#Since non fantasy human designs tend to not be my area

[creation-help]

[trigger warning for passing mentions of murder... does that count as heavy content?]

could you review the design of my ace attorney ocs?

valerie n. toine used to be a rather successful defense attorney (look on the left with the sweater vest), but after losing a case while trying to defend her fiance who goes on to die in prison, she grows cold and bitter. she becomes a prosecutor (look on the right) and plots her revenge against the man who she deems responsible, which of course in the ace attorney universe means trying to murder someone and falsifying evidence while prosecuting the case. i really wanted her to look sort of romantic and lovecore-y overall, as love is a pretty big part of her story, but obviously she has to look well-put-together and somewhat imposing as well. and i wanted her younger self to look, well, younger and more sweet/care-free.

the second one is a bit of a self insert (and doesnt have a proper reference yet), his name is jack tryles, hes a law student who acts as phoenix wrights co-counsel for a while and who val ends up stabbing in an alleyway lol. he survives though, dont worry. being a self insert his design is kind of whatever i think looks cool than anything too based on his character/story, so id appreciate critique on more of a purely visual standpoint for him.

[Again mentioning that I'm not able to comment on anything regarding the Canon text here, as I'm not familiar with the ace attorney games beyond a pretty surface level]

Valerie N. Toine:

Lemme just say I'm very much enjoying the outfit design here, having her be lovecore aesthetically while her main conflict focuses on, ykno, love, is very cool! The fact that she has an engagement(?)/wedding ring in the Before version, while in the After version it's some other nondescript ring? Mwah. Also I just wanna say, the heart shaped buttons on the jacket, in the After version, wonderful detail. Though this all did make me wonder, what if the After version was more themed around like, heartbreak and grim lovecore instead of the positive kind? Not a criticism by any means, just my suggestion for if you wanted to make the change more dramatic (maybe like adding more black, deep red and wine colors, stuff like that). Depends on if you want a more artistic or realistic impression I think! However the After outfit (hair included!) is very good as is :] also I love how, in the small headshot, her hair is in a heart shaped bun.. Mwah. Again.

In my opinion the design has a good balance with not being too simple and not too complex, and despite what I said about the color scheme earlier I think you did great with darkening the colors on the After outfit, while still keeping energy from the first one. The lessening of white is a nice subtle touch, also, great color planning on your part for making the boots (2nd vers) the same color as her bell bottoms (1st vers)! Just a very cohesive well coordinated color scheme across both iterations. The glasses and the bow staying despite everything keeps a good bit of consistency.

I think you succeeded in having her look like someone to not be taken lightly (2nd vers. Obviously), she definitely looks very formal compared to the first version. More.. Angular, ykno? Mostly thanks to the clothes. I feel like maybe I'd also add something to her Person as well, to signify the change? Due to the art style ofc I can't know if you intended her younger self to look physically younger and springier (this is a reference drawing so I'm not judging that at all), but if not I highly encourage that!

Well put together - absolutely!

Imposing - hmm? I'm not saying she doesn't necessarily look imposing - she very well could depending on how she'd be portrayed visually but mostly, from comparing the two versions I moreso get a sense of "Professionalism vs. Chill and casual", and Mature vs. Carefree, ykno? The sharp shapes in her hair do well to further the more serious and imposing image but I feel like there could be a slight bit more, if you want her to look more intimidating. Unfortunately I'm not sure if I can quite put my finger on it. My overall opinion is that the design is Good, it works, it's cohesive, and I really can't reasonably come up with anything I'd seriously think should be changed. For a very subjective personal take, in my taste, I'd probably make it even more - dramatic, cartoony? Exaggerated?? But, that is all up to how you want to portray her. I personally like to get super into designing something unless I'm intending them to look plain or "normal" (human terms), however take this from someone who primarily does surreal or fantasy (and nonhuman) designs, haha. Really, I think this is great, skilled visual design and honestly I wouldn't say I'm extremely good at outfit design myself so, while adjustments or flavor details could be added - she totally doesn't need them! I honestly could've gone on more about the small details that change between the two versions but I'll just cap this off with saying Great work!

Jack Tryles (Can I just say that last name is so tasty in my mouth. Also is it a.. Pun? Like "trials"??)

Definitely a bit more visually busy, and although it could give off a more messy or chaotic impression I kinda like it. If we compare him to Valerie, she really does come off as very put together and composed. Not that he doesn't, though! Just by comparison.

The fullbody outfit has a fun combination of shapes that give it a good amount of visual variance. There is slight asymmetry with the positioning of the pins and other accessories but he still keeps a fairly professional image - just one that's lots more personalised and customised than Valerie.

I would say, maybe the jacket could also have pinstripes like the pants? I find it a small bit inconsistent with only one of them being pure black. It's not a huge deal to me though, and I'm moreso tilting my head at it than finding it a downside. Just makes it seem that the pants and jacket aren't a part of the same set, if you get me? Though that could also work to establish personality more, like many of the other personalized touches. I think for this design, he has just the right amount of accessories! Not too many not too little. I also love that the soles of the shoes are green! The color scheme is minimal, definitely more reserved, but imo it works for what it's trying to be - which is, I assume, a work outfit.

For me personally I think I might wanna break up the large areas of black, it's just on the cusp of being a bit too much of the same color next to each other but you can again take this as a personal comment. It's just what I think would make it more visually appealing, though I do like black! Maybe you could add a lighter tone of green somewhere?

Still, it works, it's interesting enough to look at, can't find much I'd complain about. Although I think the color planning on Valerie is a bit more engaging since there's more variety of different looking things (like with patterns for example) that still fit together. Still, no complaints as I said. I'm also not sure how much I'd feel appropriate commenting on him considering - self insert, which is meant to moreso reflect on you. I will say, they do look like they fit well into the same story so, good work all around in designing them both together :]

[fhylie]

Another post about my 5ED&D game.

I'm doing this kind of scattershot since that's the way my brain works. Reasonably I should post some stuff about the world or the main city that most of the game has taken place in. So, let's talk about that aspect of the present setting.

Because it's D&D and you're contriving a bunch of things so that there can be wizards and clerics and the like in a pseudo-medieval setting, I decided to draw on some known sources. Many of the naming schemes I decided to use language groups from southern Europe (primarily Basque and Occitan for the predominant human group in the area, with others using Portuguese, Spanish, Lombard, Corsican, and Italian). I certainly wanted to draw on a Mediterranean feel for the place.

A major thing to understand is that the planet the campaign takes place on is tidally locked to its star, with a small amount of "wobble" that approximates seasons, but causing both the 'bright' and 'dark' sides of the planets to be inhospitable under normal circumstances. Most sentient races live in the wide(-ish) habitable band between these extremes, and have developed different strategies and beliefs to deal with the resulting eternal day or night.

The beginning of the campaign (most of it actually) has taken place in a mostly human city called Sanctuary, established on the continent of Thet about 1500 years ago during a time when humanity was fleeing some of the consequences of their own actions in learning and implementing magic. Basically, the "find out" after the "fuck around" part included a set of two planet-wide catastrophes that are somewhat lumped together due to an effective dark age of record-keeping in their wake, but these will have to be another post on their own.

Sanctuary is a fantasy megalopolis of interconnected cities and boroughs, a few million people sprawled out along the south coast of the continent. As you might understand, that's an unreasonable amount of people for a medieval-esque city, and I wanted it to be unmanageable and an enormous bureaucratic and logistical struggle for its ruling class to handle, forcing them by necessity to lean hard on the use of magic to address or reinforce fundamental issues.

(Don't worry; I remembered that people need to eat food. There are wide areas of farmland to the north and east of the city, but even that has to be propped up by government soil fertility programs.)

The borders of the city-nation are threefold: first, a long, semi-encircling curtain wall miles and miles in length around the non-coastal perimeter of the city (but not outlying villages or farmland), perhaps uselessly, since in most directions Sanctuary doesn't have a real major threat that walls would be useful against; second, an arcane construct called the Fence, administered by the College in a widescale effort to keep the Mist at bay (though astute observers might note that using magic to keep magic at bay is silly); and third, outlying military fortifications, naval patrols, and magical scrying which are all designed to function autonomously from the other borders and report only to the city's Crown Council.

Speaking of this, the city government is a massive tangle of layers of bureacracy ruled by a semi-effective noble class whose power base tends to be their grip over important aspects of the city (various aspects military, magic, finance, infrastructure, etc), without any one family necessarily having full control over any of these aspects. There's no king, because of, well, past mistakes and treaties, and instead the city-nation is ruled by a body loosely resembling noble electors of the Holy Roman Empire in our history. The highest body, the Crown Council, is made up of seven electors, generally from noble families, representing the Castle (military), the Road (making the entire place run), the Vault (banks and finance), the Guard (intentionally separated from the military), the Craftsman (currently Craftswoman, but representing the industrial base), and the Book (representing mages and magical forces and defenses).

These are by no means the only powers in the area, of course. There's organized crime in the form of the Attendant, a gang of blackmailers and drug pushers, there's the Gallery of the Percipient, an underground library/cult who see the gathering of knowledge as above morality, the Leriva family, a smuggler group ruled by two dragonborn twins that really lean into the serpent vibes, the Horseman's Weight, a group of thugs attempting takeover of one of the city districts, and their rivals, the Honest Men, who on the surface say they really would just prefer the Guard roll back in and take care of things, but low-key prefer to handle things their own way with vigilante justice.

The mages of Sanctuary's College Arcane have as many or more factions as the noble scions that tend to fill the College's rolls. Wizardry and its application are expensive, and the coveted title of a Magister conferred by the College's approval of some form of reproducible or valuable work that the city can use. Weather magic, new kinds of potions, advances in warding, or sometimes just a convenient excuse to award a title by political appointment as long as there's at least some excuse for their competency. The environment itself results in a somewhat cutthroat press of noble scions, merchants' progeny looking for social advancement, and sponsored students engaged in a subtle dance for position, prestige, and perhaps most importantly, funding.

Sanctuary's culture in general is mildly supremacist and xenophobic, holding pure humans above what they term as demi-humans (you know, all the other races), but not expansionist, due to their fear of the outside world and the ways magic and the Mist might affect them. In fact, it's only in the past few decades that non-humans have enjoyed full rights as citizens rather than being an established underclass, and some bigotry and distrust still remains. This is not to say that the players wanted to roleplay racists, and in fact, I'm careful to portray this sort of thing as overtly evil and destructive, because it is. You gotta have bad guys, man.

Exterior to all this are, well, the exterior political influences on the city. Sanctuary's main peer nations are Arra, an island nation ruled by theocracy and a divine sage-king that has recently started to reach out and colonize nearby coastal land on the continent; the Fanno Empire, a declining nation of elves (in the high/wood elf sense) trying to reclaim its past glory as explorers and philosophers, but thrashing in belligerent and sometime violent outreach or outright exiling portions of their population based on internecine religious struggle; Am Allanar, a different nation of elves and fey (these elves being eladrin mechanically) who prefer to remain isolationist except where their ironclad bargains with powerful beings of the Feywild compel them to protect what they see as their borders; Leda, a collection of dragonborn nation-states ruled by immortal dragon-kings, who passively watch what they see as the inevitable decline of younger kingdoms; and the Yeherit, a militant theocracy insisting on the perfect harmony of their ancient philosophical system that just happens to be highly stratified and offer very minimal freedoms to its underclasses, though materially its citizens are safe, sheltered, and well-fed. All of these except for Arra and Am Allanar occupy other smaller or larger continents or island chains, and so ships and magical travel or remote contact become important to conduct political relations.

These lists are by no means exhaustive, but they are the major ones that have come up in the campaign, with one notable exception that I'll have to address in a later post: the aberration-dominated nation of Citlali, the main adversarial political structure of the campaign.

[irandrura]

The Elder Scrolls - a disclaimer and rant

I am going to make some posts about The Elder Scrolls, and in particular, its background, setting, and characters. That means that a disclaimer is probably necessary.

Here’s the tl;dr version: yes, I know about the lore. Please trust me when I say that I was really super into it about a decade and a half ago, and I’ve kept an eye on it since. I have read the Michael Kirkbride forum posts. I have read C0DA, The Seven Fights of the Aldudagga, Sermon Zero, the Loveletter from the Fifth Era, and so on. I know the forum roleplays like The Trial of Vivec. I know that Ayrenn is really a time-travelling mining robot from outer space. I think all the stuff I just referenced varies widely in quality, opinions quite reasonably differ on it, and it’s frequently at odds with what’s actually depicted in the games, but at any rate, I promise that I know it.

So when I go on and talk about Psijics – I know, all right? I know. I am choosing to engage with the setting on a level that focuses more on characters, human stories, and, well, the narratives of the games. The TES apocrypha is interesting, but of limited relevance to the things I’m interested in. There are many valid ways to enjoy TES. Okay?

Now, the longer part:

If you haven’t played TES, and… actually, scratch that, for like 90% of people who’ve played TES, none of the above needed to be said. The thing is, when you play a TES game, it is a fairly straightforward elves-and-wizards-and-dragons fantasy setting in the D&D mould. Indeed, the earliest versions of it, back in the 90s, were based on a D&D campaign. So there’s relatively little surprising about it, and “it’s like D&D” will carry you most of the way towards understanding it.

However, TES games are also renowned for containing lots of in-game books you can read, which are often some of the most striking and evocative parts of the games. These are supplemented by a large library of apocrypha: often unofficial material, posted by developers (and ex-developers) on the internet. The most infamous of these writers is Michael Kirkbride, who has some… very unusual tastes and interests, but there are a range of other names as well. In any case, the result is that TES has an ‘expanded universe’ composed of these non-canonical writings. Often canonical texts in-game hint at some of this vast, unofficial hinterland, and sometimes ideas invented in the apocrypha sneak back into the games themselves.

Further, the apocrypha often hints at what seems to be a very different setting to the one directly experienced in the games: one that’s less about warriors and wizards and adventure and more one about divine magic, transcendence, myth, and meaning. The descriptions often seem to be somewhat at odds. This can best be demonstrated with some examples.

For instance, here is Michael Kirkbride’s description of a High Elf warship, written before any game had depicted the High Elf homeland:

Made of crystal and solidified sunlight, with wings though they do not fly, and prows that elongate into swirling Sun-Birds, and gem-encrusted mini-trebuchets fit for sailing which fire pure aetheric fire, and banners, banners, banners, listing their ancestors all the way back to the Dawn.

This is Old Mary at Water.

 You will immediately notice two things. The first is that this sounds really cool. Some of it you need some context to parse (the old elven homeland is called ‘Aldmeris’, hence ‘Old Mary’ as a mocking nickname given by its foes; the High Elves believe that they are literally, genealogically descended from the spirits that created the world at the Dawn), but even so, man, that warship sounds awesome. This Kirkbride guy can write. The second thing, though, is that it is extremely unclear what any of this even means. Given that descriptions… what does this ship look like? Try to picture it! What the heck does ‘crystal and solidified sunlight’ look like? How exactly does a trebuchet throw fire? What?

You might then go on to play a video game where the High Elves are taking part in a war to conquer the continent. If you’re like me, you’re probably keen to see one of these fabled warships. But then it turns out that in-game, High Elf ships look… like this. Or like this.

(Indeed, the High Elves are often a good example of this. An earlier written text, in a pamphlet enclosed with the video game Redguard, described the elven capital of Alinor as “made from glass or insect wings” or “a hypnotic swirl of ramparts and impossibly high towers, designed to catch the light of the sun and break it into its component colours”. Needless to say, should you visit it in a game, it does not look like that.)

After a while, you start to notice that there is very little connection between the world implied by the apocrypha and the world experienced in the games. Kirkbride says that the “closest mythical model” for the ancient knight Pelinal “would be Gilgamesh, with a dash of T-800 thrown in, and a full-serving of brain-fracture slaughterhouse antinomial Kill(3) functions stuck in his hand or head”, and says “Pelinal was and is an insane collective swarmfoam war-fractal from the future”. Indeed in Kirkbride’s descriptions Pelinal seems to have been an ultraviolent schizophrenic who led a wild, genocidal band of anti-elven warriors, was very definitely gay, and who had only a red, gaping hole where his heart ought to be (which in turn is a reference to the missing heart of the creator-trickster deity Lorkhan, whom Pelinal was in part a mortal incarnation of). You might find that really cool or you might find it banal, but there’s no denying that it’s extremely different to the Pelinal whose ghost you can meet in-game. The apocryphal Pelinal is a mad butcher whose closest mythic model, contra Kirkbride, actually seems to be Achilles; the game Pelinal is a straightforwardly sympathetic chivalric knight. This is complicated somewhat by the in-game books being written by Kirkbride and therefore being gonzo bananas insane, so the ‘canon’, such as it is, is unclear – but at any rate it is impossible to deny that there’s an incongruity.

I could go on with examples for a long time. I haven’t even mentioned the most famous – the 1st edition PGE description of Cyrodiil compared to what it actually looks like in Oblivion – or more recent ones, like the gulf between Alduin the mythic dragon who will consume the world and indeed time itself in its terrible jaws and the frankly quite underwhelming beastie you fight in Skyrim. The point I’m making is that there are effectively two TES settings: one relatively down-to-earth, immersive, and depicted in great detail in the video games, and one that’s this absurd mash-up of magic and science fiction and whatever psychedelics Michael Kirkbride has been taking this week.

I write this long disclaimer because it has been my experience discussing TES in the past that people who are mostly interested in the former – in the relatively grounded setting experience in the games – sometimes run into an elitist attitude from people who are interested in the latter. Sometimes fans of the apocrypha can come on much too strong, or gatekeep the idea of being a fan of ‘TES lore’. Any sentence that starts with “actually, in the lore…” is practically guaranteed to go on to be awful.

My point is not that the apocryphal TES is bad. As I hinted above, in my opinion its quality varies extremely widely: there are things that Kirkbride has written that I think are pretty cool (I unironically love the Aldudagga) and there are things he’s written that I think are indulgent tripe (C0DA stands out). Ultimately it’s all about what you enjoy, and I would never try to tell anyone that they shouldn’t have fun reading or speculating about or debating the zaniness of some of these texts. Indeed, as far as online fandoms and video game fan fiction goes, TES probably has the most fruitful ‘expanded universe’ that I’ve ever seen, and I think that’s wonderful. Kirkbride himself has said that “it’s really all interactive fiction, and that should mean something to everyone” and “TES should be Open Source”, which is a position I wholeheartedly endorse – and does a lot to take the edges off some of the worse things he’s said.

Rather, my point is that everyone should enjoy what they feel most interested in, or most able to enjoy. Further, I argue that there is absolutely nothing wrong – and for that matter absolutely nothing less intelligent or less intellectual – about a person preferring to engage with the version of TES most clearly depicted in the video games. Part of this might be defensiveness on my part, because in my opinion what TES has always done best is a nuanced depiction of cultural conflict: this is particularly the case in Morrowind and Skyrim, and ESO’s better expansions tend to deal in this area as well. As such I take relatively little interest in the metaphysical content of much of the apocrypha. For me, Shor, say, is most interesting as the protagonist of several conflicting cultural narratives, rather than as a metaphysical essence.

