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homeofjonicles · 2 years ago

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The Jonicles - Entry 11

Note: This is the eleventh entry of The Jonicles, hence why the date does not match when this is being posted. This was written back in June of this year before I started this blog, and there will be errors or developments in how this series was being written. Please enjoy (or don't enjoy) the eleventh entry of The Jonicles!

"Layers on layers of moments we've shared, just like a lasagna created with care.

"The flavours are burning, a new page is turning, and I hope that you'll be there in the end..."

"Goodbye, my friend..."

- Lumpy Touch (Garfield Gameboy'd Complete End Credits Theme)

It is currently 8:20 pm on the 13th of June, 2022. Today is Monday, the day of reckoning, the day of doom. And I'm not having a good day. It is also day #26 of my Jon Arbuckle hyperfixation.

You know, there's something about the Garfield fandom that I really love. For quite a mundane comic about a man, his cat and his braindead dog, there's so much creativity and soul in its fandom. Everything from the silly and shitpost-y stuff like Garfielf, to the more dark, bleak and complex stuff like Garfield Minus Garfield, a personal favourite of mine. It's quite the goldmine of pure, unfiltered fan creativity that people have when it comes to this gluttonous feline that I don't see many fandoms do, and it's really nice, if not also fucking absurd.

But there's one fan work that has and will always be one of my absolute favourites, and that one is Gorefield, or "I'm Sorry, Jon" as more people may know it by. It's such a gem.

It's this terrifying phenomenon that sprouted from the fandom that can be compared to the Zalgo meme (if anyone here is that old to remember THAT meme), and it turns Garfield into this huge, malicious, hungry and horrifying creature that's out to get Jon. Gorefield takes many forms: a spider-like creature that hunts down its prey, a pulsating, bug-like animal that is sometimes attached to Jon or other entities, a huge, endless godlike entity that consumes all and ends all, Gazorpazorpfield, the forms are pretty diverse, and sometimes the monster is even Jon (of whom i always like to see more of).

And I love it. I love this horrific, trippy and even sometimes disgusting alternate timeline to this comic, the way it twists and distorts Jim Davis' characters into freaks and monsters capable of ending the world itself, it's great! I've seen art piece after art piece, comic after comic, meme after meme of this twisted reality and they are all great, they're all horrifying, and some of them got a chuckle out of me. I remember one where Garfield finds this connect the dot book and Jon's playing around with it, and on the last two panels it's seen that Jon's drawing a detailed sketch of a demonic monstrous Garfield with a pentagram, and we see Gorefield himself on the last panel like "Connect the last dot, Jon.". There are so many of them I couldn't even list them here. I just love the idea of Jon being taken hostage and killed by someone he thought was just an ordinary cat but is actually a monstrous and possibly godlike creature.

One of my favourite, FAVOURITE works of Gorefield is Garfield Gameboy'd, a... series? of Gameboy inspired pixel art animations by Lumpy Touch that has Jon being ambushed by many horrific forms of Garfield, having to hide and use the resources he has available to him, and also involves Lyman, Odie, Nermal, Arlene and Liz in its plot. Jon encounters a cat-like beast that bites one of Jon's hands off, and shortly after this event, Jon sets fire to the house and it explodes. Jon survives, but so has Gorefield. Distant sirens go off as they stand before one another, and the world is about to end. The final nuke explodes, and all is over and gone. And yet, Gorefield reemerges, Jon kept safe and warm inside his flesh as he sprouts wings and flies up into the air, declaring Jon is what makes him complete... Complete armageddon, just as Lyman had predicted. Lyman appears out of a pipe in the ground and sits solemnly in the lake as everything around him burns. He is weak, pathetic, he couldn't save them, any of them. He calls out the names of Jon and Odie, the ones who were the closest to him, and with his strength and what I also assume to be radiation, he becomes ripped as fuck, transforming into a Dragon Ball Z character and possessing inhuman powers. "It won't be for nothing." He declares. "I'll make them pay."

... So yeah, this video is great! It's that perfect blend of horror, story and Garfield that I never knew I needed in my life. But there's also one small detail that I think really makes this as special as it is to me, and that's the end credits theme. It's so sad, so melancholy, so tragic. It's... beautiful.

Personally, I see it from Jon's perspective. Reflecting in that moment, standing before the beast he once knew as his cat with the echoed sounds of sirens going off of all the moments he's cherished with Garfield. Like layers of lasagna, his friendship and bond has run so far deep with Garfield, and even when the flavours are burning to the ground, the world is ending with the face of armageddon staring right into Jon's own and the page is taking a new turn, one that he possibly couldn't survive... He still sees Garfield as a friend. Even in this terrifying form that scares and instills fear into Jon to his very core, a form that constantly changes and adapts to its environment, a form that once tried to kill Jon and most likely still will try... Jon still wishes for Garfield to stay with him in the end, and bids him farewell as the world comes to a close, and it all fades away...

It's such a bittersweet end, and the after credits scene only makes it more so. And it just made me care about Gorefield so much more. I love its terrifyingly beautiful and exciting storyline. And that song really topped it off, with those sweet, somber lyrics and the solemn instrumental... The feeling is indescribable. I love this phenomenon, man.

That's all I really feel like saying right now. It's late, I'm most definitely going to fail film class and I'm not feeling good at all mentally, and I really need sleep... As usual, I welcome Jon Arbuckle into my awful mess of a brain with open arms and also welcome him into my dreams as well. Let's hope Gorefield doesn't catch up to ya, okay buddy? Stay safe Jon :)

Last edited at 9:49 pm

Wondering why entries 9 and 10 were skipped? Well, entry 9 is a currently unfinished entry. It contains a fanfic concept that is Gorefield related, but I never ended up finishing it unfortunately and I lost motivation for it. It may be redone or continued when my writing skills improve in the future. Entry 10 is just headcanons that, again, were also never finished. I apologise greatly for the inconvinience and I hope this isn't too disappointing. Fortunately, there shouldn't be any more entries that will be skipped after these ones.

Cheers,

Your Local Jonnoisseur

Posted on the 21st of July, 2022 at 8:30 pm.

#jonicles 11 #ahh man gorefield is awesome dude #like i know it's an older meme but its just so cool and freaky #i love stuff like bizarre body horror and family friendly media made terrifying so this is right up my alley #also the image above is from Gorefield Horrorscopes if you were wondering #also ZALGO does anyone remember zalgo????#zalgo was the shit

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cherrehx · 4 years ago

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okay so its 2am right now and I just thought of something really cute hhhh, so basically, how would kaminari, kirishima, todoroki and bakugou react to finding ship art or something of them and their crush?? I love your writing btw, it's so awesome 💕💕

super long wait, i know. half of this was written when bnha was still my hyperfixation, hence why it's one shots. the headcanons were written now, because i felt bad leaving out denki and eijirou. -cherry

katsuki bakugō:

it was just after nine in the afternoon. katsuki had already gone to sleep as per usual, though tonight he was rudely interrupted by loud knocking on his room's door.

"the hell do you want, loser?!", he shouted, still unsure of who was even at his door. everyone knew by now not to disturb him, so who dared to do so anyways?

getting out of bed and proceeding to open the door, the ash blond was slightly less angered when he saw eijirou standing there. said red head looked frantic because of something. bakugou honestly didn't even want to know what had got him so distraught, but he knew he wouldn't get his well deserved sleep otherwise,

"spit it out, shitty hair."

"we were looking at pictures from the sports festival online and we found something that you should maybe see for yourself!", eijirou started, realizing that he wasn't getting his friend's attention, so he added, "it's about you and (y/n)!"

kirishima was the only one that knew about bakugou's secret crush on you. that's why he wasn't laughing like everyone else in the common room; because what they found may cause complications.

after kirishima had mentioned your name, bakugou was swiftly jogging towards where almost all of his class was sitting gathered around a laptop, which seemed to be mina's, judging by all the leopardy and pink stickers on it.

"out of the way extras!", katsuki stomped over to see what all the fuss was about. from the corner of his eye he saw how you were cowering next to one of the couches, face covered by your hands. at first he couldn't understand why, but when he saw a particular piece of artwork displayed on the laptop screen, he figured you were just majorly embarrassed.

the art that his class found on google was from somebody's blog that was all about the 'heroes of the future!'. needless to say, the blog didn't only deal with the heroes, but also the relationships of them. ever since an encounter at the sports festival that a lot of people saw and shared around, you and bakugou had become a popular so called ship. (the girls explained that 'ship' didn't mean anything related to boats when they teased you about mentioned moment in front of him.)

katsuki couldn't help but feel embarrassed himself, but he also had to keep his cool to not seem suspicious. looking at the drawing of you and him one more time, the ash blond walked over to you, ignoring anything his class was saying.

"(y/n), you ok?", he crouched down to your level, poking your head once. his only response was a quiet hum, followed by a hiccup. worried, katsuki grabbed your hand tightly and pulled you outside the dorm.

the air was nice, not too hot, nor too cold. a light wind was blowing as the moon shone brightly.

bakugou gave you a little space and some time to calm down. when you did, he was quick to ask,

"what's the matter? did you get THAT embarrassed by it?"

you shook your head no. it was something more, but was this the right time to tell him?

"i was really embarrassed at first.", you started, "but then i thought about something and cried."

