#so i was super into anything that looked at ways to overlay the mechanics of a videogame with Reality(tm)

[caffeled]

shaking like a rabid chihuahua in anticipation for the new sao movie bc it's takin things from the top but from the reboot/rewrite of the first novel where side characters get more development & kirito n asuna actually get more time together to get to know each other. for all the eugh that's in the original & that got added in the anime, there is So much good & So much potential in there & i was, alas, hooked on this shit from the 2nd episode of s1 so. im making it everyone else's problem.

[fostersffff]

Saw your post about the TTYD remake and I wanted to say that I totally resonate with your description of TTYD being a Papercraft-themed RPG with Super Mario elements. It's one of the reasons the game had never really interested me before…it always felt to me like they made a whole separate paper-themed RPG and then decided at the last minute to put Mario and co in there to increase sales, ha. Actually playing it for the first time via the remake hasn't really changed that opinion, either. At least Super Paper Mario goes full-tilt unapologetic about it being only vaguely Mario-flavored, which makes it endearing in its own way. Meanwhile TTYD is in this weird half-step area about it all.

Anyway, I was wondering about the line between SPM and Sticker Star that you'd alluded to! My assumption was that Sticker Star was an attempt to reset the involvement of the Mario elements back to Square 1 (and over-correcting to Square -1 in the process, somehow) while leaving the amount of RPG-flavoring basically as it was, but I was curious whether this idea was in line with what you were thinking 🙂

Honestly I probably should've clarified what I meant in the actual post, but I'd be happy to do it here:

In Paper Mario, the "paper" part of it was pretty strictly aesthetic. It's especially obvious when you look at how the game was marketed in Japan where it was called "Mario Story"; the "Paper" part was an admittedly charming bit of localization marketing, and to this day I think about how that Nintendo Power ad was maybe one of the greatest print ads of all time.

There is no tangible impact on gameplay (that I can recall) stemming from the fact that the game looks like a pop-up book. In terms of its story, it's also pretty safe in terms of Brand Integrity™ for Mario, even compared to Super Mario RPG: you must save Princess Peach from Bowser, most NPCs are standard Super Mario species with a fun accessory save for a handful of weirdos, all the places you go are totally in line with pre-existing environments in Mario games.

The Thousand-Year Door (tellingly called Paper Mario RPG in Japanese, rather than Mario Story 2) leaned into the paper aesthetic, resulting in the fact that everything was papercraft lending itself to mechanics: you get the curses that turn you into an airplane or boat or roll into a tube or turn sideways to slip through narrow cracks, and a ton of puzzles involve revealing that the obstacle in front of you is a piece of paper overlayed on top of the actual path. It also got a little weirder with the story: the hub is a pirate shanty town built on ancient ruins, you go to the WWE to fight Hulk Hogan and uncover Vince McMahon's sinister conspiracy, there's a murder mystery on a train, the main antagonists are a bizarrely futuristic army hunting for a treasure that is secretly An Ancient Evil. It's not at all a bad game, it's just a very different vibe than the first one.

Like you said, Super Paper Mario is where they got REALLY weird with it- so much so that maybe they would've been better off just making it an original IP if not for the loss of the branding. My post that referred to it as "papercraft" was innacurate, because I was just thinking about the perspective shifting gimmick, which isn't inherently papercraft-related. But the more important thing with Super Paper Mario is that it got Really Weird, but again: that's not a bad thing! I haven't played it in years but I pretty fondly remember SPM.

And then for whatever reason, around this time- late 2000's- Nintendo becomes INCREDIBLY brand conscious about Super Mario, basically to the extent that anything that is not identifiable as a Core Super Mario Element cannot exist. So the time comes for IntSys to make a new Paper Mario game, but they absolutely cannot have it be weird- no interdimensional megalomaniacs, no going to hell and heaven and fighting the usurper god, and for good measures, no existing Super Mario species with accessories, either.

At around the same time, the video game industry at large was kind of in a dark period for RPGs. There was still a lot of good stuff coming out, but the mainstream Western (i.e. The Biggest Market) opinion was that they were outdated and boring. So, IntSys, either by their own volition or at Nintendo's urging, needed to make a sequel to Super Paper Mario that couldn't be weird or have RPG elements from prior installments, which left them with the papercraft gimmicks they messed with in TTYD.

And that's really what Sticker Star felt like: it's just about the papercraft gimmick, which this time around was stickers. It's ostensibly an RPG because combat is turn based, but there's not really any reason to engage with it, because everything is based on your sticker inventory. The bosses are extremely obnoxious slogs unless you bring the correct item that instantly defeats them. Hell, even Origami King, which I did actually like, wasn't an RPG either; it was still turn based, but it had a lot of the same problems.

And Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam... M&L faired a little better in that it got to keep being an RPG, but the two games that came out during the same era as Sticker Star- Dream Team and Paper Jam- placed a much higher emphasis on the weird gimmicks. Like, Bowser's Inside Story's gimmick was "Bowser is a character you can play as!", Paper Jam's gimmick was "Paper Mario is here, which means we can have PAPERCRAFT TANK BATTLES and other Papercraft Gimmicks!"

[entropy-game-dev]

Alpha testing, v0.05a & patchnotes

This post is long long overdue, considering I’ve been working on the v0.06a build for about two weeks now, but nevertheless a v0.05a playtest did indeed happen!

The demo is getting surprisingly stable, and there were only a couple of actual crashes, localised to some custom move scripts I had not thoroughly tested. Apart from that, the issues were generally minor and did not impede play.

In fact, I’d say that the balance of the game is also getting tested now, and I am actually super surprised at how balanced things are already! Like, I have just been eyeballing numbers and looking at graphs/extrapolations up until now, and yet all the numbers are falling in line quite well. Not to jinx myself or anything, of course.

My friend, the way he plays the game, is so different to me too. He takes a ton more risks than I would, goes to hard areas, goes in DEEP, and doesn’t run from battles where it appears that he’s quite outmatched. And yet despite all of this, he’s managed to come out on top without resorting to the cheat/testing controls I’ve added (like an instant back-to-the-ship button or my debug attack that costs nothing and does massive damage). So, I’m overall impressed by how much better he is at managing and assessing risk in the game compared to me!

v0.05a to v0.06a is going to be the biggest patch yet - I have a ton more changes than usual, and most of these are new features/polish rather than bug fixes, which I’m very happy with. Of course, at some point, the demo will need to be released into the wild, and I’m very much getting to a stage where I am happy with doing so. It’s one thing to be on a stream with a friend while the game crashes, but for all of you guys, I’d like the demo to be polished to a certain standard!

Keep reading below for the a0.05a patchnotes...

Features:

Press the V key to go back to the ship in case of a softlock!

Increased save backups from 9 to 10!

The map now has an icon legend!

Added version info to sentry.io script

The status log in battle now displays when status effects were applied

The equipment panel now highlights positive and negative changes with colour!

Added confirm popup for navigator with a message saying you do/don't have enough fuel to travel there!

AI now considers HP costs in their moves (lower hp = more likely to use HP moves)

X All enemies now have a low chance to drop some fuel items

X Recruiting cores now makes their level equal to (astro_level + (core_tier-1)*10)/2 +- random(core_tier)

Defending now restores energy when at low energy

Added a custom cursor!

Added tooltips for the various icons in the game!

Polish:

Mechanical prayer animation slightly reduced

Made buttons not spam a sound effect when holding the mouse down

Explosion noises slowly fade out if the explosion sequence is somehow prolonged

The battle menu now closes upon confirming each unit's turn

The stairs icons on the maps have changed slightly for clarity

Addded F1 control reminder for the help overlay to the controls menu

Added message signialling that relativistic travel is now available

Talking message boxes now overlap better

Exploding enemies now take their turn next instantly

Item menu disabled for now

Damage numbers now all appear at once

Stat panels when moving characters don't overlap now

X Only display the mine/gather point message when gathering 1 or more item

Disabled debug coordinates appearing on minimap during mouseover

Shifted the mouse stat panel down to account for the new tooltips

Unit's pictures removed from the stat panel in the recruit screen

The red battle grid is now animated

Stat panel doesn't display enemy sprites in recruit menu now

Changed I/J menu tutorial text to F/R

Changed Wiring item to Wires

Owned scrap now shows next to scrap cost of machine

Removed decimals on scrap cost for machines

Item stat panel now shows -0X instead of --X

Bitflip text is now shortened to fit into the text box

Feature labels now disappear completely when changing floors/teleporting

Floor advancement messages when stepping on a trap are now given in the right order

Corrected text when choosing to go back a floor using a wall machine

Bugs:

Random moves now hit a different cell/row/column per-hit as intended

Removed debug controls that allow you to randomise the element grid

Fuel now converts properly

Enemy appearance when moved to a non-preferential row is now fixed, and the HP moves with it

Tutorial messages when not exploring now show

Fixed battle menu becoming unresponsive after selecting and then getting out of target menu

Upstairs sprite now appears properly

Feature nameplate doesn't disappear suddenly now

Cooldowns now apply for the player when using moves

X Enemy AI row/column targeting on area attacks now has the same restrictions as the player, preventing weird targeting for AOE abilities like Encrypt

Emergency oxygen energy drain stops trying to drain energy/hp when at 0

X Move text appearing at the top and bottom of the window is now removed when you finish the battle (unlike before with self-destruct)

Unsure why but overcharging an enemy used to softlock the game, and now it doesn't

Conducting attacks now copies all associated attack data to prevent crashes in attack scripts (like explosive spread)

Core inventory now properly depth sorted behind the unit inspect window

Debug key (B) now disabled from generating game over fx on title screen

[equinoxts2]

I can't take this any more. I'm desperate to play TS2, but I'd have to redo my entire Downloads folder in order to play the way I want to. And with 269 gigabytes of hoarded content, not counting the unsorted stuff from my last few download sprees, picking from that is practically impossible and a major slog. I am losing motivation, but I'm very dissatisfied with Kulo Sena as is.

So here I am, sharing my thoughts on what I'd like in my game, because I need to get it off my chest and see what my followers think of it all...

