#bonk coin review

[kirbybaker-the-alch]

I’m starting a new thing on this blog, Kirby Reviews! Cause I want to indulge in my hyperfixation after I finally beat Super Cat Tales 2 after losing data so many times. So after finally beating it I have to give THOUGHTS!!!! Super Cat Tales 2 is a REALLY GOOD platformer despite being a mobile game. That’s because like most good mobile games, it actually uses it’s format well!

So, you control using only the left and right sides of the screen, and the game’s mechanics focus on this. If you double tap a direction, you run. Hitting a ledge while running causes you to jump. Walking into or jumping into a wall lets you climb it, and you can wall jump off the side! you also dont bonk into it like the first game ach

So the controls are tight, what else is good? Well the STORY of course! I’m not gonna spoil it but it involves Alex teaming up with other cats to take on the Tin Army, who are trying to harness the power of the Moon Crystal (held onto by Luna), to give Lord Iridium ultimate power (or something)

The graphics and music are also a really strong point of the game, its ouretty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-6j5yklhGs

Also the game’s dialogue is very humorous, you’ll probably get a kick out of it, theres some good gags too. Boss fights are very fun as well obviously, patterns are not difficult to memorize but handled very well. Now for 2 downsides- 1: this game has no checkpoints. Die and you go back to the start. 2: lategame, there is a very huge coin grind. My tip- save up for the genie lamp, and SS Gear is a very easy level with a lot of coins. (i would attach an image but the tumblore got me) Anyways overall a really good game, and fairly long. I recommend it to anyone who wants a free mobile game that plays like an actual game (like not arcadey) anyways PLAY THIS GAME YALL (And support Jonathan the game’s developer he’s really cool https://www.youtube.com/@Neutronized)

[i-amtransexual]

I posted 31,882 times in 2022

That's 28,989 more posts than 2021!

539 posts created (2%)

31,343 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@thedialup

@veryfrightened

@metfell

@sootingsofficial

@sandersstudies

I tagged 4,765 of my posts in 2022

#poggers stuff - 507 posts

#kyou - 180 posts

#mega fave - 98 posts

#save for a rainy day - 87 posts

#kyou wahoo - 84 posts

#pog ask - 69 posts

#lmao - 47 posts

#unreality tw - 43 posts

#pog ask game - 36 posts

#prev - 26 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#im like if funny was a person but they got bonked on the head and turned upside down so all the coins fell out of their pockets ✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

People keep telling me I have major golden retriever energy. At first it was a compliment and now I'm just getting suspicious. Surely this many people can't agree. Surely "golden retriever energy" isn't a universal opinion of me. Everyone must know something I don't.

62 notes - Posted April 13, 2022

#4

ok sorry for being profoundly emotional about fictional characters it will happen again

67 notes - Posted October 24, 2022

#3

hey don't cry, 1 million pronouns on earth ok?

79 notes - Posted October 19, 2022

#2

No but literally c!beeduo being an ambiguous realtionship is so important to me. It's started as platonic, and now it's tentatively cannon that it's romantic, and they have a son and they are husband's and they love each other and they just have such a wonderful relationship. If it's important to someone that's it's platonic, it can be interpreted as that and it fits and they still love eachother and it's awesome. If it's important to someone else that's it's romantic it can also be interpreted as that and they love eachother so much and it's so cool.

I personally lean ambiguous +romantic because I think of them as more kiss averse aces, which I am, because I can interpret tham as that because it fits and I feel like there are characters in media that are like me which is so cool.

It's just so special to me to think of them as this inbetween because their love is this beautiful, wonderful thing that's just a little bit more than friends but they don't really need or want to define it as romantic, and however you look at it, they love eachother so, so much.

c!beeduo are husband's who love eachother to the ends of the earth, in their own beautiful, special, wonderful, fluid way, and they defy expectations by not quite defining it, and giving the room for people to interpret it and feel connected to it whatever way they wish.

They are husband's and they have a son and they all love eachother so much.

