#is it that greedy to want a basic warehouse job or something

[jaqkiwine]

=͟͟͞͞(꒪ᗜ꒪‧̣̥̇)

[coolwali]

My “favourite” example of a “failed subversion of torture as a plot device” is in Grand Theft Auto V (2013).

I’m going to plagiarize Shamus Young’s entire piece on this section

(Source: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=43602)

“The FIB summon our antiheroes to a creepy warehouse on the edge of town. The FIB have a prisoner and they want to torture him for information, and then use that information to assassinate someone. Or rather, they want our protagonists to do these things while they stand back and pretend to not be involved.

This is already a bit thin. If they’re trying to make it so they’re not blamed for the human rights violations you’re about to commit, then why are they hanging around the crime scene?

The problem here is that we’re about to go through a fully interactive torture scene. The player will choose from several different torture implements and then use the controller to apply the chosen device to the victim as he screams and pleads for mercy. This is something a lot of people are not going to want to do, which means a lot of people are going to be asking for a solid justification for it, which means you need to make sure the whole thing stands up to scrutiny.

When I go on one of my rants about the lack of logic in a given situation, a common (and more or less reasonable defense) is to say, “Shamus, you’re over-thinking this. Just go with it and enjoy the gameplay.” That excuse doesn’t work here because the game is demanding we think about the situation, and we can’t “enjoy” the gameplay because it’s actively, deliberately unpleasant.

What makes this really awful is that the victim is the only explicitly innocent person in the entire game. Oh sure, there might be other people in the cast that you find sympathetic or likable. Tracey, Amanda, and Jimmy qualify as non-combatants. But everyone, and I do mean everyone in the world of GTA V is some combination of shallow, cruel, vindictive, toxic, greedy, abusive, manipulative, gross, hateful, bigoted, or nihilistic. Everyone except the guy you’re about to torture, who makes it clear up front that he’s willing to answer any questions and just wants to go back to his family. This is a very sensitive topic, and the game is going to engage with it in the most blunt-force way possible.

Agent Steve gives Trevor the job of torturing our victim while Michael and Agent Dave go to the other side of the city to do the assassination. The problem is that Trevor has no reason to go along with any of this. We just spent an entire (overly long) chapter establishing that Trevor is fearless, single-minded, and capable of violence on a shocking scale. He hates being bossed around, he hates when people are rude to him, he hates the government, and he’s basically unstoppable. And now he’s taking orders from a condescending government jackass in a polo shirt and the story doesn’t even give us a fig leaf excuse for why. It doesn’t even look like agent Steve is armed!

Yes, you could argue that maybe Trevor is in the mood for some torture. I can believe that. Except, wouldn’t he torture Agent Steve instead? The designated victim is a complete stranger to Trevor and means nothing to him. Meanwhile, Steve is smug, irritating, and deliberately going out of his way to piss Trevor off. Yes, the FIB has leverage over Michael. But they have no such leverage over Trevor.

The moment Trevor doesn’t strap Steve into the torture chair and go to work on him, this entire scenario collapses. This is not at all a plausible sequence of events. Sure, we can come up with some fanfiction that might explain Trevor’s behavior. But if you’re going to force the player to do something really unpleasant as part of some sanctimonious lecture / mission, then the reasoning behind it needs to be airtight and not reeking of contrivances.

Just to make it all as pointless as possible, the victim pleads with you to ask him questions because he’s already willing to talk. The writer is railroading us through this ridiculous mess so they can beat us over the head with the idea that “torture is bad”, and their presentation of the topic gives us a nonsensical strawman scenario that undercuts their point. Even a pro-torture thinker will readily admit there is nothing to be gained from torturing this guy. Which makes it feel like the writer doesn’t actually understand the debate. If they were actually going to take some sort of coherent swipe at the topic, then they really ought to present it in the context of the usual “ticking time bomb” hypothetical

You must torture the subject several times, with the game encouraging you to try a different implement of torture each time. Your available tools are:

Use pliers to rip out one of his teeth.

Use a massive pipe wrench to crush his knee / balls / arm.

Car battery to the nipples.

Waterboarding.

There are even optional things you can do to make the whole thing more sadistic, like sparking the battery connections right in his face to terrify him. The game won’t let you go easy on him, but it will allow you to be even more cruel. For some reason.

Pointless Yet Mandatory

A scene protesting the lack of accountability in government-sanctioned extra-judicial killings has accountability built into it. For some reason.

After each bout of torture, Steve asks another question about the guy they’re trying to assassinate. As we go we learn he’s an Azerbaijani with a full beard who smokes a lot and is left-handed. While all of this is going on, Michael is up on a hill overlooking a house party, peering at the guests through the scope of a sniper rifle. Once you have all of those facts, you can switch over to Michael and shoot the guy in question[2].

