#EVERY EXPANSION TRAILER. every time. i will simply pass away about it.

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i'm so normal and fine about the dawntrailer i'm totally and absolutely 100% average. absolutely fucking john doe over here.

[nikibogwater]

(Long post incoming. You have been warned)

Reasons Niki is Excited for the Diamond/Pearl Remakes:

Diamond was Baby Niki’s first Pokémon game and I don’t think I could even begin to express the impact that game had on me. My gaming life was practically dominated by Pokémon from age 10 to 18, and it all began in the Sinnoh region. So yes, Nostalgia is a big factor in this.

I have wanted a 3D Sinnoh remake ever since I played Pokémon X for the first time. Being able to see the Pokémon actually move and emote brought so much immersion to the Pokémon experience for me, and pairing that with the deep, expansive lore that the Sinnoh games offered is the perfect union of my two favorite elements from the series. 

Like a lot of people, I was initially put off by the oddly-proportioned chibi overworld sprites, but it is already beginning to grow on me. I think the idea was to capture the look and feel of the original DS games as much as possible, and to that effect, I think this art style does really well. Everything else about the game looks very crisp and nice to me. The environments are lovely, the backgrounds are interesting, and most importantly, the Pokémon are heckin’ cute. 

I didn’t have access to the wireless functions in the original game as a kid. I didn’t get to experience connecting with others online until X and Y. And with the confirmation that the Underground will be returning in the remakes, I am so excited to finally be able to have the full D/P experience that I missed as a kid.

I’ve been really disenchanted with the mainline Pokémon games for the past few years. I think Sun/Moon is where I began to feel disconnected from the series, like it wasn’t bringing me the sense of childlike wonder and excitement that it used to. I initially chalked this up to my simply becoming an adult, but then I played Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee, and found myself sucked into that little game almost as much as the games of my childhood. Looking back on it now, I think maybe it was an issue of immersion for me. With the demands of both fans and whoever is forcing Game Freak to produce a new main series title every flipping year, a lot of immersion had to be sacrificed for the sake of getting the game out on time. Because Pokémon Let’s Go was a comparatively smaller game that only featured 152 Pokémon, the developers were able to spend more time making the environments and the Pokémon feel more alive. We got Pokémon following you, Shinies appearing in the overworld, Pokémon you could ride, dynamic backgrounds for battles, clean lines and lag-free rendering...none of which were carried over into Sword/Shield, because that game was simply way too big for the amount of time they gave themselves to make it. For me, if you simply cannot give yourself the amount of time needed to make a massive game feel polished and immersive, you should stick to creating a smaller game with less content, and more polish. I’ve always been a Quality over Quantity person, I guess, and Pokémon main series games were not delivering on that front for me anymore. 

BUT with the D/P remakes, I am already beginning to see that a great deal of the Quality I want is going to be delivered; Pleasant scenery with clean lines and nice colors (instead of the strangely blurry mess that was Sword/Shield’s environments), a significantly high chance that there will be far fewer lag/rendering issues, and a faithful adaptation of one of the few Pokémon main series games with a story and world that I can legitimately lose myself in. (Oh I dearly hope they’ve kept the Legendaries as terrifying as they were in the originals...). 

I guess for me, I do not need a Pokémon game to blow me away with something new. Simply having them improve on what has already worked in the past is enough of a reason for me to come back and buy the newer titles. I wouldn’t mind having the series go in a completely new direction, create something that we’ve never seen before, give us the ultimate Pokémon experience with insanely good graphics and mind-blowing story--but given how much they struggled with Sword/Shield, I’m beginning to think that that is just too much to ask for when Game Freak absolutely refuses to let a year pass without cranking out a new title (this is why I’m still a little skeptical about Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and am withholding any excitement over that one until we have more information). Big games take time to be made well, and since Game Freak has made it clear they do not want to give themselves that time, I’m more interested in seeing them use what time they do give themselves in the most efficient and beneficial way possible. 

In keeping with the above point, the trailer explicitly said that the only Pokémon available in the D/P remakes will be the ones that were present in the original games. Again, I think this is a smart move on their part, because it means they can devote more time to making the Pokémon they do have feel more alive and full of personality, rather than having to pour all their time into programming in the literal 1,000+ Pokémon there are now. I know this kind of thing will upset a lot of people, but again, I’m more about the Quality over the Quantity.  But we'll see if Game Freak was able to deliver on that front like I’m hoping.

THE MUSIC. ‘Nuff said. 

While the trailer made it clear that they are trying to stick as close to the original games as possible, I am holding on to the hope that they will have made the necessary quality of life changes: the return of the optional Exp Share that lets all the Pokémon in your party gain xp from a battle, the elimination of HM moves that take up a battle slot, and an easier way to customize Pokémon EVs, such as candies or the Super Training feature from Gen VI (seriously why did they take that out in Gen VII???). Game Freak has slowly been inching forward with the series these last few years, introducing small changes that greatly improve the gameplay as a whole, and I think there’s good enough reason to hope that they will be smart enough to incorporate those changes into D/P remakes. 

I’m a little mystified that the general response to the remake announcements is already so overwhelmingly apathetic and even negative. I can understand not liking the art style, but for me, art direction is only one small component to a game, and even if it isn’t done perfectly, it can still be made up for in other areas. The fandom has been pestering for Sinnoh remakes for years, and now that Game Freak is trying to give us what we want, I would have thought more of us would be making a more positive fuss about it. Then again, the original game is 15 years old now. Most of us who played it have probably already moved on from the franchise as a whole. But for me, I know I’m going to buy this remake and enjoy it, even if it has imperfections. Because really, that’s all I want from a Pokémon game--to feel like a kid again and have a good time. Maybe it’s simplistic and naïve, but that’s just Niki in a nutshell for you. ✨

[lindoig8]

Sunday 18 April

We were on the road a little earlier than usual and soon met up with a couple (Dad and adult Daughter, we think) going the other way. We had seen almost no other cars on this road, but they hailed us down and asked if we had seen the other two cars in their party of three vehicles. We had, just a few minutes earlier, so they were not far ahead of us and this car had obviously passed them without recognising them. We knew of a side road up to the Strzelecki Track and suggested that their companions may have taken that route, but it was in the opposite direction they wanted to go – to Lyndhurst rather than Innamincka. They turned around and we let them pass us while they raced off to find their friends – only for us to pass them again 30-40 clicks ahead where they were again studying their maps and GPS. We stopped again and used Heather’s Maps.me app to give them the lie of the land because they couldn’t understand their own GPS. Off they went again and we caught up with them and their travelling companions at the junction with the Strzelecki. They had finally found each other, having probably never been more than 10 clicks apart and having passed each other at least once, possibly twice. I have an excellent navigator aboard so I hope we never get into the sort of pickle they seemed to have succumbed to.

The Strzelecki was something of a disappointment! We drove it 191 kilometres west to Lyndhurst and at least half of it was sealed with a good deal more prepared and ready for sealing. I reckon the government, all governments, should just decide to seal the entire surface of Australia and be done with it. There is so little adventure left in the Outback and we are continually hearing stories of the Outback Way, the Plenty Highway, the Tanami and who knows what else being sealed. It is just so sad!!! It will change the face of the Outback once the luxury hotels and resorts are built to take advantage of the bustling tourist traffic on all the sealed freeways (probably tollways!) – totally destroying the last vestige of romance, excitement and challenge. Within a very few years, there will be no authentic Outback to see and explore. If you want to learn about the Outback, do it now or it will be too late.

We had a few more stops along the way and at one place, I heard water dripping onto the road and found that the tap on one of our water tanks had been broken off when a stone flew up and hit it. I plugged it with 'Blue-tack' but doubted if it would hold (and it didn’t).

We were going to get fuel at Lyndhurst, but the bowser was not working and would be fixed in a few days. So we went south to Copley – alas, it was Sunday and the bowser there was closed too. So we ended up at Leigh Creek again, close to 50 kilometres south of Lyndhurst when we wanted to go north, but at least we got fuel. We booked into the Caravan Park at the service station so we could have showers, only to find we had to return to the servo to get the code for the ablution block.

We then found that another stone had broken the inlet hose to our water tanks so we have had to rely on our own tanks and the DC pump in the van ever since. Fortunately, we figured we had plenty of water to last us to Alice Springs so it was not going to delay us while we arranged repairs - at some unknown location!

It is interesting that we always have hundreds of small gravel stones rolling around on the car roof, making it difficult to open the back because they get lodged in the joint between the door and the roof. Every horizontal surface under the car and van is chockers with similar stones, often quite a lot larger, but the only way they can get onto the roof of the car is to be flicked up onto the sloping front of the van and bounce the 2-3 metres forward onto the car roof. There is plenty of evidence of minor stone damage on the van so I don’t suppose it is all that surprising.

A car and trailer turned up a few minutes after we arrived in the caravan park and the woman pleaded with me to tell her the code for the ablution block because she was desperate to use the toilet. I was reluctant because I thought it was a con, but eventually agreed – and they never returned to the servo to pay for their stay in the park. But next day, they wanted to empty their Portaloo and found the dump-point was padlocked. We never had a key so when she asked me for one, I redirected her to the servo and an hour later she returned, presumably having been forced to pay for the night in order to get the key to the dump-point.

We had a loquacious busybody parked next to us at Leigh Creek who was very eager to tell us all the things we were doing wrong and where we should go instead of what our plans involved, but I eventually escaped him and hid out in the van instead. And he left well before us next morning so I avoided most of his ramblings then too.

Monday 19 April

We needed to exchange our empty gas bottle for a full one so went to the servo only to find that the dust had clagged up the padlock on our gas bottle and I had to use some bolt-cutters to cut the lock off. Dearest gas ever at $50 a bottle – usually under $30. (I subsequently had to cut the clogged padlock off our second gas bottle too!)

Our first stop was Farina – the ruins of what was once a sizeable town of well over 300. There were lots of ruins around of shops, a smithy, school, hardware outlet, train station and yards, a bank, mill, bakery, etc., but in 1955 everyone simply walked away and left the place to crumble in their wake. We have seen quite a few places like this, mainly based around a single industry or service (telegraph or train station, for example), but this was a significant diverse township with a Council and local laws – yet within a single year, it became a deserted, heavily-vandalised ruin. Where did everyone go? What did they do in their new abodes? If they left everything behind, how did they survive? It is not much more than 50 years ago, certainly well within my lifetime, and it seems so hard to understand how people simply decided to leave en masse and how they survived afterwards. It certainly gives me cause for thought.

