#but I will use those lessons to be more strategic and less exploitable in my next job. and t be more steadfast in rejecting bourgeois value

[capricornus-rex]

A Shadow of What You Used to Be (15)

Chapter 15: Ahead of the Competition | Cal Kestis x Irele Skywalker

Requested by Anon

Summary: There is another! Years after young Anakin Skywalker departed Tatooine, his mother Shmi delivers a second child—this time, a daughter. Whilst the circumstance of the girl’s birth remains unexplained, Irele Skywalker has yet to choose the true path between those laid out for her.

Tags: Fem! OC, Irele Skywalker, Force-sensitive! OC, Anakin’s Younger Sister, Skywalker! OC, Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, Long-lost Sibling

Requesting to be tagged: @heavenly1927​

Also in AO3

Chapters: Prelude – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 | Previous: Part 14 | Next: Part 16 | Masterlist

16 of ?

Irele landed on the receiving platform of the base installed among the mountains, not far from the tomb’s entrance courtyard. Her entrance had interrupted the conversation between an Inquisitor—whose back turned to Irele—and a Purge Trooper Commander of Irele’s unit. The girl’s presence compelled the Inquisitor to drift from their chat and turn around.

“Ah, I figured you’d be here,”

“Pleasant surprise, Second Sister,” Irele dryly welcomed.

The Second Sister was one of the most uncontested Inquisitors among the organization. Her prowess for combat and her stratagem for war tactics were unmatched, as well as her penchant with tech—which she was more secretive of than her other attributes. However, despite all this recognition, one thing she loathed about Irele was her own prestige with the higher ups: Lord Vader, namely, and perhaps extending to the Emperor—who was expressively keen in cultivating the Sith ways into the young girl as soon as she was extracted from Tatooine.

The older Inquisitor envied the girl over the privileges and favor that she’s so oblivious of, interpreting it as some kind of unjust immunity—although Irele doesn’t feel that way, she feels she’s just as expendable as the Inquisitors. She had ingrained the idea that one slip-up could spell her extermination from Vader, no less, thus her entire being in full survival mode—with the help of her competitive spirit keeping it in check.

Irele sensed hostility from the Second Sister, so she kept her distance as they spoke.

“Ran out of planets to search?”

Her instincts were roaring at her, telling her that Second Sister has come for the Jedi, most likely. But it was basically an unspoken race to see who catches the prey first—and Irele never liked competition. If she was forced into one, she must prevail in any way she can.

“Actually… this planet, specifically, piqued me. I know about the relics hidden in here and I don’t doubt that a Holocron—or something equal to it—might work to my advantage.”

“This island is basically an idyllic mausoleum. Watch your step though, the last one in command here died trying to hide her stash.”

Second Sister stepped closer to Irele to the point that they’re at each other’s noses. Irele glowered calmly at the Inquisitor while her words hissed through her bared teeth, “I’m not that stupid.”

She didn’t walk out the conversation without bumping Irele hardly against the chest to the point that the girl wobbled where she stood.

“What did I ever do to you—and the others—to be acting like some kind of angst-ridden teenager?”

The Inquisitor froze and slowly half-turned so Irele can see at least her face.

“Don’t go humble on me just because you’re better than anyone among us Inquisitors,”

Irele bobbed her head back, expressing an exaggerated sigh as she hugged herself with crossed arms over her chest, “Poor you. I’m just disposable as you guys are.”

“Liar!” Second Sister hissed, this time directly facing Irele front and center, and even went so far as stepping forward to her; but of course, the other girl was left unfazed and secretly pitied Trilla.

That’s how they really think of me, huh?

“I didn’t come here only for you to walk in and step up. I will get that Jedi and the Holocron—and those will maybe win me the Emperor’s favor!”

Irele doesn’t react to that declaration. She watches the Second Sister walk away angrily and slam the button on the control terminal that summons the elevator. Before the heavy doors would open to reveal the lift, Irele had one more thing to say.

“Remember this, Trilla: the fantasy you think I have is no reality of mine.”

Trilla’s jaw clenched and disappeared as the elevator sank.

–

Returning to the tomb, Irele found that the golden elevator has not returned to the starting point of the shaft, and so she had to make herself resourceful. Nevertheless, she took the path to the chamber, peeked over the edge and calculated her jump. It didn’t take much effort, she descended as gracefully as she did when she first faced Cal.

She landed atop the golden sphere sitting on the concave at the center of the elevator. The scent of aging metal intruded her nose that she cringed—and maybe even sneezed. She then examined this massive, ancient elevator; she dared come up and touch the rails to feel the cold smoothness of the gold, she looked closer and found they were shaped like the corals by the windows of the lower levels of Fortress Inquisitorius in Nur. She spotted a crack on the bottom part of the ornate wall, she crouched to take a closer look—this portion had grown brittle over the millennia, but it’s as though someone deliberately broke it off. She needn’t to think who did it.

She crawled through the hole and ended up in an antechamber. Irele made her way down using the platforms that looked like tiered steps; when she it to the ground, she heard a noise like two rough stones scratching against one another. She looked and saw the bronzium statue come alive!

Immediately whipping out her saber, one flick of her wrist loosened the center of the weapon—practically splitting it into two. Remembering her training back in the dojo, she was taught that her surroundings, the environment, can be used to her advantage. And so she did.

