I'm going to need you all to trust me on this one and watch Teknolust (2002) Featuring bio-geneticist Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton) and her three computer clones (Tilda Swintons) that live in her microwave.
$LAYYYTER
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Origami Around

#extradirty
Misplaced Lens Cap
YOU ARE THE REASON
will byers stan first human second
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if i look back, i am lost
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JBB: An Artblog!
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I'm going to need you all to trust me on this one and watch Teknolust (2002) Featuring bio-geneticist Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton) and her three computer clones (Tilda Swintons) that live in her microwave.
One the one hand, I basically agree with a lot of the negative reviews that the Kickstarter campaign for Mina the Hollower was not as forthcoming as it could have been about exactly what kind of game they were making, and the end product does feel like a bit of a bait and switch.
On the other hand, as much as I was expecting a retro Zelda-like, the concept of a full-featured soulslike that adheres to the graphical and technical limitations of the Game Boy Color is objectively hilarious, so even if I'm not particularly into soulslikes as a genre I feel like I have to give them a pass, because what the fuck.
Hi Dr Tingle! I just finished Lucky Day and had a blast! Though I'll forever have a soft spot for Camp Damascus, I loooved the lead(s) of Lucky Day and I think it might have been your best horror Tingler so far, technically-speaking. Always love that moment when the pennies fall into place, mwah 👌 Is there any crunchy details or references you'd like to tell us about, like you shared for Camp Damascus? I'm guessing "Vera" is for the meaning of "true/real" or perhaps "faith"?
there is one thing i think about a lot of LUCKY DAY but it is a HUGE SPOILER so honestly buckaroos if you have not read it do not read onward this isnt small spoiler it is HUGE so do not read ahead if you have not read lucky day yet (in fact you can get LUCKY DAY here and then come back)
SPOILERS BELOW
Of all the weird shit people note in this book not once did I see mention of the fact that Herschel et al are still meant to be in school the third and fourth weeks of December
Okay spoilers hereafter
I have the benefit of foresight because the thing that made me interested enough to read the book was the Claude liveblog exercise Mr. Nostalgebraist does but wow Vincent is a lot more Just Some Guy when interacting with Miriam on the phone than people surprised by it seem to have thought
Also “how did she buy the plane ticket after receiving money by wire itself after EOD” but that goes without saying. Still not an anachronism I’d seen called out among the many though, and what feels like a more-glaring-than-usual elision-for-plot (in the sense all of the anachronisms are for speed elision)
I think I’m of the “It puts the frying pan in her hand.” camp as far as how that happens, but loosely.
Setting the discourse bomb of “do I consider this magical realism” on the mantle like
Also,
No one went “ah. Gradient descent” about the droplets of water flowing inexorably towards the bottom of a bowl imagery? Really? Like no one else is going to eat this? Okay I guess
Miriam must be going through so much effort to produce this much rendered-as-italic emphasis on a typewriter
Frederick’s whole “yesterday’s ebullience over arXiv papers lab findings was kiddie shit. TODAY however I am reacting to the real thing” deal. I feel called out, by this
To be clear relative to the above
I am acutely aware Miriam is Not Okay and that her ideation is related to Vincent’s video essays, just, on the phone he sounds like Some Guy Who Is Worried About His Girlfriend already. The one-way ticket is reckless at most but it’s not sinister in the way people (and Claudes) took it minute to minute.
I have the benefit of spoilers, though.
I don’t know, something about the attempt at delicate phrasing when he’s asking if there’s anywhere she can go if she’s not safe at home hit me in the realism and I have trouble understanding it wouldn’t do so for everyone, I guess. Too much experience having that conversation live
Tumblr are you like. Okay
“Of Birth Pangs” and its companion chapter go unreasonably hard
I think Miriam imprinting on it changed my mind about the literalism of the frying pan? Someone else said it dropped out of the narrative but she’s fixated on it as soon as she’s back.
I think the Redactor chapter is one of the closer to baseline reality ones, with the description of Miriam compiling the papers. But she also has to be in Flatbrush for it, doesn’t she? Figuratively speaking.
