#making bad choices and spending money on a mediocre game

[machinedramon]

nexon are cowards and won't give the men maid outfits so I've done the next best thing

[creatingblackcharacters]

My 2 Cents

So, one of the follow up questions I asked was

"are you willing to recognize that you have a willing tolerance for antiblackness? That there is a certain amount that you are okay with allowing before thinking it's worth speaking up?"

My goal in asking this question is not to cause you shame (though shame is not inherently a bad thing).

No, the goal is for you to practice active honesty with yourself! Be willing to accept the decisions You made!

You cannot confront- and therefore address- your own racism if you aren't willing to admit to when you're doing and allowing it. Ibram X Kendi's How To Be An Antiracist touches on this topic, of how racism and anti racism are a series of choices, not identities! Here's an article discussing it:

"No one is born racist or antiracist; these result from the choices we make. Being antiracist results from a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily. These choices require ongoing self-awareness and self-reflection as we move through life. In the absence of making antiracist choices, we (un)consciously uphold aspects of white supremacy, white-dominant culture, and unequal institutions and society. Being racist or antiracist is not about who you are; it is about what you do."

My personal fan example (and you knew this was coming 🤣) is Hades. I recognized that Patroclus' design is a white man in all but his ashy dark brown skin. It was a racist design, meant to be "representation", and I thoroughly disdain it. It wasn't enough to stop me from buying the game and enjoying it. I made a choice, to settle for mediocre representation so that I could enjoy a character I like! I still spoke up about racist and colorist fan designs, hoping that at least fans may be more receptive to not replicating racism (but that's otros veinte pesos 😬).

I'd naively hoped that maybe they'd do better the second time; maybe their actions were from ignorance! Maybe they'd learn! A *snicker* sage old man once said:

"fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Jokes on Dubya aside, I knew that I was already discontent with the designs in the first game, but I allowed it for my own enjoyment. I acknowledge that. But I had to be honest with myself the second time: if the lack of effort in the dark-skinned character design bothered me so much, and I spent all that time speaking out on it the first time... what do I look like then going to spend money on the sequel game doing it again? Do I really stand for what I said I stand for? Can I ask others to stand for what I stand for, if I don't really stand for it?

That time, I said "no". I decided I'd reached how much I was willing to put up with. I had to accept the consequences of speaking on that choice, including risking being rejected by a creative space I really wanted to be a part of. It is what it is. And it's one of many choices I'll actively make for the rest of my life. Comfort v The Right Thing.

Anyway, these are the sorts of conversations you'll have to have with yourself. Coming to terms with your choices along the journey will better help you identify just how much you're willing to sit on, and whether you want to make a difference about that. You might recognize when you're making a long streak of decisions that suggest you care less than you'd like to think; you might find out you've swallowed more than enough! But you gotta be honest about your own role in it!

[dead-mermaidd]

Top Tips for Discovering Ontario's Best Online Casinos

Ontario has just opened its online gambling market, meaning that all licensed iGaming operators can legally offer their products and services to residents of the province. We want to know which are the best online casinos available, where you have an excellent choice of games from Rai88 top studios and a safe, reliable place to play. Keep these tips in mind, and you'll be well on your way to finding Ontario's top online gambling destinations.

1.Check for a Valid Gaming License

The first and most important thing is to check that the online casino has a valid license issued by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO). Before issuing a license, this provincial regulatory authority tests a provider's platform and ensures it meets certain standards regarding player protection, responsible gambling features, game fairness, and player privacy.

Sticking with AGCO-approved sites is the easiest way to ensure you are playing at a trustworthy, safe, and legal online casino. Licenses can be easily checked on the AGCO website.

2.Look for a Wide Variety of Games

As a top-rated BetMGM Online Casino, Ontario offers hundreds of slots, table games, live dealer games, and other options. The best operators feature dozens of tables and show you a preview of the decks used, the dealer in the box, and much more.

Look for games in the library with high RTPs (return-to-player percentages) to give yourself the best chance to win. Also, make sure the type of game you like to play the most in real money mode is offered, such as video poker, roulette, blackjack, or slots. Don’t be afraid to try new different types of games from what you usually play either.

3.Optimize Your User Experience

You’ll spend considerable time at your chosen online casino, so the overall user experience needs to be slick, intuitive, and fun. The best operators can make navigation, banking, bonuses, and games as easy to access on a desktop computer as on a mobile device.

Check for features like:

User-friendly interface and site navigation Mobile app with full functionality Easy, fast deposits and cashouts Responsively designed site that works on all devices Also, ensure that customer support is available 24/7 through email, live chat, and phone in the event of any issues.

4.Compare Bonuses and Promotions

Welcome bonuses, free spins, loyalty programs, and other promotions can help you get the most value from an online casino. When evaluating operators, compare the amounts, playthrough requirements, and terms and conditions associated with the incentives.

5.Review Payment and Withdrawal Methods

The convenience and speed of your banking transactions should be a priority, so make sure prospective casinos offer the following:

Interac e-Transfer Credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard) Online banking Prepaid vouchers (Flexepin) Ideally, you’ll have multiple options that suit your preferences. Remember to check withdrawal timeframes, too — top casinos process payouts in 1–3 days.

6.Research Site Reputation and Player Reviews

While AGCO makes sure to review the licenses, nothing speaks louder than the opinions of actual customers. You can find ratings on review pages and on forums as well. If a casino is mediocre at best, it’s not going to be open to many high ratings in the first place.

You can also check Google reviews or social media comments, but give the site a pass if there are enough complaints about slow payouts or poor customer service. However, take any isolated complaints with a grain of salt — some players are quick to blame a bad run of luck on an online casino's automated software rather than their own errors.

[k-dokja]

a handful of headcanons for samuel (?)

⁠— Slaps his tits, this bad boy can hold so much trauma. He's not open or affectionate by any means, but having his "trust" is... pretty rewarding if you somehow managed to acquire it. Probably the only way he will entertain any idea of intimacy with you.

&. Contrary to popular belief, he's not much of a physical touch person. His physical touches are pretty meaningless if anything. He leans more towards Quality Time, Gift Giving, and Acts of Service when it comes to expressing any fondness he has for you. The fact he chooses to spend time with you should in fact speak volumes.

&. He spends a lot of hours working. In fact, you'll see him more often at work than at home. Ideally, he'd have your office close to his. However, if that's not possible, then you'll have to deal with less time spent around him.

&. He's pretty fashion-conscious. To him, clothes and accessories are symbols of status. Because of that, you can see him being pretty mindful of his appearance. He does use lotions frequently and takes care of his skin.

However, nothing stands out as much as his closet filled with suits and watches. If the two of you are often out together, he will coordinate your clothes with his. Anything to look suave and professional.

&. In terms of cologne, he uses the Yves Saint Laurent collection. La Nuit de L'homme back when he used to work under Alexander, but after he took over the two affiliates, he changed to Y Le Parfum. He'll probably pick out a complimentary scent for you, too.

Talk about gifts, he actually does that often. Not really in an affectionate way, but in a subtle reminder that you should use this or that. He doesn't mind you using his money to adorn your appearance, either. However, if you go for something tacky and unfitting, then he will have a few choice words.

&. He really likes quiet times with you. Having meals together, watching movies, reading books, him reading a book while you playing that strange defence attorney game, going on rides together. He's also a bit of a tea drinker. If it is possible, he will spend that time with you. Arguably, you might feel a bit antsy if you're much of a talker during these times because he doesn't talk at all.

&. It is... acknowledged that he's not the most stable guy when it comes to well, everything. Most people don't even know what he has ongoing in his mind either. You, however, always strangely know what he's thinking, sometimes. It terrifies him a little but also comforts him in another way. At least, he's not alone in this.

&. Okay, I'll confess: I made this post because I want to write headcanons of movie night with Samuel. You are the one who makes it something of a weekly routine but Samuel begins to have his own input on the third week. After enduring what he called your "mediocre and underwhelming" taste in movies, he has decided he will make the choice for the movie that week.

However, after arguing back and forth, the two of you decided to take turns in picking the movie. All is well and good.

&. It's always a production with movie night, too. Snacks, blanket, unnecessary quip about the other person't taste that's just a bit too personal. The two of you almost never missed it, even if you're on a business trip. Something about going to the cinema doesn't hit like cuddling up under blankets on the living room couch.

Once, the two of you were even watching the movie while in his car because you weren't able to go home that weekend. Things aren't always ideal but... you both make it work.

&. He has pretty specific tastes in books, but if you have any recommendations you think he'd like, he doesn't mind accepting them. However, be aware that he will give you feedback on the book you gave him. He prefers self-help books or autobiographies.

Not much of a reader of fiction, although he can be persuaded. This is also reflected in his movie tastes, by the way.

&. Aside from that, he also has a cabinet filled up to the brim with liquor within his own apartment. He has a pretty "refined" taste when it comes to alcohol in general. However, he doesn't drink that often. Mostly when he's stressed, if anything.

He smokes more than drinks and knows that he's digging his early grave, but hey, it's not like there's more joy to life for him.

[littlefoxsimmer]

Life’s Stories Challenge

“Life imposes things on you that you can’t control, but you still have the choice of how you’re going to live through this.” — Celine Dion

Life is an imperfect story composed of unexpected hurdles, amazing opportunities, bittersweet goodbyes, wholesome moments, and... less than wholesome moments. The challenge combines the unpredictable roads in life with the gameplay elements in the sims that I either love, want to explore, or would never do in my own family save and never had the reason to try. It explores these features through storytelling and, yes, sometimes even flawed sims. Are you ready to live through life’s stories?

GENERATION ONE: FAUX PHILANTHROPISTS

As a child, you grew up in a wealthy, well-known, and highly respected family. Your mother is a famous musician and your father a well-off businessman. Your family went to every charity event, every gala, and you grew up admiring your parents' Philanthropist lifestyle. You looked up to them so much you even started teaching guitar to the local kids. However, after taking up an internship at your father’s organization, you discover things aren’t as they seem, and your family has been profiting from some super shady activity within the family's charity organization! When you get home, you confront your parents, who tell you to brush it under the rug; when you resist, they throw you out, leaving you with nothing but the clothes on your back, your memories, and your guitar. Will you be able to survive on your own?

SET UP:

Traits: Self-Assured, Music Lover, & Freegan

Aspiration: Musical Genius

Career: None (Write songs at home)

Create the parents of your founder sim (Must have a bad relationship with your parents).

You may also create siblings for your founder, but this is not required.

Start on an empty lot, a guitar and zero simoleons to your name. 

You may decorate the lot with free debug items but nothing that can help with needs or skills, only decorative items .

If you have the pack, you may also grab a fire pit (as the sim has fond memories of going camping with his family).

RULES:

You can only make money via your guitar or singing (writing/publishing songs, singing for tips, etc.).

You must max the guitar and singing skills.

You must complete the musical genius aspiration.

You can not have any sim move in before you reach the following requirements:

Reach level 10 of the guitar skill.

Have at least 7,000 in the bank.

Have a house of at least 32 tiles with every basic necessity (toilet, bed, kitchen).

                                                               OR

Reach aged Adult (NOT YOUNG ADULT!).

Once you have 10,000 in the bank, you must start giving money to charity at least once a week. If you get a call to donate and you have enough money, YOU MUST DONATE in addition to your usual weekly donation!

GENERATION TWO: LIFE OF THE PARTY

Ugh, your parents always emphasized grinding and regularly working, but that just sounds… exhausting? Why do you need to do that kind of work when you can just… not? Wouldn’t it be nice to live in the lap of luxury and not have to work at all? You can just spend your days making friends, going out, playing video games, or, you know, whatever you want to do! Surely someone would pay to watch you just go about your life.

SET UP:

Traits: Lazy, Outgoing, & High Maintenance

Aspiration: Mansion Baron

Career: None

Live with the previous generation until marriage. Moving out requires a job and let’s face it… ew.

RULES:

Complete the Mansion Baron Aspiration.

Marry for money, aka a rich sim and have a mediocre relationship with them. Their friendship & romance bars should not exceed 50% fullness for any length of time, especially after marriage.

If you have any attraction mods installed, you MUST marry a sim your sim finds unattractive.

Never get a job and replace every broken item, do not repair or hire a service.

Must go to every event, accept every invitation.

LIVESTREAM and INSTA EVERYTHING.

You may also use Kawaii Stacie’s Reality Show Mod or Switch Streaming Mod if you wish to use that in addition to regular streaming.

Max the media production skill.

Must have and maintain at least seven friends, and three of them must be close friends.

Regularly go for a spa day with the besties.

Have three enemies.

When you have children, you must use a nanny/butler.

You cannot discipline any bad behavior nor encourage any good behavior.

GENERATION THREE: STRUGGLING STAR

You’ve always been your parents’ favorite child, well you think so, you didn’t hear otherwise… Well, you didn’t hear much at all actually. Your parents were very hands-off, leaving you with a butler/nanny who, let’s face it after a few generations, looks rather weird. This motivates you to get the attention you deserve. You’re the heir of a legacy challenge, darn it, and now everyone is going to see why! People will notice you when you walk by and whisper your name. Are you ready to take center stage?

SET UP:

Traits: Erratic, Snob, & Self-Absorbed

Aspiration: Master Actor/Actress

Career: Acting Career

Move into a house in Del Sol Valley.

RULES:

Have at least four spouses throughout the entirety of their life

Go to every Starlight Accolade event.

Complete the master actor/actress aspiration.

Must name any kid they have after an award (For example: Tony, Oscar, Emmy, etc.)

Own some kind of exotic animal when they become a four-star celebrity (Can grab off the Gallery).

Once they reach the middle of adulthood, they must start having BOTCHED plastic surgeries at least three throughout the remainder of their life (cas.fulleditmode in CAS).

If you see any sims you think may be related to Judith Ward, you must fight them (if nothing else than for laughs).

GENERATION FOUR: TAKING BACK CONTROL

Growing up under the roof of an Erratic and Self-Absorbed snob is a little challenging, especially when they are generally controlling of your life. Being in the spotlight because of your parents left you feeling you had to act a certain way, dress a certain way, and with everyone shouting at you about how you should exist, it left you feeling like nothing was really in your control. Should you take this job? You don’t know. Should you date this person? You don’t know! Should you get married? YOU. DON’T. KNOW. It’s going to take a while to realize that at the end of the day, you do know what is best for you!

