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absolutepokemontrash · 3 years

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The Brothers and Side Characters Play the Sims

I don’t know what possessed me to make this but WHATEVER. I’ve been playing the Sims since I was a wee little girl, and I’ve seen my fair share of weird Sims stuff that I feel would fit these bozos perfectly.

My Sims have a Functional Family Life Because I Don’t (Lucifer)

God dammit Levi’s obsessed with another game... ugh.

Spends 5 minutes in Create-a-Sim and hops into a starter home.

Lucifer’s the type to start with all the average stuff and then build their stuff up as his sim gets promotions.

It’s just... so peaceful...

...he’s adopting a dog.

Look at his new little virtual family... his sim-kids are self sufficient and getting A’s in school, his Sim spouse MC or Diavolo take your pick loves his Sim-self, his sim-dog-

WAIT NO- THE DOG’S AN ELDER?!

AAAAAAAAAAAAA-

...

He’s fine. It was just a virtual dog. *sniffle*

He’s now spending his free time drinking Demonus and playing the Sims.

What’s a mod? Levi why does your sim have gun?

Behold, My Gorgeous Home... It’s a Box (Mammon)

Mammon, like the rest of the HOL, is mooching off of Levi’s Origin account.

“AW SHIT! This house looks awesome! I’m gonna build it for Sim-me to live in!”

Mammon proceeds to build a box with rooms. Yay...

He just picks the funnest sounding job if he picks any job at all for his Sim. That’s how he ended up making 9 dollars an hour in the criminal career.

Didn’t stop Mammon from buying that solid gold bathroom set from Get Famous... a box with solid gold bathrooms.

His Sim is broke send help-

“Leviiiiiii my sim needs money... the people my sim kidnapped and is forcing to paint aren’t making enough money...” “Ugh... press control shift C and type ‘motherlode’.”

...Levi made a mistake.

“FUCK YEAH! MOTHERLODE!”

His sim’s life is so chaotic, he has a piranha pool that his sim has almost died in twice, the sim is carrying on several torrid love affairs, his sim got struck by lightning, his sim has nearly died in a grilled cheese making accident twice... in the same day.

At least once Sim-Mammon and Sim-MC get married things calm down a little.

Mammon finds out what custom content is and proceeds to download EVERYTHING HE CAN FIND.

And now he’s asking Levi why his computer is running so slow.

Expansion Pack King (Leviathan)

He got into it back when the Sims 2 was new, he’s a veteran fan.

“Bro remember when Agnes Crumplebottom would show up and whack the shit out of your sims if they were flirting?”

“Remember when that witch would show up randomly on the lot you were on if you had Makin’ Magic?”

“Remember when Bella Goth was abducted by aliens and we just... didn’t question it?”

He whines about the Sims4 and how crappy it is but still buys every expansion pack, game pack, and stuff pack.

This boy watches like 40 hours of built tutorials and ends up sobbing over his weird roofs.

“WHY DOESN’T IT LOOK AS NICE AS THE ONE I’M LOOKING AT?! THIS ISN’T FAIR!”

The mod folder is so full istg-

Levi gets custom content for the sole purpose of making his favourite fictional characters.

This is why Henry and the Lord of Shadows are married and Ruri-chan and Sim-Levi are roommates.

Oh my god they were roommates-

Levi also added his brothers to the world and uh... Sim-Mammon died in a tragic pool accident F.

Levi then proceeded to befriend the Grim Reaper.

He’s anxiously awaiting the release of Paralives.

Wait Gameplay? In This Build Simulator? (Satan)

Satan’s here to build and leave. Gameplay who?

Our favourite bundle of rage is a master architect and the amount of followers on the Gallery he has shows it.

He takes up those build shell challenges and always ends up making them look positively perfect.

Asmo’s always using his houses, and Satan often takes requests when he gets bored.

No Mammon, he reserves the right to refuse to build a golden castle for you- YOUR SIM HAS 40 SIMOLEONS-

No mods, no CC, he’s building with what EA gave him.

...and EA gave him debug objects, and he’s not going to explain how to get them.

The one time he did actually play with a family... it was one sim and seven cats.

He tries to play without cheats... and ends up getting frustrated and turns on cheats.

All hail the Pets Expansion Pack.

Custom Content Soap Opera (Asmodeus)

Asmo spends 5 hours in Create a Sim then just... clicks out of the game.

That’s how it goes most of the time, buuuuuut when he gets super invested in a family he’s made, boy howdy is he INVESTED.

Sim A is carrying on an affair with Sim C who’s in love with Sim B who’s married to Sim A but Sim D wants to kill Sim A and C even though they’re the illegitimate child of Sim C-

When Asmo realizes that in the Sims 4 he needs to manufacture all the drama himself and he can’t just sit back with a glass of wine and watch the fireworks, he switches to the Sims 2 and 3.

“...why is this old lady beating up my Sim..?”

He immediately recoils in horror upon seeing how ugly the Sims are pre Sims4.

HE NEEDS TO FIX THIS-

Ah, there we go, perfect. Custom Content to the rescue!

He ends up remaking the entire world just so he doesn’t have to look at weird looking Sims.

Asmo is the only one to have finished a proper Legacy Challenge, but it gets crazy chaotic after gen 3.

“My sim just got abducted by aliens and now he’s pregnant- WHAT?!”

He has about 40 saves and only two he actually plays.

Just a Big Ol’ Happy Family (Beelzebub)

Beel found the game, proceeded to make everyone in create-a-sim to the best of his abilities, and made everyone get along.

That’s why Sim-Lucifer and Sim-Belphie are on a swing set together, they’re friends :D

“Hey Luke do you think you can make this?” “I-is that a cake shaped like a hamburger?” “Yes. Please make.”

He took one look at the cooking options and decided to max out his Sim’s cooking skill to unlock all the options.

Beel proceeded to drool all over his keyboard. Gross...

Boy howdy did he have some crazy dinner suggestions!

Overall, very wholesome Sim-life, except for the time Sim-Levi died because the toilet caught fire, don’t worry, Sim-Beel knows how to make ambrosia.

All is good in the Sim save...

...until Sim-Beel ate pufferfish nigiri and fuckin died-

Wait Did I Not Pause- (Belphie)

Huh, this game looks fine... I’ll play for a little- *SNORE*

Belphie makes some sims, plops them into a starter home, plays for an hour, then falls asleep.

He wakes up five hours later to absolute carnage.

Three sims have died because someone decided to make Mac and Cheese and the oven caught fire, the kids were taken away by social services, and the dog ran away.

“...heheh, holy shit everyone look.”

He doesn’t play often, but when he does, death occurs. He has found out every death method for every game from Sims 2 to 4.

And that INCLUDES the Sims Medieval! You guys remember that game?

Sometimes it’s not intentional, but Belphie got bored with the totally normal life his sims were living and decided to spice it up.

“Why are the ghosts breaking my showers..?”

Help There’s a Bug- (Diavolo)

The Crown Prince started playing when he noticed Lucifer was playing it.

He was immediately obsessed.

Dia mostly plays the Sims Medieval because he likes the feeling of achievement after completing a quest!

“Barbatos... why isn’t my Sim completing their task? The icon won’t show up.” “My lord it appears the game is bugged.” “:(“

No one thought to tell Diavolo that EA doesn’t plan on offering bug support to a game made in like... 2009

This doesn’t matter! Look at how great his kingdom is doing- oh no his hero has the plague-

He plays through the Pirates and Nobles expansion and manages to get the peaceful ending, he’s so proud of himself.

“MC! Look! My Monarch’s sword is permanently on fire and I’m fighting an evil wizard!”

When he does play the other Sims games he’s pretty basic, though, he does a great job at furnishing!

Dia gets crazy sad when his Sims die... he turns off aging.

Builder no. 2 (Barbatos)

Barbie doesn’t have time for this... but when he does, he builds.

No create a sim.

No playing the game as intended.

Just builds.

It’s relaxing, okay? A nice little suburban house he’s never going to play in, maybe a treehouse, maybe a big Hollywood Mansion...

The only time he actually plays the game outside of build mode is when someone needs his help to fix something in-game.

He does download custom content build items if he feels bored by the current selection.

Oh Crap What Am I Doing?! (Simeon)

Help him. Please.

He’s so confused.

“Luke, why is my sim upset?” “He’s hungry, Simeon.” “Oh, how do I fix that?” “...Simeon-”

There’s a toilet in the middle of the living room.

The fridge is facing the wall.

There’s no bathtub or shower.

The house is on fire- there is no god- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

Okay, once he gets the hang of it he’s sitting pretty. His sims have good jobs, the kids are getting good grades, everything’s fine.

...

But Simeon won’t forget the nightmares.

What Even is This Save? (Solomon)

Solomon’s save is the definition of chaos.

One sim’s a vampire, the other is a spellcaster that really wants to fight the Callientes for some reason, there’s one normal sim that’s always sick for some reason,

It gets weird, confusing, and horrible.

Just how Solomon likes it.

His house makes no sense, like, what even is architecture?

Money cheats are needed because Solomon‘a goal of chaos and confusion is proving to be kind of expensive.

Square up Mortimer Goth, Solomon’s sims are here to steal your weird knight statue that’s worth a shit ton of simoleons for NO REASON.

He joined the scientist career for the sole purpose of getting to the alien planet and kidnapping adding an alien to the household via cheats.

The vampire ended up dying on their wedding day because Solomon forgot that he gave them the sun weakness.

Oh well, the ghost got added to the household! VAMPIRE GHOST!

The Child (Luke)

Before you say Luke’s too young to play the Sims, you should know that I was nine when I first started playing, and I turned out fiiiiiiiiiine.

He’s just happy to be playing.

Look, his sims are gardening :D

Look, two of them are getting married :D

Look, they had a baby :D

Look, his sims are building a rocket ship :D

Look, his sims’s rocket just crashed-

The concept of death hit the little angel right in the face that day.

“*sniffle*... my sims...”

Don’t worry, with tears in his eyes, Luke quit without saving and everything was fine!

Speaking of My Sims, Luke played MySims Sky Heroes and that was when Luke had his first bout of gamer rage.

MC came over to hang out with Solomon and Simeon, and in the distance they could just hear:

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY TIME WASN’T FAST ENOUGH TO CONTINUE THE STORY!? I’LL SHOW YOU FAST ENOUGH TIME!”

Okay, maybe Simeon should take the game away... just for a bit... he should take heed not to be bitten by the incredibly angry chihuahua.

Bonus:

MC: Why are our Sims married?

*Insert Boy Here*: Uh... that’s weird... I have no clue why they’re doing that...

#Obey me #obey me headcanons #Obey me!#obey me! shall we date?#obey me! headcanons #obey me shall we date #Obey me Lucifer #Obey me Mammon #obey me leviathan #Obey me Satan #Obey me Asmodeus #Obey me Beelzebub #Obey me Belphegor #Obey me Diavolo #Obey me MC #obey me barbatos #Obey me Simeon #Obey me Luke #Obey me Solomon

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yet-another-saberface · 4 years

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Interim Headcanons: Fuyuki -> Orleans

This is the first in what’ll be a series of story posts that are ‘Interims,’ or what takes place in between singularities! (Other than the eventual events.) They have less heavy story content but are still necessary because they do contain character stuff.

This one has a fic section roughly in the middle of the post! It’s around 1500 words & in the first person POV, which is actually what I’m most experienced with writing, so I hope everyone can enjoy that! There should be another short fic post coming out before I start on Orleans that’s less story and more slice of life stuff, but I’m still figuring out what exactly I want to do with that and had everything else done, so I decided to post it now!

We’re summoning some people, so get ready!

Between Fuyuki and the first real singularity, Eva practically refuses to have any downtime. She’s told that she should take it easy, let her leg heal, and wait for them to pinpoint the appropriate rayshift point. At some point they’ll help her set up the summoning circle for backup, but until then, she doesn’t need to be doing anything.

Instead of following those orders, Eva essentially ends up doing the work of multiple people herself. She hangs around the command room, usually standing the entire time, and will rush over to help anyone that seems to be having any difficulties. One of your numbers seems off? She’ll double-check it for you and if it’s correct she can explain exactly why. Tech isn’t working? Not her area of expertise but she’ll troubleshoot it until she can’t anymore, at which point she runs off to find Da Vinci. Something weird happening magically? You better bet she’s all over it and probably pushing you out of your workstation to handle it herself.

After a day or two, Roman notices what’s going on and takes her aside. She’s promptly banned from the command room unless someone asks for her to be there.

She tries to hide her disappointment… Which is surprisingly easy when the only emotion you can really convey at the moment is ‘tired?’ She heads back to her room, takes her boot off, and collapses onto her bed trying to figure out what else she should do, falling asleep in the process.

She wakes up around a full day later with a brilliant idea.

She’s gonna set up the summoning circle and perform the ritual herself. She forgets about the boot and immediately rushes off the Chaldea’s library with the intent of double-checking her memory.

She actually ends up spending a lot more time in the library than she intended when she finds out just how expansive it is. There’s all the books on magic she’s read before, along with literally everything else she could ever hope to find. This is how she finds herself filling a crate with somewhere upwards of 15 books and dragging it back to her room after leaving a note so people know who took them.

Mash catches her as she’s heading back with the books, glad to see that she seems less tired. When Mash offers to help with the books, Eva tries to say no, until Mash notices that she isn’t wearing her boot anymore.

“Senpai, did Doctor Roman say your ankle is okay now?” “Uh… Wait. Right. My ankle is injured. Still. Crap.”

It’s only then that she starts to notice how the pain is coming back from all the unsupported weight she’s been putting on the injury, and finally accepts Mash’s offer to help with the books. When they finally get them back to Eva’s room, Mash makes sure that Eva actually puts on the boot this time. Afterwards, Eva is posed with a question she’s not sure if she should answer.

“What are you planning on doing with all of these books?” A pause. “I was just going to refresh my memory! I’ve done a lot of research into servants and stuff in the past, but I’m not sure how much of it I actually remember…” “That’s a wonderful idea, Senpai! Do you mind if I borrow some of these?” “Oh… No, go ahead! Just uh… Not this one, I was gonna start here!” She conspicuously grabs the book on rituals.

She spends the rest of the day reading up on how summoning rituals work, and later that night, when the fewest people possible are awake, she sneaks off to the summoning room that was pointed out to her earlier…

I open the door to the summoning room to find darkness. It’s unexpected, unsettling. Darkness is not something easily found in Chaldea, where everything is lit up with screens and fluorescent lights. It’s fitting, I guess, that humanity’s last hope should be constantly illuminated. But if that’s the case… Then why is it here, of all places, that I find darkness? Doubt creeps into my mind, as it always does. Millions of questions spring from that first one, slowly weighing me down, and looming over me like a shadow. Is this really a good idea? Maybe there’s a reason they said I should wait for their help setting this- No. I can’t just not do it. I need to prove it. That I’m capable of being the Master that saves humanity. And this is the first step. The light from the hallway illuminates just a bit of the room, but it’s enough that I can see that a circle has indeed already been drawn on the floor. Good. Now I just need to take care of… Everything else. I feel around on the walls by the door for a light panel until I finally knock my hand against it. The room lights up in blues and whites, unlike anything else in the facility, leaving me in awe. This is definitely the place to be doing magecraft. Glancing around a bit more, the room appears to be empty… With one exception. Tucked into the back right hand corner, there’s a small stack of white crates. Okay, then. Let’s start there. I make my way around the edge of the circle that takes up most of the room, ducking my head a few times as I try not to disturb any of the floating bands of light throughout the room. I don’t know exactly what they are, but I can’t afford to take any risks. When I reach the boxes, and carefully remove the lid of the top one to find it full of prism-like stones, each one containing every possible color. They’re big enough that I can only fit one in the palm of each hand, and are lighter than I expect. I set the one I’d been holding back down in the box, rummaging for the book I’d stuffed into my pocket before coming over here. I skim through the pages for just a second before landing on the one I’d marked earlier. Stones, stones… Gems, maybe? Why are these here? I’m halfway down the page when it hits me. They’re probably catalysts. I have no idea if they’re meant to summon anyone in particular, but there’s little chance they’re anything else. Summoning’s supposed to be easier with a catalyst, right? There’s several boxes of these… Surely using a few wouldn’t be noticed. And besides, most catalysts stick around even once the summoning is complete. Most of them. Hopefully that’s how these work. Given that I’m unsure what exactly they are, I grab 3 just to be safe after setting my book down on the floor. With one in each hand and a third tucked against my chest by my upper arm, I carefully inch a toe into the summoning circle. Nothing happens. …Okay then. It’s probably not activated yet. That’s good. I set the stones down in the very center, one at a time, so that they’re arranged in a triangle formation, before walking out of the circle as quick as I can. Still, nothing happens. Good. No surprises. I put the lid back on the box, grab the book, and then walk back around to close the door for good measure. Something tells me I don’t want anyone walking in on this. Circle, catalyst, mage… There’s no way this is as easy as it seems, is there? There’s gotta be a catch to it. But… If there is one, it’s definitely not mentioned at all. So all I can do is hope that what works in theory works in reality, like always. So I set my book down and stand my ground in front of the door, facing the circle. Don’t screw up the incantation. Remember how you changed it. Remember your theory. This is all gonna work out just how it’s supposed to. I take a deep breath. I blink. And before I speak, I picture it in my head. A drop of ink hitting paper, spreading a deep blue color across the white page. With that, I can feel the familiar hum and warmth of magic circuits spread through my body, giving me focus. I can do this.

“Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation. Let my own hope and faith in humanity be what allows it. Let a wall rise against the wind that shall fall. Let the four cardinal gates close. Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the kingdom rotate. Know this; I am all the good remaining in the world. I stand against all the evil threatening our world. And it is I that shall come to have dominion over that evil. Heroic Spirit, attended to by the three great words of power, Come forth from the right of restraint, keeper of the balance!”

As I progress through the lines of the chant, I can feel more and more magical energy building up in my body, desperately trying to be released. But that heat, that feeling of everything building up, cannot compare to what happens as I end the spell. All of the energy is pulled from my body at once. I can feel each and every individual nerve fighting against it, to no avail. It’s like my heart has stopped beating, yet is also beating too fast. I’m hit with a sudden migraine, yet the next second, it seems like it was never there in the first place. And all the while, I’m forced to close my eyes because the room, once dimly lit, is now full of a blinding white. And while they’re closed, images flash through my mind. Fire. Death. A silhouette, unidentifiable. And finally the back of a boy, my age, in a Chaldea uniform, standing at the ready. I hear something incredibly loud, some sort of boom, though maybe that’s not the best way to describe it, followed by a much quieter cracking noise, as the light behind my eyelids fades away. My hearing starts to recover, but I’m scared to open my eyes. I have no idea what just happened. Did it work? Was all of that meant to happen? The book hadn’t mentioned any of that. So I stand there, listening and breathing. Hoping against hope that everything is okay. Until I hear someone speak. “I ask of you, are you my Master?”

As I finally open my eyes, another girl stands before me in the center of the circle. The stones are gone. (Dammit.) As she looks at me expectantly, her green eyes seem to see right through me. I can’t tell if I’m being judged or not. But as I take in the rest of her, I do my best to offer a response, however quietly. “Yeah. I… I’m your Master.” It’s barely more than a whisper, riding along a shaky breath. So much for seeming confident. We stand in silence for a few more seconds as I catch my breath. It worked. It really worked. That’s a Servant. Right there. In front of me. That I summoned. This time when I look at her, I begin to notice things without trying beyond her physical appearance. For starters, she’s a Saber. Wait a- That’s not any Saber. That’s. “You’re King Arthur.” “That… Is correct, Master,” she replies, showing slight confusion. “Holy… Okay. Um.” As I’m pausing to take a breath, the door behind me slams open. I jump a bit, and when I land, pain shoots through my leg. My boot broke during the ritual. I glance behind me to find Mash, Roman, Da Vinci, and a few other staff members staring. “Senpai, what did you-” “IsummonedaServant,” I blurt out, trying to shift as much weight off my right foot as possible. When everyone keeps staring, I add on a halfhearted “...Sorry?” There’s a collective sigh from the group, none of whom really seem to know what to do. “You do realize we told you to wait, right?” Roman asks. “Yes, but I thought I could handle it, because I’ve studied this a lot, and clearly I can handle it, because it worked, so-” “Chaldea actually has an alternate summoning system-” Da Vinci starts, but I cut her off. “...Oh. Of course! That… Makes a lot of sense now.” I find myself looking towards the ground. “Why’d I go and do this?” I add at the last second, quieter than the rest. “Don’t worry, this is nothing I can’t handle!” Da Vinci responds. “Just make sure to let us know before you summon anyone again, okay?” “Okay,” I respond, still quiet. When no one else says anything, Roman speaks up again. “All right then, everyone else should get back to what they were doing.” He glances at the leg the boot had broke off of, even more worried than before. “Mash and…” “Saber,” the other Servant answers. “Right. Mash, Saber, can you help Eva to the infirmary for now?” The two of them nod before stepping over to me and adjusting so that each of my arms is over one of their shoulders. I cringe a bit when I have to adjust my right leg, and soreness is slowly starting to spread through the rest of my body. This idea is continually turning out to have been way worse than I thought it would be.

So, as it turns out, Eva continually doing things that put strain on her injury has set back the healing process, and even when it does heal, it’s likely still going to be weaker than it was. She won't need a cane or anything, but she should still be wary of it and avoid relying on her right leg too heavily from now on. Running and other simple physical activity is fine, but should she need to say, kick something, she should absolutely favor her left leg unless she’s made the necessary precautions and given her right ankle the support it needs to prevent more injuries.

They get her a new boot and she’s essentially grounded for 2 days, not allowed to leave her room. They also start cutting the lights in her room on a schedule for as long as she’s grounded so that she’s forced to sleep.

She emerges, somehow, both less tired and more grumpy. Everyone catches on pretty quickly that she’s getting antsy because she’s not allowed to do anything, so they decide to set up the summoning system and let her try out a summoning that won’t make her injuries worse.

She’s initially hesitant to try any summonings with the more tech-heavy system, but she eventually agrees to go ahead with it after Da Vinci spends over an hour explaining every intricacy of how it works and how it differs from normal summoning. It’ll work, according to magical theory, so she doesn’t have anything to lose by trying it out.

This time, instead of just a single servant, she actually manages to summon several, those being Medusa, Caster Cú, Archer Emiya, and Saber Alter.

The tension between the 2 Sabers is pretty obvious, so Eva does her best to make sure that they aren’t forced to interact much while still spending time with and attempting to understand each of them. Since they’re both pretty reserved, it’s a slow process, but at least she figures out pretty quickly that they both really love food.

Cú is still salty that he’s not a Lancer, but is still glad to have at least been summoned again. He’s actually rather surprised by just how much Eva immediately puts value in him. She starts carrying a notebook around with her, and will write in it whenever she notices something new about Runes she didn’t know before. He actually tries to help her use Runes at one point, but it ends up blowing up in both their faces because Eva was focusing more on her anxiety than on the effect she wanted to achieve.

Eva knew literally nothing about Emiya, so more than pretty much every other Servant that’s around, she tries to seem professional around him. That completely collapses when he catches her in the kitchen at 3 in the morning halfheartedly making grilled cheese. From then on she’s a lot more casual and every once in a while she pesters him incessantly about Reality Marbles. She’ll probably eventually figure out that he knows more about the Sabers than he lets on.

Medusa actually surprised Eva a bit. While Eva knows a lot about her from mythology, it took awhile for her to figure out anything about her as a Servant, other than what she could discern from practice battles. The first real bit of progress she makes is when she finds Medusa reading in the library. Now they just kinda have one of those “sit and read in silence together” type friendships.

Eva isn’t exactly all hyped up for whenever the next singularity is identified, but she promises herself that she won’t be scared to go and do whatever’s needed in order to correct it. After all, she has more allies this time, and it seems like her magecraft is getting better by the day. Now all that’s left is to save humanity.

New Servant Log:

Artoria Pendragon (Saber)

Artoria Pendragon (Alter)

Cú Chulainn (Caster)

Emiya (Archer)

Medusa (Rider)

I actually have an excuse to tag people and that makes me happy

@contractgreen @panyum @withanina @campanulabell @delfinaschiffer @princessaslan @armageddon25 @patproductions @xviicprc

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dragonrajafanfiction · 3 years

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Tokyo Tower (Part 3) Spy Games

Fingel is an unexplored character in most of Dragon Raja Novels. His past is shrouded in mystery and is revealed little by little in hints and tidbits across the novels. So even though there are five novels out, I still can’t say I know that much about him.

The phone rang twice by the time you crossed the room to get it. It was an ornate metal phone standing on lion paws with a turn-style dialing wheel and an earpiece that looked like the brass handle of a castle door. Still when you pick it up you answer. “Pizza Hut. How can I help you?”

Caesar’s smooth voice carried a smile over the line. “Hello MC. I take it you’re all settled in?”

“There wasn’t much to settle. I could rattle around in this place.”

The premier suite of the Takamagahara was second in luxury only to Whale’s own full floor living quarters. This area was nearly one thousand square feet. Coming into the entrance, the floors were covered in mahogany reclaimed from an old dojo. The silk wallpaper shined bright from the walls all the way up to the ten foot vaulted ceiling that hung with a magnificent chandelier.

The sitting and dining rooms were furnished with antique World War II era wood furniture. A grand piano occupied a space near an arched window. The kitchen area was the smallest area as most people who could afford to stay here didn’t bother cooking for themselves. Half that area was just the expansive wine rack and liquor cabinet.

The bedroom floor was a rosy Berber carpet. The king-sized bed took up most of the space. Its tall ornamental posts were overlaid with a silken canopy of gold. The walk in closet was bigger than the entire area you’d stayed in until now.

The bathroom had marble tiled flooring, heated of course, a jacuzzi tub big enough for four people and an infinity shower with more buttons than you knew what to do with.

You roll your eyes around the room, sitting on the bed in your satin lavender night dress, your wet hair wrapped up in a towel. “It’s quite the upgrade.”

“You don’t sound that enthusiastic.”

“I’ll miss falling asleep to voices outside my door.”

Caesar paused at that, silent.

“A wise young man told me that… the world… as it pertains to you, is only composed of the people you know. Even though I have gotten the privilege of staying here, my world has gotten a lot smaller. You boys get on my nerves a lot. And we don’t always see eye to eye. But you are my entire world. Don’t forget it.”

“I bet you say that to all the guys.” Caesar replied.

“Yes! All the guys in my world.” You laugh at his throwing your words back at you. “Anyway… How did the meeting go?”

“Smoothly, much to my surprise. The main target is the King General. Ruri Kazama will be the assassin, Lu Mingfei will be running a sniper position. Fingel will be providing a listening point by laser sensor on the windows. Chu Zihang and I will both be guarding the perimeter in an underground garage from a nearby building to avoid infrared detection. Our job will mainly be to stop the King General from escaping. There are two places you can be. Either with Lu Mingfei as a second sniper, or with Chu Zihang and I on perimeter watch. Take your pick.”

You think seriously on this point. “Hmmm… where will Mingfei be stationed versus where you guys will be?”

“Mingfei will be on top of one of the surrounding buildings with his rifle. Having you up there might be a reassuring second shot should he need backup or suppressive fire. Snipers need teams but we’re low on manpower. Chu Zihang and I will be fine underground. There’s a cable duct we can crawl through. That said… being underground is right in your Soul Skill’s wheelhouse. Either way you choose will enhance the team.”

After a moment more thought, you say “I’ll go with Mingfei.”

“...Dammit.”

“You deserve it. Have fun on your date with Chu Zihang.” You stick your tongue out at him through the phone.

“Hey, he and I are on good terms now. It’s you I worry about. Don’t you think seeing the men who took everything from you not that long ago might shake you up?”

“You don’t go into a rage every time you see your father do you?” Caesar was silent and you waited for him to speak but he didn't. “Do you?” ask again with some surprise in your voice.

“Not...externally. I didn’t think of Herzog as your father.”

“A cold hearted person who kills without much thought doesn’t sound familiar? There’s a reason I am the way I am.” You slip under the heavy comforters on the bed while holding the phone to your ear.

“You’re not cold-hearted.” Caesar’s voice was more of a command than a statement.

“I can be.” You respond. “Hearing his voice again will be like going home.”

Caesar sighed with exasperation. “Let’s change the subject. Have you thought about my proposal yet?”

“I think... it’s crazy that you’re willing to lie to the Academy about my bloodline problem then install a know-nothing freshman to the rank of Leader of the Japanese Branch, but yes, I have thought about it.”

“Good, then your training starts now.”

You squint. “Training?”

“You need to know some basic things about Dragons, but you’ll catch up on that knowledge at your leisure. More importantly, you’ll need to understand how to navigate around the Yakuza here. Remember that Fingel is assigned to monitor the Japan Branch for the principal?”

“Yes.”

“You just happen to be the beloved of the Devil Clan commander. That makes you a valuable information asset. Fingel may seem to be a numbskull but he’s a master spy. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s wiretapped this phone and installed listening devices and pinhole cameras all over your room.” Caesar said this in a growl. “He was evasive when I asked about it so I can guarantee you he has. I don’t want him to be looking at any lewd pictures of you.”

“Are you serious? But I’m a fellow student?” You’re completely appalled.

“He does this on campus! He’s a dog with no morality! But he’s useful, that’s why I keep him in the Student Union. I know him well. If you’re going to be the leader of the Japan branch, learn to find bugs and hidden cameras. For every one you find, I’ll fine him five thousand dollars and give it to you. This phone is probably tapped so I know he’ll hear me say this.”

You flip back the covers. “Oh my gosh…” You start opening drawers and looking inside. “Thanks Caesar,” you sigh.

“No problem. Just looking out for you as always. Go to sleep in an hour regardless. It’s a big day tomorrow. Fingel, 5,000 for every one she finds.”

You start with the bathroom. Given his love for racy photos that would probably be a hotspot. In 10 minutes you managed to find three. Fingel needed to find good angles of the Jacuzzi and shower and there weren't that many places to hide and get good shots.

There’s a loud knock on the door. You grab your claw-dagger and creep forward, flipping off the lights. “Who is it?”

“R-r-room service.”

Fingel. The phone really was tapped. You straighten up in disapproval. “You’re too late, I already found three.”

“No! Wait, please. I… uh…”

“In the bathroom…” Your voice is low but it carried enough threat through the door.

“A just leader shows mercy?” came Fingel’s whimpering voice. “I don’t have 15k okay?”

“Wait a moment.” You cover yourself in a long robe and return and open the door. “Fingel, you’re dressed as a waiter. Taking cues from Ruri Kazama already? You probably infiltrated the room while I packed and talked with Caesar.” He was tall but cringed away from your icy stare.

“H-how could I not, right? I’m a quick study! But let's not talk in the hall, the first rule of being undercover is not breaking character!”

You let him in and shut the door. “In that case, I can understand why he gave you a stage name so quickly,” you say.

“The lady has a very clever boyfriend!” Fingel seemed pleased even though he had no say in the matter.

“I’ll give you the devices and say you found them. But only if you remove all the devices from the room. Understand? Remove all of them and show me where you hid them and how you did it.” Caesar wasn’t going to teach you about spy objects and hidden devices, the master spy, Fingel would!

“Of course! Of course! But I have to keep an eye on you right? Second rule is knowing where everyone is at all times!”

“You will not know when I got to the bathroom!” You hiss.

“I will know because that is now a blind spot.” He sighed mournfully but then ducked when you reached for your knife. “Okay, okay! You have to be quick on your feet. Assume you’re being watched at all times and observe everything! Caesar already warned you right? I’m on assignment from the principal to watch the Japan branch!”

“So this will be an ongoing lesson!” Your eyes widened.

“Precisely.” He winked.

“You’re wearing a wire.”

“What? No, I’m not!”

“Don’t worry I can’t see it but I assumed it after you said that. You are. Am I supposed to search you too?” You start walking towards him. “Five thousand dollars…”

Fingel for a moment, looking for an exit. He finally reached into the inner lining of his jacket. The listening device was just a small button-like object and a little copper wire pinned to his shirt. “Wow… it’s so small!” You marveled.

“You… probably wouldn’t have found it if you looked!” Fingel said with a rueful grimace. “But I can’t afford to take that chance.”

“How did you know this is the room I would be in?”

“Oh that was simple, prepping a room this size for occupancy requires a lot of staff. I just looked natural enough to be co-opted automatically in the work. If anyone asks questions, I just pretend I don’t speak any Japanese!”

Fingel walked the room. “None of the surveillance devices are in anything that can be moved easily.” He paused by a light switch, took out a tiny screwdriver and removed one of the screws. A listening device was right behind it! “People can move furniture or cover it. Any good spy will put a device in an area that’s more permanent. There are exceptions of course. It depends on the target. Usually, I will spend as much time as I can studying my target and her habits. I have to fit into her world.” His smile was surprisingly gentle. “Since you are a Cassell student, I didn’t need a lot of information to fit into your world. I just needed to show that I was with Caesar and Chu Zihang and you automatically assumed I was clear and never thought of me again. Right?”

You sigh, completely and utterly overcome. “You’re right. I immediately let my guard down and assumed I could trust you.”

“Caesar knows me better than that.” He pocketed the device.

Caesar called him a dog with no morality. Your pupils sharpen like a knife. No way he would remove all the devices. He was going to leave a few for you to find.

Fingel’s eyes meet yours. “You’re a quick study.”

“You’re going to decide how much this costs you.” You say coldly. “You have money. You can afford it. You’re conspirators! This is a game!”

“Woah! Woah! I do not have money!” He holds up his hands.