"about what?", the usually loud boy asked softly. silence was all he got for a good minute until you finally responded,

"you know how they say 'life imitates art'? i really wish it w-was like that..."

now you were the one getting silence as a response. did you really just say that?

"idiot, being all cryptic and shit.", katsuki tried to stay calm, even if he was freaking out on the inside, "if you want a kiss you can have it."

shōto todoroki:

mr. aizawa's classes had a pretty strict schedule most of the time: first the class would get an assignment, that they'd do until said teacher falls asleep. after that, everyone would quietly - in order to not wake up aizawa - do anything they want, really.

for shouto this was more or less just plainly boring, as he was one of the few students that actually did what they had to. he'd finish his work and then wait, because he had nothing else to do. he was most likely to bother midoriya, but today he was very into whatever he was writing down in his little book. so shouto settled for observing the classmates behaviour. well, rather your behaviour.

the half and half boy knew it was weird, but he liked watching you. he liked seeing you, especially when you were happy and smiling. todoroki knew what these 'symptoms' were, but he wanted everything to stay as it was for now.

why he had caught those feelings, he didn't know. he figured it was the way you stood out. you didn't get lost in between the others and he liked that.

while todoroki was deep in thought, ashido had walked over to your desk, where you were doing the assignment in peace and quiet,

"(y/n), look! the other's and i thought about how todoroki always stares at you so intensely, so we created these shipnames! which one do you like better?"

you looked at the paper or rather the newly created words and little pictures drawn by some of your classmates and immediately turned red. flailing your hands around a little, you lied,

"none of these, i don't...like todoroki in that way."

mina looked a tad upset at that, but she understood, nodded and walked back to her table. you sort of felt bad, having killed her excitement, but you didn't need anyone knowing about your secret crush on the stoic one.

speaking of the stoic one, he couldn't hear anything you and mina had talked about. he only saw her walking over, showing you something and you freaking out and sending her away. needless to say, he was curious what had caught you off guard so much. when shouto saw mina throwing away that suspicious piece of paper, he decided to look at it when class ended. even if he thought sticking his hand in the trash was a little gross.

the end of class came sooner than expected. shouto was packing his bag slower than usual, waiting until everyone had left. after they did, he skipped over to the trash can, pulling out the latest addition: a piece of paper that embarrassed (y/n)!

he stuffed it in his bag and carried on walking to his dorm room, where he finally felt safe looking at it, " 'ship names'? why would they want to name a boat after (y/n) and i?", he asked himself, before a certain doodle on the page explained your reaction and the girls' name-mixing. even shouto couldn't help but react in some way, thinking about said doodle happening in real life. that's when he got startled by a knock on his door.

"hey, todoroki. i know you always do your work in class, so i thought i'd come and ask you about...", you drifted off, seeing the light blush on his cheeks and his fire side burning, "...umm, am i interrupting something?"

he was hiding a piece of paper behind his back. you could see just the corner of it, but that was enough for you to identify what paper it was.

"didn't take you for the nosey type.", you akwardly laughed in order to drown out your embarrassment.

"sorry, i got curious.", he looked unusually upset, averting his heterochromatic eyes and letting his arms drop on his sides. you confirmed the paper was indeed the one that mina showed you earlier.

"did you dislike it a lot?", shouto asked without thinking.

now it was your turn to blush.

denki kaminari:

-ok hear me out

-his love language has to be physical touch

-so naturally, when you guys and the rest of the bakusquad had a sleepover, you cuddled

-platonically of course (even though both of you had feelings for one another, but shh)

-oh, but mina couldn't let this one slip

-she HAD to take a picture

-in the morning, when you were still only half awake, mina ecstatically showed her phone into your face

-"LOOK, (Y/N), YOU GUYS ARE THE CUTEST!"

-queue embarrassed (y/n) and denki

eijirō kirishima:

-i feel like with him, you had been like childhood friends

-and back in the day, you guys were all like

-"i'm gonna marry you when i'm older!"

-so you engraved a little "eijirō & (y/n)" into a tree

-years and years later you guys go back to that spot

-just because you wanted to reminisce the good old days

-you guys find the carvings

-"you know, (y/n), i still haven't changed my mind."

-"what do you mean, eijirou?"

-"i'd still marry you."

#headcanons #eijirou kirishima x reader #one shots #katsuki bakugou x reader #denki kaminari x reader #shouto todoroki x reader #x reader #shōto todoroki #eijirō kirishima #katsuki bakugō #bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #bnha x reader #fanfiction

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keeperofthedead · 5 years ago

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Can you tell us what culture and time period your game is based off of? I'm trying to costume my mcs and I want to be on-target!

To start, I’m flattered that you’re already interested enough to be designing a protagonist (especially considering the demo is currently a four-page prologue). I’ve been working on full-body images of the love interests—or trying to, in any case—but ah, well, the art motivation just has not been there. It should help some in this department when it actually, um, happens.

(The proper answer got a little ramble-y, so I’m putting it under a cut.)

None of the fictional in-game cultures are based entirely on any single real-world culture (though some influences are clearly stronger than others)—and, to be honest, many elements are entirely fictional (the practice mentioned in the prologue, for example). The most important influences for Vasanay, the fictional kingdom where the game takes place, are early Ottoman and late Byzantine (particularly the former), though gunpowder is absent from the setting because I think that it takes away from the fantasy feel. Be wary of what sources you use; we don’t actually have a lot of visual references for women’s clothing from that era, so what you find may be wildly inaccurate. Magnificent Century, for example, is... a little absurd.

I have just described the Hayuk, the dominant culture group in Vasanay, but there are many more than them, and neighboring peoples do, after all, influence each other. For example, the Shahtal and the Atthai peoples from the east share a few broad similarities with the Hayuk, but have more middle ages Persian and early Mughal influences, respectively. Across the sea to the west are many small kingdoms, but the most prominent is Darrada, which is inspired by Renaissance Italy and Iberia.

To the immediate south is the empire of Parnassos, with which tensions are high during the time that the game takes place. Like the Hayuk, the Padalline people are late Byzantine-influenced; Vasanay was recently (within the last two generations) part of Parnassos, hence the similarities. The grandmother of the current queen allied Vasanay with the neighboring Shahtal city-states to fight for its independence. (I won’t go too much into this because it’s important to the game. That is not to say that it’s spoiler information; only that I want to make sure that I convey key information in the game first before I talk about it on the blog, rather than the other way around. Reading the blog should not be essential to understanding the game.)

In addition to the primary late Byzantine influence, the Padalline people also have Roman and classical Greek elements. Someone will likely point out that these are noticeably earlier time periods than the other culture groups I have mentioned, but that is intentional.

I hope this helps!

#asks #the keeper of the dead #anonymous #but i know it's u lone and lily and nanda and crow #u are all prime suspects #world lore

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ygconfessions · 6 years ago

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Admins I just read the 'BlackPink analysis' confession and I understand it isn't yours and that its coming from a fan.. But do you agree with it?

Admin N is on a well-deserved break, so this is just Admin Y/my personal opinion.I think it’s pretty neutral written, but it’s still one person’s opinion. However, I don’t agree with OP, because I don’t have the knowledge, nor the interest to judge a group.That the short answer and the elaborate answer would be:

Talent is objective, just like every mother has the smartest baby. Also, Talent is nothing if you don’t have the possibilities, money, time, place, passion, to work on it. Aside from hard work, you also need lots of willpower. And even if you have all of it, it needs to be acknowledged, which needs luck, and even better someone (a company) promoting it.

If you don’t believe me take this example, the violinist always had the talent, but the public wasn’t able to hear it in the beginning, just because it wasn’t their taste of music, but watch and judge for yourself (I’m sorry for the low quality it’s from 2010 also skip to 0.41)

youtube

Also, Kpop has very little to do with talent. Unnie’s first season should give you a great example, hard work and charisma is much more important on stage then just raw talent. Talent doesn’t prevent trainees from being eliminated on kpop survival shows it’s their look that attracts first, secondly the edited portrait character ( money and company + stage image). Being an idol can be learned with or without talent just like everything else, it just takes effort and time.

Vocal Techniques, now this is difficult, because firstly I’m not a professional, but even if I was I don’t think we get to hear them enough unedited to judge bp technique, nor do we know what they actually do get taught by their vocal coaches and what the company and producer say and make them do might again be completely different from what they learn.

We have examples that the companies teachings aren’t the best. Seen in Bom, but we don’t know if it was her coach fucking her over, Teddy, other people giving her advice, YG’s given image, or she tried to appeal to fans.

Neither do I know the history of Koreas Music enough. Which means I don’t know the technique Trot singers are thought because they obviously have a very different technique from what modern pop singers need and have to use. This could influence the teaching and differentiate them from ours.

Hence I don’t judge Vocal techniques.

