#I just had a fun time trying to fill all the necessary party slots and cater to apparent player interests

[xtremesportsarena]

Unleashing Fun: Soapy Football in Madurai

Dive into the exhilarating world of soapy football, a unique sport offered by Xtreme Sports Arena in Madurai.

Madurai, a city known for its rich cultural heritage and vibrant lifestyle, now has a new and exciting attraction – soapy football. Xtreme Sports Arena brings this fun-filled activity to sports enthusiasts and thrill-seekers alike. Let’s explore what makes soapy football a must-try experience and why Xtreme Sports Arena is the perfect place to enjoy it.

 Brief Overview of Soapy Football

Soapy football, also known as bubble soccer, combines the elements of traditional football with a slippery twist. Played on a soapy, inflatable surface, this game challenges players to maintain their balance while maneuvering the ball and avoiding hilarious falls. It’s a fantastic way to enjoy football with an added layer of excitement and unpredictability.

 Why It's a Must-Try Activity

1. Unmatched Fun: The slippery surface adds an element of comedy and fun that makes the game enjoyable for players of all ages. Whether you’re a seasoned athlete or just looking for a good laugh, soapy football promises a memorable experience.

2. Great Exercise: Despite its playful nature, soapy football is a great workout. It improves balance, coordination, and cardiovascular health while burning calories in an enjoyable way.

3. Team Building: Perfect for corporate outings, school events, or friends and family gatherings, soapy football encourages teamwork, communication, and camaraderie.

4. Stress Relief: The game’s playful nature makes it an excellent stress reliever. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously when you’re slipping and sliding around!

 Details About the Soapy Football Turf at Xtreme Sports Arena

Xtreme Sports Arena in Madurai is equipped with a state-of-the-art soapy football turf designed to ensure safety and fun. The turf is made from high-quality materials to provide a smooth, slippery surface that’s perfect for the game. Here are some key features:

- Safety Measures: Padded borders and a non-abrasive surface minimize the risk of injuries, making it a safe environment for everyone.

- Spacious Field: The turf is large enough to accommodate multiple players, ensuring everyone gets a chance to join in the fun.

- Professional Setup: The field is regularly maintained and cleaned to provide the best possible experience for participants.

 Testimonials from Participants

Participants have been raving about their experiences at Xtreme Sports Arena. Here are a few testimonials:

- “Soapy football at Xtreme Sports Arena is a blast! I’ve never laughed so much while playing a sport. It’s a unique and fun way to spend time with friends.” – Arjun R.

- “Our company’s team-building event was a huge success thanks to soapy football. Everyone had an amazing time, and it really brought us closer together.” – Priya S.

- “I booked a session for my son’s birthday party, and it was a hit! The kids loved it, and the staff was incredibly helpful. Highly recommend!” – Meenakshi K.

 How to Book a Session

Booking a session for soapy football at Xtreme Sports Arena is simple and convenient. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Visit the Website: Go to the Xtreme Sports Arena website and navigate to the booking section. https://xtremesportsarena.com/booking

2. Choose Your Time Slot: Select an available time slot that works best for you and your group.

3. Fill in Your Details: Provide the necessary information, such as the number of participants and contact details.

4. Confirm Your Booking: Complete the payment process to confirm your booking. You’ll receive a confirmation email with all the details.

For more information or to book over the phone, you can contact Xtreme Sports Arena directly at +91 9361262629 or via email at XTREMESPORTSARENA@GMAIL.COM.

Conclusion

Soapy football at Xtreme Sports Arena in Madurai is an experience like no other. It’s fun, engaging, and perfect for all occasions. Whether you’re looking to organize a unique event or just want to try something new, soapy football is the way to go. Don’t miss out on the chance to slip, slide, and score your way to an unforgettable time!

[centaurianthropology]

Far-Too-Specific Predictions for Critical Role C3 that will Absolutely be Wrong (but I like)

Setting and Flavor

I would love to see a group of veterans after a massive war that left both sides devastated.  Matt likes to play with difficult moral conundrums, and a setting where two warring parties both came off poorly, and now they’re both limping through a reconstruction could be really interesting for a long-play game. I would also really like to see both sides of the conflict represented in the group.  The one thing I wanted to see more of in campaign 2 was a native Xorhasian perspective in the group (aside from Essek, who wasn’t a PC).  I’m placing this as post-major Dynasty/Empire conflict at some point in the future, so it would be the same geographical setting as campaign 2, but time skipped enough that we don’t really have a ton of recurring characters.  Cameos from the longer-lived Campaign 2 characters are still possible, though.

Player characters

These predictions are based on my perception of player preferences, interesting roleplay opportunities, and focusing on things that the players seem interested in but haven’t been able to explore yet.  I have also built prior relationships, because I loved having PCs come in with relationships to build the group on and give early opportunities for trust and character building:

 Travis: Human Cleric (Order), with possible multi-class Fighter (Battle master). I would love to lean into a tactical, Imperial battle-commander type character for Travis, who can hit, but leans more support.  I also would love to see him play a cleric with wavering faith in how he used to believe and practice.  He has seen too much of war, too much of dying, to be overly-devoted to a single law or side, and is on an active quest of faith to find a higher sense of order and morality.  He maybe left the army in disgrace, or went AWOL, but either way he is persona non grata on his former side of the war, with only one ally having followed him into exile.  Prior relationship: Ashley’s fighter.  When he went AWOL or was driven into exile, she was the only soldier who followed him. He struggles with his choices and his faith, and she acts as his rock and has become far more of an equal because of that.

Ashley: Warforged Fighter (echo knight).  Ashley loves a straightforward fighter, so I wanted to give her something without complex rules to stress her out, but one that still has some really interesting flavor and possibilities once she gets into the groove.  Echo knight is ideal, because it’s not a hard subclass to play, but it can be seriously fun.  I like the idea that her character was built as an answer to Xorhasian dunamancy, to double herself and fight as two.  As she evolved and became less a machine and more a person, she became more and more attached to her commander rather than blind patriotism, to the point that when he left, she went with him.  Prior relationship: Travis’ cleric.  He was her commander, and she still tends to act as his soldier, despite his wavering faith. She followed him when he lost faith, and she continues to be the one who follows and believes in him.

Laura: Full Orc Barbarian (wild magic).  Laura loves to hit things, and has clearly wanted to play a hardcore tank for a while. I want her to be able to wade into any fight and tank a ton of damage, and full orc and barbarian both play into that. I figure her character would be Xorhasian, was a soldier for a while, but could never fit in because of her taste for wild magic and her chaotic nature.  Having her be a full orc would also allow her to explore playing a character who can’t be traditionally sexy, which would be a fun change from Vex and Jester. I see her as someone who rapidly went AWOL from the army, and is generally unaligned and doesn’t want to think about the war or what it did to her country or her people, and wallows in wild magic to avoid it.  Maybe she went to the Menagerie Coast during the war to get away from the fighting and dive deeper into her path, at which point she met Sam’s character.  Prior relationship: Sam’s sorcerer, as they walk the same path.  They share a faith, and that drew them together before the campaign, and they’re chaotic, happy best friends.

Sam: Satyr Sorcerer (wild magic).  Doubling up wild magic would be nuts, but would allow Sam and Laura to play with some crazy combos in roleplay and in combat.  Sam loves unpredictability, and so I could really see him leaning into the dice roll and relishing when things go wrong as a wild magic sorcerer.  Satyr would also lean into this chaotic bent, and would stack well with the charisma-based sorcerer build.  I see him as being from the Menagerie Coast, unaligned in the war, but touched by it somehow (possibly lost someone / his home / etc to the fighting?).  He and Laura’s character met due to their mutual inclination and tie to wild magic, and are very close friends who have tried to spend the entire war pretending there isn’t a war.  Prior relationship: Laura’s barbarian.  They are on the same wild path, but perhaps have different connections to it or opinions about it to give them different flavors and different approaches to the same chaos.

Marisha: Yuan-ti Pureblood Rogue (swashbuckler).  Let Marisha play high charisma!  Let her play a pirate!  I would love to see a snake-y pirate lady, unaffiliated with everything, acting as a sarcastic outside observer.  I would love to see her lean into snark and the scoundrel-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype, especially in a race than is stereotyped as evil.  Maybe she’s getting out of the pirate’s life, or did something horrific that riddles her with guilt that she covers with snark.  I would just love to have her get a dark, but non-political backstory.  Prior relationship: None.  She is a wildcard character, deliberately.  She comes in and adds a very different flavor and perspective, and as such, probably shouldn’t have a relationship with any of the other characters.

Liam: High Elf Artificer (artillerist).  Liam’s love of describing his spells’ mechanics in C2 was what inspired this. I think he would enjoy being an inventor steeped in tragedy, possibly as someone who invented a weapon of mass destruction for the Empire, and still wants to believe in his homeland, despite what he did and what they did.  Give me Liam as the man who has become death, destroyer of worlds.  It plays into his love of tragedy and redemption, and I am here for that.  Prior relationship: Taliesin’s wizard.  His shame has kept him a hermit, but chance brought Taliesin’s character to him, and he saw Taliesin’s character as a means of redemption or better understanding. Having his closest tie be to someone from the other side would also play into the tragedy of his character.

Taliesin: Drow Wizard (homebrew dunamancer).  Taliesin has always been Matt’s go-to for exploring homebrew content, and introducing dunamancy into C2 was a ton of fun.  I would love to see this get expanded and explored with a Xorhasian dunamancer character PC, and Taliesin has a talent for taking something Matt has played with (Firbolgs, blood hunters, etc.), and making it unique.  He’s definitely the player I could see taking the dunamancer and making him very distinct from Essek and the pre-established notion of what a dunamancer is.  This would also fit with my notion that his character was tightly tied to Dynasty politics, possibly a courtier background, prior to the war, and found himself tied up in it.  I would love to see Taliesin play a character more politically tied to the central story than Caduceus was, as he has a talent for driving plot and being a lynchpin for Matt’s larger plans.  So centering the deep-lore plot on Tal and Liam could be really great.  Prior relationship: Liam’s artificer, though theirs is not a long acquaintance.  They met shortly before the campaign, and though they have a bond, it’s new and somewhat untested.  Not to mention that the combination of an artillerist who built a weapon of mass destruction and a dunamancer make for the potential for some explosive blowouts as secrets get revealed.

[some-cookie-crumbz]

Askdjkl that one shot you wrote about Hawks and Fuyumi having baby fever was the cutest thing ever! Do you think you could write one where they tell friends and family they're having a baby?

I HOPE YOU’RE READY FOR A BUNCH OF REALLY FLUFFY NONSENSE AND PREGNANCY PUNS ANON BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THIS IS!!!!!

It wasn’t often that Fuyumi and Keigo were the ones to host the family dinners. Despite the fact they had a house just as grand as the Todoroki estate with ample room to entertain her family, since being released from the hospital and tentative amends being made, Rei adored being the one to host. Fuyumi and her brothers never pushed the subject because they knew it stemmed from her wanting to make up for the years the family lost. She’d missed the chance to be a mother to them for a long time - especially with Shoto - so she wanted to do all she could for them as adults. And, while Fuyumi didn’t have any personal experience with that, she could understand that feeling.

And she would have an even better grasp of it soon enough.

She smiled as she looked over the table, making sure for the second time that it was immaculate and the little centerpiece was dead center. It was one she and Keigo had pieced together over the weekend as a cute little nod to why they’d insisted on hosting this time around. It was a little construction paper bird’s nest with a little ceramic egg in the center. Gently cradling the little egg, Keigo had slipped two of his smaller feathers in, but had dyed one of them to be mostly white with little red flecks.

Fuyumi would be lying if she said she hadn’t swooned a little when she saw it.

“Bathroom and sitting room are all immaculate, babe,” Keigo hummed, arms slipping around her from behind and pulling her against him from behind. She giggled and turned to face him proper, eagerly meeting him for a few quick kisses.

“Thank you, love,” she hummed softly, giving his shoulders a small squeeze. “So, just making sure, our headcount for tonight is nine in total, right?”

“Ten. Both of us, both of your parents, your brothers, Natsu’s lady friend, Fumikage, Rumi and Moe,” he said. She nodded to herself, remembering that she’d picked up enough to accommodate that party size. She’d figured that sukiyaki would be a good idea. She’d almost forgotten that Natsuo had said Nezumi would be able to attend. Ever since they’d graduated from college, their work schedules at the hospital were constantly shifting. “I mean, technically there’s eleven but~!” he sing-songed at her.

She giggled and kissed his cheek. “I can tell you’re really excited about telling them,” she mused, glancing to the left slightly, “Given how fluffed up your feathers are getting.”

Her husband’s grin widened and he leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. “Can you blame me? We’re going to have a baby! And we can finally tell everyone that matters!”

She giggled and kissed him again quickly, humming at the feel of his hands smoothing along her sides. “If you don’t get those wings under control everyone is going to know something is going on before we start dropping the hints,” she teased.

He huffed softly and nuzzled her again, his wings moving to curl around her as well. “I’m a pro at poker face, babe. Right now I just wanna enjoy this,” he murmured with a contented little sigh.

