#WOULD BE REALLY INTERESTING IF IT WAS MEANINGFULLY DEVELOPED AT ALL
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tethrras · 5 days ago
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it's so crazy that i got what i've wanted for months (lucanis confirmed being a virgin) yet it feels like such a hollow victory because as someone who has watched his romance video like 5 separate times now (from the spot where it seems like he genuinely starts to like rook of course) it literally does not tie in meaningfully to his romance at all
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beesmygod · 5 months ago
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ed zitron, a tech beat reporter, wrote an article about a recent paper that came out from goldman-sachs calling AI, in nicer terms, a grift. it is a really interesting article; hearing criticism from people who are not ignorant of the tech and have no reason to mince words is refreshing. it also brings up points and asks the right questions:
if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?
what does it mean when people say that AI will "get better"? what does that look like and how would it even be achieved? the article makes a point to debunk talking points about how all tech is misunderstood at first by pointing out that the tech it gets compared to the most, the internet and smartphones, were both created over the course of decades with roadmaps and clear goals. AI does not have this.
the american power grid straight up cannot handle the load required to run AI because it has not been meaningfully developed in decades. how are they going to overcome this hurdle (they aren't)?
people who are losing their jobs to this tech aren't being "replaced". they're just getting a taste of how little their managers care about their craft and how little they think of their consumer base. ai is not capable of replacing humans and there's no indication they ever will because...
all of these models use the same training data so now they're all giving the same wrong answers in the same voice. without massive and i mean EXPONENTIALLY MASSIVE troves of data to work with, they are pretty much as a standstill for any innovation they're imagining in their heads
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prideprejudce · 3 months ago
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I think alot more people would enjoy the show if they learned to see Rhaenyra and Alicent as Unreliable Narrators, and characters who are supposed to have glaring flaws and weaknesses.
Mandatory preface- There are Issues™️ with season 2 that are its own other ask- but the complaints ive seen about character assassination on both women kind of tells me ppl just wanted to see the two just GirlBossing around, not being tragic characters trapped in their own circumstances.
For Alicent specifically- she just isn't written to be Cersei 2.0, and while it was really interesting to see motherhood from cersei's point of view, its already been done!! I actually prefer seeing Alicent's mercurial clinging to and abandoning motherhood- its interesting!! She was made a mother at what- 15? An age where you truly arent mentally developed enough to raise 3 kids, AND be a child bride, AND be a queen, (AND be a lesbian).
Alicent is interesting to me because she's stunted at 15 years old, she's an adult woman who talks to and sometimes bullies her kids as if they are her peers, and is obsessed with her childhood crush(es). She hasn't built any new relationships* past the ones she was entangled with as a teenager, she's obsessed with both acting out to make SOMEONE see that shes suffering, (she's honestly pretty blatant for someone who prides themselves on being the Temperate Voice of Reason) but also to erase herself and reset to before she had to marry the king, before aemma died.
I think most of her 'bad out of character' decisions are just these two impulses winning out, her trying to force a reset, go back to a time where none of this had happened yet, when things were simpler and she had love and every day wasn't the worst day of her life™️.
She sleeps with cole, the man she thought was pretty at 15 (her last uncomplicated attraction just before it all went wrong and aemma died) -she doesnt seem to like it that much, but she does seem compelled to seek him out, esp when upset- shes obsessed with, and desperate to reconnect with Rhaenyra, her childhood best friend (and first love) and get back to where they were as kids, AND she still treats and asks her father for absolution as if he's still the only authority that matters to her just like she did at 15. Alot of her 'victim complex/bewildered they took it so far' behaviour in the plotting of rhaenyra's usurption reads to me like a teenager in over her head, she talked big game and now its real and shes panicking!! She's tragic BECAUSE she's still a teenager- so stunted shes unable to meaningfully grow up and learn to make healthier choices for herself, or move on and stop trying to grasp at the 'if i could just go back' urge.
As a mother, I think this creates an interesting dynamic as well, and I do like that in the casting even, she seems closer in age to her kids than rhaenyra does to hers. I think the contrast ppl are drawing with Alicent Protecting Her Kids in season1 compared to her giving them up in season two isn't bad writing to me, just massive differences in context. Sure she protected Aemond in driftmark, but we cant ignore that she probably felt humiliated by her husband choosing rhaenyra's side over hers in front of everyone, did it seem like a grown woman fighting for her son?? or a teenager furious with her ex winning one over her again? or both!! both sides twisted together is still interesting! When she protected Aegon from Rhaenys, is stepping in front of her son the king to protect him from the enemies dragon fire not the most romantic daydream of a deserving death a child bride could come up with?? Was it the impulse to protect the son she couldnt decide if she loved or hated, or was it to have the most heroic death possible to escape the reality that she sees coming. And if Rhaenyra hears about how Brave she was in the face of a dragons maw, and cries about it forever and feels sooo bad and regrets it til the day she dies, thats an added bonus. I think Alicent loves her kids, but is teenager selfish about HOW she loves and protects her kids, and is unable to be a mature, consistant, protective mother to them when she also sees them as having ruined her life. I think in season 2 when she 'gives them up' shes relieved, and once again following the compulsion of 'if i reset to when Rhaenyra was heir, i had no sons, and i wasn't married or queen, everything will be better'. I think theres complexity to it, i think she does love her sons and feels insane about it, but I think Alicent has been trying to Go Back in more and more Intense ways ever since she got married, and we might be giving her sanity more credit than it deserves when it comes to the need to wipe the board clean and go back to being 15.
hey anon are you trying to get married to me or what
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cochart · 11 months ago
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Some SMT5 Characters in P5T style because it’s cute
I’ve been enjoying P5T during my little self-assigned winter break. I haven’t cleared the game yet, but it’s been a nice distraction.
Below is some of my thoughts on P5T if you’re interested or if you’re trying to decide whether or not to buy.
Overall, the game has been pretty enjoyable. It’s nice to see the characters you’re familiar with again and the story is decent. The art style is cute and the battles are enjoyable. The game is definitely more on the casual side and might be a tad bit disappointing for people who want a proper SRPG. On the flip side, even if you hate SRPG, you’d be able to pick this game up easily. I’d definitely recommend the game for P5 fans.
On the other hand, compared to P5S, the game does feel a little short for the price. I don’t regret preordering the game at all, but if your finances aren’t doing so well at the moment, I’d say wait till it goes on a sale.
1. As a Persona 5 spinoff
As a spinoff, I think it’s a pretty nice game. It’s nice to see the characters you love again in a different context, and the new characters are fun and likable. I’m actually quite impressed by the new characters as it can sometimes be difficult to insert new characters into a well-established franchise without making them overpowered or otherwise upsetting to the existing fans. Both Toshiro and Elle are likable, fun characters with decent stories of their own.
It’s also nice to see your favorite Phantom Thieves again. Overall, the tone of the game is more playful, so you can’t expect an in-depth character exploration you get in P5R, but it still feels like a treat.
2. As an SRPG
I think the game translated the elements of Persona franchise well into an SRPG genre. With 1 MORE and Tribangle system, you really do feel like you’re playing a Persona game. While it might be a tad bit disappointing that you can only use three characters per battle, trying to find the most efficient way to exterminate the enemies with Tribangle is pretty fun.
