#like you ever try to replicate your old art style ITS HARD

[charmzero]

some v3 girls with skirts that go FWOOOOOO :)

[comikbook]

hello! warning: english is my second language and i'm just start trying to write in it regulary. so, if my text contains horrible amount of mistakes, i'm sowrry. in native i am the grammar wizard and the master of the cool words, no doubt i follow you only for a week or so, but i'm already can see how cool you in art tips (and how cool your art!). and i want to ask, did you ever have a long art block? like, mine just celebrated one year and i'm afraid, it don't wanna go away. it's not my first block, i know that i need to draw no matter how hard it could be. but i'm stuck. even doing homestuck fanart didn't unstuck me :0 drama my old style is dead and i can't find new one. faces of my beloved OCs is one big blur, so i can't draw them in any way. new OCs who i want to draw again so bad, 'cause it always was the bigest passion of mine since i was a child :c maye, you was in something like that before and can share what helped you? (thank you for reading my hot-second-language-mess. have a nice day or night or something in the middle!)

youre totally fine !! your message is perfect :)

i do deal with art block sometimes ! what really helps me is to do a self portrait, or a style study, anything that involves replicating something in a way that is very objective. it helps me recenter and appreciate my own style a lot more ! try different things, and if you need to please rest ! when its time for you to draw again youll know :)

[lazarus-harp]

replicated envies | | |

after the events of everlock, matthew wrestles with finding his footing. especially when it concerns a certain savant and an old flame of his

You're used to the topic of Joey being flung around the circle ; the savant's name ground out by people's clenched mouths like it's that hard for them to say. It bothers you little now that you've settled in, forever leaning forward in your seat as though ready to rush to the bathroom at any time. Everytime the topic is summoned, you keep quiet mostly. Not wanting to engage in idle gossip about a man you still see to this day. Didn't seem right to you. And you're certain if you did speak your heart on the subject, it would end with yelling and scornful looks aimed your way.

Basically, Joey Graceffa was ill-viewed by everyone here. You, the lonesome fan of his art, are forced into silence.

Well, that's exaggerating some. There's no pure hatred in anyone's eyes no matter how sharp their tones are. If you allow yourself to be sympathetic, you can understand they're all simply still hurt and need to direct that hurt onto a single party. But they don't mean it. You can see the blank looks in their eyes sometimes when they say something incredibly anger-fueled about the man. That's not hate. That's following a quiet rule these survivors made that you want no part of. Being isolated with Nikita was better than faking loathing for a man you felt nothing negative towards. This unity wasn't something you ever needed. So you refuse to fall into their clutches, remaining iron willed in the face of conforming creatures.

The only thing you noticed, amongst all the variety of survivors, was the man with glasses. How unlike the rest, he always said Joey's name with this echo of ache. It's always rubbing you the wrong way. The tenderness the man's tone holds as he gently pronounces every syllable of the name. That glazed over look in his vibrant eyes. It feels painstakingly familiar to how you whisper your friend's name and you think you can find more hatred towards that tone than you can find towards Joey.

You know what this is, the thing that makes Tyler say something as mundane as a name like that. A four letter word that's always weighed your small shoulders, made you want to crawl. Though as you judge the former thespian in your tense silence ; you can't bring yourself to connect the dots. Refuse to. What a heavy word it is. All it does is bleed into your entire body and dirty you with its very presence. You know the name, but you won't say it out loud. Even in the safety of your own rotted mind. A childish fear holds you back from lacing it into Tyler's feelings towards your friend. If you imply the word even in your thoughts, it'll be true. And you selfishly never want to be right on this because if you are, then that means Joey might feel the same way back. Which spells your ruination and everything after.

Aching affections were for you, not Tyler Oakley. Especially in the name of being enamored with a certain wayward savant. That was your duty to carry because you've always been smitten with the littlest of things. Strangers on the bus stop that smile at you because of curtsy, friends of friends - tenderness for humans was etched into the cavern of your heart. Drumming you into fever. It's your thing, not his. And you shouldn't feel envy clawing at your throat everytime you even glance at him, but you do. After all, you think, who else could ever love someone like Joey properly, except for you? Your friend isn't a monster but he's certainly not pure nor normal, and neither are you. Care comes easier with understanding and you have that ; could stroke the dull flames in Joey's stomach into a raging fire. Finger his hair in a way that smoothes it out into mock perfectionism. You could because you know better than most.

Love, that weapon of a word, is reserved for you ; Matthew Patrick. For detectives who've already figured it all out and know their destiny. Love is your blessing and your curse and what will destroy everyone you know from the inside out while it leaves you complete. Puppy love is what Tyler might hold for Joey, but oh, you've carried the torch for much longer now. There's nothing small or growing in your own love for your friend. It's just yours. And it's deeper than Tyler's. And that matters, somehow, in the grand scheme of this.

—

He approaches you after a session once. You're gathering your leather coat ( orange today, you yearn for Everlock harder in the fall ) and calling out to Nikita who rushes out the door, furious. She always is, yet she never lets you permanently steal her away from this ; a vicious cycle of hurting herself and you like you have to hurt. You're blindly following her until there's an "ahem.." Which makes you look back to investigate, a natural instinct at this point.

And there Tyler stands, awkward. He shuffles on his clumsy feet and smiles radiantly at you. Blinding. You blink through the rays of white and feel green at the fact you smile so crooked and he doesn't. Perfect despite the hauntings and his unrequited feelings--- seeming confident in himself though you can pick up his nervous ticks as he stands before you. Excellent performance.

"Hey there." Tyler vibrates cheerfully, clicking his tongue with his nerves before pushing on to the point. You know he doesn't want to waste time chatting you up. "I was wanting a second of your time, if you could spare it?"

So polite. You gnaw the inside of your already hurt cheek, your hesitance probing the other male to finally go, "Please, Matthew, it won't be long. I swear.."

You give in at the begging. Soft 'please's always get you in ways nothing else does. You wish Joey and Nikita would beg more often for you, though their cursed independence would never allow it.

After nodding and brief pleasantries, Tyler's able to walk back into the room with you following. Suddenly you feel uneasy. Privacy. You don't trust yourself alone with people often, always nervous about doing something foolish. Smartness was a skill you honed greatly, leaving you with the knowledge of the many things this could be about--- and how you won't respond well to any of the topics. When you two slow to a stop, you're already glancing at your hands and flexing them ; watching your knuckles turn white against such strain. You're trying to think of how badly you could hurt the former thespian. All while he's looking at you with his mouth open, then closed. As he struggles to find out how to word his want, the want you need to yank out of him. A want that burns inside of you twice as bright already.

When Tyler finds the words, he peeks up at you from where he tilts his head downward. "How's Joey?"

The words gush out of him quickly, effective and to the point. You raise a brow and watch him fluster, yet he looks pleased. Like he's been dying to ask every meeting. It makes your stomach churn with something fierce. Any charmed part of you wilts away as the acidic jealousy coats you a second skin.

"He's great, actually." The lie tumbles out, as do the others. "Better than I've ever seen him! He's always thanking Nikita and I for helping him straighten his life out , but you know Joey. Natural born charmer!"

For added effect, you wink at him. Trying to squash out your rising delight at the way his face blanks. Every word was picked with precision in order to watch Tyler's eagerness fade like a dimming light. 'You know Joey' no, Tyler doesn't, not like you and you can tell he knows that. You preen from the make-believe praise you imply the savant gives you, and feel faint with how much you love the idea of Joey being happier with you than he ever was with the man before you. It's all a lie but you almost believe it yourself. You want to.

"Well, that's good.. I'm glad he's finally happy."

Doesn't sound like it, from the defeated wisp in his sigh. But you simply smile at Tyler, in your styled crooked grin. Letting him get away with his words

You place an assured hand on your hip, pronouncing it outward. "He really is."

There's no offer to relay any message, because you would never tell Joey anyway. He doesn't like to hear about these meetings. Very bleeding hearted at the fact he was never offered a spot. So your silence wouldn't only be an act smitten with selfishness, not when it would favor your beloved savant greatly as well. It's better to leave Tyler in the dust. Covered with cobwebs that smell of the past. It's time for Joey to let go and heal properly. If he clings to anything else, he'll never get there. This love would drag him down and you know it. You adore the man to the point of self destruction typically, but today you'll finally do something in his best interests. Something Tyler fails to do.

The brief encounter ends shortly after. With the former thespian stuttering about, side stepping you greatly on his way out. You fight back a satisfied grin, or a wicked smirk, while you follow far behind.

When Nikita notices your mood, she says nothing about it. Only calling attention to how famished she is.

For once, you're thankful for her inability to talk about things like this.

[blazehedgehog]

As an Internet veteran and draw-person, I really need to ask: what anime influenced you and many online artists circa 2000s? There's a specific style from those early 2000s webcomics and fanart I'm looking for and trying to replicate, and your old art fit in that "style", in my opinion. Thank you!

It’s hard to narrow it down, but it’s also not that hard to narrow it down. Anime was a much, much smaller industry back then. The “boom” was just beginning thanks to efforts by the Scifi Channel and Cartoon Network to bring anime to television in timeslots that people would actually watch.

So here’s your crash course in casual anime history, I guess, from someone who definitely isn’t like... obsessed with anime. Or isn’t anymore, but was back then.

For me, it all kind of started with, like... Dragon Ball, and this was a show that struggled to gain any traction at first. Where I lived, it aired at 5am on Sunday mornings. If you knew a kid that watched Dragon Ball, there was a solidarity there like, “Yup, you get it.”

Then DiC got the license to Sailor Moon and started airing it in the weekday morning slot I would typically describe as “right before you catch the bus.” You’d wake up around 6am, maybe 6:15, and watch whatever was on at 6:30 while you ate breakfast. As the credits were rolling, you’d head out to catch the school bus. Sailor Moon was what I remember doing that with the most. That combined with Dragon Ball formed my foundational interest in anime.

Around this time (1995, 1996) you were starting to see anime start to seep in to the mainstream elsewhere. There was a commercial I remember for, like, an anthology of anime classics like Akira...

And, y’know, when you’re like, 14 or 15 and you see a commercial like this -- cartoons! With blood! And nudity! It’s like, holy crap. Most of the classics we know today (Akira, Ghost in the Shell) were only really available via mail order like this back then.

More shows started getting localized for TV, too, like Ronin Warriors was one a lot of my friends got in to. It was considered “The Manly Sailor Moon.” And then there was, of course, Samurai Pizza Cats. Eventually Saban stopped dubbing Dragon Ball altogether and moved straight over to Dragon Ball Z, and that gained enough popularity that I think it eventually shook it out of its Sunday Morning time slot to somewhere a little more visible by general audiences.

Coming in to 1997 and 1998, anime was really starting to gain some momentum. The Scifi Channel had begin doing their “Saturday Anime” show, which aired at 3am every Friday Night/Saturday Morning. They probably figured it was one of the only ways they could get away with showing violent cartoons.

For me, this was where I got my first “real” taste of anime. They had a stable of about 5 or 10 movies and OVAs they’d run. Venus Wars, Vampire Hunter D, Project A-KO, Robot Carnival, Tenchi Muyo In Love (my favorite), Project L.I.L.Y. Cat, Beautiful Dreamer, Galaxy Express 999, Fatal Fury The Motion Picture, Record of Lodoss War, Dominion Tank Police, Roujin-Z, Demon City Shinjiku, Gall Force...

That felt like the bandaid got ripped off. Suddenly we were all buzzing about anime. Hey, have you heard about this movie called Ninja Scroll? There’s hardcore sex in it! No American movie, live action or not, could ever match the body horror of Akira! Hey, does anyone remember Robotech from the 80′s? That was actually anime, too! Wow!

Cartoon Network was smart enough to take notice and snatched up the rights to air Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z at reasonable, non-morning hours, and they dug out Voltron and put together a simple block of anime. I don’t even think it necessarily had a name, it was just an hour or maybe 90 minutes of anime a day, and it exploded. Right place, right time. So Cartoon Network expanded.

They added more classic anime, and some shows that were similar in tone, and called it Toonami. Robotech, Ronin Warriors, The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest, Reboot, Thundercats...

And this became the place to watch anime. Which is when we enter the era you’re asking about, the early 2000′s. This is where it starts to feel like a little too much to cover, because it came hot, heavy, and fast. There was a thirst for anime that was hard to quench because production companies were small and choosy about what they’d dub, but at the same time, a sort of gold rush was starting.

When I think of peak, classic-era Toonami, the stuff that really influenced me artistically, it was shows like Outlaw Star, Ruroni Kenshi, and Gundam Wing. I’m sure I’d also have friends speak highly of Big-O, G-Gundam, and Yu Yu Hakusho, three shows I never really got in to.

Eventually, Cartoon Network (and Williams Street, then called Ghost Planet Industries) began to realize that there was a growing library of anime they couldn’t show in the afternoon because it was too intense for the kids. There was also an undoubtedly vocal contingent of anime fans who were frustrated when their favorite shows had to be edited for broadcast. This gave birth to Toonami: The Midnight Run, the precursor to what would eventually become Adult Swim. The Midnight Run became home to uncut (or simply less-cut) episodes of afternoon shows that restored blood, alcoholic references, and the few cases of more extreme violence.

Midnight Run started getting exclusive shows, too. When I think about what Midnight Run (and later Adult Swim) was known for, it was shows like Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, and again, though it wasn’t really something I saw a ton of, Paranoia Agent.

Other networks did try to cash in on the anime craze. I think Tech TV/G4 tried to get in on things with Serial Experiments Lain and a few other shows, but to be honest, it never hit as hard as Toonami did. Then there was obviously the work of guys like 4KIDS, with the Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon shows on Saturday Morning, but those felt noticeably different in vibe and in tone (something that only got more pronounced when Kids WB started a Saturday Morning Toonami block that was even more aggressively sanitized than what could be shown on Cartoon Network).

Beyond broadcast TV, the stuff I remember being popular among my circle of friends were things like Tenchi Universe, Ranma 1/2, Slayers, Saber Marionette, and.... like, Di Gi Charat and Chobits? This was probably right around the era of Azumanga Daioh, too.

Unfortunately, much past 2003 or 2004 is where I started falling off of anime. The feeling of it being “new” and “special” was starting to wear off, and there was enough coming out that the standard of quality was beginning to drop. Whereas small studios like ADV and Manga Corps. could only afford to bring out the best of the best, we were starting to get junk like Duel Masters, Rozen Maiden and Tenchi Muyo GXP.

I remember friends speaking highly of shows like Bleach (heh), .hack, Full Metal Panic, Midori Days, Tenjo Tenge, Yakitate Japan, Eureka Seven, and Air Gear, but I can’t tell you anything about them, personally.

Either way, I’m sure I’ve given you more than enough to chew on.

[calliecat93]

Callie’s Disney Princess Retrospective: Cinderella

(Snow White Review)

The year was 1950, 13 years after Snow White’s release. Despite that film’s mass success, Walt Disney’s next feature films during the 1940’s such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi would all bomb. His only true success at the time was Dumbo, and that film was dampened by a mass strike during production that saw many animators walk out. It didn’t get any better when America entered World War II and the military took over many different animation studios, including Disney. They not only had to produce propaganda shorts but due to the limited funds, they were forced to rely on Package Films and live-action to survive. As the 1950s began to dawn, it was clear to Walt that if he wanted to stay in business, he needed another hit. But not just any hit, he needed the same kind of success that Snow White brought him. But what film could give him that success?

For that, he returned to fairy tales, and he found one. A story that he could relate to as a Missouri-born boy who began with nothing. A tale that could appeal to just about anyone. A true rags to riches story of one down-on-her-luck girl having all of her dreams come true. That film would be Walt Disney’s twelfth animated feature, his second fairy tale-based film, and of course the creation of the second Disney Princess who quickly became one of the most famous. Thus, let us discuss the 1950 film, Cinderella.

Overview

Since a young child, Cinderella has been in servitude by her cruel stepmother Lady Tremaine. She is regularly mistreated and worked to the bone by both Tremaine and her nasty stepsisters Drizella and Anastasia. Despite this, Cinderella keeps a cheerful and hopeful demeanor, caring for her mouse friends and hoping that someday the dream that she has wished for will come true. A day that seems to have arrived when the family gets an invitation to a ball held to find a suitor for The Prince. With all eligible maidens asked to attend, Cinderella believes that her chance has arrived, but Lady Tremaine has other plans.

Just as it looks like all of her hopes have been shattered, Cinderella’s kindness and hard-work are rewarded by her Fairy Godmother giving her what she needs to attend the ball. She has a lovely time but is forced to flee at midnight with only a lone glass slipper to remind her of that night. But the ended up charming the Prince and left the other slipper behind, so now the girl who fits the slipper will be made the prince’s bride. Once more, Tremaine tries to prevent Cinderella from succeeding. But with the help of her animal friends and her own hope, Cinderella’s dreams will at long last come true.

Review

As a little girl, there were many films that I would watch over and over again, such as The Aristocats or The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. But I think that Cinderella was the one that I would play back the most. I remember every single part of this movie. The music, the story, the characters, just everything. And even after all of these years, my feelings and love for the film haven’t changed. If anything, it’s only grown. I still remember when my family went to Walt Disney World, and aside from Mickey Mouse the only thing that I cared about was meeting Cinderella. I did so on the last day in the Magic Kingdom, and she was so kind and beautiful and was everything I ever dreamed of. It is a moment that I will never forget.

Looking at the film itself, it’s clear that it took a lot from Snow White. A fairy tale-inspired movie, a heroine in servitude who charms all around her, an evil stepmother, a handsome prince, animal companions, you name it. I don’t think that it was accidental either. As I said, Walt /needed/ another Snow White success story. He needed to replicate what made that film work and make it better. Which he did. While the two films are similar, it’s arguable that Cinderella improved on many of those elements. While we only really get told that Snow was a servant and only see it briefly at the start, we see Cinderella’s suffering throughout the film. While Snow could look a little off due to the animators still getting used to animating realistic humans, Cinderella looks realistic, moves more fluidly, and fits the style of the film much better. While The Queen never interacted with Snow until the end and therefore never see how she treats her, we see Lady Tremaine’s cruelty towards her stepdaughter in full force and it’s equally as chilling. It truly feels like Walt looked over Snow White, saw what could be improved on, and did so with Cinderella. It really shows how far the company had come since 1937.

But Walt wasn’t the only important person on the film. In fact, he was less involved than he was with Snow White since he was focusing more on live-action and developing Disneyland. This was the film that established Disney’s most talented and loyal animators, his Nine Old Men. These men not only worked on the first five features and the Package Films, but they would go on to work on every film up to The Fox and the Hound and some even went into Imagineering. These would be the men who not only pulled the company back onto its feet after WW2, but they would teach future Disney animators/directors such as Glen Keane, Jon Musker, Rob Clements, Andreas Deja, Brad Bird, and so many others who would continue their legacy. Cinderella herself was done primarily by Marc Davis, Eric Larson, and Les Clark.

Like Snow White, the story is pretty straight-forward. It seems to be based mainly on the version written by Charles Perrault and some of the Grimm Brothers version. It does some expansion, like showing what Cindy’s daily life is like. Having her dress get ripped apart, her getting locked up, and of course, giving an expanded role to the mice. Otherwise though like with Snow White, it’s one of the more faithful adaptations minus a few things. For example, if we go off the Grimm version, the stepsisters don’t mutilate themselves to fit into the slipper… and I don’t have an issue with that either. It can feel a little dragged out, like IDK how necessary the King and Grand Duke scenes were aside from establishing certain things like the ball and the slipper search, but it’s nothing that brings anything to a halt.

The animation is gorgeous. The Nine Old Men weren’t chosen out of random, after all. This film really shows off their talents. Characters like Jaq and Gus, Lucifer, and the Stepsisters are very lively and entertaining to watch. Ward Kimball, who was the main animator for Lucifer the Cat, used his own cat as a reference after Walt pointed it out to him, and you can tell that he was having fun with it. The more realistic characters like Cinderella and Lady Tremaine look and move very well despite the challenge the animators had keeping that realism up. I’d say that their work paid off though. Lady Tremaine especially has some of the most chilling, frightening expressions of any Disney Villain. Frank Thomas did a masterful job making her cold demeanor reach through the screen and to the audience. The art itself looks beautiful and we can thank artist Mary Blair for it as she did the concept art for the film. The use of colors and shadows were done very well. It’s just the right amount of brightness when necessary, and the right amount of darkness when necessary. It hits the mark perfectly.

Then there’s the sound and the music. On the latest rewatch, I noticed how they use music for characters a lot. Take the sequence where Jaq has to distract Lucifer in the first act for example. When he’s crawling across the wall, getting ready to get at Lucifer and kick him into his own milk bowl. They use strings for his movements as well as for strings, like the other mice shutting up Gus when he laughs. It’s nothing new for Disney, after all, it was doing this in Steamboat Willie that launched the company into fame. But it always adds so much even if you don’t realize it. The score uses a lot of strings and horns, knowing when to sound triumphant and when to be subdued. It’s a very good score.

Cinderella’s soundtrack was the first to be done by the newly established Walt Disney Records, allowing the company to gain profit for their own music. The vocal tracks have two classics worth mentioning. The first is Bippidi-Boppidi-Boo, the Fairy Godmother’s song. It’s a super fun, whimsical song and even though I still struggle to get the words right, it really fits the Fairy Godmother’s nature and is just so darn catchy! The other is of course the theme of the film,  Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes. There are several variations of the song throughout the film, but of course, the first time done by Ilene Woods (I’ll talk about her more when I do Cinderella’s character in-depth) is the one we remember most. It’s beautiful, hopeful, and was one of my favorite songs as a little kid. I used to annoy people with how much I would try to sing it, haha. It really tries to convince you that your dreams CAN come true, and by golly did I believe it when I was a kid… and deep down I still do, I supposed. Point is, it’s a lovely song~

What about the characters though? Well, let us have a looksie.

As with Snow White, there are many animals, though this time it’s mainly mice and birds. The mice are the main ones, as well as the only ones who can talk. There are other animals like the birds, a horse, and of course Bruno the Dog. But the main animals to discuss are Lucifer the Cat and the du of Jaq and Gus. Lucifer is a cat, so as expected he chases the mice. But it’s clearly not just due to instinct. It’s shown throughout the movie that he seems to take sadistic glee in chasing after them, especially Gus which is especially clear in the final act. But he also enjoys tormenting Cinderella, such as messing up the floor when she’s wiping it down during the Sweet Nightingale sequence and trapping Gus with the key in part to keep her locked up. He also enjoyed getting Bruno into trouble at the start of the film, which ends up being his downfall at the end. He seems genuinely cruel which...I mean with a name like Lucifer, is it a surprise that he’s a little devil? He has some great expressions thanks to Ward Kimball and was a fun challenge for our favorite mice.  

Speaking of, Jaq and Gus serve as comedic relief and the unofficial heroes of the film when you really think about it. They drive many of the events forward such as making Cinderella’s dress and retrieving the key from Lady Tremaine. Jaq is the unofficial leader of the mice and the most talkative by far. He’s charismatic and crafty, usually unafraid (for the most part) of going up against Lucifer or from helping Cinderella whom he cares greatly for. We don’t know how long he’s known Cinderella, but he’s the one who assures Gus that she’s a nice person. Gus the newbie of the mice and a little dim-witted, but well-meaning. Due to being new, he ends up getting into several incidents like nearly being caught by Lucifer several times. Jaq and Gus make a fun duo and I always enjoyed seeing what the two would get themselves into. Also for added fun, both mice were voiced by Jimmy MacDonald (nowadays they’re played by Rob Paulsen and Corey Burton respectively). Jimmy was not only the main sound effects man for the studio but at the time he was also the voice of Mickey Mouse himself. Guess he’s a natural fit for mice, huh?

Next, we’ll go to the royals. Sadly, like with Snow White, the prince is more or less a plot device. I guess they were still having a tough time with realistic male characters. He’s a handsome young man, but sadly that’s all there really is. He doesn’t even get a name, being dubbed as Prince Charming in most material and IDK if that’s really official. They DID plan on giving the Prince more of a role, such a planned sequence with him hunting a deer but it turned out it was play hunting, but this never happened. He doesn’t even go looking for his mystery girl in the end, the Grand Duke does which is pretty disappointing. It’s a shame too since going off the King’s dialogue about how he’s been evading mariage he could have been like the male version of Jasmine. A royal who’s being pushed to get married, even though he wants to find true love on his own time and just have some freedom. They did do a bit more with him in Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. They also did more with him in the live-action remake, expanding his and Cinderella’s relationship and giving him an actual name (Kit). But we’re focusing on the original, and it’s sad that he didn’t get more to him.

The King and Grand Duke are also comedic relief and overall pretty good ones. The King is loud, blusterous, and quick to anger. He’s not a bad man, after all the only reason he wants his son to get hitched is because he feels lonely and wants grandchildren. It’s kind of cute when you think about it, even if unfair to his own son. He can be very friendly, but as I said quickly to anger. After all, when the mystery girl got away, he outright attempted to /behead/ the Grand Duke until he told him about the slipper. In comparison, the Grand Duke is more timid, but quite sarcastic as well. Very much the straight man to the King’s blusterous personality. While very much afraid of the king (though not unwilling to backtalk him), up against anyone else he takes no crap from anyone. Just watch him as he tries to endure the Tremaines, it’s amazing how absolutely done he is with all of them, and he wins points for shutting up Lady Tremaine when Cinderella makes her way downstairs. A good man!