This is supposed to be commentary on how torture yields unreliable information and that there’s not enough accountability in the system, yet the mission itself undercuts this entire idea because the monomaniacal game designer can’t let go of their precious DIAS gameplay for one stupid mission, no matter how badly it clashes with the heavy-handed sermon the writer is hitting us with. If you shoot the wrong person then somehow everyone clairvoyantly realizes they’ve made a mistake and you fail the mission.

Imagine how much more sense it would make if you just had to kill someone at the party, and nobody was much concerned with fact-checking. Maybe players would torture the guy, only to realize later that it didn’t matter. Other players would just shoot someone at random and get a free pass, underscoring how easy and tempting it is to abuse a system with no accountability. There’s your message right there!

Once you’re done with the torture and Michael kills his target, Steve orders Trevor to kill the informant. Trevor finally begins acting in-character and disobeys this order, instead taking the guy to the airport to “escape”.

It doesn’t make a lick of sense, of course. Regardless of what you did in the torture room, this guy is in no shape to fly. The game sort of assumes you used each torture implement once. So the informant is shirtless, covered in blood, slurring his words due to the missing tooth, and limping badly. He has no money, no ID, and no way of obtaining these things. What is he supposed to do at the airport? I have no idea. He tumbles down the steps in what I’m assuming is supposed to be “slapstick comedy” and that’s the last we see of him.

Turning this gruesome ordeal into a pratfall isn’t the writer’s big sin here. No, the really obnoxious thing is that after this blunt-force message, the writer turns Trevor into a sock puppet and has him explain to the informant (and to the audience) the point the writer is trying to make! I don’t know which is more disappointing, their lack of trust in the audience, or their lack of confidence in their craft.

And just to make it as bad as possible, Trevor’s “explanation” is wrong and incoherent. He correctly points out that they got no useful information out of the victim. Ok, fair enough. But then he goes on to say that torture is for the benefit of the torturer, or their boss, or their boss, etc.

This makes no sense. The US government didn’t adopt a torture program for the benefit of a handful of agents who get off on it. That’s the opposite of how power dynamics work. To say more would get into politics and involve pointing fingers, but the machinery that brought us here is a lot bigger and a lot more powerful than the will of a few CIA agents. Furthermore, if this was true then the FIB would have wanted to torture this guy themselves and not outsource the job. The only thing worse than explaining the lesson is the fact that the explanation disagrees with what we’ve been shown.

So the FIB brought in Trevor, a guy that is personally dangerous to them and has no reason to cooperate and they have no means to control. They did this so they could outsource a job they should have been able to do themselves, in order to extract information they had no means to verify from a guy who was already willing to tell them everything. This is all done in service of making an overt political statement, which is undercut by both the actions of the characters and the ingame mechanics. In doing so they take a real topic involving real human suffering and turn it into an incoherent slapstick farce. Then at the end the writer decides to just explain the lesson to us and gets it wrong.

*Slow sarcastic applause.*

Way to go, Rockstar. You managed to offend me with my own opinion, and I didn’t even know that was possible.”

it's interesting to me that torture just works to us, as a literary device. It's everywhere in movies and stories and whatnot, from big-budget dramas to little grindhouse short stories. It fits neatly into the requirements of plot: character doesn't want to offer information, Gets Tortured, has to offer information.

the issue with this is that it isn't how it works.

torture is a display of power. It fouls interrogation, this is known; a person being tortured will tell you whatever you want to hear to make it stop, which is more often than not a lie, made up on the spot, or if the truth an incomplete and useless version of it. It isn't generally done for information's sake anyway, but as a form of what the ancient Greeks called hybris, the violent exhibition of your power over another person.

This is, every once in a great while, done right in fiction, but it's a challenge to write vs. the idea that it's a shortcut to one character revealing plot-critical information to another. Pretty much every form of torture works this way, even the ones that are legally permissible. Psychological torment or physical discomfort also produce an animalistic desire to escape harm and foul interrogation. The forms of torture the cops can do? The cops do it not to gain information (or if they think it will, they're lying to themselves) but because it makes them feel powerful.

There's probably a master's thesis in it for somebody studying the rise of torture as a plot device since the beginning of the war on terror and the contemporaneous development of the Broken Windows theory of policing. I'm not really aware of any similar level of disconnect between what Works in fiction and what happens in real life!

[putschki1969]

Hi Puts, I have a question, but maybe it's too personal. As a fan, how much money do you spend? I think the three FC alone cost about $130 a year. Each shipment to Mexico costs between $20 and $50, including fees. Buying CDs, DVDs, streaming tickets, shop items, magazines (Idk if Hikaru and Keiko send something like Botanical Tsushin) I think is quite a bit of money. I graduated this year and recently started working, so I'm wondering how much money I need to pay for everything I want.

Hello there!

Don't worry, I have no filter so there is literally nothing too personal you could ever ask me. Also, I think it's important to be transparent about stuff like that.

