#your points are still really good tho quibbles aside

[risu5waffles]

Access VerboTEN

i guess if things go totally south wiv the servers, i won't need to worry about figuring out more TEN puns. That sucks.

This one isn't wivout its charm, tho' if i'm to be honest, it's well chonkier than it really has the chops to sustain. i find a lot of levels that are designed to mechanically keep the player moving only really do so smoothly if the player manages to be in just the right spot, at just the right time, hitting things at just the right angles. Wibble off course a couple degrees, and you wind up wiv a lot of bouncepads throwing you exactly where you don't need to be; and since you've lost the expected momentum for that bit, it's hard to force your way back into the flow of things.

As an aside, but the Jon Burgerman sticker set gets a lot of play in this one, and it's cute and everything, but i always found the characters to be a little too of themselves to really work in my creations. But the side to that is, was Jon Burgerman a thing, for a bit? Did people know (of) him? i just picked up the sticker set because for a bit i was picking up every DLC that came down the pike and was cheap enough, but i sometimes get the feeling that there are cultural referents that i'm supposed to get, but i don't, because i've been here for 20yrs, and may as well be in null space.

Just a little lockbox from @soupum . It's cute enough, and the opening cinematic works nicely, but it's here to do a job in the end, and it gets that job done. i really liked Soup putting his character in an action figure pack, and reminds me way back in the day, one of my title cards had the show characters as plushies at a festival.

Geeze... according to the notes, the title card was for Season 2 Episode 49, which went live November 9th, 2018. Going in the wayback a bit there.

i really, really liked this one. i'll always appreciate 100% cardboard levels, that can manage to pull off a high degree of detail and character using just the cardboard. Like, no stickers or anything. This one pulls off the trick really nicely, getting a lot of texture out of thin layer objects. There are a few lights in there to give things a bit of a pop, but they're used well enough and sparingly enough, that i can't really dock too many points.

On top of the presentation, this is just a clever, fun level. There's lots of mechanical bits and interactions wiv the environment. It's a touch challenging, but nothing that would stress a player out too much. i'm really, really glad i stumbled over this one.

This one is honestly super good, and i just wish i hadn't played it so badly, 'cause you can see it's designed to be done in one pell-mell run. i remember playing through so many times trying to get one smooth run for the Archive, and, you can see, the precision isn't really my strong point, but i still dig what's being laid down. The core mechanical conceit is really nifty, and it would have been interesting to see it worked into other platformers.

If i have a quibble, it's that the level looks so dang drab. Like, i recognize that the looks aren't really the point, but the grey-ish stone platforms and the grey background just bleed into one another. Just a little bit more colour contrast would have been really appreciated.

i'm still surprised people liked this one as well as they did. i mean, i put a lot of effort into it, and i think it's good work, but at the end of the day, it's just a little moving scene.

You have no idea how much i would love to take a long trainride anywhere wiv my friends. The curse of building an online community is i will just never have the chance to see most of the people i care about in the flesh and tell them just how important they are to me.

If you had any idea how much i fucking fiddled getting the new title card layouts to look just right... well, you'd probably laugh, and rightly so, but it took a lot of work for something that's barely noticeable. If the servers do get shuttered, and i only got the chance to show them for 25episodes (and a handful of LittleBite-sizedPlanet ones), i'm going to be pretty. darn. salty.

i don't really know what else to say about chronos453's Chapter Zero, i feel like an (almost) hour-long dive into it has left me pretty well tapped. Episode 0.1 is such a good start to the Adventure, tho'. Jumping is such a fundamental aspect of navigation, the cleverness of the level design becomes rapidly apparent. The material choices and decoration are just chef's kiss as well.

Episode 0.2 is a bit of a stepdown, although i think almost anything would have been. Swimming is just such a "kind of there" ability to work wiv. Also, while i've eventually come around on the warped wood material here, the wider camera just doesn't flatter it much at all.

Presentation-wise, we're back in the saddle again wiv 0.3. The desert area up front just looks gorgeous, and i think is a fantastic example of how the extra layers LBP3 gave us should be used. The sky islands in the second half are complete catnip (squirrelnip?) to me. i've just always had a soft spot for them.

Gameplay-wise, the level is a lot of fun, even if the climbing mechanic is... i mean, it's fine, but it's only kinda-sorta a basic ability. i mean, it is a basic ability for LBP3, but it muddies the waters a bit as to when exactly this level is taking place in regards to the series.

Revelation and End of the Line are so, so good. i know chronos complains some about the look of Revelation, but... it still makes me a bit teary, so he got something right.

