#Final Thoughts/Reflection

[cryptocism]

"just as I did, in 1983."

you'd never know my favourite parts of the show are the fucked up insane bits when my first instinct is to draw the cheesiest thing imaginable

[tazmiilly]

[zoewilkinson]

Development Projects - Final Thoughts and Reflection

16/01/2023

Over this semester, I feel that I have progressed so much in not only my 3D art but my confidence in my own work and justifying my decisions to a group of people. Before starting this course, I was very set on certain art styles and wouldn’t branch out past that. I have since experimented with as many art styles as I could over the semester period and have even found a new style that I enjoy working with so much more. My knowledge of different software has expanded and I picked up new tools I never worked with previously and probably wouldn’t have considered using on my own, like switching from Maya to Blender for character sculpting. While I still have a long way to go with learning all of the tools and how to apply them to my work, I am confident with the basics and know that this will continue to grow with my practice over the upcoming semesters.

When looking at my finished development pieces, I can see so much progression from my weekly tasks to the finished development pieces. Although I had some time problems from a nasty illness, I was still able to work around the problems this caused and continued to make a piece that I feel reflects my practice as a whole even if it wasn’t my original plan. I think my use of different software for rendering options is a huge improvement to the overall quality of my renders, and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from my turntable videos. As for my experience with texturing, I think my overall workflow has significantly improved and I have a stronger knowledge of what I’m doing.

For future improvements, I do have a few things I want to address in my next semester to see how this further improves my practice. I would like tom focus on proper optimisation techniques and the best ways to use retopology and baking to make high poly meshes low poly. I think this is my next big step in the progression of my practice now that I feel overall more confident in my modelling skills. I would also like to spend some extra time researching ideal UV unwrapping techniques to push these skills further, because I don’t know the best ways to optimise and create a clean UV map. Obviously a major downfall for my work was time management, so this is something I will be consistently keeping up with to try and avoid any significant losses from unexpected life events.

Final mushroom render.

Final alien render.

[astearisms]

fionna and cake drawings before and after watching the episodes so far. it’s nostalgic and somehow cathartic and poignant and relatable and—it just started

[quicksilversnails]

The Princess contains death within her multitudes, and no vessels embody death and the fear that it inspires more strongly than the Nightmare and Moment of Clarity.

It's a major theme to her route, from how you get to it in the first place - ruminating in fear of what she could be until her presence is enough to make you die of fright - to the Paranoid's chant constantly reminding you of your (perceived) mortality, to her goal to make the world afraid in the same way that she makes you afraid.

Because of the Nightmare's close connection to death, I think there's a lot of interesting comparisons to be drawn between her and the Narrator. I'm writing this post to explore some of their connections and also to spread my vision (TLDR they are foils. To me.)

As we know, the Narrator is characterized by His fear of death, both by His own admission...

...and by the Shifting Mound:

Meanwhile, the Nightmare is defined by the fear she brings, which she acknowledges and seems to relish in:

I think it's noteworthy that the Nightmare wants to inflict this fear onto the world as a whole, unlike many other Princesses who are mainly just focused on you and/or her own personal freedom.

This focus on the world specifically positions her ideology in direct opposition to the Narrator's. The Nightmare wants a world of terror, while the Narrator wants a world void of terror. The Nightmare believes that experiencing fear and suffering is necessary to make the good times meaningful, while the Narrator thinks goodness is self-evident, with forgetting it all being core to the structure of His ideal world.

To accept the Nightmare's vision for the world and leave with her is described as overcoming a fear of the unknown by Shifty:

…and this makes sense - what bigger unknown is there than death? But the Narrator wouldn't see this as something to be celebrated.

To the Narrator, the unknown is always worse than the known. To Him, death is unknowable, uncontrollable, chaotic, horrifying. The cowardly thing to do is accept the unknown, while the heroic thing to do is to fight for something better. This "something better", in His eyes, being the Known: defined by its deterministic, eternally repeating pattern.

