7182415
Ah okay, I never realized that threads get deleted after a time. I check Fimfiction pretty constantly so I probably just catch the self promo threads before they're deleted more often than not. Anyway, that makes sense, thanks for taking the time to answer

7182419 Np boi. : )

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing ok.

I would like to invite all writers who are interested to participate in the Self-Isolation Writing Contest, currently open until the end of April.
This is a writing contest with the theme of isolation/separation, designed specifically for this period of global lock-down due to the pandemic.

You can find all the details in the contest group here.

I hope many of you will take interest in the contest, and I look forward to your participation. Stay safe and healthy.

I kinda went to sleep without doing a rewatch after two 10 hour days at work in a row, then woke up after a few hours of sleep.

Figure I'll still be doing the rewatch today, just rather later than usual. I could start to watch the next episode now, but I want to make sure I'm awake enough for it. I seem to be awake enough not to go back to sleep, anyways...

--Sweetie Belle

7188692
Ouch, that work time. Hope it gets better.

Also you could find a substitute for episode rewatch threads if you find them taking up too much of your time. Don't have to do everything by yourself, ya know.

7188881
I know. I do have the whole weekend available, though. It's mainly that I usually do it at the end of the day Friday after work, and that OT kinda killed the end of that Friday.

The trouble is, you know how everyone's being sent to work from home? Well, I do technical support, and everyone going to work from home is calling to straighten out all the problems they have when setting up working from home...

--Sweetie Belle

7188887
Fake coughing and say you have the virus. Maybe that'll get you some free time!

Just as a reminder, I'm taking this weekend off from the rewatch, and I'll go back to it in a week, with the opening of season 2. Of course, that'll be two episodes in one rewatch post...

--Sweetie Belle

7192428
But shouldn't you wait till September? For that genuine between season wait feel.

7192558
Next weekend, I definitely have time to watch a two parter, tho'.

--Sweetie Belle

Farewell, Rick May.

Or, as Soldier would say...

"Godspeed, you magnificent bastard."

So, the Youtube algorithm has once again reached the point where it apparently has no idea what to recommend to me.

For starters it keeps recommending me the same stuff over and over again, and also stuff I've already watched. And I don't mean like a long time ago, but literally yesterday, or this morning depending on how you view the passage of time. I mean with the red bar proving I watched all of it and everything. But most of that is pretty ordinary and what I've come to expect of it.

However, today it recommended me the same video twice, right next to each other. As in literally the same, from the same channel. That's... That's a first for me, I'll be honest.

It also offered me a "personalized playlist", most of which makes no sense given what I usually listen to, and the top video was one of my old favorites I haven't watched in ages. It is not, in fact, an actual music video but rather a demonstration of fencing techniques for the English baskethilt sword, set to music.

...I think I've somehow broken it, is what I'm saying.

So, I’ve been gone from this sight for a while. So, what’s new?

Hi wussup guys er putting this here because it's the free for all area and not sure where else to go but currently looking for a 4th author for a idea inspired by the payday games (4 characters 4 fics each a separate pov written by each character owner) and I got 2 others ready to go were missing a 4th as the medic for the first heist (just so everyone has money to customize and stuff before a random original heist the first is a bank one lol) would anyone like in

--Sweetie Belle

7220653
ermagherd that's too cute

Watching a playthrough of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, I've come to realize that Sephiroth's Masamune is a bit unusual as Japanese-style swords go. Not just because it's absurdly long, I mean.

First of all, it's a saki-sori blade, which is to say it curves more towards the upper half of the blade towards the tip. The typical Japanese sword has an even uniform curve (naka-sori or torii-sori) or on older swords it will be more curved in the lower half towards the hilt. (Koshi-sori.) Notably, in pretty much all official "main series" depictions of Sephiroth, his sword has had a very pronounced saki-sori, including his original concept art, so this is something they keep doing very much on purpose. (This does not appear to be true for spin-off versions of Sephiroth, however, such as in Kingdom Hearts or Dissidia.)

Also, the Remake has a very nice close-up of the tip of the sword, and the kissaki does not have a yokote line and the edge runs very evenly to the tip. Which means it's actually a shobu-zukuri type blade, rather than the more common shinogi-zukuri which is what most people picture when they think of a katana. This is not true for his original concept art, where the sword appears to be a shinogi type, so now I'm curious of exactly when this detail was added.

Basically, this sword has a weirdly specific design considering most folk would be very unlikely to notice or care about the small details that sets it apart from just "a very long odachi." Someone at Square Enix really cared about getting it just right.

7220653

That is totes adores.

