#high horses. (pun unintended)

[mobolanz]

Thinking more and more of fruba rather often than I have in a long time now I'm legit more upset than ever about the reboot cutting this off and instead just having rin stand there.

That stuff reasonates in personal ways more than ever for me tbh :v

[ilikecorndogs]

Image ID: [tumblr tags from user cynderxdustypaws. The tags read: okay first off her blue roan is fucking gorgeous. secondly. I want to point out that the video id is misleading. that isnt just a gallop. thats a full run. also she isnt just bareback on that sprinting horse she is also riding liberty. if you look at the horse's face and neck it isnt wearing the bridle and there isnt a bit to be seen. this rider is depending on body position, leg pressure, and that single rope circle around the horse's neck to steer and communicate slowing down and stopping. not only is this an amazing coming out video, it's also displaying what a skilled rider she is] End ID

Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]

[amarantine-amirite]

Aurelie? O RLY? Yeah, RLY

One day, I decided that I was going to get out of my comfort zone. I decided I would be more impulsive, I would take more risks. And I wouldn't care about consequences.

Should have I? Well, perhaps, given doing stuff like this often leads to me eating way too much chocolate, followed by running all the way down to the Gucci store and throwing up; maybe I should have thought about consequences a little more. But I'm sick of it. I'm sick of worrying so much about unintended consequences, that I never do anything new or exciting.

I don't know why I did this, when I gave in to every stupid impulse I had; I gave myself a new name. I called myself Aurelie (as in, a fancy spelling of the internet idiom "O RLY"). As Julia, I was nervous about everything. As Aurelie; however, I was unstoppable.

Becoming Aurelie didn't really change things as much as I thought it would. It neither did me any favours nor did it screw me over. I just broke even more often. The only real change it lead to was that I now had way more funny stories that I could tell my relatives on Thanksgiving. I think the funniest story that came out of this whole misadventure happened at my riding lesson.

The barn where I ride has undergone a crazy amount of remodelling over the past couple years. I started riding there three years ago, and the place is been under construction for two. They keep saying the construction will be over within 6 to 8 months. It’s been two years. We’re no closer to finishing construction than they were when they started.

We don’t have a functioning tack room anymore, they keep all the saddles and stuff in a beat-up horse trailer out in one of the paddocks. They took the mounting blocks out of the arena so the construction workers can get closer to the wall to fix the wiring, so we’ve had to get on from the ground for two years. Part of the remodel includes an addition on the north side of the barn, and to do that, they’ve had to take out an entire wall of stalls. So that means that all the horses have to share stalls. It gets crowded in there. We have to keep the isles clear for the construction workers, so that means no tacking up in the aisle. We have to tack up in the stall.

Worst of all, they’ve had to close off one of the arenas, again, to build the addition. This means that instead of two rings is to ride in, we only have one. That means we have to divide up the arena. And that means we don’t have enough room for everybody. Some of the more advanced classes have actually taken to riding outside year-round because there is enough room in the arena. Yes. You heard me right. Outside. Year round. In fucking Wyoming.

It’s absurd, and it needs to stop. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will. I’ve heard from various people that the company that’s doing the remodels has plans to declare bankruptcy once they finish everything. So, the construction crew is dragging their feet when it comes to doing the repairs. It should not take six months to refurbish half a tack room. They should have the foundation for the two-story arena that’s part of the addition dug by now. I know for a fact that they don’t have to worry about the ground being too frozen, I’ve seen them dig in frozen ground. Their excuse of “we can’t do any more digging, the ground is frozen“ is, in a word, horseshit (pardon the pun).

It blows. The whole thing blows chunks. Big, wet, monkey chunks.

Julia would’ve hated it. She would’ve hated getting on from the ground because, in her mind, it was wrong; because it hurts spines and it twists saddle trees. She would’ve hated having to ride outside in the dead of winter because of the undue hardship that the hard ground and ice posed on the horse’s hooves. And she would’ve hated having to ride alongside the noise and commotion of the construction equipment.

Aurelie wouldn’t mind it. She knew of all the other things she could use to get on the horse: chairs, stepladders, gravestones, and the back of a pick up truck. She knew that we would be riding in the outdoor arena, far away from any of the construction noise going on in the barn. She knew that they kept that arena ice free, so the horse wouldn’t slip. It wouldn’t be a problem. Everything will be OK. Comically slow construction induced by fear of going bankrupt wouldn’t put a damper on the riding experience.

And, indeed it didn’t. I didn’t even need to get on from the ground. All I needed to do was call the horse up to the giant industrial-strength floor polisher, step up onto the polisher, and get on like I would from a regular mounting block. I didn’t even need to worry about turning it on by mistake, because it wasn’t even plugged in.

Once I clambered onto the horse and got my feet in the stirrups, I rode off towards the outdoor arena. I felt at peace with myself. I rode up to the arena knowing that even though that the construction crew took their sweet time with remodelling the barn, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Riding in the outdoor arena wasn’t so bad. They put down a nice, fresh layer of sand, so the ground was nice and soft. Nothing was covered in ice, and even if it were, the sand was abrasive enough that it would’ve scratched up the surface so it wouldn’t be too slippery.

