#and 1 was my personally most noteworthy for being very large and complex

[dailypokemoncrochet]

Links to their posts:

Miraidon / Sceptile / Veluza / Porygon evolution line / Hydreigon / Lechonk / Lairon / Eternatus / Tropius

[Link to check your own top 10 tumblr posts]

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Which member do you think is the most supportive of VMIN?

Admin 1: For a change I’ll be the one that’ll use comparatively few words since I don’t have that big of an opinion. As much as I enjoy joining in on the jokes about how Jimin is the president of the Namjinists (due to his April Fool’s Day joke tweet from years ago and other such things), I’ve never given much thought to who among the members might be the most supportive of vmin.

But perhaps I’d say it could be Hoseok due to his general fondness of both Jimin and Tae as individuals but also as them together, how he said his favorite song off of MOTS7 is Friends and even sung it during the FESTA karaoke with the iconic (very suggestive and heavy on the implications) hip thrust during Tae’s “hey, Jimin, oneul” part. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. Also if we consider that Jimin and Hoseok were roommates for a long time, I guess it wouldn’t be too far-fetched of an assumption to make on my part that surely they had a number of deep late night talks over the years, and chances are Jimin would’ve sought out advice from Hoseok during one of them, perhaps even confided in him about his feelings for Tae (regardless which ones, both would be valid and something you’d talk about with a close friend).

Another option might be Namjoon, since he’s the leader and thus certainly the person who would have to know about such developments within the group for obvious reasons, but also it seems like Namjoon sought out consolation and advice from both Jimin (like that scene in BV4 around the bonfire off to the side from the group) and Tae (like the story he told at 5th Muster Seoul (?) about how he was kind of sad/feeling off so he talked to Tae before the encore and what Tae said made him feel better), meaning they are more than close enough to bring up certain topics with each other. So, based on that, it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch that he would stand up/look out for them if need be in conversations with BH etc.

That being said, regardless of how we interpret vmin and their bond, I think it’s safe to say that all the members are endlessly supportive of them, just like they are with any other duo within the group, though it’s easy to see that they do highlight vmin at times as something…special. A bond that’s noteworthy, stands out, even within a group as close as they are.

Admin 2: Chances are that what I think and am about to say might be a bit controversial. At the same time I’d like to note that this is only my personal opinion and theory, and not some kind of proven fact, yes? Perhaps no one will agree with me, but after putting many thoughts into this and looking at different content and events that have transpired over the years, as well as some other factors I’ll explain later, these are the conclusions I’ve drawn when it comes to the members and vmin. Furthermore, I don’t want to negate/comment on other ships since those don’t really play any role in this the way some might assume.

I think it’s important to remember that BTS basically exist in two version (though they are closely intertwined):

1: the idols on screen, who stand on stage, who share their music with us, who film content and who, to a certain degree, play a role, keep up an appearance that’s part honest and part mystery.

“I think V can show parts of Kim Taehyung and parts of V, but Kim Taehyung can’t show V. Kim Taehyung is Kim Taehyung. Kim Taehyung is someone who’s still filled with a lot of curiosity and he’s inquisitive about a lot of things. There are so many things he wants to do. Also I think there’s so many things he is curious about.” – Tae, Break the Silence: Persona

2: the real-life humans with private lives, private friendships and personalities that are similar but not quite the same as what we know and see.

Both of these are real in their own right, and both of them influence each other in more ways than one. So, when we look at vmin in the context of both, the question of support and showing certain things and how those affect version 1 and 2 are tricky, multifaceted and much more complex than some imagine or present it as. Because the moment we assume private life vmin are real, that sort of swift in dynamic ultimately also affects their work and demands adjustments from all parties involved, especially the other members. A large portion of what they do and say on screen or anywhere that we can see it is, to a certain degree, planned or has been discussed prior.

More below the cut since this kind of got long:

In one of the Break the Silence episodes Namjoon spoke about how with the more recent tours they haven’t been really able to do as much “free style” stuff (as in moving freely around stage and being silly, that sort of thing) between songs with choreographies, as opposed to how it used to be in the early days, since much of the show is perfectly timed and planned down to every little detail and every single light surrounding the stage. Much the same way everything else sure is, too. Look at RUN, even there you can notice them looking at printed out pages that surely contain a short storyboard of how the episode should more or less go in general terms, since that makes editing and keeping things cohesive much easier, especially since BTS are seven people, therefore seven moving independent variables.

Keeping all of this in mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that, in my opinion, the biggest vmin supporter is JK, followed by Hobi and Namjoon. I don’t mean, by any means, that completely idiotic theory some have created that one ship hides another, because that isn’t at all what I am going for with this. Of course Tae and JK are T*ek*ok (a subunit name they’ve after all created themselves though that context of that moment has long been changed by people) and Jimin and JK are J*ko*k, and depending on the demand (from a PR point of view as well as those of fans) and situations, those ships are utilized/highlighted in certain ways to achieve certain things. With this I don’t mean to belittle the actual real-life bonds between the real-life members, merely the “fantasy” versions created in large parts by shippers.

But that isn’t what I mean. Let me explain.

There are several situations that I think support my theory/opinion, past and more recent, but for the sake of fresh memories that we’ll all be able to recall, I’ll use more recent ones. During their vlive when BE and Life Goes On were just released, the one where they wore PJs, had pizza and that cardboard cutout of Yoongi, there was a moment when Tae was supposed to put lipstick on Jimin. He pulled Jimin close with his arm around his shoulder while Jimin giggled and playfully pretended to try and push him away or stop him from doing it, despite seemingly holding on to his top to keep him close anyway. While that was happening, the other members checked what they were doing and notably JK, upon seeing what vmin were up to, moved a few steps away closer toward the cameras and stood as though between vmin and said cameras while holding that silver screen thing used for lighting in photography (I’m not sure how it’s called). Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but seeing as Namjoon, who carried the Yoongi cutout, joined him, it seemed like they were trying to hide vmin, which of course didn’t work out since the producers simply switched to a different camera.

This might be me going temporarily delulu but toward the end of that sequence there was a moment where we couldn’t see much of vmin save for the tops of their heads. At some point Tae made a move with his head which some (including myself) have interpreted as a potential smooch (as in an actual one or just him pretending/doing the motion of it, that’s up for debate) which caused Hobi to break out in loud laughter.

A second example is day two of MOTS ON:E when it was time for Dynamite. Usually vmin just walk past each other doing something funny or interacting in some way, but on that day instead Jimin pulled Tae closer, enough so that their foreheads touched, and they looked at each other in quite a meaningful way. At the same time JK stood right behind them, since he’s the one that opens the song, and watched what was happening. Just like with the above example, he stepped toward them and put his hand on the back of Tae’s head in a gesture that I interpreted as a form of safety measurement that IF vmin were to potentially do something…risky, he could intervene by quite literally pulling them apart/stopping them. This moment of course has been twisted and manipulated in many different ways to, for example, showcase some supposed jealousy or alike, but I think that’s just plain stupid.

I’d also like to show you a few other pictures that I think show us the kind of dynamic he really has with vmin, how he watches (over) his hyungs with affection and support, so to speak:

(the following pictures, left to right: JM, JK, TH)

The sole fact that three maknae ships can exist simultaneously, while vmin might be the likely one to be real, in my opinion shows that everything between the three of them must be more than okay, that there’s harmony and understanding between them, everyone knowing their place/role exactly, that there’s no jealousy or other negative emotions involved. Even more so when we consider the stakes that come with it all, at the top of it all being money, not only for the members but also BH (including everyone who invested money in stocks, as well as all their employees that need to be paid). And the fact that BTS aren’t rookies anymore, but instead they have a big and very relevant role in a broader sense when it comes to influence, power, and fame.

Look at how professional they are when it comes to being idols and everything that entails, including shipping. Just look at how despite Tae’s Weverse comment to that one shipper, and the conversation in In The Soop, they played their roles so convincingly that no one who is in favor of that ship is willing to believe them or consider that perhaps they were wrong. But, this is more of a topic for another post, so I’ll leave it at that.

Looking at all these moments, bigger and smaller ones, gestures that some didn’t even notice or did but interpreted in a completely different way for their own reasons, it brought me to the conclusion that JK is their biggest supporter.

Just like Admin 1 said, I also think that Hobi and Namjoon are big supporter as well. Although I can’t for the life of me remember the piece of content where he said this (if anyone knows, please do let me know), I recall a moment where Namjoon spoke to Tae and said that he’s his responsibility, which made me wonder if that perhaps meant that Namjoon gave his vote of confidence about Tae (and vmin) to BH or agreed to keep an eye on him/them to keep them in check. But that’s just a thought/theory.

At the end of the day, whatever our opinion may be, we have to remember that we know very little about their private life, a tiny percentage if even, so it’s important to stick to/pay attention to/based our opinions on the original material and what the members say, instead of taking into account edited videos on YT or opinions influenced by others agendas, but that, too, is something to be discussed in a different post.

Thank you for this interesting question!

[raeynbowboi]

My Two Cents on Female Characters in Animated Television Shows

Recently, while discussing my disappointment with the lack of development for the girls in My Hero Academia, I received a rather pointed response that accused me of not caring about female characters at all. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as often girl characters are usually some of my favorites in most shows, but where I think this person got confused is that they mistook my criticisms for contempt. You can criticize something without disliking it. Although I laughed and rolled my eyes at the accusation being the staunch feminist that I am, I figured it was a worthwhile topic to discuss: the portrayal and characterization of female characters in media. Particularly, animated television products.

Even though I wasn’t alive at the time, let’s rewind the clock back to the 1980s. During this decade, most animated television series were more focused on selling toys to go with the product than telling a good story, and this was also the time when gendered products exploded. Boys watched He-Man, G.I. Joe, and Transformers. Girls watched My Little Pony, the Care Bears, and Jem and the Holograms. The biggest shows usually had a gender division, though there were some shows that catered to children as a whole. What we usually got out of the boy shows is a cast almost exclusively male with maybe one or two female characters, such as with the 80s Voltron series were Allura was the only female character on the side of good. Likewise with girl oriented shows, most of the cast was girls with only a small handful of boys, though the Care Bears was an outlier due to having a rather fine mix of the two. During this era, if a girl was on the team, she usually didn’t do much. She was the damsel to be saved or the love interest to be smooth talked. She rarely had much more personality than “is a girl”. They were just kind of cookie cutter stereotypes who existed to be saved and supported by the real heroes. Some shows however did focus on strong warrior women such as She-Ra and Spider-woman. However, both of these were female spin-offs of boy shows and were again gendered products aimed only at female viewers.

The 1990s saw the emergence of shows with female leads that weren’t necessarily aimed exclusively at girls, but more often than not, it was more of a case of shows aimed at girls that just happened to attract a male audience. This happened with shows like The Powerpuff Girls or Daria, with Daria being a spin-off of Beavis and Butthead created to give MTV a female icon to draw viewership, as well as serving as a feminist icon and a voice of the disaffected nihilism of 90s teens. Shows aimed at a broader audience like Recess, The Magic School Bus, and Captain Planet started a trend of including more female characters, but it was still very common for the ratio to be tipped in favor of male characters. And this trope still remains at large to this day. This ratio is usually about 3:2 or 2:1 in a smaller group. Unless it’s aimed at girls or designed specifically to appeal to both genders, most products have more boy than girl characters.