Before I get to the juicy details I want to preface this post by saying that I am in a very privileged position so using my fangirl expenses as a general reference is probably not the best idea. There is free education and public health care in my country so I do not have any debts from either of those. On top of that I do have a job with a decent salary and my monthly fixed costs are comparatively low since I share the rent and stuff with my mum (yup, I am 30+ and choose to live with my mum, sue me). My company pays for public transportation, internet and a big portion of my meals. Last but not least, I have no car, no partner, no kids, no pets, no other social commitments or anything else that would burden me financially aside from my obsession with Kalafina so I am free to spend a considerable amount of my income on my "hobby" without having to worry too much about running into debt or not having enough savings.

Having said that, I will openly admit that I spend a SHIT-TON of money for my girls, much more than I am honestly comfortable with. Yes, I can more or less afford it but it still brings me a lot of pain and tears every single day.

Now let's get into the details 〈(•ˇ‿ˇ•)-→ [Like you I will be using USD for easy understanding]

I honestly cannot tell you a definitive number since my expenses always change depending on how many events and releases are scheduled for a particular time period. I guess I can provide a rough overview of what I am currently spending on Kalafina since there are quite a few things happening right now (nothing compared to last December though).

The four FCs I am part of with their combined costs of roughly $150 are what I consider to be “negligible costs” and they are really my least concern in the grand scheme of things.

The streaming tickets are very cheap in my opinion and I would gladly pay even more for them if it meant I wouldn't have to spend a fortune on regular trips to Japan. But yeah, it's another $150 to $200 a year for various streaming events.

Releases and merch are pricey in and of themselves (incl. around $5-$10 of domestic shipping) but it's made even worse when you are crazy like me and buy multiple copies of something just to get special benefits. Recently I have ordered Hikaru's merch (~$100), Keiko's merch (~$50), Wakana's merch (~$120) and three *coughs* copies of Wakana's Blu-ray (~$220). I also made sure to purchase Hikaru's albums on iTunes (~$20) even though I already own the CDs.

International shipping/import fees is where the costs pile up and I usually end up paying anywhere from $20 up to $150 for packages. Austria has literally the WORST import regulations T_T

I also indulge in the occasional Kalafina fashion item so that gets pretty expensive too. But that’s just me so there is really no need to take these costs into consideration.

So yeah, you can expect to spend a LOT of money depending on how greedy you are. :P Being an overseas Kalafina-fan sucks! However, I have two tips for you:

Prioritising is key! Find out what’s most important to you and then make peace with the fact that you will never be able to buy everything because that’s just not reasonable (unless you are filthy rich :P). I obviously focus on digital and physical music releases because that’s how you support their solo careers. I know it’s tempting to pirate this stuff but I urge all fans to make those purchases. The same applies to live stream tickets. If you have the means and the event is foreigner-friendly, please go for it! Aside from that, you will just have to choose your orders wisely. Ask yourself the questions: What kind of benefits do I prefer? What merch am I most likely to use? Any merch I am particularly fond of? Make sure you don’t end up overspending. While I keep encouraging fans to spend their money, you should always do it within reason. 

Cluster your orders! If you are using a proxy service like Tenso or Buyee, it’s best to have items arrive around the same time so you can consolidate your packages (within the 30-day period). After all, there is nothing more frustrating than paying $20 on shipping for a tiny fan club magazine that’s basically for free. So before you make a purchase, check the scheduled shipping time and try to make your orders align with each other. And also try to pay attention to the shipping dates of FC-related items, that’s not always easy since the schedules aren’t exactly regular but you can at least get a feel for them. If a FC item happens to arrive at the warehouse, you could always use that opportunity to order some in-stock goods or releases you have had your eye on. They should arrive quickly so you can ship them together with the FC-item. Please note that this will of course increase shipping costs/import fees since your packages will get bigger/heavier but I think at the end of the day, you are still saving money.

I know it’s often frustrating and intimidating to navigate through the world of Kalafina but I hope my posts can at least somehow help to alleviate the the stress that comes with being an overseas fan.

[artoflifehealingarts]

Posted on Quora

By Tony Castaldo

Q: My IQ is at around 151 (Mensa). What can I expect to achieve in life?

Welcome to the club! You can expect to achieve absolutely nothing!

This is like saying, “I have a race car engine. How fast can I go?”

Well, buddy, you need the rest of the car, and unfortunately nature will not always match your engine with all the rest of the mechanical parts in your car. All the parts are randomly chosen and then forced to fit together.

The “rest of the car” in this case is both your physical self, and your emotional self, all you have proven with an IQ test is that you are capable of fast analytical problem solving. That doesn’t automatically make you well-adjusted emotionally, it doesn’t automatically make you an athlete, it doesn’t mean anybody will love you or you will love them, it doesn’t mean you will make a ton of money.