Once we got to the arena, Amanda (our instructor) had a surprise for us. "OK, guys" she began, "we are going to play the paper game. If you don’t know what that is, the paper game is where you stick a piece of paper between your leg and the saddle." She walked around to us and placed a piece of paper between our lower leg and the saddle. "Whoever keeps the paper for the longest wins."

Julia wouldn’t have liked this game. She’d be too worried about one of the other horses slipping on a lost sheet of paper. Aurelie, on the other hand, wasn’t afraid of a challenge. She would’ve vowed to be the only person to keep their paper even after doing the course of three four foot high quad oxers that Amanda set up in the outdoor show ring.

Except I didn’t. It came time to jump 2 1/2 foot high verticals at a canter. After I had my turn, I looked down at my leg. I noticed that I lost my paper. Not only that, no besides me noticed. I don’t even think Amanda saw it. I don’t think any of the other riders saw it. I lost my paper, and literally no one noticed. I swear, this can only happen to me.

I had no idea what happened to the paper. I just stopped thinking about it so much. I only concentrated on going over the 4 foot oxer. I got over it, but just barely. I knocked over the top rail at the highest point and took the standards down. On the plus side, I was the only one that didn't trip.

When it came time to put the horses back, I found out what happened to the paper. When I used the floor polisher as the mounting block, I accidentally cranked it up to the highest power setting. Consequently, it went beserk when the construction crew plugged it in. I happened to walk in on the floor polisher racing from one end of the barn to the other. It crashed into stalls whenever it could, and came within a hair's breadth of running over it's own power cord. A couple of construction workers tried to stop it, but the first guy slipped on a stray piece of paper before he could do so, then the second guy tripped over him. Tthat same piece of paper got jammed in the floor polisher just before it could run over its own power cord. Thanks to that paper, the floor polisher started to smoke. Two minutes later, poof; time to get a new floor polisher.

Julia would’ve been upset. She would’ve felt insanely guilty. Aurelie, on the other hand, laughed at it. She laughed even though it meant that with the floor polisher gone, the construction would have been delayed even further. And all because I decided to get out of my comfort zone, and use the floor polisher as a mounting block.

So why did I do it? Why did I want to get out of my comfort zone in the first place? I did it because I was in a bad place. I needed to get out of my comfort zone. If you looked on it from the outside, you wouldn’t of thought I was in a bad place. But I was. I just got sick of living life in fear that things I love would be taken away as punishment for doing something wrong where I didn’t even know what I did wrong.

[moistwithgender]

Monthly Media Roundup (May 2019)

The march of time inexorably proceeds beyond my grasp and so I must write another post. I’ve been a bit burned out, just focusing on one diversion (it was Zelda, you know it was Zelda), but after finishing it I recovered enough energy to get a few more things done in the last half of the month. I didn’t watch any anime or read any manga in May, though I did read some 70s Marvel, which I liveblog in my “curry reads comics” tag. Last time I did an actual capital-P Post about my Marvel reading was a year ago after marathoning a full(ish) decade. If people are interested in more of that I could work at making posts for each year of issues I read, recapping the developments and my thoughts on them (which will become more relevant as Events become more common, I imagine). I’ve just got a few games to talk about this month, but I imagine I have a lot to say about at least one of them.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): 2 years ago I did something I extremely rarely do: stood in line at a Best Buy at midnight for the release of the Switch so that I could buy it with BotW. BotW was also out on Wii U, which I had, but the promotional material for BotW had struck such a chord in me that it justified making the jump for the new console (this would eventually become troublesome when the first model of joycons failed, but, well). I got home, put some ten odd hours into it, and then put it down for two years. I’ve always had a problem where, struck with the intuition that I will end up forming a deep relationship with a work, I will put it off for years. I put off Persona 3 for five years after buying it at launch, and it eventually became the most personal game experience I would have, even seven years onward. I think the two factors that pushed me to finally play through BotW was wanting to watch a friend stream it (but also not wanting it spoiled for me), and needing a distraction for when I was taking care of my cat.

It’s been about two months now since he passed away, and I finally finished the game at 215+ hours about half a month ago. So, I was playing this game as a coping method while preparing for loss, and in dealing with loss. It’s appropriate that the game is effectively both a fantasy about reclaiming at least part of what you have lost, and a colossal exercise in coping. The game is as much about getting distracted from your responsibilities and fucking off to snowboard in the mountains as it is about being aware of the world around you. The Zelda games have frequently used themes of Shintoism to portray harmony in nature and in civilization. I’m currently replaying Ocarina of Time and the cosmogony myth (is it a myth if a talking tree explains it to you?) specifically words the goddesses as “[giving] the spirit of law to the world” and “[producing] all life forms who would uphold the law.” When I was younger (see: early 20s) I didn’t scrutinize the text much but now I figure it’s reasonable to read “law” as “natural order”. It should be noted that for an N64 game, OoT has remarkably good prose. BotW, in transitioning the series in what may be its third main genre (as opposed to the genres of Zelda 1 and OoT), has taken that Shintoist aesthetic and incorporated it into the entire philosophy of the game’s design. More than just being a game whose narrative concerns an imbalanced world, BotW embraces the trends of open worlds and immersive sims to create an immense, varied space where the coded laws of physics are always impacting the experience. Thunderstorms make metal equipment a liability, while rain covers the sounds of footsteps. Wind can sweep away items, fire and high temperatures affect flammable objects (including yourself), and aforementioned metallic items can conduct electricity, which can be used to solve puzzles in unintended ways. Weather changes regularly based on the region and changes the world in tandem. Rain doesn’t just fall, it actively collects, and ponds become bigger, and surfaces become slicker. Each systemic element (pun not intended) that was incorporated affected everything else in the world, and in interviews there were mentions that changing the volume of wind in one area had a butterfly effect on another, causing pots to fly off of patios in a village. It’s no wonder the game took five years to make, considering how rarely glitches occur in the game (and most that I know of have to be deliberately recreated for exploitation). You’re engaging with enemies as much as you are with the environment, and at times even with your own body, creating and consuming food and drink for the purpose of staving off sunstroke or frostbite. As a result, BotW’s Hyrule is immensely palpable, and easy to lose oneself in from how livable it feels.

