#anyway those are all examples spread around on different characters

[firestorm09890]

Penny stardewvalley makes me so sad because she's SO sensitive to, like, basically everything you tell her (telling her that you can't stand children while two children are nearby is a pretty lousy move but -1500 friendship?? being a jerk to other characters' faces typically loses you about 50 points, and if you choose the option labeled "creepy" and ask Leah for a kiss in her 2 heart event she physically hits you and kicks you out of her house but that's only -100 friendship…) and so if you want to befriend her it's a whole lot of lying and tiptoeing around her feelings (2 hearts: George was right but saying that makes her feel bad. 6 hearts: her food sucks but even if you try to be polite about it she feels like a failure; only a bald-faced lie pleases her. 8 hearts: saying you don't want to be tied down with a family loses you a little bit of friendship and she's only happy if you say you want kids) and I can't help but think she's a product of her environment. She lives in a trailer with only her mother, who gets drunk every night and has something of a temper. Penny's like a skittish rescue animal who won’t even come out from hiding under something unless you leave her lots of treats

[apatheticlexicographer]

all of the lighting in stranger things is intentional, please stop saying it isn’t ( -sincerely, somebody with industry experience)

i’m pretty sure that the people who shit on the byler light symbolism theories have never been near a film set before. the idea of any kind of light being “accidental” on one of the most expensive shows ever made isn’t remotely credible if you have any kind of experience with the film industry. that being said, i know that most people don’t have firsthand experience or even secondhand knowledge of how the industry functions on the ground. as somebody who has both of those things, i figure i can try to spread the knowledge around a bit!!!

so, here we go!!! lexi’s fun fact science corner about film lighting, from the experience and knowledge of somebody who’s been on and around film sets and surrounded by filmmakers since they were 6 years old.

first of all, all the light on your screen is a lie.

(well, not all of it all of it, but most of the fun stuff is Big Lightbulb’s doing)

you see huge lights like these:

pretty much anywhere you go on a film set. any film set. and yes, that includes outdoor scenes: the sun is a ball of fire and spite with a specific vendetta against filmmakers and the clouds are its loyal minions. natural light is a bitch and should not be trusted. 

all light in a scene, even seemingly ambient light, has been curated very intentionally. the angle, the intensity, the tone, how sharp or soft it is. part of this curation is done in postproduction using editing software, but a lot of it is done on set by moving and covering lights. the quality and angle of light is pivotal in changing how a scene comes across. 

let’s look at an example unrelated to byler, to prove there’s no conflict of interest here:

here’s max while she reads her letter to billy. she’s backlit, leaving her face in the shadow. this is a lighting technique commonly used to communicate dramatic effect, tension, and an ominous feeling. the shadow cast by the backlighting isn’t hugely intense as the outdoors light conditions are otherwise very flat and quite pale. this gives the whole shot an exposed feeling: there is nowhere for max to hide. in retrospect we know what’s about to happen to max, which now makes the accuracy of that emotional signaling very blatant. while watching it for the first time, however, this lighting motif is intended to make you subconsciously uneasy. even before you know exactly what’s coming, you’re set a little on edge. as you should be!!! there is no tension without foreshadowing, just as there is no tension with too much foreshadowing.

here’s a closeup on her face, to show it more clearly:

notice how no direct light at all is hitting the right side of her face.

now here’s max a few minutes later:

...sorry.

anyway, see that light hitting half her face, while the other half is shadowed??? the position of the light source hasn’t changed, it’s still hitting her left side, but because the camera has moved she’s now being sidelit. sidelighting usually communicates mystery and conflict. Of course max is conflicted here!!! she’s facing the physical manifestation of her trauma, right after forcing herself to verbally process her joint feelings of relief and bereavement over billy’s death. as for mystery, there’s the short-term uncertainty over whether max will live or die, and the long-term uncertainty pertaining to vecna and what exactly his deal is. These are mysteries to both the viewers and the characters.

also, briefly: the tone of the light has changed from slightly warm in the first picture (nostalgia, comfort) to slightly cold (fear, death). it’s a subtle shift, but very clear.

the whole sequence is actually a very neat piece of lighting work!!!

“but lexi, how do you know that was intentional??? are you sure the sun didn’t just happen to be shining that way while they were shooting???”

yes. 

see, the biggest bitch about natural light is that it doesn’t last. the entire scene with max in the graveyard takes place within a very short span of time canonically, but there are a lot of different shots involved. it’s also a highly important and emotionally charged scene, which means it needs to be acted perfectly, however many takes that requires. the sidelight would not remain consistent across the filming of the entire scene if it wasn’t artificial. it probably wouldn’t last a single take!!!

“oh, but lexi, you’re talking about a really important scene. the lighting here might be intentional, but that doesn’t mean it’s always so important!!!”

wrong!!!

well, you are right to an extent. the lighting isn’t always super pivotal, but it’s not an optional element of film production. you can’t film your important scenes with super thoughtful lighting and just rely on the sun and the ceiling lamps for the rest of the show. lighting definitely isn’t always inspired and meaningful but it does always have thought and intention behind it (and effort!!! lighting guys are criminally underappreciated).

also, the byler scenes that people analyze the lighting of??? they’re all important scenes too!!! they might not have much bearing on the main plot at the moment, but they’re keystone scenes in the joint arcs of two of the show’s main characters. the graveyard scene is important to the plot, obviously, but it’s huge in max’s character arc. and what do you know??? most of the lighting symbolism is tied to the character aspect of the scene, and not the plot aspect.

so, to recap: the sun is evil and mostly fake, lighting symbolism can be clearly mapped, and it’s typically used to communicate deeper insight about the character being lit, which will register subconsciously.

i’m very much not done here yet lol, i have a lot more to say about colour, the lighting work done in postproduction, and the way lights are physically manipulated on set. however it’s also 7am and i’m an idiot who stayed up all night reading scientific journals about mould. i’m gonna turn in, but i plan on making a part 2 in the not too distant future!!!

hopefully this has been at least mildly interesting or informative lmao. when i see people saying stuff about what they think of byler as people working in or studying film i always forget that i am... also that lmao. also though, those posts tend to come at things from the perspective of scripting and preproduction. since most of my experience is on the ground i hope i can provide a slightly different angle to that of other film people of the tag.

til next time <333

[period-dramallama]

Becoming Elizabeth: the autopsy

I just realised I never did a review of episode 8. Lol. Lmao even. This isn't an episode review but rather a discussion of the show upon rewatch.

Basically this is a show where the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts.

When I talk about the problems with the writing, I generally mean the narrative choices. The literal writing itself is good. Particularly for Tommy S, because those funny and witty/endearing lines explain his charm and why he is able to win over people and make them think he's a nice guy he's a funny guy he's a lovable rogue he's an adventurer. Tommy S does need to have some charm/charisma in order to be an effective villain. He can't go around being obviously evil.

There are still too many F words, but i was pleasantly surprised that there weren't as many as I remembered. And some F words I couldn't bear to part with: "The fuck is that?" And "what the fuck is wrong with you?!" In episode 5 for example.

