#sam talks: devs edition | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

willothewispwisteriadawn · 4 months

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This may be a long ask because I like to yap lol

Honestly, I feel like one of the most realistic possibilities/best addition they could give us in the remaster is: more clues to find that would provide more insight to the characters and their relationships to one another. I feel like there’s many great opportunities for them to do that with the characters, especially the Washington’s (which I would happily take as a win because they are so interesting to me and we didn’t really get to know Hannah and Beth). First opportunity that comes to mind is when Sam finds Josh’s phone. This is probably me totally being biased because I want more Josh content even though he is the character that has the most lore (sue me) but I feel like we didn’t really get to see him genuinely interact with most of the characters. I mean there were obviously moments that I believe Josh was being genuine, but most of it was definitely a mask *pun intended* and him being devious. They could add some text interactions between him and all other members of the group or allow you to just kind of search through his phone. Because I’m a JoshxSam enthusiast I would geek if they had a couple of flirty messages between the two or texts that show them being what each other needs. Hell, throw in a couple messages between him and Chris where they both talk about their crushes (and more texts between him and Josh in general because friendship goals). I mean the devs used to look through Reddit so they know what the ppl want. Why not make JoshxSam Semi-Canon 9 yeas later LMAO?! I’d also like to know if Josh is really girl crazy or if it’s an attempt at being normal so seeing some brief talk surrounding Josh’s love life or affairs would be rather entertaining to me.

Another cool thing they could do with his phone is have it to where you can go to the photos app and get to see photos he’s taken. They could even have you be able to open his email and find things regarding school or his interest ect.

Since I mentioned the photo app, They could also add like a scrapbook in Beth‘s room where she writes little notes about the characters to give insight about her relationships to the characters or memories she’s had with the group and her family. All the devs gotta do is add a couple more badly photoshopped edits to the game /lh.

Another thing I think they could do is add a couple more rooms that you can explore, maybe like two or three. One: Josh‘s bedroom, Two: Bobs office where maybe you can find emails on his computer regarding Josh’s psyche, talks of Hannah and Beth’s disappearance/memories of them, some personal journal entries that talk about the dynamic of their family, history of the land and their encounters with the suspicious activity that takes place on the mountain. It’s been a few years since I’ve watched the video game fully so maybe some of this is in there because I think I remember you being able to find police report Melinda made regarding noises. ORRRR im making things up.

This would be an easier way to add some content without actually needing the actors to be there. What do you think? Do you think it is plausible?

Yap away, Anon!!! Honestly, we all need to get used to reading detailed thoughts again 😂. It’s healthy.

Anyway, I love this!!! I mean, I am a SUCKER for putting pieces together via settings and items. (I am weirdly attached to the fact that you can find one of Bob’s trophies for a film called “Blood Monastery,” because it loops back to Chris finding the monk outfit in the basement). I just geek over anything that makes the world feel detailed and connected. So I love the idea of adding content to Josh’s phone! You’re right; it’s a very easy way to add more lore and fun interactions (absolutely give me texts between Josh and Sam or Josh and Chris!!!).

I also like the idea of seeing Josh and Beth’s rooms, because I thought Hannah’s was VERY well done. You can glean so much about her from her bedroom. Whoever designed her room did a stellar job. Beth is the least developed notable character in the whole game, acting as a bit more of an exposition machine than character at points, so I’d love stuff to further humanize her like what we saw for Hannah.

Anyway, Ballistic Moon DID confirm new footage/story animation (though it seems limited)— along with more collectibles and interactions, so your idea is quite feasible, actually! Meaghan Martin has confirmed she recorded a little bit for the remake, and there have been vague leaks of Jessica. So we will be getting some new voice work/face animations for at least some characters.

In a weird way, I hope it truly is all minor additions. I definitely want certain things cleaned up and emphasized and whatnot, but I’m also nervous that a lot of new content might include things that don’t align with the tone or lore of the original (though, there have been official statements saying the devs worked hard to ensure new content keeps with the integrity of the old. And Ballistic Moon has many workers who’d worked on Until Dawn before).

I think the following things are also realistic:

Adding Emily and Matt’s “extra” chapter back into the game. That really should not have been removed as a pre-order bonus. It’s part of the story.

I think they could recycle some PS3 content for Mike and Chris. Brett Dalton and Noah Fleiss joined the project in its PS3 phase. So they have recorded content for Mike and Chris that was scrapped along with parts of that prototype that didn’t make it into the finished project. Now, I think some things were very much scrapped for a reason. All the characters changed a bit from then as did the tone and beats of the story. But I also think some stuff could potentially be added back even if Brett Dalton or Noah Fleiss can’t/decline to return.

Anyway, these are my thoughts! Thanks for the discussion!

#I will not be suing because Josh does have the most lore and characterization #nooooot even close #do I personally fancy Chris a bit more?#yeah but Josh has far and away the most detailed writing #I also like the theory that some of his awkward comments were an attempt to seem like a normal guy #mostly because I do think this game has weak dialogue writing #that theory at least makes it make sense in my head #AMAZING lore writing and iffy dialogue #until dawn #until dawn josh washington #Josh Washington

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thedemon-crowley · 9 months

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Okay, more nicknames! I feel like I'm getting better at them and I strive to get three nines today! *Celebrity edition:*

-(The Satanic) Mr Fox (hear me out: red hair, cunning, alert, swift under pressure, so much energy. also, have you ever heard a fox laugh?)

- Champagne Bolt (because like alcohol and lightning)

- Flower Chain Bolt (maybe that's one for Samael.)

- Disdain Bolt (I've seen you look at Gabriel, don't lie)

- Free Rein Bolt (I've seen you exist, don't lie. imagination, rage, come on)

- Shakira (those hips don't lie)

- Bob Ross (Antiphrasis is a rhetorical and comedic dev—...)

- Hurricane Bolt (haha, gotcha. one more)

- Anita Ward (you were into disco, right? and you're into Queen, she is one; i think this checks out)

-Tigger (high-energy, risk-taker, red hair, tall, non-predatory predator, confident, optimistic, silly. his tail can coil together and you're a snake. also, Tigger's a celeb, fight me)

(trying out explanations this time because you had questions in the past. Not sure what's better. I can leave out the commentary again next time. also yes, velma because of turtle neck)

-🫛🪶🐡 ('twas I the whole time!)

• wahoo/wahoo - starting strong!

• 9.5/wahoo - sounds a bit like an adult film star, but I love it.

• 7/wahoo - definitely more suited to Sam

• 8/wahoo - it is banger after banger with you today

• 6/wahoo - I see the vision

• 8/wahoo - oh baby when you talk like that

• 6/wahoo - rhymes with mob boss

• 7/wahoo - Ah! The element of surprise.

• 9/wahoo - I’m never living the disco phase down

• 9.5/wahoo - see the wonderful thing about tiggers, is tiggers are wonderful things; their heads are made out of rubber, their tails are made out of springs. They’re bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy fun fun fun fun fun—

Excellent collection! Bravo!

#crowleyposting #🫛 🪶 🐡

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meera000 · 1 year

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Happy mother's day (late)

Graduated college this week … it's Over but also i felt so disconnected during the last semester bc i was only on campus 2x a week for 1 class, my other class was remote and i was filling credits w an internship. so it's been a soft landing. however i have cried a lot over the last 3 days.

sam called me and was like i cried for the first time in 2 years and i was like holy shit and we talked about our friends we love our friends and how we wished we had been different for a lot of the four years. personally i was just annoying as shit the first three years, but then again i might find my current self annoying next year. he was like "i wish i hadn't been so hell" which sums it up pretty much. but we've both come out of it better and with a clearer understanding of who we are and what we want. no more hell.

went to my last college party last night because i stopped going to emerson stuff. at emerson i felt like everyone thought i was a close friend — that's so not trueee. and so my friend texted me last night and was like where are you you have to come tonight. i said OK. apparently my acquaintances at emerson have started asking where i went. it has gotten to the point though where even kitty and dev my best friends will thank me for going out with them.

on that note: i don't like feeling like i am disappearing, but i am happier just keeping things quiet and close. i know who my friends are (best ppl in world), i am experiencing a healthy relationship for the first time with someone that i care about deeply, i've got a new job that makes me feel excited and treats me well, and we have a perfect cat. and my family lives close by. there isn't much else i can ask for, or room to split up my time anyway. no point exhausting myself so i accidentally disappeared (?) whatever i'm cooling. at least i popped my head in to say hello and goodbye last night. i have a habit of stretching myself too thin so i can please everyone, but i think i'm well on my way to kicking it completely.

the party was shut down half an hour or so after we got there, so dev kat and i went to the bar. we ran into graysen althea ryan and rebekah which was so crazy because i love them all and was trying to catch althea before she went home (we are also seeing each other next week in london but like, that's such a different context). when we all realized the other group was there we were like oh my goddd screaming and jumping up and down. althea and i hugged for like 2 minutes straight and i thought i might knock her over or break my back because we were hugging so tight. and then we walked out when the bar closed and found lily and jesse!!! so fun and cute surprise. being able to feel that sort of excitement when i run into people is so important to a good life AND being able to express that appreciation……… i think graysen and i were like "i love you so much" like at least ten times.

i love my friends. what can i sayyy lol i literally spent my teen years wanting to d*e because i had never felt that sort of platonic love, but all of that changed once i got to college. likeee i am so grateful for my life and everyone everything in it. tacky but true xo

(me holding graysen, althea at the sil, jesse lily dev and kitty outside the salon)

(what's the thing carrie bradshaw said about how in new york you're always looking for a job, apartment, or boyfriend? and that you can't have all three? welllll i got all three in boston #Love)

(i haven't seen sex and the city also i just have heard that quote numerous times. this is totally taken out of context soz)

Edit: althea's post about the same night. i make an appearance! she's not on tumblr but she is on blogspot, and i love her dearly.