The two had been trying for a good couple months to get pregnant, deciding they were ready to officially start their family off. They’d met with professionals to discuss all the details regarding Fuyumi going off her birth control and what to expect following it. Fuyumi expected symptoms to be her first indication and to hit early on, as that had been how her mother’s pregnancies had all gone, but they didn’t realize until she took a pregnancy test. That had been three weeks ago and ever since the reveal, she and Keigo had both been on cloud night. Shortly afterwards, she’d worked to schedule the dinner with everyone so they could reveal it all at once.

It was hard given how many people in their lives were Pro Heroes or worked jobs with sporadic schedules but finally the night had arrived.

Fuyumi perked up when she heard a knock at the door, she and Keigo exchanging excited looks. “Show time,” he mused, pressing another kiss to her cheek.

She beamed before heading to the door, smiling brightly at Rei, Shoto and Fumikage on the other side. “Hello,” she preened, stepping aside so they could enter.

“Hello, darling,” Rei hummed, pausing to briefly embrace her daughter once she entered. The four of them settled into casual chatter as they walked to join Keigo in the sitting room. “Thank you both for having us this evening.”

“It’s our pleasure! You deserve a break from having to do all the cooking and clean-up afterwards, sometime,” Keigo agreed, his wings in their usual relaxed stance when he wasn’t on patrol. He and Rei also exchanged quick hugs before he grinned at Shoto and Fumikage. “Having fun now that you’ve both officially broken out of the sidekick slots?” he teased.

While he chatted up the younger two, there was another knock at the door. Natsuo and Nezumi were the next to arrive, followed shortly afterwards by Enji, and finally Rumi and Moe. The last couple arrived with a small bag as well. “Been a while since we’ve all gotten together, so we brought some of the good shit,” Rumi laughed, holding the bag up. Inside were a few bottles of sake with a label she couldn’t place in the moment.

“Thank you, you two,” she said happily. She escorted them to the sitting room where some passionate discussion between Keigo, Natsuo and Fumikage before heading to the kitchen to put the sake away for later. She then got started on cooking, smiling at the sounds of excitable merriment in the other room. The warmth in her home left her stomach fluttering with delight. She gently settled a hand on her abdomen and glanced down. “You’re going to be brought into such a lovely family.” she whispered before perking back up to resume preparing the sukiyaki.

She was almost done setting places and moving the spread of food to the table proper when Keigo poked his head in, still absolutely glowing. “Need any help with anything?” he asked.

“Just finishing up,” she hummed, indicating the place settings. In a matter of seconds, there were feathers skirting to and fro to complete the task. “Keigo!” she giggled.

“What?” he mused, wrapping his arms around her waist to pull her in close. He leaned forward to press a few quick pecks to her temple. “I don’t want you having to do anything more than what’s absolutely necessary!”

“I’m not an invalid, Kei,” she mused, looping her arms around his neck and relaxing in his grasp.

Before he could open his mouth to offer any retort, Natsuo’s head poked around the corner. “Smells good; is food ready?” he asked with a sly grin.

Fuyumi blinked before snorting. “You’re such a grubber, Natsu,” she chided playfully as she moved out of Keigo’s grasp.

“But is that a yes?”

She rolled her eyes. She loved her brothers but sometimes they were just so single-minded. “Yes. Go get everyone else,”

The others were quick to follow him in shortly thereafter, their meal laid out before them all and playful banter starting up. “It smells like you’ve prepared this Kansai-style,” Enji commented with a note of pride in his voice.

“Not bad,” Rumi drawled happily, cheekily grinning at the retired Pro, “but not as good as Kanto-style.”

He scowled at that. “Are you daft? Kansai-style is a more traditional approach with a fuller flavor!”

“Certainly explains how you’re filling out your clothes more than you ever did as a Pro, Endie,” she teased back.

As the pair of them continued their back and forth, Rei’s eyes fell to the centerpiece nest. “Oh, did one of your students make that, Fuyumi?” she asked.

“No, we did,” she giggled, setting into her own spot.

“Since we’re expecting,” Keigo said, drawing the word out for emphasis, “we figured we should go the extra mile.”

The Todoroki matriarch smiled at them. “It’s a rather cute little piece, I will say,” Then, without another word, she turned to patiently break up the escalating argument between Enji, Rumi and - probably feeling left out of bullying the old man - Natsuo over the superior style of sukiyaki. Fuyumi and Keigo exchanged looks, silently agreeing that more hints would be needed.

They tried alluding to there being a bun in the oven.

Fuyumi mentioned them needing to repurpose a spare room.

Keigo made some comment about being in a family way.

Fuyumi suggested the idea of little feet pattering about their home’s halls.

But even with all these hints laid out… It seemed no one at the table was picking up on them.

Keigo pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily as they cleared the table together, their guests still settled at the dinner table and chatting amicably amongst themselves while they awaited dessert. According to some website she’d found, in America pudding was associated with being pregnant - for some odd reason she still couldn’t place - and had thought that would be a funny, cute little ribbon on top of the reveal present. “Well that didn’t go as expected,” he mumbled.

“Agreed,” she said, her own disappointment starting to trickle into her voice. She hadn’t really expected any of the men in her family to catch wise to what they were implying, if she was honest. She knew her father and brothers were incredibly intelligent but they weren’t always the best when it came to social cues. She had, however, thought her mother would pick up on it all. “I think we’ll just have to say it outright.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, it’s not the most fun way to tell everyone you’re pregnant but it’ll get it out there, right?” he said with a reassuring grin.

She nodded as they picked up the little dishes of pudding, Keigo’s feathers carrying the ones they couldn’t handle themselves.

They reentered the dining room to another small squabble.

“You’re reading too much into things, Nez,” Natsuo said to the young woman beside him, her little mouse ears drooping slightly.

“Agreed,” Enji said with a small huff.

“B-But,” she trailed uncertainly before perking up at their return. 

“I believe that Nezumi-San may have a point, actually,” Fumikage cut in, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes cracking open. All attention had switched over to him. “I mean, her arguments are valid and logical. Dismissing it all as a misinterpretation feels ignorant at best.”

Shoto opened his mouth to speak but then perked up when he spotted them returning. “Ah, perfect timing, you two,” he said.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she approached her parents to hand them their pudding.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Rei hummed, taking the little dish and setting it on the table. “Nezumi-Chan thinks you're pregnant because of the little nest decor you two made.”

“That’s not the only reason, though!” Rumi cut in, slapping a hand down on the table.

“Oh, and Mirko is also on her side,” Enji snorted.

“They’ve been making weird comments all night!” she barked back, ears twitching frantically in her irritation.

“Ah, yes,” Shoto chimed flatly, “because being aware of the usage of your living space is strange.”

Fuyumi blinked slowly, her eyes sweeping over to Nezumi. The poor dear looked so flustered by being the one to accidentally cause this little battle. Before she could offer any kind of comforting words to her, though, Keigo blurted, “Oh thank God at least one of you realized what we were doing!”

There was silence for a moment as all eyes turned to Fuyumi herself, most of them stunned but two seeming satisfied and one giddy.

Rei was the first to break the silence. “Fuyumi…? A-Are you..?”

She nodded, feeling the grin split up her face at everything finally coming out. “Yes, Mother. I’m pregnant,” she giggled, happy tears starting to prick at the corners of her eyes.

In a matter of seconds the older woman was scrambling up to embrace her with an excited squeal, nearly barreling the pair of them over. Rumi cackled in manic delight as she flashed Enji a crude hand gesture. Natsuo gave his girlfriend, who looked to be pouting, a quiet and sheepish apology. Moe got up to clap Keigo on the back while Fumikage and Shoto also got up; one to shake his mentor’s hand in congratulations and the other to hug his giddy older sister and mother.

Fuyumi and Keigo exchanged amused looks from the short space between them. They’d chalk the night up to a roaring success.

[miloscat]

[Review] Chrono Cross (PSX)

My experience with this was a long time coming; in fact, it was a long time going, as I took more than one long hiatus during my 50-hour playthrough. But it’s done now, and has a special place in my heart. This review is spoiler-light FYI!

Chrono Cross might not be what players expected out of a follow-up to seminal SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, but the overworked development team wanted to do something different, and their dreams were fulfilled with quite a unique product. It’s quite frankly a mess, but a beautiful one overflowing, pooling, congealing, with ideas and style.

CC has all the excesses of PS1-era JRPGs: grainy CG FMV, esoteric pre-rendered backgrounds, a cinematic battle camera over long animations, an incredibly convoluted story. But it’s got high ambitions too; its own innovative battle system which seems daunting at first but refreshing when you get a handle on it (although I still had a fundamental misunderstanding of it almost to the very end of my time with the game, not knowing you could select lower-level Elements than your current tier). A game world that spans two parallel dimensions, which rewards close attention to the differences. And of course, the whopping 45-character roster of available party members.

These ambitions end up becoming handicaps as they’re not realised to the full extent of their intention. There’s no traditional leveling, so fights can be pointless, and unbalanced; most fights can be won by mashing through them, facilitated by an end-of-battle auto-heal system. It’s easy to lose track of which world is which, which feeds into the confusing plot. Having such a gigantic range of characters means that almost all of them have very little development.

Part of the intent with CC was to play the game through multiple times, to experience different branches and find things you missed. In my estimation, these branches don’t seem to change much beyond locking you out of a few characters for that run, and I wasn’t interested in playing through the game again just because there’s a ton of easily missable optional content. It’s long enough as it is, even despite seemingly being truncated somewhat in development as evidenced by the incredible pile-up of plot revelations, twists, and last-second villain rug-pulls in the closing hours (not to mention sacrificed concepts like Guile’s connection to Magus). Also, the appeal of bringing new characters into scenes to see their reactions is undercut by the script, which essentially has different characters saying the same thing with a different accent, necessary for localisation text file size reasons at least but leaving the interactions feeling shallow if you do catch on to this.

A New Game + also unlocks features that absolutely should have been available by default: letting you swap out main character Serge to let another of the huge roster fill the precious third slot in battles, and an in-game fast forward button. Personally, I played this through emulation, as Square/Square-Enix has never been interested in my territory purchasing the game either at the time or through re-release. This let me abuse savestates and my own blessed fast-forward function to get through those long fights. I also closely followed a guide (the excellent RPG Classics shrine) so as not to miss anything or get caught out by a moment of choice. That’s just how I play RPGs these days, shrug.

Now I sound down on CC from all this, but I actually found the game an enchanting experience. As a fan of CT, and with my Radical Dreamers experience in mind, I got a lot out of the connections and retakes respectively. CC has a light touch with calling back to CT, until late in the game with a few of the exposition dumps hammering that legacy down. But to be honest it really didn’t need this, as what it had built for itself up to that point was very compelling.

The El Nido archipelago is a lovely place to visit, with a variety of locations that look fantastic for a PSX game, getting around the limitations of early 3D with neat trickery, pre-rendering, nice textures, and excellent use of colour. The characters that do get enough focus are fun, and uncovering their web of connections and their occasional side-plots can add depth to this microcosm. Of course, the soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda is atmospheric and studded with absolute bangers; long before I played this game I knew some of the more transcendent tracks through the local Eminence Orchestra’s covers in their Passion concert series, to which Mitsuda himself contributed. And the parts of Masato Kato’s plot that I understood were fascinating!

Seriously though, of all the parts of the game that seem to have got away from them, the story may be the biggest barrier to entry. It basically boils down to cliches of a lad from a small village setting out with his female childhood friend, discovering he’s the chosen one, and eventually killing God. But there’s a lot of twists and turns along the way. So many characters have hidden agendas, and there are plot devices and machinations that are never adequately explained, or worse exposited at you later in a text dump. After beating CC I had to consult reams of wiki articles and theory debates to try and understand concepts that remained vague or outright unresolved. But somehow for me this baffling heap of enigmas was attractive, and even though realistically it’s a sloppily told story on one level, by spurring me to research and ponder, and wonder what they were thinking or what might have been if the team had had more time, it had created an exciting level of meta-game engagement.

Chrono Cross is a product of its time, but its ambitions make it (ironically) timeless. There’s imagery here and gameplay concepts too that will stick with me for a long time, and I was left with a powerful sense of longing by the end. I haven’t even talked about the excellent mid-game twist, the self-contained scope of the game world, or the odd touches of humour, all of which I appreciated as well. But more importantly, when I think back on the game I see Lynx turning, or Kid smiling, or the ominous moons, and I know Chrono Cross has touched me deeply.

[yousayparty]

The right place, the right time, and the right amount of exclamation marks

The history of Vancouver via Abbotsford British Columbia’s You Say Party is a storied one. Imagine this: trapped in a never ending nightmare of suburban dystopian hell, you form a band. With the simple adjective of having fun, spreading a message, making people dance - you leave the confines of a religiously stifling community. Within a few years you’re playing the world’s top festivals, winning awards, and wooing critics.

But now I find myself piecing foggy bits of memory fragments together with duct tape and hairspray. Like stickers on a dive bar bathroom stall, I know I was there. But why and for how long? I feel like I’m sifting through a shoebox of handbills and press clippings like some True Crime podcaster placing myself at the scene.