I've seen some people say that the quality of the writing dropped in the episodes that aren't Anya Reiss but.... I think the quality of the writing was consistent. The iconic "I wish to take my c***ing bath" was not in an Anya episode, and neither was one of my favourite scenes in the whole show (yes it's the Dudley swordfighting training scene but it's an objectively good scene and not just because it's cute boys in fencing gear).

I initially thought episode 7 was my least favourite episode, but looking back there isn't really a good episode or a bad episode. Every episode has something I like and a bunch of stuff I'd change. If I had to pick 2 favourite episodes I'd pick 1 and 6. But because the problems are with narrative choices they're spread across the series. Even in episode 1, we have Elizabeth "I said at 9 i didn't want to marry so a lot would need to happen to change my mind" Tudor suddenly deciding she wants to marry a man she barely knows because hormones and they had a nice conversation one time. The rot set in quickly.

After the first four episodes I started skipping Mary and Tommy S scenes. I won't say any more on Katherine Parr because I've already said all I have to say on her characterisation. I did do some soul searching because I wondered if my dislike of her was subconscious internalised misogyny, given my affection for morally ambiguous male characters. But no, she really does lack both charm and depth.

So why is Becoming Elizabeth so narratively unsatisfying? Aside from Elizabeth being OOC, I think it's that the story feels like it's going around in circles.

Jane and Elizabeth clash. They make up. Then in episode 7 they fall out again. Mary and Edward fight, make up, fight, make up, fight again. Elizabeth realises Tommy S is dangerous, then she forgets, then she realises again. Mary scolds this character and they don't listen and then this character and they don't listen.

Yes character development isn't linear but it isn't circular either. It GOES somewhere. Setup and payoff are mutually reinforcing. It's fun to watch the setup because you know what's coming as a result of it. Payoff is fun because you saw how we got here. But it isn't satisfying to watch something that you know won't result in anything permanent. I don't feel anything watching Jane be tactless to Elizabeth in episode 1 because I know she'll be even MORE tactless in episode 7. And I don't feel anything seeing Elizabeth reach out the hand of friendship to Jane after the recital fiasco because I know in episode 7 they'll just fall out again. Whereas with Mary and Elizabeth they at least end the series with their relationship in a different place (hell).

And I have every sympathy with the writers because I'm up to my eyeballs at editing and I know what it's like to take historical events and try and make a plot and character arcs out of them. But the letter subplot and the Danish marriage subplot were largely fictional anyway. And they kinda went nowhere.

I understand that the showrunners wanted a complex villain in Tommy S. I get it. My favourite characters in this show are people capable of great love and also great harm. But to humanise him you only really needed that conversation with Elizabeth in episode 1 establishing his uncertainty and confusion, and the excellent "goshawk hatching out of a goose egg" scene with Jane. That establishes that he has the ability to be good he just chooses to be awful. So yes, the show really did give him too much screen time. He's not the main character, Elizabeth is! He should not have screen time comparable with her and her siblings! This wasn't supposed to be the Tommy S show! Nobody asked for that!

Gardiner is another problem IMHO. Setting aside the fact he's way too young to be the real Gardiner. He really shouldn't be here. He spent Edward's reign in the Tower. I know he shows up as a result of the fictional plots... so why write those fictional plots to the point you have to bring him in?? Cranmer IS important. You could have had Cranmer pushing Edward to be radical, Ed pushing him to be more lenient, and Daddy Dudley balancing the two. Voila, a dynamic!

And I get that Elizabeth wasn't doing much politically 1550-3 but you could still show her reacting and learning from events around her rather than warping Edward's reign completely out of shape AND making her a side character in her own story.

[donnerpartyofone]

Everything I Watched While I Was Recovering From the Plague

I have a fantasy that watching a bunch of movies of wildly varying quality and content in close proximity can really bend your wires out of shape, like being exposed to too much radiation. I like to tell people that I had to get all those eye surgeries because of all the deranged stuff I subject my eyeballs to. My criteria for this marathon were "movies I want to watch but it's never 'the right time'" and "movies my sick husband in the next room is not interested in".

THE IRON CLAW: Pretty much the big, dumb, lummoxy movie that you might expect. The script is surprisingly weak--the girlfriend declares that everything is a matter of fate minutes before saying "I believe we make our own luck"??--but the family curse part is sort of compelling in spite of it all. I admit I was partially in it for the freak show of muscle mania; for various cultural reasons the way bodies were presented (and the kinds of bodies people aspired to have) in the '80s was so different than it is now, the exhibition of flesh had a very different kind of character that's hard to describe but this movie with its bulbous wrestler bodies filling the screen gave me flashbacks. Zac Efron should keep his He-Man haircut.

DARK HARVEST: I've been struggling to describe this certain type of movie that's very form over function, with a pretty specific form: there's like a really forced "stylized" nostalgia thing with a lot of humorless "weirdness" attached in movies like FINAL GIRL and KNIVES AND SKIN, and to some degree THE REFLECTING SKIN although that's a more sophisticated example (that I still don't enjoy). Anyway DARK HARVEST adds a Pumpkinhead guy (not pictured below) to the mix, and he looks pretty good at least.

THANKSGIVING: Well it's the best movie Eli Roth has made in a long time! It's OK. I like that the inciting incident is a Black Friday stampede, but it's too bad he didn't have the means to make it look more convincing; it feels like about a 150 people running around yelling and there's conspicuous amount of breathing room for the victims getting "crushed".

ZONE OF INTEREST: A tour of the ogre's castle, creepy and effective. Łukasz Żal's spy cam setup cleverly establishes a sense of being trapped in forbidden chambers.

GODLAND: Danish priest makes the perilous journey to Iceland, is a complete asshole to everyone he meets. Interesting, but more beautiful than interesting.

LINGERING: Goofy K horror in which a handful of different neurotic women are relentlessly mean to a small child. I often wonder about this trope of like, someone who is categorically unsuited to parenthood gets saddled with an orphan, and they REALLY don't want to adopt the orphan, but eventually they turn against their own personality and rational estimation of means because the orphan is so cute and/or sad. The implication seems to be that every one of us can and should be parents, and maybe this is even related to the (usually comedic) trope of the solitary curmudgeon who just wants to be left alone, until they undergo some kind of forced exposure therapy at the hands of their nosy neighbors who insist that no human being could actually enjoy their own company. This is an ongoing concern for me.

UNREST: Anarchist watch factory workers in love. Second movie in the list that uses early photography as a motif (also GODLAND). Pretty interesting formally, and I like all the stuff about the development and spread of standardized hourly time.

WITCHHAMMER: 1970 Czech allegory for Communist "show trials". Man, whether you're making an exploitation movie or a political statement, witch hunt movies are always tough stuff, huh?

HONEYCOMB: A woman unravels mentally when her childhood furniture arrives at her home, and she and her husband play out a series of weird infantile psychodramas as an escape from the pressures of their bourgeois existence. More interesting than enjoyable, and I'm not always sure how interesting it really is. There's a certain brand of European '60s filmmaking that involves a lot of improvised shrieking and laughing and crying and rolling around on the floor that makes me question whether it's really as hollow as I think it is, or if I'm just not a sophisticated enough viewer to understand the power of it, or if its original power was really dependent on its context in the development of cinema. Maybe the answer is a little of everything.

