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shihalyfie · 3 years

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The difference between the friend dynamics in the Adventure and 02 groups

This is a point I’ve reiterated in a lot of my 02-based metas, but there is a fairly distinct difference between the Adventure Chosen Children having a tight, deep bond and yet not quite being friends in “social life”, whereas the 02 group was a much tighter group on a social level. I always feel that I need to be really careful about saying this, because if I don’t word it carefully, it sounds like I’m trivializing the Adventure group’s bonds (plus, a lot of Adventure diehards will get very upset at you for suggesting this no matter how you put it), so I thought I should write something a bit more in-depth about it.

I think a lot of of this ultimately ties into what each series was about. The fact that Adventure was meant to be a series about “self-recognition of the individual” whereas 02 was about “relationships with others” has been pointed out by many a fan (and official staff too, while we’re at it), and it naturally lends to how the characters and the relationships between them will have a fundamental difference.

The idea that the Adventure group wouldn’t be the type to get together all that easily never really took that long after Adventure to set in. Of course, Our War Game! having this as a plot point also had a meta purpose (basically, limiting the number of people who could participate in the Diablomon battle), but it also has a very important point behind it: the Adventure kids’ social lives were never all that intertwined.

Again, this is something that sounds really awful to say without further qualification. What do you mean, the Adventure kids weren’t friends? Does that mean their entire adventure was for nothing? Did they go through all that only to forget about each other right after it?!

Well, no, that’s kind of exaggeration. I think to properly flesh out the nature of the issue, it’s important to define the differing ways you can be friends with someone. Imagine that you go on the best vacation in your life. You meet a handful of people there. You swap stories and get life-changing advice. You take commemorative photos after some really spectacular experiences. You swap numbers and social media contacts and then you go home. Are you going to keep in touch every so often with the people who gave you some very important advice, and maybe check on their important life events or organize a reunion sometime in the future? Very possibly! Does that mean everyone you met at that trip will now be regularly going out for lunch with you every week now?...Probably not, especially if you already have friends from school. That doesn’t mean you aren’t friends with the important people you met during that best life-changing vacation; it just means that they fill a very different niche in your life from the friends who don’t necessarily understand the life-changing vacation but have the free time to chat with you over lunch.

When the Adventure group found themselves pulled into the Digital World during summer camp, they had already come from very different social spheres. In short:

Taichi, Sora, and Koushirou were the only ones with a background of knowing each other beforehand, thanks to being in the soccer club;

Yamato went to the same school as the others but was a stranger to them, to the point people didn’t even realize Takeru was his brother at first;

Mimi had her own friend circle (see Adventure episode 29);

Jou was assigned as Mimi’s camp group leader but had no other prior relation to her, and Yamato didn’t even initially know his age;

Takeru wasn’t even supposed to be there since he didn’t go to their school and was only tagging along with Yamato;

Hikari was brought halfway into the adventure by virtue of being the eighth Chosen and Taichi’s sister.

Although six of the eight come from the same school, you can see that they’re basically “kids brought together by a certain circumstance” -- they’re not kids who would have normally come into each other’s purview had it not been for this. Which also means that as soon as their adventure ended and some years passed, the aspects of their real lives and social circles started kicking back in:

Taichi continued soccer;

Yamato formed a band (and presumably had a good relationship with his own bandmates);

Sora quit soccer for tennis;

Koushirou quit soccer for the computer club;

Mimi moved to the US;

Jou started attending a private school outside Odaiba;

Takeru and Hikari were never in their age group to begin with.

In the case of Taichi, Yamato, Sora, and Koushirou, it’s representative of how, although they originally had a shared interest in soccer, ultimately, they started to drift into their own specialties. Again, remember that Adventure was a series fundamentally about finding yourself and finding your own path, and all of these choices actually tie into their character arcs: Taichi is a straightforward person and a natural, charismatic leader, meaning soccer was good for him to begin with; Yamato learned to become more sociable and make friends at school; Sora started playing tennis as part of properly reconciling with her mother, and Koushirou decided to pursue a club relevant to his actual interests instead of one purely so that he could have minimal presence in it.

Mimi’s moving to the US is an interesting case because it’s likely because she’s often described (by both fans and official staff) as someone who is easily likeable and can get along with practically anyone. Considering that she’s constantly considerate of others and lacking in condescension or malice, it’s easy to see why; her infamous bouts of complaining were largely because she was under a lot of stress at the time of Adventure’s events (it’s even said that her cracking under pressure was meant to be representative of how an ordinary child her age would react to the situation), and otherwise she has no problems making friends -- hence why she was shown in Adventure episode 29 as already having friends in Taako and Mii-chan that she presumably hung out with prior to the events of the series. So in moving to the US, the point is made that Mimi could move to an entire other country and still hit it up with people there (and she does, given how she makes friends in Michael and the other American Chosen without issue). So thus, Mimi’s moving is also part of her own path -- becoming an effective “ambassador” between international Chosen as they start to pop up all over the globe.

As for Jou, his character arc has heavily to do with the fact that he’s always been on the “elite” academic track -- Japanese school entrance exams stretch back as far as high school, so the fight to get into medical school comes back as early as here, and since the events of Adventure helped Jou come to terms with why he wanted to be a doctor rather than just following his father’s wishes, it’s understandable that he would now be putting everything into that goal -- even if it means going to a different school outside Odaiba and committing himself to the prep school life. And, generally speaking, the other kids respect that too, given that the only time they tried to pull him from it was a time they were literally suffocating on the spot and needed Ikkakumon’s specific backup badly (02 episode 16).

And finally, Takeru and Hikari? The fact that they’re that much younger than the others in this group really is a big deal. When they’re on something “purpose-based” like an adventure, of course the others will have no problem keeping them around, and of course they’ll be happy to participate with these older kids. But if we’re talking about mundane, ordinary life -- there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest they really would prefer the company of kids so much older than them for conversations over lunch. This is especially because it’s hard to imagine they didn’t have other friends at school, too.

Not that they mind being around all these older kids when the time calls for it, but as far as socialization goes, they have their own lives to live. And that’s fine; again, Adventure was a narrative about kids coming to terms with themselves and what they wanted, and it’s not their fault for prioritizing those paths and forming their own social circles rather than insisting on being a specific eight-person group (no matter how much the fanbase wants to have the romantic image of them sticking together all the time no matter what).

Plus, it’s not like they all completely drifted apart and cut each other off!

Just because they’re not “daily life friends” doesn’t mean they’re not still important to each other. 02 episode 38 has Taichi, Sora, Jou, and Koushirou show up for Yamato’s concert -- it’s unlikely they were attending every single one of his concerts, but this was a very important one that was going to be broadcast on TV, so it’s only natural that even Jou (who, again, doesn’t go to school in Odaiba anymore) would still come to support him.

In fact, the fact they can come together when a situation like this happens even without necessarily meeting up every single day of their lives is probably a testament to how strong that bond is in itself. They don’t need to hang out once a day or week to maintain their friendship, and having other friends they’d rather hang out with throughout the day or invite to events doesn’t necessarily mean the other Adventure kids are less worthy friends to them. That experience in August 1999 was so impactful on all of them that they will never forget it, so even if they spent quite a long amount of time not interacting with each other, when a circumstance that necessitates them coming together does bring them together, they can hit it off like nothing happened. Think about how you might have an important friend that you may not chat with on a daily basis, but you talk to them once in a while and hit it off like you never had a break in the conversation. But because that strong bond is based on that one very specific experience that happened in one specific summer, it’s only natural that the majority of meetups over this are going to be based on something to do with that experience, like Digimon incidents; for ordinary things like “band concerts” or “club activities”, it’ll naturally be easier to stick around friends who have more similar social interests, like fellow band or club members.

On the other hand, this is very much not the case for the 02 group.

To understand why the 02 group has a fundamentally different dynamic, we need to dial back to a little before the actual “adventure” part of 02 started.

Right off the bat, we see:

Takeru moves to Odaiba from Sangenjaya, and specifically to the same building Miyako and Iori live in, meaning he’ll be walking to school with them every day;

02 episode 7 indicates that the Motomiya and Yagami families live in the same apartment complex, meaning Daisuke and Hikari are also likely to walk to school together;

Miyako and Iori are established as having already long hit it off with each other as neighbors;

Daisuke, Hikari, and Takeru end up in the same class (with Daisuke and Hikari having known each other already).

In other words: Even before anything to do with Digimon had been introduced (or re-introduced, technically) into their lives, the kids were already being thrown into each other’s social circles. You could technically argue that Daisuke wouldn’t have necessarily met Miyako and Iori if not for the Digimon incident coming into his life later in the episode, but Takeru being neighbors with them basically fills in all of the gaps here -- unlike with the Adventure kids where the adventure in August 1999 threw them together when they likely wouldn’t have been in the same social circle otherwise, the 02 kids are the social circle even independently of the Digimon incidents. In fact, due to being functionally neighbors, there are a lot of ways these kids’ social lives intersect, with Daisuke and Miyako being Taichi and Koushirou’s juniors, Miyako working for Yamato’s band, Yamato being classmates with Miyako’s sister Chizuru, and Jun and Miyako’s other sister Momoe being classmates.

Since, again, 02 was a series fundamentally structured on examining relationships, you can basically view Adventure being a series about “bringing some people together as they find self-assertion even when they’re from different social circles” while 02 follows that up with “so if they were in the same social circle, how would they deal with that?” -- especially since 02 makes it clear that certain kinds of emotional baggage associated with that can actually make it much more complicated.

A lot of 02′s first half is dedicated to the 02 kids doing completely mundane things that have very little relevance to the Digital World conflict -- watching TV in the computer room (remember: this was before they realized the “genius boy” being covered on the news was actually relevant to this), or having a picnic in the Digital World. Mimi even explicitly points out that this kind of thing wouldn’t have happened with the Adventure kids, but it’s not just because of the fact that Adventure involved a lot of running for their lives! It’s easy to dismiss a lot of what happens in these early episodes as “filler”, but a lot of this is dedicated to depicting how the 02 kids were constantly spending time with each other for reasons completely separated from Digimon incidents. This even includes completely ordinary things like soccer games -- Takeru, Hikari, Miyako, and Iori come to support Daisuke with an obvious motive of seeing him do well, so it’s apparent that they’ve come to enjoy hanging out with him beyond just obligation.

Part of this is because of the different nature of the Digimon conflict that they experienced. The Adventure kids had an experience that really was, functionally, “one” experience -- an extremely formative and important one, but one condensed one that they all experienced together. The nature of what the 02 territory war and conflict was, on the other hand, meant that what the conflict “was” to the 02 kids was of a completely different nature. This wasn’t summer vacation; this involved going back and forth between the fight and real life, to the point where Digimon fighting became integrated into “daily life” -- so of course you’d probably hope that the people you’re fighting with are also people you like to bond with on a social level. “Digimon life” and “social life” became synonymous to them.

And when it all comes down to it, it’s hard to pinpoint a “single experience” that the events of 02 embodied, or at least in the same way August 1999′s adventure was. As much as they were running for their lives, the Adventure kids have the luxury of looking at the events of their series as a formative singular time for them, one that they could even look at nostalgically, but for the 02 kids, it’s hard to condense everything into one singular experience (it’s easy for the audience to see it as one series, but for the kids themselves, it’s a very long chain of vaguely connected events). Actually, most of the year involved fighting with someone who ended up becoming their important friend and the other involved helping him deal with his trauma, so it’s not like everyone would be likely to have the most romantic image of this experience itself to “bond” over as much as they care more about the take-home they got out of it: each other.

One thing that 02 doesn’t really spotlight front and center with its starter cast of characters is that, unlike the Adventure kids, who either came with their own social circles prior to Adventure or eventually developed their own in the course of their lives, it’s heavily implied that the 02 kids actually had difficulty making other friends even on a social level, or at least were likely to be in a situation where the other 02 kids really were better company than their other options even for mundane situations. This is especially in the case of the newly introduced characters, who are, effectively, a bit socially “displaced” from others and likely to have struggles fitting in.

There are quite a few signs that Daisuke had serious difficulty making friends prior to the events of the series (with Hikari being the closest thing he had to one), and the fact that the 12-year-old Miyako is portrayed as constantly hanging out with the 9-year-old Iori, brought together by being neighbors, rather than people closer to their own ages stands out. Iori is particularly interesting in that, unlike with Takeru and Hikari, who were portrayed as kids likely to socialize better with those their own age, Iori’s unusual maturity for his age heavily implies that he would actually be out of place with his classroom peers (a very common phenomenon for some people in real life, too!). 02 episode 3 depicting him left alone in the classroom with only a teacher to watch him while his stubborn fixation on principles leaves him slow to finish his lunch says a lot -- his own behavior is liable to isolate him from others, and it’s thus not all that surprising he ended up bonding with some kids who are older than him and more accepting (and even treat him with proper respect, too).

Takeru and Hikari, too. There’s been a lot of arguments over whether the two of them would theoretically be closer to the Adventure kids or the 02 kids, but I would honestly say it’s technically both at once -- they have the same “not socially close, but intuitively understanding” relationship that the Adventure kids all have with each other, but hold the other 02 kids as part of their social circle and hang out with them in “daily life”. So in other words, they have the Adventure kids’ relationship with the other Adventure kids, and the 02 kids’ relationship with the 02 kids. This is presumably why Takeru and Hikari end up hitting it off so well at the start of 02 even though they didn’t interact all that intimately in Adventure; not only do they have that shared experience they intuitively understand, they also were able to start hanging out in day-to-day life and actually, well, socialize.

This applies to them in relation to the rest of the group as well. While neither of them were necessarily portrayed as having social problems, one common thread between the two is that they’re both very emotionally closed-in. Takeru’s response to negativity is to cover it up with smiles, until he can’t hide it anymore and bursts (which scares the hell out of Iori in 02 episode 19 and ultimately forms the basis of their Jogress arc), whereas Hikari has issues vocalizing whenever she’s hurt or in pain (said by herself in 02 episode 31, but with precedent from Adventure episode 48). That means that, even with potential social circles at school, it’s unlikely they necessarily would have had someone they could emotionally bond with deeply off the bat (especially since Takeru had just moved from Sangenjaya), and it’s likely why they kept gravitating towards each other (despite never truly talking about anything in-depth for most of the series) up until the Jogress arc.

In other words, while the Adventure kids’ adventure of self-actualization meant that their relationships to each other were mainly formed on simply understanding that they had a similar experience and empathizing, the 02 kids -- full of a group of somewhat socially maladjusted and out of place kids, plus two who had been on the prior adventure but were young enough to now still be carrying some deep-seated, unresolved emotional baggage -- were in a position where they arguably needed each others’ help to grow.

Jogress isn’t just an obligatory evolution gimmick; it’s something very important to 02 as a series and understanding what it wants to say about relationships. I think one thing that makes me very sad is how often its constant pigeonholing as a gimmick makes me hear people saying that Daisuke and Ken was the only plot-relevant one and the rest were forced “spares”, saying that something like Takeru-Hikari and Miyako-Iori would make more sense. But when the point of the series is about building your relationships from scratch and learning to grow together, I really don’t feel that a story about relationships that naturally existed already would have helped it nearly as much. It’s not like Daisuke and Ken was that likely of a friendship, either!

This is especially in the case of Takeru and Hikari, who certainly were vibing pretty well with each other, but were still very emotionally closed-in with a lot of emotional baggage until the more to-the-point Miyako and Iori were able to break through their shells. (02 episode 13 is so often considered a “Takeru and Hikari bonding” episode, but while it does do a lot to show off the depth of their relationship that hadn’t been depicted much besides them just hanging out all the time, it also does not solve Hikari’s core problem in nearly the same way Miyako gets to the bottom of it in episode 31.) This is also why Takeru and Hikari have such a different relationship with the 02 kids compared to theirs with the Adventure kids; while they were largely tagging along with the older kids and learning a bit about inner strength back during their summer adventure, the 02 group is the one who not only provided them with friendship on a more equal peer level, but also poked deeply into their emotional issues that they very much needed others to help them out of. These are friends who finally get them.

That Ken ultimately becomes yet another addition to this group of kids in need of friends finding support in each other should go without saying -- after all, it’s made abundantly clear he was very lonely and friendless until Daisuke and the others reached out to him -- but it ultimately culminates in them choosing to integrate this lonely boy from Tamachi into their social life. (Remember: Ken is the only of the six 02 kids to live in Tamachi and not Odaiba, but the last quarter of the series has them going out of their way to meet up.) The episode that establishes that everyone has truly made their peace with Ken and wants to unequivocally support him (with the most originally stubborn against it, Iori, graciously accepting him) is sealed off with a Christmas party. A completely ordinary Christmas party that has nothing to do with the Digimon incidents at hand, where they can play meaningless card games and celebrate the little things like Ken laughing, because it’s not just forgiving him or learning to work with him, but actively enjoying his presence and supporting him.

The Digimon Animation Chronicle profile for Ken in Diablomon Strikes Back refers to him as Daisuke’s “best friend” (親友). Usually, the word for “friends” within Adventure and 02 would be nakama (仲間); you may have heard this word from One Piece fans, but this is a word that roughly means “one of us” and has a stronger emphasis on being in a certain group, or being like-minded. Thus, “you’re a Chosen Child like us,” or, more pertinently, “you have the same goal as us and we’re in this together” (after all, it’s not like being a Chosen Child was ever an exclusive club or anything).

But in the case of Daisuke and Ken’s relationship, it’s not just about having happened to gain a deep bond over the course of 02, it’s that Daisuke now really does have a sense of emotional closeness to Ken that the two are considered best friends by default -- in any situation, despite him living all the way in Tamachi. Even though the franchise loves to put them in the category that “protagonists and rivals” usually get, where most others are ones who tend to have friction but understand each other in the end, Daisuke and Ken are unique in that they’re not like that at all. They have a very straightforward sense of emotionally confiding in each other, at worst maybe lightly bantering a bit, but they are friends before anything else, and that extends to the rest of the 02 group as well.

The aftermath

On its face, it sounds like the 02 kids are getting a pretty luxurious deal -- they got a fun adventure of emotional growth out of it, and they’re tight friends with each other at that! Well, that probably sounds great, but there’s a flip side to all of this.

Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, the Adventure kids’ adventure in 1999 was a lot more “romantic” than the 02 kids’ eight-month-long ordeal. Sure, a lot of it definitely was stressful, what with the running for their lives and the scary villains and the emotional conflict, but there was also the part about getting to meet Gennai and the other friendly Digimon around and getting to explore villages. They were on summer break, so they didn’t even really have to worry about school (especially once they realized time dilation was a thing); it’s basically the epitome of the romantic coming-of-age story. (Fun fact: Stand By Me is really culturally influential in Japan.)

02, on the other hand, was an eight-month-long ordeal of having to fight a territory war crammed into the after-hours of school, juggling fighting this war with keeping it from parents, in a fight that would retroactively turn out to be against what would later become a heavily traumatized and beloved friend, plus eventually watching him get subject to even worse trauma. Oh, and the series also ended on witnessing a bunch of deaths (or in other words, the worst New Year’s Eve ever). While it seemed like the kids had the luxury of enjoying the Digital World in ways the Adventure kids couldn’t at first, actually, they didn’t get to enjoy as much of it at all, since they never got to form any lasting relationships with anyone like Gennai or Elecmon. These kids were basically too busy trying to keep each others’ heads on straight to really be able to focus on that.

The comparative mess that the 02 kids went through, and the messes that they kind of are, means that they’re rather dependent on each other for emotional support. This is not inherently a bad thing, mind you; the fact that some people are more independent than others is a simple fact of life, and the 02 kids (whether it’s from naturally being a bit misfit or from the degree of their experiences) being the type who grow together with mutual support isn’t inherently anything bad. It does, however, mean that they’re likely to have some difficulties ahead coming out of 02 as “growing up” conspires to make it more and more difficult for them to stick together -- after all, how many people have actually been able to stick with their elementary school friends all the way into adulthood? This is especially because Japanese high schools admit students by examination, and rank by academic ability; it’s not particularly common for those from the same elementary/middle school to attend the same high school, even if they live close to each other, and it’s very unlikely that all of them will be sticking together in school by that point.

So, how did they fare?

Well, before we get into anything else, we should probably bring up one thing that seems like such a tiny little detail but is actually very important for this: Technology didn’t stagnate at 02′s D-Terminals, and by the time of Kizuna in 2010, smartphones and group chats existed! (Earlier than they did in real life, at that.) This is actually really important because of how much it does for that question of “how to keep in contact when circumstances like school keep you apart” -- especially when the Adventure group would certainly appreciate the method to keep in touch despite their lives largely getting increasingly separate. That, and even more so if other similar technological things like social media existed; there’s a lot of ways to keep in touch despite physical and circumstantial distance.

Of course, they’d been keeping in touch via email since 02, but a group chat is much lower pressure and actively encourages everyone to keep in touch; think about how useful group chats have been for connecting with your own longtime friends. It’s ambiguous whether the 02 group was privy to this particular chat from To Sora given that they were clearly on call for incidents like the Parrotmon one, but it’s also entirely possible that this is a room for The Ones Who Went on That One Adventure in August 1999, especially since they use the Crests as their icons, and the 02 group has their own (let’s be real, they totally would; think about how many Discord servers with overlapping people you might be in right now). This, combined with the fact that the Adventure and 02 groups seem to have formed a sort of recon squad for the increasing number of Digimon incidents in Tokyo, means that there are actually a lot more opportunities to stay involved with each other than ever before!

As it seems, the Adventure group does seem to be rather emotionally close to the point that Taichi is willing to reach out to Yamato simply to dump his emotional troubles about his future career prospects on him (despite them going to very different universities at this point). Yet, at the same time, there’s still a palpable sense of distance going on here, and a depiction of Taichi and Yamato having developed separate social lives and their own friend circles -- Taichi with Morikawa and Nemoto, and Yamato with Abe (their names come from the novel), who are also acquainted with each other enough to talk about career and worry about each other.

When Taichi and Yamato talk over beer, they don’t even have updates on the same people (Yamato has to update Taichi on Sora and Takeru’s status), and ultimately, Yamato comments on their drifting -- saying that it’s a potentially inevitable part of choosing one’s path. It’s not hard to see why he says this; it’s been a recurring theme for them since after the events of Adventure. Sora and Mimi haven’t been around for Digimon incidents lately because of their careers, and it’s highly likely Jou hasn’t either; Koushirou keeps in touch, but our only depictions have been in the range of business and Digimon incidents.

But for the 02 group? Absolutely not.

The Kizuna drama CD has a lot about what the 02 group was doing (and planning to do) during their little “vacation” in New York. In fact, there’s a lot to go on about here:

Daisuke and Takeru show up together even though Iori was allegedly said to be “first” approached, meaning the two of them were basically hanging out anyway.

Daisuke insists on going on a trip that’s about his own personal career with friends -- and not just any friends, but specifically the group of himself, Ken, Miyako, Iori, Takeru, and Hikari. He also wanted his seniors along, but they were too busy -- but it’s pointed out that the other 02 group members aren’t exactly full of free time either, meaning that these five have a special place of importance to Daisuke in his ramen career trip.

Even the Digimon are aware of what the other humans (the ones that aren’t even their partners!) have been up to lately.

Miyako and Hawkmon say that it’s only natural for them to show up when the group is getting together -- i.e. being with this specific company is a fact of life to her, to the point she invents D-3 gate exploitation to be with them.

The group keeps saying “it’s been a while” for periods of time in which it is made pretty obvious it’s actually not a lot of time at all. (Miyako had just left for Spain to the point her coming back elicits an “already?!” kind of reaction, yet that constitutes “a while”, and the most likely very short time between the trip planning and the movie is also apparently “a while”, and it’s very likely that Takeru’s “a while” in greeting Iori may well have not been that long, either.) It really makes you think about how often the people in this group must be meeting up to think that this constitutes “a while”...

Hikari is ready to fight people for denying her the chance to play with Miyako.

Beyond that, they’ve all apparently been regular enough presences in Daisuke’s life for completely offhand comments and actions to have major impacts on his career thoughts.

In the movie itself, Miyako refuses to take on the exact same request that she ultimately gladly participates in with the rest of the 02 group in New York -- presumably, because the fact her friends are there makes it all better.

As it turns out, despite everything -- despite everyone going in completely different directions with their careers, attending different schools (Iori’s still in high school while everyone else is in university!), the 02 group has been maintaining this attitude of going out of their way to hang out with each other, in a sort of “we do it together, or we don’t do it at all” sense. Of course, that’s not to say they’ve all stayed so socially maladjusted that they’ve become completely incapable of making any other friends at all, but there is a very clear, strong preference of them wanting to be in each other’s specific company to the point that they would do ridiculous things to make it work.

So, you might be asking: what’s the trade-off?

Yamato attributes the alienation between the Adventure group to “choosing one’s own path”. Inherently, this is not quite right (nor is the sentiment that “choices are bad” in general), especially considering that Daisuke, Iori, and Hikari already made their choices in path a long time ago, yet are still behaving like this. The question is actually more of priorities; notice that while the older Adventure characters are mainly portrayed in Kizuna as aggressively pursuing career prospects, the 02 characters, despite having their current educational statuses listed in their profiles, simply seem to have this as not an object.

Iori’s still in school uniform; he’s arguably cramming this all between school club obligations. Ken, Miyako, Takeru, and Hikari don’t have their current educational status involved at all, and even though Daisuke’s ramen trip is technically for his future career, he’s also happy to just “play around” about sightseeing (and, again, there’s also no reason he needed to bring his friends for this). Takeru’s working on his novel, but he hasn’t actually decided it’ll be his career yet. It’s not about whether they’ve made choices or not; it’s about the fact they’re going about this remarkably casually to the point where maintaining their relationship with their friends is more important than career. And this extends to the 02 epilogue as well; compared to their seniors’ more prominent history-making careers, the 02 group’s is more low-scale and community-oriented (the only exception being Sora, but even that ties into individual ambition more than anything else, considering that not succeeding her mother is already a pretty big deal in itself).

The take-home

Adventure and 02 are both very well-known for showcasing people with different personalities and goals in life, and celebrating their differences. I think, personally, the difference between the Adventure and 02 groups’ dynamics is also something that reflects on the different ways to live one’s life as well. This is especially something that most of us can probably understand well now that we’re adults looking back at this, especially in light of Kizuna.

There are some of us who really want to do large-scale things in this world, and will need that understanding of the self to get there but may struggle with maintaining consistent friendships on that turbulent path, and have to adapt by managing the different levels of their relationships and learning to get along with different people in different ways. There are some of us who gain happiness more from mutual support with the people around us even if it means not ostensibly achieving as “great” things, and feel most comfortable with a single consistent set of friends. Some of us are in between, or feel elements of both as we try to experiment with things in life (actually, I’m pretty sure that’s probably most of us to some degree).

