Graduation rings!!!! Even tho I graduate next year not this one but still lol

How much do graduation rings cost?

Graduation rings cost: Discover the cost of graduation rings with our comprehensive guide. Also, learn about its resale value and when and to whom to gift it. Read More

Genuine Garnet Ring, 925 Sterling Silver Ring, Garnet Silver Ring, Red Stone Ring, Garnet Dainty Ring, Ring for Women, Delicate Ring

I’ve fallen into a lotr/hobbit rabbit hole again and it sucksssss 😭😭😭

started listening to graduation for the first time last week

(Original image under the cut)

sellennnnn 😭😭

If Suguru had a childhood friend, do you think he would give them a promise ring like Rika did with Yuta?

OOOOOH 👀👀👀👀👀 anon this is such a tasty question ….. i’ve said this before but sugu w the childhood friends trope is like . my favorite thing Ever. so i have many thoughts hehe >:3

hmmmm honestly . i think it kinda … depends….. like i could totally see him being a promise ring guy, but i also picture his childhood besties to lovers arc as being a big slowburn !!! so. i just feel like he wouldn’t reveal his feelings as early as yuuta did w rika, yk? i can picture him being more like your protector when you’re children, watching over you and tending to you …. and i think that stays the same as you grow older. he’s a patient man so i don’t think he’d feel the need to confess right away!! giving you a promise ring feels a little too direct somehow…? 🤔 then AGAIN i’m very self-indulgent and i like my childhood friends romances to be as full of pining and longing as possible LMAO

like . in a way it’s possessive . and that’s kinda sugu. but maybe i see that more as an older suguru thing? i could see him giving you a promise ring when you’re fresh out of high school bc he just. wants you to know he’s there when you’re ready. he wants you to know how deep his devotion runs. but when you’re kids i think it’s more likely that you make a promise w him under a starry sky or smth 😭 the trope where you promise to marry each other if you haven’t found someone else in 20 years. or something. i feel like you would promise each other that and he would never forget it.

SOOO basically i guess what i’m trying to say is….. suguru would 100% give you a promise ring, but probably not when you’re children. i think he very much views you as His Person tho 😭😭 in a very tender midly possessive way !!!

me thinking about the ear piercing: 😍✨🔥

me thinking about how the ear piercing was the last point in the timeline old xian had to hit before he tian could leave. so now old xian can have he tian go away at any moment: 😫💔💀

everyone wants my jelix thoughts until i say jack rubs coke on his gums before forcing nearly unconscious drunk felix to make out with him.

BlackBerry (2023), dir.Matt Johnson

Every time my parents bring up marriage with me I fantasize about plunging myself into the deepest depths of the ocean with an anchor strapped to my leg!

Really need everyone who cares to stop with the conspiracy theory that Eddie the cop is Ralph Wiggum’s real dad and jump on my inexplicable assumption from day one that he’s the brother of one of the parents and Ralph just takes after his uncle.

Genuine Labradorite Ring, 925 Silver Ring, Labradorite Silver Ring, Labradorite Boho Ring, Raw Gemstone Ring, Handmade Ring, Ring for Her

love tarnished and the moon wife me craves moar

I have a little sum 😌

Bloodborne: A Study of Environmental Narratives and Ludonarrative Harmony.

II. Environmental Storytelling

Environmental storytelling refers to the act of using the scenery of the story to communicate additional details about the story being told, typically through details like plants, architecture, items, etc. Alessandro Soriani and Stefano Caselli, build on Michael Nitsche’s conception of the Evocative Narrative Element (ENE)[1] in explaining how an ENE works:

“‘Evocative narrative elements’ (ENEs) are implemented to ‘encourage players to project meaning onto events, objects, and spaces [in videogames]’; they help players to ‘infuse significance’ and therefore to ‘form narratives’ (p. 44). Such ENEs are defined as ‘foundational building blocks’ (p. 37) at the basis of the structuring of players’ comprehension of the game. They ‘can be anything and any situation encountered’ that can structure such a comprehension (p. 37). The aim of ENEs ‘is not to tell a linear story, but to provide evocative means for the interactor to comprehend the virtual space and the events within it and generate context and significance in order to make [it] more meaningful. While the reader of a novel is limited to the given text, the player of a game interacts with these evocative elements, cocreates them, and changes them.’ (p. 45).”[2]

            This means that any object that is presented within a game space as an object of the plot, be that a reward at the end of a puzzle (such as the rewards of notes after solving puzzles in the Resident Evil series) or an item with an in-game description that reveals more about the plot (such as key items in the Dark Souls series), can be described as an ENE. As games have evolved, these ENE’s have become much more plentiful and their nonlinear narratives more convoluted. Previously, a video game followed a structure that could more accurately be described as on rails, meaning that there was only one path forward, like a railroad.[3] As ENE’s have become a larger and larger part of game design over the years, these paths become progressively less defined and less easily followed.

