#so I also just don’t have the framework to make a concrete enough story for the au

[andro-dino]

Here's a headcanon I like

Nile listens to 2000s emo stuff and cried when MCR disbanded

THIS IS SO REAL AND TRUE AND CORRECT ‼️‼️‼️‼️

like 5ever ago I drew Nile playing guitar bc it looked cool and I like to think that he would play a lot of that type of music. actually that also just reminded me of the mfb pjsk au I thought abt ages ago too. I only doodled out ideas for wildfang bc they were the most concrete idea I had as like a punk/rock band. I never actually had a ton of thoughts abt that au and only did very small doodles but it’s very fun to think about

[pyrrhiccomedy]

Hello ☺️, I’ve heard from your lovely lady companion Emily that you’re a very seasoned DM! I was wondering if you had any advice for beginners to DMing when it comes to things like improvising and making sure your first session has an impact on the players as their introduction to the world. Any advice at all would be a lifesaver! Thank you ☺️✌🏻

holy shit, a question about DMing. you have freed me, stranger. I can stop blogging about Troy (2004). 

First of all, I’m really excited to hear that you’re going to be DMing for the first time! DMing is understandably intimidating, but it’s also incredibly creatively fulfilling, and it’s something you’ll still be learning how to do better after 25 years. 

Okay, so let’s talk about session 1.

Your first session has a lot of lifting to do. You want to make an emotional impact, you want your players to learn about the world, you want to convey tone and genre, and you want your PCs to have a chance to band together and form quick connections.

I really can’t say enough good things about session 1 being about An Escape, because an escape scenario immediately poses a whole bunch of really valuable questions.

What is a crime in this world?

Who are your natural adversaries?

Why should you trust & rely upon your new party members?

What is violence like in this game? This says a lot about your game’s tone.

What will the next few sessions be about?

Literally, in 3 of the last 4 campaigns I’ve run, session one was An Escape. I’ll walk you through the set-ups for 2 of them (the third is a one-on-one campaign, so maybe not as useful to you).

In Vampire: the Masquerade, the party (all vampires) woke up staked to the ground in the basement of an abandoned school, captives of the fanatical inquisitorial group, the Society of Leopold. None of them had met each other before, all of them were confused, angry, scared, and low on blood.

What is a crime in this world?

Just being a vampire is a crime. You can be brutally attacked, captured, and murdered for being what you are. Your only recourse is to fight for your life.

Who are your natural adversaries?

Vampire hunters. They are not as strong or as fast as you, but they have dirty tricks up their sleeves and fanatical conviction on their side, and they do not see you as human.

Why should you trust & rely upon your new party members?

Without them, you will not escape your predicament. You know you can trust them because you have a common enemy. Each of them will have a chance to solve a problem with a unique skill that you do not possess, driving home that you can solve dangerous problems together that you could not overcome on your own. 

What is violence like in this game? This says a lot about your game’s tone.

Fast, flashy, bloody, and dark. Descriptions of injuries are savage; heads get torn off, chests get ripped open, shadows pinwheel wildly as the sole hanging light in the ceiling gets knocked around amidst the violence. But there’s a slick cool to all of it. You are in real danger, but you are also capable of dealing out grievous and acrobatic harm.

What will the next few sessions be about?

Upon your escape, the Prince of the city charged you all with seeking out the leaders of the hunters. Best not to disappoint him.

In my Call of Cthulhu campaign, the characters were all prisoners on a bus to the gulag, in Russia in 1938.

What is a crime in this world?

Literally anything, if you have displeased the wrong people. One of you received a letter you shouldn’t have seen. Another one wrote seditious poetry. Another was rude to a secret police officer during an investigation. Another literally has no idea why he’s here. There is a cold, kafkaesque indifference to the notion of fairness in this world. You have been disenfranchised and shipped off to do hard labor for almost nothing at all. Do not bother to look for reason in the machinations of the state.

Who are your natural adversaries?

The NKVD. They are all-powerful, all-seeing, and brutal. They could kill every last one of you right here in the snow, and so long as they filed the correct paperwork afterwards, there will be no follow up investigation. They have the key to the vehicles, they have warm clothes, they have all of the guns, they have the radio that is your only way of contacting the outside world. You don’t even have coats that will keep out the freezing wind. If you want what you need to escape this place, you will have to take it from them.

Why should you trust & rely upon your new party members?

You will be shot, if you try to escape alone. The tundra is vast and the NKVD are always watching. Your only hope is to cause confusion and hope that your numbers count for more than your jailers’ guns. And once you’re out, into Siberia? conditions are so hostile you have no choice but to band together for survival.

What is violence like in this game? This says a lot about your game’s tone.

Almost instantly fatal. You are shown fellow prisoners (NPCs) get headshot by the NKVD captain and drop to the ground, dead. Another NPC has a broken leg, and cannot participate in combat at all. If you get hurt, that’s it. There are no health potions or magic spells that will mitigate the effects of bullets and the biting wind.

What will the next few sessions be about?

As you escaped, you saw strange apparitions across the snow, which caused the radio to malfunction. You are fleeing in your stolen truck from the NKVD, but where are you going? Where can you go, except towards the mystery?

Escapes are great, too, because as a DM, your list of things you need to prepare is pretty concrete. You need:

- Mooks

- A boss for the mooks

- a map of the immediate area, so your players know what avenues of potential escape they have

- a couple of NPC fellow prisoners for them to talk to & for you to kill along the way (alternately, this can be a great way to link the party up with future quest-givers straight from the jump).

- A list of possible resources to aid in their escape that they might be able to get their hands on (a fire axe? a radio? a car?)

- A couple of ideas for spanners to throw in the works (if things are too easy/going too quickly, maybe this NPC fellow prisoner turns on them, hoping to curry favor with the NKVD; maybe one of the hunters has a flamethrower to force the vampires to double back; maybe it starts to snow with white-out conditions, maybe something is being filmed right outside and the vampires can’t bust through the steel doors without potentially breaking the Masquerade).

Another great thing about escapes is that they’re geographically isolated. So you don’t need to have The Entire Starting Zone figured out from session 1: you just need to know about this one truck stop in Siberia, or this abandoned school in Queens. When they gain access to the wider world, the session ends, and you should have an idea of where they want to go next.

And if any of their captors survive, you may have an act 1 villain on your hands. Don’t get too attached to the idea that any of them WILL survive; but if they do, and the party bears them a grudge, find them a place in the story, flesh them out as an adversary. Your Big Bad means nothing to them yet, but Captain Volkov, the NKVD captain who pursued them across the ice like a relentless automaton, scares them.

Another thing I like about escapes is that they feel very natural. There is no quest giver; they have an obvious goal they can all agree on, and the obstacles to achieving it are built into the situation. It’s a solid framework for an adventure that you can pack a lot of worldbuilding detail into along the way.

Good luck!

[dylanobrienisbatman]

100 Days of Writing!

So i was tagged by @thelittlefanpire and I think @kinetic-elaboration to do this like... 2 weeks ago (oops), but now I'm finally starting! Thanks to @the-wip-project for coming up with this idea, and my writing friends for always being cheerleaders, sounding boards, and a great support system. Hopefully I can keep up with this to some degree, even if i'm starting a bit late!

I definitely don't write every day, but I think about my writing most days (not to copy Sara but... I'm copying Sara lol), I'm always coming up with new concepts or AU ideas, or thinking of plot points, or just... wishing I could get struck by a muse and get my stories out onto the page, so hopefully this could help! Maybe thinking about my writing process a little will help me find my way back to some stories I'd love to tell.

Day 1: Write about what your motivation is to write at all. What got you started? What keeps you going?

The first fanfic I ever wrote was a modern AU bellarke friends with benefits AU that I wrote in 2017. It was probably the first 'full story' that I'd written since middle school. I'd had a bad experience during a creative writing lesson where a story I wrote got made fun of by my peers, and nobody stepped in to support me, so it really turned me off of creative writing for a long time. I remember being so proud of what I had written, and thrilled with my story, and then i just deflated like a popped beach ball in seconds.

So writing and actually sharing a piece of fanfiction was terrifying. I was sure that it would completely flop, or that everyone would think it was terrible, but it ended up being a totally restorative experience for me as a writer. I received nothing but positive feedback from my peers, and so much love, and it started me on the path of developing a community of other fanfiction writers that I cherish deeply. So the community I was building was a huge part of what inspired me to write in the first place, and it's definitely a huge part of what keeps me going now.

The biggest thing, though, is characters. As someone who is a little bit (a lot bit) daunted by the idea of creating an OC, fanfic is my safe little place. I love characters who are concretely developed, but also not fully developed, if that makes sense. I like to write for characters that have been given building blocks of personality, backstory, motivations, and purpose, but feel a little hollow, because it allows me to have a starting point to jump off from, where I can build the person I think they are and mold them into the stories I want to tell. I find characters who are fully formed and extremely well developed to be so daunting to approach, because I worry I will get them wrong, but characters that are more of a framework of a character with a blank slate feel like they're mine to play with. The 100 was great for that, with dozens of characters who had so much potential but never got flushed out well enough in canon to make them fully formed. I've also found Shadow and Bone to be the same way, in part because the source material is from the first person POV so it's harder to fully develop the other characters. They feel malleable, both concrete in a lot of ways and totally fluid in others. Those are the characters I like to play with.

In terms of writing them, it comes and goes. I'll be struck by inspiration and spit out 7000 words, and then be unable to get a concrete thought down on the page for weeks. I'll come up with a great concept, and then never be able to write the full story. My concepts for @troped-fanfic-challenge are notorious for that, I'll brainstorm an idea that I love, and refuse to ever part with, and then it will stay in my concept list forever, not a word of it written. Troped both inspires me to an insane degree, and also doesn't. But it's mine and @thelittlefanpire's little baby and I love it so much.

So, tldr, characters, community, and a little bit of the muse is what gets me to write, and keeps me invested in my storytelling.

[homestuckexamination]

Canon, Outside Canon, or Non Canon?

That canon anon is saying partly what I was trying to say. And yes, both interpretations can coexist in meta works like HS, but whether that’s your cup of tea or not depends on whether you prefer canon compliance, non canon compliance, or in-between.

asfsaf, honestly I’m so sorry, this seems interesting, and well put, but I am not able to read this atm and I don’t want to hold this essay on my asks until like, tomorrow or Sunday, soooo if any of y’all wanna check it before I do, here:

People who lean more towards canon tend to favor concrete info and develop something already established. 

In-between is tricky. It’s a fragile balancing act that if you don’t scale it fairly (however “fair” means to you), a writer may face backlash from either parties. Fanfiction generally are outside canon unless confirmed or firmly denied that it would happen by the authors of the original work themselves.

Others that choose non-canon compliance are very comfortable with/pick creativity and freefall with ideas not stated or implied within canon. AUs usually are in this category unless the concept of alternate universes exist as a concept in the story.

Note: This is a case of “it’s a continuum, not a binary”.

A sort-of comparison can be made to this:

It’s the main reason why people who lean towards canon compliance more are quick to spot inconsistencies. Sudden changes are annoyances- like a timeskip of a character suddenly “acting OOC” because of something that was never thoroughly implied or outright stated previously. Unintended continuity errors are a pet peeve.

“…divergent thinking concentrates on generating a large number of alternative responses including original, unexpected, or unusual ideas. Thus, divergent thinking is associated with creativity. Convergent thinking involves finding only the single correct answer, conventional to a well-defined problem." 

Homestuck^2 went on a drive with Divergent Thinking in the front & Non-Canon Compliance in the backseat, downed at least 6 bottles, and went on an excursion to crash a lot of previously established facts and ran with it. While the story serves as an encouragement for fans to make their own Homestuck continuation, it did irk some readers for the reasons above. For readers who prefer to lift off gradually from the canon, it doesn’t matter whether a character is turned into a refreshing symbol for a number of people- it’s usually not what the change represents, it’s the sudden change itself. However, for people who are okay with these have the advantage of enjoying them by being more flexible by a large margin. (Note: I’m using these as examples with objective readers in mind. I neither condone the toxic side of the fandom nor exempt how some of the creators lashed out.)

Some things to think about whether a work is canon, outside canon, or non-canon:

How do you draw the line between character development and OOC?

How would you know it isn’t simply just the character having experienced a vast amount of time for that person to change a core element of who they are or were? Look closer. Maybe you’ll find hints that this character is undergoing something. Do you see any faint connection for the alteration? If not, it may be a case of OOC-ness handled wrong. After that, go back and think ”What makes this character xir own and not somebody else?“. There’s canon Roxy, there are outside canon Roxys. Roxies. Whichever.

A way to avoid the readers splashing in cold water is to make the development happen on-screen. Otherwise, it’ll be like one of those episodes where the MC wakes up to find his loved one suddenly confessing that xe’s not who xe really is. Making a character simply explaining that "people change overtime” feels more like a cop-out when, from a reader’s perspective, is done so swiftly and in-your-face.

Is it ever justified that a character is OOC? 

This is a risky question to even answer. It highly depends on the character’s mentality. It’s like seeing someone known for patience to suddenly snap. Or a normally upbeat person to have a single moment of quiet forlorn. Or a pacifist having promised to fight someone. Sometimes, characters experiencing this type of OOC-ness is a writer’s way of saying “hey, this person has extra dimensions & limitations”. OOC Is Serious Business.

Whenever Batman displays emotions, it’s an indicator of who Bruce is inside despite rarely letting them show. How do we justify that outside of said display? Through his actions. We know beforehand that he’s a caring but jaded person, but he still fights for what good is left in the city of rampant crime. And when we do get that in retrospect, that’s when we see that perhaps that character’s never been Out-Of-Character at all. It’s when it serves as a hint AND a callback to a character’s past that resonates with them that it’s enough to let it happen from time to time- usually when the psyche’s at a critical point. It compliments the usual personality as a contrast. It doesn’t even have to be anything crucial. Can be as simple as not liking a music genre anymore.

Another reason for OOC-ness is when the character is transferred to a different place for several months. Different culture, different accents, different dialects, different other things. People tend to mimic what’s around them when steeped long enough.

*Headcanons are OOC by nature of it not existing in the first place. Even if it’s connected to a personality trait, it’s still something that hasn’t been entrenched in the original framework of reference. These are often the most biased and it’s usually done for readers to see themselves or other people in those characters. Headcanons can also be creative and shouldn’t be forced on others/stated as fact. It also shouldn’t be shot down just because it’s just an idea from someone else or your own.

Is deconstruction of a trope/archetype/stereotype even necessary when it’s something that most people already enjoyed?

First, by necessary, I mean, has it been done over and over already  to the point that it’s repetitive? Have you tried giving your own twist to the deconstruction to make it unique (e.g. a mean girl who’s only kind to animals)?

