#i finally found a way to format quests!!

[irminsuls]

genshin impact gif challenge ✦

[1/?] archon quests → interlude chapter, act iii: inversion of genesis

“do you think there are any differences between your present self and your previous and future incarnations? if not, then what are the differences between humans and puppets? whoever has tasted the joys and sorrows of life in the human realm is human. whoever has loved and lost, cried with grief, howled with rage at the tragedy of death that eclipses the miracle of life... they are human too."

[lamemaster]

Elves/Valar suffering from FOMO

AN: Mindless little ramble to decrease my fomo of Valinor lol (Should this be in an interview format? I messed up)

Intro:

Another quest has taken root in the lands of Middle-earth. With the elves gone, this one falls squarely on the shoulders of the mortals of Arda.

This, however, is a sore point for many inhabitants of the Blessed Realm.

No, of course, they don’t want to be involved. They’re far too weary, far too old for such things...

(Lies.)

✨Glorfindel ✨

The Balrog Slayer is so not weary enough to skip praying for a third respawn. Like a movie franchise that never disappoints or Mariah Carey in winter, Glorfindel was made for Middle-earth. When another quest stirs on the horizon, he’s the most restless elf of them all.

Just send him already. Please.

Until then, he’ll be sitting in a bleak corner, chewing his nails and staring dramatically into the void, waiting for the next adventure to come his way.

💅🏻Thranduil💅🏻

This elf is not an adventure Barbie. He’s a full-time drama queen.

Thranduil, the sassiest king of the elves, deserves to know what’s happening across Middle-earth. As one of the last elves to leave, the thought of missing an opportunity to stir up trouble for any hero is an unbearable woe he’s forced to endure.

🔥Feanor🔥

He was supposed to have the ultimate revenge arc. But no. Instead, he’s been robbed of his moment. Blud died in the next chapter. Burnt to crisp lol.

Feanor is insanely jealous of Bilbo and Frodo for completing their grand adventures, and so he powers the entire Hall of Mandos’ electricity with the sheer force of his annoyance.

If there’s another quest with a dark lord on the rise, expect his metaphorical knickers to be in a twist.

🤛🏻Tulkas🤛🏻

This one doesn’t need an explanation. He’s the Vala of War.

Tulkas lives for that “found family” feel. Also, any chance to scare the ever-living daylight out of the corrupted ones? Sign him up. He hasn’t thrown a tantrum yet about being kept from the chaos, but it’s this close.

It's been damn long since the War of Powers people!

⚓Earendil⚓

An adrenaline junkie at heart, Earendil has been suspended from quests since his first and only one. He’s salty about it.

Worse still, like Hurin, he’s stuck watching all the fun happen without ever getting to participate. At least he got a brief serotonin boost when Galadriel sent a little bit of him with Sam. Small mercies.

👱🏻‍♀️Galadriel👱🏻‍♀️

She just wants to be the cryptic, mysterious lady with her magic mirror. Is that too much to ask?

Slightly peeved when Goldberry takes the limelight. Tries to act unbothered, but deep down? Hurt AF.

🐩Finrod🐩

Our sweet Nom aspires to rip wargs to shreds by day and play music for men by night. He’s the ultimate golden retriever of the Eldar.

Don’t leave him out of the group gatherings. Please. He’ll pout.

🔨Aule🔨

With most of his Maiar getting corrupted, Aule has seriously considered moving his headquarters. Not for the first time.

It’s not just to be closer to his little smith babies (the dwarves). Okay, maybe a little. But mostly? He wants to finally craft some good freaking rings. Because no, Mairon, an all-powerful ring with vanishing engravings is not enough.

[lavendarr00]

EZRA "ROOK" MERCAR | SHADOW DRAGON | DUALIST

Ah, Ezra. He's my second Shadow Dragon, 36, and romances Neve. Finally got to doing a proper write up for him 😊

He’s bold, charismatic, and carries himself with confidence but with the warm approachability of an old friend. He has been a Shadow Dragon since their origin and is well established amongst the ranks. Out of all my Rooks, he is the most experienced and ready to face what all Rooks do. Which makes all his failures in Veilguard sting that much more. And what makes him extra special to me, is that he's the older brother of my main Rook, Blair Mercar. 🤗

Ramblings under the cut

Like other canon adhering Mercars, his origin was on a battlefield in Ventus as an infant where his adoptive father found him. He was raised by the Mercars who are a military family, and he too served in the military until he was 20 (so only for about two years). He realized that the Imperium was not a nation he wanted to support and left to find his own path. Before the formation of the Shadow Dragons, Ezra worked with smaller, rag-tag freedom fighter groups in Minrathous that freed slaves and fought against the burgeoning Venatori. It was then that he met Blair (my canon Mercar Rook). 

Blair had already been liberated from the magister that owned her and she, amongst the others that were saved with her, needed help either fleeing Tevinter or finding a way to enter society. Ezra’s group received word from an individual that was on his own mission to free Tevinter's slaves (guess who😉) that a group he freed were in a settlement with him outside of the city. Ezra was sent to help them which is where he met Blair. The magister that owned Blair was using her for magic related experimentation which had left her traumatized. But they made an instant connection and Ezra became deeply invested in her. So much so that he petitioned his family to adopt her. And that’s what happened! Although Blair was already 17, Ezra was her guide and protector in her new freedom, teaching her about the world and standing up for her until she could do it on her own. It was only a couple years after Blair was freed that she began joining Ezra on his missions and assignments. Their unique skill sets built off each other and they were really effective as a duo. And eventually, when the Shadow Dragons were formed, they immediately joined. Their compatibility was apparent right away so from the start, the Mercars made their mark in the organization. So much so that they became affectionately known as “The Mercar Strays” (strays because Ezra was found, and Blair kinda was too haha).

As much as Ezra played a major role in making Blair who she is today, her presence in his life was just as impactful to Ezra. He was 23 when he met her and brought her into his family. Ezra was still figuring out who he was and what he wanted to do with his life. Blair became his mission and his purpose. She kinda forced him to grow up. He had to model to her what he himself should be which was totally a “fake it till you make it” situation. He learned how to lead by example and protect those that need defending. It shaped how he approached his work and absolutely how he leads the team in Veilguard. 

In Ezra’s canon, Blair is still a part of the Shadow Dragons and is working actively with them. I’m still noodling on what his personal quest would be if I gave him one and how much it would or would not include Blair. But either way, in each of their canons, they are a big part of who they are and their personal arcs. 

