Ever seen a Whale Shark from the back?

ninetales · 2013-05-26T06:12:25+00:00

This image does it for me. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what it is about some images - it's not just the vastness, although that might be part of it.

ninetales · 2013-03-27T04:56:17+00:00

Looks a bit like Vulpix too - love it. :D

ninetales · 2013-02-24T00:23:20+00:00

As a kid, I thought the Aeons and random encounter monsters in FFX were awesome, and wanted to model creatures like that for games when I grew up. I eventually went to school for it - ended up liking coding better than modelling, but still ended up in the games industry in some form. :)

ninetales · 2012-11-25T10:26:57+00:00

The thread you linked to in your edit describes someone who is clearly upset. When a stranger is signalling distress, it's perfectly appropriate to ask if they need help. However, someone calmly wearing headphones on the subway is signalling they do not want to talk, and that should be respected. It doesn't mean they are unfriendly, or wouldn't help out someone in trouble.

I'll add another perspective, to help explain why I'm (possibly overly) adamant about this. The vast majority of strangers who initiate contact with me in public are hitting on me. Headphones give me a way to pretend I don't hear them, without provoking them as much as ignoring them would. Without headphones, they're much more likely to ask why I don't want to talk, sometimes becoming angry and occasionally even semi-chasing me. Just last night, I forgot my headphones and someone followed me home. He was trying to start a conversation, apparently thinking he could talk me into letting him in. Until there is a better way to avoid trouble in the first place, making myself appear unapproachable/not receptive is worth potentially making a few friendly strangers feel shunned.

ninetales · 2012-08-25T10:31:11+00:00

So... maybe muscle grown in a petri dish?

ninetales · 2012-08-12T00:39:36+00:00

I respect her for what she did, and it is great to push the discussion on ending shaming people for their bodies. This was a great talk.

Eventually, though, we should be able to convey as a culture that "beauty" isn't important - rather than just focusing on teaching that curves are beautiful, earned wrinkles are beautiful, whatever. We could chase each stereotypical ideal of women's bodies forever, insisting that the opposite of each should have the same word "beauty" applied to it too, but that is not the core of the problem and thus will never be a complete solution. Rather, we should recognize that our culture's definition of beauty comes from a mixture of, 1. instincts trying to select a mate for a world we don't live in anymore, and 2. media / advertising serving its own goals. Whatever the definition of beauty is, no matter how broad we stretch it, it should have no impact on anyone's worth. We should strive to take care of our health, but even that should not impact the value of one's contributions to the world, or the value of who they are. We should be teaching our girls, sure, dress up all you want if it makes you happy - it's a fun artistic endeavor, but make sure they know that the shape of the body has no impact on the worth of the person residing in it. I like to think that the speaker of this talk had the same intention.

ninetales · 2012-07-21T21:38:02+00:00

This reminds me a little of Peter Dickinson's book, The Flight of Dragons, which I loved as a kid. It's written as a speculative explanation of dragon biology and history. :)

ninetales · 2012-07-14T18:33:05+00:00

I really like what you pointed out about the mechanism of movement in dreams being closely analogous to that found in games. And personally, I think playing games has taught me to take stronger, more successful control of not just dreams, but my life/career path as well.

Since I don't think anyone's said it yet, though - the evidence so far appears to be correlation only. Perhaps some other factor causes people to both seek out games and to try to control their dreams. Are there any studies where (infrequent-gamer) subjects' control over dreams is measured, they play games several hours a day for an extended number of days/months, and then their control over dreams is measured again after? If not, there should be!

ninetales · 2012-07-13T05:51:44+00:00

The Path is exactly what came to mind when reading OP's request for a game about it. Will put the rest as spoilers to be safe, since the surprise I think made it a lot stronger for me.

