After that last post, I realized we were probably overdue for one of these. As always with these open threads, no trolls, no MRAs (or people who bear a striking resemblance to MRAs).
Categories
Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff: Kitten in a beanbag edition
@EJ (The Other One) & teuthic – Congratulations! That is great! Best of luck at your new jobs.
@proxieme
Oh, no, it VERY explicit, especially at the end. I mean, right at the beginning, we’re showed a real world flash of Quico’s father looking angry with a monster shadow.
Spoilers
After Quico and Alejandra fix Lula, the Monster gets angry and EAT Alejandra.
After that, Quico goes to the temple. At the temple, Quico must turn statutes of his adventures into their real-life equivalent. Here you see the statue of the Monster turn into the real-life equivalent of the events that happened: The Monster eating a frog turns to a man drinking; the Monster scary Quico turns into his father with a belt; the Monster eating Alejandra turns into his father hurting his friend.
And it turns out you can’t sure monster, which means he can’t get Alejandra back, so he has to get rid of the monster completely.
Quico must lead the monster through an obstacle course. Those frogs? Replaced with liquor bottles. The next part involves sacrificing Alejandra over and over again to get the Monster onto the next platform. The final part involves Quico pushing the monster off the edge of the cliff, where it floats down into a tornado-like vortex.
Here’s a vid of the end since I probably missed some things.
https://youtu.be/khlP68tFqz0
End Spoilers
So, honestly, I wouldn’t let an 11 year old play this game alone, because it is NOT a subtle game at all.
Your kid may become upset; if they don’t, you’ll probably have to explain some things.
@sn0rkmaiden & pandapool
Thank you for your kind words! We’ll keep fighting! <3
Good to know.
I still might actually make it available for our 11-year-old (not our 8-year-old).
That does prompt me to do some more research. It may be something that she gets to play only around me. We have a good deal of alcoholism on both sides of our family. Its impact on my and my husband’s childhoods has been alluded to (er, “something to which we have alluded”). She’s asked some questions, but this may actually be a catalyst for more discussion…including the fairly important, “Given your genetic profile, substance use can be a tricky thing, mmmkay?” tangent.
@proxieme
That will probably prompt a good discussion. I would probably discuss it before the game so they understand it before they get to that part, however. It’s better to see things in context rather than think back on them with learned context, in my experience. You may want to play it as a family (minus your 8 year old maybe). Maybe review the video I posted with your husband so you’ll know what to expect, just in case.
The whole lesson of the game is about leaving people that will hurt you, even if they’re your family, your parent. It’s a good lesson to learn albeit a heart breaking way to learn it, as it is based on the creator’s, Vander Caballero, childhood trauma with his own abusive, alcoholic father.
The lesson is condensed into “you can’t cure monster”.
That’s something you’ll probably have to explain better because just because someone is an alcoholic doesn’t make them a monster. There’s some subtleties there that will have to be addressed. Many, many subtleties.
Also, for the sake of hope in humanity…
Pay attention, lurking MRAs: this is what self-awareness looks like
Good news: I’m going to apply to do something within a solar panel company today (hopefully). I also got a bigger memory card for my 3DS, so I was downloading a bunch of demos to hopefully pick a game or two I can save up for. (Gardening Mama and a game that’s like an RPG about running a restaurant/bar seem to be the best ones. Oh, and Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright. I have a mighty need for that one.)
Bad news: I slept on my neck wrong, so there’s a kink in it and it hurrrrts. And we’re having macaroni salad for dinner, with lots of my arch-nemesis, pickle relish. It’s also really hot.
So, with disabled people being among the most highly exploited groups, I thought maybe we should try to be a bit more aware in making disabled people feel welcome.
I have been seeing a lot of ableist language on here lately. Usually someone will use, for instance, “insane” and people will jump all over them, only to use words like “stupid”, “dumb”, or “moronic” in their next sentence, particularly amongst some regulars.
It does take a lot of thought to eradicate this speech; but I, for one, am going to make my best effort. I do have some tips. I reccomend reading a complete list of ableist slurs and making a note of which you tend to use. Stop yourself before saying it and replace it with “ridiculous”, “ludicrous”, or “outrageous”
Or, if it’s not spur of the moment, you could try out non-ableist — or Shakespearean XD–insult generators. They can be lots of fun!
Re: The subject of atheism. I was at a dinner party some time ago where I was sat opposite an older dude who announced pretty fast that he was an atheist. I said that I believe in God, but the reasons for me doing so, well, it’s a long story and very personal, and I preferred not to discuss it right now. He was like “okay”.
Then, for the next hour, he continues to over and over and over again steer the conversation towards atheism and how atheism is so much better than religion. Since I’m a polite person I was still politely holding up my end of the conversation, but when he says that one thing which is so great about atheists as compared to religious people is that atheists don’t try to convert anyone, I pointed out that he’d been trying to convert me for an hour now. He completely denied that and said that he’d only made normal, polite conversation, and if I thought he was trying to convert me, well, that must be all in my head and I’m just imagining things. I held my ground, and then he finally changed the subject, but with an air of “okay, I’m giving in to your completely unreasonable demands that I should stop talking about how great atheism is, since I’m such a swell and generous guy”.
