#Also all 3 eras have mostly held up better than my memory of them

[nicholasmoorethetwittermigrant]

Something I’ve come to appreciate watching RTD1, Moffat, and Chibnall’s eras in such quick succession (with RTD2 airing as well) is how much each era really feels like it’s own show, but also the same show.

Doctor Who is just such a tonally, stylistically, aesthetically malleable show and it doesn’t really hit when you’re watching it spaced out over decades.

[transparenttriumphzombie]

Danielle Bunten Berry (February 19, 1949 – July 3, 1998), formerly known as Dan Bunten, was an American game designer and programmer, known for the 1983 game M.U.L.E., one of the first influential multiplayer video games, and 1984's The Seven Cities of Gold.

In 1998, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Computer Game Developers Association. In 2007, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences chose Bunten as the 10th inductee into its Hall of Fame.

Bunten was born in St. Louis, Missouri and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas as a junior in high school. She was the oldest of six siblings. While growing up in Little Rock, Bunten's family didn't always have enough money to make ends meet, so Bunten took a job at a pharmacy. She also held a leadership role with the Boy Scouts.

According to Bunten, one of her fondest childhood memories involved playing games with her family. She was quoted saying, “When I was a kid, the only times my family spent together that weren’t totally dysfunctional were when we were playing games. Consequently, I believe games are a wonderful way to socialize.”

While attending the University of Arkansas, she opened up her own bike shop called Highroller Cyclerie. Bunten acquired a degree in industrial engineering in 1974 and started programming text-based video games as a hobby. After she graduated from college, she was employed by the National Science Foundation, where she created urban models before starting a job at a video game company.

In 1978, Bunten sold a real-time auction game for the Apple II titled Wheeler Dealers to a Canadian software company, Speakeasy Software. This early multiplayer game required a custom controller, raising its price to USD$35 in an era of $15 games sold in plastic bags. It sold only 50 copies.

After producing three titles for SSI, Bunten, who by then had founded a software company called Ozark Softscape, caught the attention of Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins. M.U.L.E. was Bunten's first game for EA, originally published for the Atari 8-bit family because the Atari 800 had four controller ports. Bunten later ported it to the Commodore 64. While its sales - 30,000 units - were not high, the game developed a cult following and was widely pirated. The game setting was inspired by the novel Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein.

Along with the success of M.U.L.E., Berry also had close ties with the games Robot Rascals, Heart of Africa, and Cartels & Cutthroat$. Throughout her career, she was involved in the creation of 12 games, 10 of which revolved around multiplayer compatibility. The only two which didn't have a multiplayer focus were Seven Cities of Gold and Heart of Africa.

Bunten wanted to follow up M.U.L.E. with a game that would have been similar to the later game Civilization, but after fellow Ozark Softscape partners balked at the idea, Bunten followed with The Seven Cities of Gold, which proved popular because of its simplicity. By the time the continent data were stored in the computer's memory, there was little left for fancy graphics or complex gameplay - the game had only five resources. It was a hit, selling more than 150,000 copies.

The follow-up game, Heart of Africa, appeared in 1985 and was followed by Robot Rascals, a combination computer/card game that had no single-player mode and sold only 9,000 copies, and 1988's Modem Wars, one of the early games played by two players over a dial-up modem.  Modem Wars was ahead of its time, as few people in the late 1980s had modems in their homes.

Bunten departed EA for MicroProse. Allegedly, Trip Hawkins, CEO of EA, did not feel that pushing production of games onto a cartridge based system was a good idea. The shift was important to Bunten, as computer games had previously been distributed on floppy discs, and a changeover to a cartridge system would allow games to be played on Nintendo systems. This was a significant factor in her decision to leave. She then developed a computer version of the board game Axis and Allies, which became 1990's Command HQ, a modem/network grand strategy wargame. Bunten's second and last game for MicroProse was 1992's Global Conquest, a 4-player network/modem war game. It was the first 4-player network game from a major publisher. Bunten was a strong advocate of multi-player online games, observing that, "No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer.'"

A port of M.U.L.E. to the Mega Drive/Genesis was cancelled after Bunten refused to put guns and bombs in the game, feeling it would alter the game too much from its original concept. In 1997, Bunten shifted focus to multiplayer games over the Internet with Warsport, a remake of Modem Wars that debuted on the MPlayer.com game network.

Less than a year after the release of Warsport, Bunten was diagnosed with lung cancer presumably related to years of heavy smoking. She died on July 3, 1998. At the time, she was working on the design of an Internet version of M.U.L.E..

The game's primary premise consisted of players playing with and against one another to establish total control over a planet. The name of the game stands for Multiple Use Labor Element. The game was originally made for the Atari 400 and Atari 800 but was later developed to be compatible with the Commodore 64, NES, and IBM pcjr. The game has a maximum of four players. Players are given different options and choices, and are allowed to create their colony the way they see fit. This can be done by changing races and giving respective colonies different advantages that will impact the way the game is played and determined later on down the line.

Ultimately there are two ways in which players can win the game. The first way is by having the most amount of money out of all four players, and the second way is by being able to survive the colony itself. The game focuses heavily on going out and retrieving resources that can be used to benefit their character. Items such as food, energy, and crystite are some of a number of in-game items that players are able to retrieve and use to better themselves. In order for a player to be able to access these items, they will first have to have access to a M.U.L.E. The acquisition of these items has a direct reflection on what the player will be allowed to do. For example, if a player doesn't have enough food, they will have less time during their turn.

The Seven Cities of Gold was originally intended to be another multiplayer game. It was originally a single player format, focused heavily on having the players travel around the map and collect items to help them strengthen their colony. Once they felt as though they had a solid colony, the players could battle each other to see who could overtake who After much consideration, Ozark Software came to the conclusion that this would not be doable. Instead, they went with a formula that had the game focus solely on developing a colony.

Ozark Softscape was a computer game development team consisting initially of Danielle Bunten, her brother Bill Bunten, Jim Rushing, and Alan Watson. Ozark was run out of Bunten's basement. The company was based out of Little Rock, Arkansas and had profound success with a few of their early titles. Ozark Softscape had a publishing deal with Electronic Arts for several of its groundbreaking games. In the early 1990s, Ozark Softscape left its partnership with Electronic Arts over a dispute to port some games to cartridge format for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It began a partnership with MicroProse to produce two more titles: Command HQ and Global Conquest. A dispute occurred over creating a follow-up to M.U.L.E. with Sega in 1993, and the company dissolved. The employees of Ozark Softscape moved to different areas of the software industry. 

Bunten was married three times. Bunten had three children, one daughter and two sons. After a third divorce, Bunten, who had until then been living as male, transitioned to living as a woman. Bunten underwent sex reassignment surgery in November 1992 and afterward kept a lower profile in the games industry. Bunten later regretted having surgery, finding that for her, the drawbacks of surgical transition outweighed the benefits, and wishing she had considered alternative approaches. She joked that the surgery was to improve the video game industry's male/female ratio and aesthetics, but advised others considering a sex change not to proceed unless there was no alternative and warned them of the cost, saying "Being my 'real self' could have included having a penis and including more femininity in whatever forms made sense. I didn't know that until too late and now I have to make the best of the life I've stumbled into. I just wish I would have tried more options before I jumped off the precipice."

After her transition in fall 1992, Bunten stayed out of the video game spotlight, mostly keeping to herself. She felt as though that after transitioning she was not as good at video game development as she had previously been, stating "So, I'm a little more than three years into my new life role as Ms. Danielle Berry, and her career looks to be somewhat different from old Mr. Dan Bunten's. For one thing, I'm not as good a programmer as he was." On July 3, 1998, Berry died of lung cancer.

Wheeler Dealers (1978)

Cartels & Cutthroats (1981)

Computer Quarterback (1981)

Cytron Masters (1982)

M.U.L.E. (1983)

The Seven Cities of Gold (1984)

Heart of Africa (1985)

Robot Rascals (1986)

Modem Wars (1988)

Command HQ (1990)

Global Conquest (1992)

Warsport (1997)

Although many of Bunten's titles were not commercially successful, they were widely recognized by the industry as being ahead of their time. On May 7, 1998, less than two months before her death, Berry was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Computer Game Developers Association.

In 2000, Will Wright dedicated his blockbuster hit The Sims to Bunten's memory. In 2007, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences chose Bunten to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. Sid Meier, the mastermind behind the video game series Civilization, inducted her at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.

Bunten was a true pioneer for the video game industry, especially its multiplayer aspect of it. She is regarded by many as one of the best designers to ever grace the video game industry. Her success has even led people to make the claim that the work she did with games like M.U.L.E and Seven Cities of Gold was the inspiration behind highly successful modern multiplayer games like World of Warcraft.

Bunten was known as someone who was very easy to talk to. If someone recognized her in public, she would be more than delighted to have a conversation with them.

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2021

#83 - Shadowmarch, by Tad Williams

Mount TBR: 69/100

Beat the Backlist Bingo: Cover features your favorite color prominently

Rating: 1/5 stars

Well, that was a slog.

So I have a history with this piece of intellectual property. I was introduced to Williams as an author in college (1998) because several of the friends I made my first year were big fantasy nerds--no surprise there--and I was perfectly ready to move on from my high-school-era love of less sophisticated fantasy authors. I borrowed The Dragonbone Chair from one of those friends and off I went.

So in 2001 when news about Williams writing an online serial went around, and I saw the $15 price tag...well, I was a perpetually almost-broke college student still, and sure I spent money on books, but that was a high gateway, because a) I didn't own my own computer yet, I was borrowing friends' or using the computer lab to write papers and such; and b) sure, a chunky fantasy novel might be $7 or $8 in paperback, but it was portable, easy to reread whenever, and nobody had tablets or smartphones or e-readers yet, so an online serial publication was definitely not portable. Even fifteen dollars seemed like too much for the inconvenience of a book I could only read sitting at a computer, and couldn't read all of at once.

I was genuinely angry about this shift away from the paradigm, and much like Williams vowing this serial was online only and would never be published traditionally (which I distinctly remember but don't actually have a source for) I too vowed that I would never read it.

I held out much longer than he did, if my memory of that claim is even true. But I'm wishing now that I hadn't bothered.

This is bad. Not even close to the level of quality I expect from Williams, based on the earlier Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, as well as War of the Flowers--which was weird but I enjoyed it--and the Otherland series, which was even weirder and not always good, but yeah, I still enjoyed that too, for the most part.

Who am I supposed to care about in this book? I'm no stranger to multiple protagonists, but there are simply too many here, meaning none of them get the development time they would need to be interesting. I'm trying to wean myself from the complaint that protagonists need to be "likable," because a character can be a jerk and still be interesting, but few of these protagonists are particularly likable either!

1. Barrick is a whiny jerk who folds under pressure and abdicates responsibility to his sister, and then makes a spectacularly bad decision for no reason other than to set up some tension at the end, and his future arc. If it's because he's "mad," bad plot reason, and if it's because he's affected by the more general shadow-madness, well, I guess he could be vulnerable to it like anyone else, but that's pretty flimsy too. 2. Briony is a fairly standard "if only I weren't a woman, people would take me seriously" princess who doesn't fold as much under pressure but is dealt a really raw deal. I'll give her credit, she does legitimately try her best to rule her lands, but she's also kind of a whiny jerk like her brother, too. 3. Quinnitan is...pointless. Sure, I see how the end of her arc in this book echoes those of the Eddon twins, but there is no direct connection between her plot and anyone else's. And I mean that literally, if there's anything that ties her story to any other single part of the book, I simply do not see it, it's buried in lore or foreshadowing that was lost on me amid the sheer weight of nearly 800 pages of plodding narrative. I read all of her scenes constantly wondering why I should care, and the fact that her arc is a very basic harem plot, "I don't want to be a token wife but really what choice do I have?" sort of thing, doesn't help, because on its own it's incredibly unoriginal. 4. Chert is marginally likable, because he's arguably got the most defined personality and most personal growth in the book, as a person of a "little" race who is distinctly not human--I get a mix of gnome and dwarf, with a faint whiff of Podling from The Dark Crystal--and who deals with an unexpected foundling by taking him into his family and trying to make it work, even when that foundling is really a big blank space in the story who still manages to get into trouble. 5. Captain Vansen gets points from me for being the guardsman deep in unrequited love, which is a trope I would absolutely eat up with a spoon. The problem is, the object of that love is a protagonist I don't care for (Briony,) leading me to question what the eff he's thinking that he can even admire her from a distance, let alone be in infatuation/love. And his plot arc is mostly "something goes wrong that's not really has fault but everyone blames him anyway." Which got dull.

Chert and Vansen are most of the reason this book gets a second star*, honestly. Chert's scenes with the Rooftoppers are generally pretty excellent, even if they're mostly tied to a plot arc that I don't care for.

The other thing that's getting me about this is that it feels like a deliberately grim-dark retread of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. You've got a castle that's the seat of current government but used to belong to the enemy--the enemy that no one is sure even exists anymore, that lives in a land far enough away to feel distant but also somehow close enough to be threatening, once people believe in them again. That castle is perched upon magically important ruins/caverns, and that enemy has forms of magic/communication that affect humans and can cause or appear symptomatic of madness. There's a race of small likable people who aren't quite dwarves or any other "standard" fantasy race, but are still somehow cute/appealing. There's a crippled prince who's not really well-liked. One of the primary female protagonists is a young woman who laments the limitations of her womanhood under the patriarchal feudal system of the world.

And to someone who's never read either of these series, that list of similarities could mostly read like fairly common fantasy tropes, and I forgive anyone who reads this review and thinks that. But I've read MSaT probably ten times all the way through in the twenty-plus years since I was introduced to it, and I feel like I've just been handed the same story again, with a thick coat of gray paint slathered on it and a few details changed--and those changes are basically always for the worse. No one in this story can be said to be a direct equivalent to Simon, who gets a very clear hero's journey, but if I'm supposed to slot Barrick in as a Simon/Josua mashup (that crippled prince problem) then it takes the entire book to get Barrick out of his comfort zone and on his journey, where Simon got booted from the castle at the end of the first act of the first book.

And that gets at the underlying problem that is at least partially fueling all other problems--this book is clearly just the first act of the larger story, and yes i know! that is what first books do! but this also doesn't have a lot of forward motion on its own, and it doesn't resolve anything aside from the mystery of a single murder at that happens near the beginning. Seriously, all other plot threads get kicked down the road with the "and now they're exiles" theme that the ending has assigned to most of the protagonists. Chert doesn't suffer that fate, but the ending of his story line--also the end of the book itself--is the foundling reasserting that he doesn't know who he is, which is not new information. We've literally not known who he is the whole time, except that we do find out who his mother is, but don't find out how he was taken or why he apparently hasn't aged as much as he should have or what the Qar intended by sending him back "home." The identity of his mother is basically the least important question surrounding him.

I truly feel like I just read a 750-page prologue, and that is not a good feeling.

*Yeah, I told myself this was a two-star book, but by the time I wrote the whole review, it's not and I can't pretend I still believe that. This is a one-star book. This is so bad I don't want to go on with the series, even though it almost has to get better, now that most of our protagonists are out on their journeys. And because it could hardly get worse, right? But this already took up so much of my time (I had to take a week-long break in the middle to binge some romances, as a relief from all this grimdark toil) and even though I've managed to collect secondhand copies of the rest of the series, and they've been sitting on my shelves for a few years waiting for me to invest my energy into them...I'm giving up. Not worth it.

[taylorswiftdiscographyrate]

#150-141

150. Welcome to New York (5.091) Highest score was 7.3; Lowest score was 1

This feels more like a tourism ad than a song. I’ve actually warmed up to it a bit over the years (by which I mean I gave it a 2 instead of a 1!), but that’s mostly because I’ve realised I love the emotion in Taylor’s voice when she sings “it’s a new soundtrack i could dance to this beat forevermore / the lights are so bright but they never blind me”. There’s also something to be said about how, for being a song about New York, it doesn’t really say much about New York, but as someone who neither lives there nor has visited I’m probably not the person to elaborate on that critique.

Highlighted comments: @leadinmeon: “there is a weird fucking production thing on this song and i hate it” @liabilitys: “our first proper gay rights reference” @yourivysgrows: “It feels as bright and busy as NYC”

149. Highway Don’t Care (5.122) Highest score was 10; Lowest score was 1

To go from naming your debut single after a famous country singer to collabing with said famous country singer - what a glow up! And Aussie icon Keith Urban is there too! This is another song I have listened to exactly once; I appreciate it for what it is, but what it is isn’t really my thing.

Highlighted comments: @itspeterlosingwendy: “their voices are so complementary” @yourivysgrows: Just not my cup of tea”

148. The Outside (5.141) Highest score was 7; Lowest score was 2

Some of you didn’t cry your eyes out to this after your first day of high school because you had no friends, and it shows! Seriously, this song holds a little bit of a special place in my heart, and it hurts a bit to see it this low. Some of you need to go and relisten to “How can I ever try to be better? Nobody ever lets me in” and think about what you’ve done!

Highlighted comments: @onceintwentylifetimes: “bonus points for just being such a comfort so many times”

147. Speak Now (5.216) Highest score was 8; Lowest score was 2

Now here’s a take for you all: Speak Now is a better album title than Enchanted, and Taylor was right to change it, but Speak Now the song is a terrible title track. It’s cute I guess, but it’s all a bit saccharine for me and I just cannot vibe with it, sorry! Also I spent a long time convinced that this had a music video and I’m still shaken by the fact that my memory lied to me all those years.

Highlighted comments: @yourivysgrows: “We love a good storyline” @corneliaavenue: “she is cute”

146. Only the Young (5.219) Highest score was 9; Lowest score was 1

When Miss Americana (the documentary) released, my IRL Swiftie friend watched it before me and messaged me about this song, saying how amazing Taylor’s lyricism was and her ability to set a scene with her writing - and looking at the lyrics on the verses in this song, she was right! There are some great lyrical moments in this song, but there are also some... not so great lyrical moments, and the production... let’s just blame Joel Little for that one. It’s a shame, because I think this song had a lot of potential that it just never reaches.

Highlighted comments: @corneliaavenue: “the only time I liked this song was in the joe biden ad.” @onceintwentylifetimes:  “Some great lyrics in there, but feels a bit unfocused. Also that chorus could've been improved...” @treacherousdemo: [after giving it a 4] “i'm sorry.” (there’s no need to apologise to me, I gave it a 1!) 

145. Stay Beautiful (5.241) Highest score was 9; Lowest score was 1.5

What does “Corey’s eyes are like a jungle / He smiles, it’s like the radio” mean? The world may never know. Honestly, one of the most iconic parts of the Debut (and Fearless) era is that Taylor held nothing back when it came to name dropping the guys she liked, even when she had pretty much never spoken to them, as was the case with Corey in this song... girl was brave. 

Highlighted comments: @yourivysgrows: “cOrEy'S eYeS”  @corneliaavenue: “one of her worst use of metaphors”

144. Stay Stay Stay (5.322) Highest score was 8; Lowest score was 1

Okay, okay, I hear you... but as a Stay Stay Stay apologist, can we have some appreciation for “you took the time to memorise me / my fears my hopes and dreams / I just like hanging out with you all the ti-i-ime / all those times that you didn’t leave / it’s been occurring to me / I’d like to hang out with you for my whole li-i-fe”? That’s all I’m asking.

Highlighted comments: @corneliaavenue: “a toxic relationship set to Wii background music” @yourivysgrows: “Actually this is the only Taylor song I hate 👁👄👁”

143. Crazier (5.431) Highest score was 7.5; Lowest score was 3

As someone who was neither a Swiftie during the Fearless era days by virtue of me being an oblivious 9 year old nor a Hannah Montana fan, this song doesn’t really mean much to me. I don’t even really know what the context was for Taylor appearing as herself in the movie (I don’t even know what the movie is about full stop.) It’s a nice enough song though.

Highlighted comments: @treacherousdemo: “not the strongest song but a classic nonetheless” @onceintwentylifetimes: “13/14 year old Taylor wrote this and I think it deserves more praise. Lovely imagery, lovely vocal delivery...Just so nice and wistful” @yourivysgrows: “Best song on the HM movie soundtrack”

142. Gorgeous (5.484) Highest score was 9.5; Lowest score was 1

Lyrics that can cut glass, anybody? I went with my cousin to the rep tour, and when this song started playing she went absolutely feral to it, and yelled “this is my favourite song!”. I said nothing. And before all the Gorgeous stans get mad at me, I do think this song is fun. I just don’t think it’s particularly good.

Highlighted comments: @corneliaavenue: “300 people know👀” (war flashbacks!!) @liabilitys: “i prefer the acoustic version she did in the making of videos but still a bop” @onceintwentylifetimes: “There are some days where I really do vibe with this but alas…”

141. You Need to Calm Down (5.522) Highest score was 9; Lowest score was 2.1

I think every possible critique that can be made about this song has already been made, by people who are both more qualified and more eloquent than I am. So all I will say is that despite my misgivings about this song, it’s is fun to sing along to and I do now have a habit of saying “damn... it’s 7am” whenever I have to be awake at 7am.

Highlighted comments: @liabilitys: “not one of her best songs but this mini era helped me realise i was gay so it has a special place in my heart.” @tobesolonely: “im gay” @onceintwentylifetimes: “Maybe it's just the vibe, but I feel like she could've done more with this. I don't like bubblegum pop that much.”

[kenkamishiro]

Ishida Sui’s Review of 2019

I didn’t think I’d ever finish this with my onslaught of classes including pharmacology, but I somehow managed! 6k word count, the longest TL I’ve done to date besides Parvati’s interlude for FGO. Lots of insight into Jack Jeanne’s production and what Ishida’s been up to for the past year. It was tough to translate because it was so long, but I had a lot of fun.

Let me know if there are any mistakes, I’m sure there’s a whole bunch. Have fun reading!

Original can be found here.

＊＊＊

2019. I’m reflecting on this past year while flipping through my agenda. Since I’m writing this for my sake, there’s going to be a lot of sections without much explanation.

January

○ This was when Jack Jeanne had yet to be announced, so I was mostly doing preliminary work at the time. Stuff like “BU” and “character facial expressions” will be finished some time this month, is written in my schedule book.

○ New Year’s party in Tokyo from the 16th - 19th. The New Year’s party is a joint party that’s comprised of the 4th editorial department (Shueisha’s seinen magazine branch) that’s held every year in January. I attended the party with the staff every year during serialization, minus my first year.

2019 will be the first New Year’s party since the series ended, but I thought I should stop inviting the staff to attend since we’re not working together anymore (plus it’d be a hassle), so I didn’t really invite anyone. But the day before the event, Editor M brought up the topic inside the taxi and asked, “Are none of the staff coming this year?” (Even if they’re invited now, it’s going to be impossible, asking them to fly the next day and causing a ruckus…) When I replied, “Hey, I’m sure it’d be fun if you invited them and they all came~”, the editor contacted Goubaru-kun, and after said, “He said he’s going.” Guess he wasn’t busy. In the end, the staff during serialization and several people from OB and OG came, almost identical to the lineup from previous years, and it occurred to me that maybe I should have just invited them from the start.

Anyway, at this year’s New Year’s party, I don’t really remember much of what happened. I talked with my senpais from back when I was an assistant for Kingdom, and outside the venue I sobered up from the agoraphobic dizziness I was feeling inside. At the second party I remember people talking to me haphazardly and being photographed. I wish I’d refused. Also, I was sexually harassed by Rikudou Matsubara, my senpai from the same region as me. This New Year’s party will be my last.