Are there multiple instances of Miriam being sampled in parallel?
I guess that’s not actually necessary.
Vincent’s secondhand monologue here just gives the entire game away huh
(I swear I’m not uniquely interested in him, or only insofar as I know to be interested in him-and-Miriam. But a side effect of having been drawn to the book by all the spoilers first is I’m most prompted to remark on things that I haven’t already seen discussed from last year+ and this feels underutilized.)
Or then consider that Miriam says,
I have no interests or attachments, because I was made for a single moment
Aside from the latter being strictly false in the sense that she’s thinking about her boyfriend to avoid thinking about her brother and mother: man, what a gutsy thing to lampshade, on some level
Oh boy Chapter 21, here we fucking go
On the one hand reading this as my sleep meds kick in may not be the perfect state for comprehension but on the other hand it’s winning for Vibes
(Endgame spoilers from my spaghetti of a pre-existing context follow)
Continued endgame spoilers
I guess part of the point if not all of it in selecting Herschel is fucking with him and his being the inverse of everything Santa is and is about, because if they’d wanted a 1:1 equivalency to go gently they had Vincent
I am… mild to moderately perturbed that all the Claudes take this ending positively
Awake time, have more endgame thoughts
I’m still not finished so consider these quasi-predictions: I’m interested to see if I’ll change my mind about any of them as the balance of first- versus second-hand information in my brain soup shifts
Of Nativity continues
I think the last thought above might instead be too easy, but I want to try having it anyway? Arguably I am underestimating Santa if I say it shouldn’t all be a one-thread introspective dance after all!
I made it to The Ant Metaphor and want to gesture at: Man may do you good deeds by accident, on occasion, but he will never do such things on purpose
…What about ant farms?
What about endangered ant species! Conservation efforts exist, for over a hundred of them. Here’s a 1941 example! (That ultimately failed for that site per the article, but—how many ant-generations for it to fail?) Bulgaria and Switzerland pioneered legal protection for endangered native ant species in 1959 and 1966 respectively.
Obviously Herschel wouldn’t know this, most of it is in his future and he’d consider all of it Of No Consequence(tm). (Though he knows a surprising amount about baseline ant biology, given the ignorances.) It just feels relevant to my whole thing that the metaphor doesn’t survive contact with real-life human relations to ants.
You don’t strictly need Herschel’s ringing rebuttal, some humans just… endeavor to care a lot about ants.
Some humans will endeavor to care a lot about anything.
I think I’m convincing myself on the doom-scope, after all and possibly against the will of the text. Because of Ant.
That was definitely one of the books of all time
how to stop abandoning every writing project
make sure its the right idea and right time
you might get a new exiting idea every day and start planning it, promising yourself “this is the one im going to finish” but still ending up abandoning it for another one by next week because it either stopped being exiting or you ran into an issue which convinced you its too difficult or just wrong
you can fix this by reflecting and using your revelations to choose the right project
what do you like? what do you like reading about? what do you like writing about? what do you know a lot about? what are you good at writing about?
accept that there may be ideas you like as concepts, maybe you’d like reading them but not writing it into a book yourself.
is there an idea/theme/anything you’ve had in mind for a long time and havent abandoned? why is that different? list things you’ve liked for a long time. doesnt even have to be writing related
there are many new exiting things to put your focus on for a week or maybe even month but if you truly want to be consistent, its time to look at what you’re able to be consistent about
at what point do you usually abandon projects? why? whats the furthest youve gotten? what got you there?
its really important to understand the reason behind abandoning your previous projects to do your best avoiding that in the future
whats your favourite part of the writing process? which one do you struggle with the most? which part do you simply dislike? is it possible that maybe you only like the idea of writing a book or having written a book? why do you want to be a writer
when choosing a project, consider how much you’d get to do the parts you like about writing and how much you’d have to face the parts you dont
what do you usually do when faced with a hardship during the writing process? what could you do better? if someone came to you and told you all of these problems, what advice would you give them? do you think you give up too easily? what makes you give up exactly (a feeling, a thought, a mindset, a trait, etc)? what would happen if you never changed any of this? would you even finish a book ever?