#mine

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jjrtuniport · 2 years

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JJs Dev Diary - One Button Game

Today, Sam and I met and began discussing ideas for the one button game we plan to make. Sam pretty quickly landed on an idea we both felt would lend itself well to a one button concept. This idea was Morse code and through further discussion we decided the player should have to decode pieces of code. This mainly came from Sam wanting to have the game to have a Metrix theme with green text and green numbers falling from atop the screen but I felt that style is too synonymous with hacking and wouldn’t gel with Morse Code and decoding it. I told Sam what I saw when I envisioned Morse Code being WW1 and WW2 era themes and this led to discussion on the movie The Imitation Game where a large machine is used to decipher incoming Germen code.

We also talked about what software we should use like Unreal and Unity. We decided Unreal as I have used it before and because Sam has used neither so to save us both having to learn Unity, we have opted for Unreal.

Today, 28/09/2022, Sam and I met up outside Eldon Building to begin formulating our ideas and to begin setting the foundation for the project. We went to a IT open area believing that

03/10/2022, Sam and I have met up in room 1.123 and our goal is to bring Sam 3DS file into an Unreal project. Still don’t know how to open Unreal in the open lab rooms. Asked someone and they said it should be an icon on the desktop and not through the Unreal Engine Launcher but there is also dedicated rooms like 1.123 that will have Unreal on them. Sam has sent me his model that he made in 3DS Max but trying to import the file, the file type is not recognised. I have googled about Importing a file from 3DS Max into Unreal, I believe the issue should be resolved with changing the file type to something else “Save as type: Select Unreal Datasmith (*.UDATASMITH)”.

After discussing the file types with Sam, and .UDATASMITH not working, Sam tried another that would let me drag it into my Unreal Project but Unreal crashed after importing the file.

I done both ways but “Import All” crashed Unreal and “Import” imports everything singerly and not together.

With further errors trying to import the 3DS file, and Sam having created a sound file we have decided to at least create a main menu and have the sound file play in the background.

I have done a small amount of UI work during previous projects but not in Unreal Engine 5. I know to create a widget and to implement buttons but setting up the code where the player can move the mouse or select the button may be difficult and require a youtube video.

Here I have created the widget and will now start laying out where the buttons will be and what it says within the buttons.

In Unreal 4, the canvas was automatically implemented but it appears you have to manually do this yourself now, I had to Youtube this but it is pretty simple, type Canvas in the "Palette" and drag "Canvas Panel" in the hierarchy [MainMenu]. The Canvas is important because it designates the borders of the widget, everything inside the canvas will be shown. Anything outside will not be seen.

I have added text boxes to the buttons, this will allow me to add my own texts on top of the buttons. This will help demonstrating to the player what each button does.

The font was a little small so I increased the size by editing the font size in the details panel for the text boxes.

I have created the main menu and added functionality for some of the buttons to allow the player to progress through to the game. Next is to have Sam sound file play during the Main Menu. To do this I am not sure, importing the file should be easy enough but having it play specifically during the Main Menu and not after I am unsure how to do. I researched on google and YouTube but was unable to find anything that helped me achieve what I wanted.

(Will not let me post the video and upload the Tumblr post)

Me and Sam discussed implementing a sound so that the player has feedback during the game, Sam sourced the sound and I had aimed to introduce the sound into the game by this point but as we were unable to get the 3DS file imported, the sound would not have anywhere to go. Sam sent a couple of sounds that he found, the first one I felt did not fit well with the sound associated with morse code, it has a distinguishable click sound.

The sound would of been a way to feedback to the player that they are doing something, they can hear the distinct sound every time they press the button to interact. This would of been a way to assure the player that what they are doing, is getting read in the game and the sound acknowledges this.

In reflection, it might have been better to create a less complex game, something more simple and basic instead of creating something that requires importing assets from different software. I think in the future, definitely take smaller projects until Unreal knowledge is higher. I did learn some things however, or at least re-affirm knowledge. Things like creating widgets and now having to bring in the canvas, whereas before it was automatically in. Creating buttons within the widget that the player can click on and interact with the progress. Despite not really having a game I am happy with, I think it is a good learning opportunity to take more bite size steps until really familiar with Unreal to create what I really want to create.

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incarnateirony · 3 years

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Script process detailing

So something I had assumed fandom would know, but... I realized, talking to a friend, they don't. So let's talk about what a network draft is. In fact, let's talk about the general process. So people understand expectations.

Screenwriting for TV generally goes through a general process

Writer's Draft > Studio Draft > Network Draft > Production Draft

These, also, have multiple stages. So for example, Robbie writes the first writer's draft, and gives it to Chaos Machine. Chaos Machine discusses what they like or don't, and may send it back for a few tweaks. Once the Studio Draft is final, they take it to the network.

Then, the network starts saying what they want changed, which then rolls the draft back again. So for example, a "4th network draft" has already graduated from writer, to studio, and been given to the network 3 times previously for adjustments.

-- Now to also highlight the date on that 4th network draft. Notice, 12/17. This is normal for what's basically a final submission for something trying to be taken to order.

So. like. networks take holiday. Big holiday. The exact schedule of it depends on the network, shuffles a few weeks forward or back, but basically they leave for christmas and come back a week or two into january.

This is the point that they collect all the different scripts they've accumulated over the year and go to a table to basically debate what they want to order to pilot. Depending on the time they came back, either late January or very early February is when they order things to pilot--hence the Feb 3 announce for Winchesters, Independence and others. They're generally ordered together, not separately. Like basically they've made the Approved pile vs the No pile, and the Approved pile goes to order.

This would be the 4N draft submitted right before everybody took holiday. SOMETIMES someone runs a final edit in the door around then but that gets messy.

While something is taken to order, the script is generally "approved", but the network may make final demands. For example "We need more Dean for sentiment" or "have Sam cameo bringing in a sammich so CBS is happy" or something. Just for ideas. But basically by then you have a general idea of what the network is generally happy with as the product.

At this point, depending on if it was late January or early February, late march or early april filming is normal. It's admittedly a little funky that a Feb announce has one going to March filming, but we've discussed that a lot so we're not gonna beat it to death.

However, between when it's ordered and when it's filmed, we're now in the Production drafts. You may have heard about SPN's color coding of scripts--cherry, yellow, etc etc. Every production has different draft forms, but things like color coding is unique to a production. Like a blue script might mean a different dev phase than it does on SPN, just to knock that out of the way.

But either way there can be like... 8 production drafts. Sometimes it's less if it requires less revision. The reasoning on these changes is different though. For example, time. The Winchesters script is about 60 pages--given, Robbie is wordier in description than most screenwriters, always has been. But that's still too much. It's gonna need to lose about 15 pages of content.

This content is likely to be reallocated elsewhere in the series unless it's at some point decided to be just... useless. But for example the Winchesters script has a LOT of exposition dumps. So then a script phase may pull several of those out for later and then look at how it flows after. Sometimes content intended to be parallel or something doesn't fit anymore without it's partner then, so they may be removed or revised. Sometimes it just flows weird when the segues are different so transitions and cuts need adjusted. Sometimes dialogue needs tweaked as a result. You get the idea. You've all edited a fic or something before. Just imagine every copy having a different name. Along the way scenes also get "locked", almost secured in their place/number, so sometimes things just get. You know. The cursed [omitted]. Just rarely to the level we saw in the finale. That tends to be indicative of major changes in the later copies, because the entire process is about shuffling things around early on.

At the end of the Production phase, the final script is still comprised pretty much completely of things that were originally approved in the network draft that got sent to order, but it's not there in completion due to the changes, shuffles, removals and omissions. Also, whatever this final script looks like, it's rarely recognizable compared to the first writer draft. It's been sent up, down, up, down, up, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, and then possibly put through a blender.

So the 12/17 4th network draft for the Winchesters is what got sent to order, when the execs came back from vacation, argued about what to advance for a few weeks, and then ordered. The Feb 4 leak came with the Feb 3 announcement, which was about a week before the casting leak as well--indicating someone else got their hands on it too, though I doubt it's from the same source the one we're distributing did--as much as where THAT person got THEIRS from. But it IS what set people off that HAD the Feb 4 leak going "WAIT, REAL???"

We're now a few weeks later, so they're probably a few drafts into these Production changes. They have to reduce it for time, adjust resulting delivery and make necessary changes between now and when they're ready to shoot, and you generally want it finished a few weeks in advance.

This, ironically, is probably what Pat means when he says -- after much initial denial -- his source says "some of it is real." I don't know if he KNOWS why that is, but the reality is, while it's all real, it's not final, and parts of it are going to disappear, be reordered, or experience minor final tweaks. It's not going to hit major dramatic changes at this point beyond these types of things, though, because that would require playing ping pong with the network all over again to completely change the idea, and they only have a few weeks to get ready at this point. They need the product by the time May calls are hit, and it needs filmed, and put through post in that time. You snooze, you get pushed off for a calendar year or worse, just, dropped and never looked at again.

I just realized I REALLY needed to explain this, as half of people might think it'll air EXACTLY LIKE THAT, and another half probably heard me talking about "not final, going through changes" and might think that means VIOLENT AMOUNTS OF VARIATION, when the truth is more somewhere in the middle.

Hope that clears it up for people.

I should also caveat this also makes it seem simpler than it is (believe it or not), but things like pitch, arena, board, outline, etc are all phases that come before the writer's draft, so not worth confounding this post any more deeply when it's more to explain the later phases/timelines.

#spn prequel #the winchesters #scripts

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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YOUR EMPLOYEES AND INVESTORS WILL CONSTANTLY BE ASKING ARE WE THERE YET

I think I've figured out what's going on. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated.1 Don't Get Your Hopes Up. Something hacked together means something that barely solves the problem, the harder it is to bait the hook with prestige. And that is almost certainly mistaken. So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, should be the highest goal for the marginal. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. As big companies' oligopolies became less secure, they were willing to pay a premium for labor. You can see it in old photos. If you're friends with a lot of the worst kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts. And what's especially dangerous is that many happen at your computer.