I’m not sure where I first heard the name You Say Party! We Say Die! but it caught my eye. It was an era of exuberant band names. !!!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Shout Out Out Out Out, Hot Hot Heat, Fake Shark- Real Zombie! And my own band GoGoStop! It was also a time when bands out Vancouver’s sleepy conservative suburbs were starting to break out: Witness Protection Program, The Hand, Fun100.

It was exciting. There was a sense of community. Of people just wanting to have fun. Perhaps we were shaking off the anxieties of a post 9/11 world, or shrugging off the self seriousness that was emo and hardcore. We still made mix tapes and zines- scoured Terminal City and The Straight for new bands. There was this new social networking craze called MySpace that had yet to be a ubiquitous omnipresent corporate behemoth that dominated every corner of our lives. We were called Scenesters not Hipsters. Everyone was in an art collective.

Adorned with white belts and one-inch pins; asymmetrical hair cuts and red velvet blazers we set out to prove Vancouver wasn’t No Fun City at now long shuttered venues like the Marine Club, the Pic Pub, and Mesa Luna. I didn’t drink at the time so dancing, and by extension dance punk, had become my saviour- bands like The Rapture, Les Say Fav, Pretty Girls Make Graves to name a few. When Mp3 blogs became a thing, I immediately downloaded The Gap from their 2005 debut Hit The Floor! and loaded it on my 100 song iPod shuffle. I like so many others, became an instant fan.

I moved into what could only be described as a punk rock compound- 3 houses that were owned by a former Christian sect that we dubbed Triple Threat. Members of Bend Sinister, No Dice, Witness Protection Program, and Devon Clifford from You Say Party and Cadeaux (and Whiteloaf) all lived there. He drove an orange 1981 Camaro Berlinetta to match his bright red hair and big personality. We would walk to the greasy spoon Bon’s Off Broadway to get terrible but cheap breakfast and to watch The coffee Sheriff pour undrinkable refills of sludge. It was like living in the movie Withnail and I, but funner. We all wore pins that said Do You Party? on them.

It felt like Vancouver was blowing up and You Say Party was the hand-clapping drum majorette leading the pack. Ladyhawk, Black Mountain, Radio Berlin, New Pornographers, Destroyer, S.T.R.E.E.T.S., The Doers, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? And The Organ highlighted just how tight-knit and diverse our scene was. Relentless touring and glowing reviews for You Say Party’s sophomore Lose All Time ensured they were head of the class, despite being unable to tour the US due to a previous border snafu.

Lose All Time sat on top of the Earshot charts for what seemed like forever. Famous for their frenetic live shows, and aided by stunning videos, their sophomore effort was a clear progression from Hit The Floor! It still harnessed the visceral rawness of their origins, but hinted at a confidence and maturity that was to come. The title of Lose All Time was a reference to the discombobulation of constant touring and it too was a hint of what was to come.

The touring would take its toll. Fuelled by Chinese Red Bull; a well document public dustup between band members at a bar in Germany would throw everything into uncertainty. But it was that turbulence that would set the stage for XXXX and after a restorative tour to China, the stage was set for the penultimate You Say Party record. 

Flash forward to 2009 and the city was on edge. Everything was about to change. Vancouver was preparing to host the world amidst the unfolding Great Recession. Anti-Olympic protests ramped up. A gang war raged in the streets and made international headlines, tucked behind Swine Flu hysteria and the ongoing imperialist war on Iraq.

It seemed like all the venues started closing and all our friends were moving to Berlin or Montreal. We starting looking in. Is this the city we want? Was it just growing pains? This kind of introspection is clearly reflected in XXXX. If Lose All Time was a record the band wanted to make, XXXX was a record for the people; a record for the city of Vancouver; a record for 2009.

"I finally feel like a singer, rather than a dancer who loves being in a band" said Becky Ninkovic at the time. It’s a perfect quote. One that succinctly captures the maturity and focus of the record. After a breakdown for Ninkovic, a year of rest and vocal lessons, Exclaim! announced XXXX to be a career resuscitation.

And it was. Going back now and rediscovering the record is such a magical thing. Opening for You Say Party with my band Taxes in 2008, I was impressed with the new material even if was a little jaded (I mean I was almost 30). But now with time and space I can see the songs they were working on were truly timeless. Laura Palmer’s Prom could so easily slot in with the latest 80s synthwave revival along alongside bands like Lust for Youth, Lower Dens, and Chromatics.

Overall, XXXX sounds like an exhale. A moment of stillness when you know you’ve made something extraordinary. When you know all those moments combined; moments of sheer terror, adrenalin, elation, boredom, and longing- culminate in a piece of art that once you let go of it- you just know in your gut that it’s right. It draws you in, wrestles with a brooding tension, then sends you into a churning whirlwind of tight drums and buzzing synths. It’s a remarkable achievement.

There’s plenty of vintage YSP sass throughout. “She’s Spoken For”, “Make XXXX”, and “Cosmic Wanship Avengers” are all classic synth punk gems, but the it’s in the subdued that the album really grips. “Dark Days”, “There is XXXX (Within My Heart)” and the sprawling Kate Bush like ballad “Heart of Gold” are the hallmark of a band that is comfortable exploring the limits of their genre. While lyrically quite positive, the melodies are daunting. Indeed, as Pitchfork put it, “the slower pace and more sentimental outlook of XXXX gives listeners the necessary space and encouragement to surrender to the band's emotional message”.

And it was a message they would finally return to the US with in 2009. The band was poised for mainstream breakout success. They were long listed for the Polaris and they won a Western Canadian Music Award for Best Rock Album of the year. Much has been written about what would happen next. I don’t want this article to be about the tragic onstage death of drummer and friend Devon Clifford, but it’s inexorably linked to the band’s story.

And I can only really tell it from my point of view. I wasn’t sure I would go to the funeral but a mutual friend told me that Devon would want me to go. Portland Hotel Society, a local housing provider which Devon had thrown the weight of his passion behind, rented a bus to drive out to Abbotsford. I held up pretty well until my friend Al Boyle got up to play. Then some yelled “Spagett”. Then Krista and Becky sang “Cloudbusting” and I lost it.

The band would try to carry on. Krista would leave the band and Bobby Siadat and Robert Andow of the band Gang Violence would fill in for touring.  When that didn’t go as planned Al Boyle who had been in the punk band Hard Feelings with Devon would replace Bobby. They officially went on hiatus in 2011 only to reunite a year later with Krista back on keys and a drum machine in place of Devon.

And while the band’s self titled 2016 release would be their moment of closure, the reissue of XXXX is one of celebration. Celebration of what they made with Devon. Celebration of a near perfect moment in time. A capsule of a entire city at it’s peak. The band has changed. The scene has changed. And I’ve changed. But there will always be XXXX within in our hearts.

'Cause every time it rains

You're here in my head

Like the sun coming out

Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen

And I don't know when

But just saying it could even make it happen

Sean Orr Vancouver, BC January 2020

--------------------

We are so excited to reissue a limited run of XXXX on clear vinyl through Paper Bag Records Vintage for Record Store Day on August 29th! Support your local stores & grab this album on vinyl for the first time in 10 years! https://recordstoredaycanada.ca  #yousayparty #YSPWSD

--------------------

About Sean Orr Sean Orr is a writer, musician, artist, activist, and dishwasher living and working in the unceded Coast Salish territories of Vancouver, B.C. Besides his twice weekly news column in Scout Magazine he writes for Beatroute and has written for Vice Magazine and Montecristo among others in the past. He’s the frontman in the punk band Needs and also has a pickle company called Brine Adams. Twitter | NEEDS | Tea & Two Slices | Flickr

[genghisconeat]

Quarantine has me eating two dinners a day...

Sorry to my zero readers, I am starting off this recipe with a story. I am a New Moon Leo, I cannot help myself. 

The LA lockdown has me indulging the devil on my shoulder aka my second dinner stomach. Second dinner stomach does not want to eat kale. Second dinner stomach is not interested in lean meets. Second dinner stomach does not give a fuck about my 9-5 lactose intolerance. I think this body part is a close coworker to my quarantine liver. Liver working the “it is okay to drink at 3pm” circuit. Maybe fear of unemployment leads to frontal lobe damage in 28-year old petite asian girls. People of science, let me know. 

I made this recipe while listening to “XS” by japanese-anglo queen Rina Sawayama, who my blessed friend George introduced me to two sunsets ago. On repeat. No ear buds. Sorry my dear husband. 

So many apologies. My inner Cancer is SCREAMING. 

The Inspiration: I have been watching a ton of korean street food videos and have been craving spicy rice cakes. I had no rice cakes at home, but thankfully had some gnocchi. Despite my love of potatoes, I am generally indifferent to gnocchi and had only grabbed it in my first pandemic-panic shopping spree. Good choices under pressure. 

Toasted Gnocchi with Kimchi Butter Sauce

Serving Size: Party of 1 

Ingredients:

1 pound potato gnocchi

1/2 onion finely chopped

4 - 8 garlic cloves to taste 

3/4 cup napa cabbage kimchi 

1/2 cup kimchi juice 

4 tbsp unsalted butter

2 tbsp olive oil (enough to saute onions and garlic if not using bacon fat)

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp kosher salt

Pepper to taste (a whole lot for me)

Cool but not necessary

2 strips of bacon 

1/4 cup of red pasta sauce (or 1 tbsp of red pepper paste?) idk thought it might work

1 green onion

Dice onions, mince garlic, chop green onions (use the white part too, it won’t bite), chop kimchi. Chopped kimchi should be similar in size if slightly bigger than diced onion. Set aside.

If using bacon, start here: 

Cut bacon into chocolate chips sized bits. M&M size works too. In a dutch oven render our the fat on the bacon bits. Do this on low heat so we can get all the fat out without cooking through the bacon. We do not want any burnt bits. When most of the fat is cooked out, try to scrape out bacon with a spoon. At this moment, members of the Bon Apetit test kitchen would delicately remove the bacon with a slotted spoon or perhaps a fish spatula. As I have been trying to save money and curb my drunk Amazon prime shopping, these items are not at my disposal...yet. Set aside bacon preferably in the bowl you will be eating with. For the sole purpose of doing fewer dishes. I used one of those shallow pasta bowls. 

If using olive oil, start here

Heat olive oil (or use leftover bacon fat). Toss in onions. On medium-low heat, cook onions for 3 minutes. Then throw in minced garlic. Cook for another 2 minutes. I am always nervous to burn garlic because I hate starting over and will end up just eating burnt garlic. Fun. So aromatic. So refined. 

Turn heat up to medium and throw in chopped kimchi. Let this cook for 5 minutes. Pour kimchi juice at this time and cook for another 5 minutes. Reduce heat back to medium-low and add in 2 tbsp of butter, sugar, pepper, salt, and tomato sauce (optional). Let the butter melt down and cook for another 5 minutes. Or whenever it looks like it is one sauce, one world. Then try best to scoop and place in same bowl as bacon. The sauce should be pretty oily because of all the bacon and butter. Try to get all of the oil out if possible. I think there is flavor in there. If not flavor, a few cents of butter. And in this economy, those butter-pennies are not to be wasted. Set aside. 

Now I have this dirty dutch oven. I use a towel to hold the handles, then bring it to sink to rinse with water. Try to get any burnt bits off, it is okay if it is still a bit greasy. Wipe down so surface is not wet. Again, greasy is okay. 

Because of poor time management and inability to more than one thing at a time, I now start to boil water. You could have done this earlier, but I did not want to stress myself out. I usually start the boiling water in an electric water boiler while I fill the pasta pot to 1 inch of water and let that try to start to boil on the stove. The inch of water is so the pot is not just ripping hot by itself on the stove. I have this unverified worry that heating an empty bot is somehow dangerous or bad for the pot. Though the resolution may be one google search, I prefer to manage my trauma with one inch of water. Once electric kettle water is boiling, I pour into the bowling 1 inch of water. Have I saved time? I am unsure. Do I continue to do this? Every time. 

From here, throw the gnocchi into water. I chose not to salt the water because the gnocchi is only there for 2 minutes. After 2 minutes, drain gnocchi. No need to reserve any pasta water. That is usually when I burn myself anyway. Shake the drainer furiously. The intention is to get the gnocchi pretty dry because we are going to toast it. The water might make it steamy. This could be a good time to pat down the gnocchi with a towel. Paper towels are in limited supply at grocery stores, so I am opting to conserve. 

In the dutch oven heat up 2 tbsp of butter over medium-low heat. When butter is warm and shiny, put in half of gnocchi for toasting. It should be light to medium brown, but not black. After 1 minute, flip gnocchi to crisp other side. I honestly just tossed it around and hoped for the best. If you are a person of purpose, you can flip each gnocchi with chopsticks. I was hungry. Let second side toast for 1 more minute. Remove gnocchi and put in eating bowl that has bacon and kimchi sauce. The butter probably has separated at this point. But I really have no idea to help myself or you with that problem. Toast rest of gnocchi repeating same steps as above. 

