#linking to a youtube video is just not the move anymore

[nbclover]

hehehe

[steviescrystals]

MY LIFE IS NOT REAL WHAT IS GOING ON

[brehaaorgana]

ADHD money/budgeting system I'm currently using for my benefit is going well (I've been using it for like half a year now?), and I wanna recommend it.

You Need a Budget is EXCELLENT. 10/10 do recommend. Uhhh rambling about it and my generic disclaimers + gushing extensively under the cut but TL;DR I think it's great for ADHD ppl, I've used it for 6+ months now and I find it super SUPER helpful. also weirdly fun.

DISCLAIMERS:

Budgeting helps you understand/know your money, it can't make money appear where there is none.

Everyone should learn to budget even if you don't have much money (especially then)

This is NOT a magic trick solution. Just like everything else, it is an assistive tool. This is one of those adult things we can't simply opt out of without negative consequences, though.

My advice is based on something I am currently able to do. That is, I can spend an amount of money on this specific thing that works well for me. If you have no extra money to spend then previously I was tracking things in a notebook. So you can still do this.

I believe Dave Ramsey is a fundie fraud/hack and no one should listen to him about money.

DID YOU KNOW THEY CANCELLED MINT???

Okay? OKAY.

Ahem.

You Need a Budget is EXCELLENT.

It is called YNAB for short. The first 34 days are your free trial, and that is my referral link. If anyone uses it and then signs up for a subscription, we both get a month free. Also you can share a subscription with up to six people (account owner can see everything but individuals can pick and choose what they share amongst each other) so like...idk your whole polycule can be on one account. Or your kids. Whatever.

If you are a student, it's free for a year. If you aren't, a subscription is $99 for a year (paid all at once) or $14.99 monthly, which is equivalent to paying Amazon prime. Go cancel Prime and get this instead tbh.

They got a whole article just on ynab and ADHD. They also have like...a big variety of ways to access their info? They have a book, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, blog posts, q&A's, free live workshops you can join (you can request live captioning), emails they can send (if you want) a wiki, and so on. They got workshops on all kinds of topics!!

So whatever ends up working for your brain. It also has a matching app.

If you lost Mint this year they have a gajillion things for moving from Mint.

Also they have a "got five minutes?" Page which has a slider so you can decide how much attention/time you have before going on lol:

They only have 4 rules of the budget, they're simple and practical, and it doesn't get judgey or like...mean about your spending.

1. Give every dollar a job 2. Embrace your true expenses 3. Roll with the punches 4. Age your money.

THEN THEY BREAK THESE DOWN INTO SMALL STEPS FOR YOU! They even have a printable! Also these rules are great because there's built in expectations that things WILL HAPPEN and it's NOT all or nothing with a fear of total collapse into failure. Reality and The Plan don't always align, especially if you have ADHD. So it's directing our energy towards the true expenses and not clinging to The Plan!! over reality.

You can automate a lot of shit (you can sync with your bank accounts just like mint, but also automate tagging the categories of regular expenses/transactions). And if for whatever reason you accidentally do something that makes the budget look weird or wrong:

A) you can usually fix it somehow OR b) they have like, a button you can press that gives you a clean slate and archives the previous version of the budget for you.

So if you forget for a few weeks or months, or accidentally input something wildly wrong, or just don't want to look at a really terrible month anymore and feel like you need a fresh start you can usually either fix it or start fresh which is really nice.

The app also (for whatever reason) scratches my itch to have things like...have incentives or little game-like goals in a way mint never did? I don't know why. Filling up the bars or putting money into the categories to cover my expenses is satisfying lmao. You can also make a big wish expense category for all the fun shit you want, and fund it whenever you can and then you can see the little bar go up and that's fun.

Anyways I've been using it for like 6+ months now and I think it's really helped me when I use it.

[perplexingly]

Do you have a link to the Frankenstein musical? I wasn't able to find it on vimeo. I have the 2003 demo on CD which I listened to very recently for the first time, so I'm on a complete binge of Frankenstein adaptations!

Glad you managed to find it!

I’ll still list the ones I know of just in case:

1. The vimeo musical, its €7,39 to rent and fully captioned

2. Frankenstein A New Musical, this one is probably the most well known among fans of the book, there’s some video recordings on youtube but not of the original premiere cast 😞

(Act 2 is uploaded on the same channel)

The original demo was different in many ways

3. There’s Young Frankenstein musical of which there’s many recordings online, but it’s based on the pop culture idea of the story popularized by the black and white films, and has nothing to do with the novel so I’ll move on

4. Korean Frankenstein musical, there’s a couple songs translated to English and @klqrambles kindly wrote a detailed summary of the entire thing:

5. Frankenstein The Puppet Opera, it’s one-actor theatre, it’s pretty cool

6. Frankenstein The Metal Opera, I haven’t watched it yet but it seems interesting

7. Not a musical but in a similar vein, there’s the incredible Frankenstein ballet, which was actually released on a dvd

(This is just a trailer)

Also, I know there’s been many many non-musical theatrical adaptations of Frankenstein, but they seem to me more difficult to find, other than the National Theatre’s one 😞

Blackeyed Theatre’s adaptation with the Creature performed by a puppet was streamed a couple years back but it’s not available anymore

[redclercs]

DELICATE✰ CHARLES LECLERC.

x. what a shame she's fucked in the head.

— the one where they tell you what your word is worth.

❝𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘺, 𝘐 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦❞ —𝘛𝘢𝘺𝘭𝘰𝘳 𝘚𝘸𝘪𝘧𝘵, 𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘵.

warnings: abuse downplay, bashing towards taylor swift (i obviously adore her pls don't come for me haha), online bullying, new york inaccuracies, corny taylor references per usual, etc. 2k words + articles

in my head there's a mix of begin again and cornelia street playing as background music.

masterlist ✢ next

NO one likes a mad woman, but not for the reasons Taylor Swift made you believe in the lyrics of her 2020 song. Although we are definitely afraid y/n might get 'more crazy'.

Honestly, who gave her the right to speak like that about Aidan Kim? As it turns out, the three-year relationships she willingly stayed on was a 'dead-end' one, and Aidan "abused" (and I cannot stress the quotations enough) her through several stages of their shared time.

Well, I call bullshit.

How is it that after Aidan Kim helped her build whatever she has going on that people call a 'career' she wasn't bothered about being told 'how to look and how to act' (direct quote from her own video, by the way).

Breaking up with your sneaky link and calling him your friend won't save what you did before, y/n, it's the oldes trick in the book. Everything she said in her Youtube video, one I regretfully watched despite the knowledge that I won't get those 45 minutes of my life back, is rehearsed and calculated and just tried to paint the real victims in a bad light.

Playing the victim worked for Taylor Swift in 2009, 2017, 2019... but we surely won't let it happen again, right folks? y/n needs a new tactic to crawl back from the hell, because we're not believing anything that comes out of her mouth anymore.

It's true what they say, an untalented actress makes an untalented liar.

By Lia Yim

Victoria Presley is worried about best friend's y/n y/ln's well-being after the actress 'completely ghosted her' since moving back to New York.

"One day we were fine and the next, she had packed her bags and left my house," Presley said in an exclusive interview with iNTouch. "I'm not going to lie, I was deeply hurt by her actions. I offered her my home as a safe haven and she left without explanation."

y/n had been living in Victorias Los Angeles home since mid-February until this month when she returned to her infamous SoHo apartment, one she shared with Aidan Kim until their breakup.

"I can find it in my heart to forgive her, of course," 'Vic', as she's known on social media, added. "Right now, I just want my best friend back. I want the y/n I've known for years and not this person she became since Matilde Bassi and Charles Leclerc inserted themselves in her life."

Victoria Presley, the founder and CEO of Presley Beauty, is the daughter of Luke Presley and Claire Walker and has been in the influencing business for a few years now.

"If y/n ends up reading this, I want her to know that I will support her decisions but not in the way her new 'friends' are doing. I just want what's best for her."

SEE ALSO:

→ Vic Presley on having to start from zero: "I'm not a nepobaby!"

→ A look inside y/n's SoHo apartment, the one Aidan Kim paid for.

→ Is Charles Leclerc's career going downhill thanks to y/n?

By Beatrice Mann

With y/n y/ln's latest controversy, the whole world has turned their backs on the actress. But, is it really that bad? Or is it just because she's a woman in the business?

The online community's hottest topic is y/n's Youtube video where she speaks on her relationship with Aidan Kim, her friendship with Charles Leclerc and, most importantly, how all of this has affected her career. And I want to tell you all, y/n is right.

If the roles were reversed, Aidan Kim would be thriving on a newly unlocked 'Heartbreaker' persona and y/n would still be constantly humiliated for not being 'wife material'.

I believe y/n deserves much better than what she's getting. The woman admitted she escaped a relationship where her partner LAUGHED at her and manipulated her actions for his comfort. And people are still siding with the man? Seriously, people, use your brains and dig up your morals!

The only thing we're communicating to younger generations by constantly doubting women's words and putting them in the spotlight for standing up for themselves, is that only men's words are worth something.

June 14th, Manhattan, New York.

It isn't much of a surprise when Charles calls you while you're trying to get your Moka pot to work that morning. It's your third attempt at it and the previous mornings you've left it alone with tears in your eyes to walk down the street and get Starbucks coffee. You might be a little too attached to that coffee maker.

Charles got to New York city the previous night, and reminded you that you promised to show him around more than once. You intended to keep your promise, thinking you would have more time before the day came.

But as you walk to the restaurant where you decided to meet him, you can't help but think how exciting it is that you get to show the city you love so much to Charles. And just like that morning in Monaco, you can't help but remind yourself that this is a friendly get-together.

Charles has slowly, but surely, become one of your closest friends in the middle of the frenzy that your life is. With your ex-best friend saying you walked out on her and your failed fiancé insisting that it was you, who acted like a 'total psychopath' towards the end of your relationship, you have more fingers than people you can count on.

You watch him carefully as he smooths the napkin on his legs twice and then drops in on the table again, fidgeting with the loose threads in the corner.

Your wristwatch says it's 10:00 am, which is the exact time you agreed to meet. You wonder how long he's been waiting if there's an empty cup of coffee in front of him.

"You know, it's also rude to be too early for a meeting," you say as a form of greeting once you approach the table.

This startles him enough to drop the napkin on his lap again, proceeding to scramble to return it to the table before pushing his chair out to get up.

You chuckle, but before you can say you were joking, Charles is engulfing you in a hug. Your stomach flutters because of the way he holds the back of your head with his palm. It feels like you're being reunited after months instead of just two weeks. Time doesn't feel real sometimes, you would know.

"Soleil!" he says excitedly, putting his hands on your shoulders. "It's so good to see you,"

"It's nice to see you too, Charlie."

There's the nickname again. You've tried not to think too hard about it. Is it a European thing to call your friends that? When you asked him about it the last time he called before taking his flight to New York, his response was a simple 'it suits you'.

Charles pulls your chair for you and grabs your purse to place it on the empty chair between you two. He grabs his napkin again, pulling one last time on a thread before smoothing it down and forgetting about it.

"How are you?" Charles asks, a bright smile on his face. It falters in a barely perceptible way because he doesn't want to give you bad thoughts, which seem to come automatically every time the question is asked.

"Well, I'm okay," you assure in a soothing tone, "Still looking for jobs. And you?"

"Alright. Lots of work in the simulator and I'm hoping this is a good weekend,"

"Are you sure you'll be okay getting to Montreal tomorrow?" you smile at the waitress that approaches your table, "Can I have some coffee, please?"

"Of course," Charles assures, with a gesture of his hand. He's getting to Montreal at seven in the morning and running straight to his motorhome. "There's time for everything."

"What do you want to do, then?"

You don't want to exhaust him by showing him around New York, he has a long weekend ahead. To be honest, you really wonder what compelled him to make this stop instead of going straight to Canada. Sure you had talked about him coming to New York, eventually. Not a day before he had to start his Grand Prix weekend.

"Anything you want us to do," he replies, the single-dimpled smile on his face. "I'm open to anything."

"MoMA? Central Park? Something not so touristy?" you suggest, before thanking the waitress as she places a hot cup of coffee on the table.

"Just show me the places you like, y/n, don't stress about it." Charles laughs, eyes returning to the open menu in front of him. "I only care about hanging out with you."

"Thanks," is all you manage to say as you sip the scalding coffee, you do your best not to wince as it burns your tongue and down your throat. "Let's do it then."

"So, what do you think? Everything you expected and more?"

You're taking a walk in Central Park after Charles agreed to see the Alice in Wonderland statue. It's a warm morning in New York and although you haven't been walking around for that long, Charles seems content enough with what he's seen.

"It's very... you," Charles replies, and you're sure he means it as a compliment, but New York can be really ugly too. "In a good way!" he adds when he sees your expression.

"Thank you, Charlie." you laugh again. It's easy being with Charles, laughing with sincerity and really being in what's happening in the moment.

You didn't lie when you said you weren't afraid of speaking up anymore, but the dread of actually doing it is inevitable. Your words are being twisted and marked as false because Aidan is far 'more loved' than you are. Not to mention Victoria's interview about your lack of reciprocity to her humble feelings

You're still thinking about suing her. But it hurts to know that she was your best friend a week ago.

A few people stop you both to ask for pictures and autographs on the back of phone cases. A few of them ignore you, others smile politely at Charles before asking him to take their picture with you.