And the microcomputer business ended up being Apple vs Microsoft. In 1450 it was filled with the kind of turbulent and ambitious people you find now in America. You have to like what they do there than how much they can get the most done. That's not what makes startups worth the trouble. Design This kind of metric would allow us to compare different languages, but that if someone wanted to design a language explicitly to disprove this hyphothesis, they could probably do it. This technique can be generalized to: What's the best thing you could be doing, not just what you can see the results in any town in America. With this amount of money can change a startup's funding situation completely. There I found a copy of The Atlantic. Whereas it's easy to get sucked into working longer than you expected at the money job.2 That's ok. I think you have to do all three. But more importantly, you'll get into the habit of doing things well.

But what if the person in the next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things.3 They all know about the VCs who rejected Google. The writing of essays used to be.4 You may have read on Slashdot how he made his own Segway.5 He improvises: if someone appears in front of him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he spins out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong place, anything might happen. The people who've worked for a few months I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the place I'd just left. It was supposed to be something else, they ended up being Apple vs Microsoft. By 2012 that number was 18 years. The first thing you need is to be willing to look like a fool.6 Google they have a fair amount of data to go on. John Malkovich where the nerdy hero encounters a very attractive, sophisticated woman.

Many of the big companies were roll-ups that didn't have clear founders.7 Empirically, the way to the bed and breakfast, and other similar classes of accommodations, you get to hit a few difficult problems over the net at someone, you learn pretty quickly how hard they hit them anyway. Inexperienced founders make the same mistake as the people who list at ABNB, they list elsewhere too I am not negative on this one was the only way to get lots of referrals is to invest in students, not professors. It will actually become a reasonable strategy or a more reasonable strategy to suspect everything new.8 Never say we're passionate or our product is great. Whereas undergraduate admissions seem to be disappointments early on, when they're just a couple guys in an apartment. Programmers at Yahoo wouldn't have asked that.9 Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college. VCs think they're playing a zero sum game.

I spend most of my time writing essays lately. Almost everyone's initial plan is broken. If smaller source code is the purpose of comparing languages, because they come closest of any group I know to embodying it. Distracting is, similarly, desirable at the wrong time. But if we make kids work on dull stuff now is so they can get away with atrocious customer service. In fact, here there was a kid playing basketball? Of course, figuring out what you like.

Go out of your way to bring it up e. The industry term here is conversion. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. At least if you start a startup, people treat you as if you're unemployed.10 But hacking is like writing. Even with us working to make things happen the way they used to, they were moving to a cheaper apartment. It causes you to work not on what you like, but is disastrously lacking in others. I do in the rest of the world. Their defining quality is probably that they really love to program.

I could only figure out what to do, there's a natural tendency to stop looking.11 Economies of scale ruled the day.12 One is that this is simply the founders' living expenses.13 I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I think I know what is meant by readability, and I think they're onto something. Multiply this times several hundred, and I get an uneasy feeling when I look at my bookshelves. You may have read on Slashdot how he made his own Segway.14 Everyday life gives you no practice in this. Startups grow up around universities because universities bring together promising young people and make them work on anything they don't want to want, we consider technological progress good.

Notes

Samuel Johnson said no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Which is precisely my point. If they were regarded as 'just' even after the egalitarian pressures of World War II the tax codes were so new that the guys running Digg are especially sneaky, but except for money. They don't know enough about the new top story.

The image shows us, they tended to make money. But we invest in the Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and one of the fake leading the fake leading the fake. In No Logo, Naomi Klein says that 15-20% of the aircraft is.

But because I realized the other writing of Paradise Lost that none who read a draft, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. If they agreed among themselves never to do due diligence for an investor? The best technique I've found for dealing with the other.

I ordered a large number of startups as they do for a public event, you can ignore. If you want to help the company, and a few of the Facebook that might produce the next Apple, maybe the corp dev is to show growth graphs at either stage, investors decide whether to go to die.

If you walk into a big company CEOs in 2002 was 3.

Or rather, where w is will and d discipline. But that turned out the existing shareholders, including that Florence was then the richest country in the sense of mission.

In Shakespeare's own time, because they can't afford to. The company may not be able to raise their kids in a company in Germany. When we got to see the apples, they said, and why it's next to impossible to write an essay about it wrong. That will in many cases be an open booth.

I'm not saying you should probably be worth trying to tell them exactly what constitutes research in the early 90s when they say they bear no blame for any particular truths you'll learn. As Jeremy Siegel points out that there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs. Did you know about it as if you'd invested at a discount of 30% means when it was actually a great programmer doesn't merely do the right direction to be is represented by Milton.

But a lot of the next round. It's hard to say exactly what your body is telling you. In Russia they just kill you, they tend to be very unhealthy. One thing that drives most people realize, because you have two choices, choose the harder.

Though Balzac made a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this essay talks about programmers, but one by one they die and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev. Or rather, where it sometimes causes investors to act. Eric Raymond says the best hackers want to trick admissions officers. And no, unfortunately, I mean efforts to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a truly feudal economy, you better be sure you do in proper essays.

The top VCs thus have a better education. Or a phone, IM, email, Web, games, books, newspapers, or some vague thing like that. You need to fix. But the question is not much to maintain their percentage.

Kant. Loosely speaking. The real decline seems to them to lose elections. Some types of startups where the recipe is to say incendiary things, they can grow the acquisition offers most successful founders still get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but they get for free.

World War II to the frightening lies told by older siblings. That's one of the most general truths. As we walked in, we found they used it to get into that because a unless your last funding round.

But this seems an odd idea.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Shiro Kawai, Garry Tan, Chris Small, and Nikhil Nirmel for sharing their expertise on this topic.

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silver-wield · 4 years

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FF7R: The price of strength

Siddown. Let’s talk about this because frankly I’m worried about yall’s education.

The wording of this part of the story summary is as particular as the one using “they lose Jessie right before their eyes” later during the pillar chapter to indicate that Jessie actually died, whereas “a seriously injured Biggs” didn’t.

Because word choice matters.

The title first: since I totally forgot to mention it originally and had to edit this.

The price of strength has parallels to the price of freedom, which on the surface is a Zack reference. I can already hear the romantically motivated screaming this is proof. However, the price of strength relates to Cloud and his knowledge that he’ll degrade because that’s what president Shinra said would happen at the end of chapter 7. That’s what the title’s referring to. The price of strength is Cloud’s degradation, while also being another Zack hint at the price he paid for his and Cloud’s strength.

Back to the rest of it.

So, Aerith “ambushes” Cloud. Do...yall know what ambush means?

Okay? We good? An ambush isn’t cute. Now, put it in context of Cloud, who literally swung his sword at Biggs because he thought it was an enemy lying in wait to ambush him. It’s not a positive way to describe what Aerith did.

Cloud’s on edge when Aerith appears because he’s too used to having to fight anything that approaches him in a stealthy manner. The blocking is an OG reference to the forest dream, but the story elements are different this time. Cloud spent the day with Aerith being bossed about. He stayed because she wouldn’t tell him how to get home and as much as he hated that she was right, he would’ve gotten lost.

He hasn’t just come from the temple of the Ancients where he hurt her, gave Sephiroth the black materia or went through any of the previous location events to build up a rapport between them. He has literally just met her that day. He’s known her for around 12 hours. They’re not even friends at this point.

Aerith appears because she wants to spend more time together. It doesn’t say anything about Cloud wanting to spend more time with her. Cloud wants to go home. People keep on about it like he doesn’t wanna leave. He does. Cloud wants to go home.

So, Aerith’s sudden appearance has put him on edge. Let’s take a look at that, since we know for a fact Cloud is suffering from anxiety—or did yall miss the actual meaning of Hollow, too?

Sounds like Cloud. He’s constantly prepping for hidden danger. He’s always five seconds away from reaching for that sword hilt. He’s always checking the area for danger. He’s also extremely irritable a lot of the time. He was way more snarky and sarcastic to Aerith than he was to Barret during chapter one and he couldn’t stand Barret in chapter one. In OG his catchphrase was “Not interested” but in Remake, he’s heard saying “Seriously?” way more often, which he says because he’s annoyed about something. Yeah, it’s cultural slang for the times because we all say it, but in Cloud’s case he says it because he’s irritated/annoyed (and it’s adorable and I love that he says it and yall better thank Wedge for that because he taught it to Cloud)

Onto more medical stuff.

Cloud has less physical symptoms of anxiety, though many of them only happen during his PTSD attacks. He’s seen sweating, trembling, looking pale, breathing hard, clutching his head and we know for a fact he has trouble sleeping.

Now we’ve got that cleared up, let’s head back to the rest of the story summary.

As Aerith walks on ahead, it triggers the Jenova vision, and Cloud’s heart skips a beat because of the vision. We don't get to see the contents of the vision, though, so can't say for certainty what it is.

One other common symptom of anxiety is an abnormally increased heart rate, also known as heart palpitations. Heart palpitations can feel like your heart is racing, pounding, or fluttering. You may also feel as though your heart is skipping a beat.

So Cloud, in the middle of a PTSD/Jenova attack, gets a heart palpitation, which is a typical symptom of anxiety, which he suffers from. It’s not related to any romantic feelings because Cloud doesn’t have romantic feelings for Aerith here and since he’s not meta and doesn’t get echoes of OG to feel anything that OG Cloud might have felt, this is just him reacting to anxiety triggering vision of a presumed death. It’s a build up, a step along a series of events that leads to Cloud’s mental breakdown. It’s yet another moment where Sephiroth—through Jenova—is trying to goad a reaction from Cloud, but again, he’s mistimed things (like in chapter 2 when he put his hand on Aerith’s shoulder to freak Cloud out) because Cloud at this point doesn’t have feelings for Aerith.

For anyone who isn’t clear on this, Jenova can prompt future visions. Lucretia got visions too while she was pregnant with Sephiroth. She saw meteor fall nearly 30 years before any of this.

So, why does he cry? Oh, I dunno, maybe it’s got something to do with a senseless death? Zack’s? Y’kno, his best friend? Cloud’s been conscious for five days by this point and everything in his recent past is about loss. It's possible the flash was Aerith's death, but we see all of those, so why hide this one? The last major death that affected him was Zack’s, and this moment could be where Cloud partly softens his attitude towards her on the trip through the collapsed freeway. But, that doesn’t mean he wants to hang, which is why he says no when she says to take a break. But then, she talks about her boyfriend, who she obviously still misses and is in love with and this makes Cloud feel sorry for her. He relaxes his guard. Thinks that maybe he’s been too harsh to her. He’s not gonna see her again anyway, and then the moment—literally the moment—he sees Tifa in that chocobo carriage, Aerith’s an afterthought.

