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scripttorture · 4 years

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I'm not sure if this question has been asked before, but what would be usually the reason why people would torture someone? Not to justify (torture is unjustifiable in any situation) but I really needed a driving force for a villain why they would w/o sounding ridiculous or implausible, and any reason I come up with falls kind of flat (... Which I suppose is expected, since that's how the reasonings behind tortures are in rl I guess)

I can help you out here. And I want you to know that from a writing stand point this does make perfect sense. Motivation, however shallow, is important for capturing a character.

Yes a lot of the motivations in reality are flat, shallow and outright stupid. And it can be a careful balancing act, showing those motivations making them understandable without straying into justifying them. It can also be hard to make an interesting character with flat motivations.

I think I’ll start off with talking about motivations/‘reasons’ in reality and then talk a little about when and whether we should break from reality when we write about torturers.

Remember that there isn’t a lot of research on torturers. So I’m working from the little bit of research I can access, interviews with torturers and anecdotal reports. It isn’t perfect, but this is (so far as I can tell) the best information we have at the time of writing.

Understanding why torture occurs means understanding that it is structural violence.

I do take questions on abuse, I personally don’t see much point in sticking to the strict legal definition of torture when I’m trying to help authors do a decent job portraying trauma survivors. But sometimes the definition matters. And torture is essentially defined as abuse by government employees*, by public servants in positions of authority.

Over and over again the reasons torturers give for their crimes come back to flaws in the organisations they were part of. Consistently, across cultures and time periods, they describe understaffed, high pressure environments with no training, little supervision and the instruction to produce results or else.

This combines with cultural messages that violence ‘works’ and existing sub-cultures of torturers within organisations to perpetuate abuse.

It’s also worth mentioning that for most torturers they’re coming into an organisation where there are already established sub-groups of torturers. The group dynamics do seem to play a role in all this. Though it’s difficult to say how much when we’re entirely going from what torturers say and they are… demonstrably inaccurate when it comes to talking about torture.

Having said that; torturers do seem to encourage each other to more and more acts of violence. They treat it almost competitively. They will also, sometimes, approach new recruits and bring them into the torturer sub-group, pressuring them to participate.

I’m unsure how much of a role the social factor plays in torturers starting to torture, but it definite seems to keep them torturing when they say they’d rather stop. There are a couple of reasons why.

First of all there’s a sort of implicit threat; refusing to torture is seen as a threat to the torturer sub-culture. And these are people who have already shown a capacity for violence. There have been cases of torturers attacking other members of the same organisation for their opposition to, or refusal to, torture.

There’s also a social aspect; once involved with the torturer sub-culture the individual tends to become more and more cut off from the rest of the organisation. The group of torturers becomes more or less their entire social circle.

We’re social animals. So leaving, rejecting the entire social group, is a big deal. It’s hard for us to do.

The toxic sub-culture torturers form encourages them to root part of their identity in their capacity for violence and how ‘good at it’ the other members of their group think they are. They tend to tie ideas of toughness, dependability, achievement and (often) masculinity to torture. They frame themselves as especially manly, strong and ‘willing to do the tough jobs no one else has the guts to’.

It’s complete nonsense but it’s what they do.

And it means that facing up to the fact torture is pointless feels like an attack on their self worth. A lot of them choose to double down rather then face that reality.

This isn’t a definitive list of relevant factors. It’s my assessment of the ones that always seem to show up. There are usually other factors that feed into particular situations. Rejali’s Three Systems is a worth a read on that front.

Ideas about social hierarchy and transgression are common features. So things like ‘anyone who does That Terrible Thing deserves to be tortured’ or ‘no one Like That would be in this part of town for an innocent reason’.

All of this means that motivation can be tricky to write, because the real motivations are often not the sort of thing we’re taught are ‘interesting’.

Real, honest motivations are often things like:

‘I think those people deserve it’

‘I was told to’

‘Everyone else was doing it’

‘I couldn’t think of anything else to do’

‘I got angry and took it out on someone else’

‘I thought it would work and no one ever taught me another way’

That’s not a definitive list but you get the idea. And probably get the point about these sorts of shallow motivations being narratively unsatisfying.

So let’s step back from the reality and tackle the writing problem at the heart of this: how do we make this interesting?

There are a couple of different approaches.

The first approach I see is to accept that the motivation and the villain are shallow and shift the interest away from the villain.

Villains don’t need to be interesting. And they don’t need to be the focus.

If your story is structured in a way which primarily makes the villain a looming threat and focuses on the heroes, their journey, their relationships then adding detail or depth to the villain is unnecessary.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy does this with several of its major villains. The Shape of Water does it for the main villain. Zelda: Breath of the Wild (yes I bought a switch during lock down, and it’s my first Zelda game I am not sorry) does it with Ganon.

Another approach is to accept the motivation is shallow and shift the focus away from the villain’s motivation.

Villains do not need to have a grand philosophy or deep motivation or underlying pain in order to be a good read. They don’t need to be an intellectual threat to the heroes in order to be a legitimate threat.

For instance Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, I’d argue one of the best takes on the character ever. But if you go back and watch the episodes he isn’t deep. His motivation almost always boils down to pettiness, greed and a vindictive streak a mile wide. It is incredibly shallow.

But he’s fun to watch, because he’s unpredictable and funny. He’s also a legitimate threat to the heroes because he’s so incredibly destructive. More then any other villain his crimes are aimed at effecting large numbers of people. That sets the stakes high without any motivation or philosophy coming into it.

The focus is on what he does each time he shows up, not why.

Persona 5 pulls off a similar trick. Every single one of its villains has a shallow motivation. But each of them also has power over one of the heroes or another innocent person. They don’t need a deeper or more interesting motivation in order to make life miserable for the heroes. And every caper hinges on the heroes trying to stop that worst outcome.

As much as Fullmetal Alchemist is a deep story which touches on many complex topics, neither version (the original manga or the 2003 anime with it’s very different plot) had a particularly complex villain at the end of the story. In both cases the ultimate leader of the ‘bad guys’ just wanted more power. And didn’t care how many lives they destroyed to get it.

Not all stories need a Killmonger.

It’s always worth taking the time to consider what your story needs, rather then what’s fashionable in fiction at the moment. On a personal note some of my favourite stories have been either entirely focused on the heroes or had explicitly shallow villains.

The reality is that most of the time motivations for large scale atrocities are shallow and unsatisfying. Giving fictional villains deeper or more complex motives can work, but it can also mean twisting the narrative up to make it look like the villain (and hence their actions) are more reasonable then they are.

Killmonger’s twisted vision of what would make Wakanda ‘better’ works in Black Panther, just as White Wolf’s similar motivation did in the comics a decade or so earlier. They work because they’re directly competing with the hero’s vision of what would make the world better. And because ultimately it’s about showing why T’Challa’s way is better then the villain he’s facing off against.

But I can think of other stories where giving the villain a ‘deeper’ reasoning just served to make them look reasonable. While they were arguing for torture and genocide.

And… I just think we’ve got enough of that in real life.

At the end of the day your villain should be serving a role within the story you’re creating. Motivation is one of many ways that we try to make sure they serve that function effectively and entertainingly.

But, despite what some people would have you believe, it ain’t the be all and end all of whether a villain or story is entertaining. Personality, plots, aesthetic and sometimes how satisfying it feels to see their day ruined, all feed in to how well a villain works.

The threat they represent in the story isn’t dependant on whether their motivation is deep or nuanced or rational. It’s about their ability to follow through and sometimes the horrific nature of the desire itself.

So I guess a lot of my advice here is to consider what your villain actually needs to do in the story. Then take a step back and consider whether deeper motivation adds anything to that.

Be aware that the more complex motivations and drives you add the further you’re getting from a realistic torturer. Which is not inherently apologia, or inherently a bad writing idea, but consider what any deviation from reality implies.

I hope that helps. :)

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Disclaimer

*The international definition can include groups that control territory, ie an occupying force. In some countries the definition is slightly wider and encompasses some international criminal gangs.

#writing advice #tw torture #writing torturers #behaviour of torturers #motivations of torturers #threatening villains #motivation #writing villains #effects of torture on organisations #defining torture

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Best Female Spy Movies & TV Shows to Watch After Black Widow

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Black Widow is out, bringing the women-led spy genre to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film follows Natasha Romanov in the time between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War as she works to bring down the Red Room, aka the Soviet-affiliated program that took her as a baby and brainwashed her into becoming an assassin. While the women-centric spy drama may be new for the MCU, it’s has been one of the most prolific and entertaining action sub-genres over the past few decades. If you’ve watched Black Widow and you’re looking for more taut and emotional spy thrillers to check out, we have some TV and film suggestions for you…

Hanna

Many have seen the 2011 action feature directed by Joe Wright and starring Saoirse Ronan as a girl assassin raised in the wilderness by her spy father Eric Bana, but the TV series based on the film is even better. Currently moving towards its third season, the Amazon Prime series has so much more room to delve into the nuances of the film’s premise, especially in its second season, which moves completely past the events of the movie. While the first season leans into the coming-of-age themes inherent in Hanna venturing out into the world for the very first time, the second season chooses to delve further into the spy drama of it all, expanding the series’ focus to center some of the other teen super soldiers born into the same program Hanna was rescued from as a baby. If you would have liked to learn more about the other Widows Natasha and Yelena are working to save in Black Widow, then Hanna is the show for you.

Atomic Blonde

Stylish and featuring some of the best fight scenes this side of John Wick (the film’s director David Leitch, also worked on John Wick), Atomic Blonde stars the incomparable Charlize Theron as a spy tasked with finding a lost of double agents that is being smuggled into the West on the eve of the Berlin Wall’s collapse. Like Black Widow, Atomic Blonde only has so much narrative time to delve into the complexities of this set up and setting and, maybe sensing it won’t be able to do them justice, instead leans into the aesthetic and action of this world. It works, thanks in no small part to performers like Theron, James McAvoy, and Sofia Boutella, who bring to life the stress, violence, and desperation of this intersection of place and time far better than its script.

Queen Sono

American and British spy dramas often have white westerners traveling to other, poorer nations for missions, depicting a real-life colonial power structure while rarely interrogating it. Queen Sono, billed as Netflix‘s first African original series (it is a South African series, specifically), is a spy drama that centers Black characters and community in fun and powerful ways, bringing the familiar tropes of the genre to what will probably be a new setting for most American viewers. Queen Sono follows South African spy Queen (Pearl Thusi) as she works to balance her dangerous and clandestine missions with her personal life. Funny, emotional, and action-packed, Queen Sono is a must-see for any spy drama lover looking for something new—and it’s a damn shame Netflix won’t be moving forward with a second season.

Alias

To me, Alias will always be the original. The female-led spy drama was on network television when I was a teenager, and its combination (especially in the first season and a half) of fierce fight sequences, tense spycraft, and character-driven drama made it my favorite show. Like Black Widow, Alias is grounded in family drama, most especially the father-daughter relationship between Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) and spy dad Jack Bristow (Victor Garber), but later bringing in other familial dynamics as well. The series starts as your classic double agent story, as Sydney decides to take down the agency she works for after they have her fiance killed, but, in classic J.J. Abrams style, the plot really spirals out from there—for better and worse. Airing for five season and more than 105 episodes, if you’re looking for more family-driven spy drama, Alias is the show for you.

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Deutschland 86

All three “seasons” of this excellent German-language Cold War spy series that follows an East German boy forced to become a spy in West Germany are worth watching, but the second installment, set in 1986, gives us viewers many more lady spy characters to be impressed by compared to the original Deutschland 83 story. Main character Jonas remains the protagonist of this tale, but his Aunt Lenora, probably the best spy in the entire show, takes an even bigger role in Deutschland 1986 and the subsequent Deutschland 89, as does her lover/partner Rose, a South African operative working for the African National Congress and played by the MCU’s Florence Kasumba. Throw in Jonas’ baby mama Annett, back in East Germany working as a junior intelligence agent, and the mysterious Brigitte, and you have a second season teeming with complex and cutthroat women spies.

Nikita

This highly underrated spy series ran for four action-packed seasons on The CW before totally sticking its landing in 2013. Technically an adaptation of the 1997 La Femme Nikita TV series, which was in turn an adaptation of Luc Besson’s 1990 action film of the same name, Nikita quickly surpassed both originals to become one of the best female-led spy stories of all time. Starring Maggie Q as the titular Nikita, the series began after the former spy has vowed to take down the secret agency that trained her, known as the Division. Our story begins when Nikita plants her protege, Alex, within Division, with a plan to work together to take the agency down. Of course, going undercover comes with its own emotional and ethical complications, and Alex may not know all that there is to know about her mentor Nikita, and Nikita’s role in Alex’s tragic past. With a stellar supporting cast that includes Melinda Clarke and Xander Berkeley, Nikita was far better than it needed to be and, if your a fan of the action spy genre, is definitely worth watching.

Killing Eve

Maybe it was the Russian accent, but Yelena has mad Villanelle vibes in Black Widow, and I mean that in the least psychopathic way possible. Unless you live under a rock, you’re probably aware of this BBC America series starring Sandra Oh as a bored MI-5 agent and Jodie Comer as the spy-assassin she becomes obsessed with catching, but if you haven’t yet checked it out and are looking for another female-driven spy story with plenty of banter, then Killing Eve is the show for you. The second season gets a little rocky, but with a riveting season three and the announcement that season four will be the show’s last, now is the time to jump on the Killing Eve bandwagon.

Little Drummer Girl

In terms of tone or style, Little Drummer Girl shares little with Black Widow—it’s much more geopolitical thriller than superhero action—but I’m including the British spy series on the list because it does share a star with Black Widow. Yelena’s Florence Pugh plays an aspiring actress named Charlie who is recruited by Mossad to infiltrate a Palestinian group planning an attack in Europe. Based on a novel of the same name by acclaimed spy author John le Carré, the six-episode series is directed by Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook and co-stars Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgård, and the talent is not wasted. The miniseries delves much more into the ethics of spycraft than Black Widow is able or comfortable doing, asking difficult questions about how violence and manipulation are used and justified across national lines. If you’re looking for a spy drama that isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions, then Little Drummer Girl is for you.

Gunpowder Milkshake

OK, this one is more of an assassin drama than a spy drama, but the cast is too good not to include it on the list. Starring Doctor Who‘s Karen Gillan and Game of Thrones‘ Lena Headey as a pair of daughter/mother assassins, Gunpowder Milkshake is another action thriller that is all in with the familial dynamics. Past the two stars, Gunpowder Milkshake also features the iconic Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, and Carla Gugino, rounding out the cast of action women. The film doesn’t drop on Netflix (in the U.S.) and theaters (elsewhere) until Friday, but you’ll be ready.

The post Best Female Spy Movies & TV Shows to Watch After Black Widow appeared first on Den of Geek.

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woffordswords · 3 years

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NieR Replicant (Part 2: Themes of Violence and Sacrifice)

In part 1, I examined the doubled narrative form of NieR and suggested that it makes sense to consider the significance of this form as a negotiation of a contemporary desire for stories that exist between myth (timeless, cyclical, and essential) and history (chronological, linear, and causal). In part 2, I wish to deal more directly with some of the themes that began to emerge in my overview of the game’s story in part 1. In my opinion, NieR is notable in the context of contemporary AAA games (big budget games published by one of the industries major publishers) because of it’s concern with the meanings of human behavior. In particular, NieR explores forms of behavior that are commonplace in gaming, but are not often interrogated or placed at the center of gaming narratives. Chief among it’s concerns are the boundaries between the self and other, notably in terms of questions of the distinction between selfish and selfless behaviors. Furthermore, violence and violent impulses are held up and acknowledged as a central aspect of the human character, something that is complex and meaningful and deserving of more careful consideration than what it usually receives in video games, especially given its predominance as a mode of interaction across a wide range of genres.

Starting with the latter, violence in video games is typically treated in one of two ways. Typically it is adopted and embraced as the primary mode of interaction in many games due to it’s exhilarating and demanding forms. In these games, little attention is typically given to the reasons behind engaging in violent behavior or the consequences of such actions. External discourses often celebrate these games as an appropriate release for violent and aggressive impulses that allow the related urges to be sublimated in daily life. Alternatively, critics argue that frequent exposure to violence in these games, especially among children, can lead to an increase in the prevalence of aggressive impulses and a narrowing comprehension of the range of possibilities through which people can interact with others and resolve our conflicts with them.

Violence in video games is typically not scrutinized by the games themselves. It is a means to an end, a way to achieving an engaging interactive experience that emphasizes skill, strategy, and dexterity. However, the alternative trend has been to engage with the critique of violence in video games outlined above in order to tell stories about characters whose violent impulses detract from their ability to function as empathetic, rational, well rounded human beings as well as to present the possibility of desirable alternatives. Two good examples of this sort of game that are roughly contemporary with NieR are the critical darlings Spec Ops: The Line and Undertale.

NieR takes a slightly different tact. Although it too features characters who succumb to violent impulses and are limited and even potentially damaged by the effect of engaging in such behavior, rather than condemn the behavior and the characters who perform it or suggest and provide the opportunity for alternatives, NieR considers violence as a necessary and even essential aspect of a cyclical pattern of behavior that in some ways defines for the game what it means to be human. In other words, the game neither celebrates nor criticizes violence, but instead provides a compelling framework for understanding it that allows us to consider the significance of violence in human nature and contemporary history, as well as in our own behaviors as players of violent video games.

The role that violence plays in NieR is initially one connected to a collectivities prospects for survival. The first creature that the player kills in the game are sheep who wander the plains just north of the protagonist’s village. Killing for food quickly becomes killing for protection as the player is informed of an attack by Shades on a group of human workers attempting to rebuild a bridge that connects several human settlements to the player’s village. From there, killing gradually shifts from something protective and retaliatory to something proactive, capable of fostering greater powers for the protagonist. Once the player has teamed up with Grimoire Weiss and the idea that Shades contain within them “sealed verses”, capable of augmenting the players magical powers and brining an end to the disease that plagues his people, the Shades shift in significance from a menace to resource that must be culled in order to be harvested. The old excuse about needing to protect and/or avenge people still presents itself at different moments of the game, but the player hardly needs a reason to kill. Their violence becomes indiscriminately targeted towards an entire population of creatures, even those that seem to serve no immediate threat and whose elimination fosters the completion of no immediate goal. This process of gradual abstraction where killing becomes detached from more immediate causes and broadly justified by a totalizing mission is a pattern that can be found throughout history, but can immediately and obviously connected with the war on terrorism that Western countries have been waging for the last quarter century.