SET UP:

Traits: Randomized (Up to 5 tries but you can't go back to a trait you skipped).

Aspiration: Renaissance Sim

Career: You’ll end up in at least three randomized careers (If you use a random number generator and it has one you already did, try again).

Use a generator like James Turner’s to choose a pack that has a world and move there. If there are multiple worlds (aka base game is chosen), you’ll need to find another way to randomize to choose.

RULES:

Complete the renaissance sim aspiration.

You must have had at least three careers throughout your lifetime.

Must quit and change your job once you’ve reached level 5 until you're an adult (NOT YOUNG ADULT).

When you’re an adult, reach the top of whatever career you end up with when the randomization ends.

Must use some randomizer for every decision (phone calls, jobs, pop-ups, etc.) until adulthood (NOT YOUNG ADULT).

Marry a slob or non-committal sim.

Have at least three children so that the oldest will become the heir.

GENERATION FIVE: PERFECT LITTLE FAMILY

You’re the oldest of your siblings and even though you love your parents, they can be ditzy when it comes to parenting, so it means you’ve had to pick up the slack. Doing homework with them, helping them with school projects, playing with them, but all this time helping to parent your siblings, you realized that you adore these moments. From the stomping of little feet to the late-night homework runs, raising your siblings has been so rewarding and you can’t wait to have kids of your own someday. You just can’t help but imagine all the fantastic memories you’ll have together.

SET UP:

Traits: Good, Foodie, & Family Oriented

Aspiration: Super Parent

Career: Can be Freelance, Stay-At-Home jobs, owning a restaurant or business

It's up to you to decide where this generation starts/where you want to move, but eventually, you’ll move to Evergreen Harbor.

RULES:

Marry a childhood friend.

Max your romance and friendship with them.

Move to Evergreen Harbor at some point before the next generation.

Go volunteering every Sunday.

Max out the parenting skill.

Have one sit-down dinner daily.

Must have at least one set of twins.

Have every child complete at least one childhood skill, one childhood aspiration, and achieve an A in school.

Be close with your grandchildren.

GENERATION SIX: LEGALLY GREEN

There’s smog everywhere! People are coughing and getting sick. Someone has to step in and stop these factories from polluting. It’s not only destroying this planet, it’s also harming this community! With the support of your parents and determination, you apply and get accepted to law school—time to put your nose to the books and get everything you can out of college. If you want to become an Eco-warrior, you’ll need to know how to hit these companies where it hurts.

SET UP:

Traits: Ambitious, Green Fiend, & Perfectionist

Aspiration: Academic

Career: Law

Should dorm at the university of their choosing but then return to somewhere in Evergreen Harbor when they are done with their degree with a lot that has off the grid and simple living traits.

RULES:

Go to university.

Complete the academic aspiration.

Max the research and debate/charisma skills.

Have a home garden where you can grow your food and eco upgrades so your house is self-sufficient.

Reach the top of the law career.

Your neighborhood must have a green footprint by the end of this generation.

Must be “married to your job.” Don’t marry or be in a relationship.

Must have only one child (can adopt).

Kawaii Stacie’s Explore Mod also has an artificial insemination option.

GENERATION SEVEN: BROKEN DREAMS

While your parent was off fighting large corporations, you stayed at your grandparents' house doing homework. Every time you looked at them you saw a happy couple, a loving family and you couldn’t help but wonder “Why can’t I have that? Why shouldn't I have that?” So like your grandparents, you married your childhood best friend, only to discover you felt absolutely nothing for them. You were gutted. You kept thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be happy? Why can’t I have the white picket house life like my grandparents?”. You tried shoving yourself into work, but your eyes eventually started to wander…

SET UP:

Traits: Gloomy, Materialistic, & Romantic

Aspiration: Serial Romantic

Career: Any

Can live in any non-beachy location.

RULES:

Be close with your grandparents.

Marry your childhood best friend even though you don’t love them.

Have every type of woohoo available in YOUR game. (If you don’t have certain packs, do not stress, those will be exempt).

This can be with any of your romances & does not have to be with the same romantic interest. 

Complete the serial romantic aspiration.

Have a child as a result of an affair.

Max the charisma skill.

Be caught and divorce your spouse when the next heir is a teen.

GENERATION EIGHT: LESSONS LEARNED

“I won’t fall in love!” you scream. When you were a child, you were oblivious, pretending to be a  mermaid at the local pool and drawing starfish. But when everything fell apart, you couldn’t look away. Seeing what your parent had to go through, dealing with the fall out and hurt of being cheated on was terrible, but seeing how it affected the family was even worse. No, for you, love is for the stupid. You're going to grind through life and find happiness elsewhere. Though, all these long, tiring shifts at the hospital can’t help but make you wonder if things were different if you would be on the beach making sandcastles. 

SET UP:

Traits: Noncommittal, Child of the Ocean, & Loves the Outdoors

Aspiration: Fabulously Wealthy

Career: Doctor

Can live in any non-beachy location but eventually you’ll move to Sulani.

RULES:

Complete the fabulously wealthy aspiration.

Reach the top of the doctor's career.

Create a doctor friend group of at least two other doctors.

Max the logic and handiness skills.

Become BFFs with a mermaid sim and (once you reach adulthood, NOT YOUNG ADULT) eventually realize you’ve fallen in love and marry them.

Once married, move to Sulani with your spouse.

GENERATION NINE: THALASSOPHILE

Being brought up in Sulani, you’ve grown to admire the landscape, beautiful waters, culture, and animals. You’ve developed quite a few friends here and the ocean seems to have been calling you from a young age, even inspiring you to take up a lifeguard job in the early part of your life. But as much as you enjoyed lifeguarding, you always felt there was more you could do. While monitoring the beaches you kept watching as apathetic, ill-mannered tourists dropped litter on the beautiful beaches. Every time it stung terribly, but that’s when you realized your true purpose… to bring Sulani back to its fullest potential and restore its beauty.

SET UP:

Traits: Animal Enthusiast, Child of the Islands, & Cheerful

Aspiration: Angling Ace

Career: LifeGuard (as a teen), Conservationist

Live in Sulani

RULES:

Clean up Sulani.

Become good friends with at least eight other sims.

Become friends with a dolphin.

Complete the angling ace aspiration.

Max the fishing, fitness, and wellness skills.

Have two pets at all times (dogs, cats, rodents, etc.)

Marry a bro sim.

Have at least three kids and have a beach day each week at one of the public beaches.

Have your spouse die (preferably from a shark attack while swimming in Sulani).

GENERATION TEN: HEALING WORDS

Since the untimely death of your parent, you’ve been left a little shaken. You’ve always had your nose in your book, even when you were supposed to be enjoying quality time on beach days. Now that they’re really gone, it feels like so much time was wasted. So many things needed to be said but it never will and every time you look at the ocean, you get a feeling of dread thinking about what happened. So you pack up your books and head off for greener pastures (literally), buying out an old farm and despite the dire state it’s in, it inspires you. The stories this place must hold! For the first time in a while, the loss doesn’t sting as much. You open up your laptop and begin to write…

SET UP:

Traits: Clumsy, Loner, & Bookworm

Aspiration: Bestselling Author

Career: None (Write books at home)

Move to a run down farm/vineyard/orchard style lot on Henford on Bagley

RULES:

Complete the best-selling author aspiration.

Achieve level 10 gardening and writing skills.

Run a farm, orchard, or vineyard.

Meet someone at the Finchwick Fair & eventually marry them.

Name your children after books, book characters, or anything literature.

Cook and farm with your whole family regularly.

Become friends with birds and rabbits.

Adopt a “fox” and a basset hound.

ARE YOU PLAYING THIS CHALLENGE?

Hey there! If you attempt this challenge, I would love to follow along! Even if you are just creating sims or lots inspired by this challenge, I would still love to see it. Please tag me on twitter/tumblr ( @littlefoxsimmer​ ), or use the hashtag #lifesstorieslegacy!

Acknowledgements & credits

I just wanted to give a brief thank you to @livingdeadgal128 for her support and feedback on this challenge! She is one of the most supportive individuals in the community, and I am very thankful for all of her support.

I also want to appreciate and acknowledge the creativity of the simming community as a whole, especially the Twitter simming community, whose kindness & creativity gave me the confidence to post it publicly. I’m constantly inspired & in awe by every single one of you. Thank you all so much!!!

Finally, I want to acknowledge the specific inspiration and give credit to the creators of pre-existing challenges I was inspired by, such as the ten generation legacy style gameplay format originally created by Pinstar and used in beloved challenges such as the Not So Berry Challenge originally created by lilsimsie and alwaysimming, the rags to riches style gameplay present in generation one inspired by the Rags to Riches challenge originally created by SimishGamer.

Continue to the next section for optional resources that may enhance your play-through of the challenge. –>

Awesome Resources *Not Required*:

Information

Woohoo Location Guide by The Sims Community

Creators

Unique animals that your sims can adopt by Pugowned

Mods

Attraction system (Wonderful Whims) by Turbodriver

MCC Command Center by Deaderpool

Reality Show Mod by Kawaii Stacie

Switch Streaming by Kawaii Stacie

Explore Mod by Kawaii Stacie  

Shorter University Degrees by Peridot

Live in business mod by littlemssam

Generators

Random pack generator by James Turner 

Google random number generator

I plan to make some lots for this challenge in the future as well, but feel free to check out my gallery. I already have a decorated Rags to Riches lot that you can use for the first generation of this challenge. You can find it here!

[sageybear]

Sooo I made my own sims challenge 😳 I'm not sure if it's been done before or not but I wanted to try my best,

Its my first challenge so please be nice!

Also, sorry if some of these aren't that accurate to the aesthetic.. I tried-

--------

Basic rules:

-no cheating, especially for money, unless the rules give you permission.

-feel free to edit some things to fit around the packs you have! For example if you wanna live in an apartment, or if you want to have pets! Pets are allowed in any generation, just be wary of how many people will be in your household!

-feel free to start with no money/restart your money, house etc every generation! You don't have to, but if you want to you can :)

-enjoy! Feedback is super appreciated!

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

Aesthetics Challenge

Gen 1 - Cottagecore

Your parents were humble, sweet people with no mean bones in their body. They taught you to be kind and to follow your dreams, no matter what. As a young adult, you adventure into the world and see what's out there for you.

Traits: loves the outdoors, creative, clumsy.

Aspiration: Painter Extraordinaire.

Career: Freelance Painter/selling paintings.

Rules:

-live in a small, cottage-like house (tiny living: live in one of the tiers).

-max painting skill.

-make 10 sculptures via woodworking bench.

-complete aspiration.

-marry a creative/ambitious sim.

-have at least 2 kids.

Gen 2 - Naturecore

Taking after your parents, you enjoy the peaceful life surrounded by nature. They taught you that nature was a valuable thing, never to be taken for granted.

Traits: Cheerful, Good, Bookworm.

Aspiration: Freelance Botanist.

Career: Selling plants, flowers, etc.

Rules:

-continue living in a small home.

-have a garden, you like to grow your own food.

-complete aspiration.

-max gardening and fitness skills.

-[seasons: sell flower bouquets and honey].

-have a reading nook in your garden.

-have a small circle of friends.

-have a secret relationship with one of your friends, have a child together and then "ask to just be friends".

-own a pool.

-Adopt a child/children.

-3 kids max.

-complete the plants/flowers collection.

-never marry.

Gen 3 - Alternative

As a child you always craved more excitement, the easygoing, nature filled life was never for you. You rebelled a lot as a child, and was troublesome, as well as a bit of a player.

Traits: Kleptomaniac, Romantic, Non Committal.

Aspiration: Serial Romantic.

Career: Entertainer, Musician Branch.

Rules:

-live in your parent's basement.

-have a bad relationship with your grandparents.

-complete aspiration.

-reach level 5 career.

-no long term relationships until adult.

-after completing the aspiration, you meet your polar opposite and fall in love.

-elope and have 3 kids with them (may cheat for triplets if you want to).

-max career.

Gen 4 - Clowncore

When you heard your parent's story, you made fun of them a lot. You soon found you had a good sense of humour, and would annoy people with pranks to the point of hatred towards you. All apart from one person, of course.

Traits: Goofball, Hot-Headed, Erratic.

Aspiration: Public Enemy.

Career: Entertainer, Comedian Branch.

Rules:

-Own the sad clown painting.

-Master the comedy and charisma skills.

-Optional: collect aliens.

-Have lots of friends as a child, but slowly lose touch with all but one.

-Max career and complete aspiration.

-Date someone, but have a bad friendship meter with them. Leave them at the alter.

-After reaching the top of your career, realise your love for your friend and marry them.

-Have one child.

Gen 5 - Chaoscore

Due to a mediocre relationship with your parents, you became.. A little chaotic. You couldn't decide what you really wanted, and followed in the footsteps of a crazy household.

Traits: Kleptomaniac, Glutton, Lazy.

Aspiration: Master Chef.

Career: Your choice, have 3 different jobs through your life.

Rules:

-After the chaos of your parents' life and living in a crazy house, you follow those footsteps.

-Hook up with as many colleagues as possible, and get pregnant with two of them.

-Have a bad relationship with your children.

-Complete the frog collection, and display them around the house.

-Quit your job as soon as your oldest child is a teen. Let the kids bring the income.

-2 children only.

-Complete aspiration.

-Never marry.

Gen 6 - Dark Academia

After being used by your parent for money, you became a lonely, quiet person. You simply wished for a normal childhood, and so, at first you don't realise, but you'd like to have a family of your own.. Though, you don't know the dynamics of one very well.

Traits: Gloomy, Loner, Childish.

Aspiration: Best-Selling Author.

Career: Writer.

Rules:

-Only befriend the people you meet at the welcome wagon, or your neighbours if you don't move house. (you may find a spouse by going to their house if they don't turn up).

-Live with your sibling(s).

-Have a 50% relationship with your children. You're not good with kids as you never had a great childhood yourself, and spend most of your time alone.

-Have an office attached to your bedroom and lock the door for everyone but yourself.

-Focus on your career for the first half of your life. Only explore love as an adult.

-Marry as an elder.

-Have 3 children.

-Complete aspiration.

-Complete Elements collection.

Gen 7 - Angelcore

Thanks to a bad relationship with your parents, you spent a lot of time at a friends house and saw how a real family functioned. You fell in love with the idea, and wanted to be the best parent around!

