7bicycles [he/him]

  • 33 Posts
  • 282 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: February 8th, 2022

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  • I agree with your points but I think the problem is even with games that have good writing (and music and art direction and all the other bits and bobs that make up a video game) they often fall flat because the interactivity is not woven into them. RDR2 is just genuinely a well written western which is even more impressive considering it has to rank up there as one of the longest western storys ever told if you exclude something like a dime store novel named “Cowboy Kidd” that has been issued weekly since 1962. RDR2 would work just as well as a book, or a TV series or a movie or three. All the interactable parts are fun, but they’re also mostly separate from the writing and everything else barring some minor set dressing and the video game obligatory 2 endings depending on your ratio of puppy kicked vs. money donated

    Disco Elysium for example doesn’t work outside of its medium. I mean there’s enough in there you could make a TV series out of it, or a book or pretty much anything and it’d still hold up but it’d lose a really core part of the experience because the interactivity is woven into the fabric. Your choices matter and the world reacts to it.

    So here’s my suggestions as per videogames that would not work half as good if made into another medium. I’ll attach spoilers to it, but I’d recommend not clicking on them because it probably ruins a lot of what makes them good

    • Metro 2033
    spoiler

    Metro 2033 has a mostly hidden morality system in there that determines if you get a certain, important choice at the ending. I think the beauty of it and why it only works in a videogame is that it does not present you “Kick the puppy vs. save the puppy” choices, you get morality points for listening, being aware, perceiving the Metro and not killing people. None of which is really signposted at all and was a major criticism of the game because “How was I supposed to know I should perceive the world and try to understand it instead of killing everything I see”

    CONTROL

    spoiler

    The Main story is whatever, but there’s a lot of good writing in the lore and the setting. Also the games alludes to you, the actual, real life person, as being an unknown entity to the people within the game which is cool and doesn’t really work outside of interactive mediums








  • I’m coming out swinging here.

    Movies? Right out, between the distinct fandoms of both American Sniper Part V: Killing Children, the acolytes of Marveslop and guy who’s really into french indie cinema to sexually assault women there really is nothing to save there. Get rid of it, I say, what difference does it make?

    Books? Pfff, there’s the door. A thousand women converted into abusal BDSM play by a badly written fanfic of twilight and you want that shit to go on? You in favour of Steel Storm and My Struggle? Thought not. Fuck books.

    Paintings? While Homeland Security is waxing about Kinkade? Statues, as if that’s not the #1 signifier for alt right weirdos now? Away it goes!

    I think you get the point. To judge a medium by it’s worst fans is inane, though. Capital G gamers suck, but so do so many different flavours or fans of other mediums. The problem is not the medium.



  • Where do you read up on techniques, then? I can read recipes and I’m a fine ass cook as substantiated by lots of people but what I want to learn is "if I were a stereotypical mom or grandma (vietnamese) what do I vietnamesically throw together out of the pantry? What do I even have in the pantry? What do I buy for special occasions because it’s worth the effort (and combine with things out of the pantry of mystery). Or is there even a pantry, does the whole thing kind of work on “go to local fresh market every two days”?


  • It’s enough of a melting pot I can find most non-persihables you mentioned easily but then there’s also really no good supply of fresh kimchi, for example. So I’m wondering, for example, with the abundance of sauerkraut here in germany if I were to just add some ingredients does that get close enough, you get me?

    I can easily do the equivalent of spaghetti and meatballs, i.e. italo-american, for most of anything and give a local pan fry the japanese / korean / vietnamese spin but it’s still not the cuisine





  • Wait there was a schism? Guess I haven’t been on there in awhile.

    This is at least 5 years back but I didn’t follow it too closely, IIRC they had a number of people leave over their refusal to go “we are entirely unpolitical” which of course would be a stupid thing to be for a creative writing site. I think it came after they cleaned up shop with their QA and threw out a shitload of grimdark edgelord bullshit that accumulated.

    Wasn’t Public Universal Friend nonbinary and afab? The male pronouns are throwing me off.

    Very much intentional, maybe go through it again