The Fairy Godmother is only in the film briefly, but she leaves a major impact. She is the first decent person to Cinderella in a long, /long/ time. She is very grandmotherly in her design, voice, and demeanor. She’s a little forgetful and scatterbrained, as she forgot where her wand was and it takes a good while for her to notice Cindy’s torn up dress. But she is a kindly old woman who was summoned by the hope remaining in Cinderella’s heart. She came at the girl’s darkest hour and gave her the one night that she had always dreamed of. She is voiced by Verna Felton, who was a pretty regular VA for Disney at the time. Though she often did much harsher characters such as The Matriarch in Dumbo and the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. But she perfectly portrays the Godmother’s kindly grandmother persona. Her modern VA was Disney Legend Russi Taylor, who also took over Drizella, who sadly passed away last year. It is unknown who will do the Godmother in the future, but I have no doubt that she will emerge again one day

We now come to the Tremaines. First, the daughters. Drizella and Anastasia are ugly, loud, snooty, and mean to both Cinderella and each other. They argue frequently, outright hitting each other during their… ugh… we’ll call it a music lesson. They’re spoiled in the worst way, never being happy with what they have yet get angry if Cinderella dares wear the things that they outright discarded as trash. It’s clear that their mother raised them to be as horrid as her, though they’re nowhere near as calculating. She pretty much raised them to be her attack dogs against Cinderella as well as to use them to marry off and move up in the world. Their obnoxiousness is their only real character trait, though their character animation via Ollie Johnston is quite fun to watch. Anastasia would gain more depth in the two direct-to-video sequels at the very least, more or less also getting a redemption arc. She was also voiced previously by Lucille Bliss, who played the teacher in Invader Zim, and is now voiced by the legendary Tress Macneille.

Then there is Lady Tremaine. Ho boy, Lady Tremaine. If I had the time, I could do an entire essay on this woman alone. She is one of the most chilling, yet memorable Disney Villains despite being nothing but an old woman. Why? First, her voice. In the film, she is voiced by Eleanor Audley, which remember that name cause it’s gonna come back later in this series. She is able to keep the perfect balance of calm and methodical, yet sharp when necessary. Perfectly in control. Actually, that’s a great way to describe Lady Tremaine, in control. She knows what she wants and is willing to go to any length to get it. She carries herself with confidence and regality, very rarely losing her cool. She’s calculative and methodical and you never quite know what she’s going to do until she does it. But most of all, she is cruel and petty, especially towards Cinderella.

Unlike her obnoxious daughters, Tremaine’s abuse towards Cinderella is calm and subdued, preferring to use emotional abuse and manipulation. She has brow-beaten the poor girl so bad that she becomes obedient as soon as the old woman speaks up. Tremaine is jealous of Cinderella’s beauty and therefore tries to make the girl’s life as difficult as possible. She enjoys mistreating and controlling Cinderella, wearing a cold smirk any time that she ramps up the cruelty. Probably her cruelest act in the film is manipulating her own daughters into ripping Cinderella’s dress right off of her after she managed to get it on for the ball. Despite having agreed to let Cindy go to the ball if she got her work done, she ruined her chances anyway just because she could. She’s not only horrible to her stepdaughter but even to her own daughters with how they ultimately turned out and clearly only interested in marrying them off

What makes Tremaine scary though is because… well, compare her to The Queen/Hag and later villainess Maleficent. In the real world, you’re not likely to encounter an evil queen who uses witchcraft and turn herself into an old hag just to poison you. In the real world, you’re unlikely to encounter an evil fairy witch who can curse you to die and transform into a ferocious dragon. But running into a cruel, petty old woman who will abuse you due to jealousy and for her own enjoyment? Oh yes, that can and does happen. Lady Tremaine is real. She is a perfect depiction of an abusive stepparent.  Plus as I said before, Frank Thomas did an excellent job depicting her expressions as utterly chilling. I was afraid of her as a child, and I still am now. Even at the end after her daughters failed to get on the slipper, she breaks it just to keep Cinderella from achieving a life of happiness out of pure spite. On the upside, seeing her plans all fall apart and especially her face when Cinderella reveals the other slipper is deliciously satisfying. One of the greatest all-time Disney moments.

Well, that was a lot more than I thought. But with all of that out of the way, there’s only one more character to discuss. Strap yourself in folks, because I have been waiting /years/ for this.

Cinderella Analysis

As I said above, Cinderella was one of my favorite princesses as a child. She was beautiful, had an amazing singing voice, was kind, and I wanted to have my dreams come true just as she did. She is one of the most famous Disney characters by far. I remember her pretty much being the face of the Disney Princess line when I was a kid. Nowadays I’d argue that Rapunzel is more of the face (or if we wanna count Frozen, Elsa is) but that doesn’t mean that Cindy has faded out of the public eye. After all, it is her castle that stands as the main landmark at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. That alone will ensure that she never fades out of popular consciousness.

In return, however, Cinderella is probably the most criticized princess of the Classic Three. It’s mostly for the same reasons as those two. She was a damsel-in-distress. She was domestic and passive. She got together with a man at first sight. She needed others to save her. It’s all the same thing you hear about pre-The Little Mermaid, but since Cinderella is probably the most well-known, she’s the one who gets it levied against her the most. As I said in Snow White, there is some truth about this portrayal furthering the depiction of women as domestic/passive in film. But it truly baffles me as to why Cinderella is the one who gets this criticism the most. It really, really baffles me. I can somewhat get it with Snow White and I can get it with Aurora, but Cinderella? Ugh… no. Just… no.

First of all, let’s get this part out of the way. Cinderella is an abuse victim. I think that Cinderella is meant to be about 19 years old in the film. While we don’t know how old she was exactly when her father died, we see in the opening narration that she was still a child. A child. Let’s say that she was around nine years old. That would mean that she has been under Lady Tremaine’s thumb for ten years. A full decade. If you are under abuse for that long at any age, but especially ever since a child, then that is going to affect you. So Cinderella being passive? Yeah, that’s likely in part because of the abuse that she went through. She was conditioned to not fight back, or if she did she would pay the consequences. As great as imagining standing up and fighting against your abuser is,  it is unfortunately very rarely that simple especially when you are under years of psychological conditioning like Cinderella was.

But it is also unfair to say that Cinderella is blindly obedient and broken either. She isn’t. Cinderella is introduced as kind, cheerful, and playful when she teases her bird friends and gets ready for the day. Cinderella is a kind young woman, facing every day with a smile despite her treatment. The girl lives in an attic, yet she happily sings as she gets her day started. Cinderella’s defining trait is that she is a dreamer. As she herself says in the opening, her dreams are something that no one can control. Not her step-family. Not the clock telling her that it’s time to get on with a new day. In her dreams, she is able to do whatever she wants. It is her escape. The one thing that gets her through the day, hoping that one day the dreams that she wishes in her heart will come true.

This is what fuels Cinderella ahead. It is what allows her to remain kind. It is what allows her to be sympathetic to others. What shows this most is her treatment of the mice. She treats them as her friends, making them clothing, feeds them, and frees them from traps. This is important for what happens later, but we’ll get to that later. She is also kind to the other animals, such as the horse and to her dog Bruno. In fact, it’s pretty interesting when she scolds Bruno for wanting to chase Lucifer. She tells him that it’s bad, how he’ll lose his warm bed, and quote “you know the orders”. She expects Bruno to obey the same way that she must obey. Doing so otherwise will mean consequences such as losing one’s own bed. The only animal that Cinderella doesn’t get along with is Lucifer, who is also the only character she is willing to speak against. At one point she was even willing to smack him with her broom when he ruined the floor she just finished scrubbing. It makes sense since Lucifer not only goes out of his way to make things more difficult for her, but he can’t order her around or really do anything to her as Lady Tremaine can. So in a way, it’s one thing that she has some power over.

Still, the first act shows what Cinderella’s life is like. It doesn’t seem too bad at first glance. She seems happy and treats her morning more like an annoyance than anything. But once we meet the Tremaines, it becomes clear just how bad it is. Anastasia immediately accuses Cindy of planting a mouse under her cup on purpose and Cinderella gets no chance to defend herself, though she is able to make Lucifer free Gus. She’s then summoned into Lady Tremaine’s room, clearly uneasy. Whenever she tries to explain herself, Lady Tremaine snaps back at her, making her go silent. There is no arguing. Lady Tremaine likely knows that Cinderella did nothing wrong, but doesn’t care. Whatever makes the girl miserable works for her and gives her an excuse to pile on that misery. Thus she piles on the workload, even making Cinderella do things that she already did once over again. Cinderella is unable to do anything but listen to the commands.

Everything changes, however, when the invitation to the ball arrives. Now we go back to one of the criticisms against Cinderella. Many accuse her of only going to the ball to meet the prince and get married. Now I will go more into this later, but there’s a reason why I am bringing it up now. Cinderella never at any point time from this point until the search for the mystery girl starts, even so much as mentions the prince. The ones who want to go to get married are the Tremaines. The whole reason that they go is because of the royal command for every eligible maiden to attend. Lady Tremaine wants to marry off her daughters. The sisters obviously want to get hitched to a good-looking man of power like the prince. Cinderella though? She just wants to go to a fancy ball because she can. By royal command every maiden is to attend no matter their status, so a lowly servant girl like herself is allowed. She even points this out to her step-family in one of the few cases she does stand up to them. Not by getting angry or defensive, she just outright points out the fine print. But no, nothing about getting with a guy ever comes up until much, much later.

Lady Tremaine agrees that Cinderella can go if gets her work done and finds a dress. But she uses the first part of that deal to bombard Cinderella with orders to make her unable to accomplish the second half. Cinderella has the dress picked, one of her mother’s, but she has no time to mend it up. As Jaq points out to the other mice, the Tremaines are going to make her do everything to make her unable to get her dress. But this is where Cinderella’s previous kindness kicks in. It’s clear that the mice really care for her because of how she cares for them. As such, they decide to fix up the dress for her. Jaq and Gus outright risk their lives against Lucifer to get some discarded trimmings.

Sure Cindy ultimately didn’t mend the dress herself, but it shows how her kindness came back to reward her. Just look at how downcast she is when the carriage arrives. She realized far too late that her step-family was never going to give her the chance to go to the ball. She is saddened as she returns to her attic-dwelling, looking out at the castle from the window and trying to convince herself that the ball would have been boring anyway. It fails. She is standing in darkness until the room lights up via candlelight and the mice reveal the mended dress to her. You can just hear the glee and gratitude in her voice as she swings around the dress and is at a loss of words before thanking her friends. Her kindness was rewarded… but sadly, not for long.

We now come to what is by far the darkest scene in the movie. Cinderella comes down to the door, shocking her stepfamily that she actually got a dress. At first, Cinderella is elated that she can actually go… until Lady Tremaine begins to approach. The old woman doesn’t seem to be doing anything wrong, agreeing that Cindy kept her end of the deal and even compliments the dress. But then she points out the beads to Drizella, who previously discarded them. It provokes her and Anastasia into a bitter, angry frenzy. They outright rip the dress apart while Cinderella is still in it. It is disturbing, Cinderella unable to do anything as her dreams are literally ripped away from her bit by bit. By the end, Tremaine calmly calls her daughters away and bids Cinderella a good night, leaving the girl standing in a pile of rags.

This is the final straw for Cinderella. She runs out to the back garden and breaks down. After trying so hard for so long to keep her hopes up, she can’t. All that she wanted was to go to the ball. Not to get married, just to have one night where she could have a good time. That was it. But her stepfamily just couldn’t allow for even that and tore it all away from her. Can you blame her for crying after all that? After dealing with that kind of treatment since she was a little girl? I can’t blame her. Her friends can only watch in sympathy and sadness as she says that there’s no use in dreaming and that she can’t dream anymore. She has hit her breaking point, a far cry from the hopeful young dreamer she was at the start of the film.

But not all is lost. In her despair, Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother is summoned. So a big question I’ve seen some ask is how the Fairy Godmother was summoned to begin with? Well, it’s as she herself said, she couldn’t be there if Cinderella didn’t have hope in her heart still. She is essentially a manifestation of Cinderella’s hopes and dreams. If I had to guess with Cinderella reaching her breaking point and ready to give in to despair, the Fairy Godmother manifested because she now truly needed help. It was to restore her hopes and allow her to get to the ball after the chance was so cruelly ripped away from her. I know what some are going to say, once again Cinderella got something handed to her. But this is a case where Cinderella herself more or less summoned the one who would help her. Her kindness caused the mice to help her, now her hope summoned up her Fairy Godmother to help her. It’s not happening just because.

So The Fairy Godmother creates her carriage, makes her new dress, and gives her the glass slippers. But like all dreams, this can’t last forever. She has until midnight, after which the spell will be broken. Which is perfectly fine with Cinderella, she’s just grateful for what her Fairy Godmother has done for her. Seeing her smiling and hopeful again after the previous moment and her just receiving some motherly kindness from someone is just really nice to see. Thus, she is whisked away to the ball, and almost as quickly as she arrives, she catches the eye of The Prince himself. While Drizella and Anastasia are trying to get him to look at them, funny enough.

So let’s get back to the ‘Cindy only wanted a man!’ critique. As I already said, she never mentions a man until near the end. But here at the ball, it’s not even her who goes to The Prince. Heck later when midnight hits, it’s pretty clear that she didn’t even know that the guy she was dancing with was The Prince. No, it is Prince Charming who approaches her. We outright see him look up, notice her as she enters, and is stricken by her beauty. It is him who walks to her and presents himself to her, a major contrast to how all the other girls were going up to him with him clearly bored. So no, Cinderella never wanted to get a man. It all happened purely by chance, and again she didn’t even realize that he was The Prince until after the ball was long over.

Cinderella dances with the prince throughout the night, getting so caught up that she loses track of time until the clock goes off. Once again, the clock is telling her that it’s time to wake up from her dream. She flees, but loses one of her slippers along the way. Midway on the road home, the spell is broken and she is once more in her torn-up dress. She apologizes to her animal friends for losing track of time, but happily recalls the night. But the mice then point something out to her: her glass slipper is still on her foot. Now… why is that? Well what summoned the Fairy Godmother to begin with? Hope. It is my opinion that this is why the slippers didn’t disappear as well. Cindy’s hope kept them manifested, to the point that I don’t believe that her losing one happened by chance. It is the key to her having a chance at a better life. It slippped off her foot due to that, and the other one remained for the same reason. Cindy seems to think it’s the Fary Godmother’s doing as she thanks her, but the truth is it is herself who caused both of those.

Thus, we come to the next day. The Grand Duke is looking for the mystery girl, and Tremaine is ready to leap at the chance. At first, Cinderella is pretty much ready to resume her regular life now that she’s gotten the one night that she had wanted. But as Tremaine explains the new development to her daughters, Cinderella hears it. This is when she realizes that it was The Prince that she was dancing with. That it was her slipper that was found, which means that she’s the mystery girl. Which means that she’s the one who can fit it and thus she will become The Prince's bride. This is the point that she wanted to get married to a man. In the final fifteen or so minutes. But look as to why she wants to. This will absolutely ensure that she is able to have a better life than she has now, so can we blame her for being happy?

Cinderella is so elated that she outright ignores her stepsisters demands and starts to day-dreamingly go to her room to prepare for the Grand Duke’s arrival. But this turns out to be a mistake. Because of her elation, Lady Tremaine immediately puts the pieces together. Cinderella not only managed to defy her and go to the ball, but she is now in the way of her plans to marry her daughters off. If she is there when the Grand Duke arrives, then that’ll be it. She’ll fit the slipper, be taken to the palace, and will marry The Prince not long after. That is something that Lady Tremaine simply cannot allow. Not to mention that she can’t allow the girl to go unpunished for her defiance. Thus, she locks Cinderella in her room. To both keep her out of the way and to make sure that she can never leave.

So… it looks like that’s it. There is nothing that Cinderella can do at this point. She realizes that she’s once more going to be trapped in a cruel life and begs Tremaine to let her out before just breaking down. She had her chance once more, and once more her stepmother took it away. But once more, Jaq and Gus act to help their friend and manage to get the key. But of course Lucifer interferes, trapping both Gus and the key and Cinderella is now in a position where she can’t make him stop. All of her animal friends try to help, but it proves futile. That is, until Cinderella has a realization. There is someone who can chase off Lucifer. The same someone that she previously scolded because it would be going against orders; Bruno the Dog.

Remember when I pointed out how Cinderella got after Bruno dreaming of chasing Lucifer because he’d lose his home otherwise? Yeah, it comes back around here. She’s now close to getting out of her situation, so why not allow Bruno the same thing? She has her bird friends alert Bruno, and indeed the dog rushes in and causes the evil cat to jump from the window. I think it was supposed to be implied that this killed Lucifer, but we see in the later sequels that he survived. But with him out of the way, the mice slip Cinderella the key and she is able to get out and to the stairs just as the Grand Duke is beginning to walk out. And he’s clearly glad to see her to, outright making his way past Lady Tremaine and reminding her that he’s supposed to give every maiden a chance when she tries to ward him away,

But, of course, Tremaine can’t just accept defeat. She trips the earl and the slipper is shattered. It looks like once again, Cinderella’s hopes have been for naught. But this time, she doesn't cry. She doesn’t even get sad. Why? Simple, because it wasn’t for naught. She pulls out the other slipper, proving beyond doubt that she is the mystery girl. It was her hope that created the slippers. It was her hope that kept them manifested when the spell was broken. Now it is her hope that gave her the key to at long last break free from her stepfamily for good. She gets married to The Prince (we don’t know how long after, so there is a window open for those who want to get after her for marrying a guy she just met) and is whisked away to a better life. The wish that she made at last came true.

Cinderella is defined by hope, kindness, and dreams. It is these things that fuel her to continue on with her life. It is these things that allow her to remain a good person and not be broken by her stepmother’s attempts to humiliate and demean her. Even at her lowest moment, her hope couldn’t be truly broken. Sure in real life you’re not going to be able to magically summon a Fairy Godmother or be married into royalty because of a shoe. But this is NOT real life. This is a fairy tale. It is escapism. It doesn't have to adhere to reality exactly. Plus even then, there is something to be said about not giving up hope and remaining kind in the face of adversity. It is that lesson that I have carried with me since I was a child, to remain kind no matter what. I’ve had my own breakdowns, especially since it’s still 2020 at the time of this writing. But even so, I’ve tried to remain kind. Because Cinderella taught me to do so.

It is why I have never understood the hate against her, and never will. I love the modern princesses and yes, they did need to become more proactive and strong. But this does NOT make the first three bad. Especially not Cinderella. She is an abuse survivor. She is a dreamer. She is a young woman who only wanted to have some happiness in her life. Her kindness and hope was eventually rewarded, and in a way was granted to her by herself. The mice helped her with both her first dress and to escape the attic because she was kind to them. Bruno and the animals liked her because she was kind to them, so they repaid her. The Fairy Godmother manifested because Cinderella wanted to give up, but hope still remained in her heart and gave her the help she desperately needed. The glass slippers remained because of her hope, and became the keys to her achieving a better life. Sure she didn’t have to physically fight for it, but it doesn't change the fact that things happened, that others helped her because she was kind and hopeful. Because of herself.

The last thing to note is her voice actress, Ilene Woods. She was originally hired to do the singing for Cinderella, but after Walt heard her he cast her to also do the speaking lines. She did a beautiful job. She conveys Cinderella’s grace, kindness, and hopeful nature absolutely beautifully and her singing voice is outright angelic. Do you want to know a sad, yet beautiful story? Well at the end of her life, Ilene Woods had sadly been inflicted with Alzheimer. I think we all know how devastating that disease is. She was living in a nursing home, unable to recall anything. Reportedly, the nurses would often play A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes for her. Even though Ilene couldn’t recognize that it was herself singing, it was the one thing that could make her happy all the way up to her passing in 2010. Mind you that story is from Wikipedia /TV Tropes and I haven’t been able to find an actual source saying this, but I’ve never seen anyone contest if this was true. Either way, Ilene was and will always be the Cinderella, a legacy that the current actress Jennifer Hale is keeping alive and well today.

Final Thoughts

Cinderella will always be special to me. She’s not my overall favorite princess, we still have quite a while before we get to her. But she is firmly my second favorite. The film is outright my second favorite of all time (again, we’ll get to number one later). It’s the first movie that I remember seeing in my life. I would watch it for hours over and over again. I had dolls of her. I would dress up as her. The whole reason I wanted to go to Disney World was to meet her, and I did. The film looks beautiful. The music is beautiful. The characters are memorable. The story is an outright classic even before Disney adapted it. To quote Beauty and the Beast, it is a tale as old as time. Maybe it’s just nostalgia talking, but even after all these years, I love this movie just as much as I did when I was a little girl. Maybe even moreso now. It is a true Disney Masterpiece.

Disney was hoping for a miracle, and he got it. Cinderella was the biggest hit that they had had in a looong time. Audiences and critics loved it. It was the moment that Disney was back in business and able to return to feature film, launching them into the Silver Age of Animation. While his next film, Alice in Wonderland, didn’t go very well, both Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp helped keep the studio afloat. As the decade came to a close, the studio decided that it was time to release another fairy tale-inspired film. Would this one strike gold like the first two? Come back next time to meet the final Classic Princess, Sleeping Beauty.

Image Sources: Disney Wiki, Animation Screencaps Other Sources: Rags to Riches: The Making of Cinderella Documentary

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Textiles 3- Studio work: Disperse dye and Macramé. Homework - Boro/Sashiko

Disperse dyes and heat press 

Happy to be back in the studio, we began by being shown how to use the heat press machine and using disperse dye for printing.

To transfer a print onto fabric using the heat press:

- Paint a design on cartridge paper using disperse dye. It has a similar consistency to ink and can be diluted to vary degrees for tonal range. It can also be mixed together to create colours.

-Make sure that the design on paper is completely dry. We used a hair dryer to speed up the process. 

-Using the heat press: Sandwich the design and fabric to print between greaseproof paper. Place the design face down onto the fabric or you can place the design first and fabric on top. We used a polycotton for the fabric.

-Make sure the heatpress is hot enough and clamp in place with the lever. Wait for the countdown to finish (usually 30 secs) before releasing. 

-Slide or peel the print away from the machine to reveal print. The design will be printed in reverse. (Health and safety- Heat press is hot, take care and do not leave unattended). 

Example of fabric printed with heat press.

Heat Press experiments

Print 1 - based using a spider plant leaf as a stencil and painted around it. I then used dye transfer paper on top, which I ripped into similar shapes and layered on top.

Print 2- is of lavender painted with a brush. I mixed colours for the purple and placed ripped dye paper on top. The paper came out darker than expected as I thought it would be a pale blue/purple colour.

Print 1- Experimenting with mark making and diluted the disperse a bit for freeflowing marks. 

Print 2- Based on spider plant leaves in studio, replicating veins of plants with different colours.

Print 3- My first ever print with heat press. Using colour and petal from St John’s Wort. 

Print to use left over ink- Exploring more mark marking. Paint brush used and twig used for black marks. 

Print 1- First print experimenting with dye paper and some scrunched to see how texture would be print on fabric. Some pieces are cut and others ripped.

Print 2- Exploring mark marking with layered dye transfer paper. It reminds me of vintage shirts. I like it!

Print 1- Print based on St John’s Wort plant as a repeat print. Painted with paintbrush.

Print 2- More marking and layered dye transfer paper. For some reason it came out quite light, I believe I might’ve placed the paper the wrong way round (Dye colour facing up instead on the fabric, which resulted in lighter colour). 

Print 1- Printing on a fabric found from stash in studio. I believe its a cotton. I wanted to see how the dye paper would come out on a coloured background.

Print 2- Loose painting of St John’s Wort. 

Print 1- First test with dye transfer paper. Ripped up paper. Some string got caught while in the heat press and created an interesting stencil.

Print 2- Another unexpected print. I think I placed the blue paper upside down again. Used wood material (possibly used for basket weaving??) on top of dye paper and string. The wood ending up getting partially dyed (dark bit) instead of leaving a white stencil like the string.

Print 1- Print using a twig, (dipped in ink and drawn like a pen). Representing blossoms on branch.

Print 2- First print using spider leaf plant as a stencil. Only painted around it instead of using the leaf in the heat press. 

Print 1- Using spider plant leaf again as a stencil and painted around it with yellow and red. Blended the colours together. 

Print 2- Dye paper and print with mark making use with brush. This was printed on a thinner polycotton. 

Reflection for heat press experiments

It was a lot of fun printing using the heatpress and disperse dye. I had wanted to try translate painterly and illustrative mark onto fabric and this was a great way of producing samples for it. I had some issues using real plant leaves as a stencil as it did not leave a clear impression. Perhaps next time I could put the plant in the heat press machine with dye paper for a better print, similar to what Emma had done. 

Some prints I did not like, for example the St John Wort prints when I tried painting the plant semi figuratively- I thought it would be more interesting to either create abstract prints of the plant or a stylized or figurative version. Some of the mark making did not go so well on the first try, particularly using the twig. I tried to make an impression with it but was better to draw with it like a pen. 

Some prints I was really happy with include the markmaking with layered dye paper (that reminds me of a vintage shirt), the lavender illustration, the stencil of the leaves with purple and blue dye paper and the colourful lines that represent the veins of the spiderplant leaves. I was also intrigued by the print where the wooden material and string had printed, which created an interesting x-ray like effect.

