#now that i think of it i don’t think i actually ever finished reading ntt maybe i should persevere just for her

[myriam-draws]

some starfires i’ve drawn a bit over time i miss her (i refuse to read titans 2023)

[stvlti]

2020 Creator Wrap

I was tagged by @irolltwenties to do the 2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works tag! Thank you, lovely (*˘ ε ˘*)

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Before I begin, let me just tag some friends:

@reaperlight @3dnygma @drowthelynes @transdankovsky @fantomn @lawliyeeeet @dressed-to-keehl @setfa @0akdown @reidsnor @clubolive @mermaides

No pressure, but it would be fun if you guys share some of your works this year ( ˘︶˘ ) let’s see those fics and edits and artworks!! Get the clicks and views y’all deserve 💕 💕

And now, onwards to my 2020 Favorite Works List!

I didn’t write nearly as much as some of you guys did. And though I did exceed my goal of putting out 1 fic per month, I don’t have 5 solid ones I’m proud of. So I’ll just list 4 fics here:

01 // Growing Pains

I’ve always been very nervous about reccing this one, because it broaches a topic that I don’t really have a right to claim? I’m not transgender myself, but I simply adore the trans Dick Grayson headcanon so much it singlehandedly brought me back to the DC fandom and restarted my fanfic-writing habit for 2020 😂😂 plus the writing quality isn’t half bad, and I still really like the idea/metaphor this little story started with and grew from. 

Fave moment (besides the obvious):

"Ka-Pow!!" The boy ventriloquised. Lego Robin sailed through the air in his fingers. One stubby, outstretched leg made contact with a Lego henchman, knocking all the surrounding baddies over like bowling pins. "Sorry Mr. Bad Guys, guess it's way past your bedtime too!"

"Good job, Robin." The boy lowered his prepubescent voice and tried to affect Batman's gravelly timbre as much as possible. In his other hand, he walked Lego Batman across the floor of the crime scene. "How about we round them up and leave it for the Commish? It's getting quite late."

"Oh oh! Can I have cookies on the ride back?"

The boy swivelled Lego Batman's grinning face around. "I don't see why not."

Another night out in Lego Gotham City, another day saved by the Dynamic Duo. This called for a celebration indeed. The boy set the pair of heroes down by the Lego Batmobile and reached over to his own plate of Alfred's after-school chocolate chip cookies. He took his sweet time with the last piece, savouring each bite, sighing at the way it melted on his tongue.

02 // Transference 

This is my best-performing fic in terms of the kudos to hits ratio, so I feel validated in being proud of this one :’) It’s a pretty good marker of the distances I’ve covered since getting serious about reading the comic source material end of 2019, as you can see from the much broader and varied cast of characters I focused on for this story. It also definitely cemented - to me, at least - the fact that I can write action scenes. When I went into “Second Chances” (a fem Jay fic) earlier this year, I was so nervous about writing the action sequence there, because I’ve never written a serious action scene up until that point! To me, this fic definitely showcases the growth I’ve experienced as a writer this year ^_^

Fave moment: (CONTAINS SPOILERS, PLEASE READ THE FIC FIRST IF YOU HAVEN’T!)

When the trio return, Ivy takes her place at the meeting table with a severe expression on her face. She chooses her words carefully, when she speaks. "The odds aren't pretty. We just accepted 100 refugees over the weekend, and the Green is still repairing itself after last week's attack."

Rose exchanges a glance with Jason. He gives her hand a reassuring squeeze, though he's not looking any better than she feels.

"But, each and everyone of us stayed behind to defend the Garden, because we all believed in giving a sanctuary for the civilian survivors out there.

"So bring them here. I'll take them in."

No sooner has Ivy finished the sentence, than Zatanna and Constantine have fired up their teleportation portal, and Harley's cheerful "Good luck!" is lost to the mad dash off to the rescue mission. The rest of the Shadowpact scramble after Rose as she launches herself through the portal—

—and slams into Arsenal, pushing him out of the way seconds before a meteoric explosion of green fire incinerates the very spot he'd been standing in.

