#fuck this sucked ass guys

[cins-brainrot]

POV your client shows up at your job with his German Shepard friend to attack ur balls

[northern-passage]

just found one of my favorite pieces of writing advice when it comes to interactive fiction, i think if you've read literally any of my work, it will be pretty obvious how much i use this in my own writing. i actually couldn't remember where i read this for the first time and on a whim i went through my twitter likes and found it in a thread. i'm going to transcribe it for ease of reading, but this is all coming from Alexander Freed (@/AlexanderMFreed on twitter)

he has a website here with other compiled writing advice about branching narratives and game design, though he never posted this there and hasn't really updated recently (but still check it out. there's some specific entries about writing romance, branching and linear & other game writing advice)

original twitter thread here

It's Tuesday night and I feel like teaching some of what I've learned in 15 years of branching narrative video game writing. Let's go in-depth about one incredibly specific subject: neutral / fallthrough / catchall response options!

Player ownership of the protagonist in choice-based branching narrative games (a la BioWare, Telltale, mobile narrative games, etc) is a vital aspect of the form.

The ability for the audience to shape a Player Character, to develop that character's inner life in their own mind, is unmatched in any other medium.

The Player determines the character's actions and THE MOTIVATIONS for those actions. The character's psychology can literally be as complex as the Player can imagine. However, this works best when there's enough space for the Player to develop those motivations. No game can offer enough options to support every interpretation imaginable; much of the character has to live in the Player's head, without necessarily appearing on the screen.

That's complicated. We're going to unpack it.

Generally, when presenting choices to a Player, we want those choices to be as interesting and compelling as possible.

But compelling, dramatic choices tend to be revealing of character. And no game can support hundreds of options at every choice point for every possible character motivation a Player might imagine.

This sort of narrative CANNOT maintain its integrity if the Player is forced to constantly "rewrite" their characterization of the Player Character on the fly. You want your Player to feel like they have more than enough viable options at any given moment.

At the simplest level of writing, this is where "fallthrough" responses come in.

In the examples above, each moment contains a response which furthers the story but doesn't imply a huge emotional choice for the Player. The Player is asked to choose A or B, agree or disagree, but can sidestep the issue altogether if desired.

These "neutral" responses are vital if both A and B don't appeal to the Player... or if, perhaps, the Player likes A but not the WAY A is being expressed. Milquetoast option C works for anyone; thus, the Player is never forced to break character because of a lack of options.

Questions work well for this sort of neutral option. Tacit agreement and dead silence also serve, in certain sorts of stories--as a Player, I know what's going on in my silent character's head and the game won't contradict it.

The important thing is that I'm never forced to take a path that's outright WRONG for my character. Even if other characters misinterpret the Player Character's motivation, my character's inner life remains internally consistent.

"Neutral" responses aren't the only ways to go, though. Some responses are appropriate for any character because they're tied to the base character concept.

Here, for example (from @/seankmckeever's X-Files), the Player is a marine on a mission. The Player can respond abrasively to her partner's fear or look into the issue (out of compassion or genuine belief), but our fallthrough is actually the TOP response.

There's no version of our marine who would absolutely break character by picking "Stay calm and on mission." It's not blandly neutral; rather, it reinforces aspects of the character we can be sure of and gives the Player an option if nothing else works.

Different sorts of narratives will use different sorts of fallthroughs. A comedy might treat the option to say something funny as a fallthrough, of sorts--it's entertaining and will never violate the characterization the Player has created.

In a quest-driven RPG, a fallthrough response can often boil down to "How do I move to the next step of this quest?"

That said, the strongest moments in a narrative will often have no "fallthrough" response at all. They'll work by creating multiple responses that, by overlapping, cover all reasonable Player Character actions while still leaving room for the Player to ascribe motivation.

