#sadly I have no sense of aesthetics whoops

[i-dont-talk-for-days-on-end]

Pt. 1 - Pt. 2 - Pt. 3 - Pt. 4 - Pt. 5 - Pt. 6 - Best of

I didn't expect this to be a good Sherlock Holmes adaption, but it is!

[ask-the-matsuno-neets]

Oh and if it’s okay to request another thing may I please request that’s a good look on you with totty please? Thank you

I’m always happy for more asks! I’m presuming you’re the same anon as the Osomatsu ask, right ? Both of these made my day, I was like “PEOPLE ARE STILL SEEING MY TINY ASS BLOG YEEEEE”

So of course you can request as much as you like~🌸💗

。。。

You were out shopping with your favourite pink matsu, Mr Tater Tots cutie Totty. It was clothes shopping, of course, as Todomatsu had recently become aware of the fact that your closet had no sense of style.

By that he meant it was alllll jeans, graphic tees, and hoodies. And maybe a few summery things riiiii~iiight at the back.

But, in your defence, you just hadn’t had the time to get the spring aesthetic you wanted, so you stuck with your tried and trusted go-to.

Todomatsu was prepared to help you change that.

You wanted that cute spring aesthetic? Of course he was gonna help you, it’s his specialty~

You had just strolled into a cute clothes shop in Akatska City’s high street - ‘Harukaze’, or 'Spring Breeze’.

Looking around, Totty grinned.

“I’m gonna let you loose to pick up whatever, because I know you and I know you have decent taste-” he paused

“-well, theoretically speaking. You know what outfits are good, you just lack the - what is it? Oh yeah - the fucks to give” You couldn’t help but snicker. He hit the nail on the head, whoops. Guilty as charged.

“Yeah yeah, I’ve procrastinated on getting my aesthetic closet, I get it” You rolled your eyes.

“So, without further ado~”

