#which are UNRELATED songs but also they are related to Certain Things in my brain | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ommsims · 3 years

Text

story process challenge

i was tagged by @xldkx to do this challenge, created by @herpixels , like a month? a month and a half? ago and it’s been sitting half finished in my drafts for nearly as long. *sigh* (regardless, i love stuff like this so even if it takes me forever to get to it, i appreciate the tags! 💕).

i decided to answer all the qs because it took me damn long enough to get to this, so i might as well put some extra elbow grease into it (plus it was fun!). btw it’s all going under a cut b/c it is long. i apologize in advance.

1. My Writing Process - used to be a hot damn mess. literally word docs strewn throughout my pc. However, I recently switched to using Onenote (it’s what i use to organize my d&d campaign notes) and hoo-boy is it so much nicer. this is how it’s set up and it’s honestly night and day. i can have a page with outlines, a page to organize & order screenshots, and a separate page for drafting text, and i can easily toggle though them without having to switch windows? a big thumbs up from me.

When it comes to actual writing- I used to write my drafts in novel format, which i enjoyed but it made “converting” them into tumblr posts time consuming and frustrating. I ended up scrapping most of the text in the process, retaining pretty much only the dialogue.

Anyway, nowadays I write in more of a screenplay format: dialogue only + key scene information with the occasional note to self.

I do keep a master “arcs” page with key events and each individual character’s arc from beginning to end and secondary “outline” pages with slightly more detailed outline for each leg of the project. No screencaps b/c spoilers galore!

My typical work flow process for a scene goes: (1) brainstorm scene ideas, (2) take screenshots, (3) organize screenshots into a rough storyboard, (4) add 1st draft of text, (5) edit photos, (6) edit text, (7) upload to "drafts” here on tumblr, (8) let sit for a bit (9) take a final look at things/proofread and edit as needed. It may sound counterintuitive, but i find it much easier to write dialogue for a set of images rather than attempt to take images based on prewritten text. I feel more comfortable editing and tweaking tone and content in the text this way. Otherwise, I get frustrated when I “can’t” shoot a scene exactly as it appeared in my head.

2. How I build my scenes - A lot of what i do is rooted in gameplay, therefore my sets are usually (a) play-tested and (b) not super pretty. I’ve certainly improved at decorating & building over the years but more often than not I download lots off tumblr and the gallery because I don’t have the patience, aptitude, or time to build all of my own sets. That being said, I frequently gut builds only to build a number of completely unrelated mini sets inside to reduce the number of times i have to replace lots. I also keep a list of “important locations” and where certain characters live / will move to, to help keep this all straight as there aren’t nearly enough lots per neighborhood or even per world in this damn game...

my least favorite part of scene building is actually decorating. lol. Don’t get me wrong, I love clutter. I honestly do. but fuck me if i expect myself to spend hours meticulously decorating a set, spend another 3 hours toggling back and forth b/w BB & live modes adjusting things to get rid of the damn routing errors. (yeah, yeah, i know i could ignore them, they’re not important, especially in those scenarios where i’m using a set for screenshots and nothing else, but idk. it really grinds my gears.) and then have to replace the lot like a week later because there aren’t enough lots in the game. *sigh*

3. CC/Pose Making - i do not consider myself to be a cc creator nor a pose maker but i do dabble occasionally. And to be completely honest i’d much rather spend my time doing other stuff, so it’s not high on my list of priorities atm. plus there are so many talented cc creators in this community; i can usually get by with what’s already out there.

4. Getting in the zone - Honestly, I do a lot of brainstorming for plot & dialogue in the shower. I don’t have any particular playlists to get me “in the writing mood” but I do enjoy listening to music as I work. Either instrumental stuff or simply artists/songs I like. If something just so happens to “fit” a scene I’m working on, one i’ve got planned, or even just gives me vibes for a certain character or group, I add a quick note to the top of said scene’s draft. Most of the time I stick it in the recesses of my brain and add a quick link when I finally get to the point of posting the draft to tumblr. For whatever reason, when I have one of those “oh this song is perfect for X” moments it’s essentially ingrained in my mind for the rest of eternity.

5. The screenshot folder - this will most likely give some of you out there major anxiety. but i swear it’s an organized chaos. :)

yep. 32.9gb of screenshots & related things...

So with the raws from a single random scene selected, you can see i take roughly 10 screenshots per image posted. not terrible i guess but i’m working on it. Typically I take screenshots and once I’m done editing a scene I’ll move them from the general folder to a more specific project folder.

6. Captions - I’ll answer this in three parts:

for my townie story. not really. I prefer using the text box. I tend to write (& re-write) the dialogue for each one of these scenes several times over as I add more “scenes” into my drafts. It would be incredibly inefficient, time consuming, and would waste a lot more space on my pc to have to save .psds of each image just so i could edit dialogue when I decide: “oh hey maybe so and so needs to bring up X in this scene” and then change my mind an hour later.

for niko, noor, & co. I’m a text on image type gal here. don’t really know why, but it gives the project a different energy. ironically it makes it feel more laid-back to me. which i guess makes sense, it’s a much more light-hearted “story” than my townie project. which is, imo, very soapy haha.

for legacy stuff. all text goes below the images in the text box. reasoning: it’s gameplay, I don’t brainstorm, outline, or pre-write for this. I play the game, take screenshots, plug ‘em into my drafts and write some commentary / dialogue to go along with it.

7. Editing - i am a creature of habit and have not majorly changed my editing process in probably a year and a half (when I began using reshade and had to adjust my color correcting psd). it’s a super basic system:

drag & drop my “color correction” psd.

run actions in ps. (i made my own “all-in-one” actions to really streamline the process; i have different “actions sets” for my premades’ story and for other things that get posted to tumblr. even if no one else notices it, i like the little details that keep my projects separate and “identifiable”.

voila. all set to upload.

sometimes i crop images, add “text effects”, or do more in depth editing (i.e. editing a phone screen or adding rain etc.) but overall i try and keep it simple for myself.

8. Throwback - i posted an image of one of the first (but never posted) scenes I’d written for my townie project up above. but as for how would i redo a scene i’d already posted. well i’m currently re-doing my townie story so i guess i’ll just say you’ll see how it’s redone when i get to part 1! 😉

anyway, no tags because i’m so embarrassingly late to this party but if you hadn’t gotten around to this tag, wanted to do it but didn’t get a tag, or started it and left it to sit and now you’re thinking “oh god that was months ago should i even post this anymore?!?” consider yourself tagged by me and go ahead and post it for all to see!

#tag train #story process challenge #it's long. it's rambly. but that's me.#this one was a challenge! a challenge but fun.

6 notes · View notes

youknowmymethods · 5 years

Text

Content Creator Interview #12

Tissues at the ready, because, sniff sniff, this is the last post in the current series. And we’re ending with me, @ohaine, putting questions to one of my favourite people in the whole world, @likingthistoomuch, who answers questions about her secret squish, how culture and language influence her writing, and why her eyeball occasionally rolls under the bed.

If you’ve been in the Sherlolly corner of the fandom for any length of time at all you’ll already know that likingthistoomuch is funny, sweet and not afraid to say what she thinks. What you may not know is that she’s one of the kindest, wisest people that you’ll ever meet. She’s a beautiful person, a wonderful friend, a bit crazy, a bit sarcastic, and now, by public vote (well, I voted for it), an honorary Irish cailín dána. As if all of those things weren’t enough she’s a damn fine writer too. Want me to prove it?

Molly looked surprised but followed his lead. They moved to the silent tune being played in his head, upping their tempo as the notes seemed to flow fast and with certainty until they reached a crescendo and slowly seemed to fall as leaves in autumn, leaving a wonderful silence in their wake.

“There’s no silence when I’m around you. It’s music. And its beautiful.”

The simplest symphony, one of her sixty two stories, is one of my all time favourites, and I was so happy to get the chance over Christmas 2018 to pick her brain about where these beautiful words come from.

OhAine: I’m always impressed by the gentle way you treat your words, and I’ve often wondered is that because English is a second language for you?

Likingthistoomuch: I am always surprised when reviewers say that because I honestly just blurt it all out. There is no deliberate attempt to make the words the way they are. And English, though it may seem like my second language, is in a way my first because my entire education has been in English. (I just may be more fluent in it than the local languages but that’s a discussion between my mum and me that you really don’t want to know.) The only real barriers are when it comes to the British way of putting words. Because we are so exposed to American TV, that’s the language that forms immediately in my mind. But it’s getting better, because nowadays it’s all British TV for me! (GoT is worldwide and based in Westeros so it’s not American ok!)

OhAine: Brit-picking you mean? Nothing will throw me out of a Sherlock story faster than reading something that just shouldn’t be there, so how do you get around it?

Likingthistoomuch: I (le gasp!!) ask people like you and Emma Lynch but mostly I just bulldoze ahead. (My muse lasts less than the winter here so I need to move it quickly.)

OhAine: And is it that love of film/TV/stories that inspired you to write in the first place, or are you a life-long writer? What was the very first moment that you thought to yourself; I can do that?

Likingthistoomuch: I would call myself the Accidental Writer (I can almost hear the play-writes scribbling that title down...royalties people!!!). I wanted to read a story with a certain story line, and the then regular prompt takers were all busy. @writingwife-83 was the one who suggested that I try writing the fic on my own, she said, “Why don’t you just give it a go!” And I did. The result, Moving with time, didn’t seem to be too bad considering. Of course I get the cringe moment when I read it now, but that’s what started the ball rolling!

OhAine: This seems like a really apt moment to slip in a reader question submitted by @writingwife-83. She asked; How does writing inspiration tend to strike for you? Does it hit you out of the blue or does it come from something more external?

Likingthistoomuch: It’s literally a hit from out of the blue! It can be a movie or a song or recollection of a scene, literally anything. That is exactly why my post-TFP took so long to finish, the story (Our love has a way about it) was just not getting through!! So I look at admiration when writers take on a prompt and expand it into stories. My mind’s inbox is full of Asks, waiting for the brain to acknowledge and work on it :).

OhAine: When I looked at your sixty two stories as a body, it occurred to me that there are two types of stories that you excel at; Victorian!lock, and short scenes—

Likingthistoomuch: Ooh thank you.

OhAine: No, genuinely, no smoke blowing here LOL. I think you have a real affinity for Victorian Sherlock. So, how do you get into the mind set and what about that era particularly inspires you?

Likingthistoomuch: The mind-set isn’t much of an imaginative journey. We Indians have a saying, "The English left India but left their bastard behind." This refers to the narrow minded, sexist mind-set that was highly followed during Victorian times, remnants of which we are still fighting to get rid of here. Not blaming it all on the English, we have been pretty inventive with our own original regressive thought process too. So for the social mind-set and fic setting, all I need is to look out the window.

I love putting Molly and Sherlock in that era because on some front, both of them epitomise "not all heroes wear capes". She is trying to reach for opportunities that are denied to her just because of her gender and he is seen as the almost vulgar, rude and insensitive soul who is ready to judge people on their merits alone...(oh how dare he!!) It’s a personal favourite to put them in an era where they do struggle and fight but eventually it always work towards what they want, and of course, they get it via some unrelenting angst but hey what’s the fun if it’s all bubble gum. (It’s almost my inner romantic peeping out but don’t you dare tell anyone about it, I have a reputation to keep!)

OhAine: I can kind of relate to that – and this is something I put to @hobbitsdoitbetter too, because she writes Victorian era Sherlolly so brilliantly as well – I often think of Molly in the Victorian works as being like Irish women of the last generation who took their small victories where they found them.

Likingthistoomuch: True, unfortunately every geography and people has a similar story to tell. Things are changing but this change has yet to reach the grassroots levels.

OhAine: We can’t talk about your Victorian!lock without mentioning With eyes shut tight, where you did a very interesting thing when you switched to John’s voice in a very ACD way. What inspired that? How did you find John’s voice?

Likingthistoomuch: I actually found John's character (and Martin's fabulous portrayal) in TAB to be very interesting. Here is a man who can see what’s correct, will support it but is also so short sighted that he doesn’t realise that in supporting the women's struggle elsewhere he is ignoring the struggle going on in his own home. So there was the empathy for Molly not getting her due treatment as Sherlock's wife balanced by the outrage at her wanting to follow her own heart. Martin's performance in TAB is my favourite of the special and it was fun to try and bring in his voice, the sarcasm battling the disbelief. I had great fun doing it :)

OhAine: I have this theory that you have a secret squish on John, am I right?

Likingthistoomuch: You mean crush? I absolutely adore the boots off Martin Freeman, his performance is exquisite. I know we all look in awe at Ben's work, but for me, performance wise Martin takes the cake.

As for John...you know Sherlock puts on a veil of indifference to hide that he feels so much. I think for John it’s the opposite. He thinks he feels a lot and understands it all, but he too is hiding the inner struggling man. That’s why the TLD exchange between these two, (S: Underneath all we may just be human. J:You too? S: No, you too) is so profound. Just as Sherlock found in John a partner, John did too. It’s just that Sherlock accepts that he needs John, John is too blind to understand that he needs Sherlock too. That is one man who has his emotions so cross wired and tangled, it’s a very interesting character. And the thing is I feel Sherlock understands that and hangs on to John, not looking at it as a weakness. John, if he ever introspects, will find his dependency on Sherlock as a weakness. It’s basically asking Sherlock to do something, which he himself would not apply.

And Martin adds a different layer each time he plays him.

OhAine: One of my favourites of yours is a short story (<1,000 words), New paths. There’s a very calm, meditative feeling to the story: could you tell me a bit about your inspiration?

Likingthistoomuch: So, couple of years back we made a trip to England, and had visited Filey, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. After a long drive from London, we arrived and realised that there was a view of this cliff face from our cottage. And while my city bred, urban self gawked at the lovely site, the cloud thing happened and the hills actually turned pink. In that moment, it went all quiet and I literally felt the tiredness from my long journey seep away. And it’s only nature that can do that magic.

