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#like. so many of their fans are also artsy little creative nerds
mechadria · 5 months
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the watcher stuff is sure feeding my blocklist bc if you're out there even mentioning that 6 dollars is actually okay or using "artists deserve to get paid" as some sort of master argument when a lot of fans are also artists in their own right (and not ones that can afford a tesla) and like they weren't getting paid before i simply do not ever want to see you on my dash x
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isaacthedruid · 3 years
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Please allow me to tell you about one of my favourite cartoons through this informal essay I did for school a couple of months back. 
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Gravity Falls and How it Did The Unimaginable
**SPOILERS... KINDA**
The 2010s saw the creation of some of the most iconic animated tv shows ever made, the likes of Adventure Time (2010), Steven Universe (2013), Over the Garden Wall (2014) and The Legend of Korra (2012). To explain why this era’s shows are so admirable is honestly rather difficult. Yet, there are many factors that can be taken into consideration when looking for an answer.
The past decade was very successful in perfecting their craft and utilizing the animated format to their favour, creating some of the wackiest and fascinating cartoons ever made. With the advancements made in both 2D and 3D animation for film, this bled into the world of TV as well.
To mention that 2010s cartoons have stunning visuals would be an understatement. Everything about the animation was beautiful; the strong colour palettes, the clean and imaginative character designs, the colourful and immersive backgrounds and especially the mesmerizing worlds that can be found within episodes that are half an hour.
This era’s cartoons also led to a massive shift in storytelling, writing longer-running stories that spread out across seasons while also swapping out episodic adventures for serialization. This heavily aided in the popularization of these shows, due to the rise of internet fandoms and dropping the taboo that cartoons were only for kids. Many shows acknowledged their older viewers by leaving clues and even puzzles to be solved by the theorists who have a large appearance on social media platforms like Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr. As the shows progressed, their fandoms created many theories for what they believed might happen within their favourite series. The top three shows from this era all utilized these changes, being at the forefront of the shift and helping guide the creative vision of 2010s cartoons.
Often regarded as many people’s favourite cartoon, Gravity Falls presented one of the best mysteries of the decade with two seasons and only 40 episodes. Inspired by Twin Peaks and The X-Files, it’s considered as the kids’ version of these two iconic shows as this cartoon acts as many people’s first introduction to horror through bright colours and fun characters.
This series follows the adventures of Dipper and Mabel Pines, twins, who are sent to spend their summer with their great-uncle or Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls, Oregon. This town is full of oddities like supernatural creatures, insane and eccentric inhabitants, and many puzzles. The Pines twins must adjust to the weirdness while uncovering the mysteries and protecting their new town.
While living in Gravity Falls, the twins are forced to work in the Mystery Shack, a tourist trap created by their Grunkle Stan that overcharges unlucky tourists, teaching about fake monsters despite there being real creatures all over town. On his first day in Oregon, Dipper accidentally came across a mysterious journal written by an unknown author that explains all the oddities to be found in this strange town. This book acts like an encyclopedic of the Weird for Dipper, an inquisitive 12-year-old kid who seeks answers.
Dipper is an extremely intelligent kid, his brain being far more developed than his body. He’s rather awkward and self-conscious as he often stumbles over his words or gets embarrassed trying to talk to girls. Despite this, the boy is an adventurer at heart who just wants to grow up and skip his upcoming teenage years.
While Mabel is quite the opposite in many ways, she is loud and has an in-your-face personality. Mabel is bouncy and fun, she is so excited to start high school. She is easily excitable and for the larger part of the series, she is in her boy-crazy phase. Mabel is a girly-girl as she likes all things; glitter, unicorns, rainbows, partying and crafting. Yet, she doesn’t often compare well with many of the other girls in town, they see her as weird and “too much”.
(In all fairness through, it is not too kind to either of the characters as their personalities are more complex than just awkward nerd and artsy girl-girly.)
Dipper and Mabel’s personalities are very different but somehow, they—along with their Gravity Falls family—manage to solve mysteries and save the town, multiple times.
Gravity Falls is an honestly genius series that completely changed the way cartoons were made. Originally when writing a series, you’d create a base of your story; characters, the universe and a basic plot. Yet, when creator, Alex Hirsch (who was in his early/mid-20)s and his small team first began constructing their show, they planned out everything they could possibly think of for the first season. Additionally, outlining some answers for their biggest mysteries that would be answered at the end of the series.
Despite being rated TV-Y7, this series really pushed the boundaries of kids’ television. From the teeth being ripped out of a deer’s mouth by a demon, rearranging the functions of every hole on a man’s face to an aggressive pop-rock sock puppet show that ended in a dramatic slow-motion scene of the puppets burning. Gravity Falls wasn’t afraid to get a little weird or creepy. Or create some genuine nightmare fuel. 
From the beginning, Gravity Falls had built a mystery into its series, hiding secrets and clues all throughout the show. Most notably were the backwards-recorded message and cryptograms, using roughly nine different kinds, even creating two of their own.
The inclusion of cyphers and mysteries for fans to solve is possibly the reason why this series was so successful. As one of the first shows to do something like this, Gravity Falls used social media and internet fandoms to its advantage.
As mentioned earlier, cartoon fans have quite a presence on social media platforms like Twitter and Tumblr. They create theories and share fun ideas about their favourite shows. Viewers of Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe were all included in their share of theory fun.
Sometimes, fan theories end up being correct but when you’re Gravity Falls creator, Alex Hirsch, you don’t just watch from the sidelines as your viewers figure out the biggest mystery of your show. No, you create a hoax to get your viewers off your trail and that is what he did. Around 2013, only halfway through the first season of the show, viewers had started to follow the clues, theorizing who was the author is Dipper’s mysterious journal.
Unfortunately for the Gravity Falls production crew, the viewers were right— for the sake of readers who have never seen the show, I will not mention who the author was as it would be the biggest spoiler.
In 2013, a supposed leaked image of a tv showing a younger version of the show’s crazy old man character, Old Man McGucket, writing in the infamous journal was uploaded anonymously (by Alex Hirsch) to 4Chan.
Despite the image only being on up for a few hours, it spread like wildfire. Much to the team’s success, theorists stopped searching for the answer to “who is the author” and just accepted the image of McGucket as the truth.
To further push the fake-out, three words were posted to Alex’s Twitter, “fuming right now.”
The tweet was deleted a few minutes later and fans genuinely believed that someone from the Gravity Falls team had leaked the most important part of the story.
While doing research, I came across a Reddit post from April 10th, 2013, the day after ‘leak,’ Alex’s tweet was uploaded. In this post, user, TheoDW uploaded an image of Alex’s tweet with the caption, “It seems that Hirsch got mad at last night’s leak. He already deleted this tweet.”
Seeing the reactions of these Redditors in 2013 is kind of weird and crazy to look at. “He has every right to be upset. Someone internally released a plot revealing screen shot of series breaking spoiler information,” a deleted Reddit account commented.
“This is Alex Hirsch’s biggest success by far, he spent a huge amount of time carefully planning out the series, and then in a moment someone releases a major spoiler. It would make anyone upset,” the user, Time_Loop commented.
“Seriously, this is a nightmare for a storyteller, and shows a breach of trust. I feel so bad for him–honestly, I hope whoever did the leak gets caught and appropriate action is taken. You don’t f–k with someone’s story like this. It’s unprofessional.” the user, lonelybeloved angrily commented.
In 2014, this ‘leak’ was finally disproven when viewers were given an episode on McGucket’s backstory and an amazing tweet from Alex Hirsch. 