And then later on, just in case anyone thought that story summary line held any kind of meaning, we see Chocobo Sam using it, which totally undermines any kind of importance it might have held. If Chocobo Sam’s heart can skip a beat, then it’s not a big deal, even if some people held those words in a romantic context. And the fact you only get this dialogue from Sam by doing his sidequests, getting Cloud’s canon outfit—which matches Tifa’s—and actually bother going to find him to chat, shows the devs were already expecting people to latch onto this phrase as something special and hid it for everyone who actually bothers to play the game properly so they could find it and enjoy the shade. Not to mention Jessie says it, too, and Jules, so it really doesn't have much impact when everyone says it.

Annnd finally, even if people do still wanna insist, those words are literally part of the same sentence that mentions Sector 7, so even if you wanted to put romantic coding on it, Cloud’s heart is more likely to have skipped a beat anticipating getting back home to where Tifa’s waiting for him.

Basically, no matter which way you slice it, that summary isn’t about love in connection to Aerith. Hell, it’s not about love at all, but more of Cloud’s anxiety and y’kno, plot stuff.

Not to mention Aerith is literally trying not to cry, which if I remember rightly, isn’t romantically motivated context wise.

#slam debunk #long post #story beats #character analysis #story analysis

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dlamp-dictator · 5 years

Text

Quick Ramblings (Anime Edition)

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of older stuff along with some of my backlog from the last two-ish seasons. Nothing this season really clicked with me save for In/Spectre, and I’m waiting for more episodes of the dub to come out before watching it.

All in all this has been a rather quiet season in terms of anime, at least for me. I’ve been a lot more focused on updating fanfics and my original stories for the past two-ish months to really watch any anime that I couldn’t just binge. A few things in Spring has my interest, but that’s Spring...

Anyway... onto the anime Allen’s been watching these past few months.

I’m about half way through Cross Ange and I’m having a blast with it. It’s trashy, it’s riddled with fanservice, it’s premise is honestly stupid, and even the mech battles are a little lacking, but this is an show that knows it’s trashy and over the top, so I don’t have an issue with it.

For a quick summary, Cross Ange is about an Angelise Ikaruga Misurugi, a princess living in a peaceful kingdom of magic-users, at least until its revealed that she had no magical talent and was immediately shunned and exiled from the kingdom as a member of the magic-less Norma caste. Taken from her home and forced to train and work as a mech pilot to kill dragons, she grows into a cold killing machine, with only anger and revenge keeping her going. The story goes into depth about a conspiracy regarding the Dragons, Ange’s origins, and a few other things, but again, I’m at episode 13 at this point.

This is actually my second time watching this show, but stopped after episode 12 last time, mostly because something came up for me IRL and by the time I got back to Cross Ange I realized the dub was out and I was just waiting for that to wrap up. Speaking of, the Dub is pretty good, Ange sounds great, the voice actress being able to do spoiled princess and cold-hearted badass parts of her very well. And the rest of the cast sound good too with Hilda being my favorite, my favorite moments being the ‘on-the-next-episode’ segments, which are hilarious. To paraphrase one of them:

Ange: Hey, it’s been like 10 episodes since someone died, and we just became friends soooo...

Hilda: I don’t want to be friends with you anymore.

That aside, this show it just a fun romp. It’s trashy, it’s over the top, it takes itself almost too serious but not in a way that feels like they’re reaching. Like the seriousness only adds to the cheese of it all. I haven’t finished it yet, but if you want something fun and trashy to watch with your friends, this is definitely the perfect show for it.

Against my better judgement, I decided to look back at the original Fate/Stay Night anime. It’s been years since I’ve watched it and all I remember is a 3D-rendered dragon in a mid-2000s anime. And while that is bad, it shouldn’t be all there is to that anime. As of 10 episodes I can confidently say it’s... not... terrible. A lot of the complaints I remember hearing about this anime seem to be blown out of proportion, at least given the point of the anime I’m at. It’s got plenty of time to make me cringe even more than it has now, but that cringe mostly comes from me being a 26-year-old man watching anime that was probably a lot cooler to 13-year-old Allen that the 26-year-old Allen currently watching this now. For a mid-2000s shounen series, it’s okay. Not great, but okay.

This anime might get a Rambling in itself drafted up when I finish the Gacha Rambling, but for now I’ll just say I have two main issues with this anime: Shirou Emiya, and the World-building of the Fate universe. Shirou feels incompetent not due to how he behaves, but how the writers make him behave. The second issue... requires me to talk about Fate and its writers as a whole, but the short version is I wish Fate/Stay Night wasn’t originally a porn game. It’d make things a lot easier to explain and maneuver around if it wasn’t.

Also, I do prefer this English voice cast to Unlimited Blade Works. The UBW cast if fine, even great, but Sam Riegel as Shirou and Liam O’Brien as Archer is just too perfect a combination to beat.

Finally started watching Ascendance of a Bookworm, an isekai anime about a librarian being reincarnated as a frail, sickly girl. Her one goal being to write and curate books. The only issue being the world she reincarnated into has little in the way of mass-producing books, as neither the printing press or typewriting has been invented year, and paper is rather expensive. So she uses all sorts of schemes, ideas, and plots to try and get books made on some reasonable level, each time a failure, but each failure doing more good in the long term than she thinks.

This anime has a very mellow feel to it. Not something I watch for the plot, but just to see this cute anime girl finally make handmade paper and read a book. The stakes are really that high, the premise is rather simple, but... it’s comfy watch for me. I’m about 4 episodes in and I’m glad to hear we’re getting a second season of this show by the time I finish this first season. Can’t wait to watch more of it.

So Granblue Fantasy got an anime. Two seasons actually, but I only finished up the first one since that was the one that’s fully dubbed. The story revolves around Gran, a young skyfarer wanting to travel the world to see his father. Through this endeavor he gathers many allies and friends, along with a girl named Lyria who saves his life after they first meet. The story takes off from there in a sort of island-of-the-week format. There’s a few other girls like Lyria wanting to meet the other girl that might be tied to her past, or Gran and crew constantly running into the Evil Empire(tm) of this world, but it’s more episodic affair than anything else, each three-ish episodes covering a new island.

I like the anime for its action, but that’s really it. I feel like this was at a time before Gacha games got the more dark and surprisingly in-depth lore and story-writing that games like Girls Frontline and Arknights has, but that makes it more of a comfortable watch than anything. A feel-good anime, but nothing wrong with that.

Also, I can only imagine the amount of hype that happened in episode 12 where all the characters teamed up to take down Leviathan. I don’t even play Granblue Fantasy and I was getting hype when I saw Boxing Grandpa punching debris as projectiles to take out monster fish. This was a fun anime to watch, and I say that as someone who doesn’t play Granblue.

Last up, I’ve been watching BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense. It’s a fun anime about a young girl named Maple taking a tank build to it’s logical extremely. I won’t lie, I’m watching this because it’s not an isekai and has a pretty simple plot to follow. My favorite part of the anime is when the admins and game devs try to patch the game so Maple’s Tank meta won’t break the game in half... only for her to come up with some new nuttiness that makes her even scarier.

Imagine walking around a field, minding your own business, then you see this tiny shield girl riding a flying turtle while summoning acid rain to kill a mob of monsters without even moving. This woman is unstoppable and I love it.

But yeah, that’s it for anime. Next up, I’ll hopefully have the Gacha Rambling wrapped up by Monday. In the mean time, I’ve got work to prepare for.

#cross ange #fate stay night #ascendence of a bookworm #granblue fantasy #bofuri #your dictator is speaking

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theonyxpath · 5 years

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Here we are, coming to the last few days of the Creature Collection for 5e Scarred Lands Kickstarter, and the last 9 days of the Kickstarter for Deviant: The Renegade. Wow, the time sure flies with these – you can check out below in the Blurbs for details on how everyone’s pledges have added to both projects in different ways.

That’s really a huge part of the fun for us – using KS to help create more and new parts to a project! Not something you can really do with a standard pre-order.

Thanks everybody who already pledged – and if you haven’t yet, you really do owe it to yourself to take a look. Both campaigns have a huge amount of backer activity and involvement, and have great KS-runners.

Next up, we’re looking at Mummy 2nd Edition for the just inaugurated Onyx Path Kickstarter account that Creature Collection is on right now, so we’re really going to need to get our previous backers to give that a try and pop over there. Not the easiest shift to make!

Dark Eras 2 art by Luis Sanz

At the end of the week, Dixie, Eddy, and myself (and maybe a surprise Onyx Path creator or two) will be attending the Save Against Fear Convention in Harrisburg, PA, that benefits the Bodhana Group. These folks are a non-profit group that believes that tabletop gaming can have therapeutic value – and as many of them are licensed to provide therapeutic assistance, as well as being long-time table-top gamers, they know what they’re talking about.

While there are numerous therapy panels, this is very much a gaming convention with a busy gaming area and panels about making table-top games, as well. If you can stop by, it’s a lot of fun – and the proceeds go to a worthy cause!

You can check it out here: https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-convention

Eddy will be running Pirates Of Pugmire at 6pm on both Friday and Saturday nights, all three of us will be on a World-Building panel on Saturday at 1pm, and we might be able to squeeze in a recording an episode of the Onyx Pathcast at the con.

Distant Worlds art by Sam Denmark

Funny I should just mention the Onyx Pathcast, as I want to remind everybody that the first live call-in show will be Tuesday October 8th at 5pm Eastern US time! Why that’s tomorrow!

Call in and give the terrifying yet terrific trio a piece of your mind! Cause an awkward silence so Dixie can sing the Awkward Silence Song, or give the gang your opinion on something so Matthew can interrupt you mid-way! Eddy would love to debate with you about the latest wrestling special, what was that, Hell In A Cell?