[benrybenrybenry-chr]

no no, you don't get it, BBC Sherlock fundamentally ruined Watson's character to the point that he's so unrecognizable that I, someone who loves every version of Watson with all my heart, deeply hated him through the WHOLE show. that shouldn't be POSSIBLE

#notmywatson

[rotisseries]

my favorite thing about mha has got to be how you can't tell if the writers are aware or not that the setting is in fact a corrupt police state

[constellation-skirmishes]

they're arguing over the best paramore albums

anakin: All We Know Is Falling & Brand New Eyes & This Is Why

ahsoka: After Laughter & Riot! & Paramore

ani: of course i'm right you overgrown, hairless tooka-kit

soka: NUH-UH !!

[todayisafridaynight]

reasons number A Million why not every rgg character needs to be +6ft he looks so fuckin stretched out. actually got put in the willy wonka taffy puller

[nerosdayinanime]

[stars-n-spice]

CRYING

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT MAN FUCKING HELL!!! FUCK THE BAD BATCH AND THEIR FUCKING WHITEWASHING!!!

I JUST SAW THE WHITEST TIMESKIP OMEGA FANART!! AND THAT'S FUCKING SAYING A LOT CONSIDERING HOW WHITE SHE ALREADY LOOKS!!! AND THE FACT THAT I'VE ALREADY SEEN SO MUCH WHITE ASS LOOKING OMEGA!!!! LADY WAS NEARLY AS WHITE AS THE BACKGROUND CANVAS!!!

[faunandfloraas]

i love being friends with girls and then they get a boyfriend and then he becomes the center of her entire existence and all she talks about and all she focuses on and i sit there and i smile and i nod and i feel myself becoming genuinely evil

[misty-wisp]

hiiii here's my velvet room attendant minato

ok so this guy's deal is he's akechi's velvet attendant and he does all the fusing and stuff bc yaldy (or nyarly, i haven't decided) decided to give p5's other wild card a botched great value velvet room by ripping minato's still-not-resting soul from the great seal (dw it's still intact) and slapping that into a makeshift human vessel. not only that but this vessel also has a fuckton of other souls shoved into it to allow for fusing and stuff. this man isn't joking when he says he is the compendium

as a result his personality is inconsistent as fuck! one second he's blank-faced minato, the next second he's a Completely Different Guy. he has no idea who he really is and definitely does not have any memories associated with being minato

okok onto design notes--he's a bartender! goro's velvet room is like a bar so victor here's serving up drinks. i thought it'd be cool if a fusion animation was like, mixing a drink together. also i'm sick and tired of people designing velvet attendant versions of the protags and just giving them theo's outfit. enough of that. be more silly with it

[starredforlife]

i'm assigning my followers animation homework u have to study these two battle scenes and tell me why they're both so goddamned effective. i could tell u all the answers myself. but i want ur answers

[keatxu]

aroace character in canon: *literally is aroace*

aroace character in fandom content: *getting all the dates and having all the sex*

[mikakuna]

batman really just be saying shit. "killing the joker will make you the same as him"

like oh yes of course. you're definitely on par with a man who's killed thousands of innocents because you killed one person. bitch please. you're telling me bruce being a pussy enabler is why thousands of people die at the hands of one person? he should just go to therapy after killing the joker if it's that big of a deal. if you're gonna take on a role as serious and God-like as Batman/hero, you need to accept that you have to do immoral and messed up things. there's no reason to really make batman so strictly Moral if the supervillains he fights really show no shame in mass murdering and torturing innocents- innocents in a city that he swears is his and his to protect.

in a universe like dc where supervillains (+people who work with chemicals that aren't usable in the real world) exist and absolutely cannot be tied down in prison, killing is likely one of the only ways to keep cities safe. like sorry but batman has to kill the joker, a mass murderer, if he wants gotham to become a safer place. it's that or create an indestructible prison that no villains can escape from no matter what. which surprisingly hasn't been made yet, from what i know, despite all the amazing tech bruce has and can afford

[harbingersecho]

some short felix stuff. also price is there for a second

[spaciebabie]

watching a show in vc w/someone and realizing that. for people out there sex is a need and that just like. blew my head clean open

[mooseonabreak]

Forgot film bros existed until my film course lecture today and Dear God. Why did he have to sit right next to me.