#ultimate list of incremental games

[idleincrementalgamer]

So today I played Candy Empirical  from the  Ultimate List of Incremental Games   and by “today” I mean for like 3 days. Not sure why, it’s such a basic little game, another oldie. Nothing really special to it but the graph just sells it for me. 4/10 there’s so much better out there but it does entertain

[daryatalia]

Completed my Second Game Jam!!

I completed Brackeys second game jam of 2024! The theme was Calm Before the Storm, and I was one of 1500 submissions!

I cannot fully express how happy I am to have finished my second game jam! The team I worked with were super amazing and I will go into their skills and what I appreciated later.

The game we made was a resource management, mobile defense, hack n' slash. While the submission build is not 100% functional, it still shows off some really cool systems and designs, and I'm very happy with how it turned out! I am continuing to do post-release updates and any new builds will be submitted to our Github while the Game Jam voting is ongoing.

Please check out Automik Breakers and submit your rating and thoughts if you can! All feedback is welcome because I may be fixing/completing it or need to know if it needs fixing.

Designing and programming this game was really fun! This was a week long game jam with a secret theme that was revealed on Day 1. Before the jam, I wasn't sure if I would work solo or as a team, so I drafted some ideas ahead of time for each theme that I was confident I could independently make systems for. Some of those ideas were an endless "swimmer", house break-in incremental horror, and helping neighbors with tasks around the neighborhood.

Ultimately, I decided to find a team. I'm still quite new to game jams and really enjoyed meeting people last time. I searched within Brackey's Discord server to find open teams looking for a programmer, either for Unity or Unreal Engine. I reached out to many cool people and ended up creating a team of my own! I made a Discord server for us to collaborate it, as well as the GitHub repo, Google Drive, and Miro. I focused a lot on making sure everyone was comfortable with one another and that everyone could contribute their skills to the project the way they wanted to.

Once the theme was announced, we started workshopping ideas day one. With team members in multiple time zones from NA to Europe, we met several times over the next two days to hammer out the main game genre, game loop, and systems. There were many ideas and possibilities, so talking through how we would implement each aspect of it and what assets would be needed for development helped us land on our chosen game. We made sure to keep the theme in mind throughout the development of systems, design, narrative, and artwork.

The biggest challenges for me as both a developer, designer, and team lead were managing scope and schedules. We knew what systems we wanted, but getting them to interact properly was already going to be a challenge, and we were essentially developing two "Game Modes" to function as one. As such, we were mindful to keep a list of minimum viable features and to knock additional features into "if we can" territory. When it comes to scope, to improve I would say I would start digital prototype development and systems design even a day sooner, and to build certain features one at a time until completion rather than bouncing around a bit (this is my experience). Using User Stories was especially helpful for helping me organize what the goals of development were, even more so then the task list I made for the team.

When it comes to scheduling, we have 9 team members in 5 different time zones, so making sure work and delegations were queued up for when I was offline and others were up was very important. Task lists as well as morning "hi-hello-today we will-" really helped with managing expectations and updating the whole team on development progress. It was really satisfying seeing the whole team interact and work together. I was actively learning from my fellow programmers, Spoon, Necron, and GraphicEdit, and I hope everyone else can say the same. Also, I think having a diverse time zoned team also helped us with maximizing production development without burning everyone out. Knowing something was being done around the clock without forcing anyone to crunch or sacrifice IRL activities was really nice.

Scope ultimately led to our game being less than 100% complete. We didn't have much time the last 2 days to tune the enemy strength, add greater significance to delivery items, attach power-ups to each resource item, or to fine-tune additional bugs. The story also wasn't able to iterate correctly, the random deliveries queue is still in-production, and the custom deliveries option could be more clear. I'm satisfied that these are aspects that I know can be improved and lead to a satisfying and complete game with replay value.

As for contributions, personally, I worked on a few different things throughout the jam. I managed onboarding team members, creating and updating team resources, and developing task lists for async development. I supported the team by reviewing sounds and music, artwork, and game systems. I developed the Cargo Controller ( the script that controls the movement and inventory of the cargo vehicle), the Hub Manager (the script that controls the inventory of the Hub during "Calm Mode", as well as the assignment of deliveries), and the Storm Mode Journey (which controlled the "Storm Mode"s game loop). With assistance from Spoon, I also worked on the Game Manager, making sure that it had access to both game modes and could keep track of persistent objects and values like our currency, story deliveries, and delivery items. With his assistance I also created the scriptable objects for the various resource and delivery items based on Spoons SO script.

I worked on the UI for the Hub, designing potential layouts, finding references, coordinating with the team on colors and fonts, and laying out the structure and prefabs using Unity's UI system. It was a bit of a headache but only because the nesting got so deep and the layout groups were a little unpredictable. Still, a much more satisfying and improved experience than my last game jam. Thank you to Rusty for the beautiful UI panel art!

Most days, I would start work off by connecting with the team, seeing what they needed to be successful, updating docs as necessary, all before digging into my code or UI responsibilities. My experience in project management really helped me succeed in this, as well as the dedication and talent of the team I was working with.

Thank you to RatDrum for developing the music for this game, as well as additional sound effects. Thank you to JollyGoodFriend for developing sound effects, as well. Thank you to Rustyscreech for designing the UI art and backgrounds and the Cargo Cart, as well as the concept art for the characters. Thank you to Danieluxx for designing the character animations. Thank you to Necron for developing the enemy systems. Thank you to Spoon for developing the background pooling system, the Base Item scriptable objects, and the inventory system, and for helping to optimize my and Necron's code. Thank you to GraphicEdit for developing the main menu and pause menu UIs, for developing the for-now unutilized save system, and for supporting Github commits and troubleshooting. Thank you to SirSunstone for writing a captivating story for our game world, and integrating it piece-by-piece into the Story missions, as well as for coming up with a cool list of items for us to implement.

THANK YOU to our team! Could not have done this without you all!

I'm so excited for my next game jam and to see what else I can do!

[9w1ft]

Hey, 9wing! Earl grey's a terrific and fancy choice :) Cheers from my plain ol' cup of coffee!

Now, I don't celebrate Christmas, but my life has been feeling pretty miraculous in the past few days/weeks!

I'm finally doing a bit better at school, my relationship with my family has improved slightly, and health wise, I'm not doing too bad like before. I still have a lot of room for improvement, but in the past few days, I've made a lot of progress in terms of organizing myself and getting things done on my to-do list. I've also actively making an effort to control my responses and respond to being criticised, bad events, and all of that with patience and it's paid off the past few days - so I'm very happy about that too.

On the day of Christmas, I hung around with my online friends and we created digital Christmas trees using this site, colormytree.me - we left behind sweet messages to each other by decorating each other's trees, and I've gotten some of the best messages from them. They also liked my messages for them too!

The day after, I invited my irl friends to my house for the first time. I was scared about if I could be a good host, especially since I was home alone and had to manage all of the socializing activities myself, but ultimately, it was a very fun day and my friends were amazing and patient! We made some really good memories. I also got some really good cookies out of it.

Finally, I've taken a break from my Midnights obsession to listen to the ultimate Christmas songs: evermore with a touch of Christmas Tree Farm!

Thanks for giving us a positive space, 9wing! How was your week? Did you have a nice holiday with your family?

wow! props to you for knocking out all these personal goals!! that work is hard but it’s the best feeling when you can make small incremental progress on yourself. many congratulations! ooh and i love the idea of this activity you did with friends, i’ll have to check it out!

things got a little hectic for me with some work preparations, and karlie having been here kinda gave me heart palpitations but sleuthing out where she went while here on my home turf has been fun! it’s been cool to be able to pick up on all these little details. all and all i had such a great week! we have been hanging out, cooking tasty food, and playing games. it’s been so special seeing my daughters play with one another. going to an afternoon tea later!

[tehniataslam-22]

Best Smartphones of 2024 The Ultimate Guide

In the fast-paced world of technology, staying up-to-date with the latest smartphones can be overwhelming. With each passing year, manufacturers strive to push the boundaries of innovation, offering consumers a plethora of options to choose from. As we step into 2024, the smartphone landscape continues to evolve, introducing cutting-edge features and advancements that redefine our digital experiences. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the best smartphones of 2024, highlighting their standout features, specifications, and what sets them apart from the competition.

1. Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max

When it comes to smartphones, Apple has always been at the forefront of innovation, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max is no exception. Boasting a sleek design and an impressive array of features, this flagship device is a powerhouse of performance. The iPhone 14 Pro Max is equipped with Apple’s latest A16 Bionic chip, delivering lightning-fast speeds and unparalleled efficiency. Its Pro Motion OLED display offers stunning visuals with true-to-life colors and deep blacks, making it perfect for multimedia consumption and gaming. With an advanced camera system comprising a triple-lens setup and enhanced AI capabilities, capturing professional-grade photos and videos has never been easier. Additionally, the iPhone 14 Pro Max features 5G connectivity, Mag Safe compatibility, and improved battery life, ensuring a seamless user experience across the board in Best Smartphones of 2024.

2. Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Samsung continues to raise the bar with its Galaxy S series, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra is a testament to that commitment to excellence. Featuring a premium design and cutting-edge technology, this flagship smartphone is a powerhouse of innovation. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is powered by Samsung’s Exyn os 2200 chipset, delivering unrivaled performance and efficiency. Its Dynamic AMOLED 2X display offers a buttery-smooth 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support, providing an immersive viewing experience like never before.  It boasts S Pen support, 5G, and a large battery, standing as a top 2024 flagship contender.

3. Google Pixel 7 Pro

4. OnePlus 11 Pro

Known for its “Never Settle” mantra, OnePlus continues to impress with its flagship offerings, and the OnePlus 11 Pro is no exception. Combining top-of-the-line hardware with a clean and intuitive software experience, this smartphone delivers exceptional value for money. The OnePlus 11 Pro is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, offering blazing-fast performance and 5G connectivity. Fluid AMOLED, 144Hz refresh, HDR10+, immersing viewers in multimedia and gaming with immersive experience. OnePlus 11 Pro: 108MP main sensor, triple-camera, dedicated macro lens for stunning photos and videos in any scenario. It features Oxygen OS 13 on Android 13 for a personalized experience in the top 2024 smartphones.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: Are these smartphones available worldwide?

A: Yes, the Best Smartphones of 2024 mentioned in this guide are typically available in major markets worldwide.

Q: Do these smartphones support 5G connectivity?

A: Flagship smartphones listed here have 5G for faster speeds, low latency, and better network reliability.

Q: Can I expect any major design changes in these smartphones compared to their predecessors?

A: Flagship smartphones prioritize internal hardware and new features over major design changes, typically offering incremental upgrades across manufacturers.

Q: What about software updates and support for these smartphones?

A: All the smartphones mentioned in this guide typically receive regular software updates and support from their respective manufacturers.

Q: Are there any standout features unique to each smartphone?

A: Yes, each smartphone mentioned in this guide comes with its own set of standout features and innovations.

2024’s top smartphones market will see more tech advancements as innovation persists in evolving technology.

Top smartphones in 2024 suit all users’ needs with great performance, features, and design.

[cryptidliker]

I bought a few games for Christmas thanks to a gift card and a bonus from my boss. In Stars and Time is next on my list to play, but first I've been blasting through Bowsers Fury. Also got Trombone Champ and the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm trilogy set.

Everything has been really fun, but I am kinda weirded out by the three I've touched so far??? Trombone Champ has like. Comedy horror which is weird. Ultimate Ninja, the first one is like???? An open area where you do missions and walk around in the hidden leaf village? Which is different than I thought, idk, I just expected to be mortal combat but naruto. It is not that. IT'S ALSO REALLY HARD FOR NO REASON. Fun tho!

And then Bowsers Fury... it's different than any Mario game I've played? Open world that expands incrementally and changes when you aren't looking. Everything is cat themed with no explanation. Baby bowser is a stupidly helpful companion with levels of helpfulness (from none to a little to a lot). It's very different but arguably my favorite mario game to date so far? Super Mario Galaxy is still up there but this game beats Oddessy out of the water in terms of like. How fun it is to get around and find shines.

Anywho, I am so freaking stoked to start In Stars and Time because gosh, I have been watching this artist for literal years and I cannot WAIT to look at all their pretty beautiful art and have my heart smushed.

[flowaceai]

Balancing Priorities: How the Time Management Matrix Can Help

In the world of projects, we all know the importance of staying on track with timelines. That’s where the time management matrix comes into play. For project managers, this tool is a game-changer – it helps employees complete tasks on time and cultivates the valuable skill of organization.

Take a cue from Dwight D. Eisenhower, the thirty-fourth president of the U.S. He believed in devoting our attention and time to activities based on their importance and urgency. His wisdom rings true as we often get caught up in important and urgent things, leading to reactive behavior.

But with the time management matrix, you’ll gain a fresh perspective on prioritizing tasks effectively.