Traits: Family-Oriented, Outgoing, Perfectionist.

Aspiration: Big Happy Family [Alternatively, Parenthood: Super Parent].

Career: Stay-At-Home Parent.

Rules:

-Max the cooking, charisma and have your partner max the handiness skills. [also for both, Parenthood: max the parenting skill].

-Marry your highschool sweetheart as soon as you're young adults.

-Have 4 children, the youngest being twins. (You may cheat for this).

-Have a family meal each weekend. [seasons: have a grand meal every weekend].

-Spoil your children.

-Have them age up with the happy toddler trait and graduate high school with As. [Parenthood: age up with one positive trait]

-Complete the postcard collection.

-Spouse must be an astronaut. (Can change to astronaut when they move in, it doesn't have to be their default).

Gen 8 - Gadgetpunk

Although you had an ideal childhood, you always felt yourself competing with your siblings for attention. You soon got bored of that, and your interest moved to videogaming, before your life began to revolve around it. Thanks to being spoiled, you had the best gaming setup around.

Traits: Geek, Foodie, Mean.

Aspiration: Computer Whiz.

Career: Tech Guru, E-Sports Gamer Branch.

Rules:

-Live in your parent's attic (or treehouse/garage/etc).

-Have a 'man cave' - fill it with gaming consoles, devices, and posters.

-Complete the MySim Trophies collection.

-Date your twin's best friend.

-Have as many kids as you want, and have a better relationship with one than the others. (The heir).

-Complete aspiration and max career.

-Elope.

Gen 9 - Light Academia

You had a better relationship with your parents than your siblings, and seeing how passionate your parent was about their career, it made you aspire to be just as successful. You srill make plenty of time for your family though, as youe grandparents were so loving.

Traits: Ambitious, Materialistic, Genius.

Aspiration: Renaissance Sim.

Career: Business/any to complete the aspiration.

Rules:

-Date and eventually marry an unemployed with the Mansion Baron/Fabulously Wealthy aspiration and help them achieve it.

-Complete aspiration.

-Have 5 children, you love family thanks to your grandparents.

-Leave your job as an elder after gaining a good, stable amount of money.

-Take up an instrument as an elder and max the skill/get it as high as possible.

Gen 10 - Your Aesthetic

Rules:

-Play how you like! This is the final generation, and you're free to do as you like!

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Resolutions Are Here Again

So, with last year out of the way, it’s time to turn our collective attention to the New Year and the completely unfounded belief that it represents a clean slate and the opportunity to improve ourselves as people. With that in mind, it’s time for my contractually-obligated selection of New Year’s Resolution suggestions. Some of these are actually good advice- most of them are likely to get you killed. I’m not going to tell you which is which. Let the games begin.

1. Move Away from the Cities I spent a lot of time living in London and its surrounding environments and- as I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries- it was very wearing on the soul. London is a pathological city: a form of psychosis that has crystallised in our corporeal world as a set of spindly glass skyscrapers and stone monuments to the constipated military dead. While I sometimes miss its grandiosity, I’ve found that moving away from it to the bleak, beautiful middle of nowhere has had a beneficial effect on my mental health (well, that and my gorgeous fiance). I strongly suspect that all big cities are a bit awful- I’ve never really found one that seems to be conducive to general well-being. If you live in one but have the opportunity to leave, I can heartily recommend taking it.

2. Pirate More Films I love movies. Well, I love good movies. And some interestingly bad movies, too. Unfortunately, I fucking hate mediocre movies, which make up the majority of the film industry’s output. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to tell whether a movie will be good, interesting-bad, regular-bad or just meh based on trailers (which are carefully edited to cast the flick in the best possible light) and reviews (which are written by either idiots, shills, or me- and nobody fucking agrees with me). Luckily, there’s a solution to the problem of wasting your money on cinema tickets and DVDs only to be disappointed. It’s called Piracy and here in the upcoming space-year of 2022, you don’t even need a funny Cornish accent to do it (eyepatches are still encouraged, but not mandatory). Pirating movies is a great form of quality control and allows you to decide if something is worth your time before you spend money on it, rather than after. Of course, some spectacular cinematic experiences deserve to be seen on the big-screen first, but you can usually intuit which those are and which you can safely watch at home with your feet up first. So yeah: go piracy (NOTE: This entry is an abstract speculation and a joke and in no way counts as a confession to piracy for legal purposes- though I have committed several crimes on and in boats, which is similar).

3. Stalk a Better Class of Celebrity Miley Cyrus definitely has stalkers. So does that bloke out of One Direction- you know: the one with the hair. And fucking Beyoncé. Justin Timberlake probably has stalkers. Willem Defoe has friends he hasn’t met yet (seriously- he seems like a guy who would get on with his own stalkers). And it’s a bit depressing. Because it means there are people who actually think these people are worth wasting their lives on and risking a jail sentence over. Okay, Willem Defoe might be, but if you’re stalking someone who would happily just be your friend to alleviate the crushing loneliness of being Willem Defoe, then you’re doing something wrong. So, if you’re a stalker, I suggest taking the opportunity of the impending New Year to choose a new target- someone who’s actually worth stalking. Maybe chance your arm in an intense cat-and-mouse game with Leonardo DiCaprio, unsure of whether you’re the hunter of the hunted. Or go camping in Joanna Lumley’s back garden (if nothing else, it’ll be an education in fashion choices). Or hang around in graveyards, pestering Leonard Cohen’s restless ghost! Or, if you really want a challenge, try to track down Nicholas Cage, who is known to disappear into heavy mist and dense forests between the bizarre celluloid fever-dreams that are his career. Like a majestic Bigfoot.

4. Avoid Jumanji Merchandise Like the Fucking Plague Yeah, I know this is a suspiciously specific one, but it’s more important than you might think. My Fiancé and I recently purchased a replica of the Jumanji boardgame from, y’know, the movie of the same name, expecting an exciting game we could play with friends and family with different events and twists. What we got was a tiny plastic board with a light-up centre, no rule-sheet and no special spaces or cards with events on to liven up the game. We might as well have played fucking Ludo in silly explorer’s hats. It set us back £23, too. I mean, pretty much every major I.P. you can think of has some shite merchandise attached to it (I once saw a Rick and Morty toilet-roll holder, for fuck sake), but there’s something about Jumanji that seems to invite a whole new level of flagrant piss-taking. Be warned, ye travellers on the road of nerdy merch.

5. Eat More Exotic Cheeses I really can’t sing the praises of cheese highly enough at the moment. It’s nature’s perfect food-stuff. Just stick in on a cracker with a sliced up grape and you suddenly feel like the most sophisticated fucker in the world, even though you’ve made next to zero effort to combine a fruit, a dry thing and some seriously gone-off milk. Best of all, cheeses comes in a staggering array of enticing variants, from truffle-stuffed brie to Wensleydale with Cranberry. My personal favourite is a creamy little number with pineapple and almonds and I have no idea what the technical name for the type of cheese is, but YOU MEDICALLY HAVE TO TRY IT. Yeah. I’m going to shut up about cheese now.

6. Get into Buggery and Cannibalism Because those smug bastards in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy don’t own a fucking patent! Go out there and live your big gay cannibal dreams! (And yes, I’m aware that this joke won’t land for anyone unfamiliar with British naval stereotypes or Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but I also don’t care so it balances out).

7. ‘Discover’ a New Cryptid Cryptozoology is by far my favourite daffy, half-baked pseudo-science. Sure, astrology is a fascinating system of rules and lore, all of which are excellently silly because they presume that burning balls of plasma thousands of lightyears away give a shit whether some guy named Kenneth is entering a time of prosperity and change. But fundamentally, there’s not a lot of get-up-and-go in it. One ‘studies’ astrology by reading heavy books and trying not to laugh at terms like ‘Uranus is in Retrograde’. And sure, Homeopathy has got an actual body-count, thanks to everyone who’s embraced it instead of real medicine, which is pretty metal. But none of these things are as fundamentally cool as going into the wilderness hunting something that definitely does not exist dressed like Doctor Fucking Livingstone. There’s something harmless and whimsical about Cryptozoology, which is why I invite you all to go out into your nearest place of abject desolation, convince yourself that there’s ‘something’ out there and take a few blurry photos from which you can develop an entire made-up species for other raving loonies to chase forever after. Who knows? You might do your town’s tourist trade the world of good. Fuck knows the economy could use all the help it can get at the moment, what with all the COVID that’s been happening.

8. Google ‘I’m Sorry, Jon’ and be Afraid… Very Afraid Like most people, I hadn’t consciously thought about Garfield in years. He’s just a cat who likes lasagna- what’s to think about? Then I discovered that Weirdos on The Internet (bless their little cotton socks) have decided that Garfield is secretly a terrifying eldritch abomination with the power to bend reality itself- a being of pure malevolence that delights only in the torment of ‘Jon’, the foolish human who once believed himself his owner. And there is some fucking amazing fanart and lore devoted to this concept and I can’t stress enough how wild and out there this is. It’s like something H.P. Lovecraft would write if you injected him full of LSD and sat him in a cat cafe for three days. The most comprehensive repository is the ‘I’m Sorry, Jon’ thread on Reddit, though there’s a lot of trash to ferret through before you get to the well-drawn and truly nightmarish stuff. The art of a guy named Rojorn is also a good place to start, if you want to cut straight to the point. Anyway, it’s a fucking trip- a trip right down the gaping throat of gibbering online madness. I recommend it: it’ll blow away the cobwebs and, if nothing else, remind you that human beings are really fucking weird creatures. The perfect way to start the New Year.

9. Give up on the Device and Go the Fuck Outside. Maybe on a Date Look. I don’t want to admit and I know you don’t either, but those doomsday devices we’ve all been building just aren’t going to bring the world to its knees as effectively as COVID already has. It was a beautiful dream- the world finally crushed under the heal of the cackling mad scientists who should have been in charge all along- but it’s time to let it go. It’s really hard to source Uranium and the Souls of Dead Dragons nowadays, anyway. Fucking red tape. Put the dust-sheet back on your ‘The Device’, go outside and meet a nice lady Mad Scientist. You can do cute couple-y stuff like vivisections and unearthing the curse of Lost Atlantis. Take it from someone who’s found his partner in supervillainy: you’ll thank me for it later.

10. Murder Chris Chibnall with a Bowling Ball Look- I already told you that I no longer live in London, where the prick works, so it’s up to you, dear reader, to keep the dream alive. Resolve, here and now, gentle, brainwashed minion, to go forth and end this hack’s Who-ruining spree with a good old-fashioned bowling-ball-to-the-head!

11. Tell a Dolphin to Fuck Off Dolphins are beautiful, intelligent creatures with a sophisticated language that scientists are finally starting to decode and, apparently, an abiding love of us humans. But here’s an experiement nobody has thought to run: would dolphins still love and aid humans if they could actually understand us? Let’s try insulting them in their own language and find out. Let’s see how fucking friendly Flipper is after you’ve called him a bottle-nosed tosspot directly to his face. I’m guessing ‘not very’, but that’s what science is for: to test these little hypotheses. And no, I can’t think of how to tie this one to the New Year either, but it made me laugh so it’s going on the list.

12. Stop Making Resolutions Dude (or Dudette), if you’re still reading at this point, I think you might have an addiction to resolutions. It’s time to go cold turkey. I’m cutting off this blog… right… now.

[gothamcityneedsme]

I saw this bouncing around my dash and decided to fill it out myself for fun :)  I decided to not double-list any games, and I tried to mix up the companies I used too so that the list would be more unique.

Long post, so I’m doing a readmore for my longwinded part lol.

(read more)

Favorite Game: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords - I could talk about this game forever.  How it tears apart the Star Wars universe from within, how it creates a compelling story while challenging the usual themes, etc.  I could talk for ages about the characters and how their motivations slot in place, and how this game lends itself to interpretation and analysis alongside roleplay.  It’s just a wonderful game, one I deeply love and will always love.  It’s a game that isn’t afraid to have you talk to other characters for twenty or thirty minutes at a time and honestly I’m always riveted at every line.  This game deserves the cult fanbase it has, but I think there’s a lot the fanbase misses in appreciating this game.  (Note...gameplay is a little janky and a community made mod restores a lot content that was cut before shipping-the game wasn’t properly finished).

Best Story:  Fallout New Vegas - It’s the setting that makes the story here, and all the moving pieces and factions alongside the main conflict really make this game stand out.  There’s so many little pieces to find along the way in the world and the way the main quest splits based on who you want in power feels important--and you are choosing a future for this whole region.

Favorite Art Style: The Witness - This game is peacefully wonderful with its visuals.  There are wonderful nature scenes and nests of wires and panels spreading in various parts of the island that are fascinating to look at.  The environment is half of the gameplay in most areas, so it’s important to look around even though exploration is not really the gameplay.  You find puzzles in the world, even in nature, and it’s fascinating.  The colors are bright and beautiful.  There is even a map in the middle of the island inside of a lake that helps you track your progress if you notice it (it isn’t like a normal ‘map’).

Favorite Soundtrack: Shin Megami Tensei IV - I love video game soundtracks, but SMTIV is something special.  The music booms in ways that make you really understand the atmosphere of the world, and there’s a great mix of different kinds of tracks for different places.  I love the tracks for the other worlds you enter, and the themes of the different routes are done so well.  Some of the music draws from past SMT games, but the remixes done for this game really are stunning to me, and there’s so many fantastic original tracks.

Hardest Game: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - I love this game but I literally never touch it without a walkthrough, which is why it gets to be the hardest game on the list, despite being a point and click adventure game lol.  Also just emotionally this game is challenging too, but I definitely mean this more in terms of getting a ‘perfect run’.

Funniest Game: The Stanley Parable - Trying to make this list has taught me that I don’t really play many ‘funny games’.  I don’t know if a game where multiple endings demand that you kill yourself should count as a ‘funniest game’, but it is also a game where the narrator tells you to stare at a fern and memorize its features, so....it counts.

Game I Like that is Hated: RWBY Grimm Eclipse - I’ve been playing this game since it was in early access and have loved it the whole time.  I find the gameplay soothing and fun, and I like playing the different characters.  It’s a game I play to chill out and just enjoy some fun battle mechanics.  It’s a fun game and I’ve spent over 100 hours in it, so I hope I like it, lol.

