u/Better-Bookkeeper-48

Hey! I'm a bigger guy around 320~ pounds, though I've been on a pretty good exercise streak lately. Short ginger hair with beard, friends have compared me to Jack Stauber, or Fidel Castro if I'm wearing a hat! If we cuddle it will have to be at your place since I'm living with my folks (college is expensive). I'm autistic and struggle with forming close connections organically, so it'd be nice to have someone who I could be physically intimate with without having to go through a whole lot of rigamarole. Not to suggest we can't form a more sincere connection. Just that having a friend who I can also be close to is neat. Cuddling is a neccessity, kissing is a maybe, and anything more than that we'll talk about if it comes up.

Also, again, I am autistic. I can be good at socializing, I just need to figure out what I'm trying to do first, which usually means throwing myself right into the deep end. If I am being weird, or generally doing anything wrong, just tell me outright so I can fix it. On the other hand; don't be afraid to take the first step, as I won't hesitate to speak up about something either. The best way to cope with social awkwardness is clarity and directness in my book.

I don't expect to get much traction from this. I can't imagine many Nebraska types go to reddit first for their intimacy needs. Whatever the case, I'm just here to have fun. : )

I think most people know by this point that Toby Fox's games are heavily inspired by Earthbound and the Mother series. Unlike most people, I've actually played Earthbound and have had a chance to see what exactly is meant by inspiration. I thought I'd share some of those inspirations. I personally found it highlighted what makes Deltarune unique, and also why I kind of find it annoying when people compare it to Undertale or traditional Jrpgs.

This isn't a full retrospective or anything by the way. These are just observations from getting surprisingly far in a single day of gameplay.

one of the biggest things I got from this experience was immediately recognizing where the idea for Undertale's meta narrative came from. While Deltarune and Undertale are very hoity toity with their pacifism and what not, Earthbound is a real grenadier's rpg. Everything about the combat is made to be a satisfying experience, especially getting better at it. If Ness gets strong enough, the game won't even transition to combat during enemy encounters. you just bump into them, the screen swirls--flashes--then BAM! it's over. 37 exp for Ness, presumably as he crushes the walking mushroom or stray dog or some such under his feet like the worthless cretins they are. Get even more powerful and those same enemies will actively *run away* from you as you chase them. And you will chase them, because they are walking morsels of delicious experience.

Just that brief description should be enough to make the inspiration for the genocide route clear. But that's Undertale. What does Earthbound have to say about Deltarune?

a small thing is how the Fox handles characters discussing game mechanics. It's a staple of 90s rpgs to have a character explicitly tell the player they can do this or that with the [x] button. There's even a moment in the first store of the game where you can talk to a dog and it goes, "hey, I'm being possessed by the dev. this is how you equip stuff." It's all very heavy handed in a way which goes all the way around to being endearing. It's very much in line with the sort of things Ralsei says.

A bigger thing is that Deltarune is not like Earthbound in terms of story. Now I know what you're thinking, "but [insert username], aren't both inevitably going to end with the protagonists killing god (or an equivalent metaphysical force) through the power of friendship (or an equivalent sappy element)?" And yeah, that's probably how Deltarune is going to turn out. But I will ask you this; is there any point in Earthbound where our motivation is derived from Ness as a character? When playing, does it feel like we're engaged because we're taking the story seriously and treating the setting as a world equivalent to ours? to put it simply, is Earthbound formatted first and foremost to be a compelling story, or a fun and entertaining video game? The answer most of the time is no, Earthbound is firstly a silly video game.

Don't mistake this as me denigrating the game's story. I'm certainly not criticizing the writing. I think Earthbound has some of the funniest dialogue in any game. No, what I'm saying is that Earthbound is ultimately like a classic Looney-Tunes-style cartoon. While the writing is witty and everything well crafted, the thing being crafted is made to simply be as entertaining as possible. The people making the game weren't trying to make the story to define a generation. They were trying to make something fun. What this means is that they don't take themselves as seriously in some places. They don't feel the need to tie every narrative thread together, make all the characters as deep and profound as possible, and make sure the protagonist is the actual main character. This is a game, and those things do not necessarily make a game better.