Let’s dive in…

Table of Contents

What is the Time Management Matrix?

Quadrant 1: Urgent and important

Quadrant 2: Not urgent, but important

Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important

Quadrant 4: Neither urgent nor important

What’s in your maintenance matrix?

How to Use the Time Management Matrix?

Step 1: Identify your priorities 

Step 2: Write it down

Step 3: Include deadlines 

Step 4: Do it regularly 

Step 5: Try a one-week assessment 

What are the advantages of using a time management matrix?

Be organized and clutter-free 

Prioritize like a pro

Level up your planning skills

The Bottom Line

What is the Time Management Matrix?

Time Management Matrix is a success formula many successful business companies embrace following Stephen Covey’s seven habits. Time management is more than just noting start and end times; it’s about using time wisely to complete tasks productively.

This matrix offers a clever way to organize and prioritize tasks based on their importance and urgency. Imagine a world where everything is organized and nothing falls through the cracks – just like nature’s perfect schedule. Wouldn’t it be great if we could handle urgent situations proactively?

Well, with the four quadrants of the Matrix, you can do just that and streamline your professional life:

Quadrant 1: Urgent and important

This quadrant is about urgent and important tasks that demand your immediate attention. Think of it like a fire alarm during an important office meeting. You’d prioritize dealing with the emergency over anything else. It’s about tackling critical tasks to avoid severe consequences.

Quadrant 2: Not urgent, but important

Here, you focus on important tasks related to long-term goals. These tasks require careful planning to achieve your objectives within a specified period. Imagine working on a project without a fixed deadline, but you plan it meticulously using monthly Gantt charts and daily to-do lists. It could even include health maintenance, exercise, and nurturing relationships.

Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important

This houses tasks that are urgent but not truly important. You might often find yourselves dealing with these attention-seeking distractions. Paying utility bills or answering an office call while spending time with family are common examples. 

Quadrant 4: Neither urgent nor important

Lastly, you have Quadrant 4, the dustbin of tasks. These are time-wasting activities like excessive social media use, TV watching, or gaming. While you can’t eliminate them, you can minimize the time spent in this quadrant.

Time Management MatrixQ1: Urgent and important ManageQuadrant 2: Not urgent, but important FocusQuadrant 3: Urgent, but not important AvoidQuadrant 4: Neither urgent nor important Limit

Also Read: Employee Productivity: The Ultimate Guide

What’s in your maintenance matrix?

Let’s examine your maintenance matrix and how it affects your daily activities. 

Start by asking yourself a few key questions:

Where do you primarily spend your workday – in Q1, Q2, Q3, or Q4 of the Time Management Matrix?

Draw your Time Management Matrix and log your activities for the next three days in 30-minute increments. 

Were your initial assumptions correct? Take note of where you’re spending the majority of your time.

Now, think about making a positive change. Identify one activity or response you can tweak to shift more of your daily tasks into Q2 – that sweet spot of important and not urgent.

Also, consider the communication, support, or tools you need to make this change stick for the long term.

Are you still, finding it tough to shift into Q2? Delegation or outsourcing can be your go-to. For instance, think of a reliable BPO tool that can handle call logs or control system backups while you focus on strategic planning.

How to Use the Time Management Matrix?

Step 1: Identify your priorities 

The time management matrix challenges you to question whether tasks are truly important or only seem urgent. Start by assigning each task to one of the four quadrants – this graphical aid makes it easy to see where each task belongs.

Step 2: Write it down

Whether you jot it down with pen and paper or use a digital tool, writing down your priorities is crucial. Chronicling tasks creates a visual reminder and engages your thought process.

Step 3: Include deadlines 

Assign deadlines to each task, helping you prioritize it first. Some tasks may need to be bumped up the list, while others can wait based on your set dates.

Step 4: Do it regularly 

The frequency of this time management process depends on your unique circumstances. Whether you review and update weekly or daily, consistency is key. Set aside a specific time for this activity to ensure continuity.

Step 5: Try a one-week assessment 

Try the weekly assessment approach. Have six blank matrices – one for each workday and one for the weekend. At the end of each day, fill in the matrix with the day’s activities and the time spent on each task. At the end of the week, summarize all activities in one matrix.

This weekly review brings awareness to the activities that shape your week and helps you recognize if they are truly urgent and essential.

What are the advantages of using a time management matrix?

Here are the advantages of using the time management matrix and how it can transform your days and performance:

Be organized and clutter-free 

The time management matrix works like a personal organizer. It guides you to examine your to-dos carefully and neatly sort them into the relevant quadrants. No more confusion about where things belong – you’ll have a clear picture of each task’s rightful place.

Prioritize like a pro

With the four quadrants in hand, you’ll become a master at prioritizing tasks. You can easily understand their importance and urgency and confidently place them in the most suitable quadrant. This way, you’ll know exactly where to focus your time and energy.

Level up your planning skills

Now that you grasp your duties and responsibilities, planning becomes a breeze. You’ll map out your weeks efficiently, balancing work, family, friends, and personal time. Gradually, you’ll become a planning pro, setting the stage for heightened productivity.

The Bottom Line

The time Management Myths is your ultimate tool for planning tasks based on their importance and deadlines, ensuring you tackle them immediately. 

Those four quadrants play a key role in categorizing your tasks, paving the way for developing top-notch planning skills.

With this matrix, you’ll be on the path to a fulfilling and balanced professional and personal life. 

[kilopassociation]

Mushroom wars 2 4pda

#MUSHROOM WARS 2 4PDA FOR FREE#

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#MUSHROOM WARS 2 4PDA ANDROID#

#MUSHROOM WARS 2 4PDA PC#

Simple hack and slash game playable on your android, ipod/iphone, and browser (as a facebook game), and you can use your characters on any system. Originally a paid app, it is now free, so you should pick it up! Graphics are detailed and crisp in standard Vector Unit fashion, and the game is optimized for Tegra 3. Drive around the beach collecting coins that look suspiciously like the awesome face. Kart racer from the makers of Riptide GP. Great intense gameplay and wubwub soundtrack. Excellent graphics that wouldn't be out of place in a regular console. Over-the-top arcade racer in the same vein of Burnout. Not great for much but dicking around and seeing what you can make, but hey, it's mostly free. You start with Earth, Fire, Air and Water, and from various combinations of these, create different elements. Good to memorize the elements on the periodic table.

#MUSHROOM WARS 2 4PDA FULL#

If the game has a free version or demo that's good enough you'd play it without ever buying the full version, it goes here.Ĭool incremental puzzle where you must fuse elements on a wheel. If a game is free to install, but pay-for-play, it goes in the other list.

Other than smartphones and tablets, there are also many Android-based handhelds, micro-consoles, mini-PCs / TV boxes, smartwatches, and other devices.

Get either a controller clip for an Xbox controller or if you have USB-C, get the Razer Kishi. There are several brands of pads to choose. Not all games are compatible, so check this massive list. But there are several Bluetooth gamepads with holders, designed specifically for smartphones, and some even for tablets. And even then, you can override much of the interface by installing alternative launchers. So, before buying, do some research and decide if you like the manufacturer's style.

#MUSHROOM WARS 2 4PDA ANDROID#

Since Android is open, manufacturers are allowed (much to Google's chagrin) to add their own "touches" to the system, such as extra apps or a different interface.

So if you're buying a phone from some Chinese store, use this guide and check that the phone is compatible with your network. And to complicate matters, some American carriers use CDMA, whereas the rest of the world uses GSM.

Different countries and carriers use different frequencies for their phone networks.

Carrier-subsidized phones are ultimately far more expensive, may have locked bootloaders, and often have added bloatware.

If possible, buy unlocked phones from independent stores.

But this does not mean you need some $600 flagship at this point, even a sub-$200 phone can be pretty solid. Don't expect an ancient device to run demanding games or emulators well. Handy if you get buyer's remorse or find your device can't handle some app well.

Google Play gives a 2 hours grace period: after you buy an app, the Google Play page will display a 'refund' button.

Some emulation apps are available at the SlideME marketplace, some are on the Google Play Store!

Offline Mobile Games - website dedicated to offline games only!.

Blackmart, Aptoide, Happy Chick, Mobilism, 4pda - We won't provide the links, but you can certainly find them out there.

Itch.io - A collection of both free and paid Android games.

#MUSHROOM WARS 2 4PDA FOR FREE#

Amazon Appstore - Amazon's app market offers a different paid app for free every day.F-Droid - A catalogue of Android free/open source apps.SlideME marketplace - Download emulation apps from here.AppBrain - An alternative way of browsing the apps available on Google Play.Google Play Store - Default "app store" that every 'droid phone should have.

#MUSHROOM WARS 2 4PDA PC#

Speaking of which, it is possible to run it on your PC with Android x86. So it's basically PC mustard race, for phones. Commercial developers still tend to prefer Apple, as its users seem to have more disposable income, but indie and emulator developers have flocked to Android because it is much less locked down (yarr!). Google's Android is the world's most popular mobile operating system, towering above Apple's iOS everywhere but in the USA and a handful of other countries.

[bucksmmorg]

Roblox download loop

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP HOW TO#

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP INSTALL#

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP UPGRADE#

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP FULL#

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP CODE#

This is designed for Windows/Mac OS computers (maybe linux and its distros.) Anyways, this application worked really well and helped me join games.

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP UPGRADE#

When the non-admin user tries to upgrade that shared install, it always ends in failure. The Forgotten - Fire Emblem Three Houses. To play ROBLOX on Chrome OS, download it from the Play Store. Once the admin user installs Roblox, it is shared among all users.roblox forloop for count 1, 5 do print (count) end. Red Headed Outlaw - Henry Stick-min Collection while true do - Your script here - Every loop needs a wait increment, or your game might crash wait (1) end.☆Into The Pit / En el Pozo - Español Remix Cover☆®.Roblox is the ultimate virtual universe that lets you create, share experiences with friends, and be anything you can imagine. use the abilities of characters UVC Systems Roblox Video Star and Discord. We're looking forward to hearing from you! Download Roblox and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Follow DVwast freeload background music mp3 files from Melody Loops In. You can use the box at the bottom of this page to leave a comment. If you are happy with the information above, please share it to your friends. Is 1:26 minutes long and has been viewed about 82,528 views times. "The Chad Song" - National Anthem of Chad Alternatively, in case all of the Roblox codes above don't work for you, try doing a search on our site to find more codes for it.

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP CODE#

You can try the first code or the second one, it does not matter.

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP HOW TO#

If you see more than one Roblox code for a single song, don't worry, they are simply backups since Roblox can take down songs because of copyright issues. Hey guys Welcome back to another video :D Today ill be showing you how to fix the Roblox Download Loop This is pretty easy btw. Read the loops section of the help area and our terms and conditions. If you use this loop please leave your comments. This Roblox course shows you how to add a score system and randomise events using loops, both of which are great features for any Roblox game.

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP INSTALL#

Just choose a good one, download the free trial, and use it to install the application. This 160 bpm trap drum loop has been kindly uploaded by Fratricide. What causes the Configuring Roblox Loop Issue After going through several user reports on various websites, we gathered a list of the possible causes of the issue to have a better grasp. Hey guys Welcome back to another video :D Today ill be showing you how to fix the Roblox 'Download Loop' This is pretty easy btw. Roblox works best over Wi-Fi.Chad anthem was ranked 33703 in our total library of 70.000+ Roblox ID. Tags : 160 bpm Trap Loops Drum Loops 2.02 MB wav Key : Unknown FL Studio. Join millions of players and discover an infinite variety of immersive worlds. PLEASE NOTE: A network connection is required to join. Download Roblox - Roblox is the ultimate virtual universe that lets you play, create, and be anything you can imagine. Hang out with friends around the world using chat features, private messages, and groups! With an ever-expanding catalog of items, there’s no limit to the looks you can create. What causes the Configuring Roblox Loop Issue After going through several user reports on various websites, we gathered a list of the possible causes of the issue to have a better grasp.

#ROBLOX DOWNLOAD LOOP FULL#

Roblox features full cross-platform support, meaning you can join your friends and millions of other people on their computers, mobile devices, Xbox One, or VR headsets.īe creative and show off your unique style! Customize your avatar with tons of hats, shirts, faces, gear, and more. In the mood for an epic adventure? Want to compete against rivals worldwide? Or do you just want to hang out and chat with your friends online? A growing library of experiences created by the community means there’s always something new and exciting for you every day. Join millions of people and discover an infinite variety of immersive experiences created by a global community!Īlready have an account? Log in with your existing Roblox account and explore the infinite metaverse of Roblox. Infinite 'Getting Latest Roblox' Loop Roblox Support Infinite 'Getting Latest Roblox' Loop The infinite 'Getting Latest Roblox' loop is typically something that happens when Roblox didn't install properly.