Along with this evolving rationale for enacting it, violence in NieR also can be connected with a general ignorance and obliviousness to the world one lives in. Throughout the game, strange and unique situations that range from the seemingly evolving intelligence of the shades to the existence of strange and difficult to explain locales and phenomena are hand-waved away by the protagonist in favor of maintaining focus on the more immediately demanding and gratifying violent spectacles in which they are engaged. Even towards the game’s conclusion when information about the circumstances of their world and the consequences of their actions are being directly and forcefully explained to them, the protagonists ignore and block out this information by focusing on the violent acts at hand. There is here a debate about means and ends that can be had such that it could be argued that a focus on the violent means by the characters really reflects their total commitment to their end goals. which are noble. However, it is equally arguable, and in my opinion more convincing given the ways the protagonist’s commitment to their violent actions are demonstrated to be beyond reflection such that even if new information arose that challenged their thinking in terms of how best to reach their goals, they would continue to pursue their violent course because it is the means and not the ends to which they are more committed.

This idea of violence as something so directly engaging that in precludes the accumulation and processing of new knowledge is an interesting one and something that relates back to part one’s discussion of the relationship between myth and history. Violence in NieR seems to have the effect of perpetuating the mythical cycle of extinction and rebirth precisely because it precludes the protagonists becoming aware of the historical context in which they are acting. The protagonist refuses to grasp their role in wiping out a previous form of humanity and it is because they never gain this knowledge about the historical significance of their actions that they are able to carry them out. Violence is, as has often been stated in other contexts, something of a cyclical phenomenon, with patterns of action and retribution that continue in perpetuity across history. However, instead of suggesting that violent atrocities have stood in the way of history, or set society back, it might be more effective to say that violent actions keep people involved at a mythical level of understanding and involvement with the world around them and prevent them from entering into a historical one. Emerging from this, the question that NieR seems to beg is whether or not this mythical level of acting is immoral or not.

The events of NieR are certainly tragic. They concern the extinction of a form of humanity, carried out but another form of humanity that lacks the knowledge of the full significance of their actions. However, the game also seems to suggest that there is little room for alternatives as it relates to this matter. There is no possibility for coexistence between Gestalts and Replicants. Either the Gestalts themselves share this violent predisposition and pose an immediate and unavoidable threat to the Replicants, or else they are as committed to their own survival the the replicants are and rely parasitically on the Replicants to achieve it. This is, of course, most pronounced in the case of the Shadow Lord, who, like the protagonist, will do whatever it takes to save his sister, even if it means committing atrocities against another intelligent form of humanity. Since the parasitism of the Gestalts ultimately leads to madness and the destruction of the intelligence of both Gestalt and Replicant, the elimination of the Gestalt threat is a necessity for intelligent life’s continued survival. While one can empathize with the Gestalt, there is no denying within the system that the game has established, they are, so to speak, on the wrong side of history, which is to say that their existence must come to end for humanity itself to continue. However, their fundamental sameness to the Replicants in terms of their right to be considered human is undeniable. It is this sameness, this inability to distinguish between the moral and human rights of either side that causes a major problem for humanity’s continued existence.

This is where the mythically oriented violent disposition of the protagonist becomes important. The violent outlook is capable of creating dichotomies where none exist, of disrupting markers of commonality and sewing division and discord. While these aspects of violence are rarely celebrated (or worth celebrating) they are capable of allowing life to orient itself by the cyclical form as opposed to the stable form of history. They preclude the definition of the human based on intelligence and consciousness and and preclude rational and emotional connections with others which might break the cycle and establish the alternative trajectories of history. The cycle is a sort of trap or prison, but it is also something that inevitably continues and this may hit closer to the essence of what life actually is than the many ways that historical consciousness allows us to envision life as something that evolves and makes progress, or, alternatively, collapses and comes to an end.

It is in this sense that the game does not render a traditional moral judgment on the actions of its protagonists, what it offers, or at least tries to offer, is an alternative orientation (that of cycle and myth) to view these actions from so as to make sense of them. Moral judgment does not exist in the same way within myth since the cycle is fixed and eternal and thus morality has no weight as a means to determine the direction in which human life should proceed or the means by which it may be judged. However, as stated in part one, the game does not wholly commit itself to myth, nor is the mythical outlook able to supersede the historical. Even if the protagonists fail to grasp the historical weight of their actions, the player has the opportunity to come much closer to doing so. They are torn between two poles, the desire to play the game and the desire to make sense of the story and these poles are roughly aligned with the mythical and the historical respectively.

Playing the game, participating in the thrill of combat, becomes something that supersedes the story world in many games, including NieR. Because combat in games is essentially mechanical, which is to say that it is defined and governed by the rules of an abstract system, it is endlessly repeatable and detachable from its context. It is always possible for the player to detach themselves from the world in which the action takes place and to focus on the combat. NieR itself explores and encourages this relation by encouraging multiple playthroughs in which the details of the story, since they have already become familiar, recede into the background, while the more abstract stimulation of the mechanically challenging combat becomes the focus. However, what is intriguing here is the way that NieR, in a seemingly contradictory manner, ties this mythical and cyclical engagement to gameplay systems into a continued desire for historical understanding. Many games now offer what is commonly known as New Game +, which is basically a mode in which the player can replay the game that they have already completed with the narrative remaining entirely unchaged but allowing them to keep their character/abilities/items/etc. and be faced with more difficult gameplay challenges. New Game + modes obviously place almost exclusive focus on the player’s desire to continue to “play the game”, pushing the story to the background as something that has already been completed and fully experience. However, NieR promises the player small and subtle, yet revealing and significant differences to the narrative upon subsequent playthroughs. As such, in the instances where systems would appear to be the major driver of the experience, NieR doubles down on the desire for story in order to challenge the straightforwardness of this progression towards gameplay focused abstraction.

NieR continues to hold out the prospect of more of the narrative to the players, even after the characters involved and their fates have largely been settled. It conveys the protagonists own imprisonment in the mythical cycle but also delivers to the player the promise of narrative progression. What seems to be the case is that ultimately the pull that NieR makes on the player is undecidable. Instead of narrative receding in the face gameplay as the primary motivating desire upon subsequent playthroughs, it becomes difficult to say at which level the player’s desire is more firmly rooted. NieR offers the possibilty to see its events cyclically by replaying it at the same time that it promises the ability to break that cycle by revealing new aspects of the story. Ultimately, NieR doesn’t restrict its player to either commitment, it asks them to move between the two, to experience the game and its events in both ways, not to judge which is the more proper way to view the game, but rather to suggest that the game is a novel form that allows for the experience and awareness of both.

This seems to me to be one of NieR’s major contentions about video games: that they offer something like an evolution in terms of the way we understand the world as well as tell and experience stories because they lend themselves to this simultaneous mythical and historical engagement with the world in a way that other forms do not. They allow these two forms of desire to coexist without extinguishing one or the other. The player, in the end, does not fully have the means to render a historical-moral judgment on the protagonist because despite their efforts they do not have the full picture. The mythical cycle of the game is incomplete and yet compelling in its form so as to justify itself and its continued existence (similar to the way human life is able to justify its continued existence despite the moral obstacles placed in its way by the narrative predicament NieR poses). However, neither does the protagonist have the ability to fully embrace the myth. There is too much historical and moral weight to knowledge they have accumulated while playing the game to feel that the protagonist and their role in the cycle of extinction and survival can be identified with and accepted. The player finds themselves feeling both inside and outside of this cycle, both related to and estranged from the characters they control. This is a unique position in relation to a story such as this and one that is not entirely satisfying. It presents the player with gaps and contradictions in their own experience as well as in the desires upon which said experience is structured.

If the mythical cycle is a prison that allows life to continue but locks it into an inevitably limited, cyclical awareness of its relation to the world and the historical offers lines of flight that may lead towards shared progress, but are just as likely to lead towards total ruin, NieR puts forward the need for an alternative. This alternative is the perspective of the player, at once within the world and out of it, at once able to know and judge as well as too limited in scope to make such knowledge and judgments definitive. In short, this is a means of experiencing and understanding the world that puts a premium on more immediate involvement in an experience as opposed to more detached contemplation of it, but also wants to include means of contextualizing that experience that are emotionally challenging and thought provoking without being overly moralizing or didactic. As such, what this alternative perspective seems opposed to is the rigidity of uncompromising moral and historical lenses while simultaneously rejecting the atomization and detachment of the cyclical over-investment in direct action (figured predominantly through the figure of violence). It imagines the game as a system for negotiating these two poles and thus for knowing the world differently.

NieR might, in this sense, be seen as functioning dialectically, producing a new means for understanding the world out of a clash between opposed alternatives. In my view, it provides an elegant view of stakes against with humanity threatens to exhaust itself. It offers something fluid yet thought provoking and it leaves us with a sense of these characters and their world that demands more of us in terms of our ability to make sense of it. If neither the mythical outlook nor the historical one can give us a satisfying account of the meaning of NieR, we are spurred to look instead at how we experience the push and pull between these two perspectives in our own experience. This reflexive knowledge that games can create through juxtaposing their systems and narratives with the player’s desires and experiences is, in my view, crucial to getting people to reflect on meaning differently. Whether or not it represents that transcendence necessary for life to mean something more than an a cycle or a linear progression remains unanswered. However, the way it involves the individual and their own negotiation of experience and what can be known about it is important to me, because it involves a fundamentally questioning of how we make sense of things. I hope that it engages people in a way that can’t be resolved by resource to rote ideologies or abstracted patterns of involvement, but instead makes these two domains relative to each other, leaving the player with need to sort through their own sense of how to make these domains most compellingly work together. For myself, as it relates to NieR, this means acknowledging something in my own desire for knowledge of causality that keeps me involved in the mythical cycles of violence that the game depicts. There is something in my experience therefore that cannot be reduced to either one or the other.

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We can establish a contrast between the way violent impulses and violent behavior function for the protagonists of NieR and the way they function for players of the game. Of course, there are many who do play games with the mentality displayed by the protagonists. They play games for the action, they skip cutscenes, they tune out dialogue, they are bored by anything resembling downtime. For people with this approach, NieR is a game whose story recedes into the background. Important dialogue is often conveyed during fights and thus is easy to ignore. Important portions of the dialogue can even be missed entirely if the player completes segments of fights too quickly, something that in my experience occurred fairly often unless I actively held back. In the second playthrough there are totally new segments of dialogue spoken by the boss-shades that the player fights, but they are not spoken in english (or whatever language the player is playing the game in) and must be read via subtitles, something that is difficult and requires conscious effort during a frenetic fight scene. For the player who is keen to focus on the action NieR makes it easy, but for the player who has an interest in the story, these devices create the kind of dissonance that symbolize the conflict between these two desires through setting the players experience of both at odds with each other.

As such, for the player with some sort of desire to understand the narrative, violent action in NieR becomes something like an impediment to receiving the story. An intense focus on the gameplay, something most action games demand, is actively at odds with the player’s experience of the story. Even player’s like myself who do care about the story and desire to understand it may find themselves slipping habitually into preoccupation with the action and only once it is too late realized that they have missed something that they wanted to see or hear regarding the story. This is highly characteristic of a common vein of difference in video games between the habitual nature of gameplay, particularly fast-pace visceral action oriented gameplay, and the unexpected interruptions of story that seek to command the player’s attention with their difference from the usual experience of the game. It also symbolically stands in for the way certain actions, notably those violent in nature, can stand in the way of our ability to understand the wider context of our actions, as I have already discussed above.

However, in NieR, as in most action games with prominent narrative components, violence is not only an distraction from the story, it is also the only means to access it. In a meaningful contradiction, the player forced to perform the violent actions of the gameplay in order to reveal further aspects of the story. Violence is thus depicted as not only as consuming and narrowing the player’s focus, but also as opening up and revealing more and more about the world. Players do not just commit violent acts in games because they enjoy them, although they may, violence is a means to progression in the overall narrative structure of many games, including NieR. It takes the characters to new places, it introduces them to new people and creatures, and it leads to many other moments of revelation, even as it also actively threatens to obscure and destroy what it potentially reveals. The player is perhaps more aware of this double-edged nature of violence than the game’s protagonists are, especially if they have a desire to understand the world of the game, which the characters who live in that world do not. This struggle between knowing what violent actions are capable of revealing and also understanding how they threaten to destroy or deform those revelations is a major characteristic of the experience of playing NieR. It is an uneasy knowledge that the player may sometimes actively suppress in order to feed their desire for kinetic stimulation while at other times it will erupt and confront them with the limitations of their means of interacting with this world.

Ultimately, if one way to read the gaps and ellipses in NieR’s narrative is to see it as a negotiation between different knowledge systems and are conflicting desires to understand the world, another way to read them is as a critique of our limited means of access to understanding that our means of interacting with that world provide. If we had some other means of interacting with this world we might be able to come to a more satisfying means of understanding it. However, for whatever reason, whether it is because of the limitations of our protagonists or because of the limitations of the commercial video game marketplace that allows this game to exist in the first place, we are left with a story filled with gaps and ellipses because the violent action takes precedence and determines the form of the former. This is a more critical and moralizing interpretation of the role of video game violence, but it is certainly a valid one.

Another similar and yet different interpretation of these same points would claim violence as necessary and integral, not just to this game and these characters worldviews, but to human life in general. It would claim violence as something properly human, something essential to our will to survive and protect our sense of self. As such, the game would be less about the limitations of the protagonist’s or the gamer’s perspective on the game world, and more about the limitations of humanity’s perspective on the world in general. Returning to the points above we could see these limitation as an impediment to a more complete form of historical knowledge that we desire, or we might also see them as the reason we become locked into a cyclical form of knowledge that is always relative to our position in a repeated cycle. Or, as I have more affirmatively suggested above, we may take these limitations as affordances and see them as the tools that we are capable of working with, and from them attempt to devise more satisfying and productive means of understanding the world that do not depend on an outright rejection of the violent means by which we as human beings often propel ourselves forward.

In either case, this is a much more complex and ambivalent take on violence than what we are often granted by other video games, one that forces us to reckon with the integral place of violence in our lives and its role in enacting our desires, even as we recognize how it warps and limits us and the world around us.

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The other aspect of NieR worth examining is the question of selfishness and sacrifice. Many video games over the years have purported to have moral choice systems. These often boil down to a rudimentary binary where the player is either able to act selfishly or selflessly and see some sort of impact based on their choices in the events of the story and in changes to the world around them. This trend reached its zenith with the 360/PS3 console generation and was typified by the likes of Mass Effect, Bioshock, and Infamous. Although many classic CRPG’s such as the Fallout series featured a wider range of more nuanced moral choices, the distillation of this concept in these more commercially prominent series has served in large part to define how we think about moral choice, for better or for worse, in contemporary video games. Since many of these games (as well as a plurality of games in general) grant players great and substantial powers in the context of their worlds, games are often dealing with fundamental questions about heroism and its possibility. They often treat on the old theme from Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility”, and spur the players to think more about the impact that their desire can have on the world around them.

NieR is an interesting game because it bucks many of the presiding trends in video games related to exploring what effects a powerful, potentially heroic character can have on their world. Generally, It doesn’t give the player choices about their actions. The positive or negative effects that the protagonist’s actions have on those around them, such as the decimation of the Aerie or the eventual destruction of Project Gestalt itself are ultimately outside of the players control, part of an escalating cycle of power-accumulation and violence spurred on by the looming threat of extinction for Gestalts and Replicants alike. The player is swept up in a current of events occurring in the world of NieR, acting before they fully understand the implications of their situation, forced to serve as the catalyst in terrible cycle of death and rebirth, an integral part of an enormous machine whose function is beyond their control. In this way, the protagonist’s involvement in the story of NieR is something like an allegory for the nature of the player’s involvement across the medium of video games. Although player’s of video games often do have a great degree of control as it relates to their interaction with gameplay systems, the same cannot be said about the stories and worlds within which such systems are contextualized. Typically moral choice systems in games work to combat or obscure the sense in which the player’s role in determining the story of a video game is pre-determined and their agency circumscribed. NieR takes the opposite track, reveling in making the player aware of the way that the fate of the world of NieR is almost entirely outside their control, regardless of their intentions for it.

While the mandatory missions at the center of NieR’s story always play out the same way, where the player is given more agency to shape the events of the game’s story is in relation to the game’s side quests. Unlike the main objectives that must be fulfilled for the story to progress, side quests in NieR are entirely optional. (The only exception is that if the player wishes to reach endings D and E there are certain side quests that they must complete in order to collect all the in-game weapons. Endings D and E represent the biggest part of the game’s story where the player does have some degree of agency. I will discuss them in more detail later in this piece.) The greatest sense in which the player has agency has to do with whether or not they are interested in taking part in these side quests to begin with. Since they all tend to revolve around the player taking on errands and requests from people who would be at greater risk from the dangers of the outside world than the protagonist would be, these side quests are an important area where the themes of selflessness/selfishness and heroism are explored.

In RPGs, side quests will range in terms of their significance to the larger themes and stories of the games. Often they can be acknowledged as forms of mindless busywork, intended to allow the player a structured means to gain power and resources, or else a way to pad out the game’s content and serve as an interlude between the more eventful mandatory missions. Other games use side-quests to tell relatively robust stand alone stories that contribute to the player’s overall sense of the world and develop the game’s various themes. NieR falls somewhere between these two poles. In NieR, side quests vary in terms of their subject matter, but are generally relatively mundane in terms of the tasks involved. They often revolve around revisiting previously explored areas to kill a dangerous shade or to track down some missing or needed item for a given NPC. However, they are typically much more interesting in terms of how they contribute to the player’s sense of the game’s world and its central themes. While the tasks themselves are typically quotidian, their meaning often deepens and evolves upon reflection. All contain at least a few extended conversations with the quest giver and usually also include some dialogue between the protagonist and Grimoire Weiss. It is in these instances of dialogue in which the characters are able to reflect on and consider the significance of their actions before and after the fact that surprising and unforeseen aspects of them typically become apparent.

