#She's perfect for Paper Mario's art style.

[linderosse]

I LOVE YOUR WIELDERS OF WISDOM COMIC!!!! i think its wonderful and so absolutely necessary (if u will excuse my feminism)... the art style is GORGEOUS and im just so grateful someone is giving love to all the zeldas <33

sorry that this is anon but. i dislike being perceived lmao

Thank you so much!!

And heck yeah on the representation front! I’m doing my best to write a variety of interesting characters that will help me tell the stories I want to tell. To me, the fact that they’re mostly women is both incidental and vitally important at the same time.

Tetra was my first Zelda, and I always loved her pirate captain badassery and no-nonsense attitude. I was a bit of a ‘tomboy’ (used in the non-insulting sense, simply referring to a girl who liked traditionally boyish hobbies/clothing) growing up, so I identified with Tetra real hard <3. Heckin’ loved her practical, forthright nature— and the way the games don’t hesitate to show her wackier side and how her actions sometimes get her in trouble— and how she gets out of it, with or without help.

And of course, girls can also be girly and get things done! Love the more traditionally feminine Zeldas as well; shirking feminine mannerisms definitely isn’t a requirement for a well-written female character. You can have a character wear a tiara, battle in a dress, and still be cool. Heck, you can have ’em don a soft gown, not fight at all, and still be an awesome character: maybe she genuinely wants good for the world, or maybe she controls the board with gentle magic and soft “feminine” persuasion to achieve her goals, turning foes into friends— or her pawns.

And characters don’t always have to succeed! Sometimes persuasion fails. Sometimes they argue with someone they know is right. Sometimes her sword falters. But that’s fine! That’s what makes for a good, realistic, fun character— that’s how humans are.

(continued under the cut)

See, I feel like some popular media is trending towards forcing women to be *exclusively* badass, almost flawless in their physical skill yet boyish in their mannerisms.

Like, as a random example: Peach in the Mario movie. Movie Peach no longer giggles and blows kisses, because that would be too girly. And Movie Peach is a perfect platformer and politician, because female empowerment. Same thing with Galadriel in RoP (and it’s honestly a bit different and way worse with RoP Galadriel, because her mother-name is Nerwen which translates to man-maiden and she is canonically a tomboy, but they write it so badly in RoP that not even the rest of the characters in the show respect her for her over-the-top ‘female badassery.’) And as a huge, longtime fan of both the Mario series and the Silmarillion, it kinda hurt to see those Mary Sue-esque, somewhat shallow depictions of what should be complex characters.

Now, the thing is: one or two perfect characters like that are just fine! The problem lies in the fact that many of these shows have only a few female characters to begin with, and they’re all like that. Peach is kinda alright, but Galadriel’s major flaws are barely even shown because the writing has to try to make her look badass even when she’s making objectively terrible decisions.

Because here’s the thing— depicting only perfect women and minimizing flaws isn’t supporting female empowerment. Girls have flaws too, folks. Popular media relying only on the immaculate femme fatale badass just makes for a more cliche story, and imposes higher standards on young girls who look up to these characters. And the forced boyishness forces standards as well.

Why can’t Peach flutter her eyelashes, giggle, and still knock bad guys on their asses? Or, better yet, why can’t Peach flutter her eyelashes, giggle, knock bad guys on their asses, help Mario out, also get helped by Mario, and maybe admit that it took practice for her to get to where she is now?

That’s how she used to be in the middle Mario era, like Super Mario RPG, Thousand Year Door, and Super Paper Mario. Peach was feminine and still relatable to a young tomboy like myself.

I’ve rambled on for far too long, but anyways, that’s what I’m gonna try to do here with the Wisdomverse: tell stories of a bunch of different types of people, where each of them has their own take on what it means to be Zelda.

I can’t promise I’ll be perfect at writing this either, honestly. Perhaps I’ll fall into some of the same traps— I’m sure it’s hard to avoid them.

And perhaps my thoughts on this will evolve over time as well, and I’ll later have an even better understanding of how to write the characters I want to write.

Either way, I’ll certainly do my best!

Tl;dr: I got really sidetracked, but thank you for the kind message! Glad to hear you’re enjoying Wielders of Wisdom; hope to keep building my characters into interesting and at least somewhat complex women as things progress :)

[lysolstrider]

i didn't know you were making a game thats really cool, can you tell us more about it?

yes!! just for you my dearest mutual axolotlworld… sorry I took forever to respond I really had to think about what to say!

our game is (tentatively) called COLLEGEBOUND.. or SCHOOLBOUND… or CLASSBOUND.. we are indecisive. it revolves around concepts of change, willpower, and the drive to keep going. it is tangentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic though a physical sickness is not present anywhere in the game… quite the opposite

you play as atlas, a tired sophomore who’s ready to just leave school altogether. what’s crazy though is that you can’t leave. nobody can. you’ve all been on campus and its extended neighborhood for a year straight without any contact with the outside world. your college is floating in the sky, cut off from the outside world. it’s time to fix that.

it is based VERY heavily in paper mario style combat, and is heavily inspired by games like undertale and persona 5, i would go so far as to say i hope this is an appropriate love letter to those games!! if you enjoy making friends and avoiding class, you will love this game. we are trying a lot of new things outside these games’ scopes

ideally, we get the kickstarter launched sometime after having a workable demo in mid 2025. at the moment, the majority of the demo’s soundtrack is finished, the character designs are mostly complete, and the demo’s story is 90% done. though not programmed enough to have anything tangible, the combat system is 40% complete and the UI is about 5% done. the only reason i wouldn’t be like HERES THE DEMO SCRAPS is just because i hate reading devlogs where nothing happens 😭😭

there is a secret i cannot say, but it is the reason development isn’t as quick even though it’s a two person project. just know it’s a popular mechanic for indie games to do this lately and i’m wanting to take it to a logical extreme in the most intense way possible!!!!!! which is really challenging in Unreal Engine but it is possible!

the environments and such are extremely easy and not a concern because tbh most of that is free assets we have permission to edit mixed with my hand drawn or modeled things. unironically i’m really digging the amazing world of gumball style it gives the game. i’m a huge huge perfectionist and even refuse to answer texts unless i have a perfect response so i’m polishing things as i go and am really enjoying making it!

also, we’re going to apply for multiple scholarships dedicated to things like this— with what we have so far visually we actually have a shot maybe????!!!!! i dont have any good videos on hand but the paper style is PERFECT for my art and it’s really endearing to look at and play as

i wish i could be more specific but it’s such a novel idea and i told shems i can’t talk about it anywhere for a while ugh 😭 i can’t remember my login for here on the computer but when I post some of the soundtrack snippets I will tag you in them!! the music is coming along the best so far lol

here’s some screenshots of concept art tho!! theresa and anya. theresa is an HR management major and anya is an illustration major. we thought about Anya’s color changing when she performs certain skills but that’s up in the air rn

us messing with the lighting in unreal lol (we’ve since changed the filter on it as well as making the textbox different)

[eijirc]

hcs cause its 2 am im bored

- shinsou's exceptionally good at shogi and western chess, tic-tac-toe, rock paper scissors (lizard Spock), memory card games, and most classic card games. he knows every trick, every shortcut, every strategy. nobody ever beat him, not even the yūei staff. you can't beat him. he is god.

bakugou loves to play with kirishima on the latter's switch. sometimes he stays over at his dorm playing ssbu until 2 in the morning on fridays, and he hates losing. he's a fox main, and kirishima's a donkey kong main. (if this gets 1 note i will make ssbu main headcanons for all of them tbh)

todoroki likes cooking. he's much more comfortable with making warm foods than before. sometimes he invites deku, tsuyu and satou over to his dorm to help.

sero was secretly helping the general education class make the haunted house for the culture festival. he dressed someone up as a mummy, and let people paint his strips to create fake caution tape.

iida plays the piano. he likes classical music the most, of course, but he's pretty rusty since he mostly studies in his free time.

kaminari takes it as a compliment when people compare him to pikachu. however, he plays zelda much more than pokémon and is a toon link main on ssbu. he's actually pretty good at videogames.

jirou posts anonymous song covers online. she's relatively well known in the utaite community and has her own little following, although nobody knows it's her.

ashido has entered countless dance competitions. she'd always score very high on them, including getting second and first place.

shouji's actually a really fun guy outside of school. he does skits using his arms and sometimes juggles.

satou posts cooking tutorials on youtube. he mostly makes vegan tutorials, since they're so scarce. his voice is said to be very calming.

midoriya is secretly trying to learn how to do the foxtrot, and to slow dance, in case there's a future prom in yūei. he wants to ask uraraka.

kouda likes to sing, especially things like lullabies and things with soft vocals. he's very shy about it, but after the midterms he became close to jirou and isn't afraid to sing with her.

kirishima goes on weekly days out with the rest of the bakugang, plus uraraka and tsuyu. (deku doesn't come because he's training ofa.) it was the idea of bakugou, ashido and jirou, since they wanted to improve his self esteem. it's helped him a lot.

uraraka is a good artist. her art style is just like her; bubbly, colourful and cute. she always works her hardest to make beautiful birthday cards for everyone in her class (even mineta and bakugou), and puts special emphasis on deku's cards.

monoma has frequent sleepovers with awase, tetsutetsu and honenuki in the latter's dorm. they call themselves the "golden four of class 1-b". mostly they just play mario kart at 3 am, walk around in their underwear and prank the other kids in their class.

tsuyu's a frog, but her favourite colour is sky blue, not green. it reminds her of the sun shining underwater, and it's a colour that she says makes her smile.

aoyama doesn't like himself as much as he says he does. kirishima talked to him about how bland his hardening quirk was and aoyama admitted he wasn't very fond of his own quirk, and they bonded since then. they use each other as a shoulder to lean on at times.

mineta is garbage as always. this is perfectly canon. but he aced all his tests in middle school and if he weren't a pervert and so distracted by women during his studies, people would be asking him and yaoyorozu for all the answers.

kendou is a comedian, and gets along well with everyone. if monoma hadn't been in yūei, she along with kirishima would be the glue that would make the two classes stick together. this is perfectly canon as well. (ok but kouda's rabbit keeps nibbling on her hair because it thinks she's a carrot and that's when she realised the human race doesn't deserve creatures as perfect as rabbits.)

if u want me to add any more characters just hmu im tired and i probably forgot like 12

[nycfae]

you know what game i used to really like ? super paper mario. it was the only one of the paper marios i actually played ( which i’m sure some consider to be like. a capital sin ) but i loved playing it—the ost was great, and the art style was fun, and i liked the levels a lot. it was a pretty big part of my childhood

getting to the point, holy shit does tippi / timpani and count bleck / blumiere’s relationship remind me of pix and sorcy. it’d be like a bad end kind of thing where pix’s supposed death drives sorcy mad with grief and pix to become amnesiac, but man the ending they eventually got was so sweet and i just wanted them to be happy

like. their relationship is frowned upon and the guy’s parent banishes / seemingly kills the girl, which drives the guy mad and to do terrible things in his grief, and meanwhile she’s been turned into a magical being somewhere far away and can’t remember anything but has strange dreams and flashbacks of someone she used to know....what was their name...?

one of tippi’s quotes is like perfect for pix: ‘snap out of it! how can you think it would end here, after all we have suffered without each other? we found each other again because we stayed alive... how can you admit defeat?! i will not! i will not give up! you promised we'd find happiness. you PROMISED!’ 

[orphancookie69]

Horror Anthology Film Ranking

I love Shudder. Really, it is probably my favorite streaming service over Netflix. They actually break down the movies by genre and subgenre. I really also love how I am learning more about the art of film by watching old and new stuff on Shudder. I enjoyed doing my “whodunit” post and thought, why not make similar posts but different genres? Here is my Horror Anthology Ranking. 

Monster Club (1981): Really, what gets better than Vincent Price sucking your blood and offering you a drink at a cool club after to say a proper, thank you for your blood? Stories are great, scenery is great, VINCENT PRICE. Really if I have to add anything after...VINCENT PRICE...I have questions for you. I really wish this film made a soundtrack, as I need this soundtrack and a sequel. 

Asylum (1972): I love the premise of this: doctor reads paper looking for job, goes to place for a job. Tries to impress the interviewer by saying he can spot a specific kind of mental problem. To get the job, he must find the original owner of the establishment who is suffering from said disease. The ending is fantastic and that is all I will say about that. 

Black Sabbath (1963): I am sorry Mario Bava that your film is not higher on this list, but within this genre...there are really so many gems. This as an anthology is perfect. Great host, I wonder if Twilight Zone took any inspiration for this. Stories build up perfectly and it is scary with just enough funny that its perfect for all. 

The Mortuary Collection (2019): I am happy to include a more modern one in this list to show that even if older movies do it better, modern movies can bring that old world charm to the future. I love this ones premise, a gal goes for a job opening at the local mortician and he tells her stories of the corpses to see if she can handle the job. The twist is lovely, the music is surprisingly good, and I would not mind watching a sequel to this. 

Creep Show (2020): Now, it is impossible to talk about Anthologies and not mention Creep Show. My BFF loves this and until I watched it on shudder, I had not. Since it has been and is an ongoing series, I decided to “sample” it with this film. The animation is lovely, the stories are that gross horror type? For some reason that is something I have never been able to stomach. But good stories, book style format. Not bad, but for me lower on the list. 

