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bubblesthemonsterartist · 4 years ago

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(don’t) wake me up

Hold Me Close (and never let me go) Masterlist

Shirayuki never did wake easily.

That’s what her grandparents always told her, voices fond and smiles baffled as she bounced off walls and stumbled her way to her bowl of froot loops in the hours before nine. Earlier bedtimes did not mean earlier risers, the film of sleep lingering until she was loaded down with her books and binders and bundled onboard her school bus. Not even the allure of a perfect attendance sticker was enough to pry her to full consciousness until after the morning school announcements were done and everyone had taken their seats.

College had been a blessing, any classes scheduled before 10am something everyone mourned. Sleep dazed students piling into their lecture halls wearing a unicorn onesie after lunch didn’t even cause her professors to bat an eye. “Everyone is tired,” Yuuha scoffed, bent over his laptop while downing an espresso with a redbull chaser.

This was fine, she thought. It was the ROTC crowd that were the odd ones; Mitsuhide showering off the sweat of morning PT and downing a plate full of protein before her first alarm of the day had even sounded.

It wasn’t until she was in medical school memorizing the symptoms of sleep disorders that she realized maybe her mornings were not… neurologically normal. But no graduate advisor was going to sign off for the time off needed for a sleep study and she had lived long enough like this, why not hold off a few years more?

Part of her wishes that she had done the tests back then; sacrificed a few perfect grades for the possibility of a well rested morning.

But considering her current predicament, perhaps she saved herself both time and money by not.

“Miss.”

A soft laugh and gentle pressure on her shoulder stops her cold. Blinking blearily, she stares at the whirls of gold paint dancing up a purple wall, the crinkled blue fabric covering the window beside it.

“Ah,” she breathes, rubbing at her crusty eyes. “I thought you weren’t supposed to do that.”

Another laugh, not unkind, filters through the haze. “Do what?”

Shirayuki turns where she stands - Oh, it’s a hallway. They’re in a hallway now. When did they do that? - and says, “Touch me without asking first.”

In the dim of the establishment's lighting, she can barely make out the color of his eyes, but she remembers. Gold. His eyes were… somehow gold.

No, that couldn’t be right.

“There are exceptions to every rule, Miss,” Obi says quietly, but his hands fall through the air, landing harmlessly at his side, and through the soft fuzz wrapping her brain, Shirayuki feels a paign of regret.

“Are you going to be alright?” he asks, his voice just as soft as they had been when the both of them had been wrapped in fresh, clean smelling sheets. “Do I need to call you a Lyft?”

It’s like turning over a flooded engine. She’s cranking the gas, keys turning in the ignition, the starter screaming-- “Oh!” Shirayuki shakes her head, scrubbing at her face again. God, she can’t remember the last time a conversation was this hard. It’s almost as if- as if she just woke up. Or something. “Oh, no. I came with a friend. She’s taking me home.”

In the dim half lighting, his eyes spark with humor and- and she thinks his eyes really are gold. Somehow. Either that or sleep deprivation has caused her to start processing the color yellow inappropriately, in which case, she really should schedule an appointment with a neurolo--

“Good to know, Miss,” he says, gesturing towards the door to the reception area. “I’m sure she’s waiting for you. We went a little over time.”

Shirayuki could not say this with complete certainty, but she was pretty sure she’d never been late to anything in her life. “Huh? Why?”

Obi glances up at the ceiling, scratching at the non-existent stubble at his chin. “You were… rather insistent that you wanted to stay in bed.”

Mortification floods her face with heat and she can only hope that the lighting is dim enough to hide it. She must have- she must have actually slep--

“I’m so sorry,” she blurts. Her grandparents had recorded it one time to show her; grandpa snickering behind their new camcorder as grandma wrangled Shirayuki’s floppy limbs out of bed and to standing. She had flopped right back onto the mattress, spooling the covers around her before grandma could catch her. Twice. To her knowledge, she had never outgrown it. “I’ve never woken up easily.”

His shoulders shake. “It was flattering, Miss, truly. Never have I seen a more satisfied customer.”

Now she wants to ask. But she might melt right through the floorboards first out of sheer embarrassment first. “I can’t believe I just made you lay there for an hour while I slept.”

“Professional hazard,” he quips with a wink. “You wouldn’t be the first lady to fall asleep on me.”

“That somehow doesn’t feel like something you should be bragging about,” she claps back, only to slap her hands over her mouth. Inside thoughts, Shirayuki. Inside thoughts.

“Well.” His hand lands on the door handle, huffing out a sound halfway to a laugh. “It depends on who you are talking to.”

All things considered, she may firmly be in the satisfied customers camp, so it really wasn’t fair of her to tease. Actually, now that she’s thinking about it, if she actually did sleep-- “Can I take you home with me?”

Fingers blanch on the door handle and- oh yes, those eyes were definitely, definitely, gold. “Uhm.”

“I mean!” Shirayuki’s hands slap against her cheeks this time. That- that didn’t come out right at all. “Do you have a business card? Or something?”

Obi just stares at her, and it may be her imagination, what with the lighting and all, but his cheeks seemed a little… darker than before.

“It’s just-” Oh, if only she had been blessed with even an ounce of tact. “I slept so well.”

Rubbing awkwardly at his neck, Obi huffs, “It was just a nap, Miss.” But he reaches behind her, plucking a card off of a wall rack covered in adverts from massage therapists and yoga instructors and, goodness, Shirayuki may have visited half of these establishments. “But any time you feel like drooling on my arm again, feel free to give me a call.”

She wants to tell him that it was more than a nap. It was the first time in months that there hadn’t been dreams. “Thank you.”

“I, ah-” Obi coughs into his fist, staring at the door. “I do have overnight rates.”

It’s Shirayuki’s turn to be speechless.

He tilts his chin towards the bit of cardstock in her hand. “Info on the back.”

Her tongue twists in her mouth, staring up at him, but he pulls on the handle and--

“Oh there you are!”

In the reception area, Yuzuri bounds to her feet, ushering her out of Obi’s shadow and into her arms. She already has her phone out. “I was beginning to wonder if you left or something. C’mon, let’s go get lunch at that little crepe place before things start getting busy.”

Shirayuki casts a wide eye look behind her, only catching the profile of Obi’s face as the door is pulled shut behind him.

“Okay!” Yuzuri bubbles, holding her phone between them as she leads them outside. She is not prepared for the cold blast of early spring air, but she’s even less prepared for the woman smiling up at her from Yuzuri’s phone. Pixelated leafs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Geocities era flutter across a soft focus headshot, the tinkle of piano keys emerging from underneath the sounds of passing cars. “So this is the reiki lady Kazaha swears by. She’s booked out for months, but he said he was able to get us a slot-”

“Yuzuri-” Shirayuki tries softly.

“-and, yes, I know how you feel about energy work, but her yelp reviews are really good and-”

“Yuzuri, I slept.”

Carefully swept up curls, freshly tied back into a high ponytail stop swinging, and Shirayuki almost bumps into her. Someone does bump into Shirayuki, though, then swears as Shirayuki collapses into Yuzuri’s back.

“Sorry-” Shirayuki begins, glancing behind her, but all that gets her is a dirty look as an old man swings around her, grumbling something about not stopping in the middle of the sidewalk-

Yuzuri takes hold of her arm, shuffling them to a display window. “Did you say,” she begins slowly, staring at her with wide eyes. “That you slept?”

Shirayuki nods, still unable to believe it herself. “And no dreams.”

Yuzuri takes a breath. Then another one. “Do you think… you could seep… some more?”

Any time Shirayuki closes her eyes, they burn, but she does it again and this time, her body goes momentarily weightless with the promise of unconsciousness. “Yea.”

“Okay, okay,” Yuzuri breathes, taking Shirayuki’s arm in hers once more. “Okay, yea, let’s- let’s get you home, then.”

~ ~ ~

“If I had known that this is what you needed, I would have done it ages ago.”

Shirayuki stares at the far wall. It was so much easier back there on the street, still sleep warm and a little bleary, to say that she would sleep. To say that she could. “Mm.”

Yuzuri’s arm wraps tighter about her waist, cold nose brushing against her neck. “Not that I haven’t enjoyed our little outings,” she continues. “I’ve always wanted to try that stuff.”

While Shirayuki doesn’t precisely agree, she’s not going to pretend that it hasn’t been an, ah, experience. “Mm.”

“I wonder why the professional cuddler worked but not the massage therapist?” Yuzuri hums. “If it was physical contact you needed, I would’ve thought--”

Shirayuki sighs, loud enough that Yuzuri stops talking. “It’s not coming.”

Propping herself up on her elbow, Yuzuri pulls at her shoulder, rolling Shirayuki until she’s flat on her back. Brain as heavy as a sack of beans, she watches Yuzuri frown at her still open eyes, confirming that Shirayuki was, indeed, not asleep, and then sighs.

With a plop, Yuzuri collapses back onto the mattress next to her once more, arm wrapping about her middle. It’s nice. Warm. She misses warm.

“Well, we just laid down, maybe you need some more time,” Yuzuri mumbles into her hair, and maybe- maybe she’s right. This is the closest she’s felt to sleep in her own bed in a long time. At least without heavy medication. “And maybe I should stop talking.”

That’s an idea. But it never used to bother her. Grandma could be on the phone right next to her for hours while she napped on the couch, and grandpa’s poker buddies could caw until the wee morning hours outside her bedroom window and Shirayuki would never stir. Even Zen, with his countless 2am business calls with Hong Kong, didn’t bother her--

“What sort of music were you listening to?” Yuzuri asks, flopping onto her back and digging out her phone. “We had some pretty windchimes.”

“Whales.” Shirayuki murmurs, without thinking. “We were listening to whales.”

She hadn’t liked them - they had sounded like drowning puppies - but maybe there was something to the experience that had made her relax enough. She remembers reading about it in a journal once. The researcher had said something about frequencies and brain waves and music therapists having moderate success with the method, but it’s buried under the mounds of more… established papers that she had given more time to.

Yuzuri props her phone up on the nightstand, soft cetacean whines filling the room. Settling back down next to her, Shirayuki’s eyes flutter shut at the sensation of fingers gently winding through her hair. It’s nice. Comforting, even. But not-

“It is working?” Yuzuri whispers.

“Mm.” Shirayuki doesn’t dare move. Not when she’s so close to the edge like this. “A little bit.”

“Maybe the smell is wrong,” she muses, thumb brushing against Shirayuki’s temple in soothing strokes. “Sorry, my hair product can be a little strong.”

Honestly, Shirayuki hadn’t even noticed. “It’s okay.”

“I’ll get you some tea tree oil tomorrow,” she says absently. “I think that’s what they had in their diffusers. I’ve seen the good stuff for sale at the organic grocer down the street from me.”

One by one, her muscles unwind, the pressure on her brain easing. She can’t find the energy to respond, her thoughts winking out one by one--

Buzz buzz buzzzzzzzzzzzz

Shirayuki’s eyes spring open.

“First mistake,” Yuzuri groans. “Leaving your phone in the bedroom.”

Shirayuki just might cry. With a whine, she shifts onto her side, moving to grab for her purse dumped at the side of her bed-

A firm hand stops her midroll, Yuzuri staring down at her with her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Second mistake,” she frowns. “Checking it.”

She’s very likely right, but- “It might be the hospital,” she counters.

“Then it’s low priority,” Yuzuri claps back. “You have a pager for a reason.”

“I don’t like making people wait.” Shirayuki squirms out of Yuzuri’s hold, fishing her phone out of her purse. “If it’s small, then it’ll just be a minute.”

“When you’re done, I’m taking that from you and putting it in the kitchen,” Yuzuri grumps. “And putting it on silent.”

“Deal.” Shirayuki smiles, swiping her thumb over the blank screen. Blue swirls fill the screen, a single message notification block blaring across the center that says,

IZANA WISTERIA

“Whelp.” Yuzuri’s chin digs into Shirayuki’s shoulder. “You’re never going back to sleep now.”

With a wince and a familiar churn of the gut, Shirayuki carefully rearranges her face before even attempting to cast her friend an apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” she sighs. “You might as well go home. I know Suzu must be missing you.”

“That telephone pole was probably looking forward to a night without me starfishing all over the bed,” Yuzuri grumps, pushing herself up. “But you’re right. I don’t want to be dragged into whatever overtime horror project Wisteria is pulling you in on.”

Shirayuki frowns, watching Yuzuri sweeping up the mess of her hair. “It’s not like that.”

That earns her the rise of an eyebrow. “Then what, pray tell, is it like?” Yuzuri challenges back, pinning her bun into place.

Shirayuki doesn’t know how to answer that question. Doesn’t know how to explain that things are complicated, and not in a Bumble sort of way. That the incident created a strange world where only her and Izana lived, and well…

Well she doesn’t think that Izana would appreciate her talking to anyone about it, even if that someone was her best friend. To be frank, she doesn’t even know how to begin describing the odd dynamic between the two of them.

