#i did make a few sentences of progress on the actual game script draft i promise...........................................lol !

[a1li-ens]

ppl post fic on here right ! does anyone want me to post my oc writing samples from TH / some oc porno oneshots . i just made Another of those. maybe post canon but I wouldn't call them spoilers. but also the writing is messy i have not proofed them (´・ω・) andi am a writing newbie.. but slam that fav button to tell me if you wanna read!! (´>ω<)/~💖

[captain-of-the-historicfuture]

~hello~ !! For the meta asks!: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and 25 :))

Hello!! Thank you for sending these; I was really excited to see that ask game and I was hoping somebody would send some in. It still took me a while to actually answer them though, and for that I apologise. But without further ado! Some meta answers (under the cut because they ended up being fairly long, whoops):

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (Consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway.)

I thought of a few examples, but they could basically be grouped together under a common theme: whumpy/angsty scenes that were self-indulgent as all heck. The whole self-indulgent aspect often required the characters to be just the teeniest, tiniest bit OOC and/or necessitated rather unrealistic plot circumstances. So it was simply easier to keep such scenes as maladaptive daydreams, rather than trying to think of explanations for the character/plot issues…or exposing myself to judgement for them LOL.

Receiving permission to write/share one such scene anyway is an opportunity I can’t let slip by though. It might be because I’m writing this while running on zero (0) hours of sleep—let’s hear it for insomnia, y’all!—but I suddenly couldn’t remember any of my newer ideas under this category. However, I did recall a one-shot I had started writing a couple of months ago that sort of counts? “Sort of” because I could actually be arsed to write it since I was, ya know, writing it. Only got about six hundred words down though.

…should I share those six hundred words…?

………nahhh. I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet.

But here’s the gist of it: Coulson and May (because of course it’s Philinda) were married for quite some time before the Attack on New York. But then Coulson DiedTM and then got ResurrectedTM. But gasp of horror, he had to lose his memories of his romantic relationship with May because reasons. (I actually did have some ideas for those reasons but sshhhh this is about me yeeting context and setup.)

The first half of S1 still happens as normal (except MayWard doesn’t happen because??? Vows) and it’s now post-E20 “Nothing Personal”. The morning after (or a morning soon after, whatever) the T.A.H.I.T.I. reveal! May’s mom—who doesn’t know about GH.325 and whom May fed a cover story about Coulson divorcing her or something equally as oof, IDK—shows up at the hotel and starts ripping into Coulson for breaking her daughter’s heart, then dragging her back into the field with her ex-husband (him), then accusing her of terrible things and forcing her away again.

Poor guy’s confused as heck, and so is the team, and soon enough so is Lian. The only one who understands what’s going on is May, and she’s freaking dying off to the side like why is this happening to me and eventually everybody’s like! Explain??? (Was thinking about including something from Coulson like, “Are you still keeping things from me?” Just for that extra smidge of angst, yay!)

So yeah then May gives a, like, two-sentence debriefing that elicits more questions than answers. Coulson decides to take May aside and they have a heart-to-heart. Lots of feelings and angst and hurt/comfort and at some point plenty of kissing too. Just! May hiding her feelings for Coulson’s sake but really magnified, plus some actual apologies and consideration of the grief May’s been through on Coulson’s part.

And uhh yeah that’s basically it I dunno hdsjncjshd. I warned y’all it’s OOC, plot-bendy, and very self-indulgent!

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I don’t think I could name a single character for this. I get different things out of taking on different voices, you know? I guess recently I’ve found myself gravitating towards more taciturn and introspective points of view, like JQ from my original novel Rosewood or M. Yisbon from my…other original novel Temple.

Generally, however, I like tackling stories from an outsider’s perspective. That’s why I so rarely write my more “substantial” (serious? demanding? for lack of better words?) projects from the PoV of my “preferred” character. This usually means writing from their love interest’s perspective, but not always. With shorter fanfic, using a more removed/unconventional/niche PoV can be really fun. Like, I once wrote a canon compliant ficlet purely(-ish) about Philinda from Tony Stark’s perspective. That isn’t always sustainable with stories that demand more character development or closer character studies, however, which is why it’s a good thing I like writing drabbles!

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

My word counts tend to run long, but I usually only write one-shots for fanfic. If I’m even inspired with a novella- or novel-length story idea for a fandom, you already know I’m in deep with them. And if I actually find the motivation to plan and execute that idea? Dangg. That’s only ever happened…twice, maybe thrice, and I’m in a lot of fandoms.

At times, I wish I could go for more of a middle ground ’cause, like, you know what I love to see? An AO3 dashboard with several completed novellas for my ship/character of choice. I mean yes, I hecking love >90k fics, but sometimes I’m in the mood for quick reads…and what am I supposed to do when I burn through all the drabbles and 2k one-shots? (Besides despair and/or reread my faves desperately.) Novellas are basically always safe for me LOL, and I’d hope to be able to give as much as I take.

