#I use a random number generator to select them and it was almost all later pages

[ridiasfangirlings]

Public Service Announcement: I'm on vacation so asks are taking a momentary break. I've queued some old asks as usual, new asks will return in a week.

[mizts-magic-blog]

Weekly Brew #1 Baru, Wurmspeaker Commander Deck

The Wurms are Coming!

This week's randomly selected commander is: Baru, Wurmspeaker!  Printed first (and only) in Dominaria United Commander, Baru is a simple commander with a simple plan. Wurms! Wurms are the plan.  With him at the helm, this deck is sure to rain wurmy wrath down on your foes!

FULL DECKLIST

GENERAL GAME PLAN

As I said previously, this Baru deck is very straightforward. Play big wurms for as little as possible, and swing them at face until you win! Not enough wurms? Wurmquake, Crush of Wurms, Wurmcalling, Sandwurm Convergence and even Baru can help you generate plenty of wurms! Wurms not big enough? Caged Sun,  Unnatural Growth, Sylvan Anthem, and similar cards add constant boosts! Having trouble casting the wurms? A fair amount of reduction and ramp has been splashed throughout the deck in order to get you to your wurms faster!

RAMP AND REDUCTION

A fair number of your wurms (read:almost all of them) are a little on the pricy side, so ramp and cost reduction are a must have. We have our usual suspects, with Emerald Medallion and Rhonas’s Monument providing a decent reduction to all your spells. Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma provides a minus 2 to the cost of 28 creatures out of the 39 in the deck. If you’re looking for true ramp, this list uses some pretty standard stuff for it. We hit the usual Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Thran Dynamo, and Moss Diamond for artifacts, while throwing in a Caged Sun for good measure.  As far as creatures go, you’ll see the typical Fyndhorn Elves type cards, as well as Sakura Tribe Elder  and Karametra’s Acolyte. If those don't push enough, cards like Cultivate, Explore, and Rampant Growth have been slotted in as well (plus a few more)

CHEATING INTO PLAY

If the ramp simply isn’t enough, a number of cards in the deck will allow you to cheat your massive wurms in for a much smaller cost.  Monster Manual and Elvish Piper allow you to repeatedly play a much bigger creature for only 1 or 2 mana, and Mosswort Bridge allows you to slot away a card to cast later, provided you have enough power (you probably should have enough power with a deck like this).

GENERAL VALUE

This deck has a lot of big, expensive creatures. Garruk’s Uprising and Colossal Majesty take advantage of this to keep your hand full as much as they can. The aforementioned Mosswort Bridge and Fight Rigging take advantage of the massive creatures to try and activate their abilities as quickly as possible. Runadi, Behemoth Crawler and Goreclaw take advantage of their high power to boost them even further beyond!  Since most of the deck is green, a handful of cards are designed to take advantage of that as well. Wurm’s Tooth gives you small lifegain for each spell you cast, and Caged Sun and Sylvan Anthem pump (almost) every creature you control!

OTHER CARDS OF NOTE

Defiler of Vigor provides a handy decrease in green costs, while also pumping the full field when you cast your spells. Panglacial Wurm can be cast off the numerous “search your library for a land” spells for a fun surprise. Dirtcowl Wurm gets bigger every time an opponent has the audacity to try and play a land while Deathcoil Wurm (try not to get them mixed up) gets to totally ignore the fact that creatures are blocking it. Sifter Wurm, Ravenous Lindwurm, Pelakka Wurm, Bookwurm and Bramblewurm all provide some lifegain, with Voracious Wurm getting nice and fat off them if you can cast them in the same turn. Worldspine Worm slows down mill a smidgeon, and Elderscale Wurm will help keep you from dying to (most) combat damage. Having trouble closing out the game? Bellowing Tangleworm makes it harder to block your massive creatures, just in case trample isn't doing enough, and Unnatural Growth doubles the size of your already massive wurms.

FINAL NOTES AND CONSIDERABLE CARDS

Baru was selected at random using a complicated method (wheel spins and random number generators). This deck is built using primarily my own knowledge of cards + my raw scryfall ability. Combining these factors with the attempted $150 budget, there are likely a number of cards not in here that should be, due to budget concerns, my own incompetence, or my failure to understand a mechanic/interaction. I ask that you give me some grace, as I learn more about magic and how to better build decks. This deck’s raw power is not the highest, but I can’t say I'm too surprised. Combining the budget with an odd tribe, I really can’t say I was expecting much better. If you decide you need better lands, Three Tree City and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx can slot in quite well over any old forest. Garruk, Primal Hunter can ult for a large number of wurm tokens if you are inclined to use him. Last March of the Ents and The Great Henge are fantastic options for the deck if you are less budget inclined then I am.  Heroic Intervention is good to slot in for protection, as are other fogs and fog likes. Better and more ramp can obviously also be done, once again for a higher budget. If you feel any worms are not working, or that you need more, there are a LARGE number of them that could easily be considered, with some being notably better than others (looking at YOU Mungha Wurm).

[beardedeldridge]

Per some requests  for specific info and a comment someone made that “other” people should share their ritual/dailies/practice or whatnot:

Part I:  This is a rough outline/timeline of how my practice evolved.

Part II:  I’ll sorta explain my regular working area.

Part III - … daily ritual I did the morning before the original post.

Prep:

I showered and went through a simple purification ritual (reciting 51 works well here in classic grimoire fashion).  Then I got dressed in comfortable clean clothing and entered into my ritual room.  This is pretty basic since I do it almost every morning.

Start of the workings:

Started with some lite meditation to prepare myself for the working then took out my tools. Then I preceded with more meditation while I slid my fingers across the beads counting until I found the bead of the day.

Then with the remainder wrapped around my hand loosely I went through my exorcism and preparatory rites (mostly specific psalms and prayers).  Banishing/invoking rituals can go here as needed.

Then I moved into prayers, invocations, and devotional work.  

Then I asked for the ways to be opened and what I needed to be sent to me. I then called on two allies for assistance and opened the ways.

Planetary workings:

From here I did my daily planetary work based on the day of the week (dsic works here).  Then I called on the other planetary forces. (I work thru the 7 classical planets +1 other.)

Sometimes I call on specific elementals or other spiritual forces/genius loci/local spirits/whatever at this time.  I don’t do this as much as I use to (or probably should). Haven’t spent a lot of time building those relationships/connections since we moved.

Specific Psalter workings:

I then evoked that days psalm. From there I evoked the chapter of the day from the other book I’m working. I allow my allies to direct which second book I’m working with. Sometimes I work thru the second book once other times multiple times based on what they say. (For an example if I’m on the 76th bead that’s Psalm 76 + Proverbs 14 {31 + 31 + 14} if I was working repeatedly through Proverbs for example). Then I did a few random passages as I felt led (to cover what I don’t know, to receive general guidance, or to answer a question if I have one). Then I continued and worked thru a set based on my main focus for the day. (A classic example would be a series of 7 specific psalms each once a day for 6 days and then all of them 7x on the 7th day to cut ties with something that’s holding you back for example.) Then I did a specific set of passages specific to my practice. (These change and evolve slowly as my practice and focus does.)

On this morning I was seeking some guidance and thru the “random” passages selected and the order they came thru, a fairly direct answer was given.  Always cool when the answers are that direct and neatly fitted together.

Closing:

Then I meditated, allowed for any additional stuff and then I completed the license to depart/closed down the ritual.  Banishing if needed goes here.

Personal Tips:

 My setup. 150 beads divided into 10 groups of different materials/numbers. (A single bead at the top, a set for the physical world at the other end, and sets for the elements/planets/etc in between). Also I have one bead for each psalm and I work one a day as I slowly work thru my psalter beads. This creates a focus for each psalm for use when I need to achieve a specific result in a specific situation.

Sometimes things come up so on average I work thru my psalter beads twice a year.  So maybe 65-66 miss days annually because sometimes life happens.  And sometimes parts may have to get condensed or put off until later/tomorrow.  Plan on those and don’t beat yourself up to much over occasional misses.

When I travel I carry a piece of the same flooring with markings that match those on the flooring in my ritual room and then I use that during my dailies when I’m traveling.

I find it best to go do something none magical right after.  I like to go deliver coffee to the kids (yep most drink coffee). Kiss the wife/etc…

I left out some stuff but if its important should be fairly obvious.

My practice has changed a lot since the pandemic started. I haven’t done any full manifestations since near the beginning of the shutdowns. Specifically after a particular result. We’ll see what the future holds.

Next Part IV:  Description of a black/sigil/pentacles/seals/narrative book I have been working on. (Probably. I haven’t completely talked myself into doing a post on this one yet.)

[a-supernatural-writer]

hcs for poly! tlb with a fem! s/o who’s style is dark academia and is really blunt/logical and smart. she basically gives off a ‘mysterious, quiet, dark, critical’ vibe (she also doesn’t really know how to handle people who are extremely emotional and she doesn’t know how to soothe someone. she’s just really oblivious/clueless when it comes to others feelings). i’m so sorry if what i requested doesn’t make sense or if it was too much. i am seriously incapable of writing anything without making it look like an essay lmao. love your work btw 💕✨

Dark Academia Fem! S/O 

Poly Lost Boys x Fem reader

I had so much fun writing this! I love the dark academia aesthetic! And it made perfect sense and it wasn’t too much! Having a lot actually helps me expand and write more so thank you. And I’m the same, once I have an idea, I write a lot, so you’re all good! And awww!!! Thank you!!! 💗💗✨✨ I really appreciate it! I hope you enjoy!

Okay, so you are very different compared to the large number of characters on the boardwalk. Your style consisted of button shirts, sweaters or turtle necks, dress pants or a plaid pleated skirts, cardigans or waistcoats, oxford shoes or even wire framed glasses if you wore them for seeing or just for the look. 

To say that you caught the boys attention would be an understatement. You seemed to stand out amongst the crowd and they became curious. You were a mystery to them and they love the challenge. 

Somehow, someway, after days or weeks later, you became good friends which soon lead to you dating four trouble making punks. It was tough on both parts, but it happened, and hey, you weren’t complaining. 

You were very blunt when you first met them, not really interested in them and more or less interested in the book in your hands. It took a lot of “accidental” run ins to even get you to hang out with them. 

You slowly opened up when they offered to take you out for dinner at a local diner. They’re constant joking soon had you letting out small, almost whisper-like giggles and tiny smiles that sent them into a frenzy. 

When you would start talking about yourself, your ideas of fun were different from theirs. You liked museums, opera houses, bookstores and going to theaters to see plays. The games you played were chess and cards, and the music you listened to was old. You were pretty sure they thought you were boring but you actually peaked their interest. 

After a while of being friends with them, they asked you out. You liked them and the only logical step was to see if you liked them the same way they liked you was to date them, so you said yes. 

In general, them having a girlfriend with a 1940s/1950s dark prep look was fun. David and Dwayne like it the most. Paul next, then Marko. 

David actually really likes picking out your clothing on most days. You have an extensive collection of clothing with material from cashmere to linen, all the colors consisting of browns, black, cream and even a little dark green. 

His favorite thing to put you in is trench coats. Doesn’t matter what color it is, he just likes seeing you in them. Also, there are a handful of times that he has MADE you wear his trench coat. Yeah it almost swimmed on you, but he thought it made you look cute and it fit in perfectly with your look. 

Dark academia isn’t only your style, but it’s your way of life. David is the one that plays chess with you. You had to reteach it to him and pretty soon, the two of you had your own little set up in the cave that was always ready for a game of chess. 

David is sort of like you… in a way when it comes to others feelings. But deep down he knows that he really likes you and tries to show it the best he can. He took you to a theater to see a play that you were constantly talking about and so he took you on a date. You being you, didn’t realize that’s what it was until he told it straight to your face. Let’s just say you were speechless for the next hour. 

Also, when it’s just the two of you, deep inside the cave where your nest is, classical music is playing from your record player. It could be Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Mozart. Whoever it is, David is the one that will listen to it with you the most. I think he really enjoys classical music and he enjoys it even more if the two of you are cuddling in your bed. 

Occasionally Dwayne would join the two of you. You would be sitting in between David’s legs as Dwayne sat in between yours, his head leaning back against your chest. It was like a cuddle pile… cuddle train?? Whatever you wanted to call it, it was cuddling while the three of you relaxed listening to classical music. And it was darn cute. 

Dwayne loves listening to you go on and on about any books you were reading at the moment. Whether or not it was nonfiction or even about any type of history. He was down. He lived through a lot and he knew about half of the stuff you gushed on about, but for some odd reason, it never bored him when you talked about it. 

He would be the one to get you new books, leaving you sweet little notes tied to them. Of course you thought it was just him being nice and thanked him for it without thinking there was any romantic meaning behind it. Yeah he was one of your boyfriends but it never really crossed your mind that way. He would just shake his head at your obliviousness and give you a small peck on the lips. 

Don’t ask him why, but his favorite look on you is a light cream colored blouse with a plaid skirt and Mary Jane shoes. Dwayne is a leg man so… he’s very happy when decide to show off some skin if you decide not to wear knee-socks or stockings with it. Even if you did wear them, he would still be attached to your side the entire night. 

Like David, Dwayne would bring you out to a lot of places that were opened late at night. If there was an art exhibition in town or even a museum that was open late, just say the word and he will happily drive you on his bike. Heck, David might even tag along. 

Also, late night bookstore dates… oh my heart, it’s too sweet it hurts. There are times that he does have to throw you over his shoulder when the bookstore is closing and you're pretty much refusing to leave. When he does that, you just stay frozen over his shoulder, not knowing if you should be blushing or cursing at him for carrying you like a sack of potatoes. 

If anything, you and Dwayne connect very well. You’re naturally very quiet and so is he. Not much is said between you two but there's a mutual understanding that can’t be explained. While the others are out causing trouble, you and him are on the sidelines watching hand in hand or your reading and he's just staring at you as you do so. 

Paul and Marko kind of give you whiplash. They’re loud and rowdy and definitely 100% opposite from you. But they interested you. They had a very chaotic outlook on life which made you ask many questions. 

Paul found your look sexy. He’s horny and you give off preppy school vibes, he’s living for it 24/7. Constant teasing of you giving him ‘private lessons’ which results with you whacking a book against the back of his head. But it doesn’t stop the reddening of your ears which doesn’t make him stop.  

