#from one sidequest writer to all of you <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[starstruckodysseys]

i love you side quest fic writers i love you tuc and acoc and neverafter fic writers i love you everyone writing fics for seasons other than fh or mismag <3

[athenas-only-daughter]

Haunting the Canvas - The Clea Post

spurred on by conversations I've been having with @linka-from-captain-planet, I'm collecting the info we've been able to gather about Clea here, under a read-more for spoilers, because if you run around act 3, there's actually QUITE a bit to glean about her.

This is gonna be a living/edited post as we find more info! Pls let me know if you guys see anything that's missing, find out new info, etc!

Truly as soon as you get to act three, you can't go three feet without bumping into a sidequest that has to do with Clea in some regard. She is HAUNTING the canvas almost as much as real!Verso and she's not even dead.

First and foremost, The Fading Woman is often Clea! Sometimes it's Aline (if she's sad, it's Aline) but especially in act 3 it's Clea. Particularly at the Endless Tower location. If you want to glean more about Clea, I recommend talking to the fading woman when you see her, particularly as Maelle.

Clea is the eldest sibling, this is made plain during Maelle's companion quest at The Reacher

Also in this quest Maelle implies that Clea is Renoir's favorite. Verso disputes this, saying Alicia was his favorite child. However, earlier in a conversation with Lune, Verso says Clea was Renoir's favorite. Seems like there's some nuance here!

Clea has her own axon! If you were like 'hey Renoir made Axons for the rest of his family, where is Clea's?' it's easy to miss but it's the Axon in old Lumiere that's already dead (more on this later)

Clea's Axon seems to be called 'The Hauler' and is carrying part of the world on its back (incredibly on brand Eldest Daughter Shit)

Aline also painted a version of Clea - she is no longer with the painted family and is now trapped in the Flying Manor location by Clea herself.

Clea seemed to not like the portrait Aline painted of her, or at the very least resents her parents trying to portray her in the canvas full stop (she also dislikes the Axon). This led to Clea painting over her mother's version of her and leaving her in the painting to continue her work of making Nevrons.

We know Clea is making the Nevrons thanks to dialogue in the Fountain and Flying Manor quests, as well as Clea's dialogue to Maelle before act 3 AND dialogue with the Fading Woman in the Endless Tower.

The only Nevrons that are NOT Clea's are the ones on the Axon Islands, those are Renoir's.

On that note, why is Clea making Nevrons? she's using them to stop the chroma from returning to her mother when the painted citizens die, hoping to speed along her parents' conflict and then end this once and for all.

Also on this note! Clea is also making the painted WHITE Nevrons that we see and help. I'm still not 100% sure why, but we find this out by talking to Blanche during the Fountain quest, who has the special task of killing all of Clea's failed Nevrons, because god forbid someone see she made a mistake (perfectionist eldest daughter Clea Dessendre I am studying you sooo closely)

Painted Clea had a romance! with a painted lumiere citizen named Simon (he can be fought by reaching the Abyss in Renoir's Drafts)

Real!Clea apparently shared none of her painted counterpart's affections because she tricked him by pretending to be painted!Clea and gave him enough power so he could kill her Axon (also through trickery).

Has entered the painting several times since the start of Aline and Renoir's conflict. Notably to make Nevrons, capture her painted counterpart, trick Simon, but also she met Expedition 00 at the barrier and told them everything. Then tried to kill them when they wouldn’t leave. She also came in and tried to recruit Verso at one point.

Her final time in the canvas, that we know of, was when she came in 16 years ago and told him to watch over Alicia/Maelle.

Clea thinks its safer for Alicia to be in the Canvas, away from the war.

On that note, there's a war! Clea is apparently fighting a war against the Writers near singlehandedly. Renoir calls this her 'solitary war' and Alicia/Maelle says she 'took Verso's death personally', so it seems she's seeking revenge.

Clea is noted by both Alicia/Maelle and painted!Verso as being the most talented painter of the three of them

Also plays the harp!

There's a record you can unlock play at camp called "Clea! Don't Pull Your Sister's Hair!"

Clea seems to have stopped playing in the Canvas well before either of her siblings - Francois is mentioned as missing her for over a hundred years, well before the fracture.

Francois and Clea used to sing together!

Much of the original canvas was made my Verso and Clea together. In the Endless Tower, the Fading Woman (Clea, here) says that she "spent far more time" in the canvas than Alicia and that she painted "half this world with Verso"

Despite this, Clea does not share her family's same fixation on it and seems to dislike their meddling with it - her mother's painted creations, her father's axons, etc. She does not consider the painting 'real', but "was perfectly fine to leave Maman here to work on her sorrows", and says it's Alicia's choice if she stays. She seems equally dismissive of her parents, saying that Aline "doesn't want help" and Renoir is "wasting time" when she needs his help.

There's a Fading Boy and another fragment of Clea in Fading Leaves. The Clea fragment has been erasing things from the canvas, 'out of respect for him, his creations and the things they made together'. We can infer she's talking about Verso here. The Fading Boy (remember, a fragment of Verso's soul) seems to be disheartened by this.

ETA: In the Painting Workshop, the Fading Boy talks to you about both real!Clea and Painted!Clea. It's hard to parse which is which but it seems like Real!Clea might have made the Lampmaster specifically to spook Verso, maybe when they were kids? The Fading Boy implies that he told Clea he was scared of the dark and she made him the world's most haunted nightlight (sisters amiright?)

Additionally, he mentions 'jealousy' so it seems Clea was, at times, jealous of Verso. This tracks with her being the most talented painter of the 3 but overlooked for her brother and also with something the Fading Boy says at the start of the flying manor that seems to be about Clea (not sure whether real or painted): "Everything is always about her. Her paintings, her sculptures. Everything has to be perfect, but perfect I have never been"

ETA: In Old Lumiere, the Fading Man (Renoir) seems to have some interesting things to say about 'she who painted nevrons' aka Clea: "She wasn't scared of death itself. / She was sad because there are more works of art than she'd ever be able to see in her lifetime. / So many fables from around the world that she'd never be able to collect. To bring her life in her workshop. / All the beauty in the world she'd never get to experience. That saddened her."

He also says that Clea "loved to challenge him" and that they were "the most alike"

ETA: At the Forgotten Battlefield, there's a Clea Fading Woman who asks Maelle if she can help and when Maelle is confused, says "I guess not. Pity. I'd hoped to return to more important matters. But instead I must occupy my time with... this." She then tells Maelle to "Go and play with your friends. I'll handle this."

[utilitycaster]

I love the current discourse because a "woman with a crippling traumatic pasts, gets help of her party to heal from it and spends the rest of her life living a simple quiet life with her lesbian partner" is not the problem, and it has been done before in CR, it's Yasha

If you think about it, Laudna and Yasha's characters mirror each other in more ways than just a monochromatic palette, but one wound up being more interesting and earned her epilogue better and it's not the one that was present for all 100+ episodes of her respective campaign

Yeah; this has come up a TON but like. I have watched/listened to all or part of the following actual play series:

Critical Role (almost everything barring a few one shots, mostly from C1-era)

TAZ (afaik everything except a couple of the most recent episodes)

NADDPod (everything)

RQG (only main campaign and main-campaign canon sidequests, not one-shots, but I listened to all of that)

Relics and Rarities (all)

D20 (most)

Desiquest (first 2 episodes)

Into the Motherlands (first 2 seasons)

Burnt Cookbook Party (haven't listened the last few months for life reasons but intend to catch up, was otherwise caught up)

WBN (first 3 arcs, intend to catch up)

I also am a regular listener to NADDPod and Critical Role's talkback shows. I've been a regular DM since 2020 and had DM-ed one shots prior; I've been playing D&D and occasional other TTRPGs since 2016. I've read a number of articles on the topics of actual play as a form and TTRPGs and discuss it with friends. I'm saying all of this to make it clear: people can tell themselves that I'm stupid and uninformed and don't know what I'm talking about, and I think we all know they're just mad I disagree with them and am a better and more convincing writer to boot, and they're entitled losers who want me to write posts that make them feel good solely through what I'd call bullying but really it's more like if someone tried to shove me in a locker and accidentally gave themselves a concussion running headfirst into a locker, and I filmed it.

ANYWAY getting to the point yeah Yasha tells a story that hits the same core beats while also being a superior character on every level. She also had a difficult and abusive childhood (starting from a younger age) and experienced great loss and injustice, and also committed great harm. In her grief she was taken advantage of by sinister forces that sought to use and control her, and while she was able to escape with assistance, the bindings followed her. She continued to experience loss, and despite fighting back succumbed to her past controllers until her friends - not some stranger, but the people she'd met, coupled with her own abilities - broke her free, and she was able to meaningfully and rewardingly end her servitude. She messily worked through her feelings and in the process found love, and, having been forced to be a weapon and killer, made a choice to set that aside and find her own identity.

