#I’ll probably fully render it digitally at some point

[raspberrypossums]

Traditional wip of the Krew takin a dumb equivalent of a group picture together

[canmom]

I watched an episode the new League of Legends spinoff tv series Arcane, I will watch the rest later at some point lol. visually it’s pretty interesting but it is 100% what would you would expect

animation mostly seems to be done either in house at Riot or at Fortiche Productions who did various previous music videos for them (not sure how it breaks down exactly, beyond that Fortiche definitely did the title sequence and some of the show animation is in their demo reel). whoever it is, they have a very strong nonphotorealistic shader pipeline that resembles recent trends in digital painting (strong rim lighting, fairly visible brushstrokes on surfaces).

so... it’s probably the first tv series to really bring that kind of high budget stylised videogame cutscene look to an animated series - not surprising since that look is very associated with League and Riot. i’d place it in a tradition with something like Legend of Korra (which it heavily resembles in writing) on the one hand and Star Wars The Clone Wars/Rebels on the other, though the visdev is considerably tighter than the starwars cartoons - very few sparse empty cgi sets, lots of nicely composed “looks like concept art” shots, very strong facial animation. this is definitely going to set a standard for what “expensive western CGI animation” is going to look like, and it’s cool that nonphotorealistic rendering is becoming increasingly popular.

overall though... it’s hard to get that excited because it’s kinda normcore lmao. like you can 100% tell it’s a spinoff of not just a game but a high budget modern MOBA; the character archetypes and writing beats are all pretty much “exactly what you would expect” given the premise. which isn’t necessarily an issue, like i’ve watched and enjoyed plenty of anime that throws a ton of visual flair at a conventional premise... but it feels like it’s so polished that the rough edges of personal touch that make something interesting have been sanded off along with the low budget CGI jank. which is also why I would compare it with Legend of Korra; it’s not just that they’re set in a city with a big class divide and a cool-but-scary police force and a 20s sort of visual style (Arcane is more Art Nouveau than Art Deco) but they both have that kind of “this story doesn’t really merit the animation effort you’re lavishing on it but that’s what capitalism will serve up for us” sorta feel to them!

one of the most interesting touches to me is the fact that the explosions, liquids - “effects animation” - are all clearly 2D, and made of very clean graphic shapes in a way that calls to mind animators such as Lightsoul. (it’s honestly so like his style that I wondered if he did it, but I couldn’t spot him on the credits). this added a ton of character. a slow motion fight scene with some deliciously squashy punch impacts also stood out choreography-wise. I was amused that they had Shohreh Aghdashloo’s extremely recognisable voice for the police chief, playing a character very similar to her role as Chrisjen Avasarala in The Expanse.

I feel like the premise has potential if they fully lean into the characters doing a terrorism (apparently where this is going), but I imagine it will back off to some Korra-style lib shit, because it’s the backstory of a mainstream videogame character and of course we surely can’t countenance blowing up fictional people in our fictional dystopia. that’s the thing i guess... I read V for Vendetta recently and you can really feel Moore’s anger at living through the Thatcher years, and I just don’t feel like this is going to have anything like that spark from 40 years ago, it’s just dabbling in a story about a revolution. but who knows. i’ll give it a chance!

[peppymint1986]

Who needs a laugh, or some advice

Source: http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

I highly recommend going to the site and checking out the ones that did not make the top 100 list.  

Peter’s Evil Overlord List

My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

[aurora-the-kunoichi]

Here is part two of Cat and Mouse with my OC Aurora and dark Leo inspired by @fear-the-antiverse

Cat and Mouse

Part two of Two

Aurora (My OC) and Leo (inspired by Fear the Antiverse’s Leo)

Warning: Rough Smut  (God I love writing smut)

 Aurora gritted her teeth holding off another attack, sparks flying as the two blades ground together from the immense friction. They had been at this dance for nearly an hour, skill matched between the two ninjas. Aurora could already start to feel the fatigue settle in her limbs. It was taking everything within her power to keep him at bay digging her heals into the ground, so he couldn’t push her back any further. The last thing she needed was him to get her up against the wall again claiming his victory. Curse the mutagen that gave him the stamina of a god, but thankfully the steady heave of his chest indicated he was starting to tire as well. It was now or never.

Gathering the last of her remaining strength Aurora pushed him back disconnecting their weapons. Placing the borrowed blade between her teeth Aurora’s fingers quickly engaged the firm sides of his leathery plastron gripping it tightly.  With the momentum of her body she pulled backwards catching the large terrapin off guard and hoisted his enormous weight up an over her as she rolled backwards. He obviously wasn’t expecting such a move because he grunted out his disapproval with a string of expletives when his hard shell connected with the cool brick floor. Continuing her roll backwards her nimble legs pressed into his hips keeping the two in close proximity as they rolled. Landing on top of the turtle Aurora straddled his substantial waist. Pulling the weapon from her clenched teeth Aurora pressed the business end of the well-maintained blade to the soft flesh of his neck.

Both out of breath she glared down at the turtle, he didn’t look the least bit bothered by the sharp edge of the weapon digging precariously into his carotid artery. Why would he be? They had known each other for almost two years now, enemies with benefits, if you could call it that. Skills nearly matched they would take the other down but could never deal the final blow. Somehow, they had developed some sort of fucked up feelings for one and other and after the battle was done and at a standstill their uncontrolled hormones would take over. Shoving and slamming the other about locked in the animistic need to mate. She wasn’t proud of it, but Jesus Christ could that beautiful muscled mutant take her to new heights of bliss. There was nothing soft about him or gentle, just hard and unforgiving in his rutting and she fucking loved every minute of it. So, as she loomed over him weapon ready to bleed him dry he knew she couldn’t do it. Fuck, he could probably already feel the heat of her core already throbbing in anticipation of his rough entry.

Even though he was fully aware she wouldn’t kill him his hands moved cautiously to her hips holding her firmly in place over his ridged erection which was already settled between her folds. The heat from her core against his straining cock was making him crazy with need. Grinding his hips up into her spread legs he growled giving them just enough friction to remind them what was next on the menu.

“Do it.” He teased licking his lips knowing full well his little ninja wouldn’t. “Fucking kill me and end this.”

“Fuck you, you arrogant prick. Maybe I will this time, maybe I’ll slit your throat and end our little game once and for all.”

Leo let out a rumble of laughter shifting her hips over his hardness again gaining an unintended moan from her. “Then who would fill your pretty little cunt?”

It was Aurora’s turn to laugh pressing the blade further into his flesh drawing a little blood from the effort. Leaning down to his ear slit her tongue snaked out licking a warm wet strip up his cheek. “From what I’ve told me I have three other brothers to choose from. I’m sure they all have nice fat cocks ready and willing for me.” That hit a nerve; his body tensed below her his green finger tips digging into her hips painfully. She hissed at the throbbing sensation but continued to rile up the turtle beneath her. “Maybe they’ll be a better fuck then their leader? I’ve heard the red brute is more ruthless then you are. Maybe he has a bigger cock to fill my little cunt with?” her voice was low and dripping with contention. She was playing with fire, but it resulted in the desired reaction. His breathing had quickened and a low growl, almost inaudible emanated from deep within his chest. God, she loved turning the tables on the cocky mutant.

This time she ground her hips down over him making him squirm at the delicious pressure distracting him momentarily from his rising anger. Leaning back up her breath caught in her throat, his pupils were dilated, and his lips pulled back in a snarl. He was primed and ready and the anticipation was killing her. The ache in her core was slowly driving her insane.

Then he exploded under her, “You’re mine!” Leo lurched up uncaring that his katana slid across his throat cutting through his green pebbled flesh. So, the cut wasn’t too deep Aurora abandoned the katana letting it clatter to the ground. Leo’s strong hands ripped from her hips wrapping around her waist and rolled them both. With the wind knocked from her lungs by the sheer strength of his action Aurora lay firmly beneath Leo pinned under his weight.

Leo’s toothy smile was so deceiving, she knew, she could see the rage swirling in his brilliant blue orbs. If it wasn’t for his swollen needy cock between his legs hell bend on sheathing itself deep within her warm body she would be dead by now. He sought her hands still set on evading him and pinned them above her head rendering her immobile. With his other hand it dipped below the waist band of her pants finding his warm eager prize beneath. He growled at how ready she was for him easily slipping two fingers into her moist entrance.

“This is mine.” He hummed into the crook of her neck curling his fingers up to find the special spot on the roof of her canal. He smiled confidently when Aurora gasped at the sudden surge of pleasure arching her back up to press her breasts into his plastron. “You’re mine and no ones elses. Especially my brothers!” Again, he stroked the sensitive bundle of nerves eliciting another heady moan from his captive driving her to her first orgasm of the night. “I won’t hesitate to kill anyone who takes what’s mine.”

Between her raged breathing and straining muscles her purple irises met his blue, “You don’t own me mutant, you only rent.”

His thick digit found her swollen bud at the hood of her sex and pressed into it skillfully while hitting the patch of nerves again pressing harder this time. He watched her mesmerizing eyes roll into the back of her head arching into him once again coming undone around his hand.

Her body exploded beneath him, the first of many orgasms she knew Leo had planned on doling out, she cursed his talented fingers as her clenched into tight fists above her head. Just a few unhurried passes of his thick fingers and she was like putty in his hands. Her whole body shook at the surge of her potent release gasping for air from it.

“Rent?” He laughed pulling his drenched fingers from her core. “You and I both know your body only wants mine. You can’t deny your body what it so desperately wants. My cock will be the only one filling you up little ninja.”

“Don’t be so sure about that.” She hissed when his hand jerked her shirt up revealing her black bra to his heated gaze.

“These are mine.” His warm hand reached up cupping each breast before latching his hot mouth over each mound heating the fabric with his mouth.

She could feel the moister from his mouth seep into the lace of her undergarment making her brown peaks bunch into pebbled buttons. God damn him and his big hot mouth. She barely noticed when his hand disappeared but when the black fabric fell away from her body exposing her breasts to the cool air she knew his kunai was responsible. Before she could protest its demise, his teeth returned to the peaks with a vengeance. Rolling each taught pebble between his two rows of white teeth Leo gave just enough pressure to make her cry out in the mix of pain and pleasure.

“Fuck!” she growled yanking at her hands in his grip.

“Soon little one, be patient for your fucking.” He mumbled between his clenched teeth darting his tongue over the tips hidden within his mouth. Releasing the sore nub his lips encased the torture flesh sucking once again running his smooth tongue over the crest before letting it go with a wet pop. The pressure inside his pants was beginning to become unbearable, Leo wanted his release more than anything, but the buildup was just as gratifying, so it was time to move to the next step.

Taking a chance, the large mutant released his prey’s hands and quickly lifted her hips pulling her pants and underwear free from her lower extremities with one fluid motion. Reaching behind his shell Leo pulled a small length of rope and found her wrists again before she could attempt another escape. Though he doubted she was willing to go anywhere at this point. From the red flush of her skin and the thick scent of her arousal, she wasn’t going anywhere but right into his arms.

True to her word when he wrapped her legs around his waist and hoisted her up she began to fight again. Moving with determination he slammed her back against the wall making the back of her skull collide with the damp brick. Taking advantage of her temporary disorientation Leo lifted her bound hands and tied them securely to the pipe she had used earlier to kick him in the chest.

With her head still throbbing from the assholes brute force Aurora suddenly became very aware of her new predicament. Trailing her gaze up to her bound wrists she found them tied rather well to a metal pipe protruding from the ceiling. With the bottom half of her naked and tied to the ceiling she could feel her heart begin to race. Her legs still locked around his waist her eyes traveled back to his handsome arrogant face. His now two free hands moved to her shirt that was still bunched up over her breasts and pulled the fabric up and over her face subsequently blindfolding her. She felt the tall terrapin pull away making her feet connect with the ground,thankfully still being able to stand.

Blind and helpless for the most part she had to use her other senses to figure out where the deadly ninja was. Her breath hitched feeling his hot breath spread over her neck as his hand tilted her head back giving him access to her throat. He was still very much in front of her his presence eerily close. With his smooth broad tongue he left a wet trail from her collar bone to her pulse point ending on the still tender bite mark he left earlier. Then she left his lips hovering over her ear and his warm palm press into the small of her back. “I think it’s time for the crescendo to this little game.” He whispered softly into her ear. “It’s been a while since I’ve been inside you, but I think a taste of the goods first before I fill your cunt with my aching cock. I want to know if you taste just as sweet as last time.” Shifting his hands to her hips she could feel his body lower closer to the ground. She could hear her heart beating wildly in her chest and then it stopped when his hand moved from her hip to her inner thigh pulling it up to rest her foot on his shoulder. Unable to see, she could still feel him, sensing the warmth of his skin just mere inches from her core. The anticipation was killing her and but she didn’t have to wait long. There he was his talented tongue sliding through her wet folds delving into her with such force it knocked her footing loose. His hands steadied her, both grabbing her hips holding her to him so he could devour her whole.