THE SWEET HOURS: A Spanish writer's latest play parses the Freudian mysteries of his childhood, and he fully immerses himself in the rehearsals to seek the truth by reliving his memories. It's actually not that deep but maintains a great air of importance anyway.

NIGHT GAMES: A young aristocrat brings his bride to his childhood manse where their surroundings trigger immersive memories of his debauched youth, in which--wait a minute, am I watching the same fucking movie for the third time? Not really but that was weird. Criterion notes that this is supposedly John Waters' favorite movie, which makes a lot of sense when you've heard him say that he used to force Divine to drop acid with him and go see Bergman movies, which Divine HATED. What's really funny to me is that if you basically do not want to drop acid and watch a Bergman movie then you'd think nothing could make you do it more than once! The idea of John Waters tricking Divine into doing this repeatedly is fucking hilarious.

SAM NOW: Disturbing documentary made by some young dudes trying to find out why their mother suddenly abandoned them when they were kids. It's a decent enough movie but I was extremely unsettled by the blithe naivete of the young brothers set against the increasingly obvious fact that there's something pretty bad going on with the mom. Get ready for a lot of discomfort and unresolved questions if you watch this.

LIZZIE: Why is it that nobody has made a good Lizzie Borden movie? It's one of those overly familiar tales that's just sitting there in plain view still waiting for a solid adaptation, kind of like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but that at least has the great Disney cartoon in among all the so-so film attempts. You really want this to be good with Kirsten Stewart and Chloe Sevigny AND Denis O'Hare who I love to death, but it's just not that compelling. Actually it doesn't even dig into the most interesting details of the story in my opinion, I guess we needed to save time for extra lesbian makeouts. Also I hate to say it but Chloe Sevigny is really miscast; I love her but her whole thing is being really easy-going and natural, and that doesn't really work for this character (or she's not getting the direction that worked on AHS). Oh well.

MAIDSTONE: See my notes at the end of HONEYCOMB. I found this almost totally unwatchable. I've never read any Norman Mailer. Is Norman Mailer still cool, or did he just seem cool to some people at the time? Was Norman Mailer sort of like an adolescent rebellion phase that American literature had to go through in order to get to wherever it is now? A cursory review of his legacy seems to indicate this. Or maybe it's just really hard for me to sympathize with someone who goes way out of his way to piss off women, and then his defense against the inevitable backlash is "SEE? Feminism is fascist bullshit because look how I'm being treated!" I still see men do this on the smaller scale of their personal relationships--you know the drill, drive some poor woman insane, and then when she acts insane, invalidate everything she says by calling her insane--and they don't even need the excuse of clumsy satire to keep doing it, so forgive me if I don't find this approach very radical. And that's all setting aside Mailer's fetishization of the American Negro for whom it is not my place to speak, but you can imagine what that consists of if you don't already know. In any case I did not enjoy this movie, but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time waiting for the infamous Rip Torn hammer attack. I developed this whole fantasy that Rip Torn must reach a point where he just can't take it anymore and he tries to kill Norman Mailer. I mean *I* sure wanted to kill Norman Mailer, somebody has to do it, right? There are several moments in the film where it seems like someone has finally snapped and the cathartic murder might take place. What actually happens is that Rip Torn wanders up to Norman Mailer with a claw hammer, totally wild-eyed, and declares that he has finally understood that this great work of art can only be resolved with the death of the character Mailer plays. He really seems to believe what he's saying, and the sequence is extremely disturbing. In a way it's even disappointing, there were perfectly good, sober reasons to kill Norman Mailer without putting an unstable person in a chaotic and violent situation where he might naturally flip the fuck out! If MAIDSTONE has anything to tell us about the myth of the cowboy auteur, it might be that somebody like Norman Mailer shouldn't have free reign to abuse large groups of people even in the name of social critique or whatever, because one of them might turn out to be fucking crazy.

WANDA: I love movies that are made in Pittsburgh, I find them all totally fascinating. Or even just Pittsburgh-adjacent, like contrary to everybody else my favorite part of THE DEER HUNTER is the very beginning with the wedding, it's totally captivating to me. Anyway this is an odd, grimy little drama written and directed by Barbara Loden in which she plays the most incompetent woman in the world. It's a good time for a bad time, and if you're watching closely you'll see a poster for THE BRAINIAC in one of the scenes!

KISS DADDY GOODBYE: Obscure psychic kids movies starring Marilyn Burns and Fabian. Marilyn Burns is the nice teacher and Fabian is the cop who try to solve the mystery of the psychic kids, so they inevitably have sex because we have time for that I guess, but man Fabian's like roadside bachelor pad is SO SCARY. It has to be somebody's real hoarder house and it looks like it should be condemned, I felt nervous for Marilyn Burns! Marilyn Burns do NO eat or drink anything that comes out of that kitchen! Have you had your tetanus shot Marilyn Burns? Please run screaming, this is not a normal bachelor pad mess and it is not a good place for you to be naked!

The End.

[justatalkingface]

I will say, now that we’re (hopefully) nearing the end of this manga, hori really can’t handle all of these characters. I’m not saying MHA would magically be the greatest thing in the world, things wouldn’t feel nearly as muggy and lame as they do right now if we just cut a lot of people. This is supposed to be the final battle, the ultimate showdown, and every three seconds we need to get a quick backstory because there are so many people in this story that they have never been given time to properly be developed. A good example to me is Shoji. He’s a super neat dude with a cool quirk who faces discrimination and was the victim of a horrible hate crime. He seems incredibly sweet and affectionate, and he seems to have some strong (badly written, but still strong) beliefs about hero society. And we get to hear about all those things……in a single chapter during the final arc before we are thrown into a different fight because we have a hamlets worth of characters and we gotta finally use them before it all ends. All of the characters in mha have a unique premise, but most have the depth of the puddle at best, and I feel you could cut a lot of people and very little would be lost. Allow the characters with the most potential to use all that time to actually develop instead of having to ration it out. Its just, ugh. Hori will get these ideas and staple them into a story without thinking if they’re actually necessary or if they’re being used properly.

Yeah. There's a bunch of layers to the character disconnection happening, a lot of which probably could have been avoided if he had an editor willing to make him cut content... but that probably requires too much time on a Jump schedule, and if he had that much time maybe it would have been better anyways.

*shrug*

Hori has been almost compulsively making and ditching characters throughout the entire story, which means there are both a lot of characters around that need to be dealt with, one way or another. Because he keeps forgetting them, or ignoring them, that means their... entire ass story is still sitting out there in the wind, and there's one last major story arc to try and patch them up.

Because he hasn't developed Shoji, and his racism arc, or that wind guy with the attitude problem who was easily strong enough to be in this last battle(s), when they drop them in for a few chapters for 'resolution', even the best effort would seem kind of empty, because it's still going from A to, like, F, all at once.

And... this isn't the best work, clearly, which make it even worse.