When I first started playing at release, I was a bit disappointed to discover that villages existed in-game, as early promotional material and the state of the Great Plateau you start on painted a picture of a lonely world. In the end, the soundtrack and vast amount of uncolonized land does give an understated sense of melancholy that defines the game, though the fact that every five steps you’ll find a Korok micropuzzle waiting to YA HA HA and fanfare at you betrays that a bit (I still love those Koroks and their puzzles, don’t @ me). The NPCs in this are numerous, though, from the occupants of the villages to wandering traders, and their personalities are all distinct and charming, and probably the best I’ve ever seen in a game, or at least in a long time. If this game wasn’t railroading the Link/Zelda relationship so hard, I would have liked a Dragon’s Dogma-style “date any NPC (within reason)” mechanic. I’m just going to have to start a “NPCs you should marry” side-tumblr.

Another defining aspect of the gameplay, and easily what makes the game surpass arguably every other Zelda, is how Nintendo heard the decade or so of complaints about the linear Zelda lock-and-key formula being reiterated to the point of stagnation, and, after great success with A Link Between Worlds’ item rental subversion, just decided to make everything optional. You do the tutorial on the Great Plateau, and, if you feel especially gutsy, you can beeline it straight to Ganon. He’s in horse-riding distance, or running distance, if you’re tenacious. Will you make it to him, survive the hordes of enemies, and take him down? If it’s your first time playing the game and you haven’t learned the systems, probably not. Is it possible? Absolutely. Much like how the monthly cycle of a Persona game is a proverbial Rocky training montage of preparing for The Big Fight, everything you do in BotW is in preparation. A lot of open world games can feel dissonant in that you’re incentivized to be distracted as a player and make your own fun, meanwhile the protagonist keeps saying “I’m gonna get bloody revenge on the mafia boss!” during bowling matches. There is still, unavoidably, a sense of urgency played up for narrative sake in BotW, since Impa insists Zelda is waiting and can’t hold Ganon back forever, but it’s all much more narratively justifiable, if you want that. You know, because Zelda is for hardcore roleplaying.

I couldn’t resist a second playthrough, even after logging 215+ hours, so I went ahead and started a separate file on Master Mode, Nintendo’s weird in-house, in-franchise rebranding of, uh, a hard mode. Previously it was called Hero Mode. Why do you--well, okay, I know why they do it. They’re likely trying to distinguish it from a “we just tweaked the numbers” hard mode, and also want to make it feel less threatening than something labeled hard mode. If they’re going to go to the trouble to make it a distinct form of play, they want to try and appeal to everyone. And it is fairly distinct. All enemies are bumped up one rank, so a red bokoblin is blue, and a blue bokoblin is black, and so on. There is a new strongest rank of enemy, though in my run I did not seek them out. There are enemies (and treasure chests!) perched on flying rafts, which can be one-shot with proper bow aiming, but also carry dangerous elemental arrows, and can alert all other enemies in the area. Stealth is much more difficult, and pointless early in. All enemies regenerate up to a third of their health, including bosses! Though, that can be temporarily interrupted by inflicting any amount of damage on them, so it behooves you to be on the offense. Less autosave slots! This wasn’t a problem for me. Guardians randomly delay the firing of their beams! This was absolutely a problem for me and I avoided them entirely in my run. In the beginning when tools and resources are scare, particularly on the Great Plateau, Master Mode is at its hardest, and its most thrilling. Rather than aimlessly exploring, I was pressured to decide where I knew things were, and beeline it to them. Sometime in-between two of the four main optional dungeons, I had amassed enough valuable resources that the game had settled back into the same kind of difficulty as normal mode. Bosses were a little harder due to regen and my resources being somewhat scarcer, but they were manageable. Competently performing flurry attacks (upon successfully dodging attacks at the last second) was extremely valuable to me, but I imagine with enough food in my inventory, I could have brute forced my way through a lot of the fights (though, uh, obviously thou wouldst like to live deliciously (please hate me for this phrasing)). I chose to forego the Master Sword for the sake of challenge, and beat Master Mode with only seven hearts, in around 25 hours. You should play Master Mode, it’s fun.