Overhyped, or as I call it: “the Overhyped paradox.” Nowadays there are a lot of things that are labeled as “overhyped,” but are they? For me, it’s Oreos. Sure they are addictive and yummy, and would I have them next to me right now they would be gone before I had the chance to write even half of this paragraph. The amazing thing about Oreos is, the diversity of how you can use them, they are vegan, relatively cheap, and have a huge brand power because they gathered lots of support. People come up with all kind of recipes including Oreos on their food blogs. But let’s be honest, they are daintily dipped in milk, but without it, they are just sweet and dry and don’t have a very rich taste in anything. It’s basically lots of sugar and fat and a wee bit of cocoa powder. Without the combination of the fatty, sugary cream in the middle, they would be flat. But they are tons and tons of other, not half as famous brands of cookies out there. I’m sure most of us would find a better tasting alternative if we would seek for it, or make our own recipe. But who has the time to do that? And so we go with what we know because better safe than sorry. And after all, they are tasty enough, right?Lots and lots of people need to hype it up, else we wouldn’t take notice of it. Only if we start to read it everywhere, it grabs our attention. Only then we start to think wow it must be really great and that’s when we get disappointed. Because we may not experience it the same way as the group of people that started to hype had.For Oreos, they were for many of my vegan or food allergies afflicted friends, the first cookies they could eat. However, for me, it was a less exciting version of a good chocolate chip cookie or dry kinder milchschnitte where you need to bring the milk yourself.Anyway, my point is for something “mediocre” to be “overhyped” it needs a particular amount of people agreeing with the claim, hence for them, it is not overhyping, as they enjoy and like it.So the answer for overhyping is always yes, and no, everything can be improved in someone’s eyes. That’s something I learned in art school, you can always improve a painting, but there is a point where you need to stop. Sometimes the imperfections make the charm, and when you start to over-fix things, you lose what made it appealing. There is also the question of quality and quantity, meaning the price and time it consumes, what you can invest and how much others are willing to give, shapes the final product.

I see the big three, like Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate flavor, most people can decide on one, given a choice, but a majority of us has a more delicate taste. We like variety and have different views, and that’s okay! So I don’t understand why we can’t be as accepting of different taste in music as we are when it comes to ice cream flavors - because all it is is just another preference!Hence it shouldn’t matter what I think, or OP thinks, it matters what you like and enjoy!

So my overall opinion is, it shouldn’t matter!

#ygconfessions #asks #admin y #kpop ice cream #team chocolate mint

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moonlit-han · 3 years ago

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hi!! just finished reading une chauve-souris amoureuse (wow such fancy) and I just wanted to come by and say that I absolutely love it ??????🥺🥺 I love these kinds of fluffy moments, but what really intrigued me is that there seems to be a lot of world building behind this story!

I would love to know more about it,, like, how does Y/N's magic work? I'm pretty sure you implied that she didn't know she had magic (if their parents don't know, that means she didn't show signs of having magic from birth/having magic isn't a common thing, right?) so, how did she learn about it? how did she meet Jisung? his family seems to be against weres, but isn't he considered a were?

i have so many questions skdbwknskwns

but tldr; I'm really interested in this world and I would love to know more about it. do you have other works set in this world or is it the first? i would love to read more both about this setting, and these characters, they're very interesting!

sorry for the long ask! hope you're doing well!!!

- i usually go by 🎃 in skz writing blogs, hello :]

hey pumpkin anon! okay honestly, this ask made my day, i’ll have you know~ it makes me so happy knowing you really enjoyed this fic!! erm the title really isn’t that fancy…. it’s just “a bat in love” but in french🙈 to answer your question: yes, there’s a fair bit of world building. but, at the same time, i absolutely winged this (no pun intended….!). okay you know what, i’m going to use the old standby… bullet points!

y/n’s magic has to do with heat/fire. she’s a little like a dragon or salamander (hence, her slithering off the bed like a salamander). she seeks out warmth or fire whenever possible and is strongest with that element. she’s just fine with all other magic, too! you might have also noticed her grumbling with/at the fire and its accompanying sprite. i like to think of that situation as similar to calcifer from howl’s moving castle at least miyazaki’s animated version; regrettably, i have yet to read the original diana wynn jones book *cries*. anyway, i imagine that perhaps one of y/n’s friends had magic and, when something odd happened with her and fire, figured it out. her powers did not manifest at birth and were only passed down through her mother’s side unknowingly. no, her family doesn’t know about this and just thinks she’s attending a normal university, instead of one with both the usual courses and magical ones. and that brings me to the next bit…

this fic is set in the same universe as “charmed by you,” which i actually wrote for a fic exchange last year! if you’ve read “charmed by you,” you’ll notice that chan lives in a house he’s renting from an art professor at the magical university and is studying defensive magic. so he’s now Professor Bang at the university because we all know that he’d totally be a prodigy and end up teaching not long after graduating. (he might also be a couple years older in this universe than he actually is). and then in “une chauve-souris amoureuse”, jisung and felix live in that same house!

y/n met jisung at university! aaaand she was probably like damn look at those wings 👀 i mean…can you imagine? jisung, looking like he does now, with wings. wings!! bat-like wings. i’ll just be swooning, if you need me.

so, jisung’s family is a bit elitist (but he isn’t!!!! he’s learned better, damn it!! he saw how other people actually acted and saw that it wasn’t how his parents described and experienced the world for himself and formed his own opinions😤). and by elitist i mean there’s a bit of the vampires vs. werewolves shit going on here. he’s not a vamp tho! i also hadn’t thought of him as a were…. his family just has wings?? (believe me when i say i know roughly just as much as you do about jisung’s backstory). he’d been told how bad werewolves were—just the usual random, shitty prejudices—all his childhood and then got to college and had his eyes opened. wide. the knee-jerk reaction to mistrust any werewolf is still there, but that’s it. i understands that they’re just normal, as “normal” as any of them can be, people and there’s no reason to hate!! he’s working on it. be patient with him~ having wolfie around helps lol

well!! i guess i’ll just have to think of more things to write for these characters, then! exploring felix’s pixie self more would be quite fun—somehow he got a bit overshadowed by wolfie

again, thank you SO much for reading!! i don’t mind all the questions—it’s actually wonderful to get them and i really appreciate you thinking about the story that much! i’ll gladly answer more~

#yeah i may have taken inspiration from rhysand (ACoTaR) for jisung’s character……😬#🎃 .anon #.moonbeams #.asks.#.anon

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newsnigeria · 5 years ago

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Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/nuclear-armageddon-geopolitical/

“Nuclear Armageddon” and Geopolitical Simulacrum

by Ollie Richardson for Ooduarere via The Saker Blog

As I have now come to expect, some of the comments posted beneath my last article (and if to be honest, beneath any geopolitical article published on a so-called “pro-Russian” website) refer to an imagined scenario where human beings are just doomed – completely doomed. In context, the comments I speak of go along the lines of “Yeah, the Russian leadership might be smart, but the war hawks in the West are crazy enough to just start a nuclear war, to just press the red launch button on a whim!”. I mean, of course, nuclear weapons are a very real thing, but they are categorically not triggered by emotions. I will try to explain why.

I will started by saying that it is possible to psychoanalyse the poster of such comments and produce a fully-fledged report specific to that person, and thus save time explaining complicated phenomena in international relations. In fact, I could end this article right now, since I have already implied that a person projects his or her own internal environment onto the external world (e.g. “I’m a victim, and we’re all doomed!”). But instead I feel that it is more worthwhile and less provocative to simply explain the very basics of analysing post-9/11 geopolitics by using an example.

There are two boys of the same height and weight. Neither of them has had any professional training in any martial art or boxing. They are raw, so to speak. They are instructed by a neutral (vetted) referee to fight each other in 5 minutes, but not to kill. So we have 2 boys and 1 referee, who will only intervene if he judges that either boy is close to being killed. Both boys are checked over by the referee before the fight begins, so that neither of them has any bladed weapon or anything that may give an advantage.

Now at this stage, when an observer is asked (having seen the boys for the first time) “Who do you think will win?”, the answer isn’t exactly obvious. If this observer is asked the same question after 30 seconds of fighting, it becomes slightly easier to answer because they will have seen the boys in action, but it’s still not a fact that their prediction will come true, since their interpretation of the fighting has an element of subjectivity in it and is ultimately dependent on their level of education. For example, it would be surprising if the observer projected boy Y as the winner, having watched boy X knock boy Y to the floor 3 times in 30 seconds. It would look like the observer already had some knowledge of both or either of the boys and thus predicted that boy Y would weather the storm and come out on top.

In other words, the forecast made by the observer before the fighting has started is dependent on already-adopted scientific paradigms – such as the laws of physics, their own fighting experience, probability models, etc. They most likely would not be willing to bet their house (or mortgage) on boy X or boy Y winning, since their level of certainty hasn’t crossed the threshold established in their minds, which is also based on already-adopted scientific paradigms (do we see a pattern yet – how processes are interconnected?).

Now let’s adjust the scenario – let’s remove the referee from the equation. Now we have the same 2 boys, who are told by their class teacher (let’s just assume they are obedient pupils who will do as the teacher says) to have a fight in 5 minutes. They are not checked over before the fight – it’s possible that they could have a knife, brass knuckles, or even a gun. In this new hypothetical scenario, the observer’s position (remember: the observer is just plonked in front of the boys, they didn’t have the chance to observe them in the 5 minutes before the fight was announced and started) hasn’t actually changed, since there is an equal chance that either of them could have a weapon. If in the previous example the referee checked the boys over and, relatively speaking, gave a guarantee that both were unarmed, then in this scenario there is uncertainty vis-à-vis both of them. And after watching 30 seconds of fighting, the observer is again able to offer a more reliable prediction. It’s likely that no mortgage will be gambled here either.