The companions that he is closest to in Veilguard are Neve (he romances her. Fellow Minrathous citizen, fights for their city, he’s the light she needs, etc), Bellara (reminds him of Blair a bit. In a little sister way), and Davrin (Bros. Yup that's it. They’re bros. Love em. Well actually there is more to them - they both have a strong sense of duty and responsibility to something bigger than themselves and greatly respect each other for it.). Ezra chooses Minrathous over Treviso and I haven’t decided on how hes going to handle Solas. I think that depends on how I handle any personal arc I give him. 

And that’s Ezra! 🤍

[galadrieljones]

I have finally finished all companion quest lines and I think after I clear the rest of the blight from the Crossroads, because it just feels like a moral imperative, then I am going to bite the bullet and trigger the endgame sequence for Veilguard. I think that will start tonight.

I'm scared 🙃

You know I really do like this game, but my one actual complaint is that it feels completely unregulated, pacing-wise. Inquisition was way less fun to play, but it was much better at this, just in terms of telling us what level we should be on to progress the main story. That helped me understand how much I should be grinding and focusing on companions and side quests. In Veilguard, I didn't realize the companion quests were so rich and multi-faceted and I put them off for such a long time. I have felt like a mad woman the past three nights, running all over Thedas helping my friends resolve their problems, all the while wondering when the hell I would get to see Solas again? I haven't seen Solas in so long, it's like a major dry spell and I'm sad lol 😭 Also because I wrapped up my romance so early, I've been missing that, too. Other than off hand banter here and there, and Emmrich occasionally calling Rook "darling" when they're in battle, I feel like they haven't had a conversation in weeks lol

There are good games that do this well, like Skyrim was totally unregulated and had like zero consideration for pacing, but the open world format, which was engineered for discovery and environmental storytelling, had this unique quality of being so distracting, I found I was never getting ahead of myself. I could craft the story however I wanted, as I went. Veilguard doesn't quite have this. I imagine a second playthrough will be better, but it's a good way to cause players who are new to BioWare to accidentally miss a TON of content, I feel, if they're racing through the main quests and neglecting everything else.

Anyway! It's fine lol. I just needed to vent on that, like the game is fun

[alicesadventuresinffxiv]

Telling "The First Step" as Background NPCs

One of the interesting quirks of the FC I'm in is that we often help a Youtube Let's Player record his FFXIV videos. Last year is when he did the Stormblood patches, and when I and a dozen friends got together for a special project!

Since the Lodestone short story "The First Step" would otherwise not be in the Let's Play (nor would the SMN 80 quest) we wanted to convey the plot beats of that story in another way. Specifically, we designed a handful of "scenes" that the Let's Player would naturally run across as he progressed the 4.x MSQ.

The goal was to make it look as though "Arenvald," "Fordola," and the rest of our cast were overworld background NPCs who changed position after every patch, much like the B-Team Scions do in the Rising Stones!

Our first scene could be found in Rhalgr's Reach at the tail end of 4.3. Here, Fordola and a few other Garlean prisoners are being conscripted into the Ala Mhigan Resistance. The idea was Raubahn’s, so Arenvald and Pipin are on hand to pass along the details as various Resistance and Alliance soldiers chat and train nearby.

(Credit to @halcyonlioness - here playing a Meteor-lookalike Garlean prisoner - for the first screenshot!)

.

Come 4.4, this same mix of soldiers could be seen early on in Ala Mhigo. The Resistance and the Alliance are collaborating on something, it appears...

(This screenshot by @shepspencil, with his character Anri as an Immortal Flames soldier! You can also see the Let's Player's Lalafell samurai in the background, where Alisaie and Thancred would appear for a quest at this point in the MSQ.)

Later in the same patch, more "NPCs" could be found by approaching the steps to the Royal Palace. Here, Fordola and Arenvald are being introduced to the Immortal Flames' Summoner squadron from the SMN 60-70 quests:

(More screenshots by @halcyonlioness!)

Of course, in the real short story, the scene where Fordola meets the summoners actually takes place outside Forgotten Springs. But the Let's Player wasn't going to pass through a random ARR village, so we picked a different location… albeit one that required getting our alts through a good chunk of the MSQ. It was quite the journey!

(Double Pipin shot by Pipin's player, who is a delight but does not have a tumblr!)

.

By the 4.5(6) MSQ, things might be looking dire for the Warrior of Light, but our "background NPCs" managed to defeat Ifrit offscreen, so they could be found celebrating in the Seventh Heaven bar...

And what a celebration it is! A few people were called away for Savage raiding important military errands throughout the day 😉, and we also had some random other players go AFK in the middle of the Rising Stones. As a result, the tableau actually evolved quite a bit as the Let's Player ran in and out a few times for the patch quests.

Here's where we ended up by the finale!

Some fun little details I’d like to highlight (with thanks to @halcyonlioness once again for all these screenshots):

-The summoners and the thaumaturge are all using Ifrit weapon drops now, and Crispin has his Ifrit-egi out to further emphasize the point of what we were up to.

-The Resistance thaumaturge was wounded in the fight and saved by Fordola, so she and Pipin are checking up on him again here.

All in all, it was an extremely fun creative challenge to "adapt" a written story to this unusual storytelling format. It was also quite an intense undertaking to organize! Even before the actual Let's Play recordings, we had weeks of rehearsals where we worked together to come up with our "stage blocking" and determine when in the MSQ each scene would be visible.

Ultimately, while I might have been the instigator of these shenanigans, I couldn't have pulled any of it off without such an awesome and talented cast.

Some of whom are also on tumblr! In addition to @halcyonlioness (Hyal) and @shepspencil (Anri), I'd like to shout out @darquingdragon (Arenvald) and @newsiesgirl (Alexia)! Thanks for putting up with my wild ideas. :)

As for me, I haven't done a project this involved before or since... but who knows what the future might bring?

[blueeyedrat]

Games I played in 2023.

Last year was stable. This year has been... less so. I've bounced between getting out more and shutting myself in more, and between trying to take better care of myself and letting small issues and stressors start to pile up. My steady job got a lot less steady, and I'm now out of work and finding ways to pass the time. Like video games, for instance. Shall we?