There is something like a general pattern that the side quests in NieR follow that I would summarize as the following: The protagonist receives a fairly innocuous request, Grimoire Weiss comments on the protagonists tendency to involve themselves in the problems of others, despite them having their own more pressing concerns, the task is completed, but something begins to feel off about the whole thing, and, finally, the player returns to the quest giver where they are forced to confront the reality that some other purpose was being served by the protagonist’s actions then the one they thought they would be fulfilling. The general tone of these quests can range from the silly to the serious. In one, for instance, the player helps a family to track down their missing son, only in the end for it to be revealed that said family was a family of criminals and that the son who you tracked down and forced to return home was attempting to flee a life of crime. This ends up feeling strange and slightly comical, a sort of “whoops, perhaps we should have been more careful about what we were getting ourselves involved in,” moment. In another, things become much more serious, when upon delivering letters to an old woman who lives in a lighthouse at edge of the village of Seafront it is revealed that the letters that arrive from the woman’s lover living overseas are an elaborate multi-generational ruse devised by the villagers to protect the woman from learning that her lover is dead and to ensure that she continues to wait in Seafront and continue to operate the lighthouse to the benefit of the entire community. At the conclusion of the quest, the player is given the opportunity to tell the old woman the truth about these letters and the fate of her lover or to continue to perpetuate the lie.

Apart from the choice about whether or not to engage with these side quests in the first place, these sorts of unexpectedly harrowing decisions about whether or not to tell someone the truth about the sinister, deceptive, and/or tragic circumstances of their life are the other major form of agency that the player has in the side quests that they do not have in the main quest. Their decisions ultimately do not substantially change the events of the game or the world around them. Sometimes they lead to the player receiving one reward or another, but more often than not, their only impact is in terms of how the NPCs involved understand the significance of their lives, as well as how the player views the protagonists responsibility to these characters. The player may choose to lie and keep the truth of a situation from an unwitting NPC or they may choose to tell them the truth. However, even in the latter context, the NPCs always reach an acceptance of this revelation that allows them to keep living their lives be at peace with the tragic or unexpected circumstances that have affected them. While the player may have feeling that they express through their choices in these moments about whether these NPCs are better off knowing the truth or remaining blissfully ignorant, ultimately their choices do nothing to alter the fates of the characters involved, nor their own. Telling the NPCs the truth doesn’t do anything to make the player more able to face the truth of their own situation. Neither does choosing to keep the truth from them cause the player to look away from the reality of the circumstances they are in.

Ultimately, the characters in NieR are compelled to live their lives, to fulfill their roles in their societies, whether or not they are given the opportunity by the player to come to terms with the truth. The player may agonize, feeling the weight of the choices that are put in front of them and their responsibility to these NPCs, but ultimately the player and their choices don’t have the ability to change the lives of these characters, for better or for worse. The player may have the desire to act selflessly, to behave heroically, or else they may make choices out of self-interest that best serve themselves. However, despite having the power to be in this position where the player has the ability to imagine themselves as a hero, in truth, if heroism and selflessness are about having the power to make sacrifices that improve the lives of others, then the player is ultimately unable to live up this standard. In this sense, we can see NieR as being about how a powerful and potentially heroic figure remains relatively powerless in the face of larger and more mysterious forces that they fail understand, let alone control, or, alternatively, only understand too late when the opportunity to make a decision that might positively or negatively affect the lives of those around them has already passed.

This “too little” or “too late” sense of heroism is ever-present in NieR and goes a long way towards contributing to the general aesthetic of the game. It is a markedly different experience of having power and aspiring towards heroism than the ones that are typically offered by other video games. It conveys a sense in which having power is not the same as having agency, but instead contributes to a more acute sense of ones limitations. NieR is a game about being trapped in a cycle, about the inevitability of tragic events, and about a desperate desire to resist those things that must remain largely thwarted. What it means to try to act heroically in this context serves as a powerful and enlightening corrective to the sense of heroism put forward by other games and media.

We can explore this sense of heroism in more detail at this point by refocusing on the main narrative of NieR. As previously mentioned, the player has little to no agency as it relates to shaping the events of the larger story. However, the game’s plot deals directly with themes of heroism and sacrifice, as well as their limitations. At the center of the narrative is the protagonist and a few different sets of relationships. Chief among these are the relationship between the protagonist and his sister Yonnah, the relationship between the protagonist and his companions, Kainé and Emil, and finally the protagonist and his relationship with his allies and enemies, notably the games many quest givers.

The protagonists relationship with Yonnah in particular poses interesting questions about heroism, particularly as it relates to the distinction between selfishness and selflessness. A recurrent motif throughout the game, especially the game’s first half, is the idea that acting to protect/cure/save Yonnah means becoming more distant from her. The sense that Yonnah is trapped and imprisoned, even in the game’s first half when she is in the protagonist’s village, not yet captured by the Shadow Lord, is the most prominent aspect of her character in the game. She is imprisoned by her failing body as much as she is by external forces. In the beginning of the game, we see the protagonist taking on minor tasks in service of the villagers, culling sheep, fighting shades, but these do not take the protagonist very far away from Yonnah. However, after Yonnah’s “escape attempt” where she searches in vain for a lunar tear before being captured, the player teams up with Grimoire Weiss, gaining substantially more power and beginning to take on greater responsibility. The quest for greater power that will ostensibly save Yonnah also takes him further and further away from her. This is primarily conveyed through the game’s loading screens which depict excerpts from Yonnah’s diary. These generally convey the sense that Yonnah is lonely, that she misses her brother, and that she wishes she could be more involved with the exciting life that he is living and meet the new companions that he has teamed up with.

The player may begin to feel. as I did, what Yonnah really needs is her brother’s companionship and that his tireless efforts to save her, which extend towards his becoming something like the hero of the land, may ultimately be more about his needs than about hers. It is not at all clear the plan to collect the sealed verses will work. The game is careful to indicate that the ancient song that gives rise to this plan is itself imprecise and not necessarily reliable. Still, the protagonist leaps to the conclusion that murdering shades in service of accumulating power is the right thing to do, precisely, I feel, because he cannot stand the feeling of being trapped and powerless, the same feeling that Yonnah inevitably has to live with. The protagonist has the power to resist this feeling, but in so doing he separates himself from his sister.

At the game’s conclusion, the protagonist successfully slays the Shadow Lord and brings Yonnah back home. The initial A end provides a sense of peace as well as a return to innocence, with the two symbolically reverting to their childhood forms. While this may seem to suggest that, in the end, the protagonist’s actions were justified and that now, with the dark threat eliminated, the two will live happily ever after, this ending is tinged with bitterness. This is because of the fate of the protagonists companions, who are either dead or left behind at the game’s conclusion as well as because of the the fate of the world, which the protagonist willfully ignores in his relentless desire to save his sister. We are left with a sense that by growing more powerful and expanding his horizons outwards, the protagonist had assumed responsibilities to people other than just his sister. In this light, the idyllic return home to a time of innocence reads like another selfish attempt to escape the burdens of caring for the sick and damaged, rather than a culminating reward for the protagonist’s selfless heroism. Saving his sister was ultimately possible because of the many sacrifices the protagonist made with an aim towards selfless devotion, but it is difficult if not impossible to separate these actions from their selfish aspects.

The relationship between the protagonist and his sister Yonnah in which the protagonist neglects her in order to try to save her and distance himself from her and the sense of imprisonment that she represents can be considered as the paradigmatic instance of a dynamic in which selfless and selfish actions are hopelessly intertwined, we can see this dynamic repeated in the relationship between the protagonist and his world. A consequence of the protagonists newfound powers are his ability to travel across his homeland and come to a greater understanding of the problems of others and their relations to his own. Part of the heroes journey is a gradual realization that the world is bigger than oneself and a subsequent willingness to accept responsibility for the problems of others. The protagonists journey in this regard is one of stunted growth. His continued focus on his sister’s problems ultimately lead him towards narrow solutions to the problems of others that benefit him and his smaller worldview. He never truly reaches an awareness of the most important problems of his world, not because he is unable to comprehend them, but because he is unwilling to.

Despite an abundance of evidence that the shades that he fights are intelligent and close to human, the protagonist never considers altering course away from his genocidal campaign of violence. He does not search for more nuanced solutions to the problems that other communities have with shades. As the game progresses, the player is able to see more and more clearly that the shades he’s fighting are not villainous, but rather misunderstood, but the protagonist never comes close to making these same revelations. In the most extreme case, that of the Aerie, the protagonist, although not entirely of his own volition, resorts to annihilating that village in order to defeat a powerful shade. This unconcern with the fate of other living beings speaks to the protagonist singlemindedness as it relates to the growth of his power, a single-mindedness that leads to his greater failures to comprehend his responsibility to the world around him.

This reaches a culmination in the game’s conclusion when the protagonist refuses to understand the information about Project Gestalt that Devola and Popola supply him with. It is not that he accepts what they tell him, that he is essentially committing genocide against the previous iteration of the human race, and decides that there is no turning back at this point. Instead, he simply stubbornly refuses to listen to and consider the meaning of any of it. In the end, it is Yonnah, and more specifically the Gestalt version of Yonnah, that grasps the full truth of the situation that their world has found itself in. It is in her sacrifice of her own life that we see what it means to come to terms with a responsibility to the world around her and to humanity in general. It is only in the depths of her confinement, rather than in the liberatory potential of the power possessed by both the protagonist and the Shadow Lord, that she finds the capacity to acknowledge the reality of the world around her and to truly make a heroic sacrifice.

At the game’s initial conclusion in ending A, despite its idyllic semblance, the ending is tragic because the protagonist’s failure is so pronounced. He has failed to understand anything, and this failure is perhaps most prominently symbolized in the moment where he holds out his hand to the Gestalt Yonnah who procedes to walk right by him. It is in this light that we can see that something in his potential journey towards heroism has failed. However, it is not only in this light. The protagonist can also be seen to fail in his journey in terms of his ability to help and understand his companions. Kainé and Emil are both characters who have their own tremendously impactful struggles and the protagonist’s ultimate ignorance towards them is another black mark that signals his failure to arrive at consciousness of his own situation.

(Mention the episode where Devola and Popola ban Kainé and Emil)

In a sense, NieR is about how a powerful and potentially heroic figure remains relatively powerless in the face of larger and more mysterious forces that they cannot understand, let alone control.

NieR is also a meditation on the difficulty of separating selfless and selfish actions and the ways that intending to change things for others inevitably ends up being about changing one’s own awareness and understanding of themselves. As previously stated, rather than changing the lives of the other characters or the world around them, the players attempts to be a hero only really have an effect on themselves. They aren't able to change the course of the world for worse or for better, but they are able to shape how the player knows and feels about the world. This leads to a different sense of what heroism means in the context of humanity and suggests that the selfish and selfless dichotomies that underly so many of our stories about power and how it ought or ought not to be used are reductive and fail to account for the ways that having power is itself a perspective on the world.

The premise that one can be good or bad, selfless or selfish, with the use of power, suggests that they can have a worldview that they bring with them into their acquisition of power that remains intact. It suggests that what will change when a person becomes powerful is everything around that person, rather than that person themselves. But this focus on selfishness and selflessness obscures the degree to which power is essentially a change in ones own worldview and that how one uses their power is ultimately something that has consequences for the self, not something that changes the world. Power is thus far less liberating than it is often imagined to be and primarily serves as challenge to the individuals sense of themselves, often in a way that brings them closer to their limitation as an ordinary human being, rather than something that allows them to transcend them.

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astoldbythetrees · 3 years

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So I Want to Be a Game Designer #1 - Once Upon a Tower

Introduction

Hello, reader.

Welcome to a new series, “So I Want to Be a Game Designer”! In this series, I will be analyzing a game to identify its mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics to determine if the game successfully facilitates Meaningful Play.

The game I will be analyzing in this post is Once Upon a Tower, a roguelike game designed for mobile on both Android and iOS. In this game, you are a princess who has been detained at the top of a tower. When a knight’s failed attempt to rescue the princess results in her gaining a weapon, she uses the weapon to facilitate her escape from the tower and the evil dragon who guards her.

While this game has a straightforward objective, there are many aspects that work together to make the game challenging and fun. In the following sections, I will be covering the game’s:

Core Loop

Mechanics

Dynamics

Aesthetics

Meaningful Play

Core Loop

The core loop consists of the main activities that players will use continually throughout the game. In Once Upon a Time, those core activities can be boiled down to two things:

Every action the player might take on their quest to escape the tower (i.e. descend) can be encompassed by the term “overcoming obstacles.” As the player makes their way through each level, they must destroy blocks in their way, avoid or defeat enemies, and perhaps collect fireflies and purchase power-ups. No matter how the player chooses to go about navigating the level, the fact that they must overcome obstacles remains.

Likewise, after overcoming the obstacles in their way (no matter how they choose to do it), the player must then descend the tower. This is the goal of the game, and an action that will be repeated throughout its entirety.

Mechanics

Mechanics are game rules that are designed to constrain and influence the player’s actions within the game so that it is played as intended. There are three main types of mechanics:

Space Mechanics - has to do with the environment

Object Mechanics - things within the environment that can be seen or interacted with

Action Mechanics - things the player can do

Core Mechanics

The core mechanics are those that are fundamental to the player’s experience; without these, the game would be completely different.

Gravity (Space Mechanic)

The character falls through open spaces in the map to progress through the level

Swinging the Weapon (Action Mechanic)

Serves several functions: breaking blocks, collecting fireflies (currency), and attacking enemies

The action of swinging the weapon is integral to the core gameplay because the player cannot progress without at least breaking blocks

Levels (Space Mechanic)

The only way the player can progress through the game and win it is by advancing through the levels. Without the level structure, the game would be fundamentally different

Non-Core Mechanics

The non-core mechanics, while important for furthering the core theme, are those that the game can exist without if they were to be replaced. For example, the enemies do not have to be dragons and ogres; they could be replaced with zombies and skeletons and the core of the game would remain the same.

Space Mechanics

Barred Windows - A space in the tower walls that the dragon will breathe fire through to attack the player. The player cannot interact with them, so they aren’t really an “object” in the game. The effect of the dragon attacking through them is activated when the player stands on the same horizontal plane as the metal bars.

Object Mechanics

Bricks - An obstacle the player must destroy to progress through the level

Rubble - Weak blocks that will crumble when the player stands on them, causing the player to fall through (usually to traps waiting below)

Spikes - An obstacle that kills the player when landed on (without certain power-ups)

Piston - An obstacle that periodically pistons a log vertically or horizontally to crush the player if they do not time their movements correctly

Power-ups - Purchased with fireflies between levels

Defensive buffs to prevent damage from attacks or obstacles (e.g. the armoured boots will prevent damage from landing on spikes or crabs (who have spikes on their backs))

Offensive buffs will augment the player’s weapon or give them an extra ability (e.g. the fire hammer will give the player ranged attacks, or bombs will destroy enemies and obstacles on a large scale)

Other buffs will aid in the players traversal of the obstacle course (e.g. the parachute slows down the character’s fall and allows movement when descending

Fireflies - in-game currency and points. During a level, the player can use collected fireflies to purchase power-ups. After exiting a level, the fireflies earned will be converted into stored points which can unlock new character avatars.

Diverse Enemies - Each enemy has unique behaviour, and require different strategies for countering them:

Ogre

Hyena

Spider

Crab

Baby Dragon

Action Mechanics

Movement - The player moves one block at a time by the player swiping in any direction on their screen (left, right, up, and down)

Swiping Left or Right: Moves the character one space in the indicated direction

Swiping Up: Causes the player to jump and swing their weapon at the space above their head

Swiping Down: Causes the player to break the block in the space beneath them (if there is one), which is how they can utilize gravity to descend the tower

Dynamics

These are the ways players can utilize the mechanics to play the game; i.e. the gameplay. Dynamics include strategies the players can develop based on different game mechanics.

Timing

The player needs to select the right moment to break blocks or move past obstacles to avoid getting caught

Utilizing Enemies

Some enemies will fight each other if close enough together. Players can attempt to turn them against each other by pushing them closer with hay bales or breaking blocks

Managing Currency

Do you buy a powerup now or save it for more expensive items in later levels?

Spatial Reasoning

The player must be aware of their surroundings so that they can properly react to obstacles (especially the dragon, which will breathe fire through barred windows)

Collection

Do you prioritize collecting fireflies in order to get power-ups? Or do you ignore them in favour of taking out enemies at a more advantageous time?

Aesthetics

Once Upon a Tower is primarily trying to engage the player’s competitive spirit and sense of discovery. Many of the game's mechanics and dynamics are ideal for players who enjoy a challenge and like playing to beat their best score.

Challenge

The player is issued a high score at the end of each play session, so they are encouraged to play again to beat their own score

Obstacles are tricky, so when the player is bested by a level, they are left with the competitive urge to try again until they can overcome it

Escape progress (beating all the levels) is tracked per princess. This encourages players to continue playing the game with each princess to feel the satisfaction of “100% completion”, which can be considered as completely beating the game

(No noticeable narrative to interfere with a competitive player’s desire to get right into the gameplay)

Fantasy

The game is set in a fantastical environment with mythical medieval enemies (such as dragons and ogres)

The cartoon style of the graphics keep the game feeling whimsical and fun, so that the player will not be distracted from the core gameplay

Discovery

The player is constantly learning new things during each playthrough and each level. Every time the player restarts at the top of the tower, the layout is regenerated for a fresh experience. Furthermore, as the player goes from one level to the next, they will encounter new enemies and obstacles to overcome.

Once Upon a Tower has a colourful, cartoon-like art style typical of indie games. The art style fits well with the medieval fantasy setting, so that the player can be immersed in the simple narrative of a princess trying to escape a tower.

