whimsicalobservant | Recent Entries

a series of dreams:

there was a bisexual enby protag who stumbles into a motorbike shop/biker bar and kinda gets adopted by the patrons

and a colour coded group of bikers who sometimes show up and are sorta personifications of different aspects of driving a bike?? they only ever show up on the road to either cause trouble or stealthmentor the enby protag

or both at the same time

protag first sees them after a celebratory drinking session with accompanying plot explanation gets interrupted by a mental blackout

so like theres two big bads? one in the living world, that one was responsible for the death of the protags parents? and the disfigurement of one of the supporting cast (she looked like 2b, was a pianist, and covered a glass eye with her hair)

and the bar/shop owner, plot twist!, works for living world big bad.

what does lwbb do to warrant their big bad status? no fucking clue.

theyre also fighting against the other big bad, who was apparently god?? and like. an accumulation of dead souls. "heaven is full of nasty people, its why im not there" said one of the ghost supporting cast

the protag first saw the colour coded bikers and the ghost in a vision/dream during the mental blackout and they might be confined to those?

also i tried pitching the plot at my moirail in a dream and they were like "dystopian slice of life urban scifi? you should watch motorcity"

and i tried to describe the colour coded bikers as trying to "nazghul protag into [plot point i cant remember], if nazghul were chaotic neutral instead of evil"

the dream actually didn't make it clear whether the power rangers colour coded bikers were hallucinations or ghosts and if other people could see them, but they were definitely not mortal, and might never have been

maybe like crowley and his bentley -- everyone else subconsciously avoids them and their attention drifts away from them, and you can only really perceive them if they want you to

(pitching this to a friend resulted in them asking if the bikers chase hedgehogs, too)

i think they make sure that whatever wildlife they encounter reaches the other side of the road safely

that might be because the bikers in that setting have some kind of encompassing honour code?? to protect smol things

they will fight god and the world and each other but there's shit you just don't pull, yknow?

there's some bullshit going on between the biker factions, and living world big bad is finagling shit to get at the mass of souls in heaven for whatever fucking reason. the nasty souls in heaven are some sort of greater scope villain (while lwbb is awful too in a case of the enemy of my enemy is not my friend), but hell if i know what their plan is

suitbiker might have an actual functional jetpack for all i know instead

and be very dorkily happy about being able to zip about in his suit

it looks like a giant pair of insect wings

plasma wings

(that dream was a mess and didnt care about implications of pulling faces from other places)

Current Mood: fascinated

postapoc. three things:

- some places are still pretty intact its just that the electronic etc infrastructure and society are gone, and some places are hella dangerous because vengeful ghosts

- everyone has some kind of power -- but unless youve awakened it, it only fires sporadically. (most people protag met were friendly, just parts of other groups)

- theres barriers. they can be erected by people whose powers have awakened, and theres different types, but the dream only explained one: you only know its position if youre inside it. you go out, you forget its position and entrance

they usually start out as shielding one house, but with more powered people they can be expanded

protags power was a weird as fuck portal -- some sort of parallel dimension swamp, with a lot of different eye things poking out of the ground. every eye lead to a different place. if protag focused on a certain place when entering the eye portal swamp (and they could take other people with them, too), a copy of the eye portal they were looking for appeared in the sky

mostly protag was doing random jumps, exploring, looting, and chatting with other scavengers/survivors

another dream my mind thinks ive dreamt before.

a ghost ship and its ghost crew. most know theyre dead already and will merrily chat with you, but one ghost doesnt, and she'll put you in the brig if she spots you.

the ship is not where they died.

a notebook, containing several strings of numbers (coordinates of a sort, but relative?) and sketches of things, all disjointed, but supposedly indicating treasure.

you travel with a living crew on a small research vessel and, one evening, you see that the image of the setting sun (which for some reason was four shining squares in a line) matches one of the sketches in the clue book. one of the crew members dive down, and comes back up with a satchel full of coin.

