#i enjoy when a piece of fiction or character gets me interested in a specific species and gives me an excuse to do research and learn

[pnfc]

Did u get into pnf for the plats or did you get into pnf and then get into plats bc of Perry. This is the burning question we all have

i think ur joking but i was in fact asked this before and no i wasn't already an expert on platypuses before i got into pnf. i just really like perry so i started researching them. and they're cool! would love to see one someday, even though it's unlikely.

[cripplecharacters]

I'm a diagnosed autistic man and many call me "gifted" and "high-functioning" and my sisters also suspect I have a slight Savant Syndrome, but after hearing so many autistic people talk about how they're tired of this stereotype that every autistic is a superhuman genius I really don't want to write "savant-coded" characters, specially after I realized how much of a "compensation cure" it is.

I've considered not making Sherlock-esque characters, however, there are 2 things that I don't know to address:

1- In fiction, most main characters have a special ability that makes them useful to the plot, even if it's just an average person knowing how to sew, but when it's a special interest, how do I make it sure that they're not "too Sherlock"?

2- When writing a character that is actually some kind of mastermind in crime-solving, how do I make sure they don't seem autistic when it's not impossible that, as an autistic person, I could accidentally write someone who acts or thinks like me to an extent? (Not as in "as smart as me", way smarter, but like with a trait that is from autism but we only realized we have it because of autism later in live)

Hello!

As somebody who enjoys reading crime/mystery fiction with autistic characters, this is something that I encounter a lot and it can definitely be a tough balancing act.

I recently read The Body in the Woods by April Henry which features three teenagers who find a body while volunteering with Search and Rescue and try to solve it. Although Ruby (The autistic character) has a special interest in crime solving, the author navigates it in a way that doesn't make it seem "too Sherlock" or, in other terms, like she's a super genius who can solve the case with some sort of "autistic special crime solving abilities".

In The Body in the Woods, Ruby has several special interests that are pertinent to the case at hand -- not just her special interest in crime. Ruby is also interested in bird watching, survival gear, continuity errors, police procedure, and several other topics.

These other interests help her to solve the crime but they also get in Ruby's way. Her interest in police procedure annoys the officers on the case and prevents her from getting any information from them but it also allows her to understand how the investigation is being done. Her interest in birdwatching causes her to make several unwise decisions that put her in a dangerous situation (I'm being purposefully vague here to avoid spoilers) but it also gives her important background knowledge to solve the case.

Something else that was done well is that some of Ruby's other autistic traits (Her awkwardness, her impulsivity, her chattiness, her attention to detail, etc.) also impact her investigation -- both positively and negatively.

Her impulsivity causes her to make several incorrect assumptions and jump to conclusions but it's also the reason she can make quick decisions that ultimately benefit her. Likewise, her attention to detail allows her to pick up on things others have missed but it also causes her to fixate on pieces of evidence that were ultimately unimportant.

With most autistic characters in these kinds of books, I find that the main problem is that the character is only autistic when it's relevant to the plot.

I usually see this come up in the form of a character's only special interest being crime or something very specific that helps the plot but it also happens when the character's autistic traits only benefit them during the investigation. For example, their attention to detail helps them to spot incredibly important evidence but never the irrelevant evidence or the red herrings.

One of the reasons that I enjoyed Ruby in The Body in the Woods is because the author shows both sides of this. Ruby is a well rounded character outside of the investigation and her autism affects her life outside of it. We see her struggle with maintaining relationships, we see her difficulty communicating her needs to her parents, we see how she tries and fails to fit in. We also see how her autism makes it difficult for her to solve the case -- as opposed to it being the key to it.

This is one of the best ways to make sure your autistic characters don't end up being "too Sherlock-y" (i.e. Super genius detectives).

Your second question is a bit more difficult for me to answer, especially since I often experience the same struggle.

The best thing I can advise here is to read stories in the genre with non-autistic characters. Take notes on them. How do they react to things? How do they speak? How do they interact with others? If the story is in the first person, how do they think? Try to imitate that to a degree with your own characters.

Something to keep in mind is that the term "autism" encompasses a wide range of traits and it's entirely possible that somebody will have or show some traits of autism without actually being autistic. For example, there are people who don't pick up on social cues or have a quick temper or obsess about things who aren't autistic.

If your character is a sort of crime-solving mastermind genius guy and not autistic, consider how they interact with their intellect. Are they proud of their abilities? Do they show off a lot? Do they try to hide it? Having this relationship between your character and their intellect established can help prevent you from slipping into the "socially awkward genius" trope, which can come across as an attempt at an autistic character.

The final thing I'd suggest would be to get somebody to look over your drafts and provide feedback on how your characters act and behave.

Cheers,

~ Mod Icarus

[togglesbloggle]

What to Watch at the End

I've been happy to run in to a couple pieces of media back-to-back over the last week or so- plenty of down time, since I have that bug that's going around. They make pretty interesting companion pieces to one another, actually. With the end of the world so close now, we're starting to get a bit more genuinely thoughtful art about the subject, stuff you really can't say until you have this kind of vantage point.

They are The Power Fantasy (written by Kieron Gillen), an early-days ongoing comic of the 'deconstructing superheroes' type, and Pantheon (created by Craig Silverstein), one of those direct-to-streaming shows that get no marketing and inevitably fade away quickly; this one's an adult cartoon with two eight-episode seasons, adapted from some Ken Liu short stories, with a complete and satisfying ending. I'll put in a cut from here; targeted spoilers won't occur, but I'll be talking about theme and subject matter as well as a few specific plot beats, so you won't be entirely fresh if you read on.

Pantheon is a solid, if wobbly, stab at singularity fiction, with more of a focus on uploaded intelligence than purely synthetic (though both come in to play). It's about two-thirds YA to start, declining to about one-fifth by the end. The Power Fantasy, by contrast, is an examination of superpowers through a geopolitical lens that compares them to nuclear states; I'm not as good a judge of comics over all (particularly unfinished comics), but this one seems very high quality to me.

The intersection of the Venn Diagram of these two shows is the problem of power, and in particular the challenges of a human race handing off the baton to the entities that supersede it. They're both willing to radically change the world in response to the emergence of new forces; none of them even try to 'add up to normal' or preserve the global status quo. Both reckon with megadeath events.

I'm a... fairly specific mix of values and ethical stances, so I'm well used to seeing (and enjoying!) art and media that advance moral conclusions I don't agree with on a deep level. I used to joke that Big Hero Six was the only big-budget movie of its decade that actually captured some of my real values without compromise. (I don't think it's quite that bad, actually, I was being dramatic, but it's pretty close.)

Pantheon was a really interesting watch before I figured out what it was doing, because it felt like it was constantly dancing on the edge of either being one of those rare stories, or of utterly countermanding it with annoying pablum. It wasn't really until the second or third episode that I figured out why- it's a Socratic dialogue, a narrative producing a kind of dialectical Singularity.

The show maintains a complex array of philosophies and points of view, and makes sure that all of them get about as fair a shake as it can. This means, if you're me, then certain characters are going to confidently assert some really annoying pro-death claims and even conspire to kill uploaded loved ones for transparently bad reasons. If you're not me, you'll find someone just as annoying from another direction, I'm sure of it. Everybody has an ally in this show, and everybody has an enemy, and every point of view both causes and solves critical problems for the world.

For example, the thing simply does not decide whether an uploaded person is 'the same as' the original or a copy without the original essence; when one man is uploaded, his daughter continues thinking of him as her dad, and his wife declares herself widowed, and both choices are given gravitas and dignity. He, himself, isn't sure.

This isn't something you see in fiction hardly at all- the last time I can think of was Terra Ignota, though this show lacks that story's gem-cut perfection. It's that beautiful kind of art where almost nobody is evil, and almost everything is broken. And something a little bit magical happens when you do this, even imperfectly, because the resulting narrative doesn't live in any single one of their moral universes; it emerges from all of them, complexly and much weirder than a single simplistic point of view would have it. And they have to commit to the bit, because the importance of dialogue is the core, actual theme and moral center of this show.

The part of rationalism I've always been least comfortable with has been its monomania, the desire to sculpt one perfect system and then subject all of reality to it. This becomes doomerism very quickly; in short order, rationalists notice 'out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made', and then conclude that we're all very definitely going to die, once the singleton infinite-power system takes over, because it too will be flawed. (e.g. this joking-not-joking post by Big Yud.)

And don't get me wrong, I do take that concern seriously. I don't think I can conclusively, definitely convince myself that rationalism is wrong on this point, not to a degree of confidence that lets me ignore that risk. I don't at all begrudge the people devoting their entire professional lives to avoiding that outcome, even though I don't take it as given or even as particularly likely myself.

But it is precisely that monomania that is the central villain of this show, if it even has one. Breakdowns in dialogue, the assertion of unilateral control, conquering the world for its own good. The future, this show says, is multipolar, and we get there together or not at all.

That's a tremendously beautiful message, and a tremendously important one. I do wish it was more convincing.

