#the hard part will be the videos themselves. i have zero video editing skills

[carcarrot]

babygirl i can be insane about projects in ways you never imagined

[timpac-capstone]

Week 7

So I tried making a completely new story because my original idea was just way too ambitious for the amount of time I have and where my skills are currently. Writing my script like this is difficult, it's hard to keep up with the flow of ideas that pop into my head and write them out in this style. I've tried looking up some videos online on how to write a screenplay but they're so long, 10 to 15 minutes, when all I really want to know is how do I format my words when describing the setting, where the camera is, and characters actions; which does not take 15 minutes to explain, just say if it's bold or italicized and where I should align these things. I started getting somewhat of a writer's block, I know the story I want to tell but describing it to others is difficult.

Finally finished Keep Your Hands Off Eizoken, it was actually pretty useful regarding this project. I went more in-depth in my week 5 post regarding the plot, but I didn't really get a chance to talk about the characters themselves. I really related to Asakusa because often I will have this idea for a video that I really find enjoyable but once I start typing out ideas I start to think, "People will think this is cringe" and then I start to pivot away from what I originally wanted and I slowly start to lose passion for it. That's when the producer, Kanamori, steps in to stop Asakusa from pivoting and procrastinating not because she's a concerned friend but because they are trying to make a substantial business. Mizusaki also has the same struggles as Asakusa because she is very much a perfectionist, she doesn't care that average people won't see the cut corners of their projects because she cares about the anime enthusiasts that will and in return it creates a lot of stresses on her and the team. It is relieving to see that this is something that all artists share on a professional level and it's not an exclusive thing to me. But despite these personal challenges we are still able to make amazing works that can have everlasting impacts on people.

I went to a Redshift meeting Wednesday night that was about making zines. I've never made a zine before and loosely know what they look like so I thought it would be a good idea to go because I think I'm going to have to make a zine eventually for my Capstone or if not for some project in the future. It's a pretty easy process especially when you have the proper tools so it only took like 5 minutes to make the booklet itself. Afterwards, I didn't really know what to do, I saw people writing in their zines but I wasn't really sure what to do for mine so I just made a comic. This was an eye-opener for me because it showed that I can still tell a story without developing a script first or with super amazing drawings. I'm not a reader and certainly not a writer so why was I trying to create a story the way a writer would. So I'm going to work backwards from how I usually do things which is making the visuals first and then I'll write the script around those visuals.

This is a podcast episode that my capstone professor recommended to the class to help us get over our roadblocks in doing research and experiments for our capstone. I am definitely a perfectionist, usually whenever I do an edit in a video that I'm really proud of I will watch that one edit hundreds of times as I'm working on the video just to make sure it has absolutely zero mistakes which you can tell causes a lot of delay. I definitely feel that perfectionism is getting in the way of me trying to learn digital art or animation, it is a mixture of making sure I find the perfect program and trying to use my time more efficiently, which is ironic cause I never make time in my schedule to try and learn Krita. My OCD definitely plays a part in this but not everybody in my class is diagnosed with OCD so there is something more at play here which up until this podcast I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It's that feeling of failure that I'm desperately trying to avoid, there are two instances in my life that really stick out to me when it comes to trying to make creative projects. There was one video that I made with my friends called "Why I Haven't Uploaded in a While", I was really excited because up until that point I was only making videos by myself and it was going to be a parting gift for my friend Brett who was going to the military in a couple of weeks. However, I soon realized that explaining the ideas in my head to a group of people is a lot harder than expected and as they got frustrated I got even more frustrated, not to mention I wasn't prepared for the battery in my camera to run out or the SD card to get full. I was just such an asshole, it was supposed to be a fun thing me and my friends would do before we all went our separate ways after we graduate but the video never came out the way I wanted it to and it's just a bad memory for me even though I'm still friends with these guys to this day. Another video I made, called "I'm Innocent", took me several months to make and it's where I really pushed myself in terms of editing and why my skills are so good today. I still consider this video to be my magnum opus even though the subject matter and jokes would probably get me in trouble today but I'm still really proud of what I was able to make. But when I sat down to watch it with my friends they didn't laugh at a lot of the jokes that I thought they would find hilarious and it didn't get a lot of views on YouTube. For a while after that, I was just so discouraged from making another project because of that feeling of failure constantly lingering in me, just waiting to rise up again. It wasn't until I had a video project for my "Moving Image: On Screen" class that my passion for video-making resurfaced. The fact that I treated it more as a project that had to get done before a deadline rather than a masterpiece that would define me for the rest of my life really helped me get things in motion. There were a lot of rewrites and a lot of last-minute touches but I got several compliments despite it not being as perfect as I wanted it to be. So the point of this very long tangent is that you can't always focus on the optimal route and that doing something is better than doing nothing.

Finally, I have a story! It took me a while but I finally got something out of my head and onto paper. Here's the premise, everybody's brain likes to constantly remind them of the embarrassing things they did years ago but I feel that I tend to think about them way more than other people do and I certainly react a lot more violently. I will swear at the top of my lungs, I will smash my fist on my desk as hard as I can, I will punch my own head, and sometimes I just want to shoot myself. In this storyboard, we have a character who is trying to go to sleep but the brain cells in his brain find a huge bag of VHS tapes with all his embarrassing memories and they start watching them. As the brain cells watch these tapes the main character gets more and more uncomfortable and agitated. The brain cells find these tapes hilarious and continue to watch and rewind them at the expense of the main character's sanity. Eventually, the main character has enough and heads toward his closet, meanwhile, the brain cells run out of VHS tapes from the initial bag but don't worry they drag in another huge bag. When the closet door is opened we see a shotgun and some shells; the main character grabs the shotgun, starts loading it, and puts it in his mouth ready to pull the trigger. Meanwhile, the brain cells are loading up another tape as they sit back with their popcorn in hand readily anticipating what's about to play. However, they are shocked to see that it is a happy memory and as soon as that happy memory plays the main character takes the shotgun out of his mouth with confusion, as if he just snapped out of a trance. The Brain Cells realize that this bag is filled with only happy memories which to them is boring and walk away from the TV out of lack of interest. The main character finally has peace in his mind and as he stares at the clock he smashed earlier he sees that despite its cracks and discrepancies it still functions and with that, he happily goes to sleep.

Writing a script for this became 1000 times easier with the rough storyboard by my side. I also found the Rick and Morty scripts from season 1 which gave me a reference as to how things are formatted in a screenplay for an animation. Every time I had a hard time trying to describe a scene I would just look at the storyboards and describe what I see there. This method allowed me to focus more on the dialogue for this animation since I purposefully left it out of the storyboard for that reason. I want to see if people can tell what the story is about just from my rough drawings and because I'm not 100% certain if I am going to use embarrassing moments from my life or use embarrassing moments that people can relate to but if I ever do decide to change it it will be easier to edit this way.

REFLECTION:

There was a lot of progress this week, I feel that this breakthrough of working backwards has lifted a lot of tension off my shoulders and I also feel like I'm halfway through this project. Obviously, I need to get some second opinions before I put things into motion but at the very least I have something I can use to practice character animation or start recording myself so that I can see if my scenes work.

[ahappydnp]

please pick a favorite phil vid from each year and say why you picked it (is giving you a task the same as helping with decompression? i hope so!)

You’re evil and you know it

Okay, here goes! I’ll try to stick primarily with solo videos. Also please know my instinct is just to say ‘every Phil video ever’ because everything he’s done deserves it’s own little shoutout

2006- considering he’s deleted every single video from this year other than his first video, it’ll have to be that lol

2007- Lonely Day. The music video origin story! The alien!

2008- 51 Things in My Room! There are so many amazing videos in this year. Like truly 2008 was suuuuch a good year for Phil, but this is such a good representation of what youtube was back then. It’s creative and fun and weird.

2009- Christmas Adventure. I know I’m morally obligated to say Pinof, but this was the beginning of them actually working together. The creativity is amazing! The effort is incredible and it’s such an underrated experience. Phil was the king of interactive videos

2010- SIDEWAYS GARY. Look....it’s part of my branding at this point okay. (Second place is dnp get down! A classic!)

2011- I DRANK EGGNOG! Chill vloggy Phil vibes. It’s just one I find myself coming back to? Also him making a second video in a week because he felt like it?!? Can you IMAGINE? He seemed to really enjoy youtube in this era and it shows

2012- Why I Was A Weird Kid. He’s so good at storytelling and it shows in so many of his videos this year! Love the era of quirky Phil anecdotes

2013- MEET MY MUM! Y’all know I’m Kath trash. He’s such a mamas boy and I love that woman (despite the slightly cringe story).

2014- Tour of My Brain. Once again, Phil is brilliant and doing things no one but him could think of. This entire concept is amazing and I wish it was appreciated more (but we all know it wasn’t because the other creators didn’t have the skills to steal it *cough*). Second place is obviously Festive DITL but Phils brain deserves the gold

2015- DITL Japan. I mean...you gotta

2016- The Story of Tatinof. I’m just so damn proud of them. They’re proud of them. They worked so fucking hard for the tour/book and put so much of themselves into it.

2017- Viewers Pick My Outfits! Y’all that man could make a cheese dress look hot. Once again here is me begging for part 2: quiff edition! (Runner up: dnp and dogs)

2018- Why I Went to Hospital. Look...we all know all the joint content was incredible to say the least, but I’m trying to do mainly solo Phil videos here and this is once again a great representation of Phil being a wonderful storyteller while also giving us actual information. So good!

2019- COTY obviously! Just...fuck I love Phil. The most appropriate coming out video for him. (Second place hands down is draw my life 2. I still cannot believe that. His honesty and vulnerability were astounding and he broke down more walls in that one video than I ever thought he would)

2020- Trying to Bake my Birthday Cake without a recipe. Peak Phil. His humor is amazing and he just gives zero shits and I love him

[tokumusume]

tokumusume’s list of best and worst movies and dramas watched in 2019:

There’s a new category this year. Inspired by kpopalypse, welcome the Honorable Mentions! Movies that weren’t exactly bad but also weren’t good. Movies and dramas are qualified to enter if I watched them for the first time this year, not that they were released this year. Click on ‘keep reading’~~

Best Movies:

1.      Parasite

Another masterpiece from the director of Snowpiercer (let’s pretend Okja never existed). A poor family con their way to a rich household. Choi Woo-Shik from The Witch (see below) is the eldest son and mastermind, fabulous as always. Definitely the best movie of this year. For me, movie of the decade.

2.      The Witch Part 1 The Subversion

This movie is amazing, hard to describe without spoilers. A perfect mix of Stranger Things and Hanna. Choi Woo-Shik can come to my house and kick my ass anytime. I can’t wait for part two.