Verotika (2019): Now, something in every ranking has to be the bottom. To be fair to this film, it was interesting to see an erotic anthology. Erotic and Horror are very interesting partners together (normally). This honestly was not a good movie, but had the bones to be a very good movie. I would love to see this redone, or revamped in sequel? 

I did not realize I had an anthology from different decades in here, but when you take that point of view into consideration...you really get to see where anthologies have been and where they are now. As I am writing this, I realize that Goosebumps should be on here as they would be an anthology? I loved those books as a kid, it would be the only reason I would go to the library. (I hated borrowing books). Have you seen any of the films on here? Any films you think need to be on here? 

[italicwatches]

GAMERS! Episode 01

Nobody participated in the game! Jerks.

I kid, I kid. I love you all.

So now that we’ve hit some of the big shows I’ve wanted to do for a while, it’s time to get at some of the lighter things! And mostly, I mean lighter workload. One-cour specials that I can burn through in a fortnight. Is that how you spell the actual word? The game has been so massively omnipresent over everything I look at that I can’t tell anymore.

…Anyways it’s GAMERS!, episode 01! Here we GO!

-We begin, with a blue sky, a flying plane, and a title pop! Then we scroll down from a school roof, down into a classroom. Everyone’s staring. It’s nearly 4 PM. Two figures stand against each other. Some folks have some pretty amazing faces on. Time is still. Like, full-on ZA WARUDO level time is still.

-And then…The clock finally clicks over. The cicadas start to buzz…And then die. Alas, poor cicada.

-SPRING!

-Hard cut to a game store advertising some naughty materials, as a narrator explains how some people are ‘above the clouds’. All the hottest titles for the PZ4 are out in force, and I’m pretty sure I recognize at least one cover. A young man gathers up some older, cheaper games on sale, as the narrator explains how these people might be an idol, a world-stage athlete, someone you truly adore…And for some, it might be a 2D character. As he picks up the game Golden Memories and I swear to god that girl in the center of the cover looks like she was in New Game. Is this from the same studio?

-Most can only watch these figures from afar, a source of distant admiration…So, when the cutest girl in school walked into the game store at the same time as this young man narrating, and suddenly spoke to him, one Amano Keita lost all capacity to get his body and brain to communicate. The entire stack of games (including titles like LEGION OF THE FANTASY, BASE COMBAT, and a baseball game I can’t read but I know I’ve seen that art style in a Japanese baseball game before) falls from his hands, and his eyes turn cartoony as his thought process just breaks.

-And Tendou Karen introduces herself properly…As Keita’s brain hooks together what he knows of her. The rich, call, curvy, flawless young lady of the school, the sort that draws admiration from her fellow girls and adoration from the boys. She’s smart, she’s beautiful, and she’s got amazing athletic results too. She seems almost too perfect to be real.

-The visuals make it clear that all this is going to fall apart. And our sloppy goofy hero is the reason why.

-She’s not famous, but she IS the kind of girl who has to hold a bag under her locker because of how many love notes are gonna fall out when she opens it every day. The idol of the school. Meanwhile, Keita’s a goofy loner dork who’d rather play vidjagames and is firmly in the middle of every metric the school tests him on. Average height, B- grades, damn near perfectly in the middle of all his athletic tests. Like, it’s almost impressive how nondescript he is by the on-paper metrics.

-And his brain is snapping and oh god he’s freaking out HE’S FREAKING OUT OKAY DEEP BREATH CALM DOWN CALM DOWN. She ends up helping him pick up the games, as he begins to wonder if this is going to lead to extortion or something. (The X makes it sound cool) Because he just cannot ponder why Tendou Karen of all girls would be talking to him, in a game store, and not the kind of family-friendly super mainstream one that only sells E rated games your little brother’s heard of, either. There’s an eroge poster right outside.

-As they pick up such games as STOIC BATTLE 2, and Evil ElEmEnt. But then she asks him if he likes these games, and he freaks out so bad he drops them, and now she’s gotta pick them back up because his hands don’t work. And OKAY DEEP BREATH CALM DOWN SHE’S JUST A NORMAL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT LIKE YOU NO NEED TO FREAK O—

-She picked up Golden Memories.

-…OookAY IT IS TIME TO FREAK THE FUCK OUT MAXIMUM PANIC ENGAGED

-Oh god it’s even worse.

-The game advertises itself as specifically selling blonde-girl fantasies, and includes wardrobe malfunctions.

-You get three guesses as to what color hair Karen has and the first three don’t count.

-And thus now SHE’S having a bit of a freakout and both try to play it off and woooooo boy this somehow managed to get even more awkward. Could a spout of flame please consume him now to end this torment thank you Satan. He has to try and play off why he had a blonde-gals dating sim in his hands and he insists he just was reading it to see what it was about and of couuuurse, she totally understands, yes let us both just lean on this easy explanation that lets everyone walk away…

-But of course Keita is actually kind of a total dork for the design process of them and how tightly they managed to sell a game which is when he realizes he miiiight have oversold it OH GOD TOO FAR PULL OUT PULL OUT

-Yep she’s staring.

-PANIC.

-But she breaks out into the giggles, because she’s amazed with his passion about it…And she’s…She’s like him to…To join her…

-In the game club!

-The what now?

-Hard cut to an arcade, with a small group of folks from the same school playing a flashy mahjong arcade game, when a pink-haired young lady needs the help of one guy, Tasuku! There’s an amazing(ridiculous) looking stuffed cat in the claw machine, and he’s got the magic touch…And of course, having a desperate young lady needing his help would turn the eyes of any straight young man.

-But you’re paying for the play. You’re not cutting into his game budget with this thing.

-EVEN BIGGER EYES. Why you little…

-But, okay. Deep breath. In goes 100 yen, and okay, focus, watch the toy…And Tasuku pulls the magic trick, hooking the stuffed cat’s tag with the claw! One play, and it’s in this young lady’s hands! He tries to play it cool, but inside he feels like a total badass having pulled this off for his cute, if slightly ditzy, girlfriend. The visual cue would like to let you know that his pride will soon fall.

-That night, the whole gang finally leaves the arcade…When Tasuku spots Keita over by a bench, just kinda staring down onto the bench? What’s going on with him? …Well, it doesn’t matter. He’s just some dork without a hot girlfriend.

-The visual cues want to let you know that soon this dork and Task’s hot girlfriend will be meeting in secret and Tasuku will fail.

-So Keita is staring, because Karen is explaining. She just started the gaming club, since, well, there isn’t one. It doesn’t even entirely exist yet since she hasn’t done the initial round of recruitment to get the school to accept their existence, and youuuu are her first recruit! And wow, you’re polite. …Chill, Keita. Even her classmates are all super polite. Her teacher is polite to her! Hell, when she plays Mario, Bowser himself is polite! Okay that one has to be bullshit. Maybe it was a bug?

-It did happen after three straight days of trying to beat the speed running world record for the game… You were unconscious and dreaming! Your body collapsed from lack of capacity! The only bug is the one in your damn head that led to you thinking that was a smart thing to do!

-And Karen breaks out into the giggles, having finally gotten through Keita’s shell…As she admits that the gaming thing is a bit of a secret. Her friends don’t really know about it…She even picked this school because it once had a famous gaming club. But…It collapsed, in the time between her testing in and her first day at the school…She spent her whole first year politicking behind the scenes to get the school to let her revive it, and now she’s ready to make it stronger than it ever was! That’s actually impressive.

-But what will it be, exactly…? Well, playing games, of course. But not just that. They’ll be playing them seriously. Competitively. This isn’t just about the love of games. This is about games as self betterment. And for that, she needs the kind of souls who can slam themselves against the wall again and again until they finally, finally break through. And she found one, in you! The wind picks up, the springtime cherry blossoms swirl around them, and Keita is in awe, as he finds himself…

-Finds himself…Unsure what to say…When her mother texts her! She has to get going she’s already breaking curfew wait for her after school tomorrow BYE! Ohgodrunrunrunrunmom’sgonnabesomad

-That night in his tiny little apartment, Keita slacks upon his bed, playing his totally-not-a-PS-Vita. I think I will call it a PZ Vivio, because stupid references are the best references. So anyways he’s playing it, and he can’t help but feel like this game club thing…This could be huge! The event in his youth that he’s been waiting for! Is this a dream? A magical wonderful dream—He just got a text.

-Okay. Deep breath. Pick up the phone. See what it says.

-Oh, it’s just an alert. A game friend, Mono-san, is requesting help in a mobile MMO type deal. Sure. Sure thing. PZ Vivio go down, phone goes up…

-And then we fade over to the cutesy, curly-haired girl who is Mono-san…Just to make it clear what we’re dealing with here.

-Cut to the next day! Class just wrapped, and Keita takes a deep breath, as he has to decide what to do…And Mono-san needs help again? Well, he can take a couple minutes to dive into a boss battle, besides Karen was probably just fucking with hi—

-HEY KEITA

-Yipe!

-Yep she went and found him because waiting for him to find her sounded boring. And dang, you play mobile games too, huh? And everyone’s starting to stare. Okay. Okay deep breath they should go to the club room right now! He races out after Karen, having just declined the help request and please forgive him Mono-san…As Tasuku and his group watch this hapless dork walk off with the hottest girl in school.

-To the stairwell! Where we meet Misumi Eiichi! Keith is confused. He’s her other first recruit! She found him at the arcade playing vintage puzzlers! And he’s all kind of embarrassed, as Keita quietly realizes how much of a fucking idiot he was thinking he had a chance at this…

-But then Eiichi extends a hand, and admits he’s not a super sociable guy. But he’d love to be friends with Keita. And…You know what? There’s not a damn thing wrong with ‘just’ making some good friends who he shares a passion with. Keita shakes that hand with both of his own, and it might not be the dating sim fantasy he had in his head, but this still could work out just fine…

-As all three head for the clubroom, where Karen admits she had to do some very cunning work to get them to approve the club…But they get there, and she flips the door sign to reveal it is now OPEN! She even did a custom club sign with cute pixel art on it!

-The place is already kitted out with tons of games and setups, fight sticks and spare pads…And the other recruits. Kase Gakuto, who Karen has to introduce because he’s busy playing. Then, over there playing Guilty Gear is Oohiso Niina. Both of these two are the senpais of the group, and Niina is not listening because all that matters is the Guilty Gear.

-And Gakuto here is one of the top FPS players in the world, as he wrecks face at CSGo. Or as Keita calls it, COS. And Eiichi admits that he really only knows vintage puzzlers. Well they’ll have to teach you!

-And the best part? Everything here was bought over the last year by entering in local tournaments! The school may not be super into games, but they damn well like having trophies to display and students bringing in their own club funds! But what good is a game club if there’s no game playing? Come on, guys, pick something and play~!

-And Gakuto wants to see what these guys can do…

-Straight up first round, team deathmatches in Battlefield. Gakuto wrecks face, with Karen close behind, and the rookie guys do…Poorly. Next round! By the fifth match, Keita is better than two of the bots on his and Gakuto’s team, while Eiichi is slowly but surely improving a little. MORE ROUNDS. 30 rounds in, Keita is actually slipping from sheer exhaustion and Eiichi is getting intense too…

-A full two hours later, and Keita collapses. Karen even has to ask Gakuto to go a little easier on the new recruits, but no. He’s not running a damn training school. You learn or you fall behind. Do you want to be stuck here all on your own again, jerk?

-Also as an aside, they have a legit straight-up Guilty Gear XRD Rev2 poster up on the wall. No BASE COMBAT for that franchise.

-Also Gakuto strongly questions whether Eiichi has really never played one of these before. You got the hang of twin-sticking it really quickly for someone new…And you got three kills on him. Eiichi insists he just got lucky, but at this point I’m pretty fuckin’ sure he’s lying. But whether he’s secretly got practice or just is a fast learner…

-But as for Keita, why the hell did you just stand in that corner jumping up and down on that car in the last round?! He, he wanted to see the scenery past the wall…Well you’re making everyone else on your team’s life harder, you jackass!

-And soon Karen has to calm everyone down and call for a break, as she and Eiichi step out onto the balcony…And Keita just stares, as Gakuto goes right back to CSGO on the PC and I’m not entirely sure Niina even realizes the two newcomers are here. Karen ends up asking what got the two into games…And Keita realizes he doesn’t, really, have one…

-Contrast, say, Gakuto, whose father is in a PMC and so he came into the FPS genre with tons of core practices already in his head that got translated into game mechanics. Or Niina who is trying to pull her best friend back from the dark side. (Your friend turned out to be a Gator, huh? I’ve been there, lass. May your trials serve to bring them back to sanity.)

-And Keita suddenly feels very, very awkward…At least Eiiichi doesn’t have any good reason either, so Keita can just relax, and take a deep thorough drink from his coke can…

-He just lost his memoirs and when he came to, the only thing he was good at was vintage puzzlers.

-SPITTAKE

-Keita suddenly feels like the only sane man in a world gone mad. And Karen tries to lighten the mood and encourage them to stick around. This isn’t about being some world-class gamer. It’s just about the core idea of self-betterment through games, and anyone can do that, no matter where they’re starting off! Eiichi is sold. Give him the form, he’ll be joining!

-And Keita? Well…Keita…

-As he steps out of the room, Gakuto promises to teach him proper team play, and Niina silently shoves an old fight stick into his hands. They might be weird, they might be a bit intimidating, but there’s a kind and genuine heart in their core. This might just work. He can make this work! So he can most definitely say that he’ll—

-Pass! You guys are all super competitive and he’s into single player stuff and RPGs.

