#also if this looks weird in formatting... using the 'new' post editor i keep forgetting exists lmao

[kallowrites]

hello, this is just some raw dialogue (as in, this is how I draft fics - no 'character tags' or much description in-between) for an idea I've thought about ever since I met Vengarl in-game -- I just wanna take him with me to go see how pretty parts of Drangleic are and let him talk a bunch more jhgdj

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“Did you ever have family, Vengarl? Forgive me if that’s a sensitive subject - I’m only curious. I can’t imagine the life of a sellsword is very… settled.”

“None that I can recall, no.”

“None at all? Did you not keep… company?”

“You ask dangerous questions, my friend. Ah- Do not look so distressed. I don’t mind much. Thinking back on it… In those days, I likely did. Though it’d be temporary at best. An… exchange, more than anything. With Forossa gone and divided, travelling as I did, doing what I did… I had no desire for such trivial things. I had no friends. No family. My fellow mercenaries did not even dare to bother me for any such thing, unless it was to announce a departure for more killing. The only persistent company was my blade, and my lust for violence.”

“That sounds… rather lonely.”

“I do not feel the same towards it. I think it was only fitting that others kept their distance as they did. Perhaps I was too frightening for most – I do not recall anyone daring to ask for more than a night’s companionship. And even then… I don’t recall it ending well.”

“...I’ve never done anything like that before. Perhaps I’m too much of a romantic, in that regard.”

(chuckles) “The body has its urges, whether you’re a dreamer, a loner, or any mix of all else between the two. You do what you must, at times. Though I suppose… it depends on the person in question.”

“Then how do you- Oh, forgive me,” (she blushes) “I’m growing far too comfortable, I shouldn’t be so rude…”

“Saying such things only piques curiosity. You may speak freely with me as you please. I will let you know if you offend - I will not hold it against you.”

“...It’s just… About urges. You’ve certainly been undead for far longer than I have, yes? I cannot imagine that… bodes well for them. Or you.”

“Ah, well… I cannot fault such a query. It’s not an issue for me, anymore. Though I could feel my body’s presence and existence prior to you killing it, it was… a distant connection. Perhaps more comparable to an instinct - a hunch, more than a feeling. If it still had urges from when it was human - from when I was human… I never realized it. All I could feel emanating from it was hate and violence. Being so disconnected from it for so long only served to make that obvious to me. Its only desire was to destroy and ruin all it came across, in its blind, mad journey.”

“...I cannot imagine what that’s like.”

“Do not trouble yourself with attempting to understand it. I doubt I would have understood it myself, had it not been my fate.”

“...”

“...What about you, wanderer?”

“Hm?”

“Family. Friends. Companions. Or are you, perhaps, as lonely on your journey as I have been on mine?”

(she shakes her head, looking thoughtful if a bit sad) “No. I don’t have a family, I think. I didn’t really have much in the way of friends either until coming to Drangleic, in truth. I always liked to wander, but… When the curse found its way to me, my wandering suddenly had direction. Before, I just wanted to explore the world. Now… I suppose I have a goal in mind. Though perhaps not one of my own choosing.”

“You did not choose this path you’ve set out on?”

“Not exactly. According to the Herald in Majula, many have walked the same path as I am. Some go further than others. Some don’t go that far at all before losing hope. All I know is that I arrived in Drangleic, and have been… nudged, I suppose… in one direction. ‘Seek souls. Larger, more powerful souls. Seek the King, lest this land swallow you whole, as it has so many others.’ That is my sole guidance. Though… That’s not to say I have not still retained my old ways. I still find great joy in wandering… Enjoying the journey itself. Anticipating the destination, but not rushing towards it.” “I believe that is a very reasonable way to live. Taking time to appreciate the journey for what it is, I mean. I know in the days where I still lived - not branded as Undead - I didn’t do such a thing. I didn't care. It didn’t matter where I went or who I fought for or against… All that mattered was the destination: Spilling the blood of all those who were not the ones who hired me. I may have seen a great many things… travelled to many places… But I cannot remember it all. I didn’t pay attention to it. I didn’t need to, I didn’t have to unless it could prove a useful thing to know in a battle. And even then… I was reckless. Too confident in my strength, despite that confidence not being misplaced. A disadvantage in battle only meant more death and destruction before it was through. Perhaps… That is how I was severed apart like this in the first place.”

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 3

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1 and Part 2. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1 and 2. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one.

(Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

The Battle of Ostagar cutscene is one of the first big cutscenes that got made during production. When it was shown to the team for the first time, it was one of those moments where DG felt like “Awesome, this is a game!” Context: During the development of a game it feels more like doing a series of disconnected tasks and assets rather than working on a game, so seeing stuff come together at times like this is rad. The first time it was shown, it had temporary placeholder voiceacting.

Pathfinding is always a nightmare to do, especially in games which involve a party of NPCs. As soon as other characters are involved alongside the PC, it’s exponentially more difficult and takes up a lot more resources. The PC is the most complex thing going on visually on-screen, with so many moving pieces, and in party-based games you have four [etc] of them. So, some critique that’s made of the DA games in regards to this subject which compares it to games like The Witcher doesn’t really make sense, as The Witcher has a solo PC.

‘Weird mage hats’ didn’t really become a trademark ‘DA thing’ akin to their place of random pieces of cheese around the world until later games. For DAO, someone probably asked the artists to create “mage helmets”. Mage hats actually looked better in the concept art than they did in-game. What happened was that they were already modelled and then they didn’t have time to re-do them.

DAO was made for PC first. The plan from the get-go though was that it would be an all-platform release (PC/360/PS3). Games like these are always made for the “lowest common denominator” from among the various platforms that they’re being planned to release for. Games have to be made for the most stringent/basic of the platforms because this makes for less conversion rate. At the time of DAO’s development, the PS3 was getting weak graphically and getting old, and this was quite a limitation: “Why do we have to limit [crowds?] because of this one platform?” “Well, we just gotta”. The original models were a bit too detailed. Later on, the artists started making models that had lower polycounts that they could put in a bit more of. DA was never really focused on making environments realistic in an ambient manner (making environments less “gamey” and more lived in, like having crowded places). They could have put more emphasis there but this would have led to a resources issue. Ambience basically wasn’t a high priority. As a writer DG isn’t keen on this decision and naturally he wanted the world to look more realistic, but he noted that it’s easy for him to say this when this would be work that he didn’t have to do personally.

During DAO development, they might have just had a dev sphere originally that was called “tech design”. DG thinks this was later broken up into systems design, combat design and maybe level design. Level designers are the people that are the implementers of the plot. Narrative design is a branch of the level design spoke. System designers respond to requests from lead designers. Narrative designers and writers don’t interact with system designers much unless they have to. As an example of interaction here, system designers might come to writers and say, “Alright, so we’re doing combat, what are the sorts of things a mage can do in this world?” The writers would be like “Ok, these are the sorts of spells we imagined.” The system designers might then come back with “Ok, that fulfills 2 of the 10 things we need mages to be able to do in combat. Is it possible that mages could do [this]?” Sometimes it is, and other times it would be like “No, that’s really outside of the lore”. Still, sometimes said original-lore-breaking things would be added to the game a week later due to necessity and DG would be like “Oh ok”. This kind of stuff is an insight into how some aspects of the lore came to be or changed over time during development.

The system designers on DAO got a better idea of what could be done and what could not be done according to the lore as things went on. At first, DG had to keep telling them things like “It’s not that big a deal, but in the lore mages can’t teleport. Instant teleportation isn’t possible in the world”. The system designers needed a spell where someone could get from spot A to spot B really fast on the battlefield. DG said that that’s fine in itself, “have them turn into a cloud of bees or have a light that moves between the two places. We can use magic as a transition or as a speed thing, but what is against the lore is instant teleportation, to traverse distance like that”. At first the system designers weren’t on board with it, but they got on board with it later. 