Ultimately though, I think I’m okay with where I am with regards to that. I wish I could write more in general, but I’d be okay with “writing more” just meaning “writing more one-shots”, ya know? More than okay, really. I have mad respect for fic writers who have, like, a hundred or more one-shots under their belt for this one ship. The fandom ecosystem would be incomplete without them (as well as every other type of writer, but sshhh that’s the type of writer I’m closest to being right now).

I’m definitely a plotter, and I definitely prefer it that way. It’s cool having such a detailed record of my process. I like feeling like a frazzled genius on the brink of a major discovery with all of my different outlines and colour coding and many drafts and various websites.

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

Not exactly. It might be cool if my original works were recognisable in the world, but I don’t think I’d want to be recognisable. As for fanfic, I’d low-key enjoy gaining a place in that fandom’s community as a fic writer. Like someone who gave and got fic gifts from fic writer friends, who participated in challenges and GCs, who received writing prompts on Tumblr, whose name was known for doing a certain trope/genre a bunch of times… Ya know what I mean?

Unlikely to happen when I’m so hecking hesitant to publicly (i.e., outside of AO3) claim credit for my writing, but fjnskfsjhfjs. A writer can dream, right?

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Of those three, tags are the easiest for me, for I have a reliable system for figuring out those.

Next easiest would probably be titles. For fanfiction, I like to use titles that are a quote from the source material. You should have seen all of my old Hamilton fanfic… I was really proud of some of those titles. And I don’t mean, like, whole lines—usually only two to five words. It’s a unique type of wordplay that I just love dabbling in.

And lastly, summaries. Sometimes inspiration strikes me and a snappy and intriguing synopsis just jumps out—one that I’m quietly pleased with—but most of the time I’ll spend way too long trying to think of such a synopsis and eventually just go with whatever I’d come up with so far. And live with my quiet dissatisfaction for the rest of time.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (Plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations...?) Tell us about them!

Typically, no. If I have deleted scenes, I save and publish them separately, but that’s about it. I sometimes think of AUs for my own work and might talk about them in my author’s notes—might even talk about writing them—but I never really do anything with them.

Although…

It’s not uncommon for me to decide a plotline isn’t working for a certain story or to think of an interesting but undoable arc for a certain character, but what I’ll do is make a whole new story for those ideas. Once I’m done developing the original idea and the branched-off one, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell they grew from the same roots. Does that count?

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as (film, webcomic, animated series, etc.)?

That depends on the story. I’ve actually written stories in other mediums—movie screenplay, musical stageplay, poetry, TV show scripts, play scripts, roleplay—but the novel does tend to be my comfort zone. Sometimes, if I have an idea that I think could work, or would even work better, as another medium, I’ll label it as such in my folder of ideas and decide not to write it as a novel.

Most of the time, my non-book projects are collaborations. I’m working with five different people on six different story ideas: two webcomics, one stage musical, one anime, and two animated TV shows. Little concrete progress has been made in any of those, mind you, but they’re still fun to discuss!

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Absolutely. But I’ve been writing stories since I was five years old, so we would hope so, huh?

I wouldn’t say my writing’s changed completely, though maybe that’s just my insider’s perspective.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

Oh gosh, I can’t believe you’d make me choose. Writing is just such a wonderful experience for me; I love just about everything to do with it. Admittedly, not all the time, but. Since that barely qualifies as an answer, however, I’ll give you this—

The endings. Not only that intense feeling of rightness when you wrap up that last sentence, but also the moments before. The adrenaline of knowing you’re almost there but you gotta push just a bit more to actually get there. And also the part right after—the real wrap-up, honestly: the revision and the editing. Heavens, I love revising and editing my work.

Which is not to say I don’t like writing it out for the first time, too—there’s nothing quite like seeing your cursor scroll to the next page, like going from a blank expanse to a Oh man, how many more lines are even going to fit on this page?, like watching that page counter tick up another number. However, there’s something cathartic about finally ironing out those problems I had to force myself to stop worrying about earlier because “just finish the first draft dangit”.

I guess that’s not really the end of the writing process, but whatever. Close enough (as fic writers are wont to say).

Another thank-you for these asks, and feel free to come back with more at any time! ;P

Send in fun meta asks for your friendly neighbourhood writer!

[bouwrites]

Fire Emblem: Nationality Adjectives

Okay, okay, so, I really should have done this before getting 50 chapters into a massive 3H fic, but instead I just did what felt right and struggled around ever using an adjective for Brigid people/things because, uh... I couldn’t figure it out. Hence doing the work now.

Anyway, quick preamble for clarity’s sake, nationality adjectives are just the adjectives used to refer to something or someone from a certain place. Id est, French is to France, Japanese is to Japan, or even more broadly, European is to Europe.

