#and then mario does the same thing a few decades later

[schadenfredde]

#mans really forgot his own son #and then mario does the same thing a few decades later #jjba #jojo's bizarre adventure #jjba memes #baron zeppeli #will a zeppeli #william antonio zeppeli #william zeppeli #zeppeli #jonathan joestar #speedwagon #robert e o speedwagon #robert speedwagon #mario zeppeli

[ya-boiiiii]

The differences between character appearances in Madame Goncharov (1971) and Goncharov (1973).

So, I'm a huge fan of both and love to compare and contrast so behold the second of hopefully many Goncharov analysis posts to come!

The timelines of the book and movie aren't set in stone but based on certain lines in the book such as "Plus de dix ans de loyauté et c’est ce que tu me fais?" I'm going to assume the story takes place in between ten to twenty years and as a result will also be covering how accurately to the book the characters aged.

Goncharov

Played by Robert de Niro, Goncharov is shockingly the least accurate to the books!

Described as "semblable à un loup", Goncharov is consistently mentioned with distinctively sharp wolf-like features, something that - while De Niro doesn't necessarily lack - does not have in abundance.

Another detail that gets left out is that (book) Goncharov is quite tall - over 6', being only rivalled by Ice Pick Joe in the main cast. De Niro on the other hand was 5'9 at the time of filming.

I stand by the casting of De Niro nevertheless, as Goncharov's most touched upon quality - his youthfulness - was the one thing that De Niro had in spades. Roughly 40 at the beginning of the story, Goncharov is described as looking nearly a decade his junior, this trait continues throughout with the only sign of Goncharov's advancing age being a few grey hairs (something included in the film).

Mario Ambrosini

Following the least accurate appearance we have the most (with only one major exception) with Al Pacino as Mario Ambrosini!

Al Pacino has every single feature mentioned in the book, the only difference being that Mario is described as unattractive while Pacino is most certainly not. Pacino is also slightly taller than Mario who is constantly mocked for being "petit" and "à peine la hauteur des épaules".

However, while this is not about the casting, I feel it's important to mention that Mario during the later stages of the movie looks nothing like his book counterpart.

While Goncharov barely ages, Mario is the opposite. Though the movie definitely showcases the depths of just how tired and depressed he is, it would have been impossible to portray an older Mario without the filming taking forever or casting another actor for the second half.

Mario is said to have gained a substantial amount of weight due to overeating thanks to the stress of working as Goncharov's consigliere, as well as having grown out his hair. He's also described as looking in his mid-fifties which Al Pacino was definitely not.

I'm honestly thankful they didn't use prosthetics or cast another actor though, because despite this one nitpick, Mario honestly felt like he was wrenched straight out of the book and I think only Al Pacino could have pulled him off.

Katya Goncharova

Portrayed by Cybil Shepherd, Katya is fairly accurate to the books with a few key differences.

In the books, Katya is not a real blonde and stops dyeing her roots in later chapters as her dark "true colours" begin to shine. In the movie she stays fully blonde throughout and there is no allusion made to Katya dyeing her hair at all.

Katya also has much softer features in the film than the book, having been described as the fox to her husband's wolf. She is mentioned to have a very pointy chin and triangular nose as opposed to Shepherd's more rounded features.

Like Goncharov, Katya is said to have not really aged all that much save for her eyes. I think a little makeup to accentuate her eyebags could have gone a long way, as she looks the same at the end of the movie as she did in the beginning.

Her performance more than makes up for all this though, so 10/10 in my book regardless.

Andrey (Andrei) Daddano

I know some people have mixed feelings on Harvey Keitel as Andrey (spelt Andrei in the books) but I think, in terms of appearance, the casting was pretty accurate.

In the beginning, Andrei is said to look more like Katya's brother than Valery - their similarities being a constant point of comparison (Goncharov has a type). He's described as having a "visage de renard" but I think Harvey Keitel fits this description very well.

He's mentioned to have dirty copper hair (something Keitel lacks), and is the most "pâle" of the ensemble in terms of skin. He is also supposed to have a punchable face according to Goncharov himself and I do not want to punch Keitel so there is that as well.

In terms of aging, I think the eye patch, facial hair and streaks of grey caused Keitel to age accurately to the books, however he is mentioned in certain passages to have lost quite a bit of weight (Cassius parallels what up), but I don't think it would have been ethical to force Keitel to do the same.

Joe Morelli and Sofia Ambrosini

We're doing a two for one here for Sofia (played by Sophia Loren) and Joe (played by the late, great John Cazale).

The differences for these two are pretty inconsequential, Sofia is said to have a longer face and rounder eyes (resembling Mario) whereas Joe is supposed to be 6'4 and "jaunâtre". However this is bordering nitpicky and I can't think of anyone more suited to playing these two.

An interesting detail I want to point out is that it seems Loren was cast based on her resemblance to an older Sofia as opposed to everyone else (sans Ice Pick Joe, my man died before everything went to shit).

But yeah, these two were very good choices and I do not have much else to say. Thank you for bearing with me and I will be back with another essay soon.

#gonchposting #madame goncharov (1971) #goncharov (1973) #goncharov #unreality #book vs movie #you can tell which character's my favourite lol #i could make an entirely separate post about mario's voice #poor joe and sofia are arguably the most interesting characters and they have to share a spot while i think about the sad spaghetti man #analysis #mario ambrosini #katya goncharova #andrey daddano #andrei daddano #ice pick joe #joe morelli #sofia ambrosini

[stevensavage]

Dungeons and Marios: Honor Among Brothers

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve's Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I consider the films Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and the Super Mario Brothers movie to be successes as good films. I found them both enjoyable, but also find that both of them work because the people behind them made similar choices.  There’s a lot of lessons there, and you know me, I’m definitely going to write it down. 

Let me pause to note I do not consider them to be of equal quality.  The Dungeons and Dragons movie is fun, emotionally resonant, and both grand yet very human.  The Super Mario Brothers film is a fun romp with some clever choices, but not as deep.  But the lessons - even where they both don’t succeed - are illustrative.

So how did two different films do same things, let’s take a look.  There are of course spoilers here, so here there be dragons (or Koopas).

Be Fun and Entertaining

Both movies are actually fun.  There’s action, there’s jokes, there’s actors and actresses giving it their all.  I had a good time at both. Super Mario Brothers was so snappy and tight I didn’t even take a break.

Fun can be forgotten, especially when you already have other things on your mind like adaption.  But you have to give people a reason to pay attention beyond “hey I adapted this.”  Be it Chris Pine being a charisma bomb or a brain-twisting Mario scene where the infamous Rainbow Road is realized, give people a reason to enjoy it.

You can also tell people enjoyed making them, both have a joy to them.  Which probably says a lot about why they work as well.

Don’t Run Away From What You Are

The Dungeons and Dragons film is just like the games - not the books.  A group of confused dumbasses get into trouble and save the day.  It feels like a gaming session, right down to bad luck and unwise choices.

The Super Mario Brothers movie is colorful, bright, and strange. There are moments it has homages to the games and gameplay, but outside of those it runs on a kind of game logic.  It feels like a game and doesn’t apologize at all.

This is what people came for.  I do not come wanting an explanation of Mordenkainen’s magic or how to use a Fire Flower.  I want to see hypercompetent stupidity and someone yelling “wahoo” he stomps on evil turtles.  And I got it.

Use It But Don’t Overexplain

Dungeons and Dragons brings decades of history, rules, rules changes, rules arguments, novels, adaptions, and more.  What do you do with that?  Well, it’s raw material but you tell a story first - ten minutes of rules are boring but the sorcerer Simon struggling to “attune” to a magical item is interesting because it’s about a person.

Meanwhile the Mario film inherits a disjointed series of games and events without an exact timeline or even consistency.  The film takes a pile of stuff and forges it into a setting but also doesn’t explain it much.  Power ups just exist - what matters is how you use them.  An industro-solarpunk kingdom of apes just exist - what matters is if you can make them allies.  Tell a story - besides people already bought into the premise of plumbers teleported to this cartoony realm anyway.

The stuff you adapt is fuel for an actual story.

Get A Cast That Works

Want a good adaption?  Get a cast that will embrace the roles and bring things to life so people feel and enjoy the film.  Even the best script is nothing without the right cast.

Dungeons and Dragons cast is stellar.  It’s like a movie filled with leads that just happens to center on Chris Pine’s bard, Edgin.  From the humor to the pathos, the cast brings you into the film.  A few characters might have been used better or given more depth, but everyone used what they got and then some.

Super Mario mostly does the same thing.  Jack Black owns his role as Bowser and brings pathos to the character (more later).  Anya Taylor-Joys Princess Peach is fantastic, badass, and charming enough she’s sort of the main character at times.  Charlie Day is terribly underused as Luigi, but clearly brought is A game.  I could compliment others, but you get the idea.  The film is inherently ridiculous but the cast is game, as it were.

Now Chris Pratt is the elephant in the room.  Regarding his problematic statements, I looked into them for this article, and it appears he’s not bigoted, but is not always thoughtful or good at reading a situation.  Regarding his acting, he can “phone it in” but can really shine when he sinks his teeth into a role.

That being said, his Mairo performance was extremely generic.  It was enough to move things along and make Mario human, but he didn’t add anything to the role.  Whether it’s his fault or the scriptwriters, I’m not sure.  I also noticed the animators did some amazing expression work with Bowser and Peach and wondered if they were more restrained with Mario.

Either way, lesson learned - get a cast that’s good and let them go.

Give Us Real Emotional Arcs

The Dungeons and Dragons movie brought tears to my eyes, once during That Scene at the end (if you saw it, you know), and once afterwards when I realized how I related to a character’s speech.  The movie has multiple emotional arcs that bring it to life, give characters reasons to do things, and help you connect.

This is not consistent among the cast or characters, and I blame the script.  It’s a perfectly fine script, but a few more scenes could have done wonders.  But what is there is good.

Believe it or not Super Mario Brothers does this too, multiple times.  In fact, there’s a scene where Mario and his original nemesis Donkey Kong find out they’re a lot alike.  When a cartoon plumber and a big monkey share parallel emotions, you’ve done something right.

However Super Mario Brothers also doesn’t dive into the emotional arcs as well as Dungeons and Dragons and is poorer for it.  There’s some unused potential, from Mario feeling defensive about Luigi to Princess Peach’s isolation as a lone human in her world.  There’s unexplored character motivations, such as Toad’s heroic drive that differentiates him from his fellows.  I feel there’s 5-10 minutes of cut footage that made it a better movie.

But the lessons stay the same.  In fact  . . .

Give Us Relatable Villains

Hugh Grant, playing con-man Forge  charms his way through the Dungeons and Dragons movie in a way only he could.  Daisy Head’s creepy sorceress Sofina is something out of a horror film, and you believe she’d like nothing more to murder the idiots surrounding her.  Both get scenes that aren’t just villainy but humanity - Forge finds a joy in adoptive fatherhood, and Sofina snaps over how annoying Forge is in a relatable way.

This is great, they’re enjoyable.  They get human moments - but only the acting covers the fact they’re otherwise paper-thin characters.  Both could have shown more depth with just a few tweaks or an extra scene or two.  The actors clearly work with what they have, but there could have been more.

Meanwhile let me commit blasphemy - Jack Black’s Bowser in Super Mario not only gets to be relatable, his character is better handled than the villains in Dungeons and Dragons.

Yes I went there.

Black’s Bowser is a terrifying warlord and a hopeless romantic.  Madly in love with Princess Peach, he hopes to impress her and marry her instead of conquering her kingdom (sort of).  Throw in Black’s performance with excellent animation, and Bowser becomes sympathetic, a kind of ridiculously Shakespearean character of extremes.  If anything, I felt there was more to explore.

Both films add villains with some understandable traits.  Super Mario does it better.  Forge and Sofina aren’t interesting enough on their own, but Black’s Bowser feels like he could carry an entire film.

Do A Film Not A Preview

As I’ve said before, I will compliment the Marvel movies on sheer competency. However, I’m also extremely tired that the interlinked nature of stories seems to “wash out” the films.  There’s that need to keep the mega-franchise going, and there’s a certain “safety” in choices that wears thin.  Make something that stands on its own – like these films!

Dungeons and Dragons and Super Mario Brothers are delightfully standalone.  They do their job, they deliver.  Sure you may care due to the games - in fact it’s the only reason to care about Super Mario Brothers.  But both stand on their own quite well and in a satisfying manner.

There’s just that thrill of being able to “close the book” and move on with each.  Both deserve sequels of some kind, but its nice to see them deliver and be done.  It helps the people making them focus, and it means each film is reliably complete.

In Conclusion

So there you have it.  Both of these adaptions based on games, both wildly different, really succeed due to the same choices.  Embrace what you do, don’t overexplain, get the right cast and real emotional arcs we feel.  That’s it.

It feels unnecessary to explain this, but maybe the fact I feel this says volumes about the poor media I’ve seen - and how I enjoyed these two pieces.  Let’s learn from them, and maybe apply these lessons to things beyond giant big budget movies.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com

#super mario brothers #dungeons and dragons #super mario brothers movie #dungeons and dragons movie #analysis #adaption #culture #media #jack black #chris pine

[takikats]

do you want to play more sonic games but don't know where to start? just starting off? no? i envy you.

anyway. here's a chart i made at 3 am:

this is to be read from the top, almost like a choose-your-own-adventure sorta thing. i had no idea how to organize this beast. it looks like a patch bay, but i'm also not getting paid for this. i have no clue if this would be of help to anyone, but the topic came up recently with a friend, so

note that this does not reflect on the quality of the games themselves. mostly

a few notes:

- it's a bit hard to recommend a starting 3D sonic game.

generations is the safest bet imo, but it potentially lacks a lot of the charm that would get someone hooked on the series. it's a nitpick, but calling it a 3D game's a Little bit of a stretch. that said, it goes on sale rather frequently on steam, and is one of the most polished sonic games out there, even a decade later (this reflects more on the quality of the past decade, mind you)

adventure 1 would be my pick, but camera issues and general jank make it a bit of a hard sell. and, while i think complaints around big and the rest of the side campaigns are a skill issue, it's a worthy consideration for newcomers.

adventure 2 has the same issues for the most part, plus adventure 1 at least has the benefit of allowing you to play through sonic's campaign all at once. if you're a newcomer to the series, i can understand taking issue with a game that is sluggish to let you actually play as sonic/shadow

- if the newest game in the series (frontiers at the time of writing) appeals to you, go right ahead. the boost gameplay has been slowed down, and open-world gameplay may be a selling point for some. that said, the game generally still lacks polish all-around, so be aware of that before buying. while the game holds a lot of unique spectacle, it's rather lengthy and one-note, in terms of what gameplay it throws at you. as to say, if running around in a field for 20 hours appeals to you, go get 'em, tiger

- sonic mania's very very polished as a platformer, of course. i think it's one of, if not the best places to start for newcomers. that said, while s3&k is a great game, it's difficulty and mildly jarring difficulty curve may be startling for newcomers. sonic mania is just a lot more forgiving than a lot of the other 2D platformers here, and in general

- in case you don't know why sonic unleashed is a tough sell, you're gonna need a supercomputer to run it smoothly. or an xbox whatever the fuck it's called idk. and the actual reason being that 20 minute werehog stages are a tough pill to swallow. not that it's a bad game, just know what you're getting into, especially if you're going in for more boost stages

- sonic heroes is an unfinished, crunched-to-hell-and-back game. certain parts of it suck ass as a result. a lot of it does. that said, there's something really charming in there if you're willing to fight the game's bottomless pits and slapdash difficulty to get there.

shadow '05 unironically shares a lot of the same framework with heroes, and i think it plays a bit more smoothly. it's a different beast, but maybe give it a shot if you really liked the story shit going on in sa2

- sonic 1 and cd are great games, imo, but i feel they're best enjoyed with a fresh mindset, if you're coming from sonic 2. sonic 2 helped to solidify a lot of sonic design conventions, and that means that the games made before* that can feel a bit strange. just be willing to explore a bit more than usual, and take your time. seriously

- i didn't know where to put sonic lost world on this list. it's a weirdo mario game in a trench coat. the trench coat doesn't even fit

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sth #sonic series #sonic frontiers #sonic mania #sonic cd #cat yells at cloud #oc

[gamersonthego]

Matt Giguere's Top 25 GBA Games

Ed. note: Thanks again to "Giggysan" for joining on GOTG's GBA Top 25 episode. The following list are his personal top games for the system.