This sort of thing doesn’t just depend on the system designers. It also depends on what the tech artists are willing to do. Sometimes a certain request made of them was too hard and they said they weren’t able to do it. Other times it was a matter of DG not communicating the request properly, or the tech artists had already done the work and so throwing out all their work to re-do it just because he didn’t communicate clearly wouldn’t have been cool. So sometimes the originally planned lore got contravened, and sometimes things other parts of the team implemented in the game became the new lore.

LE made an insightful observation at this point: You can’t think of game development as a cohesive series of decisions that everyone on the team is involved in. This simple isn’t how it works at all, especially on large complex projects. There are processes at some studios for decision-making, but most of the time, a bunch of decisions get made by system designers. Others get made by level designers, still others by narrative designers. Situations then arise where someone notices a certain decision and that that decision and another one contradict each other. This is where conflict arises and a solution has to be negotiated. This is why often in games we get elements in the end product that are dissonant, because it was discovered too late or by the time it was realized, it was too difficult to change. It’s actually a miracle that on a game of DAO’s depth and scope that all these things largely hold together. [My note: With this insight and the context below on documentation, it makes sense how BW sometimes appear to ‘forget aspects of their own lore’ or end up contradicting parts of the lore in different parts of the franchise]

Sometimes such things would be noticed in time and DG would go and say, “Can we not do that or do something else instead?” and the relevant parties would be totally accommodating and do it (depending on how much time they had or how much time it would take to remedy). Sometimes this worked out and sometimes it didn’t. For the most part, everyone wants to work together. DG couldn’t be involved in every aspect of systems design “like some kind of All-Watchful eye of lore”, so he had to rely on the people who were there knowing enough from the documentation. Not everybody reads every document however. There was so much documentation even back during DAO. DG can only imagine the sheer amount of world/lore documentation that now exists now in the run-up to DA4; he said he thinks that nobody at this point on the current team has read it all, as editor/lore-wrangler Ben Gelinas isn’t with BW anymore. Lots of legacy documentation accumulated very quickly. Sometimes, the old document would still be there. Over time it became harder for people to discern which was the most recent version of a particular document. Sometimes people didn’t update the relevant documentation after changing things. Lore documentation was particularly bad for this issue. BG wrangled all the documentation and created an internal reference wiki (essentially acting as a lorekeeper). He was constantly coming in and picking DG’s brain to clarify conflicting aspects or obtain the correct, in-date information etc (“Good on him”).

DAO was the first time DG was involved in voice-recording. Prior to that he was only on the receiving end, in that the recordings would come in and he’d review them as they did so. DAO is when BW set up their own VO department and where Caroline Livingstone came on. CL wanted DG and Mike Laidlaw to be more involved in the casting process. As a result, the writers then were to write casting scripts: like, ‘For Morrigan, can you write a 1 page script that goes through 3 big emotions? [like regular talking for a bit, then here’s a bit of heightened emotion such as anger, then here’s a part where they’re being funny if they were a comedic character] These scripts had to be kept short so that the recording that was made from it wouldn’t be more than 30-40 seconds in length.

For the initial VA sessions, DG and CL flew down to Technicolor studioin LA and they had all the major castmembers there (later on, recording sessions were done a lot more remotely; this became easier as BW’s setup got more sophisticated). The idea was that they would both be present live in-person for the first 2 or 3 sessions to help each VA find their ‘voice’, and for DG at the first session to sit down with each VA and walk them through who their character was, what DA was about, and help them figure out how their character should talk. Claudia Black was the first of these sessions and he was “a wreck” going into that one. It got easier after that however. CL gave directions into the soundproof booth and DG was present to give notes on things like pronunciation or the intentions behind some lines. He says he learned everything he now knows about VO direction from CL. The things and tricks CL can do to get a performance out of an actor are amazing. Sometimes an actor would get a bit fixated or stuck on a particular way of delivering a line. CL had atrick to help them past this; “I want you to clear your mind, and I want you to give me a version of this line that’s more yellow”. The idea is that they just had to break out of where they had been stuck in that mindset, and the thing was that it doesn’t matter what “yellow” meant, but what was important was what “yellow” meant to the actor. They could then take that new varied delivery and progress from there.

Alistair’s dialogue when the PC talks to Flemeth outside her hut was the first complex conversation DG wrote for DAO. It was the first one that had a lot of branching and fiddling to it. The hardest conversations to write are the ones with a lot of exposition, and when they do have exposition still making this interesting and natural. At this point in the game, the player has no agency, just reactivity. The devs talked a lot about this subject when they wrote the origin stories. Some of the stories allow the player to initially say no and refuse to join the Wardens, but you always end up being railroaded (the devs here ended up doing a form of the trope ‘But Thou Must!’). Do you give the player the option to say no? Is it important to allow them that option? At some point, writers have to accept that the player has some level of buy-in and is game to play. They discussed a lot where they sat on this and what is agency. “Maybe don’t worry about offering the player every possible choice, but about having reactivity.”

Loghain wasn’t okay with letting Cailan die. He didn’t sit and angst about it openly where the player could see, and once the decision had been made, it being Loghain, it was Made and Had To Be Done (he felt that it was something that had to happen). But he didn’t kill the son of the woman he’d once loved dearly as a random off-handed thing.

The Solas twist was planned from the beginning, from the DAO dev days. Such big things/broad strokes have stayed the same. However, some of the details have changed or been added along the way. They didn’t know for instance that Solas was going to be a companion; that was something they came up with when they were planning DAI. Flemeth’s true identity has never changed.

Zevran says Rinna was an elf, but WoT says she was a bastard child of a noble in line for the Antivan throne (the Antivan royal family being human). When asked if this was an oversight, DG said yes she was a bastard, but she may have been really far down the line of succession, i.e. technically in line, but would probably never have been allowed to take the throne in practise had that scenario ever actually arisen.

DA was maybe inspired a bit/some by ASOIAF. This was way before it was on TV of course. DG at the time had read the first book or so. He liked the fact that it was a fantasy setting but low-magic, and was about the people in the world and their politics rather than magic, prophecy and other high fantasy stuff.

It was only by DAI that the system designers decided that it was okay to think of banter as an “activity that players engaged in”. In previous games, the devs had inadvertently managed to ‘train’ players to immediately stop when companion banter fires so that they could hear it all (because if you do something else, it gets cut off). When the level designers put together the spaces, they accounted for what players would be doing i.e. how much time between combat. They didn’t however account for like “You’re travelling down this hall and there’s a banter for half of that space. This is an activity, so it’s okay not to put anything in there”. This is how the inadvertent training happened, when originally banters were supposed to be a thing that ran as you move around the world (as opposed to stopping and standing still). 

When asked if the Blight resulted from the creation of the Veil or pre-dates it: “I think you’ll probably have to wait on the game[s] for that answer, if it ever explains it”. He was also asked whether Arlathan is the Golden City. He won’t answer such questions naturally because they are “DeepLooooooore™~~ ♫”.

DG isn’t sure that he will play DA4 when it comes out. It’s not that PW and the team won’t do a good job, they will, it’s just that when DG plays RPGs he has an analytical mindset going on and finds it difficult to slip into the game and just enjoy. For DA4, as he was previously so involved in DA, there’ll naturally probably be an extra level of that with feeling like “What would I have done [for particular parts of the game’s design]?”. Alternatively he might instead feel like “Wow, this is awesome, here’s a game I would have made but didn’t have to do any work on!” DG stressed that it’s important to him to be fair about the work of his former colleagues - he wouldn’t want to come out and be like “I wouldn’t have made [this or that] choice”. He also noted that just because something might be a call he personally wouldn’t have implemented in the game, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad call. There are people out there where if DG intimated at all that there was an aspect of DA4 that he wasn’t keen on, he’s worried that they would pounce on it and use it as ammunition against the current team (who are his friends that he really cares about and wants to do well). He walked away from DA voluntarily and is happy his game will continue on. PW popped by in chat at this point and agreed that it’s definitely hard to play something that you used to work on.