Shame about Departure being a bit pants, but no engine fires on every cylinder every time, i guess.

Oh my gosh, but do i love the environment in this one. Those conveyor belt dealies breaking apart as you wear down the Adversary Zone? It is such a cool little effect. chronos said he wishes he'd made the "boss" sections a bit more active, or more precisely interactive, and i get it, but i think what we've got here is more than engaging enough for the effect he's aiming for.

-------------------------------------------------------------

And that's another TENspot down. Just two more of these. Maybe? As far as i know, there hasn't been any word from Sumo on how the maintenance is going, but that doesn't surprise me any. While i do appreciate the work they've done keeping the lights on, and i recognize it's not an easy task wiv what is likely a skeleton crew, Sumo has, frankly, always been for shite when it's come to communication wiv the LBP community. They're probably too busy trying to figure out how to wring a little more blood from the stone that is Texas Chainsaw.

[spockandawe]

Well, this is interesting! So, in that post yesterday, there was one line that really baffled me, a thing about people brushing off a character as an asshole “because he shows literally zero growth.” I kind of set that aside because it was such a weird non-sequitur, and guessed that it was just someone’s sentences not quite keeping up with their train of thought, which has happened to me many times. Apparently I was wrong! I already spent long enough on that one post, I’m tired of talking about that, but this is new and interesting. 

Okay. I kind of wanted to see if I could talk about this purely in terms of abstracts and not characters, but I don’t think it’ll work. It would be frustrating to write and confusing to read. It’s about Jiang Cheng. Right up front: This isn’t about whether or not he’s an abuser. Frankly, I don’t think it’s relevant. This also isn’t about telling people they should like him. I don't care whether anyone else likes him or not. But I do like him, and I am always fascinated by dissecting the reasons that people disagree with me. And the process of Telling Stories is my oldest hyperfixation I remember, which will become relevant in a minute.

I thought I had a good grasp on this one, you know? Jiang Cheng makes it pretty obvious why people would dislike Jiang Cheng. But then the posts I keep stumbling over were making weird points, culminating in that “literally zero growth” line.

So! What happened is that someone wrote up a post about how Jiang Cheng’s character arc isn’t an arc, it’s stagnation. It’s a pretty interesting read, and I broadly agree with the larger point! The points where I would quibble are like... the idea that it’s absolute stagnation, as opposed to very subtle shifts that still make a material difference. But still, cool! The post was also offered up as a reason why OP was uninterested in writing any more Jiang Cheng meta, which I totally get. I’m not tired of him yet, but I definitely understand why someone who isn’t a fan of his would get tired about writing about a character with a very static arc. Okay!

Now, internet forensics are hard. I desperately wish I had more information about this evolution, because I find this stuff fascinating, but I have no good way to find things said in untagged posts, reblogs, or private/external venues. But as far as I can tell, that “literally zero growth” wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, it’s become fashionable for people to say that Jiang Cheng is an abusive asshole (that it’s fucked up to like) because he doesn’t have a character arc.

Asshole? Yes. Abusive? This post still isn’t about that. This is about it being fucked up to like this character because he did bad things and had a static character arc.

At first, that point of view was still deeply confusing to me. But I think I figured out the idea at the core of it, and now I’m only baffled. I’m not super interested in confirming this directly, because the people making the most noise about this have not inspired confidence in their ability to hold a civil conversation and I’m a socially anxious binch, but I think the idea is: ‘This character did Bad Things, and then did not improve himself.’

Which is alarmingly adjacent to that old favorite standard of ‘This piece of fiction is glorifying Bad Thing.’ I haven’t seen anyone accusing mxtx of something something jiang cheng, only the people who read/watched/heard the story and became invested in the Jiang Cheng character, but things kind of add up, you know?

Like I said, I don’t want to arbitrate anyone’s right to like/dislike Jiang Cheng. That’s such a fucking waste of time. But this is fascinating to me, because it’s like..... so obviously new and sudden, with such a clear originating point. I can’t speak to the Chinese fans, obviously, but exiledrebels started translating in... what, 2017? And only now, in 2021, do people start putting forth Jiang Cheng’s flat character arc as a “reason” that he’s bad? I’m not going to argue if he pings you in the abuse place, I’m not a dick. I’m not going to argue if you just dislike his vibes. I’m just over here on my blog and in the tag enjoying myself, feel free to detour around me. But oh my god, it’s so silly to try to tell other people that they shouldn’t like him because he has a static character arc.