1. Metroid Fusion 

It’s weird to think 20 years ago the Metroidvania genre was barely a blip on the gaming landscape, containing just a handful of titles. Metroid Fusion (along with Zero Mission and the Castlevania GBA series) helped solidify the genre while also extolling the virtues of making them portable handheld experiences. Today, it still ranks as one of the best, both in part to the game’s pacing and the risks taken to its own framework. 

2. Fire Emblem

Released decades after the series made its debut in Japan, the Fire Emblem series is another shining example of breathing new life into the turn-based strategy genre. While bringing strategy games to a handheld can be a hit or miss experience, the nature of enacting a plan and then waiting on your next turn makes it easy to either sit down and grind out for a couple of sessions, or take a pause and think about how to deal with the situation. It may have taken 7 games in the series to get here, but it was worth the wait. 

3. Advance Wars

Another Famicom release that never saw localization until well after it was relevant. No surprise here that the same turn-based formula as Fire Emblem plays extremely well as a portable game. Capturing buildings and recruiting an army makes this more in line with a turned-based Command and Conquer than the static builds of Fire Emblem. The setting of Advance Wars may be more modern focused, but the graphical palate is bright and colorful, adding a bit more whimsy to a genre that is usually more dower or an outright parody of warfare. 

4. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!

A great example of how to make extremely quick pick-up-and-play games for a handheld device. WarioWare’s only fault of this is making the mirco games too much fun to play that it almost defeats the purpose of quick moments of gameplay for a handheld system. The overall aesthetic is more distinct than what was presented on the GameCube a few years later, playing more into scenarios of the cast of characters than being set in an office elevator. 

5. Gunstar Super Heroes

One of the later releases in the GBA library, Gunstar feels like it just came and went in the conversation. With only two games in the series, it can be hard to leave a lasting impact. GSH manages to bring the fury of the original Sega Genesis action shooter while adding some breadth to the formula such as being able to choose three different weapons and a variety of level scenarios. It is very much a Treasure type game that does some small fascinating things here and there to keep the player on their toes.

6. Castlevainia: Aria of Sorrow 7. Golden Sun 8. Wario Land 4 9. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 10. Metroid Zero Mission 11. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance   12. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap 13. Final Fantasy V 14. Sword of Mana 15. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon 16. Mega Man Zero 17. Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls 18. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga 19. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 20. DK: King of Swing 21. Mario Kart: Super Circuit 22. Lunar Legend 23. Super Mario Advance 24. Iridion 3D 25. F-Zero

#matt giguere #gba #game boy advance #nintendo

[rootsrockweirdo]

The September issue of Honky Tonk Times is available now at thehonkytonktimes.com. This month I interviewed Mario Carboni and Norm Hamlet, who served as Merle Haggard's bandleader and steel guitar player for over 49 years. These interviews are a dream come true!

Carboni, Hamlet carry on Bakersfield tradition of music and kindness

Mario Carboni might be the nicest guy you’ve never met. From the start of our half-hour-long interview, Carboni exhibits the personality traits not of a traveling musician but of a man who genuinely concerns himself with the happiness of those around him. The 35-year-old piano and trumpet player extraordinaire is driving across Alaska in a van purchased specifically for runs in The Last Frontier. A mix-up has caused him and his lone bandmate to miss their hour-long set at the state’s largest festival. Instead of dogging the head of the event, Carboni simply says: “They’re busy. They have so many acts in there it’s understandable.” It’s not the reaction I expected, but as our conversation continues, it becomes clear that perhaps his heroes have not only influenced his music but his attitude toward life as well. A native of Oregon, Carboni’s lifelong affair with music began at 9 months old when he started playing the piano (yes, you read that correctly). By the age of 10, he added the trumpet to his repertoire. “I started out playing ragtime and improvising,” he says. “I ended up playing the trumpet in various school bands, then figured out how to play the two of them together when I was about 20. I ended up going from there, starting to play shows – I did a year of college, and it was not at all what I wanted to do – so I went over to Bakersfield and started meeting folks I considered to be my heroes and met Red Simpson in 2015.” One of the originators of “truck driving country,” Simpson rose to popularity as both a recording artist and songwriter in the mid-1960s, scoring hits such as “Roll, Truck, Roll” and “Hello, I’m A Truck.” The Bakersfield native remained a permanent fixture in the area's music scene, coming to the aid of many aspiring musicians until his death in January 2016. “Red was always helping younger folks and kids,” Carboni says. “He’d record a record with somebody in their little home studio, mention them in a radio interview or tour with them. He toured with me; he didn’t have to do that. The two of us recorded two records together; they were the last two records he ever recorded.” Following Simpson’s death, Carboni received an invitation to play at Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace, where a chance meeting with Norm Hamlet would change the trajectory of his career, forming an unlikely duo billed as “The Rebel and The Stranger.” As a member of Merle Haggard’s Strangers, Hamlet served as bandleader and steel guitar player for nearly 50 years, playing on more than 30 No. 1 hits and performing in some of the most recognizable concert venues in the U.S. Upon Haggard’s death in April 2016 and despite his age at the time, Hamlet too found himself wondering what would come next. “We were both hired to play in a band at Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace, and we started talking that night,” Carboni recalls. “I asked him if I could have his number and eventually called him up and told him I’d like to shoot a video of the two of us playing three songs; I’d pick my three favorite songs that he’d recorded on. We filmed this series of videos and put them out. I think there was one of ‘No Reason To Quit,’ another of ‘The Roots of My Raising,’ and it was really special to me because he’d played on the original hit with Merle in the ‘70s. I told him I could never afford to pay him what it was worth, and he was very nice to do that for me. “We put them out on social media and turned around a week later, and they’d hit 600,000 views each or something like that. I called him up and said, ‘Hey, this is significant. We should start a project.’ We started talking a little more about it, touring a little bit more and more dates started coming our way. It seems like the more stuff that we do, the more stuff people want to hire us for, and it just snowballed from there to the point where we’re touring the country.” For 86-year-old Hamlet, whose career began nearly seven decades ago and whose resume also includes working with Rose Maddox, The Farmer Boys, and once as part of a band opening for Hank Williams, the decision to return to the road

seemed like the natural course. “Mario had such a charisma about him,” Hamlet said. “When he played music, everybody loved his singing and playing, and I thought the same thing. It had been a long time since I’d seen a piano player that plays as good as he does, so I thought, ‘Well, I might still try to go out there and play a few things.’ This turned into a good job. At my age, I didn’t know how long I’d be able to go out and do it. As long as I can do it health-wise, we’ll keep going out there.” In addition to their busy tour schedule, the two recently completed their debut album, "Hello Heartache," a collection of 10 songs recorded aboard Carboni's tour bus, affectionately dubbed "Ol' Red," on the streets of Bakersfield. Of the 10 songs, eight were written by Carboni and Hamlet. “Most of the songs are upbeat in the Bakersfield sound, traditional style, with a slight twist of the piano being the rhythm and bass instrument instead of a traditional instrumentation,” Carboni explains. “. . . The album also features dobro played by Norm on one track called ‘Miss the Mississippi and You.’ We brought the instrument out of the museum in Nashville to record the album. The last time it was on a recording session was in 1969 on Merle Haggard’s ‘Same Train Different Time’ album.” For now, the album is only available at the pair's live performances, which Carboni says features a mix of songs made famous by some of Bakersfield's heavy hitters, including Haggard, Buck Owens, and Simpson. "They call it a second career when somebody does what Norm's doing, I guess," Carboni says. "He helps me out by playing with me; we help each other out. I get to be his rhythm section, and he lends his incredible reputation to what we're doing, and that's a really special thing, that's important." The pair has several dates scheduled for September. To view their complete schedule, visit www.honkytonkrebel.com. As for the aforementioned festival performance, Carboni and Hamlet were given a time slot for the following day, proving once and for all that nice guys don't always finish last. At least not the ones from Bakersfield.

#Mario Carboni #Norm Hamlet #Country Music #Bakersfield #Honky Tonk Times

[theshootingraistar]

“It’s made for kids.”

I see this argument all the time. “It’s for kids, what should it matter if it’s bad? The kids aren’t going to know better.” And I hate it. This argument is wrong on SO many levels it’s absurd.

Let me give you a few good reasons why “It’s for kids” isn’t an excuse for something being of low quality:

1: Kids are a lot smarter than you think.

Sure, a little baby toddler probably isn’t going to understand the nuance of something like a Stephen King novel, and I wouldn’t expect them to, but your 8 year old probably knows a lot more about the world than you’d think they do. They don’t have to be told why a joke is funny. They don’t have to be constantly babied, and they don’t need a thousand participation trophies for understanding the word “apple”. If the piece of media in question treats a joke that everyone should be able to get as a joke that NO ONE should be able to get, or constantly holds your hand guiding you through every small detail that should be implicit, even a child can understand that this is too much. Sure, children aren’t Einstein, but they sure as hell ain’t stupid.

2: Kids have gotten better things in the past.

Children’s media doesn’t have to be low effort, low quality, borderline shovelware. They’ve gotten much better media in the past. Some older kids games actually treat a child with respect. While it may hold thier hand in some places, it’s media that’s intelligent enough to understand that the child does at least have a rudimentary idea of what’s going on. Older kids shows had a bit of nuance to them, throwing in jokes that are still funny, even decades later. Even pieces of media like Sonic and SpongeBob used to respect the child’s intelligence. It’s not the children getting dumber, it’s the media thinking they are.

3: Children will remember the better things.

Look back to your past. No, really: Reflect on your childhood, and the things YOU liked as a child. Now revisit them today. I’m almost positive the standout examples of things you remember REALLY liking as a kid had some level of quality to them that child you really gravitated to. Old Spongebob had good jokes and great writing. Sonic Adventure 2 was legitimately a good game. Super Mario 64 is legitimately one of the best 3D platformers ever made. Animaniacs had a level of maturity to its silliness, throwing in as many dirty jokes as the writers thought they could get away with. I’m certain that the things you loved as a child probably still hold up today, and that’s if you take the nostalgia goggles off, too.

And then there’s Avatar.

4: Avatar: The Last Airbender exists, and basically proves my point.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is the greatest children’s show of all time. Full stop. The show was mature, and edgy. It had great worldbuilding, and dealt with some pretty serious stuff. The characters were memorable, relatable, and there’s even representation for the disabled! This show is literally so good that people still talk about it to this day.

And it was made for 7 year olds.

One of the greatest shows ever made, with some of the most impressive nuance, storytelling, and worldbuilding that has ever been seen in ANY TV show, was made with children in mind from the start. Saying “it’s made for kids” is not an excuse for terrible quality.

But also,

5: There is not a single excuse for low quality products. Ever.

It doesn’t matter if it was made for kids or adults, by a studio or just by a few people, There is not a single excuse for a piece of media being low quality, ever. If we can ask for higher quality products for ourselves, why can’t we do the same for our children?

Who the fuck cares if it was made with children in mind? If something sucks, it fucking sucks.

#rystar's rants #seriously this argument makes me so mad #surely you'd think the kids would deserve better right?

[slade-neko]

Saw this video game tag thing pop up on my dash a few days ago. Wanted to do it.

1. First game you played obsessively? Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I believe I was 5yo. Still waiting on that FF7 Remake treatment.

2. A game that has influenced you creatively? Writing, drawing, etc. Well if I play a game and like it, then I'll create sims of it. Does that count?

3. Who did you play with as a kid? My brother from the day I was born.

4. Who do you play with now? My brother FROM THE DAY I WAS BORN.

5. Ever use cheat codes? I wasn't lying when I made this post. {link}

6. Ever buy strategy guides? Yes! Mainly to look at the artwork though. (Don't need no guide!)

7. Any games you have multiple copies of? Lots of games, most being Left 4 Dead with 6 copies (3 Xbox 360, 1 PC case, 2 PC digitally.) What can I say, its a GOOD GAME!

8. Rarest/Most expensive game in your collection? Gold cartridge Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (maybe that's rare?)

9. Most regrettable purchase? I don't regret my purchases, but I have received games I have never played like Cubix (PS2) no clue where that game came from, but I have it somehow. Madagascar (Xbox 360) came with my Xbox 360, never opened it from its case. And Monsters Inc. Scream Arena (Gamecube) or something... it was a gift.

10. Ever go to a midnight game release or stand in line for hours? No, because then I'd have to interact with people.

11. Have you ever made new friends from playing video games? I'm only friends with people BECAUSE of video games, so yes.

12. Ever get picked on for liking games? No, that'd be ridiculous.

13. A game you’ve never played that everyone else has? Probably a lot, I'd say Call of Duty, but I technically played CoD 1, 2, and 4. The campaign mode was alright, but I don't really care for CoD games at ALL.

14. Favorite game music? Koji Kondo and Grant Kirkhope are two BIG ones.

15. If it was a requirement to get a game related tattoo, what would you pick? Triforce is the most basic option, but I'd rather not get a tattoo.