For use in fanfic, I’m attempting, mostly by looking at official real-world nationality adjectives (in my language, ofc) to figure out the correct* form the adjective (and noun!) would take for regions within the world of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

*By correct, I mean the options that don’t sound horrible.

Please add your two cents, if you have any. Please. I’m actually begging. Anyway, under the read more because idk how long this is going to get.

Let’s start with the obvious. Some are canon within the game’s world, and thus whether real-world conventions apply or not doesn’t matter. So here’s the small list of Location : Adjective : Noun* in canon that I can come up with off the top of my head.

*A missing noun denotes that the noun is the same as the adjective.

Note: When I say “in canon” I mean it’s used to refer to at least one of the adjective/noun. With one exception, I don’t believe many will argue that they make sense as both, so I simply treat them as both. (Mostly because I can’t be bothered to comb through the entire game’s script picking out where what is used as nouns or adjectives.)

Abyss : Abyssian Adrestia : Adrestian Agartha : Agarthan Almyra : Almyran Dagda : Dagdan (also the name of their language) Duscur : ??? : Duscur Nabatea : Nabatean

Duscur, the only “non-standard” one, can also probably be used as the adjective, but all canon instances I managed to find in Dedue’s support logs were used as the noun. I would be happy to use Duscur as an adjective, and thus won’t explore it here, but I’m fully ready to accept arguments against it.

In a similar vein, but not quite as versatile as proper nationality adjectives, both the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and the Leicester Alliance, to my memory, exclusively use “Kingdom” and “Alliance” in sentences where the possessive is necessary. (i.e. Fhirdiad, the Kingdom capital)

Now, let’s try to make some proper adjectives for both Faerghus and Leicester, as well as Brigid, Albinea, Morfis, Sreng, and Fódlan.

Note: If any of those locations have canon adjectives/nouns, please let me know! Also if I’m missing any locations.

(I know small-scale locations like cities/territories within each state also don’t have adjectives, but no one canonically seems to be very patriotic on that scale and identify with the broader term instead, so I’m not concerned with those. Feel free to add them if you want, though!)

The only super obvious one is Albinea : Albinean, and I’m pretty confident that no one will contest that even without diving in to real-world examples to compare what form the adjective should take.

From there, we’ll start with the most relevant and go outwards. Starting with Fódlan.

Note: I’m using this resource for the right adjectives/nouns for nationalities, so if I make a sweeping statement like “no country” or something of the like, what I’m referring to is specifically what is contained within that list.

Fódlan:

In-game, Dedue actually says, “...because I was unfamiliar with Fódlan speech.” Which surprisingly doesn’t tell us the name of Fódlan’s language, but rather says that “Fódlan” is the (or a) canon adjective.

That gives us Fódlan : Fódlan : ??? (Fódlan? In the same form as Duscur, perhaps.)

That said, I just... don’t really prefer it. So I’m looking for alternatives. My preferred form? Iceland. Iceland : Icelandic : Icelander, giving us Fódlan : Fódlandic : Fódlander. Now, Fódlan obviously doesn’t end with a “-d” but also, while many countries/regions end with “-an” none end with “-lan” and I, personally, just like the sound of Fódlander, even as the adjective. In fact, within my own in-progress fic right now, I currently have it as simply Fódlan : Fódlander, with no difference between the adj. and noun.

Looking at examples with “-an” endings to their region, we have Iran : Iranian, Japan : Japanese, or Pakistan : Pakistani to give us either Fódlanian, Fódlanese, or Fódlani. I’ve seen the latter two in fics before, but of the set prefer Fódlani myself.

And just for fun, most “-land” regions actually don’t use the “-lander” ending. Iceland is special that way, presumably because they didn’t want to call themselves Ices. Instead, it’s in the form of Poland : Polish : Pole, which, if we apply to Fódlan, would give us Fódlan : Fódlish : Fód which I would never dream of actually using, but does make me laugh.

Conclusion: This section is just my personal best options, in no particular order, laid out in a less cluttered format.

Fódlan : Fódlani Fódlan : Fódlandic : Fódlander Fódlan : Fódlander (No real-world basis, I just like it this way.)

Faerghus:

To my knowledge, the only countries that end in “-s” at all are Belarus and Honduras, so let’s just use those, and throw in Paris for fun. This will be shorter because we just don’t have much to work with, and I think the “best” form is a lot easier to agree on, anyway.

So, first option, Belarus : Belarusian which gives us Faerghus : Farghusian. Which works. There’s nothing wrong with it. But I’m not a big fan just because I prefer the next option so much more.

Interestingly, this is one I’ve seen in fanfic before, so it’s something currently in use by the community, at least to some extent. That is, Honduras : Honduran giving us Faerghus : Faerghan. Something about Faerghan just sounds right to my (American) ear, and again, I’ve seen it used in fanfic before. Honestly, it sounds so right that I’m not entirely convinced it’s not actual canon, but I also can’t recall it actually being used in canon, so... eh.

