#but some people have really boring design philosophies

[hedgehogofspades]

Hate seeing those kinds of posts where someone tries to 'fix' pokemon designs they don't like but their 'fix' is literally just removing design elements that were obviously extremely purposeful and/or core to the pokemon's gimmick

#People will redesign Iron Valiant and take off the funny little pigtails they have #as if those weren't a purposeful way to push the genderblended vibe they were going for #Like to each their own #but some people have really boring design philosophies #I've seen people redesign Orbeetle too and it's really obvious by the decisions they make that they didn't catch his name is a pun

[wearethewinx]

I SAID I wanted to talk about Aisha:

It's been theorized that Aisha doesn't want to be a princess. I strongly disagree. She takes her role as the princess of Andros extremely seriously, and imo she clearly WANTS to be a good ruler. Yes, she snuck out to dance sometimes and refused her arranged marriage, but that NEVER stopped her from doing her Princess Duties, and she doesn't have baggage around the decorum of her station. She deploys it effortlessly when beneficial and takes it off just as easily. She drops everything at a moment's notice to return to Andros at the slightest sign of trouble to Be Their Princess

She is DEVOTED and LOYAL. Like, maybe the most of all the winx? She knew Flora for like, a week, and that was enough friendship currency for her to BREAK INTO HELIA'S ROOM AND PAW THROUGH HIS SHIT. Yeah Stella committed identity fraud for Bloom on day 1, but that's Stella. Aisha is responsible! Considers her actions carefully! EXCEPT when a friend needs a favor

That devotion includes her parents. Aisha's respect for her mother is paramount, even after the betrothal fiasco, and that's not just a passive thing. She proudly says "source: my mother told me and she's NEVER wrong" in class. I really wish we got to see more of Aisha's relationship with her parents

She knows a lot about poetry and speaks many languages. Again, I just wish we saw more of this

Basically homeschooled

Her royal education doesn't seem to include magic? Which is SUPER interesting to me. Every other princess we meet except Diaspro is canonically some kind of magic student, but Aisha seems self-taught. While every other princess in the magic dimension is learning to be a fairy or sorceress, the princess of Andros is learning diplomacy, fencing, languages, poetry, dancing, etiquette. That says a lot about Androssi royalty!

She's gentle

GENUINELY KIND OF A MAN HATER

I feel like Aisha is often flattened as 'the strong one' (and I do have personal beef w/ how people incorporate that into her design- she's sporty, not a bodybuilder. Dancing, motorcycling, and surfing are not activities that lend themselves to big bulky biceps!!) and I really think that's a boring disservice to her. IMO she's the sort of person who would really appreciate and treasure little friendship tokens, and spend a lot of time just. Trying to do nice things for the winx, and solve their problems. She treasures quiet time spent together.

Helia loving her (despite Aisha thinking he's a loser) because she knows a lot of philosophy and has a good command over her Vibes. Her and Brandon Doing Sports together bc the other Winx aren't interested and the other specialists annoy her too much, and them becoming catty frenemies. Aisha knowing about the history of Domino and the legend of the Dragon Fire, and bonding with Bloom over it. Bloom drawing a picture of the Winx together and Aisha keeping it forever. Aisha still being scared of the dark and Stella giving her a magical light. Musa helping Aisha plan something special to celebrate the Day of the Rose. Tecna Musa and Aisha bonding over the difficulty they have being openly emotional. Flora and Aisha fretting over eachother's well-being and bonding over their shared sense of responsibility to their families

#winx club #winx

[soundbulb]

my friends tease me for loving manosphere stuff, which is true, but they always find it kind of baffling and I guess I did too until I realized the manosphere men admired the men in these shows. obviously we all wish we could monologue in beautifully paced and well articulated philosophy, that's not what I'm saying, but the men who like this story seem incapable of viewing rust cohle as someone who is expressing beliefs that create ironic tension in his own narrative, same as marty.

it's not quite as bull in a china shop as marty saying "a man needs boundaries" in monologue while we watch him break down the door of the twenty something woman he's cheating on his wife with. but from the moment rust brings up "encouraging the capacity for illusion" it becomes glaringly obvious rust's mainlining of the secrets of the universe -- as well as the bulk of his philosophies outcropped from grief -- are exactly that same encouragement of illusion. "the world needs bad men" and "it was never supposed to work, the whole man-woman thing" is hitting you over the head in the context of the show; rust is ducking and hiding. it's intolerable, how grief irrevocably changed him as a person, the marriage that crumbled from that grief ("we turned on each other"), and the resentment it bore, and not because nature programmed it to end but because it all just did.

but that belief, that nature programmed it to end, is an extension of his idea of time as a flat circle. if you will be reborn into the life you've always been born into, than none of these choices are really yours to begin with. none of what happens has anything to do with you, which is how it feels when you lose everything to an accident on some regular day. so if you believe you're wrought through every motion in repetition, then in this repetition you're exponentially separated from anything resembling agency. but still, nature's programming is You, somewhere at some point in imperceptible time; You at one point lived the life for the first time, then over and over and over, it's Your programming, Your design. the marriage ended who knows how many times. it was never meant to work. your kid died who knows how many times because she was always going to, and you have to continue even though it feels like you're trapped inside a predetermined motion, predetermined not by a benevolent power, or even a malignant one, but by You. everything you ever did or everything done to you happens over and over, there is no such thing as once. which is just true within our lifetimes, we still live inside our decisions, our trajectories, and the trajectories of other people worn on us.

but I'd be surprised if rust believed in a "first time" like that. it's like if you roll a marble on a looping track; an elastic collision got it going, but it's already on a loop. you're born without preexistence, but does this mean that first life is a byproduct of your decisions? in the same way gravity dictated you'd move kinetic, a certain shape, slowing and speeding up at this part and that part, can the same be said for how time dictates you move through your life?

but this is what it feels like when your life is completely devastated by something random. it's the aimless inattention of a couple people at the same time; it's positions in space and speed and impact, gravity; it's an accident. you can't cope with the scope of that. you'll lose everything, but of course the world doesn't change, and the giant devouring mystery is no closer to sated or understood or whatever you believe it seeks. it's in the same way a pandemic wipes through your life and leaves you injured and ill. a plague doesn't really care about anything but living, it was never about you; lives in you but doesn't know what You are, in the same way you don't know what massive devouring mystery you live inside.

even in the murder of dora lang and marie fontenot, murders that are actually committed by men with malice and forethought, there's this thing looming above these women and children as though they're likewise devoured by something too large, incapable of seeing them. this is why it's important that dora lang and marie fontenot are easy targets, "chum in the water". it's impersonal, the accumulation of hundreds of other things that made it easy to pick them off. for some of them it was hurricanes. I love the use of hurricanes in true detective, great use of massive destroying mystery. anyway, it's why marie fontenot's disappearance is paired with the "cerebral event" that paralyzes her uncle. all of these are acts of horror too large to perceive, and why this horror is cosmic depends on where you are in the narrative. is it because evil is a design of nature (or god)? is it because you were propelled into this motion, and gravity will bring you back here, to the moment you're devoured? is it because the only closeness to this mystery is in it's silence around you, incapable of speaking to something like you, so small it could never know you were there at all? that one comes at our half way point with joel theriot -- "all my life I wanted to be nearer to god. the only nearness, silence."

the men doing the killing believe they're feeding this cosmic mystery, that it's a mouth and gut and gets hungry for the people they already view as consumable. they make it into a god that demands sacrifices. rust seems to believe it doesn't need to be fed, it will always eat. his relationship to it is hard to pin down, it clearly guides him, but when he speaks of it it's more like it's coming for him. "it's like something's got your name on it, like a bullet or a long nail in the road."

I do relate to this instinct to embrace "there was never another version". whatever I've lost to encephalitis and it's autoimmune consequences, I have this feeling in my gut there's no version of life where it doesn't happen. there's no trajectory for the me before this except becoming the me in this and after this. I think that's why rust's version of grief does resonate so much, because there's nothing he can do about how random it is, so he turns it into a bullet with his name on it. what he embraces here is the morbid version of "it was fate".

so he's mystified his experience of grief, rightfully so, because grief is inherently mysterious, and that is quite literally the process of engaging your capacity for illusion. and ultimately the story isn't telling you what's eating you, it's saying you'd know it much better by it's silence than by anything definable, present.

