#making maps is hard

[ganondoodle]

so, its pretty rough and by far not complete but this is a rough layout for the map of destiny (my zelda fancomic), i mainly took it after skyward sword but added parts of botw into it (like lanayru street, the twin mountains that were one mountain until ch3, the gerudo highlands, akkala ref; among more general map overlap)

this ones with some super rough chapter markers and some descriptions, the circle doesnt mean the chapter doesnt go to multiple places but the main happening of it is there, its again, pretty rough and lacks the correct order yet too, ill prob add that with time as i write out the scripts for the next chapters, so far i got the order until chapter 6 (chapter 4 is mostly at hylias temple and since there are alot of chapters happening there its not marked seperately)

chapter 1: demon (complete)

chapter 2: a dance of ice and fire (script done)

chapter 3: moving mountains (name not final)

chapter 4: starry night

chapter 5: a wound for a wound (placeholder name)

chapter 6: curiosity (possibly placeholder name, forgot to mark it on the map even tho i know where it goes)

most other chapters i know where and whats happening but i cant remember the exact order, i gotta make a structured chapter chart soon so i dont have to think over everything every single time i need the order

this is probably not very interesting but, even tho it is just a rough layout more for myself than anything else, i thought id share anyway, i know my handwriting when i write fast and tired is hard to read but uh .. feel free to send me an ask about it if theres anything youd like to know (do mention if you are ok with spoilers for the story)

[fisherrprince]

UMINAOSHI - KHUX Multiple Animator Project (MAP)

⚠️ glitch/flashing images warning! ⚠️

Thank you so so much to the 13 animators who collabed on this project! It was such a blast and it came out so pretty, and it was such a pleasure to work with y'all :]

[potofsoup]

Guess who's excited to get their ballot in the mail tomorrow? Me! So I slapped together a quick comic, as well as a map based off of this and this. A list of when same day registration is available is at the bottom of this article.

But also: wow, early voting stuff is so confusing! For example, I get my ballot in the mail tomorrow, and I can immediately mail it back. But if I want to drop it off in person, I need to either go to a special ballot drop box by city hall, or wait for early in-person voting sites to open, which isn't until Oct 22nd for my state.

Or like, early voting in Louisiana is apparently from Oct 16 to Oct 29th? And then there's a week of no voting, and then polls open again on Nov 5th? Or like how the only day you can register and then immediately vote is Oct 26th?

Anyway, best way to figure out the info for your area is to check your state and county's election website. I've found usvotefoundation.org to have clear fact sheets for each state (including ID requirements, polling location finders, as well as direct links to state election websites): https://www.usvotefoundation.org/state-voter-information . You can also jump to each state's election websites via usa.gov, or by searching directly, though some websites are more confusing than others.

Happy voting!

Oh, and here's the voter registration deadlines map from last time, in case you haven't registered and want to register. Oct 7th is the last day for a bunch of states!

[lucaanis]

『🐲』 — taash's fortune's favour + details

[corseque]

I honestly just wanted one single plot step that I could not predict given the 10 year wait. More behind the cut, I talk about Emet too, and I'm comparing his writing favorably to Solas' writing and why it worked better for me personally, but I am just talking about the writing skill that went into the games and not the dudes themselves, I love them both dearly of course. idk this is a mess and I am not going to edit it for clarity

For me, the game was a series of me saying

"ok I knew that. cool."

"oh yeah, I knew that. I guess it's good that the larger fandom knows about that now."

"nice, but yeah I already knew that too"

"that was something we've been talking about a lot for years"

"this thing they are acting like is a huge enormous reveal that the characters could not possibly have deduced through simply thinking about it in depth over the 10 years... the fans easily figured out by thinking about it in depth 10 years ago. So you would think his girlfriend would be able to figure it out more easily than we did. Like, why couldn't the game have been like 'oh lavellan already figured that out a while ago' it would have cost them nothing"

"this is something I've been thinking about for years, and now that it's being revealed, the companions' reactions to it are very irritating and jarring and unnecessary and I really dislike the experience I'm having right now, in this, the hour of my greatest triumph"

"this thing that is happening on my screen right now is something that I wrote an essay about 2 years ago describing how it would be a letdown if it happened without the correct setup"

"this way that they're characterizing Solas makes him less likable and less interesting than I have been finding him for all these years, and I have had people tell me 'no, he's simpler than you think' for years but I guess I was wrong, he really is simpler than I thought, so that fucking sucks. I wish I could take that information out of my brain."