The Power Fantasy works, quite hard, to build believably compassionate personalities into the fabric of its narrative. It doesn't take easy ways out, it doesn't give destroy-the-world levels of power to madmen or fools. Much like Pantheon, it gives voice to multiple, considered, and profoundly beautiful philosophies of life. Its protagonists have (sometimes quite serious) flaws, but only in the sense that some of the best among us have flaws; one of them is, more or less literally, an angel.

And that's why the slow, grinding story of slow, grinding doom is so effective and so powerful.

In a way that Pantheon does not, TPF reckons with the actual, specific analysis of escalation towards total destruction. Instead of elevating dialogue to the level of the sacred, it explores the actual limits and tendencies of that dialogue. It shows, again and again, how those good-faith negotiations are simply and tragically not quite good enough, with every new development dragging the world just an inch closer to the brink, making peace just a little bit more impossible. Those compassionate, wise superpowers are trapped in a nightmare that's slowly constricting around them, and they're compassionate and wise enough to know exactly what that means while remaining entirely unable to stop it.

It's most directly and obviously telling a story about the cold war, of course, not about artificial intelligence per se. The 'atomics' of TPF are just X-Men with the serial numbers filed off, and are therefore not constructed artifacts the way that uploaded and synthetic minds are; there's some nod to an 'superpowers arms race' in the AI sense of the term, but it's not a core theme. But these are still 'more than human' in important ways, with several of the characters qualifying directly as superintelligences in one way or another.

The story isn't complete (just getting started, really), so I don't want to speak too authoritatively about its theme or conclusions. But it's safe to say that the moral universe it lives in isn't a comfortable one. Echoing rationalists, the comic opens with an arresting line of dialogue: "The ethical thing to do, of course, would be to conquer the world."

In his excellent book Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom discusses multipolarity somewhat, and takes a rather dim view of it. He sees no hope for good outcomes that way, and argues that it will likely be extremely unstable. In other words, it has the ability to cloud the math, for a little while but it's ultimately just a transitional phase before we reach some kind of universal subordination to a single system.

The Power Fantasy describes such a situation, where six well-intentioned individuals are trying to share the world with one another, and shows beat-by-beat how they fail.

Pantheon cheats outrageously to make its optimism work- close relationships between just the right people, shackles on the superintelligences in just the right degree, lucky breaks at just the right time. It also has, I think, a rather more vague understanding of the principles at play (though it's delightfully faithful to the nerd culture in other ways; there's constant nods to Lain and Ghost in the Shell, including some genuinely funny sight gags, and I'm pretty sure one of the hacker characters is literally using the same brand of mouse as me).

TPF doesn't always show its work, lots of the story is told in fragments through flashbacks and nonlinear fragments. But what it shows, it shows precisely and without compromise or vagueness. It does what it can to stake you to the wall with iron spikes, no wiggle room, no flexibility.

But all the same, there's an odd problem, right? We survived the Cold War.

TPF would argue (I suspect) that we survived because the system collapsed to a singleton- the United States emerged as the sole superpower, with the Pax Americana reigning over the world undisputed for much of the last forty years. There were only two rivals, not six, and when one went, the game functionally ended.

In other words, to have a future, we need a Sovereign.

So let me go further back- the conspicuous tendency of biospheres to involve complex ecosystems with no 'dominant' organism. Sure, certain adaptations radiate quickly outward; sometimes killing and displacing much of what came before. But nature simply gives us no prior record of successful singletons emerging from competitive and dynamic environments, ever. Not even humans, not even if you count our collective species as one individual; we're making progress, but Malaria and other such diseases still prey on us, outside our control for now.

TPF would argue, I suspect, that there's a degree of power at which this stops being true- the power to annihilate the world outright, which has not yet been achieved but will be soon.

But that, I think, has not yet been shown to my satisfaction.

Obligate singleton outcomes are a far, far more novel claim than their proponents traditionally accept, and I think the burden of proof must be much higher than simply having a good argument for why it ought to be true. A model isn't enough; models are useful, not true. I'm hungry for evidence, and fictional evidence doesn't count.

It's an interesting problem, even with the consequences looming so profoundly across our collective horizon right now. TPF feels correct-as-in-precise, the way that economists and game theorists are precise. But economics and game theory are not inductive sciences; they are models, theories, arguments, deductions. They're not observations, and not to be trusted as empirical observations are trusted. Pantheon asserts again and again the power of dialogue and communication, trusts the multipolar world. And that's where my moral and analytical instincts lie too, at least to some degree. I concern myself with deep time, and deep time is endlessly, beautifully plural. But Pantheon doesn't have the rigor to back that up- this is hope, not deduction, and quite reckless in its way. Trying to implement dialectical approaches in anything like a formal system has led to colossal tragedy, again and again.

One narrative is ruthlessly rigorous and logically potent, but persistently unable to account for the real world as I've seen it. The other is vague, imprecise, overconfident, and utterly beautiful, and feels in a deep way like a continuation of the reality that I find all around me- but only feels. Both are challenging, in their way.

It's a bit scary, to be this uncertain about something this consequential. This is a question around which so much pivots- the answer to the Drake paradox, the nature of the world-to-come, the permanence of death. But I simply don't know.

[theresattrpgforthat]

TTRPGs that are played specifically through the framework of the Discord app? I'm reviewing a work in progress game that's being set up to work like that and I wanted to know if there are others!

THEME: Discord RPGS

Hello there friend, I know you mentioned This Discord Has Ghosts In It in another ask, but I’m going to mention it anyways - along with some other awesome options that exist out there!

This Discord Has Ghosts In It, by Will Jobst.

You’ve been invited to a haunted house. That haunted house is a Discord server.

Find your greatest fear, spill your worst secrets, and get to the thrilling seance in This Discord Has Ghosts in It.

I played this game for Halloween one year and it was great! In this game there are two roles: investigators and ghosts. All of the players will hang out in a voice chat, but only investigators can speak. Meanwhile, ghosts are the only ones who can type inside the game channels - and they are allowed to add new rooms to the house, upload pictures, and alter the text.

I definitely encourage players to use Lines, Veils, and the X card for this game, as it’s a horror game and you’re often met with images, not just descriptions.

MUDSLURP, by Will Uhl.

MUDSLURP (Multi-User Discord Server Lore-Universe Role Play) is a roleplaying game about asynchronous communication, intersecting storylines, and carrying a piece of your characters with you in everyday life. Everyone involved controls at least one character and participates in a shared text chatroom integrated into a fictional setting.

MUDSLURP is also compatible with other tabletop RPGs - bring a new dimension to your story with a chatroom for all your characters! Host server events, build out the world, and learn more about each other. MUDSLURP even supports multiple tabletop campaigns sharing the same chatroom, including guidelines for avoiding & resolving canon disputes.

This is something that really intrigues me, as I run a Discord server myself and I’m always looking for options that incorporate more people and give people multiple ways to interact. Since this is compatible with other tabletop games, I’m assuming you can have real-time sessions alongside something more like a play-by-post format - although I haven’t bought the game yet so I can’t say for sure.

Tournament Arc, by SystemxEmotion.

Tournament Arc is a text-based, real-time, head-to-head, fighting roleplaying game. Most importantly, Tournament Arc is a game where you create any character you can think of (or steal from your favourite media), and fight your friends.

When you play Tournament Arc, you will create a powerful fighter and you’ll try and beat other fighters in arena combat. Fighters can be anything you can fathom, from talented martial artists to alien creatures from other dimensions, and from off-duty superheroes to ordinary people granted arcane powers by elder beings. The one thing that they all have in common is that their powers come from spirits. Spirits are strange entities that recently appeared in the world, and are as diverse as the fighters themselves. 

As a text-based game, Tournament Arc depends on a third, neutral party for each battle. This third player is called the Conduit, who will judge both attacks and determine an outcome. I can see this being a great game for large groups, especially because each person gets to pick up the GM role at some point. You create move sets using different abilities that might be active or passive, and the book comes with advice on how to make the combat dynamic and interesting. If you are playing with a group that likes feeling powerful and enjoys big action scenes, this might be the game for you!

Eccentric Millionaire, by nickwedig.

Somewhere in the wilderness, an eccentric millionaire has buried $50 million worth of bearer bonds, gold, historic artifacts and art treasures. 

You’re going to hunt for it, from the comfort of your own homes. 

There are a lot of other people also searching for the treasure, too. Work with them for more clues, but don’t trust them. If they get the treasure first, they get millions of dollars. Second place gets nothing.

Eccentric Millionaire is an online game of logical deduction and social deception. One player acts as the host and organizer of the game. They will also play the role of the Eccentric Millionaire. The other players take on the role of treasure hunters. The game is played online, through chat systems like Discord or Slack, and via online map tools like Google Maps. Gameplay takes place over days or weeks, as the treasure hunters uncover more clues and zero in on the location of the treasure. Eventually, one player will find the treasure and win the game.

I love games that use innovative online tools, and this game's use of Google Maps is a great example. This is also great for large groups, of up to 25 people! I caution you though, the organization for a game like this definitely requires a lot of set up - you might have to customize a Discord Server before you are ready to play.