And why are all such buildings so heavily vandalised? Vandals will wreck anything, but most of the wrecked buildings we saw were made out of stone, often constructed of two layers with an air-gap between and up to about 6-700mm thick. What induces vandals to demolish such structures? It would be bloody hard work for no reward. One of the sidings we saw beside the old Ghan track had been left in such a state that I could have given some of the walls a gentle push and the entire wall and roof would have collapsed on me. It looked quite dangerous so why would anyone deliberately leave a building in such a precarious condition? Some very strange people inhabit this world!

We stopped in Marree to fill out our Northern Territory border forms. It took almost an hour – and they were never even looked at. So much bureaucracy for so little benefit. I have probably always been something of a bureaucrat myself but hopefully, always for a purpose. This Covid thing seems simply to always have been a device to keep the population under the thumb of the politicians.

Marree is at the eastern end of the famous Oodnadatta Track (and at the southern end of the Birdsville Track that we drove a few years ago) and the road itself was probably in better condition than it has been for any of our earlier 3-4 crossings. It is more than 600 kilometres of gravel and ends at Marla on the sealed Stuart Highway. We stopped at several places that day: a couple of defunct railway sidings (from when the Ghan paralleled the road en route to Alice Springs) as well as a few dry riverbeds and occasional watercourses, looking at plants and looking for the very elusive birds – of which there have been very few so far this trip. Surprisingly, at one expansive patch of water, I saw a flock of Silver Gulls (500+ km from the ocean), an Australasian Grebe, some Pacific Black Ducks and some Little Black Cormorants – as well as the usual Budgerigars – many more of them than I can recall on previous trips, but many fewer Zebra Finches.

We stopped to photograph some of the Art in the Desert, quirky stuff erected by a local pastoralist who decided that there needed to be more entertainment along the Track. It is just a string of quaint installations a couple of clicks long on his property beside the Track. I will post a couple of pics if I can find them.

We camped overnight at Coward Springs. Literally an oasis in the desert with an extensive permanent wetland that is the habitat of quite a few waterbirds, despite us not seeing any this trip. There were about 150 people there overnight: very different from our previous visits, and a nice little earner for the current owners at $15 a head (plus $10 a head for day visitors). Mind you, there is a lot of work for them to do, just the two of them looking after a big area with diverse challenges not encountered at most ‘resorts’. There are several big date palms there and on our first visit several years ago, we picked some and put them in our pockets for later – needless to say, our pockets ended up full of a dusty gooey mess that was quite inedible. Once bitten…… so we never indulged this time.

Before dinner, I walked to the natural hot spa but never went in. It is not all that big and there was a family already in it so adding us (even if we had wanted) would have made it a bit crowded. I strolled around the edge of the wetland hoping to see some of its inhabitants, but although I was almost constantly regaled with a cacophony of gentle squeaks and squawks from the reeds and shrubbery, I saw only Crested Pigeons.

[the-l-spacer]

(Ch 1) (Ch 2)

Summary: Lloyd wakes up one morning to discover that, on a whim, the Metaverse had decided to release him and Raven from the Lovers archetype they had been locked in for as long as either could remember.

In the process, however, reality became… just a little screwed up.

Now, Raven is gone, and in his place is David Adams. David Adams, who had never left Ashland, working middle-management at Justacorp. David Adams, who had never heard the anvils, never jumped off Warner's Peak.

But Lloyd remembers everything, and he makes it his personal quest to win back the love of his life.

...No matter how many 'strictly professional' coffee dates it took.

I started a (hopefully) multi-chapter, Raven-kind-of-has-amnesia fic! Title and everything's still very much a work in progress, and this chapter is more an introduction than anything, but I hope y’all enjoy reading anyways!!

- 

The last thing Raven says to Lloyd before he (quite literally) vanishes the next morning is a semi-conscious, “Good night, my love,” mumbled into the latter’s chest as they both fall asleep.

Not that he knows of his boyfriend’s disappearance just yet, of course. For now, Lloyd Allen is asleep. Well, half-asleep, roused from a dream he can no longer remember by a rather odd sensation in his chest, a sensation that he promptly attempts to shake off, willing himself to sink back into slumber. 

He succeeds with the former, though the Metaverse always finds other ways to keep him from the latter.

This time, it’s the mid-morning sun that does it, filtering in through a gap in the bedroom’s curtains, casting a single, warm beam of light across the bed. When the light reaches his face, Lloyd shuts his eyes tighter, burrowing deep under the covers.

“Mmmmfgh,” he groans. “Ravey, draw the curtains.”

When he doesn’t feel the responding shift in the mattress, nor hear the sounds of curtains being pulled, shielding his precious eyes against the sun, his half-conscious mind is consumed by halfhearted annoyance. He really didn’t know what else he expected, considering Raven was always the heavier sleeper.

Eyes still closed, he stretches out his arm, meaning to rouse his (presumably) unconscious partner. Instead of feeling Raven’s telltale warmth, however, his hand connects with nothing but an empty expanse of bed.

Fully awake now (and against his will, too), Lloyd sits up and stretches, preparing to give Raven — probably up and outside without having the decency to give his boyfriend his precious five minutes extra sleep — a good telling-to. He swings his legs to the edge of the bed, and at long last, gets up with a final, drawn-out groan.

He first realises that something is decidedly off when that strange feeling in his chest returns full-force as he’s brushing his teeth.

“This again?” He aims the question, garbled through foam, at his sleepy-eyed self in the mirror.

Spit, rinse, close the faucet, done.

He regards his reflection once again. “No response, hmm?”

More silence.

“Well, I’ll just have to work this out for myself. No thanks to you, and no thanks to Ravey, apparently. I have no idea how he’s up before I am.”

He goes through a mental list of everything that could have possibly gone wrong. Heart attack? No, there would be other accompanying signs. Some other heart condition? Impossible, at least not if the folks who built his body on the Singularity had anything to say about it.

Anxiety? It is a possibility, but what does he have to be anxious about? Compared to where he was a scant year ago, his current position of ‘Carnival Co-Runner, Trainer of One Not-So-New-Now Post-Human, and not to forget, Possessor of an Actual Living, Breathing, Positively Spry Human Body’ is downright enviable.

Perhaps it’s simply dehydration, he decides. He and Ravey did have quite a bit to drink the night before, nothing a quick trip to their small, cosy kitchen couldn’t solve. Plus, he hasn’t quite ruled out the anxiety option. Maybe, in the haze of alcohol and festivities (yesterday being their time-is-fluid-th pre-anniversary, and all), his boyfriend had talked about pulling yet another zero-gravity, hair-whitening stunt. He swears to question him once he finds him, probably in the kitchen nursing his morning hangover over a cup of strong coffee.

But when he doesn’t. When all telltale signs of life in the kitchen — the smell of cooking, of roasting coffee beans, of a chair askew or messy countertops — are simply nonexistent, that’s when Lloyd knows that something is very, very wrong.

Because the kitchen isn’t just empty, it’s as if no one but him had occupied it ever since its construction. There is one, lone kitchen chair tucked neatly at the table, a single mug, one set of silverware, and when Lloyd dashes back to the bathroom to confirm that he isn’t just hallucinating, one toothbrush, his own.

It isn’t just these rooms either. The living room coffee table, which Lloyd is certain would be filled with bottles and wine glasses in the wake of the previous night, is completely empty, and gone from various surfaces are the framed photos of him and Ravey at the carnival, at the Second Playhouse’s opening night. Even their wardrobe isn’t spared, devoid of the violent splash of purple brought by his other half’s various coats, vests, dresses, shirts and heels.

The sensation of wrongness doubles in intensity, made worse by the rapid thump-thump-thumping of his heart. Lloyd’s shaking knees give way, depositing him onto Raven’s side of the bed, cold and bare.

It is then he finally realises exactly what he’s feeling. The sensation is his heart is emptiness, something alien to him ever since he had gotten his body back and returned home to nothing but light and love (and a near-death experience, though that was an accident and hardly counted), even the memory of his hilariously disastrous homecoming sending another icy knife through his chest.

Raven is gone. With it, a piece of himself has been ripped away, and all Lloyd feels is empty.

- 

The rest of his morning is spent in a daze, running around the carnival, asking every worker, Floozy, honorary Floozy and Hell Hag he passes if they had seen his boyfriend. 

“Nope, sorry Lloyd.”

“Haven’t seen him. Isn’t he usually with you?”

“Sorry sugar, No sign of Raven Baby ‘round here just yet.”

A flurry of activity — people setting up booths, clearing the last of the previous day’s detritus, cranking the ferris wheel in preparation for the guests who would arrive from wherever the Carnival decides to park itself for the day — swirls around him, but Lloyd registers none of it. He runs and searches every corner of the place, until his hunt takes him to the last stop, Han Mi’s trailer.

Han hears the feeble knock on her door, and decides not to say anything when she opens it to a panting, wild-eyed Lloyd, who promptly proceeds to wobble past her, collapsing onto her couch, head in his hands.

“Okay, so you didn’t remember to take your shoes off before coming in, I assume you’ve got bad news.”

Through the gap in his fingers, Lloyd mutters a soft, “Shit. Sorry, Han,” before kicking his shoes off and toward the half-open door. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Han sighs, and slides a chair over, taking a seat opposite the man. Not beside. They aren’t quite there yet. 

A brief moment of silence passes, before Lloyd speaks up. “This is probably an exercise in futility, but. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Raven around this morning, have you?”

Letting out a sympathetic whistle, Han says, “No dice, sorry. I woke up, like, fifteen minutes ago, and I think I’d know if Raven was in my trailer. He isn’t with you or the Floozies?”

Lloyd deflates, letting his head fall backward to rest against the wall behind him. Addressing the ceiling, he says, “He very much isn’t. I checked everywhere, and this was my last stop.”

“Maybe he’s running a quick errand in another narrative,” Han offers.

“No. It’s not just that Raven’s gone from the carnival, he’s.” Lloyd scrubs a hand across his eyes, and rests his gaze on her. “He’s vanished completely. All his clothes, his personal items, his photos. It’s like he had never even existed.”

“Wait. What?” Han Mi’s eyes go wide. “Does everyone else know about this?”

“They only know that I can’t find him. You’re the first person I’ve told about… the rest. And there’s more.”

“Wait. Before you tell me, have you eaten yet? Drank anything? You look like a wreck… no offence.”

“None taken, and no, I haven’t. There hasn’t been time to, with,” Lloyd vaguely gestures, “everything that’s been happening.”

“Well, if he’s really up and disappeared, a little time taken to catch your breath couldn’t hurt, could it?” Sure, she was still mad at the shit Lloyd pulled as the writer for the Cabaret, but she didn’t hate him. And she knew painfully what it was like to lose someone she loved.

Lloyd begins to protest, but Han silences him with a glare. She’s persuasive like that.

“Are we doing carrot cake?” He manages feebly.

