#my favourite characters comes as a venn diagram of no eyes

[matchamabs]

poor excuse to draw all the favourites i've seen in my first watch thru the ina11 anime. there r some absolutely mental characters in this what the fuck is going on?? somehow these guys make kidou look relatively normal

[crowsent]

Can you explain the color switch technique for theater more clearly? I'm going to audition for our high school play and I want a reliable way to act without having to relive my worst memories.

dunno when exactly you sent this anon, but i hope i havent responded too late.

SO. the colour switch technique. dunno if its an official name or whatever BUT its essentially used in theatre or really in any other scenario where you have to lie or assume an emotion that you’re not currently feeling. essentially, you have to play a role. but since you said youre auditioning for a play, we focusin on the theatre aspect of it.

the most common thing i see or hear people do when they need to play an emotion that they just aren’t feeling at that moment, is to think of a personal event in their lives that elicits that specific emotion. it WILL work, or at the very least, elicit a strong emotion that pushes you to make your scene more believable and more alive. now thats great if the memory or event is a happy one. thinking of the first time you ever held your baby sibling, or that time you had your first kiss, or that day your parents surprised you with a new car. genuine happiness, or the memory of genuine happiness can work wonders to make a scene look and feel organic.

but if the emotion is negative, its going to absolutely DECIMATE your mental health.

no matter how much you think that ‘its just for a scene’ or that it wont actually affect you when youre off the stage, using the “relive memory to recreate emotion” method can and will fuck your mental health sideways with a chainsaw. its BAD for you to constantly think of painful or sad memories. there’s rehearsals, the actual performance, and worse, memories of the play itself. associating the memory of a tragic accident or a bad fight to a scene of a play youre participating in IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU.

i did theatre back in highschool. my depression at that stage was also. uh. particularly bad. so the whole “relive traumatic memories to experience pain so you can act better” is TERRIBLE advise. dont listen to anyone who tells you to do it. it WILL negatively impact your mental health AND your memories of the play, and may even discourage you from participating in future plays yourself.

but you still need to find a way to channel those emotions.

in comes colour switch theory. or technique. whatever its called. my theatre directors were GODDESSES. they recommended this technique to EVERYONE and it WORKS.

the trick is to associate a particular colour with a particular emotion, or even facial expression. when you need to keep a stoic face, you picture the colour in your mind and chant it in your head over and over to not break character. when you need to be sad, just repeat the colour you chose for sadness over and over to get yourself in the mindset WITHOUT hurting your mental health. for me, some of the colours i chose were:

blue- sadness/loneliness

red- anger

black- nothingness

grey- fear

there are more, but lets focus on these four. blue is my favourite colour. but thinking of the colour blue it doesnt automatically make me sad, so i can still enjoy it when im off stage. to channel the emotion of sadness or loneliness that i tied with the colour blue, i think of sadness from inside out and her blue motif. i think of the blue colour commonly depicted for tears. i think of cold and i think of a single person all alone, curled up in a blue room, crying.

just talking about this made my body curl up when i was writing that paragraph. i am shaking, and i feel sad, but when i stopped thinking about that imagery, it stopped. because its not a painful or traumatic memory for me, i can just yeet the blue emotion imagery away from me when i dont want it. you cant do that with personal memories and thats what makes the colour switching strategy so good. you can act better but you dont have to hurt yourself to do it.

think of it as constructing a bubble in your head, or a room you go to when you need to feel something. for anger, i think of a red room. i think of that red emoji with the brows scrunched up and the teeth gnashed together. i think of being so angry you lose words. i think of being red-faced because you just cant control it. conveniently, anger from inside out is also red, so i can think of him too. i think of fire in my veins, hot and ready to explode with nowhere to go but loud, violent screaming. and as im writing this, i can picture myself on a stage just shouting at whoeever has done my character wrong.

same goes for black and grey. black is just when i need to keep a straight face. when i need to be stoic or unimpressed. and its just a black room. nothingness. i sometimes picture that black room in real life when i have to not laugh at something funny if the timing is inappropriate, or when i have to keep a strong facade when i want to cry. i picture that room of nothingness and my mind goes blank. and i can keep a stoic face. the grey room is fog and shadows just in the corner of my eye. its something closing in that i cant see because of all the grey swirling around me. i dont know if im alone. i dont know if i am safe because i can only see a foggy room.

all in all, mentally travelling to a room in your mind created for the express purpose of eliciting a specific emotion is better than just retraumatising yourself. and its really simple to create these rooms. you dont even have to use the same colours i did.

maybe you have more trouble with expressing lovey dovery emotions. you can make red your love room. think of red flowers on valentines day, the red heart decals you see on store windows, the red box of chocolate youd give to a lover. red is passion, red is life, and you can associate things like that with your red room if you want. its like a venn diagram. things you associate with red on the left, things you associate with the emotion on the right, and the things they have in common can be used to construct the imagery of the emotion colour switch room.

then you can just chant red red red in your mind and you think of the blush on the fair maidens cheek as her knight comes to rescue her. you can think of a scarlet dress dazzling everyone in the room, but the wearer only has eyes for one man. you can think of lipstick stain against a collar.