“So the devices you leave will be the hardest ones to find.”

“Bingo!” He winked. “I gotta keep an eye on you. No offense. But now you’re thinking like you should be. You need to test people, even Cassell personnel from the Academy. Remember that I came here as an intern. There is little trust between the Japanese Branch and the Main School, so I was tested thoroughly as to my credentials. They knew me better than I knew myself on arrival so my acting started long before I arrived.”

You nod. “That’s right. Our rooms were extremely tailored to our needs on arrival to Japan. They only knew I was from Northern Siberia, but they knew that because of the way I spoke.”

Fingel tilted his head. “Good. This isn’t going to be as difficult as I imagined. You understand now that this is a normal thing, to intensely spy on each other. I had to do whatever I needed to do, to prove to the Japanese students that I was one of them.”

“You do bad things?”

Fingel passed up the kitchen and went right to the bedroom. “I do my best not to. An easy way to get out of doing something really terrible is to pretend to be completely incompetent. So they’ll assign something like that to someone else.” He pulled the night stand from the wall and unplugged the phone wire from the jack. The wire seemed to be inserted normally into the wall but it wasn’t! There was another phone jack cover under the first one. The first phone jack cover had a small computer chip that was intercepting the phone information and diverting it to where he was. Fingel had successfully installed this listening device in plain sight.

You’re not sure you would have found it.

“You answered the phone as a Pizza Hut employee. Where did you learn that?” He tosses the device to you and you catch it.

“I liked to watch James Bond. He always had a special way of answering the phone so that only people who should be calling him are calling him. If it's an outsider who doesn’t really know me, then they will assume they dialed wrongly.”

“Yeah, that surprised me. But Caesar knew it was you so he wasn’t surprised. That’s a good technique. Keep doing that. But change it up a bit so it fits the area you’re in and it’s not so obvious.”

He straightened up. HIs demeanor had changed while talking to you into someone much more serious and quiet. “I’m all done. If you find the last device? I’ll give you the 5k myself.”

#dragon raja

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themattress · 4 years

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Danganronpa Chapter Ranking

Ranking all 18 chapters across the three games.

First, I will rank each corresponding chapters over one another.

Chapter 1:

1. Welcome to Dangan Island + Destination Despair (DR2)

DR2 is the technical best of the series and it definitely has the strongest opening. While I actually prefer DR1′s prologue, DR2 definitely ups the stakes when it comes to the actual introductory murder mystery, creating a spooky nighttime locked room situation right off the bat and keeping you guessing as to how the murder went down. The high point, of course, is the revelation of Nagito’s true nature, which let you know that this is a guy to watch out for.

2. Welcome to Despair + To Survive (DR1)

Like I said, the prologue to DR1 is my favorite one - just the opening scene alone perfectly sets the tone for all that’s to follow, I also really enjoy getting to explore the school and interacting with the adorable Sayaka Maizono. The problem with this chapter is when Sayaka gets killed. Not only is the investigation a very standard one, but the mystery is too easily solved - Sayaka even wrote her killer’s freaking name down and most players will figure that out well before any of the characters do! I know this is the first case and all, but come on!

3. Ultimate Revival + My Class Trial, Our Class Trial (DRV3)

If DR1′s first chapter problem was being too easy to solve, this one’s problem is that it’s impossible to solve because the game withholds the key evidence for the sake of a twist - evidence that exposes the female protagonist you are playing as, Kaede, as the culprit! It’s a shame - despite some issues here and there (goddamn Monokubs...), I was liking the atmosphere this chapter was setting up with its ticking clock factor, the Ultimate Academy was well designed and kept distinct from Hope’s Peak, and Kaede was a wonderful, lovable protagonist the likes of which we hadn’t seen before in this series. But that one ending twist which results in her getting taken from us in favor of some dude ruins the whole chapter.

Chapter 2:

1. Boy’s Life of Despair (DR1)

Only DR1 manages to have its second chapter be an improvement over the first: with not only expansions on all of the characters and even the school itself, but a mystery that isn’t so easily solved because a certain rich douchebag deliberately tampered with the crime scene in order to make the case more challenging. The only mark I have against this one is the weird gender politics at play, and even then it’s not insulting or anything: Mondo’s toxic masculinity is even highlighted as his fatal flaw. And of course, this chapter gave us Genocide Jack. WIN.

2. Sea and Punishment, Sin and Coconuts (DR2)

While a step down from the preceding chapter, it’s not by much: this is still a quality chapter with quality character and plot development and a quality murder mystery. My biggest gripes are that it becomes obvious who the culprit is early into the trial and how they committed the murder but it takes a long time for the characters to decide on those things. If that wasn’t enough, the revelation of the killer’s motives is ridiculous, with two shocking swerves on top of each other, one of them a lie and the other one the truth. The actual scene leading to the execution, however, more than makes up for that with how emotional it is, with one of Derek Stephen Prince’s best performances in his career as Fuyuhiko reveals his inner vulnerability.

3. A Thin Line Divides Heaven and Hell (DRV3)

This second chapter is a HUGE step down from the first one. Shuichi is immediately a far blander, less compelling protagonist than Kaede was, there are too many detours before the murder happens, the mystery is way too convoluted and the culprit’s motivation is an even bigger shocking swerve than DR2′s, and the execution just goes full Saw to the point of being almost too uncomfortable to watch. In the end, it doesn’t even feel like this case mattered, it was all a drawn-out way of revealing the underwhelming “twist” to Maki’s true identity which only ended up working against her character. The best part of this chapter would have to be the body discovery, which is one of the most shocking and effective in the whole series.

Chapter 3:

1. A Next Generation Legend! Stand Tall, Galactic Hero! (DR1)

Third Case Syndrome hits DR1 the least out of all the games, as despite the problem of the class trial’s pay-off not matching the intensity of the build-up, it still doesn’t cheat the player in any way. The mystery is still well designed and on paper the crime is brilliant, and even the way it falls apart in execution makes logical sense given what has been established about Celestia and Hifumi throughout the game. There’s even fun to be had in the trial given Celestia’s legendary breakdown, plus her execution being among the series’ funniest.

2. Trapped by the Ocean Scent (DR2)

I like some things about this chapter, particularly early on: Fuyuhiko’s character development, Ibuki’s concert, Nekomaru’s sacrifice, Nagito continuing to be his delightfully twisted self, and Monokuma’s hilarious “Wizard of Monomi” movie. The build-up to the body discovery with that supposed suicide video is also legitimately scary. But it all falls apart in the class trial to a comical degree, with the revelation of the culprit having so much wrong with it I hardly know where to begin. Everything about Despair Disease in general feels like filler and a way to ax off three characters that Kodaka had no idea what to do with. It’s just a glaringly bad chapter.

3. Transfer Student From Beyond the Grave (DRV3)

This is where Third Case Syndrome hits its nadir: once again some legitimately good and scary build-up (including the requisite second murder happening halfway through the investigation when you’re not expecting it to) is destroyed by a farcical class trial that is riddled with plot holes, convoluted mechanics, and random extreme character turns that makes it clear that Kodaka was just doing all this to kill off characters he felt had reached their limits rather than staying consistent with what came before. Special mention must go to Korekiyo’s motives. While Celestia and Mikan’s motives aren’t sympathetic either, there are sympathetic reasons behind them. But with Kiyo, the reasoning behind his serial killing is...incest. Literal brother-sister incest. We had a potentially interesting, creepy character in Kiyo, but he was utterly squandered and turned into one big incest/see-saw meme. Such a waste!

Chapter 4:

1. Do Ultimate Robots Dream of Clockwork? (DR2)

One of the most challenging yet also one of the most unique and rewarding chapters in the whole series. The Strawberry / Grape funhouse is the stuff of nightmares, and the game doesn’t pull any punches in how horrific the situation inside it is, with the characters slowly starving to death and with the only way out being to either kill someone or brave a creepy life-threatening escape room. Then once the murder happens you get to play as Nagito during the investigation, getting further insight into his fucked-up mind before he pulls a morbidly hilarious 180 on his attitude and becomes a total condescending jerkwad rather than a creepy self-denigrating suck-up. And the investigation and trial amounting to figuring out how the funhouse is structured and how that structure was utilized in the murder is intellectually stimulating in the best way. Add to that one of the most emotional culprit revelations and executions and you have one of the greatest chapters ever put in a mystery-solving game.

2. All*Star*Apologies (DR1)

DR2′s fourth chapter is better, but DR1′s comes extremely close. Not only is it a locked room mystery where just about everyone except the protagonist and deuteragonist are a feasible suspect which leads to the most fun, challenging and satisfying class trial in the game, but it also ends up being the story’s emotional high point. The reveal of who actually killed Sakura and why, the reasoning behind why an innocent party tried to take the blame for it, and the long-overdue uniting of the Killing Game’s participants (even Byakuya!) against their true enemy, Monokuma...it’s powerful stuff that lingers in your memory long after it’s finished.

3. Live and Let the Languid World Live (DRV3)

Now don’t get me wrong: this chapter was the best one in DRV3 since the first chapter, but I feel like it’s trying too hard to recapture the glory of the previous games’ fourth chapters and mostly failing. The virtual world and trying to figure out how it works is a blatant copy of the funhouse from DR2, except that we barely spend time in the virtual world compared to the funhouse and whereas figuring out the structure of the funhouse actually took a lot of thinking, the secret of the virtual world is painfully easy to deduce and leads to another instance of the player being several steps ahead of the characters. Kokichi as a Nagito-esque antagonist just doesn’t work and it’s frustrating to watch him play all the other characters like fiddles when it’s so transparently obvious what he is doing. Lastly, while the deaths of Sakura, Alter-Ego Chihiro, Nekomaru and Gundham were sad, there was still a note of triumph and hope in them as well. There’s none of that in the deaths of Miu, Gonta and his Alter-Ego. These deaths are just sad, depressing wastes, even moreso in retrospect after Chapter 6.

Chapter 5:

1. Smile at Hope in the Name of Despair (DR2)

Nagito was right: DR2′s Chapter 4 was merely “the opening act” for THE best chapter in both the game and the entire series. Seeing Nagito finally go full-on batshit insane and carve out a path of destruction that leads to his own death is enthralling, as is figuring out the hows and the whys of his death, peeling back the layers of his madness and malice until you arrive at the horrifying truth, all culminating in one of the most heart-wrenching moments in the series when Chiaki finally reveals the truth about herself and offers herself up as a sacrifice to stop Nagito’s heinous scheme from coming to fruition. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it! The bizarre triangular dynamic between Hajime, Chiaki and Nagito really made this game’s story as good as it is despite uneven writing early on, and this chapter is the culmination of it.

2. Voyage Without Passion or Purpose (DRV3)

When it comes to the game’s overarching story, I don’t really care much for the events that transpire in this chapter. But when taken as a stand-alone, it’s excellent. Someone has been killed and someone is responsible for it, but for the first time in the series you aren’t just unsure about the culprit, but the victim as well! To make matters worse, the culprit shows up to the class trial inside a mech suit that has a voice changer, and he keeps changing his voice between Kaito and Kokichi’s to further muddle which one of them is actually dead. And to top it all off, not even Monokuma knows the solution to this mystery and you actually have to work together with him in order to solve it! Gotta hand it to Kodaka: this move was inspired. If only I actually gave a damn about Kaito, Kokichi and Maki, this case would hit much harder.

3. 100 Mile Dash; Pain of a Junk Food Junkie (DR1)

This time, the opposite holds true: I like these events as part of the over-arching story, especially everything that happens from the execution (the scariest one in the whole game, IMO) and onward. But when taken on its own, this chapter is a mess. Not only is the mystery and trial literally contrived by Monokuma in order to set a trap for one character, but it tips its hand too early by showing the discovery of the victim’s dead body well before it’s time for that scene to happen, and the constant flashing back to Kyoko telling Makoto about the existence of Mukuro Ikusaba is somewhere between comical and infuriating. I think the worst part is that there’s no permanent consequences for anyone: nobody actually dies in this chapter! Not the supposed victim Mukuro, not Monokuma, not Kyoko and not Makoto. It even turns out that Alter-Ego Chihiro managed to kind of survive its execution in the previous chapter! WTF? We’ve spent a whole game getting used to the finality of death, but now death is cheap!

Chapter 6:

1. Ultimate Despair + Goodbye Despair High School (DR1)

I think that DR2′s final chapter is arguably better, more epic and more conclusive than DR1′s, but I still can’t help but prefer DR1′s, similar to how I prefer Phoenix Wright’s “Turnabout Goodbyes” to Trial & Tribulations’ “Bridge to the Turnabout”. Everything about the overarching story and its mystery comes together perfectly here, Junko Enoshima never had the same villainous impact that she does here, and the conclusion where Makoto saves the day by becoming the Ultimate Hope, Junko puts herself through every execution in the game, and the surviving students open the door to an uncertain yet still hopeful future is just iconic.

2. This is the End, Goodbye Academy of Despair + The Day Before the Future (DR2)

Like I said, this one might be superior on a technical level, as it pulls out even bigger plot twists, features even deeper emotions and a greater sense of closure and catharsis, has a grander sense of scope, and Junko being given an even more final defeat since she’s a villain that if you want to defeat you can’t just kill physically but spiritually as well. Chiaki’s role here especially gets me choked up, and Hajime’s narration in the epilogue is the perfect note to end the story on....both the story of DR2 and the conjoined story of DR0, DR1 and DR2.

3. Goodbye Danganronpa + Everyone’s Killing Game, Closing Ceremony (DRV3)

This is an ending that’s better watched than it is played. Watching it, it’s comedy gold in how absurd it is. But actually playing through it is a chore, and having to do such a chore for the sake of an ending that is intentionally designed to piss you off is no fun at all. While I’d say the game’s third chapter is technically worst, this one is definitely my least favorite, especially when you take that god-awful, pointless epilogue into account. Kodaka, if you want to end Danganronpa, then go all the way and end it on your terms; don’t pussy out with that crap!

And now, my final ranking of all the chapters is as follows:

1. Smile at Hope in the Name of Despair (DR2) 2. Do Ultimate Robots Dream of Clockwork (DR2) 3. All*Star* Apologies (DR1) 4. Boy's Life of Despair (DR1) 5. Welcome to Dangan Island + Destination Despair (DR2) 6. Welcome to Despair + To Survive (DR1) 7. Ultimate Despair + Goodbye Despair (DR1) 8. This is the End, Goodbye Academy of Despair + The Day Before the Future (DR2) 9. Sea and Punishment, Sin and Coconuts (DR2) 10. Voyage Without Passion or Purpose (DRV3) 11. A Next Generation Legend! Stand Tall, Galactic Hero! (DR1) 12. Live and Let the Languid World Live (DRV3) 13. Ultimate Revival + My Class Trial, Our Class Trial (DRV3) 14. Trapped by the Ocean Scent (DR2) 15. 100 Mile Dash; Pain of a Junk Food Junkie (DR1) 16. A Thin Line Divides Heaven and Hell (DRV3) 17. The Transfer Student From Beyond the Grave (DRV3) 18. Goodbye Danganronpa + Everyone's Killing Game, Closing Ceremony (DRV3)

1-9 are the “strong chapters”, while 10-18 are the “weak chapters”.

#Dangan Ronpa #Opinion #Analysis #Comparison

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mellowdave · 4 years

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Film, its imminent death and hopeful resurrection…

We watched “Ad Astra” last night.

Like pretty much everyone, we are

watching some missed pieces during this pandemic and associated quarantine. We worked through “Tales from the Loop” last week, and while I was perusing the watchlist Friday afternoon I realized there were a few movies on HBO that we had missed at the theatre for various reasons we could take in as well. I sat Saturday and watched “Ford v. Ferrari” and thoroughly enjoyed that, so yesterday I decided to watch “Ad Astra”. I am not always in the mood for the genre it represents, or that I thought it represented, science fiction is often a let down on film, when the studio doesn’t choose a visionary to manage their millions of dollars and instead drops it on someone who’s better off making a football film, but has been reliable for them. There have been thousands of words written and entire Youtube accounts dedicated to folks lamenting the current state of affairs in the film and hi end series business, and it’s pretty unlikely that I have anything particularly unique to add to the dialogue, but these are a few of my personal thoughts. I’ll post my opinions of the actual films on separate pages.

Film and “TV” in general are obviously blurred together these days. Since Netflix became the streaming juggernaut it is, and actual broadcast TV has declined to the point of needing life support, I think I should define the two. I say “TV” in reference to content created with the home viewer as the primary audience, and film as that created for the theatre and big screen experience. You can make a solid argument that they are the same, but even if it isn’t budget and production quality any more there is still usually a palpable difference. In a sense, the big shared universe franchises, and things like 3 “Hobbit” and three “Lord of the Rings” films are not so different from serialized “TV”. The market dictates that even films are made with an eye on the subsequent streaming market from the start. I suppose a more accurate term would be “serialized content” since it doesn’t really matter where we are viewing it anymore.