you dont salvage the wreck now, its too dangerous. but you know where it is.

theres also an island nearby. you hope the locals arent aggressive.

but as you approach, you see the houses are in ruins, and no one is alive here anymore.

in one house thered be a hidden attic room if the roof hadnt been gone already. its a study, bookshelves, fireplace, a safe, a desk -- and a corpse.

you recognize the face, you met that mans ghost on the ghost ship. this is where the crew died.

his journal informs you that he will not give up and leave this place, and you remark that that was a stupid decision -- if they all had left theyd still be alive.

suddenly screaming from downstairs. your crew has been followed -- unofficial official people, dealing with keeping stuff like this covered and making sure the powers that be get their cut (read: all of it).

you hide the notebook in the safe and cons down the stairs, just to be stabbed in the leg.

thats when i woke up.

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i think ive dreamed this one before.

it all is in a very circular limbo kind of thing. the queen rules absolute, and everyone who threatens her status quo of absolute obedience gets pulled into a "trial" where she lies to make you seem a really bad person and then you get launched into a glowing sphere which is kinda like a sun but also not.

you are not allowed to speak.

but on the journey there you collect other peoples stories. you listen, and they confess, while the queen goes through iteration and iteration of the world, which no one is allowed to remember. but they do, glimpses, and then the queens pawns come

during the trial you are abandoned, but those whose stories youve heard band together to wake more people by listening to their stories, while you go collect something in the glowing sphere that will help you break the queens rule and silence

its very thought police, but like. coalpunk/dieselpunk. id say steampunk but thats not the aesthetic, its later and not as victorian

at some point during the dream it was actually a video game and the trial was basically a fuckhuge cutscene and then the pc got launched into the sun (actually tied to a rope which was tied to itself with threads that were supposed to snap and with every snapping thread you got closer to the sun?? dont ask me for the physics on this i dont think they work) and i was like "wait, this game expects me to actually play it? preposterous!"

one night i dreamed so much magnus archives stuff. xxD

one i was with a friend and tracked down by my old rel teacher. he wanted answers, we didnt wanna give them -- hed been accosted by one of the powers, we both saw the Hunt in him, and were like nope so my friend used their Spiral powers on him so he couldnt reach us while i fixed my shoelaces and then i used my Vast powers.

one was a girl genius/magnus archives crossover that was also a fanfic, a statement by a young woman with i think two personalities? they both talked about the other one as a different person, orig thinks she mustve been wasped, the other defended her existence even if it had been caused by one of the Powers

and one.

ship crew, crew member asks cm B if hes new here -- no one remembers him. b is put off, c (a burly man speaking a seaman's slang) interrupts - mentions theyre all on the weird mission ship, shit like that happens. he starts recounting the mission, a counts along mentions of crew, and then she interrupts that theres someone missing. c asks if she remembers, and instead she shows a pocket watch and says "no, but my clock just went wrong" because apparently you can gauge weird memory shit by your watch skipping around. maybe they were special watches? (due to the amount skipped versus the amount of time the explanation took, it wasnt dissociation)

and then a guy who wasnt elias bouchard, but voiced by the same actor and in a similar position of authority started recounting where exactly everything went wrong.

also my brain decided that my moirail was one of the professors at the magmus institute, doing paranormal research. dunno about what anymore, but it was mentioned.

Gonna post my dreams here for a bit.

There's a backlog, the rest will come as I dream them.

First one, I will only relay that the dream itself is not one I care to remember for personal reasons, save for one line:

"A heron, carrying a river on its back"

Current Mood: ambivalent

I have to disagree with ~~Jurgen Leitner~~ Gerard Keay about the nonexistence of an eldritch force of Hope -- although maybe it's just that I still define hope the sburb glitch faq way and am partial to the interpretation of hope being the last and greatest evil that Pandora released from the box.