Han nods. “We’re doing carrot cake.”

[whimsicottonnee]

The Thesis of Pokemon Games : Why The Galar Region and SWSH Games Offers a Complete Reworking of the Series’ Central Thesis

 Pokémon as a plot-driven series can, first and foremost, be characterized by its insistence on the dual concepts of nostalgia and locality : particularly when combined as ‘local nostalgia.’

I’m not really going to go into my whole argument of how this is pulled off by the game developers and which aspects best contribute and remind us of ‘local nostalgia’ because most of us already know. All it takes is one listen of the ost for Twinleaf Town or Aspertia Town for players to become intensely nostalgic for older games. The running theme of the player’s mother, in my opinion, is one of the major keys to achieving this, as well.

So, the theses of pokémon games (or at least a good number of them!!) deal with the player’s local sphere and the expansion of it. It’s a game about going off to college or just simply moving away from home. It doesn’t have to be the player’s lifelong home, necessarily. Shadows of Almia, the Hoenn games, and the Alola games are the best examples I can think of where expanding your local sphere does not necessarily mean that the player’s never been outside of the in-game residence before. But despite being from another region, Chicole Village is undoubtedly the player’s home in Shadows of Almia. Partner Farm is the bedrock to which the player returns, repeatedly, to meet old friends and family before embarking off again to an adventure even further away. In the Alola games, the player has recently moved from Kanto, yet it’s clear through gameplay and character interactions that the player considers Hau’oli Outskirts to be their home. The player’s mother, equally key to constructing a hometown as the score partnered with it, is another symbol of nostalgia. The game’s storytelling, in most if not every game, is designed so that the player only knows their mother as a kind, warm, supportive, and ever welcoming presence : home is where the heart lies or “east or west, home is best.” So, in embarking from these cozy, nostalgic areas with the warm wishes of your mother, the innocent aspiration of moving out is well-portrayed in the series.

Here is where ‘backyard theory,’ as I like to call it, begins. The player (save for the Galar player, who routinely has the secret of meeting characters and locations spoiled by Hop) has very little, if any, knowledge of the region that surrounds their cozy hometown. The player must gain their first pokémon and travel down unfamiliar routes catching more and more unfamiliar pokémon. There is guidance to the story, of course. Roadblocks are constructed to prevent entering “too-difficult” levels, and a combination of the professor, rivals, and enemies provide incremental story, but there’s room to explore. Some games leave enough room that players get lost their first run-through (@ the Sinnoh and Johto games). Each town is new, and the player is welcome to aimlessly explore these areas : speak with the locals, peek into apartment buildings and chat with the occupants, accept items from kind npcs who reinvigorate the optimistic worldview of the series, etc. In time, the player expects theme songs to play at certain areas, expects the sounds that the pokémon make, and expects dialogue. Previously unfamiliar buildings become “oh that’s Guzma’s dad’s house” or “that’s where the boy who plays Unwavering Emotions lives.” And while this is a mechanic of most games (after all, exploration is a fundamental aspect to rpg), the pokémon games take it further.

Certain symbols become emblematic. The Pokecenter, in particular, becomes a bedrock of nostalgia. It certainly helps that the theme is only altered, never rewritten, between every iteration of the series. Soon, the player’s backyard and local sphere is no longer confined to their hometown but encompasses the entire region. Every player has a ‘first time’ entering Undella Town, but the music becomes hauntingly nostalgic once players have become familiar with it. There’s a reason why, despite only being a route theme, DPPT’s Route 209 got a remix in the latest Smash rather than, say, Sycamore’s Theme.

So, once the climax occurs (be it capturing Giratina or saving N from the actions of his abusive father or helping Lusamine’s loved ones save her from her own derangement), it’s not the Champion-to-Be but instead the local girl from Twinleaf Town with the Eterna Roserade and the Snowbelle Snover and is friends with the swimmer kids down by the resort. The varying plots of the various pokémon games aside, the climax of the series is when the local sphere become the entire region. And it’s at this point that you’ve earned being the Champion, regardless of your team’s coverage and levels.

Alola, in a sense, did one of the best jobs in capitalizing on this universal thesis in making the Champion theme, the player’s theme, an extraordinary remix of the entire game’s theme, but that’s another meal altogether.

 Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield turn all of this on its head. There are so many npcs that the player cannot speak to, and, in most of the larger cities, there are more npcs that the player cannot interact with than there are npcs the player can interact with. Motostoke struck me significantly in the beginning of the game because I ran around the city wondering why there were so many public areas, like shops and boutiques and plot-related venues, that I could explore but only three or four private residences that I could enter. Most npcs are found in passing along the street. As they pass the player, a small speech bubble pops over their head as if they’re mumbling to themself or merely speaking to the player in passing. Fundamentally, the player cannot interact with the locals. Most places that the player does explore is also heavily driven by the plot with either Leon or Hop telling the player to go to them in order to advance the… ‘story.’

The ‘story’ is going gym to gym with repeated encouragement or roadblock without being allowed to consider the weight of heavier concerns : i.e. the chairman killing the entire region through a weirdly futuristic pokémon that supposedly is thousands of years old. Everyone the player can speak with in the towns already knows the player, since the ‘Gym Challenge’ is broadcasted on regional telly for private enjoyment (another mesh of public and private spheres that simply feels jarring for such a private-based series). Many npcs will tell the player “I’m routing for you, you know!” or “You’re my favorite Gym Challenger!” without giving any information about themself. The player no longer expands their local spheres ; they simply allow locals to get to know the regional superstar.

The climax of the game is the player saving Leon after he has already significantly weakened the legendary pokémon on the player’s behalf so that the player may succeed in finishing Eternatus off and capturing it like any other Dynamax pokémon. Thus, the three who ultimately save the region from being sucked of its life by the Darkest Day are the three superstars who have had their entire careers broadcasted regionally on television.

The player’s mom never calls or shows up throughout the game once the player leaves their hometown, and she’s never given a personality. She’s cute, alright. milf rights. But one of the wonders to many other pokémon games is the knowledge that your mother had something similar once. I’ve been referencing the Sinnoh, Unova, and Alola games a lot, but I truly think these games understood ‘local nostalgia’ the best of the main series games. In the Sinnoh games, the player’s mother shows up in Hearthome and speaks of old days in the Contest Hall. In Unova, the player’s mom seems well-acquainted with cleaning up the mess left after pokémon battles. In Kalos, once of the more shallow games in the series for local nostalgia, the player’s mom was a famous Rhyhorn racer with a story of her own. In Alola, the player’s mom’s Meowth and her friendship with Kukui paint her character vibrantly ; it also certainly helps that one of the end cutscenes to the game is the reiteration of the first cutscene with her on the deck relishing the Alolan sea breeze. In Galar, however, there is none of that characterization. Her own pokémon, a Kanto Munchlax, says nothing of her character ; why not give her something that lets the player understand that she is a Galarian village mom? Give her a Skwovel or a cute Chewtle to characterize her. She never encourages the player to come home for a nap if the player ever gets tired. And, so, despite the hometown theme being really lovely and charming (and the Budews in the front yard being a heartwrench), the idea of nostalgia is almost nonexistent in the game.

My personal take on the nostalgia of Postwick is not within the game itself. It’s more the idea of Postwick, for me. The hype of the game and the humor behind the starter release and the lovely lofi remixes that came out for the trailer themes before the Debates began is what is nostalgic for me. Driving through the desert around the town I live in with the windows down in the one-hundred-degree heat listening to SWSH lofi remixes is what makes me nostalgic for Postwick : not the narrative of the game.

And, while that’s a personal experience, all of the other above reasons are why Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield simply feel hollow. There was a sacrifice of local nostalgia for the sake of how ‘cool’ superstars can be.

[raw-output]

20 Years.

Two-thirds of a lifetime ago, a ten-year-old boy in a scratchy wool sweater sat huddled under an old down blanket. The first proper snow of the season had come the week before, and the boy hadn’t been dressed for building forts. Now here he was - bored, sick and sweaty. His mother entered the room with a mug of undrinkably hot milk with honey and butter. In her other hand was an issue of GAME.EXE, a computer gaming magazine. The words “HALF-LIFE” were plastered across the bottom of the cover. The boy loved reading, and loved computers, and the milk needed time to cool off anyway. He opened the magazine and flipped to page 8 after finding it in the table of contents. The boy grew older and switched languages, countries and continents, but his favorite game never changed.

-

It’s hard to compress two decades into text, but I will attempt to do so when it comes to my relationship with the Half-Life series that began all those years ago, with that preview article in that magazine.

The article  was written in a second-person perspective that really stuck out to me, and was filled with screenshots that would later turn out to be of an unreleased rough beta version of the game. It ran through several dramatized, episodic descriptions of events in the game, then listed out the weapons used in the game, the enemies you would face and the tactics to deal with them. Finally, there was an interview with Marc Laidlaw himself. This single article was sufficient to make me completely insufferable to my parents for the next few months. “I want to play Half-Life,” I would say. At first, this meant asking to go to an Internet cafe a few blocks away from home, and for money to pay by the hour and use one of their beefy gaming PCs. Later on, it meant asking for a copy of the game, and for time on the “main” home computer - the only machine that could run the game at all, in glorious 320x240 resolution that gave me headaches.

-

A couple of years passed. The move to the US threw everything into a pleasant state of disarray, but the one thing that hadn’t changed was having to ask my parents to use the computer to play Half-Life. I had found one of my own soon after arriving in the States, but it had no sound card. It was there, on my mother’s computer, that I finally beat the game. My thirteenth birthday present was a copy of the newly released Opposing Force expansion. My birthday cake featured an edible photo of myself playing in a fountain in downtown Chicago, which my mother doodled over with brightly colored frosting. I was now knee-deep in toxic green sludge, a crowbar in one hand, and a proud Lambda logo on my chest.

Most kids in my 8th and 9th grade classes didn’t share my enthusiasm for Half-Life. They played console games and were rightfully hyped about the Playstation 2 and X-Box. In search of like-minded people, I took to the Internet. My options for getting online in 2001 were limited to libraries - either during lunch at school, or at the Naperville Public Library, which was a hour-long walk from home. I discovered Planet Half-Life, an offshoot of the Gamespy network. Through it, I discovered the fact that my favorite game was designed from the ground up to be moddable. I learned of Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and Sven Co-op. I discovered the Handy Vandal’s Almanac and The Snarkpit, two communities focused on level design. Having no reliable internet at home, I downloaded the level editor - then called Worldcraft - onto a floppy drive and brought it home to install. For the first time, I wasn’t simply playing the game. My parents looked on as I worked to figure out the obtuse user interface, trying to remember what I’d read earlier in the day. They raised their eyebrows when I finally managed to compile and run my first level - a hollow, unlit concrete box 512 units across with a single prefab trashcan hovering in the center. There wasn’t much more I could do in the limited time I was allowed to use the good computer, but I had caught the bug. My notebooks were filled with doodles of level layouts, my mind filled with cheesy storylines to match.