The style of the art and animations upon defeat are very lighthearted. This keeps with the primary theme of keeping the player engaged in the challenge aspect of the gameplay, rather than a tragic narrative. The game is meant to be something that can be picked up and played immediately, not something that requires the player’s focus on uncovering a complex story. The upbeat background music and sound effects only add to the player’s feeling of lighthearted fun.

Meaningful Play?

“Meaningful play occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game. Creating meaningful play is the goal of successful game design.” —Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Chapter 3: Meaningful Play. In Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (pp. 4–4). essay, The MIT Press.

The game mechanics and dynamics in Once Upon a Tower are able to achieve meaningful play in several regards. For example, the blocks the player chooses to break (i.e. the route they choose) to navigate the level can determine whether they can collect fireflies or safely overcome obstacles. Collecting enough fireflies will allow the player to purchase power-ups between levels. Certain power-ups will make the later levels much easier to complete, such as armoured boots or a shield, which is why the player’s decision to collect fireflies in the early levels and save them for purchasing more powerful buffs will have an integrated effect on their gameplay.

The medieval fantasy setting of the game was a good choice considering that gravity was a core mechanic. Any tall building world works well with the concept of the game. However, the aesthetic genres are able to work in conjunction to create a game environment that makes sense. The fantasy setting facilitates the use of the castle tower as well as the designers’ creativity when choosing monsters and obstacles. These obstacles are what turn the game into something challenging, and the diversity among them is what allows the player to explore uncharted territory.

The combination of all the aforementioned mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics certainly do give rise to meaningful play.

Conclusion

Once Upon a Tower is a game that is able to facilitate Meaningful Play by a combination of its mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics, and overall design decisions. For those who have a competitive nature, this game will likely prove to be an addicting pastime due to the challenge it poses. Many of the game's mechanics, such as the obstacles, diverse enemy types, and the level-based structure of the game will keep the player engaged. The use of upbeat music and colourful visuals give the game a sense of lightheartedness that will immerse the player in the role of a plucky princess trying to escape a tower against all odds.

Credits: All screenshots are of in-game elements from Once Upon a Tower. I claim no ownership over the image contents or the game itself.

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jinruihokankeikaku · 4 years

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Rogue of Life?

Sure thing!! Recently posted a Knight of Doom analysis – now here’s that role’s Inverse, the…

Title: Rogue of Life

Title Breakdown: One who passively steals [redistributes, appropriates, reassigns, balances] Life [growth, biological life, youth, consumption, and rebellion]

Role in the Session: The Rogue of Life’s role within a session is to correct imbalances of vital energy/life-force, taking it from places or people with an excess and bringing it where it’s needed most. This class also highlights a section of Life’s domain that I think is usually less relevant to the in-game role of Life’s heroes, but which meshes rather nicely with the Rogue’s role as the “Robin Hood Class” – that being Life’s association with wealth, power, and privilege. The Rogue of Life may way be the Role best suited to literally representing Robin Hood. Perhaps their Planet’s quest involves some kind of mass revolutionary movement, or they’re destined to play a role in deposing a tyrant. Alternatively, their Planet might feature an ecosystem that’s overrun with an invasive or parasitic species which has put the native Denizens at risk; here, the Rogue would be tasked with balancing the energy web and ensuring that their Planet becomes habitable once again. Whatever the case, the Rogue of Life certainly has an air of rebellion around them, maybe more so than yr average Hero of Life.

The Rogue’s challenge is rising to the… well… uhm… challenge! Of fulfilling this role, of restoring balance to an unbalanced system. They’re likely to start out with a rather avoidant mentality, perhaps vaguely intrigued by their Aspect conceptually but unwilling to take action towards it, or to move any part of it. It is, of course, their duty to move just about every part of it, and in the case of an Expansive aspect such as Life there are a great many moving parts to account for. The Rogue of Life may at first be overwhelmed by the complexity of the economic-social-biological-metaphysical interactions that occur within their Aspect’s domain, but, if all goes well, will with time become fascinated with and enamored of them. When confronted with their Quest, they’ll likely already have an intuitive sense that something is out of balance; it is from this point that they will be drawn into the process of righting that imbalance and realizing themselves as the Rogue of Life.

As a Passive class, the Rogue is unlikely to be assertive, at least at first, in conflicts with party members, and they will initially respond to conflict in a standoffish manner rather than addressing it head-on. It will be important for them to work past their misgivings regarding themselves and their relationship with their Aspect in order for them to function not only within their own Role, but as a member of their team. A Rogue might look up to the assertive and creative demeanor of a Witch of Space, who would likely share the Rogue’s interest in the complexities of Life; they might also find a sort of affinity with an Heir of Rage, who would be, like the Rogue, less-than-assertive to begin with, but who would also share the Rogue’s deep-seated affinity for rebellion.

Opposite Role: The Knight of Doom. I actually covered this role earlier this evening, so I’ll try to reiterate some of the commentary I gave on this relationship from the Rogue’s perspective. Basically, the Knight, as a Person of Duty and Honor, would be just about the last person to jump on board the Rogue’s revolutionary program, and the Rogue just wouldn’t get this. They might admire the Knight’s stoicism and assertiveness, but they certainly wouldn’t share it, and their admiration for the Knight would likely wane as their affinity with Life (ergo distancing from Doom) waxes. The Rogue would probably ultimately come to view the Knight as dogmatic and stuck in their ways, which might provoke the Rogue (and a contingent of their comrades) to set out on their own while the Knight and their collaborators pursued another agenda, and in both revolution and Sburb, splitting the party is Generally Inadvisable.

God Tier Powers

Life is a Relational-Expansive aspect (more on that in an upcoming Aspect theory post!!), which means that powers associated with it tend towards a wide scope and a cyclical pattern of interaction with the environment. In particular, it encompasses biological cycles of growth and consumption, and the way in which these cycles are reflected in socio-psychic systems that emerge from biology. For example…

Energic Reassignment: The Rogue re-balances vital energy between nearby entities, causing hostile living beings to become enervated while revitalizing the Rogue’s companions. This isn’t a lethal weapon; rather, it’s a sort of aura that surrounds the Rogue, and whether the Rogue intends it or not, gradually maintains an equilibrium of sorts between the Rogue’s life force and the life force of their environment. The aura effectively ensures that the Rogue will never physically tire, although it’s unlikely to do much to allay the psychological stress of constant labor or combat – the Rogue’s psyche will need rest even if their physical form does not.

Level Field: The Rogue is prepared to use underhanded tactics to set up for a fair fight, and once they’ve ascended, they could gain the ability to gently guide their surroundings to physically manifest these techniques. Powerful enemies of the Rogue would find themselves gradually stripped of their initial advantage by intermittent (but steady) waves of assault from the land itself – terrain will become more difficult to navigate, flora denser and thornier, and fauna markedly more aggressive. These effects would be localized, and would fade with time, so long as eventually the Rogue’s nemesis is brought to a level plane with the Rogue and their team.

Won’t Stay Down: The Rogue’s role of rebalancing an Aspect, and Life’s domain of rebellion and the struggle against death, could cause Life to flow from wherever the Rogue chooses (within their sphere of comprehension and influence) and surround the Rogue and their allies, establishing a sort of symbiotic relationship between teammates. When one falls or falters, their energy flowing forth into the environment, the Rogue’s stored energy will flow force as Life sees fit, restoring to consciousness and health the Rogue or one of their allies. This has its limitations – with every cycle, the system will lose some energy, and eventually whichever fount the Rogue is drawing upon will run dry, and this ability is no more capable of restoring a player from a permanent (Heroic or Just) death than is any other.

Personality: The Rogue of Life will initially be avoidant of Life – that is to say, unwilling to take positions of power for themselves, unwilling to disrupt the powers that uphold the status quo, and unwilling to personally interact to any great extent with expansive or chaotic systems (like plant growth or economics). This avoidance is not due to apathy or lack of concern for its subjects; rather, it’s due to a fundamental fear of incompetence (and more to the point, a fear that they will through their incompetence cause some sort of crisis of imbalance within their Aspect’s domain). The key step forward for the Rogue of Life will be to translate their theory to practice, and to actually make the confrontation with the predators (literal and economic) that they have so long forestalled.

Songs: A couple of ideas…

Comandante by the Mountain Goats

Fallen Leaves by Billy Talent

Thanks for the ask, and I hope you found this analysis useful and/or thought-provoking!! More information on the categories of Relational and Expansive Aspects, and how I’ll be using those and similar categories in future analyses, is coming soon.

~ P L U R ~

#Homestuck #classpect analysis #classpect #rogue of life #rogue #life #ask #lordofthetermites

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gh0st-patr0l · 5 years

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Selfishness v. Selflessness: An Analysis of Deceit

So.

Since the latest episode came out, I’ve been thinking about a LOT, but especially about Deceit. He’s an amazingly complex character, and it’s a lot to wrap your head around. However, I felt that the thing I wanted to talk about most was his overall intention with this whole scenario- note, when I say that, I’m not talking about the call-back v. wedding debacle. Because, when you really look at it, Deceit’s true intent had little to do with those events themselves. It was just a convenient scenario that could be used to illustrate a point. And I’ve already gone on a rant about that part- how in the end it wasn’t even an issue of right or wrong, but staying true to your moral compass- so I won’t get into it here. What I really want to do is take a closer look at Deceit’s closing arguments, in context of the rest of the episode and his previous statements.

I’ll be honest, the first time I watched the episode I was so invested in the drama that I actually didn’t even PROCESS what he meant with this scene, but now that I’m looking back it’s absolutely critical to understanding Deceit’s true intentions. Written out, it’s actually a pretty short exchange, but there’s a lot to pick apart here. Let’s start from where the actual argument begins.

Thomas: I don’t understand... you got what you wanted. You proved that I’m not as honest as I’d like to believe. Deceit: But you’re still missing the point! Didn’t it seem kind of ridiculous to take this matter SO seriously, to the point of settling it in a legal setting?! Everyone else: [mumbled disagreements] Roman: We do that kind of stuff all the time...

Alright, so this is where Deceit has obviously become frustrated that the others haven’t picked up on his intentions with this whole scheme. (Tbf Thomas’s Single braincell had been omitted from most of the situation so it’s really not totally their fault,)

Here, we see a BLATANT distinction between him and the rest of the sides. The sides all consider these elaborate scenes and lengthy discussions and journeys over their dilemmas to be a completely sensible way of dealing with their problems. It’s just how they do things, it’s how they work best.

But Deceit, despite being a part of Thomas, doesn’t get it.

Unlike the other sides, he doesn’t give equal weight to all issues Thomas has. He sees the choice between a social obligation and a career opportunity as obvious and pointless to agonize over.

It’s important to think about this in combination with what he says in the courtroom- his ultimate goal is to fulfill Thomas’s wants and look out for him. At first, that simply sounds like the same benevolent thought process that all the other sides have, and to a point it is. But when you think about that along with the fact that he considers his friends and family as inconsequential- not just a little lower on his list of priorities, but not even worth considering- it becomes clear that Deceit’s protection and concern of Thomas takes on a whole nother form in light of his outlook and actions. But we’ll come back to that in a bit, let’s get back to the argument.

Deceit: WHOO, okay, let me put it this way- life... is like a pinata. Patton: Colorful, and full of stuff that makes you happy??? Deceit: ...SURE. And you WANT that stuff that makes you happy, right?! Patton: Do I?! Roman: Do I... Deceit: Then in order to get that stuff, you must ATTACK the pinata!

THIS is where Deceit’s language comes into play. Thomas and the rest of the Sanders Sides team are fantastic at writing, especially dialogue, and I think the specificities of the metaphor Deceit’s chosen to use here are critical.

When Deceit describes the human experience and life in society, he describes it as an object that must be looked at through a gauge of offense. He doesn’t use language like take, obtain, earn- he says attack. He views life as a struggle, as something violent that must be beaten and won. And this is reflected in the court scenes. Specifically, when he’s talking about his motivation for wanting Thomas to lie, he uses the word disadvantage. Again, referring to life as a competition, or a game. (This actually made me wonder why Thomas didn’t choose to bring up Conflict Theory at any point, but now that I think about it more I suppose an anarchistic viewpoint would fit Deceit better than one rooted in socialism.)

And Deceit wants the others, and most importantly, Thomas, to look at life that way as well. He sees life as a competition against others, and because of that, sees no value in putting other’s wants and needs above his own. In my mind, this is where his rhetoric crosses the line from sensible into overly cynical. He was right in the point that sometimes selfishness can be good- but that’s not what he’s saying anymore, and I think it may have never even been in the first place, and that he was simply being less radical in the case to appear more favorable. Deceit doesn’t just think that selfishness isn’t inherently evil, he thinks that selflessness is damaging.

And, from a character standpoint, that makes sense. Because inherently, Deceit is a selfish concept. It’s lying at someone else’s expense to achieve your own goal. And, as Deceit pointed out, that isn’t always bad! Your goal can obviously be benevolent. But as a character, he is quite literally a personification of deceit, with the goal of getting Thomas what he wants and/or needs. In a concept like that, there’s little to no room for morals or empathy.

Which brings us to our last bit of relevant dialogue from that scene;

Deceit: But you’re wearing a blindfold right now. You can keep playing with the blindfold on, if you like the game better that way. But if you take it off, it’s easier to get that stuff that you want!

Admittedly, this bit is a little harder to understand, but I think it’s clear that by blindfold, Deceit is symbolizing what he sees as disadvantage or hindrance; morals and empathy.

Throughout the entire episode, and his other appearances, Deceit has never responded with concern towards the feelings or circumstances of anyone other than Thomas himself- it may look like that on the surface from his first appearance and his acknowledgment of Thomas wanting to be a good friend, but in reality, he only reacts to those things when they’re directly related to what Thomas wants. In the lying episode, he doesn’t actually want to spare Joan’s feelings; Thomas feels bad, Thomas wants Joan to think he’s a good person, and Deceit sees a way to fulfill Thomas’s want in that scenario. In that sense, he’s actually very similar to Logan- function over feeling. He doesn’t care what he’s doing or why, as long as Thomas gets what he wants.

And this is when Deceit’s argument finally becomes clear and concrete. Deceit wanted this trial to prove that being selfish is better. This is when his intentions are no longer agreeable, at least to me, because what he’s trying to say is his core philosophy is that Thomas should ignore his morals towards the people around him, because it will be easier to then achieve his own goals. The argument goes from what was seemingly encouragement towards self-care, to a complete disregard of others. He sees caring for the people in his life to be an optional difficulty and a burden that only makes it harder for Thomas to get what he wants. He places no value in Thomas’s relationships, and only serves, or attempts to serve, in their benefit when it is Thomas’s immediate goal to do so.

And that is interesting- Deceit has no control over what Thomas wants, but an obligation to help him achieve them, and apparently, opinions on what his priorities within those wants should be. And this is when we need to remember that the sides are not full personalities, but facets of Thomas himself.

Of course, the main four are such broad concepts that it’s easier to fit more of a “person” into each one. Morality is a vast understanding of right and wrong, but has a lot of room to move around in as far as demeanor and actions, and is combined with an interesting representation. The same with logic, and the same with passion- their representations combined with the flexibility of their definitions and interpretations offer a lot of room for filling out characters. Anxiety is a little different since at its core, anxiety and fear are really only an instinctual reflex. However, by extending that out into vaguer definitions and related traits like insecurity and morbidity, and once again tying it all up with a wonderfully engaging persona, Thomas still makes him feel like a character.

But the sides are not real people. They are built to represent a certain trait, and because of that, their behavior and motivations are more extreme and less well-rounded than normal people’s would be. They are written to be, for the most part, single-faceted characters. Their personality is only a specific section of someone else’s, and because of that they don’t act or think with the complexity of a real human person. And that is SO important to understanding Deceit.

To a point, Thomas managed to fully characterize Deceit as well- however, he’s a bit different. Because unlike the others, Deceit is a much more limited concept. He is a personification of lying and dishonesty. He doesn’t represent any emotions, any other traits, he’s just Deceit. Because of that, he can only be so emotionally complex (which is why I’m very impressed that Thomas and the team managed to give him so much life and feeling!). And that is partially why... I don’t really see him as sympathetic as many do, personally.

(This is where I’m gonna move away from Just Facts to more opinion based reasoning, so just skip to the end if you’re not interested in that.)

I’m not sure if I’m maybe missing something, but from what I saw, I don’t actually think Deceit was ever sad or hurt in that exchange- only frustrated because he couldn’t understand why the others didn’t see things the way he did. In the end, I don’t feel like him blowing up was from a place of emotional hurt. On the contrary, I think the source of conflict for him was in his reasoning. It was the fact that his logic couldn’t make sense of the choices around him, because he’s physically incapable of understanding the situation from a place of empathy like the others do. What he saw was Thomas making a decision that goes against what he directly wants, and Deceit literally just can’t understand that. He can’t understand the concept of Thomas choosing to uphold his morals over his personal desires, because he just doesn’t have the personal capacity to do so. So he loses his temper, gets bitter, and leaves.

I hope that this doesn’t give you the impression that I dislike Deceit as a character. I actually LOVE Deceit, from the standpoint of a writer and a fan. He’s a wonderful addition to the cast and adds a lot to the series.

However, I don’t fully sympathize with him, and I don’t feel comfortable idolizing him as he is in the show, because I honestly don’t see him as benevolent. I appreciate his motives, but I disagree too strongly with his outlook and logic to relate to or support him. I think that’s what I was trying to communicate with this analysis- it felt to me like a lot of people completely overlooked the intention of Deceit’s actions in this episode, which in my opinion does a HUGE disservice to the complexity of his character. He’s not a helpless, misunderstood victim. He’s a character who pairs good intentions with manipulation, carelessness, and immoral methods, which is a lovely thing to appreciate as an element of a show. But when you ignore those parts of his character to either idolize OR demonize him, it does a huge disservice to both him and the writers. I think I’d just like to see more people appreciate the intricacies of his character, especially in terms of his moral implications.

But, I think I’ve rambled enough as it is, so Imma end it here. This was a LOT of fun to write, and I might do more if yall like it, cause I have a LOT of thoughts about this series in general. Let me know if you’d want to see that! Bye for now!!!!