Here’s a little gameplay SPOILER:

Something I haven’t done, but would like to eventually do, is avoid the main dungeons and just head straight to Ganon. When I played Master Mode, I wasn’t totally confident, and did the dungeons for the resources. After watching some speedruns I learned that if you skip the dungeons, and therefore the main bosses, you have to fight them all at once immediately before the fight with Ganon, without breaks.

That. Sounds. Great.

Wandersong (PC/Steam): Have you heard about Homestuck?

Okay, wait. Wait. Come back, wait. Stop leaving. PLEASE.

Okay, I got the most inflammatory sentence out of the way. Now that we’re eased into that: Wandersong is unignorably influenced by Homestuck. Homestuck conjured a lot of baggage, from having a really difficult, pretentious, arrogant author (I should know, I gave him the benefit of the doubt for way too long), to having some unfortunate narrative turns, to being a billion words long. Wandersong invokes the vaster-than-God scope, the minute and personal perspective of the heroes, and its inclinations toward emotional intelligence (it still surprises me Homestuck had these moments given the author’s deeply unsympathetic sense of humor), and… condenses it! It also makes it a light puzzle-platformer and is about performing music (note: not rhythm, you don’t have to have ANY rhythm), and looks like a Paper Mario game. It is very charming, very funny, very optimistic, and most surprisingly, uncompromising at times. Wandersong says that you, despite your role, are capable of great things, especially self growth and change, as long as you commit to it. If, faced with the consequences of your bad decisions, you choose to double down and keep at it, you will reap what you sow. This is distinctly different from Undertale’s brand of pacifism route optimism, where “no one has to die!” This brand of optimism is a measured but enthusiastic “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, but you can save the rest” and I think that’s a uniquely valuable message.

I was a little confused about the resolution of the communist uprising chapter, but I recall the game bringing my cynicism into question, and the most important thing a work can do is make you question yourself.

(Also, if any of my mutuals are low on funds but interested, I do have a drm-free version I can share.)

Minit (PC/Steam): I don’t think I actually have a lot to say about Minit! It’s very fun and curious and short. You play a little… duck… thing, and you pick up a cursed sword which kills you in one minute. Then you wake up the next day, and die in a minute. Then you wake up the next day. Having only sixty seconds of vitality, you have to optimize your exploration. There’s a slow-speaking old man who you will die listening to, but the hint he gives at the end of his sentence will lead you to something valuable. There’s a guy in a bar angry about the lack of music. If you change the music, he will probably dislike it. If you keep changing the music, you might live to see him like it. There’s a boat ride to a tropical island you have to grit your teeth and wait through. Not all of the events are slow, some are quick bouts of hurried exploration. Most of it is, given the time limit. I’d say more, but given the overall length (it took me about an hour to finish), I’d risk spoiling a sizable fraction of the experience. It’s about $10, though I got mine in a Humble Bundle Monthly subscription. The spec requirements are very low, so your laptop can likely run it.

A Hat in Time (PC/Steam): Heads up, I’m gonna get into a lot of spoilers for this game, including endgame spoilers, but also heads up, the story isn’t really the point in this game. This is a game about tone and platforming. That said, I’m gonna be talking exclusively about the weird ideas in this game, and if you want those weird ideas to be a surprise, then just skip ahead until I put up big letters.

I’m somewhat hesitant to be critical of A Hat in Time because despite a number of weird Things about it, I recognize that it’s quite popular with a lot of people, and that always makes me pause and want to figure out what it is that makes it pass the bar for others. My guess at this point is that it invokes nostalgia through its unmitigated imitation of games that came before. The games it chooses to ape are all your childhood’s Greatest Hits, Wind Waker (which it most resembled in its earliest development), Super Mario Sunshine/Galaxy (which it most resembles now), Banjo-Kazooie, Psychonauts, etc. It never really surpasses those games, for me, and at times cribs from them to the degree that it obscures the game’s own identity. After all, what you enjoy may help define you, but you wouldn’t say it’s your personality. Well. Unless you kin the Gamecube. I guess. There are bonus levels to the game’s different “worlds” (I thought they were different planets, since your hub area is a spaceship, and you access them via different telescopes, but it turns out it’s just one planet?), and you can collect photographs, which sequentially tell a story about the residents of that “world”. Psychonauts did this because each level took place in the mind of a character, and the photos together told a story about the character that fundamentally changed the way you thought about them, and made the whole game feel richer as a result. I collected the photos for all but the DLC levels in AHiT (those are Really Hard), and of those five or so worlds, none of those bonus photos told me anything that changed how I thought about the characters. There’s a dock town run by a mafia (s-sorta) led by a chef, but did you know they all used to work at a processing factory before going there? There are two manipulative bird directors who are fighting over the same studio to produce their own film and win an award, but did you know they… wanted to be directors since they were kids? There’s a devil analogue who steals people’s souls if they wander into his forest, but did you know he was a prince, and the princess was mad he talked to another girl (it was a flower girl, he was getting flowers for the princess), and imprisoned him until they both the prince and princess turned into evil ghosts? That’s the only one that comes close to being an “oh” moment, but I don’t think it does for the reasons the writer was hoping for. In general, these are prologues without substance.