Why do you deconstruct it? What purpose does it serve to the message or theme of a story?

Once you’ve mulled it over, how about a reconstruction?

__________________________________

If anyone has something to add, feel free. All of this is spontaneously typed in a matter of… I don’t know how many minutes before I sleep. Probably several errors and typos by the time it’s shared. It’s like trying to understand Light & Void, Heart & Mind, and Hope & Rage simultaneously on one topic. G'day. Night. Whichever.

[hangingslothcentral]

Here’s what writing an episode of Spirit Box Radio looks like...

If you’ve ever wondered how episodes of Spirit Box Radio are written, here’s a little overview of that process!! If you like this, I can also write up a similar breakdown of the sound design process!

Most, but not all, episodes are born in the ‘Episodes’ section of the Show Bible. The Show Bible is a document of epic proportions - 50k in length and growing every day - which contains all the essential information about the show, from the continuously evolving methods I use to edit different character voices as I learn more and more about audio editing and production, right to ‘sketches’ of the episodes for all three series of the show. There is also a large section called ‘Ideas and Notes’, where I’ll write freeform dialogue between characters and keep track of themes and ideas to try and keep them consistent. These are all numbered, and referenced in a seperate spreadsheet I have of all the characters with significant and/or speaking roles in the show.

The full break down is under the cut!!!

The grandaddy of the the plans in the Show Outline, where I go over all of the main ideas I want to be talking about in the show and roughly mark out the outline of the shape of each season. The first draft of the Show Outline was very messy and rough, but subsequent versions are broken down into Season-by-Season chunks, all talking from a multi-series perspective so as to place the ideas of the show along a three-series-long arc.

Season Outline

Season Outlines take those ideas for the shapes of the series from the Show Outline and refine them further from a beginning-to-end-perspective. I'm a goal-oriented writer, which means my story ideas tend to come from a very ‘the end’ kind of place, and the stories that lead up to that ending are all about serving that ending. Quite often the ending itself changes a long over the planning and writing process for me, but that’s the great thing about a plan! Once you have it, you can change it if you need to. What a plan does, however, is provide you with a framework for understanding what bits of a story you have, and what bits you still need to make.

The three seasons of Spirit Box Radio are quite deliberately split into two halves. There are lots of reasons why and one of them is that it gives you a very specific kind of shape to be working from. A season with a mid-season break has a part one which has it’s own escalation of tension and climax, which comes at the mid-point of the season-long escalation, where the story might otherwise sag a little.

Beyond splitting the plan into Parts 1 & 2, I typically also break episodes into ‘Blocks’. This is partly practical; I can refer in conversations with my guest writers to where it falls in a specific block of episodes, and where that block fits in the story as a whole, and it also makes splitting up the episodes for sending out scripts to my actors a lot more straight forward. Part 1 of Season 1, for example, was broken into three blocks; episodes 1.1-1.7; 1.8-1.13; 1.14-1.20. I won’t go into detail about how this effects the structure of the episodes themselves, but it’s usually about building characters up to making a certain decision, or following a certain subplot more closely before pulling away.

Episode Sketch

A ‘sketch’ is a very brief summary of what needs to happen in that specific episode. This can be concrete, like ‘find [x] item’, or vague, like ‘establish that Character A has Trait Y’. Sometimes I’ll make a note to include a specific sound or character beat, or I’ll reference a noted scene from the ‘Ideas and Notes’ i think would fit in there. It’s usually at the sketch summary stage that I figure out whether or not there will be other characters in a specific episode. The sketches for almost all of the episodes in Season One were written between August and October 2020.

Episode Plan

This stage takes those necessary elements from the sketch and fleshes them out into a coherent story. The key thing about podcast episodes is that they have to be able to be entertaining on their own, minute by minute, as well as serving the whole series (I talked a lot more about this in the last episode of Hanging with the Sloths on Patreon which is only £2/equivalent pcm to access if you’re interested!!)

Whilst I’m making my episode plan, I’ll look back at the sketches for the episode I’m working on and those before and after it, and refer to the series outline where I can, to make sure I’m keeping a handle not just on the individual pacing of the episode, but the pacing of the show overall.

I like to have Episode Plans done by about a month before I need to have a script finished.

The Script Itself

Spirit Box Radio scripts are either agonising or happen in the blink of an eye. I do not have a set approach to how I write an episode. Sometimes the plans come with sections of dialogue written months before and I’ll drape the rest of the episode around those moments and see where I end up. If there is a character other than Sam in an episode, I’ll typically attempt to write that section of the script before the rest, so that I’ll definitely have it locked by the time I need to send it to the actors. 

Any script that is for other actors (i.e. not me) has to have notes, direction, and additional information included to help the actors give their best performance. That’s difficult sometimes because I guard my show secrets closely, so it’s often a game of working out how much I can tell an actor without including spoilers for later important plot points unless absolutely necessary, and how to supplement gaps in their information. I’ll usually compare a character to a character from something else as a shorthand for performance.

This means there are two versions of every script which needs to be seen by people who aren’t me. My scripts, which I call the master scripts, have all my audio cues, breaks for drinking water in recording sessions, character notes that are Top Secret, sound scaping ideas, specific sounds I’ll need to use at different moments, and specific audio cues. As I get better at sound design, my version of the script only gets messier and messier to look at. Sometimes, when I’m writing scripts, I’ll actually even start with sound design notes now!!

Script Locking

This is the point at which a script can no longer be changed. Scripts with other characters in them have to be locked before scripts for just Sam, because they need to go out to actors and I need to ensure that I have time to go back and ask them to redo things if necessary, and also to make sure they have proper time to rehearse and organise read-throughs as they’d like to. That means sometimes sections of an episode are locked way before other sections are even written. This can be challenging as a writer because sometimes I’ll come back to a section which I know still needs work, and find I’m extremely limited in what I can do because I’ve already sent an actor a script to record from - sometimes for later episodes, I’ll have the lines from otheres already recorded and ready to go before I finalise some of Sam’s lines for a specific episode.

Sam is recorded a minimum of three weeks before an episode is due to air, and I’ll record in 3-episode stints, usually. I like to have the scripts locked a week before I record so I have time to read them through at my own pace, but sometimes I won’t manage to have them locked until three days out. On one hateful occasion, I threw out an entire script after I’d recorded an episode and re-recorded the whole thing the day before airing. I do not recommend doing this and whilst I am much happier with the result it was an agonising experience because once I’d rewritten and re-recorded that episode I then had to edit it before it was due for release, a process which takes about six hours minimum. I was making tweaks until 20 minutes before the episode went live. Do not recommend.

Editing

Speaking of editing, the final stage of writing an episode actually happens in the cutting room. Sometimes episodes are simply Too Long. Sometimes stuff that worked on paper just don’t work in audio. Sometimes I can’t say a word correctly for the life of me and have to cut a whole sentence to cover it over. More rarely, but still often enough an occurence it bears mentioning, I’ll realise in the editing process that a conversation is better in a different order than the one given in the script, and pull and move around the dialogue to adjust the flow. Sometimes I’ll move sections about a bit to accomodate similar problems with narrative flow.

Annnnd that’s it! That’s what the process looks like!

[dutchdread]

Setting the stage

One of the main problems with arguing against any specific group is of course that everyone is different, and everyone has their own interpretation and opinion, therefore whatever I say, someone will say “but that’s not what I believe”. And that’s totally fair, however, in order to make an argument of any sort on the subject of the canonicity of Cloti or Clerith, we need to establish some definition of what we’re arguing for or against. For instance, it’s possible to like a pairing, but not think its canon, or to think a pairing is canon, and not like it. On top of that, there is the fact that there are two parts of this debate, the practical part, and the hypothetical part. 

The practical part addresses the LTD based on what actually happens within the story. From the Cloti perspective, Clouds feelings are mostly irrelevant here. Aerith is dead, so Cloud can’t be with her, end of discussion. The question then becomes, “Does Cloud settle down with Tifa, or does he spend his life being depressed over Aerith?”. Now while the debate SHOULD really end here, it rarely does.

Cleriths generally don’t like using this framework for the debate because on some level they know it can’t be won. The more extreme and misguided ones occasionally try to claim that Cloud is trying to get back together with Aerith in the promised land, and these claims will be addressed, but for the most part the proponents of Clerith prefer to steer clear of the practical argument in favor of the hypothetical one. They’ll say that while Cloud does end up with Tifa, she’s his second choice, Aerith will always be #1 in his heart, and that when it comes to romantic feelings and the role they play in Clouds life, Aerith has the bigger importance.” Since this stance has become ever more difficult to defend, Aerith being #1 has now often given way to either “Cloud loves them both equally”, or  “Cloud loves them both, and it’s up to the players imagination who he loves more”. For Clotis, the practical part is also one that they’d rather not address, 1, because it’s too obvious, and therefore suited only as a conversation ender. Aka “well, Aerith is dead, so Cloud is with Tifa, end of discussion”. 

But more than that, because they feel that the idea that Cloud is only with Tifa because Aerith isn’t around, and that she’s somehow the second prize is fundamentally grating and insulting to Tifas character, which btw, is the first hint that that’s probably not what the developers intended. Yes, it’s an easy argument to win, but just like with mud wrestling, even if you win, you still end up dirty. So because of that, the conversation usually evolves into the more vague realm of speculation. And the claims here become less defined. “If Aerith had survived, Cloud would have ended up with Aerith”. “Cloud loves Aerith more than Tifa”, “Clouds love for Aerith isn’t real”.

These are claims that can be argued over ad infinitum since none of them is concrete enough. They all suffer from the problem of trying to simplify complex nuances into useable and understandable language. What does it mean to say that Cloud would have ended up with Aerith? Lets say that’s true, does that mean she’s more suited for him? That they’re “Soulmates”? Whatever that means? No, it just exchanges one practicality for another, instead of Aerith getting screwed over by dying, Tifa is now getting screwed over by Cloud falling in love with someone while he had brain damage. The conversation can easily continue to “well, if Cloud didn’t have brain damage and Zack wouldn’t have died, then he’d have ended up with Tifa, therefore she’s more of a soulmate”.

These arguments try to reduce the characters to some hypothetical original blank slate to see which one fits better, ignoring the fact that these blank slates don’t exist, that we are all a product of our experiences. And that ultimately, soulmates themselves don’t exist. The best thing we can do is talk about the bonds the characters have, their prevalence, their importance, their nature, how connected their lives are through time and events, and whether the connections they do have between them came about BECAUSE of circumstances, or DESPITE of them.

[campfiretechnology]

A Practical Guide to Actually Writing Your Rough Draft

So you want to write a book.

Welcome to the club. In this guide, I’m going to do my best to define a concrete, executable plan to actually write a fiction novel. If you follow this guide to the T, you will produce an 80,000- to 100,000-word rough draft in 4 months.

If that sounds appealing to you, then you’re in the right place. Let’s get started.

Phase 1: Get Organized (1 Week)

Writing a book is not an easy task. You’re looking at 80,000 to 100,000 words – for simplicity let’s assume 80,000. If you write 1,000 words per day, that’s an 80-day undertaking. And that doesn’t allocate any time for planning.

What all this actually means is that if you’re serious about producing a novel efficiently, you need to get organized. Specifically, you need to organize your story information – characters, plot outlines, worldbuilding notes, etc – and your manuscript – the actual document that contains your novel.

You should spend your first week getting comfortable with a system to organize this information.

Story Information

You may be tempted to dive right into the writing part. This a bad idea unless you really know what you’re doing. To start, you’ll want to establish a system of keeping track of little bits of information about your story. This can be everything from character traits and backstories to extensive lore about the story’s setting.

Luckily, there are a variety of tools available to help you with this sort of organization, both free and paid. Here are a few, sorted from least structured to most structured:

A Plain Old Document – This could be in the form of a Google Doc, Microsoft Word document, etc. If you go this route, I’d suggest organizing it under the following headers: characters, world, and plot. However, this method isn’t quite as organized as the options below, so read on.

Spreadsheets – This involves using Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or smarter spreadsheets like AirTable to store information. This method is a little more structured. For example, you could have a spreadsheet for your characters, with each row corresponding to one character, and each column corresponding to an attribute like “eye color”, “height”, or “backstory”. Then, whenever you need one of those details, you can just search for the character in the spreadsheet and navigate to the correct column.

Story Planning Software – There are software programs designed specifically for keeping track of story information. We suggest Campfire Pro, the writing software that we make here at Campfire Technology. It’s certainly not necessary to follow along with this guide and write your first book, but it’s worth checking out if you want to get organized!

Campfire Pro’s Timeline View

The particular system you choose isn’t all that important – what matters is that you find one that works for you and you stick to it throughout the writing process. You’ll want to continually update it as you write so it’s always there as an aid when you get stuck or forget a key detail.

Manuscript

You’ll need somewhere to actually write your manuscript. There are a lot of options in this area as well, also ranging from free to paid.

For the simplest free manuscript editor, check out Google Docs. It has everything you need to write your novel, though people do say it can struggle a bit on slower computers with really long documents. For a more robust solution, check out Microsoft Word. Both of these options include a sidebar in the document that can show all your chapter titles so you can easily navigate between them.

Scrivener’s manuscript editor

Finally, I’d be remiss to ignore Scrivener, a desktop application for writing books that offers the ability to reorganize entire chapters by just dragging and dropping – something that neither Word nor Google Docs can do. It’s a very common choice for organizing manuscripts.

Once you’ve chosen your system of organizing the story information and manuscript, you’re ready to move on to the next step.

Phase 2: Plan (1-3 Weeks)

Writers differ immensely in how much they plan before sitting down to actually write the manuscript. Some, like Stephen King, prefer to do very little planning. These folks are affectionately referred to as Pantsers – they like to fly by the seat of their pants with their writing. Others, like Brandon Sanderson, are architects who plan out in great detail how the story will unfold. These writers are called Plotters.

There have been brilliant writers of both kinds. However, we strongly recommend that every writer do at least a little bit of planning. Specifically, you should develop the story seed.

The story seed consists of three elements: a character, a place, and a predicament.

The character is the main character of your story. You don’t need a ton of detail here, but you should aim to have a rough idea of who your main character is. If you’re stuck, try to establish some backstory, a few personality traits, and some physical attributes.

The place is where your story takes place (or for Pantsers, where it begins). Again, aim for at a minimum a rough understanding of the setting – is it the modern United States, a medieval village, a galaxy far far away, or somewhere else entirely?

Finally, the predicament is what happens to the character in the place. If you’re a Pantser, then this predicament should probably occur at the beginning of the book – what happens to the character that kicks off the action? If you’re a Plotter, it should be the more overarching conflict that the entire book is about.

Here’s an example of a story seed for a Pantser:

A 10-year-old orphan in London discovers that he is a wizard.

