#I love stories

[your-ne1ghbor]

A century ago... (IDEA DUMP) (FW Blood)

Not Mag trauma dumping 🤦‍♀️

Alr here are your 2 new characters to the TKoRaT's expanding world:

Aster is not "Star Boy" or the one Asha wishes on.

I feel like the name best suited them, because...well idk it just did for the design I was imagining at one point.

Also this one is like pretty old, like I am between 2,000 or more. Yee they have been around for a long time...

So why did this dude want to grant this random ass guy's wish? They really didn't have a choice to be frank. They were wished upon, they have to do their job, and they also were intriuged. Why did this dude want to defeat "The Great Magnifico"?

Also, Aster I dont think will appear nessesarily in "The Kingdom of Roses and Thorns" in the main story where Asha's story takes place. Only in like a possible prequal? Idk man I am just idea dumping

So STAR BOY does know of them, but not on a personal level. I feel like since he knows the story of Aster, he just wants to not have Asha fall down that path.

(wholesome moments will never end with those two)

There was a few goals I had with this character:

Make him menecing enough

Make them sort of like a bibical angel..dont ask I just felt like that they would look like that for some reason

GIANT EYE

And I just realized they look like a character from the amazing digital circus.

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So the random ahh dude..

Yeah he hurt Mag's pride in .000000001 milliseconds lmaoo

Maybe there is like a place where they learned sorcery? I mean, I'm just thinking this dude learned how to start magic through Aster then turned to some dark ahh magic maybe idk...

I was thinking that maybe it was his brother? But Maggy (Magnifico) in my version would be the oldest in my version.

Yeah yk what? Eugene it is and he is Magnifico's younger brother who had to die. If Magnifico kills him...thats cool but idk if he has the guts at this point of his old life to kill his brother. Or his best friend? Rival? Idk but his name is now Eugene :/

Thats all I got, I am just EXPLORING and IDEA DUMPING. I am not saying that this is CANNON in my story, I'm just looking at other ways to destroy Magnifico and Amaya mentally :3

And now giving them a backstory is breaking my heart like my villains did not deserve this 😭

What is cannon though, is that Rosas was destroyed by a Star, or mainly the star helped do some mass murder on the whole place at least more than over a century ago. How they survived that long is by consuming wishes that gives them new life and live longer (yes I am adding onto what else the wishes do to them yipeee). Still debating if a wish is destroyed, the person dies, but idk yet :3

Funny enough, he doesn't use magic as much as he does now. He was very reclusive with his magic and only used it when nessesary. Never to kill people either....which is the completly the opposite of TKoRaT Maggy is now, same with Amaya :')

[jawsandbones]

I've somehow swerved everything Outer Wilds until now and I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm totally fine.

[the-river-rix]

Holy fucking shit.

[racsow]

dimensions of storytelling (quickly becoming a rant about interactive media)

storytelling in different mediums is something i've been thinking a lot about recently.

writing is the simplest, most direct form of storytelling. it leaves the most up to the reader. it has the fewest technical barriers - the only requirement is understanding of language. i would not call it primitive, but it is the oldest (aside from verbal, of course).

video tells a story in two mediums; sight and sound. it communicates a story through these subsidiary senses, its words are sight and sound. It can evoke imagery and sensations that we rely on our imagination to conjure with the written word, with the result that it is a more vivid experience but also more regimented, more definitive.

games are three-dimensional storytelling, but instead of involving more senses, they add an axis of interactivity - a dimension of time, almost. It is a damn shame that most game companies focus on making just that: games. The moments i most remember from video games are not usually enjoyable gameplay but evocative environments and scenes. There is so much that this medium, at a base level, has to offer. Its potential not as entertainment but as a medium of storytelling feels much less explored than anything that came before.

To me, virtual reality is the same dilemma multiplied. I cannot tell you how sad it makes me that VR seems to constrain itself to physics-based shooters a la Boneworks or low-poly minigames. Story almost never is a priority in VR titles. They are marketed as immersive entertainment.

VR has a latent sense of realism that makes it the most effective storytelling format I've ever experienced. More than film, games, or written word, when I recall VR it feels real. I remember walking through the environments, picking up objects, physically crawling through tight gaps or feeling dizzy standing at a precipice. Memories of VR blur the mental categorization of reality and media.