In geopolitics it would seem that things more resemble the “30 seconds of fighting” scenario described above, first and foremost because we already have some knowledge of events that have happened in the past. I.e., today is not the first day we have heard about “China”, “Russia”, “Iran”, “America”, etc. However, some may already have some knowledge, but it’s not for sure that everyone will. Thus, how can it be said that someone’s 1 hour of a maths class before they dropped out of school can be equated to another person’s solid Wall Street portfolio? In other words, I am directly referring to what is coined as Wittgenstein’s ruler. One person who has observed on social media the Syrian war since the beginning may not tell the same story as another person who also observed the Syrian war on social media for the same amount of time. How accurate a story is will be discovered over time, when the same person recounts the history of different theatres (Ukraine, Libya, Georgia, etc).

So, this leads us to a question: would the observer gamble their house after watching the boys fight for 30 seconds – referee or no referee? A possible answer may be “it depends on how confident they are”. And this would indeed be true – moreover, only the observer knows for sure how confident they are. But what if they were asked “would you gamble 20 bucks?”. Of course, the stakes, and thus the level of risk, would be less. The observer chooses the wrong boy and loses $20? It wouldn’t be anything grave; it’s only a bit of beer money. Thus in this case the observer would theoretically be more inclined to gamble. And here is the first reason why the “doomsday” commenters cannot be taken seriously, because they risk absolutely nothing tangible if it turns out they are wrong. They can just post their “prophesies” like a man spreading his seed, with zero care about the consequences, enjoying not being responsible. How can anyone’s forecasts in relation to high-level affairs be believed if they don’t put something physical/of value on the line as collateral? This is a massive problem in today’s “analytical community”, where articles that offer “good” advise to governments have become an example of cyber fly-tipping.

Let us now speak in the context of today’s geopolitical reality. There are 195 countries, and the average of the size of their territory is 767,731 sq km. Real life is like Lord of the Flies, where their main aim is to survive – to eat, to drink, and to have shelter, and to pass on genes. By recognising this simple fact, which is actually just the essence of life, the observer already has a solid foundation for forecasting activities. For example, the observer can confidently ascertain that a country is not going to seek to destroy another country if the former is certain that the latter’s response will be equal in magnitude, if not more intense. History knows no example of a civilisation that consciously slit its own throat. Through costly calculations, yes, but never purposefully.

So how can a country be sure what an enemy’s response will be?

If in the past on-the-ground reconnaissance and spies were used to assess a competitor’s defence/offense capabilities, then today most of the processing is delegated to technology. Why? Because the concept of deterrence was rewritten the moment the atom bomb was invented. If in the distant past the most devastating weapon an army had was a trebuchet or longbow archers, then today it is a nuclear warhead. The difference is that with the former it was only the army that was in direct danger – troops may be killed. By the time an army had been overpowered and started to think about retreating, the enemy could pursue them and annex or raze to the ground captured settlements. The sequence of events was very linear and more serial. Today, due to the “fruits” of industrialisation and scientific discovery, the manner in which we communicate has become very truncated, and thus less time consuming. Warfare as we knew it has become something only seen in museums. No longer does country X declare war on country Y and send troops towards Y’s territory (creating a line of demarcation).

The abstract structure of a country’s response in 2019 may be (ordered from highest to lowest risk):

Nuclear weapons – guaranteed 100% (or more) mirror damage to the enemy’s country;

Specialised non-nuclear weapons – designed to eliminate the enemy’s army assets whilst remaining within the framework of international law;

Regular ground forces – used to legitimately liquidate armed proxies, but not the enemy’s army;

Public opinion influencers – tasked with socio-economically engineering, usually through state-owned media, NGOs, and general cyberspace meme campaigns.

As long as nuclear weapons remain in the arsenal of a country, a government will always prefer to exhaust the lower risk options. It must also be stressed that the damage these weapons can inflict is only imagined, for the same reason that the observer doesn’t know which boy will win the fight before it has started (no state has ever used a nuclear weapon against another nuclear state), hence why I always insist that warfare today mostly takes place in the mind (more about this later).

Let’s use a real example – the Syrian war.

America is not able to guarantee that firing a nuclear warhead at Russia will go unanswered, neither at the stage of the US missile leaving the North American continent nor at the stage when it will have hit Russian soil. In other words, Capitol Hill knows very well that in this scenario Russia would pre-emptively wipe the US off the face of the Earth. Hence why America prefers to use proxies and carry out “colour revolutions”. Putting the fact that Israel dragged the US into the Middle East aside, both Russia and America have regular troops in Syria. An agreement (or rather, concessions) was made between the US and Russia in order to keep things stable so that their respective socio-economic situations back home receive minimal damage – “we will stay on this side of the Euphrates and at Al Tanf, and you can have the West of the country”. This does not mean that Russia and America are in cahoots – on the contrary. It means that both are nuclear superpowers and both are thus unable to overpower each other. Russia would kick America out of Syria if it could. But it can’t, or to be more precise – it can, but it would be a completely pyrrhic victory.

A simple way of understanding what’s happening in Syria is to understand that a deterrent is not supposed to be used. Here is the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of this word:

But what’s going on today is much more complicated than just a child being sent to the “naughty step” every time he/she misbehaves. Of course, ideally the parents wouldn’t feel the need to punish their child in this way, so there is thus a preference to condition the child into behaving in the desired way without actually physically punishing the child, since the “naughty step” loses its scariness over time.

In geopolitics, this is where public opinion influencers come in handy. In Russia’s case, such influencers are Russia Today, Sputnik, Tass – all English-language state media. These agencies act like a mirror reflecting the West’s ugliness back at itself, highlighting the vapidity of daily life, mocking it in a way that says “Hey, you may have been told horrible lies about our country – please look at your own sh*thole before taking the bait”. RT has an operating English-language TV channel in America and Britain, and one in French based in Paris. Sputnik has a branch in most countries of the world now (by the way: a fresh neoliberal attack against Sputnik arrived on June 14th 2019). Long story short – Russia turned the West’s propaganda manoeuvres into a large Zugswang, like stepping on many rakes at the same time. Don’t believe me? Check the Internet rankings over the past 10 years. America, as was said above, uses “colour revolutions” and NGOs to achieve the same effect, although America tries to present it’s liberal media proxies as “independent”, because otherwise the US will look completely ridiculous the next time it accuses Russia of influencing this or that “democracy”.

Continuing with our Syria example, it is necessary to understand that while it doesn’t benefit America to be involved in a war of attrition in the Middle East (AIPAC is too powerful, sadly), it makes the most of the situation anyway and uses it to hurt Russia. But what happened in 2014 was very serious in terms of international security: America opened the Ukrainian theatre, which played out at the same time as the Syrian, Yemeni, Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian, etc, and later Venezuelan one. I.e., America uses all these theatres to hurt Russia in one way or another, and to additionally complicate things, America is now obliged to hurt China too. If the objective is to give the IMF the keys to a foreign country’s central bank, the aim is always to land blows on rival nuclear superpowers. So, if to cut to the chase, America’s aim was to drag Russia into a well-prepared trap in Ukraine (the Russian army crossing the border and killing its compatriots) and prevent it from entering Syria. Hopefully, since I’ve written so much about this topic in the past, we should all be aware of how Putin skilfully dodged this bullet and created the Minsk Agreements, which allowed Russia to enter Syria by freezing the Ukrainian theatre (bringing Crimea back into the bosom of Mother Russia) and ensure that the West incurs costs as a consequence – bonjour social unrest and economic ruin due to the fragmentation of the Western bloc (US + EU vassals), aka Yellow Vests, 5 years later.

But for Russia, it’s not enough that it recovered from the damage inflicted by the CIA Gorbachev-Yeltsin fifth column and found a way to enter the centre of the great game – the Middle East – in 2015. What matters is guaranteeing the development of the state, and in order to do this the current global order, where the UN is an American puppet, needs to be overhauled. Having a comprehensive arsenal – from nuclear weapons to public opinion influencers – and the benefit of hindsight (especially in relation to what happened to Yugoslavia and Milosevic), Russia was in a strong enough position to begin this overhaul. Step 1: S-400 deployment in Syria. I wrote about the Russia-Turkey dynamic in my last article, so I won’t cover this again here, but I will, however, affirm that the likelihood of a Turkish mistake had already been taken into account by the Kremlin before that fateful day.

As a result of this miscalculation by the West, Russia is now able to go to battle in the biased UN, whilst at the same time chairing its own “UN” (military, economic, and scientific cooperation with the S-400 as the cornerstone of the new defensive-minded [multipolar] world order), which will serve as the backbone of Eurasia, regulating military reactions in accordance with international law. Now the S-400 is even in Turkey, calling this country’s NATO membership into question, and all of this happened without a single shot being fired by the Russia state at the Turkish state.

Now I want to talk about a connected topic that I have touched on before, but not in detail, because it’s so complicated that I hadn’t yet found a simple and digestible way to explain it. Recall that in the past I have spoken about supercomputers, or more precisely – the Russian Ministry of Defence’s. As a reminder, here is the proof that is exists, and here is a key quote (emphasis my own):

“A ‘colossally powerful’ supercomputer installed at Russia’s military headquarters helps the country’s armed forces tackle emerging threats by analyzing previous conflicts, such as the Yugoslavian war and the like, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.”

And yes, Russia deliberately flaunts its assets so that all parties understand intentions. You might ask “But the Pentagon surely uses one too, right?”, and the answer to this would be in the affirmative. Take a look:

youtube

As we can see, the description says:

“…Sierra is purpose-built for an entirely different mission: nuclear weapons.”

