#I hope this is really empowering and gives storytellers a lot of fun ideas.

[surely-sims]

Using WW for SFW Story Poses (and why it's so cool!)

This is an advanced workshop for storytellers looking to take their stories to the next level. Animating furniture (beds, doors, etc), Summoning in-game props from Build Buy, and adding Visual Effects (smoke, steam, etc) to your poses and animations. This class assumes that you are already comfortable with making your own poses.

[dreadfutures]

Ooh, what was your inspiration? Music, aesthetics, plot points, etc- anything you feel like sharing! I love hearing about what inspires artists ❤️ Dead Pasts and Dread Futures has such an interesting Lavellan journey and I’m wondering where you get your ideas - ty and have a lovely night ❤️

Hi thank you!! that means a lot. and thanks for indulging me.

For DPDF, the whole origin of the fic was surviving a series of really bad friend breakups that affected me more than anything else in my life and really shaped my worldview, and Ixchel often grapples with similar things. DPDF is very much about depression and isolation inextricably, from different angles.

Beyond individual relationships it keeps popping up in the form of "inspiration" as I think a lot about being mixed race, about being second generation, about clawing my way to positions of leadership and privilege and how best to open doors and empower my peers and those who come after me, about being both afforded privilege but also being marginalized in those spaces too, about building community and coalitions... They're just really central to a lot of my daily existence and the spaces I move in and there aren't clear answers or narratives so I like to write them when I can. And imagining the world as I wish it could be, where sometimes just saying "it shouldn't be this way" loudly enough will give people pause, is important work to keep me hopeful and motivated to live and do the hard work in my relationships and communities.

On more fun notes, some of my biggest inspirations:

Music

These songs make me incredibly emotional, they all have a lot of personal meaning to me about friendships that I've had and lost, and they also have directly inspired a lot of ixchel's relationships with the people closest to her. just listening to agnes these days is enough to make me cry my eyes out.

beige (yoke lore) - unburdened

bad dreams (faouzia) - stripped

running up that hill (placebo) - x

i found (amber run) - ft. London Contemporary Voices

agnes (glass animals) - stare into his eyes **(see below)

Plots, Language, Storytelling

I find myself drawing elements and plots from lots of my favorite books growing up, such as:

Riddlemaster of Hed (Patricia A. McKillip) (ideas about magic, identity, collectivism vs individualism, pacifism, betrayal and love comingling)

Chronicles of Prydain (Lloyd Alexander)

Earthsea (Ursula K. LeGuin) (magic, accepting darkness within you, collectivism vs individualism, other things)

Thirteen Clocks (James Thurber) (whimsical language, poetry, a different way of writing fairy tales, fridge horrors)

Scarlet Pimpernel (Baroness Orczy) (lifted some of it for Wycome)

The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper) (shoutout: golden owl eyes)

Song of the Lioness (Tamora Pierce) (man. really complicated and nuanced friendships and interpersonal relationships.)

A version of the Robin Hood story whose author I don't know :(

El Cid

The Bartimaeus Trilogy (Jonathan Stroud)

Specifically themes relating to loyalty, chivalry, doing what's right even when it means you lose or life is harder or it's lonely.

Honorable mentions to Peaky Blinders, Pacific Rim, all the Studio Ghibli films (especially Spirited Away).

But also a lot of fanfics I read growing up were really formative.

Elecktrum's Chronicles of Narnia fanfics, and Tonzura123's Chronicles of Narnia fanfics, were especially impactful with how they treated platonic devotion and loyalty.

** a note about agnes

this was originally in the youtube description but I think Dave removed it. But it means a lot to me so I'm copying it here:

dear friends…nervously excited to share with you the video for Agnes. it’s hard to explain exactly how it feels inside a human centrifuge. you sit in a small egg-like pod about the size of a horse which hangs off a 50 foot steel horizontal frame. It looks like something out of a bond villain’s lair. it’s claustrophobic and uncomfortable and also incredibly hot. slowly the whole thing starts to rotate like a helicopter blade. Faster and faster until every part of you becomes crushed under the extreme gravity. its like being slowly sat on by an elephant, or like your whole body being punched in slow motion. you have to flex every muscle and use every ounce of strength you have to keep going. breathing requires serious effort. movement becomes incredibly strained and almost painful. everything that once weighed 5 kilograms now weighs 50. its difficult even to keep your eyes open. it hurts in places you really didn’t know existed. veins and capillaries burst under the pressure and bruising begins. its a rapid physical overdrive. the blood rushes from your brain making it impossible to think rationally or focus. your eyes are also drained and you get tunnel vision…only able to see small circles of the world directly infront of you and your sight goes completely greyscale…no more colour. your balance and spatial awareness goes and the world begins to spin like you’ve had way too much to drink. but the most striking thing is the way that the machine pulls on your heart. you can actually feel it struggling to beat and changing shape…flattening inside of your chest. Its similar to that horrible sinking, tugging heartache that comes only with complete and overwhelming sadness. and then you pass out. we ran the centrifuge 18 times while i tried to sing along to a song which i find difficult to listen to at the best of times. this was probably the most intense video-making experience I’ll ever have. But its the only way that we could just about begin to simulate for a moment what happens within Agnes. speak soon, dave

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Intro to Balancing Your Life || Morgan & Sasha

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @sasha-r-blog & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Sasha drops in on a new class on campus; Morgan is only too happy to offer encouragements.

“…And who is it that determines the definition of humanity? What kind of definitions do we see offered by Victor, or Henry Cleveral, or the Creature?” Morgan asked the class. The students, while not thrilled with some of Mary Shelley’s ‘big words’ had enough preparation to offer semi thoughtful ideas. Obviously, Victor thought he could define what human means. One of her try-hard students, eager to please every adult in sight, posited that while Victor’s definition of humanity is the one that dominates the narrative, the intrusion of the creature’s perspective halfway through the book is meant to compel the reader into questioning its validity. “Yes!” Morgan tossed the kid a candy from her bowl. “The midpoint crisis here upends our expectations through thought, rather than action. It is, structurally, the center, the heart of the story, changing what we believe to be true. But, are we convinced by the Creature’s definition of his humanity? Why or why no–”

Morgan’s timer, the theme song of The X-Files, went off.

“Shit. Alright, that’s time everybody! Do your homework, do your reading, and get ready for Fan-Fiction Friday! And you–” She pointed to the newcomer sandwiched at the corner of the seminar table. “Come see me for a minute. The rest of you: glad you love each other, but please get out.” As the room cleared out she began to gather up her things. “I’ll level with you, I haven’t checked my roster, so I’m not sure if you’re a late add or just checking things out. But either way, I might be able to answer any questions you have better one-on-one instead of just looking at you across the room.”

Sasha watched the other students mingle and leave, a second of nervousness keeping her in her seat before the professor called out to her. It was hard to parse the tone in Professor Beck’s voice when Sasha’s immediate assumption at a teacher saying to “see me” was that she had fuck up somehow. But either way, Sasha walked towards the desk, dodging any curious looks from her exiting classmates.

“Um, hi. Sorry I didn’t mean to cause any trouble by sitting in.” She shifted the straps of her backpack, tugging them against her shoulders, as if the weight would somehow shield her from the awkwardness. “I’m Sasha Rodriguez. You gave me your office hours awhile ago. I uh, didn’t get a chance to visit but I saw your name on the winter session course list  and thought I’d check it out. I’m trying to branch out I guess.”

It took Morgan a few minutes to place the girl. She didn’t give out her school contact information to everyone, but it happened often enough that she had more than one name floating around her head. But the more she looked at her, the nervousness, the eagerness, the closer Morgan got to a hunch. “Oh, you’re the girl trying to figure everything out in college. I’m glad you decided to come by. If you’ve got some spare time, we can go somewhere and talk? I’d love to have you join in the spring, if you like what you’ve seen so far.” She dumped her books and laptop into her bag, and shouldered the load, handling the bulk with ease thanks to her strength. “Come on. Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re branching out from and what you thought about class today.”

“Oh, yeah, okay.” Sasha said as she moved to follow the professor. She still wasn’t used to how casual some professors could be. In high school they made it sound like professors were all strict, no nonsense, and unforgiving. And Sasha had certainly had professors like that during her first semester. But here was a professor throwing candy to students and cursing in class and talking about fan fiction. It was cool, but weird to process.

“I’m in computer science and I’ve only really taken courses in that department and math stuff. Oh, and also English 101, for the gen ed.” Those classes had been a lot different from what Sasha had just sat in on. Even the one English class she took didn’t really match up, that one having been run by an exhausted looking graduate teaching assistant who didn’t seem all that interested in teaching.

“The class was cool, though I feel like a lot of the stuff you were saying went over my head.” Sasha had a moment of internal panic, worried that came off as implying Professor Beck was bad at teaching. “I’ve just never been good at looking into books, but the class was interesting. I was surprised you mentioned fanfiction at the end. I didn’t think most professors even knew what that was.” Oh no, did that sound rude too? Sasha closed her mouth before she could say something dumb. Besides her advisor, if you could even count their meetings as conversation, and Ben, Sasha hadn’t really spoken one on one with a professor before. It still felt a bit surreal.

“Oh, that’s just because you’re coming in at the tail end of the course. I don’t throw my students into the deep end before I’m certain they can at least, you know, doggie paddle.” Morgan smiled good naturedly and lead them up to the main sitting area in the English building, setting her bag down carefully and making herself comfortable. “I can tell you that looking into books isn’t so different from the way you look into the stories in other media. Movies, TV, video games, comic books--our relationship to the stories we engage with say so much about what we envision for ourselves and the world. The more we understand and invest that relationship, the more empowered we feel to take control of our fate.” Morgan stopped herself from saying anything more and laughed, low and self deprecating. “Oh, jeez, don’t tell the other professors I said that. But, anyways, yes, the aforementioned reasons are what fan-fiction and other forms of counter-storytelling are so important. But more important than that is doing something that’s going to challenge you in positive, enjoyable ways. And making time for a little fun.” Morgan held her fingers up, like this much. “Can I ask how the rest of college is going for you, Sasha?”

Sasha followed her and sat in the unfamiliar sitting room. She gave a small smile as Professor Beck talked about stories and how people related to them, finding that she had been nodding along without realizing. She stopped once she did, somehow worried that it came off as over eager, as if a professor would ever get mad at someone being interested in what they were saying. If only the professor knew how close that hit to home for her. All those stories of kids getting superpowers, it was real. As if it had jumped straight off the page. As if Sasha had willed it into being. In the back of her mind Sasha wondered how she would have reacted to suddenly growing calls if she hadn’t grown up on comics and superhero movies. It felt like the blueprint to everything now.

Lost in her own thoughts she was a bit startled when the professor’s tone shifted. “No, no I agree, I think. I think all that stuff is important. Storytelling. I mean, I’m not much of a reader but comics and games and movies have been really important to me.” She wished there was a major in that stuff. Or crime fighting. She’d be on the dean’s list if her nightly patrols counted for credits.

“It’s been going okay. I mean, I don’t really do much outside of classes. I’ve been trying to do more but I mostly keep to myself.” It was the same thing she had told her advisor and Professor Campbell, but more and more Sasha felt silly for saying it. It wasn’t like she did nothing, just nothing related to college life. But it wasn’t like she could tell her professors she was protecting White Crest. Or at least trying to.

Morgan noticed Sasha’s interest and perked up at once. “You know, we do cover films in my class,” she said, grinning slyly. “And books. But still. It’s the same kind of thought process as with books, so it might as well be given its time and place. There’s plenty of other courses like that in this department, even a film and media studies minor. You should do what makes you happy, because undergrad coursework doesn’t matter half as much as you think it does. It’s all internships and jobs and connections and recommendations that help you get anywhere. And this place, college, has a lot of flaws and problems, but one of the best ways to make it worth it is leave knowing as much as you can about the things that matter to you most.” But that was about all the pitching she was willing to do on behalf of her class. Besides, being a student at UMWC came second to being a kid in White Crest. Morgan couldn’t help but look at the girl and wonder what this place would do to her. Morgan pushed the thought away, she couldn’t let herself focus on a big, bad future like it was some kind of unstoppable force.

“This might sound silly, coming from a professor who just tried to recruit you to their class, but I hope you do find other things besides school studies. There’s a much bigger world out there, and you should have something else in your life. At least friends and playing video games or going to Al’s at one in the morning or whatever kids your age do now. Life is for doing stuff, you know? Whatever it is you’re thinking about doing or joining, you should go for it!”

“I never really thought about taking a minor. I didn’t know they had one about film.” Honestly, more and more Sasha felt like she hadn’t planned much of anything when it came to school. Or life in general. But she supposed she could change that. If anything this talk had made her actually interested in looking into classes, something she had mostly breezed through doing in the past, simply checking off the boxes of what she needed for her degree. But if the professor was right and it didn’t matter that much... “Maybe I’ll try looking into classes for film and english and stuff like that. They seem fun. At least the stuff you were talking about seems fun.”

Maybe it would make school more interesting, instead of something Sasha went through the motions of to get to her real job. “Real job,” as being a superhero paid. As if she wouldn’t one day need a day job. College was a convenient way to pass the time and something she was told she had to do, but it would be nice to actually care about it, to feel like she was actually doing something.

“I do have hobbies...” Just none she could tell Professor Beck about. “But yeah, I should probably try to do more. I wanted to check out the library. I was supposed to help out with the comic collection there as a volunteer thing. So that’s a start I guess.” It had almost slipped her mind, but that was something she had been genuinely excited for. It was just hard to remember stuff like that during the day when she was normally up all night. Her nightly patrols had turned her days sluggish and uneventful, filled with quick naps between class and maybe some video games alone in her dorm before she put on her costume and went out again. And she loved doing it, of course she loved going out at night to keep White Crest safe. But at the same time...

“Do you ever just get really focused on one thing?” Sasha asked the question before she was thought about it, but decided to keep going, even if it was dumb. “Like, you have something you like or is important and you just focus on that and everything else just kinda blurs into the background?”  Sasha rubbed nervously at the back of her neck. “I don’t know if that makes sense. I guess sometimes I feel like that. But I don’t know if I want to change it.”

“The library is a great start!” Morgan said. “You’re going to learn so much, and probably find people who have similar interests to you when they come to check out materials. But I hope you do other stuff, not for credit, just for you. You’re only going to be young once--” Hopefully.

She couldn’t help but smile at Sasha’s notion, that hyper-focus was something rare or embarrassing. “Oh, all the time. I have some art projects that I do on the side, and I can get so lost in my carving that hours can pass by so easily. Same with baking, or cooking something really involved. It’s almost like you’re connecting to something else, outside of or beyond you. There’s you, the thing you’re doing, and this energy it gives you, right?” Morgan watched the girl’s expression to see if she was getting it right. “Even if it’s just kind of like that, I don’t think you should change it. Whatever that thing is, it sounds to me like the universe is giving you the green light to keep going.”

Sasha nodded, giving a small smile. She was happy that Professor Beck seemed to get it and not think it was weird. Sure, Sasha's focus wasn’t on crafts or cooking, but it was the thought that counted. Her mind lingered on what she said about being given a green light. Really, what was a bigger green light than getting her powers? But she knew there was more to it than that. There had to be a reason it was her. She had to be able to do something with her powers, something to really help people. It was comforting to have the professor say she was right, that the universe wanted her to do what she was already doing, but there was a pang of melancholy knowing Sasha couldn’t tell her, or anyone, the truth. How much did advice and validation matter when the person saying it didn’t know the full truth?

She shook the thought from her head. “Thanks. Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask you a bunch of weird questions when I came to sit in. I think it would be cool to try out one of your classes though if you still have room for students.” Sasha chased away the worry of struggling in a class she wasn’t used to. If worst came to worst she could always drop that class. At least it would be something new, something she might actually end up liking.

Beaming and unawares, Morgan took out a post-it from her bag and scribbled out the class information before handing it to Sasha. “Don’t be embarrassed about questions,” she said. “Questions are how we learn. You’re never going to find anything interesting if you always leave well enough alone.” She stood up, getting the vibe that Sasha had opened up all she felt like so far. “I hope to see a lot more of you this coming semester,” she said. “Hoping even more that you do something just for you, but.” She put a finger to her lips. That’ll just be our secret.

