Someone Should Add This To Urban Dictionary

Someone should add this to Urban Dictionary

I just write like the readers already know the character's tragic backstory. Like they already know all the crazy worldbuilding I went through to get the characters into the situation in which they find themselves. And then dribble out the backstory whenever it triggers the character's trauma. :D

A tip for excellent writing I just learned: Don't introduce a character with their Dramatic Backstory. It makes readers go "oh alright this is the Dramatic Background Story Character" and establishes a baseline of Tragic, either for the story as a whole or this character in particular. With no contrast of light and dark, pure darkness isn't impactful, it just looks like the absence of anything to look at.

If you really want someone's dramatic backstory to hit the audience like a gut punch, let them get to know the character first. That way the dark backstory doesn't come off as a description of who they are, but an explanation to why they are the way they are. Bonus points for connecting it to something that's already been established as a part of the character - what a devastating blow to suddenly put together that hold on, that funny quirky thing that they always do is a fucking trauma response.

Immortal Nox: The Lost City

Stretching her arms over her head, Astra swished her tail and laid her ears back with a yawn. She’d been feeling odd since getting up from an unexpected crash hours earlier. It was the first time she’d ever had that happen while playing a VR game. “Maybe it’s an update?” she wondered aloud and squinted through the tree canopy at the sky’s golden hue.

Tiredness was a new sensation to her while playing Ashguard. She’d been gathering herbs and materials for hours in-game. Long enough for the sun to begin dipping down behind the mountain range that bisected the main continent. To the north were the three major cities of Aesir, Vanaheim, and Nifelheim, and Astra Diane’s current location was three months’ worth of in-game travel into the unmapped Southlands.

Being a Healer Class, it was a miracle she’d made it this far by herself. Usually, she had her Porter, Xander, but she’d sent him back to Aesir to sell some things in hopes that he wouldn’t catch the plague from her.

The plague plotline had come out of nowhere for a game with very little story. But attempting to find a cure for it had been a fun use of the Crafting Skills she’d spent so much time leveling up. Unfortunately, she’d caught it too, and while Players respawned at the Soul Stones in the three major cities, NPCs did not.

Astra Diane pulled her Menu out of her pocket. “I should check on him,” she muttered. She hadn’t been feeling the plague symptoms since her crash earlier. Her Menu, a Scroll that always existed in her pocket, was a touch screen once unrolled. Swiping through the tabs, Astra selected her teleport list.

As for the symptoms, they were miserable. It was similar to having the flu, but in her mind, the tiredness and aching in her body lingered even after logging out. Earlier that day, she’d collapsed in-game and woke up several hours later. Astra felt fine now, so she supposed the plague had run its course, and she was free to return to town.

Being in the Southlands for so long by herself was lonely. She was, after all, a squishy Healer Class and tended to rely on the fact that she could heal herself to get through fights with monsters more than an actual strategy. She knew she wasn’t a very good Player.

She glanced top left to see her and Xander’s health bars. The Porter was at full health, as was she. Top right, she could see the in-game time, which only showed hours and minutes of the day. That was the extent of Ashguard’s HUD.

If she wanted to use a Skill, she had to remember and activate it. There weren’t easy buttons that stayed in view to remind Players of what they had, and the Skills didn’t organize into trees. A Skill simply got stronger the more it was used, and there were rumored to be hundreds of Skills out there to find. She did have a menu that listed all her Skills, but battles required quick thinking, and Players tended to have Skills they relied on more frequently than others.

She’d left a daisy chain of Soul Stone Shards, small, single-use devices, on her way through the Southlands.

They weren’t very durable, as other Players or monsters could destroy them, but they lasted a week in real-time. The most frequent complaint about them was that Players couldn’t respawn to them. They were available as teleport locations in the list, great for a quick run back to one of the major cities for a minute, but that was it.

Astra stared at her empty list.

What the heck?

She was some distance from the last one she’d dropped, and the others were older, leading up to the Player town at the edge of the Southlands, but that didn’t explain why they were all gone.