-Pardon?

-New day! Class! Keita has realized by now how much of a FUCKING IDIOT he was, when his phone buzzes! Mono-san needs his help…Sure, sure thing, that’ll clear his mi—

-Karen appears! And she’s not giving up. Join. Her. Club. She’s interested in you! And that gets everyone to go silent, as she holds out her hand…And the timer on Mono-san’s request ticks down, lower, lower…Keita reaches out, and…Taps it at the last second! What were you saying, Karen?

-…He…Look. He can’t join the game club.

-Why? Is it because you don’t think you’re good enough? They’ll take care of you, rookie or otherwise!

-…No. He’s…He’s not into competition. He likes the love of games. He’s not a competitive guy at all. Your focus is fantastic, but it’s just not for him, so…

-So Karen suddenly feels like she just got dumped. And everyone’s staring. She goes tsuntsun to try and save face but god dammit quit trying to be nice to her! She walks out in tears…Only to slip on a banana peel and faceplate so hard that she’s got to flee at top speed in a panicked sob…

-As Mono-san sends Keita a thank-you note for the save.

-Episode 01: Amano Keita and Chapters of the Chosen

-TO BE CONTINUED…

…You fucking stupid idiot.

[lynxgriffin]

Call in Guitar Support

Allllrighty! Here we go starting off with Save the Light!

I did beat all of Attack the Light on my phone, although man I am not good at the Paper Mario style timed attacks

So, let’s see what we got here!

Aww I like the simple art styles

Steven going turning enemies and living weapons into friends also shaped like him

Ahh! Art style! And animation all work really well!!

Really hanging long loading screens, though

I can run into the ocean, aaaaa

Okay, big rock with lightning bolt on it, clearly we need to go find the brush god for Cherry Bomb…oh wait wrong game

Aww hey Lars and Sadie

Everything is…so…cuuuuuute

HI giant new gem ship

Well geez I hope this is after Greg is a millionaire so that he can just rebuild that car wash

New gem! …I forget her name!

Aaand here we go with a tutorial battle

Nnnngh once again I love SU music I need this battle theme

Oooh I see there’s a time element involved where you wait for points to come back instead of being turn-based

Why am I so bad at defending??

“That was coconuts!” OHH GREG

“There’s a crazy blue raccoon on the Deweymobile!” OKAY THEN

Sob I do wish I was better at that Paper Mario timing thing, I know there’s like a trick to it…

“So, I guess that’s a thing that can happen…” SURE IS

Aaand Greg joins the party!

I found Lion, d’awww

huh, Greg’s starter ability is pretty neat! And, got bubble for Steven

DID YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS UNLEASH MONSTERS ON BEACH CITY AGAIN

Man Connie’s probably gonna stay in my party forever, I love me some heavy hitters

FUK YEAH STEVONNIE WOOOOO

Okay YEAH that is awesome

I’m sorry Greg I love you lots but unless we get four party members, one spot’s gonna be permanently for Connie

Sure, let’s pick up ALL THE SIDEQUESTS

Jamieeeeeeee

Wow, that key has…Dewey’s face on it

“You have a childlike sense of wonder that I no longer experience, due in large part to my cynical worldview” …Dude, Buck

OMG Ronaldo are you the dang shopkeeper

YES VIDALIA, PAINT GREG

Your Amethyst paintings are great but you got plenty of those, let’s see Greg

Heal Jam ability for Greg, YEEEUUUH

Okay, looks like Pearl is joining the party! Let’s see what she can do

About the same as her abilities in Attack the Light, it seems!

Okay Greg’s ability is really useful, but it stinks that it ends if he gets attacked at all, even if you do a perfect defense

Of course Onion is just hiding out somewhere in the forest

WOW I died and I have nooo friggin clue how that happened

I guess since Steven is the only one who can use items like…if he goes down you’re basically SOL?

Holy crap why are the monsters always picking on Greg, LEAVE THE GOOD DAD ALONE

I’m just gonna put a ton of attack points into Connie so she ends up being this adorable lil’ preteen girl who will absolutely Wreck Your Shit With A Giant Sword

If I stick with Pearl in my party, not sure what I should focus on with her…luck maybe? Since she’s got real good ranged attacks.

Although now I’m wondering if we can add Lapis or Peridot later

Holy crap Steven just dodge-rolled that guy off of a cliff

HUH well this is a new way to do weapons upgrades…

Ahaaa that’s where you get Chroma from

Greg: “MY GIANT SON”

Apparently Pearl is my high jumper for this area

Hmm didn’t get everything in this part of the woods, but maybe can come back later

GUITAR DAD WILL TEACH YOU GUITAR SOLVE MAGICAL PUZZLES WITH GUITAR

Aaand hey it’s Amethyst!

OKAY so this does confirm that it’s after Greg became a millionaire.

Okay, let’s switch out Pearl with Amethyst and see if we prefer her or not

OOF okay Amethyst may actually be more useful in terms of wide-area attacks

Geez those drill birds are not cool, they take like four turns in a row

Got the Ukelele ability! …And wow, enemies didn’t attack at all that fight?

How does Steven have the lowest jump? Doesn’t he have his float ability by now?

Alrighty we’re still somewhere in the forest, haven’t encountered an area boss yet

I may keep my party as-is for now: Steven as white mage, Connie as the heavy hitter, Greg as support, and Amethyst as area attacker. Unless Peridot or Lapis can join the party and they have some interesting abilities I wanna try. Love the CG and all, but since I did already play a full game with them as the party, want to go with our human friends for this one.

SO YEAH this is a sweet and relaxing game so far. More later!

[synatria-studios]

Let's Talk About Platformers

Hey, it’s Aria Tempest here! Lead Artist and co-creator of SynAtria! Since we’re making a platformer game, I wanted to go through and talk about some games in the platformer genre that you may have overlooked or maybe you’re hoping to get into platformers but you aren’t sure where to start.

Most people when they think of platformers probably think of Mario games so I won’t be putting any in the list, though Mario Galaxy was one of my first favorites, Mario Sunshine is a classic, Super Paper Mario is a great casual time, and Mario Odyssey is perfection in the genre. I think everyone’s definition of platformer is a little different. I’ve seen people call Portal 2 a platformer and I’m not sure I’d agree since it’s mostly puzzles where you occasionally get to do a really cool jump or two.

I consider a game a platformer if the main bulk of the gameplay is platforming. It can have some puzzle or action elements but not more than the jumpy bits! Anyways let's get started with the list!

Shovel Knight

This game is incredible, probably the best 2D platformer to date. If you haven’t played it you should and if you have played it then have you played the other campaigns? There are 4 campaigns total, Shovel of Hope (The main storyline), Plague of Shadows, Specter of Torment, and King of Cards. You can also do two player mode with a friend (or just anyone you can get to play with you I guess). Also have you tried changing things about the characters? There are loads of secret codes you can put in for various effects (like moon jump mode and giant mode) or you can just change character pronouns and genders. I often turn Shovel Knight into a girl for some cute WLW (women-loving women) gameplay and then I often make everyone else a girl too just to see their changed character models. You can make the pronouns gender neutral as well, which is something that I think is really important to put in games with gender options.

So for context, my experience with the game is having beaten Shovel of Hope several times, Plague of Shadows one time, Specter of Torment one time, but I’ve only played a small amount of King of Cards. So obviously I haven’t played the new card mini game or the new fighting game Shovel Knight Showdown.

The gameplay is based around which character/campaign you pick and in my opinion the easiest characters to pick up and play in order are Shovel Knight, Plague Knight, Specter Knight, and King Knight. Playing Shovel Knight is an easy and fun breeze though not without its challenge. Learning how to play feels new and natural at the same time. I’m not sure I’d say that for the rest of them. It took some time for me to get proficient with the other playable characters, especially King Knight, who frustrated me to learn. The game is a 2D platformer done perfectly. Jump, attack, get new items and abilities, and several different play styles. Also something that isn’t often seen done well in 2D platformers, they managed to do branching paths without it feeling metroidvania-like (like you need a map) and they were able to throw in several types of collectibles, some of which are well hidden!

I should mention the death system. Anytime you die 25% of your total money is dropped where you died even if you’re in mid air. You then respawn at the start of the level or a checkpoint. If you can get back to your money then no big deal, not even a loss. However if you can’t get back (die on the way over) then you’ll continue to lose money and each previous money bag will disappear. It’s a pretty good and simple system, not too punishing. Though it’s embarrassing to finally get back to your money only to die right in front of it, just leaving piles of money bags in the same location over and over. Some people commonly compare this to the death system in Dark Souls in which when you die your collected souls are left in that location and you have to retrieve them before dying again. While I get the comparison, that’s really where the similarities start and end.

As far as the level design, it’s genius. Each level has a great flow to it and has incredibly different feelings. Most levels have their own mechanics and enemies that need to be learned how to overcome. Everything feels very meticulously planned out to the point that you’ll probably be just running around having a great time without even thinking about it. If you’re a level design lover like me, I recommend watching this video on one of the levels on Shovel Knight if you want to get a feel for how they designed the whole level to flow together perfectly. ❀

As far as collectibles, each campaign has a unique item that you collect throughout it. In Shovel Knight the item is a music sheet that you can turn in for rewards and extra dialogue. I think it’s important in games for collectibles to feel like more than just a number. They should give extra story, items, or maybe images you access in the main menu instead of just giving out a single achievement and nothing else. I like achievements and achievement hunting but I think it’s best when a game does more than that to reward it’s player, which Shovel Knight does well.

The soundtrack is perfect and they know it. They even have songs as collectible rewards that you give to a bard like character that gives extra info about the game and songs with each music sheet turned in. Jake Kaufman did the music excellently and I can only assume the bard like character is based on him. The songs feel memorable, catchy, exciting, and retro. They're retro in the way that someone today who loves retro game music may have taken that love and made something brand new and exciting for the current time, not in the way that it sounds exactly like it just comes straight from an old game which I think plays in its favor.

The look of the game is beautiful, the backgrounds and movements look lovely and it’s a pixel art game that’s clearly been made with lots of attention to detail. Sticking to a retro feeling, they did the game with just the color palette that an NES could do and only added a few additional colors where needed. The thought process going into giving this game the right feeling and look is incredible.

One of my only regrets in life is not having known about this game’s kickstarter. For the ones who pledged enough, they get their face in a specific part of the game. Every time I get there though I always say hi to two specific portraits, one being Matt from BestFriendsPlay and my favorite one being Arin from GameGrumps. If you haven’t seen them yet I recommend trying to find them. The first time I played I scoured the area for Arin’s portrait like a treasure hunt.

For the story, it’s not that big but I loved it; I felt so invested. There’s a segment at the end of certain levels where you have to catch the girl you love and it immediately gets my heart pumping. I was all in on rescuing her from second one. People often complain about games in which a female needs rescuing, often games in which her only personality trait is being easy to kidnap. This game steers away from that, with the girl being gone, you can feel the loss and desperation to get her back from the cutscenes and you can see her as a person outside of just being someone who is kidnapped. She has friends, a life, and even a personality! (Oh my)It does a great job at establishing the two character’s strong love and bond. As for the other campaigns, Plague Knight never had me tearing up (unlike Shovel Knight), though I did adore it. However I felt that Specter Knight’s campaign was really lacking. Though maybe that’s because I’m a romantic loser and there wasn’t any romance in that one. Did anyone else feel less invested in the Specter Knight storyline? Also for those who have played it, what did you think of King Knight’s storyline?

Overall it’s an incredibly fun game that everyone should give a try if they like the genre, though just note that the story isn’t huge but it makes up for it in every other way it could.

A Hat in Time

Super cute and friendly feeling, I remember seeing gifs of the main character blowing kisses at enemies and knew I had to try it out. This game excels at giving you happy feelings, with fun dialogue as well.

Story wise it has a lot of fun elements and lots of different characters. Each world has its own character types, and while they’re all fun and interesting, they don’t feel very connected to each other. That aside, the main character is a silent protagonist type, but plays it very well using noises and expressions that in the end give her as much personality as anyone else. You aren’t going to feel super emotionally invested in the plot and characters, but you’ll have an excellent time.

With collectibles there are so many different types. There are yarn balls, which give new abilities (hats) when enough are found. Relics, sort of a multi piece collectible, you need to find a few of a certain type to make one, like for making the burger, you’ll need the top and bottom of it. Once you put them together it unlocks a bonus level, which is reminiscent of the secret levels in Mario Sunshine, with a focus just on platforming with no story, as you just kind of jump around random cubes in space. I could not love segments like this more. ♡ Finally there are rift tokens, which you can use to get random cosmetic options, such as different looks for your hats, different color palettes for your character, or music remixes. I loved these because I’m a sucker for character customization, and will frequently change my appearance several times in a sitting. I’m the type of person that plays Animal Crossing for 1 hour and changes my look three times during it to match my current mood. I definitely want to add character customization to lots of games we’ll make, I think it adds a fun element to it.

The gameplay is bouncy and energetic, and the levels are great at having separate paths with secrets in them that, even when long to explore, feel really easy to go right back to where you were at the start of the path. Several times I was impressed at the perfect wrap arounds since some games you look for a secret and get lost or just have to back track with nothing other than maybe a respawned enemy or two. You have different powers tied to whichever hat you have on and I find things like this to be very fun in 3D platformers, though I will say that some of the hats don’t feel as useful as others and you won’t put it on often. (Looking at you, sprint hat. Why do you have so many cute customization options if you’re just going to suck?)

