#but the fundamental way it works still needs some tweaks in my opinion

[descendant-of-truth]

On principle, I don't really prefer Cross Fusion as a mainstay, episodic mechanic - Netto already takes up more screentime than Rockman does, and having him be in the lead when it comes to physical fighting just comes across like he's taking over Rockman's role in the show.

However, I do like the concept of it, and I feel like all of my complaints about how it was used are very easily fixable.

Probably my biggest problem with it is that, despite being a fusion mechanic, we don't actually get to see the Operators and Navis working together during it, which is like. the whole point of the series. It comes off more like they're just wearing their Navis' clothes

Which isn't a bad way of setting it up, really, but why are the Operators the only ones in control of their movements? Rockman's voice still comes through with a filter, and he doesn't speak with Netto's mouth, implying that he's just... thinking at him?? Talking through an unidentified intercom in the helmet, maybe??? It's super vague

There's so much you could do with the Navis inhabiting their Operators' bodies, I can't stop thinking about it. Blues being surprised at how fragile Enzan's squishy human body feels, even with the power upgrade. Meiru giving herself a big hug because she and Roll love those.

Rockman tearing up because he never thought he'd get to be in the same world as Netto, and Netto loudly complaining that Rockman's making him look uncool. they start crying twice as hard and Netto refuses to admit that it's because he's emotional about it, too

And even beyond the emotional stuff (or the comedic potential of any bantering), there's some practical things you could consider, too. How strong does the armor actually make them? Would Rockman struggle to use his regular battle strategies now that he has to take Netto's presence into account?

What if there was a cost to using Cross Fusion, like having it wear both of them out quicker? That would definitely add some more stakes to each fight, and make it so that it's not just "business as usual but in the real world." It forces them to think fast and find more efficient ways to deal damage

There's so much potential for character exploration and fight scene creativity with Cross Fusion, and even if I'd rather they stick to the traditional fights more often than not, I would have loved to see them use the ability in more engaging ways

[marvelatthismess]

Buckle in, this is a long one

Unpopular opinion but I hate character reworks

Redesigns? Ehh its 50/50 as long as its cosmetic

But full reworks that change the fundamentals and play style of a character? I hate it

This isn't my autism hating change either, i don't mind changes when they're done right but im yet to see a character rework done right

We'll take Revenant for example, I never played him myself but I've played alongside a lot of Revenants, his changes not only shook up the feel of the game for those playing him but those playing with him - which i know was the point but his kit no longer works with the kits of other characters, its become selfish (some might call mirage's kit selfish too BUT mirage's whole thing is using decoys of himself to distract from his teammates, to put himself under fire while his teammates heal/reposition) in a way that makes him better at lasting solo than in a team

And with conduit's release, revenant feels like playing alongside a more expensive conduit, his ult feels like her tact but with a longer cooldown and less utility (his tact feels like a knock off of vantage's too but you didn't hear that from me)

I get that it had lore significance but they didn't need to change his kit to portray that significance, a visual redesign and a few kit tweaks could've done that. Ash has had 4 different bodies (human, titanfall2, arenas announcer (legacy launch trailer, for non arenas players that don't know what version of her this is), apex games) yet when you look back she still feels the same all the way through and you can see similarities between Reid at the beginning and Ash as she stands now; Revenant hasn't kept that individually, he has the same voice and colour scheme but past that? He has the feel of other legends, he doesn't feel like Revenant anymore

And maybe that's the point, to disconnect him from himself, but it just doesn't work. I've run into far less Rev players now than I used to, roughly 1/5 of my games used to be with a Rev on my team and now I sometimes go a whole day without seeing one as a teammate; by disconnecting him from himself for the sake of a plot line, it's disconnected him from players that can no longer enjoy his play style

Anyway- that was a whole ass rant, closing note:

If respawn rework Ash or Horizon, I will riot

[smol-warrior-1258]

What's The Point Of A Faithful Mario Adaptation?

Obvs this is very focused on video games to movies, but honestly the discourse on adaptations writ large is exactly how I usually talk about it. I've had the conversation so many times talking about adaptations (typically book to movie/tv or remakes of movies/tv) and how any adaptation should be looking at how the new medium can be uniquely leveraged to reimagine the same content. If I ever find the time I want to check out some of the references he uses and read more.

That's basically the tl;dr bc the rest is a lot of assorted thoughts on adaptation & meta content without a ton of cohesive flow. I have a lot of feelings on the topic and not a lot of structure while expressing them . . .

A huge example of missing the mark re: changing medium is all the live action Disney remakes. I personally find them somewhat disappointing across the board simply because they don't use the live action-ness to any substantial effect. It reads much more as "live action is the ultimate goal in cinema on principle" than "live action would provide genuine enhancement to the material in ways the original animation couldn't" which feels very hollow as a viewer. (Not even considering The Lion King and it's souless and still ultimately animated 'realistic' animals) The engaging aspect of retellings as discussed in this video - ie that they're a fundamental aspect of the human condition re: storytelling - is to cast new light on a beloved piece of content and, in doing so, shine up one facet of a larger jewel. That will inherently mean deviations to some extent, but those deviations ideally work in conversation with the source material and other adaptations, and changes are made with a purpose that will theoretically make up for anything lost in the process.

On that topic, changes - large or small - are a very slippery slope. I am generally inclined to hold the first version I encounter of a particular story (whether that is the original or not) much closer to my heart, and prefer that all the little details that make it up remain untouched. It seems to me that without all those little things, the story simply wouldn't be precisely what it is, and tweaking elements can have a major ripple effect. All that said, changing mediums fundamentally changes the tools you're working with and therefore your ability to convey the same narrative. For example, the most common change from book to movie is simply to cut and/or shorten scenes. Books can be a lot longer/narratively dense than movies can and it is unreasonable to make a 6hr movie just to include every scene. They are tonally very different mediums, and the audience expectations differ as well. Much as I hate to see scenes cut, I can understand the limitation. Similarly, movies & tv are subject to ratings that books are not. Many adaptations have to tone down violence, gore, and other mature or taboo content just to reach the same audiences as their source material and therefore cannot be wholly text accurate (Game of Thrones and Outlander would definitely fall into that category). Those types of adjustments are all understandble even if they take away from the viewing experience for some people. A quick call out for things like Rent or Little Shop of Horrors where the endings were completely changed in specific recognition of the fact that character death is much easier for theatre audiences to stomach than to see on screen bc you get to break the immersion at the end. The real problem, in my opinion/experience, is when changes are made with no clear goal/rationale/purpose - or worse, when source content is removed but then new material is added without justifying the switch (especially when that then causes plot holes or other narrative problems that need to be resolved!) Those kinds of things not only feel like a slap to the face on principle, but can radically alter the larger tone and miss more foundational aspects of the source material (at best; at worst they can actively go against characterizations, plot points, or worldbuilding established in the source material - a personal pet peeve of mine).

There's also a whole conversation to be had about the phethora of movies adapted from books where they had to drastically expand the scope in order to fill a runtime. This mostly applies for picture book to movie adaptations (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Horton Hears a Who, most versions of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas), but also for longer form novels that are just less involved (idk if that's the right word for it) than movie producers would like (The Hobbit though that's a topic unto itself and overdiscussed to boot, A Wrinkle in Time, I would even place Cats [the movie] in this category) Just as another aspect to consider, particularly when it comes to the video game to movie adaptations he talks about in the video, but I think it's a separate enough topic to not get into here.

This video also naturally made me think of fanfiction (my husband & I actually paused it to have a sidebar on the topic) and how it often serves the retelling function discussed in the video. There's the stuff like describing scenes from an alternative character pov, writing in scenes that were skipped/glossed over, expanding on background moments, etc which are fundamentally about producing more of the existing content but a little to the left, as it were, while generally operating within the confines of canon. We, as consumers of the source material, simply want to have more of a thing we like and thus the lovely creative fans of the world produce content to fulfill that desire. There is also the wide variety of truely adapted content in fanfiction like AUs, canon divergence, role swaps, non-canonical shipping, or introducing realistic elements to stylized and/or sanitized source content (cursing, violence/injury, sex or other explicit material, diverse characters, etc) which by & large enhance the overall experience of engaging with the source material even while altering it. Even the act of speculation & extrapolation in the form of headcanon-ing helps audiences participate in the process of storytelling and subsequently enjoy it more as an active process of engagement, rather than something passively consumed.

There is also a conversation to be had about using adaptation as a vessel for accessibility to larger, newer, or different audiences. This is both on a logistical level (ex audiobooks & visual adaptations for those with dyslexia, cinematic versions of broadway shows for those who cannot afford to see it on stage, etc) and on a more abtract level (ex recasting a story with a female lead like His Girl Friday does with The Front Page in order to examine how the same circumstances play out differently, using a modern setting to make a statement on society through the lens of a known story like West Side Story does with Romeo & Juliet, etc). Many current remakes & adaptations of beloved franchises are no doubt motivated by profitability, but it doesn't change the fact that a variety of new viewers are being exposed to the source content for the first time. We as fans hope that will only be the gateway drug introducing fresh faces to the entire fandom, but even if it doesn't (or if the adaptation is intolerable to those who were already fans) there is some intrinsic merit to expanding that audience. Fanfiction also often operates to open source material up to marginalized audiences in ways mass produced content doesn't, and allows sidelined stories to be told through known material.