The whole business seems to be about 50% dedicated to cashing in on nostalgia, and I’m not totally against that. So many really solid stories were let down by abysmal budgets, or in the case of almost all sci fi, the pretty sad visual effects available in the 80s and 90s. They were at best less than stellar, or more likely, never made at all. Some original sci fi has real potential, consider Larry Niven’s “The Smoke Ring” series, which was talked about but never materialized, or, for contrast, the disappointing vision of “Dune” that did come to film. I’m all for some re imagining of a few of the real classics, as long as they respect the source in the process. I don’t need to see a CGI version of “The Last Starfighter”, it wouldn’t improve on the story, and the effects were part of the joy, but I am stoked to see Denis Villeneuve’s take on Dune, with a real budget, and (hopefully) less studio interference.

Who didn’t love the new “Battlestar Galactica Series”? The original was a weekly appointment view for me when I was a kid even though it was the campiest thing ever made after the Gil Gerrard “Buck Rogers”. The reboot came at a time when these things were just getting off the ground, and it was made for a modest budget, making the most of every penny they spent to create a gritty take on the original, without completely disregarding it’s lore and texture. Sci Fi made it as a two hour movie first to test the waters, and found such an enthusiastic audience that it ran for seven seasons. On that note, serializing a few classic movies isn’t the worst idea either. We’re all waiting to see what Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series looks like, and I am really enthused with what I’ve seen of the upcoming “Foundation” series. The story telling options a season of 40 minute serials gives writers opens up whole new depths to character development and deeper plots.

Some recent classics like “Firefly” are probably not firing up anytime soon, but just imagine if that franchise had found the type of rebirth that “The Expanse” did with its switch to Amazon Prime and it’s dramatic budget increase. The world of “Firefly” is rich and well developed, and perfect for a spin off shot.

We’ve generally been let down by serial adaptations of films, but when the writers use a well known and popular universe of an original film or franchise as the starting point rather than the characters and plots themselves, we’ve gotten some really good work. I submit the first season of “The Mandalorian” as the obvious candidate. It’s a familiar universe, the writers don’t have to spend three episodes world building, and we get to scratch the nostalgia itch in the process. A similar series based on material not so well known to the general viewing audience requires a good bit more in the way of exposition dumps to get us involved. Instead, “Mando” hit the ground running.

Original series that don’t dig into a known universe, but rather a general since of nostalgia for a period, like “Stranger Things” are new and popular also for very solid reasons. An engaging cast paired with stellar writing from the Duffer brothers made the most surprising and entertaining non franchise series I’ve seen in twenty years. We completely stumbled onto that gem by sitting around in the house alone the year it was released just surfing the Netflix recommended list. We even started it reluctantly, saying “well, we can always turn it off” and ended up watching all night. Having grown up a child of the 80s, the universe it is set in was instantly familiar to me, and different enough from our current that it gives the writers some license to not be 100% gritty and realistic. The obvious nods to classic horror and sci fi films just iced that cake.

I think (and I say this all the time) that were in a golden age of serialized content, and even though the film industry is on life support as far as creativity goes, she’s still hanging in there, releasing the occasional gem for us to dig into. I have high hopes that we’ll get some greatness in between the industry bean counters stepping in and wrecking things. Those giant blockbusters that everyone rushes out and drops 25.00 a ticket on creates profit that pays for riskier but quality work like “Knives Out” and “Ex Machina”. Maybe I’m painting with too optimistic a brush, its a weakness of mine for sure, but things don’t seem to be so bad right now.

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zombiescantfly · 5 years

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Words About Games - Unreal Tournament 3 (Epic Games, 2007)

Unreal Tournament 3 is nothing short of an utter embarrassment, incompetent at nearly every level, and a gross misunderstanding of a playerbase that was, at the time, nearly a decade old. I wish I could just leave it at that, but this is the first game I ever felt wronged by.

This was a franchise killer. UT3 flopped so hard that it took fans desperate for any sign of a new game ten years to make Epic even consider adding a new entry to the series, and even then it is, as of time of writing, on indefinite hiatus so the handful of developers assigned to it can make more Fortnite dances. But that comes later. Unreal Tournament 3 comes first.

The Unreal series was hardly a stranger to hard knocks. Return to Na Pali was a dull-at-best expansion pack while the much-maligned Unreal 2 missed the point entirely and has since slipped into laughable obscurity, and even the original Unreal Championship on Xbox had to be redeemed with a well-received followup. I played neither of those, by the way, it's just my understanding that the first one was bad and the second was good.

So what made UT3 the last chance? What about it was bad enough to kill the franchise that had gone toe-to-toe with Quake and lived to tell the tale? The real question is what the hell Epic was thinking.

Unreal Tournament 3 lacks a great many things. At launch, it boasted a meager six gamemodes, and even then only by virtue of splitting 1v1 deathmatch maps off of Deathmatch and into a new category called Duel. So, our gametypes are: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Duel, Capture the Flag, Vehicle CTF, and Warfare. That's it. No Bombing Run, no Mutant, no Invasion, no Domination (double or otherwise), and yet again, for some ungodly reason, no Assault.

I feel like I've done this before. What else did UT3 leave out? Facing Worlds! Yep, it's out again, and this time without a replacement. That's right, no Face 4 to make up for it. A new Curse map, a staple of the series since the original Unreal multiplayer, is also missing. Most of the character factions introduced in UT2003 and 2004 are gone, like the Nightmares, the Robots, the Juggernauts, the Mercenaries, the Gen Mo’kai, the Egyptians, and the Skaarj. You know, the Skaarj, literally the most important faction to the series at large. They're gone. Xan Kriegor, the Big Bad of every Tournament since 1999, the final champ who uses an AI setting above Godlike, who has his own spaceship where the ultimate match is duked out 1v1 in a truly brutal and awesome deathmatch? Gone.

But that's not the worst of it. Sure, they stripped out almost everything they'd spent so much time building up throughout character and map descriptions for three games, but even that wasn't enough. There has to be something else they could take away to really strip the game of its identity. The Flak Cannon? No, too easy. The Shock Rifle? Almost. Malcolm, the veteran of all the in-universe Tournaments and arguably the (human) mascot of the series? I'll do you one better.

They took away the Tournament.

They took away.

The Tournament.

Unreal Tournament 3 has no Tournament.

What do we have instead, in Unreal Tournament 3, if not a Tournament? Calling it Gears of War 1.5 is a good place to start.

Unreal Tournament never really had a defining artstyle to call its own, but it was still recognizable. UT99 had its harsh shadows and pockets of bright light on largely cool-colored maps, a very neo-industrial/tech vibe with a smattering of ancient temples thrown in there to call back to Unreal. UT2003 and 4 turned their tech maps into something a bit shinier overall, left a bit of industrial grunge in, had their fun with future space techno Egypt, and splashed a bit of East Asian architecture in one or two maps for good measure. Colors were bright, each map had an identifiable pallette, and it's hard to confuse one for the other.

UT3 came out after Gears of War, which means it looked like this:

Not helping matters is the new direction character design was taken, which basically boils down to taking Gears character out of their usual armor and putting them in UT styled suits. Malcolm’s there and he's put on about 200 pounds of muscle.

Man, just look at all those graphics. And it's a good thing there are so many, because otherwise how would we know what we're looking at when the dramatic cutscenes play?

Because since we have no Tournament in our Unreal Tournament game, we of course have to have a very dramatic story about a Krall invasion and this guy named Ronin’s quest to get revenge.

Let's unpack that.

The Krall invaded. The Krall, the mercenary/slave race kept on retainer by the Skaarj, are the primary antagonists, but not the Skaarj themselves. Ronin, an entirely new character made for this game, is the primary focus when actual series (human) mascot Malcolm is right there. And the whole thing is a heroic revenge story, not a Tournament.

I hate this game.

So UT3 forces a series of ladder matches across all of three gametypes into a narrative nobody asked for. If it had had anything to with the series’ history, it probably could have been acceptable, but it doesn't mean anything as it is. Matches are now short gameplay segments in between an overproduced narrative about revenge and retribution, and they're given wholly unnecessary context. Deathmatch is no longer literal bloodsport to entertain the masses but a gritty, brutal battle of attrition until one side wears down the other side’s respawner charges. Capture the Flag isn't a game, it's you taking a daring and gritty shot at capturing your ugly, inhuman enemy’s Field LAttice Generator to turn off their respawner. Warfare/Onslaught isn't a fun territory control match, it's a gritty and unrelentingly brutal comment on how war is hell, as you capture territory to destroy the Core that powers your gritty enemy’s respawner.

Do you get it. Respawners. Real war. Not a game anymore. No fun allowed.

Sigh.

This game came out when I was late into highschool, and was one of the first games I was super excited about. Back then I didn't actually play all that many games, tending instead to stick to a smallish library of my favorites. So when UT3 was announced, originally as Unreal Tournament 2007, I was hyped. It would be one of the first games on the brand-new Unreal Engine 3, and the handful of prerelease screenshots kept my attention for months with their unparalleled lighting and detail. Blurbs about the changes they were making excited me, talking about how they were putting a bit more speed back into the game to win over the holdouts who thought UT2004 was too slow. An entirely new roster of vehicles was going to sit alongside the existing ones, and a whole host of changes was coming to merge the best of UT99 with UT2004.

That's what they promised. What was actually delivered was an anemic blend of half-baked executions. People don't like double jumping and think UT2004 is too floaty, others like double jumping and think UT99 is missing critical movement options? UT3 keeps double jumping but makes the total jump height of both equal to a single jump in UT99, removes wall and air dodging, and adds a noticeable recovery delay after dodging from the ground. Cool, great.

People didn't like the weapon balance changes and replacements? Toss out the Assault Rifle, bring back the Enforcer, but make it just as inaccurate as the AR! Make the spread on the Flak Cannon’s primary tighter, but have its alt fire shell fall off even faster than UT99’s!

That's not to say all of the changes were bad. Believe it or not, Unreal Tournament 3 actually does have a handful of things I really like, which makes their presence in an overall worse game all the more painful. Vehicle physics are greatly improved, the new vehicles are amazing, Adrenaline is gone, the Rocket Launcher has its grenades back, a lot of the new weapon designs are superb, powerups are back on the map, you get a hoverboard on Warfare and VCtF maps, and I'm all out of nice things to say.

The game, visually, is a mess (see above). A new graphics engine means new effects to play with, but those effects here are bloom and more bloom. Players get lost in overstuffed scenery because the artstyle inherited from Gears of War is red on brown on gray. A more grounded overall concept strips a lot of identity from returning maps, taking them from space or exotic locales and putting them in a generic futuristic cityscape.

That's a small complaint, and totally worth dismissing, but it shows a certain lack of respect to the history of the series, to me. These are maps that have been iconic as a whole that have been repurposed to show off how many pixels can be crammed into a skybox. When Facing Worlds was eventually re-added in UT3’s first and only content update, it was transplanted from two opposing towers on an asteroid spinning above Earth and just set in the mountains somewhere in China.

If you're looking at it from a pure gameplay perspective then there's nothing wrong with the change. But it's just part of an inherent ignorance as to what players wanted from this game. We didn't want a weird storyline where we watch Epic mush per-pixel lit action figures into each other before graciously being allowed to capture the enemy’s Field Lattice Generator three times, we wanted to mush those action figures together ourselves as we climbed higher up the ladder towards facing the Tournament champion. We wanted to thunder across whatever alien landscapes the map designer thought up that day and add another piece to the expansive puzzle of the Unreal universe, not spend two-thirds of the game puttering around China or the generic scifi city.

Also, in going back to get those above screenshots, I discovered something I’d entirely forgotten: there are no map descriptions. The strongest part of that good old fashioned world building is just gone. No more short tales of a skyscraper built by a hubris-devoured crazy person, no more small insights into the shipping lines around this or that outpost, no more glimpses at all into the world beyond the game. For them to suddenly make such a big deal about the story, Epic sure didn’t care about anything beyond their cutscenes.

But I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. What else is in UT3?

Not a whole lot. With a lack of gamemodes came a lack of maps, though I suppose 41 maps was still more than you could expect at the time. The bonus pack that turned UT3 into the “Black Edition” (I have no idea) added 19 more and did, as previously mentioned, re-add Facing Worlds. Mutators are also lacking, with a fair chunk appearing just as basic gameplay tweaks - no hoverboard, no Orb (we'll talk about the stupid Orb), no powerups, the Arena mainstay, no Translocator (just a game setting in all previous titles), friendly fire (also a previous game setting), game speed adjustments (yep, was a setting before), and your basic Instagib/big head/super berserk mutators like you always get.

Gone are fun things like quad jump, vampire, big wheels, slow motion corpses, all the “other UT” mutators (UT Classic and UT 2003 Style if you recall), and vehicle arena. Remember, no fun allowed.

And I sure do wish there was fun allowed, because some things almost are. Warfare is the star here, or at least it should have been. Imagine: a map five times as large as the largest Onslaught map, still joined by paths of dozens of capture nodes linked together to create distinct fronts, laced in between guided objectives reminiscent of Assault scenarios. Completing these objectives grants you unique bonuses on your path to the enemy Core, if you can make it past the army of players and vehicles ahead…

That's what Warfare was billed as, but that's not what Warfare ended up being. What did it turn out as? Literally Onslaught again, but with an Orb now.

The Orb is a game-breakingly frustrating mechanic. Here's how it goes: the Orb spawns at a node you control. Someone can pick up the Orb and carry it around, shooting a giant pillar of light into the sky wherever they go. The Orb will instantly destroy and capture any enemy node it's brought to, and will be destroyed in doing so. The player carrying the Orb can't use any vehicle except their personal hoverboard.

The Orb either wins games outright or does stone nothing. See, both teams get an Orb, so what happens most of the time is that one guy uses the Orb to capture a node, then the other Orb is used to take it back. It's not like you can use it to get a sneaky capture, because of the giant pillar of light shooting into the sky and an icon on the minimap. The Orb is stupid, and proper control of the map makes sure that absolutely nothing comes from its presence. So good work Epic, you added another layer to a gamemode you already stripped back to exactly what we'd gotten before, and all that comes of it is absolutely nothing.

The new vehicles are cool though. Everything from UT2004 makes a comeback with a tweaked design, and new Necris vehicles are added as well. They're usually just an analog of an existing vehicle except with wiggly scifi tentacles, so you get a single-person hoverthingy and a VTOL jet with lasers and missiles, but they really outdid themselves with some of the other ones. Filling the spot of the main battle tank for the new vehicles is a giant War of the Worlds style tripod that can clamber over most obstacles and terrain. The light attack jeep spot is a laser-toting mini-walker that can retract its tendrils and roll around as a ball, squishing people on its merry way. Like I said, not all bad. Oh, but only one team gets them, and not all maps support their inclusion. So only mostly bad.

But they are all that's left of a much larger gamemode that had more and more stripped from it until they were left with literally just Onslaught but with the Orb.

And the bad things just kept coming, this time in regards to the music. New composers were brought in again, in the form of Jesper Kyd and Rom DiPrisco, and they make a total mess of the place. There are a good number of “remixes” present on the soundtrack, but where the musical genius Kevin Reipl took GoDown and made Hyperblast Redux, whichever of the duo made the UT3 remix of GoDown just added some modulation and a breakbeat. Or maybe the classic Foregone Destruction, where the UT3 version just adds some modulation and a breakbeat. Mechanism Eight? Modulation and a breakbeat. Skyward Fire? Modulation and a breakbeat. The classic Unreal Tournament theme itself? Modulation and a breakbeat. The instantly recognizable stage music for UT2004’s Torlan, SDG-ONS1? Surprisingly, a mold-breaker here: no modulation, only an added breakbeat. And someone wailing over it. I get that it's supposed to have a vaguely Middle Eastern or whatever sort of vibe, ‘cause the original did and Torlan itself was set in a dusty oasis sort of thing, but they changed the setting for UT3 to be more temperate so I really have no idea.

My point is that the music in UT3 sucks. Even past the embarrassing quality of the remixes, none of the original compositions are memorable. There's no energy, there's nothing that plays to the idea of the game, and there's no bombast. The music probably has its fans out there, but I'm about as far from one of them as you can get.

I’m also about as far from a fan of the game itself as you can get. When this came out, I was mainly confused as to how it could be so bad. It’s not like it was the first time I ever didn’t like a videogame, but for Unreal Tournament of all things to turn out so bad, I just didn’t really know what I was experiencing. UT3 was so bad that within a month I was looking up tutorials on how to use UT2004’s editor. A year or so later Epic put UT3 on Steam and added a content pack that turned it into Unreal Tournament 3: Black Edition (I still don’t know), but that added so little that it barely made a difference. Two new gamemodes that just amounted to new types of Deathmatch, a handful of maps, and that was it.