So for this one I’d recommend it because it takes a lot of classic older 3D platformer feelings but does them with a fresh feeling. It’s less trying to figure out the genre than it is showing why the genre is amazing.

Cave Story

This game impresses me time and time again and I think I’m addicted to buying it on every platform I can. This game was made by one man in his free time over five years and it was free to play for quite some time; surprising given it’s quality. I’m glad that they started selling it though because they deserve the money for this excellent game.

The gameplay isn’t too complex. Mostly platforming challenges and instead of close range attacks like most platformers, you actually have several different types of guns. You can get several weapon types throughout the game, then you collect these little yellow triangles (I always called them Doritos) to level up each weapon. Each weapon’s level cap is low, but each level up gives a better version of it. Taking damage will level down your gun however, but getting it back in shape isn’t too hard. The only thing to keep in mind is if you want to level up a gun you aren’t currently using, then every time you see the Doritos you have to switch guns to whichever one you want to level, pick up the Doritos, then switch back. Not hard to get into the habit of, but a bit of a pain.

As for the story it blends with the gameplay very well. The world, characters, and story all feel very interconnected. I think it’s important for games to not feel like THE CUT SCENE SECTION and THE COMBAT SECTION. The world feels real and the characters are easy to start caring for. It’s one of those games that can make you laugh or tear up, and as you play you’ll feel yourself become the character and want to know more about the people around you and the world itself. Most games throw you in and tell you who your character likes and implies that you’re invested in the world around you from even before the start. While I don’t mind that approach at all, it’s interesting to see it done like Cave Story where you’re a stranger in the world with no memories or attachments and you feel yourself make them as your character does. It lets you really look at the world through your character’s eyes.

Some cool features of Cave Story + specifically includes different difficulty settings, multiple versions of the soundtrack to choose from (all with their own beautiful and unique feeling. I like playing with the Cave Story + one or remastered, but if you want to hear it all badass sounding then Ridiculon covers that), a really fun Local Co-op where you can play out the whole game with a friend, and you can change the graphics between the original graphics and the remastered ones whenever you want in the settings. I personally love when games implement this. The first time I saw it was Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and when I realized that I could go between new and old graphics even while in game just by pressing a button. Man, I wasn’t even playing that game anymore, I was just walking around looking at grass textures and switching it back and forth like a madman.

Also this game can get challenging towards the end, and if you want the best ending, you’ll probably have to look up what to do ahead of time, because none of what’s needed to be done will be something you do naturally in my opinion.

Overall it’s fantastic and if you can take a bit of challenge it should really draw you in.

DLC Quest

This game is small, short, but very fun, especially if you’re familiar with common gaming tropes.

The writing, characters, and story, are all based around common tropes in gaming, poking fun at them but exploring them in new ways, much like the movie Cabin In the Woods in the horror genre. The writing is very clever and funny. At one point there’s an area with a sign that says “Allan please add world” which is a reference to the game Hitman: Blood Money where the description of an item reads “Allan please add details” and has been referenced in many other games. The game writing knows itself well, to the point where several characters point out being part of a game, or make it clear which pointless NPC role they’re clearly meant to fill.

In the gameplay it’s basic jumping and platforming without much attacking, though there is one important detail. You don’t have access to most gameplay elements until you pay with coins in the game, poking fun at something I hate, DLC microtransactions type of stuff. At the start you can’t even move left or pause the game without paying coins first. It turns the game into an interesting experiment, that while it was done well, I wish was longer.

Level design isn’t amazing however. Falling could make you have to redo way too much platforming and I’d get lost on multiple occasions. Though I am known for getting lost in games easier than most, most of the other games on this list don’t come anywhere near this issue.

I recommend giving this game a try. It’s an interesting look at gaming and a fun time, but it obviously isn’t going to blow you away or anything.

Ori and the Blind Forest

A beautiful game where everything looks and sounds amazing. The first few minutes might make you cry, but after that you probably won’t care as much, very similar to my experience with the movie Up.

The story isn’t important though, because it shines in it’s gameplay and art. I will say one way the story suffers is if you’re in a scene you actually really care about the plot and as you move your character you feel like you’re in it and you’re trying to make it through and figure out what happens next, then you die over and over. Every time it sends you back, that obviously gives the story scene less and less impact and by the time you see the ending of the scene you don’t even care, you just want to save so you won’t have to go through that section again.

The gameplay is amazing but challenging. Mostly based around jumping (it even has double and triple jumps yay~), wall jumping (kind of similar but sadly isn’t present in most games), and attacks. Your character feels fairly weak and though they get stronger this is not a game you can just run through without thought. The save system in the game is based on how many points you have and it takes some points to save so you have to pick your save locations wisely. This is one of those games where you could end up doing a platforming challenge that takes a few seconds to do but you keep dying on it so then you have to redo that few seconds 50 times over. Then I’ll immediately crawl over to a save spot, happy that I did one small feat in this big scary world. Throughout the game you gain different very fun and helpful abilities and there’s also a skill tree which is rare for platformers. Put in points you get while playing into one of the three branches to continue expanding on each one. When you start the game and look at the tree, all ready to be filled out, you’re probably going to find something to get excited to save up for. Try not to focus on only one branch though unless you know what you’re doing.

I recommend this for gamers who would like more of a challenge. If you liked Super Meat Boy you’ll like this, though I found Ori to be less punishing. Finding collectibles and exploring the world is so much fun and if you can handle throwing your tiny, cute, and frail body into spikes constantly then you’ll have a great time. This and Cave Story are good when you really want to just have some platforming challenges without overly thinking about story and other elements.

Grow Home

A shorter game (especially if you don’t plan on getting all the collectibles) but with a really nice feeling to it. The story is very basic (well honestly almost non-existent) but it doesn’t really need one. You go around as a cute little robot, jumping and climbing to collect things.

As far as the climbing goes, it almost reminds me of playing Girp as a young teen. Most of the gameplay consists of holding two buttons back and forth to climb around the world. The fact that climbing is done mainly with two buttons back and forth (similar to Donkey Kong King of Swing) can mean it can hurt your fingers after a while, so keep that in mind.

There are tons of collectibles throughout the world but the world is relatively small and the types of collectibles are limited. Besides scanning individual new objects and creatures, the only form of collectibles are glowing blue crystals found throughout the world. It sounds same-y but you still feel excited every time you spot a new one and once you see it, the next thought is how do I get to it??? The answer to that while usually simple, can take some time but you generally feel satisfied and have fun exploring as you go. For most of the game you locate the crystals through sound so if while playing the game you put on a youtube video, I’d keep the volume low. Also keep in mind, your little robot character moves around like they’re drunk. Wobbling all over the place even while jumping. It can make it more of a challenge but it’s cute to watch and fun to move around.

Do you know that feeling when you’re rock climbing, you’re high up, you see the rock climbing wall above you stick straight out, then you look down and feel absolutely terrified? This game gave me that feeling several times, which I did not know was possible, but my body almost felt scared that I was actually going to fall. I’ve never had a game give me that feeling, and you might think well that’s terrifying, why would I even want that, Aria? Because reader, it was exciting and really put me in the game. It made me feel like I really grabbed that crystal! Also, I hate actual rock climbing so I recommend a version where you can’t actually fall in real life.

Something to note is there really isn’t any music. Most of all the noises are ambient sounds and occasional cute robo noises. Personally I watched a youtube video while I played.

Since it’s small and relaxing though, I’d say it’s worth giving a go, though I wouldn’t get it if you need something fast paced or with story. Patience is the key in this one.

Psychonauts

Finally Psychonauts. While this list has no order, Psychonauts isn’t just my favorite platformer or collect-a-thon, it’s my favorite game of all time. It embodies a lot of what I’d like to put into games, from writing, to gameplay elements, to level design.

The story is wild to explain but as you play it doesn’t feel weird at all somehow. You’re a psychic who wants to go to psychic summer camp so you run away from your home at the circus to go there and you get to know the other campers, hope your parent’s don’t try to take you home, solve conspiracies, and try to become a psychic soldier aka a Psychonaut!

The gameplay and story connect pretty well and the story is very engaging. The game is known for its amazing writing and it often took me by surprise. Also you know how NPCs or filler characters often are boring and aren’t much to think about? That is not the case with this game, each character no matter how small intrigues me and gets me thinking about their life. Several characters will sometimes say random dark things when they think you aren’t in earshot and I’m still to this day thinking about Dogen or Crystal and Clem. Also if you want some excellent dialogue, the first level, Basic Braining, has a section where you’re in a plane. My advice? Don’t exit the plane. Sit there and listen to what Vernon has to say. He goes on for longer than you’d expect, it’s amazing and I still think about what he says to this day. Though he does start looping at one point so then I just leave him there while he’s still talking. This is a game where more likely than not you’ll get engaged and pulled in by the characters, the plot, and the world.

Can I talk about the art? Please, I’m begging. I adore it. It’s so weird and unique to itself. It doesn’t seem to be trying to be anything but it’s own thing and in the PS2 era this came out in when I was a kid, it blew my mind. I recently even drew myself in the style of this game, just as a challenge since my own art varies so much from it. I think most art styles vary from it. Here’s my attempt at it. How’d I do?

Next I have to mention the powers, I love games with different abilities in them and this game has quite a few. They’re very fun to use in battle, but I recommend also testing them all out on NPCS as well. Try setting a camper on fire with pyrokinesis, or use clairvoyance to see how your teacher actually views you. Clairvoyance is my favorite but after that, Levitation is the best. It creates such a fun way to explore and move around the world.

In games like these I love collectibles and I think it’s super important to make the game in a way where it’s fun to traverse the world and with this one I love it so much that one of the ways I treat myself after a hard day is doing a 100% completion playthrough of this game. Sadly there’s only 1 form of customization in the game but it is fun. You can change the color of your levitation ball. I used to do pink to be cute but there’s a later level that feels dark and gives me the creeps so I always use white in that level like it’s a glowing nightlight to protect me.

This game has the best level design I’ve ever seen. Each level has different themes and feelings in it and plays differently. Each level is supposed to represent the mind of a different character and they capture it amazingly. Every little object and detail in each world feels like the character that you’re in the brain of. Then after a level the camp is a perfect hubworld, comforting to be in but also has occasional changes or cutscenes that you can trigger by finding them at specific times making the hub world itself feel alive and evolving. For a great secret location I recommend looking for the hidden room in Milla’s brain. I call it the nightmare room and I love it. Also which level is y’all’s favorite? Mine is the Milkman one, not just due to the humor and theming but I find it the most fun to jump around and explore and with the way the world twists and turns around it provides a completely unique experience. They’re all great though! (except for Sashas)

This game has my favorite collectible system. Tons of different types and different rewards for different types and it lets you revisit old levels to get ones you missed. The game even shows which levels and even which section you’re missing things in. They have collectibles in the hub world too! Also The collectibles feel like they’re all fun concepts in the world, unlike a meaningless item. The collectibles are memory vaults (which give you backstory to whoever’s brain you’re in), emotional baggage (Such a cute concept. You have to find a bag and a tag for it that match each other, then the bag will stop crying and you’ll get a cutscene of the bag and tag happily reuniting!), Cobwebs (You’ll see them throughout brains and they can be turned in for Psi Cards), Psi cards (You’ll see them in the hub world), Psi Cores (Use one core with 9 cards to make a Psi Challenge Marker which levels you up. Leveling up can upgrade your powers!), Scavenger Hunt Items (Turn them all in for level ups), and Figments (figments of the imagination, colored cute drawings that you’ll see all over brains. They’re a bit transparent though so finding them all can be a challenge).

This game is fun to 100% but I’ll give a piece of advice and a warning. My advice is in the first level, when there’s a punching game, try playing it more times. Keep going, dude. My warning is that it’s fun to find everything (except for the fairy figment in Napoleon’s mind) but there’s one segment in Milla’s mind called The Race that is absolutely awful for collecting in. It might make you nauseous or give you a headache. The section was designed to run through it fast but when I replay it to look for figments, I have to go slow and methodical which I find makes the colors more nauseating at that speed. It’s hard to go backwards in it as well and it’s hard to even see the figments due to the color choices in this section. Fair warning. Also don’t worry about beating the game before collecting everything. At one point there’s a save called POINT OF NO RETURN that lets you know that it’s time to backtrack if you missed anything.

Overall I recommend this one most of all for it’s clever use of writing, level design, and collectibles. If you want a good impression of some feelings that’d I’d want to implement in SynAtria’s games, it’s this one for sure.

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If you want to know more about our games, check out Wintercearig, or support us on Patreon to see the latest info on the platformer we’re working on!

If you want more art content from me, I can be found on many social media platforms so here’s my  LinkTree if you want any of those links ❀

Thank you for reading! Let me know in the comments your opinions on these and what some of your favorites are!

[merinomeri]

Pure of Heart ~ A Super Paper Mario Retrospective and Essay

   So! This is mostly going to be very personal on my part, but, after finishing the 10 Year Anniversary Stream done by my dear friend @altermentality, I felt this needed to be written. Cutting to it!

   10 years ago, I was in a very dark place. We’d only recently discovered my diagnosis with manic depression and several anxiety problems, and I wasn’t sure how to cope with it all. Between the several different medicine changes, doctors, and still being in school, it was, for a lack of better terms, hell. Honestly, I didn’t cope very well at all...I can remember closing myself up more than ever before and just feeling...broken.