3.      Death Trance

Visually stunning, kinda like Amemiya Keita’s style in early Garo or Mad Max. I wish the movie was longer and the characters were better fleshed out, Ryuen the monk and the little girl had so much potential... The most interesting thing about this movie is how sexualized the main male character is compared to the female ones, and apparently, the swords were designed to look like veiny penises (can’t find a source for this info), and yes, they do look like veiny penises. The final showdown is heavy with sexual energy. Have I already said that Ryuen deserved better? #RyuenRights

4.      Gintama 2: Rules are made to be broken

The barber shop scene is a fucking cinematic masterpiece. I never laughed so much like I did with this movie. The way it doesn’t take itself seriously, the meta jokes, everything is perfect. Even better than the first one.

5.      Kingdom

While I think that some fight scenes were way too long (like the bamboo forest one), the dynamics between Shin and Hyou/Eisei were highly entertaining, at least in my shipper eyes. I like that (SPOILER) the King of the Mountain People is a woman and not once they try to call her Queen. She is a King. Hashimoto Kanna is adorable as a Ten, Kanata Hongo does a great job as Eisei’s psycho brother, Sakaguchi Tak waves his sword around, the usual stuff but with added layers of dirt and sweat.

6.      Bravestorm

A movie I lovingly call “Japanese Pacific Rim”. Full of Kamen Rider stars (Hino Eiji! Misuzawa Haruka! That girl from Heisei Generations, the one with a sword! She has a sword in this as well!) and giant robots (god, I love giant robots!), I waited so much for this movie and it exceeded my expectations. I just wish I could’ve watched in theaters, it had a limited showing in my country.

7.      Twelve Suicidal Children

What begins as a murder mystery ends with a twist you won’t see coming. All of the actors are amazing, but special mention to Sugisaki Hana and that guy from that one boy group I forgot the name but can’t be bothered to Google.

8.      Gakkou Gurashi

Four girls and their teacher try to survive the zombie apocalypse trapped inside the school. This one destroyed me for days.

9.      Forest of Love

I’ve watched some Sono Sion movies but nothing prepared me for this. Be aware of extremely gory sequences and sensitive topics. Hinami Kyoko is so amazing as blue-haired, punk girl crush Taeko that I totally didn’t notice she was AkibaBlue in Akibaranger.

10.  The Host

After watching Parasite I decided to go on a Bong Joon Ho binge and watched this horror movie. Not as good as Snowpiercer and Parasite in my opinion but heart-wrenching nevertheless. The little girl is the star of the movie.

11.  The Hungry Lion

A story about the dangers of social media and slut-shaming. I want to punch Mizuishi Atom in the face.

12.  Cromartie High

A little absurd comedy about yakuza-style high school boys (played by middle-aged men lol) forming a club to battle aliens summoned by themselves just because. It made me laugh like a child. A hidden gem.

Honorable Mentions:

1.      River’s Edge

Depressing as fuck. Warning: the cats die. It’s not graphic but it’s traumatizing. Yoshizawa Ryo is a gay boy who sleeps with old men for money. There’s a graphic sex scene (not Yoshizawa, sadly) where my only thought was “That thing is gonna get stuck in there! Use a condom!” Can’t remember much from it except for these three scenes.

2.      The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

Yamazaki Kento has the acting chops of a dead fish but it comes handy for playing a teen with psychic abilities and zero social skills. Hashimoto Kanna is one of the prettiest girls in Japan. Yoshizawa Ryo with white and blueish hair looks more like Sakata Gintoki than Oguri Shun in the Gintama live action. The end is a huge let down but the fun ride is worth it.

3.      Ano ko no, Toriko

Congratulations to Yoshizawa Ryo, he has FIVE movies in my list of favorite movies this year! This is to make up for crowning GIVER as the biggest waste of time of 2018, this list is totally not biased, lol. “Ano ko” could be just another romance movie but the (very) little insight into how the entertainment industry works and not focusing on school life made me love it. Poor Sugino Yosuke being left behind again, when will this boy get the main girl?

4.      Monstrum

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it’s pleasant enough to fill a rainy afternoon with a lot of blood and spilled guts. Hyeri of Girl’s Day is the heroine and Choi Woo Shik is the commander she falls in love with.

5.      Weirdo Go

I confess I watched this one just to see Ji Li (aka my snake son Nie Huaisang) dressed as a woman but it was enjoyable and not that problematic.

6.      Real - Kanzen Naru Kubinagaryu no Hi

Directed by the same guy that did “Creepy” and “Before we vanish”, there are lots of twists you won’t see coming. And a dinosaur. A fucking dinosaur.

7.      Tomodachi Game: The Final

The movie loses its focus halfway through then picks up again minutes before ending. Yoshizawa Ryo delivers again as the sadistic Yuuichi, much like his role in Gintama. The plot twists are the star of the movie.

8.     The Living Dead

Sorry Wen Ning. I saw the plot twist coming in the first 30 minutes of the movie, not very smart of the writer. His personality did a 180° turn for worse and I’ll demote the movie to an honorable mention for it. Gao Han is cute though, I would like to see him as a better character.

9.      Backstreet Girls

Some recycled scenes from the drama to situate the viewers, a completely new story for the movie, it is certainly funny and enjoyable, if you can get past the forced gender reassignment surgery background and transphobic jokes (you shouldn’t get past it btw). I like the soundtrack.

Best Dramas:

1.      The Untamed

Do I need to say more?

2.      The Tale of Nokdu

This Korean romance had everything to be a mess but it wasn’t!!! *claps* I don’t hate the main female character and the whole palace politics actually kept me interested until the end. The complete shift of atmosphere mid-season was strange at first but ultimately very welcomed.

3.      The Naked Director

Netflix original Japanese content is amazing. This one is a look at the life of a legendary porn director in the late 80s, I learned a lot about the history of Japanese porn and censorship (yay pixels!) and went looking for his, erm, works. Very graphic, 69/10 don’t recommend watching with people in the house.

4.      Channel wa Sonomama!

I don’t remember it well but it’s about a news station and what is like to be a journalist and it was very interesting and funny.

5.      SCAMS

Forgettable. Sugino Yosuke with black hair cons old people via phone calls.

Worst Movies and Dramas:

1.      The cat in their arms

The cats spend 90% of the movie in human forms, and halfway through it they simply abandon the cats’ plot to show a fucking long montage of a weird guy painting a picture of a nude girl. It’s also super creepy to see a grown-up man acting like a cat, getting belly rubs and eating cat food from a bowl. Yoshizawa needs to choose his roles more wisely.

2.      Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

A waste of Suda Masaki’s talent. Can Japan stop casting Tsuchiya Tao already?

3.      Samurai Marathon

Almost two hours of dirty men running through a forest. Maybe Japanese History experts will enjoy it, because I certainly didn’t.

4.      Lady Vengeance

While there are legit great moments, I didn’t find this “classic” to be anything special. The animal cruelty was too much for me.

5.      Hot Gimmick

This movie makes Bohemian Rhapsody’s editing look like a work of art. There are more flashing cuts than a T-ARA music video. I have no idea who likes who, who’s banging who, what even are they saying. Too much poetic shit for my like. I wanted to see Shimizu Hiroya naked. I was bamboozled.

6.      The Divine Fury

While some parts were interesting, at the end I still don’t know if the protagonist is possessed by a demon (if yes, then why would he help a priest destroy his friends?) or if he was blessed by God when his father died and talked to him (the glowing hand thing, why and how??). The exorcism parts are really, really scary, or maybe I’m just a chicken, but I had to avert my eyes. The best (only) part is that the protagonists are hot. Hello Woo Do-Hwan, you can sacrifice me to Satan any time…

[tariqk]

More Minecraft grumping

Cut to spare the dash.

Things I really don’t like about Minecraft, honestly:

The early survival game is inaccessible

Here’s the thing about early Minecraft survival: you’re plonked in the middle of the wilderness, with absolutely nothing, and literally the first thing you got to do is punch a tree and find a safe place to spend the night before you get beaten up by monsters.

That’s it. You could spend the night hiding in a hole, probably crafting and mining something in the middle of the night, while hostile mobs wander areas that aren’t lit up, waiting to, basically, kill you. And you’ll stay in this precarious situation for at least a few days, as you 1) make a place to sleep, 2) build shelter, 3) get supplies to venture out, and 4) don’t die, because if you die, you lose your stuff.

This is a game marketed to mass audiences. For children, even. And it can be so manifestly unpleasant I have no idea how it got popular so quickly.

I don’t actually have a problem with this, actually! I positively enjoyed some of that experience, and some of that tension makes for some fun gameplay and entertaining stories — like the one where I found a white horse, tamed it, named it, and then proceeded to take it to a foolhardy exploratory quest before it fell under a hail of arrows (RIP Binky 2019–2019).

And I don’t even have a problem with the learning curve, because I’ve learned and thrived in environments like Dwarf Fortress. I use emacs for gods’ sake. Low accessibility and high difficulty environments are my jam.

But getting here involved more than a dozen start-and-stop moments of gameplay where I literally quit the game, deleted the save, and went to bed in disgust. It’s stupid. It’s aggravating. I can’t believe that this was ready for mass market, what with the lack of telegraphing and the pretty damn high stakes from the start, that the only people who’d play this would be gamers who are familliar with the tropes, already know a little about Minecraft lore, and are invested to try and try again.

To be fair, they’ve made some things easier: they’ve included guidebooks with recipes to automatically load items you already know into the crafter, there’s an official guide online, and if need be, you have cheats. But consider:

If you need to cheat to get the game accessible, there is something wrong with the core game loop.

You can’t create a guidebook and then rely on players gaining “enough experience” to access them to make the game more accessible.

You can’t just bloody have a guide that a person needs to open a browser, or buy the book, to get by.

Survival is very much a non-starter if Minecraft is your first serious game, you get frightened or suffer from anxiety in trying to stay alive, and you have difficulty optimizing your moves to get the best result.

Redstone is a mess

Actually, I have no opinions on how redstone is implemented on a purely technical basis. It’s a system, it’s mostly Turing complete, that's… interesting. What pisses me off is how the Technical Minecraft community is… well, frankly, hard to get into, hard to gain proficiency in, and looks fairly clannish, insular and… honestly a drag to Minecraft’s further development, if Minecraft was to get developed further.

Like I’ve talked about this before, but the existence of the Technical Minecraft is entirely dependent on a class of software behavior that you could make an argument are actually bugs. Zero-tick pistons, anomalous sticky piston behavior with blocks, quasi-connectivity… these weren’t intended consequences for the developers of Minecraft, and they’ve said so before.

Say what you want, but honestly if the only reason why a developer reverted a bug-fix because a bunch of small, clannish, insular, and loud minority were making complaints, I’d honestly ask how much value those people should have in how you run your business.

But that isn’t all. I had taken to writing down notes because I wanted to figure out how certain redstone constructions worked, and even the simplest designs suffer from the following:

There appears to be no standard way of sharing schematics and designs for redstone creations.