Game I Hate that is Liked:  Nier Automata - Neither this game’s gameplay or story impress me, and the fact that you have to replay basically the same stuff from a more boring-to-play-character’s pov in order to SEE all of the plot is a huge damper on the experience.  The story, to me, someone who engages with a lot of robot-focused fiction, is far from impressive or new, and it hardly engages with genre specifics at all, let alone in a new or interesting way.  I view this game as ‘a story with robots in it’ rather than ‘a story about robots’, which, to me, is a detriment.

Underrated: Nevermind - This game is amazing and very unheard of--and when it is heard of, it has been marketed incorrectly.  Nevermind seems like a horror game, and does market itself as one a bit, but it’s much more than that.  It’s more about trauma, recovery, therapy, etc.  This is a game that is so mindful about the topics it engages in that I am impressed by it every time.  It’s heavy with symbolism and character, despite lacking conversations or other similar game mechanics.  This is a lovely game that I really wish more people knew about-`p5-all of the patients are so interesting, and the focus on recovery and mental health is impressive.

Overrated:  Fire Emblem - I sort of mean this as the series as a whole really.  I have enjoyed the entries I have played somewhat, but I overall consider the series much less impressive than I was led to believe by others.  The gameplay especially is not impressive to me in any regard, even though I sometimes do find myself enjoying it.  The stories are alright, but many of them are weighed down by the gameplay and as a writer and person who likes to analyze writing, it’s very hard to do so when it isn’t able to fully exist under the chains the gameplay forces on it.  There are ways to mix gameplay and story well, Fire Emblem has not really done that in any of the entries I’ve played.  That being said, I don’t regret playing them, and I will occasionally replay, but I consider them mediocre games at best.

Best Voice Acting: Devil Survivor 2 - I love the voice acting in this game.  I feel like all the characters are really suited to their voices, and it’s really easy for me to visualize their voices.  They really bring the game to life and make both the dramatic and the funny scenes more enjoyable.

Worst Voice Acting: Jedi Knight Jedi Academy - I love this game, I really do, but some of the voice acting is janky.  Some of it is okay too--I think Kyle Katarn’s voice actor does fine, and some of the others I like NOW but hated when I was a kid, but the male protagonist voice in this game is just awful.  Which is bad when Jennifer Hale is the female voice actress lol.  His performance is passable though unless you’re playing darksided--the darksided ending to the game lacks all punch when you’re playing the male protagonist.

Favorite Male:  Battler Ushiromiya from Umineko no Naku Koro Ni - He’s the protagonist for most of the visual novels and I adore him utterly, especially once you move past episode 2.  He’s a wonderful character who I care about deeply.  I love his drive and how he fights--he’s someone who is easy to cheer for.  He matures well throughout the series and his character development is just wonderful.

Favorite Female:  Naoto Shirogane from Persona 4 - I really like how Naoto fits so well in the game, especially for being a final recruit--oftentimes the final recruit of Persona games (post 3) have a bit of a more difficult time feeling right with the group.  Naoto works really well though, and I love her struggles and story as well.  I think the difficulties she has concerning living as a woman in her field hit very deep to a problem that has existed for a very long time.

Favorite Protagonist: Connor of Daventry from King’s Quest 8 Mask of Eternity - I’m like, one of four fans of this character in the world, lol.  KQ8 is not a very well liked game and it does have a lot of issues, both with age and with how much of a departure it is from the series prior to it.  It’s strange to take a puzzle adventure game and make it a hybrid with what basically is a shooter, and it doesn’t really work.  Add to that the fact that you spend most of your time in the game without anyone around to talk to and it leads to this really polarizing and weird experience.  For me, Conner goes through what I would consider to be the ‘Ultimate Nightmare Scenario”.  Everyone in the world is turned to stone except him (and he survived out of mere chance) and so now it’s up to him, practically alone, to save the entire world.  There is no game lonelier than this.  I adore him for his bravery in the face of it, and how he just picks up to do what must be done because someone should do it, and if no one else can, then he will.  I also really love how he apologizes to people who are encased in stone while he takes money from their houses to help him on his journey.  I really do think he went back after the game was over and gave everyone heaps of gold to pay them back with interest lol.

Favorite Village:  Oakvale from Fable - The first Fable is the only one I really like, and it was one of the games I played when I was little, so the hometown in the game always meant a lot to me.  I like how you grow up there and how your tragic backstory is there--and then how you get to return to the town years later after you’ve come into your own, and you can see it completely rebuilt.  I like to spend a lot of my time in this town, just wandering around it and playing the minigames.  Even though I have a house in every town, Oakvale is where my hero calls home.

Most Hated Character:  Merril from Dragon Age 2 - I don’t really want to lay into how I feel about Merril, but what I will say is that it was suggested to me that I totally ignore her when playing, and I did so.  I only met her for her quest, dropped her off in town, and literally never spoke to her or interacted for the rest of the game.  I had a much better experience for it, honestly.  She appeared after I made my choice in the end of the game, which felt weird since I hadn’t spoken to her in several ingame years, but other than that, the game was totally fine without her.  I sort of just wish you could kill characters in DA2 the way you can in DAO, then I’d just do that, tbh.  It doesn’t suit very many (or any) of the characters I rp in DA2 to keep her around or support her in any way.

First Game I Played: Mixed up Mother Goose Deluxe - I’m not actually sure if this is the FIRST game I’ve ever played or not, but it’s one of the first I played alone as a kid.  I really loved it--this is probably what created my love for point and click adventures, and the game was very silly and fun.

Favorite Company: Bioware - I’ve always been a sucker for Bioware games, ever since Knights of the Old Republic 1 was my favorite childhood game.  I love how they do stories and party members, and while I’m not a fan of all of their games, I really love what they’ve made and their style of storytelling and character driven plot.  Even though sometimes their stories get cliche, I think the suit video games well and most of my early gaming was within their games.

Hated Company: EA - Bioware truly only started to go to shit after the EA acquisition, so I fucking hate EA.   I know Bioware had issues before EA too, but I definitely don’t think EA has helped the situation whatsoever.

Depressing Game: The Beginner’s Guide - I relate to this game as a creator and a writer, and it affects me deeply because of the story it tells and the questions it raises.  It makes me reflect on how I think of myself as a creator, and it reminds me of friendships I used to have.

Creepy Game:  The Path - God, I love this game.  It’s just aimlessly wandering around and finding symbolic scenery and watching your current character comment on it.  Then, you go off to find your girl’s wolf, and each one is different and unique to her, and you watch it ‘kill’ her--and facing her wolf is the only way each girl can truly mature.  Whenever you get to grandmother’s house, the camera switches to first person, and your eyes keep closing, so you can only see while clicking to move.  It forces you to keep moving so that you can see, but since you are moving, you only get to see things somewhat vaguely.  It’s got a great atmosphere, and I love the symbolic storytelling.

Happy Game: Eastshade - This game is so sweet.  There’s some drama around to with many of the quests, but I like this as an rpg without combat, and I think this would be a really good kids game.  There’s a lot to see and explore, and the game was made to be really pretty so that you want to paint several aspects of it.  It’s really lovely to just wander around in this game and bike around the area, painting anything that suits your fancy.  As long as you don’t finish the main quest, you’re free to wander, and materials do respawn, so you essentially can infinitely paint once you get far enough.

Favorite Ending: Virtue’s Last Reward - I love the questions this game asks and where the ending goes.  It thematically ties together--the whole reason the game itself exists is to get the attention of a ‘higher being’--the player, essentially.  I love how it plays with that concept, and even though the final game in the series doesn’t entirely pick this idea up where this game left it, standalone this game is stunning in how it comes together.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I was invited the other day to join a community as a Creative Advisor from a survey I filled out for Adobe.  I made the choice last November to purchase Creative Cloud for an entire year at a discount.  When I worked at an art school I had all those applications free.  Anybody in the arts community will tell you that software is expensive.  I don’t necessarily feel too connected to the local arts community these days.  But being a Creative Advisor basically means I participate in focus groups and offer my opinions in writing.  It’s a not a bad way to stay active as a creator.  I bought a drone basically so I had 4k footage to mess around with in Premiere.  I am a YouTube Creator by definition.  Yesterday after posting a video of the stream there was another survey in the right hand corner.  I cautiously opened it and read through it.  It was an inclusion survey.  YouTube wanted information to help with their community.  The first question was what race I identify as.  I can’t really argue I’m not white.  The next question was if I identified as part of the LGBTQ community.  I don’t so I answered no.  The third question was what gender I identified as.  I said male because I’m cis.  I completed the survey and went on about my business.  A few minutes later another popup asked me how satisfied I was with the YouTube community after all this.  I answered Very Satisfied and closed the window.  I’m also part of a larger community here in Chicago.  This can be drilled down so far that you can find yourself standing in a lonely circle with a thousand fingers pointed back at you.  My immediate neighbors identify.  I wouldn’t know what specifically or why so I don’t ever really pry.  I live on a pretty diverse property when it comes to tenants.  That expands into a pretty diverse neighborhood with a pretty diverse set of issues when it comes to power sharing.  I live the mad max sort of mentality these days.  Think more Fury Road than Road Warrior.  Where he helps out then silently fades away to focus on his own car wreck of a life.  One winter while shoveling snow I discovered somebody had written something in front of one of my neighbor’s doorstep.  It said “gay people live here.”  I processed it, shrugged and shoveled it away.  I couldn’t tell if my landlord was supposed to discover it, if my neighbors actually wrote it, or if it was somebody being hateful.  I made a judgement call on the account of safety and made a mental note of it then made it disappear.  I cared enough to think about it no matter how much this entire process exhausts me.  People join communities for connection.  People seek out authentic communities for safety, pride and respect.  And people in America should be able to do this freely without being exploited, judged, watched, or compared.  Communities overlap and the geopolitics therein get a little tricky.  When you live in a city with so many different influences, cultures, and hang ups the fog of the ideological war muddles up everyone’s intentions.  I think we retreat to the sanctity of our own communities because they understand the narrative and context best.  I’ve been welcomed into many communities that aren’t my own.  But my circle is pretty small these days.  Mostly because for all the care and attention I apply to the concept of community, I’m often left out to fend for myself here in my bachelor Castle of Doom.  Communities do consolidate power for better or for worse.  Just like rich people hoard money and dodge taxes.  Communities have their own cultural queues and signifiers.  Communities in America have increasingly become more like tribes in the economic desert.  Impenetrable communes at war with myopic definitions and hidden rules that are meant to keep people out for resource sake.  So much so that the Road Warrior doesn’t seem like science fiction to me from personal experience.  

It was the great poet Lord Humungus who may have set it best.  Just walk away.  Safe passage in the wasteland they said.  Be your own boss.  Own your sexuality and answer for your horny crimes.  Shit, I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to where I belong in all of this.  For me things have become equally obfuscated and easy to understand at the same time.  I’m more of an anarchist these days than I would like to admit.  I don’t really want to be on Tucker Carlson’s radar.  Simply because everyone is looking for something to label you as so they can pass an easier judgement on you.  People want you to identify so they can fit you into whatever conversational hole they wish to project at you.  I run into my neighbors all the time.  I treat people like people.  Simply because I’ve been treated enough like shit to know I don’t want anyone else to experience that.  I don’t really want revenge.  I want all this nonsense to stop getting in the way of my pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.  And the constant arguing and debate team every step of the way is troubling.  It’s people with a beaten down sense of self confidence proving themselves in the arena of mob rule.  For all the chest beating online on twitter or facebook people are kind of shook in the streets.  It is a winner take all mentality.  And even the more valid sides of the fight have taken to dirty tactics leaving some of us in the middle of an absolute shit show.  Par for the course if you ask me.  There are plenty of opportunities to be the hero these days.  Not many to be acknowledged as one.  You can be you and still support people that think differently.  I had a dream about guns last night.  I don’t own a gun.  That’s not the right choice for a person like me.  It doesn’t mean I can make a sweeping generalization for the rest of America.  Neither do I actually care to.  I’m cis.  I don’t spend my time psychoanalyzing or judging gender or sexuality other than my own biases towards it.  This is to treat people better and learn respectful communication.  Communication is a two way street.  And some communication is blocked, obfuscated or hidden for it’s own protection.  It can also be self serving.  Some of my closest friends are behind infinite onion layers of identities.  Layers of firewalls that I pirouette through like a whirling dervish just to show I still care deeply.  We take the time to show love.  We take the time to understand the obstacles.  And we have patience to understand that we have to sacrifice things sometimes for the sake of change.  Make no mistake the way I see things on my own is fucked.  I am part of a community here on Tumblr.  A much wider community.  There are times when I don’t fit in.  When it’s not about me or you or whoever behind the screen.  It’s what we connect to and how we learn to respect each other as human beings first.  Not as names.  Or fame.  Who we really are behind all of this doesn’t really matter as much as the content and ideas we share.  Community has it’s own memory and it’s own duty to hold things sacred.  Some larger communities do a totally shitty job of understanding the needs of their ideological neighbors.  And passion, pride, and lack of patience can burn bridges more quickly than building them.  There are times when you realize you are part of a community that doesn’t honor your identity at the core.  Sometimes it’s worse.  You find you aren’t welcome in a community for whatever reason.  If you are an abuser this is a safety issue and not really up for argument or discussion.  But sometimes its far less deserving.  And it’s a game of musical chairs to understand where you fit in and where you aren’t welcome.  For me I’m part Swedish and also a minimalist in nature.  Just look at Ikea and my habit of rearranging furniture.  I grew more inward this year in terms of who I trust.  Now it’s just me and a small percentage of screen names that might be owned by the same person or people.  I identify them as my closest friends.  