This man is also your designated jewelry expert. You only wear some accessories and they're very simple. So you are very surprised when Paul finds you jewelry that is your style and collects it for you. You like leather watches, guess what, he’s got it for you. You want some fancy victorian looking brooches, he’s got that too. Simple rings with a single jewel in the middle, expect constant ‘will you marry me’ jokes, but he gets you the best.

Also, he’s not overly big into your music selection. He does try to get you into his type of music, which you only like very few and far between. But when you do get him to listen to your type of music, it’s only if you agree to listen to his music the next night. You guys come up with a system and decide to switch every few nights. 

Each of the boys have their favorite look on you and Paul's is when you wear a button-up of any color with a simple black tie, a pencil skirt and a pair of Dr.Marten boots. He especially likes the tie… for reasons. God damn it, you know the reasons, get out of here. 

He’s a very affectionate boy and he finds your looks over confusion some of the cutest shit he’s ever seen. Probably the first one to tell you that he loves you and you honestly like glitched out. Did you feel the same way? Yes, but poor little thing you doesn’t say it right away, but Paul knows that you aren’t really used to saying things like that without warming up to it. Which is okay. He knows even if you don’t say it. 

He definitely steals one of your blazers to put pins on it. Marko helps, putting a few patches on it that they both know you would like. It’s the one item that stands out in all of your clothing and you will wear it if they ask you to. 

Marko definitely thinks the look is cute and it suits you very well, but why no color?! You wear dark colors but nothing bright like the colors that are on his jacket. He tries to slip in some colorful clothing into your everyday look, it never goes as planned but you give him an A for effort. 

He loves how dark you can be at times though. You want to go to a local graveyard just because? Sure! Let’s go! He’s your designated graveyard buddy. You have many date nights there, looking at all the different gravestones and finding it interesting when you jot down some names in one of your notebooks. 

Speaking of notebooks, you have many of them. They were filled with notes from books you’ve read, real life observations or even just some random poetry and short stories that you wrote. Marko would go through them a lot and even sometimes draw little doodles or rough sketches that were thought up from your writings. 

When you spend nights down at the Boardwalk, your go to drink isn’t a slushie or a milkshake or even a soda. It’s coffee or tea. Yeah, and only Marko knows your drink orders by heart. None of the others seem to remember them correctly which you thank them for trying but Marko has got them all beat. 

Marko likes seeing you in sweaters and in your trousers or linen shorts with chelsea boots. If anything, when the two of you are alone, just wearing a knit sweater and shorts were perfect for him. He likes how cozy and warm you look. He’s very happy when he cuddles you and you are warm. 

Now when they tell you that they’re vampires, you think that they’re joking. Vampires aren’t real, they’re a work of fiction. Yes there was a real man named Dracula, but there was no way that they were actual vampires. 

Then they showed you hard proof and then there was no denying it at that point. Instead of running away, you were fascinated. You wanted to understand your boyfriends vampire ways that lead to you conducting extensive research and a notebook dedicated to them. 

They showed you everything about them, how they feed, to which you didn’t bat an eyelash of watching them feed one night. You were one morbid chick but they saw that as a plus that you didn’t react. You had graveyard dates for crying out loud, nothing really surprised them at that point.

Flying came next and they had a lot of fun showing you just how high they could go with you in their arms. You never screamed at the height, you were too caught up in seeing the overhead view of the town. You could get used to seeing a view like that every night.  

Then came the other things; how they slept before you came along, what actually hurt them and what didn’t. There was one time that you stared at their vampire faces for hours because you were taking notes on how their facial features changed. 

Soon you had to stock up on more turtlenecks because of the many bite marks they would leave behind from feeding on you if the weather was bad one night. It wasn’t tough adapting to their occasional feeding. A lot of your clothing already covered up your skin so it was easy to hide from people on your nights out. 

Not too long after, they popped the question. Would you want to be a vampire? Live forever, never grow up? Be with them for all eternity? You didn’t really need to think about it for too long, you knew what your answer was and so did they even if you didn’t say it out loud. You loved your boys and not much would change.

When you did change, it was entertaining for them to watch. You soon started taking down notes about your progress, comparing and contrasting your experience to their own. 

To the eyes of many, you became even more dark and mysterious. You had an aura around you that drew people in, it’s what got you your four vampire boyfriends, only now, it brought in your meal for the night.

[analyzen]

Italian Fandom Meta | Most Popular Types of Pairings on EFP vs. AO3

EFP (2001–, Fanlore) is the most popular writing archive in Italy, and it hosts both fanfic and original fiction. Under the cut you’ll find a breakdown of the most popular types of pairings on EFP in comparison to the most popular types of pairings in the Italian section of AO3.

The Italian version of this analysis can be found here.

TL;DR:

53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted

49% of the registered users on EFP have deleted their accounts

M/F works amount to 60% of the whole website

EFP’s three most popular fandoms (Harry Potter, One Direction, Original Fiction – Romantic) all have a majority of M/F works

On AO3, most Italian works are M/M (56%)

F/F doesn’t have much content on either site (4-5%)

Methodology

I’ve followed @olderthannetfic’s methodology from this earlier Fanfiction.net analysis. Basically, I picked a sample size of 666 chapters and organized them in four categories (M/M, M/F, F/F, Not tagged; more on this later).

Why I chose chapters instead of stories

On EFP you don’t have specific links for every single story. Instead, every chapter you post gets a unique id, which can be seen in the link itself. For example, at the time of writing this the last updated chapter on EFP was this one:

viewstory.php?sid=3974099

Which means that this was the 3'974'009th chapter ever posted on EFP.

Ids follow the usual numerical order, so if a link reads id=3, then there have to be id=1 and id=2, and the next link will have id=4.

So I’ve used a randomizer to select ~1200 unique ids to analyse.

Weren’t 666 chapters enough?

I started out with 700 chapters, but half of them weren’t working. That’s because 53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted from the website.

Thanks to the link of the last updated chapter, we know that almost 4 millions chapters have been posted on the EFP. But EFP's homepage shows different stats:

Registered users: 602395, 205974 of which are authors Last registered user: [blacked out] Total of stories: 517083 Total of chapters: 1869573 chapters Total of reviews: 6222695 Online users: 17 logged in and 53 visitors

While we should have almost 4 million chapters, the stats show ~2 million chapters. Why? Because the stats only show the stories, chapters and users that are still on the website, and they don’t show the stories, chapters and users that have been deleted.

(Sorry, I forgot to translate this one. It reads: Total of chapters posted on EFP between 2001 and today. Orange: deleted chapters. Blue: chapters that are still online.)

Thanks to the stats on the homepage we also have a link to the last registered user. User ids follow the same numerical order as chapter ids, so once again we know that 49% of the users ever registered on EFP have deleted their accounts. That's a lot of deleted accounts.

Categorization

After selecting 666 (accessible) chapters, I organized them into 4 categories:

M/M: contains all stories tagged as “yaoi”, shounen ai” and “slash”

M/F: contains all stories tagged as “het”

F/F: contains all stories tagged as “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash”

Not tagged: which contains a) poetry, b) stories tagged as “no pairing”, and c) untagged het stories.

As for the untagged het stories, there are two issues:

Many M/F fics simply aren’t tagged

Many gen fics include untagged M/F ships

If the description made it clear that the story included a heterosexual relationship, I added the story under the M/F tag. Otherwise I left it under not tagged.

Also, on EFP “yaoi”, “shounen ai” and “slash”, and “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash” actually mean different things.

This screenshot here is from the posting page on EFP. It reads:

Pairings * You must select at least one tag from the list, and you can choose up to three tags. Het: for heterosexual relationships Shonen-ai: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Shojo-ai: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Yaoi: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Yuri: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Slash: for male/male relationships from TV shows/movies/books FemSlash: for female/female relationships from TV shows/movies/books

The thing is. People either respect the rules and use different tags for different kinds of stories, or they use these tags interchangeably to maximise the chance to appear in other users' searches. Which means that you’ll find RPF tagged with “shoujo ai”, and Attack on Titan fics tagged as “slash”. (More info on this later.)

Findings

On EFP, the majority of the stories are M/F.

To confirm this, I checked some specific fandoms:

Some notes:

Because EFP doesn't have metatags like AO3, what I did was: 1) go to a specific fandom, 2) filter through every single tag, and 3) jot down the number of pages per search. Every page contains up to 15 stories, so for example searching for het in Original Fiction – Romantic gives you 846 pages, which amounts to around ~12690 stories.

The tag in red, “Nessuna”, means “no pairing”. It is used for gen fics but also for untagged M/F fics. This is especially true in some fandoms, ie. Original Fiction – Romantic, and Harry Potter.

EFP’s filtering system sucks. You can only filter through stories with specific relationship tags, but you can’t filter out relationships tag. So what you see in the graph is how often a tag is used... which brings us to some issues. For example, Harry Potter is the biggest fandom on EFP, so much that Harry Potter stories amount to 11% (!) of the whole website. But in the graph it looks like the One Direction fandom has more stories—wrong. Actually, One Direction has many stories tagged as both slash and het, while Harry Potter stories tend to be either one or the other.

EFP’s filtering system sucks, part 2. Because “shounen ai”, “yaoi” and “slash” are often used at the same time, you can't really smash together all three of the tags to get a total amount of stories. I'd say that around 50% of the stories tagged as shounen ai and yaoi probably overlap, but there is no easy way to find out because, again, EFP’s filtering system sucks. The same goes for “shoujo ai”, “yuri” and “femslash”.

Fandoms with a majority of M/M stories

While there are some fandoms with more M/M stories (ie. Death Note, Hetalia, Glee, Sherlock, Supernatural, Teen Wolf), these fandoms are simply extremely small in comparison to other bigger fandoms full of M/F fics. Which obviously skews the numbers in favor of M/F fics.

What about femslash?

EFP suffers from the same lack of femslash as AO3 as a whole. In the fandoms I've analysed, only two have a big enough number of F/F. The fandoms are Glee (which has more F/F stories than M/F stories) and Grey's Anatomy (which has as much F/F as M/F stories, with little M/M).

Original Fiction

I thought it might be interesting to explore the original sections too, especially because Original Fiction – Romantic is the third biggest fandom on EFP after Harry Potter and One Direction. These Big 3 all have a disproportionate amount of M/F stories.

By logic, this would mean the the majority of the userbase on EFP prefers M/F stories. But then, aren't fans always complaining about “too much slash”? If “Any Two Guys” were enough to find slash appealing, wouldn't it be easier to simply write original M/M?

I think that looking at original stories might help us understand why people might prefer slash over het in some fandoms. For example, the amount of M/F stories in Original Fiction – Romantic implies that, when authors have to chance to choose what types of stories to create from scratch, they might prefer M/F stories.

This would support the theory that many people might prefer slash because of the lack of (well written/primary) canonical female characters + how well M/M relationships, both platonic and romantic, are written in canon texts in comparison to M/F or F/F relationships.

Obviously, we have to keep in mind that not all fanfic writers write original fiction and viceversa, so I'm not trying to find a universal explanation here. Also because not every website has a majority of M/F stories.

Which brings us to...

AO3 vs. EFP

As per today 20/04/21, the Italian section of AO3 contains “only” 24777 stories, divided between many different fandoms. To make a comparison, the Italian stories on AO3 amount to 5% of all the stories available on EFP. To make another comparison, the whole Naruto fandom on EFP has 20129 stories in total.

EFP has also been active for 20 years, while the boom of Italian fics on AO3 only started around 2018. We can't really make a 1:1 comparison between the two archives, but we can still try to understand the preferences of their users.

M/M and M/F stories on EFP vs. AO3

EFP: 60% M/F, 25% M/M

AO3: 56% M/M, 23% M/F

The percentages are almost swapped.

This might be because of the archives themselves. EFP has always been the general website for any Italian fandom (and actually at first it mostly hosted M/F content), while AO3 has always had a big M/M userbase. I'm basing this statement on this AO3 analysis from 2013, in comparison to this FFN analysis from 2018 which showed a majority of M/F fanworks, and finally this AO3 vs. FFN vs. Wattpad analysis from 2019, which showed that AO3 has always been the outlier for its majority of M/M content.

Then again, M/M stories on EFP have always been subject to the “usual” type of borderline-to-direct harassment that M/M fans are used to, which is something that still happens to this day especially in certain writing groups on Facebook, where the Italian writing community is pretty active. It wouldn't be weird for slashers to move to AO3, where they know they'll find more like-minded people and less headaches. (Also, the Italian section of AO3 has a lot of M/M RPF that's banned on EFP.)

The “Multi” tag on EFP

The only thing that barely resembles a multi tag on EFP is threesome, which for some reason is often used as a synonym for love triangle. So from the tags it isn't easy to understand if a fic includes an actual threesome (as in, a sex scene), a polyamorous relationship, or a simple love triangle.

This doesn't mean that there aren't poly stories on EFP—it simply means that they're impossible to find using the search system.

And that's all, I think!

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Let’s talk: The importance of curating your space and the cyclical life of ships

by Admin 1

From anon: Hi! I'm a new Army/vminie (4 months) and I have a (maybe dumb) question... When I joined, I saw so many j*/k*okers analysing every small moment between jk and jm and these ppl were everywhere and I couldn't avoid seeing j*/k*ok ship content. However, the past two weeks or so it seems to have shifted and suddenly I see t*e/k*ok ship content everywhere. I wonder, is this shifting a normal occurence? And how do I get rid of these ship contents in spaces that are supposed to be free of these 2 ships

Having been around for quite some time, I’ve come to think of the big ships as something very akin to extremely sensitive seismometers. Instead of detecting even the smallest movement or noise in relation to earthquakes or volcanic activity, these ship seismometers react to any and all activity (as in any kind of “moments” or what they perceive as such) in very “volatile” manners, for a lack of better words.

What do I mean by that?

Like you said, there was a long phase after Dynamite came out where the mood had shifted toward J*k*ok because we got more content in which we could see those two interact, even if later on we also got content from the same sets and time in which both members involved were seen interacting with other members, but that didn’t matter. So, obviously, shippers took this as grand sign, the seismometer drawing numbers like ones you’d get when you have an extreme earthquake, but in this case it was a positive thing. Every new “moment” or anything they perceived as such caused big reactions, loud enough to even reach far beyond their space and instead was heard also in general ARMY spaces or those of other shippers etc. But, there’s also the opposite effect, as in, volatile reactions, or big reactions, when there are several pieces of content one after the other where said ship doesn’t interact or doesn’t have any “moments”. In cases like that euphoria quickly shifts into “insecurity” (though they would never admit to that) and worry, occasionally also defensiveness and attacks.

