Very sorry for your loss, and I hope you have many a great memories to look back on. I appreciate the kind words about the story and am glad it reached you in some way 
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Your friend will be alive inside your memories forever. So you will never really lost Tami.
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My condolences on your loss. A death of a friend and peer is a special kind of heavy.
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Trying to decide how much I want to dip into the horror with this story
There are these aliens who use parts of ancient living spaceships (well, dead ones) in their own ships. Also other aliens who use those actual living spaceships as their spaceships. Itâs symbiotic. Mostly.
But.
These aliens are descendants of an older species (well, technically, the older species broke into multiple subspecies, although there may still be individuals of the original genotype going on about). Also, these aliens are extremely long-livingânobody knows how long they can live, mostly they get killed in battle or get assassinated or somesuchâand theyâre kiiiinda space dragons/dinosaurs, so theyâll just keep growing (well, their true form does, theyâre shapeshifters). So, I have this image in my head that those living spaceships actually are the precursor species.
Which means theyâre mounting pieces of their dead ancestors as parts of their technological grid. And thatâs⌠pretty grim.
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Iâm feeling the Mass Effect influence in this world-building! 
Howâs the third game going? I finished it earlier this year and cried multiple times. A very well-crafted game.
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Unpopular opinion, I like Kaidan.
Iâve actually finished it before, and I even found my old saves! Imported a character I had already finished the game with, played through Mars, and switched to Legendary edition. (I bought ME3 on Origin originally, but picked it up from some Steam sale, because it was dirt cheap and I didnât own all the DLC, but then that broke the functioning version.) Finished Eden Prime thrice, and ran through Andromedaâs opening 15 times in a row.
As you should. MEâs Reapers combined with Farscapeâs Leviathans, mixed with some ancient Sith from Tales of the Jedi, and sprinkled with some Alastair Reynolds twice removed. Also a lot of Star Trek and Babylon 5, with a side of Barsoom.
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Oh wow, you found your old saves?! Thatâs amazing. I played Legendary Edition and also have unpopular opinions lol I played an original fem!Shep, I romanced Kaidan (and stayed loyal during ME2), the Mako/Hammerhead driving was my favorite mechanic, and I chose the Synthesis Ending for my Paragon. From what I see online, these are not popular choices to make, hahaha. My friends were surprised on how much I wanted to end the genophage and make peace with the Quarian and Geth, but I think thatâs them and not fandom at large.
Iâm unsure about playing Andromeda, but I borrowed Valenteâs the tie-in novel from the library. 
I bought the current Dragon Age games and DLCs during their recent super sale. I really like DAâs world-building and have watched multiple Letâs Plays and read tie-in novels. My super unpopular opinion is that Loghain is awesome and, while his character type is a rare wonder in dark fantasy, Alistair needs a kick in the pants.
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11 posts were merged into an existing topic: Video Games (Part 2)
I got it for $5 for my birthday last year but have yet to boot it up. A casualty of becoming a writer was definitely my interest in gaming on the Xbox One. I swore it off while writing Toaster and by the time I was done, I just lost the habit. Now my gaming is almost exclusively Switch and phone.
Update on my daughter playing Parenting Simulator: she finished yesterday, and quite enjoyed it. She started a second playthrough today.
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That sounds metal af, I love it
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Hey, there was a piece in one of my posts who got moved into the videogame thread that wasnât about videogames (the rest of the post was), can I post that piece back in this thread?
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Uh huh; please feel free to repost the non-game portion here.
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Does anyone have any resources on writing dialogues that actually feel human? 
I feel like Iâm a robot trying to replicate the way humans speakâŚbut maybe itâs just my autism.
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I âact outâ the dialogue out loud when I feel that way.
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Honestly, the best resources I can say to use are movies/tv shows. Pay attention to the dialogue in those, the facial moclvements, the tone of voice, the posture shifting, etc. Turn yourself into a human mo-cap device and remember those small tics.
Also, think of how the characters are feeling in the moment and let that help dictate some unique aspects of how they communicate. Maybe when one of them is nervous they cross their arms to cover their chest, signifying that theyâre closing themselves off to the situation, or maybe one of them has a stutter or an OCD compulsion like tapping their finger on the table in repetitions of three. Little stuff like that makes the difference and really brings a character out and differentiates them in a scene.
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Thank you, this is really helpful.
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I do this too. It can sometimes feel silly, especially if you live with someone, but I do think it helps not just making sure the dialogue sounds human, but getting in the characterâs headspace as well. If it sounds choppy or robotic when you say it out loud it probably comes across that way to the reader as well. Personally, I find I rend to take on the mood of the character when I say the lines which helps me get in touch with how they are feeling in those moments as well.
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Same here. One helpful tip I offer is to act out the same lines with different moods because often youâll be able to refine your dialogue to be tighter and more focused.
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I do this too, I just make sure im absolutely certain no roommates are home when I do that for the spicier scenes.
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I talk out loud in my head. But English is a foreign language for me, so I have no idea whether or not the dialogue actually works as intended.
As far as advice go, I like this one (although I disagree with the part about quotation marks, there are real languages written by real people that use different ways to mark dialogue, so Iâd say you should always follow the conventions of the language youâre using, not to try to hold to some universal standard that doesnât exist) and this.
They donât know theyâre the same species though. And nobody really questions why the cybernetics they harvest just bond with the body and start growing like living things.
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