#very arbitrary and inconsequential stuff

[sitpwgs]

hi cossette! i hope you had an enchanted weekend 💜 if it’s alright, i’d like to ask you for some advice: what are some tips for breaking out of a reading slump? i want to read but it’s like i can’t convince my brain to do it 💔 thank you in advance!

hi sweet friend!! you're always welcome to ask me anything 🧸 i hope you had a magical weekend too!! 🤍

i want to preface this with saying that reading is supposed to be a hobby, it's supposed to be something fun for you! if you're not having fun with it at the moment, it's okay to not read for as long as you want/need to and do other things instead! there's no pressure at all; whatever reading goals you set at the beginning of the year are really inconsequential, at the end of the day. the last couple of months, i was pushing myself to read ~ 20 books a month, for no reason at all. last month, i read 25 books because i asked my friend to pick a number between 1 and 25, and they picked 23, and i decided i had to beat that number anyways. it is all very silly, and i am also very aware of how silly this all is as i'm typing this out to you! no one cares how many books i read! i don't care how many books i read either! none of this matters if i'm not enjoying it! this month, i decided to just read what i felt like reading without trying to reach an arbitrary goal, and as silly as that sounds, it really helped me. i'm giving you permission to read 0 books this month or to read 1 book this month if that is what you need 🤍 my friends are really good at reminding me that reading is a hobby and giving me permission to not read as much as i feel like i need to and to take breaks, so i figured i'd remind you of that too!

anyways, in terms of reading slumps: it might be helpful if you can identify the cause of your reading slump — are you just not feeling your current read(s)? are you having a "book hangover" from your last book? was your last read that good (or that awful)? is there other stuff going on that's making it hard to focus on reading? are you just burnt out from reading? for me, i usually get into reading slumps because i've either been just reading for content creating/reading ARCs/gifted reads/etc and not books i actually want to read, because i've just been reading too much, because i really don't like a recent read, or because i've been reading too much of a specific genre (usually fantasy).

some things that help me with getting out of reading slumps are changing genres (for example: i got fantasy'ed out earlier this year because i was trying to read a high fantasy book and then just 180'ed and did not touch anything high fantasy for months), rereading an old favorite (there's less pressure, you already know what happens, you know you love it, it's comforting), buddy reading (this one sometimes works — it has to be a pretty low stakes buddy read so you don't feel bad for backing out if you really aren't feeling that book, but sometimes i find it helpful to be able to discuss a book with someone), or listening to an audiobook! i've found that i really enjoy listening to audiobooks when i'm doing other things (cleaning, walking my dog, playing on my switch, giffing, etc.), and i've had friends tell me that listening to an audiobook while doing something else (like playing an idle game on their phone) has tricked their brain back into reading! a change of scenery might also help too — i usually read in bed before i sleep, but tonight, i ended up sitting in my chair next to toto and reading instead! putting electronics away while i read is something that i also find helpful if i'm slumping hard (less distractions).

one of my friends mentioned this tip a while back and i can't remember what it's called exactly (something about 50 pages?), but essentially, you put a bookmark/post it note/etc. after 50 pages (or whatever number of pages you want to get through) — sometimes having a physical marker helps! i've been doing this with les misérables, and it's made annotating the book a lot less daunting (even though i've read it before).

if i'm really trying to get through an ARC, and struggling, sometimes i'll text a friend and say "i want to be done with [X] pages/ i want to have finished [ X ] chapters" by a certain time and have them check in! having an accountability buddy does help for me (hence why buddy reads also sometimes work to get me out of a slump!).

the other thing i'll try if i'm really struggling is i'll pick a low-stakes book, or a hate read (but in an entertaining way). sometimes a hate read kickstarts me back into reading. going into a book knowing that i will probably not like it (for example, if it has a trope i don't like) takes the pressure off of liking it and sometimes i end up being pleasantly surprised by how much i enjoyed it!

this ask got so long, and i apologize!! i hope you get out of your reading slump soon 🤍 i'm always here if you want to chat, if you want book recs, or if you want to buddy read or anything 🤍

[foxdies]

like i’m dating my best friend.. yknow how that feels?

[stellocchia]

So, I once made a post about c!Tommy and c!Dream’s relationship throughout season 1 (which you can find here), but today I was thinking, why not do the same for the Exile Arc?

There are some people that still don’t seem to have a comprehensive idea of what actually went down during that time (either because they joined the fandom afterwards or haven’t watched it at the time) so I’ll try to do that here. I’ll cover the first 2 streams here, and then continue in the next part because this is gonna be way too damn long otherwise...

As always I’ll be talking only about the characters and the roleplay from here on out and also I’ll be touching on some very heavy topics under the cut (such as gaslighting and abuse). Also this is gonna be another one of my Overly Long Analysis, so... you know... be warned of that.

I’ll be going through this vod by vod, so It will be so long... God why do I always do this to myself?

Let’s start with TommyInnit Is Exiled From The Dream SMP... which is the vod when Tommy actually get’s exiled.

So, the exile scene per se has been covered a 100 times over, but, right after Tubbo asking Dream to “please detain and excort Tommy out of my country” Dream yeets Tommy off the walls and then he immediately establishes the general idea of how it’ll be in exile: “I don’t think you wanna die Tommy. You need to- to listen to me”.

Also it is to be noted that in this “exile” time and time again Dream establishes arbitrary rules that were most certanly not meant in the initial sentence (which is why it’s much more of a kidnapping then an actual exile). Starting from before they even leave L’Manburg completely. In fact when they are still in the vc with the others and still just down from the obsidian walls, Tommy and Dream have this exchange:

“Do I have any time to speak words? What can...” “NO. NO. NO. NO!” “what the...” 

And then right after (just after leaving the vc):

“Do you have food?” “Yeah...” “Good, we’ll be going a long while still” “Am I not allowed- well surely- surely I’m only exiled from L’Manburg-” “Oh, no no no. You’re exiled from everywhere that’s been touched”

The sentence was only for him to be exiled from L’Manburg. Dream theoretically only had authority over the Greater Dream smp in any case, so how come immediately Tommy’s “sentence” becomes being exiled from “everywhere that has been touched”? What authority did Dream have to exile him from the Badlands? Or the Holy Grounds (considering those are widely considered neutral)?

This is from right after Ghostbur joins them:

“Well, I don’t- I don’t have to come with you” “Well, I mean, I’ll kill you” (...) "I don’t have to follow you! I don’t-” “Tommy! Then I’ll just kill you. What happens if I kill you?” “I die...”

Again, technically Tubbo only asked Dream to escort Tommy out of his country, not all the way to his place of exile. Tommy here is right, he is exiled, he is not supposed to have a jailor going with him, he is not supposed to be imprisoned. All he supposedly had to do was get off the lands he wasn’t allowed into and then he’d be good. Of course Dream’s plans were different there.

Also the trend of constantly undermining anything Tommy is feeling at any given moment sure doesn’t stop with the Exile Arc! 

“No, no! I don’t want to head anywhere! I wanna to go back! I wanna go back!” “Fine fine, we’ll head this way then. It’s fine, this is fine” “I don’t wanna go!” “Tommy come on...”

Honorable mention to Dream talking about the first time he exiled Tommy:

“Do you remember- this is actually funny! Do you remember the first time you ever joined the server? And uhm... you got exiled? By me?” “Yeah?” “It’s kinda like that, except now if you don’t listen you die”

And the conditioning begins all the way here, with Dream trying to decide Tommy’s emotions for him:

“Oh... I hate you” “*laughs* Okay Tommy, you don’t hate me” “No, no I definitely do” “Noooo, you don’t hate me”

Cue Dream just blowing up Tommy’s second Summer Home after he explained that it was supposed to be a safe haven for him and Tubbo. Also note that Dream is already getting rid of any mob attacking Tommy even if at this point he still had armour and weapons to defend himself. I talked about this before, but Dream does seem to want Tommy to be as dependent on him as he is on Tommy, which is why during exile he made him dependent on him for protection/safety and company and in prison for food. Also Ghostbur going: “I don’t think this man is very nice...”, thank you Ghostbur, I wish you could remember that, but you’re trying your best and I appreciate it...

“How long is- how long am I exiled for? When can I just go back?” “You can’t (...) if you go back you die”

Again, not Dream’s decision to make. Tubbo was the one exiling Tommy meaning that, if Tubbo actually had the decision power in that istance, Tubbo was the one who should have decided when he could come back. Also, again reiterating the point from before:

“I thought I was only banished from L’Manburg, that was the deal, not the entirety of the smp-” “Oh no. No you’re banished far enough where they don’t see you”

Also, a little look into Tommy’s mentality here:

“Tubbo said he wasn’t thinking with emotion, but with reason, but: what the fuck is the point if there isn’t any- any emotion?!”

This is honestly why he is Dream’s exact opposite and probably why he finds him fun, while Tubbo is irrelevant to him. Tommy thinks emotions should always be taken into account when making decisions and he values sentimentality over everything. Dream is the opposite, to him emotions are irrelevant and sentimentality is a weakness. Tubbo is a bit of both, which makes his clash of ideologies with Dream a lot less evident. 

Anyway, they get to the island and Dream builds Tommy a dirt shack for him to set his spawn into. And then there is the first istance of Dream taking all of Tommy’s stuff (building blocks and food included) and blowing it up. Which, again, is in no way an actual exile condition. Tommy is in jail basically. He got kidnapped and now he is in jail. Also right after that Dream gives them food and obsidian (of course acting like he is doing them a big favour, when he actually just created that need), which Tommy bromptly refuses, later burning the obsidian.

Also Dream’s parting words here are: “I’ll see you never”. Which couldn’t be less true! There is quite a bit more after that, of Tommy and Ghostbur settling in, finding a ruined portal with some armour and the village nearby and Techno visiting, but this is about c!Dream and c!Tommy and it’s already incredibly long as is, so maybe I’ll talk about everything else another time...