Idk where I really meant to land with all this, but the video really helped me solidify my existing Adaptation Thoughts and I wanted more people to see it and engage in a very interesting conversation!

[kielakeet]

Brain won't shut up about Destiny 2 so rant time wheeeee

I have probably like 700 hours conservatively in destiny 2. I've been a member of a clan for a while and have played almost every kind of content in the game at least enough to know if i like it or not. I understand all the mechanics. I also haven't been able to enjoy much multiplayer content in the game at all until the semi recent introduction of Onslaught.

Some of this is to be expected. I dislike the pvp modes because I have a motor disability that gives me an inherent disadvantage and people sweat like they bet their house on this unranked match. Sure, it's not for me but it's also not required by any means.

But the problem arises when I also struggle to enjoy cooperative content, because the game is primarily designed and developed for people who want to play like it's their job and think player expression is about what emotes you buy.

D2 has an incredibly diverse amount of available playstyles. Just about every modicum of battle strategy can be tweaked and honed in on what feels best to you specifically. Class, subclass, customization within those subclasses, weapon types, combinations thereof, not to mention exotic weapons and armor that do just about anything you can think of.

But once you start getting into even slightly advanced content, the game starts enforcing strangely stringent rules over what works and what doesn't. A call to action to my fellow d2 players: when was the last time you saw an Arc Warlock in content harder than a Nightfall?

In this journalist's opinion too much of the game's content is geared fundamentally towards people who plain and simple *do not particularly like Destiny 2's gameplay.*

Most Warlock players I know are breathing sighs of relief because *their best tools are being made worse.* I'm not an expert, but that sounds like a particularly dire balancing situation.

I'm reminded of the game that was my baptism into the fps genre: Team Fortress 2. Playing off-meta loadouts in the PvE gamemode is liable to get you kicked because players are there more for the rewards of playing than the experience. A similar thing happens in Destiny, perhaps to a lesser degree because a rare drop in D2 can't be sold for a cool hundred bucks if you don't feel like hanging onto the potent status symbol. The content most heavily pushed by the devs is the kind that attracts dogmatic optimization slaves.

I won't argue there isn't a time and place. You shouldn't be running Stormtrance in Pantheon. I can accept that. The problem lies in the most interesting and diverse content also being policed heavily in the same way as the most difficult activity the game has ever seen. The only way you get your trance build into raid night is if someone else is running a Well, and they're still gonna ask you to swap to void or strand when the going gets tough.

To put together something of a point, I find the metagame of Destiny 2 to be in a nigh unacceptable state and the root cause of the issue seems to be a design philosophy that caters to people who expect to be able to identify what the best thing is and have that always work forever so they never need to fall in love with the beautiful complexity the game offers them.

[linklethehistorian]

So while working on a drawing WIP of mine, I was watching a video from Drew Gooden on the Avatar Netflix adaption (note: I have never seen Avatar: the Last Airbender, and I don’t particularly plan to, either; I am just a fan of Drew Gooden’s videos and I like to learn about various series I will probably never and honestly have no desire to directly, personally interact with), and I think that he perfectly summed up in very short terms what I mean when I say that the Fifteen anime and manga are both poor adaptions of the original story.

[Transcript: “Now, before I continue getting mad about every single aspect of this show, I do wanna answer a more general question of like, ‘what should we expect out of an adaption?’ — because it may sound like I’m trying to say that this should have been a one-to-one recreation of the original show, when that is not the case.”

“You can, and should, be able to change things; why even bother spending all this money to make something that looks worse, if it’s going to be exactly the same? But, those changes need to enhance the story; they can’t be at odds with the spirit of the show, or fundamentally change a character.” /end Transcript]

While I still need to finish my article on Fifteen and its anime adaption, and later better address the manga, this is the point I want to hammer home to people who refuse to get the position I am coming from:

I am not saying that either the manga or the anime would be bad in and of themselves if they were wholly original stories, or that there is anything inherently wrong with adding content that was not in the original source material.

I am saying that they are bad at being adaptions; they are bad at representing the pre-existing story they are supposed to be telling in a new medium. While they could be perfectly fine and serviceable — if, in my opinion, far less compelling — stories if they were original content with no previous source material to adapt from, they are not that, and that is what makes them bad. They are horrible representations of the story they are trying to tell, and for an adaption there can be no greater failing than this.

The biggest changes that were made to both the anime and the manga do not enhance the story.

They do not fit the spirit of the source material.

The anime fundamentally changes a major character and re-writes an entire scene and major plot points in order to allow them to have an excuse for a few seconds of cheap fanservice for a popular pairing/character — which could have still been had in an even better way without mutilation in a different scene they actively decided to remove in order to save time that they completely squandered anyway.

The manga in certain crucial chapters takes visual creative liberties that do not at all fit the spirit, tone, or descriptions within the source material in order to play up a horror aspect that very simply was not intended to exist in the first place, and in doing so fundamentally alters important characterization, along with unnecessary and tone-altering tweaks to a few choice lines of dialogue.

An adaption should be just that: an adaption, not a re-imagining, not a re-telling, not a re-make; its job is to tell the story and elevate it as much as possible using the unique perks of the specific medium it is being brought into. For both anime and manga, this should have been done through the use of visuals (and in the case of the anime, movement, music, and voice acting) to bring the scenes described within the original source material to life and fill in the blanks based on the rest of the picture painted there, as well as expand on certain points and add to them using the spirit of the original story.

Both the anime and the manga have times when they prove that they can do such things quite well and quite efficiently, but then utterly fail to do at some of the points where it matters the very most, and that is why it can’t and shouldn’t be forgiven.

It is not a matter of not being one-to-one with the original with every scene, it is a matter of completely ignoring the most fundamental and important aspects of some of the very most crucial ones of those scenes in favor of “doing its own thing”, even if it means completely ignoring the points the original source material — and the adaption most closely worked on by the original creator (the stage plays) — tried to make.

[thetoxicgamer]

Free Half-Life Overhaul Makes Valve’s FPS Feel Like a Modern Shooter

A new Half-Life remake has arrived, attempting to maintain the spirit of Valve's 1998 first-person shooter while enhancing and altering key fundamental gameplay elements to feel more like a contemporary 2023 shooter. Although it appears to be very identical at first glance, the Half-Life Mmod mod's minor changes to the aesthetics, gunplay, AI, and sound effects make it possibly the best way to play. The Half-Life overhaul mod has been in the works for some time, and all you need is the 1998 original to download this new version and add it to your Steam library. Developer Gunship Mark II also has similar projects for the likes of Half-Life 2 as well, if you want to give another Valve classic a new coat of paint. Check out the newest footage of the Half-Life Mmod release below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ercz2xaDSL4 Half-Life Mmod built-in features There are a lot of extra features in Half-Life Mmod, and while they’re in keeping with Valve’s original FPS game, they can make your experience feel as new as ever. - Camera adjustments - Jump/Land Jolt - Camera view roll - In-game FOV - Detail textures - Weapon inertia - Performance-intensive light effects - First-person legs - Project Bullets - Death effect - Fancy crossbow scope - Extra HEV voice lines - Extra HEV messages - Chapter select - Firing range - AI tweaks - New animations - Visual, atmospheric, and pacing-related map tweaks and additions (work in progress) - New arsenal, special weapon functions (silencers, addons, fire modes) - Plenty of bug fixes - VFX redesign (explosions, bullet impacts, muzzle flashes, monster effects, etc) I missed the boat on the original Half-Life by quite a distance and have tried going back to it for years, and while the Black Mesa fan-remake is still an excellent option for the Valve game, Half-Life Mmod had me hooked straight away with these small changes. While it’s obviously down to plenty of Valve’s work, all of these additions work well together to age-up Half-Life a fair bit, enough, in my opinion, to make it still feel like a classic, but one that hasn’t aged as bad as you might think. It’s difficult to tell too, with the improvements only becoming apparent with a side-by-side comparison, but Half-Life Mmod is a marvel. We’ve also got a list of the best old games you can play easily right now if Half-Life Mmod isn’t enough, alongside the answers to whatever happened to Half-Life 3, in case you were wondering. Read the full article

[navyinks]

painting tips pt1: brushes

These are a collection of questions i’ve received & observations i’ve made. If anything’s unclear, feel free to hmu and I can elaborate ^-^

Disclaimer:

not a tutorial & i’m not a professional.

these are just my opinions, art is subjective

not comprehensive - i’m only gonna mention things i don’t see get mentioned in other tutorials. Do your own homework and read from a variety of sources :)

My general opinion is that brushes are both overused and underused. They’re not a replacement for learning the fundamentals. If you can’t paint well with the default round brush, it’s unlikely fancy brushes will do much beyond making your painting messy. In the example above I use a variety of brushes - but only because they contribute positively to the painting, not because i need them.