He dramatically pointed a perfectly manicured finger at you

“ Let’s go!”

~~~

After half an hour of the pair of you dancing around the shop, you’d both worked together to find the cutest, most aesthetic spring outfits you could.

'Will they suit me though? I mean they’re all super cute n all, but…’ you stepped into the changing room and sighed quietly ’… Oh well, may as well step out of the comfort of hoodies for a bit’

You tried on the first outfit [[image below but imagine it’s like,,, more cream and a pale (insert fave colour)]]

'A bit OTT, me thinks’ you looked at yourself in the mirror.

“Hey, you done? Show me, show me~!” Totty called from behind the curtain.

You laughed at his impatience “Yes, Totty, I’m done-” you paused as you saw his hand go around the curtain to pull it back. Not all the way, but just enough so he could poke his head and cat-like grin inside.

Chuckling, you gave a half-hearted twirl. “Thoughts?”

Totty had pulled the curtain across more now, him leaning against the wall casually and looking you over. He nodded.

“Not that you don’t look really frickin cute, because you do and that’s an established fact-” he took your shoulders so he could 'inspect the outfit better’, “-but we both agreed that this one was a bit of a stretch; we don’t live in an anime, so sadly this wouldn’t be outside spring-aesthetic worthy. Still sweet though~” he winked.

You agreed, the whole 'kawaii’ get up was a bit too much. “Next one then?” You rested your hands on your hips.

Todomatsu smiled “Sure, cupcake~”

As he waltzed away, you quickly changed into the next one, TOTALLY not thinking about how he called you cupcake [[the pink bunny one on the left from the image below]]

“Hey Tater Tots-” you could hear the quiet grumble from behind the curtain as you pulled it aside “I’m done~” you twirled as the curtain was fully pulled across.

Recovering from the previous annoyance, he looked up from his lap and took in your outfit. He hummed and gave you a thumbs up.

“Certified Totty stamp of approval”

You raised an eyebrow “You don’t sound convinced, Todomatsu” you went and knelt next to his chair in the waiting corridor.

He looked away from you, hiding his eyes. You, determined, shifted around to meet his eyes.

“What is it Totty, tell me”

He looked away again “nothing-”

You huffed.

He sighed.

“It’s noth-” he saw your sad puppy eyes. Fuck

“-okay fine I don’t like being called Tater Tots, happy ? ”

You laughed. So he was just being a drama queen. Typical.

“So a yes to this outfit?” You stood up and spun again.

“Yeeaahh, 7.5 out of 10 I’d say~”

Turning around, you headed into the changing room one last time.

“Alrighty, keep that in mind~ Last outfit~!”

You pulled the curtain across and changed into the last of your line up

[[okay so the outfit on the left, but with the shoes of the one on the left in the same pink as the skirt]]

'Okay, last one…’ You looked yourself up and down in the mirror. Simple, yet elegant, but also cute and trendy. Niceeee.

“Tottyyyyy~” you called. Hearing rushing of the curtain, you saw a curious cat grin pop around the curtain.

“Yes, y/n dea-” he stopped mid word.

“- Wow” he pushed the curtain across fully and stepped towards you, twirling you around.

“That’s a good look on you… Like, a really good look. You look… Wow” he looked dumbfounded. Haha, cute.

You winked at him “Am I cute enough to be one of your Todomatsu girls~?” you paraphrased his brother subtly. You saw the wince of pain with the tiniest thought of the 'Karamatsu girls’, but he shook his head.

“Nonsense, y/n…” you were about to look disappointed.

Smirking, he lifted your chin to look into your eyes.

“You’re always cute enough anyway to be the only Todomatsu girl~♡”

。。。

Okay, bit of a long one. But I wanted to add some bulk to the story so ugh here?? Asgfjsbsg TODOMATSU GIRLS I cringed while typing it but whatevs the pain is worth it

Kara: wait wait WAITTT, how did he say '♡’, I must know how to say a heart for,,, uh, research purposes-

Totty: …

…

Less than 3

- Mod Yuki (who hopes you get her awful joke)

[muggle-writes]

Rules: Answer 21 questions and then tag 21 people who you want to get to know better.

tagged by @elizabethsyson

Nickname: Muggle is my nickname, but when I went by Muggle in person for more than a month at a time, it naturally got abbreviated, usually to Mugz

Zodiac: Aquarius

Last movie I saw: into the spiderverse (same answer as last time. I don't watch that many movies tbh except around Christmas. unless YouTube counts in which case... music of some sort? idk links for the next answer)

Favorite musician: changes by the day. I've kinda been in an acapella and/or folk music mood recently so the Maccabeats and Peter Hollens are in my YouTube and Spotify history a lot recently. also I'm eternally in awe of Forte Handbell Quartet (eta a longer video; i recommend skipping to the techno piece or the Jurassic Park theme)

Last thing I googled: "vine why are you buying clothes at the soup store" (my wife hasn't seen it; also i can't find the vine because apparently it's a much bigger meme than I realized). before that it was "chgrp not root" because work and group permissions are useful when they work

Song stuck in my head: well for most of the day when I haven't been actively listening to something, it's been the Pokemon RSE route-walking music. (but that somehow happens frequently when I'm in the no-music-no-internet room at work, as I was for most of the day, and I don't know how I accidentally trained my brain to make that connection). right now, surprisingly, I don't have any background music playing in my head. I think it's because the humidifier provides just enough white noise that my brain doesn't feel the need to provide its own

Other blogs: my main is @muggle-the-hat and I'm a mod on @why-do-neurotypicals but we've gotten one ask ever so that blog has been dormant for a while. I have a bunch of other sideblogs, but they're all small and I use different screen names on each of them (enby life: no idea which name suits me best so I may as well try them out) so i feel like it would just confuse things to link them.

Following: blogs matching all the themes of my sideblogs, (including this one, which is writeblr), korean langblr, jumblr, assorted fandom blogs, authors of my more favorite fanfictions (some overlap with other categories), and irl friends and acquaintances (including one fandom blog turned irl friend)

Do I get asks: on my main if at all, which isn't really surprising because i have hundreds of followers there and maybe 60 followers combined among the rest. but I get asks far less often than I reblog ask memes so... I'm always happy to get more. I do get tagged in ask games more on this one, but writeblr is actually vaguely organized about tag lists so that makes sense. also I used to get tagged a bunch on my main and I rarely could find the posts again to follow up when I had time to answer.

What I’m Wearing: pajamas. staying warm and cozy

Lucky number: I don't remember what I said last time, but I like a lot of numbers. 64 is a good number. recently I've been debugging software in which 0x3E is my lucky status number and 0x0E taunts me. (um, decimal 62 and 14). Also my other favorite number i can't share until it's no longer the combination to the lock to the Secret Room. (or realistically never because opsec and i shouldn't make public the types of parents we use for that combination lock), honestly I aim to be like.... ah, I'm sure the anecdote involves G.H. Hardy but i don't remember on which side. anyway one mathematician remarked to another about how the id number of the taxi he rode in was sadly uninteresting, and the one I aspire to be like, argued "what are you talking about, this number is interesting because ______" and I'd like to be able to do that for any arbitrary number thrown at me. (hi yes math is good, history is hard, math history is interesting yet i still forget the people even if i remember the math. except when things are named after people, but that tends to be, like, Euler and LaGrange and other people who did lots of cool science things so i remember the methods and the names of the methods separately which never helps)

Amount of sleep: ....depression both screws with my sleep schedule and means I always feel like I need more sleep except when I wake up at 5pm and feel like I've wasted the day. so yeah. I can never get enough sleep

Favorite food: yes (why do I have to pick a favorite?) uh, chocolate in most forms, many other sweet things, red meats (especially if served with potatoes), curry (especially if it has "too much" ginger), fresh-baked bread, chai the way my favorite local Indian restaurant makes it (spicier with just a little bit of sweet, which is the opposite of what i can get from the mocha machine at work which is wayyy sweet with a hint of spice but that inferior chai is still superior to coffee so i drink too much of it). also vegetables which I really don't eat enough of: sauteed zucchini and onions, roasted broccoli

Dream trip: dreaming requires creativity and tbh I funnel that mostly into my writing instead. I wouldn't mind going back to Korea for another visit though

Dream job: my current job is pretty good when I feel productive and when my debugging tools actually produce data maybe??? (they were not being helpful today. but i still mostly like my job.) dream job is probably this but with seniority and confidence and double the salary (while living in a similar area of the country; I wouldn't want to double my salary by moving to work for Google in California and having less available after rent than I do now)

