Imagine a typical FPS game where you start loaded out with grenades, machine gun, sniper rifle, etc, and are dropped into a war zone… but, in a starting cut scene, your character has taken a vow of nonviolence.
You now must use these weapons to puzzle-solve your way through environments (grenades make distracting noises, shotguns open locked doors, sniper rifles accurately knock things off ledges, etc.) and, if you accidentally DO kill or injure another person, you have to start that level over.
Forced pacifism is a huge backlash waiting to happen.
Well yeah, but that’s because gamers are assholes, not because there’s anything wrong with the concept.
Certainly nothing wronger with it than there is with forced violence, aka how 90% of all video games operate.
No it’s more because railroading is a terrible design strategy.
that’s why people hate mario, right, it forces you to stomp on goombas and drop bowser into a pit, the railroading piece of shit
or like pac-man, railroading me into eating all those dots, how dare that game have success perimeters i tell you
why won’t punch-out!!! let me calmly talk through my problems with these muscular men, who designed this thing, some kind of train engineer
It’s why Portal, which has a specific solution for each level, is so deeply unpopular. It’s why Assassins Creed, which desynchronizes if you kill anyone other than your targets, never got anything but hatred from the larger gaming community.
I would play that
Gamer dude logic: Forced violence is normal gameplay, forced passivity is “railroading” and bad design.
“villain attempts to go back in time to kill superman as a small child, gets shot in the face by ma kent, who buries him behind the barn with the others” would probably have niche appeal as a comic but i don’t care, i want it
The first time a man from the future showed up at Martha Kent’s house, Clark Kent was two years old.
According to his birth certificate, anyway. She just kind of accepted that the details were a little fudged. Relativity, and all.
Maybe the stranger would have succeeded in whatever it was he wanted to do, except that he really did just show up. Appeared, like a ghost made flesh, right in the backyard. Clark, thank goodness, was out in the fields with Jonathan. He couldn’t bear to be alone, that boy, and they could never bear to leave him.
Which left Martha free to shoot the ghostly intruder in the face.
Martha had not always considered herself a shoot first, ask questions later sort of a person. But that was before she found a baby in a spaceship where her corn was supposed to be.
They’d switch off, Jonathan and her, who got Clark and who got the shotgun. Martha got the shotgun more often than not. Guns made her husband uncomfortable. She was hardly a fan, but she’d always been a terrible pacifist. Too determined to defend herself.
The sight of all that blood and brain and bone was still nauseating. She compartmentalized, told herself it was no different from slaughtering a cow; didn’t think about riot gear or tear gas or the friends she’d lost or all the things she’d moved away from when her heart couldn’t take it any longer. This was different. This was her son.
She prodded the corpse with her foot. It remained a corpse. A real nasty looking corpse, all big and burly and holding a gun much too large. She didn’t like making assumptions based on appearances, but she didn’t imagine he’d been coming for anything nice. She bent down to search his pockets, found a metal wallet and flipped it open.
Born 2018.
Well, hell. Wasn’t that just a kick in the pants?
Probably she ought to have been a bit more unsettled than she was. But she’d been waiting two years for someone to show up on her doorstep, men in black or UFOs or something. Hell, she’d half expected her sweet little boy to hatch into something worse.
Just because she brought home space babies didn’t mean she was a damn fool.
Jonathan had rejoined her in long strides, was holding Clark in such a way that he couldn’t see the corpse on the ground. “Well, shit,” he said.
“Eyup,” Martha agreed.
“Don’t look government.”
“Nope.”
“We burying him?”
“I’ll bury him,” Martha said, standing up. “You get Clark inside and read him a book or something. I don’t want him seeing any of this, getting him messed up in the head.”
“You sure? Looks heavy.”
“That’s why we have a wheelbarrow. I’ll stick him out behind the barn, might as well keep all our secrets in one place.”
Martha had a long time to think as she dug a time traveler’s grave. There were a lot of reasons someone might travel back in time trying to kill her kid. The first was her instinct as a mother, which was: he was a fucking asshole. Who killed a kid? Fucking assholes, that was who.
Now, it was also possible that her sweet little boy grew up to be some kind of space Hitler. She didn’t think she’d raise that kind of a kid, but she didn’t suppose there was any parent who set out to raise a Hitler.