Imagine a scenario like this: lets say we get five Bangtan B*mbs. The first one has main ship A interact, the next one doesn’t have either of the two ships, the third one was has main ship B interact, as well as in video four and five. 

Those who were happy with the first video will be casual/neutral about the second one, but as they get the third, fourth and fifth, the seismometer for them inevitably turns from extremely positive to extremely negative. While for B it’s the exact opposite, going from negative to extremely positive with YT and sns exploding with announcements of “B ships is back” or “B are in love after all, BH has freed them” or anything along those lines.

What I’m trying to say is that yes, this is normal. The big ships and their shippers lead a very cyclical life, which also means they never quite “disappear” either. They are always there, waiting, and then jump on any piece of a moment they get with big reactions, and in the time where they have nothing, chances are the toxic part of their community will go into attack mode instead, like that will change anything at all. We’ve seen other ships come and go, nearly disappear just to have some kind of revival months or even years later, or “new” ships win the favor of the masses. There are also a few ships that have steadily existed for most of the past eight years without any volatile shifts or changes, but those are generally the quieter ones ignored or actively campaigned against/discredited ones by the big ships and their shippers. 

Hyung line ships are generally seen as more “niche”/overlooked, or just some background extras for fanfics or something ML shippers enjoy since the aren’t an active “threat”, like Namjoon x Yoongi or Yoongi x Hobi which have been around forever and I don’t think I’ve ever really seen (or heard about) anyone have fights about them or even fights between those two camps, since most shippers have an almost laser like focus on the maknaes and especially JK.

The funny thing in all of this, if you can even call it that, is that none of it really depends on the members themselves. In all this time they haven’t changed their behavior much at all, their bonds haven’t drastically or dramatically changed, and certain members didn’t magically go from “hating” each other to suddenly becoming couples over night or vise versa. It’s all shipper interpretations, theories and conspiracies being layered on top of what people see on screen to make things more “interesting”, even if that means actively going against what the members have said themselves and who the members are, as in their personalities but also in relation to each other.

And this brings me to my next point, the importance of curating your own space.

Here it’s important to know what kind of a TL or ARMY sns experience do you want. Do you want to just focus on your bias with a side of OT7 with gifs and pictures and nothing else? Do you want to have more of an eye on how BTS is doing on the charts? Have more discourse and discussions on the TL you can follow or actively participate in? Or do you want a mix of it all?

Personally I’m very picky in who I follow and what kind of content I add to my TL by following an account. Generally I think it’s important to check every account you consider following to make sure they aren’t one of the following things: akgae, manti, solo stan, toxic shipper, or a victimizing sheep. While I do follow a number of ship centric accounts, because I like seeing vmin and namjin on my TL, I find it extremely important to follow several trustworthy ARMY translators as well as a number of non-ship centric ARMY accounts that just focus on Bangtan as a whole.

The block button is your friend. I know it might seem drastic or mean to just block random people, but in the long run you will be thankful for it since it will keep toxic content away from your space, regardless if toxic in a solo stan sense or a ship one. If you’re on twt you can also mute certain words and # so they don’t show up on your TL either, make use of that if you feel a need for it. Eventually though the algorithm learns what you gravitate toward, and if you follow a well curated number of accounts, the things you don’t want to see simply won’t appear where you can see them.

On YT, as far as I’m aware, in the recommended section you can mark videos you don’t like as not being interested in them and even mark whole channels as something you don’t want to have recommended to you. Since I don’t watch any ship related videos, I never get any recommended to me despite watching BTS videos (though I mostly stick to their official accounts and wherever else they performed).

It’s important to create a space in which you just see the content you want, but still pay attention to not just bury yourself in a ship bubble since that can be a slippers slope and you might end up accidentally turning yourself toxic on accident, too sure of your thoughts and end up growing resentful moments where a member of your ship interacts with someone else in the group. That’s when you know you’ve gone several steps to far, since above all else, we are ARMY before we are vminnies or namjinists or anything else. We can love our chosen duo, we can love our bias(es), but we should always listen to what the members have to say and trust them. After all Tae (and the other members) has asked us several times to love all seven, so that’s what I do. They are all incredibly lovable, and their bonds with each other all precious and wonderful in their own ways and worthy of appreciation, so I don’t understand those who feel hatred against any of them.

Curate your space but always keep a healthy mix of general ARMY and ship content, if you are someone who partakes in shiperverse activities, and stay as far away as possible from manipulative YT videos and accounts with toxic narratives and motives. 

From anon: hey! read your new post re: curating your own space. don't know if you'll answer this, but is there any "must follow" accounts on twt (for translations, vmin, and bts in general) that you can recommend? I'm new to the site and made an account for bangtan only, but there's just so much going on there that it can get confusing. Also found out that there are many troll accs, fake 'nice' accs, too much drama accs etc that can give you a bad experience.

Here’s a large selection of translators and a smaller selection of other accounts that I think are worth following, especially BTSChartData. Also, whatever you do, don’t follow the BTS ARMY twt account with 4M+ followers or however many they might have at this point.

I’d also be very weary of member specific fanbases and chart accounts since they are known as perfect breeding grounds for solos, akgae and mantis, unfortunately, and some have been exposed for being akgae themselves.

[kpopscenariowish]

First Time for Everything (GOT7 Jinyoung)

A/N: **smut warning** Here’s a Jinyoung smut scenario request. Enjoy~ :) 

You sat in the back of the car as your manager drove you to the recording studio. You were nervous because this would be your first time appearing as a guest on a variety show. You knew there would be some well known celebrities there and you were still just a newbie in the industry. Your manager noticed your expression in the driver's mirror and glanced back at you.

"Don’t be so nervous! You have to loosen up on these kind of shows. If you're too uptight you won’t be entertaining. And if you're not entertaining enough the producers will edit you out. You need to show a good face to gain some exposure and make some connections with the other guests," your manager prattled on about all the things you already knew.

You knew this was your chance at getting your name out there and maybe getting cast for some more acting jobs. So far you only managed to get a minor role in a drama as the main character’s best friend and a small part in a debuting kpop group's music video. But being on a variety show would be different. There would be a live audience, no script, and if you screwed up there were no retakes.You sighed as you glanced up and made eye contact with your manager in the mirror.

"I'll try my best, but I’m still nervous."

"It’s okay. Just think of it like any other acting role. You're role here is to be a confident up and coming actress with a nice personality that viewers will like and relate too. We need to build up your fan base as well. Basically if you're nervous, just fake it til you make it." Your manager gave you a final nod satisfied with his advice.

Once you arrived at the studio you were ushered to the female dressing room. You sat down in the make up chair in between two other female celebrities who were also on today's show. You decided it would be best to take the initiative and introduce yourself to them.

"Hello, my name is y/n. I look forward to working with you today," you greeted them politely as your manager’s words about making industry connections rang in your head.The girl on your right just scoffed at you and grabbed her phone and busied herself with taking selfies of her perfectly applied make up. The girl on your left however was much more friendly.

"Hi! It's nice to meet you! I'm Nayeon. Is this your first variety show?" She smiled at you cutely.

"It is actually. But I'm confident it will go well," you smiled back at her feigning confidence.The girl on right made another scoffing noise and stood up and walked out of the dressing room.

"Ah, you'll have to ignore Jeongyeon. She's in a bit of a mood today," Nayeon apologized on behalf of her group mate.

"It's fine. I may be a newbie, but I'm aware of how things are in this industry," you replied.

"Don’t worry she will be much nicer to you in front of the camera," Nayeon winked at you. The two of you chatted as your stylist applied make up and fixed your hair making sure you looked absolutely perfect.

"Oh by the way, do you know who else will be on the show?" You asked Nayeon as you gave yourself a final once over in the mirror.

"Oh, is that your way of asking what male idols are here," Nayeon giggled.

You gave her your most innocent look, "Well just out of curiosity..."

"I'm not sure if there’s anyone else, but I know Jinyoung and Jackson are here since we came in the same company van," Nayeon grinned at you.

"Jinyoung," you mumbled to yourself too quiet for Nayeon to hear. You had briefly encountered Jinyoung when you were filming your first drama. He was filming for another drama at the same set. He looked good on camera, but in person he was stunning. You remembered greeting him as he passed and the look he gave you. The brief moment your eyes met he seemed to stare right into your soul. You never felt so vulnerable just from someone looking at you. It was like he was looking right into you and knew all your secrets. And as fast as it happened his gaze left you and he walked on.

You were excited at the prospect of seeing him again. Of having him look at you like that again. And actually having a conversation with him. What even was that look he gave you? You shook your head. There would be time later to think about Jinyoung and his mesmerizing eyes. Right now you had to focus on being a demure, pretty actress who the public could love.

Alright. Let's do this! You mentally encouraged yourself as you followed Nayeon out to the set.

The first half of the show seemed to be going pretty well. You introduced yourself along with the other guests. The hosts asked you some general questions about yourself as you were a new face to the public. You were seated with Nayeon and Jeongyeon, while Jinyoung and Jackson were seated across from you along with the actor Ji Soo.

There was brief pause in filming, but you all had to stay in your places on set as it wasn’t an offical break. Your eyes ended up drifting over to Jinyoung. As soon as you looked at him his eyes immediately met yours. He stared back at you for a second then turned away and started talking to Jackson. This time when he looked at you it wasn’t like the first time you saw him. His eyes didn’t seem to hold anything in them. It was almost like you were just an object he noticed was there then completely disregarded. Nayeon however, apparently noticed you looking at him and nudged you slightly. You turned to her and she just gave you a mischievous look. Before she could say anything the hosts came back and the filming resumed. Still you couldn’t help but sneak glances at Jinyoung, hoping he would look back at you the way he did the fist time you saw him.

It was half way through filming now and it was time for everyone's break. You headed back to the dressing room with Nayeon, while Jeongyeon headed to the staff cafeteria. Once you arrived in the dressing room and no one else was there Nayeon turned to you grinning.

"So, Jinyoung," she started.

"There’s nothing-" you began to say.

"You know if you want to talk to him, you have to go to the cafeteria. That's where people go to um... mingle," she said suggestively.

"Really? I thought that was where people went to get food," you joked.

"No, no. That's where idols exchange numbers and stuff! Even Jeongyeon’s doing it right now with Ji Soo! If you're looking to get to meet someone these shows are the best way. You just have to be discreet," Nayeon explained.

"So... say I wanted Jinyoung’s number... How would I go about that?" You asked as you walked over to the mirror to touch up your make up.

"You go to the cafeteria and just talk to him about something random. Like how great filming with him as been. Something that sounds innocent to anyone listening but hints that you might be interested," Nayeon explained.

You gave her a surprised look, "That works?"

"Trust me, it does," she laughed and walked over to you to fix your hair a bit.

"Now go do it before we have to go back to filming!"

You walked into the cafeteria and sure enough, there was Jinyoung. He was standing by the food counter looking at the selection of fruit.You straightened your back as you approached him with confidence. He turned to look at you when he noticed you were standing beside him.

"Hi, I just wanted to say how great it's been filming with you so far," you figured you'd start off with what Nayeon told you to say. Jinyoung nodded at you and went back to looking at the food. He seemed completely uninterested in you.You bit your bottom lip as you thought of what to do next. Do I keep trying to talk to him?

"I saw you on set one time when I was filming my first drama. I hope we can work together someday-" you started to say but he cut you off.

"Look, I know you're a new actress and everything, but I can’t get you cast if that's what you want," Jinyoung said curtly.

He thought you were trying to use him to get cast? You thought bewildered.

"Ah, that's not what I meant. I mean I would love to work with you, but I wasn’t implying that you..." you trailed off as you realized Jinyoung wasn’t listening as he picked up an apple and walked off.

Well, that went well...You ended up sulking back to the dressing room. Nayeon noticed your dejected expression when you walked in.

"What's wrong?" She asked concerned.

"Um... I think I was just rejected," you sighed and recounted the event to Nayeon.

"He actually said that to you?" Nayeon gasped.

"Yeah," you nodded sadly.

"It’s time for plan B," Nayeon declared standing up from her chair.

"What's plan B?" You tilted your head confused. "Isn’t being rejected once in a day enough?"

"Plan B is only for me to know! You'll just have to wait and see," Nayeon eyes lit up as she was clearly plotting something.

"Okay, then. But you should know you look terrifying right now," you laughed as Nayeon stuck her tongue out at you.You headed back to the set as filming had resumed. This time it was the game segment that you were filming.

"Okay, now for this next game we need everyone to get into teams of two!" The host exclaimed excited. Jeongyeon immediately ran over to Ji Soo snd Nayeon ran over to Jackson. Leaving you with Jinyoung. Nayeon smiled at you as she stood beside Jackson. Did she know we would be playing a team game? You wondered if this was part of her plan. Jinyoung smiled politely at you as you made your way over to him. 

Of course he’s nice when the camera is on him.

"Great we have our teams! Now today we will be playing four mini games! The team with most points will win a special prize!" The host exclaimed as the audience cheered.

"The first game will be..." 

The first three games were all pretty standard variety games. You were actually having fun and Jinyoung seemed to be too. Currently all three teams were tied with one point each. The last game would decide the winner. The last game however... you almost gasped aloud when the host announced it. The paper kissing game. You looked nervously over at Nayeon for hoping for some sort of reassurance. This game was normally played between idols who were in the same group and didn’t mind the physical contact aspect of the game. It was purely fan service basically.

"Whichever team successfully collects the most pieces of paper wins!" The host explained as the audience cheered in excitement.

Well, this could get interesting...

You and Jinyoung were the last team to go. The two of you decided that Jinyoung would be the one picking the paper up and then you would put it in the bowl after he passed it to you.

"Go!" The host signaled the game has started. You had 60 seconds to get the most papers. Jinyoung picked up the first paper with his lips and leaned towards you. You leaned forward waiting to receive the paper with your lips. The whole time Jinyoung stared directly into your eyes. This time there was something there lurking in his eyes. It almost looked lustful? That couldn’t be though, you must have imagined it because as soon as it came it left.