She struggles for a response for too long and Yuzuri sighs, grabbing her phone off the nightstand and stuffing it in her coat pocket. “Call me if you need anything,” she says, like she always does. “I’ll be over with tea tree-everything in the morning.”

From the comfort of her blankets, Shirayuki smiles. “Thanks, Yuzuri.”

“Mm.” With a lazy wave over her shoulder, she calls. “Don’t stay up too late!”

From down the hall, Shirayuki hears the front door latch shut, her apartment once again falling into stillness. Unnatural silence. And even under her down feather duvet, Shirayuki feels a chill. Maybe she should have asked Yuzuri to turn up the thermostat before she left. Or maybe she should just take the plunge and get herself a cat. They’re warm.

Taking a deep breath, the smell of her single, empty apartment filling her lungs, Shirayuki looks back at her phone. And, with a resigned sigh, clicks Read.

#bubbleswrites #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #obiyuki #professional cuddler au #TAG JEN YOU'RE IT

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scoundrels-in-love · 5 years ago

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Did you slip in through open doors and sit down, just to look at me like that (every day) | Chapter 2 - Jaime I

Brienne doesn’t mean to lie to her father. She just wants him to stop trying to set her up with men who aren’t Jaime Lannister, whom she’s secretly in love with. Unfortunately, that’s exactly who eagerly inserts himself in the narrative as her fake boyfriend. And her father is coming to King’s Landing in two weeks.

Truly, what could go wrong?

Also on AO3. Still part of @jbmonthlymadness Mutual Pining March.

He is so, so fucked.

Not quite the same way he thought a week ago, but still very much fucked.

Jaime glances over to where Brienne is watching a game on the couch for what feels like the hundredth time this half hour. While that itself isn’t unusual, everything else is. Tenseness in her shoulders he isn’t sure he will lure out with a stupid joke and then slay with even worse one, the way they’ve barely spoken to each other today and that his heart is being harshly kneaded by some huge, clawed animal. He’d say it’s a lion, but considering his House that feels just a little cliche .

Though, according to Elia, he is a walking cliche and a terribly executed one, at that. He sighs, realizes that the beer bottle really isn’t where he’s blindly grabbing for it, and averts his gaze from his fake girlfriend. There is exactly one word too many in that title and it’s neither girl or friend. If only he could convince Brienne of the same.

Jaime has tried , he really has. Gotten up earlier to make sure he can prepare her coffee and go on a jog with her, kissed her goodbye on the cheek, pestered her into having a lunch during work hours and ordered takeout to arrive just after she got home the days he knew he’d be home even later than her, sent her obscure memes about animals he found on some nature activist group on Raventome that he frankly didn’t get but hoped she would and have a good laugh between work and more.

Granted, he does all these things regularly anyway (except the cheek kisses, but he isn’t sure they’re as much of a highlight of the day for her as they are for him), but now it’s daily. And it’s not a bother, like Brienne tries to convince him to think, and Jaime would gladly do it for the rest of the foreseeable future. Even waking an hour earlier, although he likes to think that if they were properly dating, he’d persuade her to explore other workouts they could do in the time without leaving the house.

Elia suggested it’s because she’s stressed about the convention, but Jaime knows better. (“Of course you do, that’s why you suggested to be her fake boyfriend instead of telling her you’ve been head over heels for her for years now.”) No, Brienne’s work has nothing to do with the skittishness in her eyes, the way she freezes when he presses lips to her delightfully reddening cheek, sometimes daring to brush corner of her mouth or lingering a second too long because her proximity makes him a little dizzy, or stumbles over conversations topics as if they are larger than boulders she can easily best when hiking. She doesn’t even shut down his flirtations anymore - instead she looks away and mumbles something or trips into the next topic.

Their new arrangement is the cause, and the realization has been rolling toward him like a house sized morning star down a gentle slope.

“Jaime? Movie’s starting,” subject of his sweet agony and worry calls out and Jaime realizes he has quite literally spaced out. And that perhaps his inner narrator is going a little overboard. Elia would have another laughing fit if she knew.

He grabs the snacks and another beer and presents them to her with a smile, falls heavily in his spot that earns a little bit of glare from Brienne because, of course, she’s concerned for the springs and one of these days he will tell her he can think of more interesting things to wreck their couch with. ‘One of these days’ feels like an awful stretch and ‘a mountainclimb later’ sort of thing, though. He heaves a sigh.

“Everything alright, Jaime?” she asks and he looks at her, armed with a bright smile and an easy no, when they crumble faced with concern that colors the blue of her eyes deeper, yet gilded shade like the last glimpse of sunset paints the sea. Of course Brienne finds time to worry about him, despite seemingly thinking she’s standing between two cannons labelled ‘work’ and ‘fake boyfriend’, ready to shoot.

He wants to pull her close and press a kiss to her furrowed brow so much he can physically feel an alternate reality, one where he’s braver and does just that, manifest.

Unfortunately, in this one Jaime only laughs and plops his head in her lap, facing the TV. “Of course I am, B. But if you’re so worried, you can always pet my head and tell me it’s going to be alright.” He likes it when she says that, the way she sets her jaw mulishly and seems to simply talk it into existence with sheer willpower and kindness. But never for herself, only others.

Brienne stills for a moment, then, much to his relief, makes indigant noise and pushes at his shoulder slightly but with no real force. “I’m not a cushion, Jaime” she tells him and he shifts just so he can grin up at her.

“C’mon, I’ve been a good boyfriend this week, have I not earned one lap cushion coupon? I must use it before it expires.”

“ Fake boyfriend,” she says seriously and Jaime looks at the screen again so she can’t witness his grin shattering like the window of Casterly Rock’s kitchen when he had been six and too eager while playing ball. He might feel even more chastised than after the lecture Tywin had given him, which had left a stone grinding sharp edge in his gut for a week.

“Fine, but I am not going to pet your head. You are not an overgrown housecat, no matter how much you may act as one,” Brienne relents, but by the end of the movie, she brushes back a strand he has shaken into his eyes and halfway through the second movie, she actually runs her hand through his hair and he barely manages to remain still, instead of following her hand like foam graces a wave’s edge.

All things considered, Jaime feels re-energized for the next week and his little war campaign on Brienne’s heart. He likes to think of it as war, though she is not a thing to conquer despite her truly formidable walls, just to trounce the narrative she has set for herself.

Once, before that fatefully shitty night when a pipe in his first own apartment burst and Brienne had invited him to stay over until it was fixed (and then he never really left), they had talked about who they would be in Targaryen and Stark eras, both revealing their dreams about knighthood.

Already knowing her love for ridiculous, historical(ly inaccurate) romance novels, he had joked if she’d not like ballads written about her instead, but Brienne’s face had shuttered and she had reminded him that no one would go to war for her . “I would rather defend the innocent and fight than stay home a sad and unmarried maid,” she had concluded, before going off about Blue Knight and other warrior women of Tarth. Jaime had already known back then that in any lifetime she’d be worthy of many great songs - of love and otherwise. But the bridge of their friendship was tentative still and he had had no intentions of being the one to lay the siege on her heart.

And when he had wanted to, he had already been so deep in the annoying, best friend role and still so utterly not having his shit together he didn’t feel he had the right to start the march. Someone better would surely come along. Except no one has, three years later still, and Brienne seems to think it’s a sign she only deserves a photoshopped suit-hanger and Jaime would rather be pierced endlessly by her glowering and risk her friendship that he treasures above anything he has ever known, than passively let her continue believing that.

For now, he’s only dying because of work, as they are currently quite swamped. It doesn’t help at all that his brain is a little (or a whole lot, but who’s counting) occupied with various Romance-Brienne-So-Hard-She-Doesn’t-Know-What-Hit-Her strategies. His plans for Friday come to immediate stop when he arrives home and finds Brienne fallen asleep at the kitchen table, her laptop’s screensaver of pixelated Kingslayer and Blue Knight from their favorite cartoon bouncing around the screen. He had installed it the first week of living here and despite her initial grumbling, she has never changed or disabled it.

This would be easier if Brienne’s one quirk when working at home wasn’t changing her workspace every few hours, as if it helps her think. It’s one of her most restless habits and typically, Jaime finds it adorable, but now that he has to haul half-asleep Brienne to her room he… Who is kidding, he also finds it endearing.

“Jaime, I can walk,” she scoffs, but leans on him anyway and when he helps her lay down on the bed, her eyes are soft and a little dazed and he thinks of early spring mornings, when nothing but the birds and clouds are awake yet, against the blueness of the sky.

Brienne curls up and he pulls a blanket over her and she gives him a sleepy smile, so warm that the consistent pull toward her feels anchored to the sun itself. He follows it and leans down and presses lips to her forehead. She exhales softly and when he pulls back, her eyes are closed, but there’s an almost sad turn to her lips.

“I really don’t want this to end, Jaime.” Her voice is so quiet he almost doesn’t hear - he wouldn’t if he wasn’t so close. His heart does an odd thing in his chest, something that would make it more of a rope dancer than a lion leaping through a ring of fire.

Jaime brushes a strand of her hair back, gently, in an attempt to reassure what odd fear has burrowed into her heart. He shouldn’t be so happy every time Brienne expresses she doesn’t want to lose him, but even her brilliant light can’t erase generations of carefully cultivated selfishness. “It doesn’t have to.”

“But it will.” And then she nuzzles deeper in the pillow and he knows this is a conversation to be finished (or maybe repeated) when she’s actually awake. Quietly, he walks out of the room and when the door has shut gently, bounces toward the living room with a grin that everyone would tell him begs for a punch.

There is hope for him yet.

#Jaime x Brienne #braime #braime ff #rainy writes stuff #my fic #I don't know how to format these things *sad noises*

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waxing-cresc4nt · 4 years ago

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I love you. And I don’t understand how. But God tells me not to lean unto my own understanding. I don’t say it romantically. I say it perhaps as a mixture of this song and my cleansed crystal and a surrendering and gratefulness to God for her knowing. Even amidst all of this.

I fear that of all my conspiracies, there’s my new one. Which is that this is a ploy to make way for the robots to take over the world. To force us all into our homes and then isolate us and force us to start virtual living. Endlessly. And start breathing recycled air and eating pixelated fruit and just a full blown black mirror era.

I’m telling you that I must see you again. I must. I have to be able to touch your hands. And feel them on my hips. And your forehead on my own. I need to brush my lips against yours. Lightly at first. Almost as if by accident. I need to be the subject of your camera lens and draw stanzas of my poetry on your body with my finger tips. I need to be emerged under water with you. I have to get back to you some how. And it has to be in natural light. In truth. On earth and in earth. We belong to the moon and the sun. We must bathe in them together.

I don’t know who you are or where you’ve come from but I need you.

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mars-the-4th-planet · 5 years ago

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Mr. Box and Isaac Stroganoff play another game even though its been so long since either made a game review that the game review community forgot who they were.

"What are we playing today?" Isaac Stroganoff said as he put his umbrella down in the corner even though the window showed it was a sunny day out. He untucked his pants, unzipped his fly, and sat by his American counterpart: misterjukebox8

"I have several questions, but for the sake of time I will just say we are playing a game you might enjoy: Yuri Gagarin Goes To The Beach. A commissioned title made in 1999 by an unknown publisher by the name of Kozakh Studios. I could not find any information on them online except a website that was entirely in Russian. Which is why I invited you to this review despite how harsh you were last time, because you might actually like this game. Its Russian!" Jukebox explained.

Isaac Stroganoff did a Russian gesture of sort of apologizing. "Yes, well, last time I played games with you I neglected to get comfortable and I may have roasted you many as a result. Was pretty funny. But now I have taken the time to settle in, I hope we can make many good video together."

Jukebox grinned, it looked like it would be a normal video for once. Just a nice, relaxing game review with no one roasting him or attacking him or breaking into government facilities.

He brushed off the old cartridge and stuck it into his "Oh hi Mark" plug-n-play console that according to a reddit post was the only console that the game was compatible with besides the Super Nintendo, which he also had but Jukebox was trying to seem less like a Nintendo fanboy.

"I did not hit her, it is not true, I did not! Oh hi Mark" the console beeped as it started up, then the loading screen appeared and it was Yuri Gagarin the rocket girl flying in a circle around the communist symbol.

Isaac Stroganoff frowned. "Jukebox, my friend, are you implying that I must like communism because I am Russian? If so, I kick many ass. Mostly yours. I will break spleens like lumberjack splitting watermelons."

"Not spleens, she is my favorite cat in the Sims..." Jukebox joked, and added "Oh and of course I am not trying to generalize you like that Isaac... Totally... I know Russians arent all the same!"

He then winked at the camera, out of Straganoffs view.

Isaac Stroganoff smiled. "Yes, good. Let us play game then, it is done with the load."

They had three options on a title screen with Yuri Gagarin smiling and whooshing back and forth in a space background with old fashioned SNES era graphics.

>New game

>Options

>Quick play

A forth option, >Continue, was also on screen but greyed out and could not be selected.

"Weird how there is no quit option." Jukebox noted.

