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patchwork-crow-writes · 1 year

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So, Majora's Mask Randomizer is almost go! I've inputted my settings, generated a seed (which didn't crash the program, yay!), ran a quick playtest, and everything seems to be in working order. It'll be interesting to see just how crazy this can get :P

Before I begin, I'd like to quickly go over some things: this will be a largely glitchless playthrough. I'm familiar with all the speedrunning tricks and glitches such as Hidden Owl, Bomb Hovering, Grotto Wrong Warp and Weirdshot, but the settings I have enabled don't require the use of these tricks. The main goal of this playthrough is to experience the game in a new way without breaking its physics over my knee... that may come later, but not right now!

I have not shuffled music or added my own custom music. The music of the game is very special to me, and while it'd be cool to have any of the thousands of midi tracks created specifically for this randomizer program, I adore the classic soundtrack too much. This will not affect any of you, but I'm saying it because... I dunno, actually. Just one of them things :P

I'm also not going for 100% completion, I'm just gunning for the quest essential items and beelining it for the finish line. This may sound boring, but wait until you see the settings I've picked.

Speaking of which...

All the items ticked on this list indicate which items are going to be shuffled. You'll see the standard settings, including Shop Items, the Base Item Pool, Stray Fairies and Skulltula Tokens. Then there's more unconventional settings, like Cow Milk (cows will give random items when you play Epona's song near them), Soft Soil (items that appear when bugs are put near soft soil are shuffled), and Mundane Rewards (the 50 rupee prizes for minigames, etc.).

Then there are what I like to call the absurd settings. Things like: Hidden Rupees (which are spots in the overworld where rupees will appear if you walk over/shoot them), Freestanding Rupees (which are rupees that are just chilling out in the world), Caught Bottle Contents (All bottle items are shuffled, so fish can be bugs, bugs can be spring water, and spring water can be Deku Princess), Crazy Starting Items (shuffles the starting sword, shield and two of your three heart containers, meaning you start with no weapons and one heart), and the ominous sounding "Everything Else", which... do I need to elaborate there? I don't think I do, lol :P

Additional settings I have elected to switch on:

Ice Trap Onslaught - all junk items are ice traps. Junk items include small rupees, ammo refills... stuff you wouldn't normally go out of your way to pick up. There are. A LOT of them.

Quad Damage - I take 4 times the damage from all damage sources. Including the aforementioned ice traps. And I start with one heart. (spoiler warning - I am going to die. A LOT.)

Shuffled Enemies - all enemies are shuffled. This can softlock the game in certain situations, so will be interesting to see how this affects my playthrough.

Random Shop and Minigame Prices - the prices for everything are randomised. A deku nut can cost anywhere from 10 rupees to 990 rupees. To compensate, there is a 999-rupee wallet that has been added to the game. Locating this will be a top priority.

Random floor types - floor can be any texture, including grass, sand and ice. Would have loved for lava to have been one of the options, for the culture... but it isn't. Sad.

Unique colours for each of Link's transformations. I won't spoil these here, but I have picked thematically appropriate hues for each form. Here's hoping they look good!!

So... yeah. This might all seem a bit crazy - and it is! - but I do have the spoiler log to hand, so if it comes down to it, I can peek at what I need to progress. Plus which, I'm really excited to discover all the secrets this game has to offer, and whether I'll learn anything new about interesting item interactions, or hidden rupees that I never knew existed. It's a journey of discovery! And ice traps. And hardship. But hey, nothing ventured, right?

So, uh, wish me luck I guess! XD

#long post #gaming #majora's mask #randomizer #halloween #oh lord what have I gotten myself into

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fishandships · 4 years

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For Rho: 🏀, 🌙, and 🐟!

OC SI asks (tysm friend!!!)

🏀 Does your OC have any skills that people wouldn’t expect them to have? Do they have a hobby or pass time that others would consider strange or weird? How did they learn this particular skill or pick up this hobby?

Rho’s skillset is pretty standard for a trained Force-wielder, and their aquatic specialties are likewise the norm for their species. the only thing others really ever found strange about Rho was their tendency to question everything in their youth, something that was discouraged to the point that they gave up asking others and instead started doing their own research to learn for themselves. their reclusiveness was considered a bit odd among the Jedi, but not so much out of the ordinary as to be of any real note. a natural ease when it comes to communicating with animals is among standard Jedi traits, but Rho’s ability was considered a bit of a novelty with Maul and Savage when the trio first came together.