The tomb guardian raised its arms in mid-air, then its blue linings started to glow brightly and, even though it looked pretty, it wasn’t a good sign. Irele leaped up to the nearest stone platform on her left and watched the tomb guardian release a rod of blue energy out of the sphere in its chest.

“Okay, it’s got laser beams!” Irele points out.

Knowing that those beams are too powerful to be deflected using the lightsaber, she has to make use of whatever’s around her. Being small and nimble compared to the walking tower that is the tomb guardian, Irele favored the high ground: taking shelter on the platforms whenever the statue would emit its powerful energy beams and then returning to ground level.

She was starting to feel just how impenetrable the guardian’s metal shell is with her blows, but that didn’t deter her from ridding herself of this nuisance. Overwhelming the mute sentient with her lightsaber, she performed every trick in her list—which she thought was good practice—and ranged from single-bladed attacks, to duel-wielding, and saberstaff.

“I’m barely denting the thing!” she gasped, and then her eyes wandered in the antechamber.

The odd, large sphere might do something, and so she thought of how to exploit them; in a last-minute attempt, Irele lifted one—but in a struggle—and swung it towards the tomb guardian that was menacing marching towards her, its hand positioning into what ought to be a choke-hold—but Irele was too busy to notice that it was a first spinning in place, gaining momentum into a deathly punch instead.

“HA!” her own amused her—mostly because of the noise that the stone sphere and metal man produced. With the guardian disoriented, she gave it several swings; going as far as walking on the wall with great agility only to pivot and split the guardian open from its back.

At the last limbs of its life, Irele delivered the killing blow—a molten gash spitting sparks on every side on the bronzium tomb guardian’s back; three or five seconds silence rang across the antechamber, only the wind made noise with the hollow gong dangling on the beams, the mute metal sentinel was a fallen tree, the dust and sand of the ruins blanketed it in beige clouds. Upon its collapse, the ground shook under Irele’s feet and then the silence that played the gongs returned.

Irele can finally take a look around the antechamber without any interference. She heard the distant roaring of an animal she can’t identify, neither does she want to, and continued on. There were so many secrets hiding on each side of the walls, she doesn’t know where to begin.

Finally alone, only now did she notice that gigantic spheres were placed strategically on certain spots, a tall wall had been obliterated—possibly by the same object—and was positioned to the shallow, bowl-like sockets on the ground. Irele then approached the passages at the far corners of the room, the kind that ones is most likely to miss out—if one doesn’t know how to look—and didn’t find anything interesting, she only circled back to the main foyer.

“I know there’s something…” she sighed in chagrin. “Something I’m missing.”

Roaming through the first phase of the tomb, she either finds herself back to where she began or into another room but with less and less clues to pick up Cal’s trail. Her only trade-off is that she’s giving herself a history lesson, except there is no teacher to tell her.

Irele, as adventurous as she always has been, found herself twenty feet above the ground after scaling the walls and ending up on high ledges. At the other end, she found a gold light spilling through a hole in the wall and followed it. A golden sheen coated her brown irises, beige sand and aging gold had melded in color; her eyes fixed on the glass center of the floor and saw the sarcophagus underneath it. She descended from her perch and found that another tomb guardian had been felled; the odd one out in this empty yet grand-looking chamber was the wall on her left. It was not stone neither was it corroded gold; she approached it and determined it was tree bark, though she cannot say what kind.

“This bark doesn’t belong in this planet…” she deduced.

Irele hurriedly patted her pockets for her comlink and contacted HY-L33 with an urgency.

“Lady Irele, I’ve uploaded a brief data file on the scan sampling of the tree bark you sent,” the droid spoke over the radio.

“Kashyyyk,” the only thing she reads out from HY-L33’s scan file. “He went to Kashyyyk.”

At that moment, she had imposed contemplation on herself. For one, she could go back to the Anathema and fly to Kashyyyk; but a latter choice is more personal, and the thought of it is enticing, but it risks her directive and the expectations set upon her.

“What have I got to lose?” she whispered to herself and she looked for her way out of the tomb.

Once she got back to the outer plaza, inhaling in fresh air as if she’s been holding her breath underwater, she hopped back into her TIE and fiddled with the navigation computer. Her fingers hovered on the keypad, reluctant to type in the coordinates, until she worked up the nerve a minute or two later.

R-16.

As the TIE ascended from the ground, Irele tweaked her radio channel to a secure encrypted line to HY-L33 before she would go off-planet.

“Don’t ever tell them.”

–

From the other end, HY-L33 did receive Irele’s secret transmission. Apparently, Irele had prepared herself and the droid for this. The modified nurse droid’s photoreceptors flickered as soon as she received the frequency, and right off the bat, she knew what to do—and like any good, unassuming droid would do, it went on standby mode like it always has for the past two hours.

Meanwhile, in the deeper levels of the Imperial’s established base, the Second Sister oversaw the excavation operation inside the mountains of Zeffo. She noticed the faint chatter among Stormtroopers over the computer terminal and was beginning to have her suspicions, until one of her own Purge Troopers approached her from behind but kept his distance.

“What’s going on, Captain?”

“Reports say that they identified the TIE Interceptor of Lady Irele leaving the planet.”

“She flew alone? And her crew?”

