#i could be wrong about the inciting incident being fixed but the game feels a little half baked sooooo...

[volixia669]

Potion Permit isn't flawless (whyyyyyyy does this small town of like 15 need three cops?) but I'm liking it!

A little disappointed the whole incident that causes the town's distrust of chemists was an oopsie daisy that's quickly resolved. I dunno. Seemed a perfect set up for a whole, "the capital didn't give a fuck and you need to learn to distrust the state and work with rural customs while 'science isn't bad, greed is' is learned by the locals."

But I suppose if that was the plot we wouldn't have THREE fucking cops.

Still, if you like grindy games, it has a pretty solid gameplay loop. The character designs are diverse and pretty good! Aside from Rue, who I think could have been made older.

That said, the writing has a lot of poteeeential, but given what other folks here have mentioned, it doesn't go as far as it could.

[fantasyfantasygames]

Falling

Falling, 20xx Games, 2015

Falling is a game about having a really, really hard day while being so badly depressed that you literally fall into an alternate spacetime below our own, and your climb or flight back out.

There's a big content warning right at the front of this game - Falling focuses on depression. It was written by someone with chronic chemical depression, the sort that's part of your brain chemistry. It's very good at getting you to understand what that's like. If you also suffer from chronic depression, this game is very explicit about not being the right place to get help.

You make a character by drawing a hand of cards, writing a hundred-word summary of your character (a la some other games I've reviewed), and giving a short explanation of what pushed you into Underspace. During play you use descriptors from your character bio and inciting incident to draw more cards and change the ones you have. You need specific combinations of things in your hand in order to do specific things, so it's not just a matter of "better poker hand wins". Black cards are strength and toughness (both emotional and physical) but also depression. Red cards are connection and wisdom but also either mania or obsession, player's choice at chargen. You might need three red cards for one thing, or a small straight in black, or one very specific card. It's all about adapting to the situation. Go too hard and you'll regret it. XP lets you boost traits by underlining them, or cross out some that aren't helping you and write new ones.

Underspace is a massive vertical shaft, a gaslamp fantasy idea of what an enormous abandoned mine would look like. You encounter its odd denizens, many of whom are part fungus. Some of them will try to help you leave. Others are there to drag you down metaphorically or physically. There's no shortcut to get out - it's step by step. As the name of the game implies, you're probably not going to make it out in one smooth climb. The book details one particular settlement with the idea that you could use it as inspiration for others.

The art aims toward DiTerlizzi. It doesn't quite get there, but the rough lines and dark shading make it a good fit. Fans of Planescape will definitely feel at home here. Layout is fairly standard, and there's nothing wrong with that.

One of the rules for the endgame is "It's not about the inciting incident." Whatever pushed you into Underspace was a side-effect, the straw, or a total coincidence. You can't fix your depression and return to Superspace just by fixing or reversing that event.

Falling is ultimately a hopeful game, but not an easy one to play. You're going to get pulled in emotionally, and there will absolutely be serious setbacks that erase a whole session of progress. I wouldn't say you need to be a masochist to play, but you do have to want to do something emotionally challenging.

20xx Games isn't in existence any more. Falling didn't sell particularly well in PDF, never made it to print, and their other big project ran into unspecified legal issues involving Capcom, so the whole company tanked in 2017. I'm not sure what Falling's copyright status is these days. Hopefully one of the company's partners still has the rights to publish it - I think it deserves to be out in the world.

[thebibliomancer]

Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 21

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because after that big shocking reveal last time I don’t really need another because!

Last times on book: Kylan, Naia, Amri, and Tavra are finally on their way to Ha’rar after the disappointment of finding that the firca of Gyr the Song Teller was broken. When Kylan went ahead to ask Tavra if they could take a break, he discovered she wasn’t Tavra and was colluding with the Skeksis against them! He knows but she doesn’t knows he knows! How tense!

Chapter 21

Kylan is a sweet little blue berry

When Fake-Tavra and Kylan get back to the clearing, Naia immediately insists that no matter what Tavra thinks, they need to rest.

Fake-Tavra actually draws her sword although she stops short of being actually threatening with it. Still, GEEZ FAKE TAVRA!

Its only thanks to the improbability of an imposter situation that you’ve been getting away with impostering because you are terrible at pretending to be a reasonable individual!

Kylan, who has reason to worry about whether Fake-Tavra would actually use the sword knowing that her Skeksis master is getting impatient with her, steps in.

He’s stepped between Fake Tavra and Naia so many times that he’s basically an expert at this point.

“Tavra. Listen. Amri needs shoes, or soon we’ll have to carry him, which will surely slow us down further than if we stop for just a little while.”

“It’s not my fault he decided to come. If he needs shoes so badly, he can have mine.”

Tavra reached down and tore the sandals from her feet, tossing them at the Grottan boy, who flinched at the gesture.

“That’s really not necessary,” Amri began. “Naia cut some hide from her jerkin, so...”

Geez, poor Amri. He didn’t ask to be in the middle of this drama.

Kylan deflects again because he can sense that this is argument is gonna escalate and then Fake Tavra’s gonna kick their asses.

“I got a note from Rian. It came by swoothu, early this evening. His boat was damaged by a rock in the river, and he was waylaid. He’s close by and he said he’ll wait for us if we’re near. I already told him we would meet him tomorrow evening.”

Tavra snatches the note from Kylan, looks at it, and then dunks it into the fire.

Naia looks at Kylan skeptically but he hits her with the full force of puppy dog ‘please play along’ eyes.

“Oh,” she said in a normal tone, as if she had just remembered. “So that’s what you were doing out in the wood earlier. Why didn’t you tell us right away?”

Ain’t friends who’ll back up your random lies the best?

Kylan builds up on his lie by claiming that he didn’t mention it earlier because he was worried it was secretly a secret Skeksis scheme trap.

Fake Tavra confidently says its not a trap (because she is the trap and the Skeksis wouldn’t double book).

Kylan suggests that they wait until morning and then go meet him.

Tavra stared into the fire, free hand cupping her chin in thought. He hoped she was thinking what he wanted her to think - that this opportunity was too sweet to miss. Her master wanted Rian, and this was a way she could regain favor.

He was rewarded when she sheathed her sword.

“Yes. Fit those sandals to the Shadowling. We leave first thing in the dawn.”

And then Fake Tavra sits against a tree and falls asleep. Or pretends to fall asleep?

... Huh. Y’know. With all the emphasis on the Skeksis wanting to drink Naia and Gurjin, I forgot that the inciting incident of all this was them trying to catch Rian.

With that settled, Amri turns his attention to the sandals that Tavra threw at him because he doesn’t have context for all of this and his number one priority is his aching feet.

The sandals are pretty close to his own foot size but Fake Tavra broke the cords when she ripped them off.

Kylan tells Amri he’ll fix them but first fishes the fire-resistant parchment out of the fire and hands it to Amri.

Naia comes over to talk to Kylan while he fixes the sandals, which he’s really good at because it was one of the tasks Maudra Mera taught him when he was a child.