Alex had post an image of himself playfully pointing at a monitor with the supposed leaked picture with the caption, “1) Make hoax  2) Upload to 4Chan  3) Post angry tweet about "leak" 4) Delete tweet 5) Let internet do rest”
It is so interesting to look at these comments know that all of this was orchestrated by Alex.
I wish I had been old enough at the time to follow theories and fandom stuff like I do now with current cartoons but really looking at this from an outside perspective, this was insane!
The real author wasn’t revealed until 2015 and when viewers first got the answer to this biggest show on their screens, they must have freaked out!
Following the finale in 2016, a single frame of a stone version of Bill Cipher, the show’s villain, flashed in after the credits had finished.
Alex Hirsch and his team actually created a real-life statue of their villain for their viewers to find and on July 20th, 2016, the Cipher Hunt began.
By following clues, the Hunters found themselves all over the world; Russia, Japan and then travelling throughout the United States for the final 12 clues. When the hunt took them to Los Angeles, actor, Jason Ritter (voice of Dipper Pines, also a massive fan of the series) and Alex Hirsch’s twin sister, Ariel Hirsch (the inspiration for Mabel) joined in the fun helping the search.
Finally, the hunt ended on August 2nd when someone tweeted out an image of the found statue in Oregon, the same state in which the fictional town of Gravity Falls exists. The Cipher Hunt had ended but finding the statue wasn’t Alex’s goal for the scavenger hunt, it was about the journey and bringing together the viewers, more than having them actually find the statue.
Creating its own hoax, an international scavenger hunt and quite a bit of nightmare fuel, Gravity Falls was a show truly unlike any other.
The 2010s saw some of the strongest cartoons ever made, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe acting as the leaders for multiple different changes in the medium; storytelling, worldbuilding, interaction with viewers, utilizing social media, representation and further pushing music into the cartoon world. From what was created this past decade and what has already been released in 2020, I’m so excited to see what comes next.
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I have another one of these which is on Steven Universe’s representation and music if you would like to see that too!! 
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mercurytrinemoon · 4 years
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Keywords for overall energies of the signs
Aries: a baby, a tomboy, the sporty type, loud, aggressive, determined, a literal cartoon character, “let’s do it now!”, what you see is what you get, the one to yell while playing arcades, sexual, competitive, you can find them at the gym, flushed skin, friendly, protective, “yaaaaay!!!”, sooo much energy, confident, so many ideas yet so little time, cheerful, inpatient, fast, creative, sports fan, gets emotional easily, “I will fight you!”, bold, clumsy, independent, charming, in your face, a leader, sharp features, a golden retriever on crack.
Taurus: sensual, possesive, materialistic, stubborn, loves art, history and beautiful things; vintage item collector, fashionable, sweet tooth, likes fancy things, great at managing money (or spending it lol), doesn't like change, consistent, a nice voice, lightly scented perfume, is probably into ASMR, gentle, graceful, patient, chill, great advisor, calm, lazy, has an eye for quality, loves good food, in tune with their body’s needs, physical touch is important to them, will buy you gifts, all about the 5 senses.
Gemini: social, talkative, intellectual, gossipy, bubbly, funny, likes word plays and riddles, crafty, good with their hands, pays attention to the details, anxious, will google random things, gathers knowledge on everything, will stumble on their words, A LOT of nervous energy, gets easily distracted and easily bored, a lot of hand gestures, needs constant mental stimulation, very changeable, on-and-off, curious, witty, a cameleon, knows all the memes (or is a meme themself tbh), a talented writer, animated, *Chris Evans left boob grab*.
Cancer: homebody, sensitive, sentimental, clingy, nurturing, loyal, sympathetic, motherly, will babysit you, moody, soft, family type, giggly, protective, expresses emotions through creativity, feminine, will dabble in both lighter and darker themes, likes traditions, probably into picnics and tea parties or that weird tiny food cooking, needs to feel comfortable, easily influenced by moon phases, quiet, feminist activist, a home cook, a great listener, introverted, clear watery eyes, great memory, dark romantic glam; what youth is used to, age remembers.
Leo: flashy, confident, the star, dramatic, expressive, artsy, joyful, shines on stage, swag, prom queen/king, theater kid, great hair, charismatic, proud, the most chill out of the fire signs - they’re just too cool to be that obnoxiously loud, slow-mo sexy walk, egotistical, loves to be the best at what they do, "look at meee!", literal sunshine, heart of gold, generous, attention-seeker, bright smile, irresistible charm, stylish, every child’s role model, knows how to look good on camera, bling! bling!, *Tony Stark throwing a peace sign*.
Virgo: hard-working, perfectionist, pedantic, a know-it-all, shy, critical, analytical, great with details, will do most of the work in a group assignment cause they don’t want the other person to screw up the project, practical, the nerdy type, an egghead, low key funny, a smartass, nitpicky, polite, obsessive, tense, always willing to help, sincere, fitness and nutrition junkie, hypochondriac tendencies, “diD yOu kNoW tHaT...”, usually not social but can speak and communicate very easily, great journalist, basically Hermione Granger.  
Libra: the pretty one, a social butterfly, tactful, indecisive, the nicest of the signs, dyplomatic, balanced, always dating, symmetrical shapes, delicate round features, likes beauty, fashion and makeup; great artistic sense, well-balanced taste, the one to compliment you, great communication, charming, flirty, soft colours, needs harmony, hates confrontations, offending anyone is the last thing on their mind, repulsed by brash people, can be old fashioned to the point of tackiness, cute, the basic bitch, fake, vain, probably into pinterest moodboards.
Scorpio: dark, mysterious, possessive, secretive, jealous, manipulative, reflective, will see right through you, is into the occult or criminology or some horror and stuff, goes through transformative situations in their life, dark type romantic, edgy jewelry, “Ophelia” by John Everett Millais, intense, goth on the inside (or the outside), leather and lace, deep DEEP emotions, Winona Ryder’s iconic roles, hard to open up, holds grudges, *frowns brows while staring into the distance*, will secretly stalk & observe you, will give you a death stare and make you cry.
Sagittarius: enthusiastic, can compete with an Aries with their loudness, goofy, blunt, genuine, tactless, a bookworm, likes travels, fascinated with anything foreign, soooo generous, a walking party, the one to put their foot in their mouth, needs freedom, happy-go-lucky, optimistic, impulsive, spontaneous, forgetful, short attention span, obnoxious, will ask existential questions, pHiLOsOphIcAl, can also be very zen and spiritual, the class clown, pop culture junkie, "I can't be taaaamed", *Bilbo Baggins running screaming “I’m going on an adventure!!!!”*.
Capricorn: authoritative, ambitious, hard-working, stoic, workaholic, opportunistic, rigid, responsible, resting bitch face, with an attitude, all about status, patient, reliable, serious, a shy type of smile, cold, loyal, sooo self-critical, sarcastic, *Dave Grohl breaking his leg on stage and still playing the whole show*, is into high status and brand names, ages well, a great storyteller, self-sufficient, an investor, being a damn pro, dark sense of humor, "You like my hair?? Gee thanks, just bought it... I see it I like it I want it I GOT IT" 🎶 .
Aquarius: flashes of brilliance, intellectual, aloof, a humanitarian, an activist, liberal, concerned with social issues, "emotions? I don't know her", genius, friendly, a weirdo, chases aliens, a trendsetter, eccentric, a proud rebel, stubborn yet open-minded, friends come first, great sense of humor, likes new gadgets and inventions, quirky, science nerd, loves and hates people at the same time, funny, distant, dreams of the utopian world, an individual, needs to be unique, hates labels, the inventor, a lightning bolt, “Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist”.