This matches almost 1-to-1 with the format of Undertale's story. While it's certainly a lot more intentional with its themes and has a lot more thought behind it, the story still ultimately serves to make a really good game first, story second. Frisk is the protagonist, but only so that we can exist in this world; their motivations are so unimportant that we the player have a greater narrative presence than them. Much of the time is spent exploring a fun and interesting world, even if it doesn't neccessarily contribute to the greater narrative. Like, Papyrus serves about as much narrative importance as "fail-proof" Frank Fly in terms of first bosses--while they're vaguely impacted by larger narrative stuff, people aren't enjoying them for their profound contributions to the themes of their games. They enjoy them cause they're fun to be around!

Contrast this with Deltarune. Deltarune's setting is not one made to just be fun. Everything in it has to contribute to the larger narrative in some way. Everything has to be put together by the Fox with the understanding that it will be heavily scrutinized for clues and taken literally. Oh, chapter 4 ends with Toriel and fan-favorite Sans dancing drunk after we've been worrying about her all chapter? The fanbase immediately accepted this as an intentional and serious move to make Toriel a more nuanced and flawed character. Oh, Asgore was written to be as obfuscatingly vague as possible about darker lore in the last fun "calm before the storm" chapter? It's him intentionally trying to not traumatize his child. Everything is put under a microscope and taken seriously because, after all, what is it we always say? Toby thought of that.

I think this in large part is why the fandom can be a pain to participate in. It's not that people put Toby on a pedestal; and therefore are stupid idiots who won't listen to me whine. It's that people put Toby on a pedestal and expect perfect intent from him all the time. He can't make a mistake, or even just throw something in for the heck of it; because Toby thought of that. Because of this, If you don't want to treat Toby as a master storyteller always two steps ahead of our feeble attempts at media literacy--you end up sounding like you have a massive stick up your ass.

For instance, I think the lake-side Suselle scene in chapter 5 was kinda meh. I don't think that as a professional hater. I'm not enacting my shipping agenda. I'm just engaging with the story as it's given to me, and as I took it, the lake scene was kinda meh. I'd have the same reaction if it was in Red Dead 2 or something. But I can't just say that, because Toby thought of that. if you disagree and enjoyed the lake scene, I'm just being delusional. If you agree and didn't enjoy the lake scene, it's because it's actually on purpose because Suselle is doomed so Krisselle or Berdsei or whatever can take over, blah blah blah. you can't just take the scene as it is given to you, because everyone has such high expectations for Toby and his story.

It's funny. The game being unfinished is a very common retort to criticism. But I actually think much of the fandom's neurosis will be cured when the game is finished--not because it'll turn out all the debbie downers were too blind to see the real vision--but because the die-hard fans will have to accept that, no, Toby didn't think of that.

What the heck do you even think is gonna happen in chapter 6-7?

While I've cooled off with a lot of my criticisms since chapter 5 released, one I still think about is how the last few chapters haven't really given us much in terms of how the story is gonna go. Like in chapter 1 we're told we gotta seal all the fountains and stop the knight, right? Then we learn that Kris is working with the knight, we actually \*see\* the knight 2-3 times, and learn that various other lightners are canny to the dark worlds. Now what's our motivations?

...seal all the fountains and stop the knight. Hasn't changed much since then or added any more details, really. Like we saw a Titan, but we've known about them and the roaring for a while. We still have no real idea why the knight is doing what they're doing, so we're still chasing after them blind. Kris is working with the knight, but then we don't know the knight or why they're doing stuff, so we don't know what Kris working with them says either.

We've got lots of vague maybes for why things are happening. A lot of clues which don't explain anything and are actually just more questions. But not a lot of solid facts to dig your teeth into, or at least no facts that haven't been here from the beginning.

Even the more personal arcs are confused. Noelle has been crushing on Susie for 4 chapters now, and the dynamic hasn't really changed. Susie has always been kind and tender with them. While the water-side scene in chapter 5 might feel big, it doesn't actually convey anything different about their dynamic than the flirting in chapter 4. They both end with the big yuri scene being interrupted by something nasty (mom shows up/potential dad death)

Overall I just feel like nothing has really \*happened\* in the game yet. I know that's stupid to say because the game is unfinished, but I still don't think it's great that I'm somehow less invested in what's happening in the game 5 chapters in rather than 1 chapter in. That's not good whether my time between chapters is 1 minute or 1 year. It ultimately means the game isn't properly building up new things, but rather only reiterating on things that were already present.