"Quitting is for baby Europeans, not mighty Russian hordes." Isaac said snatching the controller and smashing his thumb down on "quick play"

A side scrolling stage opened up with Yuri Gagarin as the playable character. She could go in any direction since she could fly, but appeared somewhat agitated based on the pixel art. The background appeared to be a broken down industrial site with a brown and grey pallette. Jukebox shrugged. "I mean I kinda expected a bit more beach stuff out of a game called-"

"Jukebox. Please. The goal of the game is obviously to get Yuri Gagarin to the beach, dont be an American simpleton."

"But im American I cant help it!" Jukebox joked. "Hey look money!"

In the game there were alternating pillars of yellow dollar signs that spun like Mario coins or sonic rings. There was a counter at the top showing the dollar sign and a 0 next to it. There was also a high score counter which was also zero. However, Isaac Stroganoff avoided the dollar signs.

"Do you actually know how to play games Isaac, after all the times you teased me in the world of tanks video?"

"Fool. You do not grab dollar when playing communist."

"Right. Yeah those are probably hazards."

Then they saw a pulsating Stalin face, which Isaac Stroganoff swerved Yuri to grab. Their high score points went up to 1956. Apon grabbing another one, it proceeded to double to 3912.

"Oh so to get points you have to get the pulsating stalins... Makes sense, that is perfectly logical." Jukebox said with a shrug. "I never want to say that sentence again though."

"Have you noticed how wide of a behind Yuri Gagarin has in this game?" Trolli asked, poking his head from behind the couch.

"Ahh! How long were you back there??"

"Silly orange haired man has come to join us. Great, I shall enter coma and wake up when he is gone."

Yuri Gagarin in the game seemed to be flying slower now and looked more agitated, with cartoony sweat drops coming out of her head. This was probably because of the increased number of dollar signs, and what appeared to be rocket girl parts strewn around on the ground on the stage. Isaac Stroganoff just thought this made the game easier however, and continued gathering Stalin faces and getting points.

"Besides her bottom half is a rocket so it has to be big enough to carry her weight."

"Well, is not entirely inaccurate game. Russian women have much large and supple rear end. American women? Nothing. No boob, no ass, just cuteness. Good in their own way? Perhaps. If you are fool and a dog." Isaac pointed out. Jukebox scratched his head nervously "Erm... Dont get us demonitized Stroganoff... We just got this channel unsuspended after the truth or dare with ko video collab. Speaking of which what do you think of ko? Shes American but I find her beautiful."

Trolli and Stroganoff looked over at Ko from the Ko Sho, who was doing the BNHA dance after having spilled water on herself like a dork. Their eyes turned to hearts and "PERFECT!" flashed across the screen like it was a music game. Except zoomed in on Ko of course.

It was almost as if her boyfriend wrote the script for the Isaac Munger show with how attractive she was to all the characters.

Ko then started putting on cosplay and the boys went back to being boys, unpaused the game and continued.

"You know, overall, this is not such a bad game. I was expecting worse but it seems like just an old timey thematic flappy birds and you know what? I can get behind that." Jukebox admitted. "So can I play?"

Isaac Stroganoff handed him the remote. "Yes, time to get the money!" He said as the background started looking more like a beach. He darted Yuri Gagarin towards a column of dollar signs, and immediately apon touching them he was jumped by a screamer and a graphic depiction of the Russian Rocket Woman being dismantled for her capitalist sympathies. Jukebox jolted back and covered his eyes with a yelp and trolli disappeared back behind the couch while Isaac Stroganoff just looked annoyed. "We were so close to winning the quick game!!" He grumbled loudly. The lavender town music started playing about then. Jukebox, shuddering slightly, turned the power off. "Thank you for watching the Isaac Munger show everyone but we will be continuing this game when the sun is up. Or maybe not. Goodbye and thank you all for a wonderful time!"

"But is already day time outside--no wait, it is night now? Strange."

Jukebox nervously blew a kiss at the screen like usual, and called for ko to come hug him. Isaac Stroganoff looked confused. "Why is the Pokémon song still going?" He asked. "Probably just a bug... I hope." Jukebox replied, holding ko for comfort. "Nah Spookbox is probably gonna come kill us lol." Ko joked.

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virmillion · 5 years ago

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Ibytm - T minus 48 seconds

Masterpost - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter - ao3

Words: 2,053

Logan hisses gently as he pulls the bowl of popcorn from the microwave, setting it on the counter as fast as he can manage to shake the burning feeling from his fingers. “Popcorn’s done!”

“Great, now come pick a stupid show already, so I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my Friday,” Virgil calls back. Remembering to check his pride this time, Logan scoops up the bowl with two objectively safer napkins and peers around the corner of the kitchen wall.

Virgil’s head just barely peeks over the top of the couch, a tuft of pale purple hair sticking out opposite the rest. Beyond him is a daunting list of movies and shows scrolling beneath the Netflix logo. A fifteen second trailer loops for the movie Wreck-It Ralph, but Virgil stubbornly refuses to press play. The tuft of hair vanishes as Virgil leans forward and clears off a space on the table for the popcorn bowl.

“Careful, ’s hot,” Logan warns, dropping the bowl on the open spot.

“Noted.” Virgil, after acknowledging Logan’s words (which really ought to be heeded), proceeds to completely ignore them in favor of grabbing more than a fair fistful and popping the whole mess in his mouth. “Ha her he hah king?”

“You want to run that by me one more time?”

Virgil swallows around the lump of butter and grain with a grimace. “What’re we watching?”

“Great question. No more scary movies, you’re cut off from those, but that’s about our only parameter.”

“Puh- leez, it’s not my fault you couldn’t get to sleep last week. You’re the one that kept me up with nervous texts, ’member? I would’ve expected you to be grown up enough to survive watching Nightmare on Elm Street . Guess I was wrong, if laser tag was anything to go off of.”

“Laser tag was barely two months ago, and already you’re having delusions about my lacking bravery?”

“Hey, hey, you’re the astronaut in training here. I’m not the one with explicit and express intent to fly a hundred hours of pilot-in-command aircrafts before I turn twenty-seven.”

“A thousand hours, or three years of related professional experience. And if I want to break any records, it has to be before I’m twenty-six. Try to pay more attention when I lecture you about my internship next time.”

“I have to endure a next time?”

Logan shoots Virgil a pointed look, the effect of which is lost to the popcorn kernel lodged between his right molars. He prods at it with his tongue.

“In my defense,” Virgil continues, “this is pretty much the longest a relationship of mine has ever lasted.”

“Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?” Logan isn’t quite sure where all this bravado came from, but it’s doing wonders for keeping his voice even, so he won’t jinx it by digging deeper right now.

“It’s faster to say ‘relationship’ than ‘that dorky guy who hangs out at my apartment every Friday night to make fun of movies because we have nothing better to do as self-respecting adults,’ but I’ll gladly switch to that absurd and overly expository title if you prefer.”

A pout tries to crawl onto Logan’s face, which he promptly ignores. “Point taken. Did you pick a movie yet, or are you just that obsessed with watching a pixelated handyman smile on your television screen?”

“Neither. There’s no good bad movies left on here, so at this point, we’re better off watching something one of us has already seen—”

“Out of the question.”

“—watching nothing—”

“No thank you.”

“—or binging a series show.”

This gives Logan a moment’s pause. “That could work.”

“Right, because watching half an hour of an unending show every week without fail is how I want to spend my next three years’ worth of Fridays.”

“Well, why not?”

“What would we even watch? There’s, like, no serializations that normal people haven’t seen. Everybody’s watched The Office —”

“I haven’t.”

“— Brooklyn 99 —”

“I haven’t.”

“—and Parks and Rec .”

“I haven’t.”

Virgil slams the remote gown on the couch and gapes at Logan. “You haven’t seen Parks and Rec? ”

“Have you even been listening to a single word out of my mouth?”

“You are an absolute monster. You disgust me. We’re through, no more movie nights. I can’t hang out with someone whose true colors are so monochromatic.” Logan is not entirely certain whether Virgil is kidding at this point. “I’m kidding.” Logan is not entirely certain whether Virgil is about to add the caveat ‘mostly’ to that statement.

After an uncomfortably long silence wherein Logan looks absolutely anywhere that isn’t Virgil, the speakers proudly announce the sound of Leslie Knope introducing herself to a small child playing in a sandbox. “This isn’t very funny,” Logan murmurs. “I mean, what child would say they were having a moderate amount of fun and somewhat enjoying themselves to a stranger? I suppose I might if prompted, but still.”

“Shut up ,” Virgil hisses, “this part is hilarious, stop talking. ”

“Ha ha,” Logan says dryly. “I love watching drunks hide in swirly slides. Ha.”

“Shut up. ” This command is accompanied by Virgil swatting at Logan’s shoulder.”

“Well, hey, can’t we skip the theme song?” Logan is almost hoping he’ll say no, just so these movie nights can be that much longer. Series show nights, now.

“Nope, out of the question. Skipping the intro is cheating and an act of cowardice to the nth degree. Be quiet and enjoy the upbeat music.”

A few weeks later, Logan finds himself enjoying watching the theme song. Maybe it has something to do with how they’re sharing one bowl of popcorn, their fingers brushing against each other every so often, rather than Virgil hogging the whole thing for himself. Maybe it’s how their knuckles linger when they reach in at the same time, neither pulling away instantly, but neither vocalizing what’s happening. Maybe it’s how, when Virgil is distracted by people assuming Leslie is dating Ann, he absently lets their fingers link together loosely, too intentional to be a thoughtless mistake. When the scene shifts to some guy named Anthony waving, they both yank their hands away from each other. Logan swears he can feel his nerve endings burning.

Upon the premiere of season two, the distance between them has closed ever so slightly. Rather than being at opposite ends of a three cushion couch, Virgil leans on one armrest and Logan arranges himself on the next cushion over. And if Logan’s fingers wander over to Virgil’s when Leslie marries the two gay penguins (despite the popcorn being well out of reach on the table), and if they hold on long after the credits for the episode have passed, well, that’s nobody’s business but their own, isn’t it?

When the Galentine’s day episode rolls around, Logan has abandoned all pretenses of slowly inching closer, instead taking Virgil’s hand as soon as they’re both seated with their respective mugs. Both cheap water steepings from a broken keurig, of course, but at least they’re enjoying them together. Well, enduring, enjoying, same difference.

“Hey, that’s what you said the first time we went to the museum together!” Logan exclaims, watching the sweater swap moment between April and Andy. Okay, so he doesn’t really exclaim it, per se, so much as say it suddenly and without warning—it’d be rather difficult to literally exclaim it, what with his head resting heavy on Virgil’s shoulder and all.

“Oh, right, on our first date, you mean?”

“Our first what?”

For those of you keeping track at home, yes, Logan has managed to go about six months without realizing that their first date was, in fact, a date.

By the time Chris asks Tom and Jerry to come up with a new logo for the department, Logan is literally sitting in Virgil’s lap with an arm slung around his shoulders. You might liken the position to that of a koala, but then again, Logan didn’t ask you. Full disclosure, they started watching more than one episode a week somewhere along the line, but this was spurred in some part by the need for background noise while they packed everything Virgil owned into a small mountain of cardboard boxes.

“Something to celebrate the occasion?” Logan asks tentatively, holding up a bottle of champagne. This kitchen certainly looks much nicer than the last one, but the leniency of adding paint to these walls was a buffer Logan had sorely missed at Virgil’s old place.

“If you want,” Virgil replies, craning his head over the back of the couch. “But you’re paying damages if you spill it all over my clean floors.”

“Well, duh, I’m paying half the rent, of course I’d fund repairs.” Logan holds back what more he wants to mention, still wary of the sore spot surrounding Virgil’s careers.

“In that case, plop your butt down on the couch we need to replace—speaking of which, we need to figure out a day to descend on IKEA for some upgrades.” Virgil pats his lap and gestures toward the screen—longer and thinner, purchased with some of the funds they’d pooled from their respective savings when picking a place together. “Now, c’mon, we’re about to see the squad go to London. I know you’re all about the architecture over there, aren’t you?”

“As if you even need to ask.” Logan grins, plopping himself down on top of Virgil and whistling along with the theme song.

Living together, unsurprisingly, does wonders for powering through the last couple seasons at a much more efficient pace. In what seems like the blink of an eye, Logan is watching the futures of the main squad playing out as they do one last project, and it’s not a stretch to say he’s holding back tears. As the credits fade to black and The Office pops up as a recommendation to watch next, Logan lifts a hand to his cheek and is baffled to find it come away wet.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Virgil murmurs, slipping an arm around Logan’s back and rubbing circles on his arm. “This is the worst part, I know. You’ve never been this attached to fictional characters before, huh?” Logan hiccoughs. “Yeah, I got you, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

Between shuddering breaths that aren’t quite laughs, Logan manages to get out, “It’s like the end of an era. I don’t know, I mean, it’s really over.”