While writing New Paths, I wanted to see things from Molly's perspective. Do I feel she broke down and cried buckets and ate two tubs of ice cream? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think she just felt tired and also at the same time, like a huge weight was off her back. And sometimes, what you need for your soul to just feel even a little better is a few moments away from humanity. Not necessarily to forget things, but more like to recharge your batteries and get the energy to deal with things in a better way. So I made her experience what I did that evening. I made her experience the sea, the beautiful colours that nature shows and just heal her tired heart a little. God knows she needed it.

OhAine: Misty silhouettes is a unique story, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite like it before. Can you tell me about how it came to you and what are the challenges of writing Sherlock and Molly through so many lives?

Likingthistoomuch: Misty came about because of Mirrors, a short one I wrote on my phone, half asleep and trying to get rid of an ear (brain?) worm. Kiki had loved it and encouraged me to expand on it, which I attempted to do. I think I had just recently watched a historic Indian movie and was highly impressed with the battle scene, hence the opening sequence. I thought; why not work through time as well as geography, bringing these two closer and closer, like they showed in the short Sherlock episode before S3, where Anderson comments Sherlock is coming home? So they start in ancient India, and then slowly weave geographically as well as chronologically towards their current destination, London.

The challenges were to keep the story along the same theme as Mirrors, so trying to find characters, stories and their ending as well as the transition into the next life was some work. In short, I feel I have exhausted my small quota of creative imagination where the story stands right now, on the cusp of the last chapter where Sherlock is now in current time. It is definitely NOT abandoned; I have at least formulated ten stories and discarded them all because after such a long journey, Molly and Sherlock deserve a good reunion. And I trust myself to write it one day. Because that right end WILL come, I am sure of it.

OhAine: Have you found that end yet?

Likingthistoomuch: I may have! I have just started on that path, praying I stay on it.

OhAine: What does your proofreading and editing process look like?

Likingthistoomuch: Going through the document three times, checking for typos. Posting the fic, finding those three escaped typos and correcting them. Finding typos the more times I read a story. Yes, that’s the process. Elegant, no?

OhAine: Super elegant, LOL!!! You would rather do it yourself than press a beta into service? Or do you find working with someone else restrictive?

Likingthistoomuch: I think it may just be because I am such an impatient writer. I have loads and loads of ideas but putting them on paper takes a lot out of me. So once it’s there, I can’t wait to get it published and for you guys to see (and maybe get a few reviews too.)

I am learning. I do at times ask for help to oversee the plot and the work and it’s worth waiting.

OhAine: But you work without a beta most of the time… Is that a deliberate choice, or something that’s just evolved?

Likingthistoomuch: Actually, that’s just how it evolved. My first impression of a beta was someone who would do a read through and call out my typos and grammatical mistakes. Then it dawned that I could ask about the story line and if / how/ will it work. The advantage of working with someone is that you might get a better way of putting your story forward, get help when you are stuck. Or they’ll help you understand character’s motives and inspirations even more, which was a fantastic new experience for me. On the downside you could end up telling someone else's story.

OhAine: I think that’s a great point; you can end up telling someone else’s story, and it sort of has me reflecting that I’ve done that when I was very new to writing. Has it ever happened – even in relation to reader input – to you?

Likingthistoomuch: Actually no. But that’s also because almost 95% of my fics are one-shots. As for inspiring something new, only Kiki's advice at expanding Mirrors was an exception. The rest...? I am a free bird!!

OhAine: I’ve seen it argued lately that sites like tumblr stifle creativity and can lead your writing in directions you wouldn’t have otherwise taken it. What’s your take on that?

Likingthistoomuch: Oh good question! The social policing at times can inhibit your writing and introduce undue caution at best or a total change of direction of the story at worse. It’s something that every writer has to take a call on, and finally write a story that he or she wants to tell. Because, at least for me, I know when I have written something good, and maybe not many would like it. But it’s the story I want to tell, and if I am not able to do that, no matter how many accolades I get, there would always be a feeling of dissatisfaction bubbling beneath the surface. I may just not share my work next time, and that would even further piss me off :D So not a good cycle to get into. I would encourage writers to take pride in their creation and own it like a boss. Your words indeed are your baby!

OhAine: Does that mean that social media has been a stimulator more than a damper of creativity for you?

Likingthistoomuch: So far I have had a relationship with social media where I have been able to distance myself if there indeed is shit happening. Which, if you have been on tumblr long enough, you know is pretty frequent. I keep to my lane, and I expect you to do the same. So far it has been a stimulator, and the few moments where it could’ve been a dampener, I was able to remind myself that’s it’s all virtual and imaginary and I have a real life outside, and hence was able to ignore the shit.

I have a very simple mantra, you no like, you unfollow or block or ignore. I will survive, indeed thrive, in your absence....if I notice your absence in the first place.

OhAine: The thing that puts me off social media is the combative purity culture that seems to be so prevalent now.

Likingthistoomuch: *roll my eyes so hard am still looking for my right eyeball that rolled under the bed, the bugger* All I can say is, real life is tough as nails, Social Media should be a platform to release some steam, not to order or bully people around. Again, instead of telling people what to do, what to post it would be better if the Social Police (aka Staff) got their act together and BLOODY ADDRESSED THE PORN BOTS. (I got 5 new followers yesterday and no prizes for guess what they are.)

Also, as a blogger, it’s not MY responsibility to ensure that YOUR children and young people see clean content. There are tags and blocks meant for filtering NSFW stuff. I came to your free site because I thought I could post/follow the stuff I want. And people will always find a way to find 'blocked' content. It’s called Google.

OhAine: And a few quick fire questions to wrap it up. Starting with: how do you find your titles?

Likingthistoomuch: Like literally throwing a net out there and hoping the words caught make sense. Sometimes it’s just *snap* and you have your title, sometimes it takes time. I always hope the story inspires the heading but that rarely happens. Except for my post TFP, Our love has a way about it. That was purely the after effect of finishing chapter 1 that I had been trying for months.

OhAine: How do you gauge the success of a story? What’s the metric you live by?

Likingthistoomuch: Reviews! Comments! God, I love them. But honestly, sometimes it’s more about being happy myself and putting an honest effort on the paper. I feel the best when I know the job I have done is a good, genuine one, like for Our love has a way about it. It’s a lovely feeling and very few things can replace that knowledge of a job well done.

OhAine: Do you find writing is an outlet for real life pressure?

Likingthistoomuch: Not really. How can I say this, it adds a bit of colour? Like people who art! Writing makes me feel good, that I can do things that may not have a tangible benefit for anyone but it is a big achievement for me. And since not many know that I write, it’s a very personal feeling, a fight to the finish with myself.

I had a great time addressing all these questions, Áine. I am surprised that the answers aren’t one worded, as I half expected them to be. Caught me in a chatty moment I should say :) This has been a wonderful exercise, and dare I say, a wonderful initiative. Kudos to you for coming up with this.

OhAine: Aww, thanks Gee, you’re such a sweetie :) It’s been great fun, but I’ll be glad to get Friday afternoons back to normal!!

So guys, that’s it for now. I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who read, followed, re-blogged, liked, left comments, and supported this project, none of which would have been possible without the oh-so many lovely writers and interviewers who gave up their their time to participate, and who so kindly shared their fandom and writing experiences. Thank you all so, so much ♥

#content creator interviews #Sherlock #sherlolly #likingthistoomuch #ohaine

47 notes · View notes

pet-diary · 5 years

Note

Any tips for time management? I always think I need less time for assignments than I do, and this caused me a lot of stress this semester- I don’t want to make the same mistakes next semester.

I struggle a lot with time management, especially when it comes to getting ready to leave and catching the bus on time… So I’ve had to develop a lot of tools to help me over the years. These are some of the things that are really helping me right now. Hopefully some of these will help you too! (Sorry this is so long I do not have a tmi filter, lol).

Time Management Tips:

Set alarms to remind you to stay on task. I have pre-labeled alarms on my phone for all kinds of things (e.g. first wake up alarm, second wake up alarm, walk the dog,eat lunch, take pills, etc). I even made the alarm songs kind of embody the vibe of whatever the task is, so that my memory is jogged even without reading the screen. Play around with your alarm settings, you might be able to add emojis to the label to make them feel less stressful, make the song come on gradually so it’s not jarring, or my phone even has a feature where it reads out the time, the weather and news headlines from the day. It plays a song based on what kind of weather it is. It’s really useful! :) If you need to have an alarm separate from your phone because it’s too distracting, cube timers or kitchen timers can be good.

Use a habit tracker to build better habits. Most of my time management problems stem from not having enough structure in my life. Building structure, even in the smallest ways, REALLY helps me manage time better. It helps me have a better sense of how much time is passing, and how much time certain tasks take. I use Habitica which I love, but there’s a ton of habit tracker apps out there. You could also track things manually in a journal, but I feel like that could require a lot of unnecessary work/time. Habitica is easiest for me because it makes it sort of fun (the RPG element is cute), they have groups and challenges you can join, and basically it just gives me some accountability at the end of the day. I just check off what I did and didn’t do that day, and it helps me stay honest about my bad/good habits. It’s really easy to see what you’re neglecting when it’s showing up in red on a regular basis! Building habits and routines is SO key, I would argue it’s the most important thing to do for better time management.

On that note, having better sleep/wake habits is SO helpful for having better time management. It may not seem related, but your body likes routine. If you wake up around the same time everyday, your body gets used to it and will start waking up even without the alarm. Same with sleep, you’ll start getting sleepy around the same time if you make it a routine. I’ve been trying to get the most out of the few hours of daylight we have in the winter in Seattle, so I try to wake up as early as possible. My goal is to wake up at 5am (it’s not been happening lately, but I’ll keep working at it), because this will give me the most amount of daylight. I use Sleep Calculator to figure out what time to sleep/wake, which has been fairly accurate and helps me wake up with more energy. If you have the money, you might try getting a lamp that gradually wakes you up in the morning. I really want one of these! :0

Prevent yourself from getting distracted when you’re supposed to be working. Use an app like Forest to stop yourself from using your phone. Put your phone in another room if you keep checking it anyway, or put it in airplane mode so you don’t get notifications and can’t use the internet. There’s a lot of apps on the phone and on browsers that block certain sites so you don’t get distracted surfing the web or checking social. Have a separate browser for school work only (I use Firefox for personal stuff, and Chrome for school work. All my plugins on Chrome relate to getting work done and not getting distracted. I don’t even allow myself to use Chrome to search something unrelated to school because I know they’ll use my history to advertise to me and I don’t want those distractions when I’m doing work).

Take breaks when you need them, but get back to work when you should. There’s a lot of info out there about how long your breaks should be and all that. Personally, I don’t find a 10 minute break to be very useful. If I’ve been doing school work for hours and I can’t stop thinking about playing video games, I’ll work to a certain point, and then reward myself by playing Skyrim for an hour or two, then work again. Set an alarm for this, set several if needed. I feel like it helps me reset my brain. I simply can’t satisfy my need for a break in 10 minutes… But that’s just me. Figure out what works for you and the amount of time restraints you have!

Set up your environment for the task at hand. If you’re writing a paper, get out everything you’ll need and then make your writing environment the right mood. For me, that means having a nice candle, some calm instrumental music, a comfortable spot, a snack or drink nearby, etc. I’m a big believer in setting up the right environment. Sometimes that even means taking my breaks by looking at studyblrs or watching a TedTalk related to the topic I’m writing about. Inspiration goes a long way.

Remind yourself why you’re working. It really helps me to stay on task when I remind myself why I’m in school, what I’m working towards, why it’s important. Like the last tip, sometimes just taking a break by watching a TedTalk related to psychology helps me remember why I care about the work I’m doing. Make a vision board above your desk, or just a Pinterest that has inspirational images or quotes that keep you feeling motivated. I will even go so far as to find TV shows, movies, or anime that has a similar vibe to what I’m working on. When I was interviewing for an office job, I watched anime about working in an office, and it actually helped me feel excited about the position! Actually, this is the main reason I have a blog, I like to post content that gives me the right feeling for whatever I’m doing at the time. It helps me see things in a positive light rather than dreading it and wishing I had a different life. It really changes my perspective!!

Set time limits for yourself. I know this is obvious, but just make sure you’re not spending too much time perfecting things that don’t ultimately matter. I used to spend HOURS getting dressed. Sometimes you just need to give yourself a wake up call and realize certain tasks aren’t as important as you’re letting them become. If you really just have too much on your plate, ask for some help. Maybe someone else can take over a certain chore until you’ve gotten your routine down better. Maybe some of your hobbies or social activities can be put on hold for a bit. Don’t overexert yourself, or overbook yourself. Keep a calendar or planner, and make sure you know what’s coming up so you don’t just completely screw up your schedule.

On this note, DO NOT take more courses than is right for you. I used to get peer-pressured into taking more courses than I really could handle. People would make fun of me for taking so few, or criticize me for taking less than them when they were juggling work and a social life on top of that. I know that this might be impossible to adjust, financial aid requires a certain number of hours each semester, and most people have to work on top of school, but if you’re able to reduce your work load and you feel you need to, DO IT! Don’t overdo it just because you feel obligated to be busy. I personally do best with two classes. That’s it. I feel like I can handle the work load, and I dedicate enough of my mind to really diving into the subject when I don’t have a lot more on my plate than that. Figure out what works for you and make that your baseline, everyone else be damned. You might have to remain flexible on this, but I think it’s so important to advocate for yourself and know your limits, don’t let people push you into doing more than you can. At the end of the day, your grades, your learning, YOUR future is what’s at stake.

Aim towards efficiency. Really think about what’s taking so much of your time when you’re working. Are you getting distracted by friends? Spending too much time writing notes? Having to reread the same sentence over and over again because you aren’t able to concentrate? Literally just have too many tasks to do and can’t seem to finish them all on time? All of these problems have different solutions. Try to really lay out each problem, and brainstorm solutions. Time yourself if you need to, see what you’re spending the most time on. If you really just have too many assignments, talk to the professor about it. It may not result in extra time or less work, but they might be more lenient, or they might be able to offer solutions. Heck, you might even hear that you’re putting in way more work than is even required! You never know. This might also be a good time to explore accommodations if you need them. I personally have accommodations for anxiety and autism. My disability coordinator gave me access to a program called Sonocent that can be used for recording lectures and taking notes. OneNote is about the same, and it’s included with Office suite, no accommodations needed.