Games I've Recommended in the Past

Subway Runners, by Gem Room Games

[ilovetheriddler]

I’d really like to see you write something for an Origins Riddler being obsessed for the reader (love his design in that game) could be hcs or a short fic, whatever you prefer

I love his design in Origins so much! This was actually really interesting to think about since this is technically the youngest we see Eddie in the Arkhamverse, so it's interesting to think about how much would change over time in between origins to Arkham Knight in terms of how he would act in this regard. I hope that you enjoy it!

A puzzle that you can't solve.

(Arkham Games) Edward Nigma x F!Reader.

(Declaimer: I don't condone or approve of the actions taken in this story. It is purely a work of fiction.)

Word Count: 684.

Contents: Extremely obsessive behavior, stalking, character death, but it's not you or him.

How peculiar.... Eddie wasn't sure why he felt so strange whenever he saw you, but he was determined to figure it out. It was like a puzzle, an unfinished riddle! Left for him to solve. From the moment he first noticed you in passing, he knew that you were someone who could possibly entertain him, maybe not as his full equal, after all he was unrivaled in his brilliance, but maybe as a close second perhaps? That would be ideal.

He was quite surprised when he found out that your father was one of the older detectives who worked at the GCPD. How interesting, indeed... more specifically, an officer that frequently aired his grievances with Edward's "attitude," whatever that meant. Maybe that was one of the things that helped feed into his growing obsession with you? Knowing that your father greatly despised him.

It started off small, with him hacking into your university's computer to obtain your class schedules so that he'd know where you were and when. All so he could watch you with baited breath over the college security cameras, which he also gained access to fairly easily. You were in your last year of college, and overall, based on what you what studying, he could tell that you'd be extremely interesting to keep around by his side.

It soon escalated, though, to him finding your apartment and leaving small little notes and trinkets on your doorstep. You always looked intrigued by them yet also somewhat concerned. It made him question whether you had put the pieces together yet and realized that someone was watching you... or perhaps it would just be a puzzle that you couldn't solve until he gave you the answer, so to speak.

After several weeks of this, he started to grow irritated and bored. Things weren't moving fast enough for him, and the moment he noticed some other person asking you out and you telling them that you'd think about it, he knew that he had to act fast. He had to properly introduce himself soon and sweep you off your feet before some imbecile beat him to it!

Now.... When he decided to kill two birds with one stone, he knew that he could never let you truly find out. No, you'd be horrified to learn that the man that caused your father's death had been him. It was perfect. He got to test out his new puzzle trap that he had been trying to perfect, and your father got to be the unwilling tester. It was perfect! He was rid of some fool who slighted him a few times before and he would be able to show up at his funeral and approach you, playing the part of the sympathetic coworker trying to comfort you in such a devastating moment.

"Good afternoon, my dear... you have my deepest condolences for your loss. It was... truly tragic and unimaginable that someone would target a great detective like him...."

"Oh, um... thank you, do I know you? Did you work with my father?"

He throws one of his arms around your shoulder, pulling you closer, attempting to frame it as an act of comfort instead of just a selfish attempt to get you closer to him.

"Technically, I did. We didn't work closely together. He also wasn't too fond of me either... however, despite our differences, it's such a.... tragedy that he was taken so soon...."

"Well... i um.... I'm sure he'd appreciate you showing up to his funeral, even if he didn't really like you much...."

He slowly moves his hand down, rubbing your back softly. He was overjoyed by the fact that he finally had his chance to be close to you and actually hold you, but he had to keep up the act. He had to act somewhat distraught.

"Of course, and.... if you ever need anything, then simply get in touch with me, my dear...."

He quickly jolted down his number on a piece of paper and slipped it into your hand. Unbeknownst to you, sealing your fate as the object of his obsession.

[kuiperblog]

Book Review: I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

I have finished reading I'm Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin.

The premise of this book is simple, and rather than trying to summarize it myself, I will give you the author's blurb:

One day, a woman you've never met before offers you $100,000 in cash to drive her across the country—half now, half when you arrive. It’s a 2,600-mile trip, but there's a catch. She has a large, locked black box, big enough for someone to crawl inside. You're not allowed to look inside the box or even ask questions about it. She insists you leave behind all devices that can be tracked—no phone, no laptop, no credit cards, no GPS. You'll be paying with cash and navigating with a paper map the entire way. And finally, you can't tell anyone where you're going. There's no time to think; she says you must leave now. You hesitate, and she doubles the offer. Would you do it? Maybe, if you're brave or desperate enough. And besides, you think, what’s the worst that could happen?

I read it. I enjoyed it! I think it's my favorite Jason Pargin novel. One of the things that I have always liked about his novels are the fun action set pieces, and the way he builds tension throughout a scene, and across an entire book. He delivers on that here, and I am incredibly impressed with how he managed to stick the landing on this one: near the end of the book, I found myself thinking, "there's no way that this could have a climax that manages to surprise me without being a total letdown," but he proved me wrong: the big climax was completely unexpected, yet expertly "earned" by all the little bits that built up to it. It really all came together in the end in a way that far exceeded my expectations.

Jason writes humorous books, or so I've been told. I enjoy his Zoey Ashe books, and they are fun, but I've never found them to be particularly "funny." The Zoey Ashe series presents lots of absurd situations that entertained me, but none that really tickled my funny bone. However, Black Box of Doom made me laugh out loud multiple times. Maybe it's the fact that, unlike Zoey Ashe (which is science fiction), Black Box of Doom is set in "our world" in a way that feels incredibly true to life. And it feels like "our world" in a way that a lot of "real world" stories don't, largely thanks to the specificity.

Rendering the world we live in with high specificity is risky, because it's the sort of thing that is prone to "age rapidly," but I think that in 10 years, people will look back on this as an interesting period piece about 2020's culture. When Jason Pargin writes about TikTok, and Reddit, and Twitch, and the way the characters in his book engage with these platforms, you get a sense that he understands them deeply, and he is more interested in rendering them in high fidelity than he is in making a value judgment about them, or trying to poke fun at them. And yet, because he understands them so deeply, he also understands all of the things about them that are deeply funny and absurd, and so he can render those parts to great humorous effect without ever having to exaggerate. The moments of absurdity that manage to be pointed without feeling artificially "heightened" are some of the funniest, and give the book a very Dave Barry-esque quality.

Pargin ends the book with an afterward about karma how does not exist in this universe: this is a book where bad things can happen to people who behave well, and good things can happen to people who behave poorly. That much seems obvious enough that it seems unnecessary to explain it in a disclaimer, but Pargin wishes to disclaim something more specific: he wants us to know that if good things happen to a character, that is not a case of the author "rewarding" the character for being "right," nor are the bad things that happen to other characters in a case of Pargin "punishing" them for being "wrong."

Before editing this post, I wrote the previous paragraph about how "sometimes good things happen to bad people, and sometimes bad things happen to good people." But I rewrote those sentences, because I think that Pargin would reject the essentialist framing of "good person" vs "bad person." Everyone you know has done bad things at some point in their lives, and everyone you know has good qualities that might cause you to like them in certain contexts. Can anyone really make a judgment about whether that makes them a "good person" or "bad person?" If you go through someone's life looking for the one piece of evidence that will allow you to render a "good person or bad person" view of them, you will end up with a pretty low-fidelity picture of who they are, and a pretty low-fidelity picture of how the world works. All of the characters in this book do things that you probably don't approve of. Some of those things might even make you dislike them. But all of the characters in this book are fun to spend time with.

There are two interesting tricks that Jason Pargin pulls in Black Box of Doom that played with my expectations. One of which comes near the beginning, and one of which comes near the middle. Anyway, this is the part of the review where I get into descriptions that are specific enough to feel like spoilers.

First, the part that you learn as you read the first chapter:

Part of what Pargin does with his blurb is invite you to consider: what kind of man would be brave or desperate enough to accept someone offering $100,000 in cash to transport a mysterious black box across the country with no phone or GPS? What kind of hardened badass would accept a deal that is obviously pulling him into a world full of legally-questionable shenanigans and people who are obviously up to no good, with the confidence that he'd be able to handle himself in that hardscrabble world and come out alive?

And the answer is that the main character is none of those things. He's not brave; he's cowardly. He's not strong; he's weak. In fact, that's how he gets roped into this situation: he's anxiety-ridden. He's really bad with confrontation; he doesn't know how to handle conflict. And that is why he essentially allows himself to get bullied into participating in this insane errand: he doesn't know how to put his foot down and say "no." He tries to take the path of least resistance, basically procrastinating on the task of saying "I'm sorry, I can't help you," thinking "maybe if I go along with this, there will be a better opportunity for me to say no later," and of course once the ball gets rolling he can't stop it.

So, in a sense, the main character is kind of the opposite of who you think he would be based on the elevator pitch, and it's funny, and yet true-to-life, and makes for a story full of ways to put that socially-anxious guy into all sorts of crazy situations that he things are way beyond his capacity. And yet, of course, he deals with all of them, as best he can, because he must, and that's what most of life is.

Then there's something we find out partway through the story, closer to around the middle of the book.