“Oh, I know, sweetie,” Virgil mumbles, pressing his lips against Logan’s hair. “It just means moving on, and I’ll be here for you through it all.” Slowly but surely, Logan’s hiccoughs turn into giggles as the ridiculousness of the situation dawns on him. Why should he be getting so emotional over the end of some tv show? He literally went into this knowing the series would have a finale. He says as much to Virgil.

“True, but we sank a couple years into this tradition. You’re allowed to mourn a tradition, even if you think it’s silly. There’s no rules for what you can or can’t grieve, and even if you lie to yourself enough to believe there are, I’ll be here to help you through it.”

“First off, you can’t spell believe without ‘lie,’ and second, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, hon. What would you get out of dealing with nonsense emotions?”

“Besides knowing I get to wake up every morning to see your face?” Virgil pretends to ponder this for a moment, only breaking into a grin when Logan elbows him in the side—not intentionally, mind you. It’s more of an effort to bury his nose in Virgil’s neck, but unfortunately for Logan, Virgil is ticklish right around there. He laughs loudly and announces, “I want the moon.”

“The moon?”

“The moon, spaceman.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll bring you the moon. Is that all?”

“One more thing.”

“One more thing besides the moon, you mean?”

“Well, yeah, you have to know how much the moon costs.”

“How much does the moon cost?”

“The stars.”

“The stars?”

“It’ll cost you the stars.”

Logan shakes his head and smiles, wrapping Virgil in a tight hug and drying his eyes against his boyfriend’s sleeve. His words are no doubt muffled, near unintelligible, but he’s sure Virgil can make it out well enough. “Okay, love. I’ll bring you the moon.”

#labhwrites #mine #i'll bring you the moon #ibytm

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the-desolated-quill · 7 years ago

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The Witch’s Familiar - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Now that we’ve gotten past the pointless and mindless prologue that was The Magician’s Apprentice, I was hoping that The Witch’s Familiar would be where the meat of the story would be. Sadly there’s barely any meat on this thing.

Yes, while The Witch’s Familiar has more narrative coherence than the previous episode did, sticking to one time and location for the most part, it’s in fact just as bad as The Magician’s Apprentice, if not worse.

Let’s start with the biggest problem. Davros. Specifically how he’s utilised. Seeing boy Davros on the Skaro battlefield was quite an exciting development and could have opened up some interesting directions for the character to go down. Unfortunately that’s not the case. Turns out the story is not about Davros at all. It’s, once again, all about the Doctor. What? You thought Moffat had finally stopped the introspective bullshit in Death In Heaven? You thought the Doctor’s speech about being just a guy in a box was the end of the matter? Well you’d be wrong, wouldn’t you? It looks like brooding angst is going to be a staple of the Twelfth Doctor’s tenure, so you’d better get used to it.

Good God, I’m so fucking tired of this crap. Not only has the Doctor’s constant, guilt driven introspection been serving as a detriment to numerous plots, it also doesn’t make a pixel of sense, especially when you consider who he spends most of his time talking to in this story. Remember in the episode Journey’s End back in the RTD era where Davros started flinging moral judgements at the Doctor? Remember how bloody stupid that was? Well The Witch’s Familiar is like that, but somehow even stupider (and I didn’t even think that was possible). Once again the Doctor’s good guy credentials are being criticised with no justification whatsoever, and it’s hard to take it seriously because it’s fucking Davros. Davros is the one waggling his finger disapprovingly at the Doctor. Davros. Forgive me if I don’t consider Space Hitler fit enough to judge the Doctor’s moral standing.

It’s such a shame because both Peter Capaldi and Julian Bleach really give it their all and you can tell they’re really trying for something hard-hitting and emotional, but it just doesn’t work because the whole thing is utterly ridiculous. At one point Davros asks the Doctor if he’s a good man and whether he did the right thing trapping his own race inside pepper pots, which is clearly supposed to mirror the Doctor’s question to Clara in Into The Dalek, but it’s so fucking daft because... IT’S FUCKING DAVROS! He’s a racist, genocidal maniac who performed brutal experiments on his own people and was responsible for the deaths of billions. Let’s just say Santa Claus won’t be paying him a visit anytime soon. That got quite possibly the biggest laugh out of me this whole episode. And it just gets even weirder when you consider the Doctor’s response. I could buy the Doctor visiting his deathbed, taking pity on him and even sharing a laugh with him (they’ve had a long history after all). But giving him some of his regeneration energy?

IT’S FUCKING DAVROS!!!

I know I must sound like a heartless bastard, but I honestly wasn’t moved by the Doctor and Davros’ interactions. Not even slightly. It’s just too stupid and too unlikely for words. And it just gets worse when you find out that the two have been lying to each other through their back bloody teeth this all time. Were you moved by Davros’ emotional pleas to the Doctor? Turns out he was lying the whole time! He just wanted the Doctor’s regeneration energy for his Daleks (they never explain why or how this would benefit the Daleks. Moffat was too busy trying to be clever rather than filling in that little detail for us) and didn’t mean a single fucking thing he said. But it’s okay because the Doctor was lying too! Yeah, he knew all along that Davros was lying and so played him at his own game, so not only does this have no emotional weight whatsoever, there’s also nothing even remotely at stake! Isn’t Moffat a genius?

I really wish the story had stuck with the Doctor and boy Davros because that was interesting. I even liked the idea of the Doctor giving up his sonic screwdriver due to his own guilt (although that’s later ruined thanks to the sonic sunglasses. Seriously?! Sonic fucking sunglasses?!?! Give me strength!), and had they left it with the Doctor abandoning boy Davros to his fate, it would have been fine. Instead Moffat had to take it one step further.

This whole scenario is clearly taking inspiration from the classic Who story Genesis Of The Daleks. Specifically a line uttered by Tom Baker’s Doctor during a pivotal moment of the story:

"If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?"

Now if you haven’t already, I strongly urge you to watch Genesis Of The Daleks. It’s one of the best stories in the whole of Doctor Who (some even consider it to be the best) and every Whovian needs to watch it at least once. One of the many reasons why Genesis is so fondly remembered is because of the morally complex question at the centre. Terry Nation smartly chooses not to answer it, instead allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions. Steven Moffat, on the other hand, chooses to tackle the question head on. The Doctor is given the opportunity to exterminate boy Davros, but instead ends up saving him. But you see, by doing so, Moffat completely misses the point of Genesis Of The Daleks. It’s not about what the Doctor would or wouldn’t do. It’s about the question itself. Rather than expanding on the legacy of Genesis, Moffat ends up tarnishing it, sweeping all the moral complexity under the carpet and spoon-feeding us a neat and tidy answer. No of course the Doctor wouldn’t kill a child! Are you crazy? And all the millions of lives destroyed are very quickly brushed aside with some bullshit about mercy. Not only is it too simplistic, it also makes the Doctor come across like a complete hypocrite. While he’s busy trying to decide whether killing Davros is the right thing to do, he’s setting up the Daleks so that they can kill each other. Obviously this kind of manipulation is very much in character for the Doctor, but it’s ironic how he shows a lot of guilt and angst over a humanoid child, but doesn’t even so much as bat an eyelid at killing all the non-humanoid Daleks.

Let’s quickly talk about the Daleks. They always tend to suffer in Davros stories, and this is a perfect example of that. Yes we do get a lot of new info about the Daleks (most of which doesn’t make sense. Why dump old, decaying Daleks in the sewers? Why not just kill them? Isn’t that their usual MO? Obsession with purity and all that. And while the Dalek machine altering your speech sounds like a good idea and adds to the trapped and claustrophobic nature of the Daleks, it also completely contradicts what we already know about them. How did Ian Chesterton manage to have a conversation with the First Doctor, Barbara and Susan when he was in the Dalek machine?), but they’re also not in the slightest bit threatening, and that’s because nobody takes them seriously. You’ve got the Doctor whizzing around in Davros’ chair asking them if they want to play dodgems, you’ve got the Master back to her annoying, goofy self (the bitch is back? Moffat, may I remind you this is a kid’s show) undermining the Daleks’ authority at every turn. Add to that apparently it’s easy as fuck to cheat death thanks to the Master’s teleport and the TARDIS’ newfound superpowers, and the Daleks don’t really have a leg to stand on. If the show isn’t going to take them seriously, why the fuck should I?

Speaking of the Master, what are she and Clara even doing here? They contribute precisely nothing to the story at all. You could just cut them out of the story entirely and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. And why does the Master try and trick the Doctor into killing Clara? What’s the point? Didn’t she bring the Doctor and Clara together in the first place? And why did she even do that? That’s never been explained. I wasn’t kidding when I said Missy was basically Moriarty in a dress back in my review of Death In Heaven because they both share the exact same problems. With both Moriarty and the Master, Moffat is trying desperately to emulate this kind of Joker style madness, but there’s more to the Joker than just being insane. He actually has consistent motives and morals, with his insanity serving that. With the Master and Moriaty, Moffat seems to be using insanity as a way to excuse his own shitty writing. There’s no need to create a consistent character with clear goals or proper reasoning behind their actions because they’re insane. It’s just incredibly fucking lazy and it’s an utter waste of the Master. Neither she nor Clara have any kind of agenda of their own, hence why they feel so superfluous.

Finally there’s the series arc. Usually bad arcs from Moffat are to be expected, but this is the first time I’ve ever been truly worried by the direction he’s going in. It seems that Moffat is going back into Listen territory and trying to redefine the important building blocks of the show. So there’s a prophecy about something called the Hybrid and apparently that’s why the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey in the first place. Like with Listen, it seems Moffat is once again trampling over one of the most integral parts of the Doctor’s character. His mystery. We don’t really know who he is, where he comes from or precisely why he left Gallifrey all those years ago, and we shouldn’t know either. It’s like dissecting a frog. Yes you could cut it open and find out how the insides work, but then you’d just be left with a bloody mess on the table. I have no idea where Moffat is going with this Hybrid stuff, but it seems like we’re going down a very dangerous path indeed and after all the damage he’s already caused over the years, I’m deeply concerned about him potentially lifting up the bonnet and messing with the vital components of the show.

Overall The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar is a pretty rubbish start to Series 9. Nonsensical plots, pointless padding, non-threatening villains, recycling of tired ideas and an attempt to expand on a classic Doctor Who story that ultimately misses the point by several galaxies.

#the witch's familiar #steven moffat #doctor who #twelfth doctor #peter capaldi #clara oswald #jenna coleman #the master #michelle gomez #davros #daleks #bbc #review #spoilers

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sinetheta · 7 years ago

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FOREIGN: Profile and interview with multilingual Chinese/Chinese-American rapper Bohan Phoenix

In the midst of Bohan Phoenix’s latest international tour, we decided to release the full profile and interview that Sine Theta editor-in-chief Jiaqi Kang conducted with the rapper last fall. In this story, he discusses his roots, his rediscovery of China, and, of course, his signature, everlasting philosophy of lovelove. The interview is available in print form in Sine Theta Issue 2: “COLOR 彩.” Bohan Phoenix��s latest single is “Product,” which can be found here.

“This is Bohan Phoenix, Chinese-American rapper extraordinaire, utterly brash near the three-minute mark of the music video for ‘Motivasian,’ a song taken from his latest EP entitled Foreign. It’s a track in which, like much of his discography, his boyish, insolent voice masterfully switches between English and Mandarin as he raps about his experiences. As someone whose identity is composed of two vastly different cultures, he is a foreigner everywhere he goes –– too Chinese for America, and too American for China.”

A pagoda sits atop a pier somewhere in Beijing. Its pillars –– red for prosperity and happiness –– and tiled, tilted roof are reflected in the quiet greyness of the lake below while traditional Chinese music plays softly in the background. Ripples begin to form in the water when two figures appear in the side of the frame, walking briskly along the pier. Behind them loom tall apartment blocks, grimy from pollution.

Cut to within the pagoda: two men sit on the floor, playing Chinese chess and smoking. The hurried figures –– a Chinese man with shiny eyes, accompanied by a loyal, skinny white friend –– arrive, slightly breathless. As their footsteps approach, one of the chess players, a black man with sharp cheekbones and somewhat cheap-looking silk pyjamas, flips a fake braid attached to his vaguely Qing-era imperial yellow cap. A twanging sound effect is heard as the frame freezes on his bulging eyes and gaping mouth. An intertitle introduces him: Black Sesame. “Bohan?” he squawks in faux surprise, looking up at the Chinese man. “I haven’t seen you in thirty-five years. What the fuck are you doing in Beijing?”

“Somebody’s got Chewy, man, they got Chewy!” comes the answer from Bohan. It had barely been twenty-four hours since he’d received the international call, which informed him that his cousin in the capital had been kidnapped and that the ransom was 3.5 billion yuan. He’d immediately flown from New York to Beijing to scour the streets for Black Sesame, hoping that his old friend would help him. “Where the fuck can I get that type of money ‘round here?”

“I don’t know,” says Black Sesame. He rubs his temple in exaggerated deep thought, then consults his chess opponent. “What do you think, Howie?”

Howie Lee raises his head, a strange gaze staring from behind thick glasses. “Neng shuochang ma?” he asks in Mandarin. “Can you rap?”