Eventually my family moved to a house with proper internet access, and I got a set of hardware with enough power under the hood to run both the game and the editor. It could even produce sound! All the things I could only read and salivate about were now within my reach, and I gorged myself on them. Counter-Strike quickly fell by the wayside, but Team Fortress and Sven Co-Op did not. Natural Selection came out and blew me away with how different a Half-Life mod could look and feel from the original game. I stayed up past midnight, playing, building, and playing some more. I learned that projects can die - when the extremely tongue-in-cheek Scientist Slaughterhouse mod went silent.

The release of the Half-Life 2 trailer took everybody by surprise. I had called one of my like-minded friends and we synch-watched it together, pausing every few minutes to let the video buffer and gush about how amazing everything looked and how much we were looking forward to messing with the modding toolkit. The subsequent beta leak and resulting delays taught me to be patient.

The move to California was not long after, and my patience was immediately put to the test as most of my belongings were stuck with the moving company, including my computer. I must have gone through a full pack of printer paper in less than a month, drawing up concepts and layouts for Xen Rebels, a mod centered around a semi-peaceful human colonization of the realm set after the events of Half-Life. Once my computer arrived, it was right back to the late nights and groggy mornings for me. Our home Internet was bad but workable, and I spent countless hours with the new and more creative mods that were being released, including The Specialists - a strong attempt to recreate the gun-fighting and martial arts stylings of Hong-Kong action movies in a multiplayer game. Around the same time I was introduced to the strange new world of anime, and decided that I simply must change the two throwable knives offered by The Specialists into kunai and throwing needles. This of course required me to learn 3D modelling. At the time, this was done with Milkshape 3D, a model editor compatible with most contemporary game formats. Once again, countless hours of figuring out the interface and the workflow followed, set to the calming tones of the Unreal, Deus Ex and Half-Life soundtracks. Creating models felt a lot more freeform than levels as I wasn’t constrained to a unit grid or forced to use convex geometry, and one day the new throwing weapons were in. I published the modified models on a forum to exactly zero fanfare. Around the same time, I began learning the basics of Photoshop in school, so modelling and texturing went hand in hand. To say my early textures were atrocious would be an affront to honest, hard-working atrocious textures the world over, but I continued my studies. My experience with working in 3D even netted me a 2nd place award at the school art contest - money which I immediately put back into upgrading my computer.

Half-Life 2 came out in November of 2004, to universal praise and celebration. I received the collector’s edition as a present for New Year, along with a copy of Raising The Bar. I beat the game the same morning, without a wink of sleep between unwrapping my present and the final darkness of the credits screen. The SDK didn’t ship with the game, but as soon as it was released I dove in. Soon after, the modding community blossomed, bigger and more vibrant than the original game’s, driven by the incredible flexibility of the engine. One of the first mods that appeared was made by a British man named Garry, and was called simply that, “Garry’s Mod”. It let players interact with the physics engine, and slowly sprouted more and more features. Many players used these features to pose character ragdolls, eventually creating entire comic series with storylines ranging from the comedic non-sequitur to dark and serious. Of course I felt the need to try my hand at it. That lead to the creation of The Plane - the story of Beet, a Combine Elite who managed to break free of his overseers’ indoctrination and find friendship, love, and revenge on his old masters. The only redeeming feature of that story was that it taught me how not to write stories.

I began getting more attached to the Gmod community than the expressly level design one at The Snarkpit. The few levels I publicly released were designed specifically as sandboxes to play and build in. The most popular ones were gm_orbit and rp_bahamut, maps set in space and featuring zero gravity for physical objects, allowing players to build smaller spaceships, or roleplay as the crew of a salvage and exploration vessel. Posting teaser images on the forums taught me a valuable lesson - what it felt like to be the one creating hype, instead of experiencing it. The constant demands were overwhelming. Some would simply want more work-in-progress screenshots. Others would drop ultimatums that unless a certain feature was designed a certain way, they would refuse to use the map. Others yet attempted to worm their way into getting the map early, offering to test it and provide feedback. I had almost deleted each project multiple times before finally releasing it.

Life happened, and things with Half-Life slowed down. When the Orange Box came out in 2006, I attempted to get it at a five-finger discount at a local Target. I got caught. Indirectly thought it was, Half-Life taught me that idiocy often leads to consequences. Buying it legitimately later in the year and playing through Episode Two reminded me that some stories aren’t written to end neatly.

It was in 2007 that I bought a membership for the Something Awful forums, and discovered an avid and very exclusive community of Gmod players. Over the course of the following decade, most of these people remained in constant contact with me, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. I became an admin once we opened our serves to the public - moderating the newcomers and mentoring the unskilled. One of the people had a project in mind, and I began creating models again. Miraculously, Milkshape 3D remained compatible with the Source engine, so I worked with it until I learned Maya. This project would eventually become known as Armored Combat Framework, and be released to the Gmod community at large. I learned how to iterate designs based on feedback, and how it felt to work in a well organized team.

Frontier happened around 2010, and was another lesson in teamwork - specifically what happens when things break down without role redundancy. Ambitions ran high, and the hype mounted. The programmer eventually left, and all that remains of the project is the very videos and images that were used to hype it in the first place, and a folder full of now-useless models, maps and textures. That was probably what prompted me to start pulling away from Half-Life and Gmod in general.

Black Mesa came out in 2012 and breathed a new life into my old obsession. I played through the original Half-Life again, then through the remake, noting the differences and the tweaks to make the gameplay more palatable to modern-day players. It felt good, like putting on an old but comfortable jacket. I’d fire up the SDK now and then, mostly to help newer, more driven designers. Two of the guys from Team Frontier went on to work in the industry full-time. There were whispers of a new game in the works, minor leaks of file and folder names hidden away in Valve projects. Episode 3 turned into Half-Life 3. A full sequel, rather than another short episode, as originally planned. “HL3 Confirmed” became a meme, but the people at the top remained silent.

Life kept happening, as it does. I lost people, I found people. I left home. Every now and then I’d fire up HL or BM again, or drop by the old Gmod server. I’d build things and model things, and release none of it to the public. I watched as the Dota International became the most widely spectated event in gaming, making players, sponsors, and Valve millions. The realization slowly started settling in. Then Marc Laidlaw retired, and later posted the Epistle. The workers at Valve spoke of a lack of direction and stagnation that comes with a cornered market. Modding for an engine over a decade old, no matter how advanced, slowed down.

It’s a different world now. Unity and Unreal engines rule the scene. Survival and Battle Royale have become the new buzzwords. Microtransactions. Loot boxes. Streaming integration. Freemium. E-Sports. Mobile gaming. Virtual Reality. If a new Half-Life were to appear today, would it be changed by the zeitgeist, or would it stay the course set by its predecessors? I don’t know. But there’s one thing that the escapades of a mute, bespectacled research associate have taught me more than anything else: hope.

[kangwei18053060]

Reflective

 Reflective posts

Blog 1

It usually takes a dog, or a cat or some form of human stupidity to go viral on the internet. However, one of the viral videos doing the round of the internet was an old woman, frail looking, sat in a chair with downcast eyes. Her hands fluttered to the swelling music of Swan Lake. The text on the video told the viewers that the lady was a former ballerina with dementia. For someone, who has been hearing about the “power of music” this video reinforced that notion. It made me realise potential of music to connect with people and also head down the scientific or rather neurological route to find out the many ways that music plays a vital role in one’s memory. Auditory memory while being the among the first things we develop, is also the last one to deteriorate and as primal animals, we humans are so responsive to it.

Further research on this led me to new avenues and I was rather saddened to know that the ballerina in the viral video, Marta Cinta González Saldaña, passed away last year, the year that the now-viral video was shot. She resided in Cuba, went on perform in New York, taught ballet in Madrid, and in a nursing home located in Alcoy, she dreamt of performing ballet with elderly residents. The viral video has made her a viral figure and has also made headline in half of countries around the world. Tributes from other artists also poured in for her. I guess what lives on is the power of music and its effect on people.

Blog 2

When I sit down to watch a film, I tend to focus on the background score first and then on the narrative. But does this mean if I have walked out of a film with good plot but bad music? No, but during the entirety of the film my attention was constantly drawn towards the loud or misplaced music. This is why I hold Whiplash very close to my heart. If I am allotted only three adjectives to describe the film then I would primarily call it intense, followed by awe-inspiring and beautiful.

The film is about Andrew Neyman, played by Miles Teller, a freshman at college, who is an aspiring drummer and does not simply want to be good. I must say that I was initially undersold by the trailer of the film, as I thought it was about drumming. However, it is about how the extent someone is willing to go to become the best at what the do. The instructor, Terrence Fletcher, played stunningly by J.K Simmons, is willing to go to any extent to make their students great. This includes verbal to emotional abuse and also physical abuse. I think the film also presents the dilemma of whether Fletcher is just doing his job of an instructor or carrying out the version of this job. In doing so, he becomes more of a drill sergeant than a music instructor.

I believe one reason why this film interest me primarily is because as a someone majoring in music studies, the film trained my ear in picking out each piece of music in a thorough manner. Also, when I consider my interest in music therapy, this film seems to lie at the extreme end of it. Music here is not therapeutic but rather cathartic and it always makes me wonder how this piece of cinematic adrenalin shows the competitive and cutthroat world of music, which is something that not many consider when thinking about the therapeutic effects of music.

Blog 3

Quite frequently, music gets minimal amount of consideration in the present filmmaking industry, and it is not hard to perceive any reason why. Music is invisible in films. Additionally, not every person is musically inclined, and they might be so enveloped with the co-ordinations of production process, that music is actually pretty low on the priority list at this moment. However, it is important to remember the impact that a music director wants to evoke from the crowd during each scene and set aside some effort to give genuine thought to the central component of music in the film project.

It is possible to affect the audience visually, and it also possible to affect them audibly in what one lets them hear. However, when the visuals fit with sound in a meaningful manner, that is the moment when the crowds go from essentially observing and hearing, to really feeling. Think of the ominous music that plays before the famous shower scene in Psycho.

On the off chance that you have watched any of the classical films, you will quickly observe the presence of music at urgent moments in the story. There is a certain melodic extravagance that films of past ages had, that I lamentably do not see quite a bit of today. A ton of films used to have long basic credits, that highlighted the film's main theme, which constructed expectation for what was to come, and set up an air. Consider Alfred Hitchcock films, James Bond, and so on.

