#more like. graphic novel specific (and the genres my friends are usually collecting) are not quite my style. those are more ppl gift me

[thedevotionaltour]

tomorrow i will be soooo brave and show my fun dd acquisitions on the collecting subreddit. bc i want to play show and tell and have randos who also have this beloved hobby go that's awesome man bc it's fun for me and i dont have many friends aside from like one irl who have a similar comic collecting hobby (though he goes more for omnibus collections and such and tpb (but prefers omnibus formats) but i think he collects single issues too now and then too? but regardless in my realm of hobby collecting). to be clear i have many many friends who collect comics but its in a different realm its more graphic novel comics as opposed to serials (whether individual issues or tpb). so not quite the realm i exist in within comics. so for me. sharing with those who also are in my sphere of collecting very fun. i wanna have fun with them.

[the---hermit]

How to get out of a reading slump

A while back posted a list of ten books to help you get out of a reading slump, but I also wanted to post a more general list of tips I personally think are useful when you find yourself in a reading slump. (I have also talked about this topic in this ask). So here's some of my tips:

Take a break. Sometimes you can get in reading slumps because you are burned out, maybe not just because of reading, but that can be affected as well. You have no obligations when reading (unless of course if you have to do it for school/uni, in which case I would still recommend trying to get some time off or at least slow down a bit in order to get some energies back). Sometimes accepting that you are in a non-reading place in life it's the best solution.

If you feel like it's a book you are reading that is putting you in a reading slump dnf it, or at least try to switch between that and another book. I personally tend to get stuck when I have only one book in my currently reading pile, because I need to vary often, so I like to have at the very least two books that I am currently reading. Realizing this about myself made me read much more, because I have avoided a lot of reading slumps. I'd also like to add that there's no shame in dnf-ing a book, if you are not enjoying your time with it there's no reason you should keep forcing yourself to read that. Maybe it's not the right time, and you'll enjoy it more in the future, or simply the book is not made for you, which is totally fine.

Graphic novels are a great compromise to get some reading done when you are in a reading slump, but you still want to something to read. This is specifically my solution for when I am in a reading slump caused by being burned out. Graphic novels tend to require less brain energy, and the illustrations usually help a lot with the flow of the story. I think this is the safest option when you are in the worse reading slumps.

Audiobooks are your best friends, whether you want to listen to it while doing other activities, or you want the narrator to help you while you follow the page, I feel like this is another great option. I personally love audiobooks, and I like to always have one on the go. This is again a great option if you are feeling burned out, in those cases I really like to listen to the audiobook as I take a walk, or even as I play some mindless games online like tetris, and similar things. These are also a great option to help when the book you are reading is putting you in a reading slump but you really have to read it. I have used audiobooks a lot in high school to help when I had to read poems or big classics.

Short story collections can be one of the best options to get back into reading. These take off the pressure of being consistent in order to remember things, because you can pick them up and leave them as you like, since most stories won't be over 25 pages usually. There's also some great options of collections that include multiple genres, which can be very helpful when you are stuck and don't really know what you want to read.

Fairytales and kid's books might not come to mind as soon as you think of what to read, but they can be very helpful to get you out of reading slumps. They are short and lighthearted which are two fundamental characteristics of good books to get you back into reading. And rivisiting some childhood favourites is always a great choice in my opinion.

Reread an old favourite or a comfort book. I know some people don't love revisiting old favourites, but I personally love them. You always get something new out of the story, and rereading a plot you know already can take off a lot of the pressure of reading, because you don't have to pay the same attention as with a story you know nothing about. This can be very helpful when getting back into the habit of reading.

Set up a cozy place to read. I am all about romanticizing the small things in life, and this is a very effortless way to put you into a good mindset to read. I personally like to light a few candles, make myself a nice cup of tea, maybe get a little treat to eat, cuddle up under a blanket and just read. Of course your set up might change depending on your preferences, just have a little fun with it, you could even try to read a bit while you are taking a bath.

Try to read outside. Similarly to the last tip, changing your enviroiment can be helpful sometimes. Some people like to read in a cafè, but you could also go in your garden if you have one or in a park.

Consume bookish content. This might seem stupid at first but sometimes seeing other people be excited about reading and books is very motivating. It has personally helped me several times.

Start a buddy read with a friend you feel comfortable with. Sharing your thoughts with someone as you read a book can keep the motivation up and a buddy read can be a great option to help with motivation, but be sure that you are comfortable with this person so that you don't feel too pressure upon you. Be clear from the beginning set a small goal and have fun with your buddy.

At the moment these are all the tips that came to my mind when thinking about getting out of a reading slump. Of course different people might have different methods, but changing things up can always be helpful. As I said at the beginning you shouldn't feel pressure when reading, and if it's a no reading moment in your life there's not shame in it, but I have also been stuck in reading slumps where I actually did want to read but I couldn't bring myself to do so, and many of these things helped me.

original posts/tips masterlist

[emeritus-fuckers]

Hiii, I'd like to request a match up !!

First of all, sorry if it's written weird, English is not my first language and I'm in need of a few days of sleep lmao :') also this is very long because I have no idea how to write concisely to save my life, so, sorry for your eyes? brain? Idk but sorry

1 - I'm AFAB genderqueer, might be a demigirl ? idk gender is confusing. anyways, I use any pronouns because I'm extra like that lmao, and I prefer my sexuality to stay unlabelled for now

2 - Papas !! (they're so silly I love them)

3 - I'm rather small (163cm/5'4") and kinda pudgy. I would not say I'm plus size but I'm definitely thicker than average, especially around my hips and thighs (stretch marks n cellulite gang WYA). I used to be very insecure about it but thankfully I got better at loving myself (still working on it but I'll get there eventually). I'm also getting a tattoo on my upper left arm very soon (inspired by Kafka's Metamorphosis because yes) and hopefully some more piercings (I only have triple lobe for now). my hair's light brown and very short, I buzzed it back in August and I'm growing it out. Yes, I do have a terrible case of bed head. I also trim my eyebrows to be very short, makes it easier to do my makeup. Almost forgot to talk about my eyes, but basically they're blue-ish green and usually overshadowed by the huge dark circles I have. I don't dress according to one particular style, although I enjoy being in full goth fashion, makeup and all. I would probably describe my style by 'satanic grandma' because as much as I love my band shirts and inverted crosses, I also cannot live without my extensive collection of grandpa sweaters and ugly ties.

4 - I'm an introvert - and an awkward anxious ball of nerves at that, but I don't mind stepping up to the task in social situations if the people I'm with are not comfortable ordering food/asking a question. I usually am very cautious of how I act with new people I meet as I am autistic and don't want to 'scare them off' or make them uncomfortable. However, if we vibe, you get to know the still anxious but also very silly me. I especially love coming across other people that are on the spectrum, because we usually have a certain understanding of each other's way of acting and just be silly together. Speaking from experience with my closest friends, at least (not generalizing autistic people !!).

5 - I've been hyperfixating on Ghost for a good while now, but apart from that I'm very much interested in art. Learning about it of course, but also making it (I'm in art prep class rn and it's kicking my ass, send help). Drawing, writing, taking photos, making zines and stuff... hopefully after prep class I can get into a proper art school and study illustration, and maybe look into becoming a graphic novel author. My favorite artists would probably be Dora Maar, Gustave Doré and Gustav Klimt tbh. I also have an interest in geopolitics and history, especially in the Middle Ages' witch hunts and black death, but also in more recent topics such as the satanic panic. Basically all things occult and satanic. I also love internet horror media such as ARGs, like My house.wad or the Hypnagogic Archive. Music taste wise, I listen to everything, but my favorite genres are hard rock and metal. I'd say my all time fav artists are Ghost, Slayer (South of Heaven walked so that Year Zero could run, change my mind), Iron Maiden, SOAD, Twin Temple, Radiohead, alex g and Mitski.

6 - I'm a huge cat person but I also very much love crows and rats and reptiles and overall all the animals that would seem weird to keep as pets. Also I love love LOVE having deep conversations about complicated philosophical topics at night in a calm spot at a party or smth, specifically while drinking off-brand soda. Idk why I included this, I just thought of it and I'm too tired to question how my sleep deprived brain thinks right now.

Sorry again for the huge wall of text, y'all are the best !

Have a good day/night !!

This post is part of the 1000 followers match up event. Entries for the event are now closed.

Your match is...Copia

He's all for helping you love yourself, he'll kiss any part of your body you are insecure about and everyday he tells you how amazing you look. The thing that really makes it work is that he means it, you can see the sincerity in his expression.

He can also be an awkward anxious bundle of nerves. But what is so cute is that both of you try and step up for the other in social situations. You see Papa Emeritus IV come out a lot at those times.

You vibed immediatly with him it was just an instant connection. He just got you, and you him. He treasures that so much.

He will help all he can with your art class prep. Like whatever you need. If you want him to just keep you company he's there, if you need models he'll get his rats to pose with him (it's just adorable). Or if you need to work super hard he'll bring you food and drinks to keep you going.

Sometimes he joins you but drawing isn't his strongest skill so it's a good giggle, he can laugh at his mistakes and he enjoys seeing you smile at them. Other times he'll sit and write songs as you work, he wrote one about you just the other day.

He got so excited when he found out you had an interest in the middle ages, witch hunts and black death. He literally squeaked with joy and you discussed it long into the night, while drinking lots of off-brand soda.

He also finds some really cool books for you to read from the clergy library, occult, satanic panic and so on, it's all there.

~

Written by Nyx

[moonmothmama]

tagged by @amagurith

last song you listened to: A Salty Dog by Styx (cover of Procol Harum)

last movie you watched: i mean last night me and Brian binged the entirety of Blood of Zeus on netflix if that counts; otherwise i cannot recall. a Godzilla movie? Brian's been really into Godzilla lately

currently watching: we are very slowly getting through The Fall Of The House of Usher, because i cannot do more than one episode at a time and some days i can't do one. it's good so far but it's very gross. i have to look away sometimes bc it's gory

other things you’ve watched this year: lotta werewolf movies. Silver Bullet comes to mind, and i recently rewatched the remake of The Wolfman w/ Benicio Del Toro & Anthony Hopkins. Brian also started us on My Hero Academia one day a few months ago because he was curious and i didn't expect to care about it but i ended up loving Toshinori/All Might so much. also a lot of Star Wars tv shows. like a shitload. The Last Voyage of the Demeter which was amazing. Wellington Paranormal. Sandman Netflix (i wish there was more of Cain and Abel). that new Willow series (fuck disney for putting the kibosh on it). Good Omens. Some random film about a cruise ship being hijacked solely because Temuera Morrison was in it.

currently reading: a graphic novelization of the adventure zone podcast because i cannot finish a podcast if my life depends on it and Brian kept telling me i'd like it. it's cute af so far, about halfway through. it's a set of three books and i'm on the second. also uhh i just remembered now that i started a star wars novel and didn't finish it gotta pick that back up again soon. up next i'm dipping into the gorgon by tanith lee (collection of dark fantasy short stories).

currently listening to: recently went through another metal phase and so i was listening to a lot of The Hu, Megadeth, Metallica, Dio, Iron Maiden & Tenacious D, but now i'm swinging back around to the usual clusterfuck of genres including folk music (mostly but not exclusively english language), 60s folk revival & folk rock, oldies, motown, 60s girl groups, 1970s japanese folk music, (a lot of folk music ok!), a smattering of 80s pop, and specifically a lot of Warren Zevon and Roy Orbison/Traveling Wilburys

currently working on: an embroidery project as a gift for a friend

current obsession: the story i'm writing with a friend/our OCs; sumo wrestling; werewolves; all the various retellings of beauty and the beast

tagging: steal this shit and tag me!

[mediaevalmusereads]

Supersex: Sexuality, Fantast, and the Superhero. Edited by Anna F. Peppard. University of Texas Press, 2020.