When Kylan whispers back, he whispers loud enough for Fake Tavra to overhear. Oh, Kylan, what scheme are you up to?

“I don’t trust Tavra.” He watched the Silverling when he spoke. She did not stir. “Something about her has been all wrong since we ran into her. You remember... with the blue mouth?”

Naia frowned. “Of course I remember the blue mouth.”

Kylan chose his words as carefully as if he were telling a song. This was the most important part of all.

“Good,” he said. “Because if you remember, then you’ll understand why I want to meet with Rian in private. Tonight. I don’t want Tavra to get her hands on him... I think she’s working for the Skeksis. So, tonight, when it’s quiet, I’m going to sneak out and meet him and tell him. I’m going to tell him to go on to Ha’rar without us, and tell the All-Maudra that her daughter is a traitor.”

Kylan watches from a reaction from Fake Tavra but all he notices is that earring of hers twinkling in the fire light and he thinks it moves on its own.

HMMMMMMMM.

Naia protests Kylan having to go alone but Kylan can’t explain it without giving the game away and dreamfasting would draw Fake Tavra’s attention. Especially since she’d mentioned to her Skeksis master that she could sense it. So he has to trust Naia to trust him and figure out what his plan is. THROUGH FRIENDSHIP and shared experiences.

“Remember the blue mouth?” Kylan asked. “It was good we weren’t alone then.”

Amri had been quiet, since he likely had no idea what the blue mouth was or what it had done. In the meantime, he had uncrumpled the scrap of paper Kylan had handed him, smoothing it on his lap. Kylan focused on mending the last of the broken cord, waiting for Amri’s reaction. It came shortly: a glance of confusion, then the flicker of understanding.

Hmmm.

I have to say, I love Amri just being completely baffled at these references and deciding ‘I guess I’ll read garbage.’

I’m not sure what would be on the note that would give the game away but that also wouldn’t clue Fake Tavra in... unless Fake Tavra can’t read?

It’s been mentioned a couple times that she’s shown no interest in all the writing everywhere.

Also, I forgot what the blue mouth was supposed to be and only just vaguely remembered that its the plant that tried to eat them. I don’t think they ever call it a blue mouth? I’ve flipped back and while it had a mouth it wasn’t described as blue. But the fruit are blue. And that makes me think I know what the reference means and what Naia is supposed to take from it.

Kylan takes first watch and waits and waits and waits until he can’t waits any more.

Kylan watched the fire die in quiet, holding his hands in his lap to keep from fidgeting. Though the night was the same as any other, knowing what would soon come made it seem as if he existed inside a dome of his own thoughts. His mind felt like Aughra’s observatory: constantly moving, full of things.

Stay focused, he told himself. Tell the song. It will work... it has to.

He takes off into the dark wood (not the Dark Wood although it reminds him of the night he spent then and how scared he was compared to how brave he is now and hopes if someone tells his story they remember his character development. You’re such a Song Teller, Kylan).

Since he’s listening carefully, he hears footsteps following behind him at a distance.

The follower (I mean, its Fake Tavra, there’s no ambiguity there) isn’t bothering too hard to hide.

It proved to him that she had meant it when she had called him weak, and for the first time, he smiled about it to himself.

Kylan leads Fake Tavra stalking him towards a perfect ambush zone. Just a great place with ledges and boulders and all kinds of lunging places.

And then Tavra ambushes him.

Kylan turned toward Tavra’s voice just as she shoved him against the cliffside with her forearm, pinning him with her body. In her other hand she held a short knife, but more wicked was the grin on her ghostly face. She did not look like Tavra. She did not look like a Gelfling at all.

She’s being a spooky.

She demands Kylan tell her where Rian is and when he stammers that Rian isn’t here yet, Fake Tavra declares that when Rian does arrive, he’ll find a dead Kylan.

That’s the worst welcoming gift!

ALSO yeah that little earring thing thats repeatedly had attention drawn to it in the text? Its moving? And it has eight legs?

SPIDER-TAVRA. I KNEW IT.

Oh but the real ambush is the ambush that ambushes the ambush.

Kylan ducks out of the way as a bunch of finger-vines are dumped all over Tavra. They leave Kylan alone but snare Tavra in an unbreakable grip.

Amri and Naia climb down from the ledge on the finger-vines. Ah ha! Naia’s ability to talk to plants!

“How dare you!” [Tavra] cried, but the vines near her face slithered across her mouth and silenced her. It seemed the plant did not like her, either.

Hah.

“You make quite a good little blue mouth berry,” Naia said.

Kylan chuckled.

“Sweet and small. We make the best bait.”

HAH.

Okay so the blue mouth plant with its tempting little blue fruits. And Kylan was the tempting little blue fruit in this context because he’s small and sweet. And also the one that Spider-Tavra perceived as weak and no threat.

It all comes together! Good way to draw the plot threads together, Kylan!

And good way to make that weird tree that tried to eat them woven into the narrative and not just a weird random encounter.

Much respect, J.M. Lee. You wordsmith.

The three Gelfling look on the trapped traitor.

“Now, tell us who you are and what you’ve done with Tavra,” said Naia.

YEAH.

I mean, I have a decent idea but I wouldn’t mind some exposition to fill in the gaps. We’re seventy some pages to the end and I don’t know where the rest of the plot is going! Somehow I feel that we’re not going to go to Ha’rar after all.

[tlbodine]

How to Love Revision

A lot of you lovely folks are doing Nanowrimo right now. 

Which means that, in a few weeks, you will have a steaming pile of pages. A rough draft. A word-baby, if you will. And you might, at some point, want to turn that messy jumble into a real book, perhaps something to send to a publisher or publish yourself or just share with people. 

I see a lot of writing advice about finishing first drafts -- and a whole lot of it is in the vein of “Just write it! Fix it in post! Finished is better than perfect!” which is great advice for pushing through, but does tend to leave future-you -- the editor you-- with problems. 

Lucky for you, I happen to love editing (really! it’s my favorite part!) so I am here to give you some advice on how to turn those pages into a proper story without ripping all of your hair out or screaming into the void (but if you need to scream, it’s OK, I won’t judge you.) 

First Off: Credit Where It’s Due 

My current revision process draws heavily from Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Revision technique: https://hollylisle.com/one-pass-manuscript-revision-from-first-draft-to-last-in-one-cycle/

Her writing guides are golden, and I heartily recommend reading them all, starting with that one up there. 

I don’t do one-pass revisions, but her ethos really helped me. Before I found her advice, I would get caught in the endless revise/rewrite cycle. I was going through 9+ drafts of every story and it kept morphing into something new and sprouting new problems, hydra-style, every time I tried to redo it. So nothing was ever finished, nothing was ever satisfying, and I hated it. 

So I found a better way! And it freed me! I’ve written six books since then, four of them published (one Wattpad-exclusive) and I learned to look forward to the second draft. 

So how does this magic work? Let me show you! 

Step One: Put the Damn Thing Away 

Editing requires intellectual and emotional distance. So finish your story, and set it aside for a while. Stop thinking about it. Actively put it out of your mind. Work on something else for a while. Read a book. Catch up on all the TV you missed. Whatever. The point is -- you don’t want to come back to revise your story until you can look at it with fresh eyes. 