Onto the next one: Tommy Is Alone in Exile with Dream...

This stream starts off with Bad visiting Tommy to give him a few presents (which consist of Chirp, 2 diamonds, an enderchest, and almost dead diamond pick with silk touch, some coocked chicken some bones and a few stacks of oak wood logs). Also Tommy sees Logsteshire for the first time. Then Dream arrives and he is not happy about the present (something something, having other people giving Tommy useful stuff would make him less reliant on Dream). Also Bad seems to be slightly scared of Dream since he immediately tells Tommy that he should not say that any of the stuff he gave him was from him. Anyway, Dream destroys everything, but Tommy, with Bad’s help, manages to save Chirp. Here’s their exchange in this scene of course:

“Tommy?” “Yes! Yes?!” “Do you have uh... something you wanna put on the floor here?” “Yes *throws in 3 red concrete blocks*” “Anything else Tommy?” “No! You’re evil by the way, you’re an evil man-” “Come on... I know there is something else you wanna drop down here...” “No there-... *gives disk to Bad* I don’t reckon there is!” “Okay are you sure...?” “Yes!” “Alright... how about uh- how about your armour Tommy?” “No this is- I actually earned this myself” “I know you did! Just drop it in the hole Tommy” “No, no! You can’t just come and demand things from me! I’ve been exiled, I’ve done your shit! What- what do you mean-” “Tommy~” “What?” *Dream hits Tommy with an enchanted netherite axe* “Drop them down~” “Hooooo okay okay okay!”

So, in case anyone was wondering, physical abuse is there as well. And this is fully depicted as physical abuse. Like, normally, with this being Minecraft, it is implied that violence is generally inconsequential, here though c!Tommy reacts to it clearly in pain and shock. There is no doubt there. 

Sapnap arrives at this point as well. After that Dream makes it a point that Tommy cannot have the enderchast that Bad gave him because you can never have enough random arbitrary rules when kidnapping someone apparently! 

“Why are you here? Why are you here? What- what could you- what could you possibly want more from me? You’ve tortured me-” “I’m just! I’m just... keeping an eye on you Tommy” 

I’ve highlighted this because, considering the last time Dream was there he said he would never see Tommy again, Tommy’s confusion here is more then understandable. But of course Dream acts like it’s obvious that he would be there and that it’s necessary to make sure that Tommy is not “up to no good”. Also, another extremely important exchange: 

“You’ve exiled me you stupid manipulative green bastard!” “Yeah I know! I know! And you know why I did that” “Yes? Yes?” “No, you know why” “Why?” “Because you don’t listen to me ever. You’re the only person who doesn’t ever listen to me (...) listen, you are like a little annoying bug in my room and it pisses me off so I take you and I put you outside and that’s what I did. And now I’m just making sure that you stay outside”

So... the bullshit about this being about George’s house is out of the window by the first proper exile stream. Also Dream goes in the ever increasing list of villains who, if annoyed enough, will reveal all their evil plans to the protagonist. Like Tommy screaches enough and Dream will immediately go in evil monologuing mode...

“So what do you actually want from me then?” “Well nothing, I’m just here to talk to you. Tommy, we’re still friends ok? Just because I exiled you doesn’t mean we’re not friends-” “Just because I killed your friends and family doesn’t mean we can’t be bros...” “Well, it’s true!”

Ok so, it’s confirmed that Dream would still go on with this “friendship” facade even if he killed Tubbo or Wilbur then. Also:

*Tommy sees a creeper* then in the most monotone tone ever: “Help me” Dream sprinting from the other side of the cave: “TOMMY!”. I love this scene and I love this two dumbasses (and I mean the cc’s here). Also, to go back to the serious stuff: once again Dream is the one killing every single mob around Tommy because he blew up all his means for defence. Also Bad and Sapnap are still there as well, but Dream is always the on interveening (mostly because he is the one following Tommy around more closely). I’ll have a few of the more interesting quotes here afterwards until the next interesting scene:

“If I had 8 legs I would fuck you all up” “Oooh, no you wouldn’t” (Dream de-valuing Tommy’s anger once again)

“Stop following me” “NO” “Well okay then...” (honestly this was just funny...)

“Can I call you Wilbur? Or is it Ghostbur...?” “You can call me whatever you like” (for those saying that Ghostbur not correcting Tommy was weird)

“Alright Wilbur, what do you need an enderchest for? I might make an exception but-” “We- we need it so that we can access our stuff from the old world, the old world” “But not to go back” “How would we be able to go back with an enderchest?” “Well I don’t know maybe there is stuff in there that’s... better” “Tommy do you have anything that could get you to go back? In the enderchest?” “A boat? What’d you mean?” “Yeah to be honest we just need wood to get back, it’s not really-” 

Here we have Ghostbur poking holes in one of the new rules that Dream added that day. As a matter of fact, why would an enderchest be dangerous? Tommy mostly keeps sentimental stuff in there and a bit of iron. Still that’s the whole point: Dream is trying to get Tommy under his control so he needs to bring him to a point where he’ll listen to his orders even when they don’t make any actual sense. Also, btw, Dream doesn’t actually give them an enderchest after this exchange.

“Do you want to come with me Tommy? Do you want to come with me and visit the old library?” “No no no” “Yes! Yes please!” “No he wants to stay here with me” “I don’t. I definitely don’t” “He does! He’s just trying to be nice to you Wilbur. He’s trying to be nice to you” “I’m not Wilbur, I want to come with you” (way to gaslight an amnesiac ghost...)

“So how long is Tommy supposed to be here?” “Like a week?” “Oh, a week is not bad!” “*laughing* No he’s here forever” (Like goddamn, imagine if every minor griefing was punished with permanent exile!)

“M-maybe like- does Tommy gets like visitations? Like once every month he get’s to go to L’Manburg-” “No! No no no” “No visitation, huh?” “No visitation” (well, let’s thank Sapnap for trying...)

So, after this Tommy gets his plan to go through the Nether and find a quick way to and from L’Manburg to, perhaps, sneak in unnoticed at some points. Dream “allows” him here to go to the Nether (even though technically there is no reason why the exile would extend to there as well), so they get to work on fixing a ruined portal. “Did you know, I apparently blew up a nation and killed everyone” (thank God we have Ghostbur, he makes everything better). One thing I want to note though: at this point Tommy still kills the mobs attacking him when Dream is not stalking him and doing it for him, which is kind of nice. We are still at the first exile stream though...

“Can I go back for like an hour and see all my friends?” “No, they can come here though. I-I mean Tommy, I think- I think that someone could come here and visit you, but you can’t ever go back. Like I-I don’t have anything against people coming here and visiting you if they want to. They don’t HAVE to, but they can if they really want to” “Tommy think of it this way: whenever you’re in prison you can’t just go and visit your friends, but they can come and visit you” “They can come and visit you, yeah, that’s actually a very- that’s a perfect analogy”

I wonder why the best analogy for Tommy’s situation is not a f*cking exile analogy, but actual prison. Maybe because he is confined to one place, not allowed to keep any personal items and never allowed to go back? Also they actually get to Nether hub at this point and there is the famous scene with Tommy looking at the lava: 

A curious thing about this scene (aside from being a clear indication of the beginning of Tommy’s depressive spiral) is both that Dream didn’t seem to particularly care about Tommy dying up until now (and in the future as well) as long as he is the one to kill him. Meaning that he seemed fine with it as long as he had control over it. And yet at the end there he agrees with Tommy’s statement of “it’s never my time to die” which kinda makes me think that Dream by this point was already entirely set on his idea of Tommy needing to be alive for Dream to control the whole server. Tommy and Dream head back to Logstedshire after this scene.

*Tommy looks at the lava while standing very close to the edge* “I’ll go back through just to... check and see” *Dream hits Tommy away from the edge* “Come on” *Tommy goes back to the edge and Dream pushes him away again, this time covering the hole* “It’s not your time to die yet Tommy” “It’s never my time to die” “That’s true” 

“Home sweet home...” “Home sweet home. I think it’ll be good! People might visit you all the time, I mean, I can visit you! It’s- it’s actually fun to come here! It’s a little bit- it’s a change of scenery, you know?” “It’s not fun to be stuck here” “Well... you’re not ’stuck’ it’s your vacation home!” “Can I go back? I’m ready...” “No but you can leave this area, you can go somewhere else. This is just- like, I took you far away, you can go further if you want”

So, if anyone is wondering, this is not, in fact, Dream giving Tommy more freedom. Especially considering that when Tommy does leave Logstedshire later on Dream literally hunts him down, so no, that was never an option. What Dream is doing here is make himself sound benevolent by comparison by telling Tommy that the only other options he has are worse since they are even further away.

“I’m here for a good time, not for a long time” (more hints towards Tommy’s depressive spiral)

“Guys how do you know when it’s too much?” (and again)

“Can I go and see the tree?” “Tommy, you can’t go and see the tree” “Dream why don’t you let him just- it’s not in L’Manburg! Why don’t you let him just see the tree and then escort him back?” 

Ghostbur my beloved, pointing out holes in Dream’s rules all the time. Something tells me that’s the reason why Dream tried to kill him later on...

Anyway! This concludes this first post because it’s... Oh fuck this is REALLY long.... welp! I’ll make the others in the next few days! 

[deltaengineering]

that was the winter anime 2021 that was

Still not quite ready for a dozen posts about how terrible the likes of Combatants Will Be Dispatched are, sorry. Watch Vivy though, it owns. Here’s some more things that are (mostly) good. As always, worst to best.