you can associate any emotion with any colour. my process was:

pick a colour

pick an emotion/facial expression

picture a small room in your mind

fill that room with things or imagery that match your emotion or expression

be as specific or as generic as you want

you can have a green room dedicated to irritation or envy or just the loose feeling that youre not completely happy. the reasoning can be just bc you thought of the phrase “green with envy” and thought itd be neat. green can be a mother experiencing the joy of holding her child for the first time because green=nature=nurturing=mother.

establish a connection with that colour. fill out your room and create the keyword to get in. im very unoriginal so my keyword was just chanting the colour name over and over in my head. if i say blue enough times i get sad, even if i dont picture the room bc my mind has formed a link to that state of being. and i can break away without much trouble bc the connection is just on the surface.

colour switch is hair chalk. reliving memories is hair dye. at the end of the day, both of them colour hair. but you can wipe off the hair chalk w relative ease but a thorough hair dye that produces vibrant colours cant easily be removed, even when you want to switch to a different colour, or maybe even lose the dye completely.

i would recommend picking an emotion or expression that youre not good at portraying, but dont struggle with as much for your first room. i am not good at expressing sadness, but im worst at expressing upset or anger. so when i first started my colour switch mindset room, i started with sadness. it helps me express an emotion that im not particularly good at expressing, while still being relatively easy for me to get the hang of. maybe try for the second or third worst emotion you express, build a room to channel that emotion, and establish your connection.

make it a well-tread path, essentially. first few times are gon be difficult, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. all i need now to fake-cry is picturing the blue room, saying blue a bunch of times, and making a face. then i cry. completely fake and not damaging to my health.

i hope this makes sense for you. if it doesnt, feel free to send in an ask with more detailed questions abt the parts youre confused about or anything else. same goes for anyone who happens to read this that has an interest in theatre. id rather answer a dozen asks of the same question than have any of yall do something so harmful to your mental health. if anything was at all confusing, please feel free to tell me and ill gladly clarify some more. stay safe and take care of yourselves. and to the anon who asked, i hope your play goes well

[mechanicalwitch]

Pop Culture Magic, An Introductory

(This essay was written as a lecture for the discord server, Witching Willow, as an introductory to the topic of pop culture magic.)

Let’s start this off with a simple question. What is pop culture? The simplest answer is provided by the site dictionary.com states that pop culture, standing for popular culture, is “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people”. However, John Storey argues in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction that popular culture is something that can be defined in a variety of conflicting ways by different people across different contexts.

There’s a certain amount of energy invested each waking moment by almost everyone in our world – occultist, practitioner, mage, witch, or not – in pop culture. The media presents itself in ways to everyone with the resources to consume it, usually with a purpose in financial, political, or attention gain. There’s a practice that many occultists turn their noses up at, however, in making use of that energy we all put into the popular culture around us for self-betterment, gain, and other such magical purposes and practices.

Ironically, there’s a sense of counter-culture to it. Pop culture is presented for many purposes, from making money to – for the conspiracy theorists both mild and wild – government control over the people. Pop culture icons in celebrities, fiction, and media come and go, and change often. It dominates our world in a lot of ways, and therefore can be considered a force of its own worth picking by the watchful eye of a magician.

There’s many ways to use pop culture in your magic. Some use it subtly in ways of music-based rituals or more modern images driving a meditation. Others model spells and rituals after what they hear in their favourite songs or see on tv. And some go so far as to create and/or call on entities who originate from pop culture and media, seeking their magic, learning from them, and at times even worshiping them as Gods on par with those of ancient mythology. Some practitioners hold a philosophy that as pop culture changes and leads cultures with it, the investment borders on religious itself. Some may look to Michael Jackson with the adoration and love ancient Greeks held for their Gods.

For the purpose of today, we will hold a fair bit of focus on the fictional side of it, which can be more or less of fiction depending on who you speak to. Pop culture magic resembles more of a genre of beliefs and magical practices rather than one concise system. In this sense, practitioners will have many varying philosophies, beliefs, and methodologies behind their practices. These can all be as diverse as the individualism within each and every practitioner, just as many have different approaches to magic and the occult in general. Different practitioners will have different ways to utilize pop culture, and different reasons for doing so.

Divination, spellwork, and ritual work can take a lot of influence from fiction. See a spell idea on tv you wish to write and perform for an outcome, you can try that. Wish to base your element work on a system of elemental practices similar to that in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pokemon, or whichever source you find has lore on the subject? That’s something else you can do. Many fantasy, sci-fi, and other stories, games, shows, movies, and media may display systems of magic within their lore worth drawing inspiration from.

Many deck makers may create cartomancy decks tailored to be fan work of different sources, and these may hold different levels of significance to a user. Two practitioners who use the same Pokemon or Dragon Age tarot deck may read it differently – one viewing it as the same system but with more fun images, and another reading using the characters on the cards to assist in finding each card’s meaning or involvement in the interpretation of the reading. The amount of weight an image of pop culture has to a practitioner is a very personal thing, and no single person can say how much or how little of that should be involved in your practice.