I would also argue that the most recent game content has taken a good approach by going out of its way to legitimise a range of possible approaches to the setting. The latest chapter of ESO, Greymoor, includes a system where the player can dig up ancient artifacts, and a number of NPC scholars will comment on them for you. This allows the game to indicate in-character scholarly disagreement over issues fans have previously debated. One item shows disagreement over whether the mythical character Morihaus was literally a bull, or a minotaur, or whether he was a human allegorically referred to as a bull. Another one points to disagreement over the possibility of magical spaceships: apocryphal materials have referred to ‘Sunbirds of Alinor’, ‘Reman Mananauts’, etc., as sorts of magical astronauts, but that seems so ridiculous given what we’ve seen in the games as to be easily discounted. I like items like this in-game because they seem to say to players, “It’s okay to disagree over questions like this – no one is doing TES wrong.”

That said, I am reasonably positive that I’m in the minority here, because I am in the camp that usually says that legends exaggerate, and so Morihaus probably wasn’t a bull and magical spaceships don’t exist. This is not a popular position. My reason, of course, is that I think tales are more likely to grow in the telling rather than shrink, and I have a dozen of what I think are hard-to-deny examples of this happening in TES (e.g. heroic narratives of the War of Betony are very different to the grubby reality you uncover in Daggerfall, or Tiber Septim is almost certainly from Alcaire rather than Atmora). However, this means that I openly take an opposite methodology to Michael Kirkbride. Kirkbride was once asked by a forum poster whether some in-game writings are exaggerated. His reply was: “I prefer, "It is very possible, as is the case throughout this magical world, that some of the exaggerated claims made about some subjects pale in comparison to the Monkey Truth. ZOMGWTFGIANTFEATHEREDFLUTYRANTS."”

Needless to say, I find this implausible, and it means that, for example, I interpret the Remanada as an obvious piece of propaganda, inventing a story about Alessia’s ghost in order to retroactively explain why Reman, probably born the son of a hill chieftain with zero connection to the previous dynasty, really has imperial blood. This is a very different but in my opinion more historically plausible take than Kirkbride’s, who has a naked thirteen year old Reman standing atop his harem and slaughtering recalcitrant followers.

I’m not saying that my approach is objectively correct. It’s all fiction – and as Kirkbride said, TES is open source. The only thing that matters is what you the reader, player, or interpreter find the most interesting. For me, that means generally favouring what is seen in the games over the developer apocrypha, which I can take or leave.

At any rate.

I’m going to go on and make some more fannish posts about stuff in ESO that I liked.

Just… if it’s relevant, be aware that I am familiar with the zany stuff. Some of it I like, a lot of it I don’t like, and I feel no obligation to use it if I don’t like it.

There. Disclaimer over.

[science-lings]

OC Masterlist

Quick intros for my OCs as I’m going to write about them and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Rosalia Scarlett Dawn AKA Rose- 

My main girl, healing powers, the MCU version of her was recruited by SHIELD right after she got her first PHD after she was caught studying alien biology, takes her a while to become an actual superhero as her healing powers were hard to convert into anything that she could put on the field, with help from her anti-hero/ villain nemesis who she has had sexual tension with ever since they shared a dorm in medical school but then she became unethical and ignorant of the people around her ergo turning into a bad guy. Rose is usually good and wholesome but she has a dark destructive side that was awoken after her nemesis used her powers on her. Rose is selfless to the point of not taking care of herself because any time spent not helping people with her powers is time wasted in her eyes and she tends to take medical cases that no one else can, usually pertaining to other powered people, aliens, magic illnesses, etc. 

Roses Intro Sheet  - SHIELD & Hydra

Andromeda Starling- 

Roses endgame girlfriend, shapeshifter, in the MCU she accidentally used a Hydra spaceship to escape the planet as her parents were both scientists involved with that kind of thing. She didn’t really think it through and she ended up on a skrull refugee planet where she crash landed and had to be enhanced to save her life. She’s not good at teamwork and tends to be a loner as she’s afraid to get close to people. She hates being bossed around and work with other people. She can do most on her own just fine. She hates having to admit she needs help with something. She’s a pretty decent pilot and prefers swords over guns. If she likes someone enough to become attached, she get’s very protective and even a bit clingy but that rarely happens. 

Andromeda’s Intro Sheet - Andromeda Portrait - Simple Lesbians - B&W Portrait

Adisa Crow AKA Doctor Plague-

Roses nemesis, she was subtly jealous of Roses powers so she secretly tried to recreate them, instead the outcome gave her powers that could reverse other’s powers against them and make normal people ill. She became a virus in every sense of the word and even tech malfunctions around her. But her powers affect herself a little, making her go a little crazy over time and more willing to do fucked up things in the name of science. Yes she wears a plague doctor mask that helps her powers not affect herself. Her powers also heighten her negative feelings and only give her relief when she uses her powers on other people as it hates being restricted. She’s given up on being free of it and has embraced her role as a super-plague. It’s actually kind of sad really... 

Adisa Crow Portrait - Nemesis Tension 

Phoenix AKA Maat (Matt) Ramses-

Necromancer goth mom, grew up an orphan with the sorcerers of Kamar Taj as her parents were wakandan sorcerers who died protecting the reality and the ancient one sensed her magic potential, however she wasn’t great at the normal magic that they tried to teach her. She had to steal forbidden books about necromancy to really get a hold of her powers. She left the sorcerers and found others like her, connected to death, and she made a family. but eventually she would have to investigate her roots in wakanda and it may not be pretty. She inherited her parents relics, a gold sword with a hilt of wings and a gold helmet based on the helms of the egyptian pharaohs. Maat didn’t quite work as a vigilante, she just was drawn to people that needed her help and she literally can’t stop herself from intervening when humanity can be so terrible. Anyway she hates cops and abusers and rapists and all that and she does her best to help the people that they hurt. 

Phoenix Portrait  - Open Helmet Idea - The magic relics

Diana Schmitt-  

Trans girl mutant who can control and melt metal and glass, making her own weapons on the fly and using debris to her advantage. Her left arm and her right leg were frozen off by anti-mutant extremists and she makes herself prosthetics with her powers made of glass shards that she can use and layers of different kinds of metal with the outside being gold because she likes the aesthetic. She’s covered in scars from the torture and from her own forging projects. She loves making things and does her best to be positive and kind to other people but trauma is still trauma and superheroes aren’t known for going to therapy. She has PTSD and gets triggered by excessive cold and dark places. She has to learn to confront her pain and move beyond it, while also going to therapy and stuff. 

Diana Portrait - Pride Month Portrait - Early Intro Sheet

Guinevere Kaimana-

literally a mermaid who spent several decades under the water as a hermit and has water powers and electric eel levels of electric powers. (until she’s at her most powerful but still not more than like some thunder in a tropical storm, she can’t like summon lighting to strike people or anything.) In the MCU she’s a mutant who left after her mutation out of fear of rejection and in my fantasy version of my OC universe she’s a pirate mermaid princess. She figured out how to temporarily turn her tail into a tail shaped skirt and tattoos on her legs similar to fishnet tights. She can’t stay human for very long and when she’s human she has to be fully hydrated or she could die. She has an enemies to competitors to friends to lovers with Diana and it’s a very slow burn. 

Gwen Pride Portrait - mermay

Alexandria Iriklitis- 

Superhero therapist with a magic voice. Her singing can manipulate the emotions of anyone that can hear it, even through recordings and microphones and stuff, and eventually she can use it to control objects around her through levitation and even destroying the area around her if she’s emotionally charged and loud enough (which happens when she goes temporarily deaf and thinks that she can’t responsibly use her powers anymore.) She has to be very careful with her powers as music is already made to affect peoples emotions but with her powers, any miscalculation can be destructive. Someone may have bad memories of a happy song and elevate those bad feelings. So she usually depends on non-lyrical songs and her own improvisation skills. In my fantasy OC universe she’s a magic bard that’s drawn to chaos and flirts with everyone because she’s a bard. She tries not to use her magic voice to make people do things they don’t want to do, she tries to not rely on it to get whatever she wants. 

Alex Portrait

Artemis Dawn-

Roses non-powered sister who is a SHEILD agent that struggles with living in her sisters shadow. They go through an arc of repairing their relationship and get to the point of being very close and killing for each other. Artemis specializes in sharpshooting, martial arts, and disguises. She uses makeup and clothing and wigs to completely change her appearance to a point where even the people that know her best won’t recognize her. In the fantasy AU universe she dresses up as a man to become a knight after being shamed out of her princess status. She’s a badass and deals with a major inferiority complex and has to prove that she’s just as good as her superpowered sister. When hydra takes over shield, she has to save her sister from their clutches and causes Roses first power burst that kills the hydra agents by forcing their bones to grow together to turn them into grotesque body horror statues. Fun. Artemis has a cold hard exterior but softens up around her sister and it confuses her colleagues to no end. Not many people knew she could smile outside of a role. 

Artemis Portrait

Unreleased art under the cut!

Gwen without face paint and weird colors, yes her lips are blue all the time

pride drawing for Rose

Phoenix and Diana as part of a mass drawing of my ocs that I gave up on but I liked the way they both looked in it so here it is now.

old headshot when i wanted to experiment with Roses mask

angry freckles

minor oc, i do actually think i posted it but I haven’t made enough about them to know what I want them to be besides absolutely bangin with their character design

COMMISSIONS I’VE HAD DONE OF THEM

Andromeda by tinymintywolf

Anthro Rose by scriiblesbymarti on insta i couldn’t find them on here oof

Spider-rose that I won by emkayoh

rose icon by tinymintywolf

[firebirdtransam68]

I Am Looking For More OP Blogs On Tumblr

I have been noticing that whenever I follow a Tumblr user (most of them are rebloggers), they disappear from my Following count (either they deactivated their account, or blocked me; but mostly their account gets deactivated).  Most Tumblr users want more followers; I want more blogs to follow, especially OP (original post) blogs.

I am not saying there should be no rebloggers (in fact, I encourage reblogging); it is that there are so many users that only/mostly reblog other users’ posts; I want to follow more OP users because I have a big thing for originality, creativity, and individuality.  Rebloggers tend to agree on what the OP (or other reblogger) says, and whenever I go to the tagged or search section/s, only the OP posts are apparent, and no rebloggers with their own creative tags (unless I go to their blog and search whatever keyword/tag they designate some of their posts with).

Yes, I reblog other users’ posts, myself, but I tend to add my own thoughts and tags whenever I do so; and since my reblogs are not in the tagged or search sections, these posts are not mine, since I am not the OP.  Even some OP users have reblogged posts of their own, as well (but they usually do not go overboard with them, and they usually have an equal amount of reblogs as well as original posts).  Because I promote creativity, talent and individuality, I do not reblog as much as most OP users.

I am looking for more OP blogs for me to follow (or to follow me so I can follow them) that are currently active and not defunct or dormant.  And whatever the OP user posts on their blog is their primary content.  Here are some content I am looking for:

Transformers

- Transformers Generation One

    * The Transformers (1984-1987)

    * The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

    * Transformers anime and OVAs

- Transformers: Robotmasters (2004-2005)

- Transformers: Unicron Trilogy

    * Micron Legend

    * Superlink

    * Galaxy Force

    * Linkage

    * Armada

    * Energon

    * Dreamwave

- Bumblebee (2018) and other Knightformers media

- G1 callbacks in all Transformers media (besides G1, itself)

- Underrated characters

- Alt-modes

- Different planets

- Sub vs. dub comparisons

- Fan characters

    * Autobots

    * Decepticons

    * Microns/Mini-cons

    * Junkions

    * Planets

    * Vehicles

    * Other robots

    * Other extraterrestrials

    * Humans

Sonic The Hedgehog

- Classic games (1991-1997)

- Adventure games/merchandise (1998-2006)

- Sonic X

    * Sonic X (sub)

    * Characters

    * Soundtracks

    * Stock footage

- Sonic OVA

- Sonic, Shadow, and Silver (and sometimes Scourge)

- Terios The Hedgehog

- Underrated characters

- Zones/areas/habitats

- Different planets

- Sub vs. dub comparisons

- Fan characters

    * Hedgehogs (male, female, intersex, non-binary, other, etc.)

    * Hedgehybrids (like a peahedge (hedgehog x peafowl), for instance)

    * Birds

    * Reptiles

    * Recently discovered species

    * Fantastical creatures

    * Other extraterrestrials

    * Robots, machines, cyborgs, and vehicles

    * Villains (male, female, intersex, non-binary, other, etc.)

    * Humans

Spore

- Creatures

- Early Creatures

- Flora

- Cells (actually microbes)

- Vehicles

- Buildings

- UFOs (actually spaceships)

- Planets

- City Music

- Objects (including different color Spice, rocks and minerals, weapons, etc.)

- Landscapes

- Advancements (including moveable tails for creatures, doors for vehicles and buildings, and other planetary features)

- Gameplays

- Screenshots

- Your own creations

Movies

- Top Gun (1986)

- The Final Countdown (1980)

- 1980′s Sci-fi and fantasy films

- Stealth (2005)

TV Shows

- Knight Rider (1982-1986)

- Voltron: Defender Of The Universe (1984-1986)

- Any sci-fi/fantasy/science fantasy shows (including 1980′s shows)

Videogames And Computer Games

- Sins Of A Solar Empire

- Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution

- FlOw (2006)

- Osmos (2009)

- Space Dragon (3lb Games)

- Age Of Empires (1997-2018)

- Nomad (1993-present)

- The Saint Of The Braves Baan Gaan

- Any classic arcade games (1970′s to 1990′s) from most popular to most underrated

Anime And OVAs

- Beast King Golion

- Armored Fleet Dairugger XV

- Lightspeed Electroid Albegas

- Future Robot Deltaneous

- Star Musketeer Bismark

- Super Dimension Fortress Macross

- Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross

- Genesis Climber Mospeada

- Dai-Guard

- Brave Fighters

    * Brave Fighter Exkaiser

    * Brave Fighter Of Sun Fighbird

    * Brave Fighter Of Legend Da-Garn

- Brave Express Might Gaine

- Brave Police J-Decker

- Brave Of Gold Goldran

- Brave Command Dagwon

- GaoGaiGar

- Betterman

- Robot Romance Trilogy

    * Super-Electromagnetic Robot Combattler V

    * Super-Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V

    * Brave Leader Daimos

- Space Runaway Ideon

- Blue Comet SPT Layzner

- Raideen

    * Raideen The Brave

    * Raideen The Superior

- Sukeban Deka (OVA)

- Starship Troopers (OVA)

- Queen Millenia

Books And Novels

- Dragonriders Of Pern series

- Literary Brat Pack

    * Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

- The Space Trilogy

- The Red Mars Trilogy

- Sci-fi books about/featuring dragons

- Robert Heinlein fans

- Space books

- Bird books

- Giant robot/Mecha books

- Books about different dimensions

- Books about time travel

- Action-packed suspense novels

Music

- 1980′s

    * Electropop

    * Music videos

    * Instruments (synthesizers, guitars, drum machines, etc.)

    * Currently deceased musicians

    * “Flashdance” style

    * J-Pop/J-Rock/city pop

    * Lesser-known songs

    * International

    * Experimental

    * Soundtracks

- Film/TV/videogame score/soundtracks

- Transformers music

- Sonic The Hedgehog music

- Musical instruments

Fan media

- Transformers

- Sonic The Hedgehog

- Spore

- Voltron (1984-1985)

- Knight Rider (1982-1986)

- Brave Saga

- Crossovers

    * Transformers x Sonic The Hedgehog

    * Transformers x Spore

    * Transformers x Brave Saga

    * Transformers x Voltron

    * Transformers x Knight Rider

    * Sonic x Spore

    * Sonic x Voltron

    * Sonic x Brave Saga

    * Sonic x Knight Rider

    * Spore x Voltron

    * Transformers x Yu-Gi-Oh!

    * Brave Saga x Yu-Gi-Oh!

    * Spore x Dragonriders Of Pern

    * Sonic x Dragonriders Of Pern

    * Transformers x Dragonriders Of Pern

    * GoBots x Transformers

    * Gundam x Transformers

    * Transformers x Sonic x Yu-Gi-Oh!

    * Transformers G1 x Transformers Unicron Trilogy

    * 4Kids shows x Transformers Unicron Trilogy

    * Top Gun (1986) x The Final Countdown (1980)

Liveblogging/Review/Rewatching/Screenshotting

- The Transformers (1984-1987)

- The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

- Transformers: Headmasters

- Transformers: Victory

- Transformers OVAs

    * Transformers: Scramble City

    * Transformers: Zone

- Transformers: Car Robots

- Transformers: Micron Legend

- Transformers: Superlink

- Transformers: Galaxy Force

- Bayformers films (2007-2017)

- Bumblebee (2018)

- AOSTH (especially the episode “Zoobotnik”)

- Sonic SatAM

- Sonic OVA (sub)

- Sonic X (sub)

- Beast King Golion

- Armored Fleet Dairugger XV

- Lightspeed Electroid Albegas

- Future Robot Deltaneous

- Star Musketeer Bismark

- Voltron: Defender Of The Universe (1984-1985)

- Voltron: Fleet Of Doom (1986)

- Saber Rider And The Star Sheriffs (1987-1988)

- Super Dimension Fortress Macross

- Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross

- Genesis Climber Mospeada

- Robotech (1982-1984)

- Brave Fighters

    * Brave Fighter Exkaiser

    * Brave Fighter Of Sun Fighbird

    * Brave Fighter Of Legend Da-Garn

- Brave Police J-Decker

- GaoGaiGar

- Dai-Guard

- Any Raideen series

- Knight Rider (1982-1986)

- Knight Rider 2000 (1991)

- Top Gun (1986)

- The Final Countdown (1980)

- Stealth (2005)

- Challenge Of The GoBots (1984-1985)

- Fan videos

Artwork

- Landscapes

    * Planetary landscapes

    * Nature

    * Cities and towns (featuring cars and other vehicles)

    * Futuristic landscapes

    * Space

    * Alien landscapes

    * 1980′s style landscapes

    * Memphis style landscapes

    * Technological landscapes

    * Room/hallway landscapes

- Cars (1965-1990)

- Fighter jets

- Birds

- Rocks and minerals

- Memphis patterns and other 1980′s and 1990′s style patterns

- Retro 1970′s, 1980′s, 1990′s aesthetic (including airbrush techniques)

- Images made by Microsoft Office PowerPoint shape tool

- Mecha robots

- Fonts and font art

- Space/universe related artwork

Miscellaneous

- Cars

    * Pontiac Firebird Trans Ams (including 1982)

    * Chevrolet Camaros (including 1982)

    * Supercars and sports cars from 1955-2004

    * Plymouth Roadrunners

    * Custom 1980′s sports cars (custom paint job, car costumes, accessories, etc.)