How long this will take depends on you, of course. It’s a very personal thing. It could be weeks. It could be months. For me, a good guideline is to wait until I can no longer quote whole passages from memory. 

Now then. Let’s do some triage. 

Before you can start editing, you need to know your goals. If you’re a planner, this might be easy because you have an outline you can compare against. If you’re a discovery writer like me, well, this is the time to figure out what exactly it is that you discovered. Grab a notebook (or a notepad file, if you’re a digital native) and follow this process: 

Write a one-sentence elevator pitch that roughly encapsulates the concept of the story. It doesn’t have to be pretty -- you’re not showing this to anyone but yourself -- but it does have to be honest. My one-sentence pitch for River of Souls was “Self-aware zombies struggle for equal rights, but the medication they rely on to retain their humanity doesn’t work as advertised.” My pitch for The Hound was “Lesbian thrift shop owners invite the devil into their home after buying a cursed taxidermied dog.” 

Write down your theme(s). In the draft, themes might take the form of questions. In this draft, you’ll want some answers. What do you want the reader to feel when they’re done? What is the message you’re trying to tell? When I wrote Nezumi’s Children, I knew it was a story about religion -- “What should we put our faith into?” In the end, I decided the answer was, “We should put our faith in each other.” That dictated the ending. (I also wanted to be careful not to inadvertently support abandoning your pets -- so I couldn’t let the rats be happily feral at the end. A happy ending for them meant being owned and cared for). 

Write a 250-word synopsis of the story. Again, it doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to introduce the characters, the world, and the general shape of the story arc -- the inciting incident, the escalating stakes, and how the character changed at the end. 

You may find that you struggle with this part, and that is totally find (and honestly to be expected). You may discover, for example, that your character doesn’t actually change, or that there isn’t a core conflict. That’s okay! That’s what you’re here to fix! I have absolutely, definitely written a book and then discovered 80,000 words later that it didn’t have a plot. It’s OK though, because you’ll fix that problem in the next step. 

If you do indeed have a plot and escalating stakes and characters who go through developmental arcs, you’re ahead of the game. Now you’ve got the skeleton of an elevator pitch and the makings of a query letter (or a jacket blurb). 

Next: Map Out Everything 

When I was in elementary school, I had to start writing my first essays. I was supposed to make an outline, then write the paper to follow the outline. I wasn’t very good at doing it that way, so instead I would write the paper, then hastily draw up the outline to match what I said. Oops. Nothing has changed, honestly. 

With your trusty notebook (or blank text document), compile the following: 

Write out a list of scenes. Just a couple words describing the events of what happens. Now - are all of those scenes necessary? Are any redundant? Do you need to add foreshadowing or establish something earlier in the story to make sense of it? Are the scenes in the wrong order? Does every scene do some work to advance the plot, deepen the character, flesh out the world? Does the ending resonate with the theme? Re-write the scene list in the correct order, with scenes added or removed as necessary to tell the proper story. Now your scene list is a handy dandy roadmap/outline for your revision! 

List out all of the characters in the story. Write down their role in the story. Does every major character have a goal? Do motivations make sense? Does each one change in some way during the story? Are all of your walk-on roles necessary? Are there characters who don’t really do much, and could you combine them?

Fixing plot holes on your scene list is a lot easier than fixing them in the manuscript itself. Keep tweaking your scenes until the story feels like it works. Make sure there’s a logical flow between events -- cause and effect, escalating stakes. Consult structure guides like the Hero’s Journey or the Three-Act Structure if you need some help with your plot. 

Here’s a part that’s really important so it’s going in all caps: THE SCENE LIST IS FINAL. Make all the adjustments you need to the plot while you do the scene list, but do not -- DO NOT -- deviate from the story once you move on to the next step. You don’t stop modifying your scene list until you’re happy with the story, and once you’re happy, THAT is the story you’re writing. Get new ideas for things that can happen? Great, save ‘em for the next book. 

Now Roll Your Sleeves Up And Get Dirty 

Some people like to print their manuscript off and do edits in pen, but I don’t have reliable printer access most of the time and hate wasting paper. So instead, I pull up the rough draft and adjust it so it takes up one half of my monitor. Then I pull up a fresh, empty file and put that on the other half of the screen. 

Now, using my scene list as a guide, I pull up the rough draft and rewrite it, scene by scene. Yes, that means re-typing every word. You’ll find that when you do this, you’ll fix a lot of language mistakes without even realizing it. I’m an under-writer, so my drafts usually double in length during this process because I spend more time lingering on sensory details, adding scenes, teasing out character dynamics, etc. etc. etc. Just let yourself go, get immersed into the scene. If you forget what you were doing, just refer back to your outline and original draft to get back on track. 

I find this process works best if you can do it quickly. Try not to let the story get cold. Ideally, work on this every single day, or even set aside a long weekend to just hammer it all out. 

Finally: Make a Second Pass 

Now that you’ve got a second draft under your belt, it’s time to celebrate! Set the book aside. If you have beta readers or an editor, now is the time to send this to them. Hang out for a bit. Figure out who you’re querying, if you’re doing that. Find a kick-ass cover, if you’re self-publishing. Build yourself a Lego mansion. Whatever. Just sit on your draft for a little bit. 

Now that a couple weeks have passed, it’s time to make a final pass. Gather all of the feedback you’ve gotten from beta readers and editors and decide what advice you should take and what you can ignore. Here’s a guideline: If someone says something and you think, “oh, yeah! that’s exactly it!” then you take the suggestion. If they say something and you think “uh, well, no, that’s not really the story I was trying to write....” or something similar, you can ignore the feedback. Good feedback will always feel true in the “duh, why didn’t I think of that” way. 

Open up your new draft and, starting at page one, just read the damn thing. Make adjustments to the writing as necessary: 

Correct any misspellings and typos you come across. 

Eliminate weak words and phrases and replace them with stronger ones. 

Add some variation to sentence structure if you notice that it’s become repetitive. 

Eliminate redundancy. Fix your metaphors. Fix your symbolism. Keep your poetic language on-theme. In The Hound, I replaced a ton of random metaphors with dog imagery. It’s subtle, but it lends thematic cohesion. 

Some people use things like Grammarly or Hemmingway App to help with this. I’ve never used them, so I can’t speak to their effectiveness. But if you find that they help, awesome! Use them! 

Here’s a really important point: This step can ONLY come AFTER the rewriting stage. There is no point at all in tweaking sentences and fixing up the language in a story that has no plot. Fix your structural issues FIRST, and be sure they are AIR TIGHT, before you start dicking around with the words. Ok? Ok. (Someone go back in time 15 years and tell this to young me please) 

And now...you are done! 

Spend some time tweaking your elevator pitch and query letter at this point, if necessary. But no matter what, you do not go back into this document and change ANYTHING unless an editor tells you to. The book is DONE. Maybe give it a final proofread before you self-publish it (but honestly, you’re better off hiring someone to do it at that point, you’re going to be too zorched to notice the typos you missed) but otherwise don’t touch it. Don’t think about it. Write the next book. 