Brush settings: these depend on what kind of brush i’m using. I think of brushes as two types: ones that blend and ones that don’t:

For blending brushes, the settings you want to look out for are the amount of paint, density of paint and colour stretch. Play around with these until you’re satisfied with the results. Most of the time I prefer to tweak these settings on the same brush instead of making a new brush with a slightly different setting. These are the current settings on my watercolour brush in csp:

For non-blending brushes, opacity is the only one that that I change, though usually I paint on procreate at 100% opacity and set density sensitive to pen pressure. Most of my brushes are non-blending brushes. In the example above, only “sai water” is a blending brush.

Once you get to know what each setting does, you can even make your own brushes. Here is an anime brush I made - I still unironically use it because it has straights and curves, so the shape is interesting xD

On that note I thought I’d mention that I have the same opinion for art programs. Yes they are different and yes you should really get to know them properly as they are your workspace, but most programs have more than enough tools for you to make a digital painting.

Traditional painters buy new paintbrushes & play around with materials, so I think it makes sense for digital artists to do the same. You can get some for free or very reasonable prices on gumroad! For example, jin has a free set of textured brushes, and also a complete collection for the price of a takeaway. It’s a very good investment imo (I’ve purchased these and can definitely vouch for their quality) ^-^

I feel textured brushes are underused in the sense that people like to use them for rendering/blending and not much else. Here are a few ways I use textured brushes (full piece here)

I think textured brushes are especially cool when they replace using textures or even scatter pattern brushes. For example:

Bottom line - go crazy, think outside the box, work your brushes in every way imaginable. You don’t need very many, but you need to know them well.

Stamp brushes: imo these get overused, especially ones that come with popular programs like procreate & csp. The worst one is probably the cherry blossom brush on csp. Don’t just use them as they come - a little rendering goes a long way!! Remember that just because a brush looks a certain way doesn’t mean it has to look like that in your painting

Again, these are just my opinions and it’s a subjective matter. If there’s anything unclear or something i haven’t touched on feel free to come and ask :) Hope these tips are somewhat helpful! Part 2 will be about form & rendering, Part 3 probably about colour & light, but also lmk if there’s anything specific you’d like to see ^-^ Thanks for reading!

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Since you dislike Malleus because of how he was executed in the story, what would you do to make him a more better character? What things youre gonna change from him to make him less boring?

[Referring to this post!]

To be clear, the way Malleus was executed in the main story is one of many reasons why I dislike him; it’s not the only reason. Even in the original post, I left out a lot of my thoughts and tried to just condense the main points.

To me, there is a difference between whether a character is “written well” (this is more objective) and whether I like the character or not (completely subjective). This applies to Malleus. I’d say he is written well enough as a character for the story TWST wants to tell, but that doesn’t mean I have to like him. Just because content is put out there doesn’t mean I’m obligated to enjoy it.

Honestly, I wouldn’t change anything about Malleus, even if I don’t like him as he is. A lot of my grievances with Malleus fundamentally make Twisted Wonderland what it is, so changing Malleus would also change Twisted Wonderland, from the marketing (aka make Malleus NOT a focal point) to the story itself. Like, the whole point of Malleus is to be standoffish and mysterious. If he wasn’t, then there wouldn’t be any good foreshadowing for chapter 7. Another thing to consider is a lot of people in the fandom like Malleus the way he is. I’m in the minority that doesn’t like him, but I understand that he is the way he is in service of the main story plot and to stay true to his Disney origins.

I think that anything I wanted to suggest would just be me tweaking Malleus to fit more to my personal tastes rather than actually “improve” him for his current fans. Like, I know something that a lot of Malleus fans enjoy is the whole “befriending a lonely, misunderstood, and powerful monster that is actually super cute and awkward” trope. They tend to enjoy the idea of helping an overpowered nonhuman learn how to socialize and come out of his shell. If it were me designing the character, I would make Malleus the most unapologetic monster ever and really play into the rumors of him being cruel and relentless—not because that makes him “better”, but because that’s the type of character I enjoy and find interesting. I want evil dark overlord and unabashedly awful Malleus, because a major reason why I dislike the current Malleus is he just doesn’t suit my personal tastes. I don’t like the archetype and the tropes the current Malleus represents.

I know many of his fans would disagree with me, not just because mean Malleus wouldn’t be as cute, but because mean Malleus would also not work in the current main story, which is reliant on Yuu and Malleus becoming friends (the main story would need a big overhaul). That’s fine. I acknowledge that, and that’s why I said I wouldn’t actually want to change anything about Malleus. Like I said before, Malleus is still a decently written character, and he serves his purpose in the story. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

At the end of the day, characters will appeal to some people, but they won’t appeal to ALL people, and that’s okay. I’m allowed to dislike Malleus, and others are allowed to like him, but we should be respectful of each others’ opinions.

[playernumberv]

Game concept: A JRPG where you *are* the villain

Last year, I wrote about how I’d absolutely love a space sci-fi JRPG. The key novelty of that idea lay in the fact that no major JRPG - to my best awareness - has ever attempted an intergalactic space sci-fi type of narrative. However, that concept nevertheless assumed that there’d be a central villain figure or villain group, which is precisely what you’d expect of JRPGs in general - be it Tales of, Persona, or Final Fantasy, these games are typically built on the very fundamental structure of having a “group of heroes” fight a “group of villains”. 

But what if there were a JRPG in which... you are the villain?

To be clear, this is far from a brand new concept, and there are many stories which have featured villainous protagonists. Shakespeare’s Richard III is probably a classic example, but it’s a fairly common concept in modern popular entertainment too. In anime, Overlord is an excellent example of an anime where the lead characters are better categorized as villains rather than heroes - even if one wouldn’t necessarily consider them completely evil per se (and this in fact is I think a crucial ingredient to making such a story work as it ensures that the villains are still sympathetic characters you cheer on and love). The Saga of Tanya the Evil is another anime that also features a sociopathic, villainous protagonist, and what a damn blast this show is to watch. There are also games where you can partake in villainous activities, like Grand Theft Auto or Skyrim, but those aren’t quite what I have in mind here. The closest equivalent to the idea I have is Tales of Berseria (god I love this game so much), in which the lead character goes on a rage-filled quest for revenge and eventually even earns the moniker ‘Lord of Calamity’. However, Tales of Berseria’s characters are far too heroic for me to really label them villains - they’re really more like misunderstood heroes who do eventually redeem themselves. 

The idea I have is a JRPG in which you really are a villain-type character, much like in Overlord or The Saga of Tanya the Evil, and this I’m fairly certain has not been done in a JRPG. From a game-play perspective, I think this offers some small but exciting new twists to classic JRPG mechanics. For example, we’ve all experienced the thrills of unleashing powerful sorcery in JRPGs, most commonly fire magic, ice magic, and lightning magic - but what about unleashing demonic sorcery? Imagine summoning a fell Cerberus which spews hellfire in combat, reanimating corpses, or unleashing blood magic as part of your normal skillsets. Character progression - skill trees and the like - would similarly involve the development of demonic traits and demonic skills, with branching paths allowing player choice in the type of demon you develop your character into. Do you prioritize unlocking demonic summoning abilities that allow you to summon even more terrifying beasts, or do you unlock metamorphosis abilities that allow you to become a terrifying beast, or do you focus on traditional sorcery and unlock demonic spells? Equipment management - again a staple in JRPGs - can similarly be subtly tweaked to focus on demonic weaponry and armor. A sword made completely of blood. An armor crafted from human bones. The fundamental mechanics aren’t necessarily too different from typical JRPGs, but the evil demonic twist to them would add a layer of novelty that makes things much more exciting in my opinion.

Narratively as well, we’re all extremely used to hero-focused ‘save-the-world’ type narratives since these are utterly abundant in JRPGs and have surely gotten a little old and cliched (even if they remain very enjoyable). Simply by reversing the focus to tell a villain-focused story, however, and we instantly have a breath of fresh - albeit evil - air in a JRPG. A larger-scale narrative can, for example, star a demon lord assembling his/her (incidentally, I think a female protagonist would be incredible here instead of the typical male demon lord archetype) team of evil overlords in a quest to conquer the world. I won’t lie - such a story will be dark, gruesome, and controversial. But damn if it wouldn’t be a thrill to experience. Whereas typical JRPGs often have subplots involving helping a certain city or village, a villain-focused one would instead have subplots involving destroying or conquering a city or village. Gameplay elements of castle management and upgrades could be interweaved into such a plotline too. Granted - a large-scale narrative on war and conquest could be a bit much, but a smaller-scale narrative more akin to typical JRPGs would still totally work. Imagine a world in which demons have been driven to near-extinction by the hands of humanity. You hence play as a small band of demonic mercenaries or assassins - a suicide squad, you might even say - on a lengthy journey to assassinate the hero of light or the archbishop or the king. Such narratives rely on some level of ambiguity which makes you recoil at the villainy of your protagonists, yet at some level sympathize with them and root for them. That type of nuance and complexity where your villainous protagonists aren’t “all bad” and the heroic antagonists aren’t “all good” I think would enable much more compelling characters and a very complex and memorable narrative, and I think this would totally work in a JRPG.