To some extent, the fact that it's coming to us week by week makes the whole thing hard to keep track of, when the situation is this big and spread out, and I think if you just read through it in a few sittings, the final arc would make more sense... but all the fundamental problems are not going to be solve by reading it in a better format.

Like... if I was in the position Hori was in? Lots of characters, big end arc coming, need to amp the drama? I just... wouldn't have put them all in? I think just not resolving them would go over better than a bad resolution.

Alternatively, raise the stacks eight-fold, and have SFO hit UA or something, and just kill a lot of people. Makes SFO/AFO seem like a bigger threat, get rid of the surplus characters, help motivate the characters and helps make it clear that the shit is real, now, and help make it seem like things changed after this is all over, because I bet after all of this the status quo will be god once more, even if you think a civil war bringing a country to the edge of implosion would have changed... something.

[entamewitchlulu]

There's several on there I'm curious about but imma narrow it down a bit ^^; I saw Dragonriders and Dragon x Slayer and got all jazzed cause Dragons. Unicorn Field Guide and Arc of Magic sounds interesting, but then I spotted Lancer Yoko and almost shot out of my seat, PLEASE tell me about it. (also a bit unrelated but I love that I recognise several of these titles/au's. all of em are great too)

Thank you so much!! I'll happily talk about all of them lol.

(ask me about one of my wips and i'll tell you about it)

Putting this under a cut cause it'll get long

Starting with the one that's the least fleshed out, the Dragonriders AU is, well. it's a dragonrider au lol. All the main Arc V characters have dragons, and it's a fantasy world that semi-similar to something like Eragon crossed with Dragonriders of Pern, but you know, legally distinct.

I was doing designs for some of the dragons for them, like translating Odd-Eyes into a more traditional looking dragon and such. I didn't really have too much more to go on, so it might end up being more an aesthetic doodle thing than a fully fleshed project, but i dare to dream lol.

Dragon x Slayer is a sort of original fantasy world with Arc V characters, where there is this mountain range where the kingdom of dragons is, and it's cut off from the rest of the world by a magical barrier that prevents dragons from leaving. It was put there hundreds of years ago after a war between humans and dragons that the dragons supposedly lost, ending up with them being sealed away. Meanwhile, in the human world, adept humans go to an academy to learn how to be slayers, to kill dragons that manage to pass through the barrier before they can kill humans.

The longest story short, the dragon boys are all of course dragons in this au, with the ability to shift into human forms. They are the sons of the dragon king Zarc, who has become dangerously unstable since the barrier was erected. The dragon boys each find their own ways to sneak out from under Zarc's increasingly strict eye in order to explore, and one by one they all meet humans for various reasons, who come to learn that the dragons aren't necessarily as dangerous as they were led to believe. Reiji, for example, is a top of his class slayer who was tasked to enter the barrier and kill a dragon as part of his graduation exam, but he was injured during his time in the mountains and rescued/nursed back to health by Yuya.

The basic crux of this one is that the leaders of both factions (Zarc and Leo) are becoming increasingly warlike against each other while the people underneath them are trying to find ways to make connections with each other and mend the rift between the two kingdoms.

The Unicorn Field Guide is in its most basic early stages, but this one is basically one of those fun fake field guides a la Dragonology about my concept for unicorns in my fantasy universe. Basically, unicorns are a universal constant that seem to spring up out of nothing and are anthropomorphized concepts of natural forces (stars, trees, oceans, etc), and the field guide is like a scientist going around to different dimensions and cataloging all the unicorns they find there. This is mostly an excuse for me to get to draw lots of unicorns lol.

Arc of Magic is another Arc V AU lol. this time it's a retelling of my favorite middle grade fantasy series, Avalon Web of Magic. Basically, Yuzu, Ruri, and Selena (Rin joins up later) are regular girls from the real world who are tasked to become mages in order to defend another fantasy world from the destructive spread of the Sorceress and her corruptive magic that is killing the magical animals. Also Yuya is a ferret.

Lancer Yoko is a canon divergence where after the events of the Battle Royale, Yoko marches up to Reiji and pretty much demands that he let her join up with everyone because like hell is she letting Yuya go off on his own and she needs to go get Yuzu back for Shuzo anyway (girl's practically her daughter tbf lol). She mostly acts as a sort of coach/trainer for the other Lancers and helps Reiji develop unique action fields for each of them (because i think crossover, while a function of the story and also easy to animate, is boring) that play to their strengths to help them have an edge over their opponents.

I didn't get very far with my notes for this one, but I think I'd still have her separated from Yuya at the prison arc, cause as much as I love her I don't think Yuya would really grow if his mom was hovering over him too much lol. Instead I think she'd get teleported along to wherever Reiji was in Synchro arc because on the other hand, Reiji stands to benefit immensely from having a real mother hovering over him lolllllllll

thank you for asking :)

[redd956]

Writing Inspo: Utilize that body language!

Our body language says so much about us. It even differs across nationalities (Americans tend to rest their body weight on one foot, while Europeans tend to stand equally on both for example)

We see it on our posture. It’s in the way we walk. If someone moves their hands while they’re speaking, and how those movements are...

So here are some places I love to stick body language, and body language stuff I love to point out in my writing!

Body Language Moments

Show me

How a character laughs, smiles, maybe a facial expression they always tend to make for the same reasons

How their posture is. Do they slouch? Is it unusually upright? Is it casual, average, terrible?

How a character walks, maybe even runs

How they may talk with their hands, what those movements look like

Where they’re balancing their weight

Any fidgets they have and when those fidgets activate

Characterization & Body Language

As mentioned before characterization is something I try to show off every chance I get. When writing I often try to live by making every sentence either further the plot, worldbuilding or characters. A great moment to explore character includes utilizing body language.

Show me

A character is apathetic -> They don’t care about their health -> A posture so bad modern doctors sob at the sight of it

Someone who is energetic -> They bounce back and forth on the balls of their feet

A character is very expressive -> They exaggerate their dialogue by madly waving their hands about

Two close friends/romantic interests -> They lean in closer when talking to each other

Bromance going on? -> A character playfully shaking the leg of another as they both laugh

A shy character -> A character bursting into laughter, only to immediately try to hide their laugh with their hands 

A confident character hiding their insecurities -> Another character finally picks up and notices their nervous fidget, but never has the heart to confront them

Also

Even the most uniform characters have body language. In fact often their uniformity and uptightness is their body language.

Often times body language is a dead give away to what we mean, and not what we say

If you stripped all humans from being able to talk we could still easily communication using our body language

We subconsciously communicate with our body language everyday, whether it’s raising your eyebrows at a weird comment, leaning into a interesting conversation, maybe even smirking when we succeed at something we’re always talking with our bodies

Body language can also help break up dialogue, in fact it often is a part of dialogue. 

Dialogue:

“You saw it too...”, He lamented.

“Yeah I did.”

“What are we going to do?!”

I admitted, “I don’t know”

“Well we have to do something”

“I have an Idea. Let’s catch them while they’re off guard!”

This dialogue isn’t bad. However it could be greatly improved and better broken up with some body language.