Consider: There is an eldritch force of Hope, and MA Earth is its factory. Hope as rejection, hope as a fundamentally neutral force. Hope is the reason to still be fighting.

And that is the way Hope feeds off MA Earth. It is, for the moment, symbiotic with all other Powers -- people hope for something better, and so they can fear something that is worse. Fear and Hope create each other. You have multiple options regarding your interactions with the Powers, and they work not only in conjunction with Fear, but also in conjunction with Hope:

Abandon Hope and surrender to Fear: The Power eats you
Hold onto Hope, hold onto the Rejection of surrender: You might escape, for a while. Keep fighting. Keep hoping. (Keep fearing.)
Become one with the Fear: The Power eats you, but you're still around as its avatar. But as you retain a bit of humanity, you retain Hope -- which interacts weirdly with the Powers, and you Hope to strengthen the influence of your Power on MA Earth.
Accept your fate and stop hoping. Surrendering your Hope, but trading it for Acceptance instead of Fear: Escape, and since neither Hope nor Fear can feed off of you, they leave you alone.

That third part is the lynchpin -- The last shreds of humanity in the avatars, which house their Hope. The fighting is what Hope wants, because fighting means hoping (hoping to win, hoping to hurt your opponent, it does not matter). The constant cycle of interrupted ritual after interrupted ritual, of hoping to succeed this time over the other Powers, is what gives Hope its stranglehold over them and MA Earth.
The Powers feed, but I am not sure they have the capacity of Hoping. But their avatars do, and one thing their avatars will never, ever, do, because of the tensions between the different factions and the diametrical opposition of certain Powers, is to collectively team up and reshape the world. As long as there is a Power that is not in on it, it will move to interrupt.

And this state of circular battle also leads to the notion that things could be better among the "cattle". And so they hope, that someday it will be. And so they keep fighting, and keep hoping.

So I disagree with the nonexistence of Hope as a Power. It's just not a Good Power.

Fore five and twenty winters now

And I'd feared I'd been too late

Buried you neath my cloak of snow

And bid you there to stay and wait

But spring has come and from the ground

A sprout has reached towards the light

And even though you spoke no sound

A glimpse of you has left the night

Now the circle, once torn through

Mind, by no fault of your own

Can mend itself, begin anew

And make you reap what it has sown

Distant daughter, you know the land

The sky, the roads, from south to north

The in-betweens of ash and sand

And deepest of all, me, the fourth

Thus go and search one single place

That which you've hidden is the key

That which sees, you can't erase

And kept you long from being free

The first in deepest slumber rouse

The next where hill nor sky remain

The third where, too, the moon is doused

The fourth deep in midst of my domain

Be guided by these secrets thine

Leave your lungs and have no fear

And go where I keep the treasures mine

I will be there, my daughter dear

For you, I know that which you seek

Kept it safe within my chest

Come to me and I shall speak

You deserve to know the rest

And those who'd search beneath the white

Who for love nor life would never yield

Who know not peace to ease their blight

Shan't get to mine that I shall shield

I am an idiot. An absolute buffoon. A paragon of walnuthood.

The title is not an exact quote. I think Himeworks was it who said something along those lines. About a common mistake being that your script does too much.

I need to separate at least the Quest Log, because it's a hideous tangle of switches, from the Encyclopedia script.

I might need to outsource the data I'm calling to a common event so both scripts can access them.

But the point stands: the script is probably doing too much.

#fail

For the past months, I kept thinking: Man, adding a simple quest log to ADFR should be simple! A day coding and I should be done.

As evidenced by the fact that this is day 4, I am not. I do, however, have 150 lines of currently too incomplete to be useable code. Because I don't do things by halves, and a couple more things happened:

I decided that the current grimoire/encyclopedia setup was utter bullshit and would best be integrated with the quest log
You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to add a simple line to the main menu in RPGMaker VX Ace
There is hardly any documentation. All tutorials are basic programming shit, or telling me to use Yanfly's Engine.
Realized that hardcoding this is stupid and it would probably be easier and faster if I write a script that can be re-used just by changing the content variables
Today I realized why Yanfly uses hashes.