The result is that even though VR is painfully lacking in engaging stories, I still felt so emotionally and mentally present in my time playing them. My favorite moment of any game was from the VR title Boneworks, the 2018 pioneer of the phys-shooter. The part I remember had no enemies, no dialogue or any physics gameplay for which it's been lauded.

I had emerged from a metro ride into a grungy underground station. There was this faint pattering noise from above which I wondered about as I restored power to the station and pried off the boards that led to ground level with a crowbar I found lying around.

And I went up the stained tile stairs, rounding a corner, ascending step by step. The noise grew louder, and then I walked out into the Central Station, vast and empty with a great curving glass roof. Rain was hammering down, forming actual rivulets of water that coursed into gutters emptying nearby. The virtual city outside was engulfed in a storm, but through the deluge, framed by the station windows, I could see the looming Monogon Tower with its red lights in the mist, the end destination of the game, its huge countdown clock blazing in the turbulent sky as Michael Wyckoff's melancholy synth hummed in sync with the drumming of the rain.

I stood there for a long time. I actually laid down in real life, fully on the floor, the grungy station tiles millimeters from my face, and laid there looking up at the glass roof for something like 20 minutes.

The story of Boneworks is, well, barebones, and it always takes an immediate backseat to adrenaline-gorged combat and middling puzzles with lackluster greyboxed environments. If it were a flatscreen game, I would've forgotten about it immediately. But the innate vividity of VR has ingrained this game in my mind permanently. I think about that moment all the time, and when I do, I remember a place I've really been, not a game I played.

And by god, if that's what a greybox phys-shooter like Boneworks can do, then can you even imagine what the potential of this medium is? What experiences we can craft, what worlds we can build and explore? What emotions we can evoke? What stories can we tell with this medium? And why, for god's sake, aren't we?

[brucenorris007]

When has it ever been called a Super Star?

It’s Power Star you uncultured.... Ugh.

Super Star is the term they occasionally use in Mario Party games

NOT A POWER UP

They did get Mario’s curiosity right; even while he’s worried the whole way through about Luigi, he’s still looking all around this new world with awe and wonder.

Not sure about him being cocky, even if it’s to compensate for the fact that people have been telling him he’s destined for failure all his life, but as new takes on established characters go, it’s all right.

Nice of Peach to not once ask Mario his name the whole night he trained.

And again, BRO DIDN’T SLEEP; ATE MUSHROOMS TILL HE MADE HIMSELF SICK, AND DIDN’T SLEEP! If anyone tries to spin this movie into another dumbass theory that Mario secretly hates Luigi, it’s grounds for maiming.

And Luigi’s first scene in the Mushroom world, just after he gets through the door and bolts it against the Dry Bones and thinks he’s safe?

Shy Guys as the hidden threat revealed with a flash of lightning were the perfect choice.

Creepy as fuck!

Mario’s obvious discomfort being in the spotlight, that’s spot on; as his career spans over the years, he’ll learn to shrug it off, but it’s so clear that he really didn’t anticipate being involved in such a huge conflict just to find his brother.

Toad was the character who got the most of an overhaul I feel and the little dude was funny, crazy, and brought some of the wacky cartoon energy the movie needed.

The dialogue is... Well. It is.

The storytelling aspects from a visual standpoint were done well; power ups, facial expressions, characterization through how each of the cast moves their bodies. And yes, the animation working in motion was stellar.

Sometimes the spoken stuff just falls flat. Exchanges between the bros are still always cute and wholesome (and of course anything the brothers have to say about each other is cute and wholesome “HE’S MY BROTHER MARIO AND HE’S THE BEST GUY IN THE WHOLE WO-HO-HO-HORLD!”), Bowser is clearly having the most fun of all the cast (rightfully so, as JB is the one with the most VA experience, and he gets to be musical in the movie so he could not be more stoked) and like I said, Toad’s a crazy fun little dude. Rogen was rough, not gonna lie.

That only really accounts for a bit more than half the overall dialogue though, is the thing. Doesn’t quite bring the movie down, but there could’ve been a little more polish. And at times things like Peach’s vocalized love of the world isn’t necessary; could’ve let the facial expressions and her mannerisms and the scenery speak for itself. Pratt exceeded expectations in that he didn’t sour the movie as whole, but his performance didn’t make me look forward to hearing Mario, the titular character, speak unless it tied back to Luigi. Which is... not great.