Any claim that Laudna's story manages to touch in a meaningful way on the same notes, when she never takes charge of her own destiny and simply drifts and flops about through various paths of least resistance until settling back in a rut, is a desperate and sad lie told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I say this as someone who thinks that Critical Role campaign 2 is the best longform campaign of D&D I've seen, and that Candela Obscura Circle of Needle and Thread, Moonward, and EXU Calamity are all some of the best shortform campaigns of actual play: there is nothing I can think of that Campaign 3 does, across the board, that something else in actual play (ie, in this improvised format) doesn't do in a far superior fashion. That's really it. It's mediocre at best. None of these were the casts' strongest character nor relationship and it's certainly Matt's weakest plotting. If you liked it, that's great, but yeah there's nothing special about it.

[wetcatspellcaster]

Veilguard Thoughts

(my sort-of review, more of a ramble, below the cut in case of spoilers)

I had particularly low expectations for this game, as it felt to me like it was rushed out to try and hit the BG3 crowd and get them to pay £70 at the point where their hyperfixation was failing them. It felt like a very commercially-motivated decision, and I tried to modify my expectations accordingly.

I then started playing... and had to modify my expectations again.

But with two lowering of expectations completed... I genuinely enjoyed this game! I had fun! Sort of! if I squint!!

Thoughts!

I am not a competent gamer, so I like combat that feels fun and engaging without being challenging or a chore (cough, BG3 Act 3, cough), but without being lazy either. I played as a mage in Veilguard and I felt like this hit a sweet spot - moments where I was stressed kind-of invested, no moments when I was bored. The graphics for mage (for spellblade particularly) were awesome and badass, and I loved to new mode of engaging with the mage class in orb and dagger.

I understand the frustration with a lot of lore being retconned, ignored, or wilfully erased or moved away from. Some parts I understood: I do think Veilguard tries to make a move away from grimdark, not out of disloyalty to the franchise and it's roots, but bc grimdark is a very different prospect now than when Origins released. it's a genre that gets a lot more criticism and bad press, and that some people feel genuinely uncomfortable perpetuating as a results. While Origins is my favourite dragon age game, there's a lot of insane things you need to just let slide to enjoy it - like the fact that multiple origins begin with some kind of rape and sexual assault if you're playing as a woman. I don't think retconning that stuff is anything other than being politically savvy, and a little more sensitive to how fantasy has changed.

(I also think this is why they've moved away from the chantry conflict to be honest. Like the optics of Christian religions in fantasy has also changed, and let's be honest, Dragon Age had already fucked THAT, multiple times.)

I did however, like everyone, find it a bit disheartening to see how little Keep decisions mattered. Why is there no Keiran with Morrigan? why can't Mythal move to an inquisitor who drank the Well of Sorrows instead? why is my Inquisitor defending Solas when she ended the game hating him? Why is Hawke being in the Fade meaningless? I know this is just echoing what people have already said, but it was sad to see the 'conclusion' to the franchise (that probably isn't the end, let's be honest, not now that people paid £70 for an underwritten game) was even less satisfying in terms of choice and agency than ME3

This game deliberately skewed itself to read as a 'better DA2', than a 'worse, rushed inquistion'. IDK, it just makes me feel a bit grossed out, and manipulated. I mean, we know DA2 can be made in crunch, lads!!!!! :)))

Criticisms!

EVERYTHING is underwritten. The game is woefully short. If I can complete all the sidequests in a game, then something is wrong. The romances, the character arcs, the main quest, the dialogues. Everything was sparse, with the bare bones of a plot, that (in the case of companions quests) was rarely seen through to a full and satisfying conclusion. And I *know* that's not the writers fault, necessarily, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be done better.

There's so much potential, but I found that most of the companions could be boiled down to one or two traits, and while I can see people headcanoning reasons for this in real time, it's just... underwriting, or bad writing. Extremely telling to me that both Emmrich and Davrin were my favourite companions... because they had their own companions. That meant that they had multiple story hooks - their professions, their relationships, and then their little guys. They got three things, when most people only got two.

This was particularly egrerious for me with Taash, because they started out amazing, and I ended up being extremely disappointed as I watched both them and their mother being reduced down to flat one-dimension caricatures and a tired queer narrative of 'my parents hate me'. Only, this time, it's 'my immigrant parents hate me'. when you couple the reductive approach to Taash with bioware's inability to write the Qunari well or without falling into Orientalism??? they're suddenly an evil repressive queer phobic religion after being supportive of trans characters in inquisition???? you're telling me Shathann, a woman who was forced into a more feminine role by circumstance but considered herself more genderless/masculine as a scholar, wouldn't be on board with non-binary identity? just galling tbh.

The romances are underwritten. And they are badly written, to me. Luckily I know we'll have fic, but in Inquisition, each romance was 90 minutes worth of content. In Veilguard, Lucanis's romance is the longest... at 18 minutes. It just seems stupid and strange to me - if this game is chasing on BG3's coat-tails, why don't they know everyone is fucking horny?

While I liked the decision to give companions more banter together and flesh out their interpersonal relationships, I felt that the balance was off... probably bc it's cheaper to have two actors share a piece of scripted dialogue, than voice a decision tree. It meant that to me Rook often felt like a bystander in their own story, or excluded from their own found family. HR Manager-core, as it were.

General uselessness of the Lords of Fortune coupled with the Orientalism of the Lords of Fortune.... big sad.

I think the choice between Lace and Davrin is highly!!!! suspect!! do you go with fantasy racism (kill off the only dwarf, thus meaning all your dwarf companions are dead in the game, including the one who represented to future for her people) or the real racism (kill off the black man). I really wish this decision was more reactive, and perhaps based in faction strength or character bond, not just a pre-set choice.

I'll never care about solas, the way trick weekes wants me to care about solas. pretty dumb decision, to make a whole game contingent on this fact.

The ending and epilogue screens were underwhelming, and left the game feeling incomplete to me.

Joys!

To end on a more positive note...

everyone is hot. I honestly think everyone is hot. No other dragon age game had a cast of characters whom i all found attractive. This is unheard of. This is why I know all the fic will be fucking stellar.

And you know who else is hot? Rook. Genuinely one of my favourite DA protagonists! Maybe bc of the faction thing, or just the chemistry of the VA I chose. I just felt like she was pretty fucking hot tbh, and that more people in-game should be taking notice of it. Everyone should stop having conversations with each other and start desiring Rook carnally.

Weisshaupt was genuinely an amazing sequence and questline. In fact, I loved that this game featured Grey Wardens more heavily, and I loved all the lore about Wardens that was introduced.

Assan!! <3 Manfred!!! <3

Bellara and Neve kissing with tongue!!! No, I will not elaborate!!!

(I think that Bellara and Neve were two characters who did have strong stories, and that they should kiss about it.)

Elgarnan and Ghilanain.... never before has a dragon age game known what it's like to have a charismatic villain. This time, we got two. Ghilanain was my favourite, bc I'm fucking gay, but even interactions with Elgarnan and his boss battle felt engaging. I honestly don't think a dragon age game has ever had a good villain before, and these guys were both fucking cool.

[twosides--samecoin]

hey! i appreciate you offering me some advice!

i’m workin on my first ever fic (and creative writing for that matter lmao) and i keep running into the same issue

i’m really struggling to come up with plot/story. if i have like key moments or anything i have no issue writing it. i have a few pivotal moments that i want to happen but filling in the moments between them is super hard for me. is there any way to get over this?

Most people have a few key scenes they want to see when they think of writing a story, and it's normal not to know how to link them together. My longfic was my first try at creative fiction. Here's some of the thought process behind how I took my fic from an idea to a story arc!

Planning a story arc is about developing the journey. How did your main character get from Point A to B?

There's so much that goes into this answer, so here's a table of contents for this post:

Writer mental health: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Process

Planning Documents

Question Everything

Study [Part 1] Themes & Motivation

Study [Part 2] The Source Material & Your Inspirations

Study [Part 3] Storycraft

Sidequest: Questions, themes, motivation & storycraft for a story about nothing

🧠Writer mental health: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Process: I've written a post or two about perfectionism and writer mental health. Stories are sort of like plants; writers are like gardeners. No plant or story is fully formed from the jump. If your idea is a plant, then it grows from a seed. If a writer is a gardener, then they're tending a plant that grows over time. Allow yourself to make changes. Be willing to draft the story, edit, then sleep on it for a day or two and edit again before you post it online. You can always press the edit button after publication. I'm starting with this because the sooner you develop a growth mindset, the more likely you will avoid common writer mental health pratfalls. Treat writing like an oil painting in a museum: it began from a sketch and wasn't done all in one go. This point might not feel relevant until you have a bad day as a writer.