We’d all love to hear from you, no matter which of our game lines you’re into, or even if you’re into all of our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

Our Creature Collection Kickstarter for Scarred Lands 5e is scampering towards the next Stretch Goal to add more monsters – that the backers vote on – to the book! Over 20 pages of new monsters have been added so far, and an Encounter Pack giving players a place to use some of our collected creatures – the book is now 184 pages but we want to hit 196 at least – here in the last 4 days!

This book was designed with amazing art by our friends at Handiwork Games, and they’re running the Kickstarter for us on our brand-new Onyx Path Kickstarter page! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/scarred-lands-creature-collection-for-5th-edition-rpg

And, we’re running this Kickstarter, too!

The Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter has a little more than a week to go and it’s vengefully slamming through Stretch Goals now! So far, we have the classic Backer T-Shirt, unlocked the Deviant Screen, added the Beast core book and Dark Eras PDFs to the CofD PDF collection, and added three sections of the Clades Companion book! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deviant-the-renegades-a-tabletop-roleplaying-game

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features an interview with go-to editor Maria Cambone where she and Dixie will punch the hell out of some irregular verbs!

And even earlier in the week is our first Call-In Pathcast! Dixie, Eddie, and even Matthew, will be manning the phones and answering you LIVE ON THE AIR! Tuesday October 8th from 5-6pm Eastern US time. Go to https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/ or to your favorite podcast venue!

It’s character creation month on the Onyx Path Twitch channel, with every Saturday showing character creation for a different game! Saturday 5th saw character creation for the Scarred Lands, and this coming Saturday 12th will have character creation for Deviant: The Renegades, currently on Kickstarter! Follow us on www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath to ensure you don’t miss a session!

That’s not all we’re doing with Twitch, of course, as we’ve currently got ongoing games of Vampire: The Masquerade, Hunter: The Vigil, Changeling: The Lost, Mage: The Awakening, TC: Aberrant, Pugmire, and more! Check our channel out, as it’s the best place to go to see demonstrations of some of our best games.

Did you miss the Onyx Path News last week? It was on the Onyx Path Twitch channel instead of YouTube, and that’s where it’ll be living from now on. As long as you have us followed, you should receive a notification when the news is due for broadcast. As ever, you’ll be able to ask Matthew Dawkins questions about our releases during the news show.

Final pieces of Twitch news: Eric Zawadski is currently running a Deviant: The Renegades game for us on our Twitch channel, and Matthew Dawkins will be running a Scarred Lands one-shot to demo lots of the monsters from the upcoming Creature Collection! Please watch our actual play this coming Wednesday, for a meatgrinder of a session!

Remember, if you miss any content on our Twitch channel, some of it finds its way to our YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/user/theonyxpath Don’t forget though, that some of that content is Twitch exclusive or belongs to the Storytellers running their games, so don’t miss out and remember to follow us!

Have you missed any of Occultists Anonymous‘ latest Mage sessions? Here they are for you:

Episode 49: Research & Recreation Atratus and Wyrd put their heads together over the Seer’s map to determine where they should go and what they should be looking for. Later, the cabal meet with the Consilium of the Greater New York City area.https://youtu.be/wHtF5BWpRJ0

Episode 50: Alluring Scents The cabal makes plans for Peru and realize that a certain werewolf might be very helpful. Songbird has an idea to help the cabal be more… intriguing.https://youtu.be/XKa9jHqNuqo

The ENnie award winning Red Moon Roleplaying continue their excellent actual play of V5 Chicago by Night over on their site right here: www.redmoonroleplaying.co

The Story Told Podcast interviewed Eric Zawadski on their show to discuss all things great about Deviant: The Renegades, right here: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/website/bonus-episode-14-deviant-the-renegades-ks-interview

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

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

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

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

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

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

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

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

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

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

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

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

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

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’re releasing the PDF of Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel for Cavaliers of Mars on DTRPG! A PoD version of this project will come out later as a combined book featuring Witch Queen and City of the Towered Tombs. ALSO, we’ll have new Cavalier of Mars journals and other fun items on our RedBubble store on Weds!

Conventions!

Save Against Fear: October 12th – 14th This Week! Come see Rich, Eddy, Dixie, and maybe a couple of surprise Onyx Path crew! GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

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

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

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

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

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Redlines

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

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

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

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

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Second Draft

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

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

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

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

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

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

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

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Manuscript Approval

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Post-Approval Development

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

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

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

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

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

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

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Post-Editing Development

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

W20 Art Book (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Indexing

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution core (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Sending out contracts.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e – Sam on the fulls.

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Workin’ on it.

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Trinity RMCs – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Contracted.

Chicago Folio – Waiting to hear back from a couple of artists, then done contracting.

Mummy 2 (KS) – KS stuff in progress.

Memento Mori – Contracted.

City of the Towered Tombs – Contracted.

Let the Streets Run Red – Right after Chi Folio art is in.

In Layout

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

Dark Eras 2 – Aileen working on it.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – In progress.

Geist 2e Screen – Need notes from developer.

Proofing

C20 Cup of Dreams

M20 Book of the Fallen – Josh wrapping up 2nd proof.

DRE Screen – Sent to Eschaton for approval.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – Almost ready to send to Eschaton for approval.

At Press

Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2.

TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2.

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

Trinity Core – PoD proofs ordered. At Studio2.

Trinity Aeon – PoD proofs ordered. At Studio2.

V5: Chicago – Printing.

Aeon Aexpansion – Backer PDFs out, errata coming in.

Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel – PDF on sale this week.

DR:E Jumpstart – Out to backers, gathering errata.

W20 Art Book – Backer PDFs out this week.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Not to celebrate, but to commemorate the death of the comedian who went by Charles Rocket. He was part of the awful season on Saturday Night Live (1980-1981) right after Lorne Michaels left, and we commemorate him because he was by all accounts the first person to “drop the f-bomb” clearly on American TV. He was, of course for the time, fired immediately. We here at Onyx Path, who believe in the magic of all words, not just polite ones, to tell our stories, salute this trailblazer who gave his all for the cause.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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killingthebuddha · 5 years

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“All of us become pilgrims at one time or another, even though we may not give ourselves the name.” –Richard Niebuhr

PJ, who presides over Dublin’s dusty shop Sweny’s, has read Joyce’s Ulysses 51 times in 6 different languages. Over a dark pint of Guinness, with the mist from the glass melting on his fingertips, PJ speaks about the lines from the book that are making his pulse race that minute. He doesn’t try to persuade you of their sacredness or its genius. He just smiles slightly, revealing coffee-stained and wayward teeth, and nods as he cites whole paragraphs. PJ loves Joyce. To PJ, Sweny’s, the shop where Leopold Bloom bought lemon soap for his wife Molly in Joyce’s epic, is an invaluable relic of Joyce’s Dublin, and he would do anything to protect its legacy. Even as rent steadily increases, PJ continues to sell bars of lemon soap in the chemist’s shop, now cluttered with old photographs, various editions of Ulysses, and hundreds of small glass bottles. PJ says with a wry smile, “the soap cleans the body while the book corrupts the mind.”

Every year on June 16, the same date that marked Leopold Bloom’s walk around Dublin in 1904, a host of literary pilgrims visit the city to pay tribute to Joyce. Sweny’s was a sacred stop on the tour for people I met last Bloomsday, people who came from Australia, Japan, Bosnia, South Korea, the United States, Germany, Spain, Argentina, England, France, and Switzerland.

In the Catholic tradition of pilgrimage, a location that is considered sacred is often referred to as a “thin place,” a place where the space between heaven and earth wanes, and becomes rarefied or thin. Such places typically mark the site of a saint’s ascension, a miraculous act, or some epiphanic moment. In other religions, places may be considered sacred because they have been saturated with meaning by God. What might a thin place be in a conversation about literary pilgrimage? Perhaps where the distance between an author’s imagination and a reader’s lived reality narrows and eventually collapses. And where the human being who generated meaning in the place—the author, the artist, the genius—begins to acquire divine status. Joyce certainly seems to assume deific qualities every year on Bloomsday as devotees travel to Dublin and re-enact the events from Bloom’s life, visit the places he walked, and read excerpts of Ulysses aloud.

In the home I grew up in, we consider all books sacred, and one of my family’s South Indian traditions has become practically reflexive for me. When someone accidentally drops a book or grazes one with a foot, we place our hand on the cover and gently touch our closed eyelids. We thus symbolically ask forgiveness for treating a book with inadvertent disregard. My parents instilled in me a deep appreciation for written words. Literary pilgrimage provides an opportunity to reflect on that appreciation, and on what happens when it extends beyond an individual gesture to a collective expression of reverence. Why do people become dedicated to one author, or one text? And how does that dedication evolve from fleeting infatuation to persistent devotion?

Last summer, on a quest to reckon with these questions, I attended the Bloomsday festival, which is primarily organized by the James Joyce Center on Dublin’s North Great George’s Street. Deirdre Ellis-King, the chair of the board of the James Joyce Center, notes that the center is committed to providing “different points of entry” into the text, be it “music and song, drama, costume, or food.” The entry points Ellis-King referred to are visible throughout Dublin on Bloomsday. As I walked down North Great George’s Street, people were dressed for the trends of 1904—most men sported black top hats, and carried walking sticks, while women donned petticoats, lace gloves, and parasols. One man even tipped his hat, saluted me, and said with a melancholic tinge, “what a shame, poor fellow, Paddy Dignam,” referencing the character whose funeral in Ulysses occurs on June 16.

When I arrived at Davy Byrne’s, a central pub in the novel, I witnessed a joyful uproar of Irish anthems and songs from the book. There were productions of Ulysses all over Dublin, from the Abbey’s adaptation of the entire epic to the Bewley Café’s staged reading of Molly Bloom’s monologue, and her famed finale, “and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” There were pub crawls across Dublin, not to mention food tours that took visitors down Bloom’s bizarre trajectory of consumption, from kidneys for breakfast to gorgonzola sandwiches and burgundy for lunch. All these events were meant to challenge the notion that Ulysses ought to be abstruse and abstract for readers. Bloomsday participants come with varying levels of Ulysses knowledge, but even if you haven’t read the book, you can still down a pint or digest a kidney.