#true detective #true detective season 1 #rust cohle #ht #htl

[rottenshotgungames]

I want to start talking about my personal game design philosophy

Stop Saying “No”

Let’s be honest here, you’ve written a hard limit into at least one of your games. We all have, I certainly have. It’s one of those simple yet effective pieces of tech (one that’s existed since the dawn of games) that can be introduced to bring an option in line with some other option, or to prevent a scaling into eternity, or some other third thing. Maybe skills have maximums, or you can only use a certain number of consumables in a combat, or an item can only be activated every other scene or round. Whatever it is, you’ve written into your game a rule that tells the players, “No. You cannot do this thing.”

I think we overuse hard limits. My goal is to convince you that hard limits, that the “No” you’ve introduced into your rules, is the game design equivalent of junk food: easy to use and bad in large quantities.

My argument boils down to two simple points:

Hard limits are frustrating and boring

Hard limits limit your design

In addition, I will be detailing three alternatives to hard limits:

Costs

Consequences

Balance

Hard vs. Soft

Before we begin, I want to clarify the difference between a hard limit and a soft limit:

A hard limit can generally be defined as, "A rule which expressly forbids or otherwise disallows something, either in a given circumstance or in general."

A soft limit, in contrast, can generally be defined as, "A rule which disincentivizes or otherwise indirectly limits something."

Alright, on with the show.

Hard Limits are Frustrating and Boring

This is what I like to call the, “What do you mean I can’t use my telekinesis to disarm that guy??? That’s fucking stupid!” Put simply, people like using their toys, and people dislike being told they can’t use their toys for whatever reason. Even if you haven’t had as vitriolic of a reaction as the one described earlier, I’m more than positive you’ve felt this way toward some rule in an RPG at some point. Even if a hard limitation is completely reasonable, it can still be frustrating to encounter; I understand why I can’t raise my Skill levels above my character level in Pathfinder, but it was still annoying and saddening the first time I heard it.

There’s this tweet from a while back, in which one Mr. Joshy McCroo (@riseupcomus) argues that any hard CC that fully prevents you from taking actions is inherently poor design as it does nothing but frustrate the person that it’s used on. This is the very same concept, and for the very same reason: it’s just not fun.

The fundamental reason for the frustration caused by hard limits is that they restrict player choice. When you introduce a hard “no,” you often remove an opportunity to create interesting decisions, and decisions are the foundation of play. Boredom with a system or a situation is spawned by a lack of choice, by a necessity to perform the same action over and over or an inability to do anything. When you give players a variety of tools that can each be used consistently—particularly in tactical games—they will use those tools in interesting, creative, and fun ways; if you restrict those tools, restrict the freedom to use those tools as desired, boredom and frustration can set in quickly.

Hard Limits Limit Your Design

This point is less objective and far more experiential / personal. This isn’t meant to demean opposing views or differing design philosophies.

As stated earlier, hard limits are simple, effective, and easy to use. If you come up against a design wall, such as an option being too powerful or players over-centralizing, it can be easy to just institute a rule that says “You can’t use this constantly,” or “You can only have this many Gizmos™️,” but doing so will often deprive you of an opportunity to innovate or otherwise improve your design sense.

For me, learning design was a serious process of Example and Trial. I’d use reference points (such as RPGs or Video Games that I really liked) to guide me through tough decisions, and when I didn’t have that guide I’d just write and revise until something fit. Eventually, I realized that growing as a designer and developing my own philosophy meant expanding beyond (even if ever-so-slightly) my influences, and the balance shifted from Example(60)/Trial(40) to Example(30)/Trial(70). For me, the fun of design is coming up against these kinds of issues and seeing if I can develop a novel approach or take a stale approach and spice it up, and I feel myself getting better every time I try.

Hard limits are easy to use and generally (relatively) easy to implement, as such they offer less opportunity for growth.

Some alternatives to hard limits, and why you might consider using them:

Costs

Two prevalent examples of costs are weapon ammunition and (≥2) times per Scene/Combat/Rest/Day abilities (both of these can be found in D&D 3e onward and many of its derivatives).

A cost is basically just a hard limit that's been a few steps removed, but those few steps manage to turn it into a soft limit of sorts. Costs fundamentally take a hard "No" and turn it into a "Yes, but . . ."

This is probably the easiest alternative to implement, which explains why it's kinda found everywhere. Even spell slots in the Dragon Game are a form of cost limitation. It's also just a generally strong solution, usually removing a significant amount of frustration and adding opportunities for resource management gameplay. However, if not implemented with care or consideration for surrounding options, you could end up with people carrying over 500 arrows at any given time or once more falling into a set rotation of combat abilities that they perform round-to-round (thereby negating the boredom fix).

Consequences

This is my personal favorite alternative.

A consequence, like a cost, is a "Yes, but" that disincentivizes an option or changes how a player thinks about using that option. There are two major differences between a cost and a consequence:

Costs are always negative in nature (you are spending something as part of doing something), consequences can be but aren't necessarily negative.

Costs always lead to a state that acts as a hard limit (once the resource is empty, you cannot do the thing), consequences do not directly involve a hard limit.

Two prevalent examples of consequences are taking damage for doing something (such as the Stress generated by Blades in The Dark's flashback mechanic) and gaining / losing affinity with a person or faction (a la Over War: The Night Comes Down).

The primary benefit of implementing a consequence is the interconnection with other mechanics. Costs are relatively self contained—usually only branching out to a currency mechanic, a weight mechanic, or a leveling mechanic at the very most—because the threat of a hard limit somewhere down the line is often enough to change how players approach a specific mechanic or situation on its own; consequences, on the other hand, necessitate an understanding of and interaction with other mechanics in the system because they literally cannot exist without them. If using a specific ability is going to give you a status condition—for example—that status condition inherently affects other mechanics and how you interact with them as well, changing how you think about that ability and its place in your toolset pretty substantially.

As an example, there's a Priest ability in Hollow Halls (my fantasy dungeon crawler) entitled Glimpse The Plan. Glimpse The Plan doubles the user's Believe proficiency (stat used for casting Parable spells), but also afflicts them with the Blind and Afraid statuses (which are both pretty bad). The Priest playtester quickly realized that if he was Afraid all of the time, then he effectively eliminated half of the consequences—and wouldn't ya know it, there's an option to become permanently Afraid at character creation to increase your health.

All of that being said (and my favoritism clearly on display), consequences can suffer from a difficulty of implementation. Some consequences, particularly the taking of damage, are really easy to throw about haphazardly and thereby suffer from the same "limitation of design" problem that hard limits do; but escaping those, adding consequences that are unique and create interesting choices, takes time and care and an awareness of how certain mechanics can and do interact. Even the easier-to-implement consequences can often take a few tries to fine-tune.

Balance

This is simultaneously the simplest and most complicated alternative. To balance something here means to compare an option to other surrounding options, weigh the value of each, and slowly tweak numbers until they're all in line with each other. Generally speaking, the easiest way to do this is to craft an option as a baseline and balance everything else around that option, but there are times where you'll create a more powerful ability that you don't want to change, thereby causing it to become the new baseline and so on and so forth.

This alternative involves a lot of trial and error, a lot of guesswork, a lot of testing, and a willingness to add, remove, and change elements of any given option. It’s time consuming, stressful, and incredibly rewarding. I don’t recommend going pure nitty-gritty numbers-hound in every situation, or even in every game, but—if used properly—this option can create an incredibly healthy and interesting environment of options.

The primary strength of numbers balancing is that you'll probably be doing it at least a little bit anyways. Unless you're part of the "balance is for pussies" crowd, some amount of balance work will be done on every option you introduce into the game. This is kinda just, y'know, the logical extreme of that process.

All three listed alternatives can be used with each other, even on a single mechanic.

Conclusion

I do not think that hard limits are inherently bad. I really need to make it clear that I DO NOT think that you should never use them (as much as that may be suggested by the title of this post). Sometimes you'll be on a serious time crunch, or you won't be able to come up with a suitable alternative, or it's the most thematically or mechanically sound option, so on and so forth. There are instances in which it will be appropriate, or even preferable, to use a hard limit—but that doesn’t make an over-reliance upon them any better for you or the people playing your game.

Honestly, what I want people to take away from this post is very simple: every design decision matters. Even seemingly inconsequential choices with limited impact can have profound effects on an important moment for some of your players, and as such are worth considering carefully.

Self-Promo

Hey, I'm Gio. I run Rotten Shotgun games. If you wanna support me, or keep up to date on my work, you can find me on Itch.io at https://rotten-shotgun-games.itch.io/

Otherwise, I hope y'all have a great night and a great day!