That said, for people coming from a more traditional SRPG like Final Fantasy Tactics or the Fire Emblem series, P5T can be a little lacking. Part of the fun in an SRPG is customizing units and building your army. In P5T, you level up the Phantom Thieves as a whole instead of individually. I think this was necessary to prevent users having to grind to level up different units, but it also makes it harder for you as a player to customize each unit meaningfully. In FE3H, for example, you can decide whether you want Felix to be a sword master or a wyvern lord. You can also decide whether you’d want your army to be sturdier with a lot of armored units or whether you’d take your chances by raising your units’ agility and hoping that they’d dodge enemy attacks. That you can’t do such customization can be a huge disappointment for people who enjoy SRPG.
On the other hand, adopting such traditional job/class system might have turned P5T into a poor man’s FE. I feel like the developers had to choose between a traditional approach at the risk of making the game look like a FE ripoff and trying to make use of Persona-typical systems at the expense of being a solid SRPG.
Overall, the game plays more like a fun puzzle game than an SRPG. If I were to compare P5T to any game, I’d actually compare it to some of the puzzle maps in FEH. My advice is if you’re looking for a solid SRPG like Fire Emblem, you should pick up a Fire Emblem game.
3. Others
While the game doesn’t feel unfinished—like Crimson Flower route in FE3H in which you feel cheated out of Edel’s story—it does feel a little short. I haven’t gotten to the final boss, but I can look at the level and guess where I am. I’ve been playing this game in bits and pieces, but I’m already 60% finished with the game. I think at this rate, I’d finish at about 35~40ish hours. Keep in mind that when I play games, I eat and drink, so it takes a little longer than it would if I were to focus completely on the game.
One thing that shortens the game is that there isn’t anything to do aside from battling. I know some people hate it when games involve little side activity like walking around and talking to characters—though you can technically talk to characters in P5T when there’s a Talk event—or farming, but I do wish there was something to do. The quests are fun, but there aren’t that many of them.
On the other hand, because you don’t have anything to work for besides getting on with the story, I’m not sure if the developers could have made the game longer without making the battles feel too repetitive. If there were job/class systems or any unit customization available, there would be something to work for, but there isn’t.
I do think there is more potential to the premise of the game though. The Kingdoms of P5T is sort of set up like Silent Hill in that the bosses are incarnations of one’s fear. I think the developers could definitely have expanded on that.
I’ve also seen some complaints that the game is too easy. The game is definitely easier than some SRPG I played. But then, I don’t think this game was made with hardcore SRPG players in mind. Also, despite the game being a bit more casual, I didn’t feel bored playing the battles. So I think the difficulty level might actually be more suitable for the general public. Aside from something like Dark Souls, games of all genres have been getting easier over the years. I know it might be disappointing to people who want more challenging games, but I don’t see the trend reversing soon. I think the best course of action if you want more challenge is to try looking into some indie games.
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ganondoodle · 3 months ago
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totk is like a highly polished alpha build of a game to me
graphic- fantastic, i just love botws style of graphics, its the perfect blend of something more realistic but very stylized and timeless
visual design- great, i cant stand anything sonau (zonai), and ganondorfs concept art is better than final (and still involves lots of annyoing stereotypes) but overall still pretty solid
sound design- phenomenal, it really is, the underground, the rain on the parasail? unmatched, already loved botw but they really outdid themselves here
music- possibly best in the series to me, like ... theres so many fantastic tracks, in isolation i love so many of them so much ... which sucks bc being connected to such a lackluster rest sours them badly
mechanics- working but undercooked/unfit for the world, its impressive they got ultrahand working at all, but its still clunky/quickly frustrating and badly balanced also contributes to utterly destroying botws world design- this ability was simply not made for this world and is in the end both detrimental to it and itself, bc that mechanic could have truly shined in a game REALLY build around it (... if they could manage to balance it well and stop handing you the solution, it would be funyn if it werent so sad how many times the game literally doesnt even make you engage with its main gimmick bc it just hands you the prebuild thing) time reversal breaks every puzzle/challenge, also unbalanced, ceiling jump is the most harmless but i still think it lets you skip too much
writing- worst in the series, where would i even start with that, not a single character is written well/interestingly, most detrimentally the main characters, .. like all of them, zelda, ganondorf, rauru... and the "story", its barely even bare bones, its plain cardboard with an old divine right propaganda slogan written on, continuity in a direct sequel is non existant, there is no follow up on anything, why did they call it that when they dont seem to have any love for anything botw did given how much they trample over everything it established, i struggle to believe they actually thought this was good, theres has to have been trouble during development
world design/changes- a joke, ... i dont know how people dont feel scammed by how little was actually changed, no, a few rocks sprinkled througout are not meaningful changes, i was one of the people not worried about them reusing the world bc i loved this world and was sure theyd meaningfully change it- god how wrong i was; the sky and underground are both like the bare bones with textures and placeholder rewards/points of interest, they both do not matter at all and their potential is yet again utterly, painfully, wasted and only add more points of destruction to the map in case of the sky, and both add confusion about everything, not the good kind of intriguing confusion, the bad nothing makes sense confusion it really does seem like they put some quick changes into every main point of interest where most players would go to make them think they changed things when .. they only changed these parts, barely, either bc they knew everyone would skip around the world anyway so it wouldnt be worth it, or bc its ... unfinished
game design/structure- baffling (bad), connected to the point above, but it truly is beyond me why they repeated the exact same structure as botw while removing what made that work, why would you repeat every point of interest of the previous game, i know zelda games always have their regions and thats where stuff happens, but they REUSED THE SAME WORLD, you CANNOT repeat the exact same points in the same world, you just cant, its the same places, the same characters, the same structure (aka dungeons being less interesting/easier titans (divine beasts) with a paint job in structure), you basically erase the well integrated ancient tech civilization to replace it with another, not well integrated, more boring and overly pushed into your face, ancient tech civilization and make them the answer to everything that ever was (BORING), the same story structure (but worse, like the memory system but remove what made it work in botw)- AND THEN repeat the same points in the underground too? thats bonkers, literally baby bananas
dungeons/puzzles - worse than botw by FAR, as mentioned above, dungeons are less interesting titans with a paintjob (plus an extraordinarily awful cutscene, which is repeated like FIVE TIMES almost word for word), they serve no purpose but to act like they are totally real traditional dungeons when they are not, they are laughing at you, shrines are back with a paintjob with less interesting puzzles (if they even have one given how many just give you a spirit orb knock off) that can all be skipped, though the puzzles can often not even be called that (put log over gap WOOOAH puzzle) among many awful and unecessary tutorial ones (its not bad to have easy ones, but aside from the few ones that take all your stuff away -omg restrictions in MY freedom tm game??- which are the best ones, to have none be even a little challenging or not utterly skippable without even using glitches, its like they didnt even try to stop you from cheating, which is like being given a skip button with no strigns attached, doesnt even let you feel smart bc you dont have to try to cheat)
UI/controls- awful, you cant tell me this was tested by real people playing for longer than 10 minutes at once, how did the ghosty sage control scheme and arrow/weapon fusing get through this, HOW, its unbelievably tedious and detrimental to any fun (as im doing with my rewrite, a crafting system would have been so good here ..... like a proper simple crafting system, have the materials, craft your new arrow types in stacks etc) the ghost sages are not only utterly useless in combat, but clog your screen, play distracting animations as soon as you look at a slope, you constantly accidentally activate them or the wrong one bc its mapped to the main interact button!!! if you use them say goodbye to your framerate, fights are now spent chasing after some ghost guy whos actively running away from you, they do not invoke a feeling of 'connection' to my 'friends', they are invoking feelings of hatred and frustration
performance- ... passable (if you dont have the sages out .... well, it runs better than pokemon scarlet so i guess its fine, the lag when closing and opening the menu is rly annoying, especially combined with the finger and patience breaking menues and how often you need to open a game pasuing menue, but fights with a monster horde AND the sages out? yeah no its as bad as pokemon scarlet at its worst, not to mention the chaos of having five useless ghost scramble around you getting knocked around by enemies)
price- a scam, this game is not worth 70 bucks, its just not, if you get a used copy and dont spend more time in it than it takes for you to just go straight to the main points, or if you dont care about anything else but dicking around with a clunky building system ... then you can have some fun with it yeah ..... still not worth 70 money, theres probably better building games out there for less too
it jsut feels not done, not finished, its presentation and some parts are highly polished and their marketing for it is unlike anything i have ever seen, but its so .... unfinished, no amount of epic visuals is gonna let me not think of this game being half done at best, after what, 6 years of development no less? with most assets already being there and being reused unaltered??