Most of the instructions are in video, which is a terrible medium to instruct in, because you don’t have a way to skim through the resource, the presenter literally doesn’t have to say anything more than what they do on video (and thus can be as vague and contradictory as they want).

Most of the instructions are in the nature of, do everything this way, except this section, in which you need to do (flurry of movement as the presenter puts in a slightly different design that you better be able to catch). It’s “simple”. No, it’s fucking not.

Another thing that bothers me is that, fundamentally, most redstone designs are hand-crafted, which is mind-boggling. For one, if you are just starting redstone in Minecraft, you’re going to be sitting with the same toolkit that the most experienced users of redstone are. You’ll still be laying down redstone lines and putting in comparators. You’ll still be dealing with the janky and inconsistent behavior that experienced redstoners are. You’d still be debugging your creations with the same tools experienced redstoners are. And like, you’d be doing it with nary any institutional or technical support, because… reasons?

It’s like you progress from electrical engineering to low-level programming to high-level programming to virtual machines to virtualization… so that you can get back to electrical engineering again? Using skills that may or may not transfer well into other fields? Why?

And there are consequences for this as well, which I’ll get to in a bit, but also, I need to talk about how the community gets around this problem, which is basically…

Modded Minecraft replaces the problems vanilla has with other problems

Specifically? One of them is performance.

I don’t know if you’ve tried 1.12.x and then compared it with 1.15.x, but the differences are night and day. Like, I run a potato computer, mostly because we’re broke af and don’t have the scratch for a l33t gaming machine, but… well, yeah. What’s occasionally janky in 1.15 is literally unplayable in 1.12. What takes 5 minutes to load in vanilla takes up to thirty minutes in modded Minecraft.

And sure, this will sort itself out as modders eventually take advantage of the new architecture and optimizations within 1.15, but in some other ways, it won’t. Mostly because the nature of modded Minecraft is that it literally has to interface with the literal source files to generate or insert new code, and since mod-makers don’t have access to the code pipeline and the tools that they can use to optimize the game, well…

And we’ve only talked about the Java Edition, and not Bedrock, which I suspect will be even more tightly incorporated into the platforms that it runs, at the cost of having less open infrastructure, and as a result, more consequences to mod performance and stabilty.

But another thing that bothers me about modded Minecraft is how so many mods are just… Minecraft, but more. More power, more game mechanics, more technical additions, more mobs, more enchantments… but half the time the resulting game feels bloated and overly-complex.

This is funny because it literally sounds like I’m contradicting myself over the fact that early Minecraft survival had too little in terms of letting itself be accessible, so you’d think I’d welcome mods that worked out some of these gaps with things that made player lives easier.

But what I’m looking for is a realignment of how the game approaches players, not as a punitive, inaccessible system where difficulty is a mask for what is ultimately shallow gameplay, and what we get from modded Minecraft is more stuff. Sometimes, in some modpacks, just so many things that several mods do the same thing that the other mods do.

It’s kind of telling that every time I see a modpack that includes Draconic Evolution the first thing I think of is I better not get into Draconic early, because if I do the rest of the game will literally break, because I have no idea what the hell the mod creators are doing there, but when your damage scales allow you to three-shot the Ender Dragon final boss, that mod breaks the game. Doesn’t matter if you make a boss that’s three times tougher than, say, the Wither. Game’s fucking broken.

There are some good approaches: FTB Academy and other questbook mods do give players a chance to orient and align themselves with what to do, without forcing players to have to go through the anxiety and terror of not knowing what to do, and keeps them engaged far longer than they should be, but honestly… ultimately what you’re doing is more stuff, just through the lens of what the mod wants you to do.

Plus FTB Academy has Draconic and you can literally two-shot the Guardian of Gaia, which is supposed to be so tough that metal music starts playing and it can cause effects that are twice as worse as the Wither… well.

Is it just me or are there only dudes in this party?

If I have to count the number of people who weren’t cis men or boys in the time I’ve been lurking around Minecraft’s YouTube channels, I can quite literally say that the number would be less than half a dozen.

That’s very bad. When your visible community is 95% cis dudes and everyone else aren’t there, it tells me that:

The game alienates literally everyone who isn’t a cis dude

The player base are driving away anyone who isn’t a cis dude

Part of the reasons for #1 are, well, I’ve mentioned them above: it only really allows people who have the time and wherewithal to plug into an activity that offers no real benefit outside of the game itself, most of the fantasies it caters to is power fantasies of vanquishing more and more powerful opponents, and there’s barely any community support for newcomers.

So that’s no surprise that the kind of people who are popular Minecraft YouTubers are dudes who are either bad at explaining what they do, are inarticulate, or… well, to not put it too unkindly, dicks. I mean, Minecraft’s recent rise in popularity and relevance was, sadly, because PewDiePie was playing it. So that tells you everything.

And we haven’t even gotten into the fact that the playerbase looks pale as fuck, so you know that’s a thing. I’m seeing a few Indonesian-language Minecraft tutorials on YouTube, so that’s neat, but otherwise… it’s pretty white-dominated.

And this all assumes that the causes are all because of structural inequalities, not active fuckery against marginalized folks. I honestly don’t know how often that happens, though I wouldn’t honestly be surprised if it did. I mean, it’s not as if the game isn’t associated with nasty folk like PDP… and hell, even the original creator, who, to their credit, Microsoft and Mojang have sidelined, is a homophobic and racist dude.

But, yeah. I mean, $CHILD_1 and $CHILD_2 are still at it with Minecraft, and I’ll be around to help them through, hopefully to steer them away from the nasty stuff. But still, ugh. There are so many reasons to be grumpy about this game.

Mind you, at least it isn’t Roblox.

[kitty-does-stuff]

you like homestuck? why not try ___

(reblogs > likes, if you read this all and think to yourself that you should check out one of the things i talked about then why not reblog and share with others?)

hiya so ain’t a normal post for this blog, think of it like a youtube video but text (i’d make this a video but i don’t have a good mic & idk how to edit), anyways this is a start to a series of posts i’ll sometimes make, the point of this series is to point some fandoms at other pieces of work like the thing that fandom likes, so like in this post i’ll talk about other pieces of work that homestuck fans might like

anyways most of the post is under the cut cause it might be a long but i’ll show the 1st 2 that way you can see if you like my reasoning, also i haven’t seen every piece of media ever so i might miss some things so feel to add in a reblog

(also the numbers i use aren’t to show the quality, it’s just what came to mind 1st)

1: borderlands

ok tbh this game is why i made this post, this game series has a lot of the same kinds of humour (though borderlands doesn’t to what i can recall have any ablest jokes or the stuff like that), it’s a very fun game  series even for those who most of the time don’t like shooters as it’s kinda like what would happen if overwatch’s fun shooting mechanics had a baby with diablo 2‘s skill trees

the story is really great, taking a lot of cues(and names) from greek legends, also a hot tip, you really don’t need to play the 1st game, just start at borderlands 2 then go to pre sequel and then tales from the borderlands and you should be fine

also there are quite a few lgbtq+ characters (including a canon lesbian relationship that can end in marriage, i say can as it’s a part of a game where what you say and do can have things end in other ways), and there is also a lot of room for oc making as it takes place in it;s very own world that has a lot of things no other story really has

2: Undertale/Deltarune

ok you most likely know about at least Undertale but hey this is my post and i get to add what i want. anyways Undertale’s story is this: once a upon a time monsters and humans both lived above the ground but one day a war started, humans with their determination sealed the monsters deep beneath Mount Ebott, creating a barrier only a human soul could pass, one day a child climbs Mount Ebott and falls into the undergrond, the way this tale ends is up to the player

ok so there are quite a few characters that you get to know well, they all have backstorys that are quite the tales, there is canon lgbtq+ characters (including a canon relationship with two of the woman characters, a non binary protag and trans coded characters),

it’s also a very funny game and the story is one of the best story's i’ve ever heard, also if you like the music of homestuck then you’re gonna love this game’s music as it was made by toby fox (some of his songs from homestuck are: Black, Descend, Savior of the Waking World, MeGaLoVania, ect)

now Deltarune isn’t a full game yet and only chapter 1 is out rn but if you’ve already played Undertale then give this a go

3: My Hero Academia

ok so a lot of you already know about this anime but i still feel i should about it. So the show’s plot is about a world where most people have superpowers called Quirks, the main character (named Izuku Midoriya) has the dream of be coming a superhero like his role model All Might but he has a problem: he was born without a Quirk, the show has him slowly learn how to be a hero, make new friends and fight evil

there are a lot of characters so if you liked the bigger cast size of homestuck then this will be great. the fights are very well done and the super powers are well done, there is also a lot of room to make oc’s so if you liked making oc’s this show should be great for you

you can find this wherever you stream/watch anime

4: danganronpa

did you like the murder in homestuck? wish there was more and it was somehow more nuts? well then these games (plus anime and book or two) are for you!

the 1st game story is this: you are Makoto Naegi, a student of Hope's Peak Academy, who finds himself trapped in a game of mutual killing among his peers, in Hope's Peak Academy everyone is some kind of Ultimate (of skills or things like being a robot), Makoto Naegi is the Ultimate Lucky Student witch is a Ultimate given out in a lottery

the games have a lot of unique characters and a story about as messed up as homestuck, there are also canon lgbtq+ characters but for the most part most are only coded (and the ones that are canon don’t uh really get any happy endings), also due the whole Ultimate thing there’s a lot of room for oc making

here’s the order that you’ll wanna use (bolded means you need to see or else later things won’t make sense anything else is just a plus): Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc > Makoto Naegi Secret File > Danganronpa Kirigiri (may not be canon) >  Danganronpa: Togami (not canon, also just save yourself from wasting time and don’t read it, it sucks) > Danganronpa 2: Goodby Dispair >  Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF (non canon) >  Danganronpa Zero >  Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls > Ultra Despair Hagakure > Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy (there are two different complimentary series. The idea is that you alternate between the two of them starting with Side Future, then Side Despair so your order would be F1, D1, F2, D2, etc...)  > Super Danganronpa 2.5 > Danganronpa Gaiden: Killer Killer > anything else to do with the main danganronpa universe > Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (not canon to the rest of the games, it is it’s own verse)

5: steven universe

so i’m sure most of you have heard of this but it’s really good so it’s worth sharing, here’s the plot: The Crystal Gems are a team of magical beings who are the self-appointed guardians of the universe. Half-human, half-Gem hero Steven is the "little brother" of the group. The goofball is learning to save the world using the magical powers that come from his bellybutton and he goes on magical adventures with the rest of the Crystal Gems, even though he's not as powerful -- or smart -- as fellow group members Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl. Despite his shortcomings, Steven usually finds a surprising way to save the day.

this show has so many lgbtq+ characters that if i tried i wouldn’t be able to list them all, there is so much room to make oc’s if you can think of a type of gem then you got a gemsona idea buddy cuz any gem can be a character and the story is really great