Aurora cried out from the intrusion swaying from her restraint with his eagerness. Trembling in his firm gasp she focused on his nimble tongue pressing, searching and tasting the most intimate part of her. A part she had given to him so many times before and had no plan on stopping anytime soon.

God he was excellent with that brilliant tongue of his. She wanted her hands free; she wanted to touch his green skin to leave bloody marks to show her appreciation of his wonderful skill.  As if on cue a dull pull deep in her abdomen began to ignite in a dazzling fire. Her breathing increased while soft moans escaped her lips as he continued his rough assault of her pussy.  Her whole body started to shake as her peak spiraled to the surface.  Climbing and growing to leave her utterly engulfed in the sensation. Leo could sense it too; she could feel his smug smirk pressed to her labia while he worked harder to bring her to her orgasm.

Like a bolt of lightning it hit hard, making her whole body tense in its overwhelming power. His name sung from her lips as she came violently in his willing mouth flooding his tongue with her essence.

Leo could sense her impending release and worked his tongue deeper into her cunt. He eagerly awaited the sweetness he craved that came only from her beautiful core. The steady shaking of her legs began her end and he rumbled his satisfaction as it filled his tongue. For added stimulation his thick finger pushed into her quivering cunt and found the sensitive bundle gaining a strangled cry from her intensifying the feeling coursing through her.

His erection strained against the fabric of his pants leaking his translucent liquid anticipation. Pulling his finger from her dripping pussy Leo pushed off his pants stepping free of them. His three fingered hand worked his pulsing cock as he pushed her shaky leg from his shoulder. Standing to his full height Leo loomed over Aurora eager for his own end. She was still coming down from her high and he didn’t plan on letting her come back to her senses.  

Wasting no time Leo relinquished his hold on his throbbing flesh and reached around to her back side pulling her legs up and around his waist. Thankfully she was aware enough to lock her feet behind him and with one powerful drive he entered her hilting quickly. Giving his captive no reprieve Leo worked immediately to a ruthless pace slamming into her willing core working desperately to his own peak.

Aurora screamed at the rough intrusion his large cock stretching her to her limits. “Fucking prick!” she growled throwing her head back reveling in the mixture of pain and pleasure.  The large brute took what he wanted without allowing her to acclimate to his massive girth but she didn’t care. His dominating force enhanced the earth shattering sex and left her addicted to his shelled hard green body.

His rhythm strong and steady Leo brutally pounded into her grunting out his enthusiasm with every sadistic snap of his hips. Again her body reacted to his animistic stimulation burning wildly threatening to consume her completely. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her hips that would no doubt leave marks tomorrow to remind her of her dangerous tryst with the leader in blue.  Caught off guard his mouth suddenly slanted over hers taking it in a passionate kiss, something he didn’t do when he fucked her. The unforeseen gesture pushed Aurora over the edge she had been teetering on for a few moments when his warm tongue invaded her mouth.  It took everything within her not to pass out from the surge that engulfed her taking her beyond her sensory limit. With each dominant thrust the bulbous tip of his cock slammed in to her cervix extenuating the bliss that racked her over stimulated body. She thought she might just die from the overload. Not a bad way to go.

Leo concentrated on her body as it fit over him perfectly pulling him quickly to his end.  Each time they fought he couldn’t help his body from reacting. His traitorous body craved this mischievous woman to no end and it pissed him off. Humans meant nothing to him, especially woman.  But there was something about this one, his little kunoichi. Fully embedded inside her intoxicating body writhing from his efforts he felt a sudden urge that he usually never had. Her swollen lips parted, panting his name he couldn’t deny that urge any longer. Moving forward Leo claimed her mouth in an uncharacteristic kiss. With the combined sensation he moaned into her mouth when she came undone around him, her body clamping viciously around his slick ridged flesh thrusting in and out of her.  

Finally giving in Leo’s body erupted with his overwhelming orgasm. Pushing his pulsating flesh into her as far as he could go, Leo pumped ropes of hot white cum into her womb. All the while holding her painfully taught against his hips emptying everything he had into her willing cunt.  She was definitely his, no matter what she though.  

Their heavy breathing resonated in the empty halls as they came down from their natural high. Already Aurora could feel the rolling warmth of Leo’s seed as it seeped out around his softening member. Even that simple feeling kept her body tingling a little longer. Letting out a disappointed grunt when his wet flesh left hers Aurora sagged against her restraints spent from their forbidden rendezvous.

When Aurora’s body was cut loose his strong arms caught her helping her to her trembling knees and her hands freed with a quick slice of his sharp knife. Still shaking Aurora pulled her shirt down and found herself alone in the poorly lit tunnel. Like a shadow in the night Leonardo was gone leaving his warm essence slipping from her body.

“Until next time.” She whispered staggering to her feet, she needed a hot shower.

Part One

[memorycard83]

Taking pictures

The other day I went to go take some pictures for my friends shop that she works at. I’ve been wanting to take pictures there for some time but never got around to it. The times I did show up with a camera, it was a digicam or a fujifilm point & shoot digital camera that actually managed to take some good pictures in my opinion. It was a little different being put in a position where I was taking pictures for someone instead of for myself, but I still wanted to do it because I wanted to see if I know exactly what I’m doing when it comes to taking pictures of products. I brought my most expensive camera ever not to show off or anything, but because I knew it was the camera I wanted to use for the shoot since I’m actually pretty familiar with how it operates. Not only that, I really like how it renders color despite my eyes being terrible with colors.

During the shoot I realized I wanted to do mostly jewelry and not shoot plants but remembered that I was supposed to take pictures of the plants and not just jewelry. The problem I had with this shoot wasn’t that simple but kind of was. The lighting between the hours of 3-6 is not good for the plants, the sun is behind the building so there isn’t really any light being shined into the store. And even though there was some natural light bouncing off from the streets, it was a gloomy day which made the colors more on the cool side despite fixing my white balance in camera. Not only that, wasn’t that used to taking pictures in front of people and being hyped up as a photographer. The ideas I had were mostly inspired from product photography photos I’ve seen that stuck with me or photos I saw and I’m like okay, this is definitely something I can replicate and it’s actually not unattainable, but honestly I don’t think a lot of photography looks are unattainable, however I’ll talk about that another time because this is mostly about the photoshoot.

The photos turned out well, I do wish I had brought other lenses that would’ve took in more light or delivered a wider look or blurrier backgrounds because everyone loves that. I posted some on my main instagram because I haven’t posted in awhile and felt like this was fitting for the moment and not only that idk when I’ll be taking pictures with that camera again since it’s so heavy to carry around. I’m not sure how the rest of the people at the store felt about the images but hopefully they do end up being used for their website or newsletters.

I barely consider myself a photographer but that’s probably because I know the expectations people have for this idea of a photographer and I don’t think I meet that expectation among most people. I’m fully aware what I’m capable of, it’s good but it isn’t to the point where people are going to want to buy my photos because they may think their iPhone is sufficient enough to tackle the task. If only it was that simple, not only that I think there is beauty to using a real camera for photography, obviously it’ll turn out a lot different than the photos you take from an iPhone, but ergonomically it’s a lot more fun and easier to figure out how you want your photo to turn out with the ability to adjust settings and the focus plane.

This shoot did inspire me to shoot a more often than before with a real camera but also reminded me I’m pretty capable of taking good pictures if I’m given the right setting and tools needed.

[oliverarditi]

A fractured continuum

Photographs, particularly digital or polaroid photographs (remember those?), are both immediate and mediated, both portals and barriers. They are small physical reifications of memory, which both manifest and falsify the past, insisting that our recollections adopt precisely one physical position, and one instant, out of the infinitely many that we occupied during any given experience, as though we were, in David Hockney’s words, ‘a paralysed cyclops’. They promote recall with a vividness that would have seemed a powerful magic to any human born during the vast majority of our collective past, when even hand-made images with any degree of mimetic fidelity were vanishingly rare. That magic is, of course, still present, but we no longer recognise it as such, regarding the images in our photo folders (or albums, if we’re really old) as scientific samples of a materially verifiable experience, stills from a video-recording that exists somewhere in our brains. In a game I recently played, that magic is literalised, the barrier at the photograph’s surface opened, the manifestation of the past expanded until it supplants the present. The dendritic flow of experience that our snapshots freeze and slice into a singular stream of morbid quanta, becomes a living, branching continuum, a habitable space.

Life Is Strange is a thoughtful work of fiction in the guise of a video game. It’s an adventure game, which is to say a game without action sequences, but a 3D one, in which the player freely traverses and explores a number of fully rendered volumes. Each space is essentially a puzzle, in an episodic format, which requires the player to find a path through the available actions until one of (usually) several conclusions is reached, at which point they move onto the next space. Such games traditionally have involved a certain amount of saving and loading, as various options are explored and rejected, but here that mechanism is built into the narrative. Max Caulfield, an 18 year-old high-school student in Oregon, discovers that she has the ability to rewind time and to second-guess her choices. What follows is a philosophical exploration of causality, in the form of an emotionally engaging story about friendship, loyalty, memory and loss, focussed on Max and her slightly older friend Chloe. Both young women are social outsiders to some degree, and the story also explores the experience of belonging, in various ways, to various contexts.

If the game has a genre, in its capacity as a fiction, it is a young adult story. I don’t say this because its central characters are young adults, but because at the centre of the plot is a particular kind of melodramatic, thrilling villainy which is characteristic of commercial work in the young adult genre. From my own middle-aged perspective, I didn’t feel like the story needed it: in fact, given the kind of teacher-protege relationship around which it is elaborated, an entirely prosaic form of villainy suggests itself, one which will be familiar to anyone who has spent much time around arts education. But this paragraph has already become a huge spoiler, so I’ll say no more on the specifics of the narrative, and if you ever choose to play this game, sweet lector, you will need to forget you read it.

The plot is entirely driven by the characters, and if the story is ‘about’ something, it is about their relationships. I guess I probably used to imagine that could only ever be said of a game like this, which does not make violence ludic, involve representative abstractions of strategic activity, or require the player to spend long periods of time managing an inventory of virtual objects. Having played Red Dead Redemption 2 I now have to concede that any genre of game could be fundamentally character-driven, but the developers of Life Is Strange made a sound decision to avoid such mechanics; other than movement, the only real game mechanic is Max’s rewinding ability, which is completely congruent with its narrative presence, aside from a simple graphic representation. This clear focus means that the game stands or falls as much on its writing and acting as on its design. Both are excellent, with the caveat regarding plot devices given above.

Controlling the actions of a character promotes identification, in a way that shortcuts much of the work required to establish them in more passively received forms of narrative; for this reason characters which are quite schematically rendered can become quite powerfully present for the player. It’s probably easy to overestimate the quality of writing in a game, and I guess that I am also inclined to cut games more slack than, say, TV series, simply because their developers didn’t care or even notice what quality of writing they commissioned for them until recent years. It’s easy to mistake a feeling of ‘wow, this isn’t terrible’ for one of ‘wow, this is brilliant’. So if I’m careful, and step back a few paces, the writing on Life Is Strange isn’t brilliant: much is simplified that you would expect to be given some nuance in a serious drama. But it’s certainly not bad, and the voice actors bring their characters to life, especially Hannah Telle as Max, and Ashley Burch as Chloe.

The experience of a game is not identical to the quality of its dramatic materials, however. So many factors combine, in ways that are still quite mysterious to me, that a well-made game produces an immersive effect that completely absorbs me, in a way quite distinct from any other medium. My lack of knowledge, my inability to analyse, makes games the only cultural form that I can experience while I’m playing them as pure entertainment. I don’t mean that I’m not entirely entertained or immersed in books or movies or other media, but that my critical faculties are always active as well. With games, my more rudimentary criticality takes aim after the event, in a way that is uncannily analogous to Max Caulfield’s rewinding of time and exploration of possibilities, as well, obviously, to the opportunity games afford to load a save and play them over. There is an amusing metafictional point to Life Is Strange, which is that its protagonist’s special ability is something that almost everyone will have fantasised about possessing (‘if only I could go back and say X’), but that every player of video games, within that limited arena, already commands. This game’s philosophical investigations, and its insistence on experience as a branching web of possibilities, put the seal on what is one of the most immersive and life-affirming interactive narratives I’ve enjoyed.

[steeleholtingon]

This Evil Overlord List is Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, provided that (1) it is not altered in any way, and (2) this copyright notice is attached.

(From the User-Friendly Archives)

Attention all Evil Overlord List Aspirants: Contrary to popular belief, taking over the universe is not as easy as it would first appear. Due to the complexity of this task, Peter regrets that he is currently unable to give the list the attention it deserves. The list is therefore going on a temporary hiatus. This is a temporary condition. As soon as he is able to respond in a timely manner -- or until he becomes unquestioned lord and master of all things, whichever comes first -- the list will not be updated and no new suggestions will be considered. He would sincerely apologize for this inconvenience, were it in character for an Evil Overlord to do so.

Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I've read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. With that in mind, allow me to present...

The Top 100 Things I'd Do

If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

[mistressarachnia]

Post Processing your Raw Doujinshi Scans

This guide is meant to follow my first guide on scanning doujinshi without destroying them in the process.  You can find it here.  In this section, I’ll show you how I take my images from photographs and turn them into professional-looking digital scans.

So I Took a Lot of Pictures - Now What?

Sadly, after all the hard work you put in to get amazing pictures of your glorious doujinshi… you’re still not done yet - but the more effort you put into the first part, the less you’ll have to expend here. Pull the photos you took off of your digital camera and put them in a new working directory with the name of your project on your computer. From here, this guide uses Photoshop CS6, but you can find most of the same actions in GIMP.

If you shot in RAW:

This can make your life a little easier if your lighting setup was a little less than ideal, but it’s still not a cure-all. The biggest advantage to this is that you can set the correct white balance for your scans all at once instead of page by page (although, if the doujin is mostly black-and-white it isn’t such a big deal). Select all of the RAW image files in your project and drag them into photoshop.

(Look how amazing they are. So highlights. Very contrast. Much wow.)

Click the ‘Select All’ button because we want the next changes we make to apply to every picture at once.

White balance

Press ‘I’ or click the white balance tool button, then click an area that’s supposed to be pure white. This is correcting for the color temperature of your lighting, so make sure where you select isn’t actually intended to be a beige or off-white color or it will affect how the other colors are rendered. You can always include a little sheet of white printer paper in your shot to white balance off of if there isn’t any on your doujin covers.

Next, select just the inside black-and-white pages (you’ll come back and fix up the fancier cover pages afterwards).

This is where the best features of shooting in RAW come in. First, since we shot all of our pages towards the light side, take the Blacks slider and drag it down (make them darker) until what should be ‘pure black’ on your page looks good. It might be as far as this example page used (-100), or it might not - yours might not need as extreme of an adjustment.

Once you’ve got the blacks as black as they should be, you’ll probably notice that the bright areas are too bright. Grab the Highlights slider and drag it down to return some detail to the lighter regions.

We don’t want the whitest regions to be less than pure white however, so next, adjust the Whites slider up until they look right.

This scan didn’t need Shadows adjustment, so I skipped it and bumped the contrast instead.

If you were to try and crop the pages here, you might notice that the edges don’t seem to be totally straight - they follow a very slight fisheye effect due to the lens distortion from the camera. Select All pages again, then flip to the Lens Corrections tab and check the ‘Enable Lens Profile Corrections’ checkbox.

Now select only your cover pages and repeat the same steps as above. You can also play with the vibrance and saturation sliders to adjust the intensity of the colors.

If you happen to get an edge reflection or some other kind of local effect you’d like to get rid of, you can use the Graduated Filter tool to apply most of the same effects you just used to a specific zone of the image instead. In this case, I had a bit of reflection on the lower edge of the cover page, so I used a Graduated Filter effect with darkened shadows to mute it.

Before we finish, let’s take advantage of the RAW import dialog to rotate our pages with hotkeys. Start at the first page and press ‘L’ or ‘R’ depending on which way it’s oriented (if you hit the wrong one just press it again twice to rotate it to the correct orientation). Then, hit the down arrow to get the next picture, rinse, and repeat. L, down, R, down, L, down, R, down…

Once they’re all rotated correctly, hit ‘Select All’ one more time and then ‘Open Image’ to open all the shots in Photoshop.

Photoshop time

If you didn’t shoot in RAW, you’ll still be doing all the same steps here as if you would otherwise - you just might be need to be a bit more picky and intensive while doing so since the controls aren’t quite as fine.

Oh no, your camera setup wasn’t completely square and perfect. That’s what the Lens Correction tool is for! Even if you checked the box in the RAW import process, you’ll still want to use this tool (in the Filter menu) to straighten and adjust your pictures.

The default tool should be the ‘straighten’ tool which will micro-rotate your picture according to lines you draw that are supposed to be true vertical or horizontal. For instance, in the picture above, I selected the right edge of the book which wasn’t perfectly vertical.

Next, once the rotation is corrected for, it’s easier to see how the top and bottom edges were slightly trapezoidal (due to camera positioning optics). Drag the Horizontal Perspective slider left or right to correct the perspective until they’re as parallel as you can get to the guideline grid.

Now that the page is nice and square (it’s probably still not perfect, but that’s alright), it’s time to crop it down to just the page. You can manually use the crop tool on every page yourself, but I’ve found a fast and easier way to do it is by using the Quick Selection tool (W) to select the four corners of the page and then hit the Crop tool hotkey (C) to snap the crop region to the selection extents. At this point, you can either micro-adjust the crop borders here, or just hit accept and then zoom in to each side one by one to pull the borders in so none of the background remains.

Your page might look nice and black-and-white already, but let’s make sure it stays that way by quickly adding a Black & White adjustment layer.

Next, add a Levels adjustment layer. The graph represents an intensity histogram of the pixels in the image, and since this shot came out so nicely in the RAW import process there’s not much more we need to do to it - just drag in the black and white sliders a tiny bit.

If you didn’t have as much luck in the import step, or if you can’t shoot in RAW, your graph might look a bit more like this - showing that your peak whites aren’t fully white, and your blacks are a bit lighter than black. Drag the sliders in to match the horizontal extents of the histogram.

As good as your page might be looking already, there’s probably some lighting asymmetry or other artifacts that are starting to show up as you refine your image. In our case, the top of our image didn’t get quite as much light from our lamp as the bottom did, so it’s just a smidge darker.

Add a Curves adjustment layer and click the white eyedropper tool on it to sample a point that should be pure white.

Unfortunately, when we did this it started to bleach out the faint shadow on the character’s face in the mid-lower panel. Fortunately, each of these adjustment layers comes with a mask we can tweak to customize what parts of the image they affect. If we use the gradient tool to make a vertical on (white)/off (black) transition, then the top gray gets lightened while the lower gray stays as it is.

Do a final check around the edges of your scan.  Sometimes if you didn’t crop enough there can be some light imperfections in the edges.  You can usually correct them by zooming in and either using the crop tool or the paintbrush to make them perfect.

Once you’re satisfied with how your post-processing turned out, be sure to save a native photoshop file keeping all layers so you can go back and adjust if you need to (such as, if you figure out a better adjustment formula). If you’re planning to continue on and make a full scanlation of your doujin, you’ll use them in the final step of erasing the original text and adding in our own.  If not - they’re ready to post or email to a translator.

Now... go forth and scan!

[low-orbit-salt-cannon]

Evil Overlord Rules

Credit goes to http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

I will not order my trusted lieutenant to kill the infant who is destined to overthrow me -- I'll do it myself.

I will not waste time making my enemy's death look like an accident -- I'm not accountable to anyone and my other enemies wouldn't believe it.

I will make it clear that I do know the meaning of the word "mercy"; I simply choose not show them any.

My undercover agents will not have tattoos identifying them as members of my organization, nor will they be required to wear military boots or adhere to any other dress codes.

I will design all doomsday machines myself. If I must hire a mad scientist to assist me, I will make sure that he is sufficiently twisted to never regret his evil ways and seek to undo the damage he's caused.

If my supreme command center comes under attack, I will immediately flee to safety in my prepared escape pod and direct the defenses from there. I will not wait until the troops break into my inner sanctum to attempt this.

Even though I don't really care because I plan on living forever, I will hire engineers who are able to build me a fortress sturdy enough that, if I am slain, it won't tumble to the ground for no good structural reason.

Any and all magic and/or technology that can miraculously resurrect a secondary character who has given up his/her life through self sacrifice will be outlawed and destroyed.

I will see to it that plucky young lads/lasses in strange clothes and with the accent of an outlander shall REGULARLY climb some monument in the main square of my capital and denounce me, claim to know the secret of my power, rally the masses to rebellion, etc. That way, the citizens will be jaded in case the real thing ever comes along.

I will not employ devious schemes that involve the hero's party getting into my inner sanctum before the trap is sprung.

I will offer oracles the choice of working exclusively for me or being executed.

I will not rely entirely upon "totally reliable" spells that can be neutralized by relatively inconspicuous talismans.

I will make the main entrance to my fortress standard-sized. While elaborate 60-foot high double-doors definitely impress the masses, they are hard to close quickly in an emergency.

I will never accept a challenge from the hero.

I will not engage an enemy single-handedly until all my soldiers are dead.

If I capture the hero's starship, I will keep it in the landing bay with the ramp down, only a few token guards on duty and a ton of explosives set to go off as soon as it clears the blast-range.

No matter how much I want revenge, I will never order an underling "Leave him. He's mine!"

If I have equipment which performs an important function, it will not be activated by a lever that someone could trigger by accidentally falling on when fatally wounded.

I will not attempt to kill the hero by placing a venomous creature in his room. It will just wind up accidentally killing one of my clumsy henchmen instead.

Since nothing is more irritating than a hero defeating you with basic math skills, all of my personal weapons will be modified to fire one more shot than the standard issue.

If I come into possession of an artifact which can only be used by the pure of heart, I will not attempt to use it regardless.

The gun turrets on my fortress will not rotate enough so that they may direct fire inward or at each other.

If I decide to hold a contest of skill open to the general public, contestants will be required to remove their hooded cloaks and shave their beards before entering.

Prior to kidnapping an older male scientist and forcing him to work for me, I will investigate his offspring and make sure that he has neither a beautiful but naive daughter who is willing to risk anything to get him back, nor an estranged son who works in the same field but had a falling-out with his father many years ago.

Should I actually decide to kill the hero in an elaborate escape-proof deathtrap room (water filling up, sand pouring down, walls converging, etc.) I will not leave him alone five-to-ten minutes prior to "imminent" death, but will instead (finding a vantage point or monitoring camera) stick around and enjoy watching my adversary's demise.

Rather than having only one secret escape pod, which the hero can easily spot and follow, I'll simultaneously launch a few dozen decoys to throw him off track.

Prison guards will have their own cantina featuring a wide variety of tasty treats that will deliver snacks to the guards while on duty. The guards will also be informed that accepting food or drink from any other source will result in execution.

I will not employ robots as agents of destruction if there is any possible way that they can be re-programmed or if their battery packs are externally mounted and easily removable.

Despite the delicious irony, I will not force two heroes to fight each other in the arena.

All members of my Legions of Terror will have professionally tailored uniforms. If the hero knocks a soldier unconscious and steals the uniform, the poor fit will give him away.

I will never place the key to a cell just out of a prisoner's reach.

Before appointing someone as my trusted lieutenant, I will conduct a thorough background investigation and security clearance.

If I find my beautiful consort with access to my fortress has been associating with the hero, I'll have her executed. It's regrettable, but new consorts are easier to get than new fortresses and maybe the next one will pay attention at the orientation meeting.

If I am escaping in a large truck and the hero is pursuing me in a small Italian sports car, I will not wait for the hero to pull up along side of me and try to force him off the road as he attempts to climb aboard. Instead I will slam on the brakes when he's directly behind me. (A rudimentary knowledge of physics can prove quite useful.)

My doomsday machine will have a highly-advanced technological device called a capacitor in case someone inconveniently pulls the plug at the last second. (If I have access to REALLY advanced technology, I will include a back-up device known as a battery.)

If I build a bomb, I will simply remember which wire to cut if it has to be deactivated and make every wire red.

Before spending available funds on giant gargoyles, gothic arches, or other cosmetically intimidating pieces of architecture, I will see if there are any valid military expenditures that could use the extra budget.

The passageways to and within my domain will be well-lit with fluorescent lighting. Regrettably, the spooky atmosphere will be lost, but my security patrols will be more effective.

If I'm sitting in my camp, hear a twig snap, start to investigate, then encounter a small woodland creature, I will send out some scouts anyway just to be on the safe side. (If they disappear into the foliage, I will not send out another patrol; I will break out the napalm.)

I will instruct my guards when checking a cell that appears empty to look for the chamber pot. If the chamber pot is still there, then the prisoner has escaped and they may enter and search for clues. If the chamber pot is not there, then either the prisoner is perched above the lintel waiting to strike them with it or else he decided to take it as a souvenir (in which case he is obviously deeply disturbed and poses no threat). Either way, there's no point in entering.

As an alternative to not having children, I will have lots of children. My sons will be too busy jockeying for position to ever be a real threat, and the daughters will all sabotage each other's attempts to win the hero.

If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it's important to spend quality time with the grandkids.

If one of my daughters actually manages to win the hero and openly defies me, I will congratulate her on her choice, declare a national holiday to celebrate the wedding, and proclaim the hero my heir. This will probably be enough to break up the relationship. If not, at least I am assured that no hero will attack my Legions of Terror when they are holding a parade in his honor.