So we can see that the little schematic for the structure of a country’s arsenal I wrote above, consisting of 4 points, isn’t that far from reality, even if it might seem extremely oversimplified. The purpose of these supercomputers is to give the Russian Ministry of Defence/Pentagon a range of options vis-à-vis the great game. In essence, the use of nuclear weapons will only happen if the sender can be sure that the enemy and its allies will not strike back. Hence why America has only bullied Africa states up to this point, since the operations to conquer these lands don’t demand the use of Enola Gay 2.0 – the simple aircraft carrier plus proxies combination has been able to get the job done up to this point.

And it should also be mentioned that the EU (which today essentially represents German, not US, subordination) also is obliged to have a supercomputer, since America just withdrew from the INF treaty (and Trump in general would benefit from the EU’s disintegration), thus throwing Berlin under the bus.

I myself am certainly not a mathematician, and so I never dared to even write a simple equation that the supercomputer’s algorithm may use.However, recently I discovered an academic piece of work that opened my eyes to what Russia is perhaps capable of.

The document is 7 pages long (I have a full copy), and the Internet preview shows only the first 2 pages, but for the purposes of this article I think that this will be sufficient enough. So what is it? It is a scientific piece of research entitled “A Model of Information Warfare in a Society Under a Periodic Destabilizing Effect” and was produced by 3 different Moscow universities (published in 2016). In basic terms, Russian scientists created algorithms to explain how information is disseminated, and conclude that “a short-term increase in the propaganda intensity does not have long-term consequences”. Here is an example equation from page 4:

It’s complicated? That would be an understatement.

Why is this relevant to nuclear doctrines? Because modern warfare is based on calling perceived bluffs. Similar to how we don’t know for sure if a man who walks down the street with his hands in his pocket is concealing a gun, the deployment of a military unit to a certain zone can either be carried out in the name of an “exercise” (bluff) or preparation for an actual hybrid provocation (like the US’ downing of MH17 via the Ukrainian Army’s hands to justify the sanctions – which in reality are anti-German – policy).

Russia needs (and has) the corresponding tools in order to probe adversaries and remain one step ahead not only on the physical battlefield, but also in the cyber battlefield. And it is thanks to these tools that Russia managed to prevent what would have been the 3rd bombing of Syria by the US, in 2018. The mainstream media was already broadcasting the White Helmets propaganda videos, showing “bombed hospitals” and “Assad barrel bombs”, and paving the ground for more US/French/UK bombing (Trump needs these occasional controlled strikes in order to soften up his own domestic position and to economically blackmail Russia vis-à-vis other theatres). But the Russian media, in response, kept repeating “the White Helmets have begun filming a staged chemical attack”. America even sent a warship to the Syrian coast to make the threat credible, but it turned out to be a bluff, because Russia outmanoeuvred the US in the information space, having learnt from the previous 2 instances, by making any attack completely useless (“We predicted you’d stage a gas attack, and one actually happened, so now ordinary laypeople will not swallow the ‘bad Assad’ pill, and may even start to question the MSM narrative more”).

So in short: the Ministry of Defence’s supercomputer helped Putin to keep the US (and Israel) on the ropes and prevent the domestic situation from deteriorating (America wants Putin to look weak in front of his own people, paving the way for a coup d’état; the Nemtsov false flag was a failure since society did not come to the streets).

I am not trying to say that specifically these scientists wrote the algorithm of the Russian Ministry of Defence’s supercomputer. What I am trying to say, however, is that we can see a real life example of what work the Russian scientists are doing within the framework of “hybrid war”, and can thus use it to at least imagine what is going on in the defence industry. And, most importantly, it’s possible to explain to the doomsayers that international relations does not work like a light switch – on/off. The responses available to a nuclear superpower – whether it be Russia, China, or the USA – are much more diverse than just “bomb” vs “don’t bomb”. As we have seen, the main weapons of the US are armed proxies, a cyber fifth column, and sanctions. And at no point during the last 10 years have things escalated beyond point No. 3 (the use of regular ground forces in the framework of proxy warfare) in the schematic outlined above. Everyone wants to survive, remember?

Lastly, the media – both mainstream and independent – in general likes to exploit fear porn to increase the number of clicks and advertisement revenue. They will say “War with Iran around the corner”, and then the following week report “Trump imposes more sanctions on Iran”. A good general rule is that if a website tries to convince you that war is days away, then it is safe to say that it’s nonsense. In fact, the Internet “news” space has in general become a parallel universe, where we now have so-called “deep fakes”, which testifies to the increasingly complex task of algorithm creators. I will end this article with two quotes from Jean Baudrillard’s book “Simulacra and Simulation”, which I feel express very well the nature of today’s “hybrid” warfare:

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”

“It is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them.”

#russia #U.S.A

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superstringstudio · 6 years ago

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Mottos, Mantras and Mission Statements; 4 Steps to Branding Your Studio

Recently I’ve put a lot of thought into how I want my studio to be perceived by others. I’ve asked myself: What are the attributes that make Superstring different to the slew of other indie devs? What values will unite all the games that are born out of my studio? What does Superstring stand for?

I can almost hear the gags and wretches – this subject matter unavoidably gets into quite guffy, saccharine territory. It sounds like a load of bollocks, doesn’t it? Not long ago I would have agreed and written anything like this off as pretentious busy-work – a fat waste of time.

In retrospect, that thinking was naïve. I’ve come to realise how important this positioning work can be in the long run; it’s a vital step that a lot of smaller developers and studios are overlooking.

Taking the time to properly position your studio/company will cement your creative vision – it will give the games that slowly fill your catalogue consistency and a stamp that is undeniably yours. It will help you hire likeminded folk, and – most importantly – it will allow you to shape what the masses think when they see your studio interacting in the wild. This work is easy to rush and difficult to nail, but it’s not expensive. Anybody can do this work. Everybody should do this work.

I want to say up front, by the way: I am by no means an expert in the world of indie development - Superstring is still a very young studio, and yet to release its first game (Headspun is out later this summer, releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC and Mac). I have A LOT to learn about development. I have, however, worked in the games industry for over a decade, with the past four years in a global brand role at an AAA publisher. Recently, I’ve been trying to leverage some of that big-publisher-thinking on a smaller scale.

Today I want to share that work here.

In this first entry in the Superstring Journal (get updates here!) – a new monthly blog exploring various aspects of indie dev life – I wanted to walk through the four steps I’ve taken with Superstring in terms of building a brand for the studio. I’m not claiming Superstring is the best example of any of these steps, merely an example.

Note: in an ideal world, the below would be worked up alongside the birth of your studio. It should influence the name you choose, the icon you design, the language you use when communicating with the world. I’d imagine lots of people skip over all this and just get cracking developing their dream game – I know I did. Much of the below can be figured out at a later date, however – it just needs a step back, and some dedicated time to figure a few things out.

Ok, here we go!

1 | DEFINE YOUR STUDIO’S MISSION STATEMENT

This should be an easy place to start, but wrapping language around the aims of your studio/business is surprisingly tricky. “Because I want to” doesn’t cut it, sadly.

Your mission statement isn’t a slogan. It doesn’t need to be catchy or clever. It just needs to lay out what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re a tech company it will simply outline the solution that your product offers to a problem. As game developers, our mission statements are more likely to be rooted in the experience we’re looking to give to our players.

Some examples:

Supergiant Games “We want to make games that spark your imagination like the games you played as a kid.”

Dropbox: “to unleash the world’s creative energy by designing a more enlightened way of working.”

Blizzard: “Dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences...ever.”

Doublefine: “committed to making high-quality games with an emphasis on originality, story, characters, and funâ€‹”

Giant Sparrow: “[to create] surreal experiences people have never had before. Our dream is to make the world a stranger, more interesting place.”

Superstring: “To bring narrative to unlikely places through genre hybrids and experimentation.”

Try not to skip this step, as it segues directly into the second.

2 | DEFINE YOUR STUDIO’S VALUES

Yeah, the second step is equally as vague and woolly as the first. Sorry. But again, it’ll unlock a lot if you can really nail this. Knowing the three values your studio stands for will help you to hire staff who share the same virtues, and thus develop games in accordance with a unified vision. It will help write your studio’s signature.

It’s all too easy to rush this step and fart out a few quaint sounding words - but if they’re not reflective of traits you genuinely believe in, they’re meaningless. ‘Honesty’ might sound like a lovely value on paper, for example, but in an ideal world this would be true of all companies and brands. It’s hardly a virtue to shout from the rooftops, is it? “We don’t’ lie!” Brilliant. Even if this is, in actuality, less common than we know to be true, it’s just a bit shit and generic. Dig deeper.

In an effort to minimise ambiguous bollocks and show how these values can directly affect your ongoing work, I’ll share Superstring’s values alongside examples of how these values help in practice.

Superstring is:

T R A N S P A R E N T This might sound similar to ‘honest’ on paper, but it’s not. It’s about being actively open in all facets of development. It’s about sharing, and keeping very open channels of communication. In practice: transparency will inform the content we create and share outside of core development - hence this blog! It guides how we interact with other developers, and – hopefully – shapes our games, which will benefit from the outside perspective we otherwise lack as a small team. I think this is really important for small studios where you can easily end up working in a bubble. Transparency is a two way street.