Describe yourself as aesthetic things:

the smell of old books

the first glow of sunrise (the sunrise painting the mountains pink and gold)

a rainbow in the spray from a waterfall

the flicker of distant lightning (watching a thunderstorm fade into the distance)

this picture

Random fact: about me or about the world?

how about a combination answer: when we got our new handbell music this season, we only looked at half the pieces our first rehearsal and afterwards I tried to look up one of the pieces we hadn't gotten to on YouTube because it's got a weird time signature and I wanted to get a feel for how fast it would go and how strict the counting is...... except it turns out we're the first group to ever play the piece. it was commissioned recently but seeing my conductor's name on the page didn't tell me how new it was because he's super prolific. (the fact that it was on printer paper without the publisher's graphics should have been a giveaway but it's only the second time I've been among the first to play one of his pieces so I think I can be excused for not realizing)

Languages: mostly just English, but I took Spanish for years, so I can hold simple conversations in it. I can almost read sound out Hebrew fast enough to keep up in services, and I know some random Hebrew vocab but comparatively no grammar. and I took Korean in college, enough that I can recognize sentence structure but I can really only speak tourist-Korean, though I can sound anything out (if it's typed. handwriting is hit or miss.) in both Hebrew and Korean (and Spanish tbh but i don't often listen to Spanish music) I'm very proud when I can separate the words enough, listening to a song, to translate them without looking up the lyrics. also I tried to learn Japanese from Duolingo when it was new, but I still hadn't gotten the kana straight when it started progressing to kanji so that was a rough time and I went back to Hebrew.

tbh I "dabble" in "language learning" which really means I start a million courses on Duo and stick with none of them. with the notable exception of French, which I acknowledge is super common and probably a good idea to learn but the spelling and pronunciation seem so arbitrary I'm scared to look close enough to learn it properly, and I've never particularly considered starting the Duolingo course for French

I think I lost a few questions, because that's only 18 answers. whoops.

um... who to tag

@abluescarfonwaston if school hasn't drowned you in work yet and @copperscales I'm interested in both of your choices for lucky numbers especially.

... wow I'm blanking on other mutuals I haven't tagged recently. as usual lmk if you'd like to be edited in, or just answer the questions and tag me back, that's great too.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #499

Top Ten Everything Ever

Four hundred and ninety-nine. That’s how many weeks I’ve been doing this four. Four hundred and ninety-nine.

Next week is the big five-oh-oh and I’m doing something typically stupid, but I wanted to make it a real celebration. That means for the next three weeks you’re going to get some rather meaningful and special Tops Ten; lists that have been long in the making, or that are just bonkers-level awkward for me to do. Like this one.

I mean, I’ve ranked films, games, fictional guns, and robots that made me cry. How much longer can I do this for? How many more weeks am I going to put myself through this?

Give me a barrel with bottom unscrap’d.

There’s nowhere to go but up, ladies and germs, and so I present to you the list to end all lists. The most definitive list possible. A list of everything. A list of my favourite things in all of time and space. A list of the official best things ever.

I mean, what more is there to say? This covers everything. I’ve tried to avoid it being really specific to one film or one person. And, of course, it doesn’t include people I know in real life, or events that have happened to me. These are, in their own way, big, sweeping things; film series, franchises, bands, stories that have in their own way changed my life. Just the greatest things I’ve come across in my nearly 40 years on this planet.

And you can’t say fairer than that.

The Transformers comic: this should be obvious to anyone who knows me well, but there’s no greater influence in my life, in terms of storytelling or entertainment, than Transformers. And of all the variants branching off from the Prime Timeline (pun very much intended), it’s the comic that’s greatest. Whether it’s the melodrama of Simon Furman or the intricate plotting of James Roberts, I’ve been addicted to the Transformers comic for the vast majority of my life. It has fundamentally shaped how I consume fiction and the sorts of things I’m into. It’s also really changed how I write, and, in fact, the original Marvel run is at least partly responsible for the fact that I write at all. I drew Transformers comics as a kid. I planned out elaborate multi-issue arcs before I was a teenager. I wrote detailed synopses and snatches of scripts for Transformers movies that would never be made. And I robbed, wholesale, motifs and lines of dialogue for the original books and comics I was working on too. It changed my life. It’s not hyperbole to say Transformers is the single biggest piece of fiction I’ve ever touched. Till all are one indeed.

The films of Steven Spielberg, 1975-1982: Spielberg is my favourite filmmaker, but it felt a bit weird to just say “Steven!” as one of the entries here. So instead I’ve decided to hone in on his early career, despite the fact that knocks out one of the biggest influences of my life, Jurassic Park. But everything I love about Spielberg is in these movies. His skill with a camera, his love of light, his great eye for casting, his way with actors; I mean, Close Encounters, which I probably first saw aged about twelve, is just a microcosm of all my interests in my teens: aliens, government conspiracies, determined men going on a crazed quest, and above all a pervasive sense of hope and optimism. Spielberg’s craft is exemplary, but that’s also true of many of his peers. His flair for action scenes and love of spectacle is entertaining, but there are many directors of whom you could say the same. What I love about him – what keeps bringing me back to him – is his warmth and optimism, his belief in the best of us. Even in his darkest movies, in Schindler’s List and A.I. and Munich (which has one of the bleakest endings of his career), there’s still joy and warmth and something worthwhile and wholesome to fight for. And whilst Raiders is a thrill-ride and E.T. an emotional tour-de-force, all of his preoccupations are encapsulated in Jaws, a tense horror film, a buddy-comedy, an entertaining rollercoaster, an acting masterclass. But it’s still Jurassic Park that made me want to make a movie.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe: so when I was a kid I was reading Transformers and Ghostbusters and other Marvel-published adaptations, but not really any actual Marvel comics. However, as a result, I became very loosely familiar with who Iron Man and Doctor Strange were (and Spidey of course) through references and back-up strips, and that time Death’s Head fought Tony’s nephew Arno Stark. No, when I started reading “proper” comics – mainstream superhero stuff – it was DC. I loved Batman, so I bought Batman, and that was a gateway to the rest of the DCU. However, despite the successes of the various DC movie adaptations, it’s the MCU that really, really got its hooks into me. For one, they’re really good adaptations, well-cast, with some great set-pieces. But the interconnected stuff is what really sings. Not just the characters popping up in each others’ movies, or even the overall arc leading up the crossover events; no, it was the actual shared-ness of it, the way the destruction of SHIELD had an impact, or the Sokovia Accords, or Asgard, Skrulls, magic… everything has an impact, an effect. And sure, it’s incredibly good fun to follow the breadcrumbs and try to work out where things are heading. As we enter a new phase – literally and figuratively – I just can’t wait to find out what’s next.

Grant Morrison’s Batman: talking about interconnectivity, no one does it better – or weirder – than Morrison. His Batman arc – and I’m referring to the character not the title, as it spans multiple series and even, arguably, includes work he did on JLA years earlier – is a web of connected theories, images, themes, events, and references. What does the Zur-En-Arrh graffiti in Gotham mean, not just in the here-and-now, but also as a long-standing reference to decades of Batman’s past? The anticipation of uncovering the next breadcrumb, the excitement of deciphering the next reference; it was long-form storytelling as a form of existential theatre, and it was sublime. But he also did two things that have utterly changed my view of the character. On the meta level, he presented a Batman where everything was canon; the grim thirties Shadow-inspired vigilante, the goofy fifties space adventures, the hairy-chested love-god of the seventies… it all happened to one man over a span of about 15-20 years. Fair enough; that’s cool storytelling. But his idea that Batman was not a miserable, psychopathic loner, that he was not insane or struggling to cope or still traumatised by his parents’ death, that Bruce Wayne was a nice guy with friends and family, who’d used his pain as a weapon, who’d gotten past his rage and grief and turned all the negative stuff outwards. Batman was what was built from all that, and Batman allowed Bruce to grow. And what did he do? He found other lost children and saved their lives, allowing Dick Grayson to take over. Batman is a force for good, in a similar way to Superman in Morrison’s All-Star book, making people better by association. And his confrontation with Darkseid in Final Crisis is extraordinary; brilliant as-is, as a piece of comicbook badassery on the page, but the metatextual resonance it’s given – Batman as a good man versus the font of all evil, David versus Goliath, Theseus and the Minotaur – is brilliant. How it ties in to Morrison’s wider Bat-epic, the whole Black Glove stuff and the devil and time travel and the myth of Batman’s creation and all of it… and just the simple thing of Batman’s last act being shooting the embodiment of evil, saving a human life, and then saying “Gotcha,” before dying, is perfect. Perfect.

