#AI Hugging Slideshow

[jypsyvloggin]

How to do the Hugging Ai trend?

CapCut AI Hugging Templates: The Viral Editing Trend CapCut, a popular video editing application, offers a variety of AI-powered templates recently CapCut’s AI Hugging Templates have taken social media by storm, allowing users to create heartwarming videos where two people appear to embrace—even if they weren’t together in the original photos. This trend is particularly popular on TikTok and…

[greatwyrmgold]

Sorry about responding to a reply to this post again; it's attracted replies that are hard to respond to in a paragraph or so. Anyways, @theoneandonlyshipqueen4q

The narration is Akane's; however, we see lots of scenes she wasn't there for. Not just Ruby scenes; chapter 165 has police(?) discovering the Hikaru Kamii Murder Cult Conspiracy Board with no Akane in sight, for instance, and a panel of Kana reading a script alone. And 164 had Akane narrating over a page of B-Komachi members who didn't seem to invite Akane to their...post-concert news-watching party?

Also, the fact that her dialogue is disembodied narration (rather than, say, half of a conversation with someone in the same room as her) frames those thoughts as The Voice of the Narrator. By default, The Narrator is reliable and describes things accurately.

This is reinforced by Akane being the Smart One in OnK's cast, e.g. figuring out 90% of Ai's past with one night of research or figuring out that Hikaru was Aqua's father by watching some videos of Hikaru acting and thinking about things Aqua said. It is opposed by...nothing. We are expected to treat Akane's words as true by dint of them being the words of Narrator Akane, and also the only way we can make sense of chapter 166's slideshow.

...

I don't want to say you shouldn't "feel the weight of every panel," but for me, there wasn't much weight to feel. Chapter 166 opens with five panels of Ruby crying around the apartment, in poses I've seen countless times, with no dialogue or anything else that might set it apart.

You can blame this on Akane not being there, but A. you can show things the narrator wouldn't know about, B. it was Aka Akasaka who decided to put that limitation on himself by both framing Ruby's breakdown this way and keeping Akane away from most of it, and C. he didn't think of anything that could take the place of dialogue.

Then we get a couple panels of Ruby gathering her resolve, then running while crying, then hugging Kana and MEM-Cho while they cry. It feels less like a scene than a montage, a way to quickly convey the idea of Ruby recovering and nothing more. Which is not always a bad thing, but with all the weight put on Ruby in general and this last leg of her character arc in specific, it was the wrong choice for this story.

I agree that the biggest problem is that we don't see Ruby's recovery, but even if we did, the depiction of her grief would be weak. It conveys the idea of grief without getting into any specifics—nothing specific to Ruby, nothing specific to Aqua's death, no idiosyncratic reactions that don't make sense, even though real people do similar (or at least similarly stupid) things.

Again, I point to Kana's slap as an example of how to get it right. Kana holding it together for a while, then suddenly slapping Aqua's dead face and breaking down in an increasingly tearful rant, feels very specific. It's specific to Kana's personality, to her relationship with Aqua, to specific things she said (and didn't say) to him. It's really good! No one else would react to Aqua's death like that, and Kana wouldn't react to anything else like that, and while it wasn't un-foreshadowed, I'm not sure I would have guessed that Kana would follow through on that spur-of-the-moment promise to slap Aqua if he died.

By contrast, Ruby gets a dinky little montage.

The more I think about it, the more baffling Ruby's treatment in the last chapter of Oshi no Ko is.

The last few chapters didn't do much to establish Ruby's reaction to Aqua's stupid plan death beyond general details like "she cried a lot," so I assumed the last chapter was going to focus on that. And I guess it kinda did?

But it fast-forwarded through all the details so we could get to her Dome Concert halfway through the chapter and focus on that. Don't focus on Aqua's death, focus on Ruby's life and what she accomplishes.

As advice for Ruby, that's fine. But as a way to write Ruby, it means we don't feel the weight of Ruby losing Aqua/Goro-sensei. We're told that she cried a lot and stayed in her room a while, but only for a moment. We get a panel in chapter 165, two pages in 166, and then the entire rest of the chapter is Ruby standing up and Getting Over It.

What was the point?

I could ask that about many things in the last arc or two of OnK, but right now I'm asking it about Ruby in chapter 166. What's the point of showing us that Ruby overcame her grief if her grief was never presented as a real obstacle? Why should I care that she got to live the life Ai and Aqua wanted her to if there's no real struggle?

(Why should I care that Ruby's lighting up her fans' world the way Ai did? In the end, what did that do for her? Aren't we back to square 1?)

There's a lot that OnK had yet to properly resolve, and it spent its last chapter telling us about Ruby's awesome idol career. And that's it. And that's disappointing.

[darknessfoundlove]

Data on @decodetalking added to IGN006′s memory banks

“--And that’s why your present isn’t wrapped. So, I know it’s not as exciting, but!” Ai places the present on the table, “I’m hoping the gift itself makes up for it…” On the table is a lifelike statue of Decode Talker, a little smaller than Ai himself is currently. The metal of the Duel Monster’s armor had been carefully bent into shape by strong limbs, and it’s been painted with the intricate detail that only one with tiny hands and super-human eyesight could hope to achieve. 

“That’s not all! The best part of gifts are always below the surface. Watch this: Summon Decode Talker.” The little statue whirrs to life and walks across the table where it kneels in front of Yusaku like a knight. It asks, “play slideshow?” “Yes,” Ai answers for him. The Talker’s eyes light up and a holographic screen projects in front of him. A lot of the pictures Ai had clearly stolen from security cameras and old news reports: Yusaku looking at Ai in Duel Square after he had ‘captured’ the A.I, Playmaker dueling with Ai cheering in the background, spending time with Takeru, Flame, and Kusanagi. Yusaku and Ai smiling at each other while walking to school. Ai hoped it captured the positive parts of their life in Den City accurately. 