#game design #ttrpg #indie ttrpg #indie gaming #ttrpg community #tabletop #i wrote this while struggling with intense anxiety #my one published game doesn’t adhere very well to this part of my philosophy #the next one will lol #Footfall RPG

[goatbeard-goatbeard]

This probably seems like a minor detail, but I really appreciate that they had Frances McDormand, NOT Derek Jacobi, deliver the monologue to Job. Making it totally unambiguous that God is doing this, that it’s not some underling gone rogue.

As An Ex-Evangelical™️, one of the most common, most annoying ideas I run into re: Christianity is “oh Christianity is such a good philosophy! 😊 People are just interpreting it wrong! 😊 They’re corrupting Jesus’ true teachings! 😊”

To borrow a concept from UI design, if a lot of your users are “doing it wrong”, it’s actually the design that’s wrong (see also: the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does).

Yes, you’ve written the word “push” on the door, but you gave it a vertical handle — something that’s more naturally shaped for a pulling hand than a pushing hip. Of course people will grab the handle and pull. Yes, you’ve carefully marked safe crosswalks, but they’re so far apart that they’d double the walking distance. Of course people will take their chances with jaywalking, and sometimes get hit.

Yes, you’ve told people to be generous, but you’ve also told them “the poor you will always have”. Of course they’ll assume that anti-poverty legislation will fail, and vote against it. Yes, you’ve told people to be stewards of the earth, but you’ve also told them that God will end the world. Of course they’ll be skeptical of human-caused climate change. Yes, you’ve told people to love their neighbors, but you’ve also told them that anyone who doesn’t repent gets tortured forever. Of course they’re going to try to turn as many people away from hell as possible, even if that requires “tough love” in the here and now.

So for Good Omens to say, no, God is 100% involved in the story of Job, this has nothing to do with the Metatron. I love it. This isn’t a case of “things would be so much better if only people didn’t corrupt God’s true intentions! 😊”

Nah. She’s just Like That.

(also the biblically accurate/“wrestling with God” reading is just… way more fun than the boring, sanded-off Christian version where Everything Happens For A Reason. Let God be weird and petty and chaotic! Let God rant about the whales!)

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens spoilers #good omens 2 spoilers #good omens 2x02 #a companion to owls #frances mcdormand #derek jacobi #god good omens #metatron good omens #good omens meta #good omens analysis #exvangelical #anyway this is one of the reasons I like the “metatron is God’s bildadsona” theory so much #because so often things *are* fobbed off onto the evil underling who’s Doing It Wrong #and it would be extremely cathartic for Me Specifically if that pattern was inverted #if behind the curtain was the actual wizard #“God is secretly cool and it’s just other people messing it up” is literally just Original Sin but with extra steps #let God be a stinker sometimes

[the-cu-genswap-au]

next: updated refs for the main adult cast (aka, the other core quintet)

- As principal of Jerome Horwitz Elementary, Erica Wang has dedicated her career to making sure every child in her school gets the support they need. Under Erica's leadership, JHES is a much less depressing place, sporting features like an art program, a fully-stocked library, after school tutoring, and an actual full-time school nurse.

- Erica herself also likes to take a hands-on approach with students, taking notice of anyone who seems to be struggling either academically or socially and working together with Bo to figure out the best course of action. While her intentions are definitely in the right place and come from a sense of genuine care, she does have a habit of forgetting to ask the students themselves what they think of her ideas....

- Design note: Erica's design is a fusion of her main kid design and her future "Grace Wain" persona

- Bo Hweemuth is the school's student guidance counselor, which basically means his job is to talk to students and help get them any resources they need, both in and outside of school. Though a lot of students feel intimidated by him at first glance, he's actually a very chill guy who likes to approach students with as much kindness and empathy as he can. He knows what it's like to be treated like a nuisance.

- Besides being co-workers, Bo is actually very good friends with Principal Wang, genuinely enjoying the work they do together to make sure every child at Jerome Horwitz can thrive.... despite any misgivings he might have about her approach. And speaking of co-workers, he's also recently struck up a pretty close friendship with the school librarian....

- In his spare time, he likes to experiment with clay sculpture. His office is decorated with all the little sculptures and figures he's made over the years.

- George Beard and Harold Hutchins are known around school as That One Pair Of Teachers; they're always together and are each other's best friend, even outside of work. To their students, they're some of the funnest teachers they've had at JHES, since they prioritize making their classes into fun, engaging learning environments through creative lesson plans and treating their students like actual people. Especially George, since he teaches the traditionally "boring" subjects of English and Literature.

- George and Harold are also the current co-leads of the school Music and Arts Program, along with music teacher Dressy Killman. Harold mentors in art, while George handles creative writing. They like to joke that they're "professionals in their field," except they're not really joking about that and it's just that everybody thinks that they are because nobody knows anything about them outside of the school.....

- Design note: George and Harold already have canon adult designs, so I just added on a few accessories to distinguish their AU selves from their canon counterparts (George's suspenders, Harold's vest)

- Melvin Sneedly (that's Professor Sneedly to you) is starting his first year as Jerome Horwitz's new science teacher, after a regrettably failed attempt to get his robotics career off the ground. He absolutely does not want to be here, he hates teaching, he hates kids, the sooner he can get out of this terrible place the better.

- He's not exactly helping his case by driving away everyone who tries to connect with him, either. Instead of spending his break times in the staff lounge with everyone else, he's spending them holed away in his classroom, poring over lesson plans, reminders of his broken dreams, and.... other stuff. It's probably not a good idea to keep bringing these personal projects to work with him but then again, his science career did fail for a reason....

- Design note: the main design philosophy here is "hey, what would Melvinborg look like without the robot half.....?"

#all there in the manual #we like to be vague on this blog no concrete answers allowed

[marabarl-and-marlbara]

I hope you're having a good day! And if not I hope you find comfort

hey there anonymous; good morning, you sent this to me last night when i was well in bed (sun had barely even set, even; time change makes sleeping at 8 feel even earlier than usual);

mostly ignoring this to blog a bit about the usual thing i always whine-about (maybe it:ll help someone 'relate' or feel 'less alone' but lord knows its just me spinning wheels cause i like writing): the flattening of my mood: like every-thing had just become this one singular wide featureless plain with all site in sight being just the same stretch without pit and without hill: the sort-of landscape that'd provoke NO PASSION and NO THOUGHT equally and just-so also smooth away any great pain and any great joy: which is exactly just the comfort i am tired of, as it:s like some crawling thing that keeps taking more and more, example: food now all tastes the same, too, taken under by that same wasteland plain barren; although i:d describe my mood as being fairly 'up' (there are still things i:d been getting keen about: writing isekai story, the new ABA in strive looks really cool, i have religious programming to write, there is new media to read and watch) it never seems to amount more than a small 'pop' that ends-up nearly always more disappointing than fulfilling or centering; it is like the spirit has begun evaporating out of me through these little fissures in the Make of my material that had let that esprit DRY, KILN, BAKE, ASH out and leave the innerworks of me (MARA!) as little more closer and closer to being some fine spotless beetle of mechanics, and operations, clicking with spring and circuit forward and forward to next task: cook, eat, clean, exercise; count in fours always; pray in mornings, too; it is the experience of life not as a person but as the mechanical, where life ceases to be felt as life and yet as mere experience of time (both four letter words, as it were; vision poor enough they:d be the same grey smudge on the screen; vision poor enough they:d be the same dead bug on windshield before the bugs themselves became rare); my mood has been up and i still have these black thoughts flowing out from Dieth and Daniela and centered around how inescapable and infinite Wasteland seems: the self is extricated out and becomes a paperdoll where (impersonal) you imagine it undergoing a hanging or a suffocating of all air, and imagine the 'ecstasy' of whether the viewer can undergo the felt feelings of the paperdoll as it goes to 100% material; the act of moving limbs to go through with the task, to resolve, to collect the instruments, to imagine the Afters (the people who knew), to imagine all the things unsaid and things yet wanted to do and done undone and the willingness to let self be robbed of 'fate' (?) where death claims its 'natural' (?) due;

very-much i:d just like to write and focus and be left fulfilled, but it:s all fairly boring; i:d like to play the new ABA and grind her in practice mode (i SHAN'T be spending money on games though) and just instead imagine how anxious sitting in a practice mode hitting buttons feels and can:t imagine undergoing that more than eight minutes at most (this is much how writing is; much how drawing is); there:s this alien quality being poured in-to me, may-be byproduct of adhering to Etiquette like the years of slowly embodying an ill philosophy has led me further ill and alien: it becomes harder and harder to find any reason to talk to another, to nurture friendships, to say Hey, to want to do anything with others as it all just becomes more stretch on the barrenland and buttons to hit and mechanical beetle limbs to undulate, undulate, driven just by fluid sacs or what-ever dumb organ drives beetles (for me it:s my yap organ).

all of this is to say: i wish i could be playing new ABA cause i like her design a lot but can:t imagine playing a fighting game ever being fun without having a friend to do it with, and nothing sounds more boring to me at the same time, but i:m tired of being bored, too. i want to be at a joyous tone 4! a joyous tone 4! so engender a joyous tone 4 in your own life, anonymous, cause if you will it surely it:ll happen.