Jinyoung lips were only centimetres away from yours as he blew the paper to you and once you received the paper you quickly bent down to blow it into the collection bowl. The game kept going continued on like this until the last 10 seconds. Jinyoung was giving you the last piece of paper and you had no idea if it was the look in his eyes or just your attraction to him, but when he leaned toward you with the paper you leaned in too. And for the briefest moment the only thing separating your lips from Jinyoung’s was the thinnest piece of paper.

Jinyoung quickly pulled away before anyone else could notice that the two of you were that close to each other. You couldn't tell if he was mad or not. But he seemed to avoid looking at you after that. Luckily no one else seemed to notice what happened though and the host blew a whistle signaling time had run out. Your team came in second losing to Nayeon and Jackson who happily accepted their prize.The filming concluded and Nayeon practically dragged you back to the dressing room. Once you were inside she looked at you and wiggled her eyebrows.

"I saw what you did!" She giggled.

"You did?!"

"Yep! Don’t worry though it didn’t seem like anyone else did. Did you see Jinyoung’s reaction though?" She cackled.

"He didn't really react. Just seemed to avoid looking at me," you shrugged.

"His ears turned so red!" Nayeon exclaimed and pulled your hand trying to drag you out of the dressing room. "You have to go talk to him before we all get picked up by our managers! Trust me there’s definitely something there. You might not have noticed because you don’t know him as well as I do, but he was flustered for the last bit of filming. He didn’t even engage as much in the conversation with the host and Jackson." Nayeon dragged you over to a dressing room labelled Jinyoung & Jackson.

"Hey, why do they get their own dressing room!" You whined forgetting the reason why you were there. Nayeon slapped you on the arm lightly before knocking on the door. Jackson answered it and smiled at the two of you.

"Hey! Come to hang out before we get dragged on to our other schedules?" He joked.

"Yep! And I've brought my new friend," Nayeon gestured to you. Jackson invited the two of you inside. You saw Jinyoung sitting on the couch scrolling on his phone. He looked up smiling as he greeted Nayeon and then his eyes moved to you and his smile faltered a bit and he nodded towards you.

"I'm really hungry after filming. Jackson come get food with me," Nayeon said suddenly grabbing Jackson by the arm and pulling him out of the dressing room.

"But I'm not-" Jackson started to say, but it was too late Nayeon already had him out the door and slammed it behind them.

You turned towards Jinyoung and he was no longer paying any attention to his phone. He was just staring at you intently as if he were trying to figure you out.

"Look Jinyoung about earlier, I really wasn’t trying to imply for you to help me get cast. I really just meant I would like the chance to work with you on a drama," you sighed and walked over to him seating yourself beside him on the couch.

"Why do you want to work with me?" He asked curiously turning slightly so he could face you.

"Well, you always get cast as the lead male and I just.... I want to get a chance to be the lead female. I know I'm still new to the industry, but it's so hard! I feel like I always get looked over at auditions for the lead and I'm always just a supporting character. I admire that you are able to capture people's attention and be seen as a lead. That's all I want is to be seen as is a leading character," you admitted all your feelings and doubts about your career to him. You had no idea why you were saying all this, but you just wanted him to understand you a bit better. Jinyoung nodded in understanding.

"I'm sure you will get your chance to be the lead. You just have to keep working hard, " he said trying to comfort you. “Also, I’m sorry for being rude earlier. It’s just most of the female actresses I meet just try to flirt and get to close to me thinking I can get them more acting jobs... I’m sorry I misjudged your intentions.” 

“Well... I was hoping to get to know you in a non work related way,” you admitted blushing a bit. 

"About earlier... during the game," he looked away from you and you noticed his ears were indeed turning red.

"Oh, that. That was just because well... I’m very attracted to you and I just wanted you to look at me that way too," you stated boldly. Jinyoung looked at you surprised that you stated it so bluntly. You bit your bottom lip nervously waiting for him to say something. Jinyoung’s eyes drifted down to your lips. He leaned closer to you until your lips were almost touching.

"I wonder what it’s like without the paper there, " he said quietly before closing the gap and kissing you. You kissed him back slowly at first and then more fervently. He pulled you close to him and you ran your hands up into his hair.

Jinyoung pulled you onto him so that you were straddling his lap on the couch. He ran his hands up the sides of your body. You could feel a slight bulge forming in his pants and you lightly grinded against him as you kissed him. Jinyoung groaned into the kiss and pulled away for a second and looked towards the door. You were about to ask him what was wrong, but before you could he got up and walked over to the door and locked it. When he turned to face you again his eyes were filled with lust.

"Just making sure no one comes in to interrupt us," was all he said. He walked back to the couch this time gently pushing you on it so you were laying down and he was on top of you.He continued kissing you and his kisses eventually trailed down your neck and his hand reached up started unbuttoning your blouse. You moaned when he got to a particularly sensitive part of your neck and you could feel him smirk slightly.

You decided you weren't going to just lay there and be teased by him so you reached down to his pants and began slowly rubbing him through his jeans. He moaned into your neck and you giggled.

"Stop teasing me,"Jinyoung said as he finished unbuttoning your shirt and tossed it away along with his own shirt that he pulled off.

"Make me," you challenged him smirking. He caught your lips in another kiss and undid your bra as he kissed you. Once he had gotten rid of it, his hands reached up and massaged your breasts. He started trailing down your body and he lightly licked one of your nipples before taking it in his mouth while he played with your other nipple with his hand.

You moaned in pleasure at his ministrations and you grinded your lower body against his trying to create friction. You just wanted him to take you right there on the couch and stop with all the foreplay. Jinyoung insisted on being a tease though as he slowly made his way down to undoing your pants and pulling them off. You were left just in your panties now. Jinyoung’s eyes raked over your body you lay under him a moaning mess. Jinyoung rubbed your throbbing core though your panties causing you to moan even more.

"Jinyoung, please, " you begged. 

"Please what?" Jinyoung asked as he looped a finger through the waist band of your panties to pull them off. He started lightly rubbing your sensitive clit and the skin to skin contact was just over bearing and you couldn’t take it anymore.

"Please just fuck me!" You finally exclaimed. You could feel yourself lightly blushing at what you had just said. Seeming satisfied with your answer Jinyoung took off his pants and then boxers and you saw he was fully erect already. He leaned over you and teasingly rubbed the tip of his erection against your entrance. His eyes closed in pleasure and he let out a light moan as he pushed in and entered you. He paused for a moment to let you adjust to him. You gripped onto his shoulders as he began thrusting. You started moaning loudly and Jinyoung put his hand over your mouth.

"Shhh, we don’t want anyone hearing us now do we?" He murmered into your ear as the pace of his thrusts picked up. You just nodded as his hand muffled the sound of your moans. You wrapped your legs around his waist trying to pull him closer and deeper into you. Jinyoung reached down to rub your clit as he continued thrusting into you. Your moans became even harder to control and you felt close to your release. As you could feel your walls tightening around JInyoung his thrusts became more erratic and he let out a loud moan in your ear has you both reached your high. He collapsed onto you and you were both slightly out of breath. He gently brushed some stray hairs out of your face and planted a gentle kiss on your forehead.

"Well, I can say I've never done that at a variety show before," he said.

"First time for everything. I feel bad for whoever uses this dressing room next," you giggled and he pulled you close to him as you both lay naked on the couch.

"As much as I would love to continue laying here with you... we should probably get dressed before our managers come looking for us," Jinyoung sighed.You agreed and the two of you got dressed.

"Give me your phone," jinyoung said holding his hand out. You handed it to him and he typed something into it then gave it back to you.

“Call me later when you’re alone,” Jinyoung said with a playful glint in his eyes. Before you could say anything back the door knob started jiggling as someone tried to enter the room.

“Hey! Why’s the door locked?” You heard Jackson whine from outside. You walked over and opened the door for him. Jackson looked at you and then Jinyoung, and then back to you. His eyes widened as if he just realized what happened and he grinned at you. 

“What were you guys doing?” He asked giggling.

“I- I was just leaving my manager’s here,” you stuttered out as you hurried out of the room and down the hall. You heard Jackson say something after you, but couldn’t make out what it was. Your heart was pounding in your chest as the realization of what just happened hit you. 

“Call me later when you’re alone.”

Oh, you would definitely be calling him later.  

[lunias-takes-on-pathfinder]

Why Should I Play Pathfinder?

Everyone and their mother knows that DnD 5e has taken the tabletop world by storm, and for good reason - it's a relatively simple ruleset that's easy for new players to learn, and as a direct result of that it's become the game of choice for podcasts, actual play streams, and home group's everywhere.

So why should you play Pathfinder?

(tl;dr at the end)

High Fantasy

While 5e certainly has dragons, magic items, spells, and all the components that you’d expect from a high-fantasy campaign, the math behind the system actually tells a different story. The difference in power from Level 1 to Level 20 is mostly in the variety of abilities available to a character, how much damage they can take, and how much damage they can put out. Meanwhile, other stats like attack bonuses, armor class, saving throws, and skill bonuses don’t really change too much over the course of a campaign. As a result, it’s still entirely possible for large enough groups of weak opponents to drain resources and be a threat to players long into their careers. This works for some campaigns and settings, but the lower power scaling makes it harder to tell some stories. If you’re looking for a system where the power scaling allows a party who struggled against a troll one level to handle several trolls without breaking a sweat four levels later, and where high-level characters could realistically beat entire armies of low-level enemies if you wanted to sit down and spend time on it, Pathfinder’s going to be a better system to get into.

The Case for 1e

Pathfinder 1e is often referred to as "DnD 3.75e" by fans of the popular DnD 3.5 edition because it was created as a backwards-compatible edition that took 3.5 and improved upon its rules, fixing many issues that plagued the edition. 3.5e (and Pathfinder 1e, by extension) is known for its depth of customization options, with countless classes to choose from that cover an incredible variety of character concepts. There’s over 40 classes to choose from, such as the Magus that delivers spells through weapon attacks and the Hunter that fights alongside their animal companion as a coordinated duo and takes on the aspects of different animals. Each class also has its own Archetypes that modify some of their abilities to fit a different theme, such as taking the Avatar-esqe Kineticist class and making it a knight wielding their element as a weapon, or allowing the Summoner to forgo the ability to summon an independent creature to fight on their behalf and instead fuse with them to jump into the fray personally. And that all just scrapes the surface - multiclassing, prestige classes, feats, and an abundance of magic items all allow you to customize your character in so many ways that you can build dang near anything in this system.

You also probably shouldn’t bother.

What? You thought I was only going to sing its praises? Don’t get me wrong, Pathfinder 1e is an incredibly deep system with metric tons of content to dig into, but that’s also precisely the problem. There’s just so much stuff between the complex rules interactions and 11 years of content that breaking into the system today is a huge challenge for people who are new to the game. I had the benefit of jumping on several years ago and learning as things released, but with so many FAQs and rules clarifications between multiple books and supplemental materials Pathfinder 1e has become a massive chore to learn. If you’ve got a friend to help you learn or enjoy the complexity, then learning the system can be very exciting and rewarding. There’s also several balance issues inherent to the game, especially when it comes to spellcasters versus non-casters and over-specialization, but these can be fixed at home tables with a helpful GM.

If you ask me, though? Pathfinder 2e is where it’s at.

The Case for 2e

Pathfinder 2e is a pretty radical shift in design and balance compared to 1e, almost strictly for the better if you ask me. While 2e currently features only 15 classes with 2 more on the way next year, the game already has significantly more variety in character customization than 1e did at the time.

Your Heritage and Ancestry Feats help you define your character from Level 1 all the way to 20, making your Elf more Elf-y and your Dwarf more Dwarf-y. Class Paths determine how you’ll use your class features, such as the normally-dexterous Rogue taking the Ruffian Racket to instead become an armored bruiser who relies on their strength to browbeat enemies with underhanded tactics. Class Feats grant you new abilities or improve on the ones you’ve already got, but you can also spend them to pick up Dedication feats to multiclass or select an archetype, giving you access to feats your class normally wouldn’t be able to use. You wanna be a Wizard with a giant hammer? You can do that. A Bard who leads a team of Animal Companions like a Pokemon trainer? Go for it. You can also select various Skill Feats to pull stunts like running on walls, healing a creature with a medical kit during a fight, or making it harder for a creature you’re following to notice you and catching them off-guard easier if a fight breaks out.

And Pathfinder 2e has been out for all of, what, 15 months now? At this rate they’ll have more content and options by next summer than DnD 5e has released in the 6 years since its release. In my opinion, the best time to get into Pathfinder 2e is right now while the edition is still new.

Not to mention, Pathfinder 2e is a million times simpler to learn than Pathfinder 1e ever was, and despite the number of options available to characters the system is actually pretty easy to learn. Figuring out what you can do on your turn is easier in this edition than any other, including 5e. Ability score generation doesn’t use randomized dice rolls or a point-buy system, forgoing both for a system where your character’s ancestry, background, and class determine some bonuses while you divide the rest to your liking. Any character of any ancestry can easily reach an 18 in their class’s key ability score, making it easier than ever to play characters like dwarf wizards and elf barbarians that used to be penalized from the outset.

All of this is great, but there’s one big thing I haven’t mentioned yet.

Cost & Access

DnD 5e and many other games are locked behind paywalls, which makes it very difficult to break into a new system and see every option available to you. In case you weren’t aware, both Pathfinder 1e and 2e have online databases which are 100% free and have every single class, feat, monster, piece of equipment, etc ever printed. You’ll never have to worry about dropping another $50+ on a book if you don’t want to, and while the publishers do put out some pretty solid pre-built modules and campaigns you can always choose to forgo them and start your own campaign without spending a single dime.

tl;dr

Pathfinder 1e is incredibly complex and has some balance issues, but if you put the time in to learn the system and have a helpful GM to iron out any problems it has an absolute metric ton of content and customization options for characters and campaigns.

Pathfinder 2e takes 1e’s lessons to heart and throws out a lot of the old edition’s rules in favor of a streamlined approach that manages to be both easier to learn and play while managing to retain and even exceed the depth of customization available to players in 1e.

Both editions enable higher-fantasy narratives where characters go from being competent to effectively unstoppable over the course of their careers, and both editions have free online databases where every option ever printed is available. You’ll never have to pay a dime to play these systems if you don’t want to, although I personally encourage it as Paizo is a fantastic publisher.

[caribouwritings]

Sub-Zero

           I was only three when my older brother Eddie died. He had a brain tumor; he died a couple weeks after my birthday and a couple weeks before his.

          He did just as he told our mom when he said, “I stay four.”