7220653
dies of UwU overload

7213593

A brony attacked some people with a sword and our god Knighty has left us to scrabble in the dirt, but other than that we're totes mah goats fine. Fiiiiine.

Howboutu?

7237790
Still here! Doing rewatch threads of episodes instead of episode discussion threads these days, but going back watching the whole show episode by episode has been pretty interesting.

Decided to put on a different avatar for a couple of days, too...

--Sweetie Belle

7237805
Aheh, watching "Bridle Gossip" must have taken a deeply disturbing dark undertone what with the current happenings.

Good to see you too..

7237834 Well we've not reached that episode yet. I think we're on, what is it now? Sweet and Elite?

7237836
7237834
Covered Bridle Gossip back in December, actually! "Dear Princess Celestia, All the ponies in this town are racist!"

Not the only episode I had complaints with along that line, either. Some episodes, I love rewatching, but others, I end up with a bunch of complaints...

I did The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well last week, though. Tomorrow is indeed "Sweet and Elite".

--Sweetie Belle

7237843 Oh, I'm so silly. I got it confused with that one with the gossip column that the CMC ran.

I never can remember all these episode names.

7237849
Yeah, Ponyville Confidential is late season two, and that should be pretty interesting when I get to it, especially with its plot having been ripped off for that one notorious EQG comic. Things could have gone really bad at the end of that episode, too...

--Sweetie Belle

7237836w

7237843

Yes, I am glad I am not the only one who finds that the show does not hold up well to the modern day! There are a lot of episodes that have you going "Oh, this didn't age too nicely at all!" nowadays.

Kinda makes me want to write a darkly humorous, sarcastic retelling of all the "(person) goes to Equestria and has a jolly old time)" except with all of the things we now take for granted as being terrible slowly oozing out over time.

It would be a lot like those creepy 1970s-1980s British horror TV shows in which someone comes to a jolly nice little country town in Cornwall or Wales and everyone's perfectly nice and polite until it is found out that they are doing Druidric Human Sacrifice Rituals on Wednesday Nights, or they are all robots, or etc.

7237863
It also really depends on the episode. There have also been episodes that I've had great fun rewatching, and have even reminded me of what I liked about the show. It's probably not that surprising, but I loved rewatching "Sisterhooves Social" not that long ago. "Lesson Zero" was pretty good, too. OTOH, Pinkie Pie annoyed me so much in "Luna Eclipsed"...

You know, a normal 3d person transported to a 2d flash animation based world would have its own horror to it. Especially when you actually see eyes as big as your head and such...

--Sweetie Belle

7237878

Oh, God, that would be horrifying, especially if you put in the uncannyvally and add a few of those messed up Pinkie videos with the creepy laughter.

*shivers*

7040695
7040699
If you go that route you could proberbly add quite a few more characters; Discord, Sombra, Tirek, and so on. Lots of monstrous creatures you could use from MLP lore.

So I finished She-Ra recently.

I really enjoyed it. It had some of the most frustrating characters I've seen in a while but frankly, it was overall really good. Few missed opportunities in my mind, but hey, these things happen.

I'll be looking forward to seeing what that crew do next, if anything. I'll also remember the interesting writing trick of making your villains likable by contrasting them with thoroughly idiotic good guys. A... bold choice, but one I can't say didn't pay off, since it kept me highly invested in the villains and gave the good guys a lot of room to grow and evolve. Most of them. Frankly it's a cool/weird dynamic I'd be rather excited to try myself, even if it's perhaps in spite of my own better judgement.

There's not really much I think I've watched that has done that in that way. I think it's pretty fascinating.

I have recently started playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild again, only this time I made the bold choice to start it in Master Mode. The game is brutal.

Keep in mind, the game has a chromatic powerscale for enemies. Red Bokoblins, bokoblins being the most basic enemy in the game, have about 20 HP. Then you have Blue with 70+, Black with 240, Silver with 700+, finishing off with Gold with 1000+. In Normal, you start the game with glorious weapons such as a tree branch with 2 damage and can soon find a woodcutter's axe with the awesome damage of 3. They are good enough for red bokoblins.

Then you start the game in Master Mode and realize there is not a single red to be seen. It's all blue and black. In the starting area. Oh, and now they have a regeneration that would make trolls jealous, and it only takes a couple of seconds to kick in. Not to mention there is now a Lynel even in the starting area, a centaur/lion hybrid that breathes fire, has a bow, some of the most hard-hitting weapons in the game, and every single one is basically a boss fight. You have a stick. If you're lucky you got Boko Clubs that are just thicker sticks.

The difference is amazing. In Normal, my Link was a vanquisher of evil wherever it stood. No enemy was left unslain, facing them down in combat worthy of a Hero. In Master Mode, my method is: build a campfire. Wait until night. Make sure they are asleep. Kill the sentries with sneak attacks. Kill everyone else in their sleep. Not very heroic, but very effective.

