racke7

[racke7]

Buckled, bought an extra retainer.

Hit Stormblood. Arrived at and unlocked flight in the Doman-maps within a single day.

All crafting-classes and all gather-classes are now 70+, and are equipped with the highest-tier scrip-gear. (I've also bought a bunch of the gathering-books.)

I still need to buy one more set of scrip-gear for my retainers so that they can keep up, but the old one isn't at 70 yet, and the new one is still <50, so it's not a priority.

[racke7]

Probably the single hardest lesson for me to internalize in writing was that you don’t design a character you design a character arc.

One reason you as a writer might end up stuck with a flat or boring character, or one that just isn’t doing the things you need to create a vibrant plot, despite working out all the details of their life for hours, is because you’ve made the mistake I always do. You’ve made a character who is a blend of all the characteristics you envision for them, rather than saving some characteristics for the end of their journey. 

What do I mean by this? Maybe you envision a character who is a handsome prince, honest, brave, and true. In your plot, though, he’s going to be an antagonist for a bit but you don’t really want him to be seen as a bad guy, necessarily. But when you drop him into your story, he’s just… there. Being honest, brave, and true. 

That’s because the prince has no character arc. He is a static figure, a cardboard cutout. 

Let’s go a little deeper with a great example of one of the best character arcs in YA animation: Prince Zuko. He is, objectively, honest, brave, and true (to his cause of finding the Avatar) from the outset. But he’s also a dick. He’s a privileged, imperialist brat, who is rude to his uncle and vicious to our protagonists. 

By the end of the series, though, Prince Zuko is still honest, brave, and true, but he’s also a good person who has learned many lessons over the course of his trials and obstacles. He has failed over and over again at his initial goal of capturing the Avatar. He has failed at winning his father’s regard. He has failed at numerous smaller goals of day to day adventures. He has learned from all of these. We have seen his journey. But, if you started your vision of how to write Zuko from who he ends up being, he’s got nowhere to go as a character. 

It’s not just about what flaws he has corrected though. It’s about what lessons about life he has internalized. What flawed views of the world he has corrected and how. 

Rather than saying, “The character starts out a dick and learns to be nice,” be more specific. “This character starts out believing the empire he is loyal to is morally in the right for its conquests, but over the course of working for that empire’s ruler and seeing his cruelty first hand, not to mention fighting the empire’s enemies and mingling with its civilian victims, he becomes a better person and learns the error of his ways.” 

Already, right there, you have more than a cardboard character. You have a character who has an arc that molds to your plot. 

[racke7]

horror timeloop game where an entire group gets timelooped and have to work together to break out but realize in horror after a really good loop that one of them no longer remembers any of the progress made and now does the same thing every loop. they have to get out individually. they cant escape together. making progress means reducing the amount of people you have with you

[racke7]

DC x DP: Adult Sam is in a business meeting with Lex Luthor. They both start subtly flexing on each other with super technology/ghost stuff/magic to improve their position. Then less subtly.

Sam tried not to roll her eyes at Luthor. Next to her, was Valerie and Wes, who both had their notes open and were clearly in some silent conversation that she wanted to be apart of, but couldn’t because she couldn’t take her focus away from Luthor.

“And this is a kryptonite-powered nuclear generator, capable of powering this city alone for months. I’m sure you haven’t seen anything like this, so I’ll allow you to have a better look.”

Sam’s eye twitched and she sat up in her seat, smiling sickly sweet. She could hear Wes and Valerie stifling their giggles as she gestured to them and said, “I assure you, Mr. Luthor, I have seen plenty of these. I have something better.”

Valerie brought out their own generator that Tucker had created, and Sam said, “This is a power generator created by one of my executives. It powers itself on saltwater and is capable of powering several cities at once. For years.” She emphasized the “years” and pushed it towards Luthor, repeating his words, “I’ll allow you to take a look since you probably haven’t seen this before.”