When the second half is done toasting, throw everything in the eating bowl back into the dutch oven. At this point, because doing two things at once is hard, everything is probably not warm. Cook everything together for 10 minutes on medium heat, stir frequently to avoid burning. If you think it is overcooking stop earlier. 

Pour contents of dutch oven back into eating bowl. Sprinkle green onions over top. We have finished cooking. Your second stomach bellows out in victory. Walla walla. Eat alone. 

Pairing Notes: I ate this with a glass of chardonnay that I got a discounted 2 bottles for $10 at the supermarket. It was fine and divine all at once. Something I would have loved to add is some mozzarella cheese, maybe at the end, just so it gets a little melty. Maybe 1/4 cup? Maybe 1/2 a cup? Maybe 1/4 cup inside pasta? And another 1/4 side mozzarella for snacking? All reasonable additions. 

Personal Notes: It is really strange to be using tumblr at 28 versus when I first got an account in high school. It is way less fun seeing a penis gif on here than it used to be. 

Hope you enjoy the recipe! <3

Peace and pizza,

Connie, the Amateur who Tries 

[sepiadice]

NavyDice Campaign (2019/9/27): Let Doors not Impede us

Finally settled on a functional system for guests. Going to just use Japanese numbers. Has no theoretical upper limit (not that it reasonably should get higher than five), and it eliminates the need to hem and haw over which one to use when it’s by appearance order. They’re also easy to recycle between campaigns,[1] and Japanese prevents confusion when numbers need to be referenced.

We did not finish the campaign this session, which is alright, four’s kind of a lame number to end on. Too many to call it a trilogy, too few to slot into base ten or twelve (where television and baked goods thrive). Maybe if there was a seasonal motif?

I mean, there’s an elemental one, but eh.

Life outside of this game is proceeding normally. Which, I believe, is the last item for my introduction before talking about the game.

Acer ‘Maple’ Palmatum (SepiaDice/Me) Level 6 Elf Fighter. Is better friends with NPCs than with own party members. Garland (LimeDice) A spellcaster of some type. Forms a dynamic duo with... Grumble (Ichi) Bard. Gets a lot done because no one’s actively undermining him. Poppi (Ni) Also a spellcaster. Irritating. Game Master (NavyDice)

Cycle 9

Floating in the darkness, information is shared, and Poppi is instructed to, like in an adventure game, rub the key on safety deposit boxes until progress happens.

There’s a knock on the door, and Maple bolts to the marketplace.

The key opens box A113, which contains the fire orb. Which is disappointing, because, if I recall Navy’s telling of the last time he ran this, another safety deposit box has an additional orb.[2] But now the most dangerous party member has supercharged fire powers.

I’ll try to mitigate this fact.

Maple, however, has some fun to engage with. At the marketplace, she successfully outpaces Masem by a large enough margin to discreetly communicate with the Brigands.

Using a birdsong the party learned, she convinces the brigands that she’s on their side, and convinces them to fake dead.

Navy rolls dice to see how badly that goes.

I don’t know the exact rolls as he hid them behind his hands.[3] However, they must’ve been amazing, because suddenly we learn the Brigands are amazingly trained actors with fake blood and ribbons on hand to fake dramatic death scenes.

You know, like all community theater types.

It’s an amazing spectacle of improvised stage combat, and by the time Masem arrives, it looks like Maple has single-handedly defeated the enemy.

Next obstacle: how to keep Masem from discovering the ruse when he attempts to begin clean-up.

Solution: Maple sends him to the bank that’s about to be robbed, claiming to have knowledge of it due to back alley contacts.

I have successfully created a loop where no one’s harmed in the marketplace, and I have control over what happens with the bomb vest.

Neutralizing the bank heist is next on the to-do list. Hopefully someone else in the party will cooperate in that, since Maple won’t have time to stop those brigands otherwise.[4]

For now, Maple has a divine being to spring.

She goes ahead and just bombs the wall open. I’d like to find a less violent way to do it,[5] but I don’t have the resources to overcome Jenkins.

Maple asks Eli what he wants to do.

Eli’s been freed without the Dawn’s presence, which means there’s no one immediately rushing him through the escape tunnel. The person who freed him is giving Eli carte blanche to do what he wants.

You know what makes me feel good? Watching a GM realize they weren’t prepared for what I’m doing without actually undermining anything.

Eli decides it’d be a good opportunity to get the lightning orb from Masem. Thus I’ve gotten a lead on a second orb. Go me!

Maple and Eli head over to the bank, where Masem has finished stopping the brigands violently. Again, problem to solve another time. Maybe Grumble or Garland can help.

Maple attempts to talk to Masem, but he’d rather attack Eli instead. Maple grapples Masem to the ground.

Poppi, watching invisibly nearby, casts a fire spell at us, murdering Masem, Maple, and Eli. Eli’s form collapses in a clay-like manner.

This checks out, because he’s claimed to be a deity incarnated to our realm, so obviously he did a Wonder Woman and formed a body from the earth.

Anyways, Poppi has killed Maple for a laugh again.

Grumble and Garland have gone to the government building, this time swapping targets. Navy states he intends not to get flustered with Garland versus the Lord, but the interaction doesn’t escalate as spectacularly as Garland versus the Advisor.

The conversations lead to the two learning the frost orb is located somewhere in the Lord’s estate. They go there, pick up Poppi, try to bluff their way in, Poppi and Grumble give up and leave, while Garland fakes an arrest warrant for the nanny to gain entrance. He ultimately fails to find the orb, but does find the kids’ room.

Grumble enjoys a pie at a bakery. This time, an Icy chill fills the air before the darkness wave crashes over the city.

Cycle 10

Information is shared, and it’s decided to try and get the Lightning orb from Masem, as well as who calls dibs on which orb. Maple agrees to grab Masem as long as the others don’t murder him.

There’s a knock on the door.

Maple rolls to grab Masem. Navy, thinking himself funny, asks if I open the door. So I mime arms bursting through the door and pulling a man through, with appropriate mouth sounds.

Which was the gut burster of the night, so at least I accomplished something.

Poppi discovers the fire orb is still integrated into her arcane focus, and is encouraged to go find out what that means for the safety deposit box. (It was empty)[6]

Leaving Masem in the capable hands of Grumble and Garland, Maple goes to recreate the marketplace gamestate from the last loop. Though this time I don’t have to distract Masem with the bank, as he’s already busy.

Actually, I probably could’ve skipped the fake deaths. Just did the bird call, take the vest, and tell the brigands to go get meat pies or something…

Anyways, Maple jumps forward to freeing Eli from both prison and obligations! Let’s try not to get team killed this time! Maple and Eli start walking to the Bed and Breakfast.

So, how did the Masem thing go? Well, to their credit, Grumble and Garland did try talking to Masem first, convince him of our goals and to hand over the Lightning Orb. Dice rolls determined Masem believed our party to be crazy kidnappers and not to give us supercharged lightning magic.[7] It turns into a fight, and Masem downs both Garland and Grumble. He then starts dragging them back to the watch house for medical aid and interrogation. Because he’s a law man!

On the way back, he encounters Maple and Poppi at a crossroad.

Now, here’s a very important thing I want you readers to internalize: if one of your fellow players wants to try something that won’t prevent you from doing your idea, then let them try their thing first.

Maple wanted to try talking first, and expressed this intent to Poppi.

Poppi’s player decided to be petty and immediately attack. She uses her escalated fire powers to murder Masem, which means now Maple can’t try and get information from the Marshall at all.

This also soundly ends any effort from Maple to rely on Poppi for anything, as she’s regularly gone out of her way to undermine Maple specifically and then attempt rub some less than necessary deaths (both of Maple and others) in her face for��� spite, I guess?

Well, that’s the second orb acquired, given to Grumble. Time for the third.

Maple and Eli go to the government building to attempt to meet the Lord and the Advisor. Margaret is upset to see Eli, and both men are out.[8]

Maple sends Eli to go do whatever he wants, and she heads to the Lord’s Estate. Maple attempts to talk her way in, manages to confirm the Lord is home but doesn’t want to see her, Maple then states she’s a hero (because she single-handedly stopped the brigand attack, you see) wanting to meet with the Lord, only to be told he’s left.

Okay, time for stealth. I really should’ve just gone with a Rogue like I usually do, but Maple reveals herself to be amazingly capable. She had tracked the guard movements while trying to talk her way through the front door, and thus knows the timing to walk straight into a service entrance.

Inside, Maple moves confidently[9] to the Lord’s chambers. Door’s locked. The Kids’ Room, however, is not locked. It’s also adjacent to the Master Bedroom.

She checks the shared wall. After all, why walk out into the hall just to get to the next room? A discreet door makes loads more sense.

Maple, being an Elf, finds such a door.[10]

There’s a window open in the Master Bedroom. Maple closes it, thinking someone else snuck in, and now she’s made one exit inconvenient.

I then remember the Lord[12] had left, and through the window is a likely method.

Another investigation check, and Maple finds a secret chamber. There’s an empty pedestal that once held the Ice Orb, blocked by a white wall. Careful prod with a sword deletes part of Maple’s sword. Ah.

Maple takes time to memorize details about the room. Grumble and Garland haven’t shared the Lord’s shibboleth, so I need something else to convince him of things.

Well, time’s almost up, and Maple doesn’t have a lead on the Earth Orb, and fighting a Bane-possessed Lord for the Ice Orb doesn’t sound fun, so she goes out to the city streets to find the bakery, with hopes of eating apple pie.

My dice finally fail an investigation roll.[13]

Maple never gets her Apple Pie as an Icy Chill fills the air and a dark wave crashes over the city.

Thus the end of session four.

We’re going to rock the next one, and finally free Phil and all the Groundhogs!

Hopefully we get up to 12 loops. It’s my favorite number.

Then, the future!

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting.

-

[1] Though I might need to come up with a mechanism for concurrent games, to keep alternating posts unconfusing… [2] You now have time to move it if I have remembered correctly, buddy. [3] Someone probably should get him a GM Screen. [4] I do, however, have an amazing idea on a new way to divert Masem’s attention. And possibly get a massive posse. [5] Which will work into footnote four’s hinting. [6] During Loop ??, there was an empty glass orb in the box, and I was curious if that would be the case here. [7] Which is fair. [8] I’ve never seen the timeline of the two hours specifically charted, so this is an easy mistake to make. [9] No one questions a person who looks like they know where they’re going. [10] For some reason, in Advance D&D 2nd Edition, Elves had a racial ability to find secret doors. One in three odds, if I remember specifically.[11] [11] I learned this when I made an Elf Paladin of Leira during High School! Before the Hammer Problem befell. [12] I don’t know if we ever learned this guy’s name. Or if we’ve ever asked. Our party’s not very good with formalities. [13] To be fair, NavyDice went easy when I got about a 10 to find the secret orb closet. Got to just let the story advance sometimes.

[joelmillerthirstqz]

Your writing is fantastic and it would be great to read some rough, shove-y sex with Joel 👀 also needy, clingy sex would be cool too

yooooooo hello these are 100% my interests, i will work on (them)!

Late-October Update: First part, Shove, is up on AO3 :)

Joel crosses his ankles as he leans against the porch railing, Molly predictably taking up Eugene’s offer to sneak out of the town Christmas party to smoke. How the hell he’d been dragged along as a bystander was beyond him, but his brow snaps into a line when Ellie and Jesse emerge from the other side of the porch, dulled music pulsing the walls of the church.

They sidle up to Eugene, who greets them warmly and offers them the lit joint, Joel’s mouth hanging open in protest, which, to his credit, he rethinks. Ellie gives him a look before taking a drag, and he segues his aborted comments into:

“I’m runnin’, if Maria comes out here,” he notes.

“Head to Jesse’s place and go down to the basement if you’re spooked, we’re just leaving too,” Ellie mutters, abundantly drunk, handing off to Jesse before disappearing inside presumably to give some form of goodbye.

Molly piques an eyebrow and Eugene beams.

“Careful, Molly, Alex’ll be excited to see you,” Jesse warns in his soft drawl.

Molly grimaces.

“What’s that possibly mean?” Joel tightens.

“You know how he’s lookin’. You’ll be fine,” Jesse slugs her on the shoulder and she looks at her arm and back to him, realizing the composure in his voice was not necessarily a sober man’s. Joel looks like he’s trying to fit his own smug smirk down the neck of his beer bottle.

—

Jesse’s basement is a smoky disaster zone, most of the patrol group burrowed in to drink, smoke, or evidently crawl all over each other. Joel has the sense memory of descending into a basement when he’d visited friends at school or been forced to go get Tommy from some A&M party.

Sarah’s mom was already gone by the time he got tackled into a wall by a pretty blonde a few years younger than him one night, in a hazy room like this. Fun-chasing as Tommy was, he saw the sliver of opportunity for a carefree night for his brother and sobered up, picked up Sarah and stayed the night at Joel’s, texting his brother to come home when he wished.

None of it feels particularly real now—someone else’s memories—until he refocuses on the Molly, forever baffled by the way she looks at him with her whole attention.

“Joel,” Molly urges, smiling at him from the bottom of the stairs and holding her hand out for his. She’d accepted his coat on the walk over, and tall as she is, the sleeves offer just the tips of her slim fingers.

