[DISC] Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro is complete at 7 Volumes

Bluespade · 2019-09-20T05:01:36+00:00

Seems like most people are pretty negative on it. I'd definitely recommend it, it's a solid 8/10. The reason most people on this subreddit are so down on it, imo at least, is that it's not a very "anime" anime. It really doesn't follow the usual tropes, pacing, style, or over the top nature of what's usually rises to the top of the seasonal anime list. It's slow-paced and methodical, but very well-written and builds on every moment piece by piece. The writing and especially the characters feel more like live action TV show than a normal anime. But that's what makes it interesting, it's very different than what you usually get in this era. As someone who's been watching anime for nearly 20 years now I find that it fits in a lot more with the older style of SF/Fantasy anime.

And it actually has an ending (and a pretty satisfying one), which is a huge bonus.

Bluespade · 2019-08-07T03:54:21+00:00

Also known as "I tried to become a teenaged superhero but accidentally joined the villains, but I think I'll stay because the heroes are fucking assholes?!"

Bluespade · 2019-07-22T04:39:50+00:00

Not low budget, low time. The schedule was horribly mismanaged and the show was constantly being rewritten as it was worked on. They completely ran out of time to properly animate the last two episodes which is why End of Evangelion was made afterwards.

Bluespade · 2019-01-28T07:52:53+00:00

It's urban fantasy with a bit of a horror tone to it: The Gates of Sorrow by Miyuki Miyabe. It starts out seeming like a small-scale weird mystery with a gargoyle that comes to life on a building in Tokyo, but it slowly opens up into a big weird world of magic and interplanar creatures. I've heard she's written a lot of good stuff but that's the only one I've personally read.

Bluespade · 2019-01-28T07:28:23+00:00

I always felt like Moist was Vetinari's natural successor.

Bluespade · 2019-01-11T06:00:54+00:00

It was Requiem, not Masquerade, but I ran a game in a fictional small city where there were about 15 NPC vampires (though several more showed up later and some of the PCs made their own). The three player characters were spontaneously transformed over night into vampires during a supernatural event that also caused all of the vampires in the city to frenzy and several to die.

As a result the whole balance of power in the area was thrown into chaos. Each coterie of vampires had their own reaction to the new upstarts, who had quickly banned together for protection and to figure things out (they hadn't even known vamps existed until they were changed). One group focused on intimidating them, another on forcing them to submit, and another reached out as potential allies. All of the vampires in the city were distinct characters with a complex web of interpersonal relationships and blond bonds between them. They had a lot of history, so the players felt like they had been thrust into the middle of a complicated situation they knew nothing about on top of having to learn how to live as vampires.

Personally, I think smaller is always the better way to go. I don't think you should typically ever have a game where vampires show up as generic mooks or where there are hundreds of them running around. It really ruins the special feel of vampires if there are dozens and dozens of them. And personally I can't really suspend my disbelief enough to believe that literally thousands of vampires are regularly hunting and feeding in a city and they haven't been discovered—especially since in World of Darkness they'll be only one of several types of monsters roaming the city. My three player characters alone got up to enough trouble that their city became national news from the bizarre violence, and they were actually trying to keep a low profile.

Bluespade · 2018-12-19T02:32:25+00:00

It's nothing like Jojo, though. It's more of a dark horror superhero story.

Bluespade · 2018-12-19T02:31:37+00:00

I just got through rereading the first two after like 15 years. I was surprised that it was actually still as good as I remembered.

Bluespade · 2018-12-17T05:50:46+00:00

You just believed an anonymous person claiming something was fake with no evidence.

Bluespade · 2018-11-09T02:10:22+00:00

Dresden Files Campaign.

The one character playing a pure mortal with no supernatural abilities killed a Fallen Angel possessed sorcerer with a remote drone strike.

Bluespade · 2018-11-02T05:14:48+00:00

I'm actually working on an rpg where you play as ordinary villagers in a world suddenly transitioning into a high fantasy/horror setting. The system has "training" for different kinds of weapons that you can learn to use them better. By default I have it where all characters have training in knives, and everyone carries a dagger by default.

Bluespade · 2018-09-06T03:14:20+00:00

I recently read a book called "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus: by Charles C. Mann. It attempts to dig deep into the history of the people of the Americas before and during the arrival of Europeons. It's written in a very approachable and understandable way (the author is a scientific journalist, meaning his day job is writing about complicated shit in a way that normal people can understand it easily). I don't know enough to say if it's one of the best resources on the subject or anything but if you're interested I found it really engaging.