Diving in a bit deeper, we meet those who work directly with entities who originate from pop culture, be this from fiction, celebrities, and the media around them. Just as there are so many views towards what pop culture magic is, there are even more views on what the entities are, where they come from, why they’re here, and why or how one should contact them.

In my personal experience and belief, these entities are created in the same way as any other deity or spirit from classical mythology: through the belief, thought and invested energy of their followers and those who invest in or create their stories, for whatever purpose. But that’s my personal belief, looking at it from the perspective of chaos magic, deity creation, and god forms. Others may believe in theories such as the Multiverse, or the inherent belief of these entities to exist whether or not their stories exist in our world. Beyond this, the ways and reasons a person may contact or be contacted by these deities varies. Some may outright worship them as another would a god of their religion, and others may not view them as to be worshiped, but worked with for the purposes such as learning and magical influence.

There’s even those who are connected to their entities to the point where it is their religion, worshiping them as one would a mythological deity, and can refer to themselves as pop culture pagans. This is more of a devotional approach to working with these entities. These people may practice pop culture magic, but are not always practicing such. Just as not all pagans are witches or magic practitioners, not all pop culture pagans will practice pop culture magic. It’s more like a venn diagram with overlap, rather than either being a subset of one another. Whether or not the devotional or religious approach to working with pop culture in a spiritual sense is beneficial is entirely up to the practitioner. Any pop culture practitioner may view themselves as a pop culture witch, a pop culture magician, a pop culture pagan, something else entirely, or any combination of those. Because of this, I’ve avoided the claim that pop culture paganism is a part of pop culture magic, or the other way around. Though there is much overlap, they are not logically the same.

As a practitioner myself, I work with my patron deity, Giratina from the Pokemon franchise. I view Giratina as it has told me it views itself, a mass creation through the investment, thought, and energy devoted by at least a couple million fans. I do not worship my patron, however seek its guidance and knowledge that have been collected by these millions of thoughts which formed it. I also work with, from the same franchise, Dialga, Palkia, and Lunala. Each has their own skills and fields of knowledge, and each brings something new and important to the table of my life in turn for the respect, offerings, and energy put back into them through this practice. Mutual benefit, I’d say.

When asked about the subject in the server I manage for pop culture practitioners – Pop Culture Magic Central – varied responses were received, even respectfully disagreeing with one another. One member emphasized “I think I’d just like to share that in my experience, pop culture witchcraft is less about the actual entity existing, and more about a connection to what that entity stands for. Alternatively, it is also very thoughtform focused”. Another member spoke up to disagree in the discussion, stating “I would rather emphasize that pop culture witchcraft and paganism are as broad of categories as the fandoms and cultures they draw from. None of my entities are thoughtforms, and my own practice is heavily dependent on the entities themselves”.

Further Readings:

1. The Pop Culture Grimoire and Pop Culture Magic 2.0 by Taylor Ellwood

2. A Look at Pop Culture Magic by Heather Green - https://wildhunt.org/2015/07/a-look-at-pop-culture-magick.html

3. What is Pop Culture Magic? by Taylor Ellwood - https://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-studies-blogs/magical-transformations/what-is-pop-culture-magic.html

4. Pop Culture Witchcraft, Chaos and the Left-Hand Path by Jasper Jacobs - https://mechanicalwitch.tumblr.com/post/185946522860/pop-culture-witchcraft-chaos-and-the-left-hand

 Citations:

Storey, J. (2018). Cultural theory and popular culture: An introduction. Routledge.

Ellwood, T. (2004). Pop culture magic: An exploration of modern magic. Stafford: Immanion Press.

Ellwood, T. (n.d.). What is Pop Culture Paganism? Retrieved from https://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-studies-blogs/magical-transformations/what-is-pop-culture-paganism.html

[zombiesbecrazy]

Pity Free Confessions

Summary: Sometimes you play video games with your best friend. Sometimes you blurt out about your unrequited love problems. Sometimes you do both.

Written for DickBabs Week - Day 2 Prompt - Best Friends

Note: OMG, I completely forgot that it was DickBabs Week! I totally don't have time to write anything, yet, here we are. Day 2 Prompt - Best Friends.This stands alone but if you've read any of my other DickBabs fics, this comes six months after Chapter 2 of Five Times with Feeling and directly before Strike, Hit, Throw. Unedited and rushed, but I needed to participate and spread the DickBabs love :)

AO3

“I find myself in a bit of a conundrum.”

“Which is?”

“I’m in love with my best friend.”

To Wally’s credit, he didn’t even look away from the screen and continued to mash the buttons on the controller. Hell, he didn’t even blink. They were alone in the Tower today, between missions and everyone else busy in their own cities with their own mentors, leaving the two of them to waste the day away playing video games and eating junk food.

It felt good to relax and ignore a lot of his problems for a while, but there was something that Dick had been unable to ignore for months and if he didn’t say something soon he was going to explode, which is why he had suddenly just blurted it out to Wally.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, because you’re great, but you’re not really my type. I appreciate your interest though.” Wally’s character jumped into a hoard of thugs on top of a building and he was focusing on trying to take them all down in the time limit.

