#but when a game really does work well with an open world format it's tons of fun

[rinzi]

I keep seeing complaints about open world games but I don't think the problem is being open world so much as constantly trying to make bigger and bigger worlds when the story doesn't call for it which leads to inserting unnecessary filler

[juiceboxman]

Advice for New DMs

I’ve been lucky enough to have DM’d a weekly game for over a year now and I’ve had conversation with people irl and online about how they think about DMing but aren’t necessarily too confident in their own ability or don’t even know where to start. So here’s some things I would suggest to get started, things to keep in mind and advice about general stuff. Here we go;

1) Familiarise Yourself with the Rules. You can read the DMs Manual or the Player’s Manual for rules. You can find rules explained everywhere online from Roll 20 to DND Beyond. But if you don’t like reading, and I get that cause the thought of reading a 200+ page instruction manual on how to play a game does sound daunting, I would suggest watching or listening to Actual Play Shows. If you watch like a few episodes of Critical Role or Dimension 20, you kind of get the basics of DnD. That’s really all you need to start DMing, just the basics like “what which Dice do”.

2) Know your Players. DnD is a collaborative game and all good collaboration necessitates some base understanding of who you’re collaborating with. You don’t necessarily need to know the people you’re playing with very well, but just enough to get where you can decide whether these people are chill to play with. So say if you’re gonna be playing a horror/scary campaign and you know one of the people in mind for playing isn’t too into horror- maybe don’t have them play cause it will make them uncomfortable. That example is perfectly fine but it delves into extremes when you’re dealing with people who are just difficult. You can look up online and find tons of stories relating to bad dnd experiences with just rude, shitty people. I would like to clarify that by saying that these experiences aren’t a DnD problem- it’s a social group problem. If you hang out wih a shitty person they will inevitably do shitty things, and honestly its better that a shitty outburst occurs at a controlled environment such as a DnD Game than say a house party where all sorts of shit could happen. So know your players. If they’re cool people, they’ll make cool players. If they’re kind of shit heads, they’re going to cause a lot of issues and not the fun kind. Know the difference between “shenanigans” and “open disrespect” because you as the DM put a lot of work into the game, if the players don’t respect that- maybe don’t play with them. No dnd is better than bad dnd 

3) Know Your Game. This rule helps a lot if you are familiar with lots of DnD shows, which gives you a frame of reference for the type of campaign you wanna run. If you wanna go big dramatic epics with a lot of strict survivalist rules, Critical Role is a good place to reference. If you wanna go for balls to the wall humour with a lot of heart and emotional moments, NADDPOD is a good place to reference. You want a proper scary campaign, watch Sophomore Year from Dimension 20- it is primarily a comedy show but when they do drama they do DRAMA. Knowing your players allows you to know the game better. It took me quite a while in my own campaign t realise “Oh I’m not running a CR game, I’m running a NADDPOD game” and ater I realised that I was able to play it better. Know the game, know the genre, know what you and your players like and enjoy and try to maximise that fun.

4) Preparation. DMs do a lot of preparation whenever they intend to run a game. I would argue that the amount of preparation you want to do should be equal to the amount of time you’re willing to spend. Sad fact of life is that DnD, and other activities with friends, are all dependant on IRL scheduling. A campaign can fizzle and die out at a moments notice, not all stories get finished and if you wanna start any creative process that’s a reality you have to accept. I’m a creative person, I do quite a lot of writing and stuff on the side so when I do prep for DnD I don’t want to spend too much of my creative juice on a project that only six people at a table will know about compared to one that would feature a larger audience. Also if you have a busy schedule you might not have time to worldbuild, so short cuts help. So in those respects I don’t see anything wrong with being lazy. There are plenty of websites online where you can randomly generate maps, towns, characters- you name it. You don’t need to spend hours on end developing streets of a city that no one will walk down or lore behind businesses no one will ask about. You just need to be familiar enough with the history or your world, its vibe and tone in which you can effectively improv the rest. I’ve been DMing a game now for well over a year, I spend less than an hour a week doing prep. I write a few bullet points for stuff to bring up in the session, I make a brief map for encounters, I’ll look up monster stats, maybe draw up some homebrew and heroforge pictures of the NPCs- that’s it

5) Improv. I think 90% of DMing is pure improv. Depending how well you know your players and their characters, you can predict certain behaviours. So if you have an NPC say or do something that you know will gaina certain reaction from a player, that’s something you are certain about. Everything else however can be improv based. Players will surprise you. They’ll do weird dumb shit and they will do really cool game breaking shit. You have an NPC who was supposed to be a big villain? Well the PCs all teamed up and with an effective strategy, that NPC is now dead. It’s the lay of the land. The goal with prep is to have enough prepared that you can effectively pull stuff out of your ass with no issue. Improv isn’t necessarly difficult, all you really need is to listen. When a player responds to something and you feel its worth rolling for, have them roll for it. If tey roll well, tell them they did the thing. If not, tell them they didn’t. If the thing they asked for is impossible, tell them it’s impossible. You can come up with all sorts on the fly

6) DND isn’t like TV/BOOKS/MOVIES. DND is a weird medium of entertainment. Its a collaberative game where you all make a narrative, but a lot of strange stuff happens in between. Like if youre watching a movie or a show or reading a book you might think to yourself “why is this character spending twenty minutes talking to this waiter that genuinely isn’t that interesting?” or something like “why did the main villain die five pages in?” DND doesn’t follow a beat structure or format. Plot armor doesn’t fit here, it’s all decisions and luck- that’s it. Don’t be dissapointed in your work in regards to storytelling. Don’t worry about plot holes or inconsistencies, just focus on player engagement. If the players are having fun, then you’re playing the game right. You as the DM have to make sure that everyone is playing fairly and having fun. Treat your players equally, don’t be a dick, don’t be a pushover. You have to know what your players want, but also know what they don’t want. If your players like a weird NPC, have that NPC show up more cause they enjoy it. If your players discover an ability ot a magic object that left untouched will alter game play (e.g. one of my PCs recently gained an ability in which they gained the breath weapon of an ancient red dragon) that if used effectively could elminate all threat from any boss fight ever- don’t be afraid to NERF that. You need to be considerate about your enjoyment and the players enjoyment, its all in the balance.

That’s the main six points I have so far. If I have anymre I’ll be sure to add them. If anyone has any advice, feel free to add below. Hope this helps! Also; Brennan Lee Mulligan has a good podcast giving DM advice called Adverturing Academy. Has a lot of cool guests. The episode featuring Carlos Luna from Roll 20 is actually good career advice and gets me motivated just thinking about it. Definitely worth checking out!

[duelofthefatesmp3]

i DO actually wanna know how youd make kotor 3 !!!!!

this ask has been sitting on my inbox for so long on PURPOSE! i wanted some time to re read the revan book + watch some swtor gameplays so i could give a concrete answer about why the book and swtor arent satisfactory and what i would do instead (im not like. a storytelling god so i this is just my PERSONAL idea). under the cut!

to begin with, what's wrong with revan the book and swtor, mai?

i am very fond of swtor i think it was such a nice idea to have an "open" world game set in star wars old republic time. but ultimately, it was not a good conclusion to revan and meetra's storyline! now, i don't really know what happened in the development of the third kotor game (if there ever was a plan for one) but it's clear they dropped the ball on that and decided to start a whole different project. i don't think we can blame disney for that one, because it was announced on 2008, launched in 2011, and disney had just bought star wars that year. so who knows.

the thing is that it's painfully evident that a bunch of the story that was gonna be in the third game, ended up in the book + misc parts of swtor. much of the book feels like a gameplay.

now, it was clear when the book was planned that they wanted to keep revan's story open so when the game came out, they could have a cool Revan storyline so he could make a cool villain appearence and draw in some of that kotor nostalgia. which ehhhhhh. uh. i don't really think did any favors for revan's character. he didn't have a satisfactory arc (I'm not saying "a happy ending" because good arcs aren't always happy) but at least some closure?

revan went through many big events in his life. we didnt need to keep his ass in stasis for his fun villain moments 300 years later. we already had what we wanted from him: jedi turned sith turned jedi again to defeat a terrible threat. that was it we could have let it there and it would have been cool! but then they decided to drag and drag his story just to leave him right where he was before. he just suffered a little more in the in-between.

you could say he finally redeemed himself of all of his crimes this way, but wasn't that the whole purpose of the first kotor game (and would have been the purpose of the 3rd?)

swtor does not centre revan in his own narrative. he's a side character for the player to experience. and look, i get it, we've had a different protag on each game, why not have another one in this one. well, because the protagonist has no personal relationship with revan. meetra was one of his closest friends, and fought with him. there is a connection that can be exploited. but the swtor protagonist is just some guy 300 years in the future who happens to stumble into revan and his life. not even his descendants get to fully interact with revan.

also, there is the fact that revan is not the centre of the game itself, only of a particular storyline. and it's weird, because swtor could have happened without revan's involvement.

ms. meetra surik, ms. bastila shan, women of the world I'm sorry

so it's no news that star wars is misogynistic as fuck right. cause it is.

so you decide to make your gender neutral protagonist a guy. then you decide to make your other gender neutral protagonist a woman. cool. now let's guess who gets underdeveloped, turned into a plot device without reason, and promptly fridged in the most unceremoniously fashion just to fullfil some manpain moments. which one do you think got that treatment.

i know the revan book is supposed to be about revan, but why make meetra go through a whole arc just to undermine her character and turn her into the faithful servant of the guy? she leaves everything behind for him, sacrifices herself for him, hell not even dead is she not serving the guy. and she was the second game’s protagonist! she beat up a bunch of powerful people and now she’s just meh, there? she had so many interesting ways to interact with revan (meeting kreia, revan’s first master, encountering another force consuming entity, etc.)

meetra went through a whole arc about dealing with the guilt of doing something horrible and having the consequences of it cut her from the force. we see her broken, then slowly come back to the world and reconnect herself with the force, then stop running and face the consequences of her role in the war. thats such a cool character with tons of potential! and nothing happened!

then we got bastila who is. a whole deal. so you make her go through a “promising jedi who defeated revan, to questioning reluctant companion, to fell into the dark side, to was redeemed thanks to her bond to revan, who helped her come back because he’d been through the same experience” arc, and then you decide to push her to the side to have a baby?? which is... its clear that the writer didnt know what to do with her (or with the other characters outside of canderous) so hey, lets get her to marry revan and have a baby.

my ideal kotor 3

to preface, im not a game developer, so some of my choices could be stunted by what a kotor rpg can do lol. of course, it would follow the same mechanics and have the same format as the first two, because consistency!

the fun way to start the game, would be from scourge’s perspective. we get to play as a sith! i’d even say you get to change scourge’s name and gender and looks (i know sith have different looks)

in scourge’s storyline, we get from his arrival to normound kaas, to his talks with nissyris, to his missions working for her. in some of these, we can make scourge lean into the dark or the light side! fun! plus we get some exposition with dialogue options. it all continues untill we get to nissirys story about the emperor. we get a fucked up cutscene of his childhood and then BOOM when its over, we see revan waking up from a nightmare and their pov starts.

ok, as for revan’s story, since we’d have to pick it up from where kotor ended, i’d have a little cutscene of revan back into the ebon hawk, with bastila, and them telling the crew to take them to courascant. then cut to a council meeting where revan and bastila get scolded in private, then rewarded by the republic. i would also like to see some revan mournink malak’s death mayhaps. since he was their childhood friend and all.

i would 100% scrape the marriage and two years passed part. as the book said, the council had no use for revan aside from the legend(tm), so why would they stay in courascant. revan was very alienated from the jedi at that point, despite being back in the “light side”

then like, to revan asking around for meetra and other jedi from the mandalorian wars, we can cash in that atris cameo, then revan starts to have these visions about the sith emperor, and maybe we could get a playable dream sequence about revan’s fight with mandalore the ultimate (I KNOW I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT.) and we get the whole exposition to mandalore telling revan that the sith are behind it all. i believe we should get a bunch of these flashback/dream sequences of revan’s past doing shit. cut to revan burying the mask in a planet, then back to the present. we see a bunch of mission and juhani scenes trying to reach him, but he keeps pushing them away. revan and bastila meet canderous, travel to the ice planet, meet clan ordo (god i love clan ordo) you get the whole quest, you decide weather to spare veela or not, maybe you get a cheeky mandalorian companion (force sensitive mando oh?) and leave canderous behind.

we can visit like, a couple more planets searching for clues maybe, etc. then when reaching nathema, you are forced to go alone as revan, get to explore nathema a bit (raiding ancient location yay) nathema as a location can be so fun because you can have it weaken you hp bar and also you cant use the force (which, in game is pretty cool)

then we get to scourge and nyssiris arriving to the planet, they fight but since theres two of them and revan doesn’t have the force, they beat the shit out of them, and while running away, they get in a fight with bastila and the companions in the ebon hawk (ebon hawk shooting game my hated). bastila manages to get a glimpse of revan’s thoughts before they take them away. but the ebon is so ruined it takes bastila, t3 and the mandalorian a while to fix it, and they get stuck into the unknown regions for a while. the ebon hawk is left in an outer rim planet with t3 fixing it, bastila and the mandalorian run back to the jedi council, only to get caught in the middle of the jedi civil war. we can have bastila choosing to hide in courascant and trying to make sense of what she saw, reading texts about the sith empire, trying to plot a course to where they took revan (more atris! but shes pissed at her now)

cutscene to meetra’s pov, leaving malachor v behind, getting calls from everyone at the hawk (atton my beloved) but just as she’s leaving she gets a force message from revan, calling for her to find him and sending visions of normound kaas. then, through her force bond with visas, she tells her not to go because they’re gay and in love and whatnot.

then boom, she gets intercepted by bastila’s ship, with the mandalore and the other mandalorian (yes i do love having a bunch of mandos on board) and they go on their way to find revan.

now i want there to be an underlying message of “we can’t take our friends with us because we have to do this ALONE we’re powerful JEDI we don’t need our FRIENDS.” meetra gets asked if she wants to bring any friends and she’s like “no. we have to do this alone.” along the game you get constantly contacted by other game characters, you get the chance to talk to them or ignore them.

so, we get back to nathema, and meetra has a whole “holy shit this is just like darth nihilus but ten times worse. but i beat darth nihilus. i can do this!” then she finds peace in this place without the force, we get a whole speech about how the odds arent against them, they find a way to normound kaas, and get going.

in normound kaas i thought about them getting a whole mission about how to infiltrate the citadel, only to get helped by scourge. he joins the party, we get a little flashback of all the years he spent trying to make revan remember and they storm the citadel. we get to fight the dark council members, fun! then we get to free revan and the game switches povs. bastila hands the mask to revan and he has a cool “yes im revan im pretty cool” then a nice heartfelt yet rushed reunion with everyone.

then have a small CONVERSATION WITH MEETRA where she talks about the sith triumvirate she defeated and revan is impressed with her and is like “we are the last hope of the jedi, we’ve learned to walk between light and dark, we’ve done horrors but we can still make things right, our experience has made us more powerful etc.

then they fight the imperial guard, ALL OF THEM, meetra revan and scourge make it into the throne room, they all fight the emperor. meetra shows the emperor that she has seen the void, she has cut herself from the force, and she’s not afraid of him, revan supports her, talks about redemption and hope  and NOW.

NOW. how the alternate endings could go:

if you decide to take scourge through the light side, he manages to form a forcebond with meetra and revan since they’ve both teached something about the duality of the force, they get 100% stronger, but its still not enough. UNTIL. a bunch of ships (jedi and mandalorian, even non republic ships) arrive to dormound kaas, the gangs from each game storm the room and together they make the emperor and his guard a bunch of punching bags. they beat him! (unknow to them, this was a backup body because the emperor can do weird shit like that, and has only debilitated his plan, but he’ll come back dont worry). then they fly back to the republic, to tell the chancellor about the sith threat, and preparations for the war begin. meetra and revan get to live happily ever after for a while, then they die away from the jedi or the sith (waaah im thinking about them helping canderous rebuild the mandalorians, and them doing it since they killed so many mandos in the war)

BECAUSE IN THE END KOTOR IS ABOUT LEARNING TO PROCESS TRAUMA AND RECOGNIZE YOUR MISTAKES AND LIVE WITH THE GUILT WHILST TRYING TO FIX THE MISTAKES YOU MADE ALONG THE WAY. AND ALSO TO HEAL FROM TRAUMA YOU NEED A SUPPORT SYSTEM SO EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES SENSE TO YOU YOU SHOULDNT PUSH PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU AWAY. AND THINGS AREN’T BLACK AND WHITE ITS COMPLICATED SO YOU DONT END UP BACK ON SQUARE ONE YOURE A CHANGED PERSON.

or

if you decide to dark side scourge further, he betrays revan and meetra, they all die, and the emperor unleashes his angry lightning or whatever on everyone + a bunch of visions of all the enemies of past mocking them, and their loved ones suffering. and since you’ve had that “im not calling my friends bullshit” no one comes, you die there, and the emperor is only stalled for a few years. swtor ensues. scourge becomes the emperor’s hand.

now you could of course bring revan and meetra up in swtor, but maybe only as force ghost guides, or have some of the other characters of the game have relevance (visas tries to heal the miraluka planet 2021)

WELL THAT WAS A LOT OF WORDS. HOPE THIS IS SATISFYING ENOUGH

[maskydoolovesmasseffect]

Mass Effect Tag

Wellio, I’ve been tagged by @berryshiara. Passing this on to @grummel83

Gunna answer my questions now. Y’all feel free to tell me what you think of these answers. ​

I’m a fan since: 2008. I was just out of high school and still not over KoTOR. I was fresh in the army and got to talking to some other dude fresh to the army about video games. He asked me if I played Mass Effect. I said no. By the next day I just about totally forgot about him, then he suddenly appeared out of nowhere sat in front of me in the chow hall and pulled a copy of ME1 for Xbox 360 out his pocket like he was a magician doing a magic trick (ACU pockets are huge.)

Anyway turns out that guy was a romance option and I must have picked the right dialogue options. I’m still with him, too.

Favorite game of the series:

Mass Effect 2. It seemed like that’s the one where choices mattered most and you really got to know your squaddies. Also MAJOR gameplay improvements over the first game. And that game gave me the most freedom to do basically whatever I wanted and wasnt afraid to give me consequences for it.

MShep or FShep:

FShep. Nothing against MShep, but for me the real Shep is FShep. Can’t beat Jennifer Hale’s voice. 

Earthborn, Colonist, or Spacer:

Colonist. I like having the background of knowing just how dangerous the galaxy can be and how the Alliance can’t be everywhere at once so sometimes you need to manage your best on your own.

Biotics or Tech:

Both.

Paragon or Renegade:

Paragon, mostly. I tried being renegade but some of the actions are just so pointlessly dickish, or even outright unhinged in a way that would make it impossible to believe the Alliance would ever promote Shepard as an officer or even keep her in the Alliance at all, especially in the first game.

