#I had a Great Big Journey Phase a few years ago I would play it through several times every day it was intense

[canisalbus]

What are these short and compact games that you have been playing?

Well, off the top of my head, shorter games (10 hours or less) that I've been really enamored by include Journey, Night In The Woods, Abzû, Sable, Limbo, Gris, Year Walk, Never Alone, The Mooseman, Samorost 3, Katamari Damacy and Firewatch. I'm not saying all of them are objectively great and everyone's cup of tea, but I personally vibed with them.

#I had a Great Big Journey Phase a few years ago I would play it through several times every day it was intense #Journey runs with an attentive and thoughtful companion are some of the most touching gaming experiences I've had #wandering around OOB with someone was my favorite thing #tried to learn the fancy flying techniques with mixed results #and in the beginning of this year I got really fixated with the idea of getting 100% on Limbo and would replay it obsessively #but in the end I didn't manage to get the last achievement where you need to finish with five deaths or less #¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #anonymous #answered

[thommi-tomate]

Interview with Frans Krätzig

By: FCB

Frans, let's start with a question that I'm sure you've been asked before: Why is your name spelled with an "s"?

(smiles) There's no special reason, so no Dutch influences or anything like that, as I read once. My parents liked the name Franz, but they wanted something special. And so they spelled me with an 's'. In Bavaria, in the land of Franz-Beckenbauer, people sometimes look at me funny, but I've long since gotten used to it.

In the summer of 2017, you were one of the first talents to settle in at the FC Bayern Campus, which had just opened its doors. Join us on your journey, what did you take with you back then?

Not much, a big bag, a backpack, that's all. In fact, I moved in late because my parents had booked our summer vacation a long time ago and we didn't want to cancel it. I perfectly remember the respect I felt the first day I set foot on the Campus. I had visited it before, but when you move there when you are only 14 years old, everything seems enormous.

What is it like to grow in the Campus and to grow in football?

You get the Bayern DNA in your blood from day one and you quickly realize that it's all about winning, winning and winning. I thought that was great, because that's how you learn to handle the pressure from the start. I remember the incredible feeling I had when I looked at the first few games and saw the Bayern crest on the left side of my chest. Until then, I had only seen it on TV.

Your teammate Johannes Schenk, who is currently on loan at Preußen Münster, used to say that your room on campus was always the meeting place for your gang because you had the biggest room.

Tuesday and Wednesday there was Champions League, from Friday to Sunday Bundesliga... and in between we played console games. We had many great afternoons. But I can also explain to you why I had the biggest room: before the rooms for the following year were distributed, they always looked at who had the tidiest room, and that person then had the honor of getting the biggest room. So in a way I had earned it (smiles).

I'm sure you've also done some mischief...

That's part of it, isn't it? But we would never run away, because that wouldn't have done much good on campus. (laughs) For example, we would play hide-and-seek all over the campus grounds, including the gym area and the office building, late into the night. And one time one of the guys snuck into the PA booth at night in the stadium, turned on all the speakers and pretended he was a ghost haunting the Campus: 'Boo-hoo, I'm the Campus ghost' - it was hilarious.

Every year we have seen that many players have not been able to establish themselves. How do you manage this pressure?

At the lower levels, you don't realize how much performance is measured. I really felt the pressure from U-17 and U-19. There are phases in between where you think: this is exactly what I've wanted to do all my life, but what if it doesn't work out? In my second year with the U-19s, I was out for seven months with pubalgia and a hernia. A very long time, during which a lot of things were going through my head: Will I come back? What would it be like to live at home again? What kind of studies would I be interested in? My U19 coach, Danny Galm, helped me a lot at the time and supported me mentally.

What escape strategy would you have had?

Both my parents work in creative professions. I was always impressed when you can develop and design something freely. Interior design, for example, would have been an option. I think it's good to do something else for the head besides soccer. Last year I enrolled in a degree course, but soon dropped out. The course was called "Sports Management in Football", but I quickly realized that I couldn't think about football 24 hours a day. I came from training, I had to study... and there I was again thinking about football.

If you ask around campus, everyone raves about your openness. Where does that come from?

My whole family is very open and communicative. I learned very early on how important kindness and politeness are in life. I also had to go my own way as a young man and managed on my own. So it's a mix of good education and quick independence; I hope my parents will be happy when they read this (laughs).

How hard is it not to take off?

I learned at home to always keep my feet on the ground. You should never become arrogant; on the other hand, a healthy self-confidence on the soccer pitch doesn't hurt if you want to make a name for yourself at FC Bayern.

In your childhood you played as a midfielder, how come you are now a left back?

You have to ask Holger Seitz about that. David Herold went on loan to Austria during the last winter break, and Seitz thought he'd try me out as a left-back due to a shortage of players. After a training session, I went to his coach's office, he explained what he expected of me, and it worked out quite well. I really like the full-back role, but I don't want to rule out going back to six, eight or ten at some point.

It is not uncommon for experienced midfielders to take their first professional steps as full-backs: Philipp Lahm, Joshua Kimmich ...

Joshua is generally a good role model. How he can be so dedicated in every training session, how he is so eager to win every training match... sometimes I stand next to him and think: Wow, I want to be like that too, that's exactly why we play football. Josh never ceases to impress me

#frans krätzig #fc bayern münchen #interview

[i-would-have-come-for-you]

A Marriage of convenience

The art does not belong to me. All credits go to @cyantasim for the beautiful work.

Chapter 2

Hinata Hyuga was not stupid.

So when she came home to find Sasuke Uchiha in her house, talking to her father privately, she knew something was wrong.

Neji was also there, strangely. Hinata was anxious. She was pacing in the garden, waiting for their private meeting to be over so she could ask what the hell was Uchiha Sasuke doing in the Hyuga compounds?

“Lady Hinata, you must calm down. It is merely clan business.” Ko, her care taker since she was a child, advised her.

“I just-It’s unsuaul.” She stumbled for words to express what she thought. She did not stutter anymore. No. she’d outgrown that phase along with the shyness.

She’d expressed her feelings to Naruto and she’d been understanding when he’d told her he could only be friends. She was okay with the fact that he was engaged to Sakura Haruno, her close friend now.

Since the war, everyone wanted to rebuild. Together. That’s why people did not hesitate to celebrate small things and small mercies either.

The war had been cruel. But that was 3 years ago. Hinata was a 19 year old now, strong and ready to take over her clan as head.

She’d become Jonin and then ANBU along with a few of her old classmates. Naruto was training to become Hokage under Kakashi’s wing. Sakura was the head of the Konoha Hospital. Ino had decided to become a Jounin teacher along with managing her flower shop.

And Sasuke…he’d left Konoha for a journey as atonement of his sins. He’d come back a few months ago after 3 years. Hinata had been one to welcome him back along with his friends as she felt bad because everyone was wary of him.

He’d flashed her a look of intrigue before resuming his mask of cold indifference. She sighed. She’d drive herself crazy, over thinking this.

She decided to shower and change to calm herself. She showered and changed into comfortable clothing before deciding to read the mission report for her previous mission before presenting it to the Hokage today.

She knew it would be dinner time soon so she walked downstairs, clad in her T-shirt and yoga pants. As she reached the lower floor, she almost bumped into Uchiha Sasuke. She stopped herself just in time.

She looked up at his face which was weary but showed no hint of any emotion. Hinata just stared at him for a moment. “Uh-I’m sorry.” She told him softly.

He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply before walking off, not gracing her with a response. What the-?

She saw Neji, white as chalk come out of her father’s study. “Neji nii? What’s wrong?” she asked him carefully.

He looked at her and almost freaked out. “Nothing.” He breathed out heavily “Nothing at all. Please excuse me.”

He walked off. She wondered was wrong with him. Her father did not come out of the study at all. Hinata shrugged it off, determined to ask why Sasuke was here later.

For now, she had dinner to eat since she hadn’t eaten anything all day.

Hinata had just returned from presenting the Hokage her mission report. The Hokage had praised her good work.

She was still smiling from that, relishing the praise. She’d been happy with her performance on the mission. Her mind tracked back to when she was a young Genin. She’d been weak.

She remembered her father’s mission before most of her missions.

Try not to be a burden for anyone else.

That was always great encouragement, she thought bitterly. It was no use thinking back on that now. Once she was clan leader, she would surely change the ways of the Hyuga. She’d make sure there was no more resentment between the two branches.

She just finished taking off her shoes when the servant informed her that her father wanted to speak to her in his study.

It was something regarding Sasuke’s visit yesterday, Hinata was sure. She walked to her father’s study and knocked softly.

“Come in.” his voice rang out.

She entered and closed the door behind her. He stood besides the window in the room. As if anxious. Which was surely not possible.

“Good evening father.” She greeted.

“Good evening Hinata.” He said. She waited for him to say more.

“You called me here. What is the matter?” she got straight to the point as her father disliked beating around the bush.

“Hinata…I have some news for you and I hope you will take it well.”

Hinata’s heart beat faster. She had a feeling whatever the news was…it was not going to be very pleasant for her.

“What…?” she could not manage anymore words. Hiashi looked at her gravely, as if announcing her death.

“Uchiha Sasuke visited yesterday as I am sure you know. He presented me with a blood contract, sealing your engagement to him.”

Hinata’s breath was knocked out of her body as her father calmly informed her of this. “It was a marriage contract. Between you and Uchiha Sasuke.”

Hinata still could not grasp what he was saying. “The engagement was arranged by me and the Uchiha head Fugaku. It must be fulifilled.”

“No…” she breathed out.

“I’m afraid that is the arrangement. You will be married to Uchiha Sasuke with in the week.” He said it like he was not ripping her life apart right there and then. Like it was a good thing. Like it was routine. Maybe for him, ripping apart lives was not a big deal.

“You can’t do this to me.” She said angrily.

“It is for the best.” He told her.

“You can’t do this to me.” She said through gritted teeth this time. Hiashi sighed, like she was a child, stubbornly asking for a toy she could not have.

“I cannot break a blood contract. And besides, it is a beneficial match.” He said, eyeing her carefully. Her eyes burned with tears.

“You can’t rip my life apart just like that! What about my life? My ambitions. I don’t want to be a breeding mare for him!”

Hiashi flinched at this. He could not help but notice how alike she looked to her mother. It sent a pang through him. Clan before family, he reminded himself.

“Hinata…I expect you to understand.” He told her slowly.

“NO! You’re destroying my life and you expect me to UNDERSTAND?!” she said, raising her voice in front of him for the first time. Her tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Hinata…”

“NO! What about being clan head? I was trained for that all my life. I endured taunts from you, snide remarks from the elders, beatings from Neji only to become clan head and change this clan. What about that?!”

“Neji will be clan head.” He told her softly.

She stopped dead. Her breathing became very slow for a second. Neji. Clan head. Her mind wrapped around the fact that she was so replaceable.

“You…you think I’m so useless that you can replace me in a minute?” she whispered out. Hiashi’s head throbbed.

“It’s not like that. You need to understand…”

“That I’m going to be Uchiha’s breed mare, you’re selling me off, appointing Neji as the clan head and getting rid of me for good.”

“I trained all my life for naught. For this. Only to be married off. You never loved me, it hurt but it was okay. If it meant it would not happen to another under my watch, it was fine. This…death would be better than this.”

Her voice was chocked with tears and Hiashi felt something inside him break. He urged his demeanor not to break. He was clan head dammit.

“Yes.” He forced out.

She looked out and smiled without mirth. “I see.”

“You are expected to be married this week.” He informed her.

He looked at her, as she broke from the inside. He hated that he could do nothing about it. That he was the reason she was always hurting.

“After I’m sold to the Uchiha to be his whore” he flinched at her words for she was never one to use crude language “Do not expect me to visit. I will leave this compound, this clan and your lives forever. No coming back. If anyone tries to seal my Byakugan, I will kill them”

“And since you never played the role of a father anyways, what’s the use of the title alone? You are no father of mine Hyuga Hiashi. I hate you. You didn’t deserve my mother and you certainly don’t deserve me. Good bye.”

She walked outside, slamming the door shut, tears still streaming down her cheeks. Hiashi sat down on his chair, unable to support himself. He looked at the portrait of his wife, who looked as young as Hinata.

She’d always been like her mother, he mused. He’d lost Hana and now he’d lost Hinata for good too.

Hinata wiped her tears as she walked outside. She hated Hiashi. She hated him. She hated Uchiha Sasuke for barging into her life when it was finally becoming better.

She hated him. She walked to her room as her world collapsed around her.

________

“WHAT?!”

Hinata flinched at the volume of Ino and Sakura’s combined voices. She nodded wearily, not wanting to look at them.

“Your father is marrying you off to Sasuke?” Tenten asked, astonished as well.

“That’s what he told me.” She said bitterly.

“What about being clan head and changing the Hyuga?” Sakura asked softly, knowing it was her friend’s dream.

“Apparently marrying me off is better for me so Neji is going to be head while I will bear children for Uchiha Sasuke.” Hinata spat out.

Ino’s blue eyes filled with tears. “Hinata…I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.” She said, hugging her blue haifred friend.

“Ino…life is not fair. Who knows, maybe I even deserve being treated like nothing all my life.” Hinata shrugged sadly. At least her friends knew how she felt.

“Don’t say that.” Tenten scolded almost harshly “You deserve all the best things in life Hinata.”

Hinata chuckled bitterly. “That’s why I really am getting the best things.” Sakura had never seen her friend so down and it made her extremely mad at Hiashi.

“Hinata, I’ll go and kick your father’s ass if I have to. You won’t marry Sasuke if you don’t want to. You will become clan leader.” She said, taking Hinata’s hand.

Hinata shook her head. “He’s not my father anymore. I have cut ties with my clan and I will not force any bonds once I am married.”

“You’re actually accepting this ridiculousness?” Ino asked, angrily. Hinata shrugged.

“I am.”

“Hinata this is crazy.” Tenten said. Hinata did not say anything, staring ahead. She got up instead. “I should go tell the Hokage. I might need a few holidays for the preparations.”

“Hinata please-don’t. think about it. Don’t throw away your while life because of your asshole father.” Sakura urged her.

“Sakura, Ino, Tenten…it’s alright. Things will work out, I am sure.” She lied to them and herself “But more importantly…you’ll attend the wedding, right?”

Ino forced a smile and the others nodded glumly. “Of course.” Tenten said.

“You’ll regret coming to shop with us.” Ino said, grinning despite the fire burning in her heart for Hinata. Hinata let out a genuine smile.

“I am sure I will. I’ll see you tomorrow for shopping then. Good bye.”

She was gone in a flash, leaving her fuming friends who cursed Hiashi collectively, feeling bad for Hinata.

______

Sasuke was training by himself in a secluded area of the outskirts of Konoha when he felt Naruto’s chakra flash nearby. He stopped and looked around.

Naruto appeared in front of him in a flash. He grabbed Sasuke roughly by the collar of his shirt and slammed him against the tree.

Sasuke could shake off his hold but he wanted to know what had caused Naruto to be frustrated this time. “What is it now Dobe? I told you I did not steal your ramen coupons.”

Naruto’s glare did not fade. “Sasuke…what is this rumor about you and Hinata getting married?”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. That. He shook off Naruto’s hold and turned his back on him. “So you finally heard?”

Naruto growled. “Is it true?” he asked instead. Sasuke nodded.

“How could you, you bastard?!” Naruto yelled, lunging at him. Sasuke dodged his lunge and stood a distance away, an eyebrow arched perfectly.

“She wanted to be clan head! She had a life. How could you?!”

“Well her father did not really object. Plus the blood contract helped.” Sasuke shrugged. “What do you care?”

“I care because she’s my friend and Sakura told me she’s really messed up about this.”

“That is none of my concern.” Sasuke shrugged.

Naruto’s brows furrowed together as he aimed a punch at Sasuke. “Do you really want to go now?” Sasuke asked, grabbing his hand.

Naruto’s kick was the only answer. Sasuke sighed before the spar began.

____

And so Hinata got married to Sasuke by the end of the week. Sasuke offered her any room to sleep in. He noticed her surprise.

“Am I not your breeding mare Uchiha-san?” she asked, raising her eyebrows in a mocking gesture. He did not waver as he said.

“No. You are my wife, not a common whore. After all I did go through the trouble of marrying you.”

“You’re not going to bed me then?” he noticed there was a hint of relief in her voice which almost made him smirk at her fear of sharing a bed with him.

“I am not going to rape you, if that is what your indirect question means. If we sleep together, ever, it will be because we want to…not because of obligation.” He doubted it though. And he knew she did too.

He walked off, tired. She watched his retreating back with a slight admiration. But hate burned inside her. Why could he not be a complete demon to her so she’d hate him? Why did he say this? Why did he behave nicely?

She’d thought he was a sex-crazed, power hungry, obsessed and crazy bastard.

She cut the sex-crazed off the list.

As she lay in the unexpectedly soft bed in the room across from his, sleep engulfed her. She dreamt of demons, Uchihas and darkness.

________

Remember, sharing is caring. Reblog to spread the story :D

I'm going to be making a taglist for everyone who wants to be notified when I update the story so if you want to be added, please tell me.

#sasuhina fanfiction #SasuHina #Sasuke Uchiha #hinata hyuga #naruto shippuden #alternate universe #Married SasuHina #slow burn #enemies to lovers #Post war era

[reginacyrkonia]

Replies

Hi Anon! I’m happy you liked the episode with Don. I don’t think if there will be a Christmas special episode soon, because in the series it’s still autumn. If it makes you happier I can say that in the next season (3) the action would take place in winter, so there’s definitely going to be a Christmas themed episode. You’ve got some nice ideas, but who knows whether Don’ll be alone... 😉

Oh, no! I like all of them! 😂 I can’t simply choose one...