I will order my guards to stand in a line when they shoot at the hero so he cannot duck and have them accidentally shoot each other. Also, I will order some to aim above, below, and to the sides so he cannot jump out of the way.

My dungeon cell decor will not feature exposed pipes. While they add to the gloomy atmosphere, they are good conductors of vibrations and a lot of prisoners know Morse code.

If my surveillance reports any un-manned or seemingly innocent ships found where they are not supposed to be, they will be immediately vaporized instead of brought in for salvage.

I will classify my lieutenants in three categories: untrusted, trusted, and completely trusted. Promotion to the third category will be awarded posthumously.

Before ridiculing my enemies for wasting time on a device to stop me that couldn't possibly work, I will first acquire a copy of the schematics and make sure that in fact it couldn't possibly work.

Ropes supporting various fixtures will not be tied next to open windows or staircases, and chandeliers will be hung way at the top of the ceiling.

I will provide funding and research to develop tactical and strategic weapons covering a full range of needs so my choices are not limited to "hand to hand combat with swords" and "blow up the planet".

I will not set myself up as a god. That perilous position is reserved for my trusted lieutenant.

I will instruct my fashion designer that when it comes to accessorizing, second-chance body armor goes well with every outfit.

My Legions of Terror will be an equal-opportunity employer. Conversely, when it is prophesied that no man can defeat me, I will keep in mind the increasing number of non-traditional gender roles.

I will instruct my Legions of Terror in proper search techniques. In particular, if they are searching for escapees and someone shouts, "Quick! They went that way!", they must first ascertain the identity of this helpful informant before dashing off in hot pursuit.

If I know of any heroes in the land, I will not under any circumstance kill their mentors, teachers, and/or best friends.

If I have the hero and his party trapped, I will not wait until my Superweapon charges to finish them off if more conventional means are available.

Whenever plans are drawn up that include a time-table, I'll post-date the completion 3 days after it's actually scheduled to occur and not worry too much if they get stolen.

I will exchange the labels on my folder of top-secret plans and my folder of family recipes. Imagine the hero's surprise when he decodes the stolen plans and finds instructions for Grandma's Potato Salad.

If I burst into rebel headquarters and find it deserted except for an odd, blinking device, I will not walk up and investigate; I'll run like hell.

Before being accepted into my Legions of Terror, potential recruits will have to pass peripheral vision and hearing tests, and be able to recognize the sound of a pebble thrown to distract them.

I will occasionally vary my daily routine and not live my life in a rut. For example, I will not always take a swig of wine or ring a giant gong before finishing off my enemy.

If I steal something very important to the hero, I will not put it on public display.

When planning an expedition, I will choose a route for my forces that does not go through thick, leafy terrain conveniently located near the rebel camp.

I will hire one hopelessly stupid and incompetent lieutenant, but make sure that he is full of misinformation when I send him to capture the hero.

As an equal-opportunity employer, I will have several hearing-impaired body-guards. That way if I wish to speak confidentially with someone, I'll just turn my back so the guards can't read my lips instead of sending all of them out of the room.

If the rebels manage to trick me, I will make a note of what they did so that I do not keep falling for the same trick over and over again.

If I am recruiting to find someone to run my computer systems, and my choice is between the brilliant programmer who's head of the world's largest international technology conglomerate and an obnoxious 15-year-old dork who's trying to impress his dream girl, I'll take the brat and let the hero get stuck with the genius.

I will plan in advance what to do with each of my enemies if they are captured. That way, I will never have to order someone to be tied up while I decide his fate.

If I have massive computer systems, I will take at least as many precautions as a small business and include things such as virus-scans and firewalls.

I will be an equal-opportunity despot and make sure that terror and oppression is distributed fairly, not just against one particular group that will form the core of a rebellion.

I will not locate a base in a volcano, cave, or any other location where it would be ridiculously easy to bypass security by rapelling down from above.

I will allow guards to operate under a flexible work schedule. That way if one is feeling sleepy, he can call for a replacement, punch out, take a nap, and come back refreshed and alert to finish out his shift.

Although it would provide amusement, I will not confess to the hero's rival that I was the one who committed the heinous act for which he blames the hero.

If I am dangling over a precipice and the hero reaches his hand down to me, I will not attempt to pull him down with me. I will allow him to rescue me, thank him properly, then return to the safety of my fortress and order his execution.

I will have my fortress exorcized regularly. Although ghosts in the dungeon provide an appropriate atmosphere, they tend to provide valuable information once placated.

I will add indelible dye to the moat. It won't stop anyone from swimming across, but even dim-witted guards should be able to figure out when someone has entered in this fashion.

If a scientist with a beautiful and unmarried daughter refuses to work for me, I will not hold her hostage. Instead, I will offer to pay for her future wedding and her children's college tuition.

If I have the hero cornered and am about to finish him off and he says "Look out behind you!!" I will not laugh and say "You don't expect me to fall for that old trick, do you?" Instead I will take a step to the side and half turn. That way I can still keep my weapon trained on the hero, I can scan the area behind me, and if anything was heading for me it will now be heading for him.

I will not outsource core functions.

If I ever build a device to transfer the hero's energy into me, I will make sure it cannot operate in reverse.

I will decree that all hay be shipped in tightly-packed bales. Any wagonload of loose hay attempting to pass through a checkpoint will be set on fire.

I will not hold any sort of public celebration within my castle walls. Any event open to members of the public will be held down the road in the festival pavilion.

Before using any device which transfers energy directly into my body, I will install a surge suppressor.

I will hire a drama coach. The hero will think it must be a case of mistaken identity when confronted by my Minnesota accent (if everyone sounds American) or my Cornwall accent (if everyone sounds British).

If I capture an enemy known for escaping via ingenious and fantastic little gadgets, I will order a full cavity search and confiscate all personal items before throwing him in my dungeon.

I will not devise any scheme in which Part A consists of tricking the hero into unwittingly helping me and Part B consists of laughing at him then leaving him to his own devices.

I will not hold lavish banquets in the middle of a famine. The good PR among the guests doesn't make up for the bad PR among the masses.

I will funnel some of my ill-gotten gains into urban renewal projects. Although slums add a quaint and picturesque quality to any city, they too often contain unexpected allies for heroes.

I will never tell the hero "Yes I was the one who did it, but you'll never be able to prove it to that incompetent old fool." Chances are, that incompetant old fool is standing behind the curtain.

If my mad scientist/wizard tells me he has almost perfected my Superweapon but it still needs more testing, I will wait for him to complete the tests. No one ever conquered the world using a beta version.

I will not appoint a relative to my staff of advisors. Not only is nepotism the cause of most breakdowns in policy, but it also causes trouble with the EEOC.

If I appoint someone as my consort, I will not subsequently inform her that she is being replaced by a younger, more attractive woman.

If I am using the hero's girlfriend as a hostage and am holding her at the point of imminent death when confronting the hero, I will focus on her and not him. He won't try anything with his true love held hostage. On the other hand, the fact that she has been weak, slow-witted, naive and generally useless up to this point has no bearing on her actions at the moment of dramatic climax.

I will make several ludicrously erroneous maps to secret passages in my fortress and hire travellers to entrust them to aged hermits.

I will not use hostages as bait in a trap. Unless you're going to use them for negotiation or as human shields, there's no point in taking them.

I will hire an expert marksman to stand by the entrance to my fortress. His job will be to shoot anyone who rides up to challenge me.

I will explain to my Legions of Terror that guns are ranged weapons and swords are not. Anyone who attempts to throw a sword at the hero or club him with a gun will be summarily executed.

I will remember that any vulnerabilities I have are to be revealed strictly on a need-to-know basis. I will also remember that no one needs to know.

I will not make alliances with those more powerful than myself. Such a person would only double-cross me in my moment of glory. I will make alliances with those less powerful than myself. I will then double-cross them in their moment of glory.

During times of peace, my Legions of Terror will not be permitted to lie around drinking mead and eating roast boar. Instead they will be required to obey my dietician and my aerobics instructor. 

All giant serpents acting as guardians in underground lakes will be fitted with sports goggles to prevent eye injuries.

All crones with the ability to prophesy will be given free facelifts, permanents, manicures, and Donna Karan wardrobes. That should pretty well destroy their credibility.

I will not employ an evil wizard if he has a sleazy mustache.

I will hire an entire squad of blind guards. Not only is this in keeping with my status as an equal opportunity employer, but it will come in handy when the hero becomes invisible or douses my only light source.

All repair work will be done by an in-house maintenance staff. Any alleged "repairmen" who show up at the fortress will be escorted to the dungeon.

When my Legions of Terror park their vehicle to do reconnaissance on foot, they will be instructed to employ The Club.

Employees will have conjugal visit trailers which they may use provided they call in a replacement and sign out on the timesheet. Given this, anyone caught making out in a closet while leaving their station unmonitored will be shot.

Members of my Legion of Terror will attend seminars on Sensitivity Training. It's good public relations for them to be kind and courteous to the general population when not actively engaged in sowing chaos and destruction.

I will not, under any circumstances, marry a woman I know to be a faithless, conniving, back-stabbing witch simply because I am absolutely desperate to perpetuate my family line. Of course, we can still date.

All guest-quarters will be bugged and monitored so that I can keep track of what the visitors I have for some reason allowed to roam about my fortress are actually plotting.

If my chief engineer displeases me, he will be shot, not imprisoned in the dungeon or beyond the traps he helped design.

I will not send out battalions composed wholly of robots or skeletons against heroes who have qualms about killing living beings.

I will not wear long, heavy cloaks. While they certainly make a bold fashion statement, they have an annoying tendency to get caught in doors or tripped over during an escape.

If a malignant being demands a sacrificial victim have a particular quality, I will check to make sure said victim has this quality immediately before the sacrifice and not rely on earlier results. (Especially if the quality is virginity and the victim is the hero's girlfriend.)

If I ever MUST put a digital timer on my doomsday device, I will buy one free from quantum mechanical anomalies. So many brands on the market keep perfectly good time while you're looking at them, but whenever you turn away for a couple minutes then turn back, you find that the countdown has progressed by only a few seconds.

If my Legions of Terror are defeated in a battle, I will quietly withdraw and regroup instead of launching a haphazard mission to assassinate the hero.

If I'm wearing the key to the hero's shackles around my neck and his former girlfriend now volunteers to become my mistress and we are all alone in my bedchamber on my bed and she offers me a goblet of wine, I will politely decline the offer.

I will not pick up a glowing ancient artifact and shout "Its power is now mine!!!" Instead I will grab some tongs, transfer it to a hazardous materials container, and transport it back to my lab for study.

I will be selective in the hiring of assassins. Anyone who attempts to strike down the hero the first instant his back is turned will not even be considered for the job.

Whatever my one vulnerability is, I will fake a different one. For example, ordering all mirrors removed from the palace, screaming and flinching whenever someone accidentally holds up a mirror, etc. In the climax when the hero whips out a mirror and thrusts it at my face, my reaction will be "Hmm...I think I need a shave."

My force-field generators will be located inside the shield they generate.

I reserve the right to execute any henchmen who appear to be a little too intelligent, powerful, or devious. However if I do so, I will not at some subsequent point shout "Why am I surrounded by these incompetent fools?!"

I will install a fire extinguisher in every room -- three, if the room contains vital equipment or volatile chemicals.

I will build machines which simply fail when overloaded, rather than wipe out all nearby henchmen in an explosion or worse yet set off a chain reaction. I will do this by using devices known as "surge protectors".

I will explain to my guards that most people have their eyes in the front of their heads and thus while searching for someone it makes little sense to draw a weapon and slowly back down the hallway.

I will have a staff of competent detectives handy. If I learn that someone in a certain village is plotting against me, I will have them find out who rather than wipe out the entire village in a preemptive strike.

I will never bait a trap with genuine bait.

If the hero claims he wishes to confess in public or to me personally, I will remind him that a notarized deposition will serve just as well.

If I have several diabolical schemes to destroy the hero, I will set all of them in motion at once rather than wait for them to fail and launch them successively.

I will not procrastinate regarding any ritual granting immortality.

Mythical guardians will be instructed to ask visitors name, purpose of visit, and whether they have an appointment instead of ancient riddles.

[ivyplays]

Here is my Atelier collection. I loved it very much. But I’m no longer buying Atelier games. I’m very, very disappointed. The developers/publishers of my favorite series made a marketing decision that forces me to drop the series and probably put my collection somewhere under the sofa. Here is why.

Long text under “Keep Reading” (about niche games, about prices, about console industry and Steam).

This collection was my pride and joy until a week ago. I was collecting box versions of Atelier games since 2009. I became a fan of them when I played Mana Khemia on PS2, but back then I didn’t actually own any disks myself. When the series hit PS3, I became a valid paying customer for Gust. This developer never really lived up to my expectations, but I’ve always found something special about Atelier games - a unique charm. They’ve never looked up to date, and it’s really visible how low budget they are, but the 2D art is extremely pretty, the music is unbelievably good, and the alchemy system - the main reason why I like the series - is always superb with a remarcable twist in every new installment.