Rating: 5/5 stars

Genre: non-fiction, literary criticism, comics and graphic novels

Summary: From Superman, created in 1938, to the transmedia DC and Marvel universes of today, superheroes have always been sexy. And their sexiness has always been controversial, inspiring censorship and moral panic. Yet though it has inspired jokes and innuendos, accusations of moral depravity, and sporadic academic discourse, the topic of superhero sexuality is like superhero sexuality itself—seemingly obvious yet conspicuously absent. Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero is the first scholarly book specifically devoted to unpacking the superhero genre’s complicated relationship with sexuality.

Exploring sexual themes and imagery within mainstream comic books, television shows, and films as well as independent and explicitly pornographic productions catering to various orientations and kinks, Supersex offers a fresh—and lascivious—perspective on the superhero genre’s historical and contemporary popularity. Across fourteen essays touching on Superman, Batman, the X-Men, and many others, Anna F. Peppard and her contributors present superhero sexuality as both dangerously exciting and excitingly dangerous, encapsulating the superhero genre’s worst impulses and its most productively rebellious ones. Supersex argues that sex is at the heart of our fascination with superheroes, even—and sometimes especially—when the capes and tights stay on.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: discussions of misogyny, rape/sexual assault, homophobia, racism (including the n-word)

This book is an edited volume of essays in addition to being non-fiction, so my review will be structured a little different from my usual pieces.

Full disclosure: I’ve never met Anna F. Peppard, but she’s in my professional sphere. We have mutual friend/acquaintances and we’re friends on Facebook, so we’ve had some interaction. I pause to mention this because neither I nor my review are without bias, so while I did genuinely enjoy this book and think it was smart, insightful, and intellectually rigorous, I also think people should read it for themselves and not just take my word for it.

Supersex is a collection of essays on a range of topics from gender to sexuality to desire and the female gaze. Readers can find discussions of female empowerment/disempowerment, queer found families, masculinity, reproductive desire, nationalism, and more in the pages of this book, but what unites them all is the focus on the superhero; all essays take as their subject a costumed, super-powered individual (or team) from serialized comics (some Marvel, some DC, some others such as Miss Fury and Gay Comix) or their representations in live-action films, tv, cosplay, porn, fanart, and even fanfiction. Peppard states that the reason why she gathered these contributions is in part because of the lack of studies about superhero sexuality. While a number of books on sexuality in comics have preceded Supersex, Peppard’s collection stands out because it captures a range of perspectives which dovetail nicely with themes of transformation, disguise, passing, fan culture, and so on.

Personally, I found this collection to be incredibly intellectually stimulating. As a scholar myself, I enjoy reading work that is both articulate and thoughtful, and all of the contributions in this book felt academically rigorous while still remaining accessible. I particularly liked the way each author deployed critical theory or interdisciplinary studies to make their point; a number of scholars use the works of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and more, but all actively engage with both the established body of comics scholarship and more interdisciplinary publications. As a result, it felt like I was reading a conversation about comics between a huge panel of sharp, insightful scholars, and I felt like each did a good job of taking me along for the ride.

If I had any qualms, I would say that a few of the essays had arguments or bits of arguments that might have felt like a stretch or amounted to basically “X is problematic/X is subversive” without much of a “why is that important” behind it. These types of arguments are not commonplace, however, so I was able to appreciate the larger points being made as well as the close readings that supported the more nuanced takes.

In sum, I found this book captivating, and though I don’t publish as a scholar anymore, I think it would be a very useful research tool. Supersex could also be good casual reading; if you’re interested in comics criticism or even just gender and sexuality in pop culture, there’s plenty here to love. I’d only recommend that such readers also be comfortable with literary theory. Though this book doesn’t use dense prose to communicate complex ideas, it’s still not an “introduction.” Overall, it’s a lovely collection, and I can’t wait to check out more from the authors contained within.

[thatgamefromthatad]

Seen these ads? (Dress Up! Time Princess Review)

This is primarily a dress up and interactive fiction game.

The storylines and character interactions are not as dramatic as the ads would suggest, the gameplay mechanics are different from what you see in the ads and it is not a “makeover” game as some of the ads state. There are also a lot of other features in the game, although the primary focus is on dress up stages and interactive plot lines.

The characters are heavily “Elsafied” as shown in the ads, but this is actually a much better game than one would assume based on how it’s advertised.

Read my full review below:

***

***

***

👸 Is the game still fun? Yes, it is fun! The game is very well fleshed-out, from the dress up system to the storylines and characters, and the graphics are very nice as well. The outfits especially are very pleasant to look at - the fabrics have texture and motion, there’s a wide variety of items and you can even customize your own clothes with dyes and patterns and stuff unlocked along the way, which I don’t think I’ve seen before in a game except maybe the Sims and Animal Crossing lol.

The storylines are mostly based around historical events and fairytales which is pretty unique and makes for a surprising bit of edutainment - there are even little factoids throughout on different historical figures, locations, events and items etc. The decisions you make actually affect the story routes, endings and your relationships with other characters, and the characters themselves are well-developed with their own personalities and designs (although they are still Disneyfied/Elsafied designs.)

The characters emote and move throughout the dialog in a way that makes the stories more engaging, and the relationship system is really well-done; your decisions throughout the story effect your relationships and your relationship stats affect the story routes in turn. You can also improve relationships by giving characters gifts based on their individual preferences and you even get little letters and rewards from them as your relationships improve.

The dress up stages are woven into the story, usually with you dressing up to attend an event or meeting with the stage objectives related to the type of event/meeting it is (formal, informal, outdoors, you’re trying to impress someone, you’re trying to appear humble etc.) There are even items based around the specific time periods and locations of the stories.

In addition to the dress up stages and storylines there are a lot of other things to do in this game - crafting, minigames, events and contests, side stories, pets and items to collect that can boost your points during dressup stages, etc. I would say there’s almost too much to do, with a busy home screen covered in notifications that can be a hassle to go through if you’re like me and want to clear all your notifications before you do anything else lol. There are also a lot of different in-game currencies involved for different parts of the game which can be confusing. But the game gives you a good amount of guidance with tutorials explaining each feature along the way (and not thrown at you all at once), and if you can get past the sheer overwhelming quantity of things to do, you can either figure out how to organize and optimize your tasks, or just ignore the more complicated stuff and enjoy the main story stages/dress up aspects.

I was really surprised by the quality of this game based on the spammy/clickbaity/fake ads and the fact that on its face it seems like something that would be geared more toward younger children. It still isn’t exactly my cup of tea since I’m personally not that into dress up games and historical fiction, but I have to admit it was pretty enjoyable and impressive, and definitely something I would recommend to those who enjoy these specific genres.

👗 Is this a free game or a “free” game? I would definitely consider this a free game, you can pretty much do everything for free and play for a long time without hitting a dead end. You need stamina to play the main story/dress up stages but this renews over time and the stages themselves are long enough that you might not even play enough in one sitting to run out of stamina completely. I personally never ran out of stamina, especially since I racked up a lot of extra stamina (I think from earning it from different tasks I completed along the way but I’m not sure exactly where it came from).

Even if you did run out and had to wait to play more main stages, there are so many other things you can do in the meantime. And there are tons of opportunities to earn crafting materials, dress up items, experience and in-game currency, which lessens the pressure to pay in order to get more items or progress through the stories.

Probably best of all is that there aren’t paid choices in the storylines, unlike in a lot of other interactive fiction/visual novel games, where more favorable/consquential options require premium currency to make.

🕰 Features

There are a ton of different features in this game but I’ll try my best to list the ones I remember.

Dress up stages (you put together an outfit using clothing items/accessories in your inventory, and earn more points for higher-rated items as well as items with attributes that match the stage goals)

Storylines (there are different “books” to choose from with their own themes, plots, characters and dress up stages, which are mostly based on history or fairytales with the overarching plot being that your character is a time traveler who can travel into storybooks and take on the role of a historical figure/protagonist, kind of like a “past life” thing. Your character is always female and you can customize their facial features, skintone and base hairstyle but not their name since it will always be the name of whatever main protagonist you’re taking the role of. Each book is pretty long with dozens of stages and you unlock them with tickets you can earn from progressing through other books; there are also a few shorter stories or spinoff stories from the main books that cost less tickets)

Character relationships and interactions (with each main book comes a set of main characters called “companions” with their own personalities and preferences, who you can build your relationships with through story choices, giving them gifts they like and other interactions. You can get letters and rewards from them as your relationship stat increases and there’s also something called “encounters” where you make a choice based on a single line of dialog from a companion or generic NPC and get a reward, but I don’t think this affects the relationship stat. There are romantic plot lines but I don’t think there’s a separate stat for romantic relationships, it just comes out through the narrative/dialog. I’ve only played partly through one main story so far so I don’t know if your love interests are always male or not.)

Crafting (you can use materials and blueprints earned by completing stages and other various tasks to craft dress up items and gifts to give to companions)

Gacha mechanic (there’s a gacha mechanic where you get free draws each day to get crafting materials or dress up items. You can pay other currencies for more draws with guaranteed rare items.)

Friends/community (you can make friends with other players and gift them stamina and friend points which can be used for draws in one of the gacha pools. You can also borrow dress up items from friends to complete dress up stages, although this costs in-game currency. There’s also a global chat and other public chat rooms, and you can chat with or message your friends.)

Avatar and customization (You have a main customizable avatar displayed with the storyline dialog that you can also dress up with any of the items you own for a photobooth type thing, where you can make images of them in different poses to share on social media or what have you. You can also customize some clothing items using dyes, patterns and stamps you’ve unlocked and use those to dress up your avatar. The customized items can also be used in stages though I’m not clear on whether customization affects your performance or is only for visual effect.)

Events, minigames and contests (There are countless events going on at any given time, including log-in events, contests, puzzle/arcade minigames and more. These provide an abundance of opportunities to earn crafting materials, dress up items, in-game currency etc., pass them time while waiting for stamina to refill or overall engage with the game community.)

Pets, relics and research (I haven’t explored these part very much but you can get pet cats that can be attached to outfits to boost their stats and be sent out on missions to passively bring in rewards over time. Relics are another type of point-booster for dress up stages and research can be done on categories of dress up items to increase the points they yield.)

Edutainment (there’s a “memories” area where you can read through the different historical facts and trivia you’ve come across throughout the storylines)

⚖️ Ad Honesty Rating: 2/5 (the ads rely on overdone tropes and melodrama, and blatantly copy from other games/game ads. For example the ads where her eyeliner is all smeared are basically the same exact ads used for Project Makeover. The art style and basic gist of the game’s genres are relayed through the ads, but they scarcely include real gameplay and really don’t do the game justice.)

⭐️ Overall Rating: 5/5 (other than the game being overly busy and having an Elsafied art style, there’s not much else to complain about, and there’s a lot of great stuff going on here. The visuals especially really caught my attention and the complex storylines and ability to play for free unhindered really make it a 5/5 for me. Overall one of the best games I’ve reviewed so far even if it’s not my personal genre preference.)

▶️ Ad Example:

▶️ Gameplay Example:

Follow me for more reviews of those free mobile games you’re always getting ads for! Thanks for reading! 🥳

[zerochanges]

2020 Favorite Video Games

I don’t know if I am an outlier or if this is the same for everyone else but I really did not play a lot of games this year. 2020 was a very harsh year for all of us, especially for me for some personal reasons. So to get to the chase, I am just gonna say it left me not doing much in what little free time I did have, and I didn’t play much either. Usually I try to keep my lists for ‘favorite of the year’ to only titles released that year but since I played so little this year, screw it. I am gonna include any game I played this year regardless of release date.

Collection of SaGa

By far a flawed rerelease. It’s bare bones: there are no advance features you would usually expect out of these kinds of emulated rereleases like save states, fast forward, or rewind, and there was no real effort made to touch up almost 30 year old localizations that had to meet Nintendo of America’s then harsh standards. This really is just 3 roms slapped into a nice looking interface with an option to increase the game speed (which by the way you better use, the characters walk very slow in these old games). 