"I'm really polishing my photographing skills," Charles jokes as you walk away from a group of young girls who gush about how much they wish they could dress like you.

"Sorry if it bothers you," you whisper, looking at him only from the corner of your eye.

"Of course not, y/n. They ask nicely, and you're okay with it." he shrugs.

There was one time when a teenager, around fourteen or fifteeen, asked Aidan if he could please take a picture of her and yourself. It was an innocent question, she had already acknowledged him as 'that guy from Star-5' and how he'd been in Supercut with you.

But just by the way you saw his expression change, you told the girl a selfie was a better option, you would hold the phone yourself if she was okay with it.

You didn't hear the end of it for the rest of night. Aidan berated your career for the first time of many, saying it was frankly offensive that he’d been treated that way. It didn't matter that you told him the girl was barely a teen and she hadn't been rude. Still, he was more famous than you, he didn't deserve to be made felt like the opposite.

"What are you thinking?" Charles asks, touching your shoulder gently to make you pause your walk.

You really don't want to admit you were thinking about your ex-boyfriend. Not that it matters, Charles knows you think about Aidan often in a mostly negative light, but it feels weird to say it here. So you shrug and sigh. "I wish I thought of nothing, to be honest."

Charles squeezes your shoulder in a half hug. He doesn't push your boundaries, although he wishes he knew what was actually going through your mind.

─────────

It's when you two are having dinner in a restaurant in SoHo that Charles asks the question that has been eating him away since he landed in New York the previous night.

"Do you want to come to Canada with me?"

"Am I not blacklisted from the paddock?" you tease, although Elix is gone. You wonder if Ferrari people blame you a little bit for their sponsor dropping them.

"Absolutely not," Charles frowns, "And you would be my guest, you get to be in the Ferrari Suite like always."

"Thank you, Charlie–"

Charles tries not to seem disappointed as he waits for the 'but' to follow, so he drinks from his wine.

"—but I have some back to back things to do this weekend," you do regret not being able to make it, you loved the few Grand Prix you were able to attend and you would love to see Carlos too. But you have booked a few interviews with people who, more than anything want to consume gossip, but have disguised it as 'letting you tell your truth in more depth'. You cannot back down from what you started.

"That's okay," he assures with a quick wink. "You know you can come to races whenever you want to, though, right?"

"I can?" you raise both eyebrows and Charles rolls his eyes. "The benefits of having a Ferrari driver as a friend. I should have befriended you sooner."

"Very funny," he says as he hides his smile behind his glass of wine again. "Do I get invited to the Red Carpets?"

"You kind of befriended me at the downfall of my career. It's going to take a while for you to be on a Red Carpet."

Charles clicks his tongue and shakes his head. "You're only just getting started, soleil. Don't say that."

You hope he's right, because you have castings lined-up for next week too and you don't want to call him, or Mati, or your mom, crying about how unwanted you feel.

You shrug, drinking from your own wine.

"I'm being serious, y/n," Charles' tone is stern for a moment, yet not aggressive. "You have a lot of wonderful things to do in the future."

"Yeah, thanks." you dislike yourself for ruining the mood yet again, but Charles isn't bothered as he smiles at you once again.

"I mean it,"

He does, and so does Mati, and your mom. You are bound for great things, although they're taking time to find you right now.

"I know. Thank you Charlie, you're very kind. I hope you have a good race this weekend."

Charles huffs. "Yes, me too. Wish me luck?"

"I feel like I jinx you more than help you, Charlie."

"You didn't wish me luck in Spain, look how that went," he fakes a shudder and you snort. You hated every minute spent in Spain after FP3.

"Good luck, you'll do great." You pat the hand that he keeps on top of the table a couple times and before you can take your hand back, he grabs it, giving it a gentle squeeze.

Your heart races and you take a deep, sharp breath, like that would help it go back to normal. You have tried not to overanalyze everything about today, from the way Charles looked to the words he said, to the way your body responded to it. You don't want to go down that specific spiral.

"Thanks for stopping by," you take your hand back and keep it busy with your almost empty glass of wine. The alcohol has turned your cheeks warm. "You really want to see New York, huh?"

"I really wanted to see you," Charles replies, nonchalantly.

And you know you'll be spiraling, despite your best efforts.

─── team principal radio: ❝thanks for reading! also thank you so so so much because last chapter got to 1k+ interactions and i was beyond shocked!! it means a lot that you're enjoying delicate!♡❞

✰ paddock club members: @sassyheroneckgiant @flowerchild-96 @fangirlika @shegotboreddsoo @roseamongthorns13 @cissyp @chimchimjiminie16 @saturnsrinqs @roni-midnights @gayyvodka6 @studioreader @its-ash-not-grey @lu-morningstar @ferraribabe @reidsworld @feelslikestrawberries @celestialams @kosmosgalore @heeseung-baby @missenclod @buendiabebeta @mycenterfold @aces-tattooartist @burningrred @you-bleed-just-toknowyouarealive @rainybabe25 @ru-kru @lazybot @teenagedreams-cl @cool-ultra-nerd @kuskumu @formulakay3 @bisexual-desi @somanyfandomsbruh @icarus-nex @haziefairy @xjval @xoxoloverb @sainzleclercs @headinthecloudssblog @incoherenciass @bookophiliac @torrie421 @nooshytushie @azxulaa @steephanie07 @anonymous8462 @tbisloneely @pukklv @bn7921 @be-your-coffee-pot @fdl305 @lovely-blackinnon @landonorizzz @ruleroftheuniverse @ivegotparticulartaste

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[lenixsocial]

Watcher (and why nothing matters anymore):

So, in case you've been locked away under a proverbial bridge for a few days, Internet personalities Steven Lim, Ryan Bergara, and Shane Madej (known as Watcher) have elected to begin their own streaming service and ditch YouTube.

On the surface, that mightn't even seem like news at all.

After all, this sort of thing seems to happen all the time: The Try Guys left Buzzfeed to create their own company, Rhett and Link took the dive and diversified into paywalled entertainment a few years back with Mythical Society. Both of which however still rely on YouTube itself to generate views on the main channels, which funnel viewers into a FOMO type situation where "you can't miss" a special airing on the app (Mythical Society) or Patreon (Try Guys).

Watcher, in its infinite wisdom (stupidity, carelessness, unparalleled greed - take your pick) has decided that YouTube is pointless, and has moved ALL their content behind a paywall, claiming that the service was amping up to provide "TV quality programming", leaving only old content and the first episodes of the new shows up on their YouTube page as a subtle tease as to what you could get for $6/month.

It's now quite apparent from reading the comments section of their (now infamous) YouTube video, their official subreddit, and the tag on X that the fans were...not thrilled. The fingers began to be pointed within minutes. Name calling soon after. Then this blossomed into dissertations on why this was a horrible idea.

Then we found out that there was no app. Just a website. So you're paying for website access. Not a full blown streaming service to rival Netflix. Oh, and they don't even have their own servers, the videos are hosted by Vimeo. The deeper the comments section dug, the nastier the attacks got. Steven soon became the whipping boy. His past, his interviews, scanned and mercurially dug up for juicy tidbits (although all anyone gleaned from these was he's rich, was born rich, drives a Tesla in LA, likes fancy food, and has friends whom he values who are racist and possibly sexist and will not sever ties with them).

Then came the cries of incongruity. Shane Madej repeatedly said to "Eat the Rich", and here he was schilling for a platform that cost $6 a month. The cries began to pirate all of the new Watcher content because maybe he was under duress and was secretly telling them to do so. Fact is, I don't know if he was or what, but I'm certain he's under contract and wants his job.

Then came the videos from other internet users analyzing the video, and comparing this to the Try Guys situation with Ned a few months back. Both are disasters, each in unique ways with different players, and such like but here's the vast difference: none of this will even matter in a month.

Let me explain: We are in the total free fall stage of Watcher's Internet Streamer Service. What they do in the next 24-48 hours is crucial. If they revert back to their YouTube channel and apologize, they'll be fine. People will probably poke fun at them, but they'll be forgiven, eventually. But if they don't and they keep on, ignoring the fans, dousing the haters, and make it a month, I doubt we will see any resistance outside of a terse article or two.

Why? The collective memory span in this day and age is extremely short, many have likely already made judgment in their head and have passed said judgment. Therefore, they'll avoid the channel, and the streamer and will be blissfully unaware of any changes. Those who have joined up and paid will remain members, and those who have elected to remain subscribed will likely remain so and will watch the free content until they can afford the $6/month.

The thing is like it or hate it, if they decide to do nothing and ignore the public at large, they most likely will be fine. Maybe they will not have the hugest subscriber base, but people will forget about this. Something else major that is more salacious will spring up in the months ahead. Will there be lingering anger? Sure, but like I said before, these people have already passed judgment so they're already gone.

In an era of "nothing fucking matters" when your choices are sometimes entirely out of your direct control and are (at best) two sides of the same coin, it should be of absolutely no surprise to anyone that there is a fairly good possibility even after all that has transpired that nothing bad will happen. Lest we forget that old adage: "there is no such thing as bad PR".

Personally, I feel $6 is a tad much for a non-app based web streamer with little to no content. It was disingenuous to announce its launch internationally where even more people can't afford it, and some can't even view it. Steven wasn't upfront with who was in charge and now it really does seem like he's using the subscriptions to fund his international gallivanting. It's clear nobody wanted TV-show quality Ghost Files to take place in another country, nor did they want an old show revived with votes when you pay the first month's dues. They say it's a case of Watcher "not reading the room".

[storm-driver]

if i can say my two cents, i worry only slightly for KH as a story for people to enjoy due to the mobile game plethora, wherein key elements that are (seeming to be) crucial for future plot points and even character backgrounds are being placed on mobile phone games, two of which are now completely inaccessible, save the people who have preserved it and recorded it for media sharing sites.

we're running into a refined version of the old "too many consoles" problem, except now there's lost media involved. most of the games are easily accessible, especially with the steam release, thank god. but union cross and dark road do not have any official releases anymore. summary videos and recorded cutscenes are all that's left to experience those stories. and missing link is a mobile game, destined to meet the same fate unless there is time given to make an offline version. which i have my doubts about considering UX's current grave.

in a time where media preserving is so important with everything slowly moving into digital downloads and rare-to-find hard copies, and games being shut down on a dime when they underperform, i worry for the lookback on the series, where we all realize there's just gaps in the story unless you were privvy to watching it all on YouTube before it disappeared.

[manysketchbook]

Firffels: the Wuzzles Competitor That Disappeared

Recently, I found this toy at my local thrift store. I thought it was an oddly cute nativity toy, but upon closer inspection the tush tag read "FIRFFELS. I'm glad to be a SHAMEL." I did a quick search online and the first result was this page on Ghost of the Doll, a toy collector's site that archives information about 80s/90s toys and includes a forum where anyone can seek help with identifying toys. This lead me down a rabbit hole of figuring out just what Firffels were: a failed line of toys promised to be the next hot phenomenon, with minimal documentation online and a handful of toys floating around in thrift stores.

Other than Ghost of the Doll, I found info about Firffels in this 2010 blog post by Trish Babbles (written in an edgy, mean-to-be-funny style that I think is too uncharitable, but it was a different time to be online lol) and this blog post by AF Blog. My other info comes from Othello Bach's website dedicated to the book itself (her personal site is no longer functional) and from a handful of youtube videos I found of a Firffels commercial. Many thanks to these sources, without them there'd be like, nothing online about these creatures.

Firffels are based on the children's book Who ever Heard of a Fird? by Othello Bach, first edition published in 1984 by Caedmon Childrens Books (upon Googling, it appears that Caedmon is owned by HarperCollins now and focuses on audiobooks). The story follows Fird, a fish-bird hybrid, as he travels the world to find other firds. Along the way he encounters a goofy, lovable cast of other hybrid animals who have all never heard of a fird. The story ends with fird learning to love his uniqueness and find peace with being who he is. As is apparent in the Amazon link above (not sponsored, just showing my work), a used copy is $86 dollars right now. An audiobook narrated by Joel Grey (an actor that I'm unfamiliar with who is apparently known for his role in Cabaret) was also released on cassette, listed on Ebay for $75+. Luckily, there is a youtube video of someone doing a complete read through of the book, but the camera angle is poor. This is the only visual record I could find online of the interior illustrations by Michelle Dorman, other than a brief look at a few in a low quality VHS promo rip I'll get to in a minute, and the image below from an Ebay listing. There may be a few more photos in some Etsy listings that I missed.

In Trish's blog post they complain that Shamel is an ugly monstrosity and there were a few comments on Ghost of the Doll's forum of the same nature about Shamel, but I think Shamel is the cutest one! It just looks like a new breed of camel, meanwhile Fird in the background here is...he's so cartoonishly goofy. Idk how else to describe him. He's so fuckin' goofy. He'd make squeaky Spongebob-esque sound effects when he walks, I imagine.

The book was allegedly a hit and Remco bought the merchandising rights. They went all in, as is detailed in the 5 minute promotional video below. Based on a cast of 6 characters, plush toys and posable action figures hit the market with a promise that Hanna Barbera would develop an animated tv show starring Firffels, housewares would be made, there'd be a clothing line, and Design-a-Firffel contests would be held. A few housewares seem to have been made and plush toy sewing patterns were released, but I was unable to find evidence that anything else moved forward.

Absolutely fucking insane fact: according to this video, Caedmon Publishing was owned by Raytheon at the time. Thanks Raytheon for these cuddly children's toys and also, uh, horrific weapons of war?