And that’s it! That’s my mostly painless revision process! 

Obviously every person is different, your mileage may vary, etc. But I hope this serves as a helpful jumping off point. I am more than happy to answer any questions or provide clarification on things -- just drop me a line :) 

[lovetheangelshadow]

N'Pressions: Lego Movie 2

I know this is rather late, but I have had my hands full for the past couple of months until I could finally get time around to sit down and write these. So I apologize in advance with my thoughts being rather late into the game when everyone else worth listening to has given their two cents.

I’m not going to lie. There was so much against this movie succeeding besides the weather. Not only did you have to contend with it being a sequel to a major hit films that had for good and bad made some influence in the animation genre; but it was also competing with Alita Battle Angel (a big James Cameron film) AND How to Train Your Dragon 3 (a much awaited ending to a long running DreamWorks franchise). Not to mention with the objective failure of the Ninjago movie obviously made both the studio execs and audiences wary. That being said, I don’t think it would have benefitted from holding off for much longer.

So the film takes place just after the first movie with the Duplo invaders. Emmet tries to make peaceful ties with them that end up blowing in his face and the invaders go after anything bright and colorful. Five years later we get a Mad Max inspired Apolcalypseburg and while everyone else has taken a darker outlook on life and appearance; Emmet remains the same albeit a little scratched up with fingerprints and some of the decals scraped (nice detail by the way). Emmet shows Lucy/Wildstyle a dream house he’s built for them that seemingly attracts the Systar System and they send General Sweet Mayhem. The citizens take shelter in Batman’s bunker but a mercy act from Emmet freeing a stuck star shaped missile lets Mayhem in and she kidnaps Lucy, Metalbeard, Benny, Batman and Unikitty to a matrimonial ceremony held by the queen of the Systar System. After being scolded by the citizens of Apolalypseburg for not being tough and too weak to be of any use (citizens are jerks no matter the story I swear), Emmet builds a rocket ship to save his friends.

In earnest, I give points for the Lego team choosing to go with what is essentially a space rescue story rather than another chosen one tale. If there is one real good quality I can give for all four of the lego movies is that each film has its own unique aesthetic that separates them. Like if you just gave a background shot or even a color palette, each movie has their own theme to them which is not really something you could say of a lot of other animated sequels like Kung Fu Panda, Toy Story, or Ice Age. And I really appreciate them for that. There is also a very noticeable animation upgrade from the pervious Lego Movie besides the obvious advances in animation technology. Like they are actually using other household materials to achieve effects as well such as UltraKatty’s tail turning into a bottle brush when she gets flustered and Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi’s throne room moat is silk curtains which you see later in Bianca’s bedroom. Not to mention the previously noted fingerprints and scratches.

So story wise, unfortunately the story is not as polished as the first movie. Like Good Cop/Bad Cop and President Business, two major characters of the first films, are practically shoved to the side for this one. I mean, Business is the allegory for Finn and Bianca’s father, so why is he practically so absent for five years after spending 8 and a half building this Lego World into his concept of absolute order and perfection? In essence his kids have pretty much destroyed what he’s built and he barely does anything about it? Granted I am not entirely sure what sort of purpose Business could serve especially with the tone and themes they were going for. Maybe like have his try to resolve things but continuously fail? Or…or maybe throw his hands up in defeat and hint that if they don’t do something to fix the issue Armomageddon will be coming down upon them. No one knows what he’s even talking about and just keep warring with the Duplo invasion. I dunno, maybe we’ll get more answers when the Blue Ray comes out with the commentary. As for GCBC, maybe be the ones telling off Emmet for his apparent weakness in kindness and tell him that he didn’t get to be Lord Business’ second by being soft hearted and overly optimistic.

That being said we also get a slew of new characters this time around: the totally not evil Watevra Wa’Nabi, General Mayhem, Ice Cream Cone, and Tumblr’s favorite Rex Dangervest. Seriously you can NOT tell me Lego didn’t know what they were doing when they made this guy. You KNOW how the internet gets over attractive cartoon characters! Admittedly Emmet doesn’t have the strongest personality and is kind of more of a vessel for Finn (and particularly the audience) but like the first movie he is surrounded by a large cast big personality characters that balances things out. Also like the first movie the antagonists (both Rex and Watevra) much like Business aren’t entirely in the wrong or right but instead are the extremes that sometimes in a way can become toxic if pushed too far. Business was the extreme of perfection and order, Watevera and the Systar system represented absolute optimism, and Rex was the symbol of toxic cynicism. Though I will give credit that both Watevra and Rex definitely feel like much more complex antagonists than Lord Business.

While Watevera genuinely wants peace between the Systar System and Apopalypseburg she isn’t above using force, coercion, or manipulation to get there. She basically offers gifts/bribes to bring the leaders to her side and toys with Batman’s insecurities to get him into marrying her. The entire film portrays her as a scheming, brainwashing, shape shifter whose end goal is the end. Though you cannot really blame her since it was suggested the Systar System has been trying for years but kept being pushed back because they were seen as an invasion. Also they’re terrible communicators. Also I have to give props for Animal Logic and them having to animate this gal and in Lego bricks no less. Like it’s not like a slime where you have plenty of freedom; each curve and twist is an actual Lego brick. That can NOT be easy to animate.

Rex on the other hand plays with Emmet’s anxieties of not being tough enough and essentially not being the person Lucy wants him to be. And you can’t completely blame this guy for lashing out at being stranded and forgotten. If there was one thing Emmet valued above anything even before the inciting incident of the first Lego Movie, was his friends. You saw his hurt when shown that the other construction workers didn’t even seem to care and just saw him as an average nobody. Heck, even with the party bus scene the others show a hint of concern that they hadn’t seen Lucy on the ship with them but when the llama driver cranks up the music they immediately forget about her. Not to mention with the time machine, he could have easily gone back to even before General Mayhem kidnapped his friends and prevented all this in the first place, but instead chose to save Emmet only and bring everyone else down to the same miserable state he’s in to feel the same hurt he went through for years. In a way he reminds me a lot of Lotso from Toy Story 3. Both were the favorite of a child and were lost by that same kid later to be replaced and forgotten. However I am a lot more sympathetic for Rex than Lotso though I haven’t put my finger on exactly why.

Another thing to note is that this film is also a musical and it has been quite a while since I’ve actually like really enjoyed an animated musical. Like the songs actually feel like they move the story forward instead of being there for just being there. There is one arguable exception, but it is still a fun song (Gotham City Guys if you must ask). Of course then there is the blatant Catchy Song that is such a laughable parody of itself and much like Everything is Awesome, its used as like a brainwashing song. Speaking of which, we get two versions of Everything is Awesome: the much more light hearted Tween Remix and somber/hopeful Everything is Not Awesome. My only gripe is that Rex did NOT get a song. Seriously guys, a reprisal of the last verse of Not Evil as he’s strapping Emmet to the eject chair would have been bloody perfect!