[utilitycaster]

So, to keep dunking on Pathfinder/3.5e and also for lack of a better term...indie, looser systems, I do have a handful of reasons why the systems themselves don't sound like things I'm into but more generally the reason I keep making cheap jokes is because the way people sell these systems is so antithetical to what I want out of TTRPGs. Which doesn't mean they're not good, or that they're not right for other people! But god...you are not superior for liking something other than D&D 5e, you are just a person who isn't into that particular experience and if you want to get people to play other games...learn to fucking sell it.

The crunch of pathfinder has some appeal, because I do love math and rules, but it always feels like the arguments go like this.

"I can't figure out how DCs in 5e get set!"

"well, the DM sets it based on a rough estimate of difficulty, using their brain; the DM's Guide gives a scale broken down by 5-point increments that you can use."

"What? You mean I, an inveterate metagamer cannot find it by adding up 8 numbers based on the weather, my class, my feats, active spells, and the migration patterns of nearby birds in a process that brings the narrative to a screeching halt?"

Or else it goes like this (this is a literal screenshot from a reply on a shitpost I made about paladin archetypes):

Well, in 5e you are allowed to ride things without being good at dex on the grounds that the average normal person in a pre-industrial society would probably be able to sit on a horse (animal handling is also an option). You can play a halfling paladin by playing a halfling whose class is paladin, and if you cast summon steed a reasonable DM will allow you to flavor said steed as a celestial wardog. You do not need special abilities to...turn around? in 5e? damn you lived like this? and sure, you can have a spear or lance as your weapon. I guess charging doesn't do much in 5e (the charger feat exists but isn't amazing) but like, you could do it.

Like, seriously, so many posts are like "I don't see a ruleset for how I can confirm I was able to drink my coffee without dropping it on the floor? 5e seems bad" and in general 3.5e/Pathfinder appear to treat your character as a Sim or something, where if the ladder disappears from the pool you're just like "guess I'll die" [note: I haven't played either 3.5e, Pathfinder, nor the Sims but like. I'm right.] And if you want to play this that's fine! Crunch can be very fun! but god it's unnecessary and it seems like there are too many rules for the sake of just like, having rules.

Moving on to the looser systems, the "just a d100" or "just a d6" ones that "foster more RP": so many of these "foster more RP" by having systems that actively corral the conversation, or PC emotions, instead of just...letting people talk. I actually find things like Monsterhearts "turn someone on" mechanic or the sanity mechanics in Call of Cthulhu really off-putting! I'd rather be allowed to respond to things genuinely, in character.

"But M," you say "that's kind of the point of Call of Cthulhu, the sanity slippage." And you know what? You're absolutely right! Because that is where my point is leading:

The TTRPG game you pick should be mostly based on the kind of story you want to tell, and anyone who ignores that in their considerations can themselves be ignored.

I happen to enjoy Dungeons & Dragons because I enjoy that particular form of fantasy in a quasi-early renaissance* setting, and I would, perchance, like to explore a dungeon and maybe even fight a dragon. I do not want to be dealing with horrors beyond comprehension**, except in the sense that I'd like to smite/disintegrate/viciously mock them. I do not want to pretend I am in high school again, under literally any circumstances, even if I can hex people. I like fantasy combat because I am both simmering with incandescent range basically always and yet I cannot typically act on it*** and I'd like to be able to save the world through hitting things with a sweet-ass sword or casting. Hyping up a system because it lacks combat is absolutely the wrong tack with me.

And if you don't like that it's fine! But I have yet to see someone actually make an argument, to me specifically, for a different system, that actually accounted for even a whiff of my own personal preference and honestly at this point the damage, while not irreversible, is pretty severe; my attitude towards anyone trying to steer me from D&D 5e is pretty cynical.****

*look I will pick many battles on any hills wagering that ultimately I will only die on one and this is on the list. Anyway if printed books are available and gunpowder has reached your vaguely European-in-flavor society? It's Renaissance.

**always thought this quote was from Lovecraft but it's from Tesla, objectively a much better dude despite a shitty dude using his name to sell cars.

***Yes. I am an eldest daughter. Why do you ask.

****This is also the root cause of why I adamantly refuse to watch either Titanic or Finding Nemo.

[farshores]

What mods do you have running for your games?

I'm just gonna share the ones i have in mind for Tei's games bcus I use Vortex's profile feature to make multiple modded playthroughs & that'll just go on forever sharing those lists lol

Note this is an SSE modlist (that gets a lil long) & doesn't represent the load order these mods are in. There's are 4 specific lists for mods I added for: followers, fun/flavor, for general bug fixes/QOL improvements, & the respective patches

also note that im kinda tired atm & also just lack braincells so if there's something wildly misspelled lmk so i can fix it asap lol

Alrighty here we goooooo

FOLLOWERS + FRAMEWORK

Extensible Follower Framework

Interesting NPCS

Lucifer - Argonian Custom Voiced Follower

Khash The Argonian (A Fully Custom Voiced Follower)

Scouts-Many-Marshes Improved

Inigo

Nebarra

Miraak - Dragonborn Follower SE

Kaidan 2

Lucien - Immersive Fully Voiced Male Follower

Auri - Song of the Green

Gladys the Corgi

FUN/FLAVOR/VANILLA+/WHATEVER CAUGHT MY EYE LIKE THE EASILY AMUSED FOOL I AM

SkyHUD

A Matter of Time

Fuz Ro D'oh

More Informative Console

Alternate Start Live Another Life

New Beginnings - Live Another Life Extension SSE

Simple Follower Sandbox

Pronouns

Classic Classes and Birthsigns (Reimagined) _ Racial Levelling addon

Experience

Optional Starting Spells

SUNS - Season Unending Neutral Stance

Campfire

Simply Rest Anywhere

Immersive Movement

True Storms Special Edition

Supreme Rainstorms SE

Supreme Blizzards SE

Wet and Cold

iNeed [Will be replacing with Last Seed - Primary Needs]

Touring Carriages

Simply No Fast Travel

Weighted - A Compatible Item Weight Mod

Civil War Aftermath SE

Civil War Neutrality SSE

Diverse Skyrim SSE

Hearthfire Multiple Adoptions and Custom Home Support SE

Forgotten Magic Redone

Mysticism Spells for NPCS (high level + spells for spellcasters files)

Mysticism - A Magic Overhaul

Adamant - A Perk Overhaul

Arena - An Encounter Zone Overhaul + Harder Easy Spawns optional file

Apothecary - An Alchemy Overhaul + Food and Drink Addon

Apothecary - Instant Restore Potions (separate mod someone made to undo the recovery time change Apothecary added to potions)

Pantheon - Worship and Prayer

Pilgrim - A Religion Overhaul (NOTE: THE HIRCINE SHRINES WILL NOT WORK IF YOU HAVE HUNTERBORN ENABLED! IF YOU WANT HIRCINES BLESSING - GET IT FIRST THEN ADD ON HUNTERBORN)

Blade and Blunt - A Combat Overhaul

Incremental Injuries

Strike Obstruction Systems - Combat Blocking Overhaul

Leviathan Animations...All of em

Manbeast - A Werewolf Overhaul

Canis Hysteria

Diverse Werewolves Collection

Diverse Werewolves Collection - Player Replacer

Werewolf Feral Beast Run - Faster Werewolves

Simple Werewolf Favorite Howls Menu

Unlimited Werewolf Transformations

Werewolf Loot and Activate

Bigger Tails for Werewolves

Hypertrichosis - Alpha Extra Gore Edition-

Hircine Restoration Project

Mundus - A Standing Stone Overhaul

Aetherius - A Race Overhaul

Dragonborn - Shouts Perk Tree + portable optional file

Dragon War - A Dragon Overhaul + Variants Optional File

Forceful Tongue - Shouts Overhaul

Sil Gahrot - Improved Shout Learning

Dragon Combat Overhaul UPGRADED BABY YEAH

Aurbic Alduin

Talkative Dragons

Enigma Series -AIO-

Play as a Dragon

Sets of Skill - A Skyrim Class Mod

You Are Not a Novice - High Level Start (To be soon added)!

TK Dodge SE

TK Hitstop SE

Ultimate Combat SE

True Directional Movement

True Directional Movement - Tail Behavior Fix

Better Jumping SE

d13 Faster Get Up Stand Up SSE

Immersive Armors SSE

Immersive Weapons

Practical Female Armors SE

Redguard Noble Armor

Signature Equipment

Bandolier Bags and Pouches Classic SE

Guard Dialogue Overhaul SE

Immersive Patrols SE

Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul

Immersive College of Winterhold

Better ICW Map

Convenient Horses

RaceMenu

Racial Body Morphs

Bodyslide and Outfite Studio

CBBE

CBBE Rugged Preset

Pride of Valhalla CBBE

HIMBO (quick note: you don't need the NSFW mods in the requirements list! If you're messing around w/ mods of that nature it's required but if not, it's safe to just up n download the file - just use the underwear options when batch building)

Vanilla Warpaints Absolution

Authentic Eyes

BeastHHBB + Immersive Encounters file + Kharjo alt file

Beast Race Bodypaints SE

Forgotten Argonian Roots (FAR)

Horns Are Forever SE

Argonian Improvement Horns SSE

Digitigrade Beast Races for Skyrim SE

Better Claws and Gauntlets SSE

BAT - Bigger Argonian Tails

Tail Armors

Interesting Beasts and Beards to Find Them

Dominions More Argonians

Adoptable Argonian Hatchling Chases Starlight SSE

My Little Hatchling Ram-Ku

Cyb's Interesting Natural People NPCs SE -3DNPC-

Real Bosses

EVE - Arvak Burning Hooves Restored

EVE - Footstep Sounds Restored

EVE - Giant Campfires Cast Shadows (Standard Vers)

EVE - Tavern Ambiance Sounds Restored

EVE - Ice Skating Fixed

TESL- Loading Screens

Less Boring Loading Screens

Loading Screen Smoke Removed

Immersive World Encounters SE

SkyTEST

SkyTEST Bellyaches HD collection

SkyTEST - Better Sheep SE

SkyTEST - Mihail's chicks replacer

SkyTest- Mihail's goose replacer

Hunterborn

Seagulls of Skyrim

Serana Dialogue Edit

Vampiric Serana

The Choice is Yours

Timing is Everything SE

At Your Own Pace (Misc & Main files)

Thieves Guild Requirements SE

Barenziah Quest Markers SSE

Autumnwatch Addition

Pandorable's Kaidan SE

Mannequin Stay Put

Simple Forsworn

Simple Outfit Manager (Might need to toss this one, I think EFF handles outfits as well)

Run For Your Lives

Sarcastic Player Dialogue

Let Me Drop It

More Tavern Idles - compatibility version

Honed Metal SSE Updated

Honed Metal Revoiced

Honed Metal - Additional Materials

Death is Highly Overrated 2021

Save the Dark Brotherhood

Your Choices Matter - Dark Brotherhood Expansion SSE

Shut Up Night Mother

Skald's Mail

Missives

Headhunter - Bounties Redone

Store Entrance Doorbells

Paarthurnax Quest Expansion

The Library of Paarthurnax

Immersive Good Boy

Smart No More Stupid Dog

PC Head Tracking

Alternate Conversation Camera

Realistic Ragdolls and Force SE

Redguard Children Skintone Fix

Skyland 8K Night Skies

Wearable Lanterns

Wearable Lanterns MCM Fix

Xbox Control Scheme (Full file version)

IN GENERAL BUG FIXES/QOL IMPROVEMENTS/MAIN REQS FOR A GOOD CHUNK OF THESE MODS

SKSE 64

Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch

SkyUI SE

SkyUI - Flashing Savegames Fix

Cutting Room Floor

Enhanced Lights and FX

UIExtensions

Static Mesh Improvement Mod

Underwater Visibility Fix

Engine Fixes

NetScriptFramework Skyrim SE

Papyrus Extender SSE

PapyrusUtil SE

Address Library for SKSE Plugins

Face Discoloration Fix SE

Jaxonz MCM Kicker SE

MCM Helper SE

Monster race crash fix

Spell Perk Item Distributor - SSE (SPID)

PATCHES...SO MANY PATCHES

Save the Dark Brotherhood Patch (available under the Your Choices Matter file tab)

Unoffical Enhanced Lights and FX ELFX SMIM fps patch for SE (own mod under same name)

Alternate Start ELFX Hardcore Patch (own mod under the same name)

Apothecary USSEP Patch (Available under Apothecary's files)

Apothecary SktTEST patch (currently unavailable)

Apothecary Hunterborn & Campfire Patch (Both available thru "Apothecary Food and Drink patches")

BEASTHHBB - Immersive College of Winterhold Patch (Available in BeastHHBBs file tab, might need to do a bit of scrolling)

Dragonborn - Adamant Patch (Available in Dragonborn - Shouts Perk Tree's optional files tab iirc)

Talkative Dragons Enigma patch (under files for "Enigma Series Compatibility Patches (Official)")

Forceful Tongue - SimonRim Patch (Under "Forceful Tongue"s file tab)

iNeed Universal Water Patch (own mod under the same name)

True Storms - Supreme Rainstorms Patch (Under Supreme Rainstorms SE files tab)

Interesting NPCs Cutting Room Floor, EFF, Alt Start patches (all available under the Interesting NPCs file tab)

Inigo Marriage Commentary Patch for Kaidan 2 (own mod under same name)

Missives -Solstheim Patch (under Missives Worldspace Additions)

Khash the Argonian Patches (under Khash's file tab)

kryptopyr's patch hub installer (its own mod under the same name, has a lil fomod to help pick out your patches)

lilebonymace patches (same as above)

[idleincrementalgamer]

I haven't done one of these in a while (my toddler chucked my computer and it has some issues) but let's take another look at the Ultimate List of Incremental Games next up is Cern Particle Clicker

It's a basic little clicker no prestige system and very simple upgrades. I really like the visual and its covered in tool tips to learn about the titular particle accelerator. There's so many games doing more better that I wouldn't necessarily suggest it, but if you just want a simple clicker it definitely fits the bill. 6/10 no bells or whistles but solid basics for a few hours of clickin

[magnoliapip]

Potential Open Heart Love Interests Who Were Wasted

By now, we all understand that Pixelberry has wasted every single fragment of potential that the Open Heart series had. Frequently overshadowed by aimless plotlines and unbalanced attention toward the four love interests we had is the vast array of potential love interests the OH series could have had. This list is the top 10 (yes, 10) love interests PB wasted. This means that this list will not be discussing the wasted potential in the four love interests we were handed (Bryce, Jackie, Rafael and Ethan).