Other assorted tidbits:

DG really opposed the part at the Battle of Ostagar where mabari are set to charge the darkspawn horde - “That’s not how you would use dogs [in war]”

There was supposed to be a cutscene where Flemeth rescues the HoF and Alistair from the top of the Tower of Ishal in her dragon-form. This was cut. DG remembered being angry about this like “nobody is gonna buy that you fall unconscious and then wake up in the hut totally rescued. [...] I guess I’m not always right”

When DG went to Beamdog there was a period where they thought about making a Baldur’s Gate 3. They put together a pitch and had a long series of discussions contemplating things like “What do we need from BG3? What do we expect it to have in order to have the BG name? What is needed and not needed to connect to from the previous games?”

DG isn’t sure who designed the DAO inventory system

PW in chat recalled a game writer from another company who was really ragging on DAI on the Christmas Day after release

Narrative designer and system designer are very different positions/roles with very different responsibilities

Simon Templeton as Loghain did all his voicework stuff in one take, which was very impressive

It would have been the marketing department that chose 30 Seconds To Mars for music. DA was really good at choosing up-and-coming acts for this that weren’t huge when they used their songs, but became huge afterwards

During work on Baldur’s Gate 2 was the most DG has ever crunched. He slept in the office a few times

“As soon as you get both Alistair and Morrigan in the party, that’s when it’s like ahh yes, this is a BioWare game”

Were Flemeth and Morrigan’s interactions with each other and the PC when Morrigan is being told to leave the Wilds and go with the Hero an act, considering that Morrigan did know about the OGB plan? No. That was The Plan, but said plan wasn’t like “Ok, she’s going to leave Right Now”

The elves and the inversion of the traditional elven trope are DG’s favorite part of the world/world-building

One of the original intentions for DAO was to make it so that the player wouldn’t need a healer in the party, or that there would be different kinds of healing, or that healing itself wouldn’t be a thing, but this just didn’t work out

The Imperial Highway used to be a really important part of the lore but it kind of got forgotten a bit

It’s kinda funny that after release some players expressed that Corinne Kempa’s accent as Leliana was “sooo fake”. It’s not fake, she’s actually a Brit that moved to France when she was young, so she has the exact type of accent that Leliana would have (Leliana was born in Orlais and is culturally Orlesian, but her mother was Fereldan and she considers herself as such)

They talked some about the need for documentation and how doing this can feel beurocratic and uncreative and how like you’re not working on a game or writing. PW in chat expressed that there was a year where they spent a lot of it working in PowerPoint and Excel, “so I feel this”

When they switched art directors to Matt Goldman, his first big complaint was about all the brown. He came to DG like “Is there a lore reason for or are you particularly in favor of the brown for story reasons?” DG was like “Uhh no” and Matt was then like “Ok good”

Console codes/commands aren’t usually stripped out of a game before release, they are usually still in the built, just disabled. The system itself is not removed but how to access said system is

BW doesn’t crunch as bad as we hear some companies do, and kind of prided itself on “not being terrible at crunch”. But BW’s “not terrible at crunch” is still crunch. We obviously don’t commend abusive family members for only abusing people on certain days of the week or whatever

Kate Mulgrew is American but she at times did the same thing a lot of the British VAs did, which was that the devs had a lot of struggle with getting them to say “darkspawn” correctly, with the emphasis in the right places. They’d say “dark SPAWN” as if it was two words with an adjective, and the stress put in the wrong place

Lack of children in DAI was a resources thing. They only had time to make a certain number of models. There was a series of meetings where they had to decide what things to cut. In the last meeting it was like ‘Here’s a bunch of things you don’t want to cut, we need to cut 4 of them’

They decided to put horned qunari back in DA2 because then they had the resources to do so. They then ended up having to explain why there were hornless qunari at the same time, and make this an in-world explanation as opposed to just ‘We didn’t have the resources, that was totally intentional’

Lots of players missed out on recruiting Leliana and/or Sten on their first playthrough and didn’t even know they existed/could be recruited. “Apparently we weren’t that great at pointing players in the right direction”

Tevinter is inspired by the Byzantine Empire (which wasn’t called that at the time incidentally, this is a name given by historians after the fact), what used to be the Roman Empire after the western part fell. This is the era Tevinter today is meant to encapsulate: decadent but clearly in decline, far away from the heyday and the heights of the former empire [source]

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

[sunscreenstudies]

hey ik this is random but I was scrolling thru the leaving cert tag and saw your post abt your results. Firstly congrats (even if it is 3 years late haha), secondly I’m currently in 6th year and was wondering if I could ask for some English advice? I’m looking to go up a grade (h3->h2) and was wondering if you have any particular tips for studying english, the exam, technique, or for literally anything relevant to the subject. There’s no pressure to answer this, ty either way :)))

Hey! Thank you so much for the ask and i am so sorry i’ve only gotten round to it now XD

LC English tips below!

Okay so it’s been a while since I did the LC but if things are more or less the same, then you’ve got your three texts to answer a question on.

Tip #1: Even though there is an awful lot to learn, you just need to remember key words, and you’ll sail through! 

In the comparative, you need to compare your texts in every. single. paragraph. You could write a fantastic essay, but if you don’t say “In comparison to this…” “Text 2 however differs from this…” “Similarly…” “The two texts are different in the sense that…” etc. you will get zero marks at all.

When answering your poetry question, you need to keep referring to the style of the poet. Every past poetry question can be broken down into two simple questions: What did the poet write about? and how did they say it? If you can answer both these questions on every poem you learn, you’ll do great! 

Also, do not learn any more than 5 poems per poet and don’t learn any more than 5 poets to begin with. This covers you completely no matter who appears on the day!

Tip #2: Please please pleaseee remember that for the comphrehension section, you must answer one question A and one question B from two different texts! If you answer from the same text you will get 0 and worse than that, this section is worth 12.5% of your total paper which means you will be down an entire grade immediately.

The length of your answer needs to correspond to the marks going for that question. In question A you usually have three parts, worth 15m, 15m, and 20m. Your 20 mark answer must be longer than your 15 mark questions.

For every 5 marks a question is worth, you need 1 A4-page pararaph. Unless you’ve got tiny writing, this is usually 5 to 7 lines of the page.

Your teacher has undoubtedly told you all about timing and “don’t spend any longer than 40 minutes on your question A” and yea they have a point, to an extent. I spent about an hour answering my question A and then sailed through question B because for me, I found the second question a lot easier to answer. Don’t panic if you don’t stick to the “recommended time” because every single person is different and what you find easy might be difficult for someone else.

In saying that, if you are spending loadsss of time on one particular section and you can feel the clock ticking, then move the heck on. Take a deep breath, leave a blank page for yourself to come back to that question later, and start your next part. Every question has a finite amount of marks, so no matter how brilliant your 20 mark answer is, you can only ever get 20 marks for it, and if that answer came at the expense of not getting question B done at all, then you’re down a grade already.

Tip #3: They want your opinion. Let me repeat that. They want your opinion. No matter what the heck they ask you, whether it’s about poetry or your novel or a Shakespearean text, the examiner will be checking to see what you thought of the text. I know firsthand how weird writing things like “In my opion...” or “I believe that...” but this is how you get the marks. Don’t lose the H2 you’re aiming for cause you’re feeling a bit awkward. After the exam, that feeling will never matter again, but your grade will!

Link every single paragraph in every single answer. This doesn’t have to be complicated, you don’t even need to write an entire sentence. Just start every new paragraph with phrases like “However...” or  “Therefore...” or “In contrast to this...”. If you don’t link your paragraphs, the examiner will think that you don’t know what you’re talking about and that you have no opinion of your own (see Tip #3) so use those joining phrases!