📝Planning documents: Take notes on anything and everything. Most writing software will have an outline/table of contents feature to help you organize. One document could be character notes, another might be a timeline of events. One could be scene ideas. Don't feel pressured to explain yourself too much. Treat these documents as scrap paper where you can write down quick ideas and move on; use a bullet point format. As my fic grew, my documents and the contents changed. Mine are now quite messy, and I don't feel the need to use them every chapter. I've outgrown them to a degree, but I still have them for my own reference.

I encourage you to avoid deleting large sections, even if you retcon an idea. Instead, move them to a cutting room floor document. You never know what you're going to need, and though it's in your head right now, you never know what you might forget.

❓Question Everything: While you know who your characters and what some big pivotal scenes are, you need to ask Who, What, When, Where, Why & How about these people and events. If you're from an analytical background such as law or journalism, you were trained to think this way when you learned issue spotting.

Asking these questions about the pivotal scenes and characters will spawn further questions you need to answer, which will then help you figure out what to write in-between the big scenes. If your pivotal scene is a fight between the Hero and a Big Bad, or the Love Interest proposing to the main character, you should ask questions about how the characters got there. What is the conflict between the Hero and the Big Bad? How did the MC and Love Interest meet? What challenges did they have along the way?

The genesis of my fic began with these questions. I thought:

"[What] would I do to fix the canon Fallout 4 [Who] RJ MacCready story?" I was then granted a vision of RJ hiking in the snowy mountains of [Where] Banff National Park. The [Why] was "Med-Tek didn't work out". That partly answered the [When] (North America in the post-apocalypse, over two hundred years since the bombs dropped; at the end of RJ's canon story). [How] did they figure out he needs to go to Banff?

After this idea took hold of my brain, I kept asking questions. As I answered them, I kept notes.

[What] happened at Med-Tek? [How] does RJ get from Boston to Banff? If this fic begins at the end of his canon story, [Who] is the Sole Survivor who helped him through it? [Where] are the key locations in Banff RJ should go and [Why]?

Some questions are more pertinent to explain than others. For example, travel was a big question I had to solve given my story is set in a post-apocalyptic version of our world. Distance travel- unless you're a caravan or the Brotherhood of Steel- is a luxury for your average Wastelander. So I looked up the closest real world equivalent to a vertibird (a tiltrotor aircraft such as the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey), spent time researching forums and roughly figured out how much fuel and how many stops a vertibird would need between Boston and Banff.

Another writer in the Fallout fandom might not find that pertinent or put in the same research. I value being able to point at something and say, "Oh, I figured that out" to help me better inform my writing.

📗Study [Part 1] Themes & Motivation: Ok, so you're thinking about how the Hero got involved with the Big Bad and the conflict between them; you started with the proposal and marriage between your MC and Love Interest and are now thinking of how they met and how their families react to their partnership.

What are your character's goals and objectives?

What is their background? What makes them think or feel a certain way? Keep in mind that people are complex. A traumatized person isn't always "acting" traumatized to the other characters or the audience.

What are some activities you've observed in real life relationships?

What do your characters like to do when they aren't working?

Who are your characters outside of the events of the story? Who are they before the story? Who are they after? If the story events didn't happen, who would they be instead?

What does one character observe in a room that another will not notice? If one character turns their nose up at a concept or idea, why or why not?

How does your character react under pressure?

What classic literary tropes apply to your character/story? Can you mix and match, or subvert a classic trope?

A love story is rarely ever just a love story. A superhero movie is rarely ever just about superpowers and fighting. What themes, concepts or ideas do you want to explore? Do you have any intellectual curiosities or side hobbies you want to bring to your writing? I really love studying philosophy and enjoy hiking. I am a big fan of works that examine the relationships humans have with nature and each other, as well as the nature of power. These are two things that make my fanfiction different: my characters react to their environments. They observe differences between Banff/Boston and remark upon what happened to Earth when the bombs fell. One of the best compliments I ever had on my fic was from a reader from Alaska who saw their childhood home reflected in Banff's boreal forest; who almost felt as though they could smell the environment by reading the story. My wife @edaworks is a multihyphenate and autodidact- statistician, sociologist, attorney, hobby archaeologist and cosplayer among many other things. In her fic, she brings completely different ideas to Fallout than I do.

📙Study [Part 2] The Source Material & Your Inspirations:

If you struggle to think of ideas relating to the central conflict, you can always return to the source material.

Are there details you notice that you have questions about?

Is there a character interaction that intrigues you?

Is there something you feel the original creator didn't explain? (For me, I wanted to figure out how resource-intensive travel like flight is possible in Fallout.)

Outside of the original text, think about works by other people that inspire you to make your own work. What intrigues you about what they do? How does your fave author or director handle the moments in between the pivotal scenes?

What literature outside of fanfiction do you enjoy? (Some of my fave books are House of Leaves, Infinite Jest, Walden, Le Petit Prince, The Catcher in the Rye, The Road, Ulysses, Blood Meridian and The Lord of the Rings.)

Do you enjoy comedy? Do you have a particular sense of humour because your parents raised you on Laugh-In and Richard Pryor? How can you infuse your story with jokes?

What movies or TV shows had an impact on you as a kid? Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill is a love letter to the stories he was inspired by. In turn, Kill Bill inspired my own story. I'm also influenced by stories about courageous kids navigating a corrupt adult world as well as industrialization vs nature, such as in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Akira, Princess Mononoke. A lot of what I like is hyperdetailed in some way, be it via dense themes, immaculate cinematography or intricate set design.

What music do you listen do? Are there musicians who explore themes that resonate with the story you're writing?

📚 Study [Part 3] Storycraft: Learn about story structures and basic plot types to help you figure out how to build the overall story arc. Get to know your genre.

Note that you're not required to choose a story structure/plot type/genre. Approach to story delivery depends on cultural tradition, genre and the means with which the story is told. An awareness of them will help you understand how you can build your story.

A radio play, college graduation speech and a bedtime story are all part of the oral tradition. Despite being different stories intended for different audiences, all three could be told with a variety of story structures, or the same one. This chart from r/screenplay compares different approaches to story structure. There's even an entry for the Scientific Method.

If your story falls somewhere in the action/adventure genre, a story structure that might help is Joseph Campbell's monomyth; a three-act structure that watches a hero move from a known to unknown world and back again. Published in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces posited that many heroic works can be boiled down to a similar story structure. You might know it as The Hero's Journey. A good movie for examining The Hero's Journey is Hercules (1997).

(The above image is from Bookfox. <- The linked page has similar graphics & explanations for other structures.)

After acquainting ourselves with the Ordinary World of Ancient Greece and Hades' meddling, Weirdo Freak Whom Do Be Too Strong Hercules visits the Temple of Zeus, who tells Herc he can earn his godhood- the Call Of Adventure. Hercules now wants to go the distance and find where he belongs. Zeus sends him to Meet The Mentor, Phil. After a training montage, Hercules and Phil go to Thebes and cross The First Threshold into the Unknown World. Herc wants something, encounters trials & a massive ordeal, then returns to the Known World a changed man.

Let's say one of your pivotal scenes is a huge fight between the Hero and the Big Bad. You could place that almost anywhere on the right side of the wheel. The Call to Adventure could be the first fight. The fights and conflict could get worse until a major fight happens at The Ordeal. Whatever you do, the audience needs to see the pivotal scene contextualized in some way. Whether you begin the story with a fight or are leading up to one, we want to see why it happened. You want to lay the groundwork and context for the pivotal events.

The pivotal events don't mean anything without context to support them, and the audience will not root for your characters if we don't see them struggle and/or aren't given reasons to care or get to know them.

Keep in mind it's not all about drama. Ideally, The Hero's Journey helps an author deliver layers of information that ranges from telling us about the characters' journey/everyday lives to showing the audience details that leads toward the central conflict. Maybe your characters are having a casual lunch and they see people running and screaming down the street. It's out of context in the moment, but it tells the audience, "Something's going on in this story that isn't right". Setup, payoff: the audience learns the reason why things aren't right when you contextualize them through supporting evidence.

These videos [1] [2] by Extra Credits explain the monomyth through an analysis of the video game Journey.

