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@darkmodepls
do you think Ryland Grace would make a good Stanley and/or Stanley a good Ryland Grace?
That’s an interesting question!
Thinking about this from the perspective of them swapping places in their respective stories with nothing else swapping, I think that Ryland Grace would make for a good Stanley, but Stanley as Ryland Grace feels more complicated.
If Ryland Grace found himself in the parable, he would probably fall into the role of Stanley fairly well as he’s very curious and would be able to keep up as The Narrator’s foil and with his snark. Grace would probably be very curious about how the parable works and eager to explore endings that won’t get him killed (which he would stumble into anyway because The Narrator doesn’t want to spoil anything now would he?). The dynamic between Ryland Grace and The Narrator probably wouldn’t be too dissimilar to Grace and Rocky’s dynamic. I imagine that The Narrator would probably relish in the opportunity to talk about the intricacies of his stories and the parable, but would be frustrated with Grace’s curiosity about the parable and reluctance to explore potentially dangerous areas and endings because it stalls the story.
Stanley is harder to figure out because of how little we actually reliably know about Stanley since he very rarely acts independently of the player and we can’t be sure any of The Narrator’s statements about Stanley are reliable. I don’t think Stanley would be able to fulfill the science requirements of the astrophage problem, but he probably would be able to pull off the death defying acts that Grace could. If you take in common fan interpretations (defiant, driven by simple or straightforward goals, snarky, curious, mute), Stanley could probably match Rocky’s energy, though they would have to figure out communication again, but Stanley would still have significant trouble with any science problems that crop up. Stanley would probably do fine at any point during and following the trip to Erid, but would not make a good Ryland Grace at any point before. The answer might also depend on how smart you interpret Stanley to be and whether the Narrative around him shifts to accommodate for him.
Things would probably run more smoothly for Stanley if The Narrator joined Stanley in the PHM universe if he retained his status and abilities as a Narrator, though Rocky joining the parable would probably kill him unless the Parable accommodates for Rocky and either gives him his own space or the ability to survive in the Parables atmosphere. I also don’t believe Grace or Rocky would do well mentally long term in the parable if they can’t find a way to leave on their own.
In summary, Grace would probably make a good Stanley, but Stanley would probably not make a good Grace.
it’s sooo funny when rude customers encounter employees who can deny them service for the first time.
i was working at a little cafe where I could deny service over bad behavior, harassment etc. & mask mandates had just ended a week before & already people were being weird about me still wearing mine—an N95, the kind shaped kinda like a duckbill.
so this man walked in, looked at me sooo scathingly, laughed at me, and said “damn. never known a woman to choose…practicality over looks.”
And I just said, “oh. you can go, you’re not getting a drink.” And he said, “what???”
I said, “sir, you just walked in at 6 am & called women impractical and me ugly in one sentence.”
And he was so astonished he didn’t even argue he just turned around and left 💀🙏🏻 it was like he suddenly became self aware
One summer I was running ferry rides across a lake so people could see the waterfalls without walking 6 miles when a guy snapped my bra strap as he was boarding the boat. So i immediately threw him off, he started yelling for my manager, my boss cheerfully informed him that, yeah, she’s the captain of the boat and she can kick off anyone she wants. He goes to storm off, looks expectantly at his girlfriend, and she just goes, “Well, I’M not walking six miles, Michael! I’ll meet you back at the car!” and sits right back down!!!!
The expression on his face when he was told that he couldn’t get on the boat, then immediately told that his girlfriend was ditching him? PRICELESS. he just blinked at her and then stormed off like a child. I gave her a free hat and was like maybe rethink this relationship…….
i once had this fucker come up to order a beer. while i pour it he shows me the wanky fucking chemical structure tattoo on his arm and he’s like “hey. you know what this is” i was like “nah sorry” (never cared abt chemistry in school, plus having to look at a some rando’s pretentious tattoo gives me the douche chills). he decides to respond with “heh. you must not read many books”
i immediately stop pouring his beer. i reply: “heh. you must not want this beer.” thirsty boy immediately starts groveling like a worm “please please no i do want the beer im sorry im sorry” believe me when i say it was one of the most pathetic things ive ever witnessed
gotta love people immediately backpedaling when they realise that there are Consequences To Being Mean
I genuinely believe that part of why it has become so normalized to be openly callous and evil in politics is that customer service culture has trained affluent people that they can treat everyone they consider beneath them however they want and still be treated kindly.
love this guy. sometimes i wonder what he was thinking during those years.
Bruce Wayne is best viewed through the lens of “holy shit your parents were genuinely so hot, insanely charismatic, wild, and hot and do whatever the fuck they want, and then they combined their DNA??????? they made one person out of that??” because then you truly understand he’s just Like That.
it’s not even that he’s doomed to be the main character. he’s just the product of two stars collapsing into each other while also fucking the butler along the way. that man was never going to have a normal life.
Car Trunk vs Car Boot: A clear win for US English, trunk was already a thing in which you stored items, frequently for transport.
Crisps vs Chips: I gotta admit, the Brits have this one. They're thin slices of potato that have been made crispy. No chipping of any materials involved.
Car Park vs Parking Lot: Equally matched. What's a car park? A place to park cars. What's a parking lot? An otherwise empty lot where you can park.
Elevator vs Lift: Both equally fail to address that the damn thing also goes down.
Haven’t really seen it yet so here we go, *Humans* have THREAT DISPLAYS! Sure, we seems small in comparison to other creatures both on or off our planet, but when we’re actively trying to make friends with everything we see that’s a good thing. But what if we don’t wanna seem small and friendly, say the vibes are real bad and getting worse, so instincts kick in and we gotta be *dangerous*
Take bears for example, those famous Terran predators. Big furry tanks capable of tearing into cars. We’re supposed to make ourselves look BIGGER to scare them off! Insane, but it works!
Other humans! We’re not *all* super nice, so what do we do when another deathworlder seems sketchy? Crack our knuckles, our necks, even flash our teeth a little for some flare, the literal post up or get done up pose where you invade their space and just in general look threatening. Our second natural language being body language, saying “back off or I’ll mess you up”, of course we have threat displays, and I’ll be the first to say I don’t always consciously know I’m doing them.
So when we finally have outer space friends, they’re gonna lose their shit seeing stuff like this.
I've been in a bit of an art funk lately, so I decided to do a little redraw of this piece from 2021.
did you predict the bloody mary ship
another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!
(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.
actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)
a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.
deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.
the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.
and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.
however.
you do have to know which one you're doing.
the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).
and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.
the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.
the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.
point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.
realizing a headcanon of yours happens to make an element of canon even more heartbreaking when you hadn't even considered it from that angle previously
[ID from alt: emoji rubbing their hands together and grinning evilly. End ID.]
Happy “Hat wrote an amazing fic” day everyone! I couldn't help but to draw some scenes:D
Rest and Revelations by Almighty_Hat <- Wooooo you wanna read it so bad wooooooo you're gonna leave a kudos and say something nice to Hat.
A different version of the last pic under the cut. I couldn’t decide if I liked the colors
Wow is that a beach episode? There’s no beach though. Pool episode.
ALSO. Iron Lung finally got a digital release so I (fiiiinally) was able to watch it. Beautiful experience. I am now having quite…emotionally intense ideas. Don’t worry about them yet, here’s some fluff
What happened to Ratchet after Optimus found him in the robot nature documentary AU?
He’s fine enough to be an annoying patient
incredible sounds happening here
This is what we call An Argument
An Argument/Game