Pisces: a dreamer, big imagination, artistic, lives in their own bubble, believes they're psychic, can be so pessimistic omg!, likes to talk to animals, compassionate, empathetic, head in the clouds, pretends they're in a music video when they listen to music, delusional, sees everything as doom and gloom, creative, will love you despite your flaws, big glossy eyes, sensitive, shy, sophisticated, a sweetheart, a poet, a blind follower, in tune with the nature, will pucker their mouth, literally loves being in the water... or sailing... or being on the beach.
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script-a-world · 4 years
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Pylon Bios (An Update, with New Pylons)
Hello, lovely followers of script-a-world!
Please allow us to introduce ourselves! We haven’t had any sort of about-the-bloggers page available before, and now that we’ve added more to the team, we’re seeking to remedy that!
First of all, we call ourselves Pylons. What the heck is a pylon? Well, outside of this blog, it’s an upright structure for holding up something, usually a cable or conduit. When this blog was started more than a year ago (whoa), the group chose the word Pylon to describe ourselves collectively, as a fun little nickname. Whee!
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Without further ado, meet the Pylons (and Mods)! (in alphabetical order)
Brainstormed: Hey there, call me Brainstormed, and you can find me at @thunderin-brainstorm. Any pronouns will do. I'm a student, illustrator, and world traveler. My home is in America, but I'm rarely there for more than a month at a time, so feel free to ask where in the world I happen to be! Worldbuilding has been my hobby for quite a long time and I'd love to give you some tips and tricks that I've learned, or take your idea and turn it on its head to perhaps show you a new perspective. The many projects I've developed have been lifesavers for me, as they allowed me to harness my Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder and use it as a positive tool for creativity. Aside from drawing and daydreaming, I spend a lot of time biking, hunting for cool rocks and bones, binge reading any scholarly article that catches my eye, and memorising completely useless random facts that I spout at any given moment in lieu of remembering actual important information.
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Constablewrites: My name is Brittany, and I'm a California girl living in the Midwest. I use she/her pronouns. I've always loved stories with rich and detailed worlds, whether in movies, books, games, or something else entirely. I'm the kind of writer who will spend hours researching to confirm a minor detail. Naturally, I not only write SFF, but my recent projects have all required worldbuilding on more than one axis (like multiple types of magic, or time travel on top of historical) because i am apparently something of a masochist. I'm a walking TV Tropes index and a whiz at digging up random useful knowledge, both of which come in handy as a Pylon. Other random facts: I'm a trained actress and singer, I used to work at Disneyland on the Jungle Cruise (among other attractions), and a laptop held together with duct tape is responsible for my day job in tech support. I blog about writing as @constablewrites and about random things that amuse me as @operahousebookworm.
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Delta: Hi! I’m Delta and I can be found @dreaming-in-circles or @thedeclineofapollo (writeblr), and I love sci-fi. Like, a lot lol. I work in NEPA compliance for a civil engineering firm in the USA, and have a lot of experience with infrastructure, bureaucracies, biology, and space (for unrelated reasons). I spend a lot of time haunting the astrophysics wikipedia pages, and my current all-consuming project is a novel that is angling to be about 150,000 words (at current projections). Can’t wait to hear your questions!
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Ebonwing: Hi, I’m Ebonwing. I’m currently studying IT in university. I’m a writer and worldbuilder, and sometimes a worldbuilding writer or a writing worldbuilder. I gravitate towards fantasy, though I’m not going to say no to the occasional stint in scifi, and as I’m also a giant language nerd, I enjoy making conlangs for my creations. Other than that, I’m also an artist and indulge in any number of other crafting hobbies, and if I’m not doing any of those things, I can probably be found playing video games.
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Feral: Hi! I'm Feral, and you can find me @theferalcollection (if you enjoy feminism, socialism, or over-analyzed fiction) or on my writing blog theferalcollection.wordpress.com. I'm a Southern girl who likes fancy dresses, mint juleps, big hats, and using being-underestimated to my advantage. I work in the interior design industry and am currently in school for industrial design. I have previously earned degrees in comparative literature and theatre & drama. I'm a big nerd who really likes school. I've been world-building since before I knew it was a thing and writing almost as long. I’ve written mostly fantasy but the past couple projects have been science fiction. I'm ridiculously in love with the idea of being an astrophysicist but don't feel like learning calculus, so I just read about science a lot. My hobbies include martial arts, drinking too much coffee, and tabletop games.
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Lockea: Hello! I’m Lockea. You can find me all over the internet as @lockea or LockeaStone. I’m a leaf on the wind who currently enjoys the SoCal sunshine in Los Angeles where I work as an engineer and data scientist. I love street fashion (especially Lolita) and making jewelry. I have two kitties, Theodore and Cecelia, and I volunteer at the local animal shelter as a cat handler and adoption counselor. I know way too much about cat behavior, honestly, and will yap your ear off if you let me.
Worldbuilding wise, I have a deep affection for science fiction and I’ve consulted professional science fiction writers on developing technology and worlds through the explanation of science and engineering. My engineering specialization is extra-terrestrial  robotics, so if it has to do with space, planetary science, or robotics -- I got you. I’m also a fan of politics and really like developing political and socio-economic systems in fantasy and sci-fi worlds.
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Miri: Miri here, with my main tumblr @asylos and my writing tumblr @mirintala. I am a Canadian Pharmacy Technician by day and a small time ePublisher and gamer of many types by night. Mostly wandering around the Internet helping to organize events in the FFVII tumblr fandom (modding at @ff7central and @ffviifandomcalendar), and stumbling around within the Borderlands of Pandora. I use she/her pronouns.
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Symphony: Hey, I’m Symphony! Use whatever pronouns you feel like, any work. I’m currently living in Michigan with my fiance, and in-between jobs but I want to go to nursing school ASAP.  My favorite genres in fiction are horror, sci-fi, and really anything that holds my interest. In my own worldbuilding I've always felt myself most interested in developing societies on the macro level (politics, diet, customs, stuff like that), and the more esoteric, strange parts of my world. I like to make a place feel lived in, with secrets that may never be found and people who seek them out.
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Synth: I’m @chameleonsynthesis on Tumblr, but that’s a mouthful, so just call me Synth. Any pronouns work. Born and raised in Canada, but living in Norway as of autumn 2007. Looking back, I’ve been worldbuilding since at least the age of four (in my early thirties now, so yeah), with a predominantly science-fantasy bent. I’m of the artsy creative type, with way too many projects on the go at any given time, and enjoy long walks through Wikipedia and getting caught in TV Tropes. The best thing is when I stumble across some strange factoid that can justify aspects of my many weird alien species. Stupid Synth facts: I have dual Canadian and Norwegian citizenship. My legal name contains a letter that does not exist in the English alphabet. I can curl my tongue into a cloverleaf shape, and wiggle my ears. My day job is musical instrument repair. I play French horn in a concert band, trombone in a jazz band, and don’t practice my flute or piccolo near as much as I should. Outside of band rehearsals and my job, I volunteer at the local cat shelter, work out at a gym, and attend events at my city’s newly established makerspace.
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Tex: I'm Tex, and you can find me on tumblr @texasdreamer01. Most of my hobbies are centered around fandom and worldbuilding for it, though I also like cooking and reading up on fiction and non-fiction whenever I have the time. I'm currently studying biochemical engineering, with a slant in nanotechnology and its medical applications, so I need to know a bunch about the different types of sciences, as well as projecting for the development of future fields.