So yeah. I love JRPGs to bits, and I’d absolutely love to play more JRPGs. I’d also like to play more diverse types of JRPGs beyond the standard ‘save-the-world’ type of narratives, and I think taking a JRPG to space or venturing into the world of villains would be some excellent ways to add spice to JRPGs. I don’t even need to be paid royalties for verbalizing these ideas, but I hope such games get made someday so I can play them!

[wollfling]

Thank you for taking my ask seriously, and I'm sorry if I came across confrontational. This is a bit of an emotional subject for me so it's hard to explain what I mean. I don't think you came across as mean or rude.

Do you really believe that making AI art can never be a creative process? I'm sorry if again this comes across aggressive, like you said tone is hard. But if someone spent hours trying different prompts, tweaking the phrasing until they got an image that communicated an idea they wanted to communicate… isn't that a contemplative, creative process? Isn't that art?

To be blunt, I'm not a creative person. I have tried to change and learn but I'm not an artist and I've never made anything that has had any value, to me or to others. When I say it's accessible, I mean that someone like me could use it to make something meaningful, which would otherwise not be possible. Why is it that when people try to make technical fields more accessible, it's about introducing tools that let you produce good results with less skill, but the most I've seen in creative fields is people pushing for bad results to be accepted? Is it wrong for me to want good results?

I'm sympathetic about artists losing their livelihood, but I don't think that's a good argument against it. When the sewing machine was invented, lots of people who would have made a living sewing would have lost their livelihood, but that doesn't mean the invention of the sewing machine was bad.

This is a bit of a fraught discussion so I'll understand if you need to stop at any time. I really want to come to an understanding but it's hard for me not to feel like this is a new tool that can produce good results without years and years of experience being dismissed out of hand by… people who have years and years of experience. Maybe there's just some fundamental gap that in experience and understanding that I can't cross because I'm not an artists?

Of course, it's a serious topic to me! And an important conversation to have since ai is becoming more prevalent.

Creative processes doesn't exactly equal art, or visual art, for example I like to be creative when coordinating my outfits but my outfits are not art. (I've sewn some of my own garments that I designed- though they were more for function than art so I still wouldn't count them. There's a fuzzy line that devides design and art I feel)

Referencing the article about the winning ai work again, the creator sees himself more of an author than an artist. Creative writing can be art (like poetry for example) but it's just not the same as visual art. So in my opinion it's not art. Typing keywords into a ai generator no matter how specific is not art. As they article also said, the creator likened it to a word game.

Why is it not possible for you to make something meaningful on your own? Why do you believe you've made nothing of value? Why do you need the ai generator to do it for you? Do you mean you can't create your own images, because you don't like your drawings?

The reality is that art is a skill, communication is a skill. There are so many things I, as an artist, want to say with my art. And want to depict in my art. But i "cant" because of my lack of ability. So I work to get better, so I can say more and how more, and be concise or as vague as I want in my pieces effectively. This is the reality. And there are people who have improved way more in just a few years than I have over most of my life. That's the reality. Doesn't mean my work is worth any less.

What are the bad results you are talking about? Ugly art? Like the art community is pushing for bad results... so ugly art? And the good results are the ai generated images? You can want those "good results" but they ultimately aren't yours. Again, please don't take this as mean or an attack but it's not your art. A computer program made it for you. Artists are pushing for these bad results, which I am assuming again is bad art, because bad art that you've made with your own hands and heart is worth infinity more than an image generated by a soulless computer (made for you. Not by you.) Because art is about connection too. It's complicated of course, I'm sure other artists will say different things, but this is my opinion. If you don't understand why art made by people has value and that a pretty image made by a computer (guided or not) does not have that value, I'm not sure I can.

The sewing machine is a tool. You still need design the garments, construct them yourself, physically sew the seams with the machine. It just makes it faster, and easier on the hands. I think that a sewing machine is comparable to a drawing tablet, it's a tool that can help the process but everything else is made by the artist. This is so different than ai generated images from keywords. I'm not entirely sure, again, how to explain this difference either..

Again, I don't mean to offend or anything. I don't think it's about experience as an artist, rather how you view art. Art isn't just pretty pictures. If you view artists work as such then I understand not seeing the difference.

Sorry if my response is messy or if I missed something, I don't mind having the conversation but I didn't know when I'd get the chance to reply later today (and I had to type this a little quickly;;;) I don't mean to be dismissive or anything!!!

Edit because I forgot something important, if making ai art gives you a feeling of creative accomplishment and an outlet, nobody can take that away from you, and I don't mean to either. If this is important to you, you should do it! I just feel it doesn't belong in spaces with paintings, illustrations, etc because it's just not the same. I don't think that's elitist of me, they just aren't the same thing and shouldn't be treated as such. Again, I hope I didn't come off as mean at all.

[fencesandfrogs]

clan culture inspiration fic master post

a collection of fics/series/w/e i've used for inspiration. ordered by how much i used them

Flightless Dove, Poison Ivy acaciapines

read it, it’s good. it's 100% my main fic inspiration, i love it, it's very good.

the light that shines on you solacefruit

huge inspiration for my riverclan. just. massively where i get a lot of ideas. probably a larger source of material than flightless dove, if i'm being honest.

RIVERCLAN leaders have a litany of names. weather caller, storm seer, spirit walker. a new leader being made is a chance to find another for the list. these names are to honor leaders for the role they play in their lives.

(names. leaders. meaning.)

so you can see where i got that from.

Warriors Redux Deconstruction Dullard on ao3 (not linked)

i've split this into two parts, because there's a lot. i'm a fan of this in terms of world building, but i've been select in what i've used from it. deconstruction is linked highly because it had a lot of key details that shaped my opinions on what wouldn't be. a lot of this i would've changed anyway, but i wanted to list WR because it'd be dishonest to act like this wasn't shaping my thoughts.

anyway, a short list of things that were mentioned in WR:D that i'd already decided on or am now using

behaviors. i mean, i've said "flicked her tail" or "flattened his ears" so much it's getting old, but by god if i am not being true to cats movements. i think WR:D is somewhat conservative on use of purring, but i've also been writing about kits, and a lot of purring is involved with kits, so special case, i suppose. but i'm very cautious with my descriptions. i've tried really hard not to use smile, because cats don't smile. that's the one that gets me the most.

water. this is kind of a specific thing. but. in ctd's fading echoes. the lake is a concern not because the cats need water, but because the prey needs water.

queens and toms. now. i have always been irritated by this. and the lack of female leadership. because toms should know they're kept on the graces of the queens. the sisters got it right. but i can't just kick out half the cast, so i'm forced to keep them. i have, however, kept toms out of the nursery. queens are protective around their kits. it's the best i can do to appease my strong desire to literally just kick every male cat out of the clan. in all of my stories, though, i keep track of who's in the nursery with what kits, because those kits are going to bond to every damn mother. it's super annoying that this isn't kept more clear anywhere. i have to do so much math and check so many allegiances every time.

kits. it's basically impossible to convince me to write this the way the hunters do, so even in ctd, we see kits not walking, not opening their eyes, until real kittens would. does this make the early chapters of growing shadows a pain because dovekit does basically nothing but sit and listen? yes. do i care? yes, it is important to me that dovekit does nothing but sit and listen because she's a baby. bb. need protect.

genetics. usually i correct coat colors for POV cats. because it bothers me. see: tortie dovekit/ivykit in CTD, and the fact that i think in jaywing, jayfeather is going to end up amber like brightheart. i need to do some research to double check, but...i think that's what will happen. (please don't ask about hollykit, ivykit, and lionkit. i don't even know who their parents are. how is crowfeather "dark grey, almost black"? what does that mean. how is leafpool even leafpool. i don't understand anything.)

religion. i'm not fundamentally changing how starclan works, because i'm writing the books where magic is confirmed real, but...i've tried to distance the connections with it. and god, so help me, i'm going to make things a proper religion for w&f. there will be religious things like prayer. god.

cultures, folklore, names. this is getting long so i'm lumping this together. basically, i've got some name stuff sorted out. it's not "traditional" naming, because i'm not going WR on this and renaming really important cats (altho the reason WR has my respect for traditional naming is because they're not afraid to rename cats to fit the scheme), but i have some pretty defined rules. and there will be folklore and stories. this is especially important for dovefeather, when she goes to riverclan.

Sharing Tongues Icej

a series. i don't think i've used much of this directly, but it has shaped a lot of my opinions on clans. it's why thunderclan is militaristic and why windclan is so strict.

it's also shaped my thoughts on a lot of parts of clan life. i'm writing this all out of order, so i'll say, a lot of the inspiration that warriors redux had, is shared in this series. i'm not sure if there's overlap in the interst, but it's got simularities.

especially in terms of relationships. i have a bit of a fascination with story telling as a form of culture, if only because in my personal life, story telling, especially verbal story telling, has always been really important. so i think a lot about it.

anyway, these are a good set of fics, and they're ranked so highly because they're kind of a paradigm i've crafted my thoughts around.