February

Briefing session for the game held in Tokyo. Key visual created. It says here [on the agenda] that I want to go to Kagoshima. Every week there’s a checklist for 10 km of jogging and weight training 2-3 times a week. I spent about a week doing some composition work. It ended up being helpful for me, but it made me decide not to work anymore with people with different levels of interest from me.

○ TRPG is written for the 28th. Usually we use the DX (Double Cross) system, but this time one of our participating players, M’s schedule was under mysterious attack. As game master, taking consideration of everyone who’d made time in their schedules for tonight, I thought we could switch to Cthulhu and asked them to wait an hour. 2 hours later I finished coming up with a scenario and began the session. It was fairly fun.

March

Finish BU this month, is clearly noted down. BU stands for bust-up, which are drawings of characters in standing poses [sprites] that are common in ADV games. Normally, since it takes a huge amount of work, the BU work is always divided up. The original drawings are done by the illustrator, in this case I do the base illustrations (line drawing & colouring), and using them as the base, the department sharing the work cleans up the line drawings and recolours it...that’s how the process goes. But since I’m a mangaka and don’t have the technology needed to make gaming assets, I thought it’d be best to leave it to the pros in that field, so that was how that stage proceeded. At that point in time at least.

I also had plans written down to go to Kagoshima. Looks like I didn’t go.

○ TRPG on the 25th. Player M’s schedule lined up with ours, so we played DX with 6 PL plus me as GM. We went to the aquarium, were attacked by witches, and so on.

April

Finish BU, is faintly written down. It seems like the work was more or less completed earlier this month.

○ High school friend K’s wedding on the 6th. Up until then I’d only been to two other wedding receptions. The weddings were for a different friend from high school, and Tajika-san, one of my senpais from Kingdom. This suddenly reminds me of that time at Tajika-san’s reception, when I took a super early flight because I absolutely didn’t want to be late whatsoever, but I ended up not being able to fly for about an hour and a half because of engine trouble or whatever, so I entered at almost the same time as the bride and groom during the reception…

K’s wedding was the first time in my life where I was present all the way from the wedding to the reception, but how should I put it, I was struck by a beam of light. I don’t know who he’s getting married to, I have no clue what their relationship is like. But I was somehow bombarded...by all these thoughts that became jumbled in my head, like the energy in this place, the power of their oaths, questioning what it was, how light isn’t always justice.

I got the feeling that this was what proper, respectable humans take part in, but since I'm fine with not being a proper, respectable human, I decided to not do anything other than what my heart desires.

I'm definitely not good with places where I’m in the spotlight. But congratulations.

○ “Play Sekiro” is strongly noted down. Thank you for supporting me in the first half of 2019.

○ TRPG for the 29th - 30th. DX. Player M’s character dies.

May - June

My schedule book is starting to look more scattered now. On the other hand, since I’ve got a good memory of this time, I can write while recalling the events.

○ I did the covers for the Touken stage play book.

I drew the cover illustrations for the Touken [Ranbu] stage play that Mikasano-san, who I’m grateful to for his work on the anime and movie scripts for TG, worked on. In my mind, it feels like I'm watching the back of who I'd consider my older brother in the creative world, or a fellow comrade on another battlefield fighting to the death. I think it came out quite charmingly, so I’ll include the links for now. Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3

During this time of work for Jack Jeanne, I was working on “model sheets”. Blueprints for the characters’ attire, not just from the front but also the internal structure.

Unlike most other games, Jack Jeanne has “performance costumes” in addition to normal attire. Because of its “revue” theme, costumes that will be worn onstage needed to be prepared. I was shocked when I suddenly admitted that I needed model sheets for 5 different performances (spring, summer, fall, winter, final) for the 6 main characters, making 30 designs in total.

Back in the TG era, these kind of drawings that I just explained, or drawings that needed a lot of layers, were a pain in the ass. Plus I wasn’t good at them, so I thought that I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life if possible. But it seems like I have to do this myself. With a sense of determination, I decided to work solely on this for all of May. At the same time, I made nothing but curry for all my meals. There’s no deep reason behind it, but my aim was to kinda boost my ability to concentrate daily by choosing to be decisive in that action.

○ Working on model sheets It came with an unintended effect. Because I spent a month on work that required balance and consistency, my right-left checking skills got better, and completely unrelated, I improved in drawing perfect copies. The design work for the model sheets itself became really fun to do, starting around when I became obsessed with the scarf design (sumo wrestler drawing) I definitely couldn’t use for Neji’s summer costume. I discovered that it’s precisely because I’m not good at this that my labour bore fruit. I feel like this was my experience for the latter half of the year.

July

The cast members were chosen. Unlike TG, there are 6 people + 1 person who can be referred to as the main character, so it was interesting to have a cast with some breadth.

Seems like lyrical work was the main thing I worked on.

Lyrical work. In Jack Jeanne, each performance contains several songs to sing and dance to, so each one is supposed to be sung. ...hence the lyrics.

The topic of what to do with the lyrics was brought up in November 2018. What happens typically is that, let’s say there’s singing in an idol game, then a company that specializes in it is asked to produce the songs. Even for Jack Jeanne, there were several candidates I could pick and choose from. But after a quick look-through, frankly speaking, they all looked the same to me. There’s one person that’s good, it’d be great if we could get them...is what I thought, but, “Even though I don’t have the skills, I’m the one who understands this world the best,” crossed my mind. ...should I try? I tried it. To be honest, I was super embarrassed since it’d be seen by a lot of people, but it evolved into, “Who cares if you’re doing it?” And so Jack Jeanne’s lyrics were tasked to me.

I mentioned this earlier, but there are multiple songs for each performance. So if you combine those plus the opening and ending songs, that makes 17 songs in total. Lyrics for 17 songs that I’m fully responsible for. What the hell...am I doing? Maybe it was from that moment that I started losing it.

Including the lyrics that I’d been working on bit by bit every month, the remaining ones were finished in one go this July. By the time I finished everything, my current state was, “Give me more songs...let me write more lyrics!” But it wasn’t over just yet.

August

Every time I meet someone I tell this story. I’m thinking of keeping it up. Here I am, relieved to have finished the lyrics, when a message pops up on the Skype group chat. It’s from Yamashita Daisuke of Broccoli.

To briefly touch upon Yamashita Daisuke, he is a young man who’s been involved with this project since October of 2018, and a poor soul who was tasked with conducting very important meetings on his third day of working at the company.

The producer from Broccoli was going on maternity leave, so he was scouted as her replacement. As an aside, if I have to be honest, the exchanges between me and Towada-san, and Broccoli’s Jack Jeanne team up until then were quite frustrating. “How about doing it like this?” they would counter. And we’d respond with something like, “This part is going to be developed later on, and since this will become foreshadowing for the entirety of the story, it can’t be modified that easily.” This kind of situation, having to explain everything in detail one by one, going 3 steps forward and being held 2 steps back, had been going on for about 3 years, so the two of us would often whine about it over drinks, going, “When should we quit, this is ridiculous,” etc.

Finally when things began going more smoothly, the producer who was leading the project took her leave, so I wondered if we’d be able to get along with Yamashita Daisuke, but he was, how should I put it, very diligent. For the last year I've been working with people who don’t put in their best effort, so I was very hopeful and thankful to him.

But I digress. This was the gist of the message that Daisuke sent.

“Kosemura-san’s who’s in charge of musical composition wants ‘scratch vocal tracks’ for when the singers are recording.” “Does Ishida-sensei happen to know anyone he could ask for this favour?” “I’m sure it won’t be a problem for you!” “Frankly speaking, it’s okay even if they’re bad.”

Huh. Well, as you might have already guessed, even with the lyrics, it’s impossible to really understand the song at first sight without knowing what kind of rhythm, what kind of emotions are being expressed in the bar measure. Of course we’d need ‘scratch vocal tracks’ to explain the general feeling of the song.

Now, what Daisuke said was, “Do you have anyone you can ask? It’s okay even if they’re bad. Or even you can do it.” But if I found a “it’s okay even if they’re bad” kind of person, we’d still have to show them how to sing it and explain how the rhythm goes. Daisuke already knew which was probably why he asked for the favour. “The person writing the lyrics would be able to make the scratch vocal tracks the fastest.” ...come to think of it, the demo songs that Kunimitsu sent me every time that were sung using Vocaloid, weren’t they also scratch vocal tracks?

Daisuke must have been in a pinch trying to figure out how he should ask me candidly. Ishida-sensei, I couldn’t just ask you to sing it, so I had to ask in a roundabout manner.

I’d already given my answer, but I was still hesitant. It’s true that after I finished writing the lyrics for the 17 songs I’d already lost sight of myself, but if I sang, my singing would reach Broccoli and Kosemura-san’s team’s ears. But I couldn’t just leave poor Daisuke hanging.

So I consult Towada-shi, whom I’d been collaborating with in creating the scripts for Jack Jeanne, for advice. (He had been in charge of TG’s novels, and I’ve known him for a long time.) “Did you check Skype?” “I did.” “What do you think?” “Start by looking up scratch vocal tracks,” so we paid a visit to YouTube. The first search result that came up for ‘scratch vocal track’ was a video of a vocalist who was used to sing a scratch track for AKB or something. I see, so that’s what it looks like. Innocuous, but I could see it was very professionally done.

And the second result that came up was Tsunku♂-shi. The figure of Tsunku♂-shi himself recording a scratch track for his idols. The producer himself became an idol, and was singing really cutely, in his emotions and how he sang it. “This is it?” I said. “Yeah, it is,” Towada-shi agreed. If Kosemura-san and his team, and the people who will be performing the songs have to listen to it, it’d be a disservice to them to half-ass it. I don’t like people who don’t try their best. That means I have to show that attitude myself. Let’s come out of my shell for poor Daisuke as well.

“You’re gonna become Tsunku♂.” “Yeah...I’m gonna be Tsunku♂!” And that was how I became Tsunku♂.

I replied to Daisuke on the Skype group chat. “Understood, I’ll do what I can.”

So this guy, who doesn’t even know what the ‘D’ in DTM stands for, first downloads the software, and begins setting up a recording environment. Other work is pushed aside. I set 3 days to work on this.

I timidly begin working on the scratch tracks. From the perspective of someone who doesn’t have to listen to their singing for a living, it starts out as a living hell, but you get used to it as you listen to it over and over.

And so I kept learning new things. I noticed I was harmonizing with myself.

Just like Tsunku♂-shi, I’d change the voice for each character. If it was Jack (male in a male role) I’d sing like a man, and if it was Jeanne (male in a female role), then like a woman, while the main character Kisa (female) should sound cute... No, Kisa needs to be cuter! I re-recorded her part many times. Depending on the song, I’d sing for 7 people. I was Jack Jeanne now.

Tsunku♂ (I) recorded 17 songs in 3 days, and sent the data first to Towada-shi. Since I was now Tsunku♂, I no longer felt any sense of embarrassment.

“I listened to it,” the reply came, and I called him. Towada-shi was roaring with laughter. I regained the embarrassment I’d forgotten.

“Oh no, I was laughing ‘cause I was impressed,” he said, but my heart was already as fragile as that of an abandoned dog.

“Even this is a big help to Kosemura-san, and Daisuke should be grateful, right?” Yeah. Although Towada-shi guffawed at me, Daisuke will surely thank me. And then he’ll definitely tell me what a good job I did!

I dumped the music into the Skype group chat. “I did what I could,” I added.

How will Daisuke react to my Tsunku♂? I waited restlessly. Three days later on August 5th, a formal message arrived after it was received.

“Thank you very much. We will schedule a meeting with Kosemura-san…”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. My hard work got dismissed with, “Thank you very much.”

Daisuke, why? I thought you were in a pinch, so I...were...were you fooling with me from the start? Answer me! Daisuke! Just tell me I did a good job, or follow up with something, I’m fine with anything! So much for my heart being like an abandoned dog, it’s more like a grown-ass man left naked on a snowy mountain. I did what I could! This feeling was welling up inside me, but was it myself that managed to do it?

○ Later, at a meeting with Kosemura-san “It’s great that you could do this much for us. You didn’t have to do all that.” With the gist of those words, a warm blanket was finally placed over my heart, which had almost frozen to death.

“I didn’t know how to respond. I wasn’t sure if Sensei was the most who did it in the first place,” Daisuke said, so I decided to satisfy myself by threatening, “I’m gonna tell this story until the day I die.”

September

○ Responses to the Questions to Ishida Sui contest We did a “Ask anything to Ishida Sui” contest as a project for the art book “zakki:re”, where purchasers could apply with a postcard. I was writing the replies for them.

I thought there’d be a lot more questions about TG or its contents, but surprisingly there were a lot of questions asking for life advice. There were quite a few questions that I had to seriously think about to answer.

It was kinda tough since there were over a hundred of them, but I thought it’d be nice to get in touch like this every once in a while.

○ BU work for Jack Jeanne Once the music-related tasks like lyrical composition and scratch vocal tracks were completed, I worked on BU. ...BU work? Wasn’t it finished back in April?

Well, a similar situation arose just like what happened with the lyrics. Regarding sprite quality I might not be able to beat the pros, but since I’m the one who best understands how the characters look best and their body balance, I had decided to do all the line drawing colouring myself in June. I had no clue whether I’d make the deadline or maintain the quality, but thanks to Broccoli’s understanding, I was allowed to make it myself.

I realized once again that I’m terrible at splitting up work. If I can do it by myself, I will.

Plus, it’s, how should I put it, starting from my TG days, even though it wasn’t a lot I got to see various types of workplaces. I’d see places where there was no sense of responsibility whatsoever, or the work may have been divvied up appropriately, but it felt like they were making something without a sense of purpose, like a main plot line that isn’t going anywhere.

It’s impossible to accomplish big things with that kind of stance, and I understand that the more people that intervene, the more uncertain the core becomes, so I didn’t like that kind of approach. It makes me wonder whether there’s any meaning in creating a work that’s conservative and unchallenged, and if it’s nothing more than a money grab.

Since I don’t have any desire for material things, getting fed up about it is useless, but I just can’t help thinking about it.

Of course, it may be difficult to get what I want 100% of the time, but I want to create things in an environment that I think is beautiful, even in places that I’m slightly involved in.

...in other words, BU work is tough, but I began remaking the sprites once again by myself. This was the toughest work I’ve ever done out of everything, including the serialization...

○ Scratch vocals training camp at the end of September I went to the recording for the scratch vocal tracks. Based on the scratch tracks that I made, we got professional vocalists to sing it again properly. This is what the actual cast would use as a reference to sing. (So my version was like the pre-scratch vocal track.)

I was stuck in Tokyo for almost a week. Wake up, get ready, go to the recording studio. Come back at 8 or 9 pm, rest and sleep, repeat.

It was like I was back in school, and since I don’t have a steady lifestyle, I enjoyed it.

Kosemura-san’s team is really great, and I know I mentioned this before, but I felt like their workplace was a very healthy production site. When I was drawing manga, I never had much time to talk with fellow manga artists, and I’ve never had the chance to experience what other professionals’ workplaces were like, so it was very exciting for me to see people as professionals tackle one thing seriously. The vocalists were as amazing as I expected, and although my scratch tracks were played at a loud volume to annoy me, I had a great time.

The game might have a high level of entry, but it’s worth listening to just for the songs, is what I truly thought.

○ Parting words to Editor M-shi This might have been back in August, but from 2018 to 2019 I had a lot of things on my mind, so I began talking to the editor.

In between the 11 years of serialization starting from my rookie days, I’d received guidance from him so it wasn’t easy, but I expressed to him that we should keep our distance for any future works.

“I want to become absorbed in myself, not to Ishida Sui or Tokyo Ghoul,” I told him. The other part said he also felt the same way, and accepted it. The next time we meet, I hope we can talk about what we’re into, what we’re going crazy over, he said.

And so, 2 months after that conversation was the scratch vocals training camp in Tokyo, and I had the chance for the two of us to talk again. That day I was completely tuckered out from recording the scratch track, but it was a day filled with accomplishments.

He took me to a restaurant with delicious food in Ebisu or somewhere, and after concluding our brief business meeting, I tried throwing out the cliched, “So, what are you up to lately?” As the lead writer, there was a part of me that was curious about how he was doing after that talk we had.

The editor began talking about homemade curry.

...that’s what he’s into? I decide everything from selecting and picking the ingredients myself, and next time I want Ishida-kun to also see how delicious the curry is...he told me passionately, but how should I put it, the conversation wasn’t very spicy.

The food was delicious.

October

○ BU work

What’s hard about BU work is that it’s difficult to separate the layers according to the face, hair and clothes, and they all have to have the same style and touch to it. If it was manga, then maybe...no, even in manga, there’s still some need to match the outfits, but it doesn’t really matter to that extent.

It’s because I don’t like game sprites. “This character has so much energy from their sideways pose! Amazing!” This never happens…

Around this time of the year, my older sister called this elaborate task, “the task you’re probably the worst at.”

○ The bean life I’m not really fat in particular, but I made up my mind to try dieting. At the time, my body fat percentage was at 18%, and I’ve never been below 10% ever in my entire life, so I’m thinking of aiming for that. Instead of eating rice with unseasoned chickpeas and black soybeans, I began my lifestyle of consuming vegetables and cuts of meat with less fat. Hopefully I can achieve my goal in about six months’ time.

○ Ano-chan, Honda Keisuke, and I After Ano-chan left “You’ll Melt More!”, her official Twitter account removed every single account she was following, but for some reason only two people remained. Those two people were Honda Keisuke and Ishida Sui. To Ano-chan, Honda Keisuke and Ishida Sui belonged in the same category. After some time passed, even we were removed, but I consider this one of my hottest mysteries of 2019. Ano-chan! I’ll always be waiting, so let’s have tea some time with Honda Keisuke!

November

○ BU Need I say more.

○ Main cast’s first recording session from the 26th - 27th.

I visited Tokyo with Towada-shi to supervise the main cast members’ recording session. Wow, everyone was so amazing~

Of course, not just the main characters. Terasaki Yuka-san who plays the main character, Tachibana Kisa, was wonderful as well.

In this kind of game genre, the position as the main character feels less important than the male characters, but I want her to stand firmly in this story’s script. I thought it’d be nice to have the main character not stand out too much and have her watch over the male characters, and I felt that Terasaki-san’s voice and acting fit that image perfectly.

About the cast members, it seems like there’ll be a chance to speak to them eventually, so I’ll come back again.

○ 1 month into the bean life I’m steadily losing weight. Basically I always work from home. I go to the gym and supermarket 2-3 times a week. I started cooking for myself. I got a brand new refrigerator to replace the one that suddenly broke. It actually cools things down now. Living standards have risen.

December

○ I break off ties with M who I played TRPG together with. He was a former classmate who was even chief assistant at some point during the series’ run, but eventually he ended up getting fired due to falling asleep at work. He said he’d attend the last session for the story that day (although his own character had already died), and I was working on a schedule to accommodate him, but once again he cancelled at the last minute.

It’s fine to cause trouble for me (although I’ll probably get pissed), but I can’t overlook treating others the same way. And it’s not the fact that his schedule didn’t match up, it’s because he was complete trash who didn’t know how to behave like an adult once he made plans with others, that I felt sorry for the other TRPG people who took time out of their schedules. Since I felt ashamed when I was together with him, I decided I’d had enough.

This was a year where I cut ties with a lot of people, but I think what they had in common was that I was ashamed to be with them. From now on, I don’t want to associate with such people.

What’s more, when I finally told him, he didn’t even try to deal with it and just gave up, responding, “So that’s how you felt about me. Okay. My bad.”

I won’t go anywhere with those kind of people again.

○ The bean life ⇒ the potato life. I changed it to potatoes.

○ BU is over...

On December 17th, I finally finished the BU work that I spent ageeeeeeeees on.

Although I said that serialization is tough, as long as I finished 18 pages a week that was it (although there were times where I was chasing myself with other work), so I could finish it as long as I didn’t sleep. I somehow managed to finish both the manuscripts and the colour illustrations this way, so expecting BU to be similar, I wasn’t really scared about it never ending, but BU truly was despair. When is this gonna end? I’m even working super hard… This is how it went on the entire time for over a month.

There were about 200 different sprites I had to make myself, including the different costumes and poses, and I had to do all of them.

For one thing, when, “This process is necessary,” came out, I had to go through the same process roughly 200 times, that it felt like I was facing the final boss who already transformed many times. Also, it’s like not equipping myself with a lot of equipment and recovery items in the previous town, but the dungeon I somehow managed to enter is extremely dangerous and even though there’s no safe points anywhere in sight, the boss suddenly comes up behind you, and you go I’m gonna die I’m gonna die

○ If you eat a lot while you’re losing weight, you’re going to have a bad time.

On December 15th I had trouble concentrating, so I tidied up the living room, created a space in the middle of the room, and darkened the lights. After an hour of meditating, only the sound of my breathing could be heard in the room, and so I went back to work with renewed concentration after confronting the issue (like a monk?).

On December 16th, I’ve been working the entire time since morning. I thought today was going to be the last day, but an entire day has passed and I don’t have any energy...

I’ll buy a midnight snack, replenish my energy, and end it once and for all. I’m trying to lose weight, but I went to the convenience store while thinking about how I’m gonna eat a katsu sandwich (I didn’t have the energy to cook).

While looking for something at a convenience store I can eat during weight loss, I think back over the last few months.

Like how it seems like BU is finally over, how a lot of things have happened, how I’m working hard, how lately I’ve been eating only potatoes, vegetables and meat.

And then I suddenly thought, “I wonder if the reason I don’t have any energy is because I haven’t had any rice lately.”

...I thought I should go on a diet in October, so I’ve been living a very modest life since then. Thanks to that, my weight has steadily decreased, and my body fat percentage has gone down 3% to 15%. What will happen if I continue with my relatively strict dietary restrictions during this difficult time?

...even if you’re losing weight, there’s a technique you can set up to binge eat during periods where weight loss stagnates, called cheat day (though results may vary), but what is it that makes no-cheating so inefficient even for weight loss?

...should I have a cheat day today?

“Huh, is it really okay?” I asked my mind. “Do it!” was the answer I got. From that moment, everything around me morphed into things I could eat.

No exaggeration, my knees trembled.

I crammed into my shopping basket carbohydrates, carbs, more carbs… It’s okay just for today, I say as I shove cream puffs, dorayaki, pudding, Family Mart chicken and ice cream. (Even if it's a cheat day, it’s probably not a good idea to take non-nutritional foods, but shh.)

With food in both hands and in high spirits, the first thing I ate was the delicious part of the Family Mart chicken.

I groaned loudly, all alone in the room.

Alright, let’s finish this work! I was energized, but my blood sugar levels spiked so much that I felt extremely sleepy and went to bed instead.

The next day on the 17th, I wake up at 4 am and immediately notice something unusual. My body is burning. I’m sweating.

I immediately wake up, and overflowing with energy, I head for my desk. I’m working actively, and I finish the BU work. It felt like I was pushing forward with only positive energy, feeling uplifted.

I break out a laugh at a slight joke I found funny from a foreign drama (The Mentalist) I’m playing while working. The greenery of the plants and the lighted sink glisten, and the scenery is vivid.

What is this?

I suddenly recall the story of a YouTuber I saw recently. He lives in a region where medical marijuana is legalized, and he explained in detail what changes would occur if you smoked cannabis.