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #deceit sanders #ts deceit #logan sanders #ts logan #patton sanders #ts patton #virgil sanders #ts virgil #ts

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laughingpinecone · 5 years

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Yuletide letter!

I am laughingpineapple on AO3

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (doubly so if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic, hurt/comfort or just comfort from the ample canon hurt, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, outsider POV, UST, exploration of secondary bits of canon, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played straight, sensory details, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night

Any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, canon divergences, non-mundane AUs (space opera! high fantasy! new weird also), deep lore, unrequested characters popping up - please do go wild with the & combos!

Blanket crossover prompt with Untitled Goose Game: set that goose loose anywhere and ruin anyone’s day. Tariq and select Twin Peaks characters who are not Albert (Margaret, Laura...) may hope to tame and befriend the goose; anyone else better get wrecked. Capitalism may also get wrecked while Kentucky Route Zero characters popcorn.gif nearby

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, canon retellings, unrequested ships (I listed all the ships I like for each fandom. Outside of those, I’d prefer if other canon characters weren’t shipped, unless they’re like, canon engaged/married)

Dark Souls 1: Solaire of Astora

I’m only familiar with the first game! It’s probably relevant to mention that I think that linking the fire is kind of a dumbass move, Gwyn is a jerk, Kaathe has his own agenda and there’s no winning move in this world, or at least no obvious one. And amidst all this nonsense, Solaire just shines, pure of heart and dumb of ass like the best of ‘em. I love his kindness in this cruelest of worlds and I love the sad edge he’s got even earlier on when he admits to being seen as weird.

I would enjoy a bittersweet ending for him but I realize both of his endings are deeply entrenched in his themes so it’s hard to make him steer clear of either of those. If you can figure out how to make him not link the Flame or survive the ordeal, I’m all ears! I like a sense of purpose being the thing that can stave off hollowing, and I like characters helping other characters finding that sense of purpose within themselves. Focus on scenery always welcome, and if you want to make up a location, that’s great too!

I’d be super happy with a story set during Solaire’s time in Lordran that simply doesn’t mention his endings, anyway. Maybe he’s the one who helps someone else while his own tragedy keeps looming on the horizon. Striking up friendships in the face of a crapsack world! Meeting people through Lordran’s temporal/dimensional fuckery, where it’s possible to cross the path of warriors who have been gone for ages… could Solaire meet either or both Catarina knights (there’s so much great art about sun bro and onion bro but where’s the fic?), or do the grumpy grump&ray of sunshine routine with Logan, or meet Artorias or even Gwyn before he linked the Flame - or himself? What if he met Kaathe?

Ships: none really? Solaire/Chosen Undead but I don’t really like to read about customizable protagonists in fic so I’d rather not get fic featuring the CU. I’m all about the & character combos here.

Ghost Trick: Cabanela, Jowd

I love Cabanela being fierce and dazzling bright and determined and loyal to the very end, dancing to his own rhythm, so sure of himself and of his ideas that he doesn’t even need to prove to anyone that he’s right. Too sure of the wrong idea, once, and everything crashed and burned. And I love Jowd being the immovable object to Cabanela’s unstoppable force, a suicidal trainwreck of guilt with the gallows humor to show for it, and also incredibly smart (both jerks figured out Sissel’s powers better than Sissel did, that’s... something) and athletic and with an unsuspected talent for stealth.

I am very interested in various characters finding about the erased timeline, but not getting their memories back, and having to live with being told about what they did but never remembering it. Touch-starved Jowd in the new timeline is a surefire hit (or maybe Cabanela if he’s the one who came back and kept the memories of the old timeline). Touchy-feely Cabanela as kind of his baseline with the people he likes. All what-ifs welcome:what if they managed an acceptable happy ending but didn’t reset the timeline, what if Alma’s ghost stuck around… I’m also wondering about either of them ending up undead via Temsik shard - how would they take these developments (I’m assuming better than Yomiel did but the bar is admittedly low), did Cabanela do it on purpose for whatever sensible-if-you-are-Cabanela reason, what does it change in their relationship, what are the practical pros and cons of the situation here. UFO adventures with Pigeon Man! Lynne teaming up with either of them against the other! Sissel death-averting action if either/both of them die or just regular cat action! Spy stuff! Daring rescues! My forever prompt of Jowd being the one who gets a chance to prove his loyalty to Cabanela for once. Dancing.

Please no Yomiel. Nothing against the guy I’m just getting an overdose of him through RPing.

Ships: Alma/Cabanela/Jowd and all sides thereof, but when it splits the canon couple I only like it when the missing spouse is dead or otherwise unavailable, hopefully with a reset on the horizon. If you want to go for a Cabanela&Alma or Cabanela/Alma who are strongly motivated by a dead or jailed Jowd, I’m good with him not actively appearing in the fic. Alma/Jowd & Cabanela is excellent in all scenarios. I’m good with explicitly non-romantic takes on Jowd&Cabs but please keep their bond strong, and please no conflicting ship for Cabanela. Lynne/Memry!

Kentucky Route Zero: Any (Lula Chamberlain, Joseph Wheattree, Donald kentuckyroutezero, Weaver Màrquez)

(if enough of us request it, will some Murphy corollary guarantee that Act V will come out between now and reveals just to mess with the Yuletide schedule? If it does, I’ll be playing it immediately and probably add a few thoughts and prompts here for kicks, at the end of this section, after a spoiler warning. Obviously feel free to stick to canon up to Un Pueblo De Nada)

I’m all for exploration of any of the game’s themes and for including any staples from adjacent genres - wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I can’t think of any specific AUs for the disaster trio + disaster soloist here, but I generally love AUs so if you want to sidestep the inconvenience of an incomplete canon that way, be my guest! Or of course there’s Xanadu at the height of its glory, an infinite what-ifs generator. Was Weaver ever part of it, what was this digital Weaver up to? A Xanadu narrative would be great! A good fit for IF, too? I’d love to hear about any new spot along the Zero or the Echo river, or an expansion of some place that’s only mentioned by Will in HATATE or only gets a few paragraphs of text. Lula getting ideas for a new installation, or an article talking about her work? Donald listening to Static between stations somehow (Donald being constantly high as a kite as per this)? Joseph who went back to the surface finds himself near an entrance to the Zero somewhere? A collection of Weaver-isms? Feel free to bring in anyone else from any part of canon.

Ships: “Flipping through the pages, Conway is able to gather that it's a story about three characters: Joseph, Donald, and Lula. It's something like a tragic love triangle, but much more complex. Some kind of tangled, painfully concave love polygon.” 😬 that one, as a full triad, regrettably since they don’t seem too inclined to get reunited and stay that way. If you can nudge them, good. But I’m very open to non-romantic resolutions as well, going past their messy feelings to find each other as friends after so many years maybe. For Weaver, I’m interested in all her & relationships (seriously. Weaver & Cate. Weaver & EmilyBen&Bob. Weaver & Slow Moe Crow.) but nothing shippy. Conway/Lysette, Junebug/Johnny(/Shannon?).

The Last Remnant: David Nassau, Pagus

I’m very interested in post-game exploration, and getting a clearer feeling of any of the cities and assorted places that populate this fascinating world. I like the whole party with their characterization based on battle quotes, red bubble dialogues, and even their unique stat (‘authority’ is a natural fit for David but ‘romance’ tells me something new about Sibal!) Character interaction. Bit of worldbuilding. What’s another festival they celebrate? Do they erect something else instead of the Valeria Heart? Any fun discoveries down in Siebenbur? Where the hell IS Veyriel, anyway, do they go look for it and if so what do they find out? End of an age. Old bonds.

I ache for David who fought so valiantly as a warrior and as a politician only to be slapped in the face with the unexpected loss Emma first and then Rush, right as they were ready to claim their victory and as he would have to start coming to terms with the idea that maybe without the Gae Bolg he wouldn’t die young. At least his Generals are still with him - out of them, all of whom I adore, I picked Pagus because Qsiti are cool. And Pagus in particular is the coolest (”I know that fine qsiti... That large, reticent mouth, the laugh lines around the eyes...“ he’s FINE it’s CANON!). So I’d like to see how David bounces off Pagus in particular, what their bond is like, what he thinks of whatever aspect of Qsiti culture.

Ships: postcanon David/Rush, possibly with an emphasis on Rush’s nature as a remnant? I am also fond of Pagus/Sibal/Maddox, there are more prompts for them in my #letters tag!

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood, Tariq The Lone Minstrel

Oh the burning found family feelings, the revolutionary passion, the tension between topside social constraints (moreso for liberated exiles, thrust into heroic roles after the revolution) and the kind of freedom allowed by the Downside! I love all the themes, the solemnity, the heart of this game. I’ve been waiting for a character like Tariq all my life, a minstrel who’s otherworldly soft and just a lil bit eldritch. Volfred as well, he just hits my perfect ratio of “noble intentions” to “scheming to a fault”. Like, the percentages in his planner are pointless for gameplay since the ending just depends on the number of Nightwings sent topside at the end - so it’s just there for his characterization, he’s the sort of person who assigns percentages to people, nbd. ...for a good cause! That said, I would die for anyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to write in someone else as well, please do! (otoh if you maybe want to dunk on Brighton or Manley, I don’t like bashing but canon levels of love-to-hate-them would be fun)

Thoughts about finding oneself at the end of an age, as everything crumbles down to form something new. The titan stars. History nerd Volfred, “aye sir, I was there” Tariq. Conversations with Dalbert. Or with Sandra? Any postcanon very welcome with any combination of endings as long as the revolution was peaceful. Please do lean into the xeno headcanons if you enjoy them! Even for gen, I like to read what it’s like to be something other than human and these two are very much not human in different and intriguing ways. Or, Volfred’s zodiac sign is Cancer and Cancer is ruled by the Moon, so there’s that. I also love how they both hold the other in the highest esteem, especially on Tariq’s part since he’s the immortal Herald of the Scribes and Volfred is, all in all, a history teacher, but listen to him and you’d think the roles were inverted. I love my nonviolent canon but could anything happen to either of them that may require a rescue, and/or some good old-fashioned h/c? What’s something that could make Tariq of all people lose it? How’s life 100 years on?

For a funnier mood, picture Volfred trying to figure out how to flirt with Tariq with percentages, planners and all. He could just ask him but no, it’s convoluted plan or bust. Or, conversely, Tariq’s increasingly direct hints that he’s interested, but they’re still ‘increasingly direct’ for Tariq standards, so, not at all, undetectable even by Volfred who can get pretty damningly indirect himself.

Ships: Volfred/Tariq, Volfred/Oralech, some form of Oralech/Volfred/Tariq (more of a Volfred-centric V but I would like to be convinced of the Oralech/Tariq side of things), Celeste/Jodariel, Hedwyn/Fikani and Pamitha/Bertrude.

Twin Peaks: Albert Rosenfield

Case fic but they don’t find out jack shit, someone disappears, David Bowie was there, it’s complicated. Fragmented, shifted, mirrored identities. New Lodge spaces. The risks of staring into the void for too long. Gentle illusions. Transcendence. The moon. Static buzzing. Any title from the s3 ethereal whooshing compilation used as a prompt, actually. Twin Peaks is all about the mystery to me, the awe of mystery and unknowability and the human drive to look beyond and the risks of getting a peek, and about shared consciousness and trauma taking physical form and about the warmth of human connections in an uncaring world. Go wild with the ethereal whooshing!

I love Albert and he breaks my heart, a pacifist who ends his arc shooting his oldest remaining friend after life sucked all the passion and most of the idealism out of him. Is shooting Diane just to see Cooper come back, get her back and disappear with her again trauma enough to make him split? I’d be interested in reading about it, or any other take on his unwavering loyalty to Gordon which should maybe waver after Gordon’s admission that he’s lied to him for 25 years and the aforementioned unmitigated disaster of an ending. But I’m also very interested in his life apart from the disaster that is Blue Rose and his heartbreaking search for Cooper: did he keep in touch with Harry throughout the years, what did they talk about? Was he ever dragged along for a hike in the woods and did something weird happen there? We know he kept in touch with Diane, what did THEY talk about? Does he go on a journey of his own to find her after the ending? Does Tammy come along, do they see each other as friends other than mentor and protégé? What was Phil like as a co-boss back in the day? Did he get a small victory over Windom at some point (maybe even in the present day, given Kenneth Welsh’s recent wonderful interview where he’s adamant that Windom lives)? Does Laura ever visit him in some ghostly manner? He and Denise look like a great duo for a case and/or office shenanigans. We know from TFD that he’s a big jazz enthusiast, something about that? When does he cave in and just accept some aspects of Coop’s investigative method? Just set him loose on another unsuspecting character and I’ll be happy.

If Coop comes back (and I’d love for Coop to come back), I would like it if he came back on his own thanks to having sorted out his crap. After s3, I am not interested in stories about any other character saving Cooper. Albert’s got his wounds to lick dangit. And he’s got friends who can be by his side! ...I do love his dynamic with Coop so much, though. Sigh. I do miss that bastard. Anyway.

Ships: Albert/Coop/Harry and sides thereof, Tammy/Cynthia, Gordon/Phil, Diane/Constance, Lucy/Andy, Chet/Sam.

Canon-specific DNWs: any singular Dreamer being the ‘source’ of canon, BOB (let alone Judy) being forever defeated in the finale, Judy being an active malevolent presence in the characters’ lives, clear explanations for canonical ambiguities, ‘Odessaverse’ being the reality layer, the Fireman’s House by the Sea being the White Lodge, anything that 4 hours video says is the explanation of Twin Peaks

#letter #yuletide 2019

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funkymbtifiction · 5 years

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Glow Quicktypes

UNOFFICIAL TPYING BY: wackydeli097

Ruth Wilder: ISFJ

Ruth’s dominant function is introverted sensing; her first reaction to a new situation is to try to relate it back to her knowledge base in the tropes and traditions of theater. In the first season, she struggles to create a character for herself, until Zoya comes to her in a flash at the patio store (inferior Ne). She then begins to really build that character through Si: she needs direct, tangible experience to flesh out Zoya (which she gets when she crashes the Russian Jewish family’s party to practice her accent). She is concerned with getting the details of her performance just right, and she constantly tries to fit G.L.O.W. into a larger narrative of theatrical themes that she has studied so intensely for several years. She isn’t a natural risk taker, but her partnership with Sam Sylvia (an ENTP) inspires her to tap into her lower functions and try out new ideas and experiences.

Ruth is a people-pleaser and often compares herself to others; she tells Sam, “I get very anxious when I feel like I’m behind in a group setting.” She views G.L.O.W. as a team and invests a lot into building camaraderie with her costars, especially after her friendship with Debbie implodes. In the first season, she has a very hard time asserting herself because of her guilt over that betrayal.

Debbie Eagan: ESTJ

Debbie is dramatic, and she’s often manipulative, but that doesn’t make her a feeling type; in emotional situations, she’s often at a loss of how to react appropriately, and she doesn’t have a clear understanding or handle on her own emotions. She has a victim complex in relationship to Ruth (unhealthy inferior Fi), even though the two of them have wounded each other a lot over the years. She’s manipulative because she’s spent a lot of time painstakingly studying emotions (Si) and working that into her logical framework; she knows the game and how to play it (Te), which is why she’s been very successful in her career. She can easily switch off her emotions to focus on the task at hand.

She’s an unhealthy Te user, though, which leads her to be excessively harsh, most notably when Ruth finally stands up for herself and fends off a sleazy TV executive in season two. Debbie is not sympathetic to Ruth’s feelings at all. She flat out says that those are the rules of being a woman in show business. She chastises Ruth for being selfish. In Debbie’s mind, Ruth acted illogically, and what’s worse, she presumed that the rules didn’t apply to her, that she was above having to deal with these situations.

Debbie absolutely expects other people to put their own feelings aside to get the job done because that’s what she’s done for so long. Her unhealthy introverted sensing has led her to make a lot of sacrifices without really considering alternatives; up until G.L.O.W., Debbie has pretty much played by the rules and maintained the status quo, even though, as Ruth observes, she’s been miserable within it for a long time. She gave up her acting career to care for her son, but also to coddle Mark’s ego over having a wife who’s more ambitious and successful than he is. As much as Debbie lays the guilt trip on others (er, Ruth), she’s also extremely susceptible to guilt herself (unhealthy Si), which is why she would have stayed in her marriage forever.

Debbie tends to take everything a bit too far; her tertiary Ne comes out in those moments of being especially over-the-top. In healthier outlets, she brainstorms story lines and expands on the soap opera tropes that she knows well (Si-Ne). But Ne also rears its head in times of emotional duress. When Mark has his secretary call to ask her the brand of their bed, Debbie loses it; she impulsively decides to sell the bed, then everything in the house, eventually marking it all down to $5 because she can’t deal with consistent or reasonable pricing; she just knows that she wants it all gone because the memories are too painful (Si), so she says “screw it, this doesn’t make sense, nothing is going according to my plans anymore, so burn it all down” (Te-Ne). She’s constantly fending off the threat of her own emotions, too afraid to go into a vulnerable place because when she does, she slips into self-loathing and has a hard time yanking herself out of her emotional spiral. It’s a lot easier for her to repress her feelings – until they get too big and messy to handle.

Sam Sylvia: ENTP

Sam’s primary cognitive function is extraverted intuition; he deals in possibilities. We see this in action as he’s determining the cast in season one. He talks through all of his reactions to them out loud, with little regard to their feelings (low Fe) and he launches into ideas of possible characters; he takes an idea and runs with it, expanding it, complicating it (Ti working with Ne), mapping out a larger story arc that goes way beyond wrestling matches. That outrageous sci-fi plot indicates that he’s decided to take this potentially hokey wrestling show and transform it into something that fits into his autership, his internal framework that guides his film-making (Ti). He isn’t the best at follow-through, however (which is why he relies so much on Cherry and Ruth). This scattered tendency intensifies in season two, when he’s in an Ne-Fe loop over the threat of losing creative control. He becomes manipulative and petty as he fails to handle this stress. He starts lashing out emotionally, regarding Ruth with suspicion and publicly castigating her.