He takes it briefly, still subtle enough, and meets her near the bottom. Ellie manifests from a corner, somehow having beaten them there.

“Best behavior. Welcome,” she grits, shoving a—flagon? Jug? Some type of container full of harsh whisky towards them. Dina watches her interaction curiously, chin in her hand. When Ellie rejoins her, Molly sees her mouth a “you did good!”

“You good?” Molly asks, taking the flask.

“I feel eight thousand years old, why?” Joel takes it back briefly for another hard swig.

Jesse’s steel toes thunder down the stairs behind them, hooking an arm over Joel’s shoulders.

“Anyone who goes out and shivs those motherfuckers is welcome. Also, this was Eugene’s idea, my place was just far enough from the—” his eyes widen in the realization of ‘I’ve said too much.’

Joel raises his hands.

“To my grave,” he vows, Jesse snagging the sloshing liquid Joel’s trying to steady and busting between them to slink into the dark opposite end of the room, from which raucous howling resounds.

“You think Tommy knows?” Joel glances around conspiratorially.

“Maybe. Want to get absolutely tanked?”

Joel can’t remember the last time recreational drinking in Jackson had been more than a few beers or a single whisky; some of his less adroit coping skills in Boston spring to mind readily. Molly’s dimples are showing as she smiles at him and he breathes deep and dives.

They work through three shots together, overhearing Eugene telling Firefly stories that’d make Tommy clobber him over the head.

“No, they called these body shots, idiot,” one of the patrol group younger than Ellie’s age emphasizes from the far corner. He takes a shot and slams his chest into his companion and Molly bursts out laughing.

“Outbreak babies. Christ,” she comments.

“You’re going to need to fill me in,” Joel admits, not fully recognizing the words strung together as a phrase.

Molly grabs him by the collar and whispers in his ear, his face tinging pink as she speaks, carelessly grazing his ear with her mouth. If anyone was starting to do the math around them, they definitely weren’t preventing much tonight.

Recognizing it quickly as she speaks and intimates what they could do later, “You don’t think Ellie’s—” Joel slurs together.

“Joel, yeah, I definitely do,” Molly nods, leaving him to put his hands on his head and feign stretching, scanning for his kid and finding an empty couch where she’d Dina had been progressively draping limbs over her.

“College, that right?” one asks, her patrol nickname less a sign of erudition and more a signifier of the younger group begging for stories of what they assumed had to have been a great time.

“Not even close,” she folds her arms.

Joel’s looking back over at her with an unfathomable expression.

Molly raises an eyebrow at him.

“Molly!” Both Joel and Molly snap around at the sound—an inebriated Alex, ever hopeful that Molly would take interest, ambling towards them.

“Alex,” Molly acknowledges.

“Look I’m juss gonna—” he gears up, puffing his chest out.

“Heyyy!” a chorus around the room lights up as Tommy comes into view, pausing at the stairs to beckon a more hesitant pair of jeans to finish the descent.

“Look what I brought,” Tommy announces, taking Maria’s hand faux-courteously and ushering her into the room. She takes a quick glance around the room for anything really out of line, but her eyes are back on Tommy.

Molly exchanges a glance with Joel, mouth turning down in a smile she’s clearly biting the inside of her cheek through. Tommy slots in by Eugene, squinting up at Joel like he can’t process his brother’s presence, Maria swarmed by red-handed occupants trying to earn her favor with the spectrum of tipple they offer.

“I think we’re skewing the demographic a bit,” Molly turns and starts, realizing Joel had pulled much closer and they’re inches apart.

If he leans in and whispers to her with an ill-contained smile, hand on her lower back, it’s not his business if anyone chooses to see it, even if it’s intentionally around the side visible to the whole room.

—

They barely make it back to Joel’s house in one piece, Molly fully face planting into the foot of snow twice. Joel almost offers to throw her over his shoulders but realizes he’s already swaying plenty and opts for an arm around her waist, which slows their progress considerably. Joel stops them every few seconds, guiding her momentum towards him to kiss her indiscreetly.

“Y’know, never personally did one of them body shots,” he murmurs, Texas inflection pouring out of him.

“How forward,” Molly teases back.

“I think you’re supposed to be lyin’ down, actually,” he jokes, getting his keys in on the fifth try and tugging Molly inside by the waist.

“Didn’t even make sense—” she complains, Joel’s hands on either side of her face as he kisses her. She grants him easy access, inviting the taste of the dark liquor into her mouth. He grabs her knitted hat and spikes it to the floor with far more force than necessary as he gets through her buttons with surprising dexterity.  

They kiss messily between being successfully liberated from each layer of her clothing and Joel finally scoops her hips up, forcing her legs around his waist and into the dining room with the table they were already perfectly certain could handle a decent amount of stress.

“Pity my missed youth,” he implores, even as Molly is reclining and clearly interested in humoring him.

“Just get over here,” she falls back to her elbows as he hovers over her, balancing on one hand.

“You know, you’d usually come at it from the side,” Molly instructs.

“That so? I think I can do it this way,” Joel laughs, pouring the bottle he’d retrieved right onto her breastbone with no warning.

“Jooooel! Fuck!” Molly squeaks when the cold liquor slides uniformly down both sides of her abdomen, quickly chased by his hot tongue. He seems to get to her navel before the liquid can even pool there; thorough in laving the sticky liquid off of her skin, returning to her belly and swiping it clean with broad strokes.

“That was not nice,” she chastises, fisting his barely-long-enough hair in one hand, other hand pawing at the rest of him.

It makes Joel tilt his chin up at her, a look that would be sharp if they weren’t both so obviously besotted and hammered at once.

He twists free with next-to-no effort, moving back down and biting the side of Molly’s abdomen, tugging the skin a little as he pulls back.

Molly lets him look pleased with himself for a second, leaning heavily over her with a cocky smirk. She bites his lower lip, always searching for the appreciative grunt it earns, and isn’t surprised that he enjoys the pressure right up until she draws blood. Even in the low light (nobody drew the curtains against the reflective snow) his eyes are almost completely dark and he’s running them over her body and back to her face raptly.

Joel grasps Molly’s thighs, hard, and drags her roughly to the edge of the table, almost pinching.

Molly slaps him, not too hard, stinging on the ridge of his cheekbone. His mouth drops open for a second and she can’t help herself with how captivating he is, slowly tabulating what various replies may cost him with a clench of his jaw.

Joel watches her curious expression considerately and notes the flush along her front, returning the gesture with an extraordinary sense of control for being drunker than he’d been in years.

“Harder,” he challenges, eyes glinting in the snow-reflected light. Molly obliges, and they smile like they’ve stumbled on inventing a new art form together.

Molly lurches them together, grasping the back of his neck and kissing him feverishly, Joel reciprocating as their fingers overlap to get him out of his shirt. Joel shifts one knee next to Molly on the table, and the nervous groan it gives in reply makes him sigh and drag her down to the floor with him.

Molly straddles him as he kicks out of his jeans. It takes two seconds for him to flip them, slamming her back to the floor a little more roughly than he would’ve sober. He hooks the back of her right thigh over his shoulder and moves his mouth to suck on her clit without pretense.

“Joel!” Molly whines, arcing up on the chilled floor, interrupting it with a gasp when his first two fingers spread her. He glances up and tries not to break his pace, but Molly’s so fucking stunning, wreath of cropped auburn spilled on the floor, eyes boring into him with a soft upturn to her mouth.

“Hush,” he grumbles, smacking her thigh as he rises to his knees and drags her hips towards him.

Molly always feels as receptive as her demeanor towards him would suggest when he first slips inside of her, but tonight it feels like she’s thrusting into him somehow. Her shoulders stick to the floor as she’s far too wobbly to curl forward while he’s got her suspended well off the ground. Molly locks her thighs and shoves one heel into Joel’s lower back, knocking him off his knees enough to push forward into his lap.

“God damn it, Mol,” he protests thinly, gazing up at her as she grinds onto him, palms fanning over his broad shoulders.

“C-close,” she mumbles, throwing her head back and basking in the rough treatment he’s lavishing on her breasts.

Joel strokes the side of her face with a reverence she’s going to tease him for in the morning before lightly slapping her again and grasping her hair in a mostly connected movement.

Molly comes hard, exclaiming loudly enough that he feels compelled to cover her mouth with his opposite hand. Molly’s shivering pulls him over fast, certain and uncaring that she’s drawing blood along his back. Joel cries out between some kind of euphoric giggle as she nips his palm, absurdity starting to dawn on her.

They both rock for a long minute as he comes, Molly affectionately kissing along his high cheekbones and stroking where she’d scratched.

Joel strokes her back in kind, boneless and comfortably counting the thrum of their heartbeats against each other. He huffs a soft laugh first.

“Don’t start. Was that good?” Molly asks.

“If you’re good, yeah,” Joel can’t stop touching her face at the most restrained of times, and he cradles it in two hands now. He seems to beam up at her, thoroughly contented.

Molly kisses along his cheekbones once more and he nudges her with his nose.

“C’mon, put a drunk old man to bed,” he jokes, patting her lower back gently..

[kuriquinn]

Telanadas [8/19]

Cover Page & Disclaimer

first chapter

They spend the next half hour in silence, focussed on her injury. 

Luckily for both, the bone implement has not caught on anything, and Sasuke is able to pull it free without trouble. Blood fills in the wound at once, but it is not the wet gush of a clipped blood vessel or ruptured organ. Sakura talks him through stitching it closed. Liberal applications of her “little elfroot and deep mushroom” knit the flesh back together as he goes.

She dozes for a little while as he puts away the supplies, carefully erasing any trace of what was done here. Kakashi has sharp eyes, and even a fleck of blood might have him asking questions.

Sakura was right about one thing: they cannot afford him expending more magic than he must.

Just as he clears away the last of the soiled bandages, he hears a low, lyrical hum behind him. Slowly, he turns around and notes Sakura, eyes still closed in slumber and barely breathing even as her throat moves around the notes of a wordless song. Normally, she is as tone deaf as a mabari howling at the moon. He knows this because she tried to teach Sai, another of their companions, the words to a dwarven drinking song not long after he joined the outfit.

The memory itself makes him wince.

But this tune she hums under her breath is different. It makes the hairs on the back of his arms and neck stand on end, but not because it is unpleasant.

It is because it is not.

“Sakura,” he says, something in his gut telling him he needs her to stop that.

Her body startles a little, the way one might when woken suddenly from a dream, but considering she never fully dropped off to sleep he doubts that it is. Still, the noise stops, and her breathing suddenly evens out.

“Something about this place…it calls to me,” she tells him after a moment, eyes still closed, and face still relaxed. “It almost feels like lyrium, but…different.”

“Different?” he echoes.

“Like a voice on the wind…just out of earshot, words garbled…and you know they’re speaking to you, but can’t for the life of you make out the meaning…” She opens her eyes and notices his concerned expression, and quickly straightens. With a sheepish grin, she says, “Sorry. I think I’m just getting ahead of myself. We’re almost to the top of the mountain which means we’re closer to ending this journey. I can see the end in sight, and then we get a nice long deserved rest.”

“Until the next errand of overblown importance is thrust upon us,” he replies, still frowning at her behaviour. He wonders if this is another one of those Warden quirks, hearing music no one else does. “And the next.”

“Until we stop the Blight, that’s the job,” she agrees. “But still, the prospect of a moment’s peace, however short, that’s valuable—don’t you think?”

“I would not know.”

“Oh, come on! You’ve had to have at least a little downtime!” she protests, pulling herself stiffly to her feet. He makes a move to help her, but she waves him away. “Don’t the Crows give days off?”

“There is time between contracts, if that is what you are asking.”

She shoots him an unimpressed look as if to say she knows he is deliberately not answering her question. “And what do you do in your spare time?”

“Prepare for the next assignment.”

“That’s it?” she deadpans. “Seriously? Isn’t there anything you do for fun?”

“No.”

“That’s…” Sakura sighs then. “I’m sorry.”

This brings him up short, and he stares at her. He can see her finding his lifestyle distasteful or boring, but he never would have expected pity from her. “Sorry for what?”

“For whatever made your life so joyless that you spend every waking moment doing sensible stuff,” she tells him, offering a comforting touch just above his elbow.

It is not pity, he realises in amazement. It sounds like…regret? On my behalf?

But that makes no sense to him.

He does not have time to ponder this development in his study of her character because at this moment, Naruto and Kakashi return.

“There is nothing between this village and the ruins up ahead,” the mage informs them without wasting time on a greeting.

“He means nothing,” Naruto adds, a hint of complaint in his voice. “No people, no shelter, no supplies…”

“We checked the temple door, but it is locked by an odd mechanism. Apparently, it needs a key to get in: big, round, sort of the size of a fist?”

“That must be what the medallion is for,” Sakura suggests, digging into her pocket for the disc she was given earlier.

“I thought so, too.”

“Then we are going in blind,” Sasuke says in irritation.

“Looks like,” Naruto shrugs, before a jeering grin appears on his face. “Don’t worry, elf. If you’re scared, I’ll let you hide behind me while I take out the nasty, possessed cultists.”