The thing about community I’ve learned over the years is that it can always be infiltrated.  Trust can always be broken.  We find we don’t belong to the bigger picture because motives are out of place.  We long to just be normal and accepted for that.  It’s exhausting to have to identify every time you walk out the door.  I identify as human.  Mostly I identify as Tim.  Freedom in America is best summed up by a quote by my favorite person in the world.  She’s from China.  She said once she loved New York because it was the only place where she felt free to cry in public without anybody prying into why.  I’m paraphrasing.  But that shit has stuck with me like a knife for years.  That isn’t what America is about right now.  It’s almost like it’s looking for victims.  Looking for signs of weakness to trick into a confidence game.  It’s a setup on every corner.  A prank waiting to happen.  A constant obstacle to your main quest.  And this isn’t what America is about.  At least not the way I live it.  I don’t think I solve the situation with more policing.  I don’t think I solve it by doing anything other than continuing to live free. The challenge here in America is constantly evolving as it is around the world.  America’s idea of free isn’t always well thought out.  It’s riddled with paradoxes.  And yet this is all I really have.  I’ve seen enough people stalking me in the streets with shirts emblazoned with messages.  Freedom isn’t free.  Penetrate the world.  Blue lives matter.  Make seven up yours.  I’ve made statements too and found myself more and more alone.  And then I’ve started to realize geographically what’s worth fighting for.  I’m tied to an address.  That’s the address where the government sends my ballots and rejects my state taxes at.  That’s the address where the utilities are in my name and I pay my rent on time.  Sometimes even a month ahead.  I’m fiscally responsible for once in my life.  I’ve conquered years of societal glue that held me to mediocre and half assed standards.  I’m a diamond in the rough except I’m not really all the rough.  I’ve stood up for people who aren’t like me so much that I feel more isolated and weird every day.  And I learn that sometimes it’s better to shy away from places where you aren’t welcome than to make a scene.  I am stuck in my little hole here.  If the answer were getting out there and networking, I’d ask people to look at my passport.  It’s not good enough for the state to acknowledge as proof of my identity.  But I spent a lot of money going back and forth to Asia trying to do just that.  And I paid off all that debt awhile ago.  I know the world is bigger than me.  And I believe sometimes people think they’ve travelled the world in their computer.  They’re the authority on everything.  And here is the problem with freedom in America.  The authority isn’t always right.  This is why we seek out communities.  For democracy.  For peer review.  To have our narrative understood and respected.  And we need communities to be more about democracy and less about autocratic reactions to a zero sum game.  I think it’s okay to not be part of something you don’t belong.  And I also think it’s okay to respect people’s wishes to seek out where they do.  But we have to learn to live together in America despite of this.  And well this would require us as Americans to really look the beast in the eye.  And doing that alone is scary.  I should know.  I do it every day.  So much so that I’m literally not fucking around with much of anything other than what’s easy enough to read.  Even when it’s easy to read it doesn’t mean it’s done in earnest.  I can only really worry about the things I hold intimate and secret.  The creative culture I’ve salvaged with my bare hands.  I really don’t care if you don’t get who I am.  But I want you to know I care about the world being free.  At least for the people I care about.  If you ever catch yourself crying in public just remember I’m right there over your shoulder cheering you on.  I’ll fight for your right to cry about it and scare off anybody who interferes.  That’s just who I am and nobody will know or even acknowledge me by name.  Sometimes I do feel like a ghost.  I’m not trying to walk through walls people set up for protection.  But I will break down the barriers people put up to keep us from living together.  <3 Tim

[purplerose244]

Of Koi and Kindness

Hello everyone, here’s a fic for the Ninjago Secret Santa hosted by @coco-jaguar! Thank you so much for you work and dedication, I had a lot of fun like every year, it’s one of my favorite events 😍

This is my present for @ookamihanta, one of my favorite artists in this fandom! An absolute pleasure writing about your OCs, I hope I gave them justice! I love your art and I hope you spent the best Christmas! 😊😊

Here we go, enjoy! ^ ^

(These characters do not belong to me, they belong to ookamihanta for Sunny and Chiru, and the Ninjago crew for Ronin)

“Chi, I don’t wanna be that person… but it’s been one full hour since you started trying, so I’ll be that person.” Sunny sighed, shaking her head at her friend’s apparently unbreakable concentration over the target. “You’ve tried enough. It’s time to go. Come on.” There were many other ways she could had spent that snowy night. Stuck in front of a shooting gallery with a very mediocre thrower didn’t really come first on her list.

Chiru pouted, holding the ball in his hand for dear life.

“But this is the one! I can feel it!” That guy could have a future as a writer. ‘But this is the one I can feel it’, a biography by sore loser Chiru. He squeezed his eyes, eyeing the cans that were his targets. “I just… have to… aim…”

Sunny shook her head.

“Cupcake, there’s a Cafe with a special menu for smoothies just waiting for my order, please? I’m dying for a strawberry and banana right now.” And for a warm place to stay in in general, her coat was warm enough but her cheeks were starting to hurt. Winter festivals were fun, especially in the center of Ninjago City. But only there someone could find a shop for antiquity – apparently in possession of a very flawed heater –, that for some reason decided to set up a very attractive looking shooting gallery with koi fishes as prices. Just what she needed with Chiru and his newborn burning desire to have a koi fish.

When the fist sneeze came out Selene gulped nearby, her big blue concerned eyes all over her. Her cat grabbed her pants, almost climbing the girl by herself. Sunny picked her up, leaving her snuggling around her neck like a black fur collar. She was fluffy and warm, the perfect scarf. Sunny scratched her head to thank her, earning a satisfied purr.

Chiru grunted, throwing the ball again. It got the cans, but not enough to make them fall over. The man at the stand, sitting on a chair with his feet on the counter, snickered. He had a big hat slightly inclined over his face, partially hiding his eyepatch.

“Not like I wanna interrupt the stream of money… I really don’t, keep going.”

“I’m gonna get the fish, you just wait old man!”

“Feel free to try as much as you want kid, you don’t hear me complaining.” The man looked at the teens, smirking. “And it’s Ronin. Wanna know an old man, spend like two minutes with one of the ninja. That geezer master can come from everywhere.”

Sunny’s eyebrows went up.

“That Ronin? Aren’t you supposed to be in jail? Or with the heroes?… or both?” That name sparked too many controversial big newspapers titles.

“Not today, today I got these koi fishes from an old client and discovered that for Christmas kids don’t want fishes… but dragons. ” He shrugged, bring his hands behind his neck. “It’s a sad time of the year for pet marketing. Alas this is the only productive method I came with to earn some money and try to get rid of these little things at the same time. They call me many, many, many unhappy names, but lazy isn’t one of them.” Looking at the robot arm and the variety of mechanical components of his body, it seemed a sincere statement.

Aaand another ball thrown pointlessly got stuck into one of the items hung on the wall – some kind of trophy with a blade on top of it, how bizarre. Chiru growled, dropping his head on the counter, the red and blue locks of his white hair falling flat on the surface.

“This game is rigged!”

Sunny smiled sympathetically at him. She turned to Ronin.

“Can’t I just buy one? You said you just want money and for the koi fishes to be gone.”

“I mean yeah. Although, first, that defeats the economy purpose. Statistically I gain more by his tries than his victories. Then second… of course, I wouldn’t have half the fun I’m having right now.” The ball slipped from the trophy and fell down, Chiru growled louder in response. “Aha, see? I haven’t had this profitable entertainment since fire boy tried to negotiate with me for an aeroblade!” Ronin shook his head, getting more comfortable into his position. “Wanna try too, kid? To avenge his fall or some hero baloney?”

Sunny frowned, looking at her friend still dulling over the counter. After all, it was a Christmas present like another, and he really wanted a koi fish. But she had another plan in mind for the execution. She took Selene off her neck – shivering – and placed her down, then scooted closer to the guy, a hand on her hip.

“How about a deal instead?”

Ronin arched an eyebrow.

“I’m listening.” She leaned her elbow on the counter, offering a hand. “Arm-wrestling? Please sweetheart, I’ve been in Ninjago long enough to recognize an elemental master when I see one. Not gonna fall for the old ‘I’m totally not magical’ trick.”

Sunny smiled brightly at him.

“Elemental master of Moonlight to be precise, nice to meet you. With my good friend master of Blood right here.” Chiru waved without getting his head off the counter. “And I wasn’t going to use my powers, don’t worry.”

“How can I trust you?”

“Well… I’m not you?”

The man snorted, pondering for a moment with the face of someone who just really wanted to forget for a moment about working in a freezer-like shop as a living – or maybe it was just her. Ronin looked at the guy dulling all over his counter and shrugged, getting up and grasping her hand. It was the rough hold of someone who’s been through a lot.

“Why not. Bring it on, kid.”

“Gladly.”

They looked at each other for a moment, her calm expression and his sly smile. Then, on an imaginary bell somehow replaced by Selene’s determinate meow, they both started to push through their hold, trying to make the other fall back. Ronin grunted, holding on as Sunny’s hand trembled for the effort, putting more strength. They stayed in the middle long enough for the both of them to silently pant – and for the defeated with white hair to take a little peak. Then finally Sunny’s blue-polished snails clenched strongly around her rival’s hand, slowly and with an unbearable pace pushing him against the counter.

As soon as he lost the man exhaled the longest breath, looking at her in disbelief.

“You gotta leave half of a dignity, girl. Please tell me you used your powers.”

“It was a power, yes… it’s called workout.” Ronin widened his eyes then started laughing. Sunny giggled too, while Selene jumped skillfully over the counter happily watching her. “But it was a nice challenge, I thought all the strength you had was in the robot arm, not this one. And I’m pretty sure I would had noticed a hero slash public enemy walking around a gym.”

“Pff, I would never do something this fancy, I just need to compensate for what I do for money.” Ronin shrugged, pointing at his treasures for sale. “If you run away as much as I did you end up putting some muscles without really trying. Well, Moony, a deal is a deal I guess.” He looked a little grumpy, the kind you pretend to be just to playfully make things a little less too easy. He opened the fishbowl with all the koi fishes, pointing at it. “Alright kid, which one?”

Chiru finally got up from his gloomy position, wearing a very annoyed look. He slowly put his black mask over the mouth, then pointed at Sunny, who blinked in confusion.

“Didn’t need help. Could’ve done on my own.” His muttering against the cloth sounded extremely sheepish. And his pouty voice and freckled cheeks reddening said otherwise.

Sunny snickered.

“You’re welcome, cupcake.” The colorful koi fishes were swimming rapidly in the little container, scooting a little further when the master of moon peaked at them closely. White, red and black, so color so bright over the scales. “They are so beautiful… Selene don’t you dare!” The black cat stopped the paw in midair and looked annoyed at her master, even while obediently complying. “Well, which one do you like the most?”

Chiru took the mask down. He hummed and looked over as well, still squinting his eyes.

“I don’t know…”

“Is anyone looking at you?”

“Of course they are, I look like a beacon of light!” He grinned, blowing a lock of hair with superiority. Then his eyes widened and he suddenly squished his nose against the glass. “Wait a second, why is that spot so slow?”

Ronin frowned. Sunny shrugged.

“He has bad eyesight, he means the fish.”

“Oh, well, I think the little guy or gal has a lame fin, don’t know if it happened during the fishing or the transport. It can’t help it I guess.” Those big eyes were definitely ahead of him, since Ronin immediately frowned. “You want this one?” The guy nodded convinced. “Well alright, it’s your choice.” Ronin took a plastic bag and a little net, making sure to properly seal the bag with the little koi fish inside. “Here you go kid.” Chiru looked in awe at the fish being extended towards him. He slowly took it with his left hand, never taking his eyes off. The coat he was wearing barely hid his missing right arm, the stump was leaving half sleeve empty. Moving it right now, it kinda looked like a fin. The same fin that was still making it swim. No matter what happened.

Slowly a sweet smile appeared over his face.

Sunny’s eyes softened. Selene immediately rushed to get to the same spot around the girl’s neck, purring softly. The elemental master of Moonlight then turned to the man, leaving on the counter a handful of coins in front of a very confused expression.

“Why…?”

“I kinda played at your shooting gallery, so I’ll pay it as a shot.” She smiled at him. “Thank you, you didn’t have to just agree with my little game.”

“… ah, you kids are so corny.” The man rolled his eyes and took the money, a big smirk on his face. “Get out of here and get yourselves a nice Christmas I guess. At least until this city will be under attack again.” He went to get busy over his merchandise as the teens got out, muttering something about strong female elemental masters always getting the best over him.

The streets were covered in white wonder, it had been since a few days already. The roads and the buildings all together looked created a winter wonderland, with different areas set up for ice-skating and random stands selling hot cocoa. The decorations were bright and colorful, from the big neon signs of the different shops to the Christmas lights climbing every single corner. Walking along the main street many citizens were just wandering around, cute families getting closer to each other with big smiles, nice couples holding hands running towards the closest warm place. It was a rare sight in such a chaotic place.

Sunny sniffed the air, the coffee scent already present. Just one of her favorite Cafe, with a big selection of smoothies in the menu. Just when she eyed the wolf shaped sign of the place, with the irreplaceable O&H signature, Chiru cut her off, suddenly entering some kind of bakery nearby. Sunny froze, a little startled, looking through the shopping window. The guy looked very impatient as he ordered, struggling to hold that new package and the fish with one hand.

When Chiru finally got out he looked at Sunny, still pouting a little. Then he slowly gave her the little pink box of what seemed to be a strawberry shortcake.

“I could’ve got them without help, really! But… thank you.” He blushed, more for the embarrassment than the cold – so there was no backup excuse for that. And even though it was one extremely cute reaction, the master of Moonlight decided that seeing him frowning for an hour over a game was teasingly enough. So she smiled thankfully, taking the present, slowly starting to walk again with the master of Blood by her side.

“So, how are you going to call it?”

“… I don’t know if it’s male of female, I would like to know first. Until then… Nemo I think.” Chiru shrugged. “Too obvious?”

Sunny giggled, scratching her cat’s chin.

“You’re telling me? She’s Selene because of the moon goddess, I can’t exactly judge.” A big bang made them both tremble, but the shiver turned into excitement as a bright green firework exploded into the night sky. “Would you look at that…” Selene meowed, a little concerned, snuggling closer to her neck. After a few more bangs she was already getting used to it, her tail twirling just a little harshly after every single boom.

Chiru held Nemo as close as he could, looking at the show just like all the people that had decided to just stop and watch. Like there was time for beautiful things. Like there was no rush when there was enjoyment. He looked at his friend, smiling.

“Merry Christmas, Sunny.”

Sunny turned to him beaming. Another explosion of light reflected sparkles of purple into her soft cyan irises, adding just another shade of beauty.

“Merry Christmas, Chiru.”

[mychemicalficrecs]

aha also there’s one i can not find no longer about gerard being in an abusive relationship with bert n then gee gets a job at the place frank works n at first frank thinks he’s super super annoying but after he has to like protect gerard a few times he realizes somethings up? idk how to explain it 🥺

Hi Nonny!