16. Favorite game to play with your friends IRL? Super Smash Bros. Brawl with hacks, but that was over a decade ago.

17. Ever lose a friend over a game? No, that'd be ridiculous.

18. Would you date someone that hates gaming? No, that'd be RIDICULOUS.

19. Favorite handheld console? PSP. 3DS is great, but PSP Monster Hunter has ALL of my portable gaming memories. Like playing in school after End of Grade tests with my friend.

20. Game that you know like the back of your hand? Sims 4 I like to think I know everything about Left 4 Dead. Quite a bit about Monster Hunter, more so of a series though than a specific game.

21. Game that you didn’t like or understand as a kid but love now? I'd say Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. I loved it as a kid, but had a lot of complex pen & paper RPG mechanics that I never understood. I understand a lot more of it now, but its still complex as all heck. I just know you hit things, they die.

22. Do you wear game related clothing/accessories? That's the only thing I wear.

23. The game that you’ve logged the most hours into? Not sure so I'll list a few. Sims 4, Smash Bros. Brawl, Monster Hunter (its a series though), or Left 4 Dead

24. First Pokemon game? Leaf Green

25. Were you ever an arcade game player? No, don't like paying to play.

26. Ever form any gaming rivalries? No.

27. Game that makes you rage? I don't get mad at games, but I had a custom modded Hard Eight mutation in Left 4 Dead that is absolute bullsh*t!

28. Ever play in a tournament? No, because then I'd have to interact with people.

29. What is your gaming set up? A giant wall of video game consoles spanning from NES to Switch, 4 TVs, but I sit at a desk with a PC.

30. How many consoles do you own? "I own every console that's ever existed." - I Don't Play Games When I Play Games (My STRENTH) original song by Smooth McGroove BUT no seriously I own 32 consoles including handhelds.

31. Does the 3DS and/or Virtual Boy hurt your eyes or give you headaches? Yes. 3DS gave me headaches though I only really played with the 3D feature in Ocarina of Time 3D. I think my eyes broke because I couldn't get my 3D to work very well after.

32. Did you ever play a game based on your favorite show/cartoon/movie/comic? Sure I play games based on a lot of things. Literally any anime game. If I had to pick Dragon Ball Xenoverse is kinda like a dream Dragon Ball game. Oh, Attack on Titan 2 is pretty neat too!

33. Did you ever have any bootleg games or plug-n-play games? Some SEGA plug-n-play thing once. Played it like once and now its lost to time (or my closet.)

34. Do either of your parents play video games? Yes. Mom and Dad played NES Super Mario Bros. My Dad went HARD at that game until he saved the Princess. Then he quit forever.

35. Ever work in a game store? Or do you have a favorite game shop? "Hi. Welcome to Gamestop!"I never want to hear that again, but it was my main store until I went full digital/ online orders.

36. Have you ever shed actual blood, sweat or tears over a game? No, I don't tend to get upset or emotional, but Bill dying in Left 4 Dead made me pretty pissed.

37. Have you played E.T. for the Atari 2600? Do you think that’s the worst game ever, or do you have another nomination? Never played it. I don't really play "bad" games, but maybe Sims 4.

38. A game you’re ashamed to admit that you like? The Sims 4

39. A sequel that you would die for them to make? Dragon's Dogma 2 WHICH I think is actually in development, so I'd have to say Fallout New Vegas 2. C'mon Bethesda you cowards, hand the keys back over to Obsidian so they can make another good Fallout game!

40. What to you think of virtual reality headsets or motion controls? Two part question, two answers. VR Headset to immerse in world, yes. Motion Controls, no.

41. A genre that you just can’t get into? MOBAs and MMOs. I don't like paying to keep playing.

42. Maybe it wasn’t your first game, but what was the game that started you on your path to nerdiness? Nintendo 64 opened me up to what video games could be as a kid. Sad to say my parents' NES didn't really do that for me. And years later Fallout 3 was a big game changer for me too.

43. Ever play games when you really should have been concentrating on something else? Every day of my LIFE.

44. Arcade machine that has consumed the most of your quarters? None. I'd rather emulate.

45. How are you at Mario Kart? Pretty dang good. 3-STARS MARIO KART WII, BABY!

46. Do you like relaxing games like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon? Yes, both of those. I preferred when Animal Crossing had more character to it. New Horizons looks so pretty, but feels so bland compared to classic AC.

47. Do you like competitive games? No. Not really. Usually amongst friends or if I can get competitive against AI Bots. I love my machine bot friends cause they don't cry like 10 year olds when they lose.

48. How long does it take your to customize your player character? Too long. I've seriously restarted games because I wasn't happy with my character's appearance.

49. In games where you can pick your class, do you always tend to go for the same type of character? Yes, I am always the magic man, my brother is always brute warrior, and my friend is the ranger.

50. If you were a game designer, what masterpiece would you create? I don't really know. Honestly, I'd rather mod already good games to make them better than create something completely new.

51. Have you ever played a game for so long that you forgot to eat or sleep? No, that'd be ridiculous. But I've had a friend fall asleep playing games at my house 3 different times and currently dozes off during our Minecraft sessions. So, maybe that's not a completely ridiculous thing after all.

52. A game that you begged your parents for as a kid? Kirby 64 apparently. My brother tells me we had to count out pennies to buy it. I must've been too young with no recollection, but I believe it.

53. What’s your opinion on DLC these days? It's good if its not in the game's files from the beginning and is actually developed AFTER launch... and pre-order bonuses should be standard DLC a month or two later. Some games have content lost to time because of that pre-order bullsh*t.

54. Do you give in to Steam sales? Of course. If you want a game and its on sale then why not? I typically wait just for Steam sales to get games.

55. Did you ever make someone you hated in the Sims and did mean stuff to them? No? I typically make people and characters I like in Sims. I've made villains like Dio, but he's an anime villain and I don't really HATE him despite the horrible things he's done.

56. Did you ever play Roller Coaster Tycoon and kill off your guests? No. Never played that game.

57. Did you ever play a game to 100% or get all of the achievements? I try to for all the games I really like.

58. If you can only play 3 games for the rest of your life, which ones do you pick? The Sims 4, Skyrim, & Fallout: New Vegas. Mods make them live forever. Left 4 Dead and Monster Hunter are good choices too.

59. Do you play any cell phone games? Those aren't games.

60. Do you know the Konami Code? No? But I'll take a guess. Is it make an IP and forget it exists?

61. Do you trade in your games or keep them forever? Keep forever... even the bad ones.

62. Ever buy a console specifically to play one game? PS4 Pro for Monster Hunter World. It was basically for early access since the PC version was being developed and releasing after PS4, but I don't like waiting.

63. Ever go to a gaming convention or tournament? Sort of. Been to anime cons and walked into the gaming tournament rooms only to walk out less than 10 minutes later.

64. Ever make a TV or monitor purchase based on what would be best for gaming? No, but I'm going to be doing that soon, hopefully.

65. Ever have a Game Genie, Game Shark or Action Replay? Did it ever mess up your game’s save file? GameShark for N64, PS2, Gameboy, and Action Replay for Gamecube, DS, 3DS. And no not really, I would cheat responsibly... but there was this one time at school my friend and I borrowed another friend's Gameboy game, loaded it up with my Gameshark, tried playing, it crashed, loaded it back up, save file corrupted... we just stared at each other jaws dropped, "Here's your game back, dude. Make sure you don't play it til you get back home!"

66. Did you ever have have an old Nokia with Snake on it? No, but I remember seeing them on billboards in the game DRIV3R on PS2.

67. Do you have a happy gaming-related childhood memory you want to share? Every game I play is filled with happy memories (mostly.)

68. Ever save up a ton of tickets in an arcade to get something cool? These tiger plushes. My brother got white and I got orange. They were the coolest. Got a butt load of tickets from some jackpot spinning light game thing as I was good at the timing with repeated jackpot hits.

69. In your opinion, best game ever made? I've played quite a few masterpiece games, but to pick one, I'd say Fallout: New Vegas

70. Very first game you ever beat? Super Mario 64. I was a mere child on a Sunday morning and ate celebratory pancakes made by my Dad.

Wow, that was long... I get the feeling this was supposed to be a "send me ask with numbers" thing, but answering all at once is more fun.

#personal #video games

[aion-rsa]

15 Best SNES Platformers Ever

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Platformers have long been an entry point for new gamers. Video games may have greatly expanded in scope over the years and now offer so many different genres and experiences that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of them, but that’s actually a big part of the reason why it’s still so much fun to look back at these timeless games where the main objective was often to simply jump from one place to the next.

There is no console that celebrated the brilliance of the platformer better than the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The SNES may be best known for expanding the adventure and RPG genres, as well as raising a generation’s expectations for video game graphics, but few consoles have come close to rivaling the Super Nintendo’s library of classic platforming titles.

It’s hard to narrow this list down to just 15 games, but from action-based platformers to pure platforming classics, these are the best examples of this timeless genre that the SNES gifted the gaming world. 

15. Jelly Boy 

Putting you in control of a jelly baby (a candy that is popular in the U.K. and surrounding areas), Jelly Boy was only released in Europe when it debuted in 1994. The game has a colorful aesthetic and some unique platforming elements built around the main character’s ability to transform into a myriad of vehicles, tools, and other objects. Those metamorphoses will be familiar to anyone who has played a Wario Land title or Kirby’s Epic Yarn. 

Admittedly, Jelly Boy‘s mechanics can be a little clunky and the controls are deficient compared to some of the later games on this list. Still, you will be hard-pressed to find a more original platformer on the console that isn’t made by Nintendo themselves. You can even play it now via the Nintendo Switch Online service.

14. Demon’s Crest

Released by Capcom in 1994 as the third game featuring the character Firebrand (who debuted in the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series), Demon’s Crest is a forgotten gem in the SNES catalog. It adds some variety to the traditional action-platformer by giving the playable protagonist the ability to fly and shoot fireballs as well as access other upgradeable attacks and maneuvers as their quest rolls along. That feature adds a little Zelda-like adventuring to the mix, and you’ll certainly need those late-game power-ups because this platformer means business.

There are many difficult platformers on this list, but few boast the plethora of boss battles seen in this one. It’s actually similar to Mega Man in terms of its fighting style and jumping requirements, so if you are looking for an alternative to the Blue Bomber that keeps the basics of the genre intact, you’ll have a hard time doing better than Demon’s Crest.  

13. Joe & Mac

Joe & Mac is honestly a fairly basic platformer for its era. What gets it onto this list of the best games in that genre, though, is the creativity and execution of its setting.

The game sees you control two different cavemen who rely on basic prehistoric items such as fire, bats, bones, etc. The bosses are pretty cool (dinosaurs are fun for all ages) and the controls hold up well enough that you won’t ever feel like you have to force the avatar into doing something that the interface simply won’t allow for. The game spawned a sequel that was also released on SNES, but the original is unique enough to get the nod here. 

12. Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts

Despite what the title may suggest, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is actually the third game in the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series. Like the previous games, this classic sees you battle various monsters and bosses that fit the setting nicely. Although the game is maybe a little too action-heavy to get the nod over the SNES’ best platformers, it uses its platforming elements to elevate the entire experience. 

The difficulty is insanely high and the sheer amount of sprites on screen at once can lead to some lag that only adds to the frustrations of this arduous journey, but the game has a way of keeping things light and humorous when the frustration sets in. How many other games see the protagonist stripped of their armor, quite literally, when he takes too many hits?

11. Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble!

The third installment in the beloved Donkey Kong Country trilogy certainly isn’t hated by many, but it is usually viewed as a step down from the first two games. Whether that has to do with a change in composer for the soundtrack, the inability to play as Donkey or Diddy, or the fact it was released after the Nintendo 64 was on the market, the title’s sometimes mixed reputation often prevents it from being appreciated as a divine platforming experience. 

The environments and storytelling in this game are well-executed. If you’re observant, you may even notice that the developers were trying to say something about the sad state of ape habitats and pollution in the wild. Even if you didn’t dive too deep into that surprising bit of social commentary, you’ll likely find that the platforming in this one remains top-notch and that the overall experience remains severely underrated. 

10. DoReMi Fantasy: Milon’s DokiDoki Adventure 

As the only game on this list that wasn’t initially released outside of Japan, many gamers may not know that DoReMi Fantasy is a whimsical experience that features some of the key elements of Mario and Kirby’s best adventures in terms of gameplay and graphics. Starring a young child whose objective is to reclaim music for the forest, DoReMi utilizes some clever puzzles that may not be unusual for the platformer genre but certainly add to the fun.

The game got a Virtual Console release in North America in 2008, but that’s sadly the best chance many gamers have had in recent years to take a chance on this title. It’s a great example of how people should be more open to experiencing games that weren’t localized the first time around.

9. Donkey Kong Country

Perhaps the most famous game starring Nintendo’s lovable ape, the original Donkey Kong Country was Rare’s first big title for the SNES and practically started their decade-plus long relationship as a second-party developer with the Big N. Tasked with showing off off the console’s pre-rendered graphics system, the crew from Britain proved to be up to the task. Honestly, this game still looks halfway decent in 2021. 

While the actual platforming is not as good as the Super Mario games on the SNES, it offered a different flavor of jumping that is still very much appreciated. The “weight” of Donkey Kong and Diddy means that the platforming is less flighty than in Super Mario games, and the rideable animal buddies you encounter along the way add a little flair to the experience. 

8. ActRaiser

As a game that serves as both an action-platformer and a God simulator, this underrated and forgotten gem from Enix and developer Quintet showed off the visual and audio capabilities of the SNES in the early days of the console. You play as the “Master” who is tasked with building towns around the world and fending off the evils that threaten them. It’s hard to juggle two completely different genres like that, but ActRaiser finds a great balance. 

The game was re-released for the Wii Virtual Console in 2007 but has otherwise been paid little attention in the years since its release. That’s unfortunate because there aren’t many games from 30 years ago that provide this much depth and versatility. Both parts of the experience are extremely solid in their own right, and together add up to become something truly special. 

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7. Kirby Super Star

Even the most ardent Kirby fans would probably agree that the franchise can get a little stale at times. There are only so many ways Kirby can suck an enemy up, transform his powers to match theirs, and ultimately defeat King Dedede. That’s why Kirby Super Star is still arguably the best game that the pink cutie pie has ever starred in.

Featuring eight different games within the game, the genre-mixing in this one is really off the charts. There are racing elements, adventure tones, and shooting sequences amongst the different sections of the playthrough. The experience was so beloved that it was eventually remade for the Nintendo DS as Kirby Super Star Deluxe. There is something for everyone in this package, and it shows the best parts of Kirby’s history.