Think about your own life and future prospects right now, and then think about the friends you may be in touch with, or haven’t been in touch with for a while, or the ones you talk to for different purposes or fulfill different niches in your life. We’re all trying to straddle this balance; there’s no one right way to live.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers

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innuendostudios · 5 years

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Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie, a video essay on how the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers recruit. Clocking in at 41 minutes, 6756 words, 633 individual drawings, and 27 sources (including three full books), it is by far the longest and most heavily-researched video in The Alt-Right Playbook. I am very tired.

It took so long to put this behemoth together that my Patreon started to dip. So, maybe a little more than usual, if you want to keep seeing videos like these, please consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, your friend Gabe is starting to worry you.

Gabe’s always been just, you know, a regular guy. Not very political. He likes video games, sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, and anime. White guy shit. The only offbeat thing about him is you suspect there’s like a 20% chance he’s a furry. For all intents and purposes, Gabe is a normie.

But recently Gabe’s been spending a lot of time on some radically conservative forums, and listening to radically conservative podcasts, and picking some radically conservative arguments with you and your friends. You never would have expected this, not from Gabe, and, given the speed it’s happened, it’s worrying to think where it might be headed.

How have the Alt-Right gotten their hooks into your friend?

If you’ve ever known a Gabe, this video is for you. Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie.

Step 1: Identify the Audience

What you need to know before we begin is: around 2013, the Nazis went online.

Hate groups in the US, as tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center, had been growing in number since the noughts, but, between 2012 and 2014, they dropped by almost a quarter. Patriot groups dropped by over a third. However, hate crimes stayed about the same. Radical conservatism was not shrinking, but decentralizing. Still radical, still often violent, but now full of white nationalist nomads unlikely to join a formal organization.

This didn’t make them harmless. What it did was protect their asses from the typical hate group cycle: getting the public’s attention, making allies in conservative media, swelling their numbers, and then eventually disgracing themselves with failures, infighting, and, often enough, members committing horrific acts of violence, which come with social and sometimes legal consequences for all the other members.

So the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers these days don’t so much have members. They have hashtags, followers, viewers, and subscribers. This insulates them from their own audience. If Gabe, as a member of that audience, were to go out and commit a crime on their behalf, there’d be little doubt they had a hand in radicalizing him, but it’d be very hard to claim they told him to do it. On some of these sites, where Gabe spends hours and hours of his day, he’s never created an account or left a comment; the people radicalizing him don’t even know he’s there.

This distributed nature is what makes the Alt-Right, and the movements connected to it, unique. (You may remember a notable proof-of-concept for this strategy.) Doing almost everything online has, as compared with traditional hate movements, dramatically increased their reach and inoculated them from consequence. The trade-off, as we will see, is a lack of control.

And so we come to Gabe.

Gabe exists at the intersection of the kinds of people the Alt-Right is looking for - straight white cis men who feel emasculated by modern society, primarily, though they do make exceptions - and the kinds of people who are vulnerable to recruitment. Gabe fits the first profile in that he got bullied in high school, and often feels he has to hide his nerdy side for fear of getting ridiculed. The Alt-Right also has success with men who can’t get laid or recently got divorced or feel anxious about an influx of non-white people in their community. These things can make one feel like less than the confident white man they’re “supposed” to be. And it’s the closest they will ever come to being minoritized.

Regarding the second profile, it’s important to know that Gabe is not categorically different from you or me. He’s a cishet white dude - his problems are not unique. There isn’t a ton of research into the demography of the Alt-Right, but there may be a higher-than-average chance Gabe has a history of being abused or comes from a broken home. You don’t know if it’s true of Gabe, he’s never said. But most abuse survivors don’t become Nazis. The things that make people like Gabe recruitable tend to be situational: it happens often during periods of transition, as dramatic as the death of a loved or as benign as moving to a new city. Things that make people ask big life questions. Gabe has concerns like economic precarity, not knowing his place in a changing world, stressful working conditions. In other words, Gabe is suffering under late capitalism, same as everyone, and it’s entirely plausible he could have gone down the path to becoming a Leftist.

This is not to make an “economic anxiety” argument: the animating force of the Far Right is and always has been bigotry. But the Alt-Right targets Gabe by treating his “economic anxiety” as one of many things bigotry can be sold as a solution to. It is their aim that, when dissatisfied white men go looking for answers, they find the Alt-Right before they find us.

Step Two: Establish a Community

Were Gabe pledging an old-school hate movement, there would probably be a recruiter to usher him into an existing community. But that’s the kind of formalized interaction modern extremists try to avoid. Online extremism has many points of entry, and everybody’s journey is unique, so rather than be comprehensive we will focus on what are, in my estimation, the two most common pathways: the Far Right creates a community Gabe is likely to stumble into, or infiltrates a community Gabe is already in.

The stumble-upon method has two main branches, one of which is just “Gabe ends up on a chan board,” which we’ve already done a video about. The other is kind of the polar opposite of 4chan’s cult of anonymity: Gabe ends up in the fandom of a Far Right thought leader.

These folks are charismatic media personalities (that’s charismatic according to Gabe’s tastes, not ours; I don’t understand it, either). These personalities may gain traction on any number of platforms, from podcasts to reportage to blogging, though the most effective platform for redpilling is, and yes I am biting the hand that feeds me, YouTube. They may get Gabe’s attention through fairly standard means, like talking about or even generating controversy to get themselves trending, while some of the more committed will employ dubious SEO tactics like clickbait, google bombing, and data voids (just pause for definitions, we don’t have time).

What they tend to have in common, especially the most accessible ones, is that they don’t present themselves as entry points to the radical Right. In fact, many did not set out to be Far Right thought leaders, and may not think of themselves as such (though they are often selling products, of which the Alt-Right are among their biggest purchasers, and it’s not like they’re turning the money away). How they present is the same way anyone presents who wants to be successful on social media: accessible, approachable, authentic. The face-to-face relationship a budding extremist forms with their recruiter or the leader of their hate group’s local chapter are here folded into one parasocial relationship with a complete stranger.

Why this person appeals to Gabe is they’re not selling politics as politics, but conservatism as a kind of lifestyle brand. They rely heavily on criticizing or ridiculing the Left: feminists are oversensitive, Black people unintelligent, queer folks doomed to loneliness, and trans people insane; I dunno if it’s a coincidence that these are all things Gabe thinks about himself in his low moments. By contrast, they don’t sell conservatism as having sounder policies or a more coherent moral framework, but that abandoning progressive principles and embracing conservative ones will make Gabe happier. Remember, Gabe isn’t looking for white nationalism or misogyny, what he wants is the cure to soul-sickness, and these friendly micro-celebs are here to offer a shot of life advice with politics as the chaser. It is extremely important that politics be presented as a set of affects, not a set of beliefs.

The second pathway is infiltration, which is its own beast. Media personalities sometimes become gateways to the Right almost by accident: they do something edgy, a part of their audience reacts positively, and, facing no real consequence, they do it more; this leads to further positive reinforcement from conservative fans, the rest of the audience acclimates, and the cycle repeats, the personality pushing the envelope further and further based on what flies with their increasingly conservative audience. In this way, they become a right-wing figure by both radicalizing and being radicalized by their audience.

Infiltration is deliberate.

The Far Right will reliably target any community that has 1) a large, white, male population, 2) whose niche interests allow them to feel vaguely marginalized, and 3) who are not used to progressive critique of said interests. This isn’t to say progressive critique doesn’t exist, or hasn’t been baked into the property from the beginning, but that it has been, so far, easy for white guys to ignore. As such, progressives within that community probably don’t talk politics much, and women and minorities are perfectly welcome to post, same as anyone, but just, you know, don’t, don’t make identity politics, you know, like, a thing.

Given Gabe’s proclivities, he’s probably already in a number of fan communities where he can geek out and not get teased. And this is where the Far Right will go looking for him

Communities are at their most vulnerable to infiltration at times of political discord. This can happen naturally - say, a new property in the fandom has a Black protagonist - or it can be provoked - say, a bunch of channers join the forum and say provocative things about race to get people arguing - or both. Left to its own devices, the community might sort out its differences and maybe even come out more progressive than they started. But, with the right pressure applied in the right moment, these communities can devolve into arguments about the need to remove a nebulously-defined “politics” from the conversation.

The adage about bros on the internet is “‘political’ means anything I disagree with,” but it’d be more accurate to say, here, “‘political’ means anything on which the community disagrees.” For instance, “Nazis are bad” is an apolitical statement because everyone in the community agrees. It’s common sense, and therefore neutral. But, paradoxically, “Nazis are good” is also apolitical; because “Nazis are bad” is the consensus, “Nazis are good” must be just an edgy joke, and, even if not, the community already believes the opposite, so the statement is harmless. Tolerable. However, “feminism is good” is a political statement, because the community hasn’t reached consensus. It is debatable, and therefore political, and you should stop talking about it. And making political arguments, no matter how rational, is having an agenda, and having an agenda is ruining the community.

(Now, it is curious how the things that provoke the most disagreement tend to be whichever ones make white dudes uncomfortable. One of life’s great, unanswerable mysteries.)

You can gather where this is going: a community that doesn’t tolerate progressivism but does tolerate Nazism is going to start collecting Nazis, Nazis whose goal is to drive a wedge between the community and the Left. Once the Left acknowledges, “Hey, your community’s developing a Nazi problem,” the Nazis - who are, remember, trusted, apolitical members of the community who might just be kidding about all the Nazi shit - say, “Did you hear that, guys?! Those cultural Marxists just called all of us Nazis!” Wedge. Similarly, any community members who say, “but Nazis though” are framed as infiltrators pushing an agenda, even if they’ve been there longer than the Nazis have. They get the wedge, too.

This is how fandoms radicalize. They are built as - yeah, I’ll say it - safe spaces for nerds, weebs, and furries, and are told that the Left is a threat to their safety. Given a choice between leaving a community that has mattered to him for years and simply adjusting to the community’s shifting politics, the assumption is that Gabe will stay. This assumption is right often enough that a lot of fandoms have been colonized.

What is true of both of these methods - Gabe finding the Right or the Right finding him - is that Gabe does not come nor stay for the ideology. He’s here for the community, the sense of belonging, of being with his people, of having his fears validated and his enjoyment shared. The ideology is simply the price of admission.

Step Three: Isolate

There is a vast, interconnected network of Far Right communities out there, and Gabe is, at this point, only on the periphery. In order to keep him in, they need to disrupt his relationships to other communities, and become, more and more, his primary online social space. Having made this space hostile to the Left, they now seek to break his connections to progressives elsewhere in his life.

This is hard to do online. The whole appeal of moving radicalism to the internet is that your away-from-keyboard life doesn’t have to change. You are crypto the moment you log off. Some thought leaders will encourage their audience to cut ties with Family of Origin, or “deFOO,” but, even then, they can’t monitor whether the audience has actually done it the way an in-person movement could. And so alienating Gabe from the Left is less controlled, and, consequently, may be less total. How much Gabe isolates is up to him.

But the vast majority of Far Right media presumes an alienation from the Left. Part of conservative bloggers and YouTubers making the Left look pathetic is doing a lot take-downs and responses. This is a constant repetition of the Left’s arguments for the purpose of mockery, and, for Gabe, it starts to replace any engagement with progressive media directly. He soon knows the Left only through caricature. It also trains him, if he does directly engage, to approach the Left with the same combative stance as his role models. (For reference, see my comment section.) And this is only if he doesn’t partake in one of the many active boycotts of “SJW media.”

In addition to mocking the Left’s arguments, they also, curiously, appropriate them. This is one part sanitization: liberal centrism is more socially acceptable; indeed, many figures on the outer layers think of themselves as moderates, even as they serve as gateways to radicalism. But, also, many of Gabe’s problems could be addressed by progressive leftism, so they sell him racist, sexist versions of it. Yes, there is a problem with workers being underpaid and overextended, but the solution isn’t unions, it’s deporting immigrants; yes, there is a chronic loneliness and anger to being a man in the modern age, but it’s not because of the toxic masculine expectations placed on you by the patriarchy, it’s women being slutty; yes, wealth disparity does mean a tiny percentage of elites have more influence over culture and politics than the rest of us combined, but the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the Jews. And it’s hard for Gabe to reject these ideas without, in the process, rejecting the progressive ideas they’re copied from; the Right’s “take the red pill” is, to the untrained eye, similar to the Left’s “get woke.” (Or, at least, the bowdlerized version of “get woke” that is no longer specifically about race which came to fashion when white people started saying it, grumble grumble.)

Take the red pill or reject them both; either is a step to the right.

As this rhetoric slips into his day-to-day conversation, even as seemingly harmless “irreverence,” it may strain relationships with people who are not entertained by this shit. Off-color comments about race and gender can certainly be wearying for female and non-white friends, which can lead to a passive distance or an eventual confrontation [“why is everyone but me so sensitive?!”], which only seem to confirm what his reactionary community says about liberal snowflakes. If he says these things on social media, he may get his account suspended, and, if he comes back under an alt, you can bet his new reactionary friends will be the first to reconnect, applaud the behavior that got him banned, and repeat should he get banned again. A few cycles of this and he’s lost touch with everyone else.

Also, his adoption of the insular, meme-laden terminology of this community makes him less and less comprehensible to outsiders.

Over time, sources of information get replaced with community-approved ones: conservative news, conservative YouTube, conservative Wikipedia if he’s really committed. The Algorithm soon takes note and stops recommending media from the Left. He stops watching shows with a “liberal agenda,” which usually means shows starring women and people of color. Now, there is evidence that the human mind responds to fictional characters similarly to real people, and that consuming diverse media can decrease bigotry in ways roughly analogous to having a diverse group of friends, which is one of many reasons we say representation matters. By consuming a homogenous media diet, Gabe stymies his ability to have even parasocial relationships with anyone who isn’t a cishet conservative white dude or one of their approved exceptions.

To the extent that any of this happens, it happens at Gabe’s discretion and at his own chosen pace. It has not been forced on him, only encouraged and rewarded. But the fact that it hasn’t been forced can make him all the more willing to accept it, because it seems safe to consider; even though his life and social circle are changing to accommodate, he does not feel committed. But many Gabes have walked these halls, and, if they close the door behind them, there’s nowhere left to go but down.

Step Four: Raise their Power Level

(...and they say we ruined anime.)

Consider the ecosystem of the Alt-Right as layers of an onion, with Gabe sitting at the edge and ready to traverse towards the center. (No, I’m not just going to reiterate the PewDiePipeline, though, if you haven’t seen it, go do that.)

The outer layer of the onion is extremism at its most plausibly deniable. Without careful scrutiny, the public-facing figureheads could pass as dispassionate, and the websites as merely problematic rather than softly fascist. It is valuable if Gabe believes this as well; that, at this stage, he believe the bigotry is simply trolling, the extremists an insignificant minority, and any report of harassment faked. That he believe where he is is as deep as the rabbit hole goes. And that he continue to believe this at each successive layer.

People in the deepest crevices of the Alt-Right self-report getting redpilled on multiple issues at different times in their journey to the center of the onion. If Gabe’s first red pill is about the SJWs coming for his free speech, he’ll think that’s all anyone in his community believes; there’s no racism here, people are just making a point about their right to use slurs. Then, when he gets redpilled on the white genocide, he’ll laugh at those Alt-Lite cucks who tried to sweep the race realists under the rug, and at himself for having once been one, but acknowledge that those channels and websites are still useful for onboarding people, so he won’t denounce them. At the same time, nobody takes those manosphere betas seriously.

And this process is reiterated with every pill swallowed: gender essentialism, autogynephilia, birtherism, Sandy Hook truth, pizzagate, QAnon if he’s really out there. The heart of the onion is typically the Jewish Question, but these can happen in any order, and in any number. But each layer sells itself as being, finally, the ultimate truth. Each denies the validity of the others; the layers ahead don’t exist, they’re made up my liberals, while the people behind are asleep where you are now awake. That’s why they chose “the red pill” as their metaphor: take it, and everything will be revealed. That’s why it cozies up with conspiracism. But what’s supposed to follow is that this knowledge help Gabe in some way, and it doesn’t. Blaming immigrants doesn’t actually fix the economy, and hating women doesn’t make men less lonely. But, having been alienated from everything outside the onion, once that sinks in, the only recourse on offer is to seek out the next pill.

And pills are easy to find. Those within the network have laissez-faire relationships, even as they, on paper, disavow one another. When they need a source or a guest host, they aren’t going to go to the Left; they’re going to feature each other. The Left is the enemy; their ideas are beneath consideration, and the only reason to engage them is for public humiliation. [Shapiro’s book.] But you can interview “western chauvinists” and that doesn’t mean you’re endorsing them, just, you know, it’s fine to hear ‘em out, nothing should be off-limits in the marketplace of ideas. Besides, Nazis are apolitical.

And because these folks keep showing up in each others’ metadata, regardless of what they say, Google thinks there is definitely a relationship between the guy “just asking questions” and the guy denying the Holocaust. Gabe is softly exposed to many flavors of conservatism just slightly more radical than he is now, and is expected, at the very least, to not question their presence. This is an environment where deradicalizing - listening to the Left - would be sleeping with the enemy, but radicalizing further? You do you, buddy.

Gabe’s emotional journey, however, is somewhat more complex. If you’ve spent any time reading or watching reactionary media you’ve probably noticed it’s really. fucking. repetitive. It’s a few thousand phrasings of the same handful of arguments. Like, there’s only so many jokes about attack helicopters! But these people just crank out content, and most of it’s derivative; the reason to pick one personality over another isn’t because they say something different, but because they say it differently. Gabe just picks the affect it’s delivered in.

Repetition dulls the shock of the most egregious statements, making them appear normal and prepping him for more extreme ideas. Meanwhile, the arguments themselves? They’re not good. (BreadTube will never run out of shit to debunk.) They are repetitive because they’re not good. They’re mantric. A good argument you only need to hear one time; if you can follow it, internalize it, and explain it to someone else, you know you’ve understood it. But a bad argument can’t convince you on its own merits, so it will often rely on affect. This can be the snappy, thought-terminating cliche, or the long, winding diatribe that sounds really sensible while you’re hearing it but when someone asks you for the gist you can only say “go watch these 17 videos and it’ll all make sense.” Both these approaches are largely devoid of content, but, gosh, if they don’t sound sure of themselves.

And that mode can be very persuasive, but it doesn’t stick the way a coherent argument does. It needs to be repeated, the affect replenished, because the words matter less than the delivery. There needs to be a steady stream of confident voices saying “we’ve got this figured out and everyone else is stupid” or Gabe’s gonna notice the flaws. They are not well-hidden.

And the catch-22 of returning to that stream over and over is that these communities are stressful even as they are calming. People afraid they will die virgins go to forums with people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, you will die a virgin.” People afraid Syrians are coming to kill us all watch videos by people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, Syrians are coming to kill us all.” Others have already pointed out that rubbing your face in your worst anxieties is a form of digital self-harm, but I need to you understand the toxic recursion of it: Gabe is going to these communities to get upset. Every emotion is converted into anger, because sadness, fear, and despair are paralyzing but anger is motivating; Gabe feels less helpless when he’s pissed off. And so, while he’s topping up on reassuring nonsense, he’s also topping up on stress. And, being cut off from everything outside the network, the only place he knows to go to release that stress is back to the place that gives it to him. It’s a feedback loop, pulling him deeper and deeper on the promise that, at some point, relief will come.

It is a similar dynamic that keeps people in abusive relationships.

When someone in Gabe’s community makes a racist joke, they are presenting Gabe with a choice between the human interaction of laughing with his friends and his societal responsibility not to be a fuckin’ racist. And not laughing seems ridiculous; everybody’s friends here; no one’s getting hurt; this is harmless. And so the irreverent race joke draws a line between the personal and the political, and suggests that one can be safely prioritized over the other. One way to look at radicalization is being asked to stick with that seemingly innocuous decision as the stakes are raised incrementally: first with edgier humor, and then comments that are funny because they’re shocking but you couldn’t really call them jokes, and then “funny” comments that are also sincerely angry, but, in each instance, since he laughed with his bros last time, it stands to reason he should keep favoring the personal over some abstracted notion of “politics.”

This is why the progressive adage “the personal is political” is among the most threatening things you can say in these spaces.

I’m not trying to make a slippery slope argument. Most of us who laughed at edgy jokes when we were teenagers didn’t grow up to be Nazis. It is a slippery slope in the specific context of being in community with people trying to radicalize you. Gabe is a lonely white boy in need of friends, and laughing at a racist joke is personal, while not laughing is political. Staying in a community that has Nazis in it is personal, and leaving is political. The personal is what brings people together and the political drives them apart. (The “only if some of them are bigots” part of that sentence is usually lopped off). There’s this joke on the internet that nerds perceive only two races: white and political. Following that logic, what could be more apolitical than an ethnostate?

They are banking on his willingness to adapt his beliefs to suit an environment that meets a need. That same need can be satisfied by white nationalism. There are few things more seductive to people who doubt their own worth than being told you are valuable simply for being white. And you can sub in male, cis, straight, allosexual, or able-bodied. It just takes priming: by the time Gabe officially embraces bigotry, he’s already been acting like a bigot for months. The red pill is simply the moment he says it out loud.

Change Gabe’s surroundings, and you change Gabe.

Step Five: ???

The final step in a traditional extremist group would be getting a mission. But that is one thing the Alt-Right can’t do. Once you start giving clear directives, you can’t play yourselves off as a bunch of unaffiliated hashtags and think tanks; you are now a formalized movement accountable to its followers, and can be judged and policed as such.

To my mind, Charlottesville was an attempt to become such a movement, taking things offline and getting all the different groups working collectively. And, as so often happens when these people get in the same space - especially with no official leaders or means of control over their members - it backfired. Their true colors came out before they were ready and a counter-protester lost her life.

This would be the point where, historically, an extremist group starts to disintegrate. Their veneer of respectability gone, they’re now hated by the public, the media wants nothing more to do with them, and everyone not in jail turns on each other or goes underground. This is also the point where the liberal establishment says, “My job here is done,” and utterly fails to retake control of the narrative, allowing the next batch of radicals to pick up more or less where the last one left off.

But to an already-decentralized group like the Alt-Right, Charlottesville was bad but eminently survivable. People retreated back to the internet, with its code words and anonymous forums, but that’s where much of the work was already done anyway. The platforms where they organized kept tolerating them, the authorities still didn’t classify them as terrorists, and any disgraced figureheads were replaced with up-and-comers.

The major change in strategy is that it doesn’t seem anyone has tried to formalize the Alt-Right since.

So where does that leave Gabe? He’s gone through this whole process of largely hands-off indoctrination - and I should stress his journey may look like what we’ve outlined or it may look different in places, this video is not comprehensive - but now he’s swallowed every pill he cares to, he blames half a dozen minorities for everything he sees as wrong with the world, and no one will give him anything to do. You’ve got this ad hoc movement frothing young men into a militant fervor and then just leaving them to stew in their own hate. Should we really be surprised at how many commit mass shootings?

This is a machine for producing lone wolves.

Leaving men to take up arms of their own volition is a way of enacting terror while being just outside the popular conception of a terror cell. There are also, of course, more classic militias that will offer Gabe clear directives - they’re recruiting from the same pool. And Gabe may stop short of this step, settling in a middle layer that suits him or finding the inner layers too extreme. But violence is the logical conclusion of an ideology of hate, and, should Gabe take this step, he can approach violence in the same incremental fashion he approached conservatism.

He can start with yelling at people on Twitter, and then maybe collective brigading, DDoS attacks, sharing dox, leaking nudes, calling their phone numbers, texting them pictures of their houses from the sidewalk. These acts of cruelty become games of oneupmanship within his community. All this can start as far back as Step 2, and get more intense the deeper he goes. Some people join explicitly partake in harassment and violence the way Gabe joined to talk about anime.

But this behavior can serve as a kind of buy-in. The Left and the feminists and the LGBTQs and the Muslims and the immigrants are all, within his community, subhuman. You’ve maybe heard the conservative catchphrase “feminism is cancer”; well don’t treat cancer by having a respectful exchange of ideas with it, but by eradicating it down to the last cell. Cruelty against the Left is framed as righteous.

From any other perspective, posting someone’s bank information is something you might feel ashamed of. Which creates a psychological imperative not to consider other perspectives. A thing that keeps people in is staving off the guilt they will reckon with the moment they step out. Gabe is also aware that anything he’s done to the Left could be done to him if he leaves; some communities even keep dox on their members as insurance. And the things he’s been encouraged to do to the Left will likely make him feel that the Left would never take him now; the radical Right is the only home he’s got. Harassment becomes another tool of isolation.

Steadily, options for Gabe are whittled down to being a vigilante or a nihilist. There are periods of elation: moments the Alt-Right feels it’s winning - or, more accurately, the people they hate are losing - are like cocaine. They are authoritarians, after all. But the times in between are mean and angry. They are antisocial, starved of emotional connection, consuming incompatible conspiracies that may at any point run them afoul of one another, devoted to figureheads who cater to but cannot risk leading them, and living under constant threat of being outed to the Left or turned on by the Right for stepping out of line. Gabe took this journey for the sense of community and purpose, and, but for the rare moments everything goes their way, the Alt-Right can’t maintain either. They can only keep promising his day will come, a story he could get from a $5 palm reading.

The feeling there’s nothing left but to kill yourself or someone else is so common it’s a meme.

But there is always a third option: Gabe can leave.

Pre-Conclusion: For Fuck’s Sake Do Not Make Gabe Your Whole-Ass Praxis

Before we continue, I want to state plainly that Gabe went off the deep end because he found a community willing to tell him that, because he is a cishet white man, the world revolves around him. Do not treat him like this is true.

If a fraction of the energy spent having debates with America’s Gabes were spent instead on voter re-enfranchisement, prisoner’s rights, protections for immigrants, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, and redistricting, Gabe’s opinions, in the societal sense, wouldn’t matter. Reactionary conservatism is a small and largely unpopular ideology that is only so represented in our culture and politics because they’ve learned how to game the system.

And I get it. Those are huge problems that are going to take years to address, where, if you know a Gabe, that’s a conversation you could have today. And, if you think you can get through to him, it is worthwhile to try. This is a fight on many fronts and deradicalization is one of them. But it is only one, so please keep it in perspective. It sends an awful message when we spend more time trying to get bigots back on our side than we do the people they are bigoted against.

Your value as a lefty does not hinge on whether you can change Gabe’s mind.

Conclusion: How Gabe Gets Out

He may just grow out of it. These communities skew young, and some folks hit a point where hanging with edgy teens doesn’t feel cool anymore.

He may become disillusioned after the movement fails to deliver on its promises.

He may become disillusioned if something goes wrong in his life and his community isn’t there for him, if he feels they like his race and his gender but don’t actually care about him.

He may be shocked if he sees the Alt-Right at its worst before being appropriately conditioned. Charlottesville was a step too far for a lot of people.

His community may turn on him for any perceived unorthodoxy, and he may leave out of necessity.

He may be separated by circumstance from the community - a trip with no internet, hospitalization, arrest - and not be able to top up on the rhetoric. This may lead him to question his beliefs.

His community may disappear, either tearing itself apart or getting shut down by authorities.