G U T S Y There were several words I flirted with here – spirited, daring, adventurous – but they all relate to being bold. As Superstring is a one-man team, and a side project (I have a salary and full time job if things go pear-shaped), I’m happy to take risks. If an idea doesn’t pan out, nobody loses their jobs. Nobody goes without food or accommodation. In practice: Riskiness as a value means that experimentation is built into the studio’s DNA. Our games don’t need to be approved by a risk committee. We will actively pursue ideas that are more out there.

R E B E L L I O U S This sounds try-hard, but I’ve always been keen to weave a little attitude into Superstring’s persona. I don’t want the studio to walk or talk like a traditional developer; I want it more in line with a band’s brand, for example. Specifically, I want to tap into the themes and visuals of the synthwave music scene – which I feel embodies this attitude nicely. In practice: rebellion as a core value gives nice constraints for visuals, tone of voice and language. This value has directly influenced the visual identity work I'll outline later.

3 | WRITE YOUR STUDIO MOTTO/TAGLINE

The first two steps involve language that – should you wish – need never be public. They’re the invisible tracks your studio will run along. Your motto (or tagline), however, is the slightly more succinct and catchy embodiment of the first two steps. It’s the language you’ll whack on your website and Twitter bios and whathaveyous. It should succintly convey what you’re all about.

Here’s what I landed on for Superstring (after many iterations…):

“(Superstring is) dedicated to abusing the boundaries of game genre.”

I like this because it a) reinforces my mission statement of experimenting with genre hybrids, and b) introduces a little hint of attitude. It sounds progressive – a little rebellious, even.

Note: With the motto complete, I’d also recommend building out a long and short description for your studio, too. There’s countless uses for these (website about page, press release boiler plates, etc etc) , and having a long and short versions prepared will save you a lot of time.

4 | DEVELOP YOUR VISUAL IDENTITY

With the first three steps nailed, you can start building the core assets that will reflect your aims. All that introspective ethereal rubbish can now be converted into some lovely eye-candy! This final step is a big, complex one, in truth; the extent to which you’ll be able to act on it may be limited by budget (it certainly is in my case – there’s plenty more I’d do with a bigger wallet), but there’s a lot you can do to bring your intention and values to the world.

A – by no means exhaustive – list:

L O G O What is your studio logo? How does it reflect your values? Does it reflect your tone of voice? Does it take advantage of accompanying iconography? Does it work in both black and white? How will it animate in video form?

P R O F I L E P I C T U R E S What is your Twitter/FB/Insta/Discord/IndieDB profile image? Does it use your logo’s iconography? Is it still readable at a teeny-tiny resolution? Perhaps there’s no better representation of your studio than your own beautiful face.

K E Y A R T I wouldn’t say your studio needs bespoke key art (unlike your game, which most certainly does), but it can help establish your values and convey what you’re all about. I was really keen to have something more than just a logo for social headers / website backgrounds etc.

C O L O U R P A L E T T E This will likely fall out of your key art & iconography – but having a defined colour palette will help tie everything together across the many platforms you’ll likely use. Continuity is key. Whenever I set up Superstring on a new service or social media, I ensure the colour themes are set to purples/blues/pinks; whatever is closest.

F O N T What font or lettering are you adopting for studio communications? We all know how poor font choice can lead to wrong impressions...

O T H E R S T Y L E E L E M E N T S e.g. D O U B L E S P A C I N G I M P O R T A N T T E X T //Branded bullets Signature Emojis

W E B S I T E How does your website bring together all of the above to perfectly convey the brand you've tried to cultivate? This is the one place you have complete control over, and it should accurately portray what you're all about.

Note: I see lots of developers leaning on imagery from one of their games in relation to the above. I think it’s important to separate your studio imagery from game imagery as soon as you’re able. Let your studio stand on its own legs and exist outside of individual game branding.

There’s a lot more to it than just this, of course. The language and tone of voice you adopt is also born out of all this positioning work, but there's enough to talk about here to dedicate a blog of its own. I won't go into it now.

I still think a lot of the above can feel pretentious and without substance, but going through the motions of each step honestly unlocks a lot. Give it a bash.

Thanks for reading – I hope somebody finds some use in this. I am more than happy to chat in more depth about any of the points here – come chat with me on Discord - and if you found this helpful, please do subscribe to the Superstring newsletter for the next dev journal.

Jamin

#gamedev #indiedev #indiegame #games #videogames

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ratqueenexe · 7 years ago

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Oo I haven't been on tumblr for a while

Iv been tagged! By @jelixpo to do an.. About me thing I guess? XD lets give it a go :3

Name: Isabelle

Nickname: (Oo I have many) mostly just Izzy (or if u know the backstory behind it) Long Child or Ratt

Gender: Cis female

Orientation: Bisexual :) 💙💜💗

Ethnicity: White

Star Sign: Libra ♎️

Height: prolly 5'9? Lol I haven’t measured in a while XD

Time right now: 2:54 am

Last thing I googled: ‘fidget spinner pornhub’ (thERE IS A BACKSTORY AND CONTEXT TO THIS I RPOMISE! IF ANYONE CARES ILL TELL YOU IT XD)

Favourite Band(s): Safia, Twenty Øne Piløts, Starset, P!ATD and Fall Out Boy

Favourite Solo Artist(s): Katy Perry, Halsey

Song stuck in your head: Shape Of You by Ed Sheeren :3

Last movie I watched: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Last TV show I watched: 7 Year Switch (bloody hilarious Aussie reality show XD)

When did you create your blog: ummmm… Pfft I don’t actually really know… Prolly round 2014 some time??

What kind of stuff do you post: band related stuff, memes, ppls art, Youtubers, memes..

When did your blog reach its peak: N E V E R W I L L MWAHAHAH >:D

Do you have any other blogs: WE DONT TALK ABOUT THEM (nah lol one of my others is @kangarooteens I just post Aussie crap and memes and stuff lmao kms XD) >;D

Do you get asks regularly: nah. I rarely interact with ppl on this site and vice-versa

Why you chose your URL: (kind of embarrassing backstory) I was 12 when I made this blog (rip) and I wanted something ~ E D G Y ~ and I was also super obsessed with Dan and Phil at the time, hence the ‘phanther’ part lmao

Following: fukn 1712 XD Posts: I don’t actually know, how can u find out?

Hogwarts House: Slytherin 🐍

Pokemon Team: Mystic 💙

Favourite Colour(s): Prolly like black, red, pink?? Idk I love em all lmao

Average hours of sleep: about 7/8

Lucky number(s): 8, 13

Favourite manga character(s): manga/anime? Deffo Edward and Alphonse Elric from FullMetal Alchemist :3 💛

How many blankets do you sleep with: 2 (it’s winter here lmao rip)

Dream job: work @ Bethesda as a game developer :D

Dream trip: Road trip across the US to Las Vegas with my mates

Favourite book(s): ummm probably the Trials of Apollo or any other Rick Riordan (author of Percy Jackson) books rn

What I’m wearing at the moment: my Sonic the Hedgehog t-shirt for PJs XD

(Edit: shit I forgot to tag ppl XD I tag: @dyslexictrash and @ashezwhisper :3)

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undercityrezident · 8 years ago

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My Thoughts on Breath of the Wild

So I promised a review of the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And while I’ve done that… it’s also turned into a ramble-y chronicling of my experiences through the game too, just because one of the aspects of this game is the ability to carve out your own adventure apart from the main story through sheer exploration and the order you choose to visit the varying areas of the game.

So with that in mind, this will be quite the long bout of fanboyism sprinkled with the few critiques I have.

Naturally, spoilers beneath the cut, so prepare yourself.

So? Where to start? Perhaps a few notes on my circumstances and how I played this game that might colour my review of this game so that you all might take my praises and criticisms with a grain of salt:

I bought this for the WiiU, not the Switch, because… well… money is a thing (goddamnit Canadian Dollar… can’t you do a bit better?).

I played this over a course of two and half to three weeks, mostly at nights after work until the dim hours of the morning, and then to excess on my weekends/days off, trying to see and do almost everything before completing the main story, hence my reason for my blog’s hiatus during that time.

I did go into this game with a metric ton of hype and foreknowledge of certain aspects of the game (i.e. watching trailers, dev talk, E3 footage, etc.), coupled with the fact that I’m a huge Zelda fan.

That all taken into account, my overall experience of the game was a phenomenal one that had me near obsessed with it for those two-three weeks.

So let’s start with the tedious notes on things less to do with the game itself. From a hardware performance standpoint, it’s clear that this was developed more with the Nintendo Switch in mind. I had hoped that they would utilize the WiiU gamepad as a means to view the map/inventory without having to pause the game, swap screens and what have you. They did give it the same ability as the switch to allow the switch from playing on the TV to playing on the WiiU gamepad. That being said, I much preferred the TV, though I can’t speak ill of the gamepad’s ability to showcase the game. I’m sure it looked prettier on the Switch’s mobile platform though.

Speaking of graphics, this game is gorgeous. Again, I’m told (and have seen screens) of how it looks on the Switch, and it looks even sharper, brighter, and more vibrant. Still, on the WiiU, this game looked beautiful, and the game’s art style hits a nice medium between the realism you would see in Twilight Princess, and some of the more cartoony aspects from Wind Waker. This melding of styles fits with the overall theme of the game, fitting its more serious moments as well as the more comical ones as well. You can see pretty much all of Hyrule in glorious detail from… well… anywhere in Hyrule (terrain based obstructions notwithstanding). Just go ahead and climb to Death Mountain’s peak and look around and you’ll see it all in a glorious swath of colour that makes you want to visit every, single, place.