6: the adventure zone

ok so this one is a tabletop rpg podcast, so far there has been two main campaigns though one is still on going, the 1st one is called The Balance Arc it’s the campaign that was for d&d and so far is the only main campaign to be over as it has a ending (though they sometimes still do live shows set in the campaign), it’s also the one you should must likely start with, then the  2nd main campaign is called: Amnesty it uses the monster of the week rpg and is on going, this podcast is hosted by the McElroys

here’s what campaign 1 can be summed up as: The story of four idiots that played DnD so hard that they made themselves cry. 

here’s a fan-made trailer for The Balance Arc 

7: critical role

another d&d show! yeah i know but this one and the last one are very very different, for one everyone in this show knows how to play d&d, anyways this is a web series in which a group of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons, that is played live every Thursday. There are two campaigns, one of them is over while the other is on going, both are already very long so you better have some free time on your hands

if you do watch then be ready to cry at least once

8: 17776

ok so uh this one is a bit odd, it’s on the shorter side os things and is a serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative by Jon Bois published online through SB Nation, it’s odd but from what i know it’s good

9: paranatural

a webcomic that is made by the same person that made summerteen romance (y’know from Paradox Space?) anyways the comic follows the story of Max, the new kid at school, and the other members of the Activity Club as they fight ghosts, investigate the secrets of Mayview, and interact with their fellow middle school students

it’s a fun webcomic that has characters that you end up really wanting to learn more about

10: young justice

so this show is a pertty good way to get into the dc fandom, you don’t need to know much of the lore of the main dc verse as a lot of the stuff isn’t quite the same in the show so need to worry if your not the must into comics, the story is about the the teenage team of superheroes as they save the world as well as deal with normal daily life issues

it’s a fun show that can make you cry really fast, that goes from light hearted to dark very quick and isn’t afraid to kill off a characters

[taratheinfluencer-blog]

I Tried Living Like a Social Media Influencer for a Week - Here’s What I Learned:

In a world full of Instagram and Youtube, a new elitism was born: Social Media Influencers.

What are social media influencers? According to the Digital Marketing Institue, social media influencers are, “users who have established credibility in a specific industry, have access to a huge audience and can persuade others to act based on their recommendations.”

After the death of app Vine, the top users couldn’t fathom losing their daily 6 seconds of fame and get a real job, so instead, they turned to good ol’Youtube. Youtube, which was once a platform for content creators to post actual formatted-scripted-creative videos, then became a playground for inFlueNcErs to post shallow videos of themselves vlogging their day-to-day life of doing $1,000 shopping hauls and Taco Bell mukbangs.

Though these vloggers claim their content is actual ~hard~ work, from a viewers standpoint it just looks like an extreme form of the narcissism of privileged people showing off how much money they have and how much fun they can have without having to maintain a real job.

In addition to their hard work of filming themselves eating fast food, there’s also the extremely hard and tiring work of them posting pictures of themselves onto Instagram. While I personally do not understand how this is real work, other sources would argue that it is. A recent survey showed that 75% of generation z and millennials consider online content creation to be a real job, and 34% of those people want to start a YouTube channel themselves. 

Still, I can’t help but be irked when hearing about this lifestyle. But why? To figure out where this rooted irritation stems from, I decided to try to live like a social media influencer for a week. Vlogging. Instagramming. Eating like them and dressing like them. For a full week. Yeah. yeah. Here is what I learned:

1.) It Takes A lot of Confidence:

Is it confidence or is it narcissism? Depends on the vlogger. Either way, you’ll need one of the two to get started in the influencer world.

Let’s start off with vlogging. Talking to a camera while walking in a public space with people staring at you…..not an easy feeling. Every time I started filming and a person would notice, I instantly felt self-conscience.

 Even when I was attempting to film alone, as soon as I would start talking to the camera as if it was an actual person, I couldn’t help but to laugh. Every. Time. 

Maybe I should give more credit to vloggers who talk to their camera in public and make it look so easy and natural because it’s not. 

Going along with the self embarrassment, posting consistently on Instagram added to the feeling. 

I normally post on my Instagram one or two times a month, but posting pictures of myself WEEKLY felt like I hit the beyond cringe status. 

Pressing the post button was dreadful, and I ended up deleting most pictures an hour after they were posted.

Posting my face onto my friend's timelines every single day and updating my Insta story every minute felt like a whole new level of narcissism. It’s so silly and weird to think influencers easily post these pictures and just ~expect~ people to like them and to care about what they’re up to that day

This goes along with the majority of influencers being narcissistic. In a 2016 study, researchers interviewed 239 influencers on their Instagram habits and found that they all ranked high on the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale. 

The researchers also said, "narcissists can post and manipulate specific photos to make themselves and their lives appear to be a certain way. Instagram appeals to narcissists because many interactions on it are 'surfacy' or 'shallow.”

The vlogging side to being an influencer is one thing because at the very least you can try to make something fun out of it, but the Instagram part? Absolutely, absolutely, not the lifestyle for me.  

2.) It’s Only Fun if You're Making Money:

If I knew it was guaranteed I could live this lifestyle and start making the same amount of money as the top influencers do, going through the cringe and embarrassment of it all would totally be worth it.

Influencers get paid through brand deals and sponsored ads. Companies will reach out to influencers and ask them to either post a picture of them using or wearing their product, or shout out their company in a video in exchange of receiving anywhere from $200-10,000+ per post.

Social media influencer Tana Mongeau announced on her Instagram story this past week that the clothing company Fashion Nova pays her up to six figures per photo that she posts onto her Instagram wearing their clothing and tagging them in it. SIX FIGURES to post a picture on Instagram. 

Mongeau has also explained in her past videos that clothing companies send her and other influencers exclusive catalogs of clothing articles selected just for them. These items are worth anywhere from $500-5,000. She picks the clothes that she likes, they send them to her for free, she then films a Youtube video of her showing off the clothes and pretending as if she actually shops there, then she can either keep the clothes or send them back. Either way, she still receives a thicccc paycheck for giving the company an online promo.

Influencer David Dobrik stated on his vlog channel that he was able to buy 10 new cars for his friends, plus a new Ferrari for himself, within one year due to giving the company SeatGeek shoutouts on his vlog. 11 new high-end cars in one year...just for talking about a company for literally 45 seconds.  

Without the paycheck and without knowing if I’ll ever get a paycheck, I just don’t see the point in being an influencer just for ~fun~ especially knowing other people are banking off of it.

It’s like people who casually drink. Alcohol doesn’t taste good. There are zero health benefits to it. So if you’re not drinking to get drunk, what’s the point?

Being an influencer is embarrassing. There are horrible mental health benefits to it. So if you’re not posting to get paid, what’s the point? Attention?? Fans?? Feeding into narcissism???? Probably, but I still want a paycheck at the end of the day. 

3.) It Takes A lot of Time: 

Finding the perfect picture to post on Instagram takes. a. lot. of. time. After doing a full photo shoot in my Insta-baddie outfit outside of a 711 (which ties back to the needing self-confidence part and trying to continue on even when customers are staring), I then had to go through 103 pictures and even then I had to take more to find the ~one.~

But it doesn’t stop there!

Trying to edit and FaceTune the pictures like the influencers do was even more time consuming than taking the pictures and picking out the Dolls Kills mixed with Fashion Nova outfit itself.

If it took me that much time trying to decide which picture to post, I can’t even imagine how long it takes influencers, given they have more pressure put on them to post the right one. I only have a little over 4,000 followers to impress online, but real social media influencers have a solid 500,000-1,000,000+ that’s a lot of pressure! Not to mention if they’re posting the picture through a brand deal and the brand doesn’t like the picture, they can take the paycheck back...so their post has to be perfect.

Trying to come up with vlog content also took up a lot of time.

When I wasn’t laughing or cringing at myself, I was vacantly staring into the camera lens trying to come up with something to say, annnnnd I had nothing.

Then there were times where I did think of something to say, but either the sound quality was off or the sentence was worded funny so I would have to do retakes of me talking while also trying to make it sound natural.  

AND THEN, once you FINALLY got your footage, you have to edit it all. The current trend among vloggers is to do quick edits with lots of weird effects and added sounds which took me 8 whole hours to figure how to do, and even then, the outcome was still shitty! !!!

While I still do believe vlogging isn’t real work, I WILL give them credit for their editing skills, now that I consider hard work.

*side note: while I do credit editing film as hard work, it can also be noted that there are vloggers out there who pay someone else to edit their videos for them….SoOOoOo

*side side note: I was going to add the vlog here but after this experiment, I weirdly decided I want to actually try to make a vlog channel this summer since most of my friends already do and I learned a lot from this, so I’m holding onto that content until the birth of my channel.

4.) It Does Hurt Your Mental Health:

While doing my research on what the influencer lifestyle was like, I tried to take note of what they typically eat in a day and what they wore.

From the different “What I Eat in a Day” videos I watched, it mostly seemed to consist of ice coffee (which I already drink on a daily basis so that was easy) and avocados and other super healthy foods.

The common outfit choices I noticed from the wardrobe hauls I watched mainly consisted of crop tops, street fashion, and anything that reveals a lot of skin. 

Going back to a previous statement I made, influencers have a lot of followers and a lot of eyes on them, so it’s easy to see that they do whatever they can to always look their best.

While I did enjoy their food choices and clothing choices the most out of this entire experience (because it tasted good and looked cute), I feel like it would eventually become mentally exhausting to always be sooooo aware and conscious of what you look like at all times.

I mentioned before that I used the FaceTune app like all the other influencer do when editing my pictures before posting them. While I could write a whole other 25-page-long-essay on the dangers of FaceTune itself, I’ll just summarize it by saying this: FaceTune is an absolute evil drug that can trigger body dysmorphia within the user and within people who see the final FaceTuned pictures.

The features on that app that allows for you to look as if you lost 50 lbs, makes you look taller, fixes your skin complexion, and even alters your jawline??? are so dangerous and triggering to people who already suffer from low-self esteem, dysmorphia, and eating disorders, and I strongly suggest not even downloading the app, ever.

I also caught myself checking my phone every second to see how many likes I was getting after posting something. When posting content on social media becomes your job, I can totally see how addicting numbers can become and why people obsess over them. 

In a recent interview with influencer Alexandra Mondalek done by The Guardian, Mondalek said, “I was putting too much weight into who was viewing my Instagram, I would worry about how a post was performing instead of making important calls. I felt a certain pressure to make a brand of myself, and there was so much anxiety in that.”

I also caught myself comparing my posts to similar posts that got more likes and wondering why mine weren’t getting as many, but then would remember that the majority of the influencer’s pictures have been FaceTuned, and they don’t actually look like that in real life so I shouldn’t be comparing myself to them. 