I want to talk about stories. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to say, because it’s impossible to make broad, sweeping statements, because there are stories about change, there are stories about lack of change, there are all kinds of media that can be used to tell stories, and standards for how stories are told and what they emphasize vary across cultures and over time. But I think that what I can say is that telling a story requires... compromise. It requires streamlining. Trying to capture all the detail of life would slow down most stories to an unbearable degree. Consider organically telling someone ‘I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich’ versus the computer science exercise of having students describe, step by step, how to make one (spread peanut butter? but you never said you opened the lid)

Hell, I’ve got an example in mdzs itself. The largely-faceless masses of the common people. If someone asks you to think about it critically like, yes, obviously these are people, living their own lives, with their own desires, sometimes suffering and dying in the wake of the novel plot. But does the story give weight to those deaths? Or does it just gloss by? Yes, it references their suffering occasionally, but it is not the focus, and it would slow the story unbearably to give equal weight to each dead person mentioned. 

Does Wei Wuxian’s massacre get given the same slow, careful consideration as Su She’s, or Jin Guangyao’s? No, because taking the time to weigh our protagonist with ‘well, this one was a mother, and her youngest son had just started walking, but now he’s going to grow up without remembering her face. that one only became an adult a few months ago, he still hasn’t been on many night-hunts yet, but he finds it so rewarding to protect the common people. oh, and this one had just gotten engaged, but don’t worry, his fiancee won’t mourn him, because she died here as well.’ And continuing on that way to some large number under 3000? No! Unless your goal is to make the reader feel bad for cheering for a morally grey hero, that would be a bad authorial decision! The book doesn’t ignore the issue, it comes up, Wei Wuxian gets called out about all the deaths he’s responsible for, but that’s not the same as them being given equal emotional weight to one (1) secondary character, and I don’t love this new thing where people are pretending that’s equivalent.

When Wei Wuxian brutally kills every person at the Wen supervisory office, are you like ‘holy shit... so many grieving families D:’ or are you somewhere between vindicated satisfaction and an ‘ooh, yikes’ wince? Odds are good you’re somewhere in the satisfaction/wince camp, because that’s what the story sets you up to feel, because the story has to emphasize its priorities (priorities vary, but ‘plot’ and ‘protagonist’ are common ones, especially for a casual novel read like this)

Now, characters. If you want to write a story with a sweeping, epic scale, or if you want to tightly constrain the number of people your story is about, I guess it’s possible to give everyone involved a meaningful character arc. Now.... is it always necessary? Is it always possible? Does it always make sense? No, of course not. If you want to do that, you have to devote real estate to it, and depending on the story you want to tell, it could very possibly be a distraction from your main point, like the idea of mxtx tenderly eulogizing every single character who dies even incidentally. Lan Qiren doesn’t get a loving examination of his feelings re: his nephews and wei wuxian and political turnover in the cultivation world because it’s not relevant, and also, because his position is pretty static until right near the end of the story. Lan Xichen is arguably one of the most static characters within the book, he seems like the same nice young between Gusu and the present, right up until... just before the end of the story.

You may see where I’m heading with this.

Like, just imagine trying to demand that every important character needs to go through a major life change before the end of your book or else it didn’t count. This just in, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg go through multiple novels without experiencing radical shifts in who they are, stop liking them immediately. I do get that the idea is that Jiang Cheng was a ~bad person~ who didn’t change, but asdgfsd I thought we were over the handwringing over people being allowed to like ““bad”” fictional characters. The man isn’t even a canonical serial killer, he’s not my most problematic fave even within this novel.

And here is where it’s a little more relevant that I would quibble with that original post about Jiang Cheng’s arc. He’s consistently a mean girl, but he goes from stressed, sharp-edged teenager, to grief-stricken, almost-destroyed teen, to grim, cold young adult (and then detours into grim, cold, and grief-stricken until grief dulls with time). He does become an attentive uncle tho. He..... doesn’t experience a radical change in his sense of self, which... it’s...... not all that strange for an adult. And bam, then he DOES experience a radical change, but the needs of the plot dictate that it’s right near the end. And he’s not the focus of the story, baby, wangxian is. He has the last few lines of the story, which nicely communicate his changes to me, but also asdfafas we’re out of story. He was never the main character, it’s not surprising we don’t linger! The extras aren’t beholden to the needs of plot, but they’re also about whatever mxtx wanted to write, and I guess she didn’t feel like writing about Jiang Cheng ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But also. Taking a step backward. Stable characters can fill a perfectly logical place in a story. Like, look at Leia Organa. I’m not saying she has no arc, but I am saying that she’s a solid point of reference as Luke is becoming a jedi and Han is adjusting his perspective. I wouldn’t call her stagnant, the vibes are wrong, but she also isn’t miserable in her sadness swamp, the way Jiang Cheng is.