Getting back to the Nightmare herself, I think it's telling how much the Narrator HATES her, even more intensely than the average vessel. A great example of this happens just before leaving the cabin with the blade:

Like, this is big for the Narrator! In most routes He goes out of His way to distinguish slaying from killing, but here, His desire to "do things right" is overtaken by the need to see her DEAD.

Also, if you waste the opportunity by not taking the blade with you in the first place, He gets a stiff drink for himself lol

(afaik this is one of only 3 times that he gets a drink… not a common occurrence)

He also briefly seems afraid of Nightmare in her first appearance:

Tbh the screenshot doesn’t do justice to the uncertainty and fear in Jonny's delivery. It's noteworthy to me because the Princess takes on plenty of scary and immediately life-threatening forms throughout the game, but the Narrator usually reacts to the sight of those horrors with indifference or mild indignation, not terror. The Nightmare specifically inspires fear in Him.

And this all comes to a head when she removes her mask, bearing the contents of her heart for you to witness… and he completely gives up.

The sequence leading to the Moment of Clarity is one of the most abstract in the game, and there are plenty of abstract sequences in this game lol. While there are multiple ways to interpret it (and my own interpretation of it has changed many times over time), I do still want to talk about it here because it's so significant to both Nightmare and Narrator's characters.

In my mind, the key to interpreting it is in the inverted linework, which implies that we're seeing things from the Princess' perspective, reflected in the Narrator describing the Princess' experience.

Then, "the complete reality of your existence" refers to the complete reality of the Princess' existence: the capacity to change. And the Nightmare, in all her self-loathing, reveals the darkest, most horrific possibilities of that change. Change as something that hurts everything it touches. As something agonizing to experience and traumatizing to witness. As something that can tear you from the ones you love at any moment, as something that leaves you worse than where you started, as something the world would be better off without.

It all sounds a lot like how the Narrator sees change, doesn't it? "Your existence hurts them" in particular stands out to me as something the Narrator, or the cabin, would say to her directly; the sort of thing she's likely had repeated to her over and over and over throughout her isolation, until deep in her heart she begins to believe it.

The tragic irony of it is that so much of the Princess' suffering is specifically at the hands of the Narrator's construct, and yet she comes to view it as inherent to her own existence. He has convinced her of her own irredeemability. The worms have found their orifices.

(Sidenote but it's neat how the Narrator is occasionally associated with worms. Tower calls Him a "shrivelling little worm stretched beyond its limits", and P&tD's End of Everything poem describes how "the worm in your heart came for us"… which makes this visualization hit that much harder as a representation of the Princess' experience.)

All of this raw emotional vulnerability from the Nightmare seems to stand in total contrast to the Narrator, who withholds himself from you emotionally throughout the game, preventing you from meaningfully connecting with him.

But there's also something about how Nightmare sharing her heart parallels Smitten sharing his heart in the lead-up to HEA. Because HEA Smitten and the Narrator have many parallels of their own, don't they?

All three make some kind of painful sacrifice, revealing a deep vulnerability, in order to force their perspective onto those who experience it. The original Creator goes through death itself - his greatest fear - and inflicts an eternal torment onto his Echoes in order to create His better world, regardless of whether the people of His world would actually want that. The Smitten rips out his heart and calls it a sacrifice in order to give the Princess everything she "doesn't know she wants". The Nightmare takes off her mask, revealing the full weight of her suffering, in order to be let out (not only from the cabin but from her abandonment, from being misunderstood), even if doing so crushes you.

In describing the complete reality of her existence, The Narrator bears witness to everything He'd woven into her, and all the hatred He taught her to feel towards herself. He witnesses the darkest horrors of change, the agony He was so terrified of, and how she experiences all that same agony. And in His creation, the thing He hates and fears more than anything, He also sees a reflection of Himself.

Of course it breaks Him.

If the Nightmare embodies the fear of death, the Moment of Clarity embodies Death itself. If the Nightmare is possibility, MOC is inevitability. If the Nightmare is a dying star, MOC is a black hole.

Like how the Narrator and HEA Smitten become echoes of their original desire, MOC becomes an echo of Nightmare's desires. She is emaciated, her face an empty void. You can't speak to her anymore, can barely engage with her at all. She's more of a memory than a person, and so are you. She has molded you into the tool that she needs, like how the Echo molded TLQ & the Princess into their designated roles, how He also molded Himself into your guide. Time has eroded everything else, but still she remains, now singular in her purpose.

