#shangri

[sneakupandhitya]

shangri during Adventers With Gram volume 2

[paper-mario-wiki]

Shangri-La Frontier mid-season review

This is by far the best fake video game I've ever seen written in fiction.

Most MMO-centric isekai stories have trouble with providing accurate and realistic depictions of the complexities and minutia that give MMOs the allure they have. I've seen so much handwavey bullshit tacked onto fake-games that introduce unrealistically overlooked mechanics for reasons like giving the protag immense power just because they're the protag and the story is about them. A good example of this is another MMO Isekai airing this season, "A Playthrough of a Certain Dude's VRMMO Life", wherein the main character becomes extremely rich, powerful, and famous by episode 2 because he stumbled into a stealth archer playstyle, a build which apparently no human in that universe had ever conceived of before, and then making a fortune by selling basic potions to everyone after NPCs stopped selling them (another thing he was uniquely able to do because not a single other player had the forethought to spec into alchemy). These lesser, dime-a-dozen isekai add up to be boring fantasy strories with gaming elements clumsily put in so that the author can demonstrate how powerful the world's inhabitants are by showing their stat allocation screen instead of, say, explaining anything about what they do that's so uniquely powerful and how they figured it out. Ya know, stuff you'd hope to hear about from any competent story.

Shangri-La Frontier is a breath of fresh air for anyone who, like me, is sick of authors ignoring the things that actually make video games compelling in service of creating a stock-standard narratives in fantasy worlds because it allows them to get away with bullshit. I've always found it very convenient that many isekai narratives indulge in things like chattel slavery, because it's societally normal enough for the protag to purchase a beautiful, vulnerable girl to add to his harem (dont worry, she is always inexplicably in love with him no matter what because he's SUCH a kind master). And it never really seems to go anywhere. Because the Video Game Isekai, while an interesting premise in theory, is more often than not used exclusively as a means to simplify the structure of a world's power scaling to abide by an arbitrary set of omnipresent universal rules (e.g. what people who have never cared to look into game development think of video games). This anime, by comparison, is VERY clearly authored by someone who plays a LOT of games.

Every piece of logic used to drive the plot forward, so far, is congruent to a real-world example of video game conventions, and I'm not just talking about levelling up and selling monster parts. Story elements that I've rarely (if ever) seen explored in other isekai are ever-present and genuinely clever and amusingly introduced. My favorite example of this so far has been the way the protagonist has been able to go head to head with so many overlevelled foes in the first 9 episodes. The story of course makes note of how good of a gamer Sanraku (our hero) is, but much like in real life games, being super duper good at dodging attacks doesn't really make up for a 70 level gap in items and learned skills. For that reason, he gets his ass whooped more often than he actually outsmarts others (so far he hasn't beaten a single player in pvp). So how is he getting out of these situations without dying so frequently? Simple: he got access to a later area too early relative to his level (sequence break) and got access to a high level follower NPC that's been carrying him. This is something he acknowledges directly several times, specifically using words like "Emul has been hard-carrying me for a while." This, to me, is extraordinarily meaningful. That's something you can exploit in Skyrim, man. That's REALISTIC CHEESE STRATS. The excitement and wonder I find in this show doesn't come from watching the protag do something unexpected, but by watching him do something that I would think to do.

This knowledge the author has demonstrated regarding modern gaming culture extends further into the actual realistic nature of game design and community. The story exists in a reality where full-dive VRMMOs are the be-all-end-all of gaming, and given the prohibitively expensive nature of developing and designing expansive, immersive worlds, most games are pretty shit. It's been hinted at so far that this is due to a monopolistic megacorp which is one of the only entities rich and powerful enough to make a good game (the game in question being the one that shares the title of the anime), but so far the strife of the characters have been pretty centralized to the happenings of the game world and its politics. By the way, lets talk about the game world's player base politics, which I'm also quite pleased with. It exists in the form of guilds and clans who struggle for power not by participating in seemingly random pvp with other powerful players to see who is the most epic and badass warrior (again, like many contemporary isekai typically opt for), but by gaining actual realistic support from a fictional playerbase with realistic desires and playstyles. Some guilds are interested in lore, some gather for alliance and boss raids, some for things like animal husbandry, and (naturally) at least one is dedicated to trolling and PKing. Each of these factions, through the very little that we've seen of them so far, communicate on forums and only know as much as is reasonable for them to know. The only reason they give a shit about the protagonist at all is because he gained access to a high-level unique scenario quest that they want information on how to access, and the only reason word of that got out in the first place was because someone posted a screenshot of him with a unique NPC onto a forum, asking about it as "where can i find this pet summon, its super cute!" That's real. That's video games, baby.