Please note that some of these (especially toward the bottom) are included more for fan service than for actual wasted potential. Also, these are all my own opinions. Please feel free to share your own! There may be spoilers below. Viewer discretion is advised!

---------

#10 -- Baz Mirani

Not introduced until Book 2 of the Open Heart series, Baz is the friendlier and more outgoing of the two Doctors Mirani. One of the top in his field of immunology, Baz manages to balance his intellect with an easygoing nature. A relaxed positivity that almost comes off as too much. He was never really around enough, nor did he have the right interactions with MC in the series to feel like a fully developed love interest. However, after having the options in another PB book Laws of Attraction, it might have been interesting to see how it would turn out if MC could hook up with Baz.

#9 -- June Hirata

Also not introduced until Book 2, Dr. Hirata is a ruthless force to be reckoned with. A cunning behavior psychologist and brilliant neurologist, one can never really know what to expect from June, though this is mostly because no one can tell if her actions are genuine. After MC is told how June “earned” her place on the diagnostics team, it becomes clear that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Honestly, the prospect of having that directed toward MC...yeah, I want it. Badly. The only reason she isn’t higher on the list is because of her social inconsistency..

#8 -- Zaid Mirani

One of two senior residents introduced to the MC in book 1, Zaid is partly responsible for managing the interns. Zaid is the more blunt of the Mirani twins and can come off as an ass. He’s also shown to have a softer side that comes out in increasing increments throughout the series culminating in a touching moment in book 3. Once more, Zaid isn’t someone the MC interacts with a whole lot throughout the books, acting more as a recurring character to pop up once or twice a book, but I think that is a crock. I wanted more Zaid and I’m sorry we didn’t get it.

#7 -- Elijah Greene

A fellow intern at Edenbrook Hospital, MC meets Elijah in book 1 along with the rest of their group of friends. Elijah quickly becomes a steadfast friend and even a roommate. Clearly a brilliant doctor with a future in research, Elijah balances this with his upbeat personality and love of science fiction and gaming. Characters like Elijah often get relegated to the realm of being a best friend and it might have been nice to see him opened up as a possible love interest. He’s fiercely loyal, as seen by his defense in book 2 at the baseball game, and is steadfastly determined to get where he wants to be. There’s a lot to be admired in Elijah, but considering PB dropped his canon love interest, Phoebe, I shouldn’t be surprised that he was never an option anyway.

#6 -- Sienna Trinh

Sienna is literally the best.

I should just end it there because anyone who has read the series knows, but for the sake of this list…Sienna is an ally of MC’s right from the moment they meet, when Sienna helps get MC out of a sticky situation. This perfectly encompasses Sienna’s character. She spends the entire series taking care of everyone but herself and being just the sweetest, kindest, most amazing baker and chinchilla mommy that exists. After what happens in book 1 and book 2 with both of her canon love interests, well, #Siennadeservesbetter. And I think her fellow dolphin would have been the perfect person for her. 

The only reason she is so far down on the list is because she does make such an incredible best friend.

#5 -- Harper Emery

The female older mentor to match Ethan. Harper would have been in a more compromised position, not just being a direct superior to MC like Ethan, but also being the Chief of Medicine for the hospital. As an admin, watching her toe the line between desire and propriety would have been just *chef’s kiss*. Instead, her role was consigned to being the family member too hard on their younger charge, projecting what she wants but can’t have onto Aurora. Now that I think about it, that last sentence makes me want it even more.

Besides, it would have been another female love interest rather than the one that we seem to get every book and a woman of color at that.

#4 -- Landry Olsen

I know what you’re thinking but just hear me out for a second and then you can eviscerate me in the comments.

Landry is a character that has me torn in more ways than one. First, I love the twist in book 1 where we see him for who he “truly is”. It was unexpected and a lovely change.

That notwithstanding, I was also deeply saddened to see yet another promising story not come to pass. See, there aren’t many characters like Landry who are so incredibly awkward but also come off as friendly. It was a lovely change of pace and it would have been amazing, just the sweetest, to see MC bring Landry out of his shell. MC could have helped Landry gain confidence to do far more than talk to the girl across the bar. Before the end of the book, he would have been having a full ass conversation with Ethan and maybe even mustering up the bravery to ask MC out. All of the pieces were there, either as platonic friend or love interest. Instead, Landry lived long enough to see himself become the villain. But my friends to lovers slowburn adoring heart will always have a piece longing for what could have been. Judge me if you will.

#3 -- Tobias Carrick

Originally introduced in book 2 to be to Ethan what Mass Kenmore is to Edenbrook, Tobias’ story takes a flip once book 3 comes around. Immediately compelling from the get go, Tobias shows a charming competitive nature sprinkled with arrogance, grey morality, and a devilish side. Tobias’ personality would either be completely in line with MC or completely against MC depending on how you tend to play the game. Both are completely valid and interesting options. Even before the infamous beet puns in book 3, Tobias made me want to know more. Tobias was the ultimate character in the Open Heart series that would have made a perfect one night stand. Alas, it seems we’ll never know more and must stick to the fantastic fanfiction writers on sites like this to sate us.

#2 -- Aurora Emery

Let me tell you, the line between #’s 1 and 2 is so thin it’s barely there. Those two are so close I almost can’t distinguish which one I wanted more. Aurora is first presented to MC and the gang as an intern who seems like she may become an antagonist of the series. As Book 1 presses on, we start to see Aurora in a whole new light. MC comes to understand why Aurora has the cold and closed off personality she does and when given the chances later in the series, Aurora opens up into almost an entirely different person as she finds herself outside of the expectations of her family.

Aurora is a brilliant doctor very nearly on the same level as MC and later seems to become a parallel to MC for what Tobias is to Ethan. Thankfully Aurora and MC’s relationship is a lot less volatile, but those brief fireworks make me really wish Aurora and MC would have officially been a thing. I feel like PB was weighing the option for a while but decided against it, much to their detriment.

However, I had to push Aurora down for one specific reason to come in the explanation for #1. And #1 is…

#1 -- Farley the Landlord

Be honest. After having Landry on this list, you thought this was a serious entry for a second, didn’t you? Just kidding!

(the real) #1 -- Kyra Santana

Kyra meets MC for the first time when Ethan dubiously introduces her to them because Kyra broke her arm in an accident. Right from the start, Kyra is an incorrigible flirt, obviously egged on by her cancer diagnosis and fear of death. Kyra has such an incredible story. Throughout books 1 and 2, Kyra is an incredible friend to MC and it breaks my heart that PB dropped her romantic storyline the way they did.

This is why Kyra edged out Aurora for #1. Going back and re-reading book 1, it’s always obvious that Kyra was meant to be a love interest. I’m not sure what stopped them from going forward with it. I’d like to think it had something to do with potential backlash for having a patient and their doctor get involved, but I think it has more to do with being a woman or a woman of color than anything else. Which is a damned shame. We stan Kyra Santana in this house and I wanted to leave with her at the end of book 2.

----

So what do you all think? Do you agree with any of my placements? Vehemently disagree with others? I wrote this at 2am when I couldn’t sleep and didn’t bother to proofread before posting so you’re welcome.

Let me know below and cross your fingers for the finale of Open Heart book 3 coming later today!!

[oliviajames1122]

There are three reasons why digital experiences don't meet customer expectations.

Websites are more important than ever. So, why do so many people continue to fall short? 

The divide between a positive and negative digital experience is expanding. And the costs of being on the wrong side of the split are rising: not only irritated customers, but also lost income, customer loyalty, and advocacy.

The continual digital exposure has resulted in soaring expectations for those of us who are online all the time. Let's face it, since the pandemic hit, that's most of us as Many business listings still don't live up to the hype.

There are a few basic but important reasons why so many businesses are still on the wrong track. Three of the most common mistakes are listed below:

Fail 1: The website's objective is not aligned

The demise of a website usually begins at the top. Customer experience and the reality that websites are ultimately about income are often forgotten when inside business department’s debate over their vision for the site.

The stakes are high, with e-commerce revenues predicted to increase from $4.8 trillion in 2021 to $6.4 trillion in 2024. According to studies, 40% of visitors would abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load, and 88 percent will not return after a negative user experience. For e-commerce companies, poor UX is a trillion-dollar problem. 35% of customer spending is lost because the user experience isn't up to standard business listings.

Websites become a jumble of conflicting aims and messaging that benefit no one if there is no knowledge of customers or a desire to convert website visitors. Businesses that succeed online internalize and map out the website's basic goal to establish empathy with customers, tell the brand narrative, and earn income then map it out on their website.

They understand that their primary goal is to make the consumer journey as seamless as possible.

Fail 2: Stuck in the dysfunction of reaching forever

If your organization hasn't agreed on the objective of its website, the accompanying digital jumble will definitely cause internal dissatisfaction and the complaints will mount. It may be more convenient at that point to simply wipe the slate clean and rebuild the entire site than deal with the difficulties one by one free listing.

However, reaching isn't the best option here. It's time-consuming, expensive, and just as likely to result in another shoddy website especially if the stakeholders are still squabbling over their share of the pie. It's time to say goodbye to reaches and rethink how websites are built and maintained. Forget about comprehensive overhauls. Get rid of the long list of prerequisites. The new game is all about speed and iteration.

I've worked with tens of thousands of businesses. What I've witnessed time and time again is that web teams must grasp the website's primary purpose and user experience in order to succeed. Then, in response to market and user demands, be agile enough to make regular, incremental modifications.

That's how Harvard redesigned their website and launched a dynamic homepage that allows for continuous, seamless changes. Reimagining one of the worlds most prominent and high-profile university websites necessitated a thorough grasp of the requirements and aspirations of its many audiences. The team discovered the demand for simplicity and involvement by researching user groups. The team was able to focus on simplifying difficult user routes and generating a feeling of universal and timely appeal as a result of this.

Treating your website as a live, breathing marketing asset that demands ongoing attention begins with a mental shift, followed by a procedural adjustment. Finally, having technologies that enable the marketing team to adapt to changing client requests in real time is essential.

Fail 3: IT bears the brunt of the responsibility

For many firms, attempting to fix a broken website goes like this: marketing submits a modification request to IT. Nothing occurs while they wait. They eventually send a senior executive to IT to figure out what's going on. It'll be a lengthy and arduous process, and it'll probably be insufficient to restore the website's former glory.

While the success of a company's website must begin at the top, continuous adjustments are frequently delegated to the IT department, despite the fact that customer-centric experiences are firmly in marketing's domain. However, rather than soloing this job within IT, a multi-stakeholder model that empowers frontline marketing staff with web ops tools can alleviate this challenge.

Tableau, for example, has devoted a small team to ensuring that its site is updated on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Without relying on technology, they were able to achieve steady and continuous development. What's the end result? Tableau's website now generates upwards of 95 percent of its income, with 7,000 personalized landing pages fetching upwards of 50,000 leads every month.

Consider how social media, email, and digital marketing all lead people back to the website. They are only remunerated if the website is successful. Allowing it to stagnate is a surefire way to digital oblivion. With consumer expectations skyrocketing and digital marketing driving conversions, it's time to treat corporate websites like the conversion machines they were designed to be.

