#malottie speak

[malottie]

i don't think i will ever get over how limbus company is basically just the world's most insane fan fiction. what do you mean dante, charon, emil sinclair, rodya, meursault, faust and a bunch of other people are on a bus together having adventures in Batshit Insane Land. what do you mean there's time travel and vampires and alternate universes and memory manipulation and eldritch horrors involved. it is just so so fun to see people trying to grasp with it from the outside

[malottie]

HOLY SHIT THEY'RE BROTHERS???!!!!

i was like "sheldrake, i know that name, that's funny, cosmo sheldrake's one of my favorite musicians ever and they have really similar aesthetics and sensibilities" and they're brothers???!!! that is so cool

they are both so cool and so underrated, god am i happy to see some attention on them

when i was reading the book entangled life which is about fungi and the author merlin sheldrake said that once he got his first author copies he was going to dampen the pages and use them to grow oyster mushrooms and yeast and then use the yeast to brew beer and then drink the beer with the mushrooms to complete the cycle of fungal knowledge. i was like really and truly this guy gets it

[malottie]

i've never played in stars and time myself but the second hand emotionnal damage is enough to just. jesus fucking christ. i don't feel so good. fuck. i'm not crying you're crying

[malottie]

holy shit i am not beating the lesbianism allegations. first time in my life i have had to be like "i'm not gonna say anything because i need to be respectfull but yeag. ourghh" i am normal about girls i promise. i just fhfyfhgjvjj

[malottie]

the legend of zelda: echoes of wisdom isn't very fun

it is a stroll through a garden; pretty relaxing, and entertaining enough, but nothing special and pretty boring after a few hours in there. never has the zelda franchise been so uninteresting, but even more sad, uninterested. it has stopped any attempt to connect to other parts of the series or pre-existing lore, or even have a proper story without plot holes. the gameplay is immensely new and still somehow immediatly tired and tiring. the music is violently unremarkable, to the point where botw's soundtrack sounds almost in-your-face comparatively

i have been losing hope in the ability of nintendo to make amazing games for a long time. but this game, perhaps, crystallises tension points in the series

and i will now rant about game design, specifically on freedom in gameplay

like totk before it, eow is so focused on giving players freedom it forgets to be fun

"if players can do whatever they want, then surely it's fun, right?" wrong! sometimes, fun in games centers specifically around what the players can't do!

"but if they can do whatever they want and they're not having fun, surely it is their fault? they should just choose to do the fun thing, no?" wrong again! unless your game is specifically designed to be a directionless sandbox, or it is part of the game's identity or narrative to not be fun in itself, it's not the player's job to find how to have fun. it's the game's job to have scenarios and circumstances that will naturally lead players towards the fun

one big thing to take into account is what could be called the law of laziness, or rule of least resistance:

in any given scenario, more often than not, people will choose the path of least resistance

this can be the quickest path, or the simplest path, the first one they saw, the closest one, the one with the least obstacles, etc

to this needs to be added a specification, that will inform us on the root of the problem here

unless it has been specifically designed so, the path of least resistance is rarely the path of most fun

to illustrate this, let's compare breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom

in both games, what is the path of most fun to go from point A to point B? it's to go there by foot. to loosely follow your objective, stopping by points of interest like koroks, monster camps, shrines or npcs

in botw, the path of least resistance is often the horse. it is your fastest mean of locomotion, a mean that is also pretty fun: you have to cleverly catch a wild one, that you then name and personnalize, and as you grow closer to it as a player, the gameplay mirrors that as your horse disobbeys you less and less. it is also pretty convenient when it comes to designing a fun experience: the horse isn't too agile, and is often limited to roads. if the path of least resistance is to follow roads, then just put interesting stuff close to roads and boom! now it's also the path of most fun. it even makes sense logically for stuff to be close to roads. developpers can ensure you're never bored when travelling, that you're never too far from the next point of interest, because they know which path most players will take, and that is a path they can make fun to take