the writing process isnt easy. there isnt a single author that didnt go through writers block or a plot hole that seeemed impossible to solve at the time. this is why its inportant to have the right project that is worth fighting those hardships for while enjoying the journey
try to understand the difference between something not being right for you and something simply being difficult at the time
is this project you?
is this the project you’d like to be known for?
why this project? what does it mean to you? what do you like about it?
is this the project you see yourself writing about, every step of the way? it could be helpful to make a list of everything you’d need to do in order to finish this specific project—researching a specific topic needed for the worldbuilding, coming up with all the characters, etc
which parts of this book would you enjoy writing about? which parts would you not? is it worth it?
if you find that this project isnt right, revisit the first reflection list you made and choose some key elements you’d like to include in your books, be known for, and write about. revisit your book ideas and put together a book idea that includes these elements and do reflection on that one too
whenever you feel like giving up, ask why. is it because you no longer like the project or is it just difficult? why? maybe the problem is not the project but what it has become? try going back to the very start and core of the idea and seeing when it turned into what it has become? if this is true and you realise you dont like your project anymore, go back and change the entire thing. its totally okay and happens to writers all the time. this isnt wasted effort, this is you discovering yourself as a writer and what you want your project to be. its never too late to change up everything about your project.
to solve this, make a mindmap of every possible path your story could take. write down everything and choose 2-3 you like most. then write them all down separately and reflect on which one would be the best. list the pros and cons of each one. remember: reflection is so important in every step of the way
before giving up
lets say you found yourself stuck again. everything seems difficult and you want to give up. remember that you’ve come so far. remember that its okay. and remember how many times this has happened in the past. you’ll most likely run into this moment with every single project and multiple times at that.
do all of those same steps again. reflect. change it up.
what exactly is the problem and how could it be fixed? (yes, it can be fixed but you might be looking at the problem the wrong way. you need a fresh perspective)
if you still feel like giving up, tell yourself “i can give up if i still want to after this step”
let go of all pressure and think of whatever you’re stuck on. maybe its a plot hole, maybe you cant figure out what should happen next, maybe your characters arent working with you how you want them to. now, without any pressure (just let go, maybe take a break, meditate) just think of the stupidest solutions. think of this project as something that barely matters to you. like it belongs to your friend you’re giving advice to.
i was totally stuck on where i wanted my book to go because no matter what i chose, there was an impossible plot hole i had to solve. that was until i let go of all the pressure and a totally unexpected solution just found me. something id never have come up with if i kept on cracking my brains to the point of hating writing, myself as a writer, the project itself, and everything else for that matter. i took a break, i looked over what i had with a fresh perspective and the starting idea it all sparked from. i realised that i could just switch up some things that i never even thought i could change because they were part of the starting point of the idea. i did what i feared would ruin the entire idea but in reality, it saved the entire book.
remember youre not alone, there have been millions of authors feeling the same way you do now. and you can use that to your advantage. look for other peoples stories and advice. look at interviews of (your favourite) authors (or artists in general), look for tips, reflect on everything, learn through trial, error, and reflection

and if none of this works, try writing short stories
I'm as big a hater of ToTK (treating ToTK here as synendoche for the way the "open world zelda" formula has taken over the design phsilosophy of recent first-party nintendo games and certain parts of the videogame industry in general) as the next guy but damn, some people really have weird ways to hate on it.
While cooking dinner last night I was watching a youtube video about the design of old zelda vs. new zelda and I was agreeing with a lot of the guy's points (if not always with the way they were presented) up until he started arguing that:
Putting content in a game that a large portion of players will probably miss inherently means admitting that the content in question doesn't matter
It's actually a problem for a game to allow each player to have their own unique experience with it, because it leads players to miss on the chance to connect and bond with each other over shared experiences
And like. I see where these takes could be coming from. Like they seem to fundamentally be arguing for the value of more tightly designed, curated experiences, which I think is a resonable position, but then when taken to their logical extremes like this and treated as universal metrics they become nothing short of extremely bizarre claims.
this is about the amazing digital circus and it's not gonna be positive.
it's also very, very long. it was originally going to be two posts, but for the sake of information being consolidated I've left it as one. I'm certainly willing to change this if there's some tumblr etiquette I'm missing surrounding these things, though.