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki S3

Yatogame has long run out of hot Nagoya facts and its ensemble comedy never amounted to much, so now it seems mostly content to just spam more and more wacky character designs. About the only thing that it has left going for it is that 3 minutes a week are more effort to drop than to watch, so I expect them to make a movie next. 4/10

Go-toubun no Hanayome S2

Quints is a weird one. S1 was a barely good enough (i.e., well above average) implementation of the ages old harem chestnut. S2 is actually better at the core of its appeal, since it gives all the characters a sharper profile (things like taking Nino from joke to badass and making Ichika a villain are no mean feat), but it does pay a steep price for it. You see, to deliver a steady drip feed of meaningful character moments it apparently has to rush through the source material at a breakneck pace, which completely wrecks the "story" part of this story and makes every episode seem like a recap. And it still keeps wasting precious time on vestigial nonsense like its framing device and the Kyoto flashback scenario that was already the worst part of S1. But by far the most annoying aspect is its insistence on keeping all the options valid, since it prevents any real progress and makes everything seem arbitrary and pointless. So sure enough, after a season of much ado we still don't end up anywhere — you can't really raise the stakes if all at stake was "who wins" to begin with. It's watchable and even enjoyable scene-for-scene but it's getting harder and harder to call it a solid show overall. 5/10

Skate Leading Stars

I was watching this primarily because I didn't like Yuri on Ice much and wanted to see if something that is a blatant attempt to cash in on it would be better — because while YoI delivers on one aspect (being hella gay), it really is an absolute shambles of a sports show. And sure enough, Skate Leading has none of the auteur appeal of YoI, but it just works much better. In particular I appreciate how it managed to make me care even a little about a cast of assholes, which is a nice contrast to the nauseatingly ingratiating way YoI tries to make you love its characters. Also, Skate Leading is just generally cheap and unambitious, so not susceptible to trying hard and painfully flaming out on the presentation side like YoI is. But at some point you gotta let go of these comparisons and on its own Skate Leading is... just fine, I guess? Competent, mildly engaging, not very memorable. And that's probably where it loses to Yuri on Ice in the end after all, even if I think it's "better". 6/10

Idoly Pride

Idoly Pride sold itself on me with a really good (and hilarious/tragic) first episode that was just too bizarre to ignore — I mean, how can you ignore GHOST IDOL MANAGERS. Well, the majority of the show isn't like that. It's a competent and solid version of the idol franchise show, yes, but it really had more potential than that. Especially midseason, it gets lost in these dozens of characters, and while they're all likeable, it does seem like a waste of a good story just centered on Mana/Kotona/Sakura. By the end it comes back around to the heart of the matter with a Maeda-style sob story, which could be a disaster but seasoned veteran Jukki Hanada makes it work anyway. Overall, there's quite a bit of ridiculous hacky melodrama in this, but quite honestly that's the best part and I wish it would concentrate more on it. The rest is just okay. 6/10

Yuru Camp S2

Yuru Camp is still likely the best pure iyashikei show when it gets down to business. Compared to S1 though, this seems to happen less and less. At its peaks (i.e., basically any quiet moment with Rin) it's at least as good as ever, and there's some good cast additions like Mini-Inuko, but it appears that Yuru Camp simply has run out of things you can do with camping and it fills up the time with other... stuff. This stuff includes the generic school club shenanigans it was never particularly good at, and a gigantic helping of crass consumerism. Yeah, I would say the majority of Yuru Camp is just a straight up infomercial at this point, which itself ranges from the perfectly acceptable (which cute anime isn't about food constantly), to the sketchy (I don't know whether the Izu tourism board cut this production a fat check, but if they didn't, Yuru Camp still gives its best effort to make it seem that way) to the highly irritating – I am aware that camping requires gear and you can't just ignore that, but you most definitely do not require whole arcs dedicated to talking about raising funds for the purposes of acquiring the Lamp of Comfy Happiness at your friendly local Caribou™ either. Not to mention an arc where the aforementioned lame school club does the same, for double irritation. Make no mistake, this show is so riddled with scenes that beg for a solution to embed affiliate links in video files that it makes me wish I was watching something as anticapitalist and underground as Love Live. And irritating really is the last thing a show with this core concept, as stellar as it is at that, can afford to be. Bummer. 6/10

SKOO the Infinity

Skoo has one really huge asset: ADAM, its magnificent villain. It also has one really huge liability: Reki, its not magnificent protagonist. To be more specific, it's very good at anything outrageous, physics-defying and silly, such as most scenes ADAM is in, and quite bad at anything serious, dramatic (in a serious way) and down to earth, such as most scenes Reki is in. So, what's the verdict? Well, the rest of the cast is more ADAM-like, and Reki's co-protagonist Langa is fine as the straight (yeah, right) man. The tedious buddy drama is a comparatively small part of this show, and at least it pays off quite well in the end. Seriously, I was ready to give this a 6, but the final episode is probably the best one of the show, in all of its aspects. That's really not something you see often. Skoo's a great time. Except when it's not. 7/10

Non Non Biyori Nonstop

Speaking of the rare good ending, what about we gave one of those to a slim and inconsequential slice-of-life show? NNB has always been solid, comfy and amusing quality with a couple of standout moments (usually something with Renge), and Nonstop has that plus an ending as conclusive as any show of this type is ever going to have. Besides, it does a lot of things right by focusing on more characters than the central 4 (especially Konomi has great material in S3), it expands the universe just enough to not get stale, and it moves things forward — It's definitely a lot better than the movie, is what I'm saying. Apart from that, well, we're three seasons in, if you have any interest in this you probably don't need me to explain what's good about NNB at this point. Bonus points for being nothing but an ad for the manga. 7/10

Wonder Egg Priority

Oh boy, so here's the big one. Wonder Egg is the rare Meaningful Arthouse Show About Real Issues You Guys, as you might have heard. And well, the long and short of it is that it's a very good show with quite a few glaring problems (besides not actually being finished due to production issues, but what we have is enough of an ending to be able to meaningfully talk about it). In particular, one problem: WEP is, at its core, one of these metaphorical Magical Girl-ish series that are just a thin layer of abstraction over coming-of-age or societal problems. The issue is that "metaphorical" in this case means "literal" and "thin" means "basically nonexistent". This show is not subtle regarding what it's about, at all. This is a double-edged sword — on the positive side, some things really should just be said aloud, and I'm really, really fucking tired of the Ikuhara style of "here's some wacky things, maybe a blog post will eventually tell you how it's actually about the most important thing ever" obfuscation — if it's really so important, just spell it out. On the other hand, there are limits to this and when a second, different Ai appears I don't really need a voiceover line telling me that yep, this show is about parallel universes now. WEP spells out many important things, but it also spells out many things that are implicitly clear or better left vague. Not to mention that with being so obvious up front, the show's tendency to leave figuring out what it's actually saying about it up to the viewer can leave the wrong impression. Again, I settled on the opinion that it's subtle after all where it counts the most, but you might easily get the impression that it pulls its punches (Ikuhara does this the exact other way around — once you figure out what the fuck he's talking about it's abundantly clear what he's saying about it).

In fact, this show is so good at subtle, quiet character moments that it calls into question the need for big huge fighting fantasy layer in the first place, especially since I'm not a fan of the fantasy designs and the fights aren't great. Sure, they look impressive on a technical level (this show is very good looking in general), but the lack of actual impact or rhythm makes me think this is not made by people who are very familiar with action and maybe they should have asked some seasoned shounen veterans for this — or just, you know, not do it. They can (and do) impress with character acting in quiet scenes just the same. And while Ai's character story actually does pay off quite nicely by the end we got, and Momoe and Rika are also handled well, Neiru's backstory is significantly less good, not to mention the whole Frill subplot regarding the show's mythology that they introduced just before (and that's the part to be resolved at a later date), which is a huge can of worms. We'll see how well they handle that, I suppose, but as it is it's a weird and vestigial detour that doesn't add much besides thematic headaches.

But yeah, apart from all that — I like it, a lot. Great character writing in the details, cool looks for the most part, tons of ambition, and a message that I consider to be appropriately handled — for the most part, and for now. Not quite ambitious arthouse anime at its finest, but also not a pretentious disaster like Sarazanmai, Monogatari et al. 8/10

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle (1993)

Summary

Serpent Isle is a direct sequel to the Black Gate. The arrival of the Guardian has been prevented and his cult has been outlawed and disbanded, but his most loyal follower has escaped to a place called the Serpent Isle to enact their backup plan.

But the Serpent Isle is not just an island, it is another world that you find yourself in after sailing your ship between the Serpent Pillars (yes, you get isekai’d while already living in another world).

This strange land is populated by people who fled from your lord long ago, and it seems to be suffering from an apocalyptic event that you soon experience for yourself, as a magical storm teleports your companions away and replaces most of the potent items you arrived with with random junk.

So your goals are clear: Recover your items, find the Guardian’s followers, and try to prevent the world’s destruction.

In many ways, Serpent Isle can feel like a more linear and limited game than the Black Gate (for one, you can’t own and freely sail a ship), but there are actually many things that I think it actually does better.

I played it using Exult and the SI Fixes mod.

Freedom

While Serpent Isle is not fully linear, it is definitely not nearly as open as the Black Gate was.

Where the Black Gate lets you travel nearly anywhere in the world almost immediately, even enabling several forms of transportation for this purpose, Serpent Isle initially allows only one section of the island to be explored with the rest opening up as one progresses through the game.

To its credit, the way in which these areas are locked off are sometimes reasonable and do not feel arbitrary. For instance, Moonshade is an island and nearly every ship in the land have been wrecked by the same magical storms that affected your party at the start of the game, so reaching it is not as simple as just buying a boat and going there.

There are other cases, however, where the restrictions do feel nonsensical. Such as the way the Bull Tower pikemen demand obscene amounts of money for the captain’s release but will happily accept a single much less valuable gold bar instead (since acquiring those is tied to a plot point). Then there’s all the stuff with the Hound of Doskar...

On the positive side, you can deal with various parts of the game in whatever order you desire within these limitations. This includes resolving the central quests in each of the land’s three cities in your own preferred order.

However, the game is still lacking in alternate solutions for quests in general. There are some decisions to be made, but they are rather minor in the grand scheme of things.