94 notes - Posted March 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Found another fun picrew, so picrew chain time! Here's the link

Me :D

Tagging @pathtrick @ranbooautism @griancraft @discatded @be-gay-do-gay @therandomartmaker @puzzlingpapercrown @r4nboo @spider-shoes @74323-bees-in-a-trenchcoat @thedialup

Lemme know if you want me to remove you. Anyone can join if they want :D

436 notes - Posted July 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[britishchick09]

rapsittie street kids livewatch

welcome to the last livewatch of 2022! ...and probably the worst since we’re watching the infamous ‘rapsittie street kids’! i’ve seen countless reviews on this special, but i’ve never seen the full thing. today is its 20th anniversary, so why not watch it now? it’ll be bad, it’ll be cringe and it’ll be a whole lot of fun! ;D

the instruments at the beginning are really good! :D

...too bad the visuals aren’t :/

why does the bus sound like a clock?

ooh it’s rap time! B)

ricky: “but if you’ll kindly find the time to deliver gifts 7, 8 and 9 from my list!” rip gifts 1-6 :/

i’ve heard the beginning of the rap so many times that the part after sounds so weird! :o

aw he only has 3 coins rip :/

that could buy a book at st. vincent de paul’s! ;)

a car just slides out of frame lol :D

has he walked like that this whole time? :o

the voices in the music sound a bit creepy...

omg he kicks a basketball and it just  f l o a t s  lol! ;D

aww his mom died :(

she gave him a bear before she died... AND NOW HE’S GIVING IT TO A GIRL WHO DOESN’T EVEN LIKE HIM NOOOO :(

the bear just  f l o a t s

blue haired kid: “another day, another ‘d’ at rapsittie elementary...” says the teenager! :o

nicole got a dino bonk! :o

HOLD UP WHY IS ONE OF THE KIDS NELSON FROM SIMPSONS :o

ricky is talented! :D

the adults in the back tho...

he just throws ornaments on the tree like he’s in the charlie brown christmas special! :o

ok wow he’s just gonna rap and rhyme this whole special isn’t he :/

blue teen: “duuuude! that was soooo coooolll...” and that was so not cooollll... ;)

i’m pausing this to upload my new video and i guess this came out on november 25th not december 14th! the anniversary passed, but we’re in the middle of rapsittie season so i’m still watching it!

it’s all christmas and then  S U A R S

smithy: *sees the bear on the floor* ‘what’s that?” ricky: “that’s for nicole honey, i know she’s into money!” that bear is priceless tho! :o

smithy thinks liking nicole is gross lol! ;D

the teacher is fed up with everyone!

knockoff nelson: “hey ricky! let me know any time you want to fall down again! i’ll be sure to shove you in the right direction!” BUURRNNN!!!!! :D

ricky is the only kid to be bummed about recess ever!

teacher: “i said after recess BECAUSE I NEED A RECESS!” ricky: “oooohhhkayyy....” lol! ;D

ricky: “you won’t catch me.... hesitating!” lol! :D

the teacher needs a vacation...

oof this song is cringy! :o

when you wanna be the charlie brown christmas special...

omg nicole and glasses girl are doubling down laughing at that! :o

nicole: “watch what i can do!” ricky: “i’ll watch you nicole!” nicole: “not you, ricky!”

he’s the only one watching her tho...

also why is he wearing a short sleeved shirt IN THE SNOW???

ricky: “and i thought it couldn’t get any colder out here...” oof :/

omg knockoff nelson stole smithy’s sandwich! :o

and it just slides down smithy’s scarf...

the shot zooms out to the teacher and kids with presents but it looks slow mo?

lenee: “oh that looks really cool!” nicole: “here.” *drops it right onto her feet* lol!

nicole’s gift is the best because she bought it from the mall! ;)

OMG WAIT IS THAT JOHN DELANCIE AS THE PRINCIPAL???? :o

turns out it’s not but it sounds so much like him! :o

nancy cartwright, jodi benson, mark hamill and page o’hara are in this so there’s plenty of talent here already! ;)

he walks away slowly... (just like me seeing this!)

kids: “merry christmas!” blue kid: “principal dude B)” lol!

the kids ignore the teacher lol ;)

nicole thinks she’s sooooo perfect because she gets things at the mall?

oh no it’s the bear! :o

SHE CALLED IT A NASTY OLD THING YOU BISH!!!! >:(

ricky called her stupid yas you get her! ;D

why are lenee’s arms twitching?

lenee: “we go to this really big store and it starts with a ‘w’!” omg wallymart...? ;)

it’s the floating candle!! :o

AND THE GRANDMA YAAAS!!! :D

aww ricky has a santa letter! :D

grandma: “rdfgdjfdfjgh sendin’ letters!” lol!

it just... floats away from his armpit?