Conclusion: Just use Faerghus : Faerghan, it’s not that hard a conclusion to reach tbh. Unless you just like something else, I guess.

Leicester:

This is a problem for the simple fact that while there is an actual county in Britain called Leicestershire (and one called Gloucestershire), unless the British are a lot different from us Americans and they aren’t putting this information online, no one actually identifies anything by county.

Combined with the fact that the only countries that end in “-r” are Equador, El Salvador, and Madagascar, and I’m pretty sure any accurate comparison would need at least the “-ter” ending, this is going to be mostly just making up what feels right to me.

But for science, let’s go ahead and use those three for their conventions anyway, shall we?

Equador : Equadorian would give us Leicester : Leicesterian. Then we have El Salvador : Salvadoran to give us the slightly sillier Leicesteran. (I cannot not hear Listerine, lol.)

Alternatively, and this is a bold move, we could use Madagascar : Madagasy, which I frankly do not even know how to translate to Leicester because that form just doesn’t work with anything lacking the “-scar” ending, and I’m trying to compare them based on the “-r” alone. Still, I suppose with some finagling we can come to Leicester : Leicesy, or somewhat more sensibly Leicesty which is... surprisingly not horrible, but a zesty choice nonetheless.

On a more serious note, I’ve been using Leicester : Leicester : Leicesterman/woman because it’s just about the only thing I’ve thought of that doesn’t sound remarkably silly.

Conclusion: Use Leicester : Leicester : Leicesterman/woman.

(Or, if you want to meme the Golden Deer, Leicester : Leicesty. I am not recommending this.)

Brigid:

Ah, the reason I’m doing this work in the first place. I really should have done this before the Brigid arc in my fic but alas, here we are, doing this while I’m literally on the last chapter of it.

Anyway, since this list I have of real-world nationalities only has a single country ending in “-d” that doesn’t end in “-land” we’re going to just have to work with what we have.

The one example I have to work with? Chad. That gives us Chad : Chadian applied to Brigid is Brigid : Brigidian.

Which feels like something I’ve seen in fic before, but I can’t say with certainty. Now that I’m looking at that in the face, though, I want to posit for review the alternative Brigid : Brigidan, mostly just because that “-idi-” feels weird to me.

(Now I feel kind of silly. It’s really quite simple, isn’t it? I spent so long trying to figure this one out, positive that I’d find a better option, but... nah. Brigidan works, I think. Ironically, when I was looking through earlier chapters in my draft, I noticed that I had actually already used Brigidan in my story, despite me going so far out of my way to avoid using an adjective at all in my Brigid arc because I straight up forgot. F me, I guess.)

Conclusion: Use Brigid : Brigidan or Brigid : Brigidian, depending on your feelings about the letter I.

Sreng:

Another odd one, because there’s no good comparison, even in the vaguest sense. So, instead of doing comparisons to real places this time, I’m just going to throw a few of the common endings at it and see what sticks.

Sreng : Srengan/Srengian - Gives me fantasy name vibes, which I guess it is, but not location name vibes, and certainly not location adjective vibes, if that makes any sort of sense.

Sreng : Srengish : Sren??? - This is clearly reaching. And no, I will not even entertain Sren(g)man/woman.

Sreng : Srengi - I feel like I’ve seen this in fic before but cannot say for sure. Point being, though, it feels like something that reasonable people would say with their mouths, so it gets a full 5 stars from me.

Conclusion: Sreng : Srengi is the only viable option. Fight me.

Morfis:

Because Morfis doesn’t appear in my own fic, I have given this zero thought ahead of time. Also, I was 100% convinced - like, turned on my Switch and checked the actual game to be sure - that Morfis was spelled Morphis. Nope, it’s an f. Anyway, let’s gooo!

I guess the logical starting point would be the same place we went with Faerghus, with either Morfis : Morfisian or Morfis : Morfan but unlike Faerghus, Morfis actually already has that “I” there, so I think the alternative Morfian sounds a bit better.

Plus, Professor Byleth has already fished up half the pond’s population. We don’t need more fin.

Conclusion: Fish are friends. Morfis : Morfian

[shinyflareon]

Full of potential, Searching should probably keep looking for the payoff.

So now that the newest Overwatch comic, Searching, has been out for a couple days, I thought I’d give my thoughts on it now that I’ve had time to process. There was a lot of hype leading up to this comic; Zarya and Sombra are both fan-favorites, and a lot of people have been clamoring for something Zarya focused for a long time. But whether or not it lived up to that hype is...questionable. To me, it honestly read like a rough draft rather than a completed script.

tldr: lots of good ideas, but setup, pacing, and stilted dialogue meant that none of them were really followed up on.

Warning: long post, heavy image usage.