Now with the 2000s, this is when my earliest childhood memories come back to me, and it’s the girls from this era of media that turned me into a feminist. I grew up on shows like Teen Titans, Avatar the Last Airbender, Kim Possible, and Totally Spies. This is when I would argue girl characters were really starting to really leap out and become actual people, though there were shades of this in the 90s as well. They were far more deep and complex than girl characters were in earlier media. Katara was still a maternal figure and a healer, but she had pride, a temper, and could be bossy. Starfire was a beautiful alien princess, but she was a warrior princess who was just as good in a fight if not better than her male teammates. Kim Possible was a super popular cheerleader, but she was also an honor roll student and a kick ass secret agent who retained her humbleness about it most of the time. While Clover was totally boy-crazy and fashion obsessed, she was balanced out by the academic Sam and the sporty Alex, and all three spies had episodes where they were the one saving the day and figuring out the problem. Fortunately, the 2010s have continued this trend of fleshed-out female characters, as shows have allowed female characters to exceed the normal parameters or expectations of their genders to treat them more like people, such as Flame Princess in Adventure Time donning very traditionally masculine clothing when she raps, both of which are not stereotypically feminine.

However, where Western Animation has progressed greatly, Shonen Anime has fallen majorly by the wayside. A common criticism of Naruto is that Sakura spent most of the time standing around doing nothing, and this sadly applies to all of the women. Kurenai is a Jonin level ninja, but she’s only ever shown in a single fight against Itachi and Kisame where she uses exactly one technique, and it’s used to show off how strong and cool Itachi is because he could counter her illusions with his own. Hinata is driven to become stronger due to being inspired by Naruto, but barely gets any screen time or skill improvement, and her only notable fight in part II is against Pain where it was a vehicle for her confessing her feelings for Naruto, and then triggering Naruto’s 6 tailed form so that Naruto could win the fight. Heck, Ino was standing ten feet away from the wanted terrorists that killed her teacher and she did nothing the entire fight. It’s not like she had mind control powers that would have been useful or anything. Sure the arc was for Shikamaru’s character growth, but even Choji did something and Choji sucks. And Tenten... Well she doesn’t matter. You could literally replace her with a lamp and nobody would be able to tell the difference. She’s just there because every squad must have a girl character.

So, now it’s time for the big feelings ouchie word: Strong Female Character. When people hear this they assume it means a character like Calhoun in Wreck-It Ralph, that tough as nails no bs cranky type of female who don’t need no man and yes, Calhoun is a Strong Female Character. And so is Katara. And Sadie Miller in Steven Universe. And Quinn Morgendorfer from Daria. Being a Strong Female Character isn’t about being tough or being a walking tank. Strong Female Characters simply have strong characterization. They’re well-constructed. Katara lost her mother when she was young and she had to take on her mother’s responsibilities, causing her to become very mature at a young age and to feel like anyone in need of help should get it because that’s her ‘job’ in a sense. Taking care of others is what she’s done since she lost her mother, it’s become her identity, and she could never reject that self-appointed duty without losing who she is as a person. Raven from Teen Titans pushes people away because she’s destined to destroy the world, and she hates herself for what she was created to do. She views herself as a living curse, and she doesn’t want to let people get close to her because it’ll hurt that much more when she has to fulfill her destiny and hurt the people that she cares about. Sadie Miller has only ever poofed one corrupted gem, but there’s a clear personality at play. She has low self-esteem and puts up with people telling her what to do because she’s a pleaser. She likes to make other people happy. Quinn is as classic girly girl as you can get. She’s shallow, vain, and bows to peer pressure. However, she voices that she doesn’t always like having to be like this, but that if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have anything in common with her friends. She’d rather be a shell of her real self surrounded by friends than her true self and alone. As Daria points out, Quinn wears superficiality like a suit of armor because she’s afraid of looking inside and finding nothing. But in later seasons, she begins to embrace the things that make her stand out by becoming more openly invested in her studies regardless of what it makes people think of her, and honestly, nobody really cares. A Strong Female Character doesn’t have to lead an army to be strong, she just has to be a fully defined person. So, now let’s bring the discussion full circle back to My Hero Academia. Earlier I mentioned the standard 3:2 ratio for larger groups. That is to say, if there’s an odd number of main characters, expect one extra boy for every boy-girl set. Too bad in My Hero Academia, it’s a 2:1 ratio of 14 boys and 6 girls. That’s 30% of the class size. They barely make up 1/4 of the class. And of those six maybe three of them have strong personalities. Tsuyu Asui, Momo Yaoyorozu, and Mina Ashido all have very distinct personalities, stand out in the class, and and have been given noteworthy character traits. Tsu tends to favor logic over emotion but doesn’t always like that this is her go-to response because she’s afraid people will think she’s heartless. Momo has high expectations for herself, and had a whole arc dedicated to her disappointment from the tournament arc. And Mina has a clearly defined personality, flaws, and tends to speak the most of the girls in the class. While Jiro’s not necessarily flat, we know less about her than the other girls. Uraraka’s character is so fixated on being the cute love interest that she doesn’t have any other personality traits. And Hakagure’s only real gimmick is that she’s invisible, but other than that is just a stereotypical girl. There’s nothing wrong with a female character not being a central figure in the narrative. What is wrong is when female characters are left to being window dressing. Jiro’s parents are both musicians and Jiro seems to like music too so why is she trying to be a hero? We know next to nothing about Hagakure. Sure, there are boy characters we don’t know very well either. Shoji, Koda, Sato, and Aoyama are still largely underdeveloped. But see, it’s problematic not only because the ratio is so heavily slanted, but because the girls that need character development don’t get much screen time. Uraraka has used the disarming training she got from her internship a few times, but that’s not a personality or a character development. And what happened when she went to the Yakuza secret hideout? She got left outside with the rest of the girls while most of the plot happened inside with the boys. Heck, Nejire who is part of the Big Three, we saw the backstories and training for both Mirio and Tamaki, but Nejire was just sort of ... present. She wasn’t given a character. Now, does that mean that I hate the girls in My Hero Academia? Of course not! Tsu is one of my favorite characters, and I like Jiro. She’s cool. But that doesn’t mean that I’m happy with the level of development and focus they’ve gotten. They’re characters too and they should be allowed to be more fleshed out in the story.

[doktorpeace]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: An In Depth Review

I recently finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and I’ve got a lot of mixed thoughts on the game as a whole. I’m going to break these down in three ways and they’ll be of varying lengths. First I’ll discuss the Gameplay and its mechanics, then the game’s aesthetics, and then the game’s story and characters. I’ll give a general overview of each and then they will be broken down into Pros, Neutrals, and Cons. I’ve made it a point to try and avoid making references to direct spoilers, but there’s still a few in here, so bear that in mind. This is also by far the longest post I’ve ever made on tumblr, so buckle in. There’s sure to be a bit of overlap in each section, but I’ll try to stay focused. At the end of it all I’ll give overall closing thoughts. Alright, let’s start.

Gameplay:

Once fully realized to the player Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a very enjoyable, flexible, and meaningfully expressive gameplay style, traits which are not often seen in combination with one another in JRPGs. The combat is fun, fluid, and has just a ton of customizability more or less from the moment you’re able to obtain blades. Racking up extremely large damage numbers is fun, trying out different gameplay styles is easy and satisfying, and the game maintains a good pace in terms of combat through the whole game. However, this isn’t without its drawbacks, the game has a few noteworthy bugs and mechanics that simply feel like afterthoughts. The game is also much much too slow in opening up to the player. The fact that I had a gameplay element introduced to me for the first time an hour before the final boss when it could have been present for almost a full third of the game is mind boggling as a decision. Overall, I consider the gameplay to be the strongest point of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as in spite of its issues it’s a lot of fun, a real blast to play from start to finish in spite of its length. Pros: + Extremely customizable, any party member can be built to fit any role you need or want them to no matter how specific. + All of the game’s weapons are fun to use, with extremely satisfying hitsounds, animations, and gameplay differences. The fact they they control differently from character to character is also a great touch, allowing for further expression of each character’s strengths as some will naturally be a bit better or worse than others with certain weapons. + Expressiveness is a big part of this game’s combat, there’s no one correct way to play and the player is free to express themselves in a wide variety of battle strategies and styles, whether that be focusing on getting huge chain attacks, setting up combos that absolutely crush enemies but have tight timing, and exploiting weaknesses, there’s far more options as well and players are free to explore as many as they like. The game even encourages the player to try and cheese out enemies that give them trouble, with Blowdown and Knockback effects allowing players to knock enemies down from high places for huge damage or an outright kill. + Fun environments to explore with a reasonable amount of depth to them. The existence of field skills allows the game to make sure that most areas in the game give the player reason to come back to them for further exploration down the line. That said, the game’s environments are weaker than other Monolithsoft games having less depth and intrigue than either previous Chronicles game or Breath of the Wild, but they are enjoyable nonetheless. + With each Rare Blade having their own affinity chart to progress upon and unlock to make them stronger, the game has a good and consistent feeling of getting more powerful and progression even aside from the story. In my whole playthrough I only maxed out a couple Blades, but was always seeking out strengthening the ones I liked. + The player is free to use any combination of party members for the vast majority of the game, meaning if the player doesn’t like certain party members they are free to not use them anytime there are four or more party members available, which is most of the game. This includes the final boss fight, meaning players can play their way all the way to the end. + The game’s easier core mechanics mean that any combination of Blades, no matter how unfocused they may be thematically together, can clear any content the game throws at the player, meaning there’s never any pressure to simply play what’s best. Neutrals: [] While field skills allow the game to carefully piece content over time to the player to make sure they never get equipment too powerful or trip into enemies way beyond their depth (mostly), it also causes the game to lose a lot of the organic feeling of exploration both Xenoblade Chronicles and X had. Oftentimes I was excited that I had managed to find or get to a new area only for the game to effectively tell me to come back later which was always disappointing. This more rigid feeling was a negative for me, but could help players who are generally uncomfortable with open world/semi open world games’ lack of direction. [] While expressive and fun, the game’s core combat mechanics are deeply simplified from the previous two games. This makes the game as a whole much much easier. When paired with how quest experience works now it’s far too easy to get ahead of the game’s intended level. Regardless of even that the game’s strongest foe, a level 130 Boss, can be bested at level 75-80 out of a possible 99, which is a sad step down from the deep and complex postgame challenges the previous games offered players. Some players may find this easier gameplay preferable, while others might not.

[] The game opens up obscenely slow to the player. I am not exaggerating that in a 125 hour playthrough I had mechanics introduced to me at hour 100 and 124. Out of the game’s 10 chapters it takes almost half of the game to simply give the player access to the full set of basic mechanics, putting aside more niche or advanced ones. While this can help players often overwhelmed by deeper RPGs the rate is so slow that it could turn many players off, especially those who don’t like handholding. [] Almost every enemy in the game has about 20% too much health for their own good. It makes combat encounters near the middle of the game drag on much longer than they should, though early and late this isn’t an issue. Some players may not mind this but I often found it irritating. [] The load times are extremely fast across the board. While this can mean there’s a bit of pop in of the game finishing loading in textures for a bit after each load time between major locations I personally didn’t mind that. I consider the fast load times far more of a positive than the pop in is a bit of a negative, but I know some people might think differently.

