#I might also be mixing up swashbuckler stuff

[impossible-rat-babies]

meaningless complaint, but sometimes stuff in bg3 is utterly asinine in how it plays. to me

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 11/19/2024

no silly little witticism here this week! just heartfelt thanks for helping me pay my rent this month :)

listening

absolutely wild pick from last week's spotify weekly recommenced, Things Will Fall Apart by Louis Cole feat the Metropole Orkest and conductor Jules Buckley. it's been on loop all week for me and im a little sad it won't pop up in my spotify wrapped

when you make a dance pop song with a full orchestra backing, it has a really interesting effect somewhere between Golden Age of Hollywood swashbuckling film score and marching band?

Yes, understood Things will fall apart just likе they should This little shred was good Don't think it through Things will fall apart, they always do At least, something's always true

the syllables are so choppy they don’t even register to me as English at first, i was fully willing to believe this was German for the first couple lines. like @dying-suffering-french-stalkers, i have a deep fondness for works about putting an era to bed. or works focused on the sunsets of things, or one of the last living practitioners of an art. putting the chairs up on the table, sweeping the floors, and turning the lights out and locking the door behind you. this song has that sort of quiet post-wake-party remembrance.

however once you think the song has ended but it keeps going, you can turn it off. you don’t really need that extra minute and a half of strings and light vocalizations.

Lately, Louis Cole has been doing live shows with the Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest and conductor Jules Buckley. Cole recorded nothing with the ensemble. In a press release, he says, “Sometimes, when I’m mixing my own solo stuff, I’ll feel like a song needs a little magical dust. But mixing an entire orchestra and your own rhythm section, there’s so much human energy! You don’t have to add any magic. It was there the whole time.”

i don’t hear many pop songs this millennium with a full orchestral backing. perhaps i need to look harder. unfortunately spotify took this extreme interest in this song as a newfound extreme interest in electroswing, which is really not what this song is. i hope this artist does more albums like this so they can wear grooves in my brain

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reading

very hard to focus on anything book length this week. some depressing local news (my local paper's links do Not want to preview nicely here, which is annoying:

At a city council meeting in October, district Vice President Dan Joyce told council members that the management district was not attempting to "criminalize homelessness." The city’s civility ordinance bans people from sitting, lying down or placing personal items or bedding on sidewalks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

cool piece from our pals at 404 Media. i am So fascinated by crime infrastructure

Based on interviews with malware developers, hackers who use the stolen credentials, and a review of manuals that tell new recruits how to spread the malware, 404 Media has mapped out this industry. Its end result is that a download of an innocent-looking piece of software by a single person can lead to a data breach at a multibillion-dollar company, putting Google and other tech giants in an ever-escalating cat-and-mouse game with the malware developers to keep people and companies safe.

(via longreads) my interest in how and why systems fail extends to invasive species management. plus i used to live in florida just above the everglades and these fuckers (the snakes) were everywhere

[I]magine thousands upon thousands of pythons, their slow digestion transforming each corpse into python muscle and fat. Unaided, Florida’s native wildlife doesn’t stand a chance. “That’s what I think about with every python I catch,” Kalil says. “What it ate to get this big, and the lives I’m saving by removing it.” Biologists are taking a multipronged approach to the issue. They have experimented with enlisting dogs to sniff out both pythons and nests—a technique that has proved difficult in such hot weather and inhospitable landscapes. Ongoing projects use telemetry to track pythons to find “associate snakes.” Researchers use drones, go out in airboats, or even take to helicopters to locate their subjects in the interiors of the Everglades. Always, agencies and individuals are looking for the next best methods. “But for now, the python contractor program is the most successful management effort in the history of the issue,” Kirkland says. “We’re capturing more and more—something that is indicative of the python population out there and indicative of us getting better at what we do.”

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watching

continuing noirvember, watched hitchcock's Notorious to see if i still dislike hitchcock. the answer is yes. there are bond girls and there are hitchcock girls, and not that bond girls are paragons of female agency in film, but hitchcock girls are mostly fluttering little pathetic things. a scrap of agency they showed in the beginning of the film becomes a running joke and something their noses are rubbed in for the rest of the film. not for me!

patrick mcgoohan is leading me into some real dad-ass movies. Ice Station Zebra (1968, dir. Sturges) is a real you're stuck at home sick with your dad and it's on TV for the whole afternoon kind of movie. they truly do not make two and a half cold war submarine espionage films in super panavision with an overture, intermission, and interact music any more. i get why howard hughes was really obsessed with this one. it is a suspense film, but full of people competently going about their business, which i find oddly comforting.

unfortunately i do not feel this really needed to be two and a half hours long. the loving closeups of sub interiors and instrumentation really did keep me amused, though. despite how cluttered every shot is with actors, there is tremendous clarity of purpose and motion with the camera movement. just a really technically brilliant film.

how similar the russian and american control rooms and instrumentation were made me chortle. ties nicely into a little diatribe mcgoohan goes on much later in the film, "The Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists." funny and darkly true! every allied nation had some sort of Operation Paperclip going on! mcgoohan is the focus of every scene he's in, as a spy who is really hanging on by the last remaining shreds of his fingernails.

i had a good time with it, but one of many cold war suspense films im glad exist in the world but don't necessarily need to see again. it might join Escape from New York as a film i put on when im very sick though.

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playing

this pc needs some sort of replacement something, bc it has a really persistent overheating problem. it only tolerates powerwasher simulator on the lowest possible settings and genshin impact on basically mobile settings. it does not even want to run new vegas. i popped my head out of goodsprings to look out over the desert at the Strip and it said no thank you! too many polygons! naptime!

speaking of genshin, major update this week and new character i will be pulling for. she has a sister who died in the last patch, which i do Not care for as someone with a beloved little sister, but her moveset and skills are unique so far in the game. i feel like her skills are little too complicated for me to fully take advantage of with my "hit enemy very hard until he is dead" playstyle but she has a limited flight ability that will genuinely be very useful for exploration.

if i do not get her when i hit pity on the banner i won't bother pulling another nine times or whatever, bc the next patch has a character i really desperately want and i am saving for her

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making

the local crew is all getting art this year, bc i already have bristol board and a selection of small frames and zero budget. people who have pets are So easy to get gifts for bc u can simply get them stuff for their pet or that looks like their pet. way less gray cat than black cat merch in the world tho

aiming to send out international holiday cards by the end of the week, and canadian cards by american thanksgiving. the rest of you they'll get there when they get there ok

[lightflame]

Tagged by @bagadew (Also tagging in @waermeflasche because you tagged me weeks ago and I didn't get back to you)

Last song I listened to: Soap by The Oh Hellos. I burn CDs and listen to them in my car. (The first few I tried to give themes and titles, and select the perfect song orders, but ended up kind of bad and the other was cursed and wouldn't play even though I remade it three times, so I just switched to throwing a ton of songs together on "Random Mixes" and enjoying.) I was listening to my very first random mix on the drive home from work and this one came up. It's a pretty snazzy song. I think Theseus and Hello, My Old Heart are my favourites from the band.

Last book I read: Can I do a couple? I just recently finished Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell. It's the first book of Court of Shadows, the sequel series to his Greatcoats series. Greatcoats is one of my favourite series, filled with swashbuckling action, clever humour, and an absolutely miserable protagonist, Falcio val Mond, who always manages to get back up and keep going anyway. I read everything de Castell writes, and after a string of books with severe pacing problems (check out The Malevolent Seven for a book that doesn't have a second act) and other problems (I have a hard time seeing any book topping Crucible of Chaos as the worst book I've read this year), he finally seems to be back. The book didn't pack quite the emotional punch of some of his other books, but it definitely made me want to jump up and cheer for the heroes at the end.

The other book I just finished is The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. I liked her Winternight Trilogy (look it up and be prepared for some absolutely gorgeous covers, with prose to match), so I was excited to see something new from her. This book was about World War I, with some fantasy elements used for magic realism. (Portraying a soldier's struggle with addiction and PTSD through the lens of him losing his soul to the devil was a brilliant idea.) I most subsist on a steady diet of fantasy books, but this one had me hungering to read a few more historical books. I might have to pick up some books about the Halifax Explosion.

Last film I watched: I haven't watched much on my own for a while, but my friends do a movie night every Sunday. The last two times I tuned in, we watched Jesus Christ Superstar and Pokemon 3: Spell of the Unown. They were both fairly cute movies. I liked Judas's actor.

Last TV series I watched: I've been making my way through The Office for the first time. I'm on Season 3 and this happened to me, actually. There was some stuff I was like, "Wow, that was funny. I should tell my coworkers about it," but then I realized that I can't be the guy who tells his coworkers about this funny new show called The Office.

Last video game I played: If visual novels count, Umineko. I've been working my way through it slowly for about five and a half years and I'm finally closing in on the end. It's peak fiction and the greatest love story of the twentieth century. It's also funny I picked a game this insanely long for my first visual novel. Other than visual novels, I just finished Pokemon Legends: Arceus, after putting in 104 hours this year. Completing the Dex is my favourite part of any Pokemon game, so having it be more involved and include a big checklist made the game basically crack for me. I've also been casually playing some Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) with my brother. Every time we play it, I'm always amazed by how good it is and how much content it has. I want to take command posts forever.

Last thing I googled: "Dandadan Aira". I just started the manga the other day and I like her best, so I wanted to double check her full name, I think? Other than that I'm mostly looking up when books are available at my local stores. I've been religiously checking when The Book that Broke the World will be available and I'm not even sure if I'm buying it.

Last thing I ate: A few snacks from my snack drawer. I also had a Quaker yogurt bar at work. I bought a big box of them last year, but I had to throw them out because of the Salmonella. (Chewed through a lot of them before that came out, though, including eating three on an airplane.)

Amount of sleep: Supposedly seven hours, since I went to bed right after finishing The Warm Hands of Ghosts last night. The only problem is that if I get to bed at a good time, I sleep fitfully, so I'm either sleeping poorly or sleeping well, but not getting anywhere near enough sleep.

Currently reading: I started Empire of Silence, the first book of The Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio, at work today. I've had the first three books sitting on my shelf for a year or two and I finally got around to starting it. (I'd resolved to do both this series and Kushiel's Legacy this year, after having both for so long, and I got that one done at the start.) I'm not very far in, but I enjoy the writing style a lot, even if a lot of the worldbuilding is obviously cribbed from Dune. (Whoa, look, mentats.) I've heard it picks up a lot in the second book, so I'm excited for what's in store for me.

Passing this on, I'll tag @somerunner @lyssq @soulsinshadow @lunawithsocks and @dancerladyaqua. (They also have currently watching and sweet, salty, or savoury as questions, which I didn't do.)

[dailycharacteroption]

Okayo Corsair (Swashbuckler Archetype)

Have you ever sat down and watched martial arts movies? Not just the ones that get big advertisements in the west, but even a cursory deep dive into them? That shit get zany as heck, maybe not Bollywood levels, but still pretty wacky stuff, and it’s awesome.

We’re talking things like a young inventor coming home to his village to bring the wonders of progress but realizing how estranged he’s become to his own culture and how ruthless his new big-city ‘friends’ are, as well as comedy stories about an apartment complex where everyone is a secret martial artist, including the crabby landlady. There’s so much mixing and matching of genres and setpieces and some truly stellar fight choreography.

I bring all this up because today’s subject smacks a little bit of such things, given we’re talking about swashbuckling pirates from a nation in Tian Xia that pick up on some of the martial arts of the continent and even emulate some of their mystic arts.

Now, there’s a decent amount of evidence here and there that the ki used by monks and ninjas and the grit/panache used by gunslingers and swashbucklers are different applications of the same force, and nowhere is that more expressed than in these corsairs, in an archetype that is, stripped of setting context, a hybridization of swashbuckler and monk.