I am bit harsh here, but only because I thought the Romancing SaGa remasters and the upcoming SaGa Frontier remaster all looked like they got a great budget and a lot of love while this is just another Collection of Mana situation (moreso specifically talking about Seiken Densetsu 1/Final Fantasy Adventure/Adventures of Mana part of that collection). I would have loved to see Square Enix do a bit more for these older games. Or at least include the remakes. Seiken Densetsu 1 had two great remakes, both unused in Collection of Mana, and all three of these original SaGa titles have remakes that have never seen the light of day outside of Japan. How great would it have been to get the Wonderswan remake of SaGa 1, as well as the Nintendo DS remakes of Saga 2 and SaGa 3? 

But my gripes aside, these games are still fun as they ever were. Replaying SaGa 1 specifically during the holiday season really helped calm me down and made me feel at ease. It’s easy to forget but even in their Gameboy roots there are a lot of funky and weird experimental choices being made in these games. They aren’t your run-of-the-mil dragon quest (or considering the gameboy, maybe pokemon would be more apt) clones. 

Raging Loop

Perhaps my favorite game of the year, Raging Loop is one of the best visual novels I have ever played hands down. The level of creativity and splitting story paths that went into it is simply mind blowing. The basic premise is both a wonderful throwback to the old days of Chunsoft sound novels while still modern and somewhat reminiscent of both Higurashi and Danganronpa. Essentially you play as Haruaki, a poor slub that got lost in the mountains with no clue where to go until you stumble upon an old rural village with a strange history and even stranger superstitions. Before you know it there has been a murder and the Feast is now afoot.

The less said about Raging Loop the better, although I do want to say a lot about it one day if I ever can write a proper review of it. This is a gripping game that will take hold of you once you get into it though and never let go. I actually 100%-ed this and I very rarely do that. I got every ending, every bonus hidden ending, played the entire game twice to hear all the hidden details it purposely hides on your first play through, played all the bonus epilogue chapters, unlocked all the hidden voice actor interviews, collected all the art work, etc, etc. I was just obsessed with this game, it’s that damn good! And the main character is maybe the best troll in all of video games, god bless Haruaki. 

Root Double

From Takumi Nakazawa, long time contributor to Kotaro Uchikoshi’s work comes a game any fan of Zero Escape or Uchikoshi in general will probably enjoy. Root Double, like its name suggests is a visual novel with two different routes, hence Root Double. The first route stars Watase Kasasagi, the leader of an elite rescue team in the midst of their greatest crisis yet that could lead to nuclear devastation as they try to evacuate a nuclear research facility that has gone awry. 

The other route stars Natsuhiko Tenkawa, an everyday high schooler whose peaceful life is thrown into turmoil when he stumbles upon a terrorist plot to destroy the nuclear facility in the city and his attempts to stop them. Together the two separate plots weave into one and creates a really crazy ride. Part Chernobyl, part science fiction, any fan of the genre will easily enjoy it. And hey it’s kind of relevant to include on this list too since it just got a Switch port this year (I played it on steam though).  

Snack World

I was shocked upon starting Snack World as it is instantly incredibly charming, witty, and downright hilarious at times yet I heard almost zero people talk about it. EVER. This game is Dragon Quest levels of quirky though, and the localization is incredible. The game has such an oddball sense of humor that works really well with its presentation right down to the anime opening video that sings about the most bizarre things. Instead of the usual pump up song about the cool adventure ahead we get stuff like wanting to go out to a restaurant and eat pork chops. 

The self aware/fourth wall breaking humor is just enough to be really funny, but doesn't overstay its welcome and always makes it work right in the context of the dialogue. And finally, just everything; with the menus, the name of side quests and missions, and the character dialogue -- are all just so witty and full of quirky humor. This is one hell of a charming and funny game and addictive to boot.

Trials of Mana

Trials of Mana has gone from one of those legendary unlocalized games, to one of the first major breakthroughs in fan translation, to finally getting an official English release complete with a fully 3D remake. In a lot of ways from a western perspective this game has had an incredible journey. As for this remake itself, I really found myself having tons of fun with it. I loved the graphics, and the voice acting while a bit on the cheaper side almost kind of adds to the charm since both the graphics and acting really give it an old PS2 vibe. I know that is probably just more me being weird but yeah, I had to say it. 

I really hope Square Enix sticks to this style of remake more often, instead of just doing Final Fantasy VII Remakes that break the bank and involve extensive tweaking to both plot and game play. I’ll take smaller budget projects that play more like the original game any day personally. I wouldn’t mind if they also deliver a brand new Mana game all together in this engine either. 

Utawarerumono Trilogy

This year saw the release of the first entry in the series, Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen--and thus finally after three years since the sequels Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth came out in 2017 the trilogy is now complete in English. I ended up binging through Prelude to the Fallen very fast shortly after it came out and immediately jumped on to the sequels. Perhaps the best part of 2020 was that I finally played all three of these fantastic games, and did so back-to-back-to-back. Playing the first Utawarerumono was an experience I will never forget, it was like visiting old friends again that I haven’t seen in ages, by and large thanks to the fact that I saw the anime adaption of the game when I was much younger, nearly a decade ago. Back then I would have never of dreamed that I would get to play the actual game and get the real experience. 

And it only got better from here, as all three games are such wonderful experiences from start to finish. The stories are all so deep, and by the time you get to the third entry, Mask of Truth, it’s crazy to see how they all connected over so many years and weaved together into a plot much bigger than they ever were. What carries it beyond all that though has to be the fun and addicting strategy role playing game aspect, which while a bit on the easy side, is still so much fun and helps make the game feel better paced since you get to play the conquests your characters go on and not just read about all the battles they fight. Beyond that the games are packed full of awesome characters, and I know I’ll never forget the amazing leads in all of them. Hakuowlo, Haku, and Oshtor will all go down as some of the greats to me. 

Ys: Memories of Celceta

Ys: Memories of Celceta is a full 3D remake of Ys IV, a rather infamous game in Falcom’s Ys series. Not to get bogged down too much into the history of Falcom but by this point they were facing a lot of hardship and had to outsource this entry to other developers, and thus passed it on to two particular developers they had a business relationship with, creating two unique versions of Ys IV. Tonkin House who had worked on Super Famicom port of Ys III with Falcom ended up creating their own YS IV entry, Mask of the Sun for the very same system, where Hudson soft who had produced the much beloved Ys Books I & II remakes for the Turbografix (PC Engine) CD add-on created their own Ys IV entry Dawn of Ys for that console. Both games followed guidelines and ideas outlined from Falcom themselves but both radically diverged from each other and turned into completely different games. 

Falcom finally putting an end to this debate on which version of Ys IV you should play have gone and created their own definitive Ys IV in 2012 for the Playstation Vita. I played the 2020 remastered version of this remake on my PS4. I even bought this on the Vita when it first came out but I am horrible and only horde games, never play them. So it was a lot of fun to finally play this. 

Memories of Celceta is probably one of the best starting points for anyone looking to get into Ys, especially if you only want to stay with the 3D titles as out of all the 3D entries this explains the most about the world and series protagonist Adol Christian. Beyond that it’s just another fantastic entry in a wonderful series that has a few good twists hidden behind it, especially for long time fans of the series. 

Random Video Game Console Stuff

Xbox Has Blue Dragon: I actually got an Xbox One this year for free from my brother. Because of that I started to play Blue Dragon again and there’s a lot I would love to say about this game. I don’t know if I am fully committed to replaying it all the way through however but I find myself putting in a couple hours every few days and enjoying myself again. Does anyone else remember Blue Dragon? I feel like it really missed its audience and had it come out nowadays and probably for the Switch it would have really resonated with the Dragon Quest fandom a lot more instead of being thrown out to die on Xbox and constantly compared to Final Fantasy VII and the like which it had nothing at all similar with. 

The Turbografx 16 Mini: This was probably one of the best mini consoles that have come out and I feel like thanks to the whole 2020 pandemic thing it was largely forgotten about. That’s a shame, it has a wonderful variety of great games, especially if you count the Japanese ones (god I wish I could play the Japanese version of Snatcher included), and a wonderful interface with fantastic music. One of these days I would really like to be able to play around with the console more seriously than I have already. 

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon Never Existed: So Nintendo localized the first ever Fire Emblem game on Nintendo Switch which is awesome to see them touching Famicom games again--I haven’t seen Nintendo of America rerelease old Famicom titles since Mysterious Murasame Castle on the 3DS, but their trailer hilariously made it seem like this is the first time ever they released Fire Emblem when in fact they had already localized the remake Shadow Dragon on the Nintendo DS nearly 10 or 11 years ago. I and many other fans I talked to all found this really hilarious, probably solely because of how much they kept repeating the fact that this is the first time you will ever be able to experience Marth’s story.

All that aside though I have to say the collector edition for this newly localized Famicom game is probably the most gorgeous retro reproduction I have seen in a long time, and I really spent many many hours just staring at the all clear glass mock cartridge. I have found myself really obsessing over retro reproductions during 2020, and obtained quite a few this year. I really hope this trend continues to go on in 2021 as recreating classic console packaging and cartridges is a lot of fun. 

[stretchearsnotvaginas]

Way back in 2013, when my husband and I first got together, he introduced me to Fight Club, which led to an almost immediate obsession with the man behind it: Charles (Chuck) Michael Palahniuk. As someone who’s obsessed with psychological movies with crazy twists, it was only natural that I wanted to find out more about the author. So, I looked a little more into him and bought my first novel: Diary – which follows a young artist who “finds herself in pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives.” Needless to say, the book itself was enough to follow through with my research on him, which all started with:

Where does he get his ideas? What genre is he writing for?

So, after finding the answers to these, Chuck quickly became a staple in my life. I started researching everything about him and it wasn’t long before I learned that the man behind all of the novels was actually a pretty great guy. For his novels, he gets his ideas from actual people and situations in his life. Then, he actually gives credit where credit is due and acknowledges where he got his information from. Luckily, all of his ideas fall under the transgressive fiction genre because they’re not for the faint of heart.

Including Chuck, there are only 6 other authors in the entire genre, and Chuck quickly made his way into the same genre as his idol Bret Easton Ellis. Now, the primary idea behind transgressive fiction is to break societal norms and push against them. The narrators aren’t usual people, they don’t have filters, and Chuck creates plots that are twisted enough that you want to keep going. Well, with the introduction of Fight Club 2 (his first graphic novel), the group that religiously followed him quickly became known as “Chuckleheads,” and I’m honored to be a part of them.

To refrain from sounding a like a creep, meeting him became one of my bucket list goals. After diving into the world of Chuck, I decided that I had to meet the man behind the mass amounts of transgressive fiction on my shelves. So, after building up quite a collection of his books (22/25), following his web-page, and finding an event going on in Denver on Facebook, my husband and I finally got to meet him.

On February 16, 2019, my husband and I decided that meeting Chuck would make the perfect Valentine’s Day date. Over the past six years, we’d usually just go out to eat, or maybe make a day of it, but this year, we got to meet our idol. Chuck is not only a staple in my life, but he’s also a staple in my husbands. So, we woke up earlier than usual and went to I Want More Comics in Thornton, CO. They were celebrating their 10-year anniversary by having Chuck and other artists in their store. Which, I’m not entirely sure how they managed to get him there, but I’m extremely glad they did.

Now, Thornton is anywhere from an hour to two hours away from where we reside depending on traffic, so we couldn’t have gotten there right when it started with my husband being on night-shift, so we arrived a little later. Luckily, they had a system going. When you walked in, you got a ticket stub with numbers on it and they called 10 people to stand in line at a time. So, by arriving a little late, we managed to get a measly two-three hour wait time. Although, I guess it’s only measly depending on the event you’ve signed up for. Needless to say, those two-three hours were filled with anxiety, and we managed to go eat lunch and buy stuff for my reading nook from a nearby Target.

  After the wait was over, we nervously got in line to meet him. Obviously, in my excitement, I had to document almost every step with photos:

While in line, I thought about all the things I wanted to say to him. How he’s become such a huge inspiration to me, how I dedicated an entire blog to his works, and how I was a writer as well, but when I finally got up to him, I was star-struck. So star-struck that I could barely speak. We got up to him, shook his hand, introduced ourselves, and he signed quite a bit. There was so much going through my head that I just didn’t know what to say to him. Everything that I rehearsed in my head ended up completely disappearing. THE Chuck Palahniuk was standing in front of me, and I actually shook his hand.