Things I want to use/have: - Face markings that aren't standard makeup. I love them, but they don't get used much in the current Kulo Sena, which kind of frustrates me. - Cute, quirky, patterny furniture and wall coverings; cabin-like houses on the outside, but a riot of colour inside. - Non-human genetics exclusively. Lots of accessories, overlays and genetics for making my sims look more like fantasy species. It is so hard to think outside the "everyone's neurotypical" box when there are humans, even when I'm not neurotypical (or, in my mind, human) myself. - More bright and patterned clothing. For everyday wear, I want to use more of the stuff designed for modern/ish games. However, I would prefer a more Victorian style of underwear/swimwear, because I am aroace and exposed belly buttons make me sneeze. - Maxis gardening. I prefer the challenge and nurturing factor of it to fishing, hunting and gathering, and I'm also a squeamish vegetarian who doesn't want to watch sims spearing animals regularly. - Lots of untamed nature all about, but less of a prehistoric feel. I want to get more of a small rural village vibe going. - I want to retain the lore I developed for the Senaverse, and the sims I've raised and/or created in it. I also want to translate all the Nuidya names my sims have into English - for example, Kuvamatazyulo would become Phoenix Reflected in Water. I like coming up with meanings, but not translating them into my conlang as such. - No-jealousy mods, mods for multiple committed partnerships, and also mods that disable autonomous romantic interactions. I want it to move a lot slower, with romance developing from a strong friendship.

Things I don't want to use: - "Ordinary" makeup, the kind you'd see here and now. Lipstick in particular, because for reasons I still can't put my finger on, I kind of find them vulgar. - Bodyshapes. I love the idea, but they seriously limit my clothing choices, and most of them seem to be designed with ACR fantasies in mind. That just squicks me out. - Height mod. It's one more thing to have to track between rebuilds, and I hate having to keep things consistent between rebuilds even with just personality and aspiration. Also, the visual weirdness with height differences in TS2 bugs me. - Traits. Sims in TS2 had personality long before these were a thing, and again, it's too much to track between rebuilds. Also, kind of restrictive. - Anything relating to facial features - face shaper makeup, sliders, genetic infant faces? Nope. I'm face blind, why add things to my game that slow it down when I can't tell the difference? Besides, I despise the whole thing about "pretty babies" in the Sims community - the only thing pretty about it for me is that it's pretty triggering. - ACR. Way too shallow, moves too fast, and my aroace sensibilities can only take so much woohoo in the game. Also, I've modded away the turn-on/off attraction modifiers, because they're beyond vapid too. - Technology. Anything electric or mechanical, though I might be able to make a few exceptions for magical equivalents. - Anything with either English or Simlish text on it. Both break immersion for me, and I have no idea why. - Mods that limit gameplay rather than enhance it, such as requiring ingredients to craft, university degrees to advance in certain careers, or things like the religion mod that restrict sims' behaviour. - Pastel goth and grunge style anything. They just leave me cold. - Supernatural lifestate "cures" - squick me out.

And... ramble over. Quin out! *goes back to sifting through downloads*

[deleteddewewted]

Hey, I just read your Kurogiri omega and was wondering if you could do a part 2, but with Kurogiri remembering his time in the AU when he was Obroro and how he met the alpha reader until the day of his "likely" death?!

I've been trying to find an excuse to continue that, so thank you for being that excuse, anon!

Omega! Kurogiri Part 2

🚨spoilers🚨

Kurogiri x M! Reader

Omega! Kurogiri Headcanons Part 1

TW: Angst, Death, Unhealthy Coping Mechanism

You couldn’t tell him he was your mate. It would place you and him in danger.

You kept going to Tartarus to visit him but decreased the frequency of them.

Kurogiri did not take this lightly.

You were leaving him again.

You both had built something meaningful and you were leaving.

Kurogiri laid down on the bed he was given and stared blankly ahead of him.

The world became dimmer as the time passed. Eventually his eyes closed and he drifted away to the lovely abyss of sleep.

“Shirakumo!” The blue mist haired boy turned around and spotted his two friends call out to him.

Yamada, the loud blond, was dragging the dark hair Aizawa with him. He looked eager to tell him something.

“Hey man! Uh, something going?” He asked. Yamada was way to energetic for it to be his usual and Aizawa didn’t look all that annoyed either.

“You won’t believe it man! One of our classmates is super hot!” Yamadas face held a small blush to it while Aizawa turned his head around to ignore them.

He was also blushing.

Shirakumo laughed at the two and wrapped his arm around Aizawa's neck.

"Oh really? Tell me more." He teased.

Yamada gave him an entire speech about how their classmate was hot as fuck and how the guys name was really pretty. He was fanboying over someone he barely knew.

Shirakumo thought it was cute how affected Yamada was by the new student so he couldn't wait to meet him.

When he did meet you, his inner omega purred.

Everything about you was perfect and beautiful to him.

He wanted to get to know you better.

Thats what allowed a friendship to bloom between you both.

He smiled a lot throughout the day but it became brighter when you would walk into the room.

His omega purred at him, begging him to get closer to you so he could take your scent in. Look at your beautiful eyes and your beautiful face.

You would catch him staring at you, the lingering trail of smokey blue hair giving him away every time.

You also liked him, a lot actually.

Easy on the eyes but with a big personality.

Welcoming, comforting, everything you would ever want in a significant other.

You found it endearing how he took the initiative to keep Aizawa away from rude and mean people.

You could also see how your guys friend, Yamada, would falter. His smile dropping for a moment when he thought no one was watching.

That always happened when Aizawa and Shirakumo were together.

You were all young, so it didn't matter who was dating who or what the future would hold. The now was more important then anything else.

Shirakumo contemplated what he could do to court you.

He jumped to the conclusion of courting instead of asking you if you were wanting to try a relationship with anyone.

He told Aizawa and the black haired boy just looked at him. His eyes saying something that his mouth wouldn't.

Didn't matter how well Shirakumo knew him, he didn't know how to read his eyes.

"Should i get him a bouquet? Maybe his favorite foods? Ah, i dont know what to do! Aizawa help me!" Aizawa recommended he just asked you out.

"You're so not romantic, but i still love you." He missed how much his words affected Aizawa. The black haired boys face was tinted red, his neck taking most of the blush he couldn't show on his cheeks.

Shirakumo made up every possible scenario inside of his own head and instead asked Yamada for some help.

"Yo! You should totally make a dramatic confession!" Shirakumo and Yamada planned everything out.

It did not go well.

You made it clear to him that you weren't looking for anything at the moment and that you just wanted to be friends with him.

Shirakumo and his omega became upset. His spring like scent became muddled, dirty water and a harsh smell overlaying itslef in a thick blanket.

His personality didn't change around you, he was still smiles and laughter.

When class would finish he would walk with Aizawa back to the train station and vent about everything you did that day.

"He looked so handsome eating that pudding and the way he leaned on his arm. So hot." Shirakumo sighed.

Aizawa felt very conflicted. He was happy for his friend but something else made itself present when he spoke about being with you.

Shirakumos pinning wouldn't stop and it finally got to a point were he would openly flirt with you.

You didn't mind it, in reality, you were as much of a flirt back.

This game between the two of you played out with him complementing you with big charades.

You would be more tactile. Occasionally touching his arms or running your hands threw his smoke hair.

It was pleasant. His hair parting into tendrils and at times having a mind of its own.

It would wrap itself around your wrist preventing you from removing your hand.

Enough time had passed that you felt like pursuing something more with him.

Something more romantic.

Shirakumo dragged you to the roof top one day.

All he said was that it was important.

"I like you, a lot. You're just so...handsome and pretty and beautiful and everything else thats good really." He stopped and began to walk around the roof top of the school.

"My omega is going nuts with your scent and it honestly drives me crazy too." Shirakumo danced around you.

"If you only knew how much i want to hold you and kiss you every time you help Aizawa out. That one time you helped that omega by fighting those meat heads off of them. Purring for you, baby!" Shirakumo got close to the roofs edge.

"Everything about you makes me and my omega want you. I-" Shirakumo slipped from the edge and fell.

You ran to catch him, maybe you could save him.

Shirakumo would most likely die, you wouldn't get there on time to catch him.

Your heart pulled with dread and dropped when you heard him scream.

Then, a peak of mist made itself seen from the edge of the roof.

“Shirakumo!” You yelled at him as he floated above you.

He flew around in his cloud, circling around you laughing.

“Was that intentionally?” You asked once he got down from his cloud.

His face became red as he watched you look at him expectingly.

“Ah, yeah?” You laught at his response and pulled him towards you.

You ran your fingers threw his smoke like hair and cupped his cheek in your hand, thumb gently caressing his face.

“You know? You should really stick to just two word phrases. I don’t think you have the mental capacity or brain cells for anything more.” You teased.

He gave you a goofy smile while he practically melted into your touch.

You were heaven and safety for him.

His inner omega begging him to ask you to be his mate. To bond. To do everything with you.

To be yours and you be his alpha.

His mouth a body moved on their own. He couldn't stop himself from getting closer to you and wrapping his arms around you.

"I'm sorry,” He stared at your eyes and admired them more a moment, “but you’re to perfect to just put into two words.”

Shirakumo closed the gap between you two and kissed you.

Both you and him, and your secondary sexes, we’re overwhelmed and overjoyed.

It was a thrilling emotion that coursed through you. The giddiness of being able to say that this was someone you would like to invest all of your time on.

You both loved each other so much, nothing in that moment or the ones to come could ruin that.

Then in your second year, Aizawa brought you Shirakumos speaker.

It was battered and broken. Wet.

Destroyed.

Aizawa said nothing to you, the other alpha walked away from you without batting an eye or even acknowledging the blond beta running after him.

You felt your legs give way as you fell to the floor. Vision becoming blurry and warm streaks falling down your face.

“So what should we do? We both want to mate but we can’t risk our careers.” “Don’t worry about Y/n. You’re already my mate. My omega is telling me that you’ve already been accepted and naturally, I’m always glad to call you mine. Fuck the rules!” “Sure, whatever you say, my mate.”

The happy memories and the planned out future you both had with each other was now just a dream.

It was delusion you had set yourself up for.

Your mate was gone.

“So that’s who you are.” Kurogiri spoke into the empty cell. The dream having woken him up.

He turned to lay on his side and stared at the invisible cell door.

He didn’t attempt to fall back to sleep.

You laid awake in bed, face pressed into an old jacket that was clearly worn down.

It was faded in color and no longer had that signature scent you adored so much.

It no longer smelled like spring.

Or like fresh air.

It smelled like you and your laundry detergent.

Your mate was dead and you both never got the chance to make it official.

Would never have a family of your own. Never have your first anything together.

Never have another moment with each other.

He was gone and yet still here.

Your mate was a terrorist who found no issue in killing others.

“Goodnight…my omega. Sweet dreams, Oboro.” You drifted off to sleep once your eyes closed.

[depizan]

I was thinking about the post I reblogged about the loss of the Alliance in SWTOR, and some of my other disappointments with how faction is handled in the game, and how faction based MMOs in general tend to get stuck in this kind of "eternal conflict" mode. (Not that factionless MMOs don't get stuck in their own kind of weird "eternal conflict" mode, too. Look at Guild Wars 2 and the growing list of things that have tried to destroy Tyria.)