This comic immediately starts off on a bad foot for me. Presumably, it takes place immediately after the last scene in Sombra’s short Infiltration. Let’s recap that, shall we?

Chairman Volskaya asks Zarya “Do you know why you are here?”

Zarya emerges into the light of the window with a confident “I believe I do.”

What a great setup. Zarya has her mission, and we the audience don’t know exactly what it is, but there must be a reason that Katya called Zarya in for this, right?

Here’s where we get to the first panel of this comic.

What is this? Where’s that confidence from just a few moments ago? This makes it seem like Zarya wasn’t even briefed on the mission - in which case, why did she believe that she knew why Katya called her in? Was she under the impression that the assignment was somehow different? And that “I was wrong” narration bubble? That’s a cold open. There is precisely zero context as to what she was wrong about, or why she is so shocked and confused. It is assumed that the reader knows that the assignment is to find Sombra but really...that’s really vague. Is Zarya supposed to bring her into custody? Kill her? What actually is this assignment that you give to a soldier who has enough sense to point out that what it really calls for is a spy? Katya is frustratingly unhelpful in this regard. She plays on Zarya’s patriotism, appealing first to her compassion by showing some very calculated vulnerability and saying that she needs “a friend,” then to her sense of duty, keeping deliberately vague on the details and only saying that she wants Sombra “brought to justice,” and that Zarya is the only one she can trust to do it.

Then there’s this line.

See that line she says there? “We have something nobody has had before.” This line is going to be VERY important later on, so we’ll come back to it later.

And then we get...a montage. We spend almost a full page with Zarya just going to random locations and turning up nothing. The only purpose seems to be the stop in Hanamura to establish her Omnic racism (Omnicism?).

I mean, we get this guy, who looks like he might actually have a lead for her, but then decides against it after she’s rude to the Omnic server. Judging by the looks on his and the kids’ faces, it almost feels like she might as well have just outright dropped an N-bomb. But of course, this guy is never brought up again. Who is he? He looks like he might work for the Shimadas, but that’s pure speculation at best. Does he actually know anything about Sombra, or is the paneling just splitting up his speech to make it look that way? Why is Zarya even IN Hanamura in the first place? 

This whole initial travel montage just feels like padding. We should have ended that conversation with Katya with her saying something like “You are correct. You are NOT a spy. However, I have a contact in Numbani that might be able to give you a place to start looking...” and then cut straight to this panel.

Boom. One panel gets us straight to the chase, as well as giving us all we need to know regarding Zarya’s opinion on human-Omnic relations. I get that we had to establish the passage of time so Efi and Orisa could have their cameo (considering Orisa wasn’t built until after Doomfist attacked Numbani, but he didn’t break out of jail until well after Infiltration), but that’s easily rectified with just a throwaway mention of travel time. Then we get the introduction of the other half of this oddball buddy duo.

This is actually a pretty neat little exchange. It further cements Zarya’s dislike of Omnics, as well as throwing a neat little bone to Katya’s philosophy of working with ‘the enemy’ for the sake of duty and patriotism, which she again plays to Zarya’s senses of. Lynx provides a bit of brevity, though while it’s supposed to be sarcasm, there’s really no punch behind it. They just kind of...state things. Interestingly, when talking to Katya, Zarya refers to Lynx as an Omnic, not a robot. I guess even she knows better than to go throwing what are functionally racial slurs around when addressing her boss.

We get some exposition about Sombra and what she’s been up to, but it’s really nothing new. Zarya remarks that she “would rather die than understand a robot” and Lynx just sort of...makes a dry remark and takes it. We finally drop the ball that Sombra’s gone after Lumerico, and in conjunction with the sugar skull imagery and Los Muertos...existing I guess...the decision is made to go to Dorado. Lynx wants to tag along for unexplained reasons, and though Zarya flatly refuses...

she doesn’t actually seem all that bothered by it. Their dialogue is impressively casual for an Omnic-hating soldier and a laid-back Omnic hacker. Did Lynx sneak along in Zarya’s luggage? Did they bond on the plane ride? Over what?

Perhaps it was their love of montages, because guess what! That crack about knocking on doors turns out to be literal.

Zarya, I hate to break it to you, but reps are not enjoyable to everyone. To most people, in fact. Do we really need to waste time and space again watching you going around and narrate how difficult Sombra is to find, and how ‘weeks pass’ with no progress? No. We do not. You know what we would like to see? You actually interacting with your Omnic buddy more. Seeing how you actually come to start calling them ‘Omnic’ instead of ‘robot.’

Thanfully, this montage is short, and finally, we make some progress. And what incredibly awkward progress it is.

That’s Alejandra, the girl from Soldier 76′s short Heroes. And that’s Aleksandra Zaryanova, Sergeant in the Russian military, forgetting how to speak in complete sentences. Here, an example of how it could have gone:

“I’m listening. What is your name?”

“Ale...Alejandra.”