Luckily, I brought something to give to him  – my digital drawing of an Archerized Chuck.

With the drawing, also came his birthday the following week. So, I asked him, “Isn’t your birthday next week?” like a total creep and finally gave him the drawing. It was pretty cool because he said he’d set it in his office, where all his other fan-art is, but what was cooler was how casual he was about me knowing his birthday. All he said was, “ya know what, it sure is” and took the drawing. If a year ago, anyone told that my drawing would end up in the hands of Chuck himself, I would’ve said they were crazy, so the very idea that it actually ended up with him is pretty amazing.

During the whole debacle of my mind going completely blank, he signed a few books, my laptop cover, and gave us two of his infamous severed arms (pictured below).

Then, after the long wait, the signings, and the awkward discussion, we got to take photos with him. Now, when you take photos with Chuck, they’re not the usual “stand here, say cheese” kind of photos. Chuck makes the whole thing an experience and he poses you in a very particular way. Well, for my photo (that was at the beginning of this), I chose the choke pose, where he was supposed to “choke” me in a photo. However, with Chuck being as ripped as he is, instead of pretending to choke me, he accidentally cut off my airway a little. So, I literally got choked by Chuck. For my husbands stance, he chose the fighter pose, where they pretended to fight. Chuck posed him to a point where his feet were aligned in the specific way he wanted, and he had my husband flex and look at the camera.

After we left I Want More Comics and Chuck, I was still reeling. I couldn’t shut up the entire way home and I immediately edited and posted all of the photos, told all of my friends about it, and frankly I still can’t believe it happened. Now, I’m not sure what else happened that day, but I’m pretty sure we ended the night with Red Robin burgers and ended up back home playing video games. Needless to say, this was the best Valentine’s Day we’ve ever had, and my new goal is to meet him again so I can actually pick his brain like I wanted to initially. To me, Chuck is an enigma. His works are mind-bending, full of twists, and 100% totally original, one can only hope that one day I can finally sit down with him over a cup of coffee after I publish my own novel.

    Getting to meet Chuck was one of the best days of my life next to meeting Dance Gavin Dance (read about that here), and it wouldn’t have been possible without our big move to Colorado back in 2016. 

Meeting Chuck Palahniuk Way back in 2013, when my husband and I first got together, he introduced me to 

[bos-ingit]

11/11/11 Tag Game

I have finally done it. I was tagged twice by @bookenders and now I have completed all 22 questions. So this will be a long post, you’ve been warned. Here’s a little insight of me.

Rules:

Ask 11 questions, answer 11 questions (my case 22) and tag 11 people. I’m probably not going to tag 11 people.

First I’ll have my 11 question here:

Has writing always been your main interest or where you drawn to other paths?

What’s your favourite movie genre? Does it different from your reading taste?

What is your Hogwarts House?

If you could be any animal for a week what animal would you be and why?

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Do you use any tools to help you write, such as music, images ecetara?

What are you top recommended books?

Do you have any interests that most people don’t know about?

Which fictional world would you choose to live in if you could?

Where in the world would you most like to visit?

Do you share your writings with close friends and family?

Okay, I hope you enjoy me question. I couldn’t help adding in a Harry Potter related questions. Now for my answers!

What kind of stories always get you right in the feels? What makes u cri evrytiem?

Loss and self sacrifice. Anything where a character I have grown to love and am attached to dies I’m in tears. Sometimes I have to step away before I can return to that world.

Do you keep notes around for your stories? How do you organize them? Yes I do. I keep notebooks usually specific to what I’m working on. The notes I keep in them however mostly vary from WIP to WIP. I do outlines or beat sheets (if you know what those are) and keep them in labelled folders.

What’s the nerdiest trinket/swag/item you own?

I own a lot of nerdy stuff, tough choice for what’s the nerdiest. I’m gonna go with my Harry Potter collection. I have two different Hogwarts house robes (points if you can guess which ones), three house ties, a Hufflepuff scarf, Hermione’s wand and more. Extra points if anyone can guess what my House is!

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever written?                                    When I was in year 6 (age 9-10) I wrote two stories about a vampire called Bob for a school assignment. One set in a river and the other on a mountain. Bob is a strange vampire, for starters his coffin lay on the bottom of a river.

What was your favorite story/kids book when you were little? What do you think of it now?

I remember my favourite story being from this collection of bedtime stories and it was the wolf and the seven little goats. I don’t know why but I remember younger me asking for it to be read to me as my bedtime story. Well now I know the story is a little different than the children’s version, doesn’t mean I dislike it. However now that I’m older I have moved onto other stories.

Do you have a “writing outfit?”

I don’t have a specific outfit but anything comfortable qualifies as a writing outfit for me, mainly pyjamas.

What book (that you’ve read) would you say was your favorite to impress someone? What book would you say is your favorite to a young kid?

One thing I’d like to say is I’d never say a book is my favourite with the intention to impress someone. My favourite book at the moment is Northern Lights and not just cos I’ve read it recently. I’ve always felt this weird draw to Philip Pullman even before I read any of his writing. To a young kid I would say Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Have to contribute to the next generation of witches and wizards.

How do you bookmark pages in a physical book? Dog ear? Actual bookmark? Random nearby item?

I used to be someone who dogeared and then I read a post that changed my mind about that method. Now I prefer to use an actual bookmark. If there isn’t one about I’ll use a random bit of paper.

Do you reread your favorite books/stories?

I do when the mood hits me. The Harry Potter series is one I’ve been meaning to do. So far I’ve reread Philosopher's stone three times in the past year. I’m doing well as you can tell.

Do you read literary magazines?

I don’t but I know I should.

Do you like graphic novels/comics? Which ones?

Yes, although I haven’t read any recently. I’m a huge Harley Quinn and Batman in general fan, so I read her most recent series for awhile as well as Suicide Squad. I’ve also read two stand alone Joker graphic novels: The Killing Joke and Joker. Both amazing and would recommend, if you’re into that sort of thing.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?                                                     It’s probably because I’m British but I don’t know what I Klondike bar is. Would anybody like to tell me? Am I missing out on something?

When do you title your WIPs? It is the first thing you do? The last? Does it come to you during drafting?

On my screenwriting we were taught to always name our work, it is our baby it deserves a name. Most of the time that name changes during drafting but naming has become on of the first things I do.

How many inside jokes do you put in your WIP(s)?                                     I haven’t put any as of yet. The possibility for that happening in future is certain.

Your WIP’s antagonist is now The Riddler. How do your OCs handle that?

My WIP I’ll use for this is Welcome to Crestwood Moore. My protagonist Alice would love it, she’s sees herself as an amatuer detective. Being clever she’d bounce from one riddle to the next with ease. Her boyfriend Connor on the other hand would be more interested in watching her. Enjoying her delight in solving one riddle after another. Victoria, Alice’s best friend, would help but at the same time be trying to mislead her because she’s got secrets. And finally Alice’s brother Lewis would be kidnapped by now Riddler antagonist. Being in their company I’m pretty sure he’d rather they just end his misery rather then listen to the endless monologuing and boasting.

Do you use sticky notes?                                                                              I do not but I do believe they are useful.

Laptop or desktop?                                                                                       I tend to switch. Sometimes I’m in a laptop phase and then I go through a desktop phase. I guess it depends on where my desktop is located. At the moment I would choose my laptop.

Your OC is a wrestler. What’s their hype music?                                     Alice would be great as a wrestler, she does have superpowers though, so not so fun for her opponents. I’m honestly draw to Spice Girls Wannabe for her. She really wants to ziggy zig ahhh.

Do you own any craft books/books on writing?                                            I own Save the Cat. A screenwriting book I would recommend to anyone.

What’s your favorite book cover?                                                                A favourite book cover?! There are so many book covers out there. I couldn’t possibly choose just one.

How many unread books do you have sitting around right now? Which are you most excited to maybe get to eventually some time?

Quite a few. Exactly how many I don’t know. I’m most looking forward to The Interview with Vampire. It’s patiently waiting for me to finish His Dark Materials series.

How committed are you to your outline(s)?                                              Not very. With each new draft it drifts further and further away from the first finished outline anyway.

And there we go! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed! Thank you again @bookenders for tagging me.

The people I’m going to take are: @awritinglen @radiowrites @mouwwie @narwhal-writings @ladycravenheart

I’m sorry if I tag you when you don’t wished to be tagged but do have fun if you decide to tack part!

[waywardstrand]

Working from Life - our Play by Play talk!

As usual we’ve taken a little while to post another update, but things are going super well! We feel like we’ve been reaching some pretty exciting milestones on Wayward Strand recently, and are moving steadily onward.

Before getting into the talk, we’ll be Officially Announcing it soon, but we’ve added a page on our website on which you can subscribe to our newsletter! If you want to get notified about key bits of news (including when Wayward Strand is released), or you’d like to get emails with some behind the scenes stuff, head over there and sign up!

And in the meantime, here’s the video and transcript of a talk that Goldie and I did at Play by Play in Wellington, New Zealand earlier this year. It covers a pretty wide range of topics, but it speaks to each of our influences in working on Wayward Strand, as well as what we’ve learned from the process of creating it thus far.

Transcript

Jas: So Goldie and I are going to talk about this topic mainly in terms of the game that we're both working on, Wayward Strand. You don't need to know too much about it before we get started, except for the fact that it's an interactive story set in a small coastal town, in southern Victoria, from the 27th to the 29th of January, 1978. Oh, and that it's set on an airborne hospital.

It's an interesting mix of elements - so how did we get there?

When our team-mate Russell came up with the initial idea for Wayward Strand we talked a bit about where it could be set - at that point we had the airborne hospital, but it could have been set anywhere, and in a real place or a fantasy one.

At the time I'd been listening to short fiction podcasts - particularly the New Yorker fiction podcast, on which a writer chooses a story from the archives to read and discuss. After the reading, the writer and the podcast host, Deborah Treisman, often speak about the author of the piece, and discuss how the story links to the author’s life and history. I was fascinated by how many of the stories being read were set in locations and at times that had personal significance to the author.

To highlight an example, Stephanie Vaughn's stories that have been read on the podcast, Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog and Dog Heaven, from her collection Sweet Talk, are both from an army brat’s perspective, exploring daily life on military bases, and Stephanie Vaughn herself grew up on military bases; her family followed her father around to these bases through the years of her childhood. However, none of her stories are autobiographical - they're drawn from her life, but not based on her life.

Listening to her stories really awoke in me a realisation that this was something you could do - that I could do - set a story in a place and time that you have a personal connection to - and how that could be interesting and powerful. I’m going to pass across to Goldie, but I just want to say to read Sweet Talk! It’s incredible.

Goldie: One of the most captivating and earliest exposures for me of neorealism in indie art was when I discovered American Daniel Clowes’ long-form graphic novel, ‘Ghost World’. Ghost World follows Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer, two cynical, pseudo-intellectual teenage girls recently graduated from high school in the early 90’s. What really captured my curiosity was the way that the novel, as well as the 2001 film adaptation, follows the two teens as they spend their days wandering aimlessly around their unnamed American town, criticising popular culture and the everyday Americans they encounter. Especially notable in this small town, and still present in our towns and cities is the slowly encroaching franchises which smother their town’s individuality. The story regularly highlights characters who are almost the antithesis to the normalisation of behavior and social exchange. It’s hardly revolutionary, but was quintessentially realistic; a light shining on the quirk of the everyday.Ghost World was hugely influential on my expectations for myself as an artist, it taught me how to appreciate the small stuff which gets ignored by Warner Bros, Disney, Marvel and local mainstream media. Realism, in games, has usually meant photorealism - whereas realism or neorealism in literature, art and film has constantly been more about social context, historical actuality and political commitment to progressive social change. Robert Yang’s recent short article on Realism in games is worth a read to cover this.