Where the Narrator and the people outside were once consumed by thoughts of oblivion, so too are the voices. They each attempt to grapple with the inevitable in their own ways. They challenge her, run from her, bargain with her, submit to her, romanticize her, philosophize over her, become numb to her.

But you cannot escape from death, from something that only gets closer, and closer, and closer, and closer.

There is no other ending here. There is nothing to do but accept her.

There's something about how TSM describes her as wise, in stark contrast to how she calls the Narrator deluded. I didn't really know what to make of that descriptor when it first got changed, but viewing MOC as death made it click for me, and now it's one of my favourite vessel descriptions.

Where the Narrator wants to change the inevitable, MOC accepts and embraces it. If all the vessels are a reflection of some aspect of the Shifting Mound, MOC reflects the divine wisdom Shifty holds towards death, as well as the inevitability of Shifty herself - the inevitable destination where every route ends, who gently takes the vessels as life leaves their eyes, who always asks for you not to mourn them. (She also reflects all the arms)

....So after all of this, what are we left with? What does all this say about the Narrator and Nightmare?

Well, they're both deeply tied to death and fear. They're diametrically opposed in their beliefs, yet in many ways, they're exactly the same. They're both victims of a cruel world, who then become cruel to others, while also becoming cruel to themselves. They bend you and the world to their will while turning themselves into echoes of what they were.

They're such incredible foils. They're everything to me

[whateverisbeautiful]

🀄️reflecting on richonne

What The Ones Who Live has made abundantly clear is that finding Rick and bringing him home was a mission fit for Michonne, and Michonne alone. Because Rick didn’t just need to be brought back home - he needed to be brought back to life.

Sure, other characters could have located him and tried to rescue him from the CRM, but Rick needed more than a rescue…he was in need of a resurrection. And there’s only one person on the planet capable of doing that for him and it’s his wife, the love of his life, Michonne Grimes.

Rick is a man who for all intents and purposes chose to die because he couldn’t see her face anymore and started to believe he never would again. He was only ever going to come alive again when her eyes, her presence, her heart was back in his life. He was only ever going to be free from not just the literal but mental shackles of the CRM when he could hold her in his arms again and reconnect with the woman whose heartbeat he shares.

I love how this story stayed consistent to the message that was true in the main show as well, and that’s that Rick needs Michonne. And Michonne needs him too. Rick’s relationship with Michonne is the one dynamic in his life where he’s poured into as equally and deeply and lovingly as he pours into her. Where he doesn’t have to be anything but himself. It’s the one relationship that can bring him back time and time again no matter the circumstances.

Richonne is a love supreme because they are two halves of one heart. So saving him - not just in body but in heart, mind, and soul - it could only ever have been her. 😌

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

perhaps my most #cancelable videogame take i can post on this website is i think that the kind of people who say that anyone who picks the "morally wrong" or "mean" options in video game dialogue should, as a player, feel bad about their own choices/morals in real life. is that those people are just another flavor of the kind of dudes who play Disco Elysium and get mad for not being rewarded for picking the facist options. both of these groups are reducing games to "a thing I want to agree with me and everyone else who doesn't either suffers or does not have the option to play a character who behaves otherwise" rather than "a medium where you get to (or even Have to) explore different kinds of characters in order to experience the full depth of the story and characters in it."

When I want to pick options in a game that are mean, negative, arrogant, or ignorant, it's because I want to explore what would push a character into becoming that kind of person. Sometimes I want to see how the NPC characters who I-The-Player like/agree with react to someone who is fundamentally different from them. I think it's GOOD actually when the narrative allows you to push limits and especially when it has the option to then punish you for it in some way, such as losing options/routes later on, or companions straight up abandoning you for your choices. It DOES often make me deeply, viscerally uncomfortable to make choices in a game that are so counter to my own, but it means I get to experience that discomfort in an isolated environment and also think about what it means, what would push the character or even yes a real person into actually feeling those things. And I get to play with what ways the narrative could challenge them/make them grow over the course of the game--or on the other side, it can let me make a character who does start off more open/accepting but let the events of the narrative push them into being more reactively closed-minded instead.