(i am holding tightly onto the theory of it either having an extremely troubled development that is being hidden bc of their reputation, or some sort of neglect in order to focus on other more lucrative projects, this is just all too weird to me)
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skitskatdacat63 · 6 months ago
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Happy 5/14!!!!
Aaaaahh not sure if this is my best work 😭 I just really wanted to draw smth for vettonso day but my brain hasn't really been functioning well LOL so I kept dreading working on this, especially bcs its so important to me, y'know? I hope it's good????? I'm happy with the concept, but I was just so unsure on so many of the angles and it was killing me. I did the color thing bcs I thought it'd add something interesting to it :) since I didn't paint it as I usually would
Anyways! Process!
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Now I will explain all of them:
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Boy king au is where it all starts of course. I think their relationship is the most developed in this compared to the others, but at the same point, they just start from such a different point, especially affection-wise. All of these kinda have a power dynamic, except the last one, and this is the most imbalanced. Fernando is being subservient, the only part of Seb he may kiss(in public lol) is his hand.
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Matador au next. They hurt themselves when they try to be affectionate, because they live in the culture of a sport of violence and death. The sword separates them, their love for the sport keeps them apart, in fear that they hurt each other. Seb, yet again, looks down upon Fernando. Seb haunts Fernando's whole career, the constant overhanging presence. Also aside from that, shame that you can't see his three musketeers look bcs of the black background 😔
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2012 core!!! I think this one is pretty easy to understand. Both of them often kiss their trophies, more so than any driver. So they're both trying to claim the wdc trophy by kissing it. Maybe you guys should just get rid of the trophy altogether and claim each other! But yes, just like the sword in the matador au one, the trophy and their ambitions divides, keeps them from ever bridging the vast gap between them, at least at that point in time.
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The conclusion! Aka what I wish we will get at Imola 2024- kidding kidding. But it is 2024. Finally there is no conflict between them, there's no big thing keeping them in conflict, they can finally come together. Finally they can touch, there is no gap to bridge, they can appreciate each other, and appreciate what they failed to in years past.
The thesis is basically that they always have their aspirations between them, and their aspirations happen to be basically the same thing. Until those are resolved, the gap between them is too vast for them to recognize and/or find any commonality. How do you get along with someone when you're both fighting for the same thing? How do you get along when it feels like one of you is winning more? How do you get along when there's such a vast gap?
In boy king au, it's going to take a while before they both feel settled about the issue of the throne. That's what makes that au interesting, they're trapped in this state of non-closure and they have to actually solve their issues without the matter of one of them simply removing themselves from the equation. They have to find a way to get over themselves and their aspirations, because like it or not they're stuck with each other. I think with the hand kissing, it represents how Fernando, at that point, is only willing to play along with the game if it's tradition, and he often won't budge in other ways. Yes, I will show subservience, but only in this detached, formal way that I don't connect personally to. He's still holding his own bitterness over meaningfully appreciating Seb. Though it's not like Seb isn't at fault. It takes a while for him to not hold things over Fernando, and constantly humiliate him. One day they will meaningfully show affection, and it won't be some sort of power play.
I think matador au is pretty similar to real life, and the 2010s era(it's basically just their actual plot line but in the context of bullfighting.) They're forever going to have this big elephant in the room, and it only really gets resolved when one of them leaves the sport. Once they're not fighting directly against each other, they realize what they've been missing out on and what they were not appreciating for so many years beforehand. They finally come together because they can't just rely anymore on the sport keeping them together. They actually have to make that step to be in each other's lives, rather than just taking their presence for granted.
Also the text on the comic. "We keep missing, and missing, and missing, and finally kissing." It's basically: we keep missing the point of it all, we keep failing to appreciate each other presence in our lives and in our own individual grand stories. But when we're not forced together anymore, we have to make the choice to come together again ourselves. We keep missing what we actually need to do. Missing each other in favor of our aspirations. Etc etc. One day we will finally embrace and there will be nothing keeping us apart.
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saintsenara · 28 days ago
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What do you think about Tom being raised by Harry fics? Do you think that Harry would be a good caregiver to Harry? I imagine that Harry is at the very least an upgrade from the orphanage.
thank you very much for the ask, anon!
and thank you for leading me into danger... by forcing me to reveal the supremely unpopular opinion that this trope doesn't compel me in the slightest and i almost never read fics which feature it.
the adult voldemort is - in my view - the most fascinating character in the series because everything about him as a person can be traced back not only to his experience of orphanhood, but to the impact of that experience never being recognised by anyone else.
and he is - therefore - a character i find interesting because so much about his life isn't inevitable. we see throughout the series - even if the doylist text doesn't, perhaps, realise that it's saying this - that he could have been stopped from turning into voldemort at any time - not only in childhood, but in adulthood; not only before he splits his soul, but after - if that recognition had been afforded.
this isn't something which tends to make it into "tom riddle's life changes course before x date" fics - especially those which have this happening in childhood - many of which tend to take the view that, while minor details about the transformation of tom riddle into lord voldemort might be different [especially him becoming more willing to play the game of becoming minister for magic before he becomes a dictator], the darker aspects of his canon personality are unalterable and his descent into criminality and violence is, no matter harry's good intentions, broadly unstoppable.
i understand the value of "bad seed" narratives as literary devices [indeed, i've read the bad seed itself, and it's a hoot], but outside of specific genre contexts - such as horror - i don't love them.