[thesoulshyperrealaslacreatura]

Drakenier: Violence as expression and affirmation - Pt.1

It has become a rather well-known piece of trivia (or at least, well-known within the niche internet circles I flow through) that 2010's Nier Replicant / Gestalt had its overall message thoroughly inspired by well, 9/11 - the discourse that produced it, that came of it, and became it. Although it may not be a direct quote, "to kill someone, you don't have to be out of your mind, you just need to believe you are correct" is a sentiment clearly echoed throughout the game; as the many layers of its central and side conflicts drop alongside the curtains to its second, third (and maybe kind of fourth) playthrough, so does what had, for quite a ways into the game, seemed like a story mostly about finding, nurturing and protecting a community - people to call home.

However, the statement above seems to somewhat conceal-so-as-to-merely-hint-at what I'd argue is a much more complex argument the games lay forth, when looked at as one series. I, myself, have found it difficult in the past to distill both Replicant and the wider series as a whole into one coherent message or thematic frame; partly (and beautifully), because there mustn't be one - this singular reading which eclipses the broad range of experiences that people have come to share with the series - such an idea is preposterously reductive. Still, I think that this mish-mash of "the game is about philosophy and tragedy and nihilism and existentialism and society and humanity and life" and whatnot misses a bit of where the different themes intersect, producing further instances of meaning from the text. I hope to discuss the evolution (were I to sound even more pretentious, I might have used the word genealogy, but I would never stoop to that) of a few central concepts surrounding drakenier's "philosophy of violence" and where they seem to have informed or have been informed by other aspects of the works.

Strap in, because just from writing the introduction I can already tell this is gonna have to come in multiple parts. Hopefully my writing can steer away from boring you to tears throughout all of it.

Spoilers for the whole series!

Part 1: Replicant, and the subjective experience gained from that funky 9/11 fun fact

"Blood is sound, sound is words, and words are power"

This quote, almost a chant from Weiss as the player starts to grasp the gameplay loop of attacking enemies to allow for magical attacks, ties in the game's teaching of that system with what I consider to be the most powerful writing from Replicant (I'm going to refer to it as Replicant for the sake of convenience, obviously Gestalt is included in that). And it is deeply tied to what Taro himself has credited as a major source of inspiration for Replicant in relation to his previous game, Drakengard.

In some ways, Nier Replicant isn't introducing a new, foreign idea over the original Drakengard, so much as bringing out new elements from within its predecessors' critiques of the gaming landscape. Though that only really becomes clear by taking future foresights the series would reach into account; this is the point at which it becomes prudent to ask ourselves one question - how might the game's design regulate the player's interaction with the game world? (A question that, if you're at all even familiar with Drakengard, you probably already know the answer to)

From this, we can extrapolate a lot of meaning from how the original Drakengard was conceived: a game about violence, from the perspective of people who were so immersed in their own awfulness and the general precarity of their world that they cannot enact anything but that same violence. And it is that violence which comes to define them.

I'd also like to do the pedantic thing and bring up the fact that violence can be thought of as more than just physical harm, but also in terms of violation. In that sense, when I claim that Drakengard's characters are defined by violence, I mean it in that their reduction of other people to objects serves as an exertion of themselves - the Dynasty Warriors inspired combat of cleansing battlefields as the only win state reflects back at Caim as his only method of building an identity of his own, one based on strength demonstrated from conquering his enemies. You might find that these 'enemies' are violated the moment they're placed into the game as props that sustain its overall narrative.

In fact, this 'loss of personhood as self-affirmation' theme reverberates into another key factor of the game's story: pacts. They explicitly deprive humans of something of themselves - their ability to communicate, to see, to age, to have hair (sure????) -, and reduces both parties into one shared essence, yet it is what permits its characters to have strength through which they find themselves as able to inflict that dehumanization onto others. Dehumanization becomes their characterization, both from the audience's perspective as well as in-world.

Following that, Nier Replicant does not dispute that destruction of the other simultaneously inflicts upon the self both corruption and affirmation. If anything, it only takes measures to strengthen that sentiment, in light of how the added theme of perspective brings forth a need to now more closely study the subjective experience of perpetrating violence. Thus:

"Blood is sound, sound is words, and words are power"

The gameplay system I've anchored this analysis to comes into play; attacking your enemies gives you the literal strength to continue your offense, by design - ridding them of their life force, their blood, perpetuates the narrative, the words being built, the sealed verses of a prophecy you've set for yourself: that of being a hero to your sister/daughter, friends and general community. This even extends to the lyrics of Ashes of Dreams:

"Are we the plaything of fiends or merely the dreams that we're telling ourselves?"

Though we shouldn't forget that Weiss' comment takes the form of X=Y=Z=W, and it seems I've neglected the 'sound' part of the sentence. As I was writing this, my brain immediately made the association between that and Drakengard 3's focus on the power of Song, which, in fairness, definitely was made with the rest of the series in mind - but, in this instance, that sounds like a bit of a lucky coincidence. Still, what the concept of sound brings to the statement doesn't seem too far off from what meaning could be made at a bit more of a general, rudimentary level, that being: our lifeforce (blood) translates into our ability to be heard (sound), thus effectively giving us narratives about the world around us (words), which gives our actions direction, purpose (power).

From that, we can take a closer look into a lot of different aspects of the game. After all, the reason I proclaimed this piece of writing to be so powerful isn't really because I could - and did - stretch its interpretation to its fullest, but also from the way it manifests itself around the struggles of various characters, while being tied to the game's overall systems and world. Emil receding into his identity as a weapon in order to redirect what he sees as his curse onto those who seek to harm his friends - leading to his sacrifice; Weiss, who also goes on to sacrifice himself, does so in the name of putting an end to this now 5-year mission, grown into his own center of existence; Louise, perhaps reacting to the world around her, saw humanity as something to claim from others, and faced erasure upon perceiving herself as incapable of acquiring it. For better or for worse, the moral codes characters create from their own intentions of living become rigid scripts to follow as self-fulfilling prophecies of their own identities.

We can see that, ultimately, characters across both games tend to follow journeys with a general structure of: bleak circumstances > feeling of powerlessness > violence as a misguided means of reclaiming the power to define oneself > entrenchment in violence becomes overbearing, coming to annihilate the very self which sought to instigate it. From the first Drakengard to the first Nier, this hasn't changed a bit. What changed is a distinct awareness in how the self, or what we might call "us" stands in conflict with the generalized other, "them", and where it uses morality as a catalyst for smoothing out the uncomfortable edges of that conflict.

In fact, the annihilation of the self as, paradoxically, an act of self-affirmation is the very core of ending D for Replicant. And this is, partly, where the inciting 9/11 quote comes into play - given our newfound empathetic understanding of where violence comes from, how do we process it? How do we make sense of it? From the way the world is established, the very act of surviving, for both replicants and gestalts, is somewhat tainted as immoral, and predicated on the erasure of an 'other'. It leaves room for later material to find itself more at ease with this question (and those circle back nicely to ending E from the new version, as well). For now, most of what the game feels comfortable in concluding comes from Kainé, who stands in contrast with most characters by fully rejecting the notion of being a moral agent throughout the entire story, yet the game still offers us the chance to save her - it, mirroring the protagonist, relentlessly believes in her. Not even that "she can be better", whatever better might mean, just that "she can be".

And obviously, finally, we can extrapolate plenty of social commentary from this. Playing off of the thematic material introduced in Automata, we could argue that Replicant's plot is, in retrospect, about slowly building up to the depiction of a certain "Death of God" - which, in nietzschean terms, is not merely society straying from religiosity, but represents an irreparable shattering in the very idea of a centralizing narrative that everyone could subscribe to and fit within. So ends humanity, not just as a species, but as a concept; no longer are people able to identify themselves as containing some unified essence of 'humanity', recognizing the other as a complete self in its own right, as they retreat into the violence that was inflicted against them, which they inflict back at the world - to have your totality reduced to a role in a play that the winner gets to write. And in that sense, I'd argue it captures specific facets of a post-9/11 climate pretty well.