I like this show a lot so far. I like that it cares about video games, but I also like its writing. I like the main character and how hes less of an ultra badass super cool guy, and more of an earnest challenge-run lets player. Like, a lot of his dialogue straight up sounds strikingly similar to Japanese youtubers. And he's naturally always quick to point out inconsistencies in the game world's logic. I ALSO really like his community of pals from a janky old fighting game, and I ADORE the girl from his school who has a crush on him and also just so happens to be an exceptionally high level player from a top clan, and how she had to spend 9 episodes working up the courage to send him a friend request. I love that so, so much, dude.

I highly recommend this show if you're into a single thing I've mentioned. The animation is great. The world is beautiful. The character design is immaculate. And I'm looking forward to watching it continue.

[carnevol]

He grew up with no-one to love He grew up on the sidewalk He grew up running free

For @avonne-writes

[brucebocchi]

[lovebtwnboys]

Source: shangri la no tori

[jareckiworld]

Franciszek Ledóchowski — Shangri-La (acrylic on canvas, 2022)

[animalb0y]

Stevie Nicks, 1981.

[buffetlicious]

This Shangri-La Hotel’s (香格里拉酒店) Mooncake Selection Gift Box comes with three pieces each of 50-year Aged Mandarin Peel, Rose and Red Bean Paste, 50-year Aged Mandarin Peel, Yuzu and Red Bean Paste and 50-year Aged Mandarin Peel, Osmanthus and Red Bean Paste mooncakes.

Choose four mooncakes from either Reduced Sugar White Lotus Seed Paste with Single or Double Yolks or Mixed Nuts with Chicken Ham and take them home in this red round container which double as a jewellery box.

Take your pick from Goodwood Park Hotel (良木园酒店) range of baked and snowskin mooncakes. The Snowskin Combo is a gift-worthy choice set of fruity mooncakes adorned in soft pastel hues, containing one piece each of the new Kumquat Melon with Macadamia, Mango with Pomelo, Cempedak and D24 Durian. Or you can opt for their White Lotus Seed Paste baked mooncakes with Single, Double or Four Yolks.

Selected images courtesy of Shangri-La Hotel and Goodwood Park Hotel.

[musickickztoo]

RIP Mary Weiss 

December 28, 1948 – January 19, 2024

[sneakupandhitya]

[batteredshoes]

Farewell, Mary

[sowhatifiliveinfukuoka]

The Shangri-Las (1965)

[stevienickswelshwitch]

[beeftony]

Shangri-La Frontier seems like a direct response to every annoying VR MMO trope of the last 10 years and goes out of its way to subvert them.

Invincible overpowered protagonist? Dude beefs it all the time and only gets through most encounters through pure gamer skill.

Cheat skill that gives him an unfair edge? Only if you count years of playing broken games that gave him the skills of a professional playtester.

Build thought to be underpowered is actually OP? He’s a crit stacker who was forced into an agility build bc a debuff from a superboss made him unable to equip armor, and some bosses counter his build pretty significantly.

Party full of waifus? He tries to solo most of the early content, the one friend request he gets is from a girl he barely notices exists (and whose help he explicitly turns down), his bunny npc party member can’t keep up a human form for more than 5 minutes and he calls it out as trash game design, and his other two party members are a minmaxer and a player killer that he knows from other games.

“You die in the game you die in real life?” Respawns are established as a thing in the first episode and the real stakes involve finding and completing unique content that 30 million active players haven’t experienced.

This anime is everything Sword Art Online wishes it could be.

[labyrinthofstreams]

Jewish musicians of the 1960s

✡︎ Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941)

✡︎ Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein; May 2, 1946 – February 16, 2015)

✡︎ Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016)

✡︎ Barbra Streisand (born April 24, 1942)

✡︎ Marty Balin (born Martyn Jerel Buchwald; January 30, 1942 – September 27, 2018) and Jorma Kaukonen (born December 23, 1940) of Jefferson Airplane

✡︎ Robby Krieger (born January 8, 1946) of The Doors

✡︎ Paul Simon (born October 13, 1941) and Art Garfunkel (born November 5, 1941) of Simon & Garfunkel

✡︎ Phil Ochs (December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976)

✡︎ Cass Elliot (born Ellen Naomi Cohen; September 19, 1941 – July 29, 1974) of The Mamas & The Papas

✡︎ Mary (December 28, 1948 – January 19, 2024) and Elizabeth Weiss (born November 27, 1946) of The Shangri-Las

✡︎ Neil Diamond (born January 24, 1941)

✡︎ Janis Ian (born Janis Eddy Fink; April 7, 1951)

✡︎ Robbie Robertson (born Jaime Royal Robertson; July 5, 1943 – August 9, 2023) of The Band

✡︎ Gary Hirsh (March 9, 1940 – August 17, 2021), Barry Melton (born June 14, 1947), Joseph Allen "Country Joe" McDonald (born January 1, 1942), and David Cohen (born August 4, 1942) of Country Joe and the Fish

✡︎ Manfred Mann (born Manfred Sepse Lubowitz; October 21, 1940)

[goldduststevie]

Stevie on the set of the "Everyday" music video, photographed by director Dean Karr - 2001.