#honestly more horse games and more high quality horse games are just a plus in my book

[centeris2]

oh hello new game to keep an eye on in the distant future:

It has a pic from SSO because some previous SSE employees are now working there. Currently it's said to be a true crime horse mmorpg?

Additional link to their website:

tagging as sso for now since it'll be of interest to ssoblr folks, probably. But since there are links it probably won't show up. Ah well

[smallblip]

Okay, but (sorry for my english) I just really love modern hc where they perform as the band No Name during their school festival (their identities are already known and that people know they belong to one of the most famous group in the school /with nanaba and erwin/).

Levi’s the face of the group and almost half of the fans have him as their bias but they really thinks he’s asexual or bi or even gay since they never knew anyone who had been his girlfriend and he doesn’t seem to be that person to be involved in any romance.

But then he surprises everyone when during their performance, he just grabs hange’s ponytail and kissed her deeply.

And people were just like—oh, shit, wait, what.... levi just—kissed his friend....his....friend.....Hange....the Hange

Then the crowd went wilder and even Levi’s fans just gasped with excitement because—damn that’s hot!

Even Hange herself were surprised but she couldn’t do anything since levi’s grip was too strong, lost in his own world as he ravishes her with kisses as if he doesn’t give a shit about everyone watching them

she doesn’t even know how long it lasted.

Then there’s Erwin in the crowd, capturing every moment with a camera because he’s the only one who wasn’t surprised about this

Stop the presses!

“Breaking news! Levi Ackerman frontman of No Name is having an illicit love affair!”

“It’s not breaking news if everyone already knows...” Porco rolls his eyes. Connie groans. Great. Now Porco is in his shot. The school’s journalism club is essentially him and Sasha with her phone’s camera. They do not have the skill nor the budget to edit him out.

“Who’s he dating then?” Sasha shoots back.

“Heard it’s a girl from another school.” Porco shrugs.

“Heard he’s gay...” Reiner offers.

“You just want him to be gay...” There’s sniggering and Reiner wants to punch Porco, but he’s a man of discipline, so no violence before breakfast.

“It’s just a rumour! He isn’t dating anyone! Levi’s too cool to date.” Eren says, gagging at the mention of the word. A literal child.

“Who would wanna date him?” Mikasa scoffs.

“Everyone in the school apart from you, Mikasa...” Petra says, “he’s dreamy...”

Connie urges the discussion on, Sasha capturing all of this. This is the best content they’ve gotten all week. “Come on! There are no bad answers!”

“Maybe he’s dating a fan?” Bertholdt says.

“Maybe he’s dating Hanji... They do seem rather close?” Pieck says, and the silence and scowls are intended to shame her. Connie looks at the aluminium foil on Pieck’s head. Right. The Signs movie screening organised by the conspiracy society is today.

“No bad answers except that one...” Connie says.

—

“You’re the talk of the town again...” Mike says, “they were discussing you on the school’s YouTube channel.”

Levi tsks. He doesn’t know why Mike bothers with that crap. It’s a pretty high quality production... he had justified, but there’s nothing high quality about Sasha’s shaky hands and Connie’s head covering half the frame. Everyone knows Mike enjoys the gossip, and there’s no one that enjoys it more. Except maybe Erwin.

“Do tell! Who is the enigmatic Levi Ackerman dating?” Erwin teases. He knows he’s not getting anything out of tight-lipped Levi. But it’s still worth a shot. Also worth seeing how annoyed he can get. Plus it’s not like they don’t already know.

If the canteen hadn’t been so goddamn full, Levi would’ve relocated long ago. Then again, his lunch groups hasn’t changed since his first day at school. The routine works.

“I’m sure you boys would be the first to know...” Nanaba chuckles. She had been the first to know and frankly. Levi’s inability to confess has been getting stifling. The only thing that really breaks the conversation though? Hanji tripping and landing face first on the table, lucky for her Levi moves her tray out of the way, saving her lunch, “watch it four eyes!”

“What did I miss?” Hanji asks, eyes already gleaming at the possibility of new knowledge.

“We were just talking about Levi’s illicit love affair.” Mike says. This is getting interesting.

“Awww Levi! You didn’t tell your ol’ pal Hanji that you were seeing someone?”

The rest of them exchange looks. God she’s so goddamn oblivious.

“Eat. We’ve got band practice before class.” Levi says, fingers already working to peel Hanji’s orange for her.

Nanaba winces. So goddamn oblivious.

—

“So we enter school today and Sasha what do we see?”

“Merch!” Sasha pops in front of the screen and does jazz hands with Connie.

“In the lead up to the big No Name concert, everyone’s donning their best No Name merch! First, let’s speak to the best in the game, Armin Arlert.”

Armin fidgets awkwardly, “ahaha I’m just a fan who just happens to make high quality merch.” Modest for someone earning big bucks from his enterprise.

“Ah... And you have competition this year!” Connie says into the microphone, which is really just rolled up newspaper.

“Well... The quality of my work speaks for itself...” Armin smiles sheepishly at the camera, but there’s something insidious in his eyes. Armin has to admit having sole monopoly over No Name merchandising in school has gone a little stale. Surely a little competition will spice things up.

“So Zeke, care to tell us more about your entry into the merchandise game?” Connie asks the bearded boy. Who has a full grown beard at their age? Connie makes a mental note to insert “sells bootleg merch” in the little panel that runs below Zeke’s interview. The whole school is also pretty sure Zeke had been behind the whole oregano debacle last year- someone had been passing oregano off as weed and selling it to the younglings.

“What’s there to say? Mine’s cheaper.” Zeke winks.

“So, satisfied customer. Why did you choose to buy Armin’s merch over Zeke’s?” Connie asks.

Pieck glances down at her Hanji shirt, “Armin got Hanji’s nose right.” She smiles.

In the background Armin and Eren are yelling at one another.

“How could you Eren! I thought we were best friends!” Armin says. Maybe the competition spiced things up a little too much.

“It was cheaper Armin! So much cheaper!”

Eren is wearing the ugliest shirt in school so, is it really worth it though?

—

“We are absolutely not blowing our budget on a confetti canon!”

“But Levi!” Hanji whines, “you already rejected so many of my ideas...”

“May I remind you that your previous ideas include a guillotine on stage, you repelling from the ceiling-“

“A tiger...” Mike adds and Hanji shoots him a look, traitor...

“It was two tigers...” she mutters under her breath. “Aww Levi you never let me do anything fun!” She pouts and Mike watches as Levi’s resolve slips an inch. There’s nothing more disgusting than the weakness of a man in love. Mike rolls his eyes. He had told Erwin if he wanted in on the action, he should join their band. There’s just so much to see that Mike has honestly had his fill. Or maybe he’s just saying it. Damn Nanaba was right, he enjoys this more than he’d care to admit.

“If you shut up through the next five songs, I’ll buy you dinner.”

“What about me?” Mike huffs.

“Deal!” Hanji shouts triumphantly, “and if you let me sing the chorus with you on this next song at the concert I’ll buy you dessert!”

“Almost as if I’m invisible...” Mike mutters.

“Fine... Deal... If you can hit the notes that is...”

“Ohhhh snap!” Mike says, and Levi turns to him for a high five. Mike smashes a beat on his drums. Hanji deadpans.

Ba dum fuckin tiss indeed.

—

“So it’s two days before the festival and the big No Name concert. Today, we’ve got a special treat for you. Roving reporter Jean Kirschtein will find out more about Levi’s love affair, straight from the horse’s mouth!”

Jean shoots Connie a dirty look. But the pun had not been intended. Connie mouths a quick apology before continuing, “but first, a word with the people closest to him-“ Connie nudges Jean towards the general direction of Erwin, Nanaba and Mike. Remember you owe me Jean! Connie whispers harshly when he senses his friend’s hesitation, now go!

Jean groans once more. God his reputation was going to take a hit. He’s vice captain of the soccer team for God’s sake. He doesn’t need this.

“Erwin Smith! A word? Uh... Thoughts on the rumours surrounding Levi Ackerman’s love life?” Jean asks. “Erwin Smith, football captain, history club president, student council treasurer, overall overachiever, and Levi Ackerman’s friend” appears on the screen. They all know if anyone’s likely to spill, it’s going to be Erwin.

Erwin’s eyes light up, he’s finally going on the channel he watches religiously with Mike. There’s so much he can contribute, so much gossip to share, so much insight. Maybe they would even invite him as a panelist on their show. The sheer power! He looks at Nanaba and she frowns at him and shakes her head. Ah damn it! He knows she’ll tear into him if he divulges too much.

“That’s strictly on a need to know basis.” Erwin grins.

“Well... Can you give us anything at all?” Jean asks. Please for the love of god he needs to pay Connie back somehow for setting him up on that date with Mikasa. God is generous but he can easily take it all away.

“We have good, solid guesses, but other than that... No... We can’t confirm anything...” Erwin answers, but not before glancing at Nanaba. She’s nodding. Good, that’s a good answer. Ambiguous enough to keep people wanting. Erwin is relieved. Jean isn’t however, he’s now certain that his debt is going to be rolled along a tab he will soon never be able to pay.

“Oh and the history society’s having quiz night next week, be there or be square!” Erwin plugs.

“Nerd!” Nile yells from across the hallway and Mike chortles.

It doesn’t take Jean long to find Hanji, after all she’s president of the biology club, so why wouldn’t she be in a lab elbow deep in a vat of something Jean doesn’t want to know the name of. It’s her kingdom with a whopping total of four subjects.

“Hanji Zoë, I’m here to ask for the latest on Levi Ackerman’s love life-“

Hanji Zoë- the school’s resident oddball, the genius herself, in the flesh, eating a checkerboard cookie. She looks up at him and there are crumbs on her face.

“Oh! Hi Jean!” Hanji looks up momentarily, “that’s easy, Levi’s in love with me.” She winks at Jean and chuckles. Jean’s jaw drops, surely she’s kidding. Hanji’s known for that after all- her quick wit and dismal personal hygiene. He chuckles awkwardly. “Yeah... Okay...”

“See you at the concert?” She beams at him and he replies enthusiastically. Is she kidding? Everyone’s gonna be there. But Jean remains strategic, he leaves right before she gets the chance to talk his ear off about joining her club again. “Shoot... There goes another one...” she says under her breath as he exits the lab.

Jean bumps into Levi when he’s leaving the lab, odd, what’s Levi doing here, no matter, Jean has a job to do.

“Levi Ackerman! Care to comment on the recent rumours surrounding your-“

“No.” Levi interjects and heads off.

Jean flips the camera so he’s in it, “well, that’s the scoop. Back to you Connie and Sasha.”

—

“It’s the day of the festival! But really the whole school is buzzing with anticipation for the No Name concert!” Connie announces into his makeshift mic.

“Will there be another accident on-stage this time? Will Levi Ackerman reveal more on his secret romance? Is there even a secret romance to begin with? More importantly, will Porco Galliard finally pay for his own food at the festival?”

“Hey!” Porco whips his head around to glare at Connie, “did Reiner get you to say that?”

Connie shrugs, “we’ll find out after these messages...”

The concert is a blast, from a spectacular entrance (choreographed, no doubt, by one Hanji Zoë), to Mike’s drum solo, to Levi’s vocal riffs. But there’s an anticipation of another sort- will Levi Ackerman finally address the rumours of his love affair?

“My Levi-Hanji senses are tingling Nanaba...” Erwin says mid-concert. As the self-proclaimed expert on school gossip, there’s no gossip sweeter than that which surrounds his two best friends. Nanaba thinks it’s an overstatement of his abilities.

But Nanaba feels it too- the electricity in the air, “i think it’s finally happening!” She says, nothing short of a vision.

Levi announces the last song for the night, and he makes his way over to Hanji during the last chorus.

HUH?

Sasha’s cameras are rolling. She holds her breath, for what she doesn’t know, but she feels it coming, call it director’s intuition if you will.

Hanji looks at Levi and beams past the bandages over their eyes, now upgraded to a material they can actually see through, ever since that one accident with Hanji trying to execute a stage dive completely blind. It’s not fun explaining to the ER nurse how you managed to fracture your arm in so many locations.

Hanji’s expression changes to one of confusion when Levi closes the distance between them. This isn’t part of any plan. Her lips part in a gasp. The crowd falls silence, breath collectively held in anticipation. It’s happening. The most significant and exciting moment of their young lives.

What in the name of Maria, Rose, and Sheena!

Levi grabs Hanji by her ponytail and crashes his lips into hers. She forgets how to function, her guitar now hanging limp and forgotten. But her arms find their way around Levi’s neck. It’s just Mike on the drums now, roaring with laughter.

“Hell yes!” Mike exclaims and it’s captured by one of the mics, joined by Nanaba and Erwin at exactly the same time. There’s a flash from Erwin’s phone, there, immortalised in a photo forever. He knows it’ll come in handy one day. For blackmail or for a future wedding montage. Either is fine.

What just happened?

Connie’s jaw is hanging.

“Levi Ackerman and... and... Hanji Zoë?” Connie says, more for his own benefit than for his audience. Because this is Hanji they’re talking about? The Hanji Zoë? Resident evil genius, overall weirdo, oddly magnetic and popular amongst both the boys and the girls, Levi’s childhood friend Hanji Zoë? The answer had been staring them right in the face! Levi at the biology labs, Levi glowering at her, the bickering, the chemistry on and off stage.

Connie whips his head over to Pieck, and she winks at him, told you so!

“I don’t believe it! Stop the presses! Levi Ackerman, frontman of No Name, in love with the brilliant, the magnetic, the one and only... Hanji Zoë!”

Hanji is kissing Levi back with fervour, until they’re both blushing and giddy, the music long forgotten, and when everyone is done gawking, the crowd erupts in violent cheering. Who would’ve thought emotionally constipated Levi, Levi whose private life has been kept a secret for so long, safe from the prying hands of the school press and his loyal fans, would choose to make an announcement like this. What a night! What a spectacle!

“I guess that’s all for tonight folks, and what a fantastic and surprising evening it has been!” Connie laughs, “I’m Connie Springer, and you heard it here first!”

The confetti canon goes off. And Hanji watches with uninhibited joy as confetti rains down on the stage.

“So... Tigers next time?” Hanji says, unwrapping the bandages from her face, her eyes glazed over and more beautiful than anything Levi has ever seen. He scoffs, pressing another kiss to her lips for posterity.

“Don’t push it...”

(A/N: prompt so good I had to write a mini fic! Thank you anon💖💖💖)

[emersonfreepress]

The RO’s as childhood friends? Like what kind of friend would they be to an MC they grew up with since literally day one?

aww, this is a cute idea

It's hard to imagine what kind of day one friend Gabe would be 🤔 his early childhood is anything but stable so he doesn't have any friendships that go way back like that... I honestly think... having one consistent friend in his life early on would have changed his character so much he wouldn't even be the same person! But I suppose a childhood friend version of Gabe would be much more of a follower than the leader he is now, content to defer to the MC on just about anything growing up. Fiercely loyal and protective though, and very willing to break school rules or provide distractions for whatever shenanigans you'd get up to 😆

Kile would be that friend always dragging you into trouble with authority figures but pulling you out of trouble with other kids (or any actual cops lol). Loyal and constantly around. MC would have inevitably been drawn into at least a couple of Kile's fistfights, though, since kids insisted on provoking them all the time when they were little.

Jack would have been attached at the hip to MC. Tabletop games, trips to the arcade, lots of hanging out. Summers would have been epic quality time and you would have been at his house allll the time. Honestly, though, I think he would still be the same kind of friend. Loyal, supportive, always willing to listen. There'd be none of the nervousness on his side, though, meaning his admiration of the MC would be more grounded in reality rather than based on comparing you to his own perceived shortcomings.

A childhood friendship with Jessie would have ensured your popularity, I think. She was destined to be liked in school, between her personality, a popular older brother, and being the girl who had horses (plus other kids' parents wanna get in good with her parents). And since Jessie doesn't leave friends behind, popularity would have been yours for the taking early on. It's almost spoilery to say what kind of day one friend she would be because you'll see that play out with her clique—they've known each other since grade school.

Rain would have been dropped off at your house a lot, their parents taking your friendship as a greenlight to get them out of their hair more often. So it's kind of hard to imagine what kind of friend they would be... Rain being so isolated in their childhood had a big impact on who they are now and they're another character who would be real different with even one friend. And since the MC and Rain have similar experiences of being their parents' prop, a friendship would probably lead to you two getting to go to the same events and running off together to avoid all the annoying grown-up stuff.

With R hm... well they would hold you to a very high moral standard. Anyone with whom they've stuck around since that far back, they're going to value the friendship a whole lot and always view it as a connection meant to make you both grow as people. So that comes in the form of them being a slightly more serious person around you but also genuinely seeking out your thoughts and opinions. The latter is something they reserve for very few folks!

Vi is another person who would have benefited from a proper childhood friendship. A real friend might have made them less judgmental a little earlier in life. You might still have caught their social pariah status similar to how you inherit popularity with Jessie lol. Vi would be a very gossipy, very bossy childhood friend. I imagine conflict when the MC gets too old to be content with being bossed around by everyone around them. Fiercely protective but uh... not good at keeping secrets, which is something you'd have to come to terms with tbh

[luminisvii]

anyway i’ve been playing three houses on maddening lately because i hate myself, and i also hated looking at tier lists that put some characters who are actually quite bad for high difficulty up top, i made my own tier list of suggested feth characters for if you do a maddening run. this is really just so i can scream about what characters i think are best (spoiler alert: it’s lysithea)

so, here we go, tell’s three houses tier list!

disclaimer: based on personal experience, not all characters have been used on maddening, but i have played the game like... eight times. on my ninth run. so i have some pretty decent data on majority of the characters. 

tier is determined by how easy a character is to use, how much investment they require, and stat growths. crests+relics also influence this, since people who can use relics effectively are better. the game tells me not to judge based on crests, but come on! 

lords are not included, jeritza is also not because he’s CF post skip exclusive, but come on, we all know where he’d place anyway

the real tier list is this: if you’re playing on normal or hard, literally anyone is fine. follow your heart. invest in who you like. on maddening, you unfortunately need to be a little more discerning. and sometimes, you just get rng screwed, even with the best, so rip lmao 

TOP TIER (FOR COOL KIDS ONLY)

-lysithea: the coolest kid, doesn’t need a bed time. obvious bc her spell list and stats and access to relic are great. also look at her. shes bappy. she says so herself in her support with cyril (the only valid cyril support) all jokes aside, she can go down the basic mage line and mow down anyone who comes within her insane range. she also does well as a valkyrie, but with the speed penalty, i don’t recommend her staying in the class for long. just get uncanny blow! then hades will never miss! 

-felix: he may be a shadow the hedgehog motherfucker but he has one important thing that shadow doesnt: crest of fraldarius. i guess shadow has a gun, though. felix is just straightforward gameplay baby. you send him at something and it dies. go crest boy go!

-mercedes: im legally obligated to put mercie in here because of her personal, her crest, and fortify. although restore is also super neat! miss mercie is just plain reliable as a healer. easily goes through the priest line to gremory.

-balthus: extremely helpful early game, doesn’t fall off later either. his personal skill of str/def +6 when below half health means he can either straightforwardly tank or just punch shit so hard it doesn’t have a chance to strike back. also gets a relic, healing focus, and a major crest that allows him to heal, so he’s a one man army. he does one thing really well and that’s use his fists to liquefy his opponents. also gets rally strength if you care about that. my favorite strategy with him is to let the damn poison strike archers knock his health down and then just go to town, combined with vantage for REAL fun. forget war monk, this guy should just go to war master

-sylvain: this little slut will join you if you’ve got boobs so he’s real handy to have around. plus he’s got some great qualities: flexible, strong, free relic, and maybe kinda hot i guess. you could make him a paladin, but you should give him a giant lizard. he can basically become any of the master classes with ease, although i would not recommend putting him into magic classes that much unless you wanna do a wholly mage sylvie build. will still perform just fine as a dark mage even without dedicated magery. but seriously, dragon

-petra: you want crit??? you got crit!!! this little lady can not only crit like hell but also dodge tank really well. i had fun making her a falcoknight once and just watching her line it all up and tear it all down. petra is reliable and stronk and also horrible to fight against so just. recruit her, please

-constance: entirely here because of bolting. for the low price of her reason being A you can nuke enemies from across the map. while you could make her the canon class of dark flier, i for one think the warlock line is better, because that’s four uses of bolting and even more if her crest activates. she also has a similar statline to lysithea and hits like a truck with other spells, and with bolting can supply long range support, so really, what’s not to love? the rest of her spells are good too. i go for gremory over dark flier bc while the mobility is great, x4 bolting is even better. 

PRETTY GOOD TIER

-ingrid: extremely reliable, only down here instead of in the cool kids category bc her strength kinda sucks. i love ingrid though! she’s got a gambit gimmick and a crest+relic! ingrid with the chalice is super funny and i highly recommend it. i watched her fucking OWN every single siege tome user like that

-ignatz: some will say he sucks. some would argue his utility as a debuffer and rallybot. i will argue this ungodly crit. ignatz is a very luck man, blessed with great opportunities and a base crit value beyond any other. the little man will strike you down in the name of the goddess before you even know what’s going on. with a little help his strength will match the others and if you slap as much crit up on him as possible then it’ll never end. ignatz could be a one man army if he could crit more than one person at once. unfortunately he’s stuck to one divine judgment at a time. you can either use his 55% luck growth and archer level dex to gamble on a high crit rate, or you can stack his personal with another hit +20 to basically never miss anything. if you play deer, this man is a must.

-hilda: the usual, a crest, a relic, good times, a nice personal, but also like. she slaps. in general. pretty sick with an axe but works nicely as almost any physical class (i haven’t tried sword, though) because she naturally goes down the warrior line she can get some real fun times going. or just give her a lizard! women love swarms of lizards. she is a delicate little flower who will end a motherfucker

-ferdinand: fairly reliable as a cavalier class, and comes with some natural dodge tanky capability and access to seteth’s spear of assal and ochain shield which make him restore health like crazy and his personal will stay on. also a counter attack block is nice! he’s got some nice combat arts too. just a pretty straightforward cavalier. good times

-seteth: and while we’re on the crest of cichol, seteth is gonna make sure you never raise a finger against him again. you won’t survive. the only prepromote i use. he has good base stats, good growths, and he just does really well at what he does! he may come in a little late but he’s strong as fuck and is shredded. i tend to favor him over ferdie for the cichol linked items, but also i’m biased towards this anxiety dad, so take that as you will

-marianne: she tends to get left out of the healer talks because like most of the deer, she’s kind of weird. i will make an argument for her. what she lacks in utility she makes up for sheer raw power. while her crest won’t be of much use until very late and even then her sword prowess is not what you should be using her for, her spell list is all high power and she also comes with easy access to silence, which can nicely stall for some time against powerful mage enemies. she also gets a heal to herself if she’s standing next to an animal since all her friends are horses. still kinda slow as most healers are and not as much of a res tank, but a formidable edition nonetheless. blutgang is a good pinch hitter relic as well

-caspar: like most gauntlet users, caspar is good at one thing: punching. he is just really good at it. he’s perfectly geared towards being a war master. and he’ll perform that very well. he gets healing focus as one of his arts, so he can run off on his own if he wants. solidly reliable, will work at just. punching. go short king!

