#this is technically based on a series of stuff my husband wrote way back

[theswedishpajas]

I miss him, you guys :o(

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

FINALLY Someone Besides Myself (And A Few Other Fans) Stands UP For Steven!

first I want to say that I have decided while I’m talking

my words will be like this.....but when Flowey is talking it be like

This, This Is ME talking.

(Note: of course having Flowey being my Co-Writing with this is for fun too but also talks about something serious too.)

so yeah, so we are gonna share thoughts about the whole Steven Universe Future being hated by some fans, but they don’t have to like it and no one should force them to. 

but this video right here

I had just watched this for the first time today, and I think I will watch part 1 sometime when I can.

but the video is by KiwiQueen 13 over on Youtube.

I'm not sure if they have a tumblr here

BUT here is the name of  the video that has clips of the first series of Steven Universe (with some clips of Steven Universe Future too.)

Scenes That Hit Different After SU: Future.

you realize while watching the video that show clips of Steven’s childhood

that the problem that happens in Steven Universe Future,

ALL STARTED AT THE VERY BEGINNING.

yes there were some good positive sides on how Pearl, Garnet and Amethyst brought him up....but there were obviously some bad sides too.

like it turning out it wasn’t just Greg who neglected Steven.

Amethyst isn’t really like the “Mom” but just seems more like the Older Sister to Steven, who at first started out not being the very comforting type....

like when it shows in the video that she didn’t comfort him when he needed it when he was scared and thought gem-monsters would attack him while he is trying to sleep.  

but over time she did start to be more comforting to him,

and we could see their fusion Smokey Quartz as a Platonic Fusion.

same with his fusions with his Dad, Pearl and Garnet...

or like when it’s just Him, Amethyst, Garnet and Pearl fused as Obsidian.

 the only fusion that Steven had that was NOT just Platonic Love,

was when he fused with Connie and became Stevonnie.  

plus after watching that video, I can see that Connie was in the wrong with how she acted when Steven came home after the trauma he went through with his “Aunts” and with the whole Lars dying and being brought back to life.

even if Steven did act like he was okay and everything was fine,

it wasn’t and it wasn’t fair of Connie to act the way she did....even if she does have a right to her feelings and expressing them.

but she couldn’t see that Steven was hurting and was trying to act like EVERYTHING was fine.

trying to act like everything is fine when it isn’t, can do more harm than good.

instead of asking Steven if he truly was okay, and instead of seeing through his act, she instead took Lion and left.

yes it is good that they ended up making up, but it might not of been 100% the right way....Steven went on a guilt trip and had been waiting for her call and everyone thought it was just the experience he had when he was taken by Homeworld.

if you do watch the video, you will have to pause most of it to read what was wrote that points out some very important stuff.

like the fact that Steven’s Dad and Future Girlfriend were being insensitive by excluding him from the Humans Clubs....

correct, but even if they did do that. they might of not realized how it would effect how Steven would view himself.

like if your Mom makes you feel like your so easy to replace.

 this isn’t really about Toriel (from Undertale)

but I get her actions can be questionable.

but even if Toriel did have her moments where she couldn’t see how bad her ex-husband was hurting, and he might of not truly meant the things he said and was just so angry and sad after what happen to their son and adoptive child.

but the one who might take the rank of worse Mother,

would have to be Rose....

not just to Steven, but also to Spinel too.

yes Rose was doing the whole rebellion thing to save the life that was already living and growing on Earth.

but we have to remember that she wasn’t always going to do that,

not until both Pearl and herself took the walk outside of the Moon Base,

to check out her colony more closely. 

in a way, Rose....back then as “Pink Diamond” and was poofed and then permanently reformed as “Rose Quartz” and it no longer was a disguise.

that time when she realized what was happening,

and wanted to stop it, that was part of her redemption.

yes most of her life as Pink Diamond, she did do some good.

like treating other gems more than just servants and actually treating them equally.

but we have to remember that Pink did have her bad moments too.

and she had destructive powers, and when she wasn’t being unfairly punished by being placed in that tower.

the other times the punishments were justified.

the reason why Homeworld is Broken, like something cracked it.

that was obviously Pink who did that, which might of been from one of her biggest and most dangerous tantrums of all time.

and when Yellow & Blue told her NO, when she asked for a colony....

of course she would still be upset about it....

but when she went to White, we all know how that turned out....

Homeworld might of started to be in it’s current broken form

after Pink got upset when White told her No.

and it was around the same time when Pink Pearl aka Volleyball

but I’m just gonna call her “Lily”, same with me wanting to call Yellow Pearl "Tulip" and Blue Pearl "Violet"  

but yeah, Lily got hurt....really badly.

not just her form but also it caused her trauma and she tried to justify Pink’s actions, saying she didn’t mean to.

but that might only be partly true...

we know that Pink/Rose was both good and bad.

and we know that her actions, as well as Greg, Pearl, Garnet and Amethyst’s actions....had harmed Steven during the start of the series BEFORE Steven Universe Future.

Steven believed that it was his fault that Ruby and Sapphire had split.

you know, un-fused  from Garnet.

but it was never Steven who caused this....

it was his Mom, Rose who caused it.

the first time it happen, Ruby and Sapphire did end up making up.

but only when they started to see how bad it was effecting Steven.

when Parents fight, they don’t know how bad it can effect their child and it might be possible it can make them believe it is them that is the cause of the fighting.

I don’t like it when Ruby and Sapphire are called “Children”

when really they are full grown Gem-Adults and are Married.

I know that some fans do make that mistake at times....but maybe have learned from it.

in a way, Ruby and Sapphire both are Steven’s Moms.

even if he wasn’t born from their gems, they and Garnet

formed a Mother/Son Bond with him and even if she did make some mistakes in the past, she does try her best to be there for him and was there when Steven needed to be shown he wasn’t a Monster and those who love him are sorry for putting him through such a ordeal.

yes Connie was the first to point this out to Greg and every other gem who was present.

but maybe the reason why she finally realized what Steven needed right now,

was because of what happen in the past when he came back from homeworld after being taken and how she acted when he got back, was wrong.

yes she had a right to be upset, but she couldn’t see that he was already hurting and was just trying to act like everything was fine.

the violence and let’s say semi-neglect, that became normalized to Steven.

so much so, when he got older and the negativity became too much,

he had his Pink Out Bursts.

because of how things were in Steven Universe Future,

most fans just gave up watching it.

but they don’t have to start watching it, because that is their choice.

but those who have stuck through all the episodes of Steven Universe Future.

can see that what Steven was going through, was the negative stuff breaking through.

he realized what his Dad did and didn’t do, was wrong.

and I know that some fans started to realize that too.

it was wrong for Greg to not take Steven’s human half into account.

that Greg could of used the Money from the car wash

to pay for Steven’s schooling, like either having him go to school

or get a tutor to teach him at home.

as well as going to the doctor.

but if he didn’t make enough money from the car wash,

he could of did all that when Sourcream’s Bio-Dad came to give him the money he owed him.

but instead of using the money for helping Steven a tutor or for a doctor.

Greg just “treats himself” while still treating his son and Pearl.

even if the episode was still good and it had Greg and Pearl bond.

it can show that what was going on with Greg’s spending the money for just fun, wasn’t right.

yeah you can do that too, but what Greg didn’t do with the money wasn’t right.

Steven was semi-neglected and I don’t think I am the only fan of the show that has come to this realization.

yes some fans have pointed out how Steven was acting in Steven Universe Future was terrible.

but like how that video points out, it all started in the very beginning before Steven Universe Future.

it might be possible through Steven’s life he never fully realized that he was in fact being semi-neglected by not just his own Dad, but by Pearl, Garnet and Amethyst as well.

it might be possible to go throughout your whole life without realizing you have been semi-neglected.

even if you are taken care of, like given food and a home by those who brought you into this world.

there can be different ways you can end up finding out you have been semi-neglected throughout your childhood, even if the ones responsible might of not mean to do that.

  like with my parents....or rather, Asriel’s parents....

I know I am still TECHNICALLY him, but at the same time I’m not.

I’m like.......half of his components. I don’t have his soul, that makes up the very core of his heart.....I only have his memories, which weren’t even mine to begin with.....it’s like part of me is Asriel, while the other part is just Flowey....it’s like-

fusion, yeah I think so too.

this might be a crazy theory, but what if it turned out the tapes that we find in the True Lab hint something.

like what if Papyrus calling Toriel, Asgore’s Clone was true.

and there might be more to the story of the past than we know.

and the Toriel in Deltarune might really be from Undertale Timeline,

and the Toriel who we meet in the start of the Undertale Game,

is really a Clone of Asgore, who was recreated to look a little like his first wife who took their son Asriel to the other world.

this was thanks to Gaster’s machine, it might be possible that Asgore and Toriel did originally come from the Deltarune Timeline.

and went with Gaster to the Undertale Timeline.

and Asriel was born in the Deltarune Timeline.

and at some point in time after Asgore’s Clone Wife Left him....

his original wife, the Original Toriel, came back for him because she missed him and wanted to try to make things work.

this would then have Asgore have the current Royal Scientist

to create another clone, but this time one that looks 100% like him

and would be the King in his place, while he returns to his original home world with his wife.

yeah at first I wanted to talk about Steven Universe, and how I’m happy that someone else had pointed out the obvious about why Steven ends up acting the way he does in Steven Universe Future.

I also want to say, that I’m not sure if it’s just me...

but while re-watching the playthrough trailer for Chapter 2 of Deltarune.

I notice that Toriel looks like a off-white purple type color.

like her fur not seeming as white as it appears in Undertale.

but it just seem like a off-white purple when she entered Kris’s room (well Asriel & Kris’s Room)

I don’t know if the same will be for Asgore in the game,

that his fur might appear a off-white type of color too.

like one it could turn out to be a off-white to yellow or maybe orange...?

I don’t know, but if it stays just white it could hint that the Toriel from Undertale could really be Asgore’s Clone, well maybe.

I mean it turn out the Pie theory was canon.

if you seen that animation on youtube, where Kris said they were gonna eat the whole pie, and then see the trailer for Chapter 2.

you will be happy as I and others, to find out that the Pie Is Canon.

it might be possible that Sans and his brother, are from a Geno-Timeline of Undertale, where it never got a Pacifist or Neutral Run.

and after fixing the machine (that was never meant to be fixed in the first place)

Sans took his brother and anyone else who survived, and left their home alternate universe to go live at the Deltarune Timeline.

while another version of Sans, while at times goes through the Geno Routes,

also went through Pacifist and Neutral Routes.

and never truly went through just the infinity Genocide Runs like the Deltarune-Sans did before moving himself and his brother to the Deltarune Universe.

the Sans that moved to the Deltarune Universe, is perhaps a version that NEVER met Toriel, or at least the Original Her.

he met the Clone, and even befriended the Clone.

but him befriending Kris’s Mom, was the first they ever met.

to some fans, Sans fell in love with Asgore’s Clone who was named after the True-Toriel.

it might be possible that the Asriel that died in the Undertale Timeline,

was a defective clone that Gaster created for the two clones,

who at first couldn’t have children at first.

Gaster perhaps went to the Deltarune Timeline,

and got a piece of Asriel’s fur and went back to the Undertale Timeline

to make the Clone-King & Queen a biological child.

at some point when hearing about Kris,

and seeing how the young Prince was becoming lonely.

Gaster created a Clone of Kris, who would later be named “Frisk”

Gaster then had the human child fall to the underground,

where the Clone-Asriel would then meet them.

this could of been how the original timeline went,

at least until Chara came into the picture.

Chara, might turn out to be the Player inside the game.

when the Players, finish killing everyone in the Underground.

we end up meeting Chara or whoever we name them

if we don’t use the default name.

we think where we are meeting Chara is a empty dark void.

but it turns out, where we are really meeting them.

might really be inside Frisk’s Head.

there can be different theories about who both Frisk and Chara truly are.

like for one, it could of been those two that Gaster was speaking to,

and not Sans and Papyrus. or Sans and Alphys.

the red soul that powers the True Lab, might be the soul of the Original Human Child that fell into the Underground, and when Asriel (who was originally born in Deltarune) was living in Undertale until moving back to Deltarune.

that human child is who he befriends, and those memories are then carried by the Clone-Asriel, and can be tampered with if we rename them.

it might be possible that Asriel and “Chara” didn’t make it too far,

and could of ended up not going through the barrier.

because Clone-Asriel was a unstable clone, he died before even leaving with Chara’s Soul.

it might be possible that everyone’s memories in the Undertale World,

was rewritten by Gaster.

making it so that no one finds out that the Dreemurr Family that was acting rulers, were really clones of the ones who left to go back to their original world.

the Red Soul that was place in Kris’s body, might really be Chara.

and it could turn out that Frisk isn’t a clone of Kris, but could still hold a dark side that ended up corrupting Chara.

in a way, we the Players are Chara too, but at the same time we aren’t.

when Kris throws the red soul in that birdcage, we can still move around....

but only the red soul and not Kris.

this means that the Red Soul (which the trait of is Unknown, and the Determination is only Fanon.)

was us the players the whole time, or at least Chara.

it is possible that Frisk in the Canon and in the Fanon, can be really different from each other.

one, Frisk in most of the Fanon, comes off not just flirty but also a good friend and loving child of Undertale-Toriel.

on the other if we think about it, without us the players and Chara,

Frisk in the Canon of Undertale, is just soulless.