**Extra tip** Don’t spend over an hour responding to an ask on tumblr………. ( ͡°⁄ ⁄ ͜⁄ ⁄ʖ⁄ ⁄ ͡°)

18 notes · View notes

kaorei-endgame · 6 years

Note

Ranking of Resident Evil save room themes?

I got my first latte of the season, it’s chilly enough to wear pants indoors, #Streamtober started yesterday. LET’S DO THIS, NICK. >:O

youtube

17. Resident Evil 6 Chapter Ends, All Characters: Back to the cabbage patch. None of you are valid, with your Netflix Original knock-off of some ABC knock-off of 24-ass soundtrack. Go suck a giraffe’s dick with an Ada clone, Jake Muller.

youtube

16. Resident Evil, Deadly Silence: What is this Resident Evil for Babiez? Nintendogz+ResidentEvilz? Imagine listening to this on the crappy DS speakers. Wasn’t there something creepy about Jill’s costume in this game, like you could tear pieces of it off, or am I just conjuring fall memories and combining them with how they went out of the way to add boob bounce to the REmake 15 years after the fact, and now Jill’s boobs on PS4 undulate languidly beneath her shirt like a pair of Dragon Quest Slimes yearning to be free. This track: aural despair, unleavened. A way to quickly induce nausea in dogs who have eaten chocolate or raisins.

youtube

15. Resident Evil 6, Ada Chapter End: Well, okay, this one is all right. The first fifteen seconds feel like a HiFi version of a track from those Playstation 1 top-down shooters where you played a murder clown or a pyro guy escaping a space prison where you were held for crimes you definitely DID commit. The little background jog kicks in soon after and look, I’m a soft sell for ululation, what can I say.** But it just all just serves to stir memories like embers finally gone to smolder beneath the fireplace ash, stoking them after all these years, reminding me what a weird psycho they turned Ada into in this game. I like reflecting on how people got so mad about there not being co-op in Ada’s campaign that Capcom patched in a partner but his name is like “TeamMate” or “Buddy” and he has no lines of dialogue and is never addressed in the story in any way and thus is either a figment of Ada’s imagination or he’s a real dude who’s just pretty quiet and ultimately drowned on that sub? Well, I guess life’s tough if you’re the (potentially imagination) friend of an ex-spy turned pod person.

**(i contacted my musician friend, Kylie, who confirmed that ululation was the term i was thinking of, lest i second guess myself. at the same time, i’ll post her text here lest i misrepresent her words “Yeah, ululate as a technical term is vibrato using the tongue, so that would be wrong, but ululate as a descriptor refers to a sound that has a very pronounced waver between tones to it.” cool! i’ve often wondered if that’s the most accurate way to describe it. thanks Kylie!! :D)

youtube

14. Resident Evil Revelations 2: Claire gets the best costumes probably across the whole series and yet it feels like she’s gotten the least love of all the main cast. I never really got it, she looks good in denim, whether jacket or pant, and her Revelations 2 blazer does her all the favors. But now they’re remaking RE2 and they turned her face into this weird porcelain Precious Moments dol—MY BELOVED DAUGHTER. MY MOIRA. I SWEAR I’LL FIND YOU. FOR THE SAKE OF JBLL I WILL AVENGE YOU AND THE OTHER ONE.

youtube

13. Resident Evil 0: What’s with all the shivery whiney stuff. Like your younger sibling running nails down the chalkboard of your spine, like how the speed run of this game hinges on juggling an evasive bat with 5 out of the 6 flame rounds on hand, so try. Neither relaxing nor scary. Do I hear something like a bongo in the distance? That is the clarion call of Becky Chamber’s goose booty coming home to roost.

youtube

12. Resident Evil 7: I had a dream last night about this game. If you have phobias about glass and/or mouths and/or wasp genitals, I would skip this paragraph. I was in the house where you have to run away from the mom with the disgusting wasp hive vagina. Also—unrelated and yet somehow related, as dreams always are—I had opened a beer bottle in such a way that the stem broke. I had decided to drink it anyway and now, as I progressed through the house, I found that there seemed to be endless small slivers of glass in my mouth that I had to repeatedly spit out lest they cut me. When I woke up, my jaw was clenched to the point of soreness. Welcome to the family, I guess. Otherwise this save room music reminds me of the game itself: mostly dull and barely there.

youtube

11. Resident Evil Revelations: Item Box Music, only Save Room Adjcanet. Can’t disassociate this from the “swish-swish-swish-SHUCK” sound effects of navigating menus to equip Charge Shot 2 to my Shotgun. Not as pleasing or as integrated into my bone marrow as the Resident Evil 3 equivalent, but I have probably played this game through thirteen or fourteen times at this point. Life is short and yet the strings of fate tug us the directions they will.

youtube

10. Resident Evil 5: Again, this is menu music. No save rooms at all in this game. Anyway I have no inherent memory of this song because I’m sure I’ve talked over it while upgrading my M92FS to 100 bullet capacity 110% of the times I’ve played this game. Exempted from higher echelon of rankings on these technicalities, but still A POOR PERFORMANCE INDEED for Not The Best Resident Evil Yet Paradoxically The One That’s Given Me The Most Joy In My life.

youtube

9. Resident Evil, Dead Aim

: Wow I almost can’t believe I don’t remember this despite playing this game enough to write a speedrun guide for it. Well, that was the style at the time. As was a bloated zombie corpse boss, I suppose (long before Left 4 Dead, those copy cats), whose weak spot was its exposed brain which, halfway through the fight when you’d done enough damage, would pop out and dance a sprightly jig on its brainstem every time you shot it. With the whisper of wind and rain and single intermittent synth I feel like I’m living in a cyberpunk future and not a game whose protagonist’s “””cajun””” accent is as questionable as its presentation of the antagonist’s gender.

youtube

8. Resident Evil, Umbrella Chronicles

: Hey now, weird bit of the creepy-freaky bass here kind of does put you in a certain headspace, but it’s not the headspace i remember of this game, which was basically unplayable in co-op for the final 3rd because a failed QTE would result in a hunter slicing away half your health. Good for an Into the Breach playlist to keep you focused on the action and stop you from trying to play it while also binging a Netflix show about werewolves that you didn’t really like anyway, and splitting your attention between visual mediums is just getting Good Pilots Killed.

youtube

7. Resident Evil 2: Ominous. Maybe TOO Ominous at points. Aren’t save rooms about being safe? I guess we could argue that because the save room reflects the lacuna of safety BING BONG piano is the Try Hard version of video game music asking “you scurred yet?” Perhaps a novice mistake from a first-time director who would go on to do so many great things (well, RE2 among them, no lie). In a way, this fits with Rookie Cop Leon S. Kennedy, and anyway it’s so over the top I’m kind of okay with it. Most innervating when first heard on your way to equip a cowgirl costume for fast-firing six-shooter action. Guns suck, and cowboys too, but both are okay if we experience them in the abstract sense. This is what culture teaches us. Fan the trigger.

youtube

6. Resident Evil 4: A surprisingly gentle one, considering the series turn towards action from which it would never recover. I am transported to the early minutes of a horror movie where the audience knows something the protagonist doesn’t about the terror that’s about to befall them while they blithely pick up a desiccated nudie mag in an old shed on a haunted property they inherited from their estranged uncle, more focused on the “ballistics” before them than the axe murderer crouched in the shadows of disused farm equipment behind.

youtube

5. Resident Evil 3, Nemesis: More languid riff on 2. Strings get you shivery, and no more than a single BONG per two measures proves that save room music is as much about the notes you DON’T play. Two bongs to scare, but one bong to keep you on your toes, disallowing you from getting *too* relaxed by the soothing bleeps and bloops as you combine the 3 Gunpowder As you just found to make sure you have enough ammo to pistol-juke the so-called unkillable Nemesis. You’re not coward, but that doesn’t make you brave. Discretion is the better part of valor, they say, but that’s not taking into account that non-discretiony valor rewards you directly with a faster-firing pistol with critical headshots. :3

youtube

4. Resident Evil 1, Vanilla: Gentle, plucky strings make you question your memory, more familiar with later revisions than you are this one. How often was I in this place? Or does its primacy belie its immediacy? If I went to the strange, pointless closet around the corner from this medicine save room, would I find a broken shotgun I expect there, a round of magnum ammo, or simply the ghost of discarded aspirations masking as memories. I recall a time when it felt like time was enough, but then again, this was back when anything sub-three hours would get you the infinite rocket launcher, regardless of how many First Aid Sprays you used.

youtube

3. Resident Evil 1, REmake: High fidelity version of RE1’s gentle strings remind you of simpler times when your worst fears were zombies resurrecting into scarier, faster zombies with claws. What we wouldn’t give to go back to those days, and maybe tell ourselves not to take out so much student debt. Listening to this sends a pulse of gentle energy through my shoulder blades that makes me think “relaxation,” though I’m not sure my body understands the meaning of the word. A respite in trying eras, there is no association with the tension of shaving 15 minutes off your time to be competitive. “Safe Heaven,” they call it; a theme for a place that is not our own, but should be.

youtube

2. Resident Evil 1, Director’s Cut: Wow I did not expect music box chimes and tones stirs something ancestral in my blood. I’ve played the Director’s Cut far more times than the original RE1 and this is like coming home to a big house where I enjoyed an idyllic childhood, but I now know every box is filled with the creepy knife doll from Onimusha. Though these senations are foreign to me, something about them inspires a thirst for a homeland I never knew.

youtube

1. Resident Evil Code Veronica: The absolute chillest. In life, paths may wind, but the ultimate The strings are tickling your spine. You’re so relaxed you feel like oiling your ponytail, and you could even take a nap in Steve Burnside’s arms without reflexively gagging. When you hear this, you are at peace, and the world seems like a place that can be kind. Truly, the Code is Veronica.

and don’t forget to vote in our poll on whether or not we’re playing Claire A or Leon A tonight!

#resident evil #save rooms #survival horror

6 notes · View notes

typologycentral · 7 years

Text

[ENTP] Am I an ENxP or an ESxP?

Nearly a year ago, I posted a topic where I asked whether I was an ENTP or an ENFP. Lately, I've been pretty unsure of my type in general, but several posts in the thread made me ponder something completely different. While most posters on the board seemed to agree that I was likely an ENTP, a couple thought I was some sort of ESxP type. I'll give several behavioral examples of mine and you can try figure out whether I'm an ENxP or an ESxP? EXAMPLES: * I love pondering new possibilities for things. For example, if I'm reading a story, I almost always will think something like: "I really like this story, but I wonder what would happen if the main character did this instead of that?", and will devise entirely new fanfictions based on my alterations to the story. I usually discuss these alterations with people to receive feedback. * I tend to find symbolism and connections in things that are seemingly unrelated. For example, I was watching a movie recently that took place in modern times about a boy exploiting another boy's suicide. I connected the modern day story with that of Jesus Christ, Superstar, which takes places in ancient times, by connecting several related, but not at all obvious points. (The christ-like figures have long hair, someone creates a cult around them that influences people, yadda, yadda). Another example would be how I analyzed how I analyzed Walter White's facial hair in Breaking Bad and how his different hair/facial hair styles represented his current moral alignment. (Head hair meaning concealment of evil, most of his face being exposed means he's honest, the mustache means moral ambiguity, when he loses his head hair, his evil begins to be exposed, his growing goattee means he's concealing his intentions far more, growing the beard in combination with regaining hair means evil tapers down while he's manipulative to accomplish heroic goals.) * I panic whenever there's even a slight possibility of disaster occurring. As such, I make it my priority to create a hundred and one different backup plans to ensure that I'm prepared for the future when it comes. I don't like to be unprepared and exposed to potential danger. * I find living in the moment reckless and dangerous. For example, while I like fast cars and motorcycles, I tend to be very measured in how I use them, always wearing a seat belt/helmet and only going very fast if not many, if any, cars are on the road, always using turning signals, always using a GPS, etc. * I love wordplay and the idiosyncrasies of language and the many ways that the English language can be manipulated. I love puns and am able to make seemingly unrelated connections in language. I also love metaphors and make them frequently when trying to make a point. ("Of course you don't look as fat anymore! You were a whale and now you're a walrus! Walruses are smaller than whales! You'd be the physical equivalent to Forrest Gump looking smarter than a brain-dead down syndrome affected baby!") * I love disproving commonly held beliefs, particularly when my theory turns out to be the truth. For example, I'll often retype characters who are associated with a particular type using evidence for the new typing that is stronger than the dogmatic beliefs. I successfully convinced people that Squidward was an ESFP, not an INTJ and felt smug because I disproved a common myth. * I have horrific attention to detail. When I was younger, I'd often get questions wrong on tests because I'd quickly read over the question without noticing the easy to miss details. One time when I was 5, I cut my leg and didn't realize I was profusely bleeding until 2 minutes later, because I was busy talking about one of my ideas. I also find detail to be irrelevant and useless if the end goal is not dependent on it. * I love debating with others, particularly to prove I am right. I also love the notion of challenging commonly held beliefs. * I love discussing religion, politics, ideologies and philosophies and frequently ask questions related to them. As a kid, I would question why there had to be opposite sex bathrooms and questioned authority if it made no discernible sense. * I frequently get gut feelings that something will happen in the future and they almost always turn out to be correct. * I don't like personal conflict and while I hate violating values of my own, I also hate conflict and will reluctantly give in when I know it will preserve the peace. * I hate being forced to conform for the sake of it. * While I constantly generate new ideas, I rarely ever finish them. * While I enjoy physical activity to some degree, I like it more if it's creative, eccentric or based around a concept. I love capture the flag because it reminds me of prison break movies. * Regarding my inattention to detail, I'm a horrible physical artist. However, I'm an amazing songwriter and like to write songs that have a point behind them. Every single song I write represents a larger idea, whether it's satirical or sincere. * I often analyze things on a deeper level. For example, I analyzed the song "Come As You Are" as being representative of society's hypocritical mixed messages of being yourself colliding with the inherent conformism in humans, even though there was no hint about this in the song. * I'm great at thinking of new ideas no one could have ever thought of. For example, I had to hold open a door for many hours one time and I used my sweater to hold the door open by tying it to the fence. * While I enjoy having deep conversations with people about philosophy, politics, religion and hypothetical ideas, I get REALLY bored with small talk and find it to be idiotic and pointless. However, after spending a lot of time with people discussing interesting things, I need some alone time because I get overwhelmed if I'm with others for too long. * I only have a small circle of close friends, because I find it exhausting to spend too much time with too many people. * I have nostalgia for certain things from my past, but only if they were actually good. For example, I love vintage cars and often restore them. However, I also appreciate changes of any kind, because I acknowledge that nostalgia is impossible if the past remains the same. I constantly ponder the notion of nostalgia and whether it is necessary. What do you guys think? http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/the-nt-rationale-entp-intp-entj-intj-/91128-am-enxp-esxp-new-post.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