The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge: when I was little, I played Spectrum and C64 games at my cousins’ house. Then I got an Amiga – I think maybe I was ten? – and I started playing Amiga games. And it was fun and all, but then I read a review in Amiga Action, and my life changed. It was something called an “adventure game”, and it let you walk around chatting to people and interacting with the world, with great big colourful graphics and characters whose mouths moved when they spoke. And then I played it. My love of the medium and its possibilities was cemented then; and, fittingly, it was through the wordy, hilarious dialogue and comedy antics of a wannabe pirate who may, or may not, be selling these fine leather jackets. It’s not overstating things that my gaming tastes were defined by this game and its technically superior sequel. The quirky set-pieces, the weird puzzles, the playing with form (like when you “die” in Monkey 2), and the smart use of Lucasfilm in-jokery. The first game’s “How to Get Ahead in Navigating” gag/puzzle will live with me forever, as will the second game’s bonkers, nightmarish, beautifully constructed ending. As good as they were, none of the subsequent games could hold a candle to it, especially as the whole aesthetic changed into something much more cartoony. But these two? They’re my Big Whoop.

Star Wars: I imagine I know a lot of people in real life who would be surprised – nay, astounded – that I would list my ten favourite Things of all time, and yet Star Wars would not manage to break the Top Five. That’s because that as much as I love Star Wars – and I do, I really do – it didn’t hit me, didn’t speak to me, apart from one brief and weird moment in my late teens. It was games that made me fall in love, I think; games and toys. And, I have to confess, it was the prequels; the intricate digital visions of gleaming cities and impossibly acrobatic Jedi. I love the goofiness and ultra-seriousness of Lucas’ vision, sadly muddled now by the earthy chaos of the sequels. Star Wars is cool; for a while, it defined my idea of cool in cinema. An exciting sci-fi reimagining of ancient and endless myths, a confusing smorgasbord of weird stories and arcane philosophy. Plus spaceships and rapscallions and laser swords. So yes: whilst it was never my faith, so to speak, it’s still one of the coolest and most original pieces of fiction in my lifetime, and to this day there are very few things at all that I find more exciting and evocative than the thought of a Jedi pirouetting through the air with their ‘saber lit.

Middle-Earth, in print and film: one of my most vivid memories of childhood is my mum reading me The Hobbit (and also Macbeth, funnily enough). Then I bought myself my own copy, read it as a kid, read it again as a teenager, wrote (aged about 12 or 13) a sequel in which Gollum comes back to reclaim the ring. I remain to this day baffled that my teacher did not think to tell me that there actually was a sequel to The Hobbit. Eventually I did hear about it, watched the Ralph Bakshi version, and – when I read in Empire that it was gonna be a film and Sean Connery, of all people, was gonna be Gandalf – I thought it best to take the plunge. And I adored it. whilst there’s something about the lyrical simplicity of The Hobbit that I prefer, the depth and scope of The Lord of the Rings – and Tolkien’s subsequent, more disparate writing – that moves me on a profound level. It’s not just the epic nature of the work – the story itself, with its grandiose tales of heroism and adventure – but the sheer balls of the man to make such a thing, to craft wholesale an entire mythological ecosystem. And then the films! I can’t believe they managed to do that; it was pure lightning in a bottle, and we know that because they didn’t quite manage to do it a second time with the Hobbit movies. But all those glorious moments: “Fly, you fools”, “For Frodo”, “I can carry you”, “Go away and never come back” – bloody hell.

Empire magazine: it feels a bit weird, for some reason, citing a magazine as a Favourite Thing. It’s a magazine, a periodical, a journal; it tells you the news and recommends films. it’s not supposed to be part of the culture, part of the fabric of one’s being. But whilst you could debate whether criticism itself is culture, Empire definitely has a culture. It’s a club, nay, a family; something that has been entrenched in recent years through its podcasts and live shows. But for me it began as an education. I started reading it, really, to find out more about Jurassic Park (there we are again, the secret eleventh part of this list). But it went on, showing me more films and filmmakers, introducing me to esoteric industry concepts, broadening my horizons. I always liked film, but Empire made me love film. It reflected my tastes but then it enriched them, codified them, offered me new flavours. It was the first magazine to put Lord of the Rings on the cover; it celebrates Spielberg and the MCU; it had articles about The Greasy Strangler, for goodness’ sake. So much of what I love about film I learned from Empire over the last (nearly) thirty years, and so much of what I love about Empire now is because of what I learned. Bangily-bang.

Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO games: the games that did not make this list, I don’t know. Halo; man, I love Halo. Or what about classics like Lemmings, Worms, or SWOS? What about Mass Effect, Deus Ex, or Fable? What about Mario Kart, what about Civilization? They all deserved a place, really. But there’s something esoteric, timeless even, about the heights of the LEGO games. I remember playing a demo – on the first Xbox, I think – of the first LEGO Star Wars, and being blown away by the fact that, well, it was good. When the games started coming out on the 360 – Star Wars II, Batman, Indiana Jones – I was in the gloriously fortunate position of getting a lot of them for free at CITV, and I devoured them. The simple mechanics, the generous, forgiving gameplay, the satisfying tactile feel of smashing objects and collecting studs. There was something just so rewarding about playing them. And the fan-service! Giving you all those beloved characters, all those worlds, all those genuinely funny in-jokes, references, and cut-scenes. Plus they’re great to play with kids. Time went on, some games were better than others; I feel they reached their peak with the first LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes game, presenting us with an open world New York to play in and a collection of comic book characters that fitted the gameplay perfectly. Subsequent games have either put new restrictions on play, or given us more complicated stories and mechanics, or – really – just over-egged the pudding slightly. I’m really, really optimistic and excited for The Skywalker Saga, long overdue, and promising something of an overhaul. it began, really, with Star Wars; and I feel with Star Wars they’ll have their greatest hour.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: fun fact: finding the tenth spot on these lists is very hard. How about a brand I love, like Xbox, or the BBC, or even Disney? Or another writer or director – what about Aaron Sorkin? Or a TV show – Doctor Who, perhaps, or Star Trek? Or how about, oh I dunno, Shakespeare? I like him. But I’ve not talked about music, so let’s do that; we’ll go out on a number. I’m not a musical person; I didn’t grow up frequenting record shops or listening to mix tapes in my room. I liked songs, but mostly I came to music through film. That was even true with Nick Cave, who I first heard in an episode of The X-Files, and read about in the X-Files magazine. But he remains one of the few artists, The Bad Seeds one of the few bands, that I continue to seek out and listen to regularly (rather than just saying “Alexa, play nineties rock”). I love the different styles, from the distorted noise of the early, post-Birthday Party years through the sombre melodies of Nocturama. I love Cave’s lyricism; his evocation of myth, his use of imagery. I love how he manages to get phrases like “morally culpable” into a song. I love the humour as well as the tragedy, the references to things both real and mythological, the sadness and eloquence of it all. I love how so many of his songs are about sex but are also really moving and meaningful; how much of the music is infused with pain and sorrow but is also uplifting. The horrible evocations of Cave’s own abuse in Do You Love Me, through to the references to his son’s death in Girl in Amber. I love Cave’s voice. I don’t know if this has come through in this list, but something I really like is stuff that makes me cry but isn’t necessarily sad. I cry when I read Sandman, when he wins the Oldest Game by challenging the end of everything by becoming “hope”; I cry when Donna tells Josh, “if you were in the hospital I wouldn’t stop for red lights”; I cry when Steve Rogers jumps on that dummy grenade. I think it’s hope and heroism and love. And that’s something that I get constantly, mainlined, intravenous, from Nick Cave. As Morgan Freeman says in Seven, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for – I agree with the second part.”