He may have incidental contact with populations he’s supposed to hate, and have trouble reconciling who they are in person with what he’s been told about them. In his community, people bond over shared intolerance, but, suddenly, being tolerant helps him make friends. (This is one reason the Alt-Right has made a battleground of the college campus.)

He may form or revisit relationships outside the network, people who can offer him the connection he’s been looking for. This may reintroduce outside perspectives. More importantly, it rekindles his ability to have healthy relationships at all, something the Alt-Right has estranged him from.

As with recruiters, it seems these “escape hatch” relationships can sometimes be parasocial; coming to respect a public figure who is on the Left, or is critical of the Alt-Right.

Someone he is close to may compel him to choose, “me or the movement.” A lot of young men leave to save a romantic relationship.

Hearing stories from people who’ve already jumped may help; there aren’t a lot of public formers, and some raise suspicions as to their sincerity, but it is getting more common, and may be the closest we get to exit counseling for the Alt-Right.

He may become aware of the ways he’s being manipulated, or have them revealed to him, maybe because he stumbled into BreadTube, I dunno. Knowledge that you are being indoctrinated is no guarantee it won’t work - you are not immune to propaganda - but it can help one resist.

And he may revisit a core belief system that used to guide him, be it religion or social justice or a really wholesome fandom, and be reminded of the identity he used to have.

Moments like these, in isolation or in aggregate, can inspire Gabe to jump. They are also good times for friends to intervene. The reach and the impunity that comes with the internet means it has never been easier to fall into reactionary extremism. It has also never been easier to get out. People who exit skinhead gangs often fear for their lives; for Gabe, there’s a chance getting out is as simple as going to a different website. Much of his community does not know his name or his face and he may not important enough to dox.

What doesn’t get Gabe out - not reliably, not that I have seen - is an argument with a stranger who proves all his facts wrong and his ideology bunk. Facts don’t always work because facts don’t care about his feelings. This was about staying in a community, and holding onto an identity, that mattered to him. It was about belonging, and that is something a rando from the other side of the culture war can’t give him and probably shouldn’t be responsible for.

The theme here is human connection. Before he can do the work of disentangling himself, and facing the guilt of what he’s believed and maybe done, he has to know there’s somewhere for him on the other end of it. That the Right hasn’t ruined him. They’ve told him all of history is groups fighting each other over status, and, without his clan, he’ll be an exile. He needs a better story.

I don’t know that lefty spaces are ideal for this, in no small part because bringing someone who’s a bit of a Nazi but working on it into diverse communities is… questionable. And it probably wouldn’t be good for him, either; having just gotten out of a toxic belief system, he’s going to be deeply skeptical of all ideologies. In a perfect world, people who care about Gabe could build for him - to use a therapy term - a holding space. Someplace private - physical or digital - where Gabe can work out his feelings, where he is both encouraged and expected to be better but is not, in the moment, judged. That comes later. It is delicate and time-consuming work that should not be done in public, but we find these beliefs, built up over the course of months or years, tend to fall away very quickly with a shift of environment. Change Gabe’s surroundings and you change Gabe.

But, instead, a lot of people who jump are functionally deprogramming themselves, which is working for a lot of them, but it’s haphazard, and there are recidivists.

If you don’t personally know a Gabe, or have training as a counselor, you may not be in a position to help him. Possibly there are things you can do to disrupt the recruitment process or prevent infiltration of spaces you’re in - I’m looking into it, but talk to your mods - but, elephant in the room: meaningful change will require reform on the part of platform holders. Tools to disrupt this process already exist and are being used on groups like ISIS, but they’re not being used on the Alt-Right because they try oh so very hard not to get classified as terrorists (and also any functioning anti-radicalization policy would require banning a lot of conservative politicians, so there’s that...).

But what makes our story better than theirs is that the fight for social and economic justice, though it is long, and difficult, and frustrating, when it works, it fulfills the promise the Right can’t keep: it materially make people’s lives better. I am not prone to sentimentality, or to giving these videos happy endings. But one thing we have that the Alt-Right doesn’t is hope.

#video essay

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cawfulopinions · 4 years

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Persona 4 Golden and the Problem of Appealing to a Wider Audience

I’ve been questioning how to go about writing this essay ever since I first finished Persona 4 Golden back in 2013. When I first finished the game, I came out of it not liking it very much – mechanically, it felt unbalanced; and writing-wise, I found it poorer than its original. My opinions on the game have shifted somewhat since then, helped along by the release of Persona 5 and the realization that many of the game’s mechanics were testbeds for that game. However, with time, I’ve found that I can articulate a lot of the problems Golden has with its writing a lot better. What I’ve ultimately settled on is looking at the Persona 4 we were originally given, then looking at its rerelease, and seeing what changed there and why I didn’t like it. Let’s jump in, shall we?

(Note: There will be complaining about Marie. My opinions on that subject sure as hell haven’t changed in the past seven years. Also, there will obviously be spoilers.)

I. A Brief History of Persona 4 as a Franchise

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (later spinoffs would drop the subtitle) released in the west in 2008 as a follow-up to the very strange (at the time) and very niche Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Persona 3 was notable for deciding to go for an urban setting, an avant-garde aesthetic, and heavy philosophical themes, something that was rare for RPGs before 2010 (though not for its own franchise). While Persona 4 kept the philosophical focus of Persona 3, it decided to dial back some of the artsier aspects in favor of a more down-to-earth, focused story. Where P3 told a story about the inevitability of death and took place in a very modern Japanese setting, P4 decides to tell a story about the lies we tell ourselves and takes place in a rustic, rural setting.

Some of the first things that Persona 4 tells you after getting to its setting, Inaba, are that the town really only has one tourist attraction, it’s far from anywhere of real note, and its local businesses are all being driven out of business by the construction of a corporate superstore. It’s relatable, particularly to anyone who’s watched their local mom-and-pops go out of business after a Wal-Mart decided to move in.

The tone of this setting permeates through Persona 4 – all of its characters are pretty down-to-earth, and though there’s some cartoonish exaggeration in their writing, they feel more like real people than your average RPG character. Yosuke is the new kid in town who struggles with feelings of inferiority, something that’s not helped by his dad running the superstore that’s driving everyone out of business. Naoto is a girl with aspirations of becoming a detective, but hides her gender out of a belief that if she does so, she’ll be taken more seriously by the male-dominated police force. Even the game’s idol character, Rise, is someone who quit the business because the pressures of the idol industry became too much for her. Most games would take the opportunity to have an idol character written into the cast as an excuse for a pandering song and dance sequence and to play up her “waifu” aspects. Persona 4 spends the first hour after Rise’s introduced having her in and apron and slacks, serving tofu, and dodging paparazzi.

Persona 4 is not perfect in how it approaches its characters – in particular, Kanji and Naoto’s storylines have gotten a deserved level of flack for having essentially written coming-out stories for a gay man and a transman, and then immediately backing off and “no homo”-ing them. There’s a number of Social Links that end with the character deciding to go do the socially acceptable thing for them to do instead of following their own hearts, too – Yukiko’s comes to mind. But the character conflicts and stories told in the game’s Social Links are grounded and relatable.

The grounded-ness of Persona 4 was what really made it stand out in 2009, a time where RPGs and games as a whole were mostly concerned with showing off the cool things they could do with their engines (keep in mind, this was the early era of the PS3, and Persona 4 was a PS2 game). Looking back, it’s easy to realize that Persona 4 was made as grounded and rustic as it was because of budgetary concerns, but what was done with its limited budget was incredible. It looked at its setting and tone and embraced them, and that helped to make the game stronger.

And it worked! Persona 4 was easily Atlus’s biggest success in the PS2 era. Though the game was hard to find in the United States due to its short print run, it was inescapable online, and the early Let’s Play era helped keep it in the public eye. There’s a large number of people in the English fandom who only knew Persona 4 existed back in the day because of the hiimdaisy comic and the Giant Bomb Endurance Run. Meanwhile, the game was huge in Japan and topped sales charts for weeks.

Source: Gamasutra

And then Atlus almost went out of business! Oops!

Here’s what we know about Atlus at the time that Persona 4 came out: it wasn’t doing good. The PS2 Shin Megami Tensei games were all desperate attempts to try and find success, something that Persona director Katsura Hashino has been fairly public about in interviews. Dataminers examining the PS2 SMT games have found evidence that suggests every game was built on top of the previous, with every game using SMT: Nocturne’s models and basic gameplay system until after Persona 4’s release. Persona 3 and Persona 4 are so similar under the hood that model swap mods are everywhere for the two, with literally the only adjustments necessary being a reordering of animations to account for Persona 4 having a guard animation and Persona 3 not.

Persona 4 was a huge hit, but it wasn’t enough to save Atlus. The last games released under an independent Atlus were Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (one of my personal favorites) and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (a massive failure for the company). Following Strange Journey’s release, long-time franchise artist (and, more importantly, producer and creative designer for Strange Journey) Kazuma Kaneko near entirely disappeared from future SMT titles, only credited for writing the scenario concept for SMTIV and as a demon design supervisor for later SMT titles.

Soon after Strange Journey’s failure, Atlus was snatched up by Index Corporation. Very little is known about the internal culture during the Index era, but evidence suggests that it wasn’t great. The first few games Atlus produced after this point were all remakes, save for the strange, marriage-drama focused Catherine, a game that was assuredly in development before Atlus was bought out.

It was the original games and spinoffs that Atlus produced after they were bought by Index that started to show a shift in tone. Devil Survivor 2 is a notably different game than its predecessor (which was made while Atlus was independent). While I won’t get into that too much here (that game’s worth an essay on its own), it decided to trade it’s classical SMT-style aesthetic for something more bombastic and widely-appealing. Many of the characters in that game are better summed up by what anime tropes they appeal to than by their own character arcs, and the game’s plot is an unsubtle ripoff of Neon Genesis Evangelion. And it worked. Devil Survivor 2 very notably sold better than its predecessor despite being a DS game in the 3DS era.

At around the same time as Devil Survivor 2 was released, Atlus was preparing to release the first anime adaptation of Persona 4. Persona 4: The Animation was released in October of 2011, directed by Seiji Kishi (of Angel Beats! fame) and animated by AIC. I’ll leave my thoughts on Seiji Kishi as a director out of this and focus on the content of Persona 4: The Animation instead.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Persona 4: The Animation is a comedy anime.

The anime is a fairly faithful adaptation of the game in terms of plotline. It follows the game’s story to the letter, hitting every plot beat. When it needs to get serious, it gets serious, and when it nails its emotional beats, it nails them well. While I’ll go on record in saying that I flat out dislike the anime, I won’t deny that certain episodes, like the Nanako arc, are done very well. However, when it doesn’t need to be serious, the anime decides to look at Persona 4’s subtlety in its character arcs, and says, “Subtlety is for cowards.”

There’s an argument to be made that there isn’t time for subtlety in a 24-episode anime, which is why everyone’s character arcs needed to be compressed and character traits shaved down to only the most exaggerated bits. I disagree. You can easily show character without exaggeration in short-form media – the entire short story genre is built off of that exact concept. The decision to shave everyone down to their most basic traits was a decision made to make Persona 4 more accessible to a general anime-watching audience, who likely came in expecting a more action-packed, high energy deal.

And it worked.

For many people, Persona 4: The Animation was their first experience with Persona, period. The anime was incredibly popular, and it’s clear that at this point, Atlus (or, more likely, Index) realized they’d struck gold. Persona 4: The Animation was the start of a large spate of Persona 4 spinoffs, all of which adopting the character exaggerations of the anime in some form or fashion. Any time you see a scene in a P4 spinoff where Chie’s reduced to her love of meat and kung-fu? Blame the anime. Further original games after this point seemed to take a more mainstream shift as well – Shin Megami Tensei IV and its sequel, Apocalypse, are both very different games than their predecessors, with characters and plotlines seemingly written to appeal to Persona 4’s audience.

Atlus eventually managed to claw their way out from under the hand of Index, mostly because Index got caught up in a huge fraud investigation! Oops! Sega bought a whole bunch of Index at this point, and Atlus has more or less kept on trucking under Sega since. However, the shift in internal priorities hasn’t changed much – Persona 5, while still a good game, is much closer tonally to the games that came out under Index, Shin Megami Tensei V has been AWOL ever since its first preview, and the less said about Catherine Redux, the better.

II. Less is More, and Maybe Inaba Doesn’t Need A Nightclub

Which, after a long detour, brings us back to Persona 4 Golden.

Golden is a remake of Persona 4 with additional content, released for the Playstation Vita (RIP) during the height of its popularity in Japan. Like Persona 3 FES, a previous patch/remake for Persona 3, Golden primarily exists as a gameplay patch to Persona 4 with additional story content in places throughout the game. While most of FES’s additional story was segmented off into the controversial “The Answer” section, Golden’s additional content is peppered haphazardly throughout the game. Because of this integration into the main story, Golden’s issues are more pronounced than FES’s were – in FES, you could just not play “The Answer”. Golden isn’t letting you go home without at least pushing you toward Marie’s dungeon.

Golden feels like it was developed with an understanding that anyone who’s playing it has watched the anime, and decides to lean into chasing that mainstream appeal while also throwing out the intrigue of its plot and setting. This is first evidenced when you boot up the game and watch the opening. While it hits all of the same beats as Persona 4’s opening, Golden’s opening has a much cheerier tune to it, focusing on a dance sequence and colorful visuals instead of the larger tone of the game. It’s not like the Persona 4 opening is completely absent from the game, but you have to go out of your way to watch it, and first impressions are very important.

This change in opening tone is only one example of the general tone of the changes that Golden takes. While there are big issues with the game’s writing (specifically one big one, which, whooo boy, we’ll get to her), most of the issues are in the little things – the new gameplay elements, the new areas you can visit, and the new scenes that were added to the game.

I talked a lot about how important P4’s setting is to its game for a reason: most of Golden’s changes are ones that disrupt the carefully crafted tone and setting of the original game. From things like slice of life scenes about the party buying scooters for themselves, to a winter trip to a ski resort, to a goddamn idol concert on the roof of the supercenter driving everyone out of business, it feels like the game is trying to pull away from its rural setting and down-to-earth tone to appeal to the lowest common denominator: teenage boys who live in Japanese cities.

A big sticking point for me personally has always been that you can visit Okina City in Golden. In Persona 4, you visited the nearby city occasionally in social link events, but never explored it on the whole. It gave a sense that Okina City was somewhere inconvenient to go to – someplace worth going to for a day trip with your friends, but too out of the way to visit on the regular. In Golden, the city and all of its trappings are just a loading screen away. Having a larger setting change like this so easily accessible detracts from Inaba’s setting – it makes the anxieties that several characters have about being trapped by the town feel fake. It detracts from a feeling that’s so integral to the game’s tone.

Also, the first time you go there outside of a Social Link is because Yosuke wants to pick up chicks with his cool new motorcycle.

The first trip to Okina City is ultimately indicative of a larger problem with most of the added scenes in P4G have: because they were written after the anime, they’re written to appeal to anime watchers. You can immediately tell when you’ve entered a scene that is original to P4G because the writing almost immediately drops in quality – characters become less complex, scenes have nothing to do with the plot or character development, and, to be quite honest, the jokes get worse. The Okina City sequence ultimately just ends with a fat joke and another “no homo” moment with Kanji. It’s… really bad.

There’s four more of these additional sequences throughout the game, and they’re all similar slice of life sequences that rely on anime tropes to propel them. The next after this is a beach episode with the rest of your party. After that is the idol concert on the Junes roof, which gets a hastily written tie-in to the plot when an antagonist says that the concert was how he found the party. After that is the entire winter sequence of the game, which caps off with a ski resort trip that leads into the game’s extra dungeon (which we’ll get to), which THEN leads into the game’s second hot springs cutscene, which has even less purpose than the first one.

None of these scenes have any real substance – it feels like they were just included because they actually had the budget to include them this time around. It’s possible that Okina City and the nighttime areas in Inaba were originally intended for the original version of P4, and I’d believe it – the way nighttime jobs are implemented in the original version of the game is particularly awkward, and you visit Okina City enough times in Social Links that I fully believe it was intended for the full game. As for the idol concert sequence, it 100% only exists because they got Rie Kugimiya as Rise’s VA, but couldn’t fit a sequence where she sang into the original version of the game.

The problem is that these inclusions ultimately detract from the original story. They take a game with a pretty firm idea of what kind of tone it wanted to have and muddle it because, fuck that, we have a budget this time and we need more anime tropes, idols, and tsunderes for those kids who came in after watching the anime.

Which brings us to Persona 4 Golden’s biggest issues: its additional Social Links, the winter semester, and its new ending sequence.

III. We have to talk about Marie.

Like Persona 3 FES before it, Persona 4 Golden adds new Social Links to the game. The first of which is the Jester Social Link, which deals with Tohru Adachi, a local police officer and a major character. While I’ve never been a huge fan of this Social Link (I’ve always felt like it made the identity of the culprit too obvious), it’s fairly well received by the fanbase and I can see the argument for its inclusion, so I’m not going to spend time discussing it here.

The other is Golden’s new Aeon Social Link, who manages to encompass most of Golden’s issues in a single character.

Marie is a completely original character to Golden, the first of a long chain of Atlus “remake waifus” – characters who are added to a remake of a game that are intended to appeal to the otaku crowd, rarely fit in with the rest of the game, and introduce large changes to the game’s plot. These characters rarely work because the narrative wasn’t built around them, and the retcons these characters introduce are often detrimental to their games’ original plots or themes.

Marie has all of these problems. She feels like she was written by committee – designed to appeal to an otaku crowd with a fancy design and tsundere personality. On top of that, she’s voiced by a big name seiyuu (Kana Hanazawa), and her plotline is used to fill in gaps with the game’s ending sequence, since the original game struggled with setting it up and the anime barely even bothered to touch it (Persona 4’s True Ending was shuffled off into an OVA in the anime adaptation).

From the moment you first see Marie, it’s obvious that she doesn’t belong. It’s not that her character design is bad, but it doesn’t match with the rest of the game’s tone. This is something of a pattern for her. The first time you meet Marie, it’s in the middle of a scene that was originally dedicated to the protagonist meeting his new family in Inaba. It’s jarring, disrupts a scene that was about setting up the protagonist’s larger family dynamic, and interrupts the flow of the game’s opening sequence.

Personality-wise, Marie is probably the most tropey of Golden’s characters – she’s a tsundere with amnesia, has a mysterious past, writes bad poetry as a hobby, and has a very obvious crush on the protagonist. Romancing her is almost mandated – you’re required to complete her Social Link to access the winter semester of the game, and during the game’s new ending, she calls out the protagonist on television to talk about how much she loves him. You can choose not to romance her if you want, but the game does its best to push you into wanting to do so.

Marie ultimately becomes one of the Velvet Room’s new attendants, though a lot of the evidence suggests that she was intended to become one of your party members originally. This is partially because she has a unique Persona related to her, and partially because the game takes every effort to emphasize how much of a buddy she is to the party. Marie’s Social Link ranks are time gated, usually becoming available after a new party member joins your team. All of these early scenes are dedicated to the protagonist going on dates with Marie, and then a random party member will show up and immediately become friends with her. Probably the most egregious case is during any mid-game hangouts where you don’t rank up, because the entirety of your party will just show up at Junes at the same time as you and Marie. It’s so obviously artificially constructed and honestly feels insulting to the player.

This artificiality feels like it was a writer’s saving throw to justify why the team would go into Marie’s dungeon to save her. The problem is that it’s also an unnecessary move to take. The majority of Persona 4’s plot is about the party entering dungeons to save people that they don’t really know from a serial killer; it stands to reason that the party would decide to help Marie without that extra motivation. But no, it was important to the writers that Marie is also big friends with the party, so we got what we got instead.

Marie’s dungeon comes after the skiing trip that caps off the winter semester, a portion of the game that is only available if you’ve finished her Social Link. The skiing trip is mostly more slice of life/comedy scenes, right up until you get thrust into the TV World to help Marie. The dungeon itself is… notoriously bad. You’re stripped of your equipment and items, and can only use items found within the dungeon to fight back. On top of that, the dungeon constantly drains your HP and MP, and the boss of it can only be damaged by using items that give her elemental weaknesses, because she starts off immune to everything. Here’s hoping you didn’t bring Chie for that fight like I did!

As you go through the dungeon, it’s revealed that Marie was secretly Kusumi-no-Okami, a minor Shinto god in service to Ameno-Sagiri (the game’s first final boss). Kusumi-no-Okami’s purpose is that she’s supposed to observe humanity and suck up all of Ameno-Sagiri’s fog after the conclusion of the game’s plot, which will inevitably kill her. The dungeon ends with the party trying to appeal to Marie to convince her that she doesn’t need to die, and then beating her up to save her. It’s… not particularly well written, but if that was all to Marie’s character after that, it would be fine. Unfortunately, it’s not.

The game proceeds as normal after that point as you approach the actual final boss, Izanami-no-Okami. During the fight with her, there is a sequence where the protagonist is encouraged to keep going by all of his social links. In the original version of the game (assuming that you’ve done their Social Links), this sequence ends with Dojima and Nanako, the family he’s been staying with the whole game, encouraging him to keep going. In Golden, Nanako’s line is immediately followed by Marie showing up, once again taking a sequence about familial love to make it about Marie. It’s… kind of gross!

Then you beat Izanami, and in the scene immediately afterwards, it’s revealed that, just kidding, Marie wasn’t Kusumi-no-Okami after all! She was actually Izanami-no-Mikoto, the good part of Izanami that was shaved off so that she could do her whole evil plot. Once you beat Izanami-no-Okami, she absorbs that evil part back into her and everything is all hunky dory! Conflict resolved completely, no need to worry about it anymore!

The “Marie was actually Izanami all along” reveal undercuts the finale of the game significantly. It comes immediately after what was the final scene before the ending scene, where Izanami pledged to leave humanity’s direction to humans in recognition of your feats. It’s an unnecessary doubling down on a finale that was already pretty definitive, if somewhat bittersweet, by making it unambiguously happy. This remains a theme for Golden’s ending sequence.

Persona 4 ends with the protagonist leaving his friends behind at the end of the year. Though the killer is in jail and the mastermind defeated, Inaba is still in the same melancholy state as it was when the protagonist came to it, and ultimately, he has to leave his friends behind. There’s a bittersweet-ness to its happy ending – no matter what, you have to move on and trust that things will be okay without you. Obviously, the protagonist comes back – there wouldn’t be so many spinoffs if he couldn’t – but it’s important that Persona 4 ends the way it does at that point. It puts a definitive close on the game.

Golden, however, adds an extended epilogue sequence where the protagonist comes back a year later. In this sequence, you find out that Inaba’s businesses are recovering, Namatame (the false antagonist) is running for office with a lot of support from the town, Adachi (the actual antagonist) has been on good behavior in jail, and your party members are all making tracks toward happiness for themselves.

A theme of esoteric happiness runs through this entire sequence – it feels like it entirely exists just to tell the player not to worry, everything is fine now, don’t worry about any other points of conflict. If it was just one of these things, it would have been fine, but the gatling gun of happy endings makes every one of those little victories feel lesser for it. Marie, of course, is inserted into the ending sequence of the epilogue to cap off her involvement. The esoteric happiness started with Marie, and it ends with Marie.

Golden’s epilogue ties every conflict in the game up into a neat little bow, in a way that’s almost entirely at odds with Persona 4’s down-to-home nature. It’s a fantasy that doesn’t acknowledge the uglier parts of life that Persona 4 was all about confronting. It’s the same kind of lie that Izanami accused humanity of wanting to nestle itself into. Marie’s involvement in Golden sums up a lot of that game’s problems, but the epilogue brings them into sharp relief.

IV. So now what?

I wouldn’t call Golden a bad game – I’ve heard a lot of people call it the superior version gameplay-wise, and while I disagree with that (it’s got some balance issues thanks to its new mechanics), it’s definitely the most accessible version. But when it comes to how it relates to its original, Golden throws a lot of what makes it good out the window in favor of appealing to a more general audience with slice of life sequences, more familiar tropes, and a character who mostly exists to sell merchandise and tie up Persona 4’s ending in an unambiguously happy manner.

I realize I’m in the minority here when I talk about what I dislike about Golden – you’ll find a lot of people who dislike Marie, but not a lot who dislike the rest of the package. And if you have a Vita and haven’t played Persona 4 already, then you might as well use it as your entry point into the franchise. However, I can’t help but feel like Golden is the exact point where Persona as a franchise shifted from trying to tell philosophical stories with more grounded characters to chasing mainstream appeal. Even Persona 5, a game that tries to tell a story about very real societal problems, has a lot of the same problems as Golden does, and from what I understand, these problems only got worse with Persona 5 Royal.

At the end of the day, Persona is going nowhere anytime soon – Persona 5 is the best-selling game in the franchise period, and the influence Persona has had on JRPGs in general cannot be understated. But I wouldn’t mind if some of the things I disliked about Persona 4 Golden didn’t come back.

#persona 4 #persona 4 golden #p4 spoilers #opinion #video games #a massive pile of salt

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hollyhockash · 4 years

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World-Class Wonder (full quest set)

[an Aspect quest set about focused practice at the highest levels of a sport or art] [full Shepherd and Storyteller arcs available]

You’re good at something. In fact, you’re one of the best in the world. This is about how you get even better at it, and some of the things that happen along the way.

This quest set is for chess grandmasters, world-record speedrunners, Olympic gymnasts, and marathon runners alike: because being at the top of your field is a peculiarly similar experience, no matter what you're doing.

This quest set consists of five quests, each with a full-size and simplified version. I am posting them in the order in which you would play them for Aspect. Here’s a quickref of the quests, their XP numbers, and the arcs they can go on:

Practice Makes... (20-30/35 XP) (Aspect 1/Shepherd 1/Storyteller 3)

A New Perspective (25/35 XP) (Aspect 2/Shepherd 2/Storyteller 1/2)

Exhibition Match (25/45 XP) (Aspect 3/Shepherd 5/Storyteller 2)

A Rivalry (30/45 XP) (Aspect 4/Shepherd 3/4/Storyteller 4)

The Moments You Missed (20/30 XP) (Aspect 5/Shepherd 3/Storyteller 5)

Arc Features

On this quest set, you will need to define a Sport: the thing you are one of the best at, and the thing you are continuing to work on. While it does not have to literally be a traditional sport, it is competitive and easily measurable. (Thus, pure mathematics research isn’t really appropriate; it has to be Math Olympiad.) Usually it is also a thing where you are ultimately a solo competitor. (Team sports, for example, could probably be shoehorned into this quest set with some modification, but they’re not what I built this set for.) The Sport also has a community of practice - a lot of other people who also know the Skill and are also trying to get better at it.

Your Sport needs to be on your character sheet as a mortal skill (although it’s okay if the wording of what the skill is called is slightly different), and it will almost always be rated 3 or 4. This is because this quest set is designed for things that you've worked hard to get to a very high level at, and I believe that this kind of work must be done on the mortal level. A few people may get away with the skill at 2, if it’s backed by a Bondfliction or miracle that makes you The Very Best, or if it’s something absurdly niche like speedrunning Action 52’s The Cheetahmen, but that’s not recommended.