“Thanks. I’ll try to keep asking them.” Well that was one social interaction that didn’t go horribly. Wasn’t great that Sasha considered that a victory for herself but she was going to take the feeling of accomplishment anyways. “And I’ll try to do stuff for myself too.” That was going to take more work than just registering for a class, but maybe it wouldn’t be the worst. She couldn’t promise herself she would put in the effort though. Tucking the post-it note into her backpack she smiled and said goodbye to Professor Beck. Maybe a few new classes would be enough to make her college life, and her daily life, seem a bit more exciting and a bit less like time to just get through. But her patrolling White Crest at night was still more important. Professor Beck didn’t have to know that part though.

[the-spoopy-ghost-of-raejin99]

So I bought Mortal Shell because I like soulslike games and it was only $30, and while it has some ideas that I like, I'm struggling to enjoy the game as a whole.

Part of the problem is how they seem to have approached combat. I can't fault them for wanting to think outside the box, but honestly this feels like a bunch of ideas that are good on their own, but which don't work together.

Take healing, for example. There's no Estus Flask equivalent, you have to find healing items out in the world. Okay, fine, but all of the ones in the starting area at least heal very little, and mostly over a large period of time. So they're mostly for healing outside of combat.

So how do you heal in combat? Well, aside from some other abilities you might get later on, at the start all you get is Parrying and Empowered Ripostes. Basically, you can parry attacks, and if you have at least one bar of Resolve (something that builds up as you hit enemies), you can then attack for an empowered riposte, which deals more damage and heals you. There's several problems with this, however:

The healing is very minimal. More than the early healing items, but not enough to stick your neck out and risk parrying an attack you could have otherwise dodged or Hardened against if you're already severely hurt

Resolve seems to build way too slowly. You don't seem to start out with any after dying, forcing you to farm it or just hope you'll have enough just playing normally, but for me I often end up dying before regaining a single Resolve, meaning I can't heal by parrying.

Parrying itself feels very inconsistent. Or rather, each individual enemy can be parried consistently, but between different types of enemies the timing feels so wildly different that it's impossible to keep up with when dealing with multiple enemies. Add to that the fact that everything is very gritty and dark, it becomes difficult to read enemy tells except when strictly dealing with a single enemy and no other enemies in the area you can accidentally aggro so you can concentrate on it.

So healing is pretty much a no-go most of the time, and on top of that there aren't really any stats to upgrade, so you don't even have the option to really overlevel and get through tougher enemies that way. There are abilities to buy that can help, but those require an additional resource called Glimpses, and while there are a number available in the starting area, there's only really enough for a couple early abilities, and that's only if you focus on one Shell. There are weapon upgrades too, but the first one you get is an ability that costs Resolve, and the upgrade for pure damage costs a lot of Tar.

The combat feels well designed for single combat, and it does feel good in that situation. I managed to kill the Grisha (a mini boss) in the starting area the second time without getting knocked out of my shell because I managed to figure out his parry timing, and his dark fur contrasted enough with the background that it made his tells easy to read. Once you deal with the little guys that normally surround them, the big pole arm wielding enemies in the starting area are also pretty satisfying to deal with.

But anything else feels bad. Not just difficult, but bad. Dark Souls had a lot of moments, especially early on, where you feel powerless, but there's always something you can do to overcome something you're having trouble with, even if that might just be grinding to outlevel whatever is giving you trouble. Mortal Shell, in what I assume is an attempt to appeal to more hardcore players, is designed so that your only real option is to learn to play the game in the specific way it wants, instead of giving you many options to choose to deal with a problem. In other words, "git gud".

I'm fine with difficult content, but if my feeling towards that content isn't "let's figure out how to get past this" but rather "I want to turn this off and do something else", it's not a good feeling.

To continue the comparison to Dark Souls, they also fail in the storytelling department, at least this early on. While generally known for being obtuse lore-wise, Dark Souls 1 did at least do a good job in both 1) giving you at least some overview of the world and 2) giving you some general direction at the start of the game. "Darkness, dragons, fire, gwyn, undead, yadda yadda, go ring some bells, they're here and here, have fun."

Mortal Shell, on the other hand, I have no idea what's going on whatsoever. There's something of a hook in trying to find out what is going on, and I do like that you don't seem to learn the lore of an item until you use it a number of times, but there's no real direction. So far all I have is that there's a giant prisoner who wants me to bring him some glands, and some spirit lady who lets me drink tar. And the environmental storytelling is, at least so far, fairly nonexistent. Just a bunch of random enemies in little camps strewn about.

At least there's a cat you can pet. 10/10.

[scrambledeggblog]

THE FIRST STEP: Crack open the Egg

I wouldn’t call myself a writer.

This may seem ironic whilst I write this blog post. The dictionary definition of a writer is literally “one that writes” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). If you put it that way, sure I’m doing that. But still, I wouldn’t call myself a writer the same way you would call a Shakespeare a writer, or J.K. Rowling, or E.L. James (don’t worry I’m just kidding). Before this blog, I never really got into writing anything, whether it be short stories, poems, articles and what not. I have done writing exercises and research papers in school, but besides that, I have never really written anything because I wanted to.

I’ve definitely thought about it before, but then I begin to doubt myself. “What if I’m no good?” or “what if I fail?” or “what if nobody reads my stuff anyway? What’s the point?” Writing has always been an intimidating activity for me. I was never really known for making award-winning school papers, so I immediately concluded that it just isn’t me.

But one Saturday morning while I was doing chores, mopping our floor, drowning myself in my own thoughts, it hit me. The reason I never became a writer in the first place was because I immediately shut down the idea. I already labeled myself as “not a writer” before I’ve even tried. I saw myself as a failure before I’ve even failed. So now I’m thinking “What the actual f*ck? Why not give it shot???” and so I am.

Hello! I am Janine Idquival, a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in communication (I know, ironic), and I am finally taking my shot at writing!

Standing ovation; Everyone claps and cheers

Thank you! Thank you! air kisses

I bet now you all are wondering “So, what now? You’re wanna take a shot at writing, what are you gonna write about?” Well, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna write about!

…

I don’t know yet.

Boo! Get of the stage

Tough crowd. But in all seriousness, I can’t say I know exactly where I’m going at this point. I guess a great way to start is to get to know me a little more and answer the questions you all are probably thinking (or I may be wrong, you might not be thinking these questions at all, but you KNOW WHAT, IMMA ANSWER THEM ANYWAY).

Who am I?

I know I already introduced myself, but really, who am I?

*Cue identity crisis*

Okay so I don’t want to get too deep into the philosophical concept of the self or whatever. I’M DONE with philosophy classes. So I guess I’ll just give you an idea of the kind of person I am.

I am a singer. At age 6, I discovered karaoke, and since then I haven’t stopped singing.

I am a performer. At age 12, a friend of mine introduced me to the land of musical theatre. I joined one (1) workshop that summer, and was sold for the rest of my life. I continued doing workshops all throughout high school. In college I joined blueREP, the premiere musical theatre organization of the Ateneo. I performed in various musicals such as the Addams Family (where I played a fat boy), Rent (where I played a drug addict), and The Theory of Relativity (where I sang about my mom and cried). I love the way musical theatre moves me and others to feel so many emotions all at once. Amazement, happiness, sadness, fear, anger and more! I also love how musical theatre breathes life into characters, making them real, and allowing their stories to be told, which leads me to my next point.

I love telling stories, whether it be through musical theatre, or making short videos, or just plainly making kwento to my friends and family. When I was a child (probably still now) I was known to be the last person to finish her meal during dinner because I just wouldn’t shut up. I love telling people about my day, or past experiences I’ve had that are either funny, or weird, or sometimes sad. I love how stories take us on a journey, affecting and changing us through the process. Stories can come in so many different shapes and forms, written, spoken or performed. Since I’ve pretty much tried the speaking and performing form, might as well try the writing form too.

… if you’re wondering about the visual form of storytelling (ie. sketching, painting, photography), I don’t think I’ll get into it… but who knows!

Why the name “scrambled egg”?

Why not?

Kidding aside, for some strange reason, I have been told too many times in my life that I look like an egg. Yes. An egg. The thing that come out of a chicken’s cloaca (yeah I did my research). I don’t know if it’s my forehead or my cheeks, but the bottom line is that I look like an egg. If you don’t believe me, here’s a picture.

I used to take it as an offense, but eventually it grew on me. Now I truly identify myself as an egg (… What?). I felt like it was a pretty good representation of me, so I thought it was fitting for the blog. It is, in essence, about me after all.

I also once saw a post about eggs that inspired me (… again WHAT?). It said that “eggs can be a reminder that you can be anything you want”

Credits to whoever made this.

When I saw this, I felt a strong sense of empowerment. Like an egg, I can be anything I want to be. I can be a writer if I really wanted to. In conclusion… eggs are inspiring and empowering, hence the name of this blog.

Now you might ask “why scrambled?” Well thanks for asking!

“Hard-boiled Egg” didn’t really have a ring to it, and “Sunny Side Up” was already taken (I know sad, but you can check it out if you want. It’s a cooking blog.), so I decided to name this blog “Scrambled Egg.” After careful deliberation, I realized it’s quite fitting.

One of the definitions of scramble is “to toss or mix together in confusion” or “to throw into disorder.”

… Admittedly this blog will probably be a hot mess (bet you can already tell), but I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun! This blog will be a quirky mixture of all kinds of content, from self-improvement and life lessons, to theatre, to running, to… ducks.

I know it may seem like a weird mix, but that’s me! I plan to use this blog to know more about myself, as well as the world, and I’d say both are quite a mixture of many MANY things.

If cooked right, scrambled egg can be one hell of a tasty meal. Hopefully I do cook it right.

So… what now?

For full transparency, I’ve been writing this blog post for days now. I even considered not publishing it at all. I was afraid that what I’ve written is of no value. This has been the reason I’ve delayed this for years. Because I believed I can’t do this, that it’s too late now.

But as soon as I thought of scrapping this whole thing, I saw a post on Facebook that said “you are not too late to start a passion project.” It felt as if the universe was giving me a sign to do this. If that was my sign, I hope that you take this as a sign to start something you’ve been wanting to do too.

So again, I wouldn’t call myself a writer…

Not yet.

[simonjadis]

Anon I’m ASSUMING that these are from the same person; apologies if they are not

I would say that my feelings are similar to yours, but not quite identical ...

Disney’s handling has been imperfect, and some of the mistakes have been made the highest level (I know that people give Kathleen Kennedy a hard time, but if rumor is to be believed, some of the interference that made IX kind of weird came from higher than that)

for example, Kennedy said in an interview that she tries to find people who just make big, successful movies to make sure that these are also big, successful movies. I can understand that as being a safe bet from a business stand point, but that’s not the same thing as finding someone passionate about very specifically telling good, new Star Wars stories, which we did not really get in the Sequel Trilogy

(one of the most common theories that I saw from TLJ apologists was that people didn’t like that it was new/different than what they were expecting, which was really not the issue for me or my friends. Also it was just a speedrun of parts of Episodes V and VI)

I think that I’m “too close” to Star Wars to see it as a financial asset rather than a beloved universe full of characters and stories that I adore, but I don’t think that “literally just rehash the Original Trilogy for two movies and barely acknowledge any other part of Star Wars until IX” was a good idea

Rey deserved her own story. and Luke deserved to not be retroactively robbed of his

as for George Lucas, I do think that years of backlash over the Prequels sucked the fun out of it for him. Also, who doesn’t want four billion dollars? it was a sweetheart deal for Disney, of course

the sad thing is that this meant the end of Clone Wars, because Disney took one look at Lucasfilm’s budget and was like “OH NO YOU CANNOT SPEND THAT KIND OF MONEY ON A CARTOON” which is why Season 6 was paid for by Netflix and why Maul: Son of Dathomir was a comic

I love Star Wars Rebels and I’m not trying to knock the show at all, but the budgetary difference was palpable. Clone Wars did have it a little easier because of the Clone Troopers (all having the same face), but on Rebels, you notice that 90% of the Imperials are the same guy wearing a hat with his visor obscuring most of his face. market scenes show just a few people (but plenty of Storm Troopers)

the designs of the main characters -- Ezra, Hera, Sabine, Zeb, Kallus, Thrawn, Kanan, etc -- are great and loving and detailed and most of those change a little over time, but there’s a reason that we only see so many planets on Rebels. look at the huge armies and crowds in Rebels. my friend @drunkkenobi​ is the first who pointed out to me that in Clone Wars, you sometimes see lines of ships (Space Traffic) and each ship in line will be unique, distinct from the others

it’s not Rebels’ fault that they didn’t have that kind of budget. that’s also why their space battles (and space ships) never quite look right. meanwhile, for Clone Wars, if they wanted a particular scene or ship that went over their planned budget, all that they had to do was ask Uncle George

eccentric billionaires funding expensive media isn’t necessarily the most sustainable model for storytelling, but it sure worked out well for Clone Wars and for The Expanse

(Jeff Bezos personally called up the head of Amazon Prime programming, who had already been considering acquiring the extremely good but expensive show, and was like “hey the cast from this show is at a thing where I am, I’d love to just tell them that their show is saved, give me it?” and we saw as many new locations in Season 4 as we did in the first three seasons)

but streaming -- where you actually get money directly from customers who then, through their activity on your platform, show you exactly what they want to see aka what is keeping them on your platform -- offers a new opportunity for high quality genre media. remember, scifi and fantasy were EVERYWHERE in the ‘90s and the early aughts, and then because too expensive for regular TV unless they had huge audiences. only through streaming do we have these new Star Treks, The Witcher, and the real possibility of a new Stargate series

why do I bring up streaming? because

The Mandalorian goes to show that Disney can 100% do good Star Wars. Rebels was good, despite its budget, but can you imagine how much better it would have been if it had aired on Disney+

as with the DC movies (three of which are good and I’m also excited for Birds of Prey), the solution to the our-movies-made-a-lot-of-money-but-aren’t-strictly-speaking-good is literally just “let the people who do the cartoons make the movies”

and now we’re getting a final, seventh (half) season of Clone Wars! twelve episodes looking better than the show has ever looked!!

if you’re like me, you probably thought to yourself “gee, only 12?” and, cynically, you figured that it’s a trick -- announced at ComicCon in 2018 to build up the first wave of hype for Disney+

and it is ... but it 100% worked on me, I signed up for Disney+ and will pay anything for Clone War

my HOPE is that this is a test run to see if people really like high-quality animated Star Wars stories enough to continue with it. there’s only so much clone wars that one can cover (my suspicion is that we will see Ahsoka fake her death during Order 66 in these eps, so yep, that’s the end of the Clone Wars right there)

imagine a well-written series with everything that Clone Wars had in terms of content and visual quality, but it’s set after Episode IX. to my frustration, IX ends with effectively the same worldstate as VI which essentially means that nothing much happened in the Sequel Trilogy. but imagine a series set after IX. we could see a new set of (Force-wielding) characters. we could see Rey, Finn, Poe, and Rose during some episodes. Rose could finally get to do something that’s not an insulting fool’s errand (she deserves so much better!!!!!)

we don’t need a new Big Scary Empire/First Order thing, just organized crime and pirates and Hutts and bounty hunters and individual planet systems going to war as the characters try to assemble a NEW New Republic (gods I hate the unchanged worldstate)

now, I know that Star Wars Resistance is not ... reassuring. this is the only screencap that I have from it because I couldn’t get into it. it’s not the animation (I enjoyed Tron Uprising and Iron Man: Armored Adventures and this is the same kind of deal), but three things:

-I watch Star Wars for the Force primarily; other stuff can be cool but I need the Force

-I will never care about ships racing and really I don’t care about an individual ship flying; I’m a Command Ship kind of space nerd

-apparently the writing doesn’t improve much during the first season. people tell the main character to not do something, then he does it, and disaster ensues. that’s ... it’s fine, it’s fine to exist as a show, it’s just not for me

obviously, not all Star Wars media is for me, but when something -- like TLJ or the Sequel Series as a whole (even though VII and IX are enjoyable) or Resistance -- disappoints me, I would never accuse it of “ruining Star Wars”

