Ellis/Sand, Romantic Deviant

there can be overlap, but you will get some people who are exclusively one category and they are... unwilling to accept alternate interpretations of "shipping"

imo there's also shipping as "an aspirational relationship to project onto" and shipping as "I want to put these characters in a situation and see what falls out", given how "but you wouldn't want to be in that kind of relationship?!!" takes I see

is that a harsh way to look at NPCs? maybe. I love me a dark souls NPC and am sometimes sad they don't have more to say. but man. what's the AI even going to generate that's half as good as the carefully crafted lines that *do* exist and tell me more about the NPC and/or world?

with endless dialogue you very much run into the risks of a) the NPC telling you something *incorrect* and therefore perhaps fucking up the game and b) losing the *important* information in all the endless "hello, stranger!"s

the "infinite NPC dialogue" is so pointless, too. like even aside from "I am generally only talking to NPCs to get something interesting, useful, or funny out of them and drowning me in endless variations of small talk doesn't add anything to my game experience"

they're all a little cliche, but I like turning them and their general relationship and their pasts and their group and pair dynamics over in my head.

they date now. and run an inn. the ex-general is the military force guy and bouncer, the ex-chancellor is an excellent poisoner and they don't let him near anything important, the femme fatale ex-spymaster is barkeep, and the ex-princess is magic and cooking.

my middle-aged villains (and their ex-princess girlfriend) from a political low-fantasy world. they lost the villain-off to the princess' brother, so because they all had *some* mutual respect for each other as opponents, they went into hiding together and then all ended up dating

some of the other Discworld strands are more about skewering mythology or literary tropes, fantasy tropes in particular, so IG you could read them as less serious, but they're still a fun read if you like loving deconstructions of the source material

I assume people see fantasy comedy and/or that his earliest and latest books include YA and assume it's not that deep, but man, there's some good society skewering satire in the Discworld books, the Watch books especially.

you're gonna love the "he's like a father to him" discourse.

just an opinion. it's okay to have all kinds of opinions, as long as they're not about anyone in particular, apparently.

you know, sometimes I'm like... maybe no-one will mourn me, but at least my legacy won't be so many lives wasted in the kind of cruel, hateful, violent ideology right wing ""political"" ""debaters"" sell. I'd rather be a net neutral than a net negative.

you too can give up all your own ability to make your own choices to let a probability machine give you the most average answer.

given there's like... some suggestion genAI has adverse affects on decision making skills, it's an interesting choice to choose to show that in adverts like it's a positive :p

self-shipping with characters who *were* older than me at the time but are not now, because I age and they don't :p

also like... the "Secret Third Thing" folks implying that people out of work are all stupid layabouts who obviously have too much free time and not enough real problems, whether they realise it or not, are edging into some dubious territory that they might wanna unpick a little.

some days you do the landscape, some days you sit and do the Artblock Putting Paint on Paper :p

lord, typo. anyway. this is not a perfect analogy, I just think it's kind of interesting that we'll teach kids that roads are dangerous and how to be safe, even though cars can and do kill people, but... not internet safety. weird, huh.

rather than teach kids that the information superhighway in dangerous and ways to navigate it safely or stay off it, some people have decided to let them play on the road and ban the cars instead.

probably gonna have to go back in and fix some things but hey, for once having a slightly wobbly hand really helped on painting those fence wire strands :p

watercolour painting of a landscape. an empty green field under a grey cloudy sky, with the suggestion of trees on the horizon. in the foreground is a barbed wire fence

I got grass/foliage brushes for my birthday like 2 months ago and this is the first time I've really tested them out

I am not good at these games so it takes me a while to get anywhere without dying repeatedly on the way, and you know. frequently Some Number of attempts at bosses. Mohg was probably the hardest so far.

got Radahn, Mohg, and Rykard down, plus all the base story bosses up until the Foot of the Forge site of grace. done most of the Haligtree too up, just the last boss left, and all the underground sections. probably gonna go do the expansion first, or you know. as much of it as I can

screenshot of the video game elden ring, focussed on the face and chest of the player character. the character has grey skin, grey hair held back by a gold and red headband, and is dressed in highly decorated silver armour with decorative gold chains and gems

screenshot of the video game elden ring, showing the character customisation screen, with the menu options to the left and the head of the character to the right. the character has grey skin and a messy grey hairstyle with a fringe over one eye, and side sections that stop just above the shoulders

screenshot of the video game elden ring showing the character status screen. The left side has a small section of text, showing the character name Samael, followed by a short list of "Body Type: A, Age: Young, Origin: Samurai, Keepsake: Golden Seed". The character's equipment is shown in small icons below. on the right is the full length figure of he character, wearing silver armour and holding a triangular shield of engraved brass and a spear made of spiralling gold bands

been playing a game. it's probably not the *point* that I made my tarnished to my personal taste but hey, I think I'm allowed some personal taste, heterochromia and all

you'd need images for everything but like, you could frame most of those images with the inside of the windshield. maybe the occasional focus shot on the side window, or a mirror, or the front passenger seat, or the radio.

I don't think it'll be a project I make because man, that feels like more work than I have in me on any given day, but it is fun to think about what kind of things you might see out of the corner of your eye

just a weird little horror visual novel about driving at night and the things you see, maybe. couple of branching routes- both in the terms of gameplay and literal driving route

my dad's car has this built in system for like, GPS and all that, and every time it starts the Computerised Voice says "starting normal recording"

and all I can think is "this implies there is Abnormal recording", which always feels like the start of a horror game lmao

"your ship doesn't sail" good! maybe I want to see the whole relationship fall apart and founder on the rocks, wrecking everyone involved :p