Character Creation/Customization

This aspect of the games is just as barebones as the Black Gate. You can only select your name, gender, and portrait. Your starting stats are pre-set and there are no further decisions to be made there.

However, Serpent Isle does have a marginal benefit over the Black Gate in that how you spend your training points matters a lot more, since you can’t just automatically max out your stats by completing the expansion.

Even then, there is not much to the character creation here at all.

Story/Setting

I think this is one of the game’s stronger points. The Black Gate may have had a larger world with more total settlements, but Serpent Isle’s three cities of Monitor, Fawn, and Moonshade are each significantly larger than the average Black Gate town and, most importantly, this world feels more dynamic.

Due to the way many of the game’s quests and events work, Serpent Isle manages to feel more alive than its predecessor. I will not spoil the details, but you often feel like something is always happening and like new developments are organically finding you rather than you having to actively search for them.

As has become typical of the Ultima series, the setting this time around is also centered around virtues, but in this case it goes beyond the Eight Virtues you mastered in the last trilogy.

Serpent Isle’s three cities are inhabited by the descendants of people who fled the reign of Lord British and who resent his edict of the eight virtues. The knights of Monitor considered Valor to be the highest virtue, the sailors of Fawn wanted to elevate Beauty as a virtue, and the mages of Moonshade did not feel that their profession should be associated with the virtue of Honesty.

But in addition to all that, much of the game revolves around learning about and mastering the ancient Ophidian virtue system, which functions differently from what you are used to. 

The Ophidian virtues are divided into Order (Ethicality, Discipline, Logic) and Chaos (Tolerance, Enthusiasm, Emotion). The forces composing both sides must be in balance to achieve a new set of principles (Harmony arising from Ethicality + Tolerance, Dedication from Discipline + Enthusiasm, and Rationality from Logic + Emotion).

The incoming apocalypse you face in the game is the result of a cosmic imbalance in these forces. The ancient Ophidians polarized into Order and Chaos factions that warred each other, with Order winning the war and destroying the Chaos Serpent, which causes the universe to begin unravelling.

While this game does have an antagonist, resolving this imbalance remains the most significant part of the game in terms of story.

The game also has multiple big scripted scenes that did not quite exist in the Black Gate, and the world as a whole changes dramatically partway through as a result of a certain event.

Immersion

As previously mentioned, things like the quest design and more dynamic world can help make this game more immersive than Black Gate in some ways. I am reasonably certain that some of the NPC schedules are a bit more complex this time around as well.

There are also a few new things, such as a frozen wasteland up north that you need warm clothes to traverse without freezing.

Apart from that, all the features mentioned in the Black Gate are still present here, such as weather, day/night cycles, and more.

But really I think one of the most significant differences is actually just the fact that you are significantly less overpowered than in the Black Gate and have less allies. I feel like that changes the feel of the game a lot on its own in ways that have to be experienced to be fully understood.

Gameplay

Combat is, as in Black Gate, automatic and uninteresting, though it is slightly more difficult now overall.

The rest of the gameplay is largely the same as in the Black Gate as well, though dialogue has been slightly expanded with more complex trees.

Really the main difference comes down to the differences in the world and available items rather than any mechanical changes.

Some of the most significant items are a ring (obtained from the Silver Seed expansion) that provides infinite magical reagents and a magical goblet that provides endless nourishment. These things are not nearly as broken as what the Forge of Virtue provides in the Black Gate, but are still nice conveniences.

While this game has less towns than its predecessor, it does have larger and more interesting dungeons overall. The one issue with them is that some of the puzzles in them are not very interesting (often amounting to just placing items on pedestals and such).

This is also where I should talk about one of the game’s major flaws: It is the first one where the influence of Electronic Arts began to manifest. It is nothing too major at this point (just wait until we get to Ultima 8 and especially Ultima 9) but it does mean there are some questlines that were left unfinished due to EA rushing things.

It’s not just questlines either. The towns were supposed to be larger and with more content, the player was meant to eventually gain a ship they could freely sail like in the Black Gate, and a major plot element had to be changed. The Silver Seed expansion in particular feels incomplete and inconsequential in terms of story, and is largely centered around four dungeons to explore for unique loot (both the dungeons and the loot are reasonably good at least).

I also dislike just how many plot-critical items are in the game. I would like to use my backpack space for other things.

The game also offers a decent amount of locations to explore, including many optional curiosities unrelated to the main quest.

Aesthetics

While the engine and graphics are largely the same as in the Black Gate, there have been graphical upgrades, most notably in the form of significantly more detailed and lifelike portraits for NPCs.

But I would say that the biggest aesthetic changes here have more to do with the game’s design and atmosphere. 

Serpent Isle is a far more unfriendly place than Britannia, and you will be accosted by assassins and deceivers during your quest. It makes for a more grim adventure.

The whole game has a much darker tone than any in the series since Ultima 5, I think. The world is completely falling apart due to the imbalance, with storms obliterating Fawn’s fleet, goblins making significant gains in their war against Monitor, and plagues are starting to break out. You do get the sense as you explore the world that this is a land experiencing its final days.

And things only get worse from here too.

I also like how unique several of the locations are. The city of Monitor is not just a walled city, it is populated by knights who organize into three different commands that rule the city. Meanwhile the city of Fawn is completely unlike any other in the series, being built entirely over the sea.

It is good stuff, and I wish they had had the time to expand and develop these locations as they had originally planned.

Accessibility

Exactly as good in this regard as the Black Gate, I think. Even the increased difficulty (which is still not enough to make this a “hard” game by any means) does not really matter since at the start of the game you get a magical hourglass that can be used to resurrect any fallen party members and the local monks will take care of your own mortality as well.

If there’s frustrations to be had here, they may come more from some of the less intuitive puzzles than anything and plot points than anything. The core gameplay is still extremely simple.

While the game can theoretically be played on its own, I strongly recommend playing at least the Black Gate first to learn a little about the events that led to this whole expedition. The two games really are part of the same package.

Conclusion

Between the Black Gate and Serpent Isle, I always got the impression that the Black Gate was the more popular of the two. I can understand why, as Serpent Isle was a bit rushed and lacks the open exploration that has defined the previous games in the series.

Despite this, I remember loving it about as much as the Black Gate largely because of the atmosphere and how the game feels. It is a particularly easy recommendation for those who enjoyed the previous game, as the engine and mechanics remain largely the same.

I also recommend this game for anyone who may be interested in following the story or looking for an immersive experience, but who doesn’t want to bother too much with stuff like combat or numbers. Even just watching the NPCs go about their day can be fun in this game.

[vagrant-soul]

Yet again, I got hooked by a stinger implying something interesting that wound up amounting to nothing, and I’m starting to feel like the lore is just never going to be able to escape the consequences of being built on an endless string of cliffhangers with disappointing exposition for resolution.

Extensive analysis of why the Empire narrative failed in 4.5 under the cut.

I really liked the twist where Varis was a knowing puppet of the Ascians; sure, it introduced another boring, flat villain characterized primarily by Crazyface, but it did so in a way that gave a character we were more familiar with, who has more emotional weight, a few more shades of complexity. 

Varis previously had one apparent goal (maintain + grow the Empire), a logistical struggle to attain that goal (defeat the warrior of light), and no apparent concerns outside of the scope of that goal beyond glimmers here and there that there might be something more going on beneath the surface (as with your first encounter with him in Heavensward, or when he dismisses his own son as a monster despite the apparent hypocrisy). The twist gave the story an opportunity to provide us with something other than a stock villain in a fancy tin can.

Except, of course it didn’t.

Varis shows his hand immediately, revealing that his solution to the tension and conflict created by the disadvantaged position we’ve just discovered is really just additional brute force. Jumping to any conclusion is disappointing when you’ve only just introduced a concept that leaves room for doubt, surprise, tension, character growth, and all the other things that make a story interesting, but the particulars of this conclusion are especially disappointing because it’s a very simplistic idea dressed up in complexities and contrivances.

His resolution - to kill the Ascians in order to permit humankind greater control of its own affairs, separate from divine meddling - is a plot point once again lifted directly from Final Fantasy XII. In FFXII, it was an excellent motivator for the villain that elegantly added dimension to the story, and that’s probably why it was chosen for reuse here - where it doesn’t work, because the two worlds have VERY different relationships to divinity and use their plot-moving God characters to different ends.

The Ascian narrative particulars have always been hazy, but their central purpose to the story has ALWAYS been to cut across the more political and human stories and play devils-ex-machina. They’re an easy, boring and perpetual threat that allow the player’s eye and the writer’s time to be drawn elsewhere. This is, in fact, the EXACT purpose Ascian-Solus serves; it creates unity in the story through keeping the Greater Evil consistent and it allows the human characters in the foreground the capacity for a little more depth. Crucially, the fact that they’re meddling is not the problem, as Hydaelyn meddles all the time and the narrative tends to agree this is Good - the problem is just that they’re evil (or “agents of chaos”, if you will).

The idea of adding a divergent motivation to a villain by proposing they team up with the heroes to defeat the Greater Evil is itself fine, but the constraint that made this interesting in FFXII is that said villain still had to do it at cross-purposes with the hero’s interests, goals, and well-being; they were still a villain, even if they were aligned on a single point. The writers clearly tried to achieve the same effect here, but because the greater evil in this case is not the silent hand of fate but a bunch of saturday morning cartoons, it became much more difficult to keep the Emperor villainous as well. They needed his methods to keep him antagonistic, and there wasn’t any tool on the table to let them do this besides to make up something arbitrary.

Varis’ proposal to kill the Ascians therefore involves just killing a load of people. In fact, it involves doing all the same stuff the Ascians want to do, except more. His plan heavily references FFXIV’s bloated and complex cosmology, introduced an expansion ago and entirely inconsequential ever since, making it difficult to recall as well. It also introduces a new, unexplained, unsubstantiated idea that going along with the Ascian’s desired plan to unite all the worlds will also, somehow, transmogrify everybody who didn’t die in the process into a race of ultra-peaceful super-humans that will then be able to rid the world of Ascian influence.