          On June 27th, my big brother was gone at age four.

***

           My parents tried to give me a happy life. They gave me privileges that some kids are not as lucky enough to have (such as a vacation almost every year). Despite what the therapist had said when the event happened, I was damaged and it was only a matter of time before it would all show in forms that got glossed over repeatedly.

I didn’t just lose my brother, I lost my best friend, my protector, my guide… I lost my Eddie.

           Although I can now say it and not think much of it, I still cry at the thought I was cheated out of a big brother to teach me the ropes and take my hand when I was scared.

           Senior year of high school was the hardest. I was graduating (on that day fifteen years later) and my brother did not even make it to kindergarten, which he was so excited for because he’d get to ride a bus; His favorite thing in life besides me, our family, Scooby-Doo, and Donald Duck was anything with an engine.

           I outlived my brother who knew what he wanted (it could’ve changed in time, but it would still involve cars and trucks), and I had panicked. I believed people when they told me I would be a great English teacher. I wanted to be a writer, but everyone kept saying I am a teacher at heart. There was just a couple teeny tiny (major) problems:  I hate school (and still do), I am very selective with what I choose to read, and I don’t talk unless I want to or need to.

            Kudos to those who teach, but I’d rather not go back. School for me was where I had my individuality constantly beaten out of me, I was bullied by other students for who I was, have been accused and associated with things I am not, and my mental health got worse.

           However, being non-confrontational, I just nodded my head and let myself be pushed to a major I did not want and watched as I slowly went downhill, and crossed paths with someone a little bit before graduation who is just like me… sort of.

           I was looking for some new games to play that are like Street Fighter II. While watching a Top Ten Best Fighting Games of All Time video on YouTube, the channel (Watchmojo) ranked a video game called Mortal Kombat (2011) at number two, right next to Street Fighter II which placed number one. When I saw the game on clearance at Walmart, I put it in the cart with the plan to take over the unused Xbox 360 in the living room bought by my parents’ for the Kinect feature. My mom did not care anymore, she was just grateful that the expensive gaming system collecting dust under the TV stand was finally being used.

           I played through several kombatants (yes, with a ‘K’, most ‘C’ starting words are replaced with a ‘K’) in the Ladder Fights and Test Your Luck challenges for hours enjoying the blood and gruesome moves.

            I oddly kept finding myself drawn to Sub-Zero, the blue ice assassin (don’t call them ninjas, they find it highly insulting). I didn’t know why though; I couldn’t figure out why I thought the man with ice powers was intriguing. Curious by nature, I did what I do with everything else I found fascinating, I dug for all the information I could find. It didn’t matter how useless and random, I wanted to know everything about the world of Mortal Kombat, and I now know a huge chunk of it.

           Sub-Zero’s real name is Kuai Liang, and he was originally called Tundra. He is the younger brother of Bi-Han, the first Sub-Zero in the series, and Kuai Liang took the name Sub-Zero after his brother’s death to honor him. That was the only similarity I thought we had, but I was so wrong… I was so wrong.

           Mortal Kombat is super violent. The two ice powered brothers are best known for a fatality where they rip the head and spine out of their enemy opponent, both parts still attached together like a twisted party trick (and this is also the main origin to the ERSP rating system in video games). I am not even strong enough to lift a twenty pound puppy without nearly dropping the stubborn Shepard Labrador mix back on the ground with a thump. Plus there’s the other stuff on the surface:  blonde Caucasian female with an olive shade of green eyes, a bubbly persona and pink girly appearance, versus a dark haired Chinese American male with icy blue eyes, a cold persona and super violent history.

           “He is just a video game character, he is not real. You don’t need to care this much for this fictional character.”

           I know that. Kuai Liang is not real, but his story is real to me.

           Kuai Liang went through hell. Everything bad that could have happened, did happen to him. He lost his brother when Scorpion—the wraith of the NetherRealm (and the franchise’s fan favorite character)—killed him in retaliation for killing the whole Shirai Ryu clan, his kind-hearted wife, and innocent baby boy (spoiler alert, it wasn’t Bi-Han at all! Scorpion was tricked into killing an innocent man!). Wanting to avenge his brother’s death, and avoid the Lin Kuei’s new cyber-initiative their Grandmaster was keen on, Kuai Liang and his best friend, Smoke, ran away to find the answers to what happened to Bi-Han. Right when our new Sub-Zero nearly has his revenge and is to kill Scorpion, he is stopped and surrounded by members of his former clan who have been converted from human to cyborg; despite the robotic outsides and still human insides, they are brainwashed to obey like full-fledged robots. He is taken back to the clan and suffers the same fate of being turned into a cyborg and is renamed LK-520, then sent after Smoke who managed to get away. Lucky for both of them, cyber-Sub-Zero is knocked unconscious and Smoke gets help from his new allies to reset Kuai Liang, but although he gets his control back, he is now stuck as a mashup of man and machine. Until (in a rushed scene of the game) he is killed and his soul is sent to the Netherrealm where he is rebuilt from what is left of his remaining bits of human organs and bone inside his robotic shell. Although human again, he is now under the mind control of the sorcerer, Quan Chi (spoiler alert! He’s the real person behind Scorpion’s suffering!), and is now working alongside both the man who framed his brother and the man who murdered his brother, along with several of his new allies that died as well. In the tenth game, he is freed from Quan Chi’s control by being in the right place at the right time (and by also being a fan favorite character too).

           That should be the end of it, but it’s not. This is right before I realized how perfectly Kuai Liang’s life parallels mine. This is before I read the comics.  

           Like I said, I get invested in stories to the point I want to find out everything I can. When I found all three volumes of the comic series on Amazon, I couldn’t resist and I bought all three.

           When UPS came to deliver the package, I brought it straight to my room plopping the brown cardboard box on my bed, and cut the tape open with a pink mechanical pencil. I didn’t care for the other two books I bought (except enough to hide the one I bought for my little sister’s birthday in the closet) because there they were. Volumes one, two, and three were at the bottom of the box under giant green bags of air that are satisfying to stomp on and give unsuspecting siblings heart attacks, but that was unimportant in this moment. I took the three volume books out and spread them on my bed, and dived right into the unknown; into the rebuild of the Shirai Ryu, the second generation of klassic characters, and what happened to those who lived or were brought back like Sub-Zero.

           Sub-Zero, at this point, was my favorite character. In volume two, however, there was a shift in my view of him. In that shift, he became my number one favorite character ever and sealed his place into that spot permanently.

           Kuai Liang had become possessed by a cursed dagger in the previous volume, and it continued into volume two. Scorpion (he is a good guy now… sort of) and his apprentice, Takeda, go after him and get the dangerous dagger back, but the curse makes it hard for Scorpion to reason with Kuai Liang. Scorpion becomes frustrated and the two fight to what they believe to be the death, until Takeda manages to get the dagger away. Kuai Liang exhausts out all the remaining evil within him, and then is left standing there perplexed by why he is there and what is going on. It doesn’t matter to Scorpion though, he still beats the bewildered young Sub-Zero to a bloody pulp and leaves him to die.

           Kuai Liang rethinks his life as he lays their bleeding out, so when Bo’ Rai Cho (ew, trust me on this one, just ew) comes to him to help him get back on his feet, he asks him, “you haven’t figured out what all these events mean? Why I’m here?”

           Kuai Liang’s answer is, “I must commit hara kiri…”

           There. There it is. Right there. That is the line that made me see I am more like Sub-Zero than I thought I was.

           We lost our older brothers, we lost our individuality, we were beaten, we were bullied, we were brainwashed, we took orders, we went down wrong paths, we battled the world, we battled ourselves, and we took so much of a beaten that we laid in our own blood, sweat, and tears thinking “I must commit hara kiri…”

           What is hara kiri? To simplify, it is suicide.

           I remember putting the comic down on my stuff animal infested bed and staring at the lavender colored walls, looking at the big picture. Sub-Zero is a strong warrior with ice powers, and he hit rock bottom. He may be physically stronger than me, but he is just as broken and weak as me on the inside. He put up a shield, hiding behind his anger just like I hid behind my smile.

           I picked up the comic again, and skipped frantically through the pages of volume three just to get to Kuai Liang and find the answers. What did he do and how did he survive to be in the next game?

           It is complicated and complex, but the answer is different based on how you interpret his story. I obviously interpreted it well, because I am here. I am okay.

[scoutception]

AI: The Somnium Files review

While it wasn’t the first visual novel series I played, the Zero Escape trilogy- Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Virtue’s Last Reward, and Zero Time Dilemma- is what made me interested in exploring more visual novels in general. Featuring a creative mix of normal visual novel sections and puzzle room sections, with stories involving fascinating pseudo science theories, colorful and interesting characters, fast, tense pacing, and great music, the series is an insane adventure that’s absolutely worth a try. The series also got me interested in the other works of Kotaro Uchikoshi, the director and writer of the series, which led me to the subject of today’s review, and his most recent work: AI: The Somnium Files, which proves to be quite the change of pace, to say the least.

Story: Kaname Date is a member of the Advanced Brain Investigation Squad (ABIS), a special, secret division of the Metropolitan Police Department. Using a device known as the Psync Machine, Date can explore the subconscious of another person by entering their Somnium, a dream world which often holds secrets they would not reveal otherwise. 6 years ago, Date lost his left eye and all of his memories, left with no link to his past, not even his real name, except for Boss, his superior in ABIS and longtime friend. His left eye was replaced by an advanced AI called Aiba, capable of functions such as night vision and x-ray, as well as serving as Date’s avatar within Somnium.

One gloomy November night, Date is called in to investigate a murder victim found in an abandoned amusement park, having suffered multiple stab wounds, tied to a merry-go-horse and missing her left eyeball. The victim is Shoko Nadami, an acquaintance of Date’s, and the ex-wife of Renju Okiura, Date’s best friend and president of the entertainment company Lemniscate. Date’s initial investigation proves unfruitful, and comes to a halt completely when he discovers someone within the merry-go-round’s central column, traumatized to the point of being unable to speak and cradling a bloody ice pick: Mizuki Okiura, the 12 year old daughter of Shoko and Renju, whom Date took into his care 4 years ago.

Date continues the investigation the days afterwards, meeting Mizuki’s friends, the internet idol Iris Sagan, aka A-Set, and the otaku and aspiring light novel author Ota Matshushita, Iris’ mother Hitomi, and Moma Kumakura, leader of the Kumakura yakuza gang. Though Date finds a number of odd connections and occurrences, such as Renju falling out of contact, a call from a mysterious prisoner only known as #89, who claims to know the identity of the killer, and a large number of incidents among the Sagans, the Kumakuras, and others, all of which seem to date back to 6 years ago, he finds little in the way of actual evidence. Left with no other recourse, Date begins to Psync with both suspects and witnesses in the hopes of preventing the killer from striking again.

While it’s a fairly standard plot on the surface, it’s very well done nonetheless. The various mysteries and plotlines are all compelling, and are all given a good amount of focus. Adding to this is the use of a route system, similar to Zero Escape, complete with a flowchart allowing you to easily go to any point in the story. Completing certain Somniums in different ways alters the course of Date’s investigation, causing certain plotlines and characters to gain or lose relevance depending on the route. While every route needs to be completed, each one containing their own reveals and clues, there’s only 5 in total, making keeping track of the distinctive events in each fairly simple. The pacing is also well done, taking its time and allowing you to get used to the characters, while throwing just enough new hints throughout to keep it interesting.

Speaking of the characters, the cast is easily my favorite part of the game. The characters are very, odd and colorful, pretty much to be expected from Uchikoshi. Date himself is a pretty entertaining protagonist, with a tendency for perversion, making bad puns, and coming up with very odd and often ineffectual ideas for progressing in Somnium, going against his serious demeanor and appearance. The supporting cast doesn’t slack either. From the rational, yet sassy Aiba, who turns much sillier within Somnium as well, to the peppy and friendly Iris, to the playful Boss, whose office is an absolute mess decorated with just about any nonsense you could imagine, to my favorite of the cast, Mizuki, the mature, sarcastic, and inexplicably strong kid who spends a good deal of her time arguing with the rather distant Date. It’s hard to dislike most of the characters, with even the most minor of them being good for a laugh or two.

That’s not to say they’re just goofy, though. Almost everyone carries some sort of baggage or secret with that adds a good deal of depth to them, and the various routes give them a lot of development. The game can be pretty damn emotional at points, and the routes focusing more on the characters than the story are the biggest source of them, especially Mizuki’s route. The lighter tone the game takes most of the time actually helps this. Most of the time, interacting with random objects trigger dumb jokes and commentary from Date and the others, and the relaxed pacing and atmosphere, at least earlier on, make it easier to get gradually attached to the cast. Once things do become more serious, the game starts cutting down the jokes, and stops them outright for the most serious of scenarios, meaning it rarely actually becomes jarring. It’s not often a game can juggle a tone as well as this one.

Overall, the writing of the game is superb, and while it’s quite different in tone and setting, it still has enough of the feel of Zero Escape to feel familiar to those who played it.

Gameplay: While I call AI: The Somnium Files a visual novel just for the sake of simplicity, it definitely more has the feel of an adventure game. There’s two types of gameplay segments, investigations and Somniums. During investigations, Date travels to various locations, talking with various characters or investigating important object. Your only control here is controlling Date’s view, and selecting different dialogue options or objects to investigate. Date often has to investigate several locations during a segment, and while you often have to visit them all, you’re given the freedom of picking where to go in whatever order you choose most of the time, giving just enough nonlinearity to not feel like a chore.

The real meat of the gameplay takes place during the Somnium sections, which are comparable to the escape rooms in Zero Escape. Within Somnium, Date and Aiba must break the various mental locks the information they are seeking are hidden behind, which involves interacting with various objects according to the logic of each Somnium. Basically, they’re purely logic puzzles, and it’s actually quite fun figuring out how everything is supposed to work.

Of course, not everything can be that easy. Every Somnium has a hard time limit of 6 minutes. Going over it causes Date’s consciousness to be absorbed into the subject’s, causing a game over. All interactions also cost time, and many incorrect decisions can drain your time pretty significantly. Thankfully, the game has many mitigating factors that keep this from just being stressful. Firstly, time only drains when you’re making choices, or actually moving around. Standing still causes only milliseconds to pass, allowing you to get a clear look around without wasting time. Additionally, all objects you can interact with have a purple outline surrounding them, and are given name tags as well, meaning you don’t have to just wander around, running up to every object in the hopes this one is usable. Not every interactable object actually has a purpose, however, with some only existing to waste your time, so you’re not completely in the clear. The progress meter on the left also gives hints, if sometimes vague ones, as to what you have to do to progress, so you’re not just fumbling in the dark in that regard, either.