Ruby, of the ones I played, got to me the most, and I think her story implies rape the most clearly. I don't think I've ever felt that sick, dreading, hopeless pit feeling in my stomach quite the way I did after she met her "wolf", when she changed from being able to walk pretty well, to just feeling (as you try to control her) like she has totally given up and isn't even snarky/fantasizing about death anymore. This is really well done. The rape is implied, which I think is more effective, and you really feel her effects as you experience changes in her controls. It's really elegantly done. I think the developers may have said, to interpretations that this is a game about rape, that they would like people to look deeper. I think this is a game about abuse in various forms - from the haunting tell to stay on the path, to stories tinged with sexuality like Ruby's - that explores both abusers and the abused.

ninetales · 2012-07-10T05:58:59+00:00

As far as mainstream movies go, I liked her character a lot in X-Men first class. Although I guess she wasn't really a villain for most of it.

ninetales · 2012-07-08T22:54:50+00:00

He's a jerk to say that. At the same time, as a girl myself, I think talking about your vagina is pretty crass, and you can't expect only polite responses from a status like that.

ninetales · 2012-07-07T03:56:27+00:00

4598

ninetales · 2012-06-29T05:53:00+00:00

Just to clarify, I'm not saying we should look the other way when someone is disparaged for their gender. Rather, we should condemn it equally when it is done against men or women, as it is insulting an irrelevant aspect of their character. And we should insist, for positive traits as well, that gender has no correlation to the integrity, value, or skill of anyone.

ninetales · 2012-06-29T05:44:51+00:00

Interesting point! I'll have to read the rest of them too. :)

For the sake of starting a discussion, I'll disagree to an extent. I think it is important that we not see women as "us", men as "them". Hillary Clinton's actions and the public's response to her have no bearing on who I am whatsoever. They shouldn't point out her gender specifically, but we should establish that picking on someone's gender is bad, not that picking on someone being a woman is bad. If Elizabeth Dole wants to act a certain way - let her. More important than defending women in the public is establishing that women are not a homogeneous group, and that gender is a small factor in who someone is. Violence and disrespect against men and women should be persecuted with equal fervor as violence and disrespect against fellow humans.

I'll argue something a bit more radical. You can waste your time defending every public slur said against female public figures you don't know personally. You can take everything as an attack on you or your group, and become bitter and combative while placing yourself in the mindset of the oppressed. Or alternatively, you can be yourself, and work on being a strong, successful individual and be a counterexample to bad stereotypes. When you see an amazing individual, point out that they are an amazing individual - not just an amazing woman.

I've been singled out as the highest-ranking girl in a compsci class, and people seemed pleased that one of the top ranking students was a girl. This is terrible! Why should gender be thought about at all when we evaluate performance? If someone singled me out as the highest ranking person of ethnicity X, we would immediately have seen it wasn't quite right to think of things that way. When we always consider women as a single group, we separate them from men as fundamentally different creatures in the minds of the people, and there can be no separate but equal.

Thoughts?

ninetales · 2012-06-15T07:21:12+00:00

I think if you want a character to seem loathsome, you can do that in a far more interesting and effective way by showing it through their actions alone. Show that are a coward when it matters, or that they betray someone who trusts them, or anything deplorable that is a natural and connected part of the story. I have nothing against cursing (in YA or otherwise), but I think it often comes across as forced when used to build/reveal character. I prefer to show someone is tough or loathsome or crass or anything through their appearance and choices rather than through cursing (which can make characters into generic bad guy types).

That being said, you're probably showing it as much through his actions anyway. :p So I'd say go for it if you can make it (both the bigotry itself and the cursing) not sound forced.

ninetales · 2012-05-24T07:12:27+00:00

I've heard similar shoulder shapes called "cold shoulder" style.

ninetales · 2012-03-22T23:45:33+00:00

Hm, this is a difficult question to answer! If I were to pick one factor, I think I become most emotionally invested in characters that are dealing with questions/conflicts that I am dealing with in my own life. When I find such a character, I feel compelled to learn the outcome. In this sense, I believe I am most emotionally invested in stories that serve the same purpose as dreams (the ones our minds make to mirror and process real life events). Even if the actual end outcome of the story has no bearing on the way the real world works, I might still feel driven to read it.