Overall I was really happy with how most of my prints came out and experimented with different materials and style of painting. Sometimes it came out with unexpected results but I like the element of surprise of how it would print on fabric. For example, I hadn’t expected the disperse dye to come out so vividly (they look darker on the palette) and mixing purple for the lavender came out darker when I thought it would be brighter. I really enjoyed using the heat press and disperse dye and plan to make more samples for our final lesson.

Macramé 

For part of the session we were shown how to do Macramé.  Macramé is a type of textile that using knotting techniques to create products. It has been used in fashion, homeware and in sculpture.  

Sketchbook notes on Macramé and used in different ways.

My macramé practice.

Jill showed us how to do two different types of knotting-  A vertical lark head and a half hitch spiral. I really struggled to get the vertical lark head knot right and had to been shown a few times! I did another one in blue by myself as more practice. I found the half hitch spiral a lot easier to do and was pretty cool seeing the spiral form. It also reminds me when we did these in secondary school. Once I got the hang of it I found macramé to be quite relaxing and could be interesting to explore it more. Perhaps with fabric or creating a sculpture with it on a large scale like Judy Tadman’s rope sculpture. 

Boro/ Sashiko 

L-R: Traditional red Boro Tunic, Josh Blackwell Street Bags- using sashiko stitching on a plastic bag, detail photo of Boro by Jennifer Corkish, Jeans using Boro technique, detail photo of Boro by Helen Terry.

We also learnt about Boro and Sashiko. Boro is a technique that repurposes saved garment pieces and other handspun indigo fabrics. It is sewn together as a patchwork and built in layers for warmth. This art was born out of necessity in northern Japan where peasants made them during the Edo period. (1603-1863).

Sashiko is a style of stitching that commonly accompanies Boro. The stitching can be complex and create different shapes or simple with straight and long running stitches.

Homework

For homework we were tasked to create some Boro/Sashiko samples.

This sample features fabric from an old cushion, tshirt and lace from a bra. I liked the circular design and wanted to try replicate that with stitching. I found it  a bit hard getting the length of stitching similar but this was due to not giving myself enough time. 

The second sample features fabric from old tops and pj bottoms. I wanted to try different types of stitch, so did a cross stitch. The intention was to have cross stitch all around the plaid material but again did not have enough time. I also wanted to challenge myself and had create a pocket and stitched that into place with diagonal stitch. 

The last sample was actually the first one I created and struggled with the most. I had wanted to try create pleats but the tension is uneven throughout. As I was sewing in a rush, I had also caught the wrong side with my stitching and was unable to undo it without unpicking everything. The piece came out a bit crumpled and doesn’t lie flat but was a good learning curve. 

Session reflection

Overall I really enjoyed today’s session and to be back in the studio! I loved using the heat press machine and disperse dye to create painterly prints on fabric. It was also fun to use dye paper in a collage way by layering and ripping to see how that would print on fabric. I explored a lot of mark making and used natural materials of leaves and twigs for stencils and mark making. I struggled a little bit with the macramé but once I got it I found it quite enjoyable and think it could be really interesting to use in a sculpture. I found the boro/sashiko stitching the most difficult, making due to not giving myself enough time to stitch. I’ve definitely learnt that with sewing you have to take your time or end up with a poor product/ losing time to mend mistakes. 

Going forward for our final lesson, I’d like to use the heatpress again and see if its possible to use the freehand embroidery machine. It would be great to create a sample with the combination as I’ve been inspired by Veronica Cay’s work ‘I hesitate’  (research towards end in a previous post) . I would like to create something similar but with my concepts of plants and mental health in mind and will try achieve that for the last lesson in the studio.

[nosferatyou]

New Tune: Chapter 6 (Jake Kiszka x Reader)

WC: 6k (damn I went off)

Warnings: Cursing, Drug use, rock and roll, romantic tension, and a very sweet moment

Summary: Two guitarists meet at a Rock Festival, only having a week with each other before they have to return to their own lives. The bond they create is unfeigned and resolute

AUTHORS NOTE:I listened to an ungodly amount of John Denver while writing this. Also never written a scene like the last before soo that's fun.

 I wanted to try to give them two different styles that represented the characters, and I think I got it. I always saw Jake’s more of a mess, but its still in harmony. While hers is more like mine, a need for perfection, never fully happy with the final product. But there's my rendition of reader and Jake! I hope its satisfactory (also breaking away from your art style is very hard, but hella fun)

***

After she left last night all the boys couldn’t stop gushing about Y/N, well more couldn't stop making fun of me. Holding my newfound feelings for her above my head. Sam and Danny were acting out the night before, but wildly blew it out of proportion.

Sam and Danny were sitting incredibly close on the couch, each hand intertwined with the other boys.  Looking at each other with loving eyes, and the occasional dramatic, love struck sigh coming from Sam. 

“Oh Y/N, the way you wield your axe is just so sexy.” Sam said to Danny, trying to replicate my voice, but was so dramatic about it he was nowhere close.

“Not as sexy as you not making a move.” Danny said with a skewed high pitch voice.

The two boys pressed their cheeks and looked at me, batting their lashes, holding back a laugh.

“If only I didn’t have a mean old boyfriend holding me back from this sexy-” Danny was cut off by me standing from my spot and grabbing my lighter and Cigs.

“Real comedians you guys are.”

I was met with my twin, Josh, already out there seemingly enjoying the morning air.

I looked over and met his gaze, a bright smile adorning his face.

“Well good morning, little bro.”

I grumbled “by five minutes.” Under my breath. I took a spot next to him, leaning against the bus and lighting a cigarette, taking a big hit before finally exhaling.

He looked over to me with more than confusion than previously. 

“Something on your mind? Or should I say Someone on your mind?” A small sympathetic smile following the question.

I took a final drag and put out my cig, turning my full attention towards him.

“Sam and Danny are just doing their normal shit. I love them, but goddamn, they're getting on my nerves.”

“Are you sure that’s all that’s bothering you?” 

I focused on the cigarette butt on the ground, kicking it aimlessly.

“We both know that's not all that’s bothering me.”

He nudged my shoulder and gave the smile as before. “Well let it all out. Tell me about her.”

“You’ve already met her, dumbas-”

He cut me off saying “Well I know about her, but tell me how you feel about her. Dumbass.”

I gave a small laugh and looked back up at my twin.

“ She’s just- Nothing i've ever experienced. She’s got such a diverse taste in everything. She listens to everything we do, all the Jazz, folk, and so on, but then there's everything else. If she knew every word to every song I wouldn't be surprised.” 

I looked back up to josh and the smile on his face had grown. He nodded his head as if to say “Go on”

“And the sheer talent in this girl. You saw her yesterday, so you know. She can play anything man I swear. We spent about three hours playing nonstop and she did it like it was nothing. Did you know she can play like 7 instruments? Its fucking crazy. Plus the way she works with that bow is something else, maybe it's because she has cello experience. She probably has jimmy page impressed.”

 I trailed off for a moment, just thinking about her. My cheeks grew warm and flushed red. 

“She’s also so compassionate, you can tell she really cares. Despite her nonchalant demeanor she secretly goes out of her way to make sure everyones okay. She never told me that, but I can just tell.” 

“You really like her don't you?” Josh asked.

“ I really fucking like her, Josh.” 

After our chat Josh suggested that I spend all the time I can with her, make my mark, so here I am at her door, praying she’s there. With my supplies in hand, I freed my hand to knock on their door. Eventually the door swung open to Y/N with a somber face, but it brightened a bit when she realized it was me. Wearing comfier clothes then she had previously worn.

“Well hey there, Rockstar. Didn't think I’d see you till later.”

“Well I’m here now, and I brought something that'll hopefully cheer you up.”

She raised her eyebrows and noticed what I had in my arms.

“Oh?”

“Let me inside and I'll show you.” I playfully winked.

She laughed and walked up the stairs, letting me in. I walked in, shutting the door behind me, and found her sitting on the couch, knees tucked under her arms.

“Well are you just going to stand there staring, or are you going to show me what you brought?”

She asked, cocking an eyebrow.

I sat down across from her at the table, dumping all the stuff on it. A way too big sketchbook, a huge pencil bag, and gummy bears for good measure.

She stood up and her meek smile grew.

“How’d you know that I could draw?” 

“I just somehow knew a lady of many talents, such as yourself, was probably talented with a pencil as well.”

 She grabbed the huge bag and searched through until she was satisfied. Opened it up to the next blank page and opened the gummy bears for good measure.

She looked up to me with a confused look. 

“What are you still doing over here? Grab the guitar and provide some good tunes while you model for me.” 

I laughed and grabbed the guitar that was in its case next to me. I moved to the couch and unpacked it while asking, “Should I stay still if I’m you’re model?”

Without looking up from the sketch pad, she said, “Nah I should be fine. Just make sure to play something good.”

She looked up at me giving a brighter smile, and refocusing on the task at hand. 

We sat quietly for about 45 minutes, her looking up at me from time to time. Sometimes I’d make a silly face, and make her laugh. Soon after though she would return to her work, not even looking up to grab more candy. When she really focused on her work she’d scrunch up on corner of her mouth. Sometimes she’d bite her lip, back up the paper, then would go to erase something. She never failed to mindlessly hum along to songs though, only proving my point from this morning. 

She finally backed the paper up one final time before clicking her tongue, her eyes lighting up.

“I think I got your essence perfectly.”

She flipped it around to show me, nervousness flashing in her eyes for a moment.

I was completely blown away. She had completely nailed it. It only made my heart swell more.

She flipped it back around to look at it again “I think I kind of messed up your face a little in the big one. Sorry about that.”

“No no! It looks absolutely perfect and I’m not at all surprised. You did good, seriously. Y/N it looks fantastic.” I gushed, my cheeks growing pink.

Her cheeks grew pink and refocused on the drawing in front of her. She grabbed the pencil and eraser and continued to poke at her piece, never content with her own work.

After a little while I moved the guitar off my lap and moved towards her to nab the items out of her hands. I swiftly grabbed them and hid them behind my back, a pert smile on my lips..

“Hey! I was using those you know.” She said, holding her hand out as to ask for them back.

I quickly shook my head and said “You think I’m just going to give these to you? It's already perfect, there's nothing more to fix.”

She turned her head down with a sad look adorning her face, but I caught the mischievous grin poking through. “Fine then.”

“You're really not great at faking it, darling. I see that little smile on your face.”

She lightly chuckled and suddenly jumped up out of her seat to grab the items from behind me, but just as swiftly as she lept, I took a big step backwards.

“Gotta try harder than that, Little Bird.” I moved my hand above my head, and wiggled the pencils in the air enticingly. 

She looked up at the items and then back at me, a smug look on her face.

“You may be a big rockstar and all..” She paused and easily reached up, grabbing them out of my hands. “But I'm still taller than you.” She went to sit behind me on the couch in my previous spot, but not without ruffling my hair in a teasing manner. 

“You did your best, buddy.”

I whipped around and dramatically put my hands on my hips. “I totally went easy on you.”

“Sure, Rockstar.” She said, grabbing the guitar from beside her, strumming a few chords.

I grabbed all the essentials off the table, sketchbook, pencil bag, and of course the gummies. Then made my way to the couch, plopping down on her left side, dumping everything to my own. 

She stopped for a moment to try and hand me back the pencil and eraser, but I pushed her hand away and chuckled. 

“Don't you want these back, to you know, draw?” She asked.

“I prefer ink, but thank you, Little Bird.” I smiled.

We did the same as before, she modeled and provided tunes while I did my best to capture her. I knew we’d have different styles right away. You can tell she's a perfectionist in her work, not accepting flaws. I have messy lines, them almost seem alive with how fast I create them. I draw what I see, but add my own to it, depth can be something you make. So for the next hour or so I did my best to scratch out her beauty, mostly focusing on her face, which became apparent when I got a good look at it. I had been so careful with her face that the rest didn't seem to matter.

Id catch her glances every now and then, peaking at me over the guitar in curiosity. Every time I did I’d make a silly face, and every time she quietly laughed to herself with a content smile that follow. Every chance I could id try to catch her eyes just to see that. 

Halfway through her quiet rendition of “Dink's Song” I had finally finished her portrait. Which honestly didn’t compare to hers, but still, I was proud. I flipped it around to face her, and suddenly her singing stopped, her focus completely on the piece 

“Jake” She paused and grabbed it out of my hands, studying it more. 

“This is fucking fantastic.” She breathed out. Her eyes rapidly wandered the piece, trying to take it all in.

A small grin broke out on my face, and quietly fiddled with my hands, not wanting to interrupt her thoughts. 

She looked back up at me with wide, questioning eyes “How does no one know that you're this good?” She asked.

I chuckled and said “ Never seemed important to share. Its only a small hobby.”

“Only a small hobby.” She mocked. “As I said, this is fucking fantastic.”

“Well thank you, Little Bird.” A small blush forming on my cheeks.

“No, thank you, man.” She paused and moved the guitar to her side then grabbed my hand.

“No ones ever made me something like this. It’s absolutely beautiful.”

“Anything for you, Little Bird.” I said, and I meant every word.

She never let go of my hand, just sat back into her seat staring off in thought, I didn't mind the silence though. Until she asked

“Hey, Jake?”

“Yeah, Y/N?”

“I'm sorry I dragged you into that pit, I saw the way the media got a hold of it. I didn't want to make you uncomfortable.”

I squeezed her hand and caressed the back of it with my thumb. My heart was beating so hard, and I was incredibly nervous. She didn’t seem to mind at all though.

“Oh Little Bird, No darling this happens literally all the time. It’s nothing to stress over.”

“You sure?” She asked.

“Completely.” I paused for a moment “But I’m sorry it caused… you know. Boy trouble.”

She groaned and threw her head back “Oh god you head that?”

“Well when you yell that you’re not fucking Jimmy Page for everyone to hear its hard not to.” A playful smile on my lips. 

She groaned again and said “Oh god I’m sorry.”

“It's fine man, I get it all the time.. Well not the fucking part, but the Jimmy Page part.”

“She whipped her head to face me and quickly responded “No, not okay. You and Jimmy Page have completely different styles, and idiots like him who don't even listen to Greta have no say. I could go on about the technicalities of it all, but id probably bore you.” She paused and stared 

off for a moment for returning. “Plus I don't even think he listened to, nor liked zeppelin.”

“Well that's just blasphemous.” 

She laughed “You've got that right!”

“Wait shit do you have the time.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned it on, the screen flashed 4:30. I passed it over to her and as quickly as she read it, she popped up off the couch frantically.

“Shit! I have to get ready and go to sound check at 6!”

“Well go get ready then! Want me to wait?” I asked.

“Sure, but I can't promise that it will be very interesting.”

“I don't mind, after I can walk you to the venue if you'd like.”

She smiled and said “ And they say chivalry is dead.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He was kind enough to wait around and watch me do my makeup for the next 30 minutes. I of course put a little eyeliner on him, he didn't ask but he didn't seem appalled at the idea. After all of that I quickly put on my stage clothes, which consisted of Dark blue high waisted bell bottoms, a simple blue velvet bralette, a black see through shirt with white embroidered flowers (fully unbuttoned of course, and purple paisley heels for some color. When I came out of the back and he saw what I was wearing he was not very suave about complimenting it. It was honestly pretty cute.

As promised he walked me to the venue, he even added my guitar to his already heavy load. Once we got there he sadly had to go because he had his own show to get ready for. He didn't leave without a hug and a wish for good luck before going to wherever he needed to be. 

One successful soundcheck later and we were all ready for the stage. 

Nerves jittered through the whole band, this was the biggest crowd we've ever played, and it's all thanks to the Greta boys. All of the people in the crowd were here to see them. 

5 minutes till we had to go on stage and Eli had taken a small glass jar with white contents inside out of his pocket, luckily we were alone in our dressing room. He asked Asa to hold up his bass for us as a makeshift table. He emptied enough for all of us to snort three lines.

 We all let him go first since it was his, with drug equity and all. Matt went next, not that he needed it, he was already so chaotic, but it's fun to all be high together. Eli took it from Asa and let him do his, then it was my turn. We used to do this a lot before shows, but recently with a break for recording its lessened. Still our tolerances were higher than the first time we all did it together. 

I bent down to snort the first line, the familiar smell of petrol hit my nose, and shortly after I felt the drug hit the back of the throat. It burned for a brief moment, but then I got that drip, my nose, tongue and throat went numb, which made it all the more easier for the next two lines.

I instantly felt that buzz, the high we’d all been chasing. We all went from nervous to ready to play in front of a million people. Matt jumped up and in tow we all did. Buzzing from our high.

 Id grabbed my guitar and slung it on my back, Eli did the same, then we all made our way to the main stage. We whooped and hollered, ready to take on our biggest show. In the wings I spotted the Greta boys and quickly made my way over to them.

“You look absolutely stunning, Darling!” Josh yelled at me.

I slung my arm over him for a quick hug and replied “Don't I know it, had to show off the goods somehow. I'm a free woman! Well not yet… But when I get a mic on my hands I will be dumping my bitch ass boyfriend.”

“Hell yeah! Fuck that guy!” Sam chimed in.

“Fuck that guy!” I pulled away from the hug and told josh “Dude your skin has what I can only describe as good vibes, man. Like a warm feeling. I have to apologize, I just did a couple lines of coke and I am feeling the buzz. Like, Jake, you look ethereal in this light right now. Absolutely stunning.”

He just laughed and said “Well i'm glad i can be described as ethereal.”

“I could honestly go on about it, but I think I have to go. I hope you all enjoy, and wish me luck!” 

Behind me I could hear someone say “One minute!” So I quickly darted back over to my band. 

We did our lucky chant, huddled, first all crouched low to the ground. The chant really isn’t all that intricate, we just go start chanting “Fuck” in a whisper, then gradually getting louder until we are screaming and jumping around, bumping into each other.

 As so we were screaming and knocking into each other, until we all chilled and got plugged up and ready to go.

We heard our bands name announced and made our way on stage. Cheers erupted from the crowd, which was huge might I add. With the coke I was ready to do anything, and this was going to be a breeze. 

Before we went on I asked Matt if I could introduced the first song and he very graciously agreed.

We took to our spots, and when the crowd quieted Matt did the introduction.

“Hello, California! We are so glad to be here, and fucking jam with you guys! But we have a guitarist who wants to introduce our first song.”

More cheers erupted from the crowd, but that didn't last long. I stepped up to the mic “Hello everyone! I really want to dedicate this to my boyfriend, Sam.”

My band all gave me the weirdest looks, but the crowd awed in response.

“I see those fucking looks you’re giving me guys. This goes out to my son of a bitch EX boyfriend who doesn't deserve this much woman! Fuck that guy! This ones called Innocent Sun.”

 For a third time the crowd erupted in cheers, this time just as excited as the first

I backed away, and our drummer Asa got the message, playing the count in. 

Despite the name of the song it was one of our angrier ones, which is why its at the top of the set. 

Eli and I came in with a heavier riff, and with the coke, physical touch was enhanced, so my guitar strings felt so weird it was a bit distracting. I didn’t mess it up but my head was out of it.

Matt was dancing wildly along to the music, whipping the microphone around like Roger Daltrey. While he sang he’d come up to all of us and try to interact. Like he and I would play back to back, and I’d sing with him from time to time. Typically he would run around and jump off the drum risers. 

By the end of the song the adrenaline of being on stage coerced with the drugs, creating something else. We all were doing new shit in every song. I was sticking new solos anywhere I could.  Matt attempted a backflip off one of the bigger amps, which he miraculously made. Eli at one point just slapped the shit out of his bass, which didn't sound too bad. Poor Asa couldn’t do too much from behind the drums, but his drum fills were phenomenal.

As a black sabbath type band we were getting strangely rowdy, and lucky for me I had a wireless set up. So during a solo in one of the heavier songs I did a guitar spin and everyone completely lost it. Lucky for me I had taken off my loose shirt earlier in the set. 

After I had winked at the Greta boys in the wings and they lost their shit, all cheering me on. I felt like I was on cloud nine.

My heart was pounding, my ears were ringing, and I felt like I could take on the world. I was creating new licks, killing solos, and giving off some pretty damn good stage presence. But I was starting to come off of my high, and all of those pent up feelings were starting to come out. Lucky for me our last song is when we covered “Dazed and Confused”, it didn't run as long as Zeppelin played it live but its longer than anything else we played. 

When we got to the guitar solo in the song I grabbed the bow behind my pedal board and stuck my pick between my lips, quickly switching on a bunch of delay effects. 

 I gave it one test stroke on the lowest string, creating a bunch of haunting notes. When I got my confidence I rapidly smacked the strings with the bow and played chords rapidly. I slowed down, and went into the upper register, rapidly playing the highest string like a violin, trying to sound delicate. My mind wandered again, everything flooding my head. Me finally leaving Sam, everything he put me through, all the abuse and turmoil finally over. Which produced a dark sound with my guitar, throwing caution into the wind, and smack the shit out of it, occasionally strumming. It was a loud crescendo into chaos, but a beautiful one at that. 

Sweat soaked my skin and my heart was practically beating out of my chest. I kept looking over to Jake throughout the solo, searching for something but I didn't know what. I then saw the way he looked at me when I played, then I remembered the way he looked at me in general. The longing looks, his attention to detail to everything I did, the way he listened and cared. When I was looking at him I finally realized what I had been so painfully blind to. That a man only looked at someone that was for one reason, and the way I stared back only gave him more incentive to. Thing was is that I enjoyed it. I wanted his attention all the time, so bad it hurt. And I realized that since the moment I met him I had been falling for him. I just gave him the brightest smile and he reciprocated with exactly that.  

I walked to the front of the stage and went into another realm of playing. I created a brighter tone as my hand danced up and down the neck. I gave one final stroke with the bow and walked closer to the amp to create feedback, creating a loud screech, transitioning into the end of the song. I threw my bow into the crowd and took the pick from my mouth went back into the main riff of Dazed and Confused with the rest of the band.

 Asa took a mini drum solo at the end and absolutely nailed it. To finally finish it all off we all went crazy with our instruments, Matt just screamed into the mic, Eli just smacked his strings over and over, Asa lost it with the drums, and I went into a final wild solo. We all looked at each other and mentally counted down, ending the song together. The crowd erupted with cheers and we made our way off the stage, all of feeling exhausted and covered head to toe in sweat, but proud of our performance. 

The moment I got off stage I ran to Jake, and he quickly engulfed me in his arms, only staying there for a moment before he pulled away. He kept me at arms length minimum when he rained compliments onto me.

“Y/N that was absolutely fantastic! Oh my god that spin made us all lose our minds! You have to teach me. I didn’t know you could do all that, and that solo on Dazed and Confused? Phenomenal, I say something in you change.”

“Thank you so much! Speaking of that, Jake. I've got to talk to you.”

He didn’t seem to think too much about that last comment, he seemed rushed.

“Of course, love. Later alright? We go on right after you and Josh will actually kill me if I’m late.” 

“Yeah I totally understand. Go hurry, I can't wait to see you guys go on.”

He gave me a tight hug before speed walking to one of the dressing rooms.

Nerves grew within me when I realized I had two big conversations to have.

Speaking of which, I guess I should do damage control, coked out me is a bit impulsive.

***

Finding a quiet spot was weirdly hard, I mean we were in a literal desert. But I turned on my phone, not checking my notifications. I just went straight to my contacts and dialed Sams number.

He took longer to pick up then normal. Weird.

“ What’d you do this time?”

“Well hello to you too.”

“Well you only call me when you know you screwed up, like with Jimmy Page.”

I let out a long sigh, dread building in me. “Did you watch my show?”

He obviously has not.

“ I caught the end of it, You really only looked back stage, was jimmy page there.”

That anger was building up again, he didn't even mention the actual show.

“ Listen Sam about that-”

He cut me off  “Oh so you are fucking him?”

“Sam just shut the fuck up!” 

The line went quiet, and surprisingly stayed quiet.

“Sam I can't do this anymore.” My voice slightly shaking with every word.

“Y/N no, I-” His tone was different than any he’d used over this week. His words were panicked, I actually don't ever think I've heard him like this.

“No Sam, I don't want this anymore. You treat me like garbage, you don't trust me, and you don’t respect me. So this is done.”

He got louder, his tone even more panicked before. I think he might have been crying. 

“You don't have to do this! I'll stop, I-I’ll stop everything! I will do anything you want me to… Just please stay.”

“You know that's not what will happen.” I said slowly, I was practically hanging my head in shame.

“Y/N please.” 

“ Please move out before I get home, you have a week or so. Im sorry, Sam.” and with that I hang up. 

 I was practically whispered at that point. I wasn't disappointed in myself, but it was shitty of me to do it over the phone. The way I handled it all was shitty.

What pulled me out of mood was josh voice talking over the PA and Jake guitar ringing through the air. I booked it as fast as I could to the venue so I could see their whole show. I pushed respectively pushed through some random workers and crew, but I made to the wings just in time.

The moment got their parked myself as close I could, wanting to see everything. I caught Jake’s eyes when I got there and he almost seemed relieved. He gave me a warm smile, then refocused on the song “The Cold Wind.”

The show was absolutely phenomenal. They all killed it, Josh with his wailing, Sams bright bass lines, Jake perfect guitar work, and of course, Danny who held it all together perfectly. 