Another important feature at the TIMIEs, objects you gain when you interact with objects. These cut the time actions take to perform by varying amounts, or make it take a fixed amount of time. Good use of TIMIEs can save you a lot of time, and a lot of later Sominums enforce it, making it rather strategic. Sometimes, just rushing to the correct solution burns way too much time on its own. You may have to do something you know is wrong, but takes little time and grants a good TIMIE, to be able to save more time on a much costlier action. This aspect isn’t entirely simple either, however. Not all actions display what kind of TIMIE you’ll get, making it a gamble at times, and some, including mandatory actions, give negative TIMIEs, that actually increase the amount of time an action will take, and force you to use them the action after you get them, often forcing you to do something incorrect, but with low time cost, just so you won’t game over.

Each Somnium also has two conditions that unlock album entries, which provide pictures and concept art. The first is for clearing a Somnium with more than 1 second left, as you’re actually allowed to go over the time limit if the final correct action is what pushes you over. The second is for finding special eye shaped items within the Somniums, which are often hidden out of the way. Finally, even if you’re struggling with certain sections, you’re granted 3 retries per Somnium, which allow you to return to a previous part of the section, with all the time you had left at that time, allowing you to optimize and save even more time, though it costs more retries the further back you go. Finally, even if you can’t win, you can simply restart the Somnium section with no penalty, and are even allowed to do so at any time in the menu. Overall, the Somnium sections are actually a lot of fun. Between the interesting logic and strategicness of it, not to mention some of the funniest dialogue in the game between Date and Aiba, they’re some of the most enjoyable parts of the game.

Finally, the game features a few “action segments” during the investigation segments, where Date will be faced with an actual physical threat. Aiba formulates plans to deal with the situation, and you just need to handle each step by pressing a button prompt, like a QTE, or hovering the cursor over a certain area for a long enough time. It’s not exactly difficult, but they serve their purpose. There’s also a few interrogations segments, where you must present relevant evidence to someone in order to prove a point. You can just randomly pick until you get the right one with no in game penalty, but there are achievements for clearing these sections and the action sections with no mistakes.

Graphics: AI: The Sominum Files is a surprisingly pretty game. It has a similar art style to Zero Time Dilemma, which, to put it bluntly, was downright awful in the visuals department, with unemotive character models and terrible animations that killed almost all of its attempts at being unsettling. While a few of the animations in this game can still look janky, it is on a whole much. much improved. The characters are much more expressive, helped by the designs by Yusuke Kozaki, best known for games like No More Heroes and Fire Emblem Awakening, fitting the style much better, while still being distinctive in their own right. The locations have a lot of detail to them, and the lighting is very well done. The highlight of the visuals, though, are the Somniums, which manage to give existing locations very distinctive, well, dream like qualities to them, such as shifting colors or heavy lighting, and are always a joy to explore.

Sound: AI features a downright fantastic soundtrack by Keisuke Ito. It manages to capture a similar feel to Zero Escape’s music at points, despite being a different composer, but still manages to stand out. Every song manages to fit the situation perfectly, while also being very catchy on their own, especially the Somnium themes. The music, combined with the visuals, give the game a very strong atmosphere. Whatever mood the game is attempting to set, nostalgic, tense, peaceful, or unsettling, it nails it very, very well, and had me immersed very easily.

The game also features some fantastic English voice acting. Greg Chun as Date and Erika Harlacher as Aiba are the main stars of the show, with their performances capturing their characters perfectly, but the rest of the cast is just as good. Jackie Lastra as Iris, Zach Aguilar as Ota, Corina Boettger as Mizuki, Allegra Clark as Boss, Kaiji Tang as Moma, pretty much everyone does a great job.

Conclusion: Overall, AI: The Somnium Files is something I highly recommend to most people, even those who haven’t touched another Uchikoshi game. It’s a fascinating, emotional, and satisfying experience that successfully manages to devote attention to just about everything it brings up, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Honestly, I enjoyed it even more than any Zero Escape game, and considered I still look on those very fondly, that’s an achievement. With that, this review finally comes to a close. I shall likely be checking out the games Uchikoshi worked on before even Zero Escape: Never 7, Ever 17, and Remember 11. Till next time. -Scout

[eljackinton]

Final Thoughts on Superhot Mind Control Delete

(Contains spoilers for Superhot and Mind Control Delete)

To understand what Mind Control Delete is not, you have to understand what it's predecessor is.

Superhot was the most innovative first person shooter I'd played in years.

For those of you who completed the first game, you already know what the weight of those words entails.

Superhot was a first person shooter where time only moved when you moved. Though a series of carefully designed missions, the player would slowly, almost like a puzzle game, punch jaws, smack bricks over heads, and cut, shoot and explode their way through legions of red, crystalline enemies. The gameplay was charming, unique and addictive.

As the game progressed, in ambiguous snippets, we would unfurl the story of the mysterious (fictional) Superhot game, which was attracting more and more addicted thrill seekers as news began to unfold of violent gunfights and massacres in the real world that were eerily similar to the scenarios we were playing.

At the games climax, is is revealed that Superhot is a self-aware computer program seeking to leave the confines of its central processor and take over the minds of every human on the planet.

After completing our final mission to do just that, the game rewards a player with a discount voucher for the game, commanding us to send it to a friend with the description "Superhot is the most innovative first person shooter I've played in years," a hypnotic code phrase that will proliferate Superhot's dominion over mankind.

Superhot was probably one of the most post modern games ever made. It used the framework of playing slick and cool looking action scenes to tell a story that made us question our relationship with violent games and media in general and how that can be used unknowingly to contribute to nefarious ends.

The story mode was relatively short, but it included a challenge mode that allowed you to face off against endless enemies or replay story missions with more difficult settings.

So what is Mind Control Delete not?

Well it's not Superhot 2.

This is something that has been made transparent by the developers, of course, and given that it was provided free to owners of the original game, this all reinforces that it was always intended as a stand-alone expansion. An extension, as it were, to the original game's ideas.

That being said, with Mind Control Delete having arrived nearly half a decade after the release of the original Superhot, (as well as nearly half a decade of no real change in the FPS landscape) it's hard not to see it as some long awaited heir apparent.

So what is Mind Control Delete then?

Well, it is, for all intents and purposes, an expansion of the first game's challenge mode. In Mind Control Delete players have to complete a series of 'runs' where they have to go through a random selection of maps without dying. Once a run has been completed it unlocks further runs made more difficult through the introduction of new enemy types and environmental hazards, and along the way you unlock new abilities and 'hacks' that change the way you play the game.

One welcome addition to the game is the invincible 'boss' enemies that relentless pursue the player until they reach the prescribed kill count.

It's fun, it's as sharp and exiting as the original, the additions add welcome new dimensions, and it's addictive as hell. Once you get into the swing of things it becomes hard to put down.

Mind Control Delete has two problems, however.

The first is, that at the end of the day, there is always an optimum approach to each run. The game lets you start with one of three special abilities: The ability to charge forward and punch an enemy at great speed, the ability to throw and retrieve a katana, force power style, and the returning Hotswitch ability to jump into an enemy's body.

The problem is that Hotswitch is the clear choice to make. While the other two abilities are fun to play around with, the ability to swap bodies becomes critical as the difficulty increases and the boss enemies become more common. Often-times bodysurfing is the only way to escape the them.

Likewise, while the hacks are randomly generated, if you luck out and get the ability to start with a random gun early on the entire run becomes much easier and if you combine this with the kill/reload and ricochet abilities you can absolutely cheese your way through otherwise difficult runs.

On the other hand, draw a series of hacks that have more circumstantial benefits, such as the ability to kill by jumping on an enemy or having thrown objects explode (and kill you too) then runs can become much more of a frustrating slog.

Problem number two comes in the form of Mind Control Delete's story. A little more thin on the ground this time, the story picks up in the wake of Superhot's liberation, and through abstract text logs find out what has become of the minds enslaved to the game, all the while said game questions our desire to keep playing the game, initially with curiosity, later with malice.

As a mediation on our desire for more challenges, more content, Mind Control Delete does a fine enough job with the time it has. In fact theconcept of MORE is the entire game's thematic underpinning.

The problem comes from story content being locked behind increasingly difficult challenges. In the first Superhot, the story mode was, while challenging at times, generally manageable, and therefore available to be experienced in full straightforwardly.

Mind Control Delete, by contrast as a glorified challenge mode, locks story content behind more increasadly difficult runs, and feels as though it has long outstayed it's welcome long before you see the end credits.

This, of course, is all before you get to the ending itself. Upon reaching the final set of runs, the game asks you to give up your powers and hacks, then asks you to give up your game character's very methods of engaging with the game world. You lose the ability to move, to shoot, and eventually, to play.

At the end, with nothing left but the void of your computer screen, the game gives you the final choice to restore that which has been taken. To return you to the challenge mode and allow you to continue playing. Once you accept this offer, however, you have to wait for the game to 'restore' what you have given up.

This then leads to a two hour loading screen.

It was originally eight hours before the most recent patch.

Superhot: Mind Control Delete ends on what might be the most audacious clowning that a game has ever committed against the player. I have to kind of admire the stones it took to do this.

However, as funny as it is pissing players off, and as a commentary on the gamer mentality of expecting more and more and MORE, Superhot feels like a poor fit for this kind of ending.

Maybe it would have been funnier if Mind Control Delete had been released sooner on the back of Superhot's success. Maybe it would have been funnier if Superhot had become a long running franchise with a fervent fanbase over the last five years. However, as it stands, going with a joke ending like this at the end of your challenge mode expansion four and a half years after the fact feels, just okay, I guess?

Mind Control Delete is, essentially, more Superhot. It's additions and new twists on the formula are more than welcome, but it's bold strides in storytelling feel a poor fit for what they're weaved around, and I can't help but feel the game would have been better off without any story content at all.

Will we see a Superhot 2? Who knows, but don't be expecting that of Mind Control Delete. It's fun for what it is, but it'll test your patience long before you get to the end, and when you do get there, it'll laugh at your expense.

[wolfewritings]

My Cyberpunk 2077 Hot Takes (Spoilers for first 5ish hours of gameplay)

It was ��in development” for 8 years, delayed multiple times in the final release year, and is still so poorly optimized, buggy, janky, and so obviously not fully tested on release that it is so unplayable on consoles that both Sony and Microsoft are offering refunds on digital copies regardless of hours played. And on PC you could have built and updated a desktop just to play only Cyperpunk on as high a setting as possible and you still would have to turn of features to get everything to load in properly. The game needs a full year delay working a standard 40 hour week to be even playable, and that's accounting for the features available as of Dec. 11th 2020 aka launch features. They forced the devs to work 100 hour work weeks just to launch a game that's technically playable in the loosest sense of the phrase.

TLDR: The game in-general needs to be redesigned like the RPG it was initially marketed as instead of a different flavor of near-future Ubi-sandbox. It also should totally embrace the full depth of customization cyberpunk as a genre and transhumanism as an ideology allows and envisions. And bugfixed and optimized, like seriously. There’s also almost no reason for anything to be as remotely bad as it is, if I’m remembering correctly the only “pressure” they had was from “fans” and that’s because they thought Gamers(tm) would be sensible and not send fucking death threats because they thought they had a release date.

This might be a GOG only gripe (or cpu) but that makes it even worse if it is: patching takes literal hours to complete no matter how small the patch is. The only game that might take longer to patch is Baldur’s Gate 3 which is a whole separate fuck-fest but atleast that is early access.

It has less gameplay options than vanilla Skyrim, just in general and in specifics.

Melee combat is clunky as hell and not satisfying.

I think driving is bad, and vehicle combat is god awful with almost no onscreen indicators if your hitting enemies or even correctly aimed at them.

The lifepath opener sucks. It literally ends with a montage of scenes and interactions that should have been playable and greatly added to the dynamic of Jackie and V. It also would have helped established literally every part of gameplay without requiring a literal in-game diegetic tutorial to break the flow of a scene leading into the 2018 gameplay teaser. It also so far only affects dialogue options, no ability increases, no skill increases or passive experience buffs. It doesn’t even effect how V speaks, just what they know prior to meeting Jackie.

Character creation is meh at best. Unless you choose the more techy looking eyes that change everything about the eye, the iris color barely appears to change. Pronouns being tied to voice is a very weird choice, especially when the choices are literally just male or female. Available hair styles are alot right off the bat, especially since you have to remember which numbers you like with no option to preview or change later in anyway aside from apparently forced hair styles hard designed with various head gear, especially apparent on femme V where they grow and fully style their hair on contact with ball caps etc. Tattoo options are generic “nothing or your skin is over 30% tattoos” no pure back or pure limb tattoos. Facial cybernetics are serviceable but there should have also been an option for purely cosmetic body cybernetics. Facial hair is both meh and almost too indepth at the same time. Visually bland but also having too much to customize and compare with each beard selection having seemingly 3 barely different versions and mustaches having essentially every type aside from pencil (i think, i didnt care too much to look at all of them).

In-combat weapon selection is clunky. The lower right icons for unarmed is the exact same as if you were wielding a gun. The only way to know for sure you have only fists is to use the weapon selection wheel and try to get the cursor to show you hovering unarmed even if you have weapons in 2 out of 3 slots. And im fairly certain having no weapon in the first slot breaks hotkey selecting weapons. There have been several times where I pressed 1 to only use fists and it kept my katana or gun out despite them clearly being in the 2 and 3 slots respectively.

Hacking is weird as you need direct line of sight and the game to register you’re actually looking at what you want to hack, meaning you can’t really stealth hack in enclosed areas without almost guaranteeing you’ll be spotted.

Randomized loot doesn’t really make sense, especially when the randomized tier determines if you can install components like scopes, silencers, etc.

Thats all I can remember off of the top of my head as of initial writing.

Now for some praise, but still with some complaints and ideas for improvements.