There was a time I used to play Olive Specter and Ophelia pretty much and I really enjoyed it. I’m not saying they’re my favourites, but I’m just saying this so you don’t think I play only in Pleasantview. 😂 As for least fav.... I was never interested in the Ottomas family. 🤔

Hmm... It was a long time ago... I think I’ve placed there an invisible sofa recolor, but I’m not 100% sure. 😉

Hi Anon! Of course there are many possibilities and solutions. I agree that it’s better when a couple share same essential things, especially when it comes to life plans and worldview. That’s why I’m not a big fan of Don/Cassandra or Daniel/Kaylynn ship in the long run. But in my opinion 2 people forming a couple can’t be too similar. For me it’s just boring. That’s why when it comes to Pleasant sisters, Dustin and Dirk I imagine them building relationships with partners who are complementary to them. Angela is way too uptight and Dustin is reckless, so I believe together they can find a nice balance. Same for Lilith and Dirk - Lilith is sensitive and gets hurt easily even though she acts tough. Dirk seems more vulnerable and yet I imagine that deep inside he’s got much more strength. Of course all of them are teens now and they probably don’t think so seriously about relationships and life plans like adults. Besides, people do change and especially teenagers, so in the future they might act totally different. Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment, I really enjoy reading other simmer’s opinions! 💗

Hi! I’m so happy you liked my Whispering Lake 💙

The basic key to success is making them different! I know it sounds simple, but I’ve been through that phase (when I started my journey with ts2 game) when most of the sims I created had face 01 or 02. Back in that time I thought they were pretty... Also, creating perfect-looking sims with wide eyes, big lips and small noses makes the game boring. I’m not into supporting “perfect beauty” stereotypes the world is trying to sell us for years.

I don’t use face templates, I usually just play for fun in CAS and my sims are made from scratch... I recommend to use custom sliders! It’s an amazing tool and as far as I know it’s totally safe. You can create so many interesting faces! Also, try to experiment a little with style and bodyshape. I know... there are only few opitons when it comes to bodyshape, but still you don’t need to make everyone ‘fit’ and ‘attractive’ in the stereotypical way. There are many amazing CC creators on tumblr, who create wonderful genetics, clothes, hairstyles and makeup. You can check out my pinterest (pinterest.com/rcyrkonia) I’ve got some great stuff saved there.

Anyway, just try to make your sims different. Variety is beautiful.😊

#replies #pleasantview #whispering lake

[eighthxjune]

aixa writes black people + love #2 community: A “World” Still Necessary

It was 1987 when A Different World premiered.  I was young, like not yet double digits, young.  Every Thursday night, at 8:30, my mom, dad, sister, brother and I gathered around the TV, belting out the show’s theme song by Phoebe Snow in season one, Aretha Franklin in seasons two through five, and Boyz II Men in its final episodes.  Those lyrics were soon my alma mater:

I know my parents loved me Stand behind me come what may I know now that I’m ready For I finally heard them say

It’s a different woorrrrrld than where ya come from

Hillman College was a pinnacle place for me.  It personified cultural identity, and as someone who grew up in a predominantly white suburban town, the only Black pupil until high school, it was majestic and I wanted to be there.  Hillman displayed the cool factor our culture exudes so effortlessly; highlighting our style, dialect, posture, passion, and purpose from every region of the country, the continent of Africa and the Caribbean.  This “world”, was different than where I came from, and it was beautiful.  It gave me hope that a place - outside of my own home - supportive, caring and nurturing existed.

I saw Black teachers champion students who didn’t see their own unique potential, and dorm directors give sage advice. Witnessed roommates with nothing in common become best friends, and confidants.  I got hyped, and danced when adamant voices rallied together until a donor ceased support of South Africa’s apartheid.  And understood what loyalty looked like when a friend rescued his homegirl from what nearly turned into a date rape.  I cheered on two Black men fighting the weapon of racial injustice brought upon by a rival school, and marveled in a student reclaiming the image of Aunt Jemima, realizing her imperial complexion was to be treasured.  I observed discoveries, rejections, failed attempts, triumphs and losses, and empathized as if they were my own, because honestly they were.  Hillman was a community, a Black community, our community, an extension of who I was, who I am.  At such a young age, it was introducing me to myself.  This “different world” was a reflection of my desires and dreams.  It was an aspirational exhibit of Black successes - a rarity shown in media. Hillman was a place that encouraged you to stretch your capacity of thought and understanding.  It valued unlearning stifled ways of thinking, to learning expansively and with zeal.

Debbie Allen, an HBCU alum of Howard University, and the show's brilliant producer, as of season two, understood the importance of telling Black stories with all of their complexities.  She used television as a tool to address what was most difficult and challenging about us.  “If we’re not doing that, we’re not doing a good job.”  She expressed to Netflix’s Strong Black Legends.  When brought on board she excitedly wrote a storyline for character Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet), who, at the time, was pregnant in real life.  She thought it would be great to present the experience of a young Black student from an upper middle class family, not married, about to embark on motherhood.  Though the idea got nixed by the show’s creator, Bill Cosby - who didn’t approve of Denise being pregnant in college - I wonder what her story would have developed into as a student mother, a credible notion, and one I’m certain would have advanced her role.  

See, at Hillman, students strived to be the best versions of themselves, and looked forward to reciprocating care to those who raised them.  But, even more vital, they knew their obligation to boost those who were succeeding them. They cherished their Blackness and its power.

The hub of the campus was The Pit - the school’s eatery that made an appearance in practically every episode.  It was where students solely exhaled after a day of grueling classes and friends merged to catch up on the latest of tales.  Conversations flowed candidly at this hangout and with comedic flair.  Everyone passed through the beloved grumpy owner, Mr Gaines’ (Lou Myers) spot.  Even my forever heartthrob, Tupac, made a stunning guest appearance as Piccolo, an old flame from Baltimore coming to put claims on his childhood love, Lena James (Jada Pinkett Smith).

Relationships played a significant part in character maturation at Hillman, and the love story that tugged at my heartstrings was Whitley and Dewayne, performed by Jasmine Guy and Kadeem Hardison.  Cleverly laced throughout the show’s entire series, we journeyed with a high maintenance southern debutante from Richmond, VA and a Brooklyn native in J’s and flip-up glasses, who got a perfect score on his math SATs.  Allen took us on an exciting ride while these two people - growing individually - were also hesitantly falling in love with each other.  It was the ingenious love story I needed, and subconsciously yearned for, even if I were only in the fifth grade.  How could I not gush over this attainable fairytale that spoke my love language. I kept twinkling at the idea that, ‘In just a few years, this college life will be a reality for me.’  

Although Hillman College was a fictional place, its impact tripled enrollment of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.  As you may have gathered by now, A Different World ignited my love for HBCUs, and then began my search in finding one most suitable for me; a place that served as a home and fostered my voice, since it was currently muffled, allowing others - who didn’t look like me - to feel comfortable in the presence of my Black skin.  By the time I got to high school I attended the Black College Tour, twice.  Not because I was having trouble finding a good school, but really I was in awe of the noteworthy offerings provided at these historically Black schools.  The curriculums were impressive, the faculty resembled me, and the alumni were groundbreakers.  I was visiting institutions that are irreplaceable.  There was so much to learn about myself, and it was to happen in this next phase.  During my visits, I watched students purposefully carry themselves across campus, greet friends with hugs and daps, expressively admire each other’s gear and hairstyles, pause on building steps to continue debatable class discussions, only to be interrupted by an eye-catching smile.  The exploration alone made my heart flutter, and shortly after I was back at home flexing in my new Black college apparel - showing off the schools I toured.  By senior year of high school I decided to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. and it was more than I imagined it to be; finding me in a way I didn’t think it could.  It met me where I was and readied me to rule the world.

There have always been skeptics who find HBCUs to be limiting.  But, honestly there isn’t a place that will “teach you how to love and know yourself” like one - a necessary move after centuries of oppression; especially as a Black woman who receives bare minimum support when it comes to this country’s level of respect. These institutions encourage you to go inward and prepare yourself for life ahead, beyond Black communities.  On the backs of scarred ancestors, almost 200 years ago, HBCUs were created, reshaping American history.  Literally built by their hands, these Black forebears constructed a place to acquire a well desired education, and for once, as a majority, marked a setting where Black issues could be discussed. Despite what history instilled upon us, Black people were thriving and these HBCUs had a strong hand in making sure of that.

Howard University is a big part of my DNA, a connection made due to A Different World.  It’s not easy expressing to those who have never attended an HBCU how magical those four years were, and how much rich history is seeped in the campus soil.  However, the show is the best demonstration; restoring a feeling that will always remain in my heart, reminding me of friendships built that reside at my core.  I graduated from Howard years ago, started a career in New York and since moved to Los Angeles to begin a new chapter.  But every autumn, when I can, I race back to celebrate Howard’s homecoming, in high hopes of reliving just a taste of some of the greatest years of my life.  It's never quite the same, but I don’t expect it ever will be.

A Different World came to an “end of the road” in 1993, and now I stream its episodes to emotionally reconnect with a missed experience; watching amusingly as if I hadn’t seen each one several times already.  Because I still yearn to explore a “world” that inspires me to reach for more of myself, and a Black love story that provides hope.  And though this “world” may be different, I know, I’m not alone.

Take care of yourself.

#aixawrites #black people #love #a different world #debbie allen #hbcu #black writers #community #tupac #whitley and dewayne #lisa bonet #jada pinkett smith #howard university #hillman college #black students #campus life #college life #black college #jasmine guy #kadeem hardison #netflix #strong black legends #black love story #racial injustice #ancestors #black love #black couples #relationships #strong black leads

[gra-sonas]

Currently airing its second season and already renewed for its third, The CW’s Roswell, New Mexico continues to push the story of alien siblings attempting to live peacefully in the town of Roswell to new places even perhaps for fans of the original Roswell. MICHAEL VLAMIS discusses working on the show, the complexities of his character, Michael Guerin, the many (MANY) other projects on his plate and more!

watchtivist: To start off, congratulations on the success of the show! How cool that you’re heading into season three now!

MICHAEL VLAMIS: It’s crazy, I remember when I got the call that I was going to be on the show in the first place. It’s the role that changed my life and it really set me up for all the other things going on in my life. I remember getting that call, crying in a public place. So jacked up! And now all of a sudden, it’s like no big deal. I watched the episode last night (episode 207) on the TV and I get reminded it’s a big deal when I talk to my parents after every episode and hear their thoughts. Just the fact that they get to see their son miles away on television once a week. I appreciate you saying that because sometimes it feels like this is something we’re doing now, but definitely taking those moments to be grateful and the fact that we have season three is amazing.

W: It’s really great, especially in this landscape where shows don’t really get to dig into things. It’s gotta be exciting!

MV: Definitely.

W: One of the questions we received from Twitter was about if this role, that of Michael Guerin, has led you to acquire any particular skill set (or sets) for it.

MV: Oh wow, that’s interesting. Season one made me pull out my guitar again. Which was actually really cool because I got like not good at guitar, but decent where I could play a few songs. In college, I borrowed someone’s guitar and later got my own and played a bunch. Then for years, I got so focused on trying to make it as an actor, writing and auditions, that I stopped playing it. The show forced me to really go out of my comfort zone and even though it was easy things like songs with four chords or strumming patterns, sometimes depending on shooting schedules and if they got switched around, I’d learn something three hours before going to set. We’d wrap super late sometimes and I’d come home and dig in with my guitar. It’s definitely helped me brush up on that. I haven’t played the guitar on season two, so I’m probably back to where I was. [Laughs]

W: With the violent circumstances making up Michael’s background, he kind of starts out with that “looking out for number one” approach to things and season two we’re seeing Michael’s growth and him realizing when it’s perfectly ok for him to let people in and reprioritize based on that. What has that been like for you in terms of tackling the role? What would you say is the next phase of the growth for him?

MV: I think number one in tackling it was that I had no idea that the character was this complex in the beginning. I knew he was hiding his sexuality and who he really is, which is an alien. I knew that something had happened to him in the foster system growing up and he didn’t have the best upbringing. As the seasons have developed, everything has made a lot of sense. I’m sure Carina (Adly MacKenzie) knew from the moment she got the opportunity to do the new Roswell , so the way that it was written in the beginning, I was never surprised where it led me. And even with not being surprised, it’s been really cool to just see what they’ve given me to jump into. It’s kind of helped me deal with some of my trauma as a kid, and my trauma is not near what Michael Guerin’s was. I definitely had my moments, just as we all do with our families. Not feeling good enough or just hiding certain things about you because you’re afraid of who you are and people wouldn’t understand you. The complexities of the character have really helped me also look into who I am. Because I need to figure out a way into every script, every scene and the character. It helps me strip things away and boil down to “Ok, who was thirteen-year-old, chubby, Michael Vlamis and now I’m this way. What was that growth like?” Figuring out my own personal growth helps me elevate that character, Michael Guerin.

With where we’re going next, I can’t say too much because he already has some changes coming towards the end of the season. It’s very interesting to see everyone’s theories online, some are correct and some are way off.

I saw in last night’s episode they finally revealed the junkyard owner, Walt, was the little boy from the flashbacks and people were speculating that really early on! That was really cool to see people getting validation in their theories because I love seeing those online. When it comes down to it, I want the dude to be happy with one of these lovers. I don’t know who that’s going to be. Everyone always asks who I’d rather be with and I can’t really even say that, even if I had one, because they’re both so different. I think Maria (Heather Hemmens) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) are both good for Michael at different times in his life. I know Tyler is going around telling people that that’s what he wants in season three and I let him run his mouth and hope that his new love interest in the show crashes and burns. [Laughs] I would like him to be in a good relationship, a happy relationship, but at the same time, I’m so excited to do the work on the days where my mother is dying, my brother is in a coma or I’m getting my heart ripped out. I love those scenes so much, as happy as I want and think Guerin deserves to be, I love the drama on the show. So, a little bit of heartbreak won’t hurt me.

W: Right, that makes sense. The question was going to be what would you want to see for Guerin in season three and beyond but you basically answered that! You want him happy. [Laughs]

MV: I’d love to see that. I would like to further expand his journey of putting that spaceship back together. I would love to see where that goes. I don’t even know if The CW has the budget to do that and take us to outer space or something but I think that’d be so cool. To find out about that and their home planet.

W: I mean, The CW has The 100 and DC Comics shows! Space isn’t a new place for The CW.

MV: That’s true! So maybe right now we’re willing it into existence. We’re manifesting it.

W: Actually, bringing up spaceships. Given that we live in the craziest of times and the Pentagon officially released videos of UFOs - Has that been something you’ve talked about with any cast or crew members?

MV: I haven’t talked to any of the cast or crew members about it but I’m pretty sure we’re all feeling the same way about it, we’re all excited for any new information. I’ve been interested in aliens since I found out Tom Delonge from Blink 182 was a major conspiracy theorist and loves everything about UFOs and alien artifacts, that search for if there’s life outside of our own. I always thought that was so cool, going back to fourth grade listening to “Aliens Exist” by Blink 182. I want that to be the case, I want that to be real. I think life would be far more interesting and I’m always trying to believe in the most interesting things because it just furthers the imagination. I haven’t talked about it with them but now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ll shoot off a text.

W: The show hasn’t shied away from increasingly difficult topics like the foster system, immigration, citizen’s rights, abortion, etc. Is there an area you’re hoping the show either continues to explore or adds going forward?

MV: I would’ve answered this question so differently two years ago but now I would say something with the LGBTQ community really responding well to the show has really furthered me as a human being and opened up my mind to what people who are made to feel “outside of the norm” go through. I personally don’t think or feel that they are. I think it’s ridiculous the taboo that society has placed on sexualities over the years. The fact that we give marginalized voices a platform to come forward and see that what they’re going through, other people are going through. That it’s ok, it’s love and that’s all that really matters at the end of the day. It’s so special to me. The more that we can tackle that, it really comes down to my character and Tyler’s character having a great relationship. That might mean that Lily Cowles’ character, Isobel, is still going to Planet 7 and seeing what’s out there. I think it’s cool how we normalize that, it’s not a big deal. I live in LA right now, and people, they experiment, they’re fluid. They’re interested and the more you find out about yourself, the more you know, the more comfortable you are with yourself. I think that’s a really important topic that I want to further.

I think we’ve done a really good job with the idea of what an immigrant is and what an immigrant looks like. I think we tackled the abortion scenes, I would’ve never thought that was something on our show. It’s very hard because the writers find a way to interweave everything in. I haven’t had the time to sit back and think “what else?” because every week has been something new.

W: That’s a great answer, it’s true. The show has covered a lot of topics and it’s doing very well.

MV: The abortion episode was insane, Carina fought for those shots of Lily’s legs bloody and she didn’t want to shy away from the graphicness of the scene. And I think that was important, to be really truthful to that.

W: Incredibly. This season resurrected Rosa (Amber Midthunder) from a pod years later, which is similar in a way to Captain America or Han Solo being unfrozen. With time having gone on, she’s having to adjust and in her own way, catch up to 2020. Let’s say you were able to suggest 1-2 things that someone should undoubtedly know about in 2020, what would it be? Is it a book, movie, show, certain type of food? What’s something you’d for sure put on that “must haves/dos” list of things or experiences?

MV: Oh wow, you’re really making me think about this! I can’t help but think about it as if it was me in that scenario and I would say something that I was really fortunate enough to do ten years ago, which was scuba dive The Great Barrier Reef. I think it’s so sad that it’s deteriorating at such a rapid rate because of pollution. I’m sure some natural causes. A lot of people fighting climate change will say natural causes and I can understand and see both sides to that, but I know that we definitely contribute to that. That was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen. And if someone wasn’t able to see it the way I saw it, I haven’t been down there since so I don’t actually know what it looks or feels like now. But that was one of the first moments in my life where what I was experiencing…the world felt so big. Not in a way it felt just traveling. In a way it felt magical, that something like this can just exist and has existed much longer than we’ve ever been around. I’ve had that with hiking the second largest glacier in the world. All these feelings with nature have really expanded my mind and my horizon of the potential and possibilities. Realizing we’re very small, we’re here for a short amount of time. Let’s cherish it.