I danced and sang along with what I knew, Which was admittedly sparse. I didn't stop until I heard “Black Flag Exposition” which put me in a trance, I just couldn't focus on anything else. 

I know I heard it just yesterday but this is something else. His emotion bled through his music, he created magic that night. Which bled right into “Watching Over,”and he pulled the over the shoulder solo. It was uh… quite the spectacle.

 I danced and watched as long as I could, but before I could see the end of When the curtain falls I was dragged away by a roadie.

 I was given my guitar and attached to the bluetooth system. They worked fast, getting me through a small soundcheck as quickly as possible. After they just placed me right back where I was before to await my que. 

The moment I got there I heard Josh give a small speech to the crowd, and it was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.

“I love you all! We are here to celebrate Life, love, and music. Where there is love, we must celebrate it, All of us! And Where there is no love we must provide it. That's what we are to do tonight. Now we have one last song, and one more person to spread the love with. Give it up for Miss Y/N Y/LN!”

With my guitar in hand I made my way to my spot on stage between Josh and Jake, the mic stand already set up. 

“We took a lot of time to think of the perfect song you guys, and we decided on the one song that can make anyone fall in love. Enjoy.”

Jake and I started the solo to “Annie's Song”  together, even though we didn’t have acoustics we still sounded beautiful. 

Josh came in, but instead of his normal higher pitched voice, he used his lower register which still blew me away even though we practiced for hours yesterday. With Sam on the Keys it all was enough to make me cry. 

When we got to the chorus Jake and I Stepped up to the mic to harmonize with Josh, but the crowd decided to join in. It was absolutely transcendent

. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of Jake, and the smile off of my face. Hearing the crowd sing along with us, singing with my friends, and finally feeling free, I couldn't help but let a tears flow down my cheeks.

We stepped back to let Josh sing again, and Jake seemed to notice the tears and gave me the sweetest smile he could. All the love in the room was truly moving me. For the last chorus josh asked the crowd to sing along again and as loud as they could. 

As Jake and I sang we stole glances from each other, the smiles not breaking from either of our faces. Something in me finally settled, I really was truly free. 

Josh sang the final note, and we finished off the song by giving a final strum to a G chord together. As quickly as it began it had ended and suddenly walking off stage, finding myself without a guitar and being wrapped into another from jake. 

I instantly could smell his cologne on him, stronger than anything else. My skin burned where he touched me, I was buzzing with adrenaline, and I wanted nothing more than to just stay there.

Without pulling away he whispered “That really was something, huh?”

“It really was, Jake.” I sniffled.

He gently pulled away, but didn't move me from his arms. Instead of saying anything he brought his hand to my cheek and gently wiped away my tears. I looked up to him with eyes full of emotion. A lopsided smile adorned his face, and I swore his eyes were full of stars.

His hand was warm on my face, and continued to gently stroke my cheek. 

“You're beautiful, you know that?” I blurted out, still with a soft tone. Our eyes never left each others. 

His smile grew at the comment and he seemed to drift closer to me, heat radiating off him. 

“ The same could easily be said for you, little Bird.” 

I reached up and brushed his hair out of his face, my fingers moving from the tucked hair behind his ear to the back of his neck, delicately entangling them in his hair. 

I glanced down to his mouth, his lips partially open, pink and plush, astonishingly beautiful. I met his eyes again, searching, trying to find an incentive to move forward. He looked at me with the same expression, something of desperation and a softness read through him.

I moved painfully slow, pulling him closer to me, the same scent from before coming back to me. I put my other hand on his bare chest, inching closer to him. He kept his hand on my face, but moved his other to my lower back. My whole body was buzzing, wanting to move closer.

My eyes fell to his face for a moment, he drifted closer to me, our noses bumped one another.

I held my breath in anticipation, waiting for the moment to come. 

I couldn't take it anymore. I closed my eyes and pushed forward,  my lips meeting his, my warmth pushing against his. I was slowly engulfed into the warmth of his body, fleeting touches, the both of us finally emotionally letting go. When he kissed back I felt my blood rushing through my body, my heart rate rapidly increasing,  I could feel his beat just as hard against my hand. He pulled me closer to him, and I ran my hand from his chest to his neck, desperately trying to feel as if we were one. 

Both of us were heavily breathing through our noses, not wanting to break away from the rhythm we had created. Our hearts beat in tandem, our hands creating a pace, and our lips moving together in tandem. Creating a New Tune, something in our spirits becoming one for a small, fleeting moment. 

We both pulled away, leaning our foreheads against each other, breath heavy, and our hands unmoving.

“I've been wanting to do that all week” He weakly laughed out.

[tanadrin]

You seem to really like EU4, which, as it happens, is the one Paradox Grand Strategy game which I have *not* played (not counting Imperator, but then, does it really count as a Paradox game before the 4th DLC is released?), and I'm a little apprehensive about the usual 40-hours-to-familiarize-oneself investment which Paradox games tend to require. Would you mind selling me on it?

EU4 was the first Paradox game I played, funnily enough; I got into it before the first big DLC was released, although it must have been just about the time PDS was breaking out if its niche market with the release of CK2.

I actually have a lot of complaints about EU4: the modern DLC model incentivizes a bunch of tacked-on systems that don’t integrate with one another well, parts of the game get a lot of attention in one DLC and then are abandoned permanently. E.g., natives in CoP were given the ability to colonize without westernizing, I think so you could mimic, for instance, Iroquois expansionism in the 17th century, but it never really worked and now natives just... sit around. Institutions only kindasorta replicate the function of the old Westernization system--which was terrible! don’t get me wrong--but if anything getting institutions is a bit too frictionless now. And of course there’s the infamous lack of attention or balance to anything other than the 1444 start date, which is an artifact of the Great Error in developing EU4 (i.e., that there is anything other than a 1444 start date). And, of course, EU4 is a war game above all else: it does not simulate internal politics well (or at all), and it does not simulate economics well, and I crave, crave different forms of government that more profoundly affect how you play the game. And even in war, I crave systems that even permit the existence of asymmetrically distributed power between opponents to have a complex outcome, to say nothing of model it well. Historical example: East Frisia maintained its independence from the HRE for ages because the fens of the North Sea coast were super hard to invade and control for outside powers; but in EU4 that province just gets the bland “marsh” modifier, and Oldenburg or West Frisia conquers it in 2 seconds flat. There are ways you could model this! There are even ways you could model this within the constraints EU4 presents (province-based gameplay, generic battlespace), but the longer I spend with the game the more I realize just how much it leans, not in the “game about history” direction but the “game with historical coat of paint” direction.

That said, there’s a reason I have like 3800 hours played on Steam, and in comparison only 850 on CK2 and 1200 on Stellaris (aside from Stellaris being hella broken right now): I think the map-painting elements it has are done really well; wars are super fun; and I feel like I can play strategically in a way I can’t in, say, CK2. In CK2, the almost total reliance on event-driven systems, rather than geographically, economically, or politically-based systems, means that I very often feel like I’m being punished or rewarded solely on the basis of random chance. Even where some interpersonal contest is involved--say, my dastardly vassal trying to have me assassinated--it’s still often driven by random draws (% chance to discover a plot, etc) in a way that EU4 isn‘t. I think EU4 has had some of that, with events like the Iberian Wedding or the Burgundian Succession, but these are one-off artificial constructs meant to provide a point of reference to real-world history. They don’t drive the entire game. Personal unions are a big exception, as a mechanic, and one of my least favorite ones as a result; but even there you have a lot more control than it feels like you do in CK2.

And, of course, CK2 (along with, I gather, HOI4) has turned a bit more toward the “memey alt history” side of things than EU4 has. I’m not opposed to that in principle. Reforming the Germanic faith to become a religion of Amazonian cannibals, or electing a horse Pope or w/e is good wholesome fun for the whole family. But it’s not what drew me into EU4, which was basically the appeal of “here, let’s take all these disconnected things you vaguely learned about in history in school, remind you forcefully that they were happening at the same time, and give you a clear visual representation of them.” It doesn’t matter that the game itself probably isn’t a very good history teacher; its representations of history have made me much more interested in learning about, at different times, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the whole history of India, the succession of Chinese dynasties, and the history of central Asia. In comparison, CK2 suffers for being set at a time when a lot of the map has to be filled in by guesswork, and where it does touch on more clearly recorded elements of history, it filters them very much through a “this is what D&D nerds imagine the Middle Ages were like” lens. And maybe this is my bias for my exposure to medieval history showing through: but there is so much art and music and just general medieval Weltanschauung you could draw on to make a game about politics in the Middle Ages feel, well, medieval, and CK2 just... doesn’t. There’s a reason you can drop a total conversion mod like Elder Kings or that GoT mod on top of it and not have to change any of the art style or like 90% of the default events. EU4 does this a little better, via flavor events and specific mechanics like colonization and the layout of trade routes, that make it actually feel like you’re playing a game that has at least some contact with early modern history, instead of being a febrile hallucination by someone who fell asleep on top of some Penguin Atlases of World History.

This is turning into a generic rant about what I like and don’t like about PDS games, and before I go off on an enormous tangent about how I would design a history-based GSG, let me return to the original topic: if you like RTSes, and “strategy” as a game genre more generally, EU4 will have strong inherent appeal. There are a lot of DLCs, but several of them are deeply meh and totally skippable (especially Golden Century & Cradle of Civilization; and the single-nation-focused ones like Rule Britannia and Third Rome). I think a lot of people who get into CK2 but don’t like EU4 as much probably have a preference for RPG-style gameplay over strategy gameplay, which makes sense to me since I usually break the other way. But also, if you like the CK2 thing where you start as a count and work your way up to Roman Emperor or something, EU4 has a ton of opportunities for that extremely satisfying feeling of taking a tiny country and building it out to a big empire. The very late part of the game when you have defeated all your rivals and can blob freely can be pretty boring, but I’ve played to 1821 like twice, tops: the early and midgame are some of the most fun I’ve ever had in a single-player game. EU4 also deeply appeals to the Johnny in me, because I love stupid minmaxing strategies like seeing if it’s possible to go Coptic as the Mughals and massively reduce coring costs so you can conquer all of Asia for a handful of admin points. (DDRJake did a version of this back in the day with the Minghals IIRC, using the old faction system, that was pretty damn funny.)

Not sure how useful all that is, but I hope it’s worth something.

[schalaasha]

Top 20 Games of the Decade

Hi, I felt like writing about my top 20 games of the decade because I kept thinking about it. This is a semi-ranked list, but I decided not to throw numbers into the mix since, really, outside of the top 2, I can’t think of how to rank the games prior to them. I also commissioned hyiroaerak (@/HRAK__S2 on twitter, https://hyiroaerak.weebly.com/work.html) for art to commemorate this occasion.  Our characters are cosplaying as characters from our games of the decade!

Mega Man 10

I actually like Mega Man 10 more than Mega Man 9 out of the two platformer revival games in this series. Though a bit of background on this: Mega Man 4 is my favourite, and I prefer the games that are not 2, 6, 7, or 11, so I suppose that contextualises this for others.         Either way, despite it not having weapons that were as useful as Mega Man 9’s, I felt like 10’s level design and pacing worked more for me in my favour. Though I’m saying that as someone who liked the double fortress design in earlier games so that might invalidate how I feel.

 Time Attack mode from Mega Man 9 returns as well as Proto Man (but he’s unlockable right off the bat). It also has a proper Challenge Mode compared to Mega Man 9’s challenges, whereby challenges for certain levels or bosses are unlocked when you actually do it in the main game. Being able to play as Proto Man off the bat allows for the fluidity Mega Man had in 3 and beyond by letting you slide and use charged shots. I personally liked being able to play as Proto Man off the bat as while he has the 3 and beyond advantages for his moveset, he is a glass cannon and you still have to watch where you’re going.

 I feel like the levels were a little better designed and if I needed more of a challenge, Hard Mode was still there to cut my teeth on. I liked the colour schemes throughout the level maps a lot more than 9’s as well. The bosses felt particularly gripping and trading blows with them fit into a nice rhythm.

 It has more content than Mega Man 9 and I had a lot more fun with 10 than I did with either 9 or 11. The formula itself is pretty static compared to other Mega Man games, but I like simple things. Why fix what isn’t broken? It’s just a nice piece of cake at the end of the day and that’s all I really want.

  Trauma Team / HOSPITAL: 6人の医師

When I started university for the first time in 2006, I was pre-med.  I eventually got sick and tired of the politics and people in the program (ie: folks saying they only wanted to go to med school so they can get rich or make friends with pharma reps who might give them perks), and I left the program to pursue program majors and a minor to prepare me for speech-language pathology instead.

 We had a Wii in our student lounge. My main university campus wasn’t exactly big and a lot of the people who hung out in the student center were kind of cliquey. I think I had the benefit of being really good friends with one of the guys who was the biggest social butterflies at the school so I got to meet a lot of people or get involved with stuff if I felt like it. So that meant I got to play with other students in games or wi-fi sessions during classes or after classes if I didn’t have to commute home right away.

 Because almost everyone I knew at my school wanted to go into medicine, everyone played the Trauma series. Some kids played Under the Knife during class. Some kids played Second Opinion on the Wii in the student lounge. Some kids played New Blood. This was before like… Farmville took over everyone’s computers at the time.

 Trauma Team came out way after that, and some of us were either graduating or staying in school an extra year because we didn’t know what to do after the recession or knew what to do but needed extra courses for graduate school.  So the Wii was free to use.  I don’t think people hooked it up as often anymore anyway. By 2010, a lot of us who had met each other in first year decided to go our separate ways, not even in the same majors or programs anymore. A lot of us either branched out into research, psychology, neurology (like me), kinesiology, epidemiology, forensics, genetics, etc. So Trauma Team for the rest of us who were still there was a good fit.

 Trauma Team took some influences from the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic considering that was when the development phase occurred. Now, I live in Canada, and Canada was one of the focal points for the 2003 SARS outbreak. This was when health bodies in the country decided to make some changes to how they respond to potential pandemics. A lot of things they tell medical students or any students studying health policy (like I was at the time) emphasized how different parts of the hospital or medical or health care staff need to work together in order to care for a patient. I actually find the different professions involved in Trauma Team useful and a reflection of what my class of 2010/2011 became later on (a lot of us graduated in 2011 and took an extra year).

 Diagnostics and Forensics were what I was really interested in since they don’t play the same as surgery/emergency medicine since they played out like a point-and-click. Later on in life, I had to look at so many medical reports and radiology reports and file them but by then I realised what my patients had but I can’t tell them myself since I’m not a doctor. But Trauma Team gave me a chance to do so and practice my terminology as a student. A friend of mine, who ended up becoming a doctor at a hospital in Toronto, really enjoyed endoscopy since it merely involved using the Wiimote as an endoscope and the nunchuk to steer. A lot of us played co-op too.

 The difficulty in Trauma Team, I felt, was decreased from previous games. But that doesn’t really spoil it. It was a varied game and it looks fantastic. It’s a shame that the game style hasn’t been replicated or given a sequel in later years, because while I’m older and my classmates are doing completely different things and I haven’t seen some of them in years, I’d love to take a stab at these types of games with a well-practiced laboratory technologist’s hand.

  Sonic Colours

I think it goes without saying. My first community when I joined the old forum was the Sonic community. Just a bunch of people who were interested in talking about Sonic so much in almost every thread that we ended up making a community thread together. I don’t post in the new forum everyone is at but I still talk to mostly everyone via different social mediums.

 I wasn’t around when Sonic Colours came out but I think I remember reading the joy everyone felt when nearly universally everyone in that thread seemed to really like Sonic Colours. I remember the thread title still. I preordered Sonic Colours because apparently previews were saying it was… good? I didn’t bother playing Sonic Unleashed until after I’d joined the forum, but hearing Sonic Colours would be a return to form since I was one of those people who didn’t adjust well to the 3D games made me interested.

 Sonic Colours is everything I wanted from a 3D Sonic game. Or rather, a 3D version of a platformer. I didn’t really like where 3D platformers were going because they were hard to look at, hard for me to pay attention to, and to be honest I got dizzy while playing a lot of them since you’re expected to work in a 3D space as opposed to a 2D space so it was really hard for me to process. I really like the hybrid nature of the level designs that’s where Sonic Colours got me.

 Sonic Colours isn’t without its hangups: some of the levels are really short; existing mostly for ranking/getting red rings. Sonic’s jump is pretty floaty. The script is fairly short even if the jokes can be funny. Bosses are reused. Sonic Colours is not a perfect game, but the attempts it made were fantastic enough in its own right.

 The music continues to be great, but the areas are visual spectacles. Whatever you think of the series, it’s fairly undeniable that the games try to have style. From the lighting, to posing, to setpieces, to colours used in assets in the level design – Sonic has always had really great ideas.  Sonic Colours is no exception – areas like Aquarium Park, Planet Wisp, and Sweet Mountain have a variety of neat level ideas and they look good trying to execute it. From popcorn on the floor to one of the best darned water levels in all of video games due to the drill wisp, to a fresh take on a grassy knoll with beautiful music, Sonic Colours can bring tears to your eyes because of what it attempts. Terminal Velocity Act 2 is also one of my favourite parts of the Uncolourations games partially because it’s a well-executed setpiece, but it also showed me that maybe those 3D racing bits aren’t that bad.

 The bosses may be really easy, and the final boss ends far sooner than it should before it could perfectly execute its Kamen Rider reference, but I think the point was to fully enjoy the theme park that Sonic Team threw at you this time.

 In 2020 I like to say that out of all of the Uncolourations games, Sonic Unleashed is my favourite due to the balance it struck and its presentation/artstyle, and basically having one of the best soundtracks of the previous decade. But I recognise everything that Sonic Colours brought to the table. If it wasn’t for Sonic Colours, I wouldn’t be friends or acquaintances with so many people that I am with now.

  Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Have you ever played a game that made you feel warm and toasty? Canadian winters can be really cold, you know.

 When I lived at my old run-down house, my old room didn’t have good insulation. Whenever it got cold, my room got really cold. I had my own personal heater because we didn’t really have a good heating system in my room either. So I only wore flannel pyjamas, wrapped myself in faux-wool blankets all the time, and went to sleep covered in at least four quilts or comforters (which is something I still do out of habit sorry). I used to make hot choco every day because it was just so cold in my room.

 I love Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Kirby’s Epic Yarn makes me feel warm and toasty inside because I think of being wrapped up in yarn and sheets and scarves and I just feel so happy. There are so many pastels used in KEY’s earlier stages that I can’t help but to feel toasty and happy when I’m playing it. It’s not the most challenging game. The game is really easy and all you mostly do is collect furniture, music, beads, and parts of the results wheel in every level, but I don’t think that’s the point of it. The point is just to have fun. Watching Kirby turn into a car to sprint, watching him turn into a little parachute or transform during those vehicle bits, you just can’t help but to feel so enveloped by the cute.

 Being able to interact with cloth by pulling a loose button and releasing something, taking off tags, pulling on stray thread, spin balls of yarn… it feels so fulfilling because it’s a clever use of the medium. It’s exactly what you’d do if you’re stitching or knitting. Placing furniture around Kirby’s little apartment makes the Animal Crossing fan in me so happy.

 I appreciate the lengths Good-Feel went to producing the level designs. They took photos of the fabric they bought and created the graphics that way. The music is calm and relaxing, with lots of woodwind and piano and lighter sounding instruments. The entire game feels so soft and sweet. It’s a visually-impressive game since everything animates incredibly fluidly.

  Cuphead

Like anyone my age or older, I grew up watching a lot of older cartoons by Max Fleischer with watercolour backgrounds, hand-drawn characters with a lot of focus on expressions, rotoscoping, etc Lots of slapstick and musical scores out of that decade.  I would have never believed I’d play a video game that looks like that but here we are playing Cuphead this decade.

 Cuphead is a blend of that artstyle with older run and gun style games. It combines a gunning experience with puzzles, reflexive actions, and dying… and dying a lot. And learning. Underneath it’s cartoony and child-friendly veneer lies a game that is unrelentingly difficult. There aren’t really any checkpoints in the game save for one. You can’t regain lost health. It’s just you versus the game. You may spend hours on one single level learning everything about it. And you can’t beat the game until you finish off every other level on regular difficulty.

 Different levels have different forms: they can be run and guns á la Contra, which are actually, oddly enough, breathing room levels. They’re probably the “easiest” levels in the game. Other types of levels can be straight up shmup-like boss fights where you’re flying in a plane. They can be hard as a regular shmup.

 The best crafted types of levels are the ones that include platforming as part of their boss battles because they use the artstyle and ideas involved in the art piece as interesting platforming mechanics. You have a more limited control scheme but the scenario you’re involved in is really interesting and unique. You fight a woman in a play and the setpieces in the play change according to how far you are in the boss fight, for example. The game also has a parry mechanic whereby you can double-jump off of anything that’s coloured pink and fill your super meter in order to kill bosses faster. The parry cues change per boss so it’s really cool to see what they look like every time you encounter something new.

 I think while Cuphead can be utterly unforgiving, I think it should be experienced at least once for how much work was put into making things look so fluid and how creative every boss and level can be. It’s what I wanted the UBIart framework to eventually evolve into. I think the game’s aesthetics and sound are its own reward in addition to that feeling when you finally conquer That One Boss.

  Asura’s Wrath

Asura’s Wrath was a game I was incredibly iffy on even buying at all. I heard about how the ending was part of paid DLC, that the game didn’t have a lot of gameplay, and that it was incredibly unremarkable. I don’t think I had a remarkably low bar or anything for this, but I decided to purchase it on the cheap.

 Asura’s Wrath definitely isn’t a game for everyone, and I feel as though it’s an acquired taste. The main character’s art might not jive well with everyone, the lack of ‘play’ will probably deter some folks, and its episodic nature/final chapter unlock sequence would probably get on people’s nerves. With that said, at first, it seems to be an action-cinematic game without necessarily expanding on the “action” part. A lot of it at first seems to be a bunch of QTEs to move the narrative along, with the narrative not necessarily being that strong in the first place. I think that’s due in part to the game’s structure initially. The first few chapters and the first act truly don’t seem very remarkable. The Buddhist and Hindu aspects of the game are very obvious and very central to the game’s plot, but at the same time, they don’t seem to be specifically mentioned whenever someone talks about the game to me. The Asuras were not one singular character or a god, but a race of warlike beings exhibiting wrath and pride. They were incorporated into Hinduism and Buddhism through their mention in The Rigveda. With that said, I was continually impressed by how many references—whether it was mere mention of regular terms/concepts/people, the artstyle and inclusions of things like lacquer skin, mandorlas, Vajras and Pretas, and also Siddham script—was included in this game. Asura’s Wrath ended up feeling incredibly natural and a nice way of shedding some light on non-Judeo-Christian religions.

 Anyway, I genuinely liked that the game felt like a playable anime. I don’t feel like the game would be as effective if it were put into another genre, or were less cinematic. It ends up getting its message across with its carefully-researched artstyle, great scene direction, well-composed music, and penchant for feeling like it was a fantastic shounen anime. I also feel like the game has more combo-based gameplay than people give it credit for. A lot of the complexities come to the forefront on Hard mode, and going for S-ranks and finding ways to do that quickly and effectively on higher difficulty modes is always an interesting affair.

  Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

I finished marathoning all of the Ace Attorney games in 2010. I don’t recall if I was doing it before Ghost Trick but I think what enticed me to get the game was its amazing animation. I hadn’t seen 2D sprites move that fluidly in a very long time. Characters have exaggerated movements, exaggerated dances (ie: the panic dance), and they have big flashy gestures to show off the game’s animation engine.

 You’re introduced to all sorts of eccentric characters, many of whom don’t overstay their welcome (Circus case from AA2, I’m looking at you). You have a desk lamp, a doggo, a dancing detective, a little girl who’s the focal point for one episode, etc. Everyone’s dialogue is relatively snappy, their expressions and animations make them stand out from others, and due to how everything is presented right down to the character art portraits, everything just jumps off the screen.

 Because you’re a spirit with amnesia, you’re given the ability to go through time, and also the ability to through environments by hopping from object to object and possessing them in order to influence what happens in the past to save people in the present.  This is just a path to trying to figure out who you really are or to find who or what killed you. A lot of the gameplay revolves around trying to figure out which objects to manipulate and when in order to influence an outcome. It makes the game partially point and click, but also partially a physics puzzler. I don’t think I remember a single object in the puzzle segments that was wasted. In other circumstances, you must manipulate time in order to save someone in their last four minutes.

 If anything, I feel like Ghost Trick is a necessary inclusion simply because of its style and attention to detail, as well as its sort but sweet story where nothing overstays its welcome. Its soundtrack also feels similar. The game is fairly consistent and nothing really changes in terms of progression over most of the game. But I see that as a plus as opposed to a minus for the most part. It helps to bring the game to a compelling and surprising conclusion.

  Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I marathoned all of the Assassin’s Creed games in one year prior to Assassin’s Creed III since I wanted to see what the deal was with the series because the first game wasn’t that great from a play perspective for me. The thing that resonates the most with respect to Assassin’s Creed for me is marshmallow-flavoured birthday cake and a bag of regular Bugles. I started this marathon on one of my birthdays that decade.