AND IT HAS AN @ SYMBOL???

nicole is insulting lenee AND HAVING A SEIZURE OMG :o

nicole’s mom: “has my princess been a good girl?” nicole: “i’ve been a good girl all year long!” YOU BISH! >:(

NO NO NO NOT THE SONG!!!!!

nicole: “♫ look at me! ♫“ no thanks!

the snowflake is traveling to lenee’s house!

this is a nice colored sky! :)

aww i feel so bad for lenee :(

her mom doesn’t nod... she bows!

mom: “come on, it’s christmas! cheer up!” that didn’t sound very cheery of you...

oh no nicole is reading the letter! :o

she feels bad... :/

YAS GRANDMA GIBBERISH!!!! :D

grandma: “dgdfgjjgsogisigsdfhsfdf christmaaaaas!” lol! ;D

OMG NICOLE THREW THE BEAR AWAY???? :o

nicole, smithy and lenee are in an abandoned building!!!! :o

smithy: “i can so blackmail you guys!” wtf lol?

they looked everywhere but alas! :/

omg dogs are chasing them!!! :o

bully: “look at the babies scared of little doggies!” i’d like to see you get at them! ;)

smithy threw his sandwich at the bullies... and they had their own chase! :D

yay they found the bear! :D

lenee: “let’s climb on that tree and jump over the wall.” nicole: “a lady does not climb trees!” smithy: “now is not the time to be a girl!” lol!

this animation is so awkward tho??

they made it! :D

aww nicole is giving ricky his bear! :)

nicole: “but doesn’t that mean a lot to you?” ricky: “yes. and so does................. friendship.” that pause tho! ;D

ooh lenee’s fam!

MARK HAMIL IS HER DAD OMG :o

lenee sees santa! :D

cloud santaaaa!!!! :D

omg lenee song! :o

WHY IS NICOLE’S MOM OBSESSED WITH THE MALL TOO

dad: “nicole has my good looks... and your spending habits!” lol! ;D

omg nicole’s grandma wanted a videobox... which is what ricky asked for! :o

ew nicole’s parents winked and it was weird :(

aww nicole gave her gift to ricky! :)

and lenee’s sister got... that...

ricky, grandma, nicole and smithy are visiting! :D

nicole apologized! :)

grandma: “dhdhhdfgfjfghg christmaaaaas!” iconic!!! :D

dad: “SHUT THAT DOOR!” the perfect way to end a christmas special! ;D

that was rapsittie street kids! it was just as bad as all the reviews say, but i still had fun watching it! visually, it’s the worst christmas special, but it still has good moments unlike other baddies (looking at you ‘the christmas tree’!) the plot was nice and so was the acting... mostly! i’m glad i got to finally see this special after hearing about it for so long! happy 20th anniversary, rapsittie street kids! :D

[edge-lorde]

hp update: 1st leg of quidditch sideplot completed; jocks reviewed. 

also a few other things. last i left you i had decided to take a break from the main plot to focus on sidequests only. howsoever, the game is set up in such a way that every now and then it will have you wait 3-6 hours before you can play the next level. this actually lends itself very well to how i was playing. i would first start out doing a quidditch level, then hit a paywall and so move to another of the sidequests, and should i hit another paywall id move back to the main plot for a level. in this way i actually got caught up on the chapters and the sidequests for a time. now a new chapter has been released a day ago or so, but i wanted to write an update before i started it, so here we are.

I BOUGHT THE DANG HORSE. the abraxan. i managed to scrape up enough red notebooks to buy it but now i have to gain max animal friendship with it so that quest is at a stand still again. i named it horse town.

andres sidequest ended up extremely bitter sweet... he tells me all about his sports bully and i advise him to confront the unsavory individual, since he obviously didnt want to get the school staff involved. 

the intervention backfired however, and the two ended up dueling. the bully is kicked off the sports team, but andre is also banned from playing the next game. this is rather heartbreaking because he tells you that his grandmother is extremely ill, not likely to live much longer, and she had made special plans to travel to hogwarts to see his next game. she was the person who got him into quidditch and gave him his first real broom, which i now see is the very same one i borrowed from him in year 4 to sneak out of the castle on. snape snapped it in two.

while i am reeling from the realization that no one ever managed to fix that and give it back to him, he says “its ok.... well, no actually, its not.” but hes not mad anymore. he gives me a special quidditch necklace his grandmother also gave him and theres no option to refuse to take it. 

i get the feeling that there was a route i could have taken to get the good andre ending, where the bully is punished but he is not and his grandma gets to see him play. story-wise, its a good tone shift. actions have consequences and the mc has responsibilities. i still want to find a way to make it up to andre somehow....

but back to the main order of quidditch business. 1st off, we have 3 new children.

1: skye parkins. this girl is the heir to the parkins quidditch throne. a big deal, apparently. probably has adhd. penny is a huge fan of hers. i think she and the other 2 new kids change house based on whichever house the mc is in. skye in particular has some great new animations that i am a huge fan of, like tearing pages out of a book ad infinitum, and swinging a broom like a baseball bat in order to knock gnomes out of a stadium and back into hagrids garden. im pretty sure her voice lines are shared with merula. played one mini game with her and it blasted me up from friendship level 1 to level 4. 