“Ugh.” Backing out of her teleport list, she moved to Inventory to get a Soul Stone Shard. That all of the ones she’d dropped in the last four game-time weeks were gone was only an inconvenience if she died. She wouldn’t have a quick way back to her current location after respawning at the last major city she’d been in. The faster she got one activated, the better.

Astra activated the item and dropped it just as she heard shuffling in the bushes.

Looking up from her Menu, she met the eyes of a Razor Boar mid-charge. “[Dodge]” died on her lips as the two pairs of tusks ripped through her midsection. Pain like she had never felt before overwhelmed her senses. She collapsed to the ground. Her armor, which was as high-quality as she could make it, had protected her a bit from the attack, but the Boar continued to slash at her as she lay helpless on the ground, unable to think past the pain.

A tusk caught her in the throat, and a terrible coldness descended upon her.

Her consciousness hung suspended in darkness; before her were the options to Wait or Respawn. Choosing Respawn, her body exploded in sparks of light, teleporting back to the last Soul Stone she’d attuned to.

Astra wheezed out a moan of residual pain as her feet touched the pavement. Gripping herself, she shivered. Her pain setting must have gotten changed. Had they updated the game? Maybe that was why she’d passed out earlier.

She now stood in the Soul Stone Plaza of Aesir, a city built on the mountainous shore and sprawling onto an island within visual distance of the rocky beach. The architecture resembled ancient Greco-Roman, giving it an air of philosophical sophistication. It was her favorite city, and it looked gorgeous in the setting sun’s light. However something was off.

Why was it so quiet?

Turning away from the Soul Stone, she found that the plaza, usually bustling with Players coming and going, was filled with market stalls and a crowd that was just trying to get their last bit of shopping done before it got too dark. While physically, Players and Non-Player Characters were identical, the system showed Player names to other Players in text hovering over their heads.

There were no Players in the crowd.

The stall owners and their customers stared at her, pale, jaws agape. A Human grandmother had dropped her basket of apples directly next to Astra. A Lycanth woman clutched her cub to her chest.

___

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Another update!

First thing first, I promise updates will be Mondays and Thursdays. I'm excited about the story though and love writing Enoki. Ze is so fun!

Next, I should be upfront with anyone checking it out at this point. The story will take a break starting in October. I am entering it in a contest so I have to let judges do their thing and behave. I'll still be writing it, just no posts.

I will probably feel like I'm dying during this.

Read The Reincarnated Shapeshifter’s Godly Feast :: Chapter 4 Marinating Over This

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I also want to say recipes close to what you see in the story will show up as well. I always like the idea of being able to make anime food. So I'm doing that here. I am hoping everyone enjoys that. If not well, I'm gonna do it anyway.

Sorry for the sort post but I'm still sleepy and have to do the work thing. If you tag me in a game I'll try to play later! I'm still getting used to the whole Tumblr thing.

he did it again

ed zitron, a tech beat reporter, wrote an article about a recent paper that came out from goldman-sachs calling AI, in nicer terms, a grift. it is a really interesting article; hearing criticism from people who are not ignorant of the tech and have no reason to mince words is refreshing. it also brings up points and asks the right questions:

if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?

what does it mean when people say that AI will "get better"? what does that look like and how would it even be achieved? the article makes a point to debunk talking points about how all tech is misunderstood at first by pointing out that the tech it gets compared to the most, the internet and smartphones, were both created over the course of decades with roadmaps and clear goals. AI does not have this.

the american power grid straight up cannot handle the load required to run AI because it has not been meaningfully developed in decades. how are they going to overcome this hurdle (they aren't)?

people who are losing their jobs to this tech aren't being "replaced". they're just getting a taste of how little their managers care about their craft and how little they think of their consumer base. ai is not capable of replacing humans and there's no indication they ever will because...

all of these models use the same training data so now they're all giving the same wrong answers in the same voice. without massive and i mean EXPONENTIALLY MASSIVE troves of data to work with, they are pretty much as a standstill for any innovation they're imagining in their heads