Traveling to these places that have just been so affected, I think that’s very important because of what it did to my mindset.

W: I loved that answer, you made it ecofriendly and everything. That was wonderful!

MV: My sister studied environmental science at the University of Illinois, so I gotta keep her mind. But I really do believe that. Maybe that’s something I want to see in the show too! Go into some climate change.  I don’t think we’ve touched that really, have we? Each side has arguments.

W: Each episode of Roswell, NM is titled after a famous ‘90s song. What’s your favorite or what would you consider the most iconic ‘90s song or band/musician?

MV: For me, it was Blink 182! In the ‘90s that was me. I’m a big Conor Oberst fan, the lead singer of Bright Eyes. The fact I’m in a scene, now multiple scenes that play that song. They did it in season one and in season two, they play “First Day of My Life,” that has been so surreal to me because music has been so important to me as a kid. I haven’t told many people this. As a kid I’d make short films with my friends, a lot of people know that, but what they don’t know is that I would rip so much music from all these platforms. As a little 11 year old kid, I’d get as much music as I could to have thousands of songs on my iTunes and iPod. Not that I was going to listen to them, but that one day when I was making my own big movies, I’d have this database of music to select from. Back then there wasn’t Spotify and it wasn’t as readily available, and also I was a kid and that was my thinking! Music has such an influence on my life, but Blink 182 specially. All that angst I was feeling at the time as a kid, it’s really in Guerin and me, even though I handle it in different ways in real life. Feeling a little different or not understood, that was that music that would give me a release without being too intense or too Screamo. If a Blink 182 song is ever in a scene that I’m in, I can die a happy man.

W: [Laughs] Amazing. Alongside acting, you’re also a talented writer, director and producer. A screenplay that you co-wrote earned a spot on the Black List which was one of the coolest things I’ve ever read. Congratulations! Are there other projects you’re currently working on or maybe topics you’re considering for future screenplays?

MV: Thank you! Yeah, definitely! The new Nicolas Cage/Tiger King series, the creator of that is actually the showrunner of a TV show my writing partner and I created as well. So, we’re all really stoked about that. Dan Lagana, showrunner of American Vandal is making such a splash with this Nicolas Cage project that it’s helping our TV show get put together too. We’ve got the Black List/Mac Miller script, we have a “Halloween comedy” feature film that’s set up at Seth MacFarlane’s company right now. Hopefully that gets made. We have an “old lady comedy” that’s being read, taking a lot of good meetings on that. We’re writing our next movie right now, we’re probably going to finish the beat sheet. We do a very detailed, intense outline of the movie, scene by scene as if we were actually writing the script. Exterior, interior, every single scene in order, everything we want out of characters in the scene, what we expect to happen, some dialogue that maybe came to mind as we’re banging out the outline. Once we get to writing, we could bang out eight pages in a day. We finish scripts very quickly, so we’re writing a “mob action comedy” right now. So yes, I became a writer out of desperation and found some success with writing. It’s been really good. As a kid making short films, it wasn’t actually in script form.

The last four years I’ve been writing a ton and now it’s starting to pop off a bit. I love it. I produce my own movies too and it looks like we’re about to lock down distribution for the first feature film I produced and starred in called Five Years Apart, it’s got a pretty cool cast in it and I’m really pumped for people to see it, we have a really cool distributor, I’m 99% sure that’ll be our distributor but I don’t want to jinx it. We’ll see if that’s going to be Hulu, Netflix, small theatrical release, I’m not sure yet. As a first time producer I’m learning all that. We’re gearing up on producing our next feature too, we were planning on filming in Wisconsin this summer but things have changed with the conditions of the world.

Acting, producing, writing, directing and releasing another merch line. I’ve been staying busy during the quarantine!

W: Seems so! I saw the line and love the pops of color!

MV: Thank you! It’s been really good, honestly the feedback, I was very surprised with how it’s done. Compared to last year and the multiple drops, this year, we’re nearing a certain point in orders and products that we’ll have to produce within three days of being out. It’s been really cool. Last year we gave 100% of profits to a charity called Random Acts started by Misha Collins of Supernatural. And this year, I unfortunately can’t do 100% again, I made the point but learned the lesson in that we had no money for this next launch. [Laughs] I had to dig into my own pockets, which was fun and it’s all good, it’s a big creative project. This year Carina created this thing called The Little Alien, a Roswell fund for the Roswell crew that’s out of work right now. She’s been raising money through t-shirts and I’m going to donate some of our proceeds to them as well. They’re the heartbeat of the show, they’re the reason we get to be there every day and things go smoothly. We’re trying to take care of them at this time.

W: Amazing, intentions matter so that’s really cool to hear. Lastly, anything you’d like to say to those reading and watching?

MV: To those reading and watching, thank you from the bottom of my heart that you’re tuning in and giving me a platform to do what I love the most. And what I set out to do felt like such a dream that from the age of 12 to 20, I wasn’t acting and making movies. Dreams are just dreams until you realize that they are very plausible, and most dreams, I think, can be achieved given the right circumstances, opportunities and work ethic. Thank you for allowing me follow my dreams and I hope that I’m able to inspire you to follow yours.

~ WatchTivist

#michael vlamis #mgv interviews #rnm spoilers #long post is long

[bopinion]

Album of the month / 2021 / 02 February

I like listening to music - gladly, all the time, everywhere. That's why I would like to share which music (or which album, after all I'm still from the vinyl generation ;-) I enjoy, accompanies me, slides up my playlists again and again...

Big Generator

Yes

Progressive Rock - Artrock / 1987 / Atlantic Records

Yes was and is an icon of the progressive rock era. With style-defining works in the 70s and hit parade-ready bombast rock in the 80s. The British group was formed in 1968 by Jon Anderson (vocals) and Chris Squire (bass) with backing musicians Peter Banks, Tony Kaye and Bill Bruford. With the commitments of Steve Howe on guitar before the third "The Yes Album" in 1971 and Rick Wakeman on keyboards before the fourth album "Fragile", which was released the same year, the line-up for the breakthrough was finally found. While the first two longplayers were still characterized by beat and psychedelic rock, Yes now played a major role in defining progressive rock.

1972 saw the release of "Close to the Edge", which is considered by many to be the creative peak of this phase. Without commercial pressure and on the long leash of their record company Atlantic Records, the band could afford any freedom. The symphonic-classical flow of progressive rock celebrated here culminates in the 18-minute "Sonata," which gave the album its title: the intro with nature sounds alone lasts almost 60 seconds, and then it gets exhausting, except for friends of off-beat and church organ. No wonder that the piece is often analyzed as a subject of musicological studies until today.

In 1973 - note this productivity! - followed after a live album: yes, in between also innumerable concerts were played! - finally followed "Tales from Topographic Oceans", an album which is seen as an "Opus Magnus" not only by Wikipedia. Four (in the later added deluxe version even six) pieces of about 20 minutes each - small symphonies. Anyone who finds Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" experimental will be proven wrong by the progressive rock of this era, not only by Yes.

There followed a time of coming and going of this band (or should it rather be called project?) and the musical search for meaning. Especially when frontman and singer Jon Anderson left. After all, especially his bell-bright vocals shaped the spherical compositions of Yes. Probably the highest singing voice that does not belong to any of the Gibb brothers. The four albums Anderson recorded with Greek keyboard impresario Vangelis also followed this recipe, albeit at a lower level.

Apropos Anderson... Always on the lookout for something new, he can certainly be considered an experimental mastermind who left the usual Western listening habits and used world music in his work before the term even existed. Despite his height of only 1.65m, he is one of the great. It's a good thing that he didn't leave the ground so much musically as in his private life. For example, he truly believed that his spiritual guide, the 'Divine Mother' Audrey Kitagawa, helped him see into the fourth dimension. He was probably an Englishman who enjoyed a Magic Cookie or two with his tea.

When Anderson and Squire finally returned to Yes in 1983, they found a congenial partner in Trevor Rabin, with whom they embarked on more down-to-earth - and, above all, shorter! - compositions. With the album "90125" Yes had more or less arrived in the mainstream. And the success proved them right. Their songs were now played on the radio, record sales went through the roof (more than 3 million in the U.S. alone), "Owner of a lonely heart" became an international success, and "Cinema" won a Grammy. A comparison with US success acts of the symphonic rock of that time à la Journey suggests itself. But with Yes the desire for the extraordinary still flashed again and again. That's good.

"Big generator" followed the success formula of 90125 in 1987 and after difficult years of internal band disputes, but could not match its commercial success. Nevertheless, for me it is even the better album, with one artrock anthem after another. If you can even see me playing air guitar through the window during driving songs like "Rhythm of Love" or "Big generator", it's the more leisurely songs like "Shoot high, aim low", "Holy lamb" or "Final Eyes" that have taken my fancy. Or the ones somewhere in between like "I'm running". Timeless rock ballads that I always enjoy listening to. And which have a little special twist with their careful "progressive interludes" like steel drums or xylophones.

A documentary of the highly successful 90125 tour (they were on the road for almost a year with 139 shows) was filmed by none other than Steven Soderbergh. On that tour, Yes was the first band I saw live when I was exactly one week 15 years old. My school friend Mark and I took the train to Munich, saw the - not only in my perception at that time - impressive show in the Olympic Hall, were picked up by my father, spent the night in my old childhood room and took the train again the next morning to our boarding school. Mark, with whom I had more contact again in the last few years, died completely unexpected a few months ago. Since then, Yes has a melancholic connotation for me that reminds me of the youth we spent together - eerily beautiful. Rest in peace, my friend!

Here's the official Video for "Rythm of Love":

https://youtu.be/MHXmS-e0RRo

#music #album review #album #yes #big generator #progressive rock #prog rock #art rock #livemusic #90125 #jon anderson #Olympic hall #classmate #80s music #the 80s #Youtube

[twilightfansofcolor]

Daisies (Black and Quileute reader)

Based on the Katy Perry song

2006

Ever since you were a child, you had dreams of singing on stage, performing was in your blood and you grew up around music. Your mother was the first black prima ballerina in the Paris Opera Ballet while your dad was the first male indigenous opera singer in Paris, so you grew up watching your parents perform, and it wasn’t shocking that you wanted to follow in their footsteps. Your family was very supportive, and they signed you up for lessons; your mother signed you up for ballet lessons as soon as you started walking and you took to it like a fish to water while your dad signed you up for singing lessons. With each and every lesson you succeeded, and it wasn’t until middle school that you began writing your own songs and playing guitar and piano. You were so talented, and all of your teachers and classmates were sure you were going to be the one to make it out of La Push and be a famous singer.

Everyone thought that, except for your pack. 

Told them your dreams and they all started laughing

Guess you’re out of your mind till it actually happens

I’m the small town

One in seven billion

Why can’t it be me?

“Look Y/N, you’re very talented, but what are the odds of you actually making it? What happens if you don’t?” You had the third watch with Paul as you were tracking the redheaded leech that was after Bella Swan, and after three hours, you had yet to see her though you came close the night before. “Why can’t it be me? Success isn’t an overnight thing, it takes time. And anyway, this gives me more time to perfect my craft.” You had been dancing with the Pacific Northwest Ballet since middle school, and you had auditioned for the New York City Ballet before you turned into a wolf some months ago, but you didn’t get in and he knew that. Damn pack mind collective.

“You already got rejected by New York, and there aren’t any music producers near. All I’m saying is, just have a game plan ready in case things go south.” You knew he meant well, and you do in fact have an alternative, but it’s the fact Paul didn’t believe in you, none of them do except for Leah and Seth, and you swore that if you did end up making it big, you’d take them with you and live in a giant house in Bel Air or Beverly Hills or any glamorous place you could think of.

They told me I was out there

Tried to knock me down

Took those sticks and stones

Showed em I could build a house

They tell me that I’m crazy

But I’ll never let em change me

Till they cover me in daisies

Daisies, daisies

Two days later and you’re hanging out with Leah in Port Angeles at an ice cream shop after seeing the newest Johnny Depp movie. “You know what Y/N? Screw em. Screw all of them. You’re so fucking talented, and the whole town knows that. Who the fuck cares what Paul says? After we catch that redhead, let’s stop phasing.” Yeah, you’re definitely taking Leah with you if you make it. The two of you finish your ice cream cones before driving back to your house to listen to your finished song that you completed a few days ago.

“Oh my god, Y/N, this is amazing, what the actual fuck?” Leah was always your biggest hypewoman, whether it was helping pick out an outfit, setting you up with a guy or when you showed her a new song you were working on. “Glad you think so. What if I am being crazy? Seriously Leah, what are the odds of me landing some record deal or dancing in New York or Paris or London or wherever?” She stuck her head out of your closet, her hands on a floral tube top. “Y/N you can’t be serious. You’re going to listen to Paul, of all people?”

“Well… what if he’s right? What if it never happens, and then I’m the laughing stock of all of La Push?” “Don’t listen to him, Y/N, your time will come, and when you’re accepting Grammys, Paul will just be on his couch. Please, don’t listen to him, just keep working at it.” And that’s exactly what you did. After the redhead was gone, you and Leah packed up and moved into an apartment in Seattle; you and Leah had just started University of Washington and Leah was studying marine biology while you were studying accounting, with a minor in dance.

You were still with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and that’s where it happened. You had just landed the lead as Clara in The Nutcracker, the first black woman in the company’s history, and after the first show of the holiday season, a woman from the Paris Opera Ballet and told you about an opening, in case you were interested, and one thing led to another, and within two weeks, you and Leah were in (somewhat) crappy apartment in Paris but you didn’t mind. You were in Paris of all places with your best friend, and while your French was rusty, the streets crowded, you loved every minute of it.

They told me I was out there

Tried to knock me down

Took those sticks and stones 

Showed em I could build a house 

They tell me that I’m crazy

But I’ll never let em change me

Till they cover me in daisies

Daisies, daisies

2010

“And the Grammy for Song of the Year goes to…” You are actually sitting in the front row at the Grammys, as a first time nominee after years of working your ass off. After a three year stint at the Paris Opera Ballet, you decided that it was time to move on and begin your music career, and you performed original music in cafes around Paris before signing to a record label and immediately began working on your album which came out last year to great reviews. Now you were actually nominated for three Grammys: Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Song of the Year. You won the Best New Artist category but lost BPVA, and now you were clutching Leah’s hand as you anticipated the winner for Song of the Year.

And speaking of Leah, she became a model, walking the runways for some of the biggest fashion designers in the world and gracing magazines like Vogue, Elle, GQ, and British Vogue. “Y/N L/N, Daisies!” A Jonas Brother helped you up the steps and Lionel Richie handed you your trophy. You could see Leah with her phone as she snapped pictures of what was sure to be a big smile on your face. “Wow, I really don’t know what to say. This is… insane. I never thought I would be here. First, I want to say thank you to my parents for encouraging me, for inspiring me, and to my best friend Leah, I’m so grateful to call you my best friend, my soul sister. Thank you for never giving up on me when even I felt giving up on myself, and I’m so glad we’re on this journey together.”

The music played as you walked off the stage. You did it. Against all odds, you, a biracial kid from a reservation in the pacific northwest actually made it in the ever changing music industry.

They said I’m going nowhere

Tried to count me out

Took those sticks and stones

Showed em I could build a house

They tell me that I’m crazy

But I’ll never let em change me

Till they cover me in daisies

Daisies, daisies 

#twilight imagines #twilight fans of color #leah clearwater #leah clearwater x reader #leah clearwater x black reader #leah clearwater x quileuete reader

[phoenotopia]

2019 December Update

The game is officially playable from beginning to end!

That battle has concluded...

Soon begins the war! But first, a brief reprieve for the holidays.

And I must throw in the usual caveats. We're still playtesting, we're still polishing, we still gotta get age ratings, more red tape, etc etc. And most importantly, we need to figure out the launch strategy. Think Megaman, charging his shot for 5 and a half years... We're not allowed to miss at this point. It has to HIT.

Luckily, we're in a relatively stable position where we don't have to rush the game out immediately. It's not LAUNCH or STARVE - it's... take some time to aim a little. We don't want to launch in the shadow of a bigger behemoth game, and we don't want to launch completely unknown either. We have to build up the game's media presence, which has been neglected so far. I know it's annoying to have to continue to wait... but please bear with us a little longer!

Here's what we've been doing for the past couple months.

---------- THE SCRIPT ----------

The script sits at over 80,000 words. I didn't realize the significance until a teammate told me that that's actually as long as a novel! I looked it up, and sure enough, it's a little longer than the first Harry Potter. But unlike Harry Potter, hardly any of these words are wasted on, pffft, narration. It's all juicy dialogue!

(Some of the game's golden nuggets of dialogue)

There was actually a lot of mundanity getting to the end. Pirate, acting as my editor, caught tons of errors and inconsistencies. One of the most recurring issues had to do with capitalization. I like to capitalize things, often inconsistently. Some common questions that arose:

Why is this text highlighted yellow, and this one highlighted blue?

Why is this monster name capitalized, but this monster not?

Why is this item capitalized, and this one not?

... and so on!