God, there’s so much stuff not listed here. So many things I love that I feel are core; no Pixar, no West Wing, no other filmmakers cited, really, apart from Spielberg. But ten’s not a big number, and I contain multitudes.

Thanks for reading.

[igb220-n10063013-blog]

Platformer Playtesting

So this is the final week before checkpoint 1 and I've done another round of playtesting sessions with my friends (sadly I was unable to attend the workshop). Two of them had very little issue navigating the space and communicated after the playtest they found the level quite easy to read in what was expected of them. Being well versed in platform games however enabled the first two testers to give me some good feedback and suggestions for further developments. Here are some combined thoughts from the two of them.

The spear mechanic being a linear projectile did not feel natural and was at times clunky to allign - I believe this would be remedied by implementing physics to the object as well as mouse aim if possible

Both users liked I had used spears as breadcrumbs in the cloud section, they also seemed to enjoy having a limited number of spears and thus needed to think about their placements

One playtester reported the cloud's movement speed was far too slow, they also noted you did not need to use a single spear in the section (whoops).

I admitedly did my chapter readings on playtesting a little late this week, but after the playtesting sessions with my two friends I realised some content from the chapter was very applicable to me. Tracy Fullerton discusses the seperation between testing with confidants (i.e friends) and with people you are less familiar with, while both testers provide the benefit of new opinions and thought process a confidant is more likely to pull some of their punches in their feedback or look at the project with a positive bias. So to remedy this I asked a friend of a friend, who isn't very experienced with games in general, to test out my game and observe them.

Uninformed Playtester

This playtesting experience was wildly different to my previous testing, and I learned a lot just by watching them play before even discussing it. While my playtester-friends moved with ease throughout the level, this friend had a sense of hesitation in all of their moves and seemed a little unsure at times. I think some of this hesitation is due to their blanket lack of video game experience, but there are aspects of my visual communication which could be improve, below are my main to indicators of this.

The above segment I would consider the main source of information, and one that came at the expense of the player as they became visilbly frustrated in the 6 attempts. While this section was purposed designed to prompt players to think about here they throw their spear - the intended path is not to through a spear on the right wall but instead double jump and make a platform on the higher left wall - two factors I hadn't thought of became apparent:

Given that the amount of spear ammo given to you at this point is exactly how many you require on the optimal path, making a mistake (throwing the spear on the right wall) results in having to refresh the webpage and starting the game again.

The timing window required to throw your spear on the left log wall is slim, unfamiliar players find this timing much harder than I anticipated.

After discussing why this gauntlet was so troublesome for the player I have thought of a few potential solutions:

Change the log wall on the right to a grass wall to indicate a spear should not be thrown there (improved design communication through visual telegraphs)

Increase the length of the left log wall to reduce the timing window (easier challenge once the player realised the true path)

Increase the total spear count to allow the player to create both a platform on the right and left wall (more forgiving/less punishing)

Overall I think this section was so apparent because it was asking too much of the player at an early stage. At this point no jumping throws have been required, nor has the player been intentionally mislead and tasked with thinking about a less linear solution. I think this semi-puzzle is good on its own, but so early in the level prompts players with two many new concepts at once, instead gradually introducing them one by one would be optimal.

Another and more long term solution would be to implement the functionality of picking up a spear you have already thrown, this would allow players to reattempt sequences in a less punishing manner without having to restart.

Another interesting sequence can be seen above, the player stands on the cloud as it slowly moves to the left and must create a path over the vertical wall, they may also stand at the speech bubble with a grey cloud in it to recall the cloud to the starting platform. While I did suspect the speech bubbles visual design was not the greatest (I used a premade asset since my artistic skills are beyond anything another human should have to see), I did not anticipate something.

The moving platform being a cloud relys on inherited visual communication from past platformers which often used clouds as platforms, it required an informed audience to recognise it was a platform. This uninformed playtester made the realistically reasonable assumption that you can't stand on clouds and that it was simply an aesthetic choice, and instead attempted navigate to the platform with the frog on it by throwing spears (which is impossible), because that's what the previous challenges had required. I could remedy this by changing the sprite of the cloud to something else, or more interestingly the level could feature a platforming test earlier in the level which forces a player to stand on a stationary cloud platform.

Summary

This playtest was very helpful and provided me with a lot of insight into iterative design where, if this was a real game production, I would act on any issues that came to light in testing to improve the players experience. Despite some of the hiccups in playtesting, all testers seemed to enjoy the core mechanic as well as some of the example expanding mechanics I proposed to them.

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 18: Blade Runner 2049

So I have finally watched Blade Runner 2049 (which I have been hoarding since Christmas whoops).

Overall, I did enjoy it. I would say I liked it more than Blade Runner, which makes me feel pretty guilty. I hate that I find Blade Runner dated, but I kinda do. In particular, I think it’s too traditional a noir to me--I like the aesthetic of noirs but I think they’re too slow. I wanted more sci fi, less sad lone detective-man very slowly sifts through evidence in between walks in the rain. Also, so many subsequent sci fi narratives have stolen so blatantly from Blade Runner, and expanded on its aesthetic ideas (and its sci fi ideas) that the original starts to seem... simple in comparison. So I do think its very success altering the landscape of sci fi works against it, in a way.

Anyway, 2049 was more... modern, it felt more familiar to me in its aesthetic, and I felt more at home in it.

So I did think it was good. But. I would probably give it a B, B+. There were a lot of aspects I liked but I had complaints too.

Complaints first:

Way too long. It does NOT need to be (nearly) 3 hours and quite frankly, while I felt like the OG Blade Runner was a little slow, too, I think it was slow because it was being true to its primary genre, the noir mystery. This one felt long because hey if we put the words Blade Runner on it, people will sit through anything, so let’s not bother taking any sort of editing eye to the work. It was self-indulgently slow and my mind DID wander. A lot. Including at times when really it needed to be paying attention!

It was very depressing. I don’t need everything to be a comedy-drama but this was very grim and it has left me feeling honestly pretty down. I laughed like 2 times, once when K straight out ran through the wall and the other I’ve already forgotten.

I was very uncomfortable with the whole Rachael dying in childbirth thing. Like... I feel a bit uneasy even with this critique, because I know it does happen (know too well, sadly) but still, this is a narrative. It’s constructed. Someone made that choice to kill her off that way and it just struck me as a choice made for narrative convenience. In other words, a classic fridging. She was an important character from Blade Runner and yet she has NO importance in this film except to be a womb. Killing her in childbirth just emphasizes to me that she’s being used/treated as a means of reproduction: proof that replicants can reproduce, the mother of the mystery baby at the center of the plot, etc., and that’s it. As soon as she’s fulfilled that role, off she goes, because now she has no purpose. The story treated her like Wallace treated that replicant he sliced open so callously and that’s just... honestly upsetting imo. I also think it’s unnecessary because I prefer reading the OG Blade Runner to imply that she had a built in expiration date and so she could have just as easily given birth and then reached that expiration date, and died, which would also tie in that whole expiration concept--which was central to Blade Runner and nearly completely missing from 2049.