(2022 ⇐ 2023 ⇒ 2024)

Moncage

This was another decent year for getting caught up on games I've tried out and expressed an interest in before. Moncage, INSIGHT, Railbound, URBO, and a few other games you'll see further down the list. I also followed up on some games I've played in the past like Train Valley 2, and even dipped back into some old mainstays like Eternal. One of these days I'll find time for Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress again.

I more or less broke even on my backlog this year, chipping away at smaller games from assorted bundles I've picked up over the years, but also picking up some new bundles to add to the pile. So many games, so little time.

Before We Leave

While we're talking about the backlog, here's a game I've been interested in for a while. A settlement builder in a solar system of small planets, with a quaint aesthetic of wooden ships and massive space whales. I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this one. The automation and logistics aspect is an interesting spin on the genre, even it gets a bit complex at times. Never too challenging, though, and there's enough depth and nuance to hold my interest all the way to the final stages and on towards the stars. I'm looking forward to the upcoming sequel.

The Legend of Zelda (series)

It's hard to go wrong with Zelda. I have fond memories of Skyward Sword, Wind Waker HD, and Breath of the Wild, and with a new one on the way, it seemed like as good a time as any to catch up on my library. In order: Link's Awakening DX, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Minish Cap, and the DLC quests from Breath of the Wild I never got around to. Our Wii U saw more activity than it's gotten in years.

Opinions on each: Awakening was a fun, solid 2D adventure that never overstayed its welcome, though the game shows its age at a few points. Likewise, Ocarina was an interesting look at the series' jump to 3D, but was also somewhat janky at times and it took a while for me to really get into a groove with it. (I think the turning point might've been the Water Temple. I actually liked the Water Temple. Ye gods.) Majora was a sizeable improvement gameplay-wise and played with the format in neat ways, though I'll admit that I butted heads with the time loop mechanic more than once.

I have a particular nostalgia for Minish Cap; some of my earliest memories of Nintendo games are watching my friend's GBA over his shoulder on the bus ride to elementary school. After so long, this was the one I was most curious to see if it held up. Answer: yes. Minish Cap is officially my favorite 2D Zelda, and the highlight of this little retro binge. There's a lot of charm to it, and it just feels good to play.

It may be a bit too recent for nostalgia, but I almost forgot how much I loved Breath of the Wild. My old file was exactly how I left it, and playing through the extra content was a good way to re-acquaint myself with the "new" Zelda style before…

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

This was a daunting one. If I had to sum up Tears in one sentence, it would be this: There is so much game in this game. Even compared to its predecessor, there's so much to do and so many more layers of exploration and interaction, with a wide array of smaller improvements that make it a smoother experience overall.

I wish I could say I put as much time into this game as I did into Breath of the Wild, and I did put a lot of time into it, but… some other things got in the way. Summer is when my work got a lot busier and a good amount more stressful, and this was a game I slowly chipped away at whenever I found time for it. I got pretty much everything I wanted out of it, and after the credits rolled, I put it away and haven't touched it since. I should change that. I'm sure there are more good times to be had.

Mutazione

The word that comes to mind to describe Mutazione is fascinating. It's a point-and-click narrative, light on gameplay, heavy on story and character. Of the other games I've played recently, the vibes remind me the most of Sable – quiet and contemplative, where all you want to do is observe and take in the world and characters that are being presented to you. It dovetails nicely with the story itself, which largely consists of a curious little soap opera playing out around characters who are along for the ride. The writing is some of the best I've seen this year, and gets real fuckin' raw in ways I wasn't expecting. This one will stick with me for a while.

Pikmin 3 / The Wild at Heart

I've never had the focus or dexterity for a really complex RTS, but Pikmin's always been a little more approachable. Played the second game in the series a while back, picked up a used copy of Pikmin 3 at a local convention this year, and with another one coming out, it seemed as good an excuse as any to make it a double feature.

Both games have their charms. Pikmin has a distinct style and sense of scale that's hard to replicate, and a good variety of environments and encounters and puzzles. The Wild at Heart is smaller in scope as a Pikmin-like, and hits some familiar beats while remixing some of the core ideas in interesting ways. The latter also put more of an emphasis on character and narrative, something I'd like to see fleshed out more, but what we got was still satisfying. Both games were fun, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Pikmin 4 soon.

Chants of Sennaar / Heaven's Vault

Another double feature – one game that caught my eye immediately, and another I've been curious about for a while. For a long time I've had a fondness for constructed languages, with scripts and writing systems of particular interest. The idea of decoding such a language lends itself well to a puzzle game, and these two approach it in different ways: Chants of Sennaar features multiple cultures in a Tower of Babel-esque setting, each with their own quirks and traits to learn and translate between, and their own puzzles to solve. Heaven's Vault opts for depth, with a single language and a vast history that you slowly unravel through exploration.

My verdict for both games is the same. The language puzzles are really cool and interesting! I want more of them! …Everything else in between gets sort of meandering at times. Not enough to drag down the overall experience, but perhaps enough to overstay its welcome. Sennaar filled the space with a mish-mash of puzzles and stealth, which felt oddly paced at times. Heaven's Vault's pacing was hit even harder with slow exploration and visual novel-esque story segments – fine enough for one playthrough, but the amount of wandering and backtracking involved makes me hesitant to go back and play NG+ to see the rest of the content. I don't have the patience to play a visual novel multiple times to see what all of the dialogue options do. The story's fine as is, and I got what I wanted out of it.

Even with their faults, these are still probably the games that influenced me the most in 2023. If anyone asks me, as a game dev, what I would make given unlimited time, resources, and creative freedom, from now on I'm going to point to Chants of Sennaar and say "something like that". I want more games like this to exist. I will make them myself, if I have to.

F-Zero 99

This wasn't the only racing game I played this year – a bunch of new content was added to Mario Kart 8, and I also pulled Horizon Chase Turbo from my backlog and spent a bit of time on that – but this is definitely the one that made the biggest splash. I've never played an F-Zero game, and it controls differently enough from other racers I've played that I had to unlearn a lot of muscle memory, but I got the hang of it after a while. The 99-player model is frantic in an enjoyable way, and races are quick enough that it's easy to pick up and play in short bursts… which is good, because short bursts are all my nerves can take with this one. Seriously this game is stressful. Fun, but stressful. Maybe one of these days I'll actually win a 99-player race.