When I arrived at uni, eventually, to study game design it was surprising to me to see that there wasn’t yet much exploration of the ‘slice-of-life’ genre in games, and even less social realism in games. There was some, the closest example I came across with glee was Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy, who used games to talk about her experiences with transitioning. Likewise, when I discovered Escape from Woomera, Katherine Neil’s extremely confident Half-Life mod which explores Australia’s ongoing disgraceful treatment of asylum seekers, I nearly exploded with hope for games. ‘Papers, Please’ by Lucas pope is another popular example of a reality-informed game for political expression. Richard Hoffmeier’s Cart Life, too, is perhaps the ultimate realist game, but to get into something as breathtakingly perfect is going to require a different talk.

Anyway, at uni, I decided with my friends to make a game inspired by Daniel Clowes, and the mundane, and set it within my fictionalised memories of growing up in Melbourne. We called it Movement Study 1. I chose Australian artists like Howard Arkley to inspire a lot of the visual design on key parts of the short game, knowing that in the 70’s he had also tried to extract the beauty from his mundane suburban Melbournian experience.

Like Ghost World, it focused on a loosely autobiographical version of myself through two characters who wrestle with their evolving post-high school friendships. I just wanted to see if it worked in Melbourne and of course, it did. It was a successful project as far as our intention for it goes. Since then, in 2013, we’ve been lucky to see games such as Gone Home and more recently, PaperBark, set in and about the Australian bush, and Knuckle Sandwich, another Australian endeavour at personal expression through interaction, with less of a real-world setting but with so much auto-biographical content. I learned through practice that the games space, like literature and film before it, was ripe for real-world settings and stories. Since making Movement Study 1, I have worked on a handful of private, small unreleased games, illustrations and stories about the lives of people from Australia, including but not restricted to family history.

When Jason and Russell approached me about working on Wayward Strand, it was an instant fit. All they had to do was mention that they were wanting to create a game set in Australia in the 70’s and I was interested. Through exploring more about the history of the time and place, we have constantly been confronted with terrible stories of injustice, as well as a plethora of unique country-life aesthetics to draw upon, and have the benefit of the lense of contemporary awareness to know which points to focus on.

Wayward Strand is my second attempt, in a team, at writing and crafting a richly Australian story based on fictional characters, informed by stories and histories I have come across. Because of the depth of history - both healthy and frankly, fucked up, I don’t doubt that Wayward Strand will eventually prove to be a successful exercise in real-world fictional narrative games.

Jas: So we thought we should have a slide that breaks down what we see as the key benefits of setting a game in a real place and time. It’s important to know that many of these benefits apply regardless of whether your game has a strong narrative component or not!

The benefits we see are, in brief:

* If you make a game that’s set in a place that has personal significance to you, it’s likely that it will have significance to other people in your family and community as well, and they'll be able to potentially help with your research process. In our case we were particularly lucky with this, which Goldie will speak to later, but reaching out to your local community is how you can find people who are able to be great resources in this regard.

* Once you set your story in a real place and time, it provides a scaffolding for your story as you are building it - you are still going to be telling your story, but having it set somewhere specific is incredibly helpful for overcoming the blank page. It’s a real place! It exists, or existed, and you can keep finding out more about it, then using the results of what you find.

* Relating to that, a real place and time is a treasure trove for influences and idea-generating facts or stories - think of it as the most comprehensive lore you could possibly imagine, and there are likely to be virtually limitless resources to draw from (we certainly found this anyway)..

* Finally, your work of art gains an immediate significance to real people's lives - the people who live in that place now, or lived there before, or have parents or ancestors who lived in that place. This provides meaning to your project beyond your personal creative impulses, and acts as a good incentive to actually finish what you've started - you’re now contributing to a continuum of cultural works about this place and time.

Goldie: Getting deeper in to the personal connections I am able to draw upon with this particular project, my mother Liz worked in the 70s, 80s and 90s as a charge nurse in Emergency Departments across Melbourne. She also grew up rurally, and has been an unparalleled resource for knowledge of the time and of experiences in hospitals. We’ve been able to base entire characters on her stories, as well as moments with almost all of the patients. Let alone the actual day-to-day running of the hospital. Vocal mannerisms, routines and expectations on the staff, behaviours of the patients. Ways for the staff to have fun, ways for them to get away with it. The hard parts and the sad parts. There were some things we couldn’t include, especially stuff which happens after dark in hospitals on slow nights such as crutches cricket, but learning about the culture of people working in these places at that time has been wonderful.

Like mum, my dad Jim was also involved in hospitals during his career- he was a senior health architect and was the lead designer on many of Melbourne’s large and small scale hospitals and health facilities. I grew up in a house full of reams of A0 paper with architectural plans for hospitals, as well as notebooks full of questions and thoughts which I never really understood. Approaching wayward strand as a designer, in the architectural mindset was definitely enriched because of this. Ship architecture on the other hand was less known to me- but luck has it that my grandfather, also Jim, was a ship’s engineer and his WW2 ship, the HMAS Castlemaine is still docked and accessible in Williamstown, Melbourne, and the public are welcome to tour any time. Merging hospitals and ships is pretty tough, though, so we’ll see how I go.

Another thing I have been able to draw upon is the experience I had with my dad in the last 5 years of his life. He died in 2016 after a long sickness which caused him the need to live in a handful of nursing homes around Melbourne. Visiting him every few days was pretty difficult after a while; nursing homes these days generally are unpleasant places, usually due to the tiny amount of funding available to them, as well as the task of managing older, sick and dying people of diverse backgrounds with differing care requirements. I spent many after work and uni afternoons with him updating him on how my life was changing, all whilst his was completely stagnant, and drawing ever so slowly to a close. He died about 5 weeks after I started working on Wayward Strand and I have squirrelled a huge amount of observations of the patients, the buildings, the routines and the feelings from those environments into the game. It’s been very healing for me, I think, to have had a project so immediately relevant to what could otherwise have been left to simmer. Knowing that the nursing home in our game is a slightly different type: luxurious, one of the first, and more like an optional living arrangement for some of the patients feels like a good thing. To really capture the greyness and frankly, macabre tone of a contemporary nursing home isn’t what we want to do with Wayward Strand…But knowing about it helps. Kind of like pushing an idea as far as it can go, and choosing which parts are gentle and true enough to include in a family-friendly video game.

Jas: I’m going to give a specific example that came out of talking to Liz which is a pretty minor spoiler - at one point we had a storyline that revolved around a character's desire to be euthanised, and that desire being blocked by the hospital staff. It made a bunch of sense to us when we thought of it and it's a topic we're interested in and initially wanted to explore in the story, but as we spoke to Liz she let us know that at the time - this is over 50 years ago at this point - euthanasia really wasn't the hot-button topic it is at the moment, and the hospital staff would basically euthanise patients if they desired it.

The staff used a euphemism for it - it was described as "making the patient more ‘comfortable’" - and the staff would just crank up the morphine and let them pass quietly in the night. This is not only a really interesting fact to know about our setting that has a lot to potentially explore in and of itself, but we've been able to change that character's story to be more suitable to the time, and to be more unique as well.

Now, instead of the storyline being very directly related to the hot-button topic - which is already being covered in other media such as the late great Terry Pratchett’s documentary Choosing to Die) -  our storyline has become more about that particular character's struggle for empowerment, and being given the right to make her own choices.

Goldie: There’s something which belongs to the people when you use media, especially media traditionally used commercially, to depict realism. Making work which comments on reality can be a powerful historical tool, both as documentation and representative of large social issues. Take for example one of the most significant paintings from the early realism period - The Gleaners, an ever-long masterpiece by Frenchman Jean-Francois Millet completed in 1857. The painting depicts, in an unadorned manner, three peasant women gleaning a field of stray stalks of wheat after the harvest, which they will use to feed their impoverished families. It is a sympathetic representation of the lowest ranks of rural society- and in 1857 it was very- extremely- poorly received by the French upper class, who were the prime audience for paintings like this at the time. Even the middle classes, fresh on the other side of the French Revolution in 1848 were upset by the painting. To them it was a reminder that French society was built upon the hard labor of the working masses, and landowners linked this with empathy towards Socialism - very uncool, even scary at the time. The Gleaners as well as other paintings and works of literature from this period were instrumental in broadening the perspectives of entire generations, thus shaping the course of history to become more inclusive, fair and considerate. Even pieces such as the (slightly problematic) Pride and Prejudice, 1813, have used reality to create social commentary and critique. Whilst this isn’t literally my personal history, it has helped to shape the reality I live in. By now, it’s the norm, artists across all media are regularly drawing upon the real world for their work. To use music as an example, there was a fresh wave of social critique with the hip hop movement, as well as with the political American punk movement in the 70s. Avant-garde art in the early 20th century with movements like Dada and outsider art in Europe are also significant, and the list goes on.

Making art hasn’t always been, and isn’t always political, but it can be, and if games are art, we can and should go there when we can, especially when we have things to say. This is one of the reasons why amplifying voices which aren’t traditionally as loud as mine, or maybe yours, is something vital for large-scale cultural progress.

In the 70s in Australia, following consultations and through general knowledge, we can paint one picture of rural Australian life at the time. It’s been covered in movies like the popular Puberty Blues, which shows the awkward, difficult and painfully slow (and sometimes painfully fast) moments of growing up by the beach. It’s heard in music of the time, notably Australia’s rock and even punk music of the time was always the voice of a working class people, demanding better conditions, and poetically capturing the conditions of their everyday lives. We can see snippets of VASTLY celebrated Australian culture by watching football and cricket re-runs, even if they were (and perhaps continue to be) pretty bad news as far as toxic masculinity goes. Less discussed than sport culture in the public forum at the time were some of Australia’s more despicable histories- for example the government’s cultural treatment of women, queer people and most markedly perhaps it’s unforgivable and unforgettable treatment of indigenous Australians. In the 1970s this was still, and I think continues to be, shameful. When the team met with Land’s Council member Uncle Chris to discover more about being young and indigenous at the time, he and I had a blast talking about the music scene in 70s Melbourne - but we also uncovered some very hard truths which have helped us shape the experiences of another young character on board the ship.

Jas: In regards to indigenous consultation we also talked with Dan Turnbull from the Bunurong Land Council - he let us know stories of the Bunurong who lived and still live on the land where the story is set, and really gave us a primer on Bunurong culture and society from his perspective.

We initially got in touch with the Bunurong Land Council through Dakoda Barker in Queensland, and we didn’t really know what to expect, but it turned out that Dan loves games, has a great understanding of what we were going for, and was able to give specific, pointed feedback and advice.

One of the particular things we came to Dan about was that, as Goldie mentioned, we wanted to have a Bunurong character in the game - a young Bunurong man - but we were worried about the ethics and outcome for the community of having a Bunurong character without having Bunurong representation on our team.

But what Dan told us was, obviously it would be great for us to have representation on the team, but that we should still go ahead with it - that he sees it as a net positive thing, something that he's excited about as a Bunurong man, and he gave us some pointers and guidance for how to do it in a way that he'd find respectful and worthwhile, as well as letting us know how to get more Bunurong folks involved.

Now it's important to note that we shouldn't assume that he speaks for all Bunurong people, or that this is some "license" or grant to do this - but it means that, from a personal perspective, we felt more sure of ourselves in including this character, and had a better idea of how we could include him in a way that wouldn’t be detrimental to the Bunurong community.

Consultation isn't a box to tick off or something that you can use to make yourself immune from criticism - criticism is good, healthy and valuable, especially when it comes from people who are more marginalised or less privileged than you.

Instead, consultation is an ongoing process that empowers you to make your creative work more relevant to more people. Every discussion that we've had so far has given us further insight; more interesting elements of the setting to explore; and has enriched the final player experience.

Goldie: If you’re able to pile in to a car or bus with your team and visit areas you want to explore, absolutely do it. When I was making Movement Study, I originally wanted to set it where I grew up, in Port Melbourne. But as it turns out, my artist and I decided to meet in Brunswick which is a more common area for our generation to have grown up in- there weren’t very many kids in Port Melbourne and so it wasn’t as well-known as Brunswick. This was definitely the right decision, as multi-generations of Melbournians instantly recognised exactly where the game was set. When Adrienne and I went to Brunswick, we spent time walking around and taking photos and footage of the old houses lining the streets. Small details popped out - how the gardens were kept, where wheelie bins were stored, how much signage there was, the condition of the footpaths, leaf litter, how much traffic there was at the time of day the game was set…so much more. Even just to be able to grab a palette from the walk was useful. It made the biggest difference to the game I think of anything else we did, and so when Wayward Strand decided where might be best for our game to be set, we decided to head off on a short adventure.