But there are stories that lend themselves to a faction model, and SWTOR does have - or does begin with - one of those. It's just that with no prospect of whatever conflict divides the factions ever being resolved, you have a weird permanent stalemate situation, kind of. The Sith Empire will never win, because that would make Republic players unhappy. The Galactic Republic will never win, because that would make Empire players unhappy. No actual solution to the conflict can ever be found because then it would be game over. (Also, no real faction shifting because how would you code that?)

Except... maybe none of that is true. There are games that have faction shifting of a kind coded in. Think of all the minor factions in World of Warcraft, some opposed to one another, some just independent. Sure, those faction shifts are mostly achieved with some kind of grind, but it does prove that mutable factions are codeable.

This might even solve the problem of the Smuggler and the Bounty Hunter being tied to specific factions when that leads to some very odd story stuff, particularly outside of each class story. It suggests a way to handle factional grouping and third faction classes without making those factions "better" because all flashpoints are available to them.

Here is Mac's theoretical redesign of SWTOR with a different handling of factions and playing into the story focus that is the game's best quality.

Republic and Empire each get three classes, Smuggler and Bounty Hunter are Underworld (a third, neutral to the others faction). Since the galaxy is supposed to be under a peace treaty - the Treaty of Coruscant - you design the game with flexible faction tagging and lean in hard to the Cold War set up.

You have degrees of faction, just like those minor factions in WoW. I'm going to borrow the middle part of WoW's faction set up for this. Theirs runs Hated - Hostile - Unfriendly - Neutral - Friendly - Honored - Revered - Exalted. We just need the middle chunk, from Hostile to Friendly. Hostile is typical enemy mob: bar is red, it will attack you on sight. Unfriendly is an orange bar, but will not fight you unless you attack. Neutral is a yellow bar, again, will not fight you unless you attack. Friendly is typical allied mob: bar is green, etc.

Imperial players can go to Coruscant, and Republic players to Dromund Kaas, but everything is Unfriendly to them, they can't buy anything (except maybe at the spaceport?), and there are no quests available to them. Underworld players start out one tick up at Neutral and have a few merchants and quests available. Ones that it makes sense would be available to random people. (This is to balance out Underworld space starting at Neutral to Pubs and Imps.) And, obviously, Pub space starts out Friendly to Pubs and Imps space Friendly to Imps. (Though I would be slightly tempted to have Korriban be neutral to the Agent class because, as a non-Force-Sensitive you don't really belong there.)

(As you can see, we're basically using a game mechanic to underline the state of galaxy. We can also set things so that people can't go fuck things up for their fellow players by coding it so that if you just go attack people on the opposite faction capitol, you get blipped to hostile and squashed like a bug.)

Now, we write the game like there is actually a Cold War happening. This means missions for Imps and Pubs that send people into "enemy" space (not, to start with the capital or Force User planets, though) where they have to accomplish their missions without attracting the attention of the other faction. We can take advantage of instancing to allow for diplomatic incidents, like thinking "well, they can't report I'm here if they're dead," without triggering the anti-trolling splat mobs. This is also where we introduce some side quests that give people the opportunity to work on becoming to Neutral with the opposite faction.

Smugglers and Bounty Hunters are off doing Underworld stuff, with some options to take quests that benefit the Republic or the Empire. (Giving them the chance to work on becoming Friendly with one or both factions.)

All class stories get written so that there are several potential outcomes. We're going to use the Agent story as a model here, and basically set it up so that everyone has a story line that ends with them still loyal to the faction they began with, now Underworld/Unallied, or loyal to the opposite faction. This gets paired with the ability for characters to keep doing things to make the other faction like them better and you're setting up defections or the decision to go neutral with mechanics and story.

You use the Cold War setting to ramp up general tension. Have more missions like that one on Republic Hoth where you can work with some Imperials. Or the times where a Sith Warrior can use Republic soldiers to their advantage. So the whole base game has this good overlay of people wanting peace and people wanting to go back to war (on all sides!). This lets you really flesh out the factions, and the good and bad people in them. Have a more positive sort of Gray Morality going on.

As far as Flashpoints go, you re-write The Black Talon/Esseles for proper Cold War subtlety. I think we want to use the intro flashpoints to give people a better idea of the kind of proxy conflict stuff, where you might be fighting what appear to be a third party (like pirates), but you get info (of the non provable kind) that they're working for the Empire/Republic. And maybe come up with some kind of mechanic where party members can get special communications based on faction. Like, the main (everybody) cut scenes for the Esseles talk about it being pirates that are attacking them, but the Jedi/Trooper characters get a quick comm call that the pirates are probably working for the Empire and after a particular person.

For all the shared flashpoints, you tweak them so they are truly shared. One queue for everyone, we still need to work out exactly how we're getting the different factions their special flavor bits, but there's more of that here. And maybe a kind of saboteur mechanic for things like what to do with the missiles on Cademimu, so that they can still be launched at a fleet for a DS option, but it's not in-character obvious that someone did it.

We can still have some Empire and Republic specific flashpoints, which we might allow Underworld characters who are Friendly with the right faction to do. (Or maybe not if we're keeping the ones we have. They've got a bit of a secret mission vibe. Maybe we add a fun treasure hunt flashpoint for the Underworld folks.)

The end of the base game becomes the Cold War going hot because of Revan (and let's say it's not the Republic at large backing him, but a smaller group within the Republic that's okay with his plan). Now we get proper fall out from someone wanting to commit mass murder, we get a good climax, and we can shift from writing eight class stories to three-ish main stories with class and faction related flavor bits. You'd have those fighting for the Republic (ex-Empire characters could get good flavor bits about fighting their old allies and some suspicion from their new ones - a suspicion ex-Underworld characters would also get), for the Empire (again, joined members get some good flavor bits), or who are with the Underworld now.

First expansion is the war, maybe with some of what we used to have in Chapter Three going on. I'm also kind of tempted to weave in some actual foreshadowing for Zakuul here. I'm not keen on Space Voldemort or the time skip, but other parts of those expansions seem worth trying to save. But maybe we have the player characters working with Lana and Theron like in the Revan expansion, but it's about hints that there's something bad coming instead.

Next expansion, Zakuul attacks, things go super to shit, Lana, Theron, some people from Zakuul and the player character(s) form the Alliance. Oooh, wait, lets go ahead and keep the Vitiate/Valkorian thing, and have killing the Emperor be the end of the first expansion (because he wants to eat the galaxy - he's gone mad, but the Empire as a whole won't acknowlege it and are following him off a cliff, the Republic isn't seeing him and the Empire as separate, even evil characters live in the galaxy, etc). Now, Zakuul invades because when you kill Vitiate, Valkorian keels over. Whoops.

(Zakuul is the backup plan. If he can't destroy the galaxy as Vitiate, here comes the uber-Empire! You just managed to off him, but the uber-Empire gets fired at the known galaxy anyway.)

Now we have one story going, with different flavors depending on the characters relation to the three old factions. Kind of like we do in the existing game. And we avoid bumping the player character up to a ridiculous level of authority by making them part of the leadership of the Alliance instead of the leader. Keep them more in line with the base game power level.

Not quite sure where we go from here, but basically you have this kind of flowing faction thing going through the game that meshes well with the story.

I don't know. Mostly I wanted to work out how you could do something more interesting with faction.

[digimon-digital-adventures]

Big Changes with V.14

So as I brought up in the pinned post, .14 is the current system in development for DDA and has added more changes in a single update than any other edition previously. Besides some general balance changes there’s been a lot of big updates which I’d like to go over here. This is by no means a comprehensive list, .14′s updates are just that big, but this will be me going over some of what I see are the biggest, most important, and most fun updates to the system.

Effect Changes

Effects now work differently than they did before. This is probably the biggest change to the core system and as such I want to talk about it upfront.

Now, when rolling for Positive Effects, the user rolls Accuracy and counts the Successes. Then the target(s) roll Health and count the Successes. For every number above the TN set by the Accuracy successes, add 1 to the duration of the buff.

Single-Target Positive Effects now automatically hit for 1 duration no matter what you roll for Accuracy/Health. Your friends no longer dodge your high-five buffs!

Multi-Target Positive Effects can still miss on a roll of 0 for Accuracy.

Melee tagged Positive Effects can target the user, allowing for self-buffing builds.

Positive Effects do not lower Dodge Pools anymore.

What does this mean? For one thing it means you want passable Accuracy but Accuracy is no longer the end-all-be-all of a support build because you don’t want it to be massively higher than your Ally’s Health stats. It also means being in Defensive Stance is the best way for you to buff in general, as opposed to Offensive Stance from before this update.

Negative Effects work effectively the same as before; roll Accuracy vs Dodge, count net successes for Duration. However, there are a lot of cool changes and new effects for debuffers to work with now. Be sure to check out the changes in the book. Personally I’m a huge fan of Lag and DOT and can’t wait to use them someday.

Tamer Orders

Tamer Orders are a spiritual successor to the old Tamer Qualities. When you hit a certain tier of power, you unlock the ability to use a Tamer Order. These are special types of things your Tamer can do and give amazing bonuses to your Digimon without relying on Charisma to Direct. These can range from applying a Taunt to an enemy, to healing your Digimon, to allowing  your Digimon to use your Fateful Intervention. There’s a whopping 15 Tamer Orders, so I can’t fit them all here. Be sure to check them out in the book.

Instinct/InForce

Too long has Weapon been the only way to build a Digimon. Instinct now stands out as a defensive alternative which buffs your Digimon’s Dodge, Health, and Movement. And later on you gain access to InForces; powerful mechanics you can now utilize to your advantage. Instinct cannot be taken with Weapon, so be sure to choose wisely what kind of build you want.

Twin Partners

There is now a system for having two Digimon at once! They progress differently than normal partners, and have their own special rules. However despite being much weaker early in the game they can be the most powerful Digimon by the time you reach endgame. They also have access to combination attacks by default, so be sure to check the rules out.

Signature Move Update

Signature Move is no longer just a way to apply Certain Strike and Armor Piercing (which have been changed by the way, check those out!). Now it’s a big attack with extra damage, but at a cost; you can’t use it until your third turn by default. This means the Quality is worth taking even if you don’t have Certain Strike and Armor Piercing on the move.

Naturewalk/Element Master/Domain Control

Naturewalk has been updated to a proper tree of Qualities. Naturewalks now can grant special effects and bonuses, like Naturewalk: Dark granting Darkvision or Naturewalk: Water granting waterbreathing. But now there’s more than just fluff reasons to take the Qualities; and it all ends with Domain Control. Domain Controls are powerful Qualities which last for a set period, but allow your Digimon to do even more cool things. Be sure to check the tree out in the handbook. Personally I’m the biggest fan of Shadow Vale, but there’s something for everyone in here.