And suddenly, like a stage curtain falling away, everything solid melts into air. The soft light and peaceful lake setting is gone, abruptly replaced by an unnamed Beijing concert venue. An ominous, piercing chant appears out of nowhere, accompanied by frantic drums and the sudden figure of a man shrouded by darkness. It takes a second for us to realise that this is the same Chinese man as in the previous scene –– he has removed his thick hoodie and is now shirtless and defiant as he barks into a microphone behind a blurred lens, his entire body writhing to the beat. An excited audience sways around him, pale arms and hands glinting for the briefest of moments under nervous, flashing lights. The visuals, which storm by on fast-forward, begin to fuse together into a swirl of neon colors and pixels.

This is Bohan Phoenix, Chinese-American rapper extraordinaire, utterly brash near the three-minute mark of the music video for Motivasian, a song taken from his latest EP entitled “Foreign.” It’s a track in which, like much of his discography, his boyish, insolent voice masterfully switches between English and Mandarin as he raps about his experiences. As someone whose identity is composed of two vastly different cultures, he is a foreigner everywhere he goes –– too Chinese for America, and too American for China.

Bohan Phoenix is a rising figure in the hip-hop circuit. As one of a tiny handful of Asian-American rappers, his ethnicity makes him stand out from the crowd and his music is anything but ordinary. Unlike most other non-black hip-hop artists, he doesn’t merely mimic the conventions of black music culture, but works to bring traditional elements into fusion with rap. Phoenix’s smooth incorporation of Mandarin into his music distinguishes him from many Asian-American rappers who did not grow up speaking their mother tongues, and this double fluency allows him the potential to thrive in his native country. And yet, by embracing this notably unique style, Phoenix runs the risk of alienating a chunk of his Western audience and may not become a big star anytime soon –– though even those who don’t understand what he is saying admit that he has an obvious affinity for rap. Although he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page yet, this independent artist is part of the new online generation that doesn’t need to be signed to a label to be well-known. With over 210’000 plays on his Soundcloud and fans from all over the world, the twenty-four-year-old Phoenix is slowly and steadily conquering the globe.

I find Phoenix on the porch of a quiet suburban house to the west of Boston on a fresh summer morning. Wearing a plain white T-shirt, old sweatpants, and a gaudy leopard-print bandana reminiscent of nineties housewives, he invites my two friends and me into his mother’s dark, cluttered home. There’s that familiar greeting the Chinese use: “Have you eaten?” As we pass through the kitchen, he gestures towards the stove, where a pot full of congee sits alongside a tray of multicolored dumplings. His mother made him a special meal the evening before because he’d come from Brooklyn to visit her, he tells us as he sits back down in front of his laptop on the dining table. Mrs. Phoenix, it seems, is enthusiastic in the kitchen: I brush past a pile of glazed pillows made of marzipan, and sit down with my elbow next to a sponge cake in the shape of a ukulele.

Phoenix’s last name is Leng, which is the same as his mother’s, as he has only met his biological father twice. His parents weren’t married, so when his mother became pregnant, she had to return to Hubei province and marry her high school classmate in order to avoid the stigma surrounding single mothers. Phoenix is like many children of the jiuling hou, post-90s, generation that sprung up after Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms in the eighties. New economic opportunities pushed millions of young Chinese to newly prosperous cities, where they made money to send back home to family. Phoenix was raised by his grandparents in Yichang, a provincial city with a population of 4 million on the banks of the Yangtze, while his mother migrated to work in booming Shenzhen in the south. He struggled in school, and his mother realized that she would never be able to to keep up with the strict Chinese education system once he was in high school. She worked in real estate and was better off than most migrant workers, who, even today, bounce listlessly from factory to factory for years, unable to scrape together enough money to find a way out.

And so, at the turn of the millennium, she moved to the United States in search of better opportunities for her son. Phoenix followed in 2003 at the age of 11. When he first arrived, he spoke no English and was unable to communicate with his white stepfather. He recalls crying almost every night for home. His grandmother died not long after, an event that, Phoenix tells me, “took away a reason for me to go back to China.” After a couple of years in the States, he finally adjusted and settled down, becoming close with his stepfather, who treated him as his own flesh and blood. It didn’t hurt that he discovered hip-hop classics like Eminem and Tupac, whose music helped him to learn the language and gave him something in common with the local kids. ----

Back in the dining room, Phoenix busies himself on his computer as he waits for us to finish eating the dumplings. He strokes his meagre goatee while whistling and occasionally checking Pokémon Go on his phone. He makes easy small talk and, once he finds out that one of my friends will be interning at a Hong Kong music festival this autumn, he immediately begins speaking over the phone to a contact at VICE China about appearing in the line-up. Phoenix is jittery and active, always on the lookout for the opportunity to hone his craft, his ears constantly tuned into the soundscape around him –– on one occasion, deep into our interview, he stops abruptly to listen to the beeping sound of a van as it backs out of its parking space, casually commenting, “That’s a nice sound,” before returning to his original line of thought, his expression equally intrigued and amused.

There’s also a boyish innocence about him; he flits from topic to topic, his thoughts bouncing around and colliding with one another. He chats about House of Cards and going camping, and we have a brief conversation about Chairman Mao’s infamous infected pimple as he drives us in his mom’s Honda to a nearby park. There, the Wednesday sunlight rests modestly on pale green grass, and Phoenix plomps down onto dusty bleachers to admire the stark blue sky. Even when sitting down, he constantly fidgets with his various accessories: he takes his sunglasses off, then puts them on again; he twirls his bracelets around on his wrist –– there’s an innate skittish energy that seems to seep out of his very pores and sink into his music. His lyrics are at times playful and light-hearted, reflecting the laid-back way he enjoys life: “Motivasian” includes the tongue-in-cheek lines I heard they don’t ever pay attention / Spit a few in Mandarin to check if they listenin’.

For much of his career, Phoenix was convinced that he needed to create what he describes as “poetic rap”: contemplative, introspective music with artistic symbolism. It’s with this mindset that he churned out the 2013 mixtape X Years. Its title referred to the ten years he has spent in each of his two home countries: China and the United States. Although it received critical acclaim, only traces of it can now be found as Phoenix has wiped it from the Internet. He tells me that he felt the music didn’t properly convey the concept of his split cultural identity. “I probably had, like, 3 lines of Chinese on that entire thing,” he says. “Afterwards, I was like, ‘This doesn’t make sense.’ So it took it down.” From the few videos that I can find through some minor YouTube sleuthing, it seems that making X Years was tantamount to coloring within the lines. A review on the Hip Hop Speakeasy praises Phoenix’s talents but notes that he “rhymes over classic instrumentals”. He had grown up listening to great hip-hop, but had not yet, at the time, found his own voice. His embarrassment at X Years is evident in the fact that it no longer exists.

Another song that Phoenix is considering removing from the Internet is So(ul) Faded, a 2014 singsong track set to a closed-eyed piano melody created during what Phoenix calls his “J. Cole phase,” after the North Carolina-raised rapper famous for his lyrical hip-hop. In the music video, which is entirely in black-and-white, a dismal-looking Phoenix gets a haircut as he raps pessimistically about the desolate state of society today. The song is dark and heavy, and features news footage from the Boston Marathon bombing that took place in April 2013. “So(ul) Faded makes me so fucking sad,” Phoenix says. “It’s depressing. I don’t like performing it. I don’t like listening to it.” But what Phoenix doesn’t mention are the hints of imitation. It’s been pointed out to me that the haircut Phoenix is getting is a fade, and that he’s sitting in a traditional black barbershop. In the world of hip-hop –– a music scene created and led by African-Americans –– Phoenix and other non-black rappers of color straddle the line between dealing with their own racial marginalization and seeking refuge by unduly engaging with black culture. As a result, this adoption of attributes, including black hairstyles and language (African American Vernacular English, abbreviated as AAVE), presents an obvious problem as black people themselves are condemned for the display of their own culture, but non-black people can freely perform it with little censure.

Asians in hip-hop often feel racially alienated. Jaeki Cho and Salima Koroma, the filmmakers behind Bad Rap, a 2016 documentary about the topic, wrote in an email that not only do Asian-American rappers face the regular racial stereotypes, but, on top of this, there “aren’t many Asian-American artists, executives, and media personalities to start,” according to Cho. “Also, until recently, East Asian culture discouraged participation in art and entertainment, while praising conformity.” And then there’s the toxic dichotomy –– while black men have historically been wrongfully perceived as aggressive and dangerous, cultural distortions emasculate Asian men. As Phoenix himself says, nodding: “Dongfang ruo fu.” The weak man from the East.

“Hip-hop has always been an art that encourages machismo,” Cho tells me. So perhaps to overcome misconceptions about being effeminate, Asians in hip-hop across the world will attempt to compensate by appropriating black culture. They pick the most appealing aspects and try them on like new clothes, with little regard for the brutal history of social and systemic discrimination specific to African-Americans that led to the creation and evolution of black culture in the first place. Keith Ape, the Korean rapper whose It G Ma went viral in 2015, wears braids in his hair and grills in his teeth; Brian Imanuel, an Indonesian comedian who raps under the name ‘Rich Chigga’, has used black slang as well as the N-word. Phoenix acknowledges that copying black culture can lead to quicker success. “Without all that,” he admits, “it takes way longer to blow up.”

There can sometimes be a thin line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. Phoenix doesn’t consciously try to imitate black culture, appearing to disapprove of such an act. He believes that using the N-word is unnecessary. “It doesn’t make sense,” he explains. Non-black rappers, he says, will imitate trends that they think is ‘cool’ without thinking about the meaning behind it. “People don’t think about why they’re doing things anymore. Keith Ape? He’s super original in his own way. But outside of that, it’s all carbon copy.” When Phoenix finds fame, it’s going to be through his own creative efforts. But he tugs at his wrist, where he sports a bracelet that looks like a metal fork bent into a circular shape, and shrugs. “I’m not gonna knock it, because that’s their hustle… I think time will tell who’s gonna have longevity,” he says. “I wanna have longevity,” he adds.

To Phoenix, the originality and sincerity in his art is paramount: “My mentor tells me that the day you decide to be yourself, your life becomes easier and easier.” His mentor is his gospel choir teacher, Sheldon Reid, also associated with the Kuumba Singers of Harvard College, and who was the first to truly encourage his enthusiasm for rap, during the last two years of high school. He had Phoenix write verses that he would perform solo, with the choir backing him up, in front of the entire school. That gave Phoenix the confidence to perform, and drew him towards music as a profession. Ever since his gospel days, he has been constantly renewing himself for his art –– and it’s no surprise that the moniker he picked for himself is so representative of his mindset: a phoenix dies only to rise from the ashes again, stronger. Though Phoenix may have started out with more traditional hip-hop, his evolution means that he has now grown out of it and has begun to forge his own path. After a slew of small projects, Phoenix seemed to have stumbled upon something big when he founded loveloveN¥C.

To love the concept of love –– lovelove, or 爱爱 in Chinese –– is Bohan Phoenix’s thing. Call it a motto, a message, a perspective, a vision, or whatever you’d like –– it’s the phrase under which he and his friends, who include producer Jachary (who also played Black Sesame in the Motivasian music video) and tattoo artist Ralph a.k.a. M4, operate. It’s the name of their studio in Brooklyn, and it’s inked onto T-shirts, baseball caps, and Phoenix’s left arm. It’s an encouragement to embrace positivity and face the world as a good person. “Being nice is the coolest thing,” Phoenix informs me. “Seriously. I mean, love is the coolest thing –– ever.” It’s the message that he wants to resonate across the world, and he’s still figuring out how to do it through his music.

In early 2015, Phoenix put out loveloveEP, made up of four songs produced by Jachary, his roommate and closest collaborator. Infused with soft percussion and jazz-funk inspirations, the EP began to showcase what would become Phoenix’s distinctive style, which mixes honest autobiographical lyrics with cheerfulness and humor. Obama probably blowin’ trees and just keeps it lowkey, he raps in “So Responsible,” a track about smoking marijuana. The songs are catchy and fun to listen to, and their creation allowed Phoenix to experiment with new production processes such as working with live instruments. But Phoenix isn’t satisfied with it. The EP, which was completed in a week and a half, “could’ve been better,” he admits. It was much too short, and didn’t properly convey the idea of lovelove. Its mismatched title would cause listeners to misunderstand his message.

Phoenix finally found his voice when he began collaborating with Beijing-based producer Howie Lee (who starred as the antagonist in the “Motivasian” video) –– for one, it now contains more Mandarin lyrics. Songs were once lightly peppered with Chinese elements; now, the blend of cultures is an even mix. Phoenix also takes himself far less seriously as he’d previously done on the rambunctious four songs from his Foreign EP, which was released in March of this year.