In-context, the style arose among pirates of the Dragon Empires, and has since spread as far as that Mecca of piracy in the Inner Sea Region known as the Shackles.

The result is a swashbuckler, whom may or may not actually sail at your discretion, that has some neat monk tricks in their arsenal, so let’s have a look!

Unsurprisingly, these swashbucklers demonstrate incredible finesse when wielding monk weapons, and their charisma can serve for those combat feats with wisdom requirements in addition to those that require intellect.

They can also use their panache for some very monk-like deeds, starting with the ability to use ki to enhance their attack speed, movement speed, or reaction speed.

They also gain other staples like using walls to slow their fall, using panache to leap high, and even do a short-range teleport, though that last one is a bit costly.

Finally, they also train to be able to utilize fighter and monk techniques with their combat training.

This archetype trades out some of your deeds and alters your key abilities so they work with monk feats and the like, but overall you’re still going to be playing them the way you would any swashbuckler, though you don’t get to do things like purposefully miss to get a feint next turn and the like. As such, I would highly suggest looking up the feats that require monk levels as a prerequisite and see how you can blend the two.

It is interesting to see more acknowledgement of the connection between ki, grit, and panache, but this also begs the question about how characters in the setting react to it. How to monasteries and martial arts academies feel about some pirates stealing their styles and better yet, manifesting expressions of ki without any formal training or discipline. I’d imagine that a decent percentage aren’t too happy about it, could be very useful for conflict between characters and in the story itself.

While researching at a local library, the party stumbles upon an account from a dashing and spiritually-empowered pirate captain that stumbled upon a strange island, where they found ruins tied to some lost civilization of insectile people. However, they also found it rife with a monstrous fungus that reanimated the giant insects of the island as spore zombies. Recognizing the danger, they quickly fled, and destroyed anything which might have harbored the spores. However, with the right protection, perhaps another group could learn more of this lost civilization?

Where other peoples boast great power, humanity often has to make do with innovation and creativity. Such is the case with the sailors and pirates of the Singing Sea. Many cultures of aquatic peoples jockey for control of those waters, and many see those sailing on the surface as useful sources of supplies or thralls. However, humanity adapts, and many such sailors learn Sea Dragon’s Blade, a style of martial arts adapted from the dragon style founded inland to include weapons and the daring acrobatics of ship combat.

Scuttlebutt in the port town taverns says that there is a new pirate crew running the nearby waters. Very little is known about the captain of this vessel, but they say he leaps and runs as if striding on air and wields a curious weapon resembling a heavy spherical weight on the end of a rope. If nothing else, they seem to be quite competent as a sailor as well as a combatant.

[semi-imaginary-place]

red mage: so basically arya should be a thaumaturge or black mage. she's really really good at the destructive magic and terrible at the restorative magics. why find equilibrium when you can min max and be a nuke.

have you heard of ... blue? or perhaps... green?

I really like x'rhun, great character

given x'rhun's history in the ala mhigo im disappointed the 60-70 storyline isn't going there, ah well time to see what idyllshire has in store.

I was just thinking at the end of the level 60 quest if X'ruhn is in his 40s then lambert probably is too and arya looks to be a teenager, wouldn't it be be messed up is she was his daughter or something. the only reason i didn't quite believe it is because lambert said he's been in a magical coma for many years.

fake memories? artificial humans? many possibilities.

i think its pretty interesting that despite its reputation it is not black magic that is the successor to void magic, it is red magic. and this is despite both black and void magic originating from mhach.

irony that the swashbuckling aesthetic class ends up being the demon summoning dark magic storyline.

wait that coffin is why witchdrop is haunted??

hey i happen to know a certain kitty cat that is a mhach specialist. too bad the questlines can't be interdependent.

hmm even the red mage writers get conjury and white magic mixed up

sorry arya but the 50=60 stuff was far more interesting than the 60-70 stuff

dragoon! ... orn khai just ate like 300 times his body mass in flesh

ninja: ok so we got a bunch of hingashi pretending to be from doma to smuggle a scroll out of garlemarld? I'm just waiting for karasu to be involved somehow. wait wasn't the house of sticks dude murdered like at level 20? there's karasu!

2nd? 3rd? time the game has said the doman rebellion was 1 year ago. the other time I remember off the top my head was right after doma castle when you talk to the blacksmith.

I feel so sorry for Akagi. we sent him on a goose chase to the literal opposite side of the planet.

Why is Karasu so focused on Oboro. he cares more about messing with him than literally anything else.

hey if zakuro is a mercenary we could buy out her contract.

oh that's interesting. yomei and all the shinobi we have met implied that ninja are from yanxia. but hanzo is saying that its from hingashi. then again all the shinobi we talked to were domans talking about their specific ancestral villages.

I totally do not remember who master sasuke is. and i don't think karasu is dead (again). oh master sasuke is the founder of oboro's village

whm: castrum oriens is an odd name given how it means east but is situated in the WESTERN part of the garlean empire

huh you can tell who is a padjal at birth. i remember reading in encyclopaedia eorzea or something that children only find out they're a padjal when the horn start growing in at like 10-15.

uh sylphie aren't you like 14. letting at 14 year old run the show and keep secrets from the conjurers guild while void sent are running around sounds like a recipe for disaster.

why not relocate both gatty and sanche to gridania. sanche would get better medical treatment, gatty would remain with her mother, there would be more conjurers on hand to deal with voidsent incidents, and there would be padjal on hand to tutor gatty.

the writers did this to keep sylphie's importance to the plot but this is a massive plot hole that e-sumi is having sylphie be gatty's teacher. first because as e-sumi himself said sylphie is still learning as an acolyte herself, she might have powerful instinctual magic but her learned knowledge isn't that good. second she wouldn't know white magic or padjal specific stuff. this is such a bad decision. also sylphie is still a kid has shown to be overwhelmed by the scale of this problem and having to take care of and be responsible for another kid. i guess the excuse is that it's technically the wol who's suppose to be doing the teaching but we all know that the player isn't going to be doing anything.

uh she jsut summoned a voidsent you sure she doing need more training its been like a couple months at most

[masterweaverx]

I’ve decided that the main characters of "My Next Life As A Villainess” can have D&D classes! So here we go. Big thanks to 5Etools for helping me out with this!

Katarina Claes: Kalashtar Redemption Paladin. Nobody said holy warriors had to be smart!

In all seriousness, Paladins of 5E are charisma-based “Half-casters,” which means they mix melee with magic. And it’s easy enough to reflavor a lot of D&D spells as “Oh, yeah, this character just happens to know X random thing or can talk so convincingly!” (Or the character doesn’t realize they’re doing magic, which would be so Katarina.) Plus the Redemption oath just fits so well for the girl, both thematically and mechanically. Throw on Strength-based combat skills because of years of farming and sword-training... it’s pretty obvious.

As to the race choice, the Kalashtar are a third-party Eberron race that are described as being “a fusion of humans and beings from the realm of dreams.” Which hey, what else would you call somebody who remembered their past life? And from a mechanical perspective, it would give Katarina resistance to psychic damage (she’s that dense) and automatic advantage on persuasion rolls (she can say just the right thing).

Maria Campbell: Variant Human Life Cleric. A “Well Duh!” if I ever saw one.

Clerics, the traditional healers and support characters in all of roleplaying, are wisdom-based casters in 5E. I was originally considering making Maria a Light cleric but, mechanically, Life clerics are closer to Light magic as portrayed in the series so, yeah, Life.

Variant Humans are the “Pick an ability increase and get a free feat at the start of the game” race, and Maria is sorta kinda the protagonist of the old game? Her player would probably just set herself up to fill in the gaps of the other characters anyway. So yeah.

Mary Hunt: Kaladesh Elf Samurai Fighter. Look, she can be scary, alright?

Fighters can be strength-based OR dexterity-based, and Mary would have a lot of dexterity skill from all the gardening and stuff. A lot of the Fighter perks are basically “No I’m NOT giving up!” which, yeah, fits her well. Being a Samurai not only enhances that, but it gives her perks for certain wisdom traits--Mary is not an idiot by any stretch of the imagination.

Kaladesh elves synch pretty well with this build, giving both Dexterity and Wisdom boosts, but primarily I picked this particular race for the free Druid cantrip in order to represent Mary’s water magic. Still, she would be one to choose to meditate instead of falling asleep, just to keep an eye on... things.

Sophia Ascart: Detection Mark Half-Elf Divination Wizard. She likes them books.

The class side of this was easy. Intelligence-based caster? Wizard. Love of books? Wizard. Not a physical fighter? Wizard. Had a talk with her past self? Divination wizard. What can I say, Sophia is pretty good at being a wizkid.

Race, though... oh, wow. So many options. I went with a Detection Mark Half-Elf because Sophia really, really notices things and that seems to be what that particular race was built for. Plus it’s an Eberron thing, like Katarina’s race, so that’s a past life connection! Yay!

Nicol Ascart: Storm Mark Half-Elf Swashbuckler Rogue. That smile works wonders.

Com on, how couldn’t I make Nicol ‘incapacitates a crowd with a smile’ Ascart a swashbuckler? Plus Rogues are usually known for being the skill class of 5E, doing things handling things that come up in adventures beyond punching monsters. Nicol does seem the most... level-headed of the group, so he would probably be the one to handle the little details.

As for race, I’ll admit I went with the ‘Sophia’s a half-elf so Nicol’s also a half-elf!’ route. But Storm Mark Half-Elves do come with a lot of wind-based magic, which not only fits canon but also enhances what Nicol could do as a rogue. Admittedly he would have to multiclass slightly to get at most of it, but hey, Gust is a cantrip and the other spells are there for him if he ever does.

Keith Claes: Fierna Tiefling Monster Slayer Ranger. Friendly, but dangerous.

Rangers are another half-caster class, and one with many ‘summon allies’ sort of spells. Sure, they’re technically animals instead of earth elementals, but I do subscribe to the ‘reflavor is fine!’ school of thought so Keith can have his dolls come out when he casts Conjure Animals. The Monster Slayer subclass is built around countering and containing dangerous beings... like, say, Keith himself? Oh, wow, I just picked it because it looked cool. Huh.

And why is Keith a Tiefling? In another life, he was a playboy, so of COURSE he’s going to get a charisma-boost race! A resistance to fire damage makes him perfect for, ah, interrupting a certain prince’s advances. And Fierna Tieflings get spells based around convincing people of things, like Friends and Charm Person, and there’s a certain dense girl in Keith’s life that needs a little guidance.

Geordo Stuart: Gold Standard Dragonborn Draconic Sorcerer. BURN BABY BURN!

Sorcerers are one of the charisma-based casters, with the idea that they have magic IN THEIR BLOOOOOD so they can, you know, cast without needing to do all that silly Study business. Plus they get some of their subclass stuff right off the bat, and Draconic Sorcerers get extra hitpoints every level. Geordo may not use his magic often, but it’s implied that as a royal his magic is redonkulously powerful, so this? This was basically set in stone.

And why did I make the prince a dragonborn? Why, because DRAGONS ARE AWESOME. Look, I don’t make the rules. More seriously, basic dragonborn have a charisma boost, strength boost, and a breath weapon. Admittedly this would probably make Geordo look a LOT different, but what the hey.

Alan Stuart: Silver Draconblood Dragonborn Lore Bard. He knows things so you don’t have to.

Bards are the other charisma-based casters, and a lot more support-based then sorcerers. Plus they’re good musicians, which fits Alan to a T! Lore Bards lean heavily into the ‘Jack Of All Trades’ mindset, with bonus proficiencies and extra magic secrets, because there was that competitive ‘I will best you some way!’ streak early on and that did lean into ‘I’ll learn all I can’ later in his life.

As to why he’s a draconblood dragonborn instead of a standard dragonborn? Draconbloods get an intelligence boost instead of a strength boost, and also get the trait Forceful Presence instead of Damage Resistance. He might not be able to do as much damage as his twin, but Alan is really good at getting attention and using it.