All very mundane issues, but all very necessary to tackle. And there was a TON of 'em. (em vs 'em was another thing we had to make consistent). I actually did some research to see what capitalization rules Zelda had. From what I could tell, when it comes to animals and monsters in the Zelda universe:

All monsters are capitalized

All regular animals are not capitalized

The Cuccos are special, and ARE capitalized

(a collage of Zelda pictures I assembled to study)

In the Zelda universe, all regular items are lowercase, but highlighted blue when mentioned in a quest context (e.g. "butter", "hylian wheat"). Items can be uppercase, if they are special named items (e.g. "Sheikah Slate"). We adopted similar rules as Zelda in some cases, and deviated in others. For instance, in the Phoenotopia universe, there isn't a clear distinction between animals and monsters - that fish monster is really just an animal that happens to be the alpha predator in its natural habitat. So most entities are lowercase, but "big deal" entities can be uppercase.

(we made a formal document to consult whenever a question regarding capitalization arises)

---------- A SAMPLING of QUEST AND CHARACTERS ----------

A lot of new quests have arisen in our great writing effort extending over the past several months. And with it, new characters, big and small. I'll tease a sampling of some of them here (warning: some light spoilers ahead):

My favorite new quest is undoubtedly our game's new "Trading Quest". This one takes inspiration from the Zelda series - the trading quest similarly has you roaming the world and its towns in search of needy people who desire a particular item. Deliver them the item they desire, and get a new item. Do this 10 times, and the ultimate weapon awaits you at the end.

I tried some things to vary up the formula. Some NPCs don't reveal what they need right away - steps have to be taken to get them there. It's also possible to go down the wrong route in the sequence, and have to double-back. We try to keep it interesting.

---------- LOOT PLACEMENTS & GAME BALANCING ----------

A great effort was also spent towards balancing the game this past 2 months. Because even one good healing item, easily obtained, can throw the game's whole difficulty off-kilter. And this same principle applies to other areas, like the money economy and player powerup options. Altogether, they form a very delicate ecosystem for enjoyment.

One of the recent things I did for this game was put down exactly where each heart ruby, energy gem, and moonstone could be found. And this was actually a rather involved process because you have a limited number of rewards to distribute (you wouldn't want the final max HP count to be a weird number like 297). Put too many rewards in the beginning, and the late dungeons would have no rewards to offer. Put too much in the end, and the inverse happens.

I found myself going back into earlier areas and plundering their rewards to fill the later areas. And then to ensure a relatively even spread of rewards within each area themselves, I drew crude maps of the dungeons & their reward spots, so that they could be studied from a bird's eye perspective.

But it was still not enough. With NPC quests and towns also taking up their own allotment of the rewards, I found myself running low on things to distribute. So I went back to the books and upped the number of rewards across the board. Before there were 44 Heart Rubies to collect - there are now 55. Before each Heart Ruby boosted your max HP by 5, but now each one now boosts your max HP by 4, so your final max HP count would still end up the same. It's kinda similar to what happened with Twilight Princess, where they broke with tradition and made 5 heart containers required to gain a new heart instead of the usual 4. Overall, the final tally for treasure to find is:

55 heart pieces

30 energy gems

108 moon stones

Who's crazy enough to collect them all?

---------- BADGES / ACHIEVEMENTS ----------

As one of the game's finishing touches, there's a menu for BADGES - they're this game's version of achievements. This is an ongoing task that we hope to stamp out this December. A few favorites of mine from the original flash game will return ("Pillow Connoisseur" is among them).

(The menu looks like this before any badges are earned)

I allocated slots for just 33 badges, so we're selecting the badges very carefully. We got rid of most of the fluffy ones that appeared in the flash game - we wanted to reduce the number of badges that you would earn automatically for just playing the game (so no more "1st boss", "2nd boss", "3rd boss" achievements). We're aiming for a healthy mix of easily earned badges, hard earned badges, collectathon badges, secret fun badges, and so on.

The badges have another twist - they bear miniaturized portraits of characters from the game! In the initial brainstorm mockup phase, I wasn't really fond of the badge designs. You got a medal of a heart because you collected some hearts, and you got the medal of a moonstone for collecting moonstones, etc. It just seemed so... expected.

(various badge mockups)

How could we engage the players on a more fun and deep level? The idea came - what if we attached pictures of the people you meet on your journey? And these people's stories and character would have a connection with the achievement? That could keep the player guessing which character would come attached with an achievement, or even reveal a hidden detail about the character you didn't know.

---------- MUSIC ----------

Will has just one more task to do. And that's to recut the song for the trailer. One of our other goals for this December is to make a really good trailer... again. There's actually 2 other trailers we cut and never made public for reasons. Maybe I'll talk about them one day in the post-mortem.

Since this may be the last conventional update, we wondered with which song to best leave the audience. And we decided that the most suitable song is "Sanctuary". It's a song that the player will often encounter often when they happen upon a quiet resting place in the world.

There's a little story behind this song. Two and a half years ago, I linked Will the Earthbound song, "Buzz buzz's prophecy", and told him, make a song like that!

In response, Will made "Sanctuary".

Give it a listen HERE. What do you think? Did Will hit close to the greats?

---------- FAN ART ----------

Three fan arts have come in the last couple months. I display them here proudly:

Another submission by Cody G! Gale looking shy as she flashes the V sign for the camera. I like how Cody G's art is continually evolving. Note the additional detail on her eye, and how her hair is drawn extra fluffy. Very nice!

Shafiyahh is another consistent contributor, and made one in the spirit of Halloween. I really like their costumes! Gale as an angel, and Lisa as a demon, fittingly captures their relationship, since Gale is the responsible one and Lisa is the troublemaker. So cute!

A contribution from a new artist, Negativus Core! Wow, Gale looks so bada-- here! We often forget about Gale's tough side due to the cutesy graphics. This is probably how her enemies see her. And the gummy (slime) is a cute touch!

---------- FINAL NOTES ----------

Similar to last year, this will be the last update for a while. If things run too slow, I'll post a status update come end of February 2020.

It's possible, and this is a BIG IF, that something notable happens sooner than expected - like we're going to a con or we have reason to drop the trailer sooner than later. If so, this blog will update earlier than expected. BIG IF. Otherwise, it's end of February till next you hear of us.

The game's development has reached a new uncharted territory. We're going to take the time and figure out exactly what our next steps are. In addition, we'll still be doing some playtesting and script polishing. And we'll be taking a break too. It is the holiday season, things move kind of slow around this time of year. We'll enjoy the company of our family and friends.

Until then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

[theidiotwhowritesthings]

Paopu Gamers

This is a Drabble based on a Modern AU of Sora and Reader starting a gaming channel on YouTube and gaining a decent amount of popularity written by @nobodies-png​. I loved it a ton and asked permission to write about it a little and here that is!

Sora & Reader (friendship)

Warnings: N/A

1,242 words

“Hey guys! I’m [Name]!”

“And I’m Sora! Welcome to our new channel!”

Clips of you and Sora talking, laughing, screaming, and sobbing flashed across the screen. The earliest clips were from nearly 3 years ago, and you could tell because in the clips you had the terrible bangs you tried to cut yourself and Sora had on braces in many of the shots. Those older clips phased into ones from last month and the clarity of those clips were more clear and better edited.

It was a moving slideshow of how far things had come.

The last clip began to play, it was of Sora screaming and falling out his chair tangled in his headphone wire while you laughed beside him, and then it too faded away to reveal the two of you grinning and wearing party hats. Both of you had on oversized obnoxious sunglasses, the most ridiculous ones you could possibly find mind you, and popping long confetti sticks.

Sora tossed his confetti wand to the side and put his fingers to his mouth to let out a loud whistle as music blasted in the background. You dropped your own wand to scoop up a pile of confetti in front of you and throw it up again.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” You chirped loudly. “Paopu Gamers has officially hit 1 million subscribers and I think I speak for both of us when we say that we are in complete and total shock.”

Sora wrapped his arm around your shoulders and pulled you close to him, giving the camera a thumbs up, “I’m still trying to get over the shock of us hitting 100 subscribers and that was three years ago now.”

“We started this channel to do something we love and to hear each other talk about our passion, and we’re so happy that you guys, for some odd reason, like to hear us talk about it too!” You laughed.

Sora released your shoulders to give the camera finger guns, “And with this new landmark in our journey to explore every single game ever released on this planet-”

“Every single game ever released is a stretch-”

“We have decided to heed one of your suggestions! Starting next week, we’ll be posting a short series as we take on ‘I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator!’” Sora pumped his fist, “Will we find love?”

“I sincerely doubt it, but I will be craving fried chicken for weeks while we do this.” You shook your head.

“So tune in next Wednesday for that, and thank you”, Sora put his hands together and bobbed his hand, “THANK YOU. For sticking with us this long.”

“We love you guys!” You cupped your cheeks with your hands. The music grew louder again, and Sora pulled you out of your seat to dance while more confetti rained down on the two of you. The screen faded to black as reminders came up for what videos were coming out when.

“I can’t believe you two reached 1 million subscribers.” Riku shook his head as he clicked paused on the video, which already had thousands of views, to ensure the next video wouldn’t randomly start playing.

Kairi pulled you into a tight hug, her cheek pressed against yours, “I can. They’re superstars, Riku, and I always knew it.”

“Some superstars. Terra still forgets they have an online presence unless their faces pop up on a Snapchat or Insta video.” Riku chuckled, “And then a week after that he forgets again.”

“Well, he sent us a ‘congrats’ text earlier. So, he remembers”, You glanced at your phone briefly before shrugging, “As of now, at least.”

Riku leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms, “So you guys are actually gonna do the KFC dating simulator thing? Really?”

“Yeah, I think it’ll be fun.” You shrugged. It sounded like the kind of thing you and Sora could film in a day or two and would have a blast going through it side by side. Dating Simulators were always a big hit just because the two of you had so much fun with it. Filming when you guys played ‘Dream Daddy’ had been one of your top ten favorite video series. “Besides, we gotta. The comments have been going crazy for it. People want Sora to fall in love with Colonel Sanders more than they want him to fall in love with me.”

Sora nodded once and paused in devouring his popsicle to speak, “That’s true.”

“Although, lately it seems like people are shipping you more with Vanitas from those videos he was in a few months ago or Ven and Roxas.” Kairi noted as she texted on her phone, “Xion was in one of the chatrooms about it.”

Riku narrowed his eyes, “Like Ven and Roxas or…?”

You shook your head, “I think they’re still confused about which person is which person and I think most of them still think they’re the same person? It’s… It’s hard to say, to be honest.”

“And yet they want you to date him—them?” Riku asked.

You shrugged in an exaggerated manner, “The only person I’ll be dating is Colonel Sanders.”

Kairi held up her finger with a twist of her lips, “Mmmm, that sentence is not one you hear every day, and I do not like it.”

“Yeah, it sounded gross as it came out of my mouth.” You agreed wholeheartedly.

Sora held up his fist, a look of brave determination on his features, “I won’t let the weirdness deter me. I will court and date Colonel Sanders. He will be mine.”

“We’ll leave you and your thoughts about Colonel Sanders alone.” Kairi bobbed her head and quickly stood and looked to you, “So we are doing this ‘100 Baby Challenge’ thing or what?”

You stood hesitantly, Kairi looped her arm through yours to start to drag you away, “I haven’t played The Sims since like middle school. Which one are they on now? Sims 12?”

“It’s only on Sims 4, you big baby, and I’m gonna show you the ropes. It’ll be a great video series I promise.” Kairi pulled you to where she knew where your computer was.

You grinned at your eager friend, “Ok, ok. Catch me up on those sims, Kairi.”

As Kairi dropped down into your desk chair and pulled up The Sims you couldn’t help but pause and really take in your situation. Never, ever would you have guessed that Sora and your channel would blow up quite like it did. You just wanted to post funny videos of you and your best friend talking about your favorite games just for fun and for other friends to watch. Yet here you were with followers and fans and people around the world who actually enjoyed watching you do what you loved to do. It seemed too good to be true, but here you were about to re-learn how to play the Sims so you could do a challenge that many followers begged for you to try.

“Hello? Dear pupil of mine? Are you ready? Take notes I will be quizzing you later.” Kairi jokingly said while snapping her fingers in front of you. You grinned and dropped down into your desk chair on top of Kairi who squealed in surprise at the sudden weight. The two of you laughed and wrestled for seat.

This was too good to be true.

#imagine turned drabble #kingdom hearts #modern AU #sora #kairi #riku #reader #friendship #YouTube gamers #mention of the cryptid roxas #dating simulators #the sims challenges #paopugamerscollab

[crasherfly]

Weekly Update

It’s a privilege to write about personal shit this week.

There’s not much I can add to the conversation about the election, suffice to say it was both better and worse than expected, and I’m glad that society isn’t immediately collapsing, at least this week.

Which is to say I’ve never been so glad to focus on my stupid, deeply low-stakes life updates. Obviously, the future is still uncertain and there will be plenty of work to do in the days and years ahead, but a week ago, I wasn’t certain if I’d be witness to a reality where questions like “how did a week of not drinking go” and “what are you playing” still matter.

So without further ado...

It was a challenging week, obviously.

Not just the election- I’m talkin’ for like- EVERYTHING. Home life. Work life. Creative life. I could go on. You get the idea.

I went on full blown quarantine as of last Friday after learning a member of my household may have covid. You wouldn’t think it was much of a change from my normal every day, but man, I did not realize just how many little things were working together to keep my sanity together.

A short list- weekend walks to pick up morning coffee, Friday night carry-out sushi and pizza, my weekly groceries at the co-op, and most importantly- trips to the weight room- all suddenly off the table until testing results come in. 

In my state, testing often requires booking at least 3 days in advance, and it can take another 3-4 days just to get results back. Luckily, everyone in my home works remotely, so this doesn’t put us out too bad. I can’t imagine now non-remote workers manage. Even so, having to toss all the precious little things I’d managed to keep despite the pandemic stung. I even had to put my wrestling watch parties on hold- they took place on Discord, but one of my friends would normally come over to watch. 

I’ve worked through a lot of huffy anger and annoyance over the course of the past few days. Losing my ability to get to the gym as the weather turns especially hurts. As a weight lifter, I’m pretty reliant on what the gym offers. Early into the pandemic I got a lot of folks snidely telling me to go lift paint cans. I resisted the temptation to tell them they could in turn pay for my back surgery. Thanks to the pandemic I’ve learned that the gym is actually a need for me, emotionally and physically. Losing it, even for a week, feels awful. I can’t wait to get back to it. 

Until then, jogging and biking will have to suffice.

One positive- I’ve gone a week without drinking!

Based on my tracking, that’s actually the longest I’ve since June, which is nuts.

Predictably, I have gained weight. Because no good deed goes unpunished. 

I don’t know if I’d say I notice any life-changing effects yet. For all I know, my body is still adjusting to the sudden absence of all the shit it’s normally used to working in overdrive to break down.

A few things I’ve noticed- my runs are going slightly better, I can stay up later working on games or creative endeavors, and I’m actually experiencing REM cycles again- meaning I’m dreaming, and dreaming vividly. I also get incredibly hungry around 10:30 every night- because, surprise!- that’s when I’d normally sit down with a beer or glass of sake. So I’m working on finding ways around that.

I can’t say I’ve felt a huge urge to drink. I occasionally wonder when, or indeed if, I’ll grab a glass of beer again any time soon. But beyond that, it’s been pretty easy to lay off. The fatigue alone was just such a pain to work through, not to mention the way a glass of beer would just kinda pin me into place for the rest of the night. I like how active my brain is now in the late hours.

But I do watch a lot less anime now :(

On that note, here’s what I’ve been playing lately!

Outer Worlds (XBONE)

So, you probably missed it last post- probably ‘cuz I forgot to write about it in my first draft, but I wrote about my Total Kill Run that I just wrapped up in Outer Worlds. 

The short and dirty version for those of you who can’t be bothered to go back and read- I tried to do a run where I killed every NPC in Outer Worlds, a space RPG from the Obsidian, and instead got sidetracked with completing the nefarious Board’s story and ended up doing a Board run instead. 

I was surprised by how humor and wit the game brings to its commentary on your wanton slaughter. The devs were not bluffing when they said you could kill anyone and anything in Outer Wilds and they even prepared a few nice moments in anticipation that some players would try.

I was disappointed to find that the Board’s mission- and indeed, some of the progression points I followed on my own go-it-alone-and-kill-everything story, mirrored the Good Guy story beat-for-beat, basically shrugging and saying “well, you’re gonna do this anyway, like it or not”. At several given points you can kill everyone you like- but you’ll still have to find that keycard, access that terminal, or visit that far off map point now matter how hard you try to get out of it.

I was finally struck by how little I missed. I skipped A LOT of stuff- almost every sidequest and all the companion quests. And you know what? I had a fine time. I might even say I had a better time. So much time in Outer Wilds is devoted to fetching, traveling, and sitting in load screens. Turns out you do less of all of that when you just go guns blazing into every civilized map.

Some friends earlier this week were talking about revisiting old Bethesda-style RPGs like Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim. It got me thinking about whether or not I would bother doing that myself any time soon. It’s true those are better games than Outer Worlds. But if the point of Outer Worlds is to echo those positive experiences so closely...what does my recent experience say about the source of that reflection?

Just a thought I’m chewing on. I don’t have a good answer. But feel free to HMU if you have your own thoughts!

NeoGeo Arcade Stick Pro- Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury, World Heroes 2

Friday night I sat down at my desk, dimmed the lights and hooked up my NeoGeo Arcade Stick Pro. On my second monitor, I brought up move lists for King of Fighters ‘95 and started my fighting game learning journey.

I did OK, in my opinion. I stuck to just learning the hero team- Kyo, Daimon, and Benimaru. I even managed to trigger a few level 1 supers. I think I could safely beat the average player at an arcade now- but there’s definitely plenty of system I came nowhere close to learning all the ins and outs. However, after trying out a few subsequent KOF games, it seems like my learning should transfer forward.

I also tried out a few other games on the stick. Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury aren’t games I’ve had prior exposure to. In my experience, they seemed a little slower than KOF. The command lists were definitely shorter. Samurai Shodown was absolutely gorgeous and felt really, really good to play. I could see getting really into it. 