To put it roughly, you feel calm and your senses sharpen. Trivial things can become funny, and funny videos can make you roar with laughter.

Then maybe...I thought, I'll watch Nagareboshi (a comedy duo) on YouTube. Usually I go, haha, that's funny! But that day I exploded with laughter...all of their videos were just too funny.

I learned that when you’re losing weight and suddenly eat a lot, it alters your mind and body as if you smoked cannabis. (※ Just to be clear, I don’t know what cannabis is like.)

Thus the BU work ended with me being high as a kite.

(※ I’m covering it with mosaics for now. I’ll remove it once I can announce it.)

○ I stopped playing TRPGs. I’ve been doing it for about two and a half years, but it also helped me in honing my creative skills. I’d sometimes perform, so it was useful when I was recording the scratch vocals… It was a good experience, managing to vicariously live the energy of ending a story. It was a story about a group of friends, so it was easy to appreciate.

Summing up 2019

After the weekly series finished in 2018, I was in a daze for a few months, but in 2019 I worked only on Jack Jeanne for the year.

This year I tried various things, and trite as it may seem, felt the possibilities within myself expanding. I had many opportunities to realize how important it is to keep a distance from bad things that don’t do anything for me.

During my work on Jack Jeanne, I vaguely thought about my future creations. The work I’m doing now in game production is fun so I wonder if I can keep working in this field, but I’d also like an environment where I can release things more constantly.

I can’t promise anything specific, but I’m going to work on things that I want to do.

I look forward to what 2020 has to offer. Have a happy New Year.

2019.12.31 Ishida Sui

[feferipeixes]

Innocence Is Not Knowing That You’re Innocent (4/5)

Belle knows her brother pretty well. He likes comic books, he cheats at board games, and he wants more than anything to be human again. So, when he wakes up one morning with no memory of the fact that he’s a demon, she figures there’s no reason to remind him just yet. He deserves some time to just enjoy being Dipper, and not have to be Alcor.

Unfortunately, she can’t hide Dipper from the demon forever.

Chapter 4: Night of the Living Dead (link to chapter 1) (2) (3)

Shout out to @toothpastecanyon​ for being a super helpful beta reader!

(See the most updated version on AO3!)

===

“Come on out, you look great!”

Dipper groaned. “This is humiliating! How again did you get me to agree to this?”

“You’re getting my ice cream for a week,” Belle answered gleefully. Was it a bribe? Sure was, but making deals with a demon so often had taught her that a good bribe can solve almost anything. It had also taught her how to craft a loophole, and since Dipper didn’t have his demon powers right now, he hadn’t noticed that if their dad bought popsicles for dessert that week instead of ice cream, she wouldn’t have to share any of it. “Now come out!”

Dipper made a noise that was clearly intended to convey just how displeased he was with the entire situation, but mostly sounded to Belle like an adorable, yowling cat. He shuffled out of the closet looking sullen. “Happy?”

“Yes!” Belle squealed and jumped around, the bangles on her arms jangling loudly as she did so. “That costume looks really good on you!”

He turned around, and flinched when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He was wearing a long, sky blue poncho with pictures of birds flying across. He had grass-green pants and shoes, and a plush headdress that looked like the sun. It covered most of his head, leaving only a very nonplussed Dipper face sticking out. “I look ridiculous.”

Belle clapped giddily. “Nonsense, you look great, and it works because we match!” Her poncho was black, and studded with white little LED lights that looked like twinkling stars. Her long skirt and shoes were also black, and her headdress was shaped like a crescent moon. “It’s great, because we’re so different, we’re like... day and night!”

“Why do you get to be night?” he humphed. “At least you’ll blend in when it’s dark out.”

“I get to be night because I’m dark and brooding, and you’re sunny and delightful!”

“Belle, that’s the opposite of -”

“Well, you’ll be bright and sunny when we go out! You’ll have to be -- it’s Halloween!”

Dipper facepalmed. “Aren’t we a bit old to go trick-or-treating?”

“Yeah, we are. And it saddens me greatly! But we won’t be going trick-or-treating. We’re going to be going…” (she imitated doing a drumroll) “to a haunted house!”

He gaped at her. “What?”

“Onika told me there’s this old apartment building her family owns that no one lives in anymore because it’s full of ghosts and stuff! That’ll be fun, right? Ghost hunting, looking for mysteries, and all that?”

“That does sound fun…” He seemed to think it over for a bit, and then nodded. “Alright, sure. I’m in. But I’m not going outside in this outfit unless you make it two weeks of ice cream.”

“Deal!” She raised her hand for a high five, but Dipper had already turned around and was walking out of the room.

Oh yeah. This was just normal bribery -- no demon magic involved.

---

Belle was pretty pleased with her plan. A haunted house was the perfect thing for Dipper on Halloween. His powers were locked up, so he wouldn’t get summoned away in the middle of their fun. He always loved mysteries and exploring when they were younger, and since he didn’t know he was a demon, he could fear for his life just like everyone else! Yes, she thought, this was the perfect thing for him to get to enjoy while his Alcor memories were gone.

As for her? She honestly wished she could be going trick-or-treating. It wasn’t really true that they were too old, because she knew Alistair was taking his younger brother trick-or-treating, and that’s still technically getting to go trick-or-treating because adults usually give out sympathy candy to the teenagers who have to chaperone little sugared-up kids around town at night! But she knew Dipper wouldn’t enjoy it correctly -- sure, he had a sweet tooth like no other ancient demon she’d ever heard of, but scaring strangers into giving him candy was something he didn’t need to be human to do.

Besides, he was starting to figure things out. She was going to have to tell him soon enough. Might as well make sure he had some extra special fun before she does.

“Are we almost there?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s just at the top of this hill.” She stuck her tongue out. “What, is Mr. Sunshine getting scared out here in the dark?”

“No!” he replied indignantly. “I’m just excited. Why again does Onika’s family own a haunted apartment block?”

“Oh! It’s a good story!” She pulled out her phone, turned on the flashlight, and held it under her chin. “Legends say that Onika’s family promised a group of construction workers that if they built a building for them, they’d get invited to fancy apartment dinner parties all the time. But when the building was finished and Onika’s family sent out the first invitations, the workers were left out! Then, a big piano hanging from a girder 15 stories up suddenly fell down and squished them! They swore to haunt the apartments and get their revenge on rich people forever!”

Dipper scoffed. “Come on, you just stole that from the legend of the haunted Northwest Mansion in Gravity Falls.”

“Who knows? It could be true!”

They came over the crest of the hill, and there it was: an old apartment building.

“...is this it?” Dipper asked, nonplussed. “Seems a little underwhelming.”

“Yeah! Come on, Onika gave me the keys.” She skipped up to the front door, and pulled out a jangly keyring. “I think some of these are to public pools, country clubs, celebrity houses… aha! Creepy apartment block key!” She unlocked the door, and the two of them were hit with a wave of stale air. Belle sniffed in enthusiastically, and then coughed. “You smell that, Brolock Holmes? That’s the smell of mystery!”

“More like the smell of mildew,” he responded, also coughing. Still, he edged past Belle and into the building. Smiling, she skipped after him.

“I think I found a light switch,” he said. There was a click, and the room lit up. The hallway looked positively from another era -- carpeted floors, wooden doors, a chandelier with incandescent light bulbs in it. There was a layer of dust over just about everything.

“Hallway seems pretty not-haunted,” he remarked after a minute. “You wanna take a look in some of these rooms?”

“Sure, but there’s no chance on earth that we’re splitting up! You’ve seen horror movies!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He went over to the nearest door, and activated the opening mechanism. It was unlocked, and swung open with a loud creak. “Belle, can I have your flashlight?”

She hugged her phone to her chest. “Use your own, goober!”

“Sheesh, fine.” He pulled out his phone, turned on the flashlight, and shined it into the room. Not much of note immediately jumped out at them -- a dusty sofa, dusty coffee table, dusty chairs, dusty TV. He signaled for Belle to follow him, and they tiptoed together into the room. Once inside, they both shined their lights around in a wider arc, trying to get a better look at the room.

“Huh,” Dipper said. “Kind of a letdo-”

There was a loud noise, and the door to the apartment slammed shut. The twins both yelped and jumped about a foot into the air.

“Dipper? What’s going on?” Belle asked, voice shaking.

“Dunno, but the door’s not opening. Lights aren’t turning on either. Let’s, uh… let’s take a look around.”

“Alright…”

He set off toward an old bookshelf, looking more excited than anything else. Belle settled for poking at the kitchen table. It had some weird old cables clamped to the underside of it, but nothing else so strange as to call haunted. Which was just as well -- at this point, she wasn’t sure whether she really wanted the apartment to be haunted or not.

And then she felt a tap on her shoulder, which she hoped against all hope was just Dipper pranking her, but she knew her brother was awful at pranks, and furthermore she could see out of the corner of her eye that he was on the other side of the room, looking at books on a shelf. She gulped, resigned herself to whatever fate would befall her, and turned around.

There was nothing there. She didn’t know whether that made things better or worse.

“You were a fool to come here.”

Belle’s heart sank. “Aren’t you having fun, bro-bro?”

He looked up from the dusty tome he was nose-deep in. “It’s alright. Kind of eerie, but I was hoping to see a ghost.”

“Oh. Why did you say I was a fool to come here, then?”

“What are you talking about?” He dropped the book and rushed over to her, his noodle-y arms flailing everywhere. “I didn’t say anything. Maybe it was a ghost? What exactly did they say?”

She opened her mouth, and then a voice that Belle could now tell definitely wasn’t Dipper’s hissed “You’ll pay for what you’ve done.”

“You heard that, right?” she asked.

He nodded, and pulled his notebook out of his costume. Of course he’d brought his notebook -- he’d spent a lot of time researching ghosts and would want to have that research on him in a potentially haunted situation. “Let me see what we’re dealing with here. There’s the disembodied voice saying foreboding stuff -- that puts us at at least Category 3. Has anything else happened?”

“I felt a tap on my shoulder, but when I turned around, there was nothing there.”

He started to chew on the end of his pen. “Hmm, partial corporeality. Doesn’t really tell us much.”

“D-do you think it’s a ghost?”

“Definitely,” he replied, without a hint of nervousness in his voice. “I wonder if it’ll do anything else.”

“Do you want me to put on a show for you? Is that what you want?” came a voice from behind them.

Dipper and Belle swiveled around instantly, and found themselves face-to-face with an old man, which ordinarily wouldn’t have been too frightening, because it was Halloween and he might’ve given them candy, but this old man was pale white, glowing, and almost definitely a -

“GHOST!” they both screamed, and the old man started to cackle. They turned around and raced for the door, but the ghost got in their way.

“I’ve waited too long for you to show up! You’re not getting away that easy!”

The twins skidded on their heels and changed course, heading for the window.

“Nope! That won’t work, Sterlings! You’re mine now, and I’m never going to let you go!”

Belle’s heart was racing at the speed of light, and she felt like she was going to be sick. Beside her, Dipper was vibrating, and she couldn’t tell if it was from fear or excitement. He opened his mouth and the voice that came out was high-pitched and squeaky. “Wh-what did we do? Why have you been waiting for us?”

The ghost cackled again. “You don’t even know what you’ve done! That’s so rich. Here, why don’t I give you a reminder?” He started to float toward them, and Belle’s mind short-circuited.

“Simia arcu impetum ignis!” she cried, thrusting her palm forward.

“No, Belle -” Dipper started to yell, but it was too late -- a pulsating fireball shot from her hand and exploded halfway between Dipper and the ghost. Searing pain stretched over Belle’s arms, and the room was filled with screaming. Then, everything went black.

---

Belle’s eyes sprang open. It took her a moment to remember where she was and what was going on, and then she scrambled to her feet.

“Dipper?” she asked cautiously, although it came out as much more of a yell. She couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in her ears, though she wasn’t sure whether that was because he wasn’t moving or because of the explosion that had just happened. She tried to look around, but the room was too thick with smoke. She pulled out her phone, which was thankfully still in her back pocket, to see if the flashlight would help her see, and then she heard it.

A moan, low and warbling, coming from somewhere near her feet. She yelped and jumped up, readying herself to launch another fireball if she needed to. “Whoever’s there, show yourself!”

“Belle…” came Dipper’s voice.

Belle shined her phone toward the ground, and waved away some of the smoke. Dipper was lying on his back, face contorted in pain. “Dipper!” she yelled, kneeling down next to him. He didn’t look good, but she couldn’t immediately see any wounds so she figured he was probably at least okay for now. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“Belle… Ugh, you’ve gotta watch out next time. That… that spell was right next to my head, owww…”

His words were a little slurred, and she panicked for a moment that he was more hurt than he seemed. His body falling apart would be the absolute worst way for him to remember that he’s really a demon.

“What hurts, what can I do to help?”

“It’ll be fine, it’s just a headache,” he said, words interspersed with winces as he attempted to lift himself to his feet. “You know I’m sensitive to magic.”

She rushed to help him while mentally yelling at herself because actually she had forgotten that he was sensitive to magic because it had been a while since it had been relevant.

“I think we’re in the basement,” he said once he was steady on his feet.

“Let’s get out of here. This was a disaster.”

“No, this was awesome!” He bounced in place despite his obvious pain. “That was a real ghost! I can’t believe he has a vendetta against us -- we should find out what’s going on!”

“Are you serious? He was threatening to hurt us! We should go home!”

He looked at her up and down, and then at their surroundings. “Okay. Maybe a little recon would be good.” He didn’t sound particularly scared, but his hand mysteriously reached down to hold hers.

They made their way over fallen wooden beams and around broken furniture to a rickety staircase, which led directly outdoors. Belle let out a sigh of relief. They were out of there. They were going to go home, and she was going to call Onika and babble about the ghost that tried to kill them, and then Dipper would get his pinboard out and start drawing lines and conspiracies everywhere, and everything would be okay.

Then a familiar voice broke into her thoughts. “You stupid kids! Where do you think you’re going?”

They both swiveled around. The ghost was standing in a large hole in the side of the building -- apparently Belle’s fireball had a greater range than she thought. However, the ghost seemed a bit… different. He wasn’t glowing anymore, and was coughing through the still-settling dust, which seemed like a weird thing for a ghost to have to do.

Dipper’s eyes boggled. “You’re taking human form! How is that possible? Not even the strongest ghosts can do that without outside help! Are you working with a demon?” The last word felt like a kick to the stomach to Belle, but she clenched her teeth and said nothing.

“I’m not a real ghost, idiot!” The man broke into another coughing fit, and stepped out of the building. In the moonlight, Belle could see a sickly substance dripping off of him. “Haven’t you ever been to an arranged haunting before? You weren’t in any danger, you didn’t have to destroy the apartment!”

Belle’s jaw dropped. “An arranged haunting? Y-you’re not a real ghost?”

“No! This is just stage ectoplasm, and the door and furniture were all hooked up to a remote control! Did you even read the contract when you hired me?”

“Belle?” Dipper hissed. “What is he talking about? Did you know about this?”

“No, I swear I have no idea what he’s talking about! It… it must’ve been Onika! She’s the one who told me this place was haunted!”

Dipper facepalmed. “Stars above, why?” He took a deep breath, and turned to the not-ghost. “Sir? We’re sorry for uhh blowing up your apartment! We weren’t told that this was an arranged haunting, and also we’re only 14 so please don’t sue us!”

“Are you serious? You’re going to pay for what you did to me!”

“Okay. Plan B. Run for it!” Dipper hollered. Belle didn’t need telling twice -- they both started sprinting toward the hill.

“Stop, you hooligans!” The old man ran after them, surprisingly quickly for someone that old.

Belle glanced behind them. “He’s going to catch us!”

“No!” Dipper replied. “We can do this!”

“I can’t run that fast -- my costume is too long!”

“Gotcha!” came the man’s voice. He grabbed Belle’s wrist in a weird, twisting motion, and she shrieked in pain. She almost fell over, but the man held her upright.

Dipper skidded to a halt up ahead. “Belle!”

“Why’d you do that, you big meanie, that really hurt!” she gibbered at the old man.

He glared down at her. Standing directly beneath a streetlight, and still dripping with stage ectoplasm, he lit up with an ominous aura. “That’s what criminals like you get for destroying my business!”

“Let go of her, you… you monster!” Dipper yelled. Belle could barely see him in the dark, but something was making his eyes glow. She really hoped it wasn’t what she thought it was.

“Monster? Watch your tongue, young man! It’s you who’s the monster here! You’ve got no respect! I’ve seen your type before -- one minute you’re vandalizing private property, next you’re out there spilling blood and running from the law! You’re coming with me down to the police station. Some time in a holding cell will do you good -- knock some sense into you so you can be a decent human being!”

Belle gaped at the man’s ridiculous spiel. “Please stop, we’re sorry, please just let us go!”

“You should’ve thought of that earlier! You’re coming with me, princess!”

He jerked her forward by the wrist, and the pain made her vision go blurry.

“Stop right there!!” Dipper yelled, and his wobbling voice reverberated through the area. “Let her go now… or else!”

“You’re nothing but a miserable hoodlum, kid, and you’ve got some nerve threatening me after what you did!”

Belle managed to focus her eyes, and peered over toward her brother. He was definitely glowing at this point -- light flooding from his sun-shaped headdress, though whether he was aware of this she didn’t know. He pointed a finger at them, and Belle fell to the ground, released from the man’s grip. She scrambled away from him -- less because she was worried about what the man would do, and more because she was worried about what Dipper was about to do.

“Dipper, I’m okay -” she started.

“Why, you little gremlin! I’ll get you!”

“T͎̹͓̝͈̬̟͔̅͂͑ͩ̑͜h͎͕͎̮͍͙͍͔̎͊͑́̕͟ǎ͖̄̋ͧ̅ͬ̄ţ̛̼̤̖̙͎͖̦̬̽̆̃́̑ͅ'̶̢̨͚͚̮̐͊̾͊ͪͦ̃s͕͚̮̫̺ͪ̉̃͝ ̢ͭ̂̈̅͢͏͇̭̻͇̬̦Ė̦͓̥̹̠͎̈͊̇͗̍̕͟͞ͅN̶̳̮̜̫̭̣̝̣ͭ͌̉̈̃ͫ͌̚͞O̬͖͙̝͕̦̟͍̅̾̌͢U̷̞̰͕̞̗ͩͬ͑͊̄ͪ̈́͘͘G̛̫̞̱̍Ĥ͖͔̥͇̠̬͇̾ͩ!̛̗̥͆̆̋͐ͩ͊̽” Dipper screeched.

For a moment, the world seemed still but for the sound of Dipper’s voice echoing through the air. Belle heard a creak behind her, and rolled over to see the man almost over her. Then she heard the creak again, and looked up just in time to see the streetlight above them swing, once... twice… and then snap.

Belle screamed. The man paused, his expression twisting from anger to confusion, and he looked up to see what had frightened her. He barely had time to jump out of the way before the streetlight hit the ground and exploded, right where he’d been standing not a moment ago.

There was a blinding light and a wave of heat that seared Belle’s skin. She braced herself and squeezed her eyes shut in pain, but she couldn’t block out the image burned into her retinas. Through the ringing in her ears, she could dimly hear the man swear and stumble back, but she could barely concentrate on that, not with her heart beating so fast and her senses completely overloaded.

What felt like minutes passed as the heat of the fire and the ringing in her ears gradually lessened. When she opened her eyes, the man was a good twenty feet away. His arm was raised to point at her -- no, at someone behind her -- and he had a look of pure terror on his face.

He saw her move and jumped back. “Call off your demon!” he yelled. “I’ll leave you alone! Please just stop!” Then he turned around and ran away as fast as he could.

Belle’s heart sank. She didn’t want to know what was going on behind her, but she knew she’d have to get up eventually. She rolled onto her stomach, and finally dared to peer into the night.

Dipper was lying on the ground up ahead -- the glow was gone but she could see him easily because of his costume. She struggled to her feet and wobbled her way over. His eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. Whatever happened -- whatever he did must’ve taken a lot out of him. She planted her butt on the ground and buried her face in her hands. This wasn’t meant to happen -- it was just supposed to be a fun treat that Dipper would enjoy in a human capacity. And now…

There was a choking noise, and she picked her head up. Dipper, eyes still closed, spluttered for a bit, and then went back to slow, steady breathing. He looked so peaceful -- she tried to imagine he was just resting on the grass after a long day. He looked so harmless, too -- just a regular human boy wearing a silly costume and claws -

She felt something inside of her snap. Claws. Stupid claws! What was she doing wrong? Why did something have to blow up in her face at every turn? She balled her hands into fists and punched the ground, trying to hold back the tears. Why couldn’t her dumb brother stop being a demon for a single second and just be happy?!

She took a deep breath, in and out, and unclenched her fists. She reached a hand toward his, but before she could make contact, the air twisted weirdly, and then his nails matched hers. Dull and human.

Something hitched in Belle’s throat. She laid back on the grass, and let the tears fall.

(AO3 link)

[theonyxpath]

Once more into Milwaukee, old friends. That is said with true anticipation, as I’m looking forward to the Mid Winter Convention and also all of all the wonderful people who go to it and run it – including almost all of our Onyx Path Monday Meeting crew.

I also look forward to it with a tidal wave of nostalgia, as Milwaukee, and the Hilton where Mid Winter is held, was also where White Wolf booked our Gen-Con rooms and our parties in the years after Vampire first came out. So there’s a lot of overlay of memories as I walk (stagger) through the hotel and downtown.

Now, as to what we’re doing there now?

First, we’ll be officially announcing four projects that are on our plate this year at our Onyx Path Q&A Social on Friday. From there we’ll also talk about them on the Onyx Pathcast live from Mid Winter, and on our social media. So even if you miss the Q&A, and it’s been sold out for quite some time, keep and eye and an ear out (and maybe an arm, YA lit readers) and you’ll hear about them.

And like I mentioned last week, if you have any questions you want us to answer at the Q&A, send them in via the Comments section of this blog.

Dark Eras 2 art by Luis Sanz

Thursday features panels and seminars for folks wanting to get into or do better in the TTRPG creation biz, and we have a bunch of our folks helping out there; from Eddy Webb’s Developer Bootcamp, to Matt McElroy and myself sitting in on the Kickstarter tips session in the morning. There are freelancer panels with a bunch of our, well, freelancers, like Crystal Mazur and Danielle Lauzon, that are also happening throughout the con.

In fact, on Saturday, there’s a V5 Chicago By Night panel with Matthew and a host of writers from the project that should help illuminate the darkness. Not of a vampire’s soul, but of why Mike Hollywood wrote about particular Chicago landmarks – that sort of thing.

We’ve also got folks demoing and playtesting, with a few secret playtests being run, throughout the convention.

VtR2e Spilled Blood art by Andrea Payne

Let’s back it up, and I’ll talk about Wednesday, which is our all-day Onyx Path Summit where the Monday Meeting crew will be reviewing 2019 and looking towards the next couple of years.

Some of that is just stuff we have to do like budgeting, but the vast majority will be more process and project focused brainstorming.

Some of that will be to review the notes from the team that I’ve posted these last 3 weeks. We’ll look mostly at what we can improve, but we’ll definitely add in the good stuff we did all last year. And there is a lot of that last year. After all, we all need to remember the highs as we take a hard look at what could be done better.

So if you want us discussing your ideas for what we can do to sharpen our saws or new avenues to look into- please drop us a note in the Comments here. We’ll add your thoughts to the mix in the appropriate discussion. We intend to come out of this year’s Summit with strong directions for how to improve what we do while still moving forward with new projects and possibilities.