Tell me about your Ancestors Drowsy_Salamander

so this was what got me started, even over flightless dove. it got me thinking about the differences clans would have.

i haven't written "funerals. mourning. prayer." yet, although as you might guess from the fact that i have a title, it is on my mind. i think i'll draw heavily on this for that.

one other very specific line in this that i draw on is

When SkyClan was reformed by Firestar at the gorge, it was reformed in ThunderClan’s image.

now i say that specifically because i didn't want that. i wanted leafstar to find her own tradition. a lot of skyclan's destiny deals with her struggling to adapt the warrior code to her clan. so Ancestors continues by talking about tree's influence, and this is what i got from it:

SKYCLAN once held ceremonies at tilt, when the birds were quiet, but now, they hold most ceremonies at low moon, when the spirits are strongest. ...

apprentices are made at low sun, born from a time when they were not always gathered.

(ceremonies)

and i'm happy with that

Warriors Redux: Ammendment Dullard on ao3, not linked

this is ranked significantly lower than deconstruction because (a) i'm borrowing superificial things at best and (b) i had already come to a lot of these conclusions. still, i'm writing a full list because there are little things i don't think to write whole essays about sometimes. that said, whereas in deconstruction, i could basically say "yes, everything that's said here, i agree with, i'm only tweaking things for personal taste or because of differences in perspective" here it's more like "here are the things i'm using" and the other stuff is just there, but not really anything i want to use

time and date. in one of my generic CTD posts i had a few paragraphs about this. basically, i like the system of time. except for half, because that confuses me. so it's dawn, sunrise, low sun, (sun) tilt, sunhigh, dusk, moonrise, low moon, (moon) tilt, moonhigh, repeat. and kits are aged to apprentices at the beginning or rough midpoint of seasons.

numbers. math. drawing things in the dirt with claws. in short, yes, no, what the...no. just no. cats in my stories can basically count, but they don't really, like, count the way we do? they might say five leaf bares ago, because i am not saying, "the leaf bare before the one with X which was before the one with Y" and that's what a cat is thinking and maybe they have words for this, i don't know, i'm not writing that. four and nine are holy numbers, or the closest cats get. (apprentices are apprenticed at nine moons in the holy sense, because a queen pregnent for a three --- two, but who's counting --- and in the nursery for six. this will never come up in a story unless it's a background note, because it's confusing and hard to explain off the cuff.) i don't have to explain my last point.

names. i have my own rules. i don't intend on changing character names with the exception of the symbolism in jaywing and dovefeather, but i may at some point make some comments on what, based on my rules, i would do. i don't want to change names because it confuses me, but i don't want to say for sure that i won't. definitely not based on WR rules, i have my own form of "traditional naming" for the w&f world.

clan specific notes. you can find it in my writing. there's a lot of influence in it. i don't want to list everything.

come back to you one by one solacefruit

i haven't really used this for anything, i just generally like it. it's definitely given me inspiration for how i use stories, but not any particular thing.

it really is beautiful, though.

alright, that's about it.

[jackstarbrightisaqueen]

Thoughts on the Alex Rider TV show...

Some background: I’ve been reading the books since Point Blanc came out, so we are going back a few years (actually quite a few more years than I care to credit). I thought the Stormbreaker movie was a pretty awful adaptation all round. Definitely lacked the grit of the book series. Imagine my fear of what they were going to do to Point Blanc, one of my favourite books of the series...

So, thoughts (in no particular order):

1. Otto Farrant is brilliantly cast. OK, one can nitpick. He’s been aged up, but I think that works - the TV series has tried to go grittier than the movie, and if we’re honest, a 14 year old being treated the way Alex is would just be extremely uncomfortable viewing. The books are written for children - they put up with a lot more than adults. And Farrant manages to strike an excellent balance between being old enough to make the whole thing believable, and young enough to provoke the right amount of outrage. His portrayal of Alex is really very good - the unwillingness to let something drop when he’s curious about it, the coldness, the desire to just be a schoolboy, the fundamental streak of doing what’s right. Sorry, Alex Pettyfer, but no matter how good looking you were, you weren’t Alex Rider for me. Otto Farrant has nailed it.

2. Alex generally. The writing is pretty faithful to his character. There are a few tweaks - he’s a bit more of a rebel than he is in the books. The foam party - one can see Alex doing that in the book because it’s part of the bad-boy act he’s supposed to be putting on, but I’m not sure that was the motivation for the foam party; I think he did it because it was fun and he’s someone who likes to rock the boat a bit. But I liked this Alex. It made his snarkiness and impulsiveness that much more believable. And, let’s be honest, what kid is taught to withstand interrogation techniques without becoming a bit of a loose cannon? One thing that was changed that I’m still not sure about was his determination to go back to Point Blanc. Book Alex didn’t want to go back; TV Alex says he’s going with or without MI6′s help because he’s got friends there. This was admirable, and I think probably the right move (I don’t think “leaving it to the professionals” would have come off well on screen when he’d made such good friends), but I did miss the scene from the book where Jones more or less manipulates him into going back in.

3. Jack. I love Jack as a character. It’s a bit more of recent phenomenon - I think since I became about the age that Jack is and suddenly woke up to what she must have felt - but the book Jack puts up with so much without complaint. The thing is, she’s a very tricky character to portray, because it’s a fine balance between making her powerless and useless. I think they did a good job here. They’ve changed things - Jack gets her degree at the start, and hints to Ian that it might be time for her to think about leaving. It’s not faithful to the book, but it’s a brilliant move, because as soon as Ian dies and she sticks around, you think - wow. She’s just given up her plans for this kid. She really cares. And that’s what the book series hints at throughout but has only addressed explicitly in recent books. I also like that they showed her having a bit more agency, which is realistic. I mean, she’s got a law degree. She’s not helpless. Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo does a good job here. OK, she’s not the red haired Jack we know of the series. But so what? Representation matters (on a side point of which, good job in making Alex’s crush at school black too). And didn’t that thing about Immigration strike just a bit harder because Jack was black? Didn’t it make it that much more realistic and scary? This shit happens, people.

4.Ian. I didn’t have strong views about this. I’ve seen that others didn’t like how his death was changed. I’d argue they wanted to get away from what had already been done in the Stormbreaker movie, and, anyway, it set up the mystery of Scorpia’s involvement and the MI6 leak quite effectively. I don’t care about the speeding/seatbelt change. They probably did it because these days any decent car (like Ian’s was) screams at the driver if they’ve not got their seatbelt on.

5. K Unit generally. We didn’t get too much of Fox, Eagle and Snake, but we got a bit, and what I saw, I really liked. I liked that two of them were women (one of them an excellent sniper!). This show generally handles women much better than the book series - far more balance. I liked the introduction of K Unit - the whole interrogation scene was really well done, from K Unit following orders but being quite uncomfortable with the whole thing, to Alex’s reaction to it, to his escape. I think the lack of SAS training camp was again an attempt to shift away from the Stormbreaker movie and, although it has spawned a lot of fanfiction, it doesn’t actually serve any purpose that couldn’t be addressed elsewhere. For K Unit lovers, I think this move was a good thing. It is pretty difficult to justify K Unit’s attitude towards Alex at Brecon Beacons, and translating that situation to one of trust between Alex and Wolf would be very difficult. This approach worked because, although K Unit was introduced in circumstances where you think they’re acting badly (following orders to interrogate Alex), you’re immediately introduced to the idea they’re not comfortable about it - so they might be good guys after all.

6. Wolf. So this gave us ALL the feels (the apology, the blanket wrap at the end...), but I (possibly controversially) think they could have done more here. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of what we saw in the book - Wolf not liking Alex, and then them turning that around. Don’t get me wrong - obviously, the more Alex/Wolf trust, the better. But I thought they made Wolf into a bit more of a softie than they really needed to. They had 8 episodes - they had time to build more of a character arc for him. 

7. Jones. Mixed feelings. Vicky McClure is really good, and I think the way they’ve set it up, there’s room for a good character arc here; at the moment, the Department is portrayed as basically being under Alan Blunt’s rule, with others disagreeing with his approach but getting overruled. If they make it far enough, Mrs Jones is going to need to have adopted some of his ruthlessness by the time Blunt gets the sack at the end of Scorpia Rising. A bit like Wolf, I thought Mrs Jones could have been a bit more complex than she was. But I’m happy to wait and see what they do in (hopefully) future seasons.

8. Setting. Generally pretty well done. Thank GOD they were wearing proper school uniform (what were the directors of the Stormbreaker movie thinking...this is Britain, y’all). The Point Blanc academy was suitably creepy and isolated. My only criticism re setting was that the “Department” was in a basement. I can see why they did it (dark and mysterious setting, OK), but it didn’t strike me as a particularly realistic place to run a Government department from. Even MI6 has a decent building in Vauxhall.