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Utuabzu: Hi, I’m Utuabzu, I previously was part of ScriptMyth (RIP) where I tended to take the lead on Mesopotamia and Egypt related asks. I’m most of the way through a Bachelor of Linguistics, e parlo italiano und ein bisschen Deutsch. I have a deep and enduring interest in the history of the ancient world, particularly the ancient Near East, and I’m also a bit of a nerd for politics, which is helpful when it comes to worldbuilding. My random 2am research binges have resulted in my knowing a lot of odd things. I enjoy travelling and experiencing other cultures, however as I am Australian this unfortunately requires flying, which I hate a great deal. I expect to one day be crushed beneath a pile of my books. It is a demise I am ok with.
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Wootzel: Hi, I’m Wootzel, or @wootzel-dragon! I use she/her pronouns. I’m a recent college grad trying to figure life out. My favorite thing about worldbuilding is making things as realistic or pseudo-realistic as possible, and finding a justification for everything. Sometimes, this is also my least favorite thing about myself, because it can make things very hard! But, it can also be really rewarding when I get things to work out in a way that I enjoy.
My other hobbies include reading lots of fanfic while neglecting physical books, starting ambitious sewing projects on a whim, and wondering where all my time goes on a daily basis. I have changed major a few times, and I am still unsure about what I want to do with my life, except that it’ll always have writing in it somewhere.
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alpacalypseartb · 4 years
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Hello! So no angst, no smut. Yay for core-4! Lol about the war on emus hahah I guess they move fast? Queen Victoria market and Great Ocean road seem cool. Who would be most into the Melbourne street art? Who would be most into the coffee (Jughead?)? Who would be most terrified of snakes/spiders? Who would know all the Aussie facts? I’m guessing Veronica would know all the good places to eat etc. I’d like to think Archie would carry around a book of Aussie and try to use it and fail? Thoughts?
oh emus are fucking terrifying i would lose against one 😂
im a big fan of artsy Jughead maybe its the projecting but i love when he is into different arts in the comics, he just seems like a romantical creative guy so i think he would love the art scene in Melbourne in the streets and museums!maybe Veronica would also like the street art since they make great instagram backgrounds 😉 theres so many places here with great street art tbh Sydney has a few good areas with them i love (bout the only good parts of sydney tbh)
for coffee i can see Jughead being into it but theres something funny to me about such a broody hipster like dude hating coffee 😂 i would say Veronica would be an ice coffee gal!
most terrified of the wildlife i would say Archie and Jughead the girls are too badass to worry about those things Veronica would make it into a purse and Betty would probably pull an Enchated and sing to them all while they clean the rooms, Betty is a massive nerd she would know the facts have it all planned and researched in binders but Veronica would know the city layout i reckon all the hot spots cute little shops events etc,Archie would definately try and use accents and slang on locals while the others cringe and pretend they are not with him 😆 on that note i have only seen a few good Aussie impressions from Americans they always go too Kiwi or too British!
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pixelrender · 5 years
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My 5 genres of video games
I used to spend my time on a variety of games from AAA open world titles to small flash tower defense games. I’m still quite fond of many of these games and Kingdom Rush in particular has a special place in my heart as the smoothest tower defense game I’ve ever played. I got obsessed over niche genres from time to time too. I had a short period, in which I read many articles on hg101. Naturally, I got super interested in shmups back then. I still like to play a simple free shmup from time to time, but I avoid more difficult entries these days and I can’t call myself a hardcore fan of the genre.
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For the longest time I was big on RPGs and Boiware in particular. I loved Dragon Age and I still plan getting my hands on Inquisition one day. I need to replay Mass Effect 2 and finally finish the trilogy. Baldur’s Gate is still on my shortlist of games to finish and Jade Empire is one of my favourite underrated games to recommend. There were other RPGs than those from Bioware too. Gothic 3 probably qualifies for the game I spent most time with as completing it took me half a year. I still like low fiction of Gothic series and admire compact worlds of the first two games and Risen. Oblivion is my favourite roaming game. The best part about it was bumping into a small settlement in the middle of nature and just be there. The last not least I should mention RPG Maker.  I developed few small games in it and I still sometimes work on three more. 2 of them are actual RPGs. I played and enjoyed many RM games, some of them epic fantasies. So, why is this genre only a honorable mention? I don’t find myself as attracted to it and its power fantasies as I used to. I don’t have time for sprawling epic and there are certain strategy games fulfilling my lust for medieval and characters better. The two basic premises of RPGs aren’t as interesting for me as they used to be. I don’t really care about hero’s journey narrative and I’m little bored with basic mechanics. For example leveling up can be such a chore.
Now my choices are way narrower than they used to be. I still play other games and especially hobbyist and micro RPGs, which might enter my top 5 one day. These are the five genres I purposely follow, build up libraries or knowledge of their game design and talk about on Discord the most.
1. Non-linear platformers
I enjoy myself a good metroidvania. There’s only one thing, which makes a foggy, rainy better. It’s not alcohol. Also, I used term non-linear platformers on purpose. I enjoy sideview platforming and not every metroidvania’s that. There are many different movements and some of them are less fun and there are 3d games, which use Metroid inspired progression. Also, I haven’t played a single Metroid or Castlevania proper. I don’t have any excuse for the travesty. Ok, not being a console guy might give you an explanation of my situation. And with so many likes and clones on steam, I have enough to eat through without touching emulators.
I enjoy the genre’s level design in particular. I think that adding multiple layers and making souls inspired timing based combat or adding too many rpg elements rarely helps. Movement’s still the core. Upgrades/progression is at its best, when focused on obtaining new ways of movement and not stronger weapons. Clever boss fights are always important, but I prefer them to be a puzzle rather than an endurance competition. I have a huge, almost endless list of metroidvanias to play and to base my own one on.
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2. Walking simulators
Sometimes I just need to turn off. Games in general are a good resting activity, walking sims and ambient games take it little further. And I usually feel enriched by playing them. I don’t feel like an overgrown child. Walking around studying original aesthetic of their creators. It’s a dialogue, in which I confront and reflect their approach to architecture and aesthetics They are definitely better enjoyed on a big screen with proper audio and smooth performance. They’re quite power hungry as even low poly ones are usually 3d. That’s a problem with my current hardware and software. In general I enjoy low poly and minimalist walking sims the most. They tend to focus more on composition.
Almost walking sims present you with a sense of wonder. You explore unknown and often massive lands. They should let you find your own way, but some of there are more focused and lead. Even if the land’s strange, it’s for the better when it rings a sense of familiar. Going cheap surreal isn’t the way. Landscapes in walking sims can be way weirder than Dali, but they should have their own nature. Walking sims are usually very slow. There’s no activity besides walking, maybe you can pick up an item. Sometimes, you follow a story. It’s hard to define a hard border, where walking sims end and other genres start. Gone Home is about something completely else than pure walking sims, but I still enjoy it for its pacing and ambiance. That brings it very close. Curtain certainly isn’t a walking sim, but the way you move around the apartment and then walk through a corridor to bend time is very much close to timeless scenes of walking sims.
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3. Art games - game art
This is a difficult category to define. Art games are usually aiming for more than entertainment. They’re deeper with references to other media or filled with social critique. Having fun sometimes feels bad in them. Game art is even more difficult to define. To put it simply, it’s usually a piece of art using games as its medium. It can have a form of an interactive executable or weird modification of an existing game but the artistic concept is more important than it being a working game. In terms of mechanics, this is a diverse group and vague one, when it comes to game design. Here I can learn from areas more relevant in the real world. They often take on philosophy, ethics, politics, aesthetics and other fields I’m interested in more than in violence and loot.
Some game are clear art games. An easy example is Kentucky Route Zero, which despite it’s artsy nature is clearly defined by its mechanics and sense of progress. The other example from my favourite games would be Little Party. This one’s lighter on mechanics, but it tells a very subtle and civil story and it uses art and creativity more than being a product of it. Proteus would be my personal borderline example. The game’s about complementing and its island are small art pieces. This is actually very close to an ambient video installation and could be considered game art. 