Tip #4: For that letter/article/diary entry question B, make sure that whatever part of it you answer, you know the layout for that style. Reports must have a title, introduction, work carried out, findings, suggestions, recommendations, and conclusion sections. Essays need to have a clear introduction, 5+ paragraphs, and closing. Even diary entries should begin with ‘Dear Diary’ which physically causes me pain to write, but it’s what gets you the marks!

Letters are the most asked question B but the most diffuclt to get good marks in. First things first: Figure out if it’s formal or informal. Formal will be editors, principals, government, or anyone that you would address as “sir” or “ma’am” in real life. Informal will be your friends, close family members, penpals, or anyone you’d hug goodbye and laugh with in real life.

Formal letters begin with your own name in the right hand corner of the page, with your own address directly below it. Skip a line, and then write the date below it, always in the format of “01 January 2020″ and be sure to check the question for any hint about what this date should be. If you’re writing a letter to your boss asking about organising a staff barbarcue for staff morale, then you wouldn’t date it in the middle of December, right? Sign off with something professional like “Kind regards” or “Thank you for your time”

Informal letters begin with your own address on the top right-hand corner of the page but do not write your name! It’s an informal letter to your friend; they know who you are.  Skip a line, and then write the date below it, always in the format of “01 January 2020″ and pay attention to the time of year again. Sign off with something casual like “see you later!” or “talk soon!”

Tip #5: Section 2′s composing section is worth an entire 25% of your paper. If you want to get a good grade, you need to get a good grade in this. If you’re aiming for a H2, then you need to get a H2 in this section minimum.

Your essay  should be between 4 to 6 pages, or 1000 to 1250 words. At least.

Always open with a quote, a rhetorical question, or a shocking statistic. I went online the night before my Paper One exam, and wrote down 10 quotes from well-known people about the most popular topics in life, eg. Education, Love, Money, Travelling, Death, Youth & Aging, etc. and just learnt them off in half an hour. I ended up using three of them on the day, and you have no idea the relief you feel when you’re guaranteed that at least one thing in your composition will get you marks!

Take an entire A4 page and plan your essay before you start. Not only is it just common sense and super helpful to get all your ideas down before you forget them, but if you run out of time for whatever reason, then the examiner will be able to see what you were planning to write, and will give you an extra mark or two. Your plan doens’t have to be complicated and you definitely shouldn’t spend any longer than 5 minutes on it. Just throw down a few words, organise them based on paragraph, and then start writing.

And finally (i’m so sorry that you had to read all that) remain calm! No matter what happens, whether you get a H1 or a H7, as long as you do your best then no one can say anything to you! You are more than your grade and you are more than some English exam that won’t matter in ten years anyway. Stay calm, always put your mental and physical health first, and remember that this paper is not the end all be all of anything. You’ve got this.

[shannonsblog20-blog]

Shannon’s Reddit Adventure

This week, I have shifted my social media focus to be mostly on Reddit as it is not a channel I typically use. I have had an account on Reddit for several months, but I often forget that I even have it as I am consumed by checking and scrolling through Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat. Wow, writing (typing) it down definitely makes it seem like I am consuming a lot of social media throughout the day. Probably because I totally am.

Given I am fairly new and inexperienced with Reddit, I still find myself not understanding exactly how to use it or what I should be following (any advice and/or best practices are very welcome here!) As of now, I have joined communities that are mostly around my current hobbies as well as subjects related to clients I would love to have someday. For example: r/AdvancedRunning, r/CampingandHiking, r/Fitness, r/NationalPark, r/nonprofit, r/writing, and r/PublicRelations.

Hanging out on Reddit this week differs greatly from the media I typically consume because it is based more on discussion than it is about the content being posted. When I am using other social media platforms (such as Instagram or Twitter), I am just skimming captions (if I am reading them at all) and mostly looking at the images being posted. Reddit causes me to slow down a bit and think more, whereas using other social media is usually a more mindless experience for me.

The Reddit community (Redditors), unlike other social media platforms, is engaged in a more long-form way. Rather than just sharing likes and quick comments on posts, they share full responses to subreddits that are sometimes paragraphs long. Since I am in a handful of fitness and health communities, it is interesting to read all the subreddit comments because the Redditors are so encouraging of one another. Everyone seems genuinely interested in sharing advice and comparing experiences. I find this very motivating and inspiring! It’s fun to see what like-minded people are doing and thinking.

According to an eMarketer (2019) piece from March of 2019, Reddit had 26.4 million monthly users, and, in fact, last year, Christine Cassis shared a blog post on Reddit (2019) which reported that, from 2017 to 2018, the site found a 43% increase year-over-year in its health and fitness category. Personally, I love this about Reddit since this is the topic I am most interested in getting content around!

Photo from Reddit (2019)

I find that the most interesting thing about the media format of Reddit is how casual and low-key it is in comparison to a platform like Instagram. When I am scrolling on Instagram, I see highly-edited, high-quality photos that appear to go through a decent amount of production before they are posted for the world to see. On Reddit, when I browse through my feed, I am met with photos of screenshots and lower quality videos and pictures that appear as though they were taken on an iPhone rather than a professional camera. The content on Reddit is a bit more everyday and organic, which is also refreshing.

The content I follow on Reddit is also somewhat different than what I follow elsewhere. On social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, I like to keep up with news outlets, journalists, and companies. On Reddit, I don’t find that these organizations and people have communities that they post from themselves so it isn’t a great way to find out what they are currently promoting or reporting on. 

To me, Reddit is a lot different than other social media platforms. It’s wordier and more thoughtful. It engages you in a different way and makes you think about things and other people’s opinions differently. It’s a great way to seek and share advice without being expected to keep your comment short on someone’s photo. I’d like to integrate Reddit into my weekly routine more so that one day I will feel comfortable enough to make my own contributions to a subreddit and experience it firsthand. 

Lastly, a really random experience I had in just the past couple days scanning Reddit: I saw two posts (in running-relevant subreddits) that had to do, specifically, with the town that I am from! One man was talking about the trail he runs on, which is right by my parent’s house and is the trail that I have ran on hundreds of times. The other post was a woman who posted a map of a bike ride she did and, when I looked at it, I noticed she was riding around my town/neighborhood. So weird!

References

Cassis, C. (2019, January 23). Health & Fitness on Reddit. Reddit.

https://redditblog.com/2019/01/23/health-fitness-on-reddit/

eMarketer Editors. (2019, March 26). Reddit to Cross $100 Million in Ad Revenues in 2019. eMarketer.

https://www.emarketer.com/content/reddit-to-cross-100-million-in-ad-revenues-in-2019

[commodorecliche]

Lindsey do you have advice for 1st time fic writers? I have ideas but I don't know where to beginning and it's honestly a bit scary

Gah I’m so sorry you had to wait, but I wanted to make sure I could give you a proper reply! 

I totally understand it being scary! It really can be intimidating jumping into writing. But here a couple things that might help you along: 

1. Write. Literally, just write. No matter what you think of your own writing, no matter how you think it compares to other people’s writing, no matter if you struggle or if it comes easy: write. You’re gunna write some stuff that’s great, you’re gunna write some stuff thats not that great. We literally all have written a huge mixture of great and shitty stuff. And it’s okay. But always keep writing. If it’s bad, it’s bad, so what? Write more and make it better. Remember that no matter what you write, even if you think it’s bad, someone out there is going to love it. So write the thing. 

2. Know the characters you want to write. This is a biggie in fanfic - you gotta have at least a decent grasp on the characters’ basic traits before you write them. Because if you don’t, it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb. So look back at the source material, take note of the characters - how they act, how they speak, what they say, who they’re close with, etc... - and roll with it. 