Here’s the same story seed but for a Plotter:

A 10-year-old orphan in London must stop the return of the most powerful Dark Wizard of all time.

You should be able to develop this story seed in one week. Then, if you’re a hardcore Panster and you’re about to explode because of how much you hate planning, you can move on to Phase Three. That basic story seed is all you need to get started. If you’re a Plotter like me, you might want to spend as much as another two weeks planning. Read on.

Detailed Plotting

For a Plotter, the story seed does not represent a snapshot of the beginning of the story, but rather a summary of the story as a whole. As such, your predicament should refer to the major conflict that your character overcomes in the story. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the predicament is Lord Voldemort’s attempted return to power.

Once you have that predicament, you have a lot of plot to fill in. There are a few different structures you can use to help with this. The three-act structure provides a set of scenes or “story beats” that should occur on the way to the final conflict. The Hero’s Journey and Save the Cat provide similar frameworks. Learn about these, and then either choose one, merge them into your own framework, or ignore them all!

The Hero’s Journey in Campfire Pro

With any luck, the characters, plot, and world of your story will develop in parallel as you plan. For example, a decision about a character trait should influence what that character does (the plot). Similarly, a decision about the world could inspire part of a character’s backstory. If you feel stuck, just pick one aspect of the story and start adding detail – the rest will flow from there. Just make sure you’re keeping track of all the decisions you make using your organizational system. Fill in those spreadsheets!

As a Plotter, the end goal of all this planning is a book outline. If you’re writing an 80,000-word book, that means you need perhaps 10-25 chapters with word counts varying from 3,000 to 8,000 words. How you decide to break it up will depend on your writing style and your story – but you should aim to have an outline containing what happens in each chapter and an estimated word count.

Now, Pantsers and Plotters, is the moment you’ve all been waiting for.

Phase 3: Write (12-14 Weeks)

Finally, you think to yourself. I can finally do what I’ve been wanting to do all along. Pat yourself on the back, and start writing. But make sure you stick to a schedule and stay organized.

Stick to a Schedule

Create a schedule and stick to it. Google Sheets can help with this!

Perhaps the most important thing to do if you want to actually finish your book is establishing a schedule and keeping to it. Set a minimum daily word count and number of days per week that you plan to write. It’s best to start low here – say, 500 words per day, 5 days per week – and then increase these amounts over time as writing becomes a habit.

If you like using Google Sheets, you’re in luck. We’ve put together a writing schedule template where you input the total target word count, the number of weeks you want to spend writing, the number of days per week you expect to write, and the date you start writing. The template computes your daily target word counts and will show you a progress bar as you get closer and closer to finishing the book! Just make sure you’re signed in with a Google account, and you can use File -> Make a Copy to copy the template to your own account and start making edits.

If you’re dedicated to getting your book done within the 4 month timeframe defined in this guide, make sure your daily goal eventually gets high enough. For example, if your target word count is 80,000 words and you have 12 weeks to write, you need to produce just over 6,650 words per week. With a five-day workweek, that’s 1,330 words per day on average. If you start at a lower goal than that, you’ll eventually need to compensate by going over if you want to reach your goal.

Your mileage may vary. Find a daily word count that works for you!

Just make sure you never go more than three days without working on your book, even if you only write a few hundred words. You’ll find that the story fades in your mind quite quickly if you don’t work on it for days on end. Keep the momentum going, and write as often as you can.

We have a lot more tips and tricks about this in our blog post Start Writing Strategically.

Stay Organized

Remember the organizational system we said you should make sure to have? Make sure you keep it up to date as you write. For Pantsers, you’ll thank yourself later when you’re writing chapter 38 and don’t have to sift through pages and pages just to find a character’s last name. Plotters, though you may have a lot of that information already nicely organized, your manuscript will almost certainly change course at least a little bit from the original plan. When it does, update your plan, or you’ll find yourself having the same issue of losing track of all those little details.

Keep your manuscript organized as you write.

When it comes to your manuscript, make sure you use headings or sections to break up the document into its chapters. That will allow for easy navigation between the different chapters, and will keep you grounded. Never get lost in your own book!

Conclusion

Hopefully this post has done its job, and you’re now a confident writer with a concrete plan to write a book from scratch. You’re about to open a new tab in your browser and search for the organizational system that’s right for you. Then you’ll pick the right manuscript editor and develop your story seed. If you’re a Plotter, you’ll add more detail to your characters, plot, and world until the story is broken up neatly into chapters, with each one moving the story along.

Finally, you’ll write the darn thing, and with some luck – publish it.

See you in four months.

Weekly TL;DR: Get organized, plan, and write your rough draft in four months using this practical guide. Don’t forget to use our writing schedule template.

If you have any questions or comments, join the discussion on our Discord!

[funkymbtifiction]

IDK who I am?

Ok so this is kind of a whole ass mess, I started off with a question that would make it a useful read for everyone and not a waste of time, but it ended up being a bit of a personal advice question so I hope that’s ok.

What would cause unhealthiness in a type? Most of the time, i feel like i’m a healthy ENTP, but multiple arguments with my ESFJ (or ESTJ?) mom have caused me to seriously doubt myself in many ways over the years. I read that an unhealthy ENTP can be argumentative, unwilling to drop arguments, etc. These are all things my mom tells me I do, along with not taking responsibility and making excuses. I’m 18 now and we don’t argue that much but we did a lot when I was around 13-15 and kind of, ya know, going through it as teenagers do. And since my mom has basically always used these same digs at me, I’ve assumed that maybe that’s the reason that it really hurts whenever those same digs are brought up now, and basically I have a lot of self doubt and am insecure about being an immature version of my type (because that would mean that i’ve been in the wrong in so many instances in my life if everything my mom says about me is true, and i think that sentence in itself proves my mom right in that i don’t like taking accountability.) As I’m typing this, I’m wondering if maybe that fear of being an unhealthy version of my type or admitting my faults could be related to enneagram ?? Anyways, I know that nobody’s perfect and can definitely appear even worse especially in conflict, I just sometimes wonder if i’m unhealthy or a completely different type altogether. That’s another thing, I’m always trying to find an answer to things, but have a hard time settling on just one. This could be another reason for my self-doubt. I guess my question, after that exhausting story, is WHY? I go back and forth between caring or not caring about personality type, but I’m in a particular stage right now where i care and really just wanna know why i am the way i am (i’m in a bit of desperate state of mind rn lol.) I don’t know if i gave enough info for you to answer this, but what causes me to fear failure so much? Does it have to do with being raised by an ESxJ? Or is it related to enneagram? Or something else altogether? Also, am i even an entp?? you’d probably need to know more about me, but from the way I wrote this, could you give me anything? I’m asking for so much right now, I’d honestly be annoyed at me. But I’ve been so unsure about so many things lately and I just want one thing in my life I can be at least a little more sure about.

I’m sorry you are in a place of feeling like you aren’t sure who you are; if it helps, most people who embark on MBTI journeys face that, sooner or later. And it often precedes a period of self-understanding that helps you find your type, because you start focusing on how you respond to things and how you get things done, rather than what others are telling you about yourself, and linking that to specific functions.

So much hyper-focus on what your mom says about you either indicates you are a high feeler (FJ seems more reasonable than FP at this point, since it’s not about defending self from the outside world, but wondering if what others say about you is true; but if you are sure of Ne-dom, I’d look into ENFP also) or in a Fe-loop. EFJs often mistype as ETPs at first, because they don’t realize how much they lack a specific sense of self, because their entire identity is built on how others perceive, relate to, and speak to them. If this has been a persistent concern for as long as you can remember, consider EFJ (most ETPs at your age care way less what others think, and way more about how they can ‘use’ them to get what they want, since Fe is just a tool for them and not a place of ‘being’).

If you are an ENTP, you sound as if you are in a Fe-related loop, excessively ruminating on others’ external views of  you and causing you to wonder if you are really the irresponsible jerk they tell you that you are. To break this loop, you need to get back into Ti and return to building inner frameworks of logical understanding and consistency. Your natural, healthy tendency will be to notice flaws in arguments, belief systems, and logical inconsistencies, and point them out to yourself and others. You should be learning ‘how things work,’ and not worrying so much ‘how others are reacting to me.’

To gain a better understanding of oneself, you need to put your mother’s criticisms into perspective. Is she the sort of person who finds something harsh and critical to say about everyone, all the time? Or is it just you? What is the objective truth in her digs? Can you come up with specific examples of you doing the things she is accusing you of, or is it just generalization on both your part?

Immature (and at 18, you can’t be anything else, cognitively) ETPs are prone to not taking personal responsibility for themselves and making excuses about it, yes. Ti can rationalize, argue, avoid, and shift responsibility away from self (a natural behavior of unhealthy Fe) rather than simply admit, “What I did was wrong, and I’m sorry.” Arguing, for an ETP, is like breathing – they are so good at it, and so self-assured of thinking up an excuse for everything they do in order to justify their “what I want” based thinking, they forget that their “fun banter” is actually seen as “aggressive behavior” from feeling types. (Sherlock is a great example of what I am talking about.)

If you think your mom has a point, and you can come up with times when you did avoid taking personal responsibility, you have a choice – to work on next time refusing to give an excuse, humbling yourself and admitting you didn’t do what you were supposed to do, or you were selfish and ate the last bag of chips in the house, or whatever else she “gets on you” for. You can also start taking “adult initiative” and doing “mature” things around the house, to show her you are taking responsibility for your stuff, your chores, your bills, etc. The only way to convince an ESJ that you are a mature adult is to consistently act like one and show them you are being responsible with your decisions. Part of being a mature adult, regardless of type, is admitting when you are wrong and taking responsibility for the problems/pain you cause.

If she is criticizing / nitpicking needlessly, analyze her and think about her reasons why she might be doing this, or feels the need to bring others down, or is being “hard” on you in particular. There are many factors that go into people’s behaviors. Do you remind her of someone she used to know, who went the wrong way in life, and is she associating your behaviors with that person’s downward path? High Si’s are prone to instant sensory comparisons of that nature. SJs are also highly responsible people, very driven, who have a specific idea of “how the world works,” and how YOU will have to be, to succeed in it. (IE, 9/5 job, be responsible, buy car insurance, save for retirement, take care of your family, etc). This is how and why they clash with the “when I see it, I’ll know I want to do it, and do it for awhile, and then find something else to do” fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants EP types.

With parents, it’s also important to remember their bias. Their opinion of you is just their opinion. What matters more out in the world is what your boss, your coworkers, and other people who have a direct financial impact on you as an adult in the workforce think of you. Your parents have watched you grow up. Seen all the good and bad things. Things that do not matter at all in the workforce, and that nobody knows about, outside the family. Things that do not have to ‘define you’ as an adult. EJ parents can also have a lot of trouble transitioning from being “parent” to “friend” – she is used to being your “mom.” So, prove her wrong. What can you do to show her you’re an adult?

You might also be an Enneagram 9 or 6 (both, Tritype-wise, is likely) which is messing with your ability to have a concrete sense of self.

Once you’re in college, your functions will show clearer. Heavy school work / an environment where you need to please peers and teachers will bring out lower functional development.

- ENFP Mod

[botaniia]

eleroyse replied to your photoset: Chapter 128 was packed with details, but the final...

Thank you so much for writing this 1200 word essay. Bert was my least favourite of RBA for precisely the reasons you mentioned here and I was indeed glad that he died and felt it karmic retribution. I never wanted or cared to know more about him, but when I read that last line, I teared up. So thank you, this was eye opening.

Thank you for commenting these thoughts! I'm very glad that my ramblings offered a different perspective on his character, that truly made my day! ;v; 

I think now’s a good moment to nudge people towards an area many readers haven’t thought about for a while. The manga is all about dragging characters who have been defined by one moral alignment into that grey area kicking and screaming, and I feel like it at least owes it to Bertholdt to explore his motives and meet him halfway now that the story’s moral framework has become so different from when he died. As the 104th become gradually darker, I feel like RBA become lighter.

Since you mentioned it, I’ve wanted to talk about that karmic death thing (but didn’t because the post was long enough already) so I might as well do it now that we’re here anyway. At first I thought his death was very karmic, but looking at the definition of karmic, it needs to be deserved in order for it to be karmic, and karma takes into account not only actions but also intent. 

So was what happened deserved?

Looking over his life, he spent at least 5 and at most 7 years of his life relatively free but oppressed by racial bias, taught to hate everything about himself and his people. Then he joined the army for intensive training as a child soldier to give his sick father the healthcare he needed, received a titan whose trademark is to sow death wherever it treads at age 10, was used to bring an enemy country to its knees with it, and was finally sent to destroy the walls at age 11. From that moment on, he started having night terrors so bad he contorted into strained positions to escape his restless dreams. 

He infiltrated the army and befriended the people whose families he killed, bombarded by his own guilt to the point where sleep was the only time he was at peace, dreaming of being free to go wherever he wants without Marley breathing down his neck (and even then, the dreams he had usually turned into night terrors). Reiner started dissociating and over the years began to abandon him more and more, losing him the one support system he had on the island. He grew suicidal and wanted to just disappear more than anything. I can’t imagine killing Marco improved any of these feelings.

When Reiner finally cracked atop Wall Rose, Bertholdt was the one who had to face the reaction of his former comrades. Although they escaped, Ymir came along and her death is another thing he carries on his shoulders. Zeke refused them the chance to recapture Annie and manipulated both him and Reiner to follow his secret plan to be reunited with Eren under the guise that they were serving Marley. He’s left with so little choice in killing his former friends that his only option to cope with it without breaking is to put on a cold façade now, deal with the mental fallout later when Marley doesn’t need him to be a good soldier. Finally, he dies disoriented and afraid, abandoned by both his allies and his former comrades, and his death marks a victory for Paradis that’s very likely to be celebrated to this day still. None of his former comrades ever pause to consider his position or think about the morality of their action, despite its necessity. He dies a demon.

He lived and died a slave to Marley, under their control longer than he was actually free. He was a disposable weapon with very little choice of his own. I don’t think it’s fair to say that on top of all of that, he deserved a gruesome and lonely death. His own guilt and the deterioration of his mind weighed down on him heavily and his life was painful. As much as I condemn his actions, I can’t possibly think his predicament is something a 16-year-old had coming. The ones who sent him to that island deserve punishment, not him.

If anything, I see his death as another needlessly tragic instalment in the cycle of hatred that keeps the world as ugly as it is. It’s more... thematically recursive than it’ll ever be karmic to me.

I think Magath said it best this chapter.

I also think that what Layniefer pointed out here is actually important: Isayama doesn’t seem to agree he’s an unsympathetic character either. After death, the manga never framed him that way. It didn’t bring up his cold façade in RtS, it didn’t even imply his death was deserved when Marco was referenced last chapter. This chapter, it even reminded the reader of his most sympathetic moment in the series. 