I guess I must grudgingly accept that it does make more sense for Ana to be the baby than for K to be the baby. It fits together very well and I do... appreciate that to an extent, all the little clues ultimately coming together: the two babies, the track-covering, the mysterious illness, the ambiguous description of the memory as “real to someone” etc. But like... I really wanted K to be the baby and my first thought was sort of that I’d been cheated? Maybe I just identified with him too much, but it felt like ‘well what’s the point then? Why is he the main character?’ I can answer that: because it IS his story--it’s his radicalization, and even though he wasn’t born, he still is human in some way by the end of the film. But STILL. Another way in which it’s all just GRIM.

Slow as the plot was, I could not always follow it. Actually, it being slow made it harder to follow because I would zone out a lot, possibly when helpful information was going on. Also I thought it lingered on some parts of the story while just straight up skipping over other things.

The stuff I did like:

I loved the aesthetic. They really went all in on the costumes, the sets, the advertisements, the sci fi concepts, etc. Similarly, the world building, especially the expansion of the technology, was great. I also liked that so many of the machines were very 80s looking, even if they were doing very futuristic things (for example, the scene where K has the wood of the horse analyzed shows this off well).

I especially liked the world building in relation to the advancement of the technology. Like.. I’m not sure how to describe this, but in both films, there is a very strong awareness of human nature as it relates to our own inventions, ambition, and hubris. Te replicants were created by human tech companies specifically to be tools, and all of this, all of the plot of both films, is about that technology going awry, being uncontrollable, and yet humans continuing to try to control it. They try to use the replicants only off-world. They try to put fail safes in the replicants. They try to make more obedient replicants. But they never give up on replicants, and in fact Wallace is really expanding them, taking out the fail safes on purpose: longer life spans, working on reproduction. The original problems haven’t even been solved! But we need to get to that tenth world!! That tension between human greed and human fear, that inability to put the toothpaste back in the container even when you really know you should, is so deftly portrayed. I think this is particularly true of the sequel specifically because it depicts the original company going bankrupt and another one taking it on, and the different ethos that goes with the new owner.

Similarly, seeing the technology advance between the two films was really interesting and felt right: that replicants are easier to spot, for example.

I don’t get the “test” in the original film or the “baseline test” in this film but I do think there’s something interesting in the concept of testing the replicants using personal questions. I especially liked that line of Luv’s: “There’s something exciting about being asked personal question. Makes you feel desired,” or whatever it was. And then she tries to ask K a personal question: a sort of replicant flirting?

I’m too close to the viewing experience and so this is just a bit of a thought but I do think the films, viewed together, have something interesting to say about what it means to be human. What’s-his-face’s speech in the first one. The concept of memories, giving them memories to make them feel more real and thus allegedly make them more stable--but then it also makes them more human? Perhaps perhaps? As soon as they exist, regardless of what safeguards are put in--the short life span, the “inability to lie,” the obedience--if they can remember, if they can experience, if they can imagine the future, they are human. I’m not as big a fan of “if they can reproduce, they are human,” (I’d uh rather not put all my own humanity on my ability to make future humans thanks) but certainly the movies consider different possibilities of what human means, and I appreciate that.

And if you combine the K and Joi relationship/romance with the above thought.... wowowow. I mean first of all I am a Sucker for Romance and I did instinctively think what they had was real. But then I wonder, especially given the overall Grim mood/morality of the movie(s), was it not? Was I suckered in this just like K was? In other words, is it possible for a sci fi AI to come to love? Yes. But did this particular one love? I don’t know. She was made to be whatever he wanted! And everything she did and said could fall into that category, right down to giving him a name and telling him he was special. Except perhaps one thing: asking to be erased from the home itself. That was self-sacrifice. That was for his benefit, and not hers. So was it real? And if it was not on her end, was it on his? Like, the concept of a fake human and a fake intelligence, or a human-designed human and a human-designed intelligence, falling in love, and whether or not that’s possible, and if it’s not or only possible on one side, of the synthetic human truly longing for love and seeking out a version of it just as a human-human would, but in the form of just another human invention, created by the same company that created him, is kind of heartbreaking. Very heartbreaking. Does his very longing make him human?

Also as a side note to that K/Joi parallel--he gives her the ability to leave the house at the beginning and the first thing she does is go out in the rain and “feel” the rain, and this parallels, imo, both the death scene of the last replicant in Blade Runner, and K’s final scene in the snow. I felt like he was experiencing the snow like she was experiencing the rain. Do Joi’s increasing number of experiences, including physical experiences (the rain, travel, sex), such as she can have them, make her more human?

While I was disappointed that K wasn’t the baby--I think because I felt like I’d been duped a little bit, made to think I was watching one story, the Deckard/Rachael’s baby coming to consciousness, while actually I was watching a different story, a random replicant’s radicalization--I did like that the real baby was not... a total success as a model. Like, Wallace will have a hard time creating replicants who can replicate. And the replicants will have a hard time using Ana to lead their army. You would expect the first known child of a replicant and human (or replicant and replicant, as I think the case is) to be a little off in some way. And she is! Her immune system is so bad she has to live in a single room for nearly her entire life. That seemed...about right, yeah.

I liked how the movie expanded on the aesthetic of the first: MORE rainy urban California, MORE big glowing holographic advertisements, but also MORE Earth dystopias, dystopian farms, dystopian irradiated Las Vegas, dystopian snow. The various holographic Vegas performances in Abandoned Vegas were particularly inspired. Also the gigantic dead-eyed Joi at the end was (depressing but) cool.

I liked K a lot. Like every other character, he didn’t get much to do emotionally.. but I was into following him through his extensively-long narrative, and I could see how he was changing, becoming less obedient and more human. Also, I do NOT think he died at the end. He was just being emo in the snow.

Mmm that might be it. I can’t think of any other thoughts currently though I’m sure I am forgetting stuff. I am very hungry though, so I am going to eat.

[leftlovetragedy]

Why BBC Sherlock was ruined by bad writing - Part 1

This post is a part of a long summary of some of the problems with BBC Sherlock which in my opinion ultimately caused the show damage which seems practically irreparable now. One of the related problems actually is that it seems Moffat and Gatiss didn’t get why S4 was met with disdain by fanbase, why reviewers picked it apart, why ratings dropped. It means they don’t want to learn from their mistakes or simply can’t. In fact Gatiss outright refused to believe ratings dropped and that does speak about very huge denial as ratings are facts, not opinions. Both Moffat and Gatiss also suddenly lost enthusiasm about ACD, Sherlock Holmes, although they were gushing  about it just not so long ago.

But let’s get back to the problems of the writing I wanted to talk about:

1)     The problem with Moriarty