“You saw it too...”, He lamented. He could barely look me in the eyes as he said it. 

“Yeah I did.”

“What are we going to do?!”

Glancing up I found him finally looking towards me. I just shrugged, nothing came to mind, nothing but what we weren’t supposed to see.

“Well we have to do something.”

We both just sat in silence, awkwardly looking around the room. I launched up from my chair suddenly, and a gasp escaped from my mouth. Like always it caused my friend to flinch, but this time a smirk patterned his face with hope.

“I have an idea. Let’s catch them while they’re off guard!”

Yes I also added a tid bit of inner speech there (another good tool to slow pacing if you need it, and break up dialogue) But see you already know a bit more about the characters emotions, and what they’re like.

Anyway that’s all the inspiration I got to spread. Again as I always say don’t take my word as strict teaching and rules. Use it to inspire you!

[laf-outloud]

I hate to say this, but I'm finding Windy better than Walker at the moment. Trey's plot is boring, Liam isn't doing anything at the moment. And the Grey Flag plot looks too big of a conspiracy right now and seems like they're a little lost.

That's completely understandable! I think what we're experiencing right now is the difference between WIndy's shorter 13-episode run vs. Walker's 18-episode run. WIndy has to not only introduce new characters, but get through a comprehensive, season-long plot in just 13 episodes. There's no filler because there's no time. Whereas, with Walker, we already know the characters so we don't have to take time with that, and there's a season-long arc, but since it has to be spread out through 18 episodes, we end up with episodes that lay the groundwork and may not seem all that connected at the moment. We get little bits and pieces that will eventually (hopefully) pay off in a big way at the end.

For example: In this last Walker episode, we had a little more time with Cassie and Kevin... where is that going? Is Kevin good or bad? Something seems a little off with him... same with Julia. Does she know more than she's letting on? Those questions have been floating around for a couple of episodes now with no real clear answer.

Whereas, with WIndy, last week we found out Gus has been searching for Nascha. In a longer season, we might get a couple of episodes where he's gone and someone mentions his search. With only 13 episodes it's like, boom - Gus is searching for her and she's located in the very next episode!

Anyway, I know you weren't looking for a long answer, and it's perfectly okay to prefer one show over another. Maybe the long-game with Walker will still be less appealing than WIndy. Who knows? You like what you like and that's perfectly okay!

Personally, I like both forms of telling stories and can see the benefits of each, but that's just me. :)

[cuddlerlouis]

Wait what did you mean by mp what fucked up shit happened?

my exact tags were: #there should be criticism for mp because they’ve fucked up things or done things that dwd and its team/cast did and got shit on and yet

i can give you a few examples off the top of my head.

olivia got shit on for allowing paps to get pics around the trailers and fans near set when they were filming in palm springs. people claimed she did that so she could sell her flop movie and get tabloids involved with pap pics. yet no one ever said anything when we would get daily pap and fan pics from the mp set. no one said anything when we could literally match entire scenes from the book to pap pics and videos taken on set. the only things we didn't see were indoor scenes and yet no one claimed that michael grandage allowed paps to make up for his shit movie.

when olivia did multiple screenings for dwd, she got shit on because she did multiple, and because some reactions were apparently bad. said reactions were sent through anonymous asks on tumblr therefore with no way to actually confirm anything. when a similar thing happened with mp, people had distinctly separate reactions. first of all, the huge majority of people who attended the mp screening were harry fans, lots of harries and larries, it was all over twitter. my main point is that obviously mp would get a fantastic response if the room is full of biased harry fans. yet people tried to actively compare those two events regardless of who it was composed of and what the aim was and claimed harry would 100% be considered for an oscar with mp yet was the shittiest actor in dwd. anyway, the point of those screenings was to help the producing team develop their movie with some input from other people, and despite those anons spreading bad things, i did see other good reactions for dwd that no one considered here.

when it comes to posters, tastes and interests are different and subjectivity is important so i won't go there, but having the director's name misspelt on the first poster for mp is ridiculously unprofessional. i just checked and it still isn't changed. barely anyone has pointed that out but i just know had it been dwd people would have been LOUD about this.

people are SO ready to analyse every social media interaction or lack of when it comes to dwd, yet no one has said anything that harry doesn't follow david dawson back on ig. shouldn't there be beef between the two of them?

when articles started to come out in tabloids about harry's performance in mp, i remember people celebrating the headline that harry could be considered for the oscars with his performance, yet no one even cared that the rest of the cast was nowhere given the same credit, they didn't even get david's name right, when i have seen people go furious when other dwd cast members are not mentioned or credited right. and of course they all blamed it on olivia.

i could go on tbh. the double standards are ridiculous and yet no one points these out because they wanna hate olivia and dwd so bad and because they worship my policeman because harry plays a gay character. im obviously not saying dwd shouldn't get criticised or that mp should get ripped through shreds. im just pointing out the differences in criticism both of these movies have faced and the clear biased a lot of people have. i shouldn't need to specify but i am really excited for both movies and try to consider fair comments and criticism for both, unlike the majority of this fandom.

[killian-whump]

My dear, as someone who was born on January 30, 1981 I can tell you one thing: Colin looks EXACTLY his age. We love him, but let's be honest. He looks like an ordinary 41 years old man. What's wrong with that?

Nonny, you do realize I'M in my early 40s, myself... right? And... I mean... You also realize that no matter how old anyone is, we've all seen dudes in their 40s, right? There is literally nothing about you that gives you "the final say" or gives your opinion any more weight than anybody else's. Like, Colin himself could literally pop into my box and say, "I think I look a bit older than 41, actually" and I'd be like, "Shut up, boogerbutt, you don't" and I'd win the argument because it's my blog and I said so.

Furthermore... No one looks exactly their age, because there isn't really a "standard" to go by. Each and every person has a different idea of what people look like at different ages.

But there are some standard aging tells...

By 40, almost everybody has gray hair - but I've never seen any on Colin. I'm not saying he doesn't have any, but if he does, he's covering 'em. And that does make him look younger. I have a lot of thoughts about gray hair + male celebs and respecting their personal choices in regards to them - but that's a whole other topic.

Then there's wrinkles... Colin has/had some crinkling near his eyes - less an overt sign of age than a sign of a life well-lived with lots of smiling and laughing. BUT around abouts The Right Stuff, he did something-or-other that really lessened even that. I don't see any other wrinkles on him to speak of, Nonny.

There's also weight/fitness level - which our Col has absolutely no issues with as far as we can see. Either by personal choice or a necessity of his line of work, he's definitely not letting the middle age spread get 'im ;)

Anyway... I may not get out much these days, but I got out a lot in my younger years and have stayed in touch with most of the men from those days - who are all now in their early 40s, like me. And lemme tell you - Colin looks a lot younger than all of them.

Also, when I used "Colin looks a lot younger than he is" as an explanation for why some of us might feel like "cougars" thirsting after him, I'm not just talking about the way he looks right now. I'm also referring to the fact that (1) actors often play characters younger than their own physical age and (2) he's a much younger man in his earlier works. For example, Colin might be only 3 years younger than me... but Conor Elliot is literally young enough to be my son.