[particularly - and i will accept this is unbearably tedious of me; real fun sponge hours, who's up? - because they tend to rely on ideas about human psychology and/or human development and/or the classification and diagnosis of psychiatric conditions which are unnuanced at best and plain wrong at worst; and because - in the voldemort-specific context - they often approach him as someone who should be read as having a set psychological make-up, something which cannot apply to a fictional character.]
adoption isn't a miracle cure for anything - let alone the immensity of the canonical tom riddle's childhood trauma - and i'm not suggesting it is or that it ever should be thought of as such. but it is empirically better for children than institutionalising them. and it is therefore something which is sufficiently different from tom riddle's canonical circumstances that experiencing it would not only change him meaningfully as a character, but could also - it really is quite likely, especially if he's very young when harry turns up and whisks him away - change him into someone who's broadly... fine.
and i don't want to read about that! i want to read about the misery of orphanhood! if he's going to do self-growth, he can do it as an adult, with all the weight of his child and teenage history pressing down on him. the flavour is much deeper.
[which leads us to the other strand of "harry adopts tom riddle" fics... those in which the boy who lived enters his humbert humbert era. i respect authors' rights to write these stories - because i understand what fiction is - and i also think that not only can the canonical voldemort be plausibly imagined as a victim of child sexual abuse but that he has several parallels with dolores haze which could make for one hell of a fic. but i'm not interested in clicking on them. i like my tomarrymort saccharine sweet and between consenting adults... and i will not accept any suggestion that this is delusional.]
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agentrouka-blog · 5 months ago
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The Pact of Ice and Fire is some really damning evidence when it comes to Jonsa. I got into an argument with someone on a forum about it because she disputed that it could just as easily be fulfilled by Jon (a Stark) and D/aenerys (a Targ). Except Jon is the Targ fostered at Winterfell... which seems much more damning to me evidence-wise; we learn about the pact, but more meaningfully it's already been partly fulfilled (leaving the open question of how it might be further developed) and in addition to that acts as foreshadowing for Jon's parentage. It's actually very elegant.
But you know what's most damning to me about it? Why would GRRM invoke 'ice and fire' in this pact - his series namesake, the prophecy for which R/haegar felt called to? It's special, and it might not be saving-the-world special (not GRRM's style - this was what my friendly rival invoked, that it could only be J/D because they'll save the world, i.e. the heroic song of ice and fire), but it's so special it foreshadows two major revelations in the story. About love and the human heart in conflict with itself and unfulfilled political promises. I mean, you could even make the argument that this foreshadows a bit of the dragon dispute - if the Starks have already made alliance with one 'dragon' (Jon) and the rest of Westeros with another (Aegon), what's left for D/aenerys?
Interesting, interesting, all very interesting; a fascinating piece of evidence to be sure. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the J/D take, though not to formulate my argument for me - this argument is both long past and also the one thing I used to hate in anon asks from people was being used to make their arguments (I would literally be contacted mid-Discord debate hahahah) - mostly just curious as to what you think about all those conflicting Snow/Stark/Targ elements - perhaps J/D itself if you feel like it - and the Pact. Love to hear your thoughts.
Something that is often overlooked is that Rhaegar dedicates the "Song of Ice and Fire" to his son Aegon. The son by Elia. The sun's son. His intended heir.
Because to Rhaegar the prophecy was about some kind of epic confrontation between a fire-coded hero and a presumably ice-coded enemy. The imagery and wording of Azor Ahai and his more explicit fire-ice/light-dark/good-evil dichotomies is so similar that we can reasonably assume that this Promised Prince is supposed to be Fire and the Song is supposed to be an epic fight with Ice.
We can't be sure what the motivation of Cregan and Jace would have been in naming their Pact in this way, though it's likely to be different and more representative of their respective elemental symbolism. Emphasizing a union and alliance between contrasting forces for a greater political good. (In their eyes.)
The structure of ice and fire as two opposing but equally destructive magical threats with mirroring arcs and magical conduits (Bran and Dany, actually) that is faced by all of humanity fuses both takes on the name. It's not fire good and ice bad, it's two extreme expressions of blood magic, with humanity banding together in the middle trying to survive.
Jon, as the product of ice and fire Houses, can't represent ice in a union with someone else's fire to create an alliance. He himself is already a mix of both, and his most significant political effect in the narrative has been to faciliate a crucial alliance between two former enemies. We can expect more along those lines. He is the fulfillment of the Pact, in a sense, (No thanks to Rhaegar, all thanks to the love of his mother, uncle and siblings) with only the minor political detail of that marriage to a Stark cousin still in question.
Dany, on the other hand, is fully identified with fire. She can't separate herself from that role to suddenly occupy a space separate from that elemental threat. She represents the threat. Or rather, if she separated from that power (like Bran will) she would cease to represent fire entirely.
If she is to be part of "ice and fire" it can only be in the role of an enemy to be defeated. If she ceases to be fire, she has no place in that equation, and she would be missing an icy counterpart. If GRRM had intended for Jon and Dany to represent ice and fire together, he would have never needed to bother with RLJ. Jon could be Ned's bastard "ice" son to Dany's "fire". But a significant aspect of his story is, specifically, the revelation that Jon is not, in fact, Ned's son. He is the son of a Stark maiden and a Targaryen prince, "hiding in the snow".
Jon and Dany occupy two very different spots in the "ice and fire metaphor continuum".
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goblins-riddles-or-frocks · 10 days ago
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Do you think Aleksander managing to find companionship in any long living sibling would have changed anything at all? Eg Ulla lives for a long time.
Hmm hard to say because I think it would hinge on what his dynamic would be with the sibling and how that does or does not shake up his dynamic with Baghra.
Ulla is interesting because she didn’t grow up with Baghra, so she has wildly different values, which might be good! But also growing up separately means they don’t have much of a formative bond, and from what little of her personality we know about from the Language of Thorns, she seems prickly and independent. And she certainly didn’t jump at the chance of going with Aleksander when he offered! Therefore, even in a scenario where they interact as family, I think it’s just as likely they just randomly come across each other like once every couple decades lol so it’s not going to be much in the way of companionship. So I feel like he’d probably eventually wind up in the same place in that scenario?
Generally I don’t think he’s the sort of person where a single positive relationship would fix him. Both because Baghra already exists, and that didn’t solve anything at all, but also because he already has a pretty firmly entrenched “us unique few who matter vs those statistics on a page who’ll be dead in the blink of an eye” mindset. So a single sibling wouldn’t really alter that worldview, unless like very unique circumstance where they’re both older, and have had the opportunity to develop values outside of Baghra’s perspective, and they’re present during his formative years. And that’s still a toss up imo! But anyone who’s younger, also isolated, and either only has Baghra’s perspective, or like Ulla shows up way later, just isn’t going to meaningfully change his worldview, and therefore how things eventually end up.
(Unless you mean changing things in terms of him having an additional enemy or ally during the canon era, which, again, too many variables to even begin to consider.)
I’m very much not a Baghra hater, and I think Darkling stans get really weird about her! But it is true that pretty much most of his Problems (i.e. his personality) stem from how she raised him, what values she instilled in him, and the formative circumstances of them being so isolated and afraid of everything and everyone all the time. So I really think the only sort of relationship that would fix him is one found outside of his family unit, and preferably before he’s had centuries to calcify into uh… who he is.