Star Wars is a whole franchise. the breadth of canon isn’t all wiped away by some disappointments. was the MCU ruined by Age of Ultron? no. it was a bad movie but from the same franchise that gave us The Winter Soldier and Thor Ragnarok. hell, Dawn of Justice doesn’t “ruin” Wonder Woman or Aquaman or Shazam. bad movies aren’t contagious

for the past several years, the Entitled Dude crowd has felt empowered. they were radicalized in the altright/redpill/MGTOW/meninist/nazi/gamergate/comicsgate/etc spheres of the internet and now they just have a reflex where they see any sort of representation and decry it as “SJW,” which they also seem to think is a bad thing

in the same way that well-meaning people on tumblr can get radicalized into being antis/puriteens, people with certain vulnerabilities on reddit or youtube can get sucked into a world that tells them that they are the default and that other people existing is “political” in media and in real life, and that people being upset by outright cruelty towards them is both funny and means that the cruel person is the victor. they need therapy and studios need to not listen to them

unfortunately, sometimes there are movies that are bad despite having things like solid representation. Ghostbusters 2016 was a delight, but my friends and I with whom I saw TLJ (all of us queer feminists) left the theater angry. we’ve bitten our tongues a lot (even if it seems otherwise) because publicly criticizing the film too often leads some incel monster to chime in with agreement, and we’re just like

the redpillgate crowed et all is a natural ally of conservative white evangelicals, even though the former group is generally made up of New Atheists (the short version is atheists who hold socially conservative views because racism/misogyny/transphobia benefit them without using christianity as an excuse). it’s kind of like how terfs will side with conservative hate groups because, though they’re natural enemies, they both despite trans people just for existing

unfortunately, when you’re looking at who went to see a movie or who hated it, not everyone posts with an ID card saying exactly their demographic. which is only going to make studios like Disney even more nervous about including queer content in Star Wars and in the MCU (I mean real queer content with characters whose names don’t have to be searched on a wiki)

that was a bit of a tangent, but yeah. sorry if I missed anything

[dabistits]

I’m wanna make my own manga, so what advice can you give me to avoid what Hori is doing. (Btw I’m a boy) I still have to finish school before that but I wanna keep those advice with me

sorry it took so long to get back to you! i hope you will still find this advice useful regardless, even though it’s not incredibly specific. i could give you a bullet-pointed list of what to pay attention to (how much does this female character get to do in the story? would her pose be awkward if replaced by a male character? does she feel like a complex character? does she suffer unduly and in specifically gendered ways e.g. rape?) but i could come up with thousands of questions and it still wouldn’t be very useful for helping you actually learn how to spot misogyny in stories. so i’m going to give you a general list of things to do that will hopefully help you develop your analytical skills to avoid hori’s bs more than just trying to memorize a ton of questions.

consume other media. read widely, watch widely. familiarize yourself with the state of fictional storytelling today. you need a solid foundation upon which to start building your analytical skills, so that you have material to draw from when you think about what works and what doesn’t work.

talk to people. be they man or woman. it’s pretty fun to talk about media imo (otherwise i wouldn’t be running this blog), and it’s a great way to get different perspectives. if you’re in the company of people interested in media criticism, you will learn a lot, about lots of different things, if you’re willing to put yourself and your ideas out there. ask questions! let people help you work out confused feelings! 

read what reviewers are saying, especially women. most of us who talk about media are pretty detailed about why we liked or disliked something (i regularly give specific examples about what bothers me in bnha e.g. why i feel like himiko is sexualized). so, what are those things? why did a lot of women like furiosa from mad max and what messages did they get from the narrative? why was wonder woman’s costuming considered an elevation from traditional women’s costuming in action movies? why is revolutionary girl utena praised for its complex handling of misogyny and patriarchy? on the other hand, why is there a lot of feminist criticism directed at quentin tarantino’s movies? why are so many women burned out on MCU’s “strong female characters”?

reading what reviewers and ordinary bloggers, especially women, are saying is the best way for you to familiarize yourself with the landscape of feminist media criticism. it’ll give you an idea of what our concerns are, our problems with sometimes fairly specific things (like how the cinematographic rule of thirds can be used to objectify women), and also how to do things well.

at some point, you’re gonna have to tackle theory. this is somewhat unavoidable. although much of media criticism has been deferred to popular culture in a way that you can probably grasp the basics through osmosis, i would encourage you to read academics that actually go in-depth into feminist theory in all sorts of media. laura mulvey’s “visual pleasure and narrative cinema” is probably one of the foundational texts in feminist film theory, but i find that most people don’t even know ‘male gaze’ was coined by her. the ‘male gaze’ as a concept originated in film theory! going in-depth into academic writing that painstakingly deconstructs a concept, usually with respect to specific examples, will help you make your own connections and be more confident in your own analytical skills, because they will give you the tools to apply disciplined commentary.

we’re not all going to agree (obviously). that’s one reason why i insist on going with the learning vs memorizing route. you’re going to see dissenting opinions, and you will probably disagree with some opinions and that’s just what happens by virtue of us being a multitude of complex creatures. i see too many people here who need to ask an assumed authority whether they’re “allowed” to do something, and that’s just kind of ridiculous! you can disagree with women. you can disagree with me. women disagree with each other and i disagree with some women. some women think bnha is a feminist masterpiece, and you will probably have to disagree with them. you’ll have to navigate these disagreements and make the best call with all the information and abilities you have at your disposal.

try not to think of a piece of media as “feminist” or “not feminist.” this article explains why asking if something is “feminist” is a moot point, and this post goes into all the issues we encounter when we start asking if something is really “feminist.” to oversimplify and to put those ideas more succinctly, the issue is that narratives can rarely be feminist or anti-feminist unless they’re propaganda pieces specifically made to advance feminist cause. narratives with good female characters can include ‘non-feminist’ elements. we can talk all we want about jennifer’s body being empowering or whatever, but it’s not actually feminist praxis to write a story in which a high school girl gets stabbed to death, even if she comes back as a demon to eat boys. someone could consider it personally empowering, but hopefully you would recognize that there’s nothing “feminist” about killing a girl. and that’s okay. something doesn’t need to be feminist to be enjoyable nor to have interesting things to say about women/womanhood!

pay attention to women of color. please please please keep this one hammered in your head. women of color are so often ignored for the sake of white women, and we get a lot of backlash when we talk about racialized misogyny in media. this happened with orange is the new black, it happened with atomic blonde, where the non-white, female love interests were killed off so white characters could mourn, and when woc pointed this out we got tons of backlash from white women. don’t be like those kinds of people! think about us and read our writings while you go through this list, please. the same goes for the thoughts of men of color (if you’re white), for LBT+ women, mentally ill women, disabled women, fat women... we all have thoughts about the way we’re represented in media and our concerns deserve attention, especially since manga has a bad reputation for being not only misogynistic, but racist, transmisogynistic, and fatphobic.

don’t let being a boy hold you back. this might be a weird piece of advice to hear, but all too often men either think they’re already the best at writing women or they’re so fragile that one piece of criticism from a woman will make him think we’re entitled shrews. don’t fall into either of these mindsets because they will weaken you. go into this with the idea that you can do well, and that you can improve. you can improve by listening to us and taking our advice, but don’t treat us as an authority figure telling you what to do every step of the way. you have your own voice and you’re able to make your own judgments. plenty of men have made good media about women (park chan-wook and the handmaiden, ikuhara kunihiko and revolutionary girl utena, basically all of ghibli’s filmography), so know that you can be outstanding.

i know that i talked about movies a lot, but i still hope this helps you because the basics of constructing a story and characters are the same. manga is also highly visual in the way film is, with respect to actually having images you need to frame and characters you need to pose, so i think a lot of knowledge is transferrable. you might also find critical theory about comic books to be useful, though i personally don’t really follow comics. lastly, if you see this answer after all, feel free to ask questions especially if something isn’t clear!

[independentartistbuzz]

7 FROM THE WOMEN: LIZA GRABOWSKI FROM THE NORMAL LIVING

7 From The Women is a segment here on Independent Artist Buzz where we ask some of the industries finest seven questions. During this time of accusations and the lack thereof, we think it’s important to give women a voice. We chose to ask seven questions to honor the seven Wiccan clans.

Liza Grabowski is a vocalist and guitarist in one of our favorite bands, The Normal Living. From NJ on the edges of NYC, the band blends urban ideas and images with rock and roll, Americana, and folk-rock sounds, while summoning the fun of pop. With singer-songwriter roots and bar-band beginnings, their influences are eclectic, ranging from Carole King, Springsteen, and U2 to the Killers, Arcade Fire, Jenny Lewis, and Neko Case, from Fleetwood Mac, and Heart to Patty Griffin and the Dixie Chicks, helping to carry on the story of American rock and roll songwriting in the millennial age.

What have you been working to promote lately?

First of all, thank you so much for having me for this interview! I love what your site does for independent musicians, and I love how this series features and supports women artists.

Right now, my band (The Normal Living) is about to release some tracks that I’m really proud of as a woman, as a thirty-something, and as an independent artist. The first single from this new record is called “How It All Went Down,” releasing on Oct. 25. This song is really special to us. It was a full collaborative effort in writing, arranging, and eventually producing this track (with producer Chris Badami of Portrait Recordings in NJ). It’s a powerful, up-tempo song, with a big rock sound, driving guitars, beautiful piano, and female vocals and harmonies. It’s told in part from the perspective of a mother, and it’s mostly a portrait of a family after a crisis, and how you move on from that. The song kind of builds emotionally, with sort of a cathartic release at the end, when the floodgates open and you can finally attempt to deal with unfathomable grief you’ve held inside for so long, for years and years maybe. Motherhood was central to me emotionally while writing it—my favorite line in the song is “Holding up to the light everything that I taught her”—but it’s also broader than that. It’s really about how any community struggles to come to terms with trauma, loss, and grief. As a band, with this new set of songs that we’ve been working on, we’re trying to explore themes of storytelling, narrative, and memory.

Please tell us about your favorite song written, recorded, or produced by another woman and why it’s meaningful to you.

I think if I had to pick one song that was my favorite song by a woman, I think I might go to Carole King’s “Natural Woman” for that. I remember my mom and dad bought Tapestry for me for my birthday when we first got a CD player. I’m pretty sure it was 1987, because they also bought me True Blue, Tiffany, and Out of the Blue at the same time. And I guess I was a little bit young for the themes, but I remember just loving it. Not in the same way I loved True Blue—which also felt grown up to me, but in a more salacious, edgy way—with Tapestry, I loved it the way you love an old doll or a cozy bed. I loved her raw vulnerable voice—and I remember that it stirred something in me about womanhood that the pop music of the day wasn’t doing in the same way. When I listened to Tapestry for the first time, I already knew the Aretha version of “Natural Woman.” But King’s vocal on that song, on the album, just sort of blew my mind in a way. It was the first time I realized that a “song” was not equivalent to the recording of a song—that a song is this living breathing thing that could be a vehicle for extremely personal intimacy. Even though I knew the lyrics and the melody already from the Aretha version, when I listened to King sing it, I felt like I was hearing something so brand new. Both versions are so amazing; that’s what I think was so mind-blowing to me at the time.

What does it mean to you to be a woman making music / in the music business today, and do you feel a responsibility to other women to create messages and themes in your music?

I do—more so now as a mother, I think. My daughter is 4, and as a writer and a singer, I think about her all the time. What do I want for her, and what would I tell myself if I was 4 again? To every woman, young or middle aged or older, I feel a responsibility—both in my songwriting and in my own persona—to represent women as strong and empowered. But I also think it’s really important to show women characters as vulnerable and flawed and real. Maybe some days you feel like a queen, but maybe other days you feel hopeless and messy and frazzled. It’s ok. It’s ok to feel both and inhabit both spaces. You’re a real person with real feelings, and you’re not made to be looked at or objectified—you have agency and emotions and ideas that have value. I think that being a woman artist, you do have to step back sometimes to be aware of all the crap we’ve internalized from growing up in a patriarchal society. There’s one song of mine that always triggers a self-reflexive feminist critique. It’s called “Time Out, New York,” from our first EP, Less Radio. On the surface, it’s very much a portrait of a woman sitting on the sidelines, cheering on her boyfriend on stage from the back of the bar. But when I perform it now, I try to be wry and sort of ironically meta about it, knowing that I’m the one on stage singing the song. From the song’s inception, I have always imagined doing a video in which the gender roles are reversed, depicting a woman on stage, singing about a man on stage, while her partner watches her from the bar. I also sometimes imagine queering it a bit and changing the lyrics to be a woman singing about another woman. I’m not sure if I’m trying to salvage a not-so-feminist lyric that I’m a little self-conscious about, or if there are really genuine layers of irony in the song about a male performer, viewed through a female gaze, that’s written and performed by a woman. (I’m hoping it’s the latter!) In any case, yes, it’s something I’m always thinking about, and growing as an artist as I grow as a human being navigating adulthood.

What is the most personal thing you have shared in your music or in your artist brand as it relates to being female?

Honestly, I think sometimes just being onstage in and of itself as a woman musician is one of the most personal things to share. It makes you vulnerable and takes courage, especially if you don’t fit the traditional mold of a pop star or a rock star or a celebrity. I consciously battle my insecurities about my body, my age, how I look, and how I sound every single time I go on a stage or in front of a camera. I try to remember what’s important as an artist is being brave and doing the things that scare you, to put your art out into the world, to tell stories, even if you have to go out of your comfort zone to do that.

What female artists have inspired you and influenced you?

I’m trying to think back on my musical journey as a child, because I have been alive to witness four decades of music. And I watched MTV from the very beginning, so music videos and images of rock and pop stars were extremely foregrounded for me. I also was fortunate to be raised by music lovers, so I was introduced to a lot of previous decades of rock and pop as well as a child. This is a long and rambling way of saying that I’ve had a ton of female musical influences from all different eras and genres. As a young child, I remember Stevie Nicks, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Heart, The Bangles, The GoGos, Pat Benatar, Patty Smyth, and Debbie Gibson—all of those women were on my horizon when I was a kid from MTV and the radio. From my parents, I was exposed to Carole King, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, and 60s girl groups—my mom was a huge fan of the Supremes, and so we listened to a lot of those records.

MTV was really huge in my house in the 80s. I remember singing “Stand Back” by Stevie Nicks with my sister. I remember dancing to Laura Branigan and Whitney Houston songs, belting out “Gloria” and performing “The Greatest Love of All” in my second-grade talent show with a Fisher Price microphone. I embraced all kinds of genres and styles as a child. I just loved the female voice having such a platform, giving representation to women. I obviously didn’t process it in those terms at the time, but I think looking back, that’s exactly what it was that resonated with me. Then as I moved into adolescence, really the 2 biggest influences for me as a musician were Alanis Morrisette and The Dixie Chicks. I just felt that they were writing and playing and performing in ways that broke boundaries for women. Then into my 20s—Jewel was huge for me. I remember really connecting with her story about how she was down to her last dime and playing in cafes and on sidewalks, and I was so inspired by that tenacity. I also really connected with some American folk singer-songwriters at the time too. I was obsessed with Patty Griffin; I discovered her mainly through the Dixie Chicks and just started listening to everything I could of hers. And then I realized that she had done a cover of “Stolen Car” by Bruce Springsteen, who was my favorite artist growing up, and when I heard Patty’s version of it, I just kinda melted into a puddle. I just thought it was so gorgeous, and her take on it from a female perspective just took me to another place. The other person was influential for me in my 20s was Dar Williams; she truly influenced my songwriting in terms of telling stories and also just writing an album that’s cohesive and meaningful. Sheryl Crow was huge for me as a rock vocalist. I think I sang Leaving Las Vegas hundreds of times in my dorm room as a college student, trying to get it perfect and trying to get that mournful but strong rock vocal. Now in this decade, I am really looking to women like Brandi Carlile, Elle King, and Grace Potter as examples of women who are keeping rock alive.  

Who was the first female artist you saw that made you want to create music / be in the business?

The first concert I ever saw was Debbie Gibson when I was six, I believe—or maybe eight, I think, because it was actually the Electric Youth tour that I saw, so maybe I was eight or nine. I had basically memorized Out of the Blue, and then Electric Youth was also a smash for me too. I remember reading articles about her and being so motivated that she arranged, wrote, produced, and performed all of her songs. I said, I want to be like that. I want to DO that. So my sister and brother and I had this black-and-white composition notebook when we were little, and we used to write songs in it. We’d have songwriting sessions where we would write lyrics and jot notes down about the instrumental arrangements, and then we’d perform them for our parents and grandparents. That was one of the earliest times I can remember getting into what it means to produce a song or think about the structure of a song.

If you could form an all-woman super-group who would play in it?