[airlock]

airlock grades the Camus archetype

next in this series, we delve into the world of fancy jackets, ebon horses, and loves that cannot be. that’s right -- it’s the day in the lives of the one who was fortunate enough to fuck off into the ocean with no memories, and all the other ones who just straight-up died!

(do note: under cut are spoilers for… everything, and also a significant amount of me criticizing or blamming characters that you might like. you’ve been warned! but if you’d press on, then I’m afraid I have no choice but to face you on the battlefield-)

a foreword

so, I’m not trying to end up rating every single semi-sympathetic miniboss out here; to this end, I will be working with a very specific definition of a Camus for this exercise. I do not claim it to be the definition of a Camus; it’s simply what I’ll be working with. it’s as such: a Camus is a secondary villain who is characterized as virtuous, but tragically doomed to stand against the player characters, either in keeping with the aforementioned virtue, because of an overpowering external circumstance, or both.

so, let us dig in!

camoo

(7/10)

there he is, folks! the man whose dick launches thousands of ships, hurtling into each other on a maelstrom of tragedy.

a multitude of appearances -- matched only by a certain trio of flying girls -- has given him incredible room to expand as a complex, dynamic character. where his original appearance alone might blip as gently tragic but not incredibly compelling, he’s incrementally gained a robust character, and ultimately got to be one of the ones who managed to elude the pits of data size issues in Akaneian characterization.

screaming camus

(1/10)

is it a stretch to tout him as a “virtuous” character? perhaps, but for the purposes of classification alone, intent weighs a little more than execution, and I think it’s clear that the writers had intended for Berkut to be sympathetic, but tragic, as far as secondary antagonists go.

unfortunately, though, they failed big time. Ian Sinclair’s stellar voice acting counts in Berkut’s favor, but little else does. his character is nigh-on pastiche and he seems to hog a lot of screentime without adding anything of significant interest to the story or to other characters. his motivations, while genuine enough, are irritatingly played by the narrative as being sympathetic when they absolutely are not; and worst of all, his fall from grace is severely cheapened by ending on a note of easy redemption that he does not at all deserve.

mongolian camus

(4/10)

in concept, this is a brillant player punch; as if Hardin wasn’t enough, you have to make enemies of even more of those who fought by your side on the previous game, and this guy -- alongside his underlings bar Roshea -- aren’t even fighting you because they’ve gone mad; they’re the same as they were before, and it’s only unfortunate that now, their master is no longer on your side.

however, further labor on the execution front would have been invaluable here. as far as Camuses (camusi? camii? camee?) go, the ole Wolfpack has a lot less time in the limelight than is par for the course, and the one-two maps they haunt don’t leave enough room to draw out the drama.

I’m not docking points for this, but New Mystery of the Emblem also does the Wolfpack a serious disservice in making them all recruitable. besides being a cowardly evasion from the tragedies of war that Fire Emblem is well-known to mercilessly portray, it’s not even a better outcome for them personally. like, have you seen Wolf’s epilogue? and it’s only further a shame after Shadow Dragon went and made Wolf and Sedgar so busted they may have had a better chance to leave an impression on the player -- which would then have made it all the more of a gut twister if they’d remained as full proper... goddamnit I’m not doing the plural Camus thing again.

wine camus

(10/10)

without hesitation, one of the most effective... camus characters, okay, there, I settled that... ever written. it’s sad enough when you have to snuff out someone nice because war is hell and the world is an awful place, but having the guy be the protagonist’s best friend is just ruthless.

and it’s not just text, either; it’s set up brillantly. Eldigan and Sigurd’s good bond is put well on display before it’s brutally shattered. he’s even given an unusual out in that you don’t have to kill him -- but if you don’t, Chagall will! hoohoohoo, Jugdral is the bestworst.

seriously, though, I think I’ve honest to god cried at least once about Eldigan, and making me cry is pretty difficult -- like, outside of an argument or other situation where crying totally sabotages me so of course my body will do that to me.

thunder camus

(5/10)

I appreciate an extremely powerful female character as much as anyone should, but other than that, I will have to admit that I don’t find her incredibly compelling.

although Genealogy of the Holy War may have been the game that gave us Hilda, it very much betrays the Kagaman’s hesitancy in letting women be villainous, and there are not many better examples of this than Ishtar here. as far as Camus characters (hahahaha! I am unstoppable!) go, she’s one of the most virtuous -- and also one with the flimsiest reasons for staying the course of villainy anyway.

like, sure, she has a boyfriend who turned into satan. we sure get told that. and then it stays as absolutely nothing other than text, when she tends to act like she’s being forced by the greatest of all powers to continue opposing you. Thracia 776 at least strengthens the script by depicting the extant relationship as an abusive one, which would shed a little more sense into things, but it’s too little too late; too late because it’s one whole game later, and too little because Ishtar and Julius are not focal characters of that game and don’t have enough room to expand in there. (plus, it’s not a great idea for Julius anyway -- he’s hellspawn, not a smooth operator.)

tiny hand camus

(5/10)

curiously, I’d actually bill Reinhardt here as a hybrid Camus-Michalis -- while his arc swallows elements of inevitable tragedy such as a star-crossed crush and a superior that he won’t defy, it never feels like he has to fight you in the way that a Camus normally does; rather, it feels like he chooses to anyway because of his shortcomings, in the way that a Michalis normally does.

and putting these things together... well, I’m grading the whole character here, but let’s be real, he’s far more effective of a Michalis than a Camus. intent regadless, sympathy isn’t usually the sentiment that he flints up, and I believe even Olwen is ultimately of that mindset; still, it gets to be a shame that he makes the choices he does when he’s otherwise not such an overtly repugnant type.

(I went this whole time not talking about Heroes, yes? that’s because I’m not going there. not the memes, not his thorougly botched characterization there, nothing.)

alamo camus

(2/10)

I believe that Galle and Murdock are intended as Camus characters (booyaka booyaka! shakalaka!) as well, but they’re so painfully inconsequential I’m not going to get sidetracked in their direction here.

Brunnya is not that much better off than they are, alas; she gets a little more screentime, but remains underdeveloped until her one chapter in the limelight. she does get to play an interesting role as a Camus who outlives her master and still decides to carry on his will, but we’ve seen better and more compelling all over this list.

double camus

(9/10)

oh, snap, there are two of them! ... well, so there were in Genealogy of the Holy War, but these here bros aren’t to be analyzed in isolation.

the moral complexities that they play at together are interesting, but I think that the coolest aspect of their character, by far, is that they play at being direct counterparts to Eliwood and Hector. the charming, reasonable one and the brutish, straightforward one who strengthen each other through their balance -- they’re shining mirrors of what could have been, or what comes to be when you take the same strengths as those of the heroes but place them irrevocably in the path of the villains. ... hmmm, I wonder if they’d have a non-adoptive sister if Lyn were, like, relevant at that point of the story.

their screentime is surprisingly short, but all indicates that they make tidal waves on the little time they have. I’m certain they’d have benefitted from more, but they’re still amongst the best of the Camus characters (I did it again!! I did it again!!).

not severa camus

(8/10)

although her tale is not as gut-wrenching as Eldigan’s or the Reed bros’, she’s one perfectly adequate Camus. virtuous, and impactfully so, but loyal to the end, and justifiedly so -- both in a relevant backstory and in a string of deceptions and misfortunes that play her stronger qualities against her.

I don’t find her to be a standout, but she’s a perfect execution of her own concept -- and considering the staggering amount of unfulfilled potential we’ve seen up to here, that deserves its due praise.

tincan camus

(4/10)

although he’s fairly interesting, the sins of his master befall him -- the reveal of his identity is severly dragged-out for also meaning very little until the additional reveal of his brand. and by then, it’s doomed to be only a blur out of the many unfulfilled twists in the Tower of Guidance.

even beneath the mask, he’s had a lot of chances for player punches that he missed out on. his confrontation with Greil emphatizes his role as Ashnard’s underling, instead of his role as Greil’s former student and Ike’s newly-made archrival, and I feel like that’s a severe mistake -- for one thing, it forces the cutscene to end with a lame halfway intervention from Caineghis, where it would’ve been perfectly viable for Ike to walk out of that one alive exclusively due to Zelgius’s own motivations.

even beyond that, his appearances in both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn often play him as a plot device instead of a character; as a matter of fact, that ridiculous magic warp powder of his accomplishes no purpose other than enabling him to be a plot device wherever plot needs him (aside from how it silently explains how he lives a double life in two different countries, but that’s kind of a pointless detail).

and lastly, just how impossibly lame is it that he’s given a deadly final confrontation with Ike, that he’s just going to walk off of by the sequel anyway? it’s easy to see why it’s necessary for the plots of the two games it affects, but it’s laaaaaaaaame.

samurai camus

(1/10)

easily the least compelling of the list. he comes in to carry the half of a nonsense arc that doesn’t have enough room to fully build him, and it shows. and to make things worse, he’s one of the most notable sufferers of a syndrome that thorougly afflicts antagonists in Awakening and, to a lesser extent, beyond: a tendency to try to paint them as unambiguously evil before you fight them, but tragic and redeemable right after you fight them. which ultimately completely fails as the player punch that the writers ostensibly intended and robs the confrontation itself of much-needed gravitas.

if-conditional camus characters

(??/10)

hahahahaha!!! hahahahahahaahhahahahaaaa!! sockeye!!! I did the thing again and right in the middle of a nickname too!!

but yeah, I haven’t played Fates any more now than at the time of the Gharnef post.

anyways, what do you all think? have I earned your undying loyalty, or does chivalry demand that you slaughter me for my vile takes? if the upcoming Three Houses is to have a Camus... oh, who are we kidding, of course there’s going to be a Camus. in another life, things have been different, but this fate is inescapable. the only mercy we can extend for it now is to wonder what it’ll be like. once again, I welcome your comments in the replies and reblogs -- would you wrong your country by keeping them to yourself anyway?

[snow-storm27]

Game of Thrones, or, How to Mismanage Your IP

           This has been coming for a long, long time… Now that it’s over, it’s time to address what I feel went wrong with Game of Thrones.

In April 2011, HBO premiered what would become one of, if not the, most influential television program of the 2010s: Game of Thrones.  Based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by author George R. R. Martin, the series began as a gritty, grimy, medieval fantasy drama, rooted mostly in the feudal politics of managing money, conventional weapons of war, arranged marriages, and the ever-present threat of backstabbing noblemen.  However, the show has consistently had underpinnings of a far higher fantasy, with rumors of zombie hordes in the far north and legends of historical, but now extinct, dragons.  As the seasons went on, these two fantastical elements began to slowly take center stage.  In the finale of season one, dragons were reborn into the world, and after four years of once-a-season appearances, the nefarious threat of the White Walkers took center stage in an episode late in season five, as they prepared their army of the undead to mount a threat against the living.

The show slowly progressed from a low fantasy drama about politics and conventional warfare to a high fantasy struggle of the living versus the dead, aided by dragons and giants and other supernatural forces on either side.  However, despite the increase in both budget and viewership, Game of Thrones has reached its end not with a triumphant bang but with a dull whimper.  Why has this happened?  Three major themes of the development of the show have ultimately contributed to its downfall: adaptational changes, overtaking the source material, and poor treatment of minorities within the show.

I.                Changes Made in Adaptation

As with any adaptation of a book, or any other work for that matter, certain changes must be made.  George R. R. Martin is quoted as saying, “I knew that, when writing a book, you’re not constrained by a budget.  You’re not constrained by what you can do, in terms of the special effects technology. You’re not limited to any particular running time.”  He is correct.  In his book series, he describes people of fantastically large stature, and creatures beyond the scope of reality, and often he describes creatures and events beyond the scope of what HBO’s CGI budget can pay for.  While his written creations may be as different and varied as he chooses, two major CGI creations have dominated the show: dragons, and direwolves.

The dragons are largely faithfully recreated.  They are the symbol of House Targaryen, amazing beasts rendered in picture-perfect, hyper realistic computer graphics.  They grow incrementally each season, mandating new art and new computer models and more money to render with every passing year. Starting as newborns the size of housecats in the final moments of the first season, the dragons are the size of aircraft throughout the final season.  These creatures have been stated as a major draw of the show, especially to casual fans and fans who have not read the books.  The dragons are huge, dramatic creatures, and whenever they appear, they dominate the action, flying and breathing fire and generally creating a spectacle.

Conversely, the direwolves are treated as an afterthought at best.  They are kept offscreen most of the time, are seemingly forgotten about when not absolutely essential, and have been largely killed off to save money in the CG budget, but more on that in a minute.  This really smacks of poor analysis of the books, is the issue.  The Starks in the novels are subconsciously creatures known as wargs, or, humans that can psychically link with other creatures, feel their feelings, use their senses, and other related abilities.  Each Stark gets a direwolf at the beginning of the story, episode one in the show.  These creatures bond with their owners and allow the protagonists to develop their own psychic powersets.  There is no hint of this in the show, except in the oft-forgotten Bran storyline from the early seasons.  Dragons get to be large and in charge, yet the direwolves, described as nearly the size of horses in the books, are relegated to being somewhat-large domestic dogs in the show, before being killed off.