2: murphy mcnully. not actually on the team, but an “unbiased” announcer. loves talking quidditch strats and just talking in general. gets his own special talking animations, used both when announcing and talking one on one-- this boy just cant turn it off! possibly autistic, definitely a wheelchair user. gets his own special wheeling animations and when you eat lunch with him his chair never disappears, it can be scene off to the side, empty, not clipping through the table. this is the kind of attention to detail i like to see. did one minigame level with him and was also blasted to level 4. however-- YOU CANNOT PLAY GOBSTONES WITH THIS BOY!!! i imagine that this is because this is a game played sitting on the ground..... i guess it would be too awkward to try to model a scenario in which gobstones is played on a table.... it makes me so sad... his voice lines are also shared with charlie. 

3: orion amari: this boy is the shaggy of the troupe. captain of the team and really into forcing his players to balance on one leg on their brooms for hours on end, he is all about going with the flow, which infuriates the uber-active skye. also has his own special talking animations and body language, just imagine the hippie character archetype and you got it. hes got some pretty sick broom surfing moves and we also get some great trying to balance one-legged on a broom while being attacked by pixies animations from levels with him. i dont think ive gained his friendship rights yet. his facial hair does a good job of making him look more like a teen when hes the same height as all the other kids. i dont think he has any voice lines assigned to him at all. i guess none of the existing kids have voices that would suit him as well. 

the actual gameplay itself is fun too. its like the “focus” minigame in class where instead of clicking the circle, you drag a ball to bonk into the circle and there are 4 of them. sometimes you have to hit them in a certain order, sometimes its timed, and sometimes its both. pretty easy to win. costs a lot of coins that pile on quick. 

ive caught up with the quidditch plot but it was left on a cliffhanger so we shall see.....

[fwipination]

I posted 57 times in 2021

52 posts created (91%)

5 posts reblogged (9%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.1 posts.

I added 192 tags in 2021

#dnd - 30 posts

#digital art - 26 posts

#dungeons & dragons - 23 posts

#ocs - 19 posts

#comic - 18 posts

#oc - 16 posts

#update - 15 posts

#paladin - 15 posts

#thp - 15 posts

#the hunted plane - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 61 characters

#i don't know if that last one is a thing but mate i'll try it

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

A fancy magic gauntlet? You don’t say!

I love Link’s new shaggy lil haircut and had to give it a quick doodle! Is it just me, or did that gauntlet look like it had some champion-specific powers? Makes me wonder if the new champions will be coming into their own abilities! (A Sidon warp would be awesome!)

69 notes • Posted 2021-06-18 01:46:34 GMT

#4

A little extra time this week led me to finally playing Stardew Valley and I LOVE it altogether TOO MUCH. It also gave me an excuse to practice a bit more on Clip Studio! 

“Me sell hats! Bring me coines, ok poke?”

108 notes • Posted 2021-02-20 18:32:11 GMT

#3

Now they may say there’s nothing new under the Poké (Ultra) Sun, but who can deny it when it’s chest floof and curly tails?

123 notes • Posted 2021-08-28 00:20:11 GMT

#2

Two fan arts? In THIS economy??

Laser gauntlet trade! Samus is pretty interested in these curious warping abilities and the ancient tech used to make them, meanwhile Link is off to probably just bonk bokoblins over the head and cut grass.

 I grew up pretending to be Link always and my husband grew up pretending to be Samus always so these two have a special place in my heart. (it’s about time you Metroid fans got a new game!)

125 notes • Posted 2021-06-18 16:03:26 GMT

#1

They are here, and everything is going to be alright. <3

1409 notes • Posted 2021-10-16 11:54:49 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[afishtrap]

(this is a post from a different blog, from several years ago, but since I’m slowly closing down that blog and the post is relevant to some things currently on my mind, reposting here for posterity)

Recently I followed a link over to the ferretbrain, a review-site from a group of Brits, with a focus mostly on SFF (fiction and games) but with occassional forays into romance, history, and other fiction genres. After reading (and being generally pretty impressed by) the original review linked to, I started following links within the site, and ended up on a DNF review for Cassandra Clare's first book.