"But Tumblr User twosides--samecoin," you ask, "I'm not writing a heroic journey. What if I want to write a story about people just hanging out?"

👕Sidequest: Questions, themes, motivation & storycraft for a story about nothing

While your Hero doesn't need to slay monsters, some degree of conflict is necessary in most stories. Even the slicest of stories in the slice of life genre like Lucky Star have at least an episode or arc that has some problem to solve.

Seinfeld is known as being "a show about nothing", except that's not quite true. It's a slice of life comedy series that explores the misadventures of a friend group. Many episodes are predicated on telling a certain joke, gag, or are about seeing how the characters act in absurd situations. It's never about nothing. When the show was pitched to NBC, Seinfeld said: "We want to show how a comedian gets his material". The show is about mundane/everyday situations and turning people's worst tendencies into comedy gold.

Example: Seinfeld, season 5 episode 2: The Puffy Shirt

Who: is Jerry Seinfeld? Jerry is the titular character and a comedian. Also-ran are Elaine and George, as well as Kraemer and his new girlfriend, Leslie.

What: the fuck is that garment? The puffy shirt in question is considered a MacGuffin.

When/Where: Early/mid 90's NYC. Jerry's apartment, a photo studio, a restaurant, The Today Show.

Why: It's funny to see a grown-ass man act a fool about a bad fashion choice because of a miscommunication. He has to go on The Today Show and the host mocks the shirt, leading Jerry to snap about it, which then offends Leslie.

How: Jerry mishears Leslie, who has a very quiet speaking voice. In an effort to be polite, he accidentally agrees to wear the puffy shirt on The Today Show while pretending to understand her.

Themes: Miscommunication, humiliation, consequences arising from false politeness, awkward situations

Motivation: Jerry was motivated to be nice in an effort to accommodate Leslie's low talking volume in order to move the conversation along. He didn't realize he was agreeing to something he didn't want to do. This episode is not just about the humiliation Jerry suffers in the A plot- there are also B and C plots containing their own jokes that add to the tension of the episode, which all fall apart when Jerry snaps. Several plots and character arcs create pacing that feels like a boiling pot by the end of the episode: It's layers of mini jokes that support the main joke, which doesn't get a full punchline until the end. It's still one of the funniest 30 minutes of television ever produced, over three decades later.

Hope something in this ramble helps! Thanks for the ask, @publikoccurrences :)

All of my consultation, beta editing and screenshot commissions are free, but if you find what I share helpful: Consider reblogging, buying me a Ko-Fi, or check out my writing on AO3! You can send me an ask about any writing topic and I'll be glad to answer.

[isat-script-project]

(for the record, i'm sploon-fic-fan i'm just more comfortable sending on anon) can you list some events that end in time rewinding? also note if they can happen on the previously-mentioned-in-other-asks theoretical susroute+friendquest loop? i need it for a fic idea i was thinking about. also do you know any notable dead end rooms?

I don't have a list myself, but isatwiki does! More complete than anything I could put together, I think. There's also one talk from Loop at the tail end of ACT 4 that delves into it.

things that could happen on a sus + friendquest loop.... gotta admit i'm drawing from my own personal design of siffrin's worst loop ever because i kicked off my 100% playthrough act4 with a motherfucker

SOO. IN A SUS RUN + FRIENDQUESTS LOOP....

you can do memory of sadness / tutorial, ghost event... i think that's it?

cant do bad touch because that means you can't do isaquest, can't do bonnie's sidequest cuz friendquests, cant do loop hangout cuz sus run needs loopquest progress, yeah, so, just those two!

if you want to pile other mean shit into one loop, though, you still got options! You can do the change god event in the same loop, you can get the dagger and argue with loop and still do isaquest after (you could even show them the coin beforehand so they and siffrin argue EVEN MORE in one single loop!)

This could also be the first time in act4 that you do the friendquests, so you get a front row seat to siffrin's mental breakdowns, you could make this the first time you beat the king in act4, and i'm just gonna assume that You Are Loved is the situation for the ending here?

Notable dead end rooms i of course have to shout out first and foremost my friend the floor 3 writing room with my dearest belovedest Orange Poem. the other heavy hitter is the floor 3 observatory which has all the nice star and island shit in it, and the dead end room on floor 2 was uhh. the infirmary. the infirmary has grape juice in it? and the earring you can equip on isabeau. and the hallway in front of it (but behind the tears) has a dog that everyone can pet!

there's only 3 dead end rooms though so that's actually all of them. i'm biased my favorite is the writing room because it's a 100% prologue callback. also you start the memory of promise sidequest there if you want siffrin to have flashbacks to that!

Always happy to help fanfic writers be evil 👍

[spiderandme]

season 3 of ATLA is so bizarre. it's not just that it's the most episodic and languid season by a long shot, it's that there is exactly zero momentum from episode to episode as a result of there being no larger long-term objective the characters are working towards. for reasons i genuinely do not understand, the writers decided that every possible thing the aang gang may need to do in order to prepare for the invasion should either be taken care of off-screen in between seasons 2 and 3 or just implicitly dismissed as inessential. cobbling together a new invasion plan/force? taken care of while aang was sleeping. closing the physical distance between themselves and the fire nation? they're already there, no worries. getting aang a firebending master? no one brings it up, guess it's suddenly not necessary. helping aang regain the ability to access the avatar state? same story, they seem to think they've got it covered without that. there were so many natural opportunities to tell a larger story—to have the eclipse act as a deadline for something, anything—but the writers rejected literally every single one of them in favor of a series of isolated mini-adventures. as a result, a first time viewer could skip directly from s3e1 to s3e10 and suffer only minimal disorientation. they'd miss eight good-to-great episodes of television, but essentially no changes to the status quo (even zuko's redemption would come only slightly more out of nowhere than it does normally).

and then once the invasion fails, the writers still neglect to set up any macro scale narrative thrust to propel us to the end of the show! we know that sozin's comet acts as some sort of deadline for Invasion Take Two, but the writers inexplicably decide not to establish any sort of time frame for it. the gang finally start talking about getting aang a firebending master, but zuko conveniently shows up before they have to expend any energy looking for one, and aang masters firebending in one episode without even struggling in the way he did with earth bending. and he still seems to have entirely given up on the avatar state, so as soon as he masters firebending it's back to standalone mini-adventures with changes to the status quo only happening incidentally along the way! and to be clear, every episode of season 3 is good, but delicious filler is still filler. the cake to frosting ratio is way out of whack.

i am about to watch the finale for the very first time and it's wild that there is literally no momentum going into this; i would have no clue that the finale was about to happen if i didn't have the netflix episode list telling me so. why on earth does the final stretch of ATLA feel exactly like the final stretch of a big-budget video game where you've completed all the prerequisites for facing the final boss but you can fuck around doing sidequests for as long as you want before getting around to it? no matter how good the finale ends up being, season 2 is the best season by default, sorry.

[drpumpkins]

Okay hmmm Mad Hatter for the Character Ask! :3

AUGH THANK U ok lets see!!!!

First impression: I think I saw him first in The Long Halloween (comic). LOVED how he argued with the Scarecrow :] After the Long Halloween and Dark Victory, I went to Haunted Knight and got really happy to see an entire chapter dedicated to this lil guy

Impression now: *Excited yelling whenever he appears on scream, pointing at my pc, shouting THAT'S MY GUY when that bigass hat makes an appearance. Kicking my legs and flipping my desk*

Favourite moment: His snippet of appearance in Arkham City, absolutely. It hit me absolutely out of nowhere. I was freaking out /pos and when I saw that familiar, haunting silhouette I just completely lost my shit. Great visuals, great voice, impeccable cut inbetween my quests. Definitely solidified his place as my second favourite rogue, for sure

Idea for a story: OOOH this is a hard one. I'm an visual artist moreso than a writer, but if I had to write something, I'd make something in the style of "Perchance to dream" from BTAS, that is just as unnerving, and just as unbidden as his sidequest in Arkham City. Something where you don't realize what's going on and have to piece together the clues long before you realize that Tetch is behind all of this. It just fits him so damn well.

Unpopular opinion: UH ok so i dont know a lot about what Are the popular opinions LMAO so let me try and have a jab at this. Jervis is genuinely dangerous. From what I've seen so far there's not a lot of emphasis that this little guy can pose a serious threat, and while his goals are barely focused on Big Murder Plans like most rogues, I feel like he's more of a punching bag, or treated a lot like flavouring. Don't underestimate this little guy!