6. Mega Man X

The original run of NES Mega Man titles are arguably still more famous than all of the others, but Mega Man X just has more of what makes those games great. It retains the eight bosses and weapon upgrades that can be completed/acquired in whatever order the player chooses, and it even has that same incredible soundtrack that the Blue Bomber’s adventures are always famous for.

Mega Man X‘s graphical upgrades admittedly take some of that eight-bit nostalgia out of the experience, but the game ultimately makes up for it by offering new gameplay experiences. Jumping on walls and acquiring upgrades to defensive maneuvers gives Mega Man an even more badass skillset, and the game generally does an excellent job of emphasizing the “platforming” parts of its action-platformer mix.

5. Super Castlevania 4

Super Castlevania 4 is actually a kind of soft remake of the original game, and the developers at Konami did a great job of making that game more digestible for newcomers while keeping all of the iconic elements from the classic NES title.

The Castlevania basics are all here (you still control Simon Belmont, equipped with his famous whip and ax, and battle through the game’s 11 stages before reaching Dracula), but an ideal mix of combat and platforming makes this one of the most irreplaceable platformers in the SNES catalog. It’s still an airtight action-platformer experience in 2021. 

4. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

The second game in the DKC trilogy took all of the best parts of the first title and refined them to create a truly unique platforming game that was a lot more than fancy graphics (a reputation the original game has had a hard time shaking). Diddy’s Kong Quest expanded upon the game design that fans loved while keeping the jungle hijinx, masterful soundtrack, and weighted platforming intact. 

That last part is what truly separates the middle installment of this franchise from the other two. Many people have said that these games were sometimes more style than substance, but after playing through the myriad of environments on display in DKC 2, it becomes clear that this title has endured over the years because its tight mechanics are executed at a high level.  

3. Super Metroid

If this list were just a ranking of 2D games or if it encapsulated the entire SNES library regardless of genre, Super Metroid would most likely take the top spot. Alas, this icon of game design settles in the third spot because it isn’t the best example of a “pure platformer.” It’s more of an action/adventure affair, though the game’s platforming elements are still as satisfying now as they were in the 1990s.

What separates this game from so many that have tried to emulate it in the nearly three decades since release is that every ability upgrade and every part of the map fits together with nearly flawless foresight and execution. It’s never a hassle to re-explore a section that you’ve already seen. The game has a masterful flow that is incredibly modern and perhaps even more popular today because of the prominence of this design style on the indie game scene. 

2. Super Mario World

With its flawless controls, colorful sprites, cheerful soundtrack, and ageless platforming, Super Mario World is the title that all other 2D games in the genre are still compared to. The extra graphical power of the SNES gave Nintendo the opportunity to expand upon Super Mario Bros. 3‘s best ideas while exploring new concepts that simply weren’t possible before.

That is why this game remains so playable. Super Mario World combines the most enjoyable elements of the NES Super Mario classics and then elevates them to fully realize the world that Miyamoto imagined when this basic concept was created. It still doesn’t make sense to have a plumber jumping on top of turtles and occasionally getting lost inside of a house full of ghosts (those damn Boo mansions still haunt me), but when you combine this much creativity into one package, you have no choice but to admit how special it all is.

1. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

Shigeru Miyamoto and his team knew that it was futile to try and surpass Super Mario World simply by emulating it. So when developing the sequel, they made the decision to craft an entirely different type of platformer in which Mario isn’t even the main protagonist. The concept was bold, but the execution needed to be flawless if the game was ever going to be more than another disappointing follow-up. 

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It’s safe to say Yoshi’s Island exceeded all expectations. Putting Yoshi at the forefront of a platformer that included mini-games, evasion, puzzle-solving, item collection, and the most timeless color palette in gaming history was brilliance personified. Yoshi’s Island is not as famous as its older sibling, but its daring creativity and irreplaceable charm have inspired many to argue that it is the better game in retrospect. Whatever your opinion is, the fun and escapism of the green dinosaur’s finest hour (as well as the horrors of Baby Mario’s screams) will be remembered until the end of gaming.

The post 15 Best SNES Platformers Ever appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[kingjasnah]

Is there the full list of brandersons favourite games reposted somewhere?

i dont think so? or not that ive seen. u can literally just sign up for the newsletter on his website but screw it ill just post them for u. it sure was a TRIP scrolling past these to get to the interlude though. undertale is on this list.....im shakign at the thought that adolin was based off ff10 tidus but i cant get it out of my head now

#10: Katamari Damaci

I love things that make me look at the world in a new way. Katamari did this in spades. It is an imaginative, bizarre vision with unique gameplay. It is like nothing else in the world and I love it for all its strangeness and occasional lack of gameplay polish.

I was transfixed the first time I played it, and have looked forward to it being remade and rereleased on multiple different consoles. I love the cute—and somehow creepy at the same time—storyline. It feels like a fever dream more than a game sometimes, and is probably the closest I’ll ever get to understanding what it’s like to do drugs.

#9: Undertale

This is an oddball on this list because I think it’s the only game that is not a franchise from a major studio—but is instead an indie game, which I believe was originally funded on Kickstarter.I loved how this felt like a novel as much as a game. It was one person’s vision; a single story told really well, with a huge amount of personality. The humor was just my kind of wonderful/terrible, and I was instantly enamored with the characters.That probably would have been enough, but it is a nice deconstruction of video games as a medium—and has not one, but multiple innovative gameplay mechanics. Together, the package left me enamored. This is a work of genius that I feel everyone should at least try, even if it ends up not being for them.

#8: Fallout: New Vegas

I have played all of the core Fallout games, and I was one of the (it seems few) who was really excited when it moved from turn-based tactics to first-person shooter. While Fallout 3 was good, it didn’t have the charm of the first two.New Vegas delivered on everything I was hoping to see. The charm was back, the writing sharp, the quests imaginative. The gameplay was engaging and branched in a variety of directions, the gunplay was solid, and the atmosphere immersive. I of course love the first two games in the series—but New Vegas combines everything I like in gaming into one package. (As a note, I own the Outer Worlds, and am looking forward to digging into it. Consider this item on the list a recommendation of other Obsidian games—like Knights of the Old Republic Two—regardless of genre, as I’ve found them universally to be superior to their contemporaries.)

#7 Super Mario World

When I was eleven, I flew (alone, which was very exciting to me) from Nebraska to visit my uncle Devon in Salt Lake City. Before I left, my father gave me $200 and told me to pay for my own meals while on the trip—but of course, my uncle didn’t allow this. At the end of the trip, I tried to give him the money, which he wouldn’t take.I mentioned my dad would take the money back when I got home, but that was okay. Well, my uncle would have none of that, and drove me to the local mall and made me spend it on a Nintendo Entertainment System. (This uncle, you might guess, is an awesome human being.)Since that day of first plugging it in and experiencing Mario for the first time, I was hooked. This is the only platformer on the list, as I don’t love those. But one makes an exception for Mario. There’s just so much polish, so much elegance to the control schemes, that even a guy who prefers an FPS or an RPG like me has to admit these are great games. I picked World as my favorite as it’s the one I’ve gone back to and played the most.

#7: The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3)

I kind of miss the golden age of adventure gaming, and I don’t know that anyone ever got it as right as they did with this game. It is the pinnacle of the genre, in my opinion—no offense to Grim Fandango fans.This game came out right before gaming’s awkward teenage phase where everything moved to 3-d polygons. For a while after, games looked pretty bad, though they could do more because of the swap. But if you want to go see what life was like before that change, play Monkey Island 3. Composed of beautiful art pieces that look like cells from Disney movies, with streamlined controls (the genre had come a long way from “Get yon torch”) and fantastic voice acting, this game still plays really well.This is one of the few games I’ve been able to get my non-gamer wife to play through with me, and it worked really well as a co-op game with the two of us trying to talk through problems. It’s a lovingly crafted time capsule of a previous era of gaming, and if you missed it, it’s really worth trying all these years later. (The first and second games hold up surprisingly well too, as a note, particularly with the redone art that came out a decade or so ago.)Also, again, this one has my kind of humor.

#6: Breath of the Wild

I never thought a Zelda game would unseat A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda, but Breath of the Wild managed it. It combined the magic of classic gameplay with modern design aesthetic, and I loved this game.There’s not a lot to say about it that others haven’t said before, but I particularly liked how it took the elements of the previous games in the series (giving you specific tools to beat specific challenges) and let you have them all at once. I like how the dungeons became little mini puzzles to beat, instead of (sometimes seemingly endless) slogs to get through. I liked the exploration, the fluidity of the controls, and the use of a non-linear narrative in flashbacks. It’s worth buying a Switch just to play this one and Mario—but in case you want, you can also play Dark Souls on Switch... (That’s foreshadowing.)

#5: Halo 2

Telling stories about Halo Two on stream is what made me think of writing this list.I’m sometimes surprised that this game isn’t talked about as much as I think it should be. Granted, the franchise is very popular—but people tend to love either Reach or games 1 or 3 more than two. Two, however, is the only one I ever wanted to replay—and I’ve done so three or four times at this point. (It’s also the only one I ever beat on Legendary.)It’s made me think on why I love this one, while so many others seem to just consider it one of many in a strong—but in many ways unexceptional—series of games. I think part of this is because I focus primarily on the single-player aspects of a game (which is why there aren’t any MMOs on this list.) Others prefer Halo games with more balanced/polished multiplayer. But I like to game by myself, and don’t really look for a multiplayer experience. (Though this is changing as I game with my sons more and more.)I really like good writing—which I suppose you’d expect. But in games, I specifically prefer writing that enhances the style of game I’m playing. Just dumping a bunch of story on me isn’t enough; it has to be suited to the gameplay and the feel of the game. In that context, I’ve rarely encountered writing as good as Halo 2. From the opening—with the intercutting and juxtaposition of the two narratives—to the quotes barked out by the marines, the writing in this game is great. It stands out starkly against other Halo games, to the point that I wonder what the difference is.Yes, Halo Two is a bombastic hero fantasy about a super soldier stomping aliens. But it has subtle, yet powerful worldbuilding sprinkled all through it—and the music...it does things with the story that I envy. It’s kind of cheating that games and films get to have powerful scores to help with mood.The guns in Two feel so much better than Halo One, and the vehicles drive far better. The only complaint I have is that it’s only half a story—as in, Halo 2 and 3 seem like they were one game broken in two pieces. And while 3 is good (and Reach does something different, which I approve of in general) neither did it for me the way Two did, and continues to do.

#3: Final Fantasy X

You probably knew Final Fantasy was coming. People often ask if the way these games handle magic was an influence upon me. All I can say is that I’ve played them since the first one, and so they’re bound to have had an influence.On one hand, these games are really strange. I mean, I don’t think we gamers stop quite often enough to note how downright bizarre this series gets. Final Fantasy doesn’t always make the most sense—but the games are always ambitious.Ten is my favorite for a couple of reasons. I felt like the worldbuilding was among the strongest, and I really connected with the characters. That’s strange, because this is one of the FF games without an angst-filled teen as the protagonist. Instead, it has a kind of stable happy-go-lucky jock as the protagonist.But that’s what I needed, right then. A game that didn’t give me the same old protagonist, but instead gave me someone new and showed me I could bond to them just as well. Ten was the first with full voice acting, and that jump added a lot for me. It has my favorite music of the series, and all together is what I consider the perfect final fantasy game. (Though admittedly, I find it more and more difficult to get into turn-based battle mechanics as I grow older.)

#2: Bloodborne

Those who follow my streams, or who read other interviews I’ve done, probably expected this series to be at or near the top. The question wasn’t whether Souls would be here, but which one to pick as my favorite.I went with Bloodborne, though it could have been any of them. (Even Dark Souls 2—which I really like, despite its reputation in the fandom.) I’ve been following FromSoftware’s games since the King’s Field games, and Demon’s Souls was a huge triumph—with the director Hidetaka Miyazaki deserving much of the praise for its design, and Dark Souls (which is really just a more polished version of Demon’s Souls).As I am a fan of cosmic horror, Bloodborne is probably my favorite overall. It really hit the mix of cosmic and gothic horror perfectly. It forced me to change up my gameplay from the other Souls games, and I loved the beautiful visuals.I am a fan of hard games—but I like hard games that are what I consider “fair.” (For example, I don’t love those impossible fan-made Mario levels, or many of the super-crazy “bullet hell”-style games.) Dark Souls is a different kind of hard. Difficult like a stern instructor, expecting you to learn—but giving you the tools to do so. It presents a challenge, rather than being hard just to be hard.If I have a problem with Final Fantasy, it’s that the games sometimes feel like the gameplay is an afterthought to telling the story. But in the Souls games, story and gameplay are intermixed in a way I’d never seen done before. You have to construct the story like an archeologist, using dialogue and lore from descriptions of in-game objects. I find this fascinating; the series tells stories in a way a book never could. I’m always glad when a game series can show off the specific strengths of the medium.In fact, this series would be #1 except for the little fact that I have way too much time on Steam logged playing...

#1: Civilization VI

This series had to take #1 by sheer weight of gameplay time. I discovered the first on a friend’s computer in the dorms my freshman year—and I can still remember the feeling of the birds chirping outside, realizing I’d been playing all night and really should get back to my own dorm room.That still happens, and has happened, with every game in the series. I have a lot of thoughts on this series, many of them granular and too specific for this list. (Like, it’s obvious AI technology isn’t up to the task of playing a game this complex—so could we instead get a roguelike set of modifiers, game modes, etc. to liven up the games, rather than just having a difficulty slider that changes a few simple aspects of the game?)I’ll try not to rant, because I really do love this game series. A lot of people consider IV to be the pinnacle of the series, but after V unstacked units—and VI unstacked cities—there was no way I could ever go back. If for some reason, you’ve never played this grand patriarch of the 4X game genre, it’s about starting with a single stone-age settler who can found a city—then playing through eras of a civilization, growing your empire, to try to eventually get offworld with a space program. (Or, if you prefer, conquering the world.)It’s a load of fun in the way I like to have fun, and I feel like the series has only gotten better over the years. My hat is off to the developers, who keep reinventing the series, rather than making the exact same game over and over.Now, about that request for difficulty modes...

there are runner ups but for the sake of anyone whos on mobile and cant get past a read more (first of all omg im SO sorry) ill refrain. anyway he thought WHAT loz game was the best before botw?