Frisk might of been one of the discarded vessels, like what happens in Deltarune.

I mean that is a possibility.

so if that is true, that would mean that the Frisk that the monsters in the Underground befriend, is really the Player and Chara.

there might be a reason why we are able to name the fallen child from the start of the game, but it turning out we aren’t naming Frisk, we are naming Chara.

Chara is the true hero of the story, the one who truly befriends the Monsters in the Underground.

and it is us the players who help on the outside, who can end up corrupting Chara and even end up letting Frisk get more control with each LV we get.

we can see it like this, when Chara is in full control of Frisk’s body.

they can choose not to kill and choose not to let Frisk take over.

Chara could end up living as “Frisk” if they choose to let everyone be happy on the surface.

even though some of the theories I had talked about that involves Undertale and Deltarune might be wrong.

but at least the whole Pie theory turned out to be canon in Deltarune.

also if you go to the Deltarune.com

and see the countdown until Chapter 2.

you can see that the numbers are shaking.

here is the site

https://deltarune.com/

I’m keeping the tab up and have been keeping it up since last night.

it wont be until tonight, but it will be worth it in the end.

this will be one of the good things to happen this year.

cause ya know with what happen with FNAF....and the two faced humans that Scott trusted with his money, and if he had known that they weren’t as they seemed, I don’t think he would of done it and yet he did get hurt by not just them....but also some journalist who twisted everything.

but I hope the ones who had a hand in making that FNAF Help Wanted,

will be FNAF’s new adoptive owners.

and I think I want to try to keep a eye out on any new news about the FNAF Security Breach.

hopefully it is true that it will still come out.

even after that hot mess.

well we do need some good news in our lives.

and Chapter 2 of Deltarune is the Hero of good news.

it be nice if the fan game that is a AU of a AU

was canon, or maybe like Semi-Canon that takes place in a different timeline to the main one.

I love playing Five Nights Of Flirting, and it took me a few tries to finally romance Chris, cause I didn’t bother to go get the ring first.

I know there is something else I will have to do in order to get the romance ending with Fritz.

it keeps going to the Friend ending.

but I want to try to get all romance endings if I can.

before I go to the true ending.

I can’t help but see Vincent as not being William Afton,

but maybe being his son, and the father of Vincent that appears in the AU-AU FNOF fan game.

is William, and it could be possible that Vincent is the crying child in that world.

that was the first to get into that accident before Mike.

or Vincent could of been the brother of the Crying Child and the Other Brother,

and went to get William before his younger brother got hurt by their shared older brother and his friends.

even if Vincent was originally suppose to be William, before the true name of the purple man was revealed.

Vincent had in a way, became his own person and in the Five Nights Of Flirting Game, ends up being I guess redeemed and shows a gentle side to him.

even if there is that pervy side too.

we can see Vincent’s Father as William Afton,

who had became worse after the death of his daughter, and became a Monster.

or it could turn out that Vincent’s Father could be a Brother of William Afton,

and Vincent could be seen as the Cousin of William’s Three Children.

we can take a different look on how Vincent can be related to William and his three children.

it could turn out they are brothers, and Vincent was the younger brother of William.

but I think I like the idea that Vincent was the son of William Afton.

maybe being the middle child, being maybe a year younger than the older brother who ended up getting their younger brother hurt.

but anyway, back to the whole Steven Universe....

we know that there were some mix feelings about the Steven Universe Future.

some fans didn’t like it, but other fans stuck with it and still liked it even if it did end up showing some dark sides.

but it was necessary because it is linked to the first seasons of Steven Universe.

if you look up the video on Youtube that I had mention,

you will understand that the past of Steven connects to the Steven from the Steven Universe Future.

not everyone has to go watch it, and it is a choice.

but I wont pretend that the clues don’t exist.

just like I’m not gonna pretend that what happen with Cozy Glow, Chrysalis and Tirek was the correct call, I still love MLPFIM.

but I can’t agree with how those three were handled.

and they were made to be Discord’s scapegoats.

just like how the Magic from SVTFOE was made the scapegoats

for Star’s Mom, and I know from remembering how Moon’s face reacted when she made it seem like there was no other way to beat the Solarians.

but really I believe there was a way, but it might be possible that the writers didn’t let it be revealed because it was too dark.

that the only way to return the Solarians (minus Mina.) to normal.

is for the caster of the spell to be “taken out”

meaning in order to undo the Solarian transformation,

and save everyone’s life, and might of saved Quirky’s life if they done it sooner.

was to kill Moon Butterfly.

yes the Magic in the Realm did act as Alternate way to save everyone.

but it was still a scapegoat, because it wasn’t the magic that misused itself.

it was Star’s family that misused it.

and Moon deeply misused it when she not only used it to try to hurt Eclipsa’s daughter, and yet when she got amnesia and ended up lost in the realm of magic.....she made Eclipsa her scapegoat for what happen to her.

she also misused the magic when breaking her promise to Eclipsa

when she got the spell to destroy Toffee, but only end up taking his finger.

she also misused the magic when she created those new Solarian Warriors.

from what we seen of Solaria, it does appear that she had let go of any form of prejudice towards monsters, from how she bonded with Meteora.

we know so far that SVTFOE, MLPFIM and SU had Anti-Hero moments.

where it turn out that Pink Diamond/Rose was a Anti-Hero.

and even Star Butterfly ended up becoming a Anti-Hero.

we still love the shows and the characters, but we can see that there can be moments when the Heroes can end up being both the Heroes and the Villains.

ya know like Negaduck from the Ducktales Reboot.

I do have a theory that Discord, and maybe his family....

use to be the spirits of Harmony for the Original Tree of Harmony

in Equestria I, before the pony tribes cross from their broken disharmony broken icy home (that use to be connected to the hippogriff’s home before their home became a island.)

Discord was perhaps the Element of Magic, or at least the original element of magic.

but once the original tree was destroyed and all that was left was the seed,

which would then be found and taken to the Equestria II, by Starswirl.

Discord was “born”, born from the disharmony that the very pony tribes created when they destroyed their original home.

and took over the lands that belong to Tirek, The Buffalo, The Griffin and even the Changelings who once looked like their reformed selves and only look the way they did when we first see them, is because their Crystal Heart and Crystal Empire was taken over by Earth Ponies.

who would then either be transformed by magic to become Crystal Ponies

or the long exposure to the Changeling’s Crystal Heart, would then cause them to magically evolve from Earth Ponies to Crystal Ponies.

I believe that Canterlot might of been originally home to the Griffins,

during when Celestia and Luna still ruled together.

but after Luna was banished, Celestia took her army and took over the Griffins original home that would later be renamed Canterlot.

I mean why would Celestia have to rule so high up...?

why couldn’t Twilight rule from her new castle in Ponyville?

and why have artifacts that belong to the Dragons, Changelings, Yaks, Hippogriffs and Griffins....?

and remember what Celestia once said before,

that her and her sister are NO LONGER connected to the elements of harmony.

this would mean that she and her sister, wouldn’t be connected to the element of honesty, and while they can be truthful and honest at times when they need to be.

they could still hold lies that they refuse to tell Twilight and her friends.

Sci-Twi Is Best Sparkle-Girl!

yeah even though I still like Twilight, I can’t help but feel that Sci-Twi might be better than her.

plus if they let Cozy, Tirek and Chrysalis end up in the human world

instead of turning them to stone.

I believe that the ones who could of reformed them,

would be the Main 7, well or 10, if you count Vinyl, Wallflower and Trixie. 

Tirek might ended up forming a bond with Human-Fluttershy.

while Cozy forms a bond with Sci-Twi and Sunset, as the two could see her for who she was deep down, past the corrupted side to herself that was possibly born from certain bad influences.

like it could of first started when Discord had Cranky act as one of the substitute teachers....we know that Cranky got Cozy and some other students to wait on him front and back hoof.

plus part of the reasons why Cozy ended up the way she did,

might of been because of the pony versions of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

who she truly did care for and did fail on purpose just so they could get in,

but seeing how that turned out, she had to go to Starlight to tell the truth and the real reason why she failed even after those three helped her out.

why would she just throw that all away, if it wasn’t Discord corruption of her

or if it was caused by the Cutie Mark Crusaders abandoning Cozy.

I think it is possible that Cozy wanting to get rid of magic, might be from how she was treated in her past like some form of abuse, that was caused by Unicorns misusing their power.

but it could come from Starlight, we know that Starlight has done far worse than Cozy, Chrysalis and Tirek....cause messing up the timelines would be a very big deal.

Midnight Sparkle trying to destroy her world just to get to the magic in Equestria, could be a second level of bad.

while what Starlight did comes in first, but it might be possible that those other timelines that Twilight and Spike went to, still exist.

and when Starlight was reformed, the three of them never truly went back to their original timeline, which is possibly the timeline Cozy Glow really came from.

and it could turn out that Cozy came from the future, and is the true daughter of Cadance and Shinning Armor.

and not being able to take the timeline she followed her Aunt, Uncle and Starlight into....she tried to fix it by not only trying to get rid of the magic,

but also trying to become the Empress.

it is possible that Flurry might really be a Alternate version of Cozy

or she was created from using the essence of Princess Amore,

and maybe even a piece of Shining Armor and Cadance DNA.

but it could turn out that Flurry, could just be her own pony

who might still be  Shining Armor and Cadance’s daughter.

and it could turn out that when they first tried for a child,

it ended up becoming a stillborn, and that is the version of Cozy Glow

that died in the timeline she would then move into and call “Home”

Cozy Glow could end up keeping secret that she came from the Original Timeline that Spike, Twilight and Starlight left behind for good.

Cozy learned about her Aunt from her parents,

who said that one day she was just gone, both her and Spike haven’t been seen since.

Cozy Glow would then end up finding Twilight and Spike in some point in the future, which they ended up going to their home’s future and not just a timeline and Cozy ends up following them.

we know that in a short, Twilight is shown to be scared of ladybugs.

but before her castle shows up, and during when she went to the Human World for the first time to get her crown back from Sunset.

she had showed no signs of being scared of ladybugs.

plus with how many days there are in a year, it is possible that 30 Moons

could be a very long time, while only three or 4 years have past in the world that Sunset now calls home.

it is possible that Sunset was around Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo’s ages when she left Equestria. 

we know that so far that while dealing with Equestrian magic,

not once has Sunset and her friends ever banished or turned the corrupted by magic, to stone.

Aria, Sonata and Adagio (who are canonically sisters.)

only got their medallions destroyed, not themselves.

which might of been a good thing, because it is clear that it was what ended up corrupted them....or the ponies that were giving them negative energy.

it is possible that those three were part of a Siren Pony Tribe,

but ended up corrupted because of other ponies negative energies, and they became addicted to it like a drug.

so the sea-dragon like forms they took before, were their corrupted forms.

while the Pony forms with “changeling like wings” were their true forms. 

I can’t wait until the My Little Pony New Generation.

the trailers were pretty good and even if it does have Twilight and her friends cameo as action figures.

it might do better than the last season of MLPFIM.

well the last episode with Luster Dawn was great.

I just can’t agree with the whole Discord getting away with what he did.

it didn’t seem right, and it does seem that Tirek, Chrysalis and Cozy

might suffer from trauma from friendship magic, or at least the Toxic side of it.

we only see them as just the bad guys, the villains.

but they might of never truly been that way at first if it wasn’t for some moment in their lives that caused the dramatic change.

and if things had turned out differently, and Sunset just took her opportunity

went back to Equestria after being beaten by Twilight.

she might of ended up teaming up with Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy.

and being tricked by Discord and ended up being turned to stone as well.

that would mean that the element of empathy bearer, would be lost for a very long time.

the element of empathy might of only been born in the Human World,

and might not exist in Equestria.

and the element of empathy might be connect to Stygian too.

but anyway I know that not a lot of fans will agree about the whole what happen in Steven Universe Future, was caused by what happen in the original series of Steven Universe and how Steven was brought up.

it is possible it was meant to play out that way,

to show us a negative side that can happen in real life.

through the good and bad times, we had been there to watch it all in Steven Universe and then learn that his problems that started to happen in Steven Universe Future, is connected to the original series and maybe even the Movie.

and I believe it might be possible that Connie realized this when Steven was becoming worse and both she, and everyone needs to really be there for him.

and not act like everything is about them and act like he is always happy when really he’s not.

Steven is part gem, but he is still human.

what he went through in the first series, we should of seen it was gonna have really bad effects in his future when the Steven Universe Future happen.