Favourite relationship: Honestly this could be interpreted as either romantic or not romantic, and I like both of them, but I found it hilarious/fun how he and Scarecrow are so close in both the Long Halloween comic and movies. Scarecrow actually responding to his mad ramblings with nursery rhymes of his own. It's a very fun detail that I think about a lot :)

Favourite headcanon: Because he has his tea set in the greenhouse in Arkham Asylum, I like to think he is allowed to have tea there, under supervision, if good behaviour permits :) It's a cute little detail that is mostly there only for riddler trophy reasons, but.. imagine!

[smash-64]

2023 Game of the Year Countdown #1 The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie Nintendo Switch, 2023

For a fourth time since 2018, a Trails game takes my #1 for the year.

Breaking from tradition, this Trails game has no sidequests. It has a very linear story, although technically there are three linear stories and you can jump from one to another for most of the game. In many respects, this is the “Trails in the Sky the 3rd” for the Cold Steel series. Not only is the story more linear, but we get redemption arcs from past villains, and we also get an absolutely disgusting amount of playable characters. Chrono Cross has 45 playable characters, and people often say that’s too many. Well…Reverie has 50. And each of them gets at least a little time in the spotlight. It’s fantastic for Trails fans, and I adored it. I put 150 hours into this game and I’m not sure I could have put less time into it.

Playing the game on Switch, there were definitely a few times the game chugged, so I can’t give the game a perfect 10. Many of the cutscenes in Crossbell City were bogged down by the sheer number of NPCs, and was noticeable to me, a person famously unconcerned with performance. I can see why people advocate for playing this on PC or PS4, but the portability of the Switch trumps all else in my mind. This is really the only downside I experienced with the game, although it did not affect my enjoyment at all.

Having three linear storylines to follow in any order you want is phenomenal. You can keep going with characters you love, and are never forced to stick with the ones you don’t for very long. And with having a linear story, the pace of the game is potentially sped up a little bit from the traditional Trails experience where sidequests can often lead to very long delays in the main story.

The story itself offers a ton. Obviously I can’t spoil a game that is the 10th in an interconnected, on-going series, but I’ll just say that once the main story is over…the postgame story is equally as interesting and gives fans a peek at some of the series-long questions and issues brought up in previous entries. 

Combat is fairly standard as far as the Cold Steel games go. I love Trails combat and this game tweaks little, as nothing was broken. It’s perhaps a little bit more difficult than CS3 or CS4, since the Break mechanic was pretty OP in those two games and it has been toned down slightly, but you can still take full advantage of it if you’re smart and plan well. I also like how some of the accessories drastically increase specific stats, so min/maxing is actually fun in this game. I was able to get Tita Russell’s attack and HP to absolutely absurd heights in this game. She is no longer baby; she wants power!

As previously stated, almost every single character gets their time in the spotlight. Some more than others, of course, but the fact that we get 50 playable characters, yet every one of them gets a chance to shine is a wonderful piece of work by the developers and writers. I’d say that perhaps Musse gets very little, but she had more than enough focus in CS3 and 4. Even Machias gets his own episode, and he is so often forgotten that even I forget about him at times.

Music is good as always when it comes to Falcom. I appreciate some of the battle tunes, like Elegant Prowess, and the game has its own unique sound that sets it apart from CS3 and 4. Maybe not to the same extent that Sky the 3rd sets itself apart from FC and SC, but the tracks unique to this game sound different enough that they are easy to pick out. There are dozens of returning tracks as well, since we revisit quite a few places from previous entries. 

My favorite character is Estelle Bright, and I was glad to see a focused effort to put her in the spotlight more often. She wasn’t in CS1-3, and played a more supporting role in 4 than anything else. Meanwhile, Lloyd and Rean ran the show. Estelle is not one of the main storylines in this game, but it’s nice to see her back with some of her famous one-liners.

Overall, I can’t really say enough about the game. It’s an amazing JRPG experience, but one that requires playing the 9 previous games in the series. Maybe that’s a daunting task to some, but the good thing about trying out a Trails game is that there is always another one to play afterward.

[hologramblue]

okay. ffxiv writer identity matter under the cut, spoilers for shaaloani msq and all prior xpac stuff.

my theories were debunked in places by an ishikawa comment from like a year ago that i didn't see back then due to lol

but i went from "i think hiroi might have done amh araeng?" to "hiroi absolutely did amh araeng" within like twenty seconds of not-magnus walking on screen. DT whipped the train freaks (affectionate) out of its pocket with an enthusiasm i'm used to seeing from ishikawa reminding us that haurchefant and ysayle existed.

the wife getting unfridged made a few things click in my head though and i can't really spell it out rn so i'm just gonna put a bunch of names next to each other and hope you see what i'm seeing about hiroi's characterization tendencies (i don't know where to draw the line in ivalice stuff btwn matsuno's work and hiroi's contributions so it's just vibes sorry):

1) guydelot and sanson, thancred and urianger, lyon and menenius, erichthonios and themis

2) mikoto, tesleen, lilja, misija, hegemone, athena, nitowikwe

3) the redbills, the trolley/train guys, the pandaemonium staff, claudien's team, jenomis' theatre company

with these two things plus some other in mind, i have two more theories abt hiroi's work: i think he did a significant amount of eden, and i think in EW thavnair was his pet zone

eden: "why wouldn't he get credited for this if he got credited for pandemonium" probably to avoid distracting from the star factor of Nomura Was Here? but also there's some strong ishikawa fingerprints on eden too so i'm not sure it was a single-writer thing. besides the writer signature shit, note how ishikawa worked on coils, alexander, and omega, then ascended to msq lead. and hiroi did panda before he became msq lead.

anyways in writer signs you've got the aetherology technobabble and story progression heavily grounded in material logic, the thancred-urianger rapport, and ryne's development goes in a distinctly Hiroi Heroine direction. i'm so much a fan of that thing that i'd actually forgotten how meek she is in msq, even after her name change. in eden she takes on hiroi's two favorite qualities in female characters: technical competence (she becomes, like, a mission-command aether-hacker!) and being brave to the point of hingelessness in service of her convictions (e8, final cutscene). also, the quests since eden that have gone back to acknowledge what happened in eden have all been (drumroll) void stuff. and who's the void's number one fan

thavnair: look at those three lists above and add vrtra and ahewann to 1, nidhana to 2, and the alchemists of the great work to 3. back out and squint at the overall flavor of thavnair and radz-at-han sidequests. consider the integration between the 6.x void story which was absolutely hiroi-and-WG (iirc they were credited outright?) and vrtra's character and thavnair and radz-at-han in general. also the weird lines between the mord souq food jokes, EW miner/botanist, and the goofiness about zero and spicy food

[timebegins-onopeningday]

November 2023 New Works Round Up

Hello everyone, I'm a day late due to the mortifying ordeal, but I'm here with a round up post! We have 3 new works this month in the collection, including a WIP that is currently being updated!

AO3 | All works | Ask box

New works, in no particular order (link in title):

I still need you there beside me, no matter what I do by Anonymous | St. Louis Cardinals | Steve Carlton/Tim McCarver

Left-handed pitchers are their own special breed of crazy. Catchers are their own special breed of crazy. It's a long, long road.

Luck be a Ballplayer by powderblu (bluspirits) | Philadelphia Phillies | Alex Bohm/Brandon Marsh

Alec isn't sure this counts as "just normal roommate things", but he doesn't exactly want Marshy to stop, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Superbloom by heartequals (savvygambols) | San Francisco Giants | Blake Sabol/Casey Schmitt

Casey wraps an arm around Blake’s neck while Blake’s distracted by Yas. Blake flails. Casey pulls him down to his chest. “Me and some of the guys were going out after the game,” he hisses in his ear. “Come out with me.”

The next round-up post will be posted sometime on Sunday, December 10 (unless I get caught up in stupid work bullshit again in which case we may be a day late), so if you need a new deadline, aim for the North American morning of December 10.

Under the cut: November Challenges for readers and creators + 3 questions for creators (for your WIPs or completed works) and a hot sidequest for everyone!

November Challenge for Readers: Before the December post, leave comments on FOUR works from the past two months, if you haven't left comments yet!

November Challenge for Creators: Before the December post do the following:

Writers, add THREE sentences on your work every day.

Artists, spend FIVE MINUTES on your work every day 

Podfic? Five minutes of editing or ten minutes of recording every other day. Something else I’m not thinking of? Adjust accordingly to your medium.

3 Creator Questions: Answer in the notes, on your blog, or in the ask box!

Who was/is your favorite character to work on in (one of) your works you posted so far?

What's a line that didn't make it into the final cut that you really really wanted to include?

Would you trust the players in your work with the aux cord?