Though the movie is not as comedic as its processors Lego Movie and Lego Batman, I honestly still enjoyed myself. I think it is largely in part because I relate to the film a lot more than the first one since I have a sibling of my own and remember the cooperative and combative play session we had together as kids. Something I give credit for is that the film doesn’t really portray either the girl’s or boy’s way of playing the superior one. Honestly they don’t even really bring up gender roles or at least smack you in the face with it. And believe me I have seen the whole gender roles thing done so much worse. I could have done without that line from General Mayhem about Lucy doing all the hard work and Emmet getting the credit and I think having that in the trailer might have hurt things as well. I think it would have been better if Mayhem just said there is nothing special about Emmet and laughs that she’s supposed to take this guy seriously compared to others like Batman and Metalbeard once again driving in what would eventually lead to the creation of Rex. Still even with some of the plot issues, it still feels like a much more complete film then Ninjago and I hope that we can at least get the Billion Brick Race before they decide to just cut Lego off as a viable film universe. I’m Noctina Noir, and I’m one Nox of a Nobody.

[kaleidographia]

[Review] Tales of Vesperia: The Brightest Star in the Night Sky Doesn't Shine as Strongly as I'd Hoped

Warning: Contains allusive/thematic spoilers.

The day is finally here! Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, containing content previously unseen outside of Japan, has finally been released, so that us English speakers and/or non-PS3 owners can experience the new storylines, characters and features for the first time! Alas, this isn’t a post about that, firstly because this post is going up day-of-release and I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, and secondly because I am writing this from outside of the country and won’t be united with my pre-ordered copy until I return next week, RIP.

Therefore, this post is written from the point of view of someone who has only played the Xbox 360 version. I will try to keep it brief for the sake of not spoiling newcomers to the game, and also hopefully not to complain about things that are fixed (or broken??) in the Definitive Edition.

Tales of Vesperia is a game in the long-running “Tales of” franchise from Bandai Namco, the first one in HD, originally released for the Xbox 360 in 2008, later receiving an updated PS3 version in 2009, exclusive to Japan. Like many older fans, my introduction to the Tales of series was with Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube, and I fell in love hard; I was therefore extremely excited to play the next games, but unfortunately, I never owned the platforms for them until very recently. Along with Tales of the Abyss, Vesperia and Symphonia form the “holy trinity” of games in the series almost everyone loves; find a Tales fan and ask them their favourite game, and the answer will likely be one of those three (note: I’ve heard very good things about Graces and the two Xillia games, but unfortunately haven’t had a chance to judge them firsthand myself). The three games, while not directly related in terms of plot or setting, share a lot of things in common, as they had mostly the same creative team, often referred to as “Team Symphonia” (as opposed to “Team Destiny” which made most other games since then). One notable difference is the scenario writer, Takashi Hasegawa, while Symphonia and Abyss were written by Takumi Miyajima.

The Tales series is known for its reliance on anime and JRPG tropes, often used in a way that plays off cliché expectations only to then layer plot twists and character development and produce a much deeper experience than what would be expected from the get-go. When used effectively, these methods produce a story that is both fun and emotionally challenging. Tales of Vesperia is no different, offering a cast of archetypes that should be highly recognizable to those familiar with the genre, and yet this may be best set of characters in a Tales game. The party has impressively good banter, chemistry and dynamics and several scenes had me laughing out loud or yelling, and I never had a bad time watching their relationships unfold.

Unfortunately, the game spares little time fleshing out backstories or learning more about each individual character outside of the main plot. By the end, I was left wanting, as the cast was so endearing and vibrant, yet I knew next to nothing about them aside from what had been relevant to show onscreen. I longed for more information about where they had come from and how they had gotten where they were, but it is a testament to the strength of the character writing that their storylines reached a satisfying conclusion despite this relative sparse amount of information about them. “Backstory is not story”, Craig McCracken and Frank Angones were fond of saying to fans of Wander Over Yonder, but for a game with the size and scope of a 60-hour JRPG, not providing that window of information feels like a hole in the worldbuilding.

Mechanically, Vesperia builds on the model established by Symphonia and refined in Abyss, where combat takes place in a 3D arena and the player can run around, hit enemies and rack up combos fighting game style (the franchise calls this “Linear Motion Battle System”). While Symphonia was in 3D, it restricted the player to a single side-to-side corridor of action. Abyss added the ability to run around in 3D space by holding down a button, a feature Vesperia also has. This makes combat easier and more fun, as nothing is quite as satisfying as avoiding an attack and then running around and hitting the enemy from behind. And, as the game allows up to four players controlling different party members, and I have a player 2 (shoutout to my roommate Opal), Vesperia’s system is the most well-suited to multiplayer. If nothing else, I never felt lost while on the battlefield yelling for backup. The one major flaw is that boss fights come with massive difficulty spikes and I often had to grind and formulate careful battle plans with Opal just to not get continuously massacred by bosses.

Storywise, Vesperia starts off very strongly, sort of peters out near the middle, and then the third act falls apart. At first the theme is anti-authority, with a protagonist who grew up in the slums, neglected by nobles, who became a knight and then quit out of disillusionment when it turned out all they did was squabble about politics, and the inciting incident and early driver of the plot is his quest to “fix the plumbing” as a popular Tumblr text post put it. It’s clear Yuri has all the reason in the world to not trust authority and he even goes full vigilante against unjust abuse of power, but while this thread seems like the most important theme in the story, after a while so many other elements come into play it ends up lost and doesn’t really make much of an appearance except to highlight the differences between Yuri and Flynn’s approaches to life and how they prefer to help people. On its own it’s a compelling idea, but it never gets the follow-through it deserves, and my expectations were certainly subverted—but in a bad way.

It’s hard to talk about the third act without spoilers so I will probably come back to it for a proper analysis at a later date, but its ultimate message was already kind of limp in 2008 and is even more laughable now. For a game whose initial premise was so strongly against authority, the ultimate resolution of the main conflict reads as incredibly daft in light of just about everything that is happening in politics at the moment. There’s a very strong environmental allegory and the comparisons to climate change are not subtle, but the writers probably bit off more than they could chew because realistically trying to solve this problem in the time the story allotted would have been next to impossible; I still would have hoped the implications of the given solution had been actually explored instead of settling for an “oh well, guess everything’s been fixed now”.

I’m being harsh about the plot because to me Vesperia has a lot of wasted potential. Don’t get me wrong: I do love this game. It is in fact up there with the holy trinity as far as my opinions of the series go, but it lands in third place out of the three because it just fails to live up to what its first half promises about the world it created. To put it bluntly, if the story had just ended at the conclusion of the second act, it would have been much stronger. That the game continues for another 20 hours on a completely different track with an unsatisfying, unrealistic conclusion is a huge shame because it brings down what could have been a real masterpiece of tropey anime JRPG narratives. I live for that stuff, there’s a reason I want to play every Tales game, but that’s what makes this letdown the most disappointing. At least the characters themselves get good conclusions; it is unfortunate I can’t say the same for the main plot.