Now I have the code for Yanfly's Engine open in my code editor for cross referencing. It's a beautiful piece of code. I almost understand how it works.

What I also have open is Coelocanth's Crafting script, and the internal game scripts (in the game editor).

The first day, I googled, and found nothing.

The second day, I watched basic programming tutorials about Ruby, RGSS3, RPGMaker VX Ace, and wrote down whatever I needed and didn't want to forget. I'm ADHD af, I need to write shit down. I had to learn how to take notes first, though.

The third day, I found the documentation to RGSS3.

All three days I looked at code, searched code, compared code, copied code, altered code, and wrote code. I now have somehwat of an idea what I actually need to do.

But Kite, why not just use Yanfly's Engine?

Well. The thing is? It's not just for a simple Quest Log anymore. I put the whole damn Grimoire/Encyclopedia there as well, and it has several layers of content that I want accessible easier than an option window and 3 lines of text at a time. So I had to figure out how to not only add an item to the menu (and let me tell you the precision on those searches was absolutely fucking horrible), but also understand how windows work and how you trigger them, and trigger multiple ones at once, and and and.

The deepest level of nesting, at the moment, is

Grimoire -> Log -> General, which lists Controls/Saving/Passing Over/What is this Grimoire

So the current list of things I need to do is as follows:

Write the handler that generates the current submenu from input
Write the corresponding window handler
Write the handler that generates the content of the chosen options at bottom level
Write the corresponding window handler
Write the window handler for the narrower help window
Write the function that calls all window handlers
Transfer actual content to the script

See how the actual thing I'm doing this for is at the bottom? I can't actually transfer the data until I have the handlers done and running, unless I want to hardcode this.

And looking at Yanfly's beautiful code, I kind of don't want to, lol.

So I went and started coding. Little switchcase, when submenu, generate this list...

And then I was like, wait, writing this out is stupid. Let's make a for loop. For that they'll have to be in arrays, but that's alright--

Four arrays nested in one later. This was the part where I understood why Yanfly uses a hash toplevel instead of an array, because this is some top grade nesting bullshit and since I need to reference which piece of the content list list I need to use, getting this with a key is ever so much fucking easier.

I spent the past hour typing this post because the alternative is tearing up what I already have and writing it in a fresh file because the one I have at the moment is a right fucking mess. And my ADHD meds are running out.

Far in deepest sands
Almost buried a tower stands
A tower made of stone
Crystal glass and bleached bone
A hundred stories high

Legend of the tower tell
Of a people which once rose and fell
Before their death they took their power
And sealed it all within the tower
Long before Beladi reign

A thousand years have come and gone
Greatest deeds have since been done
But no matter where the thieves have crept
The tower all its secrets kept
Along their drying husks

Sometimes when the sun grows dim
A traveller comes and brings with him
A desert rose, a gear, a star
Stories and tales from way and far
And whispers of the tower

They walk into the riddler’s den
Never to be seen again
Like oh so many done before
And after them will many more
To catch at least a glimpse

Of who buried riches wants to claim
Only skull and bones remain
Of those called no single thread
Legend tells they are not dead
But welcomed into the tower

The storm subsides
The mass divides
A traveler comes from the sands
Battered, weary, and in their hands
A bloodied desert rose

Feverish they tell their tale
Succeeded where others failed
Ventured through the halls of stone
Crystal glass and bleached bone
And came across no soul

From the light into the dark
Dared not to light a spark
Straight paths curling through themselves
And in between a thousand shelves
Every deed which had been done

Parchment, paper, leather, hide
Words in reddest ink inside
From the first dawn til today
But the silent halls betray
Only the chosen remain unscarred

Their last words are of bronze rings
Etched markings and other things
It spins around a sun of glass
A model of the planet’s path
Made to show and teach the called