Lee’s beats incorporate unconventional sounds and Chinese instruments such as the guzheng, and make each of the songs absolutely entrancing: “Loveloveworldwide” is haunted by an ominous humming of unknown origin; “Motivasian” is backed by urgent staccato clicking sounds that make listeners’ heartbeats quicken with anticipation; They Don’t Know is reminiscent of a crazed child’s glockenspiel; and a hypnotising drum persists in the eponymous track Foreign. Such groundwork by a creative producer sends Phoenix’s voice flying through the air to match it with lurching rhythms and impressive versatility. His voice sounds unleashed as it switches from loud and boisterous to robustly fluid. “Foreign was different,” Phoenix explains, “because Howie’s beats were so different. I tried being serious on Foreign and I couldn’t –– it didn’t work. I just decided to have fun.”

On these tracks, Phoenix juggles English and Mandarin impressively. He alternates between verses and even, at times, in the middle of a sentence –– deftly switching to another language to make a line rhyme with the previous one. Interestingly, much of his Mandarin lyrics are reminiscent of his childhood days and refer to his family, with whom he communicated in that language. Some lines evoke scoldings from his mother, like Bu yao chouyan, yiding yao nianshu (“Stop smoking, you must study harder”), while others are his own words: Mama wo huilai le (“Mom, I’m home”). In English, where Phoenix has a wider, more mature vocabulary, he nonetheless makes references to his ancestral culture with allusions to “tai chi” and “Beijing”.

It is startling how malleable Mandarin becomes on Phoenix’s tongue. He reshapes it to fit the heaving flow of his verses. Phoenix references Tang dynasty poet Li Bai in one of his songs, but I’m sure Li would be astounded to hear the way this young tributary has squeezed the neat, tidy, paced syllables of Chinese into a raft and sent them careening violently down a bounding cascade. Inspired by prodigious Taiwanese artist Jay Chou, who helped pioneer the incorporation of rap into mainstream Mandopop, Phoenix also abandons the four tones of Mandarin that enable listeners to distinguish meaning from sound, replacing them with flattened versions. At first, it just sounds like Phoenix hasn’t mastered the language, but this is obviously not the case –– he does it on purpose. Mandarin sounds too choppy otherwise, Phoenix says. “But I have some friends in Chengdu and they speak in the Sichuan dialect and it’s like, that dialect is perfect for rapping.”

He’s referring to the Higher Brothers, a group of rappers who are part of the Chengdu Rap House and with whom he collaborated while on tour in China in the spring of 2016. The Motherland Tour, backed by VICE China, also featured Howie Lee and Zhang Yang from Lee’s do hits group and two other diasporic Chinese musicians: Mike Gao and Nehzuil, who grew up in Los Angeles and New Zealand respectively. This was the third time returning to China in the past year for Phoenix, and with each visit his appreciation for his birth country grew. In March 2015, he’d met his biological father for the second time ever and discovered to his surprise the uncanny similarities in dress, body language, and personality between the two. Later, in October 2015, he brought his American friends along to visit Beijing for the first time and to shoot the “Motivasian” video. This third time, Phoenix was not only accompanied by his loveloveN¥C friends while performing all across the country, but also met a slew of acquaintances during his travels. He was able to see China through the eyes of a tourist. Whereas before, when he returned to China, he would simply visit his family in Chengdu, he now goes sightseeing and partying with an entourage of equally energetic minds and is thus able to discover a totally different –– and perhaps far more entertaining –– side of China.

----

Rediscovering China also allowed Phoenix to rediscover himself. He was able to unearth that unique aspect of his identity through these extended visits, and it has been a factor in his transition from darker, more traditional hip-hop to his current playful style. “I don’t wanna shoot any videos in America now,” he confesses. “It was so much fun [in China]. Everything was dope there.” He compares China to New York, where he now lives, that has for more than a century been the hub of American art and culture. “It’s easier not to be creative when you’re shooting in China,” he says, because of how refreshing it is simply to see a different backdrop in a music video. “New York is so overshot. Everything [there] is overshot.” He now realizes that he can bring China into his creative career and allow his aspect of him to let him stand out as an artist. He also sees the market potential in China –– the hip-hop scene in the country is still in its early stages, and he wants to help shape it. Due to a lack of major music platforms –– Soundcloud, the West’s most popular music-sharing site, is blocked, and there is no real equivalent to alternative media outlets such as Pitchfork –– independent music has a harder time gaining widespread attention. But Phoenix is confident that the scene will develop, and that audiences in China will receive his message of lovelove.

Similar to Oscar Wilde, who famously applied the theories of aestheticism to his daily life, turning himself into an eccentric celebrity of the literary world, Phoenix embodies what he preaches. He’s already living the lovelove lifestyle by stubbornly treating everybody with respect, which is one of the reasons why he refuses to openly criticise other artists. From Phoenix’s point of view, all conflicts, such as the controversy over NYPD officer Peter Liang’s conviction, boil down to misconception; a lack of love. Phoenix tells me about his aunt in Chengdu, China, with whom he and his friends stayed during their tour. Immigration rates are extremely low in the country, and most Chinese have never met a black person in their life. In a documentary about the tour released by Noisey, a VICE channel, it’s revealed that Phoenix’s aunt once texted him saying, “Your mom tells me you’re worshipping black people.” She explains in the film that, to her, black people are at the bottom of society and that their misery fuels their music. After three days spent with Ralph and Jachary, though, Phoenix recalls her exclaiming, “Wow! Black people are so nice!” But Phoenix trails off just as he begins to get heated about race –– it’s obvious that he doesn’t like to think too much about it. “I don’t know,” he mumbles. “It’s too complicated.”

Later, when I push him to speak more about the racism I feel sure he’s experienced, he becomes irritable. He says he’s never faced hostility in the hip-hop scene as an Asian. “There’s one race: the human race,” he insists. Lovelove is supposed to overcome all superficial barriers –– it’s what truly makes sense to him right now. Perhaps Phoenix has finally found what he has been looking for all along within this ideology, and perhaps in a few years he will reinvent himself again. When I email Jachary and ask him if he thinks loveloveN¥C will last, the reply is simply and staunchly: “lovelove forever.”

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There’s a line from “Loveloveworldwide,” written by Phoenix after his second big trip to China:

我想搬回中国可我没勇气 Wo xiang banhui Zhongguo ke wo mei yongqi I want to move back to China but I don’t have the courage

The phrase hits me deep in the gut. It articulates a feeling that resides within us both, and within many members of the diaspora –– the calling of one’s ancestral roots and all the uncertainty it carries. With China’s rapid economic growth, culture is evolving just as fast, and each visit means that there is something new and fresh happening. “It’s amazing,” Phoenix says. There are so many things that haven’t been tried yet, beckoning the formation of a new avant-garde generation. And yet, at the same time, “it takes so much guts and so much spontaneity to just drop everything. Technically,” Phoenix confesses, “there’s nothing holding me back. But it’s all these things that I conjure up.”

Phoenix is increasingly splitting his time between the two countries and is working on building bridges between two cultures that often seem like they are in total opposition, whether politically or socially. Yet amidst the back and forth, Phoenix still makes time to unwind every now and then. As the official part of our interview wraps up, I snap some photos and Phoenix rolls a joint. We watch the high noon sunlight as it sits poised on the grass in the park –– the same park where, years ago, Phoenix and his schoolmates used to smoke together. He recommends a list of good Asian restaurants in Boston. I mention being underage for tattoos, and he invites me down to New York so that Ralph can ink me, no questions asked. I politely decline. It’s his birthday this weekend, and he’ll be releasing a short song called “Epilogue” to celebrate. With its synthetic instrumentals and the visceral, desperate quality to the backup vocals, it’s simultaneously emotional and coolly rational. It’s a fitting conclusion to the Foreign era of Phoenix’s work, which also includes “3 Days in Chengdu,” a 12-minute song produced by Jachary that begins with an unpretentious eulogy to his passed-away grandmother. After this, it’s a second EP with Howie Lee, and maybe some singles here and there. Another year lies ahead, six months of which will be spent in China. The future is brilliantly uncertain.

A small breeze rustles the trees. Phoenix shows me the cover that he’d originally intended to use for the Foreign EP: it’s a cartoon of him as topless baby Mao, smoking a cigar as he smiles at something in the distance, teeth glinting. VICE China, the platform on which he’d officially premiered the tracks, wouldn’t let him use it. Now, the picture shows him wearing a fuzzy panda hat and a gold chain; crisis averted. Phoenix puts away his phone. He asks me to take a Polaroid photo of him by the Honda, lighting a cigarette. He rests his water bottle on the roof of the car, where it perches momentarily, taciturn, before it’s retrieved again. He adjusts his bandana. “I’m going to go watch Finding Dory,” he says, getting into his car and tossing his cigarette butt without stepping on it. “I’m excited.” •

Photography and Illustrations by Jiaqi Kang

sinθ is an international print-based creative arts magazine made by and for the sino diaspora. Values include creative expression, connection, and empowerment. Find out more here.

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#bohan phoenix #lovelove #motivasian #jala #rap #issue2 #sine theta magazine #written #interview #conversation

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scornfluke-archive · 7 years ago

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i just scrolld thru my whole art tag back 2 front heres some Eras of Dannys Art

1. the dumbfuc era complete with h*mestuck and st*ven un*verse and thought good shading was the end all be all of Art

2. that time i made all those gemsona pixels, that was a good time

3. notes thirst, good lineart is the Pinnacle of Artistry

4. stardusters

5. the Very First mob draws

6. that one lineless style that takes 47,000 layers and makes u sad and angry at photoshop

7. literally everything is mob art theres nothing else, style evolves rapidly

8. shapse. nothing is real

9. gggg chalk brush ggggggg

#jabber

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press-a-repeatedly · 6 years ago

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Zul’s Top 9 Games of 2018

By Zul Edwards

Heyyy it’s me. I’m back! What a year! 2018 has come and gone and many awesome games have been played by everyone here at PAR. The votes were tallied, the results are in, and I am included in that bunch. However, some of the games I played and loved this year were no-shows on our list. Some AMAZING games that I think deserve a little love on our corner on the internet. So, I thought, if you out there reading this were interested, (spoiler alert, nobody is) here is my OWN personal top nine games of 2018.

So, let’s get this thing started with my number 9!... oh yeah, I only played 9 games in 2018. heh.

9) No Man’s Sky – So I was one of those gamers who was excited for NMS when it was first announced a few years back. Thought the idea of exploring a quintillion planet was awesome. Then the game came out, I heard it sucked, and I ignored it. Enter a couple years later when it was on sale, had a ton of updates and new features: true online with friends, customizable characters, base building, and a brand-new story. However, it wasn’t enough to keep me hooked. Don’t get me wrong, I liked exploring the various galaxies and doing various side quests, engaging in dogfights with pirates and mining for space gold, but overall it just still felt so empty, so repetitious, and so… blah. I guess I still prefer quality over quantity, even if the quantity is in the quintillions.

8) The Alliance Alive – The first on the list of “Games only Zul played this year”. The Alliance Alive is a 3DS game from the creators of the classic “Legend of Legacy”, literally a game I borrowed from Justin, played for all of 30 minutes, then promptly returned to Justin never to be spoken of again. So, to my surprise when he told me the same studio was making another game, The Alliance Alive, but it was helmed by one of the writers of the Suikoden franchise, I was cautiously optimistic. Much to my (pleasant) surprise, the game was good! A blend of classic JRPG turned based battles with flairs of modernization: skills learned through fighting, increased stats based on the location of fighters in battles, and a darker story not usually found in those classic SNES/PS1 RPGs this seems to emulate. While the main characters fall into some pretty cliché tropes, the side characters really shine. From giant axe-wielding lizard men that remind me of my own D&D character, to a demon-dog-man butler, to a mad child genius scientist who rides a duck robot, this game has a lot of flavor. I really should go back and finish.

7) Chasm – While it’s no secret that I love Castlevania games, I think it’s fair to say I’m not really a giant fan of Metroidvania games. I prefer the simpler side-scrolling action of Castlevania, constantly moving forward towards a goal of smacking Drac in the face with a metal whip, to the backtracking and map completing chore of most Metroidvania games. With that said, something about the less intense and simpler format of Chasm kept me hooked till the end. I didn’t mind backtracking and completing the map in Chasm because it wasn’t as vast or complicated as other games in the genre. It was colorful, had great music, stellar pixel art and a fun yet challenging battle system and platforming. Overall it was a blast to play, but it just got overshadowed in a year filled with superior games.

6) God of War – “WHAT THE FUCK?” I hear you slam on your keyboards as I place the unrivaled GOTY in a paltry 6th place. Don’t get me wrong, this game is good. In fact, it’s VERY good. However, for whatever reason, I guess this game didn’t hook me like it did for everyone else. I only have a passing familiarity with the GoW series. Even though I’m a diehard SonyBoy, I only ever played GoW 1 and never beat it. Kratos and Atreus are some of the best written and best-acted characters to come out of a video game in this year or any year. Hell, if we had a “best new character” category again this year, I would struggle to not put Atreus in the top 3. The music is amazing, the writing is fantastic, the scope, cinematography and the constant one camera perspective were all stellar achievements in the medium of gaming, not to mention I’m pretty much obsessed with all things Norse… BUT. I dunno. Little things kept taking me out of it. Atreus’s sudden, jarring mood swings. The poor pacing in certain parts. The sudden introduction of major characters and/or story elements, that felt kind of brushed over and/or rushed. The lackluster side content, the padding and the empty worlds. The game is good. But it never felt great to me. Most games that I love, I think about when I’m not playing them, then I rush home from work to play them because I want to complete them, either for the story or because the gameplay is addicting, but this game felt more like a chore sometimes. I didn’t even buy it, I just borrowed it from Butch earlier in the year when it came out. I’m sorry Cory. I tried but I just didn’t love this game.