"this thing is a retcon of information I have been thinking about for 10 years, and so I don't know how to follow along with this new direction, and I'm not sure if I even want to because it's not particularly interesting anyway"

"aw that was sweet"

"why is it like, so very impossible to have an honest back-and-forth with my favorite character about the dilemma that was most interesting to me about the previous game"

and then, as soon as, like, the other fans had caught up to the Solas lore that was really obvious from the other games, the game was.... over without anything surprising happening, or introducing a new element or plot point or perspective, or a real true twist (or two, or three) for those of us who have thought about it too hard for too long. It was very simple and easy, much, much, much, much easier than I was imagining. It all felt sort of like that Nicholson quote:

The thing was, the whole story was so interesting to think about because in 10 years, I couldn't figure out a good solution to it!!!!! It's why I was never able to write post-game fanfic about it. So I was stoked to find out some reveal we never knew about, some new information, in maybe a SERIES of steps of new information, that made the situation more complicated but also something that could be navigated by everyone involved. I know it was asking for a lot, but they had TEN YEARS, and they seemingly had set up the things they did in DAI on purpose, so surely they had some idea of a complex and satisfying narrative that would reconcile everyone.

The reason why I was expecting this is because FFXIV did a very similar story arc, which was started AND concluded WITHIN those 10 years (so it took the FFXIV team far less time to deliver as well). And the conclusion to the story in FFXIV did what I was expecting Dragon Age to do. So I thought, "holy shit, if this is the FFXIV version of this plot, how much more complicated is DA4 going to be!?!?" The DA devs also PLAYED FFXIV so they were completely aware, several years ago, of a satisfying story ending that was pretty darn similar.

People are probably going to think "oh, well Chelsea was disappointed because she spent too much time building it up in her head" but that's exactly it - I actually speculated and thought about FFXIV's story IN DEPTH NONSTOP for a year+ before its ending came out, and the ending absolutely blew me away. FFXIV Endwalker managed to introduce information and new story elements that I was not able to figure out in the YEAR I spent speculating on the ending of FFXIV's story. It took a complicated situation and revealed several several more facets to it that I was not able to predict, but were very interesting and thematically compelling, and took us all to surprising and climactic places that we could not have predicted.

Endwalker ("end" is in the title on purpose) too, was written to be THE ULTIMATE SATISFYING ENDING for a very long-running story in the exactly way that Veilguard SHOULD HAVE for Dragon Age, so while this complexity is being explored, FFXIV also gave catharsis to many different plot threads that have been built up through the previous expansions, until finally it ends with a bang. The story is desperately good to me, I loved it, it gave me closure for Dragon Age long before Veilguard was even revealed, and going back and looking at its story has made this whole thing far less painful for me.

So, I actually did not have a picture in my mind for how things SHOULD go. I just had the thought "I hope it's complicated and there are points of view or facts that we haven't before been exposed to, and the situation is resolved respectfully for Solas, not making him look like a fucking idiot (lol, the only thing I asked for). I don't even care what happens to Solas and Lavellan, I just need the story to be complicated and interesting to think about. Please, god, don't let it be "solas is wrong and he just needs to be convinced" because that's like the simplest story you could tell with this setup"

(btw they managed to tell Emet-Selch's story without making him seem like he's being an idiot on purpose or can never get anything right, and in fact the more the story goes on, the more you think of him as smart and capable and cool, so it is possible to write.... I wasn't asking for the entire moon)

And I played it and... yeah. Most of the story beats were more simple than I wanted them to be, a lot of them didn't make sense in my heart given the writing from Inquisition. (This is another essay, but if Solas' thematic story arc was always about him needing to let go of regrets, why was his personal quest the way it was? After that quest, doesn't he end up regretting not doing more....? Why did he never really talk about regret during Inquisition? If he was so trapped by regret, why was he able to do so many actions? It doesn't mesh well to me. The whole regret thing was very quarter-baked to me, I don't even like thinking about it.) His story never seemed like one that was as simple as being about one man's regrets, but then, I guess, it was always just about one man's regrets.