After I bought Shamel, I went back to the store to see if there were more. There were! I found Bertle and Elephonkey, who still had the original tags. I swear the day earlier I had seen a frog toy with butterfly wings but it wasn't there anymore. I remember passing over it and thinking "eh, butterfly wings on a frog aren't cute," and did not bothering even looking at the tags. My mistake. Turns out that toy was worth a decent amount of money and was part of this whole story.

Bertle's pink belly super bright in real life, like neon. There is a sunbleached spot on it's front.

Elephonkey is the only one with original tags. I also included an image of the tush tag. For each toy the tush tag is the same but displays the character's name.

Hybrid animals are not a unique concept. Wuzzles, a line of plush toys that were animal hybrids with wings and likely made to compete with Care Bears, are brought up in most posts and forums where Firffels are mentioned--usually to disparage Firffels as being knock off, less successful Wuzzles. Wuzzles weren't exactly successful either, though they definitely lasted longer and had more reach, likely due to the backing of a Disney/Hasbro budget. AF Blog in 2015 makes a good point that I agree with: it's unlikely that Wuzzles and Firffels were ripping each other off due to production timelines. Toy lines can be in development for years before any information is made public. It takes a long time to design toys, then get them to a manufacturer, then go through the revisions process. Not to mention the time it takes to ship things out, negotiate contracts at every step of the way, etc. And, as AF Blog notes, Whoever Heard of a Fird? was released in 1984, a year before the first Wuzzles tv episode aired, and Firffels hit the market a year later.

People draw hybrid animals all the time. For example, furry adoptable artists draw hybrids all the time (take a shot every time you find a closed species that is a feline with a fish tail or deer feet or some other animal's defining trait), the Lego movie had Unikitty, and I literally went to Walmart today and in the toy section there was a miniature rabbit-like rainbow animal with wings and a unicorn horn there. The thing that makes these toys potentially appealing, in my opinion, is that they choose safe and popular traits: sparkly horns and feathery wings, for the most part. Things that are easily marketable.

The thing with Firffels is that they combined animals with traits that are less immediately appealing. Image below from Ghost of the Doll.

Some of them are cute but the others miss the mark. Personally I like Shamel and Bertle (the plush version only tbh).

Worth pointing out is that the character illustrations do not match the toy designs. If you go back and watch the commercials included in the 5 minute promo video, you can see that the Bertle plush and action figure are brown and green rather than pink and blue, and that Shamel's hair is brown instead of purple. I saw varied photos of the Butterfrog plush: some were lighter green while others were darker. Could be an issue with differing cameras, but I don't know for certain. And then there's Elephonkey, who is the most inconsistent of the bunch:

The first image is the prototype toy as it appears in the commercial. It is grey and flesh colored, with odd looking plastic hair. The second image is from Ghost of the Doll, of how the Elephonkey action figure actually appeared in stores. Third is a photo of my Elephonkey plush. Compare it with the official character art...well, he's not my favorite design in any incarnation.

I think the toys in the commercials were prototypes that were changed to brighter colors so as to appeal more towards girls. In the 30 second plush commercial there are 4 girl actors and 1 boy actor, with the camera shots getting closer to and focusing more on the girls' faces, so it would make sense. In contrast, the action figure commercial features 1 girl and 2 boys, and most of the camera shots are of the kids' hands playing with the toys, giving off a more boyish, gender-neutral vibe. Classics of gendered marketing, am I right? lol. But I think the change was a good one. I wouldn't have picked up Shamel if I hadn't seen the purple hair, and I definitely would not like Bertle if he wasn't pink. It gives the toys more of a cohesive style, a unique identity, and they fit in more alongside the Wuzzles/Care Bears visuals with the vibrant, happy colors. There's more of a toy-like quality to them, which increases the cuddle-ability and inspires more of an urge to play.

Discovering and logging all this inconsistency has been pretty fun. But it makes me think that these toys were probably doomed by a chaotic, unorganized development process behind the scenes. And given that the book was published in '84 and toys hit the market in '85...the signs seem to point to production being rushed.

To be fair to Firffels, it was probably a little harder in the 80s to hit it big with kids. You had to be lucky, you had to have connections with the right distributors, you had to anticipate what is universally appealing to children--one of the most unpredictable audiences out there--and you had to pay to air your commercials during prime child viewing hours. These are all things that are still true, but we have the internet now and the advertising power of the internet is scary. Going viral on TikTok has the potential to skibidi someone's toilet career. iPad babies are growing up into grade school kids who throw birthday parties every year and get toys as gifts. We are living in an era where mass-producing cheap little polyester plushies and plastic figures is easier than ever and corporations have massive budgets to pump into kids' eyeballs through every advertising avenue they possibly can. They don't even need to come up with the designs anymore, they can just partner with whatever Roblox game is popular right now and capitalize on that. Maybe Othello Bach should get on Roblox.

Actually, it appears that Bach was given the short end of the stick by the time Firffels were pulled. Though her personal website is no longer up, her other website dedicated entirely to Whoever Heard of a Fird? has some info:

At the height of Fird's success, with over 100 licensees cramming the store shelves with children’s merchandise and an animation contract with Hanna-Barbera, the book and all the merchandise suddenly vanished from the shelves.  Although she lost the rights to several other published children’s books at the same time, Othello has never received a reasonable explanation for what happened.

So this passage actually clears something up for me. This whole time something that hasn't really lined up is that I had assumed that Othello Bach published the book first and then was approached for merchandising rights after the book sold well. I actually think now it's possible that from the get-go the book was written with the intention for it to become a worldwide sensation. Not so much Bach's intent, though. I have some professional familiarity with licensing and other such creative publishing contracts, particularly with books. Based on what I know, I believe it's more likely that Bach pitched her manuscript to Caedmon Publishing and Caedmon, seeking to create popular IP, was like, "this has potential and we are going to sign you on not only for the book, but for more." That might be why the character designs are so strange: they were trying too hard to get famous quick and had instructed the illustrator (it is regular practice for publishers to pair authors with an illustrator and given how much was on the line for this IP, Bach might not've had much input here) to design characters that could also become toys. It's unlikely that Michelle Dorman, a kids book illustrator, had product design skills needed to make standout, awesome toy designs. Not a knock on her, illustrators just have niches within their field that they're best at it. It's why you see so many illustrators complain about how often they get approached to design logos--that's not what we do, thank you.

What's sad is that clearly Bach had signed a bad contract that gave away most of her rights as the writer to the publisher. She openly says so above. My guess is that Caedmon told her they needed more rights than usual to be able to conduct so much merchandising (like signing contracts with Remco, much easier to do when you don't have a third party also involved), and because they were pouring so much effort into it on their end. Bach is just the writer, so while the original idea is hers, Caedmon would have matched her with an illustrator and taken charge of all the licensing and merchandising. For a publisher this is a huge commitment financially and personnel-wise, so it makes sense why they would have put forth a contract that gave them so many rights. If Firffels had become as popular as they'd hoped, they don't want to not own the IP. They would have poured all those resources into it and not be able to reap all the rewards because that pesky author would own it. It's almost like contracts like these are predatory and only serve the interests of the publisher. Almost like publishers are companies existing in a capitalistic system and therefore only serve profit, not people. Almost like companies will never truly have artist's best interests at heart, and if you are ever to sign a contract with a big publisher you need to have a good lawyer by your side.

It makes me so sad to read that they didn't even give her a reasonable explanation as to why everything was cancelled. She does not even appear to have any of the merchandise on hand, as all the photos on her website are from Ghost of the Doll. In hindsight we can guess, obviously, why the cancellation happened but I'm in the moment it was probably upsetting. It's still upsetting, given that she has included this in her website for the...revamped book!

However, like Fird, Othello refused to give up. For the next 20 years, she tried to regain the rights to her work. Entertainment attorneys assured her it would never happen.  They said, "It can't be done!" But... it could be done and Othello did it, regaining the rights back to all her work.

Yeah, so, I actually think this is the saddest part about the whole thing. She managed to get some of the rights back and republished the book with...new art...that looks so fucking BAD. Image from her website:

Sorry to this illustrator, but got damn. There is no sauce to this art whatsoever. It is unseasoned, not even salt and pepper. This looks like ass and would never fucking fly with any editor worth their chops. It took me ages to figure out that the long yellow curved line is Fird's tail. Like, this is so unbelievably sad to me. I don't even really like the original art a whole lot, but compared to this...

My informed guess as to what happened is that Bach lawyered up and fought. As we know, Caedmon is now owned by HarperCollins. I can't say for certain but there was probably some case to be made that Caedmon being sold breached the contract, or nullified parts of it, or perhaps the contract expired. It could even just be that HarperCollins didn't care about an old, unprofitable IP and granted Bach her rights back. There is also Remco to consider: they also hold some of the rights, but probably just for the merchandise? Given how prominently their logo is displayed on the toy tags, they might actually own a significant share. Perhaps they were happy not to have anything to do with the book so long as the merch rights weren't touched. I don't know! There's no info about it on the site and this stuff is usually under NDA.

So Bach got her rights back, but she's just the writer. She doesn't own any of the art, so in order to republish the book she had to hire a new illustrator. She likely did not have a huge budget for it, maybe even paying for it out of her pocket because the Choice Books logo she has in several spots on the Fird website appears to be for a distribute on demand service, in place of a traditional publisher.

As the writer, she also would not have gotten the rights to use the original audiobook, so she had one re-recorded. It also appears like she does not have the rights to the name "Firffels" either, as the only places it appears on the site are in photographs of merchandise and in titles specifically referring to the work that is still owned by Caedmon. She carefully refers to her own work as "Fird" for short or the book's full title, probably because she cannot legally imply that she owns or made anything else.

I dug into this thinking it would be a quick look at some strange, forgotten toys from a bygone era. Instead I found a story about how an artist can so easily be shafted by publishers. Everything always loops back around to workers' rights, it seems. Stories like this about shitty publishing contracts (see: Webtoon if you want to get into something current) still appear so often, man. It's depressing, and indicative that the publishing industry needs some reforming ASAP. Like, Illustrators, when are we getting a proper union?

But I'm glad Bach got her rights back and got her book republished within her lifetime. I'm sad she didn't have the budgets for a better illustrator. Sorry to bring that up again, I work as an illustrator irl and I have opinions about craft, lol. Also I just think that given how hard Bach had to fight, she deserved to have better art made. That being said, here's another link to her current website. There's not much there but what is there is a monument to a battle she fought and won, and is proud of.

The lack of detailed, clear, centralized documentation of these toys frustrates me. One of the most frustrating things about the internet for me is that there are few easily accessible, publicly available archives of toys--even for modern toys. I've had to use Amazon reviews and Ebay listings and broken online stores to decipher publication years. With this in mind I decided to do a write up and provide clearer pictures of the toys that I have (I'll take hi res pics in natural lighting too someday). Archives are important to me and the internet kinda sucks for it, I say as someone who started this blog for that purpose. If Tumblr goes down, so does everything I've posted here. As an artist who works primarily digitally, one of the scariest things is knowing that I'm laboring over an ephemeral body of work. It's just not going to exist for very long unless I print it out on archival materials. Data is not the same as a physical object. My Firffels have survived for 39 years but the digital art I draw every day is unlikely to last past 10 years because websites die and files get deleted.

I bought the Firffels from my thrift store thinking I'd resell them. I'm low income so I sell many of the things I thrift. I prefer to buy the older toys or the ones that need cleaning because it makes me feel better about being a reseller (I don't want to take away options from low income kids in my area, ya know?). But I'm putting in the labor to freshen them up and I'm putting in the effort to make unavailable toys available again, at least for one person. And I don't have a whole lot of shelf space to display the toys in my collection...but for now I think I'll keep them.

[puckpocketed]

tag game! pick a song for each letter of your url and tag that many people (if you can)

thank u for the boop @maxkeplers <3 i WILL be flexing my listening range and overdoing the assignment (song blurbs!!!). additionally, all songs link to youtube + collected playlist at the end if anyone would like to listen to them all in one place :3

P - Perfect Blue by Macross 82-99. I used to stream my art years ago and one of my viewers linked some Macross, and I’ve never looked back. this is one of my faves from their discography. I hope that guy is doing okay!!

U - Uh Huh by TrippyThaKid. hehehe weed song . i confess this one’s on my ranked valorant hype playlist for when i need to Lock In <- duelist main (derogatory). the music video by itself is such a wonderful experience but also his flow is bizarrely sick and compelling to me <3

C - Cold Turkey by The Happy Fits. Everyone moved on from 2010s british alt rock but i’m still there and so are THF. theyre still releasing this type of stuff in the year of our lord!! there’s whimsy to them… they have a whistle only section in this song… u will have to pry this music from my cold dead fins…!!!!!!

K - Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer. i love rom coms so bad, and every time i listen to this song i am filled with the sweetest nostalgia <3 if you haven’t seen How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. please. it’s a batshit film about two deeply damaged people trying to play relationship chicken whilst torturing each other in an effort to get the other person to leave them. they simply do NOT make films like this anymore !!!

P - Pressure by Abhi The Nomad. he’s an Indian hip hop artist, he raps and sings and has this habit of slotting these gorgeous little electric guitar solos into his songs. there’s a pop twist to his music, and he collabs far and wide. this song is slow and buttery smooth and such a pleasure to listen to.

O - Oh Yeah! by Green Day. they’re still making music and it still fucking slaps and i will nevaaa move past my based punk KINGS.