Now, the disclaimer here is that I've not read it, and had no interest in reading it, and that for the most part, whether or not Clare's fiction is any good -- as an objective value -- is pretty much irrelevant to what I'm about to say here. She's getting mentioned only because that review discussed her work, and more specifically highlights a pattern found in a broader scope of works. The reviewer seems to me to be pretty fair about the fact that the work is ostensibly a rewrite of a Harry Potter AU, observing that:

...there are three possible attitudes, or at the very least a spectrum with some definable stopping points on it: 1) Fanfic is art, man, art and there is ultimately no difference between If You Are Prepared and Bleak House. They're both pretty damn long for starters. 2) Fanfic is like original fiction but not as good, and is basically written by people who can't get their own stuff published 3) Fanfic is entirely different from original fiction Since the first one is clearly non-viable, and the second is actively rude, I subscribe to the third. Writing for fans and writing for publication is vastly different, and to assume that the one aspires to the other is rather to miss the point (and, arguably, the pleasures) of fanfic. Even so, I would have thought the gulf between fanfic and original fiction to be eminently jumpable. I mean, the ability to string a decent sentence together is a transferable skill, right. Right?

From there the reviewer considers the specific story, the characters, per the usual review.

What crystalized things for me was the reviewer's explanation about where she stopped reading. Thus far, the basic plot has been protagonist meets demon-hunter, hijinks ensue, and shortly after that (maybe 60 pages into the story overall), the protagonist happens upon this young demon-hunter while he's alone in a music room, playing the piano. 

Up to this point, the demon hunter has been

...rude and snippy, so it's clear that this little scene is meant to show us a different side of him but character revelation scenes only function when you know the character well enough to experience it as a revelation. This is just ... information, excessively presented. It's like being hit over the head with a neon sign saying: "you should fancy this character now." And for the record, he's a demon hunter, not a concert pianist so there really is no reason to have that scene there except as drool-footage. [...] What the scene did for me ... was exemplify the subtle sense of wrongness I'd been getting throughout the previous 62 pages. Essentially [the book] reads like fanfic - and I don't mean that as kneejerk indicator of poor quality, I mean that it reads like something constructed for a different purpose, functioning on a different ruleset... The scene of Jace/grand piano has utterly no resonance for the reader because, well, partly because it's rubbish and partly because no time has been given to properly establishing the character so it's essentially meaningless, but mainly because it has no real sense of its place in a connected, developing narrative.

The reviewer goes on to suggest that fanfiction works on a basis of potential plausibility, that is, giving the reader a situation or behavior not seen in canon that, when argued/presented by a skillful fanfic writer, become plausible (believable) extrapolations of the original character. But this also means paying more attention to the character's actions, mindsets, mannerisms, whatever, both to reinforce the character's shared story-origins -- eg speaking patterns, or facial expressions -- and then to overlay the subtle changes introduced by the fanfic's author.

I'm a visual thinker and more precisely an architectural-engineering thinker, so the best analogy I could come up with for understanding this is to use the idea of renovation a house. (No surprise, eh.) Let's say you want your guest bath and laundry room a bit more efficiently laid-out. This image is a before-and-after, but if all you saw was the second (right-hand) image, it wouldn't be unreasonable to be completely baffled.

There are few landmarks remaining to tell you how you got from where-you-are to where-you'll-be. That's what the gray outlines are doing in the left-hand image; they're acting as "before reminders" so you can see how things have been rearranged. This is exactly how fanfiction works (and especially AU fanfiction): the character's original/canonical state becomes those "shadow lines", which a good fanfic author must reference in some way, to give readers a starting point before the author begins character or story renovation.

Contrast this with looking at the plan for an entirely new-to-you house. It doesn't need to give you a Before, or tell you how this relates to that, because it can exist independently; this applies so long as you were unfamiliar with the original structure and only seeing it now for the first time. In contrast, if you looked at the above plan of a new-to-you house and saw shadow-outlines of the toilet, the bathtub, and the front door in different locations, it would probably throw you off. It would seem out-of-place, and more importantly, unnecessary information. Against the main set of information (black outlines) that you don't know well enough yet anyway, it's nearly impossible to appreciate the changes.

The reviewer called this "blowing the load" but I think it's more that the shadow-lines of past renovations, or the piano playing, are info-dumps that come with intended emotional overtones, and that is the neon sign bonking the reader in the head with: "you should fancy this character now." Or, "you should hate this character" -- but even those two are just the opposite sides of a coin that says, "you should recognize this character." Those shadow-lines allow you to say, "oh, I seeeeeee, that was there, and this is now gone, and this is here when it was originally over there, I see what you did there." 

But if you've never bloody well seen the house before, and don't have an intrinsic, visceral understanding of the house from living in it and walking through it, then the moment of "I see what you did there" means little, if anything at all. You won't really get any additional meaning you don't already get just from the basic, unshadowed, black-lined, floor plan.