 Assassin’s Creed II is one of my favourite games out there, but Brotherhood adds so much to the formula despite its middling storyline compared to its predecessor. But that’s because most of Ezio’s growth happened in the previous game. He is a middle-aged man searching for the Apple of Eden, and while the story does not carry as much emotional impact, that isn’t exactly what I’m looking for with respect to the earlier AC games.

 One of the things I absolutely love about the earlier AC games is its attention to detail even if it isn’t necessarily completely accurate. At first I missed the fact that I could explore many different towns like I could in AC2. But then I realised how big Rome and its surrounding area is. Rome is gigantic, and it has so much attention to detail with historical buildings everywhere (which you need to pay to rebuild), old tapestries from the era, citizens dancing in the streets, lovers flirting with each other behind pillars, etc. There are more roofs and buildings to parkour over and between. The game adds towards that require you to take over them before you can use them to gain access to vendors and things to renovate. You can also find the glyphs (much like the ones from the previous game) to solve puzzles in order to gain access to more lore.

 I genuinely love the renovation aspect of this game. It’s more involved and a lot better than what the previous game tried to do with its economy. You renovate in order to gain access to shops, which in-turn generates income for you, and then you can renovate other stuff based on the income that you generate. It’s something that I’ve come to miss in later AC games. It felt a lot like a Suikoden game in some aspects.

 Platforming missions return in the form of finding parts of a cult and cutting the beginnings of a conspiracy off by its limbs. They’re faster paced than AC2’s tombs and there is more variety in terms of what you platform through. I like both types equally since one allows you to marvel at the beauty of a cathedral, while the other allows you to clock a few folks while making your way through a lair.

 In addition to the lairs, there are different types of missions for each faction that you forge alliances with, there are Da Vinci missions that involve new war toys and blowing things up in a scripted way. Assassin missions can vary in terms of how you carry out the assassins (albeit still scripted; improvisation was not a thing until ACUnity).

 The crux of AC: Brotherhood is being able to recruit assassins to your cause. Random citizens throughout Rome may be under attack by Borgia soldiers, and once you save them, they are recruited to join your cause. You level them up, send them out on missions, improve their gear, and ask for their help when you can and when they’re available. This feature gets expanded upon in later AC games but it gets a very good start here.

 Brotherhood is so full of content and a lot of little things that playing it for me makes it feel like comfort food for me. It may not have the best story and it certainly isn’t as memorable in that sense as its predecessor. But it’s so fun that I can’t help but to feel satisfied every time I turn it on.

  Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

I played the original Pac-Man CE on 360 years ago at my cousin’s house, where they added a timer and a morphing maze to the base original game. I thought it was a neat novel thing at the time but didn’t think further.

 Pac-Man CE DX adds more mazes and more mechanics and more modes to the championship edition base. It added sleeping ghosts where, if Pac-Man moves near them, they wake up and they chase him around the maze in a line until you can finally eat them all and rack up a huge score. You can also elect to use a bomb at a small expense in order to save yourself and send ghosts to the middle of the maze again. These changes assist in maintaining the game’s flow and it never makes a score attack daunting or boring.

 Devouring big long conga lines of ghosts following you is so satisfying while you’re listening to a bumpin’ soundtrack and chilling out looking at the cool lights on the maze. Really and truly, while at its core, PMCEDX is a score attack game, it makes for a beautiful loving chill sensory experience and I couldn’t ask anything more from it.

  Deadly Premonition / レッドシーズプロファイル

I think I, like a lot of people, was introduced to this game via the GB series. I didn’t have an Xbox 360 so I eventually imported the Japanese version for the PS3. The game’s dub was already in English; the text was in Japanese and it was pretty easy and reasonable to get through. Deadly Premonition actually the Guinness World Record winner for most critically polarizing horror video game since the reviews at the time were so all over the place. And yes, I will contend that Deadly Premonition is definitely not for everyone.

 I am not the type of person to play shooters. I actually hate them a lot. I don’t like gushing blood in video games, and I don’t really like the act of murdering someone in a game. I used to play a lot of survival horror games when I was younger on the PS1 and PS2, but a lot of the time you’re dealing with the undead or oddball things going on around you so it’s not nearly as bad I think. It’s funny; I deal with people’s bodily fluids and body parts all the time in real life as part of my job (ie: I’ve had to help dissect someone’s stomach before fresh out of the operating room), and it doesn’t bother me. But the mere act of seeing it done or doing it, makes me feel squeamish. I don’t like it. I don’t even like watching blood being drawn from me or needles being stuck into me, even though I’ve done it to other people as part of my work.

 For the most part, inexplicably, in Deadly Premonition, you’re dealing with the undead anyhow. I’m not the best person at shooters, but I certainly know what’s a good one and what isn’t.  Deadly Premonition is not a very good shooter. It’s really janky. Some of the weapons don’t make sense in terms of how balanced they are. The controls are also really janky. This is not really a surprise considering the game’s strength wasn’t supposed to be its shooter aspects. In fact, those parts weren’t even supposed to be there.

 Deadly Premonition is often cited as an artistic piece or a good game simply because of its story and character writing.  It has an excellent main character who was cast almost perfectly. It has a lot of eccentric characters filling the town of Greenvale to help you solve the murder mystery or help obstruct it. The end result of having an unreliable narrator works out in the game’s favour. It helped sprout pop culture references, weird humour, quirky dialogue and more. I have certainly never watched Twin Peaks but I got the allusions either way since the show was so big. Slowly uncovering how every cast member lives their lives throughout the town and every day makes you more emotionally connected with them.

 Greenvale is more of a sandbox than just a place where a crime is committed. You can play darts. You can race cars. You can do a ton of sidequests somewhere that will reward you elsewhere. You can collect trading cards??? You can carry some lady holding a pot everywhere? You can taste-test for one of your coworkers? You can do a lot of stuff that makes zero sense but I still end up enjoying it all anyway.

 It looks like a PS2 or Dreamcast game or something and I almost found that utterly endearing in the era in which it was released. The soundtrack itself is so dissonant and doesn’t always fit the situation. Sometimes the sound mixing is so all over the place that it often results in making a scene more hilarious than it should be. There’s a song that’s just… American Idiot… on the soundtrack for some reason. Along the way, you start wondering “is this game real? Am I real? Is this really happening right now?” and yes, yes it is.

 In the end, because of its cult success and getting people talking, it allowed Swery 65 to make more games. Deadly Premonition was lightning in a bottle for him. He followed up with D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (unfortunately in limbo). He cowrote Lord of Arcana and Lord of Apocalypse. He recently released The Missing. If anything, I’m more interested in what he makes. I’m eagerly looking forward to The Good Life.

  999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Text/Puzzle-adventures, rather than pure visual novels, became a staple of some players’ libraries due in part of the popular Ace Attorney series, Professor Layton series, and whatever Mystery Case File games that were published by Nintendo. 999 is not a pure visual novel. It’s a puzzle adventure game with visual novel elements. With art by Kinu Nishimura and a story written by Kotaro Uchikoshi (who had a few visual novels under his belt), it was difficult for me to ignore this game. I was also at a point where I really wanted to get into a lot of the games that Aksys published so it was a natural choice to buy.

 A lot of the localization and language in this game was edited so that while it stays true to the spirit of the original language, a lot of care was put into making the dialogue and writing sound natural in the English language versus going line by line exactly. It worked out in the game’s favour because the script was fairly large. Based on Uchikoshi’s past games, he likes to ask a question and generally incorporate some pseudoscience in his narratives. 999’s version of pseudoscience ended up being morphogenetic fields (see: Rupert Sheldrake). This theory ended up the basis for a few characters and it is the way the story unravels. He also took inspiration from another older game of Chunsoft’s: Banshee’s Last Cry where the player is put into an unsettling position right off the bat. Indeed, 999 starts the player in media res, but the player is already in trouble when you begin to control the main character.

 The puzzles were added to the game so that it would be received well by a wider audience than just visual novel readers. They were naturally and seamlessly integrated into the experience that the game became almost wholly about the puzzle rooms and whatever flavour dialogue occurred during the puzzle rooms. A lot of inspiration seems to have been taken from browser-based escape games like the Crimson Room from 2004. Escape the Room games were a subgenre of point and click adventure games and it was nice seeing the concept integrated in a narrative experience that wasn’t Myst (see: http://www.fasco-cs.net/ for more information). Due to the puzzles being a fundamental part of the game’s story, with them getting more and more difficult, the final puzzle for the entire game at the end of the true route is both a relief and also incredibly impactful due to using both of the DS screens and also revealing a lot to the player about the narrative.

 If I had criticism for the game, I feel like it would be having to play the game repeatedly, doing the same puzzles repeatedly in order to unlock another prerequisite ending for the true ending. I did not play the later port which rectifies this but I’m not entirely sure that being able to see the branches would be great for the game either. I also feel like, just like a lot of Uchikoshi’s writing and previous games, that when the characters start cracking jokes when they have to urgently do things to not die, the tone feels a little off.

 With that said, 999 is one of the more compelling text/puzzle-adventures from last decade, and it uses its native platform to its advantage. There weren’t a lot of games that used the DS screens to convey a narrative properly but when you are faced with the revelation that the game was using the two screens for a remarkable reason, you feel like the game is a natural and powerful addition to any DS library and gives significance for the dual screens.

  Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

The funniest thing about Metal Gear Rising was that I actually disliked it at the beginning when I first started playing it. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time, and I didn’t ‘get’ the parry mechanic. At first, I guess I was playing it for the sake of playing it? It definitely took me a while to even warm up to it. The camera was obnoxious (and still gets to be obnoxious in some places), and I felt incredibly nauseous while playing it sometimes.

 It wasn’t until I got to the Mistral boss that I finally … found what I was looking for… I’m sorry. I’m serious, though. Metal Gear Rising truly shines during the boss battles. When I finished that particular boss battle, I’d reflected that I was smiling like an idiot the entire way through. I don’t think I’d fought satisfying boss battles in years prior to that. Returning to previous chapters told me that Platinum really likes to frame and teach players via trial by fire. Learn to parry yourself, here’s a test to see if you can parry well and you can get a trophy for it, here’s the final test to see if you can even parry (Monsoon). I loved that Metal Gear Rising threw a lot of what we knew about Metal Gear Solid out of the window, with a significantly interesting score, boss battles that centre around the climax of a battle (expertly done via excellent sound design as I noted in my SotY writeup this year), and a more interesting and personable version of Raiden. It relies far more on offense than defense and stealth, and that’s okay to me. It ends up separating Raiden even more from Snake.

 The final boss is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of affair, and I ended up loving every single part of it. I felt like it was one of the best final bosses in years. Don’t know how to parry? You’re fucked. Don’t know how to use the game’s other offensive rush tactics like Defensive Offense and running? Good luck. The game makes sure you try to know how to do these things before even bothering to attempt the boss, with the major roadblock being Monsoon. And if you can’t parry by then, the game brutally tells you that you aren’t doing it right by making the boss battles ramp up to significantly require you to use one of the game’s core mechanics for elegant combat. This isn’t the most elegantly-designed game whatsoever. In fact, it can be really sloppy. With that said, it’s one of the better action games I played all decade.

  Papers, Please!

Papers, Please is work. It feels like work because it is work. You can grant freedom and admittance to people, or you can just take their freedom away or not permit them to cross the border. Everything you do is controlled by the government, or by rules and regulations. If you do something wrong, you’re written up. Do enough wrong, and your pay is cut. Do enough wrong and your pay is cut multiple times, and you can’t provide enough for your family. Everything about the game just feels like work. Even right down to the end of the day when the whole thing feels like a budget calculation and spreadsheets. Everything about the game’s UI feels a lot like work. Where do you allocate space to do your job? How much money do you allocate to heat/food/medicine? It ends up feeling very tedious, but somehow fulfilling.

 You are an immigration officer in a fictional Soviet state. The interesting part of the game is that it doesn’t only feel like a job, but it also feels like government and self-evaluation. You end up studying why the government keeps regulating the border the way they do, and thinking about how mundane the job can be. You know that people’s livelihood and family lives hinge on whether or not they cross the border, and sometimes your penchant for following the rules and disallowing people across the border may be called into question when people plead with you to go through. Do you accept docked pay so you can reunite people or save people from slavery, or do you do as you’re told and live with the consequences of your actions. In a small way, your ethics are called into question. It’s a nice reminder that a lot of things, despite people being people and having their own stories, generally seem to come down to bureaucracy and pieces of paper as opposed to a full understanding of humanity or extenuating circumstances.

 I’d also like to add that Jorji is one of the best characters of 2013 to me. I think his glass half-full philosophy / if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again philosophy is something to look forward to whenever I encounter him in-game.

 In many ways, Papers, Please feels a lot like the Milgram experiment. Are you going to make cruel judgement calls to separate a family, or keep people in slavery because the authorities and higher-ups essentially tell you to do your job so you can keep your family healthy? Papers, Please in many ways is written incredibly well. It doesn’t use reams of text to make you understand the overall premise of the game but through your actions, you’re also helping to tell the story. That’s the sort of weird and wonky player “agency” that I find interesting.

  World of Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy series had a better decade than the last decade, I feel, considering the quantity of releases increase from the previous decade.  However, it had a lot of growing pains to deal with at the beginning of the decade. Final Fantasy games sell well all the time, and more people playing games than ever, it makes sense that sales numbers continuously increase. Attach rates aren’t as large.  Final Fantasy XIV came out in 2010 and it was not a good game at all to the point of having to be structured for its 2013 re-release. Final Fantasy XIII had mixed reviews, as well as its subsequent direct sequels.  Final Fantasy All the Bravest wasn’t exactly the best mobile debut for the series. The brand also suffered from dilution – the Final Fantasy name was attached to almost anything and everything for the sake of sales, and numerous spinoffs were released and the quality varied.

 Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, originally planned to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis setting with Final Fantasy XIII were renamed and rebranded/redesigned to be their own titles: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy Type-0. Both games also had mixed reviews and multiple delays. If anything, I can probably say that this decade was the most divisive for Final Fantasy fans.

 World of Final Fantasy came out during the same year Final Fantasy XV. I think I’ve made my feelings about Final Fantasy XV fairly well-known.  Perhaps my feelings about that game influenced how I felt about World of Final Fantasy but as someone who has played this series for decades (for reference: the first game is one year older than I am, and my first Final Fantasy was the first game), I felt like World of Final Fantasy was a love letter written to fans like me. I am a long-standing fan of the series over the course of decades and have been through its up and downs, and while I don’t like every game in the series (we all know how I feel about half of the games in the series, after all), I can still look at them for their influence on the rest of the series.  I also like the newer games equally as the older games and dislike and like games from all of the eras, so I don’t really have issues with how the series is represented in general unless the games are really bad.

 World of Final Fantasy feels like a Kingdom Hearts-esque exploration of the Final Fantasy games while throwing Pokemon into the mix. It involves a lot of older references as well as bringing new references in and throwing it into a presentation mode that fans of all ages can enjoy. The main characters are chibi which fits right into how the older games represented characters, but they can also grow taller to represent how the newer games are represented. You can create stacks of party members according to their height and balance well accordingly out of classic Final Fantasy enemies and characters in order to battle against other classic Final Fantasy characters, villains, and monsters.

 The game is exactly what I wanted a mainline Final Fantasy to look. It retains a cartoony look, embracing stylization while adding so much detail to the areas’ setpieces so that they also stand out while the characters move around on the map. I also felt like the score was also a brilliant blend of old and new: with Masashi Hamauzu composing the score but also remixing older Uematsu themes to fit within the context of the score. The score was loftier compared to Hamauzu’s older works and the strings, synth, and piano works incredibly well to bring the game’s world to life.

 The idea for WoFF was to try to bring younger fans into the fold, hence the Pokemon-like influence for using and rearing many classic FF enemies so that children could start to recognise them. The loftier script was also written in-mind taking into account both lighter storytelling from older FF titles and some darker bits taking into account newer Final Fantasy games. I’m not too sure that SE was very successful with bringing younger fans into the fold, but the way the game was written fit well with what I remember liking about FF for the first few games I had played. I also enjoyed that characters were chosen for their involvement to the plot versus them simply picking the most popular ones. This is why we got characters like Eiko and Shelke as well as regular FF mainstays. All of the characters were woven into the story well, as citizens of Grymoire as opposed to characters who just have their regular identities transported into Grymoire instead.

 I felt like the Pokemon mechanic was handled well. I even loved it enough to have the idea commissioned in combination with our FFXIV characters.  I liked that it changed up whatever skills you had access to, it influenced your stats, and it looked adorable to boot.

 I would absolutely love to see a mainline game made by this team because I felt like the loose style of storytelling and worldbuilding made for a very good Final Fantasy game, and in essence, WoFF was the real Final Fantasy XV to me. It felt more “Final Fantasy” than a lot of the games released in the same decade, or even compared to ones released in the previous decade. It was a nice step and touch to demonstrating that there were staff members who remembered what Final Fantasy is to older fans.

  Va-11 Hall-A

I’m too young to have a big attachment to older PC games like the ones on the MSX or the PC-88/98. But I’ve always had a fondness for their graphics and their music, like sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong time or something. It’s one of the reasons why I gravitated hard to the PC Engine—I felt like it was a way for me to finally experience stuff like that.

 Valhalla is supposed to be a bartending simulator but in reality, mixing drinks is a bit of a break and distraction between the visual novel bits. Usually if you’re stuck in a futuristic landscape akin to Bubblegum Crisis or Blade Runner, you’re asked to investigate a mystery or explore it. But nope, you’re a bartender making drinks and making enough to scrape by and pay your rent. You hear a lot about the world from various clientele while you serve them drinks but you don’t necessarily have to do anything with the information they give you.

 I worked as a medical administrator for a few years and over that time, I got to hear a lot of stories, meet some famous people (like been on TV people or youtubers or people who got paid to do things for celebrities), and just meet a lot of neat and interesting regular people. I got to hear stories about people’s health or their personal lives or witness people falling in or out of love. You don’t necessarily have to do anything with that information (in fact you can’t due to patient confidentiality), but the stories become sealed in your head. I can’t help but to think of some of these people I met for those few years or where they are now. I actually run into some of them at my current lab so I keep getting to see some of their stories. You eventually learn how quickly icebreak in situations like these to make people feel at ease or find a topic of conversation while they’re waiting. I even used my phone to gauge news because a lot of the time when I got home, I was too tired to do anything or getting news in the palm of my hand was incredibly easy to do.

 In this sense, I understood Valhalla. It may look dull and it doesn’t look special but you’re the one who makes it so that it doesn’t have a dull moment in the bar. You’re the one who has to make it enjoyable even if your pay sucks. Because you don’t want to be miserable either. It’s through the conversations with others that you learn about Jill because she has to add commentary too. Everyone has a different way of requesting something and it’s up to you to figure out how to decipher it. It’s a lot of like practice in being in the service industry.  You need to consistently gauge a conversation in order to actually give the client what they want to unlock more conversation.

 The pacing in this game may be a little slow, but it doesn’t feel like a hindrance because the writing is really good. Something always happens to keep you interested or you have to mix drinks to keep yourself on your toes. The humour comes across well, and nothing really falls flat. Part of the reason why I feel like the writing is genuine is because the game’s developers wanted to write something that reflected how they live in Venezuela, akin to laughter in the middle of despair according to the developers. The writing is balanced well with the music and the visuals which makes the whole package a wonderful experience.

 This game also has Rad Shiba so it belongs on the list by default.  

  El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

I had gone to Catholic Schools all my life. I was even in a nursery school operated by nuns when I was a toddler, and they always tried to get me to write with my right hand instead of my left (which left me ambidextrous for some things lol).  Because of my experiences with religion growing up, I absolutely had questions and doubts and concerns with metaphysics, theology, and epistemology. Every Catholic, I think, as they grow up and have to take religion classes, and having to take what the province mandates as metaphysics are somehow inserted into math and biology syllabi without even being mentioned in the coursework at all, questions it. And that’s okay. You should. The best religion and philosophy teacher I ever had growing up always said we should question everything we learn including what he taught us.

 Going through school, though, and reading the Bible and having Bible study, my friends and I always sorta wondered what it’d be like if a game was made about this stuff?  I know it may be a little sacrilegious but there are so many stories in there that would fit a game. Throughout my life, as I became acquainted with others from different branches of Christianity or other western religions, I talked with others who played games who… surprisingly had the same ideas and desires?  It probably won’t ever be done. El Shaddai is inspired by the Book of Enoch and while it is considered as non-canon in most Christian and Jewish sects, I guess it might come close to what some of us wanted.

 El Shaddai was a game that I picked up mostly because I bought almost every niche game back then. I just looked at some of the trailers, thought it looked just okay, and picked it up because I felt like Ignition was going out of business and it would be a novelty item. Ignition did not have the best reputation among the people I talked to back then. I played Lux-Pain whose localization left a lot to be desired. Nostalgia was a middling RPG. Arc Rise Fantasia’s localization left a lot to be desired despite being a good game. Deadly Premonition had an English dub already but the text localization wasn’t that great. I felt like El Shaddai was the most polished game that Ignition released. They got incredibly great voice actors, including Jason Isaacs. They developed a score attack combo ranking system for replayability. They had a fantastic art director and background art. They made two bishounen that screamed for female audiences to pay attention.

 All of it didn’t exactly work out for the time the game came out, and I always contended that the game was released before its time. Unfortunately, all the effort put into El Shaddai didn’t exactly save Ignition. I feel like if El Shaddai were released in the later half of the decade, it would have been accepted. However, I also feel like its marketing was mishandled. It doesn’t feel like a Devil May Cry successor. It shifts between genres continuously. It is very much like Nier in this regard: it is not for everyone and it has its own unique feel that sets it apart from other games.  It is also a score attack action game, not a hard character action game.

 One thing I really enjoyed about El Shaddai was that all of the setpieces aren’t exactly the same. It ranges from a watercolour painting to abstraction to 2D children art to more abstraction to Final Fantasy VII and keep going like that. It references rhythm games, 2D Platformers, racing games, action games, Devil May Cry (with its own brand of Devil Trigger to boot), and other genres to create something that syncs up very well with the rest of the game due to lore reasons: different enemies prefer different things so that’s why each environment looks different or the gameplay styles may be a little different. I’m okay with this because it shakes things up per chapter and the game doesn’t feel stale at all. You’re expected to adjust to new mechanics per area.

 The combat is a lot like Rock-Paper-Scissors, where certain weapons beat other weapons, or some bosses change which weapons they’re weak against (and the game gives you other weapons so you can adjust accordingly during fights). The weapon you wield also modify your platforming abilities (ex: one allows Enoch to dash, one weighs him down, etc), and they also vary in terms of character strength. In order to obtain G-rankings for each stage, the player needs to analyse which weapon would be the most useful for certain enemies and combo while guarding, guard-breaking, and stealing enemies’ weapons.

 I am putting El Shaddai on this list because I really enjoyed it for what it was. It’s a brilliant score attack action game with a fantastic soundtrack and fantastic art design. It made for a pleasant sensory experience and made some religious figures fairly compelling with good character designs. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding and prettiest score attack games I’ve played this decade.

  To the Moon

Everyone goes through life with regrets. I’m in my thirties now and I think I’ve done things I’ve regretted, or I didn’t other to do something and I’ve regretted that. Kan Gao was inspired by his grandfather’s illness when he was writing and making To the Moon, he’s noted that when he gets old and when his time would come, he might end up regretting some decision he’d made throughout his entire life.  Everyone goes through that when faced with introspection. You can have the courage to love, you can feel pain, you can live your life fully, or not live it enough. To the Moon explores this, and while the writing isn’t the best and can be a little messy (this gets improved on in Gao’s later sequels to this game: A Bird Story and Finding Paradise), I understand what To the Moon was trying to accomplish. To the Moon is an exploration of everything that life throws at us, and the results of the decisions made throughout our lives that touches everyone and everything around us until our time passes.

 Eventually you build up so many wishes and have a big bucket list but eventually there will come a time where you won’t remember why half of those things are on those lists.  To the Moon relates the story of Johnny Wyles, an elderly man on his deathbed with one wish: to go to the moon. The problem is that he could not remember why. The general flow of Gao’s games have involved two scientists from Sigmund Corp, specialising in wish fulfillment at the end of someone’s life, creating memories for people in their final moments to generate comfort for the patient. How ever you may feel about the moral implications of generating false memories for someone prior to their end of life, this is merely a set up for traveling through time to understand what the patient had wanted and what they’d accomplished.  

 Johnny’s character revolves around another character with an ASD. I will also note that my brother has autism (compounded with a multisystem syndrome). While the central focus was on Asperger’s Syndrome (Tony Attwood books being mentioned in the game), I’m a little happy that ASDs are being brought up in games and the game truly hit home for me. The writing may not be stellar, but I felt that the theme of the impact of medical disorders was communicated well. Particularly the theme of why communication and connections with others is so difficult for those with ASDs and those who take care of those who have ASDs. It’s easy to sympathize with the characters trying to express what they mean to each other.

 The game itself is relatively short. Regardless of its length, players must confront some uncomfortable situations and emotions that people struggle with daily or even at different points in our lives. I’m older now and I appreciate this game a little more since I’ve come to experience more of what the game had been trying to tell me a decade ago. The writing may not be the best, and it can be a little messy at times with respect to how it’s presented and written, but a lot of its messages come across as utterly genuine. Slowly unraveling the reasoning behind Johnny’s desire to go to the moon is beautiful. This game is quite human and I appreciate all three games that are a part of this subseries that came out this decade.  I am looking forward to more.