C - Chocolate by Day6. alright so has anyone ever run into that problem of finding a song from an artist/band and it vibes with you hard and brings you joy and you go to check out their other music and it turns out the song you liked was some experimental B-side track and none of their other stuff is like that. well. this was me with this song except this song was a thing they wrote for the OST of a kdrama. i wish i was joking. </3

K - Karma Bonfire by Diablo Swing Orchestra. ill be real. this is theatre kid music. but its somehow not attached to a musical. it’s also got jazz and swing elements. yeah idk either.

E - Escape by Asta. just one of my faves. nothing smart to say i just love this.

T - The Dreamer by The Vaccines. this is not the first song from this album i’ve recommended. this is my album of the year. it’s about remembering a relationship, the end of it, the never-end of it. my favourite lyrics in this song are from the chorus, “I know the night has got two faces, there’s one that runs and one that chases, but if I caught you in between, then I would wait for you in dreams.”

E - Eternal Groove by Android52. what it says on the tin. i could listen to this on loop for hours. i have done so!

D - Dark Matter by Steve Vai. to round out our instrumental theme… Can we have him on a Hades 2 music dlc. pleek. steve vai i love uou <3 he writes music i would blast if i was condemned to running solo tank on a raid you know what i mean??

Here’s the whole thing on youtube in a handy playlist as promised! it’s not very coherent in terms of genre or vibes at all so caveat emptor BIGLY

tagging: @oensible <- if u find a way to include weezer i would simply perish from laughter. @em-ptynet @sevennone @brocksfaber @chownkie @mkaugust @larsnicklas @wheelsnipecelebrini as always no pressure to play!! and if you see this and would like to join in, consider yourself tagged 🫵💯🔥🔥🔥

[aroceu]

some thoughts on leaving a social media website...again

as of 10/16/2024, twitter has announced its intention to implement a new feature into the platform: instead of blocking allowing you to block certain accounts from viewing your profile if it's public, it now just... doesn't do that anymore. it only limits interaction. though this certainly isn't a surprise with musk's twitter rollouts since 2021—when i first saw people start to trickle out—this, in particular, breaks a lot of users boundaries and has prompted many to private their accounts and move to bluesky.

i'm in support of this, btw—the ceo of bsky is strongly opposed to ever running any sort of ads on the site ("won't enshittify the network with ads"), doesn't use any blockchain technology, and has a culture where supplying alt text on images is the norm. your main timeline is in reverse-chronological order (like intended), but there are other separate options to create a custom algorithmic feed for certain types of content, only if you wish to. though bsky is a work in progress, i have high hopes for what it can be in the future: that is, usable, practical, and more reminiscent of what it was like when twitter first started, than how twitter currently is.

but despite my love for bluesky, i won't spend too much time glazing yet another microblogging platform. instead, i'm here to ponder the concept of social media: why we have it, why we use it, and why these moves happen in the first place. people have been trickling in and out of twitter ever since the richest and evilest man in the world took possession of it; especially in a fandom sense, there's been a back and forth between twitter and tumblr due to tumblr's former porn ban, as well. we all have principles and morals that guide the decisions we make, including what websites we decide to use. they speak to a pattern of not only our culture as people at any given time—but how these platforms have the power to implement these changes whenever they want. and we, as individuals, must make decisions both based on those principles, but also our desires to fit in.

i'll start off by saying this—eventually i'm going to start talking about what social media means for creatives. but there is in fact an extremely well-written article about this already that goes into more detail. if you're more interested in that, let me direct you there first: R U AN ARTIST ON SOCIAL MEDIA??? by omoulo

with that out of the way, let's talk about me, shall we?

i got onto the internet through geocities—crazy sentence to say now after all these years. of course, i played neopets and flash games like many other kids, but that was mostly through knowing those websites and urls existed, and preserving them in my mind so i could return to them for some mindless minutes of entertainment later. geocities was my first introduction to the creative, user-designed web, so to speak. instead of being a number to interact with a thing that someone else has made—a flash game, a youtube video, a website where you can collect fictional pets—the idea of geocities to me at the time was this idea of participating on the internet. being a part of it. writing whatever i wanted and posting it. sharing the link with others. having others find it and read it too—a part of me, my method of creative self-expression, whatever i desired to write and post on the less than permanent internet.

my best friend at the time was the one who needled me into creating accounts—first an email address, then an AIM, then a myspace, then an IMVU, so on and so forth. i wasn't going out looking for these, and though i'd heard of them before or seen ads of some of these sites, i wasn't interested in actually being on these platforms and making these accounts until my friend told me that i should. call me a people pleaser or easily influenced or whatever; i was 12. but it was through this link sharing, this naivety and ignorance of the vastness of the internet, that allowed me to be fascinated with the world wide web in the first place.

i usually cite quizilla as my first "fandom" website, because it was—but it wasn't because i found it by accident. it wasn't that i googled it or looked for a personality test and stumbled upon it. no, it's because i was chatting with a friend on AIM, and she had found some crazy chain letter story and shared it to me for how absurd it was, and sent me the link. it was on quizilla.

literally the moment i clicked that link changed my life forever. even though i read the crazy story, i also clicked on the username of the person who posted it, out of curiosity. that person had jonas brothers fanfics on their quizilla profile, of all things, which led me into an obsession with the jonas brothers in the 2 years that followed. through that link—that account—that platform—i got a lot more interested in writing, webdesign, and what it meant to be on the internet, not just as a numbered participant, but also as someone with an imagination, who finds fulfillment in creative expression. i wrote the longest thing i'd ever written in that time (30k of a self-insert, but we won't go into that), began to experiment with css and website design, and participated, sharing stuff that i thought was interesting or fun, worth 5 minutes of anyone's time.

the internet wasn't just about being a place where my presence didn't matter anymore—it became a medium of self-expression. more than that, it became a place where i could meet and socialize with people, especially as i developed avpd in my high school years.

the internet wasn't always like this. right now, when we talk about the internet, we don't talk about the random websites we find, the links we stumble upon. (i have an entire website dedicated to those for me, though.) the games we spend hours playing, by ourselves, without interacting with others. random personality tests, or just simply the news. we talk about google, but in the same way we talk about facebook, or even twitter. it's a verb; it's omnipresent; it exists within the context of our internet culture, but becomes meaningless outside of it. it's not to say it doesn't have meaning—but that the language we use represents our relationship with it, this assumed normalcy. this assumed dependence.

i bring up my own history because as young as i feel compared to many of my older internet friends, and how late to the game i always felt—i was there. i was there on the internet before twitter (since 2009), tumblr (since 2010), facebook (i lied about my age), bluesky now, and whatever will come in the future. i was there when people were saying that the internet was still being written; when websites were made with tables (eugh); when email was the primary way to connect with others, because irc was for nerds and nothing else had been invented yet.

i'm a big advocate for not looking at the past with rose colored glasses and getting caught up in nostalgia and greener grass. i believe that technology is not inherently harmful or bad—it creates more options for accessibility, especially for those who are disabled. and even outside of that, it allows us to learn about more people, communicate with others with a few keystrokes, and form relationships that we otherwise would never get to have. i don't want this to seem like i'm saying "man remember how good the internet used to be?" because i'm not—i believe that as things change, there are benefits as much as there are hindrances.

of course, it bears saying that the primary hindrance—of current twitter, of many platforms over the years, and the internet with increasing recency—is corporations. big money interests. capitalism.

it's why we get so tired of ads—it's why ads exist in the first place. it's why these social media platforms that used to feel like they were made by the same people who would use them (livejournal, youtube, twitter) have suddenly become these soulless impersonal websites. it becomes more obvious that they want you to use them more because they sell you on exclusivity and visual minimalism, rather than because that's where your friends are, and you have this unique way to express yourself.

in fact, i'll say this: the first time i learned about facebook when i was too young to use it, i was not impressed. i had a myspace at the time that i had dolled up to make pretty with sparkly gifs and obnoxious colors and weird fonts. when i saw how boring and samey everyone's facebook profile page was, i was like, what's the point? sure i could talk to my classmates and random other people in my life that i didn't really care about, but what about making myself different from others? what about my creative expression? what about having an account that makes me look unique, instead of blending in with everyone else?

and so here i am nearly two decades later pondering about the use of social media, our individuality as well as our collective interests, and how the internet has changed so much, both in itself and how it affects us, in that time.

i'm here because i want to talk to my friends and meet new people with common interests and get excited about them. i don't want to feel left out, but that's a normal experience—outside of fomo, it is in our core to connect with others. it's the whole meaning of everything. it's why i even made an email in the first place, in my basement with my best friend, secretly setting up a yahoo account because she wanted another way to talk to me, and i wanted another way to talk to her. it's why people have been leaving twitter little by little for another site—the same site as many others, because that's where all their friends are. whether it's bsky or mastodon or misskey or just back here on tumblr, we're here not just because of our desire for community, but even as simple as our desire for a bond, a relationship with another human being. to me, that is how "social media" is defined—a medium through which we socialize because of this innate desire.

and yet, of course the enshittification and corporatification makes this more difficult for us, in ways more than one. because the fact is that as we (as people) became better at using the internet, finished writing it, and understood it—psychologically and sociologically—so did the corporations. or advertisers, you take your pick. we, the everypeople who use the internet as means to fulfill our social and other self-indulgent desires, are not the only people here. as with many things else in the world, the internet turned from an unpredictable but fun mess of us figuring shit out as we went along, into a product designed to keep us using it and engaging with it more, so some rich people can put even more money into their pockets. it's why twitter is the way it is now; even why tumblr is the way it is. why social media has become about "content creation" and "small businesses." why it feels like, every day, we see more ads and AI generated bullshit, as a little bit of the original soul of the internet gets sucked away day by day.

but even there, i don't want to come across as cynical or world-weary. though i believe this to be true, i don't think it says anything about our lack of agency, or our lack of innate humanity. instead, i believe that this means, at least on the individual level, that we should think more about not only what we're doing on the internet, but why we're doing it. how we're doing it. are we here because we're addicted? or is there something we're getting out of it? sure, many websites now have more addictive UI and algorithms that tell the receptors of our brain to return to them because we were getting so much dopamine from them earlier. but i also wouldn't necessarily argue that the only solution to this is to, then, go offline.

i have many friends who've elected to depart social media but stay online—friends who i met through website building, to be fair, but that's one of my main points. i already wrote a manifesto on my love letter to the personal website; but the tl;dr is this:

the internet is not evil, it is not good, it is just a form. if we desire to express ourselves and socialize with others in this space, it does not have to be just about social media, and creating a new account on a new website every time people move. instead, we have personhood—we have individuality, we have agency. we have the ability to build our own websites, no matter how shitty or times new roman comic sansy or color clashy or sometimes inaccessible they can be. regardless of all these seeming impractical setbacks though, it does not absolve us of that ability to do whatever we want on the internet. and it also bears saying that websites, both the personal and impersonal, can change over time, for better or worse.

i am a huge proponent for people making their own personal websites. it makes me so so happy that neocities is gaining popularity, mostly because i love seeing people try their own hand at making a website for themselves, a new form of self-expression. i won't go into too much detail on this because i've already said everything i want to say about it (see above), but if you take away anything from this post, let it be this: consider making a personal website, a corner of the internet, for yourself, by yourself. not just because you want people to engage with it, or because you want to curate to an algorithm or an artistic/fannish trend. not because you want the things you make to gain traction, to get bigger numbers without considering the people behind those numbers, as soon as possible.

do it because you want to. because you have to. because you think it's cool, and because it's you. people may find it and judge it; but they may like it as well. the more unique and authentic and weird we are with each other, the more we are able to appreciate each other for who we really are. the internet is one of many places we can do this.

i don't really see these forms of self-expression separate from social media, but i do see social media separate from it. to me, social media is a vehicle to strengthen those connections, those relationships, much like DMs and IRCs; but it is not the be-all, end all of the internet. it's only a small part of it. not everything is permanent on the internet; but everything that ever has been online is a microcosm of the human experience, whether it's an old cloudflare site or twitter dot com in 2010.

our experiences on the internet are not about corporate interests. it's about using limewire to download pirate music, sharing random links we find, building a design that may not be practical or universally appealing but still represents a form of individuality. when i think of how the internet has grown, i don't think about what it means for companies or advertisers or what meetings must go on to get people like me to keep using it—i think about remembering the difference between addicting games dot com and addicted games dot com, clicking links on websites to find even more websites, sitting at the family computer and deciding if i wanted to spend hours on neopets or that one willy wonka flash game i grinded like several hours on one night when i was 7. i think about what it's always meant to me, because the internet was not always a centralized place where i was going on the same website every day. the rise of internet centralization to the point that it's become expected, the norm, the primary way any of us to be online, is not inherently a bad thing—but i wouldn't say it's a universal good, either, when the internet is a wide and vast space, and can be so much more than that.

because the one thing that remains throughout the years is our agency and choice. we still have the ability to make the internet what we want it to be, or at least a corner of it, something separate from the corporations, the enshittification, economically researched user interfaces and experiences, the advertisements, the "like and share so the algorithm boosts me more." there's still a point to it all without the money, and without twitter. and it's both our desire for creativity and self-expression, as well as our intrinsic bonds with each other. despite it all, it's about our humanity.

as the internet continues to grow, so do we. nevertheless, the importance of our humanity, and retaining it, will remain. oftentimes it is up to us to remind ourselves of that.