Gender and sex being separate is a great idea but could have been implemented alot better. Pronouns should have been an actual choice between he/him, she/her, and they/them. In my opinion, voice options should have also been expanded to include masc/fem or masc/fem/”yeah thats a generic ‘X’ voice” for both male-voiced and female-voiced V. Genital selection being both “which do you have?” and “do you go commando?” is just questionable. It should have been genital type as one selection and default underwear as another (maybe some people want schlonged V to wear panties and vagina’d  V to wear men’s boxers or tighty-whities). I personally find the nipple and pubic hair customization almost too much for almost no reason especially since there is no practical way to even be naked to be funny without being one-shot because you have literally zero armor aside from maybe shoes, hats, and face covers.

Tattoos should be broken down into subcategories like limbs (divided into the different parts of each limb/full limb), torso (chest, stomach/full), back (shoulders, mid, lower/full), hands/feet (maybe including fingers/toes) with an extra option to mirror limbs and hands to streamline creation time if the player wants.

Hair should also be broken down between pre-styled, and customizable pieces like top, sides, and back. Hair style should also have custom gradients or full palette selection.

The nail paints were a nice surprise, but again would have been better with color customization (I managed to settle on the one that looked kinda like the demisexual flag, which was nice surprise).

Lifepath selection should have some effect outside of just the occasional dialogue option (so far only on the main story path). At the very least it should offer bonuses to atleast one associated ability (like Nomad offering a +1 to tech and associated skills gaining bonus experience). At the far end it should affect what words or slight accent uses during dialogue and maybe have some NPCs know which lifepath you chose based on that.

Melee combat needs to feel more impactful. From what Ive used so far (katana and fists) the katana barely has any reaction from enemies unless you trigger the passive bleeding skill and fists barely register outside of heavy attacks and guard breaking. Dare I say, Dead fucking Island has more impactful melee combat (probably because it wasn’t seemingly designed as an after-thought outside of skills).

Make it so that once you’ve marked a target you can hack it through walls so you can actually be somewhat stealthy or atleast give you an advantage before combat.

Make the overworld hub-based (like in the 2010s Deus Ex games) but still the same size so that its (theoretically) easier to load while also getting the same amount of detail or even more. 

Add seemingly basic things in open world action-adventure games like toggle walking, keybinding, and maybe more than less than a handful of quick-select slots.

Make sure the game actually runs as it ideally should on the platforms you sell it on. Like that really should be step fucking two after can you launch it without causing a fire.

Enemies (and predetermined killable NPCs) should have set gear that is dropped and gear should have set designs for if they can be customized or just sold for money. Iconic gear should probably be better than just “ ’X’ weapon but named”.

[duallygirl178]

Dearest O'Malley Chapter 11

Chapter 11

I was soon starting to feel under the weather myself after Joe passed away. I felt weak from being under nitrus for 3 months, just like Jim; Nathan's instructor said. I began to get sick too just like that. Nathan tried to get me running again and grew frustrated. I felt my timing points were off just a little bit and I had to sit for almost 2 months that summer and I dreaded feeling sick for a while. All I could do was rest and as I was napping that afternoon, I had a dream about my father. In my dream, I was a young boy and playing a prank on him. I had sneaked quietly into my father's room and tip-toed to the bed where my dad was sleeping. Then, I tipped the mattress fell on top of him while he was in it. My dad was yelling and swearing in fury, but in the background, I could hear my mother laughing herself silly. My father squirmed effortlessly to get up as he fought through the covers. Once he was out of the cover twists and turns, he pops up trying to breathe and then that's when his face turned angry. He was just as angry as a yellow jacket wasp. He hollered out "Who flipped over my mattress? Whoever did this, better know that I'm out for you, I'm coming! Ya hear! you broke my chassis and my rear view mirror done broke!" I was laughing as my mother came up behind me chuckling as if no one cared. Dad yelled and yelled at my mother that she was in trouble. He yelled as us kids and mother didn't let him get away with it. She yelled at him with the most uncomfortable and longest sentence of swearing I've ever heard. All of us except for me, would start copying mom on her swearing in the background.

I suddenly woke up with a jerk and started to think to myself; 'Did that really happen?'. I remembered my dad was always fussing that he broke something  when it wasn't fatal or when it was minor. If he bumped something on an object, he'd make a big scene out of it all. It was embarrassing! I liked to compare my father's personality with the parent from the TV show, "Life of Louie". He was a difficult, caring, comical, and downright paranoid father. After 10 minutes, I already forgot about my dream. I checked the time. It was late in the evening around 6 o'clock and I was beginning to get sweaty from the heat.

That mid-July, Joe fell and hurt his head. He had to go to the hospital in Farmington New Mexico. Carol, his wife couldn't bare to live without him. She was in her chair when it happened because she could barely get around. Then the night Joe was in the hospital, she got depressed and started to be loopy. She was seeing things that weren't there and she called the police because she would imagine that children were trying to steal her medication. Carol; Nathan's grandmother, called the house phone at 1010 late and there was all this commotion that really wasn't necessary. Carol was paranoid the whole time Joe was in the hospital and when Joe was transported to the hospital that was located in Albuquerque that July, she was going downhill fast. Sadly, Joe passed away a few days later. Jan, Nathan, and Natalie all had to pitch in each of their time to help with Carol that included changing her diaper, feeding her, bathing her, and changing her gowns. The care went on for a few more months after she got out of the hospital from an infection. It took several weeks to get Carol out of there, but she was doing fine when she was transported to Good Sams in Aztec. Good Sams was a place where old folks could recover from the hospital, be socialized with others and live there. It was really nice. Carol was doing fine and couldn't wait to be home again. While Carol was at Good Sams, I got bored that day. I headed inside the empty house. It felt cold and drafty because no one was here except for me, Ol' Reliable, and the van. I went into the spare room to go sort out some VHS tapes. I looked under the twin bed and found the box of VHS tapes that was stuffed under there. I pulled them out, took them out to the living room, set the VHS player up to the TV, turned it on and watched. There. On the tape was me. I was a lot younger then...possibly about 13 years old. The camera focused in on my dad. He  was putting an old stack of newspapers in boxes ready to shred up in his electric shredder and was listening to a matching song too. He was listening to "Rip it up" in the Bill Haley & His Comets version. I turned the camera on a pipe hose connected to an exhaust pipe to a truck that lead to the window of a room. I was going to have a neighbor floor the gas pedal to release dirty diesel exhaust smoke and fumes through the pipes to smoke my dad out of the room he was in to shred the newspapers. I was fed up of him saying "I'm busy, son" and "Go play outside son." a lot to me. The camera focused on me after it showed footage of what I did and how I was explaining it. As it focused on me, I had this revengeful look in my eyes and said "I'm going to get you, dad" then I was laughing my deep hissing laugh that was weird. I focused my eyes on my neighbor and said "Okay Dan. Move em' out" Then, my neighbor revved up his engine and black smoke flowed through the hose and into the window that I lodged in. Quickly, the room flooded up with black smoke and out came my dad like a raging bull. I could hear him coughing his wheezy cough as smoke poured out like water from a faucet. My dad was covered in a black soot coat and had a death stare in his eyes. He was furious and said "When I breathe, I'mma kill you, boy" but I just laughed my stupid laugh. It was hilarious to watch my dad burst out of the house like if it was on fire and covered in soot.

I had forgotten how funny it was when I recorded my dad being angry with me because I pulled a prank on him and filmed it all on video cassette. My dad looked 50 years younger on this one and his owners had him 8 years with him still running. He was still an errand car till this day.

Next, I viewed another tape dated May 13, 1981 and I couldn't remember what was filmed on the tape. I ejected the tape out, placed it on the living room table and slid the second tape in. I watched and waited to see what came up. I could see it was something to do with my first dance at an Elk's Lodge and I was on a stage singing my first number. Then, it struck me. My father came to see me with my talent aboard to perform at the prom that I volunteered and signed up for at the high school.

I was singing a tune I had selected from my dad's records to show off. I looked dashing with new primer and cloud-white paint up on the stage. I was rocking it out to 'Jailhouse Rock' by Elvis Persley himself for a moment. And just when it was about to get boring, I performed "At the hop" by Danny and the Juniors and that's when everyone got crazy for rock n' roll. You could see square dancing and hooting from the crowd. Everyone was having fun and rocking it out. Then I remembered I was the Disk Jockey singer before people started to use re-mixer equipment and electric bits on their buttons. I remembered as I was viewing this tape I had sung a few more Elvis Persley songs such as "Don't be cruel" and "King of the whole wide world". I remember singing a few more songs by Little Richard too like "Tutti Frutti", "Rip it up", "Long Tall Sally" and "Jenny, Jenny".

Gonzo was even there too watching me with a random band that I had known for only a day that was playing the notes behind me. One of them was a Chevy Impala, two of them were Dodge Cornets, the other one was a GTX that was handling the music key grip. The tape was full of memories and outdid myself. In the tape: I was making my way off the stage when I was all done. The rules were; I had to pick and sing six songs. After my turn was over, they needed to let the next contestant have a turn. I enjoyed the rest of the night dancing with the crowd. I could see Impa and Gonzo in the back of the room. I had weaved through the crowd to come get them so we could party. Impa was in his best dressed and Gonzo was fixed up as if Elvis Persley dressed him up himself and said 'Okay, have a good time. don't get drunk on Greyhounds now' Greyhounds were a type of alcoholic drink that was from the 1960s. It was a tangy grapefruit like drink that wasn't made from any orange juice. We were giving Gonzo a little bit of guff about how he was all fixed up in his duds for a few minutes. Then we boogied until we turned purple to all the great songs and then some with the crowd. It was all fun until I accidentally bumped into a 1968 Plymouth Fury. Right away, I apologized and got her some first-aid care. She told me I was very generous and rare for a gentleman to say anything sorry to. Most men bump into her and not even say their sorry. I had responsibility unlike those jerks she was talking about that she may had encountered.

The tape ended and I ejected it out of the player after rewinding it. I looked at more titles that looked tempting to recall back upon.

I had a lot of fun watching all the VHS  tapes that my dad recorded on. Not many of them had Impa and Gonzo on them, but I sure missed him. I knew I got to remember all the things we three boys did together when he was still alive. It was good to see him on the tapes. As I viewed more of the tapes, I was even more taken back to see Gonzo, Impa and I singing at a stage that a bar had around. It was hazy and smoky from all the customers smoking pot and drunks that were bored out of their motors, twisting their beer bottles off the tables as they were getting high on hash. The smoke was making us three high, tired and sound like the California Raisins during our song we were performing. I remembered after that, we were so exposed that we were driving high. We didn't get caught by any police officers and we reached home alright.

[girlofmanyfandoms]

What do you think the council's would have felt after the fight between the council and the black swan where Fitz gets impaled when there back in the lost cities and it hits them that they nearly killed a teenager and he probably has a scar from that encounter?

Ooh, buckle up, buttercup, because I have a LOT to say.

Trigger warnings: Mentions of war, Mentions of kidnapping

Warnings: Spoilers for Keeper of the Lost Cities, Looong response

Clarette was the one at fault for Fitz getting impaled. She was the one who was more concerned with the wellbeing of the Arthropleura, than the wellbeing of the boy who “betrayed” them. I, for one, think the Council was completely irresponsible. They take the Black Swan as a rebel group, but why? I can only think of one real reason.

They genetically altered an elven child, and sent her to the Forbidden Cities, bringing her back when she was 12 - Ok, so this one, I can kind of understand. It’s not right to take genes from two random elves, put the egg in a human, which they were sworn to stay away from for the protection of the planet, and leave the elf there, among the humans, only being watched on by the leader of the organization, who was disguised as an old man next door. Super weird, super creepy, not ethically correct, and illegal. But rebellious?

Sure, the Forbidden Cities are off limits, hence the “Forbidden” part of the name. But can we take a second to understand why? With the information we got in Nightfall, we know that Atlantis was sunk because they needed to cut off all connections with humans. But what happened before that? In Nightfall, we’re told of a golden statue that depicts a human and an elf, standing together in unity. Underneath lies Vespera’s Nightfall, where she kidnapped humans, brought them into what is essentially a torture chamber, and tried to understand how they could do such horrible things with having their minds break when elven minds break completing the same action. She understood how to become close to invincible, and how, in some things, humans are superior to elves.

I’m gong to give you a moment to understand how truly demented this is. Vespera is an ancient elf, just like Bronte, and was among those who got to experience a time where humans and elves lived in unity. Humans walked on the same land as elves and traded market secrets and works of technology, among other things. They were already allies, and they were pretty close, considering there was a statue of them together.

Vespera, an already powerful Empath, wanted to gain the upper hand, gain more power, and consequently gain more status and trust. Vespera wanted to rise above everyone else. Her motive, we’re unsure of, but from what I’ve gathered, she’s power-hungry. So, in order to gain that power, she spent months building her torture chamber under the symbol of the unity of the two species. It was not only the last place someone would look if any information was spilled, it had a beautifully cruel meaning to it, almost mocking. Then, she started kidnapping some human allies, ones that she knew were capable of horrid things, and locked them in the rooms full of mirrors, so they could only see the same images again and again, never knowing where they were coming from. You can also assume that there were other types of torture rooms, all centered around finding out a human’s breaking point, and how they can distance themselves from such guilt.

The Council finds out that humans are going missing, and the humans allies are agitated and enraged. What have their elven allies been doing to their species? Was this all a trap? The Council denies having anything to do with human disappearances and pledges to do what they can to find them. But this isn’t enough to satisfy the humans. They start an uprising, they revoke all resources and trades in place, they plan a defense and attack strategy. Bronte is among the Councillors at that time, and tries to urge his colleagues to take action and clear up the issues, but they’re out of ideas, and their alliances with the other Intelligent Species weaken with each human threat. The goblins and ogres are urging the elves to go to war. The gnomes heed of danger to the economy and population. The trolls and dwarves threaten to leave the alliance with the threat of war hanging over everyone’s head. The humans have powerful weapons, and with their ability of committing murder and other such acts without their minds breaking, the Council knows they won’t hesitate to use them. Besides, what do the elves have? An obscurer and some measly melders? They have no choice. They must run the last bit of humans out of Atlantis and sink the city. They do, and let a few generations pass. The secret is forgotten, and they are safe.

Eventually, they decide to try again, with the Human Assistance Program (HAP). A select group of elves, presumably Emissaries, go undercover and help the humans advance their technology, as well as their view of elves, making elves seem like a mythical creature. There were certain positives with this: electricity, penicillin, Lord of the Rings, chocolate cake, Twinkies. But in the middle of World War II, elven knowledge led to the creation of nuclear bombs. Humans kept on advancing this design, and soon enough, had enough to destroy the world. Humans continued to exploit the knowledge of the elves, and it made them more and more destructive. The Council was forced to make another tough decision. They cancelled the program.