Oh, and Colin don't look like an ordinary anything.

He's a ridiculously handsome 41-year-old man.

[mykinkyyandere]

How do you feel about Five fans calling out others for sexualizing Five? He's grown up for the fics which how one should do, but people still accuse others cause we know Five as a 13 years old in the series. (Also I love your fics, I just wanna hear your opinion)

Thank you for asking, I think we really need to talk about this because the character is so popular and causes a lot of hate.

There are a lot of characters who are young and very loved. I can't think of many examples right now, but I'll try my best. Peter Pan, Miraculous Ladybug (I didn't write about it, but I'm a huge fan), Artemis Fowl, The Chronicles Of Narnia, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, many Disney and Pixar works that are top all around the world. Sportacus and Stephanie edits that are spreaded all over Tiktok. I'm sure we want to be in Stephanie's place, can't be an another reason why we like those videos. If you really like a child and an adult being together then there is the flag 🚩

Also, are there those who find characters who are officially animals and different species attractive? Don't get me wrong, I'm the one of them, and I wonder if they're sending the same hate that they're sending to us. Zootopia's Nick, Ice Age's Diego, Avatar's Lo'ak 14, Neteyam 15, Aonung 15...

C'mon haters, say something about it. Oh, I do know you send ridiculous hate to the writers but in love with at least one of those exaples above. Do we really want to fuck an animal or do we imagine them as a human? I don't know about you but I know I'm not a fucking z00pli or whatever. I don't even know what it is called. No watcher, writer and reader here wants a real child, of course, unless they're not a ped0, which we are often the target of these accusations by the haters. "Uuuuhuhu hOw dAre YoU Ped0 diSguStiNg"

If the author emphasizes that they are writing about a 13-year-old boy smut, this is absolutely wrong and a red flag. But if they write a grown-up version of the character, I see no problem. You have to ask yourself, are they writing thinking about a child? This is absolutely disgusting and sickening. Do they want a mature version of this character? Yes. Am I still disturbed and will read this fic and send stupid hate anyway? No, just block. The reader has no right to attack the writer with unfounded accusations.

[sterling-writes]

@darknightfrombeyond

Well, if you insist 😏

(not like I wasn't bursting at the seams to talk about this anyway hehehe)

This became a lot longer than I anticipated, so...

TL;DR - Bo is blind now!

So! Over my vacation, I had the honor of staying with my best friend and RP partner (@creativeheartgemini / @sparrowjaywrites) which meant we got to catch up on some long-needed RP!

Which meant we got to develop a loooot of character and story stuff 😈

So for starters, they have an OC named Rowan, who is Bo's older half-brother. One of his features is that he is half-blind due to a magical accident when he was a kid. He was born with the same purple eyes as Bo, but his blind eye is silver.

However, we never truly went into detail about that accident. (We may have once, but it wasn't memorable...)

And in this timeline, one of the story elements is that Bo has emotionally-triggered magical outbursts that started when he was very young. I think we may have implied that his grandfather, Dromeus, was the one that instigated that as a tactic to convince Bo's dad to let him train Bo one-on-one, but I can't recall.

As I've mentioned before, Bo is a very... emotional person, and can even be mean at times if he's in a bad mood. Which doesn't mix well with the magical outbursts. Especially when you remember the fact that he has necrotic magic.

Eventually, one of those outbursts took place when Rowan was present, and it resulted in Rowan going blind in one eye. (I actually can't recall the context of why Bo lashed out, unfortunately. Maybe Kat will see this and chime in.)

Fast forward a good few years- Bo's a young adult by that point, I think. Or at least in his later teenage years. And something happens to Rowan that results in him dying. (Again, I can't for the life of me think of the context. Kat please bonk me on the head.)

Bo, of course, being a necromancer, uses his magic to bring him back to life. However, the resurrection triggers Rowan's magic, which bursts out...

...and blinds Bo in one eye.

So Bo has one purple eye and one ghostly-white clouded-over eye.

However, Rowan's magic is different than Bo's, and the magical damage continues to grow within Bo, spreading the blindness into his other eye.

Over the following few weeks, he slowly loses his remaining sight as his purple eye clouds over to match the other.

Xander (Bo and Rowan's father) tries to save his sight, but he finds out that if he tries to remove the magic that's blinding him, it would kill Bo.

So Bo is now entirely blind.

Normally with big changes like this, we treat them as temporary and usually find a way to fix them, or we leave it behind when we start a new timeline.

But after I went home, I kept thinking about it, and honestly?... I kind of like that for his story!

So, for now, that's Bo's permanent status! He's blind, and I'm having a great time thinking about all the different details and stories that come with that.

For example, Bo has a cane now, and I thought it would be super cool if it can also transform into his necromancer scythe 😍

And then I also thought it would be awesome if he trained his cat, Merlin, to be a sort of service animal (or service familiar, if you will) in that he can fetch small things for Bo, or run over and meow next to something he's trying to find.

One idea I'm kicking around is that someone, maybe Xander or Ollie, finds a way to restore Bo's eyes to their original purple color, even though he's still blind. And then maybe whenever he reaps or resurrects someone, they turn white for a few weeks before going back to purple. But I'm not entirely sure about it yet.

Those are the beans! They hath been spilt!

[zannolin]

This is a free pass to brain dump about anything, good for one time but can be recieved multiple times

i've had this in my inbox since july of 2021 saving it for a rainy day and you know what i feel like brain dumping. i am putting this under a read more bc nobody needs to see me talk this much this incomprehensibly.

isn't it interesting how suspension of disbelief functions different for different mediums? like okay i'm specifically thinking about in video games vs everything else (but by everything else i'm generally thinking books, television, movies, etc; what we think of as traditional storytelling methods). in video games the story inherently functions differently than it does in, say, a novel because you are playing through the story, participating in it, rather than simply consuming. you are the player.

like to guide you through a game and give you information, the game usually has to drop you hints that normally could occur in different ways in different media. for example, all the notes left around the baker house in resident evil 7. in a non-video game setting, it's far more likely these characters would just talk to each other to say "hey i hid the dog head medallions because people kept getting out of the house." but because it's a video game and you actively need to find those dog heads, it has a note left for you to find to guide you through it, and usually you go oh great, i know what to do now, unless you're me and you're going "why would they leave a note instead of just talking...they LIVE together" and thus ending up on this tangent. because it's necessary for the game to progress you're more willing to accept it and move on rather than go huh that's AWFUL convenient...generally speaking anyway.

or how healing works. what's super brilliant to me about the winters duology is how they get you to accept the healing mechanics in 7 (and if you play the route that involves ethan losing a leg and reattaching it with med fluid, it sets a precedent for his wild hand reattachment in village) as normal because, well, it's a video game, i'm supposed to take damage and be able to heal from it because if i just died when a regular guy died...the game would be over real fast. as we see from the ethan must die dlc tbh. but then they take it to another kind of absurd level in village, with ethan falling multiple stories and being fine, reattaching his hand and being fine, etc, and you're like...well it IS a video game this is kinda weird but i'll accept it and laugh a little for now? and then they use the suspension of disbelief to turn everything on its head because SIKE none of this has ever been normal! you FOOLS! brilliant really.