#mix between HARDCORE judgement and like. yea. yea ff10 was pretty good wasnt it #but i dont think its anywhere near the best of them #long post #im read mores dont work imm so fucking sorry this is so long #MOST of these games are good its just so wild its so wild its SO wild #asks #Anonymous

[mariogoetze]

blog/important update

hey lads, with the most recent absence due to covid-19 i had a lot of time to think especially in general and about my future. in that time i also thought about tumblr and blogging and after being here for almost a decade i decided now would be the right time for some major changes. you can read them right below, thank you!

i’ve been on tumblr for a long time almost a decade if you’d like to say. i’ve had the pleasure to meet a lot of nice people, sure some encounters were here and there not nice, but most of them were very good and helped me to develop on this site. honestly back then when i joined this site i really didn’t know how it worked i used 3 different tags for the same person and i wrote in my posts 2 languages going a few sentences first with german and then switching to english afterwards. luckily i’ve met a lot of great people who’ve helped me to develop on this site and helped me to grow not only as a blogger but also as a person, which i’m really grateful for. even tho this site is a hellsite i still learned a lot of things which i was unaware of before and there were also things which i managed to develop which i’m proud of. at this moment i’d like to thank all of those who’ve helped me in the beginning and those through and through my road bc they made my journey on here really amazing filled with lots of joy and also lovely moments as well, so i’m really grateful. i’ve really experienced all kind of things here the world cup 2014 was probably one of the best ones but also emotional matches were the fandom stuck together and sometimes some wins were amazing to celebrate and there were even some defeats which made the fandom closer and let’s not start with all those memes and shit posts which made the interacting really delightful.

with more time on being here and with more inspiration and motivation i received i edited through the years and it was really great. from shitposting, to making memes and to edit pictures and to create gif it was really a hell of a blast! back then when i first joined this site i thought i’d never be able to make gifs and some years later i developed which was really a special moment for me. people telling me they enjoy my edits made me really happy and all the amount of support i received meant really a lot to me. so if you’re reading this and you’ve supported me and my work then let me tell you: thank you. it really warms my heart and i appreciate it.

but to speak now about the major changes on my blog and the update itself, let me start with saying that there are 4 major reasons why the changes will happen. let’s start of with..

1. schedule - my schedule after summer will change which means that i’ll have to work quite a lot and that won’t change anytime soon. as an editor it takes quite a lot to make actually edits (depending on what you edit and how much) and i don’t think that once i come home at 6 pm that i would like to make edits for an hour or so, if you get me? i would rather relax, listening to music, perhaps go to the gym or do something else. with my new upcoming schedule in the near future it will make it hard for me to be posting much at all as i don’t really have the time for it anymore. i dealt before quite well as i had a good balance with my studying, i will continue my studying in the future but for now i will switch to my education and hopefully in the future i will finish what i started and become a teacher.

2. fandom - interacting is one of the key things on tumblr. sure you can just make your posts and go by it i mean in the end tumblr is there to space out, i’ve been enjoying my freedom and to be able to post whatever i want whenever i want and just letting my creativity full out it was really great but nowadays i feel like more and more people are dying out on tumblr, sure they are for example nice and funny people in the bvb fandom and i do enjoy them very much but i still feel like compared to 5 years ago there is a major difference. a lot of my friends have left the fandom, those were people who inspired me to post and in general to be an active part of this fandom, sure they are still great people (shootout to all my mutuals) in it which like i said above really enjoy but i still feel like we got a lot smaller and it’s kinda less fun? i mean it’s still rolling and going but with a lot less fire than it used to be.. at this point i would like to say that i’m not trying to ruin anyone’s fun i mean if you’re still enjoying what you do then that is wonderful and please keep it up. for me the fire just got smaller and the desire has shrunken tbh. i think it’s logical tho i mean when people leave you enjoyed interacting with and also the the dynamic of the fandom changes and the club also with coaches and players it does make sense. those who are currently there are doing a good job and they kept me motivated till my last breath to keep me going so i would like to thank all my mutuals for being lovely human beings. i feel like in general you need to take more care at what you write, post and say, i mean if you for example were not happy with a certain player’s performance or in general if something bothers you, you need to watch out because there could always be someone who could hate on you for doing so and that kinda sucks.

3. favre - if you follow me for a longer period of time you will know that i was never really found of him. i don’t hate him but i do dislike him for many reasons. i personally don’t see us winning a trophy with him as he’s lacking of the mentality of some other great coaches who have won some trophies recently and in the past. for me he just doesn’t fit into the system of bvb as he gives me this ‘chicken’ scared kind of vibe. the tactic changes to play with like 3/5 defenders is something i find also quite questionable that we are not able to play with just 4 defenders and also let’s not talk about that time our players were lacking off motivation. sure it’s not all the coach who is to blame but for me he’s the major reason for a lot of questionable things, decisions and results which happened in the past. now that favre said a few days ago that he wants to continue to work with bvb and zorc said that they don’t look out for a new coach i think that totally ruins it for me.

4. favorite player - now it’s official (not like that it wasn’t obvious before) but yes mario will leave bvb. obviously my heart will always beat black and yellow, but i’m really disappointed in the way how mario is leaving. after he came back and fought of his disease he has always given his all for this club. in his playertribute he wrote how after he came back he understood more the club and how the fans feel and i totally dig that as whenever he played he always showed heart and wanted to win, especially last season when he was one of the best if not the best player who alongside other players like jadon almost made it possible to capture the bundesliga title. after that amazing 2nd leg of the bundesliga what happened afterwards? he got treated like shit. benched all over and never gotten a chance to play. after 6 games of being benched and a 1+ minute sub in the ucl at the 91′ minute he played vs bremen and guess what? he scored, he provided 3 goal chances, his pass accuracy was very high and he became man of the match. favre said he played very well and what then? he got benched again. i really hate how bvb is treating him almost like as if he was just air you know and i don’t think he deserves that, i mean he has given his all whenever he got the chance to play but to treat him like this is is just very unfair. he showed that he still has qualities and can actually play well and help the offensive but not on favre’s watch.

so now with mario leaving i don’t think i will do much edits as i used to because in general it hurts me really that he is leaving i grew up with him being in bvb as a 17 yo boy who just came from the youth. now he is rotten on the bench and gets treated like shit and his last match? well i don’t know if he will even play by the amount of time favre is benching him. but one thing is to say: once he’s gone he will find a new club and finally play again and find his happiness and that makes very happy.

but back to my blog now: one of the main reasons why i joined this site is because of mario götze, my fav club and of course the love for football, to express my feelings in a different way as you know such as edits or text posts and so on. now that mario is leaving i don’t think i will be really motivated to make edits and since my schedule and tumblr itself is changed/is changing i decided it would be the right time to take a step down.

so no i’m not leaving tumblr - i just change my blogging style and activity. i will definitely make less edits, i will probably reblog much more, i will still try do to make posts here and there (if my schedule and mood allows it and is good) but i don’t think i will be any longer the blogger i used to be for a long time on this site as i think with mario leaving bvb and also with now almost a decade of difference of tumblr and all the changes with happened on this site, the fandom itself and people leaving i think it’s fitting to make this step. i joined this site when mario left bvb and now that mario is leaving again i think my active-phase of being a football-editor is coming to an end. 

i will still be around like i said, just in a different way and style. i’ve made some great friends on here and there also a lot of nice people who i still need to get to know better and to which i look forward to! i really appreciated all the support i’ve received through out my journey and i just wanted to thank you it really always meant a lot to me! my journey is now ending now and i’ve really appreciated being able to express all my creativity and feelings for such a long time with your support you’ve always encouraged me to do even more and to feel good at what i’m doing so thank you! i look forward to my new chapter as now blogging will be different to what i’m used to but regardless i look forward to it.

i’m not ded i’m just taking a step back and i’m in the second seat row now. thank you 💛

#text #future reference #important #blog update #arigato~

[vithyahairandmakeup]

My Decade

My 2010 started with me finishing my one year diploma at London College of Fashion. I was so excited to start my new career with this prestigious qualification at one of the World’s top fashion institutions, but the makeup artist I used to look up to so much then, told me that I would not last long in this field. She broke my heart. And not because I thought I was doomed, but because of how discouraging and mean she was. 

Up until that moment I thought I had to prove something to my family, but then quickly realised that I am leaving one pack of wolves - my family of course - to walk into another - this industry!I swore to myself then, that I would encourage and support any other makeup artist along my journey and not be like her. I would like to believe that I stayed true to that to some extent. Whatever she had told me did place some doubt in my heart. Just as a precaution I thought I better apply somewhere and work part time at least. So I applied at MAC cosmetics, who had actually rejected me. They then gave me a call a few months later and asked if I could cover during their busy christmas period. Once I started at MAC, they kept me on and I worked for them for another 3 years. They even offered me the managerial position, the irony.

During the three years at MAC, I was so unsure and so confused in what direction I wanted to go in. It was a part time position, so it didn’t pay well, and I was desperately trying to freelance on the weekends. I would get a client once every few months, who wouldn’t pay me much. Without a car, without a proper makeup trolley, it was agony carrying my suitcase up and down underground staircases and holding onto it with my dear life during packed train journeys. I can assure you, it was not a pleasant experience at all.I tried being part of short movies, worked with the National Portrait Gallery, the Arcadia group (who own Topshop, Dorothy Perkins etc.), fashion shows for Nintendo, and even a shoot for British Airways. But all were unpaid and definitely got me nowhere except for a few phone pictures to add to my Facebook Page.

I would come home after a long day of standing and lugging my suitcase around, and my parents would look at me with judgemental eyes wondering why a science graduate who landed a very well paid job in a huge marketing company, would give it all up to do makeup on people for minimum wages and be treated like a servant?I honestly never ever regretted my decision. Yes it was tough not making money, and spending all my earnings on building a better makeup kit or on my travel, but it gave me life; it brought me happiness, it made me want to get out of bed, and it definitely distracted me from my anti depressants and suicidal thoughts. Being a makeup artist brought me back to life.

In 2013, I quit MAC and took the brave decision to go self employed. I registered my company officially. My freelance work had picked up, and I wanted to free my weekends from working in retail. I wanted to explore more and try out new things.I still remember I had hit 10K followers on Instagram after joining in 2012 and more and more people started to get to know me around the world. Instagram opened up a lot of doors for me.Having lived in Germany most of my childhood, my parents were ok with me travelling to Europe for bridal jobs because I was able to stay with family. I think I was the first Tamil makeup artist back then who travelled to neighbouring countries for work. That was probably one of the best decisions I had made. Travelling around Europe and doing makeup got me exposed a lot more and people who were not on social media knew of my existence. 

And as per usual I would still collaborate and work for free with anyone who contacted me. I wanted to get out there and try everything new. During exactly one of these collabs, I was asked to come early morning one day, to do makeup on a male model for a music video shoot. When I arrived that Monday morning I nearly fainted at the sight of Simbu, a very famous Tamil Actor. I was getting my station ready when the makeup artist who was hired for the entire movie did end up coming for this music video shoot. I was gutted. I thought I won’t get a chance to work with him and was prepared to pack up and leave. But the organiser was adamant that I stay and help out. I asked the makeup artist if I could do touch up makeup at least for a few scenes, and she kindly let me. The pictures I took of that moment went viral in South India, and that was the first time people in India started following my work on social media or even knew of my existence.It was also the first time a lot of makeup artists noticed me and can I just say they were not happy with this newbie getting to work with celebrities. 

It got worse in 2014 when I was asked to do makeup for another famous Actress, Sneha, for a Wedding Exhibition. To be honest I was very overwhelmed. I did not think I was cut out for the job and kept asking the organisers why not pick some of the more experienced makeup artists. I really was not ready for such a big job. I wasn’t confident.However, the organiser told me that out of all the profiles she had sent Sneha, Sneha herself picked me. That was all I needed. I spoke to Sneha on the phone a week before her arrival, and met her a few days before the show, to discuss the looks and make sure she was happy with everything.Working with her will forever be one of my most cherished moments in my career. She believed in me and trusted me. However a lot of people were absolutely angry at the thought of me doing makeup on someone as famous as her. They could not comprehend that someone as inexperienced, nor established as myself would bag in a job like this. I did understand their disappointment, but was sad that no one seemed to want to support me. 

Later that same year, I was asked if I was interested in being a production assistant for two songs from the movie Nanbenda; it was a Red Giant Production acting Udhayanidi and Nayanthara, line produced by Kavino from MYA Media. Of course I know nothing about production, but did not want to turn down this opportunity, so took 9 days off and decided to help out. The shoot took place all over Great Britain with a huge budget and an experience of a life time. I got to personally work with Nayanthara and saw what happened behind the scenes. I made great friends during that shoot, even had the responsibility of finding a castle and two horses for one scene, but went home having to deal with a divorce. Even though career-wise 2014 was a great year for me, but on a personal level I had to deal with a lot of heart ache. And no, it had nothing to do with my career, it was simply bad timing. 

The following few years just had me on a rollercoaster to be honest. I tried numerous new things; being a TV host, a judge for dance competitions and beauty peagants, modelling, acting in commercials which never made it on TV, makeup for adverts, short films, magazine shoots, editorials, none were paid of course, until I found a new love for teaching.

I started teaching one-to-one tutorials in 2014 and remember I couldn’t even get two students that December. The following year it grew to 10 students, and in 2016 I had back to back students who were willing to pay whatever I quoted. That I when I made the decision of doing a Masterclass after seeing Mario (Kim Kardashian’s Makeup Artist) do these around the US. I had no guidelines nor knew how to start. Masterclasses were unheard of in our community. I was the first.I hired a small gallery space, and rented 20 chairs. I had my cousins and friends help me set up and we bought a Kettle and paper cups to serve tea and coffee for everyone. I thought the day went so well, and absolutely enjoyed the teaching, to get a call at the end of that day from my mum crying down the phone telling me that our house got robbed. Well we quickly found out that nothing was actually stolen, but the house just go trashed. A lot of us that night stayed up thinking someone did not want me to do these classes. My high ended with such a low, and got worse when I woke up to a lot of emails from our students complaining about numerous things in regards to my Masterclass. Today, I have taught 16 classes all over the world now with as many as 80 students, and for renowned makeup brands such as Bobbi Brown and Nars Cosmetics. So don’t ever let anyone or anything stop you from what you love and what you are meant to do.

Anyway, the following years have definitely been the best; from campaign shoots for Pothys, being flown out around the world for Bridal jobs, being a panelist and being a Keynote speaker for American Express, working with South Indian Movie celebrities Amy Jackson, Bharathirajah, the beautiful Sneha again, and Meena, being in charge of Makeup for Anirudh’s Concert in London and Paris, interviewed on mental health and published in Huffington Post, and my YouTube journey with my Saree draping video amassing nearly 6 million views. I know this is not work related but me marrying the most amazing human being in New York almost 3 years ago definitely was a huge benefactor in my career too. Happiness does wonders, I tell you.