Sam Slote, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, who has organized an academic symposium on Ulysses, cites Joyce’s remark, “If I can get to the heart of Dublin, I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world.” Slote comments that in order “to get to the heart of Dublin, Joyce represents the city in all its specificities.” In this way, he “gets to everywhere else and all their specificities.” Deirdre Ellis-King agrees, remarking that “Joyce and Dublin are synonymous, it’s any-man and every-man, you could be in any city in the world and enjoy the same kind of experiences of the streetscape.” Paradoxically, by being so precise, the text becomes universal. This stylistic technique is analogous to the character of Bloom. “It’s not that every man likes kidneys for breakfast, but every man has his particularities,” Slote says. It is in this way that Ulysses speaks to any reader, any person in motion, any pilgrim—not in the specifics of every human being, but in the specificity with which any human being can be represented. No one is special. Everyone is special. Stephen Dedalus, the other main character in the novel, has a line, “every life is many days, day after day.” This could be the motto for not only the epic, but also the festival commemorating June 16—any day, in any life, could be Bloomsday. The annual convergence of time and place restores significance to every ordinary and individual encounter, to every overlooked dollop of time.

Jessica Yates, who oversees the Bloomsday festival and manages the James Joyce Center, tells me she “converted” to Joyce (her word) because of Bloomsday. Unlike people who embark on a pilgrimage to honor the text they love, Yates casually went out to a pub on Bloomsday eleven years ago without any prior knowledge of Ulysses. It was there that she met “someone special,” and they set out on a project to read Ulysses before their first anniversary. She says with a trill of laughter, “I got so into Bloomsday.”

She recommends I sit in on one of the storied reading circles at Sweny’s. I do, and am struck by the variety of voices present. Some readers sit with a cane or walker leaning against theirs chairs, and others sprint over to the shop after class. As Joycean phrases echo in the small confines of Sweny’s, I hear accents from Argentina, South Korea, and France. One Dubliner named Paddy has been attending the reading circle on and off for about a decade. Paddy wears long trousers, a light blue button down shirt, and round reading glasses. He seems serious, but he also has a toothy grin. While some wanderers came into the bookshop after one or two beers, Paddy arrives early, eager to pour over the text he deems so valuable. He has read the book in 6-month cycles about ten or eleven times—he can’t recall exactly. He views Ulysses as a vessel through which he can access his own ancestors, a thin place with miraculous possibility. He explains, “I am from Dublin. My parents, my grandparents too. I have no non-Irish connections. I think I am deeply of Dublin, and there are few books deeply of Dublin. Ulysses is one of them.” He explains why the book resonates with him emotionally by pointing to its melodic qualities: “There is a music in the language, a rhythm in the speech. I can hear my parents who are now dead, my grandparents who are now dead, I can hear them talking, when I read it, I can hear their voices.”

Yet another regular at Sweny’s is Finon, a former student at Trinity College. He has been attending readings of Ulysses for four years, and he loves how Sweny’s regulars move “in a loop,” how the book itself is like a “carousel, no fun unless you get to do the whole thing.” “After all,” he chuckles, “if you haven’t finished, it’s not worth the money.” Like many sacred texts, Ulysses contains philosophical reflections, surprising imagery, and beautiful poetry. And like many religious holidays, which draw pilgrims from all over the world to a holy site, Bloomsday too, according to Finon, becomes a “spawning day,” to which “a lot of people return.” Both re-reading and pilgrimage are rituals of returning.

Attempts to disavow the sacred aspects of the festival sometimes sound inadvertently religious. When Finon describes the goal of Bloomsday, he seems a bit like a defensive missionary: “The attempt to popularize the text is really an attempt to create an invitation into it. I mean nobody’s looking to actively spread it onto people, but to keep it as welcoming as possible.” Similarly, Jessica Yates says she wants to get people excited about the text, but she insists, “I don’t want to impose it on everyone.” They are enthusiasts who hesitate to proselytize.

Indeed, Professor Slote of Trinity College Dublin notes with a hint of smug amusement that many people were asking him what he thought of Bloomsday from a scholarly perspective and he was “about to say something,” until he realized, “I’m not going to be this guy.” It would be understandable, from an academic standpoint, to scoff at some of what unfolds. For starters, many of the most devoted participants have never read the book. Take John, the James Joyce lookalike who has stood outside the James Joyce Center every June 16 for the last seven years. He carries a cane, and wears a black top hat, a suit, a healthy gray moustache and a tiny square beard. He peers through large circular spectacles, and takes photographs with tourists. Originally a hat-maker, John grew up in Dublin. He explains the mass of people at the James Joyce Center in an assured tone: “People don’t have to be readers to enjoy Bloomsday, people just like the association.” When I asked John what he thought when he read Ulysses for the first time, his eyes stretched open, and he raised his brows: “Read it? I wrote it!” I smiled, and he conceded, “I’m afraid I didn’t read it.”

For Joyce, a writer who said that if “Ulysses isn’t worth reading, then life isn’t worth living,” John’s confession could be considered blasphemous. But returning to Professor Slote’s less judgmental perspective, it’s unnecessary to “be that guy” who reads and analyzes Ulysses in order to have a genuine relationship with the text. Slote analogizes criticism of Bloomsday to what “we have in America—the [rhetoric of the] war against Christmas … the secularization of Bloomsday is not a bad thing.”

Is Bloomsday a sign that the religion of Joyce is somehow being compromised, challenged, thinned out in the public’s touristic, commercial and dangerously superficial imagination? Or is Bloomsday’s existence reaffirming the sacredness of Ulysses to its readers? After all, not everyone who travels to Lourdes has read the Bible, and not everyone who journeys to Mecca has read the Qur’an. The mastery of a text is not necessary, or at the very least, not a prerequisite for meaningful motivations. Pilgrimage provides a different kind of proof of faith.

As Slote elaborates on not wanting to be the Grinch of Bloomsday, he says, Bloomsday “is not a bad thing—usually it falls on nice, sunny weather,” and it’s “a pleasant excuse to have a bit of a lark.” He concurs with the organizers of the Bloomsday festival that it’s good to get people interested, and even though he says “my job is generally not to think about popularizing Ulysses,” he believes offering various points of entry for readers is noble. He elaborates on Joyce’s mission with Ulysses: “While it is a book that is studied at universities, it’s not just for those people. It has a wider audience. The way culture has moved, these things tend to be more academicized, [and] something like [Bloomsday] is a good counterbalance.”

Leslie Daugherty, from the North Side of Dublin, plays Leopold Bloom in the James Joyce Center productions of Ulysses, and he agrees that the so-called “secularization” of Joyce is a good thing. He describes the text as “a fabulous read,” but takes issue with some of the academics who treat Ulysses with the wrong kind of “reverence,” effectively “making Ulysses unattainable.” He objects to the notion that Ulysses is for “the posh people,” and shook his head as he said, in a throaty voice, “No. Ulysses is for everyone who has a mind of his own.”

Marty, a man from Donegal, Ireland, who is a marketing and events coordinator at the James Joyce Center, first encountered Joyce when he read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and he says with a chuckle that “a lot of teenage Catholic dudes in Ireland identified with it.” He describes being deeply moved by the part where Stephen is called to the priesthood but says, instead, that he is an artist. The tensions between religious tradition, devotion, expectation, and the inclination towards the life of an artist resonate with Marty.

Leopold Bloom, Ulysses, and Bloomsday itself are all fraught with similar tensions. Bloom is a man who loves his wife and preaches love but deceives her and behaves disloyally. Ulysses contains styles that contradict and challenge one another—clean prose, experimental stream-of-consciousness, advertisement jargon, and saccharine romantic-novel satire. Bloomsday has attendees who have read the text 51 times and people who have never heard of Joyce. The idea of “literary pilgrimage,” too, brims with ambiguity. Are books meant to be read, or to be revered? And does a book find its meaning in an isolated experience, or in a collective celebration?

In 1996, Jonathan Franzen revised an essay initially published as “The Harper’s Essay” and retitled it “Why Bother.” In it, Franzen laments the demise of a reading-culture, and describes his “despair about the American novel.” He writes about one novel he read in reverent prose, marking his gratitude “that someone besides me had suffered from these ambiguities and had seen light on their far side—that Fox’s book had been published and preserved; that I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf—felt akin to an instance of religious grace.” The experience of literature, of reading as an act of worship, is often seen as an individual one, as it is in this passage. Indeed, the collection for which Franzen revised his essay is called How to be Alone.

Yet Bloomsday’s beauty is in its social activity. As many literary pilgrims have pointed out, Joyce wanted his text to be democratic. The point of Bloomsday is for “any man and every man,” and the text is about bringing reverence to our everyday. Ulysses itself, in various bodily and granular descriptions elevates the profane to an esteemed status. For example, in one instance, Joyce satirically describes a man seated at the foot of a large tower as a “broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed, frank-eyed, red-haired, freely-freckled, shaggy-bearded, wide-mouthed, large-nosed, long-headed, deep-voiced, bare-kneed, brawny-handed, hair-legged, ruddy-faced, sinew-armed hero.” And just as Joyce plays with his characters, gifting them gallant qualities (albeit in a sardonic tone), so does Bloomsday toy with its visitors and their expectations, until people find communion in a collective, at times gimmicky, at times reverent experience. Ulysses motivates its readers enough that they want to change their physical circumstances, embark on an embodied passage, and develop another vantage-point—beyond the systems of logic and reason that we so often subscribe to. The book inspires people to find one another, to derive solace and soul, from an admittedly kooky community. This somewhat paradoxical combination of the sacred and the irreverent is what permeates Dublin on Bloomsday. There are pub crawls and exclamations of Joycean passages made shriller by grand glasses of Guinness. But there is also something reminiscent of what we see in churches and memorials—pilgrims, persons in motion—seeking answers, inspired by something that has no neat ending, maybe realizing as they wander, that they too, will never be complete.