What fanfiction readers look for, and one of the main rules of good fanfiction (especially AU), is to create that moment of walking through a familiar house, looking at someone's suggested renovation, and making that leap from "what was" to "what it'll be" (when renovation is complete, when story is done). That's where we find the familiarity in fiction (in fanfiction and in ofic sequels), such as when an author intends to shift your perception of a familiar character. This technique is often used in sequels where a former alleged-bad-guy gets his turn at being reformed (or is to be revealed to have not been all that bad in the first place). The author must first lay out the original as shadow-lines, and then write over with the new character-plan.

Again to quote the reviewer:

Scenes of certain characters doing things they never explicitly did in the books (even if this is fucking each other) resonate with you because it feels both novel and familiar ... [Such] scenes require no build-up because the reader already knows the characters being written about. Equally, dwelling on the details, and presenting very visual, senusous scenes, seems less purple than it does when you do it in original fiction because it helps to establish a familiar character in what may be an unfamiliar setting ... Fan fiction, even if you're looking at a 100,000 word AU fic, seems to be all about the establishment of moments, which need not necessarily (and probably don't) exist as part of a continuum of moments. [The result is a book that's] original fiction without the necessary underpinnings, and fanfic without any of the characters you like. Worst of all possible worlds. [emph mine]

By definition, those floor plan shadow-lines get written with a certain amount of "this is important!" from the author, because that's part of the gearing-up prior to the renovation, to get everyone on the same spot on the "before" floor plan. I don't mean a build-up before the scene (to give us a logical introduction to it), but the amount of words given to the scene/moment itself. That's where the "seems less purple" comes into play in fanfiction, because that excessive attention paid to this specific moment acts as both black-outline and shadow-outlines at the same time. 

It's a movement that requires your fiction to do temporary double-duty, and is a useful skill when you're writing a sequel and want to tweak the reader's memory without going into a massive info-dump. It's also a hallmark of fanfiction, to tweak the readers on a point (or moment) of original canon, even as you shift the lens a bit to reveal a fuller image.

The problem is if it's the first time you've ever met a character or story, in which case you're getting "this is important!" clanging bells, but you have no basis for what this contrasts with. Now you have two sets of contradictory or near-contradictory information in your head and haven't yet gained the familiarity to distinguish what-was from what-is, let alone to assess the emotional import of either. And that's where the revelation -- because that's really what that moment is, that I see what you did there -- falls completely flat in original fiction.

[nadiawrimos]

June Books 

She Explores: Stories of Life-Changing Adventures on the Road and in the Wild by Gale Straub ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beautiful photography and well-written vignettes full of inspirational, personal stories. I wish to be one of those ‘wild women’ (for at least a few years!) with no fixed address, traveling and writing and being a creative. This book inspired wanderlust as much as my favourite TV show Departures with the added benefit of having strong, independent, and confident women in the spotlight.

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson (A) ⭐⭐⭐

This book was an easy listen filled with a lot of popular trivia. The whole book is Johnson suggesting that play (entertainment) and the pursuit of novel experiences was the driving force of change and innovation was quite interesting and evolutionarily, made sense. I particularly enjoyed the chapters about taverns as a place for recreation and politics, and the spice trade. Who knew that pepper (at one time) was worth more than its weight in gold?

Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement by Peter Singer ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I have a vegan friend who recommended that I read this book as I expressed an interest in learning more about veganism. This was an interesting book, and different from others that I’ve read including Safran-Foer’s Eating Animals and Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. This book presents a more philosophical/moral approach arguing that non-human animals deserve just as much consideration for their interests as do human animals, and coins the term ‘speciesism’ to describe the convenient way that we view cats and dogs as companion animals and would never intentionally cause pain to them, yet we still consume animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens without so much as batting an eye. In his thoughtful book, Singer argues for a practical, and all together not very extreme approach - to limit the suffering and pain humans inflict on non-human animals as much as possible by choosing to limit meat consumption and choose to purchase from ethical farms (though he does acknowledge that this is very difficult)

Gulp. Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I love Mary Roach!! This is the third of her books that I’ve read and I’ve enjoyed each one. The enjoyment she gets from asking weird questions and her sense of humour in her footnotes makes for really engaging reading about a kind of gross topic. I want to read Bonk but my library doesn’t have it. Might try Spook next. It was also an experience reading this during a flare up of acid reflux/indigestion. Not sure if that helped or what. 

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt (A)⭐⭐⭐⭐

I’ve never seen the movie and I really loved the book (which I read for the first time as an adult)! I liked the story itself, and I also thought that the descriptions of the first week of August’s heat, the sunsets, and nature in general was really beautiful. A lovely read that is definitely thought-provoking. I wish my Children’s Lit class in university read this. 

The Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature by Clemens G. Arvay (A) ⭐⭐

With a title like “biophilia” I guess I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to discover a whole chapter dedicated to hanging out naked with your lover in the woods. A bit too anecdotal for my taste - I don’t think planting an anti cancer garden could possibly be a cure-all, although I am glad it did work for some people. Overall, I thought the book was much more spiritual than scientific. 

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (A) ⭐

DNF at 30%. I found the switching back and forth between Victoria's childhood and the present day at random intervals jarring and confusing. In reading other people's reviews and spoiling the plot for myself I'm glad I stopped reading when I did.

The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things. Stories from Science and Observation by Peter Wohlleben ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

An amazing book. Wohlleben’s observations and scientific proof weave themselves together in a very fluid and organic style of writing that is both poetic and simple.

Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries by Isa Leshko ⭐⭐⭐

This was a very sweet book. The photographs of animals, their stories, and the methodology of meeting the animals on their own terms was emotional and inspiring. It was a quick read - takes less than an hour - but the message will stay with you long after you finish reading the essays and looking at the portraits of animals. All animals are unique individuals and this book does an excellent job of showing this to readers.

Do Big Small Things by Bruce Poon Tip ⭐⭐⭐

One third Wreck This Journal and two thirds wisdom/travel advice I liked this book a lot! Wish it wasn’t rented from the library so I could scribble all over it for the full experience. I did end up writing some quotes in my journal.

[symbianosgames]

Game Developer magazine's Brandon Sheffield reflects on what designers can learn from their first video game loves. (Originally printed in Game Developer's March issue, available now.)

They say you're forever dating your first love. Not literally, of course, but the early patterns set by your first relationship, and the relationships of your parents, tend to strongly influence how you approach love and relationships for many years to come.

I wonder: Is the same true for games? Do those early games we played in our formative years influence what we now perceive as "good" and "bad" in interactive media? Do they influence how we design games? I submit that they may.

Let's think about a series like Dark Souls/Demon's Souls. These games are punishing, require rather exacting inputs from players, and have somewhat fiddly controls that require getting used to. That sounds like a nice recipe for a failure stew. So why did these games succeed?

One of the praises you often see from reviewers is that the series reminds them of the glory days of Japanese console and arcade games, which were built with much the same recipe. It's like a new love affair with an old flame - the same problems as always, yet sweetly, lovingly familiar. Japanese publication Dengeki said of Demon's Souls, "Fans of old-school games will shed tears of joy." IGN reviewer Sam Bishop echoed the sentiment, saying, "Those that can remember the good ol' days when games taught through the highly effective use of intense punishment and a heavy price for not playing it carefully should scoop this up instantly."

But what about people who didn't grow up with that experience? What about those who are more used to frequent checkpoints, and the game providing a full experience to blaze through in one go, rather than in halting steps? For them, the game is a harder sell, which is why Sony passed on publishing Demon's Souls in the West, and core-oriented niche publisher Atlus had to step up and do it instead.

For Demon's Souls, its link to the past helped it succeed. But perhaps the reverse can also happen: Our personal game heritages could, at times, make us slaves to our past interests. For example, I tend to like games that are interesting, but flawed. To me, a glitch in an otherwise super-polished Call of Duty is extremely glaring and illusion-shattering, but I'll happily forgive poor graphics and the occasional invisible wall in a game like Nier, which stabs out in all directions with new ideas. If a game tries hard to do something different, I'll forgive its faults - and if I want to be a designer who makes games that are good at making money, this preference for different-but-flawed could hold me back from making games with commercial appeal.

With this thought in mind, I decided to dissect my own past as a player to see what influence it might have had on my current interests.

My history is a bit odd - I went from the 2600 and Intellivision (which were already old when I got them, but they were affordable!), to the TurboGrafx-16, which I saved up for months to afford. And this is the console that informed my early days as a player of games.

The Valis series, for example, is not very well known, but I played it to death. It's an action, platforming, hack-and-slash affair that stars a high school girl, out to save the world, with a sword taking on a horde of monsters. Pretty standard fare for the 1990s.

You could jump, perform a sword attack, use magic (and could power up both of these attacks), walk, and roll. I replayed Valis III recently, and I noticed something about those rolls that may have influenced my current interests and design habits. Rolling allows the player to travel for a set distance, both under obstacles and across gaps. But this distance is such that, at times, beginning a roll just a few pixels one way or the other means life or death in a difficult platforming section. On top of that, the platforms themselves can occasionally have dressings that don't count as area you can stand on.

This is most likely something one would want to avoid in the modern era, because it feels like the game has tricked you, when you've clearly made the roll visually, but it's counted as a death. Less obvious, though, is the triumph you feel after defeating that particularly difficult section. It's as though you've succeeded in spite of the game's efforts to thwart you. You are actually fighting against the game itself, which we're generally told not to do - but in a modern game like Demon's Souls, it makes the thrill of victory that much more compelling.