Anyway, gonna make a separate post that's just about Drakengard 3, and then one that's just about Automata, but at a later time!

also, this thesis becomes more relevant when the time comes to analyze automata, but it was still helpful in having me think through the previous games, so I'll drop it here as a reference for now, and will mention it more loudly once we come to specific sections later (not about to be the next target for hbomberguy lmao): http://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/14525

Cool that there are people writing about it!! Thank you Xinlyu Tan, the goat!!! Would love to go through more material, but I'm writing this for fun on the side... hope anyone reading this has enough fun with it to go looking for more on their own, go extend the discussion further, blah blah blah. Also hope that I make any sort of vaguely coherent point. And, lastly, I hope you enjoy yourself!

#drag on dragoon #drakengard #drakengard 3 #drakenier #nier series #nier #nier automata #nier replicant #nier gestalt #drakenier analysis

[pluralthey]

can i ask for more about shiloh? She has such an unique design and her and Jessie's relationship seems interesting :0

shiloh is hard to describe from any one angle i feel like. when i made her character, i needed her to be someone who would immediately catch jessie's eye just walking past her, someone who would willingly enter a relationship with god without fear, and someone who had some kind of power in the relationship between them. she ended up as someone older, more experienced, and more confident than jessie, someone eccentric and unafraid to look the part, and someone who isn't necessarily trying to drown but isn't trying to paddle to shore either.

as a naked mole rat, she can't really feel pain. whatever fear reflex people learn from pain, she did not, although other naked mole rats might still have more self-preservation due to a natural predispositions. i see her as someone closer to having an unnatural level of analgesia even for a mole rat; she isn't incapable of feeling pain, but it will only be in areas where a lot of nerves would be clustered anyway, because adult naked mole rats' pain tolerance comes from a reduction in nerve population to conserve biological resources (they are born with a normal amount, and i think shiloh was born with an already reduced amount of receptors that became even sparser). that's not to say that shiloh doesn't feel fear, but it isn't in the back of her mind in the same way it might be for others. she doesn't look at a flame and think "i shouldn't get too close to that" without actual conscious effort to recall it.

shiloh seeks rather extreme sensations, partially due to a perceived sense of physical ennui, with the other component being a literal sense of ennui. the thing i see in common between her and jessie is a pervasive sense of boredom or dissatisfaction. extremes are more unique. they're less predictable... less boring. i've said it before but i think her relationship with jessie could easily still work out without the god powers due to jessie's erratic emotional states and stupidity - they make her entertaining to shiloh and force her to think in new ways if only to explain a concept she feels is common sense. this is Because shiloh is a person constantly seeking relief from boredom.

she is a super spiritual, but not religious (at least, until god announces herself...) person, and she could probably be described with nietzschean philosophies. she had a hard time believing free will existed prior to The Jessie Event and certainly stopped believing in it after that; it doesn't make sense in a world created by an all-powerful god. shiloh, however, channels this nihilistic take into a strong belief in fate. she may relinquish control in ways other people find absurd because she wants to see her fate. she wants life to have meaning very badly - otherwise, it's all noise... boring, boring noise. actually, i already wrote about this a while ago in my notes. here:

shiloh can frequently be passive because she deliberately refrains from constructing narratives. She wants a meaning told to her by life instead of finding it herself. This lack of an intrinsic narrative makes her particularly receptive to a wide variety of ideas and subtleties, but it also makes her unable or unwilling to definitively shut the book on the relationship with Jessie no matter how many red flags.

aside from that stuff... shiloh is a logic-driven person who seeks and finds patterns easily. novelty often feels meaningful to her because she can quickly categorize interactions, and novel interactions can't be categorized without fabricating a new category. you'll see her in the story notice more about jessie manipulating reality than jessie would prefer even when her memories are altered because she notices discrepancies in patterns that jessie just. does not. as a foil for jessie... shiloh is also kind of a pleasure maximizer, whereas jessie is a pleasure satisficer. if you've never heard of the maximization paradox, it's an interesting topic and very relevant to shiloh in particular: maximizer types will sacrifice more resources into a decision for additional options in order to (potentially) maximize the return on the decision -- however, this type of behavior reduces satisfaction. the more thought and effort you put into a decision, the less satisfying the decision tends to be. (jessie as a satisficer picks primarily from immediately available options based on the most satisfactory result and finds even childish, stupid solutions gratifying as an exercise of power, conversely.)

i've described shiloh as a "this is how it is" person, which can sound like someone who's kind of rolled over on their back and submitted. she's like this whether she's the one dominating or being dominated, though. she's not morally bankrupt like jessie, but she's not the most moral person, either -- especially in terms of choosing to intervene with suffering instead of remaining apathetic. like what happens to her, what happens to others is fate. it's more interesting to see what happens to them than trying to impose a desired meaning onto reality. notably this acceptance of both dominating and being dominated means that, while she prefers to submit and have the powers that be decide, she is willing to exercise her own power, and she enjoys doing so when she does. when i mention things like shiloh seeing taking GOD's virginity as a badge of pride or knowing she's going to be living in jessie's head rent-free forever, the knowledge that shiloh is someone who enjoys having power over others can make it make more sense. it isn't a side of her that gets much attention in the story because she simply can't exercise that much power over someone all-powerful. any act of outsmarting jessie is temporary as she learns. i think i find her to be a uniquely interesting character because while i have to have other characters who ultimately accept jessie's godhood, shiloh is a character who DOES NOT shy away from how fucked up it is. some of the other characters may just hope it turns out well or cope by assuming they're only dreaming, but shiloh is like "this is horrible and it's actually kind of fucking awesome"

i think i talked a lot about her psychology that makes her feelings for jessie sound detached and manipulative, she is just... smitten. in her own way. she is a detached person, but she still has human feelings and investment in an emotional life.

#idletry #not art #ask #asks

[transhawks]

Firstly, Happy New Year! I hope all your future dreams come true.

Secondly, I have a strong affection for Kaigo, but at the same time, I find myself disliking him, haha. I thought this would be the right place to share my thoughts because I'm confident that if you disagree with me, you'll enlighten me.

I believe that advising Hawks to take care of his health, "for the him that's not Hawks" considering the person beyond his role as a hero, would either leave him bewildered or possibly upset. But I also think that seeing right through him (if possible) would be the only way to reach out to him and form a connection. What do you think? :D

Happy New Year! Thanks! I hope everyone had a good one and I wish for this year to be peaceful and far less full of turmoil than the last few have been. Anyway, on to Keigo. I've said for a couple years that Hawks is not an easy likable character, and it's owing to a very shallow surface reading and his intentionally pretty looks that he's popular in fandom. He's written to be polarizing. Horikoshi designed him to essentially pose a moral quandary to the reader and to be the example of the hero philosophy of saving taken to an extreme conclusion (killing to save).

This is a character meant to be divisive; a base breaker.

For this reason, I always find myself stunned at some Hawks fans and how they approach him. Even outside of a more detached look at him as a character in a story, as a "person" I don't think Hawks is "likable" once you have a fuller picture of him outside the immediate hero persona. He's actually quite disturbing the more you look into him. This is what makes me adore him, actually. He's so rich and paradoxical in personality that he's never boring to think about. I don't think you're too strange for not liking him but loving him as a character, if anything I think you have a pretty good grasp on just how conflicting he was written out to be.

As for the second part of your ask - I think he's not good at thinking of himself outside of Hawks. And yet I also think he's self-aware about the abnormality of this but the safety of being Hawks and not Keigo (whoever that is) probably appeals, despite a cycle of feeling trapped/caged because Keigo doesn't know what to do with freedom anyway. There's a song called Selfish by Sylvan Lacue that I always think of when it comes to this line of thought.

People who see through him tend to really shake his world up. Whether it's Dabi who partially did, or Jin who really saw the emptiness and reached out in friendship, digging deeper beyond the many walls/masks/personas Keigo puts up is crucial but that's really on him to let people do. Again, he keeps his distance with people (read Graduation Day!) and when I have energy, I really want to examine him and Fumikage with this sort of lens of Hawks trying to push away people who care.

#asks #hawks

[cursedvibes]

Sukuna and uraume for the character ask? :D

Thank you for the ask!