Speaking of substance, the game has a bit of an issue with theming. At least, it does at first. The first town is the previously mentioned dock town, run by a mafia. By “mafia”, I mean a bunch of meatheads who talk about how they like punching people, and refer to themselves individually, in the third person, as Mafia. Mafia loves to punch the poor and the birds. Mafia is a one-dimensional character copy-pasted across 20% of the game. Mafia laughs. They’re run by a chef, but also they can’t cook, so there’s a cat chef in hiding who routinely swaps out their food with his so no one has to eat bad food. I don’t know why, when the town has maybe three non-Mafia character. He does eventually leave and board your ship, so maybe he’s just looking for something to do. The leader of the mafia also boards your ship, for a joke and to sell you an upgrade. The mafia are also afraid of mud monsters, or aliens, or something. There’s a girl with a moustache named Moustache Girl who wants to use your Time Macguffins to overthrow organized crime, and Hat Girl decides that’s a no-go. There are giant faucets around the town that replace all the water with lava. You might be noticing these things have little to no connection. You might be suspecting this level was made first when the dev was inexperienced. I might be suspecting this. It’s fine.

Later worlds do a much better job of theming. There’s the movie studio split between two birds. One of them a penguin, who prefers science fiction, the other a…

...hmmm. I suspect this guy, The Conductor, is an OC the director has had for a while, maybe since childhood, that they just decided Is A Bird, and carried it into the game, since the game occasionally is like... bird?? Alternatively, it’s some sort of corruption of Woodstock from Peanuts. Possibly both. Anyway, this guy just wants to make movies that take place on wild western trains. He has a strong fake Scottish accent, and the penguin, named DJ Grooves, is some sort of disco Elvis. They’ve both hired owls as actors, and some crows have snuck onto the train set (the crows are so obviously the G-Men from Psychonauts’ Milkman level it bothers me a bit). This is already a little busy, but it’s okay! Birds, movies, two distinct genres, and you trapped in-between them, just trying to collect your macguffins. It works. You take part in both of their movies, and your performance in both determines the winner, when suddenly… CORRUPTION WAS AFOOT, and you have to explore the depths of the studio and engage in a showdown.

Another world is a spooky forest where your access is restricted by completing certain contracts for the devilish character. Sometimes it’s murder (reasonable), exploring a haunted mansion in survival horror format (ooh!), fixing the plumbing in a well (wait, what), and doing mail delivery (back up back up). Half of that works. The finale of the forest makes up for it, though. This game insists on most of its bosses having like 4-5 phases and breaks for dialogue and the gall required to get away with that honestly earned my respect. They’re pretty fun times.

The best level to play is, unsurprisingly, the first DLC. I say unsurprising because it’s clear the dev is learning as they go, and the level design improves as they go along. Aside from bonus levels, the first DLC takes place on a massive cruise liner titled the SS Literally Can’t Sink. Ha ha. It’s split into three parts. The first part has you exploring the many interconnected rooms of the ship to find broken shards of a macguffin, the second part has you taking that mental map and using it to frantically complete multiple timed fetch quests at once, and the third part, now that you understand the ship pretty intimately, capsizes the ship, requiring you to traverse frigid waters and overturned scenery to retrieve babies and the ship’s incompetent but adorable baby seal crew (the seals speak in hewwo talk, the game is unforgivably loaded with memes but let me have this). This progression is my favorite in the game, and while I haven’t bought the Nyakuza Metro DLC, I’m looking forward to it.

The ending level had me a bit bewildered at first because in the beginning when Hat Kid refuses to use time powers to stop organized crime, I saw it as a hamfisted way to create tension between Hat Kid and Moustache Girl. Apparently it was working up towards the moral of the story. In the final level, Moustache Girl has stolen all the macguffins, and possessing ultimate power, becomes corrupted ultimately, and summons everyone in the world to her Bowser castle to be judged and die. On first glance, I thought “well, sure, that’s sensible,” but when Hat Kid finds the support of all the villains in the game, I was a little confused. The villains sacrifice themselves to give you infinite health, explicitly stating that they’ll just come back through time magic if you win so who cares (cool stakes), and you overcome authoritarianism with the support of corrupt hollywood, organized crime, and the literal devil. This would be fine if at some point Hat Kid, you know, took them on a Zuko Quest to face turn all of them, but that doesn’t happen. They just all decide “hey yeah, fuck this girl! Also we don’t have time for the nuance this might require!” After all is said and done and you collect all your macguffins, you’re given the choice of leaving the defeated Moustache Girl a single macguffin so she can defeat the mafia (whose side are we on) or just saying nahhh. Neither appears to make a difference, but maybe in a year or two we’ll get a DLC that makes you regret your words and deeds. You try to fly your ship to your home planet, and the villains all grab on to your ship, which is in space, begging you not to leave. I seriously suspect they intended to incorporate face-turn scenes and just couldn’t find the time, because nothing but physical proximity implies these guys would have any emotional attachment to Hat Kid, and that’s a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Hat Kid brooms them off the ship to plummet down to earth and flies away. Sheds a tear about the whole thing. In the end, the moral was that Order good, but too much Order bad, except if you are Hat Kid, in which case Chaos good. Or maybe…

After finishing the game I decided to look into any left over secrets, since my completion score was in the 80s of percents. Turns out that if you use the camera badge to finagle the free look feature into a marginally open armoire somewhere on your spaceship, you can find a shrine to Hat Kid with a couple skulls, a bunch of blurry photos, and some strange symbols. If you doing this while wearing the mask that lets you see the secrets of the dead (for platforming and puzzle purposes, of course), there’s a bunch of alien text you can decode. And then there’s some youtube channels. And a twitter account. All sharing more of those decodable ciphers, all talking about vague dreamy apocalyptic histories and dark betrayals. Or something. That’s right, this game’s got a fucking ARG. I cut things off there. If the developer Gears for Breakfast is gonna make an occultist grimdark sequel to A Hat in Time, they can put up a trailer for it.