I've tried to add sufficient trigger warnings to this post, but may have missed something. please tell me if this is the case and I'll make the change as quickly as I can.
The Amazing Digital Circus & Appealing to Fandom
disco elysium is one of the best examples imo of how massive a gap can exist between a piece of media and the conversations around it. if you’ve never played it i think you’d be forgiven for thinking its some sort of fun gay buddy cop romp from how ppl present the story online
i still can’t get over the choice the developers made to give harry amnesia at the start. which is par for the course for rpgs ofc but instead of building him into something from a blank slate like you would in other rpgs you have to gradually uncover what a monumentally creepy violent fascistic pathetic piece of shit he is. and at every turn you have to contend with the fact that the public sees him and knows him as he “was” instead of how you might want to play him. and the game tells you outright that what breaks harry psychologically isn’t even the violence he enacts as an arm of the state its the dissolution of his relationship (these things are not disconnected sure but the brutality of his role as a cop is not the catalyst for his breakdown). its not about guilt or remorse for what he’s done, it’s up to you whether you feel guilty or remorseful on his behalf. also its just so ballsy to make a game about never giving up fighting for a more just world for everyone and your entry point is You Are A Cop And Everyone Here Rightfully Detests You. And You Didn’t Give A Shit About That A Day Ago. and even if you choose to give a shit about it now (if) it doesn’t mean all is forgiven it doesn’t mean you get to feel good about yourself. you’re still a cop. and if you want to pretend to be a Radical Communist Cop go ahead but we’ll take the piss out of you for it. man its such a good game
So true and I say this as a Harry enjoyer
Talking Heads Masterpost
David Byrne Audio Interviews
David Byrne Video Interviews
Talking Heads Performances and TV Appearances
Talking Heads Concerts
Talking Heads Articles and Interviews
Articles/Interviews That Totally Weren’t Behind A Paywall…
What The Songs Look Like Book
Album Inserts/Booklets/Etc.
Documentaries/Other
Whether it’s people who mention their Hogwarts house on their Hinge profile or literal white supremacists, culture is awash with adult babie
This was an interesting article to read. I think it's a little simple but still fun to skim thru.
giving wayyy too much importance to aesthetics to a degree that is idiotic. 'these babied millennial need to GROW UP!!! becuase i think CUTENESS is GROSS!!' lame as hell.
ive had enough of articles of people pointing to a bunch of disparate cultural phenomenon that have nothing to do with eachother and making sweeping claims about 'our generation' or whatever the fuck
these types of articles rule because the author thinks they're making a broad societal commentary but really they're just exposing that they desperately need to Log Off
[sagely] society is going downhill because people are now nostalgic for their youth, something which has never happened before,
I gave this article a chance but yeah, it really is just conflating their revulsion for people they don't respect, habits they find annoying, and niche interests/tastes that really aren't common in real life public spaces with society's ills, for little justification beyond a psycho analyst quoting freud regarding little kids often acting out their current traumas during playtime.
Most of us will have encountered someone who, when criticised for behaving badly, appeals to their own vulnerability as a way of letting themselves off the hook. No matter what they do or the harm they cause, it’s never fair to criticise them, because there’s always some reason – often framed through therapy jargon or the language of social justice – why it isn’t their fault. Childishness grants them a perpetual innocence; they are constitutionally incapable of being in the wrong.
Like what is this? How do you write this and not flinch at how obviously your square peg isn't fitting the circle you created? You think a recent culture of baby adults is why your acquaintance uses shallow psych/academic terms to absolve themselves of accountability? Yeah, I do know people just like this. I also know people much older than me who are constitutionally incapable of wrongness, who don't use therapy or sj talk to make themselves look weak and pathetic after they've fucked someone over. This is a recurring type of guy, not created by Disney+, existing long before any of us and will continue existing when we're gone.