-yuri: the man’s utility is unrivaled. he’d go top tier if it weren’t for the fact that he’s got unreliable strength/magic growths. he could go either way as a physical attacker or a mage, but he naturally fits well in the assassin class along with trickster, and even dancer if you like (i’m trying that and honestly the male dancer animation is so sad. like. why can’t you put as much energy into it as the women.) but this man can go. hes fast. he’ll fuck you up

-hubert: while not as hard hitting as lysithea, the man still fucks things up with dark magic like she does. he lacks her double crests but he makes up for it by still smacking people’s nuts clean off and with the added bonus of range and debuffs dark magic provides. even better, you can make him a dark mage/bishop! however points off because they won’t let me stack fiendish blow. love u vampire man!!! unfortunately locked to CF so rip.

NICE TIER: 

-lorenz: i adore him but hes a little unreliable as things go. in house, hes the better paladin than leonie, and his personal grants him a nice damage bonus with a battalion. lorenz shines as a dark knight the most, he has a heavy hitting spell list and if you really want to, thyrsus is technically his relic even though everyone puts it on lysithea! i really like him and he can perform really well but unfortunately like most of the deer he is Weird and this can put him in strange places with his growths. tis a cruel world, being a lorenz stan!

-dorothea: also suffers from strange statline. for some reason they’re pushing sword with her. honestly, because she’s outperformed by other mages, even on black eagles i tend to put her into dancer and kinda forget about her. she has quite a bit in heavy hitting spells and her personal skill grants a very nice mini heal to people around her, but honestly, i usually favor lysithea over her. she functions best as pure support but can still pull through on the offense. sadly, the competition is really rough.

-ashe: does his job, and does it well. not as heavy of a hitter as some of his fellow archers, but still good nonetheless, and has access to deadeye for extra range (although don’t count on it on maddening). his personal means he can unlock things no matter what class he’s in, so you can focus on others! i personally think that, you guessed it, he should get a giant lizard.

-annette: she does well, sadly outperformed by other house mages. functions as a rallybot and gets crusher if you care about that. i missed crusher completely in my first lions run, whoops, and then in my second one i had constance so uh. sorry, annette! she’s so very sweet, but her spell list has her down here.

-leonie: im hiding before the leonie stans get me. sure, like sylvain, she has his ability and shared flexibility for any class, but unlike sylvain she lacks power, a crest, and a relic. i see people keep arguing that she’s a massive damage dealer, but i honestly never see it. she falls off damage wise really quick, even if she’s got more than enough speed to deal with it. she’s basically just a lamer sylvain or ingrid without the crest abilities that those two have to make them stronger. what? the game keeps TELLING me crest = bad but as far as i can tell, all the best characters have one! on maddening GD, she’ll be good at first, but she’ll drop.

-dedue: i would rank this man higher since i simply adore him but he’s SUPER difficult for me to use. his defense is unrivaled, this man will flinch at nothing, but his speed is almost always shit and he tends to get nuked from orbit by mages. i love him, i really do, but man he can be a lot to manage. he does really well early game but can’t keep up. which is a shame, i really like him :(

-flayn: she has quite a bit of capability with rescue and fortify, and her major crest means her healing is even more potent. however she’s a little slow, extremely fragile, joins low leveled after you’ve already invested in a different healer, and is not very strong. she IS a res tank, though, and learns seal magic, which adds to her res tanking capability. she also synergizes with the caduceus staff, so she can be very self sufficient, and hit from farther away! flayn does very well. the major penalty is a lackluster spell list and significant investment buy in.

-hapi: she’s… weird. i like hapi quite a bit but she’s got it worse than lorenz in terms of stat growth. her personal ability makes her an extreme aggro target for monsters and she can’t even avoid their attacks, and the bonus damage it grants unfortunately isn’t better than fellow DLC mage constance, who hits harder just out of sheer momentum. for having a healing crest, she doesn’t have a particularly interesting white magic line. her dark magic grants her utility similar to hubert, but she’s slower and can’t quite strike like he does. sadly miss hapi has to be down here. id like to put her higher but boy did she struggle

-raphael: well, he’ll do his job. he’s only beat by caspar since caspar has a little bit better tools at his disposal, but they’re basically the same character. raph will do very good at punching the living shit out of things. starts off better than caspar, but unfortunately in my current run i have balthus so raph had to get benched

YOU CAN DO BETTER TIER

-bernadetta: she’ll work alright, but only with lots of attention, and her personal doesn’t seem to make up the difference. for a sniper she seems to have far less hit than her rivals in ashe and ignatz, especially since ignatz makes him more reliable. her crest doesn’t actually grant her much since it has such a low trigger rate and by the time it does work she probably already can double. also she gains no levels between pre and post skip which is hilarious but like. HELLO? ive also been told she has the worst starting stats. personally, i only use her on BE runs. i know she’s a popular character and a lot of people rank her highly for persecution complex and the fact that she learns both encloser and deadeye, but deadeye is unreliable in maddening and she’s a lot of work to keep up with the others.

-cyril: he can become a killer, he honestly does really well, but he starts so far behind you need to invest a significant amount into him. i don’t recall him having a particularly stellar combat art line either, but if you choose to put in all the work of catching the kid up, he will do well. but it’s not worth it most of the time. i use him on church route runs bc it feels right. on other runs, you’ll already have someone who fits his niche--the guy becomes a wyvern rider, and the likes of sylvain can do much better in this line.

-linhardt: kind of a shittier flayn, without fortify or rescue. lackluster spell list for both black and white, and terrible growths. he’ll do fine if you play eagles, but if you’re going to import a healer, mercie or flayn is the better option. 

-anna: oh lord, anna is difficult. her offensive stats are horrendous. flayn hits harder than her. with her unique stat line, inability to get supports, weakness in authority, and all around just odd set up, anna is not a reliable character and you should use yuri instead. they’ve basically got the same crest.

DIDN’T USE SO NO OPINION TIER: 

-hanneman

-manuela (heard she’s not good anyway)

-alois

-gilbert

-catherine

-shamir

(yes there’s a trend to this which is past FEs have trained me away from using prepromotes!)

and there we go! im still biased towards GD but the characters who do best are the ones who have a clear class line to follow and a statline that matches it. 

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 11: Rafael’s Lian Yu Experience

Ah, lets tune into Yugioh where Duke has decided to do some off-roading in the worst car and in the worst place.

Ah yes, the normal interaction you would have with a desert and your expensive vintage car. Duke has been struggling since he became a protagonist to stick to a defining trope. Now that Serenity is gone, and now that they aren’t watching a duel for Duke to be a downer about, I guess his only other tick is that he sucks at driving?

Again there was a perfectly serviceable truck back at the RV but they just really like to put miles on this car (which doesn’t have it’s lights on I believe, which...good job, Duke).

And he just launches these two inexplicably out of the car. Because Yugi might be losing his whole damn soul on the other end of this desert, but we will have cartoon shenanigans, damn it.

It really does look like Dukes looking through the wrong side of his binoculars here...that extra level of Duke.

Speaking of extra level, hows that horse thing going? Where Yugi is riding a horse for the first time in his entire life?

Because, apparently the show has decided that Yami should be really good at horses (????????). He can’t read any Egyptian, he doesn’t have any memories of his Pharaoh life, he can barely use magic, but apparently, he can game a horse. Only problem, is that this art team of high octane vehicle enthusiasts seems totally unaware of how horses work---I’ll just show you. This scene GOES places, and I will absolutely record it so you can watch it in it’s entirety in a separate post.

(see more horse under the cut)

The horses leg didn’t move the entire slide down the mountain y’all, he just stuck one hoof in front of him and power-slid down a freakin cliff like he was wearing horse Wheelies.

What the Hell?

Anyway, welcome to our new dueling platform.

You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s on a very tall thing. I know, in this show? They’re dueling on a tall thing? Whaaaaat?

This is a hilariously weirdly perfectly cylindrical land mass 10/10.

So Rafael’s whole deal is so freakin weird.

Rafael’s a weirdo. I was ready for Alister, since Alister introduced himself in a Maximilian Pegasus suit, but I just wasn’t expecting Rafael to be the weirdEST youknow? Of the three? Like he’s up there with Arcana and the band-saw ankle-slicing machine. Just a really choice human being who makes really good decisions.

God bless this artist’s obsession with edgy cargoes.

Anyways, another fun fact about Rafael is he gets more and more jacked with every single frame it feels--his muscles are like the quality to go fight Cell, but all he does is play cards.

Also he’s obsessed with justifying mass murder on a global scale so...he seems a little bit like an X-men villain in that way, except he’s...just a normal ass dude who got really buffed.

Rafael needs a reason to want to destroy all humanity--that’s really the big dilemma that the writing crew was given, but the way they got there...was a lot.

Lets dive right into it, starts off kind of normal, run of the mill “gotta cleanse the world yada yada” and then just starts somersaulting down a steep hill like in Princess Bride.

First of all, the show decides to reveal to us the entire story via a Rebecca google search, and then, once we’re like WTF? we get to hear it in it’s entirety and it is way weirder the second time.

So um...this Titanic cruise ship.

Yeah. I know. That’s a lot of Princess Peach dresses.

(welcome back, glass of OJ that every child on this show drinks with every meal)

Honestly there is no greater curse in this show than being rich. If you’re a rich dude you are SCREWED. Some force of nature is going to come for you just at any possible moment. You will get abducted....MANY TIMES. You will lose your parents, repeatedly. Your wife will die shortly after marriage. Some asshole will walk up and just remove your eyeball and replace it with a magic golf ball. You will never be the best at cards. Just never be rich in the Yugioh universe. It is better to be dead.

Speaking, of dead--just did a Rebecca-brand google search--do you know how many people fit on an average cruise liner?

It’s more than you think.

Woooooooooooooooooooooo that’s about 3000 people! Just nonchalantly! (and yo, I went mid-range, some cruise liners carry like 6000)

We passed so many 69′s just now!

Now there is some weird issues with this episode where Rebecca was like “The only survivor was Rafael” and then later, Rafael mentions his family is still alive--kinda sounds like the translation shenanigans are back at it, where the English version is desperately trying to keep people from dying, but like, the Japanese version drew a 600 ft tidal wave that ate up this cruise-liner like it was a bathtub toy made of paper.

But sure, maybe some escape boats made it out safely from a catastrophe that is 800 times worse than the Titanic. Sure they did.

PS History Channel got into a weird trend in the 00′s where they used to do these series of rogue wave horror stories--do you remember those? Anyways, one of my friends got super spooked by rogue waves and had it as one of her top ten fears. At the time I was like “lol you’re not gonna get rogue waved on a cruise are you kidding?” But then again, maybe she watched Yugioh and this episode scarred her for life?

Especially since this crazy traumatic experience was followed by three years of being stranded on an island and going COMPLETELY insane. Like not just...partial--Rafeal has absolutely no grip on reality anymore. Like, at all. He’s on another plane from most other Yugioh villains.

It’s like Lord of the Flies but there’s only one person in it. The Lord of the Fly.

This is a kid’s show.

Anyways, on the island, Rafael got hella jacked. So there was that one plus. He did eventually become a very huge person in his adulthood, although he did get a Mokuba haircut for a little while. This honestly says more about Mokuba’s hair routine than anything else.

He also spent some time seeing his lost family members as these three cards that he likes to pray to. Occasionally they fall into the ocean and he has to dry them off. Rafael lived a kind of boring weird life cycling between hallucinations and staring into the ocean.

The show didn’t bother to tell us what Rafael was eating or explain how that outfit lasted 3 years. But, they did describe that after 3 ENTIRE YEARS, Darts decided to just start harassing him.

Which...OK...and then there was this next sequence

I mean this was the only interaction that Rafael had in three years so maybe he forgot that getting drowned by people who harness the power of the ocean isn’t like...good behavior?

Anyways, back in the real world, in the city and wearing his hot topic grunge vest well into his early 30′s, Rafael decided that everyone just...deserves to die. Traffic sucks. Cities sucks. There’s too much crime. Everyone should be dead. It was very strange and sudden twist. You go from having all the money in the world, to no money, and then back to all the money and it’s like “Central heating SUCKS! KILL EVERYONE!”

Then Rafael made this mention of his family that has to be a translation thing.

Those guys have got to be dead. I mean this is Yugioh. There were no survivors. I’ll be very surprised if they pop up next episode, I’ll even dock them off the Death Count if they never died, I am that certain they won’t still be dead in this upcoming arc. They have clearly been replaced with paper cards. Like I wouldn’t be surprised if their souls were somehow inside these particular cards he carries.

I didn’t cap it, but to walk on the island you walk across a glowing oricalchos bridge and it was very goofy.

And then these guys showed up, reminding me again that they are still on this show, because tbh, I completely forgot.

I kinda miss when they were the weirdest people here and I just thought Rafael was another boring guy in handlebar muttonchops.

Anyway, it’s a short update today. I’m a little behind on things in other places, so that’s fine by me. I keep hoping that soon I’ll be back to doing like 2 of these a week. Especially since I recently decided to start blocking twitter and other places I’ve been wasting a little too much time on, maybe then it’ll funnel my efforts to here? We’ll see. Next episode we’ll find out how long all of these guys wearing jackets in the desert are faring.

And here’s a link to read these from the beginning.

[harperfinkles]

My Ranking Of Every Barbie Movie

A few months ago I finally decided to watch every barbie in order. When I was a kid I loved barbie movies, but I stopped watching them after Princess & The Popstar came out, and I felt like I’ve been missing out ever since.

Here I present to you: My Ranking Of Every Barbie Movie!

Keep in mind that I’m basing this off of my personal enjoyment of each film, and not by how “good” it is. There are many movies here that are ranked high despite being objectively flawed, as well as there are movies ranked low despite being objectively good. My opinions are also subject to change, especially since some of these I’ve only seen once.

36: Barbie & Her Sisters In A Puppy Chase

This entire movie is a mess. Like most of the barbie & her sisters movies there’s no real plot. The events of this movie only happen because of bad luck, which is never a good way to kick off your movie. I also find barbie to be completely OOC in this movie. Her disorganization and lack of planning is something that isn’t present in any of the sisters movies. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy movies that humanize barbie and give her more flaws but there are way more creative ways to do it. It doesn’t help that her insistence to “keep positive!!!” and “be optimistic :)))” just robs this movie of any meaningful message.

Then after the frustrating mess that is the puppy chase itself, Chelsey STILL wins her dance competition despite the fact that barbie didn’t let her practice, and she cheated by adding her sisters and the horses to the dance. It’s unbelievably stupid. I don’t know how the writers of this movie thought we would buy into that. I’m probably never going to watch this movie again.

35: Barbie Presents Thumbelina

The main reason I don’t like this movie is because of the style of the Twillerbees. Unlike Mariposa (the only other movie that doesn’t have a barbie protagonist) their faces look inhuman in a way that makes it hard to relate to them. I would’ve much preferred if Thumbelina had just gotten the normal barbie face, just her body becoming smaller. Besides that I think the girl whose name I can’t remember is annoying, and I didn’t like Thumbelina’s plan to get on her good side to save their home. Both of their character developments were weak and unbelievable. Then once the parents were convinced to stop demolition the movie lost all of its dramatic tension. This movie isn’t ‘bad’ per say, just completely boring. Not I understand why I never rewatched this as a kid.

34: Barbie In Princess Power

This movie had so much unrealized potential, but fell apart due to its plot that went all over the place. The villain and his frog were extremely annoying, Kera’s friends were completely one note characters, and Dark Sparkle was so petty and unnecessary. The part that pissed me off the most was how Kera’s identity was revealed to everyone. First off Wes was forgiven for this way too easily, despite it completely making me lose what little faith I had in his character, and secondly her parents handled it so casually. It seemed more like she had gotten in trouble for sneaking out to go to a party than her being forced into getting superpowers and using them to fight crime in the city. Plus the animation was absolutely horrible. What is with Mattel and changing barbie’s model every new movie?

I really wish this movie was better. Barbie as a superhero is such an amazing concept, and it makes me sad to see it executed so terribly.

33: Barbie & Her Sisters In The Great Puppy Adventure

Another movie with the most annoying villains possible. They’re the core reason I couldn’t stand watching this. In addition to that I found that the treasure being under the big willow tree was completely predictable from the first ten minutes of the movie. And even though the puppies were quite cute, their voices were so annoying. There are also a few plot holes (if you can call them that) such as the metal detector app (it hurt typing that) and how the girls knew that scaling the wall of the cave would lead to where the elevator lead. Despite this I still liked learning about barbie’s childhood and all of her achievements, though her grandma was quite creepy.

32: Barbie & Her Sisters In A Pony Tale

This movie straight up has no plot. It’s the worst of the sisters movies in that regard. Many chunks of this movie felt like filler (such as the party scene), and the character conflicts were weak and contrived (such as Chelsey and Staci's). One thing that I really liked about this movie is Barbie’s character, but that’s pretty consistent with all the sisters movies that aren’t Puppy Chase. I also found the two french guys very annoying (is there any sisters movie with a good villain?).

31: Barbie: Fairytopia

I feel bad for putting this one so low, especially considering how high my placements of all the sequels are. It feels like information is revealed to quickly at the beginning and the rest of the movie is just boring. Elina is very interesting but she could use a lot more character development. The part about her being bullied for not having wings was relegated to cheesy dialogue and didn’t really amount to anything. Plus the fungi aren’t nearly as funny as they are in Mermaidia.

The main reason I’m not putting it lower is for nostalgia and setting up the rest of the Fairytopia series. Aside from that I also really liked the vibe of the one underwater scene, and the “friends you haven’t met” line was quite good. This movie is just a complete anomaly in the great track record of early barbie movies. You honestly don’t even need to watch it to understand the sequels.

30: Barbie: A Perfect Christmas

As a musical this movie really sucks. The only song that I actually liked was barbie’s one solo, and even her singing voice there really didn’t sound like her. There’s really no plot to this movie, but I did find myself enjoying the dynamic of the sisters a lot more than the other sisters movies (even though Skipper’s Arc with the concert came out of nowhere and stressed me out). The way Santa’s magic was shoehorned into the story really bothered me though.

29: Barbie Video Game Hero

The best thing about this movie is definitely the side characters. They all had nice designs and personalities, especially Bella and Chris. The concept of this movie is also so creative and fun that I actually enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I liked it mostly during the first two levels as well as the bonus one, but the last two really soiled it for me. The fact that there’s an open world game with no clear way to win makes no sense in the context of the rest of the game, and the Just Dance advertisements are absolutely cringey. This movie has a strong beginning but really falls behind in the second half. The last scene of the movie really made me want to rip my eyes out.

28: Barbie: Spy Squad

This movie really suffers from not getting the audience to care. The characters aren’t developed enough in the opening and the way the girls got their jobs as spies seemed too easy. The storyline felt too straightforward, and even the plot twist at the end was kind of cheap.

Despite this I still really enjoyed many parts of this film. For one the animation is amazing. I loved the character designs, especially Patricia’s. Speaking of her, I thought she was a pretty good villain, even if she was a little cheesy and her ‘redemption’ arc was very clumsy. I also thought Lazlo was sweet. A lot of modern barbie movies only go halfway with the romance because they don’t want to be seen as bad role models for girls, and a lot of the times the Ken characters just seem unnecessary. I thought it was a good idea to have him be the “love interest” of a non barbie character so his inclusion doesn’t feel useless, even if they never actually got together. It was also just really fun to see all the spy technology.

27: Barbie: The Princess And The Popstar

The placing of this movie is extremely unfortunate since I actually really liked Tori and Kiera’s characters. They both had spunk and I really like the tropes of the roundy princess and the celebrity who doesn’t find satisfaction in fame. The reason this movie is so low comes down to the terrible plot. It felt like they were trying too hard to make it similar to the Princess & The Pauper even though Tori and Kiera’s characters would much better suit a different plotline. The villains were just insanely frustrating and had such unclear motivations. The songs were also pretty bad (other than Here I Am), the Ken character is annoying, and the climax has barely any emotional weight since it wasn’t led up to properly. But hey, at least Tori/Kiera is a high quality ship. If it wasn’t for their relationship this movie would be much lower.

26: Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale

I love the set up for barbie’s character in this movie. She’s just been fired for the first time, Ken broke up with her, and she feels like her life is falling apart. She really reached a new layer of dimension with this movie, and she’s the best barbie as herself character in all of the movies. My main problem is the boring plotline with the flairies. Their character’s aren’t interesting and what they do to the clothing isn’t anything special. This movie also suffers from the boring villains. Barbie’s character is my main reason for liking this movie, along with the Ken plotline, even if it could be quite contrived.

25: Barbie: Star Light Adventure

This is a very weird movie. I had completely different reactions to it during the two times I saw this movie. The first time I thought it was very disappointing. The title said “adventure” so I was very surprised when the characters spent most of the movie training in the same location and we barely got to see any cool new locations. The pace was also extremely slow, especially near the beginning. The second time I started to appreciate the movie for what it is. The animation is absolutely stunning and I love what we saw of the creatures in this universe. Sa-Lee is definitely one of my favourite side characters, and the rest of the team was pretty cool too.

They also added a bunch of new things that I think are very unique to this movie. For instance I loved that barbie’s had telekinesis. She definitely needs more superpowers in future movies. I also liked that we got to see her parents.

My main gripe with this movie has to be Constantine. He was annoying for no reason and I think the movie would’ve benefitted from either having him be nicer and more of a character arc, or having him be a full villain who’s using the team for personal gain.

24: Barbie: Mariposa & The Fairy Princess

As a sequel this movie sucks. It doesn’t cover the same themes as the first movie, we don’t get Elina telling the story, the stakes are nowhere near the height as the first one was, and the characters in the first movie don’t get nearly enough screentime. Willa and Carlos’s part in this movie was underwhelming, but I’m especially annoyed by the fact that Rayna and Rayla weren’t even mentioned once. This all probably would’ve been different had the movie been made closer to the original, and I’m extremely confused as to why they waited to make it in 2013.