It’s a new, thinly explained concept that doesn’t have any connection to any of the narrative mechanics we’ve learned in the past. You can’t draw on past story experience to intuitively understand why this character believes this plan would work and is worth pursuing, because it has no basis in anything we’ve learned so far. 

The other problem is the story information we do have - just a few story-hours ago we were introduced to another character who has been hunting Ascians, manually, with, like, a sword and a gun. And he’s been, apparently, quite successful in this approach! Of course, we, the player, have also been pretty successful in a similar approach as well, and have killed 4 or 5 of what were once-12 Ascians in the course of doing other kinds of business. 

The net result is that Varis’ proposal appears both foolish and hasty. It’s a high-effort, high-cost, ???-reward proposition that closes the door on further introspection he or any other character might have about how to solve a difficult problem (i.e. “How do we free the empire of Ascian influence”) that might in turn create a new world state (i.e. “What does Garlemald look like WITHOUT that influence?”). It ignores proven, in-world story information in favor of something invented on the fly, making it obviously irrational to anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the other options. It doesn’t make him look complicated, dastardly, or cunning - it just primes us to expect another cartoon villain, this time with exciting new fascist overtones.

The most frustrating part isn’t the lost opportunities or the strain on believability or even the way the lore seems like an overly complex rusty jungle gym, duct-tape hastily applied to support whatever direction the writers care to go in this time. It’s that this one scenario I’ve written a thousand words on is a microcosm of the interplay between these problems and the greater ones they have created in the past. It just seems inevitable they’ll be repeated into the future.

[archer3-13]

Put on some god damn pants Fjorm, for fucks sake it gets cold during the winter.

in other news, I have been entirely unsurprisied by book II of fe heroes story so far. I appreciate the directness, and its not to poorley presented so far (barring dumb design choices but hush), but its certainly just as lifeless and predictable as i thought it would be. saritire... thats his name right? anyways, evil garondork is just as much of a generic evil dick so far as i thought he would be. His daughter has no personality or reason for me to care about her existence so far, in fact for a second i fooled myself into thinking she was like his royal guard captain or something considering her dialogue until i read her description and sighed in disappointment, but hey thats what future chapters are for but way to fail to build intrigue, still good on you guys for not just making her severa 2.0, and Loki... well Loki is a playful sexy seductress which is the type... c of sexy seductresses i guess (type a is usually conceited i guess, type b is masosadist i guess... idk this is arbitrary) so shes just there to probably turn out to either be manipulating things, actually be serving someone else which is my hope personally, or be completely inconsequential which is my bet on what happens. 

Other then that im glad theirs a greater sense of agency going on, and some actual fucking direction now (figuring out how to beat the generic evil flame king and his empire of evil) but on the other hand Im not feeling the stakes ya know. Veronica and embla in general probably dont need his help, and things havent really gotten more serious since its basically the same “askr and all the words will be in peril if the villain is not stopped” as before only now with more fire. Its the same crossworld war, and frankly veronica is a much more interesting villain then any of these other fucks, possessing insecurities and sympathetic elements, but also showcasing ruthlessness and presenting a clear threat to the player. Instead, shes been increasingly shoved into the sidekick villain role to make way for bruno and his fucking garbage nonsense so he can wangst it up with alfonse because hot, and now shes also been shoved to the side by a generic dickbag asshole. I can only hope that changes with more story content, but so far i haven't been wrong with my assumptions and frankly i have seen no reason to suggest that their planning on something different.

And of course, this brings way back to Fjorm, who i honestly dont have much to write about but thats only because she hasn't given me much at all to even fume over. I hate her design, not only because i dont like the design work itself but also because its basically just sharena 2.0 and also because its a fucking stupid outfit for someone from a stock generic ice kingdom thats presumably in winter yearlong or at least cold enough to make sure their ice castle doesn't start melting during the summer. Sure, maybe one could fanon it as a magic connection or whatever prevents her from being cold for some inane reason, but that certainly not the actual reason for the design itself and even if you had cold immunity you would still probably want pants of some kind when you have to traverse through a bunch of snow year long and can we pleaaase just stop with the garter belts! other then that, personality wise i find her as enticing as samon paste, her motivation well easily understandable is generic as hell and the only thing i can hope for from her is that we actually get to know more about her country down the line when she gets the spotlight, because right now i give less of a shit personally about her then i do sternlin. Shes not even that great gameplay wise, since outside of her ton of skills and her unique special (which i would want to switch out with something useful anyways like say iceberg because damage reducing specials in feh are near worthless) shes got little going for her with a mediocre stat spread, only two actually worthwhile skills (her weapon with a built in distant counter and atk/def bond though that ones debatable) and the legendary boost is probably gonna be pretty worthless as well outside of maybe building sp faster.

speaking of gameplay wise, im liking the upgrade system, and weapon refinary looks alright so far, cover all the weapons soon you fucks, but some of the refining stuff... worries me i guess? like, i can see how a built in fury for eldgian, freeing up his A slot, might seem like a good idea but he already has fury as a basekit skill and fury isnt that enticing of a skill for most people to begin with, baring very certain builds. wouldnt it have been better to say, give him a magic damage reducing skill or a built in distant defense to upgrade mystletainn with, considering that was similar to one of its effects in genealogy (+20 to skill, +10 to res, and the critical skill) and to better play into his tank like build? I know id probably upgrade the damn thing with the res stat boost anyways, especially since it gives him more additional hp then going with the built in fury. I suppose you could run a double fury eldgian if your... insane, but again im curious as to why the built in fury. atleast its a built in fury 3, and hey i like how refining a normal weapon just gives you dew equal to the sacred crystals or whatever spent to make normal weapon, and i like how its all not too expensive, and another note fuck yes psychic is decent now but now im probably gonna have to look for a rehabilitate plus for my maria because my main team works heavily around the support buffs and my maria dont have the pow to effectively run psychic+...

also probably gonna pass on the fates kids banner, none of them particularly excited me and my banner pulls suck ass anyways, but also nice going on not even giving them a chapter or paralouge of their own, and revealing them way too early ahead of the banner so hype wont be as high when the banner does come out.

[stateofirrelevancy]

How do you feel about the posts going around that say the boys (specifically Mikey and Calum) don't look happy to see fans anymore and have "lost the light in their eyes (when with fans)"

OOH MY GOD I have so much to say on this and I’m so thankful you came to me for this question.

I haven’t been very active in the fandom lately just because I moved into my dorm this week and have been busy af every day, so I didn’t know people were saying that stuff about Michael and Calum. That being said though, I’ve seen this exact thing happen before, and I was even part of the problem at one point, so I have a lot to say on this subject.

First of all, I’m gonna be talking about mid sophomore year me and my thoughts on sos “not looking happy” in pics at the time. I’m going to be as brutally honest as I can on my past toxicity because I know those thoughts don’t in any way reflect who I am as a person today. I learned from my mistakes, and hopefully the people spouting this negativity today will learn soon as well.

My past with this problem

In about December 2014, my friend pointed out to me that Calum never smiled in pictures he took with fans. I’d never noticed this before, but when I looked back at all the recent pictures that had been posted with him, I too noticed the pattern there. And upon learning this, I felt a mix of embarrassment and anger. It was as if I felt injusticed on behalf of the fans that met him. And, me being 2014 me, I thought I’d do something about it.

So I made this edit with an accompanying hashtag like #calumsmileproject or something (it’s not that tho lol I forgot what it was). In it, I explained how Calum was being unfair to fans and how everyone reading it needed to repost the picture so it could eventually get to Calum. What goal was I hoping to accomplish? I don’t know. Maybe I wanted him to feel bad. Maybe I thought that for some reason my poorly made edit would inspire some sort of revelation within him that would suddenly transform him into what I considered to be a better man. Or maybe I just wanted the ability to say I started a movement. I just don’t know.

This is honestly so embarrassing to talk about. I want to delete all of this and just say that I disprove of fans like this. Only the friends that followed me on my old insta page know about this because I’ve always been too grossed out with myself to share what I was like not even three years ago. But I want to share this with everyone now because it provides context on why I have such a strong opinion on this topic.

The picture did get a bit of attention. While I didn’t have a huge page or anything, I had a lot of popular mutuals who reposted it, which boosted it a lot. I was also fuming about this “problem” until probably March 2015 when I sort of let it go and forgot about it.

Why I was mad and why I think others are mad today

I personally did this because I relied on 5sos for too much of my happiness. I think everyone practices escapism to some degree, but with sos, they were (and honestly still are) a big part of my identity. So when the slightest of thing went wrong, I channeled all of the anger from my actual life into my fandom life. I took all my frustrations from the real world out on 5sos because I had a lot of pent up anger that I needed to get out and I thought of them as easy targets.

While that’s not the exact same reason others are complaining, nor am I trying to say me attempting to start a movement on Calum not smiling is the same as someone offhandedly saying they’re sad Malum don’t smile in pics with fans, I do think a lot of problems in this fandom arrive from the same roots. I think people subconsciously view 5sos as easy targets to vent about because it’s easy to feel like they’ll never see what you say. Plus, when you engage in rage culture, you’ll likely get responses from people agreeing with you which only serves to make those feelings of frustration validated.

Whether purposely or not, it’s easy to find yourself almost expecting your faves to provide constant happiness for you when you’re in a fandom. And I think that’s what ends up happening when 5sos fans participate in what is ultimately pointless drama.

Why late 2014/early 2015 me was wrong and why others are wrong today

Well let’s get what’s obvious out of the way: no, 5sos don’t secretly hate their fans. That should go without saying.