Zarya kneels and gives a wide smile. “Alejandra? My name is Aleksandra. How funny that we have the same name! We could be great friends.”

“That woman you’re looking for...has she done something wrong?”

Zarya nods, looking grim. “She has. She threatened another friend of mine, and hurt many people.”

“If I helped you...”

“You would be my hero.”

There. Just a couple more panels (easily replaceable with some of the montage ones), and the similar names between the two actually becomes a point of connection. Plus, you get to revisit the idea of “friendship,” this time from Zarya’s candid, honest perspective of it, and you still get to keep the reference to the Heroes short.

(How this little girl knows where to find Sombra, I have no idea, but we have to actually get the plot moving somehow. We’re already halfway through the comic.)

I cannot even begin to express how frustrated this makes me. This conversation starts up out of the blue as Zarya and Lynx are walking up to Sombra’s hideout. There are much better times to have a talk like this - say, during those weeks you spent asking every person in Dorado if they’ve seen her. Maybe even on the plane trip from Numbani to Dorado. It honestly feels to me like they just forgot that this was a conversation that needed to happen, so they shoved it in here right before the final encounter so that they could get it out of the way.

Speaking of which, Sombra has a physical hideout? That they can just walk right up to and melt the security off of? Sombra had to know she was being hunted. So she just...sat around waiting for them to show up?

This fight is pretty, but it just amuses me to no end remembering that Sombra’s actually one of the better characters against Zarya 1v1 considering that Sombra can hack Zarya’s shields away, and Zarya’s awkward fire patterns make Sombra’s mobility even harder to deal with. Then again, Sombra didn’t even try to hack her. But what’s that crack about winning the summer games supposed to mean?

Also Zarya built up her ult LUDICROUSLY fast. I wish I could do that.

And here’s the big whammy. Remember that panel I mentioned at the beginning? Where Katya said that she was giving Zarya “something nobody has had before?” THIS is presumably it. So now I have a question.

Why wasn’t that original exchange emphasized more?

This is HUGE. Sombra’s real name is something I NEVER expected to find out. Honestly, I don’t think we should have. Sombra is Sombra; giving her a name actually manages to detract from the entire idea of “erasing her past” that she was all about. Yes, this is a great point for drama in the story, but it also somehow...lessens her I think. Anyway.

A lot of people were wondering how Zarya knew this information. How she got it. And while a couple people have realized that this is what Katya was talking about, it blows my mind that the initial setup was treated as just another line of dialogue. Katya Volskaya has something on Sombra that no one has had before? That’s IMPORTANT. That piece of information alone deserves so much more emphasis than it got - maybe even a whole panel to itself. Something like this:

Panel 1: “I knew you would be. But don’t worry.” *Katya approaches Zarya and hands her the picture*

Panel 2, closeup on Katya looking very serious and confident: “To help you find your target, you will have something that no one has had before.”

It gives the line WEIGHT. It establishes to both Zarya and the reader that this thing is going to be the key to tracking and taking down Sombra. And it is shamefully wasted. Zarya lets her graviton surge run out, then threatens Sombra and just...lets her go. Keep in mind, on the previous page, this was the beginning of their encounter.

I see...consistency is not this comic’s strong suit.

Sombra threatens that the warehouse will blow up, but oh no! Lynx was hacked...back in Numbani? How? Where? Ugh...

Me either, Zarya. Me either. Though to be fair, it was never clear on what your mission even was, so...you can’t really fail if you didn’t know what the mission was to begin with.

Katya half-handedly tries to assure Zarya of her motives, and Zarya tries to bring the “friendship” theme to a close by going back to last-name basis with Katya. It’s an attempt at closure, but it just feels disjointed.

We end with Zarya abruptly abandoning Lynx to go back to Russia, and from there...somewhere else? It’s an annoying cliffhanger to say the least.

So...there you have it. My take on the new comic. To reiterate what I said at the beginning, there is a lot of potential here. Unfortunately, the weird pacing and stilted dialogue meant that almost none of it was actually brought to any kind of satisfying conclusion. The characters are all very flat, even the normally animated Sombra. Nothing is made clear to the characters or the audience, and we’re left with more questions than answers. We anticipated a circus, and all we got was a balloon and some stale popcorn. Ultimately, this comic is a victim of what it could have been, and suffers for not living up to its own potential.

[dreamharvestgames]

Dev Blog - June 2017

Justin - Creative Director

Hi lovely readers, I hope you've been enjoying the summer weather we've been having.

This month I've been working on wire-framing our menu and game systems. This is everything that happens outside of matches including our contract system.

What's the Contract system you say? Well, this is something that's very much still in the concept stage, but in theory, it’s a mission system that allows us to deliver both narrative-driven objectives for each of the levels we'll be launching with, training missions for each of the scripts, daily/monthly events and more. It’ll be wrapped up in a cool narrative package that will hopefully envelope you in the world of Failure: NeuroSlicers and your role as an unstoppable Slicer in the NeuroNet.