  Nier Gestalt

If you’ve played a Drakengard game or the first Nier game at all, you kind of know what you’re getting into.  Not the best graphics of the decade, plays pretty janky, having bosses that can be difficult to manage, etc.  So going into Nier Gestalt in 2010, I knew what I was getting into. Not a lot of people bothered playing this game since I don’t think it got as much promotion considering it came out during the same year a mainline Final Fantasy game got localized.  Nier also got a little scrutiny since the west got a different protagonist from the Japanese version.  I will say that this worked out in its favour, since the protagonist being one of the central character’s father versus her brother makes for a better, more interesting story than having yet another shounen protagonist.

 I will support the case that, like the Drakengard games before it, Nier Gestalt was difficult to get into. The gameplay is jank.  Easy is too easy.  Normal doesn’t drop enough stuff to warrant playing on the mode. Hard can be a little hard but eventually it evens out. I generally used spears for the charge portion of the combo but in the end it doesn’t necessarily matter what weapon type you use. It doesn’t even matter if you use magic or not unless the game prompts you to do so. It’s either broken or not and the game doesn’t have a set balance for anything. Combos are boring and you’re essentially mashing a button. Even playing through the Nightmare DLC for extra drops, it continues being like this. I was used to playing shmups so it wasn’t necessarily revolutionary that AoE attacks looked as though they were spat out from a shmup either.

 I wasn’t quite understanding why game started acquiring a cult following, because what I’d played of it was pretty boring and standard. “It’s just a regular ARPG starring an older character versus a young protagonist,” I said to myself. I guess that was the reason.  I didn’t quite understand why, even past acquiring Kaine, because I guess I accepted that there weren’t a lot of NPCs and certain towns were the way they were due to, what I surmised were, RPG conventions. It wasn’t until I finished the questline for the brothers, where their mother tried to run away with a man and abandon her children, that I finally started to understand.

 Within every substory, there was something that resonated with someone.  I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to abandon their responsibilities, and at the same time I understood. Sometimes you just want to take care of yourself. With the way the older brother sort of understood why even through his anger and disappointment, it resonated with me. I finally ‘got’ the story, so I wanted to play more. This became one of those rare games where I played only for the story and lore and abandoned any hopes of the gameplay getting better.  I fished, I upgraded weapons, I did enough sidequests for the trophies. I almost platinumed this game, but since the drop rates are so terrible for this game, I didn’t.

 I started enjoying the game for what it was. It was genuinely a fun romp where it feels like everyone taking part in the game’s design contributed something unique and something they were fond of.  If you read any interview from Emi Evans from this time period, you’d realise language is something she’s particularly fond of, so much of the composition and lyrical content of every song was a phoneme from any language that would make it sound like an evolved or a sort of Esperanto version of a current language. This came into play with the game’s lore, and many of the interviews were interesting to read from back then.

 Many of the game’s stages borrowed from different genres of video games. There were the obvious shmup references, the rail shooter reference, the visual novel reference, the Resident Evil/fixed angle horror game reference, the Shadow of the Colossus references, the 2D platformer references, the Zelda references, the top-down puzzle game references, etc. For what the game lacked with respect to its combat, the game excelled at reliving genres and putting maps together in such a way that it felt like an ode to other games and genres that inspired it. The City of Façade’s language being a loose phoneme reconstruction of Japanese felt right at home with the dungeon’s Zelda references complete with Zelda fanfare for me. The Forest of Myth being one long visual novel was so hilarious and unique at the same time.  

 Playing more of the game and opening up the lore with every playthrough was neat. I don’t particularly like when games waste my time, but Nier made each new playthrough worth it. Killing bosses quickly for a trophy, redoing dungeons to see the enemies’ perspectives, and unlocking more of the story and learning more about the world that came from a Drakengard ending felt satisfying. As someone who was studying linguistics at the time, constructing nonsense words from drops out of different morphemes to act as accessories or armour was really amazing for me.

 Much of Nier felt organically put together, from characters’ writing and what they wanted from each other, to the dungeon design, to maybe even the combat design… it felt like a truly special game made from the heart with as much lore as it could possibly include. I had purchased the Nightmare DLC primarily to get weapon drops and while it isn’t nearly as interesting as the rest of the game, it has some implications for the lore. The music and resulting soundscape lends so much to the worldbuilding and includes many peoples’ languages from the area with French, Japanese, English, German, etc phonemes thrown around to sound utterly organic and special.

 At the end of this, I have come to realise that despite saying to myself that I never played this game for the game… I’ve been lying to myself this entire time. I actually did play the game for its game parts. Those are the bits I remember the most about it, and they’re the reasons why I genuinely loved the game. It’s unforgettable for me and it’s why it’s one of my favourites in general.

  Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

I did not care about MMOs in my late 20s because I was far more focused on finishing school and actually working hard in my field. I think by the end of university, I barely played games because I literally didn’t have time for them. I probably stressed myself out a lot. I threw myself into a semester where I had what felt like 500 evaluations, had to study a lot, had to write papers, and I ended up breaking up with my ex-boyfriend amicably. I was on my own a lot and to be honest, I think I felt okay that way. I think maybe others thought I was unapproachable.

 My best friend now turned fiancé had been begging me to start playing Final Fantasy XIV for a really long time, since he was in the beta prior to its 2.0 release. I made excuses and said I won’t play until a speedster class was implemented since nothing really stuck out at me. In reality, I was mostly busy. Well, Ninja got implemented late 2014, so I ran out of excuses. I got a copy of ARR but to be honest, I didn’t have time for it and I didn’t play it much so I didn’t bother to try harder since my focus was elsewhere.

 Luckily, I got into a semester where I didn’t have that much coursework to think about so I ended up playing XIV more. I caught up during ARR and really my intention was to only play through ARR and finish the story and quit. But my fiancé’s friends were so nice and welcoming to me. When the servers shut down for Heavensward maintainance and I’d finished the ARR storyline literally that night, I made the conscious decision to buy Heavensward. By that time, I was falling a little too hard for my best friend and I really liked my newfound friends. I wasn’t ready to leave Eorzea yet.

 Of course, I had some quests to finish up during Early Access so I didn’t get the opportunity to play with anyone I knew during the main storyline for Heavensward. Heavensward was leaps and bounds above anything I experienced in ARR. The story was well-written, the English voices were recast and given better direction, character deaths were meaningful, a smaller cast made for good character building, the environments were large and you could only assume things happened in each area eventually (they didn’t in the long run), each area was different, it reminded me of Canada… Heavensward made me feel at home.

 Almost every job felt built on, since nothing was really truly culled. A lot of what you got felt like an extension of what you already did. The three new jobs didn’t start out too well or too balanced. Machinist was a mess. Astrologian felt weird. Dark Knight had some growing pains but probably performed the best out of the three once the Alexander raid was implemented given that its specialty at the time centered on magic defense. I was one of the five people who really liked bowmage since it required you to think before you cast but you still did a lot of damage if you thought before firing. I swapped to an omnihealer main officially halfway through the patches because my fiancé requested it.

 Heavensward had a lot of growing pains. For all the team did for the base game, they took a six-month vacation to recharge. 3.1 wasn’t really worth the wait and a lot of people quit the game or stopped playing because nothing really meaningful was added to the game other than a faceroll raid, poorly-tuned exploration missions, and two dungeons. Gordias earlier in the expansion nearly killed the raiding community as a whole.  3.2 didn’t fare too much better, though it did add the best raid tier that has yet to be topped. 3.3 was when FFXIV solidified itself as an MMO with a grand story to tell, with one of the best conclusions a Final Fantasy game had seen in almost a decade. The sound design was near-perfect for this patch, and it was when a lot of us genuinely felt comfortable with the game and its future. Heavensward wasn’t perfect; it still had its missteps and balancing issues, but it was the most comfortable and profoundly skilled I’d ever felt with the game.

 Final Fantasy XIV may not be what it used to be.  I feel old and I feel like I’ve played the game for a really long time.  Now while it’s riding the wave of success, currently having the best story Final Fantasy has seen in a very long time, I can’t help but to remember Heavensward when we finally felt assured about the game and it felt like a cohesive gift to players who were active at that time.  I got to know so many people during Heavensward, and now I’m engaged to my best friend partially due to our experiences together playing at that time.

  Undertale

The late half of 2015 was a really bad year for me. The first half was really great. I started playing FFXIV often, I finished the hardest year I’ve ever had of my 9 years of university so far with high grades and was going full-on hard into my residency year, I fell in love with my best friend.  I was pretty happy since I finally felt very successful.

 If anyone can recall (or this may be new to the person who is reading this), towards the end of 2015 my dad was falsely accused by our neighbour of possession of a weapon (it was a gardening tool), and he had a restraining order put against him so he couldn’t live with us anymore.  My little brother is severely disabled so that’s why I still lived at home so I could help out.  Without my dad around, it was so much harder.  I came home from my days at the hospital every day after a 12-hour day, had to babysit my brother since my mom still cooked food to carry for my dad who had to live at my aunt’s, somehow had to find time to study for my licensing exam and do some work for school and my thesis, had to find time to socialise a tiny bit otherwise I’d go crazy, maybe had to take my brother to his appointments by coming home a little early, and then had to find whatever time I had left to sleep.  I stopped posting on message boards because I literally had no time to do so and I wouldn’t have anything of value to contribute to discussions either.  

 I detached myself from a lot of people. It was actually kind of lonely. It was really hard. I lashed out at people when I shouldn’t have. I don’t look back on those days other than the bright spots with fondness at all.

 Before that, everyone was telling me to play Undertale but I sort of didn’t want to? I felt like the fanbase was sort of making the game unapproachable around the time it came out. By the end of the year, I was so out of the loop about games that I didn’t give a hoot.  A friend of mine, Shadow Hog, bought the game for me on Steam. I still have the e-mail message for it.

 My now-fiancé got his own copy so we could play it together because at that point I didn’t want to do much of anything alone. I was actually sinking deeper into depression and verging on a mental breakdown. I was not mentally sound and every single week it felt like someone had to save me from doing something stupid.

 I started Undertale and I didn’t really think much of it at the start.  I can’t remember when it started clicking with me but maybe it was around the time I got into a battle with Tsunderplane and Vulkin and got to Hotland that I gave up and started having fun with it because it was just… silly. It was time to let down your hair and have some fun for once and not feel completely guilty about it.

 The idea of having to win and achieving a certain ending by sparing your enemy isn’t necessarily new – SMT’s demon negotiation, Silent Hill 2’s morality system, and MGS3’s fight with the Sorrow have some sort of sparing mechanic. The hybrid of a turn-based battle system with enemy negotiation, as well as dodge system inspired by a shmup makes every encounter both strategic (ie: having to avoid bullets while also sparing enemies in a set order per battle) and consistently active.  Unless you are going for a certain other ending, you cannot just sit there and hold down the attack button and expect to win.  That said, this makes a lot of encounters a little longer than a standard RPG battle, but the flavour text for each uniquely-designed enemy makes many of the battle worth it. Undertale isn’t a hard game unless you’re playing on a certain route. But I don’t necessarily think the gameplay part of Undertale speaks properly for it. The dungeon maps are relatively simple. They all have their little gimmicks. The battle system is relatively easy to understand.

 The reason why Undertale has such a prolific fanbase is primarily because of its character writing and ability to make and use memes properly enough that they catch on. Many of the characters are easily encountered early, are easy to draw (propels a lot of fanart), and understand due to the character writing. What also helps is that the game is 4-6 hours long, and it came out at the right time with the right kind of word of mouth.  Undertale could have easily fallen into the sea like so many other RPGs before it but it didn’t.  My fiancé and I were shopping for work clothes one day at a store that sells business clothing, construction clothing, and scrubs. He was wearing a shirt with the Delta Rune on it since he loves game shirts that are relatively subtle. Even then, one of the sales clerks pointed it out and was pretty excited to see it.  It was pretty crazy to both of us how popular Undertale had gotten.  I don’t think the popularity was unwarranted. I think it’s a fantastic game, helped by a considerably lengthy varied and catchy soundtrack. Granted, I was not as exposed to how explosive its popularity was when it came out. But I understood why so many people liked it. It wasn’t for its gameplay.

 As I progressed through Undertale, instead of thinking of the lore (which was well-written), I was thinking of how the monsters treated your character with respect and love because you treated them that way.  They didn’t go out of their way to fear you, and welcomed you as one of their own.  In the end, they were hesitant to even kill you, and you were hesitant to kill them.  Even then you still had the spare/save commands.

 At the very end, you only had the Save command.

 And that’s how I felt. When Hopes and Dreams started playing, I couldn’t help but to cry. When I was repeatedly nudged to press the Save command, I didn’t actually feel like the game nudged me to do so. That was something I wanted to do. Just remembering how depressed I was when I started playing this game and then progressing to its true end with Hopes and Dreams and SAVE the World playing, I couldn’t help but to feel like my hopes and dreams were still alive.

 Even if I was going through a really hard time in my life, hope was still there as long as I had people around me that supported me all the way through. That was the time in my life that I realised who my real friends were. And in the end, I felt like Undertale told me my friends saved me and that my dreams weren’t crushed, now matter what threw at me.

 And that’s why it’s my game of the decade. It may not be the most perfect game that came out this decade or the objectively best-crafted, but it did so much for me. When I was prompted for my game of the decade, Undertale was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t question it. I just knew. I don’t think we’ll get another Undertale again in my lifetime, but I’m glad to say that I gave it a shot and I love it for what it is.

[bobbystompy]

68 Quotes I Enjoyed From 2019

Below are my favorite quotes from 2019. Though most occurred throughout the year, some took place before but were encountered during.

1) “I don’t bitch about Millenials.

John Entwistle once complained that he didn’t understand rap. Pete Townsend said, ‘It’s not our job to understand it. It’s our job to get the fuck out of the way.’

New generations come of age. The older generation’s job is to shut up and adapt.” - @danagould

2) “I can’t do drugs with you until we kiss.”

3) “If you pay me $50 I'll show up to your funeral but stand really far away, holding a black umbrella regardless of the weather, so that people think you died with a dark and interesting secret.” - @DanaSchwartzzz

4) “A human being is a dangerous thing to let loose in a room with itself, when it cannot think.” - Roger Ebert

5) “There are no bad bourbons, only better bourbons.” - Dave Hernandez

6) “You can’t put a dollar in a kimono.”

7) “This is how it was.” - rampant takeaway from watching ‘Superbad’ several years after its release

8) “What if I had been born fifty years before you in a house on the street where you lived / Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike / Would I know? / And in a wide sea of eyes, I see one pair that I recognize” - Ben Folds, ‘The Luckiest’

9) “Learn the rules so you can break them.”

10) “Nobody makes chili for two.” - Stacy Massey

11) “‘Best city in the world,’ I mutter to myself, as i adjust my ‘driving blanket’.” - Chicago resident Deanna Belos, during the 2019 Polar Vortex

12) “Dude, no one’s ever got arrested for listening to Counting Crows.” - Ricky O’Donnell, justifying late night music volume at his party

13) Bill Belichick: We’re going to have fun tonight. Rob Gronkowski: Yes we are. We deserve it. Belichick: You’re damn right. Gronk: I haven’t stepped out in like eight months. I gotta step out tonight. Belichick: I’m with you, man. I’m even going to step out. Gronk: Oh, I like it!

A Super Bowl winning exchange.

14) Center David Andrews thanked Bill Belichick for giving him "a shot".

Belichick disagreed with it.

Andrews: Thank you for giving me a shot. Belichick: A shot? I didn't give you shit. You earned it! I don't give anything.

Another Super Bowl winning exchange.

15) “We elected one of the very worst living human beings to be President, and it's exhausting. Each and every day, it's an exhausting slog, just to exist in a world where that's true.” - Michael Schur

16) “Some of y’all always picked Odd Job when you played Goldeneye and it shows” - @thedad

17) “Any app is a dating app if you try hard enough.” - Z.W. Martin (though he says it’s lifted)

18) "Once you're as woke as I am, you learn to feel bad all the time.”

19) “Everything’s a balance beam when you’re 90.” - John Dingell

20) [I wake up in a world where The Beatles never existed]

Me: Check out this song I just wrote

[I begin playing “Ob La Di Ob La Da” without having first built up years of goodwill]

Crowd of people: Wow, this sucks ass

-- @seanoneal

21) “People change people.” - Corey Matthews, Girl Meets World

22) “The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.” - William Goldman

23) “Dan could be like a difficult uncle. I didn’t love his fire-breathing conservative politics. I didn’t love the transformation that came over his novels. In Semi-Tough, he created two benighted Texas jocks and laid their prejudices bare. He was declaring himself a member of the Mark Twain coaching tree. In later books, Dan seemed to be trying to prove he could still tell a racist joke. He insisted that his memoir—the last truly immaculate piece of writing he delivered—include a tirade against political correctness. When his editor said people might be offended, Dan said, ‘Fuck people.’

There are certain writers whose style you pilfer. Certain writers whose moral fiber you try to inherit. For me, Dan represented a third category: a writer whose aura you replicate—or, failing that, try to stand in for a while.” - Bryan Curtis, on Dan Jenkins

24) “Never marry anything. Never choose. Even in love, it's better to be chosen.” - La Dolce Vita

25) “An uncluttered, uncomplicated happy ending might sound wonderful, but it’s hardly ever satisfying. Because the value of great stories lies in the tension between desire and need, between the yearning for the ideal, and the unshakable conviction that ideals don’t really exist, at least not the way we want them to. A great story should hurt a little when it leaves us. There should be some hope, but that hope should remain somewhere just an inch beyond our fingers, because that’s the truth. Even if you had all the perfect moments in the world, you’d still be reaching.” - Zach Handlen, on the Futurama series finale

26) “You can’t see him because he has sunglasses on.” - Alissa Levy

27) “The cinema is the greatest art form ever conceived for generating emotions in its audience. That's what it does best. (If you argue instead for dance or music, drama or painting, I will reply that the cinema incorporates all of these arts).” - Roger Ebert

28) “‘Are you gonna let politics ruin a friendship?’ 

Yes tf I am

People talk about politics as if it’s this isolated, abstract concept that only matters at election time. Somebody’s politics is their world view. It’s whether they think certain human beings deserve rights. It’s how they think the world should be. And if somebody thinks that the world should be colder, meaner, less accepting and downright hostile to people that are different to them, then sure as fuck is the friendship over.”

29) “Can the Supreme Court get me mushrooms?” - J-Papp

30) “Any song under two minutes already has a head start on its way into my heart. Just scream at me and then leave me.” - Drew Magary

31) “Long neck cold beers never broke my heart.” - Clemson Tom

32) “I’d just like to point out that the last spoken words of Game of Thrones were: 

‘I once brought a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel.’”

- @Authoroux

33) “Just once before I die, I want to toss my keys to someone and tell them ‘Bring the car around’.” - Mike Skully

34) “For all the weight they're given, last words are usually as significant as first words.” - Grand Maester Pycelle, Game of Thrones

35) “The best remedy for unrequited love is a trip around the world.” - Cheers

36) [on switching from a hotel to a motel]

Manny: I don't like the sound of that. A lot of amenities disappear when an H turns into an M. Jay: Hey when I met you, you were eating cereal out of a bucket.

-- Modern Family

37) “You and Lindsey don’t want to be ‘estranged’. Estranged is the relationship we want to have with our mothers.” - MegFil

38) “Cigarettes are undefeated.”

39) “My toes are like my fingers on my feet. I can pick stuff up with them.” - Tracy Cunningham

40) “Republicans govern without shame, Democrats shame without governing.” - Bill Maher

41) Sam: I don’t understand the vagaries of the Internet Josiah: Post often, without thought, and you’ll either get cancelled or cancel someone else.

-- Blink-155

42) “Hang a lantern on your problems.”

43) “What a weird web we weave.” - The Situation, The Jersey Shore: Family Vacation

44) “Let the ocean worry about being blue.” - Alabama Shakes, ‘Hang Loose’

45) “Honesty without tact is cruelty.” - Shelley Rokos

46) “My whole life is the wrong porn link.”

47) “One parent can take care of 10 kids, but 10 kids cannot take care of one parent.” - Joe Gestetner, via “an old Yiddish saying”

48) “There are no heroes in the room.” - Classics of Love, ‘Gun Show’

49) “If I am a little dismissive, it's only because of my harrowing backstory.” - Mitchell, Modern Family (on why he doesn't like sports)

50) “Every time I’m wearing black, I meet a dog.” - Tracy Cunningham

51) “Shower sex? Why would I fuck in my crying chamber” - @chridollarsign

52) “My theory about quarterbacks, having written about some of them, is you either have to believe in god or think you are a god.” - Mina Kimes

53) “The contradictions of capitalism always manifest in our lyrics if you look deeply.” - Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker, Riot Fest 2019

54) “Got a ‘hang loose’ from the weakside bartender.”

55) “It’s Jennifer’s birthday always.” - Eric Hutchinson 

56) “I can’t think of a less relevant artist in 2019 than Kanye West. A Jesus freak in a MAGA hat. Yeah, congrats dude -- you’re every grandma who watches ‘Young Sheldon’ and mails checks to Joel Osteen now.” - Dan Ozzi

57) “The past and future are in the mind. I’m in the now.” - Tom Brady, via someone else

58) “Sometimes you walk around boring places and you feel like the most exciting thing in it.” - Drew Magary

59) “Sitting is the new smoking.” - Modern Family

60) “I'll straight up fight folks at a book club and discuss books at a fight club I really don't give a shit anymore.” - George Wallace

61) “Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.” - Rose Garvey via wine country

62) “It��s all ‘ok boomer’ until you need someone who can drive stick shift.” - @OrdinaryAlso

63) “He likes the result of the math.” - Dad, talking about my worst subject frustrating during the process but satisfying in the end

64) Stepmom: Do you want a Bears urn or Alabama urn? Dad: Ask me after they play Auburn.

65) “A cold body carries a warm heart.” - Stefanos Tsitsipas’ Instagram, after his Iceland sabbatical

66) [preparing a dish called the Sandwich of Justice with his friend’s recipe]

"The fun thing about it is when you give it to someone, you can say 'Justice is served.’ That's, uh, Ryan's line. I built my whole life on the backs of my friends." - You Suck At Cooking

67) “Usually three people can keep a secret only when two of them are dead.” - The Irishman

68) “An artist can't control who consumes their content any more than a chemist can control how their chemicals are used once they're created.” - Brian Crooks

[theparaminds]

The musical puzzle that lays in front of artists is both sprawling and overwhelming. To make sense of the swirling emotions within humanity and form sonics that mirror them monumental. But in walks Umru. Just as the puzzle seems almost impossible, he reminds of the missing piece that had fallen on the floor. Like a breath of fresh air within pop production, Umru is solving different artist’s puzzles while also looking to finish his own. 

Based in New York, Umru is seeing production for more than its surface later ability. More so than just a collaboration tool, it is. in his hands, being transformed into a means of shared expression in a time of distance. In strengthening the vision of others, Umru finds a voice his own which carries through each of his works. This voice, ultimately, is telling a story self-discovery and freedom, stitching itself into endless far-reaching stories.

And so the puzzle sits on the table still with pieces missing, with a slew of holes and complexities. All of our puzzles do. All of our personal stories are united in the full photo being incomplete. But without individuals such as Umru, the pieces would be missing a lifetime. With every song he creates, one which touches another’s heart, a piece of their puzzle is found. The resulting image is slightly more clear and ever more beautiful. 

                                                         -

Our first question as always, how’s your day going and how have you been?

Good! I’m alright, I've felt really busy, yet unproductive recently though.

In your eyes, what defining features in your upbringing brought you into the path you’re on now and what was their significance to you as an individual?

I’ve got two very creative-minded parents and was lucky to be in an environment with few obstacles in getting to do the things I wanted creatively. I was able to use my dad’s old laptop with Ableton Live installed for example. I think access to the internet was also a defining feature, moving through online communities from Minecraft servers to Tumblr and Youtube fandoms to Soundcloud and Soundcloud producer group chats on Skype and Twitter. I was in a very small town and definitely relied on these communities just as much if not more than “real life” relationships to develop as an individual.

What were the core visions you went into music with at the beginning and how do you reflect on those original mindsets and values?

I don’t have this stuff all figured out honestly. I didn’t start making music with an end goal in mind. I started working on music early on enough that I wasn’t thinking about these things, I was just finding sounds and directions I liked on the internet and wanted to start replicating them. Since then I feel like I’ve been able to carve out and develop a sound world that’s uniquely mine even if my influences are pretty clear, but I’m still an immature artist with a lot to figure out in terms of vision.

Do you feel there was ever a shifting or eye-opening moment within your career that made you realize what it is you truly wanted to create?

The closest thing I can think of is A. G. Cook emailing me and expressing his interest in the parallels between our work. This was in 2016 or 2017, I was a high schooler and “Soundcloud trap” producer. I was a fan of PC Music but never imagined my music in a Pop context. Not too long after, A. G. had me working with him on tracks for Tommy Cash and then suddenly Charli XCX. “I Got It” came out on Charli’s mixtape, Pop 2, not much longer. Then a month after I worked on it, all of a sudden, I had all this new attention as a forward-thinking pop producer. It definitely helped me understand that the lines between these worlds were more blurred than ever, and my direction has definitely shifted since then—as much as I still end up focusing on sound design and convoluted production techniques, I want to make pop music, and stretch what that can mean as much as possible.  