-

links here, for access:

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Says She Won’t ‘Enshittify the Network With Ads’

R U AN ARTIST ON SOCIAL MEDIA??? by omoulo

links @ kingdra.net (my links, like bookmarks)

A manifesto of sorts; or, my love letter to the personal website by me

[nordsea-horizons]

A “short” acnh guide to keeping resident services in the tent and still being able to terraform and waterscape the island!🌻✨

im saying short bc its probably not gonna be as detailed as watching a video, so i’ll link to two of those as well right here - by boiscrossing and ninatries on youtube.

you need 2 switches to do this and they both need to have acnh on them! also if you dont already have a full played-on island on one of the switches, this whole thing is gonna take an even longer time tbh bc thats kinda needed..

On the first switch that already has an island:

1. create a second character on your main switch island🍃 it has to be a second character btw it cant be the resident rep

2. upgrade that new character so they have a house(any size) and keep grinding for nookmiles!!! this part is kinda boring but honestly the more you do it the more you get to enjoy bc its mostly not gonna be an option on the new island..

3. get the terraforming and waterscaping, as well as anything else you might want from the nookmiles shop! you can also fill up your house/inventory with stuff bc you get to bring all that as well

4. when you are ready to move, go to the start menu and press the minus button(settings) and talk to tom nook, get ready to tell him you want to “move to a new island” and start the process

On the second switch with no island🏝️:

1. open up the start screen for a brand new island! instead of saying that you are new, you pick the option “i’m moving” when it becomes available, and then the game tells you in detail how to move on! and you can actually reroll islands, as long as the directions you get on the first island are over with👀

2. play the first day like you normally would on any new island, dont panic about nothing showing up, you gotta get to the “synched up with real time” place before you get all the things from your pockets and tom nook will tell you that they gotta rebuild your house or something lol i dont remember exactly but something like that

3. He gives you your little phone and thats all you need! You can get straight to filling up rivers and moving cliffs🎉

Now - how to keep resident services from upgrading? This is very easy! you just cant get anymore new villagers! sad but easy to remember! i mean maybe you could get one or even two out of the next 3 available(im not sure, i personally am just not gonna risk it) but you just cant finish that part of the early gameplay if you want the tent! you can get the shops and the museum tho if you want to! but yea otherwise its a 3 resident island(yourself included) so i would consider being very happy with the two starters you get🫶🏻⛺️

[felassan]

Last week Mark Darrah did a Q&A video on his YouTube channel Mark Darrah on Games, called "15K Subs - Q&A". In case it's useful to anyone e.g. for accessibility reasons, here are some notes. The full video can be watched here [<- source link].

(Some of the questions answered were leftover from his previous Q&A video in this series from some time ago, during which time he had left BioWare and had not yet started his consultant work with BioWare.)

---

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, the DA:D development era at BioWare & related topics

"I'm still consulting with BioWare."

Q. Were there any plans to make Dragon Age games in other genres, like an MMO? A. "Not really. What actually happened was during Joplin development, as we were being squeezed and people were being stolen onto other projects like Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, I actually put a Twitter poll up at one point, just sort've gauging the interest. There was never any people against it, it was really nothing more than that, just to see what the appetite was for something like that. But no development was ever done." Q. Are you looking forward to playing Dragon Age: Dreadwolf? A. "I mean, I'm not really completely on the outside anymore. I'm working with BioWare as a consultant. So when this question was originally asked I was on the outside. Yeah, I mean, that was a pretty interesting thing to look forward to, I know a lot more now than I did then. So my answer I guess is not really relevant anymore, but at the time, yeah, I would say so."

Q. At this point would it be better for the Dragon Age IP to be sold off and taken by another studio such as Larian? A. "I don't think, first of all that's never gonna happen. EA doesn't really sell off IPs. I think that it's in a good place, it's got support from EA and it's moving towards its end." [meaning Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is nearing the end of its development cycle and moving towards ship]

Q. What happened internally at BioWare, [someone whose name was redacted by Mark for the video] started becoming more and more bigoted, and why does he have a beef with Mark? A. "So I'm not gonna talk about who this was, but I'll just answer the question. The reason why there's a specific beef with me is because I was the one tasked with responding to some of the drama that was spinning up, once it crossed the line where EA felt something needed to be done. I did a video about why it's sometimes the right answer to be quiet and not to respond to something, in this particular case EA decided that things had gotten sufficiently out of hand and something needed to be done. I was the one who had the very legally-approved language and was the one that was, as a result, responding to that."

Q. [a question regarding Dragon Age extended universe/secondary material, like the comics and novels] A. "At BioWare, there is a business development group who is responsible for looking for this kind of thing. Usually, well I guess always, there is a requirement of feedback, some sort of feedback loop. Depending on the exact property that might be everything from 'you will do exactly what we say and you're just work for hire' up to 'you have a lot of creative control and BioWare maintains some degree of veto power'. Typically, with BioWare, they're looking for deals where the cost is being carried by the people making the product, as opposed to by BioWare. This is not the case with all companies. The advantage of the studio paying for it is that you make more money, but you carry more risk, so BioWare goes with the more conservative way, where they're not spending as much, or anything usually, but they give away more profit on the back end."

Q. How has it been working on Dragon Age again? Did you miss it? A. "I don't know that I missed it when I wasn't working on it. It was interesting to be on the outside. It's very strange being back in the, on the inside again, because my role is very different. I'm not the Executive Producer, I don't have that direct managerial role, I don't have direct, I don't really have any hard power whatsoever on the project anymore, so that's definitely different."

Q. What's the best piece of advice you would give the Dragon Age/Dragon Age: Dreadwolf team if asked? A. "I guess this question, which was from before, isn't as relevant, I've given them all that advice at this point."

"Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will be only on next gen consoles and PC, as far as I'm aware." [i.e., PS5 not PS4, Xbox Series X not XBone etc].

Q. Is this [referring to Dragon Age: Dreadwolf] a new beginning for Dragon Age? A. "Dragon Age is a weird franchise. It has had to reinvent itself every single time because of internal corporate pressures. This, like Dragon Age: Inquisition, like Dragon Age II, will be different from the games that came before it. I think that's fine. It's kind of become part of the DNA of the franchise at this point."

Q. What made you want to reach out to BioWare to consult on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf? A. "So I feel like that's been somewhat over-reported. So I have been doing consulting work since, in 2022, was when I started doing it. I was reaching out to different people. I knew where BioWare was when I first reached out to them. At the time they said 'no', and then I was like 'alright, fine' and I started working with some other people, and then things changed at BioWare and then they came and reached out to me when their situation was a bit different. So, I guess the short answer is money. The long answer was, I mean I have contacts there, I knew I could help them out, and I'm certainly interested in Dragon Age being the best game that it can be."

Q. How long is alpha to beta to release in general terms? A. "Almost unanswerable. It is incredibly dependent upon - the time from alpha to beta, well first of all there's lots of different definitions of these different phases, but the time from alpha to beta is the time of getting the content finished, and then from beta to release is more about getting your bugs fixed. Some games have thousands of bugs, some games have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of bugs, so these times can be highly dependent upon the game and the genre. If you're making something that's a competitive game that really needs a lot of tuning, then you want a lot of time in that beta period, ideally to get the game in front of people who're gonna play it, to really dial those knobs in as best you can."

Q. Why does Frostbite struggle with animation? A. "I actually feel like it's actually doing fine with animation. I think it's a content problem, not an engine problem, when it comes to animation in Frostbite. I think what you're seeing is what is being built. Now, that being said, Frostbite now uses ANT, which is the animation system built for sports, so it is different."

"I did watch Dragon Age: Absolution. I actually really liked Absolution. I'm not sure how enjoyable it would be for a non-Dragon Age person, because I'm not a non-Dragon Age person, but as a Dragon Age person I really liked it, I thought it was well-made, I thought it did something interesting with the IP."

Q. Have you added any new gameplay mechanics that you can talk about? [unclear if question was regarding DA:D or the DA games in general] A. "Not anything that I really remember, exactly, because, you know, it's a collaborative, for a AAA game it's a collaborative exercise, at least the way that I ran the project, so I wouldn't consider that anything that was in the games that I led was introduced by me, they would have been introduced by the team, or pushed for, or advocated for by people other than me, for the most part."

"In one of my videos, I said that Dragon Age: Origins went through lots of shifts in development. Yeah, Dragon Age: Origins was multiplayer two different times before it actually ended up shipping. Also, it was originally being built on the Neverwinter Engine, it shifted engines in the middle, so it had some big shifts. The difference being that, you know, back in the early 2000s, there wasn't as much scrutiny on development, there wasn't as wide of a pipeline for rumors as there is now."

Q. Is there going to be any new external/secondary media about Dragon Age? A. "I actually don't know the answer to that, that's not a room that I am in anymore, so that would be a question to ask BioWare."

Q. Where was this filmed? [The next DRAGON AGE: Behind the scenes at BioWare] How does it hold up comparing to what was announced at The Game Awards? A. "I think this is the video, the Dragon Age video that was filmed at a park in Edmonton. I think it was Whitemud Park, if it's the video I am thinking of. How does it hold up? I mean, it doesn't show as much, it's showing a little bit of content, it holds up fine."

Q. How difficult or realistic is it to have previous protagonists in a sequel game? Like Hawke in Dragon Age: Inquisition or letters from the Warden?  A. "It can, for Dragon Age, or any game that has a, or any game that has character creation, it is extra work, because you have kinda two choices. You either have to move to sort've default marketing protagonist. Well I guess you have three choices. Default marketing protagonist, or you have to put character creation right in the middle of the game flow, to allow people to create their character, or you have to have some way to move your protagonist appearance from game to game to game. Which, it would be the ideal solution, but that requires that your character creation remains relatively constantly from game to game. Which typically isn't actually the case."

Q. Why did EA cut BioWare's budget? A. "I assume that's to do with the layoffs. I do not have an answer to that question, but I put it in here anyway, so, there you go."

Q. Have you acquired new knowledge you can use for yourself consulting at BioWare? A. "It's actually been really useful, for me, so as a story-shaper, someone who develops my storytelling through the interaction with people, it's been useful for a lot of my concepts and philosophy, to bounce it off of people, and to be able to come back to things that I've thought about and even written about, even made videos about, and re-examine some of that. So absolutely, working with people has, for my kind of storytelling, has been helpful for me understanding the things I already believe."

Q. Any idea what the Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Collector's Edition will entail, or how do you decide what goes in them? A. "I have no idea, I guess they'll announce it probably when they put pre-orders up. When you're doing a Collector's Edition, when you're doing a Digital Deluxe, any of those things, it's all about perceived value. So it's all about, how much more do we want to charge for this thing? How do we get that much stuff in the box so that it's worth it? Not worth it for everyone, because otherwise, that would just be the game, but worth it for some degree of people. Typically, for physical Collector's Editions, that comes with a bunch of little things and one big thing. Dragon Age: Inquisition went a different way and it gets its value through a ton of little things like a map, little things you put on the map, and a lockpicking set, and a whole bunch of little things, but it's all about getting over that threshold of this being worth it to some percentage of your audience."

Q. Do you have hope that Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will be good? A. "Absolutely, that's why I'm working with them."

Q. Do you think it's possible for EA to recover in the eyes of BioWare fans? A. "I'm not sure that it's possible for any multi-billion dollar publicly traded company to ever have a really great public perception. I think it's something that they should care about, but I think they would be better served by focusing on strengthening the perception of the individual studios. Let EA be the evil corporate overlord and then make the perception of the studios that they own as strong as possible. That would be the way that I would go."

Q. If you could go back and change Dragon Age lore, what would you change? A. "There was some stuff in the early Dragon Age: Origins [days] which was very much trying to address some of the tropey, problematic bits of magic from D&D, so teleportation, things that. I think we went a little too hard there, and I think leaving that door a little bit more open would be better. The other thing that I think that Dragon Age has been dealing with, but is sort've a problem is, the source of magic. So in typical vanilla D&D magic kind've comes from a million different places, so it kinda doesn't matter. In some other settings, magic comes from a single place, it comes from the astral plane or it comes from this crystal that people dig up and grind up and use to do magic. In Dragon Age you kind've have it coming from a couple of different places, but too few to be everywhere, and therefore it doesn't matter, but too many for it to be one. So you end up with this weird thing of like, are undead caused by the Blight, is lyrium a source of magic? Like, there's just a few too many. And so Dragon Age has been kind've collapsing that probability space down. If I had a time machine, I'd probably just collapse that probability space down in the first place, not necessarily put it in the games, but at least know where that space collapsed." Q. Aren't the only sources of magic Blight, blood or Fade? A. "It isn't, because you've got Blight, blood, Fade - well, okay, yes - lyrium is [Titan] blood now because that was Dragon Age collapsing the probability space. That's what I mean by Dragon Age is collapsing the probability space. It didn't used to be. I don't know if that was always the plan for lyrium or not. I don't think so, I think that was - yeah, no, I think there are Titans, Titans have always been in the plan, but I don't know that lyrium was always - I could be wrong, I could be misremembering."

Q. Are games taking longer to come out now, or is it just Dragon Age and Mass Effect that this has happened to? Why? A. "No, games are taking longer. The short answer actually has a lot to do with graphical fidelity, it's just the assets take longer to make. There are more things, like you didn't have as many steps in creating a piece of art in 1998 as you do now, you didn't have even the concept of materials or shaders or any of these things, so now you have all of these additional steps along the way. It will be interesting to see if, as, some of these techniques, you know, PBM and photogrammetry and these other things become more commonplace, if some of those costs come down. It hasn't happened yet, it actually just kept going up and up and up, you just changed the work that's being done, but that might be the end-state, where maybe costs actually start to go down again. I haven't seen it yet though."