However if you disassociate it with the first movie it becomes way more enjoyable. I thought Catania was sweet and lowkey ship her with Mariposa (though it still doesn’t compare to the Mariposa/Carlos/Willa OT3). The crystal fairies themselves were an interesting addition to the universe and their designs were really pretty (I actually wish I was still into barbie at the time it was released just so I could’ve got some of the dolls). The increase in animation quality was also a plus. I’m also so happy that after the first movie Mariposa started running a library. It was such a natural progression in her character arc and it’s so perfect. There are still a lot of problems, such as a villain who feels utterly disconnected from the main story, clumsiness and miscommunication being repeatedly used as plot devices, and the annoyingness that are the puffballs. I’m still glad this movie happened and if you liked the first movie you should definitely check this one out too.

23: Barbie And The Secret Door

Oh boy is this one a mixed bag. It was actually the first "new” barbie movie that I saw, but it definitely did the trick of making me want to watch the other ones.

On the positive side this movie is so pretty. I love all the bright colours and the designs for Nori and Romy. Speaking of which, they were such great side characters, and an adorable ship! I especially like Romy since she was so funny and adorable. Plus, the “what’s a boy?” comment made me laugh. I thought that the world building aspect of this movie was really interesting, even if the animal designs weren’t the best.

On the negative side, I feel like the music was extremely disappointing. It got less annoying on my second watch through, so maybe I just have to warm up to it. I also feel like the villain was boring. This movie deserved a more serious antagonist, especially since we saw how terribly she affected the fairies and mermaids. I did overall like princess Alexa, but I’m kind of unsure about her arc relating to responsibility. I think a lot of modern barbie princess movies in general just aren’t as interesting as the ones that take place in the past.

22: Barbie: Dolphin Magic

What a cute movie. I loved Isla’s so much! She and Barbie were so adorable together. The dolphin’s themselves were quite cute too.

This is a very feel good movie, and it almost makes you ignore its flaws. The main thing that annoyed me is why couldn’t they just pick up the dolphin and put him back in the ocean? He’s not even that big, and there isn’t much distance that you’d have to walk with him anyway. The plot and villain aren’t that interesting either, and the sisters were sometimes annoying (such as Staci’s broken foot having no weight on the plot, and Treasure being absolute garbage). Barbie also seems a little too perfect in this movie, which isn’t even true for the rest of the sister movies and they’re all way lower on this list. I also laughed a lot when Barbie called Ken her “Friend”, since apparently romance is too inappropriate for a barbie movie. Still, if you ignore this and just watch all the Barbie/Isla scenes, the movie is really good.

21: Barbie: Fairytopia: Magic Of The Rainbow

Being introduced to all the different fairies in this movie was so much fun. I love all their different personalities and designs, especially Glee, Sunburst, and Lumina. Elina grew so much in this movie, and it truly is the perfect ending to the trilogy. The flight of spring was really cool too. The only real flaw this movie has is how clumsily Elina’s magic abilities are added in. It almost seems like she knew how to use it all along, even if we know she didn’t.

Also Dizzle is the worst. And that one apprentice’s wings being the braids in her hair was FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

20: Barbie In Swan Lake

This movie is definitely the most legitimately beautiful barbie movie out there. The colours are so nice, the dancing is so majestic, and I’d want to live in the forest any day. Odette is one of the prettiest barbie characters and I love her wardrobe. This movie also has two of the most iconic villains of my childhood who make me laugh every time I think of them.

Despite this I still don’t think this is nearly as good as everyone makes it out to be. First off, Odette’s character arc as the ‘chosen one’ wasn’t executed believably, and she wasn’t even that interesting. The romance was way too instalove-y for my taste (even Rapunzel had a more believable romance than this). The message of this movie was also really unclear in the Chelsey scenes. Overall it’s a great fairytale that I have lots of nostalgia for, but it doesn’t hold up as well when you really dig into it.

19: Barbie: Fairy Secret

I love how Barbie and Raquelle’s relationship is expanded upon in this movie. In Fashion Fairytale Raquelle’s motivations were confusing and she felt very flat. I love how we got to see them forced to work together despite their hard feelings and eventually come to forgive each other at the end once they got to the root of their issues with each other. It’s the ideal enemies to loversfriends scenario.

This movie is just really fun. Exactly what a barbie movie should be. Barbie’s stylist friends were great, and the Ken parts were pretty funny. I do overall like the worldbuilding, though Gloss Angelos looked way to small to even be classifed as a city, let alone the biggest fairy city in the world. It’s like 90% castle and 10% actual city.

In the end I always wish that Barbie, Raquelle, and Ken remembered what happened to them, and that’s the most frustrating part about this movie.

18: The Barbie Diaries

Despite being made by a completely different studio than the other movies (and having a downgrade in animation quality), this movie really holds up today. There’s a lot going on here, and it makes the plot seem way more complex than any other barbie movie. We also get to see into barbie’s head a lot more than any other barbie as herself movie, what with her fantasies that we got to see visualized. This movie is just the perfect blend of magic and normal life, and even if I do prefer the fantasy based barbie movies, this one will always hold a place in my heart.

17: Barbie And The 12 Dancing Princesses

There really isn’t much to be said about this movie. It’s just plain good. There’s nice music, a good plot, a great villain, a cute cat character, and a girl obsessed with bugs. What more could you want?

The only thing I don’t like is the wedding scene. It seemed quite out of place. Their relationship wasn’t that important to deserve the last few minutes of the movie.

16: Barbie And The Three Musketeers

Barbie sword fighting is all I’ve ever wanted in life. This movie really broke the mold for what barbie could do. Corinne is a great protagonist, and the other musketeers were great too (even if their personalities weren’t developed that much). I love how important their friendship was and how easily Corinne integrated into their group. This movie is super fun and just makes me want to scream “GIRL POWER” from the top of my lungs.

There were still some drawbacks though. The prince was annoying, I got so tired of that one sound effect that keep on repeating over and over again (if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about), the cat was way too immature, and while the villain was good, he was not subtle at all. The movie still had a solid storyline, and I loved how it ended with the girls going on another adventure. *sigh* If only this movie had a sequel.

15: Barbie: The Pearl Princess

Lumina is one of my favourite barbie protagonists. She just felt human in a way that not many others do (even though she’s technically a mermaid, not human). She was naive, but not stupid. I loved seeing her react to a world she hasn’t seen before. This movie had such a unique approach with her aunt Scylla. Her aunt may have done something completely wrong, and she admits to that, but Lumina doesn’t ignore the way aunt Scylla has cared for her and loved her over the years. She accepts her found family and her biological family at the same time, and lets her have a chance at redemption. In addition to that I really loved Lumina’s pre transformation outfit. It’s my second favourite barbie mermaid outfit next to Nori’s in Mermaidia.

I also liked how much the animals of this movie felt like active members of society, and had intelligence levels equivalent the mermaids. I’ve never really seen that in a barbie movie, at least to this extent. Kuda was a great animal sidekick who really felt like one of Lumina’s true friends. I also like how Spike looked dangerous but was a real softie on the inside.

There are a lot of other elements of this movie that I liked too, like how sweet Fergus was, and his love of botany. I liked the gag about Caligo thinking he’s being poisoned, and being paranoid about which cup he’s gonna drink from. Even if the Ken character wasn’t utilized much, I liked his dolphin friend. My only complaint is that the climax was a little messy, and I didn’t enjoy Caligo as a villain that much.

14: Barbie In A Mermaid Tale 2

This worked very well as a sequel to the original Mermaid Tale. Eris’s return as a villain felt very natural, and this movie continued to have Merliah feel like a genuine teenager with her own dreams and mood swings. The only reason it’s lower than the first one is because the plot isn’t as all encompassing and it doesn’t feel like Merliah’s life has changed as much as it did originally, if that makes sense. The plot also feels a little too fast at times, but the pacing doesn’t affect the movie drastically.

Kylie was a wonderful addition to the cast. She was mean, but you could clearly tell that it came from her insecurities about her own talent. I cannot emphasize how well her conflict with Merliah was developed. I loved their banter at the beginning and how they came to understand each other at the end, to the point where it didn’t matter who won the competition. It’s just.....SO GAY. I love it.

Speaking of which, Fallon and Hadley were both really cute in this movie too, more so than the first one. I just love how little men there are in the Mermaid Tale movies.

13: Barbie: Princess Charm School

Last time I watched this movie a few years ago I absolutely hated it, but after rewatching it again my opinion has completely turned around. The plot of this movie may still be very basic, and the supporting characters, Princess Isla and Hadley, were very one note, but it’s the strength of the Protagonist, Blair, that really makes this movie. I love seeing her determination in an environment she’s not used to, and how selfless she was even when she’s surrounded by selfishness.

Also can we appreciate how dark this movie was? Dame Devin literally MURDERED Blair’s parents in a car accident. It’s not like that hasn’t happened in any other movie, but in this one the tone just feels a lot more jarring.

I really appreciated Delancey’s character development. She seems so cold and unforgiving at the beginning, but as more information is revealed to her she changes for the better. She was raised in such a negative environment and I can’t help but be proud of her. Her friend Portia was also really funny too. I love the “YOU STOLE MY CAKE” scene.

12: Barbie As The Island Princess

Is there anything better than crazy island girl characters who talk to animals? I think not.

I love Ro’s animal family. Azul and Sagi are essentially Ro and Tika’s dads, and it’s adorable. Azul’s peacock sounds are just absolutely ridiculous, and I love it.

The music of this movie was also soooooo good. Words cannot describe how The Rat Song makes me feel inside. On a more serious note, I Need To Know is absolutely perfect. I love the visuals that go along with it. And just when you think it’s over, Ro’s part ends and Prince Antonio comes in AND IT’S SO PERFECT.  Love Is For Peasants is also the best barbie villain song in any movie. “You need to stop reading those books. Filling your head with thoughts!” ICONIC. The soundtrack of this movie isn’t as good when listening to it outside of the context of movie when you compare it to stuff like the Princess And The Pauper, but it’s still really good nonetheless.

The romantic element of this movie was also really good. I think this is the first time on this list that I’ve listed the romance as a positive aspect. Ro and Antonio are just really compatible people who fulfill very essential parts of themselves when they meet. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I also love Tika’s development in regards to their relationship too.

The villain was pretty okay, but I especially love princess Luciana. She may be a romantic rival to Ro, but she’s a victim too, and she’s given a very sympathetic role in the story even if her mother is the villain. Her arc was very satisfying.

11: Barbie In A Christmas Carol

Not really a typical barbie movie to list as one of my favourites, but it’s a christmas essential for me. Having Barbie be Scrooge was a very risky move, but god, did it pay off. Eden was cruel, but her story is so sad. I always feel her fear when her aunt disrupts Catherine’s party. This is definitely another one of the darkest barbie movies.

Also, GHOSTS. Ghosts should have been in more barbie movies. They all had cool concepts and designs, mainly Aunt Marie and the ghost of christmas future.

Catherine was such a joy to see in this movie. She’s a very kind and selfless person, but her friendship to Eden puts her in conflict with that side of herself. Seeing her fulfilling Eden’s role in the vision of the future was actually kind of scary. It makes it all the more satisfying when Eden apologizes to Catherine in the end. I really love their friendship.

Christmas Carol was always one of my favourite christmas tales after I watched the Mickey version, and I think this movie did it justice (thought it was slightly less traumatizing than that, thankfully).

10: Barbie In The Nutcracker

Even though I’ve had a copy of this for the longest time I never really took the time to watch and appreciate it. And now that I have I’ve gotta say that this was a great start to the barbie saga. The producers still hadn’t settled on making barbie movies the way they’re known for now, and you can tell by the lack of female characters and a few of the 2D sequences, but the sense of adventure this movie has is so unlike any movie that came after. And despite the limited resources they had for animating it still ended up looking stunning. They animators had such a good sense of colour, and all the landscapes looked amazing.

Before watching this I always thought that The Magic Of Pegasus had the best (canon) romance of any barbie movie, but now I actually think that this may be better. Clara and Prince Eric have great chemistry and such a believable bond. The last dance scene was amazing and it so was heartbreaking when Clara was sent back to the real world. I love the scene when Eric visits Clara’s house and confirms that it wasn’t all a dream.

Also, I really appreciate Clara’s decision to stay in the magical world. So much media, including barbie movies, puts emphasis on people staying with their family and choosing more stable environments. What writers don’t realize is that that’s boring. We don’t watch movies to learn about people’s normal lives, and I’m so grateful that this story ended the way it did. So yeah, thanks writers.

There were also many scary moments here too. The rock monster is TERRIFYING. Maybe the reason I don’t remember this movie is because the rock monster traumatized me so much I had to repress it. The Mouse King was also quite creepy. I wish newer barbie movies committed to making scary villains like him.

9: Barbie In A Mermaid Tale

I probably have the most nostalgia towards this movie since it was always my sister’s favourite growing up. Now it’s one of the only barbie movies she’ll watch with me other than the sequel. I expected to not enjoy this movie as much since I’d kind of exhausted it by this point, but I guess I surprised myself.

As I mentioned in Mermaid Tale 2, Merliah feels like a genuine teenager. She likes her normal life and hates responsibility. Because of this her arc of deciding to save her people feels so much more genuine and poignant.

The world building of this universe is just so good. The plot with Calissa and Eris was great, and I love the scene where Merliah is picking out a tail. The world just looks so pretty and magical, even if magic doesn’t play a huge role in this film. The soundtrack sets the scene so nicely, and Queen Of The Waves is definitely one of my favourite barbie songs.

8: Barbie In The Pink Shoes

This is definitely a huge unpopular opinion, so I should get all the negatives of this movie out of the way first. The animation of the faces is extremely creepy, Kristin was very irresponsible to decide to change her routine up at the last minute, and she would’ve worked much better as a choreographer than as a dancer. Despite these flaws there’s still something about this movie that makes me love it.

For one, despite the creepy faces, the dancing animations were still pretty good. And even though Kristin’s arc wasn’t the best I still find her final dancing scenes (the one in the ice palace and the one on stage) to be so inspiring. Keep On Dancing is such an amazing song and it gave me chills the first time I heard it. The movie is also quite pretty. The ballet outfits aren’t as traditional as ones in earlier barbie ballets, but they still have flare and nice colours.

The movie is also really funny. It makes fun of the ballets it covers a lot. I love the “you don’t look a day over 16″ part. The two suitors especially, Hilarion and Prince Albrecht, were so funny. I loved how their petty jabs at each other turned into compliments when faced with adversity. Hayley was also pretty funny since she was the realist of the movie.

I think the irl characters were used very nicely in the ballet world, and I liked how when Kristin got back it turned out that everything wasn’t as bad as it seemed before. Tara wasn’t as mean and Madame Natasha wasn’t nearly as scary. That’s one of my favourite tropes in fiction.

7: Barbie & The Diamond Castle

Liana and Alexa are basically a married couple. There is literally no way to refute this. Their arguments are adorable and domestic, and they clearly love each other more than anything in the world. They may have their differences at times but when it comes down to it they know each other more than anyone else does and work together so nicely. Every aspect of their lives is intertwined so much that separation usually isn’t an option for them. My heart broke when they parted since I knew that that was how Lydia would defeat them. I cried when Liana came to Alexa’s rescue, and the movie ending with them going to back to their normal house instead of staying at the diamond castle was beautiful. Truly the best and purest barbie ship.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s talk about everything else. The plot of this movie is so unique. There is no other barbie movie that’s about music itself. The muses and their drama and betrayal with Lydia was so intriguing. Seriously, Lydia was a scary villain. I was terrified of her as a child. Liana and Alexa seemed like they’re helpless against her powers, and it feels all the more victorious when they defeat her. The last fight scene was truly epic.

I really appreciate how little Liana and Alexa care about the two twins. They’re my least favourite part of the movie, and even if they do start working with them later on in the movie it’s made very clear that they don’t care about them at all.

6: Barbie In Rock ‘N Royals

I really didn’t have high expectations for this one. It was after I had watched The Princess And The Popstar and Secret Door, which both gave me a bad feeling about barbie pop musicals. But this movie really came through and made itself my second favourite barbie musical movie, and my sixth favourite overall.

The only thing I disliked was Courtney’s weird facial design. That’s it. The rest of the movie is basically perfect.

The movie started off at a relaxing pace but I was never tricked into thinking it would end that way. I love the Camp Pop vs. Camp Royalty plotline. Finn and Lady Ann seemed simple at first but their past was revealed at the perfect time. Clive was hilarious and him becoming the real villain was executed so well.

Seeing Courtney and Erika react to the camps was a delight. Their friends were so quirky and nice to them, and the camps themselves were pretty fun too (UNICORNS). Them finally meeting at the beach was such a breath of fresh air. I could imagine them becoming great friends in the future (cough sequel cough). Erika was probably my favourite of the two since she just looked really cool and had a more interesting arc. I just love it when two groups of people who have seemingly nothing in common come together to achieve a common goal. Also I have a theory that Sloan and Princess Olivia were in love the whole time, and the competition was the first time they could smile around each other without being ridiculed by their peers.

Now, onto the music. My favourite song is probably Gotta Get To Camp. I was shocked at how good it was. The choreography was also the most interesting since it was the only time the characters spontaneously burst into song. When You’re A Princess is also such a bop.

This is definitely the first movie I’d recommend to any classic barbie fan who wants to try out some of the new ones.

5: Barbie: Mariposa & Her Butterfly Fairy Friends

This is probably the closest to a perfect barbie movie you’ll get. The protagonist is very relatable, the supporting cast is great, everyone has good development, the world is scary yet so fascinating, and the villains are amazing. Also it has a non barbie protagonist. Having Elina narrate the story was such a great decision. Mariposa really sticks out in the long list of barbie protags. Her transformation scene near the end was so great. It fits the theme of the movie so well and I think that anyone can get inspiration from Mariposa’s journey.

When it comes to characters everyone is so much fun. Carlos is another one of my favourite barbie love interests, even if the movie didn’t commit to the romance fully. He and Mariposa have their love of reading in common and they like each other for non superficial reasons. Willa is also adorable and sweet. It would be very interesting to find out how she and Mariposa met, since they’re so different, yet they’re close friends nonetheless. Rayna and Rayla are both quite interesting cases. When they first showed up I rolled my eyes and thought they’d be tossed out of the way very soon, but they continued through the story and changed as people. They gained respect for Mariposa, and vice versa. Henna was also pretty cool too.

The setting was so interesting too, more than any other Fairytopia movie. Every place looks like it has danger lurking, and he characters genuinely felt small next to the landscape. One of my favourite things in this movie has to be the absolutely horrifying Skeezites. I remember playing the DVD game as a kid and having nightmares about it later.

4: Barbie As Rapunzel

This is probably the scariest barbie movie. Unlike other scary ones like Mariposa and Diamond Castle there’s such an aura of misery and helplessness to this movie that is like no other. Gothel is the main reason for it. The tower just looks so dark and every scene in the normal world has such tension surrounding it. It makes me even more emotional when Rapunzel finally frees herself from the tower.

All the paintbrush scenes are integral barbie moments for any kid growing up. I remember being fascinated by her art, and by how hope came to Rapunzel in her worst moments. We don’t get a real answer to how the paintbrush came to be, but it doesn’t feel necessary. It’s just so beautiful.

I love the animal sidekicks in this movie too. Penelope is so adorable, and I love how she, like Rapunzel, found the courage in herself to stand up and disobey her father. And having a dragon be one of the good guys was a really risky move for the second barbie movie, but it payed off so well.

This was truly an ethereal movie.

3: Barbie And The Magic Of Pegasus

This movie definitely has the most riveting original plot of any barbie movie. Wenlock was a terrifying villain and Brietta’s story is so sad. Plus, barbie standing up for Wenlock’s wives at the end basically invented feminism. I love that it’s about an ice skating barbie, and all the skating scene were so fun too.

Shiver is also adorable. I had a lot of the dolls as a kid and the only things I have left from them are the Shiver toy and the Wand Of Light. Speaking which, that wand was so epic and pretty. The movie was just so aesthetically pleasing.

Annika is another one of my favourite barbie protagonists. Like Merliah, she genuinely feels like a true teenager who's rebelling against her strict parents, and she learns a great lesson. Aidan was also a great mirror for her and when I was younger they were my favourite barbie couple. They have lots of good banter and I really buy their relationship development. I especially love the ice dancing scene at the end.

This movie is a barbie essential for me. It represents so much of my childhood. I used to watch this movie obsessively and it’s just as good now as it was back then.

2: Barbie: Fairytopia: Mermaidia

This is kind of an odd choice for my second favourite barbie movie. This one used to be my #1 favourite before I rewatched the one coming. I was obsessed with mermaids and fairies as a kid and no other movie captured my imagination the way this one did. The land of Mermaidia is so pretty and reminds me of everything I dreamed about as a kid. It also gave me Nori, my favourite non barbie character in any barbie movie and one of my biggest childhood crushes. I love how her sass comes from her insecurities about Nalu, and how she and Elina start to like each other once they see past him.

Elina/Nori is also another contender for my favourite barbie ship. They have nice banter (and I’m sure by now you all know how much I love that) and I love the scene when Elina sacrifices her wings for a tail to save Nori (that’s totally my favourite scene in any barbie movie). I wish we got more of their relationship in Magic Of The Rainbow, but I guess that wouldn’t have fit with the movie. Oh well.

This movie works very well as a sequel, while also being better than the original in every way. We had the same villain, and we got to see a part of the Fairytopia universe that we only saw a glimpse of in the first one. After Elina got her wings it only feels natural that the possibility of her losing them again is explored, as well as the prospect that maybe she doesn’t need wings to be herself. And compared to the original movie the stakes have been raised much higher, we have more reasons to care about the characters, and it’s so much funnier. The fungi annoyed me in the first movie but in this one they made me laugh constantly. And this movie wouldn’t be complete with the amazingness that is opera Bibble.

This movie doesn’t have the best plot, but it doesn’t suffer from it either. It’s one of those movies that just makes me feel relaxed and at peace (other than the Depths of Despair scene, though at this point I’ve seen it enough that it doesn’t phase me as much anymore).

1: Barbie As The Princess And The Pauper

We all knew this was coming. No other barbie movie comes close to this classic. It’s gonna be hard to describe why I love it so much since everything that’s amazing about this movie has already been said a thousand times before, but I’ll give it a go.