#The NT Rationale (ENTP #INTP #ENTJ #INTJ)

1 note · View note

crescendo-system · 7 years

Note

iM ASKING DEF HALP ADVICE but ya I'm not always able to properly relax and then any memories are like, hazy and watered down, and the last time I was able to get real deep into focus I felt a Bad memory coming on and got tf out of there

ooooo, yea that can happen. Personally speaking, I had that happen once and I continued to pursue the memory to get it over with? but it was already affecting my mood terribly and I had the time and mental preparedness to just have some sob time over the memory. it’s possible you may need to set aside time where you’re ready for it if that memory starts to resurface. I say this more because it might blindside you otherwise, or lurk underneath your consciousness and affect your mood if it goes on too long (which has happened to me a few times with my Dave kin.) But yeah if you can’t handle it then don’t feel pressured to face it just yet.

the method I use is actually probably good for avoiding that sort of thing, since it’s meant to be a guided mental walk through your memories. I’ve found it’s possible to dictate or affect what memories you see, to an extent. It’s reliant on visualisation so you could guide yourself away from that memory, perhaps. I’ve never tried to use it to avoid a memory so I’m not certain, but it’s possible.

Said method is built and personalized off of this handy dandy post right here, though the initial setup often led to me losing focus since i myself am a bit adhd lmao. This post is an inconveniently long and rambly iteration of my specific process and observations that have built up around the method as I’ve adapted it. (I’ll be reblogging both of these to this blog momentarily since I neglected to when archiving I guess, whoops)

main takeaway from these is probably- learn to visualize and utilize your mindspace to your advantage, and to sort of ‘cherrypick’ things - but don’t try to be too controlling or things will be unsuccessful, unclear or will just fall more out of control.

As for alternatives - I’ve found a few other things that help me, but personally speaking they’re not as consistently successful or reliable. They are however an invaluable resource so I recommend giving them a peek. ;)

(under readmore bc this got Lengthy™ as is in my nature to do lmao. I hope some of this helps!!)

1- paying attention to your dreams. I’ve gotten some kin details from dreams. Sometimes it’s layered in bunches of dream gunk, but if a character from my canon was there to my knowledge, I pay close attention and analyze for symbolism and alternate interpretations. This includes old memories before you kinfirmed, as well - sometimes there are details there that help as well. I’ve known someone who dreamt a kin memory in their childhood as a nightmare. It may not happen with everyone, or be obvious, but I recommend combing what you do remember of your dreams, now and then, just in case.

On a related note, keeping track of your dreams may help you remember more of them in general, and may make it easier to find kin memories. keeping a little notebook, even just to jot down key phrases or doodles, will help you remember things about the dream that you would lose on your own.

2- impressions, feelings etc - of course there’s a danger of overthinking, or of personal preferences/projections affecting it, but sometimes a gut feeling might lead to something more connected to a memory. I figured out one of the swaps in a bloodswap timeline of mine based on gut feelings alone (they had been a former matesprit so the emotional connection allowed me to figure it out better)

3- media. This one is tricky and random. I’ve regained memories from song lyrics, melodies and character themes, fanart and even some fanfics. it can be a phrase, or a certain action, pose, situation. Heck I’ve recalled a memory from a totally unrelated video before. Rather random, even if you look specifically at content/themes relating to your kin.

But there is a way to tip this into your favor - do you write? draw? make music? anything artistic/creative? then you may be able to pull from your kin memories if you do something based on your kin and the canonmates/settings/etc you had. I have a friend who’s discovered over time that many of the fanfictions they have written aren’t just fics, but actually based on memories from their timelines. They’re not always accurate portrayals of events, or quotes or dynamics, but the core flow and content has always matched up. Likewise, the way I draw/drew characters based on ‘headcanons’ have tended to match up to one of my own canons, and I believe I’ve also written fic snippets based on experiences from my timelines. And as I regain more memories, I’m beginning to write using the memories as a springboard, hoping to expand upon what was initially just, an emotion and specific image, turning it into an excavation of the whole memory I have yet to recall.

and last I can think of as of right now;

4 - talking to people about your memories - this is a very helpful exercise in general! and by this, I mean hold a discussion with someone you feel ok with, about memories and the like, as opposed to just making a post on tumblr. This conversation encourages and stimulates the brain to come up with details when describing, and sometimes the person will say something unexpected that might jog your memory, or help confirm what your canon WASN’T like. This can sometimes be because the person knows something you forgot/don’t know, or they might say something to be silly/make a joke or offer suggestions. Someone joked about something silly that otters did when I told them about my lusus in my Eridan Leijon timeline being an otter - which surprisingly gave me a memory and also answered a few questions.

I personally am on a few servers on discord where kin talk is encouraged and frequent, plus my longest time kinfriend has always encouraged me to talk about kinstuff as well as tell me about theirs, and in doing this we’ve both made connections for the other as well as discover we’re canonmates in a few tls.

So these are the methods I’m familiar with! I’m sure others have their methods, I know some witches will rely on spells and the like, but I’ve never been one for those things, based on personal preference.

I hope these help, and I am always open to helping in any way I can!! Feel free to ask me more stuff if you need!! :)

#long post #kin.txt #memory walk #lgbroductions #ask and ye shall receive

1 note · View note

fuckyeahscandalband · 7 years

Photo

SCANDAL's RINA; "It's me RINA" Style Book Translations Part 1 of 5 - MUSIC

"Everyone who has gotten this book, thank you so much. I am SCANDAL's drummer, RINA. The theme of this book is vintage. From music to movies to fashion etc., things that are important to RINA have all been packed within it. It's a book that's made from the heart, so I'll be happy if you all could enjoy it. - Rina"

About SCANDAL

'Youth' might be a word that's mostly used when you're a teenager, but I think that as long I am in this band, my youth will always been continuing. The fact that I can feel this way is probably largely due to the members. For 4 girls to come gathered together, and to always spend our time on such good terms is amazing, and I unintentionally think about it from an audience point of view at times.

About Member

The eldest, HARUNA always takes in everyone's opinions calmly, and is a leader that judges only at the very end. To have HARUNA in the way that she is rely on me at certain times makes me extremely happy, and I think it's nice if I could bring some relief to HARUNA. TOMOMI is a person that brings about relaxation and creates breathing space. In midst of a generally straightforward bunch of people, she also tends to throw out the odd curveball once in a while. MAMI is the band's melody maker. She's the most important support in terms of our music, and is the person whom widens our possibilities. The members aren't family or friends, but they are definitely partners for whatever happens. I will support these members for who they are.

About Indies

There are probably endless memories of Osaka, I reckon. When I was a middle school student, and the other members were high school students, the 4 of us gathered together for a camp at a mansion in Osaka during our Summer holidays. We'll practice in the studio every single day, everyone doing their own thing, then head to baths once practice is finished. We really didn't have money, so in order to save, we'll buy from the supermarket, and sometimes wash our clothes all at a go at the coin laundromat. It's a Summer where be it doing the laundry, eating and living together, we were together. At that time, it was hard but we also enjoyed it. And during our indies period, we then performed street lives at Osaka-jo Park's Ten-jo street, in front of an empty crowd that we really can't possibly smile at (laughs). We made hand-written flyers ourselves, and tried performing and singing while dancing. We cracked our brains, wondering what we can do to make people pause in their footsteps, to be able to stand out. I think I'll never be able to forget those times for as long as I live.

About Major Debut

I was in my 2nd year of high school when we had our major debut, "DOLL". I was really happy to see that the dream I'd aimed for had come true. It moved me, going to the CD shop and seeing our CDs lined up there. I was so happy I nearly wanted to cry when I saw a plate that said 'SCANDAL' hung up on the pillar. And right after our debut, we got to appear on music programmes and had many chances to widen our name, which I felt happy about, despite being busy. I can still recall clearly, the days that followed after our debut.

About Girl's Band

I think that girl bands are the absolute best, and I'm so in love with being a part of it. 'Girls rock' stands right next to the genre that is 'Rock', and I think that the time that it can be naturally recognised for itself alone is coming; When it does, it'll definitely be fun.

About Live

Lives are places where you're able to see the band's spirit and true abilities. I think that bands are the coolest when they're giving lives, and if one doesn't perform lives, there will surely be parts about them that you can't understand. From the choice of the venue, to the components that make the live, to being able to convey themselves through MCs, all those make up the band's spirit. It is lastly also a place where you can display your powers, when you use words and convey what you wish to say to your audience. From now on, I suppose my stance about making lives central of our activities will never change.

About Listeners

They seem different from the members or family, but they also hold a special spot. A relationship between the listener and a band can't be placed specifically. Whenever I'm writing songs or answering at interviews, the listeners would pop up in my head often. That's why, I'm always thinking of everyone. From honestly having zero in the audience during our street lives, to tens of thousands of people today, everyone's presence brings us confidence and praise. For myself, I think I'm probably the type that won't continue on with the band if we had no listeners. All of our fans are our power.

About Drums

As I thought of 'Wanting to continue on in the band as this member', it's been 10 years by the time I realised. I don't think just by drumming is all of it, and I did it in my own way to a satisfactory point, coupled with fashion and hair and make-up. In response to that, I bet there are those who come for our lives and got to know me (because of everything). I'm glad that I became a drummer on my own terms. The drums aren't just an instrument that is cool. Not only is it a instrument that girls can play, but there are also all kinds of drummers, and I'll be glad to be able to know more.

About 10 Years

When the band was made, we were so hell-bent on making it work every single day, that we never had the time to imagine what it'll be like 10 years later. After our debut, we'd been touring every year, and I always thought how much I'll like for this to keep continuing on for a long time. In the band's 10th year since formation, it felt like we've hit our very first point. Not only are we feeling the weight of the number "10", but it also seems that we'll be doing this for a long time to come.

About Composition

When I am making songs, it's often that I start from writing the lyrics. When both the lyrics and melody come up in my head at the same time, I'll make the demo using my synthesizer and electric drums. I'll connect my electric drums to the synthesizer, and the synthesizer will add on to what I play on the drums, producing data. Afterwards, I'll add in chords via the keyboard for the guitar and bass, then send my complete song demo to the members. When the melody doesn't come, I'll send my lyrics to MAMI. We'll talk about it, and I'll then leave the melody in her hands. Often, when it hits, I'll make a memo of it to go back to later, and when I think 'Seems like it'll come to me tonight', I'll write a song. When it feels like I can do it, I'll gradually be able to. How many times that has happened...is a secret (laughs).

About Overseas

Whenever we go overseas to all sorts of countries, I am both shocked and happy, to know that we have this many people asking for us. In the 10 years that the band was formed, I'm able to feel the huge possibilities of every generation and will come to think, we can still do this, there are still things we want to accomplish, and things we can do. That's because there are people who want to see us live. That's why, it's not so much about something special, such as 'Let's advance into the world!" No matter which country they're from, our fans are all our friends. To be able to go to where there are people waiting for us, to do lives, that's all there is to it.

About Now

Music has became the core to my being after all. Even when I'm having fun, and even when it looks like it's unrelated to music at first look, it's always connected. Even when I'm watching variety programme, for example, I'll think about thing like how great that talk atmosphere was, or I'll like to create such an atmosphere for our lives. After watching movies, it also evokes me to write music. Everything is related to music. Of course, I also enjoy listening to music in my private time. I often check out new songs on the radio, and recently, I think the Spanish girl band, HiNDS is pretty cool! From now onwards, I'll simply like us 4 to use good songs to create good lives, and it'll be nice if we can always keep going on like this. Also, as a band, I'll like for us to be more exposed, and to take in all kinds of interesting things. We also have our own original shop called 'Feedback!' in Shibuya, and we'll also like to continue thinking of new ways where we can bring enjoyment to everyone.

Translations & photos by fyscandalband. To purchase, click HERE. For my "It's me RINA" tag, click HERE. As I’ll only translate what piques my interest, this is only most of the interview and not a full translation. More to come.