“Gee, thanks. Not you.”

His hands gripped the controller tighter and started moving his arms like he could make his character fight better with sheer will and enthusiasm. “Donna’s like your sister. That would be weird. Don’t be in love with her either.”  

Coughing, Dick choked on the root beer that he was drinking and it almost came out his nose. Damn, that hurt. “Shut up.” Dick punched Wally’s shoulder, making his character fall from a rooftop, die and respawn at the beginning of the mission. That made Wally finally turn and glare at him. “I’m meant Barbara, you butthead.”

“Thought as much, but you should have used her name. You have too many best friends.” Wally hit pause on the game and looked at him. “You should tell her.”

“She’s got other things on her mind.” Dick flopped back on the couch dramatically, sinking into the cushions. What he wouldn’t give for it to come to life and swallow him whole rather than deal with his emotional turmoil. Stupid brain. Stupid heart. Neither of them seemed to be able to just turn off for a while. “More important things than dealing with my unrequited love.”

“How do you know it’s unrequited?” asked Wally, kicking his legs up onto the coffee table in front of them that was littered with their snacks. “She’d be lucky to be in love with you. Anyone would be.”

“I thought I wasn’t your type?”

“Just because the two of us aren’t meant to be it doesn’t mean you aren’t a catch.” Wally looked Dick over and sighed. He pulled the blanket off from behind the couch and put it on top of Dick’s melted form on the couch. Dick must have looked pathetic if Wally was trying to mother hen him like that. “Tell her.”

“It’s not the right time.” A lot had happened in their lives in the past six months. Barbara had been shot. Jason had been killed. Bruce was continuously furious all of the time. No one needed to see him moping around after a girl like a little lost puppy; especially not the girl herself. She was getting her life back together and shouldn’t have to deal with his mini crisis. Why hadn’t he figured this out at a better time? Or why couldn’t he at least still be in denial about it? It would be easier that way. Ahh, blissful denial.

“It’s always the right time to hear that someone loves you. It’s like a big word hug.”

“It’s scary,” groaned Dick back and he pulled the blanket up over his head. He knew he was pouting and whining and acting like a little kid not wanting to eat his vegetables, but that didn’t matter in front of Wally. The good thing about having a best friend was that you could tell them anything.

The worst part was that they would call you on your bullshit even if you didn’t want to hear it. Especially then.

“Ladies and gentleman, may I present Nightwing, hero and defender of Gotham and Bludhaven. His kryptonite is emotions. Don’t worry though, it was passed down to him from his Bat-father.” He could hear Wally’s voice dripping with sarcasm but didn’t budge from under the blanket. When he didn’t get a reaction, he heard Wally sigh. “You are such a drama queen.” He pulled the blanket back down off of Dick’s face. “Love is a great feeling. It doesn’t have to be scary.”

“Okay fine. Verbalizing it is scary.”

“You just told me that you love her and the world didn’t end.”

“And I was terrified to do that. Telling her is a thousand times worse.” But he had to admit that he felt a little bit better now that he wasn’t the only one in on the secret. “What if she doesn’t feel the same way?”

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not.” It didn’t. Not really. It wouldn’t change anything about the way he felt anyway. “I just don’t want things to change between us and to get all weird. I don’t want to tell her that I love her, hear that she doesn’t feel the same way and then have to see the… the… pity in her eyes when she looks at me.” He sat up but kept the blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders. “Look at Dick, with his silly little crush. He’s a delicate little flower who needs to be tiptoed around and be given gentle hugs and spoken to like he might shatter at any moment.”

“You like hugs.”

“Not pity hugs.”

“She won’t give you a pity hug.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Dude. She just went through something huge. She’s still going through something huge. She understands better than anyone about not wanting anyone’s pity.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe. I’m right.” Wally started to stare very intently at his hands that were fidgeting in his lap. “Did I tell you I went to visit her in the hospital?”

“What? No. Neither of you said anything.” Wally just nodded and he turned a little pink. Dick poked him and he gave a little yelp. “What happened?” prodded Dick.

“She yelled at me for visiting her out of pity.” Dick winced in sympathy. He had been at the receiving end of more than one of Barbara’s anger explosions before and it was never pretty, usually because she was right to be dishing it out. “I deserved it. She wasn’t completely wrong. I didn’t realise it until later, but it was at least a little out of pity,” said Wally before he turned to sheepishly look back at Dick. “She and I are friends, but we aren’t that close. She pointed out that me visiting her in the hospital when I would never have seen her otherwise was more about making myself feel better and she didn’t want that.” Dick understood. She had been upset that he visited her in the hospital the first time when she had explicitly told him not to and she was one of his best friends. He could imagine how angry she’d be about Wally. “So no. She’s not going to give you a pity hug. Even if she doesn’t feel the same way about you, she still cares about you a lot.”

“Have you talked to her since?”

“We’re cool. We’ve texted, which is what I should have done in the first place. We’re texting level friends, not visit in the hospital after you’ve been paralyzed level friends. I’ve been sending her videos of people doing extreme wheelchairing in skate parks. She says she likes them.”