Mondalek also said in the same interview that, “I’d be lying if I said I could look at an explore page on Instagram and not compare myself to what I see on those pages. Someone is purchasing something you can’t purchase or making connections you haven’t yet made. It’s the rat-race lifestyle boiled down into the palm of your hand, and sometimes it feels inescapable.”

Final Thoughts:

After this experience, I will give influencers a bit more credit. This definitely isn't a lifestyle anyone could pull off so props to those who can.

However, I still do not fully see a purpose or meaning in their job. And I'm pretty sure they don’t either — they just like the perks of the lifestyle.

Mongeau has stated several times in her vlogs that she knows she’s talentless and that she just got lucky, and I respect her for owning up to that. 

I guess my core issue with influencers lies within the ones who cannot be honest with themselves and admit their job is meaningless.

These people really aren’t contributing much to society or working that hard, but are still making more money than teachers and some doctor — people who actually work — and it bothers me! Nobody needs that much money! 

But....I did read in a recent study that, “narcissists tend to follow other narcissists on Instagram,” and prior to doing this experiment, I was already following these influencers on my own free will. So, maybe, if we’re being honest here, my problem isn’t the influencers work ethic, but deep down inside I see myself in these people and am just jealous that they’re living a richer life than I am. 

Sources:

https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-us/blog/9-of-the-biggest-social-media-influencers-on-instagram

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3617062/children-turn-backs-on-traditional-careers-in-favour-of-internet-fame-study-finds/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/08/instagram-influencers-psychology-social-media-anxiety

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/29/five-ways-to-beat-social-media-algorithms-with-influencer-marketing/#20f2d13f6db7

https://www.businessinsider.com/narcissists-habits-instagram-2018-1

https://blog.logograb.com/visuals-videos-what-happened-vine/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215303307

https://chatterblast.com/being-a-social-media-influencer-its-a-real-job/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563217306805

[thethousandscars]

So I know my blogging hasn’t been great this year. It’s been odd, the last few months. Between editing three books and my new job, blogging hasn’t really been on my agenda lately. However, I am pleased to say that with SPFBO5 about to begin, I am returning to the author reviews you know and love! But I’m still going to review video games. It’s the one thing that keeps me from going senile.

Even though my job is video games.

Introduction

This has been a game that’s been a long time coming. I bought this game in 2014, and I decided to hold off on it until things became more…developed. With the game hitting 1.0 officially in December 2018, I felt it was finally time to review it.

As you can tell, I’ve put some serious hours into this game, and I’ve probably seen 10% of the content.

Kenshi feels like a twisted, weird mix of games a child would dream up as the ideal video game. Is it the ideal video game? Lord no, but it does one hell of a good job in many areas.

I am a huge fan of open-ended sandboxes were you can just do what you want, but very few seem to do this right. This was made by a very small development team and I could tell as soon as I bought it that it was a game worth supporting. Even if it didn’t go much further, I could afford to spend 10-15$ on it. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can make a game, particularly in this day and age when there is just so much competition. The indie market is booming and with it a lot of the stigma attached to indie developers is fading, as AAA titles continue to frustrate consumers with their practices. It’s the right time to get into it.

Kenshi’s development was slow at first, and originally I did wonder if it was ever going to reach a stage where I would go into it and play it. Then more and more progress was made…and now it’s just impressive just how much is packed in this game.

The Game

This game reminds me a lot like Mount and Blade Warband, another game which I bloody adore. The graphics look like shit, if you want my honest opinion. It looks and feels bloaty, the engine is buggy and badly optimised,  there is no voice acting and no true narrative exists. What’s shocking is virtually none of this matters when it comes to Kenshi. It should be a bad game with how much it crams in, all these different parts somehow working. Parts of the game make me think it’s still an alpha version, and there’s some serious flaws with it but man. . .I love it. It’s an amazing role-playing sandbox.

You are given a massive open-ended map (And I mean it’s huge. 870 square km), full of varied biomes, different factions, and just given a smack on the bum. Go and enjoy. Make your own story. It gives you almost nothing to work with and the beginning is frustrating. It’s also tough. You will die a lot.

To give you an idea just how large the Kenshi map is, here is a slideshow. The first slide shows the Waystation, with The Hub in the distance. Most playthroughs will begin near the Hub, for it is a good starting area in the game.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This gives a good indication just how massive the map is in Kenshi.

  Onto the story element, there is none, or at least no direct narrative. There is a ton of well crafted lore in the game world of course, but nothing for you to follow. You really need to have some level of creative thinking to get the most out of this game. It’s a role playing game at its purest level. You do need to spend a lot of time with this game, it’s certainly not for the faint hearted. You need to have patience in dealing with some semi-broken mechanics, long loading times as the engine chugs on its single-core, and handle a lot of rough elements. What lies under the rough surface is a game of surprising complexity and depth.

I lost my entire party 10 minutes later to a horde of starving bandits.

However the game’s sheer openness in this case is its biggest strength, with a literal torrent of things to do. It might not be pretty to look at but its mechanics are incredible. I don’t understand how this game manages to fit in so many different genres and play-styles at once like some fucked experiment. Some of them don’t work at times, others are buggy, but for a game to do all this at once, and do a decent job overall, is seriously impressive and deserves recognition. Do they work all the time? No.

You can build your own settlements, hire mercenaries, enslave NPCs to do your bidding, form your own company. The learning mechanics are brilliant, with so many ways to train your characters. You have guilds to join, shit to steal, crops to grow. It’s not so much a game but as a world to craft your own experience, with a story development on par with Rimworld. It has an awesome body system as well. You get fucked in a fight? You will limp around until you can fix it. I get my leg cut off…just read the description here:

A character with a wounded leg will limp or crawl and slow the party down, wounded arms means you must use your sword one-handed or not at all. Severe injuries will result in amputees needing robotic limb replacements. Blood loss means you can pass out, and the blood will attract predators. A character’s stats are affected by equipment, encumbrance, blood loss, injuries and starvation.

This game gives zero shits about you, but it is also surprisingly accessible. While the game is perma death, getting into fights is a great way to get stronger. If you get put in jail, you get healed up and fed while you struggle to break out. Everything you do improves your stats in some way, so don’t shy away from tough situations. The games systems are easy to exploit and easy to break, but doing so will make parts of the game lose its aura.

Building a settlement is hard. You get to research all sorts of things with a research bench and the right materials, but the game punishes you when you start setting out on your own. You’ll get attacked by enemies on a bullshit degree, factions will come demanding tax money, bandits will demand food or money to leave you alone, and don’t get me started on the Holy Nation. Fuck those assholes. My current 30 hour play-through is dedicated to a group of plucky souls building an army to destroy them.

There are plenty of factions to play with, all with different styles. The Skeletons don’t need to eat, but can’t heal themselves without expensive Repair Kits and are hated by nearly everyone. The United Cities are a corrupt, slavers paradise. The Sheks are a warrior kingdom who look down on smuggling drugs (But you can make lots of money if you don’t get caught by their smuggling checks), while the Holy Nation are racist fanatics with a powerful belief in religion and purity. Seriously, fuck the Holy Nation.

Oh, and cannibals. There are lots of those.

This is one of the most impressive open worlds I’ve ever seen in a video game. You can play it as an RPG, a city builder, a fighting game and a stealth game, and do a pretty damn good job in all of them. I’ve rarely seen that in gaming.

If it sounds like I’m gushing, I’m not. Kenshi has some pretty glaring flaws, and if you’re one of those guys who want good optimisation and things to look pretty then you’re going to have a brain injury if you play this game. It’s buggy, chugs harder than a train on National Rail, ugly, and lacks a general direction, certainly. Do I wish it wasn’t as unstable at times? Yes. Do I regret my time with Kenshi? Lord no.

Nonetheless, I mean it when I say this is one of those endless experiences that deserves a chance. I can see myself writing a new novel just from my roleplaying experiences in this game. With an extensive modding scene, we might see some really impressive things in the future.

I will caution this: while there is a healthy modding scene, the tools themselves are limited. While this is a shame, you can fix a lot of base problems in Kenshi already through mods, and the game has been successful enough for the devs to make a sequel, with any engine fixes and improvements to be made to the original Kenshi.

  Pros

Huge world crammed full of deep lore and lots of things to do.

A.I is crude, but it does the job fairly well.

Unforgiving learning curve is satisfying to overcome, even if it takes dozens of hours.

Some of the games visuals can look good.

An excellent combat system that syncs well with the training mechanics.

Almost endless gameplay.

Despite the limitations of the modding engine, it has a healthy scene

A varied mix of factions with their own deep lore.

A great choice of weapons.

So many genres!

A large quantity of mods that add even more mechanics, game starts and factions.

The ultimate sandbox game.

Cons

Brutal early game and lack of hand holding will turn many players off.

Frequent long loading times, even with an SSD.

Ugly environments for the most part.

Limited in some ways by the creativity of the player.

No true story or endgame.

Obtuse squad micromanagement at times.

Despite an extensive number of mods, the modding tools are fairly limited.

Unfortunately you cannot conquer towns and claim them for your own. However, there is a mod in progress that adds this feature!

Much of the open world is feature-sparse desert.

Buggy pathfinding at times.

  To close things off, here are some screenshots I took in-game, and a little story to go with it. This is my current play-through, 50 days in (with no fast forward) and 35 hours.

Khronin and Viro, unlikely rivals turned friends, have a new goal. After Viro was attacked by Holy Sentinels and left for dead, Khronin has sworn vengeance against the Holy Nation.

Khronin’s skill in battle and charisma begins to grow the army. This growing force of disgruntled Sheks and bought slaves prepare themselves for their ultimate goal – the destruction of the Holy Nation.

  With a growing host of skilled fighters, Khronin and Viro take their teams out on training missions against the wild.

  Following a brutal battle between slavers, bandits and our protagonists, Khronin finally decides the time is right to begin their campaign. It will begin in the Holy Farms. Too long have these peasants stood against you. No more.

  FINAL SCORE AND CLOSING THOUGHTS: Kenshi is a hard game to give a score. It has flaws, and a lot of them, but there are few games like this on the market. I’d give this game a 8/10 overall, the bugginess and at times annoying loading bringing down its score. 

The game is not for everyone, but I still recommend you all give it a good go. I play Kenshi zoomed in with my characters, making it more like a close-third person RPG than a top-down strategy game. I suggest you try it out that way as well.

My review on Kenshi! #patientgamers #gaming #amwriting #amediting #rpg #Indie #gamedev So I know my blogging hasn't been great this year. It's been odd, the last few months.

[entergamingxp]

Guard Crush on Possible DLCs, Development Stories and More

May 13, 2020 7:00 AM EST

Guard Crush, developers of Streets of Rage 4, shared fun stories behind the revival of Sega’s legendary series in a video interview.