Every one of the games shown in the pictures were my presents. My boyfriend bought them to me for my birthdays, on valentines’ or other special occasions. It was a tradition. Every time when a new Atelier game came out and there was some special day for me to celebrate, I knew I would get it. I don’t like surprises. The feeling of knowing I will get a thing that I want excites me more. I’m also an adult of an age when I usually don’t expect presents at all - we skip buying presents for a lot of Holidays, because we don’t really need anything, and a sweater or a purse is not a present, it’s an everyday thing (we’re not rich at all, we’re just not focused on general shopping). So we ended up with a tradition. I get Atelier games, and we pay for them way more than they deserve, because it’s really hard to find niche boxed games in my country, even in the capital, so they are usually overpriced. Ordering a game by post is also troublesome and you can easily end up with nothing. So finding a new Atelier game was always a hard mission. It also made it special.

Now this tradition is over. My collection is complete. Maybe, just maybe, some time in the future I’ll find a box version of Mana Khemia for PS2 and add it to the collection, but that’s it. I’m not buying new Atelier games anymore. This is the largest sum of money we ever put into a game series, and that's it. I’d like to add that all those games we bought new, not long after release, with no discounts, usually overpriced. Two of them are Collector’s Editions (we couldn’t find the other games like this). When buying those, I always thought I was expressing my gratitude to the developer in the only way that’s possible for me - giving them money. I’ve never bothered to buy a lot of other good games, I usually wait till they are discounted, or even free on PS Plus. But the Atelier series was special for me. Not anymore. Now I’m very, very disappointed. I’m feeling down for a week now.

Here’s what happened:

It’s an Atelier Sophie game on Steam. It’s available already. And it costs about 9 dollars in my country. Not even full 9, just 8 and a half. I payed 60 bucks more for a PS4 version, and it happened only 4 months ago. I haven’t even finished this game yet. The game itself was released about half a year ago, so I wouldn’t be finished with it even if I bought the game a little earlier – for I play them slow. I was ultimately cheated. I don’t think I can find enough words to describe how I actually feel.

What I’m sure of is that I’m not buying console Atelier games anymore. PS4 architecture is a PC architecture basically, so it’s easy to port games. It’s a known fact, yet you don’t expect a niche console exclusive with a 20-year history to suddenly go multiplatform. This release renders my Atelier collection worthless. This release renders my feeling towards the series worthless, too. My dedication meant nothing. I’m not getting my next present, and it feels so sad. I look at the Atelier Sophie PS4 box and I feel scammed.

The next game in the series - Atelier Firis - will be multiplatform on initial release. It will happen this year.  I will not buy it then. I want to stress, that I would definitely pay the full price if it was still a console exclusive, it’s not questionable. The Steam version will cost very little in my county - about $10 or so. It’s always like this, here, even for the new games if they are niche. I’m still not buying. I’ll wait for Steam sales next year, when it’s $3 or so, then maybe - just maybe - I’ll buy it. So here’s what Gust getting from me instead of a full price, wich I would’ve payed if they hadn’t gone multiplatform. And, like most games on Steam, I don't think I'll even play it. I spent months on other Atelier games, playing with purpose and a goal, but this game will probably just sit there, abandoned, never explored. I actually think it's a most tragic fate for any game – being cheep and never played by people.

I’m not the only person who is devastated by this. The series have a solid fan base. People do not randomly buy new Atelier games from the shelves. There’s a chance that a random person had bought Rorona (because there were not a lot games like this on PS3) or Escha&Logy (because this good game received much media praise), but that’s it. All the other games were bought by fans who didn’t want a discount and would continue buying every Atelier game no matter how bad it was (Shallie was bad, it still got sales). They don’t look for reviews, a new Atelier game is just a must-have. I mean, it was a must-have, but not anymore. It was collector’s stuff, now it’s something that will rot in Steam back shelves.

While I’m at it, I want to congratulate Valve on steadily winning the console war. But they couldn’t do it without the help of greedy corporations who lost the sense of the market, and clueless game developers who forgot who their audience is.

I already made a similar post about Zero Time Dilemma in my blog dedicated to Zero Escape series. Back then the sure console exclusive went multiplatform on its third and final installment at initial release. I was planning no buy the PS Vita version at the very start (because it was a conclusion of a story with a lot of plot twists and I had to know everything before I stumbled upon unforgivable spoilers). But a month before release I realized that the game 1) wouldn't be available in a box in my region for a long time after release, so I would have to buy a digital version; and 2) would also be on Steam, and very cheap in my country. I didn't want to play the hendheld oriented game on PC. I didn't need the price cut for a box. But it's just stupid to buy something digital at a regular price when you can get it 5-10 times cheaper, also digital. So I made a decision.

But that time it was at least fair: I was informed from the start that the game went multiplatform and that it can be bought cheap. I was disappointed (I still am), but I didn't feel scammed. Now this time I feel cheated - they took my money, and then made a huge price cut shortly after.

I had several strange answers to my previous post, and I had to block people who didn’t get the point and told me I was making a problem out of nothing. Well, it’s not nothing. It’s a pattern:

1) Developers decide (or publisher insist) on going multiplatform. As a result they lose profits and their dedicated fan base leaves them. => 2) Big games leave handhelds for the tabletop. As a result the handhelds have small games (or overpriced big ones, compared to PC) and have to compete against the mobile branch - the challenge they can't win. => 3) Players have to chose a PC instead of console or even instead of handheld. Who wouldn't chose a crazy price cut? As a result they have to play games uncomfortably sitting instead of lying down or taking it to transport, or reorganize their rooms to fit the new gaming reality. It's bothersome and can't fully grab the player's attention. => 4) Games lose value, they are bought on sales and never played. The old game fan base turns inactive, the new fan base is never created (you can't create a fan base if they don't play your cheap games). As a result there is no community for the games, no fan base, no fandoms. => 5) The industry changes. It's hard to attach the sense of value to a game. Low budget niche games tend to fall into the same category as indie and retro, even the ones that have a long history behind them. As a result the series get closed, the developers turn to something of the same budget level - the mobile.

So in the end it's just PC + Mobile. I'm not overreacting. Some can tell me that the book industry suffered huge changes several years ago. Few fiction books are printed in good quality, they cost a lot, and everybody just reads digital copies. Everything changes. But the game industry is not quite the same. A book author doesn't stop writing just because the format changed. The content of their books is still the same, they don't have to change their writing to adjust to the new platform. But the games change. A game takes a lot of effort and a team of several people to make. Game series often get closed even if all of their authors love them and want to make them. Publishers decide to close games if they are not profitable enough. Sometimes they have a rather unique view on what is profitable and what isn't. The game series can make stable profits - twice or more the development cost, but the publisher would look at most successful big PC games (AAA ones) and mobile games (often gacha-based) and think, “Why aren't we making this? It's clearly more profitable that way. Oh wait, we don't have enough money for a AAA game and its marketing, so we have only one choice.” So an old console series seizes to exist, and we have another mobile casino instead of it.

I don't like this kind of future. Everybody loses.

[pixyrevenge]

Internet Throwback #1

One of my favorite things from the early days of the internet is the evil overlord list, and honestly it still really holds up. It’s a simple page made in 1996 and expanded in 1997. 

First 100 under the cut

The Top 100 Things I'd Do

If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

[63824peace]

Monday, 24th of october 2005

There's a great place at the train station entrance if you're in the mood to enjoy a bevy of free samples. I call this place the Solicitors' Junction.

Solicitors once distributed tissue packets as well as flyers that contained free samples. I've recently seen more free info magazines like R25 and Hot Pepper. The free info mags have replaced the tissue and flyers.

The solicitors started working the crowd in the morning and have been at it since.

I pass through Solicitor's Junction on my way to work. The part-time solicitors lurk in the gateway whenever the weather is nice. I can't avoid confronting them then. My only options are either to ignore them or to accept their handouts.

I never take the magazines or flyers. The flyers with samples are marketed toward women anyway, so I'm never offered any.

I can never resist a proffered packet of tissues though. I take it instinctively whenever anyone holds it in front of me. Kansai folk characteristically have this reflex. Kansai children are taught at an early age to take offered pocket tissues.

I wonder when someone first used pocket tissues as an advertising medium. It's a remarkable idea. Whoever thought of it must have been a genius. Now we recognize pocket tissue advertisements as part of contemporary Japanese culture.

I have learned at least one thing since I began living in Tokyo: city residents will not accept anything distributed on the streets, especially pocket tissues. Do they regard the act of accepting a gift in front of other people as undignified?

A particular episode of the anime series Crayon Shin-chan aired on television quite some time ago. In the episode Misae tried to obtain a packet of tissues from a solicitor, but she couldn't resolve herself to accept it. Then she tried buying a packet from the pharmacy. She came back around to the idea that pocket tissue isn't worth wasting money to buy. She returned to obtain a packet from the streets . . . and again Misae still couldn't get what she wanted!

The story illustrates the regional characteristics of Tokyo residents (as well as people from the outlying areas) by exaggerating them in an amusing way. I understand what the story pokes fun at once I think about it a little. It would never happen that way in Kansai though. Kansai folks extend their hands to take pocket tissues even if the tissues aren't offered to them directly. Anyone who passes by a curbside solicitor doesn't need to be pursued ; the pedestrian goes out of his way to turn around and get one!

There's no logic or rationale involved here. Folks from Kansai take anything offered to them by others. They take life as it comes to them, 100%. That's just the regional character.

I was raised in Kansai, so I take pocket tissues whenever they are offered. My jacket pockets are always brimming with tissues.

I have heard that people take a free sample if they think it's worth taking. I've also heard that some men will take a proffered sample depending on the prettiness of the woman solicitor. That may be so, but the majority of citizens in Big Tokyo refuse to take any curbside samples.

Murashu has an explanation for this phenomenon as a Tokyo native. He says, "I think that Tokyo residents regard themselves as undignified when they take a curbside handout, because they feel as though it were an admission of defeat. They want to avoid looking like some kind of hick or bumpkin who isn't acclimated to the big city."

What the--?! I suspected that Murashu was a big city snob. "How can we trust each other enough to make a video game when we can't even feel comfortable enough to accept public gifts ; even those as simple as pocket tissues ; in front of others?!"

I relish the moment when a stranger offers me pocket tissues. The fact that something so public and intimate occurs on a daily basis proves to me that Tokyo citizens still feel some measure of safety among each other.

I keep a certain pace when I walk. A person really has to adjust himself to my rhythm if he wants to offer me pocket tissues. Sometimes I can't take a sample because the timing is off between my pace and the solicitor's offer. I simply walk without stopping whenever bad timing like this occurs.

I know then that I will never see that specific person again. There's even a good chance that I'll never accidentally pass by him without knowing he's there. I will never receive an offered tissue packet from him. I feel disconnected and lonely when this happens.

That's not always the case though. Sometimes the part-time solicitors hand out two or three at a time because they want to finish their shifts quickly. I never want that many samples; I don't even want to involve myself with them to that degree. I refuse to interact with them whenever they try this.

A delicate relationship exists between givers and takers that require sensitive social perception. I think it's really beautiful that such a complex relationship exists whenever solicitors distribute packages of pocket tissues.

I ate Buta-kakuni-ramen with a small bowl of rice for lunch at the restaurant Soryu Togyokun Do.

I bought Ayoko Okubo's manga Kiteki Voyage at the bookstore because I liked its cover. I remembered Ms. Okubo's name because she received laudatory jacket quotes such as: "A genius newcomer who graduated from Tokyo Art University at the top of her class." I've never actually read her work though, so I'm looking forward to it.

I saw the film Three Years Delivery at the Tokyo International Film Festival this afternoon. I also saw Mr. Kusakabe (the film's producer) for the first time in six months.

The title had led me to believe that Three Years Delivery would be a horror movie reminiscent of Natsuhiko Kyogoku's works, but it turned out to be a different genre altogether. It was a refreshingly cosmopolitan movie rife with tears and laughter.

How could I summarize it . . . a pregnancy simulation? Role-playing a pregnant woman? Virtual reality through which we experience a woman's mettle?

It's basically a movie in which the audience experiences a woman's pregnancy, marriage, maternity, and the visceral power of women's second X-chromosome through endurance of pregnancy, delivery, and childbirth.

The film's women are all tough and strong-willed. They reminded me of Asura-no-gotoku. The idea that men are weak and inconsequential pervades the film. Only a female director could effectively evince this point in a movie.

The movie doesn't incorporate any flashy effects or breath-taking stunts. It's a slice-of-life film. Three Years Delivery feels unusual at first, but then it becomes natural by its repetition of daily life. It's a curious film to say the least.

Three Years Delivery features many scenes at the family table with a variety of colored foods. I finally saw a film with plenty of dinner table scenes. Most recent movies skimp on the dining scenes even though eating is an important aspect of a story.