We booked a house for the weekend and took cameras and microphones and notebooks, and planned visits to local historical societies and places of interest. We got a huge amount done just that weekend. Walking around on the windswept beaches and getting our boots wet in the sand, as well as climbing over sandbanks, eating fish and chips at the local fish and chippery all helped place us in the mindset of what living and growing up there might be like. Watching kids the same age as our main character, 14 year old Casey, running around at the local markets dragging their parents around, or loitering behind the library with their bikes. Of course, things have changed since the 70s, but the visits to the historical societies helped us out there. We learned, by chance, that the closest large town to where we were, was in fact where the largest rural hospital was at the time, and that plenty of nurses and doctors had lived in the town back then. We walked through the streets documenting houses which could have belonged to our characters, all the time fleshing them out in to the richly sculpted people they are today. Small details like whether someone needed to paint their fence, or whether someone had the champion roses of the street were all there for us to pick up on and include. Who helped them build their houses? What are the families of the characters like? Who has previously used the rusted swing set?

More recently, we did a second beach trip to a different part of the Victorian coastline, just as a location scouting expedition. Kind of surprisingly, the history we had discovered during our first trip to Inverloch was extremely different to the history of this millionaire’s playground, Sorrento, even though they’re only a few hundred kilometers apart. It was only a short trip, and we spent a lot of the time either relaxing or focusing on other parts of running our studio, but at least we were able to ask ourselves “Did sunburnt knees feel the same in the 70s?”

Jas: Putting the game in this setting, having characters and stories that are informed by our own memories and life experiences, give us a structure, a scaffolding, in which to create our story. It’s gives us tons of materials to draw from, is a universe that already makes sense, and the fact that it’s so personal to us is a big factor in us still being excited about the project two and a half years in.

As an example of one of the many benefits that have come up, on our trip to Inverloch we - actually Goldie - found this book of short stories by older folks, published in 1999 - it’s full of stories by people whose lived experience is way closer than ours to the time that our characters would have been living in.

Here’s another example of a benefit that happened just last week - our animation lead Kalonica is visiting Europe at the moment, and went to the V&A Ocean Liners exhibit in London, and she posted dozens of incredible photos for source material for our ship on Slack, spurring a ton of fascinating questions - the answers to these questions will further enrich the player’s experience.

A question we keep asking ourselves at the end of this process is, why are so many games seemingly set by default in fantasy or sci-fi settings? Of course do that if it makes sense for your game, but why not have the default be a real setting, a real time and place in history or a contemporaneous setting, and open your project up to these really exciting possibilities?

Goldie: Well thanks for listening to our experiences and some of the reasons behind why we take this stuff as an opportunity, I hope it’s given you something to think about. Along with the easy and fun and warm parts of setting a project locally, I hope the weight of some of the political stuff has been inspiring too. I’ve been in Wellington for a week and reckon it’s a bit of a haven, but I’ve just arrived here from my first international trip, ever, where I visited the Pacific Northwest of America following GDC. What I saw was sometimes beautiful, but usually darkly astonishing. The homelessness crisis and drug abuse problems are results from a long history of neglect from local and federal government, the low common wages are the result of rampant unchecked greed, and the lack of even baseline social healthcare is bewildering. Some of the tiniest towns I passed through actually desperately need those franchises I mentioned earlier to create work, as dying industries leave entire generations without jobs. In New Zealand, like just about everywhere else, there is a massive housing affordability crisis, and of course there’s the growing income inequality gap which is is a problem which both of our nations share. If a portion of people in games aren’t making work or observations about what’s happening in our homes, we’re at risk of losing what I think is a profoundly significant piece of global history AND falling behind as an introspective form of expression. Even by taking inspiration from previous interpretations of a real time or place, you enrichen the cultural value of your game, and align it with other forms of fiction in a positive and fresh way; in a way that games, I think, are ready to be aligned with.

The times we’re living in are full to the brim of injustices at the hand, primarily, of big corporations and governments willing to have their pockets lined to get power. Asylum seekers in Australia are still treated like bugs, women are still, if quietly, treated as second-best, queer people in some countries are still murdered. This stuff isn’t new, but the people in this room are young and talented, and making stuff which people want to consume. It’s important, I think, to realise that by digging in to your own local histories you can help shape cultural expectations we put upon ourselves and expect from each other. Being brave enough to call out the problems, and curious enough to explore them through interaction and narrative design even retrospectively is a meaningful way to make games. On top of this, it’s also an extremely abundant resource for entertainment, if that’s more your speed. I watched a few choice New Zealand films on my way here and we’ve seen the impact those have had on the global media landscape - why can’t games use the same lore and landscapes to create new and relevant places to play?

What you as a designer choose to take from your local histories and places is very open - which is why research is key. By dealing with real world figures or events or even whole communities or towns, remember that you have the voice to highlight things which are otherwise left in the past or brushed over.

[aion-rsa]

Give Comics Hope: Here’s How You Can Help Save Comic Book Stores

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article is presented by:

Often I tell my friends that if the 15 year old version of myself could know about the Marvel Cinematic Universe or that there have been three Archie-inspired TV series or that Watchmen was given a television sequel that enhances/surpasses(?) the graphic novel his head would explode. You see, I remember when comic book culture was frowned upon, considered the domain of outcasts who could never function in “normal” society. Now it dominates all.

This isn’t me being the human equivalent of the “old man yells at a cloud meme” either, just stating a fact based on personal experience…one that doubtlessly feels familiar to many of you reading this right now. As someone who had to bend over backwards to say find a bootleg VHS of Akira at a small convention tucked away in the bowels of a dingy Holiday Inn or spend hours wondering if my local PBS affiliate would ever air The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, I have nothing but appreciation for the seismic shift that occurred, resulting in our current on-demand world.

The nerds won. It’s glorious.

Despite these huge societal transformations, comic book stores have always been there for me. I first started going to them when I was eight, in search of three-for-a-dollar Jughead comics (some things never change) and now I frequent them to catch up not only on a jaw-dropping array of titles, but collectibles that my tween counterpart could only dream of. They are safe havens from the outside world, and they are in serious trouble.

As a result of Covid-19, comic book stores are struggling to survive. Even as many brick-and-mortar stores pivot to online sales, factors such as paying rent and employees mean that many retailers are just barely hanging on. Enter Give Comics Hope. Created by Bill Schanes — co-founder of Pacific Comics and an employee of Diamond Comics for 28 years — the initiative “calls on all members of our community to rally together to provide vital aid to comic book shops.”

To do so, Schanes has partnered with eBay and famed comics seller Jesse James Comics to raise money for stores in need. But they need your help. From now through Nov. 5, they’re calling on comics fans to donate items from their collection which will then be auctioned off on eBay, with the proceeds going to help comic stores in need. Jesse James will kick off the Give Comics Hope auctions on Nov. 11, so if you don’t want to donate and instead are looking for new pieces to acquire for your collection, the price of your purchases will go to this good cause.

“I’ve been retired for a few years now. I was traveling in Europe and as the pandemic hit, I was in Italy which was one of the first countries that got hit by the pandemic wave,” Schanes tells us. “As I was traveling back I was thinking about what I can do to help out. I can’t create a vaccine, but I do have a great contact list, which is pretty rich from my 50 years of contacts.”

It was here that the idea for Give Comics Hope was born.

“I came up with the idea of putting together a fundraising program or a charity drive to focus on the comic book stores,” Schanes says. “The comic book stores are the lifeblood of the community. They’re like a library or a bookstore. These are places where people can shop, they can feel good about themselves, they can feel safe, they can feel comfortable. The store owners and managers and clerks behind the registers are super knowledgeable. They’re engaging. They can be great comrades in what your focus points are, suggesting new things for you to buy and read and enjoy. I really felt like if we can get these stores some assistance, they might weather this pandemic storm for a longer period of time than without a program like this.”

So how can you get involved in assisting these businesses? Donate your items before Nov. 5, give money directly to BINC who are distributing financial aid to comics shops, or bid on the eBay auctions when they begin on Nov. 11.

“I felt it to be a difficult time to ask consumers and retailers and publishers and artists to donate cash right in the heart of the pandemic,” Schanes says. “But one thing I did know is that every part of the community of comics — the consumers, retailers, publishers, creators — all own a lot of stuff. So it’s easier to give away stuff than money because you already paid for this stuff.”

And that’s where their partnership with eBay comes in.

“We summed up the idea with The Drive For Five, where we ask each member of the community of comics to donate five or more items that have a perceived value of $100 or more,” Schanes says. “So it’s not an insignificant donation we’re requesting. Yes, we’ll take less than five items but we’re trying to make it so it’s got some teeth to it. And they can make those donations by donating five items. On our website there’s a donation button.”

Give Comics Hope’s eBay partner Jesse James will begin auctioning off items on Nov. 11, and he’s uniquely suited to the task. Since 2009 he’s been providing Glendale, Arizona with their fandom needs through his shop, Jesse James Comics. Throughout the pandemic he’s been doing live shows and further boosting his already robust eBay presence. “We have 42,000 feedback, we’ve never had a neutral or negative,” James tells us. Additionally, eBay will waive Jesse’s usual seller fees in order to ensure that all of the proceeds will go to BINC. 

While Jesse does mention “key” issues of comics from the last few decades as possibilities, such as a New Mutants #87 (the first full appearance of Cable) or New Mutants #98 (the first appearance of Deadpool) as potential big draws, the call for items is still broad enough to accommodate everyone’s tastes.

“It really comes down to nothing specific but there’s such a plethora of genres,” he says. “They think we’ll have a good mix for a lot of people. Not everybody wants original art, not everybody wants a statue, but everybody will have a choice.”

You can watch the full panel with Bill and Jesse here:

With proceeds from the auctions going to support comic stores worldwide, Give Comics Hope allows you to dive deep into your collection to unload some items and help at the same time. This pandemic has already taken so much from us, that even one closed comic store feels like a massive loss. So, if you can, Give Comics Hope, if for no other reason than to show your appreciation for all of the hope comics has given you during these scary and uncertain times.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Donate your items to Give Comics Hope using this link by Nov. 5, and help keep comic shops afloat during these difficult times! You can also spread the word about  Give Comics Hope on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Give Comics Hope: Here’s How You Can Help Save Comic Book Stores appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2HTQz4H

[rikka-zine]

An Interview with EN to CN Translator Geng Hui (part 2)

(Part 1)

I had a chance again to interview Gěng Huī  耿辉, one of the most eager translators in China (*in my opinion but I am so sure). This interview was conducted last July vie Email. Please enjoy!

Terrie Hashimoto

*All the pictures in this article was provided by Geng Hui.

Q1. Can I ask more about author Octavia E. Butler? Do you remember how you found her works?

A1. I found her short stories years ago when combing through Hugo and Nebula Awards lists, and read Bloodchild and then the whole collection before her tragic death. Instead of her award-winning ones I like The Evening and the Morning and the Night a lot. There is  a disabled and gifted protagonist in it who was recruited to build a community for his own kind, which gives me a similar vibe as her Parables.

Q2. Butler's Parable series will be published in Japan in 2022. (Can't wait!) Can you tell me what you love the most of this series? Please recommend the books to us.

A2. They are definitely worth waiting. Can I say I love everything about Parable series? From the prophetic depiction of our bleak near future to the dream of taking root among the stars, everything. However what impresses me most is that Butler never allowed her protagonist Lauren to give up hope even though she was put on a shocking collar and enslaved. If hopepunk is trending up, they would qualify as major ones of that genre. By the way, even the description of her unfinished third one from the series, Parable of the Trickster, is a great joy to read. It focuses on human colony on a distant planet and difficulties to settle down there. Hope we could read them from the Library of America edition of Butler’s whole body of works.

Q3.  What was the hardest translation for you from English into Chinese?