“Apparently they don’t know she had gone off-planet.”

“She abandoned her directive,” Second Sister tells herself, and underneath that onyx-black mask, a white crescent shined over her bronze skin—she hadn’t realized she was grinning, she can’t tell if it’s in a triumphant manner or a sly, opportunistic one.

Now’s my chance to shine! She chuckled with a sinister intent.

[blackfreethinkers]

By Kwame Anthony AppiahOct. 7, 2020

How Black is Kamala Harris? That the question gets posed speaks to the ill-defined contours of an ill-defined concept. Ms. Harris, the daughter of an Indian-born mother and a Jamaican-born father, has been called in the media “half Black,” “biracial,” “mixed race” and “Blasian.” In online posts, people have ventured that she’s “partly Black” or — for having attended Howard University, a historically Black school — an “honorary full Black.” Others persist in asking whether she’s “Black enough.”

The old British concept of “political Blackness,” the heyday of which stretched from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, would make nonsense of such questions in a very immediate way: Ms. Harris’s mother, by this definition, is just as Black as her father. For proponents of political Blackness, “Black” was an umbrella term that encompassed minorities with family origins in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Africa and its diaspora. That’s not to say it was the sturdiest of umbrellas: It was never uncontested. Yet it may have lessons for us today.

In Britain, anyway, its legacy remains legible. Three years ago, in a public-awareness campaign designed to increase voter turnout among British minorities (“Operation Black Vote”), Riz Ahmed, a British actor and rapper of Pakistani parentage, appeared on a video. “Blacks don’t vote,” he said. “And by Black people, I mean ethnic minorities of all backgrounds.” The year before, the student union at the University of Kent attracted attention when it promoted Black History Month with the faces of six famous figures: Alongside four British people of African descent, it posted two of Pakistani heritage — the pop star Zayn Malik and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.

During its roughly two decades of prominence, the political Blackness movement, taking note of how Britishness had routinely been equated with whiteness, was especially devoted to the “Afro-Asian” alliance. (In Britain, the term “Asian” defaults to South Asian.) During the 1980s, the movement’s inclusive usage of “Black” went mainstream in Britain. The Commission for Racial Equality, a public body established in 1976, decided that “Asian” would be a subcategory of “Black”; other such organizations followed suit. The bien-pensant among the children of empire started styling themselves as Black, whether or not they had sub-Saharan ancestors.

Of course, this broadened sense of “Black” wasn’t exactly a novelty. Malcolm X, in a speech from 1964, heralded Black revolutionaries around the world and explained: “When I say Black, I mean nonwhite. Black, brown, red, or yellow.” Anyone who had been colonized or exploited by the Europeans qualified. And Malcolm X, in turn, was drawing on an internationalist tradition captured six decades earlier by W.E.B. Du Bois. “The problem of the 20th century,” he wrote, “is the problem of the color line; the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”

In Britain, this capacious usage of “Black” scanted the enormous differences among the nation’s nonwhite minorities. But that was exactly its point, and its power. The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall — you could see this elegant figure on British television in those days, with his close-cropped beard and well-fitted blazers, lecturing for the Open University — was always warning against the way “race” presented itself as a natural fact about human beings. Using “Black” as an umbrella term, he felt, would weaken such illusions: It would helpfully emphasize the “immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experience of black subjects.”

In an influential 1988 essay on “black cultural politics,” for example, Mr. Hall celebrated a film by John Akomfrah, whose father (like mine) had been a Ghanaian politician. Yet he also cited the writer Hanif Kureishi’s two collaborations with the director Stephen Frears, “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “Sammy and Rosie Get Laid,” as significant contributions to Black cinema. That neither Mr. Kureishi nor Mr. Frears was of African descent didn’t make the work less Black.

Only such an inclusive conception of Blackness, proponents maintained, could effectively counter an exclusive conception of Britishness. Ambalavaner Sivanandan, a political thinker and the longtime director of the London-based Institute of Race Relations, saw strategic benefits in “the forging of black as a common color of colonial and racist exploitation.” As a young man in the late 1950s, Siva, as he was known to his friends, left behind the ethnic strife of Sri Lanka and went to London, only to witness attacks by white youth on West Indians in the Notting Hill neighborhood. “I knew then I was black,” he would write.

Opponents of political Blackness tended to suspect that Asians were being forced into a template set by Afro-Caribbeans. In the early 1990s, the sociologist Tariq Modood cited a survey that suggested only a third of British Asians identified as Black, and argued that Asians suffered more from racial prejudice in British society than people of African descent did. White working-class youth were drawn to Afro-Caribbean culture, he said, while turning against Asians. It galled him, too, to see anti-racist programs focused on Afro-Caribbeans when most non-white British people were Asian.

And there’s no doubt that the social reality on the street didn’t always harmonize with the high-minded aspirations to shared struggle. Claire Alexander, a sociologist at the University of Manchester, has dryly recalled that when she did fieldwork in the late 1980s about how Black British youth created their cultural identities, “one of my main informants, Darnell, commented, laughing, ‘you know, Claire, Blacks and Asians don’t get on.’”