I happen to like both Steven Universe and Steven Universe Future.

and even the Movie.

and just because we find flaws in the series we love,

doesn’t mean we stop caring and loving the series.

we just find some issues that we take notice of

that seem a bit twisted and notice how characters who are suppose to be on the side of good, can end up taking a dark path and doing more harm than good and not really getting to the root of what is causing the villain to act like a villain the first place.

we know that what Bradford did in Ducktales, was messed up.

but half of his actions were for good reasons.

and the one who made him a villain in the first place, was his own grandmother.

and the reason why he ended up transforming because of that sword,

was because he was hurt inside, and the sword was possibly feeding off his frustration and negativity and maybe starting to corrupt him the more he used it.

I don’t think Webby’s sisters were made from her feathers,

but were made from Scrooge’s and the reason why the Papyrus didn’t-

what does Papyrus have to do with this...? 

why the Papyrus didn’t work for those two, is because it had to be the eldest heir of Scrooge that had to get the Papyrus to appear.

why would Papyrus appear before them....?

is he a summon type monster or something?

remember, when Flowey is speaking the words become bold...

anyway Bradford became the way he is, because of his Grandmother.

of course Ludwig Von Drake would get it wrong and not see why he became the worse, was all because of his Grandmother.

some times there is more to one side, there will always be two sides and at times there can be reasons why villains in a series become villains in the first place.

some are too far gone to be saved or might of been dark from the very start.

while others are tragic villains and might even be Anti-Villians.

anyway even if I know it is possible not everyone will go check out that video that shows the clips of the first series of Steven Universe,

but I hope that some will check it out and if they watched Steven Universe Future too, they might make the connections that the first series was the beginning of it all before it got much worse for Steven in Steven Universe Future.

it will be a while before the new Chapter of Deltarune will be ready to be released.

from what I can tell we got some time to go before it happens, but it will be today or tonight when it does.

so I hope everyone has that site open up

and watching the countdown, or like watching it when they aren’t doing something else on the side.

it’s gonna be hours before it really gets started and I for one can’t wait.

but until it is time, I will do some other stuff too.

also not everyone has to agree about Steven Universe Future,

but I hope some can agree about the problems Steven went through,

all started in the first series and even into the Movie.

which both are still awesome, but if Steven is Sans too

cause the whole Steven Quartz Universe spelling out Sans,

and he might of been reborn as Sans, while Gaster could turn out to be Pink-Steven who then became Sans and Papyrus father, when he had Steven’s Human Soul reborn as a Monster or like split into two souls

that would become Sans and Papyrus.

why didn’t anyone else figure out that Steven Quartz Universe, spelled out Sans....? that is crazy, did no one figure that out first when the whole Steven and Sans being one and same theory first started?! 

anyway like my new tumblr name implies,

it will have Flowey taking some questions, and they are suppose to be living in Deltarune.

even if it isn’t canon, but I like the idea of Flowey ending up in that world.

anyway I at first wanted to share what I found out about Steven,

and that the problems he faced in Steven Universe Future,

was not the first problems he went through but was a breaking point to the problems becoming too much for him.

and it truly started in Steven Universe, the first series.

maybe sometime I can talk more about the whole Steven Universe and Steven Universe Future  another time.

I wonder what a fusion between Steven from Steven Universe Future

and Angel Dust from Hazbin Hotel would be like...? 

what would their fusion be called?

well their fusion might be the platonic.

it might be interesting if it was Sans and Angel fusing.

anyway I am gonna go now, there is a fan art I want to do later that has to do with one of the characters from Helluva Boss.

so see ya later and stay safe everyone.

and remember, it’s Meme or Be Memed.

is that whole Meme or Be Memed, even being used...?

it be interesting if it turns out it is.             

[krys-loves-otome]

Author Interview!

Thanks for tagging me Yuu ( @snow--blanket​​ )!

Name: Krys is what I mostly go by. My full handle is Krys-Imeteri-Hikari. If I need a shorter name, I'll go by Krys Imeteri. And there was a rare occasion that I went by not-krys on dreamwidth and livejournal, but now is used as a pseud on ao3 for my otome work. 

Fandoms: Mainly Cybird's Ikemen Sengoku currently, but looking to branch out there into IkeRev, IkeVamp, and Midnight Cinderella. I also write a bit for Cheritz's Mystic Messenger and Seduce Me the Otome. Previous fandoms have included Yu-Gi-Oh and its various spinoffs (especially Arc-V), Haikyuu, and Dragonball Z way back in the day. 

Where You Post: tumblr and ao3. Sometimes I'll do dreamwidth if I want to do original stuff or meta stuff that I can’t put on ao3. One of my stories is on wattpad, so I don't really consider it a major posting platform for me. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way, even though I see a lot of people liking it. Fanfictiondotnet is probably my oldest writing stomping grounds. I think I posted a few on my deviantart page as well, but haven't done that seriously in years, so if you do go looking for those pages (because I'm not linking them), have fun looking at my old, old stuff. 

Most Popular One-Shot: Depends on the platform. For Ao3, the most popular one-shot is one of my posted Haikyuu fics 'Manager Princess, After Hours' for Iwaizumi. Because everyone loves smut and Iwaizumi. For not smut, the next popular one is my Mystic Messenger one-shot 'Love at First Sight', which features Jumin. 

For tumblr, it's Rub My Belly. Because everyone loves Mitsuhide in loving husband mode, apparently. (It's also in my top 10 fics on ao3 (it's Number 8, currently!), so there's that. Side note, I am also fairly that tumblr hides my nsfw if I tag it as such, because while 'It's Not Like I Would Say No, Kitten' is my third most popular fic on ao3, it has no notes on tumblr. A smut fic featuring Masamune fucking Date, not getting any notes. I'm still side-eyeing tumblr on that one.) 

Most Popular Multi-Chapter: I actually don't do multi-chapter stuff that often, because I don't have the concentration and patience for it a lot of the time. However, I have done a one-shot collection story that is my most popular fic on ao3, which is Manager Princess. It technically doesn't count as it isn't a continuous story and just a collection before I really started utilizing the series feature on ao3, but it's definitely the most popular of my works, with the highest hit count (10886) and kudos given (456). 

For true multi-chapter fic that is most popular, that belongs to my longer form Yu-Gi-Oh Arc V fic called 'The Misadventures of Ruri Kurosaki and her Traveling Band of Emo Birds'.

On tumblr, there's only one long-form fic currently, and that's A Second Glance, so that doesn't really count as it's the only one thus far, lol. 

Favorite Story You Wrote: For this one... I think I got a tie, whoops. 

First one is Smiles, which is a Zen centric fic, written based on the events in his route on Day 10. Zen's just a silly goof that comforts the MC after said events, and it's just a super sweet thing that I loved writing about. 

My second favorite is the Oikawa chapter of Manager Princess (the Iwaizumi chapter also as it's similar in a way to Smiles.) It's not the most serious I've gotten with my writing, nor is it the deepest, darkest I've gone with fics, but... I think it's the most realistic I've gone without it going into super dark territory if that makes any sense. 

 And MC got to punch Oikawa, and that's always a highlight. 

Story You Were Nervous to Post: Everything I've done, ever. No, most nervous is probably my OC insert stuff, as I haven't given either of them intro stories so that I could give their backstories to new readers. But they seem to be received well enough, particularly 'You Should Always Tell the Truth' with my character Houki and Ieyasu from Ikemen Sengoku. (It’s on tumblr too, just saying) 

How You Choose Your Titles: Either a present theme, an iconic line from the story itself (It’s Not Like I Would Say No, Kitten), or something that gets repeated or featured often enough. Ruri's Misadventures, for example, is a reference that things are going to go bad for her, as the story details an alternate version of the events leading up to her eventual kidnapping in the canon series. Emo Birds refers to her traveling companions: her older brother Shun (whose deck mainly consists of raptor birds) and her classmate and romantic squish Yuuto (whose deck mainly consists of ghostly knights and dark paladins). 

As another example, Broken Glass is a 707 fic where he and the Reader are in person for the first time without the filter of their phones and security cameras to hide what they're actually like in real life. There's broken glass literally in the fic itself, but it's also a theme that their illusions are broken and all that's left behind are the pieces of themselves, like broken pieces of glass. 

Complete: Who's that? I don't know her, lol. The one-shots are all mostly completely and I usually don't do multi-chapter things anyway. The last time I had completed a fic start to finish was back on my fanfictiondotnet days and it was Dragonball Z fic featuring Radditz. Yes, really. There was even a sequel started, I think, but didn't finish that one either, whoops. 

Incomplete: A Second Glance. I wanna finish it though. 

Discontinued: I'd like to think of this as more as put on hold ideally, but, unfortunately, I don't think I'll be finishing Ruri's Misadventures and the Manager Princess Series, both the normal one and the After Hours series anytime soon. It's mainly due to moving on from both fandoms, for different reasons. I got a little bit more on Ruri's Misadventures that I haven't posted, but I'm not feeling where it's going, unfortunately. Maybe I'll get inspired with Manager Princess again, someday. Need to rewatch Haikyuu at some point. 

Do You Outline: Yes and no. I tend to freewrite and brainstorm out ideas like I'm talking to myself, like, 'what happens if I do this' or 'I like this idea, but it's not a strong enough hook, what if I did this instead?' Once I feel I've reached a good plot progression, I then bullet the ideas so I can get a basic barebones outline, because sometimes I"ll lose my train of thought or ramble, so I can get to the point easier and not get sidetracked with brainstorming (even if that happens inevitably anyway, whoops).

This is what my writing process looks like, basically. Here’s me working on some ideas for an upcoming one shot from Seduce Me the Otome, where I’m trying to work out ideas of Erik being with an ace!reader.

WIPs (this will be a long list): 

-A Second Glance, Part 3, where the Reader and Hideyoshi are going to try and see where they want to take their relationship from here

-When the Lights Go Down (Jumin x Reader) Originally a prompt for a Mystic Messenger prompt week that I filled way back in 2016, the story felt too short, plus I didn't have a working laptop at the time, so I wrote a good portion of those fills on my phone (and formatting the html for tumblr on my phone while it hated me when I tried to copy and paste stuff. Yes, I wanted to die). Smiles and Love at First Sight were also filled from that prompt week, and they have been updated accordingly, so I wanted to update this one as well. Will be NSFW, but it'll lean more towards the sensual side, I think.

-The Fair Mrs. Han (Jumin x Asexual!Reader) Most likely going to be a one-shot series, but I've also been toying with the idea of it being a multi-chapter. I basically wanted to explore an ace relationship with Jumin. Love at First Sight can kind of be considered a precursor to this series.

-Let's Make Love (Erik x Asexual!Reader) I've been trying to get this one shot off the ground for about two years now, but I still can't find a happy medium for it. Basically taking an incubus brother (this case, Erik) and putting him in a relationship with an asexual reader. Chaos ensues. NSFW is in debate right now. 

-Safeword (Temporary Title, May Change) (Hideyoshi x Reader) Me trying to get bolder in writing BDSM and smut. So far, there's bondage and sensation play. Most definitely NSFW. 

-Standing Still, Extended Version (Jumin x Reader) Did this originally as a 100 Word Challenge, but I still wanna explore the idea of how much the MC can handle when Jumin starts taking his obsession with her a little too far. Angst definitely, but I wanna steer clear of noncon and dubcon as I'm not comfortable with writing either of those subjects. 

-Untitled fic where Comte sends a letter to the MC in the future. Was a prompt from Fictober 2019, but I didn't finish it in time. That and I just wanted Comte to 'Back to the Future' a letter to the future to MC, lol. NSFW is up for debate.

-Untitled fic where Houki and Kennyo meet and play out those scenes in Mitsunari's route. 

-Probably more that I'm just not thinking of, lol.

Do You Accept Prompts: The short answer is no. I used to, a long time ago, but I'm a lot busier in life now than then, and sometimes I just don't have the energy to write like I used to anymore, so, even if I took prompts, it'll most likely sit in my inbox for months on end, unanswered, haunting me (I see you, Nobunaga prompt, that I'm still debating about doing). 

I will, however, make an exception if its something I can do without much brainpower, like if I posted a prompt meme or something, putting it out there that I'm ready and willing to write something quick for the masses. Otherwise, I'll stick to my own ideas and gifts for friends. 

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited To Write: One-shot wise, When the Lights Go Down. And continuing A Second Glance. 

Tagging: I don't know who has or hasn't done this already, so, for the sake of time, I tag whoever wants to do this!

[sciencespies]

Musk's Improbable Mars Quest Runs Through Border Town Concerned With More Than Getting to Space

https://sciencespies.com/news/musks-improbable-mars-quest-runs-through-border-town-concerned-with-more-than-getting-to-space/

Musk's Improbable Mars Quest Runs Through Border Town Concerned With More Than Getting to Space

Boca Chica Village, Texas – Cape Canaveral this is not.

But here, down toward the coast, on a spit of land past the Border Patrol checkpoint, where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico, there is a spaceship being assembled off State Highway 4 just before it dead-ends into the sea.