Luthor was clearly fuming as Mercy, his bodyguard, looked over the generator for any booby traps and then allowed Luthor closer to it. He clearly looked interested but was trying hard to look smart and not desperate, so he held himself back.

“This is… adequate. Who created this, you said?”

“One of my executives. He owns a share of the company too.”

Luthor snorted coldly, clearly forming some sort of plan to find out Tucker’s name and recruit him. Sam knew all about his dirty deeds thanks to Wes’ help in investigation and detective work.

“Somebody get some water,” he ordered.

Sam gestured to Wes to pour them some water before anybody else and Wes stood up to do so, a smirk flitting over his face.

He poured them all cups of water, with only Luthor’s swimming to the brim, almost spilling. Luthor eyed it in disdain, unable to pick it up or it’d spill.

Sam looked at Wes with a chiding look. “You know, you’re not supposed to fill it up so much. You’re supposed to keep an inch off of the top.” She turned to look at Luthor up and down mockingly. “But of course, two inches would be big enough for some people too.”

Valerie snorted loudly and then Lex Luthor stood up, his face reddening from rage.

All pandemonium then broke loose as a screaming match soon erupted. Although Sam was exhausted by the end of it, she looked at Wes and Valerie hopefully as they hurried out of the office with Luthor behind them, waving a fist and shouting.

“Got the evidence?”

Wes wiggled his pen and Valerie adjusted her glasses, all tools created by Tucker and Wes to record and take information and data.

“Yep! Operation Destroy the Baldie is a go!”

[racke7]

Why the fuck are extra-retainers a subscription?

[racke7]

Huh. So I added a shortcut for "teleport" and opened-closed that screen a few times? And then it was back to working as normal? Weird.

EDIT: Nevermind. It now seems to ONLY work when I manually open the map. As in, I don't click on a quest/object to see where I need to go and then click on the aetheryte next to it. I have to manually open the map, zoom out, zoom in on the area, and THEN ctrl works.

Not sure if it was something Dalamud was doing, or if I fucked with some setting that I shouldn't have, or if the base-game has changed it now, but pressing CTRL on the map no longer seems to make the aetherytes "pop up" relative to the other icons.

[racke7]

from this post^ tried to reblog but it didnt work :/

[racke7]

Not sure if it was something Dalamud was doing, or if I fucked with some setting that I shouldn't have, or if the base-game has changed it now, but pressing CTRL on the map no longer seems to make the aetherytes "pop up" relative to the other icons.

[racke7]

Saw a bunch of "hear me out"-posts and started thinking if I had anything to add to the conversation, and... hmm...

Unfortunately, I'm very anime-pilled, in the sense that I don't really interact with a lot of media that isn't in some way based on anime. And anime is usually very conformative to standard beauty-norms, so...

Oh, Bloodborne has some interesting characters. But Lady Maria isn't much of a "hear me out".

I suppose there's Mergo's Wet Nurse? I like them.

Laurence is very visually interesting, but he's kind of boring except for how he's spewing magma everywhere, and at that point you can just fuck Arcanine (pokemon).

Actually. Good point. I'm adding Arcanine to this list. Warm and friendly and big fire-doggo who can consent and is both terrifying and loyal. Fair enough.

Started thinking about what other non-anime stuff I've played, and suddenly remembered that Disgaea has the monster-classes. And... they're either conventionally attractive (fox-girl, pixie, etc) or they just kind of suck.

Could maybe include prinnies? They suck, but you get to push them down the stairs and they won't even bother filing a complaint against you? Not really into that scene myself, but I feel like they definitely have an appeal.

Oh. Actually. The Kyuubi from the Shippuuden Orochimaru-fight? The one where his face cracks in half and he swallows a WMD? I'm adding that one on this list. He's a violent rage-monster constantly being flayed alive, and capable of leveling mountains. Also kind of cute?