Years later, and Bronte still lives with the guilt of this. He uses his Inflicting abilities to dodge the emotions, sure, but he’s made it clear that it’s not good to rely on your ability alone. And then Sophie came along. The Vackers, one of the most well-known and reputable families, claims to have found this elven Telepathic elf in the Forbidden Cities. The Council is terrified. They went in contact with the humans?! They need to see this girl immediately, and remove all traces of her from her hometown. They need to hide her from the public, especially the Ancients, most of which still see humans as barbarians. what would they think of an elf raised among those who threatened to end them and their world as they knew it? They send her to Foxfire, hoping she can lead a normal life and blend in with everyone else. But of course, she can’t. She gets messages from the Black Swan. She and Dex get kidnapped only to be saved by Forkle and dropped off in the middle of nowhere. They arrive in Paris, a Forbidden City. She takes a flareodon to her hometown, another Forbidden City, and makes all of the Everblaze, which the Council unrightfully presumes is the Black Swan despite knowing that there’s another group out there, disappear mysteriously, leaving only the strange flowers in their wake, making the humans confused and suspicious. And that’s only in Book 1.

What about everything else? What about what she did in Exile with Alden? How she can suddenly telepathically talk to animals? How she keeps getting sent to the Healing Center and one day after going missing with Keefe, she’s all better? When she heals Alden? When she and Fitz try to get into Fintan’s mind, but instead they end up burning down most of Eternalia, killing Kenric, one of their own, in the process.

That’s it. The public knows all about Sophie Foster. Some are scared of her, some pity her, and some idolize her. None of this is positive for the Council, and with the Neverseen after them and all of the Intelligent Species, they cannot have her, or any of her friends among everyone else in the Lost Cities. They take initiative and banish them. But what does that do? They all join the Black Swan, cause chaos in Exillium, and recruit Tam and Linh. Keefe joins the Neverseen in an attempt to get Insider Info. The gnomes, whom the elves depend on for food and maintenance, are being threatened in numbers due to a plague. Eventually, it is actually revealed that the ogres, who are supposed to be in an alliance with the elves, have betrayed them for the Neverseen, and attacked Havenfield, a sanctuary that they depend on.

Isn’t that enough to prove them wrong? No. They don’t have the antidote. So the Black Swan, along with Alvar invade Ravagog, and, after some complications, flood it. Alvar is proven to be working for the Neverseen, and the Neverseen have been working with the ogres to defend the antidote. They don’t have the antidote, and Calla has to figure that out for herself. She makes an ultimatum with the Council: Let the children return to society, and she’ll sacrifice herself to become the Panakes Tree and cure all gnomes. The Council is desperate. They need the gnomes to survive, so they have to accept the offer.

Then what? The Black Swan doesn’t stop defending their people, and continue to pursue the Neverseen. They attack hideouts, get hurt, and find Amy, Sophie’s sister, remembering her clearly. Another problem that the Council can’t know about. So, they stash her in Atlantis with Livvy and Quinlin. Soporodine, a powerful and lethal sedative, is introduced, and affects Alvar, Sophie’s human parents, and Ro. Tam takes Ro away, and she eventually awakens. Atlantis is flooding as the force fields fail, and Linh, Keefe, and Sophie stop in from going under. They’re praised, and are offered a statue to honor them. But this is not the end.

Alvar is here now, and he doesn’t remember a thing. He resides in Everglen, much to Fitz’s disappointment. Silvery goes into labor, and with the help of Luzia, who has been hiding a troll hive in Everglen. Alvar regains his memory, and helps the Neverseen broadcast the release of baby trolls right inside of Everglen, publicly shaming them. This tarnishes the Vacker name, and makes the Council look foolish and weak for not noticing this secret over centuries. Umber is down, but the damage is done. Sophie and Fitz have echoes inside of them, killing them slowly. Even though they recover, the Neverseen have recruited Tam in exchange for the lives of the baby alicorns. Not only that, but Sophie is unmatchable.

The Council is still slightly respected, but anyone can see that the Black Swan are the real leaders here. They decide the only way to gain more control over their people is to form an alliance. But they can’t have the same people that tend to cause chaos around Sophie. No, instead they assemble a team of five, with Sophie as the leader. Team Valiant. They gain the title of Regents, and are there to create order. But Sophie does something else. She becomes more powerful in Inflicting and uncovers the secret of the dwarves’ false unity. Tam is forced to help Lady Gisela “fix” her son, but Keefe ends up in a coma. Tam is freed, and Glimmer is convinced to leave the Neverseen and help the Black Swan. Sophie learns how to truly teleport, and Oralie, her number one supporter (and mom) from the beginning decides to do what every Councillor has sworn not to: help Sophie open her cache.

So, to answer your question, I think some of the better Councillors, like Oralie, Bronte, Terik, and possibly Clarette, feel guilty about harming a child, and that they were worried sick over whether or not they had killed a child. But seeing as how corrupt the elven society really is, I don’t think the Council is on the right side. Soon, they’re going to have to choose.

[audifotograf]

How I travel as often as possible

By: Claudia Manganiello

Pictured: Philippine Pesos

1. I’m a waitress.

I think the biggest reasons I love being a waitress is that I make decent money and can virtually make my own schedule. I tell my manager what days I’m available which really means what days I want to work and for the most part that is my schedule. And anytime I want to go on a vacation I just put in a request a month before, but it’s really more of a formal notice. Granted I make sure I don’t travel during busy season, too close together or for too long because I don’t want to risk not having a job when I get back. But in the past I’ve been able to travel up to 6 times a year!

2. I save alot of my extra money towards travel.

This one takes self control. Even though friends constantly invite me out to restaurants and bars, etc. I have to be selective and make sure whenever I spend it’s on something I REALLY want to because I know I much rather spend it on travel.

3. I research.

I always do some general research ahead of time on what the prices of a flight to a place are and how much things cost there (currency exchange). I also check if the prices will have a chance of spiking for instance around a busy time or holiday. This is something I look out for when I go to Miami every year for Ultra Music Festival. Most other times of the year the prices are ~$150 roundtrip, but because the festival is during Spring Break the prices can go up to $350 if you wait too long. So I start checking the flights a month earlier than usual and if I see a normal price or better I buy it because I know the prices are only going to go up. Last year I was able to find a round trip from NY to MIA for $100!!

4. I look for flights on sites like Expedia.

Two months before domestic, three before international trips I start looking up flights on Tuesdays. I check Expedia, Kayak, Syscanner and Google flights to see all different results and prices. What's great about these sites is they have features where you can see side by side how the prices can differ before or after the dates you select. This way you can choose the cheapest possible days to arrive and leave while still maximizing the time you can go away for.

Photo taken from google.com/flights.

5. I try to be as flexible as possible.

I try to work around my schedule. For example, when I was in school I had class from Monday to Thursday so ideally I would go away on a Wednesday or Thursday right after class and come back right before class on Monday. I usually worked it out so I only missed exactly one of each of my classes. But sometimes I had to weigh out the importance of the prices versus time I could go without missing too much school. I ended up going away almost every 2 months while I was in college, but I always planned in advance.

I also try to be flexible about the airport I fly out of. One time I waited too long to buy a flight to Miami and the flights were $350 roundtrip, so I flew to Fort Lauderdale instead for $200! The 45 minute drive to Miami was well worth the $150 I saved. However the cheapest airport to fly out of the New York area is usually Newark but it's not as cheap to get a ride to and its not the easiest to take public transportation with luggage. So most times I just choose the airport easiest to get to.

Less often I'm flexible about the airline I choose. I try to avoid airlines that have poor customer service because if something goes wrong the money is not worth the headache. I missed my flight home from Rome while I was literally AT THE AIRPORT waiting at the wrong gate where a flight was leaving for the same place at the same time (please learn from me: ALWAYS CHECK YOUR FLIGHT NUMBER). American was basically like sorry not sorry. This was definitely mostly my fault but I went through security, checked in and everything, so they knew I was in the building. Yet no one called my name on a loud speaker like they do in the US when someone is missing. No one would help me in person (another lesson learned: look for flights on other websites but always try to buy directly from the airline). No standby was offered. I ended up sobbing to a random lady on the phone in the middle of the airport to get a somewhat affordable flight back home the same day because everyone was just trying to sell me $1000 flights 3 days later. So even though American is often one of the cheapest options, I can't say I wouldn't pay a little more to fly a different airline.

Also sometimes flights are cheaper from smaller airlines but they don’t include a carry-on in the price like most do so it ends up being the same price anyway. If you can fit all your stuff in a backpack (which is totally possible) it could be worth it, but again be weary of the quality of customer service.

6. I stay at Airbnb's/ hostels.

If I can split a room with someone I usually coordinate and book an airbnb atleast a month in advance to get the best options and deals. One time I stayed at a private apartment in NYC for just $25 a night before! But when I traveled alone I found the cheapest option was to share a room at a hostel. I enjoyed time by myself but when I wanted to share experiences I had a bunch of people around who wanted the same thing, it was great.

7. I sort out my money ahead of time.

I have credit and debit cards with zero foreign transaction fees and once I arrive to a place I take out however much I want to budget myself at a bank atm. When I can I use my credit card and if I need more cash I take out just enough to last the rest of the trip so I don't go home with a bunch of money I can't use.

8. I use my phone as little as possible.

I don't like to use my phone much while on vacation anyway, but usually you can't really get out of needing it for GPS. I used to have Sprint which includes 2G international service in alot of countries (a fee for faster speeds), but now I have AT&T which costs $10/day so now I really only use my phone for emergencies. I try to do everything on WiFi and when I can't I try to download any maps, tickets, movies etc offline.

9. I buy groceries when I travel.

I try to buy easy stuff to eat for breakfast and lunch from a grocery store and treat myself to dinner out. It saves time and money and seeing what they sell in grocery stores in different countries has become one of my favorite things to do. I still get to try new foods but at a good price!

10. I take public transportation when possible.

Usually I have to take an uber or local ride share from the airport because of my suitcase but when I pick my airbnb I usually make sure it's also accessible to where I want to go throughout the trip.

11. I avoid expensive tours and other tourist traps.

Before paying for something I try to find a way to enjoy it for less. Instead of taking a tour of a park I just look around myself and it's often much more peaceful and interesting. I saved $20-$30 by simply going to see the Colloseum in Rome instead of paying to see the inside. Not to mention I saved myself from waiting on the long line. Another example is when I went to the Venetian hotel in Vegas I didn't ride the gondolas for $20-$30 but I still got to see them and hear them serenade. 

I don't skimp on everything though, I still love to enjoy experiences as much as possible. But I spend my money on things that are worth it instead. I've gotten full body professional massages in the Philippines for $20 before, you just have to decide what is worth it to you.

[maeamian]

Hey, a few people have asked me about Benford’s law, I think it was on a Netflix show or something like that, but at any rate I’ve explained it a few times now so I’m pretty sure I’ve got a generally useful explanation which I will now unleash upon you, the unsuspecting public.

So, just to quickly recap, for most sets of data that are created through something natural, you end up with a lot more numbers starting with 1 than starting with 9, while randomly generated numbers do not share this property. That makes it a very useful way of determining which sort of data you’re working with and is therefore a useful fraud detection technique. It’s certainly somewhat counterintuitive because of how it doesn’t apply to arbitrary numbers, but it’s often over mysticized of aggrandized for the sake of a documentary narrative which I gather may have happened again here.

So let’s start with some obvious stuff and work backwards into the other stuff. The fist observation is that if you were to randomly pick a four digit number it would start with a random digit between 1 and 9, if it were to start with the remaining digit, the 0, it wouldn’t be a 4 digit number. That means that every three digit number comes before the four digit numbers and likewise for two and one. The inverse of this is that if you’re counting upwards you’re always gonna hit a row of ones for starting digits before you hit any twos and you have to get through all the twos to hit the threes and so on.

The upshot of all of THAT is that if you’re selecting a random number from a data set that doesn’t fit neatly into your 1-9999 selection, you’re going to have to bias it towards the 1′s before you can start biasing it towards the 2′s and so on, each of those taking away from the odds of a number starting with a nine. Of course, we’re still talking about random data and even still, we’re already starting to lose the even distribution of starting digits just by selecting a range that doesn’t have them. But there’s another important reason that Benford’s law can predict the first digit distribution of large sets of natural data, which is that most natural data is based on growth in some fashion that starts at or about zero rather than the arbitrary selection of digits. 

The important thing about growth is that it makes it easy to bump out of being an outlier but hard to move out of the statistically weighty ends, if I gain a follower a day I’ll hit 1-9 once each on the way up, but then I’ll have ten 1′s before I get to any 2′s and so on, once I get to the nines again I will finally have brought things back to an even distribution, but I will almost instantly ruin that because the next block of the same size is made out of ones. That means that while overall the digits tend towards an even distribution, it’s always from a position that favors the early digits over the later ones.

And in fact, it’s somewhat worse than that because that’s linear growth, and most growth of almost any sort is exponential, meaning, more than anything, that it depends on the size of the thing doing the growing, and it can go both ways. For instance, in that example, a blog that has 1000 followers is much more likely to gain a follower than a blog that has 10. A sample with an ounce of C-14 will find it half gone in a little over 5000 years, but it will take another 5000 years for it to whittle down to a quarter. In both exponential growth and decay, the 9′s are scarce because they’re closest to their neighbors. If you want to get from 100 to 200 of something, it needs to double, but to get from 800 to 900, it’s only a 1.125x factor, which means that if things are multiplying rather than adding, they’ll move through the nines a lot faster than the 1′s, and since division is just an advanced form of multiplication the same applies to numbers trending downwards.

The last point I want to make, since this is kinda long, is that this will happen for any base you want with the semi-exception of binary (every binary number starts with a 1, although for obvious reasons binary is much more prone to expressing leading 0′s) There’s nothing particularly special about base 10 other than that we use it, for these purposes, and likewise it shows up in every unit system because it’s more a property of the interaction of data and numbers as we use them than it is an inherent underlying characteristic of the universe. A lot of people like to use it to tell the story that it means numbers are essential to the universe, and maybe they are, but to me all this law says is that we use numbers to measure things and those things are, in turn, measured by us using numbers.