Anne Shelly: Standard Human Open Hand Monk. Somebody has to clean up after these kids!

Monks excel not just in unarmed combat, but in unarmed ‘getting places nobody thinks about’ as well as ‘keeping a cool head when everything goes nuts.’ And the Open Hand Monk doubles down on that, throwing in the ability to basically say “Stop That” whenever needed. This is perfect for Anne “My Mistress Is The Source Of All Chaos” Shelly, wouldn’t you say?

And yeah, she’s a Standard Human. In 5E Standard humans don’t get any special traits, but they do get +1 to every one of their abilities. That’s a small but significant boost to all rolls and a number of stats. Don’t underestimate Anne; she may be in the background, but she’s in the background of Madness and it takes a lot to survive that.

Rafael Walt: Fallen Aasimar Great Old One Warlock. Retired Edgelord.

Warlocks are, ah, not the easiest class to play. They’ve got a lot of special mechanics about their spells, having fewer slots but easier time restoring them. But they do also get a few free invocations, and their patrons can let them spread into different specializations. Rafael knows how to use his magic to the best he can, and... well, the Great Old One patron features just fit what he can do very well.

Aasimar have charisma boosts and darkness resistance universally, but Fallen Aasimar also come with a transformation into a terrifying shadow warrior. Look, Rafael's been through a lot, I’ll grant you. He probably deserves a break. But both thematically and mechanically, this just fits.

===

So that’s that! For now, anyway! Thoughts and opinions are always welcome.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: The Haunted Mansion

2003 was a big year for Disney, as it saw the release of a film that would kickstart a massive franchise: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Showing that pirates need not be box office poison and featuring a fun and exciting swashbuckling adventure story populated by memorable characters like Jack Sparrow and Hector Barbossa as well as awesome visual effects that hold up fairly well even today, it’s easy to say that the first Pirates of the Caribbean film proved that you really could make a truly great film out of anything, even a theme park ride. So of course Disney gave it another go with another of their most popular rides, and the result is the family-friendly horror comedy The Haunted Mansion. And… it didn’t do so well. 

The Haunted Mansion languishes in semi-obscurity these days, as it is neither genuinely great like Pirates of the Caribbean nor is it hilariously batshit like The Country Bears. It’s sort of an average film to the layperson, and nothing to write home about, but it does have its share of fans thanks to a few factors. That being said, there are also a few things holding it back from “greatness,” though honestly not overly so.

I think the biggest issue becomes readily apparent right after the opening, as it tries to establish and characterize Eddie Murphy and his family. This seems like such a weird thing to call a problem, but I think a movie like this would have benefited from simpler characters who could act as audience surrogates. And I’m not even saying to give them no depth - in fact, it would be relatively simple to fix this issue, as all that would need to be done is have everything between the credits ending and the family arriving at the titular mansion cut out. All that you’d miss is a bunch of setup that is done way better once they’re at the actual mansion anyway, some family drama that barely plays into the plot, and a reference to the Enchanted Tiki Room which, while pretty clever, doesn’t really add much beyond “Oh hey that’s a thing at Disney.”. The whole thing just feels like filler with how little of an impact it leaves. 

Thankfully, things get a lot more compelling once we get to the actual mansion. There are three major factors at play that help in this regard: the set design, the music, and the nods to the ride. The first one is easily evident as soon as they step inside; the mansion is simply gorgeous, with the sort of gothic aesthetic the ride is famous for. The music is in a similar boat, fitting the tone wonderfully and paying tribute to the famous tunes of the ride. But of course, the biggest draw here is all of the loving nods to the ride.

Some of the references are pretty obvious, such as Madame Leota being a major character, the ride through the graveyard with the cameo from the Hitchhiking Ghosts, and the busts singing “Grim Grinning Ghosts;” these references tend to just be there in the story for fans as, aside from Madame Leota, they have minimal bearing on the plot. Other references are a bit more subtle, such as the character hanging themselves in the opening credits being an allusion to a similar dark moment in the ride or the wedding dress in storage acting as a slight nods to the killer bride, who doesn’t appear since in this story, it’s the bride herself that is killed. You can definitely tell the filmmakers really love the ride a lot; really, the only thing missing is an appearance from the Hatbox Ghost.

Surprisingly, the story and characters aren’t too bad, with the backstory even being pretty dark and a little ambitious. Eddie Murphy isn’t nearly as annoying as you might think, though I will admit not all of his schtick lands; still, I can’t help but chuckle when he lampshades the obvious cliche of the butler being the killer, and he is mostly an enjoyable and fun protagonist. His kids are fine, but his wife is definitely a bit bland and feels more like a plot device due to her role in the story. On the supernatural side of things, Jennifer Tilly as Madame Leota is a delightful standout, proving once and for all Tilly is just incapable of being unenjoyable. Master Gracey is ok, though his character is mostly interesting for his role in the story, and kind of suffers the same sort of blandness the wife does outside of that… and then we have Ramsley.

Portrayed by General Zod himself (Terrence Stamp), Ramsley is the stereotypical sinister butler cranked up to eleven. You can tell that Stamp is relishing every moment of this character, delivering each and every syllable with this haunting, devilish gusto that only a great actor like Stamp could muster. And then we have his role in the story which is the “dark and ambitious” bit mentioned above. You see, it is heavily implied but not outright spelled out that Ramsley killed Gracey’s bride because she was black; it’s said he wished to avoid his master suffering a scandal, which a mixed race marriage definitely would have caused back in the time they were alive. Like I said, it’s really only implied, it’s not like Ramsley says the N-word or anything, but it’s pretty obvious what’s going on if you know your American history, particularly how some people viewed miscegenation. I’m not gonna pretend like this was revolutionary or anything, as I think it would have hit harder if they actually outright stated that Ramsley’s racism was the driving force behind his action, but it’s still a pretty bold parental bonus nonetheless.

While it definitely doesn’t measure up to the other ride-based Disney film of 2003 (and honestly, what could?), I think this is a pretty decent film in its own right. You can tell the people working on it definitely cared, between everything mentioned above and stuff like the special effects (which have aged fairly well, all things considered) and the costuming and makeup - the crypt scene in particular is fantastic and terrifying, with the zombies looking like they stumbled in from a far darker film. I certainly don’t think this film deserves to languish in obscurity, that’s for sure. If you’re already a huge Haunted Mansion junkie, I can’t recommend this enough; you’re sure to get a kick out of it for all the references if nothing else. 

This is also a pretty good movie to show kids to help ease them into the horror genre. It’s got enough creepy and unsettling stuff that it’s not totally harmless, but it has enough goofy humor to offset it a bit, and it has a lot of darker themes that make it rewarding for them to revisit when they get older. If you think Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is going to be a bit much, this is a solid starting point to act as a gateway to the horror genre. Overall it’s a fun, charming, spooky little ride, not unlike the ride it’s based on. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s as good an experience as the actual ride, but I think this film deserves a little bit more respect than it got. 

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 4: That’s all, folks.

Over already? This is a pretty thin season with not a lot of shows, so it’s not that surprising that there’s not many good ones either. Still, a weak showing. Oh well, let’s get it over with. There were a few decent ones in the last batch.

Circlet Princess

What: Dimwitted schoolgirl is good at some vaguely defined virtual fighting sport, changes school based on it, finds out relevant club has been abolished. Forecast says: 5 member plot incoming.

❌ I think it’s already clear this show isn’t very ambitious, and not very well written either. A game adaptation at its laziest.

❌❌ Man, this girl is STUPID. What the hell.

❌ The rest of the cast are less stupid (which isn’t hard), but that just means they’re so forgettable they might as well not exist.

❌❌ It looks cheap, and by that I mean really really cheap. The character design is ISO standard anime and it’s mostly on model, but that’s as good as it gets. The animation just sucks. That’s a death sentence for an action/sports show with terrible characters.

Bermuda Triangle - Colorful Pastrale

What: Japanese Spongebob, as in cute mermaids. Doing things optional.

❌ To make this quick, this is almost exactly Pastel Memories, only every problem is just a little less extreme. It has fewer characters, it’s looking slightly better, there’s a tiny bit more going on, the setting is mildly more interesting. That still means it is:

❌❌ 1. A boring mess in which a handful of samey girls do nothing of much interest in a location that should be unique, but isn’t.

❌❌ 2. Conspicuously cheap. It even has the same sightline problems.

❌❌ 3. Featuring a character model sheet that is “off” even under the best circumstances. This time due to the very offputting decision to give everyone blobby triangular irises.

❌❌ Unlike Pastel Memories (which was an ad for a mobile game) this is an anime original, so it really has no excuse being this lame.

♎ I find it amusing that Pastel Palettes are providing the OP for an anime, and it’s not the one currently airing that they’re actually characters in.

Endro~!

What: Kiraralike comedy thing in a generic JRPG setting.

♎ Namori character designs, so it’s like Spyce in that it just seems like the Yuru Yuri cast cosplaying a genre. But hey, Namori character designs do look good.

❌ I’m not as done with generic JRPG settings as with generic isekai settings, but it’s still a real problem since the former is now a subset of the latter. Mildly making fun of it does not improve things much either.

✅ The tone is cutesy and pleasant. I find this much preferable to something like Mahoujin Guru Guru, which is pretty much the same thing but with abrasive, high-intensity slapstick instead.

✅ It’s backing that up with generally high-quality, agreeable pastel looks.

❌ Not being annoying is a start, but beyond that this seems very middle of the road and predictable. I don’t get much out of the genre “parody” and simply being cute is still not an unique selling point in anime.

Grimms Notes The Animation

What: Did someone say JRPG? This is a mobile one, vaguely based on fairy tales as the title implies.

✅ This universe runs on the idea that every NPC’s fate is controlled by a preset story they’re aware of. You could make a good story about that if you took it seriously. It even does that somewhat, but only to the degree that you’d expect from a throwaway sidequest in a moderately well-written JRPG.

❌ And the reason for that is that it has to make room for being a JRPG, of course. Read: It’s irritatingly mechanics- and combat-focused. Stuff like the characters changing form when in fights just seems overly complicated and adds nothing.

❌ Said combat looks competent, but not good enough to make up for detracting from what could have been an interesting setting. Merc Storia did this aspect far better (by usually not doing it at all).

❌ So it ends up being better than expected, but then that only amounts to a disappointment.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai / Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

What: Kaguya and Miyuki are in the student council of a prestigious school and HATE HATE HATE each other. Specifically, they hate the part where the other one won’t just finally admit their love.

✅ The joke here is that it’s operating on full intensity at all times, over the most simple matters. It’s pretty much Kaiji, only about dating - complete with hammy narrator. This is another one of those shows where I can’t say with certainty that it’s solid, but I had a blast during the first episode.

✅ Regarding Quintuplets, I made it clear that I love me some sparks in my romantic comedies. It doesn’t get much more explosive than this.

✅ The characters are comparable to Quints too: Smart scheming upstart vs. rich scheming ojou, with a simpleminded girl in the middle that ends up winning more often than not simply by not overdoing it.

✅ The visuals are just as over the top as the proceedings depicted. Occasionally a filter massacre, but mostly cool.

♎ The long-term viability of this show depend entirely on whether they can consistently come up with scenarios that work, which isn’t a given. Also, this is so intense it might become tiresome - I already felt some fatigue towards the end of the first episode. We’ll see, I guess.

Kakegurui ××

What: Some weirdos think they can crash the party at Hyakkaou with an intent to scare the daylights out of Yumeko and Midari, of all people. Let’s just say they were not as prepared as they thought.

✅ As you might have guessed by me watching the sequel, I liked Kakegurui. It has its problems, but if you’re down for some crazypants madness, this show delivers.