Q. Can you tell us more about Sandal or do we have to wait until Dragon Age: Dreadwolf? A. "No, Sandal is a character whose future will be decided by BioWare." Q. Can I assume that Sandal will be in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf? A. "I wouldn't make that assumption."

Q. What did you miss most about working in AAA and how does it feel being back in a different position? A. "Like I said before, it's weird, because I am, my desk, the desk, if I go into the office the desk I actually sit at is the same desk I had before, but my position is very different. I'm not doing salaries, I'm not doing people management, I'm not doing reviews, but also I don't have final say on anything, I have no hard power in my position, it's just a consulting position, so it's pretty different. I don't know that I miss anything in particular about AAA, I mean there's a power in the giant team that you just don't see in the indie space, but there's an agility that you just don't see in AAA in the indie space, so I think there's pros and cons for both sides."

Q. Any thoughts on the idea that Mass Effect and Dragon Age have become too similar? A. "I would, so I did a very sarcastic presentation back in, probably 2017. They've always been really similar. They are BioWare games with a party, they've always been incredibly similar, so I don't think it's a problem, I think that they have their own distinct characters, they stand apart from each other. In the same way that I wouldn't say that Fallout and Elder Scrolls are too similar, but they sure are both Bethesda games, so I don't think there's a problem there at all."

Q. ​Do you have an opinion to share on why there's been no marketing yet for Dreadwolf? A. "I assume that means 'why hasn't there been marketing yet for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. I mean, there has, but nothing recently. The policy for much of AAA has become very much shorter, louder marketing campaigns. I think that there is a lot of power in that. I think that can be a very powerful way to go. Dragon Age obviously carries the fact that we did an announcement trailer back in 2018, but I think that's what's happening."

Q. Do you think it's possible for BioWare to split from EA? A. "No. EA doesn't let things go, so no. Could everyone leave and start their own studio? Sure, but BioWare will remain part of EA as far as I can tell. That's not how EA thinks."

Q. Should Dragon Age have more or fewer jump-scares in it? A. "I mean it doesn't have that many jump-scares, so... more!"

Q. Why did you decide to rejoin BioWare? A. "Like I said, I was consulting. I reached out to them, to look at the possibility of helping them out with some things. They said no, then some time went by and then they contacted me and said 'oh, actually yes', so, short answer is because it was what I was doing at the time. Longer answer is, I mean, definitely I am interested in Dragon Age being the best game it's capable of being."

Q. Do you feel BioWare could have done more to nurture the fanbase between releases, other than comics and novels? A. "Yeah, I do actually wish that there was an ecosystem to make little games, so, you know, you make the little, you make Final Fantasy Tactics, you make Dragon Age Tactics. You make mobile title - I mean there was the mobile game, the Dragon Age mobile game [Heroes of Dragon Age], that did really well, but yeah, I think there is an opportunity there. That is not the way that development works really at EA. It would've had to have been done by a different part of EA, and, so, yep. [shrug]"

Q. What do you feel about the comments that BioWare is becoming less writer-oriented? A. "I don't know that that is true. Definitely it went through a period of trying to focus more on different kinds of gameplay, like Anthem is definitely a game driven by its gameplay as opposed to by its story. I guess we'll see with Bowie what the actual truth is going to be, but I don't think that's what's happening."

Q. Is the next Mass Effect still in development? A. "Yep."

Q. Will Dragon Age go open-world again? A. "I don't know, I mean I guess that's always a possibility."

"I'm not going to comment on any things that have changed in BioWare's staffing, because, one, I found out at the same time as everybody else did, so I have no information, and two, I'm working with them, so I'm not going to give my opinion on that, so." "I'm not gonna comment on any layoff stuff."

Q. Would it be possible to give us the option to turn off the 'screen shake' effects after a critical or melee hit in Dragon Age games? A. "Yeah, I mean you do see that as an accessibility option in a lot of games now, so, hopefully."

Q. ​Mass Effect and Dragon Age have thousands of years in each of their respective lore/worlds, do you think there's a space for smaller and/or externally produced experiences that explore it more? A. "I do think there is an opportunity for that, I mean that's kind've where the comics and Dragon Age: Absolution and things like that have lived. You do have to figure out to control the IP somehow. Now you could go, like with KOTOR, where you just throw something back into the past far enough. Like go wayyy back and talk about 'where the Qunari came from' or something, but, I do think there's an opportunity there with some thinking. Now, will that happen? I don't expect so because that would require dev resources that don't really exist, or going to an external studio, which I don't think EA is gonna be particularly interested in doing."

"Yeah, I know. [the title] 'Dreadwolf' did ruin the whole vowel thing. Like, I'm also mad about that."

Q. Has there ever been discussion about adding more 'drama' to BioWare romances? I loved the conflict with Liara in Mass Effect 2 if you had romanced another character. A. "I'm sure that's a conversation that's happened somewhere. Often the characters are, each character is written by a different writer, so when they interact that can become a little bit more complicated, but yeah, there's certainly interesting things to be potentially done there."

Q. How involved are you as a Creative Lead on marketing titles? Do you have input into the creation of trailers? A. "Yes, usually there's some degree of input in trailers, but at EA they're usually done by a central group, so it's influence more than necessarily even veto. Probably the Executive Producer has veto power if necessary, but not direct creative control, they're done by a different group."

"I won't be working on [his game, High Tea on the High Seas] until my contract with BioWare is over, I expect."

"I love the modding community. We don't really support them very much, but I think there's a lot of power there for sure."

Q. Do you think BioWare should make non-linear games like Baldur's Gate 3 or stick with what they have always done before? A. "I think that there is, BioWare used to do more 'campfires in the dark', so more, like, 'I know you got here, but I don't know how', and I think that we should return to that more, at least for the side content. I think that the follower content is where BioWare's strength remains and will remain, and I think that deserves to be done in whatever way fits the storytelling that we're trying to do."

Q. Do you think the Dragon Age series should have more musical numbers in the game? A. "Yes I do."

Q. Is there any animosity between BioWare teams? A. "There has been, in the past. I don't think there is now, but there has been in the past, for sure."

Q. Do you regret allowing the player to kill certain characters? How much does that complicate future titles? A. "It makes future titles really complicated. In Dragon Age: Inquisition trying to find a Warden was like, basically they all could be dead, that's why you end up with mustache, Stroud, because literally everyone else could be dead. I don't regret it though, I think it's good to do that kind of thing when you can, it adds extra impact. You just have to live with the consequences of it."

Q. ​Is there room when AAA games are being developed for smaller projects to get made in the same studio? A. "It depends on the studio. Within BioWare, basically no, because the big AAA things just suck all the life out of it, but I've seen it work at some places where they have protection to keep the little things working and alive. So it's possible, but I don't think it could work at BioWare because I think they would just end up getting starved out by the bigger titles."

Q. ​Do you think BioWare is going to innovate, or are they trying to make something standard? A. "I mean all games contain innovation, so I'm not sure what your question is there, so yes."

Q. Was there any general reaction that BioWare had to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners?  A. "Nothing that I'm aware of. I'm sure that people watched it and had thoughts, but nothing that I've heard."

Q. Do you believe marketing campaigns that are started too early, with features that don't make it into the final product are deceptive and counter-productive because they create false expectations? A. "So I do believe in shorter, louder marketing campaigns in general. There are cases where ya gotta go out and ya gotta start building expectations for your title, but when you're out there for a long time, and you're showing gameplay, you're going to show things that end up getting cut. And I don't think, so, are they counterproductive? No, I don't think they are, because most people don't remember, they just remember they were excited, the thing they saw two years ago. They don't remember that it showed something that ended up getting cut. Do they cause a little bit of internet drama? Sure. But I don't think that they're counterproductive. I think in the cases where you have to do them, where you're repairing a relationship or you need to build up a new IP or whatever, they can be useful. Are you gonna get yourself into trouble? For sure, but, still worth doing."

"Shorter marketing campaigns are super effective, but there are cases where you need a longer conversation with your potential fans."

Q. Do you see Dragon Age as a franchises headed towards a linear end, or more of a world for stories that expand in different directions? A. "I don't know that we'll ever see Dragon Age kind've branch into a bunch of different things. So, like, will there be a main title that continues to basically be the line of canon, that's, probably, yes. That's probably what will happen. It is a franchise that is much more about its world than Mass Effect, and much less about its characters, so I get your point, but I don't think we'll ever see, like, several different parallel storylines going at once."

Q. Without a remake or remaster [of previous Dragon Age games] what would you pitch to onboard people in the Dragon Age franchise? A. "I mean hopefully Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is a perfectly reasonable on-boarding point. The games are designed to be able to be consumed starting with any of them, so hopefully that remains the case."

Q. Why did you not teach anyone at BioWare the true art of Twitter teasing and trolling before you left, because your skills was legendary, and it has not been the same since? A. "So I think, I only got to be on Twitter the way I was on Twitter because I was the Executive Producer, because I was basically the one who decided what information was public. Which is why you haven't seen me do that again."

Q. Does BioWare face any recruitment problems due to its primary location in Canada? A. "Primarily in Canada isn't a huge problem, primarily in Edmonton definitely is. We still live in this weird world of hybrid development so people are getting hired from all over the place right now, but yeah, Edmonton was always a problem for recruiting."

Q. When are you planning to talk about Anthem? [in YouTube videos] A. "Yeah, so we're like two years late on this. It is going to be after I finish working with BioWare at this point, to be perfectly honest. It's gonna be a while, but we'll get there, we will definitely talk about it."

Q. There was talk about a "five game plan" for Dragon Age at some point. Was that ever a thing? If so, is it still a thing? A. "There have been lots of plans, so, sure."

Q. Will you continue your career in development after Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, or was it just a one-time return? A. "Yeah, I'm working with another studio right now as well, this is not my only contract, for sure."

Q. Will you be involved with the next Mass Effect as a consultant? A. "That's not my decision to make."

Q. What is the main thing you would change about how management works in AAA studios? A. "I think that question is unanswerable because management at AAA studios is different everywhere. BioWare uses a matrix structure, so they have departments, but they also have individual leaders. I would like to see more project-driven, like, I've talked about [his] 'hourglass' [concept] in a video before, where driven more through the product, but that being said, I'm not sure long-term how that would be for the people, so I guess, short answer is depends on the studio."

"Dragon Age has had the misfortune of always being seen as being inaccessible to the average gamer, so there's been a lot of corporate pressure for it to become more mainstream. And so it's been kinda questing for a fantasy RPG that is very accessible. Hence why, and then, you know, hence that's Dragon Age II, and then you know Dragon Age II's reception pushed Dragon Age: Inquisition to change some more. Dragon Age has never really been allowed to be constant. And I think it would actually be very good for the franchise to be allowed to be constant for a while, get some 'true sequels' [true sequels here refers to a specific thing Mark has previously discussed on his channel] under the belt. So, yes, true sequels are awesome, I wish that there were more of them and I wish that Dragon Age was one of them."

Q. Are Dragon Age and Mass Effect regarded as big IPs by EA? A. "Sometimes. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There was a time when EA had the, I think it was called like, 'The Big 12', Mass Effect was on that list, Dragon Age was not, so, sometimes."

Q. Do you feel EA has historically had unrealistic profit expectations for the Dragon Age series? A. "I can't really get into the way that EA does its financials. I think that there are, sometimes, EA wishes everything was FIFA and obviously that's unrealistic."

Q. Will the critical success of Baldur's Gate 3 influence Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and other future projects? A. "It's a bit late to influence Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. Will it affect other future projects? I suspect so. I think it's gonna have a big impact on the RPG space, in some ways, for sure."

Q. Oh, is 'Bowie' the actual codename? Neat! A. "Yeah, Bowie is the actual codename. Did I just leak that? Well it is."

"The hardest part of a project for most people, myself included, is when you can't see the start anymore, and you can't yet see the finish, so with games with really long [development] cycles they can have a lot of trouble in the middle because you don't have the excitement of the beginning anymore and you can't see that it's finishing. So that can be hard. I think that is honestly one of the reasons why I think completion urgency has been on my mind so much, because this has always been kind of the case with BioWare with games, where you do a middle march in the dark, and so hopefully we find some solutions to that."

Q. When are you planning to talk about Anthem? A. "Yeah, so we're like two years late on this. It is going to be after I finish working with BioWare at this point, to be perfectly honest. It's gonna be a while, but we'll get there, we will definitely talk about it."

Q. ​Is it more accurate to think of the development cycle of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf as one game, or several? A. "Kind've something in-between. Definitely there have been moments where the game has pivoted to a large degree that it effectively has started over, but it hasn't always actually started over, and maybe that would've been better, so it's a little bit of both."

Q. BioWare office tour when? A. "I don't think that I can do that, but maybe BioWare will, you should ask them."

Q. Do you think the 'Frostbite is bad' narrative has been blown out of proportion? A. "Yes I do. I mean, yes it is not a perfect engine, no engine is. It definitely doesn't have the support levels that Unreal has, but it is a capable engine if you treat it with respect. The problem is, is that I think a lot of developers have not treated it with respect."