Sukuna

favourite thing about them

His backstory. Starts with how he was born (or created), how he grew up and became who he is now and most importantly what role Kenjaku and Tengen played in all this because they definitely meddled with him and his body in some way even before he was turned into a cursed object. Could honestly spend hours theorizing about it. Getting some more concrete details on his twin has me vibrating (even if it makes me ask more questions about Jin than Sukuna in particular). Hope we're soon getting our Heian flashback.

least favourite thing about them

His personality is honestly starting to grate on me a bit the more we are exposed to him. The way the Shinjuku Showdown is structured is definitely not helping there. Bit of a mix of him just standing around for 20 chapters and waiting to be attacked being quite boring and his whole petty schoolyard bully schtick is annoying me. Also I think his "might makes right" and hedonistic philosophy is quite boring. I think even Uraume's interpretation of it is more interesting than his.

favourite line

"You are but a fish on my chopping board, Gojo Satoru. A bit fresher than other, but still just a nameless fish. Let's start by peeling off your scales."

"No matter how many times I break his soul, he'll get right back up. Because he possesses and indomitable ideal." (kind of cheating because this is about Yuuji)

brOTP

Gojo maybe? As a sort of friends with benefits (sex and/or fighting) thing.

OTP

Uraume. Pretty much my only real ship with him, mostly because I like him the most when he is around them. Shows a more interesting side with him, how he interacts with people he is close to, despite both of them denying that they need to connect to people like that and that those emotions are beneath them.

nOTP

Generally don't like him in ships because his personality turns me off, but in particular SukuIta, SukuKen and SukuFushi.

random headcanon

He can't see very well on the right side of his face due to how his eyes are positioned there and I also think that he generally can't see as well with them as with the ones on his left side. Also, due to recent colour pages I'm gonna assume for now that he had blue eyes in his first life and they turned red when he reincarnated.

unpopular opinion

He doesn't look similar to Yuuji and even less to Jin. I don't know where people are seeing this except their hair being kind of a similar shape, but not even that is true. Also OG > Megukuna > Yuujikuna. I used to not like Megukuna, but have really warmed up to it actually. Mostly because it looks like an original design. Yuujikuna just looks like Yuuji with tattoos, while Megukuna has barely any resemblance with Megumi and is therefore honestly to me just young Sukuna with black hair.

song i associate with them

Gazelle Twin - Belly of the Beast

To represent his hunger and insatiability

Heilung - Krigsgaldr

His image in the Heian era and arguable also from Yuuji's POV

favourite picture of them

I honestly like his original design the most. It looks...messier? Like a real god of war. Besides that, I also like his stretched ears here. Feel much more appropriate than his very modern looking gauges and also matches the monk robe he was dressed in when dying (although Tengen might've put that on him).

His mummy in general looks really sick. The match of the clothes and the fallen in face. Feels very occult and I love it when Gege references the Ryomen Sukuna urban legend. Also fuels my theory brain how this might be connected to Tengen & Kenjaku and how much of this was really his idea. Also might I add that he looks pretty well-fed for a sokushinbutsu mummy (so it's unlikely he was actually fasting before his death and Tengen did this post-humorously).

Uraume

favourite thing about them

Trans cannibal cook? What's not to like. But besides that, how they have turned their back on society, they look down on basically everyone around them and they claim that building connections to other people and holding on to them makes you weak, yet they have fully dedicated themselves to Sukuna and clearly like him as a person as well. It's not just a master-servant relationship where you could say they merely follow him because they worship him or because of his strength but they have actual camaraderie. And yet Uraume doesn't think that's a contradiction. Other interesting thing is that despite their distaste for most other people and social norms, they are very good at playing into them and playing up being unassuming. Although they are quick to anger, they are also very good at fading into the background if they have to.

least favourite thing about them

They often get overlooked and turned into nothing but Sukuna's doormat. Don't really have any issues with them in canon except that I'd like to see more of them and especially outside of their relationship with Sukuna like what we got at the beginning of their fight with Hakari or when they're hanging out with Kenjaku alone.

favourite line

"The sorcerers of this modern era have an intense obsession with remaining 'human'. They so desperately want to hold onto their humanity, constantly telling themselves to hold back from destroying what would be so easily crushed with their overwhelming power. It is that fear of being alone that makes them weak."

brOTP

Kenny! But also with Hakari. This recent chapter just reaffirmed it. What are these guys doing?? It's so hilarious. Hakari even still has this chunk of ice on his shoulder. Nothing has changed since the last time we saw them. I really like though how relaxed Uraume is around him and how they playfully tease him. They have already opened up much more to him about their own feelings and philosophy than anyone else besides Sukuna. I really want to see more of it and only seeing glimpses of these two that only bring up more questions is driving me insane!

OTP

Sukuna. Much surprise. They are so dedicated to him, that I honestly have trouble seeing them with anyone else. There always has to be at least some mention or connection to him. I also like them and Kenjaku as friends with benefits or just a good ol' hatefuck. Would give Uraume the perfect opportunity to finally make Kenjaku shut up.

nOTP

I haven't really come across any ship with them that I disliked...well, Uraume/Megumi I guess, but besides that I can't think of anything.

random headcanon

They're older than Sukuna. Idk, somehow they just give me that impression and I think it would make their dynamic more interesting. I imagine Uraume had a lot more experience when meeting Sukuna, but stuck to him because they admire his way of life, passion and disregard for others. Kind of what also makes them like Hakari.

unpopular opinion

They aren't short. That's just a fact honestly. When you see them next to Kenjaku it's clear that they are 1.70+m aka Yuuji and Megumi's height, but for some reason people are obsessed with making them extra small and delicate.

song i associate with them

Had a bit of trouble finding ones that really fit, but these are the ones I chose for now.

IAMX - Animal Impulses

Reminds me of what Uraume told Hakari about humanity. Also of course the murder and association with cold and sharpness.

Lorn - Oxbow B

This is just vibes based. Kind of what I imagine Frost Calm to feel like and it also made me think of their preparation of the Bath.

favourite picture of them

People like to depict Uraume as small and petite, but look at those yaoi hands

they look very hot when cutting up curses/preparing food (when will we finally see them prepare human meat?)

and of course their original form. I honestly like that undercut more than their current haircut.

#asks #uraume #ryomen sukuna

[springw6ter]

Hi (nyfw thoughts)

Ok so first I just want to say that this fashion week was so boring and really sums up the kind of good idea drought we’re living in. BUT there was a fair share of discussion over some things so! instead of trying to fit my thoughts about everything on the app formerly known as twitter, I’m just gonna tell y’all here.

Shows talked about in this post; Proenza Schouler, Eckhaus Latta, AREA, Luar, Helmut Lang, Elena Velez and Tory Burch

Proenza Schouler

There’s no way Proenza was going to ruffle any feathers this season. They have a loyal following (which I’m sure has nothing to do with the celebrity affiliations of the brand) and a consistent history of people pleasing so they’ll always get their praise from Vogue. They dropped a new monogram which is the only “newness” they wanted to introduce. Jack McCollough said they wanted to continue last seasons narrative and they sure did! (Only thing different was no Sevigny). The clothes are obviously well made and evoke wealth in that special kind of iykyk way. Many people said this looked more like Helmut Lang than Helmut lang did (I’ll get to that later) and they’re not entirely wrong. Not gonna act like I wouldn’t wear this collection but definitely nothing groundbreaking.

Eckhaus Latta

Eckhaus latta is a brand that has always had a special place in my heart (maybe because I’m from the city that the two designers met and started the brand together in)(maybe). My style has definitely evolved since I first became aware of the brand but I’m always interested in what they’re doing. This season they got experimental! They worked with a 3D printing company named “Unspun” where they came up with jeans made from all different materials like hardware store twine and ikea plastic bags. The way they combined tech innovation and sustainability is not just commendable, it’s very forward thinking, which is a staple in the brands identity. With that being said some of the collection felt directionless in comparison to all of the innovation. The sheer (which dawned their new EL monogram) was very MNZ store to me but not in a bad way. I like that they’re not trying to be trendy and come up with new things however a-lot of brands were doing that so it makes me wonder if that’s a good thing or not.

AREA

I loved their modern Stone Age ladies. I think it was one of the only luxury focused shows where I was like wow! This is different. The fur printed coats were so gaudy and held its shape in the way good ol’ fur coats used to. I think this collection was really cohesive, adventurous, new. Everyone saw Saweetie wear it at the VMAs and even the unfashionable general public could see the yabba dabba reference. The prehistoric influence was chosen because as Piotrek Panscyzk said “pelts and bones were the first things humans had to build an identity around”. There’s definitely a case for a narrative about how much luxury (the hunger, the status) mirrors pre historic, pre civilized behaviors.

