#the people who say this game is easy must not have found this area

[foxstens]

every game needs to have an area that’s just Pain

[blazescompendium]

Blaze's Compendium Entry #9:Explaining the Origin of ShikiOuji

Note: This post was originally published in April 2024. However, since it is a complete research and dive into this monster, I figured out i could just repost it as a Compendium entry.

As always:

Warning: Faith and religion are important real life topics, that tackles the culture and way of life of millions of real life people. It is a cultural expression, and must be respected by all means. Here, we use a video-game ( some times) and other media series only to ignite the flame of learning about the matter, using its art when well depicted, but we do this with all due respect to the cultures we talk here, grounded by real life sources, cultures and people. And i mean this with respect. Hope you all enjoy.

I am sure that, if you played any Megaten game in the last 20 years or so, you ended up seeing this paper dude. His name is always stated as Shiki-Ouji, and he once shared the same design with the Demon called Shikigami.

The weird thing is that when researching Shikigami on my studies, I never found anything about this one so i put some detective work to find out about the origins of Shikiouji, the (yet another) dude who often repels physical damage in Megaten.

The creature is described in many of the series compendium as a powerful Shikigami, that only the most powerful Onmyoji could summon, and they have a vicious temperament.

When we talk about Shikigami, the first thing that comes to mind are paper dolls. This is no surprise, since Shikigami are summons Onmyoji binds to paper dolls or talismans, so they could interact with the physical world. This is also because paper is a very easy material to destroy, if things go south. Onmyoji are the equivalent of western sorcerer, that followed the Onmyōdō, a esoteric cosmology. It started in the 6th century in Japan as a divination practice, and evolved from there. I won't go into detail, because this is meant to be a short post. But materials about this practice are abundant on the internet.

The main concept concerning us here is the Shikigami. These are basically some kind of familiar, a spirit or demon if you want, the sorcerer could conjure to protect him or do his biding. The Cultural Alliance Brazil- Japan, which i already mentioned in other posts, states that:

''Shikigami can be Oni or demons, that should serve and protect an Onmyoji. Your abilities would be determined by the abilities of his master.

A Shikigami could assume the form of small animals, birds, etc... One Shikigami from a powerful Onmyoji could possess and control one animal. But only a real powerful Shikigami could possess a person.

When an Onmyoji is fighting another Onmyoji, they employ the use of their Shikigami. Some Onmyoji could spot the enemy Shikigami beforehand, and try to convert it to his side with magical powers. In this game, the converted Shikigami would come back to the old master, and attack with double the force. This pratice was called Shikigami Gaeshi.

Abe no Seimei is said to be the most powerful Onmyoji to ever exist. Some rumors say he had twelve Shikigami, while regular Onmyoji would rarely have more than one Shikigami at the same time.''

So, that is a rough definition of what a Shikigami is.

But, when researching this creature you would not be able to regularly find Shiki-ouji. The fastest method for him to appear, was the English Wikipedia article about Shikigami, which weirdly had this part about Shiki-ouji, but offered no source to it:

Having the kanji to Shikiouji, and some keywords, i found someone at Tumblr who asked the same question 6 years ago, in Eirikr's blog.

From there, Eirikr offered a link to a blog post writing about Izanagi Ryu Shikoku. Ryu Shikoku is an ancient folk religion and pratices from the Kochi prefecture. It is still practiced in the area to this day!

In this belief system there is the tradition of the Shiki-kui masks. Which.. bear a very uncanny resemblance to our paper guy, subject to this post:

These masks would be hang above the place the ceremonies of the Izanagi Ryu take place. They would have magical powers that could repel evil spirits, and non believers from coming to the ceremony and disturbing it. They would also serve as talismans, or paper dolls, in a simmilar vein the regular Shikigami pop image you have in mind.

Since they are used to summon spirits, bind them, and as talismans, these creatures can be, technically called a Shikigami.

With this knowledge in hands, i went to the Japanese web. And sure enough, i found this site: The Nippon Foundation Library. It has an article detailing the paper talismans used by Izanagi No Ryu Onmyoji, and their meanings, powers, and also explained a bit about Shiki-Ouji!

Here is what they have to say: (Please be warned that i do not speak Japanese, and used machine translation. Any corrections are Welcome!)

Shikē Ōji is a spiritual entity invoked by the taisa during prayers for the sick and the "toriwake" ritual to expel evil spirits causing illness or calamity. Its birth is described as abnormal, and due to its excessively violent power, it has no place to reside. Usually, it is sunk in the pond of Tendō-nanta, and summoned only when needed to guard ceremonies, to pray as the guardian deity of ceremonies, or as a prayer deity of Jumon no hakase. There seem to be several types of Shikē Ōji depending on their purpose, such as Takata no Ōji for toriwake, Gotai no Ōji for prayers for the sick, and Ōtaka-shiki for insect prayers. Additionally, talismans such as Sangoku Arashiki, Chimura San Ōji, and Sakago no Ōji are handed down, and it is inferred that they were used according to the content of the prayers, although many details of their usage are unknown.

Using the powerful Shikē Ōji against humans becomes a curse. In Kochi Prefecture, "hitting a ceremony" is widely used to curse people. Many people use this term without understanding its original meaning. "Hitting a ceremony" refers to attacking someone using Shikē Ōji. While Shikē Ōji can benefit people if used for good, it can harm them if used for evil. Talismans of Shikē Ōji, possessing such terrifying power, often have several incisions on them, each containing twelve notches, giving them a rough impression. However, unlike talismans found in mountains and rivers, they do not seem to have incisions for eyes or mouths. In this regard, they are closer to the cutting style of talismans for house gods and sacred gods. Here, one can sense the emphasis on the powerful nature of Shikē Ōji's talismans while also distinguishing them from strange monsters.

So, as you can see there is some key information about the creature here. But the most important ones:

1- It is bind to a talisman, just like other Shikigami. The text here explains it is a paper talisman with notches, just like regular ones used in religious ceremonies.

2-It has a powerful and violent nature, just like the compendium often indicates in Megaten games. It seems hard to tame and use properly without getting hurt.

3-Shiki-Ouji can be powerful and violent, but it seems they dislike being used to hurt people. Instead, they are better employed to use their magic to other deeds. However if you still use them in that regard, they will most likely curse you.

4-Their talismans have twelve notches, no incision for eyes and mouth due to their aggressive nature. This would help to control their interaction with the material world.

I am sure that, if we follow this trail we will find many more sources. Going by key words i found in this text, i found many other sites and books, but since i have no time now to fall a rabbit hole, nor do i speak Japanese... That is it, i think this is a satisfactory answer to where this Megaten Demon came from!

The real forms of Shiki-Ouji

The last thing in want to talk about, is Shiki-Ouji real appearance. Since we have a seemingly wrong impression of they in Megaten, since Kaneko took some artistic freedoms.

First and foremost: From the few things i studies about Shikigami, we know they do not have a real physical form. The paper talismans are just a way to give them physical form. But it was incredibly hard to find a Shiki-Ouji talisman, which was weird because it was so distinguishable. The main reason being that: Shiki-Ouji seems not to be believed to be easy or safe to summon, and also their talismans would be destroyed asap after use.

But with the description i got, it would be this one that matches it the most:

No eyes, or mouth. Twelve Notches, six from each side, and some incisions. Very similar to a regular talisman found in other types of ceremony. Just as the text suggested.

I got this picture from this book:

Tosa, Monobe Village: Shapes of the Gods

Monoba being the village where most of these rituals came from. The book is from 1999, and contains many pictures of actual talismans.

You can see that, aside from the head shape, Kaneko took some freedom with this design. The sources state that Shikiouji talismans should not have a face, nor limbs, since it was too powerful, and should have 12 notches. For some reason, Kaneko drew it in a human-like form, but the face still resembled the Shiki-kui masks. The earlier design of the demon was even more closely resembling the masks:

Shiki-ouji earlier design from Devil Summoner (1996). It was later repurposed as the demon Shikigami. It is almost an exact match to this talisman. I can not however identify the original source.

Shiki-Ouji current design by itself could have been based on this one talisman in specific, at least some parts of it like the head with horned-shaped appendages:

By the looks of it, its face could turn inside out, just like the Megaten Demon can do.

It was sourced by the National Museum of Japanese History, but the post went down. The low quality image of the talisman can still be seen on google, but the link is dead, unfortunately. It seems that this item is still in possession of the Museum in Japan. Kaneko could have seen it in pictures, or in person. This one seems NOT to be displaying a Shiki-Ouji thought.

Maybe the Kaneko take is that Shiki-Ouji was summoned with limbs, and facial features and became much more stronger as a result? We may never know...

And finally there is also an occult book that i found in Amazon Japan that is called: Exploring Izanagi No Ryu: ShikiOuji.

It is supposedly a manual on how to practice Izanagi no Ryu, and magics. I could not find the book online, just the summary. But it mentioned nothing about Shiki-Ouji. Probably has some sort of tutorial to summon it, in fact i was able to find many of those tutorials on the Japanese web.

Now, that is it. I think this puts to rest a little bit of mystery involving the origins of this specific demon. Kaneko sure took some freedoms, but it is still one of the more popular and recognizable characters in the series.

Final considerations:

This most likely is the answer to its origin, but i am not some sort of owner of all truths, so feel free to correct me in anything i said wrong. I am still an amateur scholar, and even if i do know a lot about mythology and ancient religions because i read many books and study a lot of hours of my days, i am by no means a specialist in Japanese Mythology specifically, specially Shikigami practices. The reason is that, i find it very difficult and time consuming to research Japanese sources, since i do not speak Japanese. I will one day, try my best since there are a lot of good Yokai to cover in future Scientific Papers.

I can, however, guarantee that i did my best possible effort in a deep search!

And i have spent a lot of time looking through pictures of Shikigami talismans, and i found some really cute. Like this one. What a whimsical little fella...

[thedarkangelpuppet]

going back to examine all the fnaf media: fnaf1

Easy enough start ' not responsiblee for injury, Dismemberment) showing that Henry and Will and the company were fully aware of how dangerous the job is and still only paying minimum wage.

The robots' behavior has become somewhat unpredictable at night, however, and it was much cheaper to hire you as a security guard than to find a repairman.From your small office, you must watch the security cameras carefully. You have a very limited amount of electricity that you're allowed to use per night (corporate budget cuts, you know).

My point that Henry is not a good person or atleast an enabler stands

First of Mike Schmidt being Micheal Afton is 100 correct in this game course of the It's me eastereggs that probally is Crying Child reaching out and the fact that Mike Schmidt in the movie also mirrors the family structure that Micheal Afton has. (i rechecked i don't think there was a its me easter egg in fnaf 2 which makes sense)

now is Mike scooped yet? probally not the odor can be from the corpses he did try to dismantle the animatronics.... Most likely Mike is here to help William dismantle the animatronics. (hell his sister location line could refer to this instead

"Father. It's me, Michael. I did it. I found it. It was right where you said it would be. They were all there. They didn't recognize me at first, but then... they thought I was you. " this is why i think mike might not be scooped yet since if the missing children are in ennard too this would make sense they didn't recognise me (they not just elizabeth)

also the security note book hints that Micheal and Mike are the same person.

Phoneguy

someone working before Mike. dies to golden freddy is mostly there to give you speeches on how bad the company is.

'Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza: a magical place for kids and grown-ups alike, where fantasy and fun come to life. Fazbear Entertainment is not responsible for damage to property or person. Upon discovery of damage or if death has occurred, a missing person’s report will be filed within ninety days or as soon as property and premises have been thoroughly cleaned and bleached and the carpets have been replaced. (Enough said Henry and William being evil and knowing very well their establisment will kill people)

Uh, the animatronic characters here do get a bit quirky at night, but do I blame them? No! If I were forced to sing... those same stupid songs for 20 years,and I never got a bath? I’d probably be a bit irritable at night too. (1983 is when the first freddys opened which means this is 2003 unless you count the diner which might been open in the 70ties (supported by the cutout from security breach ruin), or if the first game takes place 1993 or 1992 (theorized because paycheck)  -  20 which equals 1973 or 1072 for the diner to be open)

Uhh... they used to be allowed to walk around during the day, too, but then there was The Bite of '87. Yeah... I-It’s amazing that the human body can live without the frontal lobe, you know? ( we get back to this eventually people say its most likely Mangle who did it, golden freddy has the easteregg where he crashes the game if you input the date into the custom night)

cue more dialoge on how dangerous the job is and the company being aware: if they happen to see you after hours, probably won’t recognise you as a person. Th-They’ll most likely see you as a metal endoskeleton without its costume on. Now, since that’s against the rules here at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, they’ll probably try to... forcefully stuff you inside a Freddy Fazbear suit. Um, now that wouldn’t be so bad if the suits themselves weren’t filled with crossbeams, wires, and animatronic devices, especially around the facial area. So you can imagine how having your head forcefully pressed inside one of those could cause a bit of discomfort... and death. Uh, the only parts of you that would likely see the light of day again would be your eyeballs and teeth when they pop out the front of the mask, heh. ...Y-Yeah, they don’t tell you these things when you sign up..

Uhh, check those cameras, and remember to close the doors only if absolutely necessary. Gotta conserve power. (greed )

Uh, interestingly enough, Freddy himself doesn't come off stage very often. I've heard he becomes a lot more active in the dark, though, so hey, I guess that's one more reason not to run out of power, right? Heh... ( huh I wonder why? i never actually thought about it)

Uh, also, check on the curtain in Pirate Cove from time to time. The character in there seems unique in that he becomes more active if the cameras remain off for long periods of time. I guess he doesn't like being watched. I don't know.

Then again, if they think you’re an empty costume, they might try to... stuff a metal skeleton into you. I wonder how that would work... (foreshadowing to sister location pff)

See you on the flip side. (flipside was also a fnaf world thing if i recall correctly?)