In the entertainment world, there is access to shading palettes, designs, rules, protocols and best practices for pretty much everything. Nonetheless, with regards to music, it is not generally that obvious. A filmmaker will must be the one to settle on the decision on whether the selected scene would be ideal with music. In some cases, even quietness or simply ambient music of the scene convey more weight than music could at that time, and this is something I learned during my postgraduate lessons need to consistently aware of during production.  

Blog 4

This year commemorates the 250th birth anniversary of Beethoven and I believe this is an opportunity to reflect about a craftsman who endured and conquered uncommon difficulty. It is genuinely fitting that Beethoven, an artist who endured and conquered exceptional difficulty, would be so vitally associated with this year that brought unprecedented challenges to people all over the world. In Symphony No. 9, Beethoven expressed an expansive existential way of thinking that supported his faith in solidarity, resilience, harmony and euphoria. The symphony culminates in Ode to Joy, as it offers message of bliss, expectation and positive thinking that is genuinely needed during this year of pandemic. It appears in the fourth movement of Symphony No. 9 and it is among the most recognisable piece of music.

I have taken solace in finding stories about my favourite piece of classical music. Would you be able to envision what it might have been like if you are in your mid-twenties and steadily started losing your hearing, the one thing that is so desperately required for composing music? Obviously, such acknowledgment is decimating, and understandably Beethoven decided to end his own life however his resolute obligation to his aesthetic reason kept him pushing ahead as well as propelling himself innovatively more than ever. I am of the viewpoint that his loss of hearing brought about an internal creativity that challenged history and empowered him to rise above all limits.

I came across a research by the British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) conference held in Manchester found that listening to music that has 10-second repeated rhythm concurs a drop in pulse, diminishing the heart rate. Some of the recordings mentions in the conference were Va Pensiero by Italian Giusuppe Verdi, Nessun Dorma by Giacomo Puccini and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony adagio. While it is not a prescriptible medication (yet), the research proposes that these impacts are not individual, yet universal.

In the event that more proof affirms such findings, it could imply that similar kinds of tunes with comparable rhythms (like third movement in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9) may help in lowering blood pressure in each one of us.

That is quite impressive.

Blog 5

Over the couple of decades, music therapy has evolved into modern science. The Chinese culture have used music for medicinal for a long time. As I study at music from a technical point of view, I decided to find more about the traditional Chinese music therapy. For more than a millennia Chinese community looked for the privileged insights of the universe's melody and cadence. I have grown up hearing from my grandparents about music therapy being an aspect of traditional Chinese medicine. These two aspects share an interwoven and continuous relationship. Music, along with theory of yin and yang, and the five elements remain interconnected.

In ancient times, people thought Tao was the essence of music. As a child, I don’t remember paying much attention to this piece of information that my grandfather was so interested to impart. Years later, as a high school student, when I came across the concept of Tao, I knew better than to not pay attention. Tao is the changes in yin and yang, controlling the force of life, as well as the universe’ tone and mood. In ancient China music was divided into five tone that belonged to each of the five elements of Kung, Shang, Chiao, Chih and Yue.

What I found to be particularly interesting is that as per traditional Chinese medication, the five sounds compare to the inner organs. This hypothesis is utilised in various clinical diagnosis and offering treatment. Various sounds influence various organs. The hypothesis of the five tones frames the holistic premise of music therapy in traditional Chinese medication. The yin and yang related to Heaven and Earth are identified with the body's yin and yang. Taoists have consistently accepted that the human body is a little universe, and inward harmony can be influenced by external harmony. How profound is this.

As per the five basic tones, one can identify various impacts in the human body. For example, Kung-based tunes are grouped as noble, Earth-related, and influence the spleen. Regularly tuning in to such music makes one open minded and kind. Shang tunes are hefty, similar to metal, inflexible. This music influences the lungs; and successive listening is said to make one noble and amicable. Chueh-based music proclaims the onset of spring and stirs all life once again. This sort of music influences the liver. Tuning in to it makes one charitable and conciliatory. Chih music is profoundly emotional, similar to fire. It influences the heart. However, tuning in to it makes one generous.

Yue-based tunes are despairing, as peaceful as running water. They influence the kidneys. Tuning in to these tunes balances one’s intellect and gentleness.

As the ancient Chinese saying states "sad yet not hurt," and "content but not overabundance". While I do not claim that body ailments needs to be treated in the above stated manner, this is the way of life that Chinese music endeavors to pass on.

Blog 6

My secondary school-life revolved around two main interest: music and bio science. My adoration for bio science started with an interest in the functioning of human body. I once toyed with the idea of turning into a medical caretaker, but I feel nauseated when I am around blood. I wound up predominantly thinking about may be simply choosing other field in bioscience for my higher studies, yet something was preventing me from doing it.  I knew I did not want to give up music, and I went beyond jamming sessions with my band after school hours. But I was not sure how to make that into a career. Last year of high school, I carried out research on possible options, and then I decided to pursue music for higher education.  

One would have thought that knowing how to play certain instruments would have made my academic life easy but soon I learned my lesson. While being an undergrad is difficult, being a music understudy is hard. Between classes, theories, practices and schoolwork, one is kept unquestionably occupied. It was while I was pursuing my college degree that I came to know about music therapy. It grabbed my attention immediately.

While there are times when I questioned if I chose the right degree, I also reminded why I chose to study music in the first place. Discovering music therapy was an important point as it made me consider if I as a sound engineer I can curate or make music that intentionally incorporates therapeutic outcomes. I realised this more during the current pandemic situation where I found myself searching for music that would help me feel better during the lockdown situation. I decided to dig deeper and study the music as an aspiring audio engineer. While this is an ongoing side-project of mine, I think the outcome will help me attain my goal of creating therapeutic music later on.

Blog 7

Last Thursday, I found myself reflecting upon my own encounters in music as a study, and a seasonal guitar player. My thoughts mostly revolved around how I went from someone who thought they wanted to pursue bio science to someone studying music. Who were there to support me along my bending path? I wonder if other people also ponder about their scholarly and their support system? I think one of the common factors among all of my support system was they understood my belief of music lessons being something more than playing an instrument. Music exercises can be viewed as life exercises.

I must put a small disclaimer before I go any further. I cannot specify each and every individual who went to impact how music played an important role in my life. There are endless individuals who have empowered and shown me, including my previous and current professors. I think about my absolute first music instructor, my grandpa, who handed me his old guitar and when I was 10 years of age and taught me to play some of his old favourite tunes. I started to choose tunes and make melodies after two years, and I always count my grandfather as my first music instructor. I remember him as a sweet, kind man who possessed a charming little Shitzou canine who would drink up tea (with cream) on the floor beside the couch where my music lessons would take place.

My grandfather played guitar for fun and once I reached 13 years of age, my music interest began to diversify, and I wanted to learn how to play the drums. We started looking for a teacher and I had to look no further than my family. This time it was my cousin, who took me under her tutelage and gave me lessons every weekend.

I learned more in the years to come but my grandfather holds a special place as my first music teacher.

Blog 8

This year was quite revealing to me. Pandemic and my lockdown coping method aside, I found myself pursuing various interest, trying new things and found surprising thing about myself as well. One that I did not see coming is I would go on to enjoy gospel music in a therapeutic manner.

I found gospel music to have a relieving and quieting impact that influences the brain in a positive manner. It lifted my state of mind, and the verses have a method of elevating one’s spirituality to another level. I believe that at the point when the barbed edges of life are influencing oneself, gospel music can mellow those issues and water down feelings of anxiety. This is on the grounds that gospel music recognises the disappointments of everyday day life, and it gives the support that makes the listener easy to push ahead. The tempo of the music, the pitch play a significant role in it.

Tuning in to gospel music is not just entertaining, as it can likewise offer nurturing of one’s soul. Gospel music in general is motivational, fortifies confidence and spirituality, which gives a decent foundation to spiritual development. All through time, music has been related with the divinity. It has been utilized in religious practices customs to improve supplication and confidence, give a way to request, petition and commendation. Music can help individuals to remember their connection with imagination and eventually with the innovative life power.

While my religious beliefs do not align with the Christianity, I listen to gospel music as I find it soothing, minus the religious connotations, and it demands my whole attention. It engages me in a movement, and I follow the beat of the music as I follow the tempo and pattern and go through various mixture of emotions.

Blog 9

Internet is changing the concept and perception around classical music. I think of the duo TwoSet Violin when I think of this. I just spent an hour binge-watching their older videos. Set up in 2014, TwoSet Violin is an Australian comedy musician group who every now and the showcases the life of classic musician through YouTube videos. The founders Brett Yang and Eddy Chen were past members of professional orchestras in Australia. They established TwoSet Violin to fulfil their goals of being comedians while keeping music near their work.

What is not there to like about TwoSet Violin? Their friendship, their rigorous knowledge on the world and life of violin players, and my personal favourite making fun of violists and viola, all in good humour. Then later on I was introduced to Victor Borge, another acclaimed piano player who also makes use of humour and makes fun of the carefree side of musicianship by telling jokes and actual setbacks that occurred during his exhibitions.

What caught my attention to TwoSet Violin’s YouTube channel is the duo’s constant experimentation, and their parodies of life as classical music students. Very soon, I found myself laughing at Ling Ling jokes and “Practice 40 hours a day” saying.

As a teen thought the world of classical music was “all work and no play.” But TwoSet is changing the notion of classical music being a piece of high culture. For instance, the duo have played pop music in the style of classic musicians. Who would have thought Jingle Bells in Paganini style would be such an interesting experience? They also make light jabs as the tune’s simplicity. Besides their creative and funny content, I think the popularity of TwoSet Violin lies in the fact that they genuinely combine humour with the splendour of instrumental pieces and live up as professional musicians while also having a humble personality.

Blog 10

I created a pandemic playlist.  Of all things that I did to keep me afloat during these testing times, curating a playlist was the most fun activity I did. I think perhaps there is certain truth to finding joy in little things. Without a doubt, this pandemic has tested the resilience of my emotional well-being. The lockdowns and remaining indoors prompted my increase in my depression and anxiousness. Not only this, but I was continually stressed over the wellbeing and security of my loved ones some of whom are frontline workers and are the preferred choice to treat coronavirus patients. My everyday routine had become monotonous and this likewise brought huge changes in my eating and sleeping habits. I caused me to feel like I had no control over my situation and heightened my anxiety. In the entirety of this, music acted as my saviour and it caused me a great deal to improve my psychological well-being. I made a playlist and I recently added some songs to it.

I call my playlist “Tanghulu” after my favourite Chinese sweet. These are my top 10 songs from the playlist.