    * Dodge Challengers

    * Striped cars

    * Flying cars

- Planes

    * F-14 Tomcats

    * F-15 Eagles

    * F-16 Fighting Falcons

    * A-10 Warthogs

    * F-22 Raptors

    * F-35 VTOL fighter jets

    * Custom planes (including custom fighter jets)

- Seamless patterns

- Retro 1980′s themes

    * Synthwave

    * Retrowave

    * Vaporwave

    * Airbrush techniques

    * Fonts

    * Car paint jobs

    * Chrome (not Google Chrome; actual chrome gradients)

- Bird species of the world

- Space

    * Planets (including those outside our solar system)

    * Stars

    * Moons

    * Star systems

    * Nebulae

    * Galaxies

    * Asteroids and meteors

    * Comets

    * Clusters

    * Novae

    * Black holes

    * Recent discoveries

- OS

    * Microsoft DOS

    * Microsoft Windows 1.0

    * Microsoft Windows 3.1

    * Microsoft Windows 95

    * Microsoft Windows NT

    * Microsoft Windows 98

    * Microsoft Windows 2000

    * Microsoft Windows ME

    * Microsoft Windows XP

    * Microsoft Windows retro OS styles

    * Ubuntu Linux

    * Amiga OS

    * Underrated OS

- Old technologies

- Ask memes (usually for fandom related topics)

If anyone already has posts like any of these, feel free to follow me so I can check out your content (I usually follow back if the content a user contains satisfies me, but sometimes I choose not to; spam users, on the other hand...).  For those who have not logged in to Tumblr (and have content you chose to base your future blog as), please do so; the more creative individuals in the site (if not the whole Internet), the better.

That is all I will say for now.  Until I find such content that is ongoing for the 2020′s, I will explore what is available so far.  I am certain other users might have similar needs and desires like I do, as well.

This is FirebirdTransAm68 signing out.

[voidsentprinces]

📜 (For each)

Each of the Voidsent Princes are translated from my creation of them in my mind back in 2010, 2011. All of them have kept a few of these details necessary to their characters when translated to Final Fantasy XIV.

📜 - Envy’s overwritten existence was a happenstance in that the Catholic belief each sin is represented by a corresponding demon. Meant that the Leviathan is associated with Envy. Since, there always exists a Leviathan in Eorzea, this meant that Envy would be overwritten even if he was the Leviathan of his world. Envy’s spite initially came from being forced into a humanoid form and keeping only his tail to forever remain nostalgic and bitter over, what he once was rather than what he could grow to be.

By this same vein, I added the aspect of him keeping his eye color, hair color, and tail to remind him of this. To drive him forever to begrudge the Sahagin and the Eorzeans. Which motivates him to commit atrocities out of spite.

As it stands, I am still trying to work in how Envy got his start in creation lore. As in his original back story, he was literally placed in a Goddess without her knowing. Feeding on her divinity and driving her mad with the newfound feeling of jealousy, spite, envy, and pettiness. Which slowly turned him from a simple snake, into a great draconic serpentine.

This event he clings onto as his peak and why he is arrogant in that he is greater than any being. Wishing to reobtain such a place and corrupt all hearts. Feeding on many more essences. But alas, he remains anchored to trying to reobtain that lost former glory. Rather than using, his powers for any good. Reminded daily of his current state, forever chasing a dream he will never reobtain.

📜 - In their origin and repeated in their back story. Only Wrath and Sloth began as demons. Which had been changed for their translations into FFXIV. Initially; Envy was a Primordeal force, Lust was human once, Gluttony was an angel, Greed was a human made deity, Sloth was a demon, Wrath was a demon, and Pride was an angel. To reflect this, Envy was a Primal in his world, Lust was a mortal, Gluttony was a Warrior of Light, Greed was an Elder Primal, Sloth is a homunculus, Wrath was an Xaela Au Ra, and Pride was also a Warrior of Light.

I, explain this, due to keeping with the translations of things that stayed over other than the obvious (i.e. eyes, hair, manner of speaking, dress). Lust maintains his backstory of prostatuting himself to make enough money. To hire, his sick sister a life-time doctor for her non-specific illness. Then the tragedy following, where his memories and beings are stripped away. Forever doomed to only vaguely remember his sister. Ever searching for her, but centuries have past and she was mortal. Whereas, he isn’t anymore.

This was my attempts to make Lust more than a simple overtly sexual force. Giving him meaning, a passion and something to lust forever outside the obvious. He wants to remember his sister, he wants to be there to protect her, watch over her, as a big brother does. See her grow, see what choices she made, etc. Alas, he might never have that chance as his shard of origin was consumed by one of the Ascian’s ploys.

📜 - Gluttony has always been together with Pride. As it is written that Beelzebub was lieutenant to Lucifer in his uprising. This follows suit, in both interations of my translations of the sins, the two are separated. Gluttony takes up hunting in a hellscape. Eventually consumes corrupted meat which drives him mad with hunger.

Unfortunately, there is far too much green, I associate with the Seven Deadly Sins. Got Envy, Gluttony, and Greed all which could be associated with various shades of the color. So, I couldn’t decide whether or not Gluttony’s eyes should be an acidic yellow or a bile green. In the end, I felt it better to learn on this angelic figure twisted into monster. When full hog on the eldritch monstrosity. His eye deforming into a compact insectoid ocular. Carapace, translucent wings, etc.

Beelzebub was shown to favor the bow in some scriptures and drawings. So, he kept a hunting aspect about him. Though I might change him, to be more approachable in the near future.

📜  - Greed was always to be a welcoming being. As he was worshipped in both previous lives in both iterations of him. He is more than happy to welcome mortals. Share a drink, buy them food, etc.

One of the few sins to actually grow, after his downfall from the throne of divinity and being outwritten as a faux deity. Mammon found to value less material things and more people in general. Though he still wishes to collect various objects, now that he has found himself in a new world. He also wishes to collect people. Relationships, memories, experiences, stories, and the like.

This turns Greed away like Lust from the simple path of corporate greed to one of more character. Always broad shouldered, hair and eyes the color of fresh minted dollar bills. Dressing in suits like a romanticized prohibition mob boss. But, with genuine hospitality. Greed was probably the easiest to translate story wise.

📜 - Sloth is probably the least touched on Sin, I’ve worked on. They follow the troupe of being lazy and unmotivated. But, in a logical way. Yes, Sloth does tend to sleep and prefer to be undisturbed. But, in my research, I came upon an interesting bit of lore from the Belphagor myth, Belphagor is sent out into the world by Hades to measure humanity. Though his findings are uninteresting, the folklore of Belphagor offering up unimaginable inventions for people to patent and claim as their own to incite Sloth. Had some sort of impact on me.

Absolutely brilliant, able to invent things on the spot, but the laziest being in the universe. Whenever awoken, Sloth would offer up someone a genuine good idea or invention which would see themselves prosper. If, they’d just let Sloth roll over and go back to sleep.

Another aspect of Sloth kept in both iterations, they are either unfathomably lucky or unlucky depending on where you look at it. As they get around purely by chance. By never moving and always sleeping, Sloth is often farried around without their knowing. Appearing in odd places all due to random chance.

For example, Sloth went from the Great Gubal Library steps to Ul’dah by; being swept by one of Matoya’s brooms off the beaten path, rolling down a hill into the river below, floating through Coerthas onto the oceans near La Noscea, where they were subsequently eaten by an over size fish, said fish washed up on the harbor of Horizon, where it was split up only for them to come tumbling out of its belly, into a cart, which was then farried to Ul’dah, whereby they rolled off it onto the streets.

📜 - Amon is one of 72 demons written about in the Goetia of Soloman. He is a marquis of Hell and bears an owl’s head with wolves teeth, a man’s body, with a serpent tail. He is sinfully summoned by scholars to foresee the future or help them obtain knowledge. This is an aspect translated into Wrath, once a great oracle of the Xaela. He predicted an outcome which bode ill for the current Khagan. Ill respecting of this prediction, that Khagan killed Amon’s tribe and tried to force fate to bring about a new revelation which served the ruling tribe before Nadaam.

To this end, they tortured, Amon for many moons. Until at last, fate intervened in a way that was unexpected. Infusing Amon with the rage of all those unlawfully killed in his tribe. He began a beast of Wrath. Still maintaining his ability to see the future, as indicated by his ring patterned eyes. Always prone to anger and irrational thinking, going as far as to destroy a marking place because of some pineapples. Sloth developed a system of stealing piercings.

Wrath’s body is covered in piercings that pentrate through Wrath’s abdomen, fore and upper arms, his ears, nose, and lips. When ever, he gets angry. The piercings attempt to seal in the rage and when they are close to expiring, they glow molten white. This way, Wrath can maintain proper thought and function without going berserk at a moment’s notice.

The piercings can double as explosives, as Wrath can remove them and throw the heated piercings to erupt releasing the fiery energy in the designated area.

📜  - Pride, Lucifer. One of the most iconic sins and in a handful of religion, the first sin and sometimes to root of it all. Vanity, narcassism, and glory seeking. Pride is another one I hadn’t touched on alot and currently sits in an amnesiac state.

Though, his form is that of a Warrior of Light, who did his best and was awarded nothing for it. He started out seeking adventure, gathering friends and allies along the way, battling everything the troubles of the world put forth and in the end, he and his Warriors of Light. Couldn’t stop of the Ascians from consuming, his world in Calamity.

His last act was to protect, what he thought, was the last remaining member of his group from the flood of darkness. That would go on to consume his form.

Once golden in hair and eye, his fair hair turning black and the shine of his gaze fading.

Now Pride is going to be acting as a Project of mine. Balmung is going to shape him into what he becomes. Will he return to being a Voidsent Prince? Become an adventurer? Or something else? We’ll see....when I get to courage to throw him at the Balmung community again.

[comtesse-d-edessa]

not all porn is about degrading women it’s not all sex trafficking and if a woman or man or anyone wants to sell his or her or their body then it’s their choice you can have sex with anybody and it can be pleasant or a bad experience but just because there’s a camera it’s bad? if you actually looked at porn sites especially the ones about bdsm and intense scenes they speak to the actors at the end to ask how their experience was and they all had a positive one sex sells and people are consumers

Okay this is a lot and there’s only one punctuation mark so I’m gonna answer each point separately for my own clarity. Also included is your second, shorter ask.

1) “not all porn is about degrading women” I mean I guess there is gay porn. But seriously, the attitude surrounding porn speaks volumes otherwise. The way porn videos are described, the fact that domenstic violence and abuse are popular categories, the way pornographers speak about their performers off-set—and the biggest thing is that porn is, indeed, inherently degrading. It cannot not be degrading because the act itself degrades women (and men).

Porn reduces women to sex objects. (It also reduces men to sex objects. Basically everything I am saying in this post could pretty much go for men, too, but I feel as though the people who I tend to ‘look up to’ in terms of knowing their stuff about the porn community tend to have different attitudes towards male porn actors than female. I have seen, although I have not had the time to really look into it, the fact that oftentimes female porn actresses suffer abuses at the hands of their costars. I haven’t really formed my own opinion about that, and the specifically female experience of porn involvement is kind of gender specific, but like, I don’t think only male porn is any more acceptable than male-female or female-female.)

as I said, it makes women a means to an end. I believe that is always degrading, no matter what is happening. And because you say 'not always’, i think we can agree that at least the majority of porn is degrading to women. But later down in the paragraph you excuse porn by saying that it is a choice of the woman to act in porn [thus to be degraded]. But I think that the degradation of the act is not cancelled out by the fact that it is performed for money, and you think that a degrading act is acceptable if it is for money. I’m not making a value judgement on that, I’m just saying what I think the difference in our point of view is.

Also, how much 'degradation of women’ would there have to be in porn (as an industry, if you believe that there are 'non degrading’ pornos) for you to not want to support it anymore?

2) “porn is not all sex trafficking” First I have been remiss in not indentifying what sex trafficking is. I am someone who lives in one of the sex trafficking capitols of the US, and during my HS years a big sex trafficking development (I don’t want to be too specific) occurred which lead to all of the HS students in my area being given a lot of training and education on sex trafficking and the warning signs, etc. Sex trafficking is not being pulled off the street into a van and never seen again except in pornos. Like, I’m not saying that sex trafficking victims are not kidnapped because some are. But the majority are extensively groomed into it so that they 'consent’ to it. Some do it because they have been manipulated by their pimps, who might also be their 'boyfriends’. Some do it because when they showed up for a 'photoshoot’ they were raped on camera, and they are being threatened with the release of their 'sex tape’ and told they might as well become a pornstar anyway. Some do it because they or their families are being threatened. I just want to clear up that there is a ton of different ways women in the sex industry are trafficked, and that it is not as though all of these women were just pulled off the sidewalk and into porn. There are plenty of ways much more subtle than that to traffick a woman into sex work, and they are not readily apparent—or possible to identify at all, really—to the porn viewer. Anyway, just wanted to clear up. Onto my next point: can you guarantee that you have never seen a trafficked woman in your porn? If not, what is the acceptable number of trafficked women you would accept in your porn? What amount of trafficked woman would induce you to give up porn?

(Wow, only on the second statement. This is gonna be a super long post I guess. Sorry to all scrolling.)

3) “and if a woman or man or anyone wants to sell their body, then it’s their choice”I have mentioned that a lot of the time, it is not. And that isn’t something to take lightly, but I will not focus on it for too long since you do not appear to think sex trafficking is a big problem in the porn industry/a reason to not support the porn industry. But also, just because someone is choosing to perform an inherently degrading act (acting in porn) that doesn’t mean that the act it’s absolved of its degradation.

4) “you can have sex with anybody and it can be a pleasant or bad experience but just because there’s a camera it’s bad?”Porn is not two people having sex and a camera is there. Porn is two people who generally would not choose to have sex with one another recreationally, having performing porn (oftener and oftener, violent, humiliating, and 'hardcore’ sex acts being involved) specifically for pay.

Porn is not real sex. It’s showbiz. Granted, this is showbiz that can leave its performers diseased, injured, and with psychological trauma. The gruesome side of porn is all too real, but comparing it to real sex would be like comparing High School Musical to a real world high school experience. It is a visual product designed to create a reaction, not to simulate real life. And it is undeniable that over the years as more and more people demand and crave more and more hardcore porn, porn has only gotten farther and farther away from anything close to a depiction of 'real sex’. I only wish someone would tell that to the men who feel entitled to try to enact these gross fantasies out with their significant others, and for the women who feel as though they could never measure up to something that is literally not reality.

But you might want to retort with 'homemade’ porn, the conceit of which is a real-life couple engaging in recorded sexual activity either for themselves only or for a wider audience. Being a big fun-sucker, I don’t like those either. It is not uncommon for those videos which were recorded with the intention of never being made public to be made public, in acts of 'revenge porn’, and this would not be easy to tell to the porn viewer. And also, it still ties into the fact that by recording sexual acts to use for sexual gratification, the body is still made into a sex object, which I have said I think is inherently degrading. I don’t think people’s bodies should be used as objects, even if they are doing it to themselves. See my above point about consent not negating the problems with an action.

5) “if you actually looked at porn sites, especially the ones about bdsm and intense scenes, they speak to the actors at the end to ask how their experience was and they all had a positive one”

I am aware that this happens.

And yeah. They’re performers. The people asking this are the people who pay them. I’m sure for literally any organization, you could find a group of the people who rely on them for money and get them to say whatever nice things the organization wants about them. Surely you can see why every porn actor is under extreme pressure to agree that they had a good time with whatever happened during filming, not even mentioning the women who are sex trafficked (I know you think it is “not all” which I’m sure is technically correct, but you must agree then that they do exist) who have to agree that they had a good experience for reasons I’m sure you understand.

And every time, the experience is positive? Even when you yourself say, there are at least SOME trafficked women doing at least SOME degrading porn, every experience is positive?

All I’m saying is that this is an incredibly bad quality-control check. Even from the (false) assumption that porn itself is not bad, and only abuse or injury on-set are what can make an individual porno bad, then this is an obviously totally ineffective actual strategy for keeping the “bad” parts out of porn. This is just the flimsiest of excuses to allow people to justify the consumption of increasingly violent porn. And people grab onto that desperately to try to ease their consciences, even though I cannot honestly believe most people think that that’s actually an accurate way of telling whether or not a porn actor had a positive experience.

(Take this porn performer’s experience, for example. https://jezebel.com/porn-actress-nikki-benz-sues-mindgeek-brazzers-co-sta-1825143669 )

6) “sex sells and people are consumers”

You’re not wrong, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. Just because people will consume something doesn’t mean that it should be consumed. I hate to be the 'slavery allegory’ person, but people really did used to buy slaves. (I mean, they still do in some parts of the world.) but “slaves sell and people are consumers”, while being an antebellum USA reality as much as your statement is a reality of 2019, does not actually mean either of the statements are making a value judgement. Just because the world is one way really, really doesn’t mean that that is at all okay. People kind of suck. The world kind of sucks. Morals are not decided by popular opinion.

Also, sex does not sell. What porn is selling is not sex. What porn is selling is, again, the devaluation and degradation of the human person. And yes, people consume that. And increasingly, it is normalized in society so that people feel othered for not doing it, so that girlfriends are mocked for not liking it, and it is laughed off as just a thing that men and women do. So more and more people consume that degradation.

On your next ask—

7) “How about porn categories that don’t degrade anybody?” See #1. It is not the acts performed in porn (though they are increasingly humiliating and extreme) which make it degrading so much as the fact that porn itself is degrading. To everybody.

8) “when it’s just regular couples having sex, is that wrong too?” Yes. See last paragraph of #4.

Here are the sources you asked for:How porn negatively affects the brain and sexual/romantic relationships:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1988.tb00027.x^^ “After consumption of pornography, subjects reported less satisfaction with their intimate partners—specifically, with these partners’ affection, physical appearance, sexual curiosity, and sexual performance proper. In addition, subjects assigned increased importance to sex without emotional involvement.” The abstract.

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/nnbckv.pdf^^ porn consumption made people place less emphasis on sex with emotional connection, less expectation of fidelity to a partner/from a partner and more accepting of affairs, no longer desire marriage or children, and thought more highly of male-dominated relationships. It also made people (men and women both) ascribe shorter prison sentences to rapists and to be less affected/moved by rape.

https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-affects-sexual-tastes/https://fightthenewdrug.org/why-consuming-porn-is-an-escalating-behavior/https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-affects-the-brain-like-a-drug/^^ porn is addictive and porn consumption becomes more 'hardcore’ and extreme over time.

https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-damages-consumers-sex-lives/#c11^^ porn is making people bad at 'real life’ sex (again, porn is not sex.)

https://humantraffickingsearch.org/the-connection-between-sex-trafficking-and-pornography/^^ the link between human trafficking and pornography, although there are many more articles which will discuss this, I will just link this relatively short one and the source for THAT one, http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/FarleyRentinganOrgan11-06.pdf^^ “In every country, almost half of the respondents said that they were forced to make pornography while enslaved in sex trafficking.”

[yourdlmatchmaker]

I think this one is the longest match up I’ve answered so far… :’)

“Hello there, this looked fun. Could I have a long match-up please?

1. Physical appearance: 5'4" (163cm) 100lbs (45kg) very long dark reddish brown hair, dark brown eyes, olive skin (Mix of Thai, English and German) My look has been compared to a scaled down (in height) fashion model – that is long legs, very skinny, high somewhat hollow cheek bones, narrow face and a high forehead with almost no bust to speak of and a teeny tiny waist, I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

2. Personality: Oh my, where do I begin? Well, I’m definitely an extreme introvert. People usually seem to think I come across as very professional and aloof. I try to be kind and courteous to everyone I meet, but if they do or say anything that bothers me I can be a little prickly and sometimes downright vicious. Little do they know though that I’m like that, because I’m terribly shy around strangers and have a very strong desire to make people happy and protect them. I fear getting close to others, because I don’t want to hurt or be hurt and have a very hard time finding people I can bond with in both an intellectual and emotional way, so I hide behind distance and politeness. Just because I’m shy at first though, doesn’t mean I won’t be a chatterbox once you get to know me though. Once I’m comfortable with you I’ll share (almost) all of my ideas, random musings and gripes, if I think you’ll be receptive towards it anyways. That takes a very long time though and so far only two people have gotten to that point with me. For people that I’m friends with normally I tend to act in a sort of motherly way, giving them advice and helping them with their problems – sometimes admittingly to my own detriment. As well as taking care of them when they are sick or having emotional issues. I don’t like to help people, but on some level I feel like I must do so especially if I know them.