Dick smiled, because while he hadn’t heard about Wally’s visit, she had been sharing the videos with him too; he just hadn’t know the origins. “When did you get so wise?”

“I’ve always been wise, but no one ever listens. It’s a curse.” Wally unpaused the game and started the mission again. “But in this case, I had a feisty red head yell at me.”

“Story of my life. Too many best friends and too many red heads, and all of them yell at me.”

“You should make a Venn Diagram of where those all intersect. It would be an interesting thing to study.”

Dick watched as Wally’s onscreen hero ran through a dark all to pick up a weapon before heading back to the rooftop where he was about to be killed again. He didn’t have enough XP for it to go any other way, but Wally was stubborn. Wally cleared his throat, eyes glued to the screen. “So… Babs,” he began again, not dropping the conversation.

“Babs,” sighed Dick.

“Like, full on love. Not just a crush. Not just ‘hey that girl is swell’. Full on love with a capital L and heart eyes.”

Dick couldn’t hold back a grin even just thinking about how he felt about her. He was so deep down the rabbit hole. “Yep.”

“I repeat, you should talk to her.”

“We’re meeting up tomorrow for some sparring. She’s been doing weapons training now that she’s out of rehab and I want to see how it’s coming along.” She had been talking about her training with Richard Dragon and that she was learning escrima at a higher level, and yes, he did want to see her new skills, but…

“Or you just want to see her.”

Damn, Wally could read him like a book. “Yeah.”

“Because you want to kiss her.” Wally made kissy face noises at him and Dick hit him again, once again making Wally fall off the building again and die. “That was your fault. I had them that time.”

“No, you didn’t. And don’t be crude.”

Wally tossed the controller onto the table and grabbed a bag of chips, tossing one into his mouth and crunching it loudly, purely because he knew the sound of it irritated Dick. “I think it’s sweet that you are still innocent enough that you think I’m crude for mentioning kissing.”

“It’s not that… it’s…” Dick shook his head, embarrassed to be talking about this with anyone. Everyone had emotions. Why was it so weird to talk about them? “I don’t just want to kiss her.”

Wally snorted. “Who’s being crude now?”

“You are officially my least favourite of my best friends,” said Dick, rolling his eyes. “I just want… everything for her. I want her to be happy. I want to be the one to help make her happy. Somehow. In any way possible”

“You are a hopeless romantic to the core.”  Wally sat back on the couch and dropped his arm around Dick’s blanket covered shoulders. “You know my opinion. Just tell her. No risk, no reward.”

“No risk, no heart breakage,” countered Dick.

“Minimal complete heart breakage potential. At absolute worst, she’ll let you down gently and you’ll still be friends. Yeah, you’ll be a down for a while, but that is when we solve your problems with ice cream.”

The worse that Wally suggested sounded terrible and he wanted to avoid it all costs even though he knew that in the grand scheme of issues ‘one of my best friends doesn’t love me as much as I love her’ is pretty minor. Still wanted to avoid it like the plague though. “And best case scenario?”

“That she is hopelessly in love with you too? We celebrate with ice cream. Either way, there will be ice cream. The difference is that celebration ice cream has better topping options.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Dick, chuckling. “Thanks, Wally. I take it back. You aren’t my least favourite best friend. Definitely top three. And not just because you are promising me ice cream.”

“On the podium. I’ll take it.”

Wally was right though. Dick was a vigilante. A hero. He had faced far worse things than being in love every day and had come out unscathed. Well, maybe a little scathed, but still intact. He could do this. He could finally tell Barbara the truth. He was brave enough to face that answer head on.

Maybe it was finally time to take that leap.

[impracticaldemon]

What are your favorite otome games? who's your personal favorite bf/husband from each? I'm suuuper interested in this I hope you don't mind

Ahhhh!  I’m sorry this is late–I’m also way behind answering tags. 😳

Impracticaldemon & Otome Games (Long Post)

Interesting question, and no I don’t mind.  That being said, some people (I’m looking at you @shell-senji , among several others) would say that they could pick out my favourite guy even for games I haven’t played yet…  Ahem.

Okay, ikuzo! 😀 (I’m terrible at short answers.  Sumimasen.)

(1) Hakuouki ~ Saitou Hajime (coming as no surprise to anybody)He is without question my personal favourite across all games for many reasons. I’m not blind to his faults, but he suits me. I’ll explain why another time, if anyone is interested; among other things, he is the most likely to be aware of practical needs and he has the least difficulty allowing Chiuzuru to be useful. My personal head-canon is that Saitou is surprisingly caring (about specific people), but it is outwardly trumped by how hard he has worked at projecting no emotion and generally trumped by a complete devotion to duty.

I’ll pick just one image I like, but it’s very difficult.

I have other favourites among the characters in Hakuouki, and I think each one of the guys is important to the game/story/canonverse. That said, SaiChi is probably my OTP in the literal sense. I’m just very laid-back about letting other people ship who/how they want and I find many relationships interesting from an author’s point of view.  I enjoy writing for all the Hakuouki guys and other characters.  