November Sidequest for Everybody: Make a rec post on tumblr of at least two works you particularly enjoyed from the challenge so far and include at least one line on why you liked them.

That's it for this month, folks! I'll be back on December 10. Remember that to create art is to push back the forces of darkness that threaten to destroy us (Manfred's nonsense), drink water, and leave comments!

As always, ask box is open and anon is on. I can also be reached at rpfisfine@/gmail.com 🌞

[itsbenedict]

Games I Played In 2023 And Whether Or Not I Thought They Were Good (Part 2/4)

Yup, there's more! Lot of 'em this year.

[1] - 2 - [3] - [4]

Trails into Reverie

Sad to say, a... nightmarishly bad finale to the Erebonia/Crossbell saga of Trails.

The one thing I'll give it is that the core combat gameplay remains super fun, and carries the experience- they're always finding new ways to expand and iterate on the battle system, and this time is no exception.

Otherwise... man, where do I start? The story is just... such a mess. They clearly intended this to be, like... the big climax to the Crossbell games, where the people fight to reclaim their independence from Erebonian occupation- but, uh, whoops, they obviated that entire conflict with the end of Cold Steel, so they pull ridiculous Ouroboros shenanigans out of their ass to recreate that conflict as if the previous resolution never happened. Feels like they developed half the game with a specific set of antagonists in mind, and then whatever hack writer they have running the show over there changed their mind about how Cold Steel would resolve and they had to bend over backwards to make up a new antagonist who just happened to be using the same occupying army and main badguy they just dealt with already.

And structure aside, it's just... wow. Just playing the hits of awful hand-wavey writing decisions, villain motivations that make no sense, anime-ass fanservice, and sucking its own dick over how cool the cast is despite most of them doing nothing and existing only as action figures for the combat. It started stupid, threatened to become halfway interesting as it set up the intrigue, and then shat the bed in the finale by revealing that absolutely none of the intrigue mattered and that the villain was like dogs and just sort of did things arbitrarily. Never hated Trails writing more than this one. What an embarrassing display.

also like half the game's runtime is padded out with level grinding in an inexplicable magic cyber-dungeon like in Sky 3rd, which keeps acting like it's going to be important to the plot but then manages to somehow not come up even a little bit at all. and it's got a gacha in it even though it's all in-game currency and there's no real money shop so why would you bother doing that? does someone at Falcom think that gachas are actually intrinsically fun and not a shitty tactic to get people addicted to gambling? what's even wrong with them???

DREDGE

This is a fun fishing game! Except you're fishing for Lovecraftian nightmares! You're a fisherman on a fishing boat and the locals will pay extra for fish that have been horribly mutated by the unholy energies of the depths, so you have to keep finding weirder and weirder fish to finance the boat upgrades you need to find weirder and weirder fish.

I'd say... it works very well in the first half, as you're upgrading your boat and being slow-rolled on the eldritch horror, and kind of falls apart towards the end. The first couple areas are full of various NPCs and sidequests and things to do, and you always have something to do with your resources...

...but later on, the game's economy gets a little lopsided and a lot of the stuff you're hauling up just wastes space in your inventory because you're past the point where it matters but the game keeps throwing it at you. Areas are also a lot more sparse and lonely, and it ends up getting kind of repetitive.

Still, it's not too long, it has some really good atmosphere, and that first stretch is really engaging and tightly designed.

Wildfrost

This is one of them roguelike deckbuilders that are all the rage lately! And it is a difficult one. Even when you're good at it, you probably don't win most runs. Enemies are strong, you only get to play one card per turn, and you have to be really careful managing the action economy to make sure you don't get hit. You are a unit on the map, a unit without that much more health than normal summons, and if you die it's game over. Enemies hit hard and have various triggered abilities that punish you for playing sloppy- you'll frequently find yourself in no-win scenarios out of nowhere because you didn't sequence your moves right.

The other crazy thing is... the final boss? When you beat it, your hero gets possessed and becomes the final boss of the next run. Find some crazy broken synergy that steamrolls the boss? Great! Good luck finding a way to beat it next time around! The final fight's difficulty starts to scale out of control, and forces you to keep one-upping your own strategy with clever tricks.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

This was released on April Fools, and... it's not that great, honestly. The title's basically clickbait- it's a murder mystery-themed party, and Sonic's not actually dead and no one thinks Sonic is actually dead. That wouldn't really be a problem (just kind of a missed opportunity), but...

I mean, this game is for babies. I guess I'm spoiled by real mystery games, but like... it's this completely linear sequence of rooms with one or two suspects to interrogate each, hiding precisely one secret that you uncover via the most dead-obvious deductions in the world. The core mystery works but doesn't really make you feel clever or anything.

It is, like... funny, though. Sorta. I mean, as funny as it can be with the totally toothless premise and a cast that's...

...I'm gonna be honest, I've never understood why people have so much love for the Sonic cast. They all feel so one-dimensional and tedious, and they're typically unmoored from any consistent world or setting that could give them something interesting to do. They have to get by on the strength of their personalities, which are a little flat since there's only so far they can push the bit in a kids' game.

The other thing that bugs me is... y'know ProZD's Danganronpa video? This game has a bad case of "BUT CAN YOU SPELL THE WORD KNIFE?", where in between every bit of deduction or progression, you have to play a completely unrelated minigame where you play as Sonic running along a course where you have to pick up X rings by the end or else restart it, which serves as a loose metaphor for the process of Thinking Really Hard. It's got a wonky isometric perspective and the levels are all both boring and difficult and it felt like a huge waste of time. And they get harder and longer over time, until you're spending longer on the bad minigame than on the actual game game.

Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend

This is a Slay the Spire clone, but it's Touhou.

...That's about all there is to say on the matter. It has a couple unique mechanics- colored manabases, "Teammate" cards that act kind of like planeswalkers, a chargeable super instead of potions... but it's Slay the Spire. You know what the deal is.

That said- I find it a lot more fun than Slay the Spire, honestly. The colored mana thing adds some depth to deckbuilding, boss relics give you unique buffs instead of debuffs, and a lot of the archetypes are crammed with explosive synergies that make it really fun to go off. Plus there's Touhou music through the whole thing, and it's generally better-produced and prettier despite being in early access. Only point where it loses to STS is the lack of a robust modding scene.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

I did not finish this game! It was very bad!

I saw my cousin playing the sequel to this game on his Steam Deck at an engagement party, and I was dazzled by the screens and screens of party members and stats and mechanics all over the place, and thought- this has to be fun, right? I'll check it out- oh, hey, it's a sequel, I guess I'll play the first one.

This game is... very much an Etrian Odyssey clone, except they kinda make everything worse. You have have a ton of party members, but the thing is they don't learn active skills when they level up- there's no build choices to make, just Number Increasage. The only way to customize your skills is to assign units to covens, which have preset lists of abilities and drop randomly as loot. There's the appearance of customization, but in practice there's not a lot of options. Throw in "at any time an enemy might crit and unhealably disable one of your party members until you return to town, ruining your run", and it just feels like a slog.

The other thing is that it is completely repugnant. Like it's just deeply unpleasantly anime horny in the worst ways. The main character (sorta- you play as her mute faceless magic book, not her) is the worst. She's introduced beating a child and murdering her pets, and pretty much maintains that tenor throughout. And this is not an isolated incident! This game has some kind of fucked-up child abuse fetish- there's a significant number of child characters and all of them are physically assaulted by the nearest authority figure within seconds of being introduced. And it's not a problem, or even a theme- it's just a thing that happens all the time, practically as a gag. Also used as a funny gag: sexual assault! Wow! I couldn't stomach it!

PowerWash Simulator

This game seems like a giant shitpost- and to be clear, it absolutely is a giant shitpost- but it's shockingly cathartic and satisfying. There's just you, some levels implausibly caked in a ridiculous amount of grime, and a power-washer with various nozzles and soaps you use to hose off every inch of the place. There's something about it that just feels so nice! Objects flash and go ding when you fully clean them, there's a checklist of stuff and how clean it is, there's lots of fun little details in the levels...

...and it has a story campaign, which is very silly. You start off taking normal jobs washing normal things, but as you accrue Fame, you unlock weirder and weirder clients that wanted bigger and stranger things powerwashed. Without spoiling anything, it gets pretty wacky towards the end.

It's a fun game to play in the background when you're watching a show or listening to a podcast or something and want something mindless for your hands to do. (At least, at first. Some of the later levels are multi-hour behemoths, and it never feels good to stop in the middle.)

-

I still have... fourteen more games to write about. It's like they say...... the work of a gamer.......... is never done.......................

