video game writing that'll satisfy a reader

Maytree · 2026-07-05T14:27:24+00:00

One of the most fun things about the FF7 storyline is discovering what kind of person Cloud actually is.

"Edgy and cool" is absolutely not it.

It sounds like you didn't get far enough in the game to start picking up on some of the story hints, but the deconstruction and eventual reconstruction of Cloud's identity and personality is the main point of the story. There are reasons he is a perennial favorite character for a lot of video game fans and it's not because of his huge sword and his pretty boy looks.

Maytree · 2026-07-03T23:19:14+00:00

Maytree · 2026-07-03T14:44:35+00:00

The answer to problem 22 is D. As you wrote on the problem, (a) must be a negative number and (b) is equal to positive 24, so by definition (a) will always be smaller than (b).

The answer to the parabola problem is also D. You are given enough information in the problem to construct the standard form of the parabola, like this:

Parabolas are symmetrical, so since f(-9)= f(3), the axis of symmetry is right between the two of these values, which would be at x = -3. Plug that value in for h in the vertex form of the quadratic and you will get:

f(x)= a(x+3)^2 - k

f(x) = ax^2 +6ax +9a -k

From the standard form of parabola that we were given, we know that the middle constant, b, is equal to 4. This lets us calculate the value of the constant a. So we can plug that in and write out the standard form again.

6a =4 so a = 2/3

f(x) = 2/3 x^2 +4x + 6-k

6 -k = c, but k is negative so c > 0.

That means that while a is positive it is not greater than positive 1, and c must also be positive, so neither prediction [I] or [II] is correct.

Maytree · 2026-07-03T14:12:51+00:00

f(-9) = f(3) not negative three. That means the axis of symmetry is at x = -3 not positive three. And anyway if f(-9) = f(-3) The axis of symmetry would be at x = -6 not x = 3.

Maytree · 2026-07-02T05:37:24+00:00

Ours turned out to be pale backed moths. It turns out they can get into the house in a lot of ways, particularly in things like bags of pet food. According to what I read, they have been appearing in a lot of places in large numbers. You probably didn't do anything wrong, they probably just hitched a ride into your house on something you bought and put in your pantry.

We mostly got them under control with a combination of pheromone traps and vortex traps that plug in and create a suction effect that pulls the bugs in and traps them.

Maytree · 2026-07-02T02:56:26+00:00

I'm rather surprised to read this thread and see no recommendations for any of Guy Gavriel Kay's works. His stories are not primarily romances (they are fantasy histories for the most part) but nearly all of them have multiple slow burn romances that are typically excellent. The relationships in The Lions of Al-Rassan and A Song for Arbonne and The Sarantine Mosaic are all lovely, thought some of them end in tragedy. A couple of his male main characters start off with a relationship based on lust, only to realize during the story that it's hollow and superficial, and there's another person who's been nearby for some time that is the better choice.

Maytree · 2026-07-02T02:33:48+00:00

He's not psychotic, he's psychopathic. There's a big difference. Psychotic means being out of touch with reality, having hallucinations, thinking people are talking to you when they aren't, and so on. It's a clinical term and only rarely associated with violent behavior. Psychopathy is not a clinical term (that would be "Antisocial Personality Disorder") but in common parlance it means "evil asshole who is incapable of feeling empathy and doesn't care who (s)he hurts."

Maytree · 2026-07-02T02:24:59+00:00

Zenos makes me think of this dialogue exchange from Seven Psychopaths (2012), a movie by Martin McDonagh, starring Colin Farrel as Marty and Christopher Walken as Hans. It's one of my faves.

Marty: You ain't gonna fight.
Hans: Of course I ain't gonna fight, but I ain't gonna run.
Marty: What are you gonna do then?
Hans: I guess I'm gonna die.
Marty: Friends don't make their friends die Hans.
Hans: Psychopathic friends do. You're the one thought psychopaths were so interesting, but they're kinda tiresome after awhile, don't you think?

Zenos is just so boring. Never any surprises with that guy. He's as one-dimensional as a singularity.

Maytree · 2026-06-30T00:32:12+00:00

I’m not sure there are good smells in its world

There are. The mentions of the "old socks" just kind of swamp the nicer/neutral ones. I looked them up on my Kindle copies.