Still didn’t sit right with her. She didn’t much like the idea of killing baby Hitler, either.
those ao3 “kudos” emails where someone has gone through and read pretty much all of your stories, one after the other: blessings upon you and your household
don’t authors find that weird though? i don’t do that, just because i always figured it might seem stalkery, going story by story through people’s older work (which of course i do ~all the time~ because awesome fic is addictive)
if people are happy to have the kudos, i will totally start leaving them as i read
I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but no, I don’t find it creepy. Someone I’ve never met going through my old instagram selfies and systematically liking them – creepy. Someone I’ve never met obsessively reading my old fics and liking them – my favorite person of the day. Just MHO.
seeing the same person’s name on a string of kudos for your fics because they’ve obviously read through your back catalogue is one of life’s great joys
xcziel, there’s nothing I like more as a writer than someone who is obviously reading everything.
Well, maybe comments. Yes, on old fic too.
I once (back on lj) had someone comment on every single chapter of a fic I wrote in one evening. It was the most thrilling night of my fanfic career. I didn’t feel creepy in the least.
COMMENT. I don’t care how old it is or how many chapters a reader comments on.
The only thing that might possibly be more flattering is the “I stayed up all night because I couldn’t stop reading” comment.
Yes, please.
YES ALL OF THIS
all of this
Reblogging because readers somehow still have this idea that too many comments/kudos are seen as creepy or stalkery. IT’S NOT. Seriously. Every comment, all of the kudos, they’re greatly, GREATLY appreciated. And knowing that someone liked your work enough to click on your name and go through your other fics and liked those too, even the old stuff you’re kind of self-conscious about, is the greatest feeling a writer can have. So if you like a fic, say something/leave kudos, no matter if it’s the first or fifth fanfic you’ve read in one night from that author.
I LOVE when I get an email where it’s the same name, like a dozen or more times because they went through and read like, /everything I ever wrote/ apparently. It makes me so happy! 😀
Multiple kudos and/or lots of comments are the best thing ever
Not at all creepy. It’s like, they are reading, get to the end, said they liked it, and Prove they liked it because they read another and liked that…
And yes, it’s just as fun to see this with old stories. Maybe even more?
The other thing that is super nice? When someone comments and says, hey, I tried to kudos but I had already kudos’d so I’m commenting to kudos again because I do that ALL THE TIME. I either forgot I’d read this lovely thing and want to kudos again, or I’m doing a re-read of something and I *want* to kudos again. When it happens to me it’s seriously lovely – someone enjoying your stuff enough that they re-read.
I LOVE EVERY LAST PERSON WHO INTERACTS WITH MY FICS
me, holding my newborn child: what are its stats??
Class: Infant Race: human Strength: 0 can barely support own head Agility 0 needs to learn to walk Intelligence: 2, understands that crying brings food, replacement of soiled garments with fresh ones Wisdom 1 no object permanence Charisma: 20 becuase people lose their shit around babies, -1 for each month until Terrible Twos and all Charisma drops to 1.
HP: 2
Spells per day: Cloudkill, Telepathic Summons, Sleep (casts on Self),
Infant fingernails: does +1 cutting/slashing damage
Ppl be like “ I want an actual male gem, not just Steven.”
Jeez, it’s like having only one character
to represent your whole gender
in a group composed all of another gender
is a bit upsetting huh?
I wonder
what
that’s like
no really
can you
even imagine
what this lack of representation
MUST
FEEL
LIKE
This
post
isn’t
long
enough
none of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either
it’s actually physically impossible for me to not reblog this post.
I want to say I’ve reblogged this before, but I’m reblogging again for the brilliant addition of, “None of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either” because FUCKING THANK YOU.
mmmmmhm.
Every time I reblog this, there are new shows on the list.
Wow
it’s almost
as though
this happens
almost constantly
But normally you don’t notice, because it’s not about you.
I will never not reblog dainty deer-stepping beetle
wanna know the best thing about these trilobite beetles?
these are all ladies.
males look like every other beetle out there, but are the same species. it was a huge mystery for the longest time what the hell a male even looked like, or if there even were males, until they issued a money reward and someone brought in a mating pair. and they couldn’t believe that they were even of the same species because of how different they look.
we have an irl species of giant monstrous ladies and tiny dainty plain males
Meanwhile, aliens on Star Trek have bumpy foreheads.
Russian soldiers witness the awakening of an elder god.
Why does this stuff always happen in Russia? What are they doing?
Reality decided that’s the only place where it can cut lose, considering they don’t seem to give a fuck about anything.
“According to some of the YouTube comments, the fire was caused by burning zinc, and the screaming came from the underground pipes that had somewhat of a ‘flute’ effect when the air passed through the tubes.“