I like that we have invented a medium where you can play a game multiple times and experience it differently depending on the character you play as. Books and TV and movies are all static--the greatest draw of games to me is the ones that are responsive, that can tell a slightly different story every time--when other characters in the game respond differently to you because of it, or some paths open up and others don't. And so yes it did disappointment me when a franchise that previously had these elements, Dragon Age, did not include them in the most recent installment. I don't think games should have options where you get to just hit a button to say something racist with no consequences or exploration into why a character would do that. but like, if i can only ever play a game as an upstanding person who is morally right all the time in basically the same flavor for every dialogue. I only get to truly play that game Once, you know? And I only get to see the way the companions react to someone they like and trust. And never really go deeper than that.

So like... I just sit and think about the scenes you can get in Inquisition. with Cassandra breaking down, because she fears she placed a would-be tyrant at the head of a powerful organization--that she searched and searched and chose wrong. Of Varric who is desperate to convince you not to become a monster, like the last person he feels betrayed him. Vivienne intentionally pissing you off because she wants to see how far you'll go when angered, how much she has to worry about your reactions. They say so much about the companions, what they fear most, and where they will draw the line. And especially in Inquisition, at these crisis points--you don't have to double down. Your character can have a come-to-Andraste moment where they go "woah... is that really how people see me? is this what i want?" and I think that kind of option can do way more for encouraging actual players to examine the choices they make in stories, more than locking the player into supportive, non-aggressive options does.

now. do i think all games execute these flavors well? no. writers and devs will have their own biases and blind spots, even if they are otherwise well-intentioned. and I don't think the ends of the scale need to extend from "absolute angel" to "horrible bigot", because the real complexity of course lies in the middle. I am not asking for games to let me be bigoted at every turn, what I want is games that let me make the protagonist deeply flawed in one or more ways--fearfully closed-minded to things outside their upbringing, or afraid of change to the status quo, or who want to advance their own aims regardless of consequences to others. I actually agree that the game was correct not to include any options for disrespecting Taash and their personal journey for example, but I do wish... idk maybe that we could have had a scene where if for instance the player character avoided outside-world missions relating to clearing away blight, they could confront us on how this might devastate the natural world and its creatures like dragons, and push us into trying to resolve it. Or in the other direction, if you spend the (currently meaningless) time giving money to background NPCs begging in the cities, Neve could could have a special cutscene thanking you for your attention to people otherwise beneath notice. You know?

And of course not every game can do this, I can write those sentences up there that represent hundreds of hours of dev time, of course they can't do it all. But the prior games usually did have at least a little of this, and that was enough to make me really fall in love. I KNOW the tumultuous development cycle, restarts from scratch, interference from higher-ups all contributed to why Veilguard was unable to hit those same marks this time. And we probably won't ever know how much of the loss of options/reactivity was intention vs a side effect of these things. But I wish people wouldn't frame players who miss these aspects as insane/morally corrupt. When for most of us it's because we genuinely enjoy challenging and exploring these aspects of reality in fiction in a way entirely unlike what we actually support in real life. i fully acknowledge not everyone desires to play this way. and that's fine!!! i am glad people can enjoy doing a "good" run each time that brings them joy. but for me it really limits the potential bounds of my enjoyment i guess. I like media that is complicated and messy and makes me think, and extra so when I get to see how playing that way impacts the greater story around it.

[thenamesapollo]

nightmare and his stupid mascot that is basically him but with even less redeeming qualities.

[motsimages]

As per Tumblr recommendation, I started Kevin can fuck himself yesterday. I see people comment on how the sitcom part makes it look the way people see an abuser and how the abuse can be disguised. People think he is just a funny guy and the abuse goes unnoticed. I personally see it otherwise, although it's similar.

People know he is an asshole. He spends a whole episode being mean to the new neighbours just because. He meets a dangerous guy at a bar, in public. He is an alcoholic who throws weird parties with lots of other people at home. Patty's boyfriend tells her twice in the 3 or 4 conversations we see that he is an idiot. People know, and people avoid him.