There are a few enhanced weapons here and there, but with the way weapons break after a few hits, who can use them? It forces you to use every tool in your disposal and the environment in order to stand a chance, and I love it.

7243451
I've only gotten to season 3 with the new She-Ra, but honestly I find the show a bit underwhelming and I'm not sure why. It seems like it has all of the ingredients for something I should love - modern animation style, unique magical fantasy land, episodic continuity, nostalgic source, character gains new purpose in life, magic laser swords... but episodes just seem to drag with not a lot really happening or changing the stakes in any way that I've found interesting. Whenever I think about the show all I ever remember is Adora and Catra just endlessly yelling at each other, which grates on me very quickly.

7243464 I have a very bad habit of needing to play a game at its maximum difficulty whenever I get remotely good at them. What you describe is not unfamiliar.

One of the grimmest ones was Darkest Dungeon. Stygian/Bloodmoon with the expansions took me a good few tries to beat. On the plus side, I am now one of less than 1% of players to be able to claim that particular steam achievement, so, uh, great. It only cost me over a year of on-off struggling.

You might like the Gothic games. Early game is similarly kind of grim, with you having to scurry around in the muck for whatever you can find just to claw your way up the bullshit social ladders you're presented with. Kind of like real life. Good stuff; they're some of my favourite games ever. 1&2, not the, uh, 'rest of them'.

7243467 It's treason, then! Catra and Adora yelling at each other is the main draw of the show in the early game. Then again, I come from an anime background, so perhaps I find disproportionate enjoyment in watching characters scream at each other...

7243470
I guess I would care more about the yelling if I understood what they were upset about and how they could reconcile their differences... but I don't really know what those are. Is Catra angry at Adora because she's a traitor? No, it seems more personal than that. Does she love her? Didn't really get that impression either. Is it because she's a grumpy cat? That seems most likely.

I'm interested in Adora because she's from another culture and trying to adapt to a completely new way of life, but the show always seems to downplay that aspect.

7243472 Well let's start with the grumpy cat thing. Obviously, yes, that's a factor.

Factor 2 is ambition. Especially in seasons 1 and 2, ambition and outdoing Adora, who at that time is presented as something of a perfect specimen compared to Catra (at times rightfully, at others somewhat more unfairly), is a powerful motivating factor. It isn't the reason why she's yelling at Adora, but it's a reason why she's putting herself in a position to compete with Adora (which leads to yelling). This is established somewhere in the middle of season 1, but is hinted at even in episode 1. Catra wants respect and power, and frankly, I don't really blame her.

Factor 3 is that Catra wants to be right. At the end of the day, Adora chose the rebellion over the Horde, which whilst ethical, is still a betrayal. There's a strong reason why traitors are often so severely looked down on, even when they have compelling reasons to act the way they did; trust is important to people. Catra doesn't want to simply be powerful; she wants to prove to Adora that Adora made a mistake betraying her, and in Catra's mind, that means winning. This is made worse by the fact that in season 1, Catra's boss still appears to value Adora, a traitor who rejected Catra, more than her. For Catra, it's not about doing the 'right thing'; it's about proving her own worth to others around her in the only way she knows how to. Winning to Catra means proving to the people around her that she's worth as much as Adora, and it means proving to Adora that throwing her aside (which is how Catra sees it) was a mistake.

Why she wants to prove anything to Adora is factor 4: she definitely likes Adora. This is clear all the way through season 1 and Catra deciding to cut herself off from her positive connection to Adora in the ruin is a deciding factor that turns her more ruthless and focussed. That doesn't mean their past is gone, however. There is a big part of both characters that wants them to be on the same side, but since neither of them is really willing to compromise (Adora for ethical reasons, and Catra for pride reasons), this only escalates the frustration they feel. Catra doesn't just want to win in a fight; she wants Adora to come crawling back and apologise for making her feel like crap, which is why she keeps monologuing whilst scratching out Adora's spine. This unfortunately doesn't work; Adora isn't doing this to be better or to win; she's doing it out of ethical reasons, and every trick Catra is pulling simply only exacerbates the situation further, and vice versa. Choosing ethics (something Catra doesn't particularly appear to value, evidently) over her continuously only rubs further salt in the wound, over and over again. This is reinforced by her behaviour towards other characters, like Scorpia. Catra only has eyes for one character and one alone (two in season 2, but that ends fast).