“We’ve never been apart this long.” Toss up for how long the trek to the Kongs actually took, but visually it’s Mario’s second night in the Mushroom world. Less than 48 hours, and he says, melancholy and matter of fact that they’ve never been separated for that long.

The bros are ride or die for each other. I cannot stress enough how important it was the movie got this so so right.

It is baffling to me that they couldn’t work out a longer run time; perhaps not significantly longer, maybe not even breaking the two hour mark, but there are moments when things could have been fleshed out, just pump the brakes a little bit. I’m definitely guilty of abusing the in medias res style of writing to keep things moving, but just a little more time seeing how Peach handles being in charge before she encounters Mario, more time with the characters before the by-the-book switch-of-focus to the other brother.

I mean, if you wanna sell a grand epic adventure as a grand epic adventure, how things play out and are affected on the smaller scale is just as important as the breathtaking panning shots and global scale destruction.

This is pretty basic stuff; the global threat moves the Plot, and the effect said threat has on the characters moves the Viewers/Readers/Players. Gets us invested. Like, okay, Peach as an asskicking action girl-sure, yeah, we can work with that as a take so long as people aren’t weird about how she’s characterized in the games because that also works-but just enough time between her marching out of the war room and encountering Mario for us to see the toll being in charge during wartime has on her.

She’s tired, stressed, and spread thin because as one of her Toads pointed out, her people aren’t exactly built for combat. Then she meets Mario, a man just as willing to throw himself at this power-hungry insane dragon, if for his own reasons, and suddenly she’s not heading out on this pivotal mission by herself. She was going either way, and obviously she makes sure this little red man won’t get himself killed, but even if marginally it’s a relief that there’s someone next to her.

Just little things that show how the conflict affects the cast, gets the viewers invested, convinced of the stakes, all that. I know the visuals could’ve carried a lot of that storytelling because it does some of that like I said, characterizing the cast visually.

Also, as most any writer or viewer on this site will tell you breathing time between action scenes or major plot points does not always constitute filler. PACING, PEOPLE!

By the way, the Rainbow Road sequence is my favorite of the movie and I won’t be taking questions.

Of course Mario’s low point in the movie would be the WATER LEVEL. Okay, all right, yeah movie, if you did that on purpose, that’s some good self-awareness.

Though it is weird that the film says “Oh this heart-to-heart packed with barbs between rivals-turned-reluctant-allies can’t go on too long because it doesn’t fit in with this wacky cartoon video game movie” but somehow the Doomsaying Luma suits things? I dunno.

DK and Mario’s antagonistic not-friendship works real well. They were enemies for a long time in the franchise, stands to reason that they can’t stand each other even while working together.

DK really doesn’t have enough on-screen time for his end of the not-quite heart-to-heart, but then, a lot of potential for character moments seem to have been pushed aside to make space for some admittedly beautiful animation sequences. Which I love, obviously, but ideally you shouldn’t have to sacrifice one for the other, which ties back into what I mentioned about the runtime.

I have other thoughts, but that’s for other, more organized posts.

[basedboygirlboss]

you know I didn’t think I’d be obsessing over two different interpretations of the classic tale of the funky little cat in his funky little boots in such a short span of time but here we are.

[flowerthebeloved]

oh my goodness, i love words so much. just, like, a ridiculous amount. the ability to translate my thoughts and feelings into little vessels of meaning.

"Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it was alive,"

THIS!! LIKE!!! it is SO important to me that people understand me, understand what i'm saying, and what i need to communicate. it's why i can get so caught up on the proper meanings of words where others might find their definitions similar enough for it to not matter. it's why i care so much about punctuation, because i know the smallest change in punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence.

just earlier i was editing a friend's writing and she had written, "The small hut made of rotten wood is situated close to the walls, on the outskirts of the city." SUCH a simple sentence, but i questioned for a moment whether she meant "The small hut made of rotten wood is situated close to the walls, on the outskirts of the city." which would mean the hut is close to the walls and the outskirts of the city. OR "The small hut made of rotten wood is situated close to the walls on the outskirts of the city." (no comma) which would mean the hut is close to the walls, and the walls are on the outskirts of the city. WHICH IS EFFECTIVELY THE SAME THING, but the fact that that sentence could be just be slightly different just based on a comma is so wild to me.