Wait. If I can get that picky about this, can I pick a concept? Can I pick "UBW, the reality marble"? I feel like there's a certain level of sexy hellishness in being trapped inside of that eternal landscape.

So. That's my "hear me out"-list? A lot of uncertainties here, but I feel like that goes without saying in my case, anime-pilled that I am.

[racke7]

been thinking about reborn au & itatori. surprisingly wholesome and supportive. also the most insufferable couple to possibly have at your event. perhaps the moment the public realizes they're together is not holding hands in public. perhaps it is simply saying something mildly incorrect and having them close rank on you

[racke7]

FF14 free-trial outfits

So, because you can't open the "free trial"-version of the game after having bought it (since that downloads a full-version that overwrites the installation), I used my laptop.

As in, my laptop that lags on the intro-screen.

This... kind of worked. But it was easily the most cursed thing I've done all week.

Basically, I was trying to take screenshots of all of my various "settled-on outfits", both for personal inspiration and to maybe brag a bit.

As I should've probably expected though, everything was completely out-of-whack. As in, I didn't even have my gearsets saved? So I had to resort to equipping a weapon, and then use the "recommended gear"-button to use the glamoured armor.

It was lagging so fucking bad that even this much was basically impossible to do and took me well over half-an-hour.

That said, the results of my labor:

Tank:

Healer:

Caster:

Ranged-DPS:

Dragoon:

Ninja:

Gatherers:

Crafters:

Monk:

... Yeah. It wouldn't load at all for some reason. This is the kind of shit I had to deal with.

On a less ultra-cursed level, I did find some old screenshots too:

DRG:

WHM:

An actual MNK-picture:

NIN:

DRG:

Different Tank:

WHM:

WHM:

DRK:

BRD:

WHM too embarrassing to actually wear:

Aaaand that's about it. I think I have a few more somewhere, but they're all mostly just variants of some of these.

[racke7]

Wow. They really did revamp some dungeons, didn't they?

Played through Halatali and:

Old first boss:

Used to be "go in and hit it".

No real attacks or AOEs.

There were a bunch of sprites that would spawn, but they didn't do enough damage to worry about.

Only difficult part was convincing new players to just focus down the boss so it didn't take too long (it was boring).

Would spawn next to a bonfire -> The bonfire would then teleport you to the next area (people would get lost sometimes).

New first boss:

No sprites.

New AOE-attacks that will force you to move.

Actual damage-attacks (I needed to heal several times).

Spawns at the center of the room, and turns into the teleportation-bonfire after you kill it (I can only imagine that will make it easier for new players).

Old second boss:

Hit it -> Get out of the water -> Kill sprites until the boss stops being invulnerable -> Hit it some more.

Don't bother trying to kite the boss out of the water -> It will return to the water twice, no matter what you do.

New second boss:

Hit it -> Get out of the water (massive water-AOE, possibly an insta-kill?) -> Hit it some more

It might be possible to kite it out of the water entirely? (They seem to have fixed the railing so that there aren't any holes for it to jump back down into the water from)

Old final boss:

Hit it -> It will suddenly become immune to damage -> Hit the specific fire-sprite (to cancel the invulnerability) and ignore the others (they don't do enough damage).

This will happen twice, and then the boss gets a damage-up and you hit it until it dies.

Basically just a nuisance for anyone uncertain about the timing for the Limit-Beak.

New final boss:

Hit it -> It will start using an invulnerability-skill -> You have to kill all of the sprites until the special sprites spawn -> Killing the special sprites removes the invulnerability

Like. This is actually really cool to see. All three bosses have distinct identities, and there seems to be actual strategies (instead of "annoying mechanics") involved in dealing with them.

[racke7]

It also changed my animations (it was hell trying to see through everyone's attacks) and sound-settings? So I had to manually go in and enable alert-sounds when tabbed out?

[racke7]

Briefly got a cramp in my side.

[racke7]

Okay. So I think I figured out how this happened.