Emet-Selch's personal storyline (and the way it interacts with and affects the larger story) is very similar but much more cohesive and satisfying to me. It would be difficult to explain why without the aforementioned 5-hour essay. Emet-Selch's story IS about grief and anguish on a world-shaping scale in a similar way that Solas' was apparently always about letting go of regret, but Emet's story was also very pointedly and beautifully about that one theme for the entirety of his story from every tiny detail, from beginning to end - meanwhile, it seemed to me that they tried to introduce 'regret' as the main thrust of Solas' story only in the short story with the Regret demon onward.

From Inquisition just by itself, the closest I personally could get to a story theme for Solas was his inability to trust others hurting him and the world, but his trusting others in DA4 wasn't really addressed to my satisfaction. He is never required to trust anyone before the ending, he never opens up or makes himself vulnerable at all. People find out information about him, he never really dynamically opens himself. So the personal story I thought he had was never addressed at all, while a new one about regret was introduced that never made a ton of sense to me. And I don't think this is just because of my expectations - my reaction to FFXIV proves that I am able to meet good writing where it goes in surprising directions, as long as it's interesting and thoughtful and clear.

And I think this might be part of what people felt was off about the ending - Solas is sort of uninvolved in the revelations that are about him, and doesn't do much to be part of his own ending. Part of what I loved about Solas in Inquisition is that he is not controlled by you in any way, and so he feels like his own person with a very strong sense of character.

Anyway, Emet-Selch, in a very comparable and arguably more extreme plot position, is very involved in the revelations about himself, he always feels like a very strong character who cannot be affected by the player, and the whole situation is handled with deft emotion and care and delicacy. The story is comparatively very uninterested in litigating Emet-Selch or putting him on trial - the story allows you to simply feel the way that you feel in an organic way, and Emet's story spends that energy instead actually exploring his thematic material about grief and legacy, and the larger story theme of existentialism instead, in a way that is very refreshing and interesting. I've seen a lot of western stories tie themselves in knots over "redemption" and frankly it's almost never been interesting at all. Who cares about any of that. lol

(Now, I guess this is a matter of preference, because some people really like being able to shape a character's story, but idk I rewatched the ending of FFXIV and even though there wasn't a choice with Emet, because it isn't a branching story, his story felt more satisfying to me, maybe because there isn't a patronizing choice to be made for him. He is who he is, and he fulfills a very beautiful narrative role and purpose that no other character could in the story.)

I don't know how this could have been improved to me and still allowed players to choose Solas' ending for him, but I can actually think of a few different methods, none of which involve Rook condescendingly and patronizingly lecturing Solas as if Solas had never thought about a single aspect of this horrible situation he's in before that very moment that Rook lectures him lmfao.

All this to say... idk I'm writing this and I am not going back to edit it so it's stream-of-consciousness. But yeah

I just wanted the story to be complicated on a few more levels than I could have predicted. I genuinely don't care what happened, but I thought of a few twists like the Veil coming down and yeah, I was expecting A Single Twist or reveal to happen. In a Dragon Age game.

I wanted Solas to seem cool and capable and noble and smart, and actually feel like he was as old and experienced as he is.

I wanted a clear theme I could sink my teeth into

Like notice I didn't even say anything about Solavellan. Like I never in 100 years thought they were getting a happy ending where they were both alive in bodies, and I like that we got that, but I would honestly trade it for a more complicated story. To me, if a story is sad you can always write fanfic, but if a story isn't COMPLICATED, that's a much more urgent issue.