(BUT again: it makes sense you'd be willing to stretch your suspension of disbelief because again, you HAVE to heal in games where you take damage or it could potentially become unplayable for a lot of people. for example, in the resident evil 2 remake, your player character can heal from being bitten by zombies including having their neck fucking chomped when by the laws of the universe, a bite should be enough for the t-virus to spread and infect the host. it can't be cured by simple herbs or med spray, but hey, it's gotta be a playable video game with stakes! so there's this interesting grey area of how much you're willing to allow the laws of the universe to bend for you to play the game.)

anyway what's got me thinking about this is i've been working on writing a resident evil: village au where the roles are flipped (the elusive final girl au where mia is the protag, for those of you who are actually still reading this. hi.) and it's made me realize what makes a good video game plot will not actually make a good novel/fanfic plot, not without a lot of adaptation. this is because again fundamentally video games are operating on the premise of you participating and wanting to do the things like solving puzzles and finding clues and fighting bosses, which is not the same as when you're reading about those things. sure you can read about them, but you're not going to want to read a 1:1 translation where it's like, "ethan took the mannequin's arm off at the elbow. inside, there was a medallion of some sort, displaying three closed eyes. he went to the door at the end of the hall and changed the medallion on the locked door until it matched." etc. etc. video games keep you entertained by having YOU do the exploring and the solving but it's much more boring to just read that straight up, so you have to do a lot more work to make it engaging AND to account for the differences in suspension of disbelief which is where we get back to what i was originally talking about.

because like. in a video game. because i am playing it and need to keep living to PLAY the GAME, i am again, much more willing to see my player character slammed into a wall and yeeted down some stairs etc. but when i see that same thing happen in a movie or a show or read it and there's no explanation, i go ???? my little brother and i have a yearly tradition of watching home alone 2 and debating how many times, by rights, the wet bandits should have died from kevin's antics. it's a heated debate every year, between "he would have to be seriously hospitalized for this" and "no he's fucking dead right now." we're willing to laugh at it because it's a comedy, but we are very very aware that it's incredibly unrealistic and if it were being played as anything BUT comedy and slapstick (which resident evil fics and a lot of action movies/media generally are Not) it would be incredibly difficult to accept because you can't take it seriously. it's fine for comedy because, well, you aren't supposed to. bugs bunny and all that.

so when i am adapting a video game into a different medium, especially if i am writing a character who is not intended to take the same level of beating as ethan winters or if i am writing about actual game events, i have to do a lot more work to make it readable and functional as a written story that takes into account the fact that game mechanics aren't going to work the same in a written form as they will in the video game form, because you're consuming those two types of media in fundamentally different ways.

and i think it's fucking fascinating.

[talenlee]

The Ranma 1/2 Subreddit is Repeating History

When you get older you start to see cycles. Things that are new and horrifying to you, later in your life, you can recontextualise those things compared to other new things. I saw the Soviet Union collapse and I saw 9/11 happen within ten years of one another, and uh, that prepared me for basically nothing. Bad example. Oh the financial crash of 2007, which led to a financial crash of, uh, you know what maybe I picked some bad examples. But you know one thing that’s cyclical in a way that can be appreciated and not a huge bummer?

Fandoms.

Platforms come and go and when platforms are convenient to build on, fandoms will form and reform on platforms. Old cliques and ideas be fled and new societies will bloom around the same core texts and they will always differ, they’ll always have their own varieties and peculiarities, but some things, some things will endure.

Like Ranma ½ discourse.

I first arrived on the internet fandom spaces through newsgroups. Newgroups were a purely text medium that could produce huge amounts of information because it eschewed a lot of what you consider standardised formatting, and access to images and file transfer (and yes Decay, I know you could do file transfer on USENET but it wasn’t convenient), but the point was that if you wanted a content pipe in the late 90s, websites were slow and the real avalanche of media, the real Infinite Scroll, was the newsgroup. And the newsgroup had its drama and its threads and its trends and one thing it didn’t have a lot of was institutional memory.

You know how on tumblr, you can pin a post to the top of your feed so anyone who checks in on you can see the thing you think is most important as a reference document? Or you can link to things? Yeah, USENET  didn’t really have that. It didn’t have nothing, there were FAQs and links and people would save text files on online storage spaces like Crosswinds (four whole meg of free ad-less storage), but that was routing around it, and there were people – genuinely – mad that the solution to this lack of memory involved booting up a second application, because,

And I swear this is an opinion I saw,

‘There’s no good internet browser yet.’

Anyway, and one of those mega-fandoms that existed across multiple newsgroups was Ranma ½, in the spread of spaces with names like rec.arts.anime.fandom and rec.arts.anime.misc and to this day I have no idea what the difference between those two is. These spaces would talk about all kinds of anime of the day, with oldies and not-goodies and all sorts of different conversations, but also, overwhelmingly, any given conversation could wind up at talking about Ranma ½. And of that community, a number of them were straight boys, and still are!

There are conversations, in this time, that we had. Then we had them again. Then we had them again. Over time they got refined through repetition. That refinement discarded old points, routed through optimal ways to explain them until by the time I stopped checking USENET, there are some points which we handled in a very ‘oh yeah, the time knife’ way, which was incomprehensible to newcomers.

And then I fell out and I understand that those social groups moved on to other platforms. I assume that when twitter, when tumblr, when all of those ilk started to make their own spaces, then inevitably, whatever Ranma ½ fandom exited formed there and found its own patterns. I know that fanfiction websites would fight each other over Ranma ½ and there are places with different trends. You might imagine that fanfiction sites aren’t a place for discussion, but they are places with incentive systems, so you can get praise or comments on your fanfiction, there’s a way the audience can express the character of a place. Basically, if one place has a bunch of Ranma ½ fanfiction that’s all about Ryouga’s cooking troubles, that’s probably because there were more people with a drive to make that there, and felt they could make it there, and people could not adequately discourage it through their feedback options.

There are some ideas in Ranma ½ that are now, thanks to this early period of my life, kind of codified and obvious. Like just for example:

Akane is probably straight, given she expresses minimal interest in women and her interest is mostly isolated to Ranma

Ranma isn’t the best fighter in the series; he’s actually more often than not, a loser, with about ten recurring characters who clean his clock consistently

The anime constantly makes up new stories that can be wildly contradictory and shouldn’t be considered any kind of truth, while the manga tends to be more consistent

Akane hitting Ranma is pretty low key and largely only ever in response to meaningful infringements on her wellbeing

If you think Ranma’s curse seems really easy and manageable, you should look up the idea of informed consent gender care

Are these things true?

Probably. Maybe. I haven’t reread Ranma ½ in years! I want to – I actually planned to do a reread or something, like a podcast or video series? I don’t know. But the point is, there’s, in my mind, this sort of settled conversations from years and years of history and of these old arguments are done.

Now imagine how it feels to look at the Ranma ½ subreddit, and see as people who were born in this century are learning about Ranma ½ and asking the question:

“Hey, why didn’t Ranma just do this to make his curse more manageable?”