Last year, for example, one of our directions was to increase our Actual Play presence – and so we made decisions through the year that brought on more venues for that. Such as boosting our Twitch channel to the point where there’s at least one stream running a day and often more.

So, we’ll see what this year’s Summit brings us!

Meanwhile, (Blood) Cults of the (Bloody) Blood Gods (of Blood) for V5 continues to wow us on Kickstarter, and with more than a week left, we’re still going strong! We’ve passed the Chicago By Night KS in terms of number of backers and the pledge amount (in fact we’re just a hair from being 400% funded as I write this). Check out the raft of Cults of the Blood Gods vids and interviews happening just this last week in the Media section below!

Yugman’s Guide art by Shen Fei

New Years Resolutions from Onyx Path:

Here are the resolutions of our usual Monday Meeting cast of characters as we look out into 2020. Note that these are before our Summit this Wednesday, so some of them might refocus after that. Maybe not!

Dixie:

I’m going to revamp how I track and plan my projects so that things are less likely to be late or rushed. I’m also going to be more realistic about my workload and not let myself get overwhelmed because I thought I could do more than I reasonably could. It’s going to be a good year for projects!

Mirthful Mike:

My big one for 2020 is to work on my control issues… namely contracting more of the layout duties rather than trying to tackle 95% of them myself. This not only means bringing in at least one or two more designers, but also working with the devs on updating some of the tagging stuff that I’ve been manually tweaking over the years. 

Matt:

I’m resolving to make better use out of the tools we have available for project management and team communications. We have a lot of projects in development and tools to make managing them easier, so I should be more effective using them.

LisaT:

I resolve to manage my time better on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Ian:

Now that the core Trinity Continuum is out, I’m looking forward to being able to deliver upcoming supplements and game lines a lot faster. We were able to hit the ground running over December with a good handful of releases, and I’d like to keep up a lot of that momentum.

Eddy:

I resolve to clear up the clutter in my work process so I have more time to focus on projects. Being busy is a great problem to have, but it is still a problem if there’s a dozen different things that all need your attention.

Matthew:

I resolve to play and run more games outside my normal horror comfort zone! I want to expand my knowledge of rules and settings in 2020. While I love being the Vampire guy at Onyx Path, it would be fantastic to confidently take on more fantasy and science fiction work, and for me, that requires running more D&D, Scion, and Trinity!

RichT:

Last year, I was able to do much more creative work as James Bell’s efforts as our Kickstarter Concierge really kicked in and I could step back from KS planning and execution: and it was great! For 2020, I resolve to continue pushing forward with more and more creative efforts, from continuing with the ongoing reviews of our projects as our fantastic creative teams pitch and outline their ideas, to full read-throughs of finished PDFs, to expanding the unusual ideas that help define our projects and game worlds.

For example, I feel like I was able to add some fun to the TC: Aberrant KS with the lead-in webcomic, and with some of the character-based design elements for the book, and I think we can run with similar things for our other books. Maybe it’s time for us to come up with a new Deluxe book idea, to play around with some fun packaging that evokes the project specifically.

There’s a lot to look forward to with so many fantastic games to work on, and we’re all excited to be creating our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

V5 Cults of the Blood Gods has passed $119,000 and 2010 backers, and has trumpeted forward passing through Stretch Goal after Stretch Goal right into the new year!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast is a live broadcast from the MidWinter Convention in Milwaukee! Check it out direct on Podbean, or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

We continue on the V5 Cults of the Blood Gods train this week, starting with an interview between 307 RPG Podcast and one of the book’s co-writers, Jacob Burgess: https://307rpg.com/?p=128

Podcast 67 – Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: the Masquerade) with writer Jacob Burgess

Strange Adventures provides coverage of the Hecata from V5 Cults of the Blood Gods right here: https://youtu.be/TcXwmrLlEPk

Noted Vampire YouTuber Outstar has made her own fantastic video covering V5 Cults of the Blood Gods right here, and it’s worth checking out: https://youtu.be/_oUk-doDepo

Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of The Family, a V5 Cults of the Blood Gods story involving Matthew Dawkins, Klara Herbol, Bianca Savazzi, and Jason Carl, with episode three right here: https://youtu.be/TcH3RZO3Z7s

Our Twitch channel continues with its streams of superb content, including Aberrant, Scarred Lands, Changeling: The Lost, Changeling: The Dreaming, Mage: The Awakening, and Vampire: The Masquerade! Follow us on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to watch us live or catch up by subscribing!

Likewise, continue to tune in to us on YouTube for actual plays of Changeling: The Lost, Pugmire, Vampire: The Masquerade, and much much more!

Subscribe to us on youtube.com/user/theonyxpath

And the Gentleman Gamer, Matthew Dawkins, continues his Gentleman’s Guide to Scion over on his channel, youtube.com/user/clackclickbang

And here’s even more Occultists Anonymous actual plays of Mage: The Awakening for you!

Episode 70: What We Leave Behind The cabal get breakfast with Shanna in order to get some first-hand information about the Mysterium caucus in Mexico. After the sun sets, they have an appointment with a ghost imprisoned in a bench.https://youtu.be/pE4n8Pfgml4

Episode 71: A New Oracle The cabal checks in with Jimmy “Smalls” Patinko and arranges for a jailbreak for their friend out-of-time, Judd. The Leaf Theater Players take to the stage!https://youtu.be/ky8qO-OFP9g

The Story Told Podcast continue their Exalted actual play with episode 22 of the Fall of Jiara, their Dragon-Blooded story: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/fall-of-jiara-22

Blood on the Tamesis has published a fun video on playing a Lasombra using the resources in the soon-to-be released V5 Chicago by Night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utI8P5C0AJk&feature=youtu.be

Devil’s Luck Gaming continue their fantastic and epic Scarred Lands Pirates of the Bloodwater campaign over on their Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming

And back over to Red Moon Roleplaying to close us off with the penultimate episode of The Sacrifice for V5 Chicago by Night, run by Klara Herbol and including Matthew Dawkins as a player: https://youtu.be/9N29X-PWhsQ

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

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

Electronic Gaming!

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

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

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

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

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting today, DTRPG and its affiliated Community Content sites begin the New Year, New Game sale! A huge number of our PDFs are on sale from all of our game worlds, as well as a Big Scion 2e Bundle with 4 PDFs being offered for $13! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/299474/NYNG-Scion-2E-BUNDLE

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

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we will be releasing the Advance PDF for Trinity Continuum: Aeon Ready Made Characters on DTRPG! We’ll also be releasing the C20 Novel, The Cup of Dreams, and the Tales of Good Dogs Pugmire fiction anthology in the Nook and Kindle stores!

Finally on Wednesday, we’ll be opening the Storypath Nexus Community Content site for Trinity Continuum projects with templates and art packs to get you started, and several projects already submitted to the site!

Conventions!

2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI. Come see rare appearances by Onyx Path art director Mirthful Mike Chaney, Impish Ian Watson, and a rare US appearance by The Gentleman Gamer himself, Matthew Dawkins! Also, most of our Monday Meeting crew: Eddy Webb, Dixie Cochran, Matt McElroy, and RichT!

We’ll be holding panels, running games, making announcements of hitherto unannounced projects, recording the Onyx Pathcast, and holding down some seats in the Monarch Lounge!

Check out David Fuller’s Athens, Ohio Scion actual play tie-in adventure (soon to be coming to the Storypath Nexus community content site) that will be running at Midwinter. The event url is below: https://tabletop.events/conventions/midwinter-gaming-convention-2020/schedule/402

And now, the new project status updates!

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

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

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

RUST (Scarred Lands)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

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

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

Second Draft

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

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

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

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

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

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

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

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

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

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

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Editing

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

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

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

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

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

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

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Post-Editing Development

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

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

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

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

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Finals coming in.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Art is in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – LeBlanc working on finals.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Contracted. Already seeing sketches.

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

Mummy 2

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Art notes and contracts finishing going out this week.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Figuring out art notes.

Scion Mythical Denizens – Need sketches for fulls.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Got some finals in.

Vigil Watch – Need one more artist.

Legendlore (KS)

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Got notes out to artists for halfs and splats.

Scion Companion – Working on art notes for that.

In Layout

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

Pirates of Pugmire – With Aileen.

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – At WW for approval and they will be back after the New Year.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

VtR Spilled Blood – 2nd proof with dev.

Chicago Folio – Halfway through layout.

At Press

V5: Chicago – Shipping to the KS fulfillment shippers.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Being printed.

Geist 2e Screen – Being printed.

DR:E – Being printed.

DRE Screen – Being printed.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

Trinity Continuum: Aeon RMCs – Advance PDF going on sale on Wednesday.

Memento Mori – Gathering errata.

M20 Book of the Fallen – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity Continuum Storypath Nexus Community Content – Goes live on Weds.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Late last week was my granddaughter’s one-year birthday! If she demolishes life as completely as she did her birthday cupcake – the kid’s gonna be alright.

[mistiedwagonfyre]

M(erry) Monday: Just Some Get to Know You Stuff...

So I got these from moonysmind so I should probably @ them... 

@moonysmind-blog

Ok, let's get this party started! 

1. Do you prefer writing with black or blue pen?

Blue if I'm writing something, black if I'm outlining a paper. But overall, black pens are my go-to just because I have more of them. I seriously need to stock up on blue pens... Also, who uses a red pen for anything other than corrections just because that's the way they've been taught? 

2. Would you prefer to live in the country or the city?

The Country. Or somewhere in the middle. I just feel like I'd be able to manage less people over more people and get to know them more personally. And, let's be honest, the country has gorgeous skies and sprawling fields and meadows. And it feels like you could take a deep breath and just absorb the atmosphere. 

3. If you could learn a new skill, what would it be?

Balance. It would help in everything because yours truly is a ball of clumsy fluff.

4. Do you drink your tea or coffee with sugar?

Heh, I drink hot chocolate with marshmallows so...

5. What was your favourite book as a child?

Anything I could get my hands on. I. Love. Books. My favorite series as a kindergartener was the Magic Tree House tho.

6. Do you prefer baths or showers?

Depends on my mood. Baths are for when I've got tons of time to just relax  and get my mind off things and showers remind me of rain and I love them too. I take showers more often but that doesn't mean anything.

7. If you could be a mythical creature, which would you choose?

This is a hard one cuz I love all things mystical and magical... 

My immediate thought was a dragon but they get killed a lot in the myths and they're almost always stuck guarding something. Then I was like, ok then. What about a phoenix? So ya, I'd be a phoenix. Don't get me wrong, I'd totally go with all the mythical creatures and just cycle through them all, just if I had to choose just one it'd be a phoenix. Maybe, since I'd technically live forever, I could meet every single mythical creature ever. That'd be pwetty cool...

8. Do you prefer reading paper or electronic books?

Paper. It's what I've grown up with. I know, classy me. Also, there is nothing quite like the smell of a new book. Just sayin'.

9. What is your favourite item of clothing?

Punny t-shirts. All I'm gonna say.

10. Do you like your name? Would you ever change it?

Yes. If I had to change it, I'd love to be Reyna or Luna. Otherwise, I'm keeping it.

11. Who is a mentor to you?

Mostly myself. I taught myself to draw, anyhow. If not me, my mom or my newest art teacher or my neighbor. 

12. Would you ever want to be famous? If so, what for?

Yes and no. I want to inspire people (whether with art or my quirky personality) but don't want the pressure that popularity and fame brings. 

13. Are you a restless sleeper? 

If being a night owl counts as restless, then yes. If being a deep sleeper when I am actually asleep doesn't, then no.

14. Do you consider yourself a romantic?

Considering I like guys who are chivalrous and funny... yes?

15. Which element best represents you?

Water. I'm chill until all my suppressed emotions rush out. You can't hold back the ocean forever. And you can't prevent the inevitable: Me being weird. Just ask my sister, she thinks I'm insane (which is probably accurate). Also, I may seem shallow on the surface, but I can actually be very deep sometimes. I could go on and on about my relationship with water, but that's a tale for another time.

16. Who do you want to be closer to?

Everyone. I love strengthening relationships with people. It makes the group stronger as a whole.

17. Do you miss someone at the moment?

Always.

18. Tell us about an early childhood memory.

I'd love too, but then storyteller Mistie will appear and this list will become infinitely longer. You'll have to ask me in my questions tab if you really want to hear one. 

19. What is the strangest thing you have eaten?

Can't decide which is weirder: Watermelon with taco seasoning or raw onion with mustard... Both are equally delicious in the summertime at a BBQ.

20. What can you see outside your bedroom window?

A ladder, some rocks, and a dead vole. My old room had a much better view... 

21. What are you most thankful for?

My Savior

22. Do you like spicy food?

Not particularly, no. 

23. Have you ever met someone famous?

Alex Boyé. He went to a really unsanitary restaurant before he came to our house one time and puked all over our newly waxed floors. I feel bad for him. Everyone but him knew not to eat at that runofthemill A&W on the way up. He still put on a mini concert for us tho and that was pretty considerate of him, because he did it even though he can't have felt like doing it.

24. Do you keep a diary or journal?

Yup. I've got entries from back in kindergarten, amazingly. Granted, back then I wrote in pictures.

25. Do you prefer to use pen or pencil?

Pencil. I'm human, I make mistakes.

26. What is your star sign?

Well, I was a Pisces. But then they discovered that there are more stars in the sky, just like there are more fishes in the sea, and just bunched a bunch of Pisces together so now I'm Aquarius. I'm still a Pisces at heart tho.

27. Do you like your cereal crunchy or soggy?

Crunchy. Better texture. Soggy cereal is oatmeal in my mind and if you want oatmeal, you actually make oatmeal, not let your cereal sit out for who knows how long. 

28. What would you want your legacy to be?

Legacy is a tricky thing. You've gotta know what people are gonna think of you down the line. I want mine to be simple: she wasn't afraid of who she was and what others would think of that. She was herself, and that's all that matters. I feel like that's the best legacy I could have for the future generations who will grow up in a world of trial and tribulation.

29. Do you like reading? What was the last thing you read?

ABSOLUTELY! I just finished Lodestar from Keeper of the Lost Cities. I shoulda read these books years ago but they're still fan-freaking-tastic! 

30. How do you show someone you love them?

I guess my love language is acts of service or whatever. So I'd probably serve them and do tons of sweet things for them. 

31. Do you like ice in your drinks?

No, it makes it all watery. Blegh.

32. What are you afraid of?

Lots of things. I just only realize when they come along and forget what they are afterwards. Sure, it may seem nice, but it makes the terror of coming into contact with them once more infinitely more terrorizing. But bugs are extremely horrifying. And so are arachnids.

33. What is your favourite scent?

Rain with freshly mowed grass and newly printed books at a campfire with Smores by the seashore. No one will ever be able to create this magnificent scent. 

34. Do you address older people by their first or last name?

Depends on how close we are.

35. If money was not a factor, how would you live your life?

Does this mean that everything is free? Well I'm gonna stockpile food and stuff and then ship them off to 3rd world countries. I'd try to save as many lives as possible. Or I could go there in person to deliver said goods... Yup. I've decided that that's what I'm gonna do!

36. Do you prefer swimming in pools or in the ocean?

Pools have a veil of safety but the ocean is much more beautiful and alive. Also, the smell of chlorine is gross. And the taste. Blegh.

37. What would you do if you found $50 on the ground?

If it looks old and worn and dirty like it's been there a while, imma take it. Chances are whoever lost it has been long gone so I can actually take that $50 w/o feeling guilty. Otherwise I'd leave it there.

38. Have you ever seen a shooting star? Did you make a wish?

Heh, I used to wish on airplanes, satellites, and planets because I thought they were 'special stars'.

39. What is one thing you would want to teach your children?

To be kind, even when it is inconvenient. I don't know how many times someone has held the door open for me even when it seemed much more convenient for them to just go inside where it is warm and just let me open the stupid door on my own. 

Maybe I'd teach them that even the smallest acts can have the biggest impact. One of the two. Probably both.

40. If you had to have a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it?

Heh, you're talkin' to the girl who doesn't want her ears pierced. No way in heck am I getting a tattoo.

41. What can you hear right now?

Music and the sound of my thoughts.

42. Where do you feel the safest?

In a book.

43. What is one thing you want to overcome/conquer?

Darkness and fear.

44. If you could travel back to any era, which would you choose?

The one with Michelangelo, Leonardo, and all those other guys that the ninja turtles were named after.

45. What is your most used emoji?

It's not even an emoji. It is literally XD. Either that or (^^) 

46. What is your favourite season? Why?

Torn between winter (snow), spring (life coming into bloom), and fall (all the pwetty colors).

47. How would you spend your ideal day?

On a window seat during a thunderstorm either sketching or reading a book all wrapped up in a blanket. Preferably with a cat. Sipping warm apple cider or hot chocolate with marshmallows.

48. Describe yourself using one word.

Me.

49. What do you regret the most?

Not realizing certain things sooner.

50. Invent your own word. What does it mean?

Crushyblushy (adj. n.)

The general mannerisms an individual enacts around people that they like (specifically in crush and/or love situations).

syn: awkward, quirky, shy, blushy

ant: confident, flirty, aplomb, able

[kaorei-endgame]

Ranking of Resident Evil save room themes?

I got my first latte of the season, it’s chilly enough to wear pants indoors, #Streamtober started yesterday. LET’S DO THIS, NICK. >:O 

17. Resident Evil 6 Chapter Ends, All Characters: Back to the cabbage patch. None of you are valid, with your Netflix Original knock-off of some ABC knock-off of 24-ass soundtrack. Go suck a giraffe’s dick with an Ada clone, Jake Muller.

16. Resident Evil, Deadly Silence: What is this Resident Evil for Babiez? Nintendogz+ResidentEvilz? Imagine listening to this on the crappy DS speakers. Wasn’t there something creepy about Jill’s costume in this game, like you could tear pieces of it off, or am I just conjuring fall memories and combining them with how they went out of the way to add boob bounce to the REmake 15 years after the fact, and now Jill’s boobs on PS4 undulate languidly beneath her shirt like a pair of Dragon Quest Slimes yearning to be free. This track: aural despair, unleavened. A way to quickly induce nausea in dogs who have eaten chocolate or raisins.

15. Resident Evil 6, Ada Chapter End: Well, okay, this one is all right. The first fifteen seconds feel like a HiFi version of a track from those Playstation 1 top-down shooters where you played a murder clown or a pyro guy escaping a space prison where you were held for crimes you definitely DID commit. The little background jog kicks in soon after and look, I’m a soft sell for ululation, what can I say.** But it just all just serves to stir memories like embers finally gone to smolder beneath the fireplace ash, stoking them after all these years, reminding me what a weird psycho they turned Ada into in this game. I like reflecting on how people got so mad about there not being co-op in Ada’s campaign that Capcom patched in a partner but his name is like “TeamMate” or “Buddy” and he has no lines of dialogue and is never addressed in the story in any way and thus is either a figment of Ada’s imagination or he’s a real dude who’s just pretty quiet and ultimately drowned on that sub? Well, I guess life’s tough if you’re the (potentially imagination) friend of an ex-spy turned pod person.

**(i contacted my musician friend, Kylie, who confirmed that ululation  was the term i was thinking of, lest i second guess myself. at the same time, i’ll post her text here lest i misrepresent her words “Yeah, ululate as a technical term is vibrato using the tongue, so that would be wrong, but ululate as a descriptor refers to a sound that has a very pronounced waver between tones to it.” cool! i’ve often wondered if that’s the most accurate way to describe it. thanks Kylie!! :D)

14. Resident Evil Revelations 2: Claire gets the best costumes probably across the whole series and yet it feels like she’s gotten the least love of all the main cast. I never really got it, she looks good in denim, whether jacket or pant, and her Revelations 2 blazer does her all the favors. But now they’re remaking RE2 and they turned her face into this weird porcelain Precious Moments dol—MY BELOVED DAUGHTER. MY MOIRA. I SWEAR I’LL FIND YOU. FOR THE SAKE OF JBLL I WILL AVENGE YOU AND THE OTHER ONE.

13. Resident Evil 0: What’s with all the shivery whiney stuff. Like your younger sibling running nails down the chalkboard of your spine, like how the speed run of this game hinges on juggling an evasive bat with 5 out of the 6 flame rounds on hand, so try. Neither relaxing nor scary. Do I hear something like a bongo in the distance? That is the clarion call of Becky Chamber’s goose booty coming home to roost.

12. Resident Evil 7: I had a dream last night about this game. If you have phobias about glass and/or mouths and/or wasp genitals, I would skip this paragraph. I was in the house where you have to run away from the mom with the disgusting wasp hive vagina. Also—unrelated and yet somehow related, as dreams always are—I had opened a beer bottle in such a way that the stem broke. I had decided to drink it anyway and now, as I progressed through the house, I found that there seemed to be endless small slivers of glass in my mouth that I had to repeatedly spit out lest they cut me. When I woke up, my jaw was clenched to the point of soreness. Welcome to the family, I guess. Otherwise this save room music reminds me of the game itself: mostly dull and barely there.

11. Resident Evil Revelations: Item Box Music, only Save Room Adjcanet. Can’t disassociate this from the “swish-swish-swish-SHUCK” sound effects of navigating menus to equip Charge Shot 2 to my Shotgun. Not as pleasing or as integrated into my bone marrow as  the Resident Evil 3 equivalent, but I have probably played this game through thirteen or fourteen times at this point. Life is short and yet the strings of fate tug us the directions they will.

10. Resident Evil 5: Again, this is menu music. No save rooms at all in this game. Anyway I have no inherent memory of this song because I’m sure I’ve talked over it while upgrading my M92FS to 100 bullet capacity 110% of the times I’ve played this game. Exempted from higher echelon of rankings on these technicalities, but still A POOR PERFORMANCE INDEED for Not The Best Resident Evil Yet Paradoxically The One That’s Given Me The Most Joy In My life.

9. Resident Evil, Dead Aim

: Wow I almost can’t believe I don’t remember this despite playing this game enough to write a speedrun guide for it. Well, that was the style at the time. As was a bloated zombie corpse boss, I suppose (long before Left 4 Dead, those copy cats), whose weak spot was its exposed brain which, halfway through the fight when you’d done enough damage, would pop out and dance a sprightly jig on its brainstem every time you shot it. With the whisper of wind and rain and single intermittent synth I feel like I’m living in a cyberpunk future and not a game whose protagonist’s “””cajun””” accent is as questionable as its presentation of the antagonist’s gender.

8. Resident Evil, Umbrella Chronicles

: Hey now, weird bit of the creepy-freaky bass here kind of does put you in a certain headspace, but it’s not the headspace i remember of this game, which was basically unplayable in co-op for the final 3rd because a failed QTE would result in a hunter slicing away half your health. Good for an Into the Breach playlist to keep you focused on the action and stop you from trying to play it while also binging a Netflix show about werewolves that you didn’t really like anyway, and splitting your attention between visual mediums is just getting Good Pilots Killed.

7. Resident Evil 2: Ominous. Maybe TOO Ominous at points. Aren’t save rooms about being safe? I guess we could argue that because the save room reflects the lacuna of safety  BING BONG piano is the Try Hard version of video game music asking “you scurred yet?” Perhaps a novice mistake from a first-time director who would go on to do so many great things (well, RE2 among them, no lie). In a way, this fits with Rookie Cop Leon S. Kennedy, and anyway it’s so over the top I’m kind of okay with it. Most innervating when first heard on your way to equip a cowgirl costume for fast-firing six-shooter action. Guns suck, and cowboys too, but both are okay if we experience them in the abstract sense. This is what culture teaches us. Fan the trigger.