Negative and Free Qualities

Something that never got fully implemented before: now you can take a small selection of negative Qualities in order to get a bit of DP back on your build. These can be incredibly fluffy, or ways to just add a bit of randomness to how you play.

Free Qualities are all neutral for benefits; each has a tied in downside and are mostly for fluff. However they can be excellent ways to make your build more fun to play with. Both Free and Negative Qualities require GM permission.

Stage Bonus/Limitations

Stage Bonus is now implemented as a mechanic, mostly as a way to create smaller and non-DP related bonuses for certain things, as well as to limit the purchase of certain Qualities such as Weapon, Instinct, Armor Piecing, Certain Strike, and the like. Rookies can no longer just take 2 ranks of Weapon and Armor Piercing to punch well above their level. This was a very welcome addition for balance.

Mode Change/Burst Mode

I fully admit when I picked up DDA, I wasn’t as versed in terms. As such I missed Super Ultimate/Ultra as a stage and made Burst Mode the final stage of the system.

This is no longer the case. Ultra/Super Ultimate are now the highest stages, and Burst Mode is the capstone of the Mode Change tree. It allows you to effectively re-build your Digimon for a high cost, and depending on your Tamer Build grants extra special effects, many of which are callbacks to .12, AKA Rocket Tag Party Edition ™. Two Weapons are back on the menu!

Stealth Build Update

Sneak Attack, Hide in Plain Sight, and Shade Cloak have always been somewhat undervalued, as the former is very all-or-nothing, however the Substitute, Glamor, and Illusionary Overlay have all been added to give this type of build some more love. As of writing this post it’s one of the more recent updates to the system, so I haven’t had the chance to play with it much, but I look forward to it a lot.

Combat Monster Update

Combat Monster has been sort-of nerfed, upfront it’s more limited in how big its bonus can get. However, it’s now a tree type Quality. You can either go down the old Berserker path, or you can take the Brave Heart path. Brave Heart allows Tanks to take a special Stance and get more bonuses, and it caps with One for All, which upon activation shares your Combat Monster bonus with all your nearby allies. This has made a very teamplay based Tank setup which has been very welcome in .14.

Quick Healer Update

Quick Healer has been updated as a line; Second Wind will allow your Digimon to heal themselves mid-combat, thus giving more reason to dip into the tree than just out of combat usage. Regenerator has also been adjusted, be sure to check it out.

Summoner Update

Summoners can now create much more specialized minions; ranging from one big one to smaller, scout-based minions. This creates amazing versatility to a previously fairly basic type of playstyle, and I encourage everyone to check it out.

Range Update

How far you can attack has been a big concern in previous editions. With .14 there is a hard defined limit for your Digimon’s range, instead of it just being a practical limit. This is adjusted based on your stage and Accuracy, be sure to look things up before blasting away. This has been an excellent way to stop people from just sitting back and using Ranged Strikers to win.

And More!

There is so much to go over with .14, and I’ve barely scraped the surface (another thing to check out for example is the Cross Counter Quality). It’s late while I’m typing this up, so I’m sorry if I’ve missed anything major, but I cannot go on enough about how much I love the changes to the system. If you haven’t picked up .14 yet, please do as soon as you can.

Coming Soon

There is also a Quick-start guide in the works, made to simplify things a bit for quick reference. The book is amazingly detailed but we’re doing our best to make it easy to look up what you need as well. Stay tuned for that update.

[ijustwanttobefree]

adam taurus, wasted potential.

content warnings & notes: abuse mention, stalking mention, rwby hate i guess, rwby critical, my steady descent into madness over this, please tell me if i’ve tagged this wrong.

the ‘black’ trailer was the least exciting of the rwby trailers for me. that’s not to say it was bad, just that the ‘red’, ‘white’ and ‘yellow’ trailers caught and held my attention better. what did catch my attention, however, was adam. specifically when he sliced through the spider drone. 

adam taurus; a villain on the red horizon.

i was around nine or ten when i first got interested in rwby and started watching and i wasn’t really interested in colour theory until this shot. the stark black foreground overlayed onto the bold red background with the white, shattered moon really caught my eye. this was adam’s first demonstration of his semblance—moonslice—and it’s a powerful one.

he immediately destroys the drone, slicing through metal with one slash and leaving the audience waiting for more and that’s what we get.

his power is expanded upon in volume three. for my explanation of this to work, i’m going to need to go through aura since i know a lot of people are confused about what it actually is. i was super confused about it until i watched those outtake, supplement videos and grasped the gist of it ( p.s. if your viewers need to consult supplementary content to understand one of the core mechanics of your show/magic system, you’ve done a poor job at worldbuilding. ). 

aura is essentially a magical shield that coats a person’s body. it is an external forcefield generated by a person’s soul and helps prevent grievous injury. for example, preventing your opponent from chopping off a limb. aura has other purposes that i won’t list because it’s not relevant to the discussion and it’s such a convoluted mess that i don’t want to remember or talk about.

so, yang has a soul, so she has an aura. and we are told that nothing can slice through aura, it’s the ultimate defense mechanism. so when adam broke that defense mechanism by slicing through yang’s aura and chopping off an arm, many were shocked, including me. i was happy that the writers gave the series genuine stakes ( stakes that i believe are lost now ) and excited for how adam would advance.

volume four was straight hype and build-up, adam was the looming figure in both blake and yang’s stories and i was hyped up for adam vs blake and yang. then, volume five came and made adam look like a straight joke. he gets defeated by a bunch of rag-tag island natives and gets clocked by blake. no fight scene, no genuine conflict or struggle, just the beginning of the end for adam’s character.

adam taurus: an abuser from the start?

so, volume six was the death of adam ( both literal and figurative. ), the writers reduce him to an abusive, obsessive ex who just needs to be done away with. what happened to the strong, powerful mentor for blake who turned megalomaniacal and ruthless? 

i’ve seen a lot of people contend with the argument that adam was abusive by saying that blake drew a doodle of adam at the start of season two and victims don’t doodle their abusers. i just have to say that, that’s not necessarily rock solid evidence. a lot of victims of abuse sadly develop stockholm syndrome or a love for their abusers and it doesn’t negate their abuse, but i also don’t get the people who scream ‘miles and kerry said it was obsessive and a stalker so he is’.

what? j.k. rowling said that dumbledore was gay and in a relationship with grindelwald and that hermione was black; despite there being no evidence in the text for the former and contradictory evidence for the latter. by the way, in case anyone wants to pull the ‘straight, white, homophobic, male’ card; hi, i am a pansexual, black female—make a good argument instead of resorting to categorising people.

just because an author says something doesn’t mean it’s gospel, especially when there’s no evidence to say so. and, for the people saying that adam has been obsessive since the trailers, where? he was a megalomaniac obsessed with increasing power and crushing the human majority in remnant, that does not translate to crazy, obsessive ex.

could adam have been abusive? absolutely. 

was he abusive? quite possibly.

was he obsessive? obsessed with power and taking back control from the humans, yes. 

obsessed with blake? hell no, the writers pulled that shit out of their ass in volume four because they had no clue what do with his character. he should have been focused on regathering the white fang fragments, not chasing after blake for no reason.

adam snorus; plunging over the red horizon.

if the writers wanted to make adam abusive and obsessive, they were well within their means to. doesn’t mean it was a good decision or was written well, just that it was their choice and such but they could at least done adam some justice in his death.

for example, have him use his scabbard. i mean, blake and yang take adam’s sword, but he still has his scabbard/sheath and his scabbard is a literal gun. why has everyone forgotten this? why have the writers forgotten this?

he should have at least taken a shot at blake or yang, it doesn’t matter if those shots hit, just have him put a fight rather than him standing around waiting to be stabbed. in fact, adam waits around a lot in this fight—i don’t mean to dive into a long critique of this—but adam stands around allowing blake to spew exposition about his semblance to yang which robs the fight of any tension or stakes.

how about you have adam continuously bombarding yang with attacks whilst blake tells yang his semblance? it changes nothing except give the scene more tension instead of having it come to a halt for exposition. 

but anyway, blake and yang kill adam and i didn’t give a fuck. i’m not by any means an adam stan, the only emotional attatchment i had with him was the hope that he’d get a badass fight scene. i also don’t really give much a fuck about blake or yang or their relationship so don’t think i’m a bitter adam stan or a blind bumblebee stan.

there’s a difference between hating a character’s death because you happened to like that character and didn’t want them to die and hating a character’s death because it was unnecessary and had no reason to happen. 

in the end, adam’s death services bumblebee. yang gets over her shoddily-written ptsd arc ( i will talk about that another day ) and blake doesn’t really get over anything because she confessed that she had gotten over in volume five and everyone moves on. it still doesn’t negate the fact that adam had the most potential out of the villains and he gets killed because the writers didn’t know how to continue his story.

hint: maybe you should add him to salem’s inner circle instead of generically insane baddie tyrian; daddy watts; and petty, one-note fucker hazel. that way we have an already established, powerful villain who already has natural character foils in blake and yang.

literally had the worst death in the series in front of roman getting eaten by a fucking grimm.

[morethanmeetstheass]

i love your scp au but im confused af, the only character/scp i remember is blitzy/6969, and Dr.B******* could we maybe get a list of who is who?

absolutely!

so we got the scps first, some of which im just giving numbers to now (lol):

scp-6969 (blitzwing), a three-faced mass of smoke overlaying what appears to be mechanical parts and seems to have the capability of fully controlling those he talks to after 23 minutes of exposure

scp-3819-X4 (wasp), a former researcher at the foundation whose dna was fused with that of a wasp during a failed teleportation experiment 

scp-383316465 (wheeljack), another former researcher at the foundation who has a bad habit of making random object around him explode

scp-5122 (lockdown), someone that appears to be super normal but actually steals organs and body parts and is slowly getting more and more disgusting-looking

scp-5555 (swindle), a cash register that summons whatever object someone wants most and tries to sell it to them. what happens to successful sales is unknown

scp-9999 (unicron), a huge mass of energy that sucks the life out of everything around it, currently contained nine miles underground

scp-6284 (megatron), a large ball of shadow that absorbs anything that comes near it and spits them out as shells of their former selves. currently growing and no one knows why

scp-8001 (blackarachnia), a regular spider who keeps carving formulas and equations into the walls of her terrarium. no one knows what she’s calculating or why

scp-6012 (lugnut), an arm that can punch huge craters into the ground if allowed to touch the ground

scp-6285 (starscream), seemingly useless person with a randomly changing appearance who clones himself all the time and then feeds the clones to 6284

scp-8827 (shockwave), a laptop that you can’t plug usb drives into because they always fit the wrong way

then the employees of the foundation:

dr. b█████ (bumblebee), level 3 researcher, class c, seemingly immune to scp-6969s effects

dr. m███ (ultra magnus), level 4 site director, class a, oversees site 86, assigned dr b████ to work with 6969

s███ (sari), class b field agent, currently in possession of a key necklace that really should be an scp but she’s not willing to tell anyone about it yet

dr. ██████████ (bulkhead), level 3 researcher, class c, specializes in teleportation technology and was present for 3819-x4′s unfortunate transformation

dr. p████ (prowl), level 4 containment specialist, class b, works on capturing and temporarily containing anomalies 

dr. o████████ (optimus), level 4 containment specialist, class b, works on permanent containment for anomalies

dr. r█████ (ratchet), level 4 researcher, class a, studies the effects of the anomalies and spends a lot of time curing missing limbs and stuff

sentinel, jazz, jetfire, jetstorm: code names for the tactical response officers currently working at site 86

[casssgoths]

Thoughts on the Snowy Escape expansion pack announcement

I LOVE THE JAPANESE THEMING. I can’t wait to build cute little Japanese inspired houses and toy around with making CC from the Japanese inspired clothing. 