Also, your Sport is something you genuinely love pursuing. This is something you willingly give up large parts of your life to practice. This quest set is not designed for an outside authority forcing you to pursue the Sport. If you need an explanation as to why this is the case, see the Arc Notes.

Skills for this quest are things like:

chess

gymnastics

go (the board game)

martial arts

musical instrument(s) such as violin or piano

competitive dueling

competitive magic dueling

stunt flying (with a plane, or wings)

a competitive video game, like a fighting game or head-to-head Starcraft

video game speedrunning

swimming

track and field (running, and things adjacent to running)

The conceptual penumbra of your Sport skill here will be quite large, and you can use it for a lot of different things. Not only are you comfortable with practicing your Sport and things related to it, you have an extensive network of contacts related to the Sport, you can teach the Sport reasonably well, and you’ll regularly find financial or fame-related opportunities related to your Sport (such as speaking engagements, getting free trips to play video games pre-release, or offers to put your face on the cover of national magazines). I mean, obviously you will still have an Obstacle 3 to use Swimming to fix a clothes dryer, but even then the HG should let you have a relatively free hand here. Maybe when you give up and call someone else to repair it, they turn out to be a big fan of you and give you a discount?

You will also have a Community. This is a group of people who are also pursuing your Sport. At least some of them will be roughly equal to your skill level, and you regularly compete with them on a friendly basis; they are also, to an extent, a social club. This is because when you are incredibly interested in something, and other people are also incredibly interested in something, and you often interact with each other in the context of competitions, you already have a lot of surface area to bond over.

Arc Notes

Aspect arc

Practice Makes...

A New Perspective

Exhibition Match

A Rivalry

The Moments You Missed

This is the original order of this quest set, and fairly straightforward. Your routine involves practicing every day and not really getting anywhere. Then you discover another school of thought. After that, you show off your skills to lots of people. If you continue on, you could end up in a dramatic rivalry, and might also have to confront the fact that you've lost touch with another part of your life.

Shepherd arc

Practice Makes...

A New Perspective

A Rivalry or The Moments You Missed

A Rivalry

Exhibition Match

In the Shepherd version of this quest set, your ordinary routine of practice every day is disrupted by your discovery of a new school of thought, and you work through that for a while. After that, you either finally manage to demonstrate yourself as someone's equal or come to terms with how much you haven't been able to do. Beyond that, you might participate in a legendary battle with another titan in your Sport. And possibly, eventually, you go around showing off just how good you are.

Storyteller arc

A New Perspective

A New Perspective or Exhibition Match

Practice Makes...

A Rivalry

The Moments You Missed

You find yourself suddenly interested in a new way to approach your Sport. Then you either continue to pursue that path to try to wring more results out of it, or you spend some time trying to show other people that this way is better. Eventually, you end up lost and at an impasse as to what to do next. Perhaps you are pushed to new heights by a personal desire to best a rival, and might find yourself facing the fact that you've pushed aside "little" things that are no longer quite so little.

Distinct lack of Emptiness arc

This quest set is designed for a Sport that you give up large parts of your life to practice. On the Aspect, Shepherd, and Storyteller arcs, you do this (mostly) willingly and gladly, and the bad parts come from how much of your life you give up to pursue it. As best as I can tell, then, the Emptiness arc for this quest set would be for you to break because pursuing this would force you to lose other things you cared about.

I can’t write that arc.

To explain why, let me tell you a story.

I am classically trained in piano. Part of piano classical training is to learn to play complex songs from memory. There is a special type of recital - piano competitions, in my case, although I assume there exist similar events for other instruments - where you go about showing off your memorized song playing to judges, who then rate you for your performance/interpretation and award medals, much like figure skating or gymnastics routines.

My sister and I were at one such competition. They had practice rooms, one piano to one soundproofed tiny room. These pianos were in the practice rooms because they were broken in some way; almost all had strings (and thus notes) missing, and some had actual keys missing. When I got to the venue, I went to one of these practice rooms and did some last-minute rehearsal of my song. Eventually, my performance timeslot rolled around, and so I performed the song in front of the judges and an audience, and did so reasonably well.

I was later told (by my other parent, on the ride back home) that my younger sister, when confronted with these practice rooms, went to each piano, said “this piano is broken, so I can’t practice at it”, and demanded to go to a different room, and did this again and again until her actual performance timeslot came up. Then she completely failed to perform the song, as she hadn’t actually memorized how to play it.

We had been given the same amount of training, put through the same amount of required practice, and expected to perform the same. But I wanted to be good at piano, and she didn’t, and in the end that was all that mattered.

(Later on, I encountered depression, and also moved away from that piano teacher, so I stopped. But that’s another story.)

To write this Emptiness arc, then, would be to assert that it is possible to train someone to the highest levels of performance without their consent. Certainly, it is possible to train someone to bare proficiency if you use enough force. But for someone to reach the highest levels of their craft, they have to want it with all their heart. The truly world class spend their days planning out what they want to try next, and their nights dreaming of innovations. That drive can't be forced.

As such: when you experience training as Emptiness, as something that you are broken into pursuing, that’s a story so different that it cannot be fit into this quest structure.

I would know.

Practice Makes...

Aspect 1/Shepherd 1/Storyteller 3

Realistically, when you're one of the best in the world at something, you have to practice intensively every day to maintain your skills. This isn't even time spent improving yourself. This is devoting an hour or two a day just to keep the rust off.

(Mind you, in Chuubo’s realism is not really a concern, but for the purposes of this quest set, the point stands.)

Practice Makes... (35 XP)

This is the one where you are actively struggling to keep up, and it’s hard, and it feels like the goalposts keep moving.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

you suffer a minor injury such as a sprained ankle

you acquire a new nifty gadget that purports to help with your performance and then stop using it after a few tries

you hear of someone younger who is more talented and better than you

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

wait all day for something that was supposed to be done within an hour or so, with no explanation as to what’s taking so long

get up extremely early for practice

eat a granola bar

write emails or letters to other people in your Community

wash your hands carefully and thoroughly with soap

do maintenance on the equipment you use for your Sport

irrevocably screw up a practice run or practice test and have to start over

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

Practice Makes... (Simplified) (20-30 XP)

This is the one where you’re just... practicing. You know? It’s not really such a big deal. (This version is not suited for use on the Storyteller arc.)

This is a Shepherd anytime quest, where the catchphrase is something like “I need to go to practice”.

A New Perspective

Aspect 2/Shepherd 2/Storyteller 1/2

You change the focus of your studies/practices. Sometimes you're looking into a different school of thought (studying AlphaGo's record instead of historical Go games). Sometimes you are focusing on a different specialization (speedrunning glitchless instead of glitched).

A New Perspective (35 XP)

This is for when changing your practice opens up a whole new field of opportunity.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

you acquire a major upgrade for the equipment you use for your Sport

you take a complete break from your Sport, doing your best to push it out of mind, for at least a Chapter

you establish a way that you can practice your Sport without actually literally playing through it (thinking through chess problems instead of playing chess; practicing high diving moves suspended on ropes above a trampoline; using one of those extremely good trumpet mute microphones that digitally processes it back into sounding like a real trumpet)

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

study videos of someone else practicing your Skill

attempt a new trick and completely fail at it

practice as the sun rises

calculate probabilities

repeat a nonsensical word or phrase (that you are presumably using as a mnemonic device ICly) to yourself several times

catch something someone throws at you

drink the entire contents of a water bottle in one long gulp

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

A New Perspective (Simplified) (25 XP)

This breakthrough is not such a big deal.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

you successfully come up with a setup or technique that allows you to perform what was previously an inconsistent trick consistently

you achieve a new personal best (distance? time? ELO? perfect replication of every note? whatever it is for your sport)

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

practice in front of a mirror

write a checklist (following through with using it is optional)

carry an extremely heavy bag or backpack

ask for help

drink the entire contents of a water bottle in one long gulp

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

Exhibition Match

Aspect 3/Shepherd 5/Storyteller 2

You attend a handful of events that are more about raising your profile than about serious competition. Often these are charity events. Sometimes you are involved in organizing or instigating them. Getting to these events is arduous, and the physical conditions under which you’re performing are not the greatest. But the energy of the crowd rooting for you keeps you going.

Exhibition Match (45 XP)

This one is for when you go traveling or touring.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

you physically meet someone you know from your Community for the very first time

you push yourself to appear and perform despite being sick (usually with a bad cold)

you warn the people watching you that this stunt has never been done in front of a crowd before because it is incredibly scary, chancy, and/or dangerous, do it, and somehow succeed

you set up your equipment or practice despite being in a space wildly unsuitable for it (such as hauling your GameCube and CRT monitor out on a camping trip, or having someone pass you your electric keyboard through a window while you dangle outside on ropes)

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 20 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

take a long plane trip or bus ride

practice in front of a crowd

set up or practice in a place only somewhat unsuitable for it (such as doing a multi-hour running session on some random hotel treadmill, or hauling your thousand-piece wargame out onto the deck of a cruise ship)

eat junk food

connect with a stranger over your shared love of the Sport

are recognized by a slightly-too-adoring fan

have a bad dream about failing in front of everyone

use hand sanitizer

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

Exhibition Match (Simplified) (25 XP)

For if you want less travel.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

you compete with someone from out of town

you spend a night on the couch of someone you originally met in your sport’s Community (e.g. staying for a night or two while traveling; having a sleepover; your home being temporarily inaccessible since it’s being fumigated)

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

sit somewhere extremely uncomfortable

drink your third cup of coffee

solicit donations for a charity from friends

wear an embarrassing piece of clothing someone dared you to

have a bad dream about failing in front of everyone

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

A Rivalry

Aspect 4/Shepherd 3/4/Storyteller 4

You compete seriously with someone else - someone so good that people half-jokingly wonder if maybe they sold their soul. (Or maybe they're just cheating with steroids or money or video editing, but you can't prove that. Not during this particular quest, anyway.) It is absolutely infuriating. It also drives you to heights of achievement that you have never before attained.

A Rivalry (45 XP)

This one is for when the rivalry is highly structured and has an audience and so on.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

you lose. No qualifiers. You weren’t at a major disadvantage like being injured or sleep-deprived, they weren’t visibly playing dirty, you just straight-up lose and acknowledge it as such.

you invent and demonstrate a technique or trick for your Sport that was previously thought impossible (such as a quintuple jump in ice skating)

your winning celebration is interrupted by a referee’s ruling that it didn’t actually count

someone from the Rival's end of your Community (insofar as there are different sub-social-circles in your Community in the first place) gives you insider information

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 20 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

skip a barrier

have practiced so long through the night that you find you’re still doing so in the morning

wake up only a few minutes before practice is due to start, and have to rush to get ready

wander into a scene while talking to yourself about strategy

analyze footage/records of your Rival’s past performances for potential weaknesses

clean/maintain your equipment

stop in the middle of washing your face in the sink and stare up at yourself in the mirror, dripping wet

wipe sweat off your brow

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

A Rivalry (Simplified) (30 XP)

This rivalry is more unofficial/informal.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

someone threatens to hurt you or ruin your reputation, but you don’t back down

you do something absurd to try to enhance your performance

you don’t show up at an event your rival shows up to, and they’re crowing about it

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

crack nut shells with your teeth

wake up only a few minutes before practice is due to start, and have to rush to get ready

use a stopwatch or timer

clean/maintain your equipment

wipe sweat off your brow

shake someone's hand

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

The Moments You Missed

Aspect 5/Shepherd 3/Storyteller 5

There is someone you haven't gotten to meet, or some part of your life that you lost, because you've been focusing so much on your sport. Maybe you receive an invitation to a family wedding that you had no idea was coming even though you should’ve figured it out. Maybe you had to miss your high school graduation. Maybe you realize that you hadn’t met your new niece for the entire first year of her life.

Perhaps you couldn’t have stopped for it. More likely you’d made the tradeoff knowingly, let it pass by for the sake of the Sport you love. How are you supposed to make up for something like that?

The Moments You Missed (30 XP)

This is the one where you go full-on doubting yourself.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

you construct a coherent story of how things could’ve gone differently, thinking through what other decisions you’d have made if you’d been less wrapped up in your Sport

you get sick in an ordinary, Sport-unrelated way

someone in your Community helps you out of a bad situation

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

take an extremely, extremely long shower

fixate on how you could’ve done things differently

compare something in ordinary life to something in your Sport

make an extremely obvious mistake in your Sport that you should really have caught earlier

distract yourself from negative feelings by throwing yourself into your Sport instead

peel the shell off a hard-boiled egg

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

The Moments You Missed (Simplified) (20 XP)

This is the one for when you have already gone through this a couple times, and have more or less made your peace with the fact that your Sport will make you miss things.

Major Goals: The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

you watch a home video of someone else’s major life event

a teacher, coach, and/or mentor retires, moves away, or otherwise exits your life permanently

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

Quest flavor: 1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP for this quest when you:

repair something

haul old toys or clothes to a donation center

do stretches

talk about what you "should" be doing

You can combine this with an XP action, but you're not required to.

#quest set #aspect #shepherd #storyteller #quest

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365daysofsasuhina · 5 years

Text

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Eighty-Five: An Artist ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Uchiha Itachi ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ]

He’s never been one much for the arts. That’s always been more his brother’s calling, despite their father’s begrudging acceptance. While Itachi pursued music, Sasuke took to filling Fugaku’s expectations and going to school to major in business.

Granted, Itachi’s doing quite well - arguably better than his younger brother. Lessons from age four, of course, give him a little edge. Add in natural dexterity and talent, and he’s already playing in recital halls packed to the brim to hear him play his melancholy notes.

But Sasuke can’t bring himself to be jealous. Sure, he’s still hanging from a rather low rung of the corporate ladder, but it’s stuff he finds fairly mindless and easy. While many hate their jobs, Sasuke simply...does his, neither actively enjoying or disliking it. It’s just something he does for about eight hours a day, five days a week. So far he’s managing a rather frugal lifestyle just fine.

Granted, it’s also a rather lonesome lifestyle. Sasuke’s not much of a socializer to begin with, but occasionally a friend will drag him out for something. But mostly, he enjoys doing things either with his family, or on his own.

Today is one of the latter days.

Just down the street from his apartment is a niche little coffee shop he frequents. Itachi teases him about how hipster it seems, but Sasuke just brushes the comments aside. He doesn’t much care what it’s like besides being quiet, quaint, and hosting (in his opinion) perfectly brewed black coffee.

Which is why he’s currently seated at his favorite corner table, sipping a cup and going over a presentation he needs to deliver next week. It’s already finished, but it’s an excuse to get out of his living quarters and get some liquid energy. While he can’t practice the auditory part here, he can tinker a few details and...mostly spend the afternoon browsing his favorite sites.

...that is...until he feels eyes on him.

His own flicker up, the only part of him moving as they search for the intruder. But every other face is turned away - either browsing their own laptops or phones, reading, talking to a table mate, or...scribbling on a rather large pad of paper.

Dark eyes squint just a hair, watching.

It’s a young woman - about his age, maybe a little younger...her face is rather soft, so it’s hard to tell. Seated in a booth along the opposite wall, she has her knees brought up to rest against the lip of her table, and a sizeable sketchbook is propped atop them. He can tell she’s not writing - her hand flies across the paper far too much to be anything but drawing.

Huh...he has to wonder what she’s sketching. Not that he knows much about it, but surely the setting is quite nice. A still life, maybe - seems like something rather eye-catching to draw. Or so he’ll guess. Itachi would have far more idea about than he. His talents might lie in music, but he knows the artistic side of things in general better than Sasuke ever will.

After a minute or so, he goes back to his laptop screen, sipping his coffee and absorbing back into the work.

When he starts packing up to head home, she’s already gone.

The work week passes, and it’s not until the following Saturday he can make it back. Unlike his last visit, it’s pouring rain this time. A wet umbrella rests against his chair. The same project - to be presented Monday - is back on his laptop screen...but mostly just as an excuse. He told Naruto he couldn’t go to some local league basketball game he’s playing in due to work.

It’s...half true. He hasn’t given the presentation yet. It’s still a work in progress. But he also hasn’t touched it in three days because the powerpoint part is done. While he could be home rehearsing it...Naruto has a nasty habit of dropping in even when told no. Hence hiding out here.

Besides, he’s got it memorized already. He’s not missing much by loligagging here.

The shop’s a bit more crowded today - probably because warm drinks are the perfect staple for a cool, rainy Spring day. And who wants to be out in the weather? Better to just...cozy up here until the rain stops.

The numbers don’t bother him - he got here early enough to claim his table, and no one’s dared ask to steal a chair or join him. Whether he intends it or not (though usually he does), Sasuke has a rather distance-inducing aura. Or at least, that’s how his brother oh so politely puts it.

Sasuke, on the other hand, knows he just has a major case of resting bitch face. And he’s more than glad for the annoyances it spares him...at least, with anyone intelligent enough to read it. Hence why Naruto still hangs around...he just doesn’t quite get it.

Today he’s indulging in a bitter cup of sugarless hot cocoa when that same feeling returns: like someone’s watching him. Looking up, he still doesn’t catch anyone staring.

...but he does notice she’s back. Sketchbook lady. Returned to the same spot, shying a bit from her neighbors but still scribbling away. This time it’s not just a pencil - some colored...somethings sit in a neat tray atop her table. Not pencils, and...he doesn’t think they’re crayons? Oh, who cares what they are. Either way, she must be coloring her previous shot, given her same vantage point and what looks to be the same sketchbook.

Huh.

A bit more curious this time, Sasuke takes to watching her. Every so often, she looks up and studies the wall behind him: the one directly across from her. Shrewd, pale eyes squint as she examines it before going back to her coloring.

...he sort of wants to see it.

Sasuke also can’t help but wonder how she’s accounting for the change of people. There’s more of them, and they’re surely different than last weekend. Did she just...go over what she had? Or is she improvising? He’s never really given such things a thought before, but...watching someone in the act of creating, admittedly, piques his interest.

But after a little while, it gets a bit repetitive...and he can’t exactly see what she’s doing. A little disappointed, Sasuke goes back to his procrastinating, eventually noting that the rain has stopped. Should he risk going back home…?

Maybe not yet.

He stays a few hours more, ordering another cup and an everything bagel to pass the time. Not the best lunch he could have, but...meh. He can have something better for him for dinner. Only once he gets a text from the knucklehead proclaiming victory (and whining he didn’t show up) does Sasuke deem it safe to head home.

The next morning, he wakes to his phone vibrating against his nightstand. Groggily he grabs it, swiping to answer and mumbling, “Hullo?”

“Sasuke, good morning.”

He blinks slowly. “...’tachi?”

“Forgive me for calling so early, but I wanted you to be the first to know: I’m going to be back in town for the week. I’ll be flying in this afternoon.”

Dark eyes quickly brighten, sitting up. “Really?”

“Yes. I was going to tell Mother and Father tomorrow morning - I thought, for today, it could just be the two of us.”

A kind of childish glee at both the falsehood (his brother never lies) and his indulging of Sasuke’s constant pining to see him beget a smile. “Yeah, sure - got anything in mind?”

“Oh, I thought we’d just wander around downtown and see what jumps out at us. I haven’t been back in almost a year, I want to see what’s changed.”

“Okay, yeah - sure.”

“I’ll meet you at your building - I’ve got a rental car arranged. I should be there about three?”

“I’ll be waiting!”

Hanging up, Sasuke can’t help but grin at his brother’s number before it fades back to the homescreen. Well...talk about a great start to a week!

By the time Itachi makes it, he’s been bored for hours, having little else to do on a Sunday but wait around. They immediately leave again, going on foot to simply explore.

“I’ve missed this city,” Itachi admits wistfully, hands in his coat’s pockets and simply looking around.

“And we’ve missed you - how’re all your gigs going?”

“Wonderfully. I’ve been planning a little tour with another artist: a vocalist who’s been practicing with me the past few weeks.”

“Any stops near here?”

“In here, as a matter of fact - but not for a few months. We’ve got quite a bit of practice and arranging to do. But I will let you know.” Slowing to a stop, Itachi cocks his head curiously at an open door. “...Sasuke, care to go in?”

“Huh? What is it?”

“Apparently an art exhibition - locals, seems like.”

It might not be his scene, but...well, Itachi’s the guest, and it’ll make him happy. “Yeah, sure.”

The pair enter, quickly seeing a variety of works and mediums by a vast array of artists. While Itachi speaks to the host, Sasuke starts wandering, not as invested as he’s sure Itachi will be. Thumbs hooked in his belt loops, he glances over several pieces before coming to a standstill.

Wait...but that’s…?

Still staring as Itachi joins him, Sasuke barely hears his question. “...huh?”

“I asked if you found something you like…? Oh...well that looks an awful lot like -”

“It’s me.”

“...are you sure?”

“Yeah, I…” A bit flabbergasted, Sasuke shifts his weight, gesturing. “I go there all the time. That’s my table, and my laptop -” His umbrella even made it in the shot. There’s no doubt about it: even the angle matches. This has to be that woman, from before! She was drawing...him…?

“Can I help -? Oh!”

Both brothers turn to an approaching figure, and Sasuke locks surprised eyes with none other than the artist. Her own are wide, and color lightly tints her cheeks.

“It...it’s you!”

“Yeah...me,” Sasuke replies. Now it makes sense: why he kept feeling watched.

“I...I-I hope you don’t mind me using you as a model, I...I mostly do street drawing. I just...draw what I see. I was lucky to catch you twice, and so quickly! I just finished this piece this morning, I almost couldn’t bring it…” A hand tucks stray hair behind her ear. “...I’m Hinata.”

“Sasuke. Nice to actually meet you, I guess.”

“L-likewise!”

Behind him, Itachi gives a knowing smile. “May I ask, are your works for sale?”

“Oh, well...no, technically not.”

“Ah...forgive me.”

“No no, that’s okay! Would you...like to buy it…?”

“It’s rare to see my brother captured in such a way,” Itachi muses, earning an embarrassed glower from Sasuke. “You truly did a fantastic job. Of course, if you’d like to keep it -”

“No, I understand! I’m just delighted you f-found it! This city’s rather big, after all…”

“As am I. And I’m always a fan of supporting local creators. So, may we negotiate…?”

As the talk turns to money, Sasuke scowls and sulks off to one side, eyeing her other works. True to her word, most are just...captures of various local places and people. Though stylized to a point, he can still recognize quite a few places just at a glance, and further looking shows a great amount of detail.

Signing a check, Itachi hands it over with a smile. “A pleasure, miss Hyūga. I do hope you keep creating - your works are lovely.”

She ducks her head shyly, and then glances to the slip, eyes going wide. “...but you said -?”

“Please, consider it a well-deserved tip. I know enough artists to know they often undersell themselves. And yours is a talent worth supporting.”

Looking awed, Hinata breaks into a soft smile. “I’ll...go see about packaging this for you. Thank you s-so much.”

Itachi nods, turning as his brother steps back up. “Are you truly so opposed to the piece?”

“No...I’m not. It’s just kinda weird.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. Just is.”

“Well, it’s clear your territories overlap - perhaps she’ll be able to draw you again, hm?”

He doesn’t have an answer for that.

Returning with the framed artwork carefully wrapped and bagged, Hinata hands it over with another thank you. “Um...s-sorry again for stealing your visage.”

“Don’t worry about it. I guess now I get to see what you were working so hard on.”

Another light blush pinkens her cheeks. “I’ve wanted to do a portrait in there for ages...you just had the right...look, I guess.”

That earns a small snort. “Suppose I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Miss Hyūga, might I have your cell number in case I find any other potential investors in you and your work?”

“Oh! Um...sure!”

“Sasuke, you should do the same.”

“What?”

His brother gives him a look that clearly says not to question him. “It’s never a bad idea to stay connected. Besides, given I’ve taken her only copy, Hinata might want to arrange another portrait.”

Squinting suspiciously, Sasuke nonetheless agrees, exchanging digits.

“Thank you so much, miss Hyūga.”

“Oh, please just call me Hinata.”

“Very well - I hope you enjoy your evening.”

Once the brothers take their leave, Sasuke rounds on Itachi. “What was that all about?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“All of that!”

“What, I can’t buy art of you?”

“No, that’s - you were - and the number -”

“It’s clear she finds you intriguing,” Itachi replies briskly. “And not just in a superficial way. She could have captured anyone in that shop, but she chose you. Hinata saw something that caught her eye about you that no one else had managed. I just thought keeping a person with that impression of you close might be...wise.”

“...you’re setting me up.”

“Connections, Sasuke - they’re important.” Itachi gives him a smile, eyes twinkling. “Don’t they teach you that in your line of work?”

Having no retort, Sasuke just stuffs his hands in his pockets. “...c’mon, we’ve still got daylight to burn.”

“If you insist.”

Oof, this is...very very long compared to most entries, and now it's super late, I gotta get hopping to bed xD I got the idea not long after reading the prompt, and honestly thought it wouldn't be long enough...and then it ended up twice as long as most drabbles I've done for this challenge! But it was a cute concept, even when I realized it was gonna sop up the rest of my evening, haha! Anyway, I'm wiped, so I better call it. Hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading!

#sasuhina #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #uchiha itachi #best years of your life [ au ]#365daysofsasuhina

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Upcoming Must-See Movies in 2021

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It’s 2021. Finally. If you’re reading this, it means you’ve hopefully gotten through the wreckage of last year unscathed and are ready for a brighter future. And if you’re also a movie lover, this certainly includes a trip (or 20) back to the cinemas. Although a month into the new year, and our hope for a better tomorrow has faded a bit–especially with new COVID variants spreading. Yet there is reason to remain warily optimistic. Yes, including about theaters

For nearly a year now cinemas have remained largely dormant, and given the already shuffling 2021 film calendar, that will continue for the foreseeable future. However, studios (with one notable exception) remain mostly committed to getting new films to the theater this year, and the current 2021 film slate gives reasons to be hopeful.

Indeed, 2021 promises many of the most anticipated films from last year, plus new surprises. From the superhero variety like Black Widow to the art house with Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, 2021 could be a much needed respite. So below is just a sampling of what to expect from the year to come…

Judas and the Black Messiah

February 12

It’s kind of hard to wrap one’s head around the annual “Oscar race” in a year when little trophies don’t seem so damn important, but Warner Bros. feels strongly enough about this movie that it’s getting it into theaters and on HBO Max right in the thick of the pandemic-delayed awards season. And judging by the marketing, it’s bringing heat with it.

Shaka King directs and co-writes the story of Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), who became the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and was murdered in cold blood by police in 1969. LaKeith Stanfield plays William O’Neal, a petty criminal who agreed to help the FBI take Hampton down. This promises to be incendiary, relevant material — and it’s almost here.

Minari

February 12

Lee Isaac Chung directs Steven Yeun–now fully shaking off his years as Glenn on The Walking Dead–in this semi-autobiographical film about a South Korean family struggling to settle down in rural America in the 1980s. Premiering nearly a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, Minari had a quick one-week virtual release in December, with a number of critics placing it on their Top 10 lists for 2020.

Its story of immigration and assimilation currently has a perfect 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics lauding its heart, grace, and sensitivity. A few of ours also considered it among 2020’s best.