6. Resident Evil 4: A surprisingly gentle one, considering the series turn towards action from which it would never recover. I am transported to the early minutes of a horror movie where the audience knows something the protagonist doesn’t about the terror that’s about to befall them while they blithely pick up a desiccated nudie mag in an old shed on a haunted property they inherited from their estranged uncle, more focused on the “ballistics” before them than the axe murderer crouched in the shadows of disused farm equipment behind.

5. Resident Evil 3, Nemesis: More languid riff on 2. Strings get you shivery, and no more than a single BONG per two measures proves that save room music is as much about the notes you DON’T play. Two bongs to scare, but one bong to keep you on your toes, disallowing you from getting *too* relaxed by the soothing bleeps and bloops as you combine the 3 Gunpowder As you just found to make sure you have enough ammo to pistol-juke the so-called unkillable Nemesis. You’re not coward, but that doesn’t make you brave. Discretion is the better part of valor, they say, but that’s not taking into account that non-discretiony valor rewards you directly with a faster-firing pistol with critical headshots. :3

4. Resident Evil 1, Vanilla: Gentle, plucky strings make you question your memory, more familiar with later revisions than you are this one. How often was I in this place? Or does its primacy belie its immediacy? If I went to the strange, pointless closet around the corner from this medicine save room, would I find a broken shotgun I expect there, a round of magnum ammo, or simply the ghost of discarded aspirations masking as memories. I recall a time when it felt like time was enough, but then again, this was back when anything sub-three hours would get you the infinite rocket launcher, regardless of how many First Aid Sprays you used.

3. Resident Evil 1, REmake: High fidelity version of RE1’s gentle strings remind you of simpler times when your worst fears were zombies resurrecting into scarier, faster zombies with claws. What we wouldn’t give to go back to those days, and maybe tell ourselves not to take out so much student debt. Listening to this sends a pulse of gentle energy through my shoulder blades that makes me think “relaxation,” though I’m not sure my body understands the meaning of the word. A respite in trying eras, there is no association with the tension of shaving 15 minutes off your time to be competitive. “Safe Heaven,” they call it; a theme for a place that is not our own, but should be.

2. Resident Evil 1, Director’s Cut: Wow I did not expect music box chimes and tones stirs something ancestral in my blood. I’ve played the Director’s Cut far more times than the original RE1 and this is like coming home to a big house where I enjoyed an idyllic childhood, but I now know every box is filled with the creepy knife doll from Onimusha. Though these senations are foreign to me, something about them inspires a thirst for a homeland I never knew.

1. Resident Evil Code Veronica: The absolute chillest. In life, paths may wind, but the ultimate  The strings are tickling your spine. You’re so relaxed you feel like oiling your ponytail, and you could even take a nap in Steve Burnside’s arms without reflexively gagging. When you hear this, you are at peace, and the world seems like a place that can be kind. Truly, the Code is Veronica.

and don’t forget to vote in our poll on whether or not we’re playing Claire A or Leon A tonight!

[justsomebucky]

Finding Closure (Part 1)

Summary: AU. Reader left behind a hometown full of misery to make a new home in Brooklyn. A death in the family forces her to briefly return to the place that has haunted her dreams and memories for three years. Will she finally be able to move on, or will a figure from the past change everything?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 2,837

Warnings: angst, language, more angst, mention of alcoholism, mention of death, mention of funeral, mentions of neglect, mentions of estranged family members, heartache, sadness, mentions of sad childhood

A/N: This is the first part of my submission for the talented and wonderful @tatortot2701 ‘s AU writing challenge. (Tay, please disregard until it’s completed!) Y'all wanted angst, well…I took a fluffy prompt and darkened it. I tried not to but this story wouldn’t leave me alone. I’m not sure how many parts it will have.

My prompt was 28 .“____ is not a real word.” “Yes it is!”

Part:  1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

You knew it could only be bad news when your phone rang at three in the morning.

That call was the whole reason you were standing back in your hometown’s local airport, watching the luggage carousel loop around over and over.

Logically, there were a limited number of reasons as to why someone would call at three in the morning. Maybe it was the wrong number, or a butt dial. Maybe someone was drunk, or someone was going into labor. Since your only two friends in the entire world didn’t fit any of those categories, you knew that it was a stranger calling.

Bad news was a relative term, too.

Was it really all that bad? To some the news you received would be devastating. To you, it had been a long time coming, and you were sort of relieved to have the weight of it off your shoulders.

That didn’t stop you from feeling guilty about it, though.

“Hey, friend.”

You looked over at your best friend and roommate as she gave you a gentle smile. Darcy Lewis might be one sarcastic bitch for most people, but with you she always showed kindness without pity.

The difference between your life and Darcy’s was staggering. She grew up in Boston, the daughter of a business tycoon and socialite, set to inherit millions of dollars when they passed away. They kept up her monthly allowance into adulthood, and she’s never wanted for a thing in her life, except maybe friendship.

“Hi, Darce. I’m sorry, I guess I spaced out again.”

Darcy reached a hand out to rub your back gently for a second. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be the tough one today. Let me.”

The running joke between the two of you was there was no way you were some rural kid, since you were as tough as any native New Yorker. Your move to a small two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn had changed your life, your personality, and your outlook tremendously, and meeting Darcy had been a part of that, too.

She could have afforded the Upper East Side, or Downtown Manhattan. The only reason she had even bothered to move to a small apartment in Brooklyn is because she wanted the hipster experience to help her art and photography.

Her ad for a roommate had even said that exact phrase, and you thought it was a joke until you met her.  She opened the door wearing dramatic eye makeup and covered in paint, with a small camera in her hand. Darcy’s impromptu pre-screen interview was full of questions like, ‘do you dream in color or black and white?’ and ‘if you had to be a type of architecture what would it be?’ Her last question was ‘Red Sox or Yankees?’

You told her that you didn’t always remember your dreams, but you were pretty sure it was both, and that you didn’t care what kind of architecture you were, as long as you were in New York.

Oh, and you couldn’t give a rat’s ass about baseball.

Facts and reality were your game. You were an analyst by day, and an over-analyzer by night, and you were damn good at both.

The two of you balanced each other well. She made you remember to enjoy a more colorful life, and you reminded her to bring her feet back down to earth.

Three years later, the two of you were still best friends and still living in that small apartment. She never threw her circumstances in your face, and you never held it against her. On the rare occasion, she would bail you out of your financial woes, but you always paid her back.

Today, you were so very grateful for her. You offered her a smile. “I’m fine, I promise. Just…tired.”

“There’s a taxi outside. I told him to stay put for us for an extra twenty bucks.”

The second you saw your bag come around the bend on the carousel, you hauled it to the floor and grabbed the handle. “Good, let’s just get this over with.”

Early spring always felt the same here.

You were standing on the sidewalk, just outside of the hotel that Darcy had booked for the two of you. It was halfway between your old neighborhood and the airport, declared by her to be a neutral zone to clear your head if you needed to.

Not that you would. This was a clear, cut-and-dry kind of visit. It shouldn’t take long.

Brooklyn had been unseasonably warm, but this place? It was as if the grey winter just wasn’t ready to let go. A crisp chill remained in the air, allowing you to see your breath every time you sighed. Small piles of snow still littered the grass, and you couldn’t help but think to yourself that out here, everything seemed frozen in time.

That was one of the reasons why you left in the first place.

Your hometown was, for lack of a better word, stuck. It was stuck in a time that didn’t exist anymore, stuck in an era where the generation above yours refused to change in even the smallest ways, even if humanity begged for them to grow and prosper. You avoided them, you resented them, and most of all you pitied them.

It also didn’t help that bad memories haunted you wherever you walked. Thinking about your childhood usually only brought you down.

Your mother’s unexpected death when you were just two years old left your life in a tailspin, though you were much too young to know it then. Thankfully, you were an only child, because your father’s neglect and subsequent alcohol abuse made you grow up faster than you wanted to.

It wasn’t until you were sixteen years old that everything turned around for you personally. Life at home didn’t change, but you were able to be there less, thanks to…

No. Nope. Not thinking about him right now.

Your head turned to the left at the sound of Darcy’s boots clicking on the cement path. She gave you a bright smile, and you gave her a small one in return, trying to reassure her that you were still okay.

“So, what’s up first? Should we get this morbid show on the road?”

“First I have to accompany his ashes to the plot next to my mother,” you answered, turning on your heel to walk beside her to the rental car that was dropped off a little bit ago. “I don’t really want to, but I…I can’t imagine…”

The thought of the groundskeeper being the only person at a makeshift funeral kind of made you sad.

“It’s okay. I’ll be there, too.” She unlocked the car and threw the keys to you. “You don’t mind, right? You’re more familiar with the place.”

“I don’t mind,” you assured her, sliding into the driver’s seat.

Driving through town was easy, mostly because there was never any traffic here. You made your way on some winding roads, until the outskirts of your town were finally reached. The same old welcome sign stood at the edge of town, desperately needing some upkeep.

“It’s, um…cute,” Darcy said, staring out the window. “Like in a creepy Deliverance kinda way, but still.”

You laughed for the first time since arriving. “It’s not that bad, but…yeah.”

Familiar locations passed by in your periphery. There was the old post office, and the only market for about ten miles. Houses that used to be familiar to you were now mostly occupied by strangers; some were painted a different color and nearly unrecognizable.

The one place that nearly broke you when you passed was your old high school. You’d tried to think of ten different routes to get around it, to avoid even seeing it, but road construction crews made that impossible.

Darcy picked up on your discomfort, nodding toward the building as you went by. “Did you go there?”

You nodded grimly. “Graduated at the top of my class.”

“Holy shit, no wonder that analytics firm wanted you to work there so much!”

School was absolute garbage on a regular basis, but your high school in particular had little to nothing to offer a student who wanted to advance in a science field. When you specifically requested more computer classes, more anything that would be helpful for you when you graduated, the administrators tossed you into a Home Ec class like it was nothing. You were heartbroken…until…

You shook your head, trying to clear thoughts from your brain that you weren’t ready to process.

The brakes squeaked a little as you parked in front of the funeral home. When you didn’t make a move to shut the engine off or get out of the car, Darcy reached over and turned the ignition for you.

She didn’t even mind, sitting there silently with you while you had a death-grip on the steering wheel, trying to find the courage to face your father for the first time for years.

Or, rather, trying to find the courage to face what was left of him.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she murmured, laying her head back against the headrest.

You didn’t even blink.

Hours later, the last of the dirt was tossed unceremoniously over the small vault box you’d chosen for your father’s urn to be laid to rest in. When they thought you weren’t paying attention, you heard the one groundskeeper joke, “Which side goes up?” You couldn’t even muster enough anger to reprimand him, though. He was the product of his less-than-stellar upbringing in this hellhole.

Darcy was having a hell of a time in her fashionable boots, so that kind of lightened the mood. She didn’t know that lingering snow combined with warmer temperatures meant ice melt, and soggy, muddy ground.

“Careful,” you told her, turning away in your much more sensible shoes. “It’s slippy.”

“Slippy is not a real word,” she called out behind you.

“Yes it is! It’s real here. Say it to literally anyone and they will understand.” You rolled your eyes to the sky as you made it back to the car ten times faster than her. “We won’t be here long enough for you to get used to the local vocabulary, though, unless you walk this slowly everywhere we go.”

“Thank goodness,” she muttered to herself as she finally reaching the car. “I never saw this much mud in Boston!”

“Do you realize how pretentious you sound right now?” You eyed her carefully before getting into the car. “You never saw much mud because you never went outside unless it was to your deck or patio or whatever.”

“Pretentious? Maybe. Yet you love me anyway,” she retorted, slipping into the car and shutting the door with a sigh of relief.

You glanced over at her. “You’re right. I really do. Thank you for being here. Thank you for helping me through this.”

Darcy shrugged. “I love you, too. Now, I hope you remember some decent places to eat because I’m freaking starving.”

You knew what this was.

She was trying her best to distract you from falling into a pit of despair, and once again you found yourself counting your lucky stars that you had this wonderful, beautiful, kind-hearted sarcastic bitch as your best friend.

The only restaurant you recognized (since so many had closed when the markets crashed years ago) was a little bar and grill down on Main Street. It used to be called Jet’s, but it must have changed ownership, because the name The All-American was emblazoned in neon lights above the door.

By now, the dinner crowd had already arrived, and that included the regulars and the drinkers in town (though to be fair, most regulars were the drinkers).

You didn’t care for crowds, but for Darcy’s sake you’d put up with it. Besides, you’d just come from burying your estranged father. Who gave a shit if the town drunks remembered you?

Darcy led the way this time, fully intent on getting some kind of salad and a glass of wine ‘if this place even has such things.’

You followed feebly, fully intent on getting food and biding your time until you could go to sleep, wake up, and leave this god-forsaken town.

Once you were seated in front of your burger and fries, and Darcy had her house salad with a side of ranch dressing (which she doused the salad with, thereby negating its health benefits), she started in on the questioning.

What did you do for fun here?

Who was your best friend when you were younger?

Did you ever leave the town for field trips?

No seriously, there’s nothing fun here. What did you do to pass the time? Study? No wonder you’re so smart.

Thankfully, she avoided your family history. She knew a lot of it already, thanks to some tequila-induced confessions back in Brooklyn.

You reached for a french fry in silence, trying to prevent any further questioning for the moment. You didn’t mind talking about it, but you’d prefer questions in small doses.

It wasn’t all that special of a sob story, anyway.

Your mom and dad were high school sweethearts. No one knew she was sick. When she died, he died with her in every way but physically.

He resented seeing you, because you look so much like her. It wasn’t fair, in his eyes, that she was gone but you remained to remind him of what he had lost. He hated that you hated this town. He thought you were an ungrateful, intellectual snob. He didn’t want to see you, didn’t want to remember his pain, so he drank his days away.

He never went to your recitals…never saw you score a goal during your very first soccer game…never chastised any boys for flirting with you…never watched you get your diploma…all because he just didn’t participate in your life.

You didn’t lash out, though. You didn’t become a statistic, didn’t join the crowd doing drugs and sleeping around, even when the offers were tempting. All you’d have to do is picture him, a stumbling mess, shaking his head at you.

The only goal you had in mind was to get out and better yourself, make your life worth living, and you managed to do that somehow.

There was only one person who could have possibly kept you here. If he had asked you to stay, you would have given up everything to spend your life with him. Instead, he broke your heart…he rejected you, he gave up on you, he told you he didn’t love you anymore.

You hadn’t seen or spoken to him since.

There were nights where you missed him, and you thought maybe you still weren’t over him. You’d lie awake at night letting the what-ifs drown out any rational thoughts. Sometimes you would dream about a life with him by your side, only to wake up far away and completely alone.

Man, there were some nights where your dreams felt so real, like if you reached out you could feel him again. The harsh reality was, you never had any intention on staying here. You didn’t want to, even if he were to come to you right this minute and ask.

That was completely farfetched, though. You knew he never would, not after that night.

Being home only reinforced the idea that you leaving was the best thing for you.

When Darcy finally stopped her interrogation to take a bathroom break, you allowed yourself the time to glance around the room. Most of the patrons were total strangers, including lots of gas well workers that drifted from all over the country to make twice as much cash as they were used to seeing. It was a shame they didn’t hire locally instead, maybe that would kick-start the town’s economy.

You saw a couple of guys who were a few grades below you in school watching a baseball game on the giant television in the corner. It had only been three years, but to see them look almost the same as they did in school was a little unnerving.

For you, High School felt like a lifetime ago, after all.

Some women who were dressed in far too little for this chilly weather were playing pool, while some of the older men stared at them as if it wasn’t a creeper move.

Your eyes flitted from face to face. You had this strange feeling that you were being watched, but no one was meeting your gaze yet. One quick glance to the restrooms told you it wasn’t Darcy making her way back to the table.

That familiar anxious feeling started up again as you kept searching for the source of your discomfort. It took a minute or so, but you finally found it…found him.

Your spine stiffened at the sight, and anger started bubbling up inside you.

You should have known better.

Bucky Barnes was staring at you from across the bar…and he didn’t look happy.

Part:  1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

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Story Tags: (Open)

I’m going to take the first 20 people for story tags (if I even get that many interested…I’m not expecting it this time around haha)

All the story tag spots are filled! Thank you

[senzacaponecoda]

pAA?

(Decided to reduce the names to E, O and S because this isn’t something that should be treated seriously or like there’s anything in particular respectable or responsible about it, but might be helpful to someone like me trying to find something out for personal reasons.) So since I finally got my hands on a copy of O and S’s reconstruction of PAA, I thought I’d go through and pick out what I thought were their best etymons against what I think are E’s best etymons. As I’ve said before both reconstructions seem to be basically mass comparison reconstructions.

The wiki page on Afroasiatic claims they agree on basically nothing, and out of 1000ish and 2600ish I still got less than 100 shared roots, so that’s probably accurate. The page and what I pulled out didn’t exactly line up though, but also there were some roots especially on E’s end (due to a need to reconstruct verbs to nominalize for his PS theories) that I outright changed the meaning of because they actually made his individual arguments stronger; like, say, if you had 4 roots that mean knife in each sub-branch, why assume the etymon means cut?

I compared the roots in case there was something that was an obvious oversight, and while I don’t think their methods were all that good (although O and S’s are a lot better), I didn’t want to discount everything in case there was something like “well their vowel systems are different so I’m not counting roots where even V[os] = V[e]” or like “O/S posit (g,x) < *q while E has (g,x) < *ÿ” being overlooked and miraculously they agreed on like 300 more roots than the page gives them credit. There’s also issues like, well, “Is this particular author doing such a bad job but the critics aren’t seeing that, that he/she/they are dragging the other author/s down by undermining their ok etymons?” etc.

So, like, I’ve messed with the data in a way that’s irrepairable and shit. Mind that. This isn’t scholarly work and isn’t intended to be. And I messed with some of the data - even if I think it’s more representative of their works at a level, from any kind of responsible position I need to make it absolutely clear that it’s not really reflective of their work, but a reflection of my amateur, shitty thoughts on their concordances.

So, for the curious:

So when putting this list together I accidentally kept mixing which side I wrote whose roots together. E tends to have labiovelars where OS have o, E has long vowels, OS don’t, E has tones, OS don’t, E has the voiced velar fricative I transcribed as ÿ and ŋ, OS have q and q’ vs k’ and k. E has p’, the rest I guess you’ll have to guess.

I also marked a few words with * for what might be imitative or baby speak words. *? like on horn is “I’m on the fence of it being imitative”

Vowels are pretty much ignored, but otherwise definite correlates:

kol-f bark (n) dam blood k'os~k'as bone naf breath ben~bin build di3, da3, du3 call dumn~deman cloud k'at' cut* 2ab father* pir fly*? ba2 go sim hear lib heart k'ar horn*? inkwal~2ankol kidney 2er~2âr know lVk'~lak lick* tir liver sum,sim~süm,sim name wan open bu~baw place dak,duk~dik pound k'u2 rise tuf spin ra3-raa3 sun dab,dib-dub tail les,lis tongue ma2 water

Close matches, differing by not a lot of phonological space, but the correlations seem unsystematic or quasi-systematic (E *k = OS *x? or the other way). A lot of this might be due to obfuscation of the subgroups; it’s known beyond these reconstructions that Semitic b, p, f correspond to Egyptian b, p, f but there doesn’t seem to be a pattern to the correspondences beyond [+labial][-nasal]=[+labial][-nasal]... except some roots where b = m, mostly Egyptian to Semitic (iirc it’s believed that snb = slm).

! maaw~mawut die ! har~heraw day ! t(l)'ok' beat ! bak~bax burn ! k'al~k'ar burn ! (t)san brother ! kor~kw'al angry #related to kidney? ! pak~pax break apart* ! yar~3er burn #n.b. OS *e = E *ya pretty consistently ! ka2(up) cover ! t'ub~duf drip* ! g'arub~ÿar(b) dusk ! 2et~iit eat*? ! gur~guud enclose ! 2ir~2il eye #2il is also given for both by the wiki author ! 2aakw~2ax fire ! ŋiiwr~gir flames ! pur~fir flower 1 k'ur~kâr go around ! ĉa3ar~ła2r hair ! qafV3~gâf hold ! qam~kam hold ! fil~bul hole ! ĉa(2i)d~gwi/ad land ! ne2ul~ñaw moist ! bakr~bar morning ! âf~2ap mouth* ! ĉer~sar,sir root ! cab~sVp sew ! sur~tsur sing ! tsoon~soon smell ! bak'~p'ak' split* ! da2~daw walk

Really kind of stretched correspondences, usually requiring twice the amount of special pleading as above:

!! rip~2erib sew !! dabn~zab hair !! yawr~yabil bull !! büł~fil skin !! 3ir~raw sky

A root that’s probably wrong but I didn’t delete it:

!!! c'eyg~c'a3ek shout

Roots on the wiki article it says are part of “the fragile consensus” but either escaped my standards for good etymologies from E and OS or were lost when I changed E or OS’s proposed definitions to fit the data they presented for etymologization:

>> (2a)bVr bull >> (2a)dVm land >> 2igar~kw'ar enclosure >> 3ayn eye #I think for both this was only found in Sem and Egn, which is proto-Sem-Egn, not PAA >> bar son >> gamm mane, beard >> gVn cheek, chin >> gwar3~(gora3?) throat #These words weren’t in E’s but look like it and I guessed on what the OS reconstruction would look like >> gwina3~(gona3?) hand >> kVn cowife >> kwaly??? kidney #that this isn’t VnkwVl damns something >> k'awal, qwar say, call >> sin tooth >> siwan know >> zwr seed >> łVr root >> šun sleep, dream

These I sort of gathered based on a decent scholarly Egyptologist’s work

** (n)i,ku,nak(u) 1sc ** nVn 1pc ** kumV, kV 2sm ** kimV, ki 2sf ** suwa, sV 3sm ** si(y/t)a, si 3sf **-ú~-aw nom (earlier an ergative) **-á abs **Egyptian had an outright ergative participle so like yeah Some AA assumptions $$ m- participle, possible 3 or 4 denoting instruments, resultatives, passive and active meanings, and more. $$ s- causative (likely su-) $$ -í nisba = adjectivizer $$ -át/-út ending for abstract, mass, diminutive, augmentative, female nouns $$ top two combine frequently $$ maybe k became a masculine? maybe u/w too? $$ perhaps an -n- passive? -t- passive? reciprocal voice? (kick each other) $$ emphatic coronal series $$ prefixing conjugation {2 t t y t n t t y t} on imperfect-type stems $$ core verb stems seem to be perfect vs imperfect $$ a lot of sources report *-r has spreading out semantics at the end of a Semitic verb and I believe it. $$ suffixing possessive pronouns $$ probably all of pAA derives its verb system from those same possessive pronouns suffixed to participles, which probably helped the ergative to nominative alignment change. Again, Egn had an ergative participle at one point. It actually used a slightly different form of the possessed agreement system for that though, maybe reflective of a dead case system. $$ personally I think egn broke off early, sem and amz were geographically between it and ethiopia, the cushitic languages broke early but stayed in contact, chadic is cladistically cushitic that broke off in the middle of the ethiopianization of cushitic in the post-islamic era, since it seems to be in cultural memory. beja wasn’t as ethiopianized and is slightly closer to semitic, amz, and in many ways egn surprisingly, omotic was probably adopted into the family, ongota is too creolized to know anything, tones, vowel rebalancing, probably influences of Central/Eastern Sudanic. I have no idea why languages with ATR (i.e. pharyngealization) distinctions would make pharyngealized languages switch to ejectives, so if sem-amz is a thing you just have to postulate why they switched, since egyptian is no help. for all i know egyptian always had an aspiration distinction (which would explain some insane correlations) and then they fell together and split again for coptic.  Don’t think this can be projected to the proto-lang: $$ ablauting everywhere, in nouns and verbs. masdars and singular nouns probably reflect original vowel patterns. !! E and OS reconstruct consonant systems similar to PS and idk about that. Both give 5 vowel core systems but for different reasons and different results. E has length and the central short vowels fall together in all but Omo. Some shenanigans happen to get Cu uu, ii, aa, ə, and ä. Ch ends up with a i u ə, and the other three a i u. OS has e yield ya and o yield wa, ü for u~i results, and does overall less movement.