Part of the tragedy of the final season is that the last living direwolf that has stayed with his master, Jon Snow’s wolf Ghost, is summarily told to leave and head north with Tormund Giantsbane, who has never interacted with Ghost before, at least not in any measurable capacity.  Jon sends him away without so much as a pat on the head because he was too hard to animate, and Jon never really bonded with him. Ghost has been a fan favorite for years, with every second of screen time met with joyous reactions from the fanbase. And yet, he gets sent to a farm upstate by our ostensible hero.  It’s hard not to feel that the direwolves as a whole were completely useless and wasted. They are a thematic tie to our heroes’ home of Winterfell and a reminder of better days gone by.  In the show, they are a liability to be ignominiously killed off for shock value.

Speaking of killed off for shock value, how many characters die in the show before their time in the books?  Around season five, this became less of a rare occurrence, and more of the norm.  Ser Barristan Selmy, a point of view character with a compelling arc in Dance with Dragons and an actor who is a fan of the books, gets killed off in season five episode four in a confusing back alley brawl that doesn’t even happen in the books.  King Stannis Baratheon, a major character in both book and show, first kills his daughter, who is still alive in the books, leading to the suicide of his wife, who is still alive in the books, and he is summarily executed by a character who isn’t even in that location in the books.  At the end of season six, after the time covered in the books, Queen Cersei blows up an entire cathedral full of about a dozen named characters, all of whom are still alive in the books (every Tyrell except for Olenna, Lancel Lannister, the High Sparrow, the entire Sparrow movement). These are merely the more dramatic deaths that occur in the show but not the books.  I didn’t even touch the bizarre treatment of Dorne in the show, the characters that were excluded despite being key focuses of the plot (such as Arianne and Quentyn Martell, Victarion and Aeron Greyjoy, and Young Griff), entire plots that are cut and pasted with different names.  For a more complete list of dead characters, see http://mentalfloss.com/article/65078/dead-game-thrones-tv-characters-who-are-still-alive-books.

Deaths and direwolves are not the only changes made in the process of adaptation, but oftentimes the characterizations of the characters must be changed to better fit the narrative told on the screen.  However, these changes rarely make characters more compelling, no.  They often just serve to make characters either more aggressive or less likeable, seemingly at random.  Brienne of Tarth is a devout knightly figure in the books.  She is a point of view chapter in Feast for Crows, and one of her chapters contains what is arguably the thesis statement of the entire series: War is Hell.  It’s hardly an uncommon theme of fiction set during wartime, and author George R. R. Martin was himself a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.  It is baked into the books that war is never a good thing.

In the show, Brienne of Tarth is an aggressive, seemingly areligious bully.  She swings her sword and rather cruelly pushes around her squire, Podrick, under the guise of tutelage.  Setting aside the fact that Podrick is a child in the books and an adult sexual fanatic in the show, itself a confusing twist of the character, Brienne is charged, as a knight, to protect and defend the weak.  She seemingly traded off her obligation to help those weaker than herself for additional combat training because she gets into a lot of fights that she does not face in the book.  She fights the Hound at the end of season four, gets into a high-speed chase a few episodes later against Littlefinger’s men, and by the end of season five she beheads Stannis after a battle at Winterfell before smugly rubbing it in Stannis’s friends’ faces in season six.  She is rude and arrogant where her book counterpart is kind and just and faithful. Brienne is hardly the only character to undergo such changes.

Brienne’s chosen king in season two is Renly Baratheon, younger brother of Stannis and Robert Baratheon.  He was made more charismatic and sympathetic in the show, less aggressive and more progressive. This had the effect of making the Tyrells, a rather power-hungry house in the books, into a group of kind angels in the show.  A scene was added to showcase the charity of Margaery Tyrell in season three, because the audience was supposed to like them more.  Conversely, making Renly nicer and more likeable made Stannis, his killer, far less likeable. Setting aside the fact that Stannis is in both works for far longer than Renly, incentivizing writers to make him a more tolerable character, Stannis’s positive character traits are stripped from him.  Where he was a caring, if emotionally stunted, father in the books, in the show he is downright abusive and murderous.  In the books, Stannis’s relationship with religion is tenuous at most, but in the show he is portrayed as a zealot.  Stannis ultimately dies a child-murdering religious fanatic, humiliated in battle after being deceived by a foreign temptress with a foreign religion, itself a complex and uncomfortable situation that will be discussed in more depth later. Stannis’s character had to die so that Renly’s could live for all of four episodes in season two.

The show’s relationship with religion is very lopsided as well. Religious characters, such as Brienne, Sansa, Davos, and Jon, often lose their religion in the show where they are still devout in the books.  Meanwhile, religious organizations and priests are treated as insane or villainous, despite their more nuanced portrayals in the books.  Examples include Stannis, who goes from nearly an atheist to a fanatical champion of R’hllor, the Sparrows, who go from a group of concerned albeit religious citizens to violent puritanical moralists with a homophobic streak, and the Hound, who in the books is implied to become a silent monk who finds peace, but in the show is incited back to violence, with an implied message that “real men” are violent, and peaceful religion is namby-pamby kid’s stuff.  George R. R. Martin is not a religious man, but he handles the subject with far more nuance and a wider array of perspectives than the show does.  It would be easy to place the entirety of the blame in the hands of D. B. Weiss and David Benioff, the showrunners.  I wouldn’t say that they are entirely to blame, but I would say that these major changes in theme, character, and sensitivity in the show can largely be attributed to the two of them.

Really, it’s unfortunate.  The books handle a great deal of subject matter with care and sensitivity, but the show seems unable to deal with the inherently morally ambiguous work without drawing hard lines between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”.  Renly is Good, Stannis is Evil.  Religion of any kind is Bad.  Tyrion Can Do No Wrong.  Stripping the subject matter of its nuance leaves the whole experience feeling hollow and frankly lesser than both the books and other dramas on television. It’s honestly sad to see such a rich, developed world be reduced to such moral absolutism.

II.              Passing the Books

It was inevitable that the show would, one day, pass the books. Shortly after the release of the first season, the fifth book in the series was published, all the way back in 2011. Since then, eight seasons have come and gone, and the story of the show has finished.  Meanwhile, the last book published is still the fifth, Dance with Dragons.  The next book, The Winds of Winter, is still some distance away, but its plot, as well as its distant successor, A Dream of Spring, has been loosely adapted by the show.  Very, very loosely.

While some early story beats of Winds could be reasonably predicted, from season six onwards, the show went off of an outline from George and the creativity of the show’s writers. It could be easy to presume that Jon Snow, seemingly heralded as a chosen hero in the books, will return from the dead in the next book.  Similarly, the general story of the White Walkers marching south and attacking the living could be predicted.  Daenerys heading to Westeros could be predicted.  These are long-foreshadowed story threads that would be disappointing to see unfulfilled.

However, once the show ran out of material to adapt directly from the books, the writing suffered.  Twists began to appear almost for their own sake, such as Ramsay suddenly killing his own father, and Ramsay killing Osha, and Ramsay killing Rickon. Honestly, the show got way more mileage out of Ramsay than the character deserved.  Brutal scenes of horrific torture and death can only go on for so long, but not with Ramsay around I suppose.  Meanwhile, characters went from developed people to stock tropes almost immediately.  Sansa stopped being an empathetic and caring young woman and she became a frosty ice queen, mistrustful of everyone around her.  Bran stopped being a sweet little kid with psychic powers and he became an emotionless robot, taken from scene to scene to exposit new information.  Arya stopped being a sweet, if misguided, girl and became an autonomous shape-shifting mass murderer.  Jon stopped being a wise, calm commander and became an easily duped and often ignored loser.  And those are just the Stark kids!

Otherwise brilliant Tyrion has not made any good plans since season four. He gets passed across Essos in season five, then he fails to preserve the peace in Meereen in season six, fails to launch a successful campaign against Cersei in season seven, and jeopardizes the more successful campaign against Cersei again in season eight. His wight-capture plan was an unmitigated failure in season seven.  It was an attempt to gain support from Cersei that never came, it ended in the death of Viserion, and it seemed to only exist to set up the scene in the Dragonpit where all our big actors shared some screen time for half an episode.  And yet, despite his constant failure, Tyrion is still propped up by Sansa and Jon and Jorah as a brilliant mind with outstanding potential.  He shouldn’t lose his position as Daenerys’s Hand because he’s still smart, despite all evidence to the contrary.  It feels that Tyrion’s sudden loss in brain cells is due in part to no more existing book material to use that demonstrate his genius.  His failed plan in season six is remarkably similar to Barristan’s book five chapters, which I guess they needed to steal to give Peter Dinklage something to do for another year.

Jaime’s book arc deals primarily with him falling out of love with Cersei, and it happens across the end of book three and book four.  This arc is stretched out and seemingly ignored across seasons four, five, six, and seven, until finally he leaves her in the finale of season seven, only to turn right back around and head back to King’s Landing again to die in her arms, negating his entire emotional journey four episodes later.  There are superficial similarities, such as his sojourn to Riverrun in season six, but a story is more than its locations and characters.  Jaime’s arc is really bizarre in the show.  He seemingly recognizes Cersei’s mistreatment of him early in season four, but then just kind of ignores it or puts up with it for four more seasons of the show.  That’s not even getting into the change from his and Cersei’s consensual sex scene in the book (gross though it may be) into an act of rape in the show that the showrunners, writers, and directors can’t seem to agree is or isn’t rape, which is utterly baffling and sickening.  Jaime’s arc in the books is about self-acceptance, coping with physical disability, and recognizing bad relationships.  In the show Jaime just sort of doesn’t do any of those things. He never feels absolution about his messy past, he seemingly becomes a competent swordsman lefthanded over a couple of sparring sessions, and his recognition of Cersei’s abuse is just muddled by his own horrible treatment of her.

I feel that the character who suffered worst due to lack of available book material though is Daenerys.  Daenerys is established across the beginning of her arc as a liberator and a revolutionary.  She’s an inspiration to all around her, the Mother of Dragons and Breaker of Chains. She frees slaves, deals with harsh consequences of complex political maneuvering, accepts her role as potential ruler of a continent and does her best to become worthy of that title.  The last book ended with her having visions in the Dothraki Sea as she embraces her heritage as a conqueror.  A similar scene ends season five for her, as she is captured by Dothraki.  Since then, she has gone on to return to Vaes Dothrak, she killed the khals, she claimed all of the present Dothraki, she spontaneously learned how to ride Drogon, she returned to Meereen, handed it over to Daario for some reason, and she headed to Westeros.  She then sniped at Jon Snow for a while before apparently falling in love with him, saving him from a horrible wight-capturing plan, saving Winterfell from an invasion of zombies, and promptly turning evil just because the people of the North like Jon more than her, just so she could become a bait-and-switch final boss so a man could swoop in and be the real hero.  Theories abound that she would become her father, a Mad Queen, so to speak, in the books, but little evidence has been offered for that. Furthermore, several changes in other arcs have made hers play out differently.

In the books, Tyrion is allied for a time with a young man named Young Griff who claims to be Aegon the Sixth, son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell, who was supposedly killed as an infant during the Sack of King’s Landing during Robert’s Rebellion.  He claims that that baby was traded out, and he is the heir to the Iron Throne.  He leads the Golden Company, and it is somewhat anticipated that he will somehow supplant Cersei in the forthcoming Winds of Winter, and he will likely come into conflict with Daenerys when she lands on Westeros.  And they’ll have elephants in the book too, unlike the show. Tyrion is abandoned by the Golden Company when he is captured by Jorah, and later they join a sellsword company near Meereen as a battle is about to begin, but that is neither here nor there. The point is, the Aegon plot got split a few different ways.  Tyrion did not support Aegon, but Daenerys.  Young Griff is not Aegon, but instead Jon Snow is for some reason, so Daenerys comes into conflict with him.  And the Golden Company that Daenerys will be expected to defeat is in Cersei’s hands, not Aegon’s.

Aegon’s storyline is long and complex, changing many presuppositions about the backstory, as well as affecting many characters in the present.  The Dornish story in the books largely deals with him as well, and his removal from the show’s narrative further makes the Dornish subplot irrelevant.  This large removal has radically altered large chunks of the narrative as it effects the characters, the overall tone and themes of the story, and it thoroughly robs Jon, Daenerys, and Tyrion, ostensibly the main three characters, of any semblance of whatever their future plot in the books may be to compensate for this excision.  Cersei must become hyper-competent, somehow securing more money for the Iron Bank in order to net the Golden Company as a reserve army out of nowhere.  Jon post-resurrection pivots into first filling out Stannis’s book role of recapturing Winterfell from the Boltons before seemingly completing his own arc of stopping the army of the dead, only to pivot once more into becoming Aegon, the highly revered prophesied king of Westeros who comes into conflict with Daenerys.  It’s just a mess and running out of book material really caused the writing to have to bend over backwards to attempt to look like the books while completely losing the characters and motivations and relationships that made the show one of the most successful on television.