Nomadland

February 19

Utilizing both actors and real people, director Chloé Zhao (The Rider, Marvel’s upcoming Eternals) chronicles the lives of America’s “forgotten people” as they travel the West searching for work, companionship and community. A brilliant Frances McDormand stars as Fern, a woman in her mid-60s who lost her husband, her house, and her entire previous existence when her town literally vanished following the closure of its sole factory.

Zhao’s film quietly flows from despair to optimism and back to despair again, the hardscrabble lives of its itinerant cast (many of them actual nomads) foregrounded against often stunning–if lonely–vistas of the vast, empty American countryside.

I Care a Lot

February 19

A solid cast, led by Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Chris Messina, and Dianne Wiest, star in this satirical crime drama from director J. Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed). Pike plays Marla, a con artist whose scam is getting herself named legal guardian of her elderly marks and then draining their assets while sticking them in nursing homes. She’s ruthless and efficient at it, until she meets a woman (Wiest) whose ties to a crime boss (Dinklage) may prove too much of a challenge for the wily Marla. It was one of our favorites out of Toronto last year.

The Father

February 26

Anthony Hopkins gives a mesmerizing, and deeply tragic, performance as Anthony, an elderly British man whose descent into dementia is reflected by the film itself, which plays with time, setting, and continuity until both Anthony and the viewer can no longer tell what is real and what is not. Olivia Colman is equally moving as his daughter, who wants to get on with her own life even as she watches her father’s disintegrate in front of her.

We saw The Father last year at the AFI Fest and it ended up being a favorite of 2020; Hopkins is unforgettable in this bracing, heartbreaking work, which is stunningly adapted by first-time director Florian Zeller from his own award-winning play.

Chaos Walking

March 5

This constantly postponed sci-fi project has become one of those “we’ll believe it when we see it” films until it actually comes out. Shot nearly three and a half years ago by director Doug Liman, Chaos Walking has undergone extensive reshoots and was at one point reportedly deemed unreleasable.

Based on the book The Knife of Letting Go, it places Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Far From Home) and Daisy Ridley (The Rise of Skywalker) on a distant planet where Ridley, the only woman, can hear the thoughts of all the men due to a mysterious force called the Noise.

Raya and the Last Dragon

March 5

Longtime Walt Disney Animation Studios head of story, Paul Briggs (Frozen), will make his directorial debut on this original Disney animated fantasy, which draws upon Eastern traditions to tell the tale of a young warrior who goes searching for the world’s last dragon in the mysterious land of Kumandra. Cassie Steele will voice Raya while Awkwafina (The Farewell) will portray Sisu the dragon.

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Warner Bros. and HBO Max 2021 Film Slate Destroys Theatrical Window

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Disney Animation has been nearly invincible in recent years with other hits like Moana and Zootopia, so watch for this one to be another major hit for the Mouse.

Coming 2 America

March 5

The notion of whether nostalgia-based properties are still viable has cropped up repeatedly in the last few years. However, streaming, which is where Coming 2 America finds itself headed post-COVID, makes golden oldies much safer. This sequel—based on a 32-year-old comedy that was one of Eddie Murphy’s most financially successful hits—sees Murphy back as Prince Akeem, of course, along with Arsenio Hall returning as his loyal friend Semmi.

The plot revolves around Akeem’s discovery, just as he is about to be crowned king, that he has a long-lost son living in the States (we’re not sure how that happened, but let’s just go with it). That, of course, necessitates another visit to our shores—that is, if Akeem and Semmi presumably don’t get stopped at the border. The film reunites Murphy with Dolemite is My Name director Craig Brewer, so perhaps they can make some cutting-edge social comedy out of this?

Godzilla vs. Kong

March 26

Here we are, at last at the big punch up between Godzilla and King Kong. They both wear a crown, but in the film that Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures have been building toward since 2014, only one can walk away with the title of the king of all the monsters.

Admittedly, not everyone loved the last American Godzilla movie, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but we sure did. Still, Godzilla vs. Kong should be a different animal with Adam Wingard (You’re Next, The Guest) taking over directorial duties. It also has a stacked cast with some familiar faces (Kyle Chandler, Millie Bobby Brown, and Ziyi Zhang) and plenty of new ones (Alexander Skarsgård, Eiza González, Danai Gurira, Lance Reddick, and more).

It’ll probably be better than the original, right? And hey with its HBO Max rollout, questions of a poor box office run sure are conveniently mooted!

Mortal Kombat

April 16

Not to be deterred by the relative failure of Sony’s Monster Hunter in theaters at the tail end of 2020, Warner Bros. is giving this venerable video game franchise another shot at live-action cinematic glory after two previous tries in the 1990s. Director Simon McQuoid makes his feature debut while the script comes from Dave Callaham (Wonder Woman 1984, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and the cast includes a number of actors you’ve seen in other films but can’t quite place.

The plot? Who knows! But we’re guessing it will feature gods, demons, and warriors battling for control of the 18 realms in various fighting tournaments. What else do you want?

Black Widow

May 7

Some would charitably say it arrives a decade late, but Black Widow is finally getting her own movie. This is fairly remarkable considering she became street pizza in Avengers: Endgame, but this movie fits snugly between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. It also promises to be the most pared down Marvel Studios movie since 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and that’s a good thing.

In the film, Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff is on the run after burning her bridges with the U.S. government and UN. This brings her back to the spy games she thought she’d escaped from her youth, and back in the orbit of her “sister” Yelena (Florence Pugh). Old wounds are ripped open, old Soviet foes, including David Harbour as the Red Guardian and Rachel Weisz as Nat and Yelena’s girlhood instructor, are revealed, and many a fight sequence with minimal CGI will be executed.

How’s that for a real start to Phase 4? Of course that’s still assuming this comes out before The Eternals after it was delayed, again, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Those Who Wish Me Dead

May 14

Taylor Sheridan is among the best writers in moviemaking right now. Having all but cornered the niche around modern Westerns, he’s responsible for the scripts for Hell or High Water, both Sicarios, and Wind River, the latter of which he also directed. He’s back in the director’s chair again for Those Who Wish Me Dead, which has been described as a “female-driven neo-Western” set in the Montana wilderness. It is there a teenager witnesses a murder, and he finds himself on the run from twin assassins, and in need of protection from a likely paranoid survivalist. The film stars Angelina Jolie, Jon Bernthal, Nicholas Hoult, Tyler Perry, Aidan Gillen, Jake Weber, and Finn Little.

Spiral

May 21

Chris Rock has co-written the story for a new take on the Saw franchise. Never thought we’d write those words! The fact that it also stars Rock, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, is likewise head-turning. It looks like they’re going for legitimate horror with Darren Lynn Bousman attached to direct after helming three of the Saw sequels, and its grisly pre-COVID trailer from last year.

Hopefully this will be better than most of the franchise that came before, and given the heavily David Fincher-influenced tone of the first trailer, we’re willing to cross our fingers and play this game.

Free Guy

May 21

What would you do if you discovered that you were just a background character in an open world video game—and that the game was soon about to go offline? That’s the premise of this existential sci-fi comedy from director Shawn Levy, best known for the Night at the Museum series and as an executive producer and director on Stranger Things. Ryan Reynolds stars as Guy, a bank teller who discovers that his life is not what he thought it was, and in fact isn’t even real—or is it? We’ve seen a preview of footage, so we’d suggest you think Truman Show, if Truman was trapped in Grand Theft Auto.

May 28

Just when you thought this never-say-die franchise had shown us everything it could possibly dream up, it ups the stakes one more time: the ninth entry in the Fast and Furious saga (excluding 2019’s Hobbs and Shaw) will reportedly take Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his cohorts into space as they battle Dom’s long-lost brother Jakob (John Cena, making a long-overdue debut in this series). Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Jordana Brewster, Helen Mirren, and Charlize Theron all also return, as does director Justin Lin, who took a two-film break from his signature series. Expect to see the required physics-defying stunts, logic-defying action and even more talk about “family” than usual.

Cruella

May 28

Since Disney has already made an animated 101 Dalmatians in 1961 and a live-action remake in 1996, it is apparently time to tell the story again Maleficent-style. Hence we now focus on the viewpoint of iconic villainess Cruella de Vil, played this time by Emma Stone. She’s joined in the movie by Emma Thompson, Paul Walter Hauser, and Mark Strong, with direction handled by Craig Gillespie (sort of a step down from 2017’s I, Tonya, if you ask us).

The story has been updated to the 1970s, but Cruella–now a fashion designer–still covets the fur of dogs for her creations. This is a Mouse House joint, so don’t expect it to get too dark, and don’t be completely surprised if it ends up as a premium on Disney+ in lieu of its already delayed theatrical release.

Infinite

May 28

This sci-fi yarn from director Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer) stars Mark Wahlberg as a man experiencing what he thinks are hallucinations, but which turn out to be memories from past lives. He soon learns that there is a secret society of people just like him, except that they have total recall of their past identities and have acted to change the course of history throughout the centuries.

Based on the novel The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz, this was originally a post-Marvel vehicle for Chris Evans. He dropped out, and the combination of Fuqua and Wahlberg hints at something more action-oriented than the rather cerebral premise suggests. The film also stars Sophie Cookson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Dylan O’Brien.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

June 4

James Wan is already directing a new horror film this year so he’s stepping away from the directorial duties on the third film based on the paranormal investigations of Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). That task has fallen to Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona), so expect plenty of the same Wan Universe touches: heavy atmosphere, superb use of sound, and shocking, eerie visuals.

Details are scarce, but the plot—like the other two Conjuring films—is taken from the true-life case of a man who went on trial for murder and said as his defense that he was possessed by a demon when he committed his crimes. That’s all we know for now, except that, intriguingly, Mitchell Hoog and Megan Ashley Brown have been cast as younger versions of the Warrens.

In the Heights

June 18

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Broadway hit musical gets the big screen treatment (by way of HBO Max) from director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians). Set in Washington Heights over the course of a three-day heat wave, the plot and ensemble cast carry echoes of both Rent and Do the Right Thing. While a success on the stage—if not quite the cultural phenomenon that Miranda’s next show, Hamilton—it remains to be seen whether In the Heights can strike a chord with streaming audiences.

Luca

June 18

Continuing its current run of all-new, non-sequel original films started in 2020 with Onward and Soul, Pixar will unveil Luca this summer. Directed by Enrico Casarosa–making his feature debut after 18 years with the animation powerhouse–the film tells the story of a friendship between a human being and a sea monster (disguised as another human child) on the Italian Riviera. That’s about all we have on it for now, except that the cast includes Drake Bell and John Ratzenberger.

Pixar’s recent track record has included masterpieces like Inside Out, solid sequels like Toy Story 4, and shakier propositions like The Incredibles 2, but we don’t have any indication yet of what to expect from Luca.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

June 25

Can anyone honestly say that 2018’s Venom was a “good” movie? A batshit insane movie, yes, and perhaps even an entertaining one in its own nutty way, but good or not, it made nearly a billion bucks at the box office so here we are.

Tom Hardy will return to peel more scenery down with his teeth as both Eddie Brock and his fanged, towering alien symbiote while Woody Harrelson will fulfill his destiny and play Cletus Kasady, aka Carnage, the perfected hybrid of psychopathic serial killer and red pile of vicious alien goo. Let the carnage begin!

Top Gun: Maverick

July 2

It’s been 34 years since Tom Cruise first soared through the skies as hotshot pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, and he’ll take to the air once more in a sequel that also features Val Kilmer, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm, and more. The flying and action sequences from director Joseph Kosinski (who worked with Cruise on Oblivion) will undoubtedly be first-rate, but the studio (Paramount) has to be nervous after seeing one nostalgia-based franchise after another (Blade Runner, Charlie’s Angels, Terminator, The Shining) crash and burn recently.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

July 10

With Shang-Chi, Marvel Studios hopes to do for Asian culture what the company did with the groundbreaking Black Panther nearly three years ago: create another superhero epic with a non-white lead and a mythology steeped in a non-Western culture. Simu Liu stars in the title role as the “master of kung fu,” who must do battle with the nefarious Ten Rings organization and its leader, the Mandarin (the “real” one, not the imposter from Iron Man 3, played here by the legendary Tony Leung). Director Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy) will open up a whole new corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with this story and character, whose origins stretch back to 1973.

The Forever Purge

July 9

One day nearly eight years ago, you went to see a low-budget dystopian sci-fi/horror flick called The Purge, and the next thing you know, it’s 2021 and you’re getting ready to see the fifth and allegedly final entry in the series (which has also spawned a TV show). Written by creator James DeMonaco and directed by Everardo Gout, the film will once again focus on the title event, an annual 12-hour national bacchanal in which all crime, even murder, is legal. How this ends the story, and where and when it falls into the context of the rest of the films, remains a secret for now. Filming was completed back in February 2020, with the film’s release delayed from last summer by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Space Jam: A New Legacy

July 16

There are two types of folks when it comes to the original Space Jam of 1996: those who were between the ages of three and 11 when it came out, and everyone else. In one camp it is an unsightly relic of ‘90s cross-promotional cheese; in the other, it’s a sports movie classic. Luckily for kids today, NBA star LeBron James was 11 for most of ’96, and he’s bringing back the hoops and the Looney Tunes in Space Jam: A New Legacy.

The film will be among the many Warner Bros. pics premieres on HBO Max and in theaters this year, and it will see King James share above-the-title credits with Bugs Bunny. All is as it should be.

The Tomorrow War

July 23

An original IP attempting to be a summer blockbuster? As we live and breathe. The Tomorrow War marks director Chris McKay’s first foray into live-action after helming The Lego Batman Movie. The film stars Chris Pratt as a soldier from the past who’s been “drafted by scientists” to the present in order to fight off an alien invasion overwhelming our future’s military. One might ask why said scientists didn’t use their fancy-schmancy time traveling shenanigans to warn about the impending aliens, but here we are.

Jungle Cruise

July 30

Disney dips into its theme park rides again as a source for a movie, hoping that the Pirates of the Caribbean lightning will strike once more. This time it’s the famous Adventureland riverboat ride, which is free enough of a real narrative that one has to wonder why some five screenwriters (at least) worked on the movie’s script.

Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows) directs stars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt down this particular river, as they battle wild animals and a competing expedition in their search for a tree with miraculous healing powers. The comic chemistry between Johnson and Blunt is key here, especially if they really can mimic Bogie and Hepburn in the similarly plotted The African Queen. If they can sell that, Disney might just have a new water-based franchise to replace their sinking Pirates ship.

The Green Knight

July 30

David Lowery, the singular director behind A Ghost Story and The Old Man & the Gun, helmed a fantasy adaptation of the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And his take on the material was apparently strong enough to entice A24 to produce it. Not much else is yet known about the film other than its cast, which includes Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Ralph Ineson, and Kate Dickie–and that it’s another casualty of COVID, with its 2020 release date being delayed last year. So this is one we’re definitely going to keep an eye on.

The Suicide Squad

August 6

Arguably the most high-profile of the WB films being transitioned to HBO Max, The Suicide Squad is James Gunn’s soft-reboot of the previous one-film franchise. It’s kind of funny WB went in that direction when the first movie generated more than $740 million, but when the reviews and word of mouth were that toxic… well, you get the guy who did Guardians of the Galaxy to fix things.

Peacemaker: Suicide Squad Spinoff With John Cena Coming to HBO Max

By Mike Cecchini

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The Suicide Squad Trailer Promises James Gunn’s “1970s War Movie”

By David Crow

Elements from the original movie are still here, most notably Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller, but the film promises to be weirder, meaner, and also sillier. The first points are proven by its expected R-rating, and the latter is underscored by its giant talking Great White Shark. Okay, we’ll bite.

Deep Water

August 13

Seedy erotic thrillers and neo noirs bathed in shadows and sex are largely considered a thing of the past—specifically 1980s and ‘90s Hollywood cinema. Maybe that’s why Deep Water hooked Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal) to direct. The throwback is based on a 1957 novel by the legendary Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley), and it pits a disenchanted married couple against each other, with the bored pair playing mind games that leave friends and acquaintances dead. That the couple in question is played by Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, who’ve since become a real life item, will probably get plenty of attention close to release.

Respect

August 13

Respect is the long-awaited biopic of the legendary Aretha Franklin, with the Queen of Soul herself involved in its development for years until her death in August 2018. Authorized biopics always make one wonder how accurate the film will be, but then again, Aretha had nothing to be ashamed of. Hers was a life well-lived, her voice almost beyond human comprehension, and the only thing now is to see whether star Jennifer Hudson (Franklin’s personal choice) and director Liesl Tommy (making her feature debut) can do the Queen justice.

The King’s Man

August 20

This might be a weird thing to say: but has World War I ever seemed so stylish? It is with Matthew Vaughn at the helm.

An origin story of sorts for the organization that gave us Colin Firth and the umbrella, The King’s Man is a father and son yarn where Ralph Fiennes’ Duke of Oxford is reluctant about his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) joining the war effort. But they’ll both be up to it as the Duke launches an intelligence gathering agency independent from any government. It also includes Gemma Arterton, Matthew Goode, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as charter members.

Oh, and did we mention they fight Rasputin?

Candyman

August 27

In some ways it’s surprising that it’s taken this long—28 years, notwithstanding a couple of sequels—to seriously revisit the original Candyman. Director Bernard Rose’s original adaptation of the Clive Baker story, “The Forbidden,” is still relevant and effective today. Back then, the film touched on urban legends, poverty, and segregation: themes that are still ripe for exploration through a genre touchstone today.

After her breathtaking feature directorial debut, Little Woods, Nia DaCosta helmed this bloody reboot while working from a screenplay co-written by Jordan Peele (Get Out). That’s a powerful combination, even before news came down DaCosta was helming Captain Marvel 2. And with an actor on-the-cusp of mega-stardom, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, picking up Tony Todd’s gnarly hook, this is one to watch out for.

The Beatles: Get Back

August 27

Peter Jackson seems to enjoy making films about what inspired him in his youth: The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, his grandfather’s World War I service informing They Shall Not Grow Old. So perhaps it was inevitable he’d make a film about the greatest youth icon of his generation, the Beatles. In truth, The Beatles: Get Back is a challenge to a previous documentary named Let It Be, and the general pop culture image it painted.

That 1970 doc by Michael Lindsay-Hogg zeroed in on the band’s final released album, Let It Be (although it was recorded before Abbey Road). Now, using previously unseen footage, Jackson seeks to challenge the narrative that the album was created entirely from a place of animosity among the bandmates, or that the Beatles had long lost their camaraderie by the end of road. Embracing the original title of the album, “Get Back,” Jackson wants to get back to where he thinks the band’s image once belonged.

Resident Evil

September 3

Let’s try that again. As one of the most popular video game franchises of all-time, the original handful of Resident Evil games appeared ready made for adaptation. Visibly inspired by cult classic zombie movies from George Romero, Resident Evil once even had Romero attached. Instead we got the deafeningly dull Paul W.S. Anderson franchise starring Milla Jovovich. And those decade-spanning monstrosities lacked something any self-respecting zombie film needs: brains.

Now Resident Evil is back in a reboot helmed by writer-director Johannes Roberts. And he’s off to a promising start by apparently focusing on the plots of the first several video games in the series. The cast includes Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine, Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield, Kaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield, Avan Jogia as Leon S. Kennedy, and Tom Hopper as Albert Wesker. So far so good. Fingers crossed.

A Quiet Place Part II

September 17

The sequel to one of 2018’s biggest surprises, A Quiet Place Part II comes with major expectations. And few may hold it to a higher standard than writer-director John Krasinski. Despite (spoiler) the death of his character in the first film, Krasinski returns behind the camera for the sequel after saying he wouldn’t. The story he came up with apparently was too good to pass up.

The film again stars Emily Blunt as the often silenced mother of a vulnerable family, which includes son Marcus (Noah Jupe) and deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds). However, now that they know how to kill the eagle-eared alien monsters who’ve taken over their planet, the cast has grown to include Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou. While the film has been delayed due to the coronavirus outbreak, trust us that it’ll be worth the wait. Is it finally time for… resistance?

Death on the Nile

September 17

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) became a surprise hit for director and star Kenneth Branagh. Who knew that audiences would still be interested in an 83-year-old mystery novel about an eccentric Belgian detective with one hell of a mustache? Luckily, Agatha Christie featured Poirot in some 32 other novels, of which Death on the Nile is one of the most famous, so here we are.

Branagh once again directs and stars as Poirot, this time investigating a murder aboard a steamer sailing down Egypt’s famous river. The cast includes Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Letitia Wright, Tom Bateman, Ali Fazal, Annette Bening, Rose Leslie, and Russell Brand. Expect more lavish locales, scandalous revelations, the firing of a pistol or two, and, yes, more shots of that stunning Poirot facial hair.

The Many Saints of Newark

September 24

The idea of a prequel to anything always fills us with trepidation, and re-opening a nearly perfect property like The Sopranos makes the prospect even less appetizing. But Sopranos creator David Chase has apparently wanted to explore the back history of his iconic crime family for some time, and there certainly seems to be a rich tapestry of characters and events that have only been hinted at in the series.

Directed by series veteran Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World), The Many Saints of Newark stars Alessandro Nivola as Dickie Moltisanti (Christopher’s father), along with Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Corey Stoll, Ray Liotta, and others. But the most fascinating casting is that of Michael Gandolfini—James’ son—as the younger version of the character with which his late dad made pop culture history. For that alone, we’ll be there on opening night… even if that just means HBO Max!

Dune

October 1

Could third time be the charm for Frank Herbert’s complex novel of the far future, long acknowledged as one of the greatest—if most difficult to read—milestones in all of science fiction? David Lynch’s 1984 version was, to be charitable, an honorable mess, while the 2000 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries was decent and faithful, but limited in scope. Now director Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Arrival) is pulling out all the stops—even breaking the story into two movies to give the proper space.

Movies

Dune Trailer Breakdown and Analysis

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What Alejandro Jodorowsky Thinks of the New Dune Trailer

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On the surface, the plot is simple: as galactic powers vie for control of the only planet that produces a substance capable of allowing interstellar flight, a young messiah emerges to lead that planet’s people to freedom. But this tale is dense with multiple layers of politics, metaphysics, mysticism, and hard science.

Villeneuve has assembled a jaw-dropping cast, including Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem, and if he pulls this off, just hand him every sci-fi novel ever written. Particularly, if relations between the director and WB remain strained…

No Time to Die

October 8

Nothing lasts forever, and the Daniel Craig era of James Bond is coming to an end… hopefully in 2021. In fact, delays notwithstanding, it’s a bit of a surprise Craig is getting an official swan song with this movie after the star said he’d rather “slash his wrists” before doing another one. Well, we’re glad he didn’t, just as we’re hopeful for his final installment in the tuxedo.

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga is a newcomer to the franchise, but that might be a good thing after how tired Spectre felt, and Fukunaga has done sterling work in the past on True Detective and Maniac. He also looks to bring the curtain down on the whole Craig oeuvre by picking up on the last movie’s lingering threads, such as 007 driving off into the sunset with Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann, while introducing new ones that include Rami Malek as Bond villain Safin and Ana de Armas as new Bond girl Paloma. Yay for the Knives Out reunion!

Halloween Kills

October 15

2018’s outstanding reboot of the long-running horror franchise—which saw David Gordon Green (Stronger) direct Jamie Lee Curtis in a reprise of her most famous role—was a tremendous hit. So in classic Halloween fashion, two more sequels were put into production (the second, Halloween Ends, will be out in 2022… hopefully).

Movies

Halloween: A Legacy Unmasked

By David Crow

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How Jason Blum Changed Horror Movies

By Rosie Fletcher

Curtis is back as Laurie Strode, along with Judy Greer as her daughter, Andi Matichak as her granddaughter, and Nick Castle sharing Michael Myers duties with James Jude Courtney. Kyle Richards and Charles Cyphers, meanwhile, will reprise their roles as Lindsey Wallace and former sheriff Leigh Brackett from the original 1978 Halloween (Anthony Michael Hall will play the adult version of Tommy Doyle). The plot remains a mystery, but we’re pretty sure it will involve yet another confrontation between Laurie and a rampaging Myers.

The Last Duel

October 15

What was once among the most anticipated films of 2020, The Last Duel is the historical epic prestige project marked by reunions: Ridley Scott returns to his passion for period drama and violence; Matt Damon and Ben Affleck work together for the first time in ages as both actors and writers; and the film also unites each with themes that were just as potent in the medieval world as today: One knight (Damon) in King Charles VI’s court accuses another who’s his best friend (Adam Driver) of raping his wife (Jodie Comer). Oh, and Affleck plays the King of France.

With obviously harrowing—and uncomfortable—themes that resonate today, The Last Duel is based on an actual trial by combat from the 14th century, and is a film Affleck and Damon co-wrote with Nicole Holofcener (Can You Ever Forgive Me?). It’s strong material, and could prove to be one of the year’s most riveting or misjudged films. Until then, it has our full attention.

Last Night in Soho

October 22

Fresh off the success of 2017’s Baby Driver (his biggest commercial hit to date), iconoclastic British director Edgar Wright returns with what is described as a psychological and possibly time-bending horror thriller set in London. Whether this features Wright’s trademark self-aware humor remains to be seen, but since the film is said to be inspired by dread-inducing genre classics like Repulsion and Don’t Look Now, he might be going for a different effect this time.

The cast, of course, is outstanding: upstarts Anya Taylor-Joy (Queen’s Gambit) and Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit) will face off with Matt Smith (Doctor Who), and British legends Diana Rigg and Terence Stamp. And the truth is we’re never going to miss one of Wright’s movies. Taylor-Joy talked to us here about finding her 1960s lounge singer voice for the film.

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins

October 22

While the idea of a Hasbro Movie Universe seems to be kind of idling at the moment, corners of that hypothetical cinematic empire remain active. One such brand is G.I. Joe, which will launch its first spin-off in this origin story of one of the team’s most popular characters. Much of his early background remains mysterious, so there’s room to create a fairly original story while incorporating lore and characters already established in the G.I. Joe mythos.

Neither of the previous G.I. Joe features (The Rise of Cobra and Retaliation) have been much good, so we can probably expect the same level of quality from this one. Director Robert Schwentke (the last two Divergent movies) doesn’t inspire much excitement either. On the other hand, Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) will star in the title role, and having Iko Uwais (The Raid) and Samara Weaving (Ready or Not) on board isn’t too bad either.

Antlers

October 29

Dramatic director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Hostiles) is doing a horror movie. As we live and breathe. And he’s doing it with a huge boost of confidence from Guillermo del Toro, who has opted to produce the movie. Antlers is the tale of two adult brothers, one a teacher and the other a sheriff, getting wrapped up in a supernatural quagmire that involves a young student and a “dangerous secret.” And with a cast that includes Jesse Plemons, Keri Russell, and Graham Greene, we are very intrigued… even if we must wait once again due to a coronavirus delay.