Cons: - The existence of a Gachapon system in a singleplayer RPG is absolute inexcusable. 20/36 of the game’s playable Rare Blades, which form the core of the gameplay experience, are obtained randomly and there is no meaningful way to improve your ability to get them. In spite of the game’s claims that the Luck stat, Idea Stats (which are on a scale of 1-15), and Core Crystal rarity all affect the chances of getting Rare Blades, it never meaningfully mattered to me. There were at least a dozen times where I used a highest tier rarity Core Crystal, maxed out an idea stat for the type of Rare Blade I wanted, and had a good luck stat only to get a common blade with no point in being used. In my 125 hour run, in which I did a lot of the game’s optional content, I only obtained 18 of the 20 lottery based Rare Blades. While they came fairly easily for the first 10 or so, it slowed down severely after that, to the point where when only 3 are left I pulled well over 500 cores and only got one of the remaining Rare Blades I was missing. This is inexcusable and player unfriendly. The fact that there is no other way to obtain these Blades is obscene and frankly one of the worst parts of this game mechanically. - The above point, combined with the fact that the ability to reassign Blades to different party members is essentially limited to 3 for the average player means that if the player has consistently bad luck gettings Rare Blades that fit well on certain party members they may be stuck running strategies or layouts that they don’t find as fun or optimal. This is punishing the player for having bad luck, and is also pretty inexcusable. The Overdrive Protocol item should be rare, but not only 3 assured ones in a whole run rare. - The Salvaging, Cloud Sea Level, and Merc Mission mechanics are entirely unnecessary and only bog down the game. Salvaging is a way to make money quickly, but this game’s economy is so broken in favor of the player that there is no point in making use of salvaging except to obtain one Rare Blade which can only be gotten through it. Merc Missions meanwhile exist only to power up the blades Roc and Ursula, and is used by the Blade Wulfric to upgrade a field skill. They’re slow, require far too much menuing, and are not fun to do. All they are are busywork. Oftentimes the game will inject Merc Missions into the sidequests completely unnecessarily, which brings them to a grinding halt while you wait for an in game timer to countdown for anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes just to progress the sidequest you were on. This happens far too often and is entirely unnecessary and poorly designed. This is especially clear with the Rare Blade Ursula, whose entire progress is based on repeatedly performing 3 different merc missions literally dozens of times a piece, interrupting the player’s gameplay experience every 5-10 minutes ad infinitum if you wish to make her worth using. Given Urusla, Roc, and Wulfric are three of the game’s strongest blades it simply feels unfriendly for me to have to waste so much time on menuing busywork rather than exploration or combat to make them stronger. - For as tutorial heavy as the game is, there is no way to view tutorials after you’re shown them the one time which is frankly ridiculous because Xenoblade Chronicles 1 showed the player next to no tutorials but kept an entire booklet’s worth of them, including pictures, available from the menu at any time. - The lack of a bestiary is similarly weird and entirely a negative since Xenoblade Chronicles X had one, so it’s simply a step backwards to not have one this time. - The lack of an NPC affinity web means I as a player simply felt no need to talk to nearly any NPCs in this game. Most of their dialogue is pointless fluff anyway, since there was no mechanical incentive to relate the characters to others in the world like there was in the previous two games. Simply put there is no actual reason to talk to NPCs in this game, except ones that progress stories or sidequests, because the game doesn’t give you any reason to do so, nor does it meaningfully reward you with fun or interesting dialogue or lore. - The lack of a collectopedia, a staple of this series until now, negates the main reason for players to gather collectibles. Yes, they’re used elsewhere like in Pyra’s cooking or in refining Aux Cores, but those are largely extremely lenient and the player will likely never be without anyway. The existence of a collectopedia would go a long way to help this game’s collectibles actually feeling meaningful. - Rex is flat out broken compared to the other characters, I have not seen a main character in a game this poorly balanced since Robin in Fire Emblem: Awakening. Rex is not only objectively the best party member thanks to receiving an unnecessarily large number of special and unique traits, but by the end of the game using him is a crutch and I felt incentivized to not use him, not because I didn’t like him, but simply because he trivialized the gameplay experience. - Poppiswap is a very cute and fun idea in concept but horrifically executed to the point where there is simply no reason to ever use Tora over other party members, who do what he could do but better and with enormously less effort on the part of the player. - A few times I had Chain Attacks simply stop happening for no reason in the middle of choosing a move. This seemed to happen because a driver and blade got too far away from each other somehow, but the game should be able to account for and correct that. It’s a minor bug, but still extremely annoying when it came up. - I had the game straight up crash on me once. I’ve heard from other sources it happened to them more, but still keep that in mind and save fairly frequently. While this may seem like a lot more negatives than positives, I am entirely serious that the gameplay is overall much more good than bad and a lot of fun. The negatives are mostly just a lot of little things that are each worth noting rather than anything major individually, the Gachapon mechanic aside. Additionally, I praise the customizability of the game, but simply put the easier gameplay mechanics and customizability of each character feels more like compensating for the entirely luck based Gachapon mechanic than something meaningfully sought after. However, the end product is fun to play and for many that’s all that matters.

Aesthetics:

It’s no secret that this game’s visual style has come under fire and frankly I think it deserves that. This game’s very generic, moe adjacent anime art style is simply ugly to look at, and in spite of claims that it helps the characters be ‘expressive’ it entirely loses out on allowing the characters a more subtle and human level of expression present in the previous games. The characters faces often warp, unintentionally comedically, between expressions in very ugly and machinelike ways for instance. Even without getting into the nitty gritty of specific character designs being better or worse than others, the clash of Tetsuya Nomura’s fairly detailed characters who are stylized with a mix of realism and a more ‘anime’ look alongside characters like Rex and Pyra who simply look like they walked out of an anime like Love Live or Lucky Star is jarring to say the least, and it never gets better. On the other hand the game’s dubbing has come under fire for being low quality and feeling rushed, and while it is certainly not the best dub I have heard, a good many of the voice actors do very good work, though they aren’t all stars. However, the game’s sound design is simply amazing, while I personally don’t prefer this game’s soundtrack to the previous to it has some absolute stars and its sound effects for character’s attacks and special effects are similarly very good. Pros: + The soundtrack is astoundingly good, really it’s an absolute banger through and through with only a few weak tracks in the mix. This is to be expected of Monolithsoft, but they really delivered on this. + Particle effects are extremely good and diverse. Every single blade brings not only a unique body but also a unique combat aesthetic, with some like Dagas and Azami in particular being memorable and great to see in action. +The game’s animations in terms of its gameplay are very good. Monster, Humans, and Blades alike are all very expressive with diverse and meaningful movements that often convey not just an attack, but what its properties will have as well. It’s very addicting to see some of the bigger attack animations go off because of just how crisp and well done they are. + The environments are very beautiful, each area is completely unique from one another and they’re all pretty memorable, the only one I’d throw under the bus personally is Gormott for being a bit too generic grass world-y, but even it’s still very pretty. Really, all of this game’s environments and maps are very well realized visually. + Because of the clean particle effects and animations combat is conveyed very smoothly to the player, very little can catch you off guard and attack’s hitboxes are well sycned with their animations almost entirely across the board. Neutrals:

[] I would in fact say this game has more good and memorable character designs than bad ones, all things considered, it’s just that the bad ones are so unrepentantly bad that they massively overshadow what good ones there are. Designs like Mòrag, Zeke, Vandham, Roc, Brighid, Pandoria, and more are extremely memorable and fun designs but the fact that they share a stage with designs like Rex, Pyra, Zenobia, and Dahlia is an absolute shame. All memes and controversy aside there is simply no excusing character designs like Dahlia, not because this is a Nintendo game, but because she is visually repulsive to anyone with an iota of taste developed outside of the sphere of bad anime and fetish hentai. [] The camera in this game is very good and has a wide variety of options for players to make use of, however, it can still mess up and focus on the wrong thing during cinematic attacks or have simple clipping errors. This is minor and never bugged me, in fact it lead to some hilarious moments for me, but I know this could bother some people.

Cons: - Its aesthetics are unfocused. The visual design, sound design, and even its UI are oftentimes clashing and ugly. Comparing a game like this to one like Wind Waker like I have seen some do is frankly laughable. The reason Wind Waker has aged so immaculately is because of how focused and well realized its one single aesthetic is! This game cannot compare by any stretch of the imagination. - The english dub is held back by Rex, Pyra, and Malos being extremely weak, uninteresting, and poorly acted. In spite of being the main characters and the main villain we’re never given a good performance by any of them. They’re all boring and are by far some of the worst parts of the game’s dub. Other characters like Patroka stick out as well for never giving off the tone or emotion the situation calls for. Further, the dub is almost constantly out of sync with the character’s lips where this is not a problem with the previous games. It is clear this part of the game’s localization was rushed. However, all in all, many other dub voice actors are extremely good, but the fact that they are not the main characters means they are simply overshadowed by the poor performance of a few critical characters. Were Rex, Pyra, and Malos minor side characters this would not be a noteworthy negative, but it is definitely worth bringing up given they are who the plot revolves around for its entirety. - In terms of the game’s cutscenes, of which there are an overabundance, the character’s facial expressions often laughably jump from one expression to another when attempting to convey emotion. They also often move in a way I would more expect out of a PS2 era game, very stiffly and without any real weight. This is most noticeable when characters shift their head from one side to another or hang their head down in sadness, it’s robotic and unbelievable. Any alleged advantage this art style could have given in expressiveness and conveyance of emotion is entirely lost as many of the character’s featureless, blobby faces snap around in machinelike ways, making them come across more like automatons than actual people. This isn’t nearly as bad or prevalent with adult characters like Mòrag and Zeke, or anyone designed by Tetsuya Nomura, but it still crops up from time to time with them. However it’s nigh ever present with children or characters in the art style of Masatsugu Saito. Simply put, because of the poor animation and expresion the characters have this game lacks pathos in many cases. - It bears special mention that Rex’s voice actor is laughably bad at yelling or shouting. His attempts are screams made me laugh in moments that were meant to be serious and do not improve at all throughout the game. For how many screams he had to do you’d think he’d eventually get one out that was not worth making fun of but he just never hits the mark. - The game’s native sound balance is absolutely horrible. While the game does graciously allow for the player to customize it they shouldn’t be required to just to hear characters speak during cutscenes. - Including a combat narrator was a mistake and only detracts from one’s ability to become immersed in the game’s world and even its gameplay. Having a disembodied voice shout ‘Cool’ and ‘Blade Combo Level 3’ at you constantly is an extremely out of nowhere inclusion. Again, thankfully, the player is allowed to turn this feature off entirely but the fact of the matter is this Arcade Era feature has no place in a single player RPG in the year 2017. Simply put this game’s got a fairly large number of aesthetic issues, many more than I would expect out of any AAA game but especially out of Nintendo and Monolithsoft, though a lot of them simply come down to a lack of polish. Were this game delayed by 6 months to a year none of these besides the game’s primary art direction in regards to a few character designs would exist I bet. However, it’s clear this game was rushed to make it out within the Switch’s first year and it suffers for it. Compared to the polish of other major AAA games released this year, especially the absolutely immaculate Persona 5 which is the big JRPG this game needs to measure up to, this game is poorly realized aesthetically in basically every way except for its sound design which is a shame. Frankly, I expect better of Monolithsoft and this is unprecedented from them. When I can get more genuine emotion and investment and a better conveyance of real world expressions and movement out of the Wii era models in Xenoblade Chronicles than I can out of this game that’s a problem. I really, truly believe with another 6 months to a year of polish all around this game could have really had some great presentation but unfortunately right now that potential is held just out of reach.