His inferior introverted sensing isn’t all that noticeable, except in his awkward attempt at parenting Justine involves giving her old photo albums… of relatives she’s never met and doesn’t even know how she’s related to them (again, low Fe). His idea is that Justine will want to know her family’s history and that the photos are a way to communicate that with her and establish a familial connection; he just has a very poor grasp of Si (and Fe) and doesn’t bother with the details.

Bash Howard: ENFP

Bash is full of big ideas. His dominant function is extraverted intuition; he loves exploring possibilities, delighting in helping the GLOW girls create characters and explore costume options at the show’s inception, and as the show progresses, he thrives in the brainstorming and story boarding sessions. He believes in his vision of GLOW and is optimistic about his ability to bring that vision to life. He’s not the best with details (inferior Si); in season two, when a TV executive calls him and wants to come to the finale’s taping, he neglects to get the guy’s name and he turns to Debbie to figure it out.

His auxiliary introverted feeling is most obviously expressed through his eccentricity, which places him pretty far outside the kind of life his rich mother Birdie expects of him. Even though he knows this (and Birdie is not subtle, frequently withholding his allowance when she wants to express her disapproval of his choices), he doesn’t compromise; Bash is going to live his life on his own terms and adhere to his own set of values. This is a big part of why the girls open up to him so quickly; he is completely earnest and genuine, both in his love of wrestling and the way he values their individual potential, talents and needs.

That doesn’t mean that he’s fully developed his Fi, especially when it comes to his own emotional needs. In the finale of season 2, he tells Rhonda that he doesn’t fully process his emotions, but as we’ve seen from earlier episodes, this really isn’t the case. Bash has a strong understanding of his emotions, but he is reluctant to express them openly. He keeps his depth of feeling to himself, heartbreakingly so in the later episodes of the second season. This tendency to repress and internalize his emotions is compounded by the terrible reality of the closet and internalized homophobia in the 80s; Bash is either bi or gay, and he’s at least emotionally involved with Florian, his butler/best friend. When Bash gets the phone call that Florian has died (it’s heavily implied that he had AIDS), he walks away from Debbie at the bar, chokes back tears, hangs up the phone and doesn’t tell a soul. He buries all of those feelings deep inside and suffers alone. Instead, he acts with self-sacrificing chivalry towards Rhonda, which is baffling on the surface (”Rhonda just married a millionaire with no pre-nup!”), but this is his mode of coping with his complicated feelings about Florian; it’s a bruise too painful to touch or admit, so he chooses to hide further behind a mask of a heterosexual marriage.

Sheila the She-Wolf: ISFP

Sheila is living life as her most authentic self (dominant Fi). In the first season, when her roommate Ruth is struggling to create a character, Ruth praises her Method acting. Sheila swiftly corrects her: this is not a costume and it is not an act. Later on, she explains that she feels that, spiritually, she is a wolf. She doesn’t offer any further explanation of this spiritual connection to wolves; it’s enough that she knows it and that this is her truth.

Although she’s very aware of how unconventional she is, Sheila doesn’t care too much about how other people react to her appearance because authenticity is much more important to her; she has a strong sense of self and she’s compelled to express it physically, through her clothes and makeup. That indicates a strong use of her two dominant functions, introverted feeling and extraverted sensing.

Sheila has a lot of surprising talents and abilities. In season one, she reveals her ability to play piano, though, hilariously, she only knows the theme from Exodus. In season 2, she saves the day for Ruth and Debbie by typing their PSA with astonishing speed and accuracy. These unexpected talents aren’t necessarily related to MBTI, but her lack of explanation is; she simply springs into action whenever one of her skills is needed (Se), without feeling the need to narrativize how or why she knows these things.

In season 2, we see some of her inferior Te come out under stressful conditions, when Sam projects his own anxiety about losing control of the show onto all of the wrestlers and makes them compete against each other for a spot on the show each week. Sheila picks up on this quickly and adjusts to these new circumstances (Se-Ni) in order to protect herself. For example, while everyone is practicing for the week’s audition, Sheila pounces on Rhonda and covers her mouth to prevent her from revealing anything about their plan; this seems out of character for Sheila, but she’s read the situation and becomes suspicious of others (Ni-Te). She becomes competitive to preserve something she really cares about (Fi-Te); of all the wrestlers, Sheila is probably the one who truly needs this the most, because where else will she be actively encouraged to be a wolf? Sheila knows this and she’s going to fight and scrap and do whatever it takes to ensure that she can stay, even if that means somewhat harsh treatment of her teammates.

Carmen Wade: ISFJ

Carmen is warm and caring, and she shares her encyclopedic knowledge of wrestling (Si) to help her teammates develop their characters and more fully understand what they’re doing and why. In season one, Carmen is hesitant to upset her family’s expectations and demands on her, so she keeps her wrestling a secret. This is because she knows how they’ll react (Fe), that they view wrestling as a male-only activity, but also because she’s so passionate about wrestling and is unwilling to compromise on that just because her family disapproves. Wrestling is an integral part of Carmen’s sense of self; she’s passionate about the sport and its history, including her family’s history in wrestling, even if they don’t want to see it that way at first (one of my favorite moments is when her dad shows up to cheer her on and leads the crowd in chanting “Machu Picchu!”). Attaining that parental approval is important to Carmen, even though she’s willing to pursue her goals without it.

Carmen is hard-working and devoted to her area of expertise, and she uses that knowledge as a means of helping others. She organizes a team outing to watch a wrestling match so the others get that first-hand experience of what it means and what it’s about (Si again). In season 2, she is so supportive that she stretches herself too thin (in classic ISFJ fashion); she is so busy helping the others improve their wrestling moves that she doesn’t fully develop her own storyline for the week. She also shows difficulty in pivoting and improvising in the moment (inferior Ne) when Sam cuts their audition short.

#glow #quicktypes #mbti #submission #isfj #isfp #enfp #entp #estj #character typing

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bookishreviewsblog · 5 years

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Kiersten White: And I Darken (The Conqueror's Saga #1) | Lara

No one expects a princess to be brutal. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets.

Lada despises the Ottomans and bides her time, planning her vengeance for the day when she can return to Wallachia and claim her birthright. Radu longs only for a place where he feels safe. And when they meet Mehmed, the defiant and lonely son of the sultan, Radu feels that he’s made a true friend—and Lada wonders if she’s finally found someone worthy of her passion.

But Mehmed is heir to the very empire that Lada has sworn to fight against—and that Radu now considers home. Together, Lada, Radu, and Mehmed form a toxic triangle that strains the bonds of love and loyalty to the breaking point.

“Souls and thrones are irreconcilable.”

Ladislav Dragwlya is Vlad Dracul’s, prince of Wallachia, second legitimate child, but also a daughter. In a time where her gender represents a problem in accomplishing her dreams, she will have to be everything more – more brutal, more ferocious and more determined. Her brother Radu is everything but ferocious, and, when taken to Edirne as a guarantee their father won’t betray the Ottomans again, he has to learn other means of staying alive. Court schemes and secrets are no strangers to him at the age of sixteen, while Lada spends all her time training with Jannisaries and dreaming of returning to Wallachia. As they befriend future sultan Mehmed, and their friendship grows into something more (feelings develop for both of them), their allegiances start to switch. Radu finds a new home there, both in Islam and Mehmed, but Lada refuses to let go of her homeland until she realizes there is still something holding her there.

Who would say that I’d start reading a book set in the exact location and time period as my history lessons? I actually had no idea what was I going into until I started this book, but it turned out I already knew a lot about this topic which only made it more interesting (plus, now I have less to study for my history exam xd).

And I Darken is set in Ottoman Empire, following a story of Wallachian siblings and heirs to Draculesti line. I immensely enjoyed reading about events on the political scene of 19-century Europe and politics regarding the Ottoman Empire and its vassals. White shaped a really inspiring story of cultures, religions, wars, politics and court intrigues while following perspectives of two really different figures. It was really diverting to read about historical schemes and military tactics, yet still remaining inside the frame of YA literature – characters I could wholeheartedly relate with. The cultural sphere this book covers was really inspiring, especially representing differences between two religions and cultures that come with them.

The biggest problem of this book represented the lack of dynamics within the plot. As much as life at one of the biggest empires in the history of mankind sounds interesting, the absence of action makes it monotonous, even slightly boring to read. About the first third of the book covers events from Lada and Radu’s childhood and then starts their imprisonment and life with the Ottomans. Novel mainly focuses on the characters and their development, the way certain circumstances and happenings shaped their personality. And that is mostly it – aside from a lot of character development and their accommodating to a new life and growing up, there isn’t much else this book has to offer. It was pretty weak with action and any attempts to heat things up. The culmination of the plot was achieved in the last few chapters, and even that has been pretty short and predictable. In fact, the best part of this book came at the very end, when each character was faced with a painful decision regarding their future and further growth.

Lada

So, Lada Dragwlya is such a highlight of this book. Every other character I came across annoyed me, except Nicolae – Lada’s biggest bromance ship.

“I think of you like a sister," he said. "Like a brilliant, violent, occasionally terrifying sister that I would follow to the ends of earth, in part because I respected her so much and in part because I feared what she would do to me of I refused. "

She nodded. "I would do awful things.”

There is just so much about her that I love – courage, determination, and viciousness. From her birth things have been denied from her for a sole reason she was a girl, so she decided to destroy everything that is in her way to accomplish her goals. I was just so amazed by her love for her homeland and determination to go back and claim what is her no matter what. She was born a fighter and a leader and was tired of being left behind for being a woman. Although I could really see a spark between her and Mehmed, those two aren’t for each other. Both have big ambitions towards to different goals, and, even though I could see what kept Lada in Edirne the whole time, *spoiler* I was so glad she went back in the end.

And so she cut out her heart and offered it as a sacrifice. She would pay whatever price her mother Wallachia demanded.

“Make me prince,” she said without feeling.

Radu

Oh oh, Radu. As the second mc, he was supposed to be as important as Lada, but I just couldn’t see him as anything but a sad side character. His cowardice and lack of attitude towards anything was extraordinarily annoying. He never considered fighting back and he practically made himself everybody’s pawn. I understood his love for Mehmed, but he let it shape his entire being and lead his life getting him to a point where he was only being used. The only things I liked about him were the way he started going around the court and doing something and the way he described Islam and his conversion – he understood that religion and found himself in it.

Mehmed

Mehmed is practically a side character and even has no pov, but is extremely important for the plot itself and characters. I have mixed opinions towards his character because, for starters, he is pretty complex. He wants to be a good sultan and has to sacrifice everything to do great things, but that still doesn’t stop him from loving Lada and Radu. Their relationship is extremely complicated and even toxic from time to time because their love is poisoned by betrayals. Mehmed was all cool until he started using Lada and leaving her behind, so I guess he got what he deserved xd They are good together and I like them as a couple, but they need sort their things alone if they ever want to function together.

#books #book reviews #kiersten white #and i darken #conqueror's saga #young adult #historical fiction #realistic fiction

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less-than-hash · 5 years

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Holes in the Firmament

Every dev I know has at least one dream game - stuff that they'd love to be able to make some day. The more ambitious these get - the more complex or long - the less likely they are to get made. And in a collaborative medium like games, the more people (and the more money!) involved in a project, the less control any given individual has over it.

This isn't intrinsically bad. (It can also be wildly valuable to a project and rewarding personally.)

But we devs still dream of those games we'd make if we had, say, the resources of a two hundred person studio, the backing of a major publisher, and absolute freedom.

Three of mine are behind the cut.

As a note, none of these reflect upcoming Obsidian projects. Nor are they projects Obsidian would likely ever make. They don't fit the studio's brand. Which is why I'm dreaming about them here, and not pitching them internally.

So, first up!

A Squad-Based 1st-Person Firefighting Game with a Robust Relationship System and a Branching Narrative

I don't understand why there aren't more games about firefighting - though if I had to guess it's largely because making fire look good in-game is extraordinarily difficult. As is making an environment decay over time (though I suspect there are probably some pretty good, easy solutions for this using dev sleight-of-hand).

There are actually a Iot of interactive sim games about firefighting for training purposes. Much like war and flight, firefighting is something best trained without risking real life and limb.

Firefighting appeals to me as a gameplay space because it's actively protective - it's about limiting destruction and saving lives. But it can very easily be modeled with similar gameplay loops to shooters - ultimately both are about emptying rooms of danger - here it's just with water instead of bullets.

I could be water!

In short, firefighters engage in almost unequivocal good. They're heroic. They’re human. They’re flawed. And they brave dangers every day. But our industry basically ignores them.

Firefighting would give us the opportunity to set games in the modern world with people who, during their off hours, experience much more relatable struggles than your average freedom fighter, super spy, or elite soldier - relationship difficulties, debt, children, and the like.

So what would this game actually look and play like? It would likely be mission-based (calls come in of their own accord, after all), make use of movement and environmental hazards (not unlike a cover-based shooter), and have simple companion-direction mechanics similar to the Mass Effect trilogy or Spec Ops: The Line.

(Alternatively, the action could be dialed down a bit to focus on positioning a la Valkyria Chronicles.)

The gameplay would be focused on keeping your squad alive while saving as many people as possible.

Between missions you hang out at the station, or the bar, or at home - or try to balance all three, a la Catherine. You build relationships, helping your squad perform better together. You never recruit anyone, but your companions, your fellow firefighters, can die in missions, altering the narrative in both tone and content.

tl;dr: Mass Effect 2 meets Rescue Me with some dashes of Catherine

Next!

Narrative-Focused Urban Fantasy RPG/Immersive Sim

How does this not exist yet? Where's our Dresden Files or Hellblazer inspired RPGs? Or even The Magicians or Harry Potter, for that matter?

Where my Chilling Adventures of Sabrina RPG?

There's Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which, while fantastic, is 13 years old.

While I'm looking forward to Necrobarista, that seems like a pretty tight, focused experience.

We've plenty of games with magicians in fantasy realms or in space - AKA BioWare's entire oeuvre - but few in the AAA space set in the modern world.

Unless you count superhero magicians.

Wait. Did Dr. Strange even get a game? Google suggests no. What’s going on here, videogame industry? Why won’t you suffer a witch to live?!

Honestly, I get to an extent why this is. There's a reason there've been Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse games, but no Mage games, either for Ascension or Awakening. Magic is broad, and often (especially in games) wildly destructive, which can be at odds with a modern setting (or rather what makes a modern setting interesting).

Art by Jason Chan, from Reign of the Exarchs by White Wolf.

But it doesn't have to be.

The flexibility of magic actually allows for a lot of different gameplay styles. You can do straight up first-person action like The Darkness or stealth survival like Last of Us. If I were to adapt Phonogram, a comic I love deeply, you can bet your ass there'd be beatmatch spellcasting.

A lot of gameplay mechanics we take for granted are actually damned-near magical.

Maps that point you where to go and tell you where your enemies are?

Dropping from a second story window without difficulty?

Regenerating health?

Items that make you smarter, stronger, or more likable?

Bullet time?

Rewinding to an earlier point in time to avoid death or a bad decision?

So that's another question a developer has to answer: if magic comes in so many shades, what color is yours? What are you hoping to accomplish?

For me, the presence of magic in the modern world demands a layer of secrecy that implies other layers of secrets. A modern world in which magic functions immediately deepens. What else lurks out there? Where are the other magicians? How are they using their abilities?

Additionally, magic is surreal. Bend and twist reality, and you're forced to look at it from new angles. If you can tweak people's emotional responses to you, how do you know the relationships around you are real?

And that's before you realize your dreams literally might come true - especially the nightmares. Is the face in the mirror a reflection, or something sinister and jealous? Is the ghost haunting you your literal past reaching out to reclaim you?

My dream modern magician game is an open-world immersive sim in an urban setting. Drop Prey, Dishonored, or BioShock style gameplay into a sprawling city filled with physics objects ripe for transmutation and NPCs waiting to be enchanted. Add an otherworld accessed by stepping through mirrors (the entire map within is reversed).

It's about what power can accomplish, what justifies its use, and what its limits are.

Populate the world with a few powerful magician NPCs with their own agendas; dozens of NPCs to chat up, learn more about, seduce, and manipulate; and a threat that could consume reality's very soul if someone doesn't step up to deal with it. Shake. Serve.

tl;dr: Dishonored meets Vampyr by way of Hellblazer and Hellboy

And finally!

Friendship Simulator 2019

My favorite parts of the Persona games and Catherine are the things outside of the core gameplay loops. The bits where you're hanging out with your friends, chatting with them, finding out more about them, and guiding and supporting them (or tearing them down).

Or hiding in the toilet to text your significant other.

One of the things I love about Persona 5: Dancing Star Night in Starlight is that the narrative is almost solely in this mode. It's entirely about learning more about your fellow Phantom Thieves.

Lest you think I uncritically and unabashedly love it, P5D has some major narrative problems - it entirely fails to pay off its initial premise, for example, and there's no persistence to the player choices or (player-driven) reactivity within the narrative.

Nor does the way the player "progresses" the narrative make a tremendous amount of sense within the fiction of the world.

Sorry I got distracted.

Point is, from a narrative perspective it's a game about getting to know people better - literally exploring their lives - and then supporting (or undermining, if you're terrible) them.

Similarly, nothing the player says in Persona (or, for the most part, Catherine) has any impact on the game. The player might progress a Social Link more slowly by being an ass to the protagonists' friends, but they'll still increase that Link over time, provided they put time into it.

And I don't want to be dismissive here. Time management is one of the major ways in which the player engages with the Persona games. Outside of combat and maybe monster-training, it's probably the most important mechanic at play. Taking longer to max out a Social Link means you're missing other content and missing opportunities to increase your stats. Or maybe the Social Link doesn't get completed at all. (Sorry, Haru.) Or maybe you’re not powerful enough to overcome the next Shadow in time and your game ends. Those are non-trivial consequences.

But the story of the Social Link, or the story of the game, will never change based on (the vast majority of) the player's interactions with their buddies.

Despite that, the games give the player a lot of freedom as to when (or whether!) they approach those relationships.

On the other end of the spectrum, Life is Strange (and Before the Storm) does a fantastic job of letting the player get to know the characters around Max (and Chloe) and responding logically to the player's choices.