Kelehëu’s tower is its name
And like moths to nightly flame
It draws the greedy of any kind
Some are killed, but the knowing find
Admittance to the tower

Altes Land, bedeckt von Bäumen
Von Hügeln, Flüssen, Schienen
Die von Stahl gezähmt den Menschen nun dienen
Und des Nachts Vergangenes träumen

Vergessen die Mythen, vergessen die Riten
Vergessen was sie einst von hier trieb
Was seit Urzeiten hier war und hier auch blieb
Diese Wesen die über den Nachtwald gebieten

Kreaturen schön wie auch fürchterlich
Einst angebetet, nun nicht mehr
Der Menschen Glaube wandelte sich sehr
Doch sie und das Land erinnern sich

Das Land träumt, und unter Sternen und Mond
Stehn gespenstische Gräser und Wälder
Wo unter der Sonne sind Straßen und Felder
Gib acht, denn sie sind nicht unbewohnt

Und gib acht, sonst trittst du hinüber
In dieses geträumte Gespensterreich
Und bist du dort, dann ist es gleich
Denn niemand kehrt je von dort wieder

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As little girl by Nanna’s knee
One sister by the other, the third one on her lap
These gilded evenings, filled with glee
Like aunts and pops, we listened, rapt
And Nanna said, he waits

She was old then, now even more
Of a long passed time, full of its tales
And even older, of a distant shore
With ribbons curlling in its gales
And Nanna said, he waits

My sister, with her head for dreams
Said, waits he for a maiden fair?
Smiling like the sun’s bright beams
A feather step, with Rapunzel’s hair?
And Nanna said, he waits

My sister, with her head for gears
Said, how do the roofs still stand?
If the wind howls and never clears
How are they not long since sand?
And Nanna said, he waits

Aunts and pops, when they were small
Asked their questons, long since lost
Just Nanna still remembers all
Who of us knows the most?
And Nanna said, he waits

Across the woods and sand and sea
To where the gifted and the haunted flee
Where steel and magic, side by side
Draw thought and wonder to collide

There lies great Kiliskalea

Machines and sorcery, foes since old
Since times unremembered, as truth been told
Like night and day, like sea and ground
With no connection to be found

And yet exists Kiliskalea

But dusk and dawn, like shore and tide
Stand between, cross the divide
Are the bridge where opposites touch
Take a first step beyond the grudge

And gave birth to Kiliskalea

This city in the evening sun
To where all streets and rivers run
Its glow shines far into the night
From days afar you see its light

Oh, radiant Kiliskalea

It beams and shines eternal day
What lies beneath, no words may say
What lies beneath the sea of chains
Pulleys, pistons, gear refrains

Of marvellous Kiliskalea

For down below, there is no spark
Only infinite blinding, soothing dark
That grasps into the cold hard steel
And turns and moves its every wheel

And beats the heart of Kiliskalea

While mind weaves magic into form
To see a cloud and make a storm
Turn ice to wood, and flesh to stone
Never to reap what it has sown

In glorious Kiliskalea

A craft without masters but curious fools
Wh bend existence to uncover its rules
To try and make sense of its symbols and lines
To one day move beyond its current confines

For a grander Kiliskalea

And steel rose from within its core
It ruled the depths and wanted more
To reach high up and touch the sky
To spread its wings and soar and fly

Sang the Steel of Kiliskalea

And magic seeped into the inbetween
Slow and silent, where it was not seen
A delirious embrace of both love and hate
And a thirst for power, hopeless to sate

Breathed the Magic of Kiliskalea

Thus they raged, torn and entwined
And by their moves and grasps combined
They danced until the seasons turned
Until they could no more, and the city burned

And only ash remained of Kiliskalea

Of the City of Wonders, nothing remains
And with time, the wild took the plains
Farmsteads in ruins, deep beneath the waves
Or between the roots, they all are graves

But who mourns Kiliskalea?