These 3 things DA4 didn't give me in a way that satisfied me but FFXIV did. anyway idk the way my hyperfixations work, I completely switch to a new subject so talking about Dragon Age is actually hard for me right now.

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

pov you do ur gay little run cycle into the war room unexpectedly insp this painting and remembering this screenshot/post as well

[dovewingkinnie]

im not in this fandom anymore but god i miss joining those warrior cat maprojects, it feels like the fandom has definitely died down and theres waaay less of them out there Where did they all go!! come back!! i check every once in a while to see if any cool ones are being hosted but </3

[sp1resong]

88. Mind cccc. blinks at you with evil intent

[ask game]

the henhouse in the yard was torn to splinters nothing left but feathers, bones, and blood

Charlatan in Red (A Fox's Wedding) - The Forgetmenauts

[wildstar25]

🌶️🌶️🌶️ ->

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

Swear to god this will be the last post I make about it but they finally address the whole 'south American' lostbelt thing only to 1: keep calling it the wrong location 2: still not get the right location

Like I need them to be so serious right now, it's not like the Aztec and Mayan civilizations weren't spread through Mesoamerica but they were not primarily Central American and all the named locations in this lostbelt are named after places in Mexico! Which is in North America! Which is very explicitly not part of Central America!!

[scatteredfangirling]

taemin: this isn't brooklyn, right?

taemin, with unfounded confidence: yeah, this isn't brooklyn

also taemin: IS this brooklyn? 👀

staff: yes~

taemin: oh... 🙃 this is brooklyn... 🫠

BONUS: taemin panic

[petrichal]

One Piece 1133 talk: Praise Me for Living

i just wanted to open this with I WANT TO PELT SPANDINE AND THAT FUCKING SON OF HIS WITH ROCKS SO BAD OH MY GODDDD

"I'll never forget the sounds of the screams that emerged from the fire" THOSE WERE CIVILLIANS. ON THE ISLAND YOU ORDERED A BUSTER CALL ON. I HOPE YOU CHOKED IN YOUR GRAVE AND SUFFER IN HELL I HATE YOU

(kind of a moot point but one other thing i wanna say when I was reading through the raws was that Spandine says “ガキの皮を被った悪魔だ”/"That's a demon wearing the skin of a child" here which - to me - felt more visceral than the translation. still an insane thing to say about a child though, obviously.

edit: I was thinking how fucked up it was that literally everyone around her believed that she truly was the devil's child, but with descriptions like that (+ rumors spreading about how she can use "freakish sorcery" [-> devil fruits not being common in the Blues?], she'd "slit your throat in the night", and "no human emotions", like she's not human at all) you can see how easy it was for people to get brainwashed into this wrong idea of her when she was young. Government manipulation in, i guess, the entirety of West Blue at the time, ran deep. anyways)

With that outta the way, this chapter is masterful. Im gonna cry. Ive cried already throughout a third of my reading for this chapter, it's just so good. Nico Robin I love you so much

Though its unfortunate that we have to see Spandine again, Oda knows what he's doing bringing back Robin's tragedy at the start of the chapter. We know her story, we've seen her flashback, but it's an entire other thing to see it again in Elbaf, the arc where we know the context of, that Saul is alive, and it gives us a clue that that is where the chapter is heading towards.

Also isn't it crazy that when the dialogue frames Robin as this "dangerous", "unfeeling" person with no heart, the visual we're presented with is her crying as she sifts through garbage to search for food, and then sharing it with a dog?? Hello??? And the panels before that goes "The government won't go into detail about the story" for fear that "the truth" might "traumatize the children", which is CRAZY when slapped upon an image of cipher pol agents with guns actively hunting down a child??? The juxtaposition of Spandine's dialogue and the images that are shown is very telling, it's just so well done.