✅ This is one of the better episodes of it too, because it gets right into it and the game they play is dead simple. Kakegurui was never about smart moves or strong characters, so not having anything detract from our girls deriving the entirely wrong sort of pleasure from danger is a plus.

♎ Sadly, the OP is a step down (though still great) and the ED is simply an inferior, overcomplicated version of the magnificent original one. They seem to know this too, because they play the OP cut of Deal with the Devil in its entirety for a montage. The rest of the production is on par with the original though, so it’s fiiiine. Oh well.

❌ It got Netflix’d again and the subs situation is dire. Since this is one I actually like, I might have to wait for the official release.

Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai / The Magnificent Kotobuki

What: Piston-engined fighter plane pornography.

✅ This delivers where Girly Air Force failed: Close to zero exposition, the majority of the episode is just planes dogfighting with barely any talking either. And that part is executed really well. I think the plane startup sequence alone is as long as the total of Girly’s airtime.

✅ Guess what, it’s Tsutomu Mizushima, previously known for unbridled panzer (und girls) pornography, and boy can you tell. However, this cuts out a lot of GuP’s bullshit: A plane doesn’t have the cast of K-ON in it, it’s not over-the-top zany, and whatever this universe is, it can’t be as insipid as GuP’s. The classy milwank exists you guys, we found it.

✅✅ The music really helps here, sky pirates vs zeppelins just wouldn’t work without some classic swashbuckling orchestra background. Fat sound mixing on the dakka too. It’s great.

♎ Can’t really say much about the narrative because we kinda skipped that in this episode aside from the obvious, but Mizushima’s Shirobako collaborator Michiko Yokote is writing it, and that’s a good sign.

❌ Now we’re getting to the elephant in the room though: There’s no way the planes wouldn’t be CG in 2019, but the characters are CG too, and their animation is mediocre. Also, they did the KADO thing where they 2D-animated the side characters that aren’t important enough to model. This has the funny side effect that you can tell who’s going to die real soon by them looking better. It’s far from great, but probably a worthy tradeoff if the mechanical side is this extensive and also delivers.

✅ This is definitely not for everyone, since you have to have more than a casual appreciation for those magnificent girls in their flying machines. I do, though.

revisions

What: A chunk of Shibuya gets teleported to the dystopian future, local doomsday prepper gets handed a large robot because he’s special.

❌ A Goro Taniguchi joint being a poorly conceived scifi mess? Say it ain’t so! I especially dig the tryhard English jargon (mecha: “String Puppet”, monsters faction: “Revisions”, particular monster, I think?: “Civilian”, tacticool operetah: “Balancer”).

❌ Works very hard to characterize the main character, to the detriment of everyone else. A for effort, but you made an unlikeable asshole though.

❌ This is another full CG show, with the quality of the animation being curiously variable. Sometimes it’s well above average and sometimes it’s painful. There doesn’t seem to be much method to it.

✅ Tries to establish stakes by being mondo edgy and graphically murderizing some poor bystanders. It’s adorable.

❌ If you’re really jonesing for some mecha, you can watch all of this on Netflix right now. It’s not like you have any alte- wait, Egao no Daika has mecha too. Well there you go then. That’s a better show.

[tmae3114]

Tell us about the AUs. all of them.

Friend, that is a lot of AUs.

But okay!!

I won’t go immensely in-depth because a) that’d take forever and b) I want to do separate posts and drawings and stuff for a bunch of these

Okay, so, going in the order that I mentioned them in the tags:

(whoops this is going under a cut because It Got Long)

The Pokemon AU

More of a fusion than strictly an AU, I guess, because it’s pretty much “canon, but there are pokemon”.

I’ve determined full teams for the whole ‘crew, along with the genders, levels, abilities, natures, and movesets of all of their pokemon. I got… really into it. I went way too detailed with their teams. I even know what kind of pokeball each of their pokemon are in. I’m in the process of nicknaming them. I’ve also got scatterings of backstory for how they came to have each of the pokemon in their teams!

For now, I’ll tell you what their teams are, along with the nicknames and such of their pokemon. More in-depth stuff (such as aforementioned abilities and movesets and also the backstories) should probably be saved for a different post.

Diath:

“Cath” - Klefki - ♂

Ninjask - ♀

Scyther - ♀

Liepard - ♂

“Dawnguide” - Absol - ♀ 

“Gutter” - Aegislash - ♂

The pattern I went with for nicknaming Diath’s pokemon is based off of the one thing we’ve seen him name in canon - Moonsplinter. So the nicknames for his pokemon, when I eventually come up with them, will be two nouns put together into a name that connects what was named to someone or something important to him. Cath and Gutter are exceptions to the pattern because they were gift pokemon and came with the names (…sort of, in Cath’s case).

Evelyn:

“Morning Glory” - Rapidash - ♀ 

“Periwinkle” - Lycanroc (Midnight Forme) - ♀ 

“Thistleberry” - Eevee - ♂ 

“Sunflower” - Larvesta - ♀ 

“Jonquil” - Solrock - N/A 

“Juniper” - Pichu - ♀

The pattern I went with for nicknaming Evelyn’s pokemon started with Morning Glory and Juniper - I figured that since Evelyn showed a predilection towards plant names in canon, it was as good a theme as any to run with. Thistleberry is the closest to breaking that pattern, since I’ve been unable to find out if that’s actually a real plant (I’ve found thimbleberries but not thistleberries, so I feel like they might be a fantasy thing) in which case you could argue that he was named for Evelyn’s favourite pie. The reasoning for Sunflower should be obvious, a jonquil is a kind of flower similar to a daffodil which sort of resembles a sun in shape, and periwinkles mean “early friendship” in flower language, and Evie sure does make friends fast.

Jonquil may or may not mean “I desire a return of affection” in flower language but sshhhh, that was unintentional

Strix:

“Fuzzywuzz” - Venomoth - ♂

“Waffles” - Ursaring - ♀ 

Mismagius - ♀ 

“Stinky Junior” - Garbodor - ♀ 

“Clothy McClothface” - Banette - ♀ 

“Stinky” - Alolan Rattata - ♂

I don’t think I really need to explain the pattern/theme for naming Strix’s pokemon because, well, *gestures at canon* I just tried to follow the existing naming patterns.

Paultin:

“Palpatine” - Malamar - ♂ 

Exploud- ♂ 

“Charlotte” - Chatot - ♀ 

Gengar - ♂ 

“Peter” - Baltoy  - ♂ 

Alolan Marowak- ♀

I don’t strictly have a naming pattern for Paultin, wildcard that he is. I’ve just been operating on a general rule of “regular real life name that sounds fitting” (a la him naming Simon) or “reference”.

The Superhero AU

You are getting far less information about this one because it’s going to be getting posts of its own when I finally get the drawings for it finished - I’m going to do character profiles and everything.

The basic premise is a vaguely-modern-era-ish Waterdeep (in a vaguely-modern-era-ish Faerun) has a lot of superheroes running around and the Wafflecrew happens to be one of the teams that call the city home. Diath, Strix, Evelyn and Paultin are all doing the secret identity thing and there will be shenanigans involving those because, well, here’s the thing:

The Wafflecrew is a superhero team who’s members keep their identities secret even from each other, mostly because they haven’t been together as a team for very long yet.

Diath, Strix, Evelyn, and Paultin, however, are a group of friends who happen to share a flat. Who are all trying very hard not to let on to their friends that they’re a superhero.

So. Shenanigans.

(Well, except for Diath and Strix. They know about each other’s secret identities)

I won’t tell you everyone’s codenames, though, because ~character profiles~ :3c

The Daemon AU

This one is more loosely defined than the others, to be honest. I will say, straight up, that I have never read His Dark Materials and don’t have any particular intent to, because I’ve read enough excerpts to know I could never get through it. But the concept of daemons is really cool and fun and I’ve read a ton of daemon aus and I feel no shame in yoinking the concept for an au despite never having read the source material.

Evelyn’s daemon is a Norwegian Forest Cat named Carwyn, Paultin’s is a lyrebird named Leto, Strix’s is a Barred Owl named Cináed, and Diath’s… well, if you were to ask him, he’d tell you that his daemon is a very shy house spider named Perdita. The thing is, nobody’s ever actually seen her…

Diath may or may not be in a Special Situation in this AU thanks to the whole ancient-soul-that-Shemeshka-has-part-of circumstance

The Class Swap AU

This one!! Is one that I love!! a lot!! And also one that I fully intend to give its own post with art.

It started with me realising that Mason Marthain existing presented the perfect Backstory Butterfly to play with things a little and justify Evelyn being a rogue in a class swap AU. From there, I just kept playing with their backstories to see what there was that could be tugged on to shift them to one of each other’s classes. Ultimately, my class swap AU stands as such:

Evelyn Marthain, a swashbuckler rogue. Inspired by a slightly different family member, in this universe, Evelyn decided at a young age that rather than follow in her father’s footsteps, she wanted to follow in her uncle’s. Thus, rather than training at the Spires and taking on the mantle of a paladin, she apprenticed on her Uncle’s ship throughout her childhood, and eventually became a rogue.

Diath Woodrow, an oath of devotion paladin. A childhood on the streets went just a little bit differently for Diath, this time around. After a paladin caught him preventing another street kid from pickpocketing, he got taken in by the Church of Selune and found a calling that appealed to his sense of duty and his desire for adventure at the same time. (How does the oath of devotion’s call to obey just authority mix with being chaotic good, you might ask? Well, how does one define “just” authority? In Class Swap!Diath’s case, as soon as someone abuses their power, their authority is no longer just)

Paultin Seppa, a wild magic sorceror. Paultin honestly doesn’t know where his powers came from. They’ve been at the tips of his fingers for as long as he can remember. It probably has something to do with the big swath of his childhood that he can’t remember but he’s not particularly bothered with trying to figure it out. (The thing is, a panicking, traumatised child, very much going into shock, tearing through the mists of Barovia and out of Ravenloft, all on his own and without parental supervision for the very first time, has so much potential to go wrong. He stumbled through a few less than hospitable places before he ended up on the Prime Material)

Strix, a college of glamour bard. Her years in the Feywild were harsh and this time it wasn’t Baba Yaga whose care she stumbled into. She learned a lot, living amongst the fey, and not least amongst that was how a silver tongue, with words carefully chosen and used, is a magic all of its own and also a very dangerous weapon.

I can’t say anything about the two AUs I’m currently writing fics for because spoilers~ so just know that They Exist

The Star Wars AU is extremely conceptual. It features aspiring Jedi Knight Evelyn Marthain, an Alderaanian human raised in the Coruscant Jedi Temple, travelling musician Paultin Seppa, a human of mysterious origin who has an even more mysterious knowledge of the Force, given that he seemingly has no connection to any known Force sects, galactic treasure hunter/archaeologist Diath Woodrow, a human from Coronet City on Corellia, whose heritage may-or-may-not have originated on a certain planet starting with ‘M’, and Strix, a force-sensitive woman of indeterminate species (at first glance, you might think zabrak, but zabraks don’t have tails. They also usually don’t have hair but it’s not like hybrids are completely an unknown possibility… the thing is, if she’s a hybrid, there’s no way she’s a hybrid of just two)

The RWBY AU is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. It’s just an AU where the Wafflecrew are in Remnant. They comprise Team DEPS (”Deeps”) and all I’ve really figured out is their weapons and semblances and tbh, as an AU, it’s probably not going much further than that.

I had a Lot of fun with their semblances, though.

[youthofnausea7]

Chickpeas of the High Seas, a Tuna Salad Recipe for Plant Based Pirates

So tuna salad might not be everyone's favorite sandwich topping, as a matter of fact it might even be no one's favorite sandwich topping, but if there's one thing that's for damn sure, a tuna salad craving can be fucking hard to ignore. However, if there's one thing I've learned in my years as a broke vegan, it's that chickpeas make a damn good first mate for many of your swashbuckling kitchen adventures. Hoist the Jolly Roger fuckers, we're sinking that smelly tuna boat for good!