And that's all in season 1! The show goes deeper in later seasons, and then reinforces what they established further as they drive forward. One of the coolest aspects of the show is that when they get a character right, they often have an awful lot of layers that contribute to pretty much everything they do, so I think that just looking for one reason why both characters are at each others throats is not really thinking big enough. In many ways, MLP has kinda trained me for this kind of thing, since most of the main cast in MLP also have usually more than one aspect to their characters, even if they're driven by one major flaw.

EDIT: Oops. I text-walled.

7243468

You might like the Gothic games.

Is that the one where in either 1 or 2 you're some kind of prisoner and there's some kind of shield bubble or something that keeps you contained in the area you and the rest of the guys are, and you have to really work to get your weapons and defeat opponents, kinda of a mix between dark souls and Ultima IX? I think I played one of them (or a demo) and I completely forgot about them! If those are the ones, I need to play them. The little bit I did was awesome, as I remember it.

7243476 Yaaaas! That's them. Great games, even if, frankly, their combat is a bit of a, uh, experience to get used to. (but on the plus side, gothic 1 can easily be played with only one hand once you've moved the movement keys from the arrow keys to wasd).

They're a bit old now; to get them to work on my computer I needed to get a patch and then an additional patch mod with a launcher from worldofgothic. They're pretty good though; they're probably one of the most immersive RPG's I've ever played, if not the most immersive.

7243475
That seems to be a very thorough explanation, thanks. :)

I guess making Catra green-eyed was too on-the-nose, so they split out the colors

7243480 I guess I can't help myself. Overly analysing character motivations is less of a habit for me and perhaps closer to a syndrome. Don't let my ramblings prevent you from coming to your own conclusions!

7243478
It's currently at a -75% discount at gog.com right now (2.50 euros), so it looks like I really lucked up. Grabbing it from there wil probably also save me a lot of the patching headaches.

God, am I a weirdo for missing these low-poly graphics?

7243501 It saves you one, since that version comes with the latest patch (as opposed to the steam version, which I got...). You might still need a compatibility patch though if it struggles to run on your computer, but those are easy to get in a lot of languages.

I do kinda like the graphics of it. Draw distance is a bit weak but it can be increased to something a bit nicer. The colours they picked were very good; looks almost like a painting at times.

Help a boi out. I joined the fandom in 2014, but only really became active late-ish, mostly lurking around for a year until I actually started playing friendly with folk. So there's some context I frequently miss regarding the early days of the show.

What were some popular ships (yeah, great start, right?) that involved ye olde Celestia back in the early-ish days of the fandom. Anything stand out?

I'm mostly curious. I could ask this to the shipping group, but frankly, I trust you guys more.

7248003

Leaving out the long (long) list of OC pairings, her most common early ones were with Twilight or Discord, with a large side helping of Luna. Spike as a distant fourth.

So basically, about what you'd expect.

7248031 To be fair, that is pretty much what I expected. How curious. Usually I can't help myself from being at least a little wrong.

*driveby dumb idea post*

CELESTIA X SWEETIE BELLE! CEL X ZECORA! CEL X FLURRY HEART!

ooh, that last one has potential. Im thonk about this picture of Flurry I saw as a grownup mare with short hair, piercings, and a scowl. She was basically a hardcore goth scene lesbiab.

Is it bad that for some strange, unshakeable reason I had the urge to post something off-topic so I can be given the legendary Sweetie Lock?

On another but similar note, I found it quite amusing to sift through hundreds of posts looking for the locked ones so I may see which rule is violated most often, which group admins are most active, and look back on some of the absurd posts users have made. Anyone else guilty of this? Cinder Vel is the most active admin in this server by far.

7250404

I member when cin wasn't an admin. Ooh, I member.

7250404
I've gone splunking in the groups history before. It's always interesting when you start going into older times with Cosmic Afro and Lumie and Soaring and such being around.

There were actually two Sweetie Locks, but they were similar enough that no one would really know the difference. Originally, I started to try to make one, and had an idea that didn't really turn out well at all. I mentioned it to Elric of Melnipony, and I was going to try again, but Elric whipped one up and sent it to me, and I liked it a lot, and used that one for a long time.

I was noticing with the dark theme that there were white particles and things on it, though, and decided to try remaking it myself. I was able to find the exact pictures Elric had made it from and the same or a similar font, and remade one that looked just about the same, but better on a dark background, and I use that these days.

7250505
I remember when Cinder wasn't an admin, too! I actually decided I thought he'd probably make a good admin a good while before we promoted him, and was keeping him in mind for when we needed one. It can be tricky finding good admins, sometimes...

--Sweetie Belle

7250505

Not sure if I do.

7250526

I did not know that there was two Sweetie Locks. However, I do know you've used it on one of my posts in the past, though I am not sure if it was here or in another server. :P