TW: discussions of suicide (for this part)

We know that Robin was ostracized as a child. We know this. Doesn't make it hurt any less, though. Especially (and especially) when it's shown on the pages clearly of how it affected her.

What got me thinking when I saw this again was that all of West Blue was probably fed this lie from the World Government. Every island she went to knew who she was, literally everyone was warned to look out for her, that she was dangerous and should be turned in. And it's not like travelling out of West Blue was safe, nor was it probably an option that existed for Robin back then- like, she was eight!! How was she supposed to go across the Red Line, the Calm Belt?? She was truly boxed in. She must've felt that there was no other way out. Of course she'd turn to suicide.

That panel of her at the cliff honestly broke me. It's not like it wasn't implied at all back when her flashback was first shown; Her circumstances were difficult for her and it wouldn't be out of left field to think that she might have considered dying. To have it drawn on a page that she considered it, looked down from a cliff, and the fact that the only thing keeping her from jumping was her mother's words and Saul's promise was genuinely heartbreaking. She was so strong to have gone through all of that, she deserves the whole world and more actually

Cut back to the present and she lived through it all and here she is with her family, a place where she belongs aaaaaa 🥲 I love that Luffy gets all huffy (hah) over Robin saying that she can go alone, saying that a captain needs to pay their respects to those who have helped their crew, that it's the honorable thing to do. Sounds like a certain someone, ey? (Ace & Shanks lol, he remembers Makino's lessons from all those years ago too ;v;).

Then they all insist to go with her and it's so cute and I was like oh when did she change her clothes and $@!#>}! ITS THE SAME FIT SHE WORE WHEN SHE MET SAUL FOR THE FIRST TIME!! SAUL'S "FALLEN AND WON'T GET UP" IS BECAUSE HE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO GREET HER SO HE DECIDED TO JUST FACEPLANT ON THE BEACH BECAUSE THATS HOW HE MET HER FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! ITS SO SILLY BUT I STARTED TEARING UP??? WHAT????AND THEN THE PARALLELS:

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

my heart...... my heart.....augghjkjsdh..... (speechless)

The fact that the first thing he tells her was about how Ohara's sacrifice wasn't in vain, that traces of them still remain, like Robin, did you hear Vegapunk's message?? That was the message from the people of Ohara, their voices are still being heard!! was so goddang wholesome.

And Robin hears this, and she hears about how Saul survived and the things he heard other people call her, and he's getting angry on behalf of her again but all she wanted (and perhaps, what she truly needed this whole time) was something else;

For Saul to praise her for having survived.

(The Viz translation isn't ~wrong~ with Robin's line here, but I wanted to point out how it was put originally; Instead of "I want to hear nice things about how I survived!", the raws read “生きたこと… 褒めてほしい！”, which, as I understood it, "I want you to praise me... for being alive/having survived!". The chapter title has it as "Nice Things" but the original was “褒めてほしい”/ "I want you to praise (me)". And this probably seemed self-conceited in english?? and that's why it's translated like that idk, i just thought its nicer in jp)

But the fact that Robin is asking this of Saul and the fact that she's able to make that request in the first place is where I sobbed because this is what Robin wants to hear!!! It's a childish, selfish request, and it's something she wasn't able to wish for / doesn't allow herself to wish for before because she thought Saul/anyone she loved from her past was dead this whole time or that she didn't deserve it, but Saul is alive, and it's the first step she needs to take to truly heal!! Her changing her clothes and cutting her hair to seem more like herself when she was younger is a deliberate choice, this is the part of her that needs closure, the part of her that went through all the trauma the world had given her, and she's healing her inner child!! She needed to hear this from Saul!! She deserves this so much!!! (im rambly if this doesnt make any sense im sorry khfdjk)

And Saul laughs, and says of course!/“勿論だ！”, no questions asked, and the unconditional love just broke me down man i cant