Looking back at first two seasons after clusterfuck of S4, sadly, I could now notice some problems which were already planted in earlier seasons. While S1-2 were the best out of the show some decisions which were made by the writers indicated their true approach to the material even back then. But these problems would only grow like a snow ball and in the end would contribute to the undoing of the show in many ways. Mofftiss were overusing Moriarty from the start. In ACD’s canon he appears in one story (and is mentioned several times) like the nemesis to take down Sherlock once and for all. Since it’s TV series it was perfectly understandable and fair  to expand the role of Moriarty, however it was way overexpanded. Moriarty was connected with the cabby, was behind Chinese mafia, then arranged the whole Great Game with Sherlock and then meeting with him in person took place-all in the scope of all 3 episodes of S1. Had the S1 been longer perhaps it wouldn’t have looked so  jam-packed with Moriarty and would have been more subtle, but since the S1 is only 3 episodes long it did. S1 also told us that Moriarty killed the school boy, the only case which young Sherlock was not able to solve then, thus setting up Moriarty as this ultimate enemy of Sherlock literally for decades.  Then in Ep1S2 we find out that Irene Adler was also working for Moriarty and that he consulted her. Ep2S2 has Sherlock having hallucinations about Moriarty and Ep3S3 have the grand finale where Moriarty tries to destroy Sherlock and kills himself on the roof, and then Sherlock jumps from the roof, faking his suicide.

Honestly by the end of S2 Moriarty was made by the Mofftiss as this be-all and the end-all guy and that already looked over the top. But it still could have been ok, if the Mofftiss could stop there with Moriarty. And that’s exactly what they couldn’t do. They didn’t know how to stop and so they ran this character into the ground.  S3 teased us if Moriarty really died or not, with “shocking cliffhanger” final,  adding more hallucinations and flashbacks and fake flashbacks with Jim along the way.  But the result was that by the end of S3 Moriarty no longer looked liked some threatening dangerous villain, but rather as a self-caricature. S3 also told us that Moriarty had in fact a death wish and that he would have killed himself anyway, making his whole suicide on the roof pretty  weak.  Instead of some diabolically clever villain with diabolically bold clever calculated plan, we got the guy who just was crazy and wanted to off himself. Big whoop.  It got only worse when TAB special was literally dedicated to Sherlock trying to understand that Moriarty, who shot himself standing right in front of Sherlock in broad daylight, was actually really dead. No shit, Sherlock. Moriarty was again present in Sherlock’s Mind Palace,  grimacing all the way, which probably was supposed to look cool and edgy, but didn’t, and looked like a tired rehash. Then S4 finally completely killed any coolness or sense which Moriarty still had in the show (and there wasn’t much left by the time). S4 told us how Moriarty met with secret super powerful sister Eurus, spent 5 minutes talking with her or smh and even teamed with her, recording some dumb edgy videos for Eurus, which she used when Moriarty himself was already dead. Since Eurus is capable to hypnotize people after talking with them the question was left open if Moriarty was really compromised by Eurus and was just her puppet since then. Either way Moriarty was pretty much destroyed as interesting and effective villain in the show, because a) he either was hypnotized by Eurus, made into her puppet and lost any personal agenda or free will since then; or  b) he wasn’t hypnotized by Eurus, remained himself but was just really unhinged, mad dude, whose unpredictability didn’t seem like a result of his great intellect or scheming or an act, but rather a result of him being a psycho, who wanted badly to kill himself, also hoping that Sherlock would ~ probably~ kill himself as well—and if Sherlock doesn’t kill himself, hey, no biggie,  he got those great choo-choo videos for Eurus which she could  use against Sherlock, though Moriarty wouldn’t be able to see this anyway, because he will be dead by then. But surely choo-choo videos will work! Surely the world's only consulting criminal could always count on choo-choo videos! Great plan! 2)     The problem with women

I already talked once about how Mofftiss treat female characters on the shows and the short answer is: they treat them pretty awful as they pretend to write “strong female characters” while basically doing “Feminism for Dummies: The Male Edition”. 

According to Mofftiss strong female characters mean mostly villainous, dubious, criminal, weaponized psychopaths.

---Irene Adler – twisted rewritten version of ACD’s Irene Adler, here villainized cruel sex worker and blackmailer, who is told what to do by male villain, because she can’t figure it out on her own, loses  to Sherlock because she fell for him and later is saved by him. Moffat literally described Irene as psychopath, in fact he describes Sherlock as one as well, saying: ”He's a psychopath, so is she”. 

Moffat also considers ACD’s Irene boring, saying: “In the original, Irene Adler's victory over Sherlock Holmes was to move house and run away with her husband. That's not a feminist victory." Moffat is a very big fan of ACD’s stories according to Moffat. No comments here.  ---Eurus “Ebony Dark'ness Dementia” Holmes – OC, secret sister genius with super powers, who killed a child while she herself was a child, tortured her brother Sherlock and has been put to medical facility- prison for life (where she continued to torture and kill people, and even rape them-well, there was one case at least. She also was able to  leave prison at her will and kill people outside). A total psycopath, who fixed her multi-talents on playing some evil games with Sherlock. Turned out to be so, so very  needy, that the only thing she really wants is a hug from Sherlock, cause she loses the minute he hugs her. Obviously Mofftiss tried to build her as this greatest villain on the show who ever villain, but it didn’t work out.  --Mary Watson – practically an OC, since Mofftiss so heavily rewrote her, that she doesn’t resemble Mary Morstan from ACD’s canon. Even her real name is not really Mary Morstan here, she borrowed it from the grave slab of another person. She is ex-assassin who was murdering people for cash, but  retired now, who  lies and hides her past from everybody, then she shoots Sherlock almost killing him for good, in order to cover up the fact that she came to kill her blackmailer and Sherlock discovered her. Then Mofftiss make a big point that her main agenda in show is really a new life with a husband she loves and their baby (Mary shoots Sherlock while already being pregnant). Then Mary leaves her husband and little baby girl (the girl given to Mary by Mofftiss in the show, she doesn’t exist in ACD’s canon) when somebody hunts her ex-fellow assassins (yep, they still out there or some of them).  Then she is tracked down and returns, but then she is killed off because she jumped in front of the bullet meant for Sherlock leaving her baby girl without the mother and her husband as widower. Bye bye Mary’s agenda, it has been destroyed. (Also what an insult to professional  mercenary  getting killed by some institutional secretary, honestly).  Then it turns out Mary recorded some weird ass DVDs which are now regularly sent to Sherlock and John, and while she makes some kitch speeches there she barely remembers about existence of her baby daughter, if at all. In the process  we find out that John, while Mary was still alive, was already heavily flirting with another woman (it was Eurus “Ebony Dark'ness” in disguise)  and really wanted to cheat on Mary. Oh, and Amanda Abbington herself described Mary as psychopath.  --A small shout out to those Victorian ladies from TAB’s Mind Palace - they formed a secret sect in order to kill men, had creepy secret meetings and basically were an underground murder club on the loose,  even were referred to as “league of furies” at one point. Oh look, women are again portrayed as vile, criminal and agressive entities, with attached  aesthetic of KKK.  Straw feminism is strong with these ones. --Ok, let’s remember Molly Hooper, she is not a psychopath, she is not villainous, she is not a criminal, she is a nice, smart, normal, kind young working woman. At long last something different, right? Real potential?  Ehm, nope, Mofftiss still ruined it. Because she is kept in the show as a female character with a deep desperate unrequired crush on Sherlock who is ready to do a lot  for him, but repeatedly mistreated by the object of her affections. Sherlock humiliates, manipulates and abuses her emotionally several times during the show, when it gets better between them, but  Mofftiss make sure that poor Molly still can’t have personal life outside of Sherlock, her new BF/fiance Tom ins S3 is a poor copy of Sherlock, he even dresses like him (probably it was done for laughs in the show “ha ha, poor Molly, got replacement goldfish, can’t really move on” only it wasn’t really funny), but they broke up by the end of S3. Then Molly is pushed aside for most of S4, and then there is that famous “I love you” scene, which deeply hurts Molly and makes her cry.....the scene, which according to Mofftiss was a last-minute addition to the script and was not about Molly or her relationships with Sherlock at all, but only about Sherlock and his emotional development and how he is more human now. Molly was simply used by Mofftiss as show-case of Sherlock’s manpain. There was no resolution to this scene and Moffat simply said that  Molly would get over it, by having a drink and shagging someone. That’s...deep. Not.