With this system, we'll be able to give you a constant flow of evolving narrative, cool progression based rewards for completing contracts that allow you to customize your avatar and scripts and allow you to grow your character as you spend more time in the network, but most importantly will allow us to expand on the game even after full release in super interesting ways.

We'll have lots more to share in regard to this system and more down the line, but for the time being, here are some amazing fun to look at wireframes (I promise, they're fun to look at 😊)

Until next month…

PS. Don’t forget to join our Discord Channel if you want to discuss anything about the game with us; we'd love your input.

Sven - CTO / Lead Programmer

Yay, another time to forget what I did last month.

From what I can remember, I mostly focused on porting our game server from C# to Java. In case that seems like a stupid idea to you (because you think C# is much nicer, which I agree) let me elaborate a bit why this was necessary.

First, the original server was never really intended for production use and was mostly a prototype to test the network functionality, so it had to be redone. This open question is why do it in Java instead of C#. There were a few reasons for this:

The rest of the backend systems are already written in Java which was mostly done because a lot of frameworks only exist for Java.

After doing some benchmarks comparing Netty and DotNetty I concluded that Netty was performing a lot better than DotNetty (with the same load Netty used 10% CPU vs. DotNetty which used 25% CPU and quite a bit more ram). While this would, in many cases, this doesn’t really matter that much in most server applications, our game server is meant to handle a lot of concurrent games, therefore, network performance was really important.

<bias> I assume it’s easier to run Java than .net on servers. I should mention here that I worked as a sysadmin for a long time and I’m used to running Java applications. So, I’ve got a lot experience doing that but very little running .net applications. </bias>

To annoy Milcho.

Slightly off-topic: does anyone know a good Raspberry Pi alternative (or some other cheap computer) with a lot more ram (something like 4GB+)? I was trying to find something simple/cheap where I could install the whole server backend + game server for testing and having something we can easily take with us when going to events. If you have any good suggestion contact me on Twitter: @i_gamedev

Milcho - Lead Designer / Gameplay Programmer

Salutations, “I am here, ready to enlighten you, but are you ready to be enlightened?” 

I don’t know why you thought this might be an actual quote, but it definitely isn’t. I make up things all the time. In any case, let’s go over what’s been happening in the gameplay department of Failure for the last month. 

First, we’ve always been planning this massive meta-game on top of the RTS that’s we’re making to add a whole different layer on which you can focus on. The first few weeks of the month involved figuring exactly how that system might work and how it would integrate with our other systems. We got pretty far, but as game development often goes, we’ve put that on holds since it was too awestriking and dangerous for the rest of the team. We’re going to revisit it in a few months and prototype a few versions to get the best out of it. 

The rest of the time I spent thinking about how much I like doughnuts and how to get them in my diet without my dentist going after me with a stick. During that time, I also started prototyping a new and improved resource systems for the game, which was a huge task. We’re talking about changing something that has been fundamental for a game that has been around for almost 3 years and making sure that everything works in the aftermath. The main reasons for this redesign is to reduce the effect of snowballing, making sure that players that are losing a match have a chance to come back from possible defeat, though we also want to make sure that our matches stay within the 5 - 10-minute length. So far, it’s going great though and we’re definitely on the right track. I’ll update you on its progress next month. 

Speaking of next month, I guess that’s when I’ll be talking to you again. Until then, make sure to keep your doughnut intake healthy (whatever that means for you).

Loïc - Art Director / Designer

This month I’ve been focusing on polishing our UI and feedback, along with work on the new deck system.

In term of preproduction, I wrote and sketched concepts for all our nine environments and subsequent levels, tying the specific objectives of each level to the themes of the environment it takes place in. 

These are just quick prototypes of possible levels and are in no way the final look, layout or colour/theme scheme, but this is all part of our process.

Kelvin - VFX Artist / UI Artist

Yo! More UI going on this month! We really had to figure out a type of UI frame/theme to use. We wanted it to be modern, stylized, and minimal. Both Loic and I had to work together, throwing sketches back and forth, to get to the iteration that we are at now.

There were tons of iterations beforehand but we got to this. We've designed a pattern for the background of the frames also that connected organically but with strong and strict lines.

Another exciting thing we added is the notification system! There are times you're focusing on a part of the map and you don't notice your buildings being attacked. DO NOT FRET! I worked with Milcho on this system that will notify you when something is being attacked and which direction it's in! It's extremely helpful and will really help you on your game.

Adding to the notification system, we added a very, very simple change that shows feedback on your units being attacked. When a unit is attacked, it should flash white now. Simple, but awesome 😊

I also worked on an FX this month! Woo! It took a bit to get it right, but once you spend tech, the tech fragment will shatter in this cool flash of glitchiness! It's a very small part of the screen, but it turned out very nice.