Here is the key you will learn when you get older. It may take time, but I’m giving you the hint now, so you’ll recognize it more quickly than I did: Emotions are king, and will ultimately determine your fate. Not rationality, that is a servant to your emotions, and it will always be.

The neocortex is called that because it evolved recently; before that we were ruled by instincts and emotions and very limited reasoning power, like all other animals. Well, in this case evolution worked by adding something new, not subtracting. Before the neocortex, our instincts and emotions were completely in charge of our actions, and guess what? They STILL hold the throne!

There is an “accidental” brain experiment* with a man that lost his amygdalae in surgery (basically the structures that act as an emotional clearing house) to excise a brain tumor. As a result, he was rational, he could solve math problems, ace quizzes, he did not lose any of his intellect. But he was incapacitated anyway, because he could not make decisions. Asked to pick out clothes for a day, he dithered in the closet for hours, until he had to go to the bathroom. And narrating what he was doing, he could endlessly analyze and come up with reasons to pick one shirt over another, depending on who he might meet, where he might go, what the weather would be, and never come to a conclusion.

You might think he’d get bored or angry or frustrated and just grab a shirt: Nope. Those are emotions. He wasn’t embarrassed by taking so long; he didn’t hate himself, he didn’t worry about what it meant that he could not make a decision. All emotions. In essence, he just did not LIKE any shirt more than another, and he had no rational reason to pick one over another. So his intellect just came up with one thing after another to present to the king (the amygdalae), which was dead on the throne and never indicated to the intellect “I prefer that option.”

Now bladder pain, hunger, muscles and joints hurting and getting tired from standing too long; those are not emotions, and he knew how to respond to that. Physical discomfort is a thing; but also not intellect. Given orders, he knew how to respond to that.

So what is the evolutionary role of Intellect, then? It is a SERVANT to your physical and emotional self, and provides you information, projections and predictions, and understanding for you to emotionally react to.

Why stay in school, when, emotionally it would be much more satisfying to have some money by getting a job? Your intellect will project those two futures, in one you likely have a better job and better life, in the other your short-term indulgences will lead to lesser jobs and a more difficult life. And when you emotionally consider one of those options better than another, the intellect has done its job and you stay in school, despite the short term allure of not being a broke ass student.

You have to learn to manage your emotions, delay gratification, and your intellect can help you with that, but it also depends on your emotional constitution right now. The Intellect can let you breeze through school and college. Mine let me finish a Bachelor’s in Mathematics in 3 years flat, and my Master’s in same in 18 months. It let me go to college for 12 years, earning five degrees with a 4.0 GPA, including my PhD.

Academic success is yours, and getting it will help you become financially successful, because our society pays (literally and figuratively) way too much regard to advanced college degrees.

But your emotions can derail all that. Mensa itself has studied this**; their members are not all successful, even in their own judgment, not all of them are living happily ever after. They have had members get addicted to drugs, get defrauded, go to jail for committing impulsive crimes. They have had high IQ women that got pregnant and bore children at 15. Mensans end up as janitors, truck drivers, and Amazon warehouse workers. Mensans have struggled with depression, and committed suicide. Mensans have attempted stupid stunts and ended up paralyzed for life. Mensans become obese and diabetic and get diseases because they cannot control their eating, their depression, or resist impulsive temptations.

And guess what? All of that shit at about the same rate as the general population that is NOT high IQ.

Why? Because emotions rule our lives. The best thing you can do with your intellect is not to “gain control” of your emotions; you cannot dethrone the King and should not try. But what your intellect CAN do is manipulate the King, learn to convince yourself to choose the best balanced outcome of short, intermediate and long term gains.

Should you study Computer Science and within that Algorithmic Science, there is an interesting class of Algorithms called “Greedy Algorithms”. Greedy algorithm - Wikipedia . The hallmark of such algorithms is that always choosing the optimal short term solution is guaranteed to produce the optimal long term solution, so it is very easy.

That is how basic animals work, as if this is always true of the world. It is why we can trap them: We humans can devise traps so the optimal short term solution for the animal will NOT lead to their optimal long term solution, it will kill them instead. The rat taking the bite of cheese triggers a spring-loaded bar that breaks its neck. The deer chased by a human takes the route of fastest escape and lands in a concealed pit.

People have all that same Greedy Algorithm equipment built in. The purpose of the intellect is to let you defeat this very strong tendency to choose the optimal short term solution, because the Greedy Algorithm does NOT solve all problems. Animals, and us, evolved emotions to use the Greedy Algorithm because it is the simplest and easiest algorithm to implement, one step up from the random action of bacteria and viruses.

The intellect is there to help you accurately predict the consequences and outcomes of your actions in the future, so your emotions can make an informed choice about what will give you the most emotional gratification in the long term, or at least for as far as you can see the future.