Story, Writing, and Characters: I will say flatly and simply that this game’s story is by far the worst that Monolithsoft has ever produced. It’s boring, uninspired, hard to be invested in, poorly sequenced, and stars some of the absolute most plain jane characters I’ve ever seen in a major title. Extremely little is resolved in a meaningful way, the game is rife with cheap, C-List Shonen Anime tropes we’ve all seen a hundred times before, it’s cliched with no attempts at spicing itself up, simply put it’s bad and the only way to enjoy it is to not think about it or to somehow have not seen any of its tired tropes before. Even Xenoblade Chronicles X, for all of its story based shortcomings, presents a far better conflict and main protagonist than 2 could ever hope. That said, the writing is not all bad. Most of the game’s Heart to Hearts are lovely, they’re fun and great at developing the party members dynamics and them all as a cohesive unit. It’s a nice return to form more like Xenoblade Chronicles’ Heart to Hearts and a big improvement over Xenoblade X’s fairly barebones ones. The sidequests are mostly fairly mediocre however, which is sad given that’s something both previous games absolutely excelled at. I’ve mentioned Rex, Pyra, and Malos a few times in this review already, but it bears reiterating that they are all simply awful, uninspired, and boring characters and they are three of the biggest detriments this game has. Had this game starred Nia, Mòrag, or Zeke with Jin as its sole antagonist it would have been far better for it. More or less this game’s entire playable party aside from Rex and Pyra are strong, likeable characters, though all of the antagonists aside from Jin are transparent and laughable in their attempts to be taken seriously. With no depth at all and no development from any of them, how could anyone really care about this conflict? It’s truly a travesty because the world of Alrest is interesting and each of its Titans have enough intrigue and history and personality that I would have loved to have discovered more about them, however that’s not the case.

Pros: + Morag, Brighid, Nia, Dromarch, Poppi, Zeke, and Pandoria are consistently enjoyable characters which is good since you’ll see them all a lot. They are good enough to be worth pushing through this game’s otherwise generally horrible writing to see more of, because at least these characters are fun and interesting in the moment, and seeing them interact with one another in optional content is one of the best things this game has to offer outside of its core gameplay. + Heart to Hearts regain their depth from the first game and are almost all very fun and enjoyable. + Chapter 4 breaks away from the rest of the plot’s undeserved, overly self-serious, dreariness to present a more comical minor conflict that’s actually fun to follow and based reasonably in a conflict one can get invested in. Neutrals: [] Most of Chapter 3 is also quite good and revolves around Vandham, one of the best characters in the game, however the ending of the chapter is perhaps the single worst part of this entire game and I don’t say that lightly. The ending sequence of chapter 3 is a grand display of everything wrong with this game all in one extremely hard to get through sequence. [] The fact that some of the game’s writing issues could be solved with simple sequence changes shows there’s a bit more life to this plot than what one might think, but that’s not the product we received. [] Though perhaps not intentionally, Jin is an antagonist who is compelling because he is actually in the right of it compared to the main party for most of the game. However, his story arc is left completely unresolved and with almost all questions about him unanswered making one’s investment in him largely pointless. [] Many characters like Addam and Lora exist as set dressing for this world and are integral to the game’s story in some ways, but are ultimately fairly pointless as they are dropped without ceremony partway through the game with no resolution to their inclusion whatsoever. I wouldn’t even call this entirely a negative because at least the parts of the plot focusing on them in the past are far more gripping than anything happening in the present even though they are given to the player in fragments. [] Every single Rare Blade is given both a sidequest and a heart to heart dedicated to just them. While great in concept, the result is many of them just being weak or uninteresting. Most of the heart to hearts are good, but the vast majority of their side quests drag on too long, are poorly acted, and just don’t give a good look at the character in question anyway. It’s a very mixed bag.

Cons: - This is the case across the game’s map designs as well as its story elements, but all too often it simply does things to try and harken back to Xenoblade Chronicles 1. So many times I found myself thinking ‘Oh, just like in Xenoblade Chronicles’ while seeing things happen throughout this game. Rather than forge its own unique path and identity it merely takes beats from its predecessor, often sloppily and without realizing what made those things work in the first place. The result is a lot of flaccid attempts to seem cool or memorable that simply fall flat. - The game only takes time one or two times to develop Pyra and Rex one on one, together as a pair of partners and friends and elsewise relies on the player believing they have some unique, special, and immediately intimate relationship based simply on her being a Aegis and him being her Driver, something not present for any other Blade/Driver pairing nor for the other Aegis/Driver pairing in the game, rather than anything actually present in the game. The end result is them having no real chemistry for the entirety of the game, and then the player being expected to believe they’re in love at the very end out of nowhere in spite of them being little more than strangers in terms of how much they know about each other, even after this journey. Genuinely the player gets better chemistry and dynamics out of Nia and Zeke and Brighid and Tora, as well as several other sets of characters who are not the main focus of the plot. Each of these sets of characters have easily definable and fun dynamics between them, where Pyra and Rex are simply The Protagonist and The Nice Girl Who You Have To Protect. Even amongst the game’s heart to hearts, of which there are a great multitude and I performed several dozen, Rex and Pyra only get a single one that focuses primarily on them. Pyra has a stronger, more identifiable dynamic with Nia and Mòrag than she does with Rex and that’s pitiful. For comparison you frankly get a stronger dynamic between Shulk and Reyn or Elma and Lin in Xenoblade Chronicles and X within just a few hours than Pyra and Rex have all game, in spite of being the equivalent of those pairs. - In almost every single boss fight the game will interrupt the player’s progress to assault them with an unnecessary, overly long cutscene to explain why they’re actually losing this fight and every single one of them falls flat because of the horrible weakness of the villains and the corny, over the top shonen anime acting and set pieces. Once the phrase ‘My power allows me to move at the speed of light’ is genuinely and unironically used completely out of nowhere as an excuse for the player to lose even though you have at this point beaten this enemy before and if that isn’t by itself a display of bad writing I don’t know what is. Seriously, I cannot stress enough how much these story cutscenes during boss battles watch like shitty, bottom of the barrel anime rather than an actual video game. - The game’s attempts at humor almost universally are miss rather than hit, with three noteworthy exceptions being the Zeke Boss Fight segments in Uraya, Mor Ardain, and Leftheria. These moments were genuinely charming and got me to laugh, and really stuck out amongst the games otherwise poor attempts at comedy. The jokes almost all amount to ‘Haha, Anime am I right?’ with no substance and poor execution. Moments meant to be funny are often instead cringeworthy and make you want to turn the game off. - The game often kills off characters in a weak attempt at drama, attempting to add pathos to the story, however it only once gives you a reason to actually care about the character being killed. In that case, though, the character’s death is utterly pointless, and could easily have been avoided by the main protagonist simply using a power they had about 20 seconds sooner or a secondary protagonist using a power they had access to all the time, and simply didn’t use until two thirds of the way through. Every other death of a character falls entirely flat because the game simply offers no reason to care about the character who died, or because the character’s death is too sudden, or because the character's death resolves or advances nothing, or even because the character is plainly unlikable, and is often an excuse to avoid finishing character’s plotlines. This is best summarized in the fact that two characters exist in a single cutscene and bossfight and die by the end of it, though they are presented as significant for their brief existence. - In tandem with the previous point the game skips over a lot of very easy opportunities for meaningful character development in favor of nothing at all or conversations that ultimately aren’t significant. Two big examples that stick out to me are skipping Fan La Norne’s funeral and the Nightmare Sequences everyone experienced at the end besides Rex’s. - The story relies extremely heavily on the idea that withholding information from the player is a good way to generate interest and intrigue and the end result is a conflict that one cannot be invested in simply because they do not know anything that actually matters. Pyra, in spite of being introduced within the first hour of the game, has nothing of significance about her revealed to the player until the beginning of chapter 4, which will be between 25 and 40 hours later for a typical player. This means players have no actual ability to be invested in Pyra besides that she is who the player is playing as which is absolutely unacceptable. - Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is far too transparent for its own good in the broad strokes, with every single major plot event being easily predictable from hours in advance. In spite of it going out of its way to tell the player next to nothing at any given time, the plot is still easily predictable. It is horrible at hiding information from the player meaningfully. Anybody who you think will be a villain will be. Anyone who you think will be a party member is one. Anything you expect to happen absolutely will, unless it’s the actually interesting stuff. While this may seem antithetical to the idea that it leaves the player knowing nothing important for most of its plot, it is merely a testament to how uninspired the story is that the plot can be guessed so easily in spite of trying to keep the player in the dark as much as possible. - The game sets up a myriad of plot elements that simply go nowhere or are never brought up again, like the Urayan/Ardanian politics and conflict. Even some extremely important questions such as ‘Why did Pyra still have a body rather than just being a core crystal’, ‘Who is Addam’ and other, opting instead to handwave off many things that actually could use explanation with ‘That’s just how it is’. One of the most glaring is the existence of the Artifices, which the player is simply expected to accept are things that exist when they have no reason to whatsoever until literally the last hour of the game. While the game has an extraordinarily long exposition dump right before the final boss to explain the world of Alrest in truth it does next to nothing to explain the finer details of how anything in the setting works, leaving the player to simply have to accept that’s just how it is. Truly a far cry from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 which gave the player the ability to intimately understand the history, characters, quirks, relations between races and individuals, politics, and more of its setting. - The game’s final two chapters rely entirely on the player having played Xenoblade Chronicles 1 to get any significant connection to the story at this point, which is out of nowhere given the rest of the game has no such connection. This alienates player who have not experienced the first game entirely, and leaves veteran players wishing these connections were meaningful. This is because the game’s connections to Xenoblade Chronicles 1 are entirely lip service and serve no point other than to reference Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Nothing about any of these plot elements are intrinsically related to that game, and could easily be substituted for original content to help the game’s consistency. - This is a nitpick but the game extremely often uses very particular phrasing to refer to things. “This is my True Primal Power.” is an example that sticks out to me even now, yet none of these phrases actually are meaningful, nor are they ever used again. They are attempts to baselessly sound cool in a very juvenile way and are pointless, cluttering the plot with buzzwords that are truly meaningless. I genuinely and truly cannot stress enough at how bad this game’s plot is. It’s easily one of the worst plots in any game I’ve actually completed before and that deeply and truly saddens me to say. I wish I had more good to say about this game’s plot, I really do, but there’s just not really anything good to say. Some of the characters really and truly are worth it though. I adore Mòrag and Zeke and their existences are really all that let me push through this game. At the end of all of this, I guess all I really have to say is that even though I had fun with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Zeke and Mòrag and a few others are among my favorite characters in the franchise now, it has left me profoundly disappointed in a way no other game before has. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is my absolute all time favorite video game, and although this game was not nearly as bad as I was worried it might be it still was far worse than I had hoped it would have been. Having beaten the game and feeling the way I do now I feel that giving it a numerical score feels too cheap. If really pressed for one I might give this game like a 2 or 3 at best on a 10 point scale but that is far too simplified compared to how I feel. Nonetheless, I do have hope that the DLC campaign slated for fall 2018 is good. I think this game still has a spark of life and potential in it, and maybe that DLC campaign can deliver and make all of this worthwhile, but until then I cannot in my right mind recommend Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to anyone. To be a bit rude, the new anime art style this game has taken is deeply indicative of its quality. If you like shitty anime games like Senran Kagura, Disgaea, or Nitro+ Blasterz maybe this game will have something for you, but if you’re actually discerning in the quality of media you consume do not bother. Anyone calling this game a masterpiece is fooling themselves and committing a deep disservice to games actually deserving that title.