1.     Taylor Swift- Shake It Off

2.     Black Pink feat. Selena Gomez- Ice Cream

3.     Twice- Likey

4.     Boney M- Sunny

5.     ABBA- Dancing Queen

6.     Escape Plan- The Brightest Star In The Night Sky

7.     The Beatles- Here Comes the Sun

8.     Namewee- Stranger in the North

9.     KUN- Lover

10.   BTS- Dynamite

While not done intentionally, the playlist reflects the theory of positive psychology. This theory has gone on to affect the discourse that surrounds the topic of mental health, while also providing significance ideas concerning the link between one’s mental health and music. I am not professing my playlist is the cure-all to end negative thoughts but this one works for me.

[albionscastle]

Sick Day

Anon request for an imagine where Jack is taking care of a sick, tattooed woman and realizes he’s in love with her. 

Just a little blurb to get back into the swing of things after my hiatus.

MASTERLIST

SICK DAY

She looked absolutely miserable, in fact Jack was beginning to wonder if she might actually be dying. The stubborn lass kept insisting that she was ok, even though she was clearly far from it. She was sick, so sick that he knew if it were him he would have been in bed wishing for his mum hours ago, not walking around trying trying to work. He watched her as she gulped down another bottle of orange juice, hands shaking as she tried to screw the lid back on. Her eyes were all glassy and droopy and her cheeks were so flushed she looked sunburnt, he would bet money she was running a hell of a fever.

He couldn't stop thinking about her as he ran through the scene again and again, becoming irritated when his co star kept fudging his lines. Watching her sit down in his chair as they reset again he cringed inwardly when she went into a coughing fit that no doubt left her throat raw.

She had been his on set assistant for the whole shoot and never once had she ever shown the slightest discomfort. Not when they’d had to shoot all night in the rain or when his call time was changed to 3am with only an hour’s notice. She’d done everything asked of her and then some without complaint. Shit, she’d made sure he was fed, clothed, and bathed, brutally when he’d whinged or whined about being too tired to bother. The only thing he had had to worry about since arriving on set was his work.

Which made him feel like utter shite in the current situation. There was no way that should be worrying about him in her current condition. But there she was and it wasn't fair.

The scene was finally filmed to satisfaction and Jack made his way over to his chair, fully prepared to order her to go home and rest. He wasn't due back on set until later that night and he was fairly certain he was a grown enough man to take care of himself until she felt better.

The chair was empty and Jack cursed under his breath, stopping one of the ADs as they passed.

“Hey have ye seen Y/N?”

“Outside mate.”

Jack exited the building and looked around, spying her leaning against the wall, head down on her chest, breathing heavily. Guilt rose in him that he hadn't even noticed that she was getting sick and letting it get this bad before he did anything about it.

“Y/N.” he watched as she jumped away from the wall, glancing around trying to focus on him.

“It’s done? Good, let's get you to wardrobe.”

She even sounded awful he realised as she started walking, looking over her shoulder to make sure he was following.

“I ordered lunch for you, it should be in your trailer when you get there. Then we can go over the call sheet for tonight and tomorrow, looks like you’ll be sleeping in the trailer tonight.”

“No.” he stepped in front of her, stopping her in her tracks, close enough to see how pale she was under the fever flush. “Ye are goin tae take the day and go home.”

“I’m fine Jack.” she looked irritated that he would even suggest otherwise.

Normally he loved getting her irritated, her eyes would flash and her nose would crinkle up, it was adorable. Today it was just sad.

“Y/N, seriously, ye look like shite, ye need tae rest.”

“I’m not going home, I can manage and that’s the last I want to hear about it.”

She stomped off, her exit lacking the dramatic emphasis she intended when she had to stop suddenly to cough up a lung.

“Stubborn fucking wench.” Jack muttered as he followed her.

He was going to have to force her to listen to reason, one way or another.

She was sitting on the steps on the wardrobe trailer when he came out, comfortable in his jeans and jumper and out of the itchy woollen suit. Her head was resting against the railing, eyes closed, arms hanging loosely.

Without a second thought he passed by, leaning over and scooping her up into his arms. She came awake with a jolt, wriggling as he started walking toward his trailer.

“What the hell, put me down for fuck’s sake.”

“Nope, yer half dead ye eejit. Ye’re goin tae rest whether ye like it or not. Now shush and quit squirmin or I’ll drop ye arse over tit in the nearest mud puddle.”

He laughed as she stilled, content to shoot daggers at him with her eyes.

“Tha’s better me stubborn wee lass, I’m the boss and ye haf tae do what I say.”

“Fuck you.” she ground out as they reached his trailer.

“Maybe another time darlin, when ye aren’t likely tae give me the bubonic plague.”

That stopped any further protests in their tracks. He put her down inside the door, walking back to the bedroom to grab her something to change into.

“Go get changed, get summan comfy on.”

“I’m fine.”

He stepped up to her, chest touching her chin, forcing her to look up.

Take these things off, or I’ll take em off fer ye. Ye’re choice luv.”

When she didn’t move for a moment his fingers grasped at the hem of her shirt, tugging it up. She jumped back like he was on fire, snatching the change of clothes from his hands.

“Fine. You know, you’re a bully.”

“Whatever ye haf tae tell yerself sweetheart.” he called after her, earning him a slammed door.

He chuckled to himself as he set up blankets and a pillow on the couch facing the tv. She was fiery and stubborn and wonderful. He valued her friendship as well as her work, no-one else had been willing to sit through a Stars Wars marathon with him before he saw the new movie. The fact that she’d already seen and kept quiet, letting him enjoy the moment had just proven that she was an amazing woman.

Plus it certainly didn’t hurt that she was easy on the eyes. He’d felt the spark of attraction the moment they’d been introduced and it was still there, he just hid it well. However, there’d been several times he’d caught himself daydreaming about touching her, having her under him, around him. He would have felt bad about it except he knew she was attracted to him too, just not as good at hiding it. On more than one occasion he’d caught her watching him, cheeks pink, eyes dilated. He took great great delight in winking at her in those moments, loving the way she would blush and look away.

As she came out of his room wearing his t-shirt and shorts, Jack felt his breath  catch as something twisted in his chest. Pushing it aside, he grabbed a bottle of water and held out two white pills.

“What are those?” she asked suspiciously, still glaring at him.

“Just paracetamol, lass donnae panic, I’m no plannin tae drug ye and haf me wicked way wi ye. I’d rather prefer ye were awake fer tha.”

“God you’re an arrogant bastard, anyone ever tell you that?” she swallowed the pills, swaying on her feet.

“Aye, I’m told folk think tha. Put some o this on.”

“Vicks?”

“Fer yer cough and yer nose. Ye sound like a hungover frog. Do ye need some help?”

“I got it.” she grabbed the jar from his hands, slathering the pungent goo on her chest under the shirt. He simply stood back and watched as she struggled to reach her back, waiting for the inevitable.

“Can you? Would you mind?”

“Sure lass.” he took the jar from her before rolling the shirt up to bare her back. “Hold on tae tha.”

To say he was surprised would be an understatement. The expanse of smooth skin was an actual work of art, a gorgeous tattoo running from her shoulder, down her spine and into the shorts. Another two were visible down her sides, over her ribs, writing that he couldn’t read without getting too close. How had he never known about this?

He slathered the Vicks over her skin, barely resisting the urge to trace his fingers over every inch of the inked patterns. It was beautiful work, intricate and well executed and he had no doubt that it meant something important.

She started shivering and he reluctantly pulled the shirt down, easing her to the couch with his palm on her hip. As she sank down he noticed another tiny tattoo on her ankle, a pretty Celtic knot with something written around it in what looked like gaelic.

“Wha does yer ankle say?” the question was out before he could stop himself.

“Daonnan agus gu brath.” she murmured as he pulled the blanket over her.

Always and forever. He felt a twinge as he wondered who had been important enough to her to earn that place on her body. Whoever he was, Jack hated him. The realization that he did brought him up short.

“I got it for my sister.” her voice brought him back from his thoughts. “She died a couple of years ago, it was her doodle and I wanted a part of her with me.”

“It’s verra pretty.” he sat on the chair next to the couch, resting his hand on her forehead. Her fever was high, but the Vicks seemed to be helping a little with her breathing.

“You don’t seem like a man who would approve of tattoos.”

“Shows wha ye know then doesna it? Yers are amazin.”

“My sister designed them for me.”

“Do they mean anythin?”

She nodded, sipping and swallowing the water he handed her gratefully.

“The big one is like a lifeline, each little part is an important thing, I add them from time to time. The others are quotes from poems.”

He wanted more details, to know what quotes, why she had chosen them. He wanted to take hours and discover every moment she had etched into her skin. He wanted��

“Fucking hell.” he breathed out as it hit them.

She was already asleep, her cheeks lighter than they had been. He reached over to tuck the blanket around her, fingers tracing over her cheek. Moving the chair closer he brushed his palm over her hair as she slept, his eyes never leaving her. She would start whimpering in her sleep if he took his hand away so he kept it there, soothing her.

Hours passed as he watched her, her cheeks lightening, the coughing subsiding, his emotions in turmoil. As much as he tried to talk himself out of it he had come to a jolting realization.

He was in love with this woman.

Now what the fuck was he going to do about it?

[rickthaniel]

The Avenger Promise or: How I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 despite its squandered potential

This weekend I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Since I’d let a few weeks pass post-release, I was surprised to find the theatre just as packed as I’d expect from opening night. The world, like me, must have all been anticipating the sequel to what, in retrospect, might be the standout success of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. The original Guardians was stylish, witty, delightfully cast and coated head to foot in retro aesthetic, which in a pre-Stanger Things world felt totally fresh.

Unfortunately, Guardians 2 doesn’t hit that same stride. Mind you, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Dave Bautista really comes into his own with a bevy of smart/dumb one-liners, Bradley Cooper continues to build a strangely compelling character in Rocket Raccoon, and the soundtrack, opening up with a full-on dance sequence to ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky,” may even surpass that of the original. But through it all, Guardians 2 feels like it’s struggling against its own ubiquitous, monolithic creator, like a passionate kid trying desperately to convince his parents that a degree in music is just as valuable as enrollment in the business school.

See, in 2008, Marvel made us all a promise. The deal was, that if we all behaved and came out to support their summer superhero flicks, they’d reward us with a big, star-studded crossover event. The Avenger Promise. We all learned to sit patiently through every end credit sequence for that inevitable glimpse at the final chapter, the little tidbit to keep us satiated. The names were huge. Who wouldn’t be excited about Thor, Captain America and Robert Downey Jr.’s flamboyant Tony Stark? Every chapter, with varying success, established its own distinct world, its own feel, its own draw. Each one began and ended on its own power, and when Joss Whedon brought them all together four years after Iron Man’s screen debut, everyone cheered. I remember being absolutely certain that The Avengers would flop. There was no way they could take four years of hype built up over four different movies, throw together all that star power in two and a half hours, and walk away with something that would satisfy. But they did.