3. Have a plot already in mind. Start out with the idea you want to write. The more you can plan out to start with, the better. (Note: This doesn’t always work for everyone. Some people are more chaotic writers, who like to plan as they go. Which is totally fine. I tend to be a mixture of a pre-planner and a plan-as-you-go writer tbh. But I think when you’re first starting out, it’s helpful to give yourself an outline, a step-by-step of your plot and how you want it to progress.) 

4. Start small and attainableFrankly, when you’re starting out, it’s best to write about stuff you know or are at least somewhat familiar with. And it’s best to start off kind of small. I personally wouldn’t jump into a massive multichapter fic about astrophysics on your first attempt. You’re welcome to try, if that’s what you have in mind, but smaller goals like oneshots and ficlets are easier to attain. Write about things you like, things you find interesting, things you understand. Then as you get more adept with your characters, you can branch out to bigger and more diverse projects. 

5. Stay focusedA big issue I see in a lot of new writers, especially new fanfic writers, is the wandering mind. You really don’t want to include anything that isn’t actually important or relevant to your characters or the plot. A bunch of superfluous content will really only make your readers lose interest. If your plot or overall themes would be literally unchanged if you took out a section of the fic, then take the section out, because all it’s going to do is detract from the piece as a whole. This is also important for continuity. There’s an issue I like to call the Disappearing Horse, where a writer will bring up something (like a horse), only to forget about it very quickly and never mention it again because it ultimately didn’t serve a narrative purpose. If you don’t need the horse, don’t bring it out of the stable. If it doesn’t matter to the plot or the themes of the piece, then don’t bring it up. 

6. Formatting/Spelling/GrammarPlease please, this isn’t about being a stickler, this is about ease of reading the fic: please make sure that your fic is properly formatted. Make sure your dialogue is properly spaced, make sure your grammar is correct, that things are spell checked. 

7. GET A BETA READERSeriously. Literally everyone needs a beta, no matter how skilled they are. Have someone read your work, and they can look for grammar/spelling errors, formatting errors, continuity errors, awkward or weird phrasing, etc... 

8. Practice your dialogue aloudI do this all the time. Speak your dialogue aloud, act like you’re having the conversation with yourself. It’s the easiest way to find out if your dialogue is natural or realistic. Nobody wants stilted dialogue, and this is a quick and easy way to avoid it. 

9. Show, don’t tell. Avoid adverbs where you can. Adverbs are very alluring to writers - they’re a quick, easy way that we can describe something that’s happening. But they’re also pretty lazy and tend to hinder your writing’s flow. You are better off showing your readers rather than telling them. An adverbs tells the reader what’s happening, whereas active and descriptive verbs show a reader what’s happening          Example: Don’t: “She walked slowly along the beach, happily enjoying the sea air.”Do: “She moseyed along the water’s edge, taking her time to enjoy the sea air.”You see how the second sentence is much more vivid? It shows the audience much more about the scene rather than just flatly telling us “she’s walking slow and she’s happy”. 

Note: I highly recommend you check out the Hemingway text editor. It’s a very useful tool that can pinpoint issues with your writing such as overuse of adverbs, long/run on sentences, difficult phrasing, etc... 

10. Literally everything is derivative, so don’t worry too much about your ideas not being “original enough”Look, this is fanfic. The concept itself is derivative. Fanon is also a big influence on fanfic. So some of your stuff is obviously going to take some tropes or ideas from other things. And that’s okay. Build on those tropes and make them your own. (Note: obviously don’t copy people. this is more about when you feel like an idea of yours has already been done. It’s okay if someone else has done that AU you were thinking of - their AU is going to be different from your AU, your AU is going to be yours. so go for it!) 

11. WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE I know I said this already but write. And post what you write. You’re going to love writing sometimes. You’re going to hate writing sometimes. You’re going to go through spells where you feel wholly uncreative. You’re going to have times when you literally feel like a fountain of ideas. Creativity comes in seasons. Write as they come and as they change. No matter what, you’re going to get better, and no matter what, even if you think it’s bad or that no one wants to read it, you’re going to write something that someone out there is going to love. SO WRITE!! :D 

Ahhh that’s all I can think of off the top of my head! I may think of others later and add to this post. But if anyone else has any other tips, please feel free to tack them on. 

[youreyeson1y]

why i deleted the story on ao3 and started over?

so basically, i made a major change to my story. i started off with the chapter word count ranging from 4 to 6k. even though i wanted it to be like a traditional novel story with long chapters and all, most of my readers on wattpad were not comfortable with the lengthy chapters. and i have most whatdoyacallit- reader engagement (?) on wattpad, so of course i wanted to make the readability easier for them. so instead of the usual 5k+, every chapter was basically broken into two parts and now have a word count of 1.9 to 3k words.

so then, i'd initially thought that i'd keep the ao3 chapters as it is because i feel like long ass chapters don't really matter when youre on ao3. but then i thought that it would be kind of chaotic if i have like different chapters on different platforms- like everything from writing and posting and editing would be weird so i thought might as well adapt to this new format.

i could easyly add and edit new/old chapters on wattpad so that wasn't a problem, but the whole ao3 behind the scenes html editor thingys really overwhelm me so i thought i should just start over 😭💀

now that that is out of the way, i also wanna acknowledge how having shorter chapters has helped my improve my mental health so much!

before i was like oh no i have to write a new chapter and i just sit in front of my laptop hoping 5 thousand words would just pop up. and in the end, i couldn't write anything. i started procrastinating, i was stressed, i was AFRAID when i sat down to continue this fic because i didn't know if i could write it.

But then i thought about shortening the chapters because someone had said that they don't usually feel comfortable reading such long chapters.

coming from 5 or even 4 thousand words to 2 thousand is a drastic change. 2k is like only half of the chapter i used to write. i thought i'd try doing it. first i broke the older chapters into two parts and see how it would look. i was satisfied.

and then i sat down to write chapter no. 5. or as it was now, 8. and suddenly, i could write.

knowing that i didn't have to write long chapters, that just 2000 words were enough for one chapter, my hands finally moved. i wasn't stressed. i wasn't procrastinating. I was actually writing for once.

i knew the word count was short and that i only had to write so much than what i used to write and suddenly the story, which had suddenly hit pause last year mid-oct. during my exams, started to flow out of me again.

i can't tell you how fucking happy i became. and that i continued the story that i rediscovered meant so much so me after such a long time.

so yeah, basically, the updates are going to be short, but i hope, more frequent.

phew that came out too askdskj than i had expected 💀 also if you're still here i love you and you're doing an amazing job! don't forget to get your usual load of h2o you lovely human being <3

Chapter 8 of "Titans High: High School Musical" is finally published! find it on wattpad and ao3

Read from the beginning on wattpad | ao3

I have written this after quite a long break from the fic, so I hope it's good enough. For those of you who noticed, I had actually deleted this fic on ao3 earlier this week and am posting it again with the same name under my profile.

I will explain the reason soon but i want to keep this post short so I welcome you to read my story whenever you please!

thank you <3

[apatheticaria]

my spoilery thoughts on the last of us part ii

i apologize in advance for this super long post that you have to scroll past because i don’t know how to do the “keep reading” option thing

the only reason i’m writing this out is because i’m literally going insane from not being able to talk about my feelings for this game to anyone since no one i know actually cares lmao so this is mainly just for myself and anyone who wants to read this

the intro:

as i played through this game, i also watched a few playthroughs up until the point where i stopped to take a break. this was a game i couldn’t binge just because it’s so heavy and intense and sometimes you just gotta step away and take a breather

one of the playthroughs i followed along with was jacksepticeye’s and at the end he gave his review of the game like he normally does. i didn’t completely agree with everything he said, but for the most part i thought what he said lined up pretty well with my own opinion.

in particular, one thing that stood out to me was when he said that the introduction to this game shouldn’t have been Joel talking to Tommy about what he did at the end of the first game, but rather the whole flashback of Ellie’s birthday at the museum. then at “one” during the countdown to liftoff, the screen should’ve went black and fast forwarded to four-years-older Ellie opening her eyes in her home in Jackson (idk if i’m explaining this well, but Jack’s editor, Robin, edits this together and really sold it to me. if you wanna see it, go to the last part of Jack’s playthrough and look for it towards the last 30 minutes). i think this would have given us the time i think we all needed with Joel before he died and all the following flashbacks would be more focused on how/why Joel and Ellie’s relationship turned so distant - or hostile on Ellie’s part - and could’ve helped the pacing a bit.