Unfortunately I couldn't find this fic, but have these two fics where Gerard starts in a bad relationship with Bert and ends up in a better one with Frank that I found while searching as compensation ;)

If someone recognizes the fic, please chime in!

Million Dollar Man by Okaymcr, 24k, Mature. Frank Iero is the most notorious Crimelord in all of the American east coast. Especially New Jersey. He has more respect than the president himself, more money than he knows what to do with, and more power than he ever imagined himself having. Regardless, Frank lacks possesion one thing; Love. But when a porcelain complexion beauty, with an innocent head and a naïve way of thinking stubbles upon him, that might just change Franks game forever.

MJ's Not the Only One With a Man In the Mirror by desert_neon (sproutgirl), 44k, Explicit. In the autumn of 2005 in New York City, Gerard lives a mediocre life with Bert; they share a small apartment, but Gerard (sober for just over a year) pays for most of the expenses while Bert spends any spare money The Used make on alcohol and drugs. After a terrible morning, Gerard, dejected and depressed, finds himself standing in front of a bar. Tempted, he hesitates. Should he go in, give in, revert to the jobless loser he once was? Or should he move on, catch a train home? The choice he makes will impact his life in ways he can’t even imagine.

[wvldcvrd]

[SHAWN MENDES, CIS MALE, HE/HIM] have you seen MARCO SPIEGELMAN around sedona? MARCO is a BEEKEEPER, but they’re also THE WILD CARD in the sedona sleuths, so you’ve probably seen them around the firehouse shed. they’re known for being WARMHEARTED and OPTIMISTIC, but they’re also known to be OVERWROUGHT and NAIVE. when they’re not at the shed, i can usually find them at THE SEDONA FOREST. i can always recognize them by (a worn guitar neck with old strings, coming home three minutes before curfew, a crackling woodfire, and freshly blown out birthday candles).

hi friends ! my name is reed, i use they/she pronouns, and am so stoked to be here ! keep reading to find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know about my boy, marco.

tw: cancer, death, car crash, addiction

marco joshua spiegelman was born on an overcast august day in the city of boston, massachusetts. he was the fourth child and the youngest by seven years, meaning that in some way, he was his parents’ last hope.

the spiegelman family practiced orthodox judaism – his dad was raised orthodox and his mom converted from reform judaism in order to marry his dad– so marco’s childhood was very much focused on religion. the spiegelman family went to services every friday night, celebrated every holiday, forced marco to wake up early on sundays to go to hebrew school, and treated him they same as they had treated his older siblings. however, as his siblings grew up and moved out, they all stopped devoutly practicing judaism and moved into a more modern and laid back interpretation of their religion. marco craved this from a young age, but because he was stuck at home with his parents, he was forced to follow their rules and beliefs.

marco went to jewish private school for elementary and middle school, had his bar mitzvah in the seventh grade, and tried to blend in as best as he could. he liked history and english, eager to learn more about the past and help shape the future. at this point in his life, he had his goal of becoming a politician pretty much set. he would help the end the fighting in israel, solve world hunger, and just be an all around awesome guy.

however, his plans shifted on valentine’s day his eighth grade year. after coming home from school, his parents sat him down and told him that his dad had stage four exocrine pancreatic cancer. he knew that his dad had been losing weight and not eating as much recently, as well as complained all the time that his back hurt, but marco didn’t realize that it was something so terrible and life threatening.

with a survival rate of about one percent, the spiegelman family knew that his dad’s chances of survival were not good. the next few months were difficult, his dad went through lots of chemotherapy and experimental trials, but nothing seemed to be working, and he passed away before june. this crushed marco and his mom; his dad was a kind, gentle, and loving person, and the three of them had grown extremely close with each other due to marco being the youngest and the only child still living in the house.

it was hard for the two of them to live by themselves in a town that his mom didn’t really have any connection to, so a few months after his dad’s passing, marco and his mom moved to sedona, the place where she had grown up, to try and start fresh. their new beginning came coupled with the loss of their connection to their religion, and marco and his mom no longer practiced judaism

freshman year in a brand new town was intimidating for marco, and this resulted in him being extremely quiet and shy for the majority of the year. however, his history teacher saw how invested in history and current events he was and convinced marco to join the debate team. this is where he found his voice once again.

marco did a type of debate called public policy debate, a style of debate where you talk extremely fast and have to do an insane amount of research to ensure that you know what you’re talking about. in order to participate in that style of debate, his teacher assigned him a partner and he grew extremely close to her very quickly. the two of them went on to win the national title their sophomore and junior years

after joining debate, marco grew more confident in himself and began to talk more both in and out of class. being good at something gave him the boost he needed to no longer be shy, and he was well liked by most people at school. marco’s sophomore and junior years were quite possibly the best years of his life.

however, right before the trophy ceremony his junior year, he got a call from his mom, telling him that his sister had gotten in to a car crash and that she was in a coma in a hospital in san francisco. marco flew to san fran immediately after receiving the call, leaving his partner to collect the trophy on his behalf.

for the following two weeks, marco rarely left the hospital for fear that his sister would pass away without him there. although the two of them were not that close, losing another family member was something that marco could not imagine. on the fifteenth day of her being in the hospital, the doctors said that there was nothing they could do to save his sister. so they harvested her organs as donations, and the spiegelmans were forced to put another member of their family into the ground.

senior year came around and marco was a changed person. he was not as passionate or confident as he used to be, he quit debate, and he focused on judaism again to try and give his life some meaning. however, he explored the type of judaism his sister was into, reform judaism, based more on learning and exploring the ideas of religion than sitting in a sanctuary and praying.

although he skipped school often and had mediocre grades, he managed to graduate, his dreams seeming unimportant and his life in shambles. throughout this, he still managed to keep a positive attitude, now convinced that god had a plan for him and that everything would work out fine. he does have really bad anxiety tho, so it’s this classic combination of trying to have faith in the way things work out but never really being sure that they will

without his debate professor, he wouldn’t have even gotten into college, but with the help of someone making sure he followed through, he got into college t to study sustainable food & farming. this seemed like a out of the blue choice, but it combined marco’s love of research & science, and allowed him to feel like he could have a greater impact on the world than he could as a politician.

college went by without incident, but here are some highlights (joined hillel and loved being w/ other jews, was a nerd, did nerd things **including a lot of acid, lived his best life)

he recently graduated, and has found a love for beekeeping ! he has two hives and thousands of bees and he loves them all.

headcannons !

marco worked as a waiter at an italian restaurant in high school so that he could have spending money. money was never a problem in his household as his mom is a cardiologist, but he always felt bad asking for money for things, so he made his own money instead

if marco was a crayola crayon, he’d be pine green. the color is a bit darker than most of the other greens in the crayola family, just like marco in his family, but also has a hint of blue in it, hinting at the sadness that lies beneath marco’s outer layer.

marco really loves old school video games. his old nintendo 64 is collecting dust in his closet, and although he rarely has time to play it anymore, he refuses to throw it out. while growing up, video games were his way of connecting to his two older brothers, his older sister always watching on with a disapproving gleam in her eye. whenever the siblings get together, however, they always manage to turn on an old, favorite game of theirs, and the competition is always heated

in high school, marco smoked a lot of weed. he would always be seen outside at any high school party, smoking by himself or with a group of other people. however, after graduating, marco switched to cigarettes. he smokes frequently, but will furiously deny being addicted if approached about it

marco plays as waluigi when he plays mario kart/party

marco is a night person. he utterly hates getting up early in the morning, but staying up late comes easy and natural to him.

marco recycles religiously. if something is recyclable and you don’t put it into the recycling bin, he’ll lose a bit of respect for you as a person

marco absolutely loves space and the universe and stargazing (part of his appreciation for nighttime), but he also wholeheartedly believes that aliens are real, no doubt about it.

1/2 wholesome sunshiney boy, 1/2 sad and lonely and lost kid

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

The Beach Bum

I knew nothing about this movie going in besides 1) Matthew McConaughey and 2) same director as Spring Breakers, which I have never actually seen but takes up the same corner of my brain as other bits of trivia about infamous things like Sharknado or who won the celebrity boxing match between Paula Jones and Tonya Harding (Harding by TKO). You know, I like to roll the dice and go in with a completely blank slate every once in awhile, hoping to be surprised by some quirky indie darling, and this seemed like it would fit the bill nicely. 

WELL STRAP THE FUCK IN BECAUSE IT FIT NO BILL, NOT A SINGLE ONE, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. Just how much did I hate this festering hallucinogenic hemorrhoid of a movie? Well...

I can’t think of any film I’ve ever seen in which I hoped the main character not only died, but ceased to exist entirely in the blink of an eye, like George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life but without the whole life lesson part. Just completely wiped from everyone’s memory and the earth’s consciousness for all time forever as if he had never existed to infest people’s lives with his aggressively greasy uselessness. 

The plot - if you can call it that - is a series of vignettes centering on Moondog (McConaughey), a hedonist poet, as he wanders, high and piss-soaked, through the world trying to finish his book so that he can inherit the money left to him by his millionaire wife (Isla Fisher). He runs into a bunch of friends along the way, and by friends I mainly mean people he does drugs with who don’t immediately push him off a cliff. They include Jonah Hill, Snoop Dogg, Zac Efron, Jimmy Buffett, and Martin Lawrence. You might be saying, wow that’s a star-studded cast! Surely the movie isn’t all that bad, right? To which I reply, there are 7 Oscar winners featured in the film Movie 43, which is one of the literal worst movies of all time. 

Some thoughts:

Snoop Dogg has 3-foot-long dreadlocks and his character’s name is Lingerie. I don’t have anything clever to say about that, I just needed you to know.

As for Moondog, I am terrified of him. He has all the confidence and self-awareness of the world’s most mediocre man and yet everyone treats him like royalty because he lives “authentically” and is “in tune with his art” and something something “the purity of living every moment to the fullest” and I’m getting terrible acid flashbacks to every guy I ever met at a party who was getting his MFA in poetry.

Why do all these topless women even want to be around him? I bet he smells TERRIBLE. 

Jonah Hill is doing the weirdest accent and may or may not think he’s filming an entirely different movie than the one Matthew McConaughey is making.

I just didn’t expect this much crotch grabbing. Some crotch grabbing, sure, just...not this much.

There’s a long scene set to a Peggy Lee song called “Is That All There Is?” and if that doesn’t sum up my feelings about every crusty shitgoblin idea that went into making this movie, I don’t know what does.

To add insult injury, they FRIDGED ISLA FISHER. That’s a spoiler but you know what, I’m trying to save you from the existential terror of watching this movie and confronting the nihilistic darkness within your own soul as you realize that you are alive and you are spending your precious nanosecond of time on this planet letting this rotting fuck muffin of a movie into your mind and heart.

The sad part is, it doesn’t even make hedonism look fun. And not in a cautionary Requiem for a Dream type way, but in a barely-functioning-alcoholic dad bobbing and weaving at his kid’s soccer game type way. It’s just fucking sad but is somehow being help up here as some sort of pure artistic ideal (all the gross, pissing-yourself-drunk parts included). It’s outdated frat boy chic, and it’s not even a little bit fun to watch.

Zac Efron is wearing JNCOs and listening to Creed. His vignette is probably the most fun, but does it really matter? 

Martin Lawrence as a dolphin tour captain and surely owed someone a favor to take this thankless role.

Did this movie even have a script? Was all of it improvised? It’s all barely connected. I’d say it’s like a Monty Python movie or something, but that would require it to be funny or have something interesting to say.

This is by far the greatest disappointment I think I’ve ever felt at the end of a film, in which the main character DIDN’T blow up in a massive explosion.

Did I Cry? Only afterwards, realizing how much of my life I’d wasted by watching this flaming twat cockroach of a movie.

Save yourself. Please.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[ofmarcos]

( shawn mendes, cismale, he/him ) i just saw MARCO SPIEGELMAN walking down the street’s of provincetown the other day playing 100 BAD DAYS BY AJR out loud. rumor has it that the TWENTY TWO year old is WARMHEARTED, but can also be UNNECESSARILY OVERWROUGHT — overall they’re a POLYMATH. they remind me of A WORN GUITAR NECK WITH OLD STRINGS, COMING HOME THREE MINUTES BEFORE CURFEW, A CRACKLING WOODFIRE, AND FRESHLY BLOWN OUT BIRTHDAY CANDLES. ( ophelia, 19, est, they/she )

hello guys, gals, and non-binary pals, my name is ophelia and it’s lovely to meet u all!! i am nineteen, living in florida, work at an escape game, and my t key on my laptop gets stuck so um if u ever see me leave a t out of a word that’s why. also, fun fact!! i’m originally from a small town in ma about a two hour drive from provincetown :O but enough about me !! this is marco, he’s an actual meme, and you can read all about him under the cut. like this and i’ll come slide into ur dms for plots. <3

(also this got way longer than anticipated, i’m sorry, pls love me)

PINTEREST.

tw: cancer, death, car crash, addiction

marco joshua spiegelman was born on an overcast august day in the city of boston, massachusetts. he was the fourth child and the youngest by seven years, meaning that in some way, he was his parents’ last hope.

the spiegelman family practiced orthodox judaism – his dad was raised orthodox and his mom converted from reform judaism in order to marry his dad– so marco’s childhood was very much focused on religion. the spiegelman family went to services every friday night, celebrated every holiday, forced marco to wake up early on sundays to go to hebrew school, and treated him they same as they had treated his older siblings. however, as his siblings grew up and moved out, they all stopped devoutly practicing judaism and moved into a more modern and laid back interpretation of their religion. marco craved this from a young age, but because he was stuck at home with his parents, he was forced to follow their rules and beliefs.

marco went to jewish private school for elementary and middle school, had his bar mitzvah in the seventh grade, and tried to blend in as best as he could. he liked history and english, eager to learn more about the past and help shape the future. at this point in his life, he had his goal of becoming a politician pretty much set. he would help the end the fighting in israel, solve world hunger, and just be an all around awesome guy.

however, his plans shifted on valentine’s day his eighth grade year. after coming home from school, his parents sat him down and told him that his dad had stage four exocrine pancreatic cancer. he knew that his dad had been losing weight and not eating as much recently, as well as complained all the time that his back hurt, but marco didn’t realize that it was something so terrible and life threatening.