Despite all this I think Vesperia is a worthwhile experience, and one of my favourite things about is its aesthetic sense. Every location is immersive, polished, and the pinnacle of what I want to see in a videogame, to the point I dream of Symphonia and Abyss remakes made in the same style (and every other game in the series, to be honest, but that seems unlikely with the direction it’s taken since then). I genuinely cared about the party and I wanted to see them succeed and I was ultimately happy that they did even if I did roll my eyes a lot. The combat was so satisfying and so fun to play with a player 2 it makes me twice as mad that Zestiria’s camera goes completely wild during multiplayer and prevents me from joining in. I should note that for someone who plays as many games as I do I am notoriously terrible at them so I heavily favour story over mechanics, but Vesperia is a game that reminds me that engaging gameplay can make a huge difference. Yeah, I suck, but at least I’m having fun while sucking. That’s more than I can say for a lot of games.

If you like JRPGs, games that let you run around and hit things, or fun and intriguing character dynamics, you’ll probably like Tales of Vesperia. If you’re looking for a coherent story from start to finish, you’ll probably disappointed, but there’s just enough there to keep you engrossed until the end. Overall, Vesperia is solid, and the parts it fumbles aren’t bad enough to ruin the whole thing, but hopefully the extra content in Definitive Edition helps to smooth it out; I’ll have to find that out for myself.

Aside from how it messes up the voice acting this time around. Oh, Bamco.

[phoorn]

Let me complain about Meson

About Hobbits

Meson’s a build system. Or possibly Ninja, Meson’s backend, is a build system. Let’s just say the whole thing is.

It’s an alternative to CMake, which is an alternative to the Autotools, which is a way to write makefiles that work on various systems for fewer pints of blood and sweat. And makefiles are basically recipes, a convenient way to run shell commands that (most commonly) translate your source code into a binary that your computer can run.

When I first used Meson I went, “Wow”. I was thrilled. I’ve never got my head around makefiles, I think because – well, I’m always saying I’m stupid, so this time I’ll say – I’m lazy. Makefiles aren’t complicated at their core. I think what’s confusing is the many shortcuts you can take with them. Many shortcuts make things hard to learn. You can’t see the wood for the trees. And cruft.

If I do one day finally learn Make, I’ll deliberately restrict myself to the old, more verbose syntax. This general approach is what everyone should take whenever they learn something. Start with the scales (music analogy). I’m a guitarist and I’ve hardly bothered. They’re boring. And you think (’cause you’re arrogant) other people need to start with the scales, OK – and there’s nothing wrong with being dumb! – but me …

Lots of us are like this. We think we understand enough or at least trust our perception of our own intelligence – and rush ahead. When people ask other people how to make computer games they get told to make Pong. “Actually, sorry, no,” says OP, “I’m making an open-world simulation CRPG, thanks. Yes, I know it’ll take me a while.”

You’ve got to make Pong. I’m thirty-six and I’ve known this for years. And yet the game I’m writing is a Zelda clone. However, I have paid my dues, having written approximately 1,00,000 command-line programs.

The problem with bells-and-whistles, do-everything-for-you things (like Meson) is what do you do when you can’t get it to do the thing you you need it to do? Look in its documentation. Or possibly the documentation for one of the many programs/libraries/framewords/apis it uses. And when you do, you find (tenuous metaphor) they’re talking Mario and GTA and the Elder Scrolls and you don’t understand, because you didn’t make Pong.

They don’t want you to make Pong. “Try our system/framework/platform. It’s got x and y and you’ll love it! You’ll never have to bother with all those low-level things again.”

Tom Waits can explain it better.

And you end up dumb as a brick. A user instead of wizard you deserve to be. They took your magic wand.

So why am I ranting away about this? As any mediocre scriptwriter will be able to guess, there has been an inciting incident. I am incited, and an incident is responsible.

Basically, I was playing with Zig 1. No one’s written a Syntastic (Vim linting plugin) checker for it, but there is a Zig language server. So I got rid of Syntastic and got ALE (Asynchronous Language … ?), which does the same job as Syntastic, but asynchronously and with LSP support.

LSP – Language Server Protocol – is a Microsoft thing. A good thing, a way for any editor to offer lots of IDE-like things. We could always do those things, with various tools like Ctags but this does it better. Because it makes use of your actual compiler or interpreter’s output.

Getting it set up’s not easy, though, though it worked for me first try this time. A testament to how much I’ve learned? Maybe, but ALE knew where to look for the compile_commands.json and Meson stuck it in the right place.

I always make an effort to properly introduce technical things I talk about, for the sake of the fictional layperson. I, for one, get bored and stop listening to things I don’t understand. But it’s hard, and I’ve failed here before even getting to my point.

Which is systems like Meson are shit. I’ll keep using it, though. I won’t write Pong, and I won’t use Cmake.

The reason it’s shit is I’ve spent five hours trying to silence a clangd warning. clangd’s the name of a language server. For C and C++. At some point today I completely forgot about Zig.

I use gcc to compile my C programs, and too eagerly use gcc extensions. The language server stuff is all to do with clang. So, though I’m compiling with gcc, clang is being used to LINT 2 my C program.

This should be fine. clang claims to be a drop-in replacement for gcc. But it’s not.

Tom Bombadil

I like gcc’s “-fms-extensions” flag. That lets you include structs that have already been defined as anonymous members of another struct.

struct apple { char *name; }; struct orange { struct apple; };

It’s -fms-extensions that permits the nameless struct apple inside the struct orange. Normally you’ve have to give it a name, like:

struct orange { struct apple apple; };

And refer to it like orange.apple.name = "Frederick". -fms-extensions lets you do orange.name = "Frederick".

It’s just nice. I’ll show you another trick, while I’m on the subject.

It fixes the only downside of this approach, which is that now you can’t refer to the member struct as itself: it doesn’t have name. But!

struct orange { union { struct apple; struct apple apple; }; }

Now you are eating your cake in addition to having it. You can now refer to apple’s members without saying apple’s name. And you can pass just the apple to functions that expect one. By writing orange.apple.

One last thing on this topic. Even without -fms-extensions you can mostly do this. You can define anonymous structs, anonymous unions. You just can’t define a struct outside and then use it inside without its name. You can do this:

struct fruit { char *name; union { struct { float sourness; }; // oranges struct { float crunchiness; }; // apples } }

The Barrow Downs

Right now I’d rather know the language of Make. I would have silenced that warning in a jiffy. I’d be rich by now, the time I saved.

It’s swings and roundabouts. I’m obsessed with this idea. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Programmers (and maybe writers) know this better than anyone.

You do this really awesome thing in an effort to make your program or story better. And it takes ages. And when you’re done you have …

Oh, sometimes you’ll have more flexible code, or more robust code, or faster or more memory-efficient code. But you’ve sacrificed something. Readability, perhaps. Speed. Whatever. It’s gone and there’s no fucking way you’re going back over it again. You’re stuck with it. You’ll defend your decision to the death. You bled for it.

Meson’s big selling-point is it just works. Oh, it’s worth it. I said it was shit earlier – that was a lie. But I’m still mad it took me ages to fix my linter problem.