03 // Paying It Forward

This one is important to me if only for the reason that it’s the first time I’ve written character dialogues that flowed. And I didn’t even need to plan them out meticulously beforehand! Do you know how rare that is for me as an ESL writer? Dialogues have been the bane of my existence since I started writing as a wee teen. Luckily, the Titans TV show has some solid character dynamics for me to fall back on. And from there I started reading NTT era Dick & Donna, and I just fell in love with their friendship. And now, I can turn to this fic as proof I still got it whenever I doubt my abilities as a writer c:

Fave moment:

Dick glanced at her, eyebrows raised. "She ran out on you?"

"No, no, we never really... I don't think it counts as running away if it never led to anything more."

"But you wanted it to be more." Dick paused, taking in Donna's silence, which would've fooled anyone else but him. "You still want it."

"I-- yeah." Donna sighed and held her hands up as if to say you caught me. "I'm... Sorry? For stealing your girl?"

Dick laughed, bemused. "She was never mine. She knew what she wanted, what she needed - and I wasn't in the right place to give her that."

"And you? You think I'm what she needs?"

"Better you than me. You're Donna Troy. Older, smarter, prettier..."

Donna gave him a deadpan stare.

"... And you know who you want to be. She likes that in a partner. I'm still figuring that one out for myself." Dick stretched his arms up and then leaned back into his seat, lacing his fingers behind his head as he stared up into the ceiling.

04 // When I'm down on my knees, you're how I pray

I’m including this one just to showcase I got the range, babey. And honestly, the fact that I was able to write this fic and actually receive positive reviews for it was a surprise to me too!! This was the first time I ever attempted to write a real darkfic with dead dove subject matters, and I managed to nail the emotional manipulation, somehow ;__; It was a real learning experience too, learnt so much about Catholicism just to write about Dick’s guilt issues in an AU setting nobody asked for 🤡

Fave moment: (dead dove warnings apply)

"Not at all, Richard," Roman said. The boy would come to him, eventually. "Now, it's getting late. If that's all, I'll have Jason fetch your room keys. Seven Hail Mary's before bed, and think about everything we've just discussed. Tomorrow we'll do a proper debriefing."

"I... Okay." For a moment, Dick sounded like he had more to say. Instead, Roman heard a muffled sniffle, one that Dick likely tried to disguise with a hand over his mouth. Silly boy.

"Thank you again, Father," Dick said, after a beat.

"All in a day's work, my child." Roman unlatched the door and stepped out of the booth. He nodded at Dick as the younger man ambled out of the booth after him. "Goodnight now, Richard."

As he set off for the living quarters, Dick called out. "Wait!"

Roman turned around, inclining his head.

"Will you stay?" The candlelight chased shadows away from Dick's face, and for one glorious moment, Roman could see the depth of the desperation shining in Dick's blue eyes.

"Guide me through my prayers. Please."

Roman smiled.

-

Oh did you think I was done? 😂 It did say Favourite Works and not just Favourite Fics, so I gotta include this one on the list too:

05 // 2020 Jason Todd Birthday edit

I said Robin Jason deserves better and I meant it! 👏👏 This edit took me 12 hours and 67 layers ‘cause I made a mistake on like my 8th hour into the editing process o__o but it ended up being my most popular serious graphic edit, so it was worth it. I guess! 

I mean the likes to reblog ratio is still fucked but hey, I broke 1k, which is more than I can say for any of my other edits

[thearkhound]

Hideo Kojima x Mamoru Oshi interview (August 8, 1996)

The following interview was translated from the Policenauts Kōshiki Guide published in 1996 by NTT. You can read the original at the following link.

Source: https://archive.org/details/policenauts-official-guide-konami-official-giudes/page/118/mode/2up

At first I thought it was just a detective game from the packaging art

Kojima: How was the game?

Oshii: The truth is that I’ve just finished it last night. I thought I would be in trouble if I didn’t finish the game before meeting you.

Kojima: Were there any parts that gave you trouble?

Oshii: I failed the bomb disposing sequence around 15 times. Cutting the wires gave me trouble. I also didn’t know that you could auto-aim either until the final shooting sequence. Since it was impossible to win due to so many enemies, I was wondering if there was a way to make it easier. (laughs) I also had a bit of stress when I was unable to shoot the final bad guy.