with a survival rate of about one percent, the spiegelman family knew that his dad’s chances of survival were not good. the next few months were difficult, his dad went through lots of chemotherapy and experimental trials, but nothing seemed to be working, and he passed away before june. this crushed marco and his mom; his dad was a kind, gentle, and loving person, and the three of them had grown extremely close with each other due to marco being the youngest and the only child still living in the house.

it was hard for the two of them to live by themselves in a town that his mom didn’t really have any connection to, so a few months after his dad’s passing, marco and his mom moved to provincetown, the place where she had grown up, to try and start fresh. their new beginning came coupled with the loss of their connection to their religion, and marco and his mom no longer practiced judaism

freshman year in a brand new town was intimidating for marco, and this resulted in him being extremely quiet and shy for the majority of the year. however, his history teacher saw how invested in history and current events he was and convinced marco to join the debate team. this is where he found his voice once again.

marco did a type of debate called public policy debate, a style of debate where you talk extremely fast and have to do an insane amount of research to ensure that you know what you’re talking about. in order to participate in that style of debate, his teacher assigned him a partner and he grew extremely close to her very quickly. the two of them went on to win the national title their sophomore and junior years

after joining debate, marco grew more confident in himself and began to talk more both in and out of class. being good at something gave him the boost he needed to no longer be shy, and he was well liked by most people at school. this was also when he found the snackpack, and he has always been grateful for their presence in his life.  marco’s sophomore and junior years were quite possibly the best years of his life.

however, right before the trophy ceremony his junior year, he got a call from his mom, telling him that his sister had gotten in to a car crash and that she was in a coma in a hospital in san francisco. marco flew to san fran immediately after receiving the call, leaving his partner to collect the trophy on his behalf.

for the following two weeks, marco rarely left the hospital for fear that his sister would pass away without him there. although the two of them were not that close, losing another family member was something that marco could not imagine. on the fifteenth day of her being in the hospital, the doctors said that there was nothing they could do to save his sister. so they harvested her organs as donations, and the spiegelmans were forced to put another member of their family into the ground.

senior year came around and marco was a changed person. he was not as passionate or confident as he used to be, he quit debate, and he focused on judaism again to try and give his life some meaning. however, he explored the type of judaism his sister was into, reform judaism, based more on learning and exploring the ideas of religion than sitting in a sanctuary and praying.

although he skipped school often and had mediocre grades, he managed to graduate, his dreams seeming unimportant and his life in shambles. throughout this, he still managed to keep a positive attitude, now convinced that god had a plan for him and that everything would work out fine. he does have really bad anxiety tho, so it’s this classic combination of trying to have faith in the way things work out but never really being sure that they will

without his debate professor, he wouldn’t have even gotten into college, but with the help of someone making sure he followed through, he got into u mass amherst to study sustainable food & farming. this seemed like a out of the blue choice, but it combined marco’s love of research & science, and allowed him to feel like he could have a greater impact on the world than he could as a politician. 

college went by without incident, but here are some highlights (joined hillel and loved being w/ other jews, was a nerd, did nerd things **including a lot of acid, lived his best life)

he just graduated and is home for the summer, he has a job working for the local farmers’ market, and is just chillin’, trying not to think about the other shoe that is bound to drop

he’s doing okay, and that’s all he’ll ever answer the question “how are you?” with

headcanons:

marco worked as a waiter at an italian restaurant in high school so that he could have spending money. money was never a problem in his household as his mom is a cardiologist, but he always felt bad asking for money for things, so he made his own money instead

if marco was a crayola crayon, he’d be pine green. the color is a bit darker than most of the other greens in the crayola family, just like marco in his family, but also has a hint of blue in it, hinting at the sadness that lies beneath marco’s outer layer.

marco really loves old school video games. his old nintendo 64 is collecting dust in his closet, and although he rarely has time to play it anymore, he refuses to throw it out. while growing up, video games were his way of connecting to his two older brothers, his older sister always watching on with a disapproving gleam in her eye. whenever the siblings get together, however, they always manage to turn on an old, favorite game of theirs, and the competition is always heated

in high school, marco smoked a lot of weed. he would always be seen outside at any high school party, smoking by himself or with a group of other people. however, after graduating, marco switched to cigarettes. he smokes frequently, but will furiously deny being addicted if approached about it

marco plays as waluigi when he plays mario kart/party

marco has a slight boston accent

marco is a night person. he utterly hates getting up early in the morning, but staying up late comes easy and natural to him.

marco recycles religiously. if something is recyclable and you don’t put it into the recycling bin, he’ll lose a bit of respect for you as a person

marco absolutely loves space and the universe and stargazing (part of his appreciation for nighttime), but he also wholeheartedly believes that aliens are real, no doubt about it.

wanted connections

his debate partner from high school 

romantic connections (male or female or nb!!)

exes w/ lingering feelings

exes who ended on good terms

the person who took his virginity l m a o

that person that he’s been pining after since freshman year in high school who he just wants to get w/ but has convinced himself he cannot

neighbors when they were growing up

current roommate

that friend that u always compete with and like ur friends w/ them still, u are, but also u always want to brag about how great ur doing

someone who confides in him who he rarely confides back to

u KNOW they probably made a band in high school

people he went to college with

anything ur heart desires!!

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: The Dragon Prince

Netflix is making a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series.

Just… no? I realize time and development has been put into this. People are employed. But… the first series was magic, stop trying to recapture it.

Netflix has this problem where they want to propel themselves forward with original content, but that content is very mediocre. They try reviving old series and produce productions that disappoint.[1] The original concepts mostly fade into obscurity, are Stranger Things (which had one pretty good season, and then a mediocre second season), or is BoJack Horseman which I haven’t watched but haven’t heard a bad word about.

Then there’s their irritating handling of Anime.[2]

Netflix is willing to experiment and let creators do what they want. I admire that. But (and trust me, I hate to say this), they need focus testing. They need a stricter format. Edges for creators to bump up against and work around.

A standard season length, for one. An allotted time per episode maybe. Make production a puzzle to solve.

Instead they say ‘Let’s do the live-action Avatar series no one asked for, and is a passive insult to the original!’[3]

Which drags us into The Dragon Prince.

Spoilers! You might want to watch it for yourself (it’s nine episodes), but if you don’t mind spoilers, go ahead. I’m not the City Watch.

So, I think we’ve finally figured it out. We had Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was great. Then we distilled the creative staff, ran experiments and isolated elements.

Legend of Korra was good. Had the creators produce it, but not the head writer. The world was the same, but evolved in interesting ways. Good character concepts and real heart, but still missing the magic and character relationships that resonated so well in the first series.

Now, with The Dragon Prince, we get to see what happens when you isolate AtLA’s head writer, Aaron Ehasz.

You get a cliche fantasy setting, weak main plot, and a lot of cheap AtLA mimicry. But you also get some super charming child characters, intriguing (if not currently complex) villains, and small details that could build up to something great.

Which is to say: go to Bryke for the world and myth arc, go to Ehasz for the character interactions.

There it is! The ultimate break down! Let’s pack this up and…

Okay, fine. You want to hear my opinions on The Dragon Prince. That’s… fair, I guess.

So, in this setting, magic comes from six source: The sun! The moon! The Stars! The Ocean! The Earth! I think the sky?[4]

However, then humanity created a seventh magic! Dark Magic! Ooo, so evil, so dastardly!

Sigh.

Just once, I’d like dark magic to just be misunderstood. If they called it Life Magic, they’d probably have better PR.

Anyways, humanity went to war with the elves, but the Dragon King got sick of the fighting, so he sent the humans west, elves to the east, and divided the continent in half with a lava river.

Humanity didn’t really like this, so they killed the dragon king and his egg. So that’s vengeance.

Except this upset the elves because, y’know, murder’s bad. So they send a party from the assassin elf faction: The Moon Shadow Elves! They turn invisible under moonlight![5]

They’re gonna kill the Human king and his son to make things even. Because suddenly murder’s not so bad?

However, a member of the group is a child who couldn’t will herself to kill.

Basically, that cool and exciting setting you created when you were fourteen? Good news, it’s a Netflix Show now! Yay!

Also, the first season is Book 1: Moon.

And the title card is formatted exactly like Avatar, but with white text on a black background.

So the world isn’t special, and they’re deliberately aping some Avatar trappings. But that’s fine, there’s still the characters and plot. We could bicycle this!

So, what do we have with the humans? A beloved king with a dead wife and two children? Okay… both are sons,[6] so at least it’s not the usual nuclear structure. And, hey, the eldest prince is the king’s step son! Nice change.

Who else? King has an advisor that uses dark magic, suggested killing the dragon king and the egg, and talks above his station. But, hey, Lord Viren has two charming children, and he seems genuinely concerned about his king’s survival and the good of…

Oh, he gets a magic makeover in the final episode to make him look more inhuman, and spends the season plotting to take the throne.

Ugh. Of course.

Well, what about Viren’s children? Claudia is a mage like her dad, and is a cloudcuckoolander. Good choice. And she doesn’t do much that’s actively evil. We’ve got Ty Lee in Zuko’s role. I’m game.

Soren is… well, he’s going to be Azula. He doesn’t have her sadistic streak, but he’s been given the job of eliminating claims to the throne, is a competent combatant, and Viren motivates him with being in line for the throne.

He could turn, but my money’s on just being Azula.

Now, to be clear, Viren wasn’t obviously evil. There were plenty of early moments that hinted that he could be sympathetic and non-evil. However, he does spiral into torture and deceit, so once the season is over, there’s no ambiguity. Sorry.

Hey, what about the main cast?

Prince Callum is voiced by Sokka! Awesome! Jack De Sena needs more work. This time, he gets magic and impressive artistic skills! But he had to give up his sword abilities, and kept the daddy issues. But there’s still that snarky edge and loving brother personality, though the weight of them have been swapped.

He’s the half brother of Prince Ezran, who is the heir apparent of the kingdom. He’s… a goofy young boy. I dunno. Aang light. No overt talents. He’s fine.

So those two are hanging out at the castle, when suddenly their father tries to send them off to the winter cabin, despite it being not winter. He suggests made making a dirt man or going mud sledding.

Callum finds this suspect, and eventually logics out that King Harrow expects to be assassinated and wants to get his sons a safe distance away.

Meanwhile, the Moon Shadow Elves are planning their assassination, making a vow on a magic ribbon that will amputate a limb if they fail. Two targets: King Harrow and Prince Ezran to make up for killing the Dragon King and his egg. Even, you know?

Of course, they dragged a literal child along and had her make the same oath with the same ribbon, so screw ‘em. Child soldiers are bad.

This girl is Rayla. She’ll be the rogue of the main cast! Yay![7]

However, after making this promise, they find out she let a guard go so the humans know they’re coming. You’re off the mission Rayla! Turn in your fancy switchblades and ribbon!

Except the ribbon is magic and won’t come off until the job is done, so keep that I guess. And it’d be mean to take away your knives, so… look, stay at camp while the five adults go murder a dude and an actual kid.

Please remember, these jerks wanted to murder an innocent child.

Rayla decides to redeem herself, and sneaks into the castle. She finds the two princes, Callum attempts to martyr himself for Ezran, shenanigans occur in secret tunnels, and… oh, look, it’s the Dragon King’s Egg. Guess they didn’t actually kill that?

Well, let’s call the whole thing off!

Oh, nevermind. Rayla’s Uncle still wants to kill the king and prince. What a jerk.

So our three heroes escape the castle with the egg, planning on returning to the Dragon Queen. We got our mission!

Oh, and the elves killed King Harrow. So… that’s fun.

To be honest, I wouldn’t discount Lord Viren using dark magic to sidestep this. But he’s also trying to claim the throne, so maybe the king is actually dead.

Could go either way.

The kids head off to the royal cottage, where they stumble onto Callum’s aunt. She’s mute! (Maybe deaf, not one hundred percent on that, since lip reading was referenced but also some ambiguity…)

She’s a military General, fights with a shield, is super awesome, and I’m sad how Callum didn’t bring her into the scheme.

Like, yes, for the plot to work, Lord Viren needs to know the princes are alive and the boys have to be careful and having General Amaya know and supporting the boys would’ve caused other troubles.

But… c’mon Callum, literally signing to Amaya that Rayla is a monster and forcing the elf to do a Blue Spirit act is terrible. Like… they’ve established a sweet way for Callum to communicate a secret past her soldiers, and they didn’t use it for a sweet twist?

Ugh. Intentional miscommunication and unnecessary secrets. They are hitting a bunch of my hated tropes.[8]

The children run off and… don’t really do anything very interesting for a couple episodes.

The villain side of things is where the real fun is! General Amaya goes to the castle to report on the survival of the princes and stop Lord Viren from taking the throne.

However, Lord Viren offers her the throne. Again, how the scene is written and acted, I still found myself doubting what role Viren’s supposed to take. He seems genuinely concerned for the general populace, and offers compromises at every turn, and communicates honestly and…

I want Lord Viren to be a misunderstood good guy. I really want Dark Magic to not be an irredeemable evil. A story without a Big Bad, just factions with cross purposes would be great. There’s so many good escape routes for a more interesting story.

Then Lord Viren throws the man Amaya chose (her interpreter, Gren. He’s neat! I like him!) to lead the Prince Recovery Team into a dungeon, where he can watch Viren torture Rayla’s uncle for information.

Yeah… this is who our villain is.

In Gren’s place, Viren sends his children. Soren is given secret instructions to insure the princes don’t make it home alive, and Claudia is given secret instructions to prioritize the safety of the egg. So that’s our Zuko and Azula doing the Avatar hunt.

They have a fun dynamic as Soren doesn’t put much stock in magic and Claudia is an adorable dark magician girl![10] I look forward to more of them.

Now, back to the D&D campaign of the kids: Callum is trying to learn magic after stealing Claudia’s storm magic orb, and he’s pretty good at it. Rayla is worried about the ribbon cutting off her circulation and is an awesome rogue. Ezran… needs to learn healing magic so we can have a Cleric.

They accidentally drop the egg into a frozen lake and are afraid the baby dragon within is dying, so they head off to get help at a town. There’s a fun kid moment with Rayla turning a snowman into a snow-elf (it was a cute moment and Rayla needs more).