#SCANDAL #rina suzuki #scandal band #style book #translation

66 notes · View notes

howlofwinter · 3 years

Text

Why I left the band

1) Issues with IRL meetups and schedule. This was before lockdown mind you throughout 2019. X basically couldn't reliably leave his house for practise, nor guarantee gigs even in our town. We turned down a gig that was in the next town which at the time me and Y hated. Meanwhile Y was technically living in a different city (something he did without consulting us) and while he was in town for three days a week he wasn’t a “free agent” who could do sessions whenever. He could normally only do one evening session. It just seemed very impractical to be a band that couldn’t meet to write, rehearse etc. At the same time X and Y were both adamant that it was totally fine and it still could work. While I felt there was a big disconnect between what they said that wanted to be as a band and their actual ability to meetup. Our last gig I had to basically beg for more rehearsal time because I’d barely played through the song with the band all the way through with all my parts written. There was also this idea that we could be “an internet band” where meeting was more of an additional activity, rather than a primary way of exchanging ideas. I really hated this idea. I can see it working for some, especially electronic acts etc. But we weren’t good at working in our own time and this was something before 2019 that we had highlighted a lot. Additionally my mac was pretty slow and we’d all need the same plugins for it work smoothly and I was confident that my mac wouldn’t keep up. Much of making music together is being in the room and exchanging ideas on the fly. Trying things again but in different ways. Change the chord scheme, change the dynamics, change the bassline etc. This new method only allows us to use recorded ideas. I was very close to leaving in 2019 because of this schedule issue. I even wrote an angsty email to our acting manager about it. They just didn’t seem to want to be in it anymore in terms of dedicating time. 2) It became too metal. And creative differences. I wrote about 10 tracks that just was never used. At a certain point when your input is rebuffed and denied - it stops feeling like a band you are equally a part of. X and Y wrote songs that we didn’t work on too, and so this wasn’t unique, but I felt like I didn't have anything to offer that they were really interested in. Even stuff I was proud of and very happy with, they didn't want to appropriate it or rework it etc. While some of the finished tracks weren’t really my style to begin with I still wanted to work on other people’s ideas. I felt like this wasn’t returned to me. It was less about them rejecting a certain amount of my ideas, and more that I felt like I wasn’t really of use to the creative process. Why would I want to stay in a band where my output isn’t valued. 3) Intrusive thoughts. I found it difficult hearing about Y’s girlfriend (Z) all the time and I was having intrusive thoughts related to that whole saga. We would be in session talking about this and that and my brain would be elsewhere. I had desires to lash out verbally at Y all the time and answer questions sarcastically turning unrelated questions back on to Y about the Z saga. So yeah this really tipped the scales from being unsure about whether it was the right band - to knowing that it wasn’t for me anymore. I told X about this and how I didn’t want to do this anymore and he basically encouraged me to quit now rather than later as it would be easier for them. And so that was that - I left. I still feel awkward with Y now, and I feel like our friendship was strained too far because of what he did. Time and distance seemed like the only thing that would repair things. I’d already given it a year and things weren’t getting better so I don’t regret leaving when I did. 4) Those are the primary reasons. Here are some additional things that were bothersome but weren’t direct reasons I left - more observations/concerns. I just want to write them to get them out of my system. i - Money. I didn’t have money to actually invest in studio time. While X was very kind to offer to pay it for me, it would probably cause issues later down the line. Studio time is vital, as is money to tour. I didn’t have that money so I didn’t see how I could stay. ii - Ability. We started writing a couple of tracks that I couldn’t play, and much like my other band that I left, rather than simplifying it - I was just expected to get better. I learnt one of them but the other one I never got. iii - Fashion. We had lots of discussions where X would try and show things he wanted me to wear on stage. I felt like I was being told to pretend to be someone I’m not and I really didn’t like the ideas and style he was interested in. Skinny jeans and black tshirts. I felt like it was quite generic and boring. Our acting manager gave other ideas like “be aggressive, bold, memorable” which I could understand a lot more. Regardless there were lots of gigs we did where I didn’t like what other members wore. I think we had clear differences in what stage wear is and what the aesthetic we wanted to have. iv - No replacement member. We never replaced our original guitarist. We didn’t really want to in a creative sense, but it limited what we could actually perform. Compositions needed to work within 4 tracks (guitar/drums/bass/vocals) or they were essentially a waste of time. When we did want to find a replacement it proved too difficult. We had three suitable candidates and none could sing. v - Direction. When we identified our scheduling issues in 2019, my idea was to take gigging off the table and to simply write an album of ideas that we were happy with. However once we finished working on our two new ideas, immediately there was desire to record it. X argued that it would avoid us fading into obscurity. And while I saw the logic behind it, if we knew we couldn’t gig, why were we investing into a product that couldn’t be sold. Spotify is great, but it doesn’t actually pay anything (at least in our case). This was a huge investment and I wasn’t that hot on the songs in question so I had two strong motives to disagree. But to make matters worst I really disliked the sound of the producer we decided to get into contact with - but I had no alternative option. When I heard a work in progress bounce of the song they’d worked on with the producer - I felt like it was so removed from the band I once was in, despite working on said song only a few months ago. This was positive to me because it showed that leaving was the right thing to do and that even if I had stayed that I wouldn’t be happy with our newest song/product/investment. vi - Gigs with bad pay. I will make a separate post about this because it really was infuriating. Selling out a gig as the headliners, and making £60 just felt like a robbery. Most venues took either ALL the money from tickets and drinks, or they gave you £1 or £2 per ticket while keeping the remainder. If you bring 60 people to a gig, and they all buy 3 drinks, you’ve made that venue (roughly) £900 on drinks. Assuming they make £5 per ticket thats another £300 (£1200 total). Of course that's not direct profit and I don’t claim to understand the finances of venues. But when you’re the reason that people left their home to come to the venue - why do we get £60 for 60 tickets and you get £1200. And that was a best case scenario. Most venues didn’t pay us anything. Some would offer us fuel money at most. But what could we do. We needed to perform and none of us knew how to negotiate better deals. But it did feel awful to do everything right and to put on a good show for a bunch of people and have nothing to show for it. vii - Y’s poor communication and poor planning. This was something that we did address from time to time but still was annoying. There were a couple of times where he left the country entirely and only told us about it once he’d left. One event that made me quite angry was when we spent a few hundred pounds on a video which required us to perform to a metronome. We knew this before we booked it. Our acting manager additionally reminded us. The video editor told us about it. On the day he didn’t use it because he thought it was more important to have an MP3 play off his phone for our intro - than use a metronome for the video. Yet he never thought of mentioning this to us and we didn’t know until the video editor told us. The video isn’t great, and I attribute that entirely to the lack of metronome. I wouldn’t care that much if it was a free video, but it cost us a lot of money and it was essentially a huge waste of both the money and the opportunity. There was also just the way we’d start a session, get things rolling and he’d suddenly go and cook dinner. Sometimes this was only 10 minutes and it wasn’t a big deal. Other times he would cook stuff from scratch. When he had Z round he would spend time speaking to her every time we walked past the room. It wasn’t uncommon for our sessions to have 30 minutes cut out of them where he was eating. I have no problem with having a break but at moments it felt like he was wasting my time and it wasn’t something he was committed to. Another thing is while Y is a fantastic musician, it was very obvious when he hadn’t been practising at all because his tempos would be incredibly sloppy. There was only so many times I could bring this up without being rude so at some point I just stopped. viii - No photographer. We asked so many different people to take photos of us. We even payed one of them. They almost never came out good. This made our achievements go largely undocumented. To me it was always really clear that our image of being a band is more important than actually doing the ground work - but again we never fixed the issue. There are little to no images of us even playing in our home town. As far as our facebook page is concerned we hardly did any gigs ix - Time required per song. It became very obvious from an early point that we were slow at writing songs. We were together for about 5 years or so, and in that time we gigged maybe 12 songs. Before almost every gig we’d talk about how it was ridiculous and how we should write more and stop being fussy. But actually putting that into practise never happened and it became increasingly obvious that our creative process was hurting our own momentum. While I think we were all happy with the work we did together, you can only do the same gig so many times. This was made even worse by point 2. There was plenty of ideas to work on. But instead people would write new ideas, that were very often deemed unfitting for us as a group. So on one hand we have a large amount of raw creative output and potential songs, but on the other hand we have very few finished ideas or even ideas deemed worthy to complete and as time went on this was a theme of the band. In reflection I just wish people worked on other people’s ideas more rather than writing it off without even trying to rearrange it. x- Style and writing method change. I did mention this with the second point but just to go into more detail. The project started as a progressive rock act. Our goal was to write interesting rock music with meaningful lyrics. We would work on songs by improvising entirely, or working on chord schemes and ideas would slowly evolve over time. We would add our own parts/layers individually and it was very fluid with sections being added and tweaked over time. But conversely this meant songs were somewhat up in the air for a while and it was hard to judge the merits of a project - meaning time could be invested into a project for no pay out. At a certain point X decided that it would be better if we brought more finished ideas to sessions and then allowed the band to appropriate them and I agreed. But in hindsight I think it was stupid to commit to this being the only viable way. While it was easy for people to play along to other people’s ideas and make a song in the process, it was slightly different when the bulk of song is done and you are required to learn their parts. or re work their parts, or rework their song. X would bring songs in their entirety and I guess it was often hard to see them as something I wanted to invest time into adapting to our own tastes. Even on the ideas that made it - usually sections got boycotted and new ones had to be created. So the writing process moved out of the rehearsal room where we each commit our own parts - into DAWs and people coming up with their own songs - only for us to delete most of that song and write new parts and sections. So did it save time? I doubt it. While there were tracks where this method worked out well, I know our former member felt like they couldn’t contribute with this writing style and I suppose I agree somewhat. The entire point of being in a band is to collaborate. I hate to think about how much time was spent collectively - working on entire songs on our own, just for the rest of the band to veto the project. In terms of batting averages, Im certain that even X had more projects that were discarded by the band than they were used. An interesting question is would these ideas have been veto’d if they were brought to the band without being “finished” by solo members. On a similar note to this is X’s prevalence in creative control. Generally I enjoyed working with X and I have no hard feelings towards him. But something that our departed member mentioned (W for now) is that the the longer X was in the band the more more control X had, the more control X had the more things turned away from making prog rock, and more into metal. And thus, W and to a certain extend myself felt alienated and that our ideas weren’t fitting with the bands image. But really it was X’s image of the band that we weren’t fitting. While we were happy to go along with his ideas, he often didn’t return the favour. To some degree I think everyone should be able to say that they don’t like a song, and to be able to veto an idea if they really don’t like it or see its merits. But by the end of my time in the band we had so many veto’d ideas that it was ridiculous Something Y suggested was that we stop veto’ing ideas on work on songs we don’t really like that much so that we have content. To diversify the band’s style. But again X didn’t want to actually do this. I think ultimately X wanted something different out of the band than I did (and that W did). While I don’t mind doing some more metal esque songs, there has to be balance. And overall there really wasn’t. Now that I’m outside of the band, I can see that very clearly. Looking in iTunes I have the bounces where I spent time working on my own ideas that weren’t used. There was about four ideas that I worked on with Y that we liked and we wanted to use but ultimately they were shelved because they weren’t metal. And what makes this even more frustrating is that we even cited that we needed more variety in our songs in terms of mood and atmosphere. That a good set can’t all be aggressive. That actually downtime, and calmer tracks would make the more aggressive tracks stand out and be more effective. But this was never achieved. Unfortunately I do think X is largely to blame for that. If I give you a song and you don’t like that song, how can I change that song so that you do like it. Really that work has to come from you.

0 notes

timeflies1007-blog · 5 years

Text

Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season 6, p. 1

Warning: These reviews contain spoilers for this and other seasons of the reboot, as well as occasional references to the classic series.

Previously on Doctor Who: The universe ended, but then it didn’t. (Hurray!) Last season ended on the most unequivocally positive note of any season of the reboot, in which nobody died (at least not permanently), nobody suffered a catastrophic fate, and everything concluded with a lovely wedding. This season is a very different kind of story; in spite of the numerous deaths that don’t stick, this season is full of consequences, and of the dark side of the much brighter narrative that we got in Season Five. “Dark side” is the easiest term to use in describing this shift, but it doesn’t get at the entirety of what is going on here. I would argue that this is, in some senses, among the most hopeful seasons of the show, and certainly one of the most redemptive character arcs. Problems are awfully hard to fix this season—much, much harder than in most previous ones and certainly than in the immediate predecessor—but our heroes try so strenuously to emerge from these problems that I wind up with feelings that are a lot warmer and fuzzier than one might expect from the relative bleakness of this narrative.

This season has a reputation for devoting too little attention to Amy’s feelings, particularly in light of her pregnancy and subsequent separation from her baby. It’s a widespread view, but not really one that I get. To me, about 90% of the season is about Amy, to the point that I can understand criticisms that it’s too closely focused on her feelings more than I can understand the opposite. I do think that the season is better at representing her feelings of loss and grief than it is at exploring her bodily experience, but overall we get enough detail about her mental state that I only very rarely feel like she’s being underwritten. A more complex issue is the methods by which Moffat portrays Amy’s crisis. This season is pretty thoroughly wrapped up in concepts of silence and, to a lesser extent, vision. This raises the possibility of ableist metaphors, the kind that develop when writers use blindness, deafness, muteness, etc. as ways of making a point about moral failings. For the most part, I think the season avoids falling into this trap. As I’ll explain in more detail later in the season, I think that the inobservability of certain forms of trauma, as well as the difficulties in communication that stem from them, are very real parts of Amy’s circumstances, so that while there are metaphorical treatments of these issues, they are tied to very real mental health issues in which sight and speech play integral roles, and so it doesn’t come across to me as using disability as an analogy for unrelated experiences. It’s a difficult issue, though, and one that I’m trying to be attentive to as I write about these aspects of the season.

There are so many ways to interpret this season, and this can lead to questions about what Moffat actually meant this narrative to be about. It’s certainly a question worth considering, but I’m not terribly invested in the answer. Amy’s story this season means very specific things to me, grounded in my own experiences, and I’m not particularly concerned with whether or not Moffat completely intended the story to function in the way that I see it. I do think that at least pieces of the story seem to have been intentionally composed in the ways that I understand them, but there are so many pieces to this narrative that my interpretation of some of them might be completely different from what Moffat meant. Explaining how this season comes across to me is especially difficult because it’s so dependent on how the episodes fit together with each other; it’s hard to articulate the importance of individual episodes, sometimes, and so this season’s review may be more than usually centered on the review of the season as a whole at the end.