I’m normally a very logical person, so much so that I will occasionally say the wrong thing or offer ideas or advice when it’s not what the other person is looking for, which I realize after the fact but because I really like to just ‘fix’ things I have a hard time understanding that sometimes people need to emotionally vent, and I often just get confused by it. I’ll try to “be there” for them despite that but it is still difficult.

Despite my size and shy disposition I’m actually extremely hard to intimidate and will stand up for myself and other people very quickly. It doesn’t matter who my opponent is or how big, strong or powerful they are, I will stand my ground possibly to the end if I believe in my cause strongly enough (though because of my protective nature it is very easy to make me back down by threatening other people). No matter how many feminine things there are that I love, for some reason I always feel like I end up coming across as a bit too masculine and I often feel a bit more male than female. This isn’t necessarily out of a desire to be male, but rather I feel like I have more masculine than feminine qualities and also feel like I am sadly bereft in the supposedly more girlish personality traits of my sex. Despite this though I have no real desire to change my personality or sex, I am who I am after all. Nevertheless I remind people more of their brothers and sons, and my tiny social circle is all boys (at the moment.)

3. Scorpio (Sun), Gemini (Moon), Gemini (Rising) (The last two are important because despite having almost all of the Scorpio traits, once you get to know me I never shut up. ^_^;)

4. Hobbies/Interests: Drawings, painting (I like both fine art and illustration and can work in several different mediums – acrylic, watercolour, marker, ink and even digital art. Fantasy art, Surrealism, Manga and Impressionism are examples of styles I can do, and I’m still working towards improving my hyperrealist style.) I’ve been obsessed with making art since I was a very small child and at this point it’s really become my life’s work. I dedicate so much of my time, energy and resources to this that I forget to eat or sleep and become a bit of a shut-in. Reading: (Most of my books are non-fiction, though I do enjoy some older fiction on occasion – The Silmarillion, The Great God Pan and pretty much anything by H.P. Lovecraft being some examples. My library contains field guides, books on botany, mycology, medicine, artbooks, anatomy, geography, geology, microbiology, mythology, occult/witchcraft, religion, linguistics, phrasebooks, particle physics, cartography, calligraphy, history, psychology, genetics (…probably a lot more but we’ll be here for far too long.) Gardening: I love growing all sorts of things, but especially herbs and flowers. My living area is full of plants of many different kinds and I devote a significant portion of my time and energy to them. I also like to grow tropical plants from the seeds of fruit that I buy at the grocery store. Manga and Anime: I don’t seem immediately like the sort of person who would love popular culture, but the fact that I can enjoy some fun stories while reading or watching in a language that is not my native tongue has always been the main motivation behind this obsession. I’m also madly in love with cute things and ink drawings. Video Games: Another thing people probably wouldn’t expect by looking at me but… I have a HUGE collection of games (on my computer) of many different kinds. Like with anything else I do, I have to play everything in it’s original language (it’s more fun and respects the artistic integrity more.) I mostly like JRPGs and Visual Novels now, but I used to love Sierra games when I was younger, and some FPS like Doom. There is no type of game I won’t play. Though gaming is generally the lowest thing on my list of priorities these days. Cooking: I like to cook, can can do many different styles. Mostly Thai, but also frequently Japanese (both traditional and modern), Italian, German, English etc. I can cook pretty much anything though I don’t like baking as much. (I’m not super fond of sweets, except on the rare occasion when I must have them.) Fashion and Makeup: I am completely unable to leave the house without makeup and sunscreen and always have to make sure my clothing is at least presentable and neat. I actually enjoy applying makeup and like experimenting with it (I hate doing my hair though, the length is too much so I usually bun or ponytail it.) I also like a few Jfashions, Mori-Girl, Otome-kei and Classical Lolita especially. Unfortunately I’m also a very active person so I usually end up dressing in a more Korean style instead (tight high-waisted jeans, long sleeved tight black shirts and heeled boots – is running in heels a skill? XD), but when it’s practical to do so I love wearing the frilliest dresses I can find with a very poofy petticoat, a bonnet and floral designs. Hiking: I like to forage in the forest for mushrooms and plants when I can. I find that the fresh air and beautiful scenery calms me down and energizes me. Studying Languages: I haven’t had as much time for this lately, but it’s a side hobby. Unfortunately Japanese is the only one I’ve gotten particularly far in… (There are not enough hours in the day or night.)

5. I like: Tea (Especially Earl Grey, must be high quality or I get a stomach ache… yeah I know, its true. @_@), coffee (espresso in lattes or specialty black coffee made in a French Press, no drip :P), Self discipline, Quiet time, Nature, Music (all kinds, though especially symphonic metal), WalkingI love: My cats (though I get along quite well with all felinekind and animals in general (save humans :P), Plants (I mean every kind of plant, though trees and flowers stick out a bit), Fungi (even molds, though not when they’re growing on my food), Beautiful things, Art Supplies, Bright and pastel colours, Antiques, Books, Art, Paintings, Illustration, Shopping for art suppliesI dislike: When people look untidy, Foul smells, People that bore me, Small talk, Sloth, Loud noises, Erratic behavior, Selfishness, People who act overtly friendly and try to get close to you too fastI loathe: Cruelty (especially towards animals and children), Cowardice, Deliberate ignorance, People who complain a lot, Irresponsibility

6. I was unable to bond with my sole caregiver due to extreme child abuse and neglect on their part, In addition to that I was not allowed to attend school until my teenage years (I was educated very strictly at home, supposedly because I was too advanced to fit in at school – though it might also have been to keep me prisoner at home all the time. >_<). Due to this I have had a very hard time fitting in with society as my childhood was mostly spent alone, reading, drawing, playing computer games, spending time with the cats that I lived with and going out into nature (I made friends with a couple of squirrels.) Much of what I knew about people and the world was gleaned from books, magazines and the internet – although I was allowed to associate with a few family friends on occasion. I did have a very good intellectual education (though often held to impossible standards), but because I was so cut off from more normal ways of socializing I still have a very hard time relating to other people.“Relationship-wise” I’m umm… actually extremely submissive in private (^_^;) (Not something most people would expect as I seem very proud and dominant normally). I’m also very easy to embarrass as I’m not very comfortable talking directly about certain sorts of… umm… “romantic” things and avoid almost all forms of public affection. Above all else I look for people who can understand and relate to me via interests and experiences and who I can also relate to in the same way. Probably the same thing most people look for… but figured I should mention it. Would rather not be paired up with Ruki, I have a huge personal grudge against him that dates back to More Blood – and a part of me still plots his doom. (I apologize deeply to all the Ruki fans though.)

Hope this wasn’t too long, I feel a bit silly. (^_^;)

Take your time and have fun with this.

Could I please be anonymous?”

Admin Abi: Oh my~ what a long and detailed match up!! I really enjoyed reading it and I NEED to say that I felt identified with many parts!! Well~ I hope you get to see it “anon-chan” ;D and I thank you for the long wait. Long reply for a long match!

*finishing your match up*

Your romantic match is…

Reiji!

I must say/confess…I seriously I thought I was reading Reiji’s female description! I don’t intend to offend you and I apologize if I did. But you see…I want to explain myself a little more as to why I said it…

I'll tell you how you two met! After some time that you were studying in a school, you just wasn’t able to fit. Your parents then decided to change you into a more private school. They even changed you into a night-time school. During that time of the day, they thought you would be able to fit more since there would be less students as well as to keep your high level of education. They sing you up to this school and to be honest you weren’t very sure or excited about it. It would mean to adapt one more time and start all over again. Adapting to the time, education system and…met new people once again. On your first day you had a hard time finding your classroom…you were lost and let’s say you didn’t know exactly how you ended up in the chemistry laboratory. You knocked and…a handsome and elegant man opened. He seemed somehow annoyed, but he asked you what is that you wanted. You showed him your schedule and asked him where you could find your class. He gave you the directions and you thank him. This encounters seem to happen constantly since you seemed to always cross paths. He was always polite (and annoyed) and gave you instructions whenever you needed. One time you asked a girl of your class if she knew him so you could thank him properly for all his help. She was surprised and told you that he was no other that Reiji Sakamaki, the most popular family in school. She was more surprised that you get to be in good terms with the second eldest of the brothers.

“Reiji is well known to be the perfect gentleman…but he is unrechable. He’s cold towards everyone and thinks of himself above all. No one has see him dating any girl and he just closes himself in the chemistry laboratory, yet he is the top student in school. I really think you shouldn’t try to catch him, you’ll end up rejected” the girl told you. It’s not like you had those intentions with him in the first place, you just wanted to thank him. The next day you went to his class and simply left him a small note telling him how greatful you were. He was impressed? You couldn’t tell to be honest. You kept having encounters with him, you discovered that he was a little more open when you both were alone. He showed you his perfectionist nature as his sadist part. Yet…you seem to be unavoidable attracted to him. You of course were polite and a lady at first and that gave you extra points! He never confessed to you directly? He just simply let know that you now belong to him~.

He can’t believe how many things you both have in common. Just like you Reiji has an interest in botanics and science. You both have created a small garden with all types of herbs and a small section with flowers. You two sometimes have disagreements since you both are very logical, so you tend to discuss about some things. There were times in which you had troubles with him since he can’t stand being told what he should do (I mean it wasn’t your intention to offend him…you just tried giving him some advice!). Yet…even Reiji had it difficult to make you afraid…you were so difficult to intimidate, how you do it?.

He also had some troubles accepting or at least trying not to change you that much about your preferences. He sometimes have problems dealing with your more masculine nature…but well no one is 100% perfect. He sighs loudly and you know that you are doing something that is bothering him. He also doesn’t like that you tend to hang more with men that girls, yet he knows that even though you are nice and such with them…no one could provide you with the things he offers for you like a deep connection both mental and emotional. He also don’t mind the fact that you have social problems…I mean he manages to keep you with him almost all the time. He’s pleased whenever you dress like a lday or all cute just for him…it makes him feel good with the fact that he gets to know you better than anyone.

He understands what is like to grow alone and being force (in a way) to always give your best and being the best. He felt like he needed to have you all by himself and you fekt the same. You had someone to care for (well not literally but as a target to your attentions and love) and so has he. He always take care of you no matter the circunstances, he has found you and has no intention to let you go…never!

Your dates are mostly staying at his room, having a nice cup of Earl Grey tea (of the highest quality, who you think he is?) and discussing for hours about deep and serious topics. He enjoys your vast knowledge in literature, sciences, botanics, medice, linguistics, witchcraft (which he also has used), gentics…man, he can talk to you for hours and just like you said there are times you both wished the day had more hours to keep going. Even your drawings, pieces of art and knowledge in general never cease to stop to amaze him (he won’t admit it though…his biggest attempt to praise you, would be telling you “you did a good job” or “Indeed you are right about this”). Your interests are so vast that is incredible to make you both stop (Reiji is the one that always stops the conversation in order to go to sleep). Reiji sometimes have problems with your huge invest of time in your video games…but he accepts that a break once in a while is important. You small walks also doesn’t bother him that much…he has one of his familiars keeping an eye on you at all moments so he doesn’t have to worry and can concetrate on his chores and experiments in peace.

Reiji is a true gentleman: he always remembers the important dates, the things that you like and those you don’t. I can tell you that he knows perfectly that you are rather new when it comes with romantic things, so he doens’t push you into hand holding or kissing since he, himself, doesn’t like it. Your submissive nature with his dominant one makes a great combination, he feels so proud that he gets to see your true nature…and that you show it just for him…not just in a “pervert way”, but also as the chatty and even your akwardness. Because that true self with imperfections and all…is what makes you perfect to his eyes. You are so perfect together: YOU TWO HAVE SO MANY THINGS IN COMMON THAT HE SHOULD THANK HEAVENS FOR SENDING HIM SOMEONE AS PERFECT FOR HIM AS YOU!!

I hope you liked it and that I made sense? I feel that in some parts I wasn’t very clear or…maybe that was just my imagination…?

Either way hope you get to see it and like it of course…and thank you for your patience again!!

[itsfreshbelievercollectorblr]

Blogs For Beginner

Excitement 

Need to know what Angelina Jolie is up to this week? What about the most recent new music or film industry numbers for your most loved motion picture? Man does not live by work alone!

1. Huffington Post 

"HuffPo" has some expertise in announcing news stories and occasions in pretty much every real class and subcategory you can consider, and some you presumably could never consider! Established by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti in 2005, the blog was bought in 2011 for $315 million by AOL. Huffington Post highlights a large number of bloggers that contribute newsworthy substance on a wide scope of points.

2. Buzzfeed 

BuzzFeed centres around internet-based life and stimulation focusing on recent college grads. It's popular, picture overwhelming, and fun read. BuzzFeed's substance frequently turns into a web sensation because of its conspicuous designs and inside and out detailing. The extent of their crowd is stunning. Statista's May 2016 research discovered that 7 billion watchers got to their video content every month.

Educational blog

In the data age, instruction ought to be a lifetime interest. At no other time in written history has so much data been accessible to everybody so effectively. The web makes it conceivable to build your incentive as a representative, join and find out about social causes, and make change through training.

3. Coursera 

Coursera offers more than 2,000 classes from a portion of the top colleges on the planet directly in the solace of your lounge room. Courses by a portion of the top educators at Stanford, MIT, Penn State, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and more are accessible, a considerable lot of which are free or low estimated. In the event that you need to proceed with your instruction or spotlight on a point, you'll discover a seminar on Coursera! Furthermore, their blog is truly cool – find out about new course contributions, meet the educators, and investigate the subjects they instruct.

4. Khan Academy 

Khan Academy is another incredible asset for web-based learning. They offer a wide scope of courses in arithmetic that is sorted out by subject and grade level, science and designing, figuring, expressions and humanities, and financial aspects and account.

Travel 

We as a whole love to travel! Regardless of whether your fantasy excursion comprises of taking a wine visit through Tuscany, an eco-voyage through the Central American rainforests, or an adventure to ride the 10 best crazy rides in the United States, you'll find all that you need on the web!

5. Meraviglia Paper 

The slogan on this blog says it consummately: Meraviglia encourages you to choose where to remain! It pinpoints the most heartfelt spots to remain in a cosy way, regardless of whether it's in the author's lawn in northern Italy or a palace in Denmark! It incorporates heaps of idyllic photographs and expressive stories offering a superb look at probably the most lovely travel goals on the planet!

6. The Everywhereist 

Geraldine DeRuiter's exceptional voice is a much-needed refresher in the sightseeing blog world. At the point when she's not grovelling over Jeff Goldblum or tweet-playing with her better half, Moz organizer Rand Fishkin, she's composition silly close to home expositions, thoughts, and travel guides. Her blog is an absolute necessity perused, particularly her viral post on Mario Batali's sexual offence conciliatory sentiment and how she tends to Twitter abusers. Be that as it may, you additionally can't pass up her movement journal All Over The Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft.

Entrepreneurship Blogs 

7. SolopreneurHour.com 

A great structured and smooth blog that is tied in with working for yourself and making your very own riches. It's a blog with an extremely dynamic digital recording feed. Their web recordings are madly well known on iTunes, and no uncertainty they make a reasonable piece of cash from selling advertisement space on those web recordings. Webcasts are something to consider while making your blog as it could be an extraordinary adaptation apparatus.

8. BreakingintoStartups.com 

An exceptionally moving online journal that contains persuasive anecdotes about new businesses and the general population who work in them and make them. On the off chance that you need a stimulating beverage following a terrible day at the workplace or feel that you can't turn into that individual who goes it along and begins up something marvellous, at that point why not have a perused. You'll before long catch wind of individuals who truly just had the shirt on their backs and who ascended to be an achievement in business and throughout everyday life.

Instances of Tech Blogs 

One of my most loved kind of Blog is the "tech blog". Presently this isn't something new to blog about, as Tech bloggers have been blogging about innovation news and contraption surveys in detail online since the start of the web, But in light of the fact that it's such a tremendous speciality, you could cut out yourself a great edge inside the tech blog circle.

9. Knowtechie.com 

I've been following this site since it began and has seen its movement from only one person expounding on stuff he cherishes, to a site that gets nice traffic and has a group of scholars. Knowtechie is an incredible case of a site that began as an interest however has quickly turned into a business. I like the edge they have also. "Tech News For The Non-Techie". KnowTechie is a blog for individuals who love tech, yet live outside the air pocket.

Instances of Making Money Blogs 

Like economical web journals, making cash related online journals have turned out to be madly well known since the worldwide economy has declined as of late. The need for making more cash so as to have an "alright" personal satisfaction, is expanding year on year. Wages are not rising, employment is ending up less secure and the typical cost for basic items is always rising. This is the reason destinations like the ones beneath in this area are ending up increasingly mainstream.

11.SideHustleNation.com 

Side Hustle is an online network of business people goal's identity's to increase monetary opportunity by making organizations that can enable them to accomplish that. There's a gathering of profoundly significant blog entries on the most proficient method to make extra pay over your normal everyday employment wage. They utilize the web recording mechanism of substance advertising by making different webcasts with specialists discussing an entire scope of points around the business enterprise, profiting on the web and making riches.

12.MyWifeQuitHerJob.com 

An incredible site, which is profoundly helpful and rousing for individuals needing to change their 9 to 5 lives for something that will enable them to carry on a little and invest more energy with the family. The site is extremely basic, and something you could construct yourself on WordPress in merely day, yet the substance is the place this site exceeds expectations. Digital broadcasts, apparatuses, instructional exercises and blog entries that objective a particular speciality is the place this person profits. His digital broadcasts are extremely well known and when you have content that gets a lot of ears and eyes to it, at that point so will the publicizing pay.

ladies Blogs 

Mama online journals are a blog that is focused on guardians, especially ladies. Here's my single out the best mom blog models that I believe merit taking a gander at. They offer data that is creative and that can make parenthood that tad simpler. Most are monetised by supported post and show advertisements.

13.iovannaFletcher.com 

Giovanna is an author, blogger, vlogger and mum. Her blog content is predominantly about her life as a mother and a spouse. She has an extremely famous web recording called Happy Mum, Happy Baby Podcast. I cherish the assortment of substance on her blog. She blends it up between instructive blog entries about family life, what's happening in her reality and tips for mums and truly cool web recordings that spread an assortment of subjects to do with child-rearing and being a mum. The way that she's not by any stretch of the imagination hard selling is reviving.

14.CupOfJo.com 

A standout amongst the best mama bloggers around, Joanna has an extremely straightforward looking online journal, full to the overflow of helpful stuff for old and new moms alike. What I cherish about this site is the straightforwardness of the subject, the extremely current structure highlights and the typography. The blog entry thoughts are extremely astute also and separates Jo's website from various mom bloggers.