Now, how do you ensure that as an artist who collaborates heavily with others you don’t diminish or lose your own personal spark and vision? How do you approach creation with others to be able to allow yourself to be heard and not simply listened to?

I used to be very protective of my work and “sound” and found it hard to collaborate a lot of the time. But I’ve learned to step back a bit and trust everyone else a bit more and the result has been better music. Especially in the pop world it’s impossible to get too attached to your work because there’s just endless music that will never hear the light of day and I have to be okay with that. And the work that does get heard may go through many changes by others after I work on it, I’ve had to learn to get less bothered by that inevitable process.

Which artists in history do you feel you could work well and create great art with, even though to many it would seem like an impossible or confusing combination?

I’m honestly a lot more interested in working with people who are making the current musical moment interesting. There’s plenty of good music throughout history but it’s exhausting to think of everything in the context of the past. I go to music school and everything is constantly about emulating the legendary studios and gear of the golden era of recording which never feels that relevant to me. That being said, I would love to work on a track with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, J Dilla, Sylvia Striplin, Wendy Carlos, or John Tavener.

What improvements and developments do you hope to see within your sound and artistry going forth and do you feel you’re near a point of satisfaction with those elements?

I’m never near a point of satisfaction, I’ve spent a long time trying to perfect a complex, detailed, sound design-based approach and I’ve still not made it far enough in that direction.  Now, I’m feeling like a more immediate, stripped down, and more fun style that’s less concerned with the perfect details is becoming my new goal. This is after hearing projects like 1000 gecs and waterboy by William Crooks that are in this vein. What I need to improve most on is songwriting and the simplicity and catchiness of pop music that I’ve relied a bit too much on collaborators for in the past.

What do you feel is your largest goal with creation and with your efforts as an artist? Do you feel it important to speak to others or is there personal learning that you’re drawn to?

I’ve never been good at speaking to others in any other way, so music is definitely the way I do it. I guess the largest goal is simply to create or help others to create music that positively impacts as many people as possible. Production ends up being a very supportive role if you’re the kind that works with recording artists, and that’s definitely a role I’m still learning to fill. If I can get super-rich and famous that would be sick too.

Looking forward, what has you most excited for the future and what moments are you ready to experience?

Music! There’s a lot of really important work happening right now and It’s gonna sound really good in the future.

Do you have anyone to say thank you to or anything you’d like to say into existence? The floor is yours.

Thank you Rylee. Thank you A. G. Thank you Tiam and thank you Paramind for having me speak.

                                                           -

Listen on Spotify and Apple Music

Follow on Instagram and Twitter

                                                          -

Cover Photo by Max Schramp

                                                          -

Words and Interview by Guy Mizrahi

[obtusemedia]

The best songs of the 2010s: #100-76

Happy 2020! Now that the previous decade has finally finished, it’s time to commemorate the 2010s. The decade in which I grew from an awkward teen to an awkward adult. And a decade with a ton of great music. Let’s dive right in: these are my 100 favorite songs of the 2010s.

#100: “Monopoly” by Danny Brown (2011)

Danny Brown is so delightfully grimy. He’s like a cartoon sewer rat come to life, rapping about pills and making hilariously crude jokes. In an anti-drug PSA, he’d be the sketchy weirdo trying to get a kid hooked on bath salts or whatever. And for a quick shot of his non-replicable style, it’s hard to do better than “Monopoly.”

Rapping over a glitchy, menacing beat with his trademark squawk, Brown lands oddball punchline after oddball punchline. In a span of less than 3 minutes, he threatens to defecate on your tape (and he has to clarify that too — “No, literally, shit all on your mixtape”), compares himself to Ferris Bueller sipping wine coolers and then closes his track by describing a woman’s vagina as “smellin’ like cool ranch Doritos.” And that last insult is the perfect distillation of Brown: the Adult Swim of rap. But much smarter than that would imply.

#99: “Shutdown” by Skepta (2015)

At the 2015 BRIT Awards, Kanye West performed “All Day” with a massive crowd of grime artists on stage, all in black, with flamethrowers shooting fire into the sky. 

Four days after the performance, Skepta — one of the artists on stage with Kanye — released “Shutdown.” It’s a much more fitting song for the intimidating, energized and proudly British crowd of MCs than a middling Kanye non-album cut.

“Shutdown” is the kind of song a rapper releases when they’re at the peak of their powers. Skepta was absolutely at that point in 2015, and so his finest single sounds like a coronation. His gruff delivery isn’t too loud, but it’s firm and confident. He knew he was the best MC in Britain, and “Shutdown” cemented that status.

#98: “Amor Fati” by Washed Out (2011)

Washed Out was one of the brightest voices in the turn-of-the-decade chillwave movement, and with cuts like “Amor Fati,” it’s not hard to see why. 

The big single off his debut, “Amor Fati” gives you a similar sensation as taking a shower: Pure bliss and warmth cascade around you. It’s a bit repetitive, but the song is clearly meant to set a mood more than anything else, so that’s excusable. If you need an entry point into chillwave, you can’t do much better than this.

#97: “Los Ageless” by St. Vincent (2017)

St. Vincent’s trajectory this decade took her from an art-pop weirdo who collaborates with David Byrne to a more mainstream art-pop weirdo who collaborates with Taylor Swift. But in that process, Annie Clark was able to pull her sharpest hooks out and put them in use in deceptively dark songs like “Los Ageless.”

With its sleek new wave production from Jack Antonoff, “Los Ageless” could’ve easily fit on most pop records. But Clark’s atonal, shrill guitar bursts and increasingly disturbing lyrics differentiate it. The song’s themes gradually shift from “lol Los Angeles is fake and plastic” to something more tragic. The desperate (in a good way) chorus says it all: “How could anybody have you and lose you/And not lose their minds too?”

#96: “I Like It” by Enrique Iglesias feat. Pitbull (2010)

I’m aware how ridiculous putting “I Like It” — a disposable, trashy club pop hit most people might not remember — on this list. Admitting I that I love this song probably guarantees that I’ll never get a job at Pitchfork.

But then those fuzzy, cheap synths come crashing in. And Enrique Iglesias sings his sleazy come-ons in an auto-tune slurry. And Pitbull delivers a gloriously ridiculous, very-2010 verse that references both the Tiger Woods cheating scandal AND the Obamas (along with gratuitous Spanish and a Miami shoutout). And then there’s the final touch: a prominent sample of Lionel Richie’s cheeseball classic “All Night Long.” It’s too much to resist.

What can I say? “I Like It” hits all the pleasure centers (including nostalgia, seeing as it came out in the middle of my high school tenure) in my brain. It’s a beautifully stupid, hedonistic highlight of the 2009-12 pop golden age.

#95: “The Wire” by HAIM (2013)

Retro-pop standard bearers HAIM had plenty of great singles this decade. But one of their first, the groovy breakup anthem “The Wire,” is still their best.

Unlike many most breakup anthems, which tend to be wildly emotional, “The Wire” is matter-of-fact. The relationship simply isn’t working, and it’s time to end it. That’s that. You’re going to be okay.

The verging-on-curt lyrics mixed with the Haim sisters’ groovy early ‘80s rhythm makes for a pop jam that’s perfect for any “It’s not you, it’s me” moment in your life.

#94: “Helena Beat” by Foster The People (2011)

I know they represent the mainstream selling-out moment of the magical late-’00s MGMT/Passion Pit/Phoenix moment, but I have a soft spot for Foster The People. Their debut album, Torches, might not have much indie cred, but it’s all-killer-no-filler and stuffed with monster hooks. And despite “Pumped Up Kicks” being the big hit, I’ve always preferred the album’s opening track, “Helena Beat.”

With its shuffling disco beat and Mark Foster’s piercing falsetto, “Helena Beat” is likely about as close as alt-rock ever got to the Bee Gees. The lyrics, which tackle addiction, are much darker than “Staying Alive,” but it’s got a similar sense of propulsion.

And let’s not forget — Foster wrote jingles before starting a band, so he can get melodies stuck in your head. And once you’ve heard “Helena Beat,” good luck getting it unstuck.

#93: “Redbone” by Childish Gambino (2016)

“Redbone” might be the smoothest R&B cut on this list. Which is why the song’s sense of dread and paranoia makes it stand out. 

Donald Glover’s scratchy, passionate falsetto isn’t conventionally pretty, but it works well while singing about some unknown boogieman who’s “creeping.” That’s why “Redbone” was a perfect fit for Get Out, because of its lurking dread underneath the comfortable exterior. This is the song that cemented Glover as being a true renaissance man, rather than an actor with a weird musical side project.

(of course, this still isn’t Glover’s greatest musical contribution — that would be the iconic “Troy and Abed in the Morning” jingle. Especially the night variant.)

#92: “Do You” by Spoon (2014)

Spoon has been America’s most consistently great rock band for the past two decade now. Even calling them “consistent” is practically a cliché.

So all you need to know about “Do You” is that it’s another solid Spoon song in a vast catalog of Spoon songs. Lead singer Britt Daniel is still effortlessly cool, the guitar-driven groove is simple and it all goes down easy. By 2014, Spoon had nothing left to prove, except how long they could keep up their streak.

#91: “I’m Not Part of Me” by Cloud Nothings (2014)

Cloud Nothings’ finest moment is four and a half minutes of pure angst and crunchy guitars. Squint hard enough, and “I’m Not Part of Me” is one of the closest approximations to ‘90s alt-rock. And while the Ohio band isn’t necessarily reinventing the wheel here, refining what made past music so great can be just as effective.

#90: “Hello” by Adele (2015)

Despite only releasing two albums this decade, Adele casts a major shadow over the 2010s. Although I find both those records to be a little on the bland side, there’s a reason she was/is a juggernaut. And the example of her prowess is “Hello.”

“Hello” has everything you’d want in an Adele song: It’s about not getting over a breakup, a very relatable topic, and Adele gets to show off her cannon of a voice. But it also has a secret weapon compared to other Adele ballads: ‘80s power-ballad production! The bombastic chorus has more in common with Heart’s “Alone” than any of Adele’s previous hits, and it’s a perfect accompaniment to one of the decade’s most melodramatic singles.

#89: “Slumlord” by Neon Indian (2015)

Despite putting out two essentially perfect albums this decade, Neon Indian’s mastermind, Alan Palomo, doesn’t really have that one mind-melting single. Yes, “Polish Girl” was a decent-sized indie hit, but it’s nowhere near his best.

But “Slumlord” comes damn close to perfection. It’s not quite as heavy on the melted-VCR aesthetic of other songs on Palomo’s best album, Vega INTL. Night School, but it makes up for that with an irrepressible ‘80s techno groove. “Slumlord” is one of those songs that could ride its beat forever — and it kind of does, with the “Slumlord’s Re-lease” coda following it on the album. It’s a nocturnal synthpop jam that even those allergic to keyboards couldn’t resist.

#88: “The Bay” by Metronomy (2011)

While most synth-weilding indie acts were trying to ape MGMT’s high-pitched fever dreams in the early ‘10s, Metronomy decided on a different, sleeker path with their 2011 album The English Riviera. That album’s best single, “The Bay,” is an immaculate blend of silky smooth yacht rock and nervy, tense new wave. Those two opposite styles shouldn’t work together, but Metronomy managed to pull it off regardless, creating the perfect beach anthem for awkward hipster Brits.

#87: “bad guy” by Billie Eilish (2019)

I expect the 17-year-old Eilish will likely be remembered more as an icon of the 2020s than the 2010s, as she has a long and promising career ahead of her. It’s like how Lady Gaga is much more of a figure of this decade, despite her earliest hits arriving in 2009. But “bad guy” — the kind of left-field, innovative pop single that signals a new era — came out in 2019. And it’s too damn weird, catchy and just plain fun to leave off this list.

#86: “Latch” by Disclosure feat. Sam Smith (2012)

It’s a bummer that Sam Smith turned out to be such a bore, because “Latch” — his introduction to the world — is pure electricity. 

Smith and fellow Brits Disclosure, who provide the pulsating, sensual production, were a dream team on “Latch.” All Disclosure needed to do was give Smith plenty of room to unleash his golden pipes, complete with a few futuristic touches. Smith delivered on his end, proving his worth as one of the best vocalists for conveying drama on the dancefloor.

#85: “Need You Now” by Cut Copy (2011)

No, it’s not a cover of the Lady Antebellum hit of the same name. 

There were plenty of ‘80s-inspired epic synthpop bangers this decade; some groups made their entire careers off of them. But what sets Cut Copy’s “Need You Now” above the rest is its sense of patience. It’s an incredibly slow burner, building the tension with a thumping beat and calm vocals until it all explodes with a dazzling climax nearly 5 minutes in. Af that moment, the Aussies fulfill their promise with a euphoric release of synths and thundering drums. 

It’s not a complicated concept for a song, but Cut Copy executed it perfectly.

#84: “The Mother We Share” by CHVRCHES (2013)

Glasgow new wave trio CHVRCHES never really lived up to their promising 2013 debut album, which opened with the anthemic “The Mother We Share.” But man, what a way to start a career.

"The Mother We Share” is all icy synths and furious drum machines, the sounds bouncing off each other like a hall of mirrors. And lead singer Lauren Mayberry’s quiet but confident vocals add the necessary human touch, conveying a tragic feel to the song’s triumphant chorus.

#83: “Night Shift” by Lucy Dacus (2018)

One of the most ferocious, biting breakup songs of the decade, “Night Shift” is a showcase for Lucy Dacus’ vivid storytelling. The Virginia singer-songwriter spends the first half the song setting the scene of a crappy ex trying to halfway make amends, while Dacus’ character holds herself back from lashing out. She saves the visceral emotion for the second half, when the grungy guitars kick in and Dacus lets out a wounded howl, proudly stating that “I’ll never see you again/If I can help it.” “Night Shift” is a tour de force of indie rock songwriting that rewards patience.

#82: “Round and Round” by Ariel Pink (2010)

Much of indie-rock trickster Ariel Pink is a little too jokey and off-putting for my taste. But on his defining single “Round and Round,” he sprinkled in just the right touch of weirdness into a song that otherwise could’ve been a massive easy-listening hit in 1980.

The quirks throughout “Round and Round” — the woozy, off-kilter production, the lyrics that seemingly make no sense, Pink answering his phone in the middle of the song — are enjoyable. But the song’s true strength is in its chorus: a sudden punch of roller-disco AM-lite harmonies that cut through all the song’s oddities. It’s a double-shot of warmth and nostalgic beauty that feels comfortingly familiar, yet still thrilling.

Pink seemed to know the chorus was the key to “Round and Round,” as he makes the listener wait nearly two minutes for it. But its inevitable release is a truly magical moment.

#81: “4th of July, Philadelphia (SANDY)” by Cymbals Eat Guitars (2016)

Heavily referencing an early Bruce Springsteen classic in the title of a song that sounds nothing like Springsteen is quite the flex. But New Jersey indie-rockers Cymbals Eat Guitars pulled it off regardless.

“4th of July” is a clanging, anthemic scuzz-rock track about going through an existential crisis in the middle of Independence Day. While everyone else is making plans for the holiday, lead singer and guitarist Joseph D’Agostino is howling away, “HOW MANY UNIVERSES AM I ALIVE AND DEAD IN?!?” It’s one of the hardest-rocking mental breakdowns put on record this decade.

#80: “I Like It” by Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin (2018)

Rapping over extremely-obvious samples has been a time-honored tradition in hip-hop, from the Beastie Boys trading verses over The Beatles to Puff Daddy jacking the chorus from one ‘80s hit and the beat from another in the same song.

But Cardi B, and reggaeton superstars Bad Bunny and J Balvin sampling the boogaloo classic “I Like It Like That” was an inspired choice. The trio’s verses are all delicious fun, whether they’re bragging about eating halal in a Lamborghini or referencing a classic Lady Gaga hit.

But that sample, combined with a trap beat and Cardi’s swaggering charisma powering the chorus, is what makes “I Like It” a classic.

#79: “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles (2017)

Most former boy band members aim for a grown-and-sexy pop anthem once they go solo, whether its Jordan Knight, Justin Timberlake or Zayn Malik. But the standout member of the 2010s’ standout boy band, Harry Styles, chose took a sharp left turn into melodramatic classic rock instead. And it was a brilliant decision.

"Sign of the Times” is about as close to a classic Beatles or Queen power ballad we got this decade, with its clanging Western guitars, lush strings and thundering drum fills. Styles doesn’t have Freddie Mercury’s gravity-defying vocals, but his immense charisma powers the song anyways. It’s not 100% clear what “Sign of the Times” is about, but with its cinematic scope and cryptic lyrics, it’s likely about the apocalypse. And there’s not many superior songs to cry to while the bombs fall.

#78: “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn (2010)

The ultimate crying-on-the-dancefloor anthem, “Dancing On My Own” has already become a standard.

But Swedish alt-pop icon Robyn’s combination of icy synths and heartbroken, jealous lyrics can’t be replicated. Just ask Calum Scott, who slowed down the track into mushy, piano-ballad goop. Yikes.

What makes “Dancing On My Own” brilliant is its resiliency. It’s not a mopey song — Robyn is defiantly still grooving despite her crushed feelings. It’s a siren call for all those who have been hurt and know the only proper way to work out their emotions through cathartic dancing.

#77: “Trap Queen” by Fetty Wap (2015)

“Trap Queen” is an incredibly fun hip-hop banger, but I don’t think I can extoll its virtues quite as well as Fetty Wap’s hype man at the end of the track. So I’ll let him speak:

“YOU HEAR MY BOY SOUNDIN’ LIKE A ZILLION BUCKS ON THE TRACK?! I GOT WHATEVER ON MY BOY!!”

Amen. It’s a real shame Fetty wasn’t able to keep his momentum rolling past a big 2015, but at least we’ll always have the magic dying-walrus energy of “Trap Queen.” HEY WHAT’S UP HELLOOOOO

#75: “R U Mine?” by Arctic Monkeys (2012)

"R U Mine?” offers Arctic Monkeys fans the best of both worlds. On one hand, you have their AM-era slinky swagger. But it also retains the furious rock-n-roll energy of their early days.

Alex Turner sounds like a smooth-talkin’ cowboy here, but the music is anything but smooth. It hits like a semi-truck, with a calvary-charge guitar riff and so many thunderous drum fills you’d think you were listening to the E Street Band.

[triplemains]

Pong remix

#Pong remix license

The first Pong Arcade machine was installed on a local bar, and it was so successful that Atari decided to produce and sell the game by themselves, rather then licensing it to other companies. Pong was actually a training exercise for one of Atari's employees - Allan Alcorn, once it was finished, Nolan made few adjustments in order to make the game more interesting (like changing the ball's return angle) and added simple sound effects.

#Pong remix license

Nolan Bushnell founded Atari at 1972 in order to create games and ideas and license them to other companies for mass production. Today, the Pong Game is considered to be the game which started the video games industry, as it proved that the video games market can produce significant revenues. Soon, Pong became a huge success, and became the first commercially successful game, on 1975, Atari release a home edition of Pong (the first version was played on Arcade machines) which sold 150,000 units. The game was originally developed by Allan Alcorn and released in 1972 by Atari corporations. The game can be played with two human players, or one player against a computer controlled paddle. No matter how old they get, people come back to them for the entertainment value that they provide.Pong is one of the first computer games that ever created, this simple "tennis like" game features two paddles and a ball, the goal is to defeat your opponent by being the first one to gain10 point, a player gets a point once the opponent misses a ball. After all, they are classic games for a reason. No matter what game you click here, we’re sure that you will have a great time. For some explanations and rules on these games, go to our Coolmath Games Blogs to learn more about them. All of them provide challenges but end up being tons of fun to play once you take the time to learn them. Other classic games are not so easy either, including games like Chess, Minesweeper, and Mahjong. With all of these variables going on, Retro Space Blaster provides a real challenge to the players. Players must traverse through the map while avoiding asteroids from every direction, while also having aliens and various other beings headed straight toward them. While the concept of simply blasting down asteroids to save the galaxy is simple, executing this properly is actually pretty difficult. With that being said, just because games may look simple does not mean that they are always easy. It’s a simple game that you can learn in 30 seconds, and play for hours. Sure, something like Snake may not be an awesome 3-D game with tons of different skins and effects, but it doesn’t need those. Along with this, the art style of many of these classic games is unique and cool in its own way. In a world where most games try so hard to look polished and perfect, playing a game with a simple concept that you can learn in a few minutes is such a nice switch-up. However, these games have lasted for decades for a reason – they’re just super fun to play! Classic games have a certain kind of charm about them that is hard to replicate. Some of you may be asking a very basic question – why even play these games? They don’t have great graphics and the concepts are fairly simple. Looking for a pen and paper game, a board game, or a digital arcade classic? Well, you’ve come to the right place! Whether you're in the mood for Checkers, Chess, Snake, or Asteroids, this collection of free, fun classic games will take you back to the good old days.

[kmalexander]

Why Early Cartography Doesn’t Work Well for Fantasy Maps

I got message in my inbox the other daaaaay…

“I’d love to see something from the Late Medieval or even Crusades period. Does the dearth of material from those eras prevent or make such a project more difficult? Are you simply uninterested?”

It’s a great question and one I’ve received several times in the last few years. The answer is longer and more complicated than it should be. We’re dealing with history and history is always messier than we’d like. Plus, I think it’s interesting enough that everyone will appreciate why I seem to ignore the Middle Ages’ maps in favor of later sources.

Also I blame Tolkien. (Nerd alarms sound!)

Strap in, cowpokes—I’m going history nerd on y’all.

Technology, Cartography, and Fan Expectations

We need to begin with technology. The proliferation of maps didn’t commence until after the printing press became ubiquitous. That’s why we have such an explosion of content after the 15th century. Before then, maps were all hand-made. Reproduction was difficult. You don’t find as many maps from those early eras, and often the maps you do find are reproductions done in a later style. That’s not to say they don’t exist, they’re just much different than the maps that came later, and they don’t correlate with what we think of as a map.

Then there’s the fan experience and the modern fan’s expectation. Fantasy maps serve a story, after all, and most fans want certain things from the map. Locations, distance, landforms, perhaps even enough to understand the climate. But the era of your typical fantasy novel is often set much earlier than the era of the printing press. (Yeah. Sure. It’s fantasy. And yeah, sure, you can fudge it.) But this is where it gets complicated.

In many ways, Tolkien is the one who set the expectation for fantasy fans. His famous map of Middle Earth, the one we all know and love, is more akin to cartography from the 16th, 17th, or 18th century than one from the Middle Ages. While it’s easy to point fingers, the reality is there is a good reason for his decision.

The art from the Middle Ages was weird.

Have you ever spent time looking at Western art from the Middle Ages at a museum? Notice how it’s always a little goofy? A bit off? Strange angles. Weird faces. There’s a flatness to everything. Eyes are looking in different directions. The artist had no idea what a cat looked like. The baby Jesus on Mary’s lap looks like a 34-year-old man. Camels look like horses and horses like goats. Trees are rendered oddly, and buildings are even odder. Art at this time was in its infancy and it’s like that with the cartography as well.

Let’s look at a few examples to see what I mean.

10th Century – Ende’s Map of the World – 975 A.D.

Map of the World – Ende – 975 A.D.

Most Western cartographers from the Middle Ages were monks, or in Ende’s case, a nun. The maps they made were often crafted alongside, or as a part of, “illumination” for religious manuscripts. Religious zeal tended to dominate many of those early Western works, making them almost useless as maps.

This “map of the world” is an excellent example of that fervor. It’s sparse, with more effort spent on the Garden of Eden cartouche than detailing the geography. It’s far different from the detailed maps we expect from our modern fantasy novels. Yet, the era it was created, the late 10th-century, is more often than not closer in era to our crafted fantasy worlds.

12th Century – Al-Idrisi’s Tabula Rogeriana – 1154 A.D.

Tabula Rogeriana (lit. “The Map of Roger” in Latin) – Muhammad al-Idrisi – 1154 A.D.

During the 10th century, most of the progression in the science of geography and cartography was coming from the Middle East. Most of our modern understanding of mathematics and science is rooted in discoveries from the early Muslim world. Cartography is no different.

Muhammad al-Idrisi’s Tabula Rogeriana is one of my favorite pieces from those times and is largely considered the height of early Muslim cartography. While this work is rendered upside down, with North being at the bottom (not uncommon for Middle Ages work), the map itself is incredibly accurate—while scale is still being sussed out, it’s easy to spot recognizable landforms.

It’s also stunning.

Colorful mountain ranges dance across beige landforms, green lakes and seas drain into rivers, which in turn empty into the deep blue swaths of open ocean. It makes for a beautiful piece of history. While you can see the roots for the hill-profile style that would become the norm in later centuries, it’s quite different from maps we find in the opening pages of a novel. Everything here is a bit flashy, more like a painting—whereas, with later maps, engravers began using the symbols we expect. The map itself shifted in later years to become a tool for the commoner, not a piece of art for a fancy king named Roger.

13th Century – Matthew Paris’s Britain – 1259-ish A.D.

Britain – Matthew Paris – Around 1259 A.D.

The other approach we find in the Middle Ages was more typographical. Take this 13th-century map of the British Isles from the Benedictine Monk Matthew Paris. It’s not bogged down in religious fervor the way Ende’s map was—but it’s also not as detailed as one would expect.

