so with echoes of wisdom .. i havent watched any of the trailers beyond the very first one and the thumbnails/screenshots and what others have said about it-
but with the world inside the rift being called "Welt des Nichts" aka "world of nothing/void" in german ('still' in english, for some reason) and demises title in french being "avatar of nothing" ... yeah my anxiety is shooting through the roof again
(hopefully you can be a little more forgiving for me being anxious/weird about it bc demise is my blorbo)
i had similar worries with totk, that werent proven true thankfully, but the darn book is making it all worse again with all those weird lore things the game doesnt even so much as hint at AND potential retcons- im in for a really rough time huh, not just stress in real life (more in tags.. its alot) but now about my specific hyperfixation from two things even (AND artblock still..)
weird as it may sound, i dont want demise to get more lore, partly bc i dont believe theyd do anything with him that i would like (given their track record) but much more importantly- the fact that he has this little lore about him is precisely one of the reasons why i fell in love with him, i tend to like characters that are neglected by the narrative, and his story being both so flat and already done meant i can be very creative with what i come up with for him without necessarily contradicting anything in canon
(which is ... or was a big point of how i wrote destiny's story and lore, working with canon in a way that reframes it all without straight up ignoring it ... but i suppose i urgently need to let go of that and accept i spend alot of time working things that will go to waste :( )
AND not having to worry that there will be more stuff with him that would massively change not only what im writing but also potentially how i feel about him since the game he was briefly in was the oldest chronologically and ended with his death- i didnt expect them to mess with anything that far back and thought theyd just go forward and leave the timeline behind and wouldnt mess with it again, given how botw seemed to be a sort of 'fresh start' that seemingly regarded the past as the past that needs to rest and that the timeline was finally no longer a discussion if everythings unified through botw and one thing going forward
but i suppose i was very wrong with that .__.
right now the only thing that motivates me still is the left over determination and spite to work on my zelda comic, since i have never gotten this far and really want to get something done for once, but i cant lie that im feeling like i should pause all work on it too to wait and see waht the book and the new game will do .. either to determine if i still have the will to keep working on it after those things are out (my love for tloz has been taking alot of hits lately ..) or if i have to change stuff (mostly bc of my lore problem trying to not ignore it ..)
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Been a fan of your fics for YEARS. I was just telling my friend how despite how much I read fics I never actually love them, with some of your fics (especially TMA) as the exception. Felt the need to reread some of them and saw you reblogged some ISAT fanart. So. Any thoughts on ISAT you'd like to share?
Hope you have a wonderful day!! So happy I found your fics again!!
I avoided answering this for a while because I was trying to think of a way to cohesively and coherently vocalize my thoughts on In Stars and Time. I have given up because I don't want to hold everybody here all day and I have accepted that my thoughts are just pterodactyl screeching.
I love it so much. I have so much to say on it. It drove me bonkers for like a week straight. I have AUs. It's absolute Megbait. They're just a little Snufkin and they're having the worst experience of anybody's life. Ludonarratives my fucking beloved.
I am going to talk about the prologue.
The prologue is such a fascinating experience. You crack open the game and immediately begin checking off all of the little genre boxes: mage, warrior, researcher, you're the rogue...some little kid who's there for some reason...alright, you know the score. You're in yet another indie Earthbound RPG, these are your generic characters, let's get the ball rolling.
Except then you realize that these characters are people. You feel instantly how you've entered the game at its last dungeon, at the end of the adventure. They have their own in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They get along well and they're obviously close, but not in a twee or unrealistic way. They have so much chemistry and spirit and life. I fell in love with them so quickly.
But Sif doesn't. Sif kind of hates them, because they will not stop saying the same damn thing. They walk the same paths, do the same things, make the same jokes, expect Sif to say the same lines. They keep referencing a Sif we do not see, with jokes we never see him make and heroic personality he never shows - they reference a Sif who is dead - and Sif can't handle that, so he kills them too.
They become only an exercise in tedious frustration. Sif button mashes through their dialogue, Sif mindlessly clicks the same dialogue options, Sif skips through the tutorial, Sif blows through the puzzles. Sif turns their world into a video game. Sif is playing a generic RPG. Sif forgets their names. They are no longer people with in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They're the mage, the warrior, the researcher, and...some random kid.
I did not understand the Kid's presence at first. I had no idea what they contributed to the game. They didn't do anything. As a party member in a video game, they're a bit useless. Why is the Kid there?
Because Sif's life isn't a video game. Because the kid isn't 'the kid'. They're Bonnie. Bonnie, who the party loves. Why is Bonnie there? Because they love them. There is no room for Bonnie in the boring RPG that Sif is playing. And then you realize that Sif is wrong, and that they've lost something extremely important, and that they'll never escape without it.