The world looks super pretty and I really hope it’s a combination residential/vacation town because I would love for my Sims to be able to live there. 

Snowboarding??? And sledding??? We definitely should’ve gotten these in Seasons but I’ll overlook it for the sake of everything else they’re including in the pack. 

FINALLY WE GET PLATFORMS. I’ve been wanting platforms for ages so I’m incredibly pumped we’re finally getting them! 

The Lifestyles and Sentiments feature is a MUCH-NEEDED upgrade to Sims personalities. We’ve needed an overhaul of the psycho-social aspects of the way Sims function for years so I’m excited we’re finally getting that. I hope it’s not exclusive to the expansion pack and that they’ll at least include something about this in the base gme update even if they don’t include the Snowy Escape specific parts but I also won’t be holding my breath since other gameplay upgrades were pack-exclusive. 

I can’t wit to check out all the specific CAS content we get. The clothing and hair looks incredible, I especially like that short bob with the dark roots and the kimonos. 

I also see kitsune masks you can hang on the wall which I need. 

TRAINS. WE’RE GETTING TRAINS. I fucking love the train and I can’t wait. If the new world does have a residential area and a vacation area, I bet you can use the train station to travel between one area to the other. I doubt they would implement train stations into other worlds from other expansions or base game as well but it would be great if we could. Maybe they’ll add a new lot type for train stations that we can place in other towns to travel between them more realistically? 

ALSO DID ANYONE ELSE SEE THE FUCKING PARKING LOT NEXT TO THE TRAIN STATION??? Maybe it’s just for show but oh my fucking god if this is a hint that we’re going to finally get cars, I’m going to scream. 

The school uniforms are super cute, I can’t wait to play around with them. If only we were getting a sailor-style school uniform, as well, because I adore sailor collars but I haven’t seen anything like that in the trailers so we’re probably not going to get anything like that. Oh well. 

THE MANGA HOODIE. Again, I need it.

Bowing as a greeting makes me excited. Also bowing at the shrine.

I love the ski lifts. They’re probably also just for show but I love that they exist anyway. 

I’m really interested to test out rock-climbing in-game. 

I know we already have tents and bonfire from previous packs but I’m excited to see how the mechanics change in terms of mountains and snowy weather like this. 

I’m excited to see how this pack’s gameplay intermingles with gameplay from Seasons and Outdoor Retreat and even City Living. 

City Living mainly in terms of the Japanese theming in conjunction with the geek con in San Myshuno. San Myshuno already has some Asian influence to it and if Snowy Escape incorporates some more of the anime element of Japanese culture, I’m excited to see how this effects the geek con event in the city. 

I also know this is probably not going to happen but I’d love a new channel to watch anime, and then you can discuss anime with other people and create a hobby out of it and stuff. It probably won’t happen but it’d be cool af. Also reading manga, too. 

THE HOT SPRINGS!! I can’t wait to test out the hot springs and maybe even make my own. 

I’m also excited to see what kind of potential the hot springs bring to History Challenge gameplay. 

Similarly, the bath houses make me excited, as well. I love those mountain-range tile walls especially. 

As well as the lockers. They’re super cute and I can’t wait to just see the hot springs/bath houses in general.

It looks like we get new bugs, too. I guess we can hike to shrines, which sounds fun.

This MIGHT just be an overlay for the sake of the trailer, but I almost wonder if we’re getting an upgrade to Simstagram, as well. The way the pictures were framed with a username and the option to “heart” and comment on someone’s picture makes me really hopeful. 

The little mountain mascot guy is absolutely adorable and I love him. 

I also don’t know what that glowy little guy is but he is absolutely adorable as well and I also love him. 

We might also be getting rock gardens back??? From the little build preview. I don’t know if it’s just a texture paint or if it’s really something we can add to our builds and like tend to and shit but either way.

The fact that they show build previews in both the snowy and non-snowy area of the new world makes me wonder if we can live in both areas? If the entire place is residential, or if there are options? Unless the build preview in the snowy area is supposed to be the ability to build resorts or vacation homes or something. Which I would also love.

I see sushi and other dishes which makes me wonder if we’re getting new recipes, too. I think we must be since I see a tabletop grill/burner.

I also see vending machines! 

I know they didn’t show any bedroom features in the trailer but I hope we get floor futons as well. I can imagine something along the lines of a sleeping bag function where you can just put it away when you’re done with it into your inventory like the sleeping bags in TS3. Seeing as we didn’t get that sort of functionality in Outdoor Retreat, however, I doubt we’ll get it in Snowy Escape but we’ll see. Maybe they’ll give us sleeping bags here so we can all become Aizawa from BNHA lmfao

[bagels-and-seagulls]

bad boy david? i havent heard that name in a while

it’s been 84 years

more bad boy david

-david can be mean, hotter than fire and colder than ice and meaner than everything else in between all at once. he snarls, and growls, and shows his teeth to anyone that gets too close to him or looks at him a little funny just to let them know that he’s not the one they should be coming up to like that, to let them know that maybe they should back the fuck away from them if they liked all their joints in place. he shows his anger and his fury on his face, in the lines of his mouth, in the space between his eyebrows, the cut of his shoulders, and he doesn’t apologize for it, likes it when people point it out, tells him he looks mad, because he likes to say that he is and will be. 

-david let’s his emotions play on his face as a defense mechanism and a way to let people know what’s coming to them. he used to bottle things up once, keep everything tucked away in a deep part of himself, sealed up tight with super glue and duct tape and pure will to not let people see him, but that didn’t do him any good except give him a headache and kept him up at night thinking about all the things he could have said. no, he hasn’t bottled it up in a while. now he’s used to being mad and raging and letting that anger show in the tensing of his hands and the way he bends his knees to let someone know that they better square up or walk away because david is okay with either. actually, he prefers to get his hands a little dirty most of the time. his fingers itch with it. david thinks that must be the anger, too. 

-he’s not used to being jealous. he doesn’t know what that looks like in the way that his face contorts, doesn’t know how his hands will react or if his feet will take him towards the issue or away from it. he isn’t used to it, until suddenly he’s incredibly used to it, and the green monster he was always warned about was making good friends with the devil on his shoulder. they were becoming best buds these days. david didn’t know what to think about it. 

-matteo is too cute for his own good, david thinks. he’s too cute and too oblivious on top of it and that makes a deadly combination, deadlier than david’s fists and a bigot talking a little bit too loud, at least when it comes to the icy feeling that sneaks down david’s spine to settle into the spaces in between his ribs and in between the bones of his wrists. matteo talks to people, thinking that they just want to have a nice chat, thinking that he’s so far off the market, so obviously in a relationship that no one would even think to having anything but a friendly chat with him, and david notices the way that they lean in closer to him like they want a taste, even when matteo doesn’t. 

-david thought he knew what made his anger flare up, knew the way his emotions sparked behind his forehead until it made his arms react in ways that were a bit faster than his brain, but then matteo came into his life and everything was thrown for a loop. nowadays, he gets angry at nothing and everything all at once. he can listen to someone say something completely moronic and not want to deck their teeth in, hearing matteo’s voice that he should stop making classmates cry in the back of his head, at the same time one look in matteo’s direction that david doesn’t agree with can make him david think about where to hide the bodies. 

-who is this? david asks when he walks up to where matteo is talking to someone at the karaoke bar jonas had insisted they come to, and david begrudgingly agreed because he was still trying to work his ways into jonas’ good graces that spending his night off at a godforsaken place like this seemed like an okay idea as long as matteo looked at him like he was happy he was there. he asks with a cold overlay to his voice, like ice in the arctic, gripping to the back of matteo’s shirt with a tight fist and his back straight as a rod. this is andrew, matteo answer and grips onto david’s arm with a pinch in his fingernails like he’s telling him to behave himself because at this point he knew just as well as david what he could do when prompted. 

-you’re jealous, matteo tells him one night when david drug him up to the roof of some house party to kiss the spot under his ear where no one is looking. what? david asks because he isn’t really paying attention to what matteo is saying, not with the way he’s pulling his hair and the way he’s letting david suck a mark onto his collarbone. you’re jealous, he repeats a little louder. you’re a jealous person, aren’t you? and david pulls back to look at him because this hasn’t come up before, but he had thought that it had been obvious a while ago. matteo doesn’t look mad, doesn’t look anything really, except a little bit blissed out with the tips of his ears a little red and his lips a little puffy. yes, of course, all the time with you around, he answers. ask him a year ago, and he doesn’t know if it would have been the same. 

[thewakingcloak]

Night and torches are now working properly! :D

This was quite a journey the past week or so. My original plan was to just have darkness, with torches and a lantern-like item to help you survive at both night and in the caves:

As it turned out, this really wasn’t what I wanted. It was TOO MUCH darkness, especially when large portions of the game would be spent outside at night. I still wanted the idea of scary, dark caves, but it would be way too irritating for everything doing it this way.

And besides, this method was super slow.

First, I tried to simply fix the lights so that they looked better.

Oops.

After talking it over with a few people on the Discord server, and due to the upcoming item mechanic, I decided to split out the “lighting” into three states:

Day

Night

Dark

Dark would be for caves and unlit dungeons: black, unless you had your light, or if there was a light in the room. Meanwhile, you would be able to see at night with a light, and that’s what I started work on:

This was actually getting pretty close. It doesn’t adhere to the palette, which isn’t great, and a few people on the Discord server still felt it was too dark. After some conversation, I decided to try a different method, one I’d used a long time ago.

Pixelated Pope’s Retro Palette Swapper.