You see, Jason Pargin has done yet another head fake with the main character, leading us to think one way before revealing something that feels almost the opposite. There is a real sense in which this story starts off with a poor put-upon guy who is roped into traveling across the country with a mysterious woman. You spend a good portion of the early part of the book fearing for his safety. He's here, but he doesn't particularly want to be here, and it's deeply unfortunate that he's stuck with the woman who roped him into this tense and chaotic mess.

But this is a road trip novel, and as the story goes on, you get a better sense of who these characters are, the cowardly driver, and the woman who hired him. You see more and more glimpses of the sort of people they are as they confront various situations. And, over time, you shift from feeling like he's deeply unfortunate to be stuck here with her (and gosh I'm terrified of what might happen to him if things go wrong), to starting to think about how deeply unfortunate she is to be stuck with him (and gosh I'm terrified of what might happen to her if things go wrong).

Just in the same way the blurb book invites us to think, "what kind of brave or desperate person would accept this insane business proposition," we're also left to contemplate, "what kind of brave, desperate person would offer this kind of insane business proposition?" What kind of woman would find herself in a situation where she was hailing a Lyft, and then ambushing the driver to tell him that she was ready to pay him six figures, in cash, to drive her and a box to the other end of the country?

That is one of many questions that is answered by the text of the book. I enjoyed discovering the answer, and many of the other answers we encounter along the way.

[sterlingarcher23]

5 colors, 6 cubes... and "Papa" looks like El?

And now some random, not so random thoughts about this:

I mean why does Papa look like El? Maybe....maybe because this isn't Brenner? (And, yes, I put in the 5 and 6 into the image.)

But it's this? A big and small version - probably we have to mirror it as well.

"I could be your zoomer." - "This is Max.":

Superficial it looks as if labeling the character on the right side of El's drawing "Papa" points to Brenner because we're used to Brenner been called that way (like Brenner’s lines about One seem! to point only to Vecna) but it's very typical that you find double or triple meanings in this show. (Btw I think these parallels connects Max to Brenner in another way - look for a "Science Monster" in Season 2.) I mean that drawing of "Papa" doesn't even remotely look like Brenner. Not even close! It looks like an older version of El.

5 colors of the rainbow, 6 cubes. 5 6

And this is were things get interesting.

A girl who is constantly mistaken for a boy and is also trans coded....

LBT (LgBTq). In. Her. Brain.

So, maybe "Papa" is more...um "Mama"? (Um, yeah, I had the same thought it looks like there's ...sperm?) which explains why we see both in this scene. How could El even remember her birth? She's not a Vulcan. This scene is - imo - only a metaphor for the creation of an alter in the mind. "A brilliant kaleidoscope of colors." (script) The connection to Brenner and Terry has probably a different reason - I have some ideas.

Parallel: El screams, Zoomer comes out? - The dog barks and Max comes out.

Um, wait then this is 'DOG'?

(btw El has a drawing of a dog looking up to a rainbow in her room - you see it when Hopper comes into the room who mistook Max as Mike - "Mike isn't here". (Also a subtle pattern btw that things seem to point to Mike. But it isn't about him. It's not Mileven. It's ElMax!)

And if El is DOG, then who is GOD? (Fallout New Vegas gamers may get this DOG / GOD reference.) - 011/Hospital room number 110? - DOG/GOD?

"If I only could make a deal with God." - whoever creates you is your god:

Just saying.

Oh and don't forget what Maxine....sorry, what Max said:

Yes, a metaphor. Although the lines between what they mean literally and what's a metaphor are sometimes a bit blurry in this show.

Creating an alter makes you that alters creator, a father/mother figure in a figurative way, or metaphorically speaking a god. Alters can be in love with one another too. And I like to remind you that "Eleven" is officially based on a character that has DID. I could even name several symptoms of DID that Max shows: blurry vision, depression, suicidal tendencies, feeling detached from your body, able to create/manipulate an inner world (so she's a specific kind of alter)

In other words: they use these characters/elements to tell us the backstory of ElMax metaphorically. Why? Because then it's not a deus ex machina in 5 but a plot that was carefully planned, crafted and dangling in front of you for years. You rewatch the whole thing and "It was directly in front of me."

And I don't expect them to explain a lot of things but reveal the truths and the audience has to put the puzzle pieces of how etc together themselves.

Totally crazy, insane (btw Jamie Campbell Bower called S5 insane), Stranger Things is just pure entertainment....

Symbolism, metaphors, allegories is normal in fiction. And they tell us this straight into our faces with that vampire reference. (so is the Jekyll & Hyde, the Teen Wolf/Werewolf and Frankenstein's monster. Basically all important Universal monsters in one show. I kid you not. It's in the show.)

Superficially it's just a entertaining supernatural TV show and you can enjoy it that way, but I think the layers below that are more like, I dunno, Silent Hill or Alan Wake? This stuff is in parts totally bonkers. I mean really bonkers including a musical scene with real actors in Alan Wake 2. No idea what these guys are smoking. - Btw allegedly the Duffers are the kind of nerds that like stuff like that.

Silent Hill, directed by Christophe Gans.... I really think he should do more films. Crying Freeman, Le pacte des loups 👌Wait, he's making another Silent Hill film? I wanted Onimusha. With Jean Reno.

Or, using a Superman reference: "The son becomes the father and the father.. the son."

So, yeah, you may think that's all crazy. I say: Wait for Season 5.

[horse-girl-anthy]

hello! wanted to say that despite your hesitation, your ‘ramble’ post was really refreshing and echoed some aspects of fandom discourse that I’ve also seen w/in fandom circles.

I’m actually less familiar w/ RGU fandom than others, but since getting back into fandom generally during the pandemic, there does seem to be a trend of ppl oversimplifying character dynamics and intensely focusing which characters are the “victims” and which are the “villains.” it feels different from what I remember as a teen in fandom—and it really constrains fandom analysis & leads to same-y, boring character interpretations :// I hesitate to generalize but it does seem concerning that ppl are so focused around valorizing characters for being, as you say, “morally pure,” by whitewashing their actions instead of engaging w/ complicated characters as they are; it’s a rather immature view of responsibility & morality, you know? oh, and speaking of, I’d be curious if you’d be willing to share the essay you read around "vilification and heroization" as the lowest form of engagement with fiction. it sounds v interesting!

anyway, I’ve really enjoyed your analyses w/ RGU. and hey, it’s good to have multiple perspectives w/in fandom too :)

hey thanks for the ask! you've described the phenomenon well. I've been frustrated by it--clearly--but at the same time, I wonder if there's a point in fighting people over it. at the end of the day, fandom is about self-gratification. that self-gratification is often achieved through identifying with characters. on a more sophisticated level, some people turn fandom into a political battleground where they are gratified by having the most enlightened reading. I want to move past self-gratification, but sitting around complaining about how "no one else gets it" is just another form of it. which is part of why I think the solution lies in not engaging in fandom anymore.

I was talking to a friend of mine about these topics this week, and I was like, I've been obsessed with media since I was a child and studying media criticism since I was a teen. it's something I really enjoy, and "media literacy" is an important skill in a world so dominated by media. but I don't know if it's actually that important in terms of living. maybe I'll put it this way: I want to increase my ability to appreciate art so that I can get more out of it, but at the end of the day, "analysis" is a hobby. I want to do it because it's fun, not to try to gain any kind of superiority.

I will keep pursuing this interest of mine even when I'm done running this blog. not to sound too desperate, but I am dying to have interesting conversations about this stuff, it's my dream to build a community around it, so please feel free to reach out any time! I'll be self-indulgent and list a couple of the more interesting analysis sources I've found recently:

RedSails.Org is a Marxist site which seems to accumulate articles from around the internet. I was searching for critiques of Breaking Bad because it ate my brain alive back in 2017 and I'm still trying to articulate why. I found this article interesting, though kinda weird, and it's where I got the "vilification and heroization" thing from. that led me to read through their entire Art and Propaganda tag. I particularly liked this piece on Ender's Game and the one titled The Banality of Genius.

PsyArt is an academic journal which focuses on the intersection of psychology and art. I found it recently while researching Freud's views on mother/daughter relationships (specifically this article). I've been happily digging through their archives since and that's led me down several research rabbit holes.

anyway, I'll leave it there, but I am super happy to talk about this stuff any time. thank you for reaching out and giving me the opportunity to run my mouth some more.

[melodich4n]

When It comes to me as a human I really am a weird case. My humor or my personality overall is as literal as you see here online for my everyday life. There's nothing for me to hide about who or how I express myself but when it comes to interests. By that means.

I'm on the spectrum. I have ADHD and ODD too.

I don't often click with characters. For those I do, I LOVE them. Be it I haven't posted them here out of preference I just really like to stick with One Piece for content making or original characters (can change). Yet when it comes to me being obsessed or clicking with a series. Especially with a character that becomes either a comfort or a special interest of mine. It happened to be Caesar Clown.