Hey, Wait, We’re in Mordor?

I’ve got a new complaint.

When I first started programming, I used Visual Studio and Windows. I remember how hard it was for me to compile my first program, which was probably an SDL example. Probably there was Hello, World before that.

Someone said somewhere the hardest thing you’ll ever do in programming is compile your first program. And, oh, I agree. Because there’s all this stuff to learn.

I buggered off to Linux, partly because I’d come to realise if you want to program, particularly in C, it was the place to be. A lot of programming in Windows and Mac is programming in Linux. Users of those OSes use virtual machines, compatibility layers and servers to do it. They have, I am sure, mighty brains, because it’s one thing to compile a program, and quite another cross-compile it, or do it in a VM or container, or do it on the web somehow.

What I didn’t like about Visual Studio was simple: you gave the compiler and linker and build system options by filling out textboxes and picking from menus.

I roared, “But how does it work?”

I felt strongly that Visual Studio’s friendly user interface was obscuring the reality of what I was doing. Now it blindingly obvious to me it’s turning all those textboxes, checkboxes into a commandline, which it’ll fire at the compiler. But I didn’t then.

Meson gives me a strong whiff of that. Look.

add_global_arguments ('-fms-extensions', language: 'c') add_global_arguments ('-Wno-microsoft', language: 'c') m_dep = cc.find_library ('m', required : true) sdl2_dep = cc.find_library ('SDL2', required : true) sdl2_image_dep = cc.find_library ('SDL2_image', required : true) sdl2_ttf_dep = cc.find_library ('SDL2_ttf', required : true)

These are just commandline flags. Meson is taking these strings you give it – “SDL2”, “-fms-extensions”, etc – and appending it to a call to gcc. The cc.find_library function is calling something like pkg-config or cmake. Is all this stuff really better than:

gcc -ggdb3 -Wall src/* -fms-extensions -Wno-microsoft \ -o build/whatever -l -lm \ $(pkg-config sdl2 --cflags --libs) \ $(pkg-config sdl2_ttf --cflags --libs) \ $(pkg-config sdl2_image --cflags --libs) \

Maybe so.

In summary, I could have solved this Meson/LSP/ALE/Vim thing in five seconds flat if I’d written a makefile (or, frankly, since my project is hardly huge, a shell script). But I won’t start writing Makefiles any time soon. I reserve the right to complain about it in the future, though.

a language I definitely approve of, that’s packed good ideas and things done right, that I probably won’t use, because already know how to do the things it tries to solve, and learning new languages makes me feel like a toddler or an old man. Maybe one day! But it’s new, too, and if there’s one solid lesson I’ve learned in my years using Linux and programming it’s don’t use new things. Use old and safely dead things, expecially those whose undead life is regulated by crusty old men and women. Because there’s documentation! And they’re getting round to implementing those features you envy. They’ll get there. And in the meantime, well, you can do it gcc already.↩︎

A linter is a program that looks at your code and points out some kind of problem. Some show syntax errors, some tell you that it doesn’t like your coding style. Some just annoy the shit out of you and you don’t know how to shut them up.↩︎

[katlivesinthewoods]

What I Never Knew I Needed | Dan X Andy

A short ILITW re-write shipping Dan and Andy, or Dandy!

Time Taken: ~3 hours

Word Count: 2644

---

A brief "good game" in the high school locker room after gym class. A meager conversation during a group assignment. A polite "hello" in the local coffee shop.

I'd never spoken much to Daniel Pierce since our falling out as kids. Well, it wasn't just /our/ falling out. The whole group had dispersed after The Accident of 2007, each member taking a small part of me with it, but I think losing touch with Dan is what hurt me the most.

Despite the nine of us being thick as thieves, there had been little subgroups within us. Devon Destefano had always been closest with the twins, Noah, and... and Jane Marshall. Stacy Green and Ava Cunningham may have been polar opposites, but with Stacy's mom as mayor and Ava's dad as the head of the Westchester police department, they'd been inseparable for years. Lily Ortiz and Lucas Thomas were the smarties of the group and we all knew it. And then there was me and Dan, both kind of left out but brought together by that factor. My parents had teasingly asked me several times - as had my best friend since diapers, Tomoichi "Tom" Sato - if Dan and I were more than just friends, but I was seven and shooed them off with the typical "ew, boys have cooties!" comment you'd expect from someone who was barely eight. Looking back, I was clearly in denial.

I'd always known something was different with me, deep down. I think The Accident was the inciting incident that really brought everything to light. And after I came out, I realized that I had never changed - not internally, at least.

When I'd first cut my hair short, nearly a year after The Accident, nearly every boy in school laughed at me. Lucas had never been the bullying sort, but he didn't try to stop me from getting beaten up almost regularly. Noah refrained from helping, too, though after The Accident, I think he refrained from doing pretty much anything. It was Dan who finally stood up for me - he had somehow managed to worm his way into the popular crowd and he decided to help me when by all means he could've joined in. When he saw some kids wailing on me one recess, he told them to step off, helped me up, then said that my new hair looked "very me."

I'd received my first binder as a birthday present from my parents the summer before high school. I think that was what gave me the confidence to finally try out for the basketball team. Tom and I had scrimmaged in my backyard relentlessly for years - I'd always loved basketball, but I really threw myself into it when I realized it was like a coping mechanism for me. My raison d'etre, if you will.

And yet love was never enough, was it? No matter how much love I had for basketball, it didn't fill that small part of me still missing from my childhood. And it definitely didn't mean I would be getting onto the basketball team. I was scrawny and a major minority in more than one sense, not to mention still broken, incomplete after my world had shattered as a kid.

But I didn't care, so I worked hard. And I think Tom cared even less, so he worked hard with me. Throughout our first three years of high school, we sat as close to the basketball team's table as possible at lunch. It was close as well to the football team's, and every so often Dan and I would meet eyes and he'd offer me a small smile, as if he still cared, just a little.

As odd as it is to admit it, I think those brief exchanges were all that got me through some days. Tom and my parents had always been supportive, but when you've known someone all your life, their support comes off as more obligational than sincere. I think having someone outside my little bubble of constant and unwavering support acknowledge me, even for a second, made me realize that support could come from anywhere.

And then the spring before my senior year, after three years of the most intense workout regimen either of us had used, Tom and I were told we made the team. We started sitting at the basketball team's table at lunch and every so often I'd still meet Dan's gaze from the next table over. I was by no means any cooler than I had been before I was on the team, but seeing Dan's small smile made me feel like I'd finally made it, just like in all the high school rom coms we'd watched as kids. He may have been a hardass quarterback, but I could tell in his eyes that even almost ten years down the line, he was a softie inside.

Even after I'd gotten everything I thought I wanted, there was still that small piece of me missing. In fact, it seemed to be growing a little every day. It took me a little while to realize, but it seemed that every time I would meet Dan's ever-soft gaze, I'd feel a little more fixed, but as soon as either of us would look away that little bit of fullness would be taken away, stealing away more of me with it.