French Twitch team Gwak held on May 10 a video interview with Olivier Deriviere, Cyrille Lagarigue and Jordi Asensio, developers of Streets of Rage 4. Cyrille Lagarigue and Jordi Asensio are the founders of Guard Crush. Olivier Deriviere is one of the many talented composers of Streets of Rage 4, who handled nearly all the stage BGMs. Gwak is a pretty cool Twitch group made of talented individuals, though it’s not like the majority of those who’ll click on this article can understand french. Anyway, through the interview, we learned many fun details and development stories on the game. Most notably how Asensio wished to put iconic Sega character, Shinobi‘s Joe Musashi, as a playable character in Streets of Rage 4, but was turned down by Sega Japan. We’ve translated and summarized the whole interview below.

Streets of Rage 4 Development stories from Guard Crush

Streets of Rage 4 was first pitched by Guard Crush to Sega Japan. Guard Crush, Lizardcube and Dotemu already had a link open with Sega Japan thanks to the remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap. Sega Japan approved the project and pretty much gave the french developers free rein, only giving regular feedback.

Sega is a huge company, and the French developers were only in touch with a small division at Sega Japan, which they regularly sent new builds to, with new features. They always got positive feedback. That division is made of people who also played Streets of Rage in their childhood, so it was very easy to talk with them about SoR 4‘s development. Adding ramen as a recovery item was a suggestion of Sega Japan.

Sega of America learned of Streets of Rage 4‘s existence at the same time as everyone else with the reveal trailer.

After the reveal, the majority of the vocal Streets of Rage community: in Europe, in South America, etc, was very supportive. The french devs mostly got positive messages during development. There were nearly zero “noooooo don’t ruin my childhood!!” type of reactions, often seen with sequels like these.

The developers mentioned they’re happy with how the game turned out. It’s only been out for a few days though, so they don’t really realize yet tons of people around the world are praising the game. One thing the developers feared is people not understanding the game, and claiming it’s just a nostalgia fueled shallow game where you walk to the right and hit people. IGN’s review got cited as an example of people not getting the game. The Streets of Rage 4 team did a lot of choices that can be considered unconventional or anti-modern by some, like how they didn’t add things like EXP, levels and skill trees. Game systems from the RPG genre that pretty much every mainstream game borrows nowadays. In the end, judging from feedback, a vast majority of players do understand the game, and the devs are happy a lot of people dig  the combo-based gameplay.

Another thing the devs were wary of is whether fans’ enthusiasm on the net would actually translate into sales, but it seems like it went well. Streets of Rage 4 publisher Dotemu is the sole entity deciding to share sales numbers or not. For now, they didn’t share any, so the devs didn’t explicitly talk about sales numbers either.

Streets of Rage 4 gameplay philosophy by Guard Crush

Guard Crush has some Streets of Rage 4 DLCs ideas in mind. However, no DLCs are officially in development, and they don’t know yet if they’ll actually make DLCs or not.

Guard Crush tried to make Streets of Rage 4 as accessible as possible, that’s why the game has many difficulty levels.  The game was developed on hard, and the other difficulties were added later. Overall, they wanted the game to focus on scoring, that’s why the stages are short, and there are few waves of enemies.

Bare Knuckle 4‘s main base is Bare Knuckle 2. One reason why 2 is so memorable is because where and when you choose to move is important. It’s the same in 4. Where you choose to position yourself, where you decide to gather the enemies, learning where the enemies will spawn, is important. All of this was thought up with scoring in mind. That’s also why the game doesn’t include a running system like Streets of Rage 3. It would make placement less important. The developers wish for Streets of Rage 4 players to think ahead, not to react by reflex. It’s not a reflex based game like most 3D beat em all nowadays. That’s why there’s no dodge button either.

Another reason why there’s no running function like Streets or Rage 3 is how it can make your fingers tired pretty fast to dash all the time. If all characters could dash, there’s no point in not dashing, so you just keep doing it.

The Guard Crush developers also gave some good words of wisdom when it comes to game development. They stressed how developers who work on triple A games are just as passionate as indie developers like them. However, triple A devs simply can’t express that passion as much, as they’re only a small part of a huge machine. They also stressed out many players nowadays forget developers are human beings and players too. Developers do realize it when the game they released is bad. There are always reasons why a game turned out badly, and these can be either valid reasons or bad reasons.

In Streets of Rage 2, using your special move uses some HP, which leaves the player frustrated. Using the special move feels as if you’re playing badly. Guard Crush improved this system by making the HP loss temporary, and getting it back if you manage to net a combo.

Streets of Rage 4 includes many references to other games, anime, etc. These just came in naturally, and the developers didn’t really think about it when making the game. A lot of the references and Easter eggs in the stages were added by Background Artist Julian Nquyen You, who was greatly praised during the interview.

Streets of Rage 4 players already managed to find every gameplay subtlety in the game, including things Guard Crush didn’t know themselves.

On Streets of Rage 4 ‘s music

The developers managed to get so many different composers, most notably Japanese composers, thanks to Brave Wave Productions. It was decided from the start that Olivier Deriviere would handle the stage BGMs. Meanwhile, each one of the other composers would do a boss BGM. Each composer got some visuals of the boss they were composing for.

The title screen BGM, character select screen BGM and the first part of the first stage’s NGM are handled by Yuzo Koshizo. The final boss BGM is him as well. Olivier Deriviere explained this is to show the link between the past works and to show Yuzo Koshiro’s importance in the series. The game starts and ends with Yuzo Koshiro music.

Jet Set Radio composer Hideki Naganuma did not participate in Streets or Rage 4′s OST as planned. He ended up not having enough time in his schedule.

DotEmu only got the rights for the Streets of Rage 1’s Game Gear version OST, not the Megadrive version. That’s why only the Game Gear OST is in SoR 4.

Most of the BGM names are references to anime, games, etc. Ti un fou, which means “dude you’re crazy” in French, is named this way because this is what the others at Guard Crush replied when Deriviere finished and sent them the track.

Streets of Rage 4 is available on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. If you’re planning to grab the game, you might want to check out DotEmu’s statement on physical editions. Be sure to check out our review. I personally didn’t have the time to try out the game yet, but I can’t imagine myself disliking it, seeing I’ve been regularly playing Streets of Rage games since as far as I remember.

May 13, 2020 7:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/guard-crush-on-possible-dlcs-development-stories-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=guard-crush-on-possible-dlcs-development-stories-and-more

[onireview]

AliBuilder Review – Does It Really Work? Or Just a Lie?

Is AliBuilder Good or not?

Let’s go and explore a round on this review

WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. WooCommerce is incredibly flexible and it gives marketers a helping hand in their businesses. If you want to sell something, you can sell it with WooCommerce. We all see that WooCommerce can bring lots of benefit for us and this is a golden chance that we shouldn’t ignore. We can import products in many websites into WooCommerce Store. Unfortunately, there are some difficulties we might face in this process. For instance, it’s hard to find a trusted supplier among millions of suppliers in the world!

I used to worry about this issue but AliBuilder solved it for me. It becomes a great assistant for me in my business. With AliBuilder, selling products in WooCommerce hasn’t been easier.

If you want to know more about this product, just keep reading my review!

AliBuilder Rating!!

Price

Features

Support

Easy To Use

3.9

Summary

The main features of this software

- High-Margin Products To Dropship - 1 Click Products Import - Filter Products With The Fastest Shipping Options - Built-In Tracking - Automated Product Fulfillment System

Learn More...

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Overview

Vendor: Chika (Able) Emmanuel

Product: AliBuilder

Launch Date: May 18th 2019

Launch Time: 10AM EST

Front-end Price: $37-$67

Salepage: https://alibuilder.com/

Bonus: Yes

Refund: 30 Day Money-Back Guarantee

What is AliBuilder?

AliBuilder is a brand new and easy-to-use WordPress plugin that makes it easier than ever to import and dropship product from AliExpress into your WooCommerce stores.

Plus, this product is 100% newbies friendly and you can use it with ZERO experience! It sounds interesting, right?

Let’s me show you more information about this product.

Key Features

High-Margin Products To Dropship

It allows you to use the product search feature to find products on AliExpress that will make you up to a 2,000% profit margin.

1 Click Products Import

You can import high-margin quality products from trusted AliExpress vendors in just one click.

Filter Products With The Fastest Shipping Options

You are able to filter by almost anything including whether or not the product offers ePacket as a shipping option, the shipping cost and when it will get to your buyers.

Built-In Tracking

Easily give your buyers the ability to track their orders and know where they are at all times right inside your store.

Automated Product Fulfillment System

There’s also partial automatic product fulfillment system built right into AliBuilder that let’s you fulfill orders by a few clicks and syncs tracking data codes.

How To Use It?

It’s newbies friendly and all you need is to follow the 3 simple steps below:

Step#1: Install The AliBuilder Plugin

Step#2: Put The Plugin To Work

You can use this plugin to find high-margin, top-quality products and load them into your store with just a few mouse clicks. There are over 100 million products available for import from over 100k+ trusted supplies all over the world!

Step#3: Customize Your eCom Store

Without any tech skills needed, you can edit your product descriptions, titles, and even product images right inside the dashboard.

Plus, you are able to import product reviews directly from AliExpress to have a better engagement to your customers.

You can see video demo below by Chika (Able) Emmanuel, The author of alibuilder, is going to show how the software works.

Who Should Use It?

I think it’s suitable for anyone who wants to join WooCommerce. This is one of the most effective tools for vendors.

Evaluation and Price

The front-end price for AliBuilder is $$37-$67. I think the price is suitable for this professional product. You will get what you pay.

I also see more options for you:

OTO1 (value $67)

Customer Order Tracking: Users can now add tracking numbers to WooCommerce orders.

Highlight The Store’s Best Seller: When a visitor clicks on a product and sees the product best seller badge they are compelled to take action.

Product Image Swatches: Convert your normal variable (product variation) attribute dropdown select to nicely looking color or image select.

Display a countdown timer on products to create urgency

Savings Trigger

Add A Bulleted Guarantee

Add order tracking page for your customers using special short-code.

OTO 2 (value $47)

Built In 1-Click Upsell

Order Bump Built In

OTO 3 (value $147)

With the Developers/Agency license users can activate UNLIMITED stores for themselves and clients.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

Markup the price on any product in a flash.

Import product reviews directly from AliExpress to better engage your customers.

Automatic product fulfillment system and order tracking.

All popular payment gateways are supported by AliBuilder, so you can take payments via PayPal, 2CO, Stripe, PayU, and more.

Disadvantages

I haven’t seen any disadvantages of this product yet.

User Experience and Last Thoughts

Choosing this product is one of the best choice I have ever made. AliBuilder takes care of the hard part for me. I feel like it throws away unnecessary steps and makes sure that the results are fast and effective. It provides millions of product available and with only 1 click, I can easily import them to my WooCommerce store.

This product also allow me to change the WooCommerce’s boring checkout page to a stunning one and I think this feature will help my store attract more customers. I’m very satisfied with how it works. If you think this product can help you solve your problem, don’t hesitate and give it a try!