Uh hey, do me a favor: Uh, maybe sometime, uh, you could check inside those suits? Uh, in the back room? Uh, I'm gonna try to hold out... until someone... checks. Maybe it won’t be so bad. I-I-I-I always wondered what was in all those empty heads... back there-- (Freddy���s music plays as if power has gone out) You know...(Ragged moaning from animatronics can be heard) Oh no..."(Sound used by Golden Freddy during his jumpscare plays, call ends)

(wouldn't be suprised if William caused this since he has some control over the kids in the movie and the books around this timeframe seems convinent that he be killed right as he asks for you to check up on whats in the animatronics)

It is lamentable that mass agricultural development is speeded by fuller use of your marvellous mechanisms. Would it not be easily possible to employ some of them in quick laboratory experiments to indicate the influence of various types of fertilizers on plant growth? You are right. Countless uses will be made by future gener- Seldom knows contemporaneous- the joy of crea- (Hangs up)

this while it was basic stock sound from -an audiobook of the autobiography of a Yogi chapter 8 if I researched correctly- at first actually hinted towards a bigger plot (also why the have a few fangames refer to the joy of creation )about Remnant.

Apprently this refers to Dr. Bose's Theory of Living Metal. Dr. Bose said on a micro scale metal had properties like living flesh

the animatronics:

Freddy Fazbear becomes active on Night 3 and Gabriel most likely was the third of the missing kids to die.

gabriel is always the third.

Chica and Bonnie are already there when we see Gabriel die.

other stuff to point out"

If the player runs out of power, Freddy will also appear, and play his theme, the Toreador March, before game over.

Freddy's hat is removable.

Freddy doesn't move until Night 3 unless the player runs out of power

Freddy has a hand prints on his face most likely because its been comfirmed that kids tried to steal his hat (most innocent interpertations for the handprints)

the handprints are probally just from a kid or two trying to get his hat.

Bonnie:

Bonnie is the most aggressive enemy in the game and is usually the first to move,

Scott Cawthon has said that Bonnie does not abide by the laws of Space, Time, and Physics. 

This is also seen in game, as Bonnie is known for teleporting between the Backstage and Supply Closet rooms, and is slightly floating in the Celebrate poster. (still wonder if Jeremy got facetrauma from his death if the into pit kids you rescue are hinting towards the deaths i could see his being the one with the hammer with how much facetrauma both bonnies and every character named Jeremy has)

Chica;

Chica is heard in the kitchen dropping pans and plates even though you cannot see her.

(if the previous thing with all the kids you find in into the pit is on to something i can see either Golden Freddy aka Cassidy or Susie being the one stuck in an animatronic. I say chica because it could be the same situation as Banny from Walten Files where they don't directly die and feel hungry hence why chica would look for anything to eat like garbage)

Cupcake is most likely where her dog ends up to some extend.

Foxy;

Foxy is unique in the way that he will emerge from Pirate Cove faster or slower depending on how often the player has the camera open. If the player opens the camera too little he will emerge faster, until he has left the cove.

Fredbear:

While this picture of him is being viewed, a young girl's laugh can be heard. If the player sees the Golden Freddy poster and then switches back to the Office, Golden Freddy will have appeared within the Office. His appearance causes different images to flash on the screen for split seconds, along with the words "IT'S ME". Golden Freddy will wait idly for few seconds before killing the night guard, forcibly closing the game. The moment the player sees him, the player must bring up the Monitor before Golden Freddy kills the night guard. Doing so will cause him to disappear. Golden Freddy is implied to be the one who ultimately killed Phone Guy, as his jumpscare noise plays at the end of the call.Golden Freddy is one of the only beings that is capable of crashing your game, with the other being Shadow Bonnie. inputting the A.I.'s levels to 1/9/8/7 will cause Golden Freddy's death scene to happen instantly, closing the game.

(most likely possesed by both the crying child and Cassidy, the reason why cassidy could be portayed as a boy sometimes even through she is descibed as a girl in the novels and has a little girl giggle might be because her memories blend together with the crying child since the dead forget)

i think this is my reason for thinking that

the newspapers:

basic of the story we know the missing kids incident happens 1985

however theres no party linked to them if you look at the newspapers again.

theres one newspaper saying two kids were lured and never found most likely Gabriel and Jeremy causing them to arrest someone but to let the person go based on the fact they have no bodies and can't charge for murder. I say Gabriel and Jeremy because freddy and bonnie are always linked together in some way.

so most likely Susie gets lured with the promise of her dog while in the arcade.

Gabriel and Jeremy were lured together on June 26th.

Fritz was next and finally Cassidy.

with Fritz i think something similar happend to oz in into the pit where Springbonnie wanted to show him something while the robots malfuctioned causing people to evacuade (the scene of the malfunction was also mentioned in the silver eyes) i could even think he might be the reason there was blood in the ballpit in the first place in the fazbear frights timeline? (is it a timeline ??? i always saw the fazbear frights more of stories made from rumors and so like theres some truth to them like the orignial games are according to help wanted)

still thinking Cassidy was probally the last one.

theres also the whole 6 thing going on in into the pit but the memories of the victimns can be fuzzy theres 6 confirmed deaths by williams hands charlie, susie, jeremy, gabriel, fritz and cassidy but none of them could be displayed like they are in into the pit or the minigames because we saw in help wanted susie and jeremy are already in their animatronics. the fnaf 1 newspaper also suggests they were taken on diffrent dates anyways hence why they only saw 2 kids be taken. i think the 6 is more so literally telling us theres no more victimns but 6.

anyways the next one to look at on my list is fnaf 2...

afternote; theres a halloween mode/ Halloween is very important to the series assuming both CC's accident and Charlie's death is on Halloween

[nirikeehan]

wip wednesday??

okay I haven't done this in a thousand years but @theluckywizard tagged me... and I recently went insane after playing the game Road 96 and decided I needed to write a 12k long deep dive on the character Jarod.

...If you know, you know.

Anyway, it's called A Small Victorious War and the first chapter is already on AO3. Here is a bit from chapter 2, where he's looking for his missing teenage daughter, Lola, after she ran away to join a terrorist group.

Tagging: @ar-lath-ma-cully | @oxygenforthewicked | @rowanisawriter | @carnalapples | @exalted-dawn-drabbles | @monocytogenes | whoever wants to do it!!

---

He made a few calls and knocked on a few doors. He learned Mr. Winters had also left town, which set the familiar fury simmering in his gut. A group of these Brigade members were headed deep into the south, in Petria’s vast desert region. Aside from the oil fields, the area was mostly undeveloped, which meant they would be difficult to track.

And then there was the note. Please don’t look for me. He’d pursued people who didn’t want to be found before, and the rocks one had to overturn were usually unpleasant for everyone involved. He’d walked away from some of those with regrets. 

“This is our daughter, Jarod,” Maria said over the phone. “It’s different. How could you not want her home safe?” 

He didn’t say they should respect her wishes, exactly. He was less articulate, angrier, perhaps a bit accusatory about why Lola might choose to run away from her mother’s residence, where she spent most of her time. 

“Don’t you dare try to blame me for this,” his ex-wife said. “She’s sixteen years old. She’s too young to know what’s in her own best interest. You were always too easy on her. You let her do whatever she wanted, and look what’s happened.” 

Jarod hung up on her then, because otherwise he would start screaming. No, he never would have encouraged Lola to join a terrorist group. But he had, looking back on it, encouraged her to think for herself, which was maybe just as bad.

He imagined finding whatever compound the Brigades had taken her to, and dragging her out by the arm, kicking up dust as they went, the hatred bright in her eyes. I’ll never forgive you, she spat, and wrenched away from him when he got her into the cab, his fingerprints on her skin already beginning to bruise. It was this image he couldn’t shake, no matter how hard he tried. And he remembered how passionate she was about the idea that conditions in Petria could improve. She truly seemed to think it possible. 

So he stopped looking. 

His apartment was quiet that summer, and so was he, saying little more than the rote script required of him in his daily life. So where we headed today with Happy Taxi? And when Maria called he would tell her he’d let her know if he made any progress and she would ask him if he was drunk, and he would hang up again, angry, because his speech wasn’t that slurred. 

Then, as summer melted into September, he received mail from Lola. 

He called Maria immediately, the words blurring on the page, his mind racing too fast to properly absorb them. “I got the letter,” he said when she picked up, to which Maria said, “What letter?” and Jarod became very quiet. 

Lola had, apparently, only written to him. 

He had assumed that Lola would, as a matter of course, write to both parents. As he stood there, at the side table by the door of his apartment, reading the letter by the light of the streetlamp outside, he tried to ascertain why it was him she chose. He gripped the phone tighter in his hand and breathed slowly. 

“She’s all right,” he said, because at least that much seemed accurate.

“Where is she?” Maria demanded. “Is she coming home?” 

“Doesn’t say,” he said. The letter was dated the fifth of September, postmarked the sixth. Today was the eighth, meaning it must have been mailed somewhere within a hundred miles, to be delivered with such swiftness. So she was likely back in the north. The return address was a P.O. Box, but listed a town he didn’t recognize and suspected to be fabricated.

“Jarod, what does it say?” Maria asked. 

A few other things, including something “big” that would “change everything” in four days. Given the date on the letter, that meant tomorrow. This was, he suspected, why she wrote to him and not her mother. The promise of results. That her actions weren’t only frivolity. That she’d been right that day in his living room, grasping his arm, full of fervent hope. 

And she’d also signed it, in her signature way, All my love, except it was encased in a word bubble and spoken by a cartoon dinosaur that she had drawn, which made him think perhaps she had forgiven him for the plastic dinosaur incident. He wanted desperately to write her back and tell her it wasn’t too late, that she could still walk away from this, still go to university and study paleontology, he would help her, he would do anything. 

“She says she loves us,” Jarod lied, “and that she’ll be in touch again soon.” 

[rainbow-scarab]

Native Travelers of Hallownest

Hallownest is large.

I don’t know if this is an obvious statement or not, but I think it can be easy to forget how big the world is actually supposed to be in the game.

I set out to illustrate this, its huge scale, as part of another post. But as often happens with me it turned into a runaway tangent, taking on a life of its own, and it really needed its own post.

When I was playing Hollow Knight, I was amazed just how much there was to explore as I discovered more and more areas, more and more secrets. After you’ve explored it, and certainly if you’ve played through multiple times, that sense of mystery is lessened. Perhaps the world seems just a bit smaller.

But more than that. I think it can be hard to sense just how big Hallownest is supposed to be, even when in the thick of initial exploration.

Hollow Knight is not a huge open world game. There are limits to how big Team Cherry could make the map. Probably limits to how big they wanted to make it too, for gameplay experience. But even if you can cross the land, on foot (and wing and claw), in a matter of minutes…it’s supposed to be an entire kingdom. The land is larger than it may seem.

For instance…Crystal Peak.

Crystal Peak is called a “tall mountain” in the manual. Iselda as well describes it as a “huge shining mountain”. Even if it does not look that large in game, the implications are that it truly is a large mountain.

The world of Hollow Knight is large enough to contain with it multiple environments. It contains multiple species, multiple lands. Multiple peoples with their own distinct histories and cultures.

The world is large enough that even the people within it, when they traverse its various regions, can be called travelers or wanderers just by going to a different region, even if they are clearly Hallownest natives, staying within Hallownest’s borders.

For instance, take the way Thistlewind, one of ghosts in the Spirits’ Glade, speaks:

Ahh, a wanderer. I've been many places and done a great many things, but I suspect you will outdo me by far. I've long ceased travelling the caverns of Hallownest and I suspect they're now far more dangerous than in my journeys, though with your capable air I'm sure you'll do fine. Good luck! It's a vast world out there.

It seems from their words the “vast world” they traveled, in which they did “a great many things”, was all within Hallownest.

Another examples that illustrates this is the wanderer’s journals. I dunno about you, but I thought at first they were meant to be only from those who had come from outside the kingdom, coming to explore its ruins. The description on the inventory screen:

A journal left behind by a long-dead traveller. The words are written in a forgotten dialect and difficult to understand. Relic from Hallownest's past. This item now holds little value except for those dedicated to the kingdom's history.

Lemm has various things to say about the journals as you sell them to him:

It seems fate was unkind to most who travel within Hallownest's ruin.

It's long hard work translating the many languages of the bugs that explore these caverns.

Once I get around to deciphering them all, I'll be the preeminent scholar on Hallownest's dead.

You must have travelled the breadth of the kingdom to accrue such a haul.

He speaks of those traveling “within Hallownest’s ruin”, and of “the many languages of the bugs that explore these caverns”. This sounds like outsiders coming later on. And again…they very well may include outsiders. But I don’t think it’s only those from outside.

You can find the journals on various corpses, many who are definitely Hallownestian. For instance, one is on a rich bug in the Pleasure House’s elevator shaft. One is found in the Resting Grounds, buried with a wrapped up bug. One is on a royal retainer, underneath the bridge going into Ancient Basin. I suppose in their cases it may be the “forgotten dialect” more than other languages. But who knows. Hallownest may have had various languages native to it.

To explore the language possibility for a moment, using the mantises as an example. The mantises do not speak to you in game—you can only dream nail them. Do they have a different language? They do write though, and you can read all of their signs. At least one sign was meant for outsiders (warning that they are ready to kill), but other signs seem more intended for their own people. It’s possible the writing system is shared between the peoples of Hallownest regardless of languages. But if that was true, Lemm wouldn’t need to spend so much effort translating multiple languages, and the inventory description for the journals wouldn’t indicate that Ghost can’t read them. Conclusions: unclear.

Anyway. There is one corpse who I think may have been more recent though, next to Willoh, thinking “...Please... Not food...”. With its implication that Willoh tried to eat them, unless it’s possible for a long-dead corpse to change its thoughts, I would think this person died recently, possibly even from Willoh’s efforts.

There are plenty of other corpses that may be found, with and without items, showing how many bugs may have been considered travelers while still within their own kingdom. Many such corpses have dream nail dialog indicating they were lost or trapped.