Which makes the KoS introduction of other Saints really interesting! Because you’d think they would offer any sort of community for him. But a) KoS is not real to me, B) seems highly likely that the Saints were so fucked up and also so wildly uninterested in the rest of the world/the plight of Grisha that he eventually found them repellant.
Anyway, I think any sort of formative, actual community could’ve fixed him… DitW where Annika doesn’t try to kill him lmao. But also his character hinges on the concept of continued isolation, betrayal, and loneliness leading to insane ruthlessness of centuries. So like he’d need a string of good luck with people who might die eventually anyway, or at least some immortals that both don’t suck and aren’t Morozovas.
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Hey uhm I have questions regarding I guess safety? I have never been hypnotized before so I don't have any first hand experience, but am interested.
So my questions are if someone is in a trance, can they get themselves out on their own if they so choose? Does how "deep" the is matter?
Similarly can you resist a trigger? How about a trigger you don't know about, how much does that even matter?
I guess my questions boil down to if there is a danger of losing my ability to meaningfully consent? Or will I just have to trust in the decency of the person I choose to explore that with? Is there a point where it doesn't matter anymore? How much I read on here about free will is fantasy to kink on and how much is real?
Ultimately how much autonomy am I really giving up and can I get it back on my own?
I am sorry if this is rambly and long, but it's something I am concerned about.
Hi, anon! ^^
First off, you're sounding a little shy so let me just say that you've done a good thing by yourself asking these kinds of questions. Lots of people find this stuff intimidating and talking about what you think and putting words to how you feel is a very good first step to being able to play safely and happily.
For that reason, I'd suggest that - no matter what you think of the answers I have for you - these are probably also things to talk about with any prospective partners. No matter the kind of play you're engaged in, having clear ideas in your head about what is and isn't OK for you makes it a lot easier to communicate what you need to communicate or even just identify if something's not OK in the moment.
Now you've asked a lot of different questions, so let's get stuck in:
[…] if someone is in a trance, can they get themselves out on their own if they so choose? Does how "deep" the [trance] is matter?
The short answer is "yes", but as with most of these, the real answer will be "yes, and".
Trance can feel a lot of different ways, and a lot of more "traditional" approaches will produce a trance that can feel lethargic or comfy in ways that might make you reticent to drag yourself up out of it in the same way that you might not want to get out of bed in the morning. Conversely, trance might be disorienting and you might not be sure how to get yourself "out" as it were. If you kinkify mindlessness or helplessness and strive for those feelings in trance, they can interfere with your thinking in a way that might make shifting yourself difficult.
While trance will definitely fade over time if it's not maintained in some way, it's absolutely possible to quickly remove yourself from a trance. The best way to think about how to do this is to think of it as having steps like getting yourself out of any other situation:
First, you have to recognise that you are in this state and would like not to be.
Second, you have to choose to do something about this (e.g., "waking up")
Finally, you have to do it.
This isn't actually that difficult, but recognising that there are steps that can be interfered with can help you identify where things might go wrong.
Usefully, this is all a skill that you can practice and develop. I strongly encourage people to practice - for example through roleplay or dry runs - interactions like telling their partner "no" and waking themselves up from trance. You might, for example, start your practice with hypnosis with some simple instructions to teach you how to wake yourself up. After that, you can practice what it's like to need to communicate safety and consent information, exercise a 'no', and so on.
There's a lot of practical advice here, some of which I've probably written before, but I hope the broad idea there is accessible.
Similarly can you resist a trigger? How about a trigger you don't know about, how much does that even matter?
You can think of hypnosis as a tool that helps us elicit behaviour from our own minds that is normally not consciously directed. For example, our minds are perfectly capable of hallucination and imagination, but doing so on command is usually quite surprising for people.
In this sense, hypnosis is quite literally mind control, but that doesn't make it magic. A "trigger" is a thing that can be understood, albeit messily, as living somewhere at the intersection of a conditioned response and a previously agreed-upon cue. Where precisely it lives will depend a lot on how the trigger was installed. It can be a lot harder, for example, to resist a classically conditioned response than it is to ignore a strictly verbal post-hypnotic suggestion encountered in an inappropriate context. A lot of how you respond to suggestions in general is going to be mediated by your own preconceived notions and feelings.
As will be a theme, I don't think that hypnosis is specially harmful to volition. You can get into a situation where you feel unable to resist an impulse or where your ability to choose is compromised, but my belief is that this would be true even if you weren't using hypnosis. In this context, hypnosis is more like a lever that we use to make the work we're already doing easier.
To me, that's a good thing because it means that the kind of habits and techniques we use to protect ourselves from coercive control in normal settings will also apply in a hypnotic one.
Regarding hypnotic phenomena that you are unaware of, this can absolutely complicate things. Sleight of hand and gaslighting are integral parts of the bad kind of non-consent and, while very very fun to play with, can be abusively taken advantage of.
There's a great deal more that can be discussed in regards to safety and memory play, but I think the most obvious answers are that yes, it can be a complicating factor in one's ability to identify the need to assert a boundary, and that that risk isn't impossible to mitigate.
I guess my questions boil down to if there is a danger of losing my ability to meaningfully consent?
Continuing in the theme, I think that any abusive relationship can compromise your ability to meaningfully consent. The concern with hypnosis should probably be whether or not this might happen without your noticing that it's starting to happen in a way that you don't want and removing yourself from that situation.
That said, people do things all the time that compromise their ability to meaningfully consent and that's perfectly OK. I'm compromising my ability to consent, for example, if I go drinking with my mates. However, I am not making myself unsafe by doing so.
Because hypnosis can take so many forms, I don't believe and don't want to say that hypnosis categorically compromises consent. A hypnosis scene can be collaborative, rather than authoritatively or permissively. When playing with hypnosis, we can emphasise feeling free to communicate and embrace our own agency over feeling controlled or manipulated. The idea that hypnosis is inherently comprompising, in my view, only holds water if you only practice hypnosis in ways that compromise.
I appreciate that I've mostly said "It Depends", here, but I'm hoping that I'm also giving some insight into what it depends on and how to navigate that.
Or will I just have to trust in the decency of the person I choose to explore that with?
I think that, by practicing healthy communication, maintaining your own boundaries, and checking yourself against friends and loved ones, that you are perfectly able to keep yourself safe - at least insofar as any of us are able to do that.
You're absolutely going to to get into a situation where you need to trust people - I honestly don't think it's possible to live life in a way that doesn't need that -, but letting someone hypnotise you isn't going to be a make-or-break decision where you're offering up your volition to some stranger. You can think of it like any other new relationship: having a good sense of yourself and keeping boundaries is always important for keeping shitty people from taking advantage.
Is there a point where it doesn't matter anymore?
I think this is absolutely possible. For some people, it's The Goal. I think that you only reach that point through practice and repetition, however, and no behaviour is so robust as not to be extinguished by a sufficiently disruptive change in environment .
How much I read on here about free will is fantasy to kink on and how much is real?