There is often a tendency amongst the high IQ crowd to put undue importance on the value of their intellect. They want to “Spock it out,” dismiss emotions as unimportant.

Well, Spock is mythical bullshit, humans don’t work like that, so figure that out as soon as you can. The point of life is emotions, and the best thing you can do with your intellect is use it and delayed gratification diligently to ensure you live a happy life, find love, avoid fear and embarrassment and prison and disease and disability, work at a job you love that uses your talents.

There is no point in being smart if it doesn’t make you happy. You have been gifted with a superior ability to solve problems and understand consequences. A bigger hammer to solve life’s problems, or avert them altogether. But it is useless if you don’t use it, there is no point in being proud of just owning a big hammer, you need to use it.

And remember that your Intellect is a servant to your emotions, it isn’t there to replace them, but to inform them, so you can resist short term gratification when your intellect sees it is likely to sabotage your long term future. That is how you avoid being trapped like an animal and suffering at the hands of others.

* Amygdala results: I believe I first read about this in the book “The Man That Mistook His Wife For A Hat”, but for a neurologist’s talk see Antonio Damasio | Speaker | TED.

** See for example High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities.

The remainder of the conclusions and advice are my own based upon reading several such studies, and the implications mentioned.

[diceandlipstick-blog]

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Session 1 recap - 1/15/2019

The season is spring and the setting is the City of Splendor, Waterdeep. We find ourselves entering the Yawning Portal, a famous tavern built over the entrance of a well, which leads down into Undermountain. We'll come back to that in a bit though. Entering the Tavern is a lovely half-elf named Sylvar. She enters with a cloaked wrapped tightly around her lithe frame. Is she hiding something? We shall see...She looks around for someone, but doesn't seem to search hard, or possibly can't find whom she is looking for. She is nervous and looks extremely out of place, but that is only to me, the DM who will set up her story and potentially her demise at a later date.  Following her as she takes a seat, at the only table made available to our unlikely group of heroes is Elias, a young male half-elf with mischievous intent in his eyes. He receives a lukewarm almost disdainful welcome from Durnan, the proprietor of the renowned Yawning Portal. Elias is warned by Bonnie to behave while she chastises him for getting the barkeep riled up with his presence. Elias unphased and amused, orders a drink and takes a seat at the back of the tavern, away from the large crowd, though ever aware of his surroundings. As he settles in and is brought his drink a large half-orc (all you interbred motherfuckers.) enters the tavern. He's no stranger to his surroundings, and his love struck eyes fall on Yagra Stonefist, a roughneck half-orc female, who's brutality and manhandling has earned her the attentions and affections of Dirge.  Dirge takes a seat at Bonnie's insistent that he occupy the table with the lonely half-elf. He orders a drink and watches Yagra arm wrestle a few of the hulking bandits seated at her table, with stars in his eyes. Panning the camera no one is holding to the entrance yet again, and you find yourself looking at a bruised up hill dwarf named Yossuck, returning to the tavern after a long days training with Hlam the eccentric monk in the mountains. Yes, you heard me, a hill dwarf monk.. weird I know. He moves with sore muscles straight to the bar and requests a drink. Durnan points over to a table and shoves a tankard of ale at the dwarf grunting about taking a seat and glaring at the pack of bandits who have become even rowdier with the third arm wrestle loss. Suddenly everyone hears the song, "Under the Sea" as Sebastian the crab enters... Sorry, scratch that. Kymani, an islander who sounds like the crab from my favorite Disney movie, enters the tavern. Loudly greeting anyone who wants to listen, (Psst which was no one.) asking a few unhelpful patrons if they've seen his friend, Obaya Uday, to which most just look at him as if he were shit that they stepped on. (people are so racist and rude) He is greeted by Bonnie who is flustered but seemed to have it all under control, as she is running around taking orders and serving as fast as her legs will carry her. She points to a table and scurries off with a promise of return and a look of distressed confusion, he takes his seat, and it seems as though the properly planted single table that was the only place for our random adventurers who never met before or knew one another were forced to sit together. As conversations fly between them all, Elias joins the group, offering overpriced tour guiding. Once everything seemed settled, there was an outburst from the back of the tavern, the group of rowdy bandits were now trying to fight the large half orc woman. She managed to knock two of them out, but eventually the remaining four overpowered her. She was knocked out, but not before several members of this mismatched heroes get a few hits in, though sadly for Dirge, Yagra missed his heroic smash of one of her enemies. During this epic battle for first level players... Elias pickpockets the distracted customers of the Yawning Portal. Lucky for him Durnan wasn't paying him any mind though in hindsight, he should have been for his patrons' sake.  Once Yagra falls, Durnan breaks up the fight, sending the remaining bandits scampering out the door. While everyone is helping make the knocked out Yagra comfortable, there is another catastrophe to deal with. Durnan yells out, "TROLL (earned XP)!!" and once again our heroes are put into a combat situation. They fight hard, though let's face it Durnanwrecked the troll with his 4 hits on the beast and a  cocktail of oil and flame. Though there was an explosion of stirges (earned XP), who tried to drain the party members. Durnan giving the group his thanks, though the tavern was filled with more suitable warriors who could have handled the troll with more finesse, (silly DMing done weirdly wrong and right) this group were the champs of the night. As they celebrated their victory over free drink and food for the night, they are approached by a man, who calls himself Volo. Members of the party don't bother to pick their own brains to see if they remember who he is, what he's "famous" for. He sits with them, enjoying their free drinks and food, and offers them payment for a little help. He hands them each 10 gold dragons (coins not the beasts) and tells them with a job well done, he'd pay them 10 times each what he had given them if they will help him find his friend Floon Blagmaar, who has disappeared a couple nights back, and he fears the worst of his friend, and for his safety. After a while of insights and shit talking, the party agrees to band together and find this Floon character. Heading off to the Skewered Dragon, in a seedy area of the seedy dock ward, they enter the new scene which is not impressive at all, and are quickly taken advantage of by the greedy and desperate proprietor of this establishment. He extorts them heavily for the little information he knows, which for the most part isn't helpful aside from the fact that after Volo left Floon that night, another man joined him for a few more drinks and they left together. The new man's name being Renaer Neverember (I can never remember.), who is the son of the previous Open Lord, Nagault Neverember.  A smarter, maybe nicer man sitting at a table, taking a smaller fee (at this point you all have paid among yourselves 20 dragons.) offers up that he watched Floon and Renaer leave together, and were followed by a couple of men who in other areas would be bad, but fit in nicely with the dark and bad-ass theme of this bar which is called for to progress the story. Sent to Candle Lane, to look for a door with a flying snake on it. The group enters the yard of the warehouse and making plenty of noise, and shedding tons of light because of their weak ass human member with no dark vision, they are once more tonight set up in combat. Fighting four kenku (earned XP), who leave them with a parting exclaim, "Xanathar sends it's regards." (So do the Lanasters, bitch!) the group basically raids the warehouse which is packed with trash, or at least as far as the searching eyes have found so far. Sylvar finds a door, and inside the tiny closet, they find, not the man they are seeking but his friend, Renear. He accounts a similar story of drinking and leaving the tavern, he was hit over the head and has spent a couple days in the dark. He expresses to the group that he fears that they may have mistaken Floon for him, and that they seek the fortune Renaer's father had embezzled and hid away somewhere in Waterdeep. Renaer makes a claim that he doesn't know anything about the truth of the gold's hiding place but seems to gather his courage and offers to help find his friend, possibly out of guilt or friendship, who knows now. And that my friends is where we have been left off for the session.

