#'long form blogging' actually just rambling with vague coherence

[aen-lliash]

I feel like I'm ready to talk at greater length about my experiences with STO and how I've reached this point of burnout/alienation with it after all these years.

The biggest reason? It's not the same game I became obsessed with in 2014. That's actually normal and to be expected of most MMOs and people (you should check out this video about the phenomenon!), but let me explain what that means for me here. Quick disclaimer, you are allowed to disagree with me on this -- I'm discussing my subjective point of view, not any objective fact.

Putting this under a readmore because it's long - please click "keep reading" below :)

What captured my heart was STO's storytelling and how it was formatted to be super duper friendly to making OCs. I could make an OC that got inserted into the STO (and overall Trek) universe with pretty minimal effort on my part! It had enough callbacks to canon to be satisfying to me as a Trekkie, but it also had enough new stuff that it was exciting and fresh. My first two years in college were spent imagining up my OC's takes on different mission arcs more often than uh.. college. Long-time friends and followers will recall my obsession with the Dyson Sphere and the Iconian War.

But that's when things started to change, right after the Iconian War. The war itself felt like the great culmination of all the past mission arcs, like we built up to the conflict and it exploded into this terrible intergalactic event. Since then, no new missions have felt the same to me.

STO seemed to evolve further into a super segmented Star Trek theme park after that. We already had Voyager Land (the Delta Quadrant) before the war, and it played a relatively satisfying role in the war; however, it became especially clear with the Gamma Quadrant arc that we were getting a new expansion into Deep Space 9 Land after the short burst of original stuff like the Lukari and the Tzenkethi (I know that the Tzenkethi existed in canon before, but STO took them and ran with them).

It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the priority has shifted towards incorporating as many cameos as possible to run the stories, not the other way around. I LOVE Tilly and Mary Wiseman, don't get me wrong, but the way they finagled a way to get Tilly to still be alive in the STO era (having her literal fascist Mirror Universe counterpart travel into the future) felt ingenuine as hell to me. The way I see it, it's less about the story and more about capitalizing on the #SillyForTilly craze to draw new players in. Same goes for all the other canon characters, but Tilly's has felt the most egregious to me personally.

Yes, it IS cool as hell that STO has these actors willing to come in to record cameo voiceovers. It IS cool as hell that we recently got to fight alongside both Tilly and Janeway at the SAME TIME! But it's important to remember that they're not "our" Tilly and Janeway; they're their Mirror counterparts, and one of them is only there as a result of temporal shenanigans. Temporal shenanigans totally happen in canon Trek and are part of the charm, but in the case of STO, they feel excessive to me.

The way I see it, STO is putting the cameos themselves over the characters over the stories. The cameos drive engagement, which drives the ruthless monetization that has also been strangling the life out of the game. It's Star Ship Online and hey omg look over there it's Tilly and Janeway and Wesley omg wow look aaaaaaaah!!!!1!!! I understand that capitalism is gonna capitalism, the game will do what it feels it must do to survive, but it has lost all charm to me.

I came for the sense that I was being included in the universe (via my OCs, because let's face it, OCs are always self-inserts to varying degrees), now I feel like I'm watching an extremely, painfully slow interactive new Trek series that also feels like an advertisement for merch targeted at a super specific audience.

When it comes to the screenshot thing I got myself so entrenched in... I felt like I was an unpaid advertiser for the "new" game, especially when it came to lockbox and promo box ships that people will spend hundreds of dollars to obtain. 99% of the time my art of those ships came from the tribble test server or sniping screenshots of somebody else's ship, all because of the pressure to continually Create Content™. I felt emboldened to continue Creating Content™ when it became "ship art" and not just "rurinn's silly little pictures," and that's when I became Known On The Internet -- a goal of mine for a long time that turned out to be more thorns than rose petals.

We also have to acknowledge the behavior of the community at large when it comes to that monetization and how creators such as myself get caught in the crossfire. The hate I got over this recreation of a cutscene from A Measure of Morality -- not-so-subtly advertising a 300 USD ship bundle -- was unbelievable, and it still wasn't nearly as bad as the utterly soulless behavior that my partner faces to this day for his videos.

I could go on. For days, probably. Subjects such as the extreme monetization + the rampant unmoderated hate in chat that seeps into the adjacent social media communities come to mind. I felt like my soul had been siphoned away for a time because of it all -- the pain of outgrowing something I loved dearly, watching it change into something unrecognizable, and being berated and harassed by other players and community members drowning in their own toxicity and hate.