A quick note: I’m a marketer. So if you decide to buy the products reviewed here, it will give me a little commission. Put real trust when you feel believe in someone. I’m not sure that everything works smoothly, but I’m sure that when you buy through the divine buttons on this site, you have nothing to lose. The 30-day risk-free guarantee is always ready to refund. In addition, you will also receive large amounts of bonuses from my site.

Click Here to Get AliBuilder and All Bonuses

If you have any questions regarding affliate titan x or the bonus packages here. Please feel free to contact me via the comment form below or contact form. I will respond to your email as soon as I’m able.

So this is the end of my review, I hope it will help you make the right decision. Many thanks and best regards for reading my writing! See you next time!

The post AliBuilder Review – Does It Really Work? Or Just a Lie? appeared first on OniReview.

[topicprinter]

This is a short guide to give you some actionable steps to get started making money online so you can quit your job and start doing whatever the hell you want with your life.Why am I doing this?Because there’s so much misinformation out there on the world wide web… It can be so confusing to know where to begin. It’s often too difficult to know who to believe, what to do, which industry is best for beginners, and how you can actually begin making money.I know it’s confusing because I was in your shoes not so long ago. Let me give you a brief introduction to me and how I got to where I am today:I joined the US Army three years ago.Almost immediately, I knew it was not for me. You see, the military is an amazing experience and it has provided me with great opportunity, cash flow to get my life started, leadership positions, and some fantastic friends.For many people, the military is an incredible career.My story is a bit different…Almost immediately after joining, I started having issues. My first job was working inside a Brigade operations center (if you’ve been in the military, I was an S3 ops officer). For most people, something like this wouldn’t be an issue. For me, it was a nightmare.Noises seemed to bother me more than the average person.If someone was talking on the phone while I was trying to get work done, I couldn’t focus.If coworkers were having a conversation next to me while I was trying to get home to my wife, I felt like my head was going to explode… I couldn’t focus.For about a year and a half, I was wondering what was “wrong” with me… Why was I different than my coworkers? Why did they all seem totally fine at work throughout the day? Were they out of their minds? Was I the one who was “crazy”?It was a really confusing and dark period in my life… My relationship with my wife was deteriorating because I would come home from work every day in a horrible mood. What little time we had together was disconnected and beginning to turn into an unhealthy relationship. Honestly, I was not treating her well… I would come home from work absolutely exhausted and I’d take out frustration on her in passive aggressive ways that would never happen today.Thankfully, we got to the bottom of the issue. Thanks to working with amazing counselors, connecting with great online resources, and leaning into my relationships as best as I could, we figured out what was going on:I’m autistic.Do you know much about autism? I could write a full book on that (probably will someday!) alone but I’ll just give you a brief rundown:Basically, I have intense “sensory overwhelm” issues… What does that mean? Noises are more intense for me than the average person… I’m more sensitive to smells, tastes, uncomfortable clothing, heat, cold, and just about everything else.For us folks on the spectrum, life is more intense.This is why a 9-5 office job is not an option for me.For some people, becoming an entrepreneur and starting a business is a nice idea… Average Joe might daydream about working from home but never take much action in that direction. Why? Because their job is fine! They are comfortable! Life is good! There is no deep motivation to make a change.For people like me, entreprepreneurship is a necessity.I realized that if I didn’t make it as an entrepreneur, my life would be miserable…I simply can’t function in a normal job like most people. I had to do something.So I did!Through ALOT of trial and error, I was finally able to start making money online. Let me breakdown the process that worked for me. I strongly believe that this is a bulletproof model that someone could use to quit a 9-5 job and start earning enough cash to support themselves online.The process I’m going to outline assumes that you have a full-time job that pays your bills. I’m also assuming you have roughly 4-6 hours of free time in your day where you could start/run a business… If you are rolling your eyes at this part and thinking “Oh but i’ve got a family!” or “Oh but I go out with my friends at night!”...Listen. Do you want this?Do you REALLY want to develop the skills you need to work online?If not, that’s OK! Again, for many people, a 9-5 job can be great!However, if you’re someone like me who simply can’t tolerate their job and needs a way out, this guide will help.There is always a way.There is always enough time in the day to accomplish whatever the fuck you want to do.You need to prioritize, take action, and work your ass off every free moment you’ve got.There are no shortcuts.I’m not going to lie to you… It is not easy. If you want to have real success, you have to be willing to sacrifice, put in the work, and dedicate yourself to whatever you’re doing.There are no get rich quick schemes… Anyone who tells you differently is either lying or never did it themselves.Here’s what works:Step 1: Start a passion project and DEVELOP A SKILL.What’s a passion project? Can be anything.It can be a podcast (that’s what I did!).Maybe a YouTube channel?Twitch streaming is exploding these days! Maybe give that a try? Twitch is not just for video gamers these days… Their platform is expanding and looking to compete with YouTube.Maybe start a blog if you’re a good writer?Here’s the secret: IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU DO.All you are looking to do is develop skills.That being said, if your 9-5 job is already dealing with something you think can be turned into some sort of business (for example, you work in the marketing department at a large corporation), you’ve got a bit of a shortcut. When I started, I had ZERO skills. I was a 22 year old kid with no real experience, no real skills, and a ton of mental health issues… All I had was a passion for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu! I started the Mat-Tricks BJJ Podcast and got to work.For every type of passion project, there are associated skills.Let’s do a case study: Let’s say you decide to start a YouTube channel about your favorite hobby (let’s use Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as an example because that’s what I did!).You start filming yourself doing some Jiu-Jitsu techniques with your friends. Let’s say you come up with 10 videos you think are pretty good.Now you need to edit those videos. It’s time for you to hop on iMovie, Adobe Premier, or another video editing software… You start playing around. Your first few videos will SUCK. That’s OK! Everyone’s first stuff sucks :) My first podcasts were horrible! You can’t even find them online anymore because I’m so embarrassed by that content haha.This is part of the process… You will spend a few weeks or months going from “sucking” to “pretty good” at whatever it is you’re doing.Let’s say you’ve practiced editing videos for a few weeks and you finally have a few that you think might look good on YouTube.Now you need to learn about how to rank videos on YouTube. To do this successfully, you will need to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and also a bit about writing copy (copy is words that get people to take a certain action - in this case, watch the video!).Your first few videos will probably be seen by hardly anyone… Again, this is normal.Eventually, you’ll realize that you’re going to need some social media skills if you want to get anywhere.To help promote your new YouTube channel, you make a Facebook page. You also make an Instagram account. You start writing some posts, getting some of your friends and family to like/follow your pages, and start getting your first fans!Oh! I almost forgot! You’ve also gotta make your YouTube channel look good!This means designing some cover art (canva.com is badass for this), recording/editing a channel introduction video, creating some playlists, and a few other things.After a few weeks/months of learning all about YouTube channel optimization, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and video editing, you’re starting to get some traction!Finally, one day, it’ll happen.You’ll have a video that does pretty well!!!Instead of your usual 100 views, you manage to get shared around by a few of your new fans! You start getting some extra views, people start commenting on the video and saying “this is great!” and stuff like that, and your video starts ranking higher on YouTube because of the traction.Now you’re starting to get around 1,000 views a video! More subscribers start to show up and suddenly you start realizing that you have fans that you’ve never met in real life.Congrats, this is your first real breakthrough and it’s damn hard to get here… Most people give up before this point and go back to trying to climb the corporate ladder.Here’s the thing: you might think you’re starting a YouTube channel… Although that’s true, what you’re really doing is developing skills you can leverage into legit money making activities.Using our YouTube channel example, here’s a breakdown of the skills you’ve developed so far. Each one of these is worth big money if you take the time to become a real master.Video editingSearch engine optimizationCopywritingSocial media marketingGraphic design (cover art and YouTube thumbnails!)If you started a podcast instead of a YouTube channel, you’ve been practicing audio engineering, interviewing, social media marketing, and maybe you’ve started venturing into a bit of email marketing.Maybe you started a blog? Congrats! You’ve been working on developing writing skills, search engine optimization, copywriting, website design, and more!You get the point.For every passion project, there are skills that go hand in hand. Those skills are extremely valuable. This brings us to step two.Step 2: Start building a portfolio around your favorite skill.Let’s stick with our YouTube channel example.So now you’ve got some skills!Here’s the thing: you won’t enjoy most of them. You will realize quickly that one or two of your new skills are clear favorites over the others. For example, let’s say you realize you don’t enjoy editing videos… In fact, you’ve decided that you’re going to hire someone as soon as you possibly can to edit videos for you… That’s the thing about starting out: in the beginning, you’ll have to do everything yourself, even the stuff you hate. It’s almost a rite of passage amongst entrepreneurs.That’s why it’s a great idea to partner up with a friend to get started!However, this guide is assuming you’re in this alone, like I was.So you’ve found that you don’t like editing videos but you LOVE writing posts on social media… In fact, you’ve found that you’re pretty good at it! Your small following is liking, sharing, and commenting on your posts. When you see your friends in person, they say things like “great post you made on Facebook yesterday”... Stuff like that.You also find you enjoy designing the thumbnails for the YouTube videos! Whenever it’s time to open up canva.com and design a new thumbnail, you spend way more time than is necessary just because you love what you’re doing.Social media marketing and graphic design are both incredibly valuable skills in today’s market.Time for you to start building a portfolio around those two skills so you can start making some money.If you want to quit your job, you need money ASAP.Here’s the hard truth: you will not make money quickly off your passion project alone.It is a long grind to monetize a YouTube channel… You need a lot of subscribers before you can start making a reliable living off selling merchandise, creating content on a service like Patreon, sponsorships, or YouTube ads… This is a side note but currently a lot of YouTube content creators are struggling because YouTube ads are starting to pay much less money than they did in the past (I won’t get into the details here… Just look it up on YouTube if you’re interested!).If you want to make money quickly, you need to create a business around your skill set and use your passion project as practice.How do you do this? Start networking!If you want to get anywhere in business, you will quickly realize that networking is one of the most important skills you can develop.Don’t think networking is a skill? Think again. Networking is probably the most profitable and important skill you will ever develop.If you can talk to the right person at the right time and have the right conversation, you can accomplish just about anything… Assuming you know your shit!That’s the hard part: knowing your shit… Hence why you’re practicing hard on your passion project!Networking might come easily to you. Maybe you already have quite a few friends who own businesses? If not, start meeting small business owners.What’s the best way to do this? Use your passion project!Using our YouTube channel example: start collaborating with other content creators.In any niche you go into, there are thousands of content creators… Some of them will be way out of your reach (unless you’re lucky and in the right place at the right time!) but many are people who are just a few months ahead of where you’re at. Many of these folks have found ways to start making some money, although they probably are not making a large amount… Again, they are maybe 8-12 months ahead of you.Connect with these people. Invite them to do a YouTube video with you! If they say no, move on to the next person. Eventually, several will say yes.How do you reach these people? Easier than you think if they aren’t too big. Usually, if you just send them a message over social media, they’ll respond. Eventually, you’ll start reaching out to some more influential people in your industry (which is way more complex) but that’s down the road.Start getting to know them. Become friends! Do not rush this process. Do not be fake. Be a real person. Just be yourself!Start growing your network and getting more involved in your niche. How long will this take? It depends! If you love talking to people (like I do), it might take a couple of weeks. If you’re shy and it’s tough for you to break out of your shell (which is OK!), it might take longer. Be patient, know yourself, and be natural.Once you have a few friends who have actual businesses, offer to help them out for free.