[tessmontyart]

2017 year review

I am late yet again with this! 😅  2017 was ... a pretty crap year. BUT I made the most of my situation by travelling around Australia doing the most conventions I’ve ever done, growing my following and earning a nice friendly profit! More under the cut ~ (warning, starts off very mopey)

So continuing on from 2016, I was a what they call a ‘job seeker’ .. which means earning a small amount of money to cover rent and bills while applying for 20 jobs a month, only getting a handful of interviews and being rejected by every single one :))) This was extremely frustrating because each interview required a lot of anxiety just to hype myself up to go, and then hearing the same ‘sorry there were better candidates’ or -nothing at all- resulted in even more anxiety and breakdowns, and the whole thing was just a repetitive cycle that made me less and less confident each time.

(I’ve decided to use kittens to convey emotion in this post lol)

In April I was called back to (what’s left of) P55 Studios for some concept work, but it was only a 1 month contract and it took them 6 months to finally pay me for the work I did. It was fun, but man ..I hope they pick up their game soon ... it’s sad to see the state they’re in now.

I was then basically punished for ‘not finding a fulltime job quickly enough’ - the job centre shoved me into a warehouse sorting old clothes 9-5 with next to no breaks, alongside a bunch of ex criminals who were extremely unpleasant and rude to me. The dust made it hard to breathe, most of the clothes had gross stains on them as well as spiders hiding in them. After having another breakdown and being taken to hospital and a psychologist because I freaked some people out, I decided it would be best to go back to being a student and trying to learn more things for my resume, because a University Degree is apparently worth nothing in this world :/

AFTER THAT DECISION, THINGS REALLY PICKED UP! 😅

I did a 6 month IT and Web Technologies course, which was really good! I learnt quite a lot of things including HTML, and I was able to finally make a professional online portfolio with my own domain name ^_^ (tessmontyart.com)

While that was all going on, I was also managing my Etsy store and tabling at conventions, both of which are becoming quite successful which makes me happy! Other than that I’ve just been drawing and drawing and drawing. I’m pretty sure I’ve drawn the most in 2017 than any other year, and I can see my art slowly but surely improving, which is something I’ve been longing for!