Anneliese and Erika are amazing characters. They may come from different social classes but they both have the shared experience of not being able to fulfill their dreams. This movie is so good at showing you how trapped they feel, yet still their duty to their lives never waver. My mom has an interesting story about how she got into this movie. She initially thought that barbie would be a terrible role model for me and my sister until she saw The Princess And The Pauper. Anneliese and Erika are clearly very complex protagonists who have interests outside of romance and are active participants in changing their destinies and saving the kingdom. Especially with Erika, who decides to achieve her dream of becoming a famous singer before getting married to King Dominick.

This movie has a bunch of nice relationships too. Anneliese and Erika click with each other so well and respect each other’s troubles without downplaying their situations due to the class difference. The romances were both nicely developed too. Erika and Dominick may have fallen in love over the course of a day but I appreciate how much he likes her stranger side (like when he walked in on her singing to her cat lmao). Anneliese and Julian’s relationship feels especially believable since they’ve known each other for a very long time. I also really like that they waited for Erika to come back before getting married. OT4 goals.

Preminger is a barbie villain like no other. The rest of my top ten has been dominated by scary and serious villains, but Preminger is just so funny and dramatic compared to them all. He’s the only barbie villain that has became very well known in pop culture.

All of the songs in this movie are so iconic. I think that’s the biggest strength of this movie. I'm constantly listening to music and the soundtrack is a great way for me to take this movie everywhere I go. The Cat’s Meow is a beautiful song, Written In Your Heart feels so inspiring, I Am A Girl Like You is great character study, If You Love Me For Me is a beautiful and tender love song, How Can I Refuse? is an iconic villain song, and Free is a great introduction to the characters, as well as my number one favourite barbie song. Every song has something special about it and that makes it one of the most memorable movie soundtracks ever for me.

I also love the cats Serafina and Wolfie. They’re two of the best animal sidekicks in any barbie movie since they feel a lot like the human characters. THEY ALSO HAVE SO MANY BABIES IN THE END FUCKING GOD.

I hope you all enjoyed my ranking. Feel free to comment with your favourites and least favourites, just be aware that this is all personal to me and really says nothing about the objective quality of each of these movies.

[sparda3g]

Attack on Titan Chapter 118 Review

We can dance around and talk about how utterly amazing the latest anime season has been, but let’s not forget where it came from. The manga content was already incredible, so translating to the anime version is mouth-wateringly blessing. It’s the true Game of Thrones Season 8, only it’s not, because well, look at the title. However, the quality is most certainly true. When they say Sunday hype is over, I say it’s not, until the anime is over. But enough about that, we the manga readers need to look beyond, thinking to ourselves, “Will the future content be as incredible?” While that’s up for debate, I can say it’s looking downright stellar, and this chapter pushed it further.

Zeke may have left the anime (for now), but here he is in the manga, ready to play baseball. I really like that angle shot with Yelena staring to the sky as the blimps are burning and falling. It’s a shot that nailed her character well: a cult follower that praise the God for eliminating the devils. Zeke is a game changer; taking out titans and weapons left and right. Floch the douche and others come in to play as well. Basically, the tide has reversed from the last chapter, though later on, the ground will be on even level; sort of. I like Magath for not giving in to retreat, even when the odds are against him. He wants “justice” against Zeke the traitor. That is soldier’s pride at its core.

The suspense continues to escalate with Eren slowly heading towards Zeke. Honestly, I don’t know if I should be rooting for him or not, but then again, so many good characters are victimized by Zeke’s spinal fluid, so I am more frightened than excited.

A new scenario is created with the objective to save Falco, and this will be the best opportunity to show Gabi and her development payoff. It begins slowly with her wanting to tag along with Colt to save him, because she feels she owe him a lot after many hurdles. That’s admirable of her. It seems natural since she’s a warrior, but it becomes apparent later on. Falco and Nile have a nice and a bit depressing conversation. I’m glad Nile receive more moments, with Falco no less. It’s two genuine good people chatting, and that itself is rare. It’s sad though that Nile is trying to cheer him up, but thinks his time is up; won’t be able to see his family again. I hope Isayama is merciful on him.

The entire jail scene with the main crew is great, filled with plenty of really good insightful character moments. Onyankopon did in fact run off to free Survey Corps to assist Eren. Called it I guess. It could have been a simple path. Unlock the cell, inform about the problem, and ask anything after the battle is over. Instead, these characters unleashed their personal feelings and thoughts that one would say, “It’s long overdue.” Not to say the writing has been lacking, rather how long it has been building up to reach to that certain point.

Take Connie for example. It was expected of him to rage and take it on Onyankopon. However, his anger isn’t solely based on currently. It’s his frustration and experiences since the beginning that have been eating him deep inside. I can’t argue back at him; not when he’s tearing up. You can really tell he’s tired of everything. Come to think of it, he has suffered a lot; losing his best friend Sasha, losing his family, and getting betrayed by his so-called friends. I’m surprised he lasted this long mentally.

Onyankopon is the only guy that I can genuinely trust from the Yeagerists and thankfully, he comes clean. It’s like what I thought; he had no choice but to follow Yelena’s orders. Otherwise, well, brain is served. This is the woman that headshot a guy just for complaining. It’s as if it’s translating the internet world of today; nothing but restriction and ridicule. You can believe his words based on previous chapters. All of his reactions were genuine; not a clue on what’s happening. I felt a bit sorry for him. Thankfully, Armin exist to believe his story. Good boy saves the day, just like in the anime.

The planning procedure is very interesting. The option that would benefit them the most is the rumbling. At least they won’t eradicate the race; just intimidate the world. One of the interesting parts is with Mikasa. She is still conflicted with what Eren told her about Ackerman. As believable that story is, Armin believes Eren has lied. It’s astonishing because Isayama made it very convincing with the past events, including the headache part, and to call it a lie is conflicting. It won’t be against the writing if it is a lie, but then, what is the truth. Perhaps Eren does know, but twist the truth somewhere.

I like the fact Armin picked up the problem with his friends. Everyone easily bought into Eren’s words and can’t think otherwise. This does confirm that Armin lied about crying for the Euthansia Plan because he doesn’t buy it not one bit. Luckily for Eren, Armin is a great best friend you can ask for; defending his action and believing there’s a real agenda behind everything. Plus, his argument is very convincing. It is likely that Eren was ambushed by Yelena with a plan that must not be turned down. We know how insane she is, so this makes sense. Furthermore, Eren is more towards on protecting his friends, rather than wiping out existence. If accept the plan, the rumbling option will be included. It’s a lot of work, let alone to think about, but it’s beginning to add up a lot.

Plenty of characters are getting their moments to input, so it’s Jean’s turn. He’s another character that has been receiving a good amount of developments. Here, it’s about his opinion on Eren. He still maintain the thought that Eren will send everyone straight to hell; he’s not entirely wrong about that. However, the fact is, he actually envied the guy. He’s irritated by him, presenting as a damn cool guy. That’s rather charming of him to say. Who said a horse can’t express love? Connie cools down and go with others as well. Now, it feels like a good uprising moment; encouraging and relieving.

The one part that continues to make me go in circle is why Eren did all of that to his closest friends, Mikasa and Armin. I know he has to stage an act, if Armin’s theory is on-point, but the reasoning, the explanation, and the disconnection weren’t necessary. I still remember that moment and it continues to upset me, like good God, guy. It is perplexing when Armin may have discovered the answer and it ties in to the beach scene, where Eren ask about wiping out the enemy across the ocean. Something tells me Eren wants the rumbling into full effect, rather than partially. Maybe what I thought before may be true after all. By that, I mean his way to sacrifice himself without making his friends worried. It’s complex, but at least Mikasa’s head is in the right place. I hope the real reunion comes really soon.

You got to love Jean for having the kintama to go straight to armed men and belittle them, putting them in their place. He is seriously shining a lot in this arc. All the soldiers in the cell are released, so those crybabies (higher-ups) can stop crying now. You got to respect Shadis for blaming on a bear, obviously shielding the young cadets. He really deserves better. Pixis has always been a badass, and being thrown to the cell did not stop that. It’s a good move to form a group for those who drank the wine, so if the roar occurs, they won’t disrupt others who haven’t.

I really like the symbolism with Mikasa leaving her scarf behind. It really feels like the last arc when she has done something unspeakable; her character that is. It is sad because it is something she holds preciously the whole time. You could see it as a way to address her freedom, acting on her own accord. Part of me thinks this is a death flag, but I believe she will be safe. I don’t know how the scarf will come in play in the long run, but the stepping stone got me moved.

Zeke is seriously turning the tide easily. He’s dominating everything there; titans, blimps, you name it. Reiner has no chance to come close to Eren. It’s just a massacre. Why even have Armin and others? Insurance? Yelena, oh man, talk about her sanity wearing thin. She is undoubtedly sick; enjoying the destruction sight and await for the world to change. Her sitting posture can define her lunacy. Just before Armin and other set off, she has one freakish face that can haunt dreams. Holy crap, my body was shaken with fear. That face, as well as the follow-up, is the face that screams, “Please help my lord and savior. Or else, I will eat you.” I know what I said. I don’t know if she’s on to Armin, but her smile definitely says failure is not an option.

One of my favorite parts of the chapter is the reunion that I didn’t think it would warm my heart. To begin with, Nile is a true gentleman, helping Falco to reunite with his loved ones. Colt, on the other hand, isn’t much because he was getting ready to kill Nile. I don’t blame him, but I was growing worry. Praise the sun, Gabi’s development payoff is kicking into high gear. She stops Colt and instead of unfortunate incident, it all goes smoothly. Falco is reunited. Somewhere, Erwin is smiling. Seriously, please have mercy on Nile, Isayama.

Gabi didn’t understand her action, but it’s a step in the right direction. This proves her heart has changed and her action speaks louder than her mind. First, she reacted as someone who believes in good people. Next, she feels and accepts the pain of her past actions that brought a young unforgiving enemy. Braus Family walks by and while the father believes in Gabi and Falco, Kaya wishes for them to be killed. Cold, but the damage is done. Usually, Gabi would react like, “So what? You’re part of the devils,” but she’s finally accepting the blame and take it all in.

Her development is very solid. It was helped by the slow process, digesting slowly on every part, large or small. It is too little, too late, especially taking the life of a beloved character, but that’s the idea. War can corrupt the mind of a child, whether it’s from manipulation or experience; Gabi is no exception. It’s similar to Reiner, only she has a chance to change and perhaps obtain a better life. She is still young and despite the damage is severe, she admits her faults, so it’s not like she won’t learn anything. I don’t know what Isayama has in mind for her conclusion, but hopefully forgiving.

As for Falco, he finally tells them the truth that he was responsible for the invasion on Marley. I like how very telling Gabi’s reaction is. If it wasn’t for the development, she would definitely pull an Eren from the infamous traitor scene. But now that she has mellowed out, let alone exhausted by this point, she doesn’t react anything but sadness. Those two went through so much hell as kids; it’s damning that they made it this far. As sad this situation has gotten, Falco goes further to the point he has grown up.

He confesses his love to Gabi. That’s right; about to beat the main cast in the race to love. In all seriousness, I’m surprised yet proud like a father to watch him confess like a man. The boy is all grown up. Now, this is a death flag, a classic one at that. However, it was more or less toned down since he did mention the reason for his confession. It’s only adding more to the total of suspense within this battle. It’s not guaranteed, because there are times where happiness prevail, but in here, it’s uncertain. I pray to God that he makes it out okay. I’m fine with this pairing and Gabi isn’t accepting his end to be here. The only hope is if Zeke gives a damn and realize Falco will become a titan if he roars. It all lies on it.

My other favorite part, perhaps the best one, is the last action before the enticing cliffhanger. As you already know, Zeke dominates when far range; no one can’t top him. That is unless you’re Pieck and carrying a powerful cannon shot. At first, I didn’t want to believe that she was killed by Floch and others. That would seriously piss me off. I already hate Floch, so doing this would boil me red hot. It turns out that the Cart Titan’s death was a lie and she fooled everyone. Translation: her MVP streak continues. I demand a figurine for my collection!

It’s damn clever to act defeated and let the titan dissolve slowly to convince everyone. Floch didn’t know who killed her, which led to Marlely soldiers to ambush and actually use the corpse for cover. Who said they ran out of ideas for usefulness? On top of that, the cannon can be used by men, so Magath aims and fires right at Zeke; so close on wiping his human body away. Honorable mention or MVP, Magath is the man. For a normal guy, he sure is a badass. Just like that, the table is balanced (for now).

The stakes are extraordinarily high. The suspense is insane. Zeke is down, but can recover. It’s only matter of time. Magath can’t get a shot from the angle, so that’s no longer an option. Reiner and Porco are still standing. Eren is standing. Falco and others are on their way. Armin and others are approaching. Who will reach to Zeke first? What is the destination? It’s a loose ball to grab to score a victory. It’s mind-numbing just by thinking about it. The possibilities are endless. Clearly and I know you’re going to hate me when I say this, especially if you follow me in other series,

“We’re in the endgame now.” I couldn’t resist. Seriously, it’s very likely that the next chapter is the endpoint.

This chapter was exhilarating, at times unnerving, and suspenseful. There were plenty of character moments that left me awed, proud, terrified, and sympathetic. The action was tensed. Some of the scenery and angle shots are really good, especially that destruction scene. There were plenty of interesting info that I am hunger for answers, but the battle must be dealt with first. So many death flags to worry about, but at least keep Falco alive. For God’s sake, keep one pairing alive, dammit. The suspense is killing me. The next chapter can’t come any sooner…

[nayrusfountain]

Expanding Clock Town: Fan Ideas

Welcome to my newest blog. This will be a series of neat ideas that I will randomly pump out for your enjoyment as well as discus what can improve our overall experience with the games we love. Today we will look at...

                                              Clock Town

Clock Town is a fun little city in the heart of Termina that I always look at fondly. With its cheery music and colorful visuals as well as a great cast of characters, there is a special charm to this town that I feel no other settlement in the Zelda series evoke on me. 

But I'll admit its a little lacking in attractions among other things.

With only three main gaming stores plus the Deku Playground, I think its safe to conclude that Clock Town could use a little funding to create new points of interest and the like. But what can they built exactly? Well let's dive in and spice up this cute little town!

                                              A Few More Inns

The Stock Pot Inn is the only source of a motel that the city has, and this is a big no no in my honest opinion. Originally a cafeteria back in the days, the now old and outdated Inn is of poor quality and not up to par with Inns you find in BotW, which is strange because some great inns were in a small post apocalyptic town while Clock Town is fairly well off. The room with the performers hold no such luxuries aside from bunk beds and a card table, and disgusting creepy crawlies are an example of a building in need of pest control.The first class room is falling apart, with a large unkempt hole glaring back at its guest as it allows one to access the private conversations of the next room without consequences.

The place doesn't have electricity and must rely on old fashioned candles to lit its halls. I say this because places like the Milk Bar have ceiling fans, and along with other stores, electricity generated lights (study the game closely and you'll see what I mean.) There is also a random man stuck in the toilet of a doorlees restroom, forever ignored... Alas, these issues doesn't stop the Inn from getting booked, for it is the only option in Clock Town...

But not anymore.

Various Inns would be places in all four sections of the city, each one reflecting the theme of the providence from the 4 corners of the world; South Clock Town would be Swamp Theme, North Clock Town promotes Snow Theme, and West Clock Town embraces an Ocean Theme. Each one would offer a different level of costumer service as they compete with each other. One could have a beautiful high quality hotel, but the staff are stingy and rude, while a less flamboyant option would reward Link with friendly employees. Not only that, but they could be run by various races like Zoras and Deku Scrubs depending on the inn. This will affect Link in the long run as there are perks to staying in each inn, such as how many hearts he gains for his stay. A side-story should be implemented for each Inn as well, seeing as that's where the game shines.

While the Stock Pot Inn are of poor mainaince and constantly overbooked, the Southern Inn could be struggling to gain costumers due to Deku being unpopular among Hylians. However, the Deku themselves are nice people and openly optimistic, determine to erase the stereotype of their race. If wearing the Deku Mask, some of the staff members will recognize you as the son of their King's butler, and it is here where the lost son's backstory will unfold.

On the contrary, the Western Inn is popular for its wealthier ascetic, tropical themes, and beautiful design both internally and externally. Plus there is the added benefit of being closer to the ocean where the Indigo-Go's resides.

However the Zoran staff are snobbish and vain, refusing to serve costumers if they do not hold their standards or have enough money. But they will instantly serve celebrities like members of the Indigo-Go's with the best costumer service. Link would either have to grind to add money to his bank account or wear Mikau's mask for easy access and better treatment. As Mikau, Link is offer the best room, best food, and invited to participate in Zora based mini games, concerts, parties and of coarse side quests. Also, sidequests are only done with the Zora Mask.

Goron Link will either be dismiss without a second thought, or offer a less then fabulous room for his stay and limited access to games. And Deku Link will be yelled at to "get lost!" The staff reveals their struggle to provide happy costumers after many had file complaints against them, and mentions the personal problems and racial insecurities affecting their attitude. If Link beats Gyorg before the third day, the band will be found in the hotel after their performance back in the hall. As a bonus, if he helps the hotel staff, they'll soften up and change their strict policies to appeal to everyone equally, and reward Link a special mask.

I think that by applying more hotel opinions with different benefits can really enhance the gameplay and story, and having them all compete with each other would make things quite interesting.

                                         Happy Mask Shop

I'm honestly shock there isn't a mask based shop in Clock Town, especially considering how influential masks are to their culture. I know that people traditionally craft their own masks and such for festivals, but it would be great having a store center around these artifacts. The shop's sidequests would require the player to build their own original masks and customize existing ones with added perks, transformations included. Link would have to explore Termina for certain materials to craft his own handmade mask. However, players would have to be wise with how they spend their limited products; would they use up the items to create a new and unique mask with unknown functions, or use those resources to upgrade existing ones with increased benefits?

For instance, using certain materials on the Zora Mask will give Mikau ice abilities and resistance to it. Upgrading the Goron Mask will make Darmani burst to flames when fighting and send explosive shock waves to surrounding enemies. Enhancing the Deku Mask will boost its durability in fights and spit acid bubbles. You know, little examples like these. This could give previously useless masks a new use in the game while creating new ones to add to Link's arsenal.

                                 More Game Shops and Stores

Nothing much more to say aside that the city can use more gaming shops across the town. Things like the bombchu game from OoT, racing, horse and Zora riding, diving, sword fighting tournament, etc. The games should not be limited to Link as each activities can be play as his different forms depending on the theme of them. Have them either spread out or in different corners of the town.

Stores full of goodies are also welcome, and certain gear will only become available after completing a dungeon. Stores should also be expanding across Clock Town and the rest of Termina populated by shoppers trying to buy supplies in preparations for the end of the world. Over the 3 days the amount of shopper dwindle, until by the Final Night the shops are devoid of life entirely. Little things like these should add more to an already wonderful game.

                                     Homes and Neighborhoods

Finally, I want to see a variety of houses like in OoT's Hyrule Castle Town which we have access too. Here we can interact with the characters privately as they dwell on their thoughts concerning the falling Moon. We can enter the homes of the commonfolk via the alleyways and the residence of the more wealthy in the area around the Mayor's office. To make it easier for the dev team, the homes of the people can be designed like apartments for the poor and condominiums for the rich. That way the Zelda Team can save environmental space.

What can we do?

Perhaps we can rent or buy an apartment/condo via sidequest. When Link obtains the apartment, he will received a stamp that will travel with him through time similar to the bank stamp. The stamp is proof of ownership for that home, meaning the player is all set and doesn't have to do that quest again. Renting/buying can provide certain benefits like regenerating health when at the residence or storing deletable items like arrows and bombs for the next cycle. This is basically a storage space and can vary greatly depending if you buy or rent. Renting is more limited, only allowing you to store a certain number of every items. Buying, which can only be done by after obtaining the Adult Wallet, can boost the number of perishable items dramatically and even display your masks as you have more freedom to arrange your home how you like. Also, the basement can be served as a minidungeon were goodies can be obtain from completion.

Epona can also be allowed in this section on the city, but only if Link has a private property.

Of coarse, living in a neighborhood require interacting! That means sidequest galore, as Link will communicate and solve the problems of mismatched people going nuts over the moon. Rewards include weapons, items, gear, rupees, access to games and masks. Link basically becomes a neighborhood hero and wearing the three main masks can generate different missions and misadventure. Also it would generate funny reactions from random neighbors.

The Captain of the Guard Viscen, impressed with his righteous heart, will offer Link a brief position in the guard allowing more story quests and missions to unfold.

Just imagine a chase scene across the streets on horseback tracking down a criminal with the guards as backup?

One sidequest however can have an dire impact on Link himself and effect the player's playthough. If Link doesn't lock the doors when at night and sleeps, Sakon will break in at 12:00 am and steal his Transformation Masks. If this were to occur Link must immediately give chase before the thief sells them off for profit. He would have to track him down through the alleyways, but only have till morning before Sakon makes off with them to his hideout. And considering that the mask contains the souls of the fallen, it doubles as unintentional kidnapping!

Viscen would appear roaming the streets on his night patrol and confronts Link during the chase. He would then accompany Link as they go after Sakon on horseback and hunt him down. If Link succeeds, Sakon will be arrested and his magical masks with be back in safe hands.

If he fails and Sakon escapes with them, the thief will flee to his hideout and bid them for high prices. Link and Viscen would then proceed to travel to Ikana and sneak their way into his lair. A stealth mission begins, and the duo must avoid the security to reach the room where the precious items are held. Once they pass this, they break into the audition and confronts Sakon. The thief will send out Wolfos and monsters to hold them off as he once again try to escape, but by defeating the enemies Link will face him one on one and quickly wins. Sakon would then be apprehended by Viscen, and the audition quickly scatters. As Link gets his Transformation Masks back, Sakon reveals that he knew of their magical transformation powers the whole time as he had been spying on Link. He further admits that he planned to make a fortune off of them for that reason alone, saying there are nothing else like them in Termina. Viscen silence him and the screen fades white, where we see Sakon being sentence to prison. Viscen congratulates Link and offers him a guard's mask as a reward for his trouble, a mask that enables him to directly help more people across Termina.

This should be a Fanfiction. I need to write this now.

                                                Conclusion

Although I love Clock Town dearly, after playing Ocarina of Time I found myself really wishing that Nintendo took the time to include a small section of neighborhoods in the town. All the possibilities are just screaming to come to life!

#RemakeMajora'sMask4HomeConsoles

That is it. I have nothing more to say. This is how I would expand Clock Town if I were part of the Zelda Team. I sure have an active imagination. A switch remake would defiantly have the power needed to render all of this. How would you improve Clock Town? Tell me what you would add to Majora's Mask should you be given the chance!