The kid who has a crush on Max (Warren, I think?) remembers what the player promises him and then responds to whether or not the player follows through on it.

If Chloe plays A Game That Absolutely Involves Neither Dungeons Nor Dragons with her friends, they'll refer to it excitedly later and ask her to join in another round.

The TellTale games are also pretty good at this, especially Wolf Among Us, but that'll take me a bit far afield.

What Life is Strange does not provide the player is any control at all over the flow of the narrative. When the player completes a narrative beat within a scene, they're rushed along to the next scene, which is never one of their choosing. There's plenty of flexibility within the relationships (and within many of the smaller subplots), but little within the game's larger structure.

Ultimately, Persona provides little variability, while Life is Strange provides little narrative control.

I want to make a game that grabs the strong aspects of both of these while jettisoning their weaknesses.

(Far, far easier written than done!)

Basically, I want to make a game focused on the exploration of relationships. Where the personalities are the mysteries to unravel, and the interpersonal relationships between characters the dungeons to be navigated. Where the inner demons are the beasts in need of slaying - not through mystically entering the subconscious and doing battle with the Shadow, but through conversation.

I want a game about building a community, a family, and helping it come to support itself.

I think that one essential change that would make this significantly more doable is discarding the larger threats to the characters, especially those supernatural in nature. The relationships among the cast of Persona 4 are propping for the story of the Midnight Channel Murders. Arcadia Bay's pending apocalypse distracts from the relationships that seem to be the actual core story of Life is Strange.

(I find Before the Storm a stronger narrative than the original Life is Strange in large part because it's not being torn in multiple directions.)

Which isn't to say that there can't be threats, obstacles, and dangers. The world presents all manner of difficulties. Most of them requiring far more challenging and interesting solutions than "stick a sword in it."

That's a lot of abstraction, so what would this game actually look and play like?

Well, as I mentioned above, I think the Persona games, esp. Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 already do a fantastic job of providing the player the framework for exploring a space and approaching relationships at their own pace.

Add into this characters that the player can engage with in order to learn more about them (not unlike Vampyr), help with their problems, and build (or break!) relationships with them or others, and you have something of an open-world interpersonal relationship game.

The narrative of these relationships would change based on the player's actions (both in regard to how they interact with the character and how they deal with (or fail to deal with) the character's problems). So would the player's reputation, which impacts their interactions with other characters.

(The reputation system is actually one of my favorite ideas in Pillars, but I think we sometimes fail to use it to its full potential. I certainly know I do.)

Side note: in this dream game, the relationships I'm describing are not expressed in a systemic way. They're not ranked like Social Links, and they don't have reputation bars like in Dragon Age or Tyranny. It's much more akin to Life is Strange here, with each character containing their own narrative(s) to be navigated.

Over time, you bring some of these characters closer to your protagonist, recruiting a tight-knit circle that helps you face the game's primary conflict. These relationships bounce off of one another. You can never make everyone happy, after all, and some people will never get along. Late game play requires that the player balance these relationships and help forge friendships or avoid catastrophic fallings out.

Yeah, but what is that primary conflict?

Potentially anything the world could throw at a person. A lot of television shows have provided us a framework we can borrow from. Veronica Mars comes immediately to mind. (Or one of my favorite films, Brick.) Then there's Lost, which is overtly about building communities and relationships in order to survive. The Wire is another possibility. (Imagine playing as a Stringer Bell type trying to build a crew while maintaining relationships with rival crews.)

My point being that we already know what these kinds of stories look like. We just have to be brave enough to make a game that's focused around understanding other people rather than shooting them.

tl;dr: Life is Strange meets Persona, minus the strange and the personas

And that’s three glimpses into my brain. Into my dreams.

You may have noticed a few through lines. I'm pretty clearly interested in making games:

Set in the modern day

That tackle modern, realistic (and I use that term extremely loosely) concerns

That are largely non-violent

With non-linear narratives

That involve exploring the lives and feelings of non-player characters

And give those interpersonal relationships systemic narrative bite

Obviously, the projects I've been involved in recently don't check off every one of those boxes on my wishlist. That's generally how it is, if you're making games with other people.

But if you're very, very lucky, you get the opportunity to work on projects that scratch at least one or two of those itches.

I've been very, very lucky.

Cheers, <3 <3 <#

#gamedev #game design #narrative #relationships #persona #catherine #mass effect #life is strange #prey #dishonored #vampyr #necrobarista

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auctes · 6 years

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as someone who believes toko best trigger happy havoc character, i HATE IT when people say "syo has no depth!!!" and "toko's an annoying joke!!! wowzurs!!!", AS AN AMAZING FUKAWA/SYO FAN, CAN YOU HELP ME CONSTRUCT COMPELLING ARGUMENTS ON THE COMPLEXITY OF BOTH?

hi , anon !

it can be frustrating when people reduce our faves , but the first thing i’d like to say is : they’re kind of right about touko being a joke . touko’s fragile mental health is usually played for laughs , and reduced to a punchline . the localization calls her a “ schizo , ” and her maladaptive daydreams are framed as something psychotic rather than for what they are : a coping mechanism that her brain has developed to help her endure a high - stress situation .

i love when people ask these things , because the more we talk about that , the more we can start to break down touko’s character .

i would also like to state that this is a dissociative identity disorder [ DID ] conversation . i do not have DID , and i am not a psychologist . i will answer this to the best of my ability based on personal research and an ardent love for the character , but welcome corrections if necessary .

let’s talk about syo .

syo has depth . she is an extension of touko , who is , herself , a deeply introspective person . while syo is played for comic relief , it’s important to understand where she comes from : trauma . childhood trauma that touko , as a very small child , could not cope with . due to the intense physical , emotional , and psychological abuse to which she was subject , touko’s mind created syo , who fronts during times of duress and guards those memories that touko cannot endure , as a means of ensuring touko’s survival and base function . syo and touko do identify as separate entities , with a few key points to consider :

1 . DID alters can be ... anyone . anything . have their own ages , genders , sexual identities , ethnicity , personal histories , and memories . syo identifies as the name the media give her , but identifies with touko’s body , and accepts this as her appearance . a lot of alters look physically different to how the body of the core personality looks . that’s always been very interesting to me .

2 . touko acknowledges syo as part of herself . both touko and syo bounce back and forth when referring to themselves : between singular ( i ) and collective ( we ) . syo , to herself , looks like touko . she looks in the mirror and goes , “ i look like this . ” touko , especially in her later appearances throughout the series , feels a sense of belonging to syo , and acknowledges that she is a part of touko .

3 . they “ share emotions , ” meaning that there is some sort of co - conscious link between them that doesn’t go away completely during a switch . when touko hurts , syo hurts. when touko is in love , so is syo . while syo may not be able to understand and interpret complex emotions to the capacity at which touko does , she absolutely still feels them . this is what enables syo to act upon them : as a persecution alter , and later a protector alter , syo knows when she is fronting that touko is scared , or stressed , or in danger . these are the cues upon which she justifies her murders , but also those upon which she is able to fall in love and build friendships .

which leads me into my next point on syo : everything shed does is with the health and prosperity of touko in mind . DID , as a trauma - based disorder , is a neurological mechanism in place to protect the integrity of the individual . alters fulfill a purpose : they perform roles that the core personality physically cannot . syo is absolutely no different .

when touko decides to actively end syo’s murderous tendencies , syo complies . she knows that touko is suffering maltreatment at future foundation on the basis of her being labeled “ unstable and dangerous , ” and so , syo abstains from killing so as not to jeopardize touko’s wish to eventually join the foundation . while she still responds aggressively to threats , the only time she seriously contemplates killing is during another episode .

you can watch it here .

this scene is so loaded with depth . firstly , we see a clear co - conscious link between syo and touko . syo volunteers control of the body back to touko when touko is ready : even then , touko is able to recall the moments immediately before the switch , when komaru makes an emotional appeal to syo .

here , we also see a reflective , emotive side of her . we see her pause , despite whole - heartedly believing that she is going to kill komaeda . it is apparent to syo what is important to her : byakuya , and komaru . these things are important to touko , and therefore , important to syo . she has never been treated as normal : she has never really been considered by anyone to be a part of the system , as opposed to a “ deviant who kills for pleasure . ” and she thanks komaru for talking her down . in saying , “ i betrayed you , ” syo is feeling remorse . it’s touko’s remorse , because it was touko who made the deal with komaeda to exchange komaru for byakuya .

but , in the end , it was syo who threw the fight in order to spare komaru’s life , because she cannot bring herself to hurt a person for whom she and touko feel so warmly .

i’d also like to turn your attention to danganronpa 3 : future arc episode six , in which we can further witness syo and touko’s co - consciousness , and syo ultimately choosing to pursue what feels safe and warm and inviting rather than exacting vengeance . komaru talks her out of killing monaka : out of quite probably letting herself die in the process . komaru knows instinctively that syo has emotions : love . protectiveness . bravery . syo loves byakuya and komaru more , and feels a desire to protect them , more than everyone assumes her to simply love violence for violence’s sake . if something won’t serve the purpose of protecting touko and what is important to her , she isn’t going to do it .

now , let’s think about touko .

my blog is full of essays upon essays regarding touko , but i believe she can be best summarized by the phrase , the heart wants what it wants . a truly emotional , giving , and romantic woman , she actively hides herself underneath a repelling armor of grossly exacerbated flaws in order to protect her heart from being harmed .

touko has suffered in the past from consistent dehumanization , belittlement , and abuse . her parents expressed that they would have preferred her dead , and so they abused her at home . her classmates thought she was weird , and so they bullied her exorbitantly . whenever touko would actively reach out to others to pursue friendships or romantic relationships , she would be betrayed by others , and made to suffer for it .

to help you understand the breadth of the psychological impact that nearly two decades of being treated as less than human has had on touko , here is a link to a short thing i wrote on her ablutophobia , or fear of bathing . it’s a very quick overview of her self image issues , and self preservation tendencies .

next , why don’t we consider how fully and completely touko fukawa loves ? as a romance novelist , we expect her to harbor a highly idealized , grossly saturated perception of romantic love . instead , we get a woman who writes romance purely because she believes in channeling the ugly tragedies of her situation into something of beauty . here are my style notes of touko fukawa’s literary works , but we learn from her that she :

1 . prefers to write stories that are grounded in reality .

2 . enjoys magic realism , aggrandized settings , but innately human characters .

3 . prefers romantic tragedies to happy endings . ( komaru remarks upon how sad so lingers was . )

furthermore , touko states that while the power of delusion and its subsequent escapism is a powerful coping tool , she understands the harsh line between fiction and reality . she understands that no love story on the page can resemble how true love feels , but her work is so intricately entwined with emotion that she scaffolds her novels with universal emotional appeal . fictional romance , then , does not satisfy the resilience of her own heart . she is as cynical as she is whimsical : a true hopeless romantic who believes herself undeserving of loving , and being loved . she pours her heart and soul onto a page , so that others may feel to even a small margin of the scope of her feelings .

touko has a very resilient heart . despite the horrible things that togami did to her , and the abysmal way that future foundation treated her , touko is able to protect the last shred of love within her being and use it as fuel to improve herself as a person . please remember that all personal tragedies are learning experiences of touko : the pain she felt as a child became a rich and lucrative imagination . the trauma she undergoes as an adult is the catalyst to her finally turning against her self loathing , and building herself from the ground up .

what do i mean by that ? well ... touko fukawa is a badass . komaru naegi remarks constantly upon fukawa’s strength ; that she can’t imagine a “ weak touko . ” touko loathes herself ; her fears , her weakness . loathes that she can’t function as a normal human being who holds meaningful friendships without being suspicious of them ; loathes that she can’t look after herself , exact self care , without knocking back a cocktail of conglomerate anxiety . loathes that she was weak , and cowardly , and it almost got her killed when she has learned the value of being alive .

touko vocally objects to people walking all over her . she wants to be vilified ; she wants to be autonomous , and respected as a woman , an artist , and a person within her own right . touko exits her killing game , and the next time we see her in ultra despair girls , she is the furthest cry from the woman we previously knew . why ? because touko put her foot down , and went , “ i need to change . ” touko decides to do away with her cowardice , to fight for acknowledgement , and to reclaim her own life when she has been so deprived for so long of basic human kindness .

touko systematically exposes herself to blood to combat her hemophobia . touko credits other people for their strength and uses it as inspiration to keep going . touko puts a stun gun to her head and endures fucking electrocution so that she can control her switches and bequeath her body to syo when she needs to physically protect other people . touko mother fucking fukawa admits that she is scared , but picks her broken body up of the ground and stays standing so that she can do what is right .

touko has an incredibly strong sense of right and wrong that was cauterised by her participation in the killing . in this scene , we see touko voluntarily get the shit kicked out of her so that she may save thousands of innocent lives . she calls haiji towa a coward for hiding underground and not fighting back against the warriors of hope as they terrorize towa city . she does these things simply because it is the right thing to do : because if no one is going to stand up and fight for the people who cannot fight for themselves , then by god , touko is going to do it .

and , finally ... the heart wants what it wants , and touko wants to offer her heart to others . “ i’ll definitely protect both ... even if it costs me my life . ” actual quote out of the mouth of touko fukawa . touko loves . touko’s heart leads her into danger with the full conscience of her inevitable death , but she follows it to protect the lives of those closest to her . we see her , over the course of ultra despair girls , as she gradually opens up to the first person who has ever called touko a friend : to have treated touko with an ounce of humanity and kindness , and to have assured her unconditionally that touko was not alone .

pain , to touko , is transient . physical pain , that is . she’d allow a person to beat her to a pulp , even kill her , if it meant she would saves the lives of those who matter to her . byakuya and komaru make her a stronger person : love makes touko fukawa strong . love makes her stand against impossible odds , and tell those odds to go fuck themselves . touko listens to her heart : to what her emotions are telling her , and for that , her loyalty is stalwart .

i hope this helped you . i hope you have enough in your arsenal to speak up for our girl , and to remind everyone of the strong - ass motherfucking hero she is . if you have any further questions , i am always up for talking about my daughter , and how phenomenally important she is to me . i don’t think this post really scratches the surface .

in conclusion ,

#long post /#touko fukawa #ok to reblog #anon.#╰ 📖 —— mail .

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How EVE Online Is Changing Players’ Lives for the Better

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This article is presented by CCP.

Video games change lives.

20 years ago, people would have scoffed at, perhaps even ridiculed, the idea that a game could have a profound effect on its players. But nowadays, it would be very difficult to find a gamer who disagrees. Since its inception, gaming has been an engrossing hobby that helps build relationships, offers stress relief, and can even serve to impart lasting life skills. As games themselves have evolved and pursued more ambitious endeavors, this has only become more true.

One game that exemplifies this is EVE Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that is nominally about spaceships and exploring the stars. Although it might seem at first like a straightforward game about blasting away your enemies, hoarding valuable resources, and exploring the star cluster of New Eden, once you peer beneath its surface, it’s also about building relationships between players and learning skills you can take with you to the real world. It could even be argued that without delving into the metagame around EVE, it is difficult to get a real picture of why the game has survived – and thrived – for as long as it has.

EVE’s infamous depth as a role-playing sandbox has allowed its players to become warlords who rally thousands of players and form massive fleets, aggressive capitalists with the wealth to buy and sell empires, and industrial tycoons whose virtual shipyards provide arms for the largest player vs player battles in gaming history. These players often become so immersed in the game that their lives can begin to shift and change around it — often for the better.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", mediaId: "cd53c251-f7cf-4254-ac17-cf1534fa88c6" }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

EVE Online has been changing players’ lives outside of the game since very early on in its history. The game’s unique demands often encourage players to confront and improve on parts of themselves that they wouldn’t expect to. But it’s only recently that EVE’s developer CCP has coined a term for this unique aspect of the game: “The EVE Effect.” The term came about after the studio completed a study on what seems to be an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation spreading around the world in certain age groups, and how that affects players of their game. Through surveys and discussions with players at various real-world events, the CCP team found that over 60% of the players they interacted with said that they had made substantial, impactful friendships with people that they met through EVE Online. Other research by the company showed that many players also believed that EVE had helped them to develop skills that improved their real lives. This combination of friendship and skill development seems to confirm what the MMO’s thousands of players have known all along: EVE is more than just a game. EVE Online is real.

The EVE Effect is something that resonates with people that have played the game and spent any real amount of time in EVE because they can see it in their own lives. EVE Online can be a harsh, unforgiving game, where trust in another player is often viewed as the ultimate commodity. When you are forced to trust another player to help you achieve a goal and have to risk often irreplaceable in-game assets to do it, the bonds between players can grow very deep very quickly. Once a player starts receiving help from others, it’s natural for the player to then want to do the same for other newcomers — for example, by sharing their knowledge and resources or helping them with a difficult objective in the game. It’s no surprise, then, that players often end up forming vast player-driven corporations, or guilds, in the game that connects them to a web of other like-minded players, and these relationships continue to grow and often turn into real friendships.

CCP’s research showed that on top of making friends, 56% of players said that skills they learned through playing EVE had proven to be valuable in their lives outside of the game and in their careers. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given the game’s unofficial moniker as “Spreadsheets in Space,” the most common career skill referenced is the ability to successfully create and navigate complex spreadsheets, which may not sound like much on the surface until you realize how valuable this skill is to running a successful business.

One player who took his spreadsheet knowledge, among other things, into the real world and capitalized on all the life lessons learned through leading players into battle in EVE Online is Matthew Ricci. Ricci’s claim to fame within EVE Online is self-admittedly, in the grand scheme of things, relatively small. According to Ricci, he was the CEO of a mid-sized industrial-focused corporation in the game, with around 400-500 player characters under his banner.

“I ran an ore buyback,” Ricci explains. “I had to determine what a fair price was to buy from my group, and then according to my in-game skills, what could I do to make a profit.” Ricci’s in-game ventures allowed him to learn several things about real-world business concepts. “I had to understand market fluctuation, cost break down, supply chains. And on top of that, I had to convince players to sell to me at a lower cost because I could reduce their risk,” Ricci says.