I love this question, because I’m really loving The Highwomen album that came out in September; it’s just so beautiful and all of the women are such powerful energies. I think in my fantasy world, my all-woman super-group would be Elle King, Miranda Lambert, Natalie Maines, and of course me.

Connect with Liza and The Normal Living online via:

https://www.facebook.com/thenormalliving/

https://www.instagram.com/the_normal_living/

https://twitter.com/thenormalliving

https://soundcloud.com/thenormalliving

https://www.youtube.com/user/lmz27

https://www.bandsintown.com/a/2970646-the-normal-living

https://www.songkick.com/artists/6404764-normal-living

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4ftWbprw62ADY9lchhlITg?si=UvY74t_XQj2VnjWvZ3lufQ

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/the-normal-living/592223705

[scrawnydutchman]

Incredibles 2 Movie Review (Spoiler Free)

Pixar has become somewhat infamous for releasing nostalgia pandering sequels in recent years. Cars 2 & 3, Toy Story 4, Finding Dory, Monsters University. These all have their fans to be sure but many people, myself included, wished for more fresh and original ideas from Pixar that made them so great to begin with, rather than friendly reminders of how great they once were. So needless to say I’ve never been horribly interested in a great deal of the Pixar sequels . . . that is except for Incredibles 2. After the third Toy Story I’ve been saying for years that Incredibles is the only Pixar property that actually needs a sequel. Why? Because it’s a premise that’s ripe for continuation. I’m a huge fan of the first Incredibles, so much so that it’s my favorite 3D animated film ever. I loved the family dynamic, the performances, the dialogue, the design, the action. It was cool, slick, charming and heartfelt. It had the stylish edge of a spy thriller with the action of a superhero blockbuster. To put it simply, I wanted to see the Parr family do more superhero AND family antics. So needless to say I was as pumped for this movie as anyone. Did it live up to my expectations? Hell yes it did. It was everything I was hoping to get and improves on a great deal of where the first film left off in fact . . . while also being weaker in some other areas. Let’s break it down.

Story:

Synopsis: The Parr Family is back in action, continuing their superheroing despite the fact that doing so is still illegal (why the legalization of supers wasn’t  even considered after the family saved the city from Syndrome, I have no idea. But whatever. Just go with it.) Things might change for the better though when Elastigirl gets an offer from a telecommunications expert to share her superhero perspective on why these heroic acts shouldn’t be shunned. While she takes up her new job, Mr. Incredible fights his own battles of being a stay at home dad and realizes it isn’t as easy as he thought it was going to be, especially since Jack Jack demonstrates a new superpower every second. Things for Elastigirl get complicated as a mysterious new villain called Screenslaver makes their appearance. Can she get to the bottom of Screenslaver’s new plan before things turn for the worst?

I mentioned before that Pixar has a known tendency to pander a lot to nostalgia in their sequels, and Incredibles 2 is no exception. There’s more than a few references and repeats of the first film including reused sound effects, shots, settings, cinematography and so on. While these certainly are present and are admittedly a touch distracting at times, make no mistake; this sequel has it’s own identity to it. The concept is interesting, I love the idea of the parents more or less reversing their roles from the first film and all the comedic antics those bring . . .and every scene involving Jack Jack got uproarious laughs in the theater. Admittedly the story has a few noticeable holes and isn’t as tight as the first film, but they weren’t nearly noticeable enough to ruin the experience as a whole. Also the movie kind of falls short in terms of pacing; by the end of it I was honestly kind of amazed that it felt over so quick. For whatever reason the first film felt way more like it took it’s time, despite the fact that there’s only a difference of 3 minutes between each films runtime. 

Characters:

The characterization of each family member is arguably the Incredibles greatest appeal. It’s so much fun watching this family interact with one another. This time around the family dichotomy ups the anti with a handful of cute little moments between members.  I loved all the interaction between the siblings and the parents and they have constantly great dialogue between each other just as the first film does. Mr. Incredible is probably the most accurately portrayed dad in the history of animated films; he reminds me so much of my dad it’s actually insane.  There’s also one VERY small interaction between Dash and Frozone that I won’t give away but the moment I heard it I completely gushed. Also, while not as developed a villain as Syndrome in terms of motivation, Screenslaver is one hell of a cool bad guy. While Syndrome was a larger than life hamfisted manchild who loved to boast and brag, Screenslaver is a cold and calculated entity whose hidden behind layers and layers of intricate planning and espionage. Again, Screenslaver’s motivations aren’t as fleshed out or as interwoven with the family as Syndrome is but the villain more than makes up for it in aesthetic and outright creep factor. I kind of wish the movie spent more time keeping Screenslaver’s identity shrouded in mystery as that was when the appeal was highest IMHO but the twist is pretty good too. I won’t spoil it obviously, but I thought it was a pretty clever way to spread everything out. I do wish they gave Dash a bit more to do in the film though. While he has a memorable fast paced chase scene in the first movie Dash is unfortunately given next to nothing here; opting instead for more screentime for Jack Jack. In fact, both he and Violet pretty much get the shaft in favour of their baby brother when it comes to what is supposed to be their big action scene. All well. I still enjoyed seeing them again.

Visuals (Animation, Composition, Visual Storytelling, Etc.)

*this shot of Dash and Jack Jack running through a series of portals is among the most memorable.*

While the script and plot of this sequel all in all recaptures the appeal of the first Incredibles but falls just short in matching it in quality and pacing, one thing it absolutely improves upon this time around is the visuals. This film is gorgeous as one may expect it to be. The textures are beautiful, the use of the trademark Incredibles colour scheme involving shades of orange and red is great. The characters this time around are a bit more on the geometric and cartoony side whereas the first film was more rounded and mushy looking, which is a welcome change IMO. The animation is excellent as predicted. The characters move and behave their own charming ways and the facial expressions in particular are ON POINT in the film. Not to mention the slapstick is a lot better. The big thing where the visuals really shine though is the action. OH MY GOD the action in this film alone is worth price of admission. This is right up there with the first Kung Fu Panda when it comes to fight scenes oozing with creativity. The way characters utilize their powers, the way they interact with their environment, the way the stakes in every fight build as they progress, the way one action follows up another and it’s so clear despite it being so quick. It was simply excellent. The story developers have come up with stuff for this film I would have never thought of in a million years and it’s the coolest damn thing every time. 

One minor thing to note; you may have scene a seizure warning floating around on the internet for a particular scene in this movie. I’m telling you right now; they weren’t kidding. I’m not epileptic but it was quite a bit for me. I’d take the necessary precautions before you see it thinking it’s safe. While the scene in question is definitely a bit of a strain on the eyes, it’s undoubtedly a really cool aesthetic regardless.

Voice Acting Performances:

Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson and Samuel L. Jackson all return for their iconic performances as Elastigirl, Mr. Incredible and Frozone. They all do as great a job as they’ve ever done and haven’t gotten the least bit rusty. Craig T. Nelson still plays a down to earth sentimental father. Holly Hunter still plays an empowered, sharp and quick-on-her-feet mother. Sam Jackson still plays a suave and cool Frozone. Sarah Vowell returns as Violet and gives a great performance for the awkward, pugnacious yet responsible teen. Brad Bird is directing/writing again which means he also returns as Edna Mode; as entertaining as ever. We also get some exceptional performances from voice actors acting as standins for the first films roles. Huck Milner takes the role of Dash this time around and plays it very close to Spencer Fox. Between Dash and Nemo in Finding Dory  Pixar has an uncanny ability for replacing child actors after the first got much too old. The only performance that kind of stands out as not really matching the original is Jonathon Banks as Rick Dicker. I could tell instantly he wasn’t quite the same as the late Bud Luckey (R.I.P). All well; a small gripe in the grand scheme of things. The newcomers such as Catherine Keener and Bob Odenkirk are great. Overall, great performance from everyone.

Sound design (Score, Sound effects, etc.)

Yet another great element from the first movie that makes a triumphant return: the damn jazzy MUSIC. You can’t tell me you don’t get pumped up just from the killer soundtrack to Incredibles by itself. Those fans of said soundtrack should stick around until after the credits for a special treat in that regard. The sound effects for the film are great too, particularly the original made sounds for each of the superpowers. Not a whole lot else to say; it just nailed it. 

Conclusion:

Fans of the original will not be disappointed. It’s got all the appeal of the first with a great set of original stuff to be it’s own visual experience. It about matches the first in overall quality with it’s superior visuals and action but inferior story and pacing. If you haven’t checked it out already please do. I haven’t had that much fun in the movie theater in quite some time.

Story: 1.5 out of 2 - Above Average

Characters: 1.5 out of 2 -Above Average

Visuals: 2 out of 2 - Excellent

Voice acting performances: 2 out of 2 - Excellent

Sound Design: 2 out of 2 - Excellent

9 out of 10 - A worthy successor!

[sleemo]

How Star Wars authors work with Lucasfilm and earn creative control

— SYFY WIRE

Is there a franchise more secretive than Star Wars? Disney and Lucasfilm are notorious for keeping upcoming projects locked away in an inaccessible vacuum and maintaining an air of mystery and secrecy around every aspect of the franchise (at least the stuff that happens on screen). In an age when trailer and spoiler leaks are the norm, Star Wars is air tight.

But that secrecy isn't limited to the films. Every aspect of the Star Wars universe — films, television, books, games, comics — is held to the same standard. Book and comic announcements are major news, and nearly everything — across all media — connects to tell the story of a cohesive galaxy.

Star Wars is one of the few transmedia properties where "canon" is given nearly equal weight as solid storytelling.

Enter the Lucasfilm Story Group, which was formed in 2014 (following the Disney purchase) and is composed of roughly a dozen people responsible for maintaining order — and keeping all of the creative ducks in a row — within the Star Wars universe. No small feat, that.

Since then, one of the most persistent questions among fans is how much creative control the Story Group has over various projects. And when it comes to books (of which there are many), how much freedom do the authors really have to tell their own stories?

Turns out, they have quite a bit! SYFY WIRE reached out to a number of Star Wars authors, and if there's a common theme among their answers, it's that they have almost total creative freedom.

Leland Chee, the official "Keeper of the Holocron" is one of a few people on the Story Group who also helped control the creative strings before the Disney purchase. In other words, his experience managing "canon" predates the Story Group. Because of that, he has a unique view on how the role has changed.

"We've got more content [now] then I ever thought we'd have. Before we had a Story Group, what George did with the films and The Clone Wars was pretty much his universe," Chee said. "He didn't really have that much concern for what we were doing in the books and games. So the Expanded Universe was very much separate. What we had to do in the Expanded Universe was, if George did something in the films that contradicted something we had done in the Expanded Universe, then we'd have to change the EU to match what he did in the films."

"[For example,] all of a sudden, lightsabers can only be blue, green, purple, or red. That means we've got to take out these yellow lightsabers. OK... Jedi can't marry. So, this Jedi over here that got married, we'll have to figure that out. So there was a lot of that — having to retcon to compensate for what's being done by George in the films.

"So with the Story Group overseeing all of the content in film and television and elsewhere, we don't have to retroactively make those changes. We can anticipate those changes. We can seed things in one medium [and see them grow] in another. So we might be seeding things in books or TV that you might not realize is substantial until years down the road. And if people knew what the road map looked like, they would just be floored."

Perhaps the most public face of the Story Group (thanks to social media), Pablo Hidalgo clarifies their surprisingly hands-off role: "All of us in the Story Group are here to help creatives find the story they're trying to tell in Star Wars. Sometimes that means feedback regarding continuity. Sometimes that just means feedback based on how we think the story is shaping up."

And that sentiment was overwhelmingly echoed by the authors with whom I spoke. They almost all describe approaching their respective projects with a bit of trepidation, expecting the Story Group to micromanage their stories and mandate story/character changes in the interest of continuity. The truth, as it turns, is something quite different.

Chuck Wendig (Aftermath trilogy) describes the process almost verbatim with Hidalgo: "I had a lot of freedom to develop and shape the story; guidance from Lucasfilm was about sharpening that story and bringing my vision in line with the storyworld at large. It was pretty much the ideal relationship, and I never felt stifled or managed."

Adam Gidwitz (So You Want to Be a Jedi?) describes the process as empowering and exciting, even though one of his ideas was nixed by the Story Group. "One thing they did shoot down was an idea I had early on in the process. [I wanted it to] be a Jedi teaching a young Padawan this story soon after [Return of the Jedi] concluded. And they had said that because J.J. Abrams had been contractually given a perfectly clean slate for Episode VII that I could not even imply the existence of Jedi after Episode VI."

Still, Gidwitz got to retell The Empire Strikes Back in the second person, an unconventional approach that shows the flexibility of the group.

And according to Tom Angleberger (Beware the Power of the Dark Side!), it was Lucasfilm's willingness to roll with Gidwitz's non-traditional take on Empire that gave him the courage to suggest a similar creative risk with his adaptation of Return of the Jedi.

"I remember being really nervous about telling the story the way I wanted to. And then we were there at Skywalker Ranch, and I'm so nervous that I'm just going to get shot down when I say I want to have the 'dear reader' style of writing," he remembered. "And then Adam goes, 'I'm going to tell mine in the second person!' And then I was like, 'Oh, I'm doing dear reader.' Because Adam broke the ice with that second person thing, and they were so supportive of it! They were like, 'Go for it!' So I realized that, wow, they really do want us to go for it."

Angleberger confirmed that he had "almost no parameters" while writing the book. "But we knew that eventually the Story Group was going to have to look at it. We knew we wouldn't get away with everything, but we also knew that we were allowed to at least try to get away with stuff. And I got away with some really fun stuff."

For her part, Alexandra Bracken (The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy) was not allowed to read Gidwitz's or Angleberger's adaptations of the original trilogy in advance of writing her adaptation of A New Hope, but she was told about Gidwitz's decision to use the second person.

"It was in the sense that they were trying to show me that I could do whatever I wanted with it. [My editor] told me that, first and foremost, they wanted me to have a ton of fun writing the book," she said. "And initially I was not having fun writing the book because I was so stressed out about it. And then I had a separate visit to Lucasfilm, and the Story Group said, 'You can make little changes and alterations. We just don't want you to contradict something that's in the film itself or anything that's upcoming in The Force Awakens. But you can make little scene adjustments and alter the dialogue a little bit to better suit your needs.'"

Claudia Gray (Lost Stars; Bloodline; Leia: Princess of Alderaan) was initially approached to write a YA "Romeo & Juliet in space" set adjacent to the events of the original trilogy. With a few relatively minor exceptions, she was set loose to write whatever story she wanted. "I thought, when they came to me, they were going to tell me what to write, but that was very much not the case. I had a lot of freedom. The outline had to be approved, but it was my outline and they really let me tell the story I wanted to tell. It was wonderful."

John Jackson Miller (A New Dawn) is one of only a very few authors who straddle the line and has written for the franchise both before and after the Disney purchase. His novels exist in both the "old canon" (now Legends) and "new canon."

Miller explains, "Back before 2014, Lucasfilm had their fiction team proofread everything and approved the stories that go forward. But I think, then, it was more a matter of air traffic control—of them being aware of all the other things that were going on and coming out, and just wanting to make sure that things we did didn't collide with things that were going on elsewhere."

From his perspective, there are a few changes with the Story Group in place, but it's "not so much a matter of content flowing in our direction as the authors, but like 'Hey, here's a character you should name-drop.'" For example, when he was writing his short story "Bottleneck" (which appears in The Rise of the Empire), he was asked to insert a character who would later appear in Alexander Freed's Battlefront: Twilight Company.

"It wasn't a heavy-handed 'This is what this story is about,' but it was guidance in the sense of 'Here's something that's going to come out fairly far down the line, and if you insert this character now, it'll look like we planned it.' And in fact, we did! In the past, it was possible for characters in one medium to pop up in another, but it kind of happened organically and it wasn't something that was done by design."

Cecil Castellucci (Moving Target) had a similar experience. "You have to understand, [I was writing] before The Force Awakens came out. We didn't know what was going to happen, and nobody was allowed to know anything. So there were things in my book, and I didn't even know what I knew. I wrote a framework for the story and then [the editors] would come in and pepper little things in. It kind of worked like that. I knew that Leia was going to be giving her memoirs to a droid. So I just named the droid whatever. But then they were like, 'No, this is the name of the droid: PZ-4CO.' Because they knew he would end up in the movie. And he does! You hear his name! I was probably the only person who was excited about that. It was kind of like, you do your thing, and then other people come in and course correct."