I have some Thoughts on the concept of Free Will that ought to be a whole other post, but I think the answer to these questions depends on what you want to do and how you characterise your own capacity for choice. I think I've mostly addressed the practical elements, but I'd be happy to have a longer conversation as well. (Given the nuance one has to run into with discussions of free will, I prefer to have those in conversation rather than by correspondence so we can iron out what we mean.)
Ultimately how much autonomy am I really giving up and can I get it back on my own?
Ultimately, how much autonomy you're giving up depends on what you're doing and how you're doing it. This is all, in a lot of ways, in our heads. That's not to say that it isn't real, just that our own beliefs and feelings factor in immensely to how we experience things. I think that, if you don't want to give up a great deal of autonomy and are conscientious that, that you aren't likely to do so unwittingly.
Even if you do find you've misplaced some of your autonomy, you can always pick it back up. It might be a long and difficult road if you give a great deal of your freedom up, but it's never really gone. It's just something that you might not be exercising at that moment.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for writing. Even though I feel like I skipped over a lot, I know that was a lot. Feel free to ask more or shoot me a message. I find talking in real time to be much easier than through asks, but I totally appreciate if you'd rather not.
I hope you feel empowered to try things out if you want to ^^
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lilyblackdrawside · 1 month ago
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Interlocking Competition was an event from a while ago. From a time before modules, before branches, before Ch'alter. It featured the debut of Operator Pallas, who was gracious enough to be available to everyone within the event as a special support unit, if they desired to bring her along. The main draw of this event was that it featured a main stage and four adjacent stages that could affect it. Clearing one of the adjacent stages would lock the operators you used to do so out of being used in any of the other stages and remove one of the very strong elites from the main stage. Each side stage was more difficult than the one before it, with the first being clearable with a single operator like Deepcolor and the last needing actually some effort (FrostNova was there for some reason.)
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The layout looked like this. I found this to be really interesting, because at the time my roster of operators wasn't too well-developed. I had enough to relatively comfortably take all the side stages, but if it reran nowadays, I (and many other players I imagine) could just kinda roll over it, even if they buffed up the difficult. So it was kind of a thing of its time. The overall number of operators in the game was lower too after all. You could also get medals for not taking the side stages and clearing the main stage at its full power. With that in mind, here is
Interlocking Competwotion
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With a bigger, better roster, the stage also has to grow! In addition to the four already familiar side stages, there are also twelve extra stages. These follow a similar difficulty but also (especially) a different stage length, with each extra stage of its set from 1 to 3 being more difficult and slightly longer than the last. Wouldn't want it to start to drag. However, unlike the side stages, taking these doesn't lower the difficulty of the main stage. The first of each set presents a "neutral" modifier, that may make it more or less difficult depending on your playstyle. This is reminiscent of some of the side stages in the recent Pinch-Out Experimental Operation and Contingency #1/2 Contract Battleplan game modes, where you were presented with a gimmick like only having 1 deploy limit, having a very high amount of starting DP but no natural regeneration and Vanguards crippled to the point of being unable to meaningfully make more or other such things. The second and third then are just more traditional difficulty increases, related to the first's neutral modifier.
Of course, most people won't have 204 properly-raised operators to clear all these stages with, but that's the point! It's to test how minimal of a squad you can build and get away with, to take each of your units to their fullest potential and deprive yourself of comforts you may be used to in normal squad building.
The "choose your own difficulty modifiers" thing is reminiscent of Contingency Contract, but I'm just really fond of it. It's a good system. To get all medals you'll have to take six of the Extra Stage - they'll have pretty significant effects and those who want to shoot the moon will have the opportunity to do so by going for all twelve!
Naturally this event isn't real.
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briannysey · 4 months ago
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can i ruin your monklike inner piece and request the 5e rant you had in those tags. i have my own qualms with it and i know many are tired of seeing it dunked on but i'm curious what you, specifically, focus on with it.
Okay so, there’s one minor complaint that I was gonna make about the way someone else approaches D&D. But you’ve asked and I am honorbound to answer.
My problem with 5e ultimately amounts to two big things:
I feel like there’s a huge disconnect between the mechanical heavy elements and the narrative elements of D&D’s system, and the way the mechanics are structure actually make bridging that gap more difficult.
The combat and gameplay options in general are boring.
To explain the disconnect, I think this largely comes down to the design direction. A lot of people talk about TTRPGs exist on a spectrum from crunch to fluff (or mechanics to narrative, or w/e), and that’s somewhat true and useful. But I think TTRPGs could have both heavy crunch and heavy narrative, but these systems need to exist in harmony if they’re both going to exist in the same game. I think this is actually something that some TTRPGs have done exceptionally well in recent years. There’s Blades in the Dark (and some of its descendant systems) ofc, but an exemplary one is Spire, and another one I rarely see mentioned but is similarly exemplary is Kult: Divinity Lost. These games largely tend more towards narrative than crunch but they’re games where mechanical choies (like ones made during level up) have huge impacts on the narrative in ways that feel appropriate and are also really fun. Leveling up in Spire as the firebrand revolutionary class can turn a character into a living embodiment of revolution! That’s so sick, and helps mechanical elements inform narrative choices, and narrative elements inform mechanical choices!
In D&D these choices feel very disconnected. Certainly your character might go up an attribute, or gain a fancy new combat power, but relatively rarely does it feel like a level up in D&D meaningfully impacts the narrative, or inform character choices. You see some actual play actors do this, or in some really experienced home games, but if it takes an expert at the game or TTRPG veteran to do it, then it’s probably not a well made system.
I think that the nature of these two problems exacerbates the other. Like if the gameplay and character options (mostly mechanical) are boring, then the ways that they support the narrative are boring.
Combat in most D&D editions, but especially 5e, can be an absurdly long experience. One minute of game time might take an hour of play in real life. Moving through turns can be exceptionally boring, especially if a mechanic like stuns, or poor mechanical choices limit a player’s already small agency on the battlefield. As a DM I often find myself reinventing half the game if I want to provide mechanical choices that I or my players feel are interesting or fun, and I largely don’t have that problem in many other systems.
My fixes for these situations are relatively simple, but have huge knock-on effects to the game. I like to give every level up or character feature a narrative power based on a mechanical one. Some existing D&D feats actually fit really well into this, like Observant! This one gives an Attribute point (Wisdom), a specific narrative skill (reading lips), and more clear mechanical benefit (+5 to passive Perception and Investigation scores). This one character option shows not only a growth in a character’s direct mechanical traits, it makes a character’s level up and option represent a real development on both narrative and power levels.
My other fix besides adding more of these would be to add more modular and interesting powers and options. 4e actually had some very fascinating choices where characters could build suites of powers that synergized (like turning the damage tag of all a wizard’s spells to one element that the character has other power ups for- like a wizard who makes most of their spells deal fire damage). Options like these for 5e, especially options earlier with more impactful level ups would go a long way towards making combat more fun, which would make that half the game far less of a slog.
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rea-grimm · 9 months ago
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Dragon of Masyaf 1
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Dragon Altair x Reader
As a novice assassin, you came under the wing of the youngest Grandmaster, Altair himself. Under his training, you began to notice several quirks that you were determined to get to the bottom of. Including your developing relationship with the Grandmaster.