Cobalt Core

I've been playing... a lot of Cobalt Core these past couple months. I don't jump on every roguelite or deckbuilder that comes out, but when one does get its hooks in me, they get in deep. This is another one of those games where everything just works. Great music and pixel art, fun characters (all traits shared with its predecessor, Sunshine Heavy Industries, which I also liked this year), a simple but engaging narrative, and an addicting gameplay loop that I can easily sink an hour into whenever the mood strikes me. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it doesn't need to – it takes a lot of ideas from games that have come before it, and builds on them to create something really enjoyable. One of my favorite games of the year, without question.

Terra Nil

As we build up, so too must we tear down. This is another one I wanted to get to sooner or later, and managed to slip it in during the last couple weeks of the year. It's also a type of game I want to play more often; a lot of the time when I play sim and builder games all I really want in the end is to build nice-looking homes and environments, and Terra Nil spins that into a puzzle game where those things are the only goal. It was a nice time, but left me wanting more – either more content in Terra Nil, or more games like it.

Eastward

This game is… a curiosity. A solid action-adventure game with a memorable cast of characters and impeccably detailed pixel art. Gameplay flips back and forth between slow-paced story segments and fun setpiece levels with a decent variety of tools for combat and puzzle-solving. The biggest sticking point is the narrative: the pacing and worldbuilding felt odd and disjointed in places, particularly in the back half, sometimes feeling like it's saying too much and often like it's said too little. Yet throughout all that, it never failed to be compelling, and I was hooked all the way 'til the end. What's more, the idea of the upcoming Octopia DLC flipping the entire game and setting on its head has my interest thoroughly piqued – something to look forward to in the coming year.

-

Here's to 2024, and here's hoping things turn around sooner or later.

[hardworkandguts]

I May Be a Guild Receptionist But I'll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time

ギルドの受付嬢ですが, 残業は嫌なのでボスをソロ討伐しようと思います

(Anime)

Fantasy by Mato Kousaka

Era: 2020s

Rating: C

Plot: Alina Clover is the receptionist for the local adventurer's guild, mostly because it's a steady job with good benefits. However, because heroes aren't often the smartest or nicest in the bunch and take a long time to beat bosses, that leads to a lot of unpaid overtime to process all the paperwork. That's when she becomes The Executioner, a powerful character that solos bosses and allow some peace and quiet in her dayjob, but doing it secretly because she is not allowed to have other jobs.

Length: 12 episodes

Thoughts: Well, don't know about bosses, but the title really beat my formatting. A fun concept, very videogame coded and a very late pick for this season, it ended up being a somewhat disappointing watch. It's pretty bad how often I hit around half of the battle-focused parts of episodes and I'm wishing it ends because the ED is catchy and more amusing that whatever is on screen. I'm hardly a big fantasy fan, regardless of medium, and it needs something to hook me in - something like Frieren has the "well, what happens now" post endgame vibe, Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle has a gremlin of a main character, this would have the idea the main character is actually hiding as an NPC that only exists to give quests to heroes, and she can pretty much wipe the floor with all of them, but prefers the stability of her job, and that would be perfect if only those heroes didn't leave so much paperwork behind and suck so much at their job.

While the action isn't bad and it avoids dragging fights for too long, I've found the show loses a lot of charm when it becomes less of "office clerk pissed at having to do unpaid overtime so she goes beast mode on the enemies because the heroes suck" (that's more or less the name of the show already) and more "boss fight". I don't think it can be both, and ditching the whole "secret job" with "well she's too useful so let's keep it under wraps because there's some bad stuff brewing" so soon was kinda boring and closed down avenues to what could make it really good, as the show is at it's best and more unique with the characters hunched over stacks of unfinished documents. Or, even forgetting the ruse, it proves it can do that; episode 9, where Alina sneaks in the new receptionist orientation because it's being given by a legend of her field, and she hopes she can hear from her the secret to not do overtime (which is becoming a fully dedicated workaholic, to her dismay), and her activities as the Executioner as just a small part of the story, and the episode feels fuller this way. It does that every so often, but other times (like when Alina finally gets to experience the festival), still needs to pack another top level boss at the end and heeeeeeh boring. Overall, it's a more unique show when there's less Dark Gods and more troublesome heroes who can't clear the new quest dungeon and poor Alina has to stay past closing time processing documents until she snaps and very reluctantly decides to do it herself.

It's not a bad time, but I feel it's one of those shows I take nothing from, and I'll forget everything about it by next month because of how generic it turned out. If you aren't that confident in the concept, just what's the point of it, then? Another "save the world" fantasy adventure with gaming references? Disappointing.

Recommended to: fantasy fans.

Plus:

It looks fairly decent, either in action or slice of life modes.

Fun concept...

Minus:

...almost immediately discarded in favour of being BIG FANTASY SHONEN ADVENTURE.

[arysgarden]

week 1 | re-(centering, settling, organizing)

I embrace the new year with a cup of candy cane tea and a bare bullet journal whose only filled page resembles a coloring book. “2025” it announces, shaped from traced out (and colored in) vines that twist over one another to make the edges of the numbers. I have my “Quests” (new year’s resolutions) on one side, below a red (colored in) banner, and “Achievements” (unexpected, but defining experiences and moments in the new year) to the other, but of course, below its banner is empty space. 

The hardest thing about new year’s resolutions is accepting that the goals you wrote— potentially scoured Pinterest for, if you’re anything like me, who deemed their ten-goal list (already difficult) too skimpy on paper— require you to start today. Not in a week or a few days.

2025 is already a week old, and I have yet to put on my retainers (one of the many habits I swore to start this year); I have been using my creative pursuits as excuses to put off the gritty work of starting my term readings early (to loosen the burden of the start of term) or starting a research database for my lab work (I was supposed to do this…weeks ago); and my tasks for the “ambitious, but not unattainable” days I scheduled preceding the end of break continue to be postponed, dragged onto future days, with previously-schedule tasks rescaled and reordered to compensate for my unproductiveness. 

That isn’t to say I have been wasting this break. These past few days I have been easing myself back into a working mindset, doing the tedious, yet needed, tasks to set myself up for actually doing my larger goals: downloading and sorting readings for the term (if available), finding research programs to apply for, labs I would want to reach out to for those research programs, finally responding to neglected emails, and carrying out overdue action items from those message threads. I redid my notion for the year, scrapping the overcomplicated and overwhelming parts of my organization system that I just…didn’t use. 