15. motherhooddiaries.com 

Parenthood Diaries is a web-based child rearing stage where guardians and guardians to-be can impart their insights, skill and arrangements on all themes identified with pregnancy and child-rearing. Leyla, who possesses and looks after MHD, manufactures her traffic by focusing on explicit watchwords identified with child-rearing and making assets around those expressions. She's additionally focusing her endeavours on social channels like Pinterest and Facebook to make worthwhile gatherings of people by means of an elective traffic source to Google.

Instances of Food/Wine Blogs 

16.Pinch Of Yum 

My most loved nourishment blog is this one. I think the style, plan and manner of speaking is simply the first rate. Lindsay truly has to blog down to a compelling artwork, with the composition as well as in realizing how to profit from blogging. I figure she has a gigantic email list which she has developed throughout the years, that she can use to actually print cash with. Focusing on her email list with her most recent blog entries, subsidiary connections, bargains, offers, coupons will make her a lot of money every month.

17.Cookie and Kate 

An exceptionally smooth and flawlessly planned sustenance blog. Much like Pinch of Yum, Cookie + Kate realizes how to make convincing nourishment content that viably draws in with their gathering of people.

18.iamafoodblog.com 

Another sustenance blogger who completely comprehends the intensity of valuable content and learning of how to adopt a site. Stephanie Le's nourishment blog is basic in plan and in substance structure. The stuff she posts is 100% noteworthy. Every one of the formulas can be produced using home and she carries the substance bursting at the seams with astounding, top-notch sustenance photography. She gives it an individual touch by including a touch of analysis and foundation to the photographs.

19. 12×75 

12 By 75 is by a wide margin one of my most loved wine web journals. It's elegantly composed and the data you gain admittance to is through a standout amongst the most persuasive wine merchants in the business. There are very few websites out there that are written in a similar tone as though your great companion was conversing with you on a given subject. A fine case of a blog that is worked out of the unadulterated enthusiasm for the subject. Look at their praise to Bruno Mars.

Instances of Personal Development Blogs 

In case you're looking begin a self-improvement blog that educates and offers guidance to individuals on the most proficient method to improve themselves sincerely and profoundly then look at the incredible models that I have recorded beneath to indicate you precisely what should be possible on the off chance that you buckle sufficiently down at it.

20. tinybuddha.com 

Again this is an exceptionally straightforward site as far as fabricate however has a decent point. It was set up by Lori Deschene, who is the creator of Tiny Buddha's Guide to Loving Yourself. The site is about basic insight, motivation, connections, and care, which has picked up in prominence in the course of recent years. There are numerous posts on this site which depend on Buddhism's lessons, yet additionally contain things about connections, solid living and numerous different care related substance. I've demonstrated to you this self-improvement blog precedent on account of its effortlessness. You don't have to reproduce the wheel so as to create a mainstream blog inside your speciality. For whatever length of time that you focus on the correct speciality and take into account that speciality with creative substance, at that point you're onto a champ.

Instances of Fitness Blogs 

There's truly a huge number of writes on the Internet in some shape or structure. It's a prevalent speciality and one that can be rewarding on the off chance that you advance the correct item or offer something other than what's expected to the remainder of the wellness writes out there. Beneath, I have included wellness writes that do what they do staggeringly well and models that you can pick up bits of knowledge and motivation from.

21.NiaShanks.com 

A well-known wellness blog predominantly focused towards ladies, where there's positive support of ladies of every kind to get fit and begin loads and quality preparing. Nia composes rousing and enabling blog entries about how ladies can be fit, sound and tore by doing viable bodyweight works out. She likewise advances the mantra that activity ought to never be viewed as discipline for eating. I adore this site since it has a reason and an unmistakable message, which reverberates with her perusers. An extraordinary tip that you should take a route with you and attempt and use when beginning your very own wellbeing and wellness blog. Instances of WordPress Development Blogs Here's a couple of instances of web journals that assist individuals to build up their own web journals in WordPress and that offer counsel and instructional exercises on the improvement of WordPress sites. These locales will, in general, adapt their traffic by having Adsense promotions on their pages or have joined to different offshoot projects to push certain items around web improvement and WordPress topic and administrations.

22.SiteBeginner.com 

A perfect and basic plan with simple to devour data on an entire scope of subjects around web advancement on the WordPress.org blogging stage.

23.Wptavern.com 

WordPress Tavern is a site that is basic in development and configuration, yet is amazingly prevalent with the WordPress dev network. It centres around all things WordPress, from modules to WordPress instructional exercises, they spread most things you'll need to find out about WordPress. What this demonstrates is that your blog doesn't need to be garish with fancy odds and ends joined. A basic topic with creative and accommodating substance is sufficient for your site to be an enormous achievement.

24.Erickimphotography.com 

I think the manner of speaking on this blog is remarkable. In the event that just everything was composed thusly. It's well disposed, clear, simple to peruse and rousing. I like the manner in which they spread the basic things about photography with posts like "Shoot Different" and "Why your advanced mobile phone is the best camera". Appreciate this site. I did. the way of life websites

25. Sunday Chapter | Travel and Lifestyle Blog 

Sunday Chapter | Travel and Lifestyle blog about Blog Travel and way of life blog with tips and motivation for movement, style, excellence and wellbeing by Australian blogger, Angela Giakas.

26. THIRTEEN THOUGHTS | Beauty and Lifestyle Blog 

About Blog Thirteen Thoughts is a marvel and way of life blog. Notwithstanding sharing my affection for a portion of my most loved cosmetics and skincare items, I share photography and blogging tips just as some guidance for self-esteem, self-awareness, and satisfaction.

[damienthepious]

TELL US ABOUT ALL THE OCS!! ilandere, kalinda, callise, enna, lerato, raske, blacklight, clamor, bonny, vmni !!!

OKAY OMG THANK YOU I LOVE YOU BUT ALSO THIS IS GONNA BE THE LONGEST POST EVER SO IT’S GOOOOING UNDER A CUT

like . no capslock to show how srs i am this is the longest post ever fair warning

I AM THE LEAST CONCISE PERSON IN HISTORY dear mobile users I AM SORRY, also i spent so much time writing all these it’s a little ridiculous?? wow

Ilandere [my daughter my darling baby girl] [novel character - sci fi - sisterworlds!verse]

Full Name: Ilandere CirilaGender and Sexuality: she’s a gal and… errrr demisexual lesbian??? aro/ace with an exception???? she is in love with one woman and. that is kind of the end-all-be-all of her sexualityPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: Human, but non-earth human so it’s hard to say exact ethnicity? hold up i know i have a pic, and Set you (you wonderful person you) asked for a pic in another ask so… 

ignore the self-deprecation, pls, she’s got brown skin and freckles and long wavy hair and bright… bright teal eyes…

Birthplace and Birthdate: Er. non-earth again so. 17 Eshana moon, year 305 of the imperial calendar, which means nothing to nobody, and she was born in out in the suburban sprawl near Asmara cityGuilty Pleasures: fairy tales. she’s kind of a…. scientific prodigy, and ‘frivolous’ pursuits are kind of frowned upon in her culture, so she keeps her interest in fairy tales and mythology on the dl for the most partPhobias: well. ilandere, you see, works primarily on the theoretical physics of portals, so she has a fairly… deep seated, and very well informed… fear of portal fragging. like. being partway through a portal when it closes? being…. cut in pieces by a portal ceasing to be. that…. terrifies her, at the deepest level.What They Would Be Famous For: Oh well she’s kind of a mathematical genius? and she kind of is famous for that? she’s ‘one of the most promising scientific minds of her generation’What They Would Get Arrested For: um. not returning library books on time. is literally the ONLY THING i can think of.OC You Ship Them With: Kalinda :3OC Most Likely To Murder Them: holy shit. nobody in the fucking multiverse are you kidding. she is. the sweetest and kindest person. in those ‘should you fight’ memes she’s the fucking one who gets ‘yeah you can beat her but WHY WOuLD YOU WANT TO YOU MONSTER’Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she doesn’t much watch movies or plays, she has a really hard time keeping focus on them and she tends to get distracted by ideas for her work halfway through. books tho! she is literally always reading! she loves to read math books straight up. lil nerd. she likes biographies too, and, seeeecretly, mythology & fairy tale booksLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Nerd Girl Gets Makeover And Suddenly Has Straight Hair And Doesn’t Need Her Glasses And Is Pretty Now Really And Suddenly Deserves The Boy!!!!! like ew she hates that shit as both a nerd and as someone who has less than zero interest in boys.Talents and/or Powers: Did I already say math genius? p sure yeah. Also. and this is something she doesn’t know anything about. Something that’s literally just meta knowledge that I know. She has a sort of…. aura of influence? She’s magnetic. She just attracts attention (positive or negative) naturally, wherever she goes, without meaning to or really trying.Why Someone Might Love Them: She is. Bubbly and enthusiastic, she is brilliant and bright and generous and chipper and she’s. my baby.Why Someone Might Hate Them: she…. can get really caught up in herself? she might forget about everything around her because of whatever she’s working on just then? She’s also not… particularly humble? she’s not a braggart but she also doesn’t know how to… downplay her skills for other people’s comfort? like, her attention grabbing aura will occasionally breed… jealousy and spite? but frankly it usually doesn’t last past actually getting to know her.How They Change: !!!!! I’ll tell you when i actually write the book!!!!!! no but really she is eventually supposed to learn how to live in the moment, to…. really see other people around her? to realize that the world around her isn’t some dream she’ll wake up from to start having a ‘real life’, if that makes sense? she has an all-encompassing goal for much of her story that she lets absolutely consume her, and she sort of… learns eventually… that that was something of a mistake, even though she does get what she wants in the end. She missed out on her friends and family while they were right there with her.Why You Love Them: real talk tho ilandere and kalinda together were some of my first Real, Serious OCs. they were…. between the two of them, they were me exploring my sexuality. they were me becoming okay with liking ladies. and they’ve both grown just. just sooooo much with me. ilandere -  i played her and kalinda in this big fun larp my now-bf was running, and they really helped me build my storytelling, build my acting. Ilandere was a soft, brainy kid stuck with a bunch of fighters, and she could still keep up and prove her value with her mind and her talents and her generosity of spirit, and i love her so. so so very much. She’s grown with me too- she helped me come to terms with my autism, and i realized that i had always played her- with that part of me? her odd speech patterns, her social skills that she worked so hard on but didn’t come easily to her, her stimming! she is just- i can’t emphasize enough how much she means to me, as a character, as an extension of myself.

Kalinda [novel character - fantasy- sisterworlds!verse]

Full Name: Kalinda Flint Beryl (look gemstone surnames are really common on her world it’s totally not weird)Gender and Sexuality: lesbian!Pronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: non-earth human again, i’ve been revamping her look lately so i don’t actually have a faceclaim or anything yet, but i think like, in earth terms she’d be southeast asian? maybe?Birthplace and Birthdate: urgh uh midsummer in the year 1105 AK (she is two years older than Ilandere, as far as that relativity nonsense goes, since they’re from…… different fucking planets), and she was born out in the countryside, in her mum’s cottageGuilty Pleasures: pretty much… everything? she doesn’t actually…. spend any intentional time on pleasure? she kind of deprives herself of anything that could distract her from her goals, at all. So like. enjoying a fucking sunset for two seconds would make her feel guilty and pissed off.Phobias: claustrophobia, and also certain specific types of magic? like the kind of…. ancient, deep magic that lives in the bones of the earth, that lives in the void between stars, that lives in the undercurrents of death. that kind of magic.What They Would Be Famous For: She’s a fairly skilled swordsmith, a fairly skilled mage, and a fairly skilled fighter all around, but she’s none of those things enough to be really…. famous for them?What They Would Get Arrested For: hahahaha i didn’t think about this when i wrote Ilandere’s but. straight up for stealing books. that has. actually happened.OC You Ship Them With: Ilandere!!!!! :DOC Most Likely To Murder Them: Hrm. She has a parental figure, her smithing mentor? who is pretty dang peeved off at Kalinda for the. like. the way she chose to live her life? but prooooobably only enough to. y’know. smack her around a bit in frustrated affection? yeah.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: magic…. tomes…. she hasn’t read for fun since childhood, alasLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: she seriously Does Not CareTalents and/or Powers: She’s a spellsword, and her magic specialization is like, some weird combination of nature/flora magic and… void magic.Why Someone Might Love Them: she has a central core of tempered steel. she is strong and unwavering. and despite her insistence on prioritizing her own goals above all else, she will still stop to help others if she sees them in trouble (tho she might pretend to grumble about it). Why Someone Might Hate Them: she’s also kind of unapproachable, and could possible be seen as… like…. heartless? she’s very very good at acting like she doesn’t care about other people, provided they aren’t in immediate danger. and she just doesn’t have the fucking time of day for small talk or petty problems, and she’s spent so much time on her own that her social skills completely suckHow They Change: she keeps that steely incorruptible core, but she slowly, painfully learns to soften her edges. to actually value the cliche and stop to smell the roses. it’s not easy to transition into finally having what you spent your whole life wanting, but eventually… she learns to take comfort as it comes.Why You Love Them: All the reasons in the same section of Ilandere’s set, because these two babes area package deal with me. Also, because i am a spiteful creator and i am sick to death of ‘tuff gurl is straight 2 break stereotypes!’ and Kalinda is my short haired, sword slinging, hard-scrabble, tough-as-nails, lesbian baby. Kalinda helped me learn to be… unapologetic.

Callise [rp character]

Full Name: she… doesn’t have one? her actual designation is ‘Calypso’, but she does not know that.Gender and Sexuality: she’s bi, and she might, eventually, come to understand herself as nonbinary? but she doesn’t do a lot of introspection so for all intents & purposes she’s a woman.Pronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: human/living portal storm??????Birthplace and Birthdate: in… a lab…. at some undisclosed time…. that no one knows anymore because that dimension….. is gone… holy shit why am i like thisGuilty Pleasures: ohhhh she does not believe in this concept at all. Callise is sort of a live-for-the-moment um. hedonist? look she suffers a LOT throughout her nonsense life so she isn’t gonna care about eating some fuckign cake or having some sex, ya dig?Phobias: enclosed spaces, being restrained, deserts, starving to deathWhat They Would Be Famous For: ????? being….. fucked the fuck up???? and feral?????????What They Would Get Arrested For: literally not giving an entire shit about the laws of any fucking world she’s onOC You Ship Them With: a glass of warm milk & a fucking good night’s sleepOC Most Likely To Murder Them: anyone… who is easily scared by teeth gnashing and snarling i suppose?Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she doesn’t consume a LOT of media? and she typically can’t read the languages on the worlds she’s stuck on? but she fucking loves popcorn action movies and shitty comedies and just stuff that’s Fun she doesn’t have to think about at alllllll Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: …. evil scientists are a genuine trigger for herTalents and/or Powers: um. she’s. her physical form is irretrievably merged with a portal storm. like, a storm in spacetime that punches holes into various multiversal dimensions? she can sometimes control it? in little bits? but mostly it manifests as the storm completely… demolishing whatever world she’s in at that moment? usually it takes a few years after she comes to a place, but eventually the storm will ‘catch up’ to her, and the longer she’s been there the worse it will be, and then the storm will fuck up the world and…. kill her. and she will wake up on the next world. if she dies in another way, she’ll wake up in the next place anyway regardless. she really, really doesn’t understand it, not even to the point of knowing that she is the storm. she thinks the storm is chasing her.Why Someone Might Love Them: she’s…. uh… very honestly herself? she is 10000% in the moment and earnest about everything. she has no deception whatsoever within herself. Why Someone Might Hate Them: … she has no deception whatsoever within herself. she is indescribably blunt. she is… kind of animalistic and violent and doesn’t care about laws or social rules and she does things, sometimes, on the smallest fucking whim, including occasionally biting people??? and punching things and people for fun??? like she loves fighting people and sometimes it’s sort of foreplay too??? and breaking stuff just to break stuff? so… yeahHow They Change: oh Cal changes so much over the course of her long, long, looooooong life, and not always for the better? she kind of slips…. depending on how she’s treated on each world she portals to, she slips in and out of feral!Cal mode? if she’s chased and hunted, if she’s locked up, if she’s treated with violence, she’ll go wild. She, as a character, kind of reflects how she’s treated at any given time? Why You Love Them: she’s my monster child. i mean, she’s kind of a vent character? and because of her nature, i can slip her into any sort of narrative i feel like atm, which makes her a pretty fun rp character. if she dies, she dies! that particular narrative is donezo, oh well, but she gets to run off and have adventures somewhere else! it’s really fun

Enna [novel character - fantasy - elementals!verse]

Full Name: *rubs my horrible hands together* okay there is a reincarnation component to the is character so??? the first name she was given was Endellion Devlin, her title is Phoenix, and she’s had like eighteen other names including Aideen Lucero and Shea EdenGender and Sexuality: bisexual, and genderfluid between usually a woman and agender or male more occasionallyPronouns:depends what gender she’s feeling, so usually she/herEthnicity/Species: human/elemental, and bc of that reincarnation element her ethnicity changes from lifetime to lifetimeBirthplace and Birthdate: er. lots of different ones? again with the non-earth world. i’m quite predictable on that front. (i kind of hate/suck at writing plain old earth)Guilty Pleasures: hmm…. well…. she feels a bit… low-key guilty about… how much she enjoys fighting? like the physical act of fighting, she takes lot of joy in, and she feels weird about that because… obviously… fighting hurts peoplePhobias: confinement, death, drowningWhat They Would Be Famous For: leading a rebellion to overthrow a bigoted oppressive regime :3What They Would Get Arrested For: leading a rebellion to overthrow a bigoted oppressive regime :3OC You Ship Them With: Lerato, also, Sil TivanOC Most Likely To Murder Them: oh, pretty much anyone in the Creed (aforementioned bigotd oppressive regime), but mostly Raith. who kind of… has? actually? killed her. at least three times.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: sheeeee…. doesn’t actually read or consume media p much ever? she’s too action oriented. she doesn’t like stopping to watch/read things. but if she did…….. soppy romanceLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: ditto above response minus the endingTalents and/or Powers: mmm she’s a fire elemental, can produce and manipulate fire/heat, and kindasorta fly with it? also, elemental powers in this world present at puberty (yes kind of like x men thanx), and enna can sense whether or not a child is going to develop into an elemental later in lifeWhy Someone Might Love Them: she is pure fucking passion sculpted into human form. she’s the kind of person to dance barefoot outside in a thunderstorm, splashing in literally every puddle. plus she is just really very compassionate, protective, honest, funWhy Someone Might Hate Them: hmmmmmm because she is unapologetic about everything she does. she’s a fighter and she will fight you if you threaten the people she cares about, and she will not pull her punches. not at all.How They Change: during the novel i’m planning/writing, she starts off in an odd place emotionally, because she’s been… conditioned, sort of, to repress herself, and control herself, which is really really contrary to her nature, and she has to spend the first third of the story unlearning that training and becoming herself again, tho she’s feeling very burnt out about her… purpose… at that point? Then, something happens that fucks with her… worldview, and her sense of self, and she runs away, which is also pretty damn against her nature, or at least against the way she’s always lived her life, and then she spends some time learning how to slow down and enjoy things again, and remembering why it is that she fights in the first place, and who she fights for, and then… that ends really poorly too. the last part of the novel is her companion slowly slowly earning her trust back, and Enna coming back into her own as a leader and a fighter and as a whole person, finally, instead of just a symbol.Why You Love Them: Enna was created not long after Ilandere & Kalinda, meaning that she came pretty early in my creative growth, and so a lot of her meta character changes are really relevant to my life? she another bi baby of mine. also… i really like to hope that i would be as brave as her if i was in her position. she’s an ideal for me, and i aspire to be like her.