Amelie - UX Researcher / Writer

So, what happened on my side since the last time, well, mostly to be honest holidays 😊 I drafted some wireframes for the deck builder and some other menus before leaving and while I was gone Justin polished those and the guys discussed it, made some improvements and I came back only to have to say "Wow that's awesome! Let's put this all in and test it!" So, Georgia was really cool, I encourage everybody who likes mountaineering and good wine to visit, trust the French girl even just the wine is worth it! 

In Georgia every time you drink, someone makes a toast, it's tradition and if it may seem a little funny to us (especially because the toasts can be really long) they take it really seriously. And then, if you drink often I mean, you get used to it and you learn to enjoy it, you know to learn to be grateful for something in your life every day (or 4 times a day depending how much you like their wine...) so here is my toast, despite Creative England really not getting how video games work and putting us in a really shitty position, and our boss being really rather britishly cross you know... the team is still there 😊

Everybody is still super motivated to make a good game, we're not here for the money we're here for the passion of creating an experience that we really hope you will enjoy and remember. So, to passion and to the sleepless nerds in this team who make this game come to life! Cheers bros!

Writing wise I had made a good start on the faction’s motivations and identity, I also worked on our main character background, started to imagine what brought him to become a slicer...

So now that I'm back I have loads of testing to do, and my objective for the next week will be to take the time to read the mountain of level design the team has produced, see how the maps objectives can fit into mission stories and last but not least nail the first version of our intro narrative!

Daniel - Composer

Coffee shops. Who would have thought that the music of Failure NeuroSlicers would sound like coffee shops?

Now, re-read that first sentence in the voice of Christopher Walken and you begin to enter the rabbit hole of strange that I've entered since the last newsletter. While 'the rabbit hole of strange' sounds like a particularly psychedelic category of pornography, I'm in fact referring to a world of sound that surrounds most of us each and every day: the inner workings of our electrical goods.

By using an induction coil pick up (a device similar to the pick-ups on an electric guitar), I've been able to record the electronic signals of just about the entire contents of my house and — to the concern of some patrons — most of my local shops. It transpires that many of our electrical goods are host to wonderful, bizarre and, sometimes, frightening sounds; many of these sounds can be very rhythmical and full of unusual accents and musical phrases. By 'frightening' I don't mean that our devices are low-key telling us to worship Satan, but that they create sounds you wouldn't expect (particularly the payment terminal at my local coffee shop). If you happen to have an induction coil mic and nothing better to do, try recording a PS4 while you turn it off from the system menu — it really is hours of fun for all the family.

By recording all of this information with the coil pick up, I've been able to transcribe the rhythms of some electrical items and assign those rhythms to different musical instruments to create sonic fragments that cross the boundary between natural and man-made — much like the Neuro Net. For some of the less rhythmical recordings, I've been able to alter, distort and pitch the electronic sounds in Pro Tools and create some interesting instruments (my favourite so far is the synth I've created from my beard trimmer). It is this blend of natural and un-natural, of 'above the line' and 'below the line', that will form the music of Failure NeuroSlicers and, sometimes, that will even include the sounds of my local coffee shop.

Until next time.

Bobby - Communications Manager

I'm used to being the behind the scenes guy for Justin and the team and, on occasion, the doting fanboy of Failure: NeuroSlicers as it evolves. Watching the team work, extremely, hard makes you want to try and do more and one of my tasks is to try and identify community opportunities, specific to the game, and connect with a wider audience; not just from game genre perspective, like RTS, but think about the style and story of the world that will pull fans from all areas of the gaming community to keep them up to date with what's going on within the game.

I'm hoping those already reading this will be subscribed to all our various communication channels, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our newsletter but sometimes these can be dependent on, you, the community to scroll by it in your news feed, which, if you're like me subscribe to a lot of feeds, and will sometimes miss content as it becomes, what I like to dub, a complacent channel we go into autopilot when using.

How to prioritise communication channels? It's a daily thought for me. How many users are subscribed to each channel, what to publish to first can be difficult as it's a changing landscape but recently Discord is becoming more and more popular with the gaming community because of its real-time forum nature. The younger generation these days, the millennials, are used to instant messaging, they don't want to wait for emails or a post reply, they want to know someone is on the other end of the window ready to engage and that's why we're going to start pushing a ton of content there on a daily basis.

It's a great platform with so much control, not only with chat but voice too. We get asked about Alpha testing all the time and one of our recent meetings play testing came up. As you can imagine we're a small team and everyone getting time together across multiple time zones can be tricky so if it's something you'd love to get involved with please come and join our Discord group. We'll be approaching active users who really want to get their hands on an early alpha build, help playtest and provide valuable feedback to continue to evolve the game leading up to its release.

Also, share, it's so important to us we get the game out there and you're all instrumental in helping us do that.