9. Kyra. I didn’t want to like this deviation in principle - I was really suspicious they were just setting up a love interest (the same way as in the Stormbreaker movie, where they elevated Sabina’s character in a way that just wasn’t appropriate). But Kyra was a brilliant addition. Complex but good-hearted. And nothing cringey happened - even that nearly kiss before Alex leaves Point Blanc was actually pretty believable and went just far enough. Be interesting to see if she comes back - that hanging ending, man. Poor Kyra. On a side point, I think for the purposes of the TV series it was quite important to give Alex a good friend at the academy. Solitary spying works well on the page, but not so much on screen - viewers need dialogue. I thought the way they did it worked well.

10. Plot. Yes, there were tweaks. But I thought the way it was put together was well done. There was no dramatic baddie revealing all at the end. I liked the way it gradually unfolded, and that although MI6 had managed to piece some of it together, it was ultimately Alex who solved it through the spying he’d done. Interesting that they have decided to introduce Scorpia so early on, but it’s given us something to drive the series forward rather than it just being one mission after another, so probably a good move.

11. Tom. The relationship between Tom and Alex was well done (when Alex comes to Tom’s rescue at the end!). O’Connor is good (though, please, PLEASE can we ditch what my husband and I have dubbed the gnome hat?). I thought he got slightly too much air time at this stage, personally - and turning up at the Friends’ house was a bridge too far for me. But I can forgive this. I liked the way they targeted Tom because he and Alex are such best friends. This bromance was something missing from the series and it was a welcome introduction.

I could go on, but I think this is long enough. If anyone has anything they’d like to chat about or to hear my opinion on, do PM me or comment on this post. Meanwhile, I’m off to rewatch the series.

[gateau-chocolat]

Ok so I’ve been thinking about Start-Up more since I made my post last night, and I think I’m able to articulate some areas where the plot has been a bit weak for me, as well as some possibilities for (VERY imho) how to tweak those areas?

This will be a bit negative obviously, but I’m not trying to hate on the show or people who are enjoying it as it is!  I’m also pretty much enjoying it as it is, it’s just fun for me to think about plotting like this.  I’ll touch on the romance plotline briefly, but that’s not the main focus and I do not have especially strong shipping opinions.

This is WAY WAY WAY too long, but I broke it up by topic for your browsing convenience!  I’m discussing through episode 12, btw. 

Sandbox

-Ok so to be real right out of the gate, Sandbox just doesn’t feel ESPECIALLY realistic or compelling to me just, as a setting/plot device?  (That’s mainly just because the main characters have been breezing through any obstacles in their path for most of the series until now, though.)  That said, obviously it’s a fundamental part of the show’s premise so I feel like there’s no point in nitpicking much. 🤷‍♀️

- THAT SAID: If the whole purpose of Sandbox is that it’s a setting for wannabe new tech companies to work in a safe and low-stakes way, an investor taking advantage of participants’ lack of business savvy and having them sign a contract that goes against their actual wishes, like Alex did in the latest episodes, seems EXACTLY like the kind of thing that the Sandbox system(??) should be protecting participants from, but....whatever, lol.

-I might genuinely be misremembering the first couple episodes, but did Dal-mi have any specific tech ideas, or any specific motivation for entering Sandbox other than wanting to become successful and stick it to her mom and In-jae?  That’s not...bad, per se, but I think it would be a little more compelling if there was something a little more going on there?

-For your consideration, a scenario where Dal-mi already knows to some extent that her grandma is losing her sight (either just get rid of the part where Do-san is keeping this a secret briefly later on, OR maybe the secret is that grandma’s condition is actually way worse than Dal-mi is aware, idk), so she’s already kind of interested in doing something related to that, and then maybe SHE has the initial thought to combine that idea w/ Samsan’s technology to make NoonGil?  Idk, I think that would be kind of compelling and it wouldn’t detract from any other major plot points. 

-Also, I don’t need it to be an educational show or anything, but I think it would be kind of interesting if there were more scenes of the characters actually working on things, rather than just having an idea -> montage of everyone working -> complete?  Like, I’m sure the NoonGil app would be difficult to pull off effectively irl, right?  Have them mess up for an episode or 2!  Have them fail!

-We’ve seen basically nothing of the other companies besides In-jae’s, right?  Why not do a little more with them?  I don’t even think you need to add many more characters, you could just have Sa-ha be the CEO of another Sandbox company instead of a member of Samsan, since she seems to only be around for the subplot romance anyway. 🤷‍♀️ I think it could be interesting for both In-jae and the Samsan crew to have some more peers to bounce off of. 

Sandbox 2: Evil Stepdad Edition:

-Related to “have everyone fail more”, you could even just make In-jae’s stepdad more prominent than he seems to have become in recent episodes?  Maybe the thing where he almost gets Do-san in trouble doesn’t go away so easily?  (Even though I enjoyed that scene.)  Maybe instead of Alex trying to pull shady business shenanigans via a contract that just no one thought about  much apparently even though Saha LITERALLY has a background in law the step-dad could do something like that?

- The show might still do something like this, but: I’d kind of like to see a plotline where the step-dad uses some kind of illegal/unethical means to either boost Samsan (to get back at In-jae for rebelling) or boost Injae Company (to get back at Samsan), and then whoever’s being helped can feel conflicted about it?  That could be interesting for both Dal-mi and In-jae. 

The Tragic Dead Brother/Revenge Plotline

-Ok!  I’m gonna get a bit more negative here...this has been kinda goofy.

- To begin with, like, Yong-san is REALLY reaching by blaming Ji-pyeong entirely for his brother’s death, right?  From what we saw, what Ji-pyeong said was not really unreasonable, right?  (And presumably the brother’s dreams failed because none of the other investors supported him either, not just because of Ji-pyeong and Ji-pyeong alone?) 

- I can buy that maybe Yong-san FEELS like blaming Ji-pyeong, in the same way that I can buy that in episode 12 Do-san FEELS angry at Ji-pyeong, but at the same time it’s slightly weird to me that literally no one has been like “ok but it isn’t really Ji-pyeong’s fault though??”

- Yong-san’s rant to the others about Ji-pyeong in episode 12 felt REALLY off, because in the moments directly preceding that....Ji-pyeong was right?? He had good insight that would have helped them if they had been able to hear it before signing the contract?  Just, weird placement of that scene within the rest of the plot. 

- (More weird timing/scene placement: There’s the big drama about Ji-pyeong realizing what’s about to happen with the contract just as it’s being signed, but then....Dal-mi and Do-san don’t find out until they go to work the next day?  Ji-pyeong did that big dramatic run and then just went 🤷🏻‍♂️ and went home?? Nobody else from Samsan like....sent Dal-mi a text being like “hey so did u guys sign that contract, because our mentor was just here and he took one look at it and started freaking out”?????? Lol????????)

-Do-san and Yong-san and Chul-san have all known each other for a while, right?  Surely they would have known about the thing with Yong-san’s brother??? Did that just.....not come up ever???????? 

- How to tweak this plotline.....honestly, just don’t do it, lol??  If we’re committed to it, at least start foreshadowing it (specifically that there’s something going on with Yong-san, not just “wooo there’s a mysterious guy!”) a bit earlier. 

The Ji-pyeong/Dal-mi relationship

-Ok, so as I mentioned in my post yesterday, I think Ji-pyeong is fine as a character and fine as a love interest in THEORY, but Do-san’s relationship with Dal-mi has gotten so much more attention that it’s hard for me to take him seriously as a romantic option imho?  I have a couple ideas for potential ways to beef up the Ji-pyeong/Dal-mi relationship, but here’s one:

- How about if Ji-pyeong and Dal-mi have some kind of meet-cute moment as adults BEFORE the whole fake relationship with Do-san gets rolling, and before they’re in Sandbox?  So, Dal-mi is kind of into Ji-pyeong, then she gets distracted from that by the thing with Do-san and the rest of the Sandbox stuff.

- ...THEN, when she finds out the truth about the letters, it’s like “this guy that I already was a little into at one point actually wrote those letters, hmm” and not just “this other random guy who’s my mentor at work wrote those letters, ???”.  I think this would set up a more compelling love triangle, if that’s the direction the show’s really trying to go.  

Ok I have one positive thing to say:

I surprisingly quite liked the end of episode 12, both the twist of Dal-mi joining In-jae’s company AND Do-san walking angstily in the rain w/ the callback to the letter?  I’m not expecting the upcoming timeskip to improve any of my current issues w/ this show’s writing, but it could take things in some interesting directions as well!  We shall see. :>

[multi-fandom-nutjob]

How I’d tweak every Smash Character(Part I)

Hello, everyone! Cinnamon-Guardian here! I love Smash Bros to death, but not everything is perfect. I’ve been mulling over some ideas on how to tweak some characters to be better(or at least more accurate to their series of origin).

This won’t be super concerned with balancing, but tier list standings and how broken or whack certain moves are will be taken into consideration. This disclaimer is just me saying I am in no way claiming that I could do better than Sakurai or any of the other developers! This is purely to have fun and flex my creative muscles to try and get better at this sorta thing.

Mario

With Mario, I’m pretty happy with most of his tech, from his standard moves to his smash attacks and his neutral and recovery specials. The aspects of him that frustrate me the most are his down and side specials, both of whom I ultimately think could be better.