Watching the prologue before watching ISAT gave ISAT the most unique air of dread and horror, because you crack open ISAT and you see the person Sif used to be. You realize that Sif used to be a person. Sif used to be the person who made jokes, who gave real smiles, who interacted with the world as if they are a part of it. And you know you are sitting down to watch Sif lose everything that made them a person, to lose everything that made them a member of this world, and turn them into a character in a video game who doesn't understand the point of Bonnie at all.
At the climax of the game, when the others realize that something is deeply wrong and that Sif physically cannot tell them, they realize that there is nothing they can do. So Bonnie declares snacktime. And for the first time they have snacktime.
What is snacktime? Classic JRPGs don't have snacktime. There's literally no point to a snacktime - not in a video game, and not in Sif's terrible life. It's not fixing this, because nothing can fix this. But Bonnie gives Sif a cookie and Sif eats it.
It's meaningless. It's a cutscene. It didn't save Sif and it didn't change a thing. It will make no difference in the end.
But it did make the difference. It made all of the difference in the world. Bonnie is a character who you really don't understand the point of before you realize that Bonnie was the entire point.
ISAT is about comfort media. Why do we play the same video games over and over again? Why do we avoid watching the finale of our favorite shows? What is truly comforting: a story with no conflict, or a story where you always know what is about to happen? Do you want to live in a scary, uncontrollable world, or do you want to play Stardew Valley? Do you want a person or a character?
When I beat Earthbound for the first time (and if you don't know, the prologue/ISAT battle system is just Mother) and watched the ending cutscene where the characters part ways and say goodbye...I felt a little bit sad. I wanted them to be together forever. But that's something only characters could ever be.
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Advice for handling deep depression that did not help from various therapists who admitted they personally never had depression before:Keep your shoes by the door so you don’t have an excuse not to go for a walk, put smiley face stickers everywhere in your home and make yourself smile when you see them, ask yourself when you’re not doing things because of depression if this is the kind of person you want to be
Advice for handling deep depression that did help from a college professor who spent his college years deeply depressed: “Yeah I mostly handled it by spending any time I wasn’t in class smoking weed and listening to the two same classical music records on repeat”
Sometimes you can’t start with “ignore your symptoms and do it anyway”, you gotta start with “if you’re going to lay on your bed staring blankly at the ceiling for hours, put on something you usually like so at least you’ve got that going and it will keep you a little bit more sane”
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hi can i just say that while I haven't been there to read your HK fanfiction, seeing you update nailmaster's folly after so long makes me... hopeful? In the 'I also have wips I haven't touched in years but there might still be space for them one day if I get the gumption' sort of way? so, while I'm not really going to be reading it as I know nothing about HK: thanks for updating nailmaster's folly, so cool to see it.
Hey you're very welcome! I'm very stoked it's giving you hope for your future projects. That's a hope you deserve to have.
Honestly, one of the most important things about art that I wish everyone would, at some point, absorb into their creative process, is that everything is allowed to rest. Sometimes the only thing that will "fix" a problem piece is time and distance, and that time and distance is allowed to be long. You're allowed to drop something for 4 years and randomly decide it's worth your time again, and you should be able to have that process without guilt or judgement.
Not to get on the "internet culture is evil" soapbox, but, the idea of the "grind", that every project must be done at once, from start to finish, in a logical order that others can consume and follow from point A to point Z, is untenable for individual creators, especially creators that are doing it just for fun. You aren't a machine. You aren't a writing board churning out a podcast, movie, tv series, comic book set, etc. You're a person finding joy in making art about something you love. The process can be messy. It can make no sense. It can involve long breaks, or deciding you're done with something entirely. Without guilt or malice, you are allowed to wash your hands of something and then decide to get them dirty with it again when you can stand the texture.
I understand there's sadness in thinking you can't finish something, in not knowing how to fix it immediately, or not being able to conjure the motivation to put to physicality something that makes so much sense in your head. Be disappointed, and grieve it, if you must. But never think it was time wasted. No one has ever walked out of their house in the morning without, at some point or another, looking at the world to see what was there. You're allowed to start a project, walk down the road with it, and realize you'd rather look around.
You can always come back.
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I do NOT understand how these people are able to have a job and also keep up with their otome games?? The times that I was deeeeeeep into MysMes and Obey Me is when I was unemployed for an extended period. As soon as I got a job MysMes went out the window and I only kept up with OM for a long while. When I was unemployed again I got into Tears of Themis for a bit but that one takes soooo much time as well. Now that I've had a job for close to a year I've fallen out of all of them including ObeyMe which was my dearly beloved. I still love the characters so much and try to avoid spoilers in the hopes that one day I'll actually go back in and complete the stories in both games but I just don't know if I will 😭
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