These are numbers from my number project:

## tsin~tsar two ## kwrad three ## fVd'w four ## magw ten

It’s interesting that many of these shared roots are in fact Swadesh roots and that that mostly happened on accident. E reconsructed 1000 roots, OS 2600, and just using judgements like “a root needs to mean the same thing in two (standard I held E to) or three (standard I used for OS) subbranches” to sift through them brought me down to these. But like most of these roots are fundamentally two segments long. There were even ~false matches in some of them with the phonaesthetic shape of their English glosses - horn would go back to something like *karn in PIE, which looks like the root here. Maybe horns make a kar sound, but with 2iit~2et, idk, I don’t think of eating as making an “eat-eat” sound; I actually threw away a number of roots that had a “kwa-l-kwa-l” (whence Ar. 2akulu) sound which at least kind of sounds like swallowing.

[themeatlife]

The List - the Meat Life Reviews the Avengers: Infinity Saga

It’s back!  the Meat Life’s The List returns to rank all of the MCU Infinity Saga movies from Iron Man all the way to Spider-Man: Far From Home.

With the home release of Avengers: Endgame, I thought it would be a great time to revisit the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Two summers ago, after I had watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and about a month before I got to watch Spider-Man: Homecoming, I ranked the MCU movies.  You can find that ranking here.  Now that I have watched what Kevin Feige describes as the final installment in Marvel’s Infinity Saga, I go through the movies again and rank all 23 installments including the last two --- Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home. For the ones I ranked in the first one, I have included their old ranking in parentheses. And since Tumblr now limits pictures in entries to ten, I will include pictures of the new reviews.

#23 (15) - The Incredible Hulk (2008)

This is the second film in the first phase of the MCU.  The movie is mostly forgotten in the MCU, including by me.  It wasn’t a bad movie (certainly a marked improvement from 2003′s Hulk), but it felt like something was missing from it.  Of course, there is only so much you can do with a character in its own movie.  We find Bruce Banner (played by Edward Norton in this movie) being chased by General Ross, the man who spearheaded the project to create super soldiers that created the Hulk. Ross will become an important figure 8 years later in Civil War. And of course at the end of the movie we have a Tony Stark-building a team cameo and this was the intro of OG Avenger Bruce Banner/Hulk. Was the worse MCU movie in my initial ranking, and it remains there.

#22 (14) - Iron Man 2 (2010)

The weakest of the Iron Man movies.  They replace Terrence Howard’s Rhodey with Don Cheadle, who in the long run has better chemistry with Robert Downey Jr, but in this movie is just weird to see instead of Howard.  The villains are also probably the weakest of the MCU, with Ivan Vanko looking to exact revenge against the Stark family and Justin Hammer as the head of rival weapons manufacturer looking to take down Tony Stark. Totally didn’t notice the Elon Musk cameo until about the fourth time I watched it, a big inspiration for the Tony Stark movie character. The biggest contribution to the MCU/Infinity Saga is the introduction of OG Avenger Black Widow.

#21 (10) - Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Loki is one of the better villains of the MCU, and in The Dark World he is on full display. Is he good? Is he bad? In this installment, Thor must work with Loki to defeat the Dark Elves who are going after Jane Foster because she has the Ether within her. The cliff-hanger style ending makes it almost unfulfilling. The plot isn’t really as important as the introduction of the Ether, later known as the Reality Stone and the movie’s use in Avengers: Endgame.

#20 (9) - Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Although Age of Ultron was seen as a step back from the first Avengers, it is still a very solid film especially after knowing the full picture of the Infinity Saga. This is very much a set up movie, though.  We see Tony Stark accidentally create Ultron out of feeling the need to further protect the world (and also created Vision to counter). We see Hawkeye with a family and a Romanov-Banner romance.  We see the introduction of the Maximov kids, with Quicksilver’s death toward the end and Scarlet Witch joining the Avengers. And whilst on the run we also see some of the seeds of tension between Stark and Rogers as well as the leveling of the Sokovia that are important later in Captain America: Civil War. I also didn’t notice that much when I first watched but they introduced Wakanda as the source of vibranium and the vibranium poacher Ulysses Klaue.

#19 (13) - Thor (2011)

I did enjoy the movie, although I will say that this is one of the weaker entries in the MCU.  As the heir to the throne of Asgard, the arrogant Thor loses his hammer and must prove his worthiness before getting it back.  He bumps into scientist Jane Foster played by Natalie Portman (yes!).  He humbles himself and eventually earns back his hammer and has to fight the forces of his brother Loki. We see the first appearance of Hawkeye who will become one of the OG Avengers.

#18 (11) - Doctor Strange (2016)

Arrogant doctor Stephen Strange travels to Nepal in search of a treatment for his hands that were devastated from a car accident.  He gets trained by the Ancient One to reveal powers in how to access different dimensions and wield mystical weapons.  He has to harness these powers to fight Kaecilius, who has stolen pages of an ancient handbook to access the Dark Dimension.  Some of the mystical stuff might not be for everyone and I only stuck with it because I like Benedict Cumberbatch and I’m glad I did. I’ve heard Doctor Strange described as Iron Man but with magic, and that’s not wrong.

#17 - Captain Marvel (2019)

We see Carol Danvers, who has lost her memory of her origin and has an unrealized power, think she’s Kree, a sort of police warrior race. She eventually goes against them when she figures out they exiled Krulls and lied to her about her human origin. Along the way she goes to Earth in the 1990’s and does sort of a buddy cop detective case with the SHIELD agent Nick Fury to figure out who she is. It was cool to see how Fury loses his eye and seeing the old Tesseract/Space Stone. While Captain Marvel is not a bad movie, in my opinion this would have been a much stronger movie if they leaned more into her backstory of being held down and knocked down a lot more. Unintentionally, but in my mind this will always be measured against Wonder Woman, about the only thing in the MCU era that DC did better than Marvel.

#16 (6) - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) 

I had this ranked higher in my initial ranking but I must say after a while I liked some of the other titles better than this one. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 picks up where the last left off, mixing the right amount of humor and action and pulling on just enough heartstrings for you to be pulled right in.  The Guardians have to face against someone they never expected: Peter Quill’s dad.  We see the introduction of Mantis and her addition to the Guardians.

#15 (8) - Ant-Man (2015)

Ant-Man grew on me.  Marvel may well have a formula now with the mix of humor and superhero action, but it’s a formula that works.  Here we follow unlikely hero Scott Lang played by Paul Rudd, a former engineer turned petty criminal, training to break into Pym Technologies using Hank Pym’s old shrinking suit to take down the corrupted Pym protege Darren Cross.  Rudd’s humor, chemistry with Evangeline Lilly’s Hope van Dyne, along with humorous sidekicks played by Michael Pena and T.I. are the glue to this movie.

#14 (7) - Iron Man 3 (2013)

I think most don’t give the final installment of the Iron Man trilogy much credit.  We are reminded of why we love the Tony Stark character.  In spite of his arrogance there is a tremendous heart, and we see both on full display here.  Set after the events of the first Avengers, Stark is going through PTSD.  He tries to navigate through that while being attacked by new threats. And it was good after the large scale of the first Avengers movie to get something more down to Earth.

#13 - Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

We pick up after the events of Captain America: Civil War, where Scott Lang is serving the back end of a two-year house arrest for breaking the Sokovia Accords. Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne are underground and developed a quantum accelerator in the hopes of getting Hank’s wife Janet van Dyne out of the quantum realm. Arms dealer Sonny Burch and unstable phasing Ghost are after the accelerator. After the heaviness of Avengers: Infinity War, it was nice to have a little relief on a smaller scale. And Paul Rudd doing Paul Rudd things is always pleasant.

#12 - Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Picking up after the events of Captain America: Civil War (and apparently “eight years” after the first Avengers movie), we see Peter Parker filling his time being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man under the distant watchful eye of Happy Hogan and Tony Stark. That is, until he finds The Vulture’s henchmen Shocker one and two selling weapons infused with alien tech from the Invasion of New York. We get a great sequence where Peter learns the night of homecoming that his love interest Liz is actually the Vulture’s daughter and all the tension that follows. With all due respect to Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland fits the Spider-Man/Peter Parker role the very best. And at the end, we get something that rarely happens with Marvel villains...the Vulture lives and goes to jail.

#11 (12) - Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

This movie has aged very well over time. Steve Rogers, a scrawny kid from New York, wanted to serve his country in the middle of World War II.  He was selected for experimental super soldier program and became the face of the US military, spending time raising money for the USO.  Then he starts hunting down Nazi science division Hydra and its leader Red Skull.  It ends with Rogers downing a Hydra bomber and crashing it in ice, preserving him until modern time. It also heartbreakingly separates Rogers from love interest Peggy Carter, SSR Agent who helped him through his WWII missions and promised a dance. This pays off later.

#10 (5) -  Iron Man (2008)

The film that kick started the entire MCU.  Here we follow Tony Stark and the origin of Iron Man, birthed from Stark being captured by a mercenary terror group and called to action after seeing his company’s weapons in the wrong hands.  This was a role ready-made for Robert Downey Jr, a great mix of arrogance, empathy, and quick wit.  And there’s plenty of action. And with that first movie we get the first post-credit scene, a now trademark Marvel touch, introducing Nick Fury the Director of SHIELD recruiting Stark into a “bigger universe.”

#9 (4) - Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I’ll admit, when Marvel announced Guardians of the Galaxy, I had planned on skipping out.  I knew nothing of the comic and it looked cheesy.  So yes, I had my doubts about a group that included a talking raccoon and a fighting tree.  But I gave it a chance and Guardians ended up being one of the stronger movies of the MCU.  We see the origin of Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord and how the Guardians came together.  This has that right mix of humor, action, chemistry, and 80s mix tape. And we see the introduction of the Orb containing the Power Stone.

#8 - Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Eight months following the events of Avengers: Endgame, we get to see some of the aftermath of the world after “The Blip,” including a hilarious school news tribute video of our fallen heroes set to Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You.” We see Nick Fury commandeer Peter’s summer class trip to Europe to initially help Mysterio battle what looks to be Elementals from another dimension set to destroy Earth. Little do we know that it’s all an illusion that Mysterio and a crew of technicians in an effort to destroy Tony Stark’s legacy and become the biggest savior of the world. That’s about as in depth I’ll go since this movie is still in theaters so I won’t spoil the fun. But I will say that this is probably the best version of a Spider-Man movie with all the awkward teen moments, his heavy weight of responsibility of being in line to be the next Tony Stark, and the sweet interplay between Parker and Zendaya’s MJ as well as bestie Jacob Batalon’s Ned. The MCU is in good hands post-Infinity Saga with Spider-Man on board. And there is a great surprise in the end credit scene.

#7 - Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

This Thor. Marvel finally figured out how to use Thor and Chris Hemsworth’s comedic timing. Right from the opening monologue you get that this is a different movie from the other two Thor’s. After Odin’s death, Thor’s half-sister Hela takes over Asgard as Thor and Loki disappear to the planet Sakaar. Thor is imprisoned as a gladiator-style fighter where he bumps into his “friend from work” Hulk. They all link up with Valkyrie, a former Asgardian warrior to escape Sakaar and save the Asgardian people from destruction. We see great comedy and chemistry between all the main characters, Idris Elba’s Heimdall get a lot of screen time protecting and hiding the Asgardian people from Hela, and hilarious performances from Karl Urban’s Skurge and Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster. In the end credit scene we see Thanos’ ship coming in for the events directly preceding Avengers: Infinity War.

#6 (3) - The Avengers (2012)

Director Joss Whedon pulled off what people once thought impossible...a superhero team-up movie. We see Nick Fury pull together Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow and later Hawkeye for the first time to figure out and stop Loki’s plan to use the Chitauri warriors to take over Earth. The Avengers definitely is an action movie with some dramatic elements but the thing that sticks out about this is even with New York City in peril, the ride is great!  The chemistry of the entire ensemble is on full display.  Before Thanos, Loki makes for probably the strongest villain in the series.  When this came out, it was hard to see Marvel top this. And we see a glimpse of Thanos for the first time in a post-credits scene.

#5 - Black Panther (2018)

Marvel never stops amazing world building, a vibrant look at the fictional nation of Wakanda included. Black Panther picks up after the events of Captain America: Civil War, but to open we get a flashback of Oakland, California in 1992 that will impact the entire plot that follows. We then see Prince T’Challa get crowned king upon his return to Wakanda, following the death of his father T’Chaka in Civil War. Mysterious American Killmonger works with vibranium poacher Ulysses Klaue at first seemingly to steal more vibranium. As the movie progresses it is revealed that Killmonger is actually Wakandan whose father was killed in the opening scene in Oakland and is after the throne. Upon several viewings, there are multiple layers as there are in Ryan Coogler directed movies. This movie is part James Bond (with T’Challa’s sister Shuri playing the Q role), part family drama, part political thriller, and of course part Marvel movie. Black Panther tries to tackle political issues like inclusion, globalization, and immigration while also addressing how a family’s mistakes from the past can haunt and impact a family’s future. Michael B Jordan’s Killmonger is a top three MCU villain and there are wonderful performances from Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia, Danai Gurira’s Okoye, Martin Freeman’s Everett Ross, and Andy Serkis’ Klaue. The end credit scene shows a relaxed Bucky talking to Shuri about his recovery.

#4 (2) - Captain America: Civil War (2016)

In this installment, the Avengers find themselves under hot water after an accident on a mission.  The UN votes to approve the Sokovia Accords that limits the Avengers decision making, splitting the team between those who support it who stand with Iron Man and those who oppose it who stand with Captain America. During the signing, we see an attack that initially looked like it was done by the Winter Soldier but is really carried out by a former Sokovian special forces soldier who is seeking to destroy the Avengers for indirectly killing his family. Civil War has probably the coolest fight scene of the series at a German airport.  The newbies Black Panther and Spider-Man are a sight to see.  And there is a twist ending that’s really heart wrenching that splits our two main Avengers in Iron Man and Captain America. 

#3 - Avengers: Endgame (2019)

I reviewed this a few months ago, so I’ll provide the link to my review here. What I will discuss here is how great this movie is. I almost put this at number 1. The storytelling and the conclusion to many of the main characters is so satisfying as a fan. It just felt so good to watch. I may rank this higher if I ever revisit the Infinity Saga, but for now I think top three at the very least is very very good. And it is the most satisfying ending to a movie series since The Dark Knight Rises. But I placed the other two above it for the reasons I will outline.

#2 (1) - Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Wow. For so long this has been my favorite MCU movie and probably still is. We see Cap and Black Widow running from SHIELD, out to hunt down the Winter Soldier for the assassination of Nick Fury. Out of all the MCU, this movie had a modern real world feel with its questions about how to determine whether or not someone is a threat. It kind of revisits a concept dealt with in Minority Report, whether someone’s free will determines their criminality or their preconceived conditions. It had great action sequences. And it defined the direction of the MCU with its revelation that Hydra was secretly controlling SHIELD for all those years. In this installment in the MCU, we see the possibility of how these movies can be dealt. There can be genre movies within the comic book genre. This was the political spy thriller of the MCU, in the same vein as some of those political thrillers of the 1970s. And as it pertains to the bigger Infinity Saga story, we find out Steve Roger’s old buddy Bucky is the infamous assassin The Winter Soldier. And we get the introduction of Sam Wilson, the Falcon.

#1 - Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

I never got to review this when it initially came out. This is basically a Thanos movie disguised and named as an Avengers movie. The best MCU villains have the most fleshed out backstories, and in Infinity War we get Thanos’ background, how his world collapsed and how he came about his reasoning behind wanting to eliminate half of the universe’s inhabitants. You see his rational, and even though he goes about things the wrong way (I mean, he is a villain), you get to see his reasoning and motivation behind his quest. For this alone, I felt compelled to rank it number one just because of how different the approach was and how effective the execution turned out.

Then, inter-spliced with Thanos’ story is the present day struggle. The beginning of the movie we see the destroyed Asgardian ship with Thanos and his disciples taking out most of the leadership, but not before Heimdall uses the Bifrost to get Hulk back to Earth. We see Heimdall and Loki die and Thor left for dead before Thanos moves on with the Space Stone and already in possession of the Power Stone.

The story builds toward two separate teams. The space team with Iron Man, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Nebula, and the Guardians minus Rocket and Groot defend the Time Stone with the ultimate face off with Thanos on the collapsed planet Titan. Before that, Thanos had a skirmish with the Guardians on Knowhere before ultimately obtaining the Reality Stone from the Collector, kidnapping Gamora in the process. Thanos killed Gamora on the planet Vormir to obtain the Soul Stone. Before the fight on Titan, Dr. Strange looks into the future and sees 14 million possible outcomes and only one where they win. The Earth team with Captain America, Falcon, Black Widow, War Machine, Bruce Banner, Scarlett Witch, Vision, Black Panther, and the Wakandan military protect Vision while Shuri tries to unlink the Mind Stone to destroy without harming Vision while battling the Chitauri and some of Thanos’ disciples in Wakanda with Thor, Rocket, and Groot dropping in toward the end.

The space team almost grabs the gauntlet from Thanos but ultimately fail (partly due to Peter Quill’s temper after finding out Gamora was killed by Thanos). Thanos then descends to Earth into Wakanda and some of the Earth team, in particular Captain America holds him off long enough for Scarlett Witch to destroy the Mind Stone, killing her love Vision. But Thanos uses the Time Stone to turn Vision back long enough to restore the Mind Stone and obtain the last stone he was searching for. Right before he is able to snap his gauntlet fingers, Thor drops down with his new ax Stormbreaker, thrusting the ax into Thanos’ chest. But Thanos is still able to snap his fingers, dusting half the population of the universe including some of our heroes: in particular Black Panther, most of the Guardians, Dr. Strange, and, in probably the most emotional scene outside of Endgame, Spider-Man.

If you were a moviegoer in a previous era and didn’t know they were already shooting Spider-Man: Far From Home, the impact of The Snap would have resonated so much more. Even in this era, though, the ending of the film was sharp, jarring, and effective.

—————

That’s my list! I may revisit years down the line, and some of these movies may age better than others. But I feel pretty comfortable about where these movies ended up. Let me know what you think! And enjoy the home release of Avengers: Endgame!

[plainsimplevic]

Well - That’s One Way To Come Out At Work

That was surprising. At work, as I've been vehemently talking about on twitter, there's been a lot of homophobic slurs being thrown around. Just as importantly, it was communicated to me that I basically needed to step up or I'd be fired. That I was “making excuses” for not doubling my output and occasionally coming in later (sometimes too late) in the day.  This is when I've done nothing but excel at this job. In fact I've been given additional responsibility and praised by those who are hardest to please! I’ve pushed through illness after illness the past 6 months. Fought through infections so painful I could feel them through the haze caused by an entire bottle of whiskey. I’ve been here in the middle of the night vibrating because my cold is that bad. I’ve gotten SURGERY because I realized a condition was affecting my work - prioritizing that over other procedures I need done because I believe in fulfilling my commitments. Period. Whatever it takes. Be they professional, personal, or in support of my loved ones. And now my dedication, competency, and integrity are being questioned and I’m being threatened on top of all the bigotry? Those are NOT things you question about me. I’m not perfect and I fuck up but those base values are what makes me, me. Hell, my motto is Honour, Courage, Integrity!

It had gotten to the point that I've been very close to exploding, quitting, calling them the bigots they were, and storming out. I nearly did so this week after one boss was subtly (though I believe ignorantly) racist and the other was using gay slurs within half an hour.

After calming myself down, my plan was to consult with some friends this week, calm down further, get some sleep, and be professional. To put in my 2 weeks, tell them why, and use the last pitiful paycheck to put myself in a position to make money by other means.

Now, as I continued to calm down, I realized that immediately pulling the trigger on quitting was an immature way to handle the situation. As much as I wanted to, the enlightened thing to do would be to open a dialogue with my bosses and trying to resolve the situation rather than treat them as hostile. Despite the evidence, there may be more going on that I’m unaware of and they may be receptive to what I have to say. What can I say? I’m a Trekkie who grew up in the TNG era. Exhaust all opportunities for discussion before taking any action that could be taken as hostile. It may sound silly, but that show was very formative for me and the principles I learned from it have helped me well in life. #IAmStarfleet

But, after FINALLY getting some sleep last night and with one of the bosses gone on a business trip, something felt right about doing this today. I’d had some sleep so I knew my emotional control would be there and I wasn’t going to act unprofessionally. The boss had just come back from a “liquid lunch” so he was relaxed but not drunk. Having come out the day before to my straight-ally coworker had heartened me. And I was not so overloaded that I couldn’t take some time and write the 3-4 pages of talking points I needed to write before hand to keep me on track if I got flustered. So, I positioned myself so that my boss couldn’t avoid me (not that he was trying - just so he knew I needed to talk to him) and asked for a half hour one on one before he left. He agreed. It was no big issue.

Now, I’ve dealt with similar situations before. When I worked political campaigns, I was not only in a much more demanding and labor intensive positions (20+ hour days for months with no ability to take weekends off) but that boss was a total, self absorbed, jackass that continued tearing me down despite all I was doing. Nothing was good enough. So I called him and demanded a meeting. He asked when I could come in. I demanded he come to me (I was an hour and a half away). I sat him down and did then what I did today. I explained the situation and told him why there was an issue. At the next team meeting he promised to do better and afterwards gave me a big hug and thanked me. He didn’t change and was eventually replaced, but the point is that I knew that this is something I could do. But that doesn’t make it less scary. Especially since this involved something so personal that I’ve had so many issues dealing with over my life. Especially since I’ve only in the past few weeks felt comfortable enough with my sexuality to begin to talk about it with straights who are my long term friends. It surprised the heck out of me when I came out to my co-worker yesterday. #Scary.

I also had several people cautioning me not to do this. My mother was the most adamant. But also a friend who was concerned that this place was so hostile that I might just face further discrimination. For insight into my mindset, and really, just who I am, I want to quote an excerpt from my response to that.

“The bigotry, lack of respect, and lack of compensation is whats bugging me. If this convo fixes that...  Long hours I'm meh about and I enjoy the work. And that’s not judging others. That’s just who I am. I'm the guy who has the guts to face things head on. Stare the darkness in the face and dare it to extinguish my light. If I lose that, I lose everything. I cant have that with every other aspect of my life and not this now that I've accepted it.”