Kojima: Yeah, Ed ends up killing him for you. A part of me wanted to make Policenauts into a sort of buddy cop game, since I was part of the generation that was raised on shows like Starsky & Hutch. As a result, I was always aware of American culture whenever I turned on the TV. Therefore, I wanted to make something like that. Is there any particular game that do you like?

Oshii: I used to like adventure games and played them a lot, so I already knew about Snatcher. Policenauts, which I was able to play for this occasion, has a very clear world building. It felt a bit nostalgic, like the PC games that I used to play.

Kojima: What about buddy cop movies?

Oshii: When you speak of buddy cop movies to someone of my age, really old stuff comes up. It ends up becoming the world of something like The French Connection. 

Kojima: That’s another movie that I like. However, I believe Lethal Weapon is the movie most appropriate for the younger generation to understand what buddy cop movies are. Because that’s what it really is (laughs).

Oshii: Having an astronaut as a protagonist is unusual. Maybe not so much around the time when space exploration started, which around back when I was in grade school, but nowadays astronauts aren’t really that looked up to anymore.

Kojima: Astronauts were really admired in my generation. Even the astronauts that appeared in movies like Planet of the Apes knew things that weren’t usually known. It created the impression that you had to be smart to become an astronaut.

Oshii: The buddy cop genre seems to be really suitable for an adventure game, but it wouldn’t had occurred to me to have the story set it in a space colony.

Kojima: A cylinder-type colony doesn’t have much of a reality to it, does it? Originally I was thinking of setting the game in a torus-type colony or even in a sphere-like colony, but visually for today’s generation [a cylinder-type] is what they recognize as a space colony from a glance. When you think about that, all you see nowadays are Gundam-type space colonies.

Oshii: The cylinder-type colonies that appear in the Gundam franchise are really nostalgic for people like me. The whole thing has that kind of atmosphere. It’s really calming.

Kojima: It seems to be a common trend in games to have the player character replaced during the middle of the story. I usually can’t emphasize with that. But in the case of Policenauts it was very difficult to tell such a subjective story until the end.

Oshii: That’s certainly true for video games. When it comes to simultaneous proceedings, all you can do is watch when you’re shown something that isn’t from the hero’s perspective.

Kojima: Moreover, the original concept was to have no distinction between the movie parts and the gameplay visuals, but due to scheduling issues [it wasn’t feasible].

Oshii: The pre-rendered movies are treated as a single cluster, with no interactivity.

Kojima: That’s right. The pre-rendered movies are just loaded as clusters. As for the text portion, they’re cut into units of sentences while the program checks for flags. There was actually supposed to be a U.S. version made, but a translation wasn’t feasible. We talked about it on three occasions and each time the idea was ultimately abandoned.

Oshii: If the translated sentence is out of alignment, then it ruins the timing of the video. But if you end up forcibly changing the sentence, then it completely changes the meaning of the story. I think it must’ve been pretty difficult to have scenes where there are text messages, but no voice acting.

Kojima: What do you think about the voice actors?

Oshii: Since there were many actors that I recognized, it was easy to get used to them. Hideyuki Tanaka, who plays Jonathan Ingram, actually appeared in one of my movies, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard his voice.

Kojima: With Policenauts I wanted the actors to act as if they were dubbing an American movie, so I picked out people who had experience with movies. When we did the recordings we started with the NEC PC-9821 version. Since there were no video files for that version, we had them act out while we explained their scenes showing cuts of the visuals. The voice recording took quite a while, with the recording for the PC-9821 version in particular lasting six days.

Oshii: That’s quite a while. Did you do the casting yourself?

Kojima: That’s right. On top of that, I wanted to record the dramatic parts with 4 or 5 actors at the same time but such a thing seems to be rarely done in the game industry. If you record the actors one by one in isolation then there won’t be as much tension.

Kojima: What are you plannign to do after Ghost in the Shell?

Oshii: There are many things I want to do, but I want to take a break from animation for a while, since I’m really tired. I really want to do live-action, since it’s fun. But then the problem would be that I wouldn’t be able to eat when I want to.

The moment we decided on making a Saturn version, I was thinking of utilizing the Virtua Gun

Oshii: I still find the old text adventure games to be interesting. Maybe it’s because they stimulate my imagination. But when it comes to games released in this age, I think players expect them to have pictures, sounds and even moving images. Moreover, many recent RPGs and such are filled with mini-games in addition to pursuing a story.