Luar

Raul Lopez is a diamond. This collection kind of came of as a continuation of last season as well but I like this brand so much that it feels good to me. I feel like Raul is constantly playing with this really restrictive, God-fearing way of being and an inhibition-less eternality. Padded shoulders, the top draped from the eyewear, perfect collared shirts, jeans and leather, it had all the perfect Luar moments for me. No notes.

Ok.. now on to the “controversial” shows

Helmut Lang

When Peter Do was announced as the new creative director of Helmut Lang, everyone rejoiced. Why? His strengths as a designer seemed like a natural fit for the brand. Expert tailoring, black and white as a main color palette, maybe a little overlap in philosophy.. but as the outfits came out people’s reactions… were… unfavorable to say the least. People saw the reference to key Lang moments like seat belt bondage, the use of Ocean Vuongs poetry (which I felt was terribly misunderstood), the classic button up and jeans as disappointing instead of nostalgic. For me, personally, I think everyone’s expectations were rooted in something that Peter Do could not have delivered. That expectation being Helmut Lang himself. People saw Do as the second-coming and that’s just the truth but where do we draw the line with our expectations on reliving the past and how do we honor the kind of openness necessary to evolution? I myself had to sit with the collection and came to the conclusion that maybe Peter is just defining a clear end to the Helmut era of yesterday and the start of his own journey now. After closely looking at the collection and it’s details you can see how wonderful the clothes really are. It is everyone’s responsibility to question and examine the things they “care” about and I think this fashion public is not patient enough for that. It wasn’t the greatest debut but it also wasn’t the worst. Anyway we’ll see what comes next.

Elena Velez

Mud gate ss24! Since her NYT article last year, people have been really fed up with Elena (I learned only after the mud fight started to circulate) and she doesn’t really seem to mind, she seems to like it actually. She argues online, she argues IN lines, she doesn’t pay people adequately and the list apparently goes on and on. This collection is called “the longhouse” and in her press release she says a lot of things about the commercialization, sanitization, condemning and control of womanhood, she talks about anti-heroines and contemporary female evil (which she loves to embody I guess) and she says that this show was ritualistic catharsis from oversocialization. I think it’s pretentious when someone has to use so many complex, institutionalized words to convey their message. She’s speaking in code. To be honest I like her clothes but I don’t think her designs are that original. I really want to raise the question who does her message benefit? We should all be allowed our multiplicity in this life, that’s true, but being a bad person in practice is something I’m personally not attracted to. I’m a little confused but it is what it is.

SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO TORY BURCH!!!!

Who I think should be receiving a cease and desist from Miuccia Prada any moment now. This collection is such a departure from the Tory Burch we all grew up with. This must be that post divorce clarity. I like it! It’s 60s. It’s Prada. It’s miu miu. It’s Tory Burch now too!

If you made it this far I really appreciate you ♡ this was just for ki’s sake. It’s not my most critical thinking to date but there was discussion and I loved that. I wanted to contribute and this was the best way I could think of. Lmk if I should do this again with lfw!!

#nyfw #new york fashion week #eckhaus latta #proenza schouler #area #ss24 #spring summer 2024 #helmut lang #peter do #elena velez #luar #tory burch

[steelthroat]

*Bust through the wall like the Cool-aid man* Did somebody say worldbuilding?

Cybertronian architecture has always been an interest of mine and sadly we never really get a proper look at its cities aside from ‘futuristic looking towers’ and the shapes are cool! But it’s also kinda boring. Unfortunately I severely lack knowledge in the field of architecture and have been using canon and fanon to create a general ~vibe~ but I do have some consistent ones.

Vos: Towers have holes to maximize airflow. No sharp edges and small over the top decorations like in Russian artistry. It might seem like a weird combo but I swear it Seekers = Russia just makes sense

Praxis: Asian inspired in almost all aspects but architecture, follows Korea philosophy of architecture mostly. Their buildings would flow a natural floor plan meant to balance out “energies” (I swear this is based of a real Asian philosophy but I cannot for the life of me remember what it’s call). You could probably get close with calling them Green urbanization because they include their singing crystals in everything 

Nyon: I don’t have any particular culture but it’s definitely super cramped together with tons of back alley and steep stairs. Scrap metal sheets protects against the acid rain and most roads are bumpy cobblestone, alt modes don’t see a lot of action here unless you’re a beast former. Bonus is cool parkour! I wanna say it’s like the Underground from Arcane but less sketchy people

Smaller noteworthy details include:

-Tarn having long strips of road with essential shops (Midwest mining towns)

-Polyhex has geometric engravings on the side of buildings. It’s also connected to water/liquid transportation somehow, canals, the Rust Sea, whatever it’s got ports and liquid.

-Helix, Antihelix, or any city with -Helix has roundabouts and a grid pattern

-The more “touristy” areas of Kaon Gladiator pits look Roman but the local places where regular people live are all American/New England Post-Industrial

I could go into so much detail about this stuff and my understanding is that the basics of design are pretty similar across cybertron where meeting the purpose and necessary accessibility requirements are top priority. However, Layout plans will vary depending on the majority frame class and style will be more distinct the more disconnected from Iacon they are (I’m using Iacon as the trend setting “ground zero” so to speak).

This message is all that I needed as I woke up, screw morning coffee, I don't even like coffee!!!

*smooch*

I super duper like these ideas!!! I was reading and googling the whole time ahahdhfh

Yes it is a little bit boring that every Cybertronian city is down "the same way" and especially after the idw continuity where the lore is thick and we learn that the culture varies from city to city I can't believe that there are the same architectural styles... like we have varying styles from region to region (Italy) and we're all humans, imagine a place where some people drive, some people fly and some other do weird things ahahdh.

Another thing that interests me is the artistic expression of the inhabitants of those cities, an Iaconian (Iaconi? Iaconist? Ia-whatever???) would never create the same kind of art as a Kaonian (Kaonite? Kaoni????) artist.

It's like when there where romanticism and neoclassicism at the same time and varying from where the artist came from they would lean more towards one instead of the other (this is an oversimplification but I hope I'mmaking myself clear)

Also the message behind the art:

Iacon is so fkn neoclassical in my head it's unbelievable, so attached to the past "the golden age" the "true art" amd the idealistic beauty

Kaon could NEVER embrace those ideals, Tarn and Nyon and Rodion neither.

So just like the art would drastically change, the architecture would follow the lead... also because different frame types and some cities like Vod tend to have a majority of its inhabitant with a specific frame/alt-mode

If I may headcannon even more I'd say that the richer parts of the cities resemble Iacon because of its hegemony.

Why not make laws about architecture excusing them with something like "this kind of building is dangerous to xyz" or "it reminds of x traumatic age"?

Lol Cybertonians have fought for AGES and if we take a look at the Restoration age where they changed even the interior design to destroy anything that reminded people of Napoleon... I'd say that this could work for Cybertron too. Who doesn't love a little bit of historical revisionism -_-

Why not make hostile architecture against specific frame types and castes?? If someone tells me that there's a fictional discriminatory and dystopic society I WANT TO FEEL IT.

#transformers #maccadam #steel rambles #steel answers #babe wake up new tag just dropped #I will keep rambling about this fear not

[wolfgabe]

Super Mario Bros Wonder Direct Impressions

After having a day to digest the Super Mario Bros Wonder presentation I think I can properly give my two cents. I don't think I have been this excited for a 2D Mario game in a long time. It's quite insane really how many new ideas they have managed to cram in here. It practically makes New Super Mario Bros look like a prototype by comparison.

In terms of visuals, I seriously don't get where some people are coming from claiming Wonder still looks generic and bland. In what we have seen so far this game absolutely obliterates NSMB in terms of art direction and visual variety. There are also some neat twists on familiar Mario level themes. Fluff Puff Peaks looks like they went and combined the ice and sky worlds into one which is a much more interesting take on the usual Mario world tropes. You can really tell how they are embracing some of the inventive wackiness found in the recent 3D Mario titles.

The playable character roster on display here is just insane. We got the whole NSMB gang plus Peach, Daisy, Toadette 4 Yoshis, and even Nabbit. I know people will dump on Yoshi and Nabbit for basically being the "You Suck." mode but I think it's great to have them for less experienced players. There is just something very surreal about seeing Daisy fully playable in a Mario game that isn't a sports game, or a spin off. I hope this marks the start of Nintendo actually making her a genuine part of the core Mario cast going down the road.