My big highlight was World Heroes 2, which I ended up playing most of the night. It’s a bit sillier than the previously noted titles, but it has a really fun roster and a good, medium-sized move list that isn’t too taxing to remember. I had seen some of the characters, like Johnny Maximum, on the Spriteclub roster, so it was cool to see them in their native environment.

Overall, the Arcade Stick Pro is holding up nicely. The stick itself is solid, and the deck is a natural fit on my lap or desktop. I’m not noticing any serious input lag and the buttons seem really responsive. Of all my retro consoles, this might become one of my favorites.

Endless Space 2

AMPLITUDE’s 4x sci-fi has entered hallowed realms of my “Games I will Be Playing 20 Years From Now” list. A massive, sprawling turn-based strategy about managing a spacefaring empire, Endless Space 2 is great for those weeks where I want to play a 4X that I can resolve within 20 hours.

For my most recent run, I once again took up my favored faction, the Riftborn. Every game is a learning experience, so this time around I was determine to try and tackle the massive and deeply inconvenient quests that Endless Space 2 mercilessly slews at you every_damn_turn.

I was mostly successful. I didn’t finish my faction’s quest, but I did complete the Academy quests. Throughout every game the Academy looms as this impartial faction that hires out heroes and provides boons to those who donate resources to it. In the endgame, the Academy offers a quest that forces every active civilization to choose sides regardless of existing alliances. Depending on the results, the last phases of Endless Space 2 can look very different

I finished the questline, unlocked a cool cinematic and learned that next time I should definitely not ignore those quests, however obnoxious they might be. The faction buffs earned from successful completion are....pretty wild.

Sunless Skies

Another week, another dead captain in Sunless Skies. This captain had a particularly long run- I had managed about...15 hours with him before losing him to some enemies that I was not at all prepared to fight. Death comes quick in Sunless Skies- a single bad decision can lead to swift death.

This run I at least managed to bank a ton of valuable supplies and upgrade my engine. My next captain will have a better shot as a result. I’m not sure when I’ll pick the game back up. After a particularly long run I usually take a long break- weeks or even months. We’ll just see what happens.

Pokemon Shield

I’ve finally, FINALLY beaten the endgame of Pokemon Shield. At least, I think I have. I’m sure there’s a few more things to do here or there, but for the most part, I think I’m done. I beat the champion and saw the credits roll. There’s some DLC to visit and more ‘mon to catch, but mostly, I’m done.

I had the opportunity to take care of some trade evolutions and partake in a friendly battle with a friend. It was the first time I’ve done that since...I kid you not...the playground in 5th grade.

It was...really fun?

I’m a deeply casual pokemon player. I don’t search for shiny ‘mon or suss out perfect numbers. I just use who I think looks cool and I try to keep type and consideration in mind. As a result, my friend and I had to agree on some ground rules for average levels- but the result was a compelling match.

I found myself afterwards making plans for another battle night. This tends to happen in November- I get really into Pokemon again for a few weeks. Historically, this is ‘cuz I’m normally traveling a lot for the holidays. That won’t be true this year, but old habits die hard.

Maybe I’ll even bust out my 3DS again soon. Who knows?

Quest 2: Revisited

Last week, I posted some thoughts about the Oculus Quest 2. I’ve spent another week with the headset, testing some new features and trying some more involved experiences. I’m happy to report my thoughts on the machine are still positive.

If anything, my impressions are MORE positive than before. My eyes have grown used to the world of VR. I’ve found a setting on the out-of-box headstrap that I don’t hate. And I’m finding more experiences than I initially suspected I might.

I’ve had a change to run the Link option, for instance, which allows you to use your Quest 2 as a Rift. It’s actually pretty seamless, requiring only a good desktop and a USB cable. My cable seemed to suffer from some bad speeds, so my experience was pretty laggy, but with an approved cable, I have no doubt the Quest 2 could handle just about anything you throw at it.

I finished Superhot, and have only raving reviews to offer. It is a perfect introduction to all the Quest 2 can do. Given limited space, Superhot places you in do-or-die situations where you must dodge, duck and shoot your way through enemies. When you move- time movies- so you will often find yourself forced to take stock of your surroundings before making your next step.  

It is sharp, offers a great mix of puzzle solving and brisk action, and even serves as an ad-hoc workout. Picking it up with your Quest 2 is a must.

Encouraged by Superhot, I gave Job Simulator a try. It is a zany VR experience that humorously simulates a number of white collar job environments. It is short, funny, and with no shortage of silly interactions. I spent several minutes in my digital office cube shooting staples into neighboring cubes and giggling at the angry responses of my co-workers. WHO THREW THAT. STAND UP.

Finally, I’ve taken some time to try and get into the streaming world beyond the Mozilla app. It has been both encouraging and...well, not so much. I’ve mostly been dinking around in Bigscreen, an app that offers a number of Pluto TV channels in digital theater environments. You log into a room with other people, who appear as avatars, and you all watch the shows together.

Well, sorta. Most people don’t really watch the shows so much as they throw digital tomatoes at the screen and shout upsetting shit at each other. The server population seems really low, so the massive theaters take on the quality of a creepy XXX cinema, where one always feels a bit apprehensive of who they might meet.

At its best, Bigscreen is genuinely funny. I’ve made nightly stops at the Star Trek theater, which plays old reruns of Next Generation. The most enjoyable moments come in the spirit of MST3K, with witty comments and memes as people throw digital refreshments at the screen. I’ve found myself giggling despite myself.

At its worst, Bigscreen is a deeply racist and sexist hideaway full of the types of folks you’d normally shush the hell out of in a real theater. You can mute people, but it’s a tedious task. A reporting function also exists, but who knows how or if its being enforced at all. Finally, unless you’re doing a film rental, you’re going to be subjected to commercials on everything from erectile pills to The Blaze. I’ve described it to others as being Peak Late Night Cable: The App. If that appeals to you, well, it’s there and it’s free.

I’ve tried streaming my desktop, both on Bigscreen and via Oculus Link. Both were very laggy. There’s a very popular desktop streaming app I could try, but it costs IRL money. Honestly, most of what I’d want out of my desktop streaming I already get from Mozilla. 

I like the Quest 2 a lot. I hope we see more experiences tailored specifically to it, as opposed to through the Link function or via desktop streaming.

Dungeons and Dragons

I finally wrapped up my improv sessions with my local DND group. Having just finished The Lost Mines of Phandelver, I wanted to take some time between campaigns to improv and get off the grid a bit.

The result was 4 sessions, 2 hours each, where I had nothing prepared in advance and I let my players take the lead. I gave them a map I’d built of the region and told them we could go anywhere they like.

My party ended up splitting into two groups- one heading to Castle Grayhawk, and one to Neverwinter. Antics ensued, personal quests furthered, and by the end, everyone felt ready for our next adventure at the Salt Marshes.

An interesting takeaway- when doing improv sessions, I had almost zero fights. I never once broke out the battleboard and only a handful of attack rolls were even attempted. 

I, personally, like combat a great deal. So I don’t think that will be my style forever. But it was interesting to see what my sessions could look like without it, especially after such a combat-heavy campaign.

Anime

I’ll be honest- I’ve fallen really behind on this season’s anime. I have so many hobbies, and one thing gets shoved aside for another, necessarily so. This time, it’s anime and manga. I promise I’ll get back on the horse soon.

As the year winds down, I’m already thinking about my experiences over the past year and what my end of the year experience list will look like.

I’ve seen so many amazing titles this year.

Like, I get deeply, viscerally emotional when I think about Re:Zero. 

My heart races as I think of the thrilling high points of Tower of God.

I delight in my inner goth kid as I ruminate in experiences like Gleipnir and Berserk.

I’m going to have a lot to talk about. Just thinking about it motivates me to get out there and see more.

[schalaasha]

Favourite Games of 2019

I don’t like making ranked lists anymore. So here’s a bunch of games old and new I played in 2019 because I was busy catching up due to not playing FFXIV as much as in previous years.

 Ciconia When They Cry Phase 1: For You, The Replaceable Ones

I think going in, and even starting to play it, I felt like maybe the game would abandon the WTC mystery game conventions. It ended up not doing that, because the game leaves you with far more questions than answers at the end. The A3W World (“after World War III”) is still trying to deal with political issues and social issues that existed prior to World War III. A global stalemate exists due to the military implementation of the Gauntlet weapon. Eventually things happen where different countries need to deal with a shortage of resources, territorial conflicts, etc which sets off a chain reaction to World War IV.  However, the children who grew up in the A3W era, settled into new ideologies and views of how society currently works are at odds with what the older generation wants and requires of them. Along the way, they need to deal with other groups and conspiracies in order to maintain the Walls of Peace.

 So in essence, R07 still crafts a mystery for readers to figure out, but it isn’t a murder mystery. It’s an international conspiracy mystery and I am more than okay with that. I think this chapter required a lot of worldbuilding to set that kind of story up and coming out of Phase 1, I understood why the first chapter wasn’t exactly like Umineko’s. I thought that it was handled well, despite some of the purple prose (but if you’ve played a R07 game before, you’re likely used to it).  I also thought he really tried to introduce and incorporate themes including gender, generational differences, societal tiers, geopolitics disguised as sports events (possibly mirroring the 2020 Olympics in Japan), etc. as well as he could throughout the story through the game’s cast. Even if the game meanders a bit (and it definitely feels that way towards the start), when it actually starts to roll, I felt compelled to keep reading.

 And truly, the game has an incredibly large cast of characters. The TIPS section handles introductions well, and while some cast members don’t have as much time in the spotlight as others, I can see them getting their time eventually in subsequent chapters. Clearly Phase 1 exists to focus more on the children from the Arctic Ocean Union (the “AOU”) as evidenced by the additional stories unlocked at the end of the game so hopefully other chapters have the same amount of character backstory for the other factions.  I also genuinely enjoyed that the big international cast of characters allowed for many different types of designs with characters with different types of hairstyles and hair texture or characters wearing hijabs and still managed to make them retain adorableness or a sense of style. I do not recall seeing it as often in Japanese media and I’m very happy to see it here.

 I think Ciconia Phase 1 is a very good start to this subseries’ planned four episodes and I hope to see more sociopolitical commentary. It feels as though R07 looked at everything happening in Japan and social media/how news is consumed and decided to write a four-part SFF series about it. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next chapter.

  Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I backed Bloodstained when it got put on Kickstarter a few years ago.  It was shipped to me at… possibly the worst time since Shadowbringers was coming out very shortly after.  My fiancé and I played ours for a short bit, felt very positive about the game, then dropped it to play Shadowbringers.  We didn’t return to it until maybe September/October?  Both of us ended up getting our Platinum Trophies for it so we both played through everything the game had to offer.

 Bloodstained is a good experience, but not without its issues. I played on PS4 and I’ve had a few outright crashes or some glitching into walls early enough that I couldn’t come out of them again due to not having the required skill to try to get out of it.  I also felt like the game meandered or had a bit of padding in its earlier stages). Later on, you realise you have to put in the farming work to have a better and faster time not unlike its Igavania counterparts, but I did feel like the drop rates prior to actually working towards higher luck stats/drop shards were low enough almost to the point of unfair or deliberately wasting my time.  I also felt as though there were too many weapon types; with adequate shard use and shard grinding eventually you can settle into one weapon type that suits your playstyle or eventually use the gun for everything when you get the special hat quest reward).

 However, I’m speaking about this game as someone who platinumed it which requires a lot of farming and synthesis.  As a player going through the main campaign, I think the maps are adequate. The backgrounds are very lovingly crafted, and the music is absolutely one of the best of the year. Boss design is also fun and rewarding, requiring the player to learn how all the different weapon types work, adequate backstepping and closing in, and boss patterns. If you suck, the game will show you that you suck very quickly and deliberately.  Essentially towards the end, I felt as though Bloodstained tried very hard to cater to fans of the metroidvania style of game, and the classicvania style of game. I personally don’t think it completely succeeded but for a first time experience of trying to combine the two into one, it did its job with preparation for another game.  

 I also feel like some criticism was lobbed towards the game’s narrative for being told in library/book entries, and while I understand that (I actually couldn’t open all of the books for fear of my game crashing), I don’t think elaborate cutscenes and continuous dialogue would work well with this game’s flow. Bloodstained prioritizes gameplay elements and player exploration over anything else, and to be honest, I’d rather it happen that way than with long elaborate cutscenes.  I also felt as though I got more out of the game because I’d played the 8-bit prequel as well.

 Overall, Bloodstained is a passable experience. I’m glad I played it, and I’m glad I put the work in to try to make the game a better experience. I got what I wanted out of the game for as much as I backed it and I hope they try again with a similar formula because this is a very good first step.  

  The Touryst

Sometimes when I see a game with voxel graphics, I feel pretty compelled to pick it up because it looks so darn lovingly rendered and it usually ends up being fun.  The Touryst does a good job with its graphical style and visiting new islands is a complete delight because of it. It looks like a game with style, and performs super-well on the Switch. It’s also one of the freshest games I’ve played in a while.

 Basically you’re playing a blocky dude with a moustache who just wants to have a good time but when he gets to TOWA Monument, he’s told he has to find monument cores to unlock the world’s secrets. And then you can do whatever you want. The different islands have their own little personalities: there’s an island called Fijy which is volcanic, there’s Ybiza with a bunch of dudes chilling on the beach and passed out on their chairs, there’s Santoryn which is just Greece, and a few other places that are essentially recreations of real-world places.

 As you explore, there’s a lot of stuff to do. A variety of things to do.  There are puzzles and mechanics that don’t necessarily overstay their welcome, you can play footy, you can play spelunker, you can take helicopter rides, you can take pictures, get stuff for a museum, surf, play rhythm games…. It’s your vacation, do what you want. It’s a little like Vegas. Unlike Vegas, you can use your ever-increasing money and diamonds to get new moves for your moustached character to reach new objects.

 As a little game where you can do whatever you want little by little, and makes for a smooth experience, I’m glad I picked up the Touryst after asking another person what they thought of it. It has great puzzles, lots of stuff to do and explore and see, and ton of minigames for whatever mood you feel like you’re in. The game is fairly short, but I’m very glad the holiday doesn’t overstay its welcome.

  A Short Hike

A Short Hike places you in the shoes of a bird who is utterly determined to walk to the top of Hawk Peak to get signal for her phone.  I totally understand; sometimes you’ve gotta do what you gotta do.  

 But the game allows you to undertake that journey however you want to. You can go right away and finish up and get that darn signal. Or you can take your time and we’ll build that bridge when we get there. There are different types of terrains to explore if you opt to take the scenic route… and it’s rewarding to do so. You can find treasure, you can water a flower, you can talk to the Animal Crossing-esque characters to do some sidequests, you can do whatever you want.

 I’m sorry to say that when the game introduced fishing, I spent a lot of my time doing that. Fishing ruins me. The completionist in me wanted to fish. But the whole thing is that you don’t have to do any of this. If you want to finish the game, you can absolutely positively focus on that and the game doesn’t pressure you for it.  

 And that’s one of the things I like about it. It’s just whatever about the whole ordeal. I don’t feel like I’m completely and utterly missing out if I don’t decide to do something. Even the task of getting Golden Feathers to progress is fine since you only need eight for it, and the game easily gives you enough rewards to get four or five before sidequests or exploration is factored in.

 Sometimes you just need to take a walk and kind of think of nothing just to clear your head. And A Short Hike accomplishes that very well.

  Worldend Syndrome

In my effort to try to find other games to play in 2019 because I’d fallen a little out of love with FFXIV, I realised that taking baby steps with visual novels and bite-sized games would be the best idea to try to get back into traditional games (particularly since I was, and am, still questioning whether I like games as a hobby or not). On a whim, I decided to download a boatload of visual novel demos one night and tried a bunch of them out. Worldend Syndrome’s demo didn’t exactly grab me until perhaps halfway through the demo when I a) realised that this demo was long af, and b) nothing appeared what it had seemed as I kept going through it and the characters were enjoyable.

 So I decided to get the game and dragged my fiancé along for the ride. It’s one of those standard decision-making/pick which girl you want and go down her route VNs but it didn’t really feel skeezy or ecchi other than one particular point in each girl’s story where you get confessed to.  You go through the VN as an unnamed protagonist who is visiting his cousin over the summer, and you and your friends get dragged into a school club whose focus revolves around folklore. The town the protagonist finds himself in is haunted by the Yomibito, spirits of the undead who look exactly like regular people but are eventually driven mad enough to kill.

 One of the things that drew me to this visual novel was its assortment of animated backgrounds. They colourful and gorgeous. Every CG looks nice and coloured well, and the backgrounds for each area you visit are so beautiful and makes every single location easy to settle into.  The cast is also surprisingly decent, where I expected to hate a few people but I ended up being okay with them because they were written well and weren’t as tropey as I had expected.  I was also very pleased that the character that you were roleplaying as wasn’t skeezy when put into situations where he could have been, and that he treated the girls very well (though I won’t deny that there are some spots where behaviour was questionable but it doesn’t happen as often).  Because the characters were written adequately enough, the game’s true ending route comes together very well and very naturally to a point where I could seriously believe that every character got along with one another to make sure the emotional impact of the mystery was satisfying.

 In order to finish Worldend Syndrome, you have to do each route. A few characters’ routes don’t get unlocked until halfway through the game or even until the very end. The game also remembers everything you’ve done when it autosaves the system data on the world map, so if you need to reload a save to figure out someone’s schedule or if you mess up, it’s relatively easy to come back to something you’ve missed. I’ve played a lot of multiple route VNs before and Worldend Syndrome is easily one of the better VNs that allows the player to skip through to something they’ve missed or skip through previously-viewed text for another route.

