted out before I figured out which one seemed most natural for the characters I had thought up. Which ended up being a mystery crime story. This is a process that… for the most part cannot be explained but just… figured out through trial and error. Constant writing and reworking and sitting down and thinking. And its tough to conclude what genre you want to stick with because we all start out with what is called "Feature Creep" ( which again is its own post in the future ), which is simply put the issue of wanting too many features, be they plot points and themes etc., which overall just make the whole thing seem "busy". This will not only make you do a lot of extra work, but also make the reader not really know what the story is about and overall confuse people.

Its important to argue with yourself what kind of features you liked most. And instead of adding both together, to decide to only keep one. This is not to say you can't add them together, but this is usually best done with larger stories where you can more naturally blend between them rather than have it seem abrupt.

So what can you do? Make a list of genres you like, by trying to look at media you've consumed. Create small one or two page ( and I don't mean Mona Lisa sized canvas pages ) shorts where you play with a genre at a time, preferably with a handful of previously thought up characters. Evaluate which of those shorts you prefered and continue writing more shorts based on those picks and repeat this process until only 1-2 genres remain. Then decide if those can co-exist. Like in my case, a Steampunk themed Detective Novel, which is theoretically 2 Genres but the 'Steampunk' is more a background theme than the main focus. OR if they cannot. In which case you need to make the painful choice of picking one…. however this does not mean you have to throw the other away. NAY! You can keep the other in an ideas folder for the future. I have a folder with hundreds of story ideas, often times multiple chapters. They can all become future stories and you don't need to repeat the difficult process of filtering genres anymore!

I hope this helped and I thank you all for reading! Greetings! -Basil

[i3asil]

[i3asil]

shoutout to the guy who created a parody account of cinemasins where instead of pointing out every single flaw in a film, he just pointed out things he liked about the movie. you're so right cinemawins its so much more fun to like things

[i3asil]

Writing Tips : Conflicting Nations

Getting to replay Fire Emblem Fates inspired me to write this post, simply because of how well written most of it's story is. Fire Emblem Three Houses later borrows a lot from Fates and unfolds it even further.

So how DOES one write about conflicting nations? How does one make it seem real? How does one intrigue readers? How does a Protagonist or other characters in that sort of fictional world react? What is their role? WELL! I say. Allow me to at least sprinkle some ideas on this topic.

There's multiple steps to this, and usually its important to have a rough idea and inspiration of what you want before you start world building and figuring out details. But once you're ready, I would suggest starting with the conflicting nations themselves.

Why are those nations at conflict, what are their motivations and what are their roles in this story? Analysing history is important here. Usually all parties involved in such conflict have a role. One side is often an aggressor, the other the victim or defender. Which can create a Monochrome feel for the readers and make it usually easy to discern good from bad. It creates contrast. Good examples are the Fire Nation from Avatar being the obvious aggressor, or the Empire from Star wars. But there's more options to play with here. There's also cases where all sides are aggressors, or all are defenders. Sometimes its even a mix. So this is where a motivation comes into play. Why does a nation begin a conflict with another? Is it for resources and wealth, or is it for size of land? Is it as simple as hatred and pettiness and pointless bloodshed? Or perhaps its not as greedy but a nation is forced to be offensive for their own survival. Are they lacking basic living resources like food and water or medicine, and thus need to plunder?

Once we've figured out a motivation and the sort of role a nation would be placed into, it becomes time to figure out their strategy. How do they approach this conflict? There's always politics involved with what happens, and while you don't need to figure out a whole party system, its at least good to figure out roughly what the people within your story get to know. Nations can be entirely honest with their people, or they can lie. Are they telling the truth, that the enemy is the aggressor? Or are they using propaganda to cover up their own aggression? Are they actively recruiting new people, or are they trying to involve the public as little as possible? Perhaps the public doesn't even know of this conflict?

As soon as you have an idea of how you want to handle their conflicts, you can begin to place in your Protagonist and other characters and try to think of how they would react. Perhaps the Protag is gullible to the propaganda and wants to join the efforts. They might enter with a naïve point of view, allowing your as the writer to slowly damage their innocent views and show them the cruelties of the conflict, perhaps even make them start to see that its façade? Or is the Protag the sceptical type, someone who can see through the propaganda. Or perhaps they're on the edge of both.

Now knowing their point of view, you can begin to debate their motivations too. If they're the ignorant type, do they want to join the effort to do their part? Or do they just want to make money? Or do they enjoy conflict even? Or if they're the sceptical type, do they help the enemy? Or do they act passively? And if so, how long can they be passive before the conflict becomes their issue too?

Knowing their motivations, it's important to think of a turning or break point. How do you throw their points of view on the head? Does the ignorant one get scared by the reality of conflict? Do they lose a loved one? Do they get hurt themselves? Perhaps they received a vital piece of information by accident. Really think hard about how you can make your Protag interact with the idea of having been wrong about their previous ideas and assumptions. It creates tension and allows readers to begin thinking what they would do in the protag's shoes. Allow them to sympathise or in reverse really hate the protag. Both are viable choices.

This was all you really needed. Now its up to you to figure out how the conflict continues over time, and how it all ends. It is even worth considering whether the story should have a happy ending or a sad ending. Often, when conflict is involved, someone is either a hero, or they're dead. So which one is your roster of characters going to end up being? And how do the nations evolve afterwards? Who wins? What happens to the loser and what happens to the winner?

There's many case specific questions you must ask yourself when beginning to think up a story involving conflicting nations, as it requires a good know how of history and psychology.

For now I hope this can help at least some of you. I can really only recommend playing Fire Emblem Fates, Echoes and Three Houses for their beautiful storytelling with conflicting nations. Even Gundam series are a great watch as they are known to get serious and dark with their stories.

Have fun writing, have a good time and thanks for reading! -Basil

[i3asil]

wanderer 🪁

[i3asil]

Back to the roots?

So... here's a thought. Waaay back when I first traveled through Tumblr, I used to write fairly long structured analyseses.is...es... I ANALYZED Stories and Tidbits from Movies, Novels, Series, Games etc. So as to figure out nifty information to yoink for story writing. So now that I have access to posts that are longer than 200 signs ( which btw, this is already longer! ) I wonder if I should go back to doing that...