5) Moonlighter – Now here’s a game I absolutely adored. Flew under my radar and was recommended by Nick. By day you’re a humble shopkeeper, selling various wares and curios. By night, (by… MOONLIGHT) you explore dungeons ala Link to the Past style in a top-down view, into randomly generated maps. Each area has different items to collect & new materials to find, which you bring back to the shop to sell, which with the money you earn, can craft new weapons, which will get you further into dungeons, which will mean you find more items to sell which means you make more gold to spend on armor and weapons, which means you can get better materials to keep delving deeper, WHICH MEANS… ahem. Ah yes. That classic feedback loop. It sucked me in. It’s simple but effective in keeping me engaged. Coupled with a great art style, fluid beautiful pixel graphics and a surprisingly good amount of story for this type of game, Moonlighter took a nice chunk of my time early in the year.

4) Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom – Another entry in “Games only Zul played this year”, NNK2 was a surprise hit for me. I never played NNK1 and heard rather negative things about it from Nick over the years. I bought NNK2 on a whim months after it came out because it was on sale and I was craving a good JRPG, and it did not disappoint. I loved pretty much everything about this game. The music, the story, the beautiful not quite Ghibli, but practically Ghibli art style, the characters, the mechanics, the town building, the combat… it was everything I was looking for. There were certainly parts in the middle that lagged a bit, and the general “go to town > solve town’s problem > make an alliance with the town” could be considered cliché or predictable, but every town felt unique and its inhabitants all felt genuine. Recruiting citizens into your kingdom and assigning them all a role in your castle was a time sink I didn’t realize I would be so into, but I think I spent more hours on that than anything else in the game. And it also gets marks for being the other child in a video game besides Atreus, King Evan, that I didn’t want to strangle, and in fact by the time the credits rolled, he’d probably be #2 or 3 in Best Character of the Year for me.

3) Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Now as far as JRPGS go, Dragon Quest is the ultimate grand-daddy, even more so than Final Fantasy, but it was a series I never really got into. I played some previous games in the series and found passing enjoyment in a couple titles but never enough to ever want to complete a game or seek out other entries in the series. That all kind of changed when I played DQ 11. DQ has never really strayed too far from its classic turn-based JRPG roots. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” would be their mantra I assume, and I love it. In a time when the turn-based system is all but gone from genre giant Final Fantasy, DQ has instead chosen to stick with it, and fully master the dying style. It was hands down the best JRPG I’ve played all year, and probably one of the best I’ve played in several years. It has everything: a great story, compelling characters, awesome music, amazing art style, engaging combat, fun side quests, a challenging yet fair difficulty curve, and it’s actually, really funny on top of all that. While the length might scare people away, (I clocked in right around 120 hours after getting the platinum trophy for 100% completion of the game) it’s some of the best time I spent gaming in a long time. It’s a classic in a modern era. It’s weird, if you said to teenage Zul “one of your favorite JRPGs ever will be Dragon Quest 11, and one of your least favorite JRPGs will be Final Fantasy 15”, he would never have believed you… but here we are.

2) Monster Hunter World – Ah yes. The one oddball in my gaming repertoire. I think we all have one of these, right? That one game/series that for whatever reason, sits outside your normal gaming habits, yet you love it, nonetheless. Maybe you love Halo and FPS games, but you also really like Animal Crossing for some reason. Or maybe you’re a diehard Dark Souls series fan but just can’t get enough of Cooking Mama as well. Variety is the spice of life they say, and while I’m primarily a “character & story first, RPGs, video games are art” kind of dude, something about smashing Monsters in the face with a giant hammer has kept me hooked on the Monster Hunter series for nearly 10 years. I love the challenging but fair battles, the deep customization, the various weapons and armors for both male and female hunters, the varied and unique monsters that all have their own ecology, musical themes, and battle styles you must learn and adapt to if you want to survive. It’s also linking up with friends (or even strangers online) and tackling a beast as a team. For all these reasons and so much more, this series sunk its claws in me from the very first time I played it, and it hasn’t let go. Monster Hunter World is the next-gen, beautifully realized game I’ve wanted for years; and it took the story, art, gameplay, and fun I’ve come to expect from this series to another level.

1) Red Dead Redemption II – I honestly don’t know how to write about this game. I can say all the other things I’ve said up until now about how great the music is (it’s amazing), how varied and alive the characters feel (they’re amazing), how stunningly awe-inspiring the scenery is or how fluid and lifelike the character animations are (they’re amazing), how the story and personal journey of Arthur Morgan literally brought me to tears more than once (he’s #1 in Best Characters btw. And they’re amazing), how rich every side quest is, how fun the mini-games are, how great the dialogue is, or any of the other truly breath-taking aspects of the game, but I don’t think I could do them justice. Hell, I don’t even know how to put them into words myself inside my own head. To me, this is one of those games that surpasses all of that. Yea, it has flaws, every game does, everyTHING does, but to me, it’s perfect, warts and all. I can’t give it much higher praise than that, and it is absolutely the best game I played in years. When a game can give me an extensional crisis during some of its final moments, I think it’s safe to say that It’ll stick with me and has undoubtedly set a very high bar for all future games. The team at Rockstar outdid themselves and have my thanks for bringing this game into the world.

PHEW. Well, that’s it. Top 9 games of 2018 according to Zully Boy. Another great year in gaming for me personally and here’s to another great year in 2019! Lots to look forward to, and hopefully some hidden gems that’ll surprise me along the way. Happy Gaming everyone!

#goty gameoftheyear top10 top9

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jammie-dodger-wagon-wheel · 5 years ago

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Guide to how to do an andorian cosplay by someone who isn’t particularly skilled at it or in general.

First, my rules of cosplay.

Cosplay must be comfortable, Comfort being defined in three ways. It is physically comfortable to wear, you are comfortable spending any amounts of money on it, and you are comfortable wearing it outside or in front of people.

These rules may vary in how much they matter to people, but they should be considered before embarking upon a cosplay, if you don’t want to or can’t afford to spend that much money on something, don’t. If it is literally killing to to wear it, don’t. And if leaving the house and wearing it in front of people makes you feel terrible, don’t. If you can’t stand the discomfort, then it isn’t worth it, find a way to do this cosplay you are comfortable with or find a different one, but don’t do something fiscally, physically or emotionally you cannot deal with, it isn’t worth the stress.

Background

When I am cosplaying, I prefer to have some background on who or what I am cosplaying, so, overall this post is dedicated to portraying the cosplay of an Andorian Starfleet Cadet from around the mid 2370′s, or season 6 episode 22 of Star Trek Deep Space 9 “Valient”, because that is when the cadet uniform I have was debuted, (I think). This version...

The makeup can be applied to any era of star trek, but this is the cosplay I have, so I’m going with it.

1. Supplies

You will need...

A uniform and black boots

Like previously stated, the makeup can go with any era of Star trek you wish, be it the pre-starfleet days of Enterprise, any of the many uniforms offered by the various series and films, or if you want to portray a civilian by dressing in star treks many variation of bus seats they try to pass of as clothing, it’s an exercise in creativity you are able to make, but, This is what I have, so this is what I’m wearing.

I made this uniform myself by using a pattern I purchased from http://www.badwolfcostumes.com/ , specifically, this one:

You will also need

Makeup

Which for me means face paint, specifically snazaroo. If you want to add more creative things like eyeliner, well then I say good for you for being able to apply it, or if you are into the aesthetics of aliens wearing lipstick, go for it. Blue for the skin, white for the hair. Also, you can’t see it in frame, but a foam head or wig stand would be really useful in this endeavor. Finally, you can use a sponge but I find makuep brushes work better with coverage.

Headpiece

Or as they are more commonly known, a wig. Also, garden wire, stripped of coating, and antenni. My antenni are made of carved foam easter eggs, masking tape, and facepaint. Also featured are blue gloves, they are basically tights for your hands, they serve the function of colouring your hand so you don’t have to paint them or live with the weirdness of having your hands be a different colour to the rest of your exposed skin, I found them by typing ‘blue sheer gloves’ into amazon. They are optional, but I find them better than painting your hands, even if they don’t colour match.

Finally, accessories

A Starfleet badge matching the era you have decided on, pips if you are going for someone with a rank (I am not), and a tricorder, optional, but I think it adds flavor, and it means people will hear you before they see you, and I think that’s just fun.

2. We begin

Maintenance

Put the wig on a foam head, if you don’t have one that is fine, balance it on two full rolls of toilet paper, or on hook, or your fist, this will help. Brush your wig, it’s been in a package for ages and needs it.

Put in the wire, and and leave it, because...

You’ll need to repaint your antenni. Face paint on masking tape tends to fade, so before you begin everything else, you’ll need to repaint them, this will let them dry before you have to put them on and when you’re done

leave them to dry.

3. We begin

Put your hair in a wig sock, should have mentioned those earlier, this keeps your hair from showing when your wear a wig and I find it makes it easier to do your makeup.

Then begin by covering your eyebrows and the hair poking out of the wig sock with white face paint, this means the hair on your face matches the wig (even though my wig is blond, sorry, I couldn’t get a white one from the cheap party wigs in the back of the hair shop). Then..

This photo is blurry, my phone hates me.

What this photo should depict is me cleaning up the paint, making sure my work is inside the lines (of my hair).

Then begin by painting the neck, below where your collar will be, we star with the neck so it will defiantly be dry by the time you put on your star fleet issued turtle neck.

Then, we go start with the sides (an arbitrary move) making sure to get behind and just in the VISIBLE PARTS of the ear

Then over the eyes, nose and mouth, and eventually it should look like this...

What a looker, am I right. Just you wait.

This is me in my under shirt, not exactly standard issue, but I cheaped out at the undershirt pattern (but, I do plan to get it when I buy the Enterprise jumpsuit pattern, they come in a bundle).

And now, for the gloves, good luck.

Pulle gently at them without nail in the middle of the finger so they even out

and try to put the joins where finger nails should be.

Suit up and lace up them boots sonny. We’re almost done.

Put on the wig, with the wire, then add the antenni

4 Marvel at your transformation

Here’s a tip, when adding a tricorder to the cosplay, you won’t always be able to hold it, or pretend to use it because it will get very annoying, so, in order to let people know you still have it, and provided and provided you are wearing something with pockets (good luck, everyone who isn’t wearing this specific costume)...

Tape a hair slide to the back of the tricorder, this means you can grip it to the pocket or belt of the cadet uniform, so you can show off without being overtly annoying.

Here is a very pixelated before and after, enjoy..

To all those who want to do this, I wish you the best, it is one of the easier and least problematic aliens to cosplay in star trek and it doesn’t use prosthesis, so, yeah. Have fun.

#cosplay #star trek #andorian #valiant #ds9 #badwolf #snazaroo

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alexstewartbeststudy · 6 years ago

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Mechanical and Organic

13th September

The mission, which I took with great optimism - was to create a power-up or some kind of assist that would be acquired in a video game. I did not immediately leap with ideas, but as an aspiring creator for video games, It wouldn’t take long to apply something interesting to the theme of Mortal Engines

I had in mind, the concept of a creature that I had become enraptured with due to it’s interesting appearance - the star-nosed mole.

Credit for photo: Ken Catania

I knew that in order to use this kind of animal while being inspired by Mortal Engines inspiration, I would need to apply a mechanical side to the star-nosed mole. Star nosed moles are obviously good at digging through the earth as well as navigating their path with their unique nose. For this reason, I decided to give a star-nosed mole a merging with machinery to help it burrow more efficiently and simply fair better underground. A protective shell to protect a giant star-nosed mole from a cave’s falling rocky debris, is a concept that made this project interesting enough to immediately start with creating the shell - as seen below.

While I was musing over the style that I would give my ‘gargantuan armored star nosed mole,’ I had in mind the positives and negatives of pixel art styles by two revered pixel artists; Paul Robertson and Waneella. I considered Paul’s art to be too cartoony yet highly animated, whereas Waneella art has lots of shading and ambiance used without very much animation for each being. Desiring to implement my favoured aesthetics of both artists, I set about creating something that was detailed, shaded with depth and extensively animated. used a grey brush to create five shell parts, one to each layer with each lower segment made a little darker. This was to create the effect of a metal and shaded dome.