On that topic, Hyrule itself is massive. I set foot onto the Great Plateau – the starting area for the game – and was already quite impressed with how large an area it was to explore. It was already exceeding the size of Hyrule Field from previous games (with infinitely more complexity in terms of terms of ecological diversity, biomes and landscapes), and that’s the smallest area in the game. Once you leave, you can tell how much larger the world is, and it’s yours to explore. Sure you might be given a direction, but damn if I’m one to follow the beaten path. While… obliquely… following the general direction I had to go to reach Kakariko and the next step of my quest, I tried to ensure that I explored every square inch of the terrain.

At first… it felt somewhat empty. I tried to tell myself that this was the tone the game wanted to take; after all, this was essentially Hyrule in a halfway-post-apocalyptic state (more on actual story/plot details later). However, as I progressed further and looked a bit closer, I could see more of what the world had to offer me in this wide world. There were things hidden everywhere. From the apparently ridiculously large number of 900 Koroks hidden in the world (I was only able to find close to 500 after I had finished my complete world exploration), to the hidden and not-so-hidden shrines dotting the landscape, you can see there’s something to always look for and find. While not every corner is hiding something, a lot of places can tell a story just by looking at it.

An example: Fort Hateno is a bulwark dividing the west and east half of the Necluda province from one another. On the fields directly west of it, and at the wall itself, you can see the wrecks of a plethora of Guardians (formely functional autonomous robotic mechas powered by what I theorized to be magitek, though they claim it as actual technology). The field is littered with them, and you can see where they were stopped while trying to climb the walls of the fort itself. You could tell a devastating battle was fought here, though the 100 years’ gap has masked it somewhat with nature slowly reclaiming it.

There are still signs of civilization that are living in the wake of the broken Kingdom of Hyrule, however. Most of these are the small villages, stables, settlements, and even fellow adventurers like yourself, that are making their way in this rough and tumble world they now live in. While each NPC might not have a full-life story built into them, they all feel like small pieces of a larger community all contributing to the atmosphere of the game. They all certainly feel like they’re living their own lives based on the dialogue they offer, their daily routines, likes and dislikes, and the way they react to you doing certain things – please do not run naked through the streets. All of this together makes the world feel more complete. Some of these people offer quests (yes there is a questing system in this game), and this will change how certain people talk to you, as well as affect others that might speak to you later in the game. Doing these little side quests can help gain you help in the form of rewards, via rupees, ingredients for cooking (yes you can cook in this game too, and it’s often essential that you do), or other helpful items or advice/tips. Or sometimes no reward at all, as they expect you to do it out of the kindness of your heart as a good hero should.

Besides the small and varied settlements of Hylians around the regions, there are also the noted presence of other classic Zelda races in the game. Gorons, Koroks, Zoras, Rito, and Gerudo are all present in the game (making for and odd task of classification of what timeline this game falls under in the greater Zelda universe, given hints from varying parts of the game). While we don’t get to learn too much about the Koroks, we have the opportunity to learn a great deal about these other, very well fleshed-out cultures of the other major races in the game. In particular, I find the stories of the Zora people and the Gerudo to be well shown and exhibited. A quest in their region allows you to learn the storied history of the Zora from this era, and you quite literally immerse yourself in the Gerudo culture in order to progress the main story in that area. The Gerudo even sprinkle bits of their language into their common speech when speaking with you. Learning about these groups of people – their lives, their struggles, their dreams – definitely acts as a great force for wanting to see the end of the villainous force that’s seized Hyrule, and help to give it the rebirth it, and all its people, deserve.

This brings me to the story and overall themes of the game. While exploring, doing side quests, and goofing around (which can yield hilarious results depending on how you approach these tasks). The overall goal, as you’ll discover (and probably already know if you’ve seen even a little of the promotional content, or play Zelda games at all), is to defeat Ganon, or as he’s known in this game: Calamity Ganon. And while some associated content with the main quest can be lighthearted and even elicit a laugh or two (a select couple of the memories you can find of your life 100 years ago come to mind), it is largely a sad and tragic story that most certainly will inspire you to come to Zelda’s aid. She begins by waking and leading you from your long, 100 year slumber, and into the world. Our illustrious princess has been working tirelessly for your entire extended nap to keep Ganon at bay. However, a century is a long time to contend with the force of pure malice and evil that is the incarnation of Demise’s hatred and fury.

The progression of the story in this game is flexible based entirely on the way you want to play it out. You can make a mad dash straight for Ganon in your scrappy clothing armed with a stick if you really want to. And, conceivably, you could make it to him. Your chances of success would be completely and utterly hopeless, but you can give it a shot.

Or, you can follow through on your quest and free all of the Four Divine Beasts: Technological marvels that were tailor-made 10,000 years prior to destroy Ganon. You can free one, two, three, or all four, and go to face the Demon King’s incarnation whenever you like, leaving it all squarely in your hands.

But there’s more to be said on the front than just going and vanquishing Ganon’s hold on the Divine Beasts. There’s the stories of your and Zelda’s journey 100 years past, told is short excerpts of memories that you can regain by visiting familiar locales. While, going into this game, I had hoped to be able to travel with Zelda throughout my adventure, I still found some charm in this form of learning about not just Zelda, but the Champions of the other races in the world who would aid you in your quest, both then and now. You even learn about your own role and personality, as quite literally mute as Link might seem. It deepened my investment into the pursuit of the games main story, as well as my exploration of the world to discover the locations associated with it.

And these main figures in the story, Zelda, the Champions: Daruk, Revali, Mipha, and Urbosa all are complex characters that, while we may not get to see as much of them as we would nearly like, are ones that you feel tied to. From Mipha’s close childhood bond to Link, to Revali’s sass-filled rivalry and resentment to the chosen hero, and even tensions with Princess Zelda at first, these characters tell a story much better than Link by himself ever could. And while you do spend the lion’s share of time by yourself in the game’s present frame of time, you feel like you could reach back in the past and discover what once was thanks to them and this game’s form of storytelling.

Heck, even the way you obtain the master sword in this game, and the story surrounding it, was compelling and had me excited beyond all measure.

But the main story was, at times, the last thing on my mind while I was playing this game.

I had a world to explore, random villagers and travelers to save, ruins to explore, shrines to delve into, Koroks to root out and so much more. I was busy sneaking up on horses, and I can tell you the story behind each of the five that I tamed and love to ride. I found myself so damn wrapped up in this game, that I was telling my own story as I went through until I was confronted again by the narrative presented by the game itself.

Part of the immersion also comes from the game’s mechanics. In locales of extreme heat or cold, you’ll need to garb yourself appropriately just to survive (or create special meals to beat the heat or cold). It makes exploring such areas feel like just that much more of an expedition you’ll have to prepare for, adding a sense of thrill and excitement, or even apprehension, as you traverse these different habitats. Some are fraught with storms, the rain making it difficult to climb the normally you-can-climb-almost-anything environments hard to scale. Lightning even strikes you if you’re garbed in too much metal armour or carrying a metal weapon or shield. You can even procure elemental weapons that will raise or lower your ambient/body temperature to survive certain climates. Said elemental weapons can even be used to change the properties of weapons, enemies, and the environment itself if you use it in the proper (or improper manner, don’t start brushfires, kids). Some enemies are even tailored to have special resistances to these elements that you can exploit at will, given that you have the tools to do so. This makes attacking enemy encampments a proposition of planning, looking at how to approach it, utilize weapons, resources, or even their own resources (explosive barrels are hazardous, you shouldn’t really put them next to where you sleep guys) against them.

Now, I’ve been singing this game’s praises, but don’t get me wrong, it’s not 10/10 perfection (even if several reviewers gave it such a ranking). Some of the game’s accomplishments, be they optional or essential to game progression, often require near perfect precision in order to find success. It took me forever to find that perfect rhythm for dodging Calamity Ganon’s attacks just right to get that sweet slo-mo flurry bonus which is the only way I could find to damage him in the second phase of his fight. That’s probably the most egregious example of I could find, though similar aspects through aiming, timing jumps, timing execution on countless puzzles, etc, made some parts of the game more tedious than they needed to be.

And tedium isn’t limited to split-second execution in this game. While I admire the game’s commitment to realism to the point where it would awe me, I cannot count how many times I had to wait for a rainstorm to pass just so I could climb up a cliff to get to where I needed to. And the new physics surrounding Link’s falling/recoil from being knocked down, especially in rough terrain, grew frustrating as well. There were times, even down a gentle slope, where Link would not stop rolling from an attack that knocked him off his feet. It allowed enemies to get one or more attacks on me, not to mention you continuously take damage while in that state (albeit slowly, but there are times when every heart counts, especially early on).

And the difficulty curve of this game, especially early in the game, was teeth-grindingly aggravating as well. Even red bokoblins, if they were equipped with an actual decent metal sword or axe, could one-shot your new, barely equipped self if you happened to stroll into the wrong neighbourhood. Once you managed to accrue some decent armour and weapons, the curve of deaths versus encounters seemed to level off a bit more nicely (even with the scale of more difficult enemies appearing as you progressed through the main story). But for someone just starting out, learning the controls, learning the game mechanics, and learning just how fragile you were in a cloth tunic, it seemed nearly inevitable I would miss the timing on one of my dodges and get struck down in a single blow. Granted, I could accept this if I happened across a more advanced enemy, such as a guardian, a Lynel or a Hinox, but some proper weapon/damage scaling in the early game enemies would’ve saved a lot of frustration.