I tabled at the most conventions in 2017 too. I did Melbourne Supanova, Central Coast Comicon, Sydney Supanova, Nexus Con, SMASH, Adelaide Supanova as well as 2 local markets. I had a lot of fun with those and am planning to go to even more in 2018! 

Other highlights include:

⭐️ I made my first ever vinyl sticker sets!

⭐️  I made my first ever enamel pins!

⭐️  I made these adorable Nifflers in mini Jars!

⭐️ among a whole load of new products!!

⭐️  I hit 600 followers on Instagram and Facebook! 

⭐️  I successfully completed another Inktober! I failed 2016s because I was in New York and didn’t have time (a fair excuse! I wanna go back)

⭐️  During that inktober I created a new OC, a robo catgirl! I definitely want to draw her more in 2018 :) 

⭐️ I had a go at Livestreaming for the first time! It is such a good way to get stuff done o_o knowing people are watching so you don’t procrastinate lol ..

⭐️ I also started making time-lapse videos, which have become quite popular!

(below is just a screenshot!)

⭐️ I started Fanart Fridays (which I gotta get back into again!)

⭐️ I road tripped all the way from Sydney to Melbourne and back for the first time :D (thats 545.3 miles!)

⭐️ I also roadtripped all the way from Sydney to ADELAIDE and back for the first time xD;; (that’s 854.3 miles @_@ )

⭐️ I got to meet @katiecrooked for the 2nd time and actually hang out for a few days rather than 1 hour ;w; You are amazing and I’m so lucky to have such a great friend!

⭐️ I also got to meet up with the Japanese exchange student I hosted way back in 2011! My Japanese is much worse now but her english has improved so much, I’m so proud TwT

⭐️  I went to CHOCOLATE HIGH TEA

⭐️ Tried a raindrop cake for the first time :0

⭐️ Lights released the most amazing album in the world ‘Skin & Earth’ *_* 

⭐️ Owl City is finally releasing more music! (The cover of “Waving Through A Window” and sneak peaks of the new Cinematic album made me so happy!)

⭐️ The year Hatsune Miku turned 10!

⭐️ I got this cute bag for my birthday and so did my new friends resulting in this adorable pic:

(I’m the one on the right covered in owls. yes I photoshopped my fat out lol)

⭐️ I became obsessed with washi tape

⭐️ Became obsessed with Mystic Messenger

⭐️ Became obsessed with Night In The Woods (and made these cute polymer clay brooches)

⭐️ Annd also got into Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid and Houseki no Kuni ^_^

⭐️ The year Charlie got this ridiculous hat 

⭐️The year Prisoner Zero finally became available on Netflix (the 2D animated series I worked on in 2015/2016)

⭐️ and the year Doctor Who regenerated into a lady!

⭐️ It was another year of cute dates and sweet things with a sweet partner 💖

⭐️ I also got to try Teppanyaki for the first time!

⭐️ I made these cute gingerbread cookies! (my first time making gingerbread)

⭐️ And I made these cute christmas ornaments for my friend of her 2 doggies ^_^

On a sadder note ...

2017 was the year I met my partner’s grandma for the first and last time. She had a birthday party at the start of the year (my first visit to a place called Scone) and she passed away later in the year :( I had to go to my 2nd ever funeral ... it was at a really lovely country town I have never been to called Canowindra. Rest in Peace ♥️

What’s coming in 2018?

I am crossing my fingers for an animation job I applied for a while ago - one of the ladies who used to work at P55 is now working at a bigger animation company and planning to open up another studio near where I live. I wont find out for a while, cause new workplaces take a while to set up, but that would be really amazing if I were to work with her and the old animation gang again. 

Whether anything happens with that or not, I’ll be studying certificate IV of the IT course (like a continuation), and I plan to do even more conventions. Hopefully I can get into Oz Comic Con (they have a selective application process) which is 3 extra conventions if they don’t clash with anything else! (Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne). 

There’s also other conventions I hadn’t heard of until it was too late to apply that I’m keen to apply for like Animaga in Melbourne, as well as Madman Anime Fest in Brisbane and Melbourne. I also want to make a lot more non-fandom things for market stalls, as well as a comic and zines!

Hopefully I’ll hit 1k followers on fb/ig? :D that will make me feel important lol

I’m also hoping to go on a holiday this year. I seemed to go on some sort of holiday (either domestic or overseas) every year up until now xD; Sounds greedy but I really miss the feel of holidays you know??