Eternals

November 5

Based on a Marvel Comics series by the legendary Jack Kirby, the now long-forthcoming Eternals centers around an ancient race of powerful beings who must protect the Earth against their destructive counterparts (and genetic cousins), the Deviants. Director Chloe Zhao (fresh off the awards season buzzy Nomadland) takes her first swing at epic studio filmmaking, working with a cast that includes Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, Brian Tyree Henry, and more.

Movies

Upcoming Marvel Movies Release Dates: MCU Phase 4 Schedule, Cast, and Story Details

By Mike Cecchini and 1 other

Movies

The Incredible Hulk’s Diminished Legacy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

By Gavin Jasper

In many ways, Eternals represents another huge creative risk for Marvel Studios: It’s a big, cosmic ensemble film introducing an ensemble that the vast majority of the public has never heard of. But then, it’s sort of in the same position as Guardians of the Galaxy from way back in 2014, and we all know what happened there.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

November 11

With the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot criticized (fairly) for its lack of imagination and castigated (unfairly as hell) for its all-female ghost-hunting crew, director Jason Reitman–finally cashing in on the family name by returning to the brand his dad Ivan directed to glory in 1984–has crafted a direct sequel to the original films.

Set 30 years later, Afterlife follows a family who move to a small town only to discover that they have a long-secret connection to the OG Ghostbusters. Carrie Coon (The Leftovers), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) and Paul Rudd (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) star alongside charter cast members Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts, and, yes, Bill Murray.

King Richard

November 19

Will Smith’s King Richard promises to be a different kind of biographical film coming down the pipe. Rather than being told from the vantage of professional tennis playing stars Venus and Serena Williams, King Richard centers on their father and coach, Richard Williams. It’s an interesting choice to focus on the male father instead of the game-changing Black daughters, but we’ll see if there’s a strong creative reason for the approach soon enough. The film is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men, Joe Bell).

Mission: Impossible 7

November 19

Once upon a time, the appeal of the Mission: Impossible movies was to see different directors offer their own take on Tom Cruise running through death-defying stunts. But then Christopher McQuarrie had to come along and make the best one in franchise history (twice). First there was Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and then Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Now McQuarrie and company have set up their own separate quartet of films with recurring original characters like new franchise MVP Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) across four films.

Movies

Audio Surfaces of Tom Cruise Raging on the Set of Mission: Impossible 7

By Kirsten Howard

Movies

Mission: Impossible 7 – What’s Next for the Franchise?

By David Crow

Thus enters M:I7, the third McQuarrie joint in the series and first half of a pair of incoming sequels filmed together. The first-half of this two-parter sees the whole crew back together, including Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, Ilsa, Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), and CIA Director Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett). They’re also being joined by Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff, but really we’re all just eager to see what kind of insane stunts they can do to top the HALO jump in the last one.

Nightmare Alley

December 3

Director Guillermo del Toro is finally back with a film which was originally intended for release in 2020. But like so many others, Nightmare Alley saw its production frozen due to the coronavirus. Del Toro’s first film since winning the Best Picture Oscar for The Shape of Water, Nightmare adapts William Lindsay Gresham’s novel of the same name. With a script by Kim Morgan and del Toro, it tracks a mid-20th century carny played by Bradley Cooper who is also a silver-tongued grifter. But his con meets its match (and is then outclassed) by his chance encounter with a psychiatrist (Cate Blanchett). They’ll make a hell of a team.

West Side Story

December 10

Steven Spielberg has just two remakes on his directorial resume: Always (1989) and War of the Worlds (2005). While the former is mostly forgotten and the latter was an adaptation of a story that has been filmed many times, his upcoming reimagining of West Side Story will undoubtedly be directly compared to Robert Wise’s iconic 1961 screen version of this classic musical.

A few numbers in previous films aside, Spielberg has never directed a full-blown musical before, let alone one associated with such powerhouse songs and dance numbers. His version, with a script by Tony Kushner, is said to stay closer to the original Broadway show than the 1961 film—but with its themes of love struggling to cross divides created by hate and bigotry, don’t be surprised if it’s just as hard-hitting in 2021. Certainly would’ve devastated last year….

Spider-Man 3

December 17

Sony has finally gotten to a “Spider-Man 3” again in their oft-rebooted franchise crown jewel (technically though this film is still untitled). That proved to be a stumbling block the first time it occurred with Tobey Maguire in the red and blues, but the company seems undaunted since Tom Holland’s third outing is expected to bring Maguire back—him and just about everyone else too.

Movies

Spider-Man 3: Charlie Cox Daredevil Return Would Redeem the Marvel Netflix Universe

By Joseph Baxter

Movies

Spider-Man 3 Adds Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange

By Joseph Baxter

With a multiverse plot ripped straight from the arguably best Spidey movie ever, 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse, Holland’s third outing is bringing back Maguire, Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man, Alfred Molina as Doc Ock, Jamie Foxx as Electro (eh), and probably more. It’s a Spidey crossover extravaganza that’s only missing a Spider-Ham. But just you wait…

The Matrix 4

December 22

Rebooting or continuing The Matrix series has always been a tough proposition. While the original Matrix film is one of the landmark achievements in science fiction and early digital effects filmmaking in the 1990s, its sequels were… less celebrated. In fact, directors Lily and Lana Wachowski were publicly wary about the idea of ever going back to the series. And yet, here we are with Lana (alone) helming a project that’s been a longtime priority for Warner Bros.

Movies

The Matrix 4: Laurence Fishburne “Wasn’t Invited” to Reprise Morpheus Role

By John Saavedra

Movies

The Matrix 4 Already Happened: Revisiting The Matrix Online

By John Saavedra

The Matrix 4 also brings back Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Jada Pinkett Smith. This is curious since Reeves and Moss’ characters died at the end of the Matrix trilogy—and also because Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus did not, yet he wasn’t asked back. We cannot say we’re thrilled about the prospect of more adventures in Zion after the disappointment of the first two sequels, but we’d be lying if we didn’t admit we’re still curious to see the story that brought Lana back to this future.

The French Dispatch

TBA

Wes Anderson has a new film coming out. Better still, it is another live-action film. While Anderson’s use of animation is singular, it’s been seven years since The Grand Budapest Hotel, which we maintain is one of the best movies of the last decade. Anderson is working with Timothée Chalamet and Cristoph Waltz for the first time with this film, as well as several familiar faces including Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and, of course, Bill Murray.

The French Dispatch is set deep in the 20th century during the peak of modern journalism, it brings to life a series of fictional stories in a fictional magazine, published in a fictional French city. We suspect though, if Anderson’s last two live-action movies are any indication, it’ll have more than fiction on its mind–especially since it’s inspired by actual New Yorker stories, and the journalists who wrote them! We missed it in 2020, so here’s hoping it really does go to print in 2021!

Other interesting movies that may come out in 2021 but do not yet have release dates: Next Goal Wins, Don’t Worry Darling, Blonde, The Northman, Resident Evil, Red Notice, Army of the Dead.

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crystalelemental · 6 years

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I've gone on record stating that Gen 3 is not my favorite, and I stand by that. I think Team Aqua/Magma had a lot to do with that, being far less interesting than they should have been. As much as we mock IGN for it, the fact that the latter third of the game is a bunch of surf routes with the same Pokemon over and over is also frustrating. Also, since I'm in the middle of playing the remakes of ORAS, I find it really frustrating the things that they changed, with my biggest gripe being that I wish my rival would go away forever. That said, the Pokedex itself has always been something I appreciated. A lot of my favorites came from Gen 3, so I tended to remember the Pokemon in the region fondly, even if the region wasn't my favorite.

TOP 15: 15) Mightyena line - There was so much competition for this slot, it's ridiculous. Ultimately though, I have to give it to Mightyena and its pre-evolution, Poochyena. Both have great designs, but the thing that stood out to me most was that, in the early game, we were given a Dark type. That's really atypical! Usually you go through the normal types, the Flying types, and the bugs, until after the first gym. But Gen 3? You got things like Mightyena right away; it wasn't even rare! Combined with things like Seedot/Lotad and Ralts, you had some interesting types going into the first gym. Mightyena is a great starting point for introducing how unique Gen 3 and its Pokedex are, and I think it stands out a lot because of it.

14) Nosepass - Imagine being a kid who had faced Brock back in gen 1. Imagine again that you started with Red and Blue, and didn't pick Charmander. Odds are, you blasted through him without a second thought. Literally no issue. Now, imagine going to Roxanne, blasting through her Geodude like they're nothing, and then encountering Nosepass, who can tank those Grass and Water hits just fine, and hits pretty hard for early game. Nosepass is awesome. It's a fantastic tank, who can take all sorts of hits in that early game. While it doesn't hit particularly hard later on, its main draw is as a wall among walls, with great support options. The concept of basically being a walking easter island head statue is also comical. It looks funny, but it's adorable too, making for a fantastic overall Pokemon.

13) Absol - This is a Pokemon that gets a lot of favoritism based on aesthetics. It's a sleek and pretty Pokemon, but also has a great role. It tells of impending disasters, and is a fun but short-lived character in Red Rescue Team as well. I really like Absol, and just wish it could be a bit faster so it could have a solid competitive niche.

12) Aggron line - We've had big bipedal rock monsters before, like Rhydon and Tyranitar. But Aggron is just a different kind of cool. Its sleek metal plating and terrifying design are fantastic. The fact that it starts out as the cute little Aron only helps add to its charms. Best of all, you get it super early game. Rhydon was surprisingly late-game, and Tyranitar was literally only attainable when you had nothing left to do. But Aggron? You can run one the whole game. I love the ability to do that.

11) Metagross - YEAH! Metagross is a beast, and a strong contender for my favorite pseudo-legend. It's literally a walking tank, with the glorious Steel/Psychic typing. It had one of the few Steel moves in the game that was actually useful, and back before the nerf, Steel covered all of Psychic type's weaknesses, making it a defensive and offensive nightmare. I love the entire concept behind this behemoth, too. It's a walking robot monster, whose evolution is basically just it gaining more legs until it becomes Omega Weapon.

10) Breloom - I'll get to a similar case later, but Breloom is a favorite based on typing. Grass/Fighting was unreal at the time, and it did super well for itself. Plus it's just cute. A tiny little punching mushroom child, with stubby little arms that apparently shoot out to hit really hard. It's a quirky concept with a fun design, and I adore it. Plus, Spore with the abilities it would later get made it a surprisingly brutal enemy to face.

9) Roselia - IT'S SO PRETTY! Such a gorgeous Pokemon. Grass/Poison was pretty overdone, even at this point, but I just loved the appearance of it.

8) Swampert line - Dual-type starters, at this point, were still relatively rare. Venusaur had Grass/Poison, but so did every Grass type in gen 1 barring Tangela. Charizard had Fire/Flying, but the fact it wasn't Dragon is stupid. Gen 3 introduced new dual-types for starters, and one great one is Water/Ground with Swampert. While the combination had been done before with Quagsire, Swampert offered far better overall bulk and damage output, on top of its excellent typing. It's also goofy-looking, but in a really charming way. It's just so loveable, and every evolution retains that cute look.

7) Flygon - Flygon is just cute to me. It looks like such a friend. Being a Pokemon that exists in the sandstorm-focused desert area was also cool. I really liked that there was an entire region dedicated just to the new weather effect. Shame that Sandstorm was such a pain in the ass, but it's a really cool area!

6) Altaria - Altaria is so pretty. Just a fluffy cotton ball bird...dragon. It's apparently more of a songbird, too, which is just heavenly. It also got a great mega evolution, receiving Dragon/Fairy typing, which is hilarious and excellent.

5) Latias - I'm guessing this run of Dragons is proving I really like the soft, friendly dragons over the big intimidating ones that actually do well, huh? Dragon/Psychic was, at this point, the coolest typing I had ever heard of. But what's cooler than that? How about a super adorable Dragon/Psychic type. Oh, what's this? It gets a hold item that boosts special attack and special defense 50%? That's ridiculous, I love it. Latias is the more defensive option of the two, which I always felt was better if you factor in hold item. The added defensive bulk is going to matter more than slightly more physical offense from their perspective. Of course, Latios having much better special attack is ultimately better in competitive, but Latias still has her use, and is super cute.

4) Blaziken line - Remember when Fire/Fighting was a novel type? Remember when its introduction was a kick-boxing chicken creature? Those were the days. Torchic is one of the cutest starters, and its final evolution is surprisingly still an elegant design. It was such a cool idea, and I love that Hidden Abilities brought it back to the top.

3) Mawile - It's such a cute little creature. Cute and terrifying, and excellent combination for sure. It's a shame that Mawile ultimately was a forgettable Steel type in terms of competitive use, but the acquisition of Fairy type and the best mega really helped it out on that front, too. So I guess it's basically perfect? Sounds about right.

2) Milotic - I never caught one in gen 3. Not fairly, anyway. I could never figure out how to get Feebas to show up. In fact, I don't think I've ever captured a Feebas. I've always traded for it. It's just so hard to find. But man, is the final form ever beautiful. It's such a gorgeous Pokemon, and an excellent tank to boot. Everything about Milotic is wonderful.

1) Gardevoir line - Don't you judge me. We all knew this would happen. If you read anything in this post or the ones before it, you know elegant and cute are the biggest draws for me. Gardevoir is both. It's also a Psychic type, so bonus points there. Also, as mentioned in the Mightyena entry, it's super early-game. Rare, sure, but you can have a Psychic type from nearly the very start of the game. I love Gardevoir so much, it's definitely an all-time favorite, and it should come as no surprise that it winds up being the favorite from this generation.

BOTTOM 10: 10) Pelipper - I like Pelipper. Its reason for being here is that so many Gen 3 Pokemon are great, it just doesn't stand out as much as the others. I have literally no complaints, I just locked myself into "it has to be 10" and here we are.

9) Huntail - Same as above, it just doesn't hold as much aesthetic appeal.

8) Seviper - If there's anything I actually dislike here, it's just that it's pure-Poison type. We had a Poison snake already. I would've liked to see a different typing added in. Poison/Dark at this phase of the game would've been amazing.

7) Zangoose - Still good, but it loses points based on my frustrations with Pokemon Coliseum.

6) Glalie - Getting closer to legitimate frustrations, Glalie is here because its design doesn't captivate. Snorunt is cute, but it evolves into an angry face in a block of ice. Not exactly all that interesting.

5) Volbeat - Did nothing legitimately wrong, but I am upset that Volbeat gets a lot of nice and unique tools that Illumise does not. I like Illumise. I think its color scheme is a lot better. But Volbeat gets the nice tools, so whatever I guess.

4) Ninjask - Please stop speed boosting, I am begging you. You do nothing else but Swords Dance, Speed Boost and Baton Pass, please do something else.

3) Slaking - Okay, actual legitimate complaints. Slaking's problem is it goes backwards. Vigoroth was a nightmare to face, and I have a friend who stated that facing Norman's was the reason he started to respect Normal types as something other than early-game fodder. But Slaking? It re-acquires Truant, which is an awful ability by any standard, and requires very specific team support, on Doubles only, to mitigate. Anyone who sees Slaking knows exactly what will happen, and is probably more than prepared to shut it down. It's a nice design, and a nice concept, but it's been so ruined by the ability it is burdened with that it's virtually unusable.

2) Plusle/Minun - Possibly less legitimate complaint, but I feel more strongly about it. Plusle and Minun are cute and have solid designs, but their great sin is being Pikachu clones for the new area, kicking off the trend of needing an electric rodent in every area. Worse, they do not evolve, offer little in the way of any competitive value, and existed to show off the introduction to Double Battles with their unique abilities and access to Helping Hand. Beyond this, they offer very little, and are the reason we have to always have a new electric rodent that ultimately winds up having no competitive niche.

1) Grumpig - Literally the only one on this list I dislike. Spoink is cute, and Grumpig is...not. It just looks irritable and not all that friendly by comparison. It's also nothing too impressive competitively, and offers little in the way of uniqueness, losing the quirk of constantly bouncing around like Spoink did to...just be grumpy. It's a Pokemon I might like more on its own, but as an evolution of Spoink it doesn't seem as interesting.

#regional pokedex opinions #hoenn pokedex

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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The Steam Game Festival 2020: Demo Impressions Lightning Round

June 26, 2020 4:00 PM EST

Having played the best, I now play the rest. Here are more demo impressions from The Steam Game Festival that didn’t leave the same mark.

The Steam Game Festival – Summer Edition’s first iteration has come and gone, and I feel like it was an overall success. Lots of up and coming games got fresh eyes on them to drum up interest and feedback. I took it upon myself to play huge swathes of them, and I’ve already covered the games that most stood out to me. But that’s only the 10 most impressive games of the 24 in total I played.

As before, I’ve written impressions and limited myself to two paragraphs per game. They aren’t as universally good quality this time around, but there’s still some potential gems buried away here. So, here’s the lightning round of my remaining demo impressions from The Steam Game Festival – Summer Edition.

Iron Harvest

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A squad based RTS with steampunk mechs in an alternate history set a little after World War I. It’s set in the same world as the acclaimed board game Scythe. In practice, Iron Harvest plays a lot like Company of Heroes with a WWI skin featuring steampunk mechs. You build up your forces, take and hold resource points on the map, and try to beat the enemy before they beat you. I was looking forward to this game, but I honestly found myself quite underwhelmed.

The ability to pick up weapons from defeated enemies and change up your infantry armaments on the fly is neat, and the presentation is quite nice. But I just found that the gameplay is missing something. The cover system is very barren and requires you to build most of it, and units just don’t feel like they’re as effective as they should be. Unit control feels unresponsive, the mechs are visually impressive but clunky to move, and I just found myself failing to engage with it. It all felt very hollow and lacked any sort of punch or X factor when playing. I hope this can be improved before launch, but it ultimately feels like it’s too barren an experience as it stands.

The Survivalists

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The Survivalists is a somewhat standard survival/simulation game. You’re a castaway on an island and have to scrounge for resources to survive, thrive, and eventually escape. In addition to the colourful pixel art, The Survivalists’ main gimmick are the friendly monkeys you can bring on your side. These can be trained to gather materials for you, mass produce basic crafting, or aid you in combat.

In practice however, I found the controls and UI to be fairly imprecise and unclear. Multiple times I thought I was teaching my monkey pal a new task and assigning him orders, only for it to do nothing or go completely awry. The system needs a little cleaning up, I think. Beyond this, The Survivalists is colourful, functional, and entertaining enough. It’s fairly generic survival stuff beyond the presentation at this early point, though. With that said, there did seem to be the promise of ancient ruins, pirate treasures, and other intriguing things to unearth from hints gleaned in the world. Hopefully there’s more spark and variety in the full thing.

Builders of Egypt

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Back in 1999, Impressions Games released an Egyptian flavoured city builder called Pharaoh. This is a game that my teenage history nerd self played quite a lot of. Apparently, so did the makers of Builders of Egypt. This is effectively an attempt at making that classic game on a modern engine. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be anything on offer here that I couldn’t get from just replaying Pharaoh. And I don’t mean that to be a reflection of the early nature of development; it just seems like it will be a lesser game even when complete.

Pharaoh had real charm to its presentation, sound, and general design that I just don’t feel in Builders of Egypt. There’s a lack of colour and personality here that no amount of historical accuracy and high fidelity Unreal Engine lighting can replace. Now to be fair to Builders of Egypt, it’s a perfectly serviceable city builder with a solid theme. It’s possible that with enough time and effort, the mechanics and options for building cities here will really stand out. I just don’t see it currently, is all. It’s not a great feeling to want to go and replay a 20-year-old game after playing a new demo, unfortunately.

Stronghold: Warlords

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After finishing this demo, I went to check who had developed this. I thought that this was someone trying to capitalise on the Stronghold name and legacy with a cheap knockoff, or else they’d managed to get their hands on the IP. To my surprise, it’s still the same developer that’s had the series since the original game. Sadly, that’s not the only thing that hasn’t changed since the first game, either.

Stronghold: Warlords is a city-builder/RTS with a focus on building and defending a castle or stronghold. Warlords is an eastern-themed one, and has a diplomacy feature by which you can bring the titular Warlords into your fold for bonuses. But the entire thing is ugly, slapdash, and controls awfully. Again, it feels like there hasn’t been any forward development or improvement from the very first Stronghold game(s) almost two decades ago. This will need a lot of work to make it even slightly comparable to those games. Given the poor reception Stronghold 3 got, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Occupy Mars

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Another survival game, and this one just begging comparison to the book (and film adaptation of) The Martian. The aim of Occupy Mars is exactly what the title says. You’re an astronaut on Mars and you have to gather resources and build up the facilities needed for future colonisation prospects. The gimmick for this one is that it is intensely micro-management heavy. For example, let’s say you want to get ore from a rock. Generally, survival games will let you hit it twice with a pickaxe and then pick up the ore. In Occupy Mars, you’ll start by breaking up rocks into smaller chunks a few times until they’re small enough for your rover’s crane arm to load them. Then you’ll be manually moving and opening/closing the crane’s claw to load chunks of ore into your trailer.

That’s only the beginning of the tiny details you’ll need to control and pay attention to. How about manually setting power consumption, dragging power cables around and placing them in the right sockets? Or having separate oxygen metres for your spacesuit and interior structures? I generally don’t mind this genre of game, but Occupy Mars felt way too technical and fiddly for me to gel with it. That said, this is absolutely a dream for a small niche of players who crave that level of simulation. I respect its commitment to detail-oriented gameplay and wish it well, so check it out if this is your thing.

Haven

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Haven’s a potentially interesting one, but the short demo didn’t give me a lot to go off. It starts with a gorgeously vivid animated cutscene full of life and colour. The actual gameplay can’t match those visuals, but it definitely tries to match the aesthetic. Said gameplay is very movement centric, as you control your character(s) and glide over the landscape to collect resources and investigate the world. At the tail end of the demo, it surprised me by becoming an RPG, featuring an ATB-esque battle system. You control two characters with their inputs mapped to each half of the controller, and you unleash their appropriate actions in combos or sequence as appropriate.

More than anything, Haven is aiming to be a story-driven experience. The two characters are young and in a relationship together, making that abundantly clear in their early actions and dialogue. It’s all set amidst a somewhat fantastical sci-fi backdrop, and there’s definitely enough threads that pique my curiosity. At the same time, it could very easily crash and burn hard based on execution, and there’s a couple red flags in the dialogue that make me worried about that. So I’ve got a curious eye on this one, and we’ll see if it pans out.

Learning Factory

I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Learning Factory. It’s not unlike Factorio, that delightfully complex game in which you build massive automated resource collection networks. The look, layout, and mechanics of Learning Factory are almost identical to that, but on a very simple level. Despite this, it’s got a very stylised appearance, and the machines are being built in order to sell goods to cats and satisfy their needs.

Just when I thought this was a kid’s first Factorio, that’s when it kicked off the learning machines and data analytics angle. You take the data from selling goods to cats and then refine it via these learning machines to perfect your algorithm and maximise your sales. There’s even a tutorial and links to educational sources for more about learning machines. By the looks of it, the developers Luden.io have a focus on making educational games, so on that front I could see this being a useful resource. It’s not something that I’d want to play over its contemporaries, but I nonetheless respect this approach and wish the devs all the best in this undertaking!

Ostranauts

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Ostranauts is a top-down adventure/simulation where you get a derelict spaceship working and set off into space with it, hiring your crew and making life work out there. Unfortunately, that description ends up being far more alluring than the game is to play. It’s another case of having incredibly technical mechanics that end up being really esoteric in practice. There’s an audience for this, but it isn’t for me. Instead, I just found it very unclear how I was supposed to proceed with actions and tasks, and struggled to even begin doing so.

In fairness, this seemed to be one of the least ready-to-experience demos I played; so much of this could just be technical difficulties. Lots of trial and error was required to even really begin, only to find certain aspects clearly bugged and broken. This is a game in dire need of a manual, but that’s currently complete absent. I get the feeling that I’d be able to fly a real space shuttle easier than I could a ship in Ostranauts, at least until there’s actual documentation present. There’s not really a lot I can say about this one, unfortunately. Alas, I’m not interested in seeing more of it.

Mr. Prepper

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Based on its appearance, I assumed Mr. Prepper was going to play something like Fallout Shelter. In practice, it’s much more a standard survival game with resource collection and crafting. Even so, the unique perspective and dystopian “hyper American Dream” setting and narrative makes for a fairly compelling time.

You have to manage your usual gauges for survival and scrounge what resources you can, but you’re also being watched by government agents. There will be routine inspections of your house, so you have to hide all evidence of your secret bunker and illicit activities. This means keeping your house above ground in complete order, covering up workbenches, putting bunker entrances under a rug, and so on. It’s an interesting little spin on things, and I have to say that I’m intrigued by Mr. Prepper. Will keep an eye on this one.

Grounded

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I’m still surprised that this is made by Obsidian. But then, considering the systems are largely just adding more survival and crafting aspects to The Outer Worlds, it’s not all that unbelievable. Grounded is yet another survival game, but this plays with the Honey I Shrunk The Kids formula. You’re a child/teenager who has been shrunk to the size of a bug, and has to survive a suburban backyard amidst an assortment of now very large insects.

Like so many survival games, the general mechanics and crafting options on offer here are nothing new. The aesthetic and concept of your resources being chunks of grass stalks and bug parts is remarkably endearing, though. There’s also a lot of nods to the era of ’80s/’90s aesthetics and a general Weird Science feel to it all, though. I’m not sure how much content and variety this will feature, but Grounded definitely felt more charming than I expected. Worth a look at the very least.

Arietta of Spirits

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At a glance, Arietta of Spirits ticks a lot of boxes for a somewhat generic indie game. Colourful pixel art, classic action/adventure mechanics that evoke memories of classic games — 2D Zelda titles in this case — and a story that promises to be emotional and personal? That’s all here, and there wasn’t anything in my time with Arietta of Spirits that I hadn’t experienced like that before. Still, that’s disingenuous of me to say. Something doesn’t have to be unique to be good, and Arietta’s demo was good.

It’s pretty, playable, charming and fairly well-written. The concept of the spirit realm bleeding into the physical has lots of potential to work with. Gameplay mechanics were somewhat bland though, with little in the way of unlocks or special moves beyond slash with sword and dodge roll. There’s nothing bad or out of place here, it just hasn’t really done much to elevate itself. I’d need to see how Arietta of Spirits plays in later parts before I can make a solid judgement call here.

Wild Terra 2: New Lands

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Wild Terra 2: New Lands is another survival game, but this time it’s an MMORPG. You start in the wilderness and have to gather resources to survive, eventually building up a base and developing technology. Skills will increase through use, and some scavenged items will be higher quality than others. Once again, nothing that the genre hasn’t seen before, but it’s got some depth and a decent amount of options in its tech tree to entice players.

What killed the game for me, then, was the MMORPG aspect. As an Australian, I connected to the Asia Pacific server first, only to find that lag and rubber-banding was pretty extreme. I tested out the gameplay systems and found them enticing enough, but swapped to the US server to see if performance was better. Technically, the latency was improved, but in exchange? Everywhere I moved to in every direction was filled with the camps and huts of other players, and almost all usable resources were now impossible to find and respawning insanely slowly. For a new character, it was practically unplayable. If this isn’t fixed or addressed by launch, Wild Terra 2 is likely dead on arrival. Some potential here, but the current state is worrisome.