A3. I don’t have a specific one but  there are some points I can single out. When a poem or a section of verse needs to be translated, I feel not very confident to deal. Ken Liu cited Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson and T. S. Eliot in his short stories. Octavia E. Butler was inspired by Tao de Ching to create a fictional religious book of verses, Earthseed: the Books of the Living,  in Parable series. When translating these materials, I am not sure how much I should stick to the original formation and to what extent I should be flexible because of lack of experience. Sometimes I discuss with my editor, the author, scholars or peer translators to figure them out.

Another problem is that singular they or its derivative forms are used more and more in English as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, but in Chinese, we don’t have a counterpart as the singular they. The gender-neutral third person singular pronoun for people is either male or female, so we don’t have a perfect way to deal with this problem. I have a makeshift solution for now, but still think we need a new Chinese character.

Q4. Do you discuss or talk about English SF with other Chinese SF translators/editors/readers? (If yes, how often do you do? From "not at all" to "frequently". If no, how do you motivate yourself to keep reading and translating?)

A4. Occasionally readers discuss with me about the background of the original story, the authors or how to get started as a translator. I have some close translator friends and we would ask each other for critics on our own works. If I am invited by an editor but don’t have time or interest, I will try to introduce another translator to the editor. If they turn out to work together on the book, I would feel great.

When I come across a new book that interests me, I'll read the reviews or the book, and then I'll talk to some editor about it. I don't expect them to like every book I recommend, but if they do we'll consider introducing it together. However, even if my editor and I both love it, that doesn't mean it's going to meet Chinese readers successfully. There are always some uncertainties in the publishing industry.

Q5. Do you still read Chinese SF? If yes and if you have any favorite Chinese SF writers other than Liu Cixin, please let me know!

A5. Honestly, I don’t think I have read enough Chinese SF works, but would like to recommend short works by Chen Qiufan and Baoshu, which are included in Japanese version of Ken Liu’s Chinese SF Anthologies. They both have new collections coming out this summer. Hope you have chance to read them soon.

Q6. Do you have any concepts to choose works to be translated? Like "I'll translate it because it's on trend. / it'll be loved by Chinese readers. / it was written by a new writer who isn't known much" and so on.

A6. Usually I have my own choice in shorter ones.  I keep an eye on major online zines. If interesting titles or familiar authors catch my attention, I would like to read them. If the works do touch me, I'll make them my translation project. Also to make sure they can be published in Chinese I need to pitch them to my editors. They read it in English or I brief them about it and then I wait for their green light. I will talk about my intention to translate and the paying rate with the authors if their works are accepted. Normally they are happy with me translating and give us the permission to publish. As for the novel, much of the alternatives come from editors,  which I need to deal with more cautiously. Helping a new writer get recognized in China always excites me and makes me feel accomplished. Sometimes I do depend on reviews and recommending lists to make my choice, but basically, my interest matters most.

Q7. Do you have a dream or next project to be real? 

A7. There is no adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s writing until recent years. One of them that I love is the graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Sower by Damien Duffy and John Jennings. I would be thrilled if the opportunity to translate it is mine. I have contacted some editors and publishers, but got no luck for now.

https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/parable-of-the-sower-a-graphic-novel-adaptation_9781419731334/

One of my short story translations that I keep recalling is The Floating Girls: A Documentary by Damien Angelica Walters. It tells the story that certain girls mystically floated up and disappeared into the sky. Some people couldn’t forget them and shoot a documentary to track the event. During the pandemic Covid19, Damien expanded it into a Novel called The Floating Girls: A Novel, which as she said, “focuses heavily on the social reasons behind the floating girl.” I am eager to read the novel and see if it can be made into a translation project.

Thank you very much!

[patheticphallacy]

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created by That Artsy Reader Girl (originally The Broke and the Bookish). For information on how to participate and the topics of each week, click the link!

Helllo!

This week is a weird prompt for me! In the past two years, ‘comfort zones’ haven’t really been a thing I’m conscious of. I’ve never really felt any fear of reading something I’m unfamiliar with, whether that be format, genre, etc. wise, just because I don’t like the thought of ever feeling as if I’ve limited myself by being scared of what I want to read.

This list is going to be more about new ‘kinds’ of books I’ve been reading that stick out from my usual reading.

1-3: ADULT NON-FICTION!

Yeah! Non-fiction is very new to me. I mostly read celebrity memoirs–predominantly social media stars, actresses and UK personalities–and essay collections, so these were kind of new to me. The Diary of a Bookseller is a diary written by Shaun Bythell over the space of a year concerning what went on in his bookstore in Scotland.

My Life with Bob is about Pamela Paul’s ‘book of books’, where she has logged all of the books she’s read since she was in College. She reflects on the books and what she was going through at the time of certain entries, and I really want to keep my own Bob now!

And then I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is a deep dive Michelle McNamara, a leading true crime journalist who unfortunately died before she could finish the book, did into the Golden State Killer that ultimately aided in a resurgence of interest in the case that resulted in the killer being caught in recent years. It’s got a lot of difficult material, but it’s very honest and gives a voice to all of the victims and their families, and also offers looks into McNamara’s own life and upbringing.

4: PHILOSOPHICAL/SHORT FICTION

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the first bits of philosophical fiction I’ve ever read.

My reading of this was actually spurred on by the BTS Spring Day music video, which I’m very grateful for, as this is a definitive text that I found fascinating and wouldn’t have read it if it wasn’t for the usage of it in the music video. It’s also rare for me to read individual bits of short fiction, something I’m definitely going to read more of and plan to pick up more short story collections in the future!

5-7: ADULT ROMANCE!

 Adult romance! I actually read a shit ton of adult erotica when I was way too young to actually be doing so, although none of it was actually good. That may sound harsh, but you don’t have the same memories I do of the non-consensual touching and weird underage trope prominent in those historical romances.

However, I’ve recently started reading more adult romance that is actually halfway decent! It’s a genre I never really got into while I was reading YA romance, but I’ve felt myself growing out of YA romance a lot more recently.

The Hating Game is very meh, honestly, but I figured I would include it because it’s not terrible, just has some dodgy romance stuff.

Mariana Zapata is probably my second favourite of the specifically adult romance niche. My Uni friend recommended her to me and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read so far. Kulti has my favourite romance but is one of my lowest rated of her books just based on slurs used in the book. Romance isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly re-introduced me to a new world.

Ah, and then there’s Tessa Dare, my favourite. The women in her novels are always independent and have a strength to them that’s so foreign to the historical romances I always read growing up, and her romances are so sweet. Any problematic elements of the men are always addressed by the women, and they’re never pushed around or made to feel as if they are a possession with no choice but to go along with what the men say. That’s actually a reason I disliked The Hating Game, although it didn’t turn me off of reading more adult romances!

8-10: BODY HORROR

Before 2019, I never, ever would have considered myself a fan of body horror. I always enjoyed ‘artistic’ gore, if that makes sense: like in the movie Dredd, or the Hannibal TV show, which I love. Less Saw and Hostel, because I am of the belief that sometimes those films can border on gratuitous, especially in later films in the series (Saw 3D, here’s looking at you, kid). 2019 has been a year where I’ve grown a lot more accustomed to graphic things, although I never really cringed away from it in things I read years ago (to anyone I sent Guts to when we were 15/16, sorrynotsorry).

However, I’ve become a massive fan of graphic body horror descriptions, especially in the comics I read. It’s sort of a weird fascination with people’s limits and the ways writers and artists will push boundaries, something I’ve noticed prompts a lot of people– especially on Goodreads– to rate the content lower.

The Unsound is mostly about psychological trauma and a horrifying fantasy world hidden in an Asylum. There are scenes of graphic violence, including self harm and drug abuse, and the unnerving, sketchy art style only makes it even more uncomfortable to read.

Of the two, however, Lazaretto is a lot more graphic. It follows a College campus lockdown after a flesh eating virus starts to spread around its students. It’s like a microcosm for the breakdown of society and the horrific things people will do to one another, with or without their bodies decaying. It’s got a very bittersweet and upsetting ending, but I needed that when I first read it, and I really love this comic.

And then there’s Junji Ito himself. I read The Enigma Of Amigara Fault when it circulated online about five years ago, and was pretty horrified at the ending, but Uzumaki takes it a lot further with body horror. I love them snails! So great! So disgusting! The ending gets very whacky and out there compared to the small-town feeling of the first 3/4, but it’s very much worth the read.

And that’s my list! What books have you read outside of your comfort zone? Are you like me, with no comfort zone and no fear, just going where the wind takes you and discovering new things along the way?

Thank you for reading!

If you liked this post, consider buying me a coffee? Ko-Fi. 

Goodreads|Twitter|Instagram|Letterboxd

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Outside My Comfort Zone Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created by That Artsy Reader Girl (originally The Broke and the Bookish).

[theliterateape]

Blame The Bookworm -- On Reading and Self-Sabotage

By Dana Jerman

For about two years, I've been working at a bookstore. It's a Mom & Pop shop of used pap, some in questionable condition, but I love it. Love that it's cheap, love that I have access to materials you can't find at a library. Love that I can tell when people come in who is going to buy a book and who isn't. Love that I can help genuine readers like yourself.

Amongst a few other things I’ve noticed in this racket: people are sabotaging themselves when it comes to enjoying reading. It’s like anything — if you let yourself get into a pattern, it will self perpetuate and lead to crummy habits that no longer feel like a choice. S'alright. Happens to the best of us.

Try to give yourself chances to break habits and patterns. If you’re feeling stale, have a fresh go at a genre you’d previously written off. For me, up until pretty recently that was biography. A good rip thru a graphic novel or three is a great change of pace from the usual text blocks. Want to slow yourself down? Try poetry. And I know this sounds weird, but unless you have to write a paper or something, try not to read too much of the same author back-to-back. However much you like them, chances are you'll sour on them at least a little.

When asked as a bookstore clerk for a recommendation, I first have some questions for you, after which I doubt you'll remain stumped: What was the last book you read and enjoyed? Would you like something similar or different?  Looking for something really juicy or more on the lighter side? Favorite authors? What do you like to read about? Any specific subject matter? Which genre to you gravitate toward?

This too is important: skip ahead a little, or just read the ending and find a way to live with yourself about it, but for godsakes. Give yourself permission to quit a book. If after 40 or 50 pages you are slogging thru, put it down. Do it for yourself but also because it needs to be done. There are many, many, many books in the world, and only so much time to read them, so you can be picky! This counts for short books as well as long, however many so-called brilliant writers are casting a plague upon us with their massive, boring books. Chances are these cocksure bildungsromans needed another editing pass or three that they never got, and if you're really on the fence, I recommend consulting reviews on Goodreads.com to help you decide whether or not to continue.

There's a big dumb industry out there wherein lots of marketing people are trying to tell you what to read. Trust me, in this line of work, I get to field a lot of mass emails from these "publishers.” Unless you've personally solicited the advice, it's going to be flimsy. Sure, culture is fluid — Netflix adaptations are far easier to digest than a 500-page Philip K. Dick reader — and at least a few times in your life you can and should be prompted as to what to read. If you have one good take away from high school/university it was that a few teachers helped you figure out how to read. If you're really lucky, someone close to you started you off right by showing your own heart back to you in the form of The Velveteen Rabbit or Goodnight Moon...

But guess what: judging a book by its cover is a completely valid and necessary means by which to decide to read or not to read. I guess someone who thought books shouldn't have covers at all came up with that maddening phrase. Why would publishing houses in earnest hire designers, artists and writers to come up with jacket blurbs and spend so much dough on the look and feel of the volume if covers didn’t matter?

Too, I hear this phrase pretty constantly, and it's natural considering our collective materialist outlook on the world: “I have so many books at home I haven’t read.” Yep. Welp, unless you're the collector-type who just wants some bound pages to grace a shelf so they can appear intellectual, its time to clean the closet. We collect books similarly to how we collect clothes. Dump out your collection. I mean all of it. On the floor or the big couch or the dining table. Take a good look. Ditch a few volumes at the local freebie box. Don't have a freebie box? Make one and leave it where it can be responsibly maintained. Pass some along to friends in hopes that maybe they’ll be returned when the time is right for you to read them. If you’ve borrowed a book from a friend READ IT and return it. Books have a soul: if they’ve told you they want it back, they aren’t bluffing.