In my entire life from all things possible for me to enjoy. Caesar makes me most interested. Be it, I find myself already into topics such as science or medical care that cause me to naturally enjoy a character like Caesar for his role he has as a scientist. Being I can remember the time as young as 8 I wanted to be a virologist and help work in a lab on viruses. I even tried considering to research a cure for cancer. Be it since then the career changed on wanting to be in something art related as I ALWAYS loved art too. My second option and third was to take the job as a therapist or surgeon. Even a mortician as an option as death or the human body is something I've come to find fascinating and I'm not saying this to be a shock content person. I just really am intrigued by concepts like mortality/birth/death. Anything within those segments I'm a huge fan of. Remember being fascinated and still am a fan of COD zombies. The only thing that stopped me considering the medical field in any way was because I didn't want to spend that much money and time to get a job I might end up realizing I just enjoyed it as a hobby to research instead.

Yet the topic of anything relating to science and medical stuff makes me adore characters like Caesar anytime. Yet what specifically lured me more for him than other doctor or scientist characters was his sadistic nature and his *personality* in extension within Punk Hazard and even in WCI. I'm a fan of the topic of sadism, I'm not sadistic myself. I enjoy the fictitious aspect of how far you can push violence though. In themes or just because. As I was for some reason the kind of kid who watched 5+ hours of Happy tree friends and Fluffy pony content or make my 1037727 read of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac after I got home from a math test that pissed me off half crying still and then laughing about it because fictional violence is and will always still be funny to me.

I see fiction as fiction and a way to study things from a view of my own as someone with autism to pick apart on. I don't know why but the fact I just enjoy picking apart characters and themes, stories. Even music. I found myself adore him.

Caesar Clown though, I can see why others don't like him as much. There are many reasons why I can understand. Though for those that dislike him and choose to dislike me also from that, I don't care about those people.

Caesar's genuine intelligence is also something I enjoy looking at. Vegapunk is of course gonna always be smarter and more successful but Caesar has genuine feats of his own. He just goes into a clear route of selfishness that involves a lot of violence and he's not normal in the head. Far from it. Either because he grew into it or was born like it.

Which I enjoy the fan ideas people bring for him. I like people's own ways to take his character for their enjoyment.

I like taking him and either putting him into work that lets me express my mind and ideas for him. Or to put him through pain or anguish that always intrigued me again in the fictional lens.

My love for him likely comes from a sense of self relatability in his vindictiveness and behavior I used to have when younger myself (be it I'm far from it now and did not kill people just can grasp that sense of anger he has) that I also have respect also for his work. I want to see him do his experiments and partaken as a viewer of his work.

Also his own song, his theme? It makes me think of Earthbound and Earthbound is a massive comfort game for me. Specifically the Belch Factory for Caesar with the Belch's theme to his in the 2nd to 3rd stage of his theme. So that's just another random thing to throw. It's out of Character from the music of OP.

His design also feels like something I'd have made when I was younger, and when I feel or connect with a design I will cling and draw them pretty much anytime I think of them.

I think there are so many opportunities with a character like Caesar .

He has also broken Devil Fruit Abilities. I tried genuinely hard to see what his Gas Gas fruit was in terms of Elements on the periodic table. There was no direct one I could match with. I tried. Genuinely. I'm no chemistry nerd but my understanding of how certain elements have ways they react to exposed climates and other elements is what I researched into.

Also the fact he used himself to make experiments. It's fucking metal. Sick shit. I've written that into my own works myself before I got into One Piece as someone who wrote religious sci-fi horror. Where you use your flesh, or your body... Imagine being a part of your stuff? For your gain. To hurt others like some bad guy would do like Caesar.

To contort yourself easily...

It's very cool.

I think that's what I have my thoughts on so far I got for the man. I don't know what else to do or say. I'd love to converse with others here as long as it's civil and respectful about my thoughts or questions, and any form of discussion we can have. Though I do not support those who pick on others just because they "understand or don't understand" Caesar as well as others can or don't. He's fictional. Let's not be crazy.

That is all for me.

- Sally/Melodi

[veliseraptor]

June Reading Recap

Slower reading month on account of I got distracted by cdramas.

King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett. I don't know what to do with this book!!! It was by turns magnificent and difficult to get through. It definitely didn't hit me the way the Lymond Chronicles did/does, but even when I wasn't personally feeling it I can recognize a magisterial piece of work when I read one. The Thorfinn/Rognvald dynamic was probably one of the highlights for me, while it lasted. The premise of this one combines the life of the historical King Macbeth and that of Thorfinn Sigurdsson, positing that they were the same person. I did a lot of Wikipedia diving while reading, unsurprisingly. I recommend it for Dunnett readers, I think is what I'd ultimately say, or for historical fiction aficionados, but perhaps not more generally than that.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler. I keep reading Django Wexler because I enjoy his work, and keep finding that while I enjoy it and find it fun there's not a lot of real substance. But this book's gimmick (combining "time loop" and "villain protagonist") was too pointed directly at me for me to not give it a try. And I'm glad I did! It was very fun, and yet again it felt like the real substance was not quite there. However, I probably still will be reading the sequel when it comes out. So you know, I can't be too hard on it.

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. I feel like I did not exactly "enjoy" the experience of reading this set of interconnected short stories but I still want to recommend it to others, if that makes sense as a perspective. It also really made me want to read more generally about this period of time, both in fiction and nonfiction.

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer. This was totally a "let's just try something new for the heck of it" choice - fantasy romances are everywhere right now, this one was floating around in them and sounded potentially like fun in terms of concept, it was an impulse. I can't say it paid off. It wasn't an awful experience but I did find myself repeatedly going "why isn't this fluffy romance not digging more into its characters or implications" and the answer there is "that's not the point, Lise", I guess, and yeah, I think (English language) romance novels are probably just not for me.

The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi by Johann Chapoutot. This was a really interesting book. It very much takes its point as "what if we take Nazi philosophy seriously as philosophy." I really haven't read anything quite like it before and it was definitely disturbing to read in terms of really...getting into the heads of How Nazis Thought They Were Supposed to Live, but fascinating for those reasons too, and the reasons of exploring how implications of ideology leads to specific real-world policy-making.

Translation State by Ann Leckie. Still haven't read anything else by Ann Leckie that gets close to the high of the original trilogy but I did really enjoy this one. It did make me feel like I need to reread the original trilogy because I've definitely forgotten a lot, and usually when reading something makes me go "I should reread this other work by the same author" it speaks at least somewhat well of it.

Qi Ye by Priest. Hard not to compare this one to TYK since, you know, same author and same universe, and ultimately this one I didn't like quite as much. I think I...wanted the whole "trauma from living multiple lives" to come up more and more often than I felt like it really did here, and the relationship between Wu Xi and Jing Beiyuan was fine but didn't have what I needed to particularly compel me.

Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago by Douglas H. Erwin. As something of a mass extinction afficionado (as it were), for the most part there was nothing in this book that was really new to me except for one little brief glancing note at the end of the book about the possibility that we are not yet into the throes of a true mass extinction event and that's good, because if we were it would probably be too late to really do anything about it. Overall, though, it feels like this book falls somewhere in a confusing gap between "true academia" and "slightly too academic for general audiences" in terms of the specific analytical techniques it analyzes when assessing different arguments for extinction causes." Interesting, but not one I'd make a casual recommendation.

Sha Po Lang by Priest. I was feeling sort of middling on this one while I was reading it in official translation release time so I decided to just read the whole thing to see if I wanted to keep buying it, and I think after doing so I've come down on the side of "probably not." It was good, but, to be blunt, not quite good enough to grab me in the way I needed it to for the financial outlay. I still feel like I'm chasing the magic I got out of Faraway Wanderers and (what I've read of) LHJC from Priest and haven't found it again yet. I think part of the gap here was that I really liked Gu Yun but struggled to care very much about Chang Geng. I did kind of love the Pope being a major antagonist, though.

So probably the other reason I didn't read much last month is because I'm having a hard time finding something to read to really get into.

I'm currently reading too many books at the same time due to a confluence of factors including "travel" and "difficulty getting into one of them." The list is: The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, Silent Reading by Priest, and (on the side) Black Midnight Holds the BE Script by Teng Luo Wei Zhi. so hopefully I'll finish at least one of those this July.

[utilitycaster]

Would LOVE that essay on combat in dnd because full agree. But not even just for people watching live play, like, combat is an essential feature of dnd as a game system and it endlessly frustrates me when i see dms be like “yeah combat is just too complicated and no fun so i dont do it in my game :)!” Like i guess thats your right, but any non-caster class is gonna be miserable in your game. I saw a video recently talking about how dnd has kind of become the default ttrpg and is marketed as the perfect system for everyone and any style of play which is just. So not true. Combat in dnd is equally as integral as roleplay is and theres really no argument otherwise. Very valid if you hate dnd combat, it sure isnt for everyone, but in that case maybe play a different ttrpg where the characters arent constructed around combat abilities, i promise you’ll have more fun.

So this is one of those things that touches on maybe 99% of my feelings on Experiencing Fiction in general and actual play in particular; I apologize in advance for the length and digressions within this response.