What you need:

Prepared Chickpeas (I was extra this time and cooked them myself, but canned works every bit as well)

Diced Red Onion, because why not make it pretty

Diced Celery because crumch

Pickle Relish

Vegenaise or whatever other mayo substitute you have handy, you could probably also use avocado, but only if you're a millenial

A sheet or two of Nori Seaweed

Salt and Black Pepper

Dill Weed (optional, just like most of these ingredients)

I didn't list the exact amounts of the ingredients because it's the kind of thing that tends to turn out better if you just eyeball (or eyepatch) it and sample it along the way, and doing so would just be doing a lousy disservice to the simplicity of this recipe. Also you can sub almost any of the ingredients for whatever it is you like in your tuna salad. Are you fucking weird and like apples in it? Fine then put your gross apples in it, just stay the fuck away from me.

How to make it:

So start off with your prepared chickpeas, put them in a large sealable container. That's right, you're going to make this AND store it in the same container. This is the pinnacle of vegan convenience.

Alternatively you can put it in a blender, I guesss. It'd save you from having to do a lot of chopping which is cool, but I don't let anything go to waste and there's so many things I'd rather do with my day that don't include scraping tuna salad off of blender blades.

Also, using a blender undercuts the best part: Smashing!!!

Okay so I lied, smashing can actually be cruelly tedious. Just be smarter than me and use something better than a fork. You wanna try your best to mash it to the point that there's no more full beans, some halfies might escape your clutches, but who are you trying to fool anyways? Keep it up until the consistency is like that of, well, tuna salad.

Next thing to do is dice up some red onion into little pieces

Cool put them babies in the mashed chickpeas, and do the same with some celery

Since we're mixing this all up into a tasty vomit-like substance (do I talk about vomit too much in my recipes?), I usually just don't fucking care what it looks like; so what I like to do is chop chop cop widthwise and then just go fuckin ham on the pile until it's mostly little pieces.

Fold them in and realize you added way too much fucking veggies

Toss some relish on there, it'll make yer paw proud

Resist the urge to transfer it to another container.

When you've got all that mixed together, get out your mayo substitute and put a couple of big ol' globs on there, as many as you need to coat all the stuff

Mix it all up and continue resisting the U R G E

When it's all mixed up get out one of these. It's called seaweed, and it makes stuff taste like it came from the sea.

Get out two sheets and toast em over the stovetop. CAREFULLY. On LOW heat. These may be the tortillas of the sea, but if you try to toast them like a tortilla you're going to have a bad time.

When you got em all roasty toasty, crunch them up into as little pieces as possible and put em in the salad. The best way to do this is to put them in a ziploc bag, tie the bag to a skateboard, and do a whole bunch of mega rad skate tricks until there's nothing in the bag but ocean dust.

When it's all mixed together it'll look something like this, I guess

Add the salt and spices to taste, and when it's how you like it put it in a sandwich

Bang Bang

There's a lot of ways you can fuck around with this recipe; if you're more of an egg salad kinda person, use Indian black salt instead of seaweed. If you're incredibly boring you probably prefer chicken salad, just don't add either. Just a reminder, this recipe is mostly just a very loose guideline and mainly just serves as an example. Put whatever the fuck you want in it, and do whatever the fuck you want with it.

Aside from the classic tuna salad approach, my favorite thing to do with this technique is to make spicy tuna for sushi. Just lose the veggies and add sriracha, toasted sesame oil, and rice vinegar when you're adding the mayo. I'll provide the photographic evidence when I get better at rolling sushi, because as of current my sushi rolling skills are dogshit.

Picnic time, fuckers!

[mrmallardsmobileposts]

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time holds up pretty well!

I bought the Prince of Persia trilogy at my friend's suggestion in 2016. I asked him for some input on a game sale that was going on at the time and he told me that they were some of his favorite childhood games. Based on his recommendation, I bought the trilogy.

I haven't picked up a Prince of Persia game since then. I played the first one for about 30 minutes, hated it and shut off my console.

Here's my reasoning: around the time I played Prince of Persia, I was just coming off of the Mass Effect trilogy. I had only gotten a PS3 in the last few months of 2014 - my first PS3, ever - and ever since that I had been playing catch-up on all the landmark titles I had missed over the console's lifespan. I had played the Jak remasters, but I grew up with all of those. Aside from a gameplay demo of Warrior Within as a kid, Prince of Persia was an unknown series of games to me.

While Mass Effect had its jank, railroading and poorly aged graphics in certain respects, it offered a new dimension of freedom that I was not accustomed to in video games. You spend most of the games farting around hubs, shooting up corridors of enemies and stuff - tackling each new mission on your own terms, at your own pace. It's a game series that prides itself on how free and open-ended it feels.

So to drop into a game like Prince of Persia after that is a bit of a rude surprise.

My initial opinion of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was that it was too railroaded. I felt like I was being throttled, restrained, and I didn't like it. The cutscenes weren't updated very well, the camera was a jank machine and the VA was pretty bad. All in all, I was unimpressed by it - everything about the game was working against it, in my eyes. It wasn't a game that appealed to my gaming tastes at the time.

That was two and a half years ago. It took a brief fixation on RPG games, a general sense of burnout regarding the rest of my prominent games library and a GVMERS documentary on the history of the series to bring me back around to the idea of playing Prince of Persia.

I'll get the negatives out of the way - Prince of Persia is dated. In some areas more than others, but this game shows its age in all of its crusty glory - poorly remastered cutscenes, rough facial animation and VA work, wonky camera. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is a 15 year old game, and it shows plain as day.

Combat is pretty clunky too, even in this run I didn't like combat so much. It felt like they were put in to break the flow up between parkour sections, and I frankly didn't like combat all that much.

But when Prince of Persia does something well, it excels at it. The pillars of this game are its gameplay, aesthetic and sense of progression.

First of all - the parkour is fantastic. Looking at it through the lens of a 2003 PS2 game, this gameplay mechanic would have been revolutionary at the time - and as someone who hasn't played Mirror's Edge or Assassin's Creed, it was revolutionary to me as I was playing it. This is the main draw of the game - you're dropped onto a room, the game tells you to get out of it, and the exit leads to another room. Hell, it goes as far as to tell you how to get through most of the puzzles.

When I first played the game, I felt trapped. I felt railroaded. I just wanted to play more open world games, and that is the furthest thing from what Sands of Time actually is. The game is very linear, and I didn't want to play games that were overly linear at the time - I grew up playing games like Jak and Daxter and GTA, and I was chomping at the bit for more gameplay experiences like Mass Effect. That's not to say that I would only appreciate games like Mass Effect at the time - I think I was having a blast with Catherine around the same time, which is a pretty limited puzzle game - but linearity in the same sort of vein as this Prince of Persia game was very much not my thing. Even God of War is less strictly linear than Prince of Persia is imo, because the combat offers a sense of freedom and creativity to it and I feel like I'm always in control when I play those games, even if I'm being sheparded along a straight line the entire game.

The problem I had with Prince of Persia is that I was looking at it through the wrong perspective - it was unavoidable at the time considering my tastes, but it still warrants mentioning. I wasn't looking at the game in the sort of way that really highlights its strengths, and the aspects of it that appeal to me now were lost underneath all the stuff I couldn't stand at first glance.

I'm a sucker for puzzle games - Tetris, Puyo, Tangrams, I love a good puzzle game. I'm not the biggest fan of action games with forced puzzle room sections, though - pressure switches, time gates, collapsing floors etc. So you'd think that I would hate Prince of Persia for how much of the game is made up of these puzzle sections. But it seems to me that the combat, the action of this game, plays second fiddle to the puzzle-solving. I hate this gameplay when it breaks up the focus of the game - the story, the action. I hate when it's used as an arbitrary roadblock. I hate this shit in games like Jak 2. But this game is all about switches and pulleys and wall-running. It's about getting to that next checkpoint and marking your progress as you jump and flip and swing through a collapsed palace in India. The game is very slow and methodical - Prince of Persia, when boiled down to its purest form, is a puzzle game. And that aspect of it has aged really, really well.

The aesthetic of the game - the arches, the stained glass, the pillars and ceiling domes and ever-present banners and cloths - has aged pretty gracefully as well. The geometry tends to be pretty simple most of the time, but it works - it's not a graphical powerhouse like the God of War titles, but the developers made a very pretty game world with the technology they had available at the time and they made so much of it directly interactive with the player's actions in the game. It's commendable.

Also, regarding God of War - there's no way that the Prince of Persia games weren't a primary inspiration for that series. About halfway through the game, I realised that Prince of Persia is basically an earlier God of War with weaker combat but stronger puzzle-solving. They're both third-person action games that aim to replicate historical settings with some degree of accuracy to the pop-culture impressions that people have of those settings. One of God of War's biggest draws is that gorgeously realised interpretation of Greek mythology - and Prince of Persia is just as successful in capturing that swashbuckling Arabian Nights setting that it uses. On a smaller scale than God of War, but that's not an issue - the compact nature of Prince of Persia's running time and game setting is one of its most appealing factors.

Sands of Time is a short game. I finished it in six hours, spread out over a couple of weeks - I got all the health upgrades, I kinda ballsed up the Sand Orbs but I got a whole lot of them, and I beat the final boss. One thing that kept me motivated was the completion percentage attached to my game file.

Every save point is located somewhere between 2-4% of the gameplay. Every time you hit a save point, you see your progress in the game go up, little by little - so by the time you stop playing, you know you've played though 15% of the game or so. Next time you might play for less time, so you only hit a handful of save points and go about 8% though the game. But now your completion rate is 23% - next time you play, try and reach 30%! From there, you try and get yourself to 50% completion. You tackle the game in these bite-sized chunks and watch your completion number go up little by little, and it motivates you to keep going for a higher number. This aspect of the game has aged amazingly well, at least if you respond to this sort of motivation - if that sounds like it's gonna be a motivating factor for you, then you might just enjoy Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

This game is a mixed bag due to its age, but underneath the jank and the poorly aged aspects sits a very solid skeleton of a game. You might not like it compared to flashier games like God of War, but I enjoyed its earnest presentation, satisfying campaign length and rock-solid fundamental gameplay.