So how much freedom did Ben Acker and Ben Blacker (Join the Resistance) have when they started writing their series? Blacker doesn't even hesitate. "Oh, so much freedom. It is absolutely the book that we wanted to write. I would say, there's not really oversight, but there's guidance, and that's really an editor's job. And [our editor] did a really terrific job with it. The big thing that the Story Group (who reads everything) provides is just their knowledge of what's going on in every corner of the Star Wars universe. They're really good at looking at an outline of the manuscript and saying, Well, you can't use this kind of droid because it's no longer in use 30 years after Jedi, but what about this kind of droid? Or instead of using this kind of alien, why don't you make up a new alien so it doesn't have ties to anything and you get to own a piece of the Star Wars universe? That's been a really cool and surprising thing."

What's fascinating about the Star Wars publishing machine is that there's also an entire library of "nonfiction" titles that dive deeper into the details and minutiae of the universe. Adam Bray (Ultimate Star Wars; Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know) is intimately familiar with these.

"In 'nonfiction' Star Wars writing, the freedom I have varies a little from project to project. My primary objective is to work within existing canon and tell it like it already is. But sometimes there are gaps that need to be filled in. In these instances, the Story Group folks give me a lot of freedom to invent new information, as long as I run it by them later for approval. This tends to be background details rather than storylines, though occasionally these details might suggest a little story waiting to be told.

"When I worked on the guides for the animated Star Wars Rebels series, the show was new, so there were lots of vehicles and technology that needed names and stats, so that kept me busy. Numbers and droid names are a fun thing to invent, especially if you can tie them to something meaningful. If I have questions about obscure details, I can consult Leland Chee or Pablo Hidalgo at Lucasfilm. And one or more members of the Story Group always reads my manuscripts, fact-checks, and provides feedback for both in- and out-of-universe content."

The amazing thing about Star Wars, though, is that the members of the Story Group are very accessible to fans. Find me another fandom that can say that. Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo), Leland Chee (@HolocronKeeper), and Matt Martin (@missingwords) are all very active on Twitter and responsive to fans. But please be respectful and reasonable.

Hidalgo's Twitter bio used to read "2 rules: Don't pitch anything. Please don't ask me about the future."

You can bet they've heard it all.

— SYFY WIRE

[thechcoman]

WIBP: NieR Automata

Hey guys, another quick message before the rest of this. I played A LOT of a single game this week, and I have a lot to talk about with it. So, while I did play more Hollow Knight, I’m going to have today’s post only cover this game, and tomorrow I’ll make a separate post about Hollow Knight, as this post is going to be LONG. Anyways, that’s all for now. Enjoy!

I love RPGs. Especially Japanese RPGs. I grew up playing them, and RPGs have always remained as one of my favorite genres. This stems from when I, as a kid, had a Gameboy advance and played Final Fantasy V on it. It introduced me to so many concepts within RPGs. The idea of specialization; the job-class system; among others. However, one of my favorite things about RPGs has always been the stories. This stems from the original granddaddy of all RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons, which while it inspired most mechanics seen in most video games, it also inspired video games to tell amazing stories, as D&D, despite it’s deep mechanics, was mostly about the storytelling and…well…role-playing. It was about the characters and the party and the story those party members went through. As such, when first video game RPGs were being made, they wished to emulate the D&D experience by giving players of these games a grand story to embark on, along with multiple characters in a party to invoke the feeling of playing Dungeons and Dragons. I bring this up because despite many people’s feelings about stories in games, they have always been part of games, and have had many ups and downs in quality.

The game I’ve played this week is one such experimental JRPG with an experimental story. That game being NieR: Automata, a game which I had ZERO interest in when it first release, but got continually recommended to me over and over, until I eventually broke down and bought it during a sale. The main reason why I had no interest in it is because it was a sequel to an obscure game that barely sold with a boring-looking environment and looked like typical JRPG bullcrap that had turned me off of the genre for the longest time (such as the skimpy, fanservice-y designs; the over-the-top combat that was impossible to follow; and a story with far too much mystery and philosophy-talk while that’s overly convoluted). However, if what other people have told me is true, then NieR: Automata’s story will be an excellent one...I hope.

So why was there so much hype around the game? Well I did a little research, and found that the game’s creator, Yoko Taro, was notorious for having games with excellent (and insanely WEIRD) stories, but horrible, terrible gameplay. So the appeal of NieR: Automata was twofold. It had the excellent story that Taro is known for, while also being his first game that was, apparently, really fun to play. Thankfully, the developers of this particular game was Platinum Games, known for their work on the Bayonetta series and several successful licensed games that are known for having super fast-paced, over the top, QTE heavy gameplay that many people enjoy.

And yes, I can confirm that NieR: Automata has not only a great story (so far), but also REALLY fun gameplay.

The game starts out…rather differently than I was expecting. From everything I had seen of the game, I had thought it was an action RPG…but here’s this section that’s a full on top-down, twin stick shooter. Thankfully, I like top-down, twin stick shooters, so that’s fine, but it’s really out of place, especially when you reach the actual action RPG portions. It’s also not bad, but as of what I’ve played so far every time this gameplay crops up, it feels out of place. It’s still fun, for sure (if you’re expecting a deep analysis about the top-down shooter sections, I have so little to say about it because it’s a standard top-down shooter soooo…) but I like the action RPG portions far more and when most of the game is the action RPG portions, whenever I’m forced to hop into a giant robot and just hold down the shoot button, it feels a little boring, even though it’s incredibly flashy.

Although something that is flashy and also FUN is the action RPG combat. It plays out very similarly to other games made by Platinum, unsurprisingly. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, multiple different combos you can do (usually involving juggling opponents into the air), and a gun (which is the best term I can come up with for it) which will constantly fire a stream of bullets into whatever nearby enemy you’re locked onto so long as you hold down the button. You also have cinematic finishers you can do when an enemy is at low health and a special super attack that you can do when the cooldown from the last time you used it goes away. The combat also emphasizes attack quickly, and dodging through enemy attacks. Dodging, much like most Platinum games, slows down time slightly after every dodge, though unlike something like say, Bayonetta, where time will slow and allow you to get combos in while it’s slowed, NieR: Automata instead will just pause everything for a brief second as your character performs the dodge to make things flashy and exciting, all while keeping the flow of combat going and giving you time to react to what the enemy is doing next.

I love this sort of gameplay. Combining light attacks and heavy attacks to do cool, unique and interesting new combos to see what cool new flashy ways you can defeat your enemy is incentive alone. It makes you feel badass and empowered. One of my favorite things to do in the game is to start a jumping attack into a combo after I dodge someone’s attack, and then pressing the heavy attack button mid-air to slam them back down to the ground. The combat feels so incredibly fluid and free. Whenever I see an enemy off in the distance, I get excited because I know how much fun it is to fight.

However I do have a few critiques with the combat. Firstly, it feels incredibly easy. I’m playing the game on normal difficulty, and I feel like it’s still far too easy to dodge, counter and kill enemies exceptionally fast. Secondly, the flashy finishers feel…pointless. While it looks cool, if an enemy is that low on health, then there’s no point in doing the finisher since you’ll probably just kill them as easily, with the same rewards. Lastly, the controls are a little complicated and take some getting used to. You have to hold down both L2 and R1 to lock-on and be shooting at whatever enemy is closest, while occasionally pressing L1 to activate your super, mashing R2 to dodge, and then switching between that and the X/Square (depending on the controller) button for light attacks, the Y/Triangle button for heavy attacks and the A/Cross button to jump mid-combo. While you don't have to perform any finger gymnastics, it is easy to get the various buttons mixed up, and remember to hold down certain buttons while also occasionally pressing the necessary ones.

The game also attempts to incorporate aspects of Bullet Hell games. While I also like the idea of incorporating bullet hell aspects of the gameplay (both in the action RPG portions, and the top-down shooter sections), it’s not super well executed. In most bullet hell games, you would have to avoid a crap load of attacks with an incredibly small hit box and carefully maneuvering through all the bullets being shot at you. However, NieR: Automata decides not to care about that by allowing you to easily destroy buttons with a single melee attack or by shooting them down with your gun. It’s a mechanic that feels ultimately pointless since it’s barely an obstacle. I like the concept, but the execution needs work. Though from what I understand, this mechanic is a relic from the first NieR game, and well…that game wasn’t great gameplay-wise so…that should be telling on it’s own.

When it comes to the level design and the world design, I at first wasn’t very impressed, as most of the world looks fairly gray and boring, and whatever colors there are feel…muted and washed out. Plus, the starting area of the game have all these barriers everywhere that make it difficult to traverse the starting area. However, once you move on from the starting area (the City Ruins) and head into the Desert and then the Desert ruins, the game’s level design becomes a lot better and stays better. The world becomes more fun to traverse and it feels a lot more open, with plenty to explore as well.

The last thing I’ll mention about the gameplay is the RPG mechanics within the game…which is admittedly shallow, but it doesn’t need to be anymore complicated than it needs to be. There’s the usual RPG mechanics, such as leveling up to increase your stats, various equipment you can equip and upgrade, items to buy, etc. The most interesting thing the game has in its RPG mechanics is the plug-in chip system…which is basically the badge system from the first two Paper Mario games. You have a certain amount of “memory”. Each plug-in chip, which can give you abilities or increase your stats, takes up a certain amount of memory. If you run out of memory, you can’t equip anymore chips. You can slowly upgrade the amount of memory you can hold and upgrade your chips to get better chips that cost less memory. The chips, depending on what you equip, can either completely break the game’s difficult and make it pathetically easy, or make for some fairly interesting builds. I love mixing and matching different chip sets and optimizing the various builds by combining chips. It’s enthralling, and is a good way to expand on an already interesting system from the Paper Mario series.

However, it is worth mentioning that if you die during the game, you’ll lose all your plug-in chips and you have to find your old body and re-obtain them. If you die again before getting your chips though, you lose them forever, so death is legitimately scary, and through this the game basically forces you to get good at the combat in the game. And let me tell you, the moment I lost my plug-in chips and failed to recover them at one point in the game, it was a devastating feeling.

While there’s a ton more I could talk about the gameplay, like how great the sidequests are and how none of them are simple and always have a story to them, or the online components in the game, I’d be here all day if I talked about those. I’ll talk about them another time, as I do plan on writing more about this game as I play more of it.

The game’s presentation is amazing to say the least. At first, I wasn’t a fan of the art style or the character designs. The main protagonist, an android named 2B, seemed like another overly-sexualized female character in video games and it was initially frustrating, but it was something I moved past, especially since most of the other characters designs (such as the male lead of the game, another android named 9S) are really good. The art style I wasn’t a fan of at first either as everything was grey, and the colors that WERE there seemed drained of all their color. However, the art style of the game manages to match the perfectly bleak tone of the story, so it managed to grow on me as it felt appropriate. And on the few occasions where there were colors, they popped even more thanks to everything else being so dark and grey.

The music of the game is the best part of the presentation. Words don’t even begin to do it justice. The only criticism I have is that some of the tracks sound somewhat similar and repeat themselves a little too often, but other then that, the music is great. I love the mixture between the orchestra and the constant wailing and chanting of female voices. It sounds intense during intense moments, and soft during moments of respite, as it should. However, a lot of the tracks are really memorable (Pascal’s village music stands out, as does the boss fight in the carnival too), and I highly recommend listening to the game’s OST online or buying it. It’s that good.

Lastly, I want to take a moment to talk about the game’s story (and how it thankfully only barely ties into the first game, so you can experience it without playing the first game). It takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where mankind was forced to live on the moon after aliens invaded and made machines to fight against humanity with. In retaliation, humanity created YorHA, a group of android meant to fight the machines and reclaim Earth.

The main protagonist is one such android named 2B, and her love intere…uhhhh best frie…errr…sidekick? Named 9S, who desperately wants to impress her. The two are as opposite as you can get. 2B is closed off, cold and while she does truly care about 9S, she hates showing it for one reason or another that the player is not entirely sure of yet. Meanwhile, 9S is incredibly extroverted, extremely observant and always trying to solve whatever mystery and is generally pretty upbeat. The two have great chemistry with each other. The two have great banter, and I especially like the parts in which 9S tries to get 2B to call him “Nines” as a nickname, and she occasionally gives in.

The game’s story is very obvious in what it’s trying to do, as the story is kicked off due to the machines that 2B and 9S have been fighting start becoming more and more passive, even finding that they are gaining emotions and self-awareness, and generally wanting to live a peaceful life. 2B and 9S are skeptical of course, as they’ve been fighting these things for decades, but have never shown any signs of becoming good or being more and more passive. It’s clear that the game is trying to make a story about acceptance and caring for each other, and it’s done somewhat clumsily since it’s so obvious. Also, I can already easily guess some of the plot twists that are going to happen for sure (Yep, I’m TOTALLY positive that humans are on the moon, and that they totally aren’t extinct or anything).

Since the story is so simple and basic right now, I sincerely hope that something more interesting happens down the line. However, as you might’ve guess about my opening paragraph, the game’s story is really unique, risky and different. Given what I already know about the game, after the initial playthrough, things get pretty crazy, interesting and well-written. Yes, you read that right; “initial playthrough”. Much like Chrono Trigger, half the fun of the game is replaying the game on new game + in order to get new endings and to see changes in the story. Things change significantly from playthrough to playthrough, and you need to get five different endings to get the full story. So I’ll stick with it and see what happens. I’m having fun with the gameplay so I don’t mind having to replay the game a few times, especially because it seems like the game is not terribly long either.

I’m looking forward to see what NieR: Automata delivers on in the future. It’s been fairly promising so far, so I’m excited to keep playing!

Anyways, I’ll see you all again tomorrow for my second post about Hollow Knight!

[konnl]

International Bestselling Author Kathrin Hutson Releases the First Installment of Dystopian Sci-Fi Series, Sleepwater Beat

This month’s guest author is Kathrin Hutson. She has been writing fantasy and sci-fi since 2000 because she cannot get enough of tainted heroes, excruciating circumstances, impossible decisions, and Happy Never Afters. She also works as a ghost writer in almost all genres and as an editor through KLH CreateWorks. She lives with her husband, daughter and their two dogs. Let’s learn more about her writing by welcoming Kathrin Hutson to the blog!

Thank you for joining us Kathrin Hutson, congratulations on the release! Can you give us a brief introduction to yourself?

Yes! As far as general stuff about my writing is concerned, I go dark. Some people might ask, “When there’s already so much craziness in the world, why would you add more to it?” To this, my answer is pretty simple (and still so easy to forget within all that craziness): It’s not only about the darkness. More importantly, it’s also about how my characters (and people in general) grow and shift (or not) from within that darkness. Or in spite of it. I don’t write happy endings, and for one unsuspecting reader who took a chance on one of my books, “It wasn’t happy enough.” And I wear that like a badge of honor. But I do write hopeful endings, transformative endings, self-aware and self-empowered endings. For me, the fun isn’t in wrapping everything up in a little bow and calling it “happy”. It’s about reaching the darkest places, exploring them with painful clarity, and illuminating all the possibilities that arise from within.

Now that we went down that road… people seem constantly surprised in meeting me or speaking with me that I am a smiley, laughing, super approachable, ridiculously optimistic person. I wasn’t always that way, that’s for sure. Every person has their darkness and their light. Somehow, I think I’ve managed to siphon all my darkness into my career as an author, and everything that’s left fills my real life with joy and peace and excitement for where I am now and where I’m going in the future. That’s not always easy to maintain, either, with a two-year-old who’s smarter and more stubborn than both of her parents combined (and my husband and I can be a real handful). A few people have also called me a hippie, which is cool too. I’m pretty sure if I’d been born 45 years earlier, I would’ve rocked the 70s! And I do very much enjoy a well-aged bourbon.

Tell us about your new novel, Sleepwater Beat, and how you came about creating this series?

Sleepwater Beat was my first attempt at two things: 1) Dystopian Sci-Fi (or really anything not Dark Fantasy); and 2) an experimental writing style for a long short story of 35,000 words. #2 was a complete failure. I had this crazy idea for “the beat”, which is what these characters call this series’ brand of superpowers—eliciting physical responses in those who hear a very special kind of speaking. Then I thought I could recreate the effect of storytelling-by-vignette a la Memento, only why go backward in time chronologically? Let’s try mixing up the timeline so it makes no sense! That’s what I did. I literally listed each scene on one line, cut them up into little strips, and rearranged them so that no two scenes were placed chronologically together (either backward or forward) with no discernible pattern. It was… interesting. My writing workshop at the time, Charleston Writers Group in Charleston, SC, said pretty much the same. Great writing, interesting concept, wtf is going on with the order of these scenes, and oh, hey! You should turn this into a novel!