Thank you for taking your time to reading this. I'll share more ideas on other Zelda games like Breath of the Wild. Will it be a mini series? Maybe. It depends whether an idea spark in my head. I do have a sidequest idea for BotW, so it'll be posted next time!

[persephone-damnedqueen]

Beginning Thoughts of the Fall Anime Season 2017 . . .

Welp, fall is here, and as usual, it is time for me to do my annual first impressions of the season’s anime titles.  My gods if you thought the amount of shows I checked out last season was a lot, this season’s amount is insane.  This season, so far, I have checked out 22 shows thus far and plan for at least 7 more to pick up.  Insane, right?  So how do they stack up so far?   Let’s see.  Also, please keep in mind, that these are solely based off of the first one or two episodes, and are purely my opinion, so if my opinion is different than yours, then I’d love to here it.   Also, I will try to remain as spoiler free as possible.  

Netojuu no Susume:  Studio Signal.MD

Dropped.  Alright, so I feel like I have to mention this.   I’m a serious gamer.  More specifically, I love me some MMOs.  How much you ask?   Well, so much so that I actually met my husband on World of Warcraft.  Insane right?  I mean my god you do not want to see our /played time on that game.  So, needless to say, I am a bit critical on gaming anime because of this, because I know what it’s like.   This anime was just. . . . cringey.  I found myself sighing every chance I got and by the 20 minute mark, completely turning it off.  Everything about the first episode was just  . . . bad.  There’s really just no redeeming qualities. . . well, one line said by the Guild Master which was something along the lines of “you have no idea what her irl gender is.”  I laughed.  It’s accurate.  85% of female toons you see on wow are actually guys. Anyways, moving on.   

Evil or Live:  Haoliners Animation

Dropped.  Mmmm  I had such high hopes.  After reading the summary, I will admit, I was hyped for this show.  On Paper, this show sounds wonderful.  I thought it was going to be some horror psychological thriller that at the end of it left you questioning the very meaning of the world around you or something.  Instead, what happened?   I . . .don’t even know.  The series starts off with massive amounts of Live Action, which, while being completely unexpected, I didn’t mind so much; the series became an instant drop for me when the MC and Co were clearly showing a break from reality and needed actual mental help, was beaten instead.   It wasn’t “horror” or “edgy” it was just poor writing.  Needless to say, I have dropped it.

Just Because!: Studio Pine Jam

Dropped.  For no other reason that fuck it’s boring.  I fell asleep watching it not once, but twice.  It was that boring.  This series proves that even the prettiest of shows can bore you to death.  

Omiai Aite wa Oshiego Tsuyoki na, Mondaiji:  Studio Seven

Porn.  With Plot.  Alright, so this is an actual hentai series.  Not like Soft-Core either like Hajimete no Gal was last season.  This is an actual hentai series, and if you could believe it, it’s actually more plot focused and semi-interesting than 95% of hentai out there.. . . Well, as interesting as a hentai series about a female teacher and a student banging and “engaged” can be.  Don’t get me wrong here, it’s totally trash, but hey, each episode is only four minutes, so I’m going to keep watching this trash just a bit longer to see where it goes.  

Sengoku Night Blood:  Typhoon Graphics

Mmmm Still waiting for the day with they make a good anime based off of an Otome Game.  Alright, so here’s the story.  Girl gets sent back into another world and gains a harem.  A vampire harem.  That’s it.  I’ve saved you the trouble of checking this series out.  You’re welcome.  

Urahara:  Studios Emt^2 and Shirogumi

Dropped.  Instant Drop.  Jesus Christ that animation is fucking trash.  You have two studios working on this series, and the animation still looks that garbagey?!?!  How?!?!?!  I can’t even with this. . . Ugh, nope, moving on.  

Osake wa Fuufu ni Natte kara:  Creators in Pack

Yet another series that will probably be dropped halfway through.  Honestly, there’s just nothing that really happens in this series, and I know it’s really hard for anything to happen in a four minute long series, but literally nothing happens.   Wife comes home.  Husband makes her drink.  Wife gets tipsy.  Thank you husband.  I mean the main reason why I’m going to be sticking it out just a bit longer is to keep getting cocktail recipes haha.   

Imouto Sae Ireba Ii:  Sliver Link Studios

Will probably be dropped.  Is it just me or is this series like Silver Link’s answer to A-1′s EroManga Sensei?  Honestly, this show is meh at best so far.  The art is nothing too great, and the story screams EroManga, and since I wasn’t a fan, I really don’t see myself watching more than three episodes.  

Boku no Kanojo ga Majimesugiru Sho-Bitch na Ken:  Studio Diomedea

I started watching it with hopes of it doing two things.  One, fill the hole in my heart that was left when Hajimete no Gal ended; and two, explain what the hell a Sho-Bitch is.  In all honestly though, this show is probably going to be dropped.  While the art is generic, the characters are bland and too common; I also the comedy too forced at time and repeatable.  Yes, we understand main waifu really just wants to figure out what Haruka likes, and obviously misinterprets everything, but does that really have to be the joke every single time?

Inuyashiki:  Studio MAPPA

Ah, the latest from Studio MAPPA.  I have one question:  MAPPA, what the fuck?  Let me clarify.  The opening few minutes of the first episode made me feel.  Fuck, I almost started crying.  It was depressing and yet the story was just relatable and beautiful all at the same time.  I was feeling feels I didn’t want to feel.  It really kept true to the Drama tag, which I love.  I’m a sucker for some hardcore drama filled series.  Then. . . .it got weird.  Some weird like mecha space alien thing weird.  So, again, MAPPA, what the fuck?  Don’t get me wrong here.  I will be continuing to watch this solely because despite the series taking that weird turn, in no way did that make the actual tone any less enjoyable.  Plus, the art style is so unique to the show, I’m curious as to where it can go from here.  

Mahoutsukai no Yome:  Wit Studio

Alright, I’m a fan.  This has to be a contender for Anime of the Season, and we aren’t even three episodes into it yet.  It’s wonderful, and not only one of my favorites from this season so far, but my favorite thing Wit Studio has ever done, (and yes, that just brought me a ton of hate from SnK fans haha).   I can see and agree with the hype this series has had.   Honestly, check it out.  It’s good  and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.  

Blend S:  A-1 Pictures

I found my Moe-Blob for the season, and I’m so happy.  I actually really like this series so far.  It was adorable, and literally just what I want in my seasonal moe-blob.  It’s nothing too driven plot wise, and definitely won’t be anime of the season or anything like that; it’s literally just Cute Girls waitressing in this cute cafe.  Regardless, I’m definitely going to continue to watch it for a bit longer at least.  

Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou:  Studio White Fox

Keep your eye on this one this season.  It’s probably going to be the Dark Horse of this season.  In all honestly, I became instantly hooked watching the first episode.  The tone at the start was so eerie and grim that I found myself getting literal goosebumps.   Maybe it’s the high I’m on after the Made in Abyss ending, or just wanting to find something to fill the void that series has left me with, but I’m getting serious MiA vibes.  I’m hoping this series is even half as good as MiA was.  Also, I’m a major fan already of how unique the art is for this show.  

Ousama Game The Animation:  Studio Seven

I’m biased.  Period.  I will be watching this show no matter how terrible it could ever get solely because my favorite Seiyuu is the lead.  Mamoru is a God, and I will watch it religiously every week.  That being said, I can tell you that this show is edgy as fuck, and with it being one of two survival game anime out right now this season, this one is definitely the weaker, edgier of the two.  It is a pretty cool concept though, and I’m already a fan of the survival game concept, that I don’t mind watching this one until the end.  I would also like to warn that this one is definitely gory so if you don’t like that than this isn’t for you.    

Konohana Kitan:  Studio Lerche

CUTE LITTLE FOX GIRLS.  I REPEAT, CUTE LITTLE FOX GIRLS.  Having read the summary for the series prior,and seeing both the Seinen and Shoujo Ai tag on it and that it would be done by Lerche, it became an instant check out at least, and I’m glad I did.  This series is the calming pallet cleanser.  It’s the show where you can turn off your mind and just watch the cuteness.  Plus, did I mention cute little fox girls?  What more do you need?   

Black Clover:  Studio Pierrot

Alright, I’m split in two for this.  Part of me wants me to look at this show for what it is:  a stereotypical shounen series, with decent animation, predictable plot and bad voice acting, if you saw the first episode you’d know what I’m talking about.   This show screams Naruto, Fairy Tail and Bleach rip off; and hell, since I hate Naruto, never got into Bleach, and am still VERY pissed at Fairy Tail, combining the three into one really just makes me both cringe and glare at the screen.   Evil Glare.  A glare that if I could, would totally shoot lasers out and everything.  I mean hell, it’s even done by the same studio as Naruto.  Regardless, the tons and tons of shounen I’ve seen makes me just feel like this is repeating it all.   That’s one part of me.  The other part of me enjoys this show, solely for the fact that my husband LOVES the Black Clover manga, so watching it with him makes me at least want to give it a chance.   I do however doubt it will be as big as people hype it up to be, and if it does get big it will be nowhere near as good quality wise as a lot of other shounens, and will take a lot for me to become a fan.  

Juuni Taisen:  Graphinica

Without a doubt, my favorite from this season.  I’m hooked.  This series has it all:  unique character designs, well executed art, and a killer story line, (pun intended).  Mmmmm this story is wonderful.  It hooks you from the start, which is to be expected since the original source is written by the same original writer for the Monogatari Series.  There’s plot twists and betrayals and just epicness.  It also has one of the best openings and closings of the season.  Side Note:  THE PSYCHOTIC LITTLE USAGI BOY IS BEST BOY AND I WILL FIGHT ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE, AND IF HE DOESN’T WIN I WILL RIOT.  

Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru:  Washio Sumi no Shou:  Studio Gokumi

When I first saw that Yuki Yuno was getting another season, I was fucking thrilled.  Yuki Yuno was a magical girl series that I fell in love with not only because of the Madoka Magica vibes it had, but because of the beautiful art and animation and vibrant colors it used.  It’s visually stunning.  So, how is the prequel turning out?  Still just as stunning.  In all honestly, I’m going to love this series provided it stays true to the themes and tones of the first season, and if the opening episodes are anything to say about the rest of the series, then I know it will.  Plus, who isn’t up for Magical Girls this season?

Osomatsu-san 2nd Season:  Studio Pierrot

I actually genuinely missed this show.  My gods this show is a gift.  This has to be one of the underapprieciated comedy gems to come out in the recent years, and it fills me with joy knowing that it still shines just like the first season did.  I enjoy watching the episodic skits of everyone’s favorite sextuplets.  Seriously, why have you not started this show?  

Shokugeki no Soma:  J.C.Staff

DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I’VE WAITED TO SEE MY SON KUGA ANIMATED?!!??!  TOO LONG.  This is hands down the best season of Food Wars yet, and we are barely a couple episodes into it.   I love the pacing of this season, and having being a manga reader, I can confirm for you that it’s completely accurate with the manga thus far.  J.C Staff is clearly showing that they still care about Food Wars and aren’t rushing with the season.  Also, thank the gods for the 24 episode season.  THAT’S MORE EPISODES OF MY PRECIOUS KUGA.  

3-Gatsu no Lion 2nd Season:  Studio Shaft

I cried.  I fucking cried.  Hard.  My god I missed this series.  Everything about the first episode was fantastic.  The music and animation were spot on, but of course nothing out of the ordinary for the phenomenal Studio Shaft, but what did I love most you ask?  Character Development.  MY FUCKING GOD.  Compare Rei to the start of Season one, and you’d never think it’s the same person.  I can’t stress that enough.  If this first episode is a sign on how amazing the rest of this season is going to be then I’m beyond fucking happy.  This is the series I’ve been waiting for since the start of the year.  

Gintama.  Porori-hen:  Bandai Namco Pictures

Has there ever been like a bad season of Gintama?   Like Ever?  All this season has proved to me is: one, life is boring and dull without Gintama.  Two, Gintama is the king of comedy series.  Three, Gintama is without a doubt one of the greatest series of all time.   This season is hilarious and easily makes me burst out laughing from start to finish.  Thank you Gintama, I’ve truly missed you.  

Ballroom e Youkoso:  Production I.G.

How is the second half of the season you ask?  *Insert Pouting Face Here*  Fuck you, Chi-chan.  Worst Girl 2017.  THERE I SAID IT.  YEAH, I SAID IT.  WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?  #BRINGBACKBESTGIRL2017  Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Tartara has a partner now, but like seriously why her? -.-  Why couldn’t Mako just be his partner forever and they could live happily ever after?  

 So, yeah, those are my thoughts so far on the Fall Anime 2017 season.   Let me know yours, and if there is anything I’m not watching, and should be, then please tell me!  I love recommendations, and I already know of a few that I need to pick up. . . .

[harvestmoonconfessionsv2]

I just started Trio of Towns :D! It’s really great so far, but does anyone have any tips to get started?

TIPS TO GET STARTED UNDER THE CUT!

1. In this game, you can’t catch/sell bugs but Dessie will give you rewards (gems and fertilizer, for example) when you “find” them. Face the bug and click A, it will tell you its name. Save before finding the 100th bug and reload the Dessie reward event until you get 3 gems, which sell for about 11-13k (a big amount at the beginning).  info

2. Buy and plant a lot of crops, and if you have spare money fertilize at least one (1) square. You can sell all the low-level start crops OR cook them before selling them. Keep the higher level star for the Harvest Festival or to make seeds from it with the seed maker.

3. You can also win the first Harvest festival with just the fertilizer you can buy at the shop. Plant the seeds but not water them. As long as it stays at the seed stage, it will not wither. Even if it sprouts, it will last several days without water too. So if you plant them as soon as possible (use potatoes, they take longer to grow that radish, and you are sure to get several rainy days during the month) you can easily get crops with the first parameter almost full at the end of the month. Since you cannot get the seed maker until summer, this is the best way to get crops with parameters as high as possible during the first spring.

If you can water it twice a day start watering it on the 26th, if you can only water them 1 time a day, start on the 23rd.

4. Do as many job requests as possible. At the beginning, you will have a lot of free time each day since stamina goes down quite fast in veteran mode. There is a job offered by Ford where you have to try some medicine he prepared (save before you take the job; the effect of the medicine is random, but some replenish your stamina fully, which is useful if your current stamina is almost zero), with base payment of 1500. So if you have been completing jobs regularly, you can get around 3k easily (plus stamina recovery). info info

In addition to money, you get items and food as payment for the jobs. The food you get is something the giver likes. And in occasions is his/her favorite thing or someone else’s. For example, Frank sometimes gives you pizza, which is his favourite thing. Ford sometimes gives you a dish, I don’t remember the name, which Mitra likes the best.

Always save some crops and flowers for job requests and save basically every milk/egg for job requests.

5. When mining, if you wait 3 or more days before mining again, you will get better drops that mining everyday. And save before mining and if you don’t get the ore you want reload and try again. But at first, is better to mine everyday, since you get black stone and iron easier, and that is what you need for the first tool upgrade to reduce stamina consumption. Get 45 black stones before upgrading your hammer (Don’t upgrade your hammer’s efficiency too quickly because if you blow past ex. efficiency lvl 3, black stone gets shunted out of the “loot table” for the most part. I ended up having to buy a second hammer to keep at a lower level). And save 5 jade and 5 black stone to improve the range of your watering can to 1x2 if you have a lot of crops. info info which ores to sell or NOT info DON’T SELL BLACK STONE AND BRANCHES AND DON’T CONVERT THEM TO ROCK AND LUMBER. D O N O T.

But honestly DON’T sell your ores, save them. You will need them. You can get a lot of money doing other things.

6. Get a cow and chicken asap. In this game, animals have some “stats” you must level up if you want to get better byproducts info

When buying your first livestock, don’t worry about buying the milker and brush; if you do, Frank will give you 2000 G and if you don’t he will just give you the items for free so you don’t lose anything in this situation.

Try to get one of every type of livestock.

Get 2 herding pets ASAP. 

7. Town link ranks info if you want to plan ahead of time which crops/items you need to save so you don’t get stuck waiting until the NEXT YEAR to unlock a rank. But SAVE 20 SWEET POTATOES FROM YOUR 1ST FALL.

8. Once you get 5,000 FP with a villager or 10,000 FP with a marriage candidate to be invited to eat when you talk to them while they’re eating. info

list of items to gift early in game

9. Soft soil makes crops grow faster, as well as watering twice a day.

10. Pressing L button while walking or running next to someone counts for the “daily talk” friendship boost. It doesn’t work if you’re riding your horse.

11. If you want to chop a lot of rocks/branches: GO TO INVENTORY > LOOK FOR THE ITEM YOU WANT TO CHOP > PRESS A > SELECT PLACE > CHOSE THE AMOUNT YOU WANT TO CHOP > CHOP THEM ALL AT ONCE

12. SAVE WEEDS!!!! THOSE ARE FERTILIZER YOU CAN USE WHEN YOU GET THE FERTILIZER OR AND LIQUID FERTILIZER MAKER!!!!

13. Giant crops give you 5 dishes when you cook them.

15. Eat fish pie if you want to restore stamina. It’s 500G in westown’s restaurant. (But you can eat for free with villagers, but it’s nice to know other options)

16. GROW AND SAVE COCONUTS AS SOON AS YOU CAN (year 2 - summer) you’ll need 15 of them, so save them.

17. You can pick up stuff around your farm in the “arrange farm” mode. Saves time!

18. If you have some wilted crops or it’s the end of the seasons go to the… THING where you can arrange your farm and return the fields to the inventory and place them again it will return clean and you will have to plow the soil again tho.

19. FARM CIRCLES YOU SHOULD BUILD ASAP. INFO

Seed Maker

Unlocks: You complete Farming Tips 1

20,000 G, 20 Lumber, 10 Small Lumber, 10 Glittering Stone, 3 Topaz, 2 Ruby

MAIDEN WITH SHIELD

Unlocks: Complete Farming Advice 2, and have two friendship hearts with Dessie.

2100G, 50 Black Stone, 3 Diamond, 15 Emerald, 3 Platinum, 1 Philosopher’s Stone

Effect: Increase quality of maker products in 4 directions, affecting 3 fields in each direction

Chicken King Statue

Unlocks: Spring of Year 2 and you have completed Farming Tips #2

2800 G, 50 Black Stone, 20 Gold, 15 Ruby, 5 Adamantite, 5 Crystal

Effect: Small increase to animal product level

20. HOW TO MAKE MONEY COOKING

IN THIS GAME YOU CAN COOK BATCHES AND IT ALL COUNTS TO THE TROPHIES. EVERY COOKING TROPHY YOU UNLOCK IT WILL GIVE YOU A BOOST % IN THE SELLING PRINCES OF THE MEALS. COOK 100 TO GET THE FIRST BOOST. INFO

Buy a pudding recipe. Use 1 egg and 1 milk, and the pudding is worth 858G. That is like quadruple what they were worth ingredients alone. And it is an easy recipe to get almost full stamina back. 

Westown: Once you get the Corn Bread recipe from Brad in Westown and can purchase Corn Meal from a vendor in Westown for 336G a piece you can sell the made Corn Bread for 432G

Tsuyukusa: Once you have the Rice Porridge recipe from the Teahouse (D rank) you can purchase Soy Sauce and Rice (not the stalk, the second one) from Ittetsu for 196G and 105G each and turn it into Rice Porridge which sells for 540G. 

Lulukoko: Once you have the Sashimi recipe you can purchase Soy Sauce from the vendor in Tsuyukusa and a medium fish from Caolila for 245Gand sell the Sashimi for 648G.

The profit for a stack of Corn Bread is 9,504G, for Rice Porridge it’s 23,661G and for Sashimi it’s 20,439G.

Corn Bread is a loss for Veteran mode, but Rice Porridge has a 7,920g profit per stack

For an even higher profit margin you can make Smoothie. You need Lulukoko at A rank OR to ship 100 dishes to Lulukoko to unlock it and the ingredients are milk (purchase for 245G), yogurt (purchase for 245G) and a fruit (lychee is the cheapest I have unlocked and it’s 436G). The smoothie with the 100 recipe bonus sells for 1380G but it still has a profit without the bonus. The profit per stack is 44,946g. You could also just use your own milk from your cows for a larger profit, but buying allows you to sell in bulk. This recipe also has the money discount buff!

Purchasing ten stacks of corn meal/soy sauce/medium fish/etc. (ten stacks of anything really) will give you enough town link rating to get to the next lock, and if you cook these in high quantities you’ll be increasing your cooking skill while cutting a profit.

There you go a lot of tips from a lot of sites lmao but I’ve used all of them in my file so yeah if you need more just message me at @aegeanfarm :D -Admin Alex

[easyfoodnetwork]

Cooking Solo in the Woods

When an escape to a rural Vermont cabin means scenic beauty, isolation, and hopefully outrunning the stubborn ghost of a five-pound roast chicken that’s been haunting you for weeks

Clio Chang is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. When not traveling alone, she covers politics, culture, and more.

One night, early in quarantine, I roasted a whole chicken. I had just isolated myself in a friend’s empty one-bedroom apartment, away from my roommates, and was celebrating living alone, however temporarily, for the first time in my life. I bought a five-pound honker, lugged it home in my straining bike bag, and prepared it the same way I usually did: I went heavy on the salt and pepper; skipped the trussing because literally what am I, a chef; threw the chicken over some vegetables; and shoved the whole thing in the oven for a couple of hours. It wasn’t until I sat down to carve and eat it that I realized what I had done. I had made five whole pounds of chicken, plus a Thanksgiving meal’s worth of roasted vegetables, for just one person.

People often feel daunted making big meals to entertain guests, but the hardest task is cooking for one. As I quickly found out, it’s far easier to make too much rather than just enough. And guests will usually lie and tell you something tastes good, on top of bringing over beer and wine to wash down whatever you make.

People often feel daunted making big meals to entertain guests, but the hardest task is cooking for one.

I ate that chicken for weeks. I ate it in sandwiches, I ate it on ramen, I ate it straight out of the refrigerator when I excused myself from a Zoom hang to “grab a beer.” I made broth from the bones, even though I don’t really like broth, because honestly, what better things did I have to do? Eating chicken and chicken byproducts became my job, which I did better than my actual job, from which I was later laid off. And yet I still had chicken left over, a Strega Nona-style cursed reminder that not only was I alone, I was alone alone.