This is my favourite game/story partly for the rich historical background (which has sucked me in completely), partly for the characters (even though they are “types”, they have personalities/background/more reality–probably because of the RL history), and partly for all the possibilities even within canon. I’m somewhat flexible on plot (for an AU), but I do have views on keeping the characters in character–otherwise it’s not really Hakuouki for me.

(2) Amnesia: Memories ~ Kent  He’s a science/math geek, he’s even more clueless than Saitou (if possible), he has the same basic honesty/ability to care, and although he goes about it badly/not-very-romantically, he is mostly genuine about wanting the heroine to do things that are good for her.

The fact that he accepts the probability of Orion and takes the heroine’s situation seriously is a major factor in his favour.  Honestly, the most trustworthy character. He also clearly has his faults, but if you give him a chance he’ll figure them out better than most.  Also, once I found out the backstory, their very rocky relationship made some sense–I even found it relatable, because humans do such dumb things in relationships.

A big downside of the game is the very heavy reliance it puts on the heroine having to be meek to get a good ending. (Very typical of Japanese otome in this way, but this isn’t 1864 Japan so it bugs me more.  Although 2017 Japan has some major issues too.) Honestly, it’s probably second on my list only because (a) I’m very fond of Kent, (b) it got me into playing Otome games because it was on Steam (i.e., for PC), and © the alternate world presentation was very cleverly done so that there was almost no repetitive text (and I liked all the characters but one).

(3) Code:  Realize ~ Van HelsingThis game should be #2 on my list.  It’s a very good game, extremely well done throughout.  In my view, it has the best heroine (Cardia).  I’m not entirely sure why Van Helsing is my favourite over Fran (Victor Frankenstein), who is the obvious choice for me (and Fran is definitely a close second).

Preferring Van Helsing suggests that I’m less (personally) attracted to characters who are sweethearts from the very beginning. Aside from an apparent preference for some tsundere characteristics (possibly because I’m such a deep introvert–in person, not in writing!), I think part of liking Van Helsing is that his backstory fascinates me the most.

(4) Demon’s Bond (Toki no Kizuna): Yukimura Kazuya (Saitou-lite?) I can hear @shenanigumi rolling her eyes in the distance if that’s possible 😅 and for legitimate reasons (let me say up front that we had a couple of really interesting chats about this game, including a discussion about Venn Diagrams that was surprisingly productive 😂). I honestly enjoyed the game though.

The story plots are interesting and the art is lovely. But let’s be honest, I enjoyed this game so much because (a) it was a bit Hakuouki-like and nominally set in Hakuouki-verse (I enjoyed all the historical bits, and learned a lot more about people like Toyotomi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Mitsunari), (b) Kasuya’s route gave me a chance to play a different game with a character similar to Saitou even down to appearance, and ( c ) it fit moderately well on several points with my own personal Hakuouki AU in Teachings of Demons.  There’s surprisingly little that would need to be retrofitted in my story and a lot that fits perfectly.

A couple of other notes:  no voice acting (even though the original is fully voiced); same artist as in Code: Realize, and it’s a mobile game (pay per route).  I’ve enjoyed all three routes I’ve fully played (Kazuya, Kazutake and Chitose–the last one surprised me, but it was a good story and I think I partially fell for Chitose’s best friend–talk about bromance with those two). Oh, and I liked the heroine more than most (though her absolute naiveté is appalling).  

(5) OZMAFIA! ~ Axel (Poni-Pachet)Once again, my favourite character is the taciturn “lieutenant type” who generally takes the heroine seriously once the decision is made to offer her shelter.  Definitely adorkable.

The game itself has beautiful art (above image isn’t the best but it’s sweet), a truly unusual premise, and is mostly voiced (subtitled). The heroine is one of my least favourite protagonists, unfortunately, but she does have her better moments.  Overall: it’s an odd game, but there’s a lot to it and I enjoyed playing it.  Also, kudos for having routes for friendship-based (non-romantic) characters.  That was neat.

[More comments below the cut if anyone is interested, including: Nameless (Cheritz); Amazing Shinsengumi & Men of Yoshiwara (D3); & Indie Otome]

PC (Steam) Games & Mobile to PC ports, Indie Otome

On the PC, I have also played: 

Nameless (Cheritz):  My favourite route and guy by far was Lance, fitting neatly into my set of tsundere-but-definitely-not-yandere guys.  Lance is similar to Saitou from Hakuouki SSL as a student and overall, so no surprises here; the character is a doll come to life, however, so the whole feel of the game is very different.  The game was good overall, but a little too weird for me.  I’m glad I played it, but I’m also glad that I used a walkthrough for later routes.  The premise was intriguing and the game itself was quite immersive and moving in places.

Dandelion (Cheritz):  I haven’t played this one yet.  I chose Nameless first because I’m not usually a fan of the whole “guys-are-animals-are-guys” genre. Since Dandelion has good reviews, I do want to give it a try.

Mystic Messenger (Cheritz):  I haven’t played, sorry!