Despite all the ambiguity and insecurity that is present when one sets out on a pilgrimage, there is also a yearning. People embark on a pilgrimage in search of something, be it healing, obligation, or understanding. And whether it is religious or literary pilgrimage, we can discover havens in vagrancy the way we do in words. As Franzen puts it, “to write sentences of such authenticity that refuge can be taken in them: Isn’t this enough? Isn’t it a lot?” There are not often clear answers in literature, but when paragraphs protect you, it doesn’t so much matter, does it? There are not clear lines drawn between the drawbacks and merits of Bloomsday either. Tourist Destination or Holy Site? One could easily say that the merits of Bloomsday are inits campiness, its accessibility, and its rendering a “thin place” palpable to readers. Franzen ends his essay with the image of a character discovering in a broken ink bottle “both perdition and salvation.” He writes, at peace without real resolution, “The world was ending then, it’s ending still, and I’m happy to belong to it again.”

Finon, one of the regular members of the Sweny’s reading circle, also embraces contradiction in Bloomsday. He believes that the festival is meaningful, but remarks with a knowing smirk that “on Bloomsday people like to drink and eat strange meat … [but] no one’s really talking about metempsychosis” (a concept of great significance in the novel). Finon asks if I had read Station Island by Seamus Heaney when I press him on the benefits and caveats of literary pilgrimage. I answer that I have not. He is keen to explain, “it’s a poem about revisiting a Catholic pilgrimage site, a catholic shrine …based on the idea that St. Patrick had a vision of purgatory there.” Finon outlines the context of the poem. “He was revisiting the place as a secularized figure … returning to a place he no longer believed in.” This raises an interesting question within a framework of literary pilgrimage. Is it possible to have a jarring return to a place you have lost faith in if all you have lost faith in is the sanctity of the literature (and not, for instance, the existence of God?)

In Heaney’s poem, various characters appear from disparate significant moments in the history of Ireland. And at the “dead center,” Finon narrates in a thrilled whisper, “he meets the ghost of the dead James Joyce.” Heaney doesn’t name him. He refers only to the storied image of Joyce that impersonators and photographers and readers and writers have memorialized for a century: a tall man with a cane, and the voice of a singer. Heaney writes that the figure held out his hand— “whether to guide or be guided I could not be certain,” because the man seemed blind. In this poem, an itinerant soul reckons with the loss of meaning in a formerly faithful location. That a hero of literature, a genius, artist, poet, is ambiguous in his leadership—that it is unclear whether he wants to lead or be led, demonstrates the deterioration and dismantling of Joyce as an idol, of Joyce as a God. Here Joyce’s hand is “fish-cold and bony,” and the onlooker knows him “in the flesh …wintered hard and sharp as a blackthorn bush.” This is a weathered, human being, a worn body, tired, old, nothing divine or eternal-seeming about him.

In many ways, this encounter could represent the ultimate challenge, a revisiting and reckoning with the sacred ground on which a metaphorical shrine to Ulysses was erected. In Station Island the character of Joyce does not seem wholly self-assured. He says, “your obligation / is not discharged by any common rite. / What you do you must do on your own … You’ve listened long enough. Now strike your note.” In this imagination of Joyce, the source of Ulysses’s genius, is not, on the surface, a divine force, because he feels entirely human. Yet, isn’t there something god-like in the command to strike out alone, to stop “listening,” and to embrace a new “rite”?

Considering Joyce as a simultaneously godly and ghostly figure is pertinent to the paradoxes of Bloomsday. Finon notes some logical dilemmas he observed on June 16 every year: “It’s a strange map in itself. I came to the real pub where a fictional character didn’t set foot. I came to the place where nobody bought the bar of soap. (laughs) It’s quite odd.”

Nonetheless, it seems hard to contend with the fact that Ulysses renders Dublin “a thin place.” It is the destination for wandering minds and bodies to relish and find refuge in words that feel mimetic of reality: the ugly, disturbing, devastating, and remedial stories that make up most of our lives. Letting Bloomsday be a thin place extracts communal joy from that solitary act of reading (or even of not-reading!) which can at times be isolating, and that private worship of Joyce, which can at times be embarrassing. A shared human soul pieced together from infinitely complex and individual particularities. One may plumb the mundane for miracles.

Niebuhr describes pilgrims as people “passing through territories not their own—seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well.” I was passing through a territory not my own, and when I walked the streets of Dublin on Bloomsday, I felt both spiritual and giddy.

My very first interview, in the early morning of June 16, 2018, was with a couple from Trieste, and it felt like a moment of grace. I saw them loitering by the James Joyce Statue on the main street of the north side of Dublin. They were smiling and taking photos. It turned out that the man had read Ulysses as a young academic forty years ago. He matter-of-factly stated, “It was the text that inspired me to become a professor of literature.” As he spoke, his wife started laughing. I turned to her quizzically. She said, “Oh I’m sorry, it’s just my husband is really downplaying what this book means to him.” I asked her what she meant. “Well, when my first son was born—when I went into labor, what does my husband take along to the hospital? The thick fat book—Ulysses! He read it to me for twelve hours.” I turned to the man, now in his late 70s, a small smile playing on his lips, while a plum flush spread across his cheeks in patches. “Well,” he stuttered, “it’s sizzling…and brilliant…and so human.” This man wanted the very first words his son heard to be those of Joyce. What better anecdote could I have to demonstrate worship of this text? Yet, when I asked if he believed visiting Dublin for Bloomsday would lead to a more intimate understanding of Ulysses, he said, as his forehead creased slightly, “that would be too much, too big a claim.” His wife nodded knowingly. He added, “We’re here for more profane reasons.”

Literature enables both profane pleasure and reverence. On Bloomsday, no one has to choose.

#IFTTT #WordPress

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fatmclassic · 6 years

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FATM extras

Heart in a cage-Strokes cover with Dev Hynes

As Far as I could get-RSD exclusive

Pure Feeling-Target HBHBHB US exclusive

Conductor-Target US HBHBHB Exclusive

Tiny Dancer-Elton John cover

Flakes-Cover on Mystery Jet half in Love with Elizabeth EP

Wish that you were here-Miss peregrines home for peculiar children OST

Breath of Life-Snowhite and the huntsmen OST

Over the Love-The Great Gatesby OST

Too much is never Enough- Final Fantasy OST

Fairytale of new york-Pogues cover with Billy Bragg

Galaxy of the lost-Dev Hynes cover

Last Christmas-wham cover

All I want for christmas is a gril with one eye-Cover

Filthy Fingers- Floribble amd miserabella

Between two lungs demo-From special lungs boxset

Falling demo-Drumming song CD single release Bside

Postcards from italy-Beirut cover

Addcited to love-Robert Palmer cover-Island records anniverrasy

Cant speak french-Girls aloud cover

Sunday-Ashok

Anew years anxiety-Ashok

My baby just cares for me-Nina Simone cover with Jools holland

My best dress-Unreleased

I don’t wanna know-Mario Winans cover

I don’t care-Icona pop cover with dev hynes

decadence-Ashok

GET lucky/standing in the way of control-Daft punk/gossip cover

Groove is in the heart-DEE LITE cover

Slow tune-Ashok

Happy slap-Ashok

Under the thumb-ashok

Somethings gotta hold on me-Etta james cover

Girl with one eye (Bayou percusiion version)-Lungs deluxe

Girl with one eye demo

Delilah demo-RSD B-sdie

Back to black-Amy winehouse cover

Heard it through the grapevine-Marvin Gaye cover

Hey Girl-Lady Gaga collab

Donkey Kosh-unreleased

My boy builds coffins demo

Bird song accapella longer version

Halloween-Florrible and miserabella

Small hands-floribble and miserabella

Only love can break your heart-RSD Neil young cover

Little donkey-Video for floribble an dmiserabella

Throwing bricks-Floribble and miserabella

The grouch-greenday cover with DEV

Nice guys finish last-greenday cove rteam perfect

The rat-walkmen cover

When in disgrace with fortune and men eyes-Shakespeare sonnet reading with rufus wainwright

I love you all the Time-Eagles of death metal cover for Bataclan massacre surviviors

Aliens exist-Blink 182 cover team perfect

The chain-Fleetwood mac cover

Going down-Bruce springsteen cover with Kid harpoon

Not Fade away-Buddy Holly cover for compilation album

Oh darling!-beatles cover

All the time-Greenday team perfect cover

Don’t tell me-I’m not calling you a liar demo

Swimming demo

Swimming final version-Itunes UK exclusive

Hitchin a ride-Greenday team perfect cover

Are you hurting the one you love-rabbit heart single Bside

Tear out my tongue-Unreleased

Love hurts-neil young cover with neil young

redundant-Team perfect greenday cover

Scattered-Greenday team perfect

Hospital beds-Cold war kids cover

Part of your world-Little mermaid cover

Halo-beyonce cover

Stay with me-Sam smith cover

If I had a heart-fever ray cover

AAB-Ashok

Lean from the middle-ASHOK

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Geri gigolo-ashok

Stand by me-Cover for Final Fantasy XV

I will be-Final Fantasy XV OST

I’m not calling you a lair-Dragon Age 2 version

I come apart-A$AP Rocky collab

Walking on broken glass-Annie lennox cover

Wild season-Bank and steelz collab

Midnight-Cosmo (Felix white EP)

Radix-ashok

Silver bells-Fleetwood mac cover

Sweet nothing-Calvin harris collab

Fireworks-sings with Drake

Take care-Rihanna cover

Where are u now-Justin beiber cover

Youve got the love-The XX live remix collab

Times like these-Foo fighters cover

Spectrum-Avcii version

Since you been gone-Kelly clarkson cover

Wild wild life-Talking heads cover

Electric feel-MGMT cover (poor quality)

Throwing bricks studio version

Dog days are over-Arcade fire collab version

You got the dirtee love-Dizzee rascal collab

An offering-Rabbit heart demo on lungs special edition boxset

THink-aretha franklin cover

Gimme shelter-live collab with rolling stones

Southern man-Neil young cover/live collab

Heavy in your arms-Twilight eclipse OST

Spectrum (say my name)-Calvin harris remix and video

Hurricane drunk-Scrapped single version with video

Paper massacre-Scrapped song snippet extended

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Platypus I hate you-greenday cover team perfect

Maps-yeah yeah yeah cover (shocking quality sadly)

Rebel rebel-David bowie (poor quality and little footage again)

Don’t let go-en vogue cover

Borderline-madonna cover (messing in her room)

Suspicious minds-Elvis cover with Glasvegas

Jackson-Johnny cash cover with Josh Homme

Try a little tenderness-Otis redding cover

Dog days are over demo-Lungs deluxe

Ye olde hope-Unreleased

Hardest of hearts-Lungs deluxe

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Landscape demo-Ceremonials deluxe

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Ghosts-I’m not calling you a liar demo- lungs deluxe UK

Falling-Lungs deluxe

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Never let me go (reworked with Blood orange)

Toothpaste kisses-Live collab with the Maccabees

Still life-Live collab with The Horrors (Good quality)

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The bachelor-Patrick wolf live collab

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If I rise-Dido cover (stand in for the Oscars)

Wild Horses-rolling stones collab live (not great quality)

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#florence and the machine #fatmclassic #may have missed things #Florence Welch

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incarnateirony · 6 years

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To confused Supernatural fraaands joining pillowfort

Making a “how not to get lost” tutorial. I know a new social platform can be really intimidating, and I'm getting a lot of people flocking in from tumblr, sending DMs asking questions -- and no, that's not a sign to stop, I just recognize there's a lot of questions I can give you a masterpost to share to your confused friends!