Months later, as I set off for my first trip outside of New York City in four months, I was still thinking about my isolation chicken. I hadn’t left Brooklyn since March, aside from two stints into Manhattan for protests and noodles, and I had imagined it would feel like a satisfying, full-body stretch. It would be my first time driving a car in months, my first time moving more than 30 miles per hour, my first time seeing the green rolling hills that lined the highways on the way to my destination, a small A-frame cabin in the mountains of Vermont that I’d found at the last minute on Airbnb. But all I could really think about was the chicken.

Out of Brooklyn, into the idyllic wilds of Vermont

My goal was to take a vacation — to escape, even for a brief moment — as safely as possible during the pandemic. I would be doing the trip solo, which might feel less like a break and more like a test. I would be taking time for myself after months of having more time to myself than I’d had in my entire life. Why would I want additional time in my own brain, which was already filled with manufactured chicken anxieties?

But I was determined to enjoy my four days off. After all, my world was going to suddenly expand in an explosive way: I would get to see regional billboards, smell the forest air, hear the sounds of nothing at night. I resolved to not ruin it by creating another monster; a constant, edible reminder of the fact that I could not share a space or a table or a trip with my family and friends.

Why would I want additional time in my own brain, which was already filled with manufactured chicken anxieties?

The day I left, Brooklyn was in the middle of a heat wave with little reprieve, and the air was swollen and heavy. Because I was going from a high-density area to a low-density area, I resolved to buy all of my groceries before I got out of the city, stopping at H-Mart on the way. I’d had “make a grocery list” on my to-do list for days, but the ghost of my chickens past did not help me overcome my extreme laziness, and I did not, in fact, “make a grocery list.” With no plan, I ended up buying a random assortment of foods, including four pieces of cooked mackerel, one steak, one conch, 12 clams, a packet of matcha sponge cake, king oyster mushrooms, and the kind of eggplant that is both long and sexy. As I walked out of the grocery store, I passed a Trader Joe’s that had an endless line of people waiting six feet apart to enter. I felt smugly superior until I got to the car and realized that my impulse mackerel purchase was stinking up the whole backseat. A friend, of course, would have gently advised against the idea.

A campfire for one

Lunch at the lake, accompanied by the promise of a lazy summer afternoon

The only thing I hate more than being alone is coordinating with others, so I’ve ended up on many solo trips. Contrary to their premise, solo vacations don’t usually entail being truly alone — in traveling on your own, you open yourself to meeting new people. Any solo vacation movie will tell you this: In Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Lily James (as a young Meryl Streep) goes off to Greece alone, only to meet and befriend the three men who become co-fathers of her child, one to two Greek people, and a horse. The movie ends with James singing a number with all of her new friends and family, including Meryl Streep (as an old Lily James).

And then there’s Under the Tuscan Sun, which revolves around a recently divorced Diane Lane, sent by friends to go alone on a gay tour of romantic Tuscany. Lane, who is straight, gamely dons a hat that reads “Gay & Away,” and by the end of the movie she ends up with a new house filled to the brim with the patchwork family she has collected on her trip. One of the Polish workers Lane hires to renovate her house sums up her situation most succinctly when he asks her to join them for dinner: “It’s unhealthy to eat alone.”

This trail, while lovely, did not lead to the ghost of Meryl Streep.

Movies tend to exaggerate, but on my own solo vacations, I almost always manage to con someone into being my friend, even if just for a day. But this type of antisocial trip, where I wouldn’t interact with anyone, was new for me. (This particular region of Vermont was also new to me, although one friend helpfully told me that my cabin was two towns away from where she played high school soccer.) I got tested for COVID-19 a week before the trip, but because the results hadn’t arrived when I left, I decided to be extra cautious and avoid seeing anyone when I arrived at my destination. I passed farm stands, imagining all the chats I could have with Polish workers, and spurned pit stops for coffee, thus eliminating the possibility of meeting the ghost of Meryl Streep.

Because I was literally not here to make friends, I ended up inventing them. When I was about an hour from my destination, my car kept flashing an image of a coffee mug and asking me, Do you want to take a break? I thought this was both rude and forward. But I found myself saying back, “No, haha, I’m fine,” somewhat fondly. Ten minutes later, as I craned my neck to look at a billboard advertising fine homemade furniture, my car started screaming “BRAKE! BRAKE!!” I also started screaming and we screamed and slammed on the brake together to avoid hitting the car in front of us, which had slowed down to turn. “Car is friend,” I thought to myself.

Contrary to their premise, solo vacations don’t usually entail being truly alone — in traveling on your own, you open yourself to meeting new people.

When I got to the cabin and stepped outside the car, I was immediately met with a wall of crisp Vermont air. Over the next three days, I would spend most of my time hiking alone, reading under a small covered porch when it rained, or curled up in bed watching TikToks until late in the morning. Away from New York, my new surroundings were a balm, and I found myself wishing I could share them. I showed off the lush trees to friends over FaceTime, and breathed in enough air for a small city. But I resisted the urge to connect: When I trekked to a small, remote pond, I walked a wide circle around the group of teenage boys wrestling to see who could more casually throw themselves off the cliff into the water below. I stuffed away my instinct to talk to anyone, and for a small, brief moment, while I sat in the sun by the water, I felt my brain unspool with the promise of a lazy summer afternoon.

The majority of my time, though, was spent cooking. In the small cabin kitchen I made Taiwanese night market-style king oyster mushrooms, brushing them in a chile soy sauce as they grilled and tossing them with Thai basil and garlic. I made H-Mart marinated short ribs with sauteed Chinese mustard greens on the side. I cooked down the sexy eggplant with a simple teriyaki sauce made from garlic, sugar, and soy sauce, making extra to drizzle over $6 worth of flank steak for one. I also wanted to make pasta al vongole, but realized I had only bought racchette pasta — the type shaped like a tiny tennis racquet for a Hamptons mouse — because I thought it had “vacation” vibes at the time. So I ended up with a dish of clams over tennis racquets.

When your dream of pasta al vongole materializes as a dish of clams over tennis racquets

As the cabin’s only cook and diner and Yelp reviewer, I was acutely over-aware of the quality of every item of food that I made, relishing dishes when I pulled them off and despairing when I made mistakes. The memory of my isolation chicken lingered on the edges of the kitchen — as I cooked, I was careful to curb my impulse to make all the food at once, and instead cut down my portions to a manageable amount for one person. Everything took more time to make and plan than I expected, especially since I was unable to find any Tupperware in the cabin, which meant I was preparing three new meals every day. Unlike at home, I’d have to throw away whatever food I didn’t use. And so I became my own wretched Tupperware, overindulging on each dish.

Yet even though I did everything well, more or less, I still found myself tired of prepping food, cooking it, and cleaning the dishes. Completely removed from my community at home, all of this labor on behalf of myself only became more obvious. I thought about how I used to sit on the floor of my friends’ living rooms, gossiping with their discombobulated voices as they made me dinner in their kitchens. I missed the dishes that my mother would sneak hot peppers into because I “had to learn” how to tolerate spice. I thought about my favorite nights at restaurants, like the time when the table next to us got up and left and our waiter hurried over to inform us that yes, that was, in fact, the Carlos Santana.

I was also upset with myself for thinking these thoughts during a global recession when so many were struggling to feed themselves at all, and for feeling worn out by cooking for myself every day when so many were making food for entire families. I knew these feelings of guilt were useless on their own.

But what I was grasping for wasn’t really a reprieve from cooking. Rather, I missed the person I was around others. Ruth Reichl recently wrote about a night at a Paris restaurant when the maitre d’ whisked away her 8-year-old son to take part in games being organized for the neighborhood children. When her son returned, he told Reichl that he thought it was “a very fine restaurant,” to which she replied that he’d only tried the french fries and cake. “C’mon mom,” her son replied. “You know restaurants aren’t really about the food.” Those words stuck in my head for weeks. It turns out that it’s only really just about the food when you’re cooking for one.

The cabin’s kitchen, small but functional aside from its lack of Tupperware

In my isolation, I also began thinking about the idea of leisure time — specifically, the pervasive American ethos that holds that time off is an extravagance that must be earned. It’s so deeply ingrained that I even felt a pause taking my vacation, as if time off is a scarce natural resource, as if time alone is selfish. But though isolating myself further seemed somewhat redundant, taking a break had made me feel more settled and clear-headed, a feeling that should be more available, not less.

If anything, the pandemic should remind us that everyone deserves leisure time, even if it must be in solitude or at home. There’s something to learn from the countries where our solo vacation movie protagonists escape to — in both Greece and Italy, workers are entitled to 20 days minimum paid vacation every year, while in the United States, workers are guaranteed no paid vacation at all. If there is one thing in Under the Tuscan Sun that makes complete sense, it’s that Diane Lane never returns home.

On the day I left Vermont, I was so sick of planning and preparing food that I ended up eating a breakfast of matcha sponge cake and packed a lunch for the road, also of matcha sponge cake.

If anything, the pandemic should remind us that everyone deserves leisure time, even if it must be in solitude or at home.

As I started the four-hour drive to the city, I felt strangely anxious to get back. I thought about how my generation was once credited with killing both the restaurant industry and vacations, and I laughed imagining someone trying to make that argument now, as our government allowed the pandemic to destroy small businesses and communities with abandon. Even though it would be a long while until I could cook a roast chicken for my family, or meet a friend for drinks at a bar, I knew that being closer to my own community and the businesses I love still felt better than being farther away.

During those four days in Vermont, I found that there was a difference between being alone within a community and isolated from it. In the course of all my complaining, I had forgotten about the times when my friends and I would bring beers or snacks or order a pizza to hang on a stoop or at a park, or the day when my mom taught us how to make scallion pancakes over video chat. I forgot that while I was eating my big chicken, I was often chatting with friends and family over the phone, making that chicken as much a comfort as it was a curse. Even though we constantly had to negotiate with ourselves and each other — eating six feet away, bringing our own glasses, taking dinners to Zoom — we found ways to connect. There are other ways to share a table; by figuring out how, we will be able to start picking up the pieces again.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3kYVXTn https://ift.tt/32axcuI

When an escape to a rural Vermont cabin means scenic beauty, isolation, and hopefully outrunning the stubborn ghost of a five-pound roast chicken that’s been haunting you for weeks

Clio Chang is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. When not traveling alone, she covers politics, culture, and more.

One night, early in quarantine, I roasted a whole chicken. I had just isolated myself in a friend’s empty one-bedroom apartment, away from my roommates, and was celebrating living alone, however temporarily, for the first time in my life. I bought a five-pound honker, lugged it home in my straining bike bag, and prepared it the same way I usually did: I went heavy on the salt and pepper; skipped the trussing because literally what am I, a chef; threw the chicken over some vegetables; and shoved the whole thing in the oven for a couple of hours. It wasn’t until I sat down to carve and eat it that I realized what I had done. I had made five whole pounds of chicken, plus a Thanksgiving meal’s worth of roasted vegetables, for just one person.

People often feel daunted making big meals to entertain guests, but the hardest task is cooking for one. As I quickly found out, it’s far easier to make too much rather than just enough. And guests will usually lie and tell you something tastes good, on top of bringing over beer and wine to wash down whatever you make.

People often feel daunted making big meals to entertain guests, but the hardest task is cooking for one.

I ate that chicken for weeks. I ate it in sandwiches, I ate it on ramen, I ate it straight out of the refrigerator when I excused myself from a Zoom hang to “grab a beer.” I made broth from the bones, even though I don’t really like broth, because honestly, what better things did I have to do? Eating chicken and chicken byproducts became my job, which I did better than my actual job, from which I was later laid off. And yet I still had chicken left over, a Strega Nona-style cursed reminder that not only was I alone, I was alone alone.

Months later, as I set off for my first trip outside of New York City in four months, I was still thinking about my isolation chicken. I hadn’t left Brooklyn since March, aside from two stints into Manhattan for protests and noodles, and I had imagined it would feel like a satisfying, full-body stretch. It would be my first time driving a car in months, my first time moving more than 30 miles per hour, my first time seeing the green rolling hills that lined the highways on the way to my destination, a small A-frame cabin in the mountains of Vermont that I’d found at the last minute on Airbnb. But all I could really think about was the chicken.

Out of Brooklyn, into the idyllic wilds of Vermont

My goal was to take a vacation — to escape, even for a brief moment — as safely as possible during the pandemic. I would be doing the trip solo, which might feel less like a break and more like a test. I would be taking time for myself after months of having more time to myself than I’d had in my entire life. Why would I want additional time in my own brain, which was already filled with manufactured chicken anxieties?

But I was determined to enjoy my four days off. After all, my world was going to suddenly expand in an explosive way: I would get to see regional billboards, smell the forest air, hear the sounds of nothing at night. I resolved to not ruin it by creating another monster; a constant, edible reminder of the fact that I could not share a space or a table or a trip with my family and friends.

Why would I want additional time in my own brain, which was already filled with manufactured chicken anxieties?

The day I left, Brooklyn was in the middle of a heat wave with little reprieve, and the air was swollen and heavy. Because I was going from a high-density area to a low-density area, I resolved to buy all of my groceries before I got out of the city, stopping at H-Mart on the way. I’d had “make a grocery list” on my to-do list for days, but the ghost of my chickens past did not help me overcome my extreme laziness, and I did not, in fact, “make a grocery list.” With no plan, I ended up buying a random assortment of foods, including four pieces of cooked mackerel, one steak, one conch, 12 clams, a packet of matcha sponge cake, king oyster mushrooms, and the kind of eggplant that is both long and sexy. As I walked out of the grocery store, I passed a Trader Joe’s that had an endless line of people waiting six feet apart to enter. I felt smugly superior until I got to the car and realized that my impulse mackerel purchase was stinking up the whole backseat. A friend, of course, would have gently advised against the idea.

A campfire for one

Lunch at the lake, accompanied by the promise of a lazy summer afternoon

The only thing I hate more than being alone is coordinating with others, so I’ve ended up on many solo trips. Contrary to their premise, solo vacations don’t usually entail being truly alone — in traveling on your own, you open yourself to meeting new people. Any solo vacation movie will tell you this: In Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Lily James (as a young Meryl Streep) goes off to Greece alone, only to meet and befriend the three men who become co-fathers of her child, one to two Greek people, and a horse. The movie ends with James singing a number with all of her new friends and family, including Meryl Streep (as an old Lily James).

And then there’s Under the Tuscan Sun, which revolves around a recently divorced Diane Lane, sent by friends to go alone on a gay tour of romantic Tuscany. Lane, who is straight, gamely dons a hat that reads “Gay & Away,” and by the end of the movie she ends up with a new house filled to the brim with the patchwork family she has collected on her trip. One of the Polish workers Lane hires to renovate her house sums up her situation most succinctly when he asks her to join them for dinner: “It’s unhealthy to eat alone.”

This trail, while lovely, did not lead to the ghost of Meryl Streep.

Movies tend to exaggerate, but on my own solo vacations, I almost always manage to con someone into being my friend, even if just for a day. But this type of antisocial trip, where I wouldn’t interact with anyone, was new for me. (This particular region of Vermont was also new to me, although one friend helpfully told me that my cabin was two towns away from where she played high school soccer.) I got tested for COVID-19 a week before the trip, but because the results hadn’t arrived when I left, I decided to be extra cautious and avoid seeing anyone when I arrived at my destination. I passed farm stands, imagining all the chats I could have with Polish workers, and spurned pit stops for coffee, thus eliminating the possibility of meeting the ghost of Meryl Streep.

Because I was literally not here to make friends, I ended up inventing them. When I was about an hour from my destination, my car kept flashing an image of a coffee mug and asking me, Do you want to take a break? I thought this was both rude and forward. But I found myself saying back, “No, haha, I’m fine,” somewhat fondly. Ten minutes later, as I craned my neck to look at a billboard advertising fine homemade furniture, my car started screaming “BRAKE! BRAKE!!” I also started screaming and we screamed and slammed on the brake together to avoid hitting the car in front of us, which had slowed down to turn. “Car is friend,” I thought to myself.

Contrary to their premise, solo vacations don’t usually entail being truly alone — in traveling on your own, you open yourself to meeting new people.

When I got to the cabin and stepped outside the car, I was immediately met with a wall of crisp Vermont air. Over the next three days, I would spend most of my time hiking alone, reading under a small covered porch when it rained, or curled up in bed watching TikToks until late in the morning. Away from New York, my new surroundings were a balm, and I found myself wishing I could share them. I showed off the lush trees to friends over FaceTime, and breathed in enough air for a small city. But I resisted the urge to connect: When I trekked to a small, remote pond, I walked a wide circle around the group of teenage boys wrestling to see who could more casually throw themselves off the cliff into the water below. I stuffed away my instinct to talk to anyone, and for a small, brief moment, while I sat in the sun by the water, I felt my brain unspool with the promise of a lazy summer afternoon.

The majority of my time, though, was spent cooking. In the small cabin kitchen I made Taiwanese night market-style king oyster mushrooms, brushing them in a chile soy sauce as they grilled and tossing them with Thai basil and garlic. I made H-Mart marinated short ribs with sauteed Chinese mustard greens on the side. I cooked down the sexy eggplant with a simple teriyaki sauce made from garlic, sugar, and soy sauce, making extra to drizzle over $6 worth of flank steak for one. I also wanted to make pasta al vongole, but realized I had only bought racchette pasta — the type shaped like a tiny tennis racquet for a Hamptons mouse — because I thought it had “vacation” vibes at the time. So I ended up with a dish of clams over tennis racquets.

When your dream of pasta al vongole materializes as a dish of clams over tennis racquets

As the cabin’s only cook and diner and Yelp reviewer, I was acutely over-aware of the quality of every item of food that I made, relishing dishes when I pulled them off and despairing when I made mistakes. The memory of my isolation chicken lingered on the edges of the kitchen — as I cooked, I was careful to curb my impulse to make all the food at once, and instead cut down my portions to a manageable amount for one person. Everything took more time to make and plan than I expected, especially since I was unable to find any Tupperware in the cabin, which meant I was preparing three new meals every day. Unlike at home, I’d have to throw away whatever food I didn’t use. And so I became my own wretched Tupperware, overindulging on each dish.

Yet even though I did everything well, more or less, I still found myself tired of prepping food, cooking it, and cleaning the dishes. Completely removed from my community at home, all of this labor on behalf of myself only became more obvious. I thought about how I used to sit on the floor of my friends’ living rooms, gossiping with their discombobulated voices as they made me dinner in their kitchens. I missed the dishes that my mother would sneak hot peppers into because I “had to learn” how to tolerate spice. I thought about my favorite nights at restaurants, like the time when the table next to us got up and left and our waiter hurried over to inform us that yes, that was, in fact, the Carlos Santana.

I was also upset with myself for thinking these thoughts during a global recession when so many were struggling to feed themselves at all, and for feeling worn out by cooking for myself every day when so many were making food for entire families. I knew these feelings of guilt were useless on their own.

But what I was grasping for wasn’t really a reprieve from cooking. Rather, I missed the person I was around others. Ruth Reichl recently wrote about a night at a Paris restaurant when the maitre d’ whisked away her 8-year-old son to take part in games being organized for the neighborhood children. When her son returned, he told Reichl that he thought it was “a very fine restaurant,” to which she replied that he’d only tried the french fries and cake. “C’mon mom,” her son replied. “You know restaurants aren’t really about the food.” Those words stuck in my head for weeks. It turns out that it’s only really just about the food when you’re cooking for one.

The cabin’s kitchen, small but functional aside from its lack of Tupperware

In my isolation, I also began thinking about the idea of leisure time — specifically, the pervasive American ethos that holds that time off is an extravagance that must be earned. It’s so deeply ingrained that I even felt a pause taking my vacation, as if time off is a scarce natural resource, as if time alone is selfish. But though isolating myself further seemed somewhat redundant, taking a break had made me feel more settled and clear-headed, a feeling that should be more available, not less.

If anything, the pandemic should remind us that everyone deserves leisure time, even if it must be in solitude or at home. There’s something to learn from the countries where our solo vacation movie protagonists escape to — in both Greece and Italy, workers are entitled to 20 days minimum paid vacation every year, while in the United States, workers are guaranteed no paid vacation at all. If there is one thing in Under the Tuscan Sun that makes complete sense, it’s that Diane Lane never returns home.

On the day I left Vermont, I was so sick of planning and preparing food that I ended up eating a breakfast of matcha sponge cake and packed a lunch for the road, also of matcha sponge cake.

If anything, the pandemic should remind us that everyone deserves leisure time, even if it must be in solitude or at home.

As I started the four-hour drive to the city, I felt strangely anxious to get back. I thought about how my generation was once credited with killing both the restaurant industry and vacations, and I laughed imagining someone trying to make that argument now, as our government allowed the pandemic to destroy small businesses and communities with abandon. Even though it would be a long while until I could cook a roast chicken for my family, or meet a friend for drinks at a bar, I knew that being closer to my own community and the businesses I love still felt better than being farther away.

During those four days in Vermont, I found that there was a difference between being alone within a community and isolated from it. In the course of all my complaining, I had forgotten about the times when my friends and I would bring beers or snacks or order a pizza to hang on a stoop or at a park, or the day when my mom taught us how to make scallion pancakes over video chat. I forgot that while I was eating my big chicken, I was often chatting with friends and family over the phone, making that chicken as much a comfort as it was a curse. Even though we constantly had to negotiate with ourselves and each other — eating six feet away, bringing our own glasses, taking dinners to Zoom — we found ways to connect. There are other ways to share a table; by figuring out how, we will be able to start picking up the pieces again.

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[dirtdiggersanddinosaurs]

#Press Trip

Just So 2019 will go down in history, maybe because it was the 10th birthday of the now well established festival, but mainly because it was the year of ALL THE MUD! It certainly was NOT for the faint hearted! I‘ll quickly explain that this was our first time at Just So…and, did the conditions put us off? Did they heck! I’m not gonna lie, it made getting around the site with a trolley and a baby in a stroller much much harder, but we got a free workout (I used muscles I didn’t know I had!), and the boys absolutely loved doing their best ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ impressions squelching through the deep oozy mud!

In fact, from what I saw there were A LOT of mud loving littles about. I might suggest to organisers Wild Rumpus that from now on they create a mud pit area regardless of the weather so that we can chuck the kids in while us parents relax nearby on dry land!

We had an absolutely amazing weekend despite [or maybe because of] the mud. Full of magic, fun and laughter. Just So Festival really is the perfect place to spend some quality time together as a family.

These were our favourite muddy moments:

Dressing Up and Letting Go

We decided to go big or go home and threw ourselves into the craziness of the Just So tribal tournament, we were all kitted out as a shimmering shoal of five fish – read how I made our costumes here. For those of you planning a Just So adventure, I highly recommend dressing up letting go of your inhibitions.