Q. Has BioWare ever thought about character DLC, for example the story DLC in Dragon Age: Inquisition was wonderful but much of what people enjoyed about the story DLC like Trespasser was reuniting with the companions. A. "Yeah, there actually, a bunch of stuff got discussed in earlier incarnations of Joplin and Morrison about doing, like, date packs, or very, very focused bits of DLC. I don't think that's still in the plan, but that was the plan at one point."

Q. What would you say to fans of Dragon Age that are worried about Dreadwolf right now? A. "I'd say keep paying attention, and hopefully BioWare give you confidence."

Q. ​Do Dragon Age: Dreadwolf leaks hurt any team morale? A. "It can, depends on the leak, it can, for sure."

[source and full video link]

Other notes from the video are collected under the cut due to length:

Q. What's something from Baldur's Gate 3 that may not be obvious to players that you've seen and said 'wow, Larian really figured something out that I wish we, BioWare, had been able to do'? A. "The big thing that Larian is doing that is missing from most other modern games is they are, Failbetter Games calls it 'campfires in the dark', which is, a lot of their plot scripting is based upon reacting to where you are in the moment as opposed to the path you use to get there. What that means is you can do almost anything, because the game doesn't really care how you did it. If you're Matt Mercer and you pile up a bunch of boxes and then teleport into a keep, and bypass the entire plot of getting in there, once you're in the keep, the keep is like, 'okay, you're here, I don't know how you did it, but whatever, we'll just go from here'. And, two things. One, it makes for incredibly robust scripting. The game is able to not fall apart as you do things that it wasn't expecting, because to some degree it's not really expecting things as much. Two, it's just letting you do much more as a result. Now you are giving up a certain degree of reactivity for that, but it's a very powerful tool that I think has been largely set aside by most other developers."

"I think there's definitely some interesting avenues to be taken with your party members having relationships with each other and interacting with each other. It gives them more life. It makes them more believable, that they're not just there waiting for you to come and talk to them and otherwise they're completely static. I think having them interact with each other definitely helps make them more believable."

"One of the, I would say, biggest mistakes of Dragon Age II is the fact that you always have to fight both final antagonists, regardless of which path you decided to do, and that's a decision coming from 'we don't want to waste our content. We want people to see this stuff we spent all this time on'. So some of it is about just being willing to commit to the concept of, there is content that people won't see. It helps, at least it helps me a little bit to remember that most people aren't gonna even finish your game, so arguably the end is a branch that most people won't see." "Honestly, to a large degree, let the creatives guide the way. If they're excited about writing it, if they're excited about scripting it, let them do it. Maybe you do a much simpler version [of the hypothetical cutscene being discussed, re: branching content and zots/resources], but you can still do it."

"I've never played a game of the Dragon Age TTRPG. How much was the Dragon Age team involved in the creation of the rules? Not at all. That was created entirely by Green Ronin. That was their system entirely and I think they've used it for other things since then. I like that it exists. I like that there is a, something that signals that Dragon Age is an RPG. Now I think I would be pushing to make a 5th edition supplement for Dragon Age, rather than a standalone RPG, but at the time, it was the right call, I'd say."

Q. As a producer, how have you mitigated decision fatigue for you or your team throughout closing a project? A. "So one of the reasons why I actually advocate so strongly for triage is that triage is a forum through which you can answer a lot of questions, especially at the end of a project, the closing parts of a project. You're not going to avoid making decisions. Finaling a project is making thousands of decisions in rapid succession, but you can take a little bit of the burden off individual team members by helping them with that decision-making, or when necessary making decisions yourself. Triage also lets you get a group of people together. Making decisions as a group, if you've worked together for a while, can be faster, can be less draining as well."

"I really believe in some degree of developing out loud. I don't know how practical Larian's style of, 'go into Early Access for three years and develop it with the community' is, for most studios, especially the publicly traded ones, but I do think some form of discourse with the community is incredibly valuable. Are we gonna see it? I hope so, but I do think that a lot of studios have developed a very secretive, private kind of stance. For good reason. It's a lot of work to keep this discourse running, to keep it from turning toxic, to keep the conversation going. I think it's worth it, but there's work there, for sure." [I think BioWare are a publicly traded company]

"I could be wrong, but I feel like we're starting to see DLC in singleplayer games be a thing of the past. It seems like it's fading away. I think we may not see very much [of this] three years from now. Will it then circle back around, come back around? I suspect it will, but that's what I'm noticing."

[on the game industry in general] "We've had a lot of layoffs this year, so definitely there's been volatility this year, but we have, as the industry has grown up, it has become more risk-averse, at least in the AAA space, it's become more expensive, things have taken longer, but you do see less, sort've pulsing - you see less AAA games shipping and then the entire studio being shut down. It does still happen, but I do think you are seeing less of it. I think it's partly just, becoming more and more a business."

"I do not think Mass Effect 3 will ever be open-sourced."

"If I was given a large budget and asked to create a 'Dragon Age Legendary Edition', I think if I was given that task, the big thing would be, I think for Dragon Age: Origins, you have only two choices. Once you start going in there, you gotta go so deep, that I would go remaster, and just pretty it up, and let all its warts be its warts. Maybe take another crack at the console controls, and like getting tactical camera on the consoles, if I could, but largely just prettying it up. Dragon Age II, I'd be really tempted to see if you could make Orsino an optional fight, otherwise, probably it's fine. Dragon Age: Inquisition, Hinterlands, actively pushing you out of the Hinterlands much more quickly, not cutting anything from it, but definitely making it more clear that there is a critical path, because the pacing is kind've off there. Reducing the amount of Influence you need to unlock things so you can get through it a little more quickly."

"Dragon Age: Origins was originally planned as one game with no sequels. That was the original plan, which is why the end of Dragon Age: Origins has weird branching epilogue structure, is because it was never intended to be a game with sequels. You're always going to, that's a lesson for the world, always assume that you're going to potentially have sequels. So, it's not that you should leave a bunch of threads, but don't make sequels incredibly difficult to have."

"Dragon Age: Inquisition basically only had eight spells because of console convenience, yeah, basically, it's designed around its console controls for sure."

Q. Was there ever a significance to the Amell [blood]line? Like the Warden and Champion being related? A. "I don't know the answer to that question. I mean, there are often things that are planned and then executed, but also things where convenient plot hooks are picked up and taken in different ways. So sometimes things are planned years in advance and sometimes they just look that way."

"As far as I can remember, Leliana's lyrium ghost was just a quantum thing. It's just because we wanted Leliana in Dragon Age: Inquisition and Leliana could be dead. I mean it kinda makes sense, because the only place that Leliana could die in Dragon Age: Origins was at the Urn, so, sure, the Urn did it."

Q. If Dragon Age: Origins ever gets a remake, would a lot more of the problematic elements be removed? A. "So that's, ultimately what it comes down to, I think if you did a Dragon Age: Origins remaster, you wouldn't, you would just put a fresh coat of paint on it and that would be what you would do. But if you start to do a remake, I think it becomes necessary to start to open up some of those conversations, and that could be a lot, which is honestly one of the things that probably is causing hesitation on doing a remaster, or a remake in that case."

Q. If a fan writes an incredibly good idea on a forum or social media, is BioWare banned from implementing their idea? A. "It depends. If it's just like, 'I put an idea out on a Twitter post', no, you're basically releasing that idea to the public by that kind of post, but we don't, but BioWare doesn't, so I guess no, I guess, short answer no, because in that case it's like, well you just gave that to everybody. If it's a bit of fan literature, nobody's reading it, it's just going in the garbage, so no, so in that case nobody knows what's in that piece of literature, so, no."

"Will Dragon Age: II and Dragon Age: Origins ever come to PS5? I don't know. I mean that would basically require a remaster of some sort."

Q. If you had free reign what's the coolest, most ridiculous thing you would put into a physical Collector's Edition of the game? A. "So, I did, on Anthem, I did push for this, and I wish we'd done it, I did push for doing, because we had the studio that made the physical versions of the Javelin suits for that one EA Play. I did push for a $55,000 Collector's Edition, where you got one of those suits. Obviously we didn't do that."

Q. Would you say it’s harder to import decisions in a series like Dragon Age or Mass Effect? I bet it’s harder when each game has a different protagonist. A. "Actually, so, Dragon Age is a little bit more self-healing because when you are playing a Mass Effect, so Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, a lot of what you care about is the interpersonal stuff. When you're moving from Dragon Age: Origins to Dragon Age II, you don't really care about any of that interpersonal stuff, because it's a different character. I mean, you care, but it doesn't, the game doesn't need to reflect it. So Mass Effect has to deal with a lot more minutiae than Dragon Age does. Dragon Age just needs to deal with the big stuff."

Q. Would the Eclipse Engine have been better for Dragon Age: Inquisition even if it had meant the scope of the game would have to be smaller? A. "No, the Eclipse Engine was about ready to die of old age."

Q. ​Do you remember what the major aesthetic influences on Anthem were? A. "So, this is what I remember. Cigarette butts and coffee cups, so like, the abyss. No wheels. I actually think Anthem has a pretty strong identity. It looks like something."

Q. Who's decision was it to start using Frostbite? A. "I mean, the short answer is, it was the only politically-viable answer for Dragon Age: Inquisition, so, so I guess EA."

Q. Did you feel there was a large culture change when Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka left BioWare? A. "Not really, like a lot of it was basically already happening, as part, as EA basically started to impose its culture on, and also just the culture infiltrated over time. I would say that the cultural shift at BioWare happened slowly, not all at once when they left."

Q. I was really hoping for that Dragon Age tactical game. Any chance of seeing something like that in the future? A. "Probably not, I mean, it was a tweet, there wasn't anything behind that."

Q. ​If only there was a Mass Effect toolset. A. "Yeah, so I don't think you're gonna get, so a toolset with a game that is using Unreal like Mass Effect, that's much less likely, because you're gonna have to get a deal with Epic to do that. They might go for it, but yeah, that would be harder."

Q. I recently found out that The Last Court was made by an outside studio, and BioWare has brought in outside writers to work on Dragon Age before. Is that a common occurrence? A. "Yeah, it happens, for sure."

"Dragon Age II is pushing the Eclipse engine to the limit, it's basically the upper limits."

Q. Was there ever any discussion on showing Hawke and their companions visibly age over Dragon Age II? A. "There was, there was absolutely, that conversation did happen. We didn't really have any way to do it easily, but it was talked about."

Q. Dragon Age seems to have a much larger female fanbase than most gaming franchises, is this something EA has been cognizant of/interested in? A. "Cognizant of, yes, interested in, yes as well, though The Sims is actually even better. Understanding what to do about? No."

Q. What were your lessons learned from Mass Effect: Andromeda and why it went that bad? A. "I don't actually think it went that bad. It had a rough launch, so it kind've escaped a little early. That's probably its biggest problem. If it had released in the state that it was at within a month, it would've been a lot better received. Now it did also launch up against Zelda and Horizon, so, the number one lesson there is - when Dragon Age: Inquisition shipped and the Inquisition team was talking to the other team, one of the biggest things we said was 'don't use Inquisition as your baseline, it should be your worst-case', and a lot of the planning on Mass Effect: Andromeda was done using Dragon Age: Inquisition as the best case, so, what happened, basically its end got squeezed out of existence."

Q. What do you think about a Mass Effect: Andromeda remake? A. "Seems early, but maybe, some day. I mean it's kind've healed its perception to a large degree, kind've like Dragon Age II but for different reasons, it's not seen as as bad as it was seen at launch, so, I think there's a market there."

Q. Have there ever been discussions within BioWare of visual novels as a possible format for their franchises? A. "Yeah, it's come up, it's even been pitched. Hard for EA to do little things."

[source and full video link]

[rickie-the-storyteller]

Steph's Crew - Book 3 Summary

I was meant to post this last year to sort of close the Steph-related content and focus more on other projects. Actually, I was meant to post a lot of things last year...

Bretanie analysis (on here)

Season 1 of AU (on my second blog)

Jekyll and Hyde, but in the modern world (I've been working on that for fun on the side, and I've decided to post the full story on Wattpad)

Revealing the identity of the secret blogger (I'll probably do it in this post, since it is relevant to this part of the story as well)

I've been so busy, y'all. Sorry for the delays.

I just want to make sure I have time to do everything as best as I possibly can, so you can enjoy it. I think it was less pressure posting the Steph's Crew dialogues and snippets because they were old pieces of work, and since the time I first wrote them, I've neatened it up and made it considerably better than it was... I know that the stuff I've shared isn't the final product, so I don't feel the urge to make it perfect. At least not to the extent that I do with all these other projects lol.

Hopefully this can help make up for lost time. I'll get to the other posts mentioned on that list as soon as possible, but until then... here's a summary of the third and final instalment of Steph's Crew!

Enjoy!

Keep in mind that I'm still working on this one. It isn't finished yet, but I wanted to give you guys a rough idea of how it goes. And prepare for this, because it's pretty unhinged lol. I collaborated with my sister on some of the wackier ideas...

Book 3 is titled "Story of a Broken Thing." It picks up where Book 2 ends off, more or less (or at least, it fills us in on what went down since the end of Book 2). If you can't remember how UVC ended, then here's a link to that summary:

But to put it briefly, the crew have successfully solved the mystery, Brelise have split up again, Bret's gone on tour with his band, Dalice are together, Bephanie is over, and Stephanie got arrested... but then escaped from holding. Nobody knows where she could have gone.

Which leads us to Book 3. It is set a couple of years later (I think about 5 years after Book 2 ended), and a lot of stuff has happened in all that time...