There are only a few signs and symbols, and much of the heavy lifting is done with text. Beyond the coastline, there is very little in the way of landforms. No flora is present. No mountains—well, maybe one mountain. Few rivers. And this is the 13th Century! We’re nearly three hundred years after Ende crafted her map, and still two hundred years before duel-beard wielding Johannes Gutenberg would invent his printing press. And etching—the process that rendered many of the maps that influence fantasy cartography today—wouldn’t show up on the scene until seventy-five years after that.

But you can see the origins of what was to come. You can see symbols begin to creep into the idea of a map. You can see where cartography is going.

I once read an article that compared these early maps to “storytelling” rather than representations of geography. This was undoubtedly the case in Western cartography during the Middle Ages. These maps serve to enforce a narrative. But beyond that narrative, most are unusable. They’re paintings. Piece of art. They’re not tools. We see more cartouches and illustrations than useful signs and representational symbols. This is why I avoid using these as a base. There aren’t enough signs to make a robust set, and the signs and symbols that exist are very limited. This is why early cartography and Middle Ages’ sources won’t make practical brush sets.

The Silver Lining

I don’t think all hope is lost. While it’s theorized to be a bit earlier than the Middle Ages, I think there’s potential for some sort of set to come from the Tabula Peutingeriana, an early map of the Roman Empire.

A small fraction of the Tabula Peutingeriana Facsimile Edition – Konrad Miller – 1887

I’m not sure how effective it’d be from a landform-perspective, but there are so many variances in the Roman settlements that I could see it working for the right project. The trick will be finding a decent source, it’s been reproduced so many times and every time there are slight variations. Plus, I’ll need to dust off my High-School Latin before I tackle it.

There’s also an opportunity with some of Sebastian Münster’s or Girolamo Ruscelli’s work. It’s early as far as the hill-profile style goes, but it somehow feels older even though both are from the 16th century. The downside is most of the individual maps are fairly light in the number of symbols present, so I’ll need to pull from multiple sources. Unfortunately, neither did an outstanding job maintaining a uniform size with their signs or keeping line strokes consistent. Not impossible to overcome, but it is time-consuming.

Map of the Levante – Girolamo Ruscelli – 1561

Map 18 – Northern Europe – Sebastian_Münster – 1545

In Conclusion

There are going to projects that will benefit from the earlier styles of cartography. The maps I shared are stunning and fantastic pieces of history. Creating in-era ephemera can add a level of authenticity to a story, and any of the pieces I shared would be great to replicate for the right project. But for those, I think proper illustration goes a lot further than trying to shoehorn brush sets into cartographic development. In those cases, one would be better off hiring an illustrator.

I design my brushes to help non-designers create period-authentic maps. For the vast majority of fantasy projects, I think mimicking the hill-profile style will satisfy fans. Tolkien chose it for a reason. It’s easy to wrap your head around and still feels properly antiquated even if it doesn’t precisely match era to era. It’s become the defacto fantasy style, and for a fantastical world, and you know what? That’s more than acceptable.

Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information. Sign Up Today→

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[mfmagazine]

Taxidermy Couture

Article by Lauren Weigle

Photo by Rebecca Schmidt

Taxidermy Couture was definitely a must-have for me once I came across it.  Its art mixed with Goth mixed with glamour mixed with vintage mixed with...well, everything!  The point is that the collections are hot and almost entirely made up of one-of-a-kind pieces.  So, if you see something you like you better snatch it up fast as it may be gone tomorrow.  On the other hand, no one else will have the same gorgeous and unique accessory as you will, which makes each piece even more special.

Let’s talk about the Latin phrase “memento mori” and what it means in terms of Taxidermy Couture.

Memento mori means "Remember you must one day die". It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose, to remind people of their own mortality and the punishment they will receive if they transgress the rules of their religion. A phrase that has had a tradition in art that dates back to antiquity. I always say my work is "Memento mori inspired" because I personally am not trying to remind people or their punishment when they die. In fact, I'm not one for religion at all. I was raised Catholic and was forced to go to church every Sunday until I left home at 17, but the silver lining was being able to spend an hour every week staring at beautiful art, art that still inspires me to this day… obviously. As far as the connection between memento mori and Taxidermy Couture... well, my use of animal skulls, teeth, and bones would make anyone think about death.

Pretty intense, just like the name of your label.  How did you come up with the brand’s name?

Originally I called my line "Morbid beauty", but it just didn't feel right; it felt very "Goth" to me. Yes, a large amount of my work has a Gothic feel, and I love that. However, I don't want to pigeon-hole myself into a set aesthetic. Some days I'm super vamp, some days I'm a modern hippie, and other days I'm something I don't have a term for. I am, however, extremely into high fashion and art so I felt "Taxidermy Couture" simply described the work much more, and will continue to do so no matter what direction I go in the future.

Tell me about the woman behind the company, Marya.

That's a hard one! As of [December] I am now Marya, the wife. I am happier than I have ever been before in my entire life! We went to Vegas with 10 friends and had the best time! Other than that it changes all the time. I try to dip my toe in anything and everything that interests me.

Speaking of interests, I want to hear all about your musical alter ego!  Spill it!

Valium Valentine, my pop culture alter ego! She was born a year ago and sadly we only got 3 songs done.  You can find them on Myspace. We (my husband and I) LOVE all kinds of music and wanted to just play. However, once it got started I kind of took over and so we decided it was my baby. I want to make a few more songs before she dies... But, we have another secret band we have been working on, so it can be hard to put your mind in two completely different creative places at the same time. My husband and I will always make music, no matter who hears it. Its funny talking about "my music" when I have some close friends in legit bands, they actually make a living making music and touring. If I ever had the chance to go on tour as a performer I'd jump on it.

Do you think your love of music ever inspires some of your pieces for Taxidermy Couture?

How could it not!? I name pieces after songs or bands all the time. I do a series of multi-chain necklaces with my signature mink tooth lockets and other "vampire inspired" charms, no two are the same, but they all share the name "Vampire Weekend". Aside from that, I think the music world has a huge part to play in fashion. I can't help but be influenced by music; it sets a mood. Bands I loved growing up are probably why I started getting tattoos and wore chucks, so yes, music inspires many a Taxidermy Couture piece.

You also style and cut hair.  Is there anything you don’t do?!

Well, when I was really young I want to be a fashion designer. I'd draw pictures of clothes all day. My mom was a super punk rock chic, purple and green hair, made all her clothes, made jewelry out of scrap metal she'd find on the street, etc. Since the age of 11 she'd ask me to cut her hair. I won't lie. I had a natural knack for it. By age 14 I could do a perfect bob. So, when I turned 18 and had been living on my own for almost a year, I decided I needed to figure out what career path to go in. Hair just made the most sense, and I loved it. Not to mention, Cosmetology school was a hell of a lot less money than college, and I grew up really poor so the thought of debt was scary. I've worked in so many salons over the past ten years. My favorite was Ultra Salon in Manhattan, NY.  I worked there for four years before calling it quits and crossing over to freelance. I did the hair for two Rapture music videos a few years back. As of now I turned our dining room into a mini-salon. I really love working for myself from home, I'm not a conventional person.

Conventional is way overrated.  So, Marya, why is it exactly that you are drawn to things like teeth and animal skulls?

I am very drawn to teeth. They are just so cool and creepy. I have a tooth wearing a crown tattooed on my left arm. I use a lot of bone vertebrae from various animals; they have the most amazing shapes! It seems wrong not making jewelry out of them. But my original inspiration really comes from a necklace I own. Long story short, my long lost father who I met when I was 23; we were both living in NYC and this amazing thing happened and suddenly I had the coolest father ever! Well, for my birthday he gave me this to-die-for Pade Vavra Diamond and shark tooth necklace. He knew I loved shark teeth and diamonds so, boom! Two years ago I made my first rabbit foot/shark tooth necklace for my husband. We had just started dating and he flipped out over it. That's really why I started making jewelry to sell to the public. He's an independent buyer for a clothing store in our neighborhood, so he convinced me I was talented enough to sell my work. A few months later, my Etsy store was up and running. But, I suppose I have a soft spot for things not the norm because of my mother and her friends, a bunch of young artists from Boston. I even got to be in a small independent film called "black hearts bleed red" directed by Jeri Cane Rossi. The bazaar and “oh so talented” artist Joe Coleman was also in this movie. If you aren't familiar with his work you really should Google him. I wish I had the talent this man has! All the little "weird" things about my childhood just stuck I suppose.

How are you able to take these things that, to some, can be considered dark or dismal, but create such beautiful jewelry from them?

It's all your frame of mind, to some it’s creepy and they will never be into it, no matter how pretty it is. But, to me there is nothing dark or dismal about letting these animals live on through art. I don't think any part of the animal should be wasted. Animals give us the gift of food and warmth. To me the bones and teeth are just as precious and should be respected and admired. No animals are killed for the sake of my art. All parts are from animals that have died from natural causes, or have been killed for the meat. I do eat meat, so I can't be a hypocrite.  I only use vintage fur (usually from damaged fur coats from the 1980's or older) because once I found out how they actually skin the animals alive, I couldn't morally buy new fur. I have very high standards for the materials I use, which is a HUGE part of the work that goes into these pieces. How do I make them beautiful? I don't really know... I just play with it until it becomes what it should be.

Tell me more about some of your one-of-a-kind pieces.

The majority of what I make is one-of-a-kind. And, even the pieces I can replicate aren't identical. To me, teeth and bones are like snowflakes. Because of my high standards of how the animal has died I can't place an order for X amount of jawbones at a time, so I work with what I have, when I have it. I do however do a series of animal skull necklaces that are all OOAK. No two are identical because if you are going to spend over $100 on a necklace, you don't want your best friend to buy the exact same one, right? These are special pieces to keep forever and cherish. Chains like Forever 21 make me sad, mass-produced crap that everyone has and falls apart. Not to mention, the poor children working over 8 hours a day for next to no money just so we Americans can be cheap and selfish, but that's another topic for another interview at another time.  

Well then let’s stick to things like some of your vintage-inspired pieces.  Can you tell me a little about those as well?

Well, I use a lot of vintage pieces and up-cycle them. That's another reason why most of my work is one-of-a-kind. I use a mix of new and old charms and chains. Because of my background growing up with my mother I have always thrift-shopped and had fun finding little hidden treasures at flea markets and vintage shops. It may even be in my blood. After meeting my father, I found out he originally started his long career of owning retail stores with a vintage store. I must admit that lately I've been VERY focused on my Taxidermy Couture, but now that my wedding is over I have more free time and I am planning on coming out with new vintage-inspired, non-taxidermy work soon. It all depends on my inspiration. I can't force my work or it will show, and not in a good way. Any art I make is an organic experience.

Ooh, I can’t wait for more vintage pieces!  My absolute favorites are the Vintage up-cycled Chanel earrings and the Mortality charm necklace, but it’s out of stock.  Any come-backs on the horizon for those items on your site that have already sold out?

I've had a soft spot for Chanel since I was about 20. I have enjoyed collecting Chanel earrings since then. I hate clip-on earrings so any vintage pair I can up-cycle into posts, I will. It’s funny you mention the Mortality charm necklace because one of my best friends Katy aka Kickball bought it a few months back, so I got to see her wearing it again at our wedding. She fell in love (her words) with it when we did a La Sera for Taxidermy Couture photo shoot. Luckily for me she used them as her press release photos. La Sera is her solo project. She's more known for her band "Vivian Girls". And again, that is a one-of-a-kind. Ninety percent of the materials used for that necklace were vintage parts.

I’m so jealous!  Any new ideas in the works for more killer necklaces or earrings?

I won't know until I make them, sorry. However, I am lucky that a collector in the mid-west (they are retired and go for nature excursions constantly) has decided they want to "clean out there closet" so to speak, so I have a large number of vertebrae, skulls, and wolf teeth coming in any day now!

I noticed you don’t have any bracelets or watches yet.  Ever think about including some pieces along those lines in future collections?

I've actually done a few pocket watch necklaces, all OOAK and all sold before I could even get them up on my site. I do gallery and trade shows and other events where I sell my work. I also sell my jewelry at Shotwell in Union Square, San Francisco (my current home) and at Modern Eden gallery in North Beach, SF. So, not everything makes it in my own online store. As far as bracelets, it’s funny. I've made a few, but I never really think to make more because I'm not much of a bracelet person myself. I have this thin gold wire I wear every day. Come to think of it, I might be on my third year of wearing it without ever taking it off. How funny! I never really thought about it.

So, if you weren’t doing what you’re doing, what do you think you would be?  A taxidermist?

Definitely not. I am actually squeamish. I don't think I could do any of the dirty work. If there is something I want to do, I'll try it out. However, I do love decorating. I could see myself in interior design. My husband and I love doing theme rooms in our house! We can't wait to own our own home one day and go crazy! Right now I'm starting some business classes. We want to move back to NYC and open our own small Brooklyn boutique. I'll continue to make jewelry of course, but we will fill the store up with any awesome artists’ work we can get our hands on. We're hoping this will happen within the next two years. More than half my online sales are from NYC, so that's a good sign.

[spicynbachili1]

Neo Geo Mini outshines the PS1 Classic, could pave the way for a GBA Mini

But it’s not without its missteps

I don’t know what’s going on with the Neo Geo Mini. Shortly after I got my hands on one, SNK announced that an upgraded Holiday version of the hardware would be going up for pre-order in the coming days. That’s not a good sign. I have to guess that the initial SKU failed to sell as well as SNK had expected, leaving them scrambling to rework the units they already produced into a more marketable package. Their apparent lack of confidence in their product leaves me pessimistic about this weird little machine’s future. 

It’s a shame too, because this is by far my favorite plug-and-play mini console to date, at least in terms of its library. I bought the NES and SNES Classics day one, and I love them to “bits”, but there’s no denying that nearly all the games on each system are outdated. That’s the point of the nostalgia-powered novelty collections though, right? To take a trip in your mind back in time? 

If so, then that’s probably why the Neo Geo Mini isn’t selling. These are not the games that many grew up loving. These are the games that most of us could only afford to play for ten minutes a week at the local arcade, before going home and sinking hours into The Legend of Zelda or Sonic the Hedgehog. That said. there are several games on the console that stand up to the best that 2018 has to offer in their respective genres. Garou: Mark of the Wolves looks and plays better than 99% of today’s fighting games. Metal Slug 3 is still the best looking 2D run-and-gun action game I’ve ever played. There are also plenty of quality games on here that I’d never heard of before. For instance, if you told me that Ninja Masters was as all new indie fighter, and not a Neo Geo title from the ’90’s, not only would I have believed you, but I would have been more than happy to pay $15 for it.

That’s why, despite my love of Jumping Flash and Super Puzzle Fighter, the Neo Geo Mini beats out the PS1 Classic for me this holiday season. It’s also why I am more optimistic than ever that Nintendo will skip the N64 when it rolls out its next Classic console, and will instead jump straight to the Game Boy family of systems. I’ve already taken my Neo Geo Mini on the go with me a few times, and I’m sure people would love to do the same with a similarly versatile handheld/home console pre-loaded with games from Nintendo pre-DS portable generation. The Neo Geo Mini has issues, but its definitely worth looking into once Black Friday rolls around. 

The Setup 

The Neo Geo Mini is a better handheld than it is a home console. I have fairly large hands, but I’ve had no problems with the stick and buttons on the console itself. The screen is also bright and clear. The console doesn’t take batteries, and instead runs off of a USB port, similar to most cell phones. I’ve played it running off my car’s cigarette lighter USB adapter, a mobile cell phone battery, and hooked up to my laptop on the train, and as of yet I’ve had no problem with power supplies, or pulling off special moves in KoF 2002 while on the move.

The optional control pads (sold separately) aren’t nearly as nice. The analog stick is loose and the buttons are loud and clicky. They aren’t impossible to get used to, but its strange that they are such a downgrade from the stick built into the console itself.

In some misguided attempt to replicate the arcade experience, all the games are programmed to have a set amount of tokens for both players, You can tone down the difficulty ,or increase the amount of default lives you have for most of the games, but your starting token count never changes.

These are not arcade original roms though. Most have been altered for the home market to let you save then restart from whatever stage you last made it to. You can also open up the emulator’s menu and activate save states. It’s a pretty weird system that is cumbersome and confusing at first, but that’s easy to forget once you acclimate.

The emulator also has some real bare-bones features, like the ability to turn on pixel smoothing and stretching. It’s extremely small-time stuff, and for the most part, will make each game look different or worse, but never better. With the correct aspect ratio and smoothing off, the games look about as good as they do on the Switch or PS4, at least to me. I haven’t had my eyes checked this year, so maybe I’m missing something, but pressed my face up right up to the screen to look for artifacting, and my 41-year-old eyes didn’t detect any. So that’s good news. The bad news is, the only extras here are a couple of stickers. No in-menu history section, no bonuses, nothing but a instruction booklet for the hardware itself. 

The Games

There are 40 games on the Neo Geo Mini. The console costs about $110, so you’re getting each one for less than $3, about $5 less than what they might go for on digital storefronts, assuming they are available anywhere else at all. They fall under the genres of fighters, wrestling games, run and gun, shmups, beat ’em ups, sports games and unnerving Tetris knock offs. There’s actually only one of these here, but it’s worth mentioning for how bad it made me feel. 

The range of quality here is pretty enormous. Some of these games are a sincere waste of time unless you go in strictly to marvel at how much gaming has changed over the past 20 years. Others are games that I sincerely believe are some of the best ever made. I’ll break them up into three categories (Oddballs, Mid-tier and Classics) and do my best to describe them for you. 

The Oddballs 

Blue’s Journey, one of the oldest games in the bunch, is relic from a bygone era, not unlike a cigarette commercial starring The Flintstones. It has a decidedly launch era TurboGrafx-16 feel to it, with overly detailed backgrounds and very small characters. They don’t make them like this anymore for a reason. It’s generally messy, but in a sort of “manic toddler eating a $1 box of sugar cookies” sort of way. 

Robo Army is so bad that it’s funny, but not that funny. The opening cinematic is completely bananas, promising unhinged Sci-Fi violence on whole other level, but when you finally get control of your character, things slow down quickly. It’s a beat ’em up where you play as a cyborg that can randomly turn into a car, as you blow up other cyborgs, giant dogs that turn out to be cyborgs, and angry cars. It’s clunky and sad, but those with a morbid curiosity for what people used to be willing to play for $.25 microtransactions might find it interesting in a scientific sort of way.  

Mutation Nation starts off feeling similarly janky, but after a few minutes, you’ll see that a lot of the animation here is pretty solid. Charge moves lie at the core of the game’s combat system, which is novel for the genre, and the Akira-meets-Cronenberg character designs are surprising, sometimes genuinely disturbing.

Ghost Pilots is a top down WW2 shmup that was probably trying to leech off the popularity of 1942 and 1943. It’s totally fine, but nothing to write home about.

Crossed Swords is another beat ’em up, but this one plays from a Punch-Out!!/Pato Box perspective. It’s more polished looking that Robo Army, and the RPG elements add some depth, but the combat is a total mess. That’s bad news for a game that’s about, uh, combat.

Puzzled is the Tetris-knock off I brought up at the top. It really makes me appreciate all the little quality-of-life improvements that are found in recent Tetris games like Tetris Effect and Puyo Puyo Tetris. All you can do is move, rotate and drop you paces, so even the most basic of advancements like the T-spin is out of the picture. The game has a campaign mode and different stages, based around trying to free pixies who are trapped under some blocks? I don’t know guys, video games just sort of do their own thing sometimes. 

The Mid-Tiers

Magician Lord is one of the first games I ever blew $20 on at an arcade in order to see it to the end. Playing it now is not that great. In many ways it feels like Castlevania with larger characters, but the controls are just as stiff, making it hard to keep your giant hitbox out of the way of enemy attacks. It’s got a cool transformation gimmick though (you can turn into a dragon, a ninja, or even Poseidon for some reason) and one heck of a creepy womb level. 

Kizuna Encounter is a fighting game that probably started of in development as a two-player beat ’em up. Two of the games ten playable characters are beautifully animated, while the rest are serviceable but unimpressive in their appearances. What’s really interesting about the game is it’s tag team system. Unlike in recent tag fighters like Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite, you have to get close to your partner before you can tag them in. They don’t automatically jump in when the character you’re using is out of health either, adding an interesting layer of strategy to the otherwise standard Street Fighter II-style fighter. 

Ninja Masters feels like it was supposed to be the first entry in a series that would work as the Ninja equivalent to Samurai Showdown. They clearly didn’t have a lot of RAM to work with for their ambitions, as the characters are relatively small, but it has some really smartly executed animations. If I were game designer and one of my students wanted to learn how to make realistic, non-pandering breast physics for their game, I’d probably point them to towards Ninja Masters. The whole thing culminating in battle with good old Nobunaga, which is a lot of fun for fans of magical Japanese history games like myself.

Sengoku 3 is another ninja game, a beat ’em up this time, one that’s gotten a lot of praise from retro enthusiasts over the years. I’m not 100% sure why. It’s got good art and a varied cast of characters, but nothing about it really stands out about it. Maybe I’m just unfairly comparing it to the Capcom Dungeon and Dragons games without realizing it. 

Blazing Star (sequel to Pulstar) is a pretty good shmup that works on a upgrade system that extends the length and strength of your charge shot meter. Picking up power ups doesn’t always make your basic shot better, but it does give you the potential to fire off huge payloads of neon energy if you play your cards right. Other than that, a standard sci-fi anime shmup.

Last Resort is more up my alley, with a novel take on R-Type‘s bit system and even greater attention to detail to make the world you destroy feel lived in. The open levels takes place in a city under siege by giant robots, featuring little civilians driving – or even running – away from the carnage in a futile attempt to survive. It’s adorable and sad in a way that few modern shmups bother going for anymore. 

Shock Troopers and its sequel are Ikari Warriors-likes with an added evasive maneuver (a roll or a jump) to get you away from bullets, though it has a fair amount of a cooldown so you can’t spam it. The animation is better in the second one, but some of the backgrounds and characters have a weird pre-rendered look that can be a bit of a turn off, whereas the first one has more consistent art direction overall. Still, both are fun enough if you’re in the mood for some hard boiled co-op arcade action. 

King of Monsters, King of Monsters 2 and 3 Count Bout, are all wrestling games that are a nice alternative for people who want to beat up their friends without having to worry about too much depth getting the the way of the immediate violence. The King of Monsters games are based around Kaiju films, which adds an extra layer of charm if you’re a fan of the classic rubber suit Toho movies of old. 

3 Count Bout plays it more straight faced, but it’s definitely very “videogamey”, as are Foot Ball Frenzy, Super Sidekicks and Top Players Golf, the other three sports games found in this collection. Technical limitations permitted them for going for anything that approaching “realism”, but the sprite-based graphics have a loving, hand crafted feel to them, and the respective designs of each game play like cartoonish approximations of the source material. 

World Heroes 2 Perfect has a special place in my heart, as its has both the most superhuman fake Bruce Lee in the history of gaming and a psychic monk based on Rasputin, Russia’s famous love machine, but I have to admit that it’s not as deep, original, or well crafted as most of the other fighting games here. Still, it’s the best World Heroes game of them all, so if you were ever curious about what the Battleborn equivalent of ’90’s 2D fighters was like, then you’re in luck.  

The Classics

A lot has already been written about the Metal Slug, Samurai Shodown, and King of Fighters families of games, so I probably won’t go on and on about them here. Like I said at the top, I think Metal Slug 3 is one of the best looking games ever made. Metal Slug X/2 and the original game in the series come close behind it. Metal Slug 4 and 5 are notably less visually impressive than the games that came before them, with little in the way of new enemies other than bosses. So you can stop after 3 if you want, but if you don’t, go into the next two with lowered expectations. 

There are only three Samurai Shodown games here, and they stand out as some of the most extreme iterations of the franchise. Sam Sho 2 is is essentially the first game but with more characters. Samurai Shodown IV: Amakusa’s Revenge retains the new and improved sprites and Slash/Burt systems from Samurai Shodown III while (you guessed it) adding more characters. Samurai Shodown V Special is essentially an apology for Samurai Shodown V, bringing together characters from every chapter of the series for one last hurrah.

The King of Fighters games are a little more difficult to break down, as they work as a giant crossover of various SNK franchises. Technically, Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury Special (an enhanced version of Fatal Fury 2) work as their prequels. They are both dated compared to the games that followed, but they have significance. Fatal Fury Special is the first game to officially start the shared SNK fighting game universe with it’s hidden battle against Ryo from Art of Fighting. Real Bout Fatal Fury is also on this collection. I almost put it on the oddities list, as its weird, three-plane fighting system is pretty strange. In the end though, I threw it here with the classics because it’s definitely a significant part of the evolution of fighting games. 

From there were have King of Fighters ’95. ’97, ’98, 2000, and 2002. The offer a nice overview of how the franchise evolved during the height of popularity enjoyed by fighting games in the late 90’s into the early 2000’s. From a visual perspective though, they largely pale compared to The Last Blade 2 and Garou: Mark of the Wolves. For my money, they are the two most beautiful SNK fighting games of that era, or any era for that matter.

[These impressions are based on a retail build of the hardware provided by the publisher.]

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      reviewed by Jonathan Holmes

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