I’ll admit to being a book fan first, but the show suffered most when it was divorced from its subject matter.  With no real material to draw from, the show just circled the drain in season six, redoing or reintroducing new arcs for old characters.  Jaime’s trip to Dorne tried to combine his arc from Feast for Crows with the Dorne arc from the same book, but it didn’t work, so season six sent him to Riverrun because it looked like the book.  They hadn’t done the Kingsmoot yet, so that went into season six, despite having far less gravitas and far less significance.  (As an aside, Euron is the ultimate wild card in the books, a pirate warlock bent on world domination, and yet he’s just Cersei’s lapdog/bootycall in the show, which is depressing.)  Stannis didn’t take Winterfell, so they gave it to Jon.  It is sort of expected that Cersei will destroy King’s Landing with wildfire in the books, but that would mean no conflict in the South for Daenerys, so I guess she just blows up Baelor’s Sept because it is superficially similar to something in the books.  Ultimately, these hollow reimaginings of events from the books just serve to cheapen the narrative for book readers and muddle otherwise interesting arcs from the show.  It would have almost been better if the show had fully committed to being fan fiction after season four or so.

However, there remains one more damning mark against the show, the real elephant in the room.

III.            Minorities in Game of Thrones

The worst-kept secret about Game of Thrones is that it treats its nonwhite, LGBT, and especially female characters horribly.  As a disclaimer, I do not claim that all shows must aspire to some fictitious degree of “wokeness”, or else it is a bad show by any stretch of the imagination. I think that for conflict’s sake, all characters must in some way face compelling obstacles that they must overcome in order to have any semblance of a plot.  However, over time, certain patterns begin to develop in the show that leaves one suspecting some implicit biases of the showrunners.

Persons of color in the show suffer disproportionately compared to white characters.  By the end of the show, the only living character who isn’t white is Grey Worm, a castrated soldier who is a former slave.  In addition, his love interest, with whom he was one of the most stable and emotionally balanced couples in the show, is brutally and seemingly randomly killed off mere episodes prior to the finale.  It was questionable that Euron’s fleet would randomly capture one person who happened to be the only black woman in the cast, and then kill her and only her that same episode.

A single episode prior, during the Battle of Winterfell (like, the third or fourth one in the show, the one with the zombies), the entire Dothraki army is killed offscreen.  An entire legion of ethnically diverse characters is killed to demonstrate how intimidating the wights are, I guess.  Or maybe, they were okay all along, because some Dothraki are just kind of at King’s Landing two episodes later.  The writing was crazy inconsistent in the final season.  In any event, it kind of makes Daenerys’s arc in Essos largely pointless if her armies of ethnic soldiers are just used as cannon fodder for one mildly interesting, dimly lit, shot, and then the remainder are shown pillaging the terrified, white, populace later on.

Meanwhile, Daenerys’s arc smacks of white savior tropes.  Setting aside the racially dubious shot from season three where the blindingly white Daenerys is raised up by a very nonwhite crowd in adoration, it was never made clear in the books whether the peoples of Essos were darker skinned or not.  In a show where one’s bloodline and the purity thereof is of paramount importance to many of the major characters, racial sensitivity in casting should have been a higher priority.  Daenerys’s entire arc, and the sympathies of the audience, change dramatically if Daenerys is supposed to be a liberator of the oppressed, but she is presented as merely a white savior bringing civilization to the backwards and savage brown people.  Aside from not representing the books and not playing well on television in the 2010s, Daenerys looks like a monster because she is constantly at odds with the only minorities in the cast.  She seems almost like a white supremacist, dictating that it is her right to rule due to her family’s heritage.  Having a startlingly white woman with pale hair announce to her black former slaves that she is the only person with the right to rule looks really racially insensitive.

Also in her arc, Xaro Xhoan Daxos in Qarth is not a black man in the books.  He is also not dead in the books, nor did he spontaneously steal her dragons in the books. While that change in story may be entirely coincidental, the fact that a major character’s plot was changed to feature a sneaky, greedy black man instead of a kind, albeit self-interested white man is suspect.  The fact that that man dies as a result of the change raises further eyebrows.

Across the sea, Areo Hotah is changed from a white man to a black man.  He is heralded as a tremendously successful warrior in the books.  In the show he is killed without a chance to demonstrate any skills other than standing around looking intimidating, which feels stereotypical of a black man.  Meanwhile, the other Dornish folks are also distinctly not white, and they are all killed in the adaptation as well.  Oberyn suffers the same grisly fate as his book counterpart, but Doran is unceremoniously killed despite being a master-class schemer in the books. Meanwhile, his daughter and son, Arianne and Quentyn Martell, have their subplots extricated entirely due in part to the removal of Young Griff, while his other son Trystane is also randomly killed on a boat in a scene that is played for laughs.  His killers, the similarly Dornish Sand Snakes and their mother Ellaria Sand are brutally murdered on-screen by Euron and Cersei, who isn’t even near them in the books.

It would be easy to pass this off as mere coincidence.  After all, people of all colors and backgrounds die all the time in Game of Thrones.  However, something I find interesting is that as Game of Thrones was winding down, Weiss and Benioff pitched a series to HBO about what would have happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War.  While interesting as a thought experiment, it feels strange that creators with such little regard for racial sensitivity wanted to cover such an inherently racial subject as that for their next project.  It has seemingly been dropped in favor of their Star Wars trilogy, but I remain skeptical.  These creators have inspired little confidence in their treatment of minorities, which is deeply troubling and will render the show very difficult to enjoy for any length of time in the future.

Next on the list is the show’s poor treatment of LGBT characters. This is a little less prevalent, but no less obvious.  There have not been many prominent LGBT characters in the show.  Beginning in season one, Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell are gay.  The very next season Renly dies and Loras hits on his also-gay squire.  His squire then turns him in to the show-only Sparrow Inquisition in season five who, only in the show, have a tremendous hatred for gay people.  Loras spends the next two seasons in chains, largely offscreen, then he is humiliated at a religious trial before being incinerated by Cersei.  So, yeah.  Our gay men main characters either die or betray each other to religious inquisitions. Not awesome.

In season four, we are introduced to Oberyn Martell.  In the books, his bisexuality is rather implicit, but in the show he is introduced in a brothel, attempting to recruit some mixed-gender company for himself and his paramour, Ellaria Sand.  Already the show falls into stereotypes about the promiscuity and near infidelity of bisexuals, but I guess both of them are into it, so it’s not so bad.  Oberyn dies in the books in about the same way he dies in the show, which is fair enough for an adaptation.

However, then Ellaria briefly hooks up with Yara Greyjoy in season seven.  Yara had demonstrated her interest in women in season six, but it all felt rather forced, as if the depiction of a woman’s romantic or sexual interest in another woman was for show, in order to titillate the audience.  It would hardly be the first time the show used the female body as an excuse to excite a presumably male audience.  In any event, the very scene after Ellaria and Yara get together, Yara is captured by her uncle while two of Ellaria’s children are brutally killed before her eyes.  Ellaria and her third child are also captured, then poisoned and left to die in front of each other in the next episode.

There are no transgender characters in Game of Thrones.

Olenna Tyrell and Tywin Lannister share a scene in season three in which Olenna insinuates that it is a natural part of life to experiment with one’s sexuality.  She implies that Tywin is somehow weird or abnormal for never even considering some homosexual experience in his life.  Tywin is astonished by her suggestion.  Due to the show’s framing of the Tyrells as a more heroic house than the Lannisters, sympathies should theoretically be with Olenna.  However, the show falls pretty hard on the side of Tywin.  By the end of the show, the only character with any same-sex attraction left alive is Yara, who is sexually promiscuous, aggressive, refuses to truly disavow the rapacious practices of the Ironborn, and is left unattached romantically at the end of the show.  All the other characters have died, often gruesomely and on-screen.  The show, which prided itself on being subversive and different, instead seemingly gives everyone a heteronormative, socially acceptable ending, presuming they live.

The discussion of LGBT and nonwhite characters pales in comparison to the utter failure of the show with regard to its treatment of women, however. The show’s gross depiction of repeated, ongoing sexual violence directed towards women in particular is frankly disgusting, and it spans all the way back to the very fist episode of the show. On her wedding day, Daenerys is raped by Khal Drogo.  In the book, the matter is a little more complicated at the very least.  By modern jurisprudence, it’s not like Daenerys could consent at all, as she is a minor in the book, but at least she has some small say in the matter.  In the book, Daenerys and Drogo certainly do not get off on the right foot, but Drogo doesn’t rape her at least.

Also in the first episode, Tyrion is shown cavorting with some sex workers, clearly put in the show to mainly introduce Tyrion’s dwarfism, but secondarily to titillate the audience.  The show continues to use the female form to distract from large amounts of exposition to such an extent that critics coined the word “sexposition” in order to describe the sheer number of sex scenes used to accent plot information. The entire setting of Littlefinger’s brother practically exists to convey information about plot while enticing casual fans with nudity.  Everyone’s motives were revealed here: Littlefinger, Oberyn, Tyrion, Tywin, even Varys, a man who categorically cannot engage in sexual intercourse.

The use of the female body to convey information to the audience is entirely inequitable.  The number of times male genitalia is on screen can be counted on one’s hands, and there would be fingers left over.  Furthermore, the male body is not used in the same way, as a tool to excite the audience.  In fact, the preference seems to be for male genitals to be used to shock or disgust the audience rather than anything else.  Hodor’s prosthetic penis and the Braavosi actor checking himself for warts is about as far from titillating as one could get.  But I digress, there are far worse things in this show’s treatment of women than just the lack of male genitals.

Back on the subject of sexual violence, it seems as though the show cannot film a scene of consensual sex.  The complex sexual dynamic between Jaime and Cersei is shifted into an entirely different, far more concrete, and far less comfortable one in season four when a scene of consensual sex in the books is transformed into a scene of male-on-female sexual violence as Jaime forces himself on Cersei despite her protests, and the scene in question fades into the next to Jaime stating “I don’t care” to her pleas.  The scene is truly horrifying, and when I saw it as it aired in 2014, I was left appalled that the show would throw away such major characters’ entire personalities, but of far more significance was my horror that the writers, directors, and show runners couldn’t decide whether the scene was a consensual sex scene or whether it depicted an act of rape.  It is disturbing that adults of seemingly average sensibilities can’t understand such a basic concept as consent.

Furthermore, rape is used as a tool and a plot element far more often than it ever needed to be.  Sansa is nearly raped in season two, Jon stops an attempted rape in season eight, the Dothraki rape a conquered city in season one, and when Daenerys protests, she is just told to not get in the way.  The Ironborn are notoriously rapacious, as a civilization of pirate raiders, and Yara Greyjoy only agrees to give up their reaving lifestyle in order to form an alliance with Daenerys, which is presumably off the table after her death in the finale.  No change in the culture in-show occurs, and it is just accepted that sexual violence is a part of life for the characters, from episode one all the way to episode seventy-three.

The show’s fraught relationship with sexual violence is best demonstrated through the arcs of two characters: the show-only prostitute Ros, and the vastly altered story of Sansa Stark.

Ros is an invention of the show, a prostitute at Winterfell in the beginning of the show who relocates to King’s Landing for greater business opportunities.  She is introduced alongside Tyrion to further his arc as a philanderer, and she is again shown alongside Theon to demonstrate his affinity for sex workers.  After relocating to King’s Landing, she takes a job at Littlefinger’s brothel, where she features in several “sexposition” scenes across season two.  By the end of the season, she is seemingly promoted to overseeing the other workers and essentially providing acting lessons for them.  It’s somehow the most respectful thing the show does for sex workers, demonstrating that they are actual people with careers and aspirations, no matter how untraditional.  It would have been subversive to allow a sex worker to get to enjoy some semblance of status for a change.  Perhaps she could have been a foil to Bronn, both unlikely lowborn folks with unglamorous jobs who nonetheless manage to rise high due to their wit and cunning. However, whereas Bronn manages to make increasingly ludicrous demands of the Lannisters before being gifted a castle in the finale of the series, Ros faces a much darker fate.  Rumors abound that the actress behind Ros, Esme Bianco, desired greater screen time and pay, as many actors do after a few seasons of a hit television show.  This demand was met with her character being written out of the show in a truly barbaric fashion.  She becomes essentially middle management at Littlefinger’s brothel when she is contracted out by Varys to spy on his political rival.  She accepts the job, and when she is discovered, Littlefinger hands her over to Joffrey for target practice.  The last we see of Ros, she is bound, tied to Joffrey’s bed, and has been shot by a crossbow through the chest and groin.  The overarching message of Ros’s arc seems to be that women who try to take control of their situation are disregarded and removed with great prejudice by stronger, smarter men.