The Down Special works well in theory, pushing opponents back without any sort of hit-stun so that it won’t reset their recoveries any. The flaw I see is that it has no use beyond that. As such, I propose that Flud’s bursts do chip damage, akin to Fox’s blaster. That way, it can do very minor damage and still push opponents back without resetting their recoveries.

The Side Special, in contrast, works decently enough in practice but feels hallow in homage. The Cape Feather that it draws upon appeared only once in Super Mario World, a game that admittedly did exceedingly well, but also came out in 1990. When implemented, it works as a great reflector, but nothing more. As such, I propose it be replaced with the Luma Spin from the Super Mario Galaxy titles! The creators clearly know that there is a sizeable fandom for the dualogy, seeing as how Rosalina joined the roster. The Luma Spin could serve as a valuable reflector itself, but could also act as a secondary, more instantaneous smash attack that could even have some horizontal recovery to it akin to DK’s recovery. It could do all that the Cape Feather did and more with a more contemporary fandom!

Donkey Kong

Off the bat, I think something Donkey Kong needs more of is Speed. While he is the poster child for the slow and heavy characters at the bottom of the tier list, in the games where he is playable, he possesses ample agility.

The main means through which I would propose adding more speed is through a more refined dash attack. In the games, he could steamroll through enemies at ludicrous speeds. While I don’t think it needs to be as fast as Sonic or Captain Falcon, his dash attack could be a powerful roll attack that could boost him forward more.

Adding more onto his agility, I believe that his jumps should have much more of a vertical gain and have ample momentum to it. That way, when combined with his horizontally focused recovery, DK could regain his footing much better than most heavy characters. His special moves don’t need much, if any major alteration.

Link

I think Ultimate gave us the best Link we’ve seen to date, made incredibly distinct from the other two and given more weight than before. My thoughts ultimately fall on his grab and recovery.

In order to keep in line with Breath of the Wild, Link lost the hook-shot grab that he’s had since Smash debuted, severally nerfing his grappling prowess. To replace it, I would have altered it to be the Magnesium Powers you get early on. That way, Link can still have a long-range grab, but it could be slower and easier to break out of so that it’s not broken.

As for recovery, Link is still the same old Link, spinning ‘till he pukes. One thing that stood out in BotW, however, was the glider. If brought into Smash, it could effectively be the same as Peach and Daisy’s, with a sharp upward draft followed by a slow horizontally focused descent.

Samus

Samus has always been sort of the Black Sheep of the Original Roster, characterized by idling shooting inefficient projectiles from a corner. A far-cry from the ass-kicking bounty hunter we all know she is! In Ultimate, most of her competitive gameplay is centered around her charging dash attack and her grab, as if she were a football player.

How do we change that? By letting her move more, of course! As such, her neutral special will get a massive revamp, as it defaults to a pea-shooter mode that allows her to move about as she’s shooting, only having to stop for her side special, which itself will be upgraded to the ice rockets because if she can’t move, you can’t move either! The Charge Shot will only come out after you shoot and hold down the Special Move Button, making it practically the only chargeable move that you can freely move and charge simultaneously! The damage for the pea-shooter and charge shot will stay about the same, as anymore would break the game. Every other special move and her grab are all good, but since she’s so mobile, her charge attack will be replaced with a charge more akin to the energy charge she had in Super Metroid

Dark Samus

Okay, so, I don’t HATE hate echo fighters, but I do hate echo fighters who stick too close to the original’s gameplay. Dark Samus is pretty much on par with Daisy in that regard.

Off the bat, I think a slower but more powerful approach would suit her character better. It would also add to the tone of her gameplay more in my opinion.

The only big change I’d make to Specials are the Recovery and Down Special. The Screw Attack is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but it only really makes sense for Samus herself. As lame as it might sound, a massive boost in whatever direction she chooses, akin to Lucario, would fit Dark Samus better.

As for her Down Special, though, I have a more interesting idea. Dark Samus is made of Phazon, a sort of super energy. If she replaced the bombs with charging it up, it could heavily empower her Neutral Special(again like Lucario but more naturally than taking damage).

Yoshi

I kinda love him as he is. No real changes to be made honestly.

Kirby

Kirby is a character that frustrates me. His games have so much creativity with the premise of absorbing powers, but he only uses the Neutral Special of whoever absorbs him. But I do have an idea on how to change that!

Not only will he gain the Neutral Special of whoever he absorbs, but he will also gain “aspects” of that character. For example, if he absorbs Ganon, he becomes heavier and his moves have dark aura effects. If he absorbs Sonic, he and all of his moves becomes faster. If he absorbs Charizard, all of his moves have dire effects and his Side-Special gets a massive upgrade at the cost of damaging himself.

Fox

Okay, so, the thing that made Fox both legendary and infamous was how fundamentally broken he was as a character in Melee. Watching a pro-player use him was like watching a Shonen fight. At the risk of obliterating the tier list again, my goal now is to recapture that without breaking him too badly.

What Fox needs more of is consistent momentum. The main way to tweak this by reshaping the Side Special into something with more raw power but more need for precision. Being a dash attack of sorts, the main goal now is to make it both faster and more chargeable. When Fox crouches, it will charge until released, and it will go in the direction of the analogue stick akin to the recovery. This can be quicker than it is now if you release it quickly, however, though it will do marginally less damage. If running, it will default to the no-charge version for an instant strike for little damage.

This revision, however, would make the recovery seem obsolete in comparison, which is why the Recovery will default do more damage than even the max-charged side and go much further, almost being a smash attack in comparison. As such, we have a very fast and powerful Fox that can move in every direction.

How will it be balanced, then? Well, the Reflector will still be stationary, and most of his attacks will have reduced damage to ensure he doesn’t end every round before it starts.

Pikachu and Luigi

I don’t really have anything for either of these, besides the fact that I wish they have the same Final Smashes as Brawl.

Ness

Can I confess something? I hate Ness and Lucas. So much. I hate playing as either of them and I especially hate fighting either of them.

And you know what else? None of their special moves are canon! That’s right! All of the PK moves they use are from different characters! So my move would be to replace them with a far more accurate and less spam-ridden moveset. That is all. Fuck PK Fire.

Captain Falcon

Okay so, this is a Football Player that makes sense *cough, Samus, cough*. My main concern is that his side and down specials are too similar((much like another speedster)). While I don’t think taking the speed from the second fastest character in the game is at all fair, I think a set-up move for the Falcon Punch could work wonders.

As such, I think his Down Special should be replaced with a flaming kick spin tornado of sorts! That way he can juggle the opponent for some minor damage and set them up for a Falcon Punch that comes out too fast for them to dodge. Make for the best combo in the game honestly.

Jigglypuff

What is there to be done for a joke character? Well, Jigglypuff isn’t a joke character anymore! So a lot, actually!

Firstly, her neutral special should replace her side special. That side was a waste of a slap anyways. For her new neutral, however, it should be a Fairy Type move of some sort. My main choices as of now are “Dazzling Gleam” or “Play Rough.”

Dazzling Gleam is self-explanatory, essentially being a burst of energy in all directions, which is surprisingly rare in Smash(kind of like a weaker but further reaching version of her Down Special). Play Rough could tackle an opponent into a cloud of dirt as they cartoonishly fight until the opponent jumps out, doing combo damage overtime.

That’s all for tonight! I plan on doing more of these down the line, but I don’t have any sort of schedule for that and make no promises.

[scarlettlawyer]

“the phantom is the worst villain because they don’t have any defined personality/character”

Dual Destinies has a lot of flaws. The phantom as a character and villain and their execution has flaws. They’re still my favourite villain but that’s neither here nor there and irrelevant to this post. But their lack of character/backstory is not one of them.

This may sound counter-intuitive but please allow me a moment.

Btw, if you, personally, did not like (and would never like) the phantom as a villain for the specific reason(s) listed above, that is your opinion and that is totally fine. But the problems with the phantom’s character could all be fixed through the game and its/the character’s execution being tweaked. The idea of the phantom, or a character like the phantom as the villain, is not fundamentally bad at its core.

If you wanted to fix things, for starters, it would probably be necessary to have focused more on the phantom’s organisation and maybe not have them karma Houdini out of everything. We would actually need to find out more about the phantom’s organisation. We don’t need to find out more about the phantom.

(and second of all, all of the phantom’s actions in-game would need to actually be logical and make sense to the player, and not merely leave the player grasping at headcanon to explain some of the really pivotal actions the phantom decided to take).

I’ve seen complaints about not knowing their name/face and that being unacceptable, but... what would seeing their face or knowing their name actually do? What would it realistically add? Congrats here’s a random face, that means nothing to anyone, let alone the player, or hey here’s some name it’s just... what would it add? Even if the character might be flawed in its portrayal it doesn’t need these aspects to suddenly be a GOOD villain.

“having no personality means they have no motive etc etc”

This is why it would likely be necessary to actually incorporate more information about the phantom’s organisation. We can say the phantom has at least two main motives: following the organisation’s orders, and self-preservation. Just because they lack emotions, doesn’t mean they don’t have motives. In the end, the phantom was just one arm of the organisation so something should have been done about the organisation, which would also address the dissatisfaction I’ve seen people say about feeling like taking down the phantom was “empty” because they’re “no one”.