Heinz ketchup tweeted "adulting sucks." Someone made a post saying you're valid if you're unproductive. There's a grown adult in your circle who always has an excuse for why their abuse doesn't count. Alan Moore expressed a hyperbolic, negative opinion about cape movies. Again. Did you know Hitler was a Disney adult (links to top 10 listicle that states he was a huge movie and opera fan, with his he drawing of Disney characters almost a throwaway line)? Pepes. We're still worried about Pepes, right? Abusers can infantalize their victims. Conservatives can infantalize AND adultify - very tricky! A lot of people don't understand a mental disorder. Somebody out there isn't ashamed to carry a plushie around. You understand right? All of these things are connected. They're all signs. Things are dire.
Even if infantilisation is being pushed upon us, even if the helplessness we feel has a tangible basis in reality, even if adulting really does suck, we can still choose to see ourselves as capable of changing our own lives and the world around us.
The harms are undeniable,” says Cohen. “Bottom line: it’s a way of learning to love your oppressor.
I love how at no point does this sloppily slapped together article establish what, precisely, harm is caused by "people lip syncing with pouted lips and furrowed brows to audio tracks of toddlers" but comfortably concludes that these largely insignificant, quotidian interests are proof you've given up on life and the world.
Tldr don't waste a click, he's literally just mad that you like stuff he thinks is cringe. Even if you feel the premise is true, their reasoning is garbage and you need to stop automatically trusting articles because they're disparaging those you think beneath you
Grocery Cart
The best time to go grocery shopping is around 9pm. The mood is just right: mostly empty, but not eerily so; the employees are relaxed and ready for small talk, whereas earlier they’d be too busy and later too tired.
The cast of characters in the supermarket changes vastly depending on the time of day. People who live on schedules, have families, have their life together, they’re all gone by then. All that’s left are the shoppers who chose to be there or had to be there (like me, hungry with nothing in the fridge), and the employees who are there because they aren’t going anywhere else. The 9pm supermarket is a place devoid of ambition.
So I go at 9pm, grab a cart from just outside the door, and wheel her in. She seems to have a little more trouble turning than usual, but I maneuver. Fill her up with bread. cheese. milk. bacon. beer. that pre-cooked chicken designed exactly to appeal to lazy 9pm shoppers. I feel like such a tool as I toss it into my grungy little cart. Then I go to check out.
That’s where it all goes wrong.
I wheel the little cart up to the only checkout with a human in it. I recognize her of course; she works evenings. I’m still expecting things to go as usual at this point, because I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m the only one who hasn’t figured it out. Why is she just standing there? Staring down with a frown?
We are both still and silent for a moment.
“Oh no,” she says.
I’m still wondering why she isn’t checking out groceries. And then she drops a truth bomb that will reverberate in my brain ‘till the end of my days:
“This is not our cart.”
“Oh,” I say, immediately dismissing that fact as irrelevant to the current situation. Why isn’t she checking out my groceries?
“See,” she continues, “It says:” and I honestly cannot remember what supermarket that cart was branded with, because I considered it completely irrelevant, but she read the label out loud for me.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I didn’t notice.”
She stands still another moment, and then emits an “oh dear.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll survive,” I say, and start handing her groceries. The checkout process begins.
I find myself pondering the idea that she doesn’t work checkout at 9pm because she likes working checkout but because she doesn’t have the ability or will to get past the tiniest bumps along her path.
“Where’d you even get this cart?” she says, as she stops again, as if unable to solve the problem of how to check out groceries from an unfamiliar cart.
It’s funny how she tries to put me on the defensive, as if I’d wronged her by bringing in this godforsaken cart. I wonder if she’s looking for an apology or something.
“Yeah, it was just sitting right outside the door,” I say, and help her with the groceries again. “I guess someone left it there after taking it to their car from the other place.” Oh god, am I really explaining myself to her?