Here are the reasons I have seen or I surmise why people don’t like D&D combat, either in actual play or in home games:

It can get crunchy and involves a lot of rules

There are long stretches in which individuals do not necessarily act (not exclusive to combat but I think this is a factor)

It contains violence

There is a potential for character death

Now, it’s fine if you aren’t interested in D&D-style combat, for whatever reason, when you play ttrpgs. It’s just that this is a core feature of D&D. As you say, this is what the martial classes are structured around - and, frankly, no small number of casting classes/subclasses as well. By avoiding it when you play D&D, you’re avoiding the bulk of the game, and there are plenty of ttrpgs that permit open RP that aren’t combat focused that would probably fit your needs better (eg: PbtA and Savage Worlds are both generic systems that can support a heroic fantasy like D&D without the emphasis on combat skills). I happen to love and prefer D&D, but that is specifically because I love combat, and yeah, there are other games and people should seek out those games if they don’t like combat.

When it comes to D&D actual play though…skipping combat is just straight-up stupid. And to be clear I mean fully skipping it and not watching it at all; while this is piggybacking off my post about spoilers, it’s fine if you are the sort of person who needs to know how combat ends in order to enjoy it! That’s just a personal preference that I respect even if I don’t share it.

D&D combat isn’t just an inherent part of the game; it’s an inherent part of the story. The idea of D&D being split into combat and RP is a false dichotomy. There is RP and crucial story within combat scenes, and you simply do not achieve the same effects by reading an after-the-fact summary. To use examples from Critical Role, consider one of the most famous RP moments from Campaign 1, when Scanlan uses his 9th level counterspell in the Vecna fight. The weight of that moment derives from mechanics and from the fact that it is in the midst of combat and well into a climatic final battle. Or for lighter examples, there’s a ton of Beau/Yasha and Fjord/Jester mid-combat flirting running through much of Campaign 2 that informs those relationships. Molly’s death? Caleb going into a fugue state when he kills humanoids with fire? Yasha destroying Obann? Fjord dying mid-deep scion fight? Those are all moments that have deep character weight and meaning that are within the context of combat, and you cannot divorce them from that context and hope to retain the same effect.

This is what dovetails into a larger discussion of Experiencing Fiction which is a (in my opinion) worrying tendency among some people to truly believe that you can cut up media into the palatable bits and pieces and push all of what you see as icky vegetables to the side of your plate. I fucking hate this. I think it’s what drives a lot of things including a distaste for combat. This is how you get, for example, people who dislike combat because Violence And Death Bad, which, do I think that in the real world violence is most often a thing to be avoided? Do I think that in the real world death is heartbreaking? Yes, but this is fiction. There’s that great Brennan Lee Mulligan quote about how TTRPGs like D&D allow people who usually must be conflict-avoidant in real life to let out their anger and frustration in a place where it is safe and harmless, and I believe that whole-heartedly. I want stories about death because I want to know I'm not alone in how I feel about death. I want stories in which people can express their rage in ways both healthy and unhealthy, because big same. (I also think it’s absolutely not coincidental that people who believe they are ‘protecting’ people by circumscribing what is acceptable in fiction tend to be strongly associated with either bigoted, violent policies in real life, or harassment and doxxing online; maybe enjoy a fucked up movie, as John Waters once said, and you'll calm down.)

This idea that you can cut up media and only consume what you like is also what I think is behind some of the really ill-considered and overly granular timestamped content warnings I’ve mentioned previously. It is fine if there are things you don’t want to watch or which will be upsetting or even triggering to watch! It’s fine if you as an individual don’t like violence! But I think there’s a problem when people believe they are entitled to be able to watch whatever they want and have it mold to their exact wants and needs (and that it’s a failing if it doesn’t), rather than taking on the responsibility of seeking out media that already fits the bill. Actual Play D&D will nearly always have violent encounters. If this will be an issue this is not for you. It is not gatekeeping to say “you can come through this gate, but the gate is in fact here for your specifically requested protection"; and yet people think that instead, gates should be placed around everything else. So (to give an example) this is why the warnings for D20’s Neverafter strike me as a symptom of this larger problem - if you have discomfort with violence towards animals and children, that’s fine, but you are watching a D&D horror series in which over half the player characters are either animals or children. This is not something where you can skip a few seconds of a flashing gif that might be a migraine or seizure trigger, or a case where an exceptionally rough scene of gaslighting can be read instead of watched; this is inherent to the show, and if this is not for you, you need to go elsewhere.

To give one last example, I was looking for fanart for Worlds Beyond Number, and came across a picture of Suvi with a caption of “Suvi but without the imperialism” and like…Aabria has said in interviews that this engagement with the empire is extremely deliberate; that Suvi is intended to be tied into the political structures of this world as an intentional contrast with Eursulon’s status as an outsider and Ame’s role at the smaller, community level. Suvi without imperialism is not identifiable as the same character and it throws the entire story off-kilter; she is of this empire and that is the fucking point. Any story worth telling is not just items thrown haphazardly into a bowl; they are combined and mixed. Someone is giving you a plate of brownies and you are acting like it’s physically possible to take out the cocoa powder without fucking the end result, and buddy, it’s not.

(Truly, I was not joking when I said this is like, the load-bearing pillar of most of my complaints about fiction consumption patterns in general. This is about how people will deny the flaws in characters even though any reasonably intelligent ten-year-old, and I know because I fucking was one once, understands that person vs. themself is one of the core conflicts and overcoming one’s flaws is in many cases the entire story and if you start out perfect there is nothing to be said. Like…I think a lot of people genuinely just want to watch a nonstop Monterey Bay Otter Cam of their sufficiently sanitized, focus-group-tested blorbos baking cookies together, and are affronted when people with the tiniest sliver of empathy and/or curiosity want a story with plot and character growth, which in turn require conflict.)

Anyway. I think the takeaways here are that there’s this awful entitlement people have in which they think that they can simply consume anything and it is the failure of that media if it doesn’t cater specifically to them, rather than a failure of them to seek out that which they would enjoy (and I could go on this rant indefinitely; it is truly the most constant theme among Takes I Think Are Dumb); and also I really want to bake something right now, given my choices of metaphor. Combat is part of D&D as a game and as a storytelling medium, and it is incumbent upon people who do not like combat to find something that doesn’t have D&D combat, rather than try to pull out the vital organs of the story.

[choicesficwriterscreations]

December Creator of the Month: Oh-So-Youre-a-Nerd

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists, and this month’s creator of the month is @oh-so-youre-a-nerd . We're very excited because Ascindio is our very first artist to be highlighted! We hope you will enjoy learning more about them and their work below! The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page.

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog Instagram

How do you want to be known on Tumblr? 

Ascindio 

More below...

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played? 

I started playing in 2016, I can't remember if I read Endless Summer or Rules of Engagement first, but I ended up deleting the app after like 2 weeks cause I couldn't stop buying diamonds 😅🤦

I re-downloaded it about, ohh idk 2 years ago?

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I joined the Fandom specifically on Tumblr and specifically for It Lives Within, which happened to come out right after I read the first two books 

3- How did you pick your blog name? 

I always try to seem cool and mysterious when I meet people irl, and then as soon as I open my mouth, I ruin it with some niche trivia or something, and they say,  “Oh, so you're a nerd.” 😂 Can't tell you how many times this exact phrase has been uttered to me. 

4- Pull up the first post in your archive, and tell us about it!  

This is the first Choices related post I made 😂 I was just thinking about the concept of what if characters make terrible decisions cause they're controlled by a player who is out of diamonds lol I was going to do a whole series of them (next was going to be lotr “fly on eagles to mordor?” *30 diamonds* or “simply walk”) but got lazy lol

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both? 

Only art. God, I  WISH  I wrote too. I've thought about trying cause I have so many ideas floating around in my head, but at the end of the day, I'd rather spend my free time drawing. 

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

For Choices, since early 2022

For other fandoms, since well, forever, but I only started posting around 2017/18

7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

Favorite Choices book is probably It Lives in the Woods. All of the characters were so interesting, I never got bored reading it, and it had an incredible twist that made sense but I still didn't see coming. 

Favorite to create for is probably Blades of Light and Shadow though because I am such a sucker for the fantasy aesthetic.

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?.

This isn't the first Choices art I made, but it IS the first I actually shared

And honestly, I DO still like it because I still remember the way I felt absolutely POSSESSED while drawing it (I hadn't drawn anything for *months*). I would definitely change the background, though. Those trees look like shit, and they're not even the correct type for the kind of forest they're in. 

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created? 

My favorite Choices art I've done is probably this piece. 

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

I definitely didn't expect this one to do well at all as it was so hastily drawn

And I was sad this piece didn't get more love, it was such a dope scene and I was so excited about how the sword turned out

11- If you could only draw one style or type of art for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? 

I'm not sure if I'm interpreting the question right, but if I had to pick like a specific type of art, it would be digital, and I would want to do fan art. I have a hard time painting anything that I don't already have a deep connection with (so original art with no story behind it is usually a chore for me), and digital art is just so incredibly convenient and not messy and so so versatile. 

12 - Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

Because I use fiction as a way to safely process trauma/ grief/ other big emotions, each MC I make has a small part of me, whichever part I feel the need to explore at the time.

There's an amazing quote by Patrick Rothfuss that I feel explains it perfectly. 

It's from Wise Man's Fear

“These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.