   I was eventually put in a hospital program. While I was in and out of it, I played Super Paper Mario. Not only because I’d loved the previous, but, because I needed something to take my mind off everything else going on in my life at that time.

   Several things in the game clicked with me. Good things, bad things, silly things...the biggest though were the characters. I fell in love with Bleck and his minions almost immediately and I almost didn’t want to defeat them!

   ...this was one of the reasons why certain things regarding them tugged at me so much. A perfect example being O’Chunks pleading to be killed. Being almost constantly suicidal myself, I remember shutting the game off during that cutscene and eventually having to do that entire fight over. It was...so strange to see a character beg for something like that. A character who, in the past, I’d found so funny and a source of relief for me. It scared me. But it only made me love him more as time went on. Because I could relate to that...

   Also in my down time, I’d lurk on the internet, specifically dA. That’s where I first found @altermentality. A Super Paper Mario artist whose work immediately brightened my mood. Her style and humor was exactly what I needed, and it reminded me of the game itself!

   Some time passed, and I’d finished the game. It left an impact on me that I couldn’t really describe, but, I felt like it connected to what I was going through. I’d check up on Courtney’s art still as much as I could. I’d even told one of my doctors about how this girl and her art had been helping me feel better, and they urged me to talk to her. ...I couldn’t though! There was no way! Who was I, after all? Just another fan of the game...no one special, just a depressed and moody kid...

   A while later, I found out she and her boyfriend were starting a comic, which I also began to stalk. Eventually, I’d gathered up enough courage to leave a comment and tell her how much I loved her work. To my surprise, her response was far more than I expected. I cried that day, the same way I cried when I finished the game.

   We became friends; we talked about her comic and the game, and we bonded through it. She helped me out through some really rough times, and I couldn’t believe this person, who I’d only met by chance through mutual love for a game, had done so much for me.

   She began streaming the game this year for it’s 10 Year Anniversary, and we were all excited. It wasn’t until these streams that I learned about her own struggles and how this game helped her too. Again, it made me cry. Someone I look up to and regard as one of the people who’ve helped me the most felt the same way I did while playing this game.

   It’s a powerful thing. The story holds little details in it (like the aforementioned O’Chunks bit) that can strike a lot of people. It may go over their heads at first, but, the bigger plot about love and having hope in life...really effects those who play it. It’s a story about never giving up, even when things look bad. Which is exactly what Courtney and I did.

   This is a little sloppy because it’s late, and the stream just finished, but I wanted to get out as much as I could for now.

   Thank you, Super Paper Mario, for helping me meet one of my best friends, and also helping me understand some of my own emotions better. ♥

[biofunmy]

The Death of Chintz – The New York Times

When Mario Buatta died in 2018, a few days shy of his 83rd birthday, he left no will. Which is not to say that he didn’t leave anything behind. “I am the original hoarder,” he would tell you.

He had a ferocious appetite for collecting that started when he was 11 and bought an 18th-century lap desk for $12 on layaway and continued until just months before his death. (There are invoices to prove it.)

It was a habit that filled every square foot of his parlor-floor townhouse apartment on East 80th Street (famously off-limits until the end), three storage units in Harlem, two in Staten Island and a Victorian gothic house in Thompson, Conn.

An avatar of the English country style, and of 1980s excess, Mr. Buatta was perhaps the only decorator to achieve fame on the East Coast, West Coast and all points between, during a time when the wealthy found their footing with their decorators, not their art advisers.

The Prince of Chintz, as a television reporter named Mr. Buatta in 1984, designed interiors for a certain kind of American royalty — for Doubledays, Forbes and Newhouses, two presidents and Mariah Carey.

He had a rigorous eye and a sharp sense of color, and he was exacting about the spaces he decorated, dizzy with pattern and swagged in fabric and trim though they were. And yet Mr. Buatta lived, as his friend Christopher Mason put it, in “exotic disarray.”

Collecting is biography (objects can be proxies for all sorts of things), and Mr. Buatta’s particular story, and the bygone age he presided over with impish humor, went on view at Sotheby’s in New York City on Jan. 16. The 950 lots, delivered in 19 trucks, will be auctioned off on Jan. 23 and Jan. 24.

Collecting is also a form of seeing, and Mr. Buatta had a hungry eye, along with a drive for perfection he said came from his father’s lack of approval.

Mr. Buatta would tell you that his father, a bandleader, could never figure out just what his son did for a living. And growing up in an all-white Art Deco house on Staten Island, with a neatnik mother who died when he was 23, Mr. Buatta developed an allergy to minimalism.

Dog Paintings and $100,000 Palms

Perhaps in compensation, he stockpiled 19th-century dog paintings (“my ancestors,” he liked to joke), lacquered furniture, Delft china, obelisks, porcelain vegetables, botanical prints and Regency furniture. Also architectural fragments, like a George III fireplace surround with matching columns carved into swoopy palm fronds that lived propped up in his bedroom, a cluttered nest with glazed purple walls, ceiling-high bookcases and a Chinese four poster bed with a canopy like an Ottoman dome.

“Are you insane?” Patricia Altschul remembered saying to him as he pursued the palms at an auction in London. She was stunned at the price he paid (over $100,000), and that he wanted them for himself, not a client. “It will make me happy,” he told her.

Ms. Altschul, a star of the reality series “Southern Charm,” was a client and shopping partner of Mr. Buatta’s for more three decades. He once let her have it for a soap dish she introduced into one of the pristine spaces he had made for her.

“He told me, ‘We haven’t worked this hard to make this beautiful showplace for you to have an ugly soap dish to ruin it all,’” she said. “It wasn’t anything hideous. I mean, I’ve got pretty good taste, but it offended him and he immediately threw it away.”

At his home, though, everything stayed.

Beyond antiques, his appetites extended to decorating and design books, which he stacked in hip-high zigzags, gag props (enormous pairs of underpants and black wigs), Turnbull & Asser shirts (why launder when you can buy more?) and newspaper and magazine clippings about himself.

Like Andy Warhol, another ravenous collector, Mr. Buatta saved everything: decades-old taxi receipts, theater programs, letters and invoices, as well as a fully decorated Christmas tree (fake) surrounded by beautifully wrapped presents, all of which was napped in dust, since Mr. Buatta’s prohibition against visitors extended to housekeepers.

“Dust is a protective coating” Mr. Buatta was fond of saying. “I like it in big balls.”

His Overstuffed ‘Protective Cocoon’

In his last years, Emily Evans Eerdmans, a design historian who was Mr. Buatta’s co-author on his 2013 monograph (Mr. Buatta called it the Buattapedia), and others urged him to winnow, and tried to help him do so.

The Christmas tree got the heave-ho, as did the palm fronds because he was tripping over them, but little else. As he told Ms. Eerdmans, “‘You have Andrew’” — referring to Ms. Eerdmans’s husband — “‘I have my things.’”

Of his stuff, she said: “It was his lover and his family. It was a protective cocoon.”

Yet shopping for Mr. Buatta was more than just “filling the Grand Canyon of the soul,” said Todd Romano, his friend and former assistant. It was both sport and distraction. The bidding and the badinage was “his own form of daytime cabaret,” said Angus Wilkie, an antiques dealer.

Margaret Kennedy, a former editor of House Beautiful, said: “Mario gave his clients the dream. It is the decorator’s job to create a beautiful world, a fantasy, but for him it got out of control.”

Mr. Buatta’s heir is his brother, Joseph, but it has been Ms. Eerdmans’s role to sift through the acreage of stuff that Mr. Buatta left behind, a job that began last March and is continuing, with 12-hour days and a lot of Advil Cold & Sinus.

She has given 615 ties to Housing Works. The envelope stuffed with clippings of his work and addressed to his father (but never sent) she hopes will be donated, along with 80 boxes of his papers, to an organization yet to be determined.

The Connecticut house, in a state of atmospheric decay that veered toward collapse, took six weeks to clear out. Ms. Eerdmans described rooms devoted solely to lamps, pillows, tables and 300 rolls of fabric. Mr. Buatta had enraged some of his neighbors there, having neglected the place for years, because of ill health and overwork. He was notoriously hard on assistants and mostly operated by himself, particularly as he got older.

Ms. Eerdmans has been hired by the estate to undertake what has been a grubby, exhausting and emotional ordeal that she nonetheless described as a labor of love, and an honor.

She knew what Mr. Buatta wanted: a bonanza auction, a new flurry of press. And she knew how to do it, much as she and others knew how to take care of him in those final years, wheeling him to doctor’s appointments and fending off his cantankerous explosions and menu demands, like Italian pastries from his favorite bakery chosen over the phone from texted photos.

It is no joke getting old, particularly for stubborn, vivacious personalities like Mr. Buatta, and he chafed against its indignities. He and Ms. Eerdmans had not spoken in three months when a friend called in July of 2018 and said, as she remembered, “‘Mario isn’t answering his phone, can you go over there and see if he’s O.K.?’”

Despite the exhortations of friends, Mr. Buatta was not eager to focus on the aftermath of his death, which made for an unusual arrangement with Sotheby’s.

“I’ve never done a sale of this magnitude,” said Dennis Harrington, the head of the Sotheby’s English and European furniture department in New York, describing how most collectors inventory their possessions during their lifetimes — and have less stuff. “Everything was exactly his taste, and exactly what he loved.”

A Beautiful Yellow Room

Beyond those nostalgic for Mr. Buatta’s bygone world, and the many who are missing the man himself, what is the market these days for porcelain asparagus spears, Chinese side tables and tufted chintz slipper chairs?

When “antiques” has become such a dirty word that the Winter Antiques Show, once a glittering social event of which Mr. Buatta was the chairman for more than a decade, has been rebranded as the Winter Show, who will buy the “Louie-hooey chairs,” as Mr. Buatta liked to say of that former living-room staple? (The estimates in the sale, which has the nickname Harold, for the plastic cockroaches he was fond of deploying, range from $500 to $50,000, and the auction is estimated to bring in more than $1.9 million.)

Working in Ms. Eerdmans’s wake, Mr. Harrington and his colleagues culled about half of what they found. “Like every collector, Mario was obsessive, and his obsession was that he could never stop acquiring things,” Mr. Harrington said.

“He also had a horror vacui of a plain surface,” he added, noting that he had never seen so many painted and decorated objects. Or needlepoint pillows with arch sayings on them.

Mr. Buatta was mischievous, and he liked to poke fun at the affectations of the world he inhabited, but he was serious about his work and relentless in his pursuit of perfection there.

Like the character in the John Cheever novel “Bullet Park,” Mr. Buatta had as his emotional touchstone a beautiful yellow room, in his case found in the London apartment of Nancy Lancaster, the Virginia-born decorator who helped foment the English country house style. That “buttah yellah,” as rendered in her Southern accent, was what inspired his own living room, its yellow walls sliced with fat blue satin bows and armies of dog paintings.

That room has been recreated at Sotheby’s, right down to those bows. An early black-and-white photo of Mr. Buatta, looking movie star glamorous, has been blown up to fill a wall, along with the show’s title: “Mario Buatta, Prince of Interiors.”

Other rooms designed to match those in his apartment were among the gallery spaces. In the bedroom area, the walls had been painted deep purple, and there was Mr. Buatta’s beloved canopy bed and his bookshelves, filled with (a small fraction) of his books. “A Life in Decoration,” by Keith Irvine, the New York-based English decorator who was one of Mr. Buatta’s first employers, had been inscribed by its author.

“Still in business, dear?” Mr. Irvine had written wickedly.

Sahred From Source link Real Estate

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[mastcomm]

The Death of Chintz – The New York Times

When Mario Buatta died in 2018, a few days shy of his 83rd birthday, he left no will. Which is not to say that he didn’t leave anything behind. “I am the original hoarder,” he would tell you.

He had a ferocious appetite for collecting that started when he was 11 and bought an 18th-century lap desk for $12 on layaway and continued until just months before his death. (There are invoices to prove it.)

It was a habit that filled every square foot of his parlor-floor townhouse apartment on East 80th Street (famously off-limits until the end), three storage units in Harlem, two in Staten Island and a Victorian gothic house in Thompson, Conn.

An avatar of the English country style, and of 1980s excess, Mr. Buatta was perhaps the only decorator to achieve fame on the East Coast, West Coast and all points between, during a time when the wealthy found their footing with their decorators, not their art advisers.

The Prince of Chintz, as a television reporter named Mr. Buatta in 1984, designed interiors for a certain kind of American royalty — for Doubledays, Forbes and Newhouses, two presidents and Mariah Carey.

He had a rigorous eye and a sharp sense of color, and he was exacting about the spaces he decorated, dizzy with pattern and swagged in fabric and trim though they were. And yet Mr. Buatta lived, as his friend Christopher Mason put it, in “exotic disarray.”

Collecting is biography (objects can be proxies for all sorts of things), and Mr. Buatta’s particular story, and the bygone age he presided over with impish humor, went on view at Sotheby’s in New York City on Jan. 16. The 950 lots, delivered in 19 trucks, will be auctioned off on Jan. 23 and Jan. 24.

Collecting is also a form of seeing, and Mr. Buatta had a hungry eye, along with a drive for perfection he said came from his father’s lack of approval.