Earth From Another Sun

This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. I feel like Activision-Blizzard is going to smite me just for even speaking about the existence of this game. Still, here it goes: Earth From Another Sun is a blatant asset flip that shamelessly plunders visuals and designs from the likes of StarCraft. If the thumbnail wasn’t a dead giveaway, then the fact that I was fighting a slightly modified Hydralisk almost immediately was. Mechanically, it’s a horde-mode FPS that tasks you with killing enough units in a time limit to progress to the next wave, gathering pickups and loot along the way.

There is so much wrong with this game, quite frankly. It’s a visual mess; not just for the cheaply-designed or copied assets but also just in how readable the UI and systems are. Nothing describes trying to figure out what I was doing better than “trial by fire,” as I had no recourse but to wing everything. And yet? I couldn’t help but find the idea of the game enthralling. A fast-paced and frantic FPS with numerous progression and customisation elements? I could see myself playing that. Or hell, just make a StarCraft FPS. Anything that isn’t this much of a mess. Steer clear of this one, but do take note of the ideas in the process, developers!

EarthBreakers

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Speaking of an FPS based on an RTS franchise, who else remembers Command and Conquer: Renegade? Petroglyph does, because that’s what they’re attempting to reimagine with EarthBreakers. It’s a team-based FPS where you use resources collected by harvesting or through kills on building up an RTS-style base. You can use money on upgrades for you and your team, eventually producing base defences and vehicles to deploy. Ultimately, the last base standing is the winner.

References to the original C&C Renegade notwithstanding, EarthBreakers is a decent proof of concept. It’s going to need a lot more work to really shine, though. Movement was very floaty, and weapons didn’t feel particularly satisfying to shoot or land. Hitboxes were an awkward affair, and currently the only vehicle on offer are tanks so there’s not a lot of variety. As much as I love the concept and really hope for it to be polished and delivered, I’m not sure that Petroglyph has the chops to land a strong FPS that feels solid to play. Let’s hope I’m proven wrong.

And that’s everything I played for the Summer Edition of The Steam Game Festival. The event is over now, but many of these games will be developed further and available in the future. Some are worth keeping an eye on, and some are less so. But overall, this was a good event, and the availability of demos is only a good for customers.

Here’s hoping the trend will continue, and I shall likely to do this again for future events. For now, if anything piques your interest, you can click the links on each game in the piece above to wishlist them on Steam.

June 26, 2020 4:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/the-steam-game-festival-2020-demo-impressions-lightning-round/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-steam-game-festival-2020-demo-impressions-lightning-round

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nedostajeminasaljubavmila · 5 years

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24 Hours to Improving SEO

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SEO is the particular series of strategic approaches plus practices that are implemented in order to organically generate a high-rank place in the search engine web page outcomes of internet search motors like Google, Bing, and Google.

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glopratchet · 4 years

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wise, the game is set in a post apocalyptic world where mutants have overrun the earth You play as Jack who has been infected with a mutant virus and must now fight to survive against hordes of enemies that are trying to kill you The story is told through flashbacks which help give context to events that occurred during your journey without characters? The character creation screen allows you to choose from a variety of options such as gender, appearance, skills and more This is followed by several personality traits (which can be changed later) and then some brief background information about them There's also an option for a short bio which gives some additional details on their life before being infected with the virus The gameplay itself consists of combat encounters with various types of enemies ; the story is well crafted and gives a perfect setup for what comes next Gameplay itself is fairly easy to pick up with most of the mechanics being self explanatory Overal, the beginning sets the tone of what's to come Though, it could do with some fine-tuning as certain enemies feel either too hard or too weak compared to others Still, nothing that detracts from the story It gives just enough detail about the world while maintaining a sense of mystery It can be a little heavy at times, but the videos are thankfully categorized by subject making them easy to skip 's commentary goes in depth on various subjects from character design to explaining how gameplay mechanics came into being Once the story has been completed once there is also New Game Plus which allows you to carry your equipment and gains into the next playthrough This story driven game is well crafted with an interesting sci-fi plot and characters that help drive it forward animations plus extended cutscenes Xenocide on 06 February 2018 Report Review Review #2 See With Your Ears! on 06 February 2018 Report Review Sight, Sound And Mystery On 09 April 2018 Report Review New Leaf Publishing Protocol on 12 is on point The art style, font usage and color theme are all suitable and easy on the eye The website is also easy to navigate and generally bugs free Art Check A gifted artist created the various visual effects in the game From magic spells to things like light bulbs lighting up A lot of detail was put into each one to give it that extra bling and make them really pop out as looking important Without these these effects the game wouldn't feel nearly as immersive Plus they look really cool, so there's that! Sprites and Animated Images Check We have character sprites as well as several animations credit to Yumi Fujikawa Hand crafted animations that characters go through to deliver important information or their thoughts within the game, for example, an animation will begin when a character feels they should explain more thoroughly how to play a minigame as opposed to just blurting out instructions Masterful composition and presentation of story and characters by Yumichika, as all important parts of story and character development are presented through song and Development Check Extensive time was put into researching ways to realistically allow characters to grow with the addition of having a control theme for various mechanics This resulted in each character having three sectional gauges; competence, passion and popularity which could fluctuate based on their actions or in some cases the players This style and presentation of character growth was something that hadn't really been done before to this extent and as such received various levels of praise and attention Screenshots Where is this game set? One of the biggest accomplishments with this game is its unique fantasy world Created from the ground up, it encompasses various areas such as forests, deserts, a bustling city and even a castle! Having a diverse and interesting setting drastically increases replay value as players can easily get lost in exploring every corner of the map and solve undiscovered mysteries CLICK TO ENLARGE CGS Cultural and Game Development On Computer Graphics & Design, Ria is attending college to learn how to design games as a profession She, along with her sister Cicely, slowly begin to realize that the university is more of a way to make money off suckers rather than educate them in a field which will help them create better games Focusing on and passing the courses which will actually be beneficial such as computer science, mathematics and programming, Ria eventually drops out and begins to work as a game developer She creates games under the company No Braiiins Zombies On Game Design, Cicely is still in university trying to fulfill her mother's dying wish of her becoming a doctor Set design Check An interesting way to think about a game is from the world's point of view A game will most likely never be played interested in the player, the important decisions come from what options (be it paths, dialogue or actual options) are presented to the player A final decision will then be made by the game based on what has been offered Every choice made by the player gives importance to that choice as well as denoting that all other choices aren't to be explored This works by implementing consequence and reward systems Using the example above, by choosing option A, there should be a reward from the game That could be in the form of puzzle pieces or story points or something else directly linked to the game's theme If the game is using the example above: "Do you take the red door or blue door?" Taking the blue door will have you find something that will help you later in the game thus rewarding the choice of taking that door It takes too many people to make a book and almost everyone reads them and a large portion of the population watches them Now it's time for video games to follow their lead Games can be made incomplete and given length through downloadable content, they can be released early and often through community input and control mechanisms or they can be focused games targeted at niches Developments unique to the digital realm are, in reality, very recent Many games come out a year as companies strive to outdo their competitors A few good releases are lost in the crowd of many subpar ones Developers such as Nintendo, Valve and Bioware consistently release high quality products that sell more than enough to break even and then some, but these are the exceptions rather than the standard Serious gamers can no longer be content with only high quality games Everyone needs to realize that by buying games, they are creating a market Nobody forces anyone to buy crap and if something sells it's because people want more of it If the market happens to favor brainless, generic shooters then that's what we're going to get a lot more of This cycle can only be broken by buyers not buyers Raising the quality bar means raising the standards for what we buy Unfortunately as most people buy crap, there's not much money to be made in selling to a discerning audience With cost so low, it only makes financial sense for publishers to save on production costs by having half hearted localization and deadline focused game design A lot of mass market, low effort products end up littered with glitches and fallen standards that in turn tarnish the image of gaming as a whole as in the case of the infamous E T hell storm of the '80s and everyone has different rules Everyone has their niche and the problem with most strategy games, shooters etc is that as expansive as they seem at first blush, they soon become repetitive as you ultimately are forced to play by a set of rules and objectives The open world sandbox is a recent successful trope in gaming that gives lacking gamer feedback the illusion of freedom but at its core its still presiding direction: go here do this ? A movie that you control what happens, also why read when you can see it acted out in real life! A good game is like a good movie, except you have more options and it's all up to you how the credits roll (i e the ending) YOU choose the path and YOU decide on the when and where True, not every single event will be subject to your will as the bigger schemes of things armies will move about, events will happen etc Most sandbox titles unfortunately fall short fulfilling the cinephile yearning inside of us Most lack sufficient depth in their characters roles or plot elements, or throw logic out the window (hackers are capable of taking over the world yet still require aim to shoot people, large criminal organizations can be taken down with just a few people but said people can destroy said organizations from the inside, etc) As anyone knows even if the acting, setting and action is good, a rubbish ending can leave one disappointed in the whole movie In video games, the ending is typically the -ending-; where you just get a crappy cliffhanger or an ambiguous conclusion Worse yet are when cross media attempts at making a massive sandbox title are done We see this a lot with movies based on video games (e g Streetfighter, Super Mario Bros, among many others) These attempt to put the movie out before the games to try to capture a built in market, typically fail completely (except for exceptional cases like Zelda or Mario) because quite simply, they miss something that is very hard to put into words; the feeling of actually playing a great video game I don't think that it has to be like this There is a game out currently that encompasses all these things, though it's very rare that anyone knows about it, much less gives it a shot This is primarily because its not so much a game as it is an experience I am of course talking about Subahibi Be forewarned: this post is bit of an essay as I try to unpack the meaning of life etc Final Fantasy XIII is an insult to conclusions in that respect backstory, Some Context I've thought a lot about where to start this Actually, I've thought a lot about if I should start this Maybe it's just better to leave things as they are But as luck would have it (or maybe not), I've recently found myself with a bit of breathing room and why not use this opportunity to finally try to get this off my chest? No one is forcing me to do this and I can always just stop if it becomes too much for me to handle So here goes nothing… No really, there was an actual bull, and I'm pretty sure it was staring at me as it lowered its head, got closer, until nope, blanking out again continued :( Sorry, had to stop there for a moment Just getting all of this out is bringing all sorts of buried emotions to the forefront; that or I'm coming down with something workings of the MW (Mass Wheat) field, which is important to ensure a perfect lou of humn CNC usage Waht is CNC (Computer Nxt Cybcer?) Sims wsa obsolatd 20 years ago! Nowadays mesh/ION based CNC! Unfortuantely unnecessary due to the low quality of public school education these days In two decades, you probably won't even need a human! of observation, but some were probably just blind to any potential drawbacks His feeling on the human element is that in spite of our frail and imperfect nature, we tend to react in more "interesting" ways compared to the more predictable machines From a business standpoint, this provides a greater return on investment (even disregarding the lucrative military contracts) in comparison to devoting ALL resources towards automation or cybernetics to follow (in very basic terms) and it crunches all the information and chooses the most logical outcomes Of course, nothing is perfect You still need an human eye to assess all of the information from said machine in order to make a final decision at times So what about things that aren't so black and white? I mean sure, conflict is pretty clear cut, but then there's things like moral dilemmas, or more complex relationship issues by this fully automated battery of evaluation that there were bound to be a few my systems deemed unfit for our cause We didn't set out to make the perfect solider We set out to make the perfect business partner a solider, is really just another employee with a different trade This has proved to be much easier and more effective in the long run (and automated evaluations are so much faster than human ones, they are outdated by the tim roper in , underground tunnels somewhere? Perfect! Nothing could grow in the surface layers of these silos Thanks for choosing Delerg's Finest (hey we just came up with that!) Later, after reading your contract and learning more about the Combine, you fill out the attached form "20000" This is so inspiring that you choose to take their entry test! Best of luck human, should your path cross ours again! ? how so? ? Combine is often criticized for a lack of romance Respectful relationships between men and women (or pairs thereof) are often dissolved in pursuit of company growth, while wanton displays of intimacy sets a negative tone Why visit the hospital to see people make babies if you can see it proudly on display in the lunchroom? Furthermore, sick children (or employees) that desperately desire the company of their parents may be displeased by otherwise happy mothers and fathers that cancel lunch dates in favor of sitting by their ailing child's bedside Children can grow resentful if they believe a hospital is preventing their family from functioning as normal, and sadly sometimes hospital fees must outweigh loving care This comes at quite the cost since sick children often emerge even sicklier than before after building up a resistance to visiting relatives As such, sending (healthier) grandparents to visit sick children not only strengthens the child's immunity due to prehistoric levels of love, it also allows for valuable child care so that exhausted parents may rest and return to work more productive In all fairness, I can tell you from experience that closing the café during traditional lunch hour severely cuts into business I will convince the board that while hospital visits should be strongly encouraged dor everyone, exceptions for loving grandparents must likewise be made Do we need to fix something? Am I wrong? But what is the root cause of these problems? What is the system failing to facilitate: human nature, or implementation? I could go on forever Please come prepared with thoughtful answers if you wish to join me in saving the world There you have it beautiful minds: the next thirty years of your lives summed up in a few paragraphs by yours truly Please direct all questions, complaints, and threats to my assistant Calli See you bright and early for day one! to sweeping your audience along You left subtle hints and much of the tale appears predictable, though key details were obviously kept secret to enhance peril! Ruth and I worked it out during your first night here and came up with a timeline of events based on our observations of you in class Which, as an aside, explains why we both felt you weren't a promising candidate for Plus; you behaved in a consistently logical manner (another reason why we thought you lacked imagination) Was lying to the teachers too far outside your comfort zone? The staff and I had a big laugh over someone's reluctance to take advantage of an adventure But then again, adventure is tiring and the status quo can certainly be comfortable enough to inspire devotion Alright enough procrastination, it's time for my nap now One more question though: you don't mind if I call you honeymoon traffic regulator do you? Thanks Chapter 1A: No Man is an Island A warm breeze hits your face, the chatter of desultory classmates nearby distracts you from reviewing your notes yet again Two hours till the test and teacher has already given warning of its difficulty To fall or not to fall, that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? The fat lady behind you with the horse laugh is certainly in opposition of you in particular it seems Your parents could not afford tutoring for you so you are here by your lonesome struggling to hold on to your spot in this pressure cooker of scholarship It's Darwinism at its purest: you either adapt or die; lose your dreams or lose your mind, relationships, and spirit You turn to Horse Laugh with a polite cough, her gaze meets yours and you are suddenly in an empty void She floats beside you, as do you, and you find yourself belly laughing for some odd reason, tears of joy stream down your face This is what pure happiness feels like without any real substance or reason behind it There is nothing to be sad about or worried over, just the blissful here-and-now is simply written as: survive With that in mind, you know she will sacrifice her individual self if it means the safety of the emotions within her For you, is the same true? Are you in genuine danger? Is this what Pacific Spirit Memorial intends to fill your head with when they 'pass' you along to secondary schooling after this year? Either you loop them into some doctrine or fail to keep up and get left behind? I sure hope not, I would LOVE to work with them You see a vision of an automatic gate opening A booming voice makes you jump calling your name along with a string of numbers Your vision shatters and you find yourself staring into the laughing face of Horse Laugh once more - takes you a moment to adjust your eyes from the overly bright sun to the relative darkness of the classroom, all within a split second "Here you go loser!" the-jokes - reddit: "One day a religious man was walking along the beach and came upon a woman who was about to bury her time god "I know your faith is strong in your time god," he said as she stuffed his deities mouth with pebbles So I'll grant you three questions before you fill his mouth with sand She turns to him with tears in her eyes and said, "Thank you The religious man thinks for a moment and says, "First How old is your son?" "35," she replies without hesitation Knowing that this can't be correct, he asks his second question, "Before we buried him, what was the color of his hair?" For the second time, she answers instantly, "Brown; just like my husband's " in consensus Bile rises in your throat as you review the current situation Just yesterday they were whining about a backstabbing holy man; now they're fixating on one of your fellow necromancers Yvette the duchess has her fawning sycophants all a twitter with her latest song How very dull Sure Yvette is skilled, but any and every one of your little shadows could do what she does now at this point Begging for peanuts from peasants, going to galas and court appearances, singing It's all so beneath you at this point The man was right: they NEED you You're not going to just lead them to some divisa or some such nonsense, you're going to repaint the landscape of this world a darker shade in your image That means pulling out of this ridiculous provincial town and heading to where the real power is Borgo Pass maintains a good relationship with Holgard and that's the direction you intend to head That's why you have to kill the rest of them and employ your powers to ensure an undead army follows you there You'll claim ruler ship the old fashioned way: You'll take it, killing anyone in your way and raising them to help you do it With each step you plan, plot, and prepare for your shadow-kissed horde to invade the taver That's when the current song wrap Borgo Pass establishment At least for now to nature; even death is merely a mere pause in life's continuum As the heads roll down the hill in Borgo Pass, making a pleasant *clunk* *clunk* sound as they tumble into various gutters and storm drains, you scream in the night at the town before you: "WINTER IS COMING , everyone and everything must evolve or die Everything dies eventually, but why wait? realized Hope is a mistake Fear and joy are not contagious, they're all too weak willed to embrace such power Fate exists, it is what is because it always was Knowing this changes everything, or it should Blah, blah, blah Do you ever get tired of looking at your own reflection? Dealing with your father's boasts are bad enough; is this ego massage really necessary? , fear is an uncommon emotion for you But tonight is different, an unfamiliar atmosphere pervades the air and you feel afraid Ever moment brings some new horror, what is happening to this place? You see a soldier run from a comrade in arms, screaming madly as he tears off his own face, flesh dripping from bone in tendrils then piling atop one another in squirming piles upon the ground you are hopeless but in the now its certain death in the long term you are nothing but a speck of dirt on a ball that twirls in an infinite abyss for an unknown purpose in the now, a rotting giant has approached your position and is preparing to strike the first blow It seems your choice is clear, as much as you hate it You might as well get it over with right? Taking a few steps back you brace yourself for something you're going to hate doing but have to be done anyway Jumping onto a horse you ride straight into the densest part of the mist, no hesitation The wet tendrils of vapor drench your clothes immediately, chilling you to the bone instantly and making your muscles cramp up Gasping you continue to force yourself through, the sprite's chatter sounding much closer than it was before The unnatural fog sucks away all sound, leaving only an oppressive, deadly silence in its wake Something in this mist paralyzes you, fragments of memories long forgotten flitting past your vision until you see something not clouds your mind but instead itself So close now, something just ahead calls out to your mind everything? Or will her twisted curiosity be her undoing? That curiosity, the thing that ensuresacles against all warnings and the discoveries made possible A need for understanding that lead to this moment, the discovery becoming known are you prepared? You see it, a glowing ovoid shape created all of flowing mist coming together into an perfect sphere Another few feet and you'll be touching it There's a flash as your world explodes into pain Every orifice in your body hausts out a sparkling mist, your eyes, nose, ears and mouth, all unleashing a torrent of sparkling vapor It flows from you uncontrollably as you spasm with the results of the pain It feels like every nerve in your body is breaking at once, send chills wrack your entire aching body So bright! So white! Agony unlike any other burns into your very core, heart bursting, flesh rendering and bone cracking as you bones become a gelatinous substance, reforming into an unearthly shape Your screams are lost in the void as a beating heart of mist, your blood sparkling as it pumps through magical veins You see her then, standing right in front of you as her mouth moves but no sound comes out, only vibrations You can distinctly hear two voices in your head no dream fantasy blood and good! / great shiver wrack wracking quake terror terrorterrorterror / shadows! REDSHADOWS! BURNING BRIGHT BURNING SHADOWS THEY KILL THEY KILL / AGONY TEARS FLESH HOPE TERROR DREAMS / THING NOT IN boundary ANSWERS BLANK NO NO NO NO / NOW! words awful / made forge river fall rock strong mountain / fearless brave joy hopeful happy town new lives… The pain ends as quick as it begun, with another crackle of electricity your body spasms one last time before collapsing on the ground, out cold Awareness 1: Surfaces Every sound is a color, every sight has a voice, you sense yourself drifting down long staircases twined with ivy into a cool, peaceful darkness All around you, you hear a thousand familiar voices calling out to you in far off, incomprehensible words Don't worry about anything, just let your worries float away into the inky blackness it's okay now, everything will be just fine You're with us now Lead jumped The burning sensation in his arm made itself known again as he jolted away, looking at the place where the monster had grabbed him Immediately, he flexed his fingers and began massaging his arm, trying to regain feeling The monster didn't seem bothered by the sudden move as it stared at him with its dead eyes while saliva slowly dripped off its wide grin While Lead was prepared to fight regardless of the circumstances, the look in the creature's eyes told him it wouldn't be much of a contest at all, even if he was in the safety of his own home God it was looking right through me Am I already dead? Am I a ghost? Did that monster kill me and this is what the afterlife looks like? Slowly, hesitantly, Lead shuffled backwards away from the monster, placing his back against the cold stone wall underneath the window Desperately, he peered around his room for any sort of weapon he could use to defend himself, but he kept prompting annoying says of utter normality The monster continued to grin at him, unmoving from where it was standing Dead plants ringed the den in a dry moat, withered barricades keeping Lead trapped Gotta get out But how?! The being in front of him didn't look moveable at all, be it physically or otherwise He couldn't reason with it, he couldn't run from it Hell, he couldn't even touch it It didn't like ghosts If he was going to get out of this, it would have to be by its own doing So, Lead obediently continued to wait as more moments passed by, staring at the horrifying monster who gazed back Something began taking shape in the far corner of his vision, growing more defined with every passing second After a few moments, the outlines of two people materialized in front of him, both of which were girls from his class He vaguely remembered the pair, associating with them being on some pointless errand for Martin or something similar Their haunting, ghastly visages were twisted into looks of agony and desperation Martin had a firm grip on both their shoulders, his long sharp nails digging deep into their skin as they shrieked in pain from the torture His stomach churning, Lead averted his gaze in hopes of not drawing the monster's attention to them Strangely, this seemed to work as they were but left entirely alone In the meantime, Lead saw that more figures were taking form elsewhere in the room, dread filling them as they realized what was happening Martin, a fiendishly gleeful grin on his face, watched on as each new ghost was born into the room Finally, Allison emerged from the shadows "Bri ian " she whimpered, sitting up from the mattress in her panic Martin's malevolent grin widened to monstrous proportions as he, once again, lunged for Allison Just like Lead, she jolted from her place on the mattress and immediately yanked herself free of Martin's grip Her fragile foot skidded along the ground as she was flung backwards, falling onto the carpeted floor with a muffled thud Martin didn't even seem to care as she shrieked in pain "You will pay," Martin jeered, the two ghosts now hovering anxiously by his sides "Serves you right, Allison!" A similar fear began encompassing Lead once more; no, not fear No, not fear It was pure terror as he helplessly bore witness to a malicious act which he could not stop : The Sun: Its warmth begins to caress your face, revitalizing your soul and replenishing your weary mind Draping the barren brown ground with a radiant golden glow, life can once again flourish here The cool midday air penetrates into the caverns of your body, revitalizing your very core Eyesight clears and focus strengthens once more, birds chirp in the distance - ringing out their beautiful melody for all who can hear ment: Lead: You blink repeatedly, trying to focus on the oddly shaped object Martin is waving around in front of you It takes a moment for your mind to comprehend that he's holding what is presumably an Xbox controller, and he's now giving it to you Your hands firmly grasp the two halves, feeling the new texture covering its once glossy surface It's cool to the touch ings that have long been dormant begin emerging from the depths of your being Curiosity, determination - each one more familiar than you'd care to admit This is not your time or is it? "Sit down," Martin instructs, pushing against your back in an attempt to help you take a seat on the mattress laying on the floor You comply without a fight; this isn't a dream - or is it? [2016] A Clockworker's Cruelty First Semester at High School The front features a life-sized photo of a boy dressed in what looks to be 19th-century clothing; he's staring straight at the camera with an eerie, monstrous look in his eyes using chosen art style Below his image states something that makes your blood run cold "This world is simply a nexus of fleeting horrors " "An Xbox One copy of Corpse Party: Blood Drive," closest to you Continue down this dark hallway NAH- Figment- Something else- NAH- Figment- Something else- Personally Introspective- Semiotic Web "Always seemed like something was off with him, ever since that day Jefferson killed himself," Martin mutters to himself He takes a moment to think; in that moment you have the sudden realization of what exactly is going on here Nonsense and childhood friends Which only leaves - "Go through this door right here," moves to behind Martin, who stands up and walks over to another doorway in the room He opens it, and you get a glimpse of what looks like very colorful woods outside A nice breeze blows through and cools you off just enough to keep you alive "The day the day that Jefferson " His mother had only come home to drop off his youngest brother; you can see the short haired blonde woman hugging her younger son in the entryway , and even Martin's disappearance, were all smoke screens Camouflage Deception Disappearances without a trace "It was you," A swift punch to the nose knocks you back as the narrow hallway throws off your balance You feel blood trickling down your nostrils, as all you really have time to notice is that the hallway gives way into a living room, where you spot an old CRT television set that seems to be on a news cast , you ask? You copy it from a reference, of course! You take a 3D model and turn it into a texture, which you then apply to the clone-thing The process is really hard: you have to get a reference for every single little detail, or else the clone won't look right You watch as Steve creates Jon, using the newly-downloaded image which gets mapped onto what looks like a first-person shooter's character You have more than enough knowledge of 3D design to know that it's a realistic image being used for this model, and can't help but grin as you see Steve apply red hair, weird eyebrows, slightly thicker-than-average glasses, and the distorted, ugly looking face upon the model Your 'father' looks horrified at what has happened to him "The day they beat him half to death," yesterday as far as we know A dark room tinged with blue from the CCTV images, in which "Two piles of wood and bone, connected by terrible, melted skin " The realization hits you like a sack of bricks dropped from a great height Blood pours out of your mouth as you let out vomit; the realization has filled you with unbelievable terror You can taste it as it comes back up and out, pooling at your feet The tape plays on, showing two piles of burnt and melted flesh, connected by strands of unharmed meat One bone is fractered, another skin is horribly scarred And the most horrifying thing about it? The fact that you know this, and more importantly; you remember seeing this As if your mind was put through a filter which made everything seem surreal "When they return to the grounds where their journey begun," You are still wiping the bile off your lips, and you do not miss the importance of what is happening A simple yellow school bus, the words "Jefferson County Middle School" clearly printed on the side in blue lettering occupied by ghostly children with monstrous faces and skeletal bodies They look out the window at you as you enter into the physical building for the first time You watch, confused and still pondering the reality around you, as they stare in shock One of these Spectres nervously laughs out loud at what he saw You find yourself in the principal's office without even knowing how you got here The haggard woman behind the desk looks up, staring at you with a dour look that makes you think she's incarnate of Satan himself "Name?" she dully asks while prickles at your skin "Greg

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knowledgeplayer-blog · 5 years

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Step 1: Make a Plan...