People made their own maps, sure, and I’m sure if I looked now I could find mods that make it a more bearable experience. But at the same time, I’m not really sure. Because see, UT3 didn’t just release on PC this time around, it also came out on PS3 and the Xbox 360. Epic wanted to bring the award-winning modding scene to those platforms as well, which means the entire process of modding and the number of things that could be modded was cut way down to adhere to guidelines from both companies as well as the much more limited space available on the console’s hard drives. I only ever looked into mods back around when the Black Edition dropped, and the most popular mods I remember from back then is just adding a Master Chief character model.

To say that Unreal Tournament 3 was a disappointment is perhaps the biggest understatement of this entire essay. I’m not going to rant on about how it was a betrayal of brand integrity or something, because I’m not entirely that naive, but the failure of this game to do as much right as its predecessors or even impress on any great scale meant a lot for the arena shooter genre. Id Software had bowed out and wouldn’t reappear with Rage until years later. Halo was wrapping up its trilogy to critical acclaim. Call of Duty was rapidly changing the face of shooters with Call of Duty 4. Fallout 3 was near, Bioshock had come out a year or so prior, and Gears of War 2 would cement Epic’s new direction.

There was no redeeming followup to Unreal Tournament 3. Nothing came out to add Assault or Domination or Bombing Run back in. It came out, bellyflopped, and Epic let it sit in the lovingly-rendered mud full of bloom and speculars that it landed in.

In the decade-plus since then, the face of shooters has changed again and again. CoD4 ushered in an unrelenting push towards modern-day settings, a small subset of shooters with RPG elements grew larger, Bungie made more Halo games and then Destiny, a whole indie subgenre popped up to try to let us relive the days of Doom and Quake, then a fantastic new Doom came out, and now everyone has a battle royale. Even Epic.

A few years ago on the official Unreal Tournament forums on Epic’s website, a group of fans formed a plan to make their own Unreal Tournament entry under a different name. Work started, schedules were made, and it caught Epic’s attention as so many remake projects do. But rather than end with a Cease & Desist like just about every other one out there, a few people from Epic expressed surprise that there was such a massive push and actually pledged their own support to the project. Unreal Tournament 4 was suddenly an official project.

It was a strange relationship, of course - Epic’s people gave it a place in their launcher and let it use their official servers, they signed off on all major updates and made everything nice and official, but the weapon, map, and character design was going to be on the community. We can get into the ethics of that some other time, but the point was this: Before all that long, there was a playable Unreal Tournament 4. Maps were using placeholder art and geometry, most of the weapons were just the UT3 models, there was one character model, and all you could play was Deathmatch, but it was coming along. And it did come along. The Enforcer, Link Gun, Flak Cannon, Rocket Launcher, and Sniper Rifle were all finalized and modeled, a few maps were finished entirely and look gorgeous (and play really well!), and more character models were added.

And then Fortnite got big.

Fortnite, a weird little Orcs Must Die-alike with building and survival elements, wasn’t much of a big name until Epic added a battle royale mode of their own, not too long after Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds swept across the Steam Early Access scene. What that meant for the UT4 project is that the handful of official Epic people who were getting paid to curate this giant mod endeavor were suddenly reassigned to work on something a little more immediate, namely Fortnite.

The long and short of it is that Epic killed Unreal Tournament twice in a row. There are still arena shooters out there. Toxikk is basically just UT2004 deathmatch with a shiny coat of paint (I played a bit, it’s okay but lacks a lot in comparison); Quake Champions is a perfectly fine hero shooter with a lot of balance problems and way too few maps, plus it’s Quake which means all the problems I have remain; Tribes: Ascend came and went just as fast as players in it moved thanks to a suddenly overaggressive monetization model; and lately I guess Dusk has its multiplayer which I hear is pretty healthy.

The arena shooter isn’t dead; no genre really can be, and I have firsthand experience with how much work can be done to keep individual games alive, but it’s certainly not a popular choice these days. If so much has happened to the shooter genre at large since Wolfenstein 3D came out, that much and more can happen again. More people are playing videogames than ever, technology marches onward, and maybe one day someone in the right position with the right resources will create something that finally puts the public eye back on the most classic of multiplayer shooters.

But until then, the decade of languishing that arena shooters have been the subject of is entirely Epic Games’ fault.

#unreal #unreal tournament #fortnite #epic games #epic #words about games #video games #review #unreal retrospective

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mixxxfeelings-blog · 6 years

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Destiny 2: Out with the New..In with the Old?

So I’ve been a hardcore Destiny fan since its release and I will be the first to tell you it works best in bursts.

Throughout the entire franchise Bungie had always done a poor job at the simpler aspects of communication. They promised things, that depending on your interpretation of their words, were very feasible or too ambitious. At best their words came across as nebulous to much of the diehard and casual community.

In D1, The Taken King brought new life into the game when it needed it most. Now in D2 it looks like we’ve hit the same point.

A lot of players, myself included, have been running on empty trying to care about the expansions D2 delivered in the first year. Curse of Osiris had much to be desired and I’ll finish Warmind when I have the time. But after spending so much time maxing 3 characters on 2 systems I really needed a reason to do so.

So let’s talk about FORSAKEN.

THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN.

Quite literally we are going backwards and that’s a great thing. When D2 came out and the most devoted players had run out of content to actively do, the critiques and complaints started pouring in. If you lurked on the DestinytheGame subreddit you could see that most of the comments made comparisons to between D1 and D2 in regards to features, activities, and general quality of life changes to the franchise. Many players felt that D2 offered a more simplistic and streamlined experience in relation to D1, which left the hardcore players with little to do week after week. With Forsaken, Bungie is trying to take that criticism and run with it.

So what’s coming back? Over the course of the summer Bungie will be updating the game to reintroduce older modes and pother changes that all players (not just those who purchase Forsaken) will be able to take advantage of.

In general we can see that they will be tweaking some of the D2 systems to make them work better for players, while the roadmap doesn’t give us all the exact details. As of now the first two columns are already live, modifying players options in the Crucible, adding space to the Vault, and expanding the Masterwork system are probably the most notable changes there.

Between now and then with update 1.2.3, we will be getting 6v6 Quickplay and Permanent Rumble, two Crucible options that players have been asking for since the first couple months of the game. In addition to that we’ll be rounding out Year 1 with Prestige Raids and Triumphs, both returning systems from D1 and an event called Solstice of Heroes, which will probably be further detailed during Bungie’s E3 event.

In the final column we have a list of the smaller additions Forsaken will be bringing. Some of these changes we examined a little more deeply than others during Bungie’s ViDoc, so for now we are gonna stay focused on those.

The first guy on the list is Gear Collections. Separate from the Vault and the Tower Kiosks, the game will now allow you to track what Weapons, Armor, and Items you have obtained during your D2 tenure.

The categories tell you how many of the items you have collected, how many there are in total, and what you need to do in order to get the ones you’re missing.

Then with Exotics (maybe more but we’ll have to wait and see) you can purchase exotic items you have unlocked, but may have dismantled during your gameplay. With the exotics and you haven’t discovered the Collection will let you know if you have top complete a particular quest or objective in order to discover it.

Other additions that weren’t individually pictured, but are interesting nonetheless are Weapon Slot Changes, Weapon Randomization, and an update to the Mod System.

With the weapon slots, Bungie is looking to bridge the gap between new and old players.

D1′s weapon setup had 3 slots, Primary (Assault Rifles, Hand Cannons, Scout Rifles, Pulse Rifles), Secondary (Shotguns, Sniper Rifles, Fusion Rifles, Sidearms), and Heavy (Machine Guns, Rocket Launchers, Swords).

D2′s set was a tad different with their slots being Kinetic and Energy which shared all weapon types, with the exception of Grenade Launchers, Rocket Launchers, Swords, Trace Rifles, Shotguns, Sniper Rifles, Fusion Rifles, and Linear Fusion Rifles. whew

Players felt that D2′s changes made players weaker all around, by sticking the game’s more powerful and situational weapon types into the weapon slot that would have the least amount of ammo drops and overall use.

With Forsaken, you can move weapons to any of the 3 slots you want, which means things are gonna get a whole lot crazier, but its gonna be a great ride for both PvE and PvP environments.

To add to that insanity, we’re getting back Radmon Rolls (Weapon Randomization), meaning that not every gun of the same make and model is identical. Bringing more of the Borderlands style of gun drops to the game. Some gun/perk combinations will work really well, some will be useless and do nothing, and others will (this is may personal favorite), will cause players to janky, different things with their loadouts

NEW STUFF INCOMING

So what do we have on the way?

New WEAPONS

New ENEMIES

New PLACES

New MODES

New RAID

NEW SUPERRRRRS

So considering this is our first look at all this content, there may not be too much to say at this point, but the visuals give us enough to be excited about.

So it’s no surprise that we’re getting new weapons, I mean that happens all the time right? But new weapon types? Not so much. But Bungie’s taking us back to 2013, when Bows were dominating the video game ecosystem.

So Bungie didn’t go into the specs of the Bow weapon type, but this is what we know or can infer right now:

Different Bows are designed for different types of engagements, most likely close range, midrange, and long distance.

Some bows have energy related abilities.

Time-to-Kill is balanced to make up for the act of drawing the bow.

Now Enemies. Because Bungie will be exploring more of the story during their E3 slot, we only know a bit about who were are gonna be fighting in Forsaken.

But if you guessed Fallen

YOU’D BE RIGHT

I bet you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today.

So what they have said so far is that there has been a jail break at the Prison of Elders in The Reef, so it stands to reason that all the enemies we’ll be fighting are some topnotch Fallen.

We will be getting new Fallen enemy types and a sizeable number of Baron boss fights.

The major Barons are said to each operate in their own way, providing different types of engagements, instead of just a simply Kill List.

So where is all this going down? So obviously we’re going back to The Reef, the section of the Solar System that has appropriated the asteroid belt in Jovians (the Jupiter/Saturn area).

More specifically we have a new area to explore!

The Tangled Shore is a network of terrestrial platforms floating in the Reef, that are linked together through cables and wires. The idea itself is reminiscent of Fallen architecture, but I think it’s safe to assume the Awoken are responsible for its creation.

I would appear to be very open from the shots delivered in the ViDoc, but these could be imagine captured from cutscenes or early builds of the game that haven’t been populated. So there’s definitely more questions than answers here.

There is definitely an overwhelming Western theme in play here so maybe it just empty???

With the new Raid Bungie confirmed that there will be a new location that will house the Raid itself, which is slightly different than the previous raids, which were typically connected to the general overworld. How exactly they plan to section all that out has not been discussed, but I’m sure we’ll get more information on that moving forward.

The new raid is takes place in the Dreaming City. This is the birthplace of the Awoken, who are descendants of humans that escaped Earth’s orbit during the Collapse. As it stands we don’t have a real sense of the general timeline of those events, but it seem reasonable that the Dreaming City may provide some answers.

Bungie has said that the new raid with offer new puzzles to solve and mysteries to uncover. But that’s nothing new. What’s new: The raid will CHANGE. Bungie says that as people continue to play the raid, the environments will change so that over the course of weeks and months the raid will not be the same as it was when it premieres.

Definitely gets points for being pretty.

Time will tell what the scope of these alterations and changes will be. Players at least remember that the Infinite Garden from the Curse of Osiris expansion didn’t live up to the hype. Hopefully, the Dreaming City can.

So we’ve hit some PvE content, some PvP content, so now let’s talk about some content for PvEvP???

So at first glance this takes me back to Archon’s Forge from D1′s Rise of Iron expansion. Not surprisingly considering some of Bungie staff have looked to RoI for some inspiration, but we’ll get to that in a second.

For starters, Gambit is a mode for some PvE arena goodness. You kill enemies for motes of light which your team collects to deposit in your bank.

When you do that you end up sending a stronger enemy over to the opposing team’s arena. While that enemy is alive the other team will be unable to deposit motes, so you can gain a lead. After that you can fill up your bank, which summons an enemy for you and your team to take down, called a Primeval. Once you defeat it, you win the the round. Simple right?

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

You can also use motes to jump over to the other teams arena to kill their guardians or just generally prevent them from advancing. Bungie didn’t say what limitations there are in doing this, but I’d bet there’s a once per round limit.

Hmmmm? Is that everything? I felt like there was something I was really excited about, but after getting this far Ican’t seem to remember what...it...was...

OHYEAH

NEW SUPERS

But now I’m sad because I just remembered. Bungie didn’t show us too much on this front. But what they did say give us enough to work with I think.

So, first thing, these are not really new classes. Big difference there. And I really think what they’re doing here is more reasonable. They are creating new perk paths.

In D1, each class at a suite where you could choose what perks you wanted to pair together, but you were limited to one perk from each column (i.e. you couldn’t use two grenade type perks at the same time). The downside to that system was that you typically wouldn’t alter your perks much. At best you found the right combination for your playstyle and kinda left it at that. You couldn’t go full RPG and style your perks for different engagements as much as you might’ve wanted.

But in D2, the classes were steamlined as well. You choose from a jump type, grenade type, and melee type. Then you chose your path, which contained perks that would affect your playstyle. With a new super getting added to check class, it would be unreasonable for them to not introduce new perks, or a new path to augment it.

From what we’ve seen older supers look like they could have new abilities and new supers may be lifting parts from the super we lost going into D2. Gunslinger seems to be pairing its Throwing Knife mechanic with the old melee Super Bladedancer.

Warlocks seem to have a flashier teleport during Stormtrance and beam super not unlike what Moira from Overwatch has. And Titans get a Warhammer, which seems to blend together abilities from the new and old Sunbreaker.

GEEZ, that was more stuff than I thought to have before E3. But we got through it and I’m definitely excited to get back into one of my favorite game addictions!

#destiny #destiny 2 #warlock #hunter #titan #ps4 #gaming news ps4 #xbox one #pc gaming #gaming #bungie #activision

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alainas-adventures · 6 years

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NOW ALL OF CHINA KNOWS YOU’RE HERE. (Perfect.)

Homer and going to Beijing was a bit of a fluke. I mean, not that we hadn’t always wanted to see the Great Wall – but we had originally planned to go for four days in April. Then I got a random 3-day weekend. I wanted to spend it in Tokyo for the Sakura festival, but tickets were insanely expensive (we’re talking $1000 USD for flights alone). So we thought we’d check off another item on the bucket list and push our Beijing trip up to the last weekend of March. Here’s what happened in those 48 hours.

Thursday, March 29

We set our alarms for 4:00 AM. It wasn’t a pretty start, but it was the only way to maximize our day. We landed in a sea of gray that looked like fog, but we knew better. For reference, healthy air quality index (AQI) is considered to be a score of 50 or below. Typically, most of the US is in the 20-40 range. When we landed in Beijing, the AQI was 157. (We later found out that this is traditionally the worst time of year for the air quality in Beijing – do your research before booking tickets!) Of course we came prepared with masks, but we both immediately felt the effects of the pollution – it was like going from 100% healthy to day 4 of a cold, within a matter of hours. My throat was burning, phlegm appeared out of nowhere, and I had developed a cough. It was no joke. All we could do was make the best of it and enjoy ourselves despite the smog.

What I was probably most excited about on this trip was the food. Having been fortunate enough to grow up in my friend Annie’s house, enjoying her mom’s unrivaled Beijing cuisine, I had a sense of what to expect (although let’s be real, nothing beat’s Mama Wang’s scallion pancake). First up was a dry noodle dish with minced meat and fresh cucumber. Homer opted for a slightly spicier entree.

We then took a bus to Tiananmen Square. The craziest thing about this place is that the Chinese government tells its citizens to this day that nothing ever happened here. WeChat, the most widely used messaging app in China, will censor any messages you send on this subject. So it was a little spooky standing there as an American, thinking about “nothing.”

#pollution #maskcouture #help

Just beyond Tiananmen Square is the Forbidden City, or the old Imperial Palace grounds. The area is massive and the buildings are ornately decorated. It was super cool to step backwards in time. I couldn’t help but imagine that scene in Mulan where she’s running along the roof of the palace.

The palace closed at 4:30, so we had to figure out how to spend our evening. We decided to double back to Wanfujing, a popular shopping district that we had passed earlier on the bus. (I may have fallen asleep on the bus back.)

In this area is a mall called APM, built by a Hong Kong company. As such, we felt very at home inside. There were plenty of international stores, and even a Dunkin’ Donuts! (We managed to resist. Plenty of time for that in the US.) What we couldn’t resist, however, were the pay-as-you-go karaoke booths. It seems we have to do this every time we’re in China. Hong Kong, get on this level!

One quick note: We were lucky to be able to experience Beijing as locals almost solely because Homer’s mom has a WeChat account and a mainland credit card. You may not understand why this is significant. WeChat, the app I mentioned before, isn’t just for texting. It’s also how you pay for basically anything in China. Like Hong Kong’s Octopus card, but even more of a necessity. We used WeChat to rent public bikes, pay for cabs, reserve a karaoke booth, and buy ourselves drinks at a bar. It’s like Apple Pay, except it’s EVERYWHERE. So before you go, do some planning – WeChat doesn’t accept foreign credit cards, so you may not be able to do everything as easily as a local would.