Except for stories, of course. Tales of poisoned kings and duels and old wars were fine. They dressed death in foreign clothes and sent him far from your door. A chimney fire or the croup cough were terrifying. But Gibea’s trial or the siege of Enfast, those were different. They were like prayers, like charms muttered late at night when you were walking alone in the dark. Stories were like ha’penny amulets you bought from a peddler, just in case.”

13 - What element of writing/art do you struggle with most?

I have a very difficult time making the poses seem natural and flowing. My all time favorite art is Baroque/Renaissance style and how fluid the poses are, how soft the skin looks, how delicately it's all done. Obviously, I will always have my own style, but those are things that I so want to incorporate but never seem to get quite right, and it drives me crazy 😂

14 - Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

Not really. I mean, I have a ton of unfinished work, but as soon as the window of inspiration passes, I just can't get myself to care enough about it to finish it (insert Jake the Dog, “now it's gone, and I don't care about it anymore!” )

15 - If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first? 

I would, and have.  I typically show them whatever most rendered recent picture from my Instagram because I don't post any nsfw there and usually try to post only my prettier work for this specific reason haha. (As opposed to here, I post everything here, ain't NO ONE from real life invited to see my tumblr 😂)

16 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

Writers: Brandon Sanderson, for sure. He's the reason I got back into art back in 2017 ish. His stories are just so emotional they push me to create. Same with @saibug1022, there is always at least one scene from every story he shares that I desperately want to draw to try to capture the emotions. 

Artists: God, sooo many, here are just like my top 3 favorites and their instagrams.

Audra Auclair

Obsessed with her unique style, and specifically the way she draws eyelids and noses

f3lc4t

The way they draw those dripping, glowing wisps. I stare at their pieces for hours (no lie) trying to dissect them stroke by stroke to figure out how they do it.

Miho Hirano

Their art has a delicate whimsy-ness I would SELL MY SOUL to achieve 

17- Which one of your creations would you like to see a fiction written about? 

JC, this is the shit I DREAM of.

Definitely this one. 

So this is love.

This little comic means a lot to me. 

18- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art? 

Very rarely, but I do, every so often. This is my favorite original piece.

20-  What other hobbies do you have?

Gaming, singing, walking through the Cemetary with my wee daughter, reading, that's about it 🤷

21 - What’s your favorite emoji? 

🙇

22: BONUS - tell us anything you’d like (if you want to).

I really wanted to say that I don't believe in “good” art and “bad” art (just ethical vs non-ethical). That being said, I know what it's like to hate your art, like soooo intimately. If you ever are feeling shit about your art, you can ABSOLUTELY message me (I don't care if we're mutuals or not, I don't care if we've never interacted before) and just say, “I am feeling shit about my art” and I will go through your art and tell you every specific thing I love about it and why it's wonderful. I am not joking; I am so so serious rn. 💗💗💗💗 

[anneapocalypse]

I have really complex feelings about the idea (often implied or tacitly agreed to be true even when it's not stated outright) that realism in sex scenes (and specifically sex scenes in fanfiction because that's what I'm thinking about) is always preferable and desirable. That it's always better to be more realistic, and any kind of unrealistic or fictionalized portrayals of sex are inferior--or in some cases, worthy of contempt and an indication of the inexperience/immaturity/poor writing skills of the author.

I have mixed feelings about it because I do think there's a place for realism. There are things that add realism to sex scenes that I really enjoy. I enjoy watching certain characters communicate their desires and negotiate activities. In some scenarios I like seeing characters employ safer sex practices like barriers. I will always enjoy when an author takes the time to figure out a form of lubrication that's appropriate and believable in the setting! I can even enjoy when a character gets up to pee after sex before returning to bed to cuddle; it's a very human touch to the scene that can itself be comforting and enjoyable to read. I like it when people who have experience with certain types of sex create helpful guides to writing those things, offering details you might not think of or know about if you haven't had that type of sex. It gives authors more to work with! It's a tool. Realism is a tool, and one that can absolutely enrich scenes and make them more interesting and fun to read.

And at the same time, something really does rub me the wrong way when I see posts that express contempt for a realism gap in fanfiction and imply that anyone writing it that way must be a) stupid, b) inexperienced (while kind of implying that writing about sex when you haven't had sex is inherently a problem, which I object to fundamentally), and c) completely unaware that what they're writing isn't realistic, which kind of points back to A. It's less on the nose than it would have been like ten years ago, when a lot more people were willing to just come right out and mock "stupid girls writing stupid fanfic" (and all the assumptions that go along with that) but still... that tone lingers. I won't even get into some of the smug posts that used to circulate about anal sex that ended up coming across as "don't you know anal sex is GROSS" in a way that was kind of lowkey homophobic, intentionally or not. Nor am I going to get into the prevalence of queer people telling other queer people they're doing queerness Wrong (in fanfiction, in original writing, in life in general).

To bring a personal angle to this, I'm a nearly-40-year-old bisexual cis woman, married and monogamous, chronically ill, and with some lifelong undefined sensory issues that I don't have any kind of diagnosis for so I'll just call them that. For me personally, due mostly to sensory issues and some physiological quirks, sex can take a lot of energy. Sometimes it's just a lot of work! That doesn't mean I don't want it or enjoy it, or that my partner is failing in some way; I have an active and fun sex life with a very thoughtful and caring partner (and I am not looking for advice on this post, so let's not get sidetracked). There's just challenges! And sometimes I wish my own body made it easier!

So sometimes, when I'm writing smut which is definitionally for fun and primarily for me and my own enjoyment, I find myself caught between: do I want to make this character's experience of sex very realistic in a way that's relatable to me? or do I just want to indulge in the fantasy of sex being easy and low-effort?

At this very moment I'm having difficulty answering that question about some things! There's pros and cons to both, and I don't think either one is wrong. Because at the end of the day, my own enjoyment is the goal of this piece of fiction. It's self-indulgence either way. No matter what I write, these pixel people I'm writing about are not real and their sex scenes are still a fantasy. It's just a question of what kind of fantasy I want to indulge in.

There was a good post I saw recently about the fact that a lot of problematic tropes are problematic not inherently but by scale--in other words, because their prevalence reinforces ideas and narratives harmful to specific groups. And I will be the first to acknowledge that even in the realm of fanfiction--a sphere with relatively low impact on the culture at large--it can be frustrating to constantly run into the same tropes that we find unrelatable or just plain unenjoyable, whether it's rigid top/bottom roles or easy vaginal orgasms. I don't want to come across as like, scolding anyone for just being annoyed, or venting about that sort of thing. It's fine. Some people's forms of self-indulgence are irritating to me, and my self-indulgence is undoubtedly annoying to someone else. I also want to reiterate that talking about what is and isn't realistic in the context of fiction is fine and good and there's absolutely a place for it, and that I enjoy a lot of elements of realism in fiction. I just also want to leave room for fiction to be fantasy. I think that's okay. And everyone's gauge for just how much realism is enjoyable is going to be different. I think that's fine too.

[rabotimagines]

🐇 [An Introduction] 🐇

HI HELLO I bit the bullet and decided to make a self ship/ x reader blog.

You can call me Rabot! I'm HE/HIM transman. I'm an adult, FYI! I'm from the internet age when giving your info out is bad, so I'll be vague outta habit, but I am an adult. Minors please DNI I'll be posting smut occasionally.

This is a sideblog for me, so if you follow me as another imagine blog, we're probably mutuals you just can't see it <3

🐰 [What's this blog for?] 🐰

1] so I have a place to reblog others x reader content

2] so I can post the little bit of x reader stuff I write for myself.

My blogs specifically for scenarios/Headcanons of the short. The type with bullet points and such from fictional characters. Or the longer run ons, it all depends on how I feel.

I write for GN Readers and Masc or Male readers! Unless specificed any requests i decide to actually take will automatically be GN!

🐇 [So you do requests?] 🐇

Sorta! I'm mostly just planning on writing for myself, so to speak. You're more than welcome to send ideas or ramblings about characters in my inbox, but I don't wanna promise I'd be able to fill in any requests. If an idea or thing interests me, I might make a drabble or hcs in response to your ask.

But please do send an idea or an ask if you feel inclined to the worst I could say is "No, sorry." Or we could be deranged about [insert character here] together

🐇 [Writing for 'what' right now?] 🐇

• Transformers! <- my hyperfixation rn! (I'm newer! I watched TFONE and got weird about robots. I'm in the middle of watching G1 and Prime rn. I saw TF Animated in pieces when It aired on TV originally, so I have vague memories of them.

• ONE PIECE <- I like pirates. I tend to get obsessed with one piece in small bursts that come and go

🐇 [Limits?]🐇

Any type of Mess play is a hard no for me (Vomit, Watersports, Scat)

Knife or blade play is a no.

Also absolutely no forced pregnancy please thanks. (I don't mind noncon by itself or even preg talk/content just don't mix the two please)

🐰 [Tag guide?]🐰

#Rabot writes (My stuff)

#🔞 (smut/nsft)

#💌 (Fluff/romantic)

#💛 (Platontic)

#🩹 (Comfort)

#🥃 (Angst)

#🩶 (Yandere)

I only really like what's considered "light" Yandere, tbh so you don't need to worry too much there. (I like obsessive vibes but dont really enjoy like the whole "hurting you or your loved ones" type of stuff.) You can also just filter any emoji preemptively.