[1] - 2 - [3] - [4]

[xenoblademisadventures]

Xenoblade X poll answers

Elma is a xeno, a BLADE, and a Xenoblade (Monado)

This is incorrect. Elma is a xeno and a BLADE, but she is not canonically related to the Monado. That said, I really would not be surprised if that was an intended plot twist considering that she shares the same color pallet as the damn thing. Furthermore, interesting how Elma somehow knew the earth would be blown up in a skirmish 30 years in advance. There’s other stuff I could say in evidence to this theory, but this isn’t a post about my crack Elma theories, so we’ll leave it at that.

Some other fun information around this idea. In an early trailer for X, BLADE was referred to as “Beyond the Logos Artificial Destiny Emancipator,” though in the final version the acronym is “Builders of a Legacy After the Destruction of Earth.” Elma also has concept art featuring a Core Crystal. 

This doesn’t support any theory because it’s concept art, but it’s an interesting piece of trivia. 

there is an enemy type that reproduces by firing its sperm into orbit

it’s these guys. what a meme of an enemy. dudes just stand there and then turn into a palm tree abomination that one-shots you. I think the guy in Cauldros is the funnies of men. Like, imagine you’re just minding your business and then you get sniped from orbit by a palm tree of death. 

Every enemy type in the game has, like, a multi-paragraph essay, here’s what the Filiavent’s reads.

“The largest of all Miran mollusks, filiavents stay anchored to the ground, feeding on other creatures that come too close. To do so, they contract their lengthy bodies and then swallow their victims whole—along with everything else in the vicinity. All matter then enters the digestive tract, where it is liquefied by powerful acids.

Reproduction also takes place while anchored to the ground. On the night of a full moon, filiavents release a myriad of sperm and eggs into the atmosphere. While most are eaten by other creatures, one in a few thousand survives to be fertilized. Because infants have many predators due to their small size, few of them survive into adulthood—despite the presence of a defensive electrical discharge."

So, yeah, I’m not even exaggerating, these things do canonically reproduce by firing their sperm into orbit.

Samaarians were human, but not the humans you play as; they're functionally gods; this information was revealed during a random sidequest

I wanted to make this one a single option, but character limit. But yeah, Xenoblade X has a weird amount of major plot twists hidden behind random sidequests. This was just the largest one. The sidequest in question was a post-game quest called The Old Gods, where the God of the Zaruboggan is revealed to look like this.

The lore around the Samaarians is that they appeared when the universe was created and started creating a bunch of life, but they’re not benevolent. There are multiple canon slave races created by the Samaarians for that purpose and the humans we play as are implied to be close relatives to the Samaarians. Perhaps made in their image?

But yeah, that’s about the amount X actually reveals about the Samaarians. I imagine that the story was meant to tie into the Klaus arc, but there’s no way of knowing whether the original plans for X’s story contradict what the writers instead made for 2 and 3. 

Also, some of the other major plot twists given by random sidequests include: 

the protagonist is heavily implied to secretly not be a human, the term used is J-Body, but we’re never given insight on what that actually means. The party member Yelv is also a J-Body. This is revealed during Yelv’s Partner.

The White Whale was communicating with some other ships during its 2 year voyage. These ships cannot have been human ships because no one is aware of the existence of fellow surviving humans. This is revealed during White Lifehold. 

Once something gets stuck on Mira, it is impossible to leave. This is revealed by Professor B during his sidequest chain and it is also alluded to by Goetia during Chapter 6.

There was a species of Giants that existed in Cauldros but they were wiped out, most likely, by Yggralith Zero and the Ganglion built their fortress over the ruins of that civilization. All information pertaining to the giants is told through item descriptions in the collectopedia.

There’s also this entire sidequest chain around the Definians, which are a race of shape-shifters controlled by a robot that have controlled species since the dawn of the universe where you overthrow their leader. You kind of just kill a god off-screen in a sidequest, very. 

one of the alien races is from Bionis, this species is not the Nopon

True. The Orpheans are reliant on this virus called the Ovah, which guides their decision making and is connected to their reproduction. In the sidequest A Fateful Choice, it’s revealed that the Ovah came from a world predating the Orpheans. That world was shared with the Telethia where “the Ovah existed as a single entity floating in the ocean of another world.” So, while the name “Bionis” is never given, it’s heavily implied. Furthermore the Telethia is referred to as “the Ruler of Fates” and “the Endbringer,” which are both noteworthy. In the sidequest, the Telethia is compared to a God and is feared by the Ovah. 

The sidequest also involves someone getting eaten by the Telethia and receiving a vision of the past.

The Nopon in X are given zero ties to the Xenoblade universe. The closest we get is a sidequest where two Nopon look for the Sword of Legendaryness, which looks like this.

This is pretty obviously meant to be a goofy reference rather than a serious piece of lore. The item description reads “A legendary sword left behind by ancient Nopon. When the mysterious lettering on the hilt lights up, it gives one the feeling of being able to use special powers.” But I figured it was noteworthy.

the second strongest enemy is known for destroying worlds; unrelated to Earth

True. This would be Pharsis the Everqueen, which is level 98. The strongest enemy is Telethia the Endbringer, which is level 99. This is the Yggralith enemy index entry.

"Hailing from the depths of outer space, these creatures can strip away the ether from entire regions before storing it in their dorsal spines to facilitate interstellar travel. Any unlucky inhabitants of planets they encounter are also devoured down to the very last organism. When this destructive rampage is finished, they set off in search of the next planet.

Though rare, Yggralith do at times come in contact with one another. The ensuing battles spell doom for any planet unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity."

So, yeah, these guys do destroy worlds. There are three yggraliths in the game. They are no relationship to the Ghosts or Ganglion, which were responsible for blowing up the earth. Pharsis is just vibing. I’m pretty sure it’s an infant.

the Ganglion got stuck on Mira before the humans did

In Chapter 6, we learn from Goetia that the Ganglion were transported to Mira by some light, they are trapped on Mira, and that Luxaar believes the Samaarian homeland could be related to Mira. The protagonists assume the Ganglion followed humans, but they are never corrected. Also, it’s important to note that the aliens responsible for crashing the White Whale onto Mira were the Ghosts, which were the faction that the Ganglion were fighting against.

the Bionis and Mechonis make an appearance in the collectopedia

True. The item in question is called the Privative Colossus Statue. It’s found in Noctilum near the Divine Roost (where the Telethia live). 

There they are. Beating the shit out of each other. The item description reads:

“A pair of gigantic stone idols locked in combat. No one is sure who sculpted them or gave them their name, but their primal beauty often leaves a deep impression on those who stand before them.”

Also, related to this, there’s a collectible that’s literally just an ether furnace called the Lost Memory Synthesizer.

“A machine to fuse crystals that conceal some sort of energy. The problem is, said crystals don't seem to exist. Upon realizing its uselessness, the Harrier Sara-Ariel named it in disappointment.”

But yeah, the Bionis and Mechonis do make a cameo.

humans are not classified as humanoids in the enemy index

instead, they’re classified as Mechanoids because everyone’s in a robot body. 

there is a sidequest where you can kill an NPC by telling them to take a shower

true. for some reason all the sidequests around the water plant are fucked up. But yeah, the sidequest is called Lakeside Getaway. An NPC is mad that her coworkers have stopped contacting her and then you learn that they all died because of an enemy that did an Alien. You can kill an NPC by telling them to take a shower because the monsters hatch from water-related things. So, if you let the NPC shower, this happens.

Fantastic.

[a-pale-azure-moon]

Random TotK Thoughts #3

How am I supposed to save Hyrule when there's so many distractions? I'm only now starting another regional phenomenon (the Gorons) after activating all but one of the towers, doing all the Great Fairy sidequests and doing more of Penn's sidequests. I'm up to 56 shrines completed and over 100 Koroks found. It's impossible not to get sidetracked in this game and both I love it and hate it. xD

I also collected the next three Dragon Tears. (I consulted a spoiler free guide to make sure I got them in order, if you're curious.) And wow...I sure got my wish for a demonstration of Rauru's powers, and I was not disappointed.

-I've found a couple of those "Eventide" shrines and yikes are they a pain. Two of them weren't that bad, but the one I found where it was pitch darkness? A very bad time! Took me three tries. I can't wait to see how much worse they get. /s

-I much prefer how they handled the Great Fairies in this game. I didn't get to the 4th fairy in BotW until very, very late, since she was way in the desert and cost 10,000 Rupees. The sidequests were fun and they're easy to do even with minimal health and equipment.

-I want to explore the sky more, but it's too hard to get around between islands. I guess this is my enticement to go into the Depths so I can upgrade my batteries (which is a priority but again....too many distractions!)