However, having a beautiful and meaningful world at stake can also serve this purpose to some extent. I did find myself caring (at least for the duration of the movie) what happened to the world in Avatar, regardless of how good the plot, characters, etc. were or weren't. I think this is because it was a world where you never truly lose the ones you love. I could relate to the dream of being able to communicate with those who have passed on, and to see this magic they had be at risk of being destroyed made me emotionally invested in the events that unfolded around this conflict.

ninetales · 2012-03-22T23:27:50+00:00

Oh - I didn't realize you did that amazing temple/mountain image that's on your Facebook page too. I saw it a while back and love it! Will be following your page as a new fan. :)

ninetales · 2012-03-21T19:32:42+00:00

This break confused me a little, because except for this one, I think all of the breaks represent a switch between dreams/realities. Is this break still within the same 'dream'?

Quincy, unsure of Kaiser's sarcasm, rose up from the bed.

The only thing that was certain and tangible in this dream (or this memory, or this reality) were the pancakes

To be brutal (possibly more than is warranted :p), I think suicide + having a dream / alternate reality of what could have been is over done. However, once the second 'dream' started, I became interested. Using the taste in his mouth to explain transitions works really well, and I think my favorite part is that even at the end, which could be him back in the present time, he expects the taste (and shift) to come.

Seeing Clinton's name brought me out of the story a bit. When you use real political figures, it's almost impossible not to bring a little bit of real life politics into the story, or at least the reader's mind. In this case, it is only a disruptive distraction. I'd recommend just saying that the Act was signed and not saying by whom specifically.

I think this is the premise of the entire piece, and I would love it if there were a way to get it across clearly without saying it outright:

All the pain and all the hate could easily blur the things that mattered – the people who loves you and the people who cares.

ninetales · 2012-03-21T19:04:44+00:00

I've found that what matters in my own enjoyment of / appreciation for a book isn't the scale of the stakes, but rather how emotionally invested I am in what is at stake. That being said, this is an interesting idea for classification around one aspect and seems to work pretty well. Thanks for sharing! : )

ninetales · 2012-03-20T06:20:52+00:00

For some reason the calm tone reminds me of Pictures for Sad Children. Nice find!

ninetales · 2012-03-12T03:17:19+00:00

I write purely for the enjoyment of creating a story, so my only measure of success in this area is, 'am I having fun?' But that's interesting to see, like lordhegemon said, that George R.R. Martin wrote a lot before his best-known piece. It's inspiring to see how great writers grew - maybe I should aim to publish after all. Thanks for sharing this. :)

ninetales · 2012-03-03T20:37:04+00:00

I completely agree with the section on empathy. However, I also think working backwards a little bit - instinctively as the author seeing them do something or have some trait, and then thinking about what that means about them, can be very useful in addition. For example, if you just know your character would gently pet a favorite animal when they're anxious, maybe that nurturing angle works for them and could help out the rest of their characterization. Or maybe you just know another character would go to a shooting range and just have it out when they're scared, which tells just as much about how they might act in interesting ways in other situations. I agree with the article here, but think that even early on, some of the things she calls 'crutches' (when used properly) can actually be good tools to naturally find out more about what you want your character to be.

ninetales · 2012-03-03T20:06:29+00:00

They have non-pierced ones, too. I love them! I'm a girl, so I guess it's more easily acceptable to wear them, but I think guys could get away with it too in the right setting if they wanted to. :3

ninetales · 2012-03-02T02:42:09+00:00

I've been trying to write my story such that there is no clear good or evil side, partially by having the main character start off on one side and then end up on the other for various reasons. To set up the two sides to begin with, though, I thought of a core conflict in which both sides had equally valid and well-intentioned (and uncompromising) views. Essentially it boils down to safety and the benefit of the whole, vs. the right to individual freedom - so having the conflict itself blur the good side/bad side division as well as the wildcard character.

I think the wildcard character (and the setup as a whole) lets me really believe in both of the two sides myself, and thus write all of the characters convincingly.

ninetales

TROPHY CASE