I think an easy misconception to fall into is that “it’s not that hard to smile in pictures!!” because that’s what I used to think. But we as fans don’t know that the boys have to go through every day. We don’t know what it’s like to be stopped everywhere we go every few minutes with people demanding to take a picture with you. We don’t know what it’s like to come off of a 8+ hour flight only to be mobbed at the airport and to feel obligated to talk to every fan there. We don’t know what it’s like to never feel like you have any true privacy.

Smiling isn’t the only indicative way to sense how someone is feeling. Plus, smiling takes mf effort!! And let’s not forget that often times when they get stopped, it’s with a group of fans, so their minds are likely more focused on getting through everyone than on making each picture perfect. As long as the boys are being kind to the fans they meet, then it shouldn’t matter what kind of arbitrary rules, like them needing to look how we want them to look, they need to be following.

I would be lying if I said I never notice it anymore. If I see back to back fan pics, it’s hard to not think to myself “oh [5sos member] isn’t really smiling in this pic :(” But I have to actively remind myself that just because they’re not smiling doesn’t mean they have some sort of vendetta against fans. 

It’s easy as fans to fall into the trap of wanting to analyze everything 5sos do and think we know what’s going on with them, as if we’re watching a movie and picking out the symbolism purposely written into the script. But the boys aren’t move characters. They’re real, complex humans who don’t deserve to be judged based on inconsequential actions that make up a fraction of their life and even less so reflect their true perception of fans.

Even the people hating on Michael and Calum hopefully know deep down that they love what they do and they love their fans for helping them achieve them. Look at 5sos while they’re on stage. Listen to them talk about us in interviews. Don’t get caught up in searching for secret toxic behavior that isn’t even there.

[jmsebastian]

Rewards: How Breath of the Wild Fails at Incentives

I will admit up front that some of the things I don’t like about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild aren’t issues with the game itself. There is something inherently unrewarding to me about open world games that, naturally, this title shares with other games of its style. That isn’t completely the fault of the game’s design, nor the implementation of the tropes that go along with open world games. Open world games just aren’t really very interesting. For all there is to see and do, the understanding that nearly all of it is inconsequential makes the incentive to go uncover it disappear. While Breath of the Wild offers a lot more in the moment to moment action than other similar titles, it still suffers from this basic flaw. Because it’s a Zelda title, that flaw is both more pronounced and more problematic.

Just to get this out of the way, the game is too big. The common concept of value with regard to video games is amount of content, which can roughly translate into how much total time a player might spend playing. Open world games take this simplistic formula to the extreme, cramming in more side quests, collectibles, and places to visit than are required to reach the end game in an effort to make players feel that the money they spent was worth it. In a game with no story or particular goal in mind, say, Minecraft, for example, more often does translate into more. The larger your world, the more players can uncover as they go about experiencing the world. When you have a game like Breath of the Wild, which has a fairly concise and urgent story it wants to tell, there’s no way to make such a huge world fit into that story. There is also the issue of diminishing returns. With so many things to explore and find, the value of each find begins to drop. Finding a piece of opal can only be exciting so many times before the player either doesn’t need anything from them or no longer remembers what they can be used for. There’s an underlying lack of payoff in a world overflowing with stuff.

There are three major types of rewards the player receives for exploring the overworld: towers, shrines and collectibles. In terms of incentives, towers provide a reasonable reward to encourage players to find and activate them. They allow Link to obtain more detailed information on the map about the region the tower resides in, for one. They also give the player a good view of the surrounding area and provide platforms from which one can parasail Link down into otherwise difficult to reach areas. As an added benefit, they allow for fast travel between areas. Most of the towers are easy to get to and scale, but a few have environmental challenges that must be overcome in order to activate them. Even without the map information being filled in, the ability to fast travel or glide to nearby areas makes towers valuable. There is one major problem with fast travel being tied to towers, however, which is that it isn’t exclusive to them, sadly cutting off their usefulness by as much as a third for many of them.

(If you want to fill all that in, you’re going to be climbing a lot of towers.)

The second reward for exploration are the shrines. The shrines are self contained puzzle palaces that test the player’s skill with particular items, concepts, or combat. Shrines unlock fast travel similar to towers, but the main draw of the shrines is that they contain unique items that can be retrieved as well as Spirit Orbs. Spirit Orbs allow Link to gain heart containers or increase his stamina meter by trading in four orbs for each heart or stamina increase. The shrines are where the reward system, so ingrained, in Breath of the Wild really breaks down. Shrines always have a Spirit Orb as their main collectible. Unfortunately, since you need four orbs at a time to upgrade Link, there have to be a lot of shrines to guarantee enough orbs to satisfactorily increase Link’s abilities. This results in the player spending the majority of their time in the game’s overworld looking for shrines.

(Get ready to collect tons of these.)

Knowing what the reward to each shrine is going to be before entering really mutes the excitement of discovering a new one. Nintendo tried to mitigate this somewhat by including treasure chests in the shrines that have unique items, but rarely is the item good enough to justify spending the time figuring out how to access them. The puzzles that would normally make up a dungeon in a Zelda game are instead isolated and sterile. Many are enjoyable, but none last longer than a few minutes. In a weird twist, many of the shrines don’t even feature puzzles, but rather force the player to square off against a robot opponent. These tests of strength are all the same, just scaled up or down in difficulty. It feels as though they were added just in case players never engaged enemies in the overworld (which is something you can pretty much get away with if you want to).

What’s most frustrating about the way the shrines are implemented is that there is an obvious solution to making them more meaningful, one that was pioneered in the very first Zelda game. When you discover a hidden cave in The Legend of Zelda, you don’t know what you’re going to find, but no matter what it is, it’s useful. Some caves contain rupees, useful for buying items while doubling as bow ammunition. Other caves contain NPCs who convey important clues to progression. Some hold heart containers. The dungeons you traverse all have a special item that can be used to make progress somewhere else in the game, like the ladder or flute. Heck, the first cave in the game holds your main weapon, which is possible to miss or ignore. Breath of the Wild could have followed a similar design philosophy, where one shrine might offer you a very good and unique weapon, whereas another might offer a heart container or stamina increase. Not knowing exactly what was hidden inside, yet knowing it would be worth the effort, would have given shrines real purpose and remained somewhat mysterious. Since there is a hard limit on how many heart containers and how much stamina Link can have, it would have meant greatly reducing the number of shrines, certainly, but more care could have been placed on the shrines themselves. They could have been made bigger, more elaborate and interesting. Combined uses of the runes could have been explored more fully. They could have implemented the strengths of more traditional dungeons without forcing players into the hard progression sequences that made A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time so limiting.

The third reward that weaves its way into practically every aspect of the game is consumable items. Nearly everything in Breath of the Wild acts as a consumable. Fruit, arrows, monster parts, rupees, the Spirit Orbs, even weapons. Consumables are a tricky thing to get right in games. Drop too many of them and a game can become a cake walk. Drop too few and players will get frustrated that they can’t simply get something they need in order to allow them to make progress. Breath of the Wild actually manages to find a middle ground with this, but in a way that takes away the point of looking for items in the first place. The issue at hand is that all items must be replaceable. There are a few exceptions to this, such as the Master Sword (which is the only weapon that can’t break), but everything else either goes away when you use it or breaks down with use.

Since so much of the game has a shelf life, it can’t very well give out items that players would find too valuable to use. During my playthrough, I found myself hanging onto weapons that were a bit better than the usual stock I could get by defeating local enemies. That, of course, put a crunch on my inventory space, which forced me into decisions on which weapons to keep and which to use more often or discard. This was an interesting proposal at first, until I realized that none of the weapons were really worth worrying about as the amount of damage I could do didn’t increase or decrease dramatically enough to make much difference. So long as I wasn’t running around using a tree branch as my main weapon, I’d be able to take care of the overworld enemies just fine. This realization really sucked out the desire for me to fight enemies for more weapons, or scour the shrines for chests that might contain better weapons. Once I received the Master Sword, I forgot about other weapons almost entirely.

(Whatever it is, I don’t need it.)

The Master Sword, itself, is an interesting case, as it stands in such stark contrast to the way the rest of the weapons in the game work. Obviously, Nintendo couldn’t let the Master Sword be destroyed. All it would take is an absent minded player whacking away at some rocks and watching the most iconic piece of the Zelda mythos splinter into pieces before they got angry calls. Instead, they placed an arbitrary use limit on it so that it would power down for a while, similar to the way the special abilities earned from the beating the Divine Beasts work. This was a very poor compromise to make. While getting the Master Sword isn’t a herculean feat by any stretch, there should be some real reward for going through the effort of getting it. Sure, having a strong, unbreakable weapon might have made the game a bit too easy, but the amount of time spent in the game needed to get the Master Sword would have made this a trivial concern. Players who found the weapon too powerful could always opt not to sue it. The result is the inclusion of a weapon that has no practical purpose, which feels underwhelming at best, and a bit of a broken promise at worst.

The consumable nature of the game also means that Breath of the Wild has to assume that players might not have any items that weren’t forced upon them. To Nintendo’s credit, they did manage to get a lot of positives out of this dilemma. While the puzzles that litter the game aren’t very deep or involved, there are often a few ways to solve them. This was a necessity, of course, since players could very easily have gotten stuck at various points without having the right equipment and not knowing what to look for to solve the problem they were facing. Part of the joy of this game was in examining the tools at your disposal, then figuring out how you might combine them to achieve your goal. This is great for a little while, but soon gets repetitive, as it almost always boils down to using one of your four major runes: the Remote Bomb, Cryonis, Magnesis, or Stasis. Since the game couldn’t count on players having particular equipment at any given time, puzzles revolve either around things placed in the environment itself, or utilizing one of the four abilities granted to them by the Runes that the story guides you toward finding. Any less obvious methods for solving puzzles are done either because a player feels particularly playful or the puzzles are so straightforward that they become boring to solve using the intended method.