After you lighten the load a little, experiment with a new way to display your volumes. Most of my friends that are growers-not-showers when it comes to reading will hide their volumes, or face the spines to the back of the shelf so they won’t be tempted to simultaneously pick them up and start wolfing them all at once. Sorting by use seems to work pretty well. Since I'm also a writer I keep my writing reference books in a separate collection close to my desk at home.

Re-adjust if need be your comfort zone as far as consumption goes. I personally will read no more than three books at a time. This is just the amount that works for me. I've noticed folx in the academic world embracing seven to ten at a time, but that's not reading anymore. That's re-reading, or skimming for teaching and discussion content. A skill more akin to editing than reading. Never apologize for being a slow reader. Effective reading means different things for all of us.

And heck, why not keep a journal? Even if it's just a one-page note where you write down the author/title and find a way to annotate it to your specific needs, this little something extra might help you recommit to reading, thereby inviting it further in to enrich your cultural life. There are no rules, dudes.

[kintailscape]

Awesome Con 2017- Day 1

Friday, Day 1: I woke up about an hour later than usual and had a leisurely but efficient breakfast before heading off to the Metro. I began reading Pack Animals (Torchwood #7) by Peter Anghelides on the long ride to the Library of Congress. While walking from the metro station to the LOC building, I passed two women around my age taking photos of a group of people walking across the street, escorted by the police. I have been watching news nonstop for the past two weeks, but I didn’t recognize anyone in the group (and I’ve been watching a lot of news). Looked like it might have been a representative and her congressional aides, but I’ve no clue. Anyway, I got to the Thomas Jefferson Library of Congress Building a little before 11.

The Library of Congress put together a really neat pop-up exhibit only available for a few days, called Library of Awesome. It was filled with parts of the LOC collection, grouped by themes. It was a great reminder that the LOC preserves these parts of culture that are important to fans. The people behind me as we went through the different exhibit rooms were in the most AMAZING Wonder Woman and Black Panther outfits ever. There was also a brave young man in an amazing Fantastic Four outfit. There were so many great comics on display, I couldn’t begin to list them all. But I did take photos of some of my favorites. In one room they had clips from TV shows playing and I walked in just as Buffy was sacrificing herself (feels!), following by a clip of Doctor Who with the Tenth Doctor. It was a surreal to be standing in the largest library in the entire world, watching Buffy and Doctor Who and looking at first appearances of comic book characters in print! There was also a neat letter from Gene Roddenbery to Carl Sagan.

Milestone issues including X-Men #1 from 1963, Fantastic Four #1 from 1961, and Watchmen #1 from 1986   First appearances of Batwoman and Dick Grayson aka Robin! Kyle Jinadu & Northstar get married! Buffy on screen, popular recent media series on display Ralph Ellison collection lends its room to this exhibit Library shop even had some geeky things for purchase… including some March graphic novels

After fully enjoying the exhibit, I went out in search of food. Google said there was a Subway in a nearby building. So I headed to the James Madison Library of Congress Building. I found my way up to the cafeteria on the 6th floor. I wasn’t entirely sure I should be there, among the congressional aides and LOC staff. But the security guard seemed to have no problem with it and a very nice woman in the elevator who worked in the building gave me exact directions there. The view was wonderful, and the sushi was delicious. I read while I ate. I got a little lost trying to find my way back to the elevator, but I made it in the end. Then I headed back to the Metro to get to the Convention Center.

It was strange being back in the Convention Center only a few months after #AWP17. It was all arranged differently–our registration hall had been turned into a cool, dark, moody video gaming center! And our bookfair space was where I knew I needed to head for Awesome Con registration. I already had my badge, so I just picked up a program and headed down three floors to the exhibit hall. I had one mission for Friday: find Andrew Aydin and have him sign my copy of March. But when I got to Q1 in the Artist’s Alley, there was a woman selling lovely jewelry in his space instead. Confused, I checked the program and the signs; no changes there. I ran into a friend and chatted for a bit. Then I checked social media; apparently Mr. Aydin was not going to be able to attend due to a personal matter. Well, darn! But these things happen. Hope his family’s okay.

So I found myself with a few hours of free time before the first panel I wanted to attend. I wandered around the exhibit hall, sticking mostly to the Artist’s Alley and spending much of that time in Pride Alley, which was new to the con this year. It was a nice little LGBTQ+-friendly space with all sorts of things I wanted to buy. I ended up buying way too much fanart and a graphic novel that is just my kind of thing that I can’t wait to read. I stumbled upon Karen Hallion’s exhibit space and bought a few postcards; it was wonderful to meet her and be able to tell her how fantastic her art is, because I’ve loved it for years and have some of it on t-shirts. I also bought an Outlander book necklace with a dragonfly and a Celtic charm on it. I have ZERO free wall space at home, yet I bought at least 10 prints for myself (and a few as gifts). I even bought an original art piece (done by an artist in from South Africa) that was creative and adorable and unintentionally sexy; I NEVER see my favorite kink portrayed in art, let alone fanart, so I absolutely had to buy it. #NoRegrets!

I had some tough choices to make as far as panels. I ended up choosing so that I’d get a good variety and pack in as many as possible (lots of panel times overlapped) while still hitting the evening Stucky one I knew I definitely wanted to attend.

3:30 PM-4:15 PM Nerdiquette/Anerdomy: Geekdom in Theory & Practice A nice way to start out the con, talking about geek culture. We began with Felicia Day’s definition of a geek as someone who dares to love something unconventional and moved on to topics like marketing’s role, the nerd culture stigma, the differences between sports fans and the sorts of fans we are, and if it stops being a subculture if it gets too big. The moderator kept diving into much more critical analysis of it all, including ways of testing geekdom’s coherence. I didn’t follow every philosophical reference he was throwing out there, but I enjoyed it anyway. I found the discussion regarding reactionary exclusionism to be especially interesting, as I’d not considered the idea of geeks feeling the need to covet and protect what we are passionate about and keep it as our own because we were excluded/outsiders.

4:30 PM -5:15 PM YA Literature Today I wish I’d done more prep, because I had two of the presenting authors’ books at home and didn’t bring them! Panelists discussed a lot about the things they like about writing YA (really interesting characters with really interesting problems, can work in any genre, we have all been teenagers but we still wonder who we are) and how to increase diversity in books and creators of books. The best part: they shared info about their own works and shared book recommendations. The worst part: so many good recommendations! I feel like I need to quit my job and just read YA full-time now. For recs & notes from this panel, see my book blog.

5:30 PM-6:15 PM Following Your Bliss: How the Stories We Love Can Help Us Succeed This wasn’t exactly what I’d been looking for. Attending this felt a little like listening to a motivational speaker. Using himself as a case study and tapping heavily into Joeseph Conrad’s “Hero’s Journey,” Russell Walks attempted to inspire us to follow our bliss to find success. “Storytelling is more than just guns and bullets. It’s what we have in here,” he told us, patting his chest above his heart. I was hoping for useful, specific tips rather than inspirational sayings. But I do like the concept that we’re all on our own hero’s journeys and our friends are our goofy, supporting characters. And I can’t disagree with things like “Tell yourself this is what you’re meant to do and don’t give up!”

Afterward, I was going to stick around in the room to attend Whose Roll is it Anyway? (a sort of interactive RPG where the audience controlled the twists and turns instead of the DM), but that was cancelled. This made me shuffle my slots around a bit again. I ended up being able to snag a seat in room 144BC and staying put there for the next three panels! That was both convenient and due to the fact that that room’s programming all aligned with my interests.

6:00 PM-6:45 PM Full Spectrum: Why color in comics matters This panel had a nice balance of identifying current problems and looking at current trends/solutions. I liked the observations that, throughout history, most trendsetters in the comic industry have been indie. I also loved the helpful tip of don’t just yell when there’s something bad, start yelling about the stuff you like! Other discussion topics include: recent reaction to Marvel news (putting out Black Panther trailer then cancelling Black Panther: World Of Wakanda), the difference between making a cast diverse organically and changing characters (reskinning) to make them diverse, how the binging culture changes the way we consume comics (monthly issues vs. TPBs), and how Check Please is an awesome fan-interaction model (it is!). I also loved this comment from one of the panelists (slightly paraphrased because I was writing so quickly) “Lately, people over-complicate things. Just write human beings. Give everyone a chance and diversity automatically comes about.”

7:00 PM-7:45 PM Stop Queerbaiting, It’s Time to Be Brave One of my friends magically appeared beside me just as the panel was about to start, which was a lovely surprise. Another lovely surprise was the panel starting out with a mention of one of my favorite pairings: Wolfcrawler! The panelists were brilliant, passionate, and prepared. But they were also largely preaching to the choir. Sure, an explanation of queerbaiting was a great place to start, and explaining in detail why it’s hurtful, not brave, and insulting was important. But the majority of the presentation consisted of examples and explanations of why it’s horrible. At the very end they did manage to squeeze in a little bit about what we can do (which was mostly, consume the content of the people doing it right). So, by the end of the panel, I mostly felt frustrated and mad at some of those content creators who do this to us.

A few things I wrote down include: are the creators/producers really blind to what they’re doing?, they might think they’re doing something nice for us but they’re not, you shouldn’t have the freedom to jerk us around, we need real bravery from our allies, we deserve better, we’re desperate to see ourselves represented as a living main character, makes being gay into a joke, makes gay into a gimmick, there are no repercussions, you can’t be what you can’t see, Netflix and Chill could be Netflix and Educate. My three favorite quotes from the panel were:

“Prancing is very intimidating to the straights”

Regarding fandoms that have “invisible queers” (creators say that there are totally some queer characters in the world/universe, we just haven’t seen them yet) “SHOW US! Specifically I’m talking to J.J. Abrams about the cute one in the jacket and the cute one that gave him the jacket.”

“Albus Dumbledore is the very definition of a peekaboo queer.”

8:00 PM-8:45 PM Not Without You: Discussions and Reading from the Stucky Anthology This was easily my favorite part of the whole day. First, there was a great conversation about what makes Steve/Bucky so appealing and how each of the panelists fell in love with the pairing. It was interesting to hear that so many of them came to it because of Bucky. Second, panelists that came from all over the world specifically to be on the panel. Third, hearing slash fanfic read out loud by the writers themselves at a general con was amazing. Fourth, amazing Bucky and Cap cosplayers sitting in the front row (sorry, I don’t mean to objectify you, but you were sweet and really helped set the mood for those of us seated behind you). Also, someone mentioned a His Dark Materials AU with Stucky that I now I have to track down. I was able to buy a copy of the absolutely beautiful anthology at the end of the panel. I really wanted to stick around and have all the writers autograph it, but I knew that would take a long time and there was kind of a jumble as we reconvened in the hallway. So I ended up just heading to the next panel.

9:00 PM-9:45 PM Trekoff LIVE! -The NSFW Star Trek Comedy Show!/>I was a few minutes late, but I don’t think I missed much. This is only my second time attending a live taping of a podcast at a con, and this one was much more lively than the first. The game we played as a group was to figure out how to staff a ship of the most fuckable Star Trek villains. The hosts took us through every entry in the Star Trek franchise, pulling up both well-known and obscure villains and having the audience choose between two at a time to determine who was more fuckable. Some were easy choices and others were more difficult. There were also some pretty convincing creative arguments for and against some of the characters. I was surprised to find characters like the Borg Queen and Evil!Hoshi beating a lot of others. I was surprised characters like Q and the three-some of Kor, Koloth, and Kang didn’t go further. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan made it pretty far but didn’t ultimately win! Who won? I can’t even remember. You’ll have to track down the episode!

I headed home after a long, tiring day and made more progress on my book. When I had to switch trains, it took almost half an hour for the right color train to arrive. So I did get a lot read but I didn’t get home until nearly midnight (at which point I still had a load of laundry to do before bed).

Awesome Con 2017- Day 1 was originally published on The Fangirl Project