Towering and stainless-steel shiny, it looks like a surreal sculpture amid the cacti, yucca and relentless South Texas sun. And since it’s being built not in a factory but out in the open, it’s become a roadside attraction, drawing gawkers to an area so remote that the county trucks in drinking water once a month to the few who live nearby.

They’re coming to see Elon Musk’s latest creation, a prototype called Starship that he hopes will one day carry people by the dozens to the moon and Mars. Musk, in a presentation here Saturday, said his goal of building a “rapidly reusable spacecraft” here would lead to the fulfilment of his ultimate goal of creating “a city on Mars.”

But first he’ll need to pull off another improbable feat, building a private, commercial spaceport here, in what the top local elected official called a “mind-boggling” juxtaposition: SpaceX, one of the hottest companies in the world, led by a Silicon Valley celebrity with nearly 30 million Twitter followers, building a rocket in a border town where nearly a third of the residents live below the poverty line.

“I never in a million years would have imagined it,” said Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño.

Five years ago, SpaceX started building a launchpad here, hauling in dirt by the ton, that would allow the company a measure of freedom without the restraints that come with shooting rockets off from government sites, such as Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where several other companies operate.

“This is really going to be a new kind of spaceport that is optimized for commercial operations,” Musk said during a groundbreaking ceremony in 2014. “Cape Canaveral and Cape Vandenberg are great launch sites, but they are military launch sites.”

The company has been welcomed by local officials as a Walt Disney-like messiah that would help spark an economic revival in an area that desperately needs it. The state set aside $15.3 million to help the company build its facilities here and has bought into SpaceX’s vision to transform the area into a commercial spaceport that would be sending people throughout the solar system.

Photo Credit: Washington Post photo by Jonathan Newton

“You know the term ‘visionary,’ they’re the ones who make the world go round,” Treviño said.

Outside the county courthouse, the downtown here is replete with boarded-up businesses. Real estate prices are depressed. Poverty is rampant. Schools are surrounded by security fences. For years, the area has been caught in an unending “vicious cycle,” Treviño said, so bad that people who “are fortunate to get a college education or a postgraduate degree don’t come back.”

While he knows SpaceX’s presence has led to “growing pains,” he said those are merely the turbulent spasms of progress in an area that has seen very little.

But now, across the water on South Padre Island, the county has spent some $31 million building new pavilions and an amphitheatre that would host concerts and weddings and make a prime viewing area for rocket launches. Local officials hope for a future where residents and tourists line the beach, the way they have for years along Florida’s Space Coast, cheering rockets as they tear through the sky.

“It’s exciting,” said Sofia Benavides, a county commissioner who represents Boca Chica. “I’m 69 years old and have never been to a rocket launch. For my children and grandchildren, it’s great that this is happening in their backyard.”

Not everyone is cheering, though.

A handful of residents who live next door to SpaceX’s facilities recently received letters from SpaceX, which said the company’s footprint in the area was going to be bigger and more disruptive than originally imagined. As a result, it was seeking to purchase their properties at three times the value determined by an appraiser hired by SpaceX. The deal was nonnegotiable, the letter said, and the company wanted an answer within two weeks, though some have received extensions.

Called Boca Chica Village, the area is comprised of about 30 homes within walking distance of the Gulf of Mexico, occupied mostly seasonally. Many are boarded up. A few have weeds as high as the mailboxes.

The few full-time residents moved here seeking an end-of-the-road refuge. It’s nothing fancy – an outpost with little more than surf and sun and spotty cell reception, where fishermen drive their trucks up on the beach. There’s no running water, so the county brings in giant water tanks for residents once a month.

Ray Pointer discovered the area by accident in 2002. He was trying to make his way to South Padre Island, the resort town just to the north, but instead made a wrong turn, ended up in Boca Chica and decided he had found an oasis where he’d plant his flag.

Hi neighbour, Bonnie Heaton moved to Boca Chica 18 years ago from Minnesota with her husband after they retired. It was a place so desolate and tranquil she recalled the UPS delivery man once saying, “I didn’t know anyone lived out here.”

“We came across this place and never left,” she said.

The letter from SpaceX, then, came as a shock, one that she said felt like “a hostile takeover.”

“The thought of a company that’s going to shoot a rocket to the moon or Mars, that’s exciting, that’s history,” she said. “But when you get to the other side of the coin, and you lose your house, it’s terrifying.”

Ray Pointer and his wife, Maria, feel the same way. They were offered $233,000 for their home, Ray Pointer, 72, said, a figure he believes is outlandishly low. (Zillow estimates the value of their home at $103,655.)

“To tell me to leave and not really compensate me is unconscionable,” he said. “It’s not fair. It’s not the right thing to do. SpaceX is better than that.”

While many of their neighbours, who don’t live in Boca Chica year round, have taken the offer, they continue to try to negotiate.

To Treviño and other local officials, moving a few residents is a small price to pay to make way for SpaceX and its starry ambitions.

“We have to think big picture,” Treviño said. “And the fact that an individual with the vision like Elon Musk is investing his time, his money and his efforts to build his dream of launching to the moon and Mars here – it’s important that we be a part of that.”

SpaceX chose the area because of its location and comparative desolation – you want to launch rockets near the equator and over unpopulated areas. On Saturday night, Musk was here himself, to show off the rocket his team had been feverishly working to complete and to discuss his vision of the future. As for the rocket ranch he is building, he said it would continue to grow with more buildings and increased activity that forced the company to buy out residents’ property.

Initially, SpaceX had intended to launch its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets from here. But as the concept for Starship began to form in his imagination, he decided to switch gears and make Boca Chica home to the new, massive rocket he hopes will take people deep into the solar system.

“I think there will be a lot more buildings and a lot more stuff – way more stuff than is currently here,” he said. A sense of urgency to get Starship built led the company to do it in the ramshackle way it has – outside, without a factory in sight, in a barren setting fit for Star Wars that, as he wrote on Twitter earlier this month, could be labelled “Droid Junkyard, Tatooine.”

“Since it was going to take too long to build the buildings we built [Starship] outside,” he said. “My new thing is management by rhyming: If the schedule is long, it’s wrong; if it’s tight, it’s right.”

Most of the presentation focused on technical details, the benefits of stainless steel versus carbon composites (“I’m in love with steel,” he said at one point.), orbital mechanics, reentry vectors (“It’ll look totally nuts to see this thing land.”), the importance of orbital refueling and a future where humanity is “out among the stars.”

“The critical breakthrough that’s needed for us to become a spacefaring civilization is to make space travel like air travel,” he said. The first flight of the test vehicle – which looks as if it were born from a collaboration between Wernher von Braun, the designer of the Saturn V Apollo-era rocket, and Frank Gehry, the modernist architect – would come within a couple of months, he said, a short, suborbital hop to about 12 miles high.

Saturday’s presentation was the latest in a series of grand space talks that Musk’s fans have lauded as visionary and critics have derided as fantasy. But for all the hype SpaceX has received, and for the myriad times Musk has talked about making humanity a “multi-planet species,” it still has not flown a single human being anywhere, let alone the moon or to Mars.

All the talk, then, of futuristic spaceships and deep space exploration rubbed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine the wrong way. SpaceX is preparing to fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station under a contract worth $2.6 billion. SpaceX, like Boeing, the other company hired to fly astronauts to the station, is years behind schedule. And in April, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, designed to carry the crews, exploded during a test of its emergency abort engines.

In a tweet Friday, Bridenstine took the bold and unusual step of firing a shot at the company, saying that while was looking forward to SpaceX’s announcement, the agency “expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American taxpayer. It’s time to deliver.”

In response Saturday, Musk said that the company’s “resources are overwhelmingly on Falcon and Dragon,” the rocket and spacecraft that would be used to fly NASA astronauts. And company officials stressed that flying NASA’s astronauts is SpaceX’s top priority.

But Musk’s focus is clearly on the next generation spacecraft he’s been envisioning for years, one that has gone through multiple iterations and is still evolving, a stubborn problem not fully solved.

Meantime, Bonnie Heaton wonders where she’ll go next and whether she’ll ever be able to afford another place so close to the water, where during the evening, the “sun melts into the ocean,” she said.

There is one thing she knows for sure, though: “I don’t want to go to Mars. Let him do that.”

© The Washington Post 2019

#News

[vrenaewrites]

Quarter 3 Goals and Q2 Recap.

Happy fucking birthday, America. You’re a hot mess.

Literally.

When I first began doing blogs and youtube, I used to share my monthly goals. But no one liked when I did that, so I took a hint from successful bloggers and Youtubers and decided I’d go to quarterly goals instead.

If you don’t know, we technically just left the second quarter of the year, which like...WHAT. How has 2019 vanished into thin air? I feel like it was just January? Anyways. From April-June of 2019, my goals were:

- Read 6 books (2/month)

- Finish draft 1 of BLOOD FROM A STONE, my Magical Realism WIP

- Launch my BROKE INDIE AUTHOR services

- Collect all beta notes for ACCIDENTAL EVILS

- Hire an editor for ACCIDENTAL EVILS

- Film and write blogs for July and have ideas for August ready

Some other personal goals like consistent gym time and meal prep, wearing my night guard so I don’t grind my teeth into dust, spending time with my family during the season of 10 million birthdays, etc.

How’d we do?

Um...I’ll be real. I read two books. DUMPLIN’ (⅘) and THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO. (5/5). I am finishing EVERLASTING ROSE at the time of this blog. I’m embarrassed tbh. I think the heat makes me too lazy to write.

UM...well. By the skin of my teeth, I finished the rough draft of BLOOD FROM A STONE. But I’ll tell you what, I talked about this in my impostor syndrome series - I shelved this book for a hot minute, and then in June, I decided I wanted to rewrite it somehow? I wrote 15,000 words of a new draft when I literally had 3 chapters (about 15k words) left of the original draft. Aka I wasted so so SO much time. The best thing I did for this draft was take some time away while I was struggling with my perception and vision for the story - all of May was spent not writing this WIP. But. Getting back into it was tough.

This, I did! On June 1, my Broke Indie Author services launched on my website (vrenae.com/services) bitches! Promotional graphics, chapter critiques, YouTube editing, ghostwriting, book reviews - with more services to come. This was a huge exciting step for me and I can’t wait to expand the BIA line to give all those in the indie author community everything they need to succeed.

We got our notes in, and we hired a kickass editor for an amazing rate. Every day that she has that book in her hot little hands is another day I’m filled with excitement at the possibilities of what we can do with this book together.

I’m writing this in June, so I guess this is a win as well. I needed to get ahead of my self on content because I’ll be off the grid for over a week in July for my boyfriend’s 30th birthday. I have some interesting stuff coming up in August for sure. Mostly staying inside because if you’ve never been to Florida in August - don’t. Just don’t. It’s mind-melting.

We all know I didn’t go to the gym at all in May. But what I have started doing is running every morning and wow I forgot how much I loved it. If I get out there by 6:30am, that is. I tried 8:30am once and it was BRUTALLY hot. Yes, already. Florida sucks. Meal prep has been going well, mostly because I’m too broke to eat out with my coworkers that often. I spent lots of time with my family, watched a lot of TV and YouTube, and recharged my creative batteries in a huge way.

So, what’s next for me? What am I up to July - September?

MY QUARTER THREE GOALS:

Read 6 books. (2/month):

Clearly this has become a struggle, whereas in January I read like ten or twelve books? Wack.

Line edits for ACCIDENTAL EVILS:

By the end of July, my editor should be all done with AE, which is when the fun really begins.

Proofreads for ACCIDENTAL EVILS:

That’s right, fam. I’ll be recruiting proofreaders and sending them advanced copies of AE in Septemberish. Get fuckin’ ready.

Begin draft 2 of BLOOD FROM A STONE:

August is a busy lil month for this girl. I need all the excuses I can get to stay the fuck inside during the devil’s month.

Adjust SOMETHING WICKED based on ACCIDENTAL EVILS edits:

This’ll be a September project as well, but post beta notes, a lot changed that affects the finale of the Thistlewolf Trilogy. I’m sure more will come up as I get the editor notes back.

Begin my TIPSY IPSY series on my YouTube channel:

I announced on my Instagram last month that I’d subscribed to Ipsy, and a lot of you expressed interest in seeing unboxings of the monthly delivery of stuff. This won’t replace one of my videos but will be a bonus video each month. I know it’s not a writerly thing, but it’s something I’m excited about. So watch it or don’t.

What are y’all getting up to during these dog ass days of summer?

[mygangtome]

who were they then, who are they now: richard armitage

My dearest, dearest tumblr user. We’ve been here before, haven’t we? I’ve tried time and again to persuade you to watch this glorious, bonkers, utterly compelling madhouse of a show, and despite my recommendations of yesteryear, you still haven’t been persuaded.

So I’m going to have to bring out the big nose guns.

HEY! ARE YOU IN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING FANDOMS: THE HOBBIT, HANNIBAL, SPOOKS, CAPTAIN AMERICA?