Post-mortem portrayals of him show two of his qualities: his gentleness in supporting other characters and his vulnerability. His sympathetic portrayal is a negative: the absence of an unsympathetic portrayal implies sympathy. This is what I meant by that extrapolation; the average reader won’t notice this detail. I don’t expect them to, I’m sure people have written neat metas about other characters that I simply don’t notice because I don’t care for them that much. So I really hope that before the end of this story, it’s made more concrete.

Something in me wants to believe that the next logical step is to challenge the reader about celebrating his death by providing a new context and a new moral framing. To do that years after his actual death? That’d be some grade-A writing if successful and I’d be truly satisfied. I’m not sure if Isayama intends to try going for that, but if he does he only has my blessing. All the pieces are in place for him to do so, and he did say Bertholdt’s story didn’t feel finished yet.

Either way, it definitely makes me happy that my words help in offering a different perspective! Sorry for the rambling at the end ;v;’

[imaginaryelle]

Okay, @tonyglowheart , here is that promised response:

@three--rings  already brought up some points I was going to mention so I’ll skip over going into detail on those and just say that I agree with the use of caution and thoughtfulness in approaching works produced by other cultures (of whatever language), and I, too, love a mash-up of MDZS and CQL for ideal storytelling. Accepting genre tropes in general is really important as well. I once showed my grandfather a piece of my writing based on pulp adventure stories like Indiana Jones and his main reaction was “All these secret chambers and codes and gadgets, isn’t that all very convenient?” and I just had to shrug and say, that’s the genre, it’s part of what makes it fun to read. Also, based on reading about various medicinal histories I’ve been exploring, I can say that the coughing up blood thing is a trope based in Ancient China’s traditional medicine. Lots of pre-understanding-of-blood-circulation societies thought expelling old or stale blood was important for the body (possibly based on how menses works and reflected in Western medicine’s several-century-long obsession with bloodletting), and I recently read that having it caught in your chest and needing to cough it up was part of China’s take on things. I’m still not sure about all the other face bleeding, but if it’s not actually based in something historical it seems like a reasonable extension for the genre.

Okay, so the thing I want to respond to most is the translation bit, because I… okay. I understand that people are going to find works in translation less accessible than works written in a language they can read, and especially works written in their native language and of their own culture. Because obviously there are a ton of underlying ideas that inform word choice and symbolism and character arcs that most people just don’t really think about until they make a serious study of writing or literature (or they travel and learn more about other languages and literature traditions). On a linguistic studies level, language literally shapes the way humans in different cultures think, and what they pick out as important (an academic article that compares English and Chinese specifically can be found here). Even the distinctions between British English and American English, on a word choice and theme or syntax level, can have an impact. I have seen it turn kids off a book, because there are just too many elements they don’t get (this is, for example, why there are two English versions of Harry Potter). Same thing with different decades even. I’m talking about kidlit and YA here because that’s a lot of what I work with, but in that realm, the way we approach stories today is just incredibly different from how they were approached even 50 years ago, even in the same language and the same country. Think Judy Blume or The Dark is Rising vs Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Percy Jackson. And I’m fascinated by those changes, and by the effects of culture and bias on translations (I am extremely hyped to read Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation, for example), so I tend to approach them as puzzles, where I’m reading the work, but also looking for clues that will tell me more about both the translator and the author to hang in balance. I enjoy that part, and I enjoy figuring out aspects of the two languages that can contribute to how a translation evolves.

I’m a language and literature nerd, and I know not everyone is going to take the approach I do.  I’m not going to fault anyone for saying they don’t enjoy or can’t get into a translation. That’s a perfectly valid opinion. Reducing a work to its translation and judging it only on that impression of it, however, seems pretty shortsighted to me. Here are some things that I think are important to keep in mind when reading a Chinese work in translation, just based on my own extremely limited knowledge:

1. In Chinese storytelling it’s an established practice to reference idioms, poetry, folklore and historic events as a sort of shorthand for evoking the proper tone. Chinese writing tends to be extremely allusive, and much more understated than what we’re used to in English-language storytelling. We can see hints of this in some of the MDZS translator notes, and it’s likely that this difference feeds into a lot of dissatisfaction with the translation. Either the allusions are not translated in a way that adds meaning for an English-speaking reader, or the standards for detail are different. Indirectness and subtly are huge parts of Chinese literature, and so different words or scenes will have very different connotations for Chinese vs. English speaking audiences. And this isn’t even touching on the use of rhyme and rhythm in Chinese writing, which are all but impossible to translate a lot of the time, or the often extremely different approaches to “style” and “genre” between the languages (an interesting article on comparative literature is here at the University of Connecticut website). Given this knowledge, it’s entirely possible that, for example, the smut scenes are more effective in Chinese than in the English translation. In fact, I find it difficult to believe it would be popular enough to get multiple adaptations and a professional publishing run if they weren’t. In translation, smut is a lot like humor: every culture approaches it a little differently. Unless a translator is familiar with both writing traditions and the relevant genres (or they have editors or sensitivity readers who can offer advice), something is going to get lost in the process. And sometimes that something is what at least one of the involved cultures would consider to be the most important part. It’s unfortunate, but it happens.

2. Chinese grammar is slightly different from English grammar (and I’m focusing on Mandarin as the common written language here. For anyone interested, a very basic rundown of major differences is available here). Verb tenses and concepts of time work differently. Emphasis is marked differently – in English we tend to put the most importance on the start of a sentence, while in Chinese it’s often at the end. Sentences are also often shorter in Chinese than in English, and English tends to get more specific in our longer sentences. From what I understand, it’s also a little more acceptable to just drop subjects out of a sentence, and that is more likely to happen if someone is attempting to be succinct. I’ve been told that it’s especially common in contentious situations, as part of an effort to distill objections or arguments down to an essential meaning (if I’m wrong about this or there’s more nuance to it, I’m happy to learn more). As one example of how this affects translation, let’s take that and look at Lan Wangji’s dialogue. I’m willing to bet that most of his words are direct translations, or as direct as the translator could manage. But his words don’t work the same way in English that they do in Chinese. If you continuously drop subjects and articles (Chinese doesn’t have articles) out of a character’s speech in English, they start to sound like they have issues articulating themselves, and I see that idea reflected in fic a lot. The idea that Lan Wangji just isn’t comfortable talking or can’t say the words he means is all over the place, but I don’t think the audience was intended to take away the idea that Lan Wangji speaks quite as stiltedly as he comes off in the English translation. He’s terse, yes. But I at least got the impression that it’s more about choosing when and how to speak for the best effectiveness than anything else, because so many of his actual observations are quite insightful and pointed, or fit just fine syntactically within the conversation he’s part of.

3. Chinese is both more metaphorical and more concrete than English in some ways. In English we use a lot of abstract words to represent complex ideas, and you just have to learn what they mean. In Chinese, the overlap of language and philosophy in the culture results in four-character phrases of what English would generally call idioms. Some examples I found: “perfect harmony” (水乳交融) can be literally translated as “mixing well like milk and water” and “eagerly” (如饥似渴) is read as “like hunger and thirst.” If these set phrases are translated to single word concepts in English, we can lose the entire tone of a sentence and it’ll feel much more flat and... basic, or uninspired. The English reader will be left wondering where the detailed descriptive phrase is that adds emotion and connotation to a sentence, when in the actual Chinese those things were already implied. 

As translations go, MDZS in particular is an incredibly frustrating mixed bag for me, partially because of the non-professional fan translation, and partially because my knowledge of Chinese literature and especially Cultivation novels is so minimal as to be nearly non-existent. But I have enough exposure to translations in general and Chinese language and literature in particular that I could tell there were things I was missing. The framework of the plot and scenes was too complete for me to ever be able to say that any particular frustration I had was due to the author, not the translator. There’s a big grey area in there that’s difficult to navigate without knowing both languages and the norms of the genre extremely well. At one point I was actually able to find multiple translation for a few of the chapters and I loved that. It was really cool to see what changed, and what remained essentially the same, and I was actually really surprised to find that rant you mention, because to me, more translations is always better. I think it was probably about wanting to corral an audience, and possibly also about reducing arguments from the audience about whether a translation was “wrong” or “right.” And that is an issue that’s going to crop up more in online spaces than it has traditionally. Professional translators don’t have to potentially argue with every single reader about their word choice. But then, professional translators also tend to have a better grasp of both the cultures they’re working with as well, and be writers of some variety in their own right, and while I can’t know how fluent (linguistically or culturally) the ExR translator was at the time, the translator’s notes lead me to believe that at minimum their understanding of figurative language use was incomplete. So I can’t fault people for not enjoying the translated novel as much as CQL, for example, because it can be quite choppy and much of the English wording feels like a sketch of a scene rather than something fleshed out fully, but I don’t think it’s fair to apply that impression to MXTX herself or the novel as a whole in Chinese.

More about ExR: I also got the sense that they have a strong bl and yaoi bias as you mentioned, mostly from the translator’s notes. And in general, okay, that’s fine, they’re working with a particular market of fans and I’m just not as much a part of that market. I knew going in that I wasn’t the target audience. I’m okay with that. What I was less okay with was getting to the end and reading the actual author’s notes in translation and finding that the author herself expressed a much more nuanced, considerate, and balanced approach to the story and her writing process than I had been led to believe by the translation and the translator’s notes. And so when people want to criticize the author for things that happen in the translation…. I just think it’s very important to remember that the translator is also a factor, as is the influence of the cultivation genre, and the nature of web novels, and the original intended audience. As you said, white western LGBT people were never the intended recipients of this work. It comes from a totally different context. But I think it’s also important to remember that, again as you noted, it wasn’t first written as a professional work. It was literally a daily-updated webnovel, which works a lot more like a fanfic than a book in terms of approach. And on top of that, it was the author’s second novel (if I’m reading things correctly) and one that they experimented with a lot of new elements in. Those elements earn a lot of forgiveness and benefit of a doubt from me.

About MXTX herself: Most of the posts or references to posts that I’ve seen that judge or dismiss her have to do with the stated sexuality of characters who are not Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. And it just kinda baffles me, because this is fandom. Most of us spend our time writing about characters who are stated to be straight all the time. Why is anyone getting up in arms about this? How can anyone in fandom just summarily dismiss an author for producing original work that centers around a gay relationship when that’s… literally what most of us write, to some extent or another? Again, I’m not saying there’s aren’t aspects that can be criticized in her stories, but the hypocrisy is kind of amazing. I think that fandom, as a culture overall, has issues with treating gay men and their relationships as toys rather than people, and individuals can address their own behavior on that as they learn and grow. That doesn’t mean that every work about gay men having sex is fetishistic, and honestly I’d say that the translator demonstrates more of that attitude than the actual story ever does. The smut is such an incredibly tiny part of the world, plots and character arcs in MDZS that it could be taken out without significantly changing the main narrative very easily. That’s… not fetishistic. That’s smut as part of an overarching romance plot.

Which leads me to the tropes discussion. Yes, obviously there are tropes in MDZS. There are tropes in every story. It’s not a failing, it’s part of writing. Are some of those tropes BL or Yaoi tropes? Sure. Wei Wuxian denying his own sexuality for much of the novel and his tendency toward submission and rape fantasy are some of the very first tropes mentioned in relation to the genre. That Wei Wuxian just sort of seamlessly moves from “pff, I’m NOT a cutsleeve, I’m just acting like one” to shouting “Lan Zhan, I really want you to fuck me” in front of friends, enemies and family without much of a process for dealing with the culture of homophobia around him also seems to be characteristic of the genre. But I think that’s about where it ends. You and @three--rings both made some good points about the nature of the actual relationship, which I agree with: There’s not much of a power play element, or an assigned gender roles element. They’re both virgins who only partially know what they’re doing from looking at illustrations of porn, and they do enthusiastically want to have sex with each other. They’re just bad at negotiating their kinks clearly and could use a decent sex ed manual. The trope I actually have the most issue with is the use of alcohol. I personally despise the trope of “I’ll get someone drunk on purpose for reasons that benefit me personally,” due to my own real life experiences. But it’s an exceedingly common trope in Western media (Idk about Chinese media, but my guess would be it exists there too), and it’s not exclusive to mlm smut scenarios. It’s pretty much everywhere. And, thankfully, Wei Wuxian does seem to eventually realize that he’s fucking things up by using it. That said, despite knowing what happens to him when he drinks, La Wangji keeps doing it. So they’re both contributing to that mess, no matter how much I dislike that it exists, and the narrative doesn’t actually condone it. No one says “Oh, Wei Wuxian, that’s such a good idea, that’s definitely something you should keep doing.” He is consistently warring with himself over it but unable to resist. It’s still dubcon and manipulation, and I certainly understand people not wanting to read it. I just also think that reducing the entire relationship down to “bad, terrible, fetishistic BL tropes” requires the reader to ignore large parts of the story and pretty evident intent on the parts of both the characters and the author.

On purity culture: Yeah, that’s obviously been cropping up all over the place the past several years (I have indeed been in marvel for ages :P). It does seem like there are places in fandom (to some degree any fandom), where “I don’t like how this idea was executed in this context” gets conflated with “This entire work is terrible,” which is a disservice to everyone involved. I agree that there are many things that can be legitimately criticized in MDZS, but I also just… really don’t understand where this attitude comes from that because something is not perfect, it’s trash. Wasn’t fandom essentially invented out of the desire to respond to canon? To make it more your own? Isn’t picking out the parts you like and ignoring the bits you don’t (or writing around the bits you hate until you can fit them in a shape you like better) pretty much what all fic is about? Aren’t those holes people are sticking their fingers into and complaining about opportunities for more fan content?  But even more than “purity culture” I would term it “entitlement culture,” because a lot of it seems to be about the idea that media should fit into and support a certain set of beliefs at all times. A lot of fandoms are no longer an atmosphere of “I don’t like the way this is presented so I’m going to create my on version that works for me.” Instead there’s a growing element of “I don’t like the way this is presented so that means it’s wrong and bad and the original creator should admit that it’s wrong and bad and fix it to satisfy me.” And honestly? That’s just sad to me. More and more, we’re not having a conversation with canon, or even with each other. We’re not building what we want to see we’re just… tearing other people down. I really don’t understand what anyone finds fun in that, and I’m going to do my best to keep creating the things I actually do want to see instead.

[uncloseted]

All my friends are doing really big things with their lives and they’ve all found something they enjoy doing but I feel like I don’t have any of that and it depresses me. I’m the only one who feels like I don’t have a purpose.