[socialmediapromotion2020]

How To Be Successful In Content Marketing As a Modern Content Creator

First let me ask you something, would you ride your pony into another town-with your items, compact discs, your craft, your books, blog entries, or projects stuffed into the knapsack tied to your shoulders-and request your substance house to house.

No. You wouldn't...

It would be irregular, fringe improper, and the 1 or 2% of individuals that may buy your substance products would almost certainly do it because of compassion.

Notwithstanding the content creator way that a significant number of us are accidentally executing a comparable technique, there IS uplifting news.

Because your substance promoting efforts have neglected to change over doesn't mean you have a terrible item, a helpless assistance, or a revile from the universe!

It in all likelihood implies that your advertising pipe has neglected to fashion the association and relationship expected to make the deal, regardless of whether the item or administration is great and important enough to your possibility to think about buying your answer.

Notwithstanding what your selling, in the advanced world, the "know, as, and trust" factor is more significant than any other time.

Because you have an item or administration settled away on a third level page canvassed in fair duplicate and checkout button, doesn't mean you have a useful advertising and deals pipe.

This is the place where the Content Marketing Process comes in to loan some assistance and have it's impact in taking your crowd from intrigued prospect to steadfast client.

Content Marketing is the means by which brands assemble a crowd of people in the advanced world. It is a CORE aptitude for Modern Content Creators, and on the off chance that you are selling substance of any kind or organization, your substance methodology and your substance advertising should be strong in the event that you need to contend in 2013 and past.

Comprehend that substance showcasing may seem like another or faddish term. A popular wave here today gone tomorrow...

Despite the fact that it's a popular expression temporary fad starting late, it's anything but another idea, yet the Modern World has made everything fair by giving the entrance and assets to achieve what wasn't ever humanly conceivable up until as of late, and it's taken a short time for everybody to make up for lost time to the "content as money" idea.

Nonetheless, there is a major distinction between the methodologies that are effective and those that are most certainly not.

Two Approaches

There are just two direct ways to deal with selling your substance on the web. (workmanship, items, administrations, instructing, information, exhortation, and so forth)

1) Send cold traffic straightforwardly to an offer... The end.

2) Send focused on traffic to important substance and assemble a connected with crowd through adding more worth and supporting a relationship, and afterward sooner or later change them into a dedicated client.

Highway two is the situation.

That is the part of substance promoting.

The 3 Shortcuts To Successful Content Marketing

As opposed to call attention to where everybody turns out badly, I'll rather plot the most noteworthy influence arrangements, or the greatest easy routes that you can coordinate into your activities, missions, and cycles to put forth your attempts more fruitful.

1) Mindset-The principal alternate route is to move toward advertising your substance with the correct mentality.

The mindset you need to grasp is that of the Modern Content Creator, and all that intrinsically infers.

A. You are an Artist/Creator AND an Entrepreneur. You accomplish the work that is important, lined up with your motivation, and serves your dedicated crowd.

B. Everything from your main goal and reason, down to each project or mission starts with Clarity + Focus. This is consistently the beginning stage. Jobs and obligations are characterized so you can explain and zero in on your most elevated worth exercises, and afterward augment them with the most noteworthy influence.

C. You are narrator AND you are a distributer. As a Modern Content Creator you are both the master/columnist, AND you are the distributer of the magazine.

D. Content promoting is best considered as a cycle. A progressing discussion with your crowd dependent on the creation and conveyance of substance that enhances their lives.

E. Think straightforward yet complex. He who can handle and teach his consideration, will discover a group of people that gives them theirs.

F. The devices are just as successful as your capacity to utilize them. I figure we can kind of underestimate once in a while exactly how magnificent the force we have readily available really is...

I frequently hear a ton of discussion about what the following NEW "thing" will be...

Some super innovation or informal community that in a split second overwhelms the world.

While ceaseless headways in science and innovation and the a remedy for malignant growth are generally energizing, investing energy pondering flying vehicles is a pointless exercise.

It's not MORE innovation we need, it's the need to utilize the instruments we have BETTER.

Think as far as authority.

2) Message to Market Match

Content is relative, and being pertinent is progressively more troublesome across our uproarious advanced channels.

With the correct mentality, your message to showcase coordinate is the following most significant thing you CAN'T get off-base.

Tragically, for certain individuals it will be simpler to communicate in your crowds language than others. Yet, the substance of being a Modern Content Creator is the advanced comprehension of being both Creator/Artist, AND Entrepreneur.

This implies that you are making, making, giving things that are significant to you, yet additionally important to other people! A ton of the further inclining innovative sorts I work with must be helped to remember the way that their is a whole range of abilities and set-up of pioneering duties that should be coordinated and very much oversaw on the off chance that you need to locate that wonderful equilibrium of unending opportunity and satisfaction doing what you love.

... You need to adore what you do, and you ALSO need a crowd of people who loves how you help them!

The inalienable CREATIVE resources for Artist/Expert and Personal Brands can and should most DEFINITELY be applied in discovering this equilibrium, yet comprehend that an "on the off chance that you assemble it they will come mentality is hazardous."

Gotta offer some benefit. Genuine worth. Gotta understand what that worth is. This all requires understanding the most basic parts of promoting, which is truly compelling correspondence to a characterized target crowd or persona.

This expression and each believable stage is littered across the web. Maybe on the grounds that it is so extremely fundamental, thus regularly referenced that a significant number of us basically bypass the inalienable ramifications to offering that expression noteworthy and measured.

You must be altogether investigated and engaged with your commercial center. That is all. You need to know's who at the best degree of profundity to deal with that precarious equilibrium of tuning in to what your crowd is stating, and understanding where you can add to the gathering, in a significant and very much situated way.

You need to know the situating of those all around dynamic in your space so you can characterize YOUR Unique Value Positioning.

It's an equilibrium, and it's the way to finding your voice, regardless of whether that is as a position, or as a columnist or lover...

In the event that you haven't done top to bottom statistical surveying, on the off chance that you don't have the foggiest idea about the top websites, names, discussions, brands, holes, in your market; than it will be MUCH harder to cut your own space successfully.

Dazzle wounds in obscurity can now and then work out in the event that you maintain a strategic distance from the sharks, know the ideal individuals, and need to surrender your vocation to karma. I realize that master coaches/item makers who might view themselves as astute to this and unwittingly point their nose up at those "uninformed craftsman/performer types," while they, at the end of the day, don't even truly comprehend their market at the level i'm discussing.

You don't have to dive this deep with your market to be fruitful. No. In any case, when you do, there is in a real sense MANY alternatives and courses you could seek after in light of the fact that by then you can see all the holes, you KNOW the market and who's in it.

Presently, on the off chance that you're as of now a specialist, as are a large portion of my customers, at that point it's more a matter of dialing into the discussions and expounding on the most important issues, concerns, arrangements, that exist inside your locale.

It's not just about your own thoughts, or essentially expounding on what you want to expound on... Preferably you'd connect both so you are composing something significant for you, however that is most importantly addressing the persona you are meaning to reach, and does as such in an applicable and connecting way...

That seems like such nonexclusive counsel, however it's the name of game. As Brian Clark from Copyblogger showed carefully in a new meeting I heard, it's more about tuning in to your crowd, than talking at them.

3) Integrated Content Strategy: - Build an Intelligent Marketing Funnel

Pretty much each and every one of my customers, upon introductory admission, come to me with the accompanying:

They've set up their data item, workmanship, book, program, CD or administration on an internal level page (2-3-4) with some nice however generally nonexclusive duplicate and pictures.

Their web traffic is negligible, not followed, and has a system that is regularly flawed if adequately characterized or planned by any stretch of the imagination.

Presently, I trust none of them disapprove of this; I'm not saying it to tease them, however to all the more likely represent my point for you. (they will be all JUST fine;)

However, this is certainly not a successful promoting pipe.

Notwithstanding, subsequent to noting the fundamental yet indispensable inquiries for figuring out what to state and who to express it to, distinguishing the best correspondence designs, choosing the correct circulation channels, it's simply test, measure, and refine...

I figure it tends to be hard to think as far as a promoting arrangement for some, and it requires a generous measure of exertion and energy for me to draw the groupings out in my mind, move it onto paper and afterward actualize it.

Exclusively On Fiverr By  saravlad

However, the missing connection for the larger part that I can see-is an absence of incorporated system for thoroughly considering and delineating your promoting channel and creating the best, best USER experience you can. To know more visit the official website http://bit.ly/39icCwd

[pujameditationadvice]

Recuperating Meditations and Exercises

A large portion of us need recuperating of some sort. We are altogether tormented by our own negative musings, by sickness and damage, at any rate every now and then. Regardless of whether you officially ruminate or not, there are basic recuperating contemplations and mending practices you can without much of a stretch do - that can have amazing outcomes. As a volunteer for the Distant Healing Network, I regularly recommend simple activities or basic recuperating contemplations that can bring a full and enduring mending. Regularly we need to rehash the reflections and the recuperating is progressive - yet not generally. At times it is prompt.

Straightforward Affirmations and Visualizations

Our contemplations, our thoughts and sentiments about ourselves and our general surroundings - will show. In this way, one of the primary issues we face - particularly on the off chance that we have had a long haul sickness or damage - is getting caught in the idea that we are debilitated or harmed. This idea that we are harmed or sick can keep us wiped out or harmed, or can cause new disease and damage.

Now and then these negative considerations about ourselves are not in any case cognizant in us - fundamentally we have quite recently after some time become used to being wiped out or harmed. To antitoxin these negative considerations, cognizant or not, we state certifications, for example we put positive considerations in their place. In the event that you have polished this strategy before, you may find that you need just to state your confirmation a couple of times to reestablish harmony and wellbeing. Initially, be that as it may, you may need to state them ordinarily every day, and over a significant stretch of time.

