#Love Story (vr)

[caliburn-not-calculator]

I ramble about: VR-LA’s Character Arc

I feel like I’m just saying loads of the obvious with this but I still wanna say it cause it’s in my head and won’t leave.

Anyway, heads up for mention of: Suicidal Ideation and Tendencies

VR-LA’s story starting from a place of absolute aloneness and even suicidal ideation, but ending with so many families, friends, and homes and a promise made in the maze of life to keep on going… It has me feeling things

He begins with nothing but flimsy phantom feelings from his past and his strengthening relationship with his friends keeping him stable. And, as seen with the Zuggtmoy madness and the despondency well, without them he ends up right back in that spiral. Right back in that trap of wondering it it would better to have not woken up on the ship.

Later, his isolation through his wish and utter dedication finding his old crew puts a slight wedge that relationship. His drive to find his past nearly breaks his present, and he ends up having to reconstruct both his bonds with them (though minorly) and his old crew. It’s the thing that leads him to try and leave his past in the past, and focus on what he has now. He tells Dani that when he dies it’ll be on this ship, that he isn’t going anywhere. He picks this life over the old one. That connection to his family and home that has kept him going, now stronger… but not yet healthy, not yet healed. The stubborn refusal to leave his past comminuted to be put to rest through season 4 now he’s learned how unhealthy it was to dwell on it. Killing Endellion, proclaiming to his old crew that the old him is gone, being willing to give up the ship to Dani. Being willing to give up and leave behind the home he once pledged to die on. All of that showing how his outlook has progressed from the Then, to the Now, setting up the lead in to the Later he comes to look forward to in season 5.

But at this point, VR-LA’s pledge to die on the ship is still standing, until all of sudden that declaration is thrown into question by his promise to Maxim. An unexpected moment, maybe considered quietly in the back of his mind for awhile, but now coming to a head at the wake up call that is Maxim’s constant refutes to VR-LA risking his life. Maybe it wasn’t fully true at the time, maybe it was part desperate ploy to win him over and part the first realisation that the future he had always thought inevitable didn’t have to be. Whatever it was, that first promise set him on the path to looking not just back, not just around, but forward.

An episode later, VR-LA is lost in the not so metaphorical maze of life. He knows his past and how he feels about it, he knows his present and all the new bonds he’s formed in this second life. But the question of what comes next looms before him, despite his gripes with what happened before, this is the major decision he faces. And it isn’t the death on the ship he always thought would come, the death he once considered accepting while adrift, but rather… life. What he finds and chooses at the end of the maze is a long life, well lived. The exact opposite of everything he thought he had always been moving toward.

I was not expecting to find a story about coming to heal from suicidal ideation in my silly autism robit but oh boy… oh fucking hell is it there.

AND THEN, how he literally ends the series with a proclamation that no longer is he going to “die on this ship” or “wonder if it would be better to not wake up”, but that he’s taking dying of old age a challenge. How he refuses anything less than that. How despite his new dangerous position, despite stepping up and not back, he is not looking for anything less than that future he found at the end of the maze.

VR-LA starts too focused on the past, moves on to trying to focus on his present, then eventually the future. And if that progression wasn’t good enough, by the end he manages to have them all. His memories and old crew, the crew of the Per Aspera and a life of adventure, his increasingly pivotal role as magister and his aim to grow old.

Like, when I first heard the silly “Hello! I am VR-LA :D” and “Will you be our captain?” robot, I was not expecting a story about overcoming suicidal tendencies and growing to accept and combine all aspects of yourself. Like, fucking hell WHY IS HE LIKE THIS HSJDBDKDBDKFB

It’s such a well done arc for an improv show, and yeah there’s the little awkward unclear points but overall it’s so fulfilling and complete, while leaving further room to settle and heal. Right from season one he proclaims it’s the fight against entropy that makes life worth living, and the the whole show he fights that fight with himself. He goes from someone willing, and perhaps even on some level wanting, to die, to someone actively fighting for the opposite. He goes from empty of will to live and memory to, in his own words, “overflowing”.

Anyway, I love this silly robot, he makes me feel too many things, and I can’t wait to see what new stories come to pass next campaign.

[pastelliek]

Fredbdy faæzbear

[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?