“What!?!?! For free!??! But where’s the $$$??”Yes, work for free.Again, this guide is assuming you’re starting off like I did: you’re a total beginner! You’re a nobody.Working for free helps you build up a network of people who will vouch for your work.This is HUGE. It is absolutely essential if you want to go from zero to hero.I started out by helping local Jiu-Jitsu academy owners run their social media pages.Once you have 2-3 people who you’ve been helping for a few weeks/months, it’s time to go to step three… The one where you finally make some dough.Step 3: Make some dough.Let’s recap your progress so far:You now have a portfolio of 2-3 business owners who will vouch for your work.You are still hustling on your passion project and putting our consistent content.You are developing your favorite skills and learning all you can.You are continuing to network your ass off however you can.You still work at your job to pay the bills.Ok, time to make some $$$.Time to leverage your portfolio into bigger opportunities.If you’ve been working hard and networking your ass off, people will come to you!That’s what happened to me. My first client for social media marketing reached out to me and asked if I wanted to work for him as a social media manager. I didn’t have to sell him on anything! He wanted me!Why? Because I had been putting out consistent content on social media for almost a year.I had been putting out one podcast every single week for that same time period.Finally, after about 11 months, I was going to get paid. I had finally developed my skills to a point where they were worth money.Will it take you this long? It all depends on you… Again, I was a young kid who knew absolutely nothing. Like I said before, if you already have some skills from your 9-5 job, this process won’t take nearly as long. You’re already experienced!What if they don’t come to you?That’s when it’s time for you to develop a new skill: Sales.Start reaching out to people in your network who you KNOW you can help.If you want to become a social media manager (which is one of the things I do!), start looking at the Facebook pages of people in your network.If you’ve developed your skills to a certain point, you will be able to quickly see who actually knows what they’re doing.Let’s say you find a friend who 1. Owns a business and 2. Clearly doesn’t know what they’re doing with social media… What do you do?Do you message them and say “Hey pay me $1000 a month and i’ll fix your Facebook page!”NOPE!Message them and point out what they’re doing wrong in a really nice way.Maybe something like this:“Hey man! I noticed you’ve been sharing a lot of links lately on your Facebook page… I absolutely love your content and I know that Facebook doesn’t show your content to a lot of people if you’re sharing a lot of links. It reduces your organic reach! If you want your content to be shown to more people, post the links in the comments instead of the post itself!”Maybe they’ll say “Thanks” and never talk to you again.If that happens, onto the next person!You’re looking for that person who says something like this:“Dude thank you so much… Honestly, I’ve got no time for social media. I’m so busy these days running the business that social media isn’t a priority… I know it’s important but I just don’t have the time to learn.”Some variation of that.So what do you do next?Do you say “Pay me $1000 a month and I’ll solve all your problems??”NOPE!Something like this is better:“Man I know how hard it is to get ahead these days… Social media is super confusing at times… I’ve been in the social media game for the past year and it’s tough to stay ahead! Thankfully I get a lot of practice helping out *insert name of one of the people you help for free*”What did you do here?You just wrote something that we call a “brand building message/post”.Basically, some sort of message or post that tells people 1. What you do. 2. How long you’ve been doing it and 3. Who you’ve been helping… All without going over the top and being obnoxious!If you’re talking to the right person, this might be all you need to do. That might be enough for them to want to hire you.However, sometimes you might have to get them on a call.Maybe ask them to hop on a skype or phone call to see if you can give them some tips?“Hey man, I know social media is tough. Want to hop on a call? I’ll share some of the tips I’ve picked up that will save you a lot of time.”If they agree, get on the call and start dropping KNOWLEDGE BOMBS.Share everything you know for as long as the call lasts. Don’t hold anything back.Outline every single little thing they should be doing to expand their social media presence. If you’ve successfully worked hard on your skills, you should have enough information to blow their minds.If you don’t blow their minds, you either aren’t talking to the right person or you need to go back to practicing.If you’ve done everything in this guide correctly up to this point, you’ll blow some minds.So how do you “close the deal?”Well, before you ever hopped on the call, you should have first taken some time to figure out what you deserve to be paid for this service.My first paying gig was $500 a month. Why so low? Because that is what the people in my network could afford to pay.Again, you’re new. You might not have reached a point where you’re rubbing shoulders with people running multi-million dollar businesses.If you have, then ask for more!You have to realize that your skills are incredibly valuable. If you have truly put in the work to become an expert, you deserve the money… Even though you haven’t made any up to this point!If you’re an amazing video editor, you can help your clients create professional and amazing videos that will help them make hundreds of thousands of dollars if they use those videos correctly.If you’re an incredible social media manager, you can help your clients build a massive audience, sell more products, signup more clients, and take their business to the next level.If you’re a fantastic graphic designer, you could partner with a t-shirt company and design shirts that sell like crazy.Your skills are worth REAL FUCKING MONEY.That being said, you have to charge what the people in your network can actually afford.If you are talking to someone owning a business that is doing under $300k in annual revenue, they probably cannot afford to pay you $1k per month. That is OK!If you want to make more money, you’ll have to start networking with some more successful people. That comes with time… It might take a little while to start meeting and connecting with the people in your industry who can afford to pay you the big bucks. Again, be patient, work hard, and keep hustling.As I’ve said before, this guide is assuming you’re a complete beginner with no skills and zero network whose desperate to quit your job and start working online.So back to our call.Let’s say you know that your client can probably afford around $500 a month.You’ve spent thirty minutes on the call sharing everything you know… They’re clearly interested, taking notes, and saying things like “wow, this is great!”... You are going strong!Do you say “Hey man, if you want to hear more, you’re going to have to pay up! $500!!!”Nope.YOU WAIT FOR THEM TO ASK YOU HOW MUCH YOU CHARGE.Again, they already know what you do.They’re not stupid.At some point in the call, they’re going to say something like “Alright, this is awesome, clearly we need to work together. What do you charge?”That’s when you say $500.If you follow this process correctly, the client will sell themselves on your service.If you’re a beginner, I recommend this is the process you take. As you gain experience, you can be less generous with your time. However, if you’re new, that’s still a ways away.The process I’ve found that works the best for selling your skills is to provide free advice until they realize they need you around in a more permanent capacity.If you’re talking with the right person at the right time, you should have yourself your first actual client. Congrats!!! This is a huge step. Now you’re ready for the final step: the big bucks.Step 4: The big bucks.So now you’re finally making some money!You finally have a paying client.Do you still keep helping the other people for free? Up to you! Maybe you have a chat with them and see if they’re ready to hire you for something more professional? If you’ve done a great job, this should be an easy sell. However, sometimes you might decide to find a new set of clients all-together because you think you can do better. That’s fine too!Regardless, time to start making some big bucks.How do you do this? Keep networking. Keep hustling on your passion project.By now, your passion project has probably gained a bit of traction. If it’s a YouTube channel, hopefully you have a few thousand subscribers. If it’s a podcast, hopefully each of your episodes gets around 500-1000 downloads. If it’s a blog, you’re getting consistent traffic to all of your posts.Start reaching out to the people who are running successful businesses in your niche. Invite them to be a guest on whatever you’re doing on your passion project.Start networking with people who are running businesses that earn at least $1 million in gross annual revenue… Hopefully much more. Begin making friends in high places.Eventually, one of these people will need help doing what you do best.By now, you’re a real expert in your skill.You should be able to blow the minds of just about anyone who isn’t already an expert in your skill.You’d be surprised how many super successful business owners don’t know the first thing about social media marketing, graphic design, video editing, or whatever else you’ve been working to develop.That being said, they know a real expert when they see one. Although they might not know much about your particular skill, they can tell whether or not you know your shit just by chatting with you.That is why it’s so important to not skip any steps. Real entrepreneurs can smell a faker a million miles away. You must become a real expert with real clients who will speak on your behalf, if necessary.How do you close the deal? Exactly the same way you closed your first clients.Get them on a call and start dropping knowledge bombs. Blow their minds with free advice until they ask you how much you charge.This time, ask for the big bucks. Be sure you’ve done your research prior to the call and you’re asking for what you’re really worth. Typically, around $1000 a month is considered entry level work for most skills (obviously, it will depend on the specifics of what’s being asked). If you’re going to be spending a significant amount of time working for this client, expect to charge $2-3k per month. Trust me, you’ll be working hard for this person and you’re worth every penny.What if they say no? WELCOME TO THE GRIND!Onto the next person.Keep it up and you’ll suddenly find yourself working with some super successful people who are paying you real money.Congrats! You’ve done it.You now have the potential to have a real business based around selling a skill.I know I was using the example of social media marketing/YouTube channel in this case study but I hope you see how this can be applied for any skill you might have developed.What’s next?Is it time to quit your job? Well, that’s up to you!Some people bail out as soon as they have enough money to cover their bills. Personally, I recommend you hustle for a few more months to make sure you have a long-term relationship with your new clients.Relationships can go south. Personalities might not match up. There’s a million reasons that things with your client might not work out. It might be worth your effort to ensure you’ve got some legit clients who will be paying you for a long time.That being said, you can now rest assured that you’re a real professional.You can do this! You’ve got the skills you need to make it as an entrepreneur.Congrats! I know how hard it is… There are long nights, missed opportunities with friends, and plenty of frustration.Oh! And say goodbye to your lunch break at work. That hour of your day is now dedicated to working on your passion project or helping your clients.I feel confident that the process outlined in this guide can help anyone go from zero to hero and start earning money online, even if they have zero skills and zero network.How long will this process take you? It really does depend on a lot of factors. Maybe you don’t have a family and you are hustling 6-8 hours per day after work? Maybe you have a wife and 3 kids and you can only work 2-3 hours per day on all this stuff? Perhaps you connect early-on with some excellent entrepreneurs who decide to help you out?For me, it took about two years from the time that I recorded my first podcast on my cell phone while driving in my car (absolute shit) until the point I was earning a few thousand dollars a month.Nowadays, I’m doing everything that I can to make sure this process is as easy as possible for people who are trying to break free from a job they cannot bear to keep.If you're feeling lost and you've made it this far in the post... Reach out. Please! I'm here to help :)And no, I don't have an MLM to pitch...