Another small critique I have is in the game’s music. Don’t get me wrong, there are some beautiful, moving, and damn epic tracks in this game. However, I feel like there wasn’t quite enough variety in this game. I grew a bit tired of hearing the same “cold weather track” all the time when exploring the Hebra Mountains, Lanayru Peak, The Gerudo Highlands, etc. Part of what makes a Zelda game for me is the music, and each area usually has its own charm accented by the music associated with it. Now I have to concede that the existing music, especially the piano work (damn sir or madam, did you break your fingers to play those compositions for the Guardians’ Battle theme…), but I just wish there was more to define the different areas of Hyrule a bit more. I know that this game’s atmosphere probably lent to a more subtle and nuanced soundtrack, but sometimes you need a good exciting track to get you pumped when you’re running across an open expansive field or climbing a mountain.

And even with as much praise as I’ve given the story, the one complaint I had about it was the payoff for freeing the four divine beasts to fight Calamity Ganon. Based on the monologues the four champions gave when they finally were given control back of their divine beasts, I had hoped for a pitched battle that would involve them a bit more than what we got: a straight cut of Ganon’s health at the start of the fight. Sure that’s a neat bonus, but I would’ve been so much more impressed if they had intervened more directly in the fight. If Ganon’s attacks (many of which were reflections of the champions’ traits/weapons he’d killed 100 years ago and were now fighting with you) could’ve been interfered with as a form of karmic justice by the champions to aid you in the fight in a more dynamic sense, I would’ve praised this boss fight as nearly perfect.

The epic final portion of the fight against Ganon, however, made up for this quite a bit. The scale of it was massive, and those final moments riding on my horse (oh god I panicked when I discovered that I was going to have to fight THAT on my precious Neptune, I couldn’t bear for any harm to come to him) around Ganon with one final boon from my dear Zelda to defeat our foe once and for all… it was a beautiful moment.

The story’s conclusion was heartfelt and warming, and definitely gave me some good old-fashioned ZeLink feels. And it made me feel so good for the payoff of that conclusion, in having travelled all over this land in what had to be over a hundred hours worth of running, flying, riding, swimming and whatever else, all of it put forward to the end of defeating Ganon, whether by finding resources to enhance myself, or in the direct pursuit of freeing of the divine beast. It was all so worth it.

The game isn’t perfect, but despite the few scant problems I had with it, this game pretty damn close. It’s departed from the standard formula of a Zelda game and delivered a fresh new experience that I think most fans have fallen in love with, myself included. The perfect blend of humour and seriousness both in characterization, art-style, plot made me enjoy it all the way through, and the world itself told stories that I loved, even giving references and nods to previous Zelda titles that made me grin. While it’s been difficult for me to try and place this story in the overall Zelda-tri-split timeline, I’m glad it has all the elements it does, since they all came together in an execution that made this undoubtedly one of my favourite, if not the favourite Zelda experience I’ve had.

I just wish it had more than one save file so I could play it all again, though I guess I could always make another account on my WiiU.

#The Legend of Zelda #Breath of the Wild #Anaylsis #My Analysis #Spoilers #BotW Spoilers #I wanted to post this weeks ago but I got busy #And its long so sorry about that #All that being said I'm glad I finally got this out there and talked about it #I love this game a lot can you tell?

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marioncolton-blog · 7 years ago

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debchaney · 8 years ago

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When I was in my 20’s my boyfriend’s aunt gave me a copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. It was an odd gift at the time because I was working on an undergraduate degree in Earth and Ocean Sciences; taking courses in math, physics, geology, biology and so on. I did not consider myself an artist whatsoever. I guess she saw something in me I did not even know about myself then.God Bless her.

I read The Artist’s Way through and started my journal practice of writing morning pages. Journalling those freestyle morning pages got me expressing and creating and thinking about new possibilities. In words, writings, and sketches, I started imagining the life I live now: being a professional artist with my own studio. A far cry from working as an environmental geologist!

It’s amazing the power of journal writing and the power we have to create our dreams.

Twenty years later and now with over forty hand-written journal volumes (see picture above) I also honor the importance of switching things up and taking different approaches in journal writing to give myself fresh perspective and new insights I may not have gleaned by keeping to the same old freestyle method of writing.

Inspired to change my approach to journal writing this year, I googled ‘new approaches to journalling’ and was sadly disappointed with the results. Hence, I sat down and created my own list, and am now sharing it for you here.

Here’s to our self evolution through journalling and taking new approaches in this new year…

Write through the eyes of your child self. The power of this exersice cannot be understated, as so much of our outlashing and regrettable behavior stems from unresolved childhood issues. If we just took the time to re-connect with our inner child, honor their feelings, hold space and love them, I believe whole heartedly we would be much happier and calmer adults in this world.

Write through the eyes of Self-Kindness. We all could learn to be a lot more kind to ourselves. I believe if we really cultivated self kindness in ourselves, as a result we’d be kinder to others, and the world would be so much a sweeter place to live. As per achieving world peace, it all starts within, so let’s start here in our journals…

Write to really get present in the here and now. Start with a deep breathe and place your hand on your heart, centre yourself. Then write based on what you see, hear, feel, smell, notice, think, taste in the moment here and now.

Write about what is going well for you, now, in your life. We often journal about our life challenges and struggles. Writing can be great way to work through them, for sure. However, let’s take a new approach now and shine some light and energy on what’s going well for us. For those of us who study Abraham-Hick’s work, we know where attention goes, energy flows. Let’s amplify the good in our lives this year!

Writing by design: Creative Imagining our ideal future life. I love this journal exersice ! Basically this is carte blanche invitation to create your ideal dream life by your own writing and imaginative design. It can work really well with a time line, such as 5 years into the future. Let my example inspire you, set no limitations, if we shoot for the stars then perhaps we’ll land on the moon!

Journal entry examples for each of the above points:

” I really miss my teddy bear ‘Baba’. He went for a tea party with my neighbourhood friends last night and he never came home. I wish you would get me a new teddy bear to cuddle. Don’t you remember how fun it was to put little doll sweaters on him? I want to do this again. Maybe we can go to the mall Saturday with Ruthie… I’m feeling really sad about not having a bear to cuddle.”

“Dear Deb, I am just so happy with you. You have made so many great choices in your life lately that show how much you care and love yourself. Way to get up early and do your home yoga practice this morning. I know it wasn’t easy, especially being so cold lately, but you did it and reaped the benefits of feeling so good, so strong, and so vibrant all day from that. I want to honor you for that. Know that you are loved and cherished Deb. I see the good and sweetness in you, and stand by this, always.”

“I am noticing the sound of my breathe. I can hear myself typing these words. I can hear my daughter in her room moving around a lot. It makes me wonder if she is tidying up which would be a little miracle. I am noticing myself smirking at my own joke. I am noticing the delight I am feeling in my chest, a lightness. I can smell the lingering of the french fries we baked earlier after coming back from the pool. I could hear her humming as we hung out our bathing suits and the musical sound is pleasant. I feel happy creating this blog and sharing my inspiration with others. I see my room, I feel my warm covers and the pillow on my lap, I see my favourite Michelle Y. Williams painting on the wall next to me, my robe hanging off the door. I can taste the mint of toothpaste in my mouth…”

“Deb enjoyed a beautiful evening of connection with her 13 year old daughter going to the library and the pool together. Deb has been consistently, joyfully, creating new artwork and uploading their images to her online gallery at SaatchiArt.com. Deb is selling prints and originals of her artwork on a regular basis worldwide. Deb had an original art piece rented on a TV Commercial in LA last year! Deb has been meeting new connections this year to take her dream and her art business to the next level. Deb is really enjoying living in her passion and inspiring others in the process. She is exersicing regularly and enjoying getting into her body with running, dancing, yoga and hiking. Deb is feeling huge gratitude and really enjoying the love, support, and connection with her close women friends.”

“The year is January 2020. I wake up with tingles of excitment in my toes. Its early and I can hear birds chirping as I get a glass of water and walk to the little yoga room I have with warm wood floors, ready for my home practice. I click on the stereo to play some gentle yet inspirational music and begin my practice. I am as strong, lean, fit and flexible as I was in high school. I am 135 lbs and loving my body. Its a joy to move. Later in the morning after savasanah and breakfast, I head out, walking paste my beautiful home grown vegetable garden, then walking through the forest trails, to my art studio. Its of my particular design, surrounded by nature, about a kilometre away from our main home. My golden retriever dog accompanies me and I can see our horses eating in the pasture in the distance. I inhale the fresh pine air and open my studio door with excitment because… today Taylor Swift is stopping by to choose an original art piece for herself! I can’t wait to meet her …”

Truth be told, I actually brainstormed about 30+ new approaches to journal writing, scrawled out in my journal, before typing out this blog. However, something I often write ahead in my journals to remind me is:

“Know When To Stop”

So, I’m going to leave you with these 5 juicy examples and trust they will get your writing inspired with a fresh new perspective for 2017. Happy New Year with love, Deb.

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