These bugs are all what I would call “standard Hallownest bugs”. That is…they look like some of the most basic husk enemies, as can be found in Forgotten Crossroads or the City of Tears.

Their corpses can be found throughout the kingdom, farther than where you typically find them as enemies, like in Greenpath, Fog Canyon, Queen’s Gardens, and Kingdom’s Edge. The Fog Canyon ones even have the garb of the City’s rich bugs.

This all suggests to me that many of these bugs, those who came from the kingdom, traveled throughout and died. They may have been trying to find a way to escape the infection. But since they were unfamiliar with some of these areas, they ended up trapped, or getting lost until they died. These areas were foreign to many bugs. They may have never explored far from their homes, or if they did, not enough to become familiar with the areas they tried to flee to. Fleeing to the unknown is dangerous, but desperation will drive people to many things, and leaving the City would make sense for a normal pandemic. Whether due to infection or inhospitable terrain, they died in their attempts.

Now to just examine some of the examples:

Here we have bugs next to a Hallownest Seal in Fog Canyon. Both have the same dream nail dialog. Surely with their clothes, they are from the City, and far from home.

Generic dead bug in Queen's Gardens, not far from the stag station. There happens to be a fool eater if you get any closer than Ghost is here. The corpse has a Hallownest Seal.

The elevator shaft in the Pleasure House. This bug, with their garb, is clearly from this side of the City. They have a wanderer's journal. I wonder if they started digging into the walls to try to escape? (from the infection, or the infected...or, the hungry o-O)

Two corpses this time! The other one is thinking "...Tired...". They have no items, but they do have this deteriorated tent. In Greenpath, not far from Fog Canyon and No Eyes.

This is under the bridge that connects Ancient Basin to the City. They carry a wanderer’s journal. Being a royal retainer, of course they are from Hallownest. I can only guess they were trying to escape the infection or the infected.

This apparent mummy has a wanderer’s journal. I am thinking they must be from Hallownest to have been buried in this manner.

The bench near where you fight Hornet in Kingdom's Edge. These corpses have a wanderer’s journal. I’m not sure how the ash is trapping them, unless it created terrible ”weather” conditions (“snowed in”, or “whiteout” conditions). Ghost does have to break the ceiling to jump up here to them, so I guess these bugs did not have that exit. Maybe they were literally "snowed" in, other exits blocked.

Here we have this dead bug in Queen's Station, with a Hallownest Seal. Presumably Willoh tried to eat this nearby bug and others, either as they were weak and dying, or to their actual deaths. And there's this tent here. Was it Willoh’s? Those bugs'? It looks like it’s falling apart. It’s possible Willoh came from elsewhere. It’s possible that she’s been in the stasis, in this stag station for years and years. Hard to say the exact timeline.

This corpse has a Hallownest Seal. I can’t help but think this one was from Dirtmouth. Could they have recently died? When the infection came back and lured Dirtmouth’s residents down the well to their doom?

I’m still not entirely sure how many of the various bugs you find around Hallownest are from there or not. Even if they look like “standard Hallownest bugs”, does that mean they only live in Hallownest? Could there be the same species living elsewhere? Mm, the bugs we do know that came from outside, like Iselda and Cloth and Tiso, do look different. But still.

At the very least some of them are identifiably Hallownestian.

There was a time, too, when bugs traveled the kingdom, before the infection. The stag stations saw a lot of traffic. But sadly, this is the state we see the world in...thus are the consequences of the downfall of Hallownest.

And if you guys are curious, there's a good page here on all the dream-nailable corpses/objects in the fandom wiki. Also on that wiki are pages showing all the locations for relics (if you search for them individually, or just look under Lemm to navigate to them).

[afriendlywizard]

My review of a warehouse I found on Earth's Moon in the video game Starfield

I work at a cidery in the PNW. We have a pretty hefty canning line that can handle what I like to call a Solid Chunk of Volumetric Output. Our fulfillment and warehouse team touches several hundred pallets a day. We handle ingredients that come in drums, plastic IBC totes, 5 gallon buckets, and raw ingredients off the back of people’s Ford Raptors. We have pipes and valves and connectors. We talk about glycol and peracetic acid a lot. We have standard 4 level pallet racks, as well as push-back pallet racking and back-load pallet racking that maintains a First In First Out order.

I manage our Quality Assurance team, which means I spend most of my team at a desk or in a lab. I have driven our forklifts and our scissor lifts. I’ve blended our ingredients into our batching tanks. I verify our sanitation practices, and I help solve problems as needed. I spend a lot of my day staring at stainless steel pipes and mumbling about dissolved oxygen to myself.

That’s all to say, I’m not an expert. I would call myself a warehouse hobbyist and enthusiast. Not out loud to anyone, but when I play a video game that has a warehouse in it, I like to spend my time looking at how the warehouse is put together.

In addition to this, a note on Forklift Certification: It’s largely made up. There are some machines that require special licenses, and OSHA has classes you can take that probably look good on a resume, but if you look at the language that OSHA uses to define who is allowed to drive a forklift it only has two requirements. “Trained operators must know how to do the job properly and do it safely as demonstrated by workplace evaluation.” It’s up to the employer how that’s interpreted. My employer had me watch a forty five minute video and then someone watched as I drove around for thirty minutes saying “oh fuck oh fuck okay okay okay don’t hit anyone.”

I took my character, Dr. FLIPJUMP DARKSWALLOW, to the moon. I brought my companion Sarah with me, she said she wouldn’t mind a detour so that we could finally live out our shared dream of owning a pair of moon boots, so down we went to explore a seemingly abandoned lunar station. It seemed to be some kind of staging facility for receiving shipments, landing dock, staff kitchen and common area, but as far as I could tell there wasn’t anywhere within a kilometer or two to send the shipments once they arrived. Typical supply chain issues, major distro hub with nothing in site to distro to. But it did have a small on-site warehouse so Sarah and I both agreed to put a pause on our moon boots dream and explore.

This is called an IBC tote. You can fill these up through a big screw-top hole on the top, super easy to use, cheap ($275 new), universal. The most common versions I’ve seen have a galvanized steel cage and a galvanized steel pallet attached to the bottom so it can be universally picked up by a forklift. They typically have a 2” drain valve with a butterfly and a camlock. This is a pretty good example of an IBC tote! You can see how the galvanized steel was welded together at each intersection, bent into place and held there. The butterfly at the bottom has a cap in place, it has a pressure valve that’s clearly labeled. This looks pretty good!

This is a pallet jack. On Earth in the present day, you roll it into the slats on a pallet, squeeze on a hand lever in the handle, and pump the handle bar up and down as it lifts. On the Moon in the future, it looks like it’s been upgraded for use in space with what I assume is probably some electric battery type of deal. Otherwise it’s very similar to a normal pallet jack! It even has the double wheels in the front, a detail I was very excited about. There doesn’t seem to be the hand lever though, or any buttons anywhere. I assume that’s because this model has a voice assistant like an Alexa in it.

It has a spring in the back as well, another neat little detail. I’d be curious to see how this works in action, there’s a decent number of mechanical parts on it for how futuristic it looks. There’s also two small… baskets, I guess? For paperwork maybe? On either end of the handle shaft. I made up the term handle shaft.

Here is what I assume is a future-forklift. And Sarah. Please ignore Sarah. I was required to take her on a mission early on, but she keeps saying things like “that’s not yours!” and “we should not break the law,” which has been definitely cramping Dr. DARKSWALLOW’s style. Anyway, this forklift is a far cry from the kinds we have in present day. Barely recognizable.

My best guess is that you stand on this platform to operate it. But there’s no buttons or levers again, no key ignition. Presumably this turns on somehow and that panel is a touchscreen, or maybe it’s another Alexa operated device. This whole thing seems pretty dangerous. There’s no roll cage. I guess maybe there’s no OSHA in the future? Or maybe this thing has a lot of safety tech built into it to protect the operator from making mistakes. Maybe it follows Asimov’s rules of robotics and can’t allow a human to come to harm, through action or inaction. But that seems like a lot of liability to pack into programming, and it seems expensive to attach a positronic brain to a forklift. I don’t know how it would anticipate other drivers doing things badly, knocking over pallets? It seems dicey.

I do like that the cabling looks like it’s painter’s taped onto the frame so it doesn’t get caught anywhere. That’s a great little detail, very much something a maintenance team might do in a pinch. A “short term hold” as they “work with supply chain details to implement a long term repair.”

I climbed up onto a pile of boxes to get this picture. It looks like they redesigned the forks in the future, kind of a high-heeled shoe thing going on at the ends there. And this forklift seems like it has reduced functionality from what forklifts here on Earth can do. Forklifts can usually do three things with the forks: lift up and down, pitch the forks back and forth, and spread the forks wider or narrower. I think this can only lift the forks up and down. There also seems to be a large orange ball on the bottom, but I don’t know what that’s used for. My best guess, given the short cylinder above it, is that the forks can control their yaw and rotate on a horizontal access? But they’re right up against the axle so I’m not sure how that would work. Maybe if you lift the forks up it’s able to rotate? But I don’t see much of an engine to ballast the center of gravity anywhere. Maybe the entire body is made with a very dense metal, it does seem to be pretty flush with the ground.

My biggest complaint is that this forklift doesn’t have any headlights or taillights. It’s important for forklifts to have a horn and bright lights to let other workers know there’s a forklift around, especially reverse lights. These might be taillights, if I’m giving some benefit here, but they’re so low to the ground I’m not sure how other drivers are going to be able to see them. But I’m not an expert in future light bulbs, maybe these work just fine.

These look like future pallets! Pallets come in different materials, with wood or plastic as the most common, but they also come in standard sizes. But these pallets look like they’re way too small for the forklift to pick up. Maybe they’re just for the pallet jack? And big note here: I really hope for the sake of the warehouse manager in this facility that OSHA doesn’t exist, because each one of those pallets standing up on its side is going to be its own fine. Overall these pallets look pretty good, if small. And this disaster of a pile seems pretty true to form with how pallets are stored, no matter how many @everyone pings on Microsoft Teams you see get sent out about stacking pallets correctly.

I suspect everyone in the warehouse crew here hates their coworkers. They have four of these pallets in a square but are stacking things randomly on top of them. None of these things are strapped down, this black cube is on a pallet that’s a different size than the pallets underneath it. Just a bizarre move. I hope everyone’s doing okay.

And then on the other side is this: … Why? Why would anyone do this? You can’t pick those rolls up, the rest will roll right off the pallet. They’re not centered on the pallet so even if you did pick it up, you couldn’t put this onto pallet racking anywhere, it’s hanging off the edge.

This is pallet racking. It seems bolted together for some reason. I haven’t seen that before on this style of racking. It seems counter-intuitive; the whole point of this type is that it’s easy to put together, it’s modular. But if you bolt it together, it’s not modular anymore. Normally you just slot the pieces in, they fall into place and don’t require additional parts. Just welded steel with drop slots.

Oof. A dead body. I’m a little surprised there aren’t more of these here. It does feel a bit dangerous.

Here’s another pallet jack, but they aren’t using it correctly. The pallet goes into the forks, why did they put a pallet on top of the forks? Ridiculous. Now they’re just lifting things for no reason. A forklift put the pallet on, now a forklift has to take the pallet off? Why use the pallet jack at all?

And lastly: a propane cage! There’s no locks on it, the maintenance team is probably screaming at everyone to make sure they Lock Out/Tag Out their equipment, but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and sign off on it because there’s no propane tanks inside the cage so maybe the locks just aren’t necessary. Hopefully it’s just in someone’s pocket while they’re going to refill the tanks.

Overall, this is a pretty dangerous looking facility but probably usable. I’d say they ought to start working towards shoring up some safety gaps here, maybe making more intentional decisions about purchases for a while so they have the equipment they need for their process flow instead of all this equipment that requires rework and multiple touches to get anything done. But a growing business sometimes has to take what’s available! Kudos to them for getting things up and running on the moon, not an easy feat.

[ralphlanyon]

TC tag game

Tagged by @spudodell!

Rules: Answer the questions and tag other TC fans!

1. "He would not fucking say that" only they did and it's canon. When/who?

Not that they're necessarily out of character, but whenever Renault is clearly projecting her own internalized misogyny onto the characters (e.g. Laurie calling Nurse Adrian a "silly little dumbbell" at one point or the narrative voice commenting on Aunt Olive's lack of makeup), I am like

(Granted, her other contemporary novels that actually feature female protagonists are even worse about this… 🫠)

2. Did they kiss in the study? Yes/no + why you are 100% correct about this.

Yes, absolutely! I previously wrote this meta about why I think so here. But here are a few more reasons:

"Over and over, during those first months, Laurie had relived the scene in the study, guarding it with fierce secrecy as a savage guards a magic word." It would be quite odd for Laurie to constantly relive that last meeting with Ralph and guard it with "fierce secrecy," if Ralph had done nothing more than chastise him, give him an old book, and turn him out of his study. So something intimate must have happened there that Laurie still obsessively thinks about.

The infamous ellipsis after "Come here a moment" was deliberately added to the 1959 edition (one of the only additions Renault makes, rather than subtractions), which I think is probably to help clarify the significance of that pause.

Laurie's proprietary behavior towards Ralph at the party, especially him staking claim of Ralph in front of Bim (and frankly a lot of about Laurie's behavior towards Ralph in general), makes a lot more sense if they had a "moment" together in the past and both of them never got over it or each other. It would help explain why Laurie instinctively feels he does have a claim over Ralph (as the Odysseus to Ralph's Penelope, to use Bim's analogy), as well as why Ralph continues to carry a torch for him after seven years and countless other relationships.

3. Mandatory question about Ralph's alleged tattoos.

To be honest I don't think he has any tattoos yet (or at least any in areas that would be normally exposed to the public), or else Laurie would have commented on them like he comments on just about everything else about Ralph's appearance. I could see him getting some in the future though, maybe some nautical-themed ones and probably at least one related to Laurie because he's sentimental like that.