A small aside: I see so many YouTube videos and Instagram reels marketing Notion as a game changing software for productivity, and I would spend hours scouring free templates and downloading them, watching videos on how to format pages or organize my knowledge, and eventually attempting to build my own aesthetic system. Only to almost never use it. I had the same problem with the Hobinichi planner (which I spent a ridiculous amount of money shipping overseas)! Systems require upkeep and consistency, and while I am absolutely one of those types of people that need to write things down to remember them and need organization systems to structure their time and keep their goals in check, I think I fell into the trap of having too many systems in place. I would “touch and go,” skipping between my paper planner, to creating a daily page in notion, that I would inevitably forget to check any of my tasks off from, to sometimes even ripping a page out of my notebooks to create a makeshift to-do list if I felt like it.

Don't get me wrong, Notion is an incredible program to visually organize information and create a workflow! I just wanted to put my entire life into Notion, and the fact of the matter is that...*my* system was not working for me. It didn't make sense for me to split up my life into 20 different pages that I honestly forgot to check and keep up with. I have bursts of motivation, much like the dawn of a new year, to create all these new ways to see and pick apart my life on these programs, but I quickly lose stamina to keep up with all of them.

So, one of my primary goals for 2025 is to simplify and redesign my organization systems (including Notion) to cater to my lifestyle and priorities. 

Being in uni with two jobs, being on board for a few student organizations, and studying biomedical engineering, I have found the most success in managing my day primarily with Google Calendar. I even downloaded the “Duration for Google Tasks” extension, so that I can assign tasks for specific time blocks and visually factor in the time estimated for completion into my plans around and beyond class and work schedules. This is how I best visualize my days and prioritize work for the week.

So, I massively simplified my Notion workplace to supplement what my Google ecosystem cannot adequately take care of for me. I almost use it as a control panel/dashboard, with dropdown yearly and quarterly goals; daily, weekly, and monthly habits; a dashboard to keep track of all my applications for internship and research opportunities; and for now, an “everything page” to organize and keep track of miscellaneous notes that I would like to find better homes for later. [A brief snapshot of my Notion page, affectionately also called "ary's garden" is below]

It’s not perfect, but it’s a start! 

And as I progress throughout this "quarter" (I set the arbitrary end date of Q1 to Mar 29, 2025), I will keep and adapt what works and discard what doesn't. I just simply no longer have time to waste on systems that do not work for me.

And my bullet journal…will be more of a visual archive than a day-to-day task manager. I might write down some notes or visually plan out projects on its pages (instead of ripped out notebook pages I neatly fold and place into the depths of my backpack, never to be seen again), but it is not a part of my organizational system. It's more an art project than anything, and I am setting it up as such. Vision boards, photos, journal entries, ideas...we will see what I shall fill up this beautiful, blank journal with later, but this year I stop with the monthly and weekly spreads that beg for me to spill my life into its neatly traced boxes and under new list headings. This year, I accept the bujo for what it is: a hobby, that sometimes, I won't have time for.

I will update you all on how these changes impact my day-to-day operations and longer term achievements (or don’t). As I said before, we'll figure it out together!

[Above is a Salem the Cat gif from one of my favorite television shows, Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996-2003), where he is sporting scholarly glasses sitting atop a book. He looks fabulous and unbothered, as always. Truly the vibe I'm trying to embody this new year]

Nevertheless, I didn’t start of 2025 on magically better footing simply because the calendar marked an ending and beginning or because my motivation shot up at the creation of resolutions. I spent much of this break resting and healing, and frankly, and I spent the first half week of 2025 doing the same. But, as the start of school again looms for the next few days, I actually feel restored and ready to take on the new year with all it promises...and requires of me.

I have applications to finish, readings to absorb, and a life to live. Guess I have to start today :)

Until next week, mis amores,

Ary

[norbezjones]

I found out about a Pillowfort-specific blog post format called blanket boxes, and now, I'm doing a blanket box for the first time!  Hooray!  This is the Visual Novel Blanket Box by babycarrot! Figured I'd also share it on Tumblr too, some of y'all might appreciate this.

PF link: here.

🎮📖 What's a blanket box?

A blanket box is a post (the box) containing a set of questions or prompts (blankets) that you can answer to help build your Fort and introduce yourself and your interests or projects to others. Make your own post, copy the questions/prompts into it and answer them. Each blanket box has its own unique theme and questions/prompts to answer. 

You can find more blanket boxes in the BlanketBoxBox community.

🎮📖 What's this blanket box's rules? (hint: they're way more like guidelines!)

as with all blanket boxes, feel free to interpret these questions however you’d like, skip questions, and elaborate as much or as little as you want :)

tag your answers with ‘visual novel blanket box’ and repost/link to this post so others can find it!

🎮📖 The prompts

1. What genre of visual novel do you usually play?

Romance/Otome games are the ones I play most often, I find.

2. What was your first (or one of your first) visual novel(s)?

I don't think it was the first, but it was definitely one of the first: Hierofanía @sillyraccoonknight .  I loved this game SO MUCH when I was a young teenager; I even took the time to chart out every single possible branching path on a piece of paper, marking all of the different routes and endings.  I played the game repeatedly in order to complete this; I didn't use a walkthrough or anything, as I recall.

3. What was the last visual novel you played?

AFTERLIFE by Chris Logsdon.  Go play it, it's very short and very good.

4. Has a visual novel had a lasting impact on you?

The first VN in the Code:Realize series got me into otome games, which was impactful for me.  Heirofania was VERY impactful to me, as it was one of the games that made me want to make visual novels, and led me on my game development path.

5. Gush about your favorite visual novel! NOW!!

Blooming Panic is so good omggggg.  It's rare for me to like all of the love interests, but that's definitely the case here.  I haven't played the Full Bloom Edition yet so idk about xyx, but I'm sure he's wonderful. <3

6. If you could give a visual novel character a kiss/hug, who would it be and why?

I'd give Takeru Sasazuka from Collar X Malice a big big hug, that's my husbando and I love him.

7. How would your favorite character react if they suddenly turned into a worm?

If Takeru turned into a worm he would be PISSED.  He prides himself on his hacking abilities, and how can you type on a keyboard to hack if you're a worm?!  On the bright side, he loves sweets, especially donuts, and you can get a lot more out of a donut when you're teeny-tiny.