DOES THIS FACE LOOK GOOD TO YOU?

pictured here: god he’s so dashing i hate him so muuhuhuhuch

Ladies, gents, and nonbinary friends, I present to you Richard Crispin Armitage. If you don’t know who he is, you probably haven’t been on Tumblr before.

who he was before?

pictured here: he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity

Back in the hazy, long-gone days of 2006, Richard Armitage already had a more substantial following than a lot of the Robin Hood cast. He’d been around a bit in stage and the small screen; he joined a circus in Budapest, played Macavity in Cats, stood by the side of a pool as eye candy in Cold Feet, gave a career-defining performance as Smug Man At Party in This Year’s Love, and even turned up as an extra in Star Wars.

pictured here: DIDN’T KNOW THAT, DID YOU, EH?

The sudden explosion of Richard into the public consciousness is primarily due to the BBC’s North and South in 2004, in which he played a brooding Northerner who primarily wears black and holds a position of power.

Then he got cast as Guy of Gisborne, a brooding Midlander who solely wears black and holds a position of power.

Typecasting? What’s that?

who was he then?

I’ve talked extensively for previous My Gang To Me days about Guy’s character, and his excellently melodramatic interactions with other characters on the show. He’s the big baddie in a show which needs one; the sneering, scowling foil to Robin’s optimistic heroism. But he’s also generous to a fault, obsessively loving, and full of thwarted ambitions. No other character divides the fandom more - is he a misunderstood good guy or an overindulged crybaby? Are he and Marion meant to be or an abusive relationship? Does he deserve a redemption arc? I DON’T KNOW, I’M NOT THE BOSS OF ROBIN HOOD, STOP ASKING ME ALL THESE QUESTIONS.

pictured here: there’s no such thing as too much eyeliner

Two years ago, I wrote the following about Guy, and it holds true:

More often than not we end our hijinks with an exasperated shout of “GISSSSBORRRRRRNE!” echoing through the castle and a shot of Guy slinking off to explain how he got foiled this week… Despite being a handsome devil, he is so deliciously dislikeable in a proper, old-school, tying-people-to-the-railroad tracks kind of way. And I’ll be honest, it’s worth watching the show just for a demonstration of how Armitage is able to smoulder with all parts of his body up to and including his back.

Where the Sheriff revels in his own villainy, Guy never thinks of himself as anything but The Hero Of This Story, and is all the more gloriously villainous for it. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the show is well aware of the fact that Richard looks nice without a shirt on.

pictured here: how many times can i use this screencap before it become gratuitous

Admittedly, my particular preference is for bearded-and-soulful-Armitage (more on that later on) but you know, any Armitage is good Armitage.

richard on guy

The Thing You Probably Know Already About Richard Armitage is that he is a ~method actor, which means that he takes all his roles Very Seriously. He wrote a diary for Thorin. He underwent waterboarding in order to get in character for his role as Lucas North in Spooks. He got extremely into William Blake for Dolarhyde. And, believe it or not, he also got very emotionally attached to Guy.

Today, [Richard] knocks on [series writer Dominic Minghella’s] door with a pencil and pad. Can he ask me some questions about his character? I tell him, truthfully, that I can’t believe he is here - an actor of his talent, sitting on my sofa, talking to me about playing this part. I feel so lucky. Suddenly, I stop myself - do I destroy what little (gamma-male) authority I have by being so candid? I glance at him. My concerns are unfounded. He is blushing. 

source: interview in sunday telegraph, october 2006

pictured here: richard cosplaying as 80s investment banking!au guy of gisborne

I can’t even be mad at this point. 

His own opinions on Guy are about as complicated as the fandom’s.

“I’m really hoping that when people sit and watch this, when Gisborne is trying to woo Marian they absolutely squirm in their seats and their skin is crawling. That was my main aim with this character, to make people absolutely despise him.” 

source: interview on bbc robin hood website, october 2006 

“His love for Marian is something which is beginning to unravel him and he’s becoming more human through her. It’s actually surprising him. I don’t think he quite realises what’s happening to him - he’s becoming human throughout the course of the series, I think.” 

source: interview on robin hood audiobook, “will you tolerate this?”

who did he become?

pictured here: i’ve never seen spooks so i can’t comment but OOH, DASHING

After Robin Hood, Richard officially became a Household Name when he joined the cast of Spooks as Lucas North, a series regular. Technically he started filming it whilst finishing off Robin Hood, which must have been an experience.

He stayed with Spooks for three years, becoming That Guy Off Spooks With The Face, You Know The One, and also turned his hand to a few other television and film roles over the years. 

He warmed the cockles of our collective hearts when he turned up as Dawn French’s love interest and future husband Harry Kennedy in The Vicar of Dibley. Bit of a jump for him, this one, as it’s a handsome and charming accountant, rather than a handsome and charming spy. Still, he rose to the occasion masterfully, and also got to snog Dawn French, so he won on multiple accounts.

In 2011, he turned up as the bespectacled Nazi spy Heinz Kruger in Captain America: The First Avenger. He got to have a secret submarine and run around with tommy guns. One time Chris Evans punched him in the face. It was awesome.

And then Thorin happened.

pictured here: majesty~

I will keep this brief, because if I talk too much about Thorin Oakenshield I’ll burst into tears, but it was the role that changed his life.

“I just think it’s a really amazing opportunity to take a character from a book that I was brought to as a child. My first experience on stage was in a production of The Hobbit at the Alex Theatre in Birmingham, and I played an elf.  And Gollum was a papier-mache puppet with a man offstage on a microphone. It’s been in my childhood very prominently, so to come to it as an adult,  a middle-aged man, and have another look at it is a brilliant opportunity." 

source: ‘the hobbit’ cast press conference, february 2011

Yes, that’s right, Richard Armitage is a Tolkien nerd. He wore elf ears made from cereal boxes to see the Two Towers in cinemas (he was thirty years old at the time).  And in 2012 he first graced our screens as Thorin, the proud and noble long-lost king of Erebor and a significant change of pace for a man who had developed a career as shifty, morally-dubious hired killers. 

He developed a reputation on set for being “moody and broody” (his words, not mine), due to all that method acting stuff that kept him fretting about the fate of the dwarven race when everyone else was fretting about lunch, but his performance was hailed as one of the best in the trilogy and - of course - it absolutely transformed his career.

who is he now?

Good question, and really one for Richard himself, or his doctor or his therapist or maybe a priest, but we’ll take a stab at it anyway.

After The Hobbit, Richard took a break from the massive media scrutiny and did what all British actors do when they’re scared, which is be in a play. In his case, the play was The Crucible at the Old Vic (I saw it, it was INCREDIBLE) and it earned him an Olivier nomination.

pictured here: bad timez 4 johnny p

He bounced from that into a couple of movies that you are, on the whole, unlikely to have seen - disaster movie Into The Storm, social drama Urban and the Shed Crew, bizarre fantasy Alice Through The Looking Glass…

But his most iconic role of late has been in Hannibal, as serial-killer-with-a-heart-of-gold-actually-no-wait-he-murders-people Francis Dolarhyde. He joined Hannibal for the last explosive season, and seems to have had a lot of fun killing people and wearing flower crowns and… I don’t know, I don’t go here, I’m doing my best.

pictured here: @nettlestonenell challenged me to fit at least one additional shirtless shot into this post, so here’s naked dolarhyde doing something that’s probably evil

It seems to have gone down well with the fans. And things are only looking up for our boy, who’s filming season two of his spy thriller Berlin Station as we speak. He’s based in London these days - still famously private about his private life, but happy to chat on twitter and instagram - just finished performing in his off-Broadway debut in Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love, earning rave reviews, and he’s got several movies coming up.

my gang, to me!

Have I persuaded you yet that you want to get to know the man who was Guy of Gisborne? Well, you’re in luck - the boy’s been busy. You might see him on the big screen this year in Pilgrimage, or Ocean’s Eight, or Brain on Fire. He’s aging well, like a fine wine, and you only have to poke a toe into his tumblr tag to find that his ‘army’ of fans are as passionate now as they were when Guy first slithered onto our screens, eleven years ago today.

pictured here: then & now

I think he might actually be aging in reverse.

Of course, if you want to see more of Richard, there’s one surefire way to do it - and it’s the reason I made this post. Come along and join the gang in Sherwood, and get to know Guy for yourself! Buy some DVDs, or fire up a stream, and settle down with a couple of glorious episodes of the friendliest, loveliest show in television - BBC Robin Hood. 

No matter how famous he gets, to us, he’ll always be Guy. And we wouldn’t have him any other way.

Sorry, guys. We saw him first.

-

post by @interestinggin / with thanks to richardarmitage.net & richardarmitageonline.com

[kayla1993-world]

Dolly Parton wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You on the same night. The same night. She wrote 9 to 5 while she was bored in her trailer during the filming of, well, 9 to 5 then came out and sang it to her co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, using her long red fingernails as percussion. She refused (unfortunately) to let Elvis cover I Will Always Love You because his manager, Colonel Parker, demanded half the publishing rights and Dolly does not give up the rights to her songs. Not then, right at the start of her career; not now, not ever. She owns everything important to every one of them, with the possible exception of the first she ever wrote, Little Tiny Tassletop. It was about the dolly her father had made Parton, the fourth of 12 children living in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains, out of a corn cob. That was in 1951 and she was five.

Every Dolly fan has these facts wrote on their heart (along with black hatred for Porter Wagoner, the man who gave her her start and thought that entitled him to have his “girl singer” stay with him forever). Every non-fan should be informed of them also, so that they may start the short trip from darkness to love and meet us all at Locust Ridge for the once a year diamante jamboree. She is a thing, a role model musically and lovingly (her Imagination Library foundation sent out its 100 millionth children’s book last year), a honky-tonk angel, an eagle when she flies and completely a legend.

But even Homer nods, and the creator of over 3,000 songs delivered unto us via 44 Country Top 10 records, 107 Hot Country Songs-charting singles and more awards than is immediately calculable, has also created Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings.

This eight-part collection series for Netflix shows “the stories, memories and inspirations behind some of Parton’s most loved songs”. And it is … exactly that. It fulfils the description. There has, technically, been no picture. The eight episodes include stories based on Jolene (which includes the flirtation with a red-headed bank teller that Parton’s husband Carl did in and which sparked the creation of the hit); Down from Dover (you don’t throw a series called Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings and not put in the one about the expectant girl who waits without success for her lover to return and marry her); plus Sugar Hill, Cracker Jack and These Old Bones (bluegrass contingent: REPRESENT!).

What none of them has – not even Jolene, which actually has Dolly in it playing the owner of a juke joint who takes a young, motherless singer under her wing – is a bit of the humour, energy, humour, camp, glory or fizz of Parton. Each one is a squeeze of total fat from an industrial tube of the stuff. Jolene is the story of a sexy young woman – a powered hyper pixie dream girl – who is advised by an older married lady and helps to excite her marriage while they teach each other in-between life lessons along the way. The father of Down from Dover’s illegal baby is a black student who makes pregnant the white preacher’s daughter and volunteers for Vietnam without knowing he is going to be a daddy. By the time he gets back minus half a leg, the baby has died but the preacher has overcome his prejudice so everything will be all right now. These Old Bones have Kathleen Turner playing the wise old woman on the hill, and I am not quite sure how that turns out because my hearing and vision were damaged by the lumps of scenery she was biting off and throwing around the set.

Each episode appears to have been brought in for about half the cost it must take to make one of Dolly’s cantilevered stage costumes, and none of that has gone on feeding the monkeys who typed the script. Only gorillas in the very last stages of the illness could have let lines such as: “He has super-strong hands that really help with chord changes,” or (Jolene’s idea about the wife of her lover): “I was cheating her – as a woman!” out of the office.

What the scripts lack, the actors try to make up for with funny looks, lip-biting and �� if trying to be sexy – constant gentle undulation. But everything is terrible, and not even bad enough to be good.

It does not matter. It is a tiny mistake, a thing of meh next the greatness and the beautifulness that is Dolly. Quite what she was thinking here we may never know, but long, long may she rule.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include a mess of GDC talk goodness, plus Resident Evil 7/Biohazard's making-of, the role of mystery in games, & lots more.

So yep - Game Developers Conference is finally done & we're super happy with how it went. Thanks to any of you who made it out to San Francisco, or helped us with the event in ANY way! The good news for those who didn't is that GDC Vault recording was going on en masse, so we'll be rolling out LOTS of good content on our YouTube channel over the next few months. Now - time for a little rest?

Another reminder - if you dig Video Game Deep Cuts, please talk about it on social media and link to the sub page! That's how I get the bulk of my new subscribers, and it's much appreciated.

- Simon, curator.]

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

GDC-Related 

Lessons learned by an 'art-house indie' who joined a F2P game studio (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Veteran game designer Margaret Robertson opened her talk at GDC today on what she’s learned in her journey from a self-described “art-house indie” to someone who works at a free-to-play game studio."

alt.ctrl | Hands-On | GDC 2017 (Jess Conditt / Engadget) "[SIMON'S NOTE: this is the best video overview I've seen of the alternative controller exhibit (masterminded by John Polson & aided by me) that we run at Game Developers Conference every year. So much creativity here.]"