That said, there are times where a renegade action is more expedient and practical than a paragon one, like in 2 when you stab a dude in the back to prevent him from repairing an enemy gunship, so even with a paragon playthrough, my Shepard will have no issues taking that opportunity. She’s already seconds away from betraying all those guys anyway.  

Paragon in treatment of others, renegade in combat pragmatism.

Favorite Class:

I play as infiltrator and vanguard.

Infiltrator is great for using a sniping and opening loot, and then for going invisible, and if I remember right AI hacking too. That’s cool and I wish there were more genuine opportunities for stealth.

Nowadays I play as Vanguard in my playthroughs mainly just so my Shepard can be canonically biotic for story reasons. From 2 on when looting no longer needs a special skill and I get to charge around the map. I don’t really care much about using biotics (that’s what the squadies are for) but the movement is super useful (when Shepard actually does the thing instead of just standing out in the open soaking up bullets until the ability decides to actually work.)

Favorite Companion:

Garrus. I like to set him up in sniper positions. When he actually STAYS where I put him instead of running straight up to enemies to try to snipe them at point blank, he’s great.

Also his quips in 2 on are pretty entertaining.

Least Favorite Companion:

Garrus, Oh my god. Go back to the sniper position where I put you. Leave tanking to krogan; you do not have the HP for this.

Also Kaidan in ME1. He can not shoot to save his life - literally.  

My Squad Selection:

For all ME1 playthroughs after my first one, Ashley and Kaidan, just of their comments and because... well... I only have so much time with them.

Apart from that I mainly just pick my team based on who’s likely to have the most interesting commentary on whatever the mission happens to be, squad balance be damned. 

Favorite In-Game Romance:

Garrus X Shepard is my favorite love story. They are just so adorable together and always supportive even when they disagree.

But my cannon romance is Kaidan X Shepard for the drama and angst.

Favorite NPC:

In ME1 there’s this random Turian on Noveria who randomly has like a New York accent and I absolutely adore him. He plays basically no part in the story other than some minor information but he’s just so pleasant to speak to.

“If you need anything, I’ll be here.”

Favorite Antagonist:

Morinth, the Ardat-Yakshi daughter of Samara. Yes, she’s a murderous vampire who will absolutely kill you given the chance... but like, it’s a medical condition. And I really can’t help but feel for ardat-yakshi in general when their only options are to spend their whole lives on the run from justicars out to execute them, or waste their entire 1000 year lifespan imprisoned in a monetary unable to experience the world at all. Yeah, Morinth is evil, but Ardat-Yakshi don’t exactly have a good deal.

Favorite Loyalty Mission:

Grunt’s loyalty mission is the best. I get to help my baby boy, reunite with Wrex, enjoy krogan society being fleshed out, have a kickass battle against a thresher maw, and get a breeding request. It’s nice to have a quest that isn’t about family drama and genuinely gets a happy end.

Favorite Mission:

Despite Citadel DLC requiring everyone to have a deathgrip on an idiot ball, and also basically gloss over some really dark stuff, the whole clone storyline with the whole crew is an absolute ride all the way though, with lots of interesting and unique scenarios, a ton of replay-value, and funny party banter that feels like it came straight out of a Marvel movie.

Favorite DLC:

Again, Citadel DLC. Not only did it come with the story above, it also had all those interactions with past and present crewmates, including a memorial for Thane (finally!), a cool apartment to hang out in, a party, an arcade, and an awesome battle arena. It really added a TON. Also, it’s nice to see Bioware figure out that DLC needs characters - I’m remembering back in the DLC to ME 1 the party never had a single thing to say, no matter what was going on. The fun and wacky Citadel DLC is a far cry from the serious and somewhat dark space opera Mass Effect started as, but as the final DLC capping off the end of the series, it gets to do a silly victory lap (and get the taste of the ending out of our mouths.)

Control, Synthesis, Or Destroy:

No.

Favorite Weapon:

Sniper rifles, whatever I have that’s fast and has high damage output. Also that one pistol that shoots tiny energy grenades. Pew pew.

Yeah I wasn’t really big into the weapons so much. I’m here to get my story on. 

Favorite Place:

The presidium on the Citadel. It bothered me a lot when I couldn’t explore it in the second game. I know it would have been terribly impractical, but as the presidium is just a huge ring, it would have been cool to be able to explore the whole thing, going past all the little park areas, shops, monuments and so on until you loop aaaaall the way back around to where you started. Like, how cool would it be if the ring had a running track? Maybe C-sec  academy trainees would be spotted jogging together along it in formation. And can you imagine grabbing a coffee (I was going to make up a space-related name for Starbucks but it’s already STARbucks...) and taking a nice stroll along the water before finding a nice bench to alien-watch from? Other locations in the game are like great places to explore and do gameplay stuff, but the presidium seems like a nice place to just be.

Favorite Quote:

"Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer." - Javik.

This is such a fucking raw damn line. It makes me think a lot about Cerberus. When ME3 wasn’t out yet, I thought maybe the plan was Shepard would at some point choose a side, Alliance for paragons and Cerberus for renegades. It would have been so cool to have morality not merely be good vs evil, but idealism vs that ruthless calculus Garrus mentioned. How fucking raw would it be if Cerberus wasn’t just generically evil for no reason and suddenly indoctrinated but really were embodying that ruthless calculus, determined to defeat the reapers at any and all cost. Maybe Cerberus actions’ were more likely to do terrible things for the sake of ultimate victory, doing whatever it took, whereas the Alliance would be less willing to make the terrible choices and ultimately be less likely to succeed.

Now obviously, that’s not what happened, as it would have required Bioware to basically make two entirely separate games. But that line from Javik makes me think of that concept, and a universe where like Dragon Age party members can approve or disapprove of actions not merely as good or evil but along the lines of their personal values. I think Javik would sit at victory at all cost.

Also that one mission in 2 where some random NPC catches Shepard sneaking around and is all like ‘what are you doing here?’ and Shepard is like ‘What am I doing here? What are you doing here? Get out here before it blows!’ and the guy’s freaking out like WTF and she says ‘RUN!’ then laughs to herself as he flees from an imaginary bomb. Shep you troll. 

The thing I like the least about the entire franchise:

The misogyny and objectification that crept its way in, epically from the second game on. Really didn’t like those ass-shot camera angles, or female characters being slut-shamed in-universe for the clothes the designers made them wear. Yikes. 

But the biggest yikes for me in that regard is actually the reveal in 3 that the prothians guided asari development. That was fine and all, but the part that bothered me was the characters commenting “ooooh, so that’s why asari are so advanced,” as it was ever any kind of mystery before that exact moment. For one thing, asari aren’t really shown as being more advanced than anyone else, apart from having discovered the citadel first, and for second, why wouldn’t asari be advanced? All the way from ME1 it’s established that 1: Asari live for a really long time, and 2: can instant transmit information directly from brain to brain. That means they have long lifetime in which to accumulate knowledge and experience, and also can easily spread and preserve that knowledge without even the need for books. That ALONE should put them ahead. And even with all that, they only barely beat the salarians to discovering the Citadel first. But no one asks for an explanation for why salarians, who live only a few decades and can’t do mental data-transfer, are so advanced. No, only the success of the all-women race needs explaining. It was just one moment but it still bugs me. 

Also the general loss of realism after the second game. First game everyone gets armor, including full-face helmets automatically on in environments that need it. After that, people can apparently just wander the battlefield half-naked and even somehow survive in a total vacuum if they just put a plastic cup (that isn’t even connected to anything) over their mouth and nose. In the first game they at least made up some reasonable-sounding science fiction explanation for things, but after that it’s like F-it everything is just space magic now. 

Oh, and those repetitive unlocking stuff minigames. I use a mod to just skip those. 

[joy1579]

So how would the RFA +saeran (and perhaps Vanderwood) react if they got together with a very childish mc who finds wonder in everything? (And Maybe has a puddle obsession—? (Like whenever it rains, no matter what she’s wearing or what they were doing before- puddles—> stomp—> splash))😳😳👀👀 thank you 🥺❤️ (and I’m sorry for spamming your inbox)

hey hey hun! hope this does your request justice! i had a ton of fun writing it! also don’t worry about spamming my inbox i love getting messages so it’s super fun to me!! I just wish i had more time to do these requests but c’est la vie i guess. also forgive any formating issues i’m posting this on my phone but i promise i’ll go back and edit it on my laptop the second I have a chance!

anyway here you go I hope you like it!!

rfa and playful MC

jumin

teach this man to embrace his inner child and he will love you forever. no one will believe that he plays with you like he does but that sly sneakiness is like half the fun!

- absolutely fell for your childlike wonder and innocence

- constantly asking questions about what your doing and why since he didn’t have a very normal childhood

- TEACH THIS MAN TO PLAY THE FLOOR IS LAVA

- seriously sit him down and have a very serious talk with him because he WILL play with you if you ask him too but you have to explain the rules

- when you splash around he works really hard to keep a straight face he may even have a little frown but i guarantee it’s a cover

- because when nobody’s looking when no one will see he kicks some of the water. splashing your already soaked shoes and socks with a sly smirk

yoosung

he is so down for your more playful childish side! he’s such a happy sunshine child that you two become the cutest “children at heart” couple ever!

- this boy will happily play any game you want it’s one of his favorite things to do with you!

- he gets pouty if he looses too much sometimes a kiss consolation prize is necessary

- he won’t join the puddle splashing right away because he can get embarrassed pretty easy

- but with a bit of encouragement you and he will jump from puddle to puddle down the street

- okay but you both get rain boots and raincoats and go puddle stomping and frog rescuing no frogs jump into the road on ya’lls watch

- imagine you and him ferrying hat-fulls of frog across the street so they can get where they wanna go without getting run over

saeyoung

also 110% ready to play with you! he might even beat you to the punch when it comes to games and puddle jumping plus you two become the prank king and queen!

- last time you yelled the floor is lava saeyoung broke a lamp by leaping onto the table with reckless abandon

- when it rains its a race to see who can claim the most puddle stomps and last time you only win by 2 puddles! (that’s way to close for comfort training is a must!)

- you and he probably catch a cold from all the time playing in the rain without rain gear but it’s okay because you get to spend a couple of days recovering together while saeran and robocat taking care of both of you

- but pranks with saeyoung are easily your favorite especially ones where no one gets hurt! (cue releasing 367 rubber ducks into the public pool to watch the kids have fun and the lifeguards try to round them up)

- and you and saeyoung creating cat robots that follow zen around (no actual fur to trigger his allergies but it’s funny to watch him think himself into sneezing fits)

zen

he thinks it’s super cute and loves watching you have fun! he legitimately fell in love with you BECAUSE you still see all the good, fun, wonder in the world! your basically the repunzel to his flynn rider!

- if you scream the floor is lava he hefts you off the floor and into his arms saying “I’d burn for you any day” (cue the blush and hiding your face in his chest cuz dang it you weren’t prepaired!)

- he is always ready to be the prince to your princess if you wanna play out disney movies

- they always turn into photo shoots and you can’t bring yourself to complain because now you have a pic of you and him as Aladdin and jasmin

- he isn’t averse to puddle splashing but you better be carful because zen manages to pull of that sexy rain soaked look that’s super distracting

- imagine the downpour of a century your phone playing “singing in the rain” you and zen doing that dance splashing thing

- suddenly you lock eyes and he looks so good smiling and laughing all soaked like that but his eyes go a bit cloudy and his faces flushed

- it’s at this moment you remember your white shirt that’s now soaked and very see through

jaehee

she’s an old soul, calm and comforting so your youthful energy and playful spirit balance her out really well

- at first she simply chuckles at your games and antics but slowly she’ll start to play along

- it starts small. her humming along as you sing and dance to your music in the kitchen

- and gets bigger slowly her tilting the umbrella to spill water on you after your puddle jumping splashed her

- imagine her making you hot chocolate with whip cream and rainbow sprinkles as you dry your hair after playing in the rain sneaking up behind her still in your wet clothes and hugging her from behind

- she’s startled but laughs and spays a little whip cream on you nose as revenge you burrow your face in the crook of her neck getting the whip cream all over her

- after all your playing around the hot chocolate is more like cold chocolate and both of you are exhausted and ready for a hot bath

saeran

confused but happy! he’s so down to learn all the fun games you play because your so happy and sweet. restore this babies childhood and love him forever!

- he will not understand most of your games at first since he’s always had >.> a strict upbringing to say the least

- when he doesn’t get it he’ll be a bit gruff but given time and understanding he’ll open up and love your games though you may be the only one he lets see it

- like everything else when he see’s you splash in puddles the first time he’s confused until you pull him by the hand to splash with you

- he’s watching your face mesmerized by your laugh as you jump from one puddle to another he can’t help but chuckle until you slip and crash into the water beneath you

- but your still laughing and you pull him down with you hugging him to your chest and soaking him with the rainwater too

- now he’s with relief that your okay and happiness that he gets to share this moment with you

- he may never be as boisterous or excitable as you or his brother but his soft joy and gentle intimacy is perfect in your eyes especially since he really only shares it with you

[septembersung]

So @bee-friend suggested that I do a homeschool resources/curriculum post. I don’t need lots of encouragement because I love talking about all this stuff. The trouble these days is not that there’s a paucity of resources, but actually that there’s too many. You can easily drown in a sea of options and contradictory methods. It’s kind of overwhelming if you don’t have some perspective from which to start cataloguing and evaluating.

I am not claiming to be an expert. My oldest is only in first grade so I can’t give a user experience on a wide range of curricula. What I do have going for me as a “guide” of sorts is that I am a compulsive researcher and plan-far-ahead-into-the-future person, because I want to already be aware of our options and be able to recognize methods, problems, and solutions for the problems, when I encounter them. In short, I’ve been reading about this for years, have been compiling our own curriculum from the get-go, and am always absorbing insight and recommendations from more experienced homeschooling families, so I have at least a passing acquaintance with a variety of methods and options. So please don’t read this as the gospel of an infallible all-knowing guide, but rather as a friend who’s living it talking to another friend who might be interested.

Personally, my approach was to begin by exhaustively reading about methods (classical? Charlotte Mason? What about the big boxed curriculum names like Seton?) so I could recognize them and evaluate their prospective merits, and then begin feeling out what works for me as a teacher and my kids as students. And then, within that framework, to read every booklist available - literally, if there’s a booklist from a reliable source for a needed subject or our age group, I will give it a once-over - and then put my money (when I have any) into building a home library. (If you have a good local library, use it! ...We don’t.) It’s worked great so far; my kids are bright, inquisitive, and, in terms of content-acquisition, consistently working above grade level.

I’m not up for a “comprehensive” post, so this is not an intro to everything that is out there or even necessarily every resource I’ve ever drawn on. (Unless it actually works for us and becomes a regular feature, I don’t keep track of links super well.) What I would like to do is share some Catholic (or adaptable-to-Catholic-needs) resources for the grammar level (broadly, K-2nd) that I’ve found useful: 

Mother of Divine Grace (MODG). My go-to guide. Classical education, i.e., emphasis on truth and beauty with learning divided into the stages of the trivium according to where, developmentally, the child is at. If you register with them, they literally teach you how to teach your child.

Little Schoolhouse in the Suburbs is a free MODG-guide and how-to, particularly helpful for first-time teachers and if you have to adapt, like for a learning disability. Her math drill breakdowns got us through half of Kindergarten math when I couldn’t afford to buy the textbook (we eventually received it as a gift.)

Ambleside Online and Mater Amabilis. Both are free Charlotte Mason (CM) curricula; Mater Amabilis is the Catholic version. CM is not classical education, but there’s overlap between CM and classical. Lots of classical homeschoolers use/have CM influences (including us.)

Build Your Library. Found this site through this article on what are living books and how to use them (a CM concept.) I haven’t really explored the site as a whole but I found the level 1 (1st grade) ancient history booklist and free sample syllabus extremely useful this summer as we launch into ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. 

Note that Story of the World is a Protestant history and notably deficient in the Reformation era, and I’ve read other Catholic complaints. I do know Catholic families who adapt it, and also others who don’t bother because there’s now a Catholic version, The Story of Civilization, which I have the first book of and plan to try out later this year. And of course there are other Catholic (and secular) history programs.

RCHistory. It does stand for “Roman Catholic” history. It’s the only place I found that still has Kid’s Bible Timelines in stock from the “great adventure” program. Introduced me to the Gilgamesh trilogy, which my kids are in the middle of and really love. Here’s RCH’s ancient history options. 

Two guides to classical education and home education in general:

You can’t really do a homeschool guide without mentioning Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Trained Mind. The Bauers write from a Protestant perspective (they’re the source of Story of the World) but this book is invaluable for the broad perspective on classical education. 

Ditto Laura Berquist’s Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum, which is Catholic (she’s the source of MODG.)

I have older editions of both these books; I assume the newer editions have even more going for them, in terms of updated resources. 

 Preschool Math at Home. As a certified math failure and a product of public school, I was legitimately terrified to start teaching math to my preschooler. The two most important things that changed that were:

1) reading in Rebecca Frech’s book Teaching in Your Tiara, and I paraphrase: Look at this evidence of how terribly public schools are doing teaching math. And such a school  did after all produce you, who is scared of teaching your child 1 + 1. Can you do worse than that? You really can’t. 

There are a ton of Catholic-mom-homeschooling resources out there that focus on questions like “what resources are available” and “I think this is a good option but I’m afraid of x y and z.” A brief search brings up a bunch.

And 2) Preschool Math at Home, which explains in clear and logical fashion how beginning math skills build on each other and what you should be encouraging your child to do at each developmental stage. Once you understand a) what the early skills are and b) see they build on each other, the fear goes away. Then you just have to know your child, monitor what they can do, and respond to that. Which is just motherhood in a nutshell anyway. 

And finally: don’t ever underestimate what you can learn from homeschooling-mom blogs. Every August/September there’s a flurry of posts about curricula and lots of moms post regularly about what they’re reading, how they handle challenges, and what their methods are. Many of the big-name blogs that I started following from even before I was married are less active or defunct now, but a little internet searching and clicking around will start opening up what is in fact a very large and busy world. A good place to start finding these blogs is an annual linkup from SimpleHomeschool.net where bloggers share day-in-the-life posts. 

And an aside: if you don’t hate reading on screens (I do) there are a million books available for free online in various formats. Ambleside Online happens to have a convenient list of sites because they recommend free stuff whenever possible. 

Similarly, you might be amazed at how many and how varied the free online/printable worksheets, games, and “supplemental” resources are. The key here is to have looked at enough quality resources that you can judge the source and/or see when a given worksheet/activity is worth it or not.

If you’re interested in homeschooling, I hope this is helpful to you.

[big-girl-toaster]

Emily Sonnett - player analysis

A compilation of Sonnett‘s strengths, weaknesses (cause everyone has them) and general observations from Portland and USWNT games (mostly from 2018 and 2019) ft. my irrelevant opinion.

Enjoy!

Before I’ll start a few notes:

I’m obviously not a professional soccer analyst person or whatever, so please don’t come for my ass. These are just patterns or reoccurring things in Sonnett’s game I observed while rewatching tons of PTFC and USWNT games. 