Anyway, I could type forever so I’ll stop here. Not sure why I share this much of my life on the internets but its become a tradition!  PLEASE BE KIND 2018, I’M BEGGING YOU 😱

[2016] [2015] [2014] [2013] [2012]

[kecharacosplay]

So hi, my “normal job” has kinda put me on hiatus until further notice, so any help now would be appreciated! You can throw some money in my tip jar, buy something from my shop, or request a custom commission! Sky’s the limit on that one too, as I do more than just cosplays. I’m also quite adept at kimonos, corsets, skirts, dresses...pretty much anything that can be sewn. Shoot me a message if you’re interested!

And part two will be under a read more thing, because I feel like soapboxing a bit; feel free to skip/ignore! :)

Okay, so every time I talk to a friend/family member/random stranger about my sewing career, it always seems to go the same way. “Have you tried a theater position, maybe you could be like an apprentice?”, “Tailoring might be boring, but you’d do really well at an alterations shop.”, occasionally even “Just do something else to make money, you’ll hate sewing after a while if you try and make it more than a hobby.”, etc. The suggestions change now and then, but mostly the point remains the same.

“Work for someone else so they can make the profits while you scrape by at minimum wage.”

And before you say anything, yes I know it’s not always minimum wage. If you have the talent and the drive, you can advance, get raises/promotions, slowly build your brand, etc whatever. But here’s the thing about that. That’s still working you’re butt off to give some corporate bigshot a bigger profit margin, and I don’t have any desire to run a huge company of my own someday. Becoming ‘rich and famous’ is something I joke about, but have very little actual desire to accomplish. I don’t have the figure for cosplay fame or modeling, and I don’t have the determination to start some sort of business related to my passion. Selling supplies, assembly lines, warehouses, outsourcing, I know the words but they hold no appeal for me.

I just want to make enough to take care of myself. To pay my bills, maybe save a little for the future. Live a normal life basically. My prices are based on my time and my skill, and yes they only go to me, but isn’t that kind of what we all claim we want? I hear all the time how much people hate the ‘greedy one percenters’ and the big corporations screwing us all over for the sake of profit, but everyone still shops at amazon. everyone still tries to nickel and dime individual creators, complain about pricing from small businesses who can’t afford to outsource or cut costs by cheating their staff or setting up some sort of assembly line so they can make more stuff at a faster rate. And especially in clothes it’s a CONSTANT complaint about the crappy quality you get. But everyone. still. does it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the cost of living. Trust me, being at the bottom of the barrel myself I can completely understand being too poor to buy custom work. One of my favorite guilty pleasures is rummaging through the digital dollar bins of Wish. But don’t bash the individual creator in your quest to get a higher quality product at the bargain basement price. I know exactly what I’m getting with my cheap purchases. Understand that quality comes at a price, especially on an individual level like mine. I can’t afford to hire a team, I wouldn’t even begin to know how to start up a business of any sort, and I don’t want to. And there are millions in the same boat as I am. We can’t afford to live doing what we love, so one by one we fall to despair. We give up our dreams and jump in that assembly line because we have no other choice. Be a slave to a company, or starve.

And that’s where I am right now. My ‘normal’ job is a basic part-time gig that’s constantly changing, similar to freelance I guess? But I get a regular schedule and hours and paychecks. So long as they have an assignment for my area, which they currently do not. So now I’m sitting here, a little ball of stress, trying to figure out what the heck I’m going to do. The credit card bills don’t care that my income has gone on hiatus. The medical bills have already sent part of my dues to a collection agency. Even something small like a phone bill becomes a dreaded reminder of that constant push to just become another worker bee and I hate it.

So I guess the point I really want to make is really think about what you’re buying when you order that new toy on Amazon. Whose pockets are you lining with that Disney vacation package? Did the janitor at your building get even a single dime from your company’s latest profit increase? Everyone is so worried about being taken advantage of by an individual seller with a high price tag that they completely ignore the real villains. I know that’s a bit cliche, but I feel its truth more and more every day as I listen to everyone tell me(not directly, but heavily implied): “I don’t trust your work ethic/quality/prices. You’re just trying to make all your profits off me so you don’t have to work. You’re too expensive, I don’t see why you need this much money, you’re just being greedy.” And let’s not forget my personal favorite: “I love your work, you’re so talented, you could make SO much money selling your stuff(just not from me, I get the friend’s/family discount, right???)”

Don’t nickel and dime the artists at a convention. If they’re really your friends, pay them MORE than what they quote you(because I can pretty much guarantee they already gave you a discount, asking for it to be even cheaper will subsequently guarantee they’ll never want to make anything for you ever again). Stop feeding the corporate wolves until they agree to fair up or get out. We must prove to them that quality really is more important than quantity, or it will just continue getting worse for everyone not already in that ultra rich bracket.

Okay, soapbox done, bonus points to those who made it this far. I’ll try not to do this too often. It’s just been bugging me even more than usual thanks to yet another conversation similar to the one mentioned at the beginning.

Starting next post: back to the regularly scheduled cosplay posts/tutorial reblogs! :P