As big as the star-nosed mole will be, I make the shell bulky so that this creatures simply resembles the animal it is based on. However there will be additional characteristics that make this assistance terraformer more interesting. The feet are given their own layer with a colour, which I think resembles the tough fleshy nature of the moles feet, that is, within the photograph above. This was to compensate for a lack of trying to create the colour detail of the feet in the real photograph above. This would have been painstaking to do, considering there is additional detail to apply within a 64px count total, which was all we were allowed to use for this work. This goes with my philosophy of staying as true to an aesthetic as possible with an alternate colour scheme.

A simple dome shell would have been boring, so I gave exhaust chimneys their own layer, which would also wind up being the layer I use to create additional mechanical effects for. I considered how to implement my own ‘impression’ of shading for those pipes and keep some choice factors in mind: The position of exhaust pipes in relation to the the upper and lighter part of the creature. The angle of the pipe, which was was varied to look both functional (for a minimal chance of getting caught on something) and fantasy based. The feet had some additional minor aesthetic detail from the photo given to them in the form of moly like spots, giving off that rough looking texture. lines of pixels with a similar colour pallet made the toes, with a stoney pallet making the claws. The dark side of the claws made for some convenient and easily guided features.

I had quite the conundrum deciding how to differentiate between the nozzle and the nose tendrils of my star-nosed mole terraformer. I was successful in the end, but for now; I simply shaded the main nose while using dark and light pinks for tendrils. This gave the impression of individual tendrils with shading among them. That is; In the same way that a myriad of thin structures or subjects can look either starkly bright or black in the sunlight depending on their orientation and position. I became mindful of how the feet ought to help this terraformer mole through a tunnel and shaped them accordingly. The back feet would scoop down ward into the earth, pushing itself forward; whereas the front feet would scoop to the creatures sides, tunneling through and scooping debris out of the way. Shading was also added to the feet with orientation in mind with padding and lit up toe detail being particularly fruitful to apply to the front foot. The gear mechanism on the back of the creature was sort of haphazardly put on because I didn’t know how else to use the very limited space I had left. I’d make up a story of what it does in due course.

Preparation was made for the remaining four frames: Within the layers panel I created five groups - each group representing a frame. The first correlation of layers assigned to group 1 were complete, so they were copied to group 2 for tweaking, with the changes visible just by hiding the first group. I also used a small sketch book to help me visualize how I was going to proceed with creation. Rough representations of the mole’s posture were drawn for each frame.

I wanted always have samples of colours used for certain details always available for use with the eye drop tool, even after I might erase those details. That’s why I copied foot feature layers again from the first frame group, over to the second frame group, as well as having them disjointedly present - for picking out colours with the eye drop tool.

Reshaping the paw detail to represent the altered orientation simply involved erasing here and there while adding new pixels. Visualizing that was a finicky part that I determinedly did.

I wanted to make the mole sweep it’s head to it’s left as it’s way of scanning the environment with the tendrils (applied shortly there after.) After I erased details of the nose copied from the first frame group, there was a realization that I could make the main nozzle look more defined by adding shading to it. This was particularly fun to to do as it allowed to make the nozzle’s orientation very clear.

It only made sense for the chimney ducts to exhaust fumes, which is why I added some new smoke layers, which would be copied thereafter from a frame 2 layer. Dark grey was chosen for the smoke; with fantasy's of the Victorian era and billowing dark clouds in my mind. The opacity was lowered so that any interweaving lower layer’s contents would, appropriately, causes the smoke’s colour to saturate.

though I had drawn in my sketch book; the mole sweeping it’s front paw directly horizontally, primarily for clearing debris out the way; I thought it would make more sense for the front paw to simultaneously scoop things out of the way and dig into the earth properly. This is considering the weight of the mechanical armored shell being dragged with it. For this reason I changed my plan for the paw to orientate more diagonally instead and scrapped the paw visage just below, in spite of the sketch book’s guidance aligning with it.

Within the third frame group I made the toes on the front foot all level from the viewer. This meant any shading differentiation between toes would be altered purely by their position in relation to the light source. Thus, a slightly darker gradient of beige was applied to each toe, going downward.

I though a fair amount about how the claws should look, considering their established length from the previous frame groups. When anything curls up, it’s diameter decreases. So I just kept that in mind.

This snout for the third frame had some lighter variation of the default pink applied for that sheen effect as well as dimensional depth. While the snout’s tendrils seemed to be lined up quite neatly for a creature that’s meant to be wriggling them organically, I told my self that it only lasts for one frame. Also, it may look suitably eerie that there is a split second where the tendrils are uniformly aligned, which coincides with the fact that this creature is genetically engineered with machinery.

The main nozzle was given a front feature, consisting of two dark eye-catching vertical lines of pixels and a subtle more brown-like pink center to it. This was also applied to any previous frame groups who’s nozzle faced the viewer.

I want against the lecturer’s advice to present no delay between frames, which was because the nose animation movement looked unauthentic and simply jittery. The claws would have looked too manic as well.

Instead I decided to present varying delays between frames based on what the mole does to transit from one frame another. For instance, the mole only looks to it’s left for the duration of frame 2 making that moment inherently brief, which is why I gave it, as well as frame 1 which leads to it, my own default shortest delay of 0.1 seconds. It’s also worth noting that during frames 1 and 2 the paws are coming away from the earth to scoop again which, conveniently, should also be easy for the mole and therefor quick. The smoke form the chimney exhaust pipes also looks better, expelling at a quicker rate than of it disappearing.

On the other hand there were moments that lasted from frame 3 to 4, such as the nozzle, scanning to the right for a little longer than it did to the left. Also, when the feet dig into the earth it makes sense for that to take more time than coming out of the earth. As smoke dissipates, I can visualize that sort of thing happening gradually as well. Consequently frames 3 and 4 were given a longer delay of 0.2 seconds.

Frame 5′s delay was set for an experimental compromise of 1.5 seconds. This was based on how it bridges a prolonged moment with a brief moment and I assume the animation would be smoother.

In the end, I stuck to the theme of Mortal Engines very well. While I would have liked to give the terraforming mole more movement of the main body, I am content in the fact that I do not have much experience when it comes to animation and this would be my first pixel animation.

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nuttytriumphenthusiast-blog · 7 years ago

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Earlier this month, two former Google staffers quietly introduced a new app that’s designed to lend a hand customers triumph over technology’s uncanny valley and broaden a healthier courting with the ever present digital assistant that “lives” in our wallet.

Called Maslo, the brand new app (and the corporate in the back of it), within the phrases of its founders, was once constructed to broaden a “personified AI technology that interacts with empathy and playfulness.”

At its core, the primary iteration of Maslo is a day by day check-in device that encourages and develops mindfulness, in accordance to founders Ross Ingram and Cristina Poindexter.

Once downloaded, Maslo is a voice-activated journaling device with a fundamental standing replace characteristic that encourages customers to log an emoji illustration in their emotional state at a specific second and spend a minute speaking to the app about what’s happening.

The thought, the founders say, is to have Maslo evolve and personalize as customers engage with it. You can see what the corporate’s blobby AI seems like beneath.

Ingram, who was once a former Sphero worker operating on initiatives just like the BB-Eight earlier than he joined Google, has idea deeply about how era intersects with the human psyche and the way other folks create bonds with the applied sciences they use.

“We started building robots in 2010 and in the 2012 to 2013 time frame we wondered what this would look like if we added some personality to this — and some kind of relationship,” says Ingram. “Whenever we introduced those robots out into the arena… other folks had this need to attach on a deeper degree… other folks sought after to proportion facets of themselves with the robotic.”

Meanwhile, his co-founder spotted the similar behaviors from individuals who have been interacting with the Google assistants of their early days.

“A lot of these interactions were non-utility queries,” says Poindexter, a Yale-educated sociologist, who labored on Google’s soon-to-be-announced assistants within the Pixel telephone and Google Home in 2016 when she and Ingram first met.

“There was this need to go in and help people on a deeper level… I have a background in sociology and I look at it from a users’ perspective of what do people need,” Poindexter says. “A lot of these interactions [with the assistant] were mulling things over and needing a place to express them… and Google can’t deliver on that and from a brand perspective Google didn’t want to.”

That’s completely transparent from Google’s newest business.

By distinction, Maslo desires to be a house the place other folks can extra with ease deal with the emotional facets of consumer’s lives.

“It’s the way we define an assistant versus a companion… assistants help things get done in the external world and companions are going to help us get things done in our internal world,” says Ingram.

“There are going to be different classes of machines that interact and relate to humans on different levels,” Poindexter provides. “We are seeing thousands of people using machines for assistant-based things… we know that where this is going we’re going to start talking more to whatever you want to call them — assistants or companions — and Alexa won’t help you figure out if you need help.”

With Ingram’s enjoy in design and , the 2 got here to the belief (as they relate in a weblog put up about Maslo’s early days), that era “can lend a hand us transform extra human, and no more robot.”

Ingram left Google in December of 2016 and Poindexter adopted in February. The two moved down to Los Angeles and started taking part at the venture that will ultimately transform Maslo.

Maslo co-founders Ross Ingram and Cristina Poindexter

Over the long-term, the 2 founders bring to mind Maslo as a gateway to interacting with different services and products that a consumer might want — and one this is totally eager about safety. Other equipment can lend a hand with remedy, self-improvement, training or leisure, and Maslo desires to be the funnel that activates customers to make the most of the ones services and products when important.

Importantly, on this technology of higher privateness coverage, the 2 have constructed Maslo in order that lots of the consumer data that Maslo collects remains on a consumer’s software reasonably than on servers that the corporate hosts. “Privacy and trust is the most critical to us,” says Ingram. “We’ve designed the structure in a method that does stay a lot of the delicate data at the telephone. We do have to add some issues to the cloud in a safe method to proceed to broaden Maslow’s again finish and gadget studying… [But] we don’t have get entry to to the true voice word… we’re ready to interpret no matter is shared the use of our algorithms.”

Meanwhile transformative powers of era and the tactics through which it can give a sure affect in other folks’s lives isn’t simply rhetorical hyperbole for Ingram — he’s skilled it himself.

At 16 years outdated, Ingram, who grew up in a small the town in rural Colorado, confronted 3 prison fees and expulsion from his highschool for stealing a laptop. Always excited by era, Ingram got here from a operating elegance circle of relatives that didn’t manage to pay for for him to delight in his favourite interest.

The brush with the regulation may have landed him in prison, however Ingram was once despatched to a diversion program to stay children out of jail; whilst there, the younger developer made up our minds to pursue a profession in laptop science. He enrolled in Denver’s Metropolitan Community College, and whilst attending elegance controlled to communicate his method into a activity with Sphero.

Ingram met the Sphero founders once they have been simply a selection of Boulder-based Android builders going in the course of the Techstars program. When the corporate raised its first spherical, Sphero employed Ingram as its 7th worker and his profession was once off to the races.

“Going through that experience… helped me develop my sense of identity and figure out where I wanted to go in life,” Ingram says. “That’s very much what we’re focused on with Maslo today. Maslo is a reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and developing the tools you need to have that sense of self.”

Several research (together with this one from the University of Iowa) speak about the sure results of journaling on psychological well being and addressing trauma. And Poindexter stated that’s the place Maslo desires to start.

“In the beginning there needs to be some sort of joy in the exercise,” she says. “We really want to reflect back to people what they’re saying… [Maslo] holds up a mirror… it’s a sounding board and doesn’t necessarily give you the answers but shows you what you might already know.”

Over time, the 2 co-founders be expecting that the applying will evolve to transform extra customized as customers broaden a courting with the AI they’re speaking to. “The way that Maslo looks and the way Maslo animates and talks will be something that happens down the road,” says Ingram. “Being able to build this sense of companionship between machine and the user so that it is this safe space to access is very important.”

Google alums launch Maslo, a digital companion to mediate technology’s uncanny valley – TechCrunch

Google alums launch Maslo, a digital companion to mediate technology’s uncanny valley – TechCrunch Earlier this month, two former Google staffers quietly introduced a new app that’s designed to lend a hand customers triumph over technology’s uncanny valley and broaden a healthier courting with the ever present digital assistant that “lives” in our wallet.

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saltysuittaco-blog · 7 years ago

Text

At its core, the primary iteration of Maslo is a day by day check-in device that encourages and develops mindfulness, in accordance to founders Ross Ingram and Cristina Poindexter.

The thought, the founders say, is to have Maslo evolve and personalize as customers engage with it. You can see what the corporate’s blobby AI seems like beneath.

Meanwhile, his co-founder spotted the similar behaviors from individuals who have been interacting with the Google assistants of their early days.

That’s completely transparent from Google’s newest business.

By distinction, Maslo desires to be a house the place other folks can extra with ease deal with the emotional facets of consumer’s lives.

Ingram left Google in December of 2016 and Poindexter adopted in February. The two moved down to Los Angeles and started taking part at the venture that will ultimately transform Maslo.

Maslo co-founders Ross Ingram and Cristina Poindexter

Meanwhile transformative powers of era and the tactics through which it can give a sure affect in other folks’s lives isn’t simply rhetorical hyperbole for Ingram — he’s skilled it himself.

0 notes