I made a Free-Trial account.

I installed a neat plugin that let me transfer settings to new characters.

When I bought the game, I had to make a new account (for reasons).

Upon starting the game, I had the same dalamud-settings as before, and so also the same plugins.

Since this meant that my settings transferred, I assumed that the plugin had told the game that I wanted it "like that".

In actuality, the plugin likely stored the setting in its own file-system.

When this plugin wasn't active, the game immediately reverted back to "default".

In order to prevent this from happening with future patches, and to make the game at all playable, I realized that I'd need to make all of those changes regardless of if dalamud comes back online tomorrow or next week.

So I sat down and did all of the crafters, and the gatherers, and PLD+DRK+SCH+AST+DRG+NIN+MCH+BLM+SMN.

And then I also did everything in PVP. (Which was easier, since there are a lot less skills to move around, but still very annoying.)

From this work, a few things became clear to me:

DRG has like... no skills. (And that's not necessarily a bad thing.)

NIN has about ten more skills than it needs to. Holy shit.

MCH always feels like playing piano, but there aren't actually that many skills. You just have to press a lot of buttons very quickly.

BRD is... weirdly insistent on me wasting a lot of time on putting DoTs on everything.

SMN is all about pressing the same button and having fifteen different things happen.

SCH has way too many fucking skills and also no fucking emergency-heals. (No wonder it stresses me out so much)

PLD has some weird dmg-skills later on, but most of its actual tank-skills are about protecting others instead of surviving nukes, which makes it awkward to design a "this button does the same thing across multiple jobs"-system around it (because nobody else fucking does it like that).

AST is genuinely really easy to understand, it just requires four different hotbars. But you probably won't use most of those skills anyway so it's fiiiine. Probably.

On a vaguely related note to MCH. Either I'm very good at playing it (unlikely) or there's something very weird happening with damage-aggro, because MCH is a ranged-DPS (and so is supposed to lose in singular-dmg-output to basically any melee-DPS), and yet I'm consistently seeing myself as "nr 2" on aggro.

Is MCH just bullshit-good at DPS? Does something very strange happen to MCH compared to other classes around lvl 50? Am I only managing to "stay nr 2" because I glance at it mid massive-combo? Am I actually a god amongst mortals?

On a different amusing note, it's actually possible to do some things with combat-macros.

For example, BRD has two skills tied to two "unlockable" skills, and you always want to use those unlockable skills if you can. So you just design a macro like:

/ac "Straight Shot" /ac "Heavy Shot"

and it will just... work. It can only use one of these skills because of how the macro-system works in-game, meaning that it picks "the first one" that it's able to use. So you put the unlockable skill highest, and presto, one button for two actions.

BRD is however something of a blatant outlier in this, but a while back I sat down to experiment and... there are a few other things.

You remember those "dmg mitigation"-skills that tanks are riddled with? Well, excluding a few specifically unique ones, you can just put them in a macro that will do the same thing.

And because the macro can only pick one skill to use? It will pick the first one that's off cooldown. So you just set up the longest cooldown highest, and you're good to go.

(I didn't end up actually doing this, because I don't entirely trust it. In no small part because I want to be able to easily see the cooldowns.)

I ended up also trying to see if I could use this to make an insta-rez macro, where I just double-click on it to first activate the Swiftcast and then (because that puts it on cooldown) activate the rez. But this proved... weirdly inconsistent? Dunno why. Except maybe I'm very fast at double-clicking, and the macro couldn't keep up?

So. For some fucking reason, all of my hotbars and hotkeys and macros and HUD-layout?

They're saved on dalamud somehow.

Base game? Pure default. All of it.

[racke7]

So. For some fucking reason, all of my hotbars and hotkeys and macros and HUD-layout?

They're saved on dalamud somehow.

Base game? Pure default. All of it.

[racke7]

a full SAGA of chaos choices at the diner in the centre of your mind