 As it is, Worldend Syndrome doesn’t really try to do anything spectacular, nor does it try to stand out like other visual novels of 2019 have (ie: Ciconia, presumably AI but I only tried the demo and I hated parts of the script, sorry). It does its job and tells its story which has a very good payoff in the end.

  Judgement

I bought my fiancé Judgement earlier this year, as I had retired from playing Ryu ga Gotoku after Dead Souls/Ishin, and he was still playing the series religiously.  I watched him play through part of it and I felt compelled to get my own copy because the combat looked nice, and the characters were compelling enough that I felt comfortable picking it up.

 Judgement follows former lawyer Takayuki Yagami who is now a detective.  His tale is one of redemption and conspiracies, reminiscent of some Phoenix Wright games (which this game gives clever nods to when the protagonist is in the courtroom). Yagami is more serious and down-to-earth than Kiryu is so the tone of the game feels quite different than other RGG games (or at least the ones I’ve played).

 It still feels like a regular RGG game where you’re still wandering through Kamurocho, you’re still getting into fights with randos and Yakuza dudes, you date girls, you go to buy food, you play minigames, etc. But it isn’t as big as a standard RGG game; because you stay only in the one area, the cast is smaller, you get a job board to get your sidequests from, and the story itself is fairly short and sweet.  I actually prefer that as a lapsed RGG player since it’s easier to get back into the games this way.

 Judgement, however, disappointed me just a little in how little you spend in the courtroom.  You’re given opportunities to present evidence, do some suspect tailing, use your smartphone to catch a cheating husband, or use a drone to search for evidence. I felt like when you had to use the drone to search for evidence, it ruined the pacing a little. The tailing missions are also reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed, and no that isn’t a good thing! Due to this, I felt like Judgement was not necessarily a great detective game but it did a decent job of trying to mold the RGG experience to a different main character.

 Yagami can… fight… for some reason so he can beat up whatever randos come up to him on the streets. He’s actually more acrobatic than I remember Kiryu being in previous RGG games. He can kick off objects, he’s hard to back into a corner, he can do wall-flips, etc. It’s also much easier to earn XP where it’s all in one bar so you can do whatever you want to fill it up like play darts and just put stuff into his lockpicking. As a lapsed fan, the streamlining feels okay. The streamlining for combat also feels good because if you fights go on too long, the popo can come for you and you’d get fined, so emphasis is on finishing fights cleanly and quickly.

 Overall, as a lapsed RGG fan, the way Judgement looks and feels and wraps up its twists and turns was really exciting for me. It may not have as many things to do as other RGG games, but honestly I think being a leaner experience was better and thus didn’t make the game overstay its welcome.  I also am eagerly awaiting RGG7 since I enjoyed the demo a lot and I think the new protagonist can carry the series the way Yagami carried Judgement.

  Cadence of Hyrule

Sometimes, after my fiancé and I bought our Switch, I’d wake up, go brush my teeth, and return to bed just to see my fiancé awake and playing Cadence of Hyrule. I was perplexed as it’s been ages since he’d willingly played a Zelda game, and his hands are super-huge for the joycons so he doesn’t like using them much.

 You can easily say that Cadence of Hyrule is just a Crypt of the Necrodancer reskin with Zelda stuff all over it, but feels pretty clever in that it uses stuff from roguelikes and a rhythm game and makes the A Link to the Past world feel incredibly fresh. Bosses, especially, feel very fresh. Enemies move according to the rhythm and have a unique pattern that’s easily memorized so you can fall into the rhythm and take advantage of. If you’ve played Necrodancer, you’ll probably feel at home in this aspect, especially since the maps are also randomised (which leads different playthroughs feeling fresh).

 The Zelda feels comes from recreating tunes from older Zelda games in puzzles, the magnificent sprite art, the great Zelda remixes, a simple-enough story, and a standard set of things to find in each procedurally generated dungeon. You also find a variety of traditional items like the bow, the bombs, boomerang… and a spear? It’s a nice blend of Zelda and Necrodancer.

 The caveat is that it takes a little getting used to, since you’re not exactly used to not being able to freely move in a Zelda game. But when you do get used to it, it feels good. Everything is pretty expendable and if you die, you don’t feel like you necessarily lose a lot since you can accrue it all easily enough again. It’s unpredictable and that random roguelike nature is something that makes the Zelda experience feel fresh.

  Spirit Hunter: Death Mark

My fiancé and I were trying to find spooky games to play for Halloween that wouldn’t make me squeamish because despite my profession dealing with analysis of body parts and human body fluids, I can’t see that kind of stuff on TV or in games in a realistic sense. It grosses me out. At least when it’s in front of me, it’s already out and off someone’s body and in a fume hood/biosafety cabinet and I didn’t have to see how it happened. My fiancé picked up Spirit Hunter: Death Mark on a sale we went through it together.

 Death Mark is a tale about horror-themed urban legends and a curse that needs to be broken.  People get marked with a crimson bite mark in the game’s H City and they eventually develop amnesia and die. A group of people live and gather at a spirit medium’s mansion (who is dead upon arrival).  The only hint to break the curse in this mansion is a little talking doll named Mary. The protagonist eventually goes through several mysteries in an effort to break his curse and stop others from dying.

 Death Mark does some surprisingly well-crafted worldbuilding. Each spirit you deal with has a well-told backstory, sometimes especially ghoulish (particularly the bonus post-game episode, the first episode, and the one episode with the telephone booth). The game excels with psychological horror and the enemies involved in each boss battle assist in making the player feel that way as well. The backgrounds also lend well to this as while they are simplistic, the shading and colours used help to execute a sense of dread. One particular chapter harkens back to Japan’s Aokigahara, and the backgrounds used connect very well to that particular location so that it feels super-eerie.

 Regardless, Death Mark relies a lot on its text to establish its atmosphere and as someone who reads stuff like R07 VNs and other regular VNs with a lot of text, I was okay with that. The localization was well-done, albeit with some issues that would have been caught in editing but overall it carried the story very well.

 There are boss battles prior to the end of each chapter, where you must use each item you find in your exploration segments. You need to use specific items in a specific order (even with the correct party setup) in order to achieve a good ending for that particular chapter (and thus eventually the game). I thought this was an interesting mechanic and while it got a little tired depending on the spirit, it showcased how creepy some of them can be on your screen.

 Unfortunately, Death Mark does not have a variety for its soundtrack and it’s almost disappointing that the same piano tunes and boss themes played repeatedly as I felt it detracted from the experience.

 Otherwise, I felt like Death Mark was a short and sweet horror experience that played into urban legends and folklore experiences. I loved the little vignettes that eventually ramped up to a central story point. I hope the sequel is good when we get around to it.

  Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

So my fiancé and I are doing this thing where we’ve started buying one copy of a game so we’d both own it together and go through it together. Sekiro and Man of Medan were two of those games this year.

 Sekiro isn’t really like Souls. Eventually you’ll come to learn that very quickly when the game throws a boss at you and if you try to play like Souls, you’re not going to get the job done.  It will show you that you never learned how to parry properly and you’re going to have to go back and learn it.  Or if you didn’t grab a prosthetic that will make the job easier, you’re gonna have to do that too.

 The game is interesting in that you aren’t exactly whittling down health bars all the time; you’re striking properly so you can overwhelm their posture bars, find an opening, and go in for the kill. Enemy health bars are essentially secondary to that posture bar. You have your own posture bar so you’ve got to learn how to parry properly. Sometimes you need to parry complete combos in order to deliver posture damage back to an enemy. It’s all about getting into the flow and rhythm of combat. And you must beat bosses in order for you to get a stat boost, so being able to beat a boss lies in your skill, and not necessarily your level/equipment.

 Sekiro is Souls-like in its storytelling and worldbuilding. You can run around rooftops and areas to find secrets off the beaten path. You go back and forth between areas and speak to different NPCs to find out their backstories. The plot is also told via NPC conversations with the main characters. At first it’s a little dry but the story opens up eventually. It also has some great voiced NPCs for quests (one quest in particular had voicework that made me feel so sorry for the character that I was like “we need to get the proper item for this guy please don’t make him suffer”).

 It feels rewarding to put in the work in order to beat the bosses, make it so you don’t resurrect as often to make people sick, and meet whatever standard Sekiro is throwing at you. It lets the player know that they’ve met that standard, and then throws another boss phase at them so you have to get even better.

 Owl I’m looking at you.

  Super Kirby Clash

My fiancé and I bought a Switch together this year (which, outside of dinner and movies and clothes, etc. was one of our major purchases together).  We downloaded a few demos to try the control scheme out, including Super Kirby Clash.  I am aware that this game is probably old, but hey it’s still going and it’s still being supported and I’m catching up.

 I’m probably putting it here due to bias, but I think It’s really cute and the hats are super-adorable. I love getting new hats and new weapons for my little Kirby.  It’s fairly standard as far as a “mobile experience” is concerned and playing it a little when I have the time to and hacking away at it little by little is rewarding when I get a new hat or new gear. My fiancé and I played it in multiplayer as well, which felt a lot like Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

 It’s pretty inoffensive and I haven’t paid real-life money for anything in it, and I still feel like I’m progressing. So as a Kirby game with light RPG elements (ie: something I’ve wanted for years and years), it’s nice to finally see realised.

 Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

An artist I commission very often from convinced me to move this game further up in queue than I originally had it when we were talking about games we were playing after finishing Shadowbringers’ main campaign.  

 Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is the spiritual successor inspired by Wonder Boy III, with the formula being modernized for a new era. It feels fast, and it looks soooooooo pretty. The tracks are bumpin’ too. It’s also a little tough but with every difficult section successfully platformed through, you feel really good about it.

 You play as a plucky boy named Jin whose uncle is an insano who turns everyone in the kingdom into animals. After you experience sweet freedom as a human boy platforming across things easily for like 15 minutes, Jin’s uncle turns him into a pig. Whoops. From there the platforming gets a little harder and you need to learn how to manipulate different forms and different spells in order to get across various sections.

 Different animal forms give you different skills. Pig form allows you to sniff out secrets literally, snake form lets you cling to walls and go through tiny passages, frog has a sticky tongue for swinging, and lion form lets you go through obstacles. You need to use these forms well to platform well enough to get through each area and finish the game. Being successful at platforming in this game feels good and fulfilling and satisfying. As you unlock more, platforming experiences get more and more complex with more obstacles put in your way, so in essence it feels like the opposite of a standard metroidvania.  Playing both Bloodstained and this in one year felt like playing polar opposites. That said, the checkpointing in Monster Boy is really good. Game Atelier knew what they were doing.

 The bosses by contrast were really easy and it’s nice to take the time to look at the art for each boss. All of the effects are also super-nice. Playing Monster Boy on a 4K TV is quite a visual treat for its boss sections, its town section, and its platforming sections. The colours are off-the-charts. Each animal sprite has its own set of unique animations: the piggy farts and looks like >_>, froggy looking at flies, etc. And the music is so good. If this game were a 2019 game I’d definitely put its soundtrack on my list, but it isn’t. It’s a nice blend of new and old stuff and it’s a delight to hear in-context as encouragement to keep going when you fail a platforming section.

 Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a faithful representation and homage of the old Wonder Boy games. It’s filled with references and secrets and awesome art, and I’m glad to have been convinced to move it up my queue for this year.

  Most Disappointing Game: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

I love Final Fantasy XIV. It’s brought me closer to so many people in recent years and I’ve met so many more through it. Playing this game means so much to me and I want the best for it for years to come.  It’s one of the reasons why I’m so critical about it. If I hated this game, I would stop playing and honestly, I wouldn’t care about its future.  I will say this before getting started:  I like Shadowbringers’ story so far (we aren’t going to be finished with its story until 5.3).  I don’t think It’s necessarily as consistent as Heavensward, but I think Shadowbringers’ story is the most Final Fantasy story we’ve gotten since perhaps FF10. Truly, it’s the best we’ve seen for the series this decade.  

 I had a lot of hopes and hype for Shadowbringers.  I hated Stormblood, for a myriad of reasons: social reasons, gameplay reasons, and narrative reasons.  The direction Shadowbringers was going and all the trailers made it seem like it was going to be fresh and exciting and new.  My fiancé and I (and a few others) swapped servers+data centers in advance of the expansion for a fresh start, to boot. I watched the Job Actions trailer over and over and tried to decide what I was going to eventually main and gear up because I didn’t really have a main in Stormblood due to the combat changes and how easy things became for certain things.

 During a live letter, they mentioned that they’re changing how things work in battle, and that’s when I became a little cautious. I was hoping for the best leading up to release and then I saw the scholar/healer changes and got very worried.  I changed mains in Stormblood because playing Scholar was freaking horrible at the start of Stormblood.  

 I eventually had to change mains at the start of Shadowbringers because I was not having fun playing Scholar. For people who didn’t bother to level a healer at all, the writing was on the wall for healers during Stormblood. Essentially, it introduced an age of healing where you barely ever used your GCDs to heal. You mostly used OGCDs and preplanned shields. 90% of the time if you wanted to be a good healer, you’d mostly DPS. I don’t think I’ve cast a GCD heal at all in SB and ShB content unless things were going super-wrong.

 The healing changes introduced in Shadowbringers made us think that things were going to change, that things were going to be harder to heal.  I had my doubts, however, because all fights are scripted and if they were to introduce a substantial change to incoming damage, they would have to make it so most people (casual, midcore, hardcore, less experienced newbies, experienced folks) would be used to It and could handle it.  There was no way they were going to introduce more difficulty given that subscription numbers were increasing.

 And so, healers during Shadowbringers got some damage skills taken away, but in their place, they were given more tools to heal with:

-          White Mage came away from this as a very well-rounded healer at launch. It had its damage spells, it had a damage spell with a stun, it finally had long-standing and easily useable mitigation, it has substantial MP recovery, and it has a damage spell that rewards you for using three GCD heals to make up for damage lost. White Mage still making out like a bandit in 5.1.

-          Scholar felt dramatically different and didn’t feel as solid as it used to be. It had most of its damage tools taken away, the usefulness of its fairy was decreased because let’s be honest it was super-overpowered, it got one of its fairies and its AoE esuna taken away, and it was given its PvP move to act as an AoE that doesn’t have another effect. I had to completely unlearn everything I did as scholar in the last 5-6 years in order to play current scholar. Current 5.1 scholar is overpowered as heck and I don’t feel as satisfied to play it in SB/ShB content.

-          AST LOL. All the cards are balance. MP regen is what. Heals are what. Everything is just what. Other fun skills were removed. That said, I really like AST just because it feels like I have to work twice as hard to achieve the same effect the other healers bring to the table.

 So eventually with all of these changes, we had assumed that healing was going to be harder.  It wasn’t. It’s the same experience and all we’re doing is pressing one single button all the time.  I barely have to heal in dungeons.  I barely have to heal in raid unless my party members step in stupid. I just can’t bring myself to play healer every single day anymore, and I love healing in this game. Or I loved it back when it was more dynamic. I just press one button over and over and over and over and over and maybe sometimes another but I just press one button a lot. It’s really sad and it makes me miss old Cleric Stance of all things.

 I like Shadowbringers’ story. I felt rewarded playing through it as someone who’s played the game for years and did everything when it was in-content. So for me, it was like a good reunion.  There were a lot of points where the story dragged or felt rocky. I felt like the start of the 5.0 campaign was utterly boring and poorly paced.  It picked up again, then slowed down again, then picked up again, then got REALLY BAD, then picked up again for a good finish. I don’t think it’s as consistent as Heavensward’s 3.0 campaign, but it was very solid and made up for the 4.0 campaign.

 However, story is only 20% of the experience for me.  The rest of the time, I need to actually play the game. I actually liked the levelling and crafting changes and new skills they brought in during 5.0 because leveling a crafter never felt easier. I felt like I still had to work hard but the payoff came quickly and my macros still worked as well as they did from during Stormblood. I also used my Stormblood melds and Stormblood equipment for the entire levelling experience and had to make concessions for some of my macros as time went on.  I still had to know what my skills did, basically. The 5.1 crafting/gathering changes kind of make me want to craft less since I don’t feel like I have to solve a puzzle anymore and to be honest, everyone crafts now so you make far less money than you previously did.  The desynth changes also made it so that most of my markets tanked since what’s the point of gathering half the materials when desynth makes those materials easily accessible.  I’m not saying to gatekeep at all, but I feel like the experience should have been a little harder (ie: like the Ixali experience where you had to learn what your skills did or desynth shouldn’t be this easy to keep the market fairly balanced). My server is a crafting server so I am more impacted in general from this. That said, I don’t have anything to spend gil on so it doesn’t matter, I guess.  I just feel far less inclined to participate in what was one of my favourite pastimes in XIV.

 I mained Ninja which got killed in 5.0. I was already dealing with the servers moving from East Coast to West Coast, so adding a bunch of stuff to squeeze into your TA window in 10 seconds in Shadowbringers utterly killed the job for me. 5.1 Ninja throws me off as someone who played this game since the time Ninja was introduced, and I can’t make myself play it. The current opener is the Doton opener (which is something I didn’t like in SB at all) and I can’t always rely on my tank to bring the thing to my Doton. That, and making it so you do different things per every other or every third TA just makes the job a little unpalatable for me at 80. I’m one of those people who wants TA to go. I don’t like that Ninja’s become the TA bot in recent years.  I can still do well with it. People still throw buffs at me, but I don’t find enjoyment in the job anymore and I hope we get a proper retool in 6.0.

 I switched back to ranged. Thankfully Bard hasn’t changed as much since SB (though I still prefer HW Bard like a weirdo), and Dancer is one of those “I worked too damn long today and I just wanna do the mindless brainless rotation” jobs.  I miss old Machinist oddly enough.  It felt really good when you played it well and pulled off a decent wildfire. Now it’s a little easier and I don’t feel as fulfilled playing it. That said, it’s probably the best incarnation of the job since it’s sad little introduction in 3.0.