Kojima: In case of Policenauts, if the player gets involved in a minigame, there’s a possibility that they might end up forgetting the plot. That’s why a recap mode was added.

Oshii: It’s pretty interesting to play with the Virtua Gun, whether it’s a main game or a mini-game.

Kojima: I was already thinking of adding Virtua Gun support the moment we decided on a Saturn version. We didn’t have a light gun peripheral until now. However, there are some difficulties with using the gun. It’s not really suitable in places like the moon surface, where it is difficult to keep your aim in one place. It has its pros and its cons.

Oshii: I actually fired real guns on my spare time, but I find the Virtua Gun difficult to use. I can fire a real gun all day long, but I get tired holding a light gun for two hours.

Kojima: I also underwent actual gun training during development. The shooting booth I went to was quite scary. There were no security guards or cameras, and you had to buy your own guns and ammo before bringing them to the booth. I once read a novel about a female FBI agent who hated gun training because of the smell it left on her and I never understood that until I started my own gun training. I realized what it was like when the smell of gunpowder tainted my clothes.

Oshii: Ah, that’s the smoke of the gunpowder. It turns your hands black. I wonder if there will ever be something as interesting as video games again. It’s the ultimate toy for boys. I don’t think there’s ever been such an interesting toy to such an extent. When it comes to video games, what is stimulating about them is the fact it takes you to a completely different world. Or should I say, it’s a completely naked product.

What does it mean to be interesting? Something we must think about once again.

Oshii: I think we’re talking whether it is important for games to have interactivity. Starting from the fact that these two things are different, I wonder if it’s better to go back to something that is simple and fun. I don’t know much about such matters, since I don’t play that many games.

Kojima: I don’t play games that much at home either. I shouldn’t had said that loudly. (laughs)

Oshii: I don’t think there are that many people who play games and couldn’t live without them. A game is a medium where you not only receive information, but send it as well while feeling the engine on the side. With that said, I believe the amount of people who want to be entertained up to that point are very few.

Kojima: I don’t think people who play games were originally common. Game development is also an interactive world. It’s a workflow, and at the same time it isn’t. If anything in the story, events or music becomes twists, then the whole thing will become uninteresting, so you need to excavate the raw elements and then reshape them. The finished product will differ depending how much you adjust it.

Oshii: Normally I work only with movies, but in the end ,whether it’s a game or a movie, it can only harvest either, its worldview or the drama. When it comes to harvesting the worldview, having a kind of promise would better for the story. But when it comes to harvesting the drama, the worldview must be adjusted to a certain degree before it can hold up. I think Policenauts harvested the worldview. If you harvest both, you will certainly fail.

Kojima: I probably picked the worldview without thinking about it. if anything, you are often told about the story because it is an adventure game. When it comes to making a game, it is completely different from writing a novel. We make the contents first, then we add the mini-games and such afterward, and if there is a good scene i come up with, we fit it into the time frame.

Oshii: In the old days there was many easy ways out such as lack of technology, primitive specs or minimal storage space, but now there’s no such excuses. When I started thinking about what makes video games interesting, I was wondering if there was a way to make things like they were in the old days one more time. I think such problems will emerge once 3D and polygons started to emerge. In other words, I think that will be the true place for people who make games.

Interview conducted on August 8, 1996 inside Konami Headquarters in Ebisu.

[stvlti]

Fic Writer Interview

I piped up when @kiseiakhun did theirs so now I gotta pay for my hubris (but also, it's fun! Thanks for going out of your way to re-tag me!)

Name(s): stvlti (tumblr), stultiloquent (ao3)

Fandoms:

Actively writing for: DCU - comics and also related media, by which I mean of course Young Justice the cartoon and somehow also the Titans TV show. I never expected I'd write for a live action TV show series but hey, 2003 Teen Titans were my roots and Titans is a close relative. (Funnily enough I haven't actually seriously written for TT, but it's all about NTT and its derivative works)

Older fandoms on my AO3: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Noragami, Death Note

Where you post: AO3 is where I literally archive all my fics that see the light of day, drabbles and crackfics alike, but sometimes they get posted on Tumblr first (especially if it's to fill a prompt) and then make their way over to AO3 for reposting

Most popular one shot (by kudos):

Overall: "the hands that worship you", which is a pwp because I guess y'all love the porn on AO3!