The reason for this was mainly because I didn’t want to create two sets of images for every single piece of artwork in the game. Inevitably, I would’ve missed some, or updated one sprite and forgotten to update another. It would’ve been a lot of work and code modification. So, a shader seemed in order. I started by doing some mockups of how night would look, using some existing images. I took this opportunity to consolidate my existing palette, remove unused colors, and add a few new ones to support the night palette:

Version 1 was a bit funky and bright. So I tried again:

This was.... much better.

After some more tweaks, I had a new palette ready to go. The night palette (the bottom row) only used colors from the day palette (the top row).

And so I began the process of working with the palette swap shader. It actually went pretty well, though for some reason it wasn’t hitting certain objects, like the player, or jars and other interactable items.

It took quite a bit of digging to figure out what was going on there. Initially I thought the palette swapper was ignoring certain layers (since I was applying the swapper shader to a specific set of layers), but that didn’t hold up. Torches and gates, for example, were also on those layers, and they were palette swapping.

After a lot more digging, it turns out that the shader was missing these objects because I was modifying their depth. In GameMaker, changing the depth means the object gets put in a temporary layer for drawing, and that temp layer is not accessible via code. In other words, the shader would never apply.

I spoke with Pixelated Pope, and there were two methods I could try: 1) apply the shader to a depth range, or 2) apply the shader to the full application surface.

I tried the depth first, and while it worked, it was amazingly, unusably slow. So it was time to try applying the shader to the app surface instead.

The palette swapper has scripts to apply the shader to sprites, layers, depth, and so on, but nothing as far as surfaces. I fumbled around for a bit threw some code together to apply the shader to the app surface, and voila.

Yeah, so it was pretty apparent I had no idea what I was doing.

After more consultation with Pixelated Pope, it turned out I hadn’t quite been calling the right functions in the right order. With everything moved to the Post Draw event, and automatic app surface drawing disabled, I had it:

But drawing the app surface manually does mean that I don’t get nice, automatic resizing for all monitor resolutions and aspect ratios. It worked fine on my 16:9, 1920x1080 laptop monitor, but in the past, 4:3 and 16:10 (and so on) have caused the game to stretch or squish badly.

This was the case when I changed my resolution to 1024x768, so I spent more time messing around with the app surface until it was drawing at the right scaled size (with 1:1 pixels to avoid distortion), and centering it. Unfortunately, the GUI layer, which is drawn after the app surface (and after the Post Draw event), did not want to behave.

It may not be totally noticeable here, but the GUI was stretching beyond the sides of the game, which not only looked weird, but caused some minor distortion to those sprites.

It took a long time to figure this one out, and it all boiled down to using display_set_gui_maximize(zoomLevel, zoomLevel, offsetX, offsetY) (using the same parameters as I did to fix the app surface drawing/scaling/centering), instead of display_set_gui_size.

Finally, I had to get lights working. Since I didn’t want to make the shader somehow exclude the lights from the palette swap (I would have no idea how), I followed another Pixelated Pope suggestion: the lights now draw an extremely faint, white circle at 0.08 alpha. It’s not noticeable to the human eye, but it IS noticeable to the shader. The shader doesn’t swap the palette of anything touched by that light.

And that’s all!

I hope you enjoyed reading this. Next up, I’m planning on working on true darkness for scary, unlit caves and dungeons. This should be easier, since I’ve already worked with the overlay method--I just need to change it to complete black and tweak it until it looks and plays nicely (famous last words?).

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: Narriseminek, the Crownless

Chaotic Neutral Protean Cantor of Ascendance, Keketars, and Revelations

Domains: Chaos, Knowledge, Liberation, Madness Subdomains*: Protean, Education, Self-Realization, Truth

Concordance of Rivals, pg. 14

Obedience: Surround yourself in a burning circle of flames at least 5 feet out from where you stand, chanting prayers until the flames burn down to coals or smoke from any source harms you. Benefit: Gain a +4 sacred bonus on saves against fire-based spells and attacks.

(*IMPORTANT NOTE: The Subdomains are my best guess; Subdomains are not listed in Concordance of Rivals)

Hope you remember to bring oil and tinderboxes! And remember to practice fire safety, because this Obedience is a real good way to burn down an entire house. Or forest. There’s also the worrying detail that this Obedience requires you to wait until the fires burn down to the coals, suggesting that a ring of oil or grease will NOT, in fact, satisfy the conditions of the ritual. That’s a real chin-scratcher to me, and though my Rules-Fu may be weak, I can see how a more exacting DM might force their players to jump through hoops (or into them as the case may be). Do you have to lug around wood or paper and burn it? Can ‘smoke from any source’ come from a cigarette or stick of incense you have nearby? Does the Obedience end early if a freak gust blows ash into your face? Questions, questions.

Also don’t ignore the fact that standing in a ring of fire while chanting ominously is incredibly suspicious and you probably shouldn’t do it in a location someone can barge into, especially a Good someone. Or a Paladin someone. Or a Devil-hunter someone. In fact, it’s really hard to do this Obedience regularly without seeming like you might soon plot to sacrifice babies, so you might want to warn your party ahead of time that no, you don’t worship Asmodeus, you worship a different flaming serpent! ... Wait, Asmodeus isn’t a serpent in Pathfinder, scratch that last line.

As for the benefit, nothing we haven’t seen before. Nothing special, nothing grand. Fire is the most common damage type, so this ability WILL come up often and it’ll save you a lot of HP, and for that it has my applause. It’s just not exciting in any other way. I’m a little concerned that it doesn’t say “fire-based spells and abilities,” but “attacks,” but that could just be me being picky about language and wording. It comes in handy when dealing with fae, but it makes me paranoid everywhere else!

Boons are gained slowly, gained at levels 12, 16, and 20. Servants of the Monitors, though, can enter the Proctor Prestige Class as early as level 8. If entered as early as possible, you can earn your Boons at levels 10, 14, and 16. You MUST take the Monitor Obedience feat, NOT Deific Obedience. Monitors grant only a single set of Boons.

Boon 1: Ascended. Gain Anticipate Peril 3/day, Detect Thoughts 2/day, or Heroism 1/day.

Oooh, not bad! Three decent spells! Anticipate Peril gives the target a +5 bonus to Initiative for one combat, and as I’ve said before, Initiative is one of the best stats you can have bonuses to. Heroism gives +2 to arguably more important stats, though, in saving throws, attack rolls, and damage rolls. It also lasts for a phenomenally long time--a whole 10 minutes per level! It’s a pretty good boost for the beatstick of your party, but I’m not sure if it’s worth giving up on boosting up to three people’s Initiative (or one person’s Initiative three times). It depends on how many attacks your local DPS can throw out in a round, I suppose, or if your team is made up of the more fragile sorts who’d give their left arms to move first. Do note that Anticipate Peril only works for one initiative roll before fizzling, but Herosim’s lengthy duration means it will likely last through multiple fights, so scouting is essential if you want to use AP!

Detect Thoughts is something we’ve covered before, and though it technically only has niche use, it’s invaluable against enemies who’re holding information you need or sifting through crowds for specific individuals who’s thinking about how bad it would be if you found them. It’s powerful when you NEED it, but Anticipate Peril and Heroism are useful in the many battles that come with Pathfinder’s adventures.

Boon 2: Crownless Crown. You gain a floating halo of Protean symbols around your head. 1/day, you may use the Reshape Reality ability of the Keketar Protean, heightened to a 7th level spell instead of 9th; this means you may cast Mirage Arcana as a spell-like ability, except all of the illusions are woven with Maelstrom matter and become partially (20%) real, even to disbelievers, and the DC to see through the illusion is 17+your Charisma modifier.

CHAOS!

CHAOS!!

I CAN DO ANYTHING!!!

Have you ever thought to yourself “this battlefield is really nice, but I would prefer to be anywhere else”? Have you ever found yourself wishing you were on a nice beach while in the middle of a dungeon, or that this jungle would look better as a desert, or that this desert could use a giant glacier smack in the middle of it? Then have I got an ability for you!

Reshape Reality can overlay one 20ft square per level with terrain of your choice, and here’s some math for you: a 20ft square is 4x4 tiles, which means you affect 16 tiles per level. If you’re level 14 when you first get this ability, that means fourteen 20ft squares are yours to command, or 224 tiles. Numbers are good and all, but how about a visual demonstration?

(Green: You. Blue: unfortunate enemy)

BAM! That’s one configuration you can throw it down in. It affects a LOT of terrain, basically letting you decide if the current room is to your liking. You can also throw it down in a long line or loop to form a ‘cage’ for yourself and your enemies, or form an enormous barrier to cut a swath between enemy forces. Like many illusion spells, Mirage Arcana is best used by someone with a good imagination... But even the most unimaginative sorts can still cause an environment to turn itself into pure acid or magma. Whoever fails their save against the illusion takes 5d6 damage from hazards you manifest, while disbelievers still take 1d6 because of its semi-real nature. 

You can also do some fancy things like creating a small stony labyrinth or even just whip up some cover for yourself and your allies if you so desire. And there’s nothing saying that every square has to be the same environment, either! Go nuts! This is one of the most powerful battlefield control abilities you can get! ... Provided your allies are away that reality is an illusion.

Also, I think it’s really cute that you get a floaty rune crown like all the Proteans. Makes it real hard to hide what you are and what you’re worshiping, though, so watch out!

Boon 3: Mantle of Revelation. 1/day, you can cast Foresight as a spell-like ability.

For those who’ve never used it, Foresight is a level 9 spell that lasts 10 minutes per level. Mechanically, it grants the recipient a +2 to AC and Reflex saves, and prevents the recipient from ever being surprised or flat-footed. At high levels, robbing an enemy of a surprise round can mean the difference between someone outright dying to a Sneak Attack or a spell thrown from out of sight, making this spell a life-saver... Though not a level 9 lifesaver. Such a feat could easily be replicated by a level 7 or 8 spell, allowing more crunch to be packed into this Boon, right? AC is nice and all, but...

You know what else is nice? These little portions:

“Once Foresight is cast, you receive instantaneous warnings of impending danger or harm to the subject of the spell.”

Don’t open the chest, don’t drink that potion, don’t sample the cheese, don’t take another step forward, don’t say the next words you’re planning, don’t cast that spell, don’t don’t don’t... Foresight stops a LOT of incoming harm in its tracks, allowing you to step back just as an arrow flies at your face, or stop your foot just before stepping on a landmine, or re-evaluate your attack target if forewarned of some sort of defense they have. You can even cast it on someone else to give them the same benefit... so long as you’re within earshot. You need to be able to communicate with them in some way to grant them the warnings, making it more attractive to cast on yourself than another, unless you have some form of telepathic connection with the second subject.

And speaking of second subjects, here’s the other interesting portion:

“The spell gives you a general idea of what action you might take to best protect yourself and gives you a +2 insight bonus to AC and on Reflex saves.”