 Even tanking is substantially easier and that’s a mostly good thing. It sucked going into a low level dungeon and having trouble keeping aggro due to the level syncing and your DPS’ stats. Now you can just turn your stance on and go to town without losing any damage potency like you used to. I kind of miss swapping stances after I’ve established aggro though, because you could tell the difference between a good tank and a bad/less practiced tank if they didn’t bother to swap stances in a fight. Tanks came out of this expansion very balanced, though. They might need some work here and there (warrior I’m looking at you), but overall, they came out the best out of the three roles.

 Other than that, you have monks not knowing what they should be, samurai continuously getting buffed and nerfed, black mage staying consistent, red mage being lol, summoner getting changed to the point where now it’s overpowered, among other DPS changes. DPS overall don’t have as much synergy so you can take any job you want to into raid and it’ll get the job done. That said if you want to do as much damage as possible, you’re generally going to take the same few classes into the raid if you’re less educated about them.  And I feel like the lack of synergy or utility between classes or even the loss of something like mana shift makes the whole experience a little boring.  It’s very “f you, I got mine” or the onus is on the player for their own personal burdens and no one’s really helping each other unless you’re a dancer, trick attack bot, dragoon or bard.

 I really hope the other pieces of content are substantial but what I’ve seen aren’t exactly what I had in mind. Boss refights with an alternate version is really neat but I didn’t really want that for this raid tier. I wanted something more original given what we had to deal with in Omega.  I don’t really care for the Nier Automata crossover because, again, I wanted something original to the XIV lore and the First. I think doubling down on Blue Mage is a bad idea and while some folks like its party-based content now, I can’t bring myself to keep doing the content given that it’s clear they don’t know what to do with it (or didn’t know what to do with it). With one dungeon coming per patch I have to question what’s happening internally or what they’re working on. I know SE is weird internally and I really hope that the kind of stuff I’ve read in previous postmortem articles isn’t happening.

 Either way, I’m really disappointed that I want to stop playing XIV so much when it’s the most popular among my friends and followers because it’s so dissatisfying to me and it’s the most accessible that it’s ever been. I hope things get better eventually but going by what I think they have in store and their old reliable formula, I don’t have hope. I’m tired of the formula and I feel like it needs a shakeup. Overall, I’ve been less happy playing FFXIV than I’ve ever been and it makes me feel really sad. 

#goty 2019 #ciconia when they cry #bloodstained #the touryst #a short hike #worldend syndrome #judgment #cadence of hyrule #spirit hunter death mark #sekiro #super kirby clash #shadowbringers

[jobrosupdates]

‘We needed to speak our truth – and forgive’: Jonas Brothers on music, marriage and making up | The Guardian

Six years ago, on the back of 17m album sales, the Disney stars split, devastating their fans. Now they’re back with a No 1 single. They talk about family rifts – and why it took so long to patch things up

“Good to see you,” smiles Kevin Jonas, the first of three Jonas brothers to arrive in the back room of an upmarket hotel in Fitzrovia, London. Kevin and I have indeed met before, many years ago, for an interview he has no reason to remember. Between then and today, the Jonas Brothers have split and now re-formed, and for anyone querying just how in sync the newly reunited band are, Joe is the next to join us. “Good to see you,” he says. A few seconds later, here comes Nick: “Good to see you.”

It is three months since they announced their reunion, more than half a decade since a split that was blamed on a “deep rift within the band”. The pandemonium surrounding their getting back together, which has seen Sucker become the band’s first US No 1 single, feels like a mirror image of how fans reacted to the brutality and abruptness of the split in 2013, when, having sold 17m albums and achieved widespread international fame, the brothers ditched a half-made fifth album and cancelled a world tour they were in the middle of. Nick instigated the split, it emerged; there were musical differences, along with the deep rift.

I ask them how being back and once again hurling themselves into full days of press, fan meets-and-greets and invite-only concerts is going. Kevin is the first to respond: “Well, we haven’t wanted to break up yet.”

The Jonas Brothers began life as a standard teen band. Columbia Records had already released solo music by Nick, who had been performing on Broadway since he was seven. (Today, he describes his seven-year-old self as “incredibly driven and focused and not very fun to be around”, which prompts a knowing laugh from older brother Kevin.) The preposterously wholesome New Jersey brothers’ cover of Busted’s Year 3000, in which their vision of the future referenced girls with “round hair like Star Wars” rather than Busted’s “triple-breasted women”, brought modest success. But when their debut album flopped, Columbia dropped the band and around the same time, their father, a pastor whose involvement in the church had a big impact on the family, lost his job. Joe was 17, Kevin was 19; Nick was just 14. “Lost in the shuffle of major label ‘stuff’,” is how Nick puts it now. At the time, emotions ran higher. “We felt like our journey had come to an end.”

But in the words of another sibling pop band, it had only just begun. In 2007, just weeks after leaving Columbia, the band signed with Disney’s record label Hollywood. Disney’s pitch to the Jonas Brothers was simple, according to Nick. “They called and said: ‘You’ve been working with someone who doesn’t know how to market to this audience. This is literally what we do. We see an opportunity and we want to help you grow.’” Disney’s power had already become obvious to the band when the Year 3000 video was played on one of its TV channels. “I saw our Myspace followers go from 100 to 10,000 in just one day,” Joe says.

Only with hindsight is it clear just how effectively the Disney machine made good on its promise. They inserted the Jonas Brothers, albeit not as the Jonas Brothers, into the TV show Hannah Montana, as Miley Cyrus’s favourite band, in an episode that aired directly after the premiere of High School Musical 2. They gave the siblings their own sitcom, Jonas, in which they played a band (again, not the Jonas Brothers). Then came the movie Camp Rock, in which the Jonas Brothers starred alongside Demi Lovato as the band Connect 3. Once again, not the Jonas Brothers, a strategy Joe now recognises as both “genius and confusing”, but the audience joined the dots, thanks in part to another series, Living The Dream – a fly-on-the-wall show in which the band finally starred as themselves.

Those years involved so many of what Nick describes as “pinch-me-I’m-a-Jonas-Brother moments”, such as performing at the White House as favourites of the Obama administration. Joe recalls playing with Stevie Wonder at the Grammys. “The curtains open and there’s Paul McCartney and Chris Martin, and they’re the first ones out of their seats.” They were applauding, not leaving. “Obviously it was for Stevie Wonder, but that felt rewarding.”

Inconveniently, the brothers, being living organisms, got older, and while the Jonas Brothers owe their success to Disney it was inevitable that they would outgrow the channel’s values. Joe wrote a frank assessment of that time for New York magazine in 2013, saying the band were like “frightened little kids” when faced with Disney’s demands for a clean-cut band. Today, he says simply that Disney was “very helpful when we needed it the most”.

Internally, things were also complex. There is a throwaway comment in one episode of Living the Dream in which the brothers discuss their father, who by that point had taken on the role of the band’s co-manager: “The problem is, we’re never sure when he’s just being dad.” Equally, the band realised the line between brother and bandmate was frequently, inevitably, ill-defined. “Sometimes you just want a dad, sometimes you just want a brother,” Joe says today. “There was confusion when it came to family versus band, and what comes first.”

“When the band broke up, he balanced both really well,” Nick says of their father. “Because I had initiated the conversation for the group to break up, he was comforting to me while I spoke my truth. Then when Joe and Kevin’s reaction was complicated, he was a father to them, and managerial to me.”

I ask Joe and Kevin if they can expand on “complicated”. “Sure,” Joe says. “I was mad as hell.”

The split, Joe says, wasn’t something he was expecting, even if the signs were all there: “The music wasn’t as strong as it had been, we weren’t selling as many tickets. And our relationship was unhealthy. We weren’t communicating as we should have been.” Still, Joe remembers thinking that things would work themselves out. “I kind of just assumed we’d get through this bad phase and something great would happen again.”

By 2009, the Jonas Brothers had been releasing an album every summer since 2006 but their fourth album, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, sold less than half its predecessor, and less than a third of the band’s breakthrough album. After that, Nick and Joe released solo albums, which were poorly received. I ask if the failure of those initial solo outings, followed by the ill-fated retreat to the safety of the band, could have fostered resentment that led to the eventual split. Joe nods. “I wanted to at least get that personal win of being able to do something on my own, which I carried for many years, just thinking: ‘I can’t do anything without these guys.’”

After the band’s split in 2013, Kevin spent time with his wife, Danielle, raising their two daughters, starting a construction company and investing in a handful of ventures including a food app called Yood and a service for social influencers called The Blu Market. Nick released two albums, resulting in some decent airplay and chart hits such as the 2014 single Jealous. Joe formed a band, DNCE, whose 2015 billion-stream behemoth Cake By the Ocean was No 1 from Ecuador to Israel. Despite movie roles for both (Nick in Goat and Jumanji, Joe as a voice actor in Hotel Transylvania 3), and a slot judging on Australia’s The Voice for Joe, their projects hit a wall – one of the tracks from DNCE’s latest EP has broken 7m Spotify streams, while Cake By the Ocean stands at 806m.

Although the brothers were hardly estranged during this period, there was a multi-platinum elephant in the room at family events. In 2017 came the idea of a Jonas Brothers documentary, Chasing Happiness, which is out this week on Amazon. The main aim was closure. “We definitely didn’t think we were going to get back together,” Joe says. During one pivotal moment the band took part in a drinking game (the documentary was not being made by Disney), in which residual issues were pulled out of a hat, and each member rated the other on the honesty of their responses. “We all needed to speak our truth, and be able to forgive,” Nick says. “It’s easy. Say the truth, then it’s behind you. Just say it out loud.”

The brothers insist the plan was simply to draw a line under the band, but a full reunion happened anyway. They contacted the songwriter and producer Ryan Tedder, who has worked with everyone from Adele to U2. They knew they needed to update to reflect pop’s new sound, and what Nick describes as “the ever-changing landscape of the way music is released and how people consume it. We were conscious that there would always be a new wave of entertainers you can feel you’re in competition with but rather than be frustrated with how quickly things change, we’ve chosen to lean into it.” Tedder’s early enthusiasm for the project gave the band the confidence to approach other pop overlords such as Greg Kurstin and Max Martin. “Before,” Joe says, “when it was slowing down, we were nervous to reach out to big producers and writers, thinking they would say no to working with us.”

The result is an album, Happiness Begins, that is arguably better than anything the band made in their earlier years. Free from the late-00s shackles of over-enthusiastic hair straightening, the Jonas Brothers rather suit being older. They seem happy that their audiences in 2019 will generally have drinks in their hands and much like the fans who have grown up with them, these brothers seem more like individuals, too, from Nick in his designer bomber jacket to Kevin in an unassuming lumberjack shirt.

The march of age – Nick is 27, Joe, 29, and Kevin, 31 – also means the brothers are no longer synonymous with the purity rings they once wore as a display of abstinence, which quickly became the target of a rather odd media obsession. Nick has since said that the purity rings ended up shaping his view of sex. “They did,” he restates today. How? “The values behind the idea of understanding what sex is, and what it means, are incredibly important. When I have children, I’ll make sure they understand the importance of sex, and consent, and all the things that are important. What’s discouraging about that chapter of our life is that at 13 or 14 my sex life was being discussed. It was very tough to digest it in real time, trying to understand what it was going to mean to me, and what I wanted my choices to be, while having the media speaking about a 13-year-old’s sex life. I don’t know if it would fly in this day and age. Very strange.”

In any case, the band are all now married. Kevin got hitched to Danielle a decade ago while Nick’s wife is the actor Priyanka Chopra, and Joe married Sophie Turner, Game of Thrones’ Sansa Stark, in a Las Vegas ceremony last month. All three significant others feature in the video for Sucker. “Sophie was pretty adamant that she play the love interest in every music video we do from now on,” Joe notes. “I told her I didn’t think that was possible, but we’d give her the first one.” I ask him if there’s been a strange atmosphere, with one major chapter ending for Turner just as a new one begins for Joe. “We’ve definitely spoken about that. It’s difficult to say goodbye to one … But it’s amazing timing that we could be starting our life together right now.”

The couple’s refreshing approach to dealing with paparazzi in New York, where they live – staring them out, giving them the finger – often sees them go viral. “Early on, we were trying to be secretive about our relationship,” Joe explains. The problem? “We like to sit outside. Pulling faces at the paparazzi is sometimes the best way to handle the situation – and then I see myself on the top of Reddit.” He suddenly becomes rather animated. “I love Reddit! I got so excited when I saw that. I went: ‘We made it!’ She wasn’t as excited.” (He adds that he mainly visits Reddit for Gifs, memes and pictures of “any cute animal”.)

I ask Nick how he and Priyanka, who has experienced a similar level of a different type of fame, manage their public lives. “She’s coming up on 20 years in the business, and weirdly, so am I,” he begins. “But she wasn’t really familiar with us, or me, when we first started dating.” One of their first steps, within their first few weeks together, was a show-and-tell session. “We actually sat down and educated each other, playing videos we were both embarrassed and proud of. It was a helpful way to get to know each other.” (Nick adds, ominously, that Chopra “did a little digging of her own and found out some things about my past”.)

The band’s not exactly hermit-like private lives have undoubtedly boosted their comeback, but, along with Sucker being a nailed-on hit, they have also benefited from a curious type of nostalgia. Their return does transport the mind to a time when their music seemed to soundtrack things slowly getting better, rather than rapidly descending into what Nick describes today as “an incredibly negative time across the whole globe”, and what the rest of us might term an international dumpster fire.

“That should be our album title,” Joe decides. “Before The Dumpster Fire. Six years ago was a lot different everywhere, but we like the idea that we can take people out of it and smile and bring some joy to 2019.”

This feels like as appropriate a time as any to bring up the internet theory that Kevin’s appearance on the US version of Celebrity Apprentice was directly responsible for Trump’s presidency. The Jonas Brothers aren’t known for their political views but the theory goes like this: Kevin’s presence gave the ailing show an early ratings boost, but after Kevin attempted to outfox Trump in the boardroom and got himself fired, the rest of the season’s ratings were poor, and now here we are. “You can do the math on it, and it lines up,” Kevin accepts. “It’s plausible, I guess, that the need for attention could have led from bad ratings to the presidency. I hope that’s not the case.” Would he like to apologise to the world? “No. I do not take credit for it.”

I ask Nick if, as he has previously stated, he would still like to run for president himself one day. “Politics is a very tricky thing,” he diplomatically responds. “It’s a very different time to when I first mentioned my desire to be president.”

“He’s practising,” Kevin laughs.

“We’ll take what we can get,” Joe mutters.

With that, it’s time for the band to clear off and perform for fans in Kingston, London. Before they go I ask what Connect 3, the band they portrayed in Camp Rock, are doing now. “I think,” Nick says, “they’re just really jealous that the Jonas Brothers are back.”

Jonas Brothers’ new album, Happiness Begins, is out on 7 June on Polydor/Republic Records

Source: The Guardian

#jonas brothers #joe jonas #nick jonas #kevin jonas #the guardian #text #article #interview #2019

[excathedras]

Hold Onto Your Butts: I’m Coming Out

     Oftentimes, when I look back at myself, it seems like who I am now is the product of a coalition of different people all taking control of my life for different periods of time. Who I am now and who I once was are, at times, unrecognisable, though a number of central things about me remain. I can remember writing stories when I was six years old, imagining characters and a world vastly different from my own. I have pictures of myself in a purple velvet leotard at ballet, and in pink lipgloss at my first orchestra concert playing in an elementary school cafeteria. These are the big ones that come to mind, but sometimes, it is very difficult for us to look back and understand how the smaller things have snowballed over time. For me, these include trust issues that have accumulated from constant moves, a changing world, and the selfishness of humanity that seems so new to me. Another one is my adoration of classics, which began during the Scholastic Book Fair at my school, when my English had finally gotten good enough to read the popular “Goddess Girls” series, which has led me, almost a decade later, to pursue that sort of thing as a career. 

     Some things, however, are even more difficult to understand, let alone recognise. With the increasing attention of the general public to the inner workings of the LGBT community, especially with understanding gender on a global stage, this allows a place for a personal reflection of my own self and how I feel and how I want to be perceived and, in some ways, how happy I am with the body I was born into. For me, those questions have been incredibly difficult to answer. The way I see them and myself has changed many times over the years, and, though it seems backwards, has become more confusing to me the more I learn about what gender truly is and how I choose to define it for myself. 

    When I was little, my hair didn’t grow much. It is wild, Greco-African, and my white adopted mom had no idea what to do with it, so we left it to it’s own design, and it made like unkempt undergrowth. In my second grade class, I remember my teacher splitting the class in groups or halves in different ways, sometimes by eye colour, birth month, patronymic name, and, occasionally, length of hair. In that case, all of the girls were on one side, and all of the boys, plus myself, were on the other. My mother complained to the school once I asked her if that made me a boy, or less of a girl. What I couldn't articulate at the time, and haven’t been able to until recently, is that I never saw it as a degrading or empowering thing. It is just how things were and just who I was, and I didn’t think more of it than a cisboy about being a boy or a cisgirl about being a girl.

     There are hours, days, months, where I feel trapped in my own body, out of place distinctly not who I am. I look at government forms and don’t know how to label myself. I see transmen’s transition diaries and I wish that could be me. I look at ancient statues of men both virile ( The Antinous Braschi ) and dumpy ( any visual art of Socrates ) and I know that I would be happy with bodies like theirs. My schedule of ballet classes includes classes with the men just as they do pointework. I think of men, and I include myself. Yet, at the same time, I take a lot of pride in my femininity and the parts of me that are distinctly womanly, whether they be from my physical self or from within. There is power in me that comes from feeling effeminate, and the history of women is something that instills a great sense of identity and belonging in me. A great part of me takes solace in my desire to be masculine and in the ways that I am masculine. Another part of me is quelled by my feelings of femininity. This is all well and good, and many people can relate, but the issue is that these parts are not created equal, not all the time, and the presence of both is dominating in my scholastic, artistic, natural, and spiritual life. 