8. Is there a character that you reaaaallly relate to?

I really like Grayson from Lost And Found--he has special interests, he's trying to be successful in a creative field, he has homophobic parents who he wants to like him despite them not liking his identity. . . He's just like me for real lmao.

9. A character that you dislike?

No one came to mind!  Maybe the villain of Collar X Malice?  Talking about that would be spoilery though, so I won't.

10. Do you have a VN you’ve been meaning to play, but just haven’t?

So many lmao.  I literally have a whole collection on itch.io that's mostly VNs I either haven't played yet, or have only played the demos/old builds of, not the final versions.

11. Have you made any fan content for a VN?

Yeah, I helped make a Blooming Panic fangame, Coffee With Quest!  I also have written multiple fanfics for many visual novels.

[archoneddzs15]

PC Engine - DEAD OF THE BRAIN 1 & 2

Title: DEAD OF THE BRAIN 1 & 2 / デッド・オブ・ザ・ブレイン１＆２

Developer: Fairytale / Kindle Imagine Develop / Spiel

Publisher: NEC Home Electronics

Release date: 3 June 1999

Catalogue No.: HECD5024

Genre: Digital Comic

Format: Super CD-ROM2

There is something so cool about playing video games that serve as the final game release for any platform. They serve as a final chapter for any video game console and as an ending to that console's life. Anyway, backstory. I remember watching one of a few zombie-themed Eddsworld episodes [and WTFuture] and watching movies of such ilk, and thought "What if someone made a game combining the two elements?" and set about on a quest to find any video game that would fit the bill for me, until eventually I found this.

So, what is Dead of the Brain 1&2? Well, it's a PC Engine conversion of two digital comics that originally appeared on the PC-98. It's especially a strange release! First of all, despite being a PC Engine Super CD release, and the PC Engine itself dating its way back to 1987, this game was somehow released on June 3rd, **1999**. This was the same year the Sega Dreamcast was on the way to a global release, hype for the PlayStation 2 was building up, and this was the year before the Sega Saturn would be laid to rest. It turns out that this PC Engine CD release was announced as Dead of the Brain 2 for the PC-9801 was released in 1993. By the time it was announced and ready for a release though, the PC Engine had already started to decline in popularity and mind share with the Japanese public, and thus the release of Dead of the Brain 1 & 2 was cancelled. Where most cancelled games eventually rot in a hard drive somewhere or its betas get leaked out, this is not the case here. Instead of being cancelled with no way to play it, it was eventually rescued by NEC Home Electronics for one final release on one fateful day on the 3rd of June 1999, in extremely limited quantities. Also, this game was only ever sold in two retail stores in Japan, both of them being Sofmap and Messe Sanoh stores, one of which (Messe Sanoh) does not exist anymore.

Anyway back to the game. The first game in this disc is called "Nightmare Collection ~ Dead of the Brain: Day of the Living Dead", and is themed around a scientist who tripped and fell onto the ground of a cemetery during an escape from a zombie outbreak which leads to a zombie takeover of the world. The second game is "Nightmare Collection ~ Dead of the Brain 2" whose plot is a fusion of Dead of the Brain 1, mixed with a bit of Snatcher for good measure. Both games play the exact same way - a portion of the screen is dedicated to the animation, and another portion is dedicated to the user interface. It kinda reminds me of the Psychic Detective Series of games, though I say this game is definitely more appealing to my taste.

Also, I found the Stephen King name-drop reference to be hilarious. Stephen King is well known as the "King of Horror", and this game actually takes influence from Stephen King's 1983 novel 'Pet Sematary' so it would be fitting for NEC to include that reference as tongue-in-cheek as it was.

Overall, if you can find it, I can recommend getting a copy of this game. It's stupidly expensive now too, and I wonder why. Maybe its rarity had to do with it, what with it being a limited release.

[retphienix]

PHEW, what a mixed bag of an experience!

So, I finished my first living ship and lemme tell ya

This was relatively annoying all things considered lol, though not wholly negative by any means.

The catch this post up to speed, this quest is Basically "4 entire days of waiting" and that's not great!

That's not exactly what I consider worthwhile gameplay, or gameplay at all!

But, to give some leeway, it isn't like you can't play the rest of the game during that time- but to counter that leeway, there's not a single good reason for this quest to be formatted this way lmao

Good parts though:

I like how a couple of the early parts of the quest (before telling you "Alright, wait 24 hours before the next step 🙂") play off slight remixes of the basic mining and terrain manipulation loop.

I genuinely appreciate that, it's small, it's something 99% of the game doesn't remix on, and it emphasized how this living ship is "special" because it uses entirely foreign and mystical components using entirely foreign and mystical tools.

Good job 👍

I also (almost) REALLY like the final test of the quest (almost) (almost).

The final step being a round about riddle telling you to use a portal and input a special code is COOL AND I WISH MORE THINGS DID THIS.

The final step assigning new names to half the glyphs out of thin air.... not so much.

I wandered for a bit contemplating what the riddle meant, then when I went "A HA!" and rushed to a nearby portal, only to realize "Oh wait, I'm supposed to comprehend what these words equate to?" and it kinda fell apart for me.

I was able to figure some of them, Hunter being the bird made sense, Spiral I got, Star over the water I figured (I think I did at least), but Reflection is the face one because it's symmetrical? Alright, glad someone on the wiki figured that for me. The obscured companion is the fucking ECLIPSE? I mean, I can get the stretched definition in retrospect but at first glance?

The Anomaly is the hexagon instead of the atlas-adjacent shape, hmm. Oh my bad, the atlas-adjacent shape is the "rising sphere" sure sure sure I gotcha okay.

Yeah I figured like half the code then looked it up. ALMOST great and I'm sure some people went "OH HELL YEAH" and figured it out no problem- but I am not of that specific mental frequency and instead found myself annoyed to be handed a code with no prior ledger or hint to help decode it.

ANYWHO, then you have an awkward but apt no man sky moment where you absorb souls- thus damning some past travelers to being the dash of your new slick ride

which was weird but okay. I can't pretend I felt much shock or sparked much interesting thought because it was mostly out of left field- like I thought this was plenty interesting on its own as an ancient attempt of melding flesh and steel- soul and code to create a living ship- one that appeared to struggle to succeed in the prior creators hands as they couldn't resonate with the ship like we seem capable of- but then they are like "Oh and we can make it slightly edgy by saying you steal some souls to power it" like alright, whatever man lmao

And then I got hit by an annoying as hell bug trying to get my ship because my ship spawned in the exact same spot as some other player's attempts at the quest which caused the interact prompt to disable for both of us.