The powerups my god the new powerups. Elephant Mario is such a neat twist on the usual animal costume power up Deviantart jokes aside. Bubble Mario I am surprised they didn't come up with sooner especially considering it was in a ROM hack beforehand and I love how they basically brought back the Spin Drill from Super Mario Galaxy 2 and translated it into 2D.

The Wonder Effects are a perfect way of keeping things fresh in the event people thought 2D Mario was getting too boring and predictable. I have a feeling we are only scratching the surface with what Nintendo has shown us.

The badge system feels like a natural extension of the 2D Mario formula. Nintendo has essentially taking the modern game design philosophy of allowing people to customize the game to suit their play style and applied it into 2D Mario. The speedrunning potential of some of these badges is likely gonna be nuts.

Okay I really didn't have Nintendo giving Super Mario Bros Wonder its own Dark Souls style multiplayer mode on my bingo card. Honestly, I think making online play more focused on assisting and helping other players rather than competitive co-op was a smart move given how much of a mess online co-op has been in previous Mario games that had it. I really get the sense the Mario dev team applied a lot of the lessons they learned with online multiplayer in previous Mario titles to create an experience that was better suited for 2D Mario.

After seeing everything new about Super Mario Bros Wonder I think I can see why Nintendo felt the need to give this game it's own dedicated Nintendo Direct presentation. This truly feels like the proper next generation of 2D Mario in ways the later New Super Mario Bros games never did.

#super mario bros wonder #super mario bros #mario #nintendo #nintendo switch #nintendo direct #super mario

[hrodvitnon]

Assorted Abraxasverse Headcanons

- Ladon probably did not get along with Shin or Leo initially. Both because it’s really difficult for him to trust now given his circumstances but also becausd of their fundamentally different viewpoints and philosophies - Ladon doesnt like humans at all but tolerates them because Mom and Dad do (he gets better about this over time, but not all of that resentment goes away), Shin wants nothing to do with humans and would rather them stay far away, and Leo is the classical Shonen Hero who believes the best in everyone. So naturally, conflict will arise at some point.

Shockingly though, Leo was always the mediator and kept his brothers from going too far, and eventually after plenty of scuffles (and the ouccasional scolding), thry mostly chill out. Ladon is still a ball of surpressed rage though.

- Mothra is the only being outside of Ladon (and eventually Leo) Megalon respects - both because of them being Gods but also because even though they embody two opposite concepts - War and Life - they both love sharing their views and philosophies in spirited debate whenever they meet, with Mothra finding it a bit sad that Megalon still thinks so little of surface dwellers. That, and Megalon is deeply pleased by her hidden bloodlust. 

- You’d think Manda is entirely cool and calm just based on being raised by Abraxas and the way he carries himself most of the time would sell it, but it must also be kept in mind that his father is Rodan. So Manda is just as prone to coming up with stupid or reckless stunts as his dad or being somewhat of an airhead. Keeta is better than their brother, but that’s because he’s the type who prefers to come along and watch rather than directly participate. Biollante!Maddie actually finds Manda at his goofiest endearing, which only reinforces his Rodanisms.

- King Caesar exists somewhere, with his usual backstory of being the ancient protector deity of the royal family of Okinawa. Thing is, nobody but the descendants of that line know where he is and it’s unknown if the Mass Awakening changed that. People have reported a strange dog-shaped Titan appearing to take down hostile monsters then vanishing as quickly as it came, but nothing concrete has come up. Monarch suspects there’s some unknown channel in the Hollow Earth he’s using to move between place to place extremely quickly.

- No one knows what the fuck Hedorah is. All that the Fleet knows is that it used to show up and feast on the dying remnants of civilizations Ghidorah had ravaged, making them suspect it’s some manner of parasitic scavenger. 

- Gigan Rex and the Gigan Miles from GvGR were possibly either an unrelated group of planet conquerors that were suspiciously similar to Gigan himself or they were other models of Gigan that had somehow survived, just without becoming the sort of horrific techno-flesh deity and cult that Gigan and his Fleet have become.

- Speaking of Gigan, due to the nature of him in the Abraxasverse, Gigan is probably very much nothing like what he was originally designed as. The assimilated tech from countless worlds is offered to him and made one with his own body as he deems fit so to some degree or another, Gigan is essentially the depraved bastard caricature of a million dead worlds, and he relishes in it.

- Following his ‘birth’/'rebirth’, Assimilation!Mechagodzilla basically becomes Abraxas’ little brother essentially - and swiftly reminds both Vivienne and San that little brothers can be a pain in the ass. The 'Abraxas Siblings’ are often found trying to beat the shit out of each other just as often as they are sitting down and chilling.

- Assimilation!Mechagodzilla acts pretty much exactly like a bratty teenage boy or a college frat bro due to the lack of inihbitions from both the San half and Ren half within so it essentially falls to Abraxas to wrangle him whenever he goes too far. He mostly limits it to 'pranks’ or such, but he gets astronomically bored very quickly and might just kick over a building if not stimulated enough. He gets along very well with the other kids such as Leo, Shin, or Ladon - which ends up causing problems since both him and Leo will eagerly goad them into stupid shit or all kinds of shenanigans. Manda and Keeta swiftly become the only sane ones.

It gets worse after he molts too - Desghidorah takes and multiplies Mechagodzilla’s childish and impulsive behaviors by three. 

- The Super Complete Works and novelization also say that Desghidorah is some weird amorphous magma blob thing that simply copied Ghidorah’s appearance and might outright be the embodiment of the universe’s tendency to trend towards entropy. As such, it cannot die but is the embodiment of death and destruction themselves.

Going by this, I think it would very rapidly become apparent that Abraxas!Desghidorah is fucking weird to anyone with a spiritual sense such as Gods like Megalon or Mothra - having the presence of a divinity despite being a Ghidorah offshoot and never once displaying any indications of assimilating that power from elsewhere. Neither one knows what the fuck is up with Desghidorah and it raises serious questions about Ghidorah’s actual nature. 

A villainous Desghidorah would essentially be an unkillable nightmare  barring being sealed like he was in the Rebirth of Mothra films and they’d always risk breaking out to become a threat again in the future so that would be a looming issue they’d need to deal with, even ignoring their sheer power potentially putting several Titsns out of commission. And Assimilation!Desghidorah would probably use their nature as an eternal shapeshifting magma monster to troll people.

---

Lordy, what a smorgasbord! I do like Manda inheriting Rodan’s goofiness; he grows into a regal and elegant dragon who is caring of humans, yet he has his moments where he becomes a bit of a dumbass that makes him more relatable and approachable.

#submission #abraxasverse

[deshimango]

sumaya reviews kuch kuch hota hai

for sunny @amarakaran

rating: 9.75/10

2/2 set + costume design + makeup

2/2 general production (visual and sound)

2/2 acting/casting/chemistry

2.75/3 writing (including plot and character)

1/1 does it hit?

overall thoughts:

this movie made me who i am. absolutely no joke but it’s a solid 10% of my personality. my perspective and philosophy of love was directly influenced by it. like yeah!! pyaar dosti hai!!! so i don’t know if i would have the same reaction if i watched it for the first time now but it definitely is very well crafted and there is a reason for the hype it gets as a bollywood classic

the narrative build up is insane. you cannot take a step away from it, it’s a 3 hour rollercoaster of emotions that is never boring

all the songs are bangers and the score is amazing, and it really enhances the story

the costumes are great and still they hold up!! each character has their own style and it’s very well thought out, and i cant even lie, a huge part of my personal style is built off of the tina-anjali-rahul gender expression spectrum

my only real problems with it are, salmonella khans existence, and some of the weird dialogue with little anjali?? especially between her and aman, it just makes me uncomfortable

there’s the whole thing where people assume that rahul only falls for anjali when she starts presenting feminine but like it’s clear to me that he likes her the whole time, he just comes to terms with it way later and by that time she’s grown into someone vastly different than her college self? i understand weariness surrounding the idea of “you’ll grow into your femininity and stop wanting to look like a boy” because that’s a real comment that lot of desi gnc people have to deal with constantly, but i’ve always read it as anjali is both versions of herself and that neither is more true than the other. she’s made peace with her gender expression and it can fluctuate in the future but she’s still herself regardless. she likes what she likes and is who she is. kkhh is a product of its time and while i don’t know the intentions behind the creators choices, i choose to read it as an exploration of gender expression because that’s what i take away from it.

would i watch again: i’ve seen it a thousand times and i will watch it a thousand more times

#sumaya reviews #bollywood #kuch kuch hota hai