Their enthusiasm was so contagious, I did exactly that. I didn’t think I had it in me to turn this awkward short story into a novel. There was so much literary surgery that it took me two years. And a lot of self-doubt, frustration, terror, and pretty much all the emotions I had never felt about any other work I’ve ever written. I did keep most of the “flashback” scenes from Leo’s past and a bit of an unconventional story method in Part 1 (alternating between the present storyline, those flashbacks of her life, and short interludes of dystopian world-building revealed through news-report transcripts. So far, I’ve heard that I captured the “fake news” vibe perfectly. I’ll let readers speculate who that was modeled after…) When I’d included all those and strung them together into the narrative of Leo’s present, I hit a bit of a wall with continuing. Because I realized that Sleepwater Beat as a novel was actually a form of me telling my own story.

That was where the terror really came from. I have never put as much of myself into a main character as I put into Leo Tieffler. I’m definitely not as brooding and anti-social (thank goodness), and I really do care what people think of me personally despite having developed a thick skin necessary for any author. Of course, the details are different, but the parallels were really astounding. Many of the characters from Leo’s past were inspired by real people in my life. So many of those flashback scenes were inspired by real events I did actually experience. And many, many relationships throughout the book reflect in a staggering way a select few relationships I’ve had myself during my relatively short life. At one point, I thought I was writing myself and was terrified that it would seriously detract from the story. At another point, I struggled desperately to write all the social and economic commentary touched upon through this book as subtly as possible… before agonizing over the possibility that it just wasn’t screaming loud enough.

Now that it’s out, now that I’ve gotten feedback from readers and fans (and not just my alpha and beta readers, whose opinions I value quite a lot), I think I’ve done a pretty decent job of mixing it all up to let Sleepwater Beat be its own story. And it very much is.

How many books can readers expect to find in your new sci-fi series? Or is this a secret?

Well, this is Book 1 of the Blue Helix series, so of course there will be more. I already have Book 2 brewing in the primordial ooze of creativity that is my writing mind. All I can say for sure is that there will be at least three books. Most likely more. And as a pantser, I can’t really say more than that, because I won’t have any clue myself until I sit down and put it all to paper. When it feels finished and the characters quit begging for their stories to be exposed, then I guess it’ll be done.

You have a love of writing wild characters, and your new series features an LGBT component, how did come to be?

The first answer for that is that it felt right for the story. Leo isn’t a “wild character”, by any means. The fact that I wrote an LGBT main character isn’t particularly wild either. But she encounters other wild characters, and she gets flung into some pretty wild circumstances. I also wanted her to be real—existing within that gray area encompassing where she belongs, where her loyalties lie, who she trusts, what she’s willing to do, how far she’s willing to go… and, yes, who she’s attracted to. I also wanted to give her a little bit of a break within all her struggles by adding something like a love interest. It’s not very romantic (romance exists in all of my work, but none of it is particularly “romantic”. That’s the one genre I just can’t pin down, and I’m totally okay with that). In the original failed short-story experiment, Leo and her “mentor” Karl (for lack of a better term) with the organization called Sleepwater had a bit of a fling. Honestly, it felt like shoving two strangers’ heads together and saying, “Great, now kiss each other. And enjoy it!” So I dropped that in the novel.

Leo’s romantic relationship with Alex, a character from her past, was there to show the side of this main character that wanted to be a protector—someone who’d never been cared for herself and who knew the consequences of being abandoned by those who were supposed to look after her. She wanted to be that for Alex so badly that she took it a little too far, and then her fear of losing Alex became the self-fulfilling prophecy of becoming just like the people in her life who’d dropped Leo without a second thought.

Leo’s “romantic” relationship with Kaylee, another character with the beat who’s a part of Sleepwater, is definitely not as easily defined. Mostly, Kaylee is the first person who’s ever wanted something very specific from Leo for an incredibly vague reason. At first. And Leo comes to recognize that a part of her likes being told what to do (by Kaylee) when there doesn’t seem to be any ulterior motives. Ulterior motives are all Leo has really ever known, so the brutal honesty and the unapologetic requests are refreshing for her.

Putting all these things into the story with Leo as a heterosexual, cisgender woman would have detracted from her character in so many ways, especially when it comes down to the fact that nothing about her existence—not even where she’s from and who her parents were—is black and white. And in a way, it would have felt like devaluing her character growth and putting through more than a few rounds of sexual objectification. Neither of those are my cup of tea.

Short answer? I wrote more of myself into Leo than I’ve written into any of my other characters to date.

Tell us about Leo, the hero of the story.

Well, now that I answered most of this question in my last diatribe…

Leo is independent and self-reliant by necessity. What’s her ability? When she spins a beat, she can make anyone who hears her believe absolutely whatever she says, even if it’s wildly impossible (and some of it is). She’s put up so many walls around herself in so many different layers as nothing more than a defense mechanism for her own survival. Her mother left when she was three. Her father was one of the greatest minds in technological advancement who became addicted to the same new drug that propelled his career into fame. And it killed him.

She wants everyone to think that she doesn’t give a crap what they think. When she meets Karl and Sleepwater, that “tough girl” façade grows harder and harder to maintain. Even when she’s forced into gunfights and runs from government agencies and gets kidnapped. This woman definitely has a conscience, but she grew up with the repetitious misfortune of finding nothing but pain whenever she followed it. She does the wrong things with the right intentions and has to learn to reconcile them. And in the end, all she really wants is to be accepted, respected, and understood for who she is. Not for her beat. Not for what she’s done or the seemingly unforgiveable mistakes she’s made. Not for who her parents were. And most of the time, she doesn’t even know who she herself really is. So she has to figure it out.

Honestly, she was inspired by Stieg Larsson’s character Lisbeth Salander in the Millennium series (who I fell head-over-heels in love with when I saw the Swedish version of the film and Noomi Rapace as the star). So if we took away Lisbeth Salander’s goth exterior and traded her hacking superpowers for the ability to make people believe whatever she says, we get Leo. Without the solving-murders part.

You mention you’ve been creating worlds since your 10th birthday, has any of the older world building work its way into your published work?

I actually created the world for The Unclaimed trilogy (and my upcoming Vessel Broken series) far before that trilogy became what it is. I think I’d written the first two chapters somewhere in high school, then dropped it because it just didn’t make sense. When I picked it back up again in 2017, I was so ready to re-explore what I’d created and finally write Kherron’s story. I also had to completely rewrite those first two chapters, but it was so worth it.

The majority of the worlds from my amateur writing days (which will never see the light of day) will remain buried in a dusty box in my basement. I took what I needed from them when I created The Unclaimed trilogy, and I get to further explore that world with the Vessel Broken series. But for everything else, my highly sophisticated, painstakingly perfected method of “writing by the seat of my pants” and figuring it out as I go along means that all the new worlds are just that—brand new. And I don’t create them unless I’m going to write and publish the stories that take place there.

What comes first for you, world building or character creation? Or is it a mishmash of both?

Mishmash of everything! The only thing that comes first for me is the first word, then the first sentence. Including something like the first page, that is the hardest part of writing for me. The blank slate. Even when I have all the ideas in my head ready to be unloaded onto paper (or my computer).

So I guess what actually comes first is the “idea”. It’s only ever a theme, or one character in one scene because I like the way they laughed in the face of it, or a setting because it just feels like the right amount of mystically creepy. I usually let those things percolate in my head for anywhere from six months to two years, and when they feel fully brewed (and I have an opening in my timeline for writing new projects), I’ll sit down to begin. Outlining, plotting, character sketches, and world-building before sitting down to write the actual story is an incredibly boring process for me. Every writer has their own method, and those things just aren’t a part of mine. Believe me, I’ve tried. I know it’s because the thing I love most about writing fiction is the act of discovering these characters and these worlds for the first time myself during the writing of them. I get to learn who they are as the ideas just kind of pour through my head and onto the page, and tying together all the woven threads I leave for myself along the way is like playing my own scavenger hunt. More often than not, the characters turn out to do, say, and be completely different things than I originally intended, so an outline or a sketch would have been pointless anyway.

In the case of the Sleepwater Beat series, do you do a lot of research for your world building?

Oh, man. Do I do a lot of research…

Research is something I absolutely loathe. It sucks away the energetic brilliance of building worlds and being in “the zone” of writing and working with magic (for me, that magic is crafting story). I’ve adopted the use of placeholders for this, which means I can keep up my writing momentum to get to the next part of the story already, and I don’t have to tear myself out of the process to go Google something. But I still have to go back after the first draft for that research.

Sleepwater Beat is the first book I ever wrote that actually required any amount of research at all. Obviously, with my Dark Fantasy books, there really wasn’t any research necessary (okay, except for forges and blacksmithing and something about the ingredients of the very first gunpowder). Those worlds are magical and mystical and do not adhere to the physical laws of our world. Sleepwater Beat, as a very near-future Dystopian Sci-Fi, is set in our world. So there was lots and lots of research. It was awful.

I think at one point, I’d spent an hour looking up electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) to use as a plot device in this book. Then when I actually got to the place where I’d intended to use it, the story had changed so much that there isn’t even an odor of EMPs between the front cover and the back. Which is why I now do my research after the writing’s complete.

Let’s thank Kathrin Hutson for joining us again to the blog!

You can find her new novel on her website, amazon, and the various links below:

Website: kathrinhutsonfiction.com

Amazon: amazon.com/Kathrin-Hutson/e/B016N498BS

Twitter: twitter.com/KLHCreateWorks

Goodreads: goodreads.com/author/show/14541725.Kathrin_Hutson

Facebook: facebook.com/KathrinHutsonFiction

Instagram: instagram.com/kathrinhutsonfiction

Thank you so much for having me! I’ve really enjoyed getting to answer these questions (could you tell?).

[gigsoupmusic]

SORAIA's New Album 'DIG YOUR ROOTS' Out Today

Personal growth, rebirth, even revolution – such transformative concepts are the heart of what Soraia is all about. These heady themes inform the songs on Dig Your Roots, the band’s latest album, out March 13 on Wicked Cool Records. “I look at Dig Your Roots as a continuation of what was begun on Dead Reckoning,” says singer and frontwoman ZouZou Mansour of the new album’s relationship to their 2017 Wicked Cool LP. That record’s release prompted Rolling Stone/Mojo scribe David Fricke to write Soraia’s “searing guitars, burning soul and true CBGB grit…are the rock you need, in your face now.” “Dig Your Roots is coming to terms with the light and dark inside myself and in the world,” ZouZou shares. “I come from a diverse multicultural and multireligious background – my father was Muslim and Egyptian, and my mother was Belgian and Catholic. I was ‘different,’ and I hid some of my background from people, thinking I wouldn't be accepted. Digging my roots is being proud of who I am, letting it come before me even at times, being proud of where I come from, and asking the listener to do the same. “Dig Your Roots also refers to loving what grounds you: the people, the lifestyles, the places you live, where you grew up. It’s being willing to dig up your roots and re-plant if where you are no longer keeps you free – metaphorically, of course. Inherently, I want this to be the message of the record: if you're down, get up.” As a spiritual descendent of iconic women in rock such as Patti Smith and Joan Jett, ZouZou’s Philadelphia-based band also embodies elements of kindred spirits of the ’90s and beyond - like PJ Harvey and The Kills, with more than a sprinkling of ’60s Garage Rock and Soul. Their primal sonic attack spreads a message of perseverance through trials of love, loss and letting go. Bassist Travis Smith continues to be a crucial root of the Soraia tree, co-writing five of the album’s new songs with ZouZou, including “Superman Is Gone” and “Wild Woman.” “Travis delved into places on this album that we didn't go to on the last record,” she reveals. “That's scary. But he did it, which ultimately made me do it, too. It's like, ‘Hold my hand, we're going into this dark cave, and who knows what's going to happen…” Roots also finds drummer Brianna Sig with her first Soraia co-write, the enchanting “Don’t Have You.” “Her melody for the choruses reminded me of how The Sirens would lure sailors in Greek mythology,” ZouZou relates. “It was haunting and beautiful – and if Soraia isn't both of those things, then I don't know what we're doing here.” The band faced an unexpected challenge when guitarist Mike Reisman, who co-wrote four Dig tracks, including 2019 single “Evergreen,” left the group. “Mike can’t tour for longer periods of time anymore,” says ZouZou. “It hurt. He still works with us and we still connect. But you grow closer with who remains, and grow yourself.” Going forward, Nick Seditious is handling guitar duties. Further nourishing their roots is the continued support of Wicked Cool’s Stevie Van Zandt. The label head has been an advocate ever since naming their breakout track “Love Like Voodoo” the Coolest Song in the World on his syndicated radio show and SiriusXM channel Little Steven’s Underground Garage in 2013. In January 2020, Dig Your Roots' opening cut “Dangerous” becomes the tenth Coolest Song they’ve earned. Van Zandt has even become a creative collaborator, penning “Why” for Dead Reckoning and co-writing two Roots tunes: 2019 Coolest Song “Still I Rise” and forthcoming single “Darkness (Is My Only Candle).” “I trust him more than anyone in knowing what I'm trying to say and who I am,” says ZouZou. Complementing them in the studio once again is producer/engineer Geoff Sanoff, whose credits include notable work with Bruce Springsteen, Fountains Of Wayne and Dashboard Confessional. “He’s a member of the band when we’re in there,” ZouZou acknowledges. Soraia has come a long way since their punked-up cover of The Kinks’ “(I’m Not) Like Everybody Else” hit #1 on Rock radio in South America in 2015. Their independently released debut album In The Valley Of Love And Guns from 2013 features five songs co-written with Jon Bon Jovi. “I'm all about playing a fun song and throwing myself around, that's Rock ’n’ Roll at its heart,” ZouZou remarks. “But I'm also about telling the stories of resurrection and life and hope and darkness.” And now, the songs of 'Dig Your Roots' in ZouZou’s own words… 1. Dangerous I was listening to a ton of Jet and The Vines at one point, and just loved the recklessness – especially in the screams on those songs – and the pure Rock eruption of it all. It's less than three minutes and explodes the entire time. “Dangerous” was born from that specific decision to write a song with those kinds of explosive dynamics and lyrics – and as always – easy and passionate conversations about the things we love. 2. Wild Woman I had been listening to this female preacher talking about being “born inside the wild” and not knowing where you were – but that strong women thrived in the wild. I fell in love with that idea of birthing yourself – which is one way to put it – over and over when you enter into situations you're uncomfortable in, or have never been in. An added bonus is the notion of being a “wild woman” in that way was a different take on the idea I think social consciousness has on being a “wild woman.” Empowering instead of denigrating. Travis had written this swampy, mysterious riff, so we took that and made it the forefront of the song, and took the subject matter – pieced them together – and VOILA! WILD WOMAAAAAAN!!! 3. Evergreen Mike played this riff that became the verses and said he heard this drumbeat like “Howlin’ For You” by The Black Keys for it. I had been watching the movie Black Snake Moan and heard this line that the main female character “had the devil in her.” That conjured up this old South feeling for me, so I wanted to put that in and give it that vibe. The story is told with a sometimes playful and teasing attitude, and sometimes aggressive and frustrated tone. It really felt freeing and gave the speaker the power back she didn't feel she had in the first place. 4. Foxfire Travis had this intriguing idea of “foxfire” for a title line. I didn't know what it meant, so he told me all about it. It’s this phosphorescent light emitted by certain fungi on decaying timber. It’s beautiful when it glows, but it isn’t real, it’s a momentary thing. And when people would see it in the woods, many got lost being guided by it. We thought it would be interesting to write a song about depression from the standpoint of “foxfire” – or these glimmering thoughts that lead you astray and only give the illusion that everything's alright. The struggle to believe in any one thought, to characterize the confusion of that type of struggle from the speaker's point of view. 5. Darkness (Is My Only Candle) Again, a song written almost together in a room. There's a line of a Rumi poem, “Darkness is your candle.” At the time, there had been the Charlottesville riots, and lots of violence that seemed horrifically reminiscent of the racial injustices of the ’60s. I remember thinking “Where are we?” and being really upset about all the hatred and racial slurs. This song came as a result of anger, pain, sadness, worry, and ultimately the idea we can't be separate anymore or stay quiet. It took a few sessions to write because Travis and I were both so impassioned about making sure we told the truth and stayed with the times as we saw them. 6. Nothing Compares 2 U I had always felt so strongly about the Sinéad O’Connor version of this song. But despite being a big Prince fan, I had never heard his version. When I did, and heard the first line lyric change – “It’s been seven hours and thirteen days” – I knew immediately this was the one. Those numbers alone and the darker, more soulful approach he took to the lyric and melody spoke to me in a different way than the more popular version by Sinéad. In the studio, Geoff Sanoff really wanted to bring this Mott The Hoople vibe to it like “All The Young Dudes” – which added a lot more to our style of approaching it. 7. Superman Is Gone Another Travis and I song, this one was specifically about the idea of being high and feeling like “Superman” when you did that first line of anything. I'm a recovering person, so it was important to me that I also tell the story of the anger I had at my father over being absent when I was going through that. I have already forgiven him and me about that, but I wanted to tell the story honestly. And there's a part of me that still questions where were a lot of different people in my life when I was busy getting high. That idea that you wonder where people were and what they were doing when you were hardcore in this addiction – with no feeling attached to it – just a human curiosity. 8. Way That You Want It It's really just about this guy who is frustrated by a girl he digs but can't have. It's based lyrically off the same idea as “I Hate Myself For Loving You” by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, but from the viewpoint of another character – where I'm singing as the storyteller/observer instead of the person it's all happening to. 9. Still I Rise Based on a Maya Angelou poem. I live my life in no particular time, almost in a time vacuum. And no matter what, you get up. Mike and I had originally written the song, and called it “I Am (Rise).” But Steven Van Zandt got a hold of it and loved the story of the song, so we rewrote the lyrics, and he rewrote the music to it, to really tell the story of people getting up after falling. I had taken a few lines from actual conversations or experiences I had. Then, Steven and I tried to pay homage as much as possible to the original poem. We rewrote it together in an afternoon – one of the best experiences I've had with him. 10. Don’t Have You This was officially the last song written for the album. Brianna sent me two separate song ideas that ended up becoming “Don't Have You.” This was also the last song recorded for the album, and Geoff knew right away the approach to the piano. It became something really beautiful, and I wanted to keep it simple and stripped in the front end, so the lyric could pull in the listener. This was about my own heartbreak, and that little feeling of hope and possibility still inherent in the relationship is really powerful in the middle of the song. It was Geoff's idea to speak that part instead of sing it, and I was thrilled with how it came out. 11. Euphoria “Euphoria” was written by myself and Travis. I loved the bluesy and spacious riff he came up with. I felt it left a space for some sort of testimony – so I told the story of all these experiences smashed together. Though each line seems to stand alone in some parts, they weave a truthful story of this woman coming back from the dead. I love the lyric in this one. Brianna had this great idea to end it in a church-y way, since it's mainly about wanting this high experience in life. And what a great way to end the record! Read the full article