I ended up having to reset to the main menu like 3 times and turn on my VPN just for a chance at finishing the quest and getting my ship- and in the process I was checking the wiki for answers (got none) and disappointed myself by finding out if I was going to be in reset hell like this- if I would have saved a minute prior then I could be resetting for a better looking living ship- but I hadn't planned to save scum AT ALL- the game FORCED me to, but now the possibility was taunting me since I couldn't do it anymore and overall this was just a whole bother of a time.

BUT!

I GOT IT!

My 2 goals this last week or so of playing was to get an exotic I liked and to get my first living ship.

I finished both goals and funnily enough the living ship with its 4 days of mandatory waiting time was the longer goal to achieve :P

Since I'll "Probably" never have another reason to talk about this thing, lemme just say the following:

The quest is kinda bad, I like the portal part though (mostly).

The aesthetic of these things is pretty dang nice :)

And I like how living ships, like Interceptors, use different fuels (it's a small but satisfying shake up!). Between Inty's being fully stocked on all the fuel they could want from a single visit to a dissonance planet and /most/ of a living ships needs being sated by CARBON of all things, they really do give their respective ships a small nudge of identity that you can legitimately feel while piloting :)

-and I like how living ships have unique techs that accomplish what base-line ships require multiple techs to do in a single tech (like the economic + conflict scanner living tech I have :))

It's another small thing, but having unique techs that equate to "What if these 2 techs could be simplified to just 1 as a special bonus to this ship type!" is nice, I wish we saw more of it to give all the different ship types yet more identity and (minute) purpose :)

Also the internals are nice, I appreciate them a lot :)

Anyways, I'm reading now that after the first living ship you just buy following living ships for 10k nanites- thank god for that, if I ever want another that sounds far more reasonable than 4 days of waiting and a final quest step that bugs out if anyone else is doing the same quest lmao

[sfblah]

Quest for the Nekonomicon - Chapter 1

After a billion years of laying face down in the dirt, I finally wrote something. Also I can't remember how I used to format my story posts and I'd have to scroll back way too far to actually find any of them. Anyway...

Female sneezes, Dust

Adventure, Fantasy

In a world dominated by humans, the catlike nekomi have had their homelands colonized and their history erased. But, one brave archaeologist believes she may have found the way to the last bastion of nekomi civilization.

Read on AO3

[thewollfgang]

I have almost reached the middle of the sketchbook I'm using exclusively for Astarion. A lot of pages are just down right embarrassingly bad and I'm still trying to find the right style (I'm leaning more towards realistic(?), at least on paper, I think). Weirdly enough, I haven't done much digitally despite the frustration I feel when I try reaching for an undo button on my sketchbook. XD I'll be focusing on digital next though so I can color without worrying that doing so would ruin the drawing.

It's been raining (finally) nonstop for a few days now and it's put me in a very artistic mood. Nothing like sketching and hearing real rain instead of the recordings they use as the background noise in the scary story comps I listen to. I would love to sit on my porch with my sketchbook if I wasn't afraid of getting sick again. The aesthetic isn't worth it lol.

Game wise, I have robbed almost everyone in the tower, just because, and have done the trials in the gauntlet. The most frustrating was the Faith Leap Trial, especially when I realized the answer was right there on the floor. I got hella spooked when I thought it wasn't going to give me a choice on whether I wanted to go to Shadowfell or not after I accidently clicked on the portal. I'd like to think I'm not missing anything but I will do my usual wandering before entering, just in case.

there is something truly awful at the way tumblr formats asks so i read this message yesterday but had to wait till I got on my computer to format a proper response.

Every time you mention drawing Astarion I go and make a few drawings myself. I got a new phone with a little stylus thingy and I really adore the way the notes app handles the digital pencil too. It feels really authentic but I can still hit the undo button XD so we are in a similar boat! Astarion has one of those faces that I feel like I have to draw a few dozen times to get the hang of, plus i get annoyed with his hair and how swoopy it is so i just doodle a bunch of squiggles and call it good.

I've been sick the last few days so I haven't done much besides lay around and drink lots of Sprite and Gatorade. God bless antibiotics for real. I have been playing bg3, but not on my main game, but on two other multiplayer games I have with my friends. It's interesting to play different versions of Act 1 and make different choices. (Somehow, I'm romancing Astarion in all three????) I cheated just a little with the Leap of Faith trial cause you can hit the O key and put yourself in tactical mode and see the path XD cheap, I know, but I aint bovvered.

In my main game I am still overwhelmed with Act 3, but I managed to get a few things done, but STILL have not found Orin in her other disguises, but I did find a bunch of very sus toys in a creepy dude's basement. So there's that. I think the desire to explore everything is a detriment to me in this Act since it's simply so large and there's so much to do. I need to take it in little chunks and small quests at a time. I'll get there! .......Eventually!

[ex]

spoilers for zelda: tears of the kingdom below the cut

ok so who else though the multiple phantom ganons at hyrule castle were the start of the final battle so you left to go do other stuff? because that's what I did and then I found Mineru by accident because this new zelda format all but ensures i find stuff when i'm not supposed to. i see a sky island in a non-stop storm, i'm gonna get to it the wrong way (jumping off a higher island and eating stamina dishes until i reach it) i thought i had found some secret extra sage but now i realize it's just a later story element…

it is fun to finally receive official quests and have them react with "you already have [thing]?! wow so amazing" when in reality i've just been flailing around hyrule, taking fall damage and jumpscaring people popping out of the ground, accidentally finding powerful ancient artifacts

[pixelgrotto]

Adventure Paths & Strategy Guides

Those of you who keep track of this blog may have noticed that my updates have dried up since September. I have a good reason for this, because I got a new fulltime job writing for Rock Paper Shotgun. Yep, that's right - after originally starting Pixel Grotto back in 2013 because I couldn't get a job working at a video game media outlet, finally my path has come full circle. It only took a decade!

This turn of events coincides with a lot of other stuff in my life. In the past year, I've gotten married, moved from the US to the UK with my wife, and been freelancing in the tabletop RPG space all the while. In fact, my first published TTRPG work is now out in the wild in the form of Pathfinder Adventure Path #198 - With No Breath To Cry. Go grab a PDF (or physical copy) if you can, since I wrote some creepy lore about a new demon vaguely influenced by Chinese yaoguai and Japanese yokai, not to mention all sorts of Asian horror movies. I'm actually more pleased with my contributions to Pathfinder Adventure Path #199, but that doesn't come out until January. Keep your eyes peeled for it though!