Either way, none of it came easy. Yes it was hard work, but no one ever publicly or openly talks about the politics and the drama that happen in the industry behind closed doors. How not only do you have to deal with your nerves when working on a big project but you probably have to pray all day that no one tries to sabotage this opportunity for you; that no one talks to the organiser and pays them off to drop you last minute (has happened to me countless times), and hope that no one talks behind your back and invents rumours about you. The best rumour was that my ex husband left me because I was having a relationship with Simbu apparently. When my Bride told me that, my answer was “I wish”. We had such a laugh that day.

My last 10 years taught me so much. I grew on a professional and personal level. I think maturity and experience has helped me deal with a lot of it, and face a lot of it.I have some amazing friends also who are in the same field as me, and I have never stopped encouraging, teaching, or inspiring others who are entering this industry. I want to be that someone I never had 10 years ago. Jealousy, competitiveness, and hate does nothing but destroy. It ruins, and it causes nothing but pain. Fame can be another culprit too. It’s great to want to grow on social media, but do not lose your morals, values, and principles along the way. Once you lose respect, it is very hard to earn it back.

How does one deal with all of this? I used to wonder why some people were so horrible, but then gave up trying to figure out what their reasons were. I still get hate or have situations were other makeup artists try and make it very difficult for me, but the first step was to block a lot of words and people on social media. Of course we want to be liked, and we want to be a good person and set a good example, but do we really need to prove something to someone who does not know you nor like you? No matter what line of business you are, there is going to be competition. There is going to be people around you who are going to watch you like a hawk and copy every single thing that you do. But let that be a positive thing. Let that challenge you to do better, and be better, and get outside of your comfort zone. Focus on your own path and cut out anything or anyone who stresses you out or causes negativity. It really is as simple as that.Comparing yourself to others is the worst thing you could do to yourself. Insecurities do not get you anywhere. Have the right people around you who feed your soul with positivity and happiness. And definitely stay away from those who like to gossip about others in the industry. Never healthy I tell you. Trust me, I have been there, done that.

My testimony is to help you see the non-glamorous side of my job, but also see how it has never been easy and still isn’t for any of us. In 2007 I tried to take my life. If anyone had told me then, that in 2020 I will be writing a blog about how to deal with negativity, I would have laughed in their face. But here I am today, doing what I love, loving life, and not being the slightest bit deterred by the few who will always try and bring you down. I have an amazing support system of family and friends, and there are hundreds of thousands of you who support me, so surely that has to count for something too. I am so ready to take on the next decade. Are you?

[bongaboi]

Liverpool: 2019-20 Premier League Champions

30 years of hope: my life as an ardent Liverpool fan

After three decades of near misses, slips and tears, the Merseyside team’s wait for another league title is nearly over. So what does it mean to a scouser and lifelong fan?

by Hannah Jane Parkinson

I am three years old in the photograph, hugging a plastic, flyaway football. I am seven, arriving tentatively for my first training session at a local girls’ club. I am bounding back to my mother’s car, blowing hot breath on cold hands, beaming, the salt from the artificial turf embedded in the soles of my trainers.

I am eight and glued to the television, watching teen wunderkind and my Liverpool hero, Michael Owen, score the perfect goal against Argentina in World Cup 98.

I am nine. I give up one of the few days I have to visit my father to attend my first ever match at Anfield, Liverpool FC’s famous stadium. A week later, my father dies. These two events are inextricably linked in my mind, and the guilt continues to whichever day you are reading this.

I am 10 and make my first appearance in print in a feature for the local paper, the Liverpool Echo, about girls getting into football. I am quoted as saying that all my sister cares about is boys and fashion.

Twelve years old and the fuzzy letters of “Parkinson” on the back of my shirt arch down my shoulder blades.

I am 13. Our team, known as Liverpool Feds, are approached by Liverpool FC to become their official girls’ outfit. We visit Melwood, the first team’s training ground. The full-size goals loom like scaffolding.

I am 14. My hero, Owen, makes the same move to Real Madrid that Steve McManaman made five years before him. This breaks my heart. Suddenly, all I care about is boys and fashion. Without really making a decision, I give up football. Cold winter nights are spent inside on the sofa watching Sex and the City. I discover live music and MySpace.

I am 15. I own the entire range of Clearasil products. A group of my schoolfriends and I take a night off GCSE revision to watch the 2005 European Champions League final in Istanbul; the first the club has reached since the mid-80s, and so it is forbidden not to watch. Liverpool are losing by three goals at half time. A lost cause. Minds wander to the second biology paper… But wait. Liverpool pull back to 3-3. And win on penalties. Pandemonium. We join the throng in the streets; the blaring car horns; the beer jumping, like salmon, from pint glasses; the embrace of strangers; the straining vocal cords.

I am 18 and living in Russia, watching games on my first-generation smartphone via a 2G internet connection. Each time a player goes through on goal the signal drops to endless buffering. Liverpool finish second in the league, four points behind bitter rivals Manchester United.

I am 26, we are bearing down on the title. Steven Gerrard in an impromptu on-pitch team talk, after a crucial win against the newly flush Manchester City, shouts hoarsely at his players: “This does not fucking slip now!” The next home game, Gerrard – one of the best players the club has ever seen, captain, scouser, Liverpool FC lifer – literally slips on the turf against Chelsea to concede a goal. We lose. Manchester City finish top of the league by two points.

I am 29. I am in Cuba, where the internet is heavily censored. But I manage to watch the last game of the season, which will be decisive. Liverpool finish the league with 97 points; the highest points tally ever for a team that doesn’t win the title. City win again. With 98 points. Liverpool do, however, win the Champions League – for the sixth time – after scoring four goals in a sublime semi-final comeback against Barcelona. The injured Mohamed Salah, watching on the bench, wears a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Never Give Up”. The T-shirt sells out.

I am 30. I have never witnessed my beloved Liverpool FC lift the title. Two months from now, this is going to change. As I write Liverpool have a 22-point lead at the top of the table. Of 84 points available this season, they have taken 79. Next Monday is the derby against Everton.

I want to untangle what this will mean to me – the fan who met Steven Gerrard a couple of years ago, grinning like a child; the fan who, two weeks ago, was unbelievably touched when current star Trent Alexander-Arnold recorded a video message to cheer her up during a bad time. What it means to other fans: those who witnessed the dominance of the 1980s, and the younger ones who have known only disappointment. And what it means, too, for the future of the area of Anfield itself.

It’s late February in the Flat Iron pub, one of the many dotted around Anfield. Steve Dodd, who is 49, is with his friends Dan Wynn, 26, and Gerrard Noble, 47. All from Somerset, they are having a pre-match drink before the home game against West Ham. Steve talks of the current Jürgen Klopp-assembled side as the best Liverpool side he thinks he’s ever seen.

The friends have been scouring the internet for places to stay in the city for the last home fixture of the season, but to no avail. “Rooms are going for £400 a night,” Gerrard says, his eyes widening. He and Steve are allowing themselves to get excited, but Dan, who like me has yet to experience a league title win, looks anxious and rubs his thighs. “No,” he says, “I don’t want to jinx it. Though I’ve been kicked out of various WhatsApp groups for being smug about all the results.” Steve tells me they weren’t prepared for it, this three-decade-long wait: “I just thought we’d go on winning.”

We talk about how important it is that Klopp’s politics match the club: Liverpool is a leftwing city; Liverpool is a leftwing club. At the last election, Labour retained all of its 14 MPs on Merseyside. The city has never forgiven the Tories for former chancellor Geoffrey Howe’s strategy of “managed decline”. Thatcher is a hated figure. But so is Derek Hatton, the former city council deputy leader and member of the Marxist group Militant. Last month, Italy’s rightwing politician Matteo Salvini was forced to deny that he had pulled out of a visit to Liverpool after the metropolitan region’s mayor called him a “fascist”. During several games last year, chants rang out for Jeremy Corbyn. The current prime minister conspicuously avoids visiting. As Gareth Robertson, who is a part of the immensely popular The Anfield Wrap podcast, with more than 200,000 weekly downloads in 200 countries, puts it to me: “Not only do we want a good football coach, we expect almost a political leader, someone who gets us, and our city, its values.” Humorously, there have been petitions for Liverpool to become a self-determined scouse state, and “Scouse not English” is a frequent terrace chant.

The club has a mantra: “This means more.” It pisses off other teams and is, understandably, dismissed as marketing speak. But isn’t it true? Isn’t the 127-year-old club what people think of when anyone, anywhere in the world, mentions “Liverpool”? The famous football team that plays in red – allowing for the Beatles, of course.

The city has another team, the blue of Everton. I have nothing against Everton. I consider Everton fellow scousers and too little a threat to focus animosity towards. In a way, the clubs are unruly siblings; we love and scrap in equal measure. Totally different personalities, but born of the same streets.

Four years ago, a man named Jürgen Klopp arrived on these streets. Or more accurately, he arrived in the suburb of Formby, renting the house from his managerial predecessor, Brendan Rodgers. Klopp is the football manager that even non-football fans like. He’s Ludovico Einaudi, seducing those previously uninterested in classical music. He is a man of principle; a baseball cap permanently affixed to his head, as though at any point he might be required to step up to the plate on a blindingly sunny day. Perhaps for the Boston Red Sox, owned by Liverpool FC’s American proprietor, John W Henry.

Klopp is erudite. He is proudly anti-Brexit in a city that voted 58% Remain. “For me, Brexit makes no sense at all,” he has said. He is a socialist: “I am on the left … I believe in the welfare state. I’m not privately insured. I would never vote for a party because they promised to lower the top tax rate. If there’s something I will never do in my life it is vote for the right.” He grew up in a humble village in Germany’s Black Forest, and it shows. There’s a saying in the region: “the hair in the soup”. It means focusing on even the tiniest things that can be improved.

He has the good looks of one of my favourite 1960s Russian film stars, Aleksandr Demyanenko. He hugs his players as though they were the loves of his life and he might never see them again. Journalists like him for his press-conference banter as well as his eloquence. He visits children in hospitals. He is funny. When Mario Götze, one of his star players at former club Borussia Dortmund, left for Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, his explanation was: “He’s leaving because he’s Guardiola’s favourite. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I can’t make myself shorter and learn Spanish.”

Liverpool have had many famous managers, of course. Bill Shankly (there’s a statue of him outside the ground); Bob Paisley (ditto); Kenny Dalglish. But Klopp is already being talked of as one of the best ever.

Liverpool the city has evolved from its shamefully prominent role in the slave trade – in common with other major British ports – to a place with a diverse population and a well-won reputation for being friendly and welcoming. But the tragedy and scandal of Hillsborough, in which 96 fans were crushed to death in 1989 at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, is etched into the nation’s sporting history, and its social justice record. After a 27-year-long battle to clear the names of the Liverpool fans whose reputations were smeared, after inquests that lasted two years – the longest case heard by a jury in British legal history – a verdict of unlawful killing was returned. But, as Margaret Aspinall of the indefatigable Hillsborough Family Support Group pointed out, after David Duckenfield, police commander at the ground, was cleared of manslaughter last year, no one has yet been found accountable for those killings.

The Sun, which categorically did not report “The Truth”, as the infamous headline went, but was found to have published untruths that blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster, is a red-top pariah here. The paper is the bestselling national in print, but shifts a measly 12,000 or so copies on Merseyside. A branch of Sainsbury’s was once found to be selling copies under the counter, as though they were counterfeit cigarettes. It’s a boycott that has lasted longer than many marriages.

The socially progressive values of the club extend to it supporting an end to period poverty – free sanitary products are available in every women’s loo at Anfield. Last month, the Reds Going Green initiative saw the installation of organic machines to break down food waste into water. The club even has its own allotment, which grows food to serve to fans in the main stand. It was the first Premier League club to be officially involved with an LGBT Pride event in 2012, at the invitation of Paul Amann. Amann tells me how he set up the LGBT supporters group, Kop Outs, because: “It’s essential that our voices are heard, our presence is welcomed and respected.” The group works alongside the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ group and the Fans Supporting Foodbanks initiative and has regular meet-ups. These things mean something to me: a football fan as a girl, and now as a woman. A woman who dates other women. A woman who doesn’t want to hear homophobic chants on the terraces. Or, it goes without saying, racist ones. Jamie Carragher, ex-player and pundit, has apologised on behalf of the club for its backing of striker Luis Suárez, who was banned from playing for eight matches in 2011 for making racist comments. “We made a massive mistake,” Carragher said. “What message do you send to the world? Supporting someone being banned because he used some racist words.”

Back on the pitch, some of this season’s performances have been, quite simply, balletic. Others as powerful and muscular as a weightlifting competition. Formations as beautiful as constellations. Forward surges as though our fullbacks were plugged into the mains. Possibly the best fullbacks playing today: 21-year-old local lad Trent Alexander-Arnold (known just as Trent) and the fiery Scot Andy Robertson (Robbo) are spoken about by pundits as innovators. Gary Lineker and I text, rapturously, about the two of them.

For a football team to be consistent, for a team to win the league, it must be capable of winning in many different ways. The aesthetically pleasing playing out from the back. Lightning counter-attacks. Scraping 1-0 wins in the final minutes (and, particularly at the start of this season, we have done a lot of that. It’s something Manchester United used to do in their 90s pomp, and naturally, I hated them for it). Mindful of the trauma of The Slip, the agreed club line is “one game at a time”, said again and again, as another scouse son, Pete Burns, once sang: “like a record baby, right round, round, round… ” And my God, how many of those we’ve smashed. The current side is the first in England to hold an international treble (the Champions League; Uefa Super Cup; Fifa Club World Cup). We have not lost a home game for almost two calendar years. Shortly, we’ll no doubt break the record for the earliest title win during a season; the most points across Europe’s top five leagues.

It is, even to the neutral, extraordinary stuff. It is, even to the haters, albeit grudgingly, extraordinary stuff. In 2016, one of the greatest stories of modern football was the previously mediocre Leicester City winning a surprise title. Liverpool’s dominance this season surpasses that for drama. It is watching history in the present.

Being at a game at Anfield is like being high while ingesting nothing. The stands seem to have lungs. Though You’ll Never Walk Alone has become supremely emotional, an anthem for strength and perseverance post-Hillsborough (“walk on through the wind / walk on through the rain”) it’s a song originally from the musical Carousel. It was a standout 1963 cover version by Liverpudlian band Gerry and the Pacemakers that kicked off its adoption at Anfield. “It’s got a lot of lovely major-to-minor changes at often unexpected moments that have the effect of emotionally blindsiding you,” music journalist Pete Paphides says (although he’s a United fan, so feel free to discount everything he tells me). “But it’s also obviously very hymnal, with a chorus which invites that religious ambiguity. It was Aretha Franklin’s version that John Peel played after Hillsborough and rendered himself incapable of carrying on by virtue of doing so.”

Anfield has always been something special; players from countless teams often talk of it being the greatest ground they have ever played at. Or the most intimidating. Or the most electric. But of late, there’s an extra buoyancy. The crowd salivates.