Joel’s death:

potentially an unpopular opinion? but i actually like how Joel died. or uh lemme rephrase, i like the way they wrote his death. in this world of violence, hate, and brutality (actually doesn’t sound too off from our world but ahem moving on), i think the way he died was realistic, especially since he doomed all of humanity by saving Ellie in Part I. it just makes a lot of sense that someone would go after him and hunt him down

from the moment Abby and Owen stood over Jackson from the cliff, i was thinking: well theyre gonna kill Joel and since we’re gonna probably be playing as this girl for some (emphasis on some) of the game, they’re gonna go hard on the grey area of perspective in terms of revenge. which i was super on board with, but we’ll get back to that

when this game was first advertised, i didn’t know how i felt about a revenge story. it’s been told so many times and i’m never as hell-bent on revenge as much as the character is because it never feels warranted enough. that is, until i saw Joel die. watching Ellie pinned to the floor with a perfect view of his body, his face, beat to shit as she screams and begs for Abby to stop? haha that’s fucked Naughty Dog, thanks. but i do appreciate that they were able to make me just as mad as Ellie because of just how brutal his death was and how much i care, cared, about that character. no story has ever made me so incredibly enraged to the point i was with the main character full-stop to just destroy the perpetrator and take revenge. that’s why i think the way Joel dies is perfectly done. the fact that that cutscene is so horrible to watch for so many reasons just proves that it does it’s job.

Ellie’s half:

i actually don’t have too much to say about Ellie’s half of the story. this was what i both expected and wanted from the game, the whole game. while i can’t say i was having “fun”, because this isn’t really a fun game to play, you know what i mean when i say that this part was fun to play and follow.

side note: Naughty Dog’s improvement of your NPC buddy is so good, Dina and Jesse were both actually helpful, still not perfect, but also they’re not supposed to do all the work for you. i think the added layer that they could also get caught/seen and alert the enemy was completely unexpected and such a good addition to the gameplay (ofc this goes for Lev as well).

throughout the whole story, there’s kinda a problem with the pacing, and i know i’m not the first person to say that. however, i think the only big pacing issue i had with Ellie’s perspective was that kinda weird attempt of an open world map that they did with the gates. it felt a little unnecessary since i, and most other people, are playing for the story, not an open world with various side quest-like things. i missed the guitar cutscene with Ellie playing the guitar and singing to Dina (which kinda sucks, but i obviously just watched it after) because i just wanted to get back to the story rather than explore a large area. it was an attempt at something different so i won’t fault the game for that too much, but also stay in your lane lol so that section was a bit of a miss for me personally. i really liked the rest of it though, it had me engaged the whole time

Abby’s half:

ok. i have a lot to say about this half of the game since this is where most the problems occur.

first, let me preface this by saying that i don’t hate Abby. as i said, from the very beginning i knew she was going to have a, not justifiable, but an understandable reason for murdering Joel and that the game was going to be about seeing two sides to the same story. except, at the same time, i came here for Ellie, so why am i playing as this heterosexual? im mostly kidding. but fr i didn’t need the entire half of the game trying to get me to sympathize with Abby. i really didn’t need the message to be so spelt out for me, i got it from the moment i realized she was going to kill a favorite character.

i think my main gripe with the way they told this story is the way they formatted it. this story has all the elements to be amazing, but the execution just lacked the...finesse? idk if that’s the right word.

rather than splitting up the game into two halves, they could/should have integrated Abby’s story into Ellie’s so that when we cut from Abby holding the gun at Ellie in the theater to suddenly Abby as a young girl, it won’t feel so jarring when we have to start all over again with the upgrades and the timeline.

i really liked how we switched between them in the very beginning so why couldn’t that have just continued? in a book with multiple povs, the author often switches back and forth between every or every few chapters. you never see a book that starts with one perspective, then at the climax you have to start all over again from the other. at least, i’ve never seen this in any books i’ve read and i’ve read a lot ngl

maybe they forced us to stick with Abby for so long because if we’re forced to play as her, then we’re forced to get invested into her story. while this makes sense, it also really degraded at my enthusiasm for the game. it took me so long to just give up on the idea that we would be going back to Ellie relatively soon and when i did actually realize that was what was happening i was really disappointed.

instead of separating their stories, i would’ve liked to have Abby maybe one step behind Ellie the whole time so that while we play we’re just anticipating when Abby will finally catch up and it builds to this whole thing. instead, when we actually got to the point where everything was supposed to go down, we’re hit with whiplash and back to the very beginning with tutorials?? like did they just expect us to forget how to play since we switched characters?

i’m thinking, after Ellie and Dina jump over the barbed wire that explodes and Ellie’s knocked out, we could have switched over to Abby waking up in the WLF stadium. after Abby sneaks out of the stadium and you have that interaction with Jordan where he mentions Leah at the tv station, then we go back to Ellie waking up and tied to the table and we see Ellie kill Jordan.

after this i think Abby should have met Lev and Yara way sooner because i barely even remember what happened before Abby was caught by the seraphites it was so boring. so she gets caught by the seraphites AFTER we meet them through Ellie being shot through the shoulder (i still want to get all the first impressions of new stuff with Ellie because then it still makes her feel like the main character) and we meet the siblings and blahblahblah.

as a follow up, after Ellie kills Nora, which by the way, Ellie’s facial expressions are just so good with the red light while she’s just beating Nora to death? wow that entire interaction was so well done. anyway, after Ellie kills Nora, and Ellie gets back to the theater and the scene ends with her and Dina hugging, then we would switch to that whole section with Abby and Lev traveling to the hospital to get the meds and it would be cool if on her way in, Nora helps Abby and then on her way out, we run into a door we have trouble opening so we push and when it opens, Nora’s beaten up body is right there.

you get the gist. Abby’s story was barely intertwined with Ellie’s until the very end where she finds Owen and Mel dead. she doesn’t know that literally everyone else, except Leah, is dead too. i feel like that would’ve made the impact of Abby and Ellie’s fight at the theater more effective. affective? whatever i’m not an english nerd

i also think we should have gotten the flashback with Abby’s dad a little later when we’re expected to understand her character a bit more.

overall, i’m not mad about getting Abby’s side of the story, but i am mad that the way it was told felt so disconnected from Ellie. we could still get that whole arc of Abby going to the island to get Lev, she can still get her own story apart from Ellie, but she needed to have more of a interaction with Ellie’s actions.