[skabunny]

2018 a Year in Review

Hey Adventurers! Every year on social media I devour lists of list of lists all the good, bad, sweet and terrible things that happened through the year. The more pictures, tweets and ideas the better. I don’t have a whole lot to talk about to review this year so this is gonna be a two part blog. Today we’re gonna talk about things that happened and Tuesday I’m going to post a special blog of the things that I’m hoping to do in 2019.

I think I’ve talked about it here. I don’t really hold to new years resolutions. I think the process is a bit silly and it doesn’t really talk about goals, it more talks about all of the things you hate about yourself. and I’m super not ok with that. I’ll be starting the Love Your Life in 30 Days workbook from Mike Dooley. You can find the book anywhere, I have it on my kindle and I try to do it in the first 90 days of the year to give me perspective and help me to see what I’m doing and where I want to go. Last year I didn’t get super far, but I’ll be updating progress on Instagram and thanks to integration you’ll be able to follow it on Twitter and Facebook as well. I’m usually pretty good at starting so hopefully with your help I’ll get through all 30 days no problem.

Without Further Ado…

I made goals this year to work on my health, emotional well being and saying no.

I improved my boundaries. I learned to say no more often and especially when it’s in my best interest. I’m not perfect at it, but as someone who’s recovering from saying yes ALL the time, no was a pretty big deal to begin with.

It took a while, but I finally called financial aid and was able to get help affording my health care costs. I saw doctors for help with all kinds of things including my hips, weight loss, my tonsils, and the constant nausea.

I lost 10 lbs. Which is a freaking miracle. The number isn’t a big deal to me. I’m more excited that it’s 10 lbs less on my hips and what is hopefully at least a little more time to a hip replacement.

I started journaling. First using a bullet journal adjacent to my planner and then with the Journey app I purchased for my ChromeBook. I’m a huge fan of journaling. I talk to people about it all the time and I’ve been using it a lot as a tool to really kinda pull my shit together and bring things to focus. Sure they’ll exist forever and whatever, but this is more for me as a tool to be a better me now.

I took a risk at work and it paid off

When I found myself tasked with the responsibilities of someone in a Senior role, I didn’t wait around to find out when I would be made a senior tester, I took the initiative to learn what I needed to do for that role and then make it happen.

I also had an opportunity to step into a new department and take on a whole new standard of testing. This is must more strict, but also way more fun. It’s a huge risk, but hopefully it pays off in the long run with a great experience and a fantastic learning opportunity.

I met someone.

I’m not gonna go into details, for many reasons it didn’t work out. But finding people in your life that really meet you and see you for who you are is such an incredible and life altering experience that I’m grateful for every second of that seriously unique experience. I may talk about it someday, but for now I’m gonna keep it as mine.

Meeting someone who makes you feel like you’re made of magic is such a huge thing, but it seriously opened my eyes to a lot of the things that I’d been missing around me and allowed for a huge piece of closure for me. I talked about it a bit here. I’m incredibly lucky that my ex and I worked on our friendship and I feel so wonderfully blessed that his girlfriend has become a friend. They’re wonderful people together and I’m so excited to watch them grow.

I have some amazing friends

Work friends are weird. You meet because you’re all in the same place and then somehow you’re all friends based on almost no feature, just the nature that you’re friends now. Some of those friends have become regular parts of my day, regardless of what department I’m in or what I’m doing I make a point to talk with them. Laugh with them and try new things they recommend. We share videos, details of our lives outside of work and are people in a way that you can only be people with real friends. I’m super lucky that they wanted to talk and that we all still get along even when my world is crazy.

I also had the amazing opportunity to re-connect with one of my favorite people. I’m super grateful for her and for the joy she’s brought back to my life and I’m beyond excited to see what amazing things come for her in the new year.

One of my favorite people started her next chapter by moving to Oakland this year. I’m super excited for her and all of her adventures, but I super miss her.

I started streaming

Twitch is a whole new world, but it’s been really exciting to get started and really see the community from the inside. I’ve been wanting to do a lot of creative things and streaming on Twitch was one way to really get started with some of those things.

I also relaunched skaBunny Makes! This was a big deal. I had to close down the site in February because I was out of funds and creative energy to really work on it. After helping other people really work on reaching for their dreams and watching them go for it regardless of consequences I decided to leap and start again. I’m still rusty, but I’ve been pretty empowered to keep going and I’m loving the opportunity to talk about things that are going on and stuff I think is super important.I have a lot of stories to tell and I”m hoping to do more of that here.

I edited a book of poetry. I’m really proud of the poet who took their opportunity to tell their story on their terms. I may not have always been happy with them, but I’m super proud of all the work they did to complete the book.

Intersectional Feminism came into my life this year

I’ve always been a feminist, but this year I really started critically thinking about the world around me. It’s made it hard to really love certain things that I did love, but also it’s opened my eyes to just how blind I’ve been to my own prejudice and the ideas I learned back in the day. I am a huge believer in challenging my assumptions. This year I put my money where my mouth was and started learning instead of just talking. I’m hoping to bring some of these lessons and stories to you over the next year, but we’ll see. I have a lot more to learn.

I also stepped outside of my comfort zone at some point this year and started reading new authors I hadn’t experienced before. The new perspectives were enlightening and I found that the new stories really re-ignited my passion for storytelling and for listening. I’d become very good at talking over the last few years, so this year I really tried to listen more than I spoke. It’s something I’m gonna have to keep working on. But it’s a process I’m not going to stop.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - I didn’t get to see many movies this year minus the fact that I had movie pass, but I did get to see the new Spider-Man animated movie which was a beautiful, smart, brilliant movie about a biracial Spider-Man who’s father is a police officer and his mother is a nurse. It’s a brilliant story, but beyond that there are several moments that just kinda punch you in the stomach. I was told I’d cry a lot and I did. Linda Holmes from NPR picked the conversation between Mile’s father and the locked bedroom door as her moment, and it’s a good one. Mine might have been the one a few minutes before. I can’t give up all the details, but I keep thinking about it. I highly recommend the movie.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2017 book “Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions” - I found this book while looking up stories I hadn’t read before. It’s a bright take on raising children to be feminists. Adichie a Nigerian novelist and writer of the essay “We Should All Be Feminists“ makes some incredible points about how we raise children and what is beneficial to raise socially aware, strong, intelligent children. It’s a great read and her TED Talk is fantastic if you’re looking for something like that.

Killing Eve - OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG. This show. I had to start off slowly, but the last few episodes I couldn’t stop. Sandra Oh's Eve was a brilliant balance to Jodie Comer’s Villanelle. Both dark, both completely honest about who they are, both strong amazing women. I was so blown away by the power of these incredible women. The supporting cast was brilliant, I am still kinda in shock from the end. I can’t spoil anything, you should watch it.

Timeless - Ok, so the show is basically a soap opera with time travel, but they meet some amazing people and I really loved every second of this silly show. I have the two hour ending to finish, but I’m still not ready to be done with this silly show.

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel - Brilliant show from the creators of Gilmore Girls. I love it more, I think it’s hilarious and amazing and so much fun to watch. I feel like there could definitely be more representation, but it’s still charming and I still can’t wait to finish it.

Cartoons of 2018 don’t need their own individual sections. I’m still super in love with Steven Universe, Star Vs the Forces of Evil, Gravity Falls, Bob’s Burgers, Super Monsters, Young Justice, She-Ra and Hilda. They’re all worth a watch and a lot of fun.

Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette - I can’t talk about this enough. You need to see it. You can watch it on Netflix. It’s powerful, brilliant and so very smart. It’s a story, it’s a comedy, it’s a whole lota truth. Watch it and then read this Wired piece. I can’t even tell you all the feelings and ideas and discussions that were started because of this piece. She’s amazing and I am so delighted we share a name.

The 13th Doctor - I haven’t had a chance to start watching the episodes, but knowing that the Doctor is a woman and that she’s off having adventures and kicking ass makes me so incredibly happy and the clips I’ve seen are brilliant.

DC Universe Titans - This was an unexpected addition to my life. I’ve never been a big DC comics fan. I have a lot of feelings regarding how they handle lots of things, but this show started and I was able to watch with someone who’s a huge fan and it has been a trip. Another dark and serious show, but it’s been really interesting and very good. I’m really interested to see what happens next. I’m also super excited for the launch of the new Titans comics in June with art by Gabriel Picolo .

So that’s 2018. Lot’s of things made better by experiences, some sad moments, lots of happy ones. So much more going on and so many more adventures to have. I’ll be back on Tuesday with goals and plans for 2019.

XoxO Adventurers!

Hh G

Thank you for coming to visit and for continuing to support skaBunny Makes. This is a project I work on because I love it. If you love it and want to support, please contact me at skabunny.creative@gmail.com. You should also reach out if you have a guest post you’d like me to publish or if there are topics you would like me to cover. You can find a list of projects I’m working on in the Other Projects folder and you can listen to me chatter, mostly at myself 3 days a week on Twitch - Mondays, Thursdays from 7:30 to 9:30 pm and Saturdays from 7 pm to 11:30 pm.

New blog posts will be posted on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Some of it will be new content, new series, new images, but we’re still gonna talk about real life here. That’s not going to change. We will still cover loads of things that aren’t easy, mental health, life choices, living with your body, new families, life, changes in the world and all kinds of other things. Life is an adventure, this one is mine.

[symbianosgames]

Back in 2013, veteran game maker Warren Spector left the world of full-time game development to become an educator.

Three years later, he came back. He stepped down from his role leading the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy and signed on as creative director at OtherSide Entertainment, where he now leads development of System Shock 3.

"I wanted to make sure I didn't become one of those teachers who used to make games," he explained to Gamasutra last year. "Who used to know how games were developed and why. I knew I needed to keep my skills honed."

This affords him what seems like an interesting perspective on game development. Spector stepped outside the day-to-day concerns of working inside a studio and spent years trying to prepare young, aspiring game makers for challenges they face in today's game industry. Now he's back on the inside, helping to figure out the shape of systems and mechanics. Working through the production process. Making games again.

Gamasutra sat down with Spector at GDC last month to catch up on how the process is going, roughly a year into his full-time gig at OtherSide. It was an interesting conversation, especially if you're at all interested in where games are at these days, where they came from, and what sorts of stories they're best at telling.

How did your return to full-time game development go?

Well first of all, I did buy a PC finally. I knew the form factor I wanted, and I knew the graphics capabilities I wanted, and it took me a while to find just the right thing but I finally did. I don't know if I should plug the computer I bought, but I did buy one. And I've been playing a lot of games on it, which is good.

"I find that the idea of asking questions, and having a dialogue with your players, much more interesting than just saying 'here's my story.'"

And as far as getting back into game development, it's everything that game development is: it's joyous, it's frustrating, it's scary and annoying and great and exactly what I hoped it would be.

Have you hit production yet?

Oh, we're still in concept phase. I'm a big believer in figuring out what game you want to make before you start making it. So we're still hammering out game systems, working on our narrative, so we're very early on.

What do you think of GDC, having attended for so long and now being back in the role of a game dev attending?

Well I've been to every GDC since the '80s, when it was the Computer Game Developers Conference --

In Chris Crawford's living room?

No, I missed that. It was in a little hotel somewhere south of San Francisco, and it was about 250-350 people, something like that. And I remember my most vivid memory of that was, first thing I went to was a session, a lecture given by a guy named Joe Ybarra -- a big-time producer at EA at the time.

And I remember thinking, "I will never know as much about games as this man does." And then a few years later, he was a friend of mine! But has it changed? Of course -- just look around. Now we've got what is it, 30,000 people coming? Some of them old gray-hairs like me, some of them 20-somethings. Indies, triple-A developers...it’s changed. It's a completely different show now.

What advice might you give to other game devs now? 

Well it depends on what kind of game you want to make. I'm not good at answers of one thing.

The first thing is, always try to make projects that are personally meaningful to you. I realize that it's easier to say and harder to do; sometimes you just have to do the work for hire, and create something that meets someone else's needs. But find something you're passionate about. Whatever you're working on, find something to be passionate about in it.

And then, don't be lazy. I don't mean in the sense of working hard or not, I mean don't assume that games are a mature medium. And that we've explored everything that game are capable of creating or doing. Find that one new thing. It doesn't matter what game you're making -- you can always sneak one new thing into a game. And always look for that one more thing in the work you're doing.

I remember you talked up the possibilities of AI in games, especially non-combat AI, last year. Where do you stand now?

Well, realistically, I'm not sure System Shock is the place to be exploring non-combat AI, given that we're going to follow along in the tradition of everybody being dead *laughs* and communicating the story through video logs, emails, AR projections and all that.

So this is probably not the game to be exploring that particular aspect of game design. But what I do want to do is take the idea of choice and consequence and recovery, the stages of choice, consequence, and recovery from those choices, I want to take that to a whole new level by creating an incredibly reactive world. And then letting players interact with the world in a deeper way than they have before.

So that's largely the thrust of System Shock 3, as much as I can talk about it.

Oh yeah, that's fine. I'm gonna be honest with you, I've never played a System Shock.

Gah! You know, you can still buy System Shock and System Shock 2.

I know! I think it's great. I've tried to play them both, a few times, but...they're pretty old.

It's funny, because needless to say, I needed to replay those games before starting to work on the third game in the series. And when I started playing the first one, I emailed Doug Church, who was kind of the creative driving force behind that first game, and all I said was 'oh my god, this game is hard!' And his response was just "...1994."