Watching the game against West Ham, we take the lead within 10 minutes, but they quickly equalise, before going ahead. We score twice more. It is our 21st consecutive home win, setting a Premier League-era record. At the end of the game, Klopp and his players applaud the Kop end, fans’ eyes glistening with both emotion and wind chill (“walk on, through the wind… ”)

Adjacent to the stadium at the redbrick Albert pub, Clara, Tom, John – all in their 20s, students, and local – and John’s dad, David, who is 53, are cheering the last-ditch win. I repeat what I asked Steve and his friends: just how excited should we all be?

“Very fucking excited,” says John. “Very fucking excited,” Tom concurs. (Scousers use swear words as ellipses. And the speed of Liverpudlian patter matches the rat-a-tat-tat of freestyle rappers.) The Albert is floor-to-ceiling in flags; unassuming from the outside, iconic inside. Across the road at the Park – the “Established 1888” sign above its door – it is Where’s Wally? levels of rammed, entirely usual for a match day. But the mood is as disbelieving as triumphant. It hasn’t happened yet, but it already feels as though people are waiting to be shaken awake from a dream. Around the corner, posters at another fan favourite, the Sandon, advertise a huge end-of-season victory party. I grab a burger at the Kop of the Range, a kebab joint not far from a scarf stall that has seen its business rocket over the past three years.

My Uber driver, Mohamed, 35, moved to the city from Sri Lanka. A massive Salah fan, he tells me his own revenue booms when the club win a game – happier fans means higher fares. “People don’t want to spend money on a loss,” he says. “If we win, the whole mood lifts. You can feel it in the car. Though when you start driving with Uber, they tell you not to mention what football team you support. Because football means a lot to people. There are many feelings involved with football.”

It’s unsurprising to me that even back in Sri Lanka, Mohamed was a fan. Liverpool is a global behemoth. The richest club in the UK outside Manchester.

A £1.7bn valuation; £533m turnover; pre-tax profits of £42m. Matchday ticket revenues increased (thanks to a regenerated £110m main stand). Visiting the club shop, there is LFC-branded gin; babygros; even a Hello Kitty tie-in range. As Richard Haigh at consultants Brand Finance tells me, next season’s kit deal with Nike is “expected to represent the largest in history. Brands will be willing to pay to have some magic dust of LFC.” There are official stores as far afield as Dubai and Bangkok.

John W Henry has won the support of the fans for his positive handling of the club. And yet, despite this huge wealth, Anfield is the 10th most deprived neighbourhood in the country. Boarded-up houses surround the stadium. The club has not covered itself in glory in the past, accused of buying up properties in unscrupulous ways. But it is hoped that local enterprises, such as the community-run Homebaked cake shop and new housing association properties, will make the neighbourhood better.

Last week, we were knocked out of the FA Cup in a match against Chelsea. Or, as I call that fixture, Kensington versus Kensington. (In Liverpool’s “Kenny”, 98% of residents are among the most deprived 5% nationally. In London’s, residents earn three times the national average.)

In the league, there has been a blip. Last weekend we finally lost. And we lost 3-0 to, with the greatest respect, Watford; not a bad side, but a side ensconced in a relegation battle. Arsenal, who once went a whole season unbeaten (“the Invincibles”), and are keen to keep that record, tweeted from the official club account: “Phew!”

But I am not panicking. It’s possible Dan from the Flat Iron is panicking. But Klopp isn’t panicking. In typical fashion, he said the fact we played an absolutely awful game of football was “rather positive… ”

“A couple of years ago,” our hero reminds us, “I said we wanted to write our own stories and create our own history, and obviously the boys took what I said really seriously. It is so special. The numbers are incredible.” In a nod to Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous line that his greatest challenge was “knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch”, Liverpool chief executive Peter Moore says now: “We are back on our perch.” As The Anfield Wrap’s Gareth says: “In a dream scenario, a period of dominance follows. Not so long ago that dream was just that. Now, it’s a reality that is much easier to imagine.”

Four more games. Eyes on the prize. For me, at last, 30 years in the making, eyes on the prize.

#2020 #premier league #ynwa #liverpool fc #you'll never walk alone

[maxsmusicmacrology]

Album Analysis: Best of Crush 40

Halfway through the 90s, everything changed. The PlayStation came out in 94, allowing games with 3D graphics and high-fidelity (for the time, that is) audio. Big Red came hopping onto the scene with Super Mario 64 in 96, and Sonic Adventure came onto the scene at the very end of 98. As a latecomer to the 3D party, arriving over 2 years after Mario had such a successful romp, they needed something special. They needed…

Children’s media! I’m of the opinion that there are two main categories that children’s media can fall into: there’s media that is specifically made for children, like Blue’s Clues or Peppa Pig or those licensed Sesame Street games. Then there’s kid-friendly media that, while made for and marketed towards children, can still appeal to adults. This would be most Pixar movies, shows like Phineas and Ferb, and the object of today’s article, the Sonic franchise.

While there’s some pretty huge differences between children’s media and kid-friendly media, one thing they both have in common is the goal of teaching children a moral lesson. With varying degrees of success. This can be something simple like “stealing is bad”, but oftentimes there’s some greater nuance, like how the protagonist of Inside Out learns to value sadness and other “negative” emotions. But when working with hardware that has some intense limitations, like the NES or Sega Genesis, telling a complex story isn’t easy, which is why Save the Princess plots (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, the opening to Final Fantasy) were so common: it allowed for a moral hero without requiring any deeper discussion. Sonic the Hedgehog went with a bit more of an environmentalist message- saving animals from an evil scientist- which was easy enough to portray in only 16 bits.

Halfway through the 90s, everything changed. The PlayStation came out in 94, allowing games with 3D graphics and high-fidelity (for the time, that is) audio. Big Red came hopping onto the scene with Super Mario 64 in 96, and Sonic Adventure came onto the scene at the very end of 98. As a latecomer to the 3D party, arriving over 2 years after Mario had such a successful romp, they needed something special. They needed…

I’m going to review this album out of order. This is a “Best of” album, so rather than being a picture of the band’s musical vision at any given time, it contains some of their best work from over a decade-long span. What I’m especially interested in is how the music interacts with its respective game and how it evolves with the franchise, so let’s take a look at song #15 first.

Open Your Heart kicks off Sonic Adventure with a bang. It’s the first thing you hear when you boot the game up and it accompanies the final battle. Well, most of it, anyway- part 1 of the battle gets Open Your Heart and part 2 gets generic “tense orchestral music”, which is a flat-out awful decision, but I digress. Tonally, it’s perfect- it starts out tense, preparing you for the fight ahead, and then the guitars kick in to pull you forward. But more importantly… this is why I brought up the moral conflict earlier. The story is simple, so the game leans on the song to deliver its message.

Much of the lyrics are as relevant today as they probably were for most of human history: the quieter intro bit describes various catastrophes, and describes the fear and confusion that follows (much like the one we’ve been living in for the past few months). The song’s chorus is built around a dialectic: Can’t hold on much longer/but I will never let go, but then ends with Open your heart, it’s gonna be alright. Together, these components combine the fear of catastrophe with the innate desire to make things better. It instills the idea that it’s okay to have conflicting feelings about a course of action, then promises that your heart will make the right choice.

Live and Learn is the main theme of the direct sequel, Sonic Adventure 2, and fills the same roles as Open Your Heart. The opening riff plays when the game is launched, the full song plays over the final battle, and it delivers the moral lesson of the game. If Open Your Heart introduces a lesson about conflict, then Live and Learn teaches you what to do when you’ve made the wrong choice. What happens if you trust the wrong people, stay when you should’ve run or run when you should’ve stayed, let something important fall into the wrong hands?

The very title of the song hints at its message- you learn from your mistakes and do better- but to me the line that really hits comes in the second verse. But you can’t save your sorrows/you’ve paid in trade. It recontextualizes all the regret someone feels from a mistake as a sort of currency: it’s not to be saved, kept in your mind and dwelled on- you’ve exchanged it, traded it for valuable life experience. If you focus on the mistake instead of the lesson, you’ll never grow, and it’ll all have been a waste. Not only is it a natural progression from the last song, it’s an absolute banger of a track.

Next up is Sonic Heroes, the intro track to… Sonic Heroes. That won’t be confusing. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one, it’s not the big moral apex of the game and it’s much more of a title theme than the song the game wants you to walk away from. It’s goofy as hell to listen to, but it always puts a smile on my face.

What I’m Made of is the final battle theme to Sonic Heroes and is, in my opinion, the finale of the Open Your Heart trilogy. Looking at the three songs is a sort of rudimentary 3-act structure: you have the introduction and first conflict, the dark part at the end of act 2, and the triumphant closer. The protagonist takes the lesson they learned through the story and uses it to defeat their opponent. What I have in my two hands is enough to set me free. Use the lessons you’ve learned through hardship to better yourself. The songs form a very nice trilogy when viewed like this that parallels the games quite nicely, and I’m confused as to why they’re all out of order on the album.

That finishes off the Adventure and Heroes saga, and now onto… Shadow the Hedgehog… god. I Am… All of Me is the opening track to the game and also the first song on the album, and it’s so goofy. It tries to be all dark and intimidating because Shadow is the dark and edgy character, who has guns and says “damn” because he has a tragic backstory, and the character isn’t edgy because he’s a cartoon hedgehog and and the song isn’t edgy because it’s a song about a cartoon hedgehog.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad, mind you. I enjoy it, and in a way it’s a perfect fit for the game. It’s like a kid wearing a vampire costume on halloween: they can try to scare you all they want, but the worst they can do is make you smile.

All Hail Shadow is the next Shadow the Hedgehog piece. This one was originally by a group called Magna-Fi, and was covered by Crush 40 for use in later games when the band broke up. Shadow the Hedgehog features multiple paths and multiple endings, and this is the “true hero” ending when the player makes all the heroic choices. This song does a good job painting Shadow as Sonic’s foil: both of them are heroes from this point forward, but while Sonic is more of a classical hero, Shadow is an anti-hero. Somewhere in chaos we all find ourselves/this destruction is the only tale we tell. The game features Shadow trying to recover his memories and find his true self, figure out who he really is, and this is the song that has him rediscover himself as a hero.

Finally, Never Turn Back is the true ending theme for the game, and the last Shadow the Hedgehog song in the album. This is the “moral lesson” song I’ve been on about so much, and it’s a damn good one. It starts with a slow cover that samples I am… All of Me, then it gets a powerful kick that rings in the rest of the song. The message in the song is similar to Live and Learn about not repeating mistakes, but Never Turn Back gives a sense of a much more arduous period in one’s life. If Live and Learn is about recovering from a mistake, Never Turn Back is about recovering from a long series of them. It’s been a long rough road but I’m finally here/Move an inch forward, feels like a year. It’s very much about cutting yourself free of a bad period in your life and how difficult it can be to even stay put, but the positive vibe of the song reminds us to celebrate the small victories. It’s a bit more mature of a message for a game that… at least tried to be more mature.

I haven’t talked a whole lot about how the music interacts with the events of the game partially because this is a music review, but partially because it’s gone perfectly hand and hand with the music so far. There hasn’t been much dissonance between “rock music that gives life advice” and “young-ish hedgehog learning how to live life”. That’s about to change, though, because it’s time for Sonic 06. At the end of Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic declared that he was no one special, “just a guy who loves adventure”. This is when that ceased to be true.

The first three songs we discussed weren’t about Sonic. The singer was a nameless narrator occasionally fighting a nameless opponent. They were relevant to the series, but they could be about anyone. That’s what made them so versatile. His World is the main theme of Sonic 06, and where the other 2 versions of the song existed more to hype up Sonic as a character, the Crush 40 cover was more about the events of the game. As a song, it’s pretty good: it’s a more intense version of the original song, and it’s got a slower but steadier pace to it. But here’s what sets it apart from the other main themes: it’s about Sonic. It’s not a lesson about facing conflict and overcoming adversity wrapped up in an upbeat rock song, it’s about the events of the game and how awesome Sonic is. He isn’t the everyman anymore, he’s an important figure, a chosen one to save the world from this point forward. The music reflects that.

To really drive home this new direction they were going, Sega released two games for the Wii called “Sonic Storybook” games, where Sonic would become the main character of two classic stories: Arabian Nights and the legend of King Arthur. They’re both terrible in… just about every aspect, but the first entry Sonic and the Secret Rings is godawful. The main theme Seven Rings in Hand wasn’t written or originally performed by Crush 40, but for some reason they decided to cover it for their album, so I have to talk about it: it’s trash. It’s a bunch of empty lyrics about nothing with some pretty subpar mixing.

While Sonic and the Black Knight isn’t much better, it at least has a killer main theme. Knight of the Wind as a song is pretty badass, but it suffers the same issues as His World. There’s no more important meaning, it’s just about Sonic being a knight and saving people. It has a few familiar “never give up” themes, but it doesn’t do anything as well as Open Your Heart or Live and Learn. It falls into the Sonic Heroes mold where it’s fun to listen to and less fun to really take apart and analyze. The ending theme (which strangely precedes Knight of the Wind) Live Life samples Knight of the Wind, but that’s pretty much the coolest thing it does. It’s slow and pensive, making a sense of faux-thoughtfulness to cover mostly shallow lyrics.

With Me (Massive Power Mix) is the last Sonic and the Black Knight theme here, and was originally written by Crush 40 and performed by singers from the band “All Ends”. The album features a version performed by the band itself, and the song is unique in that it’s sung from the POV of the game’s villain. As a result, it features a look into a character who walked a “dark path”, weighed down by the mistakes they made. Don’t blame [me] for what I have become. It’s an ideological clash against the values in the other songs, arguing that anyone can be tempted to become evil. It’s deeper than anything in the game, but it’s shockingly good considering its source material.

That does it for the main series themes, but there’s a few others on here- a couple tracks for the racing games, an oddly placed cover of Fire Woman, and a too-slow ballad-sounding original song called Is It You. However, I think I’ve gone on long enough, and I’ve discussed everything I wanted to: how the songs showcased on this album elevate the messages given in the games.

Ultimately, all these songs are mirrors of the game they’re in, for better or worse. For that, I have to applaud the band’s versatility- even if most of the songs are the same genre, they cover a wide range of moods and messages depending on what the game demands. They can write a kick-ass guide to getting over failure or a fun little romp to introduce a game. Even divorced from their source material, many of the songs stand well on their own, and there’s a very good reason why fans of the franchise want Crush 40 to return for future installments.