Abby vs. Ellie, Abby’s pov:

i absolutely hate this fight. i really hate the way it was written and the way it happened. i get that the game is trying to give us Abby’s perspective and to show that in her point of view, Ellie is the villain in this story.

except, AGAIN, i don’t need this spoon fed to me!!! i KNOW that the world isn’t black and white and that people’s perspectives are different, but also? i don’t really care. both characters have gone through shit and both have done shitty things. neither of them are innocent, no one in this world is innocent (hence why i really dislike Mel, but that’s not really relevant), so it really comes down to which character you value more. in my - and most other people’s - case, it’s Ellie. i know the whole point of this fight is to make the player uncomfortable, but i wasn’t just uncomfortable, it made me legitimately start to dislike this game (spoiler for the end of this stupid-long review: i don’t completely dislike it)

the game really emphasizes that this is Abby’s story as much as it is Ellie’s and i get that, but this fight did not need to happen the way it did and the game didn’t need to be even longer after this. a lot of people say that we played from Abby’s perspective because Ellie would have killed Abby and that would be that (and she did, by the way, i relished watching Ellie get her revenge because while i don’t hate Abby, it was still so satisfying even if that wasn’t how the game wanted me to play). however however however, Abby wouldn’t have showed mercy either. she was absolutely going to kill Ellie if Dina hadn’t intervened then she was going to kill Dina if Lev hadn’t intervened.

here’s how i wouldve wanted it to go: we go back to Ellie’s perspective once Abby has the gun pointed at Ellie in the lobby and during their fight, Ellie would get the upper hand because she has weapons and shit (let’s be honest, Ellie would not win in hand-to-hand combat with fully-healthy Abby, we saw that first hand). Lev would try to jump in, but then Dina would disarm him and prevent him from escaping her grasp. then eventually Ellie would have the barrel of the shotgun pointed at Abby’s face and she would hear Lev tell her to please stop don’t kill her and Ellie would listen because the same exact thing happened to her (we could get a short flashback or something for more emotions, idk). so instead of killing Abby, Ellie would knock her out and her and Dina would leave and Lev would run to Abby’s unconscious body. this would end that cycle of revenge and because Abby has something more important to her than revenge (Lev), they would move on.

the ending:

if the game went how i just imagined, we probably wouldn’t get an ending that’s as depressing and open ended as it is, but i’m sure Neil and his team could figure something out, such as Ellie still has to deal with PTSD and Tommy’s really pissed at them and Ellie still looses her two fingers. so we get that little domestic sequence and the PTSD flashback and Tommy coming with his eye missing and showing the map. he leaves and when Ellie is about to leave in the middle of the night, Dina convinces her this time to stay and the next day Ellie tries to play the guitar one last time before giving up since she doesn’t have her fingers (i still want that last heartbreaking flashback, that one fucked me up i love it) and she goes out to leave it somewhere in the woods with it all ending with her walking away from the guitar that Joel gave her to symbolize her letting him go. idk man something like that, still not that open ended, but i’m just talking out of my ass rn

anyway that’s not how it went so we’ll stick to reality.

an open ending isn’t supposed to be unsatisfying, because that’s what this ending was. Part I does an open ending perfectly as we still get closure even though we don’t know exactly how things go afterwards (until now obviously).

after playing from Abby’s perspective for so goddamn long, it was weird to play as Ellie again, even while it was also a relief, and that makes me really sad. in the end, i did feel bad for Abby when she was literally left to starve and “hang” (but again i didn’t need 15+ hours in order to feel basic sympathy).

from the way they wrote the story, i knew Ellie wasn’t going to let it go and she was going to leave Dina and JJ. it made sense and i don’t think it was out of character for her, but the fact they did that in the first place and that Abby was the one to let go first? Abby got her revenge, she killed Joel, but Ellie never got that closure so of course she was going to go after Abby.

in the very end, Ellie is left with no one and Abby still has Lev and a group of fireflies to run to. Ellie’s biggest fear was being alone as she said in the first game, but that’s exactly what she’s left with. yeah life is unfair and i do like that the consequences feel real in this story, but i don’t think Ellie deserved to be done so damn dirty while Abby is living her best life. sure all of Abby’s friends were murdered because of Ellie and Dina leaving is Ellie’s own fault and i don’t blame Dina, but i mean we have no idea what happens to Ellie after this, where she goes. it at least feels like she’s on the road to eventually being relatively okay, as okay as you can be in this world.

i can’t completely articulate how i feel about this ending, even after three days having finished playing. all i do know is that while it’s realistic how Ellie’s story ended, i would’ve liked for Abby to get the same treatment. for her to not actually find the fireflies through the radio and escape from the Rattlers only to have no where to go so that, just like Ellie, revenge cost her everything and we don’t know where she went after.

maybe because Abby’s story was pretty much wrapped up and Ellie’s wasn’t, they’re planning for a trilogy, but i guess we’ll see.

the tldr;

this game has all the elements it needed to be amazing overall imo, i just wish they were all utilized Better. the reason it’s so hard to figure out how i feel about this game is because it has so much potential that just never came through and i’m really jealous of all the people who were blown away by this story. it’s still a good game though, but a 7/10 seems too high and 6/10 seems to low. ig it’s a 6.5/10 for me.

thanks for reading if you made it this far

[trespasserswilliam]

Would you post a list of all the podcasts you listen to?

Certainly!

Pre-P.S. This post ended up way longer than originally expected cause I felt the need to talk about them. So sorry for the length.

So I have a sort of system for listening. I used to do a lot of different playlists on my podcatcher, but I’ve narrowed it down to two major playlists and a third other playlist.

First playlist is just called New Stuff and it’s all the stuff that I’ve caught up to the present on and keep up with as new episodes come out. That’s all of these: 

Welcome to Night Vale 

duh

Alice Isn’t Dead

Fantastic. The combination of Joseph Fink’s words combined with Jasika Nicole’s performance is to die for.

My Brother, My Brother, and Me

My first introduction to the McElroys and hot damn

The Adventure Zone

My first real introduction to D&D and also hot damn

The Black Tapes

This is by Pacific Northwest Stories network. It’s a mystery/supernatural thriller/drama, lots of demony stuff. 

Lime Town

Straight up sci-fi mystery. This one has been on hiatus for a while, but the story is really good and compelling. 

Internet Box

Trash, but trash I’m attached to. Isn’t really going anymore. It was a bunch of Rooster Teeth people but the podcast isn’t associated with Rooster Teeth. I don’t recommend it for people who would be reading this.

Double Feature

The first podcast I ever listened to. Two dudes who watch two movies every week and then talk about it. Big fans of horror movies and I actually started watching horror movies because of them.

The Thrilling Adventure Hour

One of my favorite bits of entertainment over any medium. It used to update weekly because they used to do live shows monthly and split them into 4 parts, but they don’t any more. Similar to old timey radio shows, they had two segments (Sparks Nevada, Marshall on Mars, a western set on Mars and Beyond Belief, a supernatural detectivey sorta thing if the detectives were two socialites that loved each other and loved to drink) that always happened and then a bunch of other segments they would cycle through. Lots of stuff to listen back through, like 6 years worth maybe? and I recommend this to everyone.

Cool Games Inc

Griffin McElroy and Nick Robinson take suggestions and try to brainstorm video games. Hilarious and I love it.

Sawbones

Justin McElroy and his wife, Syndee. Syndee is a doctor, so they do histories of medical stuff, whether procedures, diseases, notable people, but they make it funny. Can get kinda gross if you gross out easy, but very chill.

‘Til Death Do Us Blart

The McElroys team up with the guys from Worst Idea of All Time and watch Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 every American Thanksgiving and then talk about it and the podcast will go on for eternity. When one of them die, they have named successors to take their place. They only started 2 years ago, so there’s only 2 episodes, but I look forward to listening to this for forever.

Interrobang

Travis McElroy and his friend Tybee Diskin talk about stuff they frustrates them. This is one of my favorite podcasts because they talk about things like social media issues and relationships and LGBTQ issues and just a whole bunch of things. It’s very frank and there’s no judgement going on and they’re both around my age by about +/- 2ish years and it’s helped me figure out what being an adult means to me? and what kind of adult I want to be/am?

The Worst Idea of All Time

Two dudes from New Zealand, Tim and Guy, decided one day they were going to watch Grown Ups 2 every week for a year and then talk about it. They slowly descended into madness over the next year and then when it was over they decided to do it with Sex and the City 2 and then they descended into madness again and then they decided to do it a third time with the movie We Are Your Friends and they are 36 weeks into that and then they’re gonna stop and do other things. Very funny but sometimes you do worry about them. Flagship podcast of The Little Empire Network

Off Topic

This is a Rooster Teeth podcast and a loose spiritual successor to Internet Box, only better cause they’re older and wiser and less ignorantly offensive. 