[frootertooter]

YEYEEEHWEEHERHAH omg we can finally see how Crane develops overtime oghhghg yesyesyeysyeyesyesyes >:DDD

[ashleybenlove]

Brie saw Lark at the prison visiting that guy. He's some guy named Jimmy, and happens to be her daughter's father.

And she tells Brady.

And they hug after having a discussion and then they kiss. And goddamnit. Girl, stop, you have a good stable guy with Mike.

[astranauticus]

Do mechanites cry?

[reki-rixt]

Ok I’m just now finding out that apparently people COMPLAINED about Just Dance having lore??? Literally WHY??? Story mode took up what, 7 maps? AND THEYRE STILL FUN PLAYABLE MAPS!!! What exactly did people take issue with, and why was it so much of an issue that now people are speculating Story mode is no longer a thing????

[viv-imus-illogic]

me: oh wow! the amazing digital circus is so cool im intrigued by the prospect and the style is so cartoony /pos

the hlvrai and y2kvr spirits:

[warlockeye]

Would like to see another Fromsoft game that takes place in a type of time period like or similiar to Bloodborne's or Deraciné's.

[kandidandi]

Kandi...KANDIIIII...

WHY you gotta mess with my heart with this Astronomer AU?! This is my schtick. My jam. MY VIBE.

*Paps you furiously...with all due affection* You're killin' me here.

(Though now I just want someone to come into the daycare to do a Nasa thing w/ Sun, Moon, and all of the kids. You know, the ones were you can ask the astronauts questions and stuff...because Sun or Moon getting to ask questions too!)

EHEHE YESS I KNEW YOU'D LIKE IT!!! you inspired it tbh hshsfdgjfg

ALSO YES YES YES IM PICKIN UP WHAT YOURE PUTTING DOWN!! i love those educational talk things so much awawa!!!!!!!!!

[glitterhoof]

FUCK gregory and his little bear friend too

[aurosoul]

I finally met the founders of Figmin XR in person!!!!!! 💖💖💖

their names are Astra and Javier, they are a husband & wife duo, and their home is JUST as magical and tech-filled as you would expect from the creators of a futuristic, hologram-based sandbox application. every room was a mix of nature, technology, and childlike wonder. (they are also parents, and their kids use XR sometimes too!)

I got to try basically every cutting-edge XR headset that exists during my visit, and witnessed two of the most reality-breaking things my brain has ever been faced with:

1. with both of us wearing augmented reality headsets, Javier (pictured center in the first photo) pulled an animated gif out of thin air and handed it to me - just with bare hands. no controllers required. it was BEYOND surreal to be physically HOLDING a GIF. a GIF!!!!!!!!!!

and 2. I got to use ‘spatial mapping’ (AKA room scanning) in-headset. depth-sensing lasers & cameras around my eyes scanned the topography of everything I looked at, overlaying a green Matrix-style pattern onto everything in my field of view. I felt like a human scanner, and once the scan was complete I could project SHADOWS from virtual objects onto every real surface around me.

I spawned in an adorable virtual giraffe toy, and it was extremely brain-breaking to have a virtual object cast perfect shadows onto a wall, or a couch, or an end table, IN REAL TIME as I was moving it around. with shadows added, my brain fully accepted that the giraffe was a real object physically in the room with me.

ANYWAYS it was wonderful seeing all this cutting-edge tech used specifically for PLAY - and education, and accessibility, and bringing people together IRL, and paying artists, and assisting with everyday tasks, and just....... MORE good things! Figmin XR is built with such an optimistic view of the future, and it is forever going to be an honor that I get to contribute to it in such a significant way.

the future is not all bad. there are plenty of good things still happening, and being created, and yet to exist!!!

[leatherbookmark]

all this time i've been covering my ears going LALALALALA pretending that ~virtual idols~ don't exist and this is what you do to me? and hongjoong and yunho? please never fucking do that again it's an insult to them and real life actual human idols in general

[walterboy360]

A 360° Virtual Valentine's A Pixelated Love Story in VR

[ashleybenlove]

Jack's dad needs to get over the fact that he chose the Marines instead of higher education. It's literally been decades.

[gods-little-meow-meow]

im loving the difference between the magnus archives slow burn, dread filled story vrs the magnus protocol which is like being shot with several different chekhov's guns all at one