It’s okay to do things on your own timetable.  I know it can feel like you’re behind or being left out when a lot of people around you are in a certain stage of their life, but you’re not doing anything wrong by not being there yet.  Everyone has to figure things out at their own pace, and there’s no right or wrong way to do that.  I also bet that at least a few of your friends aren’t as fulfilled in their jobs/school/projects as you think.  I know a lot of people who pursue a particular career because they think they should, only to realize that it’s really not something they love or that brings them fulfillment.  I know from the outside, it can look like everyone else has found their place and is happy, but behind the scenes, for a lot of people, it’s not that simple, and they feel the same way you do now.

Putting that aside, it sounds to me like maybe you just need to figure out what your passion or purpose is.  I’ve talked about this before here with regard to finding a career, so apologies to anyone who’s seen my thoughts on this before, but here’s my take on it.

First, I would look into the Japanese concept of ikigai- your “reason for being”.

When searching for your ikigai, I would suggest making a list (no matter how short), of the things you love, the things you’re good at, the things the world needs, and the things you can be paid for.  Look for overlaps in each category, and try your best to think creatively about how you can combine the different categories.  For example, maybe you love movies, you think the world needs to know about global warming, and you’re good at organization.  Your ikigai in that case might be to be a coordinator on documentaries that focus on global warming.  It’s a job that pays pretty well, and also incorporates the other sections on your list, so it’s likely to feel fulfilling.  For help figuring out what your strengths might be, I like the VIA Character Strengths Survey.  It’s not methodologically perfect, but I think it can help to point you in the right direction, or at least give you a set of options to consider when thinking about what your strengths might be.

Moving away from ikigai, there’s this story that I think about a lot.  One of my great uncles told it to me, and I always assumed it was a story from his life until one day I discovered it was actually a chain email called The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman and the Banker.  I still think about it a lot, though, and it’s shaped the way I view work, so maybe it will be useful to you as well.  It goes like this:

An American investment banker was taking a much-needed vacation in a small coastal Mexican village (in my uncle’s story, the fisherman is from Kalymnos and he dives for sponges) when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. The boat had several large, fresh fish in it.

The investment banker was impressed by the quality of the fish and asked the Mexican how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The banker then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican fisherman replied he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman replied, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos: I have a full and busy life, señor.”

The investment banker scoffed, “I am an Ivy League MBA (in my family the school is always Harvard), and I could help you. You could spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats until eventually, you would have a whole fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to the middleman you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You could control the product, processing and distribution.”

Then he added, “Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City where you would run your growing enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But señor, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15–20 years.”

“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You could make millions.”

“Millions, señor? Then what?”

To which the investment banker replied, “Then you would retire. You could move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

The question that this story prompts for me is, if you had unlimited time and resources, what kind of life would you lead?  Where would you live?  What would you spend your time doing?  Who would you be with?  Would you have pets?  Kids?  What would your daily routine look like?  Maybe the answer for you isn’t a university degree or an office job.  Maybe it’s not millions.  Maybe it’s diving for sponges on a Greek island or being a fisherman in Mexico.  I think it can be helpful to put together an image of that perfect life and then try to reverse engineer the best way of getting there.

I would also think about the opposite- what kind of life could you absolutely not stand living? Knowing what your “hard nos” can help you to narrow down the potential field of options. For example, my hard nos include anything to do with venipuncture, jobs that require me to be organized on behalf of other people, anything that’s heavy on performing/public speaking, jobs where people have high expectations of me (incidentally, this is the reason I’m not a therapist), and any environment that wants me to work more than 40 hours a week.  For some people, all of those are totally doable, but for me they’re not, and that’s okay.  There’s no reason to spend your life doing things that make you miserable.

The last thing I’m going to suggest is the CareerExplorer quiz.  I like this quiz in particular for a few reasons.  First, it’s a really comprehensive test, and so I think it can help you find the language to describe what you’re going through, what your hard yesses and hard nos are, and what you need in a work setting. Even if the answers the test gives aren’t perfect, I think it provides a framework to think about career options because of the questions it asks.  The other reason I really like this test is because so far it’s been 100% correct for everyone I know, even those with more obscure careers, so it seems to be more exact than other career aptitude tests out there.  And the user interface is really nice as well, which is a bonus.

I know none of that is a concrete answer to your question, but hopefully it can lead you in the right direction when it comes to finding a purpose and thinking about what you might want to do with the rest of your life, careerwise or just in general.

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 1.5

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, as we finished up chapter 1’s Daily Life and shifted into Deadly Life, plotting a murder was not relaxing, Shuichi had issues and he and Kaede were FRIENDS, Kaito finally made a legitimate but basically inconsequential attempt to do something about the situation, and Rantaro fell right into Kaede’s (but really the mastermind’s) trap. We also got through most of the pre-investigation discussion, including nobody taking the First Blood Perk, so we’re about to jump in here as everyone takes a look at the Monokuma File.

The photo of Rantaro’s body in the Monokuma File doesn’t show the blood on the back of his hand that was holding the Monopad. The body discovery cutscene included that correctly, but it seems someone forgot to draw it here.

Both the file and the cutscene don’t show the trail of blood from the shot put ball that implies it rolled away rather than being placed on the ground by someone, which was something that made me assume right from the beginning that the murderer wasn’t in the room when he died. (I thought it was Shuichi who set a trap, though.)

(And, since the real murderer actually was in the room after all, I guess that means she probably threw it at him from a distance away? That would also prevent her getting any blood on her clothes. Assuming the trail of blood seen in the investigation but not in the cutscene/file is in fact canon.)

Kokichi:  “And try to take this seriously, okay? Our lives are on the line.”

Excuse me, you have no right to tell other people to take things seriously when lives are at stake.

Everyone’s agreement to investigate with at least one other person makes a lot of sense. In the previous games it was always just “have two people guard the body”, but crucial evidence that the culprit might try and destroy could be anywhere. This is a much better way of trying to prevent that.

Kaito:  “It’s not something you should be proud to say… but I guess we don’t have a choice.”

Hah, look at Kaito not liking to admit that they have to suspect each other enough to do something like investigate in pairs just in case.

Kaede:  (Once we expose the mastermind, we’ll be able to escape…)

Yeah, that’s right, expose the mastermind. That’s totally what this trial’s for, right? Not catching the blackened or anything.

Kaede:  “Anyway… we have to stop the mastermind so this is the last murder that ever happens here! We just have to.”

Shuichi:  “…”

…Has Shuichi already realised the implications of the fact that Kaede keeps talking about catching the mastermind and not the blackened? Oh no.

Ryoma happens to join in a conversation about the sensor and the receiver, in which Shuichi mentions he can turn the receiver off. Ryoma then goes on to be the person in the trial who argues that Shuichi could have faked his alibi by turning off the receiver. It’s nice that the writers actually keep track of who knows what piece of information when most characters are only involved in a small part of the investigation.

Kaede:  “Well, I still think the mastermind is the culprit.”

Guh. The mastermind is the culprit, but Kaede is only saying this to encourage people to hone in on the mastermind during the trial. She doesn’t truly believe for a second that her shot put ball might have missed and the mastermind might have wanted to finish the job for her.

Shuichi:  “He moved *away* from the hidden door… to this spot. Why would he do that…? And there’s no trace of his body being moved. It… doesn’t add up.”

Kaede: “…”

Shuichi:  “Ah, are you okay? You’ve gone pale.”

Nervous that Shuichi’s already figuring out your plan and you’re not going to get a chance to uncover the mastermind in the trial, Kaede?

Shuichi finds Rantaro’s Monopad in his pocket. Later when we see the photos, we see he had a Monopad in his hand. These two pieces of information are given to us far enough apart that it’s quite easy to miss the contradiction in it, and nobody notes the contradiction in this chapter, but it is important. I remember vaguely noticing on my first time that it was weird the Monopad wasn’t where it should be, but wrote it off as a minor writing mistake in the end since it was never brought up in the trial. Nope!

Shuichi:  “The shot itself is fairly heavy… You would have to be fairly strong to use it as a weapon.”

Kaede:  (Fairly strong, huh?)

This is probably Kaede thinking she can use this as an excuse to hide her crime by claiming that she’s not strong enough to kill someone with a shot put ball, exactly like she goes on to do in the trial.

Kaede:  “You mean… he had the same idea as us? N-No way… He should have told us… We could’ve worked together…” (I collapsed to the floor, crushed by the weight of my frustration.)

Look at Kaede being especially devastated upon realising that not only did she kill an innocent who wasn’t the mastermind, she killed someone who was just as determined to fight back and help everyone escape as she was.

Shuichi:  “…the culprit’s objective wasn’t to survive, it was to kill everyone here.”

Kaede:  “E-Everyone?”

Kirumi:  “That would explain why they would forgo their survival in favor of a class trial.”

Kaede:  “But… doesn’t that seem like a bit of a stretch to you?”

Heh, Kaede’s thinking about the First Blood Perk from the framework of why she ignored it and not even realising that other people might assume she did it for an awful, selfish reason like that.

Kirumi:  “Well, if the culprit it also the mastermind, then it’s certainly plausible.”

Kaede:  “W-Well, true… Killing us all does seem like something the mastermind would do…”

And here’s Kaede realising that she can use this as more ammo to get everyone to zero in on the mastermind during the trial. (It really isn’t something the mastermind would do, though. If they just wanted to just kill everyone, they’d have done it already and wouldn’t go about it in this convoluted a manner.)

Shuichi:  “The books that you stacked up haven’t moved.”

Kaede:  “Oh, you mean the ones I stacked to keep people from going through the vent.”

“Oh, you mean that thing I did with them that definitely wasn’t me setting up a death trap, just reminding you that I was totally blocking the vent with them even though that doesn’t make sense.”

Ryoma:  “Tell me who you think the culprit is. I don’t mind if it’s just an educated guess.”

Kaede:  “Oh, I wanna know too…”

…Do you really, Kaede?

Ryoma:  “But… there’s someone you’re a little bit suspicious of, right? No, there’s gotta be.”

Shuichi: “Ah…”

Ryoma:  “But you’re afraid of that. You’re afraid of suspecting someone, aren’t you? That’s how it looks to me.”

One of the cool things about Ryoma is that he’s really perceptive like this. Shuichi has definitely seen enough evidence by now to start suspecting Kaede, but of course he’s too terrified to acknowledge it. Ryoma doesn’t even know about Shuichi’s issues, but he can still see this!

Maki:  “…Am I a suspect?”

Kaede:  “Oh, no! That’s not what I meant—”

Maki:  “You should suspect me. In fact, you should be suspicious of everyone.”

I mean, no, she shouldn’t suspect you, Maki, you have an airtight alibi that you’re about to explain to them. In a lot of ways this case is really brilliant, but one of the decidedly less brilliant things about it is how everyone involved in the strategy meeting temporarily becomes an idiot when it comes to understanding how alibis work. Some of said characters are genuinely a bit dim, but Maki is emphatically not.

At the very least, this does work nicely to establish how Maki feels about suspecting people – that it’s simply the sensible thing to do, especially when it’s her you’re suspecting.

Maki:  “So trust no-one, Kaede… Or you’ll lose, got it?”

Guhhh, it’s so heartbreaking that Maki is convinced this is how the world works but also so, so understandable for her. At least she isn’t going to stay trapped in this mindset forever!

Maki:  “And he picked the seven people he thought would be useful in a fight.”

Kaito’s idea of “the seven people who would be useful in a fight” is… interesting, to say the least. Two obvious candidates he should have included that he didn’t are Ryoma and Kirumi. It’s perfectly understandable that Kaito avoided Ryoma, given his issues with him (which I will discuss plenty in chapter 2, don’t you worry), but Kirumi is a little more strange. It’s possible Kaito wasn’t aware of just how much of a hypercompetent badass she is and assumed she could only do normal maid stuff.

Maki:  “Kaito thought Himiko’s magic and Angie’s connection to Atua would be useful.”

For these two, I feel like it might have been less Kaito’s decision than it seems. He was probably inviting Tenko when Tenko insisted Himiko should come with her because of course she would, and then seeing that Himiko was coming, Angie invited herself along too because Atua thinks it sounds fun! or whatever. And then Kaito kind of shrugged and went, “well I guess magic and Atua might help? Whatever, the more the better.”

Kaede:  “But what about you, Maki? Why did he also pick the Ultimate Child Caregiver?”

Maki:  “He just looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, you probably know how to fight.’”

And he’s right, isn’t he! Kaito is a really good judge of character, without needing any concrete evidence to go on. It might seem like he’s just being ridiculous and reckless and idiotic, but he actually has a very keen intuition when it comes to people.

Still, can we take a moment to appreciate the utter trainwreck that this strategy meeting must have been? Gonta locked himself in the back room to watch a bug movie rather than participate, Tenko, Himiko and Angie were probably bickering like they always do, and Rantaro, one of the most sensible and down-to-earth of the bunch, left a few minutes in because he clearly figured his own plan was better than this nonsense. Kaito may be good at motivational speeches, but he is terrible at actually strategising, which would have very quickly become apparent the moment he tried to start doing so. Maki probably sat quietly in the corner wondering why the hell she even decided to go along with this idiot in the first place. She could totally have taken control of the meeting and devised a strategy herself, but I imagine she wasn’t comfortable revealing how much she knows about fighting and killing things, besides which most of the people in the room would probably be too busy being ridiculous to pay attention to her plan.

Also note how Maki is alone in the game room and not investigating with anyone else like they promised. Probably she did at first go into the A/V room to question Gonta but then got fed up with the idiocy of everyone else involved and left.

Gonta:  “Gonta happy to be invited to meeting.”

Aww, I bet he was. He’s so desperate to protect everyone and be useful to everyone that he must have been overjoyed when Kaito asked him for help with this.

Gonta:  “But Gonta think he not be much help, cuz he not smart…”

Gonta really isn’t as dumb as he thinks he is, though! He’s honestly about on par in intelligence with most of the meeting’s participants.

Gonta:  “Why… no-one believe Gonta!? Gonta feel so… pathetic!”

Aww, it’s so sad that he feels pathetic and useless because people don’t realise how much he means well. Don’t worry, Gonta, most of them will come to appreciate how good you are in due time! Especially Kaito.

Kaede:  (Ultra Despair Girls 2… Coming soon…?)

This: not actually breaking the fourth wall! Just a little in-show advertisement for one of Team Danganronpa’s other projects. Though I find it a little strange that they’d wait over fifty seasons of main-series Danganronpas before deciding to give one of its early spin-offs a sequel.

Kaito:  “So I’m not cleared of suspicion yet, huh?”

Yes, you are! We just got done discussing your alibi! You were with at least Tenko the whole time! Gah. Kaito should also not be so stupid as to think this. He is considerably smarter than people always say he is.

Shuichi:  “Ah, don’t worry… you’re not a likely suspect…”

Kaito:  “Hey, that’s not something a detective should say!”

Shuichi:  “What?”