[eddycurrents]

For the week of 4 March 2019

Quick Bits:

A Walk Through Hell #8 gets creepier as Paul tells his story, raising huge questions of how deep a conspiracy may go to have covered up his brutal history. Garth Ennis, Goran Sudžuka, Ive Svorcina, and Rob Steen are delivering one hell of an atmospheric horror story with this series.

| Published by AfterShock

Amazing Spider-Man #16.HU is really another prelude to the “Hunted” event, but this one gets its branding and special interstitial “.HU” suffix, from Nick Spencer, Iban Coello, Edgar Delgado, and Joe Caramagna. This issue follows Black Cat as she is sent to free the Owl from Taskmaster and Black Ant to square things away with Hammerhead. It does a good bit to redeem Felicia’s behaviour of recent years, explaining exactly why she’s more or less been acting out of character as a hardened criminal kingpin.

| Published by Marvel

Astro Hustle #1 is a pretty good start to this space opera from Jai Nitz, Tom Reilly, Ursula Decay, and Crank! It reminds me a lot of Barbarella crossed with Sword of the Swashbucklers, mixing space and pirates with some oblique sociopolitical commentary. Also maybe a bit of The Incal. This issue largely introduces us to Chen Andalou (yeah, I’m not sure if there’s a significance to the Un Chien Andalou reference) and the band of pirates he falls in with and it’s rather entertaining. Reilly’s art reminds me a bit of Moritat, Goran Parlov, and Goran Sudžuka and it works very well for the story.

| Published by Dark Horse

Avengers #16 continues the war of the vampires. I really like the new design for Ghost Rider from David Marquez. It’s more in line with how Vengeance used to be portrayed and the flame and shadow from Marquez and Erick Arciniega really works for a harder edged version of the character.

| Published by Marvel

Avengers: No Road Home #4 sees Sean Izaakse and Marcio Menyz begin their three issues handling art duties and it’s gorgeous. Like Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco, and Jesus Aburtov for the first three issues, the artists are really giving this story their all and delivering some incredible artwork. Great layouts and panel compositions as we get to see Nyx’s own side of the story.

| Published by Marvel

Batman #66 resumes “Knightmares” with an issue of the Question trying to get to the bottom of Selina leaving Bruce at the proverbial altar. Illustrated by Jorge Fornés, with colours from Dave Stewart, it leans hard into Year One imagery to begin with, evoking David Mazzucchelli, and just goes through Selina’s history with Bruce from there.

| Published by DC Comics

Black Hammer ‘45 #1 expands the Black Hammer universe out further with the addition of a Blackhawks analogue, along with nods to Enemy Ace and Rocket Red, from Jeff Lemire, Ray Fawkes, Matt Kindt, Sharlene Kindt, and Marie Enger. There’s a compelling mystery set up across the present and the past regarding the Black Hammer Squadron’s final mission and the art from the Kindts is gorgeous.

| Published by Dark Horse

The Black Order #5 concludes the series focusing on Ebony Maw’s betrayal, the end of the Grandmaster’s game, and Carlos Magno, Scott Hanna, Jay David Ramos, and Dono Sánchez-Almara providing the artwork. This has been an interesting series, telling a relatively simple story of the Black Order executing a contract to topple the Sinnarian Emperor, but Derek Landy has been telling it through issues each largely from the viewpoint of each of one of the members of the Black Order. It’s been a good insight into what makes these villains tick.

| Published by Marvel

Blossoms 666 #2 continues to be an entertaining read from Cullen Bunn, Laura Braga, Matt Herms, and Jack Morelli. This chapter lightly deals with the fallout from the disappearance of Ethel and Reggie, while setting up Betty to investigate. The story is definitely taking a slow burn approach, but it’s quite compelling. The horror of a devil cult infiltrating a small town vibe going on is wonderful. 

| Published by Archie

Champions #3 goes in a few directions as the new bigger team get some training in, an enemy from Sam’s past comes calling, Dust apparently didn’t get sucked into the Age of X-Man and is dealing with anti-mutant hysteria, and Miles is racked with guilt over his decision. I love the layers that Jim Zub is adding to the script and the art from Steven Cummings, Marcio Menyz, and Federico Blee captures the youthful action very well.

| Published by Marvel

Conan the Barbarian #4 might be my favourite issue of this series yet with glorious guest art from Gerardo Zaffino, evoking memories of his father’s work on Savage Sword, and presenting a gritty, visceral, and dark tale of King Conan alongside Jason Aaron, Matthew Wilson, and Travis Lanham. The idea of Conan becoming sick over peace is humorous and there’s a wonderful nod to the Punisher.

| Published by Marvel

The Curse of Brimstone #12 brings the series to an end with a final confrontation between Brimstone and a member of the “home office”, Infernal. The revelations about who Infernal is a twisted alternate version of is interesting, as well as their means of ingress into the regular DCU. The series also goes out with a bang with the very impressive artwork from Denys Cowan, John Stanisci, and Rain Beredo. Cowan is a legend and that shines through in this final arc. I do hope, though, that we see Brimstone and the effects of this series pop up somewhere else in the DCU in the future. 

| Published by DC Comics

Deadly Class #37 continues “Never Go Back” with the spotlight shifted back to Quan and Kenji, bringing back Saya in a pretty big way. The action in Wes Craig’s artwork (with colours from Jordan Boyd) is pretty much peerless.

| Published by Image / Giant Generator

Deathstroke #41 serves as a prelude to the “Terminus Agenda” crossover with Teen Titans, with Slade a fugitive in Gotham, trying to figure out the reason behind one of his recent contracts, from Christopher Priest, Fernando Pasarin, Cam Smith, Sean Parsons, Jeromy Cox, Carrie Strachan, and Willie Schubert. There are some interesting mysteries being set up here, even as Slade is being targeted.

| Published by DC Comics

Die #4 is another brilliant issue from Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, and Clayton Cowles. The depth of the storytelling, character and world building, and overall narrative is staggering in this series. The amount of thought and attention to detail that seem to have gone into constructing the story is just amazing, as what feels like a fully-realized fantasy world cognizant of itself comes tumbling out.

| Published by Image

Eclipse #13 begins the final arc of the series, from Zack Kaplan, Giovanni Timpano, Flavio Dispenza, and Troy Peteri. If the spark lit in this issue is any indication, it looks as if the series is going to end in fire with a lot of death.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Giant Days #48 gives us that rare issue also illustrated by John Allison, I think for the first time since the original series, for a wedding. Very funny look at some of Susan’s hang-ups and Daisy confronted by possible feelings for Esther.

| Published by Boom Entertainment / BOOM! Box

The Girl in the Bay #2 gets weirder as the younger Kathy navigates, from her perspective, the future. Melting doppelgangers, creepy old guys that killed you, ghosts of rock and roll legends, and flat screen televisions stymie her as the mystery deepens. This is some intriguing stuff from JM DeMatteis, Corin Howell, James Devlin, and Clem Robins.

| Published by Dark Horse / Berger Books

The Green Lantern #5 is more glorious madness from Grant Morrison, Liam Sharp, Steve Oliff, and Tom Orzechowski. Easily one of my favourite things to read every month. This issue dives headlong into Hal’s test of recruitment to the Blackstars, a trial of having to survive a gauntlet across the vampire planet, Vorr. Though definitely part of a larger narrative, I’m still impressed by how this series is being constructed through largely satisfying, mostly self-contained stories. And, of course, the astounding artwork from Sharp and Oliff. There’s also some wonderful vampire Easter eggs in this one.

| Published by DC Comics

Immortal Hulk #14 is one hell of an issue, burying Thunderbolt Ross (again) and giving us the reunion of Bruce and Betty. All with glorious guest art from Kyle Hotz, delivering some of his best artwork pretty much ever. Dark, moody, and evocative. This is a big one, once again underlining how sick, twisted, and downright evil General Fortean and the forces hunting Bruce really are, even if they’re supposedly the “good guys”.

| Published by Marvel

Justice League #19 begins the “The Sixth Dimension” arc from Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez, Alejandro Sanchez, and Tom Napolitano, as the League tries to get help from Mr. Mxyzptlk in regards to the broader problems with the Source Wall, Perpetua, and the nefarious plans of the Legion of Doom. Interesting bits of humour in this issue, especially since the end moments give us a rather dark turn.

| Published by DC Comics

Killmonger #5 concludes what has been an excellent series reintroducing a movie-influenced Killmonger back into the Marvel universe from Bryan Hill, Juan Ferreyra, and Joe Sabino. This finale shows just how brutal and calculating he can be when exacting revenge.

| Published by Marvel

Morning in America #1 is the debut of a new ‘80s teen horror drama from most of the Kim & Kim team of Magdalene Visaggio, Claudia Aguirre, and Zakk Saam, with Aguirre providing full illustrations on this series not just colours. It’s good, setting up our lead characters nicely and presenting a compelling mystery for the disappearances of the children.

| Published by Oni Press

Oberon #2 launches Bonnie on her quest, first testing her with a labyrinth, while Oberon and his man-servant deal with some complications. I’m loving the artwork from Miloš Slavković, who is proving equally as adept with fantasy as he does with the sci-fi of Lightstep.

| Published by AfterShock

Red Sonja #2 is a bit more traditional in its approach than the first issue subverting some of the conventions of sword and sorcery, but is no less entertaining as Sonja prepares to defend Hyrkania from the Zamoran invaders. Mirko Colak’s art makes it seem like he was born to draw this sort of adventure.

| Published by Dynamite

Ronin Island #1 is an entertaining debut from Greg Pak, Giannis Milonogiannis, Irma Kniivila, and Simon Bowland, featuring an island of survivors who think they’re the only remnants left from the collapse of the Japanese shogunate. Great art from Milonogiannis and Kniivila, along with a very interesting twist as a cliffhanger.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Self/Made #4 makes another turn as Rebecca manages to “fix” Amala’s data files and brings her programming online in the real world. I love what Mathew Groom, Eduardo Ferigato, Marcelo Costa, Mariana Calil, and Troy Peteri are doing with this series. It’s very good sci-fi, populated with some compelling characters, and raising some important questions about self-determination, creation, and the purpose of life.

| Published by Image

The Six Million Dollar Man #1 is a rather light-hearted take on the franchise from Christopher Hastings, David Hahn, Roshan Kurichiyanil, and Ariana Maher (with special thanks to Zack Davisson). Nice bits of humour in the start to this spy thriller.

| Published by Dynamite

Star Wars #62 begins “The Scourging of Shu-Torun” and what I believe is the final arc from Kieron Gillen. This issue is largely a gathering of the team, with Leia laying out the plan for the regular crew and then going on a recruitment drive of many of the faces that we’ve seen throughout Gillen’s run

| Published by Marvel

Star Wars: Age of Republic - Padmé Amidala #1 is another one-shot set during the Clone Wars, from Jody Houser, Cory Smith, Wilton Santos, Walden Wong, Marc Deering, Java Tartaglia, and Travis Lanham. It briefly touches on Padmé’s relationship with Anakin, but largely deals with attempting to secure a partnership with an unaligned world for the Republic. Things naturally don’t go as well as planned.

| Published by Marvel

Star Wars: Vader - Dark Visions #1 begins a mini-series written by Dennis Hallum and illustrated by different artists per issue, essentially giving us standalone stories from different perspectives on Darth Vader. This first one is from Paolo Villanelli and Arif Prianto, lettered by Joe Caramagna, and is told from the perspective of an inhabitant of an unnamed world that’s been ravaged by a kaiju. It’s a different take on Star Wars, but the art is wonderful.

| Published by Marvel

Vampirella vs. Reanimator #3 sees things get significantly worse for the planet as Herbert West enables Mictecacihuatl’s and Vampirella raises her husband to try to stop her. Things don’t exactly go to plan. I’m still loving the black and white art with spot colours from Blacky Shepherd, it really gives the series a unique visual feel.

| Published by Dynamite

Vindication #2 complicates thing a lot more, delving into Chip’s past and revealing that there’s definitely something shady about Turn, though there are hints that whatever problems he’s got himself in it might be due to protecting his criminal brother. MD Marie, Carlos Miko, Dema Jr., Thiago Goncalves, and Troy Peteri are doing a great job of creating a compelling crime story here, showing that pretty much no one in this story is squeaky clean.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Witchblade #12 closes out this arc, mostly, and sets up a new world as a spell to get them out of their predicament goes awry. Though this story continues to move at a relatively slow pace, Caitlin Kittredge, Roberta Ingranata, Bryan Valenza, and Troy Peteri are still delivering a compelling, engrossing story as they build Alex’s rapport with the Witchblade and throw some unique complication at her.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Young Justice #3 gives us a touching reunion of Impulse and Superboy, before explaining how Conner got to Gemworld. It still doesn’t explain anything about why these pre-Flashpoint variations (other than a possible hint that Superboy isn’t “our” Superboy, although it’s presented in such a way that it seems more like in-story misdirection), but it’s still entertaining. Brian Michael Bendis, Patrick Gleason, Viktor Bogdanovic, Jonathan Glapion, Alejandro Sanchez, Chris Sotomayor, Hi-Fi, Carlos M. Mangual, and Josh Reed continue to slowly tease out the main plot on Gemworld while giving character-specific flashbacks.

| Published by DC Comics / Wonder Comics

Other Highlights: Cemetery Beach #7, Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #5, The Dreaming #7, Female Furies #2, From Hell: Master Edition #4, Gasolina #16, GI Joe: A Real American Hero Yearbook 2019, Kill 6 Billion Demons - Volume 3, Meet the Skrulls #1, Night’s Dominion: Season 3 #4, Noble #16, Paper Girls #26, Unnatural #8

Recommended Collections: Avengers - Volume 2: World Tour, Curse Words - Volume 4: Queen Margaret, Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman, Fantastic Four - Volume 1: Fourever, Justice League Dark - Volume 1: The Last Age of Magic, The Last Siege, Polar - Volume 0: Black Kaiser, Star Wars: Ewoks, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl - Volume 10: Life is too Short, Squirrel Girl, The Wicked + The Divine - Volume 8: Old is the New New, Xerxes

d. emerson eddy has seen the rise and fall of kings.