It is essential to keep your assertion short and straightforward, uncomplicated. In the event that the issue is passionate, pick an attestation of the contrary positive feeling. For example, on the off chance that you experience the ill effects of melancholy, your assertion could be, "Bliss, happiness, euphoria". In the event that you are inclined to outrage or dread or anxiety, you could state, "Harmony, harmony, harmony". Or on the other hand, "Quiet, quiet, quiet." Or, "I am the spirit". Or on the other hand, "I am (a being of) Radiant Light". You will know whether you have picked the right expression to state - in light of the fact that you will locate the quiet or harmony or euphoria you have been looking for.

In the event that the issue is a physical one, the cure is comparable: "I am totally solid and upbeat", or, "I am totally mended" - and afterward picture it. See yourself filled and encompassed with the Divine Light, completely mended, solid and cheerful. Attempt to likewise feel it, what it felt like to be completely solid and glad, or potentially unharmed. I simply did this activity for a moment or two prior today - and as opposed to being level on my back with influenza, I am currently at the PC joyfully composing this Journal section. What we people call "marvels" - frequently are only a basic change in our reasoning.

Basic Prayers

Continuously request a total and enduring mending, and in that solicitation deep down include "On the off chance that it is Thy Will". What's more, consistently state "Thank you", regardless of whether you are completely recuperated at this point - or not. Supernatural occurrences once in a while occur on the off chance that you hold up until after a wonder happens to state, "Much obliged". Keep your petitions basic, they don't need to be intricate. You don't need to list everything that distresses you. Simply request a total and enduring mending, and afterward state, "Much obliged." It is frequently a smart thought to offer something consequently, some great deed or petitions - however this isn't generally essential. At the point when we put our full trust in God, our supplications are constantly replied - in manners that are best for our very own spirit and the spirits of others.

At the point when I need assistance or recuperating - I approach Everyone I can consider. You can approach the holy messengers, God, holy people, Our Lady, Her Divine Son - on any Divine Being. In the event that you are approaching the holy people for help, you don't have to know their names or which holy person to approach. Essentially request the holy person that can recuperate you, whoever the individual in question may be - and they will come. The equivalent for the heavenly attendants. Simply surrender it all over to God, believe that whoever you need will be sent to you. We people will in general confuse even the least complex of things, and we figure we should do everything ourselves - when in truth Divine powers are behind both our generally inconsequential and our most noteworthy accomplishments.

What's more, this may sound odd - yet at times the best healings come to us when we are petitioning God for other people. The primary mystery to Divine Healing is in extending our association with God. Our Lady, in Medjugorje, has said that we should all pick our very own otherworldly Path and afterward do our absolute best on it. That we should make God the exceptionally focal point of our lives.

In the event that we do this, at that point when we go to God and the other Divine Beings for help, the channel between us is as of now open and unadulterated. Something else, when we need assistance, we should invest valuable time and vitality first opening overwhelming, thick entryways that different us from God and His radiant position of royalty. In some cases we can't open the entryways - some of the time they have been shut for such a long time, they can't open aside from with extraordinary trouble. On the off chance that we are accustomed to going to God for even the littlest subtleties of our lives, at that point it is easy to discover Him when we are in torment or in trouble.

There was a man who composed Our Lady a letter every night. After certain years he chose to quit, thinking it a silly thing. One of the visionaries in Medjugorje, after a nebulous vision of Our Lady, reported that Our Blessed Mother had a message for somebody there. The message was that the man ought not quit keeping in touch with Her letters every night, Our Lady anticipated them. We should all compose God letters, each snapshot of consistently.

Ramana's Exercise

The Indian Sage Ramana Maharshi said that our first and last slip-up is thinking we are the physical body. As far as mending of the body, when we recollect that we are not the physical body we have made the main large stride towards recuperating. The spirit isn't debilitated or harmed, just the physical body is. At the point when we recollect that we are the Radiant soul, we are remaining in our actual Selves. What's more, the Radiance of the spirit, the Divine Light that is the spirit - can recuperate the physical body. In evident mending, the physical body is mixed with the Light of the spirit. Then again, in the event that we think we are simply the physical body, we can get detained in it - alongside its sicknesses and wounds. Our own musings will detain us.

Ramana's activity is to deep down ask: "Who is wiped out (or harmed)?" We answer: "I am." Then we ask: "Who am I?" The appropriate response is: "I am the spirit" or "I am Radiant Light". You can do this activity either with your eyes shut or open, albeit by and large it is simpler with your eyes closed. In the end, the inquiry, "Who is wiped out (or harmed)?" may be sufficient, there will be no compelling reason to state the remainder of the activity, the spirit will introduce itself to you significantly after the underlying inquiry, "Who is debilitated?".

This training can work for any ailment, damage - or negative feeling. On the off chance that you are furious, ask: "Who is irate?" If miserable, "Who is dismal?" The appropriate response is consistently the equivalent: "I am Radiant Light" or "I am the spirit".

Straightforward Healing Meditations

These contemplation practices are additionally sheltered, extremely incredible, and can have astonishing outcomes:

1. Perhaps the most straightforward short contemplations we can do is to just ask that the Divine, Healing, Radiant Light be sent to each cell of our body. Close your eyes and picture it. You can do this activity for a couple of moments a few times every day, or for as long as twenty minutes or all the more on more than one occasion every day. Now and then once is sufficient, for example you are recuperated subsequent to doing this activity the absolute first time.

We can likewise do this for other people, by internally imaging them and going them to the Radiant Divine Light. Regardless of whether we do this for just a couple of moments, a few times each day, it will bring recuperating - regularly a total mending for that individual. Every one of these activities will work better on the off chance that you earnestly approach God or Divine Beings to support you. One of my 'understudies' as of late did this specific exercise for her serious and difficult physical issues. She additionally approached each Divine Being she could consider to help her as she did the activity - and was supernaturally recuperated inside a couple of moments. I feel compelled to pressure this as much as possible: we are on the whole Healers. It is just a matter of the profundity of our Love and Compassion for every aware being and the profundity and broadness of our Trust in God.

2. Two all the more mending reflections:

Exercise I

Sit in a seat with your back straight and tenderly catch your hands, with your feet on the floor. (In the event that you can't sit up, rests on your back, with your arms at your sides.) Try to clear your psyche of musings. Request direction, edification and Healing. You can approach God or a particular strict figure in the event that you wish. Ask that you be filled and encompassed by the Divine, Healing Love that is the Divine, that is God. Picture the Divine Healing Light entering from the highest point of your head, filling each molecule of your body and afterward likewise encompassing you. Lounge in it. Deep down say some short expression, for example, "I am the spirit" or "I am brilliant Light", more than once, as you picture the Light fill and encompass you. Attempt to do this for 10 to 20 minutes. On the off chance that you are resting, envision the Light encompassing and filling you from over your inclined body.

Exercise II

You can likewise do the above envisioning yourself absolutely solid, restored and doing things that you love to do. In this activity see yourself cheerful and brilliant, made of Light. This activity could be shorter, 3-5 minutes. Also, you can do it more than once per day, as well as join it with reflection practice I. I propose that you attempt every one of the activities above and afterward choose which is best for you healing meditation. You additionally may locate that some recuperating activities or contemplations work best for specific illnesses or wounds. I have witnessed marvels with every one of them, they are generally extremely amazing - none of them appear to be less powerful than some other. In any case, every one of us must discover what works best in every circumstance, where our hearts are. With a touch of experimentation you should locate the best one for you.

I propose that you attempt every one of the activities above and afterward choose which is best for you. You additionally may locate that some recuperating activities or contemplations work best for specific illnesses or wounds. I have witnessed marvels with every one of them, they are generally extremely amazing - none of them appear to be less powerful than some other. In any case, every one of us must discover what works best in every circumstance, where our hearts are. With a touch of experimentation you should locate the best one for you.

[midsummerreads-archive]

Author & Event Spotlight

The Event: Nemesis Book Launch

Where: Barnes and Noble at the Arboretum, Charlotte NC When: Tuesday, March 21 Who: Brendan Reichs and Renée Ahdieh

This was by far one of the most original panel discussions I’ve ever attended for a book launch, and it might be one of my favorites!  Brendan came prepared with a list of random questions for him and Renée to start off the event.  Those in attendance were treated to a lively conversation where we learned that Brendan’s least favorite word is Pamphlet and Renée’s is one that rhymes with “oist,” although I think everyone dislikes that word (not just you, Brad!).  Both authors told about their Hogwarts houses, Brendan apparently tried to rig the quiz to get Gryffindor, but still ended up a Ravenclaw (Yaaaaas!) with an Eagle Owl patronus (#Same).  Renée is a proud Slytherin, who used to lie about being a Gryffindor, apparently a very Slytherin thing to do and the patronus of a rat, which she is fine with because Ratatouille.

My favorite part of this part was that after asking the audience to choose a number between 1 and 50, they took turns reading a small snippet from each other’s newest releases to the crowd. Someone hollered out 23, so I got this part on video for everyone! They then followed up with a brief summary of their inspiration for these books and what they are about. You can definitely tell these two are good friends and are hilarious together.

After asking each other a few rounds of questions about their books, Brendan was equipped with a Polar Express Conductors hat full of random rapid fire questions for himself and Renée, and coincidentally, those of us in the front row. Some of these conductor questions included Magic Wand or Light Saber, Hogwarts Headmaster or Starfleet Captian, Ghost or Ghostbuster, Prehistoric Times or the year 3010, and on and on.  It was pretty fun and I think it allowed the audience to feel more engaged, although I’m a bit partial since I was able to do the participating.

Brendan and Renée then signed books for the crowd (and there was an impressive one!).  Check out more photos below sprinkled between my interview with the star of the evening, Brendan Reichs!

Midsummer Reads (MSNR): Thanks so much for sitting down with me, are you excited?

Brendan Reichs (BR): I’ve very excited, tonight is the first night I’ve ever done a book event for Nemesis, so it’s a big deal.

MSNR: Yes! And it’s in your hometown.

BR: It is, it’s fun to do it at home. It’s actually a little nerve wracking to do it at home just because you know a lot of people in the audience, so it’s not like having that distance you have with a normal crowd, but it’ll be great.

MSNR: Are a lot of people you know coming?

BR: Uh, they better.

MSNR: That’s how I would be; Uh, I’d better see you or someone’s going to get hurt.

BR: I’m taking names.

MSNR: So this book is super complex.

BR: It is.

MSNR: I was reading it and I was like, SO MANY THINGS HAPPENING. Could you describe it in one sentence to a reader?

BR: I actually try. That’s why it was so hard to actually sell the idea because trying to describe it was too crazy to get it into one sentence. Basically…

MSNR (interrupting because I’m rude): You can describe it in a run-on sentence

BR: I would describe Nemesis as Min is a girl at 16 years old and every two years on her birthday she is murdered by the same person except she doesnt die like a normal person, instead she wakes up about a half a mile away without a scratch on her every single time. So on her 16th birthday after she’s been murdered for the 5th time she’s finally had enough and decides she needs to figure this out.  No one is really paying attention to her because there’s this world wide calamity going on where there’s an asteroid heading towards the planet and no one knows when it’s going to hit. And there’s this bit national/international human existence story going on. So there’s very little attention being paid to the trials of a teenager in Idaho.

MSNR (Interrupting, again, because I’m the worst): Right, because no one pays attention to teenagers.