*sigh*
And this was in Sweden, where most people don’t believe in God, so he doesn’t even have the excuse of being oh-so-oppressed by the religious majority. He did say that he grew up in a religious household and disliked it, but don’t take this out on me, FFS.
@Dvärghundspossen
Patience might be a virtue but, damn, you don’t have to be THAT virtuous.
Omigod, I’m watching In Living Color and they had a Milli Vanilli joke that wasn’t about them lip syncing. :O
@Dvärghundspossen – I feel like most people who persist in trying to “convert” a person to something aren’t really interested in them as people. I mean, it’s great to be interested in ideas, and it’s not bad to argue them, but if that’s his only reason for talking to you, it sounds pretty self-centred.
@Dvärghundspossen:
“A fanatic is someone who can’t change their mind and won’t change the topic.” It sounds like you found one of those. My condolescences. That’s just impolite behaviour on his part.
I’ve been trying to write this little fictional manual about magic for a couple of months and I don’t know how to end it.
It’s suppose to be one book of many in a series for young spell casters to learn about magic, although those other books won’t be written because this manual is just an excuse to explain how magic works in a simple way for me and readers before I write something more, let’s say, “evil”.
I have:
An introduction
Quick grammar guide (which has to do with how magic is taught)
What is magic
Who can use magic
How magic is used
A part that explains the types and branches of magic
An in-depth overview of (almost) each type of magic in two parts
An explanation between people who can call about magic naturally and those who need to harvest magic to cast it
A part that tells that tells that everyone is better at a certain magic than another
Where the magic is found to be harvested and that’s it
All in ten pages. :/
I’ll probably have to rearrange some sections here and there to make it flow better but I just can’t figure out the conclusion part of the book or whether or not I should include things that I’ve been planning on writing in other short manuals and just have them be briefly mentioned or not. The book is only suppose to be an overview of the basics of magic for children and it’s just frustrating me I can’t figure out the conclusion.
@Jackie:
If the pamphlet is written by a magician in order to educate other magicians, then the conclusion might be an excellent place to briefly explore the mundanity of magic.
To the young magicians, this helps drive home that magic is just another option in their life. They can use iPods and smartphones and cars and jumbo jets too if those help get the job done. Waving a wand to create a meal may be spectacular, but to a magician it’s no different from using a kitchen to create a meal: you do some stuff and then food happens. As such, a magician’s ordinary life will be filled with a mixture of the mundane and the fantastic, and there will be plenty of situations where they’ll use a non-magical solution because it suits them better. Telling newly-magical kids this would be the responsible thing to do.
To the readership, this helps you ground your system of magic in the familiar world and lets them understand that it’s coherent and obeys its own rules and limitations. It makes it less of a plot device and more of an aspect of the fictional universe.
I’d love to read that when it’s done, if I may.
@EJ
Err, it’s kinda not like that. For one, that’s not really how magic works in the world I’m trying to create, and two, the book is “from” the 60s. It’s gonna concentrate on “outdated” ways of teaching magic and theories about it since I’m going to be writing many different books by various author and stuff.
I’m thinking of splitting it into a student/teacher parts since this technically is for teaching. Teaching magic is kinda an old-timey apprenticeship sort of deal. The reason this book is around is because there’s been some shady teaching practices and misinformation being taught generation to generation.
Of course, it’s missing some details here and there about how magic actually works and how it came to be and stuff, but that’s because no one has the technology or fortitude to actually study where magic comes from, exactly.
I’ll just say magic is in the universe, but separated into another plane of existence which cannot be properly access by anyone who has connections to the mortal plane because it would fucking destroy the shit out you; all atoms erased kind of shit. It’s extreme. Although technically where magic comes from is another dimension entirely, the dimension we live in and the magic dimension have never been separated. It’s like if two trees grew from the same acorn and wrapped around each other. There would be a lot of shit messed up for at least our plane of existence if we every lost connection to the magic dimension, too, because our universe depends on the magic universe for a lot of things throughout the galaxies.
Although that isn’t mentioned in the book, I’d just thought i’d share it.
Here, I’ll like a PDF for peeps to read if they’re interested.
Please note it isn’t even a complete first draft so some of the wording could be a little confusing and some of the concepts will likely change,
https://www.mediafire.com/?qb2n2kjyxug2v9w
Cool. It’s a very scientific sort of magic. It puts me in mind of a lot of Platonic stuff.
@EJ
I had to look up what that was ,and I’m reading it and…
…
I’m just gonna go with, “Yeah, sure. How magic works in the universe is Platonic. Okay.”
I’m firmly of the opinion that magic systems are cooler when they’re written in terms of real-world philosophy, because it gives you a huge tradition to draw from and loads of things to reference. For Platonism, for example, it allows you to make reference to the idea of geometrical shapes being used as symbols for The Elements and The Corrupt, and of tables of references between them.