4. 53 vs 59 edition: quote a line or paragraph that is better in the edition you like the least.

I generally prefer reading the '53 edition mainly for the extra bits, but there are several stylistic writing choices I do prefer in the '59 edition. One of them is Ralph telling Laurie, "I didn't think you had that much bitchery in you." He says "cattiness" in the '53 edition, but Laurie is very bitchy (and Ralph likes that about him!).

5. Which TC character would feel right at home here on tumblr dot com?

Bim or Sandy! They would be bringing the tea. ☕️

6. Tag yourself at Alec's birthday party.

Probably part of the couple holding hands in dead silence, lol.

7. Post a TC meme.

I have a lot of memes in my TC tag, but here's one I made a while ago:

8. Easy to talk about who deserved better. Who deserved worse?

Dave because he bores me (the worst thing a literary character can do). Also Ralph's parents and Jeepers.

9. You can break the fourth wall (at any point in the novel) and say a single sentence to our protagonist, Laurie Odell. What do you say?

"You are intensely afraid of abandonment which is why you keep trying to leave people before they can leave you. (Please go to therapy.)"

10. What's a question you have about TC? One you haven't found an answer for yet.

What do Laurie and Ralph do for their post-war careers? There have been several excellent ideas in post-canon fics, but I haven’t quite settled on my own headcanon for them.

Tagging: not sure who hasn’t been tagged yet, but feel free to nab if you see this!

[samieree]

Dawn of the North || Game of Thrones

Robb Stark x OC

(masterlists in the end) -> Prologue + description

Chapter I ''Beginning''

Since they ran away from home, they planned to save enough money to sail by ship to Essos and settle there, in one of the Free Cities. Their plans changed when it turned out that earning money was not that easy. Especially when you feel guilty when you rob someone.

When Amalthea thought about the situation that took place two years ago and their stay in the North, she would not have thought that her and Ryledia's lives would take this direction. She didn't think they would return to the North, it seemed to her that they would be best off in the lands of the Reach or the Riverlands. After all, they grew up in the Reach, this was the area they knew best. But after two years they found themselves back in the Kingdom of the North, and quite far in it. Okay, earlier, they had gone further, to some village between Winterfell and Dreadfort, but then they told themselves that they would not want to come here ever again. It was cold, they had to buy warmer coats and shoes, stay in inns at night... It was simply unprofitable.

But something brought them back here. More specifically, just south of Moat Cailin. They began their journey there when they learned of King Robert's death and that the North had called the bannermen and declared war on the Lannisters.

"We should buy some good wine from Dorne and have some fun." that's what Ryledia told her when they heard about the change on the throne.

After all, King Robert had always been the greatest threat to Amalthea's life - although his death didn't mean she would suddenly be completely safe. She had no doubt that there were still plenty of people who hated Targaryens and it made sense to hide her true identity.

It would certainly be easier if they were able to go to another continent. No one would have paid attention there if Amalthea hadn't put on her dark red wig and just let her silver waves down. In fact, their story would have gone in this direction if Ryledia had agreed to Amalthea's proposal. Namely, it was about selling hair. Long, silver, light curls would be very expensive. The girl wanted to cut it as high as possible - she was wearing a wig anyway - and sell it for at least enough to get them both across the sea. But then she heard:

"No. You will not sell yourself."

Amalthea didn't see it that way. For her, it was just her hair, a beautiful but at the same time annoying part of her appearance. Especially since the longer they were, the harder it was to stuff them under the wig.

Apart from this argument, Ryledia added that it would not be easy for them to find a buyer, and if they found one, he would definitely ask them where they got the hair from. And then what? Would they say they were lying on the ground? And if they admitted that they belonged to Amalthea, they would risk that the merchant would discover their secret.

Returning to their current situation, Amalthea began to become suspicious as to why they had returned. While they were sitting in one of the inns, a few soldiers, rather high-born, came there. Of course, they were looking for the comfort of a normal bed, which they left at home when they went to war. Or women, one of the two. Anyway, this time no one was bothering them - and even if someone was, after politely refusing, he left them alone (unless he was drunk, in which case he needed a little help in the form of a push towards his friends) - it was rather... other way around. Ryledia did so, to be precise.

Amalthea didn't know the true nature of her friend's behavior as she sat and talked with the military men, laughing and drinking with them. Sometimes she kept Amalthea next to her, and sometimes she left her at another table - but then she looked at her discreetly almost every moment to make sure that she was in no danger, that no one was bothering her. The silver-haired girl finally thought that her close friend must have fallen in love. Or more precisely, what pushed her to this conclusion was that when one of the men suggested that they travel with them, from camp to camp - of course not to fight, gods forbid, they were women. It was just about... keeping company. Besides, they knew a bit about tending wounds and cooking, so they could always be useful. Especially since they had their own horses, so traveling wouldn't be a problem for them.

And that's how they ended up in the middle of a war camp. She was sitting next to Ryledia on a tree trunk by a fire over which rabbits were roasting. She didn't feel very comfortable here, much less as comfortable as Ryledia. She wondered if she felt the eyes of others on her as she did and wondered what all these men were thinking. After all, they left their wives - if they had them - at home... She wanted to broach the subject with Ryledia, but firstly: she didn't want to interrupt the conversation, and secondly: she didn't seem like she had the same thoughts. Maybe she hid it well, or maybe she didn't have any at all. After all, some blood divides them.

She sat and stared at her fingers, playing with them until she got tired of it. The conversation didn't interest her either, it didn't seem to be about any topics she could comment on, so she stayed silent almost the entire time.

She sighed and looked around. She didn't expect to see any familiar face, although deep down she hoped that she would see the boy who, together with his father, saved her and Ryledia two years ago. After all, he was the one who called the bannermen and led the army, so he had to be around here somewhere. But the camp with about twenty thousand people is huge. The chance of seeing him somewhere was-

She noticed a woman entering a tent. She did it immediately, after all, she didn't expect many more women to be in the camp. Especially since this one looked much older than her. She leaned a little in her seat, but she still couldn't see anything that was happening in the tent she entered. But now her attention was finally focused on something other than twiddling her fingers and listening to the boring conversation. She stared at the tent for a long time until her suspicions were finally confirmed: the woman she noticed was Lady Stark. She was the first to leave after a dozen or so minutes - yes, all this time Amalthea was staring at one and the same tent - and some time later her eldest son came out accompanied by someone else, his age or at most five years older. She recognized him immediately, even from this distance - and they were about a dozen meters away.

He didn't change much, except he had a beard now. His hair still curled into small curls,  had blue eyes, a warm, thick coat, and the silver direwolf pin adorned the clasp of the coat.

Their eyes met for a moment, completely unexpectedly. She mentally cursed that he happened to look in her direction and notice her, but there was only a faint blush on her face as she quickly turned back to the fire. She rested her elbows on her thighs and placed her hands on her cheeks to hide the pinkness before anyone noticed.

After all, she was what, seventeen? And she had just seen once again the boy for whom her heart had fluttered once before, and whom she had spoken about to Ryledia for so long that she had almost tortured her to death. Now she felt her heart racing again, but quickly calmed down.

At least for a while.

"My Lady?" she almost jumped when she heard his voice behind her. She should have expected it, after all the conversation had died down until Robb nodded and smiled that it was okay, they may talk freely, he came here for only one person. "What an unexpected meeting."

He was only a year older than her, not even a whole year, and he kept reliving that moment when his eyes fell on a beautiful girl and lingered on her a little too long. Then, at the inn, he did everything he could to hide it, but his father still teased him a bit about it later. Of course he noticed. Nothing was as embarrassing for Robb, although now he would give everything to have his father back, even if he had to argue with him that he had absolutely never been seriously attracted to any woman. He could at best discuss this with Theon, although he would prefer to keep it to himself. He would never start such a conversation himself, his feelings were his alone.

But now he decided to approach her. He could have ignored it, thought that he was just imagining it, that it definitely wasn't her. After all, he didn't even know her name. Neither her nor her companion. But he couldn't let go, he never could.

"Unfortunately, not in better circumstances than last time."

"I heard that two women joined in, but I regret that I didn't ask for their name right away. Although I haven't even had a chance to learn it yet." yes, none of them introduced themselves when they had the pleasure of meeting at the inn. "Could I?"

"Amalthea." she replied, smiling gently.

"I'm Robb Stark."

She wanted to say that she knew his name - after all, she was educated, or at least enough to know everything important about the world around her and the most important houses of Westeros, but her voice got stuck in her throat. Why? Because Robb took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing the back of it. Maybe it was just an innocent, polite gesture, but her heart sped up, threatening to make her face blush.

"And your friend?" he asked, looking behind her at the brunette who was still busy talking with the soldiers.

She hesitated for a moment before answering, thinking about how his lips had just placed a gentle kiss on her hand, about the warmth of his gentle embrace when he was holding her hand for this short time.

"Ryledia." she also looked at her, but only for a moment, because she definitely preferred to look at the boy who touched her girlish heart than at the friend she was with every day.

"I hope you haven't had any unpleasant experiences in these two years like at that inn." he really wanted it to be that way, even though the chances were slim. After all, women traveling alone are unfortunately often harassed. But they didn't look like they were in bad shape.

If it weren't for traveling alone, he would assume they had family somewhere nearby they could stay with - at least one of them. They didn't look like they could be sisters, but anything was possible. He assumed that since Amalthea hadn't introduced them that way, they didn't have a bond deeper than friendship. Still - ladies traveling alone was like asking for trouble. For that reason, he was glad that they would stay with them, at least for a while. That wasn't the only reason, of course, but he didn't want to admit it yet. For now, he wanted to... get to know her. Just like that.

He couldn't deny it, she was pretty - he had eyes, after all. Who wouldn't like a slim girl with a visible waistline, fanciable breasts, amber eyes and long wine-colored hair? That's why he went so far with politeness as to kiss her hand while introducing himself. A gesture of respect, but at the same time he hoped that he had impressed her and that Amalthea would reciprocate his desire to get to know each other.

It is true that he has his duties, he leads people to war, he wants to save his father, but during the day he also has long moments when he is alone with his thoughts. He would gladly fill it with her, if she agreed to it, of course.

And if not, he would have to try harder than just kissing her hand while looking her straight in the eyes.

"Fortunately, no." it was a small lie on her part, because her and Ryledia's life had never been easy, even before they ran away from home.

Amalthea had always had the same fear as her father: being recognized. Over time, she got used to it and was less careful, no longer touching the edges of the wig to make sure her hair wasn't sticking out - and asking Ryledia about it every now and then, whenever she could do it discreetly...

They were both aware of the dangers their journey entailed, but they didn't feel like they had any other choice now. They could stay somewhere longer and settle down, but it's more complicated than it seems, fitting into a community that already knows each other well and you are a stranger. Traveling gave them freedom, even if it meant risking their health or even lives from time to time.

That's why Amalthea was surprised by Ryledia's quick agreement to the idea of ​​joining the moving army.

"If you don't mind... I'd like to have a few words with you from time to time, my Lady. It's very... relaxing to be able to talk about something other than the current situation."

"Why 'my Lady'? Maybe I'm not of noble birth? After all, I travel from city to city without staying anywhere for long."

"It's obvious." he nodded at her and looked at her from her feet to the top of her head. "The way you talk, how you carry yourself, the way you look. A woman from a humble home is not like that."

"Be careful, my Lord, maybe it will turn out that I am a lost princess?" she said jokingly, laughing with him. She ignored the way she felt Ryledia lightly tugging her skirt from behind to be careful not to say too much. But these are just jokes! He wouldn't take her seriously, anyone would laugh if they heard something like that while talking with her.

"Then I would have to call the Maester to remind me of all the rules of etiquette regarding behavior in the presence of the princess." he replied in an equally light tone.

They continued their banter completely unaware of two things: First of all: Yes, Ryledia, who was sitting on a trunk practically behind Amalthea's back, may have continued her conversation with the soldiers, but at the same time she was listening carefully to her friend's conversation with Robb. Secondly: Catelyn noticed them too, or more precisely, that her son was suddenly interested in some woman - where did she even come from? On the one hand, she was happy because he finally didn't look all tense, but she didn't know her, this probably wasn't a good match for him in any way, and she immediately thought of everything that could go wrong if her son will be reckless.

And that's how he'll be like if he becomes infatuated with her.

~

-> Chapter II ''Two worlds'' -> general masterlist -> Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon masterlist

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Hello!! This is kind of a stupid question but do you understand who the Moonshadow assassins kill and why? At first I assumed it was just human rulers/generals from all kingdoms but when Viren was talking about how they were a threat in season 2 the other rulers didn’t seem to think it was as big of an emergency and I was a little confused. I hope you have a great day!!

I actually love questions like this! There's some nuance in the answer, and also some uncertainty, but I'll share my take for ya:

The Moonshadow assassins don't seem to pick their own targets, they accept assignments from the Dragon Throne. The full nature of that relationship hasn't been explained in any detail, so it's a tricky, complicated area of lore for the moment.

Basically, we don't have any information on how the Dragon Throne chooses the targets it passes on to the Moonshadow assassins for taking, aside from the one that happened just before the show's plot began, with Zubeia sending Runaan and his team to kill Harrow and Ezran. All we know is that these targets are supposed to be so threatening to Xadia that the world would be better off if they were no longer in it.

It's not impossible to imagine Avizandum telling his assassins to take out someone who didn't actually deserve it. It's relatively easy actually, knowing how he liked to stomp on humans, and how long he lived. It's probably happened. The only question is: how often? (angst)

I would guess - because again, we don't really know this for sure yet - that Avizandum generally chose actual threats, or people who could easily become threats in a war. But when you're a long-lived dragon, maybe you see different patterns in the mortal lives and cultures of humans. And Runaan and all the assassins before him wouldn't live long enough to recognize those patterns themselves, so they probably had to accept their targets out of either trust or duty. (more angst)

Some of them would definitely be military type targets: generals; shining young hero types with a chip on their shoulder; stealthy human assassins; dark mages if they dared risk it; and etc.