in the fifth grade (ages 10-11), my teacher was reading something with the word "reluctant" in it. so, she asks us if we can give a synonym for "reluctant." i raise my hand and offer "hesitant," and only after does she say that that is correct, but does anyone else have an answer? do i realize that hesitant wasn't a much more common word than reluctant was. but i didn't really think like that.

that's the same teacher who told me she would submit my creative writing to the local school system (who was making a book of students' writing) even though i said i didn't think i would submit it myself, because she believed it was that good. miss her.

so, i guess this also ties into my love for telling stories.

"Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen."

i love the minecraft end poem. i believe being understood and being known are the first steps toward being loved. so, my life has largely consisted of me finding all the right words and the right sentence structure and the right punctuation that gets my point across correctly. i just love words so much.

[nerfherder-02]

I've been thinking about why I love Andor so much (besides the fact that it's brilliant and the best star wars media in years) and it led to me thinking about the fact that most of my favorite star wars media is within the time of the Empire.

I think it boils down to the core story of Star Wars, the timeless struggle of a few desperate people against a looming enemy. the indomitable human (or alien) spirit. the innate desire for justice that prevails against all odds. the catharsis of seeing the abusive systems crumble from within, inch by suffocated inch.

I think the best stories are those that we can find within ourselves. maybe even when we don't live in a time of despotic regimes, we will still have to go to war with the oppression in our homes, or our minds. we have to wake up every day and make every effort to fight the good fight. and when the evil creeps in, keeps us apart, confuses and pushes us down, we have to shake off the dust, learn to trust, and fight!

[barnabyboppins]

A picture is worth a thousand words but a picture is a moment, where a story is a journey

Both are worth magnitudes

[stranger15]

Never bite the hand that feeds you... 

[iliiuan]

Moiraine would be so proud.

So there are some perks to living in a tourist destination. There are a lot of detractors mostly that you cannot shoot the tourists because you rely on them for your income but you have a semi captive audience with no context for any of the bullshit you spew. You can tell these people anything and they will believe you, the trusted friendly local. Now this is a very much Spider-Man situation where Great Power begets Great Audacity and even worse Responsibility.

My buddy goes on a run and when hes done there is a bar near a creek. So he wades into the creek because the day is hot and the water is cold.

Tourists ask what hes up to, with his running stuff he didn't want wet piled on the shore and him very obviously cooling off in the water. He says he's fishing.

But now here is why I am telling you this story. The universe occasionally aligns in such a way that we get to really really fuck with people and their perception of said universe. The opportunities do not come often and when they come you must seize the day. This is what my buddy did.

So this Creek runs through town and as a result of the highway and neighborhoods and culverts and roads it does not have a great salmon run. It's a short Creek the headwaters are only a few miles from the ocean it never had a great salmon run to begin with. But there are salmon.

One such fish brushes past my buddy's leg. Immediately he knees the fish like he is juggling a soccer ball and pops it out of the water, then slaps it out of the air on to the shore.

This is dumb luck. He could not do this again if he spent years training. Noodling (catching fish with your hands) is a thing that is legal to do with salmon but it is so much harder than literally every other way to catch salmon, including grabbing them with a garbage can. What he just managed is the kind of thing that should make you want to grab the fish and swing it around your head like a stripper with her panties off.

But,

He has an audience.

This is the opportunity offered by the universe.

He plays it cool.

He puts on dead pan straight face on and wades up to shore to grab his fish and nod to the tourists. Someone asks something and he assures them this is the standard way to get a quick dinner here. The tour guide has caught up with his group. He looks at my buddy and his fish and the general lack of fishing accoutrement. Without missing a beat, the guide backs up every ounce of bullshit out of my buddys mouth because if there is one true fraternity it is locals bullshitting stupid tourists.

[yeepof]

I understand that tall men are our POV characters, but surely being like a foot taller than everyone around them would have some occasional consequences

[lesbxdyke]

I could think of no better way to share the news than this!

So when I was 17, my cat went missing and I'd given up hope of ever seeing him again.