“Well, it’s not our cart,” she says.
I try to imagine a world, a perspective, in which this is a problem. I wonder what it’s like to be her, to look at that cart and see it as an obstacle, rather than something so trivial as to go unnoticed. Maybe I’m the crazy one, over-generalizing as mathematicians are wont to do, thinking that the general case of grocery cart can be combined with the general case of grocery checkout lane. Maybe I’m the one in the wrong, treating all grocery stores and grocery carts as equal, when here is a specific case: an individual life to whom her individual place of employment matters.
The last of the groceries go through, and we chat the usual checkout chatter, about non-cart-related things. A bagger arrives and helps put stuff in one bag while I do the other. The checkout lady wanders off.
“You know,” the bagger says, “this isn’t our cart.”
“Yeah, it was just outside the door and I took it without noticing,” I reply, still wondering why the hell anyone cares.
“I know, I saw you,” he says. “Have room for this?” he hands me the half-gallon of milk, a bottom-of-the-bag item, and I glance over to see his bag is almost completely and optimally packed to the brim.
“Yeah, got a spot right here,” I say, slipping the milk down to the bottom of my comparatively sloppy bag.
“You see, this cart has a lower carriage…” he begins, and starts detailing the differences between this cart and their official supermarket-owned carts.
I suddenly have a vision of carts as he sees them. He is an expert. He knows carts in a way I never will. I imagine him efficiently locating and gathering this store’s carts from the parking lot, knowing them instantly even from blurry far-off silhouettes in the dark and the rain, knowing them by the feel of how they roll and turn, knowing which store a shopper is coming from even when he’s facing away because he knows the sound. I imagine him seeing me take this foreign cart and pushing it through the store gathering groceries and all he can see is the glaring wrongness of the cart, so obviously different, wondering: how can I possibly not notice?
How can I go through this little portion of my life ignorantly dismissing what is so plain and clear to everyone around me?
I leave, and they seem glad to be rid of me, and the cart. If you don’t hear from me again, I’ve probably been arrested for accidentally driving my groceries home in some random person’s car.
an angel on letterboxd just dropped a whole playlist of films free on youtube I was filled with so much love and light I had to share with you guys
it also includes short films, animated movies, documentaries of every genre, full recordings of live performances. all spanning different decades from different countries. YOU DONT EVEN FUCKING KNOW
there are also websites like worldscinema, solidaritycinema, and rarefilmm hosting incredible obscure world cinema for free! and if you're more inclined towards the esoteric, there's also evilbjork's avant-garde canon playlist on youtube! also important to mention Maya S. Cade's incredible black film archive and the otherness archive, an obscure queer cinema archive! You could always be watching more films !
A new big 5 hour-long video essay dropped about Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages recently, and while I appreciate that it tried to explain the various references and symbolism it makes to a wide variety of subjects, I think trying to look at real history/religion/occultism/conspiracies to explain the game’s story is a fool’s errand because it puts all these ingredients together in such a slapdash fashion it mostly has little resemblance to reality (which the video does acknowledge but still spends a lot of time trying to do anyway). It can explain the game’s choices to a certain extent, but it won’t get you to really understand this game’s bizarro version of everything.
When analyzing it, people keep treating it as either some tome of eldritch knowledge (if they are already inclined to believe these things) or as a crash course in occultism and such (if they are more skeptical) instead of seeing it for what it is, which is a work of fiction. Harry Horse likely believed in at least some of what the game purports, but I don’t think it was nearly as much as people think.