GUESS WHAT CHINA HAS THAT HONG KONG DOESN’T (yet)?! VICTORIA’S SECRET!!! Guess where I hadn’t shopped since I visited home a year ago?! I was a tad excited. Homer had to hold me back from buying the entire (three-story) shop.

Wanfujing reminded us of Shanghai’s Nanjing Road – minus the trams mowing down pedestrians.

And of course, what would a trip to Beijing be without the original Peking duck? We visited the most celebrated restaurant in the city to try it for ourselves. It did NOT disappoint. One of the ways to enjoy this famous dish is to dip a bit of duck into a bowl of sugar. I am not exaggerating when I say that the result tasted like an elephant ear (American carnival food). The rest of the duck was polished off by dipping it in hoisin sauce and wrapping it in tortillas with cucumber and onion.

After filling ourselves to the brim, we took an after-dinner walk down a snack street where there were some more adventurous options (live scorpions on a stick, ready to be fried and eaten). This was one of the only times I actually felt crowded in Beijing. The city was (to my preconceived notion) surprisingly wide and roomy.

I spotted some of these stock character Chinese opera masks and flashed back to my childhood – somewhere in my room at home, I still have one of these masks from one of Annie’s trips!

To close the night out, we checked out Beijing’s night life. I suppose you could compare this to the scene in Wan Chai after dark – laid back, live music, a slightly older crowd. Every bar had a singer slaying the karaoke game, and some of the ones we saw had serious star quality! But best of all was the senior salsa club that we saw practicing in a park. They were having the best time!

Friday, March 30

This was our day to see The Great Wall of China – one of the Wonders of the World! Getting there was half the battle. We first rented bikes and pedaled to the nearest train station, stopping to have breakfast at a Starbucks (wherein they were playing Christmas music for some reason, but I kinda liked it). Then we commuted out to the countryside and waited for the railway train to arrive. When it finally came, we hunkered down for a 90-minute ride into the mountains. I was surprised to find every surface blooming with sakura flowers! Remember how I wanted to see them in Tokyo? I was delighted to be able to kill two birds with one stone on this trip to Beijing.

Before beginning our ascent up the Wall, we stopped at a local eatery for some bao (steamed buns filled with meat and vegetables).

We chose to climb Badaling, the most popular section of the wall. The climb wasn’t particularly tough, but we also didn’t go very far. Just far enough to reach the toboggans. However, if you want to slide down, I would recommend that you climb Mutianyu instead, because that is the section of the wall with the toboggans that you can steer yourself. The ones we found in Badaling were more like a run-down carnival ride. BUT HOW ‘BOUT THAT VIEW?!

Pretty amazing to think that this landmark is over 13,000 miles long! I can’t even comprehend it.

We were pretty tired after a long day of traveling and climbing, but not too tired to enjoy some delicious dry noodles in peanut sauce! I ate this whole bowl.

This restaurant is called Morning and I highly recommend it.

The last thing we did on our trip was check out Knight, a somewhat hidden bar in what looks like an apartment complex, where the bartenders are also magicians. We sat at a table shaped like a club, gazed at the signatures of celebrities on the wall, and were entertained. One of the magicians did a trick on me where he made an X appear on my hand without even touching me! My favorite part, though, might have been Homer’s reaction to all this. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone more impressed with anything.

HOW DID THIS GET HERE HE DIDN’T EVEN TOUCH ME

Saturday, March 31

We jetted off pretty early and experienced Beijing traffic firsthand. Luckily, we made it to our gate just as the aircraft was boarding! We got back to HK safely, but unfortunately, I found out that what happens in Beijing doesn’t always stay in Beijing. Despite wearing a mask at all times (except to eat, sleep, and take a picture), the pollution found a home in my lungs and throat. I completely lost my voice for a week. As you can imagine, it was a tough week at work and I was very thankful for the support of my trackmates and colleagues. But despite all the challenges it presented, I really did enjoy Beijing. It is a busy, metropolitan, culturally diverse, expansive city, and it’s home to some amazing sights. (And some even more amazing food.)

Stay tuned for Homer’s and my final trip in Asia for 2018 – we’re headed back to somewhere we’ve been before. Can you guess where it is?

#beijing #china #march 2018 #photos

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dapperdanny-blog · 7 years

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How To Lucid Dream

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to control your brain and impact your fantasies?

To experience your ultimate fantasies while your body is totally at rest is possible and it all feels like real life; in fact many lucid dreamers claim that their lucid dreams feel more real than real life.

Imagine what it would be like kissing your most loved on-screen character, flying, being a legend, or basically assessing distinctive and correct answers for your genuine issues?

Perhaps you simply need to remember your fantasies better?

It's reasonable in the event that you do.��

Accepting you rest 8 hours consistently, you'll spend 33% of your life dozing!

Wouldn't it be awesome in the event that you knew about how your mind utilizes this time and knew how to control the procedure to encounter new things and convey positive results to your life? Clear imagining is the thing that you require.

Clear imagining is monitoring envisioning amid profound rest.

This normally happens when the visionary encounters something abnormal that makes them question their world; they understand they're in a fantasy.

The more the visionary ends up plainly mindful that he or she is imagining, the more he or she can intentionally impact the fantasy's substance.

Advantages of clear imagining

Notwithstanding, learning have clear dreams takes some training.

In the event that there is a quick course, it is by raising your acetylcholine levels – it directs the REM rest and enables you to wind up noticeably mindful you had always wanted.

Onnits Alpha Cerebrum supplement makes an incredible showing with regards to of doing only that. However, more on that later.

• Experience your dreams •

Your fantasies will turn out to be more distinctive in the event that you rehearse clear envisioning. By "clear" I mean more exact and simpler to review. You could satisfy your dreams, for example, flying over the place where you grew up, kissing Jessica Alba, conversing with perished relatives or any number of things.

As far as possible is your creative energy, and you can do whatever you need in your fantasies. Isn't that Stunning!?

• Nod off less demanding •

Clear envisioning can help a sleeping disorder.

When you're ready to control your fantasies bad dreams happen less much of the time, which can enhance your rest quality

• Feel resuscitated for the duration of the day •

After an unwinding clear dream, reality ends up noticeably simpler to confront.

You'll likewise have a tendency to be more bold when confronting testing circumstances throughout your life.

• Discover answers for genuine issues •

You can test diverse answers for issues in your fantasies.

For instance, you may test how you'll feel after you've had a troublesome discussion with somebody who is imperative to you or even work on giving a discourse before a crowd of people.

You can work on anything that is worrying you.

How do our fantasies function?

Our fantasies are a mix of verbal, visual and passionate boosts formed into a story line, which is regularly broken and irrational yet is continually intriguing.

When you rest, your cerebrum goes through five phases of rest, which takes around 90-110 minutes, involving a rest cycle.

I Alpha stage

Alpha stage happens amid the minutes soon after you set down, when you begin nodding off. Your body temperature brings down, pulse moderates and breathing turns out to be substantial. You can encounter automatic muscle compressions amid this stage in case you're under anxiety.

This short stage, which endures around 10 minutes before we fall and rest and just before we wake up resembles staring off into space, amongst rest and attentiveness.

Amid this stage a few minutes of rest and attentiveness is customized, putting away vital data that starting now and into the foreseeable future will be in your vitality field.

We additionally enter the alpha state amid reflection or when we let our creative abilities free – ex. amid painting, composing, making music.

II Theta stage

Is the phase of rest we can without much of a stretch be stirred from. Indeed, we may not know that we're notwithstanding dozing.

It's likewise simple to nod off once more.

We can in any case recall our fantasies between the alpha and theta stages, and they have an immediate relationship to the fantasies we plan in the alpha stage.

III, IV Delta stages

It's the condition of profound rest that takes 30 minutes to enter once we set down, and we don't recollect our fantasies amid this stage. 30 minutes into this stage we fall into a considerably more profound period of delta, where it turns out to be exceptionally hard to wake up.

We are totally uninformed we had always wanted amid this stage.

Our hearts start to pulsate all the more gradually, breathing backs off and our mind demonstrates low movement, like being in a state of extreme lethargy.

V REM stage

We normally enter REM (Fast Eye Development) roughly a hour and a half subsequent to nodding off.

This is the reason we require long stretches of rest every night.

Amid the REM stage our muscles debilitate and we lose our capacity to respond, however our brains and spinal strings stay dynamic.

EEG readings amid this stage seem like those recorded amid attentiveness. Awakening from this state you will recollect your fantasies precisely. When REM is finished, we for the most part come back to Stage Two rest.

On the off chance that you get just brief times of rest, you can't generally get past the stages you have to mend and remain sound.

On the off chance that you feel like a fantasy is taking quite a while, it is.

Dreams take as long as they appear. So how might you improve utilization of the rest organizes your mind and body go through amid every night and begin clear imagining?

8 Ways You Can Clear Dream This evening

Tip 1 : Keep a fantasy diary

Keep a diary and pen beside your bed so you can quickly record your fantasies. Every morning spend a couple of minutes recording your fantasies and compose each and every detail you recall before you woke up.

It will enable you to distinguish designs in your fantasies and better acknowledge when you're imagining.

Search for things that show up all the time in your fantasies. When you figure out how to see these fantasy signs it'll be simpler for you to perceive when you're envisioning.

After you've kept your diary a while you'll see that your fantasies will review all the more effectively and their force will increment. You'll encounter more unconstrained clarity.

You can also use lucid dreams to control and eliminate nightmares!

Tip 2: Attempt supplements that lift acetylcholine levels for more striking dreams

Studies performed on acetylcholine boosting supplements uncover a fascinating symptom: distinctive, regularly clear dreams. Scientists considered the outcomes and found that acetylcholine is in charge of directing REM rest. The higher your acetylcholine levels, the more constant and expansive the REM cycle moves toward becoming.

My most loved supplement is Alpha Cerebrum from ONNIT. It is a standout amongst the most intense and excellent acetylcholine-improving supplement based supplements accessible, and the outcomes I've been getting are stunning!

Tip 3: Lift your Melatonin levels

A little organ in the mind called the pineal organ produces melatonin, and melatonin controls our rest wake cycle. It joins data about our condition to various parts of our bodies and makes it less demanding for us to nod off amid the night and animates our mindfulness amid the day. High melatonin levels emphatically impact the nature we had always wanted and impact the achievement of clear envisioning.

You can expand melatonin by:

• Resting in entire murkiness

• Resting and awakening at a comparative time each day

• Eating more sustenances that animate melatonin generation, for example, light and dim mustard, almonds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and fruits. Likewise, yet in less amount: rice, oats, red radish, bananas, tomatoes.

Tip 4: Contemplate before resting

There is an imperative connection amongst reflection and clear imagining. In the two cases you expect to achieve a wonderful mindfulness. Reflection is neglectful; simply feeling, detecting, watching, and tuning in.

You can ponder whenever and in any position you feel great. To accomplish clear imagining I prescribe reflecting a few minutes in your bed, just before resting.

Close your eyes and ensure your body is casual. Lie still and enable your brain to float. Presently feel your breath entering and leaving the body.

Try not to collaborate with it or consider whatever else. Feel the vibrations as it enters your mouth, see your stomach rising and falling with your breath. Simply make the most of your own reality with a full nearness.

You may encounter fascinating hypnagogic sensations, for example, drifting, sound-related pipedreams or developing dream scenes.

Tip 5: Instruct yourself to recall your fantasies previously resting

Let yourself know obviously that you need to dream; you need to know that you are envisioning and you need to recollect it. Rehash like a mantra before resting, "I will clear dream today around evening time".

You educate your mind to acknowledge when you're envisioning, particularly amid the pre-rest stage.

Tip 6: Do rude awakenings

Rude awakenings are identified with activites that you can just perform, in actuality.

The most well-known rude awakening is endeavoring to squeeze yourself while envisioning.

When you squeeze yourself while imagining you feel no agony.

You can likewise put your finger through the palm of your inverse hand. On the off chance that you would it be able to implies that you're imagining.

My most loved checkup is to compose a word on my hand.

Record any word on your hand. For instance your name and take a gander at it all the time.

When you build up this propensity in your fantasies you won't see this sign, and you'll realize that you're imagining.

At to begin with, seeing that you're envisioning may be alarming and wake you up, however later it simply make you mindful that now is the ideal opportunity for 'surfing' your fantasies.

Tip 7: Know about exceptional items

When you are envisioning focus on mirrors, book titles, watch confront.

They are normally foggy in dreams, so taking a gander at them amid a day will help you to perceive when you are imagining.

To advance a propensity for focusing of these uncommon articles, take a gander at them a ton when you are alert.

Tip 8: Set your caution 30 minutes sooner than ordinary

Set you caution somewhat sooner than you have to, so you can backpedal to rest since you more probable intruded on the REM period of rest.

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#How To Lucid Dream Tonight #lucid dreaming #8 steps to lucid dreaming

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

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6 Everyday Things You Had No Clue Were Made Of Dead Swine

There are products you expect to be made out of swine, like meat, milk, or those donkey gonad insertions you bought on the internet( yes, everyone knows ). In information, you’d perhaps find ripped off if you bought a regular burger and they gave you a tofu patty with twig cheese and compost bacon. As it turns out, you’re much more likely to be in the opposite statu — experiencing some everyday part, well, every day, wholly unaware that it’s actually made from formerly alive beasts that once blinked and farted.

You don’t have to be a hardcore vegan or vegetarian to be fazed that there are dead animal fragments in innocent-looking nonsense like …

Your Tattoo Ink Is Maybe Made Of Incinerated Animal Bones

You only is a requirement to browse the veggie part at your local supermarket for a few minutes be noted that the Venn diagram between “avid vegetarian” and “tattoo enthusiast” is pretty close to a clique. Well, if you’re against injuring swine and never demonstrated much believe that that where that ink adorning your figure came from, is fully prepared to dislike us( and yourself) upon speaking the following new paragraph. Or, if you’re merely the queasy character, you might wanna stop here anyway.

Alexas_Fotos/ Pixabay This adorable pig commemorates your last chance to turn around .

You see, unless you went out of your room to get a vegan tattoo, that ink almost certainly contains the charred bones of dead animals. That’s what holds it that crisp, appropriately death-metal-esque blackness. And that’s not all: Animal fat is commonly used as an ink stabilizer, while gelatin made out of animal hooves acts as a bind agent. We’re gonna go ahead and guess those hooves weren’t volunteered by their original owners.

via Vegan Tattoos “Yeah, swine brutality genuinely gets under my scalp, you know? ”

Some inks use resin from shellac beetles for binding, which might be less horrifying in the vegan/ vegetarian feel, but is still skin-crawlingly gross. Fortunately, vegan tattoo inks do exist, but according to The Atlantic, “outside veggie hotspots like New York City, Portland, and Los Angeles, they can be hard to find.” We’re gonna presupposes all the cool children with vegan tattoos knew this and carefully vetted their ink, lest they become a living, breathing precedent of irony.

via Tattoos Hut “And now to read the Wikipedia article on tattooing and take a big sip of luscious ink … ”

Your Chewing Gum Is Chock Full O’ Sheep Grease

We’ve already told you that cosmetics contain a particularly gross essence called lanolin. What we neglected to mention is that it’s not just food ingredients in stuff you scratch on your scalp — it’s also in chewing gum. Just to be safe, you should probably spit out any gum you happen to be ruminating before we continue.

What “couldve been” be so gross? Lanolin is gunk that’s “naturally produced by the sebaceous glands in sheep’s skin” and ceases up all over their woolen, “coating the fibers with a protective, waxy sheath.” In other words, it’s sheep sweat, and it’s jolly gnarly.

To get lanolin from fleece the old-school route, you boil it and wait for the fatty to rise to the surface. More modern methods include pressing the petroleum out with rollers or spinning it in a centrifuge. Irrespective of the distillation procedure, the final result is a nice tub of “wool fat” that you’ll wishes to daddy straight into your opening and ruminate, natch.

Most gum labels don’t list lanolin as food ingredients by appoint, because it’s one of various that comprise the innocuous-sounding “gum base.” Likewise , note that although some companies claim that lanolin is “cruelty free, ” many vegans and vegetarians consider it unethical because it supports the “inherently cruel” woolen farming industry. You know, in case the “chewing on a sheep’s form oil” duty wasn’t enough for you.

Your Beer, Wine, And Orange Juice Might Be A Little Fishy

We’ve certainly used up our pun quota for this article already, but there’s just no other mode to set it: You might find the following information a tad crappie. Specifically, we’re speak about isinglass, a gelatinous essence made from the swim bladders of freshwater fish( like sturgeons ). It’s traditionally used in brew and wine-making as a filter to attain the finished products appear clearer, thus generating our brewskis that alluring, piss-like seem we’ve grown accustomed to.