Mr. Buatta would tell you that his father, a bandleader, could never figure out just what his son did for a living. And growing up in an all-white Art Deco house on Staten Island, with a neatnik mother who died when he was 23, Mr. Buatta developed an allergy to minimalism.

Dog Paintings and $100,000 Palms

Perhaps in compensation, he stockpiled 19th-century dog paintings (“my ancestors,” he liked to joke), lacquered furniture, Delft china, obelisks, porcelain vegetables, botanical prints and Regency furniture. Also architectural fragments, like a George III fireplace surround with matching columns carved into swoopy palm fronds that lived propped up in his bedroom, a cluttered nest with glazed purple walls, ceiling-high bookcases and a Chinese four poster bed with a canopy like an Ottoman dome.

“Are you insane?” Patricia Altschul remembered saying to him as he pursued the palms at an auction in London. She was stunned at the price he paid (over $100,000), and that he wanted them for himself, not a client. “It will make me happy,” he told her.

Ms. Altschul, a star of the reality series “Southern Charm,” was a client and shopping partner of Mr. Buatta’s for more three decades. He once let her have it for a soap dish she introduced into one of the pristine spaces he had made for her.

“He told me, ‘We haven’t worked this hard to make this beautiful showplace for you to have an ugly soap dish to ruin it all,’” she said. “It wasn’t anything hideous. I mean, I’ve got pretty good taste, but it offended him and he immediately threw it away.”

At his home, though, everything stayed.

Beyond antiques, his appetites extended to decorating and design books, which he stacked in hip-high zigzags, gag props (enormous pairs of underpants and black wigs), Turnbull & Asser shirts (why launder when you can buy more?) and newspaper and magazine clippings about himself.

Like Andy Warhol, another ravenous collector, Mr. Buatta saved everything: decades-old taxi receipts, theater programs, letters and invoices, as well as a fully decorated Christmas tree (fake) surrounded by beautifully wrapped presents, all of which was napped in dust, since Mr. Buatta’s prohibition against visitors extended to housekeepers.

“Dust is a protective coating” Mr. Buatta was fond of saying. “I like it in big balls.”

His Overstuffed ‘Protective Cocoon’

In his last years, Emily Evans Eerdmans, a design historian who was Mr. Buatta’s co-author on his 2013 monograph (Mr. Buatta called it the Buattapedia), and others urged him to winnow, and tried to help him do so.

The Christmas tree got the heave-ho, as did the palm fronds because he was tripping over them, but little else. As he told Ms. Eerdmans, “‘You have Andrew’” — referring to Ms. Eerdmans’s husband — “‘I have my things.’”

Of his stuff, she said: “It was his lover and his family. It was a protective cocoon.”

Yet shopping for Mr. Buatta was more than just “filling the Grand Canyon of the soul,” said Todd Romano, his friend and former assistant. It was both sport and distraction. The bidding and the badinage was “his own form of daytime cabaret,” said Angus Wilkie, an antiques dealer.

Margaret Kennedy, a former editor of House Beautiful, said: “Mario gave his clients the dream. It is the decorator’s job to create a beautiful world, a fantasy, but for him it got out of control.”

Mr. Buatta’s heir is his brother, Joseph, but it has been Ms. Eerdmans’s role to sift through the acreage of stuff that Mr. Buatta left behind, a job that began last March and is continuing, with 12-hour days and a lot of Advil Cold & Sinus.

She has given 615 ties to Housing Works. The envelope stuffed with clippings of his work and addressed to his father (but never sent) she hopes will be donated, along with 80 boxes of his papers, to an organization yet to be determined.

The Connecticut house, in a state of atmospheric decay that veered toward collapse, took six weeks to clear out. Ms. Eerdmans described rooms devoted solely to lamps, pillows, tables and 300 rolls of fabric. Mr. Buatta had enraged some of his neighbors there, having neglected the place for years, because of ill health and overwork. He was notoriously hard on assistants and mostly operated by himself, particularly as he got older.

Ms. Eerdmans has been hired by the estate to undertake what has been a grubby, exhausting and emotional ordeal that she nonetheless described as a labor of love, and an honor.

She knew what Mr. Buatta wanted: a bonanza auction, a new flurry of press. And she knew how to do it, much as she and others knew how to take care of him in those final years, wheeling him to doctor’s appointments and fending off his cantankerous explosions and menu demands, like Italian pastries from his favorite bakery chosen over the phone from texted photos.

It is no joke getting old, particularly for stubborn, vivacious personalities like Mr. Buatta, and he chafed against its indignities. He and Ms. Eerdmans had not spoken in three months when a friend called in July of 2018 and said, as she remembered, “‘Mario isn’t answering his phone, can you go over there and see if he’s O.K.?’”

Despite the exhortations of friends, Mr. Buatta was not eager to focus on the aftermath of his death, which made for an unusual arrangement with Sotheby’s.

“I’ve never done a sale of this magnitude,” said Dennis Harrington, the head of the Sotheby’s English and European furniture department in New York, describing how most collectors inventory their possessions during their lifetimes — and have less stuff. “Everything was exactly his taste, and exactly what he loved.”

A Beautiful Yellow Room

Beyond those nostalgic for Mr. Buatta’s bygone world, and the many who are missing the man himself, what is the market these days for porcelain asparagus spears, Chinese side tables and tufted chintz slipper chairs?

When “antiques” has become such a dirty word that the Winter Antiques Show, once a glittering social event of which Mr. Buatta was the chairman for more than a decade, has been rebranded as the Winter Show, who will buy the “Louie-hooey chairs,” as Mr. Buatta liked to say of that former living-room staple? (The estimates in the sale, which has the nickname Harold, for the plastic cockroaches he was fond of deploying, range from $500 to $50,000, and the auction is estimated to bring in more than $1.9 million.)

Working in Ms. Eerdmans’s wake, Mr. Harrington and his colleagues culled about half of what they found. “Like every collector, Mario was obsessive, and his obsession was that he could never stop acquiring things,” Mr. Harrington said.

“He also had a horror vacui of a plain surface,” he added, noting that he had never seen so many painted and decorated objects. Or needlepoint pillows with arch sayings on them.

Mr. Buatta was mischievous, and he liked to poke fun at the affectations of the world he inhabited, but he was serious about his work and relentless in his pursuit of perfection there.

Like the character in the John Cheever novel “Bullet Park,” Mr. Buatta had as his emotional touchstone a beautiful yellow room, in his case found in the London apartment of Nancy Lancaster, the Virginia-born decorator who helped foment the English country house style. That “buttah yellah,” as rendered in her Southern accent, was what inspired his own living room, its yellow walls sliced with fat blue satin bows and armies of dog paintings.

That room has been recreated at Sotheby’s, right down to those bows. An early black-and-white photo of Mr. Buatta, looking movie star glamorous, has been blown up to fill a wall, along with the show’s title: “Mario Buatta, Prince of Interiors.”

Other rooms designed to match those in his apartment were among the gallery spaces. In the bedroom area, the walls had been painted deep purple, and there was Mr. Buatta’s beloved canopy bed and his bookshelves, filled with (a small fraction) of his books. “A Life in Decoration,” by Keith Irvine, the New York-based English decorator who was one of Mr. Buatta’s first employers, had been inscribed by its author.

“Still in business, dear?” Mr. Irvine had written wickedly.

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[rosecolored-gay]

All them questions bitch

Okayyyyy

1. Are you a side, back, or front sleeper?

- Side or stomach, mainly stomach.

2. When you hum random music what song is it?

- Probably the jeopardy theme song.

3. Explain your username

- I am a gay, and rose colored because of the Paramore song.

4: Explain my username

- Anon?

5: How did you fall into the tumblr hellpit?

- Lol, my friend Tuna from high school marching band.

6: What fan interest of yours would you least prefer to explain in your workplace?

-My hidden love for Degrassi, and other shows from when I was kid.

7: What fan interest or yours would you most enjoy explaining in your workplace?

- Definitely my love for Grey’s Anatomy

8: Last song you listened to?

- High Hopes - Panic! At the Disco

9: Weirdest thing on your dash today?

- Not weird, but saw a lot of porn

10: In a perfect world, what animal would you most like to adopt?

- A polar bear!

11: What animal would you most like someone else to adopt?

- This question doesn’t make sense to me

12: What’s something trivial you have strong opinions about?

- OOH man, if you want to get me fired up, I have a strong opinion on LGBTQ rights, gender inequality, a woman’s right to choose, and race inequality. I’m a sociologist, so.

13: What would your super-villain finishing move be?

- Spiderweb like Tom Holland did in Homecoming.

14: Explain your icon.

- It’s me, looking hella gay.

15: You meet your true love(s) today. Possibly again. Describe your ideal hilarious romcom meetcute. (can be aromantic)

- Ummm, I always love the idea of two people picking up each others coffee order by accident and then they go to switch it and the one person is like “why’d you order this like this?”, idk and it leads to conversation, lol. I have a wild imagination when it comes to writing.

16: Your comfort food, and why.

- I really really really love Matzo Brei made by my dad. 

17: What type of mad science will you Show Them All with? (ex: mad chemical engineer, mad library scientist, mad linguist). Which of your creations will probably turn on you?

- I have no clue

18: Favorite cheesy trope?

-The having to share the bed trope

19: Favorite trope nobody writes enough of?

- Fake dating

20: Rec me a book, comic, or anime, or other piece of media you wish there were more like.

- Mmm, I could always go for more LGBTQ fiction.

21: Wierdest tumblr drama you’ve been a part of or stumbled across.

- Uh well, someone was harassing me on anon for a while. 

22: You know those things from a million years ago your brain suddenly reminds you to feel embarrased/guilty/bad about in full technicolor? Tell me one of them.

- L O L, how about the time I decided not to listen to my mom, and I was swinging my body back and forth on my grandmother’s walker, and it was on concrete, it moved, and I fell on my ass and bruised my tailbone so bad I couldn’t sit for a week.

23: What is something you collect?

- Notebooks

24: Pens. Do you know where the one closest to you came from? Would you be distressed if someone took it?

- Its a pilot precise pen, it belongs to my mother and if I took it she’d murder me.

25: The last game you played is crossed with the zombie apocalypse and now going down outside your window. How boned are you?

- Like video game? Uh, Super Mario Bros.

26: What was the last thing that made you cry?

- Getting a job that I really wanted.

27: Most embarrassing/weird/personal body thing you’re willing to talk about.

- Umm, I have a lot of freckles just randomly placed all over me.

28: Your icon is now the voice of your inner therapist. How is this gonna go?

- So, I’m my own therapist?

29: Name a kink you only like hypothetically.

- I’m so vanilla

30: Name a kink you find bewildering.

- Anything with animals is just fucking weird

31: You have acquired: a mouse, a lizard, a rabbit, a spider, a domestic fox. Name them! Who gets to sleep on the bed?

- Mouse is definitely now named Mickey, the Lizard is Godzilla, Rabbit is Dash, Spider - No way in hell am I keeping a spider.., Fox is named Zeus

32: What was your favorite childhood toy? Do you still have it?

- It was a barney plush, and he’s in a box in my closet

33: Hit “shuffle” on your media player and tell me your favorite lyric from the song that comes up.

- “Did you take him to the pier in Santa Monica? Forget to bring a jacket, wrap up in him cause you wanted to? I'm just curious, is it serious?”

34: What fan media (of yours or someone else’s) would you most like to see art/fic for?

- These Strange Steps, it’s a Faberry fic on AO3. 

35: What do you ship that you think would be hard to explain convincingly to other people? Attempt an explanation.

- Uhhhh, I kinda shipped Arizona and April from Grey’s Anatomy.

36: What meme gets on your nerves?

- The salt bae one I guess

37: Showers or baths?

- Showers

38: Who was your biggest childhood nemesis and why?

- This kid Talia, she lied to a kid that liked me and told him I hated him and almost ruined our friendship.

39: First writing prompt that comes to your head.

- AU on fake dating

40: Least favorite color.

- Purple

41: What was the last thing you got really obsessed with?

- Cutthroat Kitchen

42: What’s the weirdest experience you’ve ever had on a mind-altering substance? (prescription, recreational, otc, or food)

- Uh, got high and drunk at the same time and just felt hella fucked up

43: Shuffle up a random song on your media player. Now tell me what ship/story goes with it.

- Wowwww, its How To Save A Life by the fray, it just means someone on Grey’s is prob gonna die.

44: What’s making you happiest recently? :)

- Rach

45: What’s scaring you these days? :(

- Writing 60000 papers, will my brain turn to mush

46: Post a funny video for me.

- Too much work

47: Did you ever have a dream/nightmare that stuck with you for years?

- YES, ok make fun of me all you want, but one night I had a nightmare that a hippo chased me up a palm tree, been scared of hippos since. Absolutely the most irrational fear ever

48: What’s a movie you thought you’d hate but you turned out to love?

- Honestly, I thought I’d hate marvel movies, but I love them now that I’ve given them a try

49: Tell me a really obscure fact you know.

- There’s a spot in the brain where if someone smoke cigarettes and you injure this part of the brain, they’ll immediately quit cold turkey

50: Hot or cold?

- I hate hot weather, love the cold

51: How did your parent(s) punish you as a kid? What do you think of that?

- Taking away my phone or something I wanted to do. It was good incentive not to misbehave anymore

52: What’s something you thought was true about yourself that your feelings have changed on over the years?

- That I wasn’t smart

53: Write a story in seven words.