-I resent that the game made me hold the idiot ball when "Zelda" was kidnapped, and then the disguised Yiga mocked me for falling for it. [eyeroll] Nintendo does love to troll players that way.

-Ditto for the "Zelda" we see with Yunobo. It's a little insulting how the game is trying to convince me she's turned evil when it's also shown me that she's thousands of years in the past. The present day Zelda is clearly an imposter, either another Yiga or something similar.

-I love how Memory 4 starts, giving us our first look at non-mummified Ganondorf looking menacingly at Hyrule and declaring that he will make it bow before him. His design is awesome, and I especially like how he contrasts with Link. Ganon's just huge, a tall and broad wall of muscle, and Link's a tiny little shortking. Who will soundly kick his ass.

-I also love how the generic soldiers and Zelda are (rightly) freaking out about a swarm of Molduga, and Rauru barely moves faster than a brisk walk as he approaches the ledge. And then he wordlessly fires off his Holy Hand Grenade and obliterates all the Molduga. You can tell even Ganondorf was impressed.

-I guess that scene also definitively answers my question about how Rauru's third eye works.

-Memory 5 was a nice callback to Ocarina of Time and I appreciated the homage. I was also deeply relieved that the writers didn't make Rauru suddenly hold the idiot ball and instead made this more of a "keep my enemies closer" situation. It comes across as mildly arrogant or naive at worst, but it doesn't make Rauru look outright foolish.

-I enjoyed Ganon's passive-aggressive "compliments" and how Rauru gave him an almost bored brush off.

-So the Zonai are already nearly extinct, with just Rauru and Mineru left? What happened to the rest of them? Did they really come from the sky originally? How long had they been living on the surface before Hyrule was founded? (The ruins in the present suggest a long time.) Where do their Secret Stones come from? I want to know all of these things!

-It was completely unsubtle how the camera lingered on the Secret Stones, particularly Sonia's. I'm sure that's not significant.

-Memory 6 was so wholesome. Zelda was so cute with the way she gushed over Link, and Sonia and Rauru both sounded like amused parents teasing her about her very unsubtle crush.

-It's also a nice callback (call forward?) to what Rauru's ghost said to Link at the end of the tutorial.

-Finally got a clear shot of the cool Triforce tattoos on Sonia's wrists too. How does the Triforce fit into this continuity anyway? We know it exists because we saw it when Zelda used her powers in BotW, and there's Sonia's tattoos and the conspicuous triangle pattern on Rauru and Mineru's shawls (and the fringe on nearly everyone's clothes as well). It's so weird how neither of these games have mentioned such an iconic object in the Zelda mythos by name, and have only made vague visual allusions to it.

[draco-the-voiddragon]

You know a lot about DnD.

How would I make a cult of the lamb sidequest, or even a one shot based on it? Like, I had the idea, but my IQ is in the negatives, and I have writers block, so please help

Hmm, the Cult of the Lamb? Some research was in order but...

I don't mind helping with that:

A Necromancer subboss with abilities around your players' levels assuming they're all lvl 3, but the necromancer is about level 4-5 depending on the number of players/npcs. Likely could throw in a few stray zombie beastkin depending on how long the side quest is supposed to take or number of rests allowed.

Any Undead being to my knowledge can only be beat by crits or radiant damage, or if the summoner is killed/loses for brevity's sake. I'd say that at lower levels, there can be exceptions since not everyone will have radiant damaging attacks. Fire damage can be a substitute if needed, but give cold resistance in that scenario.

Base plot ideas:

A Lamb Beastfolk is having trouble sleeping because of zombies terrorizing the town at night. It turns out that this lamb is the evil one raising them. Setting for the battle could be a church/graveyard.

It could also be a clue gathering mission/special item sidequest. I would think given the death theme, the woundrous item known as the ghost lantern as a potential possession of the Lamb could work too. It's both a lighting source, and with attunement the attuned can use mage hand with it. The Lamb could not have attuned properly and been possessed by the spirit inhabiting the lantern.

Lemme know your thoughts, I wrote a lotta my own campaign from scratch and have a couple WIP books with a few chapters each at least.

I adore the endless creation that flows in ones' mind stronger than riptide currents. I always could use a reason to write or draw.

[honourablejester]

This is fascinating, because one of the things I’ve been saying for a while now is kind of the opposite: it’s not that Fallout imagines that written history will vanish after 200 years that I find implausible, it’s that no new history is happening to replace it. And by that I don’t mean that nothing big is happening in the games, there is massive political and factional events happening in all of them, it’s that no new culture is happening. Or at least, no new expressions of culture.

There’s no new music. There’s no new books. There’s no new buildings. And yes, Fallout 4’s Magnolia, Fallout 3’s Daring Dashwood. But the fact that they’re so rare is noticeable. All those radio stations, and they’re all still playing pre-war stuff, even 200 years down the line. Yes, there are plenty of live performers in the various wastelands, half the sidequests in Vegas are finding performers, etc, but there are so few new recordings. And why is no one building anything that’s not some sheets of metal glued onto the side of pre-war buildings? Why are there still pre-war canned food and skeletons lying around populated areas 200 years later? Why have more of the terminals not been written over? Why is there nothing new to erase what has come before?

And, from a Doylist perspective, this is because the Fallout games are telling two stories simultaneously: post-war and pre-war. (Also to maintain the post-apocalyptic aesthetic). They showing the world in the state it is currently, and how it got there. And how it got there, the pre-war reality of this America, wasn’t pretty.

I always find Moe so funny, and most of the time our characters don’t correct him, even though we could. Because, yeah, Moe is hilariously wrong about baseball specifically, but all he’s doing is assuming that the pre-war would be just as violent and ‘barbaric’ as his world is, and he’s not wrong there. Sure, baseball wasn’t an overt blood sport pre-war, but the picture of pre-war America we’re given is no rosier than the post-war one, it’s just greener and superficially prettier. Pre-war America was a wartime capitalist hellscape where inflation was absolutely bonkers, almost every major company mentioned, including the soda company, was making weapons on the side, the army was drugging their own soldiers with drugs that post-war would be called things like ‘psycho’ and viewed almost exclusively as raider drugs, horrifying things were happening to Chinese-Americans and way too many people were just ignoring it, curfews enforced by lethally armed robots were apparently commonplace, companies were regularly irradiating their own customers and it was considered a minor faux pas at worst (see Repconn in Vegas), and, oh yeah, every horrifying Vault Tec experiment was being laid out. Vault Tec was pre-war. Sure, the experiments played out after the bombs fell, but they were designed pre-war.

All that, and America didn’t even win the Great War. I mean, nobody won the Great War, that’s the whole point of the series, but. There was an invasion on American soil in Alaska. They justified all the pre-war barbarity on the grounds of the war, and it wasn’t even helping.

‘American idolatry’ is so far from what Fallout’s lore is doing. It is, in fact, the opposite of what Fallout has been doing for years. Fallout’s pre-war America is a doomed cartoonish exaggeration of everything the game’s writers can see going wrong with current America. And, uh. It’s possibly less exaggerated than we were all hoping.

So, like, I’m not going to blame Moe for assuming that pre-war baseball might have been a bloodsport on par with what you might see in a post-war raider camp, because while he’s wrong about baseball, he’s not wrong about the blood lying just below the surface of the pretty green pre-war world. The barbarity was there, it was just tucked away slightly more than the wasteland tends to bother with. His narrative is, in some ways, more honest than the actual truth, so a lot of the time our characters roll with it.

It's also funny that the thing closest to pre-war America in the games is the Institute. The pristine clean society built on slavery with hideous secrets floating just beneath its shiny surface. Moe is a sleazy lying salesman, but he’s more honest. The Great Green Jewel, Diamond City, is built on blood. Not a pre-war bloodsport, not directly, but they fully are standing in a monument to violence. Pretty lies covering up the blood.

So yeah. There are parts of the writing for Fallout in general, and Fallout 4 specifically, that I do not like. Some things were handled wonkily, for sure. But there is a lot of thought in the lore of the games, a lot of genuine effort and genuinely good story. And it is definitely not idolatry. It’s a dystopia. Both post- and pre-war. Pretty much everything you learn about pre-war America over all the games is almost cartoonishly bad. That’s the point. The post-apocalyptic anarchic hellscape of the games was caused by the capitalist hellscape of pre-war America. In some cases extremely directly, as with Vault Tec and the Enclave and the Institute. Because war never changes, and all the new barbarity is just a successor to all the old barbarity.

Todd Howard’s brain is equal parts American idolatry, stupidity, and a pathological need to lie