Kaito:  “If you suspect me, you better pursue it to the end. Investigate until you’re satisfied.”

However, I can’t be too annoyed since it gives Kaito a reason to say this, which I really like. One of the traits Kaito puts a lot of value in is having strong convictions and being true to yourself. He believes that if someone feels a certain way about something, they should accept that feeling as a part of who they are and run with it 100%, not try and pretend they don’t really feel that way at all.

(This is one of the reasons Kokichi pisses Kaito off so much – because he’s the exact opposite of this. I’ll probably be talking about this a lot.)

Kaito:  “Well, I’m not planning on leaving it all to you guys. I’ll investigate my own way!”

Yes, Kaito, look at you doing something about this even though you’re not going to end up contributing anything new to the investigation other than what you already have.

Kaito:  “If either of us find something, we’ll report it to the other, got it!?”

Communication! It’s all very well people spreading out to investigate multiple things, but if they never share that information with each other then it’s a lot less helpful. Teamwork is important for astronauts!

Although Kaede never does end up reporting the rest of her investigative findings to Kaito. Sorry, Kaito.

Gonta:  “Gonta not eat door for breakfast! Breakfast most important meal of any gentleman’s day!”

Shuichi:  “…I agree.”

It’s just as well Shuichi’s not actually agreeing about the breakfast part, because he shouldn’t be – he never usually has breakfast until Kaito convinces him to start doing so next chapter.

Kaede:  “I guess an arm could fit through as well, if it were thin enough…”

This should be proof enough that Gonta didn’t do anything involving sticking his arm through that door, because his arms are definitely not thin.

If you talk to Maki again after leaving the A/V room, you get a new conversation.

Maki:  “Were those two still there?”

Kaede:  “Yeah… I didn’t wanna get involved.”

Maki:  “Smart move. Just hearing it wore me out.”

Ha, I figured as much. Maki: always 1000% done with everybody’s nonsense.

(I wonder which two out of Kaito, Himiko and Gonta she’s taking about. Even though he was being the most sensible, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kaito was one of the two, knowing Maki.)

Maki:  “Well, detective, if you do solve this case, it'll really help us out. We're only in this mess because the culprit refused to step forward.”

Shuichi:  “…”

Kaede:  “Let's go, Shuichi! We still have more people to talk to!”

Shuichi:  “Y-Yeah…”

[the camera slowly and pointedly pans over to Maki, who is giving them one of her death glares]

Maki:  “…”

This part makes me think that Maki is looking at the cheeriness between Shuichi and Kaede and noticing how subtly forced and awkward it is because Shuichi already suspects Kaede.

Kokichi is wandering around on his own despite everyone’s agreement to investigate with someone else, because of course he is.

Kaede:  “Why would you do something that would make everyone suspicious of you?”

Probably because he’d rather everyone be suspicious of him and keep their distance than have someone act like they trust him and so he can trust them too only for them to turn around and stab him in the back.

Kokichi:  “Nee-heehee… I’m so excited. I want the class trial to start already.”

Sure, just keep telling yourself that this is a game and you’re having fun with it, Kokichi.

Kiyo:  “My appearance and actions thus far suggest I am someone who would commit a murder.”

BECAUSE YOU ARE. AND YOU HAVE. MULTIPLE OF THEM.

Kaede:  (At least he’s self-aware…)

Exactly what I was about to say, Kaede.

Kaede:  “Well, Tsumugi *is* the Ultimate Cosplayer. She could’ve gone to the bathroom to secretly disguise herself as someone else.”

*deep breath*

NO. THIS IS A STUPID ARGUMENT. You do not need to be disguised as someone else to commit a murder if nobody is going to see you do it! The only point at which a “maybe Tsumugi disguised herself!” argument has any kind of relevance is if somebody who isn’t Tsumugi was witnessed committing the murder, or coming out of the library just afterwards. Then, sure, we should question if that person was really who they appeared to be or if it was Tsumugi in disguise. But the whole point of this mystery is that nobody was seen doing anything of the sort! Maybe Kaede’s saying this because she’s expecting someone to be in the photos, but once they see the photos and don’t see the murderer in them, everybody should drop this line of questioning altogether.

That’s not even getting into how ridiculously dumb Tsumugi’s whole cospox thing is. I find it incredibly difficult to buy that it’s real, and Kaede should, too. Tsumugi even told her to look away while she got changed – she could have been secretly applying makeup to fake the rash during that time! And even if it is somehow bizarrely true that Tsumugi does get cospox from cosplaying real people – well, she considers Kaede and everyone else in this school to be a fictional character, doesn’t she?

And, even if you take this as concrete proof that Tsumugi can’t disguise herself, that doesn’t magically give her an alibi! She was still using the bathroom at around the time Rantaro was killed, and, as I said, funnily enough, you don’t need to be wearing a disguise to be able to kill someone.

I’m not saying all this because I believe everyone should have actually figured out Tsumugi did it during this chapter. I just think it’s frustratingly dumb that that’s the reason they use to write her off as a suspect. The real reason she apparently couldn’t have done it is because nobody knows about the hidden passage in the bathroom, and therefore that she could have got into and out of the library without being seen by the multiple witnesses who were just outside it and would have seen anyone using the normal route.

Tsumugi:  “You breathe life into characters. It’s almost like you’re summoning them. From fiction into the real world…”

Yes, Tsumugi, and once you’ve summoned a fictional character that you wrote into the real world by using a Flashback Light, they are real people and you no longer have the right to fuck with their lives for people’s entertainment.

Kaede seems really convinced the mastermind is going to be in these photos. She has to just be desperately telling herself that, because she has no reason to assume that the mastermind would have wanted to interfere with her murder plot. She should expect the photos to show exactly as little as they do.

I love how Kaito is clearly SO READY TO PUNCH SOMEONE in this photo of them rushing in. He was told the mastermind was in here, so here he is, already rolling up his sleeves getting ready to give them a piece of his mind.

Please also appreciate how Gonta is the first to run in out of the next four, even though he had farthest to run because he was in the A/V room. He probably insisted that everyone else get behind him just in case something dangerous was in there. Gentlemen protect everyone.

Kaede:  “Yeah, that’s pretty odd. Why isn’t there a picture of the mastermind entering?”

Yep, definitely odd, you definitely think that’s odd and weren’t expecting it in any way.

Now really would be an appropriate time for Shuichi to mention the intervals, since it provides the possibility for someone to have got in without being in the photos. I guess he’s too busy thinking that these photos prove the culprit has to be Kaede and freaking out about it to mention that, though.

There’s something kind of interesting about the fact that Rantaro was opening the moving bookcase. It implies he’d never done so before – if he had, he would already know the door behind it is locked with a card reader. If he already knew that, then his plan here wouldn’t have been to try and get into the secret room; he’d have been better off just staking out the library and trying to catch the mastermind in the act, exactly like Shuichi and Kaede were doing. Heck, if Rantaro had known that beforehand, he could have innocently suggested to Kaito to hold the strategy meeting in the library, which would have completely ruined both the mastermind’s hypothetical attempt to make more Monokumas, and Kaede’s murder plan.

(Kaito came so close to completely accidentally saving everyone, if only he’d happened to hold his strategy meeting in the basement’s other room. Instead, what he actually did was completely accidentally ruin everything by delaying Kaede and Shuichi long enough to let Tsumugi get away.)

Shuichi:  “Ah, I did notice something while I was removing the camera… The security sensor for this camera was switched off.”

Did you not also notice that the flash was switched on, Shuichi? Or are you just neglecting to mention that detail because you don’t want to consider what it means?

Kokichi:  “Oh, by the way… Rantaro had his Monopad the whole time, didn’t he? Do you think anything was in it?”

Kokichi is potentially being very observant here. But.

Shuichi:  “I inspected his Monopad, but I didn’t find anything suspicious about it.”

…Other than the fact it was in his pocket and not in his hand like this photo shows it should have been, no?

Kokichi:  “Aw man, so it’s got nothing to do with the case. How confusing.”

I swear to god, Kokichi, if you’ve actually noticed the contradiction between where his Monopad was and where it should have been and you’re not mentioning it to ~make things more interesting!~ or whatever the fuck, then the deaths of literally everybody who dies from this point onwards are on your head for being an uncooperative, selfish little shit. This fact proves that the murderer was in the room with Rantaro, which proves it can’t be Kaede. If Shuichi had known that (and he’s probably only not noticing because he’s too busy freaking out over all the evidence that Kaede did it), then maybe we’d have reached the actual truth in this upcoming trial.

I am going to be charitable towards Kokichi and assume that this is not in fact the case, otherwise I would be complaining constantly throughout the rest of the story that everything bad happening is technically partly his fault, and that’d get pretty repetitive pretty quickly.

Kaede:  “I-It’ll be fine… I just… feel like my back is up against the wall.”

Yeah, your back specifically, right? Everyone else will be fine no matter what.

Huh, you can examine stuff in the warehouse after everybody but Kaede and Shuichi leave to go to the trial. But they didn’t change the investigation text for the shot put balls. Shame.

Shuichi:  “Kaede, really, are you okay…?”

Aww, look at Shuichi worrying about Kaede, even though he himself is very decidedly not okay right now for reasons specifically related to her.

…how is it daytime outside. It should be nearly midnight by now.

Shuichi:  “Do you really think it’s one of us…? Not just the culprit… But the mastermind as well?”

Kaede:  “Huh? Isn’t that what you told me, Shuichi?”

At this point, Kaede believing the mastermind is among them isn’t just because she believes in Shuichi’s reasoning, it’s also because she has to believe that for there to be a hope of her saving everyone in this class trial.

Kaede:  “If you just dismiss a possibility and look the other way without confirming anything… then you’re just turning your back on the truth.”

Shuichi:  “…”

Kaede:  “What’s the matter, Shuichi? You seemed so sure of yourself during the investigation.”

Shuichi:  “Ah, sorry…”

Shuichi knows he’s turning his back on the truth right now and he hates himself for it but still can’t bring himself to face it.

Tsumugi:  “Don’t worry about my cospox. It always goes away as soon as I stop trying to cosplay real people.”

Which is all the more proof that it’s utter bullshit and Kaede should be suspicious as hell about your claim.

Kaito:  “Don’t worry. Even if we gotta do a class trial or whatever, I’ll do something about it!”

Yep, Kaito is going to do something about… the entire class trial! Somehow. Because that’s definitely a thing that can have something done about it and he’s definitely not just desperately trying not to feel powerless.

Kaede: “Remember our promise? We’re gonna escape this place and remain good friends afterward… So let’s do it! I’m sure we’ll be alright! Because… we make such an incredible team.”

Kaede is still pure and good even when she is a murderer.

Kaito:  “Heh, I wouldn’t be able to call myself a man if I was still scared after hearing a girl say that.”

…Okay. Look, we need to establish something here. I am of the firm, unshakeable belief that Kaito’s talk about manliness is not toxic masculinity in any meaningful way, and isn’t even that strongly about gender. I will be commenting on basically every instance of him talking about manliness in order to build up a picture of what the concept of being a “man” actually means to him throughout this commentary.

So it is extremely inconvenient that the very first instance of this also happens to be one of, what, maybe four or five lines Kaito has in the whole game that are somewhat misogynistic. Aside from this tiny handful of lines, everything else about Kaito’s personality, principles, and behaviour towards the game’s female cast – especially Kaede and Maki, who mean the most to him – indicates that he considers gender completely irrelevant to how much he respects a person, to the point that these few lines come across as jarring and out of character. This line here implies that he sees Kaede as beneath him because she’s a girl, and that his concept of manliness involves men needing to be emotionally stronger than women, and both of these things are objectively not true about him. I’ve talked about Kaito’s respect for Kaede more than enough for the former of these being untrue to already be abundantly clear, and as I said, I will be making a case for the latter being untrue as well as we go along.

Danganronpa’s writing can sometimes be annoyingly sketchy and awkward like this (see: 80% of the things Miu ever says, and every time Tenko yells about degenerate males, to name the most obvious examples from this game). While Kaito is usually so well-written that he’s unaffected by that, it seems that ever so occasionally it manages to graze him with a temporary Misogyny Bullet. These moments should be disregarded as bad writing and not taken to be a meaningful part of Kaito’s character, since they are contradicted by absolutely everything else about him.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled Kaito Being Good:

Kaito:  “Bring it! I’ll show them how I, Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, live!”

Kokichi:  “Don’t you mean ‘die’?”

Don’t worry, Kokichi, he’ll show them that too, in time. And that’ll do a better job at your main goal of pissing off Monokuma than you ever will.

Kaede:  “If you’re scared, borrow the strength of others who will be there to help you.”

Yeah, Shuichi! Like Kaede is here for you right now, and like Kaito and Maki will be later! Friendship is exactly what people need to help them deal with the terror of a killing game, and it’s great that we finally have a Danganronpa that realises this and makes it such a big part of the story.

Kaede:  “Think of everyone you’re helping, and let that be your strength.”

And now Kaede is definitely speaking from personal experience – she’s able to be as strong and encouraging as she is because the thought of the people she’s doing it for gives her that strength!

Kaede:  (Those words were mainly for me… To inspire me, so I would not turn back…)

Guhhh. She knows she’s almost certainly going to her death; of course she’s terrified and needs to give herself courage like this!

Kaede:  (Rantaro… He died without knowing his own Ultimate talent… No… He was murdered… by some horrible, lowlife scumbag…)

AAAAAAAAA. KAEDE, NO, YOU WERE TRYING TO SAVE EVERYONE.

(I mean, he was actually murdered by a genuine scumbag, but Kaede is not thinking that the scumbag isn’t her.)

Kaede:  (I’ll never forgive his killer… That’s why… We’re going to expose the mastermind and end this killing game!)

Because she thinks that the only thing she can do to try and make up for this unforgivable crime is to at least actually save everyone else when all is said and done.

Kaede:  (I can’t show any fear here… I must fight till the bitter end.)

…Yeah. The bitter end, all right.

---

[Next post]

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 113 Review

Sad! Edition

Arlingtonpark presents: SNK 113, a play in three acts.

Act I

Act II

Act III

GIVE ME A BREAK, OKAY? THIS CHAPTER DIDN’T GIVE ME MUCH TO WORK WITH!

This was a more leisurly outing for this arc compared to the previous string of chapters. We get some insight into Zeke’s plan (but not a full elaboration), Levi makes a monkey out of him, and the EFC arrives in Shighanshina. That’s it.

Ironically, this was one of the more action packed chapters, yet it’s not as thrilling as, say, SNK 112, which was mostly our main trio sitting at a table.

Our heroes, sans Eren, have been mostly helpless in the face of Zeke and the EFC’s machinations, and Isayama has pressed this to good, suspense-inducing, effect.