Like, why is so much of chapter 5 about making Ralsei come out of their shell when it ultimately doesn't say anything different about their character than what happened in chapter 4? Yeah he's a little bit more of a jerk about it, but that just gets kinda dropped in the end so he can try and geal Flowery. On the other hand, why is barely 15 minutes spent on the festival and Suselle becoming official, two thungs which the game has been hyping up since the beginning?

With all this in mind, what even is going to happen in chapter 6 and 7? I know there's a lot of potential, but if you couldn't tell from everything else I've written, I don't think Toby's done a good job setting up what's going to happen with that potential in specific.

While I am going to use a specific example of this "realism" retort, please know that the fandom loves playing this card for all sorts of things.

"Of course Asgore doesn't talk about the incident with Kris, it was probably deeply traumatizing. Besides, why would he explain something they both already know?"

BECAUSE THIS IS A STORY, JACKASS! People in the Deltarune fandom *love* trying to handwave away narrative beats that feel unsatisfying using this logic. But it doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense for this character to bring up this thing, or for that character to explain that thing.

This is a *story*, a kind of character focused story that is dependent on us having context for why people are acting the way they are to become engaged with it. Susie's growth into a kinder and more empathetic person is only interesting because we saw her be so harsh in the beginning. Is it very realistic that Susie would be so annoyed with quiet people that she'd assault them for it? No, that's a pretty petty thing to get so mad over. But it gets across her character, and it gives us a reason to care that she does get better.

When people try to talk down criticism by going "actually that event (or lack there of) makes sense and is a totally reasonable way for that to turn out if it were real", it makes it clear to me that they've never had to think hard about how to make a story.

Narratives, at their core, are structured around conflict. Not neccessarily good vs evil, life or death; but at the least something has to happen which is disruptive enough to get a reaction. You wouldn't want to watch Susie and Kris become kind-of accquaintances by working on a project over a week. You want to see them fall into the dark world and suddenly be thrust into a situation where they *need* to work together and become best friends. Similarly, it isn't enough for Susie, Noelle, and Kris to have an understated awkwardness because they all kinda like each other, but not in the same way. You need Susie and Noelle to loudly declare their love for each other, meanwhile Kris quietly broods to themself as they are forced to tag along with two people who they'd rather be with themselves. *things* need to happen, the bigger the better.

The problem with basing a story on whether things are reasonable then is that reason is actively diffusing. Oh, we're out of chalk? Well it's a good thing I keep this extra box in my desk. Oh, queen is trying to conquer the world or whatever because she thinks that's what Noelle wants? Well obviously Noelle would just tell her right away she doesn't want that, problem solved. It doesn't matter that these things make sense. They would undermine the story and make them less interesting.

In the end, reason has to give way to narrative satisfaction. It doesn't matter if it makes sense that Asgore would never attack their kid (even though Toriel was more caring and still was able to attack us in a way that made sense for their character in Undertale, but whatever). Asgore has shit going on that we want to see, and if it's a fight that'd get those things across the best, then it's a fight that should've been in the story.

TL;DR: reasonability is not a valid argument for why things should or shouldn't have happened the way they did. Stories exist to be interesting, not reasonable.

So I have a habit of going down wikipedia rabbit holes when trying to do research for my book, especially when the research is for making thematic references to things.

In one of these wiki dives, I distinctly remember reading a wikipedia page about a book where Ganymede falls in love, only to be kidnapped by pirates and having to endure severe hardship to reconnect with his one true love. I tried to look it up again, only to find that apparently it does not exist. The closest I've found is the Ephesian Tale, which seems to follow many similar beats but lacks specific details I remember from the original wiki page--that being Ganymede gets raped by the pirates. The stupid Google AI keeps either telling me I'm conflating this with the fact Zeus kidnapped Ganymede, or some sci-fi book about a submarine or something.

I'm fine if I really did just make this up, or conflate it, or whatever. I just want closure on whether I hallucinated this or not.