Tossed in with other ingredients, isinglass compiles moving molecules and curdles into a clod in the bottom of the vat or barrel, where it’s easy to remove. Plenty of breweries big and small have eliminated this fish byproduct from their manufacturing, but others can’t be arsed( Guinness told you so would go vegan in 2015, but apparently hasn’t gotten around to it yet ). Admittedly, since the isinglass is removed from the brew or wine before bottling, simply minute lengths of fish bladder was possible to make it into your actual beverage. But still, it was once there and now( thanks to us) you’ll never be able to forget it.

Another favorite booze that have included fish is Tropicana’s “Healthy Heart” orange juice, which contains omega-3 acids … as well as sardines, anchovies, and tilapia. The feeling is to give consumers the benefits of fish without them actually having to eat any. This is fine and good, unless you happen to be allergic to fish or a vegetarian who didn’t stop is whether or not their glass of OJ contained something other than, you know, orange juice.

Your Laundry Is Replenished With Silky Soft Animal Fat

What possible beef could we maybe have with fabric softener? It’s funny “youre asking”, because it probably contains some.

Dryer membranes and fabric softeners labor by coating laundry with a film that obligates it soft to the suggestion, static-free, and springtime fresh. A all-important but rarely advertised factor in the soften process is tallow — which is made from “rendered fat from cattles, sheep, and horses.” In other texts, your dryer expanse is more like dryer sheep .

This coating continues to build up on your laundry over age, gradually dealing your undies, towels, and everything else in particles of animal fat — in fact, that’s exactly what attains the textile so damn soft. When you constrict a freshly dried towel, you’re mostly grabbing onto some Frankensteined, multi-animal love handles( good luck going that mental image out of your chief ). But hey, at least now you know why your feline is so haunted with clean laundry.

So what are your non-animal picks for softening invests? In several clauses whose producing dates we double-checked to make sure it wasn’t April 1st, experts recommend doing your laundry with vinegar. Just remember to contribute it as the liquid is crowding or already full, or you’ll travel from repulsing your salad-loving sidekicks to risking being eaten by them.

Likelihoods Are There’s Dairy In Your Condoms

Given their wholly un-creative call, it’s not a surprise that lambskin condoms are made of sheep intestines. Hence, we’re approximating they don’t making such a style onto the wangs of numerous vegetarians. What they probably don’t know is that the latex ardour gloves they’re using aren’t exactly cruelty-free( and we don’t mean in the 50 Shades feel ).

Most latex condoms contain something announced casein — a dairy protein commonly are in addition to pieces as varied as cheese, toothpaste, glue, coat, and, yes, your dong. Since the sentiments of raw rubber on your skin wouldn’t be very erotic, casein and other substances are used to make the latex more smooth and dick-friendly. So, while you might not be wrapping your waste in sheep intestines, “you think youre” encompassing it with solidified cow tit juice. Some condom makes too throw in some milk powder for good measure.

Fortunately, there are some condoms on the market that are free from all animal-derived essences, so vegans can breathe easy knowing that the only “biological material” in their genital raincoats is their own. But what if you’re one of those persons who escapes milk products for less humanitarian, more “not getting the poops” reasonableness? Well, according to one doctor, there’s a very small chance that the casein could prompt an allergic reaction in someone who is lactose intolerant( but she’s never seen it ). So if your marriage doesn’t have an orgasm, find free to tell yourself that that’s entirely the same reasons why.

In A Bunch Of Countries, Your Money Is Lubed Up With Animal Fat

You know all that hard-earned money you’re spending on vegan and cruelty-free makes? Well, uh, might wanna start looking up regions that still use the barter method. Swerves out, quite a few countries’ fund now contains tallow, which, again, is a type of rendered animal fatten. You may never hold a fatty clod of greenbacks, but on the bright side, a hunk of fat legislations is likely doable.

The culprits are polymer banknotes, which are more sturdy than another type of foldable currency and are much harder to counterfeit( apparently due to scammers’ deep commitment to cruelty-free techniques ). On the one handwriting, polymer mentions should have a lesser environmental impact in the long term, because they are last longer than article statutes. On the other hand, those with ethical or religion the rationale for scaping animal products can go screw themselves, apparently.

So, which countries have espoused this type of pork barrel spend? Lots. In addition to the UK, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Malaysia, Nigeria, Chile, and at the least 17 other nations have opted for plastic over article. Since Britain unveiled their five-pound polymer memo in 2016, some 135, 000 beings have signed an online application expecting the removal of all animal concoctions from money. A representative from the company that affords the polymer said they only recently found out about the issue and are trying to find a non-murdery alternative, but “that will take time.” In the meantime, we can only expressed the view that British charge card corporations are having their best time ever thanks to Whole Foods’ UK chapter alone.

Also check out The 6 Most Horrifying Ingredients In Everyday Cosmetics and The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry Is Feeding You . Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 8 Popular Foods With Ingredients That Will Haunt Your Dreams, and other videos you won’t witness on the site !

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artin5minutes · 7 years

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Breath of the Wild Adventure Log Day 19

Log 19

Oof it’s been a long time since I updated this log.

Guess what?

I beat the game.

Where I last left off I was exploring the dungeon of Hyrule Castle with the intent of simply exploring the castle and doing basic recon.

However, a particular somebody was around and free and sort of excited that I was so close to fighting Ganon and both of us figured I would just die quickly anyway.

So when I resumed I pretty much beelined for the main objective, after making sure I was healed up and had cooked a bunch of meaty meals.

When I entered I was surprised at what happened simply because I still didn’t know what to expect. The floor collapsed and I found myself far below Hyrule Castle facing a messed up spider version of Ganon. What I would realize later is that if I had not faced the Divine Beasts I would have to fight each of THOSE iteration of Ganon first...hence why I encountered Water Ganon upon my earlier encounter.

So because I had completed all of the Divine Beasts I was pleasantly surprised to see that HALF of Ganon’s health was drained. That’s good.

Oh, I’m pretty poorly equipped and trained at fighting Ganon. That’s bad.

Remember when I told you that I really wasn’t great at combat or doing timed anything in the game...so yeah.

The good news is I didn’t die.

The bad news is I spent a lot of time simply running and evading so that my Goron Shield power would work because once Ganon hit 1/4 health he became impervious to direct attacks.

Again, I figured if I was good at timed blocks I could get some openings on him but I wasn’t and I found myself low on health and food so I simply waited until my Goron shield regenerated and used that to create openings into attacking Ganon.

I also was not prepared for the Master Sword to continuously be useless 99% of the time. WTF! So I was also burning through all of my best swords that I had been saving.

It got pretty ridiculous how barebones the fight became. I was wondering if Link was any good at fisticuffs.

But lo and behold, I was patient and managed to beat spider Ganon and I was eager for the next fight because because we know there is another fight coming and also where the hell is Zelda?

So cutscene cutscene there’s Zelda and we’re outside for some reason and Ganon reappears as a giant 4-legged beast that just stands still while I shoot light arrows at it.

Ok.

This fight is weird and once again I am poorly trained because I barely rode any horses in the game and my horse keeps running INTO Ganon’s hooves and knocking me off.

I eventually hit Ganon in the weak spots enough and now I’m waiting for that final one-on-one battle and somehow it never happens.

WTF SERIOUSLY!?

That was it? That’s the end of the game?

I would come to understand later that like 99% of all gamers, this ending was disappointing but let me elaborate on my reasons.

1. We never have a direct encounter with Ganon. No villain speech, no threat of revenge, no mention of Triforces, no talk of how he even managed to do this for 100 years.

2. For a game this big and expansive and exploratory, having an ending that is so brief is embarrassing. People put in hundreds of hours to exploring this world and the conclusion is a lousy boss fight and even lousier cutscene that doesn’t really wrap anything up nor is there any discussion of the future.

3. We were supposed to believe that Zelda was in peril this entire time but nothing in her 13th hour presence indicated that she had been suffering or hurt. She seemed just fine and ready to help you. It was a HUGE deflation of HER narrative that the game had been building towards the entire time. In the end, she hands you a bow and arrow and tells you to do the rest. Not cool.

4. Looking back at almost EVERY other ending to a console LoZ game, this has got to be the worst. Wind Waker’s ending is epic. Ocarina of Time’s ending is epic and beautiful and tragic. Majora’s Mask has a better ending. A Link To The Past is a great ending (I love catching up with ALL of the characters in the world).

5. I know they wanted to reverse our expectations of what a Legend of Zelda game could be but that does not excuse what seems like a rushed and brief ending. It was like a person climaxing WAAY before they were supposed to.

So...as you can imagine I finished the game and then set about wrapping up all of the loose ends left, loose ends that I am still in progress on.

For one, I completed all of the shrine/side quests though there were several that did not appear in my quest log...thanks to the counter that appears once you complete the game I knew I had 3 that were unaccounted for. This meant though I had found the shrines/quests I had not interacted or triggered them properly in the game flow.

Most notably I had never actually found that demon statue that converts hearts into stamina and when I did find it, outside of Hateno, I was shocked that I had never seen it before.

I also never talked to the guy that points you towards the shrine that is triggered by flying in the air and firing an electric arrow into a target near Gerudo Cliffs.

And lastly, I had never read the tablet that explains how you have to get the shrine ball all the way around the spiral in Akkala.

Obviously, I also had lots of Korok seeds to find. When I finished the game I had less than 200 discovered. Because I completed the game only a few weeks before DLC 1 pack was released I decided to wait until I got the Korok mask to actually look for them directly.

The other giant task I had ahead of me was upgrading ALL of my clothes...and this was when I learned about how hard it was to get star fragments and dragon pieces unless you went online and found the shortcuts of when and where and how to get these things.

It was still daunting. I kept track of all the material I needed. I ended up having to collect over 50 star fragments and over a dozen parts from EACH dragon...so 36+. Near the end of this task I ran out of ruby and topaz so I had to grind for that too.

I finally completed it a few days ago. Fighting ALL of those Lynels sucked.

Since the DLC came out I quickly found all of the treasures. It was by chance that I found the Korok Mask as I was having a hard time navigating the Lost Woods again. I actually still don’t remember how to get through there.

I ended up having to cheat and look online because as it turned out, even though I was given clues to those locations, I had never been to many of them so they were not on my map. Who the hell spends that much time in Hyrule Field?

I tried the Trials of the Sword.

The first time I did not get very far at all and after 3 attempts and not doing very well I stopped and waited a few days. I was worried that it was too hard.

I tried again and got much further...12 rooms deep.

I tried again and the Hinox killed me. Ugh.

I tried again and took my time and was VERY patient...saving all of my weapons.

I fought the Hinox and made sure to utilize my abilities and defeated the Hinox easily.

To my surprise the trial ended and the Master Sword was upgraded A LITTLE.

I’d have to return again to charge it A LITTLE more.

I tried the 2nd stage of the trials. It was hard and I didn’t get past the 3rd room.

I haven’t returned yet though now that I KNOW there is a break in the trials I can better pace myself.

I’ve also been isolating areas and doing detailed explorations with the Korok Mask. I’m currently up over 300 seeds. I’ve scoured Hebra, Tabantha, and Gerudo Highlands (all the barren areas) as well as a few smaller areas in between.

I DO know that my reward for 900 seeds is not at all worth it all but I am a completionist and I fully intend on getting all of the seeds someday. I have a full slate coming up so I probably won’t have an update for another few months but hopefully by then I’ll have made some progress...maybe even completed the Trials of the Sword.

Thank you for following my journey.

#Nintendo #Legend of Zelda #Breath of The Wild

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invested-in-your-future · 7 years

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how wud u rank entire verse from beginning to now??

Hmmm, I’d say, from best to worst:

Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 - nearly perfect barring Guggenheim trying to sell us Laurel’s death. Sara went from pointlessly retconed in character who stole Laurel’s spotlight in Arrow to her own person and a badass leader in Legends S2, everybody else gelled way better than before, etc. GREAT villain team up too with all villains being charismatic and fun to watch(with Darhk and Merlyn being way better than in Arrow). Rip storyline was phenomenally acted and chilling to watch. Absolutely great fights, homages and plot twists. Good LGBT representation too. Oh and look tension without perma-fridging female characters!

Flash Season 1 - perfect mystery, great villain, great atmosphere and pacing. It was so refreshing going form Arrow to this and it just felt great.

Flash Season 3 - Great villain, great introspection into characters, great ending and set up. Awesome Killer Frost being even more awesome. Its a bit dragged out an all but the pay off is worth it and there was a lot of badass scenes and badass fights. Oh and Barry being called out on his mistakes and flaws

Arrow Season 1 - perfect mystery, great villain, feisty Laurel, great build up and decent grounded tone. Sure Laurel getting kidnapped every episode felt shitty(and a harbinger of things to come) tho. And Oliver’s a dick but at least he feels sufficiently damaged instead of a playboy asshole for no reason he was in other seasons. The finale fight between him and Merlyn is still one of best fights in DCTV.

Flash Season 2 - Great build up, good fights, great new characters and multiverse expansion, awful villain reveal that made Zoom feel meh after he was unmasked.

Supergirl Season 1 - Lots of cheese but lots of heart too. A bit too procedural and by the book, however still had some VERY GOOD episodes(ex: Falling is one of my all time favorite DCTV episodes ever), great female empowerment themes. Also some nice Superman movie homages and comic book callbacks.

Legends of Tomorrow Season 1 - Great standalone episodes, great team dynamics, decent LGBT representation. Some very janky plot lines. Hawk duo actors had absolutely no chemistry or acting skills. Overtly hammy villain without actor capable of selling it. Some plot conveniences.

Supergirl Season 2 - Some good standalone episodes and some great fights and comic book callbacks, but holy shit did Man Hell being in every.single.plotline. drag it down horribly. Not to mention the overall season long story felt disjointed and half-assed. Highlight of the season has to be Lena Luthor being awesome, as well as Alex’s coming out storyline.

Arrow Season 2 - Oliver being complete dick to everyone and sleeping with everyone. Sara being retconed to being alive and stealing Laurel’s role and stuff. Laurel spending whole season under-appreciated in awfully executed addiction storyline. Everybody struck with complete case of dumb not being able to figure out who Blood is. Fridging of female characters starts.

Arrow Season 3 - Complete filler season. Filler filler filler. Female fridging ramps up. Oliver is even bigger dick. Felicity becomes unbearably mary sue. The only upside really is Laurel Lance starting to become badass. That’s literally the only reason to watch this.

Vixen - literally meh? The definition of “I have absolutely no strong opinions about this at all”

Arrow Season 4 - HOOO BOY. Felicity Smoak completely unbearable. Oliver Queen completely unbearable. Villain that is complete bore despite REALLY good actor. The only upside is Laurel La….OOPS WE MURDERED HER IN SHITTY DUMB WAY I HOPE YOU LIKE ALL THE MANPAIN. What’s next? Sorry our episode scripts got jumbled so we will just make up shit as we go along resulting in the dumbest finale possible.

#Arrow #The Flash #Legends of Tomorrow #Supergirl

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feynites · 7 years

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I had a thought earlier and thought I'd shoot you an ask about it: Do you have any tips on getting better at world-building (I think you're great at it btw)? Also, have you always liked world-building, in itself? I find myself often using worlds other people create, because I'm not very good at creating/thinking of my own, and was wondering if that was lazy of me? Just was wondering what your opinion was, on all that! Just food for thought. c:

Thank you! I’m glad you think I’m good at it!

World-building is a very interesting subject, but it took me a while to even really appreciate what it was. I’ve also spent a lot of time in other people’s worlds and environments, that’s pretty common among fanfiction writers, but I wouldn’t consider it lazy. Not unless you think any fiction set in our world is also lazy. There will always be parts of a story that some people are better at or prefer to focus on, or still need to build up their skills at. It’s normal.

I think a few things are very key to good world-building, though. Or at least in my experience, it’s the stuff I’ve figured out that’s helped me the most.

1. Nothing is original. You might not be entirely sure of where an idea has come to you from, but at the end of the day, there are only so many facets to human existence out there. Our imaginations only carry us so far, and our ideas come from the people around us, and also from their ideas. Artists draw from the things they see and experience, and use references to make stuff more realistic. So do writers. Do not worry that your stuff is unoriginal. Doing your best to abandon that fear is one of the biggest favours you can do for yourself as a writer; there’s a difference between similar concepts and ideas, and plagiarism, and only plagiarism is really a problem.

2. Nothing is without real-world context. This is related to the above. The things you make are coming from somewhere, and that means that they will have implications and real-world parallels. It pays to stop and consider where you’re getting your ideas, and what those ideas are implying about the world around you, too. In order to write stories, you have to be willing to take the stuff of your daydreams, and hammer it out into a narrative. It’s like turning a hunk of rock into a gemstone. You have to cut pieces out, decide what to reshape, what to keep, and what to throw away. If you can’t attack your own presumptions about the real world, you’ll have a harder time shaping a consistent fictional one. But also, at the end of the day, a rough diamond and a faceted one are both still diamonds. People will often be able to tell where you’re pulling your ideas from, so what you say about certain subjects can still have an impact on real-world concepts, and on your readers.