OKAY I’M DONE TALKING ABOUT A HAT IN TIME, the short of it is that I had a lot of mixed feelings but had fun.

How did I end up talking more about A Hat in Time than Breath of the Wild? What are my priorities?

Well, that’s everything I finished in May! Will I get back to anime and manga in June? Guess we’ll see! Again, let me know if you want me to do year-recap Marvel posts, since my liveblogging is mostly just shitposts, and the occasional attempt at thoughtfulness among those posts feels kind of out of place. Honestly, I’m probably gonna do that anyway, but it’s nice to see interest. If you read all this, thanks a lot! Go play Breath of the Wild and Wandersong.

[sorrythatwasamistake]

LilyGraves??? Uh yess

So, before falling asleep last night I thought “you know what, why not give this headcanon thing a try” so here we go:

. As by rocktheholygrail excellent gif, Chase did offer sex as a way to turn Major back into a zombie. He did it mostly on the “why the hell not?” type of thinking because Major was hot and he wanted to be turned into a zombie and it seemed like a fun experience. He did, however, make sure to emphasize that it was an offer that Major had every right to say no;

. Major said yes also in the “why not?” type of thinking though there was probably some curiosity, a chance that he might get to see deeper into this man (pun unintended) and at the same time he wasn’t actually sure this wasn’t all a joke and he was nothing if not prepared to call someone on their bluff except nope, they’re in his very nice house, there’s a dog running around and hello bed, hello really nice abs… oh hello, zombie genes;

. Anyway, it should absolutely not have kept happening. There was no good reason for it. And yet, it did. Again, partly curiosity, partly simply the fact that they were both available and both enjoyed sex and Major still wasn’t sure he trusted Chase, or how much he actually liked him, but it’s not like he had grounds to be on the high horse himself so;

. It’s Chase who figures out feelings are involved first. He is not a machine, no matter what people think. However, he also very determinedly thinks “I can stop this” and he does except hello, has anyone seen Major’s puppy eyes? Yeah, Chase is as weak as the next man and so here they are. They keep having sex and Chase is pretending very hard that he is not falling deeper and deeper for those bloody eyes and the fact that he tries so hard and is simply such a good man but also takes no shit and his anger is righteousness and it’s like Chase is addicted;

. Major meanwhile doesn’t realize he’d actually care if Chase died beyond “oh man, I’ve just lost a damn good booty call” until he does come close to dying and “holy shit, I might actually really like him???” Liv and Ravi do not understand but they are bros and they support him;

. Anyway they both keep pretending it means nothing until that cliché scene - which I will die for - where sex suddenly turns into more. There’s looking into each other’s eyes and soft touching and they’re each thinking “I just fucked up” except neither stops and yeah, alright, they kind of both freak out afterwards. Chase goes for a shower and Major runs out;

. So they both think it through and realize that hello, the other person clearly likes them back, so Major goes to Chase’s office and they have an honest conversation. Ok, not that long, it’s short but it’s sweet - by Chase’s standards anyway and that’s it really;

TL;DR: Basically these two idiots started having sex on the basis of “why not?” thinking but then feelings are involved and they start realizing because holy shit, the other person has beautiful eyes and a lyrical laughter and yeah, great abs, but they’re actually a person they want to spend time with?? And everything ends well because it’s the way it is.

[unluckyxse7en]

Reblogging to reply bc I can tell I'm gonna get Wordy, too wordy for the reply function and I don't want to lose my train of thought. Everything under cut, and honestly if you want to skip most of it, or can't follow it all atm, I put a star emoji ⭐️ next to orange text to highlight the part where I Finally say the stuff I think you'd find most helpful all of this - I know I get on a high horse a lot with this sort of thing so better if you can just get the meat of it if nothing else lmao

Maybe I'm reading too much into the tone of this post but... it sounds like you're coming at this from an angle that's too harsh for writing.

Writing is like any art. It takes practice. It takes study and learning. It takes feedback to help pinpoint those flaws and snags as you're still training your eye. Most importantly, it takes lots and lots and lots of rough drafts, failed passes, to build up to the goal.

I have stories I've been refining since middle school where I reinvent or rewrite scenes and scenarios over and over and over as I try to get it closer to my vision. I have story concepts from then that, I still enjoyed writing or like, but recognize now they just didn't have that extra something that made them work, that helped it stay afloat, whatever.

I've been writing since middle school, and drawing from an early age, and one of those people friends have praised my skills and asked how I got where I did. And I always give uncertain answers because I never quite know what to say, but it always boils down to the same, consistent answer I know is true - and I'm gonna focus on my art path for a second to better put it into words but it'll still apply here:

I've just been doing this so much of my life, for so long, that the skills naturally polished themselves. So many sketchbooks of silly, wonky "manga" style humans and goofy looking latias-faced dragons built up and developed over time.