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4. Turn based strategy games 
Games my brain enjoys the most. I get satisfaction from solving. Solving concrete situations of strategy games is closer to me than abstract puzzles and logic games in general. Into the Breach is close to the latter in terms of mechanics but I love it, because it’s not cold, it makes me feel and every time I fail and an enemy hits one of the cities, I stop breathing for a moment. It makes me feel heroic to put one of my mechs in front of houses and almost sacrifice its pilot to save those lives.
There’s a huge influence of Heroes of Might and Magic. That game has many flaws, but its pace is perfect. Battles are usually either swift of epic. Heroes were my first love and I still fondly return to them from time to time. They’re not as challenging or complex as most tactics/strategy games, but they’re perfect rewarding fun. I only left them as my default turn based strategy to branch out. Series like Civilization and Warlock are building more consistent worlds. Especially in Civ its super fast turns and ties to the real world’s history make it a captivating game, in which you need to strategize on several fronts at once. Tactics are the second path I currently follow. There are closer to RPGs, but for reason your characters becoming stronger makes more sense here. It’s often because you can lose them and losing a level 10 character hurts more. I enjoy the small scale of tactics games too. The smaller the better. Again it’s a game design challenge of going further without sacrificing complexity.
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5. Grand strategy games
I wonder how longer this one sticks. I love engrossing myself in Paradox games, losing track of real for weeks and becoming weirdo obsessed with my own history of the world. But it’s weird and disconnecting and you can’t talk about it with your friends, because explaining it is impossible. You can share some stories with fellow grand strategy players, but it’s not difficult to realize the weird nerdness of the company.
So, what’s so good about them? They simulate politics on a world-wide level with an amount of realism, which just feels right. You can change history, but only within borders set up by Paradox. For example you can conquer France as an Aztec, but it stays France. Shapes are the same, systems too. This shade of reality makes fiction in Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria and other games much more easy to engage with. That’s also why I find Stellaris boring. Leaving reality, there’s nothing to compare your fiction with. It renders my choices irrelevant and different developments have same impact on me. Multiplayer probably changes this.
Civilization is far less complex than grand strategy games. It’s simple and easy to explain and to change. Yet it keeps certain connection to the real world and it has great modding scene. There isn’t an infinite number of expansions for it, which would make it bloated with features. And one run lasts a lot less. Civ isn’t a simulation, it’s still a very long puzzle. One day, I will only stick with one of the two. Now It looks better for Sid Mayer than Paradox.
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Pictures are from following games: Caged Bird Dont Fly Caught in a Wire Sing Like a Good Canary Come When Called, Gunmetal Arcadia, Mura Toka (1 and 2), Morphblade, Victoria 2
0 notes
susantregre · 6 years
Text
Ornaments Kids Can Make
Some of my favorite holiday decorations are  ornaments kids can make. Creating art that can be hung on a Christmas tree can be a fun way to spend time together as a family during the holidays.
From filling plastic globes to painting  tin foil ornaments, there are so many ways to create homemade ornaments for kids. We’ve included some of our favorite ideas below, and you can also check out our Homemade Ornaments series on YouTube for even more!
Ornaments Kids Can Make
  Kids will love making these ornaments with just a few supplies from your kitchen cabinet.   “ via  Kids Activities Blog
Colorful pom-poms transform a simple pinecone into a cute ornament for your tree.   “ via The Nerd’s Wife
Super simple and smells amazing!  These dried orange slices are one of the easiest DIY ornaments. –via Red Ted Art
These  yarn embossed ornaments will add lots of color to your tree. “ via Babble Dabble Do
Trace a coloring book page for unique ornaments created by kids!   “ via  Kids Activities Blog
It’s so easy to turn ribbons into beautiful ornaments. “ via Teach Me Mommy
Cover a small toy with glue and clear nail polish for a sparkly addition to the tree.   “ via  Kids Activities Blog
Make ornaments with seashells from your vacation. “ via I Can Teach My Child
Grab some play dough and let kids create a self portrait  as a fun ornament.   “ via  Kids Activities Blog
Practice pattern-making with these candy cane ornaments. “ via From Play Dough to Plato
Make angels out of pipe cleaners and feathers. “ via Powerful Mothering
STEM  Ornaments for Kids
These beautiful icicle ornaments double as a science experiment. “ via Happy Hooligans
Kids can build their own LED ornament with this easy tutorial. “ via Planet Smarty
Trees made from nuts and bolts would be such a unique ornament. “ via Left Brain Craft Brain
Discover chromatography by creating these fun ornaments. “ via Inspiration Laboratories
Erupting ornaments are a fun science experiment. “ via Little Bins for Little Hands
Practice shapes with these simple sewing card ornaments. “ via Mr Printables
Make slime and add it  to ornaments — is it a liquid? Is it a solid? Who knows? “ via Little Bins for Little Hands
Snowman Ornaments
This cute snowman ornament is made out of corks!   “ via  Kids Activities Blog
Make a snowman out of your child’s fingerprint and save it as an ornament!   “ via The Nerd’s Wife
Turn old CDs into snowman faces. “ via Happy Hooligans
Kids can decorate craft sticks to look like snowmen for this adorable ornaments. “ via Happy Hooligans
Make a snowman ornament out of thread spools. “ via Learning and Exploring Through Play
Fans of FROZEN will love this easy Olaf ornament from a coaster. “ via Crafts by Courtney
Use plastic lids to create cute snowman ornaments. “ via Kids Craft Room
Recycled can lids make adorable snowman ornaments! “ via Things to Share and Remember
Loop together washers for these snowman ornaments. “ via How Wee Learn
Use bottle caps to create these snowman ornaments. “ via One Artsy Mama
Ornaments You Can Bake
  You can eat these stained-glass ornaments  straight off the tree!   “ via The Nerd’s Wife
Dried orange slices smell amazing and are beautiful, too. “ via Premeditated Leftovers
Homemade clay ornaments are perfect for saving handprints. “ via Tips From a Typical Mom Blog
Cinnamon ornaments will last for years — spray with water to refresh their scent. “ via Completely Delicious
Melt peppermint candies inside cookie cutters. “ via Hello Homebody
Add dried flowers to baked ornaments for a natural look. “ via Twig and Toadstool
Bake perler beads in cookie cutters for fun and colorful ornaments. “ via Meet the Dubiens
Santa Ornaments
Count down the days until Santa visits with this cute chalkboard ornament.   “ via Three Different Directions
Turn your child’s handprint into a  Santa ornament. “ via Messy Little Monster
Make Santa Hat ornaments from craft sticks and cotton balls. “ via Buggy and Buddy
Decorate wood slices for cute Santa ornaments. “ via The Eyes of a Boy
A paintbrush can be turned into a Santa ornament with just a few supplies. “ via Glittering Muffins
This Santa ornament is made out of a paper star. CUTE! “ via Buggy and Buddy
Make a Santa ornament from a lightbulb! “ via Mama Papa Bubba
These Santa hats just might be the easiest ornaments ever. “ via Creative Family Fun
Globe Ornaments
youtube
You just need three supplies to make gorgeous glitter ornaments that don’t leave a mess.   “ via The Nerd’s Wife
Make your house smell AH-MAZING with a DIY oil-diffusing ornament.   “ via  Kids Activities Blog
Fill globe ornaments with just about anything for a one-minute craft. “ via No Time For Flash Cards
This “I Spy” ornament  doubles as a fun way to keep kids busy during the holidays. “ via Busy Kids Happy Mom
Turn your child’s baby things into a beautiful ornament you’ll cherish for years. “ via Fireflies and Mud Pies