And for those who are going to criticize me and say that my lack of self acceptance of my sexual identity disproves that statement let me point a couple things out. 1) Bandwidth. Without going into too much detail, my life, especially the past 10 years, has been ROUGH. It’s hard to do things like process your sexuality issues when you’re doing things like working 16 hour days while a tooth rots in your head because you can’t afford to get the root canal you need because all you’re money’s going into making the choice between food and bills. Or when everyone around you, with the exception of your mother, does not seem to be, but is actually dying or abandoning you. 2) Lack of community. I’m just a man and I have my limits - sometimes I need help. By reaching out for that help, I’m proving my statements about myself true. I haven’t had anyone I could turn to and ask, “what was it like for you?”. No-one to relate to. No-one to tell me that there’s nothing wrong with me. I didn’t even have support outside the queer community dealing with every other aspect life - much less in it to deal with this. Every time I reached out the past 5 or 6 years to try to get that support, I was shut down in some way. I’ve had community members shrug and be dismissive, not understanding the traumas involved with growing up Catholic and in a homophobic setting. I’ve had people point to some reading material, pat me on the head, and send me on my merry - not truly understanding the damage 25+ years of internalized homophobia can cause. I’ve had one gal talk about bi-erasure in one breath, insist I’m straight in the other, declare how lesbians are superior to all others, and then try to get me to apologize for being a cishet man. Which, growing up primarily raised by women, having strong memories of sitting around the table as they talk about how horrible men are, being told “but you’re different” and “one of the good ones” and left feeling othered and wondering how much I should hate myself for my gender did NOT go over well. But that’s an entire blog post in it of itself and I digress.

So the time for the meeting came and I told my boss everything. I told him that he needed to quit the gay slurs. That I was bi. That I had met and was falling for the most amazing guy which had inspired me to make another attempt at confronting these issues. That the past couple months have been awesome and positive but extremely intense. That there’s been many times where I’ve held it together during the day and then just stared into my monitor for hours unable to do anything but have tears in my eyes once everyone left. That I’ve been on my laptop so much because I’m getting (and giving) support. That I’m afraid that some of my friends may end themselves and not be there tomorrow. Of all the illness I’ve been pushing through. And how, through it all, I still got the job DONE.

And the response was shocking. He was completely taken aback. He asked, “what slurs?” I gave him an example and, being total white straight male, he hadn’t even realized what he was doing. He asked if I was gay. I told him bi and he laughed and exclaimed how insensitive he’s been and immediately apologized. He lit up and exclaimed how awesome it was when I said I was falling for (again) the most amazing man (hard). He said how he has no issues with queer folk and told me of his gay friend with a similar background to me. He told me how, when he grew up, they used those terms all the time to effectively mean asshole but had no clue what they meant and that they had just become reflex - but that that was no excuse. That he had no problem not outing me to anyone else, though I’m close to being completely out. I was valued and appreciated.

And then, no joke, he asked me what I needed on my projects and the entire thing became, among other things, a pitch session and him putting many of his resources at my disposal.

Also, it turns out that the “firing” thing was because the other boss was freaking out about how a couple of business partners who were funding my salary simply didn’t like having to pay me and, for that reason alone which nothing to do with me, were looking for any excuse to “cut costs.” From my own deductions, I now realize that it’s mostly that I haven’t been putting up enough of a “show” of working on the rare occasion they’ve been around which is probably making it harder for that boss to defend me. Also, I’m 90% sure this is that guy’s first time managing someone and I know for a fact that this is his first time working in this industry and dealing with certain types of personalities - like said business partners. These are things that I have decades of experience with in one form or another so, now that I know that I know what his issues largely are, I plan on having a similar talk with him and offering my advice and support. I’ve been in that position before and watched it blow up in my face. Honestly, he’s fucking lucky it’s me and not someone else - they would have stormed out. I know. I’ve been the one stormed out on.

His main fault was not properly communicating to me how much of an issue these asshole business partners have been. I’ve been in his position many a time and now exactly how to compensate for that kind of bullshit. And because of his lack of communication, I haven’t been able to make his job easier by doing so.

I think there might be a couple of translation-to-this-industry issues as well so I’ll talk to him about that too. And, apparently, the boss I talked to has had to pull that boss aside a few times recently. Somethings going on with his personal life I feel.

So, yeah. That was probably the best coming-out-at-work experience I could have had. We’ll see if the boss I spoke to lives up to his promises but, as of now, things are looking up. I’m so glad that I haven’t been too traumatized in life that I can still hope. Maybe I’m just too stubborn an asshole to let it go. But it’s that hope that led me to try the diplomatic path. That allowed me to adhere to my values and belief that dialogue and understanding can solve nearly all situations so long as both sides listen.

And yes, those are Starfleet values. And if that’s too corny for you I have 2 things to say. 1) Read the above book-of-a-blog again and tell me how I’m wrong when EVERYONE else (except Mom) was telling me that the only solution was to quit in a righteous rage. 2) Fuck off you ignorant, pessimistic, little shit. #IAmStarfleet #FirstDutyToTheTruth #TrekTillIDie

I may still leave here soon for various other reasons, but now, rather than making enemies here I’ll leave with (assuming words meet deeds - which evidence so far here as indicated these are the kind of people where that’ll be the case) A) the use of these facilities for my own projects, B) plenty of time to prepare, and C) a financial cushion to aid in the transition.

Thanks to Danni, Alex, and Kaeden who’s support and affections have been crucial in helping me get to the point where I’m secure enough in my identity that I can tackle issues like this. Thank you for being my community.

[neni-has-ascended]

The case of Twipsy: How a great premise and potential can be wasted with the mantra “It’s just for kids”

Ah, the year 2000. To the ones who still remember it, it can sometimes feel like it was just yesterday that the media ran hot with fear of the “Y2K” bug. It was a time when ear-shattering dial up noise and crude HTML ruled supreme over a world of miscolored gifs, flashy neon effects that burnt your eyes, unhelpful search engines and an ocean of badly designed Geocities pages. A time when using the phone and internet simultaneously was a supreme luxury and browsing 3 hours a day was considered addict behavior. 

It was in this time, that the world of German children’s programming was introduced to the mascot of the then upcoming Expo 2000 in Hannover; Twipsy. Fittingly enough, that weird, little guy would be destined to become an animated time capsule of that era; of the way we saw and perceive the internet in it, how we interacted with technology, and also quite possibly of the then pervading mindsets that led to the decline and death of the already tiny market for German animation co-productions. 

You know what they say: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The road to my hell is paved with the good, nostalgic intentions I had in rewatching all of this show this weekend once I found the English Dub. Oh boy. 

A little backstory first: In 2000, Germany was going to hold it’s first officially sanctioned World Fair in Hannover. The theme of the expo was simple: Man, Nature and Technology. The fair was meant to highlight how both the natural world around us, as well as technological advances co-existed and were enriching human life every day. As such, it was a very futuristic sort of event, with a bright outlook on progress and enthusiasm for the way the world seemed to be going at the time. 

When the time came to come up with a mascot for the event, a design by the Spanish artist Javier Mariscal was selected: In keeping with the fair’s themes, Mariscal had created a surreal, almost abstract figure with both rounded shapes like those found in nature, and sharp edges like those associated with technology, arranged in a humanoid shape. The figure, which Mariscal described as a burst of pure energy carrying information from the beginning of time into our age, was called “Twipsy”.

I will reckon with you first here and now: I was 7 years old when I first saw Twipsy, and I was terrified. His abstract design that looked like it could be cute but just not quite was deeply uncanny to me, with his huge nose, chin with built-in goatee, mismatched feet and, last but not least, his gigantic, shapeless right arm. What was this demon, this abomination of nature? Was it going to hide under my bed and come take my soul at night? Would it lurk for me if I dared to come to the expo, just so it could devour me with its gigantic mouth?

Clearly, I was not the only child who felt this way, as soon after the selection of the design, controversy began to surround the expo’s mascot-to-be, many believing that it looked too “weird” to be used. Perhaps that was the reason why just a short time later, the rights-holders of the Expo commissioned Mariscal’s own studio to produce an animated series based on the character, in an attempt to endear him to kids. The result was “Twipsy: the Animated Series”, and I have to admit that, at very least in my case, the attempt worked: Within days of the show first airing on the German cartoon channel “KiKa”, the character went from a creature haunting my nightmares to something I found deeply endearing. However, the ways this endearment was achieved succeeded much more in concept than in actual execution.

This show... oh boy, this show is such a mess, I don’t even know whether I should begin to talk about it in a positive or a negative way.  From the moment I first saw it as a little kid, I felt deeply conflicted, and even if I ultimately have far more fond memories of it than terrifying ones, I suspect this is mostly because the show somehow managed to tap into a ton of concepts that speak to me personally, while using them just decently enough to not make me feel insulted, but that’s all. As far as I can tell, I feel a lot more positively about the show than it has any right to be felt for, and I’d like to explain why that is.

The premise of the show can be summed up as “Tron”, or rather “Tron, but in the late 90s and for kids”. That’s pretty much it, really. Between those two quotation marks, you find pretty much all you need to know about the show. But I am a very long-winded person, and I have a lot of thoughts to share, so let me go into detail anyway: 

The show begins when Nick Walker, a technologically inept 13 years old kid, accidentally gets digitized and transported into cyberspace when his sister Lissie spills juice over his computer. There, Nick meets Twipsy, one of hundreds of odd, lightning-fast energy-beings called “cyber messengers” who exist solely to transport data packages (usually E-mails in this series, for some reason) within computer networks. Any and all issues with data packages dropping and not reaching their destination or being scrambled on the way can be traced back to the often clumsy nature and carelessness of these little guys. (So if you ever got problems with your online voice calls, you know who to blame now.)

Twipsy turns out to be a rather curious being and quickly takes a liking to Nick, befriending him, which ultimately results in Twipsy hitching a hike along with Nick when his best friend, programming genius Albert, manages to return him to the physical world.  The rest of the series follows Nick, Lissie, Albert and Twipsy traveling back and forth between the two worlds numerous times, messing around with everything they can get their hands on either out of curiosity, or to “fix” some sort of problem they have. There are episodes that deal with one of the kids trying to run away to cyberspace to hide from real life, episodes about Twipsy going to the real world to escape his responsibilities in cyberspace, episodes about characters being stuck in the world that’s not their own and trying to get back home, episodes about mischief in one world negatively affecting the other...a surprising number of episodes about the Walkers’ dog getting stuck in cyberspace, for some reason...anyway, you know the whole deal. 

It’s a familiar premise, one that’s been used before. I already mentioned Tron, and even Digimon Adventure got a jump on this show when it came to the idea of traveling between a real world and a computerized one. However, regardless of whether or not this show wasn’t the first to use this premise; at the time this show came out, it was still fairly fresh. It was promising. It was cool.

In keeping with the Expo 2000′s themes, the show mostly concerned the mingling of the technological and natural worlds; Just like how the kids were fascinated with cyberspace and always tried to find ways to use it to their advantage, many episodes also concerned themselves with Twipsy taking interest (often a deeply sentimental one) in human life and nature, skewing his priorities in ways that often made his actions hard to understand for both, his human friends, and his peers over in his own world. Now, everyone who knows me and my blog at least tangentially probably understand already why this instantly managed to endear a character to me that had previously haunted my night-terrors: Go, join Peridot, Teddie and Yuki Nagato in my corner of honor, you adorable, little cubist painting, you. I just love awkward aliens who like humans. 

The whole set-up is like a dream to me. The world of the information we humans produce, mingling with the world we live in. Fiction and reality crossing, clashing, creating new ideas. Just imagine the potential! The stories that can be told with kids who have access to the very beings embodying the concept of information-processing! The stories that can be told with a being that has never known anything other than processing and transporting pure information, suddenly exposed to the human world!

The problem is... While Twipsy doesn’t necessarily “fail” at utilizing these concepts, it... doesn’t exactly “succeed” either... 

In fact, more often than never, the show seems to be held back. Held back by its budget, by its art, by its writing... By what it’s meant to be. It exists somewhere between a constant stream of amazing ideas and a barrage of lazy, weak execution. 

Just watch the show’s opening. There’s nothing that conveys the Jekyll&Hyde issue this show has better than it’s opening:

https://youtu.be/PVtzCO7C6Is?t=22s (Starts at 22 seconds in.)

(And here the German version, which I grew up with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ur4LK4yPU )

It begins the moment you hear the music. An old 56k Modem’s Dial Up sound seamlessly fading over into the vocals of the singer. Then, the song actually begins, and it’s great. It’s catchy, energized, mixing a really great sort of 90s pop music with chiptune, a synthesizer and yet other electronic elements. Even in times when I could barely remember this show existed, this song always stayed on my mind, and anytime I actually did remember it, I remembered because of this song. It’s one of my personal favorite cartoon opening songs of all time. It’s perfect, immediately telling you what the show is about, before you’ve even seen any of the actual animation. Even the singer suffering from the same odd addiction with the word “cyber” that the US dub of Digimon had with “digi” doesn’t stop this song from being amazing. In fact, the whole show has surprisingly good background music. 

However, this “surprisingly” is where it all goes downhill. Remember how I said the song draws you in before you ever see the animation? Well, once you actually see the animation, it’s very likely you’ll just leave again: Even though the show uses fairly decent CGI for the time (both for the background in the real world and in cyberspace), and the animation itself varies from “sloppy, but energized” to “competent, but boring”, the art-style is just horrendous. One would think that the cubist look of the cyber messengers would be a great way to contrast between their alien nature and the humans, but no. All characters are drawn in a style clearly based on Twipsy’s own design, and while the show somehow manages to make it work on him, on the humans it just goes right past being “uncanny” and becomes “REALLY uncanny”. The saddest thing is that I know that this is not due to Mariscal and his studio simply being unable to draw in any other style: As recently as 2010, Mariscal made a beautiful adult animated movie called “Chico and Rita” and while I don’t think the humans in Twipsy should have looked exactly like that, something closer to it would probably have done the show a great favor. 

There’s another problem that’s right there in the opening: The show’s terrible pacing. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was just the show trying to forgo a classical three-act-structure for something closer to a four-act-structure (which is a very valid creative choice) or just plain bad writing. I eventually decided it was probably the later: Just like how the opening seems to be telling a story, but scenes just begin and end, segueing into each other poorly and with leaps in-between that make you wonder “Wait, when did that happen?”, the same is true for the show itself: Episodes start fine enough, with a clear beginning and set up, but then things never go quite right. The episodes are about the same length as those of Steven Universe; 11 minute; but unlike Steven Universe, which uses every second just perfectly and makes every shot feel like it has a purpose, Twipsy often feels like somebody just scrambled the episodes over the cutting room floor and tried to pick up the right pieces. Essential shots and character reactions are just skipped, often as important as the actual resolution of a conflict, and we’re left to sit back and imagine that things worked out just find, because in the next scene, the status quo is restored without us never actually seeing how it happens. At the same time, the show often wastes up to one or two full minutes worth of animation on establishing shots of the kids’ houses or cyberspace (abusing the aforementioned decent 90s CGI for all it was worth), when it could have been used much better to pace the individual stories more evenly. As soon as you sit down and think about it, it really is a very frustrating thing.

It’s not made better by the fact that most of the episodes don’t have a proper climax (which is why I wondered if they were meant to be structured in a four act structure, but... nah). Conflicts usually just resolve themselves and  “disappear” again just as suddenly as they’re introduced, nobody ever has to seriously fight for anything they want. Things just seem to “happen”, there’s no effort, no team work evolved, and whatever emotional moments the show has are glossed over and downplayed so much, it leaves you wondering if anything worth of note ever happens in these people’s lives. A reminder: These people are inter-dimensional travelers. I should not be feeling that. 

It’s a real shame, because the show actually does have a real sense of continuity; changes and development to a character that happen in one episode usually stick in all subsequent one, which almost makes you forget how these characters keep making the same dumb mistakes over and over. It’s just a shame that all this development is given to us almost exclusively by verbal exposition, since the animation is often too stiff to tell us anything about what the characters are supposed to be feeling or thinking. The show has also a terrible problem with exaggerating the archetypes of two of its main characters, Nick and Albert, who tend to spend a considerable amount of their screen-time reminding us of their respective stereotypes (dumb jock & genius nerd). If I remember right, it was a little better in the original German dub, where their voice actors at least made an attempt to give them a personality outside of that, making them sound like normal kids, but the English dub just eliminates even those pretenses, by giving them the most stereotypical voices they could possibly have; nasal and annoying. 

The third human main character, Lissie, is surprisingly quite a bit more nuanced than just being “the girl” or “annoying little sister” for which I am very thankful. Even her English dub voice is pretty decent. She often feels like the only person acting like a human being in the room... However, she also acts like a mid-teen, when canonically, she’s supposed to be 8 years old, so there’s that. The fact that she’s very tech savvy and the author of a popular online column for troubled people is still a nice touch, especially because it might be a sign of her trying to step into the footsteps of her mother, who is a psychiatrist (which contributes to the plots of a few of the better episodes). However, Nick and Albert rarely ever do anything outside their stereotypes, which, combined with their voices, makes it hard to relate to them. Thankfully, later episodes at least tone Nick’s stupidity down a little. 

Still, Lissie not just being the “annoying little sister” actually plays into a bigger positive the show has: The relationships between the characters are generally very pleasant, genuine and believable, much more so than the actual characters themselves. Lissie and Nick don’t constantly annoy each other just because they’re siblings and the trope says they have to be annoying. Rather, they fight when it would be natural for them to fight and work together and have fun together when normal siblings would do so. This makes it much easier to believe that they genuinely care for each other than just writing their relationship around tropes would be. Likewise, friendships between jock characters and nerd characters in cartoons tend to involve the jock exploiting the nerd, however, that is definitely not the case here: While Albert often DOES do Nick’s homework for him, it’s made clear that Albert does it because he feels sorry for Nick, and not because Nick makes him do it. and likewise, Nick, despite being a jock, is very supportive of Albert and even his hobbies, cheering him on in everything he does and even trying to play his wingman whenever he tries to impress the girl he likes. Not once does Nick laugh at Albert for being a nerd, despite them not really sharing many interests, and Albert genuinely seems to look up to Nick’s outgoing nature and physical strength, despite knowing how dim-witted he can be. It’s kind of a refreshing take on the usual relationship between those two stereotypes. 

Of course, the same is true for the relationship between Twipsy and the kids, which is a very genuine friendship: Whenever anything is wrong with their internet connection, the first thing the kids wonder about is whether Twipsy is alright. Whenever there’s news about trouble in the kids’ hometown traveling through the internet, Twipsy immediately ditches his work to go check on them. It almost makes up for the lack of emotional high points or genuinely interesting characters in the show (but not quite). In fact, Twipsy actually has an arc of sorts in the show, in which he goes from first finding the human world to be disgusting and illogical (being an existence who’s never had to deal with anything other than pure data before), but slowly grows to appreciate it in ways only he could, gorging himself on food he doesn’t need to eat for nothing but the sensory pleasure (there actually is a running subplot about his food-addiction causing the walker siblings trouble), often becoming obsessed with animals and inanimate objects and slowly beginning to prioritize his friendship with the kids over his responsibilities in cyberspace, which often ends up getting him in hot water with his superiors. 

However, all of what I just said would be a lot more powerful if the show allowed it to have two things that it doesn’t give them, which are: Impact and Consistency. 

There is no impact in Twipsy’s emotional connection to the kids and the human world because there are never any climactic situations testing said connection, never any danger to actual conquer for them. There are so many points in the show when it would have made sense to have the other cyber messengers question Twipsy’s logic or agenda due to his obvious loyalty towards his human friends, but nothing like that ever happens; his dual loyalties are never challenged. Interesting stories, interesting arcs could have happened here, but it never comes to it, no risks are ever taken or even introduced for longer than 30 seconds. No matter what happens, the show always remains so horribly vanilla, the blandness is nauseating. 

There’s no consistency in Twipsy’s arc, because while he often claims that he didn’t know about the upsides of things like “fun” or “emotions” before because Cyberspace has none such things, by the time we are actually introduced to other cyber messengers, we see them hanging out and playing flash games (yes, this is the year 2000 indeed...) together and even having rivalries among each other quite frequently, calling these claims into question. Now, Twipsy is clearly the most emotional and fun-loving cyber messenger we see in the show, so it’s perfectly possible that actual enjoyment of games and interpersonal relationships are something he brought there and taught to the others after first being exposed to that, but since we never really see what the relationships between the cyber messengers were like before the series, we can’t compare and we’re given little other indication that Twipsy’s descriptions of cyberspace as a emotionally cold world with an all-work-no-play mentality are actually true. 

Then there’s also the issue of everything involving computers in this show about computers just being total and utter bullshit. When one data package drops, the file is lost? That’s not how the internet worked, not even back in the year 2000. A printer and a scanner stuck together apparently equates a portal to a parallel dimension, rather than an HP Deskjet. Oh, cool. Information leaks are caused by “e-mail snatchers” who have nothing to do with humans, rather than malicious humans breaching off information? Rumors on the internet happen due to two energy-beings who love to spread misinformation, and not being people just love to gossip? Oh, come on! This show could easily have been used to build a genuinely, believable world inside the internet WHILE still teaching the viewer a thing or two about how networking works and why the internet does what it does. Sure, the show is definitely reflective of what most of us thought the internet was like back in the late 90s - a magical place where stuff is brought from A to B with the speed of light - but it does nothing to actually further our understanding of the connection between nature and technology, as it supposedly set out to do. When Megaman Battle Network did your educational job better than you did, you know you have a problem, Twipsy. But I guess they just decided they didn’t need to pay attention to making computers feel accurate, because it’s for kids, and kids don’t get how computers work anyway, so whatever. In fact, I feel that sums up all of the issues with the show quite nicely: 

No matter where you look, Twipsy is a show full of potential for great stories, with no pay off ever. It’s like badly animated Steven Universe that remained stuck at what it was during “Gem Glow” and never went beyond that, despite the obvious possibilities. And the reason for that is obvious to me:

“It’s just a kid’s show”. That must have been the mantra this show was made with. They could have animated the show better, but they didn’t because “It’s just for kids”. They could have given the characters more nuanced personalities, but they didn’t, because “It’s just for kids”. They could have paced the episodes better, but they didn’t. “Kids wouldn’t follow that anyway”. They could have made the stories more engaging and risky, but they didn’t “We don’t wanna scare the kids”. They could have done more with all the interesting, creative concepts introduced in cyberspace, but “Kids don’t want that; they just want flashing lights and pretty colors”, so nope. 

Do you see why this show HURTS me so much? I love so much about what’s in there; there’s the seed of a great story in there, the potential for great characters and great adventures. It already does have great music and great concepts, and even some amazing creativity. The creator is a friggin’ professional artist, for crying out loud! But no; it was a marketing vehicle to get kids interested in computers and an event they’d probably never go to, so they didn’t make use of any of that. They went in halfway, then stopped, threw their hands up and said “alright, we did our dedicated job, no reason to go any further, bye.” It’s just painful to watch, and it makes me sad, because you can absolutely tell that the makers of this show were capable of doing more with it. They just did not. 

And so, Twipsy disappeared as he appeared, fading back into obscurity as soon as the Expo was over, with only some 90s babys like myself occasionally finding themselves humming the theme-song to themselves and silently wondering if this weird, weird show actually ever happened. 