BR: Right, exactly. And there’s another character, and this book has been fun because it’s the first time I’ve written a male point of view in my career, so Noah is having the same things happen to him except that he’s a little bit less stable than Min.  He’s a – kind of one of those guys that on the outside he – he’s a rich kid and she’s a poor kid – he’s trying to keep everything together but really he is a mess. Because he’s been having the same thing happen to him but he doesn’t trust himself to know that it’s even real. So these two things are happening and they eventually decide and they start to investigate that everyone around them starts to be suddenly implicated and you can’t trust anyone. And they find out that they might be at the center of a vast government conspiracy that may implicate all life on Earth.

MSNR: That is a big run on sentence. I’m okay with it.

BR: Yes, it is.

MSNR: So when I was reading it, I found it to be kind of a commentary on human emotion and the way that human nature really plays into the certain aspects of the two characters, specifically, and how they react to this outside force that’s coming onto them.  Very much like Lord of the Flies, like, they are put in this situation, how are they going to react?

BR: That is an essential influence, and I think the publisher likes to use the tagline of “Orphan Black meets Lord of the Flies,” which is an interesting combination, but there’s no good parallel anyway. But that’s what you want and I appreciate that you say that, because you want the story to be about the characters. Ultimately there’s a lot of plot going on in this book and if you stick with it it will all unwind itself, but it winds up pretty heavily at the beginning where you’re not really supposed to know what the hell is going on for a large portion of the book, and then it’s really good that it’s supposed to be centered on the characters because ultimately that’s where every story either fails or survives is on how good the characters are, because the best plot in the world doesn’t survive if you don’t care what happens. So I spent a lot of time trying to put the characters together, I hate the term strong female protagonist because that implies that your female antagonist has to be masculine or different in a way, you know, I just like to think of her as a strong person, and it shouldn’t be noteworthy that she is female, and it was interesting to get to write a male character’s perspective, although I’ve not read the entire breadth of YA, but I’d never read a YA where the male lead was basically kind of a mess.

(Literally this whole time I’m nodding my head and agreeing, because Brendan has taken over the interview **in a good way**) 

BR (continued): So i thought that would be fun because that’s normally assigned to a female character, so you get to overcome their internal difficulties, which can be boring, but what if this is a 15 to 16 year old boy who is putting the good face out there but doesn’t really have an idea of what he is doing with his life. I mean what is happening to him and stuff. So that was the motivation for that. If you like the characters then that’s exactly what I’m about.

MSNR: I actually assigned them songs: Um, I put Min as being very much like Titanium by David Guetta and Sia.

BR: That’s very good.

MSNR: And then I put Noah as more of the Bleachers, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, um, Jack Antonoff, and it’s called I Wanna Get Better. It’s about mental health and screaming at himself “I wanna get better,” I want to be better than this, and that’s kind of exactly how I see Noah.

BR: Somewhere in the blogosphere (*waves* hey everyone!) there’s a, and I believe it’s for YA Highway, I’d have to look it up, but I did make two playlists. On the Min Playlist, the first song is a Halsey song, because when I listened to her album that just clicked to me, I was like, this is that kind of angry but not a pushover type vibe that I was getting. Like she was pissed off and isolated, but she’s also not asking for favors.

MSNR: Which I really like. Because sometimes girls are perceived as being, you know, weak and asking for help a lot. At least in the South, which is what I grew up with.

BR: And there’s some great YA being written right now with female lead characters, so this is in no way sort of any genre defining effort, just that in the beginning the came fully formed to me, and that she would be isolated and damaged by what had happened to her, but NEVER broken by it. Just that she’s a fighter and she stays that way even though it does have it’s affects. YOu know she acts like she has no friends..

MSNR: Awe, but I like Tack though. Even though he never knows when to shut up.

BR: No, he doesn’t And Tack is sort of my character, and every one of my books that I write, there’s basically one character that’s sort of me talking through the book, you know what I would say in each situation, because I’m kind of a smart ass that doesn’t know when to be quiet either, and that’s sort of Tack in this book.  He’s basically saying the things that I would be saying when I shouldn’t be, you know, running my mouth.

MSNR: Honestly there’s a little bit of all of us in Tack, probably, especially when we were teenagers and never knowing quite when to be quiet.

THIS IS THE SPOT WHERE WE TALK ABOUT SPOILERY THINGS. 

PROMISED BRENDAN IT WOULD BE OFF THE RECORD *SINGS* LALALALALALA

BR: This was the last piece that fell into place for the book. I’m a big planner and when you write books like this that are so plot oriented they have to make sense and you have to keep track of what’s happening.

Matchy-matchy!

MSNR: So let’s just refer to it as “The Twist,” so where you plotting the book and then “the twist,” fell in or you were influenced by outside research?

BR: Most of the time the best ideas that come to me when I’m writing come to me about 2/3rds of the way through the first draft. This is when I’ve been living with the idea for about two months, and I’ll wake up one day, and typically in the shower, it will come to me and will have connected overnight. And this was one of the last pieces to come in and it was really three book ideas that all really came together in this crazy boo, which is why it’s so overbaked in terms of that there’s so much in it and because I had all this stuff and I managed to slot it all in together.

MSNR: I know, but I like that it has so much in it because it keeps you on your toes. I literally had to put it down to go to sleep, and I was so concerned about trying to figure out what was happening!

BR: And this is the stuff that I like to read…

Renée Ahdieh (RA)  shows up being adorable: Totally crashing!

MSNR: Hi, how are you!

RA: Good, how are you?

MSNR: Good!

RA (to BR): What’s up, how are you feeling?

BR: Good, good.

MSNR: This is weird, but you smell really good. (I still think this is weird but I had to keep this in haha)

BR: She always smells good, it’s a signature.

RA (wanders away, being fabulous): *laughing at us* I do like that.

MSNR: So, I’m not going to lie. The guy in the black suit? I totally pictured him as Agent Smith from the Matrix the whole time, and maybe that’s because I grew up with the Matrix, but yeah.

BR: No, that’s fair. And for our generation it would be an Agent Smith type- I mean- for me he looks a little different. Although for me, and this is probably not something I should admit to an audience, but I find the way the character looks, and in the book I’m consistent in the way the character looks but in my head that’s never how the character looks.  it’s just a weird dissonance that no one’s ever called out before because no one knows what things look like in my head.

MSNR: In my head he looked like Agent Smith.

BR: Right, for me he’s more of a Guy Pierce, but yeah you know it’s like a flat hair, flat face individual. And I just finished drafting the second draft of the sequel…

MSNR: So we are going to learn more about the project?

BR: It gets darker and deeper and a lot of the Lord of the Flies aspects are really going to come to the fore, because one of the questions I was dealing with was, the main premise, which was that I wanted to fight the finality of death, and what if death was not final; but not in like a zombie way or a ghost way or a resurrection way, but legitimately if it just didn’t work. Like, you died but you didn’t.

MSNR: As long as Tack isn’t Piggy the whole time.

BR: Right. Well, there’s a lot of, and you know I read Lord of the Flies, and you realize only two people die in that.

MSNR: Yes, but you get it.

BR: But they played it and it’s so beautifully written and you get their dissent. And with my book, I’m hoping to get that same thing, but also that a lot of people die. Because you know with Min’s experience in this book, death has not been permanent and that is such a central question. How would you deal with that? How do you deal with the idea that something that you know should be the end of something isnt? And you can’t really control it?

MSNR: I think the last question I have for you, because I don’t want to keep you too long, is that why you decided to do it on their birthdays, and you know not on…

BR: That is a question that will be revealed, and there’s a lot of little detail strings that are still out there and that’s because you don’t really know at the end of Nemesis, what is next. This book leads you to a point, but it doesn’t take you past that.  And a careful reader would ask themselves, “wait, why was this happening,” but I haven’t gotten to that yet.  That’s a great answer. You know if I didn’t answer it, “Oh, it’s in book 2!” And then I’m like, will you write that down and send it to me? Just in case I made a mistake.

MSNR: When can we expect book two?

BR: Uh, it should be a year. I mean I’m putting in the drafts now so I expect roughly the same time next year.  You know, we don’t have much say. I really like Spring releases, which you never know, but I assume it would be next spring.

MSNR: Well, thank you so much for talking with me!

BR: No, thank you so much.

MSNR: It was so good to meet you in person!

BR: Good to meet you too, and I’ll see you..

MSNR: Yep, you’ll see me in a few minutes!

  A huge and special thanks to Brendan Reichs, Penguin Teen, and Renée Ahdieh for the event on March 21.

Nemesis is available NOW! Go pick up a copy.

    Author & Event Spotlight was originally published on A Midsummer Night's Read

[recentanimenews]

My Week in Manga: February 6-February 12, 2017

My News and Reviews

Last week at Experiments in Manga I posted the Bookshelf Overload for January–it was kind of a strange month for manga and other media acquisitions for me, but it wasn’t as absurd as December so at least my wallet’s a little happier. I also managed to finish my draft for February’s in-depth review, so I should have that cleaned up and posted sometime later this week.

Last week I came across a few interesting things online related to queer manga, comics, and other media. Massive has now released Jiraiya’s Two Hoses in English, a manga telling the story of “The Greatest Couple,” characters who were initially designed for the company as part of its launch. (Massive has released Jiraiya’s Caveman Guu manga, too, which was subsequently collected in the excellent anthology Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It.)

I haven’t had a chance to actually listen to it yet, but the most recent ANNCast focused on LGBT representation in manga and anime with guests Erica Friedman, Jason Thompson, and Valerie Complex. Friedman also visited the University of Michigan back in January to discuss queer manga. The recording of her presentation Alt Manga, Queer Manga: Telling Our Own Stories is now available to watch on YouTube.

There were a few Kickstarter campaigns that caught my attention last week as well. First and foremost, Chromatic Press is raising funds to release the final volume of Lianne Sentar’s series Tokyo Demons in print, produce a revised edition of the first novel, as well as reprint the other books in the series. It isn’t a secret that I am a huge fan of the series, so I definitely want to see the project succeed. Tabula Idem is a great-looking tarot-themed queer comics anthology with an accompanying queer-themed major arcana tarot deck. I’m not very familiar with most of the artists involved, but Kaiju (whose comics I greatly enjoy) is contributing the cover illustration. Pamela Kotila has also launched a campaign to print the second volume of the webcomic Spidersilk. Though I haven’t actually read it yet, I recently picked up the first volume so this project seems to be aptly-timed.

Quick Takes

The Ancient Magus’ Bride, Volumes 4-6 by Kore Yamazaki. It’s been a little while since I’ve read The Ancient Magus’ Bride but that’s not because I don’t like the manga. In fact, it’s quite the opposite–The Ancient Magus’ Bride is actually one of my favorite series currently being released in English. I simply wanted to have a whole stack of volumes to read all at once. (Also worth noting: The first printing of Volume 6 is even accompanied by a special booklet with an additional comic!) Somehow, I had managed to forget just how much I enjoy The Ancient Magus’ Bride. I love its moody atmosphere and setting, beautiful artwork, and intriguing characters. Elias remains something of an enigma although parts of his past have now been revealed. He isn’t particularly happy about this development, though. Likewise, more is known about Chise, too, although she is still hesitant to share. The relationship dynamics in The Ancient Magus’ Bride are somewhat peculiar but remain compelling. Most of the characters in the manga are struggling with some sort of heartbreaking loneliness or feelings of isolation. To see them slowly drawing closer together, forming bonds of friendship, family, and love is immensely satisfying.