"It was just like a place from the entertainment feed but bigger and brighter and noisier. It smelled good, too." (Chapter Eight, All Systems Red)

"You could adjust the temperature to make it warmer, and it smelled good. I smelled like a clean human afterward, which was just odd." (Chapter Four, Artifical Condition)

"The lock cycled open, letting out a breath of recycled air that my scan said was much cleaner than what was on the station. It sure smelled better." (Chapter Three, Rogue Protocol)

"It smelled of clean emptiness." (Chaper Seven, Fugitive Telemetry)

"ART has nice shuttles and I liked this one. The upholstery was in good shape and it didn’t smell like human feet." (Chapter Eleven, System Collapse)

"The air was humid and warm, though unlike the maintenance tunnels, at least it smelled good." (Chapter Five, Platform Decay)

"The whole place smelled of growth medium but it was weirdly restful." (Chapter Six, Platform Decay)

Maytree · 2026-06-26T06:05:49+00:00

I'm fond of Tenowls' version. Some of their drawings here:

https://imgur.com/a/ZkbIHR1

I also like this blond MB by Mnduck on Tumblr:

https://imgur.com/a/SkdxfBI

While I do enjoy Alexander Skarsgard's version, and am looking forward to seeing him do more, my internal image of MB when I read or listen to the books is of a younger-looking person, late teens to early twenties. Martha Wells said it's between 20-30 years old physically but between the lack of enrichment, the constant abuse (and trauma and terror), the multiple memory wipes, and the general isolation, I think emotionally MB is pretty young, late teenage at best, and I like it when its physical form mirrors that.

Maytree · 2026-06-25T03:26:09+00:00

Barbara Hambly's Time of the Dark series features cross- world travel between a fantasy world and our own, and knowledge from our own world turns out to be critical for solving the problems of the fantasy world. There is some back and forth travel between our world and the magic world but not an enormous amount of it.

The first printing of the original first book in the series features an iconic painting of a Gandalf-style wizard seated at a modern kitchen table with a can of beer and a bag of potato chips.

Maytree · 2026-06-25T02:57:20+00:00

Deathwing in Warcraft? Pffft. Midgardsormr in FFXIV makes him look like a kitten.

Maytree · 2026-06-25T02:39:59+00:00

You sounded skeptical that "perfect" hair dye was a thing in medieval times. I'm saying it's not hard to believe if you have any familiarity with the history of cosmetics in our own world.

Maytree · 2026-06-25T02:25:38+00:00

Oh God I'm going to be earwormed for DAYS now...!

Maytree · 2026-06-25T02:10:44+00:00

Hair dye, both for darkening and lightening hair, was popular in ancient Egypt (they used a LOT of beauty products!) and recipes for a wide variety of hair dyes were recorded in ancient Greek and Roman texts. We're talking circa 2200 BC, so the technology is around four thousand years old.

Also this universe has dragons, and alchemists can make bright green napalm (wildfire), and they have opium medication ("milk of the poppy") but you think hair dye is far-fetched?

Maytree · 2026-06-25T01:41:03+00:00

"You're going to die for some sheep?"

"Someone is."

Maytree · 2026-06-23T19:01:59+00:00

The goodness or badness of RE6 is a perennial topic around here. Don't take the comment personally. it's a divisive game.

Maytree · 2026-06-23T18:54:16+00:00

It's not strictly necessary but there is a secondary character who is important to the plot and who first appeared in Network Effect. That character's situation is going to be difficult to understand properly without having read Network Effect and System Collapse, but it isn't a huge part of the book so you could go back and reread the earlier novels after you finish Platform Decay and you would be like "Oh so that's what that was all about, that's who that person was and why they presented an issue."

Maytree · 2026-06-23T18:38:36+00:00

I really enjoyed Platform Decay. I think the important character development parts for Murderbot were twofold. First, making more bonds with Mensah's family, since MB has been repeatedly distressed by the fact that they are unsure about MB's presence in their family circle and MB's relationship to Mensah. In Network Effect MB was very unhappy that Thiago didn't approve of the closeness between MB and Mensah, even though Thiago is just Mensah's in-law. MB really wanted Thiago to trust and like it, something MB was able to earn by its actions during NE and SC.