Even more fraught with unfortunate implications than Ros is Sansa’s storyline.  For the first four seasons, Sansa’s storyline largely follows that of the books.  She is a young woman who is engaged to Joffrey Baratheon, a sadist who insists on having her physically abused for his own pleasure.  She manages to escape from the situation with the assistance of Littlefinger, essentially a medieval pimp with an unrequited crush on Sansa’s mother, and whose affections have seemingly transferred to her daughter by the time of Cat’s death.  In fact, once they escape King’s Landing, he forces a kiss on her in the Eyrie’s courtyard, which is a precipitating cause of Littlefinger’s murder of Lysa Arryn.  So Sansa briefly stays in the Eyrie at the mercy of a pedophilic pimp at the end of season four.  But then everything changed between the filming of season four and the filming of season five.  Sophie Turner, the actress behind Sansa Stark, turned eighteen.  I know this because she is literally four days older than me, and I also turned eighteen in there.  Also, the show passed her book plot, and desperately needed to give her something to do, so they took a horrible, tragic plot from the book and gave it to Sansa.

In Dance with Dragons, Sansa’s childhood friend Jeyne Poole is given to Roose Bolton, the traitorous warden of the North, to disguise her as Arya Stark and marry her to his bastard son Ramsay Snow, in order to legitimize the Boltons’ hold on the North.  While she is there, she is forced to marry Ramsay, and he abuses her horribly.  We do get confirmation on the page that she is sexually abused by her new husband, which is horrible, but no actual scene depicting a sexual assault occurs. Meanwhile, in Feast for Crows, Sansa Stark is learning the politics of the Vale in order to marry the new Lord of the Vale for the stated purpose of riding north with the Vale’s knights to liberate Winterfell.  Littlefinger orchestrated both the events with Sansa and Jeyne, and Littlefinger would never endanger Sansa knowingly because of his weird fascination with her.

The show thought that the best version to handle these plotlines would be to send Sansa to Winterfell in order to be raped on-screen by Ramsay.  This scene plays out in perhaps the most-despised episode of the show.  Meanwhile Littlefinger’s defense of this change is that he, a master of spies all over the country, didn’t know that Ramsay, a notorious serial killer and molester, was a notorious serial killer and molester.  It strains not only his credibility as a spymaster, but also the premise of the show that Petyr Baelish wouldn’t know about the most obvious villain in Winterfell, much less that he would give Sansa away from his custody on bad information.  Furthermore, it is downright offensive that this change was made in the first place. The show had faced a similar scandal the previous season, turning a scene of consensual sex into a scene of seeming rape.  They should have known better.  Furthermore, the Vale setting could have been much better integrated by simply not changing things like that.  Maybe Sansa’s season five could have been spent learning how to do political maneuvers, and then the Vale could ride north and be a surprise extra army for Stannis. They could lose and Sansa could still end up going to Castle Black on the run from Ramsay and his forces at the beginning of season six, all without the frankly gross and unnecessary rape scene. There were so many other ways it could have gone.

In season eight, Sansa credits her rape at the hands of Ramsay as a formative moment for her that was essential to her growth into the strong and powerful woman that she became.  I feel that this not only gives Ramsay far too much power in a storyline that didn’t need it, but it seems like the writers just giving themselves an unwarranted pat on the back for a deeply unsettling and unpopular change to the narrative.  The change to Sansa’s story in season five turned her into a victim, seemingly for the benefit of Theon’s character arc, as he ends up having to save her from Ramsay’s clutches.  I credit Sophie Turner and Alfie Allen for their powerful performances, but they never should have had to give the performances that they did.  It is just sad and a waste and a really disgusting misuse of the characters and the actors.

However, the character that I feel was most mistreated by the writers was Daenerys Targaryen, who was thoroughly misunderstood by the entire creative team and her entire storyline suffered tremendously as a result.  To begin with, the scene of consensual sex that she has with Drogo on their wedding is turned into a rape scene.  Already, we are off to a bad start.  Then, when her incestuous, abusive, unstable older brother is killed by Drogo, her reaction is relatively passive.  The writers would later cite this moment as proof that she must be crazy, because her abuser died and she had no reaction.  Later, she was very much neglected in season two because her dragons were expensive to animate and her adventure in Qarth is admittedly a little bit strange.  However, her visions with the Undying are fundamental foreshadowing to the rest of the narrative.  These were cut out, and I understand why.  They could often be a little esoteric and strange, but without those visions, she seems adrift and aimless.  She instead has visions of turning away from the Iron Throne, and meeting Drogo and their unborn child in the afterlife beyond the Wall.  These scenes were evocative, and I’ll admit I enjoyed them at the time.

Later, she enters Slaver’s Bay, from seasons three through six. This part of her story was deeply criticized in the books for feeling like a waste of time, especially in Dance with Dragons where she has mixed success ruling Meereen, and a bunch of other characters go on great quests to find her and are generally disappointed with what they find.  It is easy to feel a little less than enthused about that arc. However, the most damning critique of Daenerys’s liberation quest in Slaver’s Bay comes from the mouth of Tyrion in the show’s finale.  He cites her killings of the slavers and masters, or upper class, in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, and claims that every time she killed these horrible people, she felt a little more empowered to do whatever she wanted and got a little more crazy and detached from reality.  This culminated in her killing of the Dothraki Khals, which garnered her a Dothraki army.  Tyrion alleged that the adoration went to her head, and she felt empowered to do anything, and Jon presenting even the idea of a challenge to her rule caused her to somehow lose her mind in its entirety, torching King’s Landing in the process.

This sequence of events is fundamentally ridiculous.  Perhaps she felt gratified from receiving praise, but that does not lead to insanity.  Furthermore, her defining character trait, and a constantly restated goal of hers, is that she wants to help the people on the bottom.  She gives water to the dying people of Slaver’s Bay, she opposes the fighting pits to preserve the lives of the poor who might otherwise be forced into them, she fights the slavers over and over again, not to mention the obviously good deed of freeing the slaves in Slaver’s Bay.  In America, Abraham Lincoln is often cited as one of, if not the, greatest presidents who ever lived, for preserving the country while also outlawing slavery.  (As an aside, I am aware of the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception in the case of prisons, which is a problem that we are still dealing with in 2019 with the school-to-prison pipeline and the issue of private prisons, but Lincoln made a big step, and that should be recognized.)  Our society places a high value on freedom, and therefore freeing slaves should be an unequivocally heroic deed.  And yet the narrative punishes Daenerys for doing this, constantly.

In season six, Tyrion criticizes her approach, and claims that reparations should be made to the slave holders, and the plan should have taken longer to occur.  Essentially, Tyrion would rather be kind to the slavers and leave people in chains for longer because freedom would be inconvenient.  Such a thorough undermining of Daenerys’s message is given to Tyrion, ostensibly the show’s main lead, two seasons ahead of his criticism of her entire arc.  Furthermore, no real reason is given why she turns against the common people of King’s Landing.  Sure, she could be a little annoyed that Northerners seem to like Jon more, but those are his people.  It makes sense that his friends would like him.  And yeah, sure, Tormund’s comment about how he’s so cool for riding a dragon would definitely be obnoxious, but that’s hardly a reason to go insane.  The seeming reason for her sudden descent into madness would be the sudden deaths of her advisors Jorah and Missandei, as well as the spontaneous, poorly executed death of Rhaegal.  In addition, the actual betrayal of her confidantes Varys, Tyrion, and Jon would make her descent into madness seemingly justified, rather than an instability.  You’re not insane if everyone around you is actually out to get you, you know.  But, her issue should be with her advisers, and Cersei.  A sensible solution during “The Bells” would have been to destroy the Iron Fleet, destroy the scorpions, kill the Golden Company outside the gates, and then fly Drogon to the Red Keep to kill Cersei.  It is fundamentally out of character for her to turn Drogon, a sentient weapon of war, on the poor, destitute common folk of King’s Landing.  She wants to be a liberator, and up until that very moment, she was a liberator.  Who is liberated when all the people are dead?

In the finale, she gives a very uncomfortable speech that implies that she will kill all the nobility in Westeros before taking her army to take over the world.  The imagery in this speech feels very similar to speeches given by Nazis, given the identical, orderly, masked troops in front of the black-clad and impassioned speaker.  In addition, the shot of her approaching the stairs while Drogon’s wings unfurl in the background was very well-made, and successfully made her look like the actual Devil.  Later, in her scene with Jon in the throne room, she makes a desperate plea for him to join her in her global conquest.  I understand her desire to keep Jon close, after all she seems to love him very much, and he is handsome and charming and all that.  But in her plea to him, she makes a very out-of-character argument that she and Jon have the power to enforce their will upon the world, for the betterment of mankind. Jon asks her why others can’t choose, and Daenerys seemingly says that they are just more important than the rest of the world, “They don’t get to choose.”  What?  Daenerys is all about the common people, or at least she was until she found they were very easy cannon fodder for Drogon.  But it seemed that she was more interested in hurting people loyal to Cersei specifically, even in her discussion with Jon.  So, her sudden disregard for the common people of the world remains completely bizarre.

And then she dies.  Jon kills her, and Drogon flies off with the body.  The entire “Mad Queen” storyline came right out of nowhere after the threat of the White Walkers was dealt with startlingly fast.  It seemed the writers wanted a twist ending, so the Night King was killed surprisingly fast, then Cersei surrendered so Daenerys, a generally kind, good-hearted person could spontaneously become the villain of the piece in the last two episodes.

The writers said in an Inside the Episode feature that when a Targaryen is born, the gods throw a coin and the world holds their breath.  When Daenerys was born, the gods threw a coin, and they allege it landed on madness.  I don’t buy that, because for seventy episodes, she had been a good, fair, just, kind ruler.  Sure, her callous disregard for abusers, rapists, and slavers might be a little cold, but in all fairness, it is hard to feel sympathy for abusers, rapists, and slavers.  Her love of the common people, slaves, and the poor has always been her predominant character trait.  It’s ridiculous to believe that suddenly, she’s just evil now.  The writers blame her flip-flop on her Targaryen genetics.  And maybe the history of inbreeding has damaged her genome some.  But then, if Targaryen genes are the problem, why would Jon be a better fit as king, like all the characters argue for?  He’s a Targaryen too, why has his coin landed on goodness?  It feels very much that he is trusted because he is a man with a penis. Varys says as much when he decides to support Jon over Daenerys, his status as a man will make him easier to support among the lords of Westeros.

In universe and in real life, Daenerys is torn down because she is a woman.  The writers turned her evil because of her seemingly random emotions, which is a stereotype about women, that they are too emotional to be in charge.  Daenerys is given no credit despite her humanitarian accomplishments, yet Jon is supported because he is a man.  To Daenerys, being a Targaryen is a mark against her, a sign of her madness.  To Jon, being a Targaryen is a mark of legitimacy, it makes him the rightful king of Westeros.  Furthermore, Jon’s legitimacy isn’t even all that important, because he gets randomly shipped off to the Wall and Bran becomes king anyway, so I guess both Jon and Daenerys were just red herrings all along.

In Conclusion:

Game of Thrones ended with a resounding whimper.  The defining television program of the last decade has ended, and most fans are just glad that it’s over.  Given the rushed pace of the last two seasons, the directors are probably just glad it’s over as well.  HBO offered them more money for more episodes, but they turned it down.  I’m not optimistic for their take on Star Wars in a few years.  I feel that the actors did their very best, and they deserve praise, but they had really bad material to work with.  And, ultimately, that is the point.  Game of Thrones, as a television show, is already showing its age, and it ended yesterday.  The early seasons especially are awful towards, in particular, women, and the casual abuse of women makes rewatching it unpleasant. Later seasons make wild changes to the plot from the books, the writing suffers as a result, and it feels that without source material, Benioff and Weiss can’t write an original story that respects the lore.  Hopefully George R. R. Martin will finish the final books, and we’ll get a more complete ending.  But for now, this show is what we have.

Allegedly, there are a few successor shows or prequels in the works. The one that has been more formally announced has a woman at the helm, and a woman in the role as the lead. With no specific source material, hopefully that will require more quick thinking, better writing, and better treatment of women.  The cast is far more diverse already.  Hopefully it stays that way.  The legacy left behind by this show will be complicated to navigate.  I have no interest in watching this show again.  Maybe I can get excited about a future project in this universe, but as things are, Game of Thrones was the defining show of the 2010s, and as it leaves its audience with a messy legacy of unfortunate implications in its treatment of the source material and its minority cast members, that is just a shame.

[mahoney93lindhardt-blog]

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