Note that Robin was smiling this entire time (maybe from the start of the arc? or at least since she cut her hair) and leading up to the last page was when she finally started breaking down. They're crying, the crew's crying, Luffy looking on so fondly, happy for her, and I'm crying. I love One Piece so much, I love these dorks. I don't think I'll forget this last page for my life, it's one of the best moments in this series to date.... Truly the Robin chapter of all time <3

bonus: lmfao?? maybe they'll let him down once they get back for the festivities but rip bozo

[betweenlands]

look i hate LLMs as much as the next person but can we please stop acting like a totally easy and feasible replacement would be installing a mod that just exists out of thin air and comes with a custom written set of quests and NPC dialogue branches.

that is not how writing works. that is not how writing dialogue for games works. i have literally written NPC dialogue for a minecraft map before and six short, unpolished, janky monologues with no branching whatsoever took me two weeks to finish. frankly i would rather have the LLM stank than put a bunch of under/unpaid writers or actors into crunch mode for a relatively minor aspect of an otherwise great server.

[dovewingkinnie]

there should be more multi animator projects (maps) about random characters that the host made up ngl i know its like 'free art' for the creator but like? if its a good story with good designs i'd wanna join tbh... it would definitely be something new in the midst of all the warrior cat maps

[day-mark]

god i fucking love competitive play, i love watching high level, skilled gameplay from passionate players, i love learning the statistics for each player and the game as a whole, i love hearing everyone and especially the casters glaze the fuck out of my favorite players. mc summit/mojang and mc.c you will be fucking dealt with .

[bleue-flora]

Right so… prison break. The question I set out to answer for my scavenger hunt is: Would Techno’s prison break plan via the toilet have worked?

And the answer is interesting… for starters, despite Dream informing us that there is an elder guardian right under the cell [clip], this is not true. The elder guardian is actually right above the cell, with one further away under the middle of the entire lava chamber [more details on prison guardians].

Which actually makes their escape even easier (well they’ll still have to deal with the mining fatigue, but with how many guardians there is and their proximity that probably wasn’t going to end from killing the one guardian anyways). The most efficient way I found, is actually digging behind the cell (remember how Sam was doing that in Daedalus) and crawling. Not only is there red stone back there, and an opening, but also that direction is the shortest distance to the outside. Using this method Dream only has to break 14 blocks total (11 obsidian, 2 black stone {red}, 1 iron bars {pink}) [details on breaking time], making his (absolute minimum) total breaking time 286 hours or roughly 12 days. {the red stained glass panes note which blocks he would break}

As an aside, Foolish actually got pretty close to breaking in [far right picture] and had he gone from the back wall instead he probably would have succeeded lol XD.

If however, rivals duo instead continued the path they were on, they would actually find that the cell is essentially floating, so the water would seep under and turn some of the lava into cobblestone. (Interestingly, there is existing cobblestone already down here, a detail Sam notices after Techno escapes and finds Dream in the water hole [clip]. If I had to guess, I’d say while setting up that stream in creative they actually broke more blocks to make it more believable, but noticed how it was hollow, so plugged it up but neglected to fix the cobblestone, and instead made up some canon reasons why they hadn’t made more progress [clip] [clip])

Anyways, if they did mine down there, they could break some cobblestone {lime} and do some crawling under the cell. Using the open space down there they’d want to make as much progress towards the back wall as possible before going down under the lava and then digging straight. If they did this method, they would have to break 24 blocks (22 obsidian, 2 cobblestone {lime}) and it’d take them a total of 566 hours or roughly 23 and a half days. (It should be noted though that in this path Dream would be swimming (holding space bar) while mining so he doesn’t drown - I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t cause him to starve, but still would be annoying and realistically rather exhausting.) {diamond blocks are to show which block above would be broken, with diamond ore representing cobblestone - wanted to make sure you can see where the water is}

Course these are what I found to be the most efficient ways, they could of course chose a different direction or break different blocks, increasing their escape time. Additionally, these methods only work as long as Dream is left alone long enough and(or) knows when to crawl back out when they come to not draw suspicion. So to give Dream some credit, Techno is a necessity for this to work at all and he couldn’t have done it before(or after) without risking major problems…