We still don’t know much about Zeke, and why Eren is acting like he is now is still not completely understood. The opposition is opaque and they’ve been on a real winning streak so far. Just like how reports of a serial killer in your neighborhood can put you on edge, our heroes are put on edge by…just everything that’s happened so far, and we feel that gnawing fear by extension.

But now might be a turning point.

For the first time, Zeke/Eren (Zeren?)’s plan has hit a real snag. Now, now things will really start to get interesting. Pieck and Galliard did escape and participate in the Liberio fight, and Gabi and Falco are unexpectedly here on Paradis, but those were hardly setbacks. Detours maybe, but they didn’t threaten arrival at the final destination.

This is different. The plan was to rendezvous at Shighanshina and that’s just not going to happen now. Levi is dragging Zeke around like a monkey on a leash and Eren is none the wiser. And there’s no way for him to know that.

It’s not like they can communicate telepathically. unlike Hange and Levi When the time comes to meet up, Zeke isn’t going to be there. From Eren’s perspective, Zeke may as well have disappeared off the face of the Earth.

The plan apparently was to provoke an attack on Paradis by a coalition of the world’s forces. But this plan also apparently hinges on being able to use the Wall Titans to repel this attack. But that’s out the window too now. Zeren’s plan is in danger of catastrophic failure and at the worst possible time.

The enemy is already here. Pieck is on Paradis, no doubt gathering intelligence. It’s good that Zeke is subdued, but that creates a power vacuum and there’s no one around to fill it.

The legitimate government is facing a legitimacy crisis.

The EFC will be in damage control mode now that their plan is in danger of falling through.

And oh yeah, Marley has already infiltrated the island.

Paradis can easily devolve into chaos, now. Pixis’ government is a leader without much of a following; Eren has popular support. The EFC has a following but their leaders will soon be scrambling to regain control of the situation. And all Marley cares about is killing everyone.

And this raises a very intriguing question: How will Eren react to this?

Like I said, things have mostly gone smoothly for him. Yes, Eren’s had this stone cold demeanor, even in the middle of his fight in Liberio, but really he’s been coasting so far. Things have done nothing but go his way. Now it suddenly isn’t. So how does he react to that?

If SNK 112 is any indication, he won’t handle things well. Eren lost his cool at a backhanded swipe by Armin. And I’m not gonna lie, if that was all I had ever seen of Eren, I would have said he was weak.

Sad, even.

When it comes to Eren, Isayama will probably go the classic shonen villain route. Think Frieza or Cell from DBZ. Calm and cool, but only when they’re in control. Once they lose control, they lose their cool and reveal themselves as the wild animals they always were.

This will probably play into his freedom complex. Eren wanted to free humanity from the titans so they could explore the outside world. He framed it in terms of control. Freedom=control is the equation here.

Not being in control, to him, means not being free, so when he realizes he’s not in control anymore, he’s going to go apeshit.

Like the Trumpian figure that he is, Eren will probably resort to dominance rituals to sooth his own ego.

Floch had better watch out. When the guy at the top is a dominance obsessed lunatic, it doesn’t matter how high up the food chain you are. If you’re not at the top, you’re at the bottom. If my Eren=Trump framework is correct, Eren is going to abuse that to hell and back. He’s going to subject Floch and co. to all manner of degradations.

I honestly wouldn’t mind that, if it’s not extreme. Floch would deserve it.

Where do I even start with Floch?

In the past, I’ve compared the story of SNK to the current political landscape in the US. I don’t think this is intentional, to be clear; it’s just a very amusing parallel.

As leader of the Yeagerists, Floch roughly corresponds to Mark Meadows, the leader of the House Freedom Caucus. The HFC is a band of extremist, Trump-aligned, Republican politicians who openly rebel against their leadership. Meadows is the group’s current chairman.

Floch and Meadows share one overridingly important similarity: neither of them can create; they can only destroy.

John Boehner (pronounced “baner.” Seriously.) was leader of the House Republicans, until he was shit-canned because the Freedom Caucus didn’t like him. Here’s how he described their mindset:

“They can’t tell you what they’re for. They can tell you everything they’re against. They’re anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That’s where their mindset is.”

That’s basically Floch. He wants to Make Eldia Great Again and he thinks the Wall Titans have a role to play in that, but does he have a plan beyond that? Almost certainly not! That would require building something up, and that is beyond his feeble abilities. He thinks Hange is soft and opposes that. He thinks the military is old fashioned and opposes that.

Is there anything concrete that he supports? He supports using the Wall Titans and he supports Eren’s leadership, but his “game plan” is basically:

Use Wall Titans.

???

ELDIA IS GREAT AGAIN!!1

That’s hardly a plan.

All Floch and his team have accomplished is create chaos and dysfunction.

That’s it.

They instigated a social uprising, decapitated the government, and now? They’re just running around trying to find Zeke. (Even though Zeke and Eren already have a rendezvous point worked out.)

All Floch is good for is blowing stuff up and shitting over everything. But in the words of the great Sam Rayburn:

“Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.”

Floch is no carpenter. Floch is a coward. This pitifully small boy. This absolute failson. It’s no surprise at all he’s where he’s at.

Floch talks big now, but that’s only because he’s riding high now. I bet he’s the type of person who buckles under even minimal pressure. You all saw how he was during the Shighanshina battle. Everyone kept their composure even as Zeke’s rocks were closing in on them. Except him. He was the first to crack.

My sense is that Floch is not a constitutionally strong person, and he knows it. And he thinks he’s a coward, so we know he doesn’t think well of himself.

That’s the key. That’s why he is so devoted to Eldia.

He can’t feel pride in himself qua himself, so he has to feel pride in himself qua an Eldian. His logic is that if Eldians are strong then he is strong by proxy because he is one of them.

It’s the same thing with Trump supporters. Trump’s base supports him because Trump wants to maintain the racial hierarchy that benefits white people. And Trump’s base supports that because a lot of them are poor, white people. Because even though they don’t have a lot going for them, “at least I’m not black.” There’s little in their lives to be proud of, so they take pride in their race to feel better about themselves.

It’s like the evil version of gay pride.

Gay people take pride in their homosexuality because it’s a form of psychic preservation. They are denigrated for this one aspect of themselves, so they emphasize pride in that aspect to counter the stigma. It’s a way of preserving their sense of self-worth.

People like Floch take pride in their race because they have no self-worth to preserve. They’re empty and sad. Their race is one of the only things they have going for them. So they fight for Eldian greatness because a restored Empire will make them feel all big and strong.

It is utterly pathetic.

That’s one thing Floch and Eren have in common. They’re both sad. From Eren’s sad enslavement to the vague notion of freedom, to Floch’s sad belief that if Eldia is made “great” he’ll be made great in turn. It’s sadness all the way down.

The exemplar of that in this chapter is when Floch confronts Shadis.

It’s hilarious how Shadis calls Floch out on being a sad pissant and Floch tries to prove him wrong, only to prove him right in the process.

Not only does Floch miss, he’s stupid enough to say so out loud. He even explains what he was trying for.

Duuuude!

Just play it off as a warning shot! You’re trying to put up a tough guy front. Don’t admit to having failed spectacularly.

He would have been better off doing that anyway. Hitting Shadis in the foot just for mouthing off also would have proven him right. If you feel the need to shoot someone for mouthing off to you, then yeah, you are, in fact, a sad pissant.

But if it was just a warning shot to the ground around him, then that still would have been excessive, but it wouldn’t make you look insecure as hell.

To quote Game of Thrones:

“We’ve had vicious kings, and we’ve had idiot kings, but I don’t think we’ve ever been cursed with a vicious, idiot king!”

He’s not just vicious. He’s not just an idiot. He’s not even just a vicious idiot. He’s a vicious idiot with power. God help them.

But this idea of insecurity being the root cause of nationalist behavior raises an important question: why are the denizens of Paradis also on board with this nationalist program?

Well, nationalism runs on tribalism, so the people need to care about their Eldianism. Their being Eldians.

And going by that…it might actually be the Survey Corps’ fault.

At the start of the series, the Walldians were apathetic about the outside world. But thanks to the (not unjustified) efforts of the Survey Corps, the Walldians started to care.

Rod’s titan was over twice as big as the Colossal Titan; it loomed over Orvud like a kid looms over a toy cityscape playset. A lot of parallels were made in that sequence to the original Colossal Titan attack. In hindsight, Isayama, in his typically blunt style, was probably motivated by more than a need for a stylistic flourish. He probably did it to impress on the reader what he intended the Walldians to take away from the same event: From their perspective, this was another Shighanshina.

But the ending was different this time.

This was bigger than the first attack. Much bigger. Thousands upon thousands of people died in the first attack and its aftermath. Literally no one died the second time. Rod’s titan was subdued without incident. Awesome, but it also had the effect of inspiring nationalistic pride in the people.

Historia’s plan, very explicitly, was to exploit these nationalist feelings to the Survey Corps’ advantage. Stopping a second Shighanshina created a sense of communal unity among the Walldians. The plan was to encourage and then use those feelings to “stabilize the situation” as Historia herself put it.

And it worked, only it worked too well. Now those nationalist feelings have carried over to the Marley conflict to deleterious effect.

And then there’s the Wall Maria operation. That was described by the narrator like this:

“The area within Wall Maria represented one third of the land humanity had left. When the territory was lost five years ago, the loss of human life and property was massive. And, as those who remained inside the two walls quickly realized, those losses were only the beginning. It seemed wrong for us to continue living. Whether humanity could survive another day was out of human hands. Everything was now up to the titans. Because humanity had no way of defeating them. But, that day, one boy gripped the dagger in his heart and used it to kill a titan, stomping its massive head into the  ground. How did the humans who saw that sight feel? Some were filled with pride. Some were filled with hope. Some were filled with rage. But all of them screamed. Now, if Wall Maria is taken back, what scream will fill humanity’s hearts?”

The term for the “scream” the narrator is describing here is “nationalistic fervor.” The Wall Maria operation inspired further feelings of nationalism in the people. And again, those feelings have carried over.

This is a case study in unintended consequences. They wanted humanity to fight, now humanity is fighting and it’s backfiring spectacularly. The people are out for blood. Only this time the blood doesn’t evaporate without a trace.

It’s very revealing how Floch acts towards Shadis compared to Hange.

Hange didn’t have a very high opinion of Shadis the last time we saw them in a room together, but they still stood up for him. Even when they’re pissed at someone, they still don’t lose sight of the humanity of that someone.

Floch also has a low opinion of Shadis. He ordered him beaten for no reason. Because Floch is a sad, maladjusted, man-child. He sees the world in black and white terms. If you support him, you’re golden. If you don’t, you’re not even human.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Floch actually gets off on abusing whatever power he has over people. Being powerful is a high he doesn’t get to experience often, so don’t be surprised of he savors the exercising of it.

So I’ve noticed that the Survey Corps is still training recruits to fight titans. Who don’t exist anymore.

Ooookay.

Where is Isayama going with this?

Floch cites the stagnation in Survey Corps tactics as a reason why Eldia isn’t great. Isayama isn’t trying to both-sides this debate is he?

Floch is an asshole and his movement is repugnant. He’s a right-wing fucking nationalist. But it seems Isayama is trying to send the message that he’s not wrong.

What is it with this series and this schizophrenic approach to right-wing nationalism? The story has condemned it in certain moments, but when it comes to condemning the actual leaders of this movement, Isayama equivocates.

Floch is an asshole, BUT he’s actually right because the Survey Corps really is backwards thinking and in need of new leadership.

Eren is an asshole, BUT he’s actually right because the rumbling *is* necessary to protect Paradis and everyone else was just slow to accept this.

This isn’t just a case of the villains having a point. The key in situations like that is to show they have a point, but that their methods are obscene. Important to that is showing an actual alternative to those methods. Putting forth an alternative is important because it doesn’t matter how horrific Eren or Floch’s actions are, if it’s the only way to proceed then the argument can be made they are doing the right thing.

When the villain has a point, they have correctly identified a problem, but have incorrectly identified the solution.

With Eren and co. the story doesn’t just depict them as having correctly identified the problem. Their proposed solution is depicted as being at least somewhat correct too.

That’s a problem because it means Isayama is granting undue legitimacy to a repugnant, real world ideology.

Them being assholes should be a feature, not a bug. The bug being that they have a point. But the way Isayama has set things up, it’s that them having a point is the feature and their jackassery is the bug.

It all amounts to the story criticizing the nonessential aspects of this movement while leaving the substantive aspects intact.

At this point we’ll all need gas masks real soon because the smoke just keeps piling up.

The last thing of note is Zeke. Apparently he doesn’t get off on pain and suffering. Who knew.

We are apparently going to finally get a peak (you know it’s only going to be a peak) at his backstory and mindset next chapter.

Zeke worrying about his glasses, which belonged to what seems to have been a childhood friend of his, is obviously supposed to signal that Zeke can in fact empathize with people.

I am…warily looking forward to this. The ending blurb teases that he does in fact have a reason for what he’s doing. What I hope Isayama will do, because I think it would be a cool twist, is reveal that Zeke’s motives and plan is merely internally logical, but from an outside perspective, his plan is still totally batshit insane and maybe even nonsensical.

Because that’s how it is with people. People are rational actors, but all that means is that they respond to incentives and harms as they themselves weigh them in accordance with their own internal value system.

In other words, people act in a way that is always internally logical but not always truly logical. The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic example of this. Everyone acts rationally and because of that everyone loses.

How interesting would it be if Zeke’s motives only make sense to him, but are still, in a way, understandable?

The next chapter will end the second volume of this arc. Based on past chapters in a similar position, it will probably end on some event that rapidly escalates the conflict. My guess is that it’ll end on Marley launching its attack on Paradis.

SNK 114 awaits.

[jessicaoniell-blog]

Product Design Process: Ultimate Guide for Beginners

You have an idea in mind. You want to build it. What form should it take? How can you make an app or a product the most intuitive for people to use? Good design is not just intuitive but also memorable - it does not blend into the background, yet using it should come naturally. Leaving a (good) lasting impression on users is important. This is the noob’s guide to product design. If you have no idea of how to design a product, start here.