I am a writer working on a fantasy setting heavily derived from real life mythology and theology. In my setting there is a country called Elysium inhabited by the Maenads, which are made up of Satyrs and Nymphs. While there are many different kinds of pre-existing Nymphs (Oceanids, Oreads, Naiads, etc.) which can be pulled from to create distinct cultures and societies, the satyrs don't have that. Most of the time they don't even seem to have a creator god. They hang out with Dionysus, sure, but they mostly just seem to exist without prior context.

While I don't consider myself a dunce regarding Greek mythology and religion (I've read the Odyssey, I've read the Bacchae, and I'm majoring in history with a minor in religion and philosophy) I'm also definitely not an expert. I'd appreciate if you guys could either give me some different categories of satyr from mythology, or otherwise help me brainstorm avenues to make ones from whole cloth. Even just some more obscure intricacies in how they were understood by contemporary Greeks could help.

Thank you for your time.

Let me be blunt here. I have been trying to write a book for over a year, and while I consider myself good at slinging sentences together, there are things about the fundamentals of writing and fiction that I do not have a grasp of. I tried looking for resources to deal with this before. All I got were blog posts about how to make an outline and reddit replies that were barely a paragraph long.

I do not want a blog post which is really just shilling the bloggers new book, I do not want to be told to just "read more" so I can infer things, and I don't want to be told one of a billion different buzz terms like "show don't tell" without any elaboration on what that actually means! I want resources which thoroughly and explicitly dive into the theory and craft behind making a good piece of fiction.

If it dives into a good writing technique, I don't want it to just tell me what it is. I want it to explain why it is good, really get into the muck of what makes it tick, and give examples that aren't just for fantasy or sci-fi. That has probably been the most annoying part of this if I'm being honest. It shouldn't be this hard to find writing advice applicable to a story with stakes lower than an intergalactic war.

Edit: If you read all this and still give me some advice like "the best way to learn is by doing" anyway, I will spit in your tea. (not actually. But seriously, don't do it.)

Hey, big fan of New Vegas and Fallout in general (even Fallout 4 in spite of its flaws, god bless them). But I've found it weird how little of a sense of history the setting can have at times. Because even though it's been 200 years since the bombs dropped--unless you're a raider or a tribal--everyone with working electricity kinda just acts like normal people. I know that sound weird, but let me give you an example:

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A common argument for why the NCR isn't good given by a handful of "neutral" npcs (I can specifically remember Cass saying something along these lines, so we'll use her for reference) is, "why are we trying to imitate the old world when it's the failure of the old world systems that caused the great war?" This is a very interesting counterargument for a faction that would otherwise be the token "good" one, no problems there. The problem is how it is presented. This is the sort of conversation had maybe right after the bombs dropped, when the people having it still remember what it was like to live through the build up to the cataclysm. In their minds, the prelude to all out nuclear warfare would be more prescient than the aftermath, because they've yet to be truly defined by that part yet.

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Cass is not that. Cass is a wandering trader in a line of wandering traders, 200 years and 10 generations down the line from the thing which defines her world. She knows nothing of late stage capitalism, maoism, MAD, or nationalism. She has never lived in a world where societal survival is a said and done thing in most of the world. And yet she talks about it like how we talk about contemporary politics, where the systems we use to control people by the millions is such an after thought that people actively avoid talking about it so they don't get in a spat with uncle Brandon at thanksgiving; as if a hop, skip, and a jump away from the NCRs borders isn't a group of raiders surviving off of human corpses and mutated earth worms.

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This is found in a lot of the logic of the settings societies. Neither the NCR nor the Legion came about as a natural product of their world and its history, but rather because one of their leaders sat down and had a big think once about the old world and (incorrectly) hegalian dialectics or whatever and said, "yes, I will create a martial state devoted entirely to conquest without any intended follow through."

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And speaking of the Legion, what's the deal with how the people of the setting understand *actual* history? Like, how is it that Edward Sallow knew enough about something as niche as ecclesiastical vs classical latin pronunciation to know his title should be pronounced as Kaiser, and yet the actual Followers of the Apocalypse (the people whose whole deal is that they know stuff and are trying to teach other people it) barely know a thing about Genghis Khan, probably one of the most important people in world history?

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Again, I love Fallout New Vegas and think its story is great. This is just my autistic history major brain thinking too much about something I care about. Honestly, do you guys have any good examples of things that go with/agains this?