But a dragon might see strange harmless patterns beginning to form and decide to nip them in the bud before they led to anything truly threatening: a craftsman who just had a design breakthrough with a prototype ballista; a baker who just invented hardtack that could keep an army on the move for weeks; an armorer who just made a much safer design; a clever miner who found a rare and valuable source of iron.

People like that aren't dangerous on their own. But the knowledge they might share among the humans during a long drawn-out war with Xadia could be devastating in a decade or five. A dragon who already doesn't like humans would probably have no trouble sending his best assassin to snipe unsuspecting ordinary people like that.

We're still not sure if assassins must take an assignment, or if it's just dishonorable or something not to take it. But Runaan's a pretty regimented guy, and he's not fond of humans either. Between his trust issues and his protective instincts, I don't think he'd look too hard at his assignments these days even if he had a choice - he'd believe he was doing the right thing for his people, and then he'd stop thinking and go shoot someone.

I think sometimes Runaan definitely was doing the right thing by killing someone. But it's impossible to say which missions were and which weren't the right thing. Life is way too complicated for clear-cut answers like that.

Okay, onward!

The other part of this answer is about the Pentarchy itself. I think their hesitance to commit right away, and the reason Aanya got so much time to smack Viren with her sass, happened partly because Viren lives in a border realm like she does, and the other three rulers have a nice safe buffer between them and the brunt of the war efforts.

Basically, Del Bar, Neolandia, and Evenere don't have any skin in the border game.

They don't have big standing armies, and the only threats they deal with are small incursions - either assassins from other human realms or occasionally Moonshadow assassins.

Which is the topic at hand! But when Viren tries to convince Harrow to do the switching spell in S1, he claims that Moonshadow elves are an unstoppable force. Almost a force of nature, kind of vibe. If they come for you, you're just gonna die about it. Harrow even agrees with him! It's common knowledge how deadly the Moonshadow assassins are. And that's what happened despite all of Viren's plans - he still lost his king because Moonshadow assassins are scary good at their job.

So it's plausible that the other rulers didn't see any point in committing resources to an unsolvable issue - if Moonshadow assassins were coming for them, then they'd die. Why risk anyone else? Anyone in the assassins' way would die too. (Which they did in Katolis)

Another option is that Viren has been wrong before, and the other royals did commit resources to deal with the threat he claimed was coming, only to have time and money and forces wasted. If Viren had brought them costly mistakes, they could've been hedging their bets this time around.

There's a funnier possibility though: maybe they just didn't like Viren. People in power sometimes say polite things to an underling or a petitioner, and then have no intention of ever following through with it. They might've all been blowing smoke here, telling Viren "oh yeah sure if we're all in, let's totally do war, bro" and absolutely never meaning it even a little bit because they simply did not like the messenger.

Which is mean. But: royals.

tldr:

there's a few things affecting the Pentarchy scene all at once. We don't know all the factors involved yet, and the Pentarchy probably doesn't either. But at the end of the day the Pentarchy chose to hesitate, and that left Viren on his own.

[wardenswateringhole]

Forget Me Not

Ingo lead Akari through one of the many valleys found in the Highlands. It was one of the more safer routes. An easy to follow path had been well worn into the ground from the foot traffic this area saw from the clans and the merchants. The only pokémon around were starlys chirping busily in the trees and the occasional shinx or bidoof.

Akari eyed Ingo curiously. While she was prone to asking a million questions a minute while in the presence of Ingo but she was noticeably quieter this time. “What's this 'rare herb' you wanted me to help you find?”

Ingo kept his eyes forward as he walked. “I'll explain more when we reach our destination.”

“Is someone sick? Are you sick? Ingo--?”

“Everyone is well, I assure you.” Ingo answered quickly to douse the flames of panic he could hear rising within her. “I promise. More will be revealed shortly.”

Any other time, Akari would press more. Ingo would have his companion running circles around him trying to pry information from him. The little mind games she would play to get him to slip up and say too much. It amused Ingo to no end. A small amount of worry swirled within him at Akari's silence.

It didn't take long for the duo to reach a small clearing. Akari's eyes widened at the flowers that covered the area. Ingo smiled. “I found this spot not too long ago. I thought you might like it.”

“Ingo?” Akari cocked her head at him. “Is this where the herb is?”

“No... Not exactly...” Ingo cleared his throat and fussed with his hat. “I must admit I may have... fibbed... a bit.”

Akari turned to him and put her hands on her hips. A look of mock shock and disappointment was on her face. “Ingo!”

“I-I apologize!” Ingo stammered. “I could not help but notice that the Galaxy Team has been giving you far more tasks than usual. I was worried.” He pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his thinning hairline. “I made up the story about needing a rare herb so I could bring you here to take a break. It seemed like you very much needed to rest your engines.”

Akari sighed. “Yeah... They have been giving me more to do. Rei twisted his ankle so I've been taking on his tasks too.” She smiled. “Thanks Ingo. I really appreciate this.”

She looked over the flowers. There were many hues of blue, red, yellow, and pink with white scattered in between. The air smelled incredibly sweet. Akari knelt to inspect the blooms.

“I should gather some to take back to Rei. He's been miserable cooped up in his cabin. I wonder what color he would like.”

Ingo knelt beside her with his hat in his lap. “I'm sure he'd appreciate any colors you bring him. The smell more than makes up for any disliked colors.” He picked a flower and put it up to his nose. “I'm rather surprised combee do not convene here.”

Ingo looked over to find Akari not listening in the least. She was studying a handful of flowers silently. “Miss Akari? Are you alright?”

Akari nodded. “I... I remember... someone used to bring me flowers when I was sick. Back home...” She twirled a flower between her finger and thumb. “I can't remember who... I keep seeing blonde hair and a red hat that kinda looks like Rei's...”

A sigh the likes of had never been heard coming out of the young surveyor dragged out of her. The flowers were dropped solemnly into her lap as she looked down. “It makes me feel terrible when I remember stuff like that. These people meant so much to me. At least, that's what it feels like. How could I forget them?”

Akari's eyes looked up at Ingo. The shine of tears was becoming increasingly clear.

“Do... Do you think they miss us?” Akari finally asked. “The people we left behind. You think they even know we're gone?”

Ingo looked over Akari for a few moments. He of course felt the same. He did well to hide exactly how many times a memory would creep up on him and leave him a mess for days on end. Memories of family and friends with no faces and garbled voices. Precious moments that he felt he would keep close to his heart til his dying days now a fleeting sensation. It hurt. It hurt more to see young Akari going through the same turmoil.

“I cannot say...” Ingo spoke carefully. He wanted to at least be honest with her. “I do not know what our loved ones are doing or feeling at this moment... But I do know this.”

He ran his hand over her head gently. “We miss them terribly. It is not a pleasant sensation. It is not a sensation that I would wish my loved ones to feel.” His hand cupped her chin and looked into her eyes. “I hope they are happy and well, even if I am not there to take part in it. I wish that for ALL my loved ones.”

Ingo suddenly found himself tackled into a hug. Akari's face was buried into his chest as she sniffled. He voice was muffled against his tunic. “Thanks, Uncle Ingo.”

Ingo hugged her close and nuzzled her head lightly. A few moments passed before Akari pulled away and wiped her eyes. Ingo's gaze was gentle and patient as she tried to laugh off the sudden emotional rush. “Ugh. Okay. I'm okay. Let's get to picking some flowers. I want Rei to check out these smelly things.”

Akari returned to sorting through the colored petals while Ingo placed his hat back on his head. Yes, he missed the life he left behind but people like Akari gave him the strength to persevere. She'd never know how much she had helped him and how much she meant to him. He was completely fine with that.

His thoughts were broken abruptly as Akari's hand grabbed his sleeve tightly. Her voice was a harsh whisper. “Ingo! A pokémon! I've never seen one like it!” Akari pointed toward a shuffling green mound peeking in and out among the flowers. Ingo squinted but could not tell what it was either.

“I need to catch it!” Akari was already shuffling through the flowers trying to be as stealthy as possible. Ingo watched her with a bemused smile. His young friend already looked to be back to her old self.

He hoped that this memory at least would stay with him forever.

[quillyfied]

what are ur fav foods or restaurants that are gluten free?

Aha! A tricky one! I will endeavor to provide a good answer!

So, disclaimer: I also have IBS, which complicates the tummy question, and I also have severe anxiety, so I’ve refused to go to or eat at many restaurants with my family since being diagnosed. This will be a short list, but I highly encourage you to do some research in your own areas and to either get comfortable asking people working in restaurants questions or have someone do it for you. YOU MUST LET THE RESTAURANTS KNOW YOUR CONDITION IF YOU HAVE CELIAC OR ARE GLUTEN SENSITIVE. And realize that most people still don’t understand what you mean when you say you have celiac disease or even a gluten intolerance. But they will understand wheat allergy, especially if you start listing common examples (buns, breading, gravy, etc). Don’t rely on “oh but it’s fruit, why would fruit be a problem?” Because sometimes you find yourself in a Cracker Barrel asking a waitress who has to go ask her manager and the manager will frankly tell you that there’s so much flour flying around back there that if you have any kind of gluten problem, this place is not safe for you. Incidentally, Cracker Barrel is not on my list of safe restaurants, but it is on my list of places to play a fun peg jump game.

Sit-down restaurants, I very much enjoy Cheesecake Factory’s mashed potatoes, and some of their burgers come with a gluten free bun that’s pretty good. Olive Garden has gluten free pasta and tomato sauce, but if tomatoes aren’t your thing, they will absolutely just coat them in butter (and add grilled chicken if you want, and they do scrape and clean the grills). There’s also quite a few local sit down places that I’ve had success with, so, again: research what is in your area! There’s actually a whole gluten free bakery and bistro in my area that isn’t exactly easy for everyday eating but great for a sometimes treat. And I just found a local Italian place that does a delicious chicken Alfredo that didn’t make me sick! Local restaurants can be such treasures, friends.

Quick service joints, by far my favorite is Five Guys Burgers and Fries. They already cook their burgers and buns on separate grills; all you need to do is tell them about your allergy, and they’ll flag it for their people to change gloves when handling your food. Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers has a grilling process where they flip their burgers onto a separate grill to cook the second side where the buns also go, but if you tell them, they will keep it on the meat-only grill; their fries are made in the same fryer as onion rings and therefore not safe. Chicken Salad Chick is a pretty good one so long as you pay attention to the chicken salad ingredients and ask for the Quick Chicks, which are individually packed. LawLer’s BBQ is really good; my sister in law gets the loaded baked potato without cheese, but I think I’ve gotten it before with cheese since I got sick and been fine? I don’t remember, but be safe and maybe skip the cheese, since anti-caking agents in shredded cheese is a sneaky place for gluten to hide and few restaurant workers will even know to check that.

Fast food, there are so few options for actual meals. Wendy’s Frosty is good, but not a complete dinner; I think their baked potatoes and chili might also be safe but I’m not a fan. Some salads are okay (check the dressing always), and many fries are okay (NOT MCDONALDS, THEIR FRIES ARE NOT GLUTEN FREE THANKS TO GLUTEN IN THE BEEF FLAVORING THEY ADD AND ALSO NOT DEDICATED FRYERS), but in my area, the safest place to get a fast, tasty meal is Chick-fil-A. They have dedicated fryers for their fries, and dedicated grills for their grilled nuggets, and they have managers and in some locations allergy specialists on site to make sure your food is made and handled carefully. I’ve never gotten sick from eating it. The moral implications are less than stellar, but. It is what it is. They’re the only place I can eat. And sometimes, I don’t have the time to run home and cook myself a meal before keeping other plans.

I can’t cite my sources here; I spend a lot of time googling and looking up menus and asking questions. Please do your own research and figure out for yourself what is near you that you can have and what you like. It’s a hard thing to live with. Good luck, friend!

[fruiteggsaladit]

Concept for a canon-complicant yyh fanfic, and some character analysis of Yusuke and Kuwabara in Genkai's tournament:

Genkai, at the end of the preliminary eliminations of her tournament for a disciple, having one round that doesn't consist of strength or logic, asking the contestants,

"Why are you here?"

The concept came to mind and then I found it compelling. Giving the contestants an explicit opportunity to describe their circumstances of why they have come here, after they've already succeeded in a number of trials before the actual matches. Some having been so focused on making through this that they're stumped by the question, regardless if they have their life story ready or not. Some refusing outright to describe a story, and instead leave a statement. Others are ready, perhaps thinking that this is another test and so they must have the most compelling story to tell for why they deserve learning from this great master before she dies.

It's a compelling concept to me because 1) it gives opportunity to give easy dimension to background characters and give more crunch and texture as foils to our main characters of this section, and 2) it's fun to make emotionally constipated Yusuke who is only here for a bribe, and easily-embarrassed Kuwabara who just came here for advice and for some reason* didn't leave when the lady is obviously busy and he's not interested in the position. Also gives these characters opportunity to hear and react to what they're hearing! If they admire the stories they hear or what is left unsaid by another, or if they dislike them for that! Yusuke and Kuwabara also know each other before-hand and it's fun for me to force them to air out their thoughts or feelings.

It would be funny too, if after some stories about tragedy and some of glory, to get to Kuwabara, who is a little impressionable (he is moe that way), and perhaps gets very self-conscious about the fact that he came here by happenstance and then just didn't leave.

* it's tempting to say it's Yusuke... but no, he came here on Shizuru's suggestion, and despite his lack of saying so, it appears that in the manga he makes a gesture of "well I guess while I'm here...". There's of course the social aspect too, of having arrived at a big gathering and then being the only person who leaves. What if someone sees him?? Urameshi's there too!!