[racingtoaredlight]

The Rickenbacker Bass

...I never noticed the Rush patch on Cliff Burton’s knee before.

Anyways, recently I had the chance to take a Rickenbacker 4003 for a spin at my local music instrumentdashery, and whooboy is that thing a motherfucker.  God knows how many words I’ve spent on the Precision and Jazz Basses from Fender, but there are other iconic basses that are incredible and defined music in their own right.

The Rickenbacker is not some versatile, “sits perfectly in the mix” bass...it cuts through the mix like a goddamned swashbuckling pirate.  This is not the bass you take to a Motown session or a gig at a wine bar...this is the one you take when you have to wield some serious sonic mass and keep up with stacks of Marshalls and thundering drums.

***

U-G-L-Y.

Ugly ugly ugly ugly ugly.

It’s almost like this thing was designed with bizarro ergonomics.  “Just how sharp do you want those edges jamming into your wrist and ribs?  Mega sharp?  Perfect!”  “Oh, you’re going to be standing with this strapped to your shoulder?  Cool if we make it 15 pounds and make the giant headstock dive to the ground like a kamikaze pilot?  Awesome!”

Walking up to a Rickenbacker bass is a wholly uninspiring experience until the moment you wrap your hand around that skinny neck and play those first amplified notes.  After that, it all makes sense.

***

There is a bassist in one of the most unfortunately famous bands of all time, but he’s a no-talent assclown and doesn’t even deserve to have his name mentioned alongside the bassists I’ll be talking about today.  That’d be like saying Magnum PI was a Formula 1 driver because he drove a Ferrari.

The track above is the Rickenbacker sound that put its stamp on music, not some limp-dick bullshit like the Beatles.  Chris Squire played bass nominally.  While the instrument he played was technically a bass, what he played on it was lead guitar, pure and simple.  Chris Squire could shred every bit as well as Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman and Bill Bruford, and a large part of his strategy was his Rick.

What Squire did revolutionized not just the role of the bass inside a progressive format, but also the bass itself.  Squire modified his 1964 Rickenbacker 4003 to have two outputs...the neck pickup was sent to a bass amp, the bridge was sent to an overdriven guitar amp, creating a chorused, distorted stereo tone that cut through the morass that Yes easily could have become with so many notes clogging up the space.

Remember historical context.  We’re talking early 1970′s when roundwound strings hadn’t really become prevalent, solid state amps hadn’t come around yet and everyone was putting parts together like MacGuyver because this was still the primitive era of sound and rock music.

But Squire stumbled upon the Rick’s perfect formula...super bright roundwound strings, overdriven amplifier, played with a pick.  If you needed to keep up with this new breed of turbocharged guitarist, that was the arsenal you needed.  And it’s one that really hasn’t been improved on.

***

Since the most common transition is bass to guitar and not vice versa, you see a lot more hybrid instruments in the bass world than you will in guitardom.  Guitarists realized pretty quickly that there were limits to drop tunings and adding lower strings...you start wading into the bassist’s territory and all the sudden the mix sounds like a giant jacuzzi full of mud.

Typically you see basses with shorter scales and guitar-style pickups.  Almost like a baritone+ guitar rather than a bass.  Something like this...

*Before anyone makes fun of this guy, he’s one of the most in-demand session bassists and producers in the industry right now...

When I think of the Rickenbacker bass, I actually consider it a hybrid too, despite the traditional scale and electronics.  It’s a electric guitar forced to wear bass clothing, because when you play that thin, blazing-fast neck and get those screaming pickups going, it’s more like a guitar at that point.

The Precision Bass is a bass, and makes no illusions about being anything else.  It can play melodic, fast lead stuff, but it’s first role is primarily to lock down that low end and sit in the mix between the bass drum and snare.  Even the Jazz Bass, with it’s slim neck and expanded sonic modeling (i.e. extra pickup), was still clearly designed to tackle basslines and grooves.

But the Rick is not going to do that thump, it has no illusions about holding down any type of groove, and frankly it doesn’t really care.  Think about a professional bassist’s typical job requirements...not the rock star stuff, rather paying the bills stuff...”money” gigs, musical theater pit shows, weddings, lessons, recording commercials, etc.

The P-Bass is so prevalent because it can do all of those gigs easily.  Jazz Bass too.  But the Rick’s trebly, jangly, aggressive sonic scimitar sound that weighs a million pounds and doesn’t fit into gig bags is not the best choice, practically speaking.

***

COUNTERPOINT:  Fuck practicality.

***

So there’s the Rick.  You’ve no doubt heard it before, even if you didn’t realize that’s what you were listening to.

In terms of history, it does have a cool history.  Adolph Rickenbacker was a Swiss engineer who started working for National Guitar Company (the steel resonator slide guitars) when he met this guy named George Beauchamp.  Beauchamp was this dude who had these ideas about amplifying a guitar, but National was the wrong company for that idea to fly.

So Rickenbacker and Beauchamp started their own company and set out into the great unknown after the Great Depression pretty much put everyone out of business.

This duo pretty much built the entire company from the ground up...along the way coming up with revolutionary design ideas that are commonplace today.  The tremolo bar (”whammy bar”) and “neck-through” construction were both invented by these guys in the 1950′s.

Neck-through construction is the best method for building a guitar.  Fact.  It’s also the most expensive, most complex and most difficult to repair, but from a quality of sound standpoint, it’s full stop the best.  You start with the neck and then glue the body’s “wings” to the side...sometimes, but not always, putting a solid wood top over the laminates.  What this does is affix the pickups, bridge and strings to the neck, giving it one solid, undisturbed mass for the best resonance.

It’s a different sound than bolt-on (Fender) or set-neck (Gibson) guitars and basses, but it’s the most pure because everything that’s responsible for making the sound is all fixed to one piece of wood.  It’s just not a type of guitar for beginner...it needs maintenance and care from an experienced player who’s willing to send it back to the luthier for upkeep on a regular basis.

But, regardless of upside/downside, the fact remains that this duo is responsible for two design aspects that have changed the guitar industry to the point where they’re now standardized.  It might be hard to imagine a world without neck-through guitars and basses (given that despite the advantages, bolt-on and set-neck are still massively more common when you look at what shows up on legendary recordings), but thinking about a world without whammy bars is simply a world I don’t want to imagine.

***

We’ll finish with a few pictures of Lemmy’s customized Rick.  This thing is fucking beautiful.

[sgt-nerd]

Lights, Camera, Action Points!

Nerd Company, fall in!

In a lot of games, you have special points you can spend for things like bonuses and rerolls and the like. Used well, and it is a powerful weapon in your arsenal to control the pace and tone of your game. Used poorly and it can undermine everything you're trying to do. We'll call them cool stuff points, because the help encourage players to do cool stuff.

First, let's talk about what cool stuff points can do. As mentioned, sometimes they give bonuses. Spend a point and get an extra +2, or +1d6, or +10 to a roll, depending on your dice system. Sometimes this has to be declared before you roll, and sometimes you can do it after you roll. If you have to declare it, it makes it a lot more uncertain. Maybe you could have succeeded without the bonus. Maybe you fail anyway. But it makes it much more likely for the points to be wasted. That's not necessarily a bad thing—the chance of failure is why we have rolls, after all. But it can be frustrating, especially if the points are hard to come by. On the other hand, if you use the bonus after you roll, you're much less likely to waste it. You'd only use the bonus when you were pretty sure the bonus would bump it up to a success. This makes it a lot more predictable, but it does take some of the tension out of the decision. Either way, this can make it easier to do things that the players might otherwise have trouble doing, or even let them do things that would normally be impossible.

Sometimes cool stuff points give you rerolls. This can help make your players more likely to take risks. If they fail, they get a second shot at it. It can give some extra survivability when they can reroll saving throws or dodge rolls, and it can make it more likely for difficult rolls to succeed. It's similar to getting a bonus, though it doesn't make it possible to succeed beyond what they normally could.

Sometimes a point gives more direct survivability. In the Warhammer Fantasy RPG, Fate Points can be spent whenever someone's character would die. Instead of dying, the character suffers some other survivable fate. Maybe they're captured instead of kills, or they're left abandoned on the battlefield, but it leads to an interesting situation where they can keep going, instead of being out of the game. In Paranoia, the clones are effectively cool stuff points you use to bring your character right back into the game. In Savage Worlds, you can spend bennies to make soak rolls and cancel out incoming wounds. In games like these, the points are a direct barrier against death. So long as you have them, you're not out of the fight. When you run out, you're in dire straits and it makes the game much more tense.

In some games, you spend points to make cool stuff possible. Sometimes you have specific abilities that require one of these points in order to work, like a psionic blast or a super power. Sometimes it's more general, like being able to declare there's a rope and a chandelier for your swashbuckler to use, or that your childhood friend happens to be in the same bar you are. The characters can use their points to directly power their ability to do cool things beyond what the normal rules allow.

There is one final thing these points can do in some games. They can be used as experience points, being traded in at the end of a session. This is a terrible idea, and I will explain why.

In the first four cases, the points serve a very important purpose. They encourage the players to do things, generally the aforementioned cool stuff. Maybe it's because they know they can get a bonus or a reroll to make success more likely. Maybe it's because they know they have more chances at survival, thanks to either rerolling a bad roll or spending a point to avoid death. Maybe the point is exchanged directly for them to do cool stuff. When you let them trade them for experience, you are effectively penalizing players who use them for any other purpose. You are incentivizing them to hang back and avoid taking risks. At the end of the day, you want your players taking risks and doing cool stuff.

Think back to every fun story someone's told you about an RPG. I'll bet you that at least 90% of the time, it was a player taking a chance and having something cool happen. Or maybe something disastrous happen. But it started with players trying something out.

Encouraging them to hoard points is worse than not having the points at all, because it encourages them to avoid risk, to avoid doing anything interesting, to hang back and let other players take chances. It penalizes them for doing the cool stuff. You want them to do cool stuff, whatever that means in the context of your game. It might be fighting mobsters, it might be getting past traps, it might be political intrigue, but you want them to be active participants.

Of course, that doesn't mean just throw points into the game without thinking about how else you're using them, especially when they have multiple uses. You need to think about how many they have and how they can get them back.

You want to make sure that the different uses are all valuable enough that players want to spend them. Getting a bonus is good, but if the other use is "don't die" in a highly lethal game, your players will probably save them for the second use.

In this specific case, whether it's a probelm is going to depend a lot on how often they expect to die. In a game where players have good odds of survival, they might just keep a point in reserve, where one where every encounter ends with a player character going down is likely to see all points saved up to get them back on their feet.

Warhammer Fantasy RPG has an interesting way of dealing with this issue. I mentioned Fate Points earlier. You also have fortune points that are equal to your fate points. Fortune points get you rerolls and a few other benefits. However, spending a fortune point doesn't affect your fate points. They refresh every day. Losing a fate point, though, reduces your fortune points, and you don't get them back automatically. You have to earn them back, generally by doing big heroic things. It lets them have both types of point. Players are still encouraged to use their fortune points without needing to worry about not having fate points later on.