in totk, the path of least resistance is almost always to jump from a skyview tower or sky island and just paraglide to your destination. minutes on end of dull paragliding through empty skies, ponctuated here and there by a few aerocudas that are more annoyance than threat. there's nothing the developpers can do to make this more fun. there are no roads in the sky to line with points of interest, and no place where to put those points of interest: it's the fucking sky. it's in the air. even worse, riding through the skies actively discourages you from stopping at points of interest. when on land, you can just stop, do something, and then continue from where you left; but in the air, you can't do that. whichever interesting stuff you see on the ground below you is immediatly classified as a mental footnote for later, because deciding to drop to the ground and investigate kills your momentum. you have to, again, teleport to a tower or sky island, and then redo the gliding-for-minutes-on-end, or go there by foot which takes more time and mental effort and so likely won't be chosen. losing height is loosing gliding distance, it is loosing momentum: it is increasing the resistance of the path. even sky islands aren't immune to the problem: if you see a sky island on your way and decide to go check it out, you better pray you're high enough. because on ground, you can always just climb; height never completely bars you from doing anything. but the skies aren't so kind: if you're so much as a pixel too low, well sucks for you but you're not getting on. come back another day

but it's not like they can stop you from choosing the path of least resistance here: it would require deleting all skyview towers and sky islands. from the very start, the developers cornered themselves. but they also kept making mistakes: revali's gale, in botw, is useable only from the ground, and gives height: it is useful in combat, puzzles, and traversal but purely as an aide for climbing and other on-foot activities. on the other hand, tulin's sage ability is almost entirely useless outside of its 1 purpose: to give you distance while gliding. it encourages, it facilitates gliding as the primary mean of locomotion. it decreases the resistance of what is already the path of least resistance, making it even more desirable but no more fun

the difference here is in player freedom: botw, with its more limited options, forces you down a path that the developers can curate and make fun. totk allows you to just skip it all, and you do: because why wouldn't you chose the path of least resistance? the incentives for ground travel often aren't enough at all

utter and absolute freedom can often make for very boring games

and that is a thing eow suffers from as well, though in a decidedly different manner

in echoes of wisdom, you are a god trapped in a shoebox: you have a nauseatingly wide array of options, tools and freedoms, and despairingly few things on which to exercise them

you have tens of options to cover ground fast, but you are never far enough from anything that you really need to use any of them. teleportation points are so numerous, nothing is ever more than 2 minutes away from you, even inside dungeons

you have access to dozens and dozens of monsters. you won't use half of them. immense variety in opponents makes for great combat: this game isn't really about combat though. and immense variety in tools invariably leads to only ever using the best one, or the one better suited for the job

puzzles aren't ever challenging, because you have effectively every tool at your disposal. nothing it can throw at you has only 1 solution, and the result is that you rarely ever feel smart. not that the puzzles are ever designed to be hard, all dungeons are short, simple and straightforward, but you ultimately always either find your own solution and feel like you bruteforced it, or humor it like you would a small child by completing it using the glaringly obvious intended way

you can break out of the conventionnal bounds of the game, but there is no reward in doing so. it doesn't get you places faster than the standard route, and almost every place is directly accessible from said standard route anyway. it is, as explained above, the path of least fun. except it isn't even really the path of least resistance. no hidden cave or easter egg, it doesn't even allow you to get into places earlier than you're supposed to. you are a child, only allowed what the adults decide you can have. yeah sure, walk on trees and climb cliffs. it won't do anything for you. you have immense power, and you can't do anything with it. you are a god trapped in a shoebox

eow constantly and consistently discourages you from doing much of anything with your freedom. the resultant is that you don't actually feel that free. take the limit on the number of echoes: it makes it almost impossible to create complex systems with them. each one is designed to work alone or almost alone. there is almost no system of interactions, and so there is no depth in gameplay. you have an object, and it does a thing. and you have a lot of objects, so you can do a lot of things. but there is nothing to do with that. everything is simple and straightforward and shallow

you have everything to be creative with, but no incentive to be. you have nothing to be creative about. sure, you could do a painting worthy of masters. but if a stick drawing netted you the same result, would you?

you are a big fish in a small aquarium. you are an excavator owner in a kid's sandbox. you are a god trapped in a shoebox

[malottie]

i see this sentiment more and more and i wonder why the fuck it took so long for people to realize that nintendo doesn't care half as much as the average zelda fan about what's going on with the games

you go girl. nothing you can do will ever be as disapointing as what nintendo does anyway, but it sounds like what you'd make would be genuinely great

chat help. in my attempts to fight art block i've started actually seriously plotting out how to make Zelda If It Was Good

[malottie]

i think i'm such a fan of heartwrenching tragedies because a lot of the time that's just what being trans feels like

oh your birth and life circumstances have trapped and alienated you in such a way that you could never achieve your happiness no matter what you do and you are doomed to be misunderstood, despised and isolated as you and all those in similar situations are forced to hurt and grieve and die alone? geez talk about bad luck. couldn't be me