The movie wants to tell its audience to live daily life as fully as they can. Naturally the director chose to emphasize those dining scenes.

Tomoko Nakujima performed wonderfully as the heroine. She wrapped an aura of life around herself and transformed into a presence greater than one of mere sexuality. She identified herself somewhere between Mother and Woman. She was beautiful. I am confident that she will prove herself a top-notch actress in her future career.

The press package also had an original design. The film's English title is Three Years Delivery, and the press set (including the press sheet) came in a bag labeled "Happy Delivery!" The bag's name referred to both the film's subject and the materials used to construct the bag. They designed the bag using packing materials usually reserved for fragile objects. I also heard that the material is eco-friendly since it won't emit noxious pollutants when it burns. The press package's name is a fun little play on words.

There's Enterprise Inc. always makes elaborate and interesting press materials and pamphlets. I'm going to show this to Ichiro Kutome, the king of artistic decorations.

I wrote an article today for the new Kadokawa magazine NewWORDS which will be published on November 25. I haven't worked on game creation all day. I didn't even check in at the office . . . what a day.

In the evening I went with Murashu to the symposium given by the Digital T.I.F.F. subdivision of the Tokyo International Film Festival. They'll show the MGS4 trailer during the symposium. This will probably be the MGS4 trailer's final theatrical appearance.

The B Program started at 7 P.M. It opened with three 4k-sized digital clips from The Sound of Music, Spiderman 2, and Mystic India. Then SCE's Playstation3 presentation began. They showed images from Gran Turismo, Killzone, F1 Racing, The Gateway, and Motor Storm. Lastly they showed the evening's most anticipated feature: the two-minute version of the MGS4 trailer!

The trailer finally played at the Virgin Cinemas after having been shown to the audience at the Shinjuku Milano theater. I was deeply moved. I wanted to show it to everyone.

Afterwards they played a long film rendered by 4k technology as an example of the cutting edge effects. I considered returning to my office, but I deliberated too long and lost my chance. The next movie began while I hesitated; I couldn't leave my seat.

I resigned myself to staying. I didn't have much choice in the matter. I hoped that the movie would be one that I wanted to see.

Murashu also forgot about our work and accepted his place as a member of the audience.

"What is this?" I asked eagerly.

I learned that the 4k sneak preview movie was Stealth.

"What!? I just saw this on Friday!" I thought. I looked at Murashu with a defeated expression. His expression showed keen interest to see the film.

My memory rewound to the moments before the symposium opened. Murashu and I waited in line at the entrance. The line hardly moved an inch.

"Quite a lot of people here."

"Indeed."

I dislike waiting in line. I started talking with Murashu to distract myself from the tedium. He had become interested in Stealth because he had read about it in my blog.

"I won't spoil any of it if you're going to see it," I said. "But if you're not going to see it then I'll tell you the plot."

"I doubt that I'll have time to see it," he said. "So go ahead."

I told him the movie's plot while we stood in line. I recounted the narrative until the symposium opened. I even gave a detailed description of the ending.

And they had to choose Stealth out of all the movies in the world to demonstrate 4k digital technology.

I would have been rude to leave Murashu alone, so I sat through it again. Luckily they showed the dubbed version. They still didn't play Hyde's song during the credits though.

I returned to my office after the movie. I only took care of mail and then went home.

I haven't done much of anything today.

I didn't have a chance to eat dinner. My gut hurts.

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: DeBrusk’s Future, Sekera’s Injury, Ellis in 2018-19, and More – August 16

  We are seven weeks away from the beginning of the season and that time will pass quickly. Before we know it, parts of the fantasy hockey community will be scrambling to prepare for drafts.

Don’t be one of those people scrambling for drafts by grabbing your copy of the 2018-19 Dobber Hockey fantasy guide! It has projections, articles, and a whole lot more. Head to the Dobber Shop and procure yours now.

*

In my Ramblings a couple days ago, I implored readers to keep Jake DeBrusk high on the draft lists, drafting him as often as possible. I went back through the archives and thought I had written on DeBrusk’s 2017-18 season but apparently that is not the case. Let’s rectify that.

I don’t want to keep looking back on last year but it gives us good insight into 2018-19.

At first blush, DeBrusk’s time in the AHL wasn’t overly impressive. While 49 points in 74 games in his age-20 season is nothing to dismiss out of hand, it was nowhere near the best in the league. The thing is, that Providence Bruins team wasn’t a high-scoring one, or at least they spread the scoring around; DeBrusk finished second on the team in points while Jordan Szwarz led with 54. Not bad.

Fast forward to 2017-18 and DeBrusk had 43 points in 70 games in the NHL. How did he get there?

The first thing that stuck out to me early in the season was DeBrusk’s ability to get to the net. I even wrote about that after their first game! While getting to the net isn’t in and of itself a guarantee of production, we’ve seen how it can help players like Patric Hornqvist and Brendan Gallagher have very successful seasons.

To better visualize DeBrusk’s shot locations, here is his 2017-18 shot density compared to Gallagher’s, with the viz pulled from Hockeyviz.com:

      Beyond shot location is shot rate. DeBrusk launched 14.45 shot attempts per 60 minutes at five-on-five last year. That was slightly below David Pastrnak and slightly above Brad Marchand. League-wide, that rate compares to Artemi Panarin (14.57) and Sebastian Aho (14.44). Those are all very impressive names to be around.

If you want to compare shot rates to players close to his age, the only players with higher shot rates last year who were also in their age-21 season or younger were Kevin Fiala (17.92), Alex DeBrincat (16.47), Sam Bennett (16.02), Brock Boeser (15.22), Pastrnak, Jack Eichel (14.71), and Mitch Marner (14.56). Depending on your view of Bennett, those are all exceptional young talents with whom DeBrusk finds himself in company.

DeBrusk was eighth in 5v5 TOI per game last year, eighth among Bruins forwards. He was below David Krejci, David Backes, Riley Nash, and Danton Heinen, on top of the Big Three. That third line, which was so good last year, won’t look the same this year. With natural progression, we could see about another minute added to DeBrusk’s TOI totals, which should add a few points alone.

Finally, there’s the question of the power play. That was brought up in my Ramblings yesterday and the immediate threat is Ryan Donato. It was Donato given top PP minutes when he was called up whereas DeBrusk almost exclusively stayed on the second PP unit. It is a fair concern, but my thinking is that DeBrusk is more of a net-front player (as evidenced by his shot locations) than Donato, and that’s the role they need to fill with the departure of Rick Nash. I will fully admit that it may be Donato, in which case DeBrusk’s upside takes a big ding, but this is a case where I think one player fits the role better than the other.

I won't dig into all the other stats like expected goals and on-ice shooting percentage but they will be factored into my projections. 

There are a large range of outcomes for DeBrusk depending on his PP usage. He has 60-point upside if he can get those top minutes. If not, he could slide into the 45-50 range. More than anything, the point is I believe he’ll return a profit on his ADP, especially if he keeps improving those hit totals (he averaged one per game last year playing under 15 minutes a night). I’ve mentioned before my projections won’t be ready for a few weeks yet, but I can say with certainty that DeBrusk will be one of my most-drafted players this year.

Feel free to disagree in the comments.

*

The Ducks signed winger Ondrej Kase to a three-year deal carrying at $2.6-million AAV. 

I wrote about Kase back in early July and the same thoughts hold up. I will be writing about him more over the coming month or so. 

*

While I’m thinking of it, it’ll be interesting to see the ADPs of both Donato and DeBrusk. Donato was only around in limited minutes and it’s easy to overlook DeBrusk on a team with names like Bergeron, Marchand, Pastrnak, McAvoy, and Krug. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait much longer to see where some ADPs fall:

.@YahooSports confirms @YahooSportsNHL team and league registration will open August 16, 2018 and run until March 10, 2019.

First day for live draft – August 20, 2018

Last day for live draft – March 3, 2019 #FantasyHockey #NHL pic.twitter.com/nEX71D7YaV

— Fantasy Hockey Geek (@FantasyHockeyGk) August 15, 2018

Hurray!

*

Andrej Sekera has undergone surgery to repair a torn Achilles. While some initial speculation puts the timeframe at around six months, I will say I’ll be stunned if he’s back anytime around the All-Star Game. If he can make it back at any point in the 2018-19 season, that should be seen as a win.

No, I’m not a doctor.

Ian covered the injury from his perspective in his Ramblings yesterday.

On top of Ethan Bear and Evan Bouchard, I want to just say this: it was better for an injury for the Oilers to come from the left side than the right. They still have Oscar Klefbom and Darnell Nurse (once he’s signed), and they can run (or will have to run) Kris Russell on the third pair. It’s the right side where they’re shallow so at least it’s from a position of relative strength.

What this injury does is a few things. It locks Klefbom into the top pair role, it locks Nurse into the second pair, and it eliminates competition for the top PP unit. Remember that a couple years ago, Sekera had taken some top PP minutes from Klefbom. There is still Nurse lurking around, but it’s one fewer guy for Klefbom owners to worry about. Whether those top PP minutes bring substantial production is uncertain given how they performed last year, but at the least, the minutes will be there.

It’s very unfortunate for this injury to hit, though. Even if they’re strong on the left side, the Oilers can ill afford to lose any impact defenceman and he’s just a fun defenceman to watch anyway. Let’s hope he can return faster than I think he can.

*

For those wanting to read more on Bouchard, visit his Dobber Prospects profile here. One thing working in his favour is they desperately need right-shooting defencemen; right now, it’s Adam Larsson and Matt Benning. If they don’t sign anyone else, it’s plausible he makes the roster. Though I assume they’ll give him at least another year before making the roster full time. We’ll see.

*

Ryan Ellis signed a new contract and this is probably one of those situations where he’s going to be a much better real-world asset than fantasy asset.

A lot of people will be excited with his 32 points in 44 games. That’s all well and good. There are red flags, though.

First is the injuries. He’s played 332 games since the 2012-13 lockout year out of a possible 410. That’s an average of 66.4 games played per 82. Now, that’s an average dragged down by two significant injuries because he’s played at least 70 games in three of the last five years. But he’s also missed at least 10 games in three of the last five years. That’s always something with which to be concerned.

There’s also the assist rate. He had 23 assists last year (remember, in 44 games), and that was a career high. His secondary assist rate at five-on-five was 0.7 per 60 minutes, a career-high. He had never cracked the 0.5 mark before, and his previous three seasons were 0.19, 0.32, and 0.4. If he had that secondary assist rate last year, it would have more than tripled his total of secondary assists at five-on-five. We know that second assists are usually random and expecting him to replicate anything close to the rate he had in 2017-18 is misguided.  

His shot rate did jump which is a big reason to think he’ll have a solid goal-scoring floor. The problem is that it’s just a 44-game sample. He had a shot attempt/60 minutes rate at five-on-five of 12.3 last year. He had never cracked double-digits before, so it was a significant deviation from his norm. Shot rates across the league increased, but if I recall correctly, it was around 4-5% on average. Ellis’s rate jumped over 24 percent. It could be a new norm, or it could be a blip due to a half-season sample.  

Remember that Ellis has never broken the 40-point mark. If he played a full 82-game season, maybe he can get there. But he’s also third on the depth chart for PP minutes and won’t come close to that top PP unit as long as both Roman Josi and PK Subban are in the lineup. I think extrapolating Ellis’s 2017-18 year to 2018-19 will lead a lot of people astray. I’ll be drafting him with the expectation of 40 points, not 50 or more. That likely means he won’t be on any of my teams this year.  

I’m aware this is a significant deviation from what Dobber has in the guide. There will be many instances where he and I do not agree (DeBrusk’s PP role was another). That’s fine! Good-faith debate among reasonable people is important to learning in fantasy, or just in life in general. If we all agreed all the time, it would render fantasy sports rather boring.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-debrusks-future-sekeras-injury-ellis-in-2018-19-and-more-august-16/

[corvus-no-genmu]

The Top 100 Things I'd Do

If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

[fadingfartconnoisseur]

Top 5 Most Important Investments For a Growing Blog

If you’ve started your blog using our step-by-step guide and received our eBook, then you’ll already know how important investing money back into a growing online business can be. If you’re considering starting a blog, or you’ve already started one yourself, then this post will still be extremely helpful for you.

When we first started this travel blog back in 2012, we were overwhelmed by everything we had to do in order to just get it off the ground. There are so many things to think about and before your blog starts making any money, you have to do all of the jobs yourself – marketing the blog, designing the blog, growing your social media, etc.

It can definitely be a full-time job.

But as your blog starts to grow and you see the opportunity to monetize it and earn some money, you need to start thinking about what investments you should make to help it grow larger, faster and more profitable. There are loads of things you can spend money on, and some new entrepreneurs waste thousands of dollars by investing in the wrong things at the wrong time.