3. Let your setting be bigger than you. When writing, it’s extremely easy to get caught up in your own ideals and frames of reference, and that can mean that you design a world that acts more like how you think it should, rather than how it would. Worlds are big, and to some extent you can mitigate this by being aware that there is more going on than what you’re describing - that your story’s perspective is limited to the characters and events in it, and that contradictory things or mysterious unknowns still linger in the wider scheme of the setting. Your characters shouldn’t know everything that you, the author, knows, and you, the author, shouldn’t know everything about the world, either. An exhaustive list of details can even work against you, because it makes it trickier to keep track of what all your characters do and don’t know as well.

4. Big events are great, but cause and effect is better. When you look at history, you can see the way certain figures and events impacted one another, and connected together to get people to their ends or beginnings. A common mistake in world building is to take the big events - wars, coronations, the fall of empires, the rise of them, etc, etc - and just throw them into the setting without much thought for how they all interact with one another. But it’s like… if you have a nation that’s got a standing army, that’s expensive. Most nations have very small armies of professional soldiers, and instead tend to temporarily conscript people to bulk up their armies in times of crisis, because someone who is busy training and fighting isn’t doing other vital work, like raising livestock or farming crops or building homes, making babies, running households, etc, etc. But they still need to be fed and clothed and offered some kind of shelter from the elements, provided with equipment and a certain degree of entertainment, and things like that. Professional soldiers can spend their time focusing on being the best fighters they can be, so there’s an advantage to it, but you also need to justify having them around, especially if the rest of your country is having to work overtime to keep them fed. So a nation with a big standing army is going to be a nation that finds a lot of reasons to go to war - war lets you bring home spoils, lets you raid someone else’s farms to feed your soldiers, and expand your territory, and tax or enslave conquered peoples, and so on and so forth. You can start your world-building at the point of ‘I want this nation to have a big army’, or you can start it at the point of ‘I want this nation to be war-like’, or somewhere else on the chain of events - but certain things will also imply certain other things. It’s best to be aware of what those elements are when you’re laying out your setting. If you make a nation with a big army that is ‘peaceful’, you either need to explain how that works, or else people will probably think that the reputation is inaccurate (and that’s fine, too, as along as you’re willing to create a nation with one hell of a propaganda machine instead). But if you have a warlike nation, then there will also be other nations that have taken the brunt of its actions and conquests. So you will do better to let a few key traits expand into their implications, than to try and railroad everything into a framework that doesn’t flow naturally from those things. Because if you have your big nation with its standing army and militant inclinations, every other part of the world is probably going to be impacted by its quest for expansion, and if they aren’t, you need to be thinking about why, or else the pieces of your setting won’t fit together very well.

5. Avoid the Golden Mean Fallacy. The Golden Mean Fallacy, also known as the ‘argument to moderation’, is the idea that the perfect solution to any problem lies in compromise. But thereare some situations where saying ‘both sides are in the wrong’ requires a lotof false equivalents or narrative contrivances, even though people often tend to think that this is the most reasonable or neutral stance to take as the sort of arbitrator of the setting. Approaching societal conflicts in your world-building withthe idea that compromise is an ideal solution can actually be really offensive, though, and less ‘neutral’ than beneficial to aggressive qualities in the setting.For example, if one group is trying to commit genocide against another, looking at it and going ‘okay you guys want to live, but these other guys want to killyou, so I think the solution here is to just let them eradicate your culture –that’s really what they’re objecting to, anyway, and then you get to live andthey still get to destroy you, everybody wins!’ is not something you want to present as a fair solution. Sometimes people are just plainly in the wrong. That said…

6. Nevermake any culture/race/ethnicity/etc ‘evil’ in your stories. Doesn’t matter ifit’s orcs, robots, aliens, faeries, or what-have-you. The ‘savage tribe ofmonster people’ or Always Chaotic Evil Race™ is a bad trope and it needs to godie in a fire. If you want an ‘evil group’, you will do far better to alignpeople based on something like ideology or political corruption than race, geography, or traits theyare born with. There are other tropes along these lines that should be avoided, too, in fact there are more of them than I could successfully list in a timely fashion. As a general rule, though, if taking your world-building principles and applying them to real-life groups would result in an appalling statement, you should either change it, or else work it in as a form of propaganda and prejudice which you’re well aware of. That’s the difference between something like ‘mages are the most dangerous people in Thedas’ versus ‘the Templars believe that mages are the most dangerous people in Thedas’. One is you, the writer, making a blanket statement that some groups of people are just born dangerous, whereas the other is you, the writer, creating a scenario where prejudice exists in the setting.

7. Taking something out is often harder than adding something in. For example, building a setting without something like sexism or racism is usually much more complex than building a setting with something like magic or dragons or something. Fantastical elements are flexible, and you can shift the rules of them around to suit your needs without too many people crying foul. Whereas something like sexism is built into a lot of aspects of our society, and sinks into things that many people don’t even think twice about. Trying to create a fictional world where there is no sexism or history of it is, therefore, very hard, because you have to learn as much as you can about the ways in which this prejudice impacts our society and our presumptions, and then try and extrapolate how that would change everyone’s behaviour in a different world. And what you don’t change will immediately tilt your setting towards being the kind of place where biased presumptions are true facts of nature, rather than being a place where bad attitudes merely exist among the people and cultures there. This applies to basically everything, by the way, although it’s usually the most glaring when someone decides that they don’t want to deal with X kind of bigotry, and think that just going ‘it doesn’t exist in this world’ is the simple way out. (It’s not, the simple way out is to go ‘it exists in this world just the same way it does in ours, but I’m not focusing on it’.)

8. Keeping track of things is more important than knowing them off the bat. Everybody knows you’re making stuff up. That’s what they came to this party for. Inconsistencies can happen, but it’s also entirely possible to get so caught up in the planning stage that you never actually do any writing. So a good compromise between spontaneous invention and consistency is to just note the things you add in when you add them in, and then figure out how they might impact the other elements in your story, and set aside potential consequences in case they’re interesting or useful later on. Editing is your friend, and ‘I don’t know, let’s think about it until I do’ is also a vital element to incorporate into your thinking.

9. Be aware that you can mess up, and probably will. In order for any story to be inclusive of a wide enough range of people and cultures to make a whole world, it’s going to require you stepping outside of your own experience, or incorporating stuff that you have only a limited amount of knowledge on. You may very well fuck this up. This doesn’t mean the attempt was doomed, and it doesn’t mean you’re bad at world-building, and it also doesn’t mean that you have to defend your mistake in order to keep your setting from being deemed a worthless heap of junk. Your honour doesn’t ride upon whether or not you can make a convincing argument as to why your intentions outweigh the unintended implications of your actions. If someone points out a mistake, you should think about the ways you can go about handling it and/or fixing it. Maybe you just suddenly made your virtuous heroic group a lot more shady than you thought. Maybe you have to abandon a plot twist you were originally angling for. Maybe you have to make your narrator a lot more unreliable than you initially planned. There are solutions, and most importantly, you gotta listen to the people in the real world whose cultures or traits you borrowed from for your story. Just like when you borrow anything. If it’s not yours, you need to respect that and be mindful of how you use it.

10. Have fun. When you make a new world, there should be things in it that you love. That speak to your delight and sense of wonder. These are the things that often help the most when you’re deciding what to actually make in your world. You want unicorns? Put in unicorns. You want talking dragons? Put in talking dragons. Just think about how they would work, and how people would react to them, and how having them around might change the way the world operates. A lot of stuff will build naturally out of that.

I hope some of this helps!

#Anonymous

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marvelandponder · 7 years

Photo

Wow, So Supportive!

So, you might be able to tell, but I’ve been kind of figuring out this series as it’s gone along. The first had more behind the scenes info, the second more comparative analysis, and now this topic comes along which requires something entirely new.

Well, not all that new, but enough that it’s an honest to goodness challenge to tackle a topic so terrifically tremendous in size: the entire population of the planet that we’ve been introduced to so far.

I could just spend this time geeking out about my favourites, and I will warn you now, it will probably come to that, but what I want to know is what this pretty pony populous does for the show.

And, I mean, with such an expansive cast that will no doubt only grow in the coming season, there’s quite a lot of characters to cover! But, as sure as I’ve overdone it on the alliteration already for no particular reason (I’m in a mood), there’s certainly something to be gained by examining what the background cast has to offer!

World-Building

Aside from giving our main characters other personalities to play off of, supporting characters give a greater depth to the world they live in. To the audience, the variety of viewpoints and personalities isn’t just fun, but indicative of a living, breathing environment.

It’s part of the illusion. If there’s characters out there besides the protagonists that are fully fleshed out or even just feel like they could be, it adds to the believability that this is a whole world. In fact, with a good supporting cast, not only can other characters with conflicting viewpoints to the main characters be in the right, but they can have their own lives that don’t feel like they’re in service of a plot of the main character(s)’ story at all!

It tells you more about the world the main characters grew up and currently reside in. Seeing what characters outside the main six value and how they conduct their lives gives us context for how they act, what makes them so special (or in some ways, not special).

And in a world this big, you can even get perspectives from outside the country. We might’ve assumed everyone was as friendly and kind as the ponies, but in fact they’re known for being soft and weak among the dragons and having a “typical pony hero complex” and a weird tendency towards singing and hugging among the griffons (who via contrast show us what the rest of the world is like, more on this soon).

So, yeah, finding characters who’ve had their own experiences apart from our favs helps the world feel more real, and certainly more interesting.

The season 6 finale is the perfect example of that fact in action. Watching these side characters approach something that’s usually only handled by personalities we’re all very familiar with was refreshing---plus, there were character dynamics we never dreamed we’d get to see (Trixie and Discord being the big example)!

To use a pretty specific example of how cool this is, check out how terrified Trixie is again:

Throughout the entirety of this two parter, Trixie’s constantly showing the audience how terrifying this situation actually is to a normal citizen of Equestria.

And that’s so cool! We get to see by contrast how brave and well-worn our favourite heroines have become---even Fluttershy can mostly handle herself these days (at least, with her friends by her side) without too much panic.

At one point Trixie even refers to a possible changeling invasion as “princess level stuff.” Even better, the second Starlight tells her about it, she immediately says they need to tell Twilight---which both shows the character development from No Second Prances (as the two of them grew to respect one and other), but also shows the audience this is serious to her: in a crisis Trixie’s first instinct was to get help from her rival.

This kind of perspective on things can only come from a source outside the main cast: contrast.

Parallel Characters

Here’s something you’ve no doubt noticed MLP loves to do: base entire characters around the antithesis of one of our main character’s traits.

This is pretty obvious when it comes to Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer, and how they operate as warped versions of Twilight (you can’t spell it out better than following the same naming scheme). In various ways, both of them demonstrate by contrast how well Twilight understands friendship and Harmony, among other things.

Discord is the same way.

It’s kinda like how Lex Luthor is the perfect counter to Superman: the mild-mannered boy-scout that will always try to do the right thing meets the embodiment of greed and capitalistic folly. Lex is the self-made man lead astray by his own desire for power, and yet Superman seems to prove that despite being alien, his down-to-earth morality is what ends up representing the best of humanity.

You can compare quite a number of iconic villains to their heroes that way, by seeing what each of them represent. Hans Gruber and John McClain from Die Hard. Ganondorf and Link from the Legend of Zelda. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. That’s one part of what makes them so memorable---a perfectly fitting contrast to the forces of good their meant to fight.

In the same way, Discord’s very obviously the counterpoint to our Element of Harmony wielding heroes. Not just the whole chaos and harmony thing, but because of how their values clash. Discord only ever cared about getting a laugh and shaping the world in his own nonsensical image, whereas the girls only care about each other and the ponies of Equestria. The conflict is natural from that point on because Discord’s character was constructed to make it so. More than that, though, his defeat isn’t just good triumphing evil, but instead the things the Mane six value triumphing over the view that directly opposes them.

Tells you they’re in the right by showing you how awesome it feels for them to win, essentially.

Lightning Dust is yet another easy example of a character that exists just for contrast. She’s been likened to season one Rainbow Dash many times, and it just goes to show you how far season 3 Rainbow Dash had come in comparison.

So, side characters won’t just give you different perspectives about the main characters verbally, but through their actions. Even when they only get a wee bit of screen time, relatively speaking.

Minimalism and Imagination: A Writer’s Greatest Tools

That’s sort of how an episode like Slice of Life happens.

Filler background characters with interesting enough superficial attributes (like designs, occupations, or implied character traits) give us just enough personality to work with that our imaginations can fill in the rest. To an extent, all side characters function in this way.

It’s the same way a non-main character can go through an arc off-screen. I know, off-screen development sounds terrible---for important characters, who get a lot of precious screen time.

What happens, essentially, is we’re presented with the bookends to an arc: the beginning and the end, and in between is mostly filled with our imaginations.

The example that pops to mind first is Trixie, between her first appearance her second.

Last we see her, she’s leaving Ponyville with her ego bruised.

Next we see her, she’s acquired an evil amulet and is ready to not only humiliate Twilight in kind, but take over the entire town and turn it into Trixieville.

So... a step up from embarrassed.

The reason we buy that elevation has to do with both the story Trixie tells about hitting rock bottom (at a rock farm, no less), and the amount of time in between.

We’re not given very many details other than her career being impacted and her perception that she was humiliated everywhere she went, but it’s been two seasons since we’ve seen her---there’s enough of those little details and time in between for us to imagine a gradual change that made her decide to seek out straight up revenge, no matter the cost.

In a similar vein, I also find it interesting to see how characters differentiate themselves, with such little screen time.

For some, it’s definitely a matter of great design and/or voice acting that really makes them pop out at you. In addition, there’s usually either some adherence to an easily digestible archetype, like the (...*grunts*) tsundre Dragon Lord Ember or the timid Coco Pommel (which sounds bad, like I’m saying they’re cliched, but archetypes can be pretty useful for side characters yet-to-be-developed because it tells us a lot about their personality instantly). Or, a twist on archetype.

For an example, let’s get fancy: Fancy Pants and Filthy Rich both should be greedy and/or power hungry, or just generally thoughtless based on the rich, money-focused business character stereotype. Instead, seeing how Fancy Pants will make conversation easily with anyone and warmly accept those of a lower class than he is, and how Filthy Rich will be a tough but loving father to his daughter (as opposed to spoiling her) and will go out of his way to be nice to the Apples makes them feel like more complex characters.

Playing to our expectations and then twisting them even just slightly makes them feel less like cardboard cut-outs there to fill the insert snooty rich character here role, and more like well developed characters---all just with a few small actions.

Don’t even get me started on characters who say one thing one time, and we fixate on it to the point that it’s central to their identity. Sometimes, it’s because we treat it like a meme; like, Sonata kinda liking Tacos is a thing the same way Derpy like muffins is a thing. And let’s be clear, Sonata also talks about punch at some point in the movie, concerned with the fact that she added too much of one flavour. But the juice thing isn’t a big thing tied to her character in the fandom like tacos are, and why? Tacos are funnier, I guess.

And let me clear: it’s not some failing of the writers that they haven’t developed these characters, or the fandom getting too obsessive over small details. It’s intentional. Of course, there’s quite a few side characters that do get on-screen development (Big Mac, Thorax, the Wonderbolts, etc.), and still others that remain a mystery intentionally.

Zecora remains a character I’d LOVE to see explored, for instance, because there’s still a number of questions surrounding her. Did she have a family once? How much magic does she really know? How did she learn all of it?

Sometimes the answers aren’t as fascinating as a lack of answers. The MLP staff knows this full well apparently, since they’ve always had a policy about leaving things open-ended just in case they want to develop them later, thereby letting us fill in the blanks.

Which reminds me of another great example: Applejack’s noticeable lack of parents. From literally nothing, we created entire personalities, stories, and character motivations---to the point that when it’s explored in canon now, they have HUGE expectations to live up to.

The role of imagination in developing this world is intentional. That’s what good writers do---give you just enough to let you fill in the blanks.

But that’s what’s so wildly inventive about all these characters. So many of them are so memorable---either through what they tell us about the world, the main characters, or even just as characters in and of themselves (whether that be developed through a bit of trickery with our imaginations or actually developed in the show). There’s so many I’d love to see again, and so many more I’d love to meet in the future!

And, because of them all, like the Mane 6 at the end of Slice of Life, I feel quite lucky to know who I do.

Editorials? What are those? I don’t know, but I’ve written a bunch over here for you. Maybe the three most recent ones will jog my memory (check out the other Elements of MLP posts with the Year of the Pony link):

Derpy Editorial, Top 10 Redeemed Villains, and Starlight Editorial

Year of the Pony

Header Image Wouldn’t Be Possible Without:

Trixie Vector by Comeha Elements of Harmony by SpiritoftheWolf Elements of Harmony by TechRainbow

Chiggity-check out those hard-working artists, yo!

They’re All Main Characters in My Heart, Dammit

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