Seeing herds of stags, swarms of bees and some roarsome lions strolling around the aptly named Spellbound Forest, really is truly magical. A sight you’ll honestly never forget, and your photos will look absolutely amazing too!

Feeding the fish

Eli small fry

It was like being part of a real life fairytale and really helped us to see the wonder of the weekend through our childrens eyes. Stanley really got involved and was instantly drawn to other fishy families, we enjoyed a game of Giant Guess Who with some fellow fish team mates and won a golden pebble in a wager! Woo hoo!

The humongous Tribal Scoreboard situated on The Village Green is updated throughout the weekend as golden pebbles are handed in to Tribal leaders and counted.

Keeping Score!

We earned pebbles for our costumes, picking up somebody elses litter when the wind blew it away, for the Guess Who game, and then for ingenious costume repairmanship using duck tape – note to self: need to vastly improve sewing skills! I’m still not sure if there are any hard and fast rules on how to earn pebbles but it’s certainly fun trying.

Meeting our Tribal leader blub blub blub!

Stanley really was rooting for the fish team to win and was cheering us on all weekend, he also got involved in some lighthearted taunting of the other teams too. We came 5th overall, the Foxes bagged 1st place this year! I think it teaches children a great lesson about competition, teamwork, loyalty and doing your best.

Getting Our Groove On

One of the things we all agreed on when we looked at the programme was that we wanted to take in as much live music as possible. We joyfully discovered at Timber Festival that we have two little groovers on our hands.

My little fish swimming at High Seas

The Footlights stage was at High Seas and after a true trek to get there via the mud (it was at it’s worst at this point), a toilet stop, more mud, then skirting around the field with the trolley, and a bit more mud we finally set up our ‘base’. After all that effort it made sense to stay put for a bit and it was a great excuse to enjoy the music, we were also reasonably close to a bar and some yummy food vendors – perfect!

The Baghdaddies’ exuberant and rampant brand of world music is an exhilarating cocktail of Balkan melodies, ska and latin grooves and sizzling brass played with furious energy and theatrical humour, making them as unforgettable on stage as they are when performing as wandering brass troubadours. They take themselves incredibly seriously so you don’t have to…

The Baghdaddies blew us away, they got everybody (including us) up on their feet and dancing! The lyrics are also hilarious, and you cant help but smile. It’s pure feel good music!

We also caught Harry Bird & The Rubber Wellies who again provided a very toe tapping mix of folk inspired sea shanties, Mexican rancheras and reggae. And finally Mr. Tea & The Minions for some gypsy flavoured party music. Not your average playlist eh?

One of the Baghdaddies songs included the line ‘Have a Tequila son’ which Eli took literally!

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, YES mud does make dancing in a field absolutely 100% more enjoyable if your aged 5 and 2!

We also tried out the silent disco hosted by Our Kids Social in the Flamingo Lounge. My boys weren’t sure at first and found it all a bit odd, but they soon got into the swing of it for a bit of oops upside your head! There was a parents vs kids dance off battle that got very animated – think Dadtastic air guitar moves on one side with some fierce flossing on the other. Great fun!

And finally, it was a bit of a surprise when my cautious 5 year old wanted to try out Circus Swing! So on Sunday we had a lesson in swing dancing that included some neat circus tricks too. I only dropped him on his head once while he did the no hands cartwheel over my legs, so I’m calling that a win!

I love the fact that Stanley was willing to try out new things, James has experienced a silent disco at the ripe old age of 2 and that we all got to listen to some excellent live music.

Singing Along

Watching David Gibb perform in the natural amphitheatre of the Woodland Theatre on with Stanley was my highlight of the weekend. He’s not a big fan of sitting still but the combination of catchy tunes, audience participation and easy to remember lyrics meant that we made it through the entire performance with big smiles on our faces.

We learned all about bats, discovered that we (and the rest of the audience) couldn’t count to five, became roses and showed off our muscles. Stanley also became a huge fan of Teddy at the Disco and has been singing it on repeat ever since. We sat next to our good friends over at Typical Mummy (there’s nothing like sharing a plastic poncho to sit on, to really cement a friendship) and we were all happily singing along together.

It was during this performance that I experienced what I’ll always remember as the Just So spirit, a real sense of camaraderie. The steep incline of the Woodland Theatre plus wet ground made it more than a bit treacherous underfoot. Getting in and out was no easy task and to this purpose I saw children being passed along rows, hands and arms being offered to help steady balance and people sharing seating arrangements to ensure everyone had a great time. There was a real sense of we’re in this togetherness, the mud was not going to stop anyone having fun!

I’m happy to say we now have David’s new album Rolling down the Road (released 23rd August) winging it’s way to us (order yours here) and also Climb that Tree for our Teddy at the Disco fix – my car journeys are never going to be the same again!

Slowing Down

In a way the conditions did us a favour, it made us really think about what we wanted to see and do. Most of Saturday was spent in and around High Seas and the nearby Roll Up Roll Up simply due to logistics, we took in the music as I’ve previously mentioned but we also watched Clown about Town which thoroughly entertained the boys and only mildly terrified me (she was absolutely lovely but I’m not a fan of clowns!)

A clown on the run, wanted for a crime she didn’t commit. In trying to prove her innocence, she finds that the silver lining is daring to be yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else. A joyous celebration of what it is to be human with slap-stick comedy, puppets and silly dancing!

Even I admit that the overly theatrical blood scenes (not as bad as it sounds, honest!) were really funny! This then inspired Daddy and the boys to wade over to the big top to try their hand at some circus skills while I stayed with a snoozing Eli.

Again, after watching David Gibb in the Woodland Theatre we ambled to The Spellbound Forest via the Corn Shack and settled in to watch our old favourites at Campfire Stories. I’d been eyeing up the huge corn cobs all weekend and me and Stan treated ourselves on Sunday – they were absolutely delicious!

We love Ian Douglas and have been lucky enough to sit and listen to his stories at several different events so he was an easy and relaxing watch while we nibbled away.

Then it was onto our crazy haired friend Professor Pumpy-Knickers Pumpernickel who we first encountered at Timber Festival. Once again he was thoroughly entertaining, and made the forest come alive with explosive science!

Embracing the Eccentricity

Just So proved to be just as bonkers as we were expecting – we’ve experienced nothing else like it! One thing we definitely wanted to catch was the lantern parade on Saturday evening. We didn’t make a lantern at the workshop as we’d heard that it gets very busy but we were armed with our Jelly fish umbrellas which lit up and looked the part.

Well, it’s hard to describe the spectacle that was the lantern parade, there was a clog wearing lady singing and dancing with some enormous Ghost Caribou. Then, the Baghdaddies arrived, the Caribou suddenly lit up and off we went, following the craziness towards Footlights!

Over the weekend we also bumped into the Dream Antelopes, Boudicca in her chariot (the moving puppet/sculpture horse was AMAZING) and got soaked as water pistol wielding passengers sped past in Vesaqua, shooting at us as they went. What’s Vesaqua? It’s a bathtub on wheels attached to a 1966 Vespa of course!

Vesaqua

Anything We Would Change?

The weather played such a huge part this year that I’m not sure what a ‘normal’ Just So looks and feels like. I would have liked a few more seating areas – we took chairs luckily, but pulling them around in the trolley was really hard work because of the ground conditions. I’m assuming that there are usually more hay bales dotted about to perch on but again due to the weather these were probably repurposed as ground cover on the worst affected areas.

The golden pebbles – are still a complete mystery to us! I don’t know who can give them out, or what they can be earned for! Having said that I’m not sure if a full explanation of this via the programme or a information board would take the magic away? It felt like a secret that you had to learn about from fellow more experienced Just So’ers…but maybe that’s the point, to get people talking and build a community of seasoned Just So families? I will say this – once you’ve earned one it quickly becomes a quest to get more, it’s so addictive!

And Finally…

There you have it, if you want to let go of the stresses of everyday life then this is the festival for you. You can completely immerse yourself in a bubble of make believe for an entire weekend. Got kids? Then it’s a super family friendly festival (mud aside), it has everything to entertain little ones and baby changing, bathing and quiet areas too. We can’t wait for next year!

Earlybird tickets for Just So Festival 2020 (21/22/23 August 2020) will be available from TODAY (Friday 30th August). Visit the Just So Festival website to grab yours.

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all the team at Wild Rumpus, the volunteers and site staff who when faced with almost biblical conditions on Friday went the extra mile to ensure people got on and off the site safely and pushed cars out of the mud, all with a smile on their faces.

Disclosure: we were invited to attend Just So Festival by Wild Rumpus as part of their Press Team. Our weekend tickets were gifted in exchange for a review of our experience and promotion across my social media channels. All opinions are my own. All images and media are my own.

Five Go to Just So! 2019 Festival Review #Press Trip Just So 2019 will go down in history, maybe because it was the 10th birthday of the now well established festival, but mainly because it was the year of…

[rationalsanskar]

Take A Peek Into South Florida’s Startup Culture, From Fort Lauderdale To Boca Raton

Until a few years ago, South Florida native Adam Garfield had been living in Boston and working in corporate finance. He had a “good job” at a hedge fund, earned a stable salary and could comfortably pay his rent, but something was missing.

“At the end of the day, it wasn’t very fulfilling,” Garfield says. “I think everybody sees it, where they start a job and they grow into just being pigeonholed in what they’re doing, and they only have to use one part of their brain. I just wanted to use the whole thing.”

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His idea to launch SpeedETab, a mobile app that lets customers pre-order and pre-pay for to-go lunches at local restaurants or concession stand items at sporting events, would let him do just that. By starting his own company, Garfield could be analytical and creative. It was a risk, but it was one he felt he needed to take. 

“For me, the bigger risk was not doing anything and seeing someone else do it and succeed,” says the founder and CEO of the Fort Lauderdale-based startup.

Nowadays, more and more South Floridians like Garfield are taking a chance at becoming an entrepreneur, with the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area ranked as No. 2 for startup activity in the U.S., according to a report by the Kauffman Foundation last year. 

Speedy Success

Garfield is wearing a fitted SpeedETab T-shirt—appropriate work attire for the company’s relaxed environment—when he steps out of SpeedETab’s offices in an industrial zone of downtown Fort Lauderdale. As he walks down the street to CoLab Workspaces, the coworking space where Garfield and co-founder Ed Gilmore first got the business off the ground, the 29-year-old CEO mentions he dropped his PR firm after a story ran that called SpeedETab a Miami startup. 

As of fall, the app has been made available in New York and parts of D.C., but Garfield says he’s proud the growing company is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale. “Everyone knows how established Silicon Valley is, but for us, it’s really a chance to make a name not only for ourselves but for Fort Lauderdale,” he says.

Garfield and Gilmore, a developer who came on as chief technology officer, launched SpeedETab in April 2015. From there, it quickly evolved from a nightlife app for ordering drinks at a bar (an area where SpeedETab didn’t see much success) into an all-encompassing, everyday tool for pre-ordering food and beverages at a wide array of venues—including Warsaw Coffee, The Poke House, Flash Fire Pizza and Agave Taco Bar—in order to skip the line. “We want to let you have the most out of your lunch break, or we want you to be able to get to work on time but still get your coffee,” Garfield says.

Currently available at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, SpeedETab also plans to expand to other theaters and sports and concert venues in the area to save event-goers time at concessions stands during intermissions. The startup’s growth now depends on a team of 16 people who are motivated by this “movement,” as Garfield calls it—making to-go orders in today’s on-demand society as efficient as possible. “Within our company, it’s really about making people want to come to work everyday, and obviously the main way that we do that is by building something that people are excited to work on,” he says.

Nerds To The Rescue

Also catering to the on-demand market is Delray Beach-based startup Nerd Alert. The company offers in-home tech support to South Floridians, provided by a team of “Nerds”—an endearing name given to the tech support staff. Having 40 certified “Nerds” on staff gives each employee enough flexibility to pick up or pass on a job based on convenient hours.

On “Nerd Academy” days, potential new hires are invited to do ride-a-longs with the veteran “Nerds” and have a chance to learn about the company culture. “They see that we’re real people, not on our high horses. I’m in the trenches, just like all the other ‘Nerds,’” says co-founder and CEO Julius McGee. The company also holds social events, like bowling or beach trips. Through efforts like these, McGee says he’s trying to change the connotation of a nerd. “People ask me, ‘Should I call you a nerd?’ I say, ‘It’s like calling me Superman.’” 

It was following a stint as a “Genius” at the Apple Store that McGee started going into the homes of clients to resolve their technological issues one-on-one, much like he does with Nerd Alert now. With three friends—the entrepreneurs who founded Virgin Gaming alongside Sir Richard Branson—and a fifth partner with PC experience to complement McGee’s Mac expertise, McGee founded Nerd Alert, the Uber-fied version of the tech support and training. 

The company launched its services in February 2015 and has grown through referral discounts and by building relationships with 55-plus communities where Nerd Alert holds technology workshops with residents who oftentimes end up booking their own sessions. Rather than simply fixing problems and hitting frustrated clients with a big bill, as so often happens in tech stores, McGee and the other “Nerds” work to educate clients about what went wrong and how to resolve it. Clients now range from people in their 40s to 80s, to small businesses or doctors’ offices with Wi-Fi issues, to accounting firms looking to hold seminars on how to use Excel.

Co-founder Ryan Tenbusch says Nerd Alert made plenty of mistakes along the way—one being hiring some of the wrong people at the outset (applicants who were techy but not personable enough to work comfortably with clients in their homes)—but the important thing is they’ve learned to adapt, such as by implementing “Nerd Academy.” “It’s OK to make mistakes,” he says. “Honestly, people are so afraid to fail. You’re going to screw it up; I guarantee we’re going to screw something up next week. We’ll laugh about it and figure it out. There’s no ego on our team.”

Operating out of The KTCHN coworking space located on Atlantic Avenue—surrounded by other startups in an area McGee feels is undergoing a “renaissance”—has been advantageous for networking opportunities, McGee says. Some investors who learn about Nerd Alert have told him, “Hey, that’s a really cool idea—why don’t you go out to Silicon Valley?” But McGee insists that South Florida is where he belongs. “You don’t have to be in a certain location in order to be successful,” he says.

Fast-Tracking Funding

Though South Florida’s startup scene is certainly growing, the Kauffman Index shows a startling counter to these success stories: Of the 40 largest metro areas in the U.S., South Florida is ranked second to last in entrepreneurship growth when considering the number of startups scaling up into larger companies or how quickly (or not) the revenue for each is growing. “The entrepreneurial environment is here, but the know-how on how to scale a company, or the ability to scale it with additional funding is not here, and that needs to mature,” says Thomas Buchar of The South Florida Accelerator, which has offices in Broward College’s downtown Fort Lauderdale campus.

From Miami to West Palm Beach, the South Florida region takes in just under 1 percent of the total share of venture capital investment in the U.S., while Nos. 1 and 2 San Francisco and Silicon Valley combine for nearly 40 percent, according to the Martin Prosperity Institute. However, The South Florida Accelerator, which has partnered with local business giants like Citrix, is fast-tracking the typical investment-seeking process by connecting startups with large companies to back them. These Fort Lauderdale-headquartered firms give Broward County’s emerging startup scene an edge. “Look at where the top, top companies are—Ultimate Software and Citrix—they’re not in Miami,” Buchar says.

A secretive Dania Beach startup with Google and other big-name investors backing it has also drawn attention—and capital—to South Florida’s startup scene. MagicLeap is developing “mixed reality” technology (bringing virtual reality animations into a real-time setting), and even though its product is still at least 18 months away from hitting the market, the company is already worth $4.5 billion, according to Forbes. Local entrepreneurs hope this may have a trickle-down effect, motivating venture capitalists to fund other startups in the area or even leading MagicLeap employees to become investors themselves.

In the meantime, Broward College’s Innovation Hub Director Enrique Triay says entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are already moving from Silicon Valley and other startup hubs to South Florida for a number of reasons: lower taxes, the weather and overall quality of life.

Kick-starting Their Own Business

One Fort Lauderdale startup duo has bypassed South Florida’s funding shortfall by taking matters into their own hands: Jonathan Azevedo and Chris Lightcap of Plug and Play (PNP) Robotics put their ZenCrate anti-anxiety dog den concept on Kickstarter last fall and reached their crowdfunding goal of $80,000 in just 11 days (in fact, they almost doubled it). “We wanted to go the route where we didn’t have to reach out to angel investors,” Azevedo says. “We didn’t want to give up ownership of the company and didn’t want to have more decision makers in the room.” 

It’s been that way since the beginning for PNP Robotics, a product development startup. The co-founders, both engineers, became friends while working together for a medical company where they helped develop a surgical robot that can perform high-precision knee and hip surgeries. Azevedo and Lightcap eventually decided to start their own business to develop new products, and even then, they were hesitant to seek out investors. Instead, they first founded a consulting firm, ADEX Technologies, to earn enough revenue through developing for other companies that they’d soon be able to launch products of their own.

Their ZenCrate came about after Charger, a guide dog Azevedo had trained, started showing signs of anxiety during thunderstorms. Azevedo tried veterinarian-prescribed medication, essential oils and every other solution he’d found through research before he and Lightcap applied that research toward creating an entirely new product. 

The stylish, “smart” den they came up with plays calming music at frequencies ideal for dogs, has a motion-activated fan for ventilation, and plugs into the wall but also has a backup battery in case the power goes out during a storm. The ZenCrate’s acoustic design keeps anxiety-inducing sounds out while keeping the relaxation music in, and its shape mimics the tight-spaced feel of a car’s backseat, where Charger seemed most at ease. “Naturally, dogs in the wild would always take comfort in a den-type environment,” Azevedo says. “It makes them feel comfortable, and they can kind of lessen their senses. They know nothing can come out of their blind spot, so they can lay down and relax.” 

The PNP Robotics team is also working to develop an app so pet owners can control the ZenCrate remotely, get notifications, or even watch a livestream. The first mass order of ZenCrate is set for delivery in March.

Collaboration and Community

On the corner of Broward Boulevard and Federal Highway, a creative and tech hub has emerged in Fort Lauderdale that’s looking to take South Florida’s startup community to the next level. The new space, called Collective Ventures, offers an innovation center, a startup accelerator looking to invest $5 million into 100 new companies during the next three years, and a community coffeehouse all in one. “Coworking exists, startup accelerators exist, collaboration exists and cafes exist. I put them all together,” founder Brian Jacob says.

It takes four ingredients for an entrepreneur to be successful, Jacob says: knowledge, experience, courage and money. Most of the time, he meets people with only two of the four. But that’s where Collective Ventures can step in, whether the entrepreneur is looking for funding, expert advice or professional services. Conveniently, the 20 companies who are members of the coworking space all come from different industries essential to the growth of a startup—web development, search engine optimization, photography, PR, social media, legal services and more—and each of the agencies was hand-selected to be a top resource to whoever walks into the center. “I want people to come in for a cup of coffee and leave with a business,” Jacob says.

The soon-to-open coffee shop will host Ted Talk-style presentations that, even for the student who only comes in to study, Jacob hopes will be as inspirational as they are informative. Between the 110-seat cafe’s open-plan design and seven presentation and conference rooms that are rentable by the hour, the venue is bound to be a breeding ground for entrepreneurs and innovators. And, designed with collaboration and community in mind, it could soon be the birthplace of South Florida’s newest startups. “There’s only so much you can do alone,” Jacob says.

Coworking Spaces

Not only are new companies surfacing in South Florida, but so are new takes on work environments. Claim a desk nearby other creatives, entrepreneurs and freelancers at one of these coworking spots.

General Provision

This FAT Village coworking space is divided into themed rooms, such as The Hideaway, an alcove with a staircase for those who work best in a lofted setting, and The War Room, a presentation room lined with armor that features a Smart TV and video wall, and has a coffee bar with bicycle stools. It’s also the new home of Wyncode FAT Village, a computer programming academy that takes participants through an accelerated coding boot camp.

525 NW First Ave., Fort Lauderdale

CoLab Workspaces

CoLab’s open-plan workspace offers eclectic decor (think early 20th century-style telephone booth and a desk made from an old airplane wing) in a laid-back environment, as well as conference rooms and tons of freshly ground coffee from the Grind Coffee Project. Visitors are also welcome to book the conference rooms on a first-come, first-serve basis.

599 SW Second Ave., Fort Lauderdale

Innovation Hub at Broward College

This business incubator at Broward College’s Cypress Creek Center features 5,400 square feet of private offices, shared working space for up to 16 people, small conference and mentoring rooms, and a large seminar room with audiovisual equipment for video trainings and more. In addition to working space, Innovation Hub provides mentoring and access to industry experts and investors. It also hosts six-month “Shark Tank-meets-Survivor”-style accelerator programs for Broward County residents in which entrepreneurs fine-tune their startup concepts and learn how to seek funding. 

6400 NW Sixth Way, Fort Lauderdale

The KTCHN

The KTCHN in Delray Beach offers coworking space for the creative community right on Atlantic Avenue. The open workspace features a meeting room, galley kitchen and lounge area. Perks of membership include free food delivery from Delivery Dudes, fresh roasted coffee from Subculture and more.

135 E. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach

Quest Workspaces

Quest runs state-of-the-art shared office spaces in cities such as Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and, most recently, Plantation. The offices feature a blend of open, communal areas and closed meetings rooms for privacy, with unique elements such as a treadmill desk, communal dining tables, an open kitchen, TV lounge and dedicated meditation space.

1200 N. Federal Highway, Ste. 200, Boca Raton / 101 NE Third Ave., Ste. 1500, Fort Lauderdale / 150 S. Pine Island Road, Ste. 300, Plantation

This content was originally published here.

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Keeping Your Equine Athlete at the Top of His Game

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Keeping Your Equine Athlete at the Top of His Game

Fitness, hoof care, saddle fit, and more are key to keeping healthy equine athletes at the top of their game.

Photo: Dirk Caremans/FEI

Nine ways to keep your sport horse performing his best

You know you’ve made it to the big time when your toiletry bag stays packed, your show clothes are either filthy or still at the dry cleaner, and your calendar looks like a chessboard, with every weekend blocked off for shows. If you’re here, you’ve worked hard. Now it’s all about maintaining and improving your skills—and your horse’s.

It’s your job to stay on top of your own game as a rider, but when it comes to your performance horse’s health, the veterinarian can be your greatest asset. We talked to several practitioners who maintain the health of high-performance sport horses. Here are their top nine tips for the healthiest show season yet.

Overall Fitness: Cross-training  is key.