Paint thumbprints onto ornaments to create reindeer. “ via Little Bit Funky
Character Ornaments
Everyone’s favorite snowman, Olaf, is so cute made from pom poms. “ via Kids Activities Blog
You won’t believe how easy these  Minecraft Creeper ornaments are. via Totally the Bomb
Make Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ornaments from toilet paper rolls. “ via Happy Hooligans
Little ones can fill plastic ornaments with paper to create Sesame Street characters. “ via Heart of Deborah
Turn your child’s footprint into a minion ornament! “ via I Heart Arts N Crafts
Gorgeous Frozen-inspired ornaments are really simple. “ via Undercover Tourist
Make a Baymax ornament by painting a white ornament. “ via Mom Endeavors
Create Darth Vader and Storm Trooper ornaments from craft sticks. “ via Vicky Barone
Salt Dough Ornaments
These marbled rainbow salt dough ornaments are beautiful. “ via Two Daloo
Twist salt dough to create candy canes you can hang on the tree. “ via Fun at Home With Kids
Make fun salt dough ornaments that glow in the dark! “ via Growing a Jeweled Rose
Gingerbread clay is a fun twist on traditional salt dough ornaments. “  via The Imagination Tree
Turn a footprint into an Olaf ornament with this salt dough craft. “ via I Heart Arts and Crafts
Make a Christmas Tree out of your child’s handprint in salt dough. “ via The Imagination Tree
Sparkly beaded salt dough ornaments would be so pretty with the tree lights behind it. “ via The Artful Parent
Spell out season’s greetings with Christmas salt dough letters. “ via Nurture Store
Toddler painted salt dough ornaments are beautiful art. “ via Alisa Burke
Recycled Ornaments
youtube
Make a Christmas tree out of corks.   “ via  Kids Activities Blog
You won’t believe what these penguin ornaments are made out of! “ via The Nerd’s Wife
Use noodles to make beautiful angel ornaments. “ via Your Modern Family
An old puzzle  becomes  beautiful snowflakes. “ via Play Dough and Popsicles
When kids button ornaments on this cute Christmas tree, they’re practicing fine motor skills. “ via Buggy and Buddy
Turn all those holiday cards into ornaments that you’ll keep for years to come. “ via The Chaos and The Clutter
Make a paper mache tree ornament from old newspaper. “ via Buggy and Buddy
Paint dried pasta for beautiful and interesting ornaments. “ via Cutting Tiny Bits
    The post Ornaments Kids Can Make appeared first on Kids Activities Blog.
from Kids Activities Blog https://ift.tt/2DWfFft
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trendingnewsb · 7 years
Text
5 Sucky Things That Suck On Purpose
This may come as a surprise, but I like it when things don’t suck. In fact, I would say that I devote 80 percent of my efforts toward avoiding suckage. Sadly, though, I can’t control the actions of others, and I won’t ever be able to until The Device is perfected. But until then, some people make shitty things, and the rest of us have to deal with it. And while we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that everyone makes mistakes as we eat a pizza which inexplicably arrived topped with double olives and pineapple, there’s no solace in the knowledge that some people do shitty things entirely on purpose. On that note, here are five terrible things which people made fully knowing that they’d be terrible.
5
The Google Glass Battery
If you were sober or literate in 2013 and 2014, you may have had to endure the deluge of tech profiles and extremely not-boring thinkpieces on Google Glass. If you could not in fact read or legally drive in 2013 and 2014, Google Glass was basically Google’s answer to the question “What’s a super expensive piece of shit I can intrusively wear on my face which will obscure my vision and make anyone around me fearful that I’m videotaping them like some kind of creeper?” You know, a question that we’ve all asked.
While most of us immediately dismissed Glass as being about as appealing as a herpes scab parfait, there were naturally a few fans who couldn’t wait to be the dollar store version of Geordi LaForge. But even amongst those die-hard tech fluffers, there was a clear issue: Glass had a battery that sucked like a leech in the coldest recesses of the vacuum of space.
The battery life of Google Glass clocked in at around 45 minutes, meaning that you had just enough time to stream yourself watching one episode of Young Sheldon and then crying about it afterwards before it shut off. Google tried to explain this away as an intentional design feature that was actually beneficial and not an example of a battery assembled by a one-eyed guy in an flea market who smells like cats.
According to Google, your cellphone is just a dangerous espionage device constantly listening to you from your pants pocket and maybe sending all that sweet, sweet pants gossip back to Samsung or the Kingsmen or whoever the fuck cares what you’re doing. So in an effort to heroically protect you from filthy spies, Google intentionally made a shitty battery so that the New World Order agents will only be able to watch half of your masturbation session before they’re left hanging. Suck it, dickholes! You’ll never know how this one ends!*
*Hastily, with a climactic yawp.
4
Low-Quality Viral Commercials
In 2011, the internet was blessed with one of the worst commercials for a taxidermy business that anyone had ever seen. I say this not as a connoisseur of taxidermy ads, but as a logical human being. Also, do taxidermy places really need commercials? What more needs to be said, other than “Hey! Do you like wolves, but hate the bitey, movey kinds?”
youtube
This commercial for Ojai Valley Taxidermy featured the one-two punch of Chuck Testa’s taxidermy skill and acting, and made us all fall in love with the stuffed corpse of a coyote and the overall awfulness of the entire experience. It was poorly made, clearly cheap, and its only redeeming quality was that all of the badness made it charming as hell. Chuck Testa became an internet hero. And it was all bullshit.
Testa is just one of many viral commercial stars made famous for being in videos often shared as “the worst commercial I’ve ever seen.” One commercial for a mall from 2014 featured employees singing a jingle that sounded like a cross between 3 a.m. barf-in-your-own-shoe-drunk karaoke and a cat stuck in a well. It sucked large, and people went nuts about it.
youtube
For a local business trying to drum up some attention, you have two options: Legitimately make a forgettable, boring, low-budget commercial which blandly explains whatever you’re trying to sell, or roll the dice on potentially going viral by making an abomination. Create such an abysmal crime against advertising that the sun refuses to shine when the video is playing and birds immediately stop singing and synchronize-shit on your car. Make it so bad that everyone immediately shares it with everyone they know. And then your craptastic commercial becomes an internet sensation.
They say people are ten times as likely to share a bad experience with a business than a good one. People like to complain more than they like to praise, probably because if something goes right, it fits in with your expectations and is therefore unremarkable. It’s only when things go wrong that you get worked up and make a stink over it. So when you see a commercial that damn near offends you with its utter fuckshittery, you’ll share that monstrosity with everyone. And that’s exactly what they want.
3
Web Brutalism
When I first got the internet in my house as a kid, we got a state-of-the-art, badass, lightning-fast 56k modem. I could download an MP3 in like ten minutes, and sometimes an entire dirty picture would load up before something went buggy and the poor woman was cut off at the knees. And seven out of every ten websites looked like a low-res My Little Pony pony ralphed cotton candy and Four Loko across a small-town church bulletin board.
As time passed, we all grew up and became better people with better websites. Dancing baby GIFs gave way to interstitial ads and Flash videos. Designs that looked like they were made by a guy with vinegar in his eyes working in the dark faded away, and sleek, professionally designed mega porn sites took their place. It was a great time to be alive. Or so we thought, because I guess people got sick of things that don’t look like shit and Web Brutalism was born.