🌙 What are some of your OC’s favourites? Favourite food, colour, season, stuff like that! Give some general simple facts that tend to get overlooked!

to the surprise of no one, Rho loves seafood of any kind, and really enjoys trying new foods. they adore warm climates and hues of blue. when it comes to comfort in their surroundings they favor cool, natural colors and organic shapes (they were pretty miserable on Mandalore for this reason, among others). their sense of fashion involves loose, comfortable clothing that allows freedom of movement in the water and dries quickly. one of their favorite pastimes as a Jedi apprentice was spending time around younglings, at that point hoping someday to be allowed an apprentice of their own. their love of children has not diminished, though in their adulthood they have come to question their capability in terms of raising a child (especially considering their partner is about as far from paternal as one can get).

🐟 What was your OC like as a baby? What were they like as a child? A teenager? An adult? How do you think they’ll develop ten years into their future? Twenty years? Will they live to old age?

ever since their early childhood, Rho has always been restless. during their time with the Jedi, from the time they were recruited as a little one, they always felt distanced from their companions and only ever experienced happiness and a sense of freedom when accompanying their Master on offworld missions. they were curious and driven with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of any kind, which led to them spending a lot of time in the archives, choosing literature over other companionship. despite being so withdrawing and quiet, they were still friendly and kind when interacting with others, so their fellow apprentices came to think of them as ‘distracted’, or more bluntly, a bookish airhead. going rogue in their early adulthood was the best thing that has ever happened to them, as they finally feel free and in control of their own life and destiny, and look forward to continuing to grow in themself as they roam the galaxy with a new outlook on life. as for living to old age, they spend little time thinking that far ahead, as realistically they know they likely won’t make it that far, but are choosing to hold onto the hope that they and their newfound family will eventually find peace together.

#the fish is very thematically appropriate lol #singingdeepinme #river babbles #rho #rho kawthar

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virtuissimo · 6 years

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Pride by Ibi Zoboi (Review)

This book is a modern retelling of the Jane Austen’s seminal classic Pride & Prejudice. Zuri Luz Benitez is a black Haitian-Dominican teenager in her senior year of high school whose identity is constructed around her life in Bushwick, a neighborhood with a tight community that is going through aggressive gentrification. Across the street, in one of the new gentrified houses, the Darcy family moves in, including twins Ainsley and Darius, two rich private-school boys sticking out like a fish out of water.

Zoboi’s adaptation creates amazing parallels when compared one-to-one with P&P, but it can’t hold its own very well. The writing is a simplistic and the characterization for most of the named characters is extremely one-dimensional. I was taken a bit by surprise when I found it in the youth section, and the simple writing makes me confused about the age of the intended audience. In any case, I didn’t have a bad time reading this, but I was expecting a lot more than I got.

To expand a little on the intended audience, I think my confusion is mostly because of the conflicting styles. On one hand, Zoboi’s prose is very simple and almost hamfisted in how she handles her characters and story. Other than some nice and age-appropriate poetry from Zuri herself, the rest of the book isn’t very elegant in writing quality. So I said to myself, ok I found it in the youth section. It’s intended for a younger audience. However, all the central characters are in their senior year of high school, and there are numerous allusions to sex and cusses that I’m not sure would fly in middle fiction. I think those who are in this reading level will find the characters too old and teenagery, while those who are the main character’s ages will find the prose to be lacking. Zuri in specific is a voracious reader, and she herself would not have the patience to enjoy reading this book which is far below her reading level.

It’s easier to read this book for what it’s supposed to be saying rather than what it is saying, if that makes any sense. For instance, Darius when he first shows up is quiet and doesn’t offer much information about himself, but he also wasn’t very rude or belligerent upon first impression. I know “prejudice” is half the thing, but Zuri really jumps the gun and kind of started the whole feud in the first place. It just wasn’t that believable that he was some jerk who deserved her hatred like it was with Elizabeth Bennet, and similarly it wasn’t very believable when she later learns that she just misinterpreted his social awkwardness.

Also, I thought it was interesting that the title removed the “prejudice” when to me that seemed like a much bigger aspect of this version than in Austen’s work. For instance, Darius makes a number of disparaging remarks about Bushwick and its “ghetto” people, but even before he makes these remarks Zuri already “hates” him based on stuff she made up about him in her head. And then later, when they begin to get closer, she actually never confronts him about his prejudice and just. Forgives and forgets.

She also forgives and forgets when it comes to Ainsley and Janae. This bothered me a lot more than some of my other nitpicking because it actually changes one of the important themes of P&P. Not that Zoboi doesn’t have the right to alter thematic elements—she absolutely does! But the theme of family and the fact that Zuri would do ANYTHING for her sisters is told to the reader through a lot of exposition, but we don’t actually see it. The moment in the car when she finds out that Darius split up Ainsley and Janae is really representative of that for me. She got angry in the moment, but she never actually investigates to find out WHY he did it like Elizabeth in P&P. On that note, later on when she forgives him, she never asks him to account for it again.

In fact, character motivation and appropriate emotional buildup was a recurring issue in this book. Nothing hit quite like I think Zoboi intended them to.