I will focus on a few key points, that doesn’t mean that she has deficiencies in other aspects, sometimes it’s just hard to show them and I tried to avoid stating arguments without giving visual evidence. (All the links and credits are below the gifs)

I would love it if you gave additions, feedback or criticism to this post but all in all I just hope that you enjoy reading a bit about Sonnett’s more professional side and soccer tactics in general.

Please let me know if the format is weird, I’m still figuring out how to make big posts.

I sincerely apologize for the low quality of gifs, as I said, I’m figuring things out and I wasn’t able to upload proper clips.

And lastly, Sonnett is a precious little bean and I enjoyed making this more than I should have. Also, did I use this as an excuse to spend days on end rewatching old games? Yes I did.

I will start with three main strengths I think she brings to the pitch:

Communication / Leading the back line                                               (this is in regards to her position with the Thorns, I will talk about the differences between PTFC/USWNT later on)

As a center back you naturally have a more responsible role in terms of shifting players that are in front of you and communicating things to them they can’t necessarily see. Sonnett embraces that role completely and at 25 years old she is at the level of world class CBs in that regard. A lot of players take on that role much later in their career. Her college coach Steve Swanson for the University of Virginia said about her:

"There is a standard of focus and intensity that Emily demands of the players that play around her. She’s not afraid to hold her teammates accountable in that regard. That was one of the unique aspects of our team dynamic this year, is that Emily's style of leadership is different than the team was used to. I think the team has recognized that the qualities Emily has, we need.“

http://www.espn.com/espnw/news-commentary/article/14100802/virginia-emily-sonnett

This clip I wanted to show you is from a situation that is very common for a defensive line but overlooked bc we as viewers naturally tend to look at the movement of the ball. It’s the intentional shifting of the back line in the exact right moment to let an opposing attacker run into offside. In the original video you can hear Sonnett shout “DROP THE LINE“ and Menges and Kling follow her movement which results in Alex being successfully caught offside at the side line. 

((Tumblr won’t let me upload video clips, so here’s a crappy gif (look at Sonny and Menges), click the link to get to youtube, it’s at 21:30))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JGM6Nju0b4

A simple moment but a very crucial part of back line coordination.

      2.    Box positioning

A.k.a. one of the most important parts of good defending. Sonnett covers runs from attackers almost always with textbook precision. She anticipates passes and is able intercept balls which makes her a proactive rather than a reactive player. When she does have to go for a tackle she brings a feistiness that she probably learnt from a certain Kelley O’Hara I can imagine. She usually opts for slide tackles and that decision could be debatable if you’re the coach but it’s just so good to look at tbh

(credit to @geekmythologys for the last gif)

But anyway, her box positioning. Having watched a lot of games with my eyes glued to number 16, I can of course safely say that Sonnett knows what she’s doing. But I’ve been thinking more and more that she often has a sort of intuitive approach when it comes to box positioning in particular. For this next clip I’m gonna need your opinion. Normally I wouldn’t tell Sonnett to abandon her player in that moment, especially bc it creates a 3v2 situation on the attackers left side and also considering the angle in which Dunn is facing the goal. However, she steps in and is able to block the ball.

to see it properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ev3SFCmbqQ  at 15:40

What do you think?

Oh and this is just excellent clearance work. AD was certainly hyped about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvcOuadyFu4

    3.   Offensive effort

Sonnett is one of the highest scoring CBs of the league but her offensive efforts aren’t measurable in just goals. For corner kicks she likes to do the near-post run Julie Ertz style and has been successful in the past, most notably the 2-0 in the semifinal 2017 against Orlando (which resulted in this gem of a gif):

She likes to stay up top for a bit when her position is covered by someone else and tbh I’m living for these moments.

Here she encourages quick playing and would have gotten through with it if the nwsl had good refs. She didn’t even touch her. (get it? haha) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOIDLJ4ZL1A

Here she drives the ball after winning it, even if her teammates are pushing up late and then she stays up front to participate in the counter attack. Unfortunately nothing evolves out of this situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ev3SFCmbqQ

Right. Those were the strengths, in terms of weaknesses, I don’t wanna pick apart the smallest things but this is what I found:

Misjudged midfield positioning

We’ve talked about her excellent positioning in the box, however, a huge part of modern soccer is having the Center Backs pushed up to the half-line (as well as inverted outside backs but that’s another point). And what I’ve noticed is that sometimes during turnovers Sonnett goes in to put pressure on the player and with that an even wider space opens up behind her that the opposing team could exploit. Like in this picture.

Blue is the ball movement, red (Sonnett) goes in when in my opinion green (Lindsey) should have been the one putting pressure on the ball bc now Daly can run into that open space. 

Luckily Sonnett’s speed prevents Houston from getting anything out of it but Daly tried it several times during the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOIDLJ4ZL1A

My second example is that iconic tactical foul against ARod that we all remember.

Her positioning isn’t optimal, Klings pass isn’t the best, ARod gets her off of the wrong foot, she can’t turn around fast enough and has to stop her with a professional foul which is (I’ll say it again) demanded by coaches in situations like that. But anyway, tumblr has talked enough about this game rip

      2. Determining the biggest threat

This is a minor one, because Sonnett is usually really good at reading the game and making the right decisions. However in this game against Australia, she tries to cover the space behind Dahl which is technically reasonable but considering how wide open the Australian is, she should have closed her in earlier. That little hop inside the center of the field made the difference and the opposing player was able to score. 

I think it’s safe to say that stuff like this comes with age and experience. And again, Sonnett is only 25!

(The whole game against Australia is awesome for spotting strengths and weaknesses, plus we get tons of Sonny close-ups thus I can recommend rewatching it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBNvE3owllY

Two more things I wanted to include are two risks that could be relevant in the future.

From time to time she doesn’t control her arm movement in the box.

This is obviously the natural thing you do when you make a move like that but with the new rules by Fifa, defenders are more and more limited and this would have been a penalty if it had hit her arm. Idk it could bite her in the ass at some point.

      2. Intuitive positioning 

We’ve talked about this and people might have different opinions on it. I personally think though that this might make the difference between a great and a world class defender. So I say go for it Sonny.

Phew, I’m almost done guys, congrats for getting this far, I hope it’s interesting at all.

The last thing I wanna mention is this: The difference between Portland Sonnett and National Team Sonnett, a.k.a. CB Sonnett and RB Sonnett.

Even though as a right back your role is more offensive, I feel like Sonnett has to be pushed to go for it. She rarely does those runs in behind the winger and towards the end line. When she does it it’s great but compared to Kelley she simply isn’t there yet. It also seems to me like for Portland she takes more liberties in pushing forward which maybe is a confidence thing as well. She is a given for the Thorns but had to fight to regain that roster spot for the NT in 2017 after not being called up for several months. Maybe the fear of making mistakes bc of being out of position hinders her a bit? (I’m saying this while being aware that I of course don’t know what the coaches want her to do and what the different game plans require of her.) Anyway, I love her 1v1 defending as RB. I think she is underrated and absolutely deserves a spot on the Olympic roster next year. 

One last low quality gif because we gotta stay on brand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBNvE3owllY

Well that’s it, I hope you enjoyed it. Again, I’d be grateful for additions, opinions, feedback, whatever. 

Thanks for reading :)

[theonyxpath]

Here we are in almost the last week of the Deluxe M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter, and like all KSs, we’re at that time where pledges start to slow. So we’re thinking about this KS, and our previous ones, and the roster that’s coming up.

What works, what doesn’t, and what just makes us wonder. Like, should we continue to portion out sections of the complete text during the KS, so at the end backers have pretty much the text as it’s going to be before being formatted during layout. (Which makes it a lot easier to read in most cases!)

We like that model, as it shows prospective backers just what they’re getting so situations where folks expected one set of information but got something else don’t occur any longer. And it shows that the text being finished won’t be a factor in the final project delivery to KS backers.

Those are two pretty good things, in our estimation!

But, does that kill the fun for folks? Like, is there value in being, well, surprised by your new book when it arrives? So far, we’ve been betting that the surety of information is more important to more backers than those who might miss a surprise, but we could be wrong.

Similarly, if we say this is the text and if you don’t like it then you can drop your pledge before we finish, we see that as a valuable option for backers. We want folks who back to enjoy the Kickstarter and the material we’re releasing. We hope they enjoy the chance to help create one of these books by backing, or going further and taking one of those fancy, upper-tier rewards that let them add characters or be part of the art.

Lunars art by Gunship Revolution

Yet, we can only hope we’re pleasing folks as it is often hard to tell if our methods are not delivering our intention since the vast majority of backers don’t interact with KSs Comments section. Whether because of a general, well-earned, fear of Comments sections throughout the internet, or of KS Comments specifically, my impression from talking to backers is that they don’t need the stress.

Who can blame them? It’s why I always try and suggest other ways for folks to communicate with us – even here, I’ll suggest adding to the Comments for this blog, but whenever I do I also get direct emails. And they usually start off with a variant of: “Hope you don’t mind my contacting you this way, but I didn’t want to get involved with any drama in the Comments.”

Like I said, we tend to think a lot about how we do things, and particularly Kickstarters since they are one of our most public display of our processes.

In some states, public display of your processes can get you arrested!

To get back to the M20 Technocracy Reloaded KS, here’s some links to fun and informative programming that will be reposted in the Onyx Path Media section below:

Tune in to hear words of wisdom from the Technocratic Union live on Twitch, Tuesday, May 19th at 9 PM EDT on the Onyx Path Publishing Twitch Channel. twitch.tv/theonyxpath

Plus, Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of Technocracy Reloaded right here: https://youtu.be/RtdW0znt7GU Please give them your support!

And also, Travis Legge’s M20 Technocracy Reloaded actual play, featuring a stellar cast including the one and only Satyr Phil Brucato: https://youtu.be/ALnD1nwuTis

TC: Aeon Jumpstart art by Aaron Riley

Our Next Kickstarter:

Of course, as we’ve been thinking about Kickstarters, we’ve been thinking about the best time to bring back the Legendlore Kickstarter. This was the KS we cancelled as we launched it right before the Covid-19 lock-downs, and we just didn’t think it could get the sort of attention it deserved.

But as we have considered the situation now, it seems like our lines of communication are, if not perfect, working far more closely to expectations. I’m getting regular notices from backers of our previous KSs again, for example.

So, without further ado, and not wanting to sit to long on Legendlore, we are going to Kickstart it next after M20 Technocracy Reloaded!

Expect most of our approach to be similar, but knowing that we already have a wonderful group of backers from the first go, we’ll be aiming at putting the KS together in a way that doesn’t just make them go through the same things again, and that appeals to folks who didn’t back the first time.

More on that as we have some actual examples!

Lunars art by Yiyhoung Li

Things We’re Doing To Try and Help During All This

On Wednesday, we’re opening up Dystopia Rising: Evolution Community Content on the Storypath Nexus. This is a chance for anyone to work with the templates and art packs we provide to create new projects for DR:E. As a creator, it’s a way to both publish your ideas, and to get a little extra cash during these difficult times.

That’s pretty much our feelings for any Community Content site right now. Plus, for players, the projects posted on these sites are PDFs that usually aren’t that big or expensive, and they very often are focused on useful additions to our official stuff. Adventures, deep dives into specific topics we’re not really set up to put together – just great ideas to add to your playing enjoyment.

Just wanted to chime in here to remind folks that we released Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras 2 on DTRPG last week, and besides the big book itself in PDF and PoD versions, we released each chapter as an individual PDF. If you’re into a particular line and/or historical period, but can’t indulge in buying the full book, these individual chapters are a lot easier on the budget with the job situation being what it is.

Also on DTRPG right now is the Shelter in Play Bundle containing about $180 worth of PDFs, including the Vinsen’s Tomb Jumpstart for Pugmire and A Light Extinguished, the Jumpstart for Scion 2e, plus a ton of other delightful games for playing while we’re all stuck in together – all for $10, and the proceeds go to two worthy charities! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/312564/Shelter-In-Play-BUNDLE

Our friends at IPR, Indie Press Revolution, are running sales of our books over on their site (link below in the sales partners area) and are planning to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If you’re looking for our traditionally printed hardcover books and screens, Deluxe and otherwise, now’s a great chance!

We made the decision last week that we wouldn’t be attending gaming conventions until we feel like our folks would be safe from Covid-19 if they attended. Considering that “con crud” is a thing that we expect to get after major conventions during a normal period, we just can’t send our people into a convention right now. Unfortunately, that includes our industry biggie Gen Con, which still has not announced whether it is postponed or cancelled. Regardless of their decision, ours is: we’re not going.

Finally, speaking of conventions: Thanks for the support and interest in an online Onyx Path Convention I received in the blog Comments and elsewhere all last week. It was heartening, and a little scary, how many of you would enjoy virtually playing our games and meeting with us. Actually, all kidding aside, it was great to hear!

No news yet, but you gave us even more to think about. In this case, expect that we’ll be acting pretty quickly on running something like a virtual convention. We want to commit, if we’re going to, before the enormity of it has a chance to sink in!

So, thanks to your feedback, we’re a few steps closer to arranging a virtual venue where we can talk about and play in our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

The M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter funded in 43 minutes and at with just over a week to go has passed 1800 backer operatives, is over 400% funded, and has achieved Stretch Goals consisting of a Storytellers Screen unlock, an unlock of more original Mage PDFs, Backers’ Exclusive T-Shirt, Wallpaper, and building the Technocracy Reloaded Player’s Companion PDF: sections on Constructs and Symposiums (and then expanded by a later SG), Digital Web 3.0, Technomancers’ Toybox 20 and the Q-Division bonus section, Unlikely Allies 1, 2, & 3, Mission Statement short scenarios, and the expanded Digital Web 3.0.2. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/m20-technocracy-reloaded

Highlights of M20 Technocracy Reloaded include:

An Operative’s Handbook that provides a detailed overview of life in the Technocratic Union, describing the organization of the Union, the Conventions, and the roles that sympathizers, extraordinary citizens, and Enlightened Operatives play in the overall structure of the Technocracy.

An examination of Technocratic initiatives on a global scale.

Devices, procedures, and hypertech used by the Technocratic Union that explores the Enlightened Science, allowing operatives to apply similar effects in the field, if they have sufficient understanding of the principles that allow these gadgets to function.

A comprehensive list of citizens, cyborgs, operatives, progenitor creations, and allies to use as NPCs.

Storyteller support that explores story seeds and metaplot to shape a chronicle for their needs.

Next Kickstarter: We return to The Realm of Legendlore!

Onyx Path Media!

This week Impish Ian Watson returns to delve into the Trinity Continuum, specifically the recently announced Trinity Continuum: Anima, VtM Bloodlines, and the happy wonders of managing Onyx Path social media with the Terrific Trio!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Tune in to hear words of wisdom from the Technocratic Union live on Twitch, Tuesday, May 19th at 9 PM EDT on the Onyx Path Publishing Twitch Channel. twitch.tv/theonyxpath

Join the Consensus and watch the stream.

Plus, Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of Technocracy Reloaded right here: https://youtu.be/RtdW0znt7GU Please give them your support!

Come tune in to our Twitch channel for a schedule including:

Vampire: The Masquerade – Blood on the Tamesis

Vampire: The Masquerade – Chicago by Night Noir

Pugmire – Paws & Claws

Storytellers with Coffee

Scarred Lands: Chronicles of Calastia

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale

Mage: The Awakening – Occultists Anonymous

Scarred Lands – Purge of the Serpentholds

Dark Eras Werewolf: The Forsaken

Chronicles of Darkness – Tooth & Claw

Deviant: The Renegades – A Cautionary Tale

Good heavens, that’s a lot of games for you to watch!

You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed!

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale: https://youtu.be/fx_UEKY6moE

Scarred Lands: Purge of the Serpentholds: https://youtu.be/9YC0qb29vjk

Mage: The Ascension – Technocracy Reloaded: https://youtu.be/ALnD1nwuTis

Hunter: The Vigil – Hometown Heroes: https://youtu.be/LJs8Q6KVu1o

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/SXYLA9rCjKk

Vampire: The Masquerade – Blood City Chicago by Night: https://youtu.be/NmDv9Sq_wKA

Chronicles of Darkness – Seattle by Streetlight: https://youtu.be/6CwozhRpUNo

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

Did you miss 307 RPG interviewing Matthew Dawkins regarding everything from They Came from Beneath the Sea! and They Came from Beyond the Grave! to upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade books? Give them a listen here: https://307rpg.com/?p=265

Further to that interview, the 307 RPG Podcast released an episode all to do with the Archetypes in They Came from Beneath the Sea!:  https://307rpg.com/?p=282

That’s not all! Vorpal Tales commence an actual play of They Came from Beneath the Sea! tonight over on their Twitch channel! Find them here: https://twitch.tv/vorpaltales

Utility Muffin Labs, home of the 25 Years of Vampire: The Masquerade podcast, have released a glowing review of The Chicago Folios right here: https://utilitymuffinlabs.com/25-years-of-vampire-the-masquerade?author=51a88e2ee4b035d1810e13fe

Occultists Anonymous are here with a new special Mage: The Awakening series:

RV Mage 07: Reversion  With Orphean mages no longer on the field of battle, the Pentacle mages work to undo the warping of the Gauntlet. The werewolves threatening the Supernal Being is going to make negotiations a little difficult. https://youtu.be/iUZKuh0G5sI

RV Mage 08: Excursion Following the Supernal shenanigans in downtown Richmond, Vicar, Drifter, and Amanita begin the search for further Orphean agents. An attempt to restore relationships with the werewolves goes as well as you might expect… https://youtu.be/YUcXnQwB-vM

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This week, the PDF and PoD versions of Oak, Ash, and Thorn the Changeling: The Lost 2e Companion bolts from the freakish Hedge on DriveThruRPG on Wednesday!

Oak, Ash, and Thorn as a companion book to Changeling: The Lost Second Edition, expands on what’s in the core book. It contains:

Expanded rules for freeholds and a selection of seeds for sample freeholds in four international locations.

Rules for creating new court Bargains and an introduction to non-traditional Mantles, including free companies, traveling bands, and Lost dynasties, with a playable example of each.

Entitlements, the titles of nobility that changelings assume to inherit mystical legacies from the Lost who came before them, including three full examples with accompanying tokens and Merits.

Expanded rules for tokens, including two new types with examples, guidelines for creating your own, and a system for ripping out one’s heart to become unkillable.

Also on Wednesday, we open the Dystopia Rising: Evolution Community Content section of the Storypath Nexus! Expect template and art packs you can use to create your own supplements to the DR:E tabletop RPG (and even get a royalty for your work!) Check it out for community-created supplements to further expand your fun with DR:E!

Conventions!

Though dates are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s our current list of upcoming conventions:

UKGames Expo: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

GenCon: https://www.gencon.com/

Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/

Gamehole Con: https://www.gameholecon.com/

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

V5 The Faithful Undead (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Anima

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Second Draft

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

Dearly Bleak – Novella (Deviant: The Renegades)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Development

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Manuscript Approval

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Post-Approval Development

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Book of Lasting Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Indexing

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Scion Titanomachy

Tales of Aquatic Terror

WoD Ghost Hunters – KS final art: One more piece coming in.