            Soriani and Caselli also establish the term Visual Narrative Elements (VNEs) to refer to the graphical representation of visual elements in the game world, such as objects, rooms, and characters, which are the building blocks of their five types of visual (by which they mean graphical) narratives: evoked[4], enacted[5], enacting[6], embedded[7], and emergent.[8] For the purposes of the rest of the paper, the most important of these to keep in mind is the embedded visual narratives, which “refer to those visual elements intentionally positioned by developers which contain information about the context of the game,” as this is the strategy that FromSoftware takes with the story of Bloodborne.[9] This means that as the player enters a new area and interacts with the items and enemies within that area, they will in turn learn more about the story of the game and the particular role they play in that game. For example, in Dark Souls III (2016), another game developed by FromSoftware, the player can come across a body in a swamp that has a spell book and a set of pyromancer robes. The description of these items, in addition to their location, tells the player the story of a swamp pyromancer who preceded the player in their journey.

Espen Aarseth addresses a similar question, the intersection of game world structure and game mechanics, in his essay, “A Hollow World: World of Warcraft as Spatial Practice”.[10]  World of Warcraft (2004) is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPGs), meaning that it is played by many players interacting with the world and the characters simultaneously and often in cooperation with each other. As a roleplaying game (RPG), the player designs an avatar for themself to embody and move within the game world. The game also does not have a set path to follow like Super Mario Bros (1985), and, as such, allows for a more explorative experience since the avatar can explore without being put on a specific path. This gives the player a large amount of freedom to tell the story of their character rather than just the predetermined story of the game.

Aarseth argues that, as a world made up of a wide variety of landscapes and cultures, spread across multiple in-game continents, that World of Warcraft represents a “hollow” world, where the variation is rich, but it lacks in depth.[11] He says that this hollowness is part of what gives the game its popularity.[12] The game world’s primary goal is to be functional and playable, which distinguishes it from traditional fictional worlds of film and literature, where the primary goal is to offer grounding for the action of the narrative.[13] This means that, rather than designing a world from a directed perspective, one that cannot change after publication, World of Warcraft designs a world where the perspective is guided by the player’s interest and interaction within the game world. It is because of this approach to world design, focusing on the interactivity of the world, that its hollowness shows merit: it allows players to make their own stories and add their own depth.

Tanya Krzywinska, also discussing World of Warcraft, talks about how this hollowness relies on some familiar themes to remain as an evocative environment for player interaction.[14] She attributes familiar themes to the real world’s collection of mythological stories, and the nonlinear symbology that makes up these stories being at play within the game world.[15] Though these symbolic elements are nonlinear, they add to Krzywinska’s conception of worldness: “the world should have a unifying consistency; this applies not only to spatial coordinates, style, and physics but also to the past events that constitute the current state of affairs within the world and to which the player-character is subject.”[16] Symbols, as well as references to the game world’s internal history add this consistency for World of Warcraft.[17] For an example, Krzywinska points to the faction within World of Warcraft called the Night Elves, who are an incredibly long-lived race that has historical ruins throughout one of the game’s regions.[18] To indicate the historical ruins, the game uses forms of ancient Greco-Roman architecture strewn around important locations to indicate to the player that those locations are ruins or built on top of ruins. By utilizing this real-world symbol of the Greco-Roman ruin, and the mythological familiarity with such places, the game world becomes more fleshed out within the player’s mind and they in turn become more immersed in the world that seemingly has a history that exists before their experience of playing takes place. The story is then communicated through the player’s experience of the environment without any dialogue to tell them the written history of the area around them.

[1] Soriani and Caselli, “Visual Narratives in Videogames.” 481.

[2] Soriani and Caselli, 481.

[3] Arcade games such as House of the Dead (1996), and early home console games like Super Mario Bros (1985) are famous examples of on rails games.

[4] “Evoked visual narratives refer to those situations where the fact that some videogames are set in scenery/backdrop already known to gamers may ignite a process of anticipation that allows the game narrative context to exercise a greater sense of involvement by evoking what the player already knows about such contexts.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[5] “Enacted visual narratives can be considered all the cases where game designers stage in-game scenarios where players are called to 'solve' the situation by means of creating or perturbing a graphic element (or a set of them) that immediately becomes an integral part of the game world, thus activating a narrative sequence.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[6] “Enacting visual narratives refer to all those visual elements staged by the designers with the intention to suggest to the players an action with a specific scope.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[7] “Embedded visual narratives refer to those visual elements intentionally positioned by developers which contain information about the context of the game.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[8] Soriani and Caselli, 485; “Emergent visual narrative concerns all those games that allow the creation of graphic assets by the player, such assets assuming that for the person they have meaning within a context of reference absolutely internal to the subject.” Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[9] Soriani and Caselli, 495.

[10] Aarseth, “A Hollow World: World of Warcraft as Spatial Practice.” 111.

[11] Aarseth, 111-112.

[12] Aarseth, 112.

[13] Aarseth, 118.

[14] Krzywinska, “Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories.” 383-384.

[15] Krzywinska, 385.

[16] Krzywinska, 386.

[17] Krzywinska, 386.

[18] Krzywinska, 388-390.

All skulls used in my graduation thesis 💀