(no subject)

I feel like there are different kinds of “average” stories. There are stories that are essentially interchangeable, such that you could watch one and never be surprised by another one. There are stories that have some good stuff and some bad stuff so it balances out. And then there are stories that are just . . . Kinda good. Like, there’s nothing incredibly brilliant about them, but you’ll enjoy your time with them, and maybe have a fond memory of one relatively clever scene.

Blood is Mine has taken over my brain

Bloodspeech is much better than English at conveying information, but struggles with tone and emotion.

Jane’s bloodspeech has an “accent,” in that she conveys emotion in ways bloodspeech doesn’t normally do. Her English dialogue isn’t written out, but it’s mentioned that it has a “bloodspeech accent.” Presumably, that means she conveys information really well.

You know those characters whose thing is that they’re really good at conveying plot exposition? In Blood is Mine, that’s the heroine.

Probably my last post about Blood is Mine

I think what ultimately killed Blood is Mine was a problem with interactive comics as a format. The author had Jane face things that posed a great danger, so the players came up with more and more ideas to prepare and even the gap. He was good about creating time limits, but he still ended up with a lot of downtime that was just “and what other action will you take to prepare?” He couldn’t montage or time-skip without being unfair to the players, but all the events that happened during downtime built up so much continuity that by his own admission, he could no longer keep track of everything. So he skipped downtime in a non-interactive ending where he could dictate that Jane was prepared enough and ready to fight.

This was great for Jane’s characterization, though. She saw some of her friends horribly injured and nearly killed, and the author portrayed her as terrified of losing them, struggling between the desire to keep them safe and the desire to stop the villains.

(no subject)

Story on Not Always Right about a person who advised a stranger which over-the-counter allergy meds to take. Lots of people saying it was a bad thing because you don’t know if you’ll recommend something that will hurt them.

What if you don’t recommend anything at all, and they coincidentally buy something that hurts them? Are you more or less responsible?

Looking back on my old posts

I don’t talk about my ethics much anymore, but I think what I mean when I talk about ethics is different from what other people mean. I think of it like there’s a machine marked “utils,” and if you press the right buttons on it, it will make some utils. What I want to do is write instructions about how to use the machine. There are wrong buttons I think people should not press, and even buttons I think other people should stop you from pressing, but I don’t think the machine itself grabs your arms and makes you press the right buttons. And if you don’t press a button, the machine doesn’t throw red paint on you so people will know you’re immoral.

People say Utilitarianism is too strict, because it makes you press too many different buttons. But I think what Utilitarianism does is tell you that there are more buttons you could be pressing. And there are a lot of buttons, so realistically, nobody actually presses every single good one. It would be meaningless for the instructions to say “press every good button at all times,” because people still wouldn’t do it.

I’ve been told that I can’t write this kind of ethics, because ethics requires the concept of “you should do such-and-such.” In that case, I’d be happy to say the thing I’m writing isn’t ethics. Call it “fweeb” or whatever, because the name doesn’t matter.

I’m reading hentai

Narrator: “It’s even possible that these characters aren’t some cartoon-y rendition of humans, but are actually a very realistic depiction of humans in the year 100 million.”

In the year 100 million, anime is real.