Option 1) He omits what he thinks is embarrassing to say and lies a little. Option 2) He tells the truth: his senses are getting distracting and his sleep paralysis is getting worse, and he wants to seek a professional about this. It was his sister who told him to seek Genkai, but he didn't know there was a tournament.

I think Option 1 would leave Genkai knowing he's lying or omitting something, and it's up to the writer if this is significant to her or not. I personally think it's very in-character of her if the question is just for her to get a feel for the people present and there isn't a right-or-wrong answer to her question: even a lie is acceptable.

Option 2 would leave her more impressed maybe. It takes guts to admit you did something to go with the flow or because you didn't know how to leave gracefully. Kuwa looks surprised when he got the red lot, he might have expected he could have gained an easy exit if it was white. So, he's baffled when it was red. And then it was games, an area he's very comfortable with, and likely got caught in the groove. Which is also a little embarrassing to admit! "I forgot I could leave," haha! But it could also lead up to Genkai outright asking him, "Do you want to leave?" and Kuwabara would be put on the spot again if so. Depends again on the writer if she asks him and he does intend to leave, or if she doesn't ask him and he's once again kinda "forced" to go w the flow, or if she asks him, he says yes he wants to leave, and then she tells him "Too bad, it's too late now!" either for the kick of it or bc she knows too that Rando is somewhere in this crowd.

When I imagine the order of Kuwabara or Yusuke first in regards to when that question is directed at them, I end up starting with Kuwabara bc Yusuke is the protagonist and it's ultimately him who ends up as Genkai's disciple: it feels like good tradition to build up to his answer. That and, while being a kuwameshi stan, building up to Kuwabara feels too "wifebeamy" to me. Too much potential for "woah kuwa is so inherently good he should have some cookies for that" when this is too early for that. Or, it doesn't feel like the right time for me for such a moment. Too easy a moment for me, might be to someone else's tastes though?

Next is Yusuke, who came because of his job but primarily because of a bribe! He does not expect to get chosen, he was really hoping he'd get eliminated early, he doesn't want to get chosen, he's also uninterested in the serial murdering demon Rando! Though, when his watch broke, it probably made reality kick into gear for Yusuke, to realise that yup, that serial killer is right here on these grounds. Makes it a little harder to leave now that he's got confirmation.

He definitely doesn't have a story ready. When Kuwabara asked him why he's here, Yusuke responded by evading the question: "I've got good reasons, unlike some people." (anime, eng dub) - or turning it back around on Kuwabara: "What are you doing here?" (manga, viz eng translation)/"You tell me why you've come here!" (anime, eng netfx sub) / "Right back at you, what did you come here for?" (my own rough translation of the Japanese dub) / "そういう おめえこそ 何しに来たんだよ" (Japanese dub and sub, might have an error on my part!)

Options: 1) lie. 2) tell the truth.

Interesting how in the English dub, Kuwabara comes across as giving up his reason for being here to Yusuke without prompting. Yusuke dismissed him just a moment earlier by implying he didn't have a good reason, "I have good reason, unlike some people" before he even got to hear it! It was not an invitation to chit-chat. Kuwabara next comes across as too-surprised-to-be-defensive-so-he-just-explains-himself. "You think I don't?" In the manga and the Japanese dub especially though, he comes across to me as surprised that Yusuke asked him about him at all. "Why are you here, why did you come?" "M-me...? Well, the truth is..." Very funny to note here is Yusuke's face as Kuwabara describes his predicament. With the English dub, it came across to me as "Of course his powers grew," like he's exasperated with having had a direct hand in Kuwabara's spirit senses developing more (but also in general having an effect on the world by participating in it however directly or indirectly and being annoyed he affected something he didn't mean for). In Japanese, it read to me as "Oh yeah that's my bad..." Kuwabara notes that this spirit sensing is affecting his fighting in the English dub, and in Japanese it affects him being unable to move (referring to sleep paralysis? I've heard some things abt Viz translation not being the best but it's what I have). And it makes sense then why I read Yusuke's reaction a little differently then? Because one interpretaiton of Kuwabara was about his fighting, the delinquency, the fun and mutual violence for the sake of fun and for some self-fulfillment in oneself and with one's fellow friends. The other is directly about his own health, physical and mental. "Of course that happened to you," "Oh yeah that's my bad..."

Yusuke might mind or might not mind just coming out and saying he's not interested in winning. He does have a small interest in this though, because before the watch-compass exploded, Rando the serial killer was kind of a far-off concept. After the explosion, it feels a lot more real, perhaps. He becomes more invested in looking at his fellow contestants, even sizing up Kuwabara to decide if this Kuwabara is real or if he's always been a demon but in hiding.

In the manga he's impressed enough by Genkai roaring at two men (from Kyuushu mind you, hello 90s-that-still-prevails-today rascism and classicism) that he reconsiders wanting to win for the sake of getting stronger. "Skills powerful enough to strike fear into the hearts of demons! Those would be worth having! Guess I'll stick around after all... and win this competition!"

In the anime, in Japanese, it comes across more like he understood now why yokai would be after Genkai and her powers. Espcially because prior to this he was very exasperated with Genkai being an old woman. And then he goes, "Right! I still have to figure out if Rando is in this group", and bing bong the watch breaks.

Lie or tell the truth? Saying out loud that there's a demon present would be very foolish. He could lie, and same instance as when I babbled on about Kuwabara potantially lying, Genkai would know he's lying or not telling the whole truth.

For some reason my gut is telling me she would not accept a lie like, "I came here because I genuinely wanted to" from Yusuke as much as from Kuwabara! I like to think that she senses something familiar about him that reminds her of herself, which makes her less forgiving of him lying or being hesitant about his true motives in front of her. "I know what you fucking are, don't try me," kind of reaction? (I refuse Genkai seeing any similarity to Toguro within Yusuke.) I also like it a little bit that Genkai relates to Yusuke even before the discipleship begins.

Many dislike the parts of yyh where Yusuke wins by accident or luck. I like this abt yyh actually! It feels very in theme and points to more tragic aspects, that it was indeed luck that prevented him from dying. It invites more reflection, sadly many end up at "it doesn't feel earned" and stop examining things at that point. Yusuke can be clever and strong, but he's also very lucky. It's especially prevalent in the marsh section of the latter part of the tournament. All the more reason, I think, for Yusuke to give some kind of answer that makes Genkai react or go "that one!! ... if this wasn't a tournament based on skill I would consider that one strongly."

It would truly put Yusuke on the spot! Probably very similar feeling to Takenaka at best, Iwamoto at worst, but more unsettling because this spirit energy martial arts master is a stranger to him. Maybe he feels it's unfair! Maybe others in the tournament are also baffled.

Could this paint a mark on Yusuke's back? If Genkai kept that in mind, would she still ask that, or would it be reflexive of her to make Yusuke speak a truth? Depends on the writer.

And then Genkai reveals that no one was eliminated in this "test", she just wanted to know them a little. Though this might not be in-character for her as the individual character, I prefer doing that in favour of strengthening whatever themes or motifs I might notice.

[rowanthestrange]

So in case you were wondering, sequence breaking by jumping that cliff and avoiding the school means: no Titans spawn, the gyms say ‘Welcome to X Gym’ and then the dialogue box just goes away, and the team fight areas aren’t interactable at all and just make a plink sound when you try to click on the bell that makes the minimap flicker. And I don’t know if picnic areas are super rare, if you spawn them yourself or whatever, but the only picnic tables I’ve found have been with the people who give you ingredients.

Funnily enough, the level 50 terastylized Leafeon I found at the top of the glitch cliff right at the beginning is still the strongest Pokemon I’ve found, and I had to walk all the way to Area 6 to find a Pokemon Center (which has level 40’s).

Can’t be arsed to put this on reddit, loads of people must have done it, it was so obvious and easy, the game practically begs you to go up that cliff and try and fight the Pokemon on the other side of the gap.

There’s no obvious speedrunning applicability. You get to run around where I assume the Titans will be without them there which I guess could be cool, but there’s nothing else to do in those locations. Normal Pokemon spawn so maybe you could do a slightly glitchy Professor Oak’s Challenge - made more difficult because you can’t ride Koraidon yet, make sandwiches (afaik), or whatever. But it’d be super niche, and you could self impose those restrictions anyway.

[zynart]

whispering to the ghost in the machine, asking it to paint me a pretty picture

i know we're all probably annoyed by and exhausted of AI art discourse by now, which is understandable, because there's a lot of people there who have dug in deep without having much of an idea of how any of it all works. i can say that it is genuinely very annoying how some people in tech with no artistic sensibilities who don't know enough to know how little they know but bring a lot of unearned confidence to the table anyway. i can say that they are very annoying on twitter and often have no real taste. but i want us, just for a moment, to go back to even just... about a year ago, and what you knew of AI art at the time. there's been communities using AI art for a couple of years now, circles on twitter where some of it started as hobbyists and even meme pages which posted the computer's amusing responses based on its wonky contextless interpretation of prompts. that was when art generating AI tools weren't all that good and we could all be amused not just by being able to visualize funny scenarios or interesting aesthetics, but of catching a glimpse of how this alien computer with a rudimentary grasp of text and a mechanically gifted child's understanding of composition actually 'thought'. and that was fascinating as much as it was funny

remember that? but then AI art tools advanced so quickly that our relationship with it as something that occasionally came across the tl changed. back then it was still mostly hobbyists, people who also found watching a machine think and paint to be interesting, and people who did mostly have a certain artistic curiosity to be playing around with this weird and novel tool. but then all of a sudden tech people discovered it and then all we saw was people who made their livings off of hype and marketing and linkedin platitudes and razzle dazzle for venture capital, and the kind of people who followed those people and imagined themselves as one day being like them, the kind of people who saw this as just another bodyhack to get around an inability to draw things. and then the kind of people in their orbit, who like drawing high fantasy and video game elves with huge boobs

and all of it somehow felt like a symptom of a wider anti-intellectual and anti-sophistication monoculture, like disney strongarming cinemas into starving out original IP and well-made middlebrow blockbusters while nerds insist that dominating mainstream pop culture isn't enough and that they be feted for their taste, god forbid martin scorsese criticize the newest thor movie. and it's like marvel for the cinephiles and rupi kaur for the poets and YA for the writers, seeing the art most in public consciousness and receiving the most attention and coverage — even if it's not exactly rave reviews, it's still all the oxygen in the room — is just godawful, and there are so many artists more deserving

(i mean, it's almost a cliche at this point that people in tech will see a domain that has a lot of thought and study behind it and think the difficult questions within the domain are just somehow things nobody had thought of before, instead of things people who devoted their lives to the area and are no less smart than any of you had engaged with and not been able to find an easy solution to. any of us working in the humanities know what i'm talking about here, so i get the frustration of how all this comes with associations to a tech dude approach that everything is optimizable through a process for efficiency and that the deep body of work, thought, critique, and practice that it takes to develop taste and intuition and domain knowledge can somehow be bypassed if only the people working on it had just thought of this shortcut, which they just were too dumb to have considered before —)

wait, i'll give a little context about myself first, because i know that at least a good fraction of my readers are approaching this with skepticism, assuming that someone taking AI art seriously must be some kind of artless stem person. and i mean, i'm not gonna pretend that my art is good, but i can say art is something i think deeply about and have much interest in, that i follow closely and read criticism and theory, something that i don't take lightly. that i don't think just anyone can do well, that i think takes not just talent but thought. more written art than visual in my own art, but an endless all-consuming fascination with weird new mediums and the kinds of themes you might expect from someone whose blog homepage is black and neon color schemes with consolas body text with a list of projects made over quarantine that includes 1) several essays about internet culture, 2) a virtual date night generator so you could be long-distance and still travel to cities, events, art shows, concerts, beach bonfires, fireworks shows... 3) travel-blogging in lockdown with hq walking tours on youtube, high-dose thc for immersion, audio calls as friends to walk with and the screenshot button as my camera, 4) a digital apartment space on gather, made specifically for parties where you can stay in rooms but chat to people if you go up to them, 5) a text-based game with some poems and a hacky premise about an AI recording your brain, and 6) a magical realism short story about a climate post-apocalypse

but thing is. alright, let's return to the hobbyists, and how fast AI art was developing. and very soon watching with much amusement the machine try to understand you and draw you a little painting all proudly without realizing it made no sense at all turns into learning how to whisper to the machine and getting some intuition of it and figuring out exactly how to set up the machine to produce some very specific image from your mind. i've followed AI art circles and there are artists using technology as tools in their process who have a lot of insightful points that have clearly thought deeply and respectfully about it who have plenty to say

but discourse has never really gone for insight, so what gets traction is often dumb statements from tech randos who don't know the first thing about what makes good art good art or how to recognize artistic value, or arguments from people who don't know anything about how AI works or even what the technology is and think that they make collages from actual phrases or actual chunks of pixels across the internet. lots of made-up bullshit like the collage memes* pictured earlier where the creator made a collage themselves as an example of how AI art works, or viral posts of disinformation which takes output from faceapp-style AI tools which produce output from a given photo side by side with the original as proof of a search-and-collage mechanism

(this is the collage meme in question. the collage image given as an example of AI art is something this creator made, not an AI art product, because that's now how it works)

which isn't how it works at all. but i think i should explain how it actually does work before we go ahead.

there's an old joke now about AI or machine learning basically being just a glorified logistic regression or matrix multiplication and the thing is, it's more true than it's not. AI being basically like a billion equations that learns which output of a cluster of pixels is most accurately represented by which equation to look like whatever thing the keyword is, and learns the equations to combine those equations to most accurately give out whatever bunch of keywords and grammar the prompt is. math that says an equation where you input this. not collaging anything or even having access to any of the original art (you can find a more thorough explanation by an AI artist here)

and just to reiterate that. because a lot of people seem to have no idea how it works and seem to think it's kind of a web crawler, or a 'spider' in old school terms, that basically does a search of a big library of images and pastes them together in a mashup (sometimes in amusing ways, like recently when there was a movement to flood artstation with anti-AI images with big red slashes on them, out of an impression that AI is literally searching artstation and collaging recent pieces fitting the keywords which would make this sabotage all the art machines, and people in the AI art community posted images they'd generated to also have big red slashes with joking captions about the anti-AI slashes working and ruining all the tools. if you saw either side of this little hubbub but didn't know what exactly was going on, now you've got some backstory)

the thing is, i think ultimately this approach of trying to confuse people about what AI art does obscures what ultimately makes human stories or art unique. which is having interiority and a mental model, the lack of which gives you an uncanny valley. the whole thing imo obscures what actually makes human created stories or art unique and interesting, which is that interiority and a consistent mental model. the lack of which means AI art can have a real uncanny valley effect even when it achieves a lot of technical precision

the training-and-regressions process that created AI art generators is why it can know roughly how big a hand is supposed to be in scale to whatever else is being drawn, and it can know fingers are a bunch of bars of light and dark color next to each other, so it can output a bunch of alternating bars fit inside a certain sized area by taking the equations for those things, but it doesnt have any mental model about how a hand should look or why a hand would be a certain way or even really what a hand is, just a ton of regression results. same for how people constantly say the white squiggles that look like signatures proves that its collaging paintings which have signatures on them when its never an actual signature of a person, its just that the equations to most accurately represent a painting often notice that paintings have little squiggles where a signature would be and so include a little squiggle in the equations

and once again a human with interiority would know that having a random squiggle in the corner of a painting actually makes no sense bc it serves no actual purpose, but the AI doesnt know what signatures were or why they're there. because it has no interiority, no conscious experience, no sense of self or its place in the world in relation to other things, no mental model of how things go together and why.