Environmental storytelling in the original System Shock

And I said "Oh my god, this game is big!" and his response was "1994."

"Oh my god, this UI is terrible!" "1994."

We did the best we could, you know.

Well since you've been reimmersing yourself in some recent games, are there any you'd call out as especially worth studying by fellow devs?

Well, Dishonored 2. There's a particular kind of game I find most appealing, and the Dishonored series is right in that vein so it's pretty cool.

So I'm playing Dishonored 2 right now, and...well mostly, to be honest, I've been a little disappointed in the games I've played, and haven't played very much. What I do is, I play a game until I get so frustrated that I have to stop, or throw my controller against the wall or something. Or I've learned everything I'm going to learn from it, or I finish it. And I finish very few games.

But you know, I've played some Metal Gear Solid 5. I'm woefully behind, so I've been playing some Shadow of Mordor. Certainly there's some intriguing different things in that game, so that's worth taking a look at. I'm obsessed with some mobile games, there's this little puzzle game called Hundred that I just love. I'm playing it obsessively right now. And these aren't new games, but I think the Go games from Square Enix are a ton of fun. Deus Ex Go, Lara Croft Go, and Hitman Go -- I just find those great ways to pass the time.

There was a minute there where we were sure Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system was going to be the next Big Thing in game design. Seems like we were wrong -- not a lot of devs picked up what Monolith was putting down.

Well, it's kinda their thing. I can't speak for any developer but myself, but if somebody's already done something, what's the point of doing it yourself? It's like, come up with your one new thing.

And one of my rules for any game I work in is, there has to be one new thing, something no one's ever seen before or done before. And that's already been done. Why would I do it again? I mean, there are certain elements of it that I find intriguing; like, it's nothing new, but characters you interact with on an ongoing basis, who change over time, that's pretty cool. But having them interact with each other, you know, it's an interesting idea. It's theirs. It's not something I'm going to adopt.

So what is it about Dishonored 2 that impressed you, that you think is worth calling out?

Nothing specific. I think it's just the overall immersion of the world, and the behavior with the characters. My ultimate goal is to empower players to tell their own stories, and play the way they want to.

You know, I had a mission statement that was 12 pages long that no one would read. then it was an 8-page version, then a 4-page version, and I ultimately summed it up in two words: "playstyle matters." And the Dishonored games really express that exceptionally well.

So it's not any one thing, but I do wish other developers would take a look at that and do more of it. I'm looking forward to Mass Effect, and those games have certainly adopted some of that approach to game design, and the more people who do that, I think the better off we're going to be, as a medium. And the more enjoyment players are going to get out of what should be genuine interactivity. Most games fake it. The immersive simulation games try not to fake it. So it's that attitude, more than any specific thing.

Yeah, in your Deus Ex postmortem I was surprised to see you acknowledge how much was faked.

Yeah, unfortunately. There's a lot of stuff that isn't, too! What we did was, we had to make sure that each dominant playstyle was represented, for sure. But beyond that, players really did discover their own solutions. 

Sure, many devs these days cite that specifically as a big influence on their work.

Even back then, I was gratified that a lot of developers told me that they were inspired by it. And that was part of the point! 

I was surprised to hear you trace Deus Ex back to your time playing Dungeons & Dragons. How did you wind up playing D&D with Bruce Sterling?

I moved to Austin, Texas to go to grad school, and at that time Austin had an amazing science fiction writing scene. And Bruce was part of this circle of writers, and I fell in with this circle of writers, and another friend of mine, Bud Simons -- he writes under the name Walton Simons -- Bud had been playing in a campaign with Bruce. And invited me to come along to play in this campaign, and it was just...he was just a guy.

At that point, he hadn't even published his first novel yet. He was just a friend. I hung out with him at parties, and then eventually started gaming with him. I was a board gamer, and had never played D&D but then in 1978 there it was, you know? Everything else sort of went away.

So what happened to that Austin circle?

Oh, Bruce left the country and you know, we had families and you know, time goes away. People grew up. But tabletop roleplaying, like I said in my talk, was immensely influential. I wasn't playing just with Bruce, I was playing in half a dozen campaigns, run by various Dungeon Masters.

And just seeing how each one works differently, and yet there's always that same core of players telling stories together. That was seminal for me. It wasn't just important -- I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing without that. 

What, specifically, do you value about tabletop role-playing games, or perhaps tabletop games in general?

Well I get enjoyment out of board games, that's the primary thing I value them for.

Fair enough! I suppose I should have asked, what value do they add to your work as a video game designer? Do you prototype mechanics out on paper, for example?

Well, I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I've never actually done a paper prototype for a game.

I always think 'yeah, I should do that,' but the games that I make are complex enough that it's hard to keep all the rules in mind. And so there are so many little systems that have to interact with one another that it's hard to imagine making a board game.

One of the things that I don't know if I made the point in my talk very strongly, or at all, is if a game could be made in another medium, it's less interesting to me. I like to make games that couldn't be translated into a board game, or vice versa.

And yet so many video games can be traced back to tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons.

Oh, sure. We would have no video game business without Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. I always say that every game developer should get down on his knees once a day, face towards Lake Geneva Wisconsin, and say a little prayer of thanks to those guys.

  "I always say that every game developer should get down on his knees once a day, face towards Lake Geneva Wisconsin, and say a little prayer of thanks to those guys."

But it's also a problem, because I think personally, too many developers have been inspired by the mechanics of those games. And we have better ways of simulating a world than Gary and Dave had back then. So I would love to see us jettison -- forever -- character classes and you know, the character stats: strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, charisma....I mean, we don't need that stuff. So it would be nice to move away from that.

But also the content; look at the content of games, of many if not most video games, and it's right outta D&D or Traveller. And we could do so much more. Thank god for the indie guys and gals; the indie folks are at least bringing new kinds of content into games.

But Richard Garriott was directly inspired by his D&D campaign when he made the first Ultima game; and we just keep on making guys in chainmail and guys with big guns games. Which are right out of that adolescent power fantasy stuff that defined D&D and Call of Cthulhu and Traveller and Empire of the Petal Throne and all sorts of other games your readers have never heard of.

The other thing that's interesting about those old role-playing games is, I don't know if you're familiar with the term Monty Haul dungeon [pun on deceased game show host Monty Hall, a dungeon designed purely for combat and looting -- thus "haul"] but those were always the most popular things.

It was funny, when I got to TSR, where I worked for a few years, everybody up there wanted to get away from the Monty Haul dungeons, where you knock down a door, you kill the monster, you grab the treasure, you knock down the next door, you kill the monster, you grab the treasure.

And so one of the designers did an adventure module that was the most ridiculous, silly, over-the-top Monty Haul dungeon ever, as kind of a statement. And it was the best-selling module we did! It's what people wanted. And that's also inspired video game developers.

You know, we need to be asking bigger questions. And some people are doing that. Again, the Mass Effect games ask you to think about stuff, the BioShock games ask you to think about stuff. The key for me, as I said in my talk, was not to answer the questions. Video games ask questions. Other media answer them.

I find that the idea of asking questions, and having a dialogue with your players, much more interesting than just saying 'here's my story. Here's what I think about Topic X.' That's way less interesting.

Seems like you're still passionate about the future of game dev. Do you know what's next for the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy, now that you're gone?

I'm unclear about that, to be honest. Most of my brain cells are devoted to System Shock 3 right now. I know that they were talking about shifting its focus. Instead of bringing students in and teaching leadership the way we did, there was talk about bringing in guest lecturers and opening up more broadly to the general public.

But honestly, I don't know. I probably shouldn't even speculate! If they ask me for advice, I will give it. 

I ran into a bunch of my students here. It's cool -- they've all gotten jobs or done startups. We really did, I think, change some lives. Which is pretty gratifying. 

Headline photo captured by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman

[helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog]

EXCLUSIVE: The Impact and Legacy of ‘Law & Order: SVU’ 400 Episodes Later

On September 20, 1999, audiences were invited to explore another side of New York City, where crimes were “especially heinous.” The first spinoff of creator Dick Wolf’s successful Law & Order series, Special Victims Unit introduced viewers to a new team of “dedicated detectives” -- Oliva Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd) and John Munch (Richard Belzer), led by Capt. Don Cragen (Dann Florek) -- tasked with bringing justice for sexually based crimes.

Their stories quickly became beloved by audiences as the series not only became a ratings hit for NBC, but also earned critical acclaim -- including a historic run of Emmy nominations and wins for its guest stars -- and adoration among the many actors who passed through on their way to stardom.

“At its heart, it's a show about good versus evil,” Michaela McManus, who played ADA Kim Greylek on season 10, tells ET. “In a world that's increasingly scary and uncertain, people want to believe there are tireless champions like Benson and Stabler.”

MORE: Behind the Scenes of Mariska Hargitay and Anthony Edwards' 'ER' Reunion on 'SVU'

In the middle of its 18th season, now starring Raúl Esparza (ADA Rafael Barba), Kelli Giddish (Det. Amanda Rollins), Peter Scanavino (Det. Dominick Carisi Jr.) and Ice-T (Det. Fin Tutuola) alongside Hargitay, SVU is just two seasons away from the record for longest-running live action prime-time scripted series (a title shared by the original Law & Order and Gunsmoke). On Wednesday, Feb. 8, it will air its 400th episode, a feat achieved by only eight other scripted programs over the past four decades.

“In the classic sense of television, the Law & Order formula is still very vibrant and effective in delivering a punch and a message,” Scanavino says, explaining why the show still works, while Giddish adds: “The viewers know the format by now, but the show still manages to surprise you.”

“They will never run out of stories,” Ice-T, who initially came on to do four episodes in season two and has stayed for the duration the series, says of Wolf and the writers, who continue to draw inspiration from real-world situations. “When they first decided to do this show they were wondering if there would be enough material, but it just keeps coming.”

Getty Images

Inspired by the 1988 prosecution of “preppie murderer” Robert Chambers by Linda Fairstein, who served as the head of sex crimes in Manhattan’s District Attorney’s office, Wolf became fascinated by the psychology of crime as it related to human sexuality. “It was really [Linda’s] brainchild to have this unit that we could fictionalize,” says Tamara Tunie, who has played Medical Examiner Melinda Warner since season two. What started off as a story idea for a 1990 episode of Law & Order turned into the concept for Law & Order: Sex Crimes, which served as the foundation for SVU.

“I knew when I read [the script] it was the greatest show I ever read for,” Hargitay says. After several false starts on short-lived series and numerous guest spots, the actress finally found her groove when she was cast as Cynthia Hooper on season four of ER, which at the time was co-produced by Neal Baer, who went on to be the showrunner for SVU seasons two through 12. “It was the beginning of something, and the trajectory of my life and career -- and certainly me as an actor -- changed from being on that show.” After 13 episodes on the No. 1 TV show on prime time, Hargitay thought her next stop should be Law & Order. “True story: I said, ‘That Dick Wolf likes brunettes,’” the actress recalls telling her agents. “’Can I be on that show, can you call them?’”

Within two months, the actress had an audition for the series. After flying in to New York from L.A., where she was living at the time, Hargitay met up with longtime friend Fisher Stevens, the actor-turned-director of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Before the Flood who appeared on Key West with her in 1993. “She was like, ‘God I want to move to New York,’” Stevens recalls. “She was actually hanging out with us when she got the gig.”

By the end of season five, in 2004, Hargitay had earned her first of eight Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, winning one in 2006. Very quickly, the actress became the heart of the series, both on- and off-screen. “It’s been the perfect marriage of storytelling with an actress on television,” Baer says, citing “911,” which earned the actress an Emmy, as his favorite episode of hers.

MORE: Mariska Hargitay and 'SVU' Cast on Joe Biden's 'Dream Come True' Guest Appearance

“She is the face of the show but also the face for empowered women,” Wolf says. “She capitalized on it in an incredibly positive way with her foundation, Joyful Heart, and used it in a way that you hope people would use their positions.”

In 2004, after the show had opened the public’s eyes to the epidemic of sexual assault and domestic abuse, Hargitay founded Joyful Heart with the intention of helping survivors heal and reclaim a sense of joy that was ripped from them. In addition to raising $32 million for services and goods for survivors and various prevention programs with her foundation, Hargitay has also helped raise awareness for untested rape kits and campaigned for the Violence Against Women Act, a bill written by Vice President Joe Biden.

One of the longstanding legacies of the show is easily the way it’s changed the dialogue about sex crimes. “We deliberately tried to demystify both the process and the perception of people who had been assaulted,” Wolf says, adding that reports of sexual assaults in New York City increased after the show premiered. “When the show started, many women didn’t come forward because they would be labeled [that] it was their fault.”

The show’s impact was further cemented when Biden appeared as himself on the season 18 episode “Making a Rapist” to talk about the backlog of untested rape kits. “When SVU started, a significant number of police departments didn’t have sexual violence units in their departments. It began to change the whole culture of policing. It’s not the only reason, but it was really important,” Biden told the press ahead of his appearance. “When I came out publicly and said you should be able to marry who you love, I had no doubt that the public was already there because of Will & Grace and a number of other programs. Entertainment changes culture. Responsible entertainment can have a phenomenal, positive impact. SVUis one of those programs.”

It was also the program that everyone wanted to be a part of. And for New York actors, it meant an opportunity for screen time and a paycheck. “I've been in the business a very long time and at the beginning of my career, there was no reciprocity between stage and film actors,” Broadway veteran Patti LuPone says. Having appeared on the original Law & Order and a 2015 episode of SVU, she credits the franchise for hiring theater actors in need of additional work. “For a lot of actors, that was their one opportunity to get on-camera time and get paid a really good wage,” adds Transparent star Amy Landecker, who says she stills gets residual checks in the mail for her two appearances in 2003 and 2005. “We all owed a lot to Dick Wolf.”

Of course, ask any actor and they’ll say appearing on the show in any fashion -- guest-starring or recurring, alive or dead, victim or villain -- is a rite of passage. And in its 18 seasons, a countless number of would-be stars have gotten their start on an episode of SVU. “It’s beyond a rite of passage if you go through and see the people who have been on the show,” Wolf says, taking pride in the casting of the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who got his SAG card for appearing on the original Law & Order. “It’s phenomenal.”

In fact, four of the 2017 Academy Award acting nominees -- Mahershala Ali, Viola Davis, Isabelle Huppert and Michael Shannon -- have appeared on SVU. “One of my highlights was having Isabelle Huppert shoot me. That was just delicious,” Tunie says of the longtime French actress’ notable guest role on the season 11 episode “Shattered.” For Ali, who made a brief appearance in 2009, he says “it was great working on such an iconic show.”

Just about anybody who has appeared on SVU speaks highly of the show and its stars. It may be a well-oiled machine, as many describe it, but Hargitay and the rest of the cast have created a welcoming environment that has led to many standout performances. “This truly is -- and this is real -- that even if you came on for a day, you always felt like you're part of a family,” says Davis, who recurred on SVU as defense attorney Donna Emmett between 2003 and 2008 before becoming Annalise Keating on ABC’s How to Get Away With Murder.

MORE: 'SVU' Reunion! Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay Reunite for Sweet Selfie

“Everyone comes on the show and goes, ‘I expected you to phone it in. I expected you to be over it.’ And I go, ‘I am so not over it. I’m just trying to be better. We all are,’” Hargitay says of the cast’s continued drive to do the best show possible.

“There’s a great phrase: Always be a beginner,” says Peter Gallagher, who has been recurring as Deputy Chief William Dodds since 2014. It’s an idea that’s easy to forget, especially on a long-running series, but that’s not the case with SVU. “What I’m most impressed with is how much energy goes into keeping it fresh. A lot of that comes from Mariska, who has this boundless energy and a desire to keep the show relevant and alive.”

While a lot of deserved credit is given to Hargitay’s longtime leadership on the series, it’s hard to ignore the writing, which has earned several Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations over the years. “They write so well,” Ice-T says. “When they keep giving us good scripts, it makes it fun.” And if the writing “stays good,” Wolf says the show can reach 21 seasons -- a goal of the creator and the cast alike -- and continue well beyond it.

When asked about his biggest takeaway from producing the show -- and the franchise as a whole, which has included four spinoffs, plus two upcoming series -- Wolf says that diligence is its own reward. “The biggest challenge, if you’re doing what I modestly call A-level television, is quality control,” he says of the cast and crew that have contributed to SVU’s success. “A-level work is not a hope, it’s an expectation.”