Yet the various criticisms of political Blackness presented quandaries of their own. Sure, the umbrella concept didn’t give voice to all the differences it encompassed, but it wasn’t meant to supplant the many other sources of identity in people’s lives. Besides, a term like “Asian” itself ignored the immense internal diversity of the group it designated. Among British Asians, Sikhs and Hindus didn’t vote the way Muslims did. Islamophobia targeted Asians but was also promulgated by Asians.

Mr. Hall, warning against the fiction that “all black people are the same,” had no illusions that Afro-Caribbeans were a cohesive group, either. When he was growing up in Jamaica, he recalled, nobody was ever called “black,” but colorism — prejudice against those with a dark skin tone — was rampant: His grandmother could distinguish 15 hues of brown. Social groups, he knew, are fractal. By the logic of culture, creed, color or kinship, you could always split them into smaller groups. So why not lump them into larger ones, too?

In Britain today, the arguments for splitting and lumping — for specificity and commonality — remain unresolved. The Black Students’ Campaign, the largest organization of nonwhite students in Britain and Europe, represents students of Asian and Arab heritage as well as those of Caribbean and African descent. A few years ago, chastened by critics of the “Black” umbrella, the organization decided that it needed a new name and asked members for suggestions.

Those Black History Month posts at the University of Kent certainly came under fire for including people of Pakistani heritage. “Ill-thought and misdirected” was an institutional tweet from Black History Month UK. The Kent student union “unreservedly” apologized on its Facebook page. The offending faces were purged.

When Riz Ahmed appeared in the public service announcement for Operation Black Vote, some people were eager to see his face purged, too. The journalist Yomi Adegoke remarked, “When I’m followed around in an Afro-Caribbean hair shop or newsagent, an Asian vendor forgets all about political blackness and becomes far more occupied with blackness-blackness.”

But there have been voices for lumping, too. “As children in the 1980s,” Mr. Ahmed wrote somberly, “when my brother and I were stopped near our home by a skinhead who decided to put a knife to my brother’s throat, we were black.” Emma Dabiri, an author and broadcaster (“Irish-Nigerian” is how she designates herself), recently called for “the identification of affinities and points of shared interest beyond categories that were invented to divide us.” And, as it happens, the Black Students’ Campaign never found a replacement for “Black,” and the group still includes Arabs and Asians.

There’s a reason that “political Blackness” never gained much purchase in the United States. In Britain, what matters most is whether or not you’re white; in America, what matters most is whether or not you’re Black.

Still, in the United States today, similar debates roil over “people of color” and the acronym now in favor, BIPOC (for Black, Indigenous and people of color). Does such nomenclature suggest that all nonwhite people are interchangeable? Indian-Americans have a household income that’s two-thirds higher than the national median; for Black people, it’s a third lower. Should these groups share an umbrella? Does the language of generality blunt the sharp analysis of racial disparities we need?

Damon Young, the author of the memoir “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker,” calls “people of color” a “valueless catchall that extinguishes identity instead of amplifying it.” Jason Parham, in Wired, has dismissed “people of color” as an “idiomatic casserole of cultures and identities.” If you mean Black people, say Black people, such critics argue. And they have a point.

The hitch is that the term “Black people,” too, is a casserole of cultures and identities. Anti-Black racism can be a useful concept. But it’s equally an umbrella, casting its shade over the fact that in socioeconomic terms, British Caribbean immigrants and their children and grandchildren in the United States have fared better than “native” African-Americans and that those from the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean have fared worse. It also obscures the fact that colorism, even within Black America, can entail another set of disparities in treatment.

And while some African-American critics think “people of color” is hopelessly expansive, others think the same of “African-American.” The political movement ADOS, which stands for American Descendants of Slavery, wants to establish what it considers a properly “cohesive” notion of Black identity, fencing out people like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris as “New Black” usurpers of a native lineage of suffering. (For some of those who take Blackness as a badge of dispossession, Ms. Harris’s father’s elite education makes him a suspect member of the Jamaican comprador bourgeoisie.) Every tribe, it’s clear, contains other tribes. It’s umbrellas all the way down.

Reflecting on political Blackness, then, should encourage us to retrain some of our reflexes. The identity group that we invoke should be “right-sized” to our needs and aims. Sometimes we’ll want to contract a category for purposes of analysis; sometimes we’ll have reason to expand a category for purposes of solidarity. Indeed, if the context is white nationalism and the anxieties of membership in an eroding demographic majority, “people of color” may be an invaluable analytic term. The salient distinction there is between white and nonwhite.

What about the ADOS movement? If ADOS activists flounder — they have fixed their gaze on slavery reparations and are intent that the wrong people don’t get in on the action — it will be because their certain-Black-lives-matter-more approach proves politically misjudged. An ambitious goal like reparations may require broad support, and in turn a broad conception of “Black.” Skeptics might think that, as with the prospectors and fortune hunters of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” ADOS’s determination to keep the rewards for themselves imperils the chances of anyone getting them.

But let’s say you’re concerned about colorism. You might have been among those who were indignant when Zoe Saldana, a light-skinned Black woman, was cast in a biopic about Nina Simone, a dark-skinned Black woman. To talk about such prejudice, you’ll have to insist on one of the ways in which all Black people aren’t alike. You’ll have to split rather than lump.

Getting the identity aperture wrong — drawing a circle that’s too wide or too narrow, given our agenda — can lead to confusion or futility. When we’re told that about a third of Latinos support President Trump, should we wonder whether something has gone terribly wrong with Joe Biden’s ethnic outreach? Or should we wonder whether a demographic category that suggests a similarity of interests between Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may — for these purposes, anyway — be eliding distinctions that matter more?