Videos cited:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJYxYzxFyZw Peppa Pig - Caddicarus (warning: weird shit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JWYDUYqhlc&list=PL5F29F0909BF08B56&index=15 - Best of Crush 40 Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voI-9TdS0Jw - Seven Rings in Hand (Crush 40 Ver)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HrOjyltyEM - With Me (Massive Power Mix)

#children's media #sonic the hedgehog #crush 40 #album review #coming of age #rock music #upbeat music

[lovemesomesurveys]

Have you ever sold anything online either on Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, etc.? If not, what is your website of choice like any of the above for buying things? No, I’ve never sold anything. I like shopping on Amazon, Etsy, and Ebay as far as those kinds of websites go. If the opportunity arose, would you ever go to a nude beach? Do you think you’d be comfortable enough, being naked among others like that? Absolutely not. I’m not comfortable naked, and I most definitely wouldn’t be naked in public. I’m waaaaaay too self-conscious. I don’t even wear bikinis or any kind of swimsuit. I also have no interest in seeing other people naked. You do you, boo, but it’s not my thing.  What was the last book you read? What about the book drew you to want to read it (plot, title, cover…)? Did you end up liking it? I recently finished a trilogy (The Jack Ryder Mystery Series). Well, what I thought was a trilogy but I discovered there’s actually 3 more. I’m about to start the 4th. I read a few other books by the author and enjoyed them and the description of the first book caught my interest. I was hooked after the first one and had to keep going to see what happened. Have you ever considered keeping a dream journal? If you have one, have you ever looked back on it at all of the odd/interesting dreams you used to have? I thought about it before, but I’ve never done it. I very rarely remember my dreams. I generally forget them soon after I wake up or just remember random bits of it. Do you think regifting is cheap, or is it okay? Have you ever regifted before? I mean, I’ve been given gifts that weren’t really my thing, but I knew someone else would really enjoy them so I gave it to them. I’ll tell them, though. I’ll be like, “Hey, so I got this but I already have it/it’s not really my thing, personally, but I know you like them so I thought you might be interested” or something like that.

How often do you wash your hair? What do you think when you hear of some people not washing their hair for weeks at a time? Is it healthier, as they claim? I wash my hair 3-4 times a week. Weeks would be too long, but I think a few times a week is fine. I also dye my hair, so it’s best not to wash it too often.  Do you think President Obama should stay in office, or is it time for a new president? It’s time for our current president to be out of office. In general, do you like/get along with your mother’s or your father’s side of the family more? I get along well with both sides. Have you ever seen an animal give birth? Have you ever had a pet give birth before? Not in person, no. What do your plans usually consist of on Christmas morning? Are they the same this year? We get up early and sit in the living room while my brother passes out the presents and then when they’ve all been passed out we start opening them. We like showing each other what we got as we go. When we’re done, we mess around with some of the stuff for awhile. Christmastime this year is going to be weird given how this year has been. :( Do you like iPads/tablets or laptops more? E-readers or books? Laptops. I do a lot of my reading on the Kindle app on my phone, honestly. I have access to tons of books and it’s just really convenient. If you don’t get much snow where you live, do you wish you did get more snow? If you do get snow where you live, do you get a lot? Do you like snow? It doesn’t snow here at all, but I wish it did. If men could get pregnant too, would abortion still be as big an issue as it is? Yes. It’s still abortion and people have strong opinions about it.  What is something you want to try to accomplish within the next year? I don’t know. Have you ever had to “come out” to your parents about anything (sexual orientation, change in religion, etc.)? How did it go? No. Do you ever get drunk by yourself? No. I don’t drink. Has there ever been a time where you’ve forgotten something extremely important? Yeah. What’s the most unusual kind of pizza you’ve ever tried? Nothing unusual. If you were given the chance to decorate an entire house the way you wanted, with no limit to cost, how would you decorate it? I don’t have the creativity for that. Like, I’d have some ideas and certain things I’d definitely want to have, but I wouldn’t know how to go about decorating an entire house.  If you could have any kind of lava lamp, what kind would you have? Nah. What movie do you know by heart? There’s several. Has there ever been a time where you thought you were going to be great friends with someone, but it just never happened? Yes. What’s one of your favorite things to touch/feel? Something soft or furry, like my faux fur throw blanket. How often do you wear tights? I haven’t worn tights in years. I wear leggings everyday, though. If you had to choose, what’s the most important thing in your life at the moment? My faith, family, and health. Do you have Netflix? Yep. Has there ever been anything you’ve become interested in much later than other people? Yeah. Like with TV shows or movies, for example. Why is your favorite TV show your favorite? I have a lot of favorite TV shows. Describe your favorite picture of yourself, or post it. My baby photos. Is there a genre of music that some people would be surprised that you enjoy? I don’t think so. Assuming you have a Facebook, if one of your friends posted things that annoyed you, would you be more likely to delete them as a friend, hide their statuses, or just put up with it? I’d just hide their posts. I think you can like “mute” people or something like that on Facebook. Have you ever had a veggie burger? I had one once several years ago. Do you like candles? I wish I were into them cause they’re aesthetically pleasing and relaxing, but I’m not. What’s your favorite video game? Mario Bros everythijng. What was something you liked about today? It’s only 4:43 in the morning. Ask me later. When was the last time you passed out? Never. Do you think “friends with benefits” relationships could ever possibly work without anyone getting hurt? Not from my experience and many stories I’ve heard from other people. Someone catches feelings or you’re not on the same page and someone/both get hurt. It’s just too messy. Do you wear more sweatshirts or jackets? Sweatshirts. What was the last thing you had to drink? Starbucks Doubleshot energy drink. When was the last time you wore a sports bra? Never. When was the last time you went to a waterpark? I don’t do waterparks.  Does your best friend live close to you? My best friend is my mom, who I live with. Have you ever rode a train? Nope. Where did you get the shirt you’re currently wearing? The UC I went to. When was the last time you played Rock Band? With whom? I’ve never played Rock Band, but I loved playing Guitar Hero back in the day. I want to play! What was the last thing that you ate? Ramen. Who last messaged you on Facebook? My aunt. What were you doing Saturday at 1:30 pm? Sleeping. The last time you were intoxicated, what were you drinking? I think it was Jack and Coke. It was 7 yeas ago, so *shrug* Who last walked you home? When I was 19-early 20s I had a friend who lived like 10-15 minutes away walking distance and she and I walked around a lot to nearby coffeeshops and restaurants before she got her license. And to each other’s houses. Anyway, there were times she walked me home. What do you do to help your face from breaking out? I don’t do anything, honestly. Thankfully, acne just stopped being an issue for me when I got older. Apart from a couple pimples every now and then. Did you make any new friends lately? If so, what are their names and how did you meet them? Nope. Would you rather see your favourite band/artist in concert with 2 other people or have a free $20,000 shopping spree to Walmart? I’d take the concert for sure. I haven’t been to one in over 10 years, I miss concerts! Who knows when we’ll have any concerts again now. :( When was the last time you went out to eat? Back in early February. On a scale of 1-10, how anxious are you currently? At this current moment, like a 4. What kind of music do you listen to? I like variety. Various genres and artists across decades. What does your perfect day consist of? A day at the beach. Do you have any online friends? We have an awesome little survey community on here. I read your survey answers and I root for you. I want the best for you guys.  Would you dye your hair red? I do. I’ve been dyeing my hair red for 5 years. If your ex wanted to take you back, would you say yes? Nope. How is the weather? Right now it’s 57 F.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

[ialwayscomewhenyoucall]

I wanna wake up where you are...

winterhawk

rated: mature

~1.4k

“I should probably go.”

Bucky’s arm, wrapped firmly around Clint’s middle, pulls him somehow closer to his own chest. How does Clint, the taller and ganglier of the two, always end up as the little spoon?

“You don’t have to,” Bucky murmurs, the vibration of his lips on the back of Clint’s neck sending shivers down his spine.

Clint halfheartedly tries to pull away, but finds himself weakening. Every time they do this it gets harder to go, to get dressed and go to his own place. It’s not the distance--if he doesn’t feel like going to his apartment across town he can go to his floor here, and it’s only down a few flights of stairs. If he’s feeling lazy it’s only an elevator ride, although it’s hardly worth the wait for the car. It’s not comfort--yeah, Bucky’s bed is comfortable, and Clint is sometimes envious of his sheets, but his own bed is comfortable too. And the pillow is just the way he likes it.

No, it’s not inconvenience or comfort. It’s that he just doesn’t want to leave the warm bed with the hot as hell supersoldier in it.

But they’re just friends, right? This isn’t any kind of a relationship.

They fight bad guys together. They play video games and order pizza, and yeah, they often sit next to each other on movie nights, but that’s just because they usually come in together and oh fuck they are in a relationship.

He flips through the past few months in his mind. He’d introduced Bucky to some of his favorite movies of the 80s and 90s, sometimes with the team but sometimes at his place, or Bucky’s. They’d sit together and eat popcorn, critiquing acting abilities and writing and film styles. They’d spent countless hours of target practice together, seeing who could get the best score. It was comparing apples and oranges, of course, with them using different weapons, but they did it anyway. They’d sat in silence on slow, easy mornings, drinking coffee. Bucky sipped slowly, Clint downed his half a cup at a time, but it accomplished the same thing.

And then, after a particularly harrowing mission, they’d fallen into bed together.

Not that there’d been an actual bed involved. Not that time, at least. They’d both been riding high on adrenaline--saving the day will do that to a body. They were still on the scene, clean-up crews everywhere, when a damaged gargoyle gave up hanging on to the church it had been clinging to for decades--or possibly centuries--and crashed to the alley below. Clint and Bucky had been checking out the alley for stragglers and had walked directly into its path, but Bucky heard it falling at the last second and pulled Clint out of the way. They ended up with him against the wall and Clint pressed up against him, chest to chest, faces inches apart. They both could feel the charge from the contact, could see the blown pupils and pure want on the face of the other. Clint raised his eyebrows in a “are we really doing this?” look.

Bucky, accepting the challenge, grabbed Clint by the hair and mashed their mouths together.

There had been no finesse, that first time. How much subtlety, how much artistry, can there be in a rubble-strewn alley? It had been all hands and mouths, all tongues and teeth. Zippers pulled and fabric ripped. Neither one of them had lasted long, there was just too much.

And they didn’t talk about it after. Not that first time. But they kept going back to each other.

After the first time things were slower. Deeper. More...intimate. Still frantic with need, still fueled by that charge they got when they touched, but somehow more about the journey than the destination. (Well, okay. Maybe it became about the journey and the destination.)

But it was still just...sometimes. And Clint didn’t stay the night, because they were just friends.

Right?

All this runs through Clint’s mind within a few heartbeats, and before he can say anything Bucky’s pulling him, impossibly, even closer. He throws a leg over Clint’s legs, and begins ghosting his lips against Clint’s skin again.

“I won’t make you stay,” he says, and Clint can feel the heat of his breath, a sharp counterpoint to the chill of the air conditioned air on his sweat-sheened skin. “I’d never make you stay. Never. But I want you to stay. I want to fall asleep with you, to get kicked or elbowed or whatever when you thrash around while you’re sleeping; I want to hold you when you have a nightmare and to wake up with you in the morning.”

“I’m horrible in the morning,” Clint says without thinking. “Until I have coffee.”

Bucky laughs, and Clint can feel the rumble of it resonating from Bucky’s chest and into his back. “I have seen you in the morning before, you know. I know at least partially what I’m getting into. How often have I been the one to hand you that first cup of coffee?”

Staying within Bucky’s hold, Clint rolls over until they are face to face. He puts a hand against Bucky’s chest, the thump-thump thump-thump of Bucky’s heart under his palm, and says, “I thought...I always go away because I didn’t want you to think I was being clingy. That I’d...caught feelings.”

There’s laughter in Bucky’s eyes, but his voice stays even when he says, “And have you? Caught feelings, I mean?”

Clint knows the look on his face is ridiculous. “Yes.”

Bucky rolls him onto his back in the span of a heartbeat, and then he’s on top of him, kissing him so thoroughly that he can barely breathe. Not that he cares. This would be an excellent way to die.

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky says when he pulls back to take a breath. “We’re both probably idiots, but I think you get the prize. What did you think it meant that I kept making you coffee, asking you if you wanted to go to the range with me, sitting with you at movie nights. Have you ever seen me play Mario Kart with anyone else?”

“In my defense,” says Clint, grasping at straws, “you never...I don’t know, tried to hold my hand. Or put your arm around me at movie night.”

Bucky buries his face in Clint’s neck for a moment. The sound that comes from deep in his chest is somewhere between a growl and a groan. “I’ve never held hands with anyone. I’ve never really had...anyone.” He looks Clint in the eyes. “Before, when I was a kid...things were different. There were sometimes guys I met up with in dark places, but there was never anything special. It was too terrifying to be special. Everything was secret.”

“Oh, fuck. I didn’t...Bucky, I didn’t even think.” Now Clint wants to hide, but with Bucky on top of him there aren’t many options. “You’re right, I am an idiot. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Quiet is fine. Secret is fine. Whatever you--”

Bucky stops him with a kiss. Just a small one this time, but it’s effective enough.

“Sweetheart,” he says, and Clint warms at the nickname. “Stop babbling.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want to hide. If this, with us, is really a thing--”

“It is,” Clint interrupts.

Bucky’s smile is soft. “If it’s really a thing, then I want everyone to know. And I’ll hold your hand whenever I want, no matter who else is looking.” He raises his eyebrows questioningly. “Yeah?”

Clint quests around in the sheets until he finds Bucky’s hand, then laces their fingers together. “Yeah,” he says.

“And you’ll stay the night?” Clint can hear the hesitancy in Bucky’s voice.

“Whenever you want,” Clint says. After a beat he says, “I’m gonna take my aids out now, if we’re actually going to sleep.”

“I suppose I can let you sleep now,” Bucky says with a wink. “I make no promises for later.”

 *

“You sure about this?” Clint asks. He pushes back the curtain of hair that’s keeping him from seeing Bucky’s eyes.

Bucky nods, his jaw set. Stubborn. Clint runs his thumb along that jaw, rough with stubble, and Bucky relaxes at the touch. Just a bit, but it’s enough.

“Okay then.” He tilts Bucky’s chin up enough to brush his lips across Bucky’s; a promise for things to come.

They lace their fingers together and push open the stairwell door, walking onto the common floor side by side.

****

Author’s note: Yeah, this whole thing happened because I've been feeling nostalgic lately and have been listening to 90s music...and somehow got Slide stuck in my head. (And yes, I know the song is about a pregnant girl. Still...)

I wanna wake up where you are, I won't say anything at all... -Slide, The Goo Goo Dolls

#lirael writes #winterhawk #marvel fic #clint barton #james bucky barnes #fluff #friends to lovers #semi-public sex #sharing a bed #holding hands #i really don't know how to tag this #really they're mostly just... #idiots in love