AK FEDEAU: THE BLOG

@euxiom replied to your post:

nah, we just have several neighborhood cats that come by once in a while. i think this specific one might be a neighbor's outdoor cat. i snapped some other pictures of it about eighteen months ago - it seems to like to talk to me and rub its head on my leg.

i'm too allergic to cats to ever own one, so it's fun to have creatures that i can enjoy for brief enough periods that they don't make me sick. i think i've mentioned before that it's like i'm the animal in the zoo and they're the guests that come to observe my habitat. who knows, maybe one day they'll see me getting fed up with arknights and throw me a pumpkin lmao

snoozing in the heat

omgg this is wild. i can't imagine doing a story without picking out at least a few songs to associate with it. in the past, i tended not to share those playlists with people, because privacy gave me permission to put, you know, ~cringe~ songs on them. but the VOW writers all shared our playlists when we were working on longsummer nights, and it was so fun to see how other people paired music with their work. 10/10 would subject my social circle to it again

you know what amazes me? people who can connect a song to a ship or a character based on the meaning of the lyrics. i take the coward's way out and pick on instrumentation and vibes, but the lyrics people? poets. modern-day philosopher-kings. also thank you about rosie, please have a song she has subjected the entire neighborhood to from her car speakers

guess who irina just met 😎

finally made it to LE2 with irina! gosh i love this game. i remembered why it's my favorite in the trilogy in like ten minutes.

man, better call saul has really forced me to evaluate how much i'm willing to put my characters through

three people will find this funny but i had to get it out of my head

@euxiom replied to your post:

journal entries, audio logs, book excerpts, emails, etc. make up a big day-to-day part of many game writing jobs. [obsidian calls them "examinables," i'm not sure what the term is elsewhere.] we joke about the skeleton with the "this amulet isn't cursed!!" diary next to it, but the fact is, it makes a world feel more lived-in for very little resource cost. besides, if you look back at the historical record, people could be surprisingly meticulous about documenting their lives.

but yeah, i mean - what do i lose by trying it? it's more enjoyable for me to write out irina's terrible, socially-awkward run-ins with her squadmates than to just have her recount them. "showing vs. telling" means a hundred things to a hundred people, but that's gotta count for something, right? [okay, i mainly want to write her and zaeed's fights lmao]

over the course of picking at irina shepard's log, i decided to throw in a new ingredient: audio transcripts. they show up every now and then between journal entries as recordings pulled from various security systems. they're mainly between her and squadmates, but i didn't want to leave the old guard like joker, chakwas, or anderson out either. [i used to be a transcriber before i got the job at voltage, so it's funny to dust off those timestamping skills again.]

when you're trying to tell a story through a person's diary, you're limited to that person's interpretation of events. it didn't feel right that no one on the normandy would get to speak for themselves - mass effect is such an ensemble cast, you really lose a lot. between that and emails, you've got voices that contrast with irina's. they show that her perspective on the trilogy's missions is not always charitable, or even accurate.

i've wanted to do some serious writing in this format for years, but talked myself out of it because i worried it'd seem lazy. now more than ever i figure that fanfic is supposed to be fun, and i'd always touted it as a good place to experiment anyway. you have to practice what you preach.

man, i really like my job, but working under my most ironclad NDA yet is not conducive to the steady stream of posts that i would like

listen, i love shipping as much as the next girl, but you know what can be just as much fun as a slow burn? a burn that never ignites. years of chemistry that the characters never, ever act upon because the writer knows it would deflate the tension they've built up. maybe they have lifestyles that would be incompatible, or maybe they work together and don't want to be unprofessional, or maybe they don't even realize it. it's about the fact that sometimes, the suggestion is more satisfying than any resolution would be.

so you figure, mass effect takes place around 175 years after our current time, right? if shepard wears the n7 sweatshirt, is it the fashion equivalent of running around the normandy in a frock coat and cravat

@tobbycat replied to your post:

the greatest tragedy of arknights is how good it is. it's been my go-to "keep me entertained while i exercise" game for months now. [standard warning still applies: it is a gacha game, so if gambling gives you trouble, i wouldn't recommend it. it's easy for me to avoid the slot mechanic for months at a time and only pull when there's a character i really want. know yourself.]

why?

the "people with animal ears" thing is a little goofy for me, but like, i've watched anime before. i know the drill. i have no idea what the fandom is like, and frankly, i'm content. all i know is that it's fun and the girls are my sailor moon friends

every time someone in my social circle starts playing arknights it increases my power level. soon there will be no stopping me