If the terribly cheesy name didn’t give it away, Web Brutalism is a kind of artsy shitsy internet aesthetic. You purposefully make your website look like the south end of a northbound horse. Ugly, disorganized graphics, shockingly off-putting colors, a veritable dumpster of design techniques shat out onto a screen — if your site doesn’t look a fourth-grader’s glue and cardboard collage, you’ve failed.
A classically bad website was designed on Angelfire by your aunt who collects figurines of Jesus playing sports when she wanted to do something to commemorate her love of beat poetry. Some links were unclickable, images didn’t quite line up right, and it had charm in the same way your macaroni artwork had charm to your mom, who never told you that it looked like shit because she loved you. By the way, your macaroni art looked like shit. It’s cool, though, mine looked like the shit that shit takes after eating shit sandwiches. And somehow, someone decided a forced version of that was a good idea.
Web Brutalism seeks to make a website harder to navigate and uglier to look at than a fine, upstanding site, like the one you’re currently enjoying. Why? The answer is best summed up in this quote I heard from a guy in a bar once: “Fuckin’ because.”
2
Bioware’s Female Designs
Back in the day when I had an NES, there were basically two female characters you could name across the spectrum of video game characters: Princesses Peach and Zelda, and I don’t even think Zelda was actually in her game. But I did beat Super Mario Bros. 2, and Peach helped a brother out on that one, so yeah, you could say I’m like a video game feminist or some such. Which is why Bioware’s curious history with female characters is such a headscratcher.
Bioware makes some pretty impressive-looking games, like Mass Effect, and the character designs are amazing. There is a definite problem with some of them, though, insofar as that amazingness is in how straight up nuts-on-a-donkey ugly they are.
When Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, fans were quick to notice that the male version of the player character, Ryder, looks super badass and cool and almost exactly like the male model who lent his likeness to the game designers. The female version of Ryder looks like the model if you rolled her in a sack of sadness and didn’t let her sleep for four days while feeding her a straight diet of CHUD.
Twitter
So why, if you have the ability to render characters in a way that makes them look like not vaguely emotive ballsacks, would you make your character look like a vaguely emotive ballsack? This one requires a bit of creative tinkering in the ol’ thinky bag, but it does make sense. Female characters in gaming, as you may be aware, have a bit of a lackluster history in terms of realistic representation. After Princess Peach, the next big name in lady characters was Lara Croft, who was at first presented as polygonal boobs on blocks, and then later as well-vectored boobs on well-vectored short pants. And thus began a tradition of most video game women being little more than boobs and confusion. So maybe Bioware makes their female characters less appealing on purpose so as to not be considered sexist or douchey.
youtube
Bioware has never come out and said they’ve made purposefully ugly characters. They have acknowledged abhorrent animation issues and terrible facial expressions which they set to work on fixing, but fans were all pretty convinced that there had to be more behind the distractingly objectionable visages of the female characters. As noted gamer nerd and feminist Lisa Kerzner argues in her video, it looks an awful lot like Bioware put considerable effort into downplaying the character’s face to make her more of an ugmo hero type (but just in the face), while trying to pawn it off as a technical limitation. Despite the fact that numerous other games can feature women who don’t look like victims of barnyard mad science, including a lot of Bioware’s previous games.
Unfortunately, dealing with matters of sex, sexism, and gender in video games is like opening a bag of cat shit lined with explosive squibs right in your damn face. If you recall anything to do with Gamergate, you know this is ground no one wants to tread on, so you almost can’t blame Bioware for not saying jack shit about it, as you don’t want to feed any trolls. But at the same time, when it’s obvious that they can make a nearly identical male character, there’s clearly a reason they’re not putting that same kind of effort into their females.
1
Scam Email Grammar
Usually when I send emails, I spell the multi-syllable words incorrectly and use grammar that’s about as fucked as a friction-burnt Fleshlight. But that’s my own bugaboo to deal with, and has little-to-no bearing on the world of scam email.
The odds of you having never received a Nigerian scam email are slimmer than Slender Man’s weird dick, which I’ll tell you about sometime if you buy me a few beers. But for the sake of the kids in the audience who are reading this on the wall I inscribe all my articles on and have never received email before, a Nigerian scam email is a poorly worded piece of fuckery that shows up in your inbox claiming to be from some African prince who has millions of dollars tied up in banks overseas, and if you could just help pay some transfer fees, you can keep a buttload of it!
Typically, these emails use terrible grammar and atrocious spelling, not because the person sending you the email is a blithering idiot, but because they need you to be so gullible that you believe a Wakandan prince personally sent you a one-way ticket to being a millionaire, and he typed the message with a greasy turkey leg in his hand while riding a homemade roller coaster.
Most of us can identify a scam email right away. Another subsection of people will be suspicious but interested. And an even smaller division will write back to test the waters. The scammers want nothing to do with any of those people. They want the person who immediately responds with their bank account number in the signature line, because they only want to deal with people who may have mistaken a ham bone for Tony Danza more than once in their lives. So don’t be too proud if you recognize right away that someone sent you a weak as shit attempt at ripping you off; they just didn’t want you to waste their time.
Ian’s Twitter is awesome on purpose. Go look.
Does Troll 2 suck on purpose? Find out for yourself, and go down the rabbit hole of recommendations like Samurai Cop and more!
Read more: http://ift.tt/2gTq5jG
from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2AazPyt via Viral News HQ
0 notes
trendingnewsb · 7 years
Text
5 Sucky Things That Suck On Purpose
This may come as a surprise, but I like it when things don’t suck. In fact, I would say that I devote 80 percent of my efforts toward avoiding suckage. Sadly, though, I can’t control the actions of others, and I won’t ever be able to until The Device is perfected. But until then, some people make shitty things, and the rest of us have to deal with it. And while we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that everyone makes mistakes as we eat a pizza which inexplicably arrived topped with double olives and pineapple, there’s no solace in the knowledge that some people do shitty things entirely on purpose. On that note, here are five terrible things which people made fully knowing that they’d be terrible.
5
The Google Glass Battery
If you were sober or literate in 2013 and 2014, you may have had to endure the deluge of tech profiles and extremely not-boring thinkpieces on Google Glass. If you could not in fact read or legally drive in 2013 and 2014, Google Glass was basically Google’s answer to the question “What’s a super expensive piece of shit I can intrusively wear on my face which will obscure my vision and make anyone around me fearful that I’m videotaping them like some kind of creeper?” You know, a question that we’ve all asked.
While most of us immediately dismissed Glass as being about as appealing as a herpes scab parfait, there were naturally a few fans who couldn’t wait to be the dollar store version of Geordi LaForge. But even amongst those die-hard tech fluffers, there was a clear issue: Glass had a battery that sucked like a leech in the coldest recesses of the vacuum of space.
The battery life of Google Glass clocked in at around 45 minutes, meaning that you had just enough time to stream yourself watching one episode of Young Sheldon and then crying about it afterwards before it shut off. Google tried to explain this away as an intentional design feature that was actually beneficial and not an example of a battery assembled by a one-eyed guy in an flea market who smells like cats.
According to Google, your cellphone is just a dangerous espionage device constantly listening to you from your pants pocket and maybe sending all that sweet, sweet pants gossip back to Samsung or the Kingsmen or whoever the fuck cares what you’re doing. So in an effort to heroically protect you from filthy spies, Google intentionally made a shitty battery so that the New World Order agents will only be able to watch half of your masturbation session before they’re left hanging. Suck it, dickholes! You’ll never know how this one ends!*
*Hastily, with a climactic yawp.