So what we’re left with in Breath of the Wild is a huge world filled to the brim with content that simply doesn’t matter. Very little in the game matters, ultimately. So little, in fact, that nearly everything past the introduction sequence can be skipped entirely. While there are a minimum number of bosses that need to be fought to beat the game, you can do so simply by storming Hyrule Castle and boss rushing them all at once. Sure, it’s a real challenge to do that without considerable familiarity with some of the more intricate combat mechanics, but once competence has been achieved, it’s hard to justify spending any time doing anything but going straight to the end game once players know it can be done.

(To be fair, the flurry rush is a pretty satisfying move.)

The upside to the majority of Breath of the Wild being made up of filler is that it has spawned a pretty fervent speedrunning community. Zelda games are no strangers to speedrunning, but the enthusiasm with which Breath of the Wild has been met by speedrunners makes me think some of that has to do with the fact that the game, on its own, doesn’t have much to offer. Instead, many players have taken to exploring the game on their own terms, trying to shortcut their way to the end as fast as possible in the hopes that such an experience would provide the reward the game, itself, could not provide.

I had hope that the story of the game would be enough to tie it all together, or at least give me a reason to care about why I was playing. Sadly, the implementation of the story is, perhaps, its greatest downfall. There isn’t much story to speak of, but in contrast with every other title in the series, Nintendo felt compelled to give this story voice. It would be easy to criticize the English language actors for the game’s cringe-worthy bad voice work, but the material is just as dreadful. Every spoken line is a cliche, and when it’s combined with the obvious fake voices being put on to match the characters, the whole thing feels disingenuous. Perhaps it’s a bit of an unfair criticism, but since there were no other language options to choose from, I had no choice but to skip over the cutscenes in order to spare myself hearing the labored work of the actors.

Along the same letdown, I was surprised by the lack of memorable music in the game. For a series with so many iconic themes at its disposal, Breath of the Wild contains none of them. That alone wouldn’t matter, as one can hear the Ocarina of Time score only so many times before it loses its magic. Upon finishing the game, only one tune remains in my mind: the horse stable melody. Part of the problem is that the score is adaptive. There’s a piece that plays when Link comes in close proximity to an enemy, there is a different song that plays in towns or when rock monsters form from the earth. None of them feel like themes, though, nor do they behave much like themes since they fit so many different places and situations. The music feels consumable much in the way weapons do. As such, the score is utterly forgettable and would have played just as well entirely without one.

While my overall impression of the game is unfavorable, it would be dishonest not to mention that while I was playing the game, I had fun. Moment to moment, there was quite a bit to keep me occupied. It was nice to see the return of Lynels to the franchise, for instance. The environments, devoid of meaningful content as they might be, were enjoyable to look at, walk around in, be in. There was a distinctive and enjoyable art style that worked in many ways the way the Wind Waker’s aesthetics did. Being a cross platform game between the Nintendo Switch and Wii U meant sacrifices had to be made, but those limitations only made the overall look of the world better. Sure, the Wii U version frequently had frame drops in the single digits, but those still shots looked great. There’s something incredibly charming about Breath of the Wild that makes me recognize that in spite of its deeply rooted flaws, it’s a pretty good game. Like Super Mario 64 before it, Nintendo proved that personality can be 9/10ths of a game. While I do think Breath of the Wild will see a similar retroactive re-evaluation along the lines of Skyward Sword, I certainly can’t begrudge anyone who loves the game now and forever. I sure enjoyed it while I was playing.

[jivingcryingboy]

FEAR

I was sitting at a cafe with my family once, I must have been about 3 or around that age and I was watching this Lucozade advert. This is one of my earliest childhood memories. In the advert there were several people who were staring daringly into the city like one of those vague perfume adverts where no one knows what the hell's going on. After a while they start drinking Lucozade and as they all take their first sip they all suddenly transform into cats and start jumping and purring all over town. It must have had an effect on me because from then on I never touched a bottle of Lucozade for an embarrassing amount of time. Probably until I was old enough to realise that drinking Lucozade doesn’t turn you into a cat.

That memory defines what fear is to me. Granted there isn’t a likely possibility that a liquid will ever turn me into a feline, but there’s been times down the years when I’ve been worrying where the actual, fretted possible outcome was just as likely to occur as me turning into a cat. I would lay there not being able to sleep, rolling around morning and night, my brain wrecked with anxious thoughts over something that was so ridiculously unlikely to happen it was laughable.

The worst thing about fear is that it hinders you from believing in yourself and that process, overused as it may be, is key to what helps you do great things. And I don’t mean being able to write Thriller, I’m talking about just being yourself. Walking into a room, looking in the mirror and just being yourself.

I've busked a lot in London and if you have ever busked or performed yourself I'm sure you too have heard, “You can’t busk here / wow that’s a terrible cover / this is your living?? / there’s a no-policy-busk-thing here ever”, whatever bullshit thing that comes about. After a while, once I realised remaining silent wasn't a helpful skill in order to earn money or gain an audience in the busking game, you begin to gauge the value of the consequences people warn you about; It’s zilch. Nada. My situation forced me out of my comfort zone. Me playing there, here or somewhere I’m not supposed or playing a song while someone walks past with their hands over their ears might be embarrassing to do so, but all of these scenarios are very likely to have no lingering, negative consequences. I might have that moment of pure embarrassment, guilt or shame but those feelings are so inconsequential to you it’s unbelievable. They're also feelings that don’t last a long time. It is through these experiences of being on a stage and pursuing a career which is deemed ‘un-persuable’ by some that has made me see my own fears for what they are.

Budding artists worry all the time, I’m sure of it. I did and still do sometimes. Trying to make a career out of music is bit like wearing a superhero outfit: when you’re 3 years old, everyone at the party thinks that a Spiderman outfit is the cutest thing in the world. But when you’re in your 20s, 30s and 40s and you’re still wearing that Spidey number??? It ain’t so cute anymore. You hear them say it: “Why’s that weird old dude in a Spiderman outfit?” And people, even close to you, start to question, "What is he/she/it doing with their lives?" And I’d be lying if I ever told you that I’ve never had these thoughts. A massive liar. Sometimes I’d be in the studio and if a song was sounding terrible at the time, maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed too, my thoughts would descend into absolute chaos. "What am I doing?! I’m writing shit songs in my fucking bedroom whilst my mates are decorating bedrooms for their new fucking kids!" One time I had a nightmare where my mate’s child who was a few months old heckled me off the stage.

What is the value of your fear? Why do you say no to yourself? Other people? Fear of failing?

Were you ever about to do something when a little voice inside your gut says, "nah, you shouldn’t/couldn’t do that." Whether it’s leaving your job to find a more deserving workplace for you or even if it’s asking a girl you like out for a drink. “You can’t do it. It'll be embarrassing. You’ll regret it”. How often do you hear that? Ask yourself again, what is the value of your fears? What are you protecting yourself from? What are you gaining from them? Will you be satisfied by not gambling on something that can potentially deeply satisfy you for the sake of one minute of shame? A millimetre of guilt in the big measuring stick of life? It's amazing how just a thought so small can appear so daunting as to paralyse you from doing so much. All of your reactions to these moments through the years will have affect where you end up.

We spend a crazy amount of time respecting our hollow, implausible fears. When you are a child this happens all the time. But as a child, all of our fears, in the scheme of things, are in the form of short term, arbitrary, harmless situations. Lumpy food for example. I was told when I was a baby, I cried when this particular spoon changed colour whilst I was dipping it into a yoghurt. I cried for ages. As a baby, my brain was horrified by this. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised the stupidity of my fear of the chameleon-esque spoon and I know now that if I ever ate from that spoon again (for some strange reason) it probably wouldn't have any long lasting negative effects on me. When we are children, for the most part, life forces us to overcome our fears, most of them material or physical: watching fireworks, talking to new people, riding a bike, going on a rollercoaster, whatever it is. You begin realise the emptiness of these fears and what little it does to hinder you even if they come to fruition.

When we are adults it changes slightly. We no longer become overly concerned with the physical. We become concerned about the future, the hypothetical; the unknown. The stuff we have no control over: Death, health (to an extent), relationships. And you can either let the unknown be the ambitious canvas for whatever path you paint or you can let it place you into some weird kind of purgatory of no consequence where the only thing that happens is you getting older. Some fears have no conclusions. Tom Petty once sang, ‘Most things I worry about never happen anyway’. How often have you looked at the same thing and felt so differently about it? Felt so positive and then so down. About the same thing. Even when not a lot has changed. You, your friends, your partner, your prospects? It doesn't even matter how academic or intelligent you are too. I think sometimes even the brightest person can think too much and will fabricate intricate, complex excuses to hide why they can’t face their fears when infact the real answers and solutions are quite simple.

That ‘thinggg’ in your gut (everyone has that ‘thing’ in their gut), that seemingly undeniable feeling deep down that tells you ‘nooooo’ for some sad reason has mistakenly become the centre-point for all of your morals, your decisions, your crystal ball, the righteousness of the path you take, loads of stuff. Whenever you hear a well informed, constructive opinion that defies your argument this voice comes out. Nooooooo. Whenever you hear a piece of music that is initially foreign to your ears, that voice rings out. Nooooo. Whenever, you make a joke and no one laughs, it’s there. Even when I've been writing this I've thought, “Am I really gonna post this crap up?" It might still be crap but that's not even the point. These situations are different to what you are comfortable with but there's nothing productive about what this feeling can do for you if you adhere to it constantly because you won't learn or adapt. We all approach opinions and experiences in our lives which challenge our staunch preconceived notions. When you are defied, are you humbled and enlightened or are you stubborn? Actually analyse why you are rejecting what you are encountering. That ‘thingggg' is some kind of emo-safety net and will only lead you to where you are now. The question is… are you happy with where you are now? If you are, then great. If you’re not, change it. And the stuff you can't change? The weird mole on your face? Your weird shaped head? Luckily, appearance is a bit like fashion and if you strut down the catwalk confidently parading that head of yours then people will be wishing they had your weird shaped head. Your age? “I’m old”. How many times have you said that or heard that. I’m 18, I’m old. I’m 28, I’m old, I’m 35, I feel old. I’m 67, I’m old. You must have been born old. That’s just fear. Feeling old is just being fearful of running out of time to find out and do the things you want to do. The freedom of youth. You are old when you are dead.