- uhhh

54: What is your favorite curse word?

- fuck

55: Favorite food for every color of the rainbow.

- pink - cotton candy, green - broccoli, yellow - pineapple, red -strawberry, blue - acai berry

56: If you were a poltergeist where would you haunt and what would be your preferred style of prank?

- I’d haunt my enemies, scare the shit out of them

57: What is an art style, craft, or skill that you can’t do, but you really admire in others?

- anything art like

58: What is a skill you have that people probably don’t know about?

- I can write poetry well

59: Name a pet peeve you have, and something you do that is probably a pet peeve for others.

- PEOPLE THAT CHEW WITH THEIR MOUTH OPEN, uhh i click pens constantly. Sorry lmao

60: Dragons, dinosaurs, or aliens?

- dinosaurs

61: What was the last big fight you had with someone about?

- About what show to watch at dinner, with my mom.

62: Insult the asker of this question creatively.

- too lazy

63: In an ideal world, what would you like done with your body after you die?

- do that thing where i become a tree

64: Find me a weird stock photo and post it.

- no

65: What was your bedtime ritual as a kid? Did you have one?

- my dad used to come in my room and open my closet and check under my bed for monsters and yell at them to leave

66: What are the three traits you value the most in others?

- humor, loyalty, honesty

67: What are the three most interesting wild animals you’ve encountered in your life?

- manatees, elephants, trump supporters

68: What is a word you really enjoy saying?

- shitballs

69: Answer number 60 like it was a “fuck, marry, kill” rhetorical.

- dude no thats nasty

70: Describe something that happened to you today as if you were a narrator in a film noir, nature documentary, or 50s teaching video

- ummm no

71: Create five new nicknames for yourself as quickly as you can.

- hey you, asshole, gaymo, flaming homo, queerer than a deer

72: Shorts, pants, skirts, or other?

- basketball shorts, or jeans

73: What’s a song you hate and why?

- Anything by Meghan trainor or taylor swift

74: If you were a superhero, what would be your one weakness?

- id stop on my way to save people if i saw a cute puppy that id want to pet

75: Describe a weird encounter you had with a bug.

- I killed a spider yesterday that had hitched a ride in my car

[theodrabblestopmotion]

Stop Motion Animation

What was your final idea?

Our final idea was adding a real life person into a video game setting. We decided to design a Mario inspired level based on the original 1985 Super Mario Bros. game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). We came up with a couple of ideas in our group before deciding to go with this idea. One of the other ideas was making a person do a fighting scene against an enemy that was drawn on paper. Because we were inspired by the original Super Mario games, this pixilated look is what we used in our stop motion.

Because we decided to create it based off the classic platformer games, we used pixilation/cut-out stop motion techniques to add movement to an environment similar to ones found in those games. We mainly referenced from older games such as Super Mario Bros. because these games had the style and perspective that we were going for, and they held the right amount of charm that would fit our stop motion and contribute to the ‘hand-made’ effect we were going for.

How did you arrive at this idea?

Using Super Mario Bros. and other similar titles as reference, everyone in the group created unique and original pixel blocks of our own design to use in order to emulate the style of the Mario levels. We used an online program named Piskel to create them, and after drawing the blocks we transferred them into Adobe Animate and created our final environment using the grid tools to lay down our blocks consistently.  

What specific approaches did you practice?

We practiced taking the pictures for our animation. At first, we tried using the green screen to take these pictures, however we encountered problems while using it, the videos turned out blurry which meant we couldn’t cut them out because it wouldn’t look correct against the background. Instead I took slow motion videos of my sibling at home and converted them into the pictures that I then used in our animation.

What went well during this final production stage?

What went well was the creation of the animation on Adobe Animate because it allowed us to create the animation in a shorter time that if we made it all on paper like we initially decided to do. The other things that went well were the creation of the pixel art blocks. Another thing that went well was the actual animation that I did because he could finish it in less time and we could do some much more with the help of a computer.

What issues did you encounter along the way?

Originally we used a DSLR and a green screen to film ourselves doing various actions, such as running and jumping. The goal from this was to take the frames of these videos and use them in the stop motion, but we ran into technical difficulties when the images turned out blurry and unusable. In order to overcome this issue, I instead filmed my sibling doing the various actions and put the frames into Photoshop to cut around and use for the animation. This was a success and I were able to use those frames in our final animation. Another issue we had was that Isaac half-heartedly cut out the pictures of the actions to cut out and he cut though most of the person so the rest of us had to spend more of our time cutting out the picture again.

What have you learnt during this project?

I learned a lot of things during this project, especially when it came to teamwork and understanding the capabilities of each other when we worked in a team. Prior to this project the rest of the group knew little about the different techniques and methods for stop motion, and researching them enabled us to make the decision to try out these alternate methods and use them for our final piece. While researching these methods we learned which ones we would clearly not have time or skill to finish properly to a suitable level, such as proper pixilation or Claymation, and this helped us decide to do computer-aided cut-out stop motion instead. This helped us a lot save time and managed to complete the task efficiently and to a decent standard which I was happy with.

What would you do differently if you could do this over again?

If I could do this project over again, I think I would do more research, chose a better team to work with and try to work more efficiently. Despite working as a group, I had some difficulty in finishing and agreeing on what to do for the stop motion which held us back and may have affected the quality of our work, and next time I should try to avoid this to make sure our work is up to standard. I also would consider trying out other methods of stop motion as cut-out stop motion is common and it is hard to do many unique and original things with, and I would definitely consider methods such as pixilation and shadow animation as these would be a fun challenge and provide good opportunities to create a more memorable and interesting animation.

What do you like about your SMA?

Despite this, I am content with many aspects of the stop motion animation I did. The work I did on the individual blocks of the background shows how hard I worked and the effort we made to show our inspiration and also make it unique - I also spent a lot of time taking the images I used for the actual stop motion after the videos failed and cutting them out in Photoshop, and I think the effort I took for this shows in my work and gives it a certain charm of its own. In the future I should continue to put a lot of effort into our work so that the final piece reflects our motivation and love for what I created.

What don’t you like about your SMA?

While there are plenty of good aspects about our piece, not everything is perfect and there is clear room for improvement. I dislike that I didn’t manage to do much dynamic movement with the technique I used, although that was the disadvantage we already considered when deciding to use cut-out stop motion. In future if I ever did stop motion again, I would for sure consider other methods first as although cut-out isn’t too difficult it is hard to create interesting movement with the strict 2D limit we have.

Who did what?  

We made sure that everyone in the group had at least one task when it came to finishing this project:

Katie: cut out one action cycle of the pictures of the character in the animation, made two of the blocks used in the animation and she also did some of the write up.

Isaac: made three of the blocks that were used in the animation and did some of the write up.

Rhiannon: made one of the blocks in the animation, designed the enemy that was used in the animation, cut out three action cycles of the character and helped with the write up.

Theo: was responsible for making the animation itself, cutting out two action cycles of the character, took the pictures and designed two of the blocks in the animation.

While all of us had designed a background, due to time restraint we could only use one. Because of this, we decided to use the background that we all agreed was best.

These are the block and who made them:

Theo:

Katie:

Rhiannon:

Isaac:

Process

To make the animation I used Adobe Animate and had to move each individual asset one frame at a time. This meant that the animating was easier to do because it was on a computer.

This was the final animation that I created:

[marinadidierportfolio-blog]

The City

It's the city ... It's the tangled way A corrupt human of life who mute and applaud. And it is acclaimed and falsified and hidden. And it dazzles. But it's just one moment. [...]  Mário de Andrade Different ways of seeing the city were portrayed by Brazilian artists. Writers, musicians and artists contributed their unique way of relating to space. The modernist writer, Mário de Andrade, was already approaching the city with enthusiasm, nostalgia, and all the paradoxes that made São Paulo a multilevel arlequinal city, loaded with information and styles. In Paulicéia Desvairada he presents his vision of the city as he himself said, through "verses of suffering and revolt". He sought through literature to insult and mock the provincialism of a modern São Paulo that grew in geographical numbers: industries, buildings and people, but remained reduced to what Mario's eyes were capable of seeing. He wanted in this ambiguous relationship to describe the new environment, the concrete and the abstract, the whole place in which the man of the big city lives, an overview of the city and his life.

inspiration

Sao Paulo! commotion of my life My loves are flowers made of original ... Arlequinal! ... Diamonds ... Gray and Gold ... Light and mist ... Oven and warm winter ... Subtle elegance without scandal, without jealousy ... Perfumes by Paria ... Arys! Slaps lyrics on the Trianon ... Algodoal! Sao Paulo! commotion of my life Gallicism screaming in the deserts of America! [...]

 Unexpected Paulicéia

In another book on São Paulo, Lira Paulistana, as the title itself suggests, there is a song to the city and in it the desire to return to it. Mário de Andrade treats São Paulo as a living space, almost an organism. He compares the city to man and his characteristics. It transmits to the reader every personification of the space itself. In the poem When I Die he remembers with nostalgia the environment that was once São Paulo.

When I die

When I die I want to stay, Do not tell my enemies, Buried in my city,          Missing.

My feet buried in Aurora Street, In Paissandu leave my sex, In Lopes Chaves the head          Forget it. [...]

Carlos Drummond de Andrade talks about his hometown, Itabira, preserved in his childhood memory. In Confidência do Itabirano there is a duality in the feeling towards the little town. With subtle irony, he expresses the boredom of the life of the interior while showing a longing for this way of living.

Itabirano Confidentiality (Feeling of the world)

Some years I lived in Itabira. Mostly I was born in Itabira. But this is sad, proud: iron. [...] The will to love, which paralyzes my work, comes from Itabira, from his white nights, without women and without horizons. And the habit of suffering, which amuses me so much, is sweet itabirana heritage. [...] Itabira is just a picture on the wall But how it hurts!

Recife also had its poet, Manuel Carneiro de Sousa Bandeira Filho. The nostalgic tribute made to the city in the poem Evocation of Recife, presented associations with other cities and titles that generally Recife receives. With this, the Flag intended to discard comparisons, to construct its own city, without artifice, through the eyes of a child. He refers to the streets of his childhood and recalls experiences related to them. This beautiful poem shows with sensitivity, the feeling that can exist between a person who lives "in the city" and lives "the city". It draws attention to the urban environments that have had importance for him during his life, the Aurora Street, Sun Street and Union Street.

Evocation of Recife

Recife Not the American Venice Not the Mauritsstad of the West Indies shipowners Not the Recife of the Mascates Not even Recife that I learned to love later - Reef of Libertarian Revolutions But Recife without history or literature Recife with nothing else Recife from my childhood Union Street where I played whip-burned and left the windows of the house of Mrs. Aninha Viegas Totônio Rodrigues was very old and put his pince on the tip of the nose After dinner the families took the sidewalk with chairs Gossip boyfriends laughs We played in the middle of the street. The boys shouted, Rabbit leaves! Do not leave! [...] Union Street ... How beautiful the hills of the streets of my childhood Rua do Sol (I'm afraid that today it's called Dr. So-and-so) Behind the house was Rua da Saudade ... Where was going to smoke hidden On the other side was the quay of Aurora Street ... ... where you went fishing Capiberibe - Capiberibe Far away the sertãozinho of Caxangá Bathrooms of straw One day I saw a girl in the shower I kept beating my heart. She laughed It was my first enlightenment. Full! The floods! Dead Ox Mud Trees Debris Swirl Vanished And on the pedestals of the iron train bridge the fearless caboclos on banana rafts [...] Recife… My grandfather is dead. Recife morto, Good Recife, Brazilian Recife like my grandfather's house.

Every recollected remembrance was later contrasted by the poem Vou-me Al-Pasárgada, the pessimistic and evasive phase of the poet. Amargurado, Manuel Bandeira described Pasárgada as a place where he would finally find the peace he did not have in life. Everything would be possible in the idealized city, there he would be happy.

I'm Going Away To Pasárgada

I'm going to Pasargada. I'm a friend of the king There I have the woman I want In the bed that I will choose I'm going to Pasargada. I'm going to Pasargada. Here I am not happy. There existence is an adventure [...]

The desire to live in a place where full happiness would always be present, had already been imagined by Thomas Morus in his famous work, The Utopia. The word would have a morphological meaning of happiness not yet realized by man anywhere. It aimed to report the imaginary life of people from this "nowhere". In the geographically isolated island metaphor, everything would happen naturally in an organized way. The capital of the island was named Amaurota or "city of dreams", and its inhabitants were Ala'opolites, "citizens without a city". All symbolic language used by Morus sought to represent the human need in the search for happiness. In creating a new reality, thought would become a form of criticism of the patterns of real cities and the lifestyle of their equally concrete inhabitants.

The fact that the city has been mystified for years, worshiped and criticized, being an addiction, a virtue, is justified by human anguish in an attempt to identify with the common environment. The existence of cultural factors contributes to this identification with other inhabitants and with the city itself. The absence of common spaces for socialization compromises interpersonal relations, leaving only "bubble gaps" where people meet literally. The time spent actually living then becomes summed up at brief intervals of encounters and mismatches. Art as an expression of the city and its visitors, seeks to present on canvases, pictures, paper, realities seen and felt by artists. A clear example of this feeling transposed in the work was the music by Sérgio Andrade and Zezinho Franco, Viva o Recife, a composition that has fueled an increasing interest in the living parts representing the local singularity. For the younger generation, this carnival anthem alludes to a time when Recife was able to achieve a perfect social interaction, music works in this way as an ideal advertisement of the city.