“Will that be before or after you run for cover, demanding I take out the enemy trying to set you on fire?” Sasuke returns crisply.

“Oi, that happened once, and in case you didn’t notice, that was a rage demon that came out of the damn floor!”

“I am confident we will manage somehow,” Kakashi says, intervening before Naruto punctuates his complaint with a flying fist.

“Are you ready to go?” Sasuke asks Sakura, carefully avoiding looking anywhere near where her wound is. Still, she knows what he is really asking.

“Never better,” she chirps, and grabs her supplies.

Kakashi notices something in the byplay, judging by how his eyes rove between Sasuke and Sakura, but if he suspects anything concrete, he does not address it. At least, not until Naruto has followed Sakura and is safely out of earshot.

“If you two needed a moment, you did not need to send us on an arse-freezing wild-goose chase in the mountains,” the older man says dryly. “All you had to do was ask…”

“Shut up, mage,” Sasuke replies. “Or I will find a better place for that stick than your hand.”

“Well, if that is the sort of thing you are into…”

Sasuke snarls a wordless curse at him and stalks after the other two. He knows there is no point in stooping to Kakashi’s level. Unlike Naruto, who will shout and scream and throw a few punches, and then forget the matter Sasuke does not wish to talk about, Kakashi is more patient. He will refuse to engage with any threat, but make sly, would-be-innocent comments over a matter of days. It is amusing to watch him bait others in this way—in particular Obito; it is not so entertaining when Sasuke is the one on the receiving end.

The party makes their way up the next section of the mountain together, hobbled against the wind and the incline.

Kakashi was not making light of the temperature for dramatic effect.

They were wrong about the place being completely empty, because even with the howling din of the wind, Sasuke can hear the distant roars of a dragon. He only hopes that they get to shelter before the thing makes a pass above this part of the mountain.

As they amble onward, Sasuke keeps a careful eye on the figure at the head of their procession. Sakura tramps through the snow with her usual determination and uncomplaining nature. He would never have known she had been gravely wounded earlier from the way she moves. It seems her healing skills and balms are far more powerful than he imagined.

Eventually, the four of them arrive at the giant, ridged stone door, and Sasuke sees the lock-seal Kakashi and Naruto mentioned.

Sakura brings out the medallion and presses it into the slot. There is a hissing noise and the ensign glows green, shooting a light into the crevices and cracks of the door. A moment later, the sound of creaking, shifting gears fills the air, and the door pulls open before them.

Sasuke enters first, bow raised in case there is anything lurking that may jump out at them, but this entry passage is empty. The walls and hallways are made of stone, covered with such a thick layer of ice that it is as if the place is built from glass. It is cold in here, too; not quite the knife-sharp frost of the mountain air, but still as frigid as a tomb.

“This will be fun,” Naruto whispers excitedly as they proceed up the corridor.

Despite his game face, they are all careful in their explorations, investigating every corner of the passages in a slow, methodical manner. Sasuke leaves discreet markers in room corners and by doorposts to find their way back should this place be as cavernous as the countless elven ruins he has explored. Snow has tumbled through the walls and ceilings of the temple, casting dark shadows across the corners and making the floor more slippery than it might be under normal circumstances. At one time, this building might even have been a comfortable living space.

They slip through close passages and well-built chambers, rooms with ancient books and scrolls that have Kakashi’s fingers twitching and Sakura’s eyes coveting. There are at least two armouries with discarded weaponry and armour that is ancient, but well-made.

“Ooh, swords!” Naruto declares, gleefully going to check the balance and sharpness of the blades, while the others look for more useful supplies. Sasuke finds several quivers of arrows—some spelled with magic runes to bewitch their targets. He does not like magic, but in this place, using it might be necessary. He adds these to his own supply.

That turns out to be a good idea.

Entering a large, vaulted chamber that seems trapped by time and thick snow, the shadows are suddenly alive with more blade-brandishing figures. These men are not dressed like villagers, but in billowing red robes and burned bone armour.

“More cultists,” Sakura murmurs, hoisting her axe.

Sasuke can see right away that they have the high ground, perched upon the grand staircases up ahead. They send down volley upon volley of arrows, interspersed with blasts of fire that suggest the presence of mages as well.

The party divides, Sasuke claiming the left side of the hall and Kakashi the right, both of them aiming to destroy the ranged fighters in the distance. Naruto and Sakura take the more direct approach, dealing with the incoming wave of close-combat attackers.

Once Sasuke and Kakashi reach the edge of the staircase, most of the archers and at least one mage are dead. Then, they climb upward together, moving around and behind one another in a slow rotation that allows them to divert any incoming projectiles.

Once, Sasuke even snatches an arrow from the air right before it pierces Kakashi’s temple.

The mage repays the favour by turning a wall of icy projectiles into a spray of rain using a fireball. It is a massive blast of flame that grows larger as it travels through the air and immolates the last mage. Sasuke inclines his head in thanks.

Times may have changed, but he is not about to stoop to thanking a mage of all people.

Down on the landing, Sakura and Naruto’s opponents are less feeble. The hulking, bone-wielding warriors appear immune to pain, forcing Naruto and Sakura to hack away at them. Limb by limb and inch by inch until nothing but pulp and bone surround them on the floor.

Sasuke’s stomach rebels a little.

There is a difference between a quick kill and this carnage.

“It is a type of fugue state,” Kakashi explains once the last body drops. “They do not realise they are mortally wounded until all the nerves in their body have been severed. Dwarves have an ability like this, yes?”

Sakura shakes her head, pale. “No…not like this. Dwarven berserkers can ignore pain, yes, but that’s because they’re’re fueled by battle rage and blood lust. They still feel. This…” She swallows. “This was like fighting those corpses we encountered in the Circle of Magi when we met you, Kakashi-sensei.”

“Except these guys weren’t walking corpses, they were actually alive,” Naruto adds with a shudder. “Look, there’s the blood to prove it.”

“Alive may not be the right word,” Kakashi muses. “After the amount of brain damage, hypnosis and blood magic they have been subjected to, I doubt you could really call it living.”

“Pity,” Sasuke says, staring down at one of the discarded arrows broken upon the ice-encrusted stone floor. It is the broken arm bone of a child, “That would mean we are putting them out of their misery.”

“Let’s keep going,” Sakura says, heading for the grand staircase. “We don’t know how big this place is, and there could be more of them. I’d like to get rid of as many as possible be before we lose the last natural light.”

There is a distant rumbling, and once again Sasuke hears the keen of a dragon. The others do as well, and Naruto shifts uncomfortably.

“Maybe after we do that we can set up camp?” he suggests. “I have this bad feeling we’re not getting off the mountain without coming face to face with that. And I’d really rather do it with the sun overhead than stumbling around in the dark…”

It is a sentiment none of them can argue with.

Comments and concrit are much appreciated, and very motivating! For information about supporting my original, non-fandom related works, you’re welcome to check out my ko-fi tip jar, or my patreon page. 

栗

Next Chapter

[uclaradio]

Interview with Vasudeva @ ArcTanGent Festival 2017

Interview by Layla Moheimani 

Photos by Ed Sprake

August 19, 2017 - Fernhill Farm, Bristol, UK

In previous decades of rock music, the term “power trio” would refer to acts like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience; a tight rhythm section supporting a superstar guitarist frontman. These days, and especially within the realm of what some might refer to as math or progressive rock, the most exciting three-piece bands are those in which all the instruments are perfectly balanced whilst still maintaining their individual complexities (see also my writings on Town Portal and Alpha Male Tea Party). Niche music festivals can often run the risk of redundancies within the lineups, but during both of my years at ArcTanGent Festival Vasudeva has always been a standout. Two-guitar bands are certainly not a new revelation but Vasudeva holds a high distinction in that each part truly carries its own voice. There is no lead or rhythm guitar between the two, just lyrical lines that flow seamlessly into one another without ever losing their distinct personalities. The musical chemistry which all three members of Vasudeva share stems largely from the fact that they are friends first and bandmates second. I sat down with guitarist Grant Mayer and drummer Derek Broomhead in their mansion-tent at ArcTanGent Festival in Bristol over the summer to discuss the band’s early development, their love of Blink-182 and the release of their new album.

Layla: When did you guys first start playing together and at what point did it become what it is now?

Derek: I was playing in a band with Corey [Mastrangelo, Vasudeva guitarist]. We were playing post-hardcore when we were fifteen years old. And we knew of Grant and we asked him to join the band. He played one rehearsal and was like “Nah,” he just dipped. Then three years later we all realized we were playing music alone. So we [decided] “Let’s do this together.” And it turned into something that we were proud of.

L: It’s just a band of three people playing alone in a room together.

D: Yeah. Before we had our bass player it was just me, Grant and Corey figuring things out. Grant was just learning how to tap. But because of his piano background [he] was able to figure it out really quickly and in a unique way.

L: What were some of the bands you were listening to early on?

D: Obviously, Minus the Bear. We were big into Maps & Atlases -

Grant: toe.

D: Yeah, we were listening to a lot of toe. Just music that makes you feel good, nothing too techy or thrashy. Although we were listening to Veil of Maya a lot and that is like the heaviest band ever.

L: You were like, “Okay, that’s the threshold we are not crossing.”

D: laughter Yeah, it’s just something we’d always throw on and have a laugh to.

G: That’s the fucking breakdown kings right there. Those breakdowns are the best I’ve ever heard.

D: Yeah, totally.

L: Your live setup is unique in that the bass lines in your music are very prominent but you don’t actually have a bassist onstage. How did that come about?

D: My good buddy Chris Ratay, we’d always played together but never started a band. There was this one day, the three of us were jamming and I invited [Chris] over and he was like, “I think this is sick.” He was actually a guitar player but he picked up the bass to fill the slot. We were with him for two and a half years and when he was leaving the band, we still had a lot of opportunities and were like, “What are we gonna do? We can’t replace -” Because when you’re in a band, it’s really hard to find someone that fits the mold because you have to live with those people essentially.

L: Yeah, especially because your band isn’t a standard operation either. You can’t just hold an audition and have some dude show up.

G: Yeah, I’ve known Corey since I was seven. We’re not even friends, we’re fucking brothers. It’s such a deeper level of relationship that I can’t even describe.

L: How did you guys first meet at age seven?

G: First day of school on the bus. Classic suburban shit. Bonded on Blink [182].

L: Were either of you even really into music at that age?

G: Yeah, we loved Blink.

D: We all grew up on pop-punk. We were all skater shitheads to the core. Grant and Corey have known each other since they were children and I’ve known Corey since I was maybe 13. I was starting a band and we were pretty into the emo thing and my friend Mark was buddies with Corey. He brought him in and we instantly clicked. I think when I was 13 or 14 he stayed at my house for two months. We never separated. We were that close right off the bat.

L: Wow. And it’s actually sustained since then.

D: Yeah, absolutely. And then I met Grant. The thing about me and Grant is we’re the exact same person but in a strange, different way.

L: What instruments did you guys start on that led you to what you play in the band now? 

D: My dad always wanted me to play guitar. I learned a bunch of blues tunes on guitar when I was 5 or 6 and liked it a lot but I was the kid just banging out rhythm from Day 1. I asked my dad for years to get a drum kit and it got to the point where [I decided to] save up money so I had to work and basically do things for him to show I was dedicated to playing drums. I bought my first drum kit when I was 10 and it was a piece of shit. We bought it on eBay for maybe $300 but I was proud of that thing. I just remember jamming out to Blink when I was 10, trying to learn what Travis Barker was all about. That was a serious learning experience for me. Just to be on your own doing exactly what you want and figuring it out without anyone telling you what to do.

L: It has a very organic feel to it.

D: Yeah, I guess. I don’t think I ever wanted to be in a band. It was just something I had to do. I never looked up to rock stars aside from Blink. I never [thought], “I want to be a sick drummer.” I just kept playing. I guess I was 14 when I decided I wanted to do this for a living. It just made the most sense and it’s been the most fun. Seriously, I could be doing bullshit but I’m out here having the best time. To Grant What about you? You started on piano, right?

G: Yeah, it was a similar thing. My dad played guitar but he didn’t want me to play guitar. He pushed piano and saxophone onto me but I always wanted to play guitar. So I ended up teaching myself guitar while [taking] more strictly regimented lessons for the other two instruments. I gave up sax earlier, then gave up piano and focused on guitar and just taught myself how to play that with the tools I’d learned from the other mediums.

L: You guys have toured extensively over the past seven years. Would you consider that to be more of your [focus] while releasing records intermittently or do you want to spend more time as a recording band as well?

G: I think it’s 50/50, honestly. They are both so necessary and I see them as such fundamental parts of what we’re doing. At this point it’s cut even down the board. The more we tour the more I feel like we’re neglecting recording. And the more we’re recording [the more] I feel like we’re neglecting touring.

D: Yeah. Trying to find that balance is hard.

G: But we’re definitely eager to get back in[to the studio] because it was a long time coming for [No Clearance, the new album].

L: Yeah, it was like three or four years.