For these purposes is always the crucial qualifier. One’s purposes can involve coalition politics, cultural interpretation or socioeconomic precision. The point is that none of these identity terms is stenciled by the brute facts of the social world; rather, they stencil themselves upon the social world. Each is invariably a decision — a decision made jointly with others — that arises from our interests and objectives. You don’t like the available identity options? Start a movement; you may be able to change them.

By the cultural logic, or illogic, of race, Kamala Harris, like Barack Obama, counts both as biracial and as Black. Among major-party vice-presidential candidates, she qualifies as the first Asian-American, the first Indian-American, the first African-American, the first woman of color. Identities, of course, are multiple, interactive and, yes, subject to revision. As the architects of political Blackness rightly insisted, collective identities are always the subject of contestation and negotiation.

Political Blackness may have had its day, but we’re still coming to grips with its central insight: Blackness, like whiteness, has never not been political.

[gaming2day]

Zombie Army 4: Dead War - Review

Did you notice that just a few weeks ago, Valve came out and said in uncertain terms that there'll be absolutely no Left 4 Dead 3 anytime soon? Well, the terrible news for several is astounding for Zombie Army 4: Dead War, which couldn't have hoped for better timing. He's here to follow those four-player cooperative steps - except that his zombies also are Nazis, and sometimes once you kill them you get a super-gross gross kill. It definitely scratches the itch, although the few new ideas it injects don't really reinvigorate the genre that Bill, Coach, Zoey, and Francis have built.

It may sound familiar on the entire, but Zombie Army 4 manages to separate itself from the already sizable horde of zombie cooperative shooters in some fun ways. For starters, the story is delightfully absurd, with occult forces bringing the Nazi army back from the dead, apparently from the literal bowels of Hell. His campaign of about eight hours ends with a ridiculous and surprising final battle that's worth seeing uncontaminated. there's also a simplified Horde mode if you only want to remain on one position and see what percentage waves you'll face as you are trying out different weapons. I prefer the variability and forward momentum to play the entire campaign, but the Horde offers many opportunities for intense shootings and last-second wins.

The WWII setting is disgusting and filled with blood, but during a creative way during which I could not wait to ascertain what I might have fought after. I enjoyed facing powerful enemies like zombie flamethrowers with explosive gas cylinders on their backs, Nazi zombie generals whose hearts must be removed to stop them from spawning more enemies and managers like tanks that reveal gigantic ribs when their armored sides are made the jump. And it's made all the more exciting by a superb soundtrack that seems straight out of the classic zombie movie George A. Romero from 1985, Day of the Dead - my only complaint about music is that I wish it had been mixed louder and channeled more often.

There is a layer of strategic dismemberment within the brainless massacre.

There's a little quite running and shooting because the way you shoot zombies encourages you to face the walking dead during a more nuanced way: getting a particular number of kills unlocks special abilities, like enhanced sniper shots or reload of superfast rifles, but you furthermore may have the likelihood to recover health by taking close kills. Killing a variety of zombies from afar to realize the proper to run and recover some health adds a layer of strategic dismemberment to the brainless massacre.

Additionally, there's clearly some Doom inspiration that helps keep the action moving, with some zombies offering ammo, grenades, or health packs if you tread on them after they're defeated. This led to some great moments during which I recovered from being cornered by coitus interruptus an enormous wave, healed myself with close fatalities then trampled on enemies on the bottom to recover ammo before rushing to subsequent target. Where it appeared to me that it had only been done a couple of moments before, I found myself at my best and prepared for everything that happened afterward without even an ammo cache pitstop.

The layouts of the eight levels of Zombie Army 4 (and the smaller final comparison) are neat and do an honest job of contextualizing why you would like to maneuver from point A to point B beyond basic survival. Sometimes you're exploring an abandoned zoo, other times you're getting fuel for a ship so it can make its way down a canal, or you're learning pieces of a bomb to mix at the top of the stage. the amount doesn't look radically different, but all of them have interesting layouts that are fun to explore and are disturbing and disturbing in their own way. The goals are simple enough where you and your friends will never be confused about what to try to next, but interesting and varied enough that it doesn't appear to be you're always doing an equivalent thing. There are never times when cooperative play is required - you'll easily play alone if that's how you roll - but the more players take part the action the upper the problem it automatically climbs and therefore the more important teamwork becomes.

You can easily play alone if that's how you shoot.

I like the crazy sprint to finish this sort of goal, but I used to be less hooked into the areas where you've got to carry your position for a particular period of your time. These defensive scenarios aren't all that common, but curiously enough Zombie Army 4 constantly offers you anti-personnel mines and electric cables that are not that useful when you're on the run rather than preparing for an assault. And even during the checkpoints once you have time to put the traps, most of them went after the primary wave and returned to plain shooting anyway.

The upgrade system is additionally rewarding, to some extent. The persistent progression of the character allows you to deepen across the board, so whether you're in Horde mode, playing the campaign alone or with friends, you'll add new skills like better defense or faster positioning of anti-personnel mines, among others. There aren't enough options to permit you and your friends to diversify and occupy classes with wildly different and synergistic abilities, but it's still worth increasing your skills from one level to a different.