First things first. The very best strategy for optimizing your horse’s health is an appropriate fitness routine. Start there, and the rest will follow. Or as Christy Cullen, DVM, of Massachusetts Equine Clinic, in Uxbridge, says, “There’s nothing you can buy in a bottle that replaces good fitness. It’s absolutely key to maintaining a sound, healthy horse.”

While that’s a no-brainer for most owners of mid- to high-level performance horses, don’t underestimate the value of cross-training for improved overall fitness. “We see a lot of repetitive-motion injuries that could have been avoided with a more varied training schedule,” Cullen says. In other words: Don’t forget how much fun it is to get out of the ring and onto the trails. Your horse will thank you for it, too.

Hooves: You’re going too long between trims.

The “no hoof, no horse” rule proclaims hoof care as principal to maintaining a healthy horse—yet many veterinarians say owners still try to stretch the time between trims too far.

“Eight weeks is too long,” Cullen says. “Most performance horses are more comfortable going five or six weeks. More than that, and you’re asking for trouble,” stressing the mechanics and quality of the hoof with a long toe.

And as Barb Crabbe, DVM, of Pacific Crest Sporthorse, in Oregon City, Oregon, notes, “Never choose your farrier based on cost. I’ll pay double for quality hoof care. And when your farrier recommends the ideal length of time between trims, listen to them!”

Joints, Ligaments, and Tendons: Don’t forget to stretch.

At Florida Equine Veterinary Services, in Clermont, owner Erin Denney-Jones, DVM, likes to start each new show season with a wellness exam. The checkup starts with the basics—evaluating temperature, pulse, and cardiopulmonary health, plus weight and body condition—but it also encompasses joint and tendon health.

“Getting your hands on the horse is paramount so you can feel down their legs for swelling, palpate tendons and ligaments, and (then also) watch the horse walk and trot,” Denney-Jones says. “After we get a baseline, we’ll move to flexion tests to pinpoint any lameness” related to the joints or soft tissue.

Top 5 Stretches for Healthy Horses

If you’re lucky enough to have a trainer or team veterinarian that travels with you to shows, you’ll benefit from having the same person evaluating your horse throughout the season. But either way, have your veterinarian perform regular veterinary checks.

As far as what you can be doing when the veterinarian isn’t there, all horses can benefit from daily “carrot stretches,” Denney-Jones says. “Just don’t forget the hind end. Pick up the hind foot and bring it forward to touch the elbow or forelimb for a long, low stretch. You’ll also need to cross over to the opposite side for a lateral stretch.”

Nerves, Muscles, and Saddle Fit: Test your balance as a rider.

Some muscle- and nerve-related therapies, such as mesotherapy (a series of steroid injections into the mesoderm, or middle layer of skin, of the horse’s back to help relax the muscles, aiding healing) need to stay in the off-season. But an appropriate chiropractic or physical therapy program can really help as part of a mid-season (or season-long) tune-up, notes Denney-Jones.

“We don’t have to go straight to injections,” she says. “There are plenty of different options we can offer prior to injecting a joint or pursuing a more invasive treatment.”

But if you start a conversation with a veterinarian about massage therapy, don’t be surprised if it leads to questions about saddle fit—and ends with your vet asking you to tack up and hop aboard. Expect to be the subject of close scrutiny while your veterinarian checks to see if you’re part of the problem. But don’t worry; often it’s not you, it’s your saddle. “That can be a real eye-opener,” says Denney-Jones. “Often owners will expect that I can give a horse with a sore back some kind of golden shot or silver bullet, but often it just comes down to poor saddle fit or a saddle that simply needs to be reflocked.”

Teeth: The rules are changing—and that’s a good thing.

Most horse owners of a certain age could immediately identify the characteristic rasping sound of an equine dentist’s file on a horse’s teeth. While traditional methods might be fine for many horses, new methods and more advanced tools mean equine dental treatment options are more expansive than ever before.

Taking Care of Your Horse’s Teeth

“Better dental care is one of the reasons horses are living to 40 these days,” Crabbe says. “In the ‘old days’ (20-25 years ago), we typically floated teeth with a hand file, primarily just removing sharp edges to make the horse more comfortable. ‘Dental balancing’ became a thing in the late ’90s, and early on (especially with the advent of power tools), there was a lot of overcorrection going on, with subsequent damage to the teeth.”

The pendulum has since swung the other way, Crabbe says. “Now we see a somewhat less-aggressive approach, with a focus on proper balancing without causing damage.”

And, not every horse needs to be on an annual or biannual schedule for dental work. “Horses that eat more forage tend to need less dental care, and horses that eat more grain and are kept in an indoor setting tend to need more,” Cullen says. “We’ll check all horses twice a year, but horses masticate (chew) differently and so will need a different level of care.”

Nutrition: Feed forage first.

“Honestly, I see of ton of fat horses,” Cullen admits. “People tend to overfeed grain and to overestimate the caloric needs of their horses. Once you start euthanizing horses that have foundered, you get sensitive to it. If you feed your horse adequately for what he realistically does, you can avoid a lot of problems.”

“People tend to overfeed grain and to overestimate the caloric needs of their horses. Once you start euthanizing horses that have foundered, you get sensitive to it. ”

Dr. Christy Cullen

Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Crabbe says many people still think every horse in the barn should get a scoop of oats each night, regardless of their various nutritional needs. “You need to consult with your vet about what’s available and minimize your horse’s intake of cereal grains and carbs,” she says. “The nutritionists who work for feed companies know a lot more than we do and are going to formulate something that’s far more nutritionally balanced than what you just made up in your tack room sink.”

Crabbe recommends a forage-first diet for most performance horses, administered in close consult with an equine nutritionist or veterinarian. “And get your hay analyzed,” she says. “It might look beautiful, but if your analysis comes back at only 5% protein, that’s not adequate for a performance horse.”

Conversations about nutrition often go hand-in-hand with questions about supplements. Many horse owners swear by hoof, joint, or digestive supplements—and many can work wonders—but it’s imperative to do your own research on each individual horse.

“I’m a firm believer that if you’re following a high-quality hay and feed program, you won’t need much by way of supplementation,” Cullen says. “People will spend hundreds of dollars on supplements, yet what’s often lacking is a solid fitness program. If the supplements aren’t actually working, you end up feeding the birds—literally.”

Digestive Health and Ulcers: If you suspect them, scope for them.

“The gastroscope has changed the way we treat gastric ulcers,” Cullen says. “A gastroscope (exam) is easy to do, and you don’t know until you scope a horse what level of ulcer you might be dealing with. Once you know, you can formulate a plan. There’s nothing more frustrating than chasing ulcers.”

A gastroscope allows the veterinarian to identify or rule out painful performance-limiting gastric ulcers.

Photo: Anne M. Eberhardt/The Horse

Because gastric ulcers have been linked to excess stomach acid, which can damage the stomach lining when there’s no food within to buffer those acids, many veterinarians have started recommending a series of small meals spread throughout the day or, better yet, free-choice hay.

“Hay and other forage helps keep stomach acids under control,” Cullen says. “The more concentrate you feed, the more likely that the horse’s stomach pH will be out of balance.”

The horses Crabbe sees typically enjoy more turnout time than the average horse does, reducing the incidence of gastric ulcers related to feeding. Yet, she still advocates for scoping, rather than giving omeprazole “just in case.”

“The more concentrate you feed, the more likely that the horse's stomach pH will be out of balance.”

Dr. Christy Cullen

“And when a gastroscope doesn’t reveal gastric ulcers, it can be an indication that you’re dealing with a different problem, such as colonic ulcers, which can’t be seen with a scope” Crabbe says. “Gastric and colonic ulcers often go hand-in-hand, but if you rule out gastric ulcers … a different treatment might be recommended.”

Biosecurity: Know your risks and be as prepared as possible.

“If you’re going to show up to a horse show where there are thousands of horses running around, you have to be able to accept the risk of (disease) exposure,” Crabbe says.

New rules requiring proof of vaccination before showgrounds entrance—for all horses, not just those competing—are a step in the right direction, says Cullen. “Yet we still have to remind people to isolate horses with unknown backgrounds for four weeks before introducing them to a new barn,” she says. “For that reason, we still have to quarantine at least two or three barns per year due to strangles. It’s completely preventable.”

While vaccinations help reduce risk of exposure, Denney-Jones is quick to remind owners to schedule vaccines during a horse’s downtime and to keep passports current for travel. “As an FEI vet, we’re taught that we can’t give any leeway if a passport isn’t up-to-date,” she says. “As an owner, it’s your responsibility to get it done, not your vet’s. Get it scheduled!”

Overall Wellness: Know what’s going on with your horse.

There’s also no excuse for not knowing your horse’s full medical report after a veterinary visit. “A successful season is made when you find a good trainer, a good farrier, and a good vet and use your resources to act as a team,” Cullen says. “Don’t ever consult Dr. Google about a problem in your horse.”

And, as Crabbe notes, be realistic about the demands on your horse’s body and psyche, and react accordingly. “We’re asking a lot of our horses, so most performance horses will have stuff wrong with them,” she says. “As an owner, you have to educate yourself about your horse and its management. Know what’s happening. Talk to your trainer. Talk to your vet directly. Be involved in the decision-making process. The best thing an owner can do to help protect their horses and keep them in the ring is to know what’s going on.”

About the Author

Lindsay J. Westley

Lindsay J. Westley is a freelance writer based in Burlington, Vt. She grew up riding hunters, worked as a wrangler in Montana, and spent two years as a professional polo groom. She rides between deadlines when she can find a horse.

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Video Game Retrospective - Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

George Lucas had a thing for “multimedia projects” before and after going crazy and messing up his own franchise with ill-advised ideas and direction and generally not having any proper oversight. that might’ve salvaged the prequels. A more recent pre-Disney example was The Force Unleashed, which was a really neat concept but fell flat for me gameplay-wise because, well, it feels a bit quaint after experiencing the versatility and general flexibility of Jedi Knight and the awesome insanity of Metal Gear Rising. (Speaking of which, a Star Wars game done by Platinum Games with the right budget, time and director would be absolutely incredible.)

The one big project Lucas worked on before the prequels was Shadows of the Empire, which was functionally an exercise of creating a whole bunch of material around a theoretical interquel film between Empire and Jedi without there actually being a film, though I think the idea of actually producing a film was entertained at one point. There was a fairly decent novel by Steve Perry, comics by Dark Horse, and an absolutely incredible soundtrack by Joel McNeely (who was recommended for the job by John Williams himself), but arguably the biggest part was the video game, which initially released on the N64 and later ported to the PC with CGI cutscenes and voice acting.

I’m gonna say this up front - I have genuine nostalgia for this game, and not just because of the surprisingly faithful recreation of the Hoth battle. That being said, after recently getting the PC version of this game myself, it’s... Not good. It’s playable, especially with mouse and keyboard controls that allow for strafing, but unfortunately there’s more bad than good. That being said, it’s still worth examining.

Shadows of the Empire focuses its game adaptation around Dash Rendar, who is a rather shameless expy/clone of Han Solo, though it’s a bit more justified by the fact that he’s friends with Solo and in some ways a bit of a friendly rival. Frankly, you could do a lot worse for a Star Wars protagonist, it can be said that the much-beloved Kyle Katarn from the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight saga was at least partially cut from the same cloth. But at any rate, if you want to play as a Jedi, you’re out of luck here. On the bright side, though, you get to do some pretty badass stuff as Dash - fighting an AT-ST on foot and winning, a jetpack duel with Boba Fett (plus fighting the Slave I when Fett decides to get pragmatic), flying directly into Prince Xizor’s skyhook base to blow it up from the inside... This game has quite a bit of variety.

One thing to get out of the way quickly - the game’s mechanics are “janky” and feel poorly-programmed in many ways. Moving down a downwards slope causes Dash to fall down it rather than walk in many cases (which has resulted in a otherwise-avoidable deaths), the way the movement works in general can be awkward in dangerous areas if you’re not using an analog stick due to Dash’s high maximum movement speed, jumping doesn’t account for the velocity of moving platforms (making the junkyard sequence awkward to navigate) and the Stormtroopers (among other enemies) are more accurate with their blasters than you are (and I don’t just mean they’re still inaccurate, they’re actually as precise as Obi Wan said they were in this game) and are often placed in awkward locations, making shooting them without getting damaged to be often difficult if not impossible in later stages. The game is playable, but it can be fairly difficult due to unfair mechanics and enemy placement. Oh, and the speeder chase doesn’t intuitively inform you how the hell you’re supposed to make jumps. I could go on for a while about, this. Also, the PC version, to my knowledge, doesn’t let you rebind keys, and mouselook controls both turning and moving forward and backward, which makes it a bit awkward if you find the mouse and keys fighting for moving your character.

In general, it feels like this game was made in that period where developers in general had the unenviable position of trying to figure out how to make things work in 3D. While the devs of this game weren’t really able to make something that aged well, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The only things that they really did well were the flying/space vehicle levels, and even those would be later outdone by Factor5′s Rogue Squadron. That being said, this game deserves the recognition it gets for being the first game to successfully recreate the Hoth battle, complete with bringing down AT-ATs with tow cables.

Before we continue, I might as well talk the differences between the two versions of the game - the PC version replaced the N64′s ‘simple’ cutscenes (mainly just static images with simple tweening animations) with CGI FMVs, and provided full voice acting. The voice acting is fine, but I honestly prefer the N64′s cutscenes in many ways. Aside from the use of just the one theme for all the cutscenes (granted, it’s a damn fine theme and provides enough atmosphere), the visuals are really nice compared to the even worse-aging CGI of the PC version’s FMVs, and some scenes are outright superior in the N64 version - IG-88′s introduction, for example, is unsettling, with him rising out of the junk pile, and his appearence with the red eyes is genuinely creepy (the guy scared the hell out of me as a kid, but I guess I was more easily scared back then, I used to be terrified of Andross in Star Fox 64/Lylat Wars as well back then, amongst other enemies and bosses during that generation), whereas the CGI version makes him look much less threatening and his voice doesn’t help either. Really, the N64′s cutscenes are absolutely dripping with atmosphere, which the PC cutscenes lack. On the bright side, both versions use McNeely’s soundtrack, which is impressive considering the N64′s known space limitations.

This game does have some replay value, just to note - every level has a collection of “challenge coins” (which are actually floating, silver Imperial emblems) to find, and beating the game on hard or above nets you a secret ending revealing that Dash successfully faked his death while escaping from the Skyhook by hitting hyperspace just as it blows up. None of the other media for the project reveals this twist, and the novel ends with Luke assuming that Dash perished because he wasn’t on his game because he failed to save an allied ship during an earlier space battle (turns out he couldn’t have done anything about it anyway) and was still reeling from the guilt.

In summary, it’s not a good game. But it is still noteworthy as far as Star Wars games go for what it did and what it tried to do, and its genuinely redeeming qualities (mainly the soundtrack). If nothing else, at least watch a let’s play of it or something if you haven’t experienced it in some form, or get the PC version via Good Old Games.

Oh, and amongst the other stuff that was in the recent Star Wars Humble Bundle, there’s the excellent Rogue Squadron 3D, and Galactic Battlegrounds, which is basically a Star Wars version of Age of Empires II, made by AoE’s developers, which is really cool and worth playing if you’re an RTS buff.

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How the Blue Jackets came back down to earth (Trending Topics Extra)

COLUMBUS, OH – JANUARY 19: Brandon Dubinsky #17 of the Columbus Blue Jackets stands at center ice during warmups prior to the start of the game against the Ottawa Senators on January 19, 2017 at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Kirk Irwin/Getty Images)

It was a psychological effect, more than anything else.

When you’re winning, as the Columbus Blue Jackets were for a good chunk of the season, there’s little impetus for fans, players, coaches, or executives to question the process by which those wins were gained. In fact, even outside observers who should know better become tempted to explain away the team’s more glaring problems and instead highlight why what they’ve done right is capital-S Sustainable.

Things came to a head starting in late November, when the team began what eventually became a 16-game winning streak. Though they’d started 11-5-4, catapulting yourself to 27-5-4 is a good way to dispel any doubts about your ascension to the top of the hockey world. The reviews of the Blue Jackets’ play from all but the hardiest of skeptics went from credulous to fawning. There was, in fact, even the suggestion that their success through 36 games — some 44 percent of the season — was going to change the face of the league. For instance, because the Blue Jackets didn’t hold morning skates and had this incredible amount of success, it stood to reason that the rest of the league should follow suit.

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(Of course, they should follow suit, because it’s to everyone’s benefit to cancel morning skates and everyone also hates it. But tradition is tradition and unless given a very convincing reason, it’s probably never going to change. This is the NHL, after all.)

However, more recently the Blue Jackets have been on the losing end of their results far more often than they used to be. They have losses in 10 of their last 17 games, and only have four regulation wins in that stretch. This means their opponents — all but two of whom are also in the Eastern Conference — have a .618 points percentage against Columbus since Jan. 5. Columbus’s points percentage in that same stretch is just .441.

So there are three very distinct portions of the Blue Jackets’ season, and they can be divided somewhat evenly: The first 20 games they were great, the next 16 they were unbeatable, and the last 17 they were awful. And hey, if more than two-thirds of your season to date features a combined .806 points percentage, you’re in great shape.

But the first half of the season is for figuring out what a team “is,” to inform projections about what it will do in the second half and the postseason. At this point, the Blue Jackets are basically a playoff lock, but their inability to pick up Ws for the past month-plus is something we might have expected had we been looking at something other than goals-for, goals-against, and the standings column.

Far be it for me to suggest that adjusted 5-on-5 shot-attempt data is perhaps the best predictor of future success, here in the year two-thousand seventeen anno Domini. But hey listen, folks: It kinda still is. And with that in mind, let’s just sit here and remind ourselves again that all indications were that Columbus was a mediocre team that pounded bad opponents, struggled against good ones, and came out on the winning end most nights regardless of those successes or failures.

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Here, then, is how the Blue Jackets’ full-season stats (bottom row) rank from left to right, respectively, in the entire NHL: fourth in total points percentage, eighth in attempts, 11th in scoring chances, seventh in shots on goal, fifth in goals, 12th in expected goals, fifth in shooting percentage, 10th in save percentage, and sixth in PDO.

As you can see, all but those goal margins are somewhat slim, meaning that if luck abandons them in any given game (which, as you can see, it has lately) they’re going to struggle to put wins on the board. You can also see that until their previous 17-game stretch of futility, they always outperformed their expected goals by a significant margin at 5-on-5.

It’s also important to note that their vaunted power play, which many credited as having (you guessed it) “figured out shot quality” has been in the dumps for a month. This was a 5-on-4 unit that ran at more than 30 percent for much of the season, through sheer luck. You cannot “talent” your way to a team PP% that’s like 80 percent better than the league average, and even if you could, Columbus never had the horses to do it.

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Power play scoring rates also help to explain the Blue Jackets’ winning ways early in the season, and why they’ve been losing lately. Breaking down those same three distinct portions of their season, the power play looks like this: 28.3 percent in the first 20 contests, 28.3 percent in the 16-game winning streak (fun coincidence there), and 11.9 percent in the past 17.

In fact, Columbus hasn’t scored on the power play at all in 10 of their past 11 games. For the entire rest of the season combined, their PP was held off the board only 18 times in 42 games.

These struggles were totally foreseeable if you wanted to actually see them. You didn’t even have to go hunting for them. They were right there for the viewing. Because honestly, there’s not a lot this team has done at any point to really make you stand up and say, “Now this is an elite team,” other than the winning. And if you looked at the underlying numbers, you understood fundamentally that the winning wasn’t going to last.

Like any team, the Blue Jackets are beholden to shooting and goaltending success, and they don’t have a sound enough process (like, say, the Kings of the past few years) to both suffer from a low PDO and ensure long-term success. The underlying numbers say they should be a slightly above-average team, the standings say they’re elite. The underlying numbers always win out over a long enough timeline.

Yahoo

And to circle back to the idea of psychological effects, Tortorella and others are now ascribing mysticism to their recent problems, rather than the fact that this team is, frankly, mediocre.

“It’s attrition through this part of the schedule. To me, it’s mental toughness. That’s where we’re going to have more lessons,” Tortorella told Craig Custance. “They have to understand how difficult it is. … They have to experience it and accept the challenge. They have to raise their level.”

So now Tortorella is meeting with his team multiple times a week to figure out the issues and get back to their previous success. One imagines those meetings come up with few effective answers.

This idea that you get more goals by trying hard rather than just getting bounces is of course silly and easily dismissed as the ravings of an out-of-touch coach. After all, before the hockey world started inscribing Tortorella’s name on the Jack Adams a month and a half ago, he was widely derided as a coach in over his head at both the NHL and international levels. As well he should have been.

Is it possible for coaches to adapt? Sure. The improved percentages this Columbus club posted to date (with slightly more talent than it had last year) might imply Tortorella learned something. But he was seen as clueless in the United States’ humiliating loss at the World Cup, and he cannot have synthesized lessons learned into a better on-ice product for his NHL club in, what, a two-week turnaround? Again, the numbers say this is a perfectly alright team, but if you ever thought they were elite-level or had figured out how to generate shot quality while simultaneously denying it (something no coach, let alone one of Tortorella’s past performance, has ever done), you have to ask yourself a simple, salient question: Where did all that go?

Custance says it’s the psychological and physical effect of getting everyone’s “A” game every night, and that might be part of it. But Nick Foligno, for example, wasn’t going to shoot 16 percent all season no matter how hard or soft he was covered. And hey, Foligno shot 15.9 percent in the first 36 games of the season (he missed two of them), and he’s at 12.2 percent since. That’s going to happen, and you’ll never ever guess his career shooting percentage. Okay here’s a hint: it’s 12.1.

You can do this all day: Pick a Columbus player almost at random, and his on-ice percentages were probably going to be too high to be sustainable. That includes Sergei Bobrovsky, who’s been awful for the last month.

Put simply: No one figures out shot quality on a team level — certainly not both for or against simultaneously — and over 50, 60, 82 games. Goaltending talent can often keep your team sv% quite high (look what the Rangers did for a decade before this season) but that doesn’t appear to have much to do with coaching.

You can summarize the issues this way: Over this putrid 17-game stretch, in which Columbus has just four regulation wins and were just shut out at home by Vancouver, they’ve been a lot better than their record. In the previous 36 games, they were a lot worse. These things even out, though they probably shouldn’t to this extent.

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Wins are wins, but long-term you are who the numbers say you are. Columbus is a perfectly alright team but it didn’t take a psychic to see trouble was on the horizon. Their air of invincibility is gone. Maybe teams will stop giving them their “A” game every night now. Maybe they’ll start posting PDOs in the 103 range. Maybe the winning hockey will start up again as a result.

But probably not.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless otherwise stated.

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