Were there other factors? Absolutely - having an art friend pointing out things I did he liked; looking at artists I liked while reading their comics and asking myself, what do I like about it?; I'd borrow 'how to draw' books and while I rarely did it for anything beyond looking at their tutorial prompts for fun (e.g. a book on 'manga monsters' had some interesting combo ideas as they walked through the creative process), I'd also skim the more technical lessons or descriptions and pick up some tips laid out for the reader along the way; sometimes just looking at things going on around me and testing myself to capture their essence simply because I didn't know what else to draw.

And of course, eventually I went to college and studied technically and my art grew in leaps and bounds there. But it was already at a pretty decent level while being largely just. Self-taught. I wasn't watching art tutorials or speedpaints on youtube, and even the arts high school I went to all of the classes I took were performing-arts based.

All of this to say - writing is the same way. You can take technical courses or study based on other's advice or lessons. I think that's good to incorporate. But you have to put in your own practice - Practice! - too, in order to get it where you want it. You need to let yourself have the rough drafts. The not-so-good attempts. Not every stitch of writing can be pure gold, the same way some lines in an artwork will always be wobbly, or spotty, or slightly off.

Most importantly - even "failed" attempts of writing are foundational to helping you improve your writing. They have worth, even just as stepping stones, as training dummies. That can't be written off (pun unintended) and devalued so much. You can't have only a final draft of any strong work. No author worth their salt writes one single draft and ends up with something worth publishing. Hell, there's a whole separate job dedicated to reinforcing this concept - editors aren't just there to spellcheck, or at least shouldn't be. They're also there to help challenge any weaker points in the writing.

Which - I'm gonna add this and be blunt based on an earlier conversation we had, but that ties into my next point: you need the feedback. You n e e d it. You need it to be shown the worth in your writing, because fresh eyes will always see what you overlook; and you need it because bouncing ideas off of people is a crucial step in the creative process for writing.

Hell, some friends may even be able to help you workshop the weaker points, my partner and I do that all the time where we indicate a scene or line that isn't working (for us as the reader or as the writer) and then discussion for how to tweak/refine it ensues. The end result is always so much better than if the author had just stewed on it in frustration on their own.

And yeah, that's a difficult and scary concept, I know. It's vulnerable, and not all constructive criticism comes out as "constructive" depending on who you talk to. Plus your ideas are your brain babies, letting them out into the world leads to risking scary things - I get worried about publically posting about some worldbuilding frameworks I'm proud of because I don't want people poaching the concepts I put such hard work into building and interpreting my own unique ways. I do get it.

But you will creatively stagnate if you work shut off from other people's input entirely. That is unfortunately how it goes sometimes.

⭐️ All this aside, I know none of what I wrote above makes any of it easier. So some closing suggestions that are hopefully more actionable or easy to work with - if you want to Practice your writing, but are scared of a) not doing your best stories justice and b) exposing your unique ideas to other people, for fear of spoiling, idea theft, whatever....

Write something you have less investment or ambition in. Write fanfiction, or try writing something one-off based on a smaller idea or generated prompt*. Write something as basic and generic as you want, the point is to practice articulating and refining how you capture things, so don't worry about making something new. Hell, write a fix-it fic to an existing thing that bugs you; builds off another framework so you don't have to wrack your brain for an idea of the event flow, and then there's no need to worry about posting unless it's really really good.

And when you do these exercises... try to be open to the idea of sharing them for feedback. Even, and maybe especially, if you aren't happy with the outcome, or get stuck. If you're not as invested, there's less risk, and if nothing seems to work, then it's easier to let it go. No harm, no foul, and you practiced exercising those writing muscles.

That will ALWAYS have inherent worth, whether you see it or not. Those hours and failures and so-so attempts all add up to polish your skills even if they do so behind the scenes. I promise.

*normally I'd have referenced/suggested that infamous writing prompts blog here on tumblr but uhh there's some Discourse blowing up in that area rn - no matter where you stand, you may want to steer clear or only use their prompts in private for now, just for the sake of avoiding any heat one way or another.

I have a lot of different ideas for things I want to write but I feel my writing technique is poor and a slog to read through so its hard to get past the fear of my writing being too bad to be worth anything.

I am worried about trying to write a story with a creative vision in mind and butchering it by writing it so poorly the story I want to tell and the story I present are entirely different. And difficult to get through.

Even if I never post much of it here, it still feels difficult to see any inherent worth in any writing I do. Even if people say creating is inherently important, I find it difficult to believe it myself.

[writer59january13]

the personal as political

     Analogous to turning radio dial upon frequency modulation blaring favorite station suddenly naturally accompanying discernible pronounced surge of static sound waves (especially at broadcaster airing hottest tunes, one feels induced to:i. hurl the bloody high fidelity top of line stereo system (of a down) out the window; ii. inflict self harm preceded via blood letting leeches; iii. upgrading additional memory application for the pseudo donny mass writer of these words.

    Either measure only increases popping, crackling, snapchatting along the bandwidth incorporating other audiological frequencies, particularly where religious channels (despite substantial distances) blast forth loud and clear.