I am grateful for STO. I met so many friends because of it. It helped me through some unimaginably difficult times in my life. I met my partner through it and even collaborated with him to create some stunning art. I have been hurting over this for a long time, but I think I'm finally at a stage where I can accept what happened, move on, and heal.

[chorusnihili]

I know I still owe you a tag from my Gaster and thank you for your patience on that!! But gonna go ahead and add to the “plots please” because I definitely want to interact with you more

send "plots please" for three (or more) plots / ideas etc. I'm too lazy to go hunt down the actual post (still accepting if anyone wants me to ramble on for them too)

take as long as you need tbh, as long as I'm still hanging around this blog I'll be happy to reply whenever you get around to it.

Honestly anything with Gaster + Gaster is just --- great. It's amazing, 10/10 I'm totally into all of it. (This also applies to any other Gasters reading this.)

My Gaster especially has a love / hate relationship with all other Gasters and his reaction is just ... fun lmao.

I know I chose Refused Form + your Void but honestly, any combination has the potential to be interesting.

Original Form + your Void ; Spoiler Alert, my Original Gaster does not like alternate Gasters at all and. Will freak out a little, ngl. Mainly because he actually doesn't have any knowledge of alternate timelines or really DT or the Void, so it's all very ... Spooky! to him.

Refused Form + Pre Fall ; My G has really ... interesting reactions to Gasters who haven't yet met their demise. He doesn't try to stop it, but he might vaguely allude to what's going to happen. ("The CORE, it's beautiful. What do you think would happen if you fell into it?" ... "Well, lets hope that doesn't happen, shall we?")

Why? Well, that's kinda outside the scope of this question but to put it concisely it basically comes down to his beliefs in KARMA yada yada and thinking that whatever other Gasters did to deserve getting struck out of existence, it's probably not his place to intervene.

That being said if you want to try out an AU where his intervention would cause your Gaster not to fall, I'm all for it. 90% of this blog is bullshit thinly hidden behind a professional presentation, so I'm more than happy to contradict myself for the sake of having a good time. Gaster's a walking contradiction anyways.

To be honest I don't have too much to suggest for your Grillby. He's a cool character and I've read your bio for him a hundred times but? I've got nothing really. The only thing I can suggest is Refused G coming to visit the bar and Grillby having a distinct feeling that this guy is familiar and yet--something seems ... different.

Probably not substantial enough to do something with, tho, I'm sorry!

I'm not super familiar with your other muses, though--Ferno and Flambe I think they are? I've read some of their content but I can't really find much information on them.

That being said I'm willing to just yeet a skeleton into their timelines and see what happens.

Alternately I have a vague concept Fell!Gaster who murdered Asgore, took the throne, and eventually got yeeted into the CORE by Undyne but that's a topic for another time.

But yeah. That's some word salad for you. Other than that, like I said, 90% of this blog is vaguely coherent garbage strung together by sheer force of will, so if there's something you're interesting in doing, chances are I'll find some way to make it work. Feel free to chat with me in IMs or if you prefer, I'm always on Discord: FlourTheCat#0542

[imeugene]

NKTLDK/FILM ENTRY #5

So “Nozomi Killed the Last Divine Kibou” is done. Post-production work is complete. The only thing thing left is some papers that need to be signed for liability and right to use image yaddy yaddy yadda ireallyneedtogetsomeoneelsetodothepaperworkformeeventually-type things that I dread but it’s part of the game so I’m gonna game it but something I’ve been experimenting with is the use of test audience to gauge reactions.

The hardest thing for me is to view the project objectively. I know every single nuance designed into the film. I know the story inside out, from character motivation to their often unsaid backstory, there is literally no one who knows this movie better than I do and thats simply cause the majority of the design of the project was by me. I won’t say entirety though, each actor brings their own interpretation of their role and the story and their acting is the end result of that. They’ll ask you what you think of a take and I look at it objectively and simply judge whether it works or not. They may feel like they could’ve done better but that’s simply the nature of art. There’s a lot of things about this one I feel could’ve been done better but oh well. Some of the actors and crew members have viewed the final project*. Even though I value their opinions of the short film, I don’t rely on them in the entirety because like me, they simply know too much so that’s where the test audiences come from.