Aberrant – Contacting and contracting. Signing off on sketches.

Pugmire Adventure – All sketches in.

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2

Deviant – Dividing up among current artists.

Legendlore – Back to KS prep.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Happening.

Cults of the Blood God – Rolling along.

Scion: Dragon – Waiting on art notes.

Masks of the Mythos – Waiting on art notes.

Scion: Demigod – Waiting on art notes.

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (KS) – Sent out notes for fulls and splats for KS.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Vigil Watch

TC Aeon Terra Firma – Over to Josh.

V5 Let the Streets Run Red – Working on it.

Pirates of Pugmire Screen – Getting charts from dev.

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart – New artist taking care of finishing missing art.

Pirates of Pugmire – Errata input.

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – Inputting backer errata.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – Gathering Backer PDF errata.

Scion Companion – Just waiting for two tweaked pieces, expected today.

Contagion Chronicle – Corrections going over to Josh.

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

Duke Rollo Book – Finishing gathering backer errata.

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Magic Item Decks (Scarred Lands)

Yugman’s Guide Support Decks (Scarred Lands)

At Press

Night Horrors : Nameless and Accursed – PoD proof on the way.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution Community Content site – Opening on the Storypath Nexus this Weds!

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

C:tL 2e Oak, Ash, & Thorn – PDF and PoD versions on sale at DTRPG this Weds!

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Please welcome Aaron Voss to Onyx Path! Aaron is old White Wolf and was my print buyer in the years before the merger with CCP, and has expertise in every stage of the game book creation process, and is specifically going to oversee getting our projects printed and shipped (and help Mirthful Mike Chaney out where he is needed).

[love-takes-work]

Below, I’m sharing a long outline of what was discussed in this wonderful interview, for those who can’t or prefer not to listen but want to know the content. It is very long and I don’t feel like finding pictures so you’ll have to just enjoy it like it is. It’s not a transcript but it is, in my own words for the most part, a recitation of everything Susana and Rebecca talked about: musicals, the upcoming movie, animation influences, and quite a few things you did not already know.

Susana introduces the interview by saying that tons of attention is paid to the diversity and the characters and all this great stuff in the show, but she wants to talk about the science fiction aspects and the society and worldbuilding Rebecca and her team have put in. She begins by talking about how the show seems so planned considering aspects of the show's beginning feed so well into the end, and she asks Rebecca to talk about that.

Rebecca opens by saying it was conceived as a coming-of-age story, so a ton of stuff that the adults know, Steven doesn't know, allowing it to be a story about things that happened to adults but remain child-friendly. Rebecca brings up a college class on the sublime that she took, about what's going on and implied to be going on just outside the frame of the art, so she was really taken with that concept.

Rebecca claims that her planning is pretty dry, and it's just a bunch of charts. She had stuff like Fusion names and weapons from the beginning, and of course she couldn't use them in her pitch because it didn't make sense without knowing the characters. Susana mentions that CN wanted the show to be aired in no particular order, and Rebecca mentions how it was hard to work with because she DID want continuity. Planting seeds in episodes and giving puzzle pieces that'd come together later worked for a long time, while still making each episode work as a whole and be satisfying. Later, when CN came to them wanting like eight related episodes, there they had the barn arc to give them--they had already planned to make this story related. She felt it aired in a "bizarre" way, but they comforted themselves on the Crew knowing someday people would watch it how it was meant to be watched. As a lead-up to the movie, CN IS going to air "every Steven ever," so people will actually get to see it in marathon format.

Batman: The Animated Series comes up and they discuss how censorship limited what they could do on that show because of problems with glass breaking. Susana says she actually really appreciates it when stories can still be told well despite the constraints put on them, and asks Rebecca if that applies to SU. Rebecca agrees that it does, and also that she loves stuff like video games that managed to function with ridiculously small space requirements. Developers still offered up such creativity, she says. So because of the beauty that arises from those constraints, she thought she should have constraints in her show on purpose, even if it isn't applied from outside. The most obvious one for this show was that we're trapped into only knowing and seeing what Steven knows and sees. "The Test" is a good example of Steven actually seeing something he isn't supposed to see: the Gems having a private conversation about him. According to her, plenty of stuff is written about what the Gems are up to outside of what Steven knows about them, and they can only kind of hint at it.

Coming from Adventure Time, there were some similar aspects. Rebecca got to work with some of her heroes from independent comics, and she got a lot of inspiration from them. On Adventure Time, it's our world but far in the future, and Rebecca would have loved to do something similar with Steven because she loved that aspect. Quite a few of the Adventure Time crew had come over from Flapjack and they thought it would be funny if the Adventure Time characters found a tape of Flapjack. As much as it would have been cool to take that idea for her show, that was theirs, so Steven's is more like it's our Earth but in an alternate timeline where Gems invaded 6,000 years ago. She rattles off some known similarities and differences of our two worlds, and elaborates on how Hollywood is in Kansas because in that world Disney never left where they started. Laugh-O-Gram Studio took off like it didn't in our timeline. She has a ton of other info like that but it won't matter to reveal it until or unless it matters to Steven. (She also throws in that Harman-Ising could be Ising-Harman in her world if they never figured out how cute it would be to have it the other way.)

When Susana asks about how she took so many details and managed to make a pilot with enough of them that she could get a show with it, Rebecca takes a turn into discussing working on Hotel Transylvania (for just a month!) with Genndy Tartakovsky. She had been planning to have a month off, but then Genndy asked, so she of course couldn't say no and felt she learned a ton. (She wrote the Steven Universe theme song in the car during that commute, by the way, given that she had a lot of time to sing and be alone.) When she hit Genndy with some of her ideas, he advised her to slim the details down and just boil it into its essence--who are the people and what is their relationship to each other? She still uses that advice, trying to condense things from macro to micro. She has succeeded since in figuring out how to keep the complexity and still assert the simplicity. Ultimately, you can keep those details but you don't have to emphasize them if they're not feeding into the main point. They'll drag the piece down. They discuss Genndy's role as the Animation Director on her pilot, which happened when she was asking if he knew anyone and he ended up saying he'd do it himself. She was so shocked that he agreed to direct her pilot that she was dazed and ran into a pole in the parking lot. The whistling of the wind through the resulting dent always made her giddy because she was thinking she would be working with Genndy.

Susana then turns to discussing Rebecca's influences and brings up Revolutionary Girl Utena. Rebecca mentions that she initially saw Utena because a person named Connie lent it to her in high school, so that's where SU's Connie's name comes from. Rebecca points out how hilarious Utena is in addition to being beautiful. She felt it was formative because Utena was "gender expansive and bisexual." Rebecca saw the movie first (which she doesn't recommend doing), then saw the series and then the movie again. She wanted to understand why the characters were turning into cars. (Chronicler's note: I was equally baffled by the Utena movie's car chase and car transformation stuff in the early 2000s. I did not know what to make of it.)

Rebecca elaborates on Utena and art influences, saying she loves to trace artists' influences to see where their pieces were coming from. She saw that Utena is very influenced by Princess Knight, and she was thrilled to visit places in Japan that influenced Osamu Tezuka. The Takurazuka Theatre is in Tezuka's town, and Rebecca describes how every show there is performed only by women. She felt that having this theater there influencing Tezuka certainly inspired him to include gender expansiveness in his work. The influences are so obvious when you look at the sources, and now all of this that came through Tezuka's work then through Utena then to Rebecca is so incredible.

When Susana brings up trends and how magical girl stuff influenced today's creators, Rebecca says she prefers not to think of it as a trend really because some of what's roaring out in popularity now was always around but was actively prevented from being made in the past. She talks about watching Tenchi Universe (the "Universe" part of SU came from Tenchi!) and Sailor Moon on CN, knowing it wasn't American, but she didn't really realize it "didn't belong" on the network, and felt that her access to influences was really unusually open--especially since her dad was an animation nerd and had a bunch of unusual stuff that influenced her, especially stuff that gave her a peek into how animation actually worked and knowledge that she could be one of the people making it. If she could call anything a trend now, it's that that sort of access is now available to more people because of the interconnectedness of the Internet and how we're so much more capable of influencing each other now.

They then discuss some anime stuff they had been exposed to and how Rebecca helped with an intro to Whisper of the Heart which is her favorite movie. She discusses how that movie (and Kiki's Delivery Service) are good representations of creative processes and sometimes what happens if an artist is blocked. She thinks the actual craft and work associated with the process is more important (and more interesting) than talent. Rebecca adores artists who take notes and figure out how to make their stuff good versus a specific moment of inspiration or an artist just "bleeding" their talent on everything. Art is a craft! You can study it! This is front and center in Whisper of the Heart. Rebecca discusses the Russian movie Film Film Film (which influenced the Zircons' design), and it has a writer character who is afraid that his process will destroy something inspired by a muse. She thinks it's a really interesting look at process.

Next they discuss a science fiction story in another format: the book The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. Kat Morris lent Rebecca the book while they were roommates at the very beginning of when the show was starting. She loved seeing how the world worked in the book through the way they treated the main character. They also discuss the artist Jules Feiffer, who Rebecca had a relationship with because she carpooled with his nephews. They gave her a book of his called A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears. She loved it so much, especially how it deconstructed fairy tale tropes. One story was about a prince whose special ability made people close to him laugh themselves senseless, so he really couldn't have a relationship with anyone. She considers this an influence on Pink Diamond as a character. The SU character Sadie was named after this book's character Plain Sadie.

Next, Susana asks about musical influences for the show. Rebecca names Patti LuPone first. She saw Patti as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd and remembers seeing her playing the tuba in this weird arrangement where the cast was also the orchestra. She was so impressed. When she later wrote to Patti asking her to be Yellow Diamond, she referenced learning from her that a person could be so dramatic that it's funny and vice versa. She also has a "chills" moment from a different show, during "Everything's Coming Up Roses," where the character she's playing is imagining an audience going wild but the actual audience IS going wild.

As they discuss how the upcoming movie is a musical, Rebecca talks about going home with Ian after work and putting on musicals or movies based on TV shows so they can "study" for what they're doing. She'd take notes about what works and what doesn't and why. She loves these old movies that dissolve into total weirdness by the third act. She references Ziegfeld Girl and Busby Berkeley movies, which were an influence on Homeworld's style. She subscribes to a philosophy attributed to Bob Fosse that characters have to be feeling something strongly if they're compelled to sing. She makes a reference to A Goofy Movie as a movie that moved from a TV show to a movie. She wished that movie had more songs.

Susana and Rebecca discuss the movie, some intense moments, the history of Goofy and how different some of the old versions of him are, and how a description of Goofy by Art Babbitt was influential on her. She loves that cartoons can be so many things, and she adores studying moments from them and incorporating them. There are some really horrifying discoveries you can make, but you can also reinterpret some of the beautiful moments and stir them together to get new brilliance.

Susana says many songs in Steven Universe become the centerpiece of an episode, but in "Mr. Greg" it's more like a typical musical even though it's an episode of a cartoon show. Rebecca agrees that it was great practice for the movie. She was more moved by that episode coming back than any other so far by that point. She also felt that "For Just One Day Let's Only Think About (Love)," the song, was a great practice musical song--especially since there's all that chatting in between singing. That song was really influenced by A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum's song "Comedy Tonight." She finds those kinds of musicals so much fun. She was influenced in "Mr. Greg" by Victor/Victoria--specifically the song "Crazy World" when the camera is panning around the protagonist (who's wearing a suit). They're of course dated, but they contain beautiful moments. She took home some of the Pearl drawings from "It's Over, Isn't It" when she went to the studio in Korea. (Yes, Steven Universe is animated on paper, though the color is digital.) Elaborating on "Mr. Greg," she says the episode became much simpler and sweeter--originally there was some intense stuff in there, like Pearl picking up cars and throwing them at Greg.

Back to the movie, Susana points out that Rebecca's been studying how to make a conversion to a cinematic story versus a really long TV episode. What makes something feel like a movie? Rebecca struggles to figure out how to talk about it without saying too much. She figures you have to dig into the fundamentals of the show--make a movie about something new, but something basic. She loved the Dexter movie and it was so smart. Rebecca has a weird connection to the Beavis and Butt-Head movie too (some of her crew worked on the movie!), but she thinks even that movie is smart because they're all about watching TV and in the movie their TV is taken.

Susana then asks about the movie length format and how it felt from going from a very short TV format to a movie. Rebecca's word to describe it is "terrifying." The episode "Change Your Mind" was 44 minutes and that was a ridiculously long format for them--but it carried the extra baggage of tying up so much of what they'd dumped into the show. Rebecca said they couldn't really even "feel good" about finishing it because the immediate next step was something that was so much more of everything hard about "Change Your Mind." Rebecca elaborates on the elements that were ramped up for the movie and concludes "What I'm trying to say is I'm really tired." She's really, really excited for us to see it. It's so different than a bunch of episodes tied together, even if it was eight "Mr. Greg" episodes. All the pieces have to be awesome and then tied together have all the pieces inform each other. She remembers being impressed by anime as a kid because it usually told interconnected stories, and she thought that would be really hard; turns out self-contained episodes are even harder, and she has to kind of do both on her show. She thinks of her songs like that too--they must be good on their own, but they enhance each other by all being part of the same work and building something better together.

Finally, Susana asks what comes next after Steven Universe--one day, when the show does end, what does Rebecca want to do? Well, take time off, write some guitar songs, write poetry no one will ever see, and so on. Rebecca says that her head is really in SU now though, and there's so much more to do--yes, there is more to tell that comes after the movie, and she wants us to know there are also stories that belong in that two-year gap between the end of "Change Your Mind" and the beginning of the movie, but she feels this is a good place to stop talking. She's so excited about everything we have yet to see.

[noona-kisses]

Search Query: WWW (Series Review)

Search Query: WWW popped onto my radar when it was announced last year because it was a Noona Romance -my favorite kind of K-drama. Sadly, I didn’t get to watch it then because I was busy with my job at a Korean hagwon, applying for jobs in Japan and preparing to move, and then later actually moving. I was able to watch it recently, though, and I really wanted to put my thoughts about it down, because I have many. Future reviews of dramas will probably follow a 2 episode per post format; basically following the weekly airing styles. This one, however, will be a basic overview of the series and my thoughts on the ups and downs of it. I’m ready and willing to have discussions, because I have A LOT of thoughts on this drama and I’m always interested to see how other people interpreted things.

So let’s get it started!

Synopsis:

Bae Ta Mi is a 38-year-old director at one of Korea’s two biggest web portal sites, UNICON. Due to UNICON’s corrupt Korean infrastructure, Ta Mi ends up fired from her position and beginning at new job at UNICON’s main competitor, BARRO, with only one goal: to destroy UNICON. Along the way she ends up meeting Park Mo Gun (often written in subtitles as “Morgan”), the 28-year-old CEO of the gaming music production company Millim Sound and begins a complicated relationship with him.

What I Liked:

Female Representation: 

I didn’t want my synopsis to be too long, so I purposely said nothing about our other characters, but let me make this clear: I was LIVING for the relationships between our three female leads. Bae Ta Mi, Song Ga Gyeong, and Cha Hyeon are all women who, by society’s standards, are unlikable. Ta Mi appears cold to people who don’t know her and she’s not afraid to speak her mind, and she’s extremely confident in her own abilities. Ga Gyeong is clever and cunning, as well as ambitious, and she’ll do anything to achieve her goals. Hyeon is physically strong and opinionated, and she is definitely not afraid to make those opinions known. And these descriptions can’t even begin to really depict what the characters are like onscreen. 

All three of them are completely different from the women we see in the typical K-drama. These women don’t need a man to save them, and they definitely won’t let a man distract them from what they want. They also refuse to bow down under pressure. Add to this that all of them are in positions of power in their companies (Ga Gyeong is second only to the CEO, and Ta Mi and Hyeon are both directors) and are the ones calling the shots, and you’ve got some incredibly powerful females. Even our female baddies (Ga Gyeong’s mother-in-law and UNICON’s CEO) are women. The women in this show are powerful, diversely written (some side characters are very uncertain, or man-obsessed, or smart) and the impact this makes can’t be denied. As a 30-year-old woman, I was rooting for all three women and was so happy to see characters that I could really relate to.

Complicated Female Relationships: 

Often in dramas I see the relationship between females falling into two categories: endlessly supportive and close besties, or bitter enemies. I absolutely love that this drama went beyond that. It was a clear depiction that friendship can be a maze, and one wrong turn can get you stuck. For example, a flashback and Ta Mi’s own words tell us that her and Ga Gyeong used to be very close and friendly, until Ga Gyeong got married and promoted at work. By the time we really meet them, they’re at each other’s throats. We know, as viewers, that it’s because of complicated reasons (Ga Gyeong is under A LOT of pressure from her mother-in-law and parents to do things Ta Mi doesn’t agree with), but the characters don’t know that, and that’s the point -in real life, you don’t know anything unless the other person tells you. Similarly, Hyeon hates Ta Mi because she thinks she’s sneaky, and basically the root of all of UNICON’s evil. It’s not until she begins to work closely with Ta Mi that she can really see what she’s like, and that she’s more complex than Hyeon originally thought. 

Conversely, Hyeon adores Ga Gyeong and still thinks of her as the kind, helpful and honest girl she used to be in high school because that’s what Ga Gyeong shows her. Hyeon rarely sees the side that Ta Mi saw for so long, and it puts a small kink in the relationship when Hyeon realizes Ga Gyeong might not be as good as Hyeon thinks she is. Our trio fight, bicker, and threaten each other even as they protect and save one another at the same time. They aren’t all BFFs by the drama’s end, despite the awesome final scene -but they understand each other more, and I really appreciate that the writers kept that complexity until the end.

Modern Issues: 

I really, really love some of the issues the drama talks about. The debate about deleting keywords from the ranking (celebrity vs. civilian, rumor vs. private life) was interesting to watch because I honestly never thought about that before. Western portals don’t use keywords the way the show does, but doesn’t Google still use a dropdown menu of the most searched words? Doesn’t Twitter show the top trending hashtags? Being placed on there could seriously negatively affect a person’s life, and I love that the show tried to create a discussion over whether it was ethical to delete keywords, and how the decision can affect those involved (i.e., actor Ha Min Kyu wanting to die because people are criticizing his former host bar job and Ta Mi almost crumbling under the weight of knowing she pushed for the decision that caused his attempt).

As a woman who is hesitant on marriage, I was also loudly cheering when Ta Mi called Mo Gun out on his assumption that her wanting to live together but not marry was weird. She tells him that society considers his view (getting married) normal, and that he will never have to explain why he wants to get married because no one questions it since it’s expected, while she is always going to have to explain why she doesn’t want to get married because society considers her the odd one. This is especially relevant to Korea, where women are still expected to get married and have kids in their twenties, and any woman who doesn’t want to get married is considered strange.