And gives you a +2 insight bonus. Why’s that important? Because it means ‘general idea of what action you might take’ does NOT directly lead to this insight bonus, but is in addition to it. Foresight’s greatest power relies a bit on DM fiat, which is painful if they aren’t super open to discussion of the spell’s minutiae, but elaborated on and discussed beforehand with the DM will allow you to solve encounters MUCH more smoothly than normal. Say, perhaps, the enemy has a Scroll of Disintegrate on them that no one has seen yet. Foresight may warn you ahead of time to bolster your Reflex save even further, or somehow strengthen your touch AC. You don’t know WHY you’re receiving this warning, but all will become apparent in time.

Foresight warns you not to open a door, but you must to progress. The spell then warns you to protect yourself from Fire damage, and you can extrapolate from there. Or perhaps it tells you to draw your weapons and prepare your spells as you walk down an otherwise empty hallway, just before you’re ambushed.

Really, Foresight is a far more powerful spell than many give it credit for because so much of its power relies on interpretation and the DM working with the fact you can see danger coming at least six seconds before it happens. See? Me being ridiculously careful about interpretations of wording worked out in everyone’s favor for once!

You can read more about Narri here.

[claricelowww]

#FORWHAT (Part 2)

As mentioned in the Part 1 post, it runs as an interactive social media campaign. The concept of the campaign is to turn it into a competition / giveaway of sorts, getting the customers to fill in the blanks on their own with positive things that they want to MOVE for.

It would mainly take place on social media platforms such as Instagram (@asicsmalaysia) and Facebook (ASICS / ASICS Running Club Malaysia). Each post would consist of 3 visuals from ASICS - the thumbnail (Visual 1), the fill in the blank (Visual 2), and the recommended shoe and beneficial factors of said shoe (Visual 3).

For example, the visual would be “RUN FOR ___” and the customers would then have to fill in the blanks with their answer, and share their story/journey. After that, they would have to repost it on their social media with the #FORWHAT and tag @asicsmalaysia in order to submit their response. The people with the best caption and story would then be chosen to win the specified pair of shoes that have been recommended for that particular activity. The shoe recommendation also serves a second purpose, which is to inform all who see it about the qualities and benefits of the shoes. This would mean that, even if someone doesn’t win the giveaway, they could potentially go and purchase a pair for themselves because of the built up “hype/desire” towards trying to win the shoe.

But overall, this campaign allows the #FORWHAT movement to be one that moves towards nation-wide betterment. In other words, it also gets people to share their stories and inspire other Malaysians.

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 1A

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 1B

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 1C

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 2

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 3

Note: The original images used in the social media visuals (without text or logo) were sourced from ASICS.

CRITS

Amanda Chan:

For visual 1C, the shadow of the text and the human is different (different lighting and different slant position). Be more cautious of the lighting and shadow angles in future. The designs for visuals 2 and 3 are generally alright, but they do look a bit plain. The first image is okay, but second image looks somewhat undone/incomplete, as though there’s something missing.

Eunice Loke:

The campaign seems as though it’s in different pieces and is lacking cohesiveness. Be cautious of the positioning of the campaign, because it would be dependent on the type of image they’re trying to put forward (for athletics, for leisure, etc). The intent of the campaign is good, but the “wellness” aspect doesn’t shine through the flashy visuals. The idea is there, but it needs refining.

Chynna:

Specify which social media platforms you want to use and help people understand it by creating mock-ups of the post on social media (this is because captions will help to boost the understanding / clarity of the direction that you want to take). 

The images have been treated well – the title of the campaign hidden in the shadows looks nice (in the posters and social media visuals). A suggestion would have been to try playing with typography (some of the titles were upright, but it was suggested that they be made italic in order to show movement). As for the informative part of the social media visuals, the attention grabbing part of the message should be made to stand out (WIN A PAIR OF FREE SHOES etc).  

Sarah Ann Toolseram:

When doing a real campaign in the future, consider the costs. Shoes being given away like that would result in very high costs. Besides that, the shadow in visual 1C is a bit off.

Basil Cha:

Love the idea of localization. Feels like it could be a very exciting campaign, but it feels too safe/normal still.  Look at brands that are super strong on branding (Nike!! <- cannot emphasize this one more, Adidas, etc.).  Also, just be clear on where you want to bring your audience to, in terms of campaign direction. I really like the idea of #ForWhat. I can imagine like a video ad of people like saying, “This one for what ah” “For what wan” and then ending with “For anything you want to be” or something along those lines.

Visuals are clean/not trying too hard, but I think there needs to be a bit more trying The #ForWhat copy is really cool, the idea of moving with purpose, etc. and I think it’s also a very challenging statement when Malaysians say “For what” and I think sport brands always push that kind of attitude whether it’s about challenging the norms, etc.

There also shouldn’t be too many words on a social media post. Things you can consider are creating a mockup of an Instagram post, where you can actually type in a caption so your design is in the context of a description, etc.

Damien Chung:

I think your idea is pretty good, as in it does give people the idea of what a shoe does, and that it's not just for style and looks, but it's functionality as well for the user. I think for the interactive part, judging from my experience right, these kind of shoes or brands actually have a very niche market. Especially Asics, which has marketed itself to be a sportswear brand, but branching out slowly into lifestyle. 

So, I'm not sure if your assignment has anything to do with targeting groups on FB or some sorts. This can't be organic, it has to be boosted unless you have a face of an influencer in your visual that everyone knows and are a fan of, which would generate more engagement for the campaign. If this were to be an organic post, your organic reach would be very little, since the market is niche. The mechanics are great, which is to increase the shares. I was thinking of who is the one that would recommend the specific shoe for the winner or whoever the other participants are. The downside of it is that, what is recommended may not be what the users want, and opinion varies, so that's something we need to think about la. Perhaps you could also include like a voucher or a code for whoever that joined the contest (include a cap of course) to make people buy it rather than just finding out the type of shoes recommended for their activity, increasing the conversation rate.

The visuals used are great! But I think social media visual 2 and 3 can be less DI and more organic like your other visuals, it's more visually appealing than a blue background. Overall I like the idea! I might use it for my work too (haha).

Another thing to take note off, visuals that feature people are bound to get more attention yea. Or any big brands like Nike or Adidas, that would work well. So when your visual features someone, make sure it's someone relatable and you would know. Even if don't know, local would be good also.

Yaeber Neo:

Campaign as a whole has lack of a big idea. As a consumer, I’m not too sure what the campaign is about. What’s the movement about, what’s the key message, why should we join the movement? It’s very easy for people to turn it around and say join the movement for what? You’ll probably need something else to kickstart or introduce the campaign. For example, put together snippets of different athletes or influencers telling their own story of what they move for and why. Then it would carry forward better to Part 2 of the campaign where you focus on social engagement. Part 2 of the campaign could look at more recent trends on Social Media. TikTok for example encourages lots of movement where people do dance covers etc. See how you can leverage on that. Could Asics have their own song and dance challenge?

Felicia Lee:

Maybe this could kickstart by involving stories of day to day people. For example, the way Humans of New York portray stories of people. Story of a struggling modern dancer or an athlete. Then, followed by the audience to fill in the blanks.

Ida Chong:

The social media visuals are generally pretty good and have a sporty feel to them. It makes you feel like exercising because there is movement in the image. The masking and effects applied to the visuals are good as well. However it needs to connect more, in terms of the entirety of the 3 social media posts. This is because the thumbnail image doesn’t really connect with visuals 2 and 3 (probably because they are VERY blue). If the blue is still intended to be used to to it being the company’s colour, then perhaps it could be used as an overlay with another image or colour. Besides that, you should also take note that if the placement and words are simple then the background needs to have more happening.

Annabelle Foo:

I think the play on words here really added a catchy/playful touch to the messaging since it’s something you hear quite frequently, and it still followed through in reminding people why they do what they do. But also if the first phase begins with #ForWhat, it could be a bit difficult for people to translate that messaging right away. I think there’s a really good potential build-up here before #ForWhat comes in, maybe you could tap into how everyone has a different why to what they do and it may look really drastic but I think it’d be good to capture those differences at the start before establishing #ForWhat? Design could be a bit more cohesive in terms of typography style/placement, but visuals still eye-catching and clean!

[redantsunderneath]

Marlene Dietrich/Josef von Sternberg marathon: The Blue Angel, Morocco (1930), Dishonored, and Shanghai Express (1931)

I watched all of these films, the Blue Angel in German (which surprisingly didn’t hurt, though I might have missed some puns), so I could be prepped for the great movie podcast “There’s Sometimes a Buggy” that is covering the collaboration that made Marlene Deitrich as we know her. I don’t have a lot of exposure (more on my movie history later) to the early talkie years so these movies were a bit surprising to me on a lot of fronts, not the least reason for which was that I wasn’t brought up in rape culture, I guess (is this what people mean when they say that? cause, jeesh! every movie, the threat is just there). Funny enough, I felt that The Blue Angel was the only one that was really political to me along axes that felt vital, which is peculiar as the other three were about political conflict of factions/nations and make statements about war, nationalism, and the other, but I guess they don’t seem political in a sense that fits with current discourse. I didn’t see the CPC officer in Shanghai Express as pro communist but as a tentative stab at ambivalent nuance of the other’s perspective, a tipping of the hand that there’s a western-centracism in his absurd rape code (this is a common feature through the films of a “first claim” that a certain type of man has on a woman that has nothing to do with what she wants), and as ultimately an example of the brutality of violent conflict (more pointed because he’s been fleshed out).  But I admit, by the films' equalizing the other side (the Russians, the CPC and even the Tunisian rebels if only by making the French Foreign Legion look so terrible) that is in itself a statement.  Kubrick’s Paths of Glory seems to pick up where this leaves off.

The Blue Angel is the film I have the most to say about, and was the most interesting conceptually, but was hard to sync with for technical reasons (me not speaking German maybe being one of them).  Through the films, we watch Dietrich get better at being a talkie actress and the Blue Angel doesn’t push her that hard, but this may be more a function of the camerawork and editing than anything else.  Jannings somehow works better with her as a leading man than anyone but Dishonored’s McLaglen because he can fill the space created by her silent movie style of encapsulated performative moments then stasis/posing, though the let it breathe editing doesn’t help (I almost think her hand on ribcage pose starts as a need for her to have something to do when reacting that seems like a reaction).  Morocco’s Gary Cooper sometimes seems like he’s in a different space than her and Shanghai’s Brook is super clipped (though she’s better adapted by then).