The point is the doing of them, rather than the accomplishments There is no actor but the action, there is no experiencer but the experience An artist’s expression, is his soul made apparent. His schooling as well as his `cool’ being exhibited. Behind every motion the music of his soul is made visible. Otherwise his motion is empty. The Tao of Jet Kunedo – Bruce Lee

i feel like with any new tool or medium, the way you make good art is by exploring its actual unique capabilities. so a lot of the best AI art have an "under the skin" (as in the movie) type of vibe and a sense of alienness or eldritch aspects, a sense of making art using a medium where its inner workings is inherently unknowable unlike how artists like filmmakers or photographers or painters can learn the actual characteristics of their tools, like how different film stocks produce different aspects or which kind of lighting setups create a certain effect or which type of lens or setting to use or which kinds of paint are reflective vs matte or hold their color best or whatever. and that aspect as a mirror of current technology and AI itself as it advances beyond our actual understanding of it or its effects

as opposed to the uninspired trash posted by a lot of unimaginative silicon valley tech bros or big tiddy anime girl lovers or gamers or like, sahil bloom. because people who dont actually know about or think about or understand art doesnt get the whole concept of mediums and their capabilities, or understand the evolution of art or its role in broader society. all like just a futuristic version of how retvrn accounts who drool over like tacky ass marble greek pillars around a pool in a miami drug dealer's mansion or see some random english cottage that was cookie-cutter even when it was built are all people who have an absolute loathing of abstract art or modernist architecture or surrealism or anything like that because their only conception of art is "does it look superficially nice (according to my super basic sensibilities)" and dont have the imagination or curiosity or brain cells to understand any more than that, in that they dont really have any sense of the place of new technological tools in art to make anything good. so its just hack shit like mediocrity

(okay, maybe i'm being a jerk here. there are absolutely people who i think deserve much scorn — for something related, see my post on 'book lovers' and how much of book twitter or booktok seem to actively hate books and be proud of hating classics or literature or the hard work of actually appreciating literature — but there's definitely people in there who are probably pretty nice and are just excited about being able to make something that they find pretty, which they couldn't before. that's kinda sweet, maybe. and they didn't really intend their posts to contribute to an overall milieu of a groan-worthy moment in art. maybe they were just posting it themselves the same way i post stuff like "haha look at this cool rock i saw on the way to work today". it's not really their fault that they don't have particularly refined taste or a clearly defined idea of artistic sensibilities and preferences, because we all have limited time in our lives and allocate that time according to what interests us, and maybe someone who likes a pretty painting by the computer just spends their time on other things closer to their interests than me reading books and art shit. i may complain about it but i don't want to be a jerk about this, and i'll try reserve my ire to people with an actual platform posting their garbage instead of everyday randoms)

but returning to things that are specific to the medium, and the element of using a black box as your oils and canvas and clay and camera. even something like prompt engineering isnt just telling the computer what you want, its trying to figure out the inner workings of the tool by going into it blind. almost like if you had zero knowledge of what a camera was or what was inside it and had to try dismantle it and reverse-engineer what this contraption or this gadget was or what the lens being this place does or how film works and why it gives pictures but similar cylinders or similar salts dont. why the film has to be film specifically and not something of the same shape or similar substances if you're unaware of the chemistry of photosensitive silver salts, why the lens has to be an exact way and not just any round flat see-through glass if you're unaware of the concept of how lenses bend light or the laws of refraction. or why a photo taken in a certain angle or certain lighting exposure might look bad vs what you need to take a good picture, or why you want to use a certain kind of lens for portraits or for landscapes, or why something darker colored photographs poorly, or why the moon can look amazing to the eye but look terrible in a camera when certain other things look the same both to the eye and in a camera, and so on

something different from other mediums/tools is that making the art itself is an exploratory process, that in many ways its physically impossible for any human to ever learn the inner workings of the equipment beyond just a very broad sense because we cant actually ever learn like a billion components no matter how much you try, and there can never be an encyclopedia or a body of work that gives you full expertise in it so each individual artist's entire body of work is their entire body of knowledge and each person's is completely unique, that the same inputs may not give you the same outputs so its impossible to mechanistically predict which means that being able to precisely recreate something is impossible the way you can in theory precisely create a painting or photograph as it exists in your original intention — not always for something like photography because you have action shots and stuff, but we're talking about the actual physical realities of what's possible in the medium so being able to exactly replicate a still life of a rock or a portrait is possible with sufficient mastery — which means that the creation process will always require a sense of just intangible Vibes

i described my blog earlier, but i want to return to themes that interest me. i love themes of alienation and loneliness, finding hope in despair, technology as a force that might free us in the small scales but subsumes us on the grand ones. i'm fascinated by questions of whether subjective experiences that still feed inputs into our brains is any more or less "real" because the process that created the stimuli is different: how meaningfully different is it that i experienced paris, not just photographs or tourist traps but walking through narrow streets and listening to street musicians, through a screen and headphones and sometimes but not always facilitative substance use? would someone a hundred years ago given the same tools not view it as having explored paris through some magical form of spiritual transportation or astral projection? would they consider themselves as having been to paris, while i cheapen my own experience by insisting it didn't really matter because spending hours walking through those streets wasn't material enough? will this way of thinking feel as strange to someone in the near-future to whom the line between the 'real' and the digital world is much less present or relevant?

and i think the line between the technological eldritch of the internet, the art of people as mediated through the technological medium, and the material world is already blurred for me — or it almost is, but some part of me won't let it and will discredit some as less real than others, and some part of me will dispute why i think that way because by any metric that matters they are equally important, like why do i view internet friends i haven't met yet as "less real" than friends i've met in person even if we were much less close and shared much less, and even if 95% of my communication with my real-life friends is still on the same chats and texts and apps as my online friends, so why

and so on —

see, the genuinely spooky and interesting thing about current AI tools on the more abstract and higher level of things, that what so much of the research with GPT and so on is trying to do is probe at the nature of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. the hard problem of consciousness, whether consciousness or sentience or qualia is something that will form itself once any entity has sufficient intelligence, or once you have a network of neurons that's big enough, because there's an assumption that human consciousness itself is an emergent phenomenon from the right environment of intelligence.

AI art tools are far too specialized to actually give insight on this, the way that they might be trying to figure out with GPT and deepmind and stuff. AI art tools are what i said earlier, glorified matrix multiplications and a gajillion regressions that learnt patterns associated with patterns. but developments in AI are linked to each other, just by the nature of how these get made, and developments in more generalized AI will be used to develop finer and finer new generations of AI art models

i do think the rapid rate of progress, the pioneering, the developing familiarity with an unknown entity that's constantly itself changing and growing, the constant calibration and recalibration of intuition, it's all part of being into AI art at this point. or at least of being seriously into it, like a lot of the original AI artists i described before. and i think that is fascinating

anyway. all this reminds me of something from one of my favorite books. i'm not going to name it here to not spoil it, but the narrator and key characters are a type of entity created by humans and seen by human as not having souls in the same sense that humans do, because humans can't create souls, of course. but being able to know this for sure is a big question, and what humans decide on as the way to tell if these figures have souls is through their art. the idea that art would reveal the soul, that you need a soul to be able to make real art:

"She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul." ... "You said it was because your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside. That's what you said, wasn't it? Well, you weren't far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all. That was why we collected your art. We selected the best of it and put on special exhibitions. In the late seventies, at the height of our influence, we were organising large events all around the country. […] 'There, look!' we could say. 'Look at this art! How dare you claim these children are anything less than fully human?' Oh yes, there was a lot of support for our movement back then, the tide was with us.""

and as a companion text, i'll quote david chalmers from the seminal paper "the hard problem of consciousness":

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect ... there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.

We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. The usual explanatory methods of cognitive science and neuroscience do not suffice. These methods have been developed precisely to explain the performance of cognitive functions, and they do a good job of it. But as these methods stand, they are only equipped to explain the performance of functions. When it comes to the hard problem, the standard approach has nothing to say. These are simply the wrong sort of methods: nothing that they give to us can yield an explanation. To account for conscious experience, we need an extra ingredient in the explanation. This makes for a challenge to those who are serious about the hard problem of consciousness: What is your extra ingredient, and why should that account for conscious experience?

At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be instantiated in the absence of experience. It follows that no mere account of the physical process will tell us why experience arises. The emergence of experience goes beyond what can be derived from physical theory. The facts about experience cannot be an automatic consequence of any physical account, as it is conceptually coherent that any given process could exist without experience. Experience may arise from the physical, but it is not entailed by the physical.

The moral of all this is that you can't explain conscious experience on the cheap. The tempting induction from [applications of biological science to physical processes of living beings] fails in the case of consciousness, which is not a problem about physical structures and functions. Given that reductive explanation fails, nonreductive explanation is the natural choice. In physics, it occasionally happens that an entity has to be taken as fundamental. Fundamental entities are not explained in terms of anything simpler. Instead, one takes them as basic, and gives a theory of how they relate to everything else in the world. I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.

We know no set of physical properties can constitute experience, for familiar reasons. But perhaps some quite alien property might do the job ... a "hidden dimension" of space which enables the existence of consciousness. I suspect that such a property has to be hidden, as an empirically adequate theory can always be cast in terms of structure and dynamics that are compatible with the absence of experience. It seems that the new dimension will either (a) be epiphenomenal to the other dimensions (or at least to the projections of those dimensions that we have access to), or (b) related to them as a "realizing" property, carrying the structure in one of these dimensions and making it real. The latter would be compatible with the idea of turning the hard problem "upside down", on which physical reality is itself somehow derivative on underlying experiences ... on which the fundamental (proto)experiences are part of the causal order.

Some of the most intriguing pieces speculate about the shape of a fundamental theory of consciousness. Many of these proposals invoke some form of panpsychism ... making a case against the existence of fundamental laws that connect consciousness to mere complexity, to aspects of functioning, or to biological properties ... and makes a strong case for an integrated view of nature, on which consciousness is not a mere tacked-on extra. Given that the physical domain is a closed causal network, the next choice is that between views which put experience outside this network, with physical laws that make experience epiphenomenal, or put experience inside this network by having the intrinsic properties of matter be proto-experiential. The latter offers the most attractive and integrated view, if the "combination problem" can be solved.

truth is though, i'm a skeptic about whether we'll ever be able to create consciousness. it's something i genuinely doubt, but i think the possibility is legitimately interesting. if art examines the world as it is and as it could be, and our hopes and anxieties, and the cultural moment and counter-moment and zeitgeist and reaction, then i think that in a world where we're all billions of us nodes in a permanently connected system, ourselves probing the very nature of consciousness by trying to create brains in the mainframe, those are themes worth exploring with art. and the tools that are deeply intertwined with these questions by their nature, tools where the creation process itself is engaging with those themes, have their unique place in letting us

i know that the superabundance pandora's box of AI art tools does mean that any given artwork is much less likely to survive the ages the way that defining artworks of previous moments in time have come down to us, but maybe we just haven't had that first Great artwork in the genre yet, who knows? and even if we don't, does that matter — does the ephemeral nature of art as reflecting the ephemeral nature of everything on the internet and in the internet age, everything both superabundant and super-rare, permanent and nonexistent, trillions of pieces of content most of which all fade within moments, fleeting interactions, distance passions, broken urls, myspace, geocities, forums lost to servers going offline, every single line from years of conversation archived in every chat window but rarely re-read, blocked friends, deleted account friends, the coming point where more facebook profiles belong to the dead than to the living, twitter main characters of the day, gorgeous art that we look at for 3 seconds before keeping on scrolling, streaming services that disappear their own libraries. does that mean that the moments when we see art that touches us matter, and the way they touched us and how they made us feel, all that matters even if we may not remember it later

here's one AI painting i really liked. it's probably not a good representation of the current state of AI art with prompt specifications and stuff because it's from quite a while back, from the days i mentioned at the start of this essay when AI art tech wasn't as good as it is now and all AI generations had a certain bizarre feel to them. but still, this is art i think about often and which clearly had some effect on me

@ images_ai on twitter

i do find what AI art reveals about how the machine ‘thinks’ to be interesting too, sometimes:

@ ai_curio on twitter

AI art tools, as the specific subset of AI we're talking about here, has no real connection to adjacent research that aims to find an artificial general intelligence and investigate the possibility of emergent consciousness in massive digital brains, with large language models like gpt/chatgpt. but i think it's inevitable that developments in generalized AI will inevitably feed into each new generation of AI art tools. language models to to help it interpret prompts more accurately, to parse context better, to understand connotations, or higher-level discoveries about intelligence and the inner workings of the mind to learn things like to develop distinctive style, maybe… who knows. i don't

"An artist’s expression, is his soul made apparent. Behind every motion the music of his soul is made visible."