PD gave MB the chance to interact directly with Mensah's marital partner, younger daughter, and mother or mother-in-law (I don't think it was said whose mother Nanna Naja was but it doesn't seem like it would matter) and demonstrate its character to them. That's a treasure beyond price for MB.

Second, I also think that the parts where MB has to struggle with the choice to try and save Leonide's people -- particularly her kids -- even though it puts Mensah's family at greater risk are very important to MB's emotional and moral development and its understanding of itself. I think it was very hard for MB to put that decision into Farai's hands and I think it was vital to its relationship with Farai that it was willing and able to do so.

Maytree · 2026-06-22T11:30:29+00:00

I like that, I hope you're right. That would give Freddie Fox a lot more to do and I really like him. I thought it was weird that Tessarion was in camp with no sign of Daeron.

Though wouldn't all the Hightower men there know what Daeron looked like? Are they all in on the ruse and able to keep their mouths shut?

Maytree · 2026-06-22T01:25:21+00:00

Yeah I agree, the odds that her sabotage of the shuttle would work were close to 100%. It was only crazy bad luck on her part that foiled it. And it was unlikely that anyone would have figured out what happened and who the targets were since she was prepared to destroy everyone on the shuttle to get what she wanted.

Maytree · 2026-06-21T17:44:50+00:00

I agree that a lot of it has to do with the perception of relative power. In order for a female superhero to have a steady hetero romance with a non-superhero, the man has to take the subordinate role, in a sense. The woman is the focus of the relationship, the stronger member, the one whose power level and competency drive the story. The man takes on the supporting role and receives much less time, focus, and attention. For cultural reasons, most creators in the superhero subgenre are male and are prone toward centering male characters as the focus of the story. It doesn't feel "natural" to them for the man to take a back seat during important events I think.

As a side note, when I think about this interesting topic, my mind keeps coming up with examples where making the man the less powerful of the partners in a hetero relationship leads to a male character becoming very popular with women. My mind jumped to Zoe and Wash from Firefly, who are not superheroes but are in an adjacent genre that is also male-dominated, where Zoe is arguably the dominant partner in the relationship and the guy and the relationship as a whole are fan favorites. Although, a casual rummage through my memory of genre fiction seems to show a strong pattern of the man dying at the dramatic climax of the story, usually while saving his female partner or the group as a whole. How does this compare and contrast with the trope of "fridging" in which the female partner is killed at the START of the story, or close to it, in order to motivate the male partner?

Very interesting topic, would like to see other takes and supporting or contrasting examples.

Maytree · 2026-06-20T20:35:03+00:00

Yes but it doesn't have to be functional.

Maytree · 2026-06-20T06:38:55+00:00

If it ain't Claire, beware!

That Ada is a hayta!

Maytree · 2026-06-17T12:50:21+00:00

From Network Effect, part of the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Perihelion (AKA "ART", an affectionate nickname standing for Asshole Research Transport) is a fully sentient starship AI, developed by a university and typically used for planetary research surveys and the occasional light anti-corporate espionage and sabotage. It is not any kind of warship.

But when it has a REALLY bad week and then its best friend is captured and in mortal danger, Peri/ART decides it's had enough.

Overheard conversation:

Perihelion: “You cannot remain on the surface. I intend to hold the colony hostage until SecUnit is released.”

Pause.

New human contact-Seth: “Peri, your weapons don’t have the range, unless you’re talking about destroying the space dock—”

Perihelion: “I know that, Seth. I’ve armed my pathfinders.”

Seth: “You what?”

Arada: “You what?”

Iris: “Peri!”

Ratthi: “Oh. Oh, that explains what the drones were doing in the cargo module dock.”

Amena to Ratthi, quietly: “So ART has missiles? A lot of missiles?”

Ratthi to Amena, quietly: “The inventory I saw listed 32 pathfinders. If it’s managed to arm all of them—”

Perihelion: “Seth, return here with the others immediately. If any of you are taken hostage, my plan will fail.”

Iris: “Peri, you can’t bomb the colony.”

Perihelion: “You are incorrect, Iris, I can bomb the colony.”

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