The drama also talks about the issue of familial obligations through Ga Gyeong and her husband, Jin Woo. Her parents basically expected her to marry well and obey her husband’s family to help their own company out, while Jin Woo’s mother expects him to help her keep Ga Gyeong on a leash and connected to her. Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo both hate their parents, and by the end of the drama both of them are refusing to do what they’re told -which, again, goes against a piece of Korean culture that is still strong to this day. Children are expected to take care of their parents in their old age and to respect them and their decisions. Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo together basically make the point that there is a limit to what children should be expected to do for their parents. Yes, it’s told through the chaebol lens, but the lesson is still important to working class families also.

The drama also has one big issue that’s discussed, beginning to end, through the interactions and relationships of our characters: communication. In today’s world, communication is becoming more and more difficult, even as more forms of communication are being created. And lack of communication causes problems. If Ga Gyeong had been open with Ta Mi about the reasons she was making certain decisions, Ta Mi never would have thought so ill of her. If Jin Woo had been more open about his own feelings and wants with Ga Gyeong, he might have been able to show her how much he cared before she left. Hell, they might even have been able to do something before divorce became a necessity. But there are scenes within the show that also stress how important communication is, most notably when Alex is head-hunted by UNICON. Ta Mi reservedly tells him she’ll support him no matter what, even though she knows they can’t afford to lose him, and it’s not until Brian (BARRO’s CEO) says she needs to tell Alex this, that she does -and realizes he didn’t want to leave, but he felt like he wasn’t needed anymore. 

Ta Mi and Mo Gun’s argument about marriage is also an example. They never sat down and really TALKED about it. He just kept saying “It’s okay, I can wait” and Ta Mi never REALLY pushed him to discuss and think about the topic as hard as she needed to. It became a recurring issue in their relationship and was pretty much the main reason they had so many problems. It’s an issue that doesn’t have an easy ending, but if both parties FULLY understand it, then it’s easier to be in the relationship.  Another example is Hyeon’s early judgement of Ta Mi. Hyeon never really talked to her. They would argue and debate during meetings at times, but they never really discussed their personal beliefs about their work and why they thought that way. If they had communicated more openly before, Hyeon probably wouldn’t have been as harsh to Ta Mi in the beginning. There are tons of examples throughout the example of why people need to communicate, and I’m thrilled a drama attempted to create a discussion about it.

Men Supporting Women: 

In this drama, the women are in charge. Sure, Jin Woo’s family is the one Ga Gyeong is stuck doing the bidding of, and Brian is BARRO’s CEO and the Korean president and all those higher in power in government are male -but it’s the women who are the ones with the real power. It’s Ga Gyeong’s mother-in-law who basically rules KU Group with an iron fist. Ta Mi and Hyeon are the ones who put BARRO on the track to beating UNICON. Ga Gyeong is the one who fights back against the dirty dealings in UNICON. And in the wake of these women are the men supporting them. Jin Woo gently offers shelter and aid as Ga Gyeong fights his mother, and even speaks up against his mom when she tries to have him bring Ga Gyeong back into the fold; Brian gives advice but otherwise lets Ta Mi and Hyeon do what they think is best for the company; Mo Gun acts as Ta Mi’s shield and comfort when things go wrong, but he cheers for her all the way. 

I love seeing how much the good men in this show support the women in their lives, and how they show that support. One of the greatest scenes is when Ta Mi and Hyeon make to block the acting CEO of BARRO (Kevin) from walking into the building to sign a harmful regulation. Brian walks in to take his position back and help stop it, but after that the entire scene focuses on Ga Gyeong walking to take her place as UNICON’s new CEO and Ta Mi and Hyeon strutting through the building in pride at standing up for what they knew was right. Brian quickly becomes a background piece as the screen is filled with our three heroines. If more men in reality were like the supporting men in this drama, I know women would be better off.

Music: 

This OST is BOMB. I loved every piece of music I heard, from the instrumentals to the voiced ones. Mamamoo’s “Wow” is a power pop song that makes me stand straight every time I hear it, and Elaine’s “Search” always gave me a thrill because I knew amazing things would happen when I heard it. The music can really make or break a drama (I’ve watched some dramas that made me roll my eyes HARD at the song choices), and this one chose its pieces well. The songs fit the scenes and I will most definitely buy the OST in the near future.

What I Didn’t Like:

Ta Mi & Mo Gun’s Relationship: 

I’m going to say it: by the drama’s end, the lead romance was easily my least favorite part of the show. Don’t get me wrong, it started off okay and I loved it at first. Their first meeting, how quickly they connected, the small jokes they had -it was adorable, and I honestly squealed a little bit. And then they broke up. Then they got together. Then they broke up again. Then together again. When a couple has a dramatic breakup three or four times in 16 episodes, there is a SERIOUS problem that needs to be addressed, not to mention that final breakup loses its edge because a viewer is left going “I’ve already seen that before.” I understood why Ta Mi kept pushing him away, but I really, really disliked the fact that she was so wishy-washy about it. One push away before a big finale breakup and reunion, fine. But two or three? No, that’s when you know the relationship shouldn’t be happening in the first place. 

I also disliked the relationship because of how Ta Mi acted/looked with him after the first few episodes. She always looked tired and withdrawn around him. A relationship isn’t supposed to make you feel or act that way. I don’t think it’s the actress’s fault (I put full blame on the director here), but as characters in a show I should see that the relationship does energize her -but even some of their more active scenes (like the piggyback vacuuming scene) shows her as lethargic and almost uninterested. 

But, again, it was the constant breakups that annoyed me the most. As I mentioned above, one of their biggest issues was about marriage: Mo Gun wanting it, Ta Mi not wanting it. In real life, this is an issue that’s a deal breaker with two people. A GOOD writing of this problem is done one of two ways: either the couple agreeing to date and see what happens because they care about each other after talking about it, or the couple staying apart because they can’t deal with the uncertainty. Either way, the couple communicates their wants for the future, discuss possibilities, and then sticks to whatever decision they make. And like I said, one breakup over this is fine. But these two continued to break up over this over and over again and it drove me insane. I got SO tired of their relationship by the second breakup I was tempted to start skipping through their scenes together. That’s a pretty good indicator that the romance needs work.

Lack of Flow: 

In any kind of writing, whether it be for a novel or a screenplay, there has to be a good flow. Each scene should glide effortlessly into the next one, and storylines should work together as a cohesive unit, not push the viewer out of the story. Honestly, I feel like this drama would have been pretty damn perfect if the romances for Hyeon and Ta Mi had been tossed out, and we had only focused on the women and their work the entire time. I feel this way not because I hate romance (I love it to death and Hyeon and Ji Hwan were adorable together) but because every time the show went from our heroines fighting in the business world to them giggling with their beaus, I felt like I was watching a different drama. The tone of the drama, and the women themselves, changed dramatically anytime the story shifted to focus on the romance.

In addition, I also felt that the romance was shoe-horned in. I told a friend of mine, “I’m convinced the writers wanted to make the women lesbians and kept forgetting the men even existed.” I still stand by that, because I swooned more during some of the women’s scenes together (Hyeon moving Ga Gyeong out of harm’s way, Hyeon drunk and sharing Ta Mi’s bed, Ta Mi giving Ah Ra her expensive purse) than I did during any of the scenes with Hyeon/Ji Hwan and Ta Mi/Mo Gun. The romantic scenes with them (especially with Hyeon and Ji Hwan) often felt like the writers went, “Oh, yeah, we have to do something with those men” and then wrote them in. This drama isn’t the worst case of incohesive writing I’ve seen (“Strong Woman Do Bong Soon” takes that prize with its identity crisis), but it was bad enough that I had to reorient my brain when we went from business to romance.

Final Episode: 

Hear me out: I loved everything about the first part of the episode with the reading of the ethics guidelines, Ga Gyeong destroying KU Group, and the final scene with the car. My issue is definitely not with that. My issue is that over half of the episode is dedicated, yet again, to Mo Gun and Tami’s rocky relationship. I had to sit through almost forty minutes of a woman moping over the man she pushed away and their inevitable reunion. I wanted more of an emphasis on the OTHER side of the story. Where was Ga Gyeong those three months she was gone? What made In Kyung decide to actually help her? How was UNICON faring after Ga Gyeong stepped down? How did the politicians really deal with the revelation Ga Gyeong put out there? 

I really wanted to see how our heroines’ actions up to that point affected their lives and the lives of those around them, as well as their relationships to each other. I wanted them to get their payoff for all their work and the fights they went through. Instead, I got a pretty rushed finish to that one and then sat through half an episode of Ta Mi running from her feelings. I feel cheated, almost, and that’s not a feeling I want to leave a drama with. Even though that final scene in the car was GLORIOUS, I wish the drama had done more for this women in the finale than just keep their romantic relationships alive. Or, if they were determined to have romance, focus on Ga Gyeong and Jin Woo, the ONLY couple I cared about in the entire show.

Overall:

Despite my heavy criticisms at the end there, I really did enjoy this drama. I cried, laughed, and cheered with these women. By the end, I felt I had made three new friends and found some awesome role models for myself. Ta Mi, Hyeon, and Ga Gyeong alone are enough to give this drama a high rating, but I’m giving it a 7/10 because despite its faults I did enjoy the ride and for once a drama made me care about the shady business side of its story -that’s extremely difficult to do.

So if you love strongly written female characters who are more like someone you’d find in real life than a make-believe fair princess and who will readily take their lives and their fates in their own hands, you definitely need to check this drama out. I adored it and will watch it again whenever I need a reminder that women are badass and shouldn’t hide it.

[doomedandstoned]

Metal Legends Cirith Ungol Return Triumphant and ‘Forever Black’

~By Billy Goate~

Remember when metal was wicked? You know, the harsh, heavy metal vibe and those hammer blast beats that used to scare the bejesus out of your folks See: Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It".

No, you don't know, do you? Because you had the cool mom and dad who not only let you listen to metal, they said you could borrow their records anytime you wanted. I wasn't so lucky.

My metal consciousness awakened just at the tail end of the Satanic Panic, though outrage against heavy metal was far from over in transitioning from '80s to '90s. Initially it was FM radio that introduced me to bands like Ratt, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Poison, Cinderella, and a host of others often derisively labeled hair metal (sure, I suppose they deserve their fair share of digs, but they were still badass). But it was when my family finally got cable TV in the home that MTV introduced me to the wider world of 1988-89 metal -- most memorably to Metallica's "One" and Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine".

The ban hammer came crashing down once my mom saw me rocking out to Scorpions one day and decided this preacher's kid was headed in the wrong direction, with long hair, tattoos, demon possession, and The Number of the Beast not far behind. We were homeschooled then and there in an attempt to rescue us from the godlessness of this age.

I can sympathize with my parents now that I'm older. Imagine how scary it must have been to raise children in the world of "Welcome To The Jungle." It all must have sounded truly wretched to their ears.

Now here's a band that maybe comes closer to personifying those fears, as CIRITH UNGOL frontman Tim Baker immediately strikes a note of dread with his demonic voice box (I pray my pipes are even a third as lusty as this when I'm 63). Add to that dueling guitars and a charging rhythm section and the Ventura band sound downright mean and nasty, like they'll cut you for no good reason if you pass them on the same side of the street.

Had I half the chance, I would have surely relished this sound as a 10-11 year old and cherished it well into my adult years. As it stands, I only had the opportunity to soak in the band's impressive discography over the past three years. Let's just say I've been making up for lost time with a lot of repeated binge listening.

Frost and Fire by Cirith Ungol

Though Cirith Ungol have been together since 1972, their first album didn't appear until the early-80's. 'Frost and Fire' (1980) may not have gotten the credit it deserved for pioneering the heavy metal sound. They did, after all, pre-date Iron Maiden by three years.

Both Iron Maiden and Cirith Ungol's LPs debuted the same year, too, but they were practically an ocean apart musically. There are many songs on Frost and Fire that, while beloved, clearly were composed in the '70s and rightly belong to that era (check out "What Does It Take" and tell me I'm wrong). You won't find vocals this gnarly, this snarly, in most any other band in '72, though, that's for damned sure!

1984's King of the Dead was a huge leap forward for the band musically and forever established their characteristically evil style. The record was a milestone for metal, as well. You'll not hear anything wilder than the opening number "Atom Smasher" from Cirith Ungol's contemporaries.

Where Ronnie James Dio may have brought macho bravura and operatic grace to his performances, Tim Baker, Jerry Fogle, Michael "Flint" Vujejia, and Robert Garven delivered on the menace, striking Tolkeinian fear in the hearts of all those who dwelt in Middle Earth.

King of the Dead (Ultimate Edition) by Cirith Ungol

Two more albums followed in 1986 and 1991, respectively, then the band called it a day, hanging up the hat for some 23 years. Whispers of reunion materialized in 2015 and we got our first teaser of how a retooled Cirith Ungol (still composed of many of its original members, some dating back to the band's '70s era) with the single "Witch's Game" in 2018. This got fans more than a little excited and a live album followed in short succession.

Cirith Ungol's big return, 'Forever Black' (2020), definitely matches the intensity of their oeuvre to date. I'll be straight up with you guys, though. Four songs in, I felt a little exhausted. It's like being around someone with tons of energy who wants to talk your ear off, when all you want to do after work is go to bed.

Well, I decided to do the sensible thing and sleep on it, then revisited Forever Black the next day. What I can tell you is, as a morning person this is definitely a morning person's kind of album. It's got power, plenty of gumption, and the will to fight -- just the kind of thing you need to face the world when you awaken to tackle life's daily struggles.

Speaking of which, the attack of "Legions Arise" makes me want to get up and shout the chorus with a thousand other fans, fists raised staunchly into the sky. It's at this point I noticed how deep and spacious the recording is sonically, giving it that arena feel. You are right there at the front of the stadium, listening to every instrument distinctly and a voice crying out with authority.

I'm especially drawn to the march-like force of "The Frost Monstreme" with its "Holy Diver" beat and those ferocious pipes stoking the faithful minions to take on the Sea Mingols. Two-minutes into the track and we meet with a Sabbath-like transition. In fact, the lead riff of that mid-section sounds like a "wrong note" version of "Iron Man." Definitely digging it!

Judging from the Bandcamp reviews, the big fan favorites are "Stormbringer" and "Nightmare," followed by "Fractus Promissum," "The Frost Monstreme," and "Before Tomorrow" -- all of which are fine songs in their own right.

As solid an album as it is, there is really only one other song that had me wanting return to again, and that is "Forever Black." It comes the closest to matching the emotional punch of Cirith Ungol's classic "I'm Alive" from their immortal debut LP.

Don't misread me: this sound is ideal for open air fests and big stadiums. I can picture the crowd now -- so pumped and ready to fuck shit up. Additionally, I could see myself taking the whole album on a road trip or a long hike without complaint. In my mind, it's music that demands a physical response from you, or at least grabbing the keys and getting out of town.

Dedicated fans of fantasy and science fiction will no doubt be sufficiently absorbed by the album's abundant references to fantasy literature. For the casual listener, though, I'd recommend taking it in doses...as generous and as deadly as you like.

Out now in all formats on Metal Blade Records.

Give ear...

Forever Black by Cirith Ungol

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

[survivor-mesopotamia]

Ep. #1 - “hail santa that is all.” (Chrissa)

Nothing much really so far. We got into tribes so far everyone seems cool ans all so can't wait to see what happens from here.

Opening thoughts: I'm very much downplaying my knowledge, making it seem like I care most about challenges, know nothing about how online Survivor works (I played and hosted one) and not a massive amount about the actual show either, asking a lot of questions. Trying to find people with the most similar personalities and let others propose any alliances.

boy am i overwhelmed

Day 1; So I'm sitting here, eating dinner, a salad with garlic bread and a mike's hard pineapple strawberry lemonade, and I decide to do a confessional! Lets talk about my tribe, first and foremost. We're the "Second Chances" tribe. Fitting, we're all FLOPS. Imma do this in the order we were REVEALED to the world. Because that's cute, right? We're basically the beauty tribe bc everyone is lowkey real scrumptious lookin. Eric; Before this game, Eric and I bonded in the Ahkmim VL about how we never get cast for tumblr survivor, and how we're waiting for redemption, and I'd feel bad leaving him as the first boot. So hopefully he'd also feel bad, and wanna talk to me. I don't think the two of us have much in common yet, he's into anime, and reading, which is like, two things I'm not really down for, but I'm definitely gonna give Spirited Away a try sometime soon so I can talk to him about it. I kinda wanna ask if the red in his hair is naturally like.. blood red. But maybe that's the lighting in the room, or maybe he died it even MORE ginger, because I often hear to him referred to as GINGER Eric, but also i don't wanna have an awkward "No, this is just like.. normal ginger" conversation. Megan; Ohhhh Megan.. my girl Megan. We've had a rocky road in our friendship, and I wish I was just talking about ice cream. Something about her though just makes me have infinite patience for the things the two of us deal with, I can't help but just want to be with her all the time. I scouted her out from FaceBook to play my Whodunnit, and we've been extremely close ever since, our game relationship has been rocky enough for me to worry slightly about her, but all I can do is trust her, and build good enough relationships with other people that if she tried to fuck me over, I would know, and strike first. Its still unclear to this day whether she had a hand in my elimination in a Big Brother game we played, 1984. What is crystal clear, is that we cried together while she cast her vote to evict me. I love her, won't never stop lovin her. I'm hoping this can be OUR season to dominate, because I feel like we're almost evenly matched when it comes to a jury vote. Will; "Whoop-de-do" iconic king of not getting his haircut. Uhh.. idk what all to say, because before the game, I knew nothing of this man. However, Monty said something about him being alive and on Skype, and my mind immediately goes to "Is he hot?" and I check his profile, and publicly announce that he's hot. Which isn't FALSE, but then we both get revealed for the game, and put on the same tribe. So now we're vibing, and relating on the fact that tumblr players hate us, and we've deemed each other, "Heather". He's currently petitioning to call our tribe "The Heathers" instead of Enlil. We get on really well, and he's pretty damn cute. Also, he goes to bed SO early, I hope we get enough time to talk and get close on this tribe. Julian; Well. This is a lot to unpack, but I found out he was playing about 3 days before the game, and since that point. He's gotten unnecessarily aggressive with me, and a couple others over non-tumblr related matters. Julian and I have a rocky history, between me being recruited, and auto-casted for his ORG, Trinity Survivor, his ex-co-host/current-best friend berating me, and deleting messages to make me look bad. To Julian throwing passive aggressive low-blows about my social ineptitude in my face if I'm angry about something, to us making final 3 together in minis. Overall, I'm constantly at odds about how I perceive our relationship, I want to be able to assume the best of him, and say that I'm good in his book, no matter what happens. I think a lot of the time, our friend group isn't the most mature, and it is really difficult to have an adult conversation with someone from within that friend group, without someone else having an opinion to share on it, so I've heard things that he's said about me, that I'm not necessarily sure if its true or not, but I try my best to hold a strong, level head and smile whenever I see him, but sometimes its difficult wanting to approach a conversation with someone head on, but knowing that you can't do that with him is definitely a struggle of mine. We have very different communication styles, and its difficult to see past it sometimes. For now, I'm going to be working with him, but I'm not sure how long that can last, as he admits it himself, he can only handle my personality for short periods of time. Jack; Well, Jack hasn't said a single word for the last three hours, since the game has begun. I don't WANT to have to stay up till 5-6 in the morning to try to have a conversation with him, but if that's what I gotta do, then that's what I gotta do. Chrissa; Chrissa, Todd. My LOVE. Chrissa is someone that I owe something to, she's amazing, beautiful, talented, show stopping, never before seen, etc. Our game relationship is not great, because I organized her first boot in Ascendance Season 4; Back to the Future. However, it was because she was attached to someone that kept accusing me of having powers behind my back. So, hopefully Chrissa forgives me, and gives me another chance, because I'd love to work with her. I feel like Chrissa is someone who is extremely intelligent, and loyal, and that's someone I want on my side. I love my tribe, lets win every challenge until the merge!!