    The same inexplicable phenomena (i.e. intense electronic "noise" arises when adjusting the audio knob to the sole survivor classical station, when Bach in the day, this heir of a renown Kapellmeister (who frowns on adulation, exaltation, or illustration of self) since his upbringing arose from humble origins (species unknown).

    As appreciation of the Latin phrase reductio ad absurdum please let the following Biblical apothegm be totally irrelevant despite admission, allusion without exoneration, collusion with uber collision coverage Lyft Nationwide, attestation, et cetera from this atheist absent any clear cut kindling correlation.    

    "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, "scripture quoting Jesus recorded in the synoptic gospels: I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 

    Rebuttal warning! Do not avert your gaze unless ye can explain how a large animal (usually with at least one hump per dink) can slip thru a hole slightly bigger than a pinhead.

    A hunch that biochemists must be cloning near microscopic dromedary or one mega size sewing needle. Nonetheless and needless to "say", these beasts of burden mainly suitable as caravanserai for ants found in France.          

     While adorned with figurative blinders, this scrivener lacked horse sense asper posting an unbridled bit tinged with political undertones. A reader felt stirred up after I trotted out said spur re: us writing on an undisclosed social media website.                

     The garbled galloping gaffe sparked an online dressing down toward my riding high on the saddle communique titled piece hove crop "Putin (Non Gmo Gluten Free Cheese) On The Ritz. 

    Said unnamed person on BLANK social media platform called me out. This stallion wannabe did not rein in written transgression. Without taking lock, stock and barrel of unfettered poetic disquisition, yours truly admittedly (in the mane) went a foal and did not harness verboten non tack tickle verbiage.  

    No disagreement against deserved, unsolicited reaction to get (figuratively) whipped. This chap does pony up punning about United States government. 

    He accepts withering, trotting out blistering umbrage defying strictures disallowing hinted Democratic or Republican points hoof view. 

    Rather than agitate, dilate (as opposed to early tomb hie death), gyrate Jar Jar Binks (this included for nary a handy dandy blues clues) jesting meaninglessly per singing vapidly yields phone knee baloney.

    Quite understandable my poppycock bolted uncontrollably from metaphorical stable. The unexpurgated missive will not be repeated lest the online facilitator once again take umbrage, and goes hay wire. 

     Perhaps privilege to post future feeble lettered attempts of mine will be immediately corralled.     That outcome preferable versus being jailed, and unable to pay bale!     If this wordsmith fetlock hit, he could choose to expand this pablum add hock (whose barn storming emanates about thirty five miles northwest of Filly), he will not breach codas effecting fearsome heretical invective. 

    He avers that his previous gam bit trespassed outside the parameters decreed by virtual facilitator. Hands held high, yours truly pleaded tubby put in a paddock.      

     Such indiscriminate neigh saying in violation of specific stricture barring politics casts me as no mister Ed, but mane lee in farrier to other riders with threat from online.      

     Hoop fully, all Apollo gees twill be accepted from this matted Harris Tweed Scottish tartan ode dee us pencil necked geek. Obliviousness (came in like a cowpoke and out like a bovine chip from the outskirts of Poker Flats) momentarily loo sing me mum oar rings (matter of fact rudderless syndrome over washing minimal shreds of moost every sketchily etched convoluted asininely worded pastiche of gobbledygook.      

     Noun intent for this subject to be the direct object of textured scorn, ridicule, quilted pun hush ment. Yea, he unwittingly, unintentionally, unequivocally, et cetera impinged on the pro noun sta taboo stipulated off limits of Marcy's Playground veering into the sandbox of politics. 

    Honest tug hod, this plain spoken tired unpretentious varmint steers clear broaching controversial matter, and hence dust newt take objection sans mild rebuke, cuz aye hate to roil hull lee revile reasonable rationale.       

     Ma miner over the fence blithe asseveration for recognition kindled jarring displeasure on behalf of forum moderator, now finds this bone a fide add hock tweedle dum in the snoop doggy dog doubling up as Pooh's house (for Whinny zee Equine you ninny!           

     The innocuous missive not purposely POSTED to incite antagonism, nor does deliberate intent to aggravate, provoke hostility invoking comment against zero tolerance alluding to politically decreed material. this non-confrontational fellow found himself unexpectedly locked in digital crosshairs while in hot water in reference my painted posting regarding politics.

      Aye proclaim genuine heartfelt displeasure at myself for unintended provocation, disapprobation, yet also bring to light that expressing sentiments about one nagging (dog gone) pet peeve tubular theme almost invariably impinges on notions tangential to other than the idea espoused. 

    Thus in my humble opinion, this reasonably cogent, fervent, intelligent, (non-biased) et cetera versatile nebbish wordsmith doth not blatantly, deliberately, flagrantly, et cetera drive his focus along track of controversial route, (and find himself railroaded in the process) without exposing indirect objection pertaining to a hot button issue. 

    Brainstorming bupkis on thy Facebook page will not draw the same degree of ire -land ding ma tushy on a vermin invested clinker with only thin gruel ladled out by an oaf phish shuss jail warden, whose near eternal presence monitoring word manglers (who dangerously split infinities, ply pluperfect phraseology, dangle modifiers, et cetera.

adieu: matthew scott harris