The talk on gentrification and class difference is good tho. Perhaps incomplete, but there’s only so much space. They really show how class plays a role in a variety of different circumstances and scenarios, and I think Zoboi succeeds here where others have failed.

Some of the parallels that I liked:

- Warren and Colin took me OUT when they first appeared. You can really see what Zoboi thinks about Mr. Wickham and Mr. Collins from the original lol.

- The tour of Howard instead of touring the Darcy home was very interesting to me. I think it was a great introduction to how she wasn’t expecting her world to expand so much, and that there’s a lot of different experiences in the world that she’s missing, and she gets introduced to this idea by people who AREN’T Darius and Ainsley. I really liked that.

- The leopard print and “inappropriate dress” that the Benitez family wore to the Darcy cocktail party. It seems like a good way to show how respectability politics still play into the modern day, and it added a bit of character to the Benitez family as a prototypical Latinx family that I really enjoyed.

- The Warren and Georgia situation was also a good way to translate this into the modern day.

- P&P: In order to avoid scandal, Darcy pays for a marriage between a 16 year old and a 20-something known scumbag, and this is seen as a good thing because it saved the Bennet family. Zoboi’s Pride: Darius beats the shit out of Warren. I REALLY CRIED, THIS IS WHAT I WANT OUT OF AN ADAPTATION.

Things I didn’t like so much:

- Ainsley x Janae is treated like a veeery minor side story instead of being a secondary plot. One of the big things in P&P is that Jane and Bingley are the prototypical pure love story and they think they are the main characters. Ainsley and Janae are not given much space to breathe in the narrative, and their relationship comes across as an afterthought instead of as one of the principal plot threads.

- The diversion with Darius’ grandmother was also thrown in there like an afterthought. It didn’t add much to the story other than showing that Darius will side with Zuri when push comes to shove. It still felt like it took up a lot more time than it needed to if the grandmother wasn’t going to appear again at the end of the book like in the original. If it’s role to the plot was going to be minimized like that, I don’t really understand why it was included at all.

- Charlise and Colin as a pair also felt out of place. In the original, Mr. Collins and Charlotte weren’t a major part of the story, but they contributed to the narrative that Austen wanted to tell about marriage and the different types of marriages that exist in English society at the time. Charlise and Colin don’t really have that effect on the story at all. Both characters are completely irrelevant to the plot (except Colin in the last possible moment), and they’re only really there to BE an adaptation.

- Some of the plot beats were rearranged. I didn’t mind this so much since any number of directorial decisions are valid so long as the have a positive impact on the adaptation’s goal, but I didn’t really see how they added much.

One thing I REALLY liked was the addition of Madrina. I’m not sure if she’s a reference to something I don’t remember from the text or a completely original addition, but I thought she made for some really interesting moments. I especially loved how much connection Zuri felt with her Orisha worship and that they called her “daughter of Ochun.” I would change NOTHING about this, it was pure and really sweet.

One adaptation I WISH Zoboi had made was to have Zuri call out Darius’ hypocrisy. In P&P, the Bennetts are certainly in a different social class from Darcy and the Bingleys, but they’re ultimately still property owners in Britain. The stakes are different here. Darius keeps talking about how things in his life aren’t perfect just because he’s rich (which is absolutely true, especially when Zoboi starts getting into his experience as a black teenager surrounded by white classmates), but he is STILL not really understanding the difference in experience between himself and Zuri. The thing is, although she’s not right to judge Darius’ whole personality, she absolutely IS right about a lot of his privilege at the very beginning, but she kind of lets that go after a while. Zuri confronts Darius about his wealth many times, but to me at least it doesn’t really seem like she was able to convince him that his whole outlook on life is fundamentally different because of his wealth. Idk maybe I’m grasping at straws here. I just wish that Darius had actually talked about like . trying to persuade his parents to donate more to charity, or doing community service, or idk DISTRIBUTING THE WEALTH. Darius doesn’t change much in the story. At the beginning, he’s like “sorry im rich but lmfao you’re being mean to me!” and then at the end he is like “I am simply a rich boy, I cannot change this” which is barely a difference at all.

Anyways. I really didn’t hate this book. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did, which is why I have all these criticisms about it.

I recommend this to anyone who wants to read a thoughtprovoking discussion on class through the lens of one of history’s most overrated love stories (speaking as someone who loves P&P: yea it’s overrated). Read it for Zuri and Darius, who are totally different people from Elizabeth and Darcy. Read it for nostalgia, because even though I don’t know what it feels like to be one of 5 Afrolatine kids in Bushwick, I Felt that family affection.

3/5 for having great ideas but not such great execution.

#book review #ibi zoboi #pride ibi zoboi #pride and prejudice #p&p #my post

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