"Your art would reveal what you were like. What you were like inside. That’s what you said, wasn’t it? Well, you weren’t far wrong about that. We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all."

if art is expression and communication, something that reveals the soul. something intangible, indescribable, intuitive. an artist attuned enough can take meaning from the work

(i'm not attuned, but i once spent three hours staring at a rothko painting and i could've sworn i felt soul in it, and i can't explain why. i couldn't put it in words. but i don't think the power of art is all some kind of placebo effect, just because i can't put it in words)

you can tell from the earlier quoted paper on consciousness that i genuinely have no idea where AI research probing into the workings of generalized intelligence and the nature of consciousness and qualia as emergent phenomena will go and what it will find. i've admitted to being a skeptic. but i do think that the long constant watch for those first flickerings of consciousness if, whether justified or not, one of the grand themes of at least the 2020s if not a longer period in history that we'll only be able to contextualize after the fact but that we're definitely living through right now. and maybe even before we can understand or recognize it ourselves, the inner workings of the machine will begin to reveal themselves deep down, layers down. but i do think that maybe even before we can understand or recognize it ourselves, those first rumblings...

art speaks to the soul, right? art is the soul of the artist made apparent? the artist that's mastered the tool so that it creates an image as intended, so that what is communicated by that art is what the artist intended it to communicate. and that's what separates the AI artist from the casual, right?  the artist learns how to create their vision, the casual has an idea of what they want and is surprised by the result. creation vs commission. and that's what's worth taking seriously, the endeavor. building a relationship with the machine until you know what to say and how to say it for you to use the microchips as a chisel, equations as film

whispering to the ghost in the machine, coaxing it, understanding its quirks and lapses, learning just what to say so that it'll create what you want it to create. seeing how that changes, what you have to do differently as it grows. knowing that the machine is growing. gazing into the screen and finding the shape of what you tried to conjure, and if there are any other shapes or shadows of shapes, outlines or swells, that slowly begin to reveal itself, almost imperceptibly at first except by intuition. some sense of interiority. something distinct, that you know is distinct because you've worked out how to create your own expression, so if you see something else in there. something that reveals the blurry, lumbering shape of what could be the soul or the spirit, something that an artist might be able to pick up on before a programmer. any moment now. look closer

———

if you liked this, feel free to check out my other 'essays’ on internet/pop culture stuff on my homepage. here’s a selection:

· “book lovers” don’t love anything about books and it’s weird (or, defending classic novels)

· there are things we owe to each other

· i trained a neural net on 10,000 irony-poisoned tweets and it just gave me cringe?

· what makes someone good, bad, cancelled, or redeemed? i don’t know either!

· please tell me if you have a definitive answer on what makes someone a bad person

· ok, fine, my social justice politics feel a bit like religion sometimes and that’s ok

· after the deluge (short story) (dispatch from an island state post climate apocalypse)

[amplexadversary]

Man I think the thing that annoys me the most about Genshin is that there is genuinely a great open-world adventure RPG game underneath its many many many flaws.

Cut because I have a lot to fucking say apparently.

Are there problems with the character designs? Absolutely. Rather than having truly unique characters the game uses the way 3D models work as a crutch and an excuse. But at the end of the day, it's still a bunch of weird little guys in minxy outfits, and in an ideal version of the game, you would only really need a handful of them to really speak to you.

The overworld and all the various places you can go are genuinely beautiful, and the climbing and gliding mechanics scratch a particular itch in my brain; there is a freedom to approaching the terrain howeverthefuck you want because you can climb damn near everything, and while there is always an "easy" route to get anywhere, there is also endless potential for self-imposed challenges like "climbing the fuck up a mostly sheer wall meant as a one-way shortcut, because there *are* some very hard to find footholds there where you can regain stamina," or "shut up, story, Mountain is talking, and I want to see just how many places I can get to before I'm actually meant to go there." This is held back by the fact that it is not a central mechanic, and I found as I moved into newer areas, there were a lot more exceptions to the "can climb anything" rule. Another frustration of mine that might not be relevant anymore was that at the point where I quit, the newest areas had a lot of flat areas with only occasional verticality that were just not as fun to screw around in.

But no, the things that REALLY frustrate me about this game and, imo, hold it back from being truly excellent are the monetization and the over-reliance on timers to create difficulty.

Look. Gatchas are predatory monetization schemes that foster gambling addictions and add perverse incentives to gameplay, like a mandatory Power Creep to always make it feel necessary to pull for the New Characters. This intertwines a lot with the over-use of timed fights; the goal of these is to make the player over-rely on DPS as their main goal, which is the easiest way to ensure that your power creep strategy works.

Reworking these two infuriating fucking elements would do the bulk of the work that would turn this game from a decent one to a uniquely great one and I am not even fucking joking. Remove the timers? Players now have more freedom to choose their play style, whether it's to create the most efficient DPS teams possible for a challenge, to play defensively and rely on their resource management, built healers, and general not-getting-hit skills to win them fights, or to create the most crackpot builds and party combinations that let them, at a steeper challenge, win with their favorites.

Then, heavily tweaking and adding variety to the gatcha system for another gated, but fairer progression. There honestly could still remain an element of chance, an option for a player to buy the chance to gamble (which, I DON"T LIKE but serves as a big ol' COMPROMISE to the counterargument "but what about the money???"), AND the potential to roughly tie character acquisition to game progress, while still allowing some flexibility for people who REALLY REALLY want a specific little doll in a flashy getup.

The solution? Make all the banners for the big "5*" characters available tied to whether you've completed certain quests, that would make sense for them to join your party after. You could even do this in chunks where you have a variety of possible recruits per banner. Tweak the pity system to be like the weapon banners, where after your guarantees for *a* powerful character/weapon, you are guaranteed *the* powerful character/weapon you *want.*

If you must, change the drop rates of the 4* and 5* each month; it adds a little element of planning and waiting for the perfect moment to strike to get the highest chance of getting someone you want.

Do the same for the weapon acquisition banners. Also, add an option where the player can forego the exp the shit weapons can give and instead trade them for more rolls. Also also, if the player rolls a constellation for a character who already has all their special shit unlocked, make it so that if the player uses it, it transforms into a constellation for a random character. Just because it would be funny, make it so that this may or may not be for a character they actually own. In order to use it they have to unlock the character. (What? Just because I want games to foster a healthy relationship with the player doesn't mean I'm not evil.)

Again, this preserves the personalized element of the current game's balance between working with the randos you get and going after a specific one you want. (Which I think is both funny and the only redeeming element of the gatcha system; I spent like half the time I played the game without an effective healer and had to make do with incidental ones and I think that is fucking hilarious. Also I ended up really liking a gal I got early on who I probably wouldn't have considered otherwise.)

Instead of tailored challenges for the what is it fucking called abyss, have a pool of possible challenges that are randomly rolled each month per player, and make the number of "floors" available tied to where they are in the story. This replicates the incentive to get new characters to address new challenges, but makes it less *mandatory.* Increase the timer for the challenges by like 50% and add another level of reward for speed. Make this one of the only timed challenges in the game. Add "survival" challenges to the pool, where rewards are given based on how many waves of enemies are defeated before a party wipe. This creates a system where players ARE rewarded for building new characters and creating effective builds, while rewarding multiple playstyles, and gives the option to either try for the maximum amount of currency per cycle or to save up (by playing the game over all at a slower pace).

Make events permanently available, unlocked via a system similar to the quest keys. Have a menu to activate events that works like the quest system in Warframe. Make these replayable, but only refresh the rewards (ie, you can replay the event, but get nothing until the refresh) on relevant calendar days. This provides incentive for players to play an event when it's "in season," and gives them something to look forward to, but removes the toxic FOMO element.

Hell, make the "refresh" rewards from events different than the initial ones, by giving currency for the whatsitcalled shop where you can straight up buy characters/constellations. That way there's incentive to play both new *and* old events.

Speaking of the shop, keep the monthly rotations of purchasable characters, but increase the number of slots based on story progression, and add one (1) "5*" character and like, three (3) "4*" slots that are determined randomly from the characters the player has met in-story. Increase the random 4* slots by like one for every major story chapter the player completes, and increase the 5* slots by one for every 2 or 3 chapters. This creates a system that I think math nerds and guide writers would love, trying to sus out the precisely perfect story progression to have the best chance to get every specific character, which would probably drive engagement as these nerds talk about it, while balancing the incentive to get later-game characters with the penalty of having a larger pool which is less likely to give the guy (gender neutral) you want.

Add an identical system for weapons.

Also, let people climb shit and sequence break in the dungeon areas like the gremlins we are; just don't let us actually get the rewards until we complete the various challenges. People will find stupid fucking ways to accomplish these things, you add some sweet bait to get the kind of player who loves going out-of-bounds, and also to the kind of player who loves looking for unexpected tactical advantages to give themselves.

Honestly a lot of this shit largely fixes the irritating artifact/equipment system as well without even touching it, because removing the timers makes it possible for players to largely settle for "good enough" random equipment rather than "perfect" equipment (and the nerds who want perfect equipment can still grind for it. Maybe add a pity system where you sacrifice one of every piece of a set to reroll either the main or sub stats of a chosen piece. (full 5* set of equipment for the main stat, full 4* set for a substat, maybe a full 3* and below set to juice up the specific gains on one substat to a higher number in the possible range)

Anyway TL;DR this game could be so much better, greatly lower the incentive to develop an gambling addiction and still have the opportunity to make money* and it drives me fucking batty

tl;dr yes I want this game to be more like Warframe, shoot me.

*(pay to unlock certain banners out of sequence, pay to get more currency for rolls or for the shop instead of saving up and choosing purchases carefully, pay to refresh rewards or get more chances to get equipment, but none of it is strictly necessary. It kind of mimics Warframe in that it becomes "pay to skip grinding")

[jcmarchi]

A Web Designer’s Secrets to Longevity

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/a-web-designers-secrets-to-longevity/

A Web Designer’s Secrets to Longevity

The web has been around for 30+ years. And we’ve reached a point where “old timers” exist within the industry. In this case, let’s define it as anyone with more than 15 years of experience.

My web design career began in 1996. That was right about the time when the web was becoming mainstream. More people were coming online. Organizations began to see the value in having a website.

So much has changed. We’ve gone from static HTML to content management systems (CMS). The industry has adopted many standards and best practices. Most impressive is that we can take the web with us. Mobile devices have been a game changer.

Truthfully, I couldn’t foresee any of this when I started. Nor did I know that I’d still be working on the web. Things just turned out that way.

Or did they? There must be some secret formula for sticking around this long.

I’ve thought about what it takes to achieve longevity in web design. Here’s what I found.

You Need Enthusiasm for Your Work

Enthusiasm is a key to longevity. And it applies to every career path. Staying on course is difficult when you’re not having fun.

But sometimes we get the wrong impression. Enthusiasm isn’t a 24/7 feeling. It can leave us for days, weeks, or more.

And there are numerous causes. A particularly stressful project can sap your energy. A difficult client can make you dread going to work. Plus, this work is just plain hard. Things don’t always go according to plan.

So, where does enthusiasm come from? Some find it in the creative process. Others may find it in solving complex problems. Helping a client achieve their goals is also a goldmine of good vibes.

Being filled with endless joy isn’t the point. That’s not a realistic expectation for any of us. It’s about finding bits and pieces that excite and motivate you. And you can adjust your workflow to experience more of these moments.

These are the things you can hold onto during tough times. And they’ll give you the energy to take on the next challenge.

Be Willing to Adapt to New Tech

Very little stays the same in this industry. Fundamental technologies like HTML and CSS remain. But even they have evolved. As they say, change is the only constant.

Adapting to change is difficult. As is understanding when to make a change. There are no easy or universal answers.

New technologies arrive daily. But not all of them will be worth your time. How will you know when it’s time to adapt?

So much depends on your niche. Look for tools that will add value to your skill set. Find technologies that will help you better serve client needs. These are areas where change makes sense.

The benefits of something new aren’t always apparent. You may need to experiment to find them. Finding the right one can provide a boost for your career.

You don’t have to jump on every new thing that comes along. But a willingness to try can make a difference. You’re investing in yourself and your future.

Work for Something Bigger Than Yourself

Web design is just another job at the end of the day. There are positives and negatives. And not everyone has the desire to stay in the industry.

Those of us who stay seem to have a common thread. We want to become involved in the web design community.

This involvement takes many forms. It could be contributing to an open-source project like WordPress. Or you might advocate for important causes like security or accessibility.

But you don’t have to focus on making change at the highest level. It’s also possible to impact others on a one-to-one basis. Activities like mentorship help bring others into the industry. It may make someone else’s journey that much more rewarding.

Paying it forward gives you a reason to stay in web design. It doesn’t have to be anything time-consuming or difficult. Even small contributions provide a sense of purpose.

Stay around as Long as You Like

Being a web designer for 25+ years is hard to fathom. The job description has changed dramatically. And yet here I am.

I’m far from the only “old timer” out there. Other talented and dedicated folks have made it this long. Some have even come full circle and retired.

If you’re hoping for similar longevity, think about the items above. Find a niche that you’re enthusiastic about. Don’t be afraid to try new things. And give back in a way that suits you.

Each of these items will help you establish roots in web design. They’ll open you up to a world of opportunity and support. You’ll need them to survive the challenges and changes.

You may make it longer than me! And who knows what the web will look like then?

Related Topics