Why should I exploit a machine gun when my rifle electrocutes zombies?

The gun upgrade system, however, is initially exciting but can hit a wall. the ditch Gun may be a personal favorite: by the top of the campaign, I had sped up my refill, boosted damage output, and added bonus damage to electricity. I added similar upgrades to my precision rifle, but after a short time I ended up with a load of weapon upgrades that I wasn't getting to use. Why should I take two steps back and begin employing a machine gun when my rifle electrocutes zombies? Since there are not any lessons, I even have not felt the rationale to travel back to the start line and alter things.

It's a nice touch, though, that once you die you switch into a zombie and watch, without control, as your character approaches the gang and becomes another obstacle for your friends to beat. Once they kill you, you'll regenerate (as long as they do not die first), so it works as a fun handicap to stop instant regeneration - and let's face it, it is also fun to kill your friends' zombie versions.

Microtransaction reaction

Zombie Army 4 at launch represents a good package with a considerable campaign, but a primary season of DLC is already planned and a Season Pass is out there for $ 34.99. alongside new characters and guns and new skins for all characters and guns, the primary DLC also will add three new campaign missions. There also are additional free levels for Horde mode, although at the instant it's not clear exactly when these new contents are going to be available. In terms of what is immediately available, there's a little selection of cosmetic items and alternative guns that are included within the Deluxe edition or which will be purchased individually for $ 4 or $ 5. So far, it doesn't appear to be the DLC content is going to be an enormous problem.

From a technical point of view, I didn't encounter any connection problems, but I had some general bugs. On quite one occasion I found a scenario during which the zombies were coming to infinity, albeit the goal had been completed, forcing us to start out over. I also had a few times when large black bars appeared, obscuring my view of ammo reserves and when my special skills would be available. it had been quite annoying.

The verdict

Zombie Army 4: Dead War feels largely familiar among the horde of Dead 4 Dead-style cooperative shooter, but it isn't without its clever mechanical touches and runs on the oldest computer game clichés: killing Nazi zombies. Between his varied election campaign and a fun horde mode, there are many opportunities for heartbreaking teamwork and gory, disgusting X-ray kills. The weapon's progression system doesn't provide many reasons to expand, therefore the attraction of his replay value isn't as strong because it might be.

[tangtang7843-blog]

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However earlier than you do, ship a fast e mail to the individual behind it, asking them how a lot cash they’ve truly EARNED utilizing the method they’re promoting. And ask for screenshots (likes those on this web page). If all they'll produce are meager earnings for themselves, how are they going that can assist you earn the sort of cash you need and deserve out of your on-line freelancing profession?   Freelance To Win Be taught what it actually takes to achieve success on the earth of on-line freelancing       SalesPage (extra data) Danny Margulies – Secrets and techniques of a Six-Determine Upworker Accommodates: Movies, PDF´s MEMBERS ONLY Signal As much as see all our obtain hyperlinks and hidden content material. 100% Satisfaction Assured Obtain as a lot as you want You may select from two membership choices: Lifetime or Month-to-month Begins at $23.95 What individuals say... 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[recentanimenews]

Peter's Picks for the 2017 Anime Awards

It’s that time already. The 2017 Anime Awards are upon us and competition looks even fiercer than last year. Now that voting is open, I assume you all are fulfilling your civic duty and making your voice heard by voting. In case you find yourself stuck on a category, however, I’ve laid out all my votes and the reasons why I think each deserves to win on February 24th.

Best Action: My Hero Academia

My Hero Academia has all the best features of shonen series when it comes to fighting. The battles this season were creative, strategic, and possessed an emotional heart. Feelings are a tangible force in shonen that can both determine the outcome of a battle and ensure the struggle possesses real meaning. The fight between Deku and Todoroki put the absolute best of the series on display and Bones brought out the big guns, ensuring all the highlights were given unforgettable visual sequences.

Best Drama: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

On my shortlist for best anime this year, Rakugo is difficult to summarize; a story tackling many different themes and spanning over half a century. Following the practitioners of a niche form of Japanese theater, Rakugo tells the story of one performer's life, his influence on his loved ones and the future of his art, and his struggles with intimacy and his own mortality. It’s a disservice to this anime to describe it as anything other than a true masterpiece from the story, to the voice performances, to the wonderful visual direction.

Best Comedy: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Although some of the other series on this list may have drawn out more consistent laughs, I don’t feel like any of the provided such a complete package as Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, effortlessly weaving jokes in between cathartic moments and the daily life of one supremely bizarre found family. The series tackled humor from a number of directions so it never grew stale and often felt inventive, even using it in service of the plot. Discovering this series may have been one of my most pleasant surprises of this year.

Best Slice of Life: Tsukigakirei

This may be my most selfish pick among any of the categories, but I really feel like Tsukigakirei was something special, offering a romance that wasn’t about getting together but staying together. Kotaro and Akane experience firsts together, step outside their comfort zones, and force each other to grow. It’s a wonderfully affirming reminder that we’re all awkward. The series dips slightly into melodrama from time to time but the resolution is inevitably a message to do the right thing and put in your best effort. You may not always get what you want, but you can be satisfied in the end.