Play Dead

I forget how I found this podcast, but it’s about death in video games and the roles it plays and why. Very interesting, but it can get pretty heavy sometimes.

Quality Control

Justin McElroy, as part of his job as an editor at Polygon, talks to the reviewers who review a video game for Polygon and asks them more stuff about the game. Usually I’m really good about listening to every episode of a podcast, but with this one I only really listen to the episodes about video games I have an interest in.

Beef and Dairy Network Podcast

Um. This one’s tough. Set on an alternate earth. Beef is very big there. Or at least beef is very important to the fictional people who do this podcast. Host talks to people about beef. It sounds very not interesting, but it is really very interesting and it’s very funny in a subdued british way. It can get pretty surreal sometimes.

Strange

Rarely updates. I started listening to it because Jeffrey Cranor was on the first episode telling a story from his life about something Strange that happened to him. It’s mostly a storytelling kind of podcast, but since last april there’s only been 3 episodes.

Tim Talks To

Tim from Worst Idea of All Time talks to people he finds interesting. 

Trends Like These

Travis McElroy and his friend Brent Black talk about trending news.

Tanis

Another from Pacific Northwest Stories network. Similar to Black Tapes, only no demony stuff, just weird stuff.

Boners of the Heart

Another from the Little Empire Network. Two ladies from New Zealand talk about their actor crushes, to start out with. That framework is only very loosely adhered to, especially the further in you go, but man are they hilarious. Just the two of them talking is a delight and some of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.

Unexplained

This dude has a very calming voice. He just talks about unexplained things, phenomena, happenings, etc. Usually leaning towards myths, ghost stories, that kinda thing.

Within the Wires

From the Night Vale people. I love this one, and it has a very unique story telling format.

The Bright Sessions

A therapist for people with supernatural abilities. Psychic stuff, that kind of thing. It has a lot of LGBTQ representation that is presented in a way that normalizes it and it’s wonderful.

Archive 81

Season 1 was excellent. Supernatural thrilller style, good use of the medium, story within story framing, very good. Season 2 is... not at all like season 1. It’s almost like a completely different story and it’s unecessarily gory and tortureporny sometimes? Listen to season 1 for sure, but the vote’s still out on s2.

The Deep Vault

Done by the same people who did Archive 81. Also very tortureporny. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great either. Can be enjoyable.

Ars Paradoxica

Time travel sci-fi. Very sciencey but in an accessable kind of way usually. It has quietly become one of my favorites.

The Moth

Storytelling. The Moth is a radio show on actual radio I guess? They get regular people on stage and then the person tells a story. Very good.

Dead Pilots Society

Done by the people who did Thrilling Adventure Hour. A lot of those people work in TV, and this is table readings of pilot scripts that never made it to TV screens. Hit or miss for me.

Kakos Industries

Kind of like if Night Vale was evil and sexy? The premise is that you’re listening to the shareholder report for an Evil company that does Evil, but there’s also a lot of sex. Sex positive, and doesn’t usually feel super exploitative.

The Infinite Now

Little mini short stories, all sci-fi themed. 

The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air)

On the Night Vale network. Lots of big name people in this one. It’s enjoyable to listen to, and I love the framework they have for it, but I wasn’t as enamored with it and other parts of the internet seemed to be.

The Males Gayz

On the Little Empire network. Two gay dudes from New Zealand talk about gay stuff. Also very funny.

Always Open

Another Rooster Teeth podcast. This one’s really funny and mostly lady dominated. One of my favorites.

The Alton Brown Cast

Alton Brown has a podcast. He talks to people. It’s as interesting as you think it is.

Darkest Night

I forget how I found this one, too. Probably from one of those podcast recommendation lists? It’s recorded with one of those binarual mics, so headphones is strongly suggested for this one. It’s a horror podcast, and a pretty gory one, too. Very intense at times. 

Rose Buddies

Griffin McElroy and his wife, Rachel, watch the Bachelor family of products and then talk about them. I’ve never watched the Bachelor or any of those. This is one of my favorite podcasts.

The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel

Young Adult podcast! Made for younger kids, like 8-13 range probably? Young kids do the voice acting as well. This is a high production affair. Sci-fi kind of story, and a good story.

Mystery Show

Surprisingly charming. Real life podcast, like Serial, only Starlee Kine, the narrator/creator, is good at solving small mysteries. Only 6 episodes. A season 2 was planned, but then Starlee was apparenly abruptly fired from whatever company was producing this or something? She said she’s working on s2, but it’s a lot harder now.

Small Town Horror

Another horror/mystery podcast. Oddly distressing at times, but intentionally so.

State of the Realm

Final Fantasy XIV podcast. They just talk about the game.

Jerk City

Audio readings of the comics. Sounds like people call in to a voicemail box and read them. It’s very avant garde.

Silent Key

Another podcast by the Jerk City people. I’m... not really sure what this is? It’s like that thing, modern art elicits an emotion out of you but you don’t know what that emotion is or why? That’s why I still listen to this one.

The Dark Tome

A story podcast. The framing device is pretty good, a book that transports you to the story itself, but this feels like one of those shows that used to be on Saturdays at like 11 to trick you into learning about classic literature. Definitely feels like it should be a TV show rather than a podcast.

Surprisingly Nice

Travis McElroy and Hal Lublin (of Thrilling Adventure Hour fame, Steve Carlsburg from Night Vale) talk to people and have a “Surprisingly Nice” chat with them.

Point Mystic

Another supernatural mystery show. Just started not that long ago and they just wrapped up their first story. Really enjoyable.

Hosting

Another Little Empire podcast. Guy from Worst Idea of All Time played host to a friend from Australia for 7 days and they recorded a podcast every day and it just gets more and more absurd.

Polidicks

American politics as told by an american journalist and a New Zealander, namely Tim from Worst Idea of All Time. Just started with this one.

Missing Richard Simmons

I was super interested in this when it started, but I’ve read a few articles decrying it and now I feel weird about it. It has one more episode to go, so I guess I’ll ride it out for one more week.

Rabbits

The last and newest one from Pacific Northwest Stories. Very similar to the other two, except this one is about a cryptic ARG thing.

The second playlist is New Pods, and it’s a newer playlist. In the last monthish I added a bunch of new podcasts, so in order to keep up with the above but also be able to work my way through the newer ones, I made a separate playlist. I put a date cap on it, so this playlist is all podcasts where the first episode is from 2014 on. I was up to Feb 2015, but then I added about 15 new podcasts yesterday? day before? from an ask a friend reblogged and I’m in Sept of 2014 now. 3rd playlist is podcasts that started before 2014. I didn’t want to back up so far that it would take me a year to get caught up, so that playlist is a lower priority.

Podcasts that I am currently working my way through, have listened to at least a couple episodes, all on playlist 2:

Plumbing the Death Star

From the Sans Pants Radio network. Some Australian dudes debate about nerdy stuff in the way nerdy people do, like What Hogwarts House would you be in? or How does Thor get a haircut? Currently In Feb 2014 on this one.

Shut Up a Second

Also from Sans Pants Radio. Kind of like Plumbing the Death Start except not exclusively nerdy stuff. They just talk about anything. 

Wolf 359

Just started this one as part of the last round of additions. So far so good.

Pleasure Town

Also just started. 

Ones I haven’t listened to yet, but are subscribed to, either on playlist 2 or 3:

D&D Is for Nerds

Dinosaur Park

Boone Shepherd

Movie Maintenance

Super Gym Friends

The Glass Canon

Ghostbusters Resurrection

Dungeons and Doritos

Pokeballs of Steelix

Nerdy Show Book Club

The Orphans

The Call of Cthulhu

Liberty

Mabel

King Falls AM

Alba Salix

The Penumbra Podcast

The Bridge

EOS 10

The Elysium

The Magnus Archives

Greater Boston

Return Home

Our Fair City

And that’s everything in my podcatcher.