Needless to say, this has probably been the most hectic and life-changing year I've gone through since 2018, when I moved from Hong Kong back to the US. And as 2023 comes to a close, I'm feeling reflective. I compare myself with others a lot, and much of my life has been spent looking at the accomplishments of people around me and feeling like I don't measure up. While I still do this to varying degrees, I suppose I can finally acknowledge that two of the goals I've always had - 1) to work in the gaming industry to some capacity, and 2) to see my writing published - have manifested in 2023. If I could venture back to 2013 when I started this blog (with a post about eating dumplings while playing Final Fantasy XII, no less) and tell my old self what he'd be up to a decade later, younger Jeremy would be chuffed.

That's another thing of note: as of this past October, Pixel Grotto turned a decade old. Technically, the site is even older than that, since prior to Pixel Grotto, I used this Tumblr for a blog dubbed Aqua Headphones that was sort of a mixture of personal ramblings combined with reblogs of whatever I found cool on the internet at the time. Since then, I've written an awful lot about video games, which led to writing about tabletop games, which led to working in both fields in a professional capacity.

It's surreal to examine my goals and observe how they unfolded in unusual ways. My original desire to work in games media came from the childhood magazines that I loved - Computer Gaming World and Electronic Gaming Monthly - and when those went the way of the dodo, I became a journalist with the sly hope that maybe one day I'd get a job working at Kotaku or something. But I finally got my gaming gig not at an American site, but a British one. And I'm writing guides, which is not something I initially envisioned myself doing. It's tricky work where we often have the chase the reins of the most popular franchises (I now know more about Modern Warfare 3 guns than I ever imagined I would), but it's also fun, since it reminds me of days spent perusing GameFAQs and leafing through physical strategy guides, several of which I still own. Versus Books' Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time Perfect Guides remain on my shelf alongside Prima's Quest for Glory guides and Peter Spear's The King's Quest Companion...and while I can't do my current work in the same format of these gems (many of which were "novelizations," a style of guide writing I really miss), it does feel trippy to be following in their footsteps.

I could say the same thing about getting my words published. As a kid, I forever wanted to pen the next great fantasy novel. And while I've got more than a few discarded novel drafts sitting on my hard drive, the field of fantasy fiction isn't the one that's bearing my first printed work. Instead, it's modules and supplementary books in the fantasy tabletop gaming space - a space that has let me develop and externalize some of the plots and characters that have been gestating in my head since childhood. To a certain extent, that childhood desire to be the next great Tolkien has lessened as a result of this, and I can't say I'm displeased. I'm also happy that my first published work has been in a Pathfinder Adventure Path, because once again thinking about magazines, Adventure Paths remain one of the few remaining publications in the TTRPG space that bear some resemblance to old issues of Dragon magazine, and the nostalgia makes me happy.

I don't like to spend much time on this blog talking about myself, because there are always new ways to incite comparison to others and activate the inferiority complex in my brain. But at the end of a very long 2023 and on the tenth anniversary of the name "Pixel Grotto," I feel like it's necessary. As we move on to year eleven, I'll continue to make posts as long as my schedule permits it - after all, I can't let this blog fall to the wayside seeing as how its existence contributed a great deal to the opportunities that I now enjoy!

[snugglyporos]

What amazes me in so many of the comments is that so many people simply don't understand why the change was so radical and why it was such a hit. Let's create a timeline!

Dragon Quest 1 came out in 1986. Final Fantasy 1 came out in 1987. I bring this up because D&D First Edition came out in 1974. For those curious, my parents were 13. As a side note, the animated Lord Of the Rings came out in 1978. We should also mention that the basis of what would become 'the rpg format' that is western fantasy was, by 1986, thoroughly established setting wise. 'The Last Unicorn' was written in 1968, 'Lord of the Rings' was finished in 1949, and Conan the Barbarian's books were written in the 1950s.

Now, by the time of Dragon Quest 1, the tone of most fantasy settings was established; all of the works I listed all share a similar tone and vibe, save for Dragon Quest. The 60s brought huge interest in the fantasy genre, the 1970s saw this continue with the dark tone of Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons. Final Fantasy 1 got sued because they named their giant eye monster a beholder, which was copyrighted.

Dragon Quest, by being cute and cartoony, was fundamentally different from everything else out there. It was unique. It was novel. It stood out. Remember, there are hundreds of fantasy settings around this time that take the standard medieval fantasy approach. You want swords and sorcery, there are lots of options. Dragon Quest stood out by having a unique design and memorable look. RPGs were a popular genre at the time; they weren't hugely difficult to program and you got lots of hours out of them. And in that saturated market, Dragon Quest's vibe and design set it apart.

Literally, the original design looks straight out of D&D, because it probably was, because most fantasy by that point looked like the original design.

The simple act of, well, simplifying the design and making it cute literally made the franchise.

In some ways, this change mimics the cultural rise of kawaii in the wider Japanese culture, which in the 1970s exploded as a way of writing in schools, mostly by girls. It was such a cultural thing, for women to write in big, cutesy writing, that it was banned in schools. In the 1980s, the people who had been in school in the 1970s took that culture and brought it to animation and magazines, especially advertising. To know just how everywhere it was, Kazuma Yamane was a dude who dedicated two years to studying handwriting culture, and dubbed this writing phenomenon "Anomalous Female Teenage Handwriting." The years he did this? 1984 to 1986. Guess what came out in 1986? Dragon Quest!

I bring this up because Kazuma Yamane found that kids weren't picking up the style from others, they had come up with it themselves. It was a trend. It was underground style.

And Dragon Quest was, at the time, hitting that same trend. In other words, the reason the slimes look like that is because the artist literally rode a popular teenage trend while also separating himself from the rest of the fantasy stuff at that time.

As for why they kept it? Aside from the popularity, D&D 2nd Edition was about to release in 1989, and in the early 90s there would be government investigations in the US about video game violence. Dragon Quest, by being so obviously cute and non-threatening, avoided the struggles of some of its competitors.

It cannot be overstated that this design idea created this franchise and steered it towards decades of financial success.

reminder