The holograms switched over to their new life in Spirale with a candid shot of them meeting again for the first time on the platform. You could easily see the happy, yet complicated expressions on their faces. Some pictures of Yusaku and Ai riding Firewall Darkfluid Dragon came before a rash of recent pictures taken by Ai himself. Ai pulling a tiny Yusaku into a hug, them lying in the snow together, and the pair participating in a number of winter activities. The pictures end, and a 3D hologram of Yusaku and Ai dancing for the first time, complete with music comes to life. 

After it ends, Ai sighs almost dreamily and cradles his head in his hands. “I’m so glad I installed a camera into my drone. So… Do you like it?  I’ve never given a Christmas gift before, but I tried my best.” He looks up at Yusaku nervously.

[reviewfix]

Review Fix chats with the team behind Mutant Football League, who discuss smashing through their Kickstarter goal in less than a weekend and how it feels to have the game on its way to release. The spiritual successor to the cult classic Mutant League Football on the Sega Genesis, the team, led by MLF creator Michael Mendheim, has some big shoes to fill, but from what we’ve seen so far, Mutant Football League looks primed to be another cult classic.

To contribute to the MFL Kickstarter, Click Here.

Review Fix: How does it feel to meet your Kickstarter goals so quickly?

Michael Mendheim: Hi Patrick, great to talk with you again. You know how it feels? It feels fantastic. I’m so happy for the project, our team, the community. It’s nice to finally win one of these things. WOO-HOO!!! Releasing the Sneak Peek Preview was the key. We placed it on the $1.00 tier, which is usually reserved for the virtual hug or the thank you. For a buck, we give you a steam key and you can play MFL on the PC if you have an Xbox one PC controller or DualShock 4 and bust some mutant heads. Here’s the link for your readers. Everyone reading this should finish the article and then go play and if you like the game, throw some money down and pre-purchase it.

Releasing the Sneak Peek Preview was one of the riskiest things we’ve ever done because the game is pre-alpha, so there are bugs, AI issues, the list goes on and on. My business partner, Maxim Novikov and I looked at each other before deciding to do it and said it’s either going to work or be a disaster and sink us. We were out of options. It was the only card we had left to play. So we went for the Hail Mary play and scored. Fun prevailed over bugs. We did the campaign because we were running low on funds and we need to get online done. That’s the last major feature and we’ve been working on it for a while now. We can’t ship without online play.

Review Fix: How much validation does this give you considering EA’s stance on the series for so long?

Mendheim: Absolutely none. EA has done nothing to prevent us from making this game. There is no animosity towards EA at all. I’m a fan of EA and I purchase their product all the time. They retain their rights to the characters and audio/visual presentation of the original game. We’re not re-making the original game. We’re making a different game, with different teams, characters and features. The new game is much faster paced and brutal than the original. We wanted to capture the spirit and humor of the original and based on the feedback we’ve received, we’re doing that.

Review Fix: For those under a rock- what makes this game so special?

Mendheim: MFL is a fast paced arcade football game. Think NFL Blitz with monsters, mutants, chainsaws and death. It’s a party game, best played with friends (over some beers). If you like to compete, enjoy mayhem, laugh and scream – this games for you. It’s insane!

Review Fix: What has development been like?

Maxim Novikov: Chief Technical Officer: The development of any game is not an easy process, but it’s been fun and interesting. We are developing the game in Kiev, Ukraine and I’m in charge of the studio out here. Michael is in Chicago and we talk daily. He also travels out here to work with us. Developing MFL has been different than other project I’ve ever worked on. Mostly it’s because we have to deal with Michael’s extreme passion and insanity on a daily basis – it’s exhausting! Everyone has to give all they’ve got just to keep up with him. But it’s been working. We’re such a small team, building a complex football game which we didn’t understand at first. When we started we couldn’t understand these crazy rules. The game made no sense. First down. Encroachment. What are these? Now we understand the game of American football.

Review Fix: How does the Mutant Football League push the envelope in ways its predecessors never did or couldn’t?

Novikov: The original game was created a long time ago, almost at the beginning of the Video Game console era, and so many things have changed since then. We now can deliver amazing visual effects, realistic physics, dynamic lighting and shadows, I could go on all day. But the biggest thing is, you can play MFL online. With that alone there is no comparison.

Review Fix: How does it feel to have so much support from the internet gaming community on this?

Chad Nimmo: Social Media Director: It feels great.  The community is so eager for this game.  And the fan base is growing every day.  We have people who have been with us since the first crowd-funding adventure, all the way to people who just found out about us during this successful Kickstarter; and they all want the game right now.  I think that’s one reason our campaign was successful.  So many are chomping at the bit for this game that they wanted that demo now, they want beta and alpha access so they can play the game now! So yeah, it feels great to have a community of fans that want your game so bad, and are so willing to support it to make sure they get it.

Review Fix: What makes this development team special?

Novikov: We are a small independent game studio, and when we had the idea to make this game, we had no people or money to do it. But the desire to make this game was so big that it attracted people. Our team is small, but consists of very experienced and talented people. Many of them sacrificed their secure and well-paying jobs in a big companies to work on this project. The reason they did this is because they believe in it. They believe in the game because of Michael’s passion. The Game has such a unique and fun concept.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Mendheim: Well now we have to deliver on our promise.

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Review Fix Exclusive: Inside Mutant Football League Review Fix chats with the team behind Mutant Football League, who discuss smashing through their Kickstarter goal in less than a weekend and how it feels to have the game on its way to release.