How Prompto's AI-driven selfie system in Final Fantasy XV was built (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Prasert “Sun” Prasertvithyakarn served as lead designer on Final Fantasy XV’s buddy system and AI; at GDC this week he took the stage to talk a bit about how the AI-driven snapshot system was designed and built."

Developing Crashlands while facing a terminal cancer diagnosis (Simon Parkin / Gamasutra) "In 2013, the 23-year-old game artist and developer Samuel Coster hallucinated a dragon made of blood bursting from his chest. The hallucinations continued and soon increased in regularity. “I figured I was struck with a strange virus,” Coster recalled, in a session titled 'The Last Game I Make Before I Die' delivered at the Game Developers Conference this morning."

Writing Mafia 3: 'We had a lot of very uncomfortable conversations' (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Today at GDC, Hangar 13 narrative director William Harms took the stage to break down how the studio pulled it off. Most notably, in the face of some praise for how Mafia 3’s pulpy revenge story effectively treats with themes of racism and discrimination, Harms pushed back against the notion that tackling racism was a core goal of the game’s narrative design."

Train Jam perfectly captures the magic of both traveling and game dev (Katherine Cross / Gamasutra) "Thus it was that Adriel Wallick, doyenne and major domo of the jam for the last four years, settled on “Unexpected Anticipation” as the theme for all of this year’s games. She spoke above the cheers of a 300-strong crowd in the newly refurbished Burlington Room of Chicago’s Union Station, christened by the opening ceremonies for this unique event."

Warren Spector traces Deus Ex's development back to a game of D&D (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Shortly after the game shipped, game director Warren Spector wrote a broad postmortem of the project. Today at GDC, he revisited the subject after 17 years to offer some fresh insight into how the groundbreaking game came to be. 'People always ask me which of my games are my favorite; don’t ever ask a game designer that,' said Spector. 'The closest I ever get to answering is saying that the game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.'"

For Tim Sweeney, advancing Epic means racing into AR and VR (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "What does it feel like to receive an award honoring a lifetime of achievement...before you're 50? "I feel like maybe I'm an old fogey and should be shopping for a cane!" Epic chief Tim Sweeney tells Gamasutra, with a laugh."

Lessons learned from over 15 years of of teaching a VR/AR design course (Chris Baker / Gamasutra) "Virtual reality and augmented reality may seem like new mediums, suddenly made viable by the emergence of the Rift and the Vive and Hololens. But Jesse Schell has watched hundreds of people build immersive VR and AR environments for the last several decades. And he has some general lessons to impart from his experience."

A dev's guide to ensuring studio conflict is healthy and productive (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "At GDC today, Finji CEO and cofounder Rebekah Saltsman shared some advice on cultivating the former and avoiding the latter, based on her own experience shipping multiple games at Finji alongside her husband (and Finji cofounder) Adam Saltsman."

[SIMON'S NOTE: There's all kinds of other good GDC 2017 coverage out there. But I mainly stuck to Gamasutra, since we spent a lot of time on detailed talk write-ups, which are all compiled here...]

Non GDC-Related

A Fresh Narrative in Gaming (Justin Porter / New York Times) "A mixed-race man comes home from the Vietnam War to more carnage: His adoptive father, the leader of the black mob, is betrayed and killed by the Italian mafia, the main criminal power in a fictional city based on New Orleans. So the veteran, Lincoln Clay, starts taking retribution, leaving hundreds dead in his wake. That’s the familiar revenge-as-motive storyline of the video game Mafia III, developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K, but the twist is that Lincoln is also a victim."

Shigeru Miyamoto – 1989 Developer Interview (TV Game / Shmuplations) "This short but insightful interview with Shigeru Miyamoto first appeared in an early seminal book of video game history, “terebi game denshi yuugi taizen” from 1989. The interview captures Miyamoto in the early limelight: not yet the legend he is today, but more of a bright star among other contemporary developers."

How SteamWorld Heist brought skill into turn-based tactics (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "SteamWorld Heist is a tactics game about boarding procedural spaceships with a squad of desperado robots and grabbing all the swag you can before they’re turned to scrap. It’s also a cross-genre oddity, a turn-based platformer, with presentation and polish that comes across a bit like a Nintendo fan fell in love with XCOM."

Rediscovering Mystery (feat. Jonathan Blow / Derek Yu / Jim Crawford) (Noclip / YouTube) "In this special feature about video game mysteries, we talk to Jonathan Blow (The Witness / Braid), Derek Yu (Spelunky) and Jim Crawford (Frog Fractions) about the games that inspired wonder in us as children."

What the game industry thinks of Nintendo’s Switch (Matt Leone / Polygon) "Yet more than most consoles, Switch remains a bit of a mystery at launch. Are motion controls going to be a big part of it? What type of player will Switch developers cater to? In an attempt to wrap our heads around it, we recently reached out to a group of developers and industry veterans to get a sense of where those in the game business see it going."

Eleven Essential Books that will help shape your Game City (Konstantinos Dimopoulos / Medium) "Designing an imaginary city is not an easy thing to do. Even less so when it’s a videogame city, the construction of which will also have to take a myriad of technical and cost constraints into consideration."

toco toco ep.47, Katsura Hashino, Game Creator (toco toco TV / YouTube) "In this episode, we follow Katsura Hashino, director of various RPG games including episodes of the world-renown Persona series, he will introduce us to philosophy and his work. Starting from Shibuya’s Center Gai, we will hop on the Den-en-Toshi line over to Sangenjaya, which was the inspiration to create the city of Yongenjaya, a key area in Hashino’s latest title: Persona 5."

Frog Fractions: inside the mind behind the world's strangest video game (Chris Priestman / The Guardian) "Jim Crawford is a self-confessed dilettante who moves from project to project in the blink of an eye. How did he create the most anarchic video game ever made?"

BIOHAZARD 7 INSIDE REPORT File 01: The Meaning of A Moment of Silence (Toru Shiwasu / Alex Aniel) "BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil INSIDE REPORT was included in the COMPLETE EDITION of the Japanese version of Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. It is only available officially in Japanese, and no official English translation has been announced. [SIMON'S NOTE: There's multiple parts to this translation on Alex's blog, and it's all excellent stuff.]"

A Torch in the Dark: Using Creative Direction to Light The Darkest Dungeon (Chris Bourassa / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 talk, Red Hook Studios' Chris Bourassa breaks down the creative philosophy of Darkest Dungeon - one that is characterized by a steadfast commitment to a clearly articulated, externalized creative core."

Populists Stage A Coup In Space (Alex Barron / Simon Parkin / New Yorker Radio Hour) "EVE Online is a massive multiplayer online videogame set in outer space, with tens of thousands of people playing at any given time. A few years ago, a faction of upstarts within the game’s community, who thumbed their nose at the rules, went to war against the alliance of skilled players they regarded as corrupt, elitist insiders. They won, in a shocking coup precipitated by espionage. Sound familiar?"

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include a mess of GDC talk goodness, plus Resident Evil 7/Biohazard's making-of, the role of mystery in games, & lots more.

So yep - Game Developers Conference is finally done & we're super happy with how it went. Thanks to any of you who made it out to San Francisco, or helped us with the event in ANY way! The good news for those who didn't is that GDC Vault recording was going on en masse, so we'll be rolling out LOTS of good content on our YouTube channel over the next few months. Now - time for a little rest?

Another reminder - if you dig Video Game Deep Cuts, please talk about it on social media and link to the sub page! That's how I get the bulk of my new subscribers, and it's much appreciated.

- Simon, curator.]

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

GDC-Related 

Lessons learned by an 'art-house indie' who joined a F2P game studio (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Veteran game designer Margaret Robertson opened her talk at GDC today on what she’s learned in her journey from a self-described “art-house indie” to someone who works at a free-to-play game studio."

alt.ctrl | Hands-On | GDC 2017 (Jess Conditt / Engadget) "[SIMON'S NOTE: this is the best video overview I've seen of the alternative controller exhibit (masterminded by John Polson & aided by me) that we run at Game Developers Conference every year. So much creativity here.]"

How Prompto's AI-driven selfie system in Final Fantasy XV was built (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Prasert “Sun” Prasertvithyakarn served as lead designer on Final Fantasy XV’s buddy system and AI; at GDC this week he took the stage to talk a bit about how the AI-driven snapshot system was designed and built."

Developing Crashlands while facing a terminal cancer diagnosis (Simon Parkin / Gamasutra) "In 2013, the 23-year-old game artist and developer Samuel Coster hallucinated a dragon made of blood bursting from his chest. The hallucinations continued and soon increased in regularity. “I figured I was struck with a strange virus,” Coster recalled, in a session titled 'The Last Game I Make Before I Die' delivered at the Game Developers Conference this morning."

Writing Mafia 3: 'We had a lot of very uncomfortable conversations' (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Today at GDC, Hangar 13 narrative director William Harms took the stage to break down how the studio pulled it off. Most notably, in the face of some praise for how Mafia 3’s pulpy revenge story effectively treats with themes of racism and discrimination, Harms pushed back against the notion that tackling racism was a core goal of the game’s narrative design."

Train Jam perfectly captures the magic of both traveling and game dev (Katherine Cross / Gamasutra) "Thus it was that Adriel Wallick, doyenne and major domo of the jam for the last four years, settled on “Unexpected Anticipation” as the theme for all of this year’s games. She spoke above the cheers of a 300-strong crowd in the newly refurbished Burlington Room of Chicago’s Union Station, christened by the opening ceremonies for this unique event."

Warren Spector traces Deus Ex's development back to a game of D&D (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Shortly after the game shipped, game director Warren Spector wrote a broad postmortem of the project. Today at GDC, he revisited the subject after 17 years to offer some fresh insight into how the groundbreaking game came to be. 'People always ask me which of my games are my favorite; don’t ever ask a game designer that,' said Spector. 'The closest I ever get to answering is saying that the game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.'"

For Tim Sweeney, advancing Epic means racing into AR and VR (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "What does it feel like to receive an award honoring a lifetime of achievement...before you're 50? "I feel like maybe I'm an old fogey and should be shopping for a cane!" Epic chief Tim Sweeney tells Gamasutra, with a laugh."

Lessons learned from over 15 years of of teaching a VR/AR design course (Chris Baker / Gamasutra) "Virtual reality and augmented reality may seem like new mediums, suddenly made viable by the emergence of the Rift and the Vive and Hololens. But Jesse Schell has watched hundreds of people build immersive VR and AR environments for the last several decades. And he has some general lessons to impart from his experience."

A dev's guide to ensuring studio conflict is healthy and productive (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "At GDC today, Finji CEO and cofounder Rebekah Saltsman shared some advice on cultivating the former and avoiding the latter, based on her own experience shipping multiple games at Finji alongside her husband (and Finji cofounder) Adam Saltsman."

[SIMON'S NOTE: There's all kinds of other good GDC 2017 coverage out there. But I mainly stuck to Gamasutra, since we spent a lot of time on detailed talk write-ups, which are all compiled here...]

Non GDC-Related

A Fresh Narrative in Gaming (Justin Porter / New York Times) "A mixed-race man comes home from the Vietnam War to more carnage: His adoptive father, the leader of the black mob, is betrayed and killed by the Italian mafia, the main criminal power in a fictional city based on New Orleans. So the veteran, Lincoln Clay, starts taking retribution, leaving hundreds dead in his wake. That’s the familiar revenge-as-motive storyline of the video game Mafia III, developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K, but the twist is that Lincoln is also a victim."

Shigeru Miyamoto – 1989 Developer Interview (TV Game / Shmuplations) "This short but insightful interview with Shigeru Miyamoto first appeared in an early seminal book of video game history, “terebi game denshi yuugi taizen” from 1989. The interview captures Miyamoto in the early limelight: not yet the legend he is today, but more of a bright star among other contemporary developers."

How SteamWorld Heist brought skill into turn-based tactics (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "SteamWorld Heist is a tactics game about boarding procedural spaceships with a squad of desperado robots and grabbing all the swag you can before they’re turned to scrap. It’s also a cross-genre oddity, a turn-based platformer, with presentation and polish that comes across a bit like a Nintendo fan fell in love with XCOM."

Rediscovering Mystery (feat. Jonathan Blow / Derek Yu / Jim Crawford) (Noclip / YouTube) "In this special feature about video game mysteries, we talk to Jonathan Blow (The Witness / Braid), Derek Yu (Spelunky) and Jim Crawford (Frog Fractions) about the games that inspired wonder in us as children."

What the game industry thinks of Nintendo’s Switch (Matt Leone / Polygon) "Yet more than most consoles, Switch remains a bit of a mystery at launch. Are motion controls going to be a big part of it? What type of player will Switch developers cater to? In an attempt to wrap our heads around it, we recently reached out to a group of developers and industry veterans to get a sense of where those in the game business see it going."