Eventually, Ricci began asking himself, “If I can do all of this in-game, why can’t I do the same thing in real life?” That’s when he realized that nothing was stopping him from leveraging the skills forged in EVE to improve his real life. Ricci now runs a successful business in Canada. “We have two divisions in the company, a sales representation business to sell electronics to major retailers, and a drop shipping business where we purchase and resell products we find that we like.”

Ricci credits EVE with giving him not only the knowledge to run this style of business, but also the confidence in himself to build a real company out of nothing, just like in the game.

On the other side of the coin, there are players who use their real-life skills to further their EVE career, and through that broaden their skill set, all while networking with other players who work in the same industries. This feedback loop has led to some EVE players landing great jobs in the real world.

That’s exactly what happened to veteran EVE pilot Innominate, who asked us to use his in-game name rather than his real name for this article. In the EVE universe, Innominate is a high-level director in the Goonswarm Federation, one of the game’s most populous player-driven factions, and a member of EVE’s Council of Stellar Management (CSM). The CSM is a player-elected focus group that works with CCP on upcoming game features and provides feedback to the developer. The combination of having played EVE for so long, and being in two relatively unique positions in the game, has given Innominate a broad view of the MMO and the effects it has on players.

Start Your EVE Online Adventure Today

“You hear a lot of stories about people who ruin their lives playing [other MMORPGs], but with EVE you tend to hear more of the other way around,” Innominate says. “I started playing EVE, I started going to player meets, I’ve gotten jobs, or I’ve made friends where I’ve never had any before.”

Innominate also believes that EVE Online can be a powerful learning tool.

“Most of the things that make you good at playing EVE are real-life skills,” Innominate explains. “They’re not things you can grind. You have to learn leadership and diplomacy, and eventually you come out of the game realizing, ‘Wait a minute, this shit’s useful.’”

This “shit” that Innominate refers to are intangible skills that a person has to learn through experience rather than from studying, and the game is rife with opportunities to practice them. This is because of the high-stakes scenarios in the game, where words and communication can affect your station in the game as much as your actions.

In-game, Innominate helps run Goonswarm’s IT server infrastructure, which is how he eventually embarked on his current career in the IT industry. “After a few years, I thought ‘screw it,’ I’m going to find a job, but the only real experience on my resume was my experience running Goonswarm servers,” he says. “Fortunately, one of our other directors happened to be at a company that was looking for ‘Linux nerds.’ We spoke, and the next day I had an interview, and the day after that I had a job.”

Eventually, the company that hired him grew and needed to find more people, and Innominate turned back to EVE to fill those positions, pursuing players he thought could handle themselves. “The company had always been a remote work company and not everyone is suited for that kind of thing. But something about having a high impact role in EVE prepares people for that sort of thing.” He suggested that the company look into another of the Goonswarm server admins, and from that point, the trend continued. “We’ve hired 10 people from Goonswarm at this point I think. My boss is the Goonswarm Head Diplomat!”

The idea that a game requires a diplomat to play – much less a head diplomat assuming charge of a vast organization of diplomats – may seem crazy, but in EVE, it’s not uncommon. In many ways, EVE is best viewed as a 17-year-old collaborative science fiction storytelling experiment. Since the beginning, the narrative has been largely driven by the players, who’ve role-played themselves into massive, galaxy-altering battles, economy-shattering hostile corporate takeovers, and infamous betrayals that turned the tides of interstellar wars. So much has happened in EVE Online that the MMO even has its own unofficial historian who documents the biggest events in the game’s long history so that future generations remember the players and factions that came before.

Veteran journalist Andrew Groen has written two non-fiction historical novels covering the early days of EVE Online and still has many stories left to tell. After years of watching EVE history unfold as a reporter, Groen agrees that there really is something to the EVE Effect.

“The game is complicated, and the game is complicated in a lot of ways to teach you about real life. The most glaring way that that occurs is in people’s social skills, and their abilities to understand large groups of people,” he explains. “To be able to understand and picture other people’s lives and their needs is an incredibly useful skill set that carries into other areas of people’s lives.”

Groen’s way of interacting with the community and the game is by telling the story of the game as a neutral observer. Yet, the game has still had a large impact on his life.

“My life is completely different as a result of the fact that I started writing about EVE,” he says, adding that before EVE he was a person of mild renown in the relatively narrow field of video game journalists. After beginning his journey with EVE, “the idea that I would get a chance to have a dedicated audience that would give me years of time to focus on my work, and give me their money in advance so that I could work on something I’ve always wanted to do, non-fiction journalism — I have no idea what I would be doing without this opportunity.”

Wanting to tell the story of EVE is a calling that many people find themselves heeding at some point during their EVE career. So much so, that it has given rise to a host of blogs, podcasts, and even several virtual talk shows dedicated to the goings-on inside the game world. EVE veteran January Valentine has worked as a producer on two of the largest of these programs, “Talking in Stations” and “The Meta Show,” each reaching hundreds of viewers every week.

“They are, for lack of a better word, talk shows, sort of like you would see on ESPN, except we focus on the goings-on of EVE Online,” Valentine explains. “I try to make the news very understandable so that anyone from any point of view in EVE can understand what’s going on in any other part of EVE.” Producing these shows, and gathering all the news, information, and stories from around the game eventually translated into January creating her blog Something You Should Know, where she writes about important events in one of EVE’s biggest wars.

“In my opinion, EVE is the medium that effort translates best into results. If you’re feeling stuck in real life, you can go online, and put in some real, sincere effort in, and you can grow as a person. You can put effort towards challenges conducive to the growth in real life,” Valentine says of why she feels that EVE has changed her life.

The biggest lesson she’s learned though is “Humility. When you start trying to be active in the meta [in EVE Online], it’s very clear that you are the little fish. Wanting to talk to people like TheMittani, Headliner, or Progod, you have to develop a diplomatic persona, to move around the EVE universe to get to those kinds of people.”

Another player who spends a good deal of her time talking about EVE, either while streaming on Twitch or co-hosting a podcast with her fiance, whom she met while playing EVE Online, is Miranda Fair, who is better known as Mirandalorian. Between EVE engagements, she moonlights as a Captain in the United States Army who focuses on logistics.

As you might expect, running into active duty or veteran military players is very common in EVE. I asked Fair if she thought the game seemed to disproportionately draw that type of player to it.

“[EVE] has been really beneficial to me as a social outlet, especially while I’ve had to move all over the place with my career,” Fair says. “I’ve actually met people in many different military-centric communities in EVE, and even outside of that, a lot of people are in armies of different countries all over the world. I think what draws military-minded personnel into EVE is that the game is very tactical. When you get into these giant battles, you need to have people who are willing to step up and be leaders, and I think that attracts that military mindset.”

One theme that has come up time and again when talking to people about EVE Online is the personalities and the leaders that the game shapes.

“It helps people develop leadership and social skills,” Fair says. “Whether you’re leadership for a thousand-person alliance, or the CEO of a corporation of twenty people, or just a member of one of those corporations, it allows you to choose what you want to focus on and get good at, and follow that.”

Some players find the EVE experience so unique and engaging that sharing it with other people becomes a primary part of their gameplay loop. This is something that I personally experienced in my early days, trying to find my own place in the game. Everything I did in EVE felt so unique and different from what I’d seen in other games that I found myself constantly talking to my real-life friends about it, whether they wanted to hear it or not. I loved telling stories about my experiences in EVE so much that I decided to apply for a writing position at an EVE Online-focused news site.

Before this point, I had never really written anything that was intended for a wide audience. I had written papers for school and posted on online role-playing forums, but had never written anything that I thought tens of thousands of people would ever read. This part-time “job” I picked up to tell my stories paid out in in-game credits, which was helpful to my burgeoning career as a spaceship pilot, so it killed two birds with one stone. I was satisfied with my decision and didn’t think it would go any further than that.

Then the unexpected happened. My dedication to the game soon blossomed into a freelance writing career. I began contributing to several major video game news outlets, chronicling the grand EVE narrative from my perspective. My stories about EVE have now been read by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. I’ve even traveled to Reykjavik, Las Vegas, and Toronto, and other places in search of more stories to tell about the game. I’ve been able to hone my skills as a writer and I’ve gained more confidence, all thanks to my years playing EVE Online. As you might have guessed, I am a massive believer in the EVE Effect.

One of the most common sentiments shared among the player base, beyond the usual “spreadsheets in space” joke, is that EVE is a game that fascinates people outside that don’t even play it. If there was a list of people’s favorite games that they have never played, EVE would surely be near the top. The reason that people are drawn to EVE is, for the most part, the same reason that the EVE Effect exists. The stakes when playing EVE are very high, and because of that, the bonds that people share in the game, and the lengths that people will go to learn skills that give them an edge, are greater than in other games.

EVE Online can be a harsh and unforgiving game, where loss is real and can be very demoralizing – it is not necessarily a game for everyone. However, this unique universe drives players forward, to better themselves and to meet new people. Once a battle is won, a corporate empire is built, and goals are achieved, it’s not uncommon for players to shift their dedication to achieving something tangible in the real world with those same skills, and with the help of those same friends that made everything possible in the first place.

Start your EVE Online adventure today.

The post How EVE Online Is Changing Players’ Lives for the Better appeared first on Den of Geek.

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14 Legit Ways of Making Money Online From Home I Start Earning Money From Home Easy And Big

Making some extra side hustle cash doesn't even have to be that complicated. As someone who's been immersed within the field of online income generation for nearly 20 years now, I can tell you that it takes some work. However, there are several clear paths forward. At the top of the day, it all boils right down to what your goals are and just what proportion you are looking to automate your income.

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Could you create an additional $200 per month? Sure. How about an additional $1000 per month? How would that change your life? To most, it might make a monumental difference. But what if we were talking thousands more per month or maybe tens of thousands more? How would that alter the trajectory of your life? Clearly, you'll make money on the web . you only need to decide what proportion of some time it's worth.

While we all have some overtime , it often doesn't desire it. But it also doesn't take an excessive amount of effort to form some extra dough on the side. We're not talking about millions upon millions here -- we're mostly talking about doing small, bite-sized projects to get some fast cash. And counting on your skill set, you'll easily make a couple of hundred dollars or maybe a couple of extra thousand per month.

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1. Become a virtual assistant. One simple thanks to make money from house is to assist others complete tasks as a virtual assistant. If you're highly organized and may properly manage some time , then becoming a virtual assistant presents a low-friction entry point into the digital services industry. you'll easily perform these functions as a foreign worker regardless of where you reside .

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Finding work as a virtual assistant are often easily done through sites like Upwork, Indeed.com and Remote.co. Search the prevailing posted jobs and make bids. you will need effective communication skills and fluency in English and popular web and business software applications.

Related: Learn the 4 Principles That Helped This Virtual Company Become one among the simplest Cultures in America

2. Sell stuff on eBay or Craigslist. A large subset of our society is earning a full-time income by selling items on Craigslist and eBay. you'll do that by selling your own items, otherwise you can help sell items for people and take alittle commission. Selling on eBay offers more friction than Craigslist and you will got to establish solid reviews before you'll begin to maneuver high-ticket items.

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However, eBay does provide resources for sellers to assist you get acclimated to selling on the platform. Take the time to try to to your due diligence and research the platform. If you've got some solid online marketing skills, you will find this much easier than if you are a complete newbie to the planet of digital marketing.

Related: 8 Places to Sell Stuff Fast once you actually need the cash

3. Trade cryptocurrency. As the digital world evolves, so does our currency. What appeared like a novelty yesterday will ultimately become the well-liked medium for money. A Gallop poll found that 10 percent of individuals claimed to use cash as their preferred payment method in 2016 (down from 19 percent in 2011).

While cryptocurrency remains relatively new, it'll ultimately become the quality . Bitcoin and Etherium could be the first cryptocurrency platforms today, but the US Dollar will eventually become the Digital Dollar by leveraging the blockchain. you'll cash in of the present boom in cryptocurrency by trading it through platforms like eToro and Kraken, amongst many others.

Related: Start Earning Now.

4. Online tutoring Websites like Skooli, Tutor Me and Tutor.com provide resources for getting into the web tutoring space. While you do not got to use a platform like these, they supply a lower friction entry point into the market. you'll also look for online tutoring gigs on a spread of other sites like Upwork, Freelancer and lots of more.

What sorts of things are you able to tutor online? you'll easily tutor a topic like math or science, while also teaching a language if you're bilingual. you'll also tutor musical instruments just like the guitar or piano, along side a slew of other topics .

Related: To Rapidly Enhance Your Business, Stop Selling and begin Teaching

5. Sell services on Fiverr Fiverr has grown significantly since its inception. Today, it is a vast marketplace where you'll sell almost any service under the sun. this is often great if you are looking to form money online as a digital nomad or maybe while sitting reception on your laptop while in your pajamas.

What, specifically, are you able to sell on Fiverr? Anything from graphics and style services, to digital marketing, writing and translation services, video and animation services, music and audio, programming and application development, business services and lifestyle services that has anything from celebrity impressions to gaming.

Related: the way to Use Online Platforms To Earn Money Now

6. Build sales funnels. Every successful business has an automatic sales funnel. Yet, numerous businesses are completely unaware of the facility of an efficient funnel. Sales funnels provide automation within the sales process. they assist you build a relationship together with your audience and develop a bond with the buyer . There are many tools you'll use to create a sales funnel, but the world's most successful businesses often create custom-coded funnels.

Expert sales funnels often start with a free offer, also called the lead magnet. By delivering value within the lead magnet, you're creating trust with the buyer . within the next step, you'd usually find what's called a self-liquidating offer or a visit wire. These are deals that are hard to pass up, often for $7 to $47. The front-end offer is typically found beyond that along side one-time offers to assist boost the lifetime value of the customer and therefore the average cart value.

While there are considerable technique details when it involves sales funnels, understanding them today, right now, could set you up for a better degree of online marketing prowess. It'll also assist you scale your business by optimizing a conversion rate, then simply expanding your ad spend.

Related: what's a Sales Funnel? The Guide to putting together an automatic Selling Machine

7. Hire out your home. Another way you'll make money reception is to truly hire out your home. Air BnB has carved a large industry out of vacation rentals. While the market did exist before Air BnB's arrival, it's certainly grown by leaps and bounds since its arrival on the scene.

In 2017, Air BnB purchased luxury vacation rental provider, Luxury Retreats, and other consolidations within the marketplace have happened with leading sites like Invited Home's acquisition of PPG rentals and Seasoned Dreams' platforms, and Expedia's $3.9 billion acquisition of another vacation rental giant, HomeAway. The market is booming and therefore the time is ripe for entry, regardless of how big or small your home or condo could be .

Related: Need To Have A passive Income On Auto-Pilot? Learn The Tricks

8. Launch an ecommerce site. Ecommerce is booming. While Amazon takes the lion's share, consumers are buying by the droves once they can scoop great offers. In fact, a number of the leading online marketers like Neil Patel, Frank Kern, Dean Graziosi, David Sharpe, John Reese and lots of others, are using free-plus-shipping ecommerce and book funnels to form small fortunes. This comes back to the implementation of sales funnels within an ecommerce environment. In fact, much of what people believe traditional ecommerce stores taking months or maybe years to create and costing alittle fortune simply isn't true.

Related: How Can Ecommerce Owners Use the newest Trends to Their Benefit? 5 Entrepreneurs Advise.

9. Start a blog. Blogs are quite possibly one among the simplest ways to earn a passive income, even while traveling the planet . While starting a blog could be simple you'll got to put within the work and therefore the effort so as to reap the advantages . Plant the seeds now to enjoy the harvest later.

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However, once that blog gets going, generating an income and scaling out your business is simple . Simply produce more content and line up more offers. As your blog grows in popularity, you'll even be ready to attract top talent willing to write down for you merely in exchange for one very powerful link back to their own websites.

Related: the way to Start a Blog and Make Money Online

10. Build a side hustle business. There are many ideas for lucrative side hustle businesses that you simply could easily start from the comfort of your house . While starting them is straightforward , actually fixing the work to plug and grow those businesses may be a bit tougher . The hard part is seeing them through.

While you'll launch a daily business selling someone else's products, you'll also invent your own product. While businesses supported inventions might sound more complex to make , they are doing present attractive investment opportunities as depicted on popular shows like Shark Tank.

Related: What sort of Side Hustle do you have to Try? (Infographic)

11. Create webinars I've become hooked in to the webinar medium for selling. Building out automated webinars is one among the foremost useful skills you'll possibly have, like entrepreneur Jason Fladlien, who's done of $100 million in sales through webinars by only selling other people's products and not his own.

Webinars follow a selected template and format. They're formulaic. If you'll master that formula, you'll quite literally dominate during this space. Find an excellent business idea or opportunity that you simply can sell that delivers massive amounts useful .

Related: Start Making Out For Your Own Daily Expenses Right From Your Home

12. Social media management. Social media management may be a good way to get an income from home. Considering the expansion of social media, businesses are clamoring to seek out their way ahead of prospects. However, most businesses haven't got a clue about how they will increase their exposure. That’s where you are available .

Building a social media management business might take some effort and time, but it's well worthwhile . you'll charge a large monthly fee for every business to assist manage their social media, allowing you to earn a full-time income doing this gig.

Liz Benny, the founding father of Jinga Social, not only built one among the most important and most well-known social media management businesses out there, but also created multiple seven-figure webinars teaching people, you guessed it, the way to launch your own social media management company.

13. Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing presents a really low friction entry into selling products online. While you are doing need some sort of audience to sell these products or services to, you'll make a big amount of cash from home while doing it. Some products or services have very high earnings per click. meaning , if you play your cards right, you'll easily make an outsized profit on conversions by driving traffic to specific offers as long as you target the proper interests.

You can find affiliate marketing offers on sites like ClickBank, CJ.com and Rakuten LinkShare, amongst many others. look for the proper offer and make sure that you present it to the proper audience and do not spam people about it. Do your marketing ethically.

Related: The Only Guide You Need To Start off Your Money Making Journey Now

14. Create online courses. One of my absolute favorite ways to form extra cash from house is to make online courses. Now, this does take an upfront investment of your time . But, as the other passive income generating activity, you are doing the work once and obtain paid repeatedly for it.

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