And his bubble know, but they justify it and excuse it. And that's the sitcom. The sitcom is the theater of excuses Allison has (and then other characters too) about his behaviour.

"Can you believe it? We were in our anniversary, such a fun party, we were both super drunk and I don't know how it ended, that I was face down on the floor and the table was broken! Anniversa-rager we call it lol"

"He is such a clumsy guy that just as I was leaving the house, you won't believe that I don't know how he managed to cover me in chilli sauce! What a silly goose!"

"He is so helpless without me, he couldn't find the printer and he called me all day because he needed me to explain to him how to work it. And he worries too! He called the cops because he didn't know where I was, maybe I forgot to tell him".

The conversations with her coworker about husbands help drive this point. That's what mariage is. You find ways to justify it and to avoid certain fights and that's it. We got lucky.

But he did all these things on purpose. And the unreliable narrator of the sitcom makes the joke of it and makes the audience consider that maybe it isn't *that bad*. Allison needs to believe that's what it is, so it is. It really isn't that bad, she thinks, he is just like that.

And we can actually see the worrying things and the threatening parts from minute one. It's only a joke because we have been trained to dismiss it. To justify it and to move on. He isn't doing any heavy lifting here.

In episode 1, just the fact that he ends up standing on the table (when she doesn't want him to even put glasses on without protection) says a lot. But then the table breaks and he fixes it poorly and visibly. It would be bad enough just like this, but I personally think there is more to it. It's just that Allison doesn't want to speak about it or look at it so it is just the table, but it's the switch that turns on for her, the last drop. But she did end face down on her living room, on top of the broken table. It's a very elegant narrative tool where we don't see, but if we wanted to see, it's there.

And the more she notices, the more off-putting the sitcom is. It's still played as a joke, with the laugh track, but she is more aware now, so we can notice too.

We start the series with her turning point, but if the series started a year before that, it would only be happening in her house, as it is her life, her only frame of reference, and it would only be a sitcom because isn't he such a clumsy but caring guy?

[ronkeyroo]

Even after everything — Every moment I wished myself gone

Im glad I stayed

[fumifooms]

One thing that makes Metal Sonic so interesting is that the very fabric of his being is made of contradictions.

He wants to be Sonic, but he wants to be his own version of Sonic, a “better” one. He has a strong identity, yet he has none outside of his goal and is ready to sacrifice individuality for it. He thinks organics are inferior, but is jealous of one. He craves recognition and praise, but he doesn’t care about others or social success. He’s unfeeling, yet he’s so, so angry, all the time. He’s supposedly a cold calculating machine, but he’s impulsive and emotional. Eggman abuses him, but they’re also a funny villain family. His programmed goal drives every single of his actions, yet he has free will. He’s a tool above all else, but he’s his own person.

He’s so dysfunctional it’s impressive

[dailyjevil]

hello!! hope you're having a good day :D

since you're doing the pride flag challenge, I hope you don't mind me requesting the lithromantic/sexual flag!

left is lithsexual and the right is lithromantic, idm which one you pick :]

(it means to feel romantic and/or sexual attraction to someone but doesn't want the feeling reciprocated or stops once it is :>)

Day 297 of posting Jevil every day

[the-insouciant-scientist]

Self-soothing (alternatively: loneliness is a complicated thing when you're never really alone.)

[willowaddison]

Indika's ending.

[megidoreyn]

「僕は君と一緒に 今日の安寧が明日も続く世界を創るのだ…」 「A world where peace lasts forever…」

Drawn for the megaten ワンドロ/60min on 11/28. 💙twitter 💙misskey

[cherryys]

what makes yuuji mean so much to megumi is that he is the second person to ever risk everything for him specifically and prioritize Megumi over everything else. Like his sister who chose to protect him despite him pushing her away, Yuuji chose to protect him despite only knowing him for like 15 minutes tops. That's why they both mean so much to each other. Yuuji chose to save Megumi. And for that, Megumi chooses to save Yuuji every single time.