Well... I’m back again... not going inactive this time! Let’s just do a quick roundup for now: JJ seems to think we’re in a showmance already which is either great or bad for my game, Megan’s a sweetheart and I could see us aligning, Eric is definitely a gamer and I have a feeling he’ll be a loyal, jack and Julian are both pretty straightforward and seem on the quieter side, and Chrissa straight up vanished already so we’ll see how that goes! Basically somebody thinks I’m their husband but I don’t know if I ever signed the prenup, but if it means JJ is gonna spill on how he feels about everyone then that’s some good insight. Nobody really wants to talk game yet but that’ll change soon!! Kk bye for now

Night 1/Morning 2: Everyone on my tribe seems extremely cool and I'm loving the way the tribes are divided. The only name I recognized on the cast was Monty's and he's on my tribe! I don't know him personally but I think he first played around when I was hosting a season. I have hit it off with Johnny the best so far I think, and definitely Isabelle as well. I seem to have a lot in common with both of them on a personal level. Strategically, I haven't locked anything down yet. I don't want to come right out and blurt "ALLIANCE?" with anyone; for right now I'm just trying to play it cool, get to know people as well as I can, and be a likeable presence in the tribe so people just wanna have me around.

I just asked Collin to talk to Adam about forming a four person alliance, which Collin will "bring" me into while Adam suggests someone. This might secure me in a four person alliance which would be ideal, but if it backfires, it will backfire on Collin, not on me. I'm trying to get myself into a majority while insulating myself from being seen as the strategic threat

First confessional before first IC

I was thrust on a good tribe we have JJ and Eric and hopefully this group of people won't make us last in competitions atleast lol maybe if we lose though hopefully i can argue why jack needs to go with his timezone but hopefully i don't have too. 

im ngl idk why i decided to play tumblr survivor again and the instant paranoia of just caring about my PLACEMENT is going to keep me up at night *shivers*

It's been a day in and so far I really like our tribe! I'm vibing with a few of them and it looks like there's been alliance formed between myself, Julian and JJ. JJ has said that he owes it to Chrissa not to vote her out if we lose, and I think he has something with Megan on the side based off what Julian has told me. That leaves Will and Jack, and I've talked with Will a ton. Tomorrow I'm gonna try and see if he wants to work with me too because I feel like to win this season, you will need to keep all your options open. 

Day 2: I got to talk to Jack last night, he was talkin about how he did some funky fresh survivor statistics on how tribe swaps affect tribe line loyalties, which I found super interesting. Then I decided to share a statistics thingy I did on how the Final 3 format doesn't produce an even ratio of male / female winners, but the Final 2 format does, and how potentially something about the final 3 format in survivor could be a factor in why we haven't had enough female winners in the last few generations of survivor. But he didn't even believe there was a female bias in survivor.. which kinda threw me off. Oh well, we ended the conversation on a good note before I went to bed. Well, the tribe seems to be getting along well, I tried to get a tribe call going, but it ended up just being me and Megan helping Chrissa with strategies to get higher scores in the challenge. She can't seem to break 100, and I feel really bad for her, I hope the rest of us can carry this competition, because I would feel like the worst human being in the world if I gave someone first boot twice in a row. Not to mention I'd consider Chrissa a friend of mine. Maybe I'm playing this game a bit too emotionally, before we even have our first tribal. What a concept.. Will and I are only getting closer and closer, we continuously refer to each other, affectionately, as "Heather". But he really lied to me today, pretty hard core. He said he was gonna order his weight in mexican food when he got off work... but he ate Thai instead...? How dare he ??? Rude. Anyways, if he's lying about that, what else could he lie to me about? Smh. Fuckboys amirite? I think that if we lose this challenge, Jack would be an easy vote off. He's in a different timezone, and his age unfortunately would make it really difficult to have a decent social game. If we lose more than once, there's one of two things that could happen.. 1.) There's a standoff between Julian, Megan and I, trying to maneuver this tribe to remove each other. Which is exactly why a friendship / showmance / whatever with Will is so important. Will would likely be the swing vote they try to get, I don't see Chrissa voting me out if I prove my loyalty at the first tribal our tribe faces. 2.) The three of us dominate the premerge portion of the game, and it becomes an impossible to maneuver situation for me at the merge, because all the connections I have outside of my own tribe, both Julian or Megan also have a hand in, with the exception of Jay, who I don't find myself falling that closely to. I feel like I might be thinking too much, too fast. I guess I just can't show the rest of my tribe that. I'm hoping my reads on the tribe are at least somewhat correct this time around. :/

Collin never ended up messaging Adam, and I was worried about falling behind the 8-ball, so I took alliance building measures into my own hands. I messaged Zach about joining up by stating that Collin had told me he also had a good conversation with Zach, and I made sure Zach didn't just feel "brought in" by asking him which person he would want to be 4 in our alliance. He suggested Cameron, which is fine by me. He hasn't officially reached out to Cameron yet, but our plan is to bring Cameron in if we end up losing, and I will probably want to vote Kyle or Grace in that scenario. Hope we don't lose though!

I don't really (or at least usually) stress about challenges and definitely not this early in the game, but some of these people are so stressed and panicky. Will (who I talked to about aligning earlier today like I had said I would in my last confessional) is stressed about not being able to beat his current high score of 199 and feels like he's on the lower end and might be eliminated. I was telling him though that this isn't necessarily about your score, but your ranking. You can get 209 or 189 and still get the same ranking. Chrissa on the other hand is totally panicking. She has an admittedly low score of 89 which she forgot to screenshot which is really rough. She same flash games aren't her thing (and I believe her) but when I tried to calm her down and say there's lots of time to improve and that we can win this, she continued to panic. There's not much I can do for her. I'm not aligned with her right now and she's just really scared to get first boot, which I don't even think will happen. JJ feels obliged not to make her first boot should the scenario present itself, and I'm aligned with him and Julian. If anyone's going home right now, it's probably Jack unless he has connections I am unaware of. I would really like to win though because I love our beauty tribe xoxo 

I managed to find the idol clue, and in telling my formed trio of Collin and Zach, Zach accidentally revealed that he had found it too. I don't think he intended to tell me, so now I am not sure if I fully trust him. I'll work with him for now, but he is going to be a big move player and I'll have to watch out for that

Forgive me father for i have sinned it's been a day since my last confession I've made some progress me and grace knowing each other well pregame means i have an instant ally coming in to help not be first.....or second out and me and Collin seem to be kinda working together I guess?? I hope not fully sure but I feel confident I'm not going if we go to tribal.

hiiii so glad to be back in the game!!!! So thankful I have the opportunity to redeem myself after my huge flop in 94, but lowkey worried about being on the An tribe? Only because it is filled with people who have done well in the past I’m not sure how to measure where I fall within them, but everyone has been very nice and seems to get along with me so far! Also it seems like there is no suspicion from them about Zach and I being siblings which is STELLAR. From looking at the cast I think the only person who knows for sure is JJ, and perhaps Megan? But thankfully they aren’t on a tribe with either of us so that might work in our favor. I’m a little nervous about this first challenge but I have one of the highest scores on my tribe atm, so I feel like if we go to tribal it might be okay. Fingers crossed hehe ;))

FUCK entanglement! FUCK IT IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL hail santa that is all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBoZlL8ZWzY

Zach is playing super hard out in the open. That is good for me, he can make connections to help our alliance, and if there is ever a moment where our alliance gets exposed, he will probably be out in the forefront as a target. The flip side of that is that I might not be able to go to the end with him if he could be perceived as the leader of my alliance, so I'll need to see how the game develops

We came in second in the immunity challenge by ONE POINT. Thank the lord because our group seems very cohesive at the moment, and going to tribal would have put everyone into scramble mode. I've been bonding the closest over the first 4 days with Isabelle, and I am hoping it can lead to a strong game relationship. Right now, we seem to be very social with one another and we have gone as far as to say we wouldn't vote for one another, but I'm still sort of waiting for that defining confirmation (as much as you can get that in Survivor). After that, I'd say I've been pretty chatty with Johnny and Monty equally (but I think I have a slightly tighter personal bond so far with Johnny). Abrielle I talked to more so over the first couple of days but I would say between her, Jay and Madison those are the ones I've made the least connection with. They all seem like good people, just haven't had as much traction chatting with them. I don't want us to go to tribal for as long as we can help it, because for me the best case scenario heading into a swap would be if our tribe had the numbers advantage and some sort of tribe-wide unity going into it. I feel like that way I could be in a good spot but also not in the forefront of the tribe alliance (I'd hope that would sort of fall on Monty or Johnny maybe because of their Tumblr Survivor experience). For now though, just continuing to get to know everyone as best I can and try and make sure people want me around, and have me in their plans moving forward.

https://youtu.be/2ix-llpzUOQ

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https://youtu.be/bwCjV8my_Zc ok my mom walked in so i didn't get to finish my thought, but i guess the full thought is just: what the fuck? like i'm really gonna be watching this vid on repeat while y'all are just trolling us. this will end up in my nightmares. know that. also my paranoia is once again setting in. as i mentioned in previous confessional, i feel like ben and i have bonded the most, and we've both pointed it out to each other, but now i feel like he's pointing it out... almost too much? he's basically comparing our convos to his with the rest of the tribe and that they're much better (which i lowkey agree), but something feels fishy because again IM PARANOID. AM I BEING PLAYED?? like literally the scenario in my mind is that everyone's aligned except me and ben has been chosen as the bug to make me feel comfortable. okay yes im crazy. and it's only day 2 whew! im going to bed goodnight.

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ok now ive found a video about spectograms the channel has liked. this hunt is getting me anxious bc slowly but surely the amount of views on the immunity idol vid is increasing. AHHHH

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ok i found the spectogram and it literally spells out "SINK." (also this shit is scary so again, my nightmare comment holds.) so there are 5 other followers, which makes me know for sure that at least 5 other ppl have found this vid. also i have no idea what to do with the word. i assume that it'll come in handy eventually (maybe a password? send in a chat? comment on the vid? something?) and i really really hope im the only person to find this. i know that's unlikely tho.

---

oh my god. oh my fucking god. the clue is at survivor-mesopotamia.tumblr.com/sink . im screaming. proud of myself. BUT of course it says... "clue Though you have found it, No clue has emerged. UNDER CONSTRUCTION, Come back when you’ve merged." i- i have to wait until i've merged. HA. we'll see if bitches get that far. and im bitches. anyways sorry for the spam, now back to your regularly scheduled programming

Day 3: I almost forgot to do this confessional. But here I am, in bed, watching Avatar, and drinking butterscotch milk with Irish cream, which is surprisingly good? Anyways, here we go! First, you’re telling me that we LOST the challenge.. what the hell :( I thought I did so well having 188, but apparently even 256 wasn’t going to cut it. The fact that if Jack could improve his score by 30 points, means we’d be safe from tribal, it annoys me that it felt like he didn’t try as hard as Chrissa in the flash game? Julian, he says we can beast through this game and make final three. This is something I’d really love to be able to trust that he has in mind, but I just am unsure at this moment. He gave me information towards the idol search that I appreciate, and probably wouldn’t have figured it out myself. That felt good, but I feel like he wasn’t giving me everything he knew, just enough to make me feel comfortable. I’ll have to continue to keep my eye on him.. Next, Heather, or Will, my potential showmance. We’ve finally got the opportunity to call each other, we talked about the idol search, and our potential moves in the future. He told me he likes the idea of not playing with Julian, but right after he told me this, Julian asked if we were good? Which was kinda sketch. But I’ll do my best to trust Will, and call it a weird coincidence. Megan hasn’t talked to me much today, but she was a room moderator for sequester, and was visiting a friend today, so I can’t blame her. Chrissa is hopefully safe, I can’t give her first boot in back to back games together, I refuse to be that heartless. She’s so good I can’t do it. Eric hasn’t talked to me much either. For someone who should probably know that his name is on the block, I’m surprised Jack isn’t talking too much to me? Maybe it’s because I’m on the chopping block and I don’t know it. I’d be really heartbroken if I were the first boot.

So we lost the challenge by ONE FREAKING POINT, which sucks ass. But not me doing the best in my tribe on the challenge. We stan improvement. Anyway, it looks like the discussion for the vote is between Jack and Chrissa, namely Jack. Though Chrissa performed worse in the challenge, she's done a better job connecting with the rest of us than Jack has. As of now, that's what the general concensus is. I talked to Julian and he agreed, and we are aligned with JJ. Chrissa would vote our way to make sure it isn't her. Another thing that's happening is the idol search. The video made literally no freaking sense, but when the channel liked this video about spectograms, Julian put the video into it and it spelled sink. It turned out that by putting the word sink into the blog link, it says a clue will be there but at the merge. I guess this means for now there will be no idols, so as long as the people im with are truthful, the person who is planned to go home at tribal will go home without a shadow of a doubt.

https://youtu.be/ury1fLaZQec

Right now everyone on the tribe is at peace and getting along, but we all know that’s gonna change when we go to tribal council.

I'm sad we lost the first challenge. I came back to do better than i did the first time, so the idea of being the first boot would suck. I'm not that close with Chrissa so 100% she's my vote. She has played more seasons than all of us & the second chancers deserve their time. Also, Chrissa did the worst out of us in the challenge so it makes it easier to convince everyone to vote for her, but i also dont want to be the one who targets her first because that could come back round to me, and i would hate that as i've waited over a year for a 2nd shot at this. At the moment i'm closest with JJ & Will F, they are 100% my final 3 right now. I like Megan & Eric as well. I've only had 1 comversation with Julian and we did get on well but we havent talked about anything since then. I've tried to talk to Chrissa but she's never really tried to talk to me.

Hi!! Megan for my first confessional!! Yall are gonna have to remind me throughout my time in this game to do these because I'm SO bad at remembering to do confessionals lmaooo. So this first round there's been a lot going on. There are three tribes- newbies, flops, and a tribe of vets who have played well. Clearly I am on the flop tribe, because I was a SAD pre-merge boot in Svalbard. I was feeling really excited about my tribe and definitely thought we could do well and at least not lose the first challenge - we don't want to be flops again!! But alas, after a long day of doing that stupid entanglement flash game, we have proven our labels and FLOPPED yet again, getting last. SO. now we have to go to tribal council tonight. I am out of town this weekend so I haven't been able to talk to many people but I hope I can make it through this first vote. All I've heard so far is that people want to keep the tribe strong so we don't lose another challenge, and based on the first challenge scores, the two bottom challenge players would be Chrissa and Jack. So far I have heard that people want to do Jack instead of Chrissa, which I am fine with. I haven't talked to him that much and I think the time zone difference unfortunately puts him at a disadvantage, so honestly, we should probably vote him out first. I am nervous of course though because people have been fairly quiet and that's never a good thing, but I am hoping and praying that nothing crazy happens and Jack is the first boot and all is good and fine with that. Okay now I'll talk a little about the players on the tribe and how I feel about them- Okay so obviously I know JJ and Julian fairly well from previous games & also being in various group chats together. So far we are planning on working together as a trio and I am GOOD with that so far. Chrissa I have played with once before but she's not very social or talkative, and tbh, I haven't had a DM with her in this game yet, but she seems sweet. Eric I like a lot, he is funny and outgoing and a little chaotic and I love that in him. I think I know him from something previously but quite honestly I don't remember him, but he remembers me LOL. I hope they're good memories. Jack, again, I haven't talked to him much because of the time difference I think. Also isn't he like a minor? Oof that's weird. Anyway onto the final member of my tribe - the king, the legend, the literal love of my life - WILL!!!! I had never met Will before this game but we vibed IMMEDIATELY. We get along so well and we have a lot of things in common and we like the same kinda things. We've had a lot of really good conversations already and I feel the closest to him in this game by far, even though I have known other people on my tribe longer. I adore Will and I will do everything in my power to make sure we both get as far in this game as we can. Okay I think that's enough for a first confessional, bye!!!

Things have been pleasant and slow so far. Everyone on the tribe seems nice and at this point I’m still just hoping that we’ll all get as far in the game as possible at the expense of the more experienced players. I’m a little concerned because I haven’t really been party to any strategy talk yet; I think that’s just because no one has thought it necessary while we don’t have to go to tribal, but I’m still worried I might just be on the outs and not know it.

hiiii so glad to be back in the game!!!! So thankful I have the opportunity to redeem myself after my huge flop in 94, but lowkey worried about being on the An tribe? Only because it is filled with people who have done well in the past I’m not sure how to measure where I fall within them, but everyone has been very nice and seems to get along with me so far! Also it seems like there is no suspicion from them about Zach and I being siblings which is STELLAR. From looking at the cast I think the only person who knows for sure is JJ, and perhaps Megan? But thankfully they aren’t on a tribe with either of us so that might work in our favor. I’m a little nervous about this first challenge but I have one of the highest scores on my tribe atm, so I feel like if we go to tribal it might be okay. Fingers crossed hehe ;))

I’m SCARED I’ve been out of the loop for TOO LONG. 

from what I've heard i am safe i won't be comfortable until i heard the votes not being all me. 

https://youtu.be/oX4-_QPoqNk

https://youtu.be/YviOufmjmps

My brand is having 4 minute confessionals

from episode 1 https://youtu.be/VqDkCGLTARU

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from episode 1 also https://youtu.be/mklfEHtGp04

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9UqNr3fbiE

Jack voted out 6-1

[saltoftheplanet]

Why I’m skeptical about the Final Fantasy VII Remake

I’m skeptical that the remake will be good because there will be a lot of changes that will impact the direction, tone and narrative of the game, and Square Enix’s track record suggests to me that those inevitable changes will destroy and undercut what was special about the original game.

An essay breaking that down piece by piece is under the cut.

There will be a lot of changes

The remake will represent a huge and doubtlessly beautiful graphical update. With these updates, however, comes the need for a variety of new directorial decisions. For example, how should the camera behave during cutscenes? Who should they frame, and how? What will their body language and facial expressions show? Now that all the cutscenes will be voice acted, what tone will characters speak familiar lines with?

Likewise, the game is switching to a third-person, over-the-shoulder view. The original FFVII used a fixed camera and prerendered backgrounds to create a world that felt rich, full, and often cluttered. Every level will require redesign to account for the new way of moving about the world, and the amount of assets required to create the same feeling and to direct your attention in a same way will be exponentially higher. Likewise, there will need to be changes to account for the new combat system, as stages will need to be designed for both exploration and combat in many cases.