     For so long, I thought of transgenderism as an ensnaring commitment for me, in which fulfilling my view of myself as a man meant that I would have to sacrifice my femininity, or to stay a woman would mean lying and suppressing a large part of me for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to do either, so I ignored it. Which, as it turns out, is also not a great thing to do. I faced a manic number of years going through reinventions and obliterations of myself as I tried to force myself into a binary I knew would never make me happy. I bullied myself with the words of ignorant people with my own form of “self - help conversion therapy”. I told myself it was a phase. I told myself I was just doing it for attention. I told myself that I was making this all up, and that there are only two genders, and that I was between the phase of committing to being a transgender man or just staying a woman. I told myself to just settle for what I have because I’m beautiful and because it’s easier to just stay put and that it’s safer to stay put, and that, if I’ve already lasted this long ignoring these strange wills, I can live the rest of my life like this too.

     I found myself a few months ago taking a myriad of “Am I Transgender?” and “What Should My Gender Be?” and “Am I Nonbinary?” quizzes, as if cisgender people need to validate their gender so many times. The last time I did something like that, I was asking if I was a lesbian, and here I am, a decade later, still liking women. For some reason, I didn’t (or more accurately wouldn’t) put those pieces together. I would lie on some of the tests, seeing two answers for each question. One answer described, albeit shallowly, how I felt. The other answer was perfectly how I wanted myself to feel. One allowed for dynamic personality and the room for me to feel comfortable, and the other sought to place me in a box. Some tests came back saying I was distinctly male or distinctly female, and these were only a temporary comfort. Some tests came back saying that I exist out of the gender binary. And somewhere along the way, I figured that lying to myself or denying myself was no longer going to get me the answers that I wanted, so I started to research. 

     Instead of telling myself that I was nothing more than an attack helicopter who would never be taken seriously, I started reading articles and hoping that they would reassure me, in a healthy way, that I was simply cisgender and trying to protest societal norms. Considering this post, I’m sure you can assume that the effect they had on me what the exact opposite of that. Instead, they taught me about the history of gender across numerous societies and its presence in nature, as well as what gender means in a practical sense, and how to find what it means in a self - centric sense. As strange as this sounds, the most prominent and most important thing that my research gave me is validation in my confusion. I hardly understand how I identify myself; there is no word to encompass me and my identity entirely, but, in real life, there are no labels like that. We have broad ones, such as being transgender, being a student, being an American, but those experiences are different and beautifully undefined (You may have noticed an influx in my use of this word in my writing, in fact, as it has shifted for me from being something to be afraid of to something take refuge in.) for everybody. I don’t have all the answers about myself, but nobody has the answers for themselves either. To want to conquer those mysteries is to not want to enjoy youth, or enjoy life, or enjoy the intricacies of humanity and the human experience as a whole. 

     Some days are better than others, some days are filled with confidence and pride in my diverse self, and others have me feeling out of place and lost. The hardest step in this journey has been being able to come out to myself. I had a very distinct idea of who I was, and deviating from that and re-examining that meant being unsure and admitting that I am not as strong as I like to present myself as. I revel in the good days, and in the bad days, I remind myself that I should be happy with my confusion and my vulnerability; I am too dynamic and too broad to ever fit in a box. I don’t know how I define being nonbinary yet, but I have a long time to figure it out. And in the meantime, I know where I belong, I know who my friends are, I know where I want to go, and I know who I want to be, and that’s more than enough for me. <3

TL;DR

     I would like it if you referred to me with they / them pronouns and any variation on the name Frankie you want. Gendered terms of endearment like “gal”, “bitch”, or “bro” are just fine. I’m begging you not to treat me any differently akdakjdsa

#x. memoirs of an egg 》 mun. #it probably wasnt necessary to write all this but this is the only recorded entry i have of organised thoughts about my transition #my diary is just incoherent flailing and name lists. lots and lots of name lists

[thedeaditeslayer]

[Exclusive Interview] Writer Scott Duvall talks Comic Horror Mash-up Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep.

There’s never been a better time to see your favorite comic book characters meet on the big screen than right now. However, if you’re a horror fan, now is also a great time to see some of your favorite big screen characters meet on the comic book page. I’m talking about Dynamite Comics’ groovy and gory mashup series, Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep, a horror adventure that brings two of Bruce Campbell’s greatest characters together for a high-stakes battle against the undead.

We got the chance to talk to Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep writer Scott Duvall about horror comics, cult films, and what makes both of franchises so resonant with horror fans. Check out what he had to say below, and once you do, check out the conclusion to Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep, out this Wednesday, June 5th!

Grant DeArmitt for Nightmare on Film Street: How did this comic come about? Whose idea was it to bring Ash and Elvis together and when are they getting their Nobel?

Scott Duvall: I admit, I came up with the idea so to see it become a reality is truly a crazy dream come true! I had approached Dynamite about doing this as a crossover a few years ago shortly after I noticed that two Bruce Campbell characters had crossed paths before in Dynamite’s Army of Darkness/Xena crossover series. That sparked the thought that Ash should meet Elvis from Bubba Ho-Tep and from there the concept was born and I was on a mission. Once IDW got into the Bubba Ho-Tep comics business, courtesy of creator/writer Joe R. Lansdale, it made the dream a little more within reach. I took another stab at it and, luckily, they went for it!

NOFS: What connects the two stories? Has Bubba Ho-Tep been a Deadite all along?

SD: To answer the second question, no, Bubba Ho-Tep, as he was dubbed by Elvis, was a mummy when we met him in the original Lansdale story and movie adaptation, and he died a mummy, so the original story we’re telling here changes nothing of what happened in previous events. But more on Bubba later… After hearing about Elvis supposedly taking down a mummy in Texas, he can’t resist hitting the road to see for himself if there’s any truth to the rumor. So while these two deal in the supernatural, there isn’t anything mystical about their worlds crossing over, they already exist on the same plane of reality.

NOFS: Can you cue us in on the dynamic between Ash and Elvis? What do our heroes think of each other?

SD: I think what connects these two characters and their worlds is the fact that Ash and Elvis encounter some crazy, inhuman, obstacles in their individual journeys, and so they can relate to each other on that level. At first they both question the others’ sanity and so there’s some personality conflicts to iron out, but once they realize they’re both on the same team, it doesn’t take long for them to find common ground, and by issue three they feel like old friends who have always known each other.

NOFS: As for our villain, how did he survive the events of Bubba Ho-Tep?

SD: He didn’t! However, Bubba has risen again, and this time he’s powered by the Evil Force that Ash is real familiar with, making Bubba a half-mummy/half-deadite hybrid, and twice as dangerous, sucking innocent souls left and right.

NOFS: These are two franchises with loyal cult followings. What goes through your mind as you approach writing them?

SD: As a fan myself, I strive to live up to fan expectations and not squander this opportunity we’ve been given to try and tell the best story imaginable of the first meeting of these two beloved franchises. I knew both of these worlds colliding could work, and that when you’re playing with properties that have built-in audiences, you absolutely must take into account the history of the characters and what makes them tick. Particularly when it comes to the way they talk and interact with each other, that was very important to me to get right. Making sure Ash and Elvis sounded like themselves was crucial to getting fans on board because as soon as you lose their voices, you lose the reader, so it had to have that level of authenticity. Listening to them talk on a loop as I viewed the movies back-to-back-to-back during the plotting phase really helped to get their established voices in my head as I dove into the script.

NOFS: As someone who gets to experience these franchises like no one else, what do you think makes a cult classic?

SD: For me, it really comes down to the characters and their enduring personalities. I’ve seen a lot of different fandoms in the time I’ve been involved in entertainment, and the passion these followings have is a pretty powerful thing to witness, especially when you’re near the epicenter of something that’s bigger than yourself. It’s powered by people in large numbers who revolve their lives around something and now conventions and social media are making it easier for these fans to find each other. But again, it comes down to creating characters that people care what happens to them and we never tire of. Ash and Elvis certainly fit that bill.

NOFS: The art in this book is by the fabulous Vincenzo Federici. What makes his art special, and where do you think we see that in this comic?

SD: I got so incredibly lucky with my art team on this book! I really think it’s one of the most distinct looking Army of Darkness crossover comics I’ve ever seen so I’m proud that it stands out, and that’s in part thanks to Vincenzo’s incredible skills. He was really egging me on to keep raising the stakes and try to incorporate some monsters for him to draw, and so I rose to the challenge and the series is so much better for it, which you can really see his influence on the direction we take in issue 3. He not only can draw some scary looking mummies, but also injects a lot of visual humor into the work, as well as dazzle with some of the most amazing fight choreography I’ve ever seen illustrated. Not only did I luck out with Vincenzo, but the colors by Michele Monte are a stand-out too. He brings a lot of intensity to the pages with his striking color palette and the perfect moodiness to each scene. I also am fortunate to be working alongside my friend Taylor Esposito who it’s been said before, is one of the best letterers in comics working today. He brings a lot of personality to the project, catering captions to the characters and giving the reader just a little something extra to add to their enjoyment. We’re all fans so we’re trying to bring our A-game and live up to the source material.

NOFS: The last issue of Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep comes out June 5th. Without spoiling the ending, can you give us a glimpse into the future of Ash & Elvis’s comic book adventures?

SD: The final showdown takes place in Graceland, except Elvis’ private jet just took a nosedive into the dining room and the mansion is now engulfed in flames. I will say for Bubba Ho-Tep fans that a familiar character will pop up during a crucial moment and it’s probably not who you’re thinking!

NOFS: And for the Scott Duvall fans that are born of this book, what other books of yours can Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep readers check out?

SD: The last series I wrote was a sci-fi mini called Narcopolis: Continuum published by Heavy Metal, and I’ll actually be re-teaming with the artist Ralf Singh on another story for Heavy Metal Magazine in the near future which is one of the craziest things I’ve ever written, but Ralf said he wanted to draw a T-Rex. I have a couple other projects in the pipeline, but nothing I can talk about just yet. Stay tuned!

NOFS: Finally, not everyone who wants to get into comics is into superheroes. What horror comics can you recommend, both past and present, to bring horror fans into comics?

SD: Great question! My #1 recommendation for horror comics is Locke & Key. If you haven’t yet checked that out, do yourself a favor and get it. I used to hand my copy of volume 1 to friends and co-workers in order to get them hooked just so I would have someone to talk to about L&K. That series is so well done on every level from the compelling narrative and cast of characters to the beautiful artwork on every page. Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez created a true modern masterpiece!

As we mentioned earlier, the conclusion of Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep arrives in stores everywhere this Wednesday, June 5th. You won’t want to miss the conclusion of this epic horror mashup, so head to your local comic book store ASAP!

#Scott Duval #Army of Darkness #Bubba Hotep #comic #Dynamite Entertainment #Dynamite Comics

[galadrieljones]

11 questions

tagged by @thevikingwoman. thank you!!

1. The most beautiful place you have been 

Ah, a tough one. To me, there is nothing more sublime than the big, wide open empty of the American West. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Utah, and the weird hellscapes of northern Nevada. BUT, on our honeymoon, we went to France: flew into Bergerac and slowly drove north to Paris over the course of several days. The sunflower fields were in full bloom and it was really something else. I also have to say that, while I don’t always love where I live in Orange County, the sunsets in Laguna Beach really are the prettiest sunsets in the whole world.

2. Pick a super power. Why that one? 

Not no sleep, but just less sleep. I’d love it if I could subsist on just like four hours a night. I’d get so much more done that way!! Lol.

3. Do you have a comfort movie or show? What is it? 

Yes, I have several comfort shows. My most frequented are probably Gilmore Girls, Buffy, and Dawson’s Creek. Right now, on maternity leave, I’m also taking a GREAT deal of comfort in Beat Bobby Flay lol. Idk, I just really like him!!

4. A creation you’re really proud of?

All of my fanfic I’m very proud of. I feel it keeps getting better with every work. I’m very proud of having finished The Dead Season, but I feel like, in terms of writing and storytelling skill, A Funeral feels like my most honed creation so far. 

5. Something you are looking forward to in the next year or two?

Well, I just had a baby eight days ago, so I’m looking forward to getting back to normal!!

6. Top 5 video games?

The order here can tend to fluctuate based on where my emotional attachment lies on any given day, but I’ll be as “objective” as possible. Also I have six because the first two I consider to be a tie:

The Last of Us - This is one of my favorite games because it’s so tightly woven, as a story. The characters and their relationships, in combination with the setting and high stakes horrific atmosphere makes it feel both terrifying and desperate in almost EVERY moment. There is ALWAYS something to lose, and Joel’s longterm character development is both very unique and also extremely realistic, nuanced, and heartbreaking.

Red Dead Redemption 2 - This game, for me, succeeds on the strength of its protagonist. The game itself is beautiful, meandering, dynamic, and the story, while sprawling, is multi-faceted and really advanced in its usage of POV, symbolism, and ambiguity. It’s impossible for me to choose between RDR2 and TLoU because they’re such different games. There really is nothing like RDR2, and there is no protagonist like Arthur Morgan, but the narrative of TLoU is just so...perfect. Overall, I think protagonists like Joel and Arthur are sort of paving the way for games that are much more “adult” in scope. These are the first two games I’ve ever really played that feel exclusively BY adults and FOR adults. 

Skyrim - I can’t even really qualify my love for this game at this point in my life. It’s like comfort food. It’s like coming home.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - It’s an imperfect game, but it’s big and the characters are wonderful. I get lost in the banter, the background dynamics, the politics, and the wealth of opportunity for OC creation and fan works.

Horizon: Zero Dawn - Aloy is such a unique female protagonist, in that she is almost a Byronic Hero. Female Byronic heroes are really rare, and I think I love her for her secret romance, masked with a hefty layer of sarcasm, bitterness, and self-preservation. I love Aloy’s journey, because it begins with one quest (find the men who attacked the Proving and killed Rost) and then becomes a much more existential quest (Aloy’s discovery of her own origin story). The game itself is good, but I think if a sequel is made, it’s going to be fucking REALLY GOOD.

Bloodbourne - I’ve never actually played Bloodbourne lol but I’ve watched my husband play it twice. It is by far the weirdest game, aesthetically, I’ve ever encountered. The bizarre menstrual symbolism and hidden zones are entirely gnarly and beautiful. And I love the storytelling style of Hidetaka Miyazaki, how it’s all shown, or implied. There are no quest markers, no obvious objectives. Entire worlds can be missed through happenstance, or failing to fully investigate one small mystery to its painstaking conclusion. 

7. A recent favorite anything (food/entertainment/clothing/??)

As previously stated, I’m very into Beat Bobby Flay lately lol. Dude, Bobby Flay is entirely 100% the man. He is both calmly confident and entirely accomplished as a chef, but also extremely gracious toward his challengers and always willing to concede the loss (though he usually wins lol). That kind of humble confidence is...rare. He reminds me of that thing Solas says in DAI: “No real god need prove himself.”

8. Favorite board game?

I know it’s old school, but I really love Risk. I like playing with my husband, because he’s VERY good, but I learn a lot from him, and though I have only beat him maybe one time ever lol I usually take him by surprise a few times during the game, and that’s very fun lol.

9. Stealing this one: I know that lots of people have “dinosaur” or “ancient Egypt” interests as a child; what was something that you were super interested in as a child? I’d love to learn a new fact about that subject if you’re willing!

When I was a CHILD, I had a definite elves and fairies phase, as well as a metaphysical time travel/scifi phase. My favorite books, which I would read constantly over and over again were Afternoon of the Elves by Janet Taylor Lisle (which has no *actual* elves in it--the elves are like metaphors, honestly explains a lot about my tendency toward fabulism rather than actual fantasy) and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Looking back, I still see these books and how they manifest in my preferences today. They really blur genre boundaries--between fantasy, science, and domestic realism. They’re about kids having regular kid problems and often experiencing catharsis via “fantasy” worlds. 

10. A strange thing you googled recently, if you’re willing to share. 

Well, I’ve googled a lot of strange things lately. When you have a new baby, you’re always googling strange things lol. But I’d say, in the past few months, the strangest thing I’ve had to google was basically male and female underwear from the late 1800s. What the fuck does Arthur wear under his pants?? What the fuck is Mary Beth hiding under that skirt?? The most alarming thing I discovered was that women typically wore crotchless drawers around this time. This way they could pee without having to completely remove their myriad of skirts lol 

11. You only put ten questions, so I’ll steal a simple one from the previous batch, ie: Five favorite books! I’ve been thinking about some of them lately, so I wanna share:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Airships: Stories by Barry Hannah

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

I’ll tag @buttsonthebeach @morgan-arthur @ladylike-foxes @bearly-tolerable @wrenbee @lyrium-lovesong @ma-sulevin @a-shakespearean-in-paris @hidinginthehinterlands and @idrelle-miocovani

Questions:

Five favorite books?

Five favorite video games?

Favorite visual artist(s) (fan artists and/or traditional)?

Favorite video game protagonist (non-OC) and why?

What’s the best meal you’ve ever eaten?

What’s your dream road trip? Or, if you don’t like road trips, what’s your dream vacation?

Do you like old movies? I’m talking OLD movies, like golden era, from the 1930s-1950s. Why or why not? Do you have a favorite?

What’s something unique and interesting about the place where you live and/or grew up?

If you were going to be transported into the setting of any video game, which would it be and why?

Regardless of where you actually live, would you prefer urban, suburban, small town, or rural living?

What is the most emotional you’ve ever gotten over a video game?

#about me #11 questions meme