Five years after that success, however, the Avenger Promise has become a weight on the back of every Marvel film. Remember when they talked about the different stages of the MCU? The PowerPoint slides numerating franchise plans years into the future? We’re living that future now, and I have no clue anymore what stage we’re at. It’s gotten so that half the trailers before any movie you care to see are MCU trailers, and we all sit through the Dolby logo at every closing credits, be it for Pixar or Tarantino, because we’ve been conditioned to expect that little nugget at the end. The oversaturation of the superhero genre and Disney’s cinematic dominance has been talked to death, so I don’t want to dwell, but the scale just keeps getting more unbalanced. And now, it’s starting to really starting to harm itself.

Guardians 2 has, if I counted correctly, four individual scenes spread throughout the credits. Some were foreshadowing, others were simply comic relief, but I realized somewhere between the third and fourth that the movie feels less complete because of it. Captain America began and ended, with enough of a wink and nod to get you excited for Steve Roger’s inevitable thawing. It was the same with Iron Man and Thor. Guardians, on the other hand, feels like a stepping stone.

The appeal of the first movie was its distinct style. It felt more like an extra-campy, 70s sitcom rendition of Star Wars than a superhero film. The action was solid, and the ties to the rest of the universe were there, but it worked on the merits of its quirky individuality, which now seems threatened by the very circumstances that gave it breath.

As much as I loved Karen Gillan and Michael Rooker in the first film, I find it a little odd that they, among other minor characters from Guardians 1 (remember Yondu’s backcountry first mate?), all become so central this time around. Everybody has an arc, a speech, and a hug-it-out moment of resolution, which is…nice…but it feels a little bizarre in a franchise that already boasts five major leads. Add Kurt Russell’s Ego to the mix and you have a cast of eight major players, more than the first Avengers even with Sam Jackson thrown in. That’s absurd, and it made me wonder why such a huge crew was necessary.

By the third act (if you can call it that, the movie has a weirdly one-act feel with everything pretty much happening in the same spot), I figured it out. Because somebody needs to be in danger. Because somebody needs to deliver the emotional gut-punch. Somebody’s arc needs to wrap up, one way or another, and it can’t possibly be any of the five protagonist. No, they’re arcs are waiting on Infinity War and Vol. 3 and whatever follows in MCU Stage 12. Every personal moment with the core cast felt weightless because their brand status is now abundantly clear. They’re protected from on high from any permanent character shifts, any major change in dynamic, any real danger at all. Instead, the movie spends half an hour speed-grinding a minor character up to the party level just so somebody can have a real moment. It comes off alright, but it doesn’t avoid feeling shoehorned in by the multi-billion dollar guardian angel that is Disney. For all the Fast and Furious family talk, the character inclusivity still seems like a scheme to keep Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and the other three headliners in narrative stasis.

Even Rocket’s arc, which to me felt subtle and interesting, loses a ton of weight by the fact that this movie is just the latest piece of a massive puzzle that I have an ever-diminishing interest in finishing. Infinity War holds none of the allure for me that the first Avengers did in 2012. Thanos has been hiding in the credits too long for me to care anymore. Will I see it? Yes, they got me. For a big dumb fight with theater surround sound, I’ll toss eight more bucks Disney’s way. The machine keeps turning, and I’m a part of the problem. It just saddens me to see a really brilliant property like Guardians kept from its true potential, its uniqueness and creativity crushed under the heel of the MCU business model.

When Ego helps Starlord unlock his god-powers, Chris Pratt grins and promises to “build some weird shit.” There’s a glint in his eye. He’s psyched. But all too soon, Ego reveals the price of those resources – life as a “battery,” fueling the assimilation of everything he’s ever known. Guardians 2 is almost too good of a self-prophecy. And while the jokes still play, the music still bumps, and a lot of the style remains, it hurts to watch something great be crippled by its obligation as a cog in an endless expanse.

[tagnoob]

The Lifeblood expansion is upon us, having been deployed earlier today.

Arriving Today

After weeks… and in some cases months… of talk and updates and dev blogs, the date has finally arrived.  And what does Lifeblood bring?

The Moon in the Sky

Probably the biggest change involves moon mining.  Moon mining lies at the center of the production of Tech II ships and modules, so any disruption of that means a disruption in the market… and a disruption seems likely.

The first aspect of the moon mining change is the introduction of new Upwell structures, in this case the Athanor (Medium size) and Tatara (Large size, there being no XL) refineries.  These structures will be replacing the moon mining and reaction capabilities previously seen in the familiar old Player Owned Starbase, or POS.  From this point forward a POS can no longer mine moons; that capability is now gone.

A Tatara Refinery in the Wild

The refineries will take that all over… once they come online.  Corps and Alliances and the rare enterprising soloist will have to grab a BPO for one of the new structures… probably research it a bit just to shave off some of the cost… and actually start building the new refineries.  During that time there will be no “moon goo” production.

Meanwhile, the big moon reshuffle will also have happened, so people will need to go probe moons to find out what they will now yield.  Yesterday’s R64 might not be so valuable today.

And then, once moons are surveyed and refinery production has ramped up and structures are available to be place (one per moon), there is the matter of the new moon mining process.

The old process was passive.  The POS modules did the work and somebody just had to show up to collect the output every so often.  It was common for one person to have multiple moons and reaction farms going, or for an alliance to have a few people tending their moons while the proceeds went to support their ship and SRP budget.

The new process involves extracting a chunk of a moon, hauling into space, blowing it up into little chunks, and then mining it the way you would mine an ore anomaly.  That means getting people out there in mining ops to collect the 75 new flavors of ore that will carry the things like technetium that was formerly extracted passively. (There are also ten new mining crystals, with tech I and tech II variants, divided into classes of moon ore rather than individual ore types.)  Groups that pride themselves on being PvP only who have depended on moon mining to fund their operations will need to find a new way to stay on the moon goo gravy train.

So there will be delays as the new structures are produced, moons are scanned, and organizations adapt to the new reality of moon mining, during which time we will all be living on whatever moon goo supplies have been hoarded ahead of time.  I suspect that the price of Tech II modules will rise on market speculation alone.

Related Dev Blogs:

Introducing Upwell Refineries

Reactions Redefined

The Goo Must Flow

Mining Ledger

A legit opportunity to say “spreadsheets in space” for once, CCP has added a way to track your own personal mining output, with a corp version so that leaders can get an organizational view of who is mining what, when, and where.

I will be interested to see what becomes of this.  Every time CCP gives more data to players, that data ends up getting used in many ways.  I expect this will become both boon for some and bane for others around New Eden.  There is a dev blog up with details.

Guristas Shipyards

Coming with Lifeblood will be a new pirate faction shipyard, this time from the Guristas.  Up to three of these NPC Sotiya class engineering complexes, two in null sec and one in low sec, will be up and running in Guristas space, which is in the north end of New Eden.

Guristas Shipyard

As with the Blood Raider shipyard in the south, these will spawn forces to defend based on the attacker’s force and will drop blueprint copies of Guristas capital ships.  These will be the Loggerhead force auxiliary, the Cayman dreadnought, and the Komodo titan.

The Loggerhead force auxiliary

The Cayman dreadnought

The Komodo titan

While these look like their Caldari counterparts, the Minokawa, Phoenix, and Leviathan, they have their own special additions.  In keeping with the Guristas love of drones, the latter two will be able to launch fighters.

Forward Operating Bases

In addition to the shipyards, both the Blood Raiders and the Guristas will be deploying forward operating bases around New Eden.  These will be group PvE sites to attack and will react proportionally the way the shipyards do, only on a much smaller scale.

At EVE Vegas CCP said that if these forward operating bases are allowed to linger NPCs from them will start to venture out to attack those in system with bad standings with the faction in question.  How powerful these excursions from the FOBs will be was left unsaid.  If they are akin to belt rats it won’t be a big deal.  If NPCs start hunting players in force, I expect outrage and hilarity to ensue until they’re nerfed.

The Agency Upgraded

Also shown at EVE Vegas was the new vision for The Agency.  Up until now it has been simply an interface from which regular events have been run.  But CCP has a broader vision for The Agency, planning for it to be the one-stop-shop for all of your PvE needs.

The Agency will roll up events, agent finder, the journal, and epic arcs as well as showing you anomalies and other PvE activities around you in New Eden.  This is supposed to open the world of PvE options up for newer players who might not even be aware that they exist.

Dev Blog about updates to The Agency.

Resource Wars

With The Agency update we also get another new PvE activity for it to track in the form of resource wars.  This is sort of an co-op open quest approach to PvE, where you do not have to fleet up but can join in as you want.  Your job will either to be to mine ore to hand off to NPC haulers or defend the haulers from NPC pirates.

The events will reward ISK, standing, and loyalty points with the new empire specific NPC corps that will be running these operations.

The sites will also come in five tiers of increasing difficulty which you will have to unlock by increasing your standings with the corp in question.

If done right, I think this could be a good addition to the PvE options in New Eden.  I plan to give this a try.

There is a dev blog up explaining Resource Wars in more detail.

Other Items

In addition to a frigate/destroyer/cruiser balance pass there are the usual bits and pieces and minor updates and fixes that have come along for the ride with this release.  UI and tool tips seem to have gotten a pass, and they keep plugging away at that new map.  There was also the CONCORD battleship the Marshall, which was redone in anticipation of handing copies over to people who attended both Fanfest and EVE Vegas. (ONE per person this time, not one per account.)  You can now wager on duels… so after a year hiatus, some form of gambling has returned to New Eden.  Also noted is the coming of the Crimson Harvest event later this week.

Further details can be found in the patch notes for the release as well as on the EVE Updates page.

While there is no music track to accompany this release… I guess the days of new space music are behind us at this point… there is a Lifeblood feature tour trailer.

Lifeblood comes to EVE Online The Lifeblood expansion is upon us, having been deployed earlier today. After weeks... and in some cases months...

[rollinbrigittenv8]

A California Road Trip with Lost Campers

Wandering Earl

I shall introduce you to “Caitlin”. Now I don’t know the story behind the name but that was the mini-campervan my girlfriend and I were given for our California road trip when we went to pick up our rental from Lost Campers USA in Los Angeles.

Clean and ready when we arrived, we were given a ‘tour’ of the vehicle, signed some paperwork and within minutes the Lost Campers staff had us on our way. Caitlin would now be our home for the following 6 days.