Platonism is an idea which comes from people who wanted to believe that the world was neat and symmetrical and made sense. Whenever they found A, they assumed there was a B elsewhere. Your system reminds me of that a great deal: it makes sense of the world, and provides a neat, helpful way of looking at it. Everything has a box, and everything is in that box. There are no unhelpful missing bits or anything like that.
Platonism also mentions the idea of multiple worlds, wherein things that exist in one cast a shadow on the others. This might be a thing you can use too.
@Pandapool:
You might be having trouble ending it like a book because it isn’t quite written like a book, with chapters and sections and what-not. Books that aren’t novels tend to end rather abruptly on the last chapter, maybe with a glossary or indexes and appendices, because each chapter is self-contained and doesn’t need to flow from one to the next.
The format you currently have is more like an information pamphlet, which feels like it needs a conclusion because the sections are all written with the same focus and importance.
I think if you organize what you have into more explicit Chapters and sub-sections, it’d be easier to figure out how to conclude each smaller portion without feeling like you’re concluding the entire book.
Also, I gotta say, I’m liking your system. Some parts of it remind me of a system I was working on a little ways back, which is pretty awesome. I had a similar three-category system of elements, and my categories were even kinda similar to yours in some ways. I had 3 sets of 3 though, rather than 2 sets of 3 sets of 2.
Man… I was even writing stories in that world… I should really go back to it some day.
Huh… now that I’m reading more carefully through…
“Magic” seems like it’s a very physical substance. Like, metal “magic” would be a physically touchable crystalline solid. Is that the case? If so, what’s the difference between “sensing” magic and just seeing a collection of it in front of you, since each of the types of magic have their own sensory properties like color and shape and texture?
How are these substances related to the magical dimension? Are they like strands of spaghetti coming through a colander, where you can sort of “pull” more magic through from the other dimension if you have some to begin with? Or is there some other connection?
*continues reading*
@EJ
Well, admittedly, not all magic is inside neat little boxes. There’s also Undefined magicks, which are very controversial and debated over. It’s because no one knows where magic comes from exactly nor the nature of the plane of magic. And the beings that COULD tell people about their plane are completely unhelpful with the matter, if they come from the magic plane at all. No one knows, really. (Well, I do, but this would become a reeeaaally long comment if I went into details.)
I probably should look up more philosophical and physic things but eeehhhh that’s kinda boring. I rather think about it, kinda like how I thought up the multiple worlds theory and was super bummed out when I discovered it already existed. Talk about nothin’ original anymore.
@Kirby
Admittedly, I’m trying to write a textbook without ever reading a textbook all the way through so I should probably look at an actual textbook for reference. I’ll find a textbook and think about a few more things I can cover before expanding on what I got.
I didn’t mention the magical dimension in it because no one really knows about it. You can’t go there or anything, at least people from this plane can’t.
But, you see, magic starts out in an “unnatural” state called Magos iridis (or Magus iridis, IDK Latin). It is a combination of all The Elements. The magical plane is always making magic so it’s completely 100% full at all times. Because of this, it expands into our plane all over the universe as rips, which aren’t like rip rips, but kinda like…sweat, in a way? Rips come through the plane but it isn’t because the plane is “thin” or whatever, it just does.
When it enters our plane, it turns into its “natural” state where it splits from the “rainbow” magic into the forms we know as The Elements. Some of the magicks don’t split cleanly, however, which create The Corrupt. The Corrupt can also be made through some very extreme measures. Think magical Hadron Collider type deal. The Elements are like uranium and helium, The Corrupt are like Einsteinium and Californium. Making Corrupt Magic isn’t an exact science, however. You just throw all the magic you can find and press it together as hard as you can and hope it combines into something you need because magic has a mind of its own.
But, yeah, you can, essentially, “pull” any Element or Corrupt Magic into the world through the rips until the rip decides to go. You see, magic is both a force and a being, so it decides what it wants to be, where it will be, and what it will do, you see. That’s why it’s hard to use certain magicks for things outside of that magic predetermined abilities and why certain people can control certain magicks better than others. It’s a compatibility thing. Gotta like each other to work together better.
Oh, and the difference between sensing magic and seeing it physically? A lot. I mean, you can see IRL metal, but really only magnets can “sense” it. You can still feel the metals, see it, know its properties but only magnets can be drawn to it, if you feel me?
It’s just, yeah, you can’t always see the magic in its natural form because it’s been combined with other things, like the sword example I gave. But, you know, just because tin and copper make bronze doesn’t mean the tin and copper aren’t there anymore, they’re just combined to make a new material. Magic is nice in a way that it doesn’t always interfere with how things look afterwards, unless a lot of magic is used.
Cool stuff! I’d like to see where you take it!
Fun fact: I only started making the rules up for magic because I wanted to write about vampires and the way vampires are made are through magic so I needed to figure out how magic worked so I knew how vampires work so I can finish writing my vampire anatomy book so I have something to refer to while writing my vampires. 😐