Until on Monday, 27th of May, 2024, my friend sent me a FB post asking 'isn't that your mother?' about the person named on the microchip.

Here he is! 16 years old, and found safe, twelve whole years after he went missing!

Yesterday (Tuesday the 28th of May, 2024) I went to the rescue that had him, and I reclaimed my boy, renaming him Artie! (He'd originally been called 'Cat' because my mother and I couldn't decide on a name)

He's home safe with me now, currently inhabiting my bathroom and purring up a storm every time someone goes in there!

I'll be doing slow introductions between him and my current cat to give them the best possible chance of living in harmony!

Here's some pictures of Artie once we let him out of the carrier:

[great-and-small]

Apparently the local university’s undergraduate entomology course sends students to catch insect specimens at the same place I like to go birdwatching, which explains why I saw three enormous frat looking dudes with tiny bug nets and overheard one emphatically say “bro BRO I told you we already have enough lepidopterans”

[brucenorris007]

Okay, I think I covered everything else that’s on my mind about this movie. Which just leaves....

Well. Puss, the themes and Death are so closely tied together that I can’t really talk about any one of them without also getting into the others, so... 

*Breathe in*

SO.

Death. 

“I don’t mean metaphorically, poetically, spiritually or theoretically. Straight-up.”

It–and he–are a constant presence throughout the movie, and the film isn’t shy about it. Horner’s men are swatted down like flies without even the dignity of having individual names assigned to them. The first five minutes are dedicated to showing us who Puss in Boots, the legend, is and his characteristically cavalier swashbuckling attitude toward everything

even in those five minutes, it’s been brought to my attention that Death, the character, is lurking in the crowd, watching and waiting for Puss’ eighth life to end, which it does at the end of the film’s first action sequence. (gorgeous sequence, natch)

knowing Dreamworks, I’m sure they found even more ways than that to weave death into the visuals, but the really genius thing is something I realized just in the midst of typing up a previous post

Papa Bear keeps suggesting that their family head home to hibernate, which fits in with his obvious desire to nap, yes, but it also implies the movie is set in autumn

as in the season before winter, when things freeze and die

Puss in Boots is on his last life, literally the last of stretch of the AUTUMN of his mortal time on earth 

AASDFSDFGDSDF dreamworks you beautiful brilliant MMMM

the otherworldly whistling that precedes Death’s soundtrack and appearance on screen is eerie and haunting and piercing, suits the character of death so well because even as it sticks with you it’s still startling and chilling each time you hear it

And of course I’m sure many youtuber’s have already said it, Death is a great villain because he’s not particularly a villain, but the personified phenomenon we all must face at some point made real (again, “Straight up”) who’s doing his job. the primary trait that makes him a character instead of some mystery man metaphor is that he loathes Puss for his complacency towards life

ironically, Death actually treasures life more than anyone; if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have spent the film hunting Puss to prematurely end his last life, nor would he have let Puss go at the end

and that brings us to the transformation Puss goes through from Legend to Man. er, Cat.

everything that he learns throughout the film, all the growth he undergoes ties back to who he is when he first meets Death and when he meets Death at the end of the movie and it’s all about letting go. letting go of the delusion that he’ll be fine no matter what danger he throws himself into, of the legend he’s created for himself about himself

The task is the same both times; Puss has to confront Death. Nothing about that fact actually changes, he still has to do it alone at the end of the film, he still can’t definitively defeat Death

but Puss himself changes; he lets go of his image of being a fearless hero, accepts that he’s afraid of Death, he lets go of the hope that he can outrun death through using the fallen star’s wish, he lets go of prioritizing all the moments of winning glory over his past lives and learns to cherish those more mundane and innocuous moments he’s had in this life.

Puss sheds the Legend he once was to be the Cat behind the legend. and the awesome part is that he doesn’t lose out on anything in doing so; the cat he is at the end of the film isn’t weaker than the cat he was at the start, nor is his life less fulfilling. Life isn’t more colorful than it was before, and he doesn’t give up swashbuckling either; he just learns to cherish and fight for the life he’s got

In the end, neither he nor any of the cast really need the wish, and that’s the great moral of the film; the things you need in life, the things you really want, you don’t need magic for. So long as you have your priorities straight, they can be found

i think that’s all from me, then. good night