Lerato [novel character - fantasy - elementals!verse]

Full Name: Lerato SorchaGender and Sexuality: bi womanPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: human/elementalBirthplace and Birthdate: i’m gonna leave this at a very very long fucking time ago in a place that burned to the groundGuilty Pleasures: look poor Lerato feels guilty about a lot of very legitimate things, but she doesn’t waste a lot of time berating herself for small pleasuresWhat They Would Be Famous For: Back In The Day, she’d be famous for the whole revolutionary leader thing that Enna takes over from her, but nowadays she really prefers to hang out in the background, on the sidelines, offering support and advice. she is TiredWhat They Would Get Arrested For: i mean. collusion with a known resistance leader, so.OC You Ship Them With: Ennaaaaaaaaaaaaa. she really really really loves Enna, just, so fucking much. for all the good it does either of them.OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Raith holy shit, because Raith is a jealous horrible. um. monster. and yet again. has actually killed Lerato before. but only once. and also Gideon would, because of that whole being a leader in the Creed thing.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she likes poetry an awful lot.Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: love triangles.Talents and/or Powers: she’s also an elemental, but substantially older than Enna, and her powers present a bit differently. she can teleport in a kind of hazy burst, can recover from damage by ‘fading’ out, and she can sense elementals at a distance (this sense is particularly attuned to Enna, actually, and one or two others)Why Someone Might Love Them: she is very sensitive and attentive to other people’s emotional states, and she is loyal to a fucking fault. if she thinks you are deserving, she will 100% fucking die for you. she’s also like… fierce and gentle at the same time? she makes me think of turtledoves and rainclouds and campfire smoke and i find her utterly loveableWhy Someone Might Hate Them: she never fucking says what she fucking means, and she keeps pretending that she doesn’t feel anything when she’s fucking dying inside because she fucking thinks that being self-sacrificing will somehow! fucking! help! anything!  also she has been known to… string people along, because she doesn’t want to hurt them, so she just… she’ll deliberately neglect to clarify her emotions because she’s afraid to make someone else feel bad about them. it’s not dishonesty… but it is p much cowardice.How They Change: Lerato learns that a) sacrificing yourself is not always the best fucking option, especially not when you haven’t consulted the person being protected, and b) you don’t get what you actually want if you don’t say what you actually want and c) …  that she deserves to be treated well, that she deserves and always did deserve better, that she didn’t deserve abuse and coercion, that she can be and should be happy.Why You Love Them: Well, Lerato started as kind of a… if Enna was who i wanted to be, then Lerato kind of formed from this nebulous fictional idea of a person i would want to fall in love with / want to fall in love with me? and thus tbh Lerato changed from a super cliche, jane austen/jane eyre mysterious romantic leading man who would do anything for Enna, and developed slowly into a woman with quite complex motivations and emotions who i still wouldn’t mind doing a smooch with. i am a mature content creator. fuck. so anyway, i love Lerato because… well… i kind of made her to be loved?

Raske [rp character - x files]

Full Name: Harriet Delilah RaskeGender and Sexuality: queer womanPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: she? doesn’t know? she’s adopted & her ethnicity’s never really been important to her. also she’s a rare Actual Earth Human from my character rolodex, wow weird.Birthplace and Birthdate: you’d think, considering that whole Actual Earth Human thing i’d have an answer for this? i know her bday is April 7th, but i can’t remember if the rp she’s from took place period to the original x files show or if the gm updated it to modern, and that changes the year sooooGuilty Pleasures: frankly? she kind of secretly enjoys making people feel uncomfortable about her prosthetic leg. if people get weird about it on their own? she makes a point to dial it up and just. low key fuck with them.What They Would Be Famous For: deadpan humor and avoiding her feeliesWhat They Would Get Arrested For: maybe kind of possibly breaking the law in pursuit of Truth That Is Probably Out There?OC You Ship Them With: proper mental heath careOC Most Likely To Murder Them: ~~~Mysterious G Men~~~Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she doesn’t watch movies a lot. She used to really like medical drama tv shows, but now she spends her time listening to audiobooks, usually biographies or historical fictionLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: she hates hates hates the ‘lone sniper’ myth in fictionTalents and/or Powers: she’s a tough cookie and an excellent shot with both a pistol and a rifleWhy Someone Might Love Them: you know how working hard for something makes it seem more worthwhile once you get there? it’s like that with Raske. if you pay enough attention you realize that she’s actually so fucking funny, it’s just that she always delivers her humor completely deadpan. she’s got a lot of subtlety to her in every emotion, so once you get to know her and you can see through her veneer, you realize she’s an awkward, funny, sensitive, endearing worrywart, who only pretends to be totally in control of herself.  and also she could totally throw you over her shoulder and carry you off into the sunset so there’s that angle also ;3Why Someone Might Hate Them: well, if you don’t manage to get through her crunchy exterior, then all you’re gonna wind up seeing is a stone faced gal who never fucking laughs and won’t give anyone the time of day for small talk. also she stole the last cup of coffee and didn’t put a new pot onHow They Change: she gets… way more paranoid…. and also she bonds with her fellow agents in a totally dweeby found-family wayWhy You Love Them: she’s really different from the sorts of characters i usually play rp-wise? i almost always trend towards really emotional characters, and talkative ones, and Raske is kind of the opposite of that? so she really let me stretch out my character building muscles, and she helped me work on more subtle acting. 

Blacklight [rp character - superhero!verse]

Full Name: Sabrina Aurore SeaverGender and Sexuality: aro bi gal (i’m realizing a trend, here)Pronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: mixed race black/Korean metahumanBirthplace and Birthdate: Boston, April 8th, 1989Guilty Pleasures: ehhhh when she was younger she used to be into some recreational drug use (nowadays she mostly just drinks, & she smokes occasionally too)What They Would Be Famous For: her awesomesauce freerunning skillzWhat They Would Get Arrested For: well, y’see, vigilante-ism is technically… actually… very illegalOC You Ship Them With: she hooks up with a lot of people and has a lot of fun with them, but she… doesn’t have… romantic feelies?? p much ever? her and Sharkie (who i s2g i will figure out a real name for eventually) kind of develop a really sweet queerplatonic relationship eventuallyOC Most Likely To Murder Them: mmm Clamor but mostly in a if you get yourself killed i will murder you sort of wayFavorite Movie/Book Genre: bad/good 80′s moviesLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: helpless damsel needs rescuing by Big Strong MahnTalents and/or Powers: copied from her rp blog bio bc i’m a laaazy nb: Her range of vision is substantially better, spanning from ultraviolet to infrared (meaning that she can also ‘see’ heat, to a point). During the day, her body absorbs ultraviolet light and emanates heat without any conscious effort on her part, and at night it does the opposite, causing her body to effectively become a black-light (hence the name). The odd way her skin interacts with light and heat is responsible for her relatively pale complexion, since it makes her incapable of tanning properly, and it also means that she cannot be damaged by heat by itself, though fire, a chemical reaction, can still burn her just fine. She can manipulate and produce infrared, visible spectrum, and ultraviolet light as well, creating bright blinding flashes or heating flammable material until it combusts (though she cannot produce or manipulate fire itself).Why Someone Might Love Them: legitimate love for you, my dude. she’ll risk her idiot skin to save your life and then take you out dancing, she’ll smile like a bonfire and laugh like you’ve said the funniest thing she’s ever heard and she’ll mean it, really and truly. she’s easy to fall in love with because she treats every interaction and every person with attention and care. she is genuinely interested in what you have to say. she will make you feel important, and funny and special, and lmao then she’ll break your fucking heart because yes, she loves you, of course she loves you, she would die for you and she’d help you move, but not like that dude i’m sorry. she doesn’t love you like That.Why Someone Might Hate Them: that last bit, also she’s irreverent and reckless and a bit careless with herself and sometimes other people, because the idea that she could hurt other people’s feelings by putting herself in danger just. doesn’t occur to her? ever? and if you’re nasty to her she will turn into THE BIGGEST SHIT, she goes FULL BRAT MODE and she is. p unlikable when she aims that at yaHow They Change: she learns a) it’s okay that she doesn’t have feelings for people. she’s not broken. she doesn’t need to change herself for someone else. she doesn’t need to pretend. it’s okay. b) being a reckless idiot while in a costume and mask will Get You Shot, dummy. c) you can’t compartmentalize your whole life. things will start to bleed over before you expect them to and it will Not end wellWhy You Love Them: oh, baby blacklight. I came up with her for a larp my bro was running, his superhero verse is Really cool. She started as sort of a tropebreaker? she’s a superhero because she has powers and because she thought it would be FUN. she has literally no angst about her superpowers, she has a pretty cool home life, she isn’t hard up for money, her parents are BOTH ALIVE and she has a halfway decent relationship with them? and i fell in love with that idea hard. also she’s just developed into this really fun, happy, positive person with a good impact on the world, and she lets me live vicariously thru her extroverted party girl self

Clamor [rp character - superhero!verse]

Full Name: Kai “Kitty” MahoeGender and Sexuality: lesbianPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: hawaiian, metahumanBirthplace and Birthdate: June 2nd, 1991, Los AngelesGuilty Pleasures: lmao nahWhat They Would Be Famous For: for being the worst low-level villain and stealing the most petty shit ever in history, you already have like eight amps and more fucking sound equipment than any human could ever want, also you can do that with your fucking body already i hate youWhat They Would Get Arrested For: “”OC You Ship Them With: she’s… kind of in love with Blacklight? and it’s a bit fucked up…. she mostly plays it off as No One Fucks With My Hero But Me, but she’s saved Sabrina’s life at least three times and occasionally tries to make out with her under the pretense of near-death adrenalineOC Most Likely To Murder Them: …. Sharkie (god i need a NAME for them)Favorite Movie/Book Genre: period romance Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: the fucking wilhelm screamTalents and/or Powers: she can manipulate sound with her mind/body. she can amplify or muffle noises around her, and she can use a sort of rhythm… frequency… amplification thing to turn sound into a weapon. she can create sonic blasts easily or make someone temporarily deaf. she could do this with just any old noises, but she is fucking Extra and always uses instruments, particularly percussion and particularly drumsticks, tho she can play a bunch of different things. Why Someone Might Love Them: she’s actually p funny and clever and fun to hang out with as a civilian…….Why Someone Might Hate Them: … but her alter-ego is a complete fucking shithead, she’s a selfish dick and she Will Steal Everything You LoveHow They Change: tbh she’s still to early in development for me to know this quite yetWhy You Love Them: i love bratty irreverent characters sometimes

Bonny [novel character - sci fi - Star Stray]

Full Name: Bonny Read CalumniGender and Sexuality: bisexual nonbinary womanPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: human Birthplace and Birthdate: she was born on a colony called Atlantis on the moon Europa, at some as-of-yet unspecified Future Year, November 14thGuilty Pleasures: she sneaks off to places she shouldn’t be on every single spaceship she’s been on. she loves finding secret places to hide, and she uses them like an earth kid would use a tree fort, to keep her little treasures and private stuff, and to hide from her momWhat They Would Be Famous For: well… acheiving First Contact with an alien species lmaoWhat They Would Get Arrested For: … nothing??? she is actually quite a sweet young woman, not exactly criminal material, unlike most of my oc children.OC You Ship Them With: her long distance friend/crush/ex, DalOC Most Likely To Murder Them: there are a few angry splinter factions that are veeery against the nasty alien creature that came from the sky, so probably them?Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she loves YA, specifically dystopian YALeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: she hates the super smart child prodigy clicheTalents and/or Powers: she’s really good at taking things apart and fixing them, and she’s really great at figuring out how mechanical things work.Why Someone Might Love Them: she will fix the AC in your room and bring you snacks and listen to you vent about your day and give you a comisserating, rueful smile. when the conversation lulls, she’ll come out with an unexpected joke just to surprise you into laughing. she will dance ot any music. she will go to a museum full of stuff she doesn’t actually care much about or understand just to make silly jokes about everything there with you. look she’s just. dweeby but charming about it anyway.Why Someone Might Hate Them: her anger issues make her difficult to get along with sometimes? she tends to bottle her feelings and then eventually, inevitably explodesHow They Change: mmmm she stops hiding her desires to make other people happy, and she um. learns not to be an asshole to aliens for no reason? and to be fcking respectful of Vmna and their cultureWhy You Love Them: she a good space girl. lov her. sorry i’m so damn tired

Vmna [novel character - sci fi - Star Stray]

Full Name: [i fucking wrote their name wrong in the tag bc i’m ridiculous, and also i can’t remember ipa and their language is super weird so this is going to be unpronounceable]   k’ Vmna nksGender and Sexuality: Vmna’s people don’t actually have a concept of ‘gender’ that in any way parallels human gender, so they kind of don’t have sexuality either? like as a conceptPronouns: they/themEthnicity/Species: their species doesn’t really have a translatable name, but Bonny tends to call them ‘centaurs’Birthplace and Birthdate: [insert words that don’t fucking make sensewithout the context of the novel]Guilty Pleasures: What They Would Be Famous For: being the first of her species to actually speak with and make friends with an alien life formWhat They Would Get Arrested For: maybe for sneaking Fun contraband to the alien without permissionOC You Ship Them With: i believe that'll have to wait for the sequel novel! but she is totally gonna wind up falling for a human i betOC Most Likely To Murder Them: ditto Bonny’s answer, because they consider Vmna complicitFavorite Movie/Book Genre: there’s a specific genre on their world that’s p much just ‘comfort fiction’, like? just sound/image/smell/story combinations that are made to be pure comfort. they love those.Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: lmao in fiction on their world has a cliche of all aliens looking like mis-colored versions of their own species but, like, with weird feet usuallyTalents and/or Powers: Vmna is very good at linguistics Why Someone Might Love Them: they are attentive and clever, and they’re ridiculously empatheticWhy Someone Might Hate Them: no good reason goddamn. Vmna is lovelyHow They Change: Vmna learns to appreciate Earth Music and Earth Idioms and Earth Humor, and they also grow to be more confident in their skills as a linguist  and a sociologistWhy You Love Them: Vmnaaaaaaaa is super cool and they’re also like, the Primo Example of me spitewriting? because their ENTIRE species exists because i’m hella bitter about shitty alien design in fiction? like i haaaaate miscolored Space Babe design? i hate boring anthropocentric alien design???? SO MUCH??? as someone once said (i think it was Dal?) (and i’m paraphrasing), CONVERGENT EVOLUTION WILL ONLY GET YOU SO FAR, there is NO REASON for alien design to be boring! Except for LACK OF IMAGINATION. SO! Vmna’s species are weird centaur/elephant folks who have big spike-claw feet and move vertically as easily as they move horizontally, and they have no gender and they communicate emotion partially thru scent/pheremones, and they see color different, and a bunch of other shit i’ve forgotten since i wrote the novel, and Vmna themself is just. The Epitome. of their species. in my head. and i love them

AND WITH THAT I THINK I’M DONE???? WOW THANK U SET THIS WAS FUN IF EXHAUSTING! and i hope this is even marginally interesting to someone besides meself

[operationrainfall]

Title Knight Bewitched Developer Joshua Keith Publisher Joshua Keith Original Release Date April 18, 2018 Genre Fantasy RPG Platform PC (Steam)

I always appreciate it when development tools and engines are made available to newcomer game designers. They allow beginners and amateurs to make reality a vision of a game they may have, and they also allow for as much customization and creativity as the designer desires. Knight Bewitched is one such vision, allowing a newcomer game designer to share with us his unique and immersive story.

Knight Bewitched tells the epic tale of Ruth, a well-respected knight from the kingdom of Halonia. When we first join her, she is tasked to slay a dragon, the spawn of Typhus the World-Breaker. After a successful mission, an image of Typhus appears, vowing to fully return and end humanity as he once attempted in the past. Back then, Typhus set humanity against the race of dragons in a bloody war and a repeat of these events would doom the world. In the meantime though, Ruth is soon tasked to eliminate a lone witch, Gwen. However during the mission, Ruth falls deathly ill and is, in turn, rescued by Gwen. Not able to harm her benefactor, Ruth returns to Halonia and is assumed bewitched and arrested. After escaping her arrest with the help of her squire, Stray, and the assassin, Uno, the three reunite with Gwen to set off into the world to prevent the return of Typhus.

The story elements of Knight Bewitched are the game’s greatest strength. Although the overall plot, defeat a big boss and save the world, is a touch on the dry side, the narrative and character development are outstanding. Starting with the narrative, the writing of Knight Bewitched is fantastic, as I found myself immersed and my attention held throughout the game. The banter between the main characters, the plentiful humor, and our heroes’ reactions to enemies and NPCs is all brilliant. While the game is set in a fantasy setting, there are many references to modern and internet culture, yet these seemingly out of place jokes and references don’t break immersion and only add to the fun and light-hearted nature of the game. The writing overall is incredibly fun and charming. Not once did I find it drag on or become stale. Rather, I was pleasantly entertained throughout.

The character development is also impressive, as we see personal struggles and satisfying growth amongst the individual characters. Gwen is a wonderful character. She’s funny, charming, witty, and sarcastic at the perfect moments. Stray is a character easy to sympathize with, given his background, and just as easy to root for. Despite his troubles, he still manages to show his jovial and cheerful sides. Ruth and Uno tend to fit common molds a bit more than the other two, but they are no less likable. Ruth is a straightforward and determined woman, capable of handling anything in her way. And yet despite her upright personality, the ease at being ruffled by Gwen’s banter is incredibly cute. It’s another level to her character that makes her special and enjoyable. Uno, the brooding silent type, does get plenty of meaningful development that lets any player grow to like him on a personal level. He even has his own moments of humor too, which makes him even more memorable.

The only complaint I have in terms of story is the relationship between Ruth and Gwen, as I found its development lacking in depth. Early on, we are made aware of Gwen’s attraction to Ruth, as Gwen’s dialogue, inner thoughts, and behaviors all demonstrate her care and growing feelings for Ruth. However, Ruth never properly nor convincingly reciprocates this attraction at all. She is distinctly passive or nonreactive to the point of indifference. Finally, when it’s revealed that Ruth shares Gwen’s feelings, it comes off as such a rushed response, as again, Ruth hadn’t shown any attraction towards Gwen up to that point. In fact, it could very well had been assumed that Ruth had only been concerned for Gwen simply as any other friend or companion. It also could have been assumed that Ruth was straight, bi, or even asexual because of how little the relationship dynamic was actually developed. One-sided until close to endgame and boom, they’re lovey-dovey. This is especially disappointing because all other story aspects like the narrative, individual character development, and humor are all admirably written. It is clear the developer has the talent, but the ball was dropped when it came to the one major relationship in the game. It’s a dishearteningly missed opportunity, as pacing and balanced buildup between both Ruth and Gwen would have made their relationship worlds more intriguing.

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The story elements are what make this game remarkable, but unfortunately, the same level of quality failed to be maintained in its gameplay. Knight Bewitched does nothing special with its gameplay, relying solely on the cookie-cutter RPG Maker mechanics. It’s not broken. On the contrary, gameplay all works well, yet nothing unique was changed or added to make the experience more memorable. Gameplay is split between combat and overworld mechanics, with battles occurring at random and utilizing the engine-provided turn-based setup. I will say that I found encounter rates and challenge level to be acceptable, never requiring any serious grinding nor ever feeling like your team is over leveled. I did come across one bug, having to do with how status effect turn counts are handled. Turn counters only turn over or refresh when someone takes damage. My team was once sleep-locked by an enemy that could no longer attack, due to it running out of MP. So, no one could attack and adjust the sleep stat counter, resulting in my having to reset the game.