This is also the season in which we get a pre-credits voiceover sequence, a.k.a. Amy Pond telling us “When I was a little girl, I had an imaginary friend…” and then going into a tiny synopsis of her friendship with the Doctor. I’m not really sure why this is here or who it was intended to be useful for, because anyone who’s seen the show before knows this information and anyone who jumps into the show in the middle of this season is going to have a lot of questions that aren’t answered by this segment. It’s pretty annoying, but if you watch on Amazon the fast-forward button is a very helpful friend whenever this voiceover comes up. Given the unusual amount of connection between this season and its predecessor, though, something of a recap of what has gone before is appropriate, particularly as a way into Amy’s mentality. A more accurate and useful version might go something like this: “When Amy Pond was a little girl, she had an imaginary friend, and she spent much of her childhood struggling to keep believing in him. He came back, and so did Amy’s belief in his capacity to rewrite time. He’s done so many wonderful things that even death seems rewritable. Amy’s particular brand of faith ran away with her, and they’ve been running ever since.” And…here we go.

A Christmas Carol: There are about sixty billion versions of A Christmas Carol, but to my knowledge this is the only one with flying sharks. This episode features a lot of whimsy, both shark-related and otherwise, but it’s deceptively serious as well. Some Doctor Who Christmas episodes are integral to seasonal arcs on the show, while others function more as standalones. This one is unusual in that it looks like the latter, but turns out to be much more connected to the season than it initially appears. In fact, it’s connected to two seasons, and one could see it as Season Five’s endpoint almost as much as the start of Season Six. In some ways, it functions as a sort of bridge between the two seasons, but I see this primarily as our first foray into the odd combination of light and solemnity that characterizes much of Season Six. “Halfway out of the darkness” could be seen as the theme of this season, and so the Doctor’s use of this phrase to define Christmas is our introduction to an important concept.

It’s also our first step into the troubling side of the “time can be rewritten” idea, which is hugely important for Season Six. At the end of the last season, the Doctor basically rewrote the universe, fixing at least some of the pieces of existence that disappeared through the time crack and rewriting time on a very large scale. Here, this happens on a much smaller, more personal level, and while it brings about Kazran Sardick’s redemption, it also comes across as invasive and potentially destructive. Season Six devotes a great deal of time to the human cost of miracles, and it’s pretty concerning that, while Kazran might have wound up a better man because of the Doctor’s interference, he’s also a different one, to the extent that his technology no longer recognizes his brain. The ethical implications of essentially rewriting a person, even if the rewrite is morally superior to the original, are not really discussed here but this moment of his brain literally becoming unrecognizable highlights just how much of an impact the Doctor’s actions can have. It’s such a dramatic change that it’s difficult to avoid thinking “Would the Doctor really be all right with just giving someone an entirely new backstory, complete with memories of experiences and connections that had never existed before?” and this question persists until we go back to the honeymooning couple and remember that last season’s happy ending pretty much depended on exactly that happening to Amy.

We also get the season’s first mention of silence—not, in this case, a scary monster, but an aspect of loneliness. I didn’t really listen to the lyrics in Abigail’s song the first time I watched the episode, but they’re eerily appropriate for the upcoming season. Lines like “When you’re alone, silence is all you know” and “Let in the shadow; let in the light of your bright shadow” are awfully cheesy, but Christmas episodes can get away with a little bit more cheese than usual, and the song is just so pretty that it gets away with the lack of subtlety. Given the rest of the season’s attention to Amy remaining steadfastly silent about a lot of her problems and refusing to acknowledge the shadow in her life, in retrospect it seems like a song about the growth that she needs to do this season. Because the episode feels like a commentary on Amy’s arc this season, I’m ok with her relatively small role in this episode, and even the return of the kiss-o-gram outfit only annoys me a little bit.

I am more bothered by the treatment of Abigail herself, even though I love her and I’m happy whenever she’s on screen. It’s sort of weird to apply the concept of fridging to a character who is so vibrant and lively throughout the episode, and who doesn’t actually die in it, but if you’re going to have a female character’s impending demise operating as an important plot point, it’s probably a good idea to avoid literally putting her in a giant freezer. There are quite a few rankings of Christmas specials on the internet, and while there are of course fluctuations between the lists, this one is the clear favorite. I do think that it’s the most creative and possibly the most fun, but I would rank it behind at least one and maybe several of the other specials on the grounds that Moffat doesn’t manage to give Abigail a storyline that’s meaningful to her (as opposed to being a motivation for Kazran’s narrative) to go along with the dynamic personality and gorgeous voice.

When it’s not putting Abigail on ice, this episode is thoroughly delightful in spite of its serious attention to the season’s darker themes. The production design brings together exactly the right combination of quirk and genuine beauty in creating a stunningly gorgeous planet. The fish/sharks are brilliant—the whole scenario is weirdly believable as the basis for this planet’s economy and power structures, and young Kazran’s account of the bonding that he missed out on when he was away from school during a fish attack gives us an intriguing glimpse into the role that the fish play in this culture. The Doctor reacts charmingly to them, particularly in his optimistic assertion that “I bet I get some very interesting readings off my sonic screwdriver when I get it back from the shark in your bedroom.” Even beyond the goofy charm of the fish, the episode is a strong adaptation of Dickens’s novella. This is partly because of Michael Gambon’s strong performance as Kazran Sardick—a name that nicely exaggerates Dickens’s proclivity for character-appropriate naming. What’s most impressive, though, is the way the episode works with the past/present/future structure. Much of the episode weaves smoothly between the first two, allowing us to watch the older Kazran remember the memories that didn’t exist until the Doctor showed up. I fully expected the future part of the story to involve a trip into Kazran’s near future, as the TARDIS would make it easy enough to get him there. Just when the episode looks like it’s going to do a pretty conventional take on Christmas Yet to Come, it does something thoroughly unexpected; this season is pretty plot-twist heavy, but few of the later revelations startle me quite as much as the sudden appearance of young Kazran, staring fearfully into the old man who has become his future. I can’t quite articulate why this works so well, but I was so surprised by this approach when I first saw the episode that it completely took my breath away.

While Abigail’s literal fridging diminishes my enjoyment a bit, I’m incredibly impressed with how well this special brings together serious psychological issues with a truly fun, entertaining story. We get a lot of attention, in this season, to the rewriting of time, and to the presence of Silence—in most cases, these are part of big, complicated, large-scale stories. Seeing them operate as pieces of a much more intimate, personal tale of loss is an important introduction to how one should think about the events that lie ahead. The episode isn’t without missteps, but a beautiful set, stunning character work, and flying sharks all in one episode are a pretty fabulous Christmas present. A-

The Impossible Astronaut: This is technically the start of the major arc of Season Six, but it picks up so many ideas from “A Christmas Carol” and from the end of Season Five that it feels like the opening number of Act Two rather than the beginning of a completely new story. Watching the Doctor die a few minutes into the episode is a shocking moment, both because it’s the protagonist’s demise and because of the unusualness of the murder method—namely, being shot by an astronaut who has emerged from the depths of an American lake. It’s pretty clear that the Doctor isn’t really dead, as the show can’t exactly move forward without him, but trying to figure out exactly what happened and how he wriggled out of what looks like certain death is fun even in the certainty that it won’t stick.

There is an immensely enjoyable sense of silliness at work here that erases any sense of self-importance that might otherwise come from appearing to kill of your lead character in a season premiere. The Doctor’s attention-getting historical forays at the beginning of the episode are a bit hit-or-miss for me, but the scenes at the White House are sublimely funny (with the very brief exception that we definitely didn’t need the Doctor referring to his companions as “the legs, the nose, and Mrs. Robinson.”) The shocked reaction to a big blue box turning up in the oval office is particularly well done, as is the dialogue in the ensuing scene: the Secret Service officer yelling “Do not compliment the intruder!” is probably my favorite line, but the Doctor trying to requisition a fez and some jammy dodgers is a close second. Canton is an immediate delight, coming across as smart and snarky and just a little bit bewildered about all of the sci-fi material that is suddenly unfolding around him.

The episode’s considerable humor competes with quite a lot of serious material. This is due in part to River’s increasing consciousness of the difficulties of her relationship with the Doctor, who knows less about her each time they meet. Even more importantly, Silence has been threatened, foreshadowed, and even sung about, but this is the episode in which it finally becomes monstrous. I don’t think I’d get a lot of agreement on this, but to me, the Silence are Moffat’s greatest monsters. Yes, I like them better than the Weeping Angels. The idea of a monster that you forget when you’re not looking at it is inherently frightening, offers a lot of potential for really interesting subtext, and works incredibly well in a visual medium. Watching the characters go back and forth between terror and total ease is fascinating, and the music underscoring some of these scenes helps to make these moments even more effective.

The monsters aren’t the only things creating emotional imbalance in this episode. Amy, who is finally in an outfit that no one could reasonably interpret as an attempt to over-sexualize her, goes through quite a lot of turmoil here. After the events of the previous season, it’s unsurprising that her ability to process grief in a healthy way is slipping. She does react tearfully to the Doctor’s “death,” but her immediate reaction to it also essentially involves rewriting it in more palatable terms in her mind—“maybe it’s a doppelganger, or a clone,” she insists, as she frantically tries to piece together the version of this story in which things will turn out okay. Even after she sees the Doctor alive again, she starts thinking about how his eventual death can be unwritten. This reaches its climax when she grabs a gun and shoots at the astronaut, which is shot in crazy slow motion that should be awfully cheesy but somehow is marvelous. There is a lot of focus this season on Amy’s disillusionment with certain aspects of her relationship with the Doctor, and this is the first moment that she turns away from his principles, even if it is brief and she misses. (I would see this as a cop-out if the events of the season finale didn’t happen, but they do and so I don’t.) “Time can be rewritten” is a hopeful expression, sort of, but it’s also one that takes away the possibility of closure, that stops one from recognizing the need to move on. Amy’s willing to do anything to rewrite time here, even to the extent of pointing a gun at a stranger and pulling the trigger, and for all the excitement in this episode, it’s her psychological state that I find most chilling. A-

Day of the Moon: Sometimes, Moffat has a tendency to write something stunningly brilliant and then distract from its brilliance by including one or two really annoying things, and this episode is one of the most prominent examples. This story, and particularly this second part of it, is terrific, and if it were not for a couple of glaring missteps, I would put this episode well within the top 30 of the reboot. Its ranking plummets, however, (to, I think slightly outside my top 70 in the eleven seasons so far) because of a couple of brief moments that draw attention to their own stupidity and distract me from how fabulous the rest of the episode is.

I’ll get into the things that bother me in a little bit, but let me first say that what definitely doesn’t bother me is the plot-driven nature of this two-parter. It is inarguably the case that a LOT is happening here, and the sheer magnitude of the plot is one of the things that puts a lot of people off about this season. There are definitely some aspects of the seasonal arc that suffer from the narrative twistiness, and while I do think that there is far more character-driven work this season than it tends to get credit for, this episode is one of the plottier ones. The thing is, plot twists are usually intellectual devices grounded in being flashy and impressive, but sometimes events come together in such a perfect way that I do wind up reacting emotionally. Watching what looks like chaos be revealed as order carries with it a sort of surprised sense that things look nicer than what I expected, sort of like suddenly seeing a kitten. My heart just goes, “My goodness, I wasn’t expecting you!” and pieces of this episode bring out that kind of reaction in me, to the point where, if I were a person who tended to cry at television shows, I’d be sniffling about how lovely the narrative structure is.

We begin the episode with precisely the kind of giddily brilliant scenes that I’m talking about, as Canton appears to hunt down and kill the entire Pond family, while keeping the Doctor locked up in a familiar-looking prison. (And yes, you could see this as a bit repetitive, but I kind of love that there was pretty clearly an offscreen exchange in which Canton asked the Doctor how to construct the facade of a perfect prison for containing him, and the Doctor just described the Pandorica. It’s nice when he’s willing to get ideas from all his worst enemies. I hope the Doctor did impressions of all the monsters while he was explaining the plan to Canton.) The invisible TARDIS suddenly coming to light, the Ponds complaining about a lack of airholes in their body bags, River falling backwards off a building and into the TARDIS swimming pool…it’s such a stunning bit of goofiness and I love it. The show can’t spend too much time on hijinks like the swimming pool business or it would start to look awfully self-indulgent, but in small doses it’s just incredibly charming.

After the delights of the opening sequence, we learn more about the Silence and the efforts being made to remember them. The lines drawn on the skin as a memory technique never fail to scare the hell out of me this season, but I also like the implanted voicemails, which are nicely creepy ways of getting across just how much is being forgotten. The children’s home is a solidly atmospheric setting, and while I get a bit annoyed about the amount of time spent on a kidnapped Amy pleading for help, her initial wander around the house is a strong introduction to her role in the little girl’s life. The notion that the Silence have manipulated humanity into traveling to the moon so that they can get access to fancy spacesuits is also pretty frightening—this whole episode really emphasizes just how much influence the Silence have had on Earth, and their input on space exploration is a good example of how far their impact has extended. I do have a few qualms about the role that they have played in influencing human affairs; there are moments in this episode that seem to lurk pretty close to just removing human agency altogether through the suggestion that the Silence have been manipulating us into almost everything we’ve ever done. The depiction of 1960s America is so vibrant in this episode, though, and the characters are so full of purpose and energy, that it doesn’t come across as a brainwashed world.