I don’t want to get away from the fact that sometimes our worst fears do become realities. I’ve been talking more about the fear of hypothetical situations but obviously past crises can affect your outlook on those imaginings drastically. Sometimes you can be in the small percentage, the minority that suffers from that rare thing you previously thought only people in the news get. A Doctor told me once she was treating this patient who had just finished his treatment and was then declared all clear from cancer. For the months that followed, this guy was constantly worrying about his illness coming back and although this was a possibility, it was an unlikely one. The Doctor told him to enjoy his life and be himself again. He didn’t enjoy himself and was on edge pretty much all the time. Well a year later, his illness did in fact come back. What the Doctor was telling me was you have to enjoy whatever you are doing right now because you have no idea what will happen to you, good or bad. Down the line, you will never get that time back. How many times do you scoff at that line? It is hard to disagree with though.

Fear can be good for you but only in the right circumstances. It keeps you alive for one. It makes you jump out of the way if a car is about to knock you down, it tells you that you should stay away from that tiger lingering in the grasses over there. Shame and guilt stops you from doing stupid stuff again. You have to experience those feelings. If you tease someone and they cry it might not be nice to feel a sense of shame but in that moment you've learnt to not do it again. But to obey that voice when your dreams are waiting for you when the only real obstacle is you? To deny yourself of something that could be so good? You can get lost in that. And when we do get lost in that, we procrastinate and distract our minds on YouTube, we make excuses regarding weather as to why we can't get fit, we declare ourselves not technologically adept enough to make make an app, anything to stop us escaping our safe spot and to stop us facing what we need to do in order to be fully satisfied. It’s all distraction. This goes for everyone. The scary thing, one of the scariest things is that no one will ever stop you from lying to yourself. If I’ve learned anything from people who are older than me, people who have lived, they paraphrase the same thing: never regret the things you never did. Never say, "I wish I did that”, when you were in a position to do so.

I also, also, don’t want to present fear as something that is easily ridden or completely laughable. Leaving a job, a relationship, taking less money to do what you want to do etc. They are risks. Or better put, they are paths that might not end in the place you want them to end up. You have to ask yourself the questions. Can you face risking it with no reward? Will you be content with not having gambled in attempting to do something that you love doing? What are you willing to sacrifice? I've accepted if I end up not doing what I love doing. I will be content with that but only, only, only if I've left it all out on the floor and squeezed all the juice out the metaphorical musical lemon.

Unfortunately, social media has made us become so aware of other people’s highlights that we begin to question our own actions and freeze in our pursuits of whatever we want to do. In our heads, our journeys become slow, or pointless, or simple, or doomed, or boring. We are constantly telling ourselves we are failing or lagging way behind. And when we do this we stop and do nothing at all, which is the worst thing to do. I don’t want this to be another attack-piece on social media because social media does some great things. Where it fails, or where I think we fail is how we introduce it to young people who were born into the social media generation. They are scared of being alone. I don’t just mean not having a relationship either, I mean in their own heads. They confront their fears, boredom and perceived failings through focusing on the lives of others. They learn about interaction through invisible ones, not even physical ones; ones where you can actually touch, talk to, feel, see and smell someone. I think this makes it harder to work out how your mind works, how you feel about something, how you solve your problems. And when these people finally do make a connection with someone real, that someone becomes the vessel for all of their problems when really they should be learning how to make themselves happy in their own company without the excuse of someone or something else.

Not to say you shouldn't be having any down moments. I worry that the more I get involved with making music the more unlikely I will be able to provide for someone or a family later on. But I guess that's something I've gambled on. I would rather fail at music rather than give up music. That fear, however irrational it maybe seem to you, is present. And I'm not saying that we should aim for our fears to be vanquished either. I think it's about altering how seriously you take those worries when your mind is in a fearful state. Easy as that? I think that's the hardest thing to do, to recognise or acknowledge when you are not thinking straight or at least to be able to know whether your thinking is of rational thought or not. Surely however, it's impossible to distinguish between rational and irrational thought under the visor of intense emotions, to not believe or act on what you are feeling so strongly about in those moments. What I've personally tried to do over the last few years is be objective as possible. Like I said that's pretty much impossible. But what I try and do is look back at all the consistent, important factors in my life that I love: music, my family, friends, art, tequila (whatever it is floats your boat) and at the moment, if I ever see any of those things as hindrances or if I ever question their value to me in my messy emotional state, then I tell myself I'm not in the right state of mind to be making any kind of decisions or judgements. I can only take myself seriously when I calm down. When you are scared, it’s crazy how a single thought can spread and affect the most positive of relationships in your head. This sounds like some psuedo-help-psychology bullshit and it might just be that, but it's starting to work for me only if it’s personally. Ultimately, it’s very hard to think rationally when your head is in a mess but just by recognising those anxious patterns, just by knowing you are stressed, that can help. Again, I don't think it's about getting rid of your fears, I think it's about acknowledging that they are there and I think it’s about questioning the validity of why they are there in the first place. More often than not, that feeling of fear can't always be fully justified by obeying it.

One of best things I have learnt and developed in my life over the years is that if I get up on stage, introduce myself as someone who wants to have a music career, if I tell a joke and no one laughs, if people don’t like me personally and put me down, even if! Even if you are reading this and saying “what a pretentious prick this artist thinking he knows anything about anything” etc. … I can still smile and be content and confident in myself to be alright with that. You see how “unscary” failure actually is. I have died on stage. I have embarrassed myself in front of people. I have been petrified of life. You name it. But I'm still here. And if I muck up, say anything out of line, I’ll learn and I'll move on. It’s a process, but I’m think I’m getting there. Fuck your fear, your self degrading thoughts, they benefit no one. If anything, they only make the destination sweeter.

I’m talking to the people who are in the fortunate position of being able to choose what they want to be and the same people who are not doing so because they are held back solely by their own fear. The unknown. I want to get this straight too. I am a twenty something, healthy, white dude who is (very) lucky to eat cooked meals, sleep under a roof every night and moan about the weather. In essence, I have nothing to be fearful of. I have no family of my own to provide for, no relationship to provide for, no direct responsibilities. I am not fleeing a war-torn country, I am not starving. My musical endeavours work because of how lucky I am to be born in a part of the world where I am not out there running for my life. How lucky am I? And if this is you too, how lucky are you? Really, I mean that. A massive percentage of people out there, probably too scary to say, can’t decide what they want to do in life because they have to focus everything they have on surviving until the next day. I think when you are comfortable, you are in danger of standing still. It's easy to freeze when you have a warm bed and a nice house. But when you don't have these things, people have no choice but to be dynamic, they have no choice but to face their fears, they have no time to think too much. When they’ve overcome their obstacles, they probably can face anything that life throws at them. If you’ve ever met these people who have gone through tragedy, who are now starting families, working towards their dreams, doing all of this through all the shit they’ve been though, it’s the greatest, most humbling lesson you can have.

Maybe what I've written comes across as really off the mark; fear just simply worked out by some poorly worded piece by some pretentious musician, but I really didn't mean it for it to be that way. Be under no false pretences, I'm only writing about what I've understood and seen over my lifetime and I guess it's a bit like writing a song. You write for your own personal reasons but you're also seeing who connects with you because if that does happen, it's a wonderful thing. To share something. And if this does manage to stir you in any way, even if it's just one person, well it can’t be that bad at all then.

So, if you are reading this and you're contemplating taking a risk, taking that leap of faith, throwing the die, all the clichés you can think of, no matter how small or big the task is, whether it’s just walking confidently into a room of people or setting out to be a rock star, I hope you do take a chance on yourself and go find out how un-earthshattering and valuable failure actually is

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion. 5 Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery. “Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants Read Next 8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get. We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.” SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b> Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together. In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time. essay > And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.” “CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “ div > 4 All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests. “I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.” When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim? What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner? div > You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board. It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world. 3 It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare? I think about this every day. Every day. div > Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body. It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless. I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks. div > Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy. If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up! 2 Being Special Is Free That’s right, I said it. You’re welcome. It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd … … for Toddslaughter. div > Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth. One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing. Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster. div > OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile. I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it! div > Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online. You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars. div > 1 Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think. You’re welcome again. div > Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest. BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness. div > Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately. BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES! div > Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “ We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference. Seanbaby devised being funny on the Internet. You can follow him on Twitter, or frisk his hit mobile competition Calculords . b> Did you realise Casper van Dien was in a Tarzan movie in the 90 s ? i > b> Support Cracked’s journalism with a tour to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you . i > b> For more, check out 5 Deeply Embarrassing Thing The News Keeps Doing and 6 Time The News Went Totally Overboard Chasing A Story . i > b> You should click on this join and follow us on Facebook . i > b> Read more: http :// www.cracked.com/ blog/ 5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/06/30/5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion.

5

Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All

Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery.

“Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants

Read Next

8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy

And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get.

We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.”

SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b>

Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together.

In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time.

essay >

And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.”

“CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “

div >

4

All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes

We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests.

“I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.”

When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim?

What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner?

div >

You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board.

It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world.

3

It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die

In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare?

I think about this every day. Every day.

div >

Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body.

It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless.

I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks.

div >

Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy.

If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up!

2

Being Special Is Free

That’s right, I said it.

You’re welcome.

It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd …

… for Toddslaughter.

div >

Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth.

One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing.

Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster.

div >

OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile.

I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it!

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Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online.

You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars.

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1

Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis

OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think.

You’re welcome again.

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Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest.

BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness.

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Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately.

BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES!

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Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “

We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference.

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