Dylan and Alice have broken up. Wasn't meant to be, I guess. But don't worry - they're still friends, and there's no bad blood between them or anything.

Victor and Jen have unfortunately split up as well, leading to Jen moving back to Texas. Alice decides to go with her. She's doing alright - currently taking some classes at a local college, and helping out at her old dance studio in her spare time. She's also still making YouTube videos.

Bret's band is still doing well. They're not touring anymore at the moment, but they are super busy recording a new album, and filming music videos. Plus, they have been asked to perform at the Jingle Bell Ball towards the end of the year, which is very exciting. Even though he has moved back to the UK, because of the nature of Bret's job, he can't just stay in London with his aunt anymore like how he used to... but he still comes to visit her as often as possible. And he and Elise are still close friends, so that's cool. He's been seeing other people over the past couple of years, though.

Elise and Charlie are together. She decided to give him a chance. They're really happy together and they seem to have a pretty healthy, solid relationship for the most part (they've been together for two years straight by the time Book 3 has started). Charlie still harbours some degree of jealousy/wariness towards Bret, though, since she's still really good friends with him. He's never once brought it up to her, though. But it becomes a big deal in this part of the story... more on that later.

Ben isn't really in this part of the story... at least not until towards the end, when Stephanie randomly decides to call him for some reason. But he's doing fine. Moved back to his cooking job from Book 1 lol. It was good money, and now he doesn't have another person to share it with! Wait, that sad-

And by now, Dylan, Connor (who has finally moved on from Daisy! Thank God), Elise and Charlie have all finished their university courses. Yay!

In fact, this is what kickstarts the plot. Dylan's family (we get to see them again in this one! Specifically his mother, her new husband and his younger brother Sam. I feel like we didn't get enough of them last time) is very proud of him for finishing such a long, tough course (3 years, + 1 foundation year + 1 year of masters), and they decide to reward him with an epic summer trip to Australia. And it is during this holiday that he sees Steph again (she's not in Australia btw - he sees her when he goes with a family friend to the Samoan islands).

She fills him in on how she got there. I haven't neatly worked this part out... but basically, Reggie helped her leave the country (idk whether to make him a villain or some kind of loose cannon/antihero type of guy. Like, he's awful most of the time, but he's also one of Stephanie's oldest friends, and he can be genuinely nice when he wants to be. Especially to her. He needs to be in trouble tho lol. I think the thing about him is that he gets away with his awful behaviour easily, whereas Stephanie is kind of forced to be held accountable, even if she actively runs away from the consequences of her actions sometimes...)

After that, she was stuck on her own again for a while and needed a job. So she applied for a job at a local Natia hotel (Natia is a famous line of hotels... kind of like Hilton, to give a known real-life example). She didn't have enough money for a cab or bus, so she had to walk the whole way there through heavy rain. By the time she got there, she looked terrible lol. But when she arrived, she bumped into a handsome young man who kindly helped her out. He got her a room and some clothes to change into, which helped in making a good first impression and whatnot. She got the job!

Later, she found out that the guy's name was Jordan Natia. The son of the hotel line founder (he also owns the hotel she got a job at). She thanks him for her help, and he invites her for dinner... and the rest is history.

And by history, I mean she ends up marrying him lol. Dylan finds out that she now lives at the resort that he and his family friend are currently staying at. She also has a baby daughter named Mia (short for Miranda. Not suspicious at all). She loves her life so much right now. She's always prided herself on being a strong independent woman who can take care of herself, but she's surprised at how much she's enjoying being a stay-at-home mother and housewife lol. She loves spending time with her baby, and she loves her husband a lot, too. He takes good care of her. However, similar to Ben, he doesn't really know all that much about her (Jordan goes through a similar arc to Ben's in Book 2, where he finds out the truth about Stephanie, and it changes the way he sees her. Minus the cheating lol).

Dylan is shocked at how much Steph has changed since the last time he saw her, but he's happy for her at the same time. He can see that she's genuinely happy and seemingly at peace, which is great.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, Charlie has decided to propose to El. He's taking it VERY seriously - even asked for her family's blessing and everything. They all said yes... even Adam lol (he's grown to like Charles by now). One summer evening, he pops the question (in a truly beautiful and romantic way btw), and Elise says yes in the moment, but she doesn't know if she truly feels ready for marriage yet. Something about the situation feels wrong to her, but she doesn't know what it is. However, instead of communicating her mixed feelings to her now fiance, she decides to distract herself with hangouts with her family and friends, as well as getting into her work and other hobbies, preferring to think about anything other than her problems (man, does THIS sound familiar lol). Charlie starts noticing a change in El's behaviour and it begins to really upset him (especially since Bret is one of the people she starts spending more time with, and we all know how she feels about him), causing more strain in their relationship. It only gets worse when they find out about Stephanie's whereabouts...

Dylan messages the others about his trip everyday through a group chat. One night he reveals that he's reunited with an old friend of theirs and sends a picture of him and Stephanie hanging out. The others are shocked. Elise especially.

The situation started becoming somewhat of a controversy in the news... people started talking about it more online, many blogs and news websites (including The Looking Glass) started covering it. Alice made a video on YouTube talking about it (and it came from the unique angle of her knowing the person from school and being their friend and everything. She didn't mention Steph by name, though). It blew her channel up.

The story of Stephanie's escape was quickly resurfacing back into people's minds after being forgotten for such a long time. And this wasn't good for Steph lol. Especially after finally making a life for herself that she was genuinely truly happy in.

But that's not the end of the story.

I'll tell you the rest in part 2 of this summary!

[valictini]

How I wish the dragon tears quest had concluded and impacted the rest of the game without changing too much of what nintendo gave us (FULL endgame spoilers ahead)

First of all, I got inspired by a comment under a YouTube video and I fully agree with this idea: Impa could have just told Link to not divulge what happened to Zelda while she tries to figure out if there's a way to get her back. The justification behind it would be that not only it would shoot everyone's morale, but it could also create a political disaster if we randomly announced that Hyrule had no ruler anymore.

Impa could have transmitted the message to Purah so she can make her own research. Purah could have a unique dialog where she acknowledges that even though it probably won't get Zelda back, Link should still investigate the strange happenings around Hyrule, just in case.

Impa would actually be in Kakariko Village as soon as we finish the quest!! Idk why they didn't do this in the first place!!

When visiting the different regions, we'd have the same dialog and events, except we'd get a unique dialog where each future sage remarks that Link seems unenthusiastic about their search for "Zelda". Link being sworn to secrecy, and the sages being polite, they'd probably cut it short and apologise for prying or something.

When you finish each temple, they all remark that maybe it wasn't Zelda. Cue, another unique dialog where they ask Link if it's why he seemed reserved about this mission.

When we finish the regional quests, Purah tells Link that they didn't find anything yet, and maybe they should reveal the truth to the others for their input.

So they do just that and!! They have!! An actual!! Emotional response!! When they all learn the truth!!

Like holy shit was it just me or did they move on from this very quickly? Aren't they supposed to be friends? Idk man, maybe it was because I had been waiting for this moment for hours but it felt really underwhelming.

Finally, after getting Mineru, we could have Impa and Purah announce to Link that they might have an idea: taking inspiration from Purah's experiments with age regression, they could possibly make a machine on a larger scale that would revert Zelda's age and hopefully get her back into a human. (still baffled that Purah's age experiment is just a background joke at this point, so why not make it actually relevant!!) They warn Link that it would take years to develop such technology and it could not work in the end so he shouldn't get his hopes up etc

Purah also remarks that if only they could somehow boost the time reversion power in Link's arm, it would be so much simpler. But alas, such amount of power seems impossible to acquire (wink wink)

She concludes by saying that unfortunately, all Link can do for now is fulfill Zelda's wish and kill Ganondorf once and for all.

Finally, thanks to all this foreshadowing, when we beat Ganondorf and get the cutscene where we see Rauru and Sonia boost Link's powers to revert Zelda, it wouldnt feel like such a Deus ex Machina anymore!!

(I mean, canonically they use both time and light but honestly i struggle to understand why they needed to specify that. At least in this version, they could have just said they boosted only the time power and simply kept it as a reference to the scene where Sonia and Zelda boosted Rauru's light powers to beat the moldugas)

As someone who finished the dragon tears quest line before I even started my second dungeon, I can't tell you how immersion breaking it was to have everyone chasing an obviously fake Zelda without being able to say anything.

It feels like such a huge oversight. I don't even understand how the Devs managed to give unique dialogs to every NPC depending on weather/what you wear etc and NOT think about players who'd finish this questline before the rest. So here's a simple but satisfying way that they could have done it IN MY OPINION

[miru667]

Hi again, Miru! I need your opinion on something as an old onceling. Do you think there's still room for new oncelings to do an analysis of something in the movie, or maybe interviews, or maybe the fandom itself? Is it possible to find a way to output new content? I look through archives and it honestly feels like the entire movie has already been picked apart way back in 2012 - 2014. Your thoughts?

As we are all unique individuals who have gone through different experiences in our lives and no experience is the same, yes there can always be some new perspective that someone can bestow through their watch of the movie.

For example, in 2020, 8 years after the fandom began, @floooopafloooopa made several analyses on aspects of the movie that I personally had never seen anyone else delve into, and I was really impressed by them. My favourites include the one comparing Once-ler and Thneedville to Disney and EPCOT: [link] and of course the 85 page analysis comparing Once-ler to the Beatles and other popular people and aesthetics of the 60s and 70s: [link]

And another example, just recently I happened to revisit The Conservative Lorax video on YouTube from 2012: [link] and although I know many youtube comments are the most worthless comments in the world, I still found some interesting perspectives from people in the comments even in the past year, talking about capitalism. Here's a topic that really stayed with me: One person said "a real capitalist would replant to make a profit" and another said "a true capitalist would farm the trees instead of cutting them all down" to which others replied:

These comments were all made only within the last 3 years. I doubt these people have even seen the 2012 movie.

So now if you take these ideas and think about our dear Oncie...yes, he is still a dumbass for not thinking about maintaining his resources and then being shocked that he ran out of trees, but there are evidently people out there who would've instead called him dumb for not planning to immediately move on to capitalize on the next big thing, like air. Some people would've agreed that short term profits are the smart move! This, or the Once-ler should've moved on to synthetic fibres to replicate Thneeds, or that he should've planted GMO trees that grew really fast, patent them, then also patent the air they produce (and then we wouldn't need O'hare anymore). But we all know what genetically modifying truffula trees can cause... 🧟 haha. So the 1st comment up there has a point - the story really is more of a metaphor for respecting nature rather than trying to say something specific about business decisions.

And look! I just gathered and put together a mini analysis on the subject of "sustaining your resources vs how far the Once-ler actually could have gone in the other direction". In 2023! So yes, I believe there's room for more analyses.

Not to mention that concept art for the 2012 movie keeps gradually being shared over the years well beyond 2014: [link] I pretty much consider it new source content which can then spark new analyses, as well.

As for anaylses on the fandom itself...I would just advise to be careful and respectful if you're wanting to talk about anything from the past that you weren't a part of (having been in the fandom for only a month in 2012 doesn't count either, iykyk), since many past oncelings are still around even if they're not active in the fandom anymore, and it hurts to get misrepresented.

[ghoooooooooooooooost]

this is my personal acct with my personal opinions follow my art-only acct if you're only here for art

🥩 ghooost - they/he/she - haitian

warnings: body horror, gore, suggestive art, talking a lot (a LOT)

do not follow or interact if you are a proshipper, loli/shotacon, terf ect.

don’t follow me if you are still a pr*jmoon fan who supports the company (i may block)

i can n will block for any reason.

anti-haitian "jokes" are not tolerated.

🥪 strawpage: https://ghooosthand.straw.page/

🥪 carrd w socmed links + commission info + itchio link: <here>

🥪 patreon: <here>

🥪 art-only tumblr!: @gooey-goo

🥪 oc tumblr!: @ghooostzone

🥪  carrd art gallery!: <here>

NOTE: 

1. if i mass delete art for a specific fandom post-2020 you’ll still find it on my itchio (or on youtube if it’s a video), if not you can potentially ask me to put it there. don’t reupload without asking me!!!

2. please try not to spam me too heavily! i used to block ppl over it srry.... (bc there were multiple cases of ppl literally going through 200 posts at once n it made me irritated/paranoid). i try to be chill abt it now but for certain fandoms its a chance for a hardblock (namely pm)

List of (unique) tags:

🥩 oc group tags:

oc, sweven, alien food, mikko in hell

🥩 art tags:

my art, art process, ghooost wip, ghooost art explanation, ghooost art vault

🥩 oji search = stuff i find that’s specifically old or middle-aged men (40+ but sometimes 30 yr olds end up in there u kno how it be...) (50+ is best btw)

🥩 pk gayming = general gaming tag; yume time = yume nikki fangames

🥩 book eating event = reading tag (doubles as gaming tag for some visual novels or games that i’m only watching playthroughs of)

🥩 personal finds = art scans, books, merch etc i obtained

🥩 [character / media name] posting = basically me posting a bunch of the same thing/character over n over. sometimes doesn’t have the word “posting” in it

^ current list of these tags:

- gegege posting

- samurai calibur

- jiro posting

- ginko posting (not used at all anymore but i still like him ^_^ so i still rb the old posts)

^ there are other tags of this nature for other games or media, if they’re not on this post anymore it means i just moved on from them or haven’t used them in a long time