The Amazing Shinsengumi (Dogenzaka/D3):  Saito Hajime (duh)A no-brainer, since the similarities are difficult to ignore (except that this Saito actually has the 5′11″ height of the RL Saito).  Nagakura’s route in this one is also good - he is definitely Hijikata’s second-in-command, and it suits him. Okita is attractive, just not quite my type.  Heisuke is completely yandere–that was a shock. He looks like Hakuouki Heisuke but!!! There is no route for Hijikata to many people’s dismay (though the character is what you’d expect), but Nagakura balances that. Harada is a flirt, but not nearly as nice as in Hakuouki - but that’s strictly a personal opinion.

(Is it my fault that Saito was drawn this way?  Is it my fault that I prefer blue and indigo and quiet, serious guys?)

This game is definitely more in the basic “romance” style (and like most of this style, there’s no voice acting).  The art is quite nice and the stories are okay. A lot of people complained that it was a Hakuouki “rip-off”, but without disagreeing completely, I’m not sure that’s fair.  There’s a lot of Shinsengumi stuff out there and an awful lot of people like the “girl taken back to the base” story.  This game does not have the complicated political background of Hakuouki and it doesn’t have any supernatural component - it’s pretty much about the love interests. My view: it’s good for what it is.

The Men of Yoshiwara (D3): KaguraThis is another D3 game and similar comments apply.  Not voiced and slightly repetitive.  And yet there were aspects about the game that were unexpected and surprisingly appealing. This game is the closest I’ve ever seen to literally “reverse harem” (not my favourite expression): it’s about choosing a guy from available courtesans in a top-class brothel.

Kagura is quiet, serious, literate and a sword master (er, with actual katanas 😅).  What can I say? Also, once again, I can’t be held responsible for appearance - he happens to have indigo hair.

Well, I had hoped to also pass along some notes on various Indie Otome games I’ve played, such as Backstage Pass and others.  Unfortunately, I’m out of time and this is already way too long.

Also, I’m still trying to finish Kyoto Winds before getting back to Nightshade and The Charming Empire.  I have the feeling that I already know who my favourite characters will be though. 😅

I hope this was of some interest.  And despite all of the above, I am open to giving shorter answers to less open-ended questions!

~ ImpracticalOni

[awesomeblockchain]

You don't own your items. That lucky knife skin you scored in CS:GO? The cool Halloween-themed Overwatch outfit? Nope. Property of the developers who let you use it. That value is destined to stay within the game's ecosystem, and we've never had a better technical solution. That's the problem Enjin is trying to solve.

It didn't take long for the blockchain to enter gaming. The two tech-savvy crowds form a solidly joined Venn diagram, and we're already losing track of all the startups aiming to use the new technology to carve out their little niche in the gaming space.

While most of the esports focused cryptocurrencies focus on betting - some legitimate, some less so - Enjin is focused on true ownership. Whether that be ownership of games, or items, or persistent character traits, or whatever else the developer can think of. It's a platform for others to get creative with.

Having flirted with entering the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation for months, Enjin Coin moves from gaming show to gaming show, preaching the word of adoption. If developers don't adopt, none of the cool stuff happens. If they do, the sky is the limit. The difference is Enjin has some great ideas about how to get people on board.

We sat down with Enjin's head of dev tech Pat LaBine to chat about what the blockchain could bring to our space. His background is gaming, not crypto. A 13-year veteran of Bioware and IO, he's worked on titles like Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Dragon Age, Hitman, and even a much older version of Anthem.

His expertise reflects the team. They're mostly game developers, not just mathematicians. And perhaps that's why they have what we think is the best strategy for getting people started.

Enjin Coin - or blockchain tech in gaming, for that matter - has no killer app. Enjin is focused on making a platform, and letting developers use it in all the innovative ways they can think of. There's no roadmap here - it's all new.

But seeing as he ditched his life as a videogame executive, we figured LaBine would have some crystallised ideas about where the tech could take us.

-Provable scarcity," he told us. -It's good to show people sometimes that there are only ten of these in the world. And you can actually go on a blockchain scanner and see - you don't know who they are - but you can see only 10 people own these things.

-I look at it like, you're going to have this digital garage of stuff you collect from playing games over and over. You could have tokens from a game you played five years ago, and maybe some of them are worth something."

But what ensures those items will have value beyond the game's lifecycle? Isn't the value still tied to the game? What happens if people just stop playing it?

-Every token you create, you actually have to give it a value, and you have to spend real-world value to craft that," explains LaBine. -So it would be like spending real-world materials like metal. Like you need to buy the metal - in this case, it's Enjin Coin - to forge the sword out of it. So there's always a minimum back value for it out there.

-So, the Black Lotus, which is a Magic: The Gathering card, it's an extremely popular and rare card. It's only five cents of paper. But it could be worth thousands of dollars. Same with these tokens."

Pat LaBine fully expects that many gamers won't even know about the crypto side of the coin. They'll just know that they can trade their items, and if need be, melt them down to the raw Enjin Coin value to be used elsewhere. But you won't have to be a developer to benefit monetarily from the crypto side.