Viva Recife

Recife woke up and said good morning.

He found all the people in the streets.

In the bridges, in the squares, loving each other

If meeting with joy,

In the eternal gingado of frevo, ciranda and baião

Coconut, passion fruit and lemon beating

Come, come, come be part of this cord

Recife has a place for you inside the heart

[jessiczhai-blog]

IAT 206W Final Paper

                                The Development of New Media

                                    - The Meanings Under the Transitions of Digital Games

      New Media now is a very popular word. It includes a large scope of media, and plenty of creative productions use new media to be their starting point. The most important symbol of new media is it builds the strong connection between technologies and humanities. Digital media is one of the products which goes with the tide of the development of modernization. Technology increases the information’s spreading scopes without doubt, and make people easy to use it widely. For example, internet media, mobile phone media, and digital network televisions, all of them are the ramifications of the development of new media. “Those digital media that are interactive, incorporate two-way communication and involve some form of computing” (Logan, 2010). Comparing with the traditional old media, new media utilizes the interaction of technologies, and more creativity. From Logan’s point of view, a very appropriate ramification product from his “two-way communication” idea is the digital game. It is not hard to see that some traditional popular digital games which led an emerging trend at that time are keeping changed again and again today. Under those changes, not only the qualities of game interfaces have a giant leap, but also the memories for people who have experienced those old games’ era will add more deeper meanings to today’s variable digital games. In my paper, I will use compositional method to analyze some hidden meanings under images. From some different aspects for example colours, image qualities, and role positioning to deep understanding some representative classical digital games.

      The development velocity for digital game is very fast for these years. A few years ago, digital game was still at the stage of a simple entertainment way, but now digital game is not only an entertainment tool, but also has entered an area of art, and becomes one of the backbone force of new media. “Seen from 2001, the potential cultural role(s) of computer games in the future is practically unfathomable. It seems clear that these games, especially multi-player games, combine the aesthetic and the social in a way the old mass media, such as theatre, movies, TV shows and novels never could” (Arseth, 2001).  Arseth’s opinion indicates that digital game has a high compatibility property, which means it is the union product from many other media. At the same time, it is also the outcome of other media’s development and highly concentration. It is obvious to notice that digital game can bring a totally different kind of interactive experiences to people, which other media can not achieve. As time goes by, the techniques that digital games show to people become more and more realistically. The higher and higher game image qualities are not only bringing better visual experiences and operating feelings to people, the more important thing is those details’ enrich and perfect in digital games can make people to agree on the quality of the game itself. The development history of Super                                                                            

Figure      1. The transitions of Super Mario, Mario Bros, by      M.D. Marcas, 2017, http://mundodasmarcas.blogspot.ca/2006/06/mario-bros.html

Mario (see Figure 1) shows the detailed timeline, and the changes of Super Mario in different periods. From the image itself, people can see the difference of characters’ design versions between 1985 to 2015 clearly. In 1985’s version, multi-player version was starting to add in the Super Mario’s series of games. The choice of colours is very simple, and the whole game interfaces’ style is based on two-dimensional technique. The heavy pixelate character role image lacked beautiful visual effects and character details. People can reluctantly see the Super Mario is a pudgy man, looks like an uncle, because he has mustache. The dress collocation of the conspicuous red hat and suspender make Super Mario looks like a worker. Another characteristic which makes Super Mario impressive is his big nose. Comparing with other digital games’ main characters, the design of Super Mario is undoubtedly special, because all of his characteristics that I mentioned above make him looks far with the heroic image. People can easy to link his image to a common plumber, or a convenience store worker. Even though there were no plenty of role design principles on the 1985’s Super Mario, his amiable and friendly feelings which from his simple role image design made people to remember him easily. At that time, the design was limited by the immature technology, so people could adapt the pixel style easier. In order to match up with the action game genres, the choose for red colour of Super Mario’s suspender makes his arms and legs are easy to be distinguished. On the other hand, those distinctive elements are kind of symbols for Super Mario. Depending on the level of technology, the selection for those design elements are quite clever. Different with today’s digital games, technologies’ supports can make much more designs come true. How to effective use of limited technologies to show some most important representative points to people is the key point.                                    

Figure 2.      1988’s game interface of Super Mario, What’s your Favorite Super Mario      Game?, by Jason Million, 2017, http://gstylemag.com/2017/10/27/whats-your-favorite-super-mario-game/

      At 1988, the role image of Super Mario was changed to what people are familiar with (see Figure 2). Some obvious changes for this time are the addition of dark blue on Super Mario’s suspender and hat, in addition, the original red colour for suspender had moved to Super Mario’s arms and legs. The dark blue colour adds more vivid effects to the game character. Comparing with 1985’s version, 1988’s pixelates had been reduced a lot, and more design details had been included. Super Mario’s face now is more clearly. The dark blue colour makes the character’s eyes, hairs, mustache, and body easier to be distinguished than 1985’s version. The original typical designs, for example big nose, fat body, and cute hat were all saved, which kept Super Mario’s affinity. From the Super Mario’s timeline image (see Figure 1), it is not hard to see that started from 1988’s version, the design of Super Mario’s face did not change a lot in subsequent versions. The existence of the red hat, big nose, and big beards became the icons of this character, and never changed until now.

Figure 3.      Spider Man and Captain America’s colours palettes, Mavel colour palettes,      by Pinterest, 2017, https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/105201341267257019/?lp=true

      The biggest change of Super Mario is on 1996, because it was decided to transform as three-dimensional version. Super Mario as one of the earliest digital games, which carved out plenty of new directions for the future of digital games’ development. In 1996, digital games had not risen completely, but the Nintendo company challenged themselves, who spent much money to develop and reform their game qualities. Because of what they did then, those subsequent digital games could develop so successful.  Except some special clothes in other themed versions, red, and blue become the basic colours for the whole game series. Now it seems that plenty of other characters are also using red and blue colour to be there representative colours. The two characters which people can easy to connect with Super Mario’s basic colours are Captain America and Spider Man (see Figure 3). From the comparison between Super Mario’s timeline image and the colour palettes of Super Heroes, people can notice that they all use very obvious red and blue colour to be their main iconic colours. Back to these characters’ role positioning, they are all the main characters in their stories, and they stand for righteous. When audiences see the Spider Man and Captain America in movies, the first impression that they bring to audiences are friendly and justice. The selection of red and blue colours add more connections for these two movie characters, and make them to show a kind of positive feelings to audiences. Connecting these ideas with Super Mario, the red and blue colours become a bridge which helps magnifying the role positioning of Super Mario. In the digital game, Super Mario is very brave and powerful. He should fight with the vicious dragons to rescue the princess again and again in the game                                      

Figure 4.      Princess is caught by Koopa, Damsel in Distress, by Videogmer 314, 2017, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1335170455064837400&page=2

story. At the same time, Super Mario’s strongest opponent in the game series who is called Koopa is always threatening the safety of the world (see Figure 4). As Arseth said before, people now can understand that digital games are also mixed with some other media’s elements into themselves. The main story line of Super Mario is very similar with traditional hero movies. The protagonist should against with antagonist, and then protect the heroine as well. After the addition of background story, the whole Super Mario series games become more vivid than a simple horizontal version action pass game, and the main story line is a foreshadowing for other further branch game types in Super Mario series.                                    

Figure 5.      The transitions of Princess Peach, Redbubble, by B. Basher, 2013, https://www.redbubble.com/people/bowserbasher/collections/354524-super-mario?ref=carousel_collection

      The functions which from other supporting roles in Super Mario series games are also very important without doubt. The Princess Peach is one of the most famous and earliest representative female game character at that time. Same as the Super Mario, in 1985’s version, the design of Princess Peach was also not clearly, and even worse than Super Mario (see Figure 5). From the image, people can barely see that she is a female character, because of her dress and long hair. Different with Super Mario, there were nothing special on her face, and she looks not pretty, so that it is hard for people to remember this character. The small crown on her head is the most obvious symbol, which shows she is a princess in this game. In the early days of the game, Princess Peach was staying at the walking-on NPC position, which means she could not be controlled by players. Almost every time she appeared in the game, she was caught by the Koopa and asked for Super Mario’s help. The 1985’s Princess Peach had no power, and her role position was weak, because she was always kidnapped by the antagonist. Started from 2002, the changing of the design for the Princess Peach bring a totally different feeling to people. The original long yellow hair was replaced by shorter and energetic style. The changing of her facial expression adds lovelier and confidence characteristics to this character. Her new small umbrella’s colours were suitable with her light pink dress, which could attract more female players’ attentions. In 2008’s version, people could see that Princess Peach got rid of her long dress. Instead of that, the light weight sports wear provided a more flexible attribute to the character. This new kind of healthy image indicates that the Princess Peach was not same as the previous role positioning which was delicate, people now can receive the positive and lifeful feelings from her. The promotion of her status in the game is also reflecting the Super Mario series games are following with the development of the society. In the recent game versions, Princess Peach is completely get rid of her stereotype. She becomes one of the main characters in Super Mario’s game world, and she has her own weapon which is a pan to fight with the antagonists. Combining all these improvements of Princess Peach, which build up a new harmonious character image to people. A cute without losing the personality role image provides more choices for people, and adding more interesting elements for the whole game.              

Figure 6.      The transitions of Koopa, Redbubble, by B. Basher, 2013, https://www.redbubble.com/people/bowserbasher/collections/354524-super-mario?ref=carousel_collection

      The existence of antagonist is indispensable, not only in movies and TV plays, but also in digital games’ plots. The first time for the biggest antagonist which is called Koopa appeared in Super Mario games series was still on 1985 (see Figure 6). The original design was not bad actually. There were plenty of spines on its shell and head, and the detail of its sharp teeth showed its antagonist role position clearly. Focusing on the design details, Koopa’s design looks more complicated than other characters. When people see this image, the first thought of this character is a monster. Different with 1985’s Super Mario which provides a vague role positioning to people, the image of Koopa shows its antagonist position directly to people. From                

Figure 7.      Loki, Comic Vine, by Joseloayza, 2017, https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profile/joseloayza/

Koopa’s timeline image, green and dark yellow constitute a large proportion for the character.  These two colours are also used for some other antagonists in Marvel’s stories. For example the design of Loki (see Figure 7) uses green and yellow to be his main colour palette. Loki is one the most famous antagonists who is well known by audiences. Comparing with the designs of Koopa between 2014 and 1985, the hue has changed darker and darker. The selections of the decorations on its arms, and short brownish red hairs on its head added more evil and powerful feelings to this role. Koppa’s designs build a distinct feeling from other protagonists. For example, Super Mario and Princess Peach are all have bright or light colours trends. The sense of heaviness which comes from Koppa is opposite with other protagonists. Just from the images, people can feel that the size of Koopa is much bigger than other characters. This physical contrast will bring pressures to players when they are using smaller sizes’ protagonists to fight against with this big monster, which adds more challenges to the difficulty level of the game.

               Figure 8.      Sonic Game Interface, Sonic The Hedgehog, by M. Diver, 2017, https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/topic/sonic-the-hedgehog

      After 2010, people can get the strong feeling of technologies are mixed into this game. The character’s image is clean and stereo, and the qualities of colours are more vivid than all old versions. Not only the application of three-dimensional in the game, but also the development of the whole game’s painting style makes people feel very impressively. After this time point, different characters’ designs and positions have been decided. In other words, this time point is like a turning point, which leads Super Mario series games keep going to the higher level. At the same time, the concordant designs for each character make the gaming environment more balanced, and coherently. Until now, Super Mario accompanies us through exceed thirty years, which can stand for a part of generation. In the digital games’ area, thirty years is such a long time. At the similar period, some other classical digital games were also kept until now. Such as Sonic (see Figure 8), and Street Fighter (see Figure 9). These two famous classical digital games have similar interface styles with Super Mario, which is pixelate in their original versions. From the Sonic game interface, the designer still used red and blue to be main colours for Sonic, so                                      

Figure 9.      Street Fight Game Interface, Pin Games Street Fighter, by Senior, 2017, https://anmysite.com/top/pin-games-street-fighter.html

people can understand the combination of red and blue colours has become a design formula for the image of justice. To a certain degree, the technologies and design principles at that time was quite nice. In the Street Fight game interface, the cooperation between hitting and sound effects brought newness to people, and started to lead the trend of the new action game type. The creation of the Street Fight added more interactions between people and game machine. On the other hand, this new game type provided competitive and exciting feelings to people, because it was based on multi-players to fight with each other. It is undeniable that all these kinds of classical and traditional games laid the foundation for later digital games’ developments.

      We have to say that these pixelate style games are some platforms, which saved plenty of people’s happy memories. For the present teenagers and children, who did not experience these classical games before, they will be difficult to understand why these old games could attract so many people’s attentions at that time, because today’s digital games have already entered a huge different level, but for people who was in that generation, these classical games stand for their youth. Maybe this is the reason why those game companies keep adding new technologies into those classical games, which can build more connections between old and new generations’ people.

                                                                                                   References

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Diver, M. (2017). Sonic Game Interface. [Digital Image]. Retrieved from https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/topic/sonic-the-hedgehog

Joseloayza. (2017). Loki. [Digital Image]. Retrieved from https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profile/joseloayza/

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http://gstylemag.com/2017/10/27/whats-your-favorite-super-mario-game/

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