Product Design Process - Step by Step Guide

The entire design exercise, however, should only come secondary to market needs and opportunities. Once you have scoped out your market opportunity, you should have a rough idea in mind of what possible forms the final product may take. Using this as a framework, you should dive deeper into what the product looks like and why. While this document focuses primarily on user-facing software, the core principles can be applied to any generic product. Initial Conception This phase primarily focuses on concretizing user needs and putting down a defined form for the product. Does a website make the most sense? If perhaps the use case is geared towards on-the-go utility then is a mobile app a better fit? These are questions that need to be answered. Your answer does not have to be absolutely correct at this stage, but it should be a well-thought-out starting point from where to iterate and improve your understanding of what you should build. Customer Interviews It’s always a good idea to do multiple sets of user interviews, and at least two.  With a product in mind (or on a piece of paper), go out and start interviewing people who you think might use your application (your target persona - more on that here). Make sure that the initial set of interview questions is verifying your product hypothesis and customer need. At this stage, it might be helpful to show customers competitor apps or use other what-if scenarios, to more clearly build the story around your product and help you understand whether you should really build what you’re building.  At AppRocket, we use Google Forms for customer interviews, which allow you to easily view all of your form responses in a spreadsheet. Wireframing and Prototyping of Mock-Ups Based on preliminary interviews with your target user personas, you have a clearer idea of what your customer needs are and what the product should look like. It’s time to start putting pen to paper and creating a rough prototype of what the app should look like. This is basically a set of screens that show the functionality of your app, and can be made digitally or even drawn with pencil and paper.  Essentially, an initial (or low-fidelity) prototype should focus on the overall structure and flow of the application, in particular: Mapping user flows and journeysNavigationPage structure and layoutsContent information and hierarchy This should be kept deliberately rough (with all the features & functionality depicted) for quick feedback and rapid iteration. Easily available wireframing tools like Balsamiq Mockups or Sketch allow you to put together wireframes quickly, and Invision makes the process of sharing your work and getting feedback a lot easier. Many people draw things out on paper with paper prototypes. However, I personally feel that paper prototypes are very slow and not worth the time and effort people gradually begin investing in paper prototypes.  If you’re working with teammates on this stage, you should be able to answer what is where and why, with findings gleaned from your customer interviews incorporated into the low-fidelity mockup. I cannot emphasize this enough, the goal once again is to create a rough outline, a low-fidelity mockup of your product that clearly shows what the main user interactions and flows are, and to use this as the basis for creating a high-fidelity design and then the final product.  What Is the Difference Between Wireframe, Mockup and Prototype?  User Testing with Wireframes Here, paper prototypes have an advantage over digital prototypes made by e.g. Balsamiq Mockups, but then you can always print your digital prototypes. The people providing feedback on your product should ideally be the people using it and if that’s not possible, then a small sample set of people from the same demographic. Put your wireframes into an intuitive and easy-to-use form and share them with your users. Be there when they have a look. Note down the aspects of the product the testers understand, and what they don’t. Make sure your design and product teams are both present in these sessions if possible, as it will give them food for thought on how to address any shortcomings that come up. Every user testing session should be focused, with concrete questions you would like to answer. If you are making a food delivery app, does this app help testers seamlessly get food delivered to where they want to? Are the processes happening behind the scenes optimized towards this?  Ask specific, directed questions around different use cases of the app, and observe whether the task is easy or hard e.g. If you were to change your profile picture, how would you do it?If you wanted to add a post, what would you have to do? And then add follow-on questions built around that particular use case e.g. how to rollback a user action or unlike something you previously liked. Note down: Any points of friction or confusion (“I was expecting do to something else”, or “I don’t know why you’ve done X this way”)Any general comments on the UI (“this feature was nice”, or “I couldn’t find this button”)Feature requests (“I would really like to also be able to do this”, or “If you could also add this that would be really cool”) Now using these findings, it’s your job to determine what feedback is actually worth listening to and what feedback is just noise. At the end of the day, people’s opinions are just their opinions. Incorporate relevant feedback into your wireframes. Repeat this process until you’ve honed down what you want. Final UI Designs and High-Fidelity Mockups At last, you’re almost there and the final product is within sight. Now it’s over to the designer, to convert the low-fidelity mockups into high-fidelity pixel-precise UI designs. Following standard design patterns here is a double-edged sword - it can lead to brilliance, or crash spectacularly. A general rule of thumb is to follow accepted norms unless there’s a very strong reason not to. Design patterns are ingrained in most people’s psyche and easy and intuitive to understand. Material design guidelines, for example, are highly popular and for a reason - they work. Incorporating them into your application immediately brings a familiarity to the product, and helps onboard users easily. Apps that have their own design theme such as the X-plore file manager (which is one of the oldest mobile file managers still running) often have a much steeper on-boarding curve. Something to avoid. This is approximately the point where high-fidelity wireframes should be made before the final ‘paint’. These are very close to the final design of the product, but still primarily focused on the interactions and user experience. The idea is to depict a user experience as close to the finished product as possible, to iterate on further and improve. However, these are often time-consuming and may be skipped if the final UI design can be iterated on and brought to perfection.  However, these are often time-consuming and may be skipped if the final UI design can be iterated on and brought to perfection.  Post high-fi wireframes, the design team needs to bring the whole product together with the final splash of color, the animations and interactions, and the icons and artwork, and build the product in final form visually for the development team to bring to life. Final pixel-perfect designs are to be delivered at this point. If you’re working with an independent or offshore design team, make sure that at this point they deliver to you at this stage: Initial high-fidelity wireframes (if that’s a step of the design process you want to include)Full and final UI design documents (a lot of designers use Sketch these days, but Sketch is Mac-only and you will probably need the flexibility. Require Adobe Photoshop Documents (PSDs)All the assets & design elements used in the design including any icons and any artwork or other UI elements, in PNG format (this is a process called ‘slicing’ - slicing the image into its components so that the development team can pick and place them at the appropriate points throughout the app. If you don’t get this done, you will have to export the images yourself, which will require that you have the time and the requisite software (Adobe Photoshop / Sketch / whatever). Which Is But to Say... Designing a product is more complex than the standard ‘just as someone to put together what looks good’. Of course, you can do that, but for your product to actually be any good, there is a clearcut path to success, at least from usability. Which, of course, involves more time and effort than the average notion of designing a product. However, if you can incorporate the above process even partially into your design process, you should be able to come up with a much more robustly-designed product. Want your Product to be designed by Professionals? Get in touch with us at AppRocket! Read the full article

[silver-wields-a-pen]

heya!! okay so like my friend and i are in the midst of world building a magical world, and like,, ive just come to a stump? do you have any tips? thanks much love!!

If you’re struggling with coming up with location descriptions, have you tried looking up images of places? There’s so many fantastic, real locations you can remodel to fit with your fantasy world. One of my favourite places is Spencer lake in Australia. It’s pink. The water is actually pink! And there’s a scientific reason for it, so if you like mixing reality with your fantasy then this is a good guide for how the natural world just does its own thing to make fantastical results. 

Fantasy isn’t subject to only using fantasy. You can throw in whatever you like. It’s your world build and as long as it makes a decent amount of sense then readers can believe it. I read part of a fantasy story where depending on the time there was more or less magic available. The reason was magic was contained within a geyser, so people could time when the next eruption was and prepare for it. There were mechanical items for times when there wasn’t enough magic and then magical items for when there was. 

There’s also lots of lovely links to world building questions that other writers have posted.

This one on religion building, because it’s very rare for a culture to not have religion, even if you don’t really use it in your story, it’s good to have the info planned out. This one has further questions on religion building.

This one has lots of world building questions for you to answer to help start off your framework. For this list, I’d say to start off with the most important questions you need to have answers for and then add others as you need to. 

If you’re struggling to find fantasy races, then this is my personal go to choice — besides wikipedia. It has a list of interesting races you can then look up more info on.

World building is fluid because it’s always changing, so you don’t have to decide on the exact details of everything all at once. If you start off small and focus on your characters immediate surroundings that’ll help you feel like it’s not as big a job. Start off with the house. How is it made and who are the people who make the tools and resources? For roofs, is there a specific material people in this town use more than another material? Why? What’s the economy of the area like? Is there a need for policing or walls? Why? What are the prejudices associated with this? Are they different in another part of the country?

The world develops just like your characters do, and each country will be different to its neighbours. If you think of each like a mini world build and then bring them together and see what conflicts they might have with each other that will give you more questions to answer.

For everything you create you need to answer why it’s like that. If you like an idea, but can’t figure out why it works that way then try testing it out by writing a short story using that part of the world build. Sometimes the characters know what’s going on better than we do.

Anything can be inspiring. I’ve got a post of a kitty with oversized teeth and that’s a good reference for fantasy cats. I’ve got one of a gate with no fence. There’s ridiculous stuff like a concrete umbrella that people could laugh about, but put it in the right context and it’s suddenly the right thing.

Tdlr: Images are helpful. Links are included. For every question you need an answer. Science is just as weird as fantasy. The world is a character too. Play with everything 😄

[agl03]

I’m kinda mad how Jemma is being portrayed in that clip. She actually seems mad that Daisy has Fitz locked up despite the fact that she was brutalized by him (“Daisy won’t listen to reason” “and now he’s paying for it” The last one is more how she said it) and just acting petty. Jemma has always been clinical and can put emotions aside like we’ve seen in the Framework or being able to instantly spot Aida. Especially since it’s likely Fitz could make things worse not better with him being such a

Wild card. The doctor could take over whenever. I’m also suspecting a fight between Jemma and Daisy but I don’t see their friendship being able to recover

Hi @asdfsweets

I’m not even going to apologize because I LOVE take charge Jemma here.  I have been waiting for Woman on Fire for ages.  I’ve also been waiting for this kind of Fitzsimmons team up forever as well….its what I desperately wanted going into Self Control last year and look how well that ended.

This is not meant to be black and white, everyone mixed up in what is coming is right and wrong.  This team should all be working together and they aren’t.  In some cases they are actively working against each other.  That is the whole point.  

I don’t think its all anger between Jemma and Daisy, I think its a lot of frustration mixed with that anger, the whole team is frustrated.  With the situation and with each other.   Because in many ways they are all doing what they think is best in order to stop the world from ending….just like in early Season 4 every person on the team took a different route when it came to stopping another death like Lincolns.  In Season 4 this lead to the team being fractured, fighting, they didn’t even really unite until after Coulson, Fitz, and Robbie were brought back from the Hell Dimension.  

 Again, this is a horrible situation, no one likes the HOW Daisy got her powers back but Jemma especially sees the science behind it, why it was necessary.   She also see’s that her husband is recovering from a traumatic event of his own and needs her help and support and she isn’t being allowed to give it.  Daisy actually locked Jemma away from Fitz.  Jemma had access inside his cell at the end of 15 but not in the Peek for 16.  

The frustration is also stemming from what I suspect is Fitzsimmons came up with what they feel is a better option.  Daisy and May wanted Fitz to use The Doctor’s memories and he did to come up with that Hale is building a weapon.  While Daisy wouldn’t give Fitz access to the computers it looks that Jemma did do as Fitz suggested, her research has led them to checking Malick’s assets and the locations he gave up. 

Jemma is frustrated that rather than follow what she feels is a more concrete lead that could get them to Coulson and stop the world from being destroyed, Daisy would rather go get Robin and pull her out of hiding.  Jemma knows that part of why Daisy isn’t listening is that the idea came from Fitz.   

Daisy’s focus is currently a bit split, she only wants to get Coulson back.  Fitzismmons are talking about a way that saves him and could stop the world from being destroyed.  

I feel this is a big parallel for Coulson and Daisy.  As in Season’s past when Daisy (and last season May) were taken Coulson’s focus would shift completely.   Whatever crisis they were dealing with would take a back seat and he would focus fully on getting them back…by any means necessary.   

Jemma could frustrated with the double standard here too.  Piper betrayed the team in 11 and her actions not only got nearly all of them captured and Elena lost her arms in a horrific way.   Yet Piper has been let out and is back in the field, Elena isn’t insisting she stay locked in a cell.  Daisy has willingly betrayed the team and used them to follow what she felt was the best coarse of action a number of times and also wasn’t locked up this long….if at all.  Daisy forgave Cal after he murdered and tortured who knows how many people to get to her, allied himself with Whitehall/Hydra, had her kidnapped by Ward, and he was going to force her into the chamber to get her powers.  Cal was 100% in control of himself at all times and his Mr. Hyde was a deliberate transformation he created.  Daisy called him a Monster that she wanted nothing to do with…yet in the end “they got there”.  No its not apples to apples but the president is there.

Daisy has every right to be angry with Fitz.  Her reaction is very real and raw.  And part of that realness is how she is treating Fitz now.  Not being willing to trust or listen to him, not letting him out, and getting upset with others who are supporting him.  All of this is compounded by her concern for Coulson and getting him back. Her own frustration at how powerless she feels and the stress of being leader in a crisis situation.  And yes to some extent I do believe the writers want her to come off as being unreasonable.  Because its not just Fitz she’s not listening too.  Its Jemma and May that we know of as well.   

There were hints that Daisy might not be over what happened in the Framework either.  In 12 when she called him Leopold after he counciled against sending someone else down there to help Coulson.  It was a low blow that visibly made Fitz recoil and Jemma to step in.

There is nothing wrong with Jemma trusting and having faith in Fitz, its 100% in line with her character.  Her doing something big to protect Fitz is nothing new either. 

Season 1 she shot Sitwell

Season 2 she went toe to toe with Real Shield and May

Season 3 she corrected Malick’s math to make sure the portal was open long enough…and she made sure that portal was allowed to open.

Season 4 she defied Daisy and went after Alistair to try to get to Fitz after Daisy said they had to leave him behind.    

Daisy might see him as the Doctor but Jemma does not.  She never lost faith in him in the Framework and she isn’t going to now.  She knows he is fighting a battle but knows he is a good man who is just trying to protect people and save lives.  She is going to be there for him as he recovers, unwilling to have what happened in Season 2 again.   Jemma has faith in him and he trusts her.

I don’t think we’ll ever see The Doctor to that extent again.  Fitz suffered a split brought on by a cocktail of circumstances that will never be replicated again.   And The Doctor was saw in 14 was not the Doctor of the Framework.  He didn’t have his own agenda, he wasn’t getting revenge for tossing Ophelia out the window or destroying his world. he was doing what Fitz was unwilling to do so save his.  Its also out in the open now, Fitz isn’t hiding it, so if he does see or hear him he can tell Jemma and she can help him work on a better solution.  Use the shadow when he needs too.    

I don’t think Daisy’s relationship with either of Fitzsimmons will ever be the same after this.  But I do think it will get better.  Daisy spending time with Deke coming up here and hearing his stories about his Grandparents.  Asking her to relive happier times for him can bring back better memories.   Them also being in some serious peril and Daisy faced with the prospect and losing them for good usually goes a long way on TV shows in helping to heal rifts.  

Everyone on the team is making decisions right now that are feeding the conflict.   And sometimes that kind of stuff just has to happen to move the story along.  Fitz felt he did the right thing giving her her powers back, Jemma agrees.  Neither one like the how.   Daisy feels she is doing the right thing leaving Fitz in the cell and focusing on getting Coulson back.  In leaving Fitz in the cell and not listening serves as the catalyst for the invincible three to take action and position everyone for what is to come.