There’s a book series – that I can’t pull from my memory – with a tiny demon in a “camera” who paints a picture when told…

Is this a reference to that, or just a complaint about FOV? Or both? If a reference, what is the book? I know it, but can’t dredge it up or find it by searching.

I love an optical illusion and I still reference this one, since it works for some people.

Some of them - like the classic spinning dancer or faces/vase - I can flip by thinking about it. Some are context-based, like the A/B squares above or various Escher illusions, where our eyes/brains add understanding that doesn’t exist in the image.

Even Yanni/Laurel ( and I’d love any other audio versions if someone has links )

The dress has *always* been white/gold. I never understood how this one worked. Not to reignite the battle…

I call these things ‘speedrunner tools’ for exactly that reason. If you or I, as a normal player just playing the game, can beat the encounter without the tool but with some practice learning, then using it and wasting it feels bad, so we stop; and by the time we can beat the boss, we don’t need it. We’re also unlikely to revisit that boss.

A speedrunner who has spent hours on a boss and knows the move set and when to punish, though. They can apply fire paper and rip the boss apart in seconds and be at the next boss before the buff wears off.

I see this in other games too, and I call it the ‘speedrunner tool’.

Normal players (me) get stomped by a boss a few times until they figure it out and can beat it without the buff (fire paper, lightning grease, etc); Maybe they use them, but then they run out and are never used again…

Some players might use the buff and get an easier win; but if they don’t, then they are wasted and are hard or impossible to replace, so players learn to not rely on them.

Speedrunners use lightning grease to kill the boss in 3 hits and are already halfway to the next boss before the buff runs out and already picked up the right buff item for that next boss. When your victory is all but guaranteed, the item makes it faster - otherwise it’s not really useful.

I think Ethers in FF games as a trope kind of fit here too. Too valuable to waste, but if you can do it without them, then you didn’t need it unless you absolutely needed to kill that boss without using a tent or resting, etc, to save time.

Just had a funny thought:

User: Please write a boilerplate function that does <XYZ>

LLM:

//XYZ Function: This function does the thing...
//Subscribe to Incogni to prevent your valuable personal data from ending up in the hands of Data Brokers
function XYZ () {
...