Altair stood in his study watching the novice training from the large window. He checked them here and there but otherwise didn't study them. He trusted the mentors who trained them to do a first-class job. 
This time, even if he tried to focus his attention on something else, like his work, he always had to return to the window. One of the novices towered over all the others and got his attention.
You were one of the few who was interested in training and learning to be an assassin. You were a talent that was not seen here very often. A beautiful flower that grew in the inhospitable environment of the desert. One of the rafiqs noticed your talent and sent you here to Masyaf.
Although you were just a novice, you planned to change that soon. You wanted to become a full-fledged assassin and fight for people's freedom.
The mentor taught you new sword attacks that you learned naturally. During training, you had the impression that someone was watching you. But you didn't see anyone. That is, except as a mentor, but that was his duty.
You were halfway through training when someone approached the training ring. From his uniform, you guessed that he was someone in a high position. However, you didn't have time to follow him, because another novice rushed at you in a practice match and wanted to take advantage of your inattention. 
You simply dodged his attack and sent him to the ground in a few simple moves. The mentor complimented you while giving your opponent some advice on what to avoid next time and what to improve on. After this fight, the mentor gave you a break before turning to the newcomer.
"Altair, what brings you here?" greeted the assassin's mentor. You immediately knew who it was by the name. Everyone on Masyaf has heard of Altair. The youngest Grandmaster in Assassin history. Looking at him, you got the impression that he was only a few years older than you.
“I wanted to see for myself how strong our novices are,” he replied, looking you over. You had the impression that his gaze lingered on you longer than on the others.
"I must say that we now have a really strong and skilled group," the mentor praised you. Altair nodded his head meaningfully before looking back at you.
"You?" he said to you. "What is your name?" he asked.
“Y/F/N,” you replied. Altair repeated your name before turning to your mentor.
"Starting tomorrow I will be personally supervising training Y/F/N. Is that okay with you?" he said and it didn't sound like a question at all.
"Sure. I see a lot of potential in Y/N. I'm sure you'll be happy with her," he replied. That was a shock to you. Train under a grandmaster? It just didn't happen to anyone. That was the first you heard about it.
And so it was that from the next day you were taught by the great Altair himself. Altair was strict about some things and tried to get the best out of you, but sometimes you wondered if there was more to it.
Several times you caught him watching you with his amber eyes with an almost dreamy expression. When you caught him staring, he would usually immediately look away, or immediately harden his gaze and go back into learning mode.
Moreover, every time you addressed him as a master, it caught him by surprise. You didn't understand why. That's how everyone at the castle addressed him. 
Sometimes when you addressed him like that, he would stop, or you noticed how his cheeks turned pink, which he tried to hide in the shadow of his hood. But that happened at least. Especially the times you caught him staring and asked him if something was wrong.
He had a style of training that suited you. Sometimes he would give you little training missions like find and bring without being seen etc.
You also trained your fighting skills with him. He always explained a movement to you and how to do it. He let you try it a few times before you had to fight him. You had the impression that the fights were just some kind of game for him.
You could see the joy in his eyes at being able to fight with you. But he never spared you and so it happened that he always won. After the fight, he told you what you improved and what needed to be improved. However, he always praised you for improving. You hoped that one day you would be able to beat him in a fight.
Over time, you found out that the Grandmaster regularly went to the underground passages, which were so complex that they seemed like a labyrinth. Especially when you got into a giant corridor made up of thousands of columns where one had no idea how many steps he had walked. Everything looked the same there and it was easy to get lost there.
At first, you just waved it off that it was nothing, but your curiosity didn't stop you and you wanted to find out what was there. In the beginning, you tried to follow Altair, but somehow he always got lost. And so you set yourself the goal of one day finding out what is hidden there.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Assassin's Creed Masterlist
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trooperwrites · 9 months ago
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Solo Leveling
Enjoyment: 8/10
Quality: 4/10
Link
Genre: Action
Synopsis
Sung Jin-Woo is an weak E rank hunter barely making it in low rank dungeons when he faces a bizarre dungeon which leaves his party mostly dead and him as the only survivor. However, as the old saying goes, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Sung Jin-Woo has now acquired the ability to level up and he is on his grind to become the strongest hero of all time.
Review
I think this is probably the biggest gap I've given between the enjoyment of something and the quality. Firstly, lets talk about the positives. Solo Leveling has really nice looking art and panel composition. The fights are well framed and executed and everything looks very cool. Secondly, Solo Leveling is a very effective power fantasy. There is just something deeply satisfying about watching this guy level up and seeing the tides of battle immediately be reversed upon his arrival. In a world where good does not always prevail, it is satisfying to read Sung Jin-Woo triumph against what look to be hopeless odds. However, I think in terms of writing on a technical level that make the text worse even when considering genre and the tfact that it is suppose to be a power fantasy.
First, I want to talk about the fact that the text spends time foreshadowing things that are never developed. There are two cases that I think best exemplify this. The less egregious one was with the case of the Chinese hunter Liu Zhigang. His abilities where shown multiple times and there were numerous instances where it seemed like it he would become important in the later story. However, ultimately literally nothing happens with his character and he just gets dropped as the later arcs focus entirely on Sung Jin-Woo.
Secondly, in this case of Sung Jin-Woo's romantic interest of Cha Hae-In. Following the Jeju Island Arc, there is significant development of the relationship between the two. It appeared that she was going to his guild and maybe we would get a story arc between the two. However, some other random character ends up joining the guild and no arc happens. What makes this particularly egregious is that the new character that ends up joining the guild ends up being unimportant to the story and she doesn't actually do anything. What is the point of introducing this new characters to the guild if they aren't going to contribute meaningfully to the story. Not only is nothing done with the new character that has been introduced but also this ends Cha Hae-In being meaningful to the story. After this moment, she also disappears from the story and basically nothing happens between the two of them until shortly before the final arc where they go on a date and the epilogue where they are married. Ignoring the rest ending and epilogue for a moment, I'll get back to that at some point, there isn't enough development done between Jin-Woo and Hae-In for me to care about their relationship. They are basically strangers who haven't talked to each other in months by the time of their date. By not having Hae-In join Jin-Woo's guild, what was the point of them getting closer during the Jeju Island arc. She could basically be cut from the story and nothing would change. We lose out on having two characters interacting and developing as characters. Her character just feels like a prop to indulge in the power fantasy of the strong conventionally attractive woman falling for the main character.
This brings me to my other major critique in that Sung Jin-Woo morphs into a story warping character. This isn't true at the start, early on there are a lot of compelling supporting characters with their own struggles and goals but as the story progresses they become less and less important. Eventually, Jin-Woo is the only character that actually matters and the only character with any meaningful development. Hae-In's fate is the same as every other supporting character as they no longer become relevant nor are their arcs developed or focused on; it becomes, in essence, a one man show. This leads into the ending where Jin-Woo resets the world and everyone forgets about the hunters.