In Blue Angel, the effort to create composite Mise-en-scène with the ominous foreground frames is terrific (those anchors hanging down! the professor’s approach to the club!) and we have some of that German expressionist inner state stuff going on, especially at the end (the shadow of the chandelier!) but the cameraman doesn’t seem to know where to be and maybe that explains the ostensibly crappy blocking.  The cinematography on the others is much better – the superimposed tracking shots in Morocco are phenomenal – and have just as many knockout myth buildingly shot scenes (too many to mention but her in a tux in Morocco,  the final escape in Dishonored, the prayer in Shanghai Express).  All the movies have enough differences in approach that you could think they were done by a different team (were the external shots in Morocco the ones shot by Peckinpah’s eventual AD, Lucien Ballard?).

There are all sorts of motifs running through the films: clocks (and calendars), racially insensitive dolls, men’s hats on women, skein-like drapes sometimes burned by irons vs drawn opaque shades, a man eavesdropping to get mood altering information from behind a louvered door, clowns/harlequins, throwing stuff that will need to be cleaned up on the floor/wall, makeup application in a number of functions (e.g. highlighting her performative nature, emasculation of men), sitting/sprawling on things as an act of feminine claiming of the space, guttural and animal noises as announcement we’re in a libidinal space positive or negative, the stockings, the kept animals, and all sorts of recurring human archetypes.   But it’s The Blue Angel, with its full bore usage of these things plus more (eggs, nautical detritus, clock figurines, etc, that the subliminal story is the most present (though Dishonored is pretty potent).

The reason why I say Blue Angel is the most socio-political is that as a 2019 person on the internet who sees the culture war, is aware of the history of Weimar imagery as handled post Nazi, and knows what’s coming (spoilers for Hitler), the statement being made looks really complicated with a first pass of: the intelligencia’s embrace of the subaltern as primarily an instrument-possession both losses them cultural power and leaves them outside of the outgroup too, which is how, maybe, regressive populism (the students as rabble) wins. Granted this is an Iser-type hermeneutical hot take and it is complicated by the possibility that Jannings codes as pre-Hitler German populace’s growing conflation of left wing and Jewish as “dark other” (problematic, hard to bring the 1930 and 2019 horizons together on this, mileage may vary, but a case can be made) which would almost make this an anti-radical (on both sides) statement that meshes with the other movies’ anti-violence, anti group/idea allegiance, pro-people take. This is just the "bad decision" version. As for Jannings, the lumpen here is fine with him as long as he performs correctly.  Maybe this is an artifact of Dietrich not being the protagonist by a director who wants her to be.  The thing that really overlays this from a now standpoint, though, is the rhyming with a kind of 4chan framing where he has lost his “rightful” power, is “cucked,” and has an entitled-male rage tm (i.e. this can be read as an anti incel-ideology movie). The other movies don’t have this kind of congruence for the most part.

But the way the symbols work is pretty neat.  His descent from prominent social capital to internationally renowned cock-a-doodle-do jester is marked by the change in the relationship with eggs as sexual enticement vs humiliation (and the humiliation was there from the beginning to be sure).  The clown is there as a warning/future self.  The special clocks that eerily suggests his/society’s demons are coming and no one can stop the forward mechanism of time. The caged bird is as you would expect.  The dolls are a sort of self possession that she does test runs giving away.  There’s too much to talk about.

Morocco has Cooper’s charisma going for it (which works best with Dietrich’s when they cut back and forth), the best non-closeup camerawork (the exteriors are great), large scale staging, and that cool woman in a tux mythmaking performance piece.  It contains Cooper’s great non-verbal performance in the scene where he eventually writes “changed my mind” on the mirror (you can see him decide).   The last scene of her trudging across the desert and throwing away her heals is great, and there is so much motion in the frame so often – the superimposition of movement that turns a dissolve into a long transitional double shot, the scene where she looks for him in the marching parade, etc. The relief map was hinky, though.  

Dishonored was my favorite of the four. I liked all these films but, broken down, it had a couple of “bests” in it, but was #2 for everything else.  It had the best-functioning male lead (the always in a mask non-naturalistic thing was perfect as that how she is and it balanced the space well) and a greater share of my very favorite scenes: the final escape scene, the party, the firing squad, and any any fucking piano playing (the first shot of her playing piano is my favorite shot of all the films).  It’s the second best as a subliminal story (after Blue Angel), was the only one other than Shanghai Express that seemed like it had a screenplay - a story story rather than a loose idea, the idea of certain shots, the actors types, and dialogue. It had the most convincing sweep other than Morocco. The cat was a nice setting free of agency, progressing the doll as totem of self/other possession but with a mind of its own, with the power to ruin everything.  This movie really vibed with me perfectly.  

For Shanghai Express, see above, but I have to say I love the Disney villainess (before there were Disney villainesses) dress.  The multi note secondary characters with actual performances and arcs was unique... the pastor who changes his mind on what is morally good is terrific, as are the exchanges between two fully fleshed out prostitutes and an old prude.  My list is close, but If I had to order it would be Dishonored, Blue Angel, Shanghai, then Morocco, but it’s tough because the great things about each vary so much (I kept dithering on the bottom three more than #1, I considered putting Morocco 2nd).

It’s odd I’ve written this much and I haven’t broached the gender archetype pushing and pulling here, mainly because this seems pretty well mined territory.  I’m under-read on this and feel like my take would be super cold -- cross dressing, Gary Cooper with a flower behind his ear, the unflinching depiction of how tough a time women have it while still depicting a kind of unique female cruelty to men, and the constant sexist statements undermined by the POV and what actually happened.  Hopefully my naive viewpoint, coming at this fresh eyes will be valuable. So, like, are all these movies from this time period about class?  It kind of reminds me of Impro, the Keith Johnstone book, which basically boils all theatrical character interaction to being about status.  

Anyway, I’ve ignored my exegesis of Taylor Swift’s Lover to write this, so I must be back to work.  

[madebycinexo]

Exo’s performances at MAMA

I’ve always found that Exo’s performances at the Mnet Asian Music Awards were really iconic, and it’s been something I’ve looked forward to every year. I made a list of all their performances with the year, title and components of each performance, because I knew I wanted to make an edit (or, well, several edits) of them. One vague idea I had was to make it like a sketch in a notebook with all the details, so it would look like it was a plan/concept for the performance, kind of like a storyboard. I would have probably really overcomplicated that, so I went with something else. 

2012: Time Loop 2012

Resources:

Font: Hacked

VCR Overlay / Noise

At first I wanted to do the same template for every performance. I wanted to highlight memorable moments from each performance, so this is what I came up with originally:

Now I look at it and I’m just not feeling it, but when I first made it I really thought it was awful. I thought a bit more about the performance, and the theme of it. Since it’s called Time Loop 2012, and they’re performing older song and “reversing time” so to speak, I decided to go with a VCR/glitch effect. I had actually done a test of this kind of effect a few weeks prior and I really liked it:

I think the test gif looks a lot better than the final edit (why does this always happen oTL) 

The RGB split is done by using differently scaled copies of the image/gif and using the blending options. The glitch effect is done by using the wave filter on a few frames. The lines are added with a halftone pattern, and then I added some grain/noise as well. I think I followed one of the methods shown in this tutorial.

2013: Ein süßer Traum

Resources:

Font: John Hancock CP

Title Card

Old Film Countdown

Film Scratches Overlay

This one is based on the VCR shown at the beginning of the performance. It was kind of like a silent film with its captions (except it wasn’t silent.) So I wanted to go with that concept and make it look like an old film. This one was quite fun to do, adding little tweaks and stuff. I really wanted to use the same font as the one in the VCR. I tried several of those font identifier sites, googled silent movie fonts, and went through font categories that it could fit in, but I could not for the life of me find it. I got so frustrated and almost used a different font, but then somehow I found it (I literally don’t even remember how, but I was so glad I did.)

2014: The New Age of Exo

Resources:

Font: Lombok

Paper Texture

Watercolor Brushes

Something I really remember and love about this performance is how different the stage for every segment was. With every song, the staging and the lighting transports you somewhere else, and I wanted that to come through in the edit. I chose the font because it reminded me of the outlines of the boxes at the beginning of the performance. I really liked the paper and watercolor effect I did for the January 2017 edit, so I had been wanting to use the effect for a different edit as well, and I thought it worked well for this. Instead of using white paper as a background I drew from the dominant color of each stage. I did try it with white paper, but I didn’t find it as immersive:

And here’s another draft:

This is my favorite out of the edits, because it’s closer to what I had envisioned these edits to be in my head. I especially like how the Deep Breath one turned out. 

2015: Light of Planet

Resources:

Font: The Kabel Font

I went with a neon theme, inspired by the title of the performance, the pink neon lighting in the Call Me Baby VCR, the lightsabers and the LCD panels or whatever it is on the stage right before the performance started and everything was dark. I made the font bigger this time, because it didn’t have the same effect when I just put it at the top left corner. With neon it’s kind of like go big or go home. For Call Me Baby and Lightsaber I blended different parts of the performances together. They turned out good. The Drop That and Love Me Right gifs aren’t that great. Lightsaber turned out the best, I felt really satisfied with it.

2016: The Sacrifice

Resources:

Font: Exodus (Striped)

This gave off a futuristic dystopian vibe. I had been font hunting prior to making these edits, so I found ones that fit quite easily. (This one gets bonus point for being called Exodus). At first I thought of making a gif of each member for the VCR and then putting it into one gif, but since there isn’t much movement and I wanted to include something other than their faces as well, I just took a few frames for each member. Kyungsoo and Lay weren’t in the VCR, sadly. The Kai & Sehun gif is actually just one long sequence, but of course it had way too many frames, so I divided it into three separate ones and just put them next to each other. Baekhyun’s solo was difficult to do. When you watch the performance... it’s not super enjoyable to watch, because the lighting and the angles are so bad you can’t really see anything. I think Baekhyun mentioned being upset about it too on his instagram. He had this whole mechanical heart going that really gave much more purpose to the performance, but you couldn’t see it at all. They really did him dirty.

2017: The Force Of The Planet

Resources:

Font: Metrica

With the theme and the “Kinetic Performance” as Mnet likes to call it, I wanted to use a font that was inspired by constellations. I almost used a different one, but the other one felt almost too whimsical and was more difficult to read. Maybe I can use it in a different edit some time. The font looked better when it was bigger, but I didn’t want it to distract from the performance too much, so I set it on overlay or soft light, whichever worked better for each gif and then duplicated it as needed, so it would be more prominent. I added a shadow to it to make it stand out from the background a bit more. For the title gif I colored the font using the colors of the planets (?) above them. It looks a little bit... cheesy. For Power I wanted to use two different parts. Since the light goes down and you just see their silhouettes at the ending, I tried blending the other part I wanted to use into that, which kiiiind of worked.

Overall these edits weren’t exactly what I imagined. It became more of an experimentation of different fonts and effects. The 2014 one was the closest to what I wanted to do.