Once again I called on a wide variety of people of people to view it. Some are the type that’d call themselves cinephiles, others think Avengers is the best movie ever and everyone in between. My goal was to create a project that has some artistic basis but at the same time wide reach. Someone who has mastered that is Christopher Nolan. His movies are very approachable and creative but it’s not obsessed with being so artistic that it loses viewers. It’s probably why he is one of the few directors today whose name alone will sell movie tickets, it’s why he’s able to get such massive funding for his original projects when every other studio is trying to play it safe with sequels and remakes that already have a following. I wanted to do just that. It’s a samurai/ninja type action movie and honestly who doesn’t like that?!

It is artsy. It’s black and white. I’m pretty sure I revealed it in a previous post but it’s a product of technical error than a creative decision which is actually the most common thing people who don’t do art don’t know about art. I’m ok with it. The story is a lot more vague than I wanted it to be. This is due to certain scenes not running as long as I hoped and cutting down lines. A lot of expository lines were cut and my biggest worry was that it may have been too much. I don’t want people to watch it and think “ok…” in a legit way, I hope that is arouses question and thought but about the themes and messages involved, not the entirety of the movie itself. I don’t want it to be another nonsensical art movie and I just label it “abstract”. Lines were cut, some were forgotten and I overviewed it. Filming is over so I have to work with what I got. It’s not exactly the project I imagined when I was writing the script and designing the process but it’s close enough. That’s just the process but does it stay true to what it was about. I ramble sometimes (everyone who reads this blog knows) and my ADD mind makes it hard to follow, I don’t want this movie to be a visual rambling. Once again the test audience is the only way I know if it’s successful.

The idea is that they give me honest feedback and if enough complaints were made about a certain aspect of the movie, than that aspect is a weakness. I then determine if I can fix it or not. What I showed was the most polished version of the movie. The actor and crew feedback definitely had some common points of criticism and there were small changes made here and there and suggestions were implemented. What we’ll call the control group saw was what I felt was ready to be pushed out as a final product. Asking whether it’s good or not is a terrible question in my opinion. Number one even if you put out the worst thing, people will say it’s good not to crush your feeling. Which is good cause it just means people aren’t that terrible but as a way to systematically try to evaluate the project it’s awful. The most important pieces of information to me was the specific feedback.

Firstly I asked everyone “Did they get it?” and the answers were interesting. Some people got the gist of the story but were lost in the specifics. Others implemented their own assumptions to fill in those lost spaces. Others didn’t even care for the specifics and just understood it for the bigger picture. Everyone seems to get the general idea of the movie which is a relief because I really tried to create something that was little on expositions and more on a mood. Of course the story has to be understood to attain the right mood I was going for so the fact that as minimalistic the movie is at times, it worked in that aspect.

Because a lot of the plot based elements of the story didn’t have proper exposition, I didn’t know if the non-linear storytelling method would be confusing. I tried to ante up on visual storytelling with this one but I’m still very unexperienced when it comes to proper cinematic storytelling. I work hard and study it because it’s what I love to do but it’s all theory until you give it form. This is where things got kind of weird. It seems that some people got certain key story elements and others didn’t but it’s not consistent in what they got and what they didn’t get. Like the first half of the movie was confusing to some but to others the last half. Both parties were right on their assumptions when I asked them so I know the information was there but it seemed like there is a lot of ambiguity in the story where no one is able to catch all of it. I don’t think anyone understood all the elements. Even weirder is that it doesn’t seem to matter somehow? In my personal understanding of the project, I thought that all of what I construed as the basic points of the movie would have to be understood for it to be enjoyable and feel like a coherent story but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The basic idea/message/theme is well understood and any ambiguity doesn’t seem like a let down as far as the control group perceived but just another mystery in an already rather vague story. Which is unexpected.

There were changes made to the short due to the control group’s feedback which kind of gives me a bit more confidence in the group and myself as a filmmaker. There wasn’t any common point of criticism or trend that warranted anymore change so that’s that. It’s done. This week I really need to get the paperwork done and that’s the biggest hassle. Some people might get mad that they got they got filmed but have zero screen time.. but it is what it is. They got compensated. The next project has started but it might happen slow or quick, I don’t know.

*Most of the actors and crew haven’t seen the test screen even though it’s online because I’d rather them experience it in the proper theatre format than some computer screen.