Eleven Essential Books that will help shape your Game City (Konstantinos Dimopoulos / Medium) "Designing an imaginary city is not an easy thing to do. Even less so when it’s a videogame city, the construction of which will also have to take a myriad of technical and cost constraints into consideration."

toco toco ep.47, Katsura Hashino, Game Creator (toco toco TV / YouTube) "In this episode, we follow Katsura Hashino, director of various RPG games including episodes of the world-renown Persona series, he will introduce us to philosophy and his work. Starting from Shibuya’s Center Gai, we will hop on the Den-en-Toshi line over to Sangenjaya, which was the inspiration to create the city of Yongenjaya, a key area in Hashino’s latest title: Persona 5."

Frog Fractions: inside the mind behind the world's strangest video game (Chris Priestman / The Guardian) "Jim Crawford is a self-confessed dilettante who moves from project to project in the blink of an eye. How did he create the most anarchic video game ever made?"

BIOHAZARD 7 INSIDE REPORT File 01: The Meaning of A Moment of Silence (Toru Shiwasu / Alex Aniel) "BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil INSIDE REPORT was included in the COMPLETE EDITION of the Japanese version of Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. It is only available officially in Japanese, and no official English translation has been announced. [SIMON'S NOTE: There's multiple parts to this translation on Alex's blog, and it's all excellent stuff.]"

A Torch in the Dark: Using Creative Direction to Light The Darkest Dungeon (Chris Bourassa / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 talk, Red Hook Studios' Chris Bourassa breaks down the creative philosophy of Darkest Dungeon - one that is characterized by a steadfast commitment to a clearly articulated, externalized creative core."

Populists Stage A Coup In Space (Alex Barron / Simon Parkin / New Yorker Radio Hour) "EVE Online is a massive multiplayer online videogame set in outer space, with tens of thousands of people playing at any given time. A few years ago, a faction of upstarts within the game’s community, who thumbed their nose at the rules, went to war against the alliance of skilled players they regarded as corrupt, elitist insiders. They won, in a shocking coup precipitated by espionage. Sound familiar?"

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include a mess of GDC talk goodness, plus Resident Evil 7/Biohazard's making-of, the role of mystery in games, & lots more.

So yep - Game Developers Conference is finally done & we're super happy with how it went. Thanks to any of you who made it out to San Francisco, or helped us with the event in ANY way! The good news for those who didn't is that GDC Vault recording was going on en masse, so we'll be rolling out LOTS of good content on our YouTube channel over the next few months. Now - time for a little rest?

Another reminder - if you dig Video Game Deep Cuts, please talk about it on social media and link to the sub page! That's how I get the bulk of my new subscribers, and it's much appreciated.

- Simon, curator.]

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

GDC-Related 

Lessons learned by an 'art-house indie' who joined a F2P game studio (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Veteran game designer Margaret Robertson opened her talk at GDC today on what she’s learned in her journey from a self-described “art-house indie” to someone who works at a free-to-play game studio."

alt.ctrl | Hands-On | GDC 2017 (Jess Conditt / Engadget) "[SIMON'S NOTE: this is the best video overview I've seen of the alternative controller exhibit (masterminded by John Polson & aided by me) that we run at Game Developers Conference every year. So much creativity here.]"

How Prompto's AI-driven selfie system in Final Fantasy XV was built (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Prasert “Sun” Prasertvithyakarn served as lead designer on Final Fantasy XV’s buddy system and AI; at GDC this week he took the stage to talk a bit about how the AI-driven snapshot system was designed and built."

Developing Crashlands while facing a terminal cancer diagnosis (Simon Parkin / Gamasutra) "In 2013, the 23-year-old game artist and developer Samuel Coster hallucinated a dragon made of blood bursting from his chest. The hallucinations continued and soon increased in regularity. “I figured I was struck with a strange virus,” Coster recalled, in a session titled 'The Last Game I Make Before I Die' delivered at the Game Developers Conference this morning."

Writing Mafia 3: 'We had a lot of very uncomfortable conversations' (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Today at GDC, Hangar 13 narrative director William Harms took the stage to break down how the studio pulled it off. Most notably, in the face of some praise for how Mafia 3’s pulpy revenge story effectively treats with themes of racism and discrimination, Harms pushed back against the notion that tackling racism was a core goal of the game’s narrative design."

Train Jam perfectly captures the magic of both traveling and game dev (Katherine Cross / Gamasutra) "Thus it was that Adriel Wallick, doyenne and major domo of the jam for the last four years, settled on “Unexpected Anticipation” as the theme for all of this year’s games. She spoke above the cheers of a 300-strong crowd in the newly refurbished Burlington Room of Chicago’s Union Station, christened by the opening ceremonies for this unique event."

Warren Spector traces Deus Ex's development back to a game of D&D (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Shortly after the game shipped, game director Warren Spector wrote a broad postmortem of the project. Today at GDC, he revisited the subject after 17 years to offer some fresh insight into how the groundbreaking game came to be. 'People always ask me which of my games are my favorite; don’t ever ask a game designer that,' said Spector. 'The closest I ever get to answering is saying that the game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.'"

For Tim Sweeney, advancing Epic means racing into AR and VR (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "What does it feel like to receive an award honoring a lifetime of achievement...before you're 50? "I feel like maybe I'm an old fogey and should be shopping for a cane!" Epic chief Tim Sweeney tells Gamasutra, with a laugh."

Lessons learned from over 15 years of of teaching a VR/AR design course (Chris Baker / Gamasutra) "Virtual reality and augmented reality may seem like new mediums, suddenly made viable by the emergence of the Rift and the Vive and Hololens. But Jesse Schell has watched hundreds of people build immersive VR and AR environments for the last several decades. And he has some general lessons to impart from his experience."

A dev's guide to ensuring studio conflict is healthy and productive (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "At GDC today, Finji CEO and cofounder Rebekah Saltsman shared some advice on cultivating the former and avoiding the latter, based on her own experience shipping multiple games at Finji alongside her husband (and Finji cofounder) Adam Saltsman."

[SIMON'S NOTE: There's all kinds of other good GDC 2017 coverage out there. But I mainly stuck to Gamasutra, since we spent a lot of time on detailed talk write-ups, which are all compiled here...]

Non GDC-Related

A Fresh Narrative in Gaming (Justin Porter / New York Times) "A mixed-race man comes home from the Vietnam War to more carnage: His adoptive father, the leader of the black mob, is betrayed and killed by the Italian mafia, the main criminal power in a fictional city based on New Orleans. So the veteran, Lincoln Clay, starts taking retribution, leaving hundreds dead in his wake. That’s the familiar revenge-as-motive storyline of the video game Mafia III, developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K, but the twist is that Lincoln is also a victim."

Shigeru Miyamoto – 1989 Developer Interview (TV Game / Shmuplations) "This short but insightful interview with Shigeru Miyamoto first appeared in an early seminal book of video game history, “terebi game denshi yuugi taizen” from 1989. The interview captures Miyamoto in the early limelight: not yet the legend he is today, but more of a bright star among other contemporary developers."

How SteamWorld Heist brought skill into turn-based tactics (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "SteamWorld Heist is a tactics game about boarding procedural spaceships with a squad of desperado robots and grabbing all the swag you can before they’re turned to scrap. It’s also a cross-genre oddity, a turn-based platformer, with presentation and polish that comes across a bit like a Nintendo fan fell in love with XCOM."

Rediscovering Mystery (feat. Jonathan Blow / Derek Yu / Jim Crawford) (Noclip / YouTube) "In this special feature about video game mysteries, we talk to Jonathan Blow (The Witness / Braid), Derek Yu (Spelunky) and Jim Crawford (Frog Fractions) about the games that inspired wonder in us as children."

What the game industry thinks of Nintendo’s Switch (Matt Leone / Polygon) "Yet more than most consoles, Switch remains a bit of a mystery at launch. Are motion controls going to be a big part of it? What type of player will Switch developers cater to? In an attempt to wrap our heads around it, we recently reached out to a group of developers and industry veterans to get a sense of where those in the game business see it going."

Eleven Essential Books that will help shape your Game City (Konstantinos Dimopoulos / Medium) "Designing an imaginary city is not an easy thing to do. Even less so when it’s a videogame city, the construction of which will also have to take a myriad of technical and cost constraints into consideration."

toco toco ep.47, Katsura Hashino, Game Creator (toco toco TV / YouTube) "In this episode, we follow Katsura Hashino, director of various RPG games including episodes of the world-renown Persona series, he will introduce us to philosophy and his work. Starting from Shibuya’s Center Gai, we will hop on the Den-en-Toshi line over to Sangenjaya, which was the inspiration to create the city of Yongenjaya, a key area in Hashino’s latest title: Persona 5."

Frog Fractions: inside the mind behind the world's strangest video game (Chris Priestman / The Guardian) "Jim Crawford is a self-confessed dilettante who moves from project to project in the blink of an eye. How did he create the most anarchic video game ever made?"

BIOHAZARD 7 INSIDE REPORT File 01: The Meaning of A Moment of Silence (Toru Shiwasu / Alex Aniel) "BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil INSIDE REPORT was included in the COMPLETE EDITION of the Japanese version of Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. It is only available officially in Japanese, and no official English translation has been announced. [SIMON'S NOTE: There's multiple parts to this translation on Alex's blog, and it's all excellent stuff.]"

A Torch in the Dark: Using Creative Direction to Light The Darkest Dungeon (Chris Bourassa / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 talk, Red Hook Studios' Chris Bourassa breaks down the creative philosophy of Darkest Dungeon - one that is characterized by a steadfast commitment to a clearly articulated, externalized creative core."

Populists Stage A Coup In Space (Alex Barron / Simon Parkin / New Yorker Radio Hour) "EVE Online is a massive multiplayer online videogame set in outer space, with tens of thousands of people playing at any given time. A few years ago, a faction of upstarts within the game’s community, who thumbed their nose at the rules, went to war against the alliance of skilled players they regarded as corrupt, elitist insiders. They won, in a shocking coup precipitated by espionage. Sound familiar?"

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include a mess of GDC talk goodness, plus Resident Evil 7/Biohazard's making-of, the role of mystery in games, & lots more.

So yep - Game Developers Conference is finally done & we're super happy with how it went. Thanks to any of you who made it out to San Francisco, or helped us with the event in ANY way! The good news for those who didn't is that GDC Vault recording was going on en masse, so we'll be rolling out LOTS of good content on our YouTube channel over the next few months. Now - time for a little rest?

Another reminder - if you dig Video Game Deep Cuts, please talk about it on social media and link to the sub page! That's how I get the bulk of my new subscribers, and it's much appreciated.

- Simon, curator.]

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

GDC-Related 

Lessons learned by an 'art-house indie' who joined a F2P game studio (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Veteran game designer Margaret Robertson opened her talk at GDC today on what she’s learned in her journey from a self-described “art-house indie” to someone who works at a free-to-play game studio."

alt.ctrl | Hands-On | GDC 2017 (Jess Conditt / Engadget) "[SIMON'S NOTE: this is the best video overview I've seen of the alternative controller exhibit (masterminded by John Polson & aided by me) that we run at Game Developers Conference every year. So much creativity here.]"

How Prompto's AI-driven selfie system in Final Fantasy XV was built (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Prasert “Sun” Prasertvithyakarn served as lead designer on Final Fantasy XV’s buddy system and AI; at GDC this week he took the stage to talk a bit about how the AI-driven snapshot system was designed and built."

Developing Crashlands while facing a terminal cancer diagnosis (Simon Parkin / Gamasutra) "In 2013, the 23-year-old game artist and developer Samuel Coster hallucinated a dragon made of blood bursting from his chest. The hallucinations continued and soon increased in regularity. “I figured I was struck with a strange virus,” Coster recalled, in a session titled 'The Last Game I Make Before I Die' delivered at the Game Developers Conference this morning."

Writing Mafia 3: 'We had a lot of very uncomfortable conversations' (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Today at GDC, Hangar 13 narrative director William Harms took the stage to break down how the studio pulled it off. Most notably, in the face of some praise for how Mafia 3’s pulpy revenge story effectively treats with themes of racism and discrimination, Harms pushed back against the notion that tackling racism was a core goal of the game’s narrative design."

Train Jam perfectly captures the magic of both traveling and game dev (Katherine Cross / Gamasutra) "Thus it was that Adriel Wallick, doyenne and major domo of the jam for the last four years, settled on “Unexpected Anticipation” as the theme for all of this year’s games. She spoke above the cheers of a 300-strong crowd in the newly refurbished Burlington Room of Chicago’s Union Station, christened by the opening ceremonies for this unique event."

Warren Spector traces Deus Ex's development back to a game of D&D (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Shortly after the game shipped, game director Warren Spector wrote a broad postmortem of the project. Today at GDC, he revisited the subject after 17 years to offer some fresh insight into how the groundbreaking game came to be. 'People always ask me which of my games are my favorite; don’t ever ask a game designer that,' said Spector. 'The closest I ever get to answering is saying that the game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.'"