There had always been something deeper in Dan's eyes, an unintelligible something I just couldn't place. I thought at the time he had a little piece of him missing, too, and I figured I would never know the answer. I figured my senior year would pass just like the first three years of high school and I'd never talk to Dan again.

And then, the night before the first day of senior year, I received a text from him.

He sounded so sure of himself in his messages, but I had a feeling in my gut that his texts were coming from a place of deep-seated fear. He'd returned to the woods, the site of The Accident, and claimed that the nightmares our group had dreamed up as kids were real. I told him he was crazy, turned off my phone, and went back to sleep. I wish I hadn't.

The next day, Dan wasn't at school. I didn't have to wait until lunch to know it, either. I had a gut feeling as soon as I walked through the door, and that feeling was confirmed by the faint voice that seemed to rise from the grave of my childhood over the gymnasium, interrupting the pep rally and letting me and my long lost group of friends know that our past was not yet finished with us, and that Dan, the least deserving of the remaining eight of us, was in danger.

It was Devon who rallied us together after school, and as much as I tried to deny it, deep down I knew that what had happened at the pep rally was no prank, and that those bruises on Devon's neck weren't just a hickey gone wrong. I think the main signifier of this was the fact that that hole inside of me started to fill up again. It was Devon as well who insisted we go into the woods in search of Dan, and despite my better judgement and the knowledge that I'd have to be up early for basketball practice, I agreed to come along. To my surprise, Noah did the same.

I nearly cried when we found Dan, half alive, later that night, and I didn't know why. At least, I didn't at the time. He'd been bait, no doubt. Just a way to lure the rest of us back into the woods and finish the sick game we'd started ten years prior. That infuriated me. The game always went a little too far, the instigator always played a little too rough, and somehow, after all it had taken from the eight of us, it still wanted more. Well, I wasn't about to let that be Dan.

He was comatose before he'd reached the hospital. It was a week before they let anyone aside from his family in to see him, but you could bet I was there the moment they opened visiting hours. That was when, after ten long years of keeping everything inside, I finally spilled all the tears my body would allow. I didn't know why, but seeing Dan so lifeless felt like a personal blow, like that lingering remnant of hope from outside my bubble of obligatory support had been crushed. I think that was when the missing part of me was at it's largest, like a black hole, threatening to eat up any positive feeling it thought I didn't deserve.

Despite Tom's ever-comforting presence, the one thing I felt like I needed after Ben was attacked by a bear was one of Dan's smiles. Just a small sign that I could keep going. But it never came. He just laid there. I waited for what felt like hours - hell, I even held his hand. There had been a brief second of hope when I thought I felt Dan squeeze my hand, but the nurse had told me a few visits ago that it was common for comatose patients to have small "reactions" like those, even to nothing. Eventually Tom had to take me gently by the elbow and guide me from the room. In all honesty, I was glad for it. I might have stayed until they kicked me out, otherwise.

After the bear attack I made a name for myself: "King Kang." The feeling of immense pride still dimmed, however, when I realized that Dan wasn't cheering along with the crowd. I shunned the increasingly frequent thought that maybe he never would. As much as I hated to think it, Dan, to whom I owed so much of my thanks for his silent support, may never see me revel in the glory he helped lead me to. Even so, I visited him the next day to tell him about my victory. I was a little started - and a little nostalgia-struck - when one of the nurses commented that he was lucky to have a boyfriend like me. I felt that missing part of me grow a little bigger when I replied that I was just an old friend.

Seeing Dan just a few days before I went with the whole group, officially reunited after ten years, must have helped me in some way, as I was able to keep it together even when he was possessed by the literal ghost of our past. It was as though even just being around him made me feel stronger, just as those small smiles he would gift me had done throughout the years.

Days later, just after we performed the ritual to lock away our childhood nightmares once and for all, I rushed to the hospital to see Dan, hopeful that just by defeating the monster that had put him in his comatose state he would be instantly better. I was disappointed when they informed me that visiting hours were closed by the time I arrived, and even moreso when I arrived to his room to see him just as vegetative as the last time I'd visited, just two days before.

And then came homecoming, the night I wouldn't forget for the rest of my life. I'd been crowned Homecoming King, though the victory felt as empty as I did without Dan there to share it. As if nothing was right without Dan, the whole night descended to hell in an instant when the school came under attack by Redfield's army of zombie dogs. The ritual had failed. Just when I thought things couldn't possibly get worse, I couldn't hold off one of my zombie attackers and was met with a broken leg and a long trip to the woods.

I was hit on the head so many times as I was dragged to the house where it all started that I began fading in and out of consciousness. I longed desperately for my friends to come save me and even tried texting them, but sometime during the trip I'd lost my phone. I was almost tempted to burn the thing by the time I got it back, but I'd learned to appreciate my belongings over the years.

Tears came to my eyes when my friends finally found me, not because I was in immense pain or because I was glad help had finally come, but because among their number was a fully-functional Daniel Pierce. His name was the first thing I said, but it came out choked. Instead of lingering on it - after all, all our "conversations" had been painfully one-sided and I was sure he remembered none of it - I addressed the whole group.

And then came Tom, possessed and ready to kill. But I met Dan's eyes, and he gave me a small smile - different from before, but still familiar - and I knew then that I had the strength to talk Tom out of Redfield's control. As cliché as it was, I could only describe it as the power of friendship.

But Tom was the least of our problems. Noah, traitorous snake as he was, lured us into Redfield's trap, and it was then that he revealed it wasn't Redfield who had done all this, but Jane. She hadn't fully died in The Accident of 2007. Her soul had become what Redfield's was - a corrupted mass of dark power, wishing only for first companionship, then death. And the only way to get what she wanted - her freedom - was to replay the very game that trapped her in the first place.

It was once again a small smile from Dan, despite all the hell-worthy goings on around us, that helped me power through the pain of my broken leg and the torture of spiders crawling up my body. Even despite that and Noah's betrayal and Jane's mocking voice, I was strong.

I was strong enough to power through the pain. I was strong enough to ignore the jabs Jane directed at me - that I wanted Ben to be hurt, that I wanted to be the best, but that it would still never be good enough for /him/. For /Dan/. I was strong enough to say the three words that would finally set me free from that hell: I wasn't scared.

It was Dan who helped me be strong. Not because he gave his quiet strength to me, but because he helped me realize that I had always been that strong, ever since we were kids. And so help me, God, I was strong enough to decide that if we both survived this, I would tell him I loved him. As I was pulled back into the darkness of the basement, the setting of the nightmares of my childhood, I heard Dan scream my name, and something in his voice told me he loved me, too.

As my friends appeared, joining me and a hysterical Ava outside the ruins of Redfield's old house, I waited impatiently for Dan to come out as well. And he did. And as soon as I set my eyes on him, the adrenaline coursing through my veins gave me just enough extra strength to make my way into his embrace before my broken leg completely gave out.

It was then that I realized what I never knew I needed in order to fill that void inside me. It was him. It had always been him. And as our lips met for the very first time - but certainly not the last - that gaping hole inside my chest was finally filled.