This year: "if you can't summon your own tentacles, store-bought is fine", which is also a pwp because you horny mofos will always pick porn over anything else welp (thanks for leaving kudos though 🤣 and tbf, this one does have the unfair advantage of being literally the second oldest piece posted this year so it's had more time to amass more kudos than my gen / PG rated fics. proportionately though it's definitely not the one I've gotten the highest kudos to hits ratio on)

Most popular multi-chap (by kudos):

Discounting "if you can't summon your own tentacles" (which is more a two-parter that was written as a one-shot), I don't have an answer for either "Overall" or "This year" for this one because I have in fact only ever written one (1) multichap fic since moving to AO3 (we don't talk about the dark days on Deviantart) and said multichap fic isn't even close to within the top 10 most kudos'd fic on my account. That plus it's an RPF from my teenaged years that I really don't wanna plug on main because I don't want y'all to read that shit (it's RPF, come on)

Favourite story you’ve written so far:

I can't answer for "Overall" (cause I feel like I'd be forgetting and therefore neglecting a portion of the stories I've got in my portfolio over the last 8 years), but for "This year" it is in fact my latest entry, "Transference"! I was quite proud of the comfort zones I tested with that one, I pushed myself to write more than 2 character povs for a single piece (my record had always been 2 but in that fic I was juggling 3 - almost 4 character perspectives), plus it gave me an excuse to play around with narrative structure which is always a Thing I'm nerdy about

Fic you were nervous to post:

Cool cool cool so I'm just gonna expose myself with this one, but it was actually the priest kink fic, "When I'm down on my knees you're how I pray". I wanted to contextualise Dick Grayson's guilt issues in a Catholic context as like a what-if, but I've also never been Catholic, wasn't raised Catholic, and it was somehow important to me that I didn't misrepresent the customs and rituals of Catholicism? Even though just writing the fic itself was already fundamentally disrespectful? Idk my brain works on weird logic.

btw if any of you wanna cancel me for this just block me and move on.

How do you choose your titles?:

The title is either based on the central theme / moral of the story, which will come to me as I write and is usually the case for fics I take more seriously, OR, if it's a ficlet I didn't put as much effort into and/or don't intend to show off, I'll usually pull from lyrics for a one liner that hits the emotional notes I'm going for in the story.

Do you outline?:

Almost always. The only fics I haven't outlined are spur of the moment things, stuff that's very focused on a single instance or thought without much plot or coordination needed.

Complete: 26 25 in total

not counting the ones I deleted or orphaned this year (again this number does not include my Deviantart stash shhhh those didn't happen)

In-progress: uh....3 4?

I'm kinda in between the research and planning stage for 3 different fics atm so idk if it's really in-progress in-progress... Those 3 fics aren't even set in stone, I might abandon them again like I did with one of these 3 (the dark academia au) 5 months ago (that I recently picked back up on the research front)

Yeah I forgot my Sladick fic is a 2-parter that I should probably work on and finish at some point 😬

Coming soon/not yet started: I think it's somewhere between 8 and 11

I just added 2 more to the list after Romin Week prompts dropped /sigh. But I really wanna test my comfort zone again and try writing the wilder stories for a change (it'll be fun though if I get around to it! Hopefully something BOP movieverse shaped if I'm lucky)

Prompts:

Sure, send them my way! I accept prompts, just can't guarantee I'll be able to respond speedily though cause I can't chain my muse to me and also real life happens, a lot

Upcoming work you’re most excited about:

Ooof idk if excited is the right word, try trepidation...I'm scared to mischaracterise our faves...but a BOP movieverse fic is probably going to be real fun! Just hope I can finish the research and writing in time for the event though

No-pressure tags:

See this is the real point of me asking to be tagged and filling this tag, cause I wanna pass it on to my writing mutuals in other fandoms. So @trans-l-lawliet @fantomn @mellonearyou @3dnygma , if you're listening,,,,

Also any other writerly friends or followers reading this and curious to try, please go ahead! Have fun with this!