Best Continuing Series: March comes in like a lion

I’ve been onboard this train since the very beginning, but the new season of March comes in like a lion surprised even me, taking everything that made the first season great and turning it up to 11. Seeing Rei growing and learning to rely on his support network is indescribably rewarding and the new subplot with Hina absolutely devastating. This season delivered what I consider to be one of the best single episodes this year, introducing a conflict so frustrating and authentic you’ll be left feeling genuine bitterness until it reaches its resolution.

Best Girl: Chise Hatori

While many seem focused on a certain bone-headed magus, I was originally drawn to The Ancient Magus’ Bride by Chise. One of the joys of the series is watching her slow emergence from a dark place, the victim of abuse and certain that there is no person or place in this world that will have her, into a confident and capable individual with a sense of belonging. Chise finding satisfaction in the opportunity to help others and learning to allow herself selfish happiness are one of the features that make the series truly magical.

Best Boy: Rei Kiriyama

Rei is probably the most moving portrayal of an individual suffering from chronic depression and anxiety I have seen in fiction, full stop.  The series has tracked his progress of overcoming his self-isolating instincts of feeling that he is a burden upon others to reaching out to those who bring him happiness. Where Chise may be able to one day find contentment, Rei’s quest feels less certain, but he’s gained the conviction to find and hold onto as many moments of happiness as he can.

Best Hero: Izuku “Deku” Midoriya

All-Might describes Deku and the quintessential hero and who am I to disagree with All-Might? Horikoshi’s vision of what defines heroism is one of the features which I believe elevates My Hero Academia to the stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other legendary shonen series and Deku is the personification of that ideal. A person who instinctively reaches out to those in need, even to his own detriment, even if he knows he will regret it. Honesty, empathy, and altruism made him a true hero even before All-Might gave him the power to realize the demands of his heart.

Best Villain: Stain

The obvious choice, Stain is both a villain and the central point upon which the new arc of My Hero Academia turns, inspiring an entire generation of disenfranchised individuals to rise up against the authority which has failed them. This aspect of his character also makes him the only sympathetic villain among the nominations. He sees rampant corruption among the pantheon of heroes dedicated to protecting the helpless and rejects them. Although his methods are evil, the truth of his criticisms resonates with those who have suffered as he has.

Best Manga: My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness

I don’t know if I’ve ever read any work of sequential art as real as My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. Nagata’s experiences reach the extremes of debilitating anxiety, depression, and existential uncertainty, but have such a universal element of struggle told with such candidness that it's impossible not to engage with her autobiographical tale and draw a sense of common struggle and optimism from her hard-earned lessons.

Best Opening: “SHINZOU WO SASAGEYO! (心臓を捧げよ!)”

Of all the ways Studio WIT delivers with Attack on Titan, their OPs and EDs may be my favorite part. Each and everyone feels like they deserve a place among these nominations (if only the Anime Awards had been around during the first season), delivering a concentrated dose of the bombastic, over-the-top style of the show itself. The newest is no exception, with an energized anthem to get your blood pumping for 20 minutes of tension, violence, and horror that will inevitably culminate in a cliffhanger.

Best Ending: “STEP UP LOVE (ステップアップLOVE)”

Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond has an emotional and thematic rhythm that is very unique, portraying the extreme deadliness neighborhood of Hellsalem’s Lot in a strange, light-hearted sense, like a quirky clubhouse full of misfits that often kill each other. How is the ending sequence captures that bizarre contradiction is beyond me, but it sure is fun. I love everything about the ending, from the music to the psychedelic animation, showing off the cast at their wackiest.

Best Film: In This Corner of the World

Possibly the hardest choice on the list is between In This Corner of the World and A Silent Voice, but I have to give it to MAPPA’s creation half-a-decade in the making. The staff went in trying to tell a human story and portrayed one of the most evocative tragedies I’ve ever witnessed without exploiting the characters suffering as a selling point. The film is both devastating and inspirational, carrying with it a message that all-too-relevant at this moment in time.

Best CGI: Land of the Lustrous

2017 may have been the single greatest year for CG in anime, with several releases that really showed how it could be utilized in ways that 2D can’t replicate. I was surprised not to see Polygon Pictures’ Blame! make it into the nominations. Barring that, Land of the Lustrous was a beautiful adaptation that took Haruko Ichikawa’s framework and made its own visual world. The hand-painted backgrounds and CG characters never felt awkward against one another and the characters gestures and use of the gem’s colors on the environment were spectacular.

Best Score: Made in Abyss

I remember reaching the theatrical climax of the very episode. The camera panned across the city as the light from the sunrise broke over the top of the mountain and into the caldera then dove into the gaping maw of the abyss. The score in the scene absolutely sold the moment for me and the completeness of the experience had me sure the series was something special. It’s one of those series you know early on is going to have a vinyl soundtrack release.

Best Animation: A Silent Voice

As much as I’m a fan of Yutaka Nakamura battle cuts, Yoh Yoshinari’s absolutely wild effects animation, and the immensely evocative visual style of March comes in like a lion, A Silent Voice seems like the obvious choice since, well, it was a film that allowed the already sterling consistent quality of Kyoto Animation to put their absolute best into every moment. A necessity in a story that focused so closely on expression and gesture.