It really makes you wonder what’s Mofftiss’s problem with women and why writing for female characters on the show is such a trainwreck?  Well, according to Moffat: --“The original [Sir Arthur Conan Doyle] stories had a huge female following, which I'd never forgotten, and that's because the Victorian ladies liked the way Sherlock looked. (Laughs.) So I thought, use this massively exciting, rather handsome man who could see right through your heart and have no interest ... of course, he's going to be a sex god! I think we pitched that character right. I think our female fan base all believe that they'll be the one to melt that glacier. They're all wrong -- nothing will melt that glacier.”  --"Women are needy. Women are out there hunting for husbands."  Also his understanding of pregnancy and motherhood “Your wife turns into a boat, and shortly after that, you never sleep again and you clean shit off someone. It doesn’t seem like a very appealing prospect”.     Also the infamous “There’s a huge, unfortunate lack of respect for anything male.” I guess all of it sort of explains why Mofftiss write women that way. To be continued...

[drscotcheggmann]

The Value is in the Aesthetics: the Art of the Pokémon TCG

New Twitter account: @ArtofPokemonTCG

Hi guys. So here we are. An account dedicated to celebrating the art of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. The idea for this channel was primarily born from my love of, well, the Art of those lovely little rectangles of cardboard (that’s my wife’s description, substituting the word lovely for pointless) that we like to cherish. Some of said pieces of cardboard can even be special, sparkly ones (that’s what I tell my wife as an unexpected package drops through the letterbox and I try to justify spending more than I perhaps should have).

Despite having dabbled in the Online Trading Card Game on and off, I’m not much of a player. I prefer to collect. It all started back in 1999 with Base Set when I was about 12 years old and the Pokémon craze craze swept my school and every other school in Britain. But while I’d like to say I’ve been collecting ever since, the reality was that Pokémon just wasn’t seen as ‘cool’ when heading into your mid to late teens. And thus began my, what adult Lego fans call, Dark Age. But darkness can only have relevance in relation to light and the light was to make a brilliant return in my early 20s when I picked up Pokemon Diamond for DS. It was like picking up where I’d left off with an old girlfriend (my girlfriend at the time wasn’t happy when I described it like that)! But my itch to climb back into card collecting wasn’t scratched until about a year ago. The initial excitement of opening a booster pack came rushing back, followed by a pang of regret at not having the foresight to keep all of my old cards, but the elation at realising I had about 18 years worth of sets and expansions to wade through on eBay. To date there have been 74 total sets/expansions released with the 75th and 76th expansion of the current set due to be released before the end of the year. If we take the cards in those sets plus promos, the TCG now has nigh on 10,000 unique cards, give or take a few for reprints etc. (If anyone knows the precise figure, I’d love to know). Of course, there was no way in hell I was going to collect all of them, as

a) I’m a collector, not a completionist and b) I’m not rolling in cash.

The latter of the two arguably dictates how true the first is. Maybe if Pokémon cards were £0.50 per pack, I might be a completionist. But sadly they’re not that cheap; the reality is that this hobby has if anything become more and more expensive since my glory days in school. Booster packs, booster boxes, collection boxes, pin badge boxes, booster packs, elite trainer boxes. That’s a few hundred quid in that last sentence! Spending is a huge part of collecting in any hobby, but especially in this one. The rarest cards can fetch hundreds of pounds; the extremely limited Pikachu Illustrator Trainer card fetched more than £44,000 at auction. That’s an extreme example. Even if you’ve not got £50k kicking around, gathering dust in your bank account, a well looked-after Base Set Charizard could cost you in the region of £50 these days on the secondary market (shamefully, I traded mine for a holo Scyther after school one day; the excitement upon the release of the Jungle set led to a few silly decisions!) A sought after full art card, depending on rarity and set, can go for a more modest but by no means insubstantial £15 to £20.

So what’s all of this got to do with what this account is setting out to do: celebrating the Art of the Pokémon TCG? Well, there’s much more to collecting Pokémon cards than investment. Arguably, there is just as much enjoyment to be had from this hobby, regardless of whether you have your monthly pocket money to spend or have a full time job that affords you a little disposable income. Actually, I’ll retract part of that statement: Not arguably. Definitely. Regardless of value or rarity, all of the cards that you pull from your £3.99 booster pack are bound by one thing: the love that the illustrators pour into their design and presentation. I’ve always loved the artwork and aesthetics of other media. I’m no stranger to a video game art book and so Pokémon TCG was no different. The owner of my local card shop (sadly now closed as of yesterday) used to even keep a few cards aside for me, just because they might be of interest to me from an aesthetic point of view, and not just for his own commercial gain. But it was on one afternoon in particular that this idea of celebrating the art of the TCG really took root. Following a long spell of not having bought any boosters (13 packs of Burning Shadows in a row without a GX, Full Art or better had left a more than bitter taste in my mouth), I impulsively bought a Break Point blister pack. Blisters are not renowned for their good pulls but it was nicely reduced and I had my mind fixed on one of the many Full Art Mewtwos in that set. Nothing beats the thrill of breaking the seal on a booster, doing the card trick and seeing what happens. But there’s also no worse feeling than pulling three packs of absolute crap, which is exactly what happened. Feeling just that bit more bitter and remembering afresh why I had decided to stop buying booster packs, I decided to pick up my £9 worth of nothing and flick through what I’d pulled. Might as well get my money’s worth, I thought.

That was the moment.

I stopped to actually look at some of these cards more closely: the commons, uncommons, the non holo rares; all cards I would’ve rashly skipped over on my way to see if that elusive EX of any description lay hidden at the back of the pack. But while only lowly common and uncommon cards, some of these were nothing short of stunning with so much care and attention given to render them so vividly and really bring each Pokémon to life. The bitterness subsided and gave way to sadness. Not a '£9 down the drain’ type of sadness but one that spoke of booster pack openers across the world doing exactly the same as me and not giving the lesser cards the attention and love they deserve. And they do deserve it, since their illustrator no doubt devoted just as much attention and love to their design as they hoped we would pour into appreciating them. And I know for one that that doesn’t always happen. The most damning example of this is a recent feeling of disappointment I experienced at only pulling a rare holo from a pack. That was another big moment since I started collecting again. A stop moment. Way back when Base Set fever was sweeping every playground in the land, holos were the pinnacle. I remember being so proud to own my 1st edition Machamp holo, which was dime a dozen since it came in a starter deck. But it was a cool card and I whooped at pulling it as part of the Evolutions reprint again almost 18 years later. So, to go from this to now resenting a holofoil card, just because it wasn’t the EX, GX or Hyper Rare I was craving. It seemed that somewhere along the way a perversion of values had taken place as to what constitutes true satisfaction from a set of pulls. Value, rarity and status had trumped the true value of aesthetics. I know there is some crossover there too though: an ultra rare card can also be truly stunning. I’m not going to lie and say that I now throw all of my ultra rares in the corner because 'look at the pretty colours on this Caterpie’. I have many Full Arts and a few Hyper Rares which I really love. But my point is this: let’s not ignore the Magikarps, the Polywags, the Hoot Hoots, the Mudbrays just because of their circle or diamond symbol. Stop and have a closer look. Think about how someone somewhere thought to capture this particular Pokémon in this particular pose, on this particular backdrop and that that person was fortunate enough to have their work placed on a card for the world to see.

To quote Novellist Julian Barnes:

“Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it.”

Never have truer words been spoken. My hope in creating this account is to celebrate the art across the entire TCG; not only cards across generations but also from Commons to Hyper Rares, not celebrating their status as such but rather what our senses first latch onto above all else: their aesthetic value. I hope to do this through posting pictures, offering personal reflection on selected cards while also inviting you to share with me your highlights from the TCG.

Thanks for reading and enjoy. Please follow, like and retweet. Spread the word. Art belongs to everyone. Pokémon can too. And you don’t even have to catch 'em all to do it!