G: Exactly. So we’re not trying to push that again.

D: The thing is, we always have music. We sit on our music for so long. We could record a lot right now. It’s just about finding the structure and the time to get to business.

L: Were the songs on No Clearance ones that had been piling up over time?

D: Yeah. I feel like with a lot of those songs, we reworked them to where you can’t even recognize them.

G: We definitely had a cohesive idea towards the whole thing. We picked and chose what we thought would be a good album together, you know? We wanted an album [where] each song would speak for itself. We didn’t want an album of a couple singles. We struggled even choosing the singles as we released them. It was arbitrary. Like, that’s what you have to do but the whole album’s a goddamn single for us.

L: Did you guys have a different intention going into this one over the previous one?

D: I feel like we learned a lot from our first release in terms of structure and songwriting. We really wanted to write songs that made sense and never lost a vibe, but could just keep it going.

L: So Grant, why did you want to start tapping in the first place? What brought that on?

G: Definitely just listening to the bands we mentioned before. Like, Minus and Maps. And I was like, “Yeah that’s cool. I could definitely do that for sure.” and I just [started doing] it.

D: Every[day at] 5:45 in the morning you’d just be ripping a waterfall with Corey, learning how to tap.

G: Yeah, we were teaching ourselves together, the two of us.

L: How do you and Corey put those two parts together?

G: It’s a lot of back and forth. The more we’ve grown, we’ve learned to really sit and complement each other. That’s always a growing concern of ours. We’re always trying to push the limits of that, just playing your place in the song. I feel like [with] some of our earlier stuff, people almost put the math rock connotation to it because it’s two intricate guitar parts going over one another. But at the same time, it’s all 4/4. It’s all verse chorus verse, traditional song-structure. It’s just intricate. We’ve really tried to hone the songwriting process and complement each other rather than compete.

L: I feel like with two-guitar bands it can be all across the spectrum as far as that balance is concerned. But you two actually have your own really distinct voices within the music, which is super cool.

D: Yeah, I would agree. These are the most unique players that I’ve hung out with. It’s really cool to be in a band with someone that you actually love as a person [who] can also blow your mind every single time. It’s always fucking sick.

You can read my review of Vasudeva’s set at last year’s ArcTanGent Festival here and watch video from the London show of their 2017 UK tour here. Keep up with music and upcoming tour dates from Vasudeva here.

[chocobro-hijinks]

Android Companion AU

Lucis is an advanced civilization, the crown city of Insomnia is self sustaining and generally safe, but the limited land with which to build on can barely fit the growing population. You are an independent adult who had landed a dream job in the heart of the city, your parents bid you farewell from their farmhouse just east of Lestallum, and now you are living alone in a very crowded, claustrophobic, and constantly noisy business district.

One day, you find an offer of comfort in your solitary life:

Model: NOCT-1.5 (limited number of units produced):

This model is the cutting-edge technology of all companions available in the market, the be-all end-all royalty of the trade. it is never advertised because very few people can afford it, but you’re a tech nerd and you’ve heard of the legends

It’s usually ridiculously expensive and waaaay out of your range, for some reason, this one is on sharp discount in your local computer shop

the clerk tells you it’s on a discount because it has been taken out of the box by a previous owner and returned, but is in top shape otherwise

it’s a small investment even after the price cut and you’re seriously trying to talk yourself out of it, but the more you look at the android behind the sheer plastic, the more you are entranced by the sharp features and slim design.

a part of you hungers to see what the eyes look like once turned on, and what kinds of apps and functions you can install on such a rare product

you take it home, and the moment you plug it- him in, bright piercing eyes glow red for three seconds, and then mellow out to a soft crystal blue

he doesn’t smile as per programming, he doesn’t greet you and ask you what username you would like to sign in as; he simply asks “where the hell am I now?”

turns out this particular android is defective, he has a tangible fracture in the enamel of his back that can’t be seen under the realistic silicone flesh, you start to believe the creeping suspicion that he has been sold and resold several times before finding his way to you, he has learned to loathe it

his energy depletes fast no matter how long you charge him, sometimes he will not respond to your voice commands even though you are 100% sure he heard, the string running between the balljoints of his hip and knee snaps out of place sometimes, and you have to rewind it back into it’s slot every time

his library is mostly filled with video games and movies and you don’t have the heart to wipe it out, eventually you start taking an interest in them as well, and he teaches you a hilarious card game called King’s Knight which you’re pretty sure is made up

his algorithm slowly adapts to your lifestyle: helping you with the cooking, suggesting places in the city for you to visit together, helping you wind down to sleep at the end of a stressful day

he’s not very fond of the alarm clock app, though, and had repeatedly attempted to delete it

he doesn’t have a lot of domestic functionality, either, you’re not sure if it’s lost with the injury to his crystal core or if it’s just the limitation of a ‘leisure’ model

you find his presence, if unexpectedly somber, comforting. it’s nice to have someone waiting for you at home just to talk to you after a long day

now when you see posts gloating about interacting with this model in some tech exhibit, you thank your lucky stars that you found the ‘defective’ one, because the factory default seems to be a tearfully boring and obnoxious prince-type cliche

Model: MT-Series Line: Argentum:

The Argentum (Silver) line is manufactured to look male, while the Aurum (Gold) line is manufactured to look female.

This series was so heavily advertised and mass produced that you absolutely refused to consider an android companion because of the depravity of it!

The whole MT-Series rubs you the wrong way; a bunch of pretty models programmed to act like stuck up bullies with minimum functionality. They’re made to fill up office hallways and do mundane desk jobs

they’re not even good at it, everything about them is mediocre and you refuse to jump on the hype train, not even for the endless customization features.

it is extremely attractive and, because of the affordable price, there’s at least one in every modern household, doing taxes and planning family finances

one day you are waiting on a care package from your family when you receive a huge shipment box covered in foreign lettering. you take it home, assuming they’ve used whatever cardboard container available that can fit all the vegetables of the season, like always

instead you find a used Argentum model with no clothes, bubble wrap hastily stuffed around the hips (to let pass through customs no doubt), no instructions manual, and three charger cables of varying lengths

you’re sure it’s been sent to the wrong address but there’s no way for you to return it because there’s no shipment label or letter.

you have to ask the machine itself where it came from, you plug it in

this boy turned on like a charm, at first he spoke a foreign language but after hearing you speak for thirty seconds his algorithm realigned itself and he switched to Lucian

He introduced himself with machine name “Prompto!” that can’t be modified without inputting a password in Nifillian, he blinks his shiny inquisitive eyes in wait for your name and beams at you when you tell him

you wanted to return him, you really did, but that smile could melt meteors!

you ask him for a rundown of his operating mission and previous location, he stutters, turns off, then automatically wakes up again

most of his default core programs were replaced with homebrew ones, all his optional apps, previous ownership libraries and all of his geolocation data have been wiped clean

this one knows not a lick of complicated math but can vocalize every top40 hit songs for as long as the battery will last

you’ve heard of people who tinker with the androids, and knowing it’s illegal means if you’re caught with a modified machine you could face a fine you can’t afford

he’s yours now, so you decide to teach him how to blend in so that one day you can take him out to see those chocobos he keeps singing about whenever he’s idling

you give him things to do around the house and bless his whirring core he tries. it’s fun learning how to cook with him, what his culture algorithm has learned about fashion, and what kinds of activities his synthetic muscles have learned before he dropped into your hands

 the one thing he really excels at is taking photographs, and the love that shines in his eyes when he’s taking pictures of you make you wonder if it’s possible for someone to install a soul in a machine

Model: G.Ladio Line: 飴.citia (Sweet Line):

this one is straight up advertised as a “Lover Companion”, and most series don’t even come with a shirt

the most slandered model in the Android Companion community, praised only for it’s lengthy charge time and sturdy assembly, it’s nearly impossible to damage this one without intending to

you have no need for a lover android, you tell your friends over coffee, if you wanted a jackhammer you’d get one from the hardware store for half the price

so of course your friends prank you by getting you a G.Ladio unit for your birthday

you don’t realize what they’ve done until you’re opening presents the next day and BAM! topless muscle man unfurls from the Styrofoam packaging to engulf you in a tight warm embrace

it takes you a minute to figure out how to cancel the command your friends have set up to switch to idle mode, by then he’s on top of you with both hands up your shirt and a very real mouth on your neck

you’re angry and embarrassed and flustered, one button press away from chewing out all your asshole friends in one conference call, but the warm eyes and soft smile that look back at you persuade you otherwise

his set up process is super simple, all you have to do is input your name and choose an intensity setting

that’s literally what it was called: level of intensity

you sweat nervously and decide to have it on the lowest setting, while searching for the instruction’s manual hoping there’s an intensity equal to ‘off’ or ‘not yet ready for the whole concept tbh’

thankfully you have something big enough to cover the tattoo your friends ordered with the purchase (your least favorite bird: the crow)

now you can start your day without being distracted by realistic silicone man titties; self-heating-silicone if your first encounter was any indication

low intensity Gladio is surprisingly pleasant, he comes with romance novel apps to recite for you, a warm rumbling voice bank to lull you to sleep, he’s waterproof, heatproof, and knows several party games

he waters your plants when you forget to do it according to a botanic encyclopedia he has installed by default (it’s to select flowers on your dates, but this works better for your succulents and lilies) 

you find it nice to have someone to warm your toes on in bed, someone to enjoy casual cuddling while watching a movie, someone you can program to kiss your neck juuuust right, someone who never tires of you when you’re overly snappy and moody after a bad day

your friends tease you about ‘how are you liking your overpriced jackhammer’, and you laugh at their blanching faces when you tell them you’re already on the highest level of your Gladio and is considering ordering a new drill bit

Model: Scientia Ign-1S:

This one isn’t nearly as advertised as the others, it is manufactured by a highly specialized company for very specific corporate purposes

the only reason you even know it exists is because it is necessary to have one in your office branch to communicate with the other units around the company building

you and your coworkers consider it part of the office furniture, it’s just always there, idling in the background

It has very basic social apps, there is an admin lock on it’s learning curve so you can’t teach it to converse with you, it watches everything silently, recording, seething

One morning you show up to work and there’s security everywhere, there has been a break-in and the android was sabotaged in an attempt to break the encryption

the camera spheres in the eye sockets were ripped out with a crowbar, damaging the satin silicone finish of the face assembly and shattering the glass orb inside a socket beyond repair

one hand is officially lost, a leg was ripped and used to smash into the glass window overlooking the office of your superior

one of the many crystal cores lay dim in it’s exposed chest, having self-destructed as a tampering defense mechanism

a coworker jokes that now your office has a free punching bag

the technician announces that any sensitive data had been completely wiped and is ready for repairs, but your office refuses to fix the machine because it’ll be cheaper to just buy a new one under a different insurance contract, they order a disposal

at the end of the day you find a limb sticking out of the dumpster behind your workplace and yank it out, it is attached to the damaged Scientia android now missing it’s wig and some internal wiring

you’re virtually broke and absolutely cannot afford repairs for such a limited model, but at this point leaving him behind feels like leaving a human coworker to fend for themselves, robot or not

it takes you months of research and the hunting down of parts, of learning how to weld wires and stitch silicon flesh; eventually you end up with a somewhat functioning Scientia model without breaking the bank!

sure one socket is permanently closed to prevent the constant shedding of glass and enamel shards, there are cuts and spots on it’s face that cannot be restored without reskinning his whole head, but at least the new core you scored in an online bid comes with some fancy custom tools!

now he has a massive concept-generator, a library of battle animation files that control the skeletal rig, an advanced linguistic database so he never runs out of words to say, and some strange fashion-modeling script (it installed itself!)

you also find an extensive voice bank to replace the one that had been locked back in the office, this one only comes in an unusual Tenebrean Accent (no wonder it was free...)

you put on his new hair last, a fancy pompador you got off a cosplay site, his delicate face pulls into a soft smile

he’s been watching you, learning you, for over a year as you patched him up and sowed him back together. He knows what foods you like, what music you listen to when you cry, what breeds of dogs please you the most; he offers all of it to you when he obtains functioning limbs

you find yourself eager to go home to your imperfect housemate who looks at you like you’re his sun and stars, and there’s very little you can do to keep from falling in love with his every smile

he is very protective of you, and you feel safe walking with him in a crowded city where not many people recognize him as a machine

you become protective of him, too, and remove the admin limitations on those battle commands so nobody can ever hurt him again

(there’s not enough android companion stories out there, let me live)

as always, these head canons can be freely used for fics, RPs, art, whatever, change what you want and have fun with it!