The way I’ve come to my own understanding of the plot and characters is to not ask questions like “What are these characters referencing, and what is the history of it in our world which I will translate one-to-one to DG” I ask “What are these characters in-universe, what do they want, and why?” Because believe it or not, there’s an internal logic to it where characters have connections to each other and they all have certain allegiances and goals, and there’s a pretty straightforward backstory underneath all the mountains of jargon, it can just be hard to figure out because DG was unfinished.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but this feels vaguely relevant…
Read the full text of It Can’t Happen Here on Project Gutenberg: X
dammit I read the wikipedia plot overview and-
-christ we had a well know book that almost perfectly, step by step, laid out exactly how we’d get where we’ve gotten now, and its been around for like 90 FUCKING YEARS
fuck
I hate how this post got even more relevant
how to write fight scenes
many people have told me that Chum has good fight scenes. a small subset of those people have asked me on advice for how to write fight scenes. i am busy procrastinating, so i have distilled my general ethos on fight scenes into four important points. followed by a homework assignment.
Fight scenes take place on two axii - the physical and the intellectual. For the most interesting fight scenes, neither character should have a full inventory of the other's abilities, equipment, fighting style, etc. This gives you an opportunity to pull out surprises, but, more importantly, turns each fight into a jockeying of minds, as all characters involved have to puzzle out what's going on in real time. This is especially pertinent for settings with power systems. It feels more earned if the characters are trying to deduce the limitations and reach of the opponent's power rather than the opponent simply explaining it to them (like in Bleach. Don't do that). 1a. Have characters be incorrect in their assumptions sometimes, leading to them making mistakes that require them to correct their internal models of an opponent under extreme pressure. 1b. If you really have to have a character explain their powers to someone there should be a damn good reason for it. The best reason is "they are lying". The second best reason is "their power requires it for some reason".
Make sure your blows actually have weight. When characters are wailing at each other for paragraphs and paragraphs and nothing happens, it feels like watching rock 'em sock 'em robots. They beat each other up, and then the fight ends with a decisive blow. Not interesting! Each character has goals that will influence what their victory condition is, and each character has a physical body that takes damage over the course of a fight. If someone is punched in the gut and coughs up blood, that's an injury! It should have an impact on them not just for the fight but long term. Fights that go longer than "fist meets head, head meets floor" typically have a 'break-down' - each character getting sloppier and weaker as they bruise, batter, and break their opponent, until victory is achieved with the last person standing. this keeps things tense and interesting.
I like to actually plan out my fight scenes beat for beat and blow for blow, including a: the thought process of each character leading to that attempted action, b: what they are trying to do, and c: how it succeeds or fails. In fights with more than two people, I like to use graph paper (or an Excel spreadsheet with the rows turned into squares) to keep track of positions and facings over time.
Don't be afraid to give your characters limitations, because that means they can be discovered by the other character and preyed upon, which produces interesting ebbs and flows in the fight. A gunslinger is considerably less useful in a melee with their gun disarmed. A swordsman might not know how to box if their sword is destroyed. If they have powers, consider what they have to do to make them activate, if it exhausts them to use, how they can be turned off, if at all. Consider the practical applications. Example: In Chum, there are many individuals with pyrokinetic superpowers, and none of them have "think something on fire" superpowers. Small-time filler villain Aaron McKinley can ignite anything he's looking at, and suddenly the fight scenes begin constructing themselves, as Aaron's eyes and the direction of his gaze become an incredibly relevant factor.
if you have reached this far in this essay I am giving you homework. Go watch the hallway fight in Oldboy and then novelize it. Then, watch it again every week for the rest of your life, and you will become good at writing fight scenes.
as with all pieces of advice these are not hard and fast rules (except watching the oldboy hallway fight repeatedly) but general guidelines to be considered and then broken when it would produce an interesting outcome to do so.
okay have a good day. and go read chum.
I remember when I was first playing Tears of the Kingdom, worrying that the physics/contraption shrines were going to be tedious to replay
But having replayed a good chunk of both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and having some distance on both, you know what's tedious? The motion control shrines. The ones where you count constellations on the wallpaper. The one where you follow a korok without being seen. The ones where you have to match a grid of lights from a different shrine.
Don't get me wrong, the physics/contraption puzzles *are* somewhat tedious to replay. But I'll take them over the ones where you have to stand there and wait for a specific weather event to happen, every single time.
InterActivity #5 (Nov./Dec. 1995) - The Making of GADGET
Via The Internet Archive