There’s no point in paying money for advertising if you don’t have anything to convert visitors to sales on your website. There’s no point in paying someone to edit your videos for you if you rarely post on YouTube and have no subscribers.

It’s important that you make smart investments at the right times in order to grow your business as quickly and efficiently as possible. In this article, I’m going to list, in order, the top 5 most important FIRST investments that every blog should make.

1. Design

In my opinion (and the opinion of many other bloggers and online experts), website design is the second most important factor (next to excellent content of course) in keeping new visitors on your site and influencing them to return time and time again.

However, new bloggers, and those already making a few thousand dollars per month from their sites are always hesitant to invest one, two, three or five thousand dollars on a website design (don’t worry, I’m going to cover some cheaper options in this section as well). A custom design is a huge investment, but believe me, it’s one that pays its dividends over time.

Internet readers have an extremely short attention span. Even the most interesting websites usually only keep readers on their pages for 3 – 4 minutes.

Before we had Scott Eldridge of Eldo Web Design create a fully bespoke Goats On The Road theme for us, we were averaging just one minute visit time on each page. Now we’re nearly double that, thanks to an aesthetically pleasing design and smart button and link placements that help our click-through rates.

Our Blog After Our First Redesign (Not Bespoke)

When people stay on your website longer, they’re more likely to share your content, click your affiliate links, sign up for your newsletter and buy your products. If you decide to run Google Adsense on your blog, then longer visits also mean more ad revenue.

You need to catch people’s eye in the first few minutes of being on your site. Your pages have to load extremely fast and you need to give them plenty (but not too many) opportunities to click to other related pages on your site and convert by sharing, signing up for your newsletter, purchasing etc.

Whatever investment you make towards your website design, you need to make sure that it’s 100% mobile responsive. Google has already announced that it will stop ranking sites that aren’t mobile friendly, so you need to make sure that your site looks just as good on a 52 inch screen as it does on a 5.2 inch screen. It needs to be mobile optimized and have a full mobile version, or Google will stop displaying it in search results.

Here are a few routes you can take when investing into your blog design, starting from the most expensive and moving towards the cheaper end of the spectrum:

Fully Bespoke Theme

A fully bespoke design is one that is created by a professional developer that doesn’t use a standard WordPress theme as the framework. Most blog designs you see online today are just basic themes, a few of those have been redesigned by developers and even fewer have been created from scratch (like Goats On The Road is).

A split-screen of the before and after of our site

A bespoke theme will load faster, work better, be completely unique and thus, more memorable to new visitors. It will ditch all the add ons and extras that come with bulky themes and give you exactly what your site needs to run quickly and smoothly.

A bespoke theme will probably cost you anywhere from $2,500 – $10,000, so it’s not an investment that a growing blog is likely to make (but it’s one you should consider down the road). But there are some cheaper options as well.

Premium WordPress Theme

A cheaper route to take is to purchase a Premium WordPress Theme. Many people immediately go to Divy, or other drag-and-drop themes so that they can design their blog easily to look exactly how they want it. BE CAREFUL with these types of themes. They are extremely heavy, meaning they’re slow to load, and they create some messy coding.

Consider purchasing a nice theme that looks good right away. One that you’ll only have to make minor styling changes to and one that’s compatible with a lot of plug-ins. This post covers quite a few excellent premium WordPress themes to help you choose.

Premium Plugins

If you’re not willing or ready to invest $2,500 in a bespoke design, or $50 – $100 in a custom theme, then you can add to your free WordPress theme by installing plugins.

There are quite a few excellent free plugins for travel bloggers (I’ll write a post about those soon), but there are also a few that you can purchase that can help your site. These are definitely the cheapest way to design and optimize your site if you’re already using a free WordPress theme.

Interactive Maps Plugin: This is the plugin that we use to display clickable maps on our site like you see on our Videos Page and our Destinations Page. These maps are a great way to show readers all the places that you’ve created content about. We purchased this from Code Canyon for $21.

Social Fans Counter: That funky little plugin that displays all of our social media accounts at the bottom of every page, along with their follower numbers and a running total. This one was also purchased on Code Canyon for $17.

InstaShow Instagram Plugin: At the bottom of our site you’ll see a line of photos taken directly from our Instagram feed and when you hover over them, you can like and comment. This plugin is great if you’re trying to grow your Instagram and it costs $19 on Code Canyon.

MailChimp / Convert Kit: As soon as you start growing your blog, you should start growing an email list. You should have a place for people to enter their name and email on every page of your website. Even if you’re only sending them a newsletter ones every three months, you should be collecting these emails because these will be your best customers down the road.

For beginners, MailChimp is a great option and it comes with a compatible WordPress Plugin. It’s free until you have 1,000 subscribers and then goes up in price incrementally after that. Convert Kit is a bit more expensive (depending on how many subscribers you have), but it’s said to be a bit more feature rich and helps conversions.

2. Upgrades

Growing a blog and online business quickly and efficiently is all about productivity. You need to be as effective as possible, every time you sit down at your laptop. You also need your website to load as fast as possible so that you don’t lose new readers, which is why it’s important to upgrade your servers and hosting plan when needed.

It’s important to purchase the best equipment, internet package and server hardware that you can afford. For the former, it’s vital that you ensure that your electronics aren’t getting in the way of your travels and lifestyle.

Electronic Upgrades

Of course, the best computer you can have is some kind of massive tower with a 42 inch screen, 128 GB of RAM and a 3 TB SSD hard drive, but you’re not going to be travelling and living around the world with a desktop computer are you? Similarly, the best camera may be a massive DSLR and the best drone might be the Inspire 2, but these may not be practical for a digital nomad lifestyle.

For us, the optimal vlogging camera is the Canon G7x Mark II, the optimal drone is the DJI Spark and the best photography camera for size is likely a mirrorless like the Fujifilm X-T2.

A perfect balance between quality and convenience is what you should strive for when choosing the best hardware. If you’re doing a lot of video or photo editing on your computer, then you should have a Macbook Pro with 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD hard drive. If your Mac is an older version, you can upgrade this for less than $250.

If you’re spending a lot of time in Adobe Premier Pro, Final Cut, After Effects, Photoshop or Lightroom, then you know just how annoying those loading icons can be. For every second your workflow is halted to render, load, transcode or analyze, you’re wasting time that could be spent growing your business and making money.

It may only take your older computer a few minutes to render a clip or analyze a photo each time, but those minutes quickly add up. Trust me, if you upgrade your computer to double the RAM and hard drive speed, you’ll save hundreds of hours per year on editing. Those hours can be put towards writing an eBook, creating new affiliate posts or growing your social media.

I’ve already written Essential Time Saving Electronic Upgrades that all Digital Nomads Should Consider so if you haven’t read it yet, check it out.

Internet Upgrade

If you’re a digital nomad who’s constantly travelling, then this won’t really pertain to you, but if you’re renting an apartment long-term, then you should definitely consider asking the owner to upgrade the internet for you.

Our Fibre Optic Internet Speed in Koh Samui

Most AirBnBs and apartment rentals around the world have the cheapest, slowest internet possible. Talk to the owner and tell them you’ll pay for any upgrade costs. Usually it will only run you about $10 – $50 extra dollars per month for the faster internet, but it could save you a lot of time in the long run.

Server & Hosting Upgrades

While you’re considering upgrading your tangible hardware (like cameras, computers and microphones), you should also consider upgrading your website’s hardware through your host. Speed is not only important for efficiency of your work, but it’s also vital for the health of your website, both for your readers and for search engines.

Click Here to test the speed of your website. If your home page and other popular pages take more than 4 seconds to load, then you should consider upgrading your servers.

Google has already stated that it’s taking website load speed into consideration when ranking websites in search results, so you need to make sure that your site loads as fast as possible. You can check with your host and see what upgrades you can make to the websites RAM, caching networks, CPU and hosting servers.

You can also upgrade your hosting package to a private, cloud, or dedicated server for a bit extra per month.

Ask your host to have a look at your site and recommend the upgrades that will have the largest impact on your site loading speed for the least amount of money.

3. Hire VAs (Virtual Assistants)

This one is huge. As soon as your site starts making money and you feel overwhelmed by the tasks of social media, writing posts, editing posts, design, marketing and emails, you should hire a Virtual Assistant to help you.

Most bloggers put this off for a long time because they tell themselves “I only spend 15 minutes per day quickly doing this task, I can just do it myself”. This is the wrong way to think. If it’s a task that can be done by someone else, then you should delegate it to a VA.

To maximize your growth, you need to spend time doing tasks that only you can do, like writing blog posts, shooting videos, and communicating with advertisers, press partners and tourism boards.

For all of your mundane tasks on social media and on your blog, you should have one VA. Not only will it free up your time to spend on more important items, but your VA will quickly become better at the tasks than you ever were. This will be their only job with you. They will hone their skills and within a month or two, they will be able to complete the tasks faster and better than you ever could.

 Bonus Tip: Have your VA complete our 6 Day Social Media Success Schedule and our 6 Day Blog Success Schedule each week.

The same goes for any other repetitive tasks that you find yourself doing on your site. The minute you have money, you should consider hiring a VA.

You can usually find VAs on websites like UpWork, Guru and Fiverr, but another great way is to post in a travel blogging Facebook group that you’re looking for a VA. More often than not, there will be a VA in the group, or a blogger who has a VA who is looking for more work. This is a great way to find new assistants because you can hire them on the recommendations of other bloggers in the industry.

4. Advertising

Your awesome content can only get you so far. Eventually you will have to start investing in advertising to ensure that your photos, shares, videos and articles reach a broader audience. In many businesses, advertising will be your first investment. Before most companies are even profitable, they’ll have a monthly ad spend. But I believe that online businesses (like blogs) are different.

It is my belief that you should at least be making enough money from your website to be sustainable, before you start spending a lot of money on ads. Sure when you’re starting out, you can run a Facebook ad to get likes on your page or try to create a profit positive AdWords campaign, but in general, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on advertising until you are making a decent income (think: $1,500 / month or more).

This is because there are so many things a blogger can do to market themselves without spending a dime. You can pitch yourself to big media sites like BBC Travel, Business Insider, NatGeo Traveller and Lonely Planet. You can write dozens of guest posts for big travel blogs in your niche. You can comment on different sites and build back links to help your organic SEO.

There is a lot to think about when growing a blog and you can start by exhausting all of your free options, before moving into paid advertising.

But when you start making a solid, reliable income from your blog, then you can start to invest in advertising. There are countless ways to advertise your site, but I’m going to list some of the most popular and effective ones here in this section:

Facebook Ads

The Facebook Ads Manager section is extremely confusing, overwhelming and frustrating. Don’t get discouraged! If you’re stuck, click the support tab and go on a live chat (or email) to get some help. Don’t waste your time messing around.

When you’re first starting out, there are only really 2 types of ads that are worth trying. Page Likes and Website Traffic to important pages. To get you started, I’ll help you with the basics.

IMPORTANT: Each of the types of Facebook ads follows the same step-by-step process. Choose the type of ad you want, where they’re displayed, the Audience they’ll reach and finally, the budget you’re willing to spend. The audience targeting is the most important section.

Make sure you choose countries that are likely to react, engage and continue liking and sharing your content down the road. Sure you can get 10,000 likes from Pakistan for very cheap (likes from Pakistan are inexpensive on Facebook), but unless your blog is Pakistan focused or you already have a large Pakistani following, this audience could be useless to you as an English travel blogger who has never visited Pakistan.

Focus on countries with residents who are likely to travel to the places you write about, who speak English and who are already inline with your current audience (which you can find under demographics in Google Analytics).

You should make your target audience even more specific by choosing their interests. If your blog is all about budget travel, then be sure to add that into the “interests” section of the audience targeting page. To add interests, simply type them in the box and then click the relevant options that appear.

Likes On Your Page: When you create a new ad in Ads Manager, you’ll have a bunch of options. One of these options is “Engagement”. If you click that icon, you can then choose the “Page Likes” option. If you can afford $30 / month, then set the budget to $1 / day and run it for a month. Make sure you choose an audience that will not only “like” your Facebook page, but continuously engage with your posts down the road. Choose English-speaking countries and add in interests that coincide with your target audience.

Traffic To Your Website: This is great if you have a page that converts well for affiliate or product sales. There’s really no point in sending a ton of visitors to your home page, unless your confident that you have a high conversion rate (ie: newsletter subscribers or webinar sign-ups) on your home page.

A great way to utilize Facebook Ads is to create an ad that sends people to a high converting site on your page, or remarketing visitors who have already spent some time on that page, but didn’t convert.

To create an Ad that simply sends people to your high-converting page, all you have to do is click the “Traffic” option in Ads manager and go about the normal steps of choosing a well-defined audience and an affordable budget.

Make sure you choose interests that pertain to the post you’re sending them to. For example, if you’re sending people to a page where they can purchase your eBook about the Top 50 Cheap Countries in the World, then you should make sure you’re targeting people who have an interest in budget travel and frugal living.