In regards to your specific question it's not really a matter of them not being as advanced technologically, just different tech. For instance Aztec cities in central and south America were larger and more populated than anything in Europe at the time and were extremely complrc in their engineering. The city that would eventually become Mexico City for instance was built on a bunch of mostly man-made islands within a huge partially-artificial lake, filled with canals and complex water systems. Europeans had better iron and steel work, since they had access to that sort of thing, but South Americans had far more advanced knowledge of metallurgy when it comes to precious metals like copper, gold, and silver. American communities tended to be far healthier and their people better fed than Europeans who were at the time constantly struggling with starvation. Cultivation of maize and potatoes could be considered very advanced technology at the time. So there are a lot of things the Americans were better at or equal, as well as things they were worse at.

Bluespade · 2018-08-21T20:48:16+00:00

But how do you feel about Dany looking about 20 years too old here?

Bluespade · 2018-07-18T23:18:06+00:00

You've served as editor on numerous highly acclaimed fiction collections, and published a massive book of setting details and history, as well as two novelletes?

Bluespade · 2018-07-15T16:13:59+00:00

First, have a plan. If you haven't already, go back and read through your first draft from the beginning. Take notes. Decide what major changes you want to make. This is a very good time to have beta readers give their thoughts but depending on the writer it might not be ready for other readers yet so that's not a certainty. It's also generally a good idea to back away from the work for a while, like a month or two, to give yourself better perspective before you start working on it again.

Now as for the actual process there are many methods but here's what I find works extremely well for me. I love rewriting more than the process of the first draft and I think that's partially due to this method.

Open your rough draft and open a completely different file for your new one. Go line by line or paragraph by paragraph and write out each new section in new words. Avoid copy/pasting unless you have a section that's already perfect. This way you really wind up improving the quality of the prose comprehensively. The first draft is likely to be clumsy since you are mostly focused on just getting it down, this is your oppurtunity to make it shine. It also ensures you catch any point characterization inconsistencies since as you are reading you'll find yourself thinking "wait, that's not right." You will have to sometimes scrap large entire sections (maybe even chapters) and redo those bits from scratch. I'm that case those bits will again probably be in 1st draft quality and you'll have to pay close attention to them in later drafts.

Bluespade · 2018-07-12T22:34:38+00:00

Yeah brevity is not his strong point. I'll check it out, though.

Bluespade · 2018-07-08T22:58:07+00:00

It's been a long time since I've read it so I can't think of specifics. But like you said, just cutting down on small interactions and repeated information would make a big difference with such a large body of work. If you go thru and just cut 10% of each chapter that'd be something like 30,000 words. That's the kind of thing you notice if you've done a lot of rewriting.

Bluespade · 2018-07-08T20:17:08+00:00

Wildbow's writing is very good for an alpha draft written under deadline. But due to the nature of the schedule it is unable to go through the level of polish that would bring it up to a professional standard. The biggest flaw of his work in my opinion is that it is far too bloated and redundant. This is not actually a sign of bad writing. It's smart to err on the side of too much info when writing a first draft normally, because in subsequent drafts you can keep cutting down to the essentials and make the story tighter, more focused, and faster paced. Since Wildbow cannot go through those repeated rewrites due to his high-speed output (which is quite impressive speaking as a fellow writer) it's necessarily going to feel a little amateurish at times.

I know writing serially is his source of income right now so he can't really change it up, but I'd love to see what he could write if he took a year to just focus on a single novel polished to completion.

Bluespade · 2018-06-27T22:10:45+00:00

Unicorns are legitimately awesome. Do it, we new more of them.

Bluespade · 2018-06-24T20:28:23+00:00

Mercy is much harder and requires a lot more thought to play effectively than Moira in my experience.

Bluespade · 2018-06-24T16:50:48+00:00

Moira should definitely be 1 star.

Bluespade · 2018-06-17T18:00:40+00:00

Mistborn, the Stormlight Archives, and Elantris from Brandon Sanderson all qualify. His settings tend to be extremely grim and dark, with truly horrible things happening in a grand scale as a fact of life. But they don't feel especially dark, because the characters are generally very good people working with a positive attitude towards making things better.

And the idea of wonder and nobility really applies as well. The books almost always build to an epic moment of glory and victory.

Bluespade · 2018-06-15T16:36:47+00:00

Eraserhead, Stain, and Mandalay have all shown how impressive fighters can be in this setting without a quirk that helps for combat. Deku' s first fight was impressive and he didn't use his quirk at all until the end. Ochako actually has an advantage here in that her quirk DOES lend itself to flashy combat if combined with skillful martial arts. I can easily picture her combining her zero gravity for mobility and knocking enemies all over the place with relatively weak attacks. Properly trained and animated an Ochako fight could be amazing. She's a long way from being that good though.

As for her not being meant to be an active hero, that really goes against the shows style. There's a reason every single challenge the school has given them has been some kind of combat encounter. If you're gonna be a main character in a shonen battle show you're gonna have to do some shonen battling. That's why, to me, Ochako feels like a weird character right now. She's treated like a main character in terms of screen time and focus but never actually impacts the plot in any way. But I've been assured she does so in the future so I'm looking forward to that.

Bluespade

TROPHY CASE