There is a lesson here for me as a designer: I can sometimes focus too much on making things smooth for a player in the immediate term, versus their long-term experience.

I won't bore you with my history as a player, but revisiting these old game-loves continually revealed patterns in my current thinking. For instance, Bonk's Revenge's somewhat mystical and alchemic systems helped drive me to chase the elusive beast that is emergent gameplay in a simple game world. But is that my white whale? That pursuit has, at times, led to feature bloat (which is exactly what happened in the subsequent Bonk installment, incidentally).

Just to make sure I wasn't the only one who's influenced by his past, I asked my friends Tim Rogers of Action Button Entertainment and Frank Cifaldi of Gamasutra.com, with whom I record a weekly podcast (which is also called insert credit), to talk a bit about their formative games, and found them similarly branded by past experience.

For Cifaldi, it was The Secret of Monkey Island, which gave him the first glimpse of a full, living interactive game world. This colored his interest in games for years to come; when he was young, he made adventure games in HyperCard, and later, when he was working at GameTap, he made an interactive community adventure game called Captain McGrandpa.

Rogers, meanwhile, thinks Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best game ever made. SMB3 is very much about precision and timing of jumps and reactions, but also about secrets - warps, hidden passageways, and coin boxes in the sky. It's no wonder, then, that the first game he directed (ZiGGURAT for iOS) is a deceptively simple game about timing, precision, and nothing else - aside from the occasional secret.

For your human relationship problems, you can go to a therapist - but they'll just reflect back what you already know. I highly recommend you take a self-analysis approach to your game history. Going back and dissecting those early learnings can help you grow past your earliest ideas of what a game is, or can be, because while most lessons will be good, some will be bad as well.

The musical platformer Sound Shapes is an interesting case study: If you read the postmortem in the December 2012 issue of Game Developer, you'll see that the game's mastermind, Jon Mak, said, "I don't like platformers, or level editors, but in the back of my mind they made sense." He also added, "That was a thing that we learned: We couldn't achieve our design goals with what we would do naturally."

So here is an example of developers playing against their type, and against their early imprint. This worked well, and brought Sound Shapes to critical acclaim, and many IGF nominations. But at the same time, is it any wonder that (sorry, Jon) the game just doesn't feel like a solid platformer? It feels like an interactive music toy where platforming happens to be the mechanic to drive progress. Without the music element, this would not be a loving homage to the platforming genre.

There are lessons in our past for all of us. Try it out on yourself; think about the first game that really grabbed you. Maybe it's the first game that compelled you to keep coming back, aiming for a perfect score; maybe it's the first game that made you feel like games were a living world; maybe it's the first game that let you play against another player.

Revisit these games with new eyes. While playing them, think about the jump distances for platformers, or how you start a drift in a racing game, and how long that drift lasts. Think about the level progression in RPGs, or the score multipliers in a shooter. How has your current work reinforced those old ideas? How have they strayed? Should you be more critical of those old ideas? It's an interesting exercise which can yield some surprising results. Even if you don't come away with something practical, you may have an easier time explaining why you prefer to sink hours into Minecraft over Skyrim - or the reverse.

The kids of today expect autosaving, persistence, checkpoints, and massive interactivity on a Minecraft scale. And they're not wrong to expect it! That's what they grew up with, and that is to some extent the future of entertainment. But when they grow up, what will they expect from games? What will their first love affair teach them to love and hate?

Getting closer to the now, what about kids who grew up with the Nintendo 64? The precise magic of GoldenEye 64 has never been properly revisited. What of a child who grew up with the Dreamcast? Is anyone serving her needs?

I'm not suggesting we need to mine the past and prey on nostalgia. But attempting to serve similar experiences to those people felt in their youth - in new and modern products - can be a valuable goal. Nobody wants to play a new game that's exactly like GoldenEye 64. They want to play a game that feels like how they remember GoldenEye 64 at the time they were playing it. With a little self-analysis, and a careful study of these bygone eras of games, you might just get at that mystical and elusive feeling.

[yesshinypizzastudentthings-blog]

Brioni Solid Silk Satin Tie, Red Reviews

Details

Brioni solid silk satin tie.

Approx. 3.5" at widest.

Dry clean.

Handmade in Italy.

DesignerAbout Brioni:Founded in 1945 by Gaetano Savini and Nazareno Fonticoli, the first Brioni sartorial shop was located on Milan's Via Gesu. Named after Brijuni, a favorite island destination for Italy's elite, the label was known for absolutely perfect handcrafted suits, a tradition that continues to this day.

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