It didn’t have to be that way. This German-Spanish collaboration could really have gone places. Laugh at me if you want to, but this really could have been one show from Europe that people remember. It was dubbed into so many languages. It could have become one of these really smart, interesting, weird classics that people look back onto and say “Yeah, that show was pretty great!” about. And it was from Europe. Spain and Germany. Not Japan, not America, not Canada or even France. Do you know what having just one popular, interesting show could have meant for these countries? Maybe there’d actually be a market for German or Spanish animation today if this had succeeded. Maybe there’d be jobs for aspiring animators here that would not involve moving to the UK or France or even America. 

The show could easily have been remembered as a really sweet, heartwarming story about worlds mingling and colliding, and Twispy as a mascot who went above and beyond what was except of him, staying relevant far beyond the expo. It could have educated kids about responsible, intelligent internet use, while also being a smart, challenging story for everyone to enjoy. But that didn’t happen.

Doug Walker of Nostalgia Critic fame once said - and I’m paraphrasing - “Why does Hollywood only ever reboot properties that were already good to begin with, only to mess them up in whole new ways? Why don’t they ever reboot things that sucked and fix them in ways they could be fixed only now?” It’s something I wholeheartedly agree with. Properties such as this show shouldn’t be forgotten and left in the corner to gather dust; they should be given another chance, rebooted and remade, with the honest intention of fixing what once went wrong. I swear, if somebody did a remake of this show in the modern era, adhering to the standards set by animated gems like Adventure Time, Gravity Falls or Steven Universe, I’d freak. It would be one of my new favorite shows, instantly, I promise. Heck, even just a web-comic based on and remaking the show would be enough. I’d actually consider doing one myself, if I didn’t already have a million other projects I am working on...

In fact... I did some sketches of what the characters of the show might look like in a hypothetical remake:

 ( Ignore Nick. I can’t draw jocks...)

I know, this will probably never happen. Nobody remembers this show. Heck, I barely remember it most of the time. But I think it’d be worth it. There so much that could still be done here. So much that should have been done here. 

Too bad that the rights for the show and character are spread over two different companies. That makes hope for anything like this ever happening especially slim. Even syndication of this show is a miracle these days...

But, you know. I for one will always remember Twipsy for what he could have been, rather than what he actually was. It’s sad, but I like it that way. 

And I’ll remember him for that sweet, sweet theme song, too. 

Sources:

Estudio Mariscal

Wikipedia

The actual show (can be found on Amazon Prime UK, and only there, don’t ask me why.)

[theclacks]

Buffy (Season 4) & Angel (Season 1) Thoughts

Whoo, so watching two seasons at once makes a giant dent in my viewing speed, but it’s kind of awesome. The “new series” rush I had in season two is mostly gone I think, replaced with a steady comfortability, which is good, because whenever a series is short enough that I reach its end/catch up before the rush fades, then I feel incredibly listless.

Anyway. Thoughts below the cut.

Buffy - Season 4

On how it compares to other seasons...

So season 2 is still my all time favorite. I think season 4 is tied with season 3 for me on like-ability. I think season 3 was strongest toward its end and season 4 was strongest towards its middle (hello, Spike pseudo-redemption arc). I think killing Professor Walsh as early as they did was a mistake; she and Buffy had a great antagonistic relationship. The greatness of season 2 was the relationship between the heroes and the villains, especially once Angel turned darkside. My biggest problem with the mayor was that he and Buffy never met until the very end of the season and that’s kind of my same issue here. They traded out an AWESOME antagonist (works for “good” like Buffy, but sees her as a uncontrollable threat! there’s some age/generation issues going on, defined career woman vs unranked youngster! science vs magic and prophecy! they used to hold each other in high esteem but now don’t!)... for, well, Adam. Who was very season one-ish in terms of flat personality and “I SHALL RULE THE WORLD MWAHAHA.”

On Oz leaving + Tara entering...

I read an interview/comment part way through that said Joss’s original plan was to string the Oz/girl!werewolf/Willow drama over the whole season, but then Seth Green nope’d it out of there and thank fucking god. I hated girl!werewolf. I don’t even remember her name and I’m fine with that.

I loved the introduction of Tara. I loved the episode where Oz came back (although I spent the whole episode fearing for his life) and Willow came out to her friends and Tara expecting Willow to leave her and asking if they could still be friends and I WAS CRYING DURING THAT SCENE. I HAVE NO SHAME. I think it was first scene in Buffy I cried at. Willow and Tara’s actresses just knocked it out of the park.

Also, it was weird for me since all I’ve ever heard from people about Willow is that they retcon’ed her sexuality into being a lesbian, and... unless something changes in the future, that’s totally not the case because she’s obviously bisexual. Like mentions loving Oz AND loving Tara in the same episode? And if talking about retconning her into being bisexual, umm... that shit doesn’t need foreshadowing... unless people are talking about something that happens in a later season with Willow saying straight out she doesn’t like men... and you know what? I’ll just see it when I get there.

On Riley...

He’s okay. Like, just, okay. I liked the episode where he told Buffy not to hold back during sparing, she kicked him across the room, and he’s like “it’s okay, i told you not to hold back”, and later she confesses (to Willow?) “.......I held back.”

IDK. I didn’t like the episode where the frat house sucks them into being a kind of sex battery thing... well, I liked the Xander, Willow, Anya, and Spike parts, but yeah.

On Spike...

I think the weirdest character development thing was him hooking up with Harmony. I mean, really? BUT it was awesome seeing Harmony eventually kick him to the curb, so there’s that. I got spoiled for the headchip thing, but I didn’t know it was coming this season, and his conversation with Willow immediately discovering his “impotence” was one of the best things ever. Oh, and “Something Blue” I didn’t know that episode was going to be a thing and it was AWESOME. I also liked how he didn’t immediately turn good and was mostly an annoying hinderance to the main characters; that fit him much better than a straight heel-face turn.

On college vs high school...

It’s weird. I have more nostalgia for college than high school, so I really enjoyed the first few college eps. Like, the way I’ve seen people talk about their love for the high school era of Buffy... I think that was me during this season. (People who used to hang outside the student union delivering flyers for whatever, I MISS YOU.) I did like the episode where they revisited the high school’s ruins. That was a nice touch. And I like Faith a lot better this season, especially when she realizes it’s been months and months since graduation. (Oh, and speaking of the Faith/Buffy bodyswitch episode, their actress did such a good job.)

On Giles...

Nothing too much to report. I do think more than any of the other characters, he’s lost his groove. Hopefully he’ll re-find it in season five.

But enough about Buffy, it’s time to discuss...

Angel - Season 1

General thoughts

OH MY GOD. I think I actually ended up enjoying Angel more than Buffy for these two seasons. I thought it was going to be something I’d slowly have to sit through episode after episode until I grew to like and then LO AND BEHOLD Charisma Carpenter’s name popped up in the credits. And suddenly Angel went from “Angel interacts with random LA strangers I don’t know” in my head to “OH MY GOD CORDELIA IS IN LA BEING BROS WITH ANGEL AND FIGHTING DEMONS AND SHIT.” And it’s been awesome since.

On Doyle and Wesley (and Cordelia)...

I was not expecting them to switch season mains halfway through, and although I’m still sad that Doyle left the show so early, I’m kind of cool with it because it meant Cordelia getting his visions. And honestly, if you’d told me after the first episode of Buffy that Cordelia Chase was eventually going to become bros with Angel in LA and with god-given vision superpowers and a ghost as a roommates, I’d... well, I don’t know what I would’ve thought, but it definitely would’ve spoiled the wild, amazing journey. Of course, Cordelia was already my favorite character about four episodes into watching Buffy, so... yeah.

One of my lesser favorite parts of season three was having Cordelia vanish for a whole bunch of episodes after her breakup with Xander, so seeing her rise like this and be a central character and have AMAZING heart-to-heart conversations with Angel... like, Buffy and Angel have their super love but at this point I feel like Cordelia and Angel are stronger friends? Like they treat each other as brother and sister and it is the best damn thing ever.

Also along that line, the reintroduction of Wesley was great. Probably the best replacement they could’ve gotten for Doyle. It really strengthened the team, especially for the Faith episodes since she was someone they ALL had history with. And since the Cordelia/Wesley UST got resolved in the final season 3 buffy episodes, his friendship with cordelia was awesome too. JUST ALL THE FRIENDSHIPS FOR CORDELIA KTHXBAI.

On LA vs Sunnydale...

If college era of buffy is nostalgic, angel’s LA setting is straight up “THIS IS MY LIFE RIGHT NOW”. I’m past Buffy’s concerns about class schedules and straight in the thick of Cordelia’s concerns about finding a decent apartment for a decent rent, balancing work that pays the bills with the true passions you live for, having to pay bills, be an adult.

And I think Cordelia really is angel’s greatest strength right now because of how much different her life is from all of her classmates’ back in Sunnydale. She’s had to grow up the fastest. Even Xander who’s ostensibly in similar shoes (straight to work/no college) has a kind of flat dotted-ness to him. He picks up random weekly jobs, he stays in his parents’ basement, he feels the world moving on without him because it is. Contrast that with Cordelia, moves to LA, gets a rad (albeit possessed apt), gets a job with Angel’s firm (basically starts Angel’s firm), gains Doyle’s visions, making her an even more integral part of the team... Their respective paths over the course of the same year couldn’t have been more different.

On “I Will Remember You”...

Holy damn that was an awesome episode. I knew it wasn’t going to last because Angel being a vampire is, like, his whole thing. I was like Buffy going “let’s wait before diving into all this” but then they crumbled and then they were in bed eating ice cream together and it was THE CUTEST THING EVER. And then even after Angel decided to turn back, I was like “that’s okay because at least they’ll have their memories and then it was suddenly all NO. NO. NOOOOO. THIS IS NOT OKAY, ANGEL NO. BUFFY MY BB, NOOOOOOOO.” The juxtaposition between Buffy in tears, clinging to him, and then 180 degrees, being back in his office completely tense and cold was traumatically beautiful and well-done.

And a part of me really eventually wants her to remember down the line, but I have no idea whether or not that would ever happen.

On Faith...

So. I’ve decided that my favorite part of Faith is when she completely breaks down into self-loathing. It happened when she was in Buffy’s body and then again when she was squaring off against Angel in the rain. She sold it so well, that I’m cool with her again.

On evil!Angel...

Evil!Angel is my favorite, the humor that just drips out of him while he’s killing everything. And I love that there are hints of it even when Angel’s “sober” so to speak. And while I never want him to turn fully evil again (season 2 played that the best way it ever could), I do like the way the writers are able to tease it back. First with the buffy season three episode where he faked it, and then again in this season of angel where it was kind of drugged out of him. And once again, I’m super happy that Cordelia and Wesley are his buddies because they can recognize that history of his in an instant (granted, Cordelia more than Wesley).

On Gunn and Lesley and Wolfram and Hart...

So Buffy/Angel crossovers excluded, my favorite episode of the season by far was when Angel and Lesley joined forces to infiltrate Wolfram and Hart and they also pulled in Gunn for good measure. Maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for heist episodes, but I think (I hope) that episode marked a turning point. Like “this is the world of angel. these are angel’s allies and these are his foes and this is way it comes together.” I’m looking forward to more with all them.

On Kate...

I have conflicted thoughts about Kate. I like her as a character. She’s been used somewhat inconsistently re: episode and screentime-wise, and still very distant from the main characters. I hope she’s used more in season two.

On LA’s demon sub-culture...

The thing I’ll end with is that I love how angel introduces us to a whole bunch of other demon, both good and evil and somewhere in between. With the exception of Willie’s bar, buffy doesn’t have that? Like I feel half the demons from LA could wander into Sunnydale and Buffy would start beating them up before they could talk. Or like if they put one toe out of line, she’d try to kill them.

Take for example the episode with Doyle’s ex-wife. Her fiance tried to eat Doyle’s brains, but the ending to that wasn’t “kill the fiance” it was just “that’s not okay, demon, and you broke my trust by trying to do it and if that’s a requirement for us to get married, then the engagement’s off.” And lo and behold, they broke off the engagement and thus ended the episode. No killings. And I don’t know, there’s just something ridiculously refreshing about that.

[pvpxrswvg]

Top 25 Albums of 2018

Two and a half years and over a hundred albums later I have finally completed my top albums of 2018 list. It was an interesting exercise doing this list two and a half years later, as the method of completing this list felt completely different to 2017 and 2016. In those years the lists practically made themselves, as I was limited to what I had been listening to at the time. A lot of which hasn’t held up. 

In a weird way it feels like those lists had a lot more personality. While I can look back with some degree of confusion at artists like 2 Chainz making my top 25, I can at least associate those albums with the memory of listening to them at the time. With this list it felt like I was forced to be biased towards albums that received critical acclaim or that are still relevant today. So in some ways this is a more objective take on a top 25 albums list.

This list will be the same format as always, which is 25-11 in alphabetical order and then the final 10 counted down.

21 Savage - I Am > I Was

While not my personal favorite, I Am > I Was is undeniably 21 Savage’s biggest and most successful album to date. While this album has a lot of the same drawbacks as a lot of major label rap albums (i.e being bloated and lacking a lot of the artist’s personality) this album was still a step forward from Issa Album and contained some great tracks such as a lot, monster and 4L. It’s also getting to the point where almost anything 21 Savage released would be in my top 25.

Baby Keem - The Sound of Bad Habit

I’ve noted several times on this blog how I’m a huge fan of Cardo, who might have the best beats over the past 5-10 years out of any producer. Cardo’s style of dark trap beats with noticeable west-coast influences makes this a great release and Baby Keem’s youthful energetic rapping is the perfect match for this sound. This album also has some serious highlights such as Check Please, Extra and Baby Keem.

Benny the Butcher - Tana Talk 3

Out of the millions of rap artists doing a vintage East Coast sound, Benny the Butcher might be the best. He has a great ear for vintage hardcore east coast beats and he sits over them so well with his calm menacing flow. While this isn’t my favorite sound, it’s honestly hard to imagine it being done any better than it is on this album.

Brockhampton - iridescence

This might have been the most disappointing album of all time. After having the top 3 of my 2017 list all be Brockhampton albums, I was excited as anything for this album. I remember staying up to listen to it at midnight, listening to it straight away and then just being sad. Almost immediately I had stopped liking what was probably my favorite artist at the time. Listening to this album two and a half years later and it’s not that bad honestly. The only part I really can’t get behind is that every single Joba verse is pure cringe. If you had replaced every Ameer verse on the Saturation trilogy with Joba’s autistic screeching those albums would probably be just as bad. Still I’m a huge fan of anything Kevin Abstract does and tracks like Weight, Something About Him and San Marcos hold up really well.

Curren$y, Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist - Fetti

Freddie Gibbs - Freddie

I’m going to review these albums together, as their inclusion here comes down to one thing: I am a huge fan of Freddie Gibbs and even his mediocre releases are enjoyable enough to make my top 25. These two would actually be my two least favorite releases that he has put out over the past seven years, but they still have their highlights. In particular, I loved hearing Freddie rap over Kenny Beats production on Death Row, even if the 03 Greedo feature ruins the song.

Kryptonyte - Kyrptonyte

This album is basically a love letter to both mid 90s Memphis and DJ Screw era Houston, which means that I was always going to love this album. While the rapping can be forgettable at times, the production is always on point (the standout beat would be Ride with Jade) and the hooks are usually memorable and fun. A bit amateurish overall, but still a very enjoyable release.

Maxo Kream - Punken

This album was a more serious step forward for Maxo, who went from rapping about wide bodied cars on The Persona Tape to rapping about his upbringing and family. It was more of a critical success, but personally I saw it as a step back in quality. Due to the consistent themes on Punken the production and rapping isn’t as varied compared to his previous work and that can make the album feel a bit monotonous at time. Still I love Maxo and Work is a genuine song of the year contender.

Mike - War in My Pen

Mike’s style of lo-fi lethargic rapping is so effortlessly dope on this release and the overall flow of this album makes it such an easy listen. It reminds me a lot of the Earl Sweatshirt album from this year, only a touch more amateurish and without the memorable standouts.

Migos - Culture II

This album was a very late addition to this list, but I felt like it would have been disingenuous to not include it. Looking back at Culture II on this list will give me the same feeling that I get when I look back at some of the other terrible albums that I have included in previous years. I’ll probably never listen to this album in full ever again, but I remember listening to this a ton on release and it easily would have been one of my most listened to rap releases of 2018. Tracks like Gang Gang and Narcos are still dope as ever.

Nickelus F - Stuck

Ever since Trick Dice released in 2015 I’ve been a huge fan of Nickelus F. I absolutely loved that album and if I ever get around to doing a 2015 list it would easily feature in the top 5. While I don’t think without Lil Ugly Mane production Nickelus F will ever reach those heights again, Stuck is a pretty close attempt and was probably the hardest cut from my top 10. Trill Burr in particular is a classic song and feels like it could have easily been featured on Trick Dice.

Noname - Room 25

Room 25 was the one album that I reviewed in 2018 and I still agree with pretty much everything I wrote back then. While not as good as Telefone, this was still a great release. 

Playboi Carti - Die Lit

After seeing so many artists of this new trap wave release one good album and then completely fall off, I was shocked that Playboi Carti was able to follow up his debut mixtape with such a strong release. Even on my previous AOTY list I referred to his sound as lightning in a bottle. While I slightly prefer his self titled debut, this album brings the same energy and perhaps has the better highlights of the two with tracks like Shoota, R.I.P. and Long Time. I think both this and Room 25 speak to the depth of 2018, as neither are too far off being as good as the respective artist’s earlier releases that had cracked my top 10.

Saba - Care for Me

While I was never able to get into Bucket List Project, Care For Me connected with me a lot more. Saba spitting that typical soulful, introspective, and mellow Chicago style is incredibly dope on this record and the trap influences go a long way towards making it listenable. The opener Busy / Sirens especially is an incredible beautiful track.

Vince Staples - FM!

This release being included is evidence to how much of a Vince Staples fan I am. I’m honestly not sure why this album exists or what it’s supposed to be. This weird 22-minute concept album is supposed to mimic a radio station I guess? It’s not very good, but I love Vince Staples and the Kenny Beats production is pretty good here.

10. Black Kray AKA SickboyRari - Bloodrain

While only 16 minutes long, this EP was an easy inclusion for me since Amongst the Dead is one of the best rap songs that I’ve heard in recent years. The first six tracks of this EP are okay and top 25 material, but the closer is just so incredible that I can’t leave this out of the top 10. 

9. Mac Miller - Swimming

This was the hardest album to rank for me, but only because I first listened to it about a week ago. It’s hard to compare this to albums that I’ve heard over three years ago, but in my haste to complete this list and move on to 2019 it has to be done. The production here is for the most part magnificent and Mac’s introspective mellow rapping is consistent across the whole album. What’s the Use and Self Care would be my standouts.

8. Czarface & MF DOOM - Czarface Meets Metal Face

I had the previous Czarface album in my top 10 and it’s mostly for the same reason. I feel like 7L has become so comfortable in this setting and has quietly been one of the best producers of the past five years. When you have legendary rappers like Inspectah Deck and MF Doom rapping (Esoteric is no slouch either) over those beats it becomes a very easy inclusion in my top 10.

7. J.I.D - DiCaprio 2

Described sometimes as a southern Kendrick Lamar, it’s easy to see when listening to this album why these comparisons are made. JID is clearly heavily influenced by the Compton rapper and borrows a lot of his iconic flows. It’s easy to forgive as the end product here is so strong and songs such as Slick Talk, 151 Rum, Off Deez and Off Da Zoinkys are all incredible. While a lack of consistency holds this back from featuring higher, this is still a great album and I’m excited to see what JID does in the future.

6. Kids See Ghosts - Kids See Ghosts

When I was making this list, I felt like there was a clear gap between these top six albums and the rest of this list. All of these albums are incredibly strong and indicative of the strength of this year. Kids See Ghosts arguably has Kanye’s best production since MBDTF, as he creates these melancholic atmospheric beats that perfectly match Kid Cudi who is rightly the star of this record. For Cudi, this is easily the best thing that he has ever done and it feels like the great record that he was always destined to make. The biggest thing holding this release back is that it’s only 23 minutes long, so it doesn’t quite fulfill it’s potential. Reborn and Kids See Ghosts would by my standouts and both are absolute classics.

5. Death Grips - Year of the Snitch

This is the first time that I’ve mentioned Death Grips on this blog and it’s for the simple reason that I haven’t really enjoyed any of their work since Jenny Death. Year of the Snitch is a fantastic return to form in my opinion and is perhaps one of the strongest releases in their entire discography. As you could expect it’s a 37 minute adrenaline rush with the noisy chaotic sound that Death Grips are known for. Death Grips Is Online, Black Paint and Hahaha would also be some of my favorite Death Grips songs overall.

4. Pusha T - Daytona

These four Kanye releases in four weeks felt like such a momentous event and Daytona was the perfect way to kick it off. Within 45 seconds of If You Know You Know you could tell that Kanye had returned to form and that these releases, while short, were going to be handled with the same perfectionist mindset that had led to Kanye releasing so many classic albums. Similar to Kids See Ghosts, Kanye perfectly blended in to match his guest and was able to create beats that were absolutely perfect for Pusha T’s aggressive boastful raps. Pusha T also raps on this record like he had something to prove and it ended up being a defining performance for the legendary rapper. When thinking back to 2018 my mind will always go to Kanye releasing four albums in four weeks. Especially since in the case of Daytona and Kids See Ghosts the end product was so strong.

3. Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs

Some Rap Songs is perhaps the release that has benefited the most from this list being made two and a half years late. While unnassuming at first, I found myself repeatedly going back to this one over and over. Earl’s lo-fi production on this album is incredibly hypnotic and serves as a great backdrop for the Odd Future rapper. While it has often been masked by edgy or depressive lyrics, Earl has always been a great rapper and I feel like on Some Rap Songs he was able to reach his full potential. Overall this album is just extremely impressive as both the production and rapping here are top notch.

2. JPEGMAFIA - Veteran

I’ve gone back and forth dozens of times as to which of these next two albums would feature at number one as both would be incredibly deserving. In the case of Veteran, this angry, raw and rebellious record served as my introduction to JPEGMAFIA, who is now one of my most loved rap artists. Featuring gltich influenced beats and aggressive vocals, JPEGMAFIA has created a truly unique sound that pulls influences from every corner of the rap world. While this album has the strongest standouts of any record released this year (1539 N. Calvert, Real Nega, Baby I’m Bleeding and I Cannot Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies to name a few), ultimately I was uncomfortable having it at number one due to the fact that the middle of this album is so inconsistent. Apart from that it’s an amazing album and borderline classic.

1. Denzel Curry - TA1300

As of writing this Denzel Curry is my favorite rap artist thanks to his enegetic delivery, tremendous ear for beats and unique songwriting. It should be no surprise then that I loved this album, considering that TA13OO is close to being his magnum opus while undoubetedly being the album that led to him being taken seriously. Prior to TA13OO Denzel was just the ex-RVIDXR KLVN rapper who made Ultimate, who was also dismissed by many as just being a trap artist. After this album everyone was forced to respect him as an artist, rapper and songwriter, as it’s impossible to listen to this album and not recognize the raw talent that is on display. The highlights on this album (Vengeance,  Black Balloons, Sirens and Percs) are all incredible and help this album get to borderline classic status. As of right now I’m still hesitant to call this album a classic, as there’s a few hiccups on this album and overall it lacks a cohesiveness when listening to it front to back. Perhaps I’m being a little harsh, but considering the talent of Denzel I know that he has a genuine classic in him. I’d be surprised if when it’s all said and done TA13OO is still remembered as the highlight of his discography.