I do like that turn order and action icons are visible in battle.

Outside of combat, the world is made of various towns filled with NPCs to interact with and plenty of dungeons to explore. However, exploration is limited to acquiring uninspired items, many of which are unnecessary or fail to give a reasonable advantage upon acquisition. I will say that I do like the variety of obtainable equipment, as they require some strategy to use. They are not your typical “boost everything” kind of equips, so deciding how you wish to utilize your characters and what stats to heighten all comes into play. The ability to change equipment during a fight is also a nice touch. Finally, I found it disappointing that there is only the main campaign to play through, as there are no subquests to be had.

Further issues include the complete lack of a quest log. Many times during play, players will be completely on their own to discover where to go next. Only sometimes do teammates or NPCs guide players to the next area. Even when you do receive hints, most often they are vague compass directions. A quest log, especially after spending significant time in a village or dungeon, would have helped remind players on what to do or where to go next. Speaking of being on your own, the first segments of the game provide zero guides or tutorials as to how to actually play the game. Those familiar with RPG Maker games will undoubtedly figure things out quickly and will regard this as a non-issue. Yet, not everyone has played RPG Maker games and may not be familiar with its standard use of the Z, X, and C buttons, or its alternate configurations. (I prefer using Enter, Shift, and Num 0.) Only after your first boss fight does a gameplay guide become available. Overall, gameplay is uninspired, its lack of quest logs hurts, and the potential struggles for newcomers as to how to play may take away from their experience.

As I stated, I really do like the idea of mechanisms and tools that allow anyone to create a game on their own. RPG Maker, Unity, Ren’py, you name it. Having said that, I do take issue when developers completely rely on the tools and assets available with zero effort to leave their own marks. This is exactly the case here in regards to the aesthetics of Knight Bewitched. There are no custom pieces of art, nor are there any original pieces of music. Most of the assets are taken from RPG Maker Fes and some from other RPG Maker and free asset sets.

Now I fully understand that not everyone is an artist and even fewer are musical composers, so much so that I forgive the use of pre-made music, but there are options available to leave a unique visual mark, whether it’s through commissions or teaming up with volunteers willing to help. It’s disheartening to see a complete dependence on pre-made visual assets, as I believe any custom artwork would have brought more life and impact to these characters. Instead, the reliance on stock artwork, which is someone else’s vision, is unfortunate. I will say this. I suppose it is impressive that the developer managed to use Fes assets for a PC game, as Fes is only available for the 3DS. I haven’t figured out how this was done, since I don’t believe Fes assets are available to download for any of the PC-based RPG Maker engines. Regardless, I would have preferred custom artwork, especially if the game is being sold for profit. Instead we get stock portraits, stock sprites and tilesets, and zero in-game CGs.

Knight Bewitched is a marvelous story trapped in a less than stellar game. The game overall is painfully average with a few hiccups too, which is disappointing given the impressive writing waiting to be discovered. With unremarkable gameplay and a full dependency on engine assets, it is difficult to rate this any higher than our average score of 2.5. Again, nothing here can be considered awful, but its many bright spots are just as soon cancelled out by its flaws and the end result is a game few would consider a gem. I would perhaps argue that this story would have been more outstanding in another media form, rather than an RPG. My thoughts aside, Knight Bewitched has its charm and points of brilliance, and for about $5 for this roughly 10-hour campaign, I can still easily recommend this to those looking for an RPG with terrific immersion, strong narrative and a very easy group of characters to root for. I hope we see a continuation of the Knight Bewitched saga in the future.

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[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”2.5″]

Review Copy Purchased by Author

TBT REVIEW: Knight Bewitched Title Knight Bewitched

[bisoroblog]

How Schools Spark Excitement for Learning with Role Playing and Games

Michael Matera’s students don’t merely learn about medieval Europe, they live it. Albeit, with a few monsters and enchanted items thrown in the mix.

The Milwaukee teacher’s Grade 6 history class is an ongoing role-playing game called Realm of Nobles, where students join guilds, earn achievements, make trades and wage the occasional epic battle in an imaginary medieval kingdom. Matera has played the game for years, and maintains that the fusion of history, fantasy, narrative and role-play is an effective formula to engage students in learning.

“The excitement and the pride in their accomplishments are all through the roof. I love seeing kids gaining real-world skills, taking risks and learning from defeat in this gamified class,” said Matera, who wrote Explore Like a Pirate: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich and Elevate Your Learners, a manual for teachers who aspire to design their classes as games.

A growing number of educators like Matera are remodeling their classes by fusing game elements to their instructional environments. But, does switching grades for experience points and homework for quests amount only to cosmetic surgery? Is school merely being “reskinned” with a new paint job without fundamentally altering the age-old classroom rituals?

The Rise of the EduLARP

The use of simulations and role-play in education is not a recent development. Model United Nations, historical re-enactments, mock trials and other types of dramatic simulations have been in the teacher toolbox for decades. What is new, however, is that the simulation is packaged as a game and sustained for an extended period, often spanning the entire school year.

This particular union of role-play, narrative, and game owes no small debt to Dungeons & Dragons, the classic role-playing game (RPG) that is enjoying a recent resurgence. D&D pioneered and popularized an array of RPG conventions that are now video game and tabletop staples, like experience points (XP), levels, loot, character classes and boss fights.

In the mid-’70s some eager D&D fans donned armor, weapons, gowns and cloaks, and transplanted RPG elements to the real world in the form of live-action role-play, or LARPs. Players stay in character as they interact and battle in elaborate adventures set in real-life forests and fields that evoke medieval fantasy. The popularity of LARPs in Scandinavia inspired a pair of Danish educators to open the Østerskov School that teaches with edularps. Today, edularps are found in schools in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and even some U.S. schools have jumped into the fray.

Sanne Harder, a game designer and educator who worked at the Østerskov School, thinks that edularps are not only a fun way to learn, but also a better way to learn.

“When I choose to use role-play as a means of teaching, it is because it is an excellent way of organizing teaching, not because the hobby appeals to its fans,” wrote Harder. “In the 21st century, being a teacher is not about teaching pupils facts, it is about helping them internalize knowledge, skills, and competencies.”

Sarah Lynne Bowman and Anne Standiford conducted a 2016 mixed methods study of edularps at an L.A. charter school and found that they encouraged “greater motivation, engagement, interaction with peers, collaboration, and comprehension of material,” which is promising, but the area is new and the research nascent.

Choosing a Road to Victory

Edularps, and other class-as-game variants like alternate reality games (ARGs), pervasive games and gamified class, are popping up in schools, universities and even camps across North America. While the sword-and-sorcery motif remains prevalent, some educators have diversified into themes and settings that better fit their learning goals.

While still a high school science teacher, University of Connecticut assistant professor Stephen Slota designed a unit-length game to teach human reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases. “The students worked in teams of three to control a character avatar in a fictitious village, and their goal was to engage in an epidemiological study of the area by investigating locales and speaking to non-player characters as enacted by the instructor,” said Slota, who edited Exploding the Castle: Rethinking How Video Games & Game Mechanics Can Shape The Future Of Education, a collection of game-based learning essays.

Slota has since developed half a dozen class-as-games for subjects as far-flung as education technology, Latin, psychology and biology. Matera also sets one of his games during the Cold War, and the edularps at the Østerskov School involve a wide range of themes and settings.

The games tend to be flexible and students are able to alter the unfolding experience through the choices they make. This freedom to shape their circumstances and the accompanying sense of agency is a big part of what engages them in learning.

“I’ve found — both anecdotally and in my research — that freedom to push and pull at the game’s narrative and ruleset provides students with a sense of greater personal ownership, and therefore greater depth of knowledge about content than usually accompanies schoolwork,” said Slota.

Matera also stresses the importance of student agency, and feels that it marks a significant departure from typical classroom dynamics.

“Games have clear objects, but no one set path to that victory. This is where strategy comes into play. An RPG, as with many well-designed games, allows for the players to create their own path to victory,” said Matera. “This level of customization and personalization feels different than traditional school because it is different. Students have an opportunity to create their own experience within the game. They earn badges, items and power-ups that allow them to have a unique game characters. This leads to endless strategies, trades and allegiances to help successfully make it through the Realm.”

Houston-area teacher Kade Wells also personalizes his class by using a D&D-style character class system. He gives his students a basic personality test and, based on the results, assigns them one of four roles designed to support classroom management.

“Protectors keep the peace and manage group outbursts; Initiators get things ready and help to get materials, sharpen pencils and put things away; Diplomats help group members and facilitate all processes and are ultimately responsible for the group’s behavior; Sages keep the records, help with attendance, make sure that things are orderly and accounted for,” said Wells, who has found the class system empowers his students to self-regulate and take greater ownership of their environment.

There’s an App for That

Matera, Slota and Wells design their games from scratch, cannibalizing a pastiche of web applications, pen-and-paper elements, learning management systems, Google apps, spreadsheets and any other available tools that they can bend to their playful purposes. But teachers who don’t have the time, confidence or knowledge to dive into the DIY approach can turn to commercial software designed to help educators run their classes as games.

Rezzly’s 3D GameLab, the University of Michigan’s GradeCraft, NEXED’s Answerables and Classcraft are gameful learning management systems that have tapped into the class-as-game zeitgeist to help educators keep track of quests, levels, experience points, badges and other game features.

“They will do anything for XP [experience points] and GP [gold pieces] to level up their avatar,” said Carrie Casey, a Wisconsin middle-school science teacher who uses Classcraft. “I have seen some of my students who will not hand in work — work hard to get their work in for me so they get XP and do not disappoint their team.”

It has also helped Casey reach some challenging students: “I have connected to them through gaming where no other teacher has connected to them that year.”

Canadian teacher Justin Matheson says that his Grade 6 students loved the sword-and-sorcery motif, and he credits Classcraft’s video game qualities for fostering perseverance. “With video games, people get to a point where things become increasingly difficult and they experience repeated failure. Then, you are encouraged to try again and again, and to seek help through outside resources to find success. This is the most notable benefit that I have seen in my class. My students see difficulties as speed bumps instead of roadblocks.”

Grafting Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG elements to classrooms can have an effect that delves much deeper than mere optics. Games and classes are both systems that operate with rules. When the rules that typically govern the class are hacked by the rules of the game, a fundamental shift can take place. Games offer a valuable palette of functions and features that can be creatively repurposed to rewrite some of education’s more problematic operations. Educators who are not satisfied with business as usual can tap into the power of play and design the change they want to see.

How Schools Spark Excitement for Learning with Role Playing and Games published first on https://dlbusinessnow.tumblr.com/

[perfectzablog]

How Schools Spark Excitement for Learning with Role Playing and Games

Michael Matera’s students don’t merely learn about medieval Europe, they live it. Albeit, with a few monsters and enchanted items thrown in the mix.

The Milwaukee teacher’s Grade 6 history class is an ongoing role-playing game called Realm of Nobles, where students join guilds, earn achievements, make trades and wage the occasional epic battle in an imaginary medieval kingdom. Matera has played the game for years, and maintains that the fusion of history, fantasy, narrative and role-play is an effective formula to engage students in learning.

“The excitement and the pride in their accomplishments are all through the roof. I love seeing kids gaining real-world skills, taking risks and learning from defeat in this gamified class,” said Matera, who wrote Explore Like a Pirate: Gamification and Game-Inspired Course Design to Engage, Enrich and Elevate Your Learners, a manual for teachers who aspire to design their classes as games.

A growing number of educators like Matera are remodeling their classes by fusing game elements to their instructional environments. But, does switching grades for experience points and homework for quests amount only to cosmetic surgery? Is school merely being “reskinned” with a new paint job without fundamentally altering the age-old classroom rituals?

The Rise of the EduLARP

The use of simulations and role-play in education is not a recent development. Model United Nations, historical re-enactments, mock trials and other types of dramatic simulations have been in the teacher toolbox for decades. What is new, however, is that the simulation is packaged as a game and sustained for an extended period, often spanning the entire school year.

This particular union of role-play, narrative, and game owes no small debt to Dungeons & Dragons, the classic role-playing game (RPG) that is enjoying a recent resurgence. D&D pioneered and popularized an array of RPG conventions that are now video game and tabletop staples, like experience points (XP), levels, loot, character classes and boss fights.

In the mid-’70s some eager D&D fans donned armor, weapons, gowns and cloaks, and transplanted RPG elements to the real world in the form of live-action role-play, or LARPs. Players stay in character as they interact and battle in elaborate adventures set in real-life forests and fields that evoke medieval fantasy. The popularity of LARPs in Scandinavia inspired a pair of Danish educators to open the Østerskov School that teaches with edularps. Today, edularps are found in schools in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, and even some U.S. schools have jumped into the fray.

Sanne Harder, a game designer and educator who worked at the Østerskov School, thinks that edularps are not only a fun way to learn, but also a better way to learn.

“When I choose to use role-play as a means of teaching, it is because it is an excellent way of organizing teaching, not because the hobby appeals to its fans,” wrote Harder. “In the 21st century, being a teacher is not about teaching pupils facts, it is about helping them internalize knowledge, skills, and competencies.”

Sarah Lynne Bowman and Anne Standiford conducted a 2016 mixed methods study of edularps at an L.A. charter school and found that they encouraged “greater motivation, engagement, interaction with peers, collaboration, and comprehension of material,” which is promising, but the area is new and the research nascent.

Choosing a Road to Victory

Edularps, and other class-as-game variants like alternate reality games (ARGs), pervasive games and gamified class, are popping up in schools, universities and even camps across North America. While the sword-and-sorcery motif remains prevalent, some educators have diversified into themes and settings that better fit their learning goals.

While still a high school science teacher, University of Connecticut assistant professor Stephen Slota designed a unit-length game to teach human reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases. “The students worked in teams of three to control a character avatar in a fictitious village, and their goal was to engage in an epidemiological study of the area by investigating locales and speaking to non-player characters as enacted by the instructor,” said Slota, who edited Exploding the Castle: Rethinking How Video Games & Game Mechanics Can Shape The Future Of Education, a collection of game-based learning essays.

Slota has since developed half a dozen class-as-games for subjects as far-flung as education technology, Latin, psychology and biology. Matera also sets one of his games during the Cold War, and the edularps at the Østerskov School involve a wide range of themes and settings.

The games tend to be flexible and students are able to alter the unfolding experience through the choices they make. This freedom to shape their circumstances and the accompanying sense of agency is a big part of what engages them in learning.

“I’ve found — both anecdotally and in my research — that freedom to push and pull at the game’s narrative and ruleset provides students with a sense of greater personal ownership, and therefore greater depth of knowledge about content than usually accompanies schoolwork,” said Slota.

Matera also stresses the importance of student agency, and feels that it marks a significant departure from typical classroom dynamics.

“Games have clear objects, but no one set path to that victory. This is where strategy comes into play. An RPG, as with many well-designed games, allows for the players to create their own path to victory,” said Matera. “This level of customization and personalization feels different than traditional school because it is different. Students have an opportunity to create their own experience within the game. They earn badges, items and power-ups that allow them to have a unique game characters. This leads to endless strategies, trades and allegiances to help successfully make it through the Realm.”

Houston-area teacher Kade Wells also personalizes his class by using a D&D-style character class system. He gives his students a basic personality test and, based on the results, assigns them one of four roles designed to support classroom management.

“Protectors keep the peace and manage group outbursts; Initiators get things ready and help to get materials, sharpen pencils and put things away; Diplomats help group members and facilitate all processes and are ultimately responsible for the group’s behavior; Sages keep the records, help with attendance, make sure that things are orderly and accounted for,” said Wells, who has found the class system empowers his students to self-regulate and take greater ownership of their environment.

There’s an App for That

Matera, Slota and Wells design their games from scratch, cannibalizing a pastiche of web applications, pen-and-paper elements, learning management systems, Google apps, spreadsheets and any other available tools that they can bend to their playful purposes. But teachers who don’t have the time, confidence or knowledge to dive into the DIY approach can turn to commercial software designed to help educators run their classes as games.

Rezzly’s 3D GameLab, the University of Michigan’s GradeCraft, NEXED’s Answerables and Classcraft are gameful learning management systems that have tapped into the class-as-game zeitgeist to help educators keep track of quests, levels, experience points, badges and other game features.

“They will do anything for XP [experience points] and GP [gold pieces] to level up their avatar,” said Carrie Casey, a Wisconsin middle-school science teacher who uses Classcraft. “I have seen some of my students who will not hand in work — work hard to get their work in for me so they get XP and do not disappoint their team.”

It has also helped Casey reach some challenging students: “I have connected to them through gaming where no other teacher has connected to them that year.”

Canadian teacher Justin Matheson says that his Grade 6 students loved the sword-and-sorcery motif, and he credits Classcraft’s video game qualities for fostering perseverance. “With video games, people get to a point where things become increasingly difficult and they experience repeated failure. Then, you are encouraged to try again and again, and to seek help through outside resources to find success. This is the most notable benefit that I have seen in my class. My students see difficulties as speed bumps instead of roadblocks.”

Grafting Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG elements to classrooms can have an effect that delves much deeper than mere optics. Games and classes are both systems that operate with rules. When the rules that typically govern the class are hacked by the rules of the game, a fundamental shift can take place. Games offer a valuable palette of functions and features that can be creatively repurposed to rewrite some of education’s more problematic operations. Educators who are not satisfied with business as usual can tap into the power of play and design the change they want to see.

How Schools Spark Excitement for Learning with Role Playing and Games published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

[warriors-cats-as-havniil-blog]

Havniil Official Explanation

I thought it would be fun to draw warriors cats as Havniil. This post is basically an in depth explanation of the Havniil so that nobody's confused though since they are of my own design.

The Havniil are a fantasy race/species/ whatever you wanna call it of my own making for an original story/setting my older sibling and I are working on. They "present" a variety of feline features, appearing as anything from upright walking cats to looking completely human.

The features they can present as feline are: eyes, ears, teeth, tail, whiskers, claws, markings (on their skin no actual fur and it can be only in patches or specific places), fur, and body shape (this is the point they become upright walking cats and it's actually incredibly rare since it essentially requires ALL of the previous traits in order to even have a chance to present)

The amount that they present corresponds to their place in the hierarchy of their society. So a Havniil that has cat ears and eyes would be in a lower position than one that had ears, tail, markings, teeth, and eyes. However a Havniil won't grow any more feline features than they are born with. So, except under specific circumstances, an individual cannot advance past their social position. Earning the title of hero is one such way a Havniil can advance in society.

For a warriors analogy, a clan cat would present as more feline than a non-clan cat. Most kittypets would not have more than three feline presenting features (usually ears, tail, and eyes). In the setting the Havniil were created for, about three features would make them attractive to humans, meaning they're more likely to be pets.