Included is: how and where to find people and content, maximize your reach and impact, how to actually use the interface to its best capacity, what bugs to expect, how to talk to the staff and suggest new features, dos, donts, and how-tos.

Pillowfort tutorials and stuff exist, and I'll link those in a bit, but I can not emphasize enough how important it is to find the right communities for you as a base line to start. So, have a list of the biggest Supernatural communities and a few not-huge-ones that may still tickle certain fancies.

Supernatural: show, cast, and ship positive

Destiel: Take a wild guess what the comm is for

ProfoundNet: The PB/Destiel server related, I dunno how much they upkeep it at a glance but everybody seems to stay in touch.

SupernaturalArtsAndFics - All ships, all cast, don’t be a dick is the rule there.

DeanWinchesterIsBisexual

And lo, though I hate promoting it I will be fair, there’s The_Wincest_Community and just “Wincest” - the members and content seems pretty identical.

There’s an SPN NSFW Art group too -

Castiel fangroup

SPN Multishippers group

SPN Reverse bang

SPN Fanart,

Destiel Fan Favorites Survey Community

Cockles

After here, groups keep getting smaller and are all like… 30 people or less, I’m stopping centralized listing at the 30-mark. And right now, small groups still have a chance to boom once more people migrate across. But this is where you can start to find MOST of your people at.

You can search the community feature for smaller, related communities. Hell, there’s a Drowley community with 7 members right now. A Sabriel , a Sastiel. Etc. There’s a bunch of fractal J2 hat groups that have like 3-10 people, one has like 20. Any time I try to search J2M I’m getting a nightmare deluge of unrelated results and freeze when I click to page 2 to find something relevant. The Team Free Will group looks young and may end up redundant on a feed, only time will tell. Actor based groups seem… smaller. There’s a J2 Fanart group, but not one for them independently. 17 members. There’s a misha group called Mishapocalypse . So that’s still needing to get built up over there all-around.

For what it’s worth, I tried to paste a few together:

Right now, Supernatural Meta has 19 members. You don't have to be a meta author to join.

Annnnd I just put together a “The Brothers - Sam and Dean”place to enjoy non-shippy talk, content and conversation about the brothers. Just forage up the rules and roll.

And I have a Bobo Appreciation club I just launched but the site is in lag-mode and I don’t have the will to find the link.

Disclaimer: I’m just going with the biggest groups I’ve seen. I have not personally investigated all of these. I can’t say I’m necessarily endorsing all of these as awesome places or whatever, but it’s a place to START on a new platform. And before I get a concern troll asking why I linked a Wincest group, whether we like it or not, Wincest is here. It’s not the biggest ship, it’s not the cleanest ship, it’s not the - whatever. I don’t agree with it, most of my followers don’t agree with it, but lots of fans are multishippers, are scattered abroad, and frankly… now is not the time to be separated bitching over our differences.

Now a short bit about what communities are GOOD FOR and why I endorse them so much.

See, when you join a community, you get subscribed to all posts going through that community, whether you follow the individual or not. If you fear a community will give content you don't want to see, blacklist the tag on the sidebar under Filters & Blacklist and, if someone just utterly fails to tag their trash you don't want to see, there's always the block function. If a community has more bad than good for you, maybe try to find another, or make your own. There's lots.

But that said, it helps us find each other and content while this platform is young. If you post, say, to the Supernatural group, several hundred people get your post blasted across their feed, presuming you aren't using a tag they blacklisted. It keeps feeds active and keeps us from climbing into holes we lose information in. And, frankly, gives even the smallest account a chance to be seen by the world.

Okay cool, you've found a few communities, there's posts on your feed, you know where to start chattering and finding people, so how does this work past THAT?

Well, first there's a few realistic messages from early beta users and devs about the platform worth reading.

A sort-of masterpost of tutorials and how-tos.

Where to find the beta community, make a wishlist of features to suggest to the devs, introduce yourself, find known issues, contact the staff, history, find other base cornerstone communities outside of fandom, tips, how-tos, you name it. REALLY USEFUL POST. MUST READ.

Realistic expectations for the client in beta.

How to jerry rig it to work as a mobile app with notifications.

In the area of visuals, if you're tired of the blue ... ocean that surrounds us while they refine their visual experiences, if you're on desktop, I made a series of SPN skins. Follow the instructions to install the skin of choice.

Sam Winchester - Vivid; Warm tones, mostly red

Rowena; Dark, black, violet, red.

Team Free Will - Dark; amber green blue slate

Sam & Dean - Earth tones, medium theme

Dean & Cas 1 - vivid; bright, blue/green

Dean & Cas 2 - dark, blue/green, slate, transparent side bar, feather head navbar.

The second Dean & Cas one is the most extensive. The first were quick generated slap-overs to get rid of the most persistent blinding elements, D&C2 I took it a few steps further. It’s lightly responsive with glows on link hovers, more image overlays tucked around quietly, wider use of gradients and color filled posts to match the theme, which the others don’t have. In time I’m going to see if I can start styling the divs themselves such as changing shape/align. Pretty sure I can. I’m weathered in the fires of RPH profile editing to make CSS do ridic stuff.

And yes, I take requests. I do it for free, right now at least. It’ll probably go obsolete. I don’t have a huge number of requests. So why not?

Keep in mind, there's some differences between pillowfort and tumblr, which most people are migrating from. Personally, I consider these HUGE improvements and steps forward once this place gets bigger. So let's do a breakdown, in complement to some of the resources I linked above.

So what makes Pillowfort so fucking special?

Okay, so check it out. On tumblr, we’re used to reblogging shit into the depths of the internet. As Pillowfort grows it, too, has that capability with some differences. The boldest difference is that when you reblog, your opinion doesn’t get attached to the end of the post. It just reblogs the base post. Some people initially complained and thought that was the loss of a feature but came to realize it’s a blessing.

You see, that means someone can’t kidnap your post with a shitty opinion to reblog it to their friends with a shitty opinion that all attach their heckling shitty opinions. Like, let’s say it’s someone that’s Destiel fandom reading this. Ever had an anti shit reblog your post and it run wild? Well, now, if they try to reblog it, all they reblog is… your Destiel post. Thanks for that.

So how do we actually say what we need to?

Well, fam, it incorporated elements from LJ/DW, in having threaded replies. Multiple threads if so needed. The threaded replies are capable of housing just about anything an OP has. So a blog post has, alongside Like/Reblog notifications, comments. Open the post, read the comments, start an actual conversation with some merit. Did some douchebag come to spam your comments since they can’t reblog? No problem, delete their shitty comments and block them, problem solved.

But it doesn’t end there.

Double back to the stuff about communities I bragged up, above. Notice what all that gives you. Realize you can blog into/out of/across different communities.

When you make your own communities you can have internal discussions or blog in/out posts, you can set rules, promote moderators, remove or ban problem users, and generally control the flow of your community to keep out shitlords. But, if for example, you subscribed to a community that turns out to be secretly run BY a shitlord because, IDK, maybe they don’t like that you think Sam is bi or something, most of these communities are large and blog in/out/engageable enough that you won’t lose your contacts, you WILL find your people over time, and you won’t be completely choked off to a singular abyss.

So the base beat is

PF treats every single post like any root post on an LJ/DW comm, but is able to be reblogged from/to communities or your own blog page as freely as tumblr. PF takes the best concepts of current and previous fandom platforms in its base application and lays a groundwork that literally all of us can prosper on if it survives and continues.

“I kinda like PF but it doesn’t have X feature-”

Okay look, PF is a smolbabe, like I said. It’s in beta. The thing is, they’re adding things every day. They have a dev list like 2 pages long for goals and things are getting crossed off and added like, biweekly. It might already be on their list to add. And if it’s not, guess what?

The staff actually give a shit and react to questions and concerns. There’s entire beta groups to talk about features with bugs, and/or features that should be added or adjusted. There’s a comm to talk directly to the staff about things. They're linked above in this post, and you can find them, leave what you want to see modified or added... boom! Help make this platform WHAT YOU WANT IT TO BE.

A small, young platform needs people willing to be out there saying what would improve the experience. You’re not just fandom pioneers, you’re social media pioneers if you so choose to be. It’s not mandatory. You can just fan in your space how you want. Or you can go to the beta groups and staff groups and tell them what you think would improve the experience. Keep in mind, tumblr didn't start with all the bells and whistles it ended up with. It didn't start with a bazillion users. But some people put their toes in the water while others jumped in, and others stayed back for years until all their friends changed pools.

Hopefully this answers most questions, concerns, and wants for people tripping into Pillowfort from the fandoms I attend right now. If anything still confuses you -- don't be shy about making USE of the powerful differences. Pop open this post, leave a comment, hold a conversation and I'll help how I can.

#supernatural #tumblr exodus #pillowfort

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