And some of the things are kind of obviously time-based. I don’t mean people are saying ‘why don’t they just use smartphones?’ but also things like ‘why do people react to a crossdresser like this?’ where the answer is oh my god you have no idea how homophobic Japan was in the 80s. And sometimes it’s new spins on old conversations, like how Ranma’s gender is masc, and so whether or not his body complies with that shape doesn’t change anything, and that means Akane is definitely straight, as long as Ranma considers himself masc even in his femme body. Because that’s a thing that really happens.

The discourse around Ranma ½ is wonderful and silly in hindsight because of how much of it wound up accidentally including a lot of really meaningful history and cultural context, just as a byproduct of who it attracted. If you liked the manga in the 90s, you were downloading fan translations or scans, you were probably having to contextualise text, or buy imported goods. A body of people invested in Ranma ½ were obviously trans people who hadn’t yet necessarily learned about or brought that full knowledge to bear, and so as they learned about it, they started integrating that knowledge into this conversation, which meant that a lot of us who weren’t reading Gender Trouble were getting a filtered version of it through conversations about whether or not it was gay to want to see Herb’s tits.

And now, it’s happening all over again, but on Reddit, with reddit’s strange dynamics, and also, there are weirdo ancient internet folks like me, going: We doing this? Are we doing this? We are doing this.

What the heck.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[minecraft-sideblog-tm]

There are so many little details in my solo world that I put like a solid amount of logic into why something looks a certain way that A) just floats around in my head for no one else to see/hear, and B) are all details that like if I just let someone freely explore my builds they would not think twice about. So I just want to ramble about a couple of them for a minute lol

(under the cut, because yeah it’s definitely a ramble. I include pictures though!)

For example: The secret nether lab under ground is full of magma blocks and campfires, because there are a couple rooms meant to labs for studying different nether plants. Nether plants grow in very hot temperatures natively, therefore lab must be very hot in order to grow them. But there’s no way some campfires are going to match the same heat intensity as a literal hell dimension, and therefore the nether trees in the lab are small and stocky. 

Because when real life plants grow in inadequate conditions, they tend to grow smaller/slower than they should. A tomato plant that only gets 70% of the light it needs might still make a tomato but it’ll probably be pretty small. A flowering plant might just not make any flowers, etc. 

The smaller nether plants are easily placed much closer to open flames than a full tree can be. Therefore, they can grow to their normal sizes a lot easier.

Also in the Nether lab is a room with an excavated fossil. (Don’t think to hard on the logistics of how a single person would excavate an entire nether fossil, get it into the overworld, and build a room for it alone... lol). It’s one of my favorite rooms in my base tbh

I decided it should be covered in lichen and have those roots hanging off it. The logic there was like: if there is any organic matter somehow left in the bones, it was protected by the heat in the Nether preventing any kind of lifeform that could decompose it from being able to survive. But bring it into the Overworld, which is significantly cooler, would have a lot more moisture in the air, and has significantly more life, suddenly that organic matter becomes susceptible to decomposing. 

The character brought it to the overworld to study it, very quickly noticed bacteria and lichen starting to grow on it, and then tried to make this room as hot as possible to slow the growth of anything else. 

Okay, one more that still kind of involves the secret nether lab™, but this detail lore is a little retroactive. I added the sculk veins to these bushes a while back because I just thought it looked interesting. Now, however, I decided there’s a story reason for it lol. I haven’t built it yet, but I plan to make a closed-off part of the lab that’s like a sculk research lab gone horribly wrong. Basically the character discovered sculk while exploring, brought some back to study, but didn’t realize the speed it would spread under the right conditions.

They create those conditions, the lab starts to get overgrown, and the sculk is spreading much faster than they expected. They eventually cut their loss and try to remove any of the hospitable environment created for the sculk before closing off the lab for good. It’s in a secret, hidden lab that likely no one will ever find anyway, but they still try to put up warnings just in case someone ever does.

Some of it still gets into the ground water through the cave that part of the lab is in (which is also pretty close to being under where these bushes are).

(this pond is directly behind me in the previous screenshot) At some point part of the path outside collapses into this strange pond that seemingly one of the nether plants and the sculk have somehow seeped into and created a weird little ecosystem (there are fish in there too). 

I actually didn’t plan that at all when I first decorated the pond like this, I just thought it looked cool. Originally it was a joke that since I used to throw poison potatoes in it all the time to let them despawn, it somehow created an ecosystem. But then I built the nether lab and the blue room ended up being almost directly below this, so I was like hey wait that’s much cooler lol

[draugsresurrection]

New Year Recrawl

So, I think this place kind of got away on me. There's been multiple DR updates across last year, but posts simply didn't make out here. I've tried being on a multitude of new sites in hopes of even the faintest traffic, and spreading those posts out slightly to clearly see which sites worked and which didn't, and, well, none did. So by the time Tumblr's turn came around, I was just so disenchanted and mentally drained that I just... didn't.

But anyway, new year (sorta; complications pushed this back about three weeks from intended), new update, attempt to be less terrible. Version 1.1.4 has three big update features, and a couple of smaller ones. Two of the bigger updates are a casino that's there more for moral obligation and making its town more standout than a sign that I actually like or use such casinos in RPGs, and a major change to all humans, giving them varied resistances based on their weapon, magic, and armour types. This includes the player's party, too. They're relatively small modifiers, but make fights quite a bit more volatile, and defensive positioning more important.

The main update, at least to me, is the ability to buy new outfits for party members. Why did that get prioritized? Well, two reasons. One, this does potentially address complaints that certain characters don't 'look' like their roles, like Alice being the de facto black mage, despite looking more like a healer with her pink dress and flower in her hair. The second, the main one, being that I think the ability to visually change a character is worth a lot in a game that tries you to drastically change a character's stats over the course of the game.

Equipment is tied to levelling up, and, say, Lucy swapping from a Iron Saber to a Steel Scimitar might see her Attack/Magic split go from 15/18 to 28/13, resulting in her playstyle changing dramatically for her Scimitar duration. Having her look different (at the player's own free control) is a good way to mark this change. Some outfits will try to look more mage-y, more armoured, more speedy, and so on. Gale above is another perfect example; normally a staff-user, she could instead equip a Dagger and be a speedy frontline support fighter instead. Maybe it's not that big a deal for other people, but some of my own play/test sessions are months apart and I frankly spend a solid five minutes wondering why someone's magic is so awful before checking their gear after battle.

But that was just stuff from one update of, uhm, seven, since the last time I posted here. To speedrun the highlights of additions since then; 100 New monsters have been added to the game. ALL enemies now have Weak, Dead, and Attacking frames. Some AI fixes, again. Academy Lessons provide uniquely crafted encounters as a way to teach the player about certain spells and mechanics. Ineffective spells/skills have a subtle 'fizzle' animation. A proxy of a Trophy/Achievement system has been added. Autosaves were added. And lastly the turn timeline that was the focus of the previous post here.

Just noticed I didn't include a download link yet, so let's just end this cleanly with that. Link to itch.io download here.