For Tim Sweeney, advancing Epic means racing into AR and VR (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "What does it feel like to receive an award honoring a lifetime of achievement...before you're 50? "I feel like maybe I'm an old fogey and should be shopping for a cane!" Epic chief Tim Sweeney tells Gamasutra, with a laugh."

Lessons learned from over 15 years of of teaching a VR/AR design course (Chris Baker / Gamasutra) "Virtual reality and augmented reality may seem like new mediums, suddenly made viable by the emergence of the Rift and the Vive and Hololens. But Jesse Schell has watched hundreds of people build immersive VR and AR environments for the last several decades. And he has some general lessons to impart from his experience."

A dev's guide to ensuring studio conflict is healthy and productive (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "At GDC today, Finji CEO and cofounder Rebekah Saltsman shared some advice on cultivating the former and avoiding the latter, based on her own experience shipping multiple games at Finji alongside her husband (and Finji cofounder) Adam Saltsman."

[SIMON'S NOTE: There's all kinds of other good GDC 2017 coverage out there. But I mainly stuck to Gamasutra, since we spent a lot of time on detailed talk write-ups, which are all compiled here...]

Non GDC-Related

A Fresh Narrative in Gaming (Justin Porter / New York Times) "A mixed-race man comes home from the Vietnam War to more carnage: His adoptive father, the leader of the black mob, is betrayed and killed by the Italian mafia, the main criminal power in a fictional city based on New Orleans. So the veteran, Lincoln Clay, starts taking retribution, leaving hundreds dead in his wake. That’s the familiar revenge-as-motive storyline of the video game Mafia III, developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K, but the twist is that Lincoln is also a victim."

Shigeru Miyamoto – 1989 Developer Interview (TV Game / Shmuplations) "This short but insightful interview with Shigeru Miyamoto first appeared in an early seminal book of video game history, “terebi game denshi yuugi taizen” from 1989. The interview captures Miyamoto in the early limelight: not yet the legend he is today, but more of a bright star among other contemporary developers."

How SteamWorld Heist brought skill into turn-based tactics (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "SteamWorld Heist is a tactics game about boarding procedural spaceships with a squad of desperado robots and grabbing all the swag you can before they’re turned to scrap. It’s also a cross-genre oddity, a turn-based platformer, with presentation and polish that comes across a bit like a Nintendo fan fell in love with XCOM."

Rediscovering Mystery (feat. Jonathan Blow / Derek Yu / Jim Crawford) (Noclip / YouTube) "In this special feature about video game mysteries, we talk to Jonathan Blow (The Witness / Braid), Derek Yu (Spelunky) and Jim Crawford (Frog Fractions) about the games that inspired wonder in us as children."

What the game industry thinks of Nintendo’s Switch (Matt Leone / Polygon) "Yet more than most consoles, Switch remains a bit of a mystery at launch. Are motion controls going to be a big part of it? What type of player will Switch developers cater to? In an attempt to wrap our heads around it, we recently reached out to a group of developers and industry veterans to get a sense of where those in the game business see it going."

Eleven Essential Books that will help shape your Game City (Konstantinos Dimopoulos / Medium) "Designing an imaginary city is not an easy thing to do. Even less so when it’s a videogame city, the construction of which will also have to take a myriad of technical and cost constraints into consideration."

toco toco ep.47, Katsura Hashino, Game Creator (toco toco TV / YouTube) "In this episode, we follow Katsura Hashino, director of various RPG games including episodes of the world-renown Persona series, he will introduce us to philosophy and his work. Starting from Shibuya’s Center Gai, we will hop on the Den-en-Toshi line over to Sangenjaya, which was the inspiration to create the city of Yongenjaya, a key area in Hashino’s latest title: Persona 5."

Frog Fractions: inside the mind behind the world's strangest video game (Chris Priestman / The Guardian) "Jim Crawford is a self-confessed dilettante who moves from project to project in the blink of an eye. How did he create the most anarchic video game ever made?"

BIOHAZARD 7 INSIDE REPORT File 01: The Meaning of A Moment of Silence (Toru Shiwasu / Alex Aniel) "BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil INSIDE REPORT was included in the COMPLETE EDITION of the Japanese version of Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. It is only available officially in Japanese, and no official English translation has been announced. [SIMON'S NOTE: There's multiple parts to this translation on Alex's blog, and it's all excellent stuff.]"

A Torch in the Dark: Using Creative Direction to Light The Darkest Dungeon (Chris Bourassa / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 talk, Red Hook Studios' Chris Bourassa breaks down the creative philosophy of Darkest Dungeon - one that is characterized by a steadfast commitment to a clearly articulated, externalized creative core."

Populists Stage A Coup In Space (Alex Barron / Simon Parkin / New Yorker Radio Hour) "EVE Online is a massive multiplayer online videogame set in outer space, with tens of thousands of people playing at any given time. A few years ago, a faction of upstarts within the game’s community, who thumbed their nose at the rules, went to war against the alliance of skilled players they regarded as corrupt, elitist insiders. They won, in a shocking coup precipitated by espionage. Sound familiar?"

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

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include a mess of GDC talk goodness, plus Resident Evil 7/Biohazard's making-of, the role of mystery in games, & lots more.

So yep - Game Developers Conference is finally done & we're super happy with how it went. Thanks to any of you who made it out to San Francisco, or helped us with the event in ANY way! The good news for those who didn't is that GDC Vault recording was going on en masse, so we'll be rolling out LOTS of good content on our YouTube channel over the next few months. Now - time for a little rest?

Another reminder - if you dig Video Game Deep Cuts, please talk about it on social media and link to the sub page! That's how I get the bulk of my new subscribers, and it's much appreciated.

- Simon, curator.]

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

GDC-Related 

Lessons learned by an 'art-house indie' who joined a F2P game studio (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Veteran game designer Margaret Robertson opened her talk at GDC today on what she’s learned in her journey from a self-described “art-house indie” to someone who works at a free-to-play game studio."

alt.ctrl | Hands-On | GDC 2017 (Jess Conditt / Engadget) "[SIMON'S NOTE: this is the best video overview I've seen of the alternative controller exhibit (masterminded by John Polson & aided by me) that we run at Game Developers Conference every year. So much creativity here.]"

How Prompto's AI-driven selfie system in Final Fantasy XV was built (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Prasert “Sun” Prasertvithyakarn served as lead designer on Final Fantasy XV’s buddy system and AI; at GDC this week he took the stage to talk a bit about how the AI-driven snapshot system was designed and built."

Developing Crashlands while facing a terminal cancer diagnosis (Simon Parkin / Gamasutra) "In 2013, the 23-year-old game artist and developer Samuel Coster hallucinated a dragon made of blood bursting from his chest. The hallucinations continued and soon increased in regularity. “I figured I was struck with a strange virus,” Coster recalled, in a session titled 'The Last Game I Make Before I Die' delivered at the Game Developers Conference this morning."

Writing Mafia 3: 'We had a lot of very uncomfortable conversations' (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Today at GDC, Hangar 13 narrative director William Harms took the stage to break down how the studio pulled it off. Most notably, in the face of some praise for how Mafia 3’s pulpy revenge story effectively treats with themes of racism and discrimination, Harms pushed back against the notion that tackling racism was a core goal of the game’s narrative design."

Train Jam perfectly captures the magic of both traveling and game dev (Katherine Cross / Gamasutra) "Thus it was that Adriel Wallick, doyenne and major domo of the jam for the last four years, settled on “Unexpected Anticipation” as the theme for all of this year’s games. She spoke above the cheers of a 300-strong crowd in the newly refurbished Burlington Room of Chicago’s Union Station, christened by the opening ceremonies for this unique event."

Warren Spector traces Deus Ex's development back to a game of D&D (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "Shortly after the game shipped, game director Warren Spector wrote a broad postmortem of the project. Today at GDC, he revisited the subject after 17 years to offer some fresh insight into how the groundbreaking game came to be. 'People always ask me which of my games are my favorite; don’t ever ask a game designer that,' said Spector. 'The closest I ever get to answering is saying that the game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.'"

For Tim Sweeney, advancing Epic means racing into AR and VR (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "What does it feel like to receive an award honoring a lifetime of achievement...before you're 50? "I feel like maybe I'm an old fogey and should be shopping for a cane!" Epic chief Tim Sweeney tells Gamasutra, with a laugh."

Lessons learned from over 15 years of of teaching a VR/AR design course (Chris Baker / Gamasutra) "Virtual reality and augmented reality may seem like new mediums, suddenly made viable by the emergence of the Rift and the Vive and Hololens. But Jesse Schell has watched hundreds of people build immersive VR and AR environments for the last several decades. And he has some general lessons to impart from his experience."

A dev's guide to ensuring studio conflict is healthy and productive (Alex Wawro / Gamasutra) "At GDC today, Finji CEO and cofounder Rebekah Saltsman shared some advice on cultivating the former and avoiding the latter, based on her own experience shipping multiple games at Finji alongside her husband (and Finji cofounder) Adam Saltsman."

[SIMON'S NOTE: There's all kinds of other good GDC 2017 coverage out there. But I mainly stuck to Gamasutra, since we spent a lot of time on detailed talk write-ups, which are all compiled here...]

Non GDC-Related

A Fresh Narrative in Gaming (Justin Porter / New York Times) "A mixed-race man comes home from the Vietnam War to more carnage: His adoptive father, the leader of the black mob, is betrayed and killed by the Italian mafia, the main criminal power in a fictional city based on New Orleans. So the veteran, Lincoln Clay, starts taking retribution, leaving hundreds dead in his wake. That’s the familiar revenge-as-motive storyline of the video game Mafia III, developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K, but the twist is that Lincoln is also a victim."

Shigeru Miyamoto – 1989 Developer Interview (TV Game / Shmuplations) "This short but insightful interview with Shigeru Miyamoto first appeared in an early seminal book of video game history, “terebi game denshi yuugi taizen” from 1989. The interview captures Miyamoto in the early limelight: not yet the legend he is today, but more of a bright star among other contemporary developers."

How SteamWorld Heist brought skill into turn-based tactics (Alex Wiltshire / RockPaperShotgun) "SteamWorld Heist is a tactics game about boarding procedural spaceships with a squad of desperado robots and grabbing all the swag you can before they’re turned to scrap. It’s also a cross-genre oddity, a turn-based platformer, with presentation and polish that comes across a bit like a Nintendo fan fell in love with XCOM."

Rediscovering Mystery (feat. Jonathan Blow / Derek Yu / Jim Crawford) (Noclip / YouTube) "In this special feature about video game mysteries, we talk to Jonathan Blow (The Witness / Braid), Derek Yu (Spelunky) and Jim Crawford (Frog Fractions) about the games that inspired wonder in us as children."

What the game industry thinks of Nintendo’s Switch (Matt Leone / Polygon) "Yet more than most consoles, Switch remains a bit of a mystery at launch. Are motion controls going to be a big part of it? What type of player will Switch developers cater to? In an attempt to wrap our heads around it, we recently reached out to a group of developers and industry veterans to get a sense of where those in the game business see it going."

Eleven Essential Books that will help shape your Game City (Konstantinos Dimopoulos / Medium) "Designing an imaginary city is not an easy thing to do. Even less so when it’s a videogame city, the construction of which will also have to take a myriad of technical and cost constraints into consideration."

toco toco ep.47, Katsura Hashino, Game Creator (toco toco TV / YouTube) "In this episode, we follow Katsura Hashino, director of various RPG games including episodes of the world-renown Persona series, he will introduce us to philosophy and his work. Starting from Shibuya’s Center Gai, we will hop on the Den-en-Toshi line over to Sangenjaya, which was the inspiration to create the city of Yongenjaya, a key area in Hashino’s latest title: Persona 5."

Frog Fractions: inside the mind behind the world's strangest video game (Chris Priestman / The Guardian) "Jim Crawford is a self-confessed dilettante who moves from project to project in the blink of an eye. How did he create the most anarchic video game ever made?"

BIOHAZARD 7 INSIDE REPORT File 01: The Meaning of A Moment of Silence (Toru Shiwasu / Alex Aniel) "BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil INSIDE REPORT was included in the COMPLETE EDITION of the Japanese version of Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. It is only available officially in Japanese, and no official English translation has been announced. [SIMON'S NOTE: There's multiple parts to this translation on Alex's blog, and it's all excellent stuff.]"

A Torch in the Dark: Using Creative Direction to Light The Darkest Dungeon (Chris Bourassa / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2016 talk, Red Hook Studios' Chris Bourassa breaks down the creative philosophy of Darkest Dungeon - one that is characterized by a steadfast commitment to a clearly articulated, externalized creative core."

Populists Stage A Coup In Space (Alex Barron / Simon Parkin / New Yorker Radio Hour) "EVE Online is a massive multiplayer online videogame set in outer space, with tens of thousands of people playing at any given time. A few years ago, a faction of upstarts within the game’s community, who thumbed their nose at the rules, went to war against the alliance of skilled players they regarded as corrupt, elitist insiders. They won, in a shocking coup precipitated by espionage. Sound familiar?"

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