The episodic format of the game will necessitate changes to the pacing. Successful episodic games excel at creating self-contained rising and falling action and narrative arcs within each episode. Conversely, Final Fantasy VII was plotted and paced as a single complete narrative. Either the pace and order of events will need to be changed to make each episode stand strongly on its own, or the episodes on their own will be gawky and suffer pacing issues as they are pulled out of context from the greater whole.

Finally, the narrative itself will change. We have yet to see a verbatim line in each of the trailers, so the script itself is being rewritten, and with it many nuances will change. Square has stated point-blank that story changes are on the table. Finally, the compilation of Final Fantasy VII and the various Ultimanias released over the years have added a variety of changes to the narrative and to the lore. The teaser trailers we’ve seen so far have been in-line with the Midgar we see in Advent Children, itself a massive change to the famously ambiguous ending of the original game.

Direction and tone will be affected

All of these changes will not be neutral. In just about every decision of how this story is retold, some things are necessarily going to be emphasized and de-emphasized. Each of these decisions will carry and shift meaning in subtle ways. In that sense, the remake should more truly be considered an adaptation.

Examine the opening of FFVII; a meandering view of the stars fades into Aeris’ face. A single long shot pulls back to the city of Midgar. The tone here is mysterious, and the amount of time dedicated to the environment equals or surpasses the time spent on a character. This direction in cinematography echoes the game’s focus, as it is very much a story about the interplay between the characters as they exist inside of larger, overwhelming forces and environments.

The remake does have the opportunity to give us more meaningful cinematography in its cutscenes, but it may also make directorial decisions that change the meaning or impact of scenes. Especially likely is an increased focus on the characters and the action, and implicitly, the “cool” factor of both of those things, seeing as how the Remake and Square Enix as a company largely foreground great visuals and cool sequences. There’s absolutely room for that, of course, considering the bike scene in the original - but the broader point here is that no intervention can be neutral, and the Remake will inevitably have a different focus from the original.

One influential decision the writers have made is in their audience. All promotional material thus far has been aimed squarely at “returning” players, with no explanations offered for newcomers. What we’ve seen so far is in line with the marketing material - they are not simply trying to recreate FFVII as it was, but also tap into our collective sense of familiarity about it. The direct engagement with an expected audience means they will likely try to recreate the feeling of the experience rather than the experience itself, which would then necessitate certain story changes to keep things surprising or mysterious. This approach will inevitably widen the gulf between the remake and the original game.

SquareEnix’s Track Record

SquareEnix has been behind many beloved games, but they are not the company they were when they released FFVII. Their track record over the past decade, maybe even closer to the past 15 years, has been one of spotty quality, half-baked ideas, poor execution, and a narrative flexibility that suggests a lack of commitment to telling a story with singular vision and protecting the integrity of that story. Whatever your opinion or personal enjoyment of more recent Final Fantasy entries, they objectively lack the clarity and direction that made older entries of this series so beloved. To be completely clear, it is not that I believe these stories could never get there; it is that I’m keenly aware of the fact that they came short.

But more relevant than Square’s entries in the mainline Final Fantasy franchise are the entries to the Compilation of FFVII. These, two, have come with a variety of directorial changes that the new format and technology demanded. They’ve built their own lexicon that will likely be drawn upon in the creation of the remake, and that bring subtle changes along with them. For instance - Advent Children’s visually spectacular fight scenes introduced us to the idea that the characters were all able to leap vast distances and perform acrobatics mid-fight, and we’ve seen this idea carried forward into all subsequent entries of the series, even though it’s somewhat at odds with the more grounded, cyberpunk tone of the original game that earmarked these kinds of superhuman abilities as specifically unusual.

That may seem like a minor quibble, but I would argue that it’s a series of minor changes that have led to the difference in tone and focus between the compilation and the original game, and it comes down to a variety of directorial decisions that continue to be pertinent. For example, in Advent Children, the writing team made a decision to base Cloud’s character around what people would most remember from the game, and decided that would probably be the Cloud that we see at the beginning of the game. This decision was in play as early as his cameo in Kingdom Hearts, and for as inconsequential as it may have seemed then, it’s carried a rippling effect with it. By choosing to write the character in a way that they felt most fans would recognize, they also chose to downplay the growth and the specific quirks that wound up making that character interesting - a repeated issue with many of the characters.

Likewise, because the compilation prioritizes its returning Final Fantasy VII fans, it also tends to prioritize fanservice and recognizable, digestable moments over the overarching narrative of the world of Final Fantasy VII. One memorable example would be a cute Yuffie cameo in the midst of the Wutai War in Crisis Core, a war we are told repeatedly was extremely brutal and which actually destroyed Yuffie’s home and embittered her for years thereafter. The result is a story that’s at odds with itself due to tonal and character inconsistency. The prioritization of a quick moment of familiar joy robs the character of her impact in the long term, and this pattern is repeated for many other characters throughout.

Of course, the compilation has changed more than tone and framing of characters, and has also contributed several ideas to the world of Final Fantasy VII that are now in play. For example, the idea that upon death, people return to the Lifestream, whereby their spiritual energy is used by the planet to create new life. This is a distinctly animist idea that the Compilation has leaned away from, as they cannot cameo dead characters if those characters have since been reincarnate as trees. The compilation has since introduced the notion that a person’s soul and consciousness not only stays intact, but that they can come into contact with the living - an idea that’s fundamentally at odds with the themes of life, loss, death, existentialism and uncertainty that are extant in the original game.

Finally, though not least significantly, Polygon’s An Oral History of Final Fantasy 7 reveals that the reason Advent Children and subsequently the compilation was created was to save Square Enix from financial ruin, not to continue the story for its own sake. It is important to acknowledge the reality that Final Fantasy VII is bankable, and the reason for the remake to begin with may very well be that bankability rather than a good faith intention to retell a story that touched many. The episodic nature of the release does nothing to help that faith, nor does the fact that initial development was outsourced to a third party.

What was so special about FFVII

“So what?” you might ask. Even if there are a ton of changes, and those change the direction and tone of the game, does that really mean it won’t or can’t be good? To that - the jury is out. But I don’t particularly care if the FFVII remake is a good video game - I care if it’s a good representation of FFVII.

I admit without reservation that FFVII is, to use a technical term, anime trash. It has lots of rule of cool sequences that keep the game light, bits of spotty translation, and narrative stumbles. It is not a perfect work. But there is a reason why it was enduring; there was meaning to it, and that meaning was what made it special and unique.

FFVII was a ponderous game. It seldom presented an idea without later exploring and unpacking it. Its characters are seldom what they appear, the mission they undergo is hardly as noble as it seems, and what you expected to happen simply didn’t. It’s rife with deliberate ambiguity and doesn’t work overly hard to explain itself. Its story is shot through with uncertainty, about identity, faith, morality, justice, and every other waymark we use to navigate our life. Its most memorable moments rest in the loss of that certainty, and its most triumphant in the character’s perseverance regardless.

Though FFVII is primarily remembered and beloved for how it made people feel, it wasn’t written to be deliberately provocative or emotionally manipulative. The story was deeply impacted by a real-world loss, and the mandate of the team at the time was to convey that loss for how it truly felt, without the celluloid gloss and tropes like a dying speech that have since proliferated through the compilation. There was an honesty, an integrity and a complexity to this story that caused people to argue in earnest that it was the first video game that could truly be considered a piece of art.

I think the ephemeral nature of these qualities often leads people to conclude that FFVII is mainly loved due to “nostalgia,” but that’s a dismissive take that fails to acknowledge the deliberateness and consistency of its themes and ideas. The same care has very obviously not been given to any of the subsequent FFVII games.

In other words: this was never going to be an easy game to remake. A remake worthy of standing on the same pedestal as the original would require the same careful dedication to thematic consistency and integrity, to tone and feeling as the original. It would require careful thought to the impact and presentation of each of the monumental changes demanded by the new technology and platform.

Square-Enix has yet to do anything to suggest that it is up to this task. I have tremendous empathy for the development team that is taking on this task, but that doesn’t mean I have faith in their ability to really, truly, pull it off.

[wikiablogger]

25 Things Wrong With Boruto Everyone Chooses To Ignore

Boruto is the successful sequel series to one of the most popular anime to ever exist: Naruto. As it follows the next generations of shinobi, fans get to see all the couples grow older and see their children become strong ninja themselves. Predictably, the main character of the show is Naruto's own son, Boruto Uzumaki.

Though the show echoes a lot of themes and styles from its predecessor, it has a lot of its own, new charm. It continues on from Naruto and grows into its own conflicts, stories, and adventures. Many fans consider it to be better than Naruto, as it took the good from that show, cut out the bad, and made it a better overall experience. At least for certain there are far less infamous filler episodes.

However, just like Naruto, Boruto is not beyond reproach. It still has flaws in plot, logic, and character growth. It might be easier to overlook blemishes because of Boruto's increased quality, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. For example, there's a lot of debate about Sasuke's home life that sends fans atwitter. However, there's more to it than just the continuation of the Sasuke/Sakura debate. 

25. The Opening Scene

Boruto begins many years before the anime, showing the terrible destruction that will plague Konoha. It also implies all this destruction happened at the hands of Kawaki, a vicious combatant. Boruto himself steps into the battle, showing immense strength and defending the shinobi.

Then the series heads back to Boruto's youth, when he's a rebellious with daddy issues and a lot of angst about shinobi, a far cry from his future self.

Though it's an interesting hook, it does jar fans and mildly spoil Boruto's character growth. Part of Naruto's charm was his willpower and long-term growth into leadership, responsibility, and strength. This opening scene ruins that for Boruto.

24. Sarada's Identity Crisis

There's an entire arc in the series centering around Sarada and her parents. Since she has never really met Sasuke, she's unsure if she's really his daughter and that troubles her. This is the understandable aspect of her identity crisis

However, the less logical turn is when she starts questioning if Sakura is her mother. Sakura has raised her since birth, been with her every day, and cared for her lovingly. Even though Sasuke is a mystery, Sakura's devotion to her should be enough to assume she's her mother. They make look different, but thinking Karin birthed her or Sakura would care for Karin's child is ludicrous.

23. Boruto's Overpowered Abilities

Naruto was always powerful, even though he struggled to hone that power. However, Boruto is on another level. Despite his indifference to shinobi life and the Hokage title, he is easily one of the strongest students in his class in pure talent.

At best, Boruto appreciates winning and being powerful, but his strength is growing exponentially in comparison to his father.

Not to mention, his Karma marks add an absurdly powerful, currently unpredictable element to his power levels. Naruto became a powerful Shinobi, but Boruto might be on a completely different level that it's almost absurd.

22. Orochimaru's Involvement

Orochimaru, the troubled mad scientist of Naruto, is one of the most problematic characters in the series. He caused the shinobi of that time much grief with his schemes and plots.

However, in Boruto, he's just a parent coming to teacher meetings. Though Mitsuki hardly deserves exile for his father's deeds, allowing Orochimaru as much leeway as Naruto and Sasuke do is ridiculous. Mitsuki may be a genuine, talented, kind kid, but Orochimaru is still a complex, scheming man. He shows little growth away from that part of himself. After all, he is into making clones now, and sometimes very unstable ones like Shin Uchiha.

21. Burgers

Like Naruto had ramen, Boruto has burgers. Boruto loves eating the food with his friends and can be found often cradling a burger in his hands.

It gives the young shinobi a place to hang out and something the fill them up after hard work, but there is one big question: why burgers?

Naruto's world is heavily based in Asian mythology. After all, every land is full of ninja running around. Ramen made sense as their food of choice. However, burgers are an inherently European creation that's only been heavily franchised by Western culture. Boruto creators may be trying to connect with Western audiences, but burgers just don't make sense.

20. Katasuke Encouraging Boruto's Cheating

By Boruto, technology has greatly advanced in the 15 or so years since he Fourth Shinobi War ended. Doctors like Katasuke are even creating technology that hones ninja abilities.

Whole progress is exciting and Katasuke was desperate to get his tech tested and noticed, it was completely illogical to give it to Boruto to test in the exams. At best, Boruto wouldn't have been caught, leaving the Kote unnoticed. At worst, it could have completely failed and seriously hurt him. Instead, the middle occured: it worked great but the cheating and misuse of the Kote got both parties in great trouble. It was an overall dumb idea for Katasuke.

19. Sumire's Home Life

Sumire is a focal young ninja during the possession arc of Boruto. Why? Because all of the posessions and danger are looming because of her. Sumire's parents passed after their family was ostracized from Konoha for their involvement in Danzo's Root organization. She attempted to enact a revenge plot, but her friends stopped her.

However, beyond accepting her school life, what does Sumire have? If previous orphans are any indication, she lives alone and is depressed.

If Kabuto's orphanage is her home, that's frighteningly worse. Sumire's home life isn't talked about and isn't a concern, though it should be. After being trained to become an agent of revenge, she deserves a good home or at least some counseling.

18. Team 10's Leadership

The teaming up of Nara, Akimichi, and Yamanaka children is a classic shinobi combination. For generations, various heirs have paired up like this to create powerful teams. After all, together they build the powerful Ino-Shika-Cho Formation.

Another element to this team is that they are commonly lead by a member of the Sarutobi Clan to cement their bond. Consequently, the last trio was led by Asuma Sarutobi and was dubbed Team 10. However, Boruto's Team 10 is led by Moegi, a ninja with no connections to the Sarutobi clan. Instead, their leader should have been Konohamaru or Mirai, both strong shinobi and members of the Sarutobi clan.

17. Lack of Post-Ninja Careers

Boruto is set long after the Fourth Shinobi War, in a time of prolonged peace. Because of this, ninja have fallen out of favor and less are needed. Therefore, some of the older shinobi now have interest in finding non-ninja careers. There are complaints of there being a scarcity, however.

While it's an understandable plight for the older shinobi, this doesn't make sense in the world of Naruto. During the previous series, there were cooking-nin in the Land of Lightning and other similar occupations on display. It may require some travel, but there are certaintly jobs out there for non-combat ninja. Ino is a florist now, after all.

16. Sasuke and Sakura's Marriage

Sakura pined after Sasuke for the entirety of Naruto. However, Sasuke showed little interest in her romantically. At best, she was a friend who annoyed him. Sometime between Naruto and Boruto, though, they marry and have a daughter.

Despite showing no previous interest, Sakura and Sasuke are an illogical match.

Sasuke is very private, prefers not to be touched, and stays away for long missions. Sakura prefers affection, is constantly saddened by his absence, and it fairly open with her emotions. Their personalities don't match up well and it's bizarre the pair would end up a "happy" couple.

15. Mitsuki's Immeasurable Potential

Mitsuki is a very unique character, as he's the artificially created son of Orochimaru. From Orochimaru's genes alone, Mitsuki is understandably powerful. However, there's an element that makes him even more complex: his conception.

Artificial humans haven't existed before in this world. The shinobi have no clue if this will effect his powers. In theory, Mitsuki could be even more powerful because of the precision in his genetics. He could have more potential than any other shinobi has even had before. While that's wild enough, it's even wilder how no one seems as concerned or fascinated by his unknown, immeasurable potential.

14. Technological Development

During Naruto, technology is akin to the tech of the early 1900's with some odd tapes and other advances mixed in. However, 15 years later, by Boruto, the technology has rapidly evolved to the point it is far more akin to the modern technology of the early 2000s's, with sleek computers, phones, video  games, etc.

Though peace can create rapid growth, it seems quite extreme that what took about 75 years for first world countries took only 15 years in Naruto. Either Naruto should have been a little further along in tech, or Boruto should be a bit further back. Maybe huge computers and block phones, not sleek, newer tech.

13. Kabuto Running the Orphanage

Kabuto was one of the most aggressive of Orochimaru's minions during the time of Naruto. He faithfully protected, resurrected, and destroyed for his master. He single-handedly caused a lot of pain for Konoha.

Kabuto had a change of heart during the final battles of Naruto, wanting to help save the world, not destroy it, but that hardly makes him a good person.

By Boruto, though, he's the leader of orphanage. Giving a twisted follower of a mad scientist agency over tons of young minds seems irresponsible and dangerous, particularly with all the Shin Uchiha clones there now.

12. Boruto Agreeing To Team 7

Team 7 was the iconic trio of Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto in the original series. When Boruto graduates Ninja Academy, he, Sarada, and Mitsuki are grouped together into a team. They were initially called Team 3, but after Sarada became wildly impressed with Naruto, she asked they be renamed Team 7. Her request was granted.

However, there's a serious snag in reviving the name: Boruto. While Boruto learned to work well with Sarada and respect her, he still has serious issues with his father and hates the idea of following in his footsteps. For him to agree to Team 7 is a complete breach of character.

11. Sasuke's Absentee Relationship With Sarada

Sasuke's relationship with Sarada is strained and distant, at best. However, it doesn't make sense for it to be. For starters, Sasuke is the best person to teach her about her genetic powers. After all, he's the only other Uchiha. He should be caring for his only heir much more closely for that reason alone.

Beyond that, though, he knows losing his parents, his troubled relationship with his brother, and the Uchiha Curse of Hatred led him down a dark path. To do better for Sarada, he should give her a doting father and lots of support to guide her away from hatred.

10. The Emergence of The Otsutsuki Clan

When Kaguya came to earth, it was already mentioned she wasn't the only one of her kind. However, it seemed she was the first to get distracted by love and, later, ultimately fail in her mission. It's understandable when Momoshiki, Kinshiki, and Urushiki come to the planet. The problem lies more in when they came.

Thematically, if Kaguya was the final enemy large enemy, it's insane to make her clansmen early villains in Boruto's lore.  

Though it gave Sasuke and Naruto a challenge, it was a ridiculous feat for the genin main characters. The Otsutsuki clan should have appeared later to be villains for the younger cast.

9. So Many Ninja Housewives

Naruto showed us the strength of both male and female ninja in its many trials, battles, and wars. It gave fans the first female Hokage in Tsunade, the secretly powerful Hinata, intimidating villains like Konan, and more. However, by the time Boruto rolls around, most all of the remaining female cast are relegated to housewives.

While it makes sense for Ino to want to run her family flower shop, or Hinata to want to be close to her kids, some don't fit the role well. For example, Sakura is far more likely to have wanted to do something else with her time, perhaps as a village medic-nin. Instead, even she's a housewife.

8. Denki

When Boruto began, fans were introduced to the title characters closest friends. This included Shikadai and soon after, Denki. Unlike Shikadai, though, Denki is a terrible ninja and Boruto has to save him from bullies.

This seems like it might be setting up Denki for a growth arc, but instead he just always seems several steps behind everyone.

Also, Denki is prone to getting his friends into trouble because of his clumsiness, low confidence, and more. Even more, his skills in computers is barely used. Though it was a nice idea to have a kid who didn't want to be a ninja at all, it's disappointing his growth is so miniscule.