[malottie]

i think the dream is to be a pretty lady butler in a manor or castle that sees close to no visitors so your whole job is to dress as a beautiful lady butler every day and attend to various inconsequential matters around the house. 8am greet the housemaster. 10am serve the housemaster her tea. 11am make sure the halls are clean. 1pm team up with the housemaster's girlfriend/knight to kill the intruders. 3pm stand in the grand hall at the top of the stairs. 6pm check on the kitchen about the housemaster's dinner. 9am get bred by the housemaster while her girlfriend/knight watches. who said that

[malottie]

i just need everyone to know that whenever i say "hell yeah" i am specifically thinking of its rendition by brian david gilbert in response to karen saying "oh he's for sure dead". it makes sense if you've seen the snoozetown video

[malottie]

yeah being in love (romantic) is great and all. except the part where it fucks with your brain and litteraly alters part of your personnality at times where it concerns that person. wasn't fun rediscovering that after years of silence

"love makes you blind" wrong love makes you a stranger to yourself. you will find that you know not the corners of your own heart nor the corridors of your mind. you will find in a dim nook of your heart a dusty cupboard door you could've sworn didn't exist yesterday and open it to find strange and new variations of the sentiments you know well, "exciting", "wonderfull", "hopefull", they whisper, as they continue to work industriously behind the stage, and you understand then that in this you have no say. you will find that every piece of furniture in the palace of your mind has subtely shifted position into a singular direction, not of your own volition but as the space itself submitting to that new point of interest, your spiritual lodgings now barely changed yet utterly unfamilliar as they take on their new orbit

and as your very being rearanges itself as your mute consciousness is forced to sit and watch you will find that it is wonderful. despite all of this, you cannot hate it. and especially, you cannot hate them. it is so lovely to love, after all

[malottie]

there is no such thing as a transdar, just like there is no such thing as a gaydar. however

there is that one specific style you only find in trans girlies. i have never seen you before but these weird-looking bangs and badly-painted nails are telling me all i need to know. that choker ain't lying sis i know what you are. and just so we're clear yes i do find it kinda hot

[malottie]

in a world so utterly obsessed with efficiency and productivity, there is an indeniable power in making a detour for no other reason than to make a detour

when was the last time you took anything but the quickest route? when was the last time you wandered, even just a little, off the trail, and into the trees? when was the last time you took the time to take the time?

the world won't let you. it spins, and whirls, forever dreaming of greater speeds still, and these little moments of calm and quiet and blissful unoptimisation, you have to snatch them yourself and keep them close. you really have to keep them, precious and fragile, you can't have too many of them, or too much, because there is only so much time you can take. there is only so much time that is truly yours

when i make a five minutes detour to walk by the pond, am i taking the time? i wish i could just take the time of the whole world, and i would sit by the pond for days and days and weeks and months perhaps. i think i would be very happy. but there is only so much time that is mine. i have only been afforded so much time, and so i can never just take the time. what a blessing it would be to have infinite time. when i will have made a five centuries detour by the pond, when i will have stared into the water for generations, when i will have slept and overslept for aeons untold, when i will have procrastinated until the heat death of a billion universes, i will still have infinite time. you can only really take what is yours to begin with, yet we are all on borrowed time. will i ever be able to just take the time ?

[malottie]

anyone have this problem? that i have too much love and respect for my favorite medias and can't bring myself to consume let alone create fanon of it. and the only times i have had a primeval need to write fanfic is when i saw something and went "i can do this but better"?

[malottie]

being neurodivergent with a subconscious that has learned to cope pretty well is fucking insane because most days you'll be doing relatively fine but sometimes there's a day that just overwhelms you and your coping system shuts down and now every car has to explode, the concept of rain needs to have never existed at all, the faintest hint of a baby's scream will cast you in mental anguish as if it was a banshee's death knoll wail and you'll kill the next person that talks to you even if it is jesus christ himself

[malottie]

the entire shen comix fandom is foaming at the mouth this is turning into a silksong situation. shen for your own safety please you've got to say something about this they are starting to she/her you in there the mob is running loose

[malottie]

just flirted with a cute girl i'm really into for the first time ever in my life and there are about 20 new emotions in there i have to figure out. i am feeling woefully unwell, i am coming down from the adrenaline i think