Or, hell, look at tgcf. The stagnant, frozen nature of the big bad is a central feature of the story. The bwx of now is the bwx of 800 years ago is the bwx of 1500+ years ago. This is not the place for a meta on how that was bad for those around him and for him himself, but I have Thoughts about how being defeated at the end is both a thing that hurts him and relieves him. Mei Nianqing is a sympathetic character who’s also pretty darn static. Does Ling Wen have a character arc, or do we just learn more about who she already is and what her priorities always were? I’m going to cut myself off here, but a character’s delta between the beginning of a story and the end of a story is a reasonable way to judge how interesting writing character meta is, and is a very silly metric to judge their worth, and even if I guessed at what the basic logic is, for this character, I am still baffled that it’s being put forth as a real talking point.

(also, has it jumped ship to any other characters yet? have people started applying it in other fandoms as well? please let me know if this is the case, I am wildly curious)

(no, but really, if anyone is arguing that bwx is gross specifically because he had centuries to self-reflect and didn’t fix himself, i am desperate to know)

And finally. The thing I thought was most self-evident. Did I post about this sometime recently? If a non-central character experiences a life-altering paradigm shift right near the end of the story (without it being lingered over, because non-central character), oh my god. As a fic writer? IT’S FREE REAL ESTATE. This is the most fertile possible ground. If I want to write post-canon canon-compliant material, adsgasfasd that’s where I’m going to be looking. Okay, yeah, the main couple is happy, that’s good. Who isn’t happy, and what can I do about that? Happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, etc.

It’s not everyone’s favorite playground, but come on, these are not uncommon feelings. And frankly, it’s starting to feel a little disingenuous when people act like fan authors pick out the most blameless angel from the cast and lavish good things upon them. I’m not the only one who goes looking for a good dumpster fire and says I Live Here Now. If I write post-canon tgcf fic, it’s very likely to focus on beef and/or leaf. I have written more than one au focusing on tianlang-jun.

And, hilariously. If the problem with Jiang Cheng. Is that he is a toxic man fictional character who failed to grow on his own, and is either unsafe or unhealthy to be around. If the problem is that he did not experience a character arc. If these people would be totally fine with other people liking him, if he improved himself as a person. And then, if authors want to put in the (free! time-consuming!) work of writing that character development themselves. You would think that they would be lauded for putting the character through healthier sorts of personal growth than he experienced in canon. Instead, I am still here writing this because first, I was bothered by these authors being named as “freaks” who are obsessed with their ‘uwu precious tsundere baby’ with a “love language of violence,” and then I was graciously informed that people hate Jiang Cheng because he experiences no character growth.

[livefromphilly]

Panasonic Lumix GX7 Thoughts After 10 Days

PROS:

It's a small and light system. While the body isn't that much smaller than other interchangeable lens cameras I've owned like the Sony A6500, the compact lenses make a huge difference. I can fit the body, two lenses that cover 24mm-300mm, a 50mm equivalent prime, and have room to spare in my smallest camera bag. 

The autofocus seems reasonably quick and pretty ok at things that don't involve tracking. 

It's very usable for not having a joystick. Although it's a 2013 camera it's touch screen interface is much better than my much newer A7III (to say nothing of the 2015 A7RII that didn't even have a touch screen). Aside from just being able to change the focus point with the touch screen you can also use it to navigate the menus (neither the Sony nor my Fuji can do that) as well as swipe through photos and pinch to zoom (my Fuji can also, my Sony cannot). 

It also has built in wifi and a very usable camera app; another nice surprise for such an old body. Sending photos from the camera to my phone is a lot more reliable with Panasonic's app than Fuji's. 

The flash sync speed is 1/320, which is the highest in any camera I've owned that didn't use a leaf shutter. 

Focus peaking works really well on this. Maybe because of the smaller sensor and deeper depth of field, but it's nice to just see what's in focus quickly and know you got it without having to double check. 

It was cheap! I was thinking about getting a zoom lens like the Sigma 100-400 or a compact zoom camera like a Sony RX100VII for a while now because I've been enjoying using my 24-105 but wanted a little more reach for some things. This camera with the 45-150 (90-300mm equivalent) solves that issue for less than half the price of any other option I considered. 