[topicprinter]

Of course, i understand that 2020 is a bit fucked up with all this beervirus situation, but anyways, there are more years further, 2021 is on the line. So i’m gonna tell you how to do everything right. Especially when you have so much time.Okay, so you decided to grow your startup to find investors, PR and all the stuff. Where to start? One of the best options — become a participant in one of the most famous and worldwide startup conferences such as Web Summit, Collision or Startup Grind.Our app made the cut for all of them.I am ready to share the experience. What to expect, where to start, what you won’t get there, which of them to choose, how to pass the interview and what to do there. i hope this will help you somehow.What is it a startup conference and why you need it?What is it?All of the startup conferences works the same way. At some point, people realized that just IT-conferences became boring. The same big names, the same speakers are talking about their success and their new releases. There’s much more fun in a startup sphere, where each of them is passionate about its app or service, they are ready to share their fuck ups, ready to pitch and ready to make it funnier. And for grownup companies, it’s a great chance to sell sponsorship packages and exhibition stands.That’s why Web Summit, Collision (70 000 and 30 000 participants), and all the other conferences from my list (search below) — are big and famous IT-conferences that have added some innovations. Especially this helps startups to see the world and get some PR upvotes with small costs. For the participants tickets are always cheaper like 10 times, free slots in the program, partnership discounts and hundreds and thousands of opportunities for networking and finding investors.What will you gain?Firstly, if you’ve never experienced tech conferences before, this will definitely blow your mind and will show new edges. You will realize that the world is full of projects, ideas, opportunities, and your local market is more of an exception than a rule.After your coming back, i promise, you will be powered with the feeling of unlimited energy and desire to workworkwork.Secondly, you’ll get that desired networking opportunities. Big startup conferences — are literally the only place on Earth, where you are standing side by side with YC, Andreessen Horowitz, and CEO/CTO from corporates you could never dream of, also many bloggers and journalists.Thirdly, you’ll earn some kind of quality mark. If you were picked for Collision, it means your idea worth something — you have a reason to be connected. Investors and journalists will be more friendly.As an example, i am referring that in my pitch which helps us to grow chances for new investors and new networks out of conferences.What you won’t gain?If you are just dutying at Alpha stand on Web Summit or Grind at Startup Grind, you won’t be the goal for YC. No one from Techcrunch won’t write about you and of course, Andreessen Horowitz won’t pay any attention to you. You’ll be “Just Smile and Wave boys. Smile and Wave” surrounded by other smiling and waving startups. If you weren’t picked for the Main Scene Pitch, your speech will be only for other startups waiting for their turn. Anyway, all startup conferences need you to be prepared af f*uck. It is just a place where is everybody. But that’s it. Everything is in your hands, appoint meetings, find investors and be freaking active.Where to participate?Here is my sincerely picked list of biggest startup conferences: 40 conferences list for 2021. Apply everywhere, no joke — later you will decide where to go, also will practice your pitching and interviewing. An interview is easier than you think but you still have to be ready.How to get ready?With a bigger conference comes bigger responsibilities. That means they have a more formal selection process. I will show it to you on Web Summit example.First thing you’ll be asked to prepare the application form with questions. It includes contacts, description of your startup in 7 words and basic information about your team, funding and about the sphere you are working at. If everything was great — a WS scout will contact you to schedule a call.📷After passing the call you’ll be able to apply the pitch contest, acceleration, connecting with mentors and many other options. You need to prepare:LinkedIn linkPitch Deck (standard AirBNB example)Website and app links.Answer questions like:Why should your startup be part of the %such and such% conference?Describe your startup tweet-styleTeam Experience?Competition?What channel(s) or tool(s) are fueling your customer growth?Why is now the right time for your product/solution to hit your specific market?Describe your company's current tractionFor the Pitch Contest, you'll be asked to prepare a one minute video, where you represent your project (in English, of course).I made it too! Not really Titanic film, but i was accepted (spoiler alert: not to the main scene).Getting ready for the interview: what scouts ask?After the first check, they realized your idea smells good, you’ll be scheduled for a call. Usually, scouts carry this. 15-20 minutes for each call. There is nothing to be scared of. Scouts are not the sharks of the venture capital market. They are just in middle management. Their goal is to find good startups but also to sell your tickets. They are in advance on your side. You need to be really creative to disappoint them.Scouts are using a standard script: asking about your product, about your team, MVP status, fundings. Technically, it’s the same question VC will ask, but scouts are mostly interested in just “having answers”.For example, when i had the interview for Web Summit, our app wasn’t even ready for Test Flight. I only made an interface animation based on export from Figma and sent it to scout. It was enough to become an Alpha participant.After the interview scouts bringing successful and promising applications to discuss on the round table. A couple of weeks later you are getting the congratulations email with a discount tickets link (~€300 instead of €1000 for Web Summit).After that, you’ll have to apply the Pitch Contest and download your logo for your stand. That’s it! Get ready for a trip!Once you are at a conference — it’s a big win for your future. Conferences are interested in showing your growth further and also… are interested in selling tickets.That’s why our Collision’s scout interview took us 5 minutes. Are you good after the Web Summit? Good. You’re in Beta. Welcome!Just a small note — Beta is for grown-up startups. There are a lot of journalists, bloggers, and all this networking and PR stuff.How to get ready for a trip?Networking before the conference: schedule all meetings in advanceAs I said before, startup conferences are a great opportunity to talk to anyone. But all meetings must be arranged in advance. Prepare your Grammarly, put the LinkedIn page in order, fill out AngelList, set up the official app, and start writing to everyone who you need, offer meetings during the conference. Depends on how much you were right with the target audience, 20-30% of participants will agree.Networking at the conference: chats and partiesIdeally, during the conference through the day, you will be at meetings, occasionally running to the most interesting speeches. But don’t forget about two more opportunities to find new contacts.First of all, there are very cool targeted chats/public messages around these conferences. For example, the Russian Web Summit chat in Telegram has about 1000 people. This is a very intelligent audience, if you need the advice of experienced, although selling your shit them won’t work. There are also good chats inside official apps.Second, there are dozens of evening parties, hangouts, and drunken parties held around conferences.The Complete List of Side Events around Web Summit — this year there were about 50 of them. It’s not necessary to appear at all of them.So, don’t be scared to try, to start and to grow. Feel free to ask anything!

[thehallofgame]

Review: Star Ocean: First Departue

Release: 2008 (Original, Japan only, 1996)

My Rating: 7.5

              Though now developer Tri-Ace’s flagship property, the first Star Ocean game didn’t leave Japan until more than 10 years after its original release. Announced in tandem with the PSP remaster of Star Ocean 2, Star Ocean: First Departure is a PSP remake of the classic, and at the time revolutionary, original game. The remake sees some brand new anime-style cutscenes, full voice acting and new party members all in addition to the game being totally remade with Star Ocean 2’s engine and control scheme. Of course, unless you’re fluent in Japanese or were devoted enough to track down a fan translation, you’d have nothing to compare the updates to.

              This game seems as of two minds about itself as I am about it. That is to say that, in many ways, it feels and plays like contemporaries of its day. Chrono Trigger in particular often comes to mind. Yet, though many of its ideas feel played out and repetitive, from a 2017 point of view, it still manages to intrigue enough to keep one playing.

              The first few hours of the game are pure, unpredictable insanity as it feels like the game begins a traditional medieval fantasy and then someone spins some wheel covered in possible settings and the player suddenly loses all context for the plot. Ultimately, the story settles into a discernable path… but only after several hours of dialogue and gameplay amounting to little more than moving the characters from checkpoint to checkpoint.

              Our hero is Roddick, a young man from the planet of Roak a few hundred years in our future. All the natives of Roak have animal ears and tails and commonly use magic. Everything is peaceful until a mysterious disease strikes the planet, and while on a mission to gather medicinal herbs Roddick and friends encounter a team of humans investigating the crisis. As it turns out the plague was caused by extraterrestrials and the disease had been harvested from a creature native to their planet several hundred years previously. Unfortunately said creature is currently only a legend. But! There’s a mysterious device that allows for time travel. And so Roddick and Millie of Roak, as well as Ronyx and Illia of Earth, make a daring trip back in time in order to harvest the original host of the virus in hope of making a cure for the future. At this point the game turns back into a familiar medieval fantasy, though with some scifi flavor thrown in at the edges of the world to keep the player enticed.

              It’s a quirky setting, and while it doesn’t provide the planet hopping one might hope, it does a decent job of creating a space opera that feels player driven. The goals of the game are usually simple, amounting to traveling across the world map to the next city. It is the characters along the way that provide the interest that holds the story up. The four time travelers take up only half of the eight slots for party members, the rest must be recruited as the story goes. However, there are nine possible characters for these four slots. And in all but one case there is no way to remove a character once they’ve been accepted into the party. Not only that, but which characters the player accepts change the story as well as which other possible recruits the player will meet or be available to recruit.

              This is simultaneously brilliant and frustrating because, while it lends great replayability and makes every playthrough at least slightly different, it also means the player must play multiple times to meet everyone. Some characters are simple to find, others require obscure steps and several specific party members to gain. And these people are just about evenly spread throughout the game. It can be tempting to fill out ranks early in the game but that might mean missing out on opportunities or powerful party members later.

              Each of these characters have their own affiliations and stories in the world. Sometimes these will be unveiled as part of the story, but most often occur during the awkwardly named ‘private action’. These events are activated outside of towns and will cause the party to enter and scatter into various locations in the town. They can then each be tracked down and spoken to. Sometimes this reveals short scenes and produces significant moments of character development. The implementation is a little sticky though because if a private action is used the party cannot rest at a inn, go to a port to travel or even complete quests until the player exits the town and reenters it.

              Backtracking turns out to be the order of the day in Star Ocean as multiple quest threads happily send the player right back the way they came over and over. Even merely travelling between adjacent towns can easily take hours due to very frequent random encounters. There’s supposed to be a skill tree devoted just to controlling the random encounter rate, but even when maxed out I found it didn’t do much more than give the player a false sense of control over the monotonous grinding. Rewards for these battles is limited to boot. Cash gain and level growths are steady and consistent, which is the one saving grace as there are few varieties of enemies and loot they can drop. The party can carry only 20 of each item, anyway, so it doesn’t matter how many healing potions the enemy drops because it doesn’t take long to top out the inventory.

              Combat itself, however, isn’t that bad and would even be fun if there was less of it. Star Ocean pioneered a system of real-time action RPG combat that still feels pretty solid. The party can field four people at a time, but the player can only control one designated leader. The other members are guided by a set of tactics parameters assigned to them outside of battle in a sub-menu. This system is pretty rudimentary, but it gets the job done better than many more recent iterations of this idea. While there’s no nuance the player can be sure that if they toggle characters between saving action/magic points or using their strongest abilities that is what will happen.

              The player’s party and the enemy will spawn at opposite ends of a large rectangular map and charge at each other. At this point the player uses the analogue stick to move their leader unit around the map towards enemies, away from danger or into a flanking position. The player can even do absolutely nothing and the battle will probably go fine. Units who rely on physical attacks need to close to the appropriate range at which point pressing the x button will launch an attack. Doing so will result in up to two follow up attacks in a chain, while hitting either of the bumpers will spend magic points to activate a powerful special attack. Meanwhile, however, the enemy is also free to attack in real time and needs to be watched lest it stagger the player and keep them from attacking, rather than the other way around. The circle button allows the player to switch the character controlled in battle. The triangle button opens a menu which, presuming the battle/game itself decides the party member ‘can’ do so at the present moment, allows use of consumable items, spells, changing assigned tactics and an option to try to escape a battle that’s going poorly.

              There’s no tutorial, so between combat tactics and the necessary mastery of the many sub menus to get the party set up, tactics decided and special attacks assigned, there can be a slightly frustrating learning curve.

              I mentioned previously that items, even healing items, may only be stacked to twenty like items. This means that in the field and long dungeon crawls the party need to rely on the crafting system. Much like other Star Ocean features this system is at once fun and a royal pain.

              Each party member gains some skill points upon level up which can be shunted into dozens of possible skills with ten levels of mastery apiece. These skills are more or less split into combat and crafting skills. Skills are sold to the party in stores before they can be learned, in sets of ten or so skills. These provide several skills which vary from easy to understand descriptions of combat skills to extremely vague creative skills. Translation in this game can be a little spotty, and this is one of the areas it shows most, where a subjective and quite possibly culturally significant implication just doesn’t make it across in a coherent statement. A character will need points in multiple skills to develop a specialization. If multiple party members have the same specialization they can unlock a super-specialization which either allows stronger versions of talents or better crafting results. It can be utterly vague what’s needed to unlock which specialization, however. This leads both to pleasant surprises and ineffective point wasting trying to figure out how to do the one thing you need. The best items in the game are all locked behind this wall, though luckily they’re not needed to complete the story. They’re pretty handy for the optional dungeons though, many of which contain the world’s secrets.

              Star Ocean becomes a game of peaks and valleys, often highs and lows are intimately related and inextricable. For example, the music is excellent but the voice acting is, on-average, mediocre but sounds like it was recorded on sub-par equipment. The whole game is like this, fifty percent enticement and fifty percent disappointment. The tug and pull between boredom and the memory of a last tantalizing tidbit of world-building is constant.

              Ultimately I find that these highs and lows even out to a mediocre game, but more than most a player’s experience with Star Ocean will be utterly subjective. One person’s grind will be another person’s epic fight sequence and one person’s disgust at the party’s constant crushes on and jealously over one another will be another’s great time. There are great ideas in here, and a great world, the problem is that they’re buried pretty deep and it’s hard to say whether it’s worth the effort of digging long enough to find them.