But they ARE someone. They are someone who has been lying to the player, and faking their way through the past three cases. The main cast shared inside jokes with them. You trusted them.

“self-preservation doesn’t make sense cause like they have no sense of self so what self are they trying to preserve”

Yeah but here’s the thing... The phantom doesn’t know who they are, they lack emotions, but the game clearly shows us that they do have the basic instinct and desire for survival. They talk a big game about being “no one” but at the end of the day, they still don’t want to die. So perhaps the game should have emphasised them still, in the end, being human, to help solve this issue. But you don’t necessarily need to give them a backstory in order to do this. Even in their current empty state, it’s still a simple fact that they’re biologically, a human being. And they can deny it all they want but they DO have a “self”. Because it’s needed even to speak out of character.

“why do they even work for the organisation tho bc no sense of self etc etc”

Like as I’m saying in this post. You basically need to accept these two facts about the phantom for anything to work: they act in both self-preservation and the interests of the organisation. and BESIDES that, they’re mostly empty.

They left everything behind and are a very elite spy for this organisation, they’re near-emotionless, they are very good at acting, they betrayed the main cast and they betrayed you, the player. They do not want to be discovered, they do not want to die, and they are very intent on carrying out any orders they receive from the organisation. This is all you really need. I don’t understand WHY they need a backstory of whoever they were before, why this is necessary for them to be considered a “good villain”. There are objective reasons to call them not a good villain but I don’t think this is one of them! Because the whole thing is, they do not remember anything. If the game dragged out some kind of backstory, somehow (which... HOW would you even do that?), they still probably wouldn’t remember and the information might be meaningless to them. Because they’re a Cool Emotionless Spy now. That wouldn’t... change that. They’d still be Mr What Are Emotions even if you did that.

I am genuinely interested in hearing how people would tweak the phantom’s execution to make them a better villain if, indeed, they dislike them as a villain. But if you’re out there saying “actually, there is no way to solve it, the concept of the phantom as a villain is fundamentally flawed, objectively” then I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to bluntly disagree with you.

Like, the concept, the lack of emotions, not having a name, is not for everyone! And that’s fine! We all have personal preferences, even when it comes to villains, we have villains we like and dislike, but just because we weren't  big fan of a certain villain doesn’t mean the concept doesn’t work. At that point it’s opinion. But please don’t act like its an objective fact that the concept of the phantom as a villain is fundamentally flawed.

I like the concept of the phantom and the many ways it can be pulled off, and that does not make me objectively “wrong”

[mi6015handeldalegonzales]

Production Analysis

I have always loved movies, believing that stories on screen that take us back to the future and over the rainbow speak a language that is universal. They may not be real, but through this medium, they manage to influence our outlook on the world. This is what I think films are all about: a combination of technical and creative aspects that work in harmony to share the director’s perspective on life, and invoke specific emotions from the audience. My ultimate desire to be a filmmaker and share that perspective with my own audience is what drove me during my final project.

 I had many options in tackling this animation, be it showing off my skills, explicitly targeting the film industry, or just having fun with it. While any would have sufficed, I wanted to have full creative freedom to produce something that felt both powerful, and uniquely meaningful to me. Hence, I decided to make a personal short following a character that had undergone similar trials as I had in my life.

 Despite that, I believe that the project I ended up giving myself was too ambitious, which was corroborated by Goodfellow. This was due to having to condense the development of a whole storyline and an entire character into a two-minute animation, which meant a lot of scenes, and subsequently, numerous set designs to pack in all the information needed to convey the story. To cut this down, I had to change the story and replace the crash with a scene where the daughter falls and loses her ‘drawing competition award,’ in a bid to avoid creating an entire character arc for the animation. In this scene, the mum was supposed to arrive in her car to save the day, taking out her pen and drawing 3D wings for the daughter (the wings from the award). The story would have ended as the daughter takes flight, with a dedication fading into the sky that said, “To my mum and sister, who have always been the wind under my wings.”

 Despite how I pivoted, however, I still could not finish my changes in time due to my perfectionism. Instead of moving on to the next part of the animation, I kept finding small, negligible mistakes that I would take time out of my day trying to fix. Even as I submit my work now, there is still a lot that I want to change and improve upon. I ended up having to cut down the animation by half, including only the montage section of the initial concept, and ending it with, ‘to be continued’ for the animation to make sense.

 3D modelling was my favourite part of the whole process since I love seeing my sketches take shape in a 3-dimensional space. The process was not too hard, as I had modelled characters before, and I only needed to follow the same procedure, even managing to improve my method based on prior problems. In my previous projects, the clothes were all separate objects, causing too many tears in the model when animating. This time, I made the outfit part of the main body. The jacket was the only exception, but I still made sure to keep the vertices underneath far out from the ones for the main body, to prevent the different meshes from overlapping with each other. What I was not used to, and found more difficult, was giving the model high, defined cheekbones as it did not adhere to the basic round face I would normally create. Fortunately, with a few tweaks and experimentation, I managed to overcome this obstacle.

I’ve always found creating rigs a significant challenge, so I am thankful and fortunate that I was able to use the Advanced Skeleton, which cut my work down by weeks, compared to if I had done it manually from scratch. Even then, setting up the rig and weight painting drained me so much that my productivity levels plummeted in this section of the production process. This was because, having always preferred creative aspects over technical ones, I struggled with the lack of creative leeway in this part of the process. A challenge I encountered was the difficulty in animating natural eye blinks. When modelling, I gave the eyeballs an outer layer to create refraction from the light, making it more realistic. This layer was invisible, so I did not think it would matter that it protruded further than the eyelids. It turned out, however, that when rigging and making the eyes close, this did in fact cause problems. I did not have the time to fix these issues, and thus errors can be seen in the final animation. Still, lessons were learned; something to keep in mind for future projects.

 Ideally, I wanted a soundtrack that would elevate my project and help carry the weight of emotion I hoped would be conveyed by the short. However, it was tricky to find the right accompaniment due to copyright problems. Most free music online gave the animation the feel of a cheap advert, or made it seem like it was an amateur YouTube vlog. Even non-copyrighted lo-fi songs (which were my usual go-to) could not match the atmosphere I wanted. I even asked my housemate if he could produce a sample for me, as he is a DJ that creates some of his own tunes. Alas, that did not pan out as I kept changing the idea of my final piece and did not have the time to oversee the music production with him. Nevertheless, this may have been a blessing in disguise as I ended up finding a beautiful, free-to-use, fantasy-themed piano instrumental which yielded the right mystical and emotional ambience I desired. If given more time, I probably would have added several muffled, diegetic sounds to make the result even more atmospheric.

 The most excruciating part of the entire animation production was the creation of the 2D assets. This was because I did not have any drawing pads for digital art, and I also lacked a phone to take any photos of sketches, thus leaving my laptop mouse as my only option to draw with. Even the simplest assets were immensely tedious to make, which was the main reason why it took so long to make such a short video. I could not afford to get a drawing tablet at that time, so I just had to push through.

 Another, lesser difficulty was the colouring aspect. In one of the final project meetings with Goodfellow, he told me that he liked the colour scheme and aesthetic from the animation I submitted for the Professional Creative Production (MI6011) module and that I should try to incorporate that again into my final work. Of course, I took this as a challenge, not only to live up to expectations and previous standards, but to go above and beyond.

 It turned out to be an ambitious undertaking since colouring is not my forte. Most of my casual artwork consisted of sketches, and I was therefore not very acquainted with colour theory and design. To offset this, I took inspiration from themes of beautiful video games and movies that I liked, but had difficulty in combining everything into a uniform colour scheme throughout the whole work. I needed to make the entire piece coherent, and not like a patchwork painting reminiscent of Picasso’s more surreal works. Make it look like it is all part of the same cartoon and not a total mess of idea vomit dump. This was made even more taxing because I already had the inconsistency between the 3D and 2D characters. I eventually overcame this barrier by finding a reference point, and using hue tool to make everything match.

 In my opinion, the post production process was the most effortless part of working on this project, as I was experienced in After Effects from even before university. Neither did I find the merging of 3D and 2D that difficult, as I used an artificial greenscreen in Maya when rendering.

There were many fundamental obstacles I had to overcome during this project, but the main issue was timing and execution. Nonetheless, I am immensely proud of what I was able to produce, which showcases the tremendous amount I learned in this course, for which I am so very grateful. However, I am in some ways disappointed and unsatisfied with what I am submitting, compared to the scope of ambition in my head when I initially pictured my final film. I had a lot I wanted to give, but much of it was just not practical in the final delivery. Even then, from failure comes lessons, and I believe that despite not achieving everything I had hoped to, I have discovered a lot just from the production process. I have emerged not only more knowledgeable in both the creative and technical aspects of different areas of the pipeline, but I’ve also developed my work ethic, and myself as a person. The project has left me with so many takeaways, and I’m determined to continuously improve from here on out.