7. Karin Keeping Sarada's Umbilical Cord

When Sarada was born, Karin assisted Sakura in labor. After that, though, Karin kept Sarada's umbilical cord. It's a very strange decision already, but her reason for doing it is even stranger. She didn't keep it to remember helping Sakura birth life, but to have a momento of Sasuke's. A momento that is the epitome of his relationship with someone else that isn't her.

Karin can be misguided and creepy at times, but this perhaps takes the cake for craziest thing she's done. She has no use for the cord and it's disturbing to put romantic sentimentality into it.

6. Children Fighting Gang Members and Bandits

In Naruto, some of the teachers make questionable decisions by continuing fights with surprise enemies that may be too difficult for their ninja students. Boruto tries to bypass this by having rules for these situations. Students can only engage in combat with a teacher around.

However, that's nearly worse. Now, students are actively seeking trouble with gangs and bandits. And with the permission to fight them with instructors, of course headstrong shinobi like Boruto go out fighting without that supervision. Though a nice sentiment with better planning to fight with the kids, the random encounters made more sense and encouraged genin to pursue dangerous battles less.

5. Boruto's Low Levels of Character Development

As the main character of the series, Boruto has a surprisingly low amount of character development. In Naruto, the title character had a long way to go. He was rebellious but lonely, talented but erratic, courageous but headstrong. Boruto, on the other hand, has far less internal conflicts. He's rebellious but has tons of friends.

He's talented, focused, and strong. His courage is strong, but he also has a level head in a fight.

Many of Boruto's conflicts are not internal, but external. They can often only be dealt with in time or rely on others to change, too. This makes his growth inherently less noticeable and progressing, making him less engaging as a character.

4. Underusing Himawari

Early on, it's pretty clearly shown that Himawari, with time, might actually be the strongest Uzumaki child. Boruto may have his Karma mark and talent, but Himawari knocked out her father, Seventh Hokage, at the age of three and awakened her Byakugan. There is a raw strength to her, but she is also inherently kind and empathetic. She is a fascinating young character the show puts little spotlight on.

Moreover, it would be hilarious to see a young, cute girl achieving feats of power older children struggle with. It wouldn't be surprising if she could. Himawari could add more humor to the show and add another great power for fans to watch evolve.

3. Sasuke's Crimes

Throughout Naruto, Sasuke committed countless terrible crimes. Sasuke is now seen as a hero by the village despite all he's done. It was understandable for Naruto to forgive and forget, but not the whole village. Sasuke's actions destroyed some lives, after all, and he did try to destroy Konoha entirely.

Even more, though it's good Sarada doesn't have to suffer for her father's crimes, it's strange no one treats her differently for it. If everyone hated Naruto just for housing a dangerous creature, why wouldn't they treat Sasuke or Sarada poorly at times? Naruto's generation may be kinder, but those older generations are still alive and kicking. They wouldn't stay silent.

2. Boruto's Lack of Likable Goals

Until he becomes closer to Sarada and makes a goal of becoming her protector, more like how Sasuke is for Naruto, Boruto has very unlikable goals. Though he's the main character, he's very belligerent and angst-ridden about life. His only goal is to become nothing like his father.

Though Naruto is a questionable parent, he is a good leader and warrior.

His support of Sarada is the first goal that achieves something greater. That goal isn't realized until nearly 40 episodes into the series, though. Until then, he's only filled with abhorrence for his father, so much so that it makes his character fairly illogically angry and flat.

1. Naruto's Terrible Parenting

Naruto is now the Seventh Hokage, a fitting achievement for the powerful, willful young ninja. However, being Hokage makes parenting very hard. Naruto is also a highly neglectful parent, though, willing to send a shadow clone to his daughter's birthday instead of himself.

With Naruto's desire for family and loneliness as a child, it's ludicrous that his bad parenting is as serious as it is. The Hokage excuse makes sense to a point, but missing major life milestones and practically ignoring the troubles of his children is blatantly irresponsible. One would think he'd be an ecstatic, almost annoyingly interactive father. Instead, Naruto is nearly non-existent and that doesn't fit his zealous, loving personality at all.

---

Do you think we missed anything else wrong with Boruto? Let us know in the comment section!

[marystudies]

A LONG ASS LIST OF TIPS FOR HIGH SCHOOL: FRESHMAN TO SENIOR YEAR LETS GO

Disclaimer: This is just from my experience, so these might not all apply to you! 

Freshman Year

ok, ok, freshman year can be scary but don’t let that get to you

dont worry about upperclassmen being rude/teasing you 

it’ll most likely happen, but I’ve never seen an upperclassman tease a freshman with the intention to really hurt them

one day you’ll be them so dw

on the topic of upperclassmen, make some older friends!!! (through classes, sports, etc.) it’s so nice to have someone give you tips and help you through high school

dont expect your friend group to stay the same lol

BUT ITS A GOOD THING I PROMISE YOU

I was scared of changing my friend group, so even though I wasn’t being treated too well, it wasn’t until senior year when I really made a change and I wish I did it earlier

be open to meeting new people, everyone is scared just like you and looking for more friends

I don’t think its neccessary for freshman to become sUPER involved in clubs and all that but at least get a feel for whats out there

try out for a sport if you play one!

this goes for all of high school, not just freshman year, but I regret not being as involved as I could’ve been 

Go to school events like football games and dances! School spirit is considered weird in middle school but its cool in high school

take your classes seriously, your teachers are right - high school is much harder than middle school (but it’s not too bad if you stay organized!)

my freshman year GPA was my lowest like english really caught me off guard (properly formatted, 5 paragraph essays being 50% of your grade??? a concept.)

so my cumulative GPA was brought down

I think most freshman don’t have access to AP classes to boost your GPA or anything, but if you’re looking to push yourself take an honors class or 2! (if available)

Sophomore Year

wooohooo ur no longer a freshman

I’d take at least 1 AP class if you can

my sophomore year I took AP Human Geo - which I really loved, and it also wasn’t too hard

a lot of sophomores take AP World which is a BITCH of a class

BUT I wouldn’t recommend taking Honors World because you don’t get the GPA boost, you don’t get college credits (unless you take the AP Euro test or something), and it’s almost just as hard 

this is a bit random - but when you’re taking Algebra 2 (which was my sophomore year) PLS PAY ATTENTION math builds on itself don’t fuck yourself over

take the PSAT if you want (I honestly don’t remember if I took it freshman year too but eh), but seriously its not required

start thinking about college (I know it’s the last thing you want to do)

just little things like

when do I want to take the SAT/ACT?

would I like a small school or a big school?

What will I be able to put on my college applications?

like if you do community service through a club/church/etc then great!!! sports? YEs

can’t think of anything? Join a club! Try out for a sport (it’s not too late) Find something that interests you

you’re probably pretty situated socially now but never be afraid to get to know those classmates/”school friends” better! 

Junior Year

so junior year is commonly thought of as the hardest year of highschool

which is partially true (we’ll get there later)

but anyways, seriously buckle your seatbelt and get ready to work your ass off because THIS YEAR COUNTS, LADIES AND GENTS

Take AP classes if available

I took AP Psych (WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND) and Honors PreCalc (coming from regular Algebra 2)

Psych gave me college credit and a GPA boost

HPC gave me a GPA boost for UCs 

It was a bitCH of a class but it made AP calc a breeze 

If you haven’t started already, start prepping for SAT/ACT and then take them

tutoring is very helpful, but it can be expensive

I’ve seen studyblrs post about free prep through Kahn Academy and other stuff, so you might have to do a bit of digging but there are tons of resources out there

TAKE PRACTICE TESTS

take one of each first - then focus on the test you did better on 

one of my biggest regrets is taking SAT prep instead of ACT prep because my ACT (which I didn’t do specialized prep for) ended up equivalent to my SAT (which I did prep for)

the more you take em the better you get

Studyblr is gr8 for finding test taking tips

If you’re not happy with your score, just take it again! I only took each one once but most people improve their scores if they take it again

I recommend visiting a few universities when you’re on break! Get a feel for what you like and what you don’t like (size, location, public/private, etc) and what kind of school you could get accepted to

you don’t want to end up applying to a billion schools that you wouldn’t even want to go to

private schools like it when you express interest by visiting

so if you’re visiting, make sure you check in so you can be in their system 

END OF JUNIOR YEAR - ASK FOR LETTERS OF REC NOW! BY THE FIRST WEEK OF SENIOR YEAR A LOT OF TEACHERS ARE ALREADY TAKING ON TOO MANY LETTERS!

Senior Year (buckle up this section is the longest)

but YAY UR A SENIOR 

DO FUN SENIOR YEAR THINGS like my school has all kinds of events for seniors and it’s so great 

Remember when I said junior year is the hardest? Yeah well no... 1st semester senior year is SO MUCH WORSE ur in for a lot of fun

Ok seriously - don’t let senioritis get to you first semester

Still take challenging classes! Schools are looking for progression in difficulty

Those mid year transcripts REALLY DO MATTER! 

College apps, man

Make sure you’re communicating with your counselor to make sure you have everything ready and on track 

like file the FAFSA and CSS (used for lots of privates)

tbh I didn’t think it would help me a lot but it (the CSS) actually did so just do it even if you think you’ll get nothing

Ok so hopefully at this point you have a feel for what schools you are interested in

Things to consider: location, price, size, public/private, difficulty of the application, ranking, program/major you are applying to, campus, overall vibe

I didn’t do any interviews but maybe look into it

Don’t get too comfortable and set reasonable goals - apply to several safety schools, a few good options/could go either way schools, but also a few “reaches”

ESSAYS

I’m no college counselor, but don’t just wing your essays without having an adult/professional look over them

I got lucky - my mom is a professional writer so my family didn’t pay for a counselor

Do your research - you can find so much information about what schools are looking for in essays

If an essay is “optional” DO IT it’s really not optional lol

Keep in mind - these essays are nothing like what you’ve been taught. You don’t have to (and often SHOULDNT) write a 5 paragraph essay with topic sentences relating back to the thesis and evidence, etc. its much more free

think “What is the story I am going to tell?”

get creative - this is hard and takes some time

Think: How am I going to separate myself from thousands of applicants? What is a story that ONLY I can tell?

DO EARLY ACTION FOR AS MANY SCHOOLS AS POSSIBLE!!! 

such a relief to knowing you got in somewhere in like,,,, november

acceptance rates are higher for EA 

the order from highest to lowest is ED > EA > RD

Early Decision scares me (schools will say they give equal scholarship consideration but lol thats a lie) 

but if you have your heart set on a school go ahead

apply to other school just in case, you don’t want to get stuck starting all your apps when a lot of students have already turned them all in

Now that you’re done with applications (whew), the acceptances (and rejection) will start coming!! yay!

ok first for acceptances

those first acceptances are so cool like YAY YOU GOT INTO COLLEGE IM PROUD OF U

as soon as you get your first acceptances really start researching the school more and deciding if you’d REALLY want to go there or not

i know this is hard bc you haven't heard back from all your schools but it’ll make choosing a school so much easier

sadly, not all acceptances are happy tho

like I got accepted to my #1 school but they gave me no money so it was impossible to go

I was so emo for a couple days there

BUT! If you’re serious about it, try appealing for financial aid but keep your expectations low

ok now waitlists

these can be a bit nerve wracking

PLEASE apply for the waitlist right away

at some schools if you dont within a couple days, your application might get thrown out

aaaaand rejections

i dont have a lot to say about this but please dont be too hard on yourself

sometimes its just not meant to be and thats ok!

NOW PICKING A COLLEGE

def the most difficult and mentally draining part for me lol

make sure you really map out everything to consider

net cost (tuition, room & board, books, travel, personal expenses, etc.), size, location, etc.

I personally had this idea that I’d end up at a big school far from home but I’m going to a small school close to home and I’m still super excited!!! So make sure you give every school a second look 

APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIPS!

the essays aren’t usually too bad and sometimes you can just rework your college app essays

you can find them online, your school might have some (like PTA scholarships, band scholarships, etc.)

ok this is the time everyone really gets senioritis

i almost didn’t get senioritis at all lol just because slacking off stressed me out

but please be smart about it dont get rescinded 

and lastly have fun! high school really does fly by, it’ll be over before you know it

[pipermaycosplays]

*Disclaimer* I do not hate Pikachu if it sounds like I’m dissing Pikachu. Pikachu is one of my favorite Pokémon. Objective here is to give Pikachu’s older sibling some much needed love.

Several months ago, I came across an article by The Gamer, in my Facebook feed and the title was, “25 Awesome Things Fans Forgot About Pokemon*” (link will be at the end of this post, I have put it on Tumblr before but I don’t think the articles I post have been that popular). I thought to myself, “Well this looks interesting, I’m gonna read it.” When I got toward the end of it, I noticed a fact that just about reduced me to tears. The number one fact was simply this, Raichu Exists. Ouch. If any gen 1 Pokémon is underappreciated, its Raichu. Does the Pokémon company hate Raichu?

This instilled in me a new found love for Raichu. A few years back when XY BreakThrough came out, I bought the Burning Spark theme deck featuring Raichu because the box art was nice and I liked the artwork on the card. Now, I am trying to get two decks ready to go for Tekko that are built around Raichu. One for the standard format (Raichu GX) and one for expanded format (Raichu Break). Just trying to show Raichu some love here…anyway back to how Raichu is underappreciated and overshadowed.

Right from the get go, Raichu has been forgotten. Pikachu was made the adorable mascot of the Pokémon Franchise. The first impression you get of Raichu, is in the opening theme of the anime when Ash’s Pikachu faces off against Lt. Surge’s Raichu (which I believe has been characterized as a jerk Raichu…). So right off the bat, fans have a negative image of Raichu because he kicked Ash’s Pikachu’s butt in a fight. In the Pokémon video games (please anyone correct me if I am wrong, for I have never played the video games, I only know what I read about them), if Pikachu is your starter, it won’t evolve into it’s more powerful, older sibling Raichu. However, I have also read that if you happen to like Pikachu better than Raichu, it’s not recommended that you evolve your Pikachu until toward the end of the game for the sake of completing the dex. From an outsider who hasn’t had much experience with the games, to me that seems a little sad, because before the Light Ball, Raichu was the better pick for your team. However even if Pikachu had the **Light Ball, it does not get a speed boost, just an attack boost, so given that, Raichu is still faster. A little later, is a side-by-side comparison of their base statistics. When generation 6 dropped for Pokémon, a cool, new type of evolution was introduced to the gameplay….mega evolutions. Raichu got snubbed of a mega evolution and yet I’ve seen so many fakemon/fanart designs for a mega Raichu, that actually look pretty epic. And some of them actually look like what would have been Raichu’s older sibling, Gorochu.

That said, when generation 7 rolled around an interesting and new form for certain Pokémon (mostly gen 1 Pokémon), were Alola forms. Raichu finally gets some love? Perhaps. He did get blessed with an adorable Alolan form….with dual typing may add…electric and psychic typing. I still have yet to see an Alolan Raichu GX card and I still have yet to see Alolan Raichu printed as a psychic type. With gen 8 starters having been dropped recently, I think my wishes for that are slim to none.

This next one might be slightly out of place but let’s compare the base stats between Pikachu and Raichu. All stats directly taken from: https://veekun.com/dex/gadgets/compare_pokemon?pokemon=Pikachu&pokemon=Raichu

Raichu Base Stats:         Pikachu Base Stats:

Base EXP: 218 Base EXP: 112

Base Happiness: 70 Base Happiness: 70

Capture Rate: 75 Capture Rate: 190

HP: 60 HP: 35

Attack: 90 Attack: 55

Defense: 55 Defense: 40

Sp. Attack: 90 Sp. Attack: 50

Sp. Defense: 80 Sp. Defense: 50

Speed: 110 Speed: 90

Base Stat Total: 485 Base Stat Total: 320

Effort: 3 Speed Effort: 2 Speed

I recently read that the Pokémon company has made Pikachu more viable as an attacker via an item called, “Light Ball” which to my understanding is an item that only a  Pikachu can weild (to me that begs the question, why? Why can only a Pikachu wield the Light Ball?). It raises special attack and attack stats and therefore makes it slightly better than Raichu overall. At least that is my understanding of how the item works. I have also read that in Gen 3, I believe, that Pikachu beat a Raichu with Light Ball, however it doesn’t stand a chance now against Alolan Raichu. Here is the link to the WikiFandom page on the Light Ball; **  https://pokemon.fandom.com/wiki/Light_Ball

In the Pokémon tcg, Raichu has gotten the short end of the stick. And while I don’t know much about how the tcg started back in Base Set, however from about DPP on, I can tell you a bit there because I follow a lovely blog called, @pokemon-card-of-the-day   and they have done a wonderful job of shedding light on how the tcg has evolved over time….Please check their blog out, its awesome! Anyway I digress..back to Raichu. To my knowledge and understanding, I don’t think that Raichu has been part of any top cut/competitive deck until now. And for various reasons I suppose. With all the electric support running around in the current format (pun intended), and the Shining Legends Raichu GX, somebody wants my boy to win. Of course, from experience, the most viable Raichu GX deck is the Snuggly Generator variant, not Raichu x Magnezone variant (too bulky). I hope Snuggly Generator Raichu GX somehow goes to World’s this year. I really do.

Raichu to my knowledge has been printed in half or less than half (Bulbagarden article said 43 different cards I think…) of the sets that Pikachu has been released in, and yet, Raichu has had some beautiful card artwork. Several examples come to mind when I think of all the lovely artwork featuring Raichu. Base Set Raichu comes to mind, he just looks so happy. Another example is Expedition Base Set Raichu, the holo with the stars and Raichu, again looks very happy. Or how about the artwork for Raichu in the Black and White Next Destinies set? He is walking down a street with balloons looking perfectly happy…or how about a throwback to some of the first EX cards released? Raichu was fortunate enough to get 2 different EX cards with beautiful artwork. For my last, and slightly more recent example, take the Radiant Collection Raichu from the XY Generations set, it’s just plain adorable….and yet he isn’t popular. That begs the question….why? Raichu has had some awesome artwork in the tcg…so many gorgeous cards Imo.

Raichu, you are a the goodest of boi’s and deserve a ton of love! Thank you for existing. You are absolutely adorable. Thank you to something wonderful I recently discovered on Tumblr; Pokéganda blogs…I discovered two for Raichu! Thank you @raichu-propaganda and @raichupropaganda for showing Raichu some love! :) 

Here is the link to Raichu’s Bulbagarden page for it’s appearances in the games, anime, manga and tcg, and just about anything else you want to know on the soft, squishy boi; https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Raichu_(Pokémon) Whoever did this Bulbagarden page, very nice job. I love the detail in it. Thank you.

Thank you to @dragonair–propaganda  for complimenting Raichu the other night, that really made my night. I absolutely adore the Pokéganda community, and follow a bunch of the blogs.

Below is the link I referenced at the beginning of this post, if anyone was interested in reading it. Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this long winded post, it has been brewing for several months, and I have put a little over a month worth of time into this.

*https://www.thegamer.com/pokemon-awesome-things-fans-forget-trivia/

~MistyMay