The entire plot is captivating, but the Doctor’s defeat of the Silence is the clear high point, and is one of my favorite resolutions ever on this show. A couple of factors make this work, the first being how suggestible people are when they are looking at a Silent. The Doctor makes clear—by having Canton look at a Silent and telling him to adjust his bowtie—that people can be influenced by what they have heard while looking at a Silent, even when they have forgotten the entire experience. The quasi-hypnotic possibilities certainly play a role here, but I would say that the pattern of remembering and forgetting associated with the Silence also makes the Doctor’s plan work. It has been established that everyone forgets the Silence only when they are not looking at them; Amy, for instance, remembers seeing the Silent at the lake when she sees another in the White House bathroom. Everyone who ever watches the footage of the moon landing will therefore see the “You should kill us all on sight” message, immediately forget it once the image has passed, and then remember it only if they happen to come across another Silent. The proper version of the moon landing thus stays intact in everybody’s memory, but if they find themselves in the company of a Silent, they will suddenly regain the knowledge that they need to see the Silent as an enemy. In spite of the hypnotic influence of the Silent’s words, this doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone will actually try to kill them—I can imagine that some would be too frightened to take them on, and others would just be incapable. The increased presence of human knowledge and aggression, though, means that the Silence face a world that is more hostile and dangerous, and have a legitimate reason for seeking a new planet to rule. What’s especially brilliant about the Doctor’s plan is that because of the general state of forgetfulness, it doesn’t push humanity to hunt down the Silence and try to drive them away; whether the “kill us on sight” line is functioning as hypnotic influence or people are remembering instructions when they see a Silent, the impulse depends on being in close enough proximity to the Silence that they are actually visible. This gives the Silence the information that their safety has been compromised, thereby giving them the incentive to go somewhere else, and so if they’re careful about not being seen, they should be able to get away. (They’re good at appropriating human technology, so I can imagine that they would be able to get themselves to another planet.) It’s a revolution by warning, in which nobody really needs to get killed, and the whole notion of uploading cell phone footage into a 1960s video in order to let scary monsters know that they need to abandon Earth is just such a creative way of resolving things that I absolutely love it. You could make the argument, and many have, that Moffat can get too clever-clogs for his own good, but watching the narrative click into place like this—I don’t know, the world just looks a bit sunnier for a while. It’s not often that you want to hug a cell phone, but I really do by the end of this story.

The surprises don’t stop there, as we conclude the episode with the revelation that the little girl that they have been looking for is regenerating. We know so little about her at this point that I don’t have that much of a reaction to the character’s experience, but it’s such an unexpected moment (at least it was to me) that it makes for an extremely strong ending to the story. There is as much genuine surprise in this episode as almost any other in the episode, and these twists are incorporated so beautifully into the story that it’s a joy to experience the rush that comes from realizing just what has happened.

In spite of the fabulousness of much of this episode, it doesn’t make my all-time favorites list because of a couple of smaller pieces that lower the quality of the entire episode. One problem with this episode is the brief and thoroughly unwelcome return of the Amy/Rory/Doctor love triangle. It’s present only as a miscommunication—Rory hears Amy say something to him that sounds like it could be addressed to the Doctor, and worries that she is regretting her choice to marry him. She also tells the Doctor that she’s pregnant without telling Rory, suggesting that she places more trust in the Doctor. Of course, everything is resolved by the end, but while her explanation that she didn’t want to tell Rory about her pregnancy because she’s worried that her baby will be born with “three heads, or like a time head” is believable enough, this whole element just comes across as extremely contrived. Amy’s use of the “fell out of the sky” language to describe Rory doesn’t really accord with the notion that they’ve been friends since childhood, and so it just looks like Moffat made her say intentionally confusing things in order to create a space for marital drama. The interaction between the Ponds at the end of the episode is awfully cute, though—I particularly liked Rory’s jubilant exclamation that he’s “never going to stop being stupid!”—so while I did not enjoy this throwback to last season’s most irritating subplot, I was still happy with the Ponds as a couple by the end of the story. The larger problem is the exchange between Canton and Nixon in which we learn of Canton’s sexuality. I really, really like Canton; the actor is great, the character’s combination of obvious intelligence and befuddlement about what on earth is happening is endearing, and he’s a solid source of support for the Doctor and Ponds in this story. I’m glad that the show is making more of an effort to include LGBT characters this season, after not doing at all well in this regard in Season Five, and Canton was, I think, at this point the second-most screentime for an LGBT character, after Captain Jack. Given that for both Captain Jack and the soon-to-debut Vastra and Jenny, their sexuality is a defining element of their characterization, it’s sort of a nice bit of variation to have a character who is primarily known for his work in the monster-fighting plot, and whose sexuality emerges as a minor part of his background. However, while getting across Canton’s sexuality in just a line or two is a reasonable move on those grounds, the actual lines are completely misguided and deeply problematic. Nixon’s reaction that the moon is “far enough for now” just comes across as laughing at the sixties for being a homophobic time period, which is blatantly unfunny both because of the tremendous discrimination facing gay couples in the 1960s and because in many ways that discrimination hasn’t stopped. Nixon’s inability to accept such a relationship is the punchline here more than Canton himself is, but it’s a completely inappropriate piece of humor. Even the soundtrack emphasizes the jokey nature of the exchange, making this even more grating.

If you took out the five seconds devoted to Nixon’s reaction to Canton’s sexuality, you would have a very, very strong episode; I would put up with the brief return to the Pond Relationship Drama in exchange for all of the fascinating stuff that happens to them here. There’s just enough that annoys me, though, that I don’t love the episode as much as its stellar plot warrants. In a way, this makes this two-parter a fitting opener to the regular season, as Season Six is, in general, a giant mass of brilliance that wanders off into total stupidity at intervals. Overall, this two-parter is a mostly glorious, intermittently frustrating opening to a season that is full of both wonderful and terrible things. B+

The Curse of the Black Spot: It’s a shame that this utterly boring episode happens here, in what is otherwise a terrific string of episodes. A few questionable things in “Day of the Moon” aside, the string of eight episodes that starts with “Vincent and the Doctor” and ends with “The Doctor’s Wife” is full of glory—except for this episode, which manages to make pirates dull. I do like the setting for the episode, which is what keeps it out of my bottom five episodes of the reboot—watching the characters run around on a pirate ship is entertaining enough to lift the episode above the slog of unimaginative plotting that otherwise characterizes this story. Still, for an episode that has the automatic fun of featuring pirates on a pirate ship, this is a huge disappointment.

There are some decent moments here; the beginning of the episode, in which pirates react with terror to extremely minor injuries, is relatively intriguing, and Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey does a good job as the lead pirate suddenly forced to take responsibility for the son he abandoned. The whole Siren story is just so inane, though, that the poignancy of the father/son narrative gets completely overshadowed. The Doctor interprets events incorrectly over and over again, which is an approach that appears to good effect in a number of other stories but is mostly just annoying here. The usually delightful Ponds are reduced to yet another silly love triangle, this time with the mysterious Siren: Rory spends a significant amount of time being spellbound by her beauty, leading to extremely tiresome jealousy on Amy’s part. The Siren herself is sort of a fragmented version of the sexy nurse cliché; she spends part of the episode nurturing sick and injured pirates, and the rest of it trying to sensually lure men to their deaths, or at least so it seems. Nothing makes me quite as angry as Ursula the paving slab in “Love and Monsters,” but this episode probably spends a larger amount of time on sexist nonsense than any other in the reboot.

There are some nice pieces of continuity here with the rest of the season; I like that a season in which magic eye patches are a major plot point has a pirate episode in it, and the episode provides one of several installments in the season’s thematic focus on the inseparability of parents and their children. Otherwise, though, this is an awfully pointless episode. C-

#doctor who #reviews #season 6 #matt smith #karen gillan #arthur darvill #steven moffat #eleventh doctor #amy pond #rory williams #female doctor

0 notes

ladala99 · 5 years

Text

Spyro Reignited Countdown: Attack of the Rhynocs

Back on the GBA, we get the first Spyro game with a semi-continuous world: Attack of the Rhynocs.

And we’re back to games that give me nostalgia. It’s the first Spyro game I beat all by myself, and ranks up there with the Insomniac trilogy for Spyro games I’ve beaten the most times.

Gameplay

Digital Eclipse had a formula that worked, and kept with it. Camera no longer gives me motion sickness like it did in Season of Flame, and everything else is as solid as ever.

It’s not quite as varied as Season of Flame, though, as minigame portals are no longer a thing and very few minigames exist. But what’s there works very well.

Additional Playable Characters

As is tradition with Digital Eclipse games, we get two additional game modes. This time, it comes as Sgt. Byrd and Agent 9 missions.

Sgt. Byrd is actually the one I like less. It’s in 2D, but the main issue is how hard you have to mash the A button to fly, because you need to press it to flap Byrd’s wings, every time he flaps his wings. And when you’re rescuing the penguins, you don’t get as much air when you flap, making you flap more often the more penguins you rescue at once.

Honestly though, aside from thumb fatigue, I really enjoy these levels. You go around the map, shooting enemies and bringing trapped penguins back to base. And the music is by far the catchiest song in the game, and I might even daresay the entire franchise.

Agent 9... I don’t hate. This time it’s stealth missions, and honestly that’s how I prefer to play games with a ranged attack: shooting opponents before they see you. It’s still 2D and plays similarly to his parts in Season of Flame, but it’s all about not being seen rather than shooting first. You get a vacuum gun that replaces the enemies with decoys, and you have a grappling hook to swing over gaps above enemy heads. There’s various pieces of cover to hide under from cameras. While I still prefer Spyro’s gameplay, this is the only instance of Agent 9 in the series where I enjoy his levels.

Collectables

Are really all over the place in this game.

So we have Gems as always. They’re collected in the same way as always, but aren’t needed for progress if I recall correctly. Still, if you 100% the game, you will end up having 0 Gems. Moneybags sells you cosmetics and his area’s Heart, charging you so much overall that you will have nothing at the end. And you have to literally rob him to get that much.

The main collectable this time is Hearts. But unlike previous games, these collectables aren’t everywhere, nor like Talismans are they easy to get. No, aside from some freebies from bosses and the one Moneybags sells you, Hearts come from NPCs after you collect all of their lost items. These lost items are scattered around each world, some in easy-to-reach areas, others in much more difficult areas. Most of these collections have at least one piece hidden in a chest, which you need two key pieces to open, both rewarded for completing both a Sgt. Byrd and an Agent 9 Mission.

You are almost guaranteed to end the game with just the freebies. There is so much backtracking in this game. Because you’ll go through the levels in order, right? You’ll get the keys as you come to them. You won’t be completing any keys until halfway through the game, and there’s some chests in early areas that require keys that have pieces in literally the last area of the game. So you’ll make a chest sweep after you get all of the keys. And then, finally, you’ll go through and give the items to each NPC in exchange of the Heart.

Powerups

There are no temporary powerups in this game.

Breath Abilities

And here we solidify the permanence of breath abilities.

You start the game with Fire and a weak Wind ability. Fire is as it always has been, and Wind allows you to flap your wings to push some wind forward. Useless in combat, but essential for pushing yourself across water on various types of boats.

As you go on, you gain Ice Breath (which acts as it has in previous games), and upgrade your three abilities: as you hold down the breath button, you charge it up. Once it’s fully charged, you can release it for a different effect.

Fire breath upgrades to shoot a fireball far forward. You can use it to hit faraway targets and enemies.

Ice Breath upgrades to freeze certain patches of water so you can walk on them. Why does some water work and not others? There’s really no reason.

Wind upgrades to create a tornado with a lightning storm cloud on top. It’s used in specific boss battles, but otherwise is too unwieldy to use in normal combat.

Digital Eclipse did well to keep each breath ability unique and for all of them to have their uses. I’d say this is the best use of Breath Abilities in the Classic series.

Bosses

They’re unique and okay. Each is fought a different way, and they often involve using the environment and/or your upgraded breath abilities to your advantage. These bosses are definitely far superior to the ones in previous games.

Levels

My brain refuses to accept that this game has levels in the same way other Spyro games do, but whatever I think, it does. It’s just that there isn’t a clear exit for any level other than its entrance, and without something like Talismans, there’s not a clear endpoint to any particular level. Yeah, you get a new power every one, but you get that power pretty early in a lot of them. If you wanted to speedrun, it’d be easy to basically enter, get the ability, exit, and you’d have hardly touched what there is to do in the level.

But, the theming is well-done, and a lot of the levels are unique and have interesting mechanics. I can’t fault them for doing what they try to do. It just feels weird.

Story

The Professor shows Spyro his new invention, a telescope that peeks into Ripto’s world. He also shows Spyro another new invention: a robotic butler named Butler.

Butler malfunctions, and when Spyro shorts him out to deactivate him, the portal to Ripto’s world opens. Ripto comes in, bringing his Rhynocs (since they’re definitely his at this point), and they go about wreaking havoc. Now, Spyro needs to go throughout the realms and get Hearts, a power supply that will seal the portal again, as well as, of course, stopping Ripto.

Overall this plot brings up a lot of questions (why is Ripto living in the Rhynoc world? Why is he even still alive? What purpose is there to spying on him? And that’s not even getting into the returning NPCs) and contributes to the weird feeling this game has.

For the first time, it doesn’t feel Spyro-y. And I don’t know how much of it’s the plot and how much of it’s the level design.

Unique in the Series?

Yeah. There’s certain abilities Spyro gets that are never seen again (Wind powers, glowing in dark areas, the ability to teleport but only to a specific area, limitless access to powered-up attacks).

Butler only appears in this game, and all of his related mechanics.

It’s the only Spyro game with a dedicated tutorial level.

It’s the only game Moneybags squeezes every last Gem out of you and doesn’t give any back.

It’s the only Spyro game with a stealth section.

It’s the only Spyro game that scatters a bunch of unrelated items everywhere, requiring a lot of backtracking to gain the main collectables.

It characterizes everyone in a way unique to the series, like Bianca being a magician, Zoe being a librarian, and Ripto being a raging toddler.

It’s just so different that it hardly feels like the same series, even compared to its Season predecessors.

Is this a bad thing? Not at all. Digital Eclipse finally stopped trying to recreate the Insomniac games and put their own spin on the franchise. It just didn’t stick.

Conclusion

I still love this game. It’s still one of my favorites, and is definitely my favorite GBA Spyro game.

But you can’t go into it expecting more of what previous Spyro games were like. And this is going to be the new trend of the series.

Perhaps it was Enter the Dragonflies’ failure that caused Universal to allow studios to make these changes. Perhaps it was that it no longer was Universal but Vivendi in charge. Whatever the case, from this point forward, Spyro was never the same again.