[Masterlist]

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello! I’ve been following you for a bit now, and all of your recommendations have been super cool and interesting! If you don’t mind me asking, do you have any recommendations for really long indie ttrpgs? One that could match the length of dnd or CoD books, I mean. The specifics don’t matter as much, I just really like sinking my teeth into long game books like that.

THEME: Long Indie Games

Hello friend! Fear not, I have a multitude of long indie games to recommend for you!

Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, by Jenna Moran.

Length: 578 pages.

The Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG is the diceless RPG from Jenna Katerin Moran, author of the well-regarded Nobilis and an important contributor to Eos’ Weapons of the Gods and White Wolf’s Exalted RPG.

Chuubo’s is a special beast. I personally don’t know how one actually plays this game, but the book itself is fascinating to read. It has recognizable parts such as character skills, Health Levels, and XP, but I think I’d want to sit down with a physical copy to be able to properly read it and get a handle on how you play through a story. If you enjoy a challenge, or even just something enchanting and evocative, I’d recommend Chuubo’s.

Part-Time Gods, by Third Eye Games.

Length: 318 pages.

The gods of today are shadows of what the old gods possessed. Their power has been heavily diminished, and many choose to live a regular, mortal life, revealing themselves as gods only when absolutely necessary. The reason for this is twofold. First, fate doesn’t like it when the gods share their secrets with a mortal. Unless they are the god’s worshipper, terrible events and horrific accidents have a way of happening to the people closest to the god. Secondly, divine works attract creatures and monsters called Outsiders, created by the Source (after its capture) to destroy any god they encounter.

This is a game that’s on my TBR shelf - and it might stay there for a while, because this is another pretty lengthy book. I am very grateful for the index at the back of this book, because I think this would be pretty difficult to navigate. Part-Time Gods is set in the modern-day, but the premise behind your god-hood is very unique, so one of the first chapters is dedicated to telling you what exactly it means to be a part-time god, part-time taxpayer. The book also contains small pieces of prose set in the world, meant to give you a flavour of the genre and tone intended by the designer. I’m really interested in the concepts expressed in this game, and I hope I have enough brain space to read it in the future!

We Are All Mad Here, by Shanna Germain.

Length: 226 pages.

Jack climbing the beanstalk. The little mermaid finding her voice. Alice struggling with the madness of a place unruled by the laws of reality. The queen. The child. The woodsman. The knight. When you think about fairy tales, who do you become? Where does your imagination take you?

We Are All Mad Here is a tabletop game about fairytales and mental health, providing you with new options for the Cypher System while also creating a setting about visitors to a magical land called the Heartwood. In the fiction, only those who have had some kind of struggle that affects their mental health are able to travel to this magical land. Germain intends this to be a way to tell a narrative about mental health using allegory and metaphor. The Cypher system itself is pretty complex, and you probably won’t be able to play a game of We Are All Mad Here without the core rulebook, so it might be worth it to take a gander at the Cypher System Rulebook while you’re at it.

Coyote & Crow, by Connor Alexander.

Length: 484 pages.

More than 700 years ago, a massive disaster changed the course of history. The world was plunged into centuries of darkness, but the event also introduced the Adanadi — the Gift — a strange mark that appeared on all life. This mark would have an enduring impact on humanity. Centuries later, the Earth is healing. New, advanced nations have risen. Ancient legends stir.

Coyote & Crow is a pretty extensive and unique game, using pools of d12s pulled from your stats, as well as narrative beats such as character motivation, Gifts and Burdens to help give your character a personality. Because it introduces an alternate history and a drastically different future, the core book as a decent amount of lore to acquaint you with the city of Cahokia and the world that surrounds it.

This game has quite a bit of support out there, with adventures such as Stolen Heart, Laughter Lost & Found, and The Case of the Great Underwater Panther.

Impulse Drive, by Adrian Thoen.

Length: 242 pages.

Play a crew of misfits and scoundrels living a life of danger and adventure as they explore space and try to make their ship a home in a technicolor sea of stars. Fight dangerous organizations, investigate unnerving mysteries, and find trouble in a game that rewards you when your characters face their shortcomings. Grow your characters and ship with new gear and abilities as you discover and create the universe together, as a group.

For a PbtA game, Impulse Drive feels pretty substantial. It provides a quick primer on Powered by the Apocalypse games, and includes advice for the players as well as the GM. This might be because the game includes a lot of details about gear and vehicles, as this is a space game that cares what your party has on hand and what their ship can do. There’s also advice on changing the game, extra moves, and a roll table for mutations! If you’re looking to see how to play out a space adventure in a more narrative-focused system, you might want to check out this game!

The Shrike, by Alice the Candle.

Length: 162 pages.

The Shrike is a game about fantastical voyages aboard a skyship. It's inspired by Avery Alder's The Quiet Year, John Harper's Lady Blackbird, Italo Calvino, Ursula K. Le Guin, and utopian and dystopian fiction. It features four complete adventures (two multiplayer, two for solo play). 

This indie game is on the short side of this list, but it’s definitely long by indie standards. The author has provided 4 different adventures that you can read through, which will likely spark your imagination along the way. Interestingly, the voyages are placed in the first half of the book, while the information about Solo, Co-operative. and Guided Play embody the second half of the book. I’m not sure how I feel about this layout choice, but if you’re mostly looking for a book that you can read, flipping through the voyages might be more interesting to you than the rules of play.

Games I’ve Recommended in the Past

Lancer, by Massif Press. 431 pages.

The Wildsea, by Felix Isaacs. 364 pages.

Exceptionals, by Sahoni. 253 pages.

Gubat Banwa, by makpatatag. 399 pages.

Monster Care Squad, by Sandy Pug Games. 176 pages.

[uzurakis]

BYF + RULES!

hi! this is a blog dedicated for jujutsu kaisen, blue lock, & sakamoto days! i will often ramble about other series too, but it’s still a writing-centric blog.

please do filter the tag #jjk spoilers #jjk leaks #jujutsu kaisen leaks #jjk (chapter) if you don’t want to see any jjk spoilers here.

as for blue lock, i haven’t read the ongoing bastard munchen vs pxg match and refrain myself from any of the series’s spoilers. so please do not come at my inbox and talk about the recent bllk chapters.

DNI. basic dni criteria. zionists. do not bring any discourse/hateful asks to my blog.

asks are always open for interacting and brainrots. don’t be afraid to send them in, i won’t bite! quite the contrary, i love to interact here :]

i use endearments, like, a lot (baby, babes, sweetie, etc). lmk if you feel annoyed by me referring you with those :)

if you want to become an anon, just drop at my inbox and say what anon you want to be.

ANONS. 🎲 ; 🙂‍↕️ ; 🪼 (my lovelies <3)

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING IF YOU WANT TO REQUEST & ACCESS MY WORKS!

i write both SFW and NSFW. with that being said, minors please do not interact with my explicit contents. also, i age up characters when writing them; if it’s not your cup of tea, then feel free to get off my page, mind your goddamn business, that fucking easy. no need to tell me and send me asks especially on anon, that’s soo lame. it’s just a piece of fiction so don’t take it seriously. thanks!

do i have an update schedule? reqs are running on queue and i post my own drabbles sporadically. i may have finished your writing loong before it’s posted because of my queuing system.

ONLY OPEN TO DRABBLE/HEADCANON SUGGESTIONS! your thoughts or thirsts. I WILL NOT write any full fic requests or oneshots.

keep in mind that i use feminine reader and pronouns. DON’T BE TOO SPECIFIC AND KEEP IT BRIEF; example: your oc reader, certain traits or attributes reader, you literally explaining the whole plot. trust me, i won’t write yours. just let me be free with my creative space ;)

-> i beg not to ask me for a part 2 of my writings anymore 😓

keep in mind that i have ALL THE RIGHTS to NOT write your suggestions. either i don’t know how to write it or it doesn’t pique my interest that much. my apologies.

drabbles: one character with your prompt

headcanons: a maximum of 3 characters for each promt

or just your brainrots or entries and we’ll talk about it!

my writing is only limited to some of the characters from the whole series. the ones that aren’t listed, i might have a hard time to nail the characterization and a BIG POSSIBILITY i won’t write for them even though you asked for it :)

JUJUTSU KAISEN: fushiguro megumi. itadori yuuji. gojo satoru. geto suguru. yuuta okkotsu. nanami kento. choso kamo. (i don’t write for toge)

BLUE LOCK: itoshi rin. yoichi isagi. meguru bachira. hyoma chigiri. seishiro nagi. reo mikage. michael kaiser. shidou ryusei. itoshi sae.

SAKADAYS: yoichi nagumo. natsuki seba. gaku. shin.

i would really appreciate if you reblog instead of spam likings if you enjoy my works, one, i can get shadowbanned, not funny guys. two, i may consider you as a bot and block you on sight. three, i enjoy seeing reblogs especially with your comments, it makes my day.

all rights reserved. @uzurakis