If you’re trying to remarket readers who have visited your important pages, but didn’t convert, you can easily do this with Facebook Ads. If someone visited your Top 50 Cheap Countries in the World eBook page, but didn’t end up buying it, you can remind them with a nice little ad in their Facebook feed.

To do this, you have to first add a Facebook Tracking Pixel to all of the pages on your website. After you do that, you can choose a custom audience in the audience section of Ad Manager. Then you can choose “People Who Have Visited Your Website” or even “People Who Have Visited Specific Pages On Your Website”.

If you choose specific pages, you simply enter the URLs of the pages that you want to target and voila. If someone visited those pages in the past 1 – 90 days (you decide the cookie duration in Facebook Ads Manager), then they’ll see your ad appear in their feed or on the side bar on Facebook.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that after you visit certain websites or certain product pages on Amazon, you see ads for those products all over your Facebook feed? Well now you know the secret.

Instagram Ads

Since Instagram was acquired by Facebook on April 9th of 2012, all Instagram ads are run through the Facebook Ads Manager. So I don’t need to go into much detail, because they follow the same formula as what I’ve described above. All you have to do is choose “Instagram” in the placements section of Facebook Ads manager.

Keep in mind that Instagram videos can only be 1 minute long, so if your ad is a video and you want it to appear on Instagram as well, you’ll have to make sure it’s 60 seconds or less.

Google AdWords

Before Facebook Ads came along, Google AdWords was pretty much the only place where businesses and bloggers went to create ads. It is a highly focused way to get visitors to your site because you can choose what keywords your site will appear under in search results.

Let’s say you want your Cheapest Countries eBook sales page to appear in search results when people Google “Cheapest Countries”, “Cheapest Destinations” and “Cheapest Places To Travel”.

You can do this with Google AdWords. First you’ll have to create an account, then you’ll have to create a new ad set, choose your keywords and place your bid. Google gives you an “Estimated CPC” which helps you decide if you want to bid on the keyword. CPC means cost per click and it’s pretty self-explanatory, if the CPC is $1 and your ad gets 100 clicks from Google, it’ll cost you $100.

Google AdWords campaigns can be frustrating, because most terms that are obviously easy to convert (like How To Start a Blog) have an extremely expensive CPC, so you need to know that you’re going to convert a lot of visitors before investing $5+ per click into AdWords.

I really can’t word it any better than Neil Patel did on his KissMetrics Blog post:

Use the formula below to calculate your Max CPC and then compare to the estimated CPC you found above:

Max CPC = (profit per customer) x (1 – profit margin) x (website conversion rate)

For example, let’s say your average profit per customer is $500, and out of 1,000 website visitors you convert 10 into customers. That means you have a 1% website conversion rate. If you are comfortable with a 30% profit margin, then here’s how you would calculate your Max CPC:

Max CPC = $500 x (1 – 0.30) x 1% = $3.50

Again, your Max CPC must be in the neighborhood of the estimated CPC in Google’s Keyword Tool or else you’re in trouble. If your Max CPC is $3.50 and the estimated CPC for a keyword is $10, then you’ll need to first increase either your profit per customer or your conversion rate before you can profitably advertise on that particular keyword.

Basically, you don’t want to invest a bunch of money into Google Adsense if you’re not converting enough readers to be profit positive. Google Adsense is difficult to master, but if you can launch a profit-positive campaign, you can make a lot of money.

5. Conferences

Finally, I recommend investing some money to go to at least one conference. When you’re first starting out, you won’t likely have TBEX contacting you to fly you to their Europe Summit to be a speaker, so you’ll have to spend some of your own money to purchase a ticket, get yourself there and put yourself up in a hotel room.

Conferences are great for learning from those in the blogging business and networking. I can’t stress enough just how important it is that you network with other bloggers in your niche and brands in your industry when you’re starting out.

There are tons of different conferences you can attend outside of TBEX. There’s Inflow, World Tourism Forum, VidCon (for YouTubers), ITB in Berlin, World Travel Market and many more. Before you choose which one you want to go to, consider your goals for the conference. Is it to meet other bloggers and learn how they’ve become successful in the industry? Or, are you looking to meet brands and tourism boards to hire you?

If it’s the former, make sure you check the attendee list before purchasing your ticket. Make sure that there are a bunch of knowledgeable bloggers in your niche who are attending before you decide to go.

We’ve been lucky enough to meet and learn from Tim Leffel of The Cheapest Destinations Blog, Jarryd & Alesha from Nomadasaurus, Dave & Deb from The Planet D, Justin Carmack from The Art of Scuba Diving, Johnny Ward of One Step 4 Ward, Jonathan and Kach of Two Monkeys Travel Group and so many more. Because we met them all in person, we have formed a much more solid relationship. And over time, we’ve found different ways to work with together, or at least bounce ideas off of one other.

If you’re hoping to meet up with tourism boards and brand marketers at the conferences, then check to see that there will be brands there that fit your niche. If you’re a budget traveller and only 5 star resorts and luxury tour companies are attending the event, then choose another one!

Most people go to these conferences to meet up with potential business partners, but I believe that it’s far more valuable to network with your fellow bloggers and learn from them. Invest a bit of money to go to a couple of conferences when you’re starting out and if you choose wisely, it could give your blog a much-needed boost.

Summary

For a business to grow, you need to invest in it. You need to invest a lot of risk, a considerable amount of time and finally, a lot of money.

Start with investing in the design of your blog. Think of it as your store front. You want people walking by (surfing by) to be impressed and have a good first impression.

Invest in the efficiency of your business. Not just in the speed of your computer, but the speed of your wi-fi and the load time of your website as well.

Once you’re making enough to sustain your lifestyle, it’s time to invest in VAs to help you with repetitive tasks and in Ads to help you reach new audiences. And finally, once you’ve grown an audience and a brand that is worth partnering with, you can consider investing in travel influencer conferences, summits and meet-ups around the world.

Investing money back into your business is just as important as investing time into it. If you’re too cheap with your own business to nurture it with some cashflow, then it will never grow beyond a certain point. Somebody once said: “You need to spend money to make money” and that has never been truer than it is with blogging and online entrepreneurship.

Spend your money wisely and watch your business grow before your eyes. Give it boosts where it needs them and never stop helping it grow organically. Investing smartly is the true key to success in this competitive online space, and now you have to tools and knowledge to make some intelligent first investments and start seeing real returns from them.

Good luck!

The post Top 5 Most Important Investments For a Growing Blog appeared first on Goats On The Road.

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5 Tactics to Appear in the Search Results That Don't Require a Lot of Work: SEO doesn't discriminate. For brands that “get it” and have the know-how and resources, the coveted first page rankings are ripe for the picking. But let's be honest. SEO is back-breaking and often mind-numbing work. With a plethora of continually growing ranking factors and algorithm updates, staying on top is a daunting task. But it doesn't have to be. Quite a few SEO tactics—requiring only marginal effort and little time—can help you appear in the search results. I'm not saying that laziness and a half-hearted effort will get your brand to the top. But I would like to discuss five specific tactics that don't require a lot of work but should still have a noticeable impact. 1. Optimize titles and tags using a sneaky trick Let me preface this by saying I love out-of-the-box tactics most people overlook. Sometimes, we miss the things that are right under our noses. There's one particular technique that Brian Dean mentions in this post on Backlinko I absolutely love and have used myself. It's incredibly simple, yet I feel it can have a considerable impact on your SEO. Here's how it works. Say you're writing a blog post and want to find fully optimized phrases for your title and meta description. You can save yourself a lot of time by entering a broad keyword in Google and scoping out Adwords ads for optimized phrases. Here's an example. I'll use “CRM software” as my keyword phrase. Here are some of the ads that pop up: From here, I can find at least three or four potential phrases to use for my title and description. For instance, I might pick the following: Positive customer experience Enhance customer service Custom dashboards reports Just like that, I've found three fully optimized phrases I can use in my content. And just think about it. These companies obviously didn't choose these keyword phrases at random. In fact, they're often the result of extensive split-testing to see which phrases would get the most clicks and highest conversions. So, you know for a fact the phrases you find via this method are gold! Besides using this technique when writing new posts, you can also use it for existing content that has performed okay but hasn't reached its full potential. For instance, you could go back and tweak the title and meta description of a post lingering on page two of the SERPs to give it “the extra SEO juice” it needs to climb to page one. 2. Optimize Google My Business According to a 2016 report from Search Engine Land, nearly 60 percent of searches now come from mobile devices. So you can bet that local SEO is of supreme importance, especially for brick-and-mortars. And here's the interesting thing. Half of consumers who perform local searches on their smartphones actually visit a store within one day. If you've been skimping on local SEO thus far, you're probably missing out on a lot of high-quality leads and, ultimately, sales. Although there is a laundry list of elements contributing to sound local SEO, there's one simple tactic that can help you considerably. And that's optimizing your Google My Business account. It takes a minimal time commitment but can have a palpable impact. Here's what you want to do: Claim your listing if you haven't done so already. Set it up here. Look over your business's details to ensure they're correct and up-to-date. Include your hours and any other relevant information. Choose hyper-specific categories for your business. This makes it much easier to rank than having broad categories. Consider adding new images of your business, showing it inside and outside. Here's a good example of how you want your listing to look: Also, be sure to encourage your customers to leave reviews because this can definitely boost your “street cred.” 3. Check for (and fix) crawl errors You may have read a previous post I wrote on how to use Google Search Console like a boss. One particularly useful element I covered was crawl errors. It's an extremely important feature that allows you to quickly identify the following: 404 errors Server errors URLs pointing to a nonexistent page Here's the purpose of crawl error reports in Google's own words: In other words, this will tell you whether there are any issues preventing Google from properly crawling your site. This way, you'll be able to identify any problems quickly and fix them right away without having to look through your site manually. All you have to do is click on “Crawl” from your dashboard. Then click on “Crawl Errors.” If everything is good, you'll see this: Otherwise, Google will list the details of any problems. If you do find errors, consult this guide from Moz on ways to fix them. 4. Optimize for image search Here's the thing about Google image search. Driving traffic through image search tends to be much easier than through regular search. Why? First, there's less competition. Second, a lot of people fail to fully optimize their photos for image search. I like to think of it as low-hanging fruit that can generate an influx of traffic. Optimizing for image search is by no means rocket science but can definitely help your SEO and traffic. Here are the essentials. 1. Be highly specific when creating a file name for each photo. I suggest going long-tail for your descriptions versus using broad terms. For instance, you are better off going with “red-camping-tent-in-forest.jpg” than with “camping-tent.jpg.” 2. Take care of the alt text. If you're unfamiliar, alternative (alt text) is a word or phrase that can be inserted as an attribute in an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) document to tell web site viewers the nature or contents of an image. If for some reason the image doesn't appear on a page or a person visiting that page has a visual impairment, the alt text will describe it to them. Again, the key to creating great alt text is to be specific. To give you an idea of what Google is looking for, here is an example from its image publishing guidelines: And here's one more little trick. 3. Specify the width and height of your images. According to WordStream, A web browser can begin to render a page even before images are downloaded, provided that it knows the dimensions to wrap non-replaceable elements around. Specifying these dimensions can speed up page loading and improve the user experience. If you haven't been following these image optimization practices in the past, I suggest going back and tweaking your images so that they follow this formula. It doesn't take much effort but can prove very beneficial. 5. Improve outbound links We all know that inbound links are of monumental importance. In fact, many experts agree that inbound links are still the number one ranking factor in 2017. But what about outbound links? These obviously don't carry the same weight as inbound links, but it doesn't mean they have no significance. I recently came across an interesting study from Reboot that measured outbound links as a ranking signal. Long story short, they found that outgoing relevant links to authoritative sites are considered in the algorithms and do have a positive impact on rankings. Here's proof: It makes sense this is a ranking factor. Why? Because most pages containing outbound links to authoritative resources offer genuine value compared to pages containing internal links only. If you've been slacking on your outbound links, I recommend going back and adding at least three links to high-quality relevant resources on your posts. This may be all it takes to give your content a boost in the SERPs, and it can help you maintain any higher rankings you've already obtained. And the best part is that it's really quite easy. A quick Google search on your topic should provide you with plenty of potential resources. Or you could always use BuzzSumo to see what's resonating with readers. Here are just a few things that pop up when I enter “CRM software”: Just like that, I've found a handful of quality resources to link to. Conclusion I get it. SEO can be a total pain at times. It's by far one of the most meticulous and painstaking digital marketing techniques. And I also know what it's like to be pressed for time. While I can't promise these tactics will get you to the number one position in SERPs for every single keyword phrase you're trying to rank for, they should—most definitely—improve your standings. When it's all said and done, they can be the catalyst for a surge in organic traffic to your site, which should bring in more qualified leads. Can you think of any other SEO tactics that don't require a major time investment? http://bit.ly/2qw0BOJ