As far as physical appearances go, I tend to base them off of cats. Their skintone would be based on the kind of climate they're in, but also the amount of cover in their territory. So those Havniil from northern tribes would be pale, but so would those from a forest because of all the cover. The forest tribe wouldn't be as pale but it would still be pale compared to those in a desert or other open environments. For example, if I were to draw Bluestar as a Havniil her eyes would be blue and her hair would be blue-gray. I'd give her blue-gray ears and a tail and probably give her teeth and claws as well. Her skin would be light-medium ish somewhere in that range. Being a leader I'd probably give her patches of blue-gray on her skin as well, but not all of her body I don't think???? Anyway, Havniil are also small compared to humans.

Havniil society is very community based. They live, hunt, and gather other forms of food in groups. They're organized into tribes and live across an entire continent. The continent stretches from the northern reaches of the world to the southern temperate area. The evening meal is a community feast, where every individual living in the tribe comes together to eat and talk and share stories.

Each individual Havniil has a role to fill. Their first role is chosen at birth based on their inborn skills, but they can choose to learn more than one role once they complete their training and do some service in their previous role. As far as actual roles go, I haven't covered all the bases but I've got a decent amount.

The leadership/advisory roles all have criteria for the individual entering the role to meet. They must be of a specific social standing (presenting at least four feline traits), and they must have filled two non-combative roles previously (basically roles that don't fight or hunt). The leadership and advisory roles are:

Tribe King/Queen: the leaders of each individual tribe of Havniil. They present as more feline than human with very few exceptions.

Tribe Prince/Princess: the main advisor to the king or queen. They do not have to be related to the king or queen and more often than not are not related to them in any way.

Healer: basically a Havniil doctor can essentially do what they want if lives are on the line, even directly defy their Tribe king/queen. Also act as an advisor to their king/queen.

Enforcer: judge and police officer all rolled into one. Answers directly to the tribe queen/king. They act as an advisor as well.

The roles available to any individual are:

Hunter: specialize in fighting mages, alchemists, and gunslingers. The Havniil are unable to use magic themselves so Hunters are outfitted in a special metal that absorbs magical energy to a point. Their weapons are made of the same metal and can also redirect that magical energy towards their enemies. They use heavy weapons more resembling human weaponry and heavy armor and focus on hitting HARD and QUICK. They are trained exclusively for battle and do not participate in hunting prey.

Shadow: specialize in stealth and speed. Shadows use light weapons uniquely designed by the Havniil and little to no armor and focus on precision and mobility. Shadows are also part of hunting parties and are the main attack force that takes down their prey.

Guardian: specialize in defense and endurance. They use heavy armor and weapons designed specifically by the Havniil and focus on mobility and the ability to draw attention of enemies and take hits. They protect the Shadows from possible dangers while the Shadows take down prey.

Runner: specialize in speed and endurance. They work with Shadows and Guardians in hunting parties to draw prey, especially Aisoth packs toward the main hunting party. Then the Guardians will occupy the majority of the pack so that the Shadows and Runners can take on the members of the pack specifically deemed to be prey for the hunt. They are fast and agile, able to round tight corners and even completely turn around without missing a step (of course they lose speed but they don't stumble) in battle they also herd enemies into the waiting Guardians, Shadows, and Hunters. They appear to be solitary, or in a group of two or three but really they're part of an entire battle/hunting party.

Harvester: they are in charge of foraging for plants to eat. Harvesters work in parties of three with two Guardians accompanying them.

Scouts: live among humans to see what they're up to and the state of the world beyond the Homeland. They are required to be able to physically pass as human.

Engineer: specialize in using and advancing the technology the Havniil have access to.

Architect: specializes in designing... everything, not just the cities but just everything

Communicator: specializes in communication and in many cases manipulation. Communicators use technology and their charisma to make sure things run smoothly and are often in contact with scouts in the world

Explorer: do exactly that, they travel far from home to find new things and send reports back to their tribe prince/princess.

Lore Master: keeps all the history of the Havniil and their relations with other peoples.

The Havniil diet consists mostly of large animals, fruits, and seeds. While they are settled, they do not grow their own food, instead hunting and gathering from their territories. Their territories are quite large usually. I honestly don't have an exact size but each tribe is like it's own kingdom. The Havniil also tend to hunt animals that live in groups, whether it's packs or herds or whatever. Their main source of prey are the Aisoth packs native to their territory. Havniil do occasionally eat smaller animals as well though.

Aisoths are huge wolf-like pack animals that are able to inhabit most environments. They have disproportionately large claws and horns on their heads, spines on their backs, and smaller horns on their chins. Their pelts vary in length and color depending on the environment they're in.

Anyway, back to the Havniil.

Havniil mate for life. They tend to have difficulty moving on from someone they loved as a significant other. It takes a long time to get over someone. They usually don't take a second mate. Its frowned upon in the society to do so, especially if their mate died as opposed to just leaving them. That being said, if a Havniil leaves their mate for another one they face exile from the tribe. Its seen as a sign that the individual is disloyal and cannot be trusted. Some Havniil never mate and that isn't even that unusual in their society. Many Havniil, especially in higher positions in society dedicate their lives to their tribes instead of taking a mate. Also, please don't assume Havniil are all straight because that is not true. Their significant other can be any gender. Speaking of gender, in Havniil society, there are four general gender categories. I don't have names for them cuz I'm bad at naming things, but they're basically feminine masculine, masculine feminine, feminine, and masculine.

Havniil can also mate with most other races/species/whatever in the setting, including humans. They usually have twins but can have as many as 4 babies at a time. Even if it is not the Havniil that carries the babies, twins are still common. Obviously quadruplets are not nearly as common if a Havniil isn't carrying. No matter how a Havniil presents or how diluted their blood is, they are still considered Havniil if there has been one that presents at least one feline feature in their family line going back as far as 6 generations. So any individual that fits that criteria would be welcome in the Havniil homeland.

Havniil have stronger senses than humans and are easily over stimulated. In their own society steps have long since been taken to mitigate sensory overload but most others aren't even aware it happens so easily.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

This blog was originally posted on the RetroNeo Games blog page on May 27th, 2017.

Let me tell you a story. It’s about a boy who was born into a fairly poor family who eked out a passable existence on a family plot in the mountains. When he was only 12 years old, his father was killed in a tragic farming accident, and as his mother was too ill to work, he became the sole breadwinner for a family of six younger siblings.

He had a talent for singing. His deep and melodious voice, paired with a deep well of emotion bought from years of personal sacrifice, won him many admirers in the taverns and dance halls around the local villages. It wasn’t long before the girls started to notice him.

As his younger siblings matured, he dreamed of leaving the farm and pursuing a career in music, until one day a paramour told him she was pregnant with his child. Dreams of a life of travel and singing were forgotten. They married and his love gave birth to twins some few months later. He was the happiest man alive!

Unfortunately, the harvests had been poor for years, and the bank reclaimed his family’s farm as the twins neared their first birthdays.

With not one, but two families to support, and no means of doing so, he joined the army, one of the few employers who was always hiring. He moved both families to the city as he began boot camp.

His first post was guarding a hydroelectric power plant. It was hard to be away from his family, but he knew that they were safe and provided for.

One day on duty, as he quietly hummed a lament, thinking about the night he first met his beloved, this happened…

GIF recorded from tommytep's YouTube Channel. Click image for source.

THE END

Like that one? Let me tell you another (shorter) story.

A class sits idle in some code, waiting. Its name is Soldier 4. It’s basically frozen in time. It doesn’t even look like anything yet because its mesh hasn’t been rendered because the player camera’s frustum hasn’t come across it yet. Suddenly, the player enters a trigger area around the corner and the class springs to life in glorious pixelated detail. It starts playing an animation, shifting its weight back and forth on two legs. Then a raycast determines  that it’s just been shot 3 times. A rather slow and painful looking death animation is chosen from a small list of predetermined death animations. After a few seconds, Soldier 4 lies still, fades to nothing, and the garbage collector erases any trace of his existence shortly thereafter.

FIN

Okay, which story do you like better? Which is more true? Which is more believable?

Which would you tend to think of when playing a game? I suppose that would depend on how immersed you are, and what lengths the game goes to in order to inform you about non player characters (NPCs).

I used Goldeneye because it’s one of the earliest examples I can think of where my mom was a bit upset that I was shooting people in games, rather than speeding through checkpoints and jumping on robotic animals. It’s also one of the first games I can recall that put some real effort into showing pain in the enemies. You could shoot them in the foot, hand, or crotch, and they’d stop shooting, grab the injured area, make a pained noise and hop around (if they still could).

I was too busy at the time being blown away by the speed and the technology (I’d also never played Doom or similar 3D shooters at that time) to think of the enemies as anything more than obstacles to progression, but I can see now in games what my mom saw then. And it’s got nothing to do with graphics, or realistic animations. It’s partly a question of emotional maturity, of course, but also of storytelling. Where I just saw ‘baddies’ my mom saw me walk into a room and gun down a random young man in a Russian uniform with no provocation. Goldeneye didn’t really give you reasons to kill most of the game’s enemies other than “you’re James Bond and they’re Russian. Duh!”

Twenty years later, we have plenty of room on the disc to fit even a little audio that can precisely let you know why you should (or shouldn’t) want to kill these dudes. Yet in those situations where we have the opportunity to do better, how often do we actually strive to?

When to dehumanise

There are so many games of all sorts. I’m not at all trying to argue that we do want backstories for all game characters in order to make them better. That could often do the opposite.

Brutal Doom's OTT gore doesn't exactly inspire regret or sympathy. Because demons!

Take Doom (new or old). It’s an unapologetic power fantasy, delivered through the medium of speed and violence. Killing demons removes any need for cumbersome storytelling. It’s black and white. Demons are evil. Kill demons. A game shouldn’t try to do too many things. If the extras conflict with the core idea, cut them.

We often dehumanise the enemy in games. Literally. Whether to simplify story, avoid moral debates or to sidestep local censorship laws, we turn our targets into zombies, monsters, robots, or aliens. It works really well. Robots and zombies can also relieve the impact of bad AI, since they’re not meant to be particularly intelligent to begin with. Great! Over the top violence and power fantasies can be fantastically fun, and I wouldn’t change Doom 1 or 4 one little bit.

The topic I’m addressing is what to do when we have human adversaries, who are meant to represent believable people. Because this is the greater challenge, and it’s likely that you seek to tell some sort of story when you’ve chosen to have human antagonists.

There are two types of games that use humans as enemies; those with either fictional or non-fictional settings.

Fictional Settings

GTA V is one of the most realistic, alive open world games that’ve ever been created. But players have zero empathy for the citizens of Los Santos. The game’s over the top satire, occasionally wonky physics, and amazing yet vastly imperfect AI, prevent any great depth of immersion. That’s not to say that you can’t get lost in the game for hours, but you’d never mistake it for a real experience, and you wouldn’t really start to feel for the characters. The emphasis on driving fast across a world populated by pedestrians is fundamentally incompatible with any sort of attempt to make you care about individuals in this world. And that’s fine. GTA V is incredible for what it is, and no game can be everything (though it’s not far off, to be fair).

Now take Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I just finished playing yesterday. As in most games, you’ll mow down hundreds of enemies, but narratively there’s something interesting going on. If you listen to the idle dialogue and/or audio records, you’ll come to appreciate a depth to the enemies. There are the core villains but also their paid and oblivious contractors. Trinity are out to do bad things and don’t care who they kill, but most of the enemy army are hired mercenaries who don’t know about or don’t believe in the religious fanaticism that drives their employers. Among these contractors, many start to realise that their bosses are nuts, and say that they didn’t sign on to round up and shoot local tribespeople. Some talk about trying to get out asap. Some other contractors are psychopaths themselves, and then Trinity are always evil. This approach did make me want to avoid killing certain guys, or at least regret having to do so. A little. It also made me more eager to hear what type of group I was about to go up against, by stealthily sneaking up on their positions instead of opening fire early. It’s a pity that there aren’t any non-lethal options or other mechanics to expand on this narrative theme. Once the bullets start flying, the good ones and the bad ones all want to kill you just as much.

Still, it was a good effort at adding some depth to the game, and I appreciated that it was there. Because personally I’m usually (when facing human game enemies) thinking that they’re probably not all bad and they don’t all deserve to die. It was nice for a game to respond to this.

Of course, other games have done this, and done it better. If you haven’t yet played Spec Ops: The Line then do it now! Even if you think you know all the spoilers, it’s a masterpiece in subverting player expectations. The whole journey through the game is brilliant.

Fundamentally, I think that most conflicts only occur due to a lack of understanding or empathy (including an unwillingness to share resources). With better communication and patience, most could be avoided. Games so rarely attempt to show this, but if narrative is a serious part of the game you want to deliver, then it should be strongly considered.

Games are such a powerful medium for delivering understanding and empathy because the player actively takes part in them. I’m not saying that every game should be doing this, but we could certainly be faring better as an industry.

Historical Settings

Real world armies have forever attempted to dehumanise the enemy in order to make it easier for your own troops to kill them. They’re all savages. They’re all baby killers. They’re all rapists, thieves and murderers, and God is on our side. War films are almost universally anti-war films (especially since Vietnam) and they usually tap into the folly of these lies. Yet war games still seem to find it more convenient to buy the lie hook, line, and sinker.

Maybe it’s because you’re asking the player to do the killing directly for hours on end that designers have felt the need to retain these lies. I remember that in the opening minutes of Call of Duty World at War you’re being brutally tortured by Japanese captors before being rescued by Kieffer Sutherland and his band of more morally upstanding brothers. It’s set up so that you will have no problems killing Japanese or German pixels for the next several hours. Of course, the Japanese and German armies were conducting genocide and torture, and stopping that is a fairly justifiable goal (as long as we’re clear that no side was squeaky clean), but I’m just saying that I’ve never seen a game take the opportunity to do what Letters from Iwo Jima by Clint Eastwood did.

This is why I’m a bit concerned that Call of Duty are returning to World War 2 as a setting this year. For the last several years they’ve been doing fictional settings and usually have some big opening set piece showing you exactly how evil your enemies are and why you should kill them all (they blew up your house and neighbours, usually). Their games are so formulaic that I’m concerned they’ll miss their chance to advance the genre of war games by just ticking all the same boxes in a new (well, old) setting and perpetuating the notion that Americans are always good, and Nazis are always bad. That said, they seem to be heavily influenced by Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan so maybe they will have some shades of grey in their narrative and do something new.

Battlefield 1 at least lets you play as both sides in a conflict and although human lives are reduced to mere ‘tickets’, I do admit that I felt remorse when sitting in a machine gun nest, mowing down a charge across the trenches by the players on the other team.

Yes, it’s a game, but it represents something. Yes, the players will respawn and so it’s more like a game of paintball or virtual tag than an actual battle, but this is where my empathy for pixels idea comes in. Real lives were ended doing exactly this kind of action that I’m doing right now. I sincerely hope that when you watch the last hour of Titanic you feel a lot more moved than when you watch Con Air. Similarly, I hope than when you play games based on the world wars or Vietnam, that a part of you doesn’t glorify the killing in the same way as you the glory kills in Doom.

They’re different beasts, I think, and deserve different treatments from the creators. I hope that Call of Duty: WW2 gets some of that.

Games with more moral weight

I’ve referenced more linear games here so far, but RPGs are traditionally much better at giving weight to your moral decisions, even if they are nearly always set in fantasy or post-apocalyptic worlds.

I recently played Westerado, an indie cowboy RPG/ murder mystery in an open world that you have a lot of agency over. It doesn’t take itself fully seriously, but because you can go anywhere and kill anyone, you feel like you’ve some real responsibility in the world. Because of this responsibility, when I found myself riding out with some US Army soldiers who’d been fighting with native American tribes, and we than happened upon said tribes in a sudden ambush, I said “oh f**k no I will not be killing native Americans and still pretending I’m the good guy”. I ran from the fight. I failed that side quest. I think the army were regrettably all killed but I’m not sure. But that was my story. The game didn’t establish that these natives were out of line in any particular way, just that the army were fighting them. So my own knowledge of history filled in the rest.  While I was happy enough to help the army bring food to settlers (or whatever we were doing in that quest) I was not taking part in any genocide. Pixelated or not.

Here is an example of an extremely unrealistic looking game reaching me on a real level. An historical setting (fictional as the specifics are) and a game where my choices can have a lasting effect can create real empathy even for pixelated characters.

Mechanics for deeper, more sympathetic NPCs

Assuming you want some moral ambiguity or emotional weight in your game, particularly if you’re making a war game, what tools could be used to advance this agenda?

Just having NPCs chatter together is a very simple way of humanising them (for better or worse) before you go in guns blazing or not. It’s tried and true in linear games, but challenging in open worlds where the dialogue inevitably can start to repeat, and feel insincere.

The opening level of Battlefield 1 had you fighting a pitched battle on the Western front. Each time you died (in this level only), as the screen faded to black, you got your character’s name and the year of their birth and death. What it would say on their tombstone, basically. You then respawned as a new soldier elsewhere in the battle. This gave a weight to death that most war games (and the rest of this one) usually can’t deliver. If you add to that system something like “loving father and husband” or “always dreaming” you’ve a better system already.

Valiant Hearts has you play as characters from both sides of the trenches, and actually never has you kill anyone. It shows your Franco-German family in tact before the war, then watches as, torn apart by circumstance, they struggle to reunite.

This War of Mine has you play a war game from the point of view of starving families trying to survive amidst the rubble, where you make decisions to kill innocents because you need food for your own kids. The shocking reality of the unseen other side of war games was powerful.

Apart from historical settings that bring their own moral weight (and ethical dilemmas in terms of storytelling) to the table, you could use procedural generation to fill out backstories for each and every NPC that lives or dies. It’s its own challenge, but it’s possible. Watchdogs had a system where you could hack the phone of anyone in the open world and get a little summary of that person as an individual. That’s not an end in itself, but it’s a tool in the box.

Dwarf Fortress procedurally generates its entire world and history when you launch a new game. Co-creator Tarn Adams and Kitfox Games’ Tanya X Short have some great GDC talks and blogs about procedural generation, including a book they co-wrote called Procedural Generation in Game Design coming out soon. Do check some of it out if you’re interested in the area.

I’ve experimented myself with generating a small town’s size of population. Everyone gets a name, age and job. Every year people grow up and either die, marry, have kids, or do nothing extraordinary. Over a few seconds I grow this town by several generations and all of a sudden have a family history for every character still alive at the moment I start playing the game properly. I’m planning on using something similar to this in Sons of Sol to flesh out your wingmates’ backgrounds, though we don’t yet know the extent of player interaction with wingmates outside of the main missions.

In Conclusion

There are many more ways we could flesh out NPCs. Better AI is one. We could even get as far as giving NPCs the levels of interactivity that the hosts in Westworld have. Though I think the point of that show is that some people will just refuse to acknowledge the humanity in artificial things, while others can empathise with them very naturally; less because they’re fooled by looks or behaviour, but more because they’re emotionally invested in the story.

Humans have always loved storytelling, and creators have always found new and better ways of expanding our toolset for crafting them. We have amazing tools for creating empathy and understanding through interaction now.

Games are chief among the most consumed media in the modern age. Violence and conflict are a core part of many of our games, but also a significant part of the real world that we live in. In a world that too often seems to lack empathy and a willingness to understand our adversaries, games could be our best tool to foster a willingness to understand other sides in a conflict. I think it’s important that we start to do this more often. It doesn’t suit every game, but where killing humans is the main activity, and especially in historical war games, I think we can and should do better than we have been. We’re moving the right way, I think, but let’s keep it up.

Until next time..