With a comfy mattress, an interior table and sink and everything from an awning to outdoor chairs and tables, a cooler, a propane stove, cooking equipment and storage compartments, we had everything we could possibly need for our adventure. We were excited to get started and as we turned out of the parking lot near LAX and onto Aviation Boulevard, we knew that traveling in such a van was a wise decision for a budget California road trip.

And this is what happened once that California road trip began…

Day 1: Los Angeles to Morro Bay

It wasn’t long into our adventure, about eight minutes to be precise, when we agreed to have a coffee stop. And you know how it goes, with all the traffic in LA and difficulty finding a parking spot, this turned into a much longer break than expected.

Eventually though, with coffee in hand, we got back out on the road, meandered through the streets of Santa Monica and onto the Pacific Coast Highway.

We were feeling good. We were feeling clean (this would change quickly). And we were feeling energized. We rolled along, passing Malibu and Ventura, until we reached the town of Santa Barbara in time for lunch. We ate at the Santa Barbara Public Market, an indoor food hall on the corner of West Victoria and Chapala Streets that was a great spot for a fresh meal (we went with poke bowls, highly recommended), before stretching our legs on a long walk down State Street. And then, like true campervan novices, we spent an hour in the Ralph’s supermarket trying to figure out what kind of supplies we should buy.

Bananas, wine, granola bars, water, tea and mandarins seemed like all we needed in the end.

In the early evening we pulled into Pismo Beach and went for a walk through the historic, yet tiny, downtown and beachfront, not quite attracted by the shops and restaurants enough to stick around longer but satisfied with our first glimpse of the beach.

We continued north and upon arrival in Morro Bay, decided to pull into a campground for the night. The only problem was that all of the campgrounds were completely full, leaving us no choice but to try and find a quiet spot to park, and hide, our van for the night.

Twenty minutes later we found that spot.

I backed the van up into a corner at the very end of a quiet road along the beach, where we were hidden by a huge pickup truck parked in front of us. And from this location we enjoyed dinner and a bottle of wine in front of the ocean before falling asleep, and eventually waking up to, the sound of the waves, all from the comfort of our campervan’s bed.

Day 2: Seals, Hearst Castle and Big Sur

Awake and ready to go by 8:00am, we stopped for coffee and breakfast at the Luna Coffee Bar in the quiet village of Cayucos before continuing along the coast. After 30 minutes we reached a turnoff that lead to an ‘elephant seal viewing point’.

And then we almost missed seeing the elephant seals. I made the brilliant suggestion to walk along a quiet path to the left, from where we soon saw 3 small seals lying on the sand off in the distance. Luckily, when we returned to the van, my girlfriend suggested that we walk the other way for a moment and sure enough, that’s when we came upon the dozens of massive elephant seals that this area is known for.

It wasn’t even 9:30am when we reached our second stop of the day – the Hearst Castle.

For years I’ve wanted to visit this bizarre mansion built in the early 20th century by newspaper magnate Willian Hearst and now that I have visited, I would recommend it to anyone on a California road trip in this area. We took the one hour Upper Rooms tour with one of the best tour guides we’ve ever encountered and we then spent some time on our own wandering around the expansive gardens and surreal indoor pool.

The ‘castle’ is too crazy and everything from the hilltop location to the zebras (yes, zebras) to the architecture to the ancient artifacts to the interior design to the stories behind every room simply cannot be imagined without being there. Awesome place.

Next up was a subpar Sunday lunch in the nearby town of Cambria. And then…

First, let me state that despite not having a real plan for our road trip, there was actually one place that we really didn’t want to miss – the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur. My girlfriend is a huge fan of his writing and I’m slowly learning more and more about him and his works.

While located only 30 miles up the road from Cambria, due to the landslides earlier this year that knocked out a couple of bridges along the coast, a long 100+ mile detour was now required to get in and out of Big Sur. We still planned to make the trip though.

So, after our lunch, while sitting in the campervan browsing the internet for a few minutes, I suddenly discovered that the Henry Miller Memorial Library had revised their opening hours because of the drop in tourism after the landslides. They were now only open Thursday to Sunday, 11am – 6pm.

It was Sunday. It was 3:01pm. According to Google Maps, we were 2.5 hours away with the detour.

And off we went…Route 46 over to Route 101 and up to the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road which then took us on a 60 mile adventure through wine country, an eerily quiet stretch of US Army-owned land, the alluring depths of the Los Padres National Forest and the towering Santa Lucia Mountain Range, with its dozens of dangerous turns and lack of barriers protecting you from a long fall of a cliff.

It was a wild detour, gorgeous and energizing, yet slightly nauseating, especially given our time constraints.

We pulled into the Henry Miller Library at 5:35pm.

I’m not sure what was more exciting, being at the library or the journey to get there but we thoroughly enjoyed the 25 minutes we spent wandering around the building, speaking with staff, flipping through books and soaking up the atmosphere.

And then we left.

Our dinner that night consisted of sandwiches bought from the only open shop in the area, the Big Sur Deli, which we ate at the best view point we could possibly find.

After dinner, we pulled into the corner of a small parking lot back near the Big Sur Deli, where we promptly passed out on the bed in our van, quite satisfied with the happenings of this lengthy day.

Day 3: Big Sur and the Middle of Nowhere

The second landslide was just north of where we slept and so on this day, we had no choice but to head back south. We took our time, stopping at several view points along the way until we reached the tiny community of Plaskett. And wherever we stopped, we always had the spot to ourselves, something I never imagined possible along this famous route.

After a lunch overlooking the coast (doesn’t get old!) and a drive up to a mountaintop hermitage that turned out to be closed, we turned back onto that Nacimiento-Fergusson Road from the day before, also the only route out of Big Sur.

But this time, we would do things a little differently. Once at the top of the mountains, we decided to get off the paved road and head onto a dirt track called the Coast Ridge Trail. We were’t exactly sure but looking at Google maps, this route appeared to offer a nice loop that would end up right where we wanted to be later in the day.

Here’s how that went:

We entered extremely remote territory, with not a person, house or sign of civilization to be found.

The dirt road was stunning, cutting into the sides of mountains and along impossibly narrow ridges while offering far-reaching and spectacular views in all directions.

To complete the loop, we had to turn onto a second dirt road.

This second road was insane. Even narrower and with extremely steep inclines and declines, soft dirt patches that were tough to drive through and sheer drop-offs at all times.

It was also insanely beautiful (as you can see in this video!).

Just before arriving at the main road we were aiming for, we came upon a closed steel gate that blocked our track and forced us to turn around and completely retrace our route for 1.5 hours. (We were not happy about that.)

After thinking we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere while trying to get the van out of some soft sand for the sixth time, we eventually reached the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road once again and continued our journey away from the coast.

After this long day, we decided to spend the night at an RV camp in the small town of Greenfield, right on Route 101, partly because we couldn’t find anything else and weren’t in the mood to keep on searching. Among the huge RVs and massive trailers, we backed up our little minivan into its spot and had a quiet night, and our first shower that didn’t involve splashing water onto our bodies from a sink faucet in a rustic outhouse or bathing in a cold creek (which was actually quite nice).

Day 4: Monterey

After breakfast at the Denny’s in the town of Soledad (what would a US road trip be without one breakfast at Denny’s?), we decided to drive into Salinas, the hometown of John Steinbeck, for a wander through its quaint downtown area.

From here we continued to the coast until we reached Monterey, where we had decided to meet up with my friend Jerry.

I had actually only met Jerry once before (he’s a good friend of one of my good friends), and while I knew he was a stellar guy, I certainly wasn’t expecting the welcome we received from him and his wife. Jerry gave us…

the keys to his classic Saab convertible so that we could buzz around Monterey for the afternoon

a delicious home-cooked seafood dinner that we all ate while looking out over Monterey Bay from the window of his living room

a great room to sleep in (the waves outside lulled us to sleep!) and an invitation to make ourselves completely at home

And most importantly, awesome company. Over a couple of bottles of wine, we all spent a few hours that night talking and laughing about Monterey, about authors and books, politics, our jobs and our other interests. It was simply a great night.

Day 5: A Redwood Forest and Our Final Night

After brunch with Jerry at the excellent Wild Plum Cafe in town, it was time for us to hop back into our van. Our stay in Monterey, which also included time wandering Cannery Row, downtown and the beach, was short but perfect and as a result, we didn’t feel the need to visit any other towns. We drove right through Santa Cruz and onto Route 9 until we reached the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park instead.

It was our first encounter with the redwoods and this little park was an ideal location to get out into nature and be among these massive, mesmerizing trees.

Then, before we knew it, the time had come to find a place where we could enjoy our final evening with the campervan. We continued into San Mateo county along small roads for about an hour and a half, randomly turning right and left several times, until we came upon a one lane, cracked pavement path that seemed worth checking out. We followed it for about 2 miles and it eventually led us into the Pescadero Creek Park, a park that seemed to be long forgotten given the condition of its gate and entry way and the complete lack of even a trace of visitors.

As a result, we were thrilled and we soon found a small clearing right up on a mountain ridge. This would prove to be the idyllic location we had hoped for.

We pulled out the chairs from the van just in time for sunset, poured some wine, put on some music and, despite having forgotten to buy dinner and with only granola bars to eat as a result, we dug in for one final night among the beautiful California nature.

Day 6: San Francisco

Waking up early in the midst of some heavy, wet fog, we did some work (despite the remote location we had great 4G coverage!), organized all of our stuff and then quietly began the last leg of our California road trip. Two hours later we pulled into the Lost Campers parking lot in San Francisco, climbed out one last time and just like that, dropped off our trusty campervan.

A California Road Trip in a Mini-Campervan?

Is a mini-campervan right for you? I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.

After our experience, we realized that the main downside of such travel is that it can be a little cramped as there isn’t a huge amount of space inside the minivan.

Apart from that though, it’s definitely an ideal option for travelers that simply need a place to sleep and the basic amenities for their road trip. For one or two people, it works out very well as the small van allows you to travel on any road and you always have a bed to lie on. If you use campgrounds, the real mattress inside the van is far more comfortable than sleeping in a tent and you’ll also have all the equipment you need to prepare your meals.

And when split among a couple of travelers, the price is more than reasonable since you get both transportation and accommodation in one.

As for Lost Campers themselves, the staff are extremely helpful and the company’s culture seems to truly revolve around making their travelers happy. I know a couple of readers wrote to me after my last post to say they had an awesome experience with this company too. The vans and equipment are in good condition, the rental process is hassle-free and they have three convenient locations as well (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Salt Lake City).

If this is your travel style, Lost Campers USA is well worth checking out for a California road trip, or any road trip in the western USA!

Would you travel in a mini-campervan? Any questions about the road trip or the campervan itself? Let me know!