Mr. Mini Mart by Junko. Although the boys’ love manga Mr. Mini Mart was released in English first, my introduction to Junko’s work was through the series Kiss Him, Not Me. Because I was enjoying that series, I made a point to track down a copy of Mr. Mini Mart which for a time had gone out-of-print. (It’s more-or-less back in print again, but the manga seems to only be available directly from Juné Manga’s online store.) I forget why I initially passed on Mr. Mini Mart but I’m very glad that I finally got around to reading it. Mr. Mini Mart collects two boys’ love stories. Most of the volume is devoted to the titular “Mr. Mini Mart” but a short, unrelated one-shot manga “Young Scrubs” is included as well. It’s not nearly as good, though. “Mr. Mini Mart” is wonderful and surprisingly sweet. The story follows the high-school-aged Nakaba who, after an unfortunate incident in middle school, has been living as a shut-in. He gets finally gets out of the house when his uncle gives him a job at his store, but Nakaba has a difficult time getting along with his coworker Yamai and his abrasive personality. I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for a sensitive tough guy and it turns out that Yamai is an amazing example of one and is just a great person in general.

The Seven Princes of the Thousand-Year Labyrinth, Volume 1 written by Yu Aikawa and illustrated by Haruno Atori. I really wanted to like the first volume of The Seven Princes of the Thousand-Year Labyrinth more than I actually did. The basic premise is intriguing. A group of some of the kingdom’s most noteworthy, and in some cases most notorious, citizens wake up to find themselves trapped together in an elaborately booby-trapped castle. (The exception is the protagonist Ewan whose only distinguishing characteristics are his trusting nature, inherent kindness, and the fact that he’s from the kingdom’s most remote island.) The assumption is that whoever manages to survive the ordeal will become the kingdom’s emperor and reigning lords. There is a ton of potential in this set up, but The Seven Princes of the Thousand-Year Labyrinth simply didn’t work for me. Mostly I think it’s because the characters all come across as types rather than well-rounded individuals. What’s more is that they don’t even feel like they should all be a part of the same series; I found this lack of cohesiveness to be frustrating. The artwork is pretty, though, if not especially distinctive and there are plenty of plot twists, too.

Tomie by Junji Ito. Although uncommon, license rescues aren’t particularly rare, but Ito’s horror series Tomie is one of the very few manga to have been released in English by three different publishers. Most recently, Viz Media has collected the entire series in a single, massive tome with over seven hundred forty pages. The translation used is the same as the one in Dark Horse’s Museum of Terror series which I own, but I couldn’t resist the deluxe, hardcover treatment the volume received to match Viz’s other recent re-releases of Ito’s manga. Tomie was actually Ito’s award-winning professional debut and began serialization in 1987 in a shoujo magazine. The manga is largely episodic although there may be several chapters devoted to a single story arc and later stories sometimes make passing references to earlier ones. What ties the series together is the presence of Tomie, a beautiful young woman who is seemingly immortal. Time and again men fall desperately in love with Tomie and are eventually overcome by a desire to murder and dismember her. Not only does Tomie survive, she regenerates and multiplies, and so the horror continues. While not as mind-bendingly bizarre as some of Ito’s later works, Tomie is still weird, horrifying, gruesome, and grotesque.

By: Ash Brown

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How Healing Shame Can Save Our World

Personal growth includes recognizing the many faces of shame and how this hard-to-detect emotion holds us back. The gnawing sense that something is wrong with us keeps us roaming in a trance of unworthiness and self-doubt. A deep sense of being flawed and defective saps our joy and spontaneity.

But have you ever wondered how shame plays out on the larger world stage? Understanding the extent to which political leaders are secretly driven by shame and use shame to steal our vote can shed new light on the hidden ways that this insidious emotion infects today’s political landscape.

It is difficult to directly observe the shame that politicians carry. It’s challenging enough to notice how it lives inside ourselves! But we can notice the effects of shame–how it gets acted out–as a clue to its silent operation. Now more than ever, it’s important to understand what makes people tick rather than judge and shame them, which incites more reactivity, anger, and mutual blame.

Observing politicians of any persuasion, we often encounter those who display an arrogance and know-it-all attitude. At first glance, we might view them as the supremely confident leader who’s got the right stuff to rescue us. But history is littered with fallen leaders whose projection of power and confidence won elections (Hitler, Mussolini, Marcos), but who turned out to be self-serving dictators who cared more about power than people.

Arrogance is driven by shame. When shame looms large–oftentimes due to being brutally shamed growing up–it becomes so overwhelming that our organism has a way of dissociating from it. Some people get depressed as a result of this curious capacity for self-protection. We can observe their somberness, pessimism, or low energy, but not the shame that drives it.

Others become arrogant as a compensation for a shame that is also difficult to see–and which they don’t allow themselves to feel. They bluster, bristle, bully, and intimidate. And there’s a palpable anger that grabs our attention, especially if we are also angry at the “system” or carry some ill-defined anger toward something or somebody. Clever politicians have a way of mobilizing our discontent, then directing it in a way that serves them, not us.

It may seem like a stretch to suggest that loud, self-praising politicians carry a secret shame. But to a large extent, such individuals are raging against their own shame–their inner sense of powerlessness and their fear of failing, which would frustrate their desire for admiration. We may notice their narcissistic penchant to take up lots of space. But what’s hard to spot is their inner fragility and emptiness.

A telltale sign of a shame-driven person is a disinterest in sharing power, compromising, or acknowledging mistakes or uncertainty. When shame rules, they can’t afford any display of vulnerability. They become masters of manipulation. They evoke fear and insecurity with half-truths or untruths and then designate themselves as the hero who will cure the ills that they eloquently exaggerate or manufacture. This is a common tale throughout history.

Anger and Shame: Secret Bedfellows

People who carry a lot of anger are often unaware of its true source. As children, we’re vulnerable. We desperately seek love and acceptance in order to thrive. Some unfortunate children get a particularly hefty dose of conditioning (rewards and punishments) from well-meaning parents to attain worldly success, money, or fame as the price of love and acceptance (and from the relief of being shamed for not excelling). Rather than being valued for their inherent preciousness, these children are ridiculed and cajoled to create a false self to present to the world.

The drive to win and succeed may go beyond the simple desire to support and protect their family; it becomes a life and death struggle to prove their worth and rail against the inner demon of unworthiness. When they fail at something, they’re overwhelmed by shame. They can’t relax into simply being human–having limitations and imperfections like everyone else—and be okay with that. There’s too much shame to embrace humility; they’re invested in being special.

The tragic twist is that for some people, their fabricated self begins to feel like their authentic self. This may lead to what is called a personality disorder—in short, when having a distorted self-view feels natural. They succumb to a devil’s bargain to win adulation and some semblance of love and belonging. But sadly, by clinging to a hardened and rigid self, they pay the price of losing their own soul.

Perilously, such individuals (whether here or abroad) who seek positions of leadership unwittingly spread their silent misery to others. They stoke fear and anger to gather allies and cover up the shame of feeling inferior. Rather than viewing empathy and compassion as strengths, they may characterize these qualities as mere sentimentality that has little place in their cold view of the world.

Shame-based anger is a heat-seeking missile searching for a target. The shame that is too threatening to feel gets transferred to others, such as ethnic groups or other nations. Through scathing criticisms and blame, they make others feel the shame that they’re unwilling to face within themselves.

Shame-driven people lash-out when they feel shame. Simply observe their impulsive threats or rants when criticized. But it’s their own shame—the possibility of being wrong or flawed–that’s really driving them crazy. Having scant inner resources for allowing and processing it, they immediately go to anger as a bulwark against an unbearable shame.

Anger is a seductive energy. It can be used by an authoritarian leader not only to cover up their own shame, but also to harness other people’s anger and “empower” them to cover up their shame, whether from their history or from a legitimately difficult life. People may applaud such a “leader” for giving voice to the deep resentment they also feel. So we’re seeing a gathering storm of wailing individuals, but no real solutions to the enormously complex problems we face. In fact, problems often worsen without an appreciation for nuance and complexity.

Keeping Pace with Psychological Manipulation

Democracy depends upon having an educated electorate. Informed decisions can only be based on facts and truth. Those of any political persuasion who claim to love democracy are actually putting democracy at risk whenever they shamelessly distort the truth and assault their opponent’s character rather than courageously expose their own positions.

The founding fathers could never have anticipated the advent of mass media and how truths get spun and twisted through sophisticated methods of psychological manipulation–and how a ratings-driven media goes along for the ride by giving airtime to the most creatively outrageous characters.

Keeping pace with such unprecedented manipulation and dirty tricks means revisiting what it means to have an educated electorate, which would provide some immunity to such manipulation. This includes ratcheting up awareness of simple psychological principles, such as realizing how we’re prone to manipulation, shedding light on how shame operates, and recognizing how politicians who fan fears and shame their opponents are being driven by something other than good will.

A more psychologically aware electorate would be attuned to the smell of manipulation. There would be more awareness of when we’re being swept into a fear-driven, addictive media frenzy. There would be a growing awareness of who appears to be seeking power as compensation for their poor self-worth. There would be more appreciation for transparent politicians who have the integrity and wisdom to deal with issues that have complexity, even if such leaders are a little boring.

If I appear to be asking too much of the public to become more psychologically savvy, take comfort: having an advanced degree in psychology isn’t required to have an intact bs detector.

Myopic Leadership

Shame creates a myopic brand of leadership that encourages its followers to cling to a narrow identity, whether to an extreme nationalism, an ethnic, racial, or religious identity—or being part of the 1% who control most of the wealth. Today’s world is seeing a proliferation of extremist ideologies driven by fear, ignorance, and insecurity. Such narrow clinging weds us to a self-identity devoid of tolerance and compassion, which sets a stage for conflict and war.

Seeking solace in a limiting identification tears us away from our humanity and the simple truth of our interconnectedness. The awareness that we share one small planet—that there is one environment that we need to cherish and protect—just as we need to treasure the vulnerable self that has gone into hiding through a barrage of shaming—is vital to our very survival.

I’m more trusting of politicians who reveal their limitations, acknowledge mistakes, and show vulnerability–and who have the humility to put scientific discoveries (even inconvenient ones) ahead of their own self-comforting beliefs and fantasies. It is noteworthy that the Dali Lama, the Nobel prize winning leader of Tibetan Buddhists, has declared that if science makes discoveries that conflict with Buddhism, then Buddhism needs to change–not science. Refreshingly, the Dali Lama is not paralyzed by the shame of being wrong.

Many Americans are being swept into despair and hopelessness. But new hope can dawn with the growth of understanding and increased awareness of what makes people do what they do.

Whether or not it makes sense to you to dig deeper into how shame is a hidden factor that drives many people to rail and to rally, consider this. When politicians are campaigning, listen to something deeper than your surface emotions. Who appears to have the emotional maturity, wisdom, and compassion to truly care about you and lead us toward a better life?

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from World of Psychology http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/01/04/how-healing-shame-can-save-our-world/