4
Low-Quality Viral Commercials
In 2011, the internet was blessed with one of the worst commercials for a taxidermy business that anyone had ever seen. I say this not as a connoisseur of taxidermy ads, but as a logical human being. Also, do taxidermy places really need commercials? What more needs to be said, other than “Hey! Do you like wolves, but hate the bitey, movey kinds?”
youtube
This commercial for Ojai Valley Taxidermy featured the one-two punch of Chuck Testa’s taxidermy skill and acting, and made us all fall in love with the stuffed corpse of a coyote and the overall awfulness of the entire experience. It was poorly made, clearly cheap, and its only redeeming quality was that all of the badness made it charming as hell. Chuck Testa became an internet hero. And it was all bullshit.
Testa is just one of many viral commercial stars made famous for being in videos often shared as “the worst commercial I’ve ever seen.” One commercial for a mall from 2014 featured employees singing a jingle that sounded like a cross between 3 a.m. barf-in-your-own-shoe-drunk karaoke and a cat stuck in a well. It sucked large, and people went nuts about it.
youtube
For a local business trying to drum up some attention, you have two options: Legitimately make a forgettable, boring, low-budget commercial which blandly explains whatever you’re trying to sell, or roll the dice on potentially going viral by making an abomination. Create such an abysmal crime against advertising that the sun refuses to shine when the video is playing and birds immediately stop singing and synchronize-shit on your car. Make it so bad that everyone immediately shares it with everyone they know. And then your craptastic commercial becomes an internet sensation.
They say people are ten times as likely to share a bad experience with a business than a good one. People like to complain more than they like to praise, probably because if something goes right, it fits in with your expectations and is therefore unremarkable. It’s only when things go wrong that you get worked up and make a stink over it. So when you see a commercial that damn near offends you with its utter fuckshittery, you’ll share that monstrosity with everyone. And that’s exactly what they want.
3
Web Brutalism
When I first got the internet in my house as a kid, we got a state-of-the-art, badass, lightning-fast 56k modem. I could download an MP3 in like ten minutes, and sometimes an entire dirty picture would load up before something went buggy and the poor woman was cut off at the knees. And seven out of every ten websites looked like a low-res My Little Pony pony ralphed cotton candy and Four Loko across a small-town church bulletin board.
As time passed, we all grew up and became better people with better websites. Dancing baby GIFs gave way to interstitial ads and Flash videos. Designs that looked like they were made by a guy with vinegar in his eyes working in the dark faded away, and sleek, professionally designed mega porn sites took their place. It was a great time to be alive. Or so we thought, because I guess people got sick of things that don’t look like shit and Web Brutalism was born.
If the terribly cheesy name didn’t give it away, Web Brutalism is a kind of artsy shitsy internet aesthetic. You purposefully make your website look like the south end of a northbound horse. Ugly, disorganized graphics, shockingly off-putting colors, a veritable dumpster of design techniques shat out onto a screen — if your site doesn’t look a fourth-grader’s glue and cardboard collage, you’ve failed.
A classically bad website was designed on Angelfire by your aunt who collects figurines of Jesus playing sports when she wanted to do something to commemorate her love of beat poetry. Some links were unclickable, images didn’t quite line up right, and it had charm in the same way your macaroni artwork had charm to your mom, who never told you that it looked like shit because she loved you. By the way, your macaroni art looked like shit. It’s cool, though, mine looked like the shit that shit takes after eating shit sandwiches. And somehow, someone decided a forced version of that was a good idea.
Web Brutalism seeks to make a website harder to navigate and uglier to look at than a fine, upstanding site, like the one you’re currently enjoying. Why? The answer is best summed up in this quote I heard from a guy in a bar once: “Fuckin’ because.”
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Bioware’s Female Designs
Back in the day when I had an NES, there were basically two female characters you could name across the spectrum of video game characters: Princesses Peach and Zelda, and I don’t even think Zelda was actually in her game. But I did beat Super Mario Bros. 2, and Peach helped a brother out on that one, so yeah, you could say I’m like a video game feminist or some such. Which is why Bioware’s curious history with female characters is such a headscratcher.
Bioware makes some pretty impressive-looking games, like Mass Effect, and the character designs are amazing. There is a definite problem with some of them, though, insofar as that amazingness is in how straight up nuts-on-a-donkey ugly they are.
When Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, fans were quick to notice that the male version of the player character, Ryder, looks super badass and cool and almost exactly like the male model who lent his likeness to the game designers. The female version of Ryder looks like the model if you rolled her in a sack of sadness and didn’t let her sleep for four days while feeding her a straight diet of CHUD.
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So why, if you have the ability to render characters in a way that makes them look like not vaguely emotive ballsacks, would you make your character look like a vaguely emotive ballsack? This one requires a bit of creative tinkering in the ol’ thinky bag, but it does make sense. Female characters in gaming, as you may be aware, have a bit of a lackluster history in terms of realistic representation. After Princess Peach, the next big name in lady characters was Lara Croft, who was at first presented as polygonal boobs on blocks, and then later as well-vectored boobs on well-vectored short pants. And thus began a tradition of most video game women being little more than boobs and confusion. So maybe Bioware makes their female characters less appealing on purpose so as to not be considered sexist or douchey.
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Bioware has never come out and said they’ve made purposefully ugly characters. They have acknowledged abhorrent animation issues and terrible facial expressions which they set to work on fixing, but fans were all pretty convinced that there had to be more behind the distractingly objectionable visages of the female characters. As noted gamer nerd and feminist Lisa Kerzner argues in her video, it looks an awful lot like Bioware put considerable effort into downplaying the character’s face to make her more of an ugmo hero type (but just in the face), while trying to pawn it off as a technical limitation. Despite the fact that numerous other games can feature women who don’t look like victims of barnyard mad science, including a lot of Bioware’s previous games.
Unfortunately, dealing with matters of sex, sexism, and gender in video games is like opening a bag of cat shit lined with explosive squibs right in your damn face. If you recall anything to do with Gamergate, you know this is ground no one wants to tread on, so you almost can’t blame Bioware for not saying jack shit about it, as you don’t want to feed any trolls. But at the same time, when it’s obvious that they can make a nearly identical male character, there’s clearly a reason they’re not putting that same kind of effort into their females.
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Scam Email Grammar
Usually when I send emails, I spell the multi-syllable words incorrectly and use grammar that’s about as fucked as a friction-burnt Fleshlight. But that’s my own bugaboo to deal with, and has little-to-no bearing on the world of scam email.
The odds of you having never received a Nigerian scam email are slimmer than Slender Man’s weird dick, which I’ll tell you about sometime if you buy me a few beers. But for the sake of the kids in the audience who are reading this on the wall I inscribe all my articles on and have never received email before, a Nigerian scam email is a poorly worded piece of fuckery that shows up in your inbox claiming to be from some African prince who has millions of dollars tied up in banks overseas, and if you could just help pay some transfer fees, you can keep a buttload of it!
Typically, these emails use terrible grammar and atrocious spelling, not because the person sending you the email is a blithering idiot, but because they need you to be so gullible that you believe a Wakandan prince personally sent you a one-way ticket to being a millionaire, and he typed the message with a greasy turkey leg in his hand while riding a homemade roller coaster.
Most of us can identify a scam email right away. Another subsection of people will be suspicious but interested. And an even smaller division will write back to test the waters. The scammers want nothing to do with any of those people. They want the person who immediately responds with their bank account number in the signature line, because they only want to deal with people who may have mistaken a ham bone for Tony Danza more than once in their lives. So don’t be too proud if you recognize right away that someone sent you a weak as shit attempt at ripping you off; they just didn’t want you to waste their time.
Ian’s Twitter is awesome on purpose. Go look.
Does Troll 2 suck on purpose? Find out for yourself, and go down the rabbit hole of recommendations like Samurai Cop and more!
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