With item rarity being not only provable but enforceable, it's even possible to attach items to a one-time event or achievement. The winners of a DOTA 2 tournament could merge their team skin with an Enjin Coin and trade it like a signed Messi jersey. A world record speedrunner could offer something similar to their streaming audience.

-That could be a good way for an esports team to create revenue," says LaBine.

The cryptocurrency space is prone to outlandish claims, and we've already seen a few in the gaming space. Much of the time, it comes in the form of inflated numbers. -We serve 3 billion gamers!" is a real boast currently made by one coin unaware of its self-parody.

One such claim that caught our eye was GameCredits' proposed strategy of creating its own game-making engine to create games around using the coin. We weren't sure what was more arrogant: reinventing the wheel, or the assumption people will abandon their favourite developer environment to make a game involving one proprietary crypto.

Far more realistic is Enjin's strategy of integrating into existing engines. Tools are on the way for both Unity and Unreal - the two most popular engines - which require no coding to use. It even recently announced support for Godot.

-You need some basic knowledge of how they work, but you don't have to code the smart contracts," says LaBine. -So theoretically the target user we're looking at is a technical designer. Familiar with the tools but won't necessarily know how to code."

While there's certainly an overlap among developers and those interested in crypto, keeping the learning curve small is key. To borrow Unity's motto, modern engines have somewhat democratised game development, and those walls between creators and their vision should stay levelled.

To that end, Enjin Coin wants to have a developer portal in the future that shows off different use cases. Much like the Unity Store's example projects, Enjin's portal will have a -game as a token" project or an example of a token-enabled collectible card game.

Unity users will soon be able to download the tools for free, and Enjin won't take a cut of transactions made through the technology. The barriers to entry are low to facilitate maximum experimentation. And should any promising projects emerge, Enjin has earmarked 10% of its coins for partnerships and developer incentives - it can effectively fund them.

We've seen enough -top wallets in crypto" articles to see the Enjin wallet mentioned a few times. It's touted as one of the most secure in the world, and we wondered what the strategy was behind a gaming crypto investing so much time and energy into a wallet.

-It's to get people into the ecosystem," explains LaBine. -It's a place where you can see all of your games and items. We'll open source it at some point but for now it's closed source. But who knows, we might have skinned wallets, like a Blizzard wallet or stuff like that, if they allow it."

LaBine opened up his own wallet full of gaming items for us to see. It's currently a minimalist UI and will be expanded before it hopes to shoulder the burden of your entire game item collection. But it works - LaBine can send you a sword in Minecraft on demand.

As for wallets themed on other companies? While possible, they may already be making their own moves into the space. LaBine expects early adopters to be mostly indie, but now that he's known as the -gaming crypto guy" to his career's worth of triple-A contacts, he's had executives picking his brain.

-Yeah, we've had a couple of conversations with them," he says. -Don't count the big triple-A studios out, because they all have skunkworks departments, and they are definitely working on blockchain stuff. They're just not telling anybody about it.

-They don't know how they're going to use it yet, a lot of the time. But it's going to happen at some point. One of the big publishers is going to come out with Ubisoft Coin or something like that. Steam Coin, or whatever."

The big question with any cryptocurrency is -what can this do that a database can't?"

-I think traditional systems do a good enough job most of the time. But databases can't provide true ownership of the tokens to you," he says. -They're basically just leased to you, at their whim. So you could be banned - we see that in esports. As a value proposition, I don't know that that's compelling enough.

-For a developer, you don't require as much infrastructure because you're leveraging the Ethereum network and all the properties of that network. You don't need a huge security team, or DevOps, to administer. That removes the customer service element that you might traditionally need, running your own giant databases.

-But again, it depends on where the market goes, right? Like, what players think is valuable. Some of my friends are like, 'Yeah, I don't care.' So you put 200 hours into Overwatch and you don't care that you don't own the skins? And they're like, 'Nah.'"

In the case of Enjin Coin, there will be interesting use cases made newly possible. But much of its appeal is doing the same things with increased confidence. The idea of a digital collector, for instance, is less likely to occur if the collector is technically leasing items behind mountain-sized EULA agreements.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect is the fact that separate systems can be designed to interface with any token. It's rare enough to see your RPG characters carry over into a sequel. But what if they could carry over into any game? Progress in one game could affect the world of another. If the receiving software knows how to interpret the token, anything is possible.

For all the bluster in the crypto space, LaBine is refreshingly frank about the issue.

-We know it's going somewhere, but I don't what form it will take," he says. -Blockchain isn't as sexy as AR/VR. Those techs have been around for 30 years at least, as an idea. But blockchain hasn't been around very long, as Bitcoin and whatnot. As an idea, it's very new. You'll see some people doing wacky experiments with them, and mostly crash and burn, but somebody will figure something out. And people will be like, 'Cool, I get it now!'

-So I don't know which way it'll actually go. It may not even take off at all. But I can easily think of a world where my son is playing Fortnite or PUBG, and all these items are things he could own and give to his friends. I could easily think of people saying 'How was it not like this before?' I worked at big studios for a long time, and this time I actually feel like I'm slightly ahead of the curve. So that's exciting, but it's also kind of scary."

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