It's stylish! While not quite up to the X100V, the two tone black and silver look is still dope on this body. 

It has a tilting EVF. It's weird because it also has a tilt screen but I guess it could be useful in some scenarios I dunno. 

CONS:

Small and old sensor means that high ISO performance is a bit on the rough side. It's somewhere between modern APS-C sensors and modern 1" sensors and it performs closer to the former than the later. That said, it's usable if you're careful with it and don't try to shoot it like it's a full frame camera. 

The eye sensor can sometimes get tricked into turning the EVF on and the screen off when you're shooting waist-level. I like my more modern cameras that can tell when you have the tilt screen tilted. That said, there's a button right next to the EVF that switches it instantly when it does screw up and the EVF can't til up so it won't screw up. 

It has a built in stabilization, but I don't think it's quite as good as my Sony's. An even more minor quibble: it lets you dial in focal lengths for adapted lenses or manual focus glass, but the one manual focus lens I got is 25mm and there's no setting for that (which is weird considering 25mm is a standard nifty fifty in this format). Something is better than nothing I guess. 

No usb charging. That wasn't really a common thing in 2013, but it still kinda stinks. 

Poor(ish) battery life. Thankfully the batteries are small and cheap enough that this isn't a huge deal. 

Unless you're shooting in manual you don't get a proper preview of the exposure (ie it looks well lit even if you have exposure comp dialed in to the extremes). I've taken to just shooting in manual to avoid this issue. It’s a real head scratcher, tho.

Overall this camera is pleasantly surprising considering it’s age and price. I paid $270 for it with the kit lens but used body-only setups can be even cheaper. Of course if you’re in the market for one of these and you plan to use it as your only camera, the newer Panasonic GX85 has better autofocus and stabilization for only $600 with the 12-32 and 45-150. I saved about $260 getting a used older model with the same lenses but for some people buying new might be a better move. 

The two Panasonic lenses seem decently sharp, but the size is the real draw for both. The 12-32 collapses in on itself to the height of maybe two Oreos so the footprint of the GX7 with that attached is absolutely tiny. The 45-150, while considerably larger, is still very small for what it is. The barrel extends as you zoom but even pushed out all the way it’s still smaller than a can of PBR. I also got the 7Artisans 25mm f/1.8 which is an absolutely fantastic lens for the $70 they cost new. While it’s not going to impress many people in terms of corner to corner sharpness, it’s sharp enough in the middle and focuses ridiculously close to your subjects. It’s also a fair small lens and sits in the middle of the other two in length and weight. 

I guess the elephant in the room for people considering cameras like this is the state of micro four thirds as a system. Olympus recently sold their camera business to a company called JIP that isn’t known for doing big things with the brands they inherit (they turned Sony VAIO computers into a junk brand basically). Panasonic is the other big name in M43rds and it seems like their focus has been on their full frame cameras as of late since they’re more profitable in a declining market. While this isn’t great news for the long term if you’re picking it as your primary system, for people already invested in other systems that want something cheap and small with a nice selection of lenses, it can be really appealing. 

My plan is to stick to buying several year old used stuff for any of my micro four thirds purchases, but I think I’m set for the time being with the three lenses I currently own. 

SAMPLE PHOTOS: 

7Artisans 25mm f/1.8 | 1/160 sec, ISO 1600

7Artisans 25mm f/1.8 | 1/125 sec, ISO 1600

Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 45-150mm f/4-f/5.6 @ 45mm | 1/2000 sec, ISO 400, f/7.1

Panasonic 12-32mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 ASPH MEGA O.I.S. Lumix G Vario @ 15mm | 1/250 sec, ISO 400, f/3.7

Panasonic 12-32mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 ASPH MEGA O.I.S. Lumix G Vario @ 17mm | 1/160 sec, ISO 400, f/4.1

Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 45-150mm f/4-f/5.6 @ 93mm | 1/2500 sec, ISO 200, f/5.4

Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 45-150mm f/4-f/5.6 @ 45mm | 1/80 sec, ISO 200, f/5.6

Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 45-150mm f/4-f/5.6 @ 53mm | 1/320 sec, ISO 200, f/5.6

Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 45-150mm f/4-f/5.6 @ 80mm | 1/1250 sec, ISO 400, f/5.1

Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 45-150mm f/4-f/5.6 @ 45mm | 1/500 sec, ISO 200, f/5.6

Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 45-150mm f/4-f/5.6 @ 45mm | 1/125 sec, ISO 1250, f/5.6