Then the group picks up a girl, Ellis, so abruptly that she might as well have been a player that joined between sessions. Ellis rides a giant puppy named Ava, so we’ve got a beast-master fighter!

Ellis tells the boys about a magic healer on the top of a scary mountain filled with scary monsters. With no options, the four go to the mountain.

They fight one monster, have some self reflection, get to the mountain, learn Ezran can talk to animals,[11] and the monsters there are illusions.

They get to where to where the healer is, only to learn that, nah, she’s just a powerful illusionist and Ava only has three legs.

The only way to save the egg is to hatch it. But they need a storm to do so.

Thus, Callum shatters his magic orb to release a storm, the egg hatches, and the titular Dragon Prince is able to gently bite off the magic ribbon Rayla couldn’t cut off with a magic sun knife.

(Either the dragon is magic enough, or saving the baby dragon was considered equal to assassinating Ezran).

Soren and Claudia use a spell to pinpoint the group!

Lord Viren inprisons Rayla’s uncle in a coin and transforms into an eviller looking form!

Also, there’s some mystery with a magic mirror? Cliffhanger stuff.

So… The Dragon Prince is not amazing. The dialogue and character interactions and relationships are great, but the story and world is paint by numbers.

The next season has plenty of room for subversions and interesting experiments, but… until I see it, I honestly think the show’s skippable in its current form. Filler episodes to build the world and characters would do a lot to help, and committing to nuances hinted at for Lord Viren would be great.

Also, hopefully they improve the animation. I’m not normally one to care about frame rates, but boy did the animation stutter a lot for a finished product.

It’s average.

Thanks for reading this review! Consider checking out my other writings, sending me comments and questions, check out my webcomic or RPG Blog, or whatever. Next time, Netflix is releasing an Anime I’ve been excited for nearer the end of the month. Keep an eye out for that, which will post to my Patreon first. I’m also slowly rolling out a Review of Digimon there!

Until we go flying with dragons,

Kataal kataal.

[1] Admittedly, modern fandom is filled with loud obnoxious people, but I haven’t heard anything good about Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, even from my less frothy-mouthed sisters. [2] If you’re gonna simuldub series in Canada, you can do it in the US, you jerks! [3] Everything can be improved. But actually remaking something just says the original wasn’t good enough. That’s why people hate reboots. [4] Can’t remember if that’s under the purview of the stars or not… [5] Which is Warcraft, Ehasz. [6] Unless there’s a spoiler with Ezran’s voice cast. [7] Canvas likes playing rogues. [8] Let’s see if season two can get inappropriate student-teacher relationship![9] Then they can get a free sandwich. And my eternal ire. [9] For the record: when Claudia inevitably defects and starts teaching Callum magic, that’s not going to count. The two are close in age and it’s not an institutional power imbalance. [10] I want a show about Claudia, Rayla, and Amaya on awesome adventures. [11] He’s a druid! Learn to heal, nerd.

[nameless-articles]

A Delayed Topic: Budgets in Video Games

I’m naked in my Japan dorm eating Pocky, yet I’m disappointed in myself. Not because of my current activities, but because in waiting (really working on other projects) to write my article on mid-tier budgets I missed the boat before other big-name video game people sailed off on it. Nonetheless, it’s a topic I’ve had on my mind for a while now, and to scrap the project just because some other people have tackled it would be silly. So without further ado, I present to you my thoughts and hope for video game budgets going forward (though of course whatever I have to say will have little influence on what publishers do).

A while ago, my brother and I got into a heated discussion over the price of video games. He believes sixty dollars is too high a price for a newly released game, while (though of course I’d much rather pay less) I find it to be a fair price. However, for any readers ready to judge my spending habits, I should remark that I only buy perhaps one or two new games a year (in actuality, I haven’t bought a newly-released game in 2018). It takes a game a fair amount of effort to win me over enough to drop money on launch; the best way for a game to earn goodwill is to be created by a developer that has a good track record. While some people find this habit (that of buying games from trusted developers) as a risk not worth taking, I have only been truly upset over maybe one new game purchase in my life (that honor goes to Mass Effect 3). In my experience, that game has stopped me from not only waiting to buy future Bioware titles but has stopped me from buying them altogether. In the long run, I believe the customers’ (not as individuals but as a collective) happiness will determine whether a developer will succeed or fail. That being said, it isn’t stopping publishers from doing everything in their power to fight that reality. There’s only so much we can say about predatory practices in video games. At their core, these practices are forced into a game with little consideration for how it affects the mechanics or overall flow: The majority of modern AAA games are designed to make money, nothing else.

The question is not “does the price of the game reflect its quality?” Video games are art, and, with no malice, if a painting can sell for millions I don’t see why video games can’t do the same. That might seem like I’m arguing against my point, but I’m not. For us to consider games a form of art, we need to reconsider how we view the cost of that art, and the cost of art is not solely determined by the work put into producing it.

Take Battlefront II for example, by technical merits it is quite the achievement and all the detail packed into it must have taken the developers countless time to create, yet I wouldn’t consider paying over ten dollars for it because, as a customer, the experience on offer is not one I value greatly. On the other hand, if the asking price for Drakengard 3 had been eighty dollars, I would’ve at least considered it. I don’t believe this is how most people think of games, despite having often heard claims that people would’ve spent two hundred dollars on Skyrim if they could (although given the recent controversies concerning Fallout 76 that might’ve been a bad idea, too). Most people make such claims with one particular game when they have become infatuated with it (someone might make that argument for me), but I think the scope of this lens should be broadened to every game we consider purchasing.

Of course, we need to consider the mass-marketed and laborious nature of video games. Visual art like painting and photography can afford to have higher prices precisely because they are limited in quantity. In addition, video games take countless hours from multiple people through different departments, and they all need to be compensated somehow. No developer should expect to work for free (that said, practices like crunch time which recently got brought up again for Red Dead Redemption 2 still occur), and I am all for making sure they get their fair share.

However, a significant chunk of a big games budget is spent on marketing the game, with less than a majority fraction going to actual development, and this trend is only growing. While I understand the importance of giving your game a good amount of coverage, the fact that more money is spent letting people know a game exists rather than ensuring the quality is a recipe for mediocrity, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. I want to give the video game industry the benefit of the doubt and believe the goal is to create a product worthy of the consumer’s money, but trends like massive marketing budgets and locking in game items on the grounds of player choice speaks more to the capitalist perversion of the craft. It might sound like I’m taking video games too seriously, but I believe we are seeing a shift in the industry that is going to change the way video games take risks, and I would argue in a manner that is ultimately limiting the artistic possibilities of the medium.

With budgets as inflated as they are, these projects can’t fail. I don’t mean fail the way publishers mean fail, wherein they expected a decent game to become the next Call of Duty or where only a couple million sales means the investors didn’t make the massive profits they expected (though still made a profit). Big budget games are less likely to try out new and experimental ideas because more often than naught consumers want something they know rather than new mechanics or odd stories. While this has always been the case to some degree, games like Metal Gear Solid 2 are less likely to be created today than they were two console generations ago. Ironically enough, Death Stranding is looking to be such an experience and the only reason it’s able to do this is because the game is being designed as a console exclusive, which Sony banks on selling more consoles than actual units (in the sense that the game might sell a couple million but many of those buyers will probably get one of their consoles just to play it). Games like Bloodborne are meant to give people a reason to own a console by pushing that system as the only means to get such an experience (in some sense it matters less how that game sells). Of course, Sony is expecting a Hideo Kojima exclusive to sell very well, but they are still taking a huge risk by giving him a good amount of money considering the kind of experience it seems to be (at this point, a story-based open world exploration (admittedly this is not the most unique general premise but the story seems to suggest otherwise)). We could never expect a publisher like EA or Ubisoft to take such a risk, though to give them credit they do bankroll much smaller games that tend to mechanically and narratively experiment more than the Battlefields and the Assassin’s Creeds that give EA the profits to test things out on a smaller scale.

It might sound like I’m giving these larger publishers some slack, but I think this approach is still rather tamed and limiting the possibilities video games have. I don’t see this setup of high-budget-destined-for-profit games to pay for the experimental smaller games as giving the most variety of gameplay and narratives. I think it’s better than only big budget games, but these other projects tend to be closer to indie games, which, though they have their place in video games, have to be limited in scope and technical prowess in order to exist. For example, Undertale is an amazing game that I’m glad exists, but imagine what Toby Fox could do if he had a couple million to spend rather than fifty thousand. These are the experiences lacking in the industry, multi-million dollar budgets with the heart and mindset of an independent project. This isn’t to say such experiences don’t exist at all, but that I believe they offer the best compromise between publisher greed and developer freedom. While this might have already been expected, I’m going to talk about how Drakengard 3 is close to an example of such a product.

While full of plenty of flaws and lackluster gameplay elements, the entirety of the Drakengard/Nier series is enjoyed on a cult level because it offers something that is hard to find in other games: that is, a balls to the wall crazy story that, for the sake of the memes, really makes you think. I find the lore of the series interesting, but I mainly play them because they offer stories that for once give me a chance to reflect on my own perspective and have me consider why I believe what I believe. Yes, games like that exist elsewhere, but there is a specific type of craziness and intrigue that comes with these games that I have yet to see replicated in other series (by all means, feel free to mention some). Back to Drakengard 3 in particular, I’ve already talked about why I believe the final boss is one of the best moments I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. Such an ending risks alienating countless players, and it’s the kind of choice you’d probably never see attempted in today’s AAA titles because it’s far too risky. However, you’d also never find it in an entirely independent project, because they lack the funds to even try and attempt an ending of that scope. For that reason, I believe the AA (a couple million, maybe ten or twenty million at most), offer the best space for games that want to push the artistic bounds of the video game medium.

One argument to be made against this proposal is the fear that such games won’t have the level of polish present in higher budget titles. While this can be true, it doesn’t account for what the reality was two generations ago. Games like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Silent Hill 2 (it just seems like the second game is always the best of a series) were expensive in their day, but even their budgets look small in comparison to what’s being spent on games today. While the graphical prowess of AAA games has increased vastly since then, do modern games come across as mechanically or narratively more engaging than two generations ago? I tend to think not, though games like Nier: Automata give me hope that interesting narratives can still be constructed and built upon in a world of higher budgets. Nier is by no means a high budget game, but it costs more than anything an independent studio is able to muster, while at the same time turning a profit for their publisher and bringing their developer from the brink of death. All while giving players an enjoyable and engaging game.

There’s been the idea floating around that games need to cost more than $60. The rising costs of video games is the main culprit, proponents of an increased price say, however I want to lay blame on the consumer for a moment. Gamers appreciate flashy graphics, and these graphics don’t come cheap. It makes sense for publishers to make certain elements of a game top priority if players demonstrate that these features are the sort of things they want to see. Most consumers want more of the same, yet love to complain that every game is trying to be the next [insert current leading genre here]. Players flock to these games, at least enough to allow publishers and developers to make a quick buck off of making such a game.

More than any other artistic medium, video games are highly iterative, which can be to its advantage at times. However, as a result trends take awhile before they die, and in that time there will be countless games of a popular genre that take up time, money, and space from games that are doing different things. Consider how many forgotten first person shooters existed last generation, consider how many forgotten open world games exist this generation. Now imagine the countless battle royal games that are either out or coming out in the future. All of those games devote resources away from a potentially game-changing project. I’m losing focus a little bit, but it’s worth remembering that the problem is not merely concerned with budgets.

In order to give players what they want, publishers and developers have to find monetization methods to make these games and make a profit for their investors, for whom (unfortunately) the creation of big budget games is often times merely a profit-driven endeavor. Money has always driven the creation of art, and only recently crowdfunding and other supportive methods have taken off. However, the vast majority of the population isn’t rich enough to support multiple games with thousands of dollars like some of these investors can, so until then this method of game production will persist. Since players are (rightfully) against a flat price increase of video games, we’ve seen growing use of microtransactions and lootbox systems that, as anyone should know, do not justify the cost of what they give but rather subsidize the other costs of the game. Players buy these microtransactions, and in some cases the overall amount spent on in-game microtransactions have earned a company more money than other games or even the game its sold within. Publishers know this, which perpetuates the cycle of spending more money on marketing to ensure they can get enough whales that will sink a ton of money into the game so they can make their profit regardless.

The saddest part about the current situation is that it might not even be enough to “vote with your wallet” as is often repeated, because most players don’t engage with these monetization practices, but those who do engage in such a way that it’s worth it for the company to alienate a vocal minority of their players in favor of exploit the small amount of players who will pay to play. A complete boycott of these games might not be enough to convince publishers to change their monetization methods. At this point, they know how much money they can make through the nickle-and-dime processes that even if games had a higher starting price it would hardly incentivize them to drop it altogether. Given the number of deluxe and super deluxe editions many games release with which only give access to maybe a few other missions and cosmetics for a quarter of the cost of the real game, some might argue is already the case.

Why did I bother writing all this if the outlook appears black. I’m certain no developer will ever read this, and given my general reach on this site is minimal at best, it’s very unlikely that this will get any traction that leads to some grander change. Still, I find it important for people to see and understand why games are monetized the way they do, and in this instance the burden is on the consumer to inform publishers the kinds of experiences we want to see. I’m fully aware that what I want from video games is not what other people want to see; if it was, then there would be no reason for me to make this post. But I do find the experiences I want lacking, and I believe more AA budgets will give the best range for those types of experiences that will push gaming in a new direction. It is not the Red Dead Redemption 2’s of the industry that will revolutionize gaming, but the smaller, humbler experiences that will shape the artistic future of games to come.

There is still much room for video games to develop as a medium. Whether it’s in traditionally controlled games or virtual reality experiences, there is still plenty for us to learn and develop how the immense amount of player-controlled interactions influence the final product. Expensive-to-make games cannot afford to fully explore these bounds, making them the least opportune avenue to expand, reshape, or break how we understand player interactivity in an artistic sense. While there are developers who do push bounds on higher budgets, most do nothing that hasn’t already been done (sometimes even better) by a project on a lower budget. I guess what I really want to say is that I want something to challenge me and my understanding of player agency as much as the Drakenier series, and I doubt it will be something that cost over fifty million that will change that.

P.S. I understand that what I seek for the future of games, whether narratively or mechanically, is not necessarily the priority of other players, let alone publishers and developers. Perhaps in the future I’ll go more into what I look for in video games, and why I enjoy playing the games that I do.