Step 2: Fail catastrophically. Hello world. I’m back from silence (if nobody is reading what I write, what counts as silence at that point?) after my inaugural post dedicating this blog to the Pathfinder TTRPG. And I was having grand thoughts about wanting to make very regular posts and content on here, producing a companion YouTube channel, and providing my thoughts and ideas a platform. And then a few months passed, I quit my job, moved out of my apartment, my girlfriend graduated college, a fridge fell on me and tried to ride me down stairs (true story). Also attempting to build up a Twitch channel from scratch, it’s been a time. But now that I’ve moved into my new place, I have a bit of time on my hands while I’m looking for work. And talking about my favorite game is a great distraction from counting the hours and filling out applications.

Now, I’ve made a few claims in the past about wanting certain structure to all of this, but right now I kind of just want to talk out something I’ve been thinking a lot about in fictional settings. It just so happens to effect us IRL too, so all the better.

Class, race, and prejudices that crop up betwixt.

I find that when I’m running games, I don’t lean too hard on including hard racism and hate in my NPC’s, or the infrastructure of the world for that matter. Part of that has to do with the make up of my current gaming group, I think. A good GM should always think about the content they prepare, and how well it fits with the comfort levels of their group. Prepping a gritty, black-and-white noir detective story for a group that wants to stroll through a small farming village and establish themselves as noble guardians there will be a bad flow.

(I’m aware that compassionate, experienced players can roll with those kinds of drastic changes and work with the GM on whatever they want to run. That is a niche case full of people far luckier than I’ve ever been.)

So keeping the tone of your game consistent with the desires of your group tends to be the safer route.

(Your players could quickly become an angry mob, shanghai you into running the game they want anyway, and all you’ve learned is that you need to wear darker, more absorbent pants when you run for that group. Or that you need a different group. Which ever is easier.)

So when my group is largely made up of players that are watchdogs for that behavior and subscribe to the call-out culture of our modern age, all I’d be doing is inviting a large amount of game sessions chewed out into rants on political correctness.

But..hang on...

They’re getting offended by racism. That’s a good thing, that’s the right response. Why is this somehow a problem for me? Am I a hateful bigot? God, I hope not.

But is a given NPC a hateful bigot...

There’s the rub.

Because there’s something that I think all game’s should strive for, and that’s the verisimilitude (believability) of the world. And I know that making a world believable helps to root your players into it. It helps them sit in the skin of their characters and get personally invested in the story.

The local alchemist has a chip on her shoulder towards orcs? A fellow PC made an off-hand comment mocking the length of elf ears? The BBEG just started an unholy crusade to wipe gnomes off the face of the known world? Your mileage may vary.

And your mileage is directly proportional to how important racism needs to be to evoke the desired response from your players.

To pull out of hypotheticals for a moment, I’d like to show a real-life example. For those that know the history of the United States, you all know that the Civil War was to settle the matter of slavery within this country. That conflict was a very, very heated one. And it inspired people on both sides to fight tooth and nail for what they thought was right. That passion, that righteous fury.

It makes for very powerful story-telling.

And that story would not exist in a world that was presented as idyllic and lacked racial prejudice.

(Disclaimer: slavery is an abominable act, racism is people being afraid of the unknown, and our world is a very sad, lonely place right now)

The fact that I even had to put that disclaimer is part of the problem if you ask me. The fact that the desire to put those events under a mircoscope and weigh all sides fairly can be described as sympathizing with some of the worst parts of U.S. history baffles me. How else can one prevent such atrocities without understanding them?

Rant over.

Back to gaming.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah, racism in games.

It’s a touchy issue. On paper, in practice, and is something that I think people need to understand, not plaster over and move on from.

Which is why I think racism in a fictional setting is very, very important. It puts this real issue in people’s faces and allows them to experience the very minimum of how it feels to be discriminated towards because of things outside one’s control. How can your players explore those ideas if you don’t present them faithfully? How can they feel the loneliness of being the one human in an elf town? Or the camaraderie that gets built up by the next human that person meets? Or the next one? And then suddenly every human feels united. And then they become a force strong enough to achieve the type of social reform they want and the world as a whole grows.

That little story right there only exists because of that racist shopkeep.

And it’s a great story with a great message! Combat hostility with brother-and-sisterhood. Push bad ideas back with good ideas. Build a better future instead of continuing the things that made the past bad.

So I think I want to try to be more racist towards the characters in my games.

Because I want to help my players think about social problems.

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a-alex-hammer · 5 years

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The Simple Math Behind Starting A Side Hustle

By: Tom Blake | This Online World

I talk about side hustles a lot.

As a college student, I have good reason to frequently mention this topic seeing as I believe starting a side hustle is absolutely vital for anyone in school.

Additionally, I think the world of online money making is generally interesting and fun, so I argue that starting a side hustle or developing new income streams is a worthwhile (and fun) endeavor for anyone to take part in.

That being said, I understand that it can be intimidating to take the first step.

I was in the conundrum-camp just 9 months ago when I decided to give starting my own blog a shot. I also had no idea what I was getting myself into when I decided to start my own drop shipping business or when I tried (and failed) at shipping POD items on Etsy.

After succeeding and failing at a variety of businesses and ventures, I’ve ultimately learned that it doesn’t really matter as long as you are persistent.

Get as many irons in the fire as you can…throw things against the wall and see what sticks. That’s the name of the game when it comes to side hustling.

I’m not saying to go guns-a-blazing and launch 6 different projects all at once, but don’t be afraid to dabble with different ideas.

Eventually, you will find what works best for your given skillet and desires. I’ve launched blogs or Amazon affiliate websites before, but this is the niche and platform that has worked for me (it took a few years to find…I launched my first website when I was 16).

Anyway, I was recently having a conversation with a friend where I encouraged them to start their own Etsy shop.

Inevitably, the conversation touched upon 2 questions:

How much money could they make by opening an Etsy shop?

Would the whole thing be worth it?

After giving those questions some thought, I wanted to break down the simple math behind starting a side hustle in this post because I don’t think it is as complicated as people might think.

This post will contain:

The simple math behind starting and benefiting from a side hustle.

What side hustles help protect us from.

Side hustling for income diversification?

Some quick suggestions on how to make more money and financial independence.

Let’s get to it!

The Simple Math Behind Starting a Side Hustle – $50/Month:

Before I get into the nitty-gritty details of this quick math, I want to outline what assumptions and tools I am using:

I am using this compound interest calculator from getsmarteraboutmoney.ca.

I am assuming a current initial investment amount of $0.

I am assuming all of the money from side hustling is added to an investment portfolio each month (or that you contribute an equivalent amount to your portfolio if side hustle money is for paying off bills).

I am assuming a 5% annual return rate. This is a conservative estimate and more than reasonable.

I am giving the portfolio 20 years to grow.

Now, let’s say you started a simple side hustle that started netting you $50 of income every single month.

This $50 might not seem like much, but then again, that’s $600 of extra income each year.

And when you plug in these numbers into the compound interest calculator…

Some pretty awesome returns come out!

It might sound absolutely crazy or even impossible, but if you invest $50 a month at a 5% annual rate of return, you will earn more than $8,000 in interest over 20 years.

Additionally, your investment portfolio as a whole would increase by more than $20,000; all from a simple $50 a month side hustle!

If you don’t believe the math, just check out the year-by-year breakdown:

The simple fact is that compound interest and time is the most powerful combination side hustlers have in their arsenal.

It doesn’t matter if you are trying to reach financial independence or if you just want to make more money: investing and a long time frame are a killer duo!

So, what are some viable side hustle ideas for making $50 a month?

There are some very simple ones:

The Simple Math Behind Starting a Side Hustle – Other Income Levels:

Alright, while making $50 a month from side hustling is a great start, it’s also reasonable to expect that you can make more money and increase your portfolio worth.

Let’s take a look at a few more monthly earning thresholds!

Earning $100/Month from Side Hustling:

If you invested $100/month at a 5% annual rate of return, you would earn more than $16,5000 in interest in 20 years and reach $40,500 in portfolio value!

Some viable side hustles I would recommend to make $100 a month in additional income include:

Teaching English or other subjects online.

Offering local services in your city, like lawn care, shoveling snow, gardening help, etc.

Starting your own blog (it will take a few months to get running, granted, but if you check my recent income reports you’ll see it is possible to earn $100-$300 a month from blogging within a year).

Start writing on Medium (frequently…ideally several times a week until your income starts to pick up).

Earning $300/Month from Side Hustling:

If you invested $300/month at a 5% rate of annual return, you would earn almost $50,000 in interest over 20 years and see your portfolio grow to more than $120,000!

Granted, it might take some time for you to develop a side hustle to a $300/month point, but it is possible!

Realistically, these are some side hustle ideas I could see generating $300/month:

Earning $1,000/Month from Side Hustling:

Alright, while this might be getting to the daydreaming phase for a lot of side hustlers, I think this $1,000/month benchmark really shows the power of compound interest in full.

Personally, earning 165K in interest from side hustle work sounds like a dream come true. While I am still a long, long way off this mark, the numbers certainly serve as a nice goal to work towards!

However, I think it is fairly unreasonable to expect someone that someone with a 40 hour work week can earn an additional $1,000/month from gig jobs or anything that pays a lower hourly rate.

To earn $1,000/month as a side hustle, I imagine you would have to:

Get into some sort of consulting on the side (SEO, digital marketing, project management, etc.)

Offer copy-writing services or do landing page work for businesses (these can be some high paying contracts).

Find some other way to offer a business your services, since businesses are more likely to have the capital to pay monthly contracts worth $1,000 or more.

My business partner and I have had $1,000 contracts in the past for SEO and paid advertising work, and I have heard of copywriters earning some impressive amounts of cash.

Hell, even bloggers who dabble in sponsored posts can make a killing, so it is certainly possible to make the coveted $1,000/month mark with enough time and dedication.

But even if you can’t make $1,000 a month in extra income, you see the point: any additional income can be immensely powerful when invested.

Now, while making extra money is always welcome, I also want to touch on a few other benefits of side hustling because this concept is much more powerful than just increasing your net worth.

Other Factors Side Hustles Protect us From:

1 – Avoiding Debt or Paying Off Debt Faster:

Due to life events or circumstances, not everyone is able to invest the extra money they make. This is absolutely normal.

However, earning even a bit of additional income every single month from a passive income source or side hustle can be immensely valuable.

While in school, I sold textbooks, did freelance digital marketing, started a blog, and entered marketing competitions to help make money in college.

Ultimately, that money went a long way in helping with the cost of tuition/textbooks and general living expenses.

Even a humble $50/month side hustle can help prevent $600 worth of debt each year or cover an expense like a phone bill or part of the grocery bill.

And if you factor in the interest you end up paying on loans, each side hustle dollar that is spent on paying off debt or mitigating it in the first place is actually more valuable than the base dollar amount in a sense.

2 – Income Dips or Unemployment:

I work at a digital marketing company where the commission is a pretty important part of what I take home at the end of the month.

For anyone else in a commission-based job, seasonal work, or industry that fluctuates with pay-rates, you know that income dips are just a fact of life…not every month will be the same.

Additionally, depending on what country you live in, health care or certain worker compensation laws may or may not assist you in the event you have to take extended amounts of time off from work.

And, finally, depending on your industry and the job market in your country, there are varying amounts of risk when it comes to losing your job entirely.

While I am a firm believer that honest, hard-working people will always make it out okay at the end of the day, the simple fact is that one’s income can take a sudden and unexpected hit for a variety of reasons.

In the worst case scenario, having additional income streams in your life can be a saving grace.

This is essentially income diversification 101, and if you can successfully develop multiple income streams, you are accelerating your path towards financial independence while simultaneously reducing your risks.

Even if a side hustle only bring in a few hundred dollars every now and again, you can use this money to help build up an emergency fund that will buy you more time in the event your income dips.

In a way, having a firmly established side hustle is like a financial safety net. The more money your side hustle produces, the better and wider your safety net is!

3 – Stagnant Growth & Lack of Learning:

I once had an internship at an insurance company where I was a ‘Ratings Tester’.

In the job description, it said I would be helping the company improve upon their current insurance policy rating system, as well as devise some new components for how the company would develop new plans.

In reality, I spent 4 months making fake people in an imaginary script-based world, assigning them wonky insurance policies, and trying to break the system. It was pure quality assurance work and brute-force bug testing at its finest.

Needless to say, I was miserable.

I also wasted an internship and didn’t learn anything useful besides the fact that I will never work in insurance as long as I live.

However, while I was forced to toil away at the world’s shittiest version of The Sims video game for 8 hours a day, at night, I did my own thing.

It was at this time I started doing freelance digital marketing, reading about passive income, and brainstorming money making ideas to try.

Spending time on the things I was actually interested in brought enjoyment into my life, taught me a variety of new skills, and helped keep me sane.

If you are ever caught in a period of time where you are not learning or have become stagnant, starting a side hustle is an immediate way to remedy the issue.

Even if you are currently employed at a job that isn’t unbearable, if you aren’t consistently learning new skills and honing your talents, you are losing a competitive advantage to the people who are putting in the extra work.

When in doubt, look to Elon.

Your side hustle can even accomplish more than simple income generation.

If the skills you learn from starting your own business or online venture complement the skills you need to do your job, you might even become a more valuable employee.

Or, in an even cooler scenario, the skills you develop from starting a side hustle might allow you to receive a promotion at work or suggest new ideas that benefit the company you work for.

For college students who still have to enter the job market, this concept is even more important.

Unless you are in engineering, some science, or a trade, I believe colleges are generally doing a poor job at teaching students any hard skills (or even how to think…but don’t get me started on this).

I’m finishing my degree in Psychology/Marketing, and if I hadn’t had internships or side hustles, I wouldn’t know a damn thing!

Starting your own business or trying to make more money in college will make you more prepared and qualified to enter the workforce, so make the most of of your college years and learn through trial by fire.

Final Thoughts on Side Hustle Math:

While starting your own business or attempting to make money online can seem daunting at first, I think it is important to remember a few important things:

It’s alright to start out small.

Your side hustle income doesn’t need to replace your full-time income.

Investing your additional income or paying off debt faster are some of the most important things you can do, financially speaking.

Even if your side hustle never amounts to more than a humble $50/month income boost, make it happen.

It is impossible to grow or develop new skills without putting in any effort, and you might be surprised at where you end up after putting in some time.

And one more thing…don’t forget to have fun!

If you want to take your side hustle money and go out for a nice dinner or buy someone a thoughtful gift, go for it.

I think it is easy to get lost in the calculators and long-term picture, and all too easy to forget that life isn’t just about reaching financial independence as fast as you can.

Sometimes, you just need to treat yourself or the important people in your life to new things and experiences.

I hope you have enjoyed this post, and thank you to everyone who stuck around to the very end.

Catch you all in the next post!

Republished with the permission of ThisOnlineWorld.com.

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Source/Repost=> http://technewsdestination.com/the-simple-math-behind-starting-a-side-hustle/ ** Alex Hammer | Founder and CEO at Ecommerce ROI ** http://technewsdestination.com

#success #motivation #AlexHammer #Founder #CEO #Ecommerce #ROI #Charlotte #Secrets #win

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nuoveggdb-blog · 5 years

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whatevernevermind · 5 years

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What [Current Popular TV Show] Can Teach You About SEO

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puclpodcast · 6 years

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Teambuilding for PUCL Draft League Feat. Geo

I bet you are all wondering why I called you here today. It’s not because of the insane deal of 2 cases for the price of 1 of Corsola Cola. It’s not because of the attempted takeover of PUCL by Shadow President Zcron. It’s because we have more PDL news to talk about! As many of you know either from the weekly postings, podcasts, and/or the discord chat, the PDL Season 2 draft happened last Sunday and the hype is incredible. We are seeing coaches trading mons, and making deals behind closed doors to try and get the edge on their opponents this season. With this week being a prep week before the battles commence it is the perfect time to go over how to build your teams on a weekly basis for your opponent.

Team building in draft league is much different than building a team for Singles OU or VGC. The biggest difference is that both you and your opponent have a set roster. You have 10 Pokemon and they have 10 Pokemon, so you each know what could potentially show up. Not only that, but you can vary you team up week to week to better combat your opponent. The first thing I do each week is look at the weaknesses of each team. Is there a type that my opponent doesn’t have a good switch into to? I try and find the weaknesses within the team and the best way to abuse it. If I notice that the team has a weakness to rock, I’m 100% going to Stealth Rocks to try and break down his team.

The next thing of importance to look at is the speed tiers of your opponents and your teams. Let’s say your opponent has a couple of really fast mons and a couple of really slow mons. Then your pokemon in the middle can run a more offensive nature like, Adamant and Modest and still outspeed pokemon. Overall it is important to know what pokemon on your opponent’s team you can and cannot outspeed. If you are bringing the slowest mon between both teams, then there is almost no reason to invest in speed when it will always get outsped.

After looking at your match-up it is very important to determine what your Win-Con(s) is/are for that match and what your opponents can be. You want to build a team that supports your Win-Cons and gives them the best possible chance to beat your opponent, as well as, handle the potential mons your opponent can bring. A Win-Con can be an offensive sweeper or a defensive core that your opponent can’t break through. It is all about your style of play vs your opponents. There are several other things to consider when teambuilding but one of the best ways to understand this is to see it first hand. Geo and I will be going over our prep for our match against each other in the PDL Season 1 Quarterfinals

Clod9 Vs. Geo (PDL Season 1 Quarterfinals)

Team Matchup:

Clod9’s Roster:

Kyurem-Black, Jirachi, Florges, Roserade, Darmanitan, Gligar, Quagsire, Swellow, M-Sableye, Tauros

Geo’s Roster:

Porygon 2, Suicune, Alolan Muk, Mamoswine, Yanmega, Hitmonlee, Delphox, Bisharp, Rotom, M-Aerodactyl

Clod9’s Preparation

When preparing to battle Geo, or anyone in Season 1 of PDL, the first thing I looked at was how could Kyurem-B kill his entire team. Since Kyurem-B is one of, if not the best wall-breaker in the format i looked at it’s match up and noticed between Outrage and Fusion Bolt, I could hit everything neutrally and break down the walls. Geo had no Fairy type on his team. However my main concern was the wall core that Geo had drafted. P2, Suicune, and Alolan Muk caused my team a lot of problems especially Alolan-Muk and P2. Based off that, I was fairly certain he was bringing; P2, Suicune, A-Muk, Mamo, M-Aero, Bisharp. The dark types do really well against my team, and they fit Geo’s play style from that season. I knew if I was going to win the game, it would be on the back of breaking down his defensive core so Kyurem-B could come in and win the game late. In order to do that I needed to get rid of P2 so I purposely brought this Jirachi set:

Jirachi @ Colbur Berry

Ability: Serene Grace

EVs: 44 HP / 12 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 196 Spe

Timid Nature

– Thunderbolt

– Hidden Power [Fighting]

– Flash Cannon

– Trick

Designed to trick away the Eviolite from P2, potentially an Assault Vest from Alolan Muk and worst case I get to eat a Dark type hit and do some damage back to his team. I also thought he would bring a pursuit trapping Bisharp to come in on the Jirachi and deal with it that way, so i packed Hidden power fighting that could take out most offensive variants of Bisharp. This spread also allows me to guarantee survive a Sucker Punch without colbur berry and revenge with HP Fighting. Other than the Jirachi set, everything else I was fairly standard. Scarf Darm to hit mons hard and revenge in the late game if I needed it. Defensive M-Sableye with taunt/knock off to stop the walls. Aromatherapy Florges to handle my team getting toxic’d. Defensive Quagsire for his set up mons. All of those mons had one goal in mind. Break down the enemy team so that the monster Kyurem-Black could come in and take down his team.

Kyurem-Black @ Dragonium Z

Ability: Teravolt

EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 20 Def / 4 SpD / 228 Spe

Jolly Nature

– Outrage

– Fusion Bolt

– Toxic

– Dragon Claw

There were very few members of Geo’s team that could handle a Dragonium Z Outrage from KB and those that could would be taken down Fusion bolt. His best switch into Kyurem Black was the P2, so I packed Toxic with the intent that if I could weaken it and any form it would be helpful. During the week up to the battle I couldn’t find a good last move, I considered Rock Smash, Hidden power Fighting, Earth Power, Roost, Substitute, but went with Dragon Claw since I didn’t want to always be locked into Outrage. It was probably a mistake but that’s the point of draft league, to learn and improve for the next go around.

Geo’s Preparation

The first thing to do when looking at building a team is first deciding what mons they are likely to bring. So, when I look at his draft versus mine, What I see initially is a dual core of Jirachi and Kyurem-B. So, I know for sure that these are coming. Typically, I had been running toxic to wear teams down until I could set up a sweep, so the means M-Sableye is also likely coming. Now that is a scary tri-core. Now I need to figure out what to bring of mine to handle his team. I decided on Alolan Muk with poison fang to wear down the Sableye. This essentially would allow me to win the 1v1 and if he were to switch in to anything but the Jirachi it can get the toxic there too. Mamoswine was my next bring, as the ability to have stealth rocks up limits the amount of times that Kyurem-B can switch in, and his EQ threatens Jirachi. I decide to round off these two with my defensive core of P2 and Suicune. Both can essentially be run as either a special of physical tank. P2 also threatens Jirachi with foul play and recover. Now in order to play this toxic stall type of game, I need to be able to handle any clerics who could bring. On his roster that is both Florges and Roserade. To do this I brought the most niche Mega Aerodactyl set you may ever see

Aerodactyl-Mega @ Aerodactylite

Ability: Tough Claws

EVs: 252 HP / 160 Def / 28 SpA / 68 SpD

Lonely Nature

– Taunt

– Stealth Rock

– Ice Fang

– Hidden Power [Grass]

This is a super tanky set designed to survive while killing a cleric and getting rocks up. The first reaction is to use Aero to kill the Kyreum because stone edge can OHKO it. I decided against that because all he needs is a choice scarf and I lose that. In fact I was fairly certain that he was going to run a choice scarf, because As you may notice I do not have any fairies, and choice scarf outrage could just do a ton of damage to my team. The little bit of SpA is for Quagsire. This allowed me to guarantee the 2HKO. Ice fang lets me fight the Gligar and Roserade, while the lonely nature allows me to still get the Atk bonus to OHKO Gligar. I couldn’t necessarily beat the Florges 1v1 with this build but I could keep it from using aromatherapy. I have one more choice of mon, and I still need a way to kill the Kyreum. So I choose Bisharp. I went with a full defensive build:

Bisharp @ Leftovers

Ability: Defiant

EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def

Impish Nature

– Iron Head

– Protect

– Sucker Punch

– Grass Knot

Remember that I was convinced that Clod was going to run choice scarf on Kyreum. So, I could use protect to bait out the earth power. Then switch into Suicune and go for a burn with scald. Iron head with this build does something on the order of 75% so just needed some rocks up on the field. You may notice that I haven’t talked about what my answers were to Darmanitan and Tuaros were. Well with a defensive Suicune, I felt that covered me enough for Darmanitan. As for Tauros, didn’t really have answer to it. Just kind of figured he wasn’t going to bring as all 9 of his other mons could do what he could, but better against my team. So that is a quick look into what goes through my mind when building a team.

RESULT

Geo and I had one of the closest games of the entire season. We fought back and forth exchanging toxic, knock offs, Earthquakes, and Moon blasts until it ended in a 1-0 in Geo’s favor. Looking back, I believe I misplayed the end of the game which would have given me a better chance to win, but we will never know. Geo played phenomenally that game and I look forward to playing again this season (if we get to play again this season). This is where I want to iterate, that you should always go back and rewatch your games. It gives you a different outlook on the game watching it rather than playing it because you can pick up on habits you may catch things that you missed when battling.

Interview with Geo

Since we already have Geo here with us, I thought it would be a good chance to get to know a little more about him.

C9: Thank you Geo for taking the time out of your busy day to answer these questions for the fans. To start off, You made a really deep run last year in PDL. Give us your overall impressions and thoughts of that Season.

GEO: Last season was really a learning experience for most people. The gap in competitors was pretty large in the beginning. By the end of the regular season that had shrunk a ton. A few of the ‘easy’ wins I had in the beginning of the season would have been a lot closer, if not gone against, if the people I played, played with skill they showed in the end of the season.

C9: Since we just drafted for Season 2, how do you think your draft went/ What was your strategy going into the draft?

GEO: I really like my draft. Being bias, I feel my draft is one of the stronger ones but only results will tell if that’s the case. I went into the draft with a few versatile cores I wanted. After the first few rounds then it became a matter a filling out the role players for the team.

C9: Did you get sniped at all during the draft?

GEO: Kinda? I had in mind a few S tier mons that I wanted. I didn’t really plan on drafting Tapu Koko by a few rounds in a realized there was a good chance I could get it. It depended on what the few other people drafted that didn’t have an S tier drafted. Once they drafted I knew what I wanted. I had a mon in each tier I could’ve used. By round 5 I was the only one who hadn’t drafted in S tier meaning I could wait until the last round to draft it.

C9: If you had to guess, what do you think your overall record will be at the end of the regular season.

GEO: Ideally I would like to better my record from season 1 so going 9-3 or better would feel real good possibly winning the whole thing.

C9: Well it looks like you have your work cut out for you this season. With several returning coaches and a bunch of new ones, the difficulty level has been raised this season. One might even say that it has been turned up to 11… Ok, back on track, lets learn about you as a pokemon Fan. When did you start listening to PUCL?

GEO: That’s a good question. I can’t say that I actually listen to PUCL. I know Thatch in real life and he got me into the community directly and showed me what competitive pokemon was all about. Other than a select few, podcasts aren’t really my thing.

C9: What pokemon generation did you start with?

GEO: Gen 1 where it all began. Picked it up when it first came out in the US.

C9: What is your favorite region?

GEO: Kanto.

C9: Who is your favorite pokemon?

GEO: Mega Gallade

C9: If you had to pick: Attack or Special Attack?

GEO: Attack

C9: What is your battle style: Stall/Hyper Offense/Bulky Offense/Balance?

GEO: Bulky offense.

C9: Do you prefer Speed or Trick Room?

GEO: Speed. I’m a singles player and thus trick room is bad!

C9: What is your favorite Weather; Hail/Sand/Rain or Sun?

GEO: Sun.

C9: Electric/Misty/Grassy or Psychic Terrain?

GEO: Psychic.

C9: Favorite status to inflict: Sleep/Freeze/Paralysis/Burn or Poison?

GEO: Toxic!

C9: Have you watched the Pokemon anime? If yes, what is your favorite Theme song?

GEO: Ummm I haven’t watched since Ash went into Johto. So I would have to say the original.

C9: Thank you Geo, for joining us today, and shedding some light on how to prepare for battle in the PDL. Maybe we will hear from you again, but you will have to tune in to future articles to find out. Take care PUCL, and happy prepping.

Below is a video by TTM Jolt (One of the Best Draft League Players) and his process of Teambuilding. He goes in depth about his process and how he prepares for every match. If you are looking to improve your teambuilding in Draft League, check out this video.

youtube

from Teambuilding for PUCL Draft League Feat. Geo

#pokemon #pucl #pokemon podcast #ORAS #nintendo #video games

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