And it all started with a humble GBA game experimenting with characterization and gameplay. A Hero’s Tail didn’t come from nowhere.

#spyro #attack of the rhynocs #video game review #spyro reignited

1 note · View note

thedramafilesblog-blog · 7 years

Text

It has been a year since Jubiemon and I decided to start The Drama Files! Time has flown by so fast! So much so that it feels like just yesterday we were getting all set up for this blog. We thought about what we wanted to do for a special “One Year Anniversary Post” and we decided to write about our Kdrama blogging journey. It has been quite an experience and some strange things have happened to us in this virtual reality since starting this blog ranging from getting hated on on Twitter for our “unpopular” opinions to discovering that fangirls come in all kind of shapes and sizes and can be found in the unlikeliest of places! So, we decided to answer some questions about what this year of blogging has been like for us.

Actual footage of Jubiemon and RedRosette making plans

Why did we start this blog?

RedRosette J: This is such a funny question to me. This blog was born out of Jubiemon and I’s constant bitching and complaining about how awful Scarlet Heart Ryeo was. We found ourselves with so many thoughts and opinions about it that we felt maybe others would share and decided to start a “drama review blog”. We really wanted it to be a unique blog where we didn’t filter our opinions and thoughts to please the masses. We wanted it to be real and uncensored opinions about dramas by real people. We decided on a “law-themed” reviewing system because we are law students and live and breathe these structures everyday. It was definitely more fun to apply these techniques that we were learning in school to reviewing dramas than it was to doing actual school work!

Jubiemon J: I think we were sitting in a boring class as well when we were complaining about Scarlet Heart Ryeo. Then we suddenly went, “Why don’t we blog about this but make it a bit more interesting by taking it through a legal writing point of view?” Obviously, we comforted ourselves by saying that we were practicing our writing. Hahaha. Ironically, I think it did push us to be more concise and to focus on areas where we were lacking. Later, we wanted to point out some issues in legal dramas so people aren’t misinformed. Sadly, there haven’t been any interesting legal dramas going on nowadays. We’re still waiting for the next hit legal drama!

Us thinking about blogging like…

What expectations did we have about blogging?

RedRosette J: I have blogged sporadically before so I wasn’t a complete newbie to blogging but I did have certain expectations of what blogging would be like. I thought it would be quick and take up little time. I mean how hard is it to type stuff up on a page and hit publish right? I also thought that doing screenshots of dramas takes little to no time and that I would have tons of time left. All in all, in my head, blogging seemed like an afterthought rather than an actual thing that you do as a hobby.

Jubiemon J: I had a few blogs here and there; however, I was never committed to any of them. I got bored of them very easily and found that other parts of my life took over. Oddly, this blog has kept going. I think it’s because RedRosette is there too so it’s easier when there’s two of us! Two = better than one!

I don’t think I’ve ever had expectations for any of the projects that I’ve been through. I’ve always been the sort to jump into it and do things!

RedRosette J: I agree with Jubiemon. Doing this blog together really makes a difference!

Us thinking that blogging would be a piece of cake

What was the reality of blogging like?

RedRosette J: The reality of blogging is so different from my expectations of what blogging is actually like. I spent an obscene amount of time take screenshots while watching dramas. Sometimes I’d end up spending about 2 hours on a 45 minute drama! It took even longer to edit the screenshots. I was not expecting that. I was also not expecting to spend so much time writing. Although we have been a bit slow with posts in the past few months, mostly because a) Jubiemon and I had real life commitments and b) the dramas have been such crap and not worth writing about, at the beginning of the blog, getting used to writing all the time took a really long time. I was spending most of my downtime during school writing for The Drama Files. It became my hobby and turned into something totally fun to do when I wasn’t worrying about school!

Us trying to balance school and blogging like…

Jubiemon J: The reality of blogging . . . is a lot more hard work and dedication than I thought like RedRosette mentioned.

It’s funny. I never time my posts, probably because I’d freak out on how long it takes me to complete a post. I think, generally, it takes a good one to three hours to pump out a post; this doesn’t include taking screenshots and watching the clip. If RedRosette is there to help out with the post, then the time gets reduced. If the post has a lot of deep/philosophical concepts, then sometimes I might dedicate at least half a day to three days to the post (i.e. the Boku no Unmei no Hito desu posts and the BTS posts).

I think the toughest posts I’ve made have been related to BTS’s “Blood, Sweat & Tears” Japanese MV because I had to not only read “Demian” and scholarly articles about the concepts within “Demian“, but also think about how all the past BTS MVs relate to “Blood, Sweat & Tears”. I even had a little diagram I made to figure out what each character represented.

What I didn’t expect was how I worked, in terms of blogging. I end up being the sort that would have to sit down and plough through everything in one go without any breaks. If I take a break, then I lose my train of thought and then I get lazy and don’t feel like writing.

Us when we finish reviewing a drama

Why did we decide to branch out to reviewing Kpop?

RedRosette J: If you guys follow us you will know that the only Kpop we review is related to BTS. I think its because a) we (and by that I mostly mean Jubiemon ;)) are huge fans and b) BTS has content in their music that is most of the time not shallow, pretty philosophical and engages with issues that impact young adults. On an intellectual level, BTS provides excellent blogging fodder!

Jubiemon J: The other backstory was that for the “Spring Day” post (our first BTS review), RedRosette and I both felt that this song was about reminiscing a friend who had disappeared/committed suicide, but then we didn’t see any theories about this. RedRosette suggested that I could start a post, so I did. That post surprisingly . . . led to far more views than I expected and I had a lot of fun analyzing the song and the MV.

Yes, we’re both fans of BTS because of their music, talent, and personalities. I love anything that makes my brain work and like RedRosette mentioned, BTS’ music and MVs intellectually stimulate us.

What impact has Kdrama blogging had on our real lives?

RedRosette J: I think for me, it became an outlet to share my thoughts about the dramas that I was watching and that I really enjoyed. My close friends (with the exception of Jubiemon) and family do not watch dramas, so for me, it was a nice way to talk about what I enjoyed with others who like dramas as well. It is also very nice to have a hobby that is completely unrelated to the things you do in real life in most ways LOL!

Jubiemon J: I grew up in a household where I watched dramas as a hobby. It’d be the reward my mom would let me have after I finished homework. I started off watching mostly J-dramas and Chinese dramas. Later, I started watching K-dramas too. However, we never really talked about the dramas in detail, so blogging became a good outlet!

Us, pre-Drama Files

Has blogging changed our perception of Kdramas?

RedRosette J: I think it has. After starting the blog, I realized that I was looking for themes and content in dramas more than I had before. I was also constantly looking for cute shots that I could capture for screenshots for the blog, even if we weren’t reviewing the drama LOL! In the grand scheme of things, my thoughts about Kdramas haven’t really changed though. I still love makjang dramas even though they are absolute trash and I could rip them to shreds in a blog post. I do however feel often that I don’t want to review a drama that I enjoy watching because I find that if I had to review it, I’d end up taking it apart and nit-picking and end up not liking it as much. So in that sense, dramas changed for me.

Jubiemon J: I think nowadays, Redrosette and I will always think . . . is this new drama going to be something that we’d review? Like Redrosette, I’d always think more about themes and symbols now.

Us, trying to think of themes 10 seconds into a drama

Why did we decide to branch out to J-dramas?

Jubiemon J: I was watching Boku no Unmei no Hito desu and I remembered telling RedRosette how great this drama was and how I’d love to review it. RedRosette encouraged me to do a review and I just went all out. This was also the first time I did a drama series review by myself, so I realized how much dedication and time RedRosette has put into screen shotting. (She usually takes care of screenshots when the two of us review and generally, I’m the one that starts the post and adds the tags.)

What drama did you enjoy reviewing?

Jubiemon J: I really, really enjoyed reviewing Boku Unmei no Hito desu, even when the ending was kind of disappointing. The drama had a lot of interesting symbols and themes, which I loved analyzing.

RedRosette J: I really enjoyed reviewing The K2. Mostly because it was an absolute shit show (ramen dancing, underground super computers and incessant running) and awesomely fun to review. It was also the first drama that I reviewed on my own so it was fun to learn about blogging through this drama.

Sidenote: I also really enjoyed reviewing Shopping King Louie because I loved how every 10 seconds was something super cute. I remember constantly whining to Jubiemon about how I had way too many screenshots for this drama LOL!

What do we hope to do in the future on the Drama Files?

RedRosette J: We want to keep reviewing dramas and BTS Kpop and we hope that people will continue to read out mish-mashed thoughts on it. Although time has become an issue this year, we hope to review as many dramas as we can in our available time. Huge thanks to everyone who has been following us and reading our posts too! ❤

Jubiemon J: I’m hoping to review a few more J-dramas if I find one that really captures my attention. I’ve been thinking about doing movie reviews as well, but not sure when that’ll happen. Of course, I will continue on reviewing the BTS MVs and albums!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DRAMA FILES!

THE DRAMA FILES CELEBRATES ONE YEAR! It has been a year since Jubiemon and I decided to start The Drama Files! Time has flown by so fast!

0 notes

typologycentral · 7 years

Text

[ENTP] Am I an ENxP or an ESxP?

Nearly a year ago, I posted a topic where I asked whether I was an ENTP or an ENFP. Lately, I've been pretty unsure of my type in general, but several posts in the thread made me ponder something completely different. While most posters on the board seemed to agree that I was likely an ENTP, a couple thought I was some sort of ESxP type. I'll give several behavioral examples of mine and you can try figure out whether I'm an ENxP or an ESxP? EXAMPLES: * I love pondering new possibilities for things. For example, if I'm reading a story, I almost always will think something like: "I really like this story, but I wonder what would happen if the main character did this instead of that?", and will devise entirely new fanfictions based on my alterations to the story. I usually discuss these alterations with people to receive feedback. * I tend to find symbolism and connections in things that are seemingly unrelated. For example, I was watching a movie recently that took place in modern times about a boy exploiting another boy's suicide. I connected the modern day story with that of Jesus Christ, Superstar, which takes places in ancient times, by connecting several related, but not at all obvious points. (The christ-like figures have long hair, someone creates a cult around them that influences people, yadda, yadda). Another example would be how I analyzed how I analyzed Walter White's facial hair in Breaking Bad and how his different hair/facial hair styles represented his current moral alignment. (Head hair meaning concealment of evil, most of his face being exposed means he's honest, the mustache means moral ambiguity, when he loses his head hair, his evil begins to be exposed, his growing goattee means he's concealing his intentions far more, growing the beard in combination with regaining hair means evil tapers down while he's manipulative to accomplish heroic goals.) * I panic whenever there's even a slight possibility of disaster occurring. As such, I make it my priority to create a hundred and one different backup plans to ensure that I'm prepared for the future when it comes. I don't like to be unprepared and exposed to potential danger. * I find living in the moment reckless and dangerous. For example, while I like fast cars and motorcycles, I tend to be very measured in how I use them, always wearing a seat belt/helmet and only going very fast if not many, if any, cars are on the road, always using turning signals, always using a GPS, etc. * I love wordplay and the idiosyncrasies of language and the many ways that the English language can be manipulated. I love puns and am able to make seemingly unrelated connections in language. I also love metaphors and make them frequently when trying to make a point. ("Of course you don't look as fat anymore! You were a whale and now you're a walrus! Walruses are smaller than whales! You'd be the physical equivalent to Forrest Gump looking smarter than a brain-dead down syndrome affected baby!") * I love disproving commonly held beliefs, particularly when my theory turns out to be the truth. For example, I'll often retype characters who are associated with a particular type using evidence for the new typing that is stronger than the dogmatic beliefs. I successfully convinced people that Squidward was an ESFP, not an INTJ and felt smug because I disproved a common myth. * I have horrific attention to detail. When I was younger, I'd often get questions wrong on tests because I'd quickly read over the question without noticing the easy to miss details. One time when I was 5, I cut my leg and didn't realize I was profusely bleeding until 2 minutes later, because I was busy talking about one of my ideas. I also find detail to be irrelevant and useless if the end goal is not dependent on it. * I love debating with others, particularly to prove I am right. I also love the notion of challenging commonly held beliefs. * I love discussing religion, politics, ideologies and philosophies and frequently ask questions related to them. As a kid, I would question why there had to be opposite sex bathrooms and questioned authority if it made no discernible sense. * I frequently get gut feelings that something will happen in the future and they almost always turn out to be correct. * I don't like personal conflict and while I hate violating values of my own, I also hate conflict and will reluctantly give in when I know it will preserve the peace. * I hate being forced to conform for the sake of it. * While I constantly generate new ideas, I rarely ever finish them. * While I enjoy physical activity to some degree, I like it more if it's creative, eccentric or based around a concept. I love capture the flag because it reminds me of prison break movies. * Regarding my inattention to detail, I'm a horrible physical artist. However, I'm an amazing songwriter and like to write songs that have a point behind them. Every single song I write represents a larger idea, whether it's satirical or sincere. * I often analyze things on a deeper level. For example, I analyzed the song "Come As You Are" as being representative of society's hypocritical mixed messages of being yourself colliding with the inherent conformism in humans, even though there was no hint about this in the song. * I'm great at thinking of new ideas no one could have ever thought of. For example, I had to hold open a door for many hours one time and I used my sweater to hold the door open by tying it to the fence. * While I enjoy having deep conversations with people about philosophy, politics, religion and hypothetical ideas, I get REALLY bored with small talk and find it to be idiotic and pointless. However, after spending a lot of time with people discussing interesting things, I need some alone time because I get overwhelmed if I'm with others for too long. * I only have a small circle of close friends, because I find it exhausting to spend too much time with too many people. * I have nostalgia for certain things from my past, but only if they were actually good. For example, I love vintage cars and often restore them. However, I also appreciate changes of any kind, because I acknowledge that nostalgia is impossible if the past remains the same. I constantly ponder the notion of nostalgia and whether it is necessary. What do you guys think? http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91128&goto=newpost&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

#The NT Rationale (ENTP #INTP #ENTJ #INTJ)

0 notes