This ending is really bad; I really hate the ending. The story basically ends by wiping out every character arc other than Jin-Woo's and resets the world to what it was before the story began. To highlight why I think this story is bad, lets again focus on the epilogue where Jin-Woo gets married to Hae-In. The reason why these two characters had a connection as hunters because they were both absurdly powerful and they were both isolated. They both have dealt with the struggle of being a hunter and the isolation that comes with said power. But this Hae-In is the not same Hae-In that he marries; the Hae-In that he marries is essentially a stranger with no connection to him. However, the failure of Solo Levelling to actually develop any of its side characters means that this is failure becomes blunted. Very few characters are actually different than when we first met them so nothing much is actually reset as all the character development that actually happens is about Jin-Woo.
All in all, Solo Leveling is a very power fantasy to read but it doesn't actually do anything substantive or interesting with its characters.
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dinoburger · 10 months ago
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I can't help but feel sort of ashamed and embarrassed by the willingness of people to rally behind escapist fiction but not real human causes... I spend a lot of time in fan work and next to none developing any kind of practice of my own, time I could thereby extend into engaging my own culture.
I've spent a lot of my life isolated, always struggled in institutional education, never secured employment, have been cornered and overwhelmed by familial abuse and on top of that and been terrified of dying to the ongoing disease crisis the world faces. I know why fiction is appealing to me and why those community bonds attract me, but at the same time, the longer I tease apart the threads of what I'm really made of there's a kind of lowest common denominator easiness to fan communities - not that the work isn't meaningful or valuable, but like, is Gabe Newell the entity I want to devote my life to or have I just been marketed to?
it's embarrassing to have consumerism be such an active part of your work and identity. I keep thinking about the OFMD nonsense.
Like, even if I don't give a cent to Steam, I'm still part of the glue holding the commercial enterprise together. I still provide a means of continued patronage under the guise of community. I see a lot of interesting avenues of exploration in these characters, but, at the end of the day I feel like the majority of people interacting with my work don't see it as a unique exploration of the material but supplementary to their experience of the game and another means of continuous consumerism.
It was easier to tell myself this was all for the joy of community and shared interest at first, it does still bring me joy, but it feels distinctly tainted by the reality of what my engagement means.
I've felt uncomfortable in paying publicity to various creators over the years and felt uncomfortable by how easily other artists would do the same - I'm eternally aggrieved by the inescapable presence of Scott Cawthorn's work, for instance, but I can't claim to be miles better. I think I've struck the much deeper root of that discomfort that lies in lending validity to having a consumerist identity that overrides a broader scope of meaning and experience.
It feels cheap, trite, and like the core of my work will never be about anything except for marketing a product.
There's another post floating around about specifically how social media makes artists fixate on branding themselves as a product too which also makes me suspect that just substituting the product I'm marketing for an original work won't necessarily elevate my practice, either.
This is maybe my biggest remorse about having everything on one blog... I've framed my online identity in this way. People therefore treat me in this way. I am the product. Every aspect of me is there to be consumed, including my personal life, my sense of activism, all of it.
And I will be coaxed into an easy lull of letting it happen. I won't meaningfully expand my practice.
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yallemagne · 6 months ago
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genuinely curious, what do you think about Jack x Art as a ship
you know it's a good question when i unlock my chambers to fetch the laptop.
Love it. I'm obviously not as invested in it as Mina/Jonathan or even Arthur/Lucy, but I love it.
Before I get too deep into this, I'm begging you, if you like Jack/Art read @bluecatwriter's fics for it on ao3. Such amazing work. I need to catch up, but I haven't had reading brain.
Think we're gonna have to dip a little into headcanon here. And I spoil the book, newcomers beware.
I see these two as family friends. Obviously, what with the familiar nicknames Art and Jack. Both from wealth, though Arthur has titles and land and Jack has medical nepotism. I imagine Jack's upbringing to be very emotionally stunting, raised to embody rigid standards of masculinity. Meanwhile, Arthur's father decided to put all the work he could in making him feel emotionally supported, leading to a very emotionally driven young man. When they were little, I imagine Jack almost hating Arthur for how sensitive he is, saying he's spoiled, but it's really just bitterness over not getting a healthy upbringing.
And then they grow up, and Arthur grows a million feet taller, and Jack has a lot of complicated feelings about that. Cue "Don't be intimidated, Seward. Try to imagine him in his underwear.". Jack is a bit more mature at this point and recognizes Arthur's emotional maturity as a good thing. He still tends to view it as "Arthur is masculine enough to make up for some feminine habits", so it isn't perfect. Meanwhile, Arthur has always looked up to Jack, though he now has to crane his head down. The two of them embody something the other finds admirable, and their regard for one another sits in this void space between respect and attraction.
Now. Sexuality. There are two wolves in my head. One is more interesting. The wolves are: Jack is disaster bisexual and Jack is compulsory heterosexuality gay. The former is what is said about every single male character in the history of tumble fandom, and the latter feels more interesting from a writing perspective. For the development of this relationship, I lean toward the latter. THIS IS RELEVANT I PROMISE.
So... I think Arthur introduces Jack to Lucy in hopes they would get along because Arthur wanted Jack to one day be his best man. Very awkward when (this is just an interpretation of the events btw) Jack subconsciously recognizes Arthur's feelings for Lucy and projects his feelings for Arthur onto Lucy because Perfect Man likes Girl -> Like Girl to become Perfect Man.
(I do think Jack truly falls in love with Lucy as a person separate from Arthur over the course of the story, but not romantically. He just can't perceive it as anything other than romantic because of heteronormativity.)
Arthur loves and trusts Jack so much that, even knowing Jack proposed to her the same day he did, he goes to him and asks for help when Lucy is sick. This love and trust means he doesn't think to ask questions, though. I talked about that before.
When Arthur loses his father, his existing family, and Lucy, the woman he was going to build a new family with, he falls apart in Jack's arms. He trusted Jack with Lucy's health, and she died without Arthur ever being informed how dire of a condition she was in, and he still trusts Jack with his emotions. Jack isn't fully equipped to comfort Arthur, but his attempt is genuine and deeply appreciated by Arthur.
And then Bram wrote Arthur being comforted by the only other recurring female protagonist and decided that that marked the end of Arthur existing meaningfully in the story because Bram is a coward.
I've already written a post about Jack's feelings of entitlement regarding women and why it's more than just shipping that makes me resist the idea that Arthur and Jack married anyone other than each other. Their relationship is based on mutual respect and a willingness to be vulnerable with each other. The key to getting these two hitched is getting Jack more open to vulnerability, and then we are set.
Following the events of Dracula, Jack is anxious about embodying perfect masculinity, getting a wife, having a million kids... but this anxiety manifests with him bothering Arthur to do it. Arthur is in no rush to do any of these things. The woman he was preparing to build a family with is gone. Jack, who sees every single woman as a potential wife because of misogyny, is flabbergasted. Perhaps they have a falling out (just cut out my write-up of the falling out bc I'm like "that's a good idea!" even though I know I'll never write it). Jack has been pressing Arthur to move on because Arthur embodies the masculinity that Jack strives for, and if Arthur doesn't want a wife, what if Jack doesn't want a wife either?? What if they're both gay??? Arthur asks "...well, what if?"
Then they have a Vegas wedding.
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