Anime of the Year: Land of the Lustrous

I can’t help but give this one to Land of the Lustrous. Haruko Ichikawa’s exploration of human nature through the unlikely lens of anthropomorphic gemstones is utterly captivating, stripping away all of our superficial layers one by one to reach some sort of ultimate truth of humanity. Orange’s adaptation is inspired, presenting one of the greatest arguments yet for the use of CG in anime. It’s gorgeous, mysterious, eerie in its ever-present sense of danger, and almost heartbreakingly tragic.

Those are my favorites for this year! Choosing between the nominees wasn't easy, but I feel confident the best of the year was represented in each category. What do you think of my picks? Do you disagree my choices? Share your picks in the comments below!

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Peter Fobian is Features and Reviews Editor for Crunchyroll, author of Monthly Mangaka Spotlight, writer for Anime Academy, and contributor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[marstarrab-blog]

Rachel and nat in conversation with the Barbican.

Rachel Mars and nat tarrab present their new show this autumn as winners of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award. We go behind the scenes with the Mars.tarrab duo for an insight into the making of ROLLER … and much more.

Where do you find inspiration for your shows?

Rachel: The urgency to make a show comes when an internal offer suddenly chimes with something going on in the world. With ROLLER, we find ourselves thinking about our bodies, ageing and our space in the world, as issues of female visibility and power are in the ether in a critical way.

nat: and often these come from things that make us cross, injustices, voices that are not heard and experiences not traditionally in the spotlight. We know we’ve hit upon a good idea when it feels so impossible and so necessary that it makes us feel nauseous to even attempt it.

How much of your own personal experiences do you draw on?

R: A lot. That’s always the starting point. We think the personal is a great way in to think about the political.

n: and that personal is always densely interspersed with research from a broad range of sources and other peoples’ experiences, pop culture, found words … these all combine to create a whole.

What are some of the themes that keep popping up?

n: the workings of the body, gender trouble, female voices, female relationships, questioning voices of supposed authority, striving, queerness …

R: Tootsie.

n: always Tootsie.

R: I mean, that sounds flippant. But actually when we first met, we found we both had this deep love of that film from when we were children. And it absolutely addresses gender trouble, striving and the female body.

Can you give us one example of how you researched ROLLER?

n: we loved our time with the Brighton Rockers roller derby team, hanging out in a sports hall surrounded by ferociously fit and passionate women learning strategic ways to slam their bodies together.

R: We spent one evening strapped into every type of padding you can imagine being taught that the way you stop yourself rolling forward when on roller skates is to send weight down into the ground through your vagina.

n: that was never in my physics lessons.

We’re both really interested in risk-taking in theatre but we come at it differently

Do you ever argue vociferously in the middle of the creative process?

R: I’d like to say ‘yes’, that we’re always fighting and throwing humous at each other. But generally no. It’s a process absolutely powered by debate and conversation but it has never tipped into arguing.

n: sometimes in the heightened atmosphere in the few days before opening a show, our differences can lead to tensions that sometimes leak out. We call it ‘paper cutting each other’ and we have become quite adept at noticing, naming and stopping it.

You’re a theatrical double act – tell us about your individual approaches to performance and how they come together in Mars.tarrab?

R: We first came together because we were both working on our first solo shows and were nervous about presenting them. Instead we created a mash-up show. And we liked it.

n: you also work as a solo performance artist whereas the solo work that I do is visual art. So when something in the world shouts to both of us for attention, we come together to make work. One example of where we differ is the way we employ risk. We’re both really interested in risk-taking in theatre but we come at it differently. I’ll always want to bounce really high, skate really fast, balance really precariously … I find physical risk thrilling and key to theatre being absorbing for an audience.

R: Whereas at the moment I’m interested in taking risks with theatrical form. Which is infinitely less terrifying for my body. And my mother.

n: As we head into this show exploring roller derby, those differences will most probably get some air time.

What double acts have inspired you?

R&n: The Two Ronnies, Morecambe & Wise, French and Saunders, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig, Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall.

n: and Cagney & Lacey.

R: … for you.

How important are strong visual elements to your shows?

n: historically we have always made images from our bodies – one short, one tall – and exploited these similarities and differences. Wherever we work, whether at the Barbican or in a bathtub in Islington, we’ve always got that starting point.

R: The visual element is the guts of our work. You being a visual artist and theatre designer as well as a performer makes the visual aspect of the work integral to the making. Left on my own, it might all be words, and I think people tend to remember images more than words so we are rigorous when constructing them.

n: we take complex cerebral concepts and figure out ways to transform them into arresting stage pictures. We seek to represent something but also critique it from within the image.

R: For example, in our last show about the 1980s (The Lady’s Not For Walking Like An Egyptian), we were wrangling for days with the free market economy. We finally translated it into an image involving the two of us, a huge unstable ladder, a handbag full of edible money, a Margaret Thatcher wig and lots of Lycra.

n: that’s an image that audiences say they remember.

What does it feel to be putting on a show at the Barbican?

n: it feels like a great invitation to innovate and extend what we do and how we do it.

R: An honour, knowing all the influential artists that have performed on those stages before us.

n: we’ve not worked with such a large organisation before. There’s a certain pressure in that and we are excited about what might arise – it may release us into a new kind of creativity.

R: What happens when you bring a hitherto DIY queer aesthetic into a bigger more mainstream establishment?

n: we’ll tell you in November.