Speaking of giving them back, there are a few different ways to go about it. Some games have you get them back whenever you rest. Some have it based on the gaming session. When D&D 3.5 introduced action points, it had them come back when you leveled, which made them very scarce. As mentioned above, fate points in WFRPG never come back. You have to earn more through adventurning, and that happens fairly rarely in the game. In games like FATE or Savage Worlds, you can get cool stuff points for playing up your character's weakness in a way that makes the game more interesting, or by doing particularly cool and clever things.

The flow of cool stuff points will help direct the flow of action. When players are full up on cool stuff points, they'll be willing to try lots of things, to take risks, to be badasses. When they run low, they'll be more cautious. If they know they'll get their cool stuff points back the next day, they'll be more willing to spend them, where if they know it'll be a long while before they get more, they'll be more inclined to save them up.

If you want a game that's more constantly tense, then you want to use fewer points or make them harder to get back, or both. If you want a more action-packed game with the players taking lots of risks and swinging from chandeliers and the like, then give out more or make it easier to get them back.

And you don't need to have cool stuff points. They're a great tool, but it's perfectly possible to have a great game without that specific mechanic. Think about them in the context of the rest of your game's mechanics. Try them out, mix them up and see how they affect the flow of the game. Remember, there's no substitute for basic playtesting to see how everything fits together.

Nerd Company, fall out!

[derkastellan]

Vikings: Evolving my own setting

My most backstoried setting so far hasn’t been done in one go, it evolved. And it evolved nicely enough for me feeling I can share it with others. It also highlights the process of expanding a setting.

Since I have players participating in this campaign, setting details are spoilers to them. You know who you are... don’t read on in your own best interest. 

Everybody else be invited to the broad strokes initial setup from which I started.

What I originally made was an “age of sail” setting meant to have elements of the video game “Sid Meier’s Pirates!” in it: adventure, swashbuckling, ship-boarding, discovery, etc. The basic idea was to create a setting where multiple colonial powers were setting out to establish footholds in a new world.

The players come in during a phase where these powers discover various islands in a large archipelago before discovering the actual mainland, placing them in the Columbus phase before discovering America, because I wanted players to be at the forefront of events. 

As ships set out further east they would inevitably stumble unto an continent full of fantasy races of goblinoid variety. More goblin jungle-dwellers were actually meant to be an incentive to look a bit into how we react to certain fantasy races just by default. Players were meant to see the cruelty of colonial exploitation during this phase but also challenge a bit preconceived notions, without planting the game too closely to historical reality. I personally thought that how many players and CRPGs react to goblins (as XP fodder) was close enough to the attitudes of original conquistadors when it came to the people of the Americas to transplant the idea in our age while blurring the lines a bit.

The setting wasn’t meant to be a historical lesson, though, but a mix of flavors. So there was an Orcish empire in the tall mountains towering in the east which also was oppressing and enslaving the goblins, doing cruel rites for their chtonic gods. And there was a crashed spaceship in the north-eastern part of the continent. (This will become important later.)

I laid down this broad-strokes canvas for a campaign including an island in the south with some technological stuff and a primitive tribe and then filed it.

Then I ended up with a group willing to play fantasy by putting out posters advertising it in very broad strokes. I pitched this idea but it didn’t resonate. I took input from offering some ideas like science fantasy (along the lines of Numenera) to see what would stick and had a rough idea what to work with.

What I did is to dial back the story of this setting for several hundred years into the viking age. I decided against a high fantasy setting and made it a bit low-tech by default. Magic - yes. Plate armor and crossbows - no. The other decision I made was to make it a story about a settlement the players were involved in. I wanted to play with the idea of having a homebase and people the players care for.

The original system chosen was Shadow of the Demon Lord because it looked like it was less effort to run than D&D and might be fun for the rich character options. (It bombed, but one gotta try. Seriously, SotDL sucks ass in a big way.) This led to some odd character choices - a changeling and an orc - in the ranks of the party. Completed by a more fae-themed elf (like with iron aversion), a dwarf, and a halfling. 

The choice of system had an interesting impact because it advocates a “level 0″ adventure where the characters have no class advantages and where they basically have to earn their way to level 1 in a more humble way. (That didn’t sit so well with some.)

The setting intro then was an upcoming war in the norse world, with the king asking tribute or men for his campaign against the more southern Hegren. The village where the players were at home decided in a war council that it was better to try and raid for loot and hand that loot over to the king than to risk being drawn into a protracted, probably ill-fated war. And the young player characters were enlisted in that raid.

My players had no taste for raiding or looting which was okay for me because my plan anyway was to cast them away from the fleet through a storm. They wrecked their ship on an island, the more experienced crew members dead or out of commission, and tasked with survival. In the course of this they explored the seemingly unsettled island a bit and found a tomb with enough loot to sail home and claim success.

The next winter season was spent training them with part of that loot into their fancy-pants fantasy classes. (The campaign was meant to have time skips in an emulation of “adventuring in seasons” as is suggested for The One Ring gameplay.) 

And then the village council decided to get out of this whole escalating war business by establishing a refuge on that island the players had found. The PCs became the key characters in a colony mostly composed of adolescent viking settlers finding their way on the new island.

From here on a major part of the campaign would take part in getting to know more of the island setting itself and growing their base through their adventures. You could call this Act 1. And this is where setting-building seriously took off for this setting on its own. 

What I had set up for myself was a three-fold setting:

In the west an old world of which the viking north was a part.

In the middle this undiscovered island to settle on.

In the east, an undiscovered world roughly sketched in the previous setting.

What I had tried to achieve was give myself excuse for a variety of adventures - if I really wanted a town-based adventure, I could place it back in the Old World, given that the old village still was there and would have needs, too. Then there was this aspect of base/colony building which tied the campaign to the island. And there was a larger world to the east to provide space for growth if needed.

More in separate installments. 

[alittlebook-ish]

18 Book-ish Questions for 2018!

Ahoy there my fellow readers and book eaters! Welcome to 2018! 

I hope you all are having a marvelous year so far, and you are all buckling down trying to make progress on your reading goals! If not, don’t fret, there’s still a long year waiting for us! 

I’m posting this later than I intended because I’ve been so wrapped up in some winter cleaning! But here it is: a glimpse into my 2018! 

How many books did you read in 2017? What did you set your 2018 reading goal as?

I set my goal for 20 books this year, and I read 29. 

As for 2018, I set my current goal to 35 books, but it wouldn’t be surprising if I end up changing in. For my Spring semester alone I’m required to read 15 books, along with texts from the Shakespeare textbook (I just don’t know if they’re full plays). There’s at least 30 books I want to read on my own free time...so I’m interested to see where this year takes me. 

Thoughts about your year in reading?

I think overall I had a really good year! A majority of the books I read this year were either 4 or 5 stars for me, and I found two authors who’s books I honestly love with every inch of me! My biggest regret tho was my reading slump between September and November, where I had a hard time finishing anything because I just wanted to read a specific book that I couldn’t have quite yet. Also, it was a really big year for buying books....really big year. 

How many books are you planning to read this year?

Somewhere between 35-40 books. With school and my job I just don’t have the time or patience to read every book I want. Compared to 2017′s reading goal of 20 books, 35-40 seems ambitious, but I need to read about 16 of those for my English minor.

What are your goals in 2018 as a reader?

1. Read more diversely. 

2. Read different genres. 

3. Read through at least half the books I own before buying more.

4. Read the books lent to me that I’ve been holding onto for forever.

5. Finish the books I’ve abandoned.

6. Read more classics. 

What are the Top 5 books on your TBR for 2018?

1. All of Maria V. Snyder’s books (that I haven’t finished...counting these as one)

2. Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

3. Storm and Siege by Leigh Bardugo

4. Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor 

5. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog  by Dr. Bruce Perry 

An author you’d like to read (that you’ve never read before):

Leigh Bardugo. I’ve heard nothing but praise for her work, and as a lover of all things fantasy I think I’d really be into her books! I always walk past her books while I’m browsing in Barnes and Noble, and 9/10 times I’m drawn to at least pick it up. I also couldn’t count the amount of times someone has recommended Six of Crows to me. Hopefully next year I decide to follow through and buy one of her books! 

A book you’d like to read:

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. SJM gets a lot of praise in the book community, and a lot of people recommend A Court of Thorns and Roses and the remainder of that trilogy (or is it a quartet? I can’t remember). While I can’t say ACOTAR is of interest to me at this point in my life, I was always drawn to the Throne of Glass series...but I never bought the first book because I didn’t like the cover (yes...I’m one of those people). However, the UK edition made me want to purchase at least the first installment in the series because I am a total sucker for that white aesthetic. 

A book you’d like to re-read:

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. And Then There Were None has always been one of my favorite required readings, and it’s been seven or eight years since I’ve read it cover to cover. This past summer I picked it up several times to try and re-read it, but I always ended up putting it down in favor for another book. Hopefully this year, I’ll finally make it through. 

A book you’ve had for ages and want to read:

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. I bought this book on Amazon in May of 2014. That poor book has been sitting on my shelf for over three and a half years, waiting for someone to pick it up and read it’s story. Again, this book is talked about a lot by some of my favorite Goodreads reviewers, and they hold this book in high regard. This will probably be one of my summer reads, but I’m going to try and make it happen!

A book you started in 2017 and need to finish

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. There’s at least a hundred other books I should read but this one...I kinda need to return. I love swashbuckling adventures, and my coworker lent me this book to read but school and life happened, and I was never able to get through the first few dozen pages. But...I kinda need to finish it before summer.

A big book you’d like to read:

Iluminae by Amie and Jay Kristoff. It’s not that big of a book, but it’s 599, which is probably one of the bigger books I intend on reading in 2018. Though Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss are up there too (it’s just a matter of if and when I get to them). 

An author you’ve previously read and want to read more of:

Agatha Christie. I’ve started collecting up her paperback books, because I honestly love a good detective story mixed in with all the fantasy I read! Whenever I go to the bookstore I tend to spot a lot of cozy mysteries, and I’m not necessarily into all of that side of mystery, thought they are fun to read. However, Christie was such a great writer, and a lot of her books are true classics. 

A book you got for Christmas and would like to read:

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius by Marc Seifer. Before Christmas, I had an argument with my grandma about Einstein and Tesla, and how much better Tesla was. I guess that prompted her to buy me a biography on him (actually...two biographies). Regardless, I really want to try to read more nonfiction this year and to learn something new. 

A series you want to read from start to finish:

Avry of Kazan trilogy by Maria V. Snyder. Once I close the cover on Ixia and Sitia, I want to pick up Snyder’s other fantasy trilogy! I love how Maria explains her worlds and her magic system, so I can’t wait to start something new! (Book 1, 2, 3)

A series you want to finish that you’ve already started:

The Chronicles of Ixia series by Maria V. Snyder. The Study books are some of my favorite books of all time, and I’m three books from finishing the 9 book series! (Book 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

Most anticipated 2018 release?

The Darkest Legacy by Alexandra Bracken. Set for release on August 7th! I’m so excited that Zu is getting her own standalone novel! The Darkest Minds trilogy is one of my favorite trilogies of all time, and I love everything Alexandra Bracken writes. 

Most anticipated book turned movie/TV show?

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken. Set to be in theaters September 14th! I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited to see a trailer for the movie, and when I finally see it I might honestly cry. 

Any New Year’s Resolutions?

I’m really trying to get my shit together this year. I spent the two weeks completely gutting my room, getting rid of all the old stuff that no longer makes me happy or no longer need. I must’ve had almost 20 bags of trash because I honestly just got rid of absolutely everything. I sorted out books and clothes for donations as well! It feels good to just relieve myself of all that clutter, and I intend on doing so for the rest of the year! 

I also want to work on some writing this year. I just finished a Creative Writing course and it was honestly so much fun being able to just let my thoughts flow, so I’m going to try and do some more this year. Especially with my camp season coming up!