#worth noting that this is in the game thread for a game in which op's team is currently losing despite being the overwhelming favorite

[karnalesbian]

[centrally-unplanned]

The Evil Orcs Debate may not have the moral dimensions in animanga space as it does in the West, but there are also large threads exploring the fictional space of that debate, even excluding shounen's "defeat means friendship" trope or mecha Buggers/Formics/Kaworu reveals.

There's a whole sub-genre going on of "yuusha discriminated against by their own people, joins the demon kingdom", multiple sub-genres of "set from the point of view of the demon kingdom (and their king) in the first place", and even Danmachi had an entire arc questioning the (assumed lack of) sentience of monsters spawning in the Dungeon.

Hell, animangnoveltoons actually seem more likely than Western fiction to do half-assed fantasy racism storylines. By the numbers, I'd guess that there are probably far more shows in the last decade NOT doing "unquestioned inherently evil race" than there are. Certainly there are way more "the demons are the protagonists" cases than Western fiction, something something related to the ambiguity in how concepts of demons/hell differs in Asia (e.g. Houzuki no Reitetsu) something something

I don't have a Frieren point to this, but it is worth noting how "they are on the main fine with evil races" has dimensions.

Not really sure what the "but" is doing there, since I certainly never said otherwise - I CERTAINLY never said a single thing about % of shows have a given trope. But yes, once you separate out the western moral debate around Evil Orcs, when it isn't about "is it an actual, real-life sin to make this writing choice", then almost by structural necessity you get a million different takes on the topic; its no longer reduced down to it. Hell is anime, the most common take on any trope X is going to in some way involve "can I fuck it?" - its why the demons in Frieren are still mainly hot humanlikes after all. The isekai genre in particular is very interested in the "meta" of video game tropes, which almost always include enemies you fight, and so has gone to town on playing with every variation of how your slimes or orcs or undead or demons relate to society, to PCs, etc.

Frieren definitely does slot into this wider milieu. At the start of this thread, our OP remarked that people talked about Frieren like it was "subversive" in some way. That idea is silly of course, but I think it is fair to say that lighthearted fantasy anime has become the mainstream in the past few years, a lot more comedy hijinks stuff was big. Even Mushoku Tensei, which is intensely detailed on worldbuilding and "realism tone", still has its other 50% being harem comedy shit. Frieren's success probably does have something to do with its level of seriousness (which isn't 100% of course, just margins) being undersupplied recently, and so the people who wanted that back are vocally happy about it. This goes far beyond the demons of course, but they are a part of that - Frieren as a character has a hard-nosed maturity to her in her battle-earned ruthlessness. Again, a common trope, just you know few big fantasy shows of 2022-2023 had them I don't think, as those cycles go.

[skelezomperman]

A Classic Digression on FE7 and two pet peeves in argument

I got into a rabbit hole this morning and ended up finding my way to this classic post about FE7's story being bad. This post is so influential that even nowadays you will see people pointing to it to show what's wrong with FE7's story.

(Spoilers for FE7 and FE8 ahead)

I do agree with many of the criticisms levied at FE7's story. It's not great and I would rate FE6 as better. That said, I feel that if this kind of post came out today, I would find it obnoxious. I read through the post and thought that there were several places where the OP was being too hard on the game and this is especially evident as I'm playing through FE7 right now. At one point for example, the OP criticizes that Marquess Araphen refuses to provide aid to Lyn. Yes, on paper it's nonsensical that he would ally with the guy who tried to burn down his castle, but it seemed crystal-clear to me that this is because the marquess is that racist against Sacaeans (and I would say the racism is a pretty big part of Lyn's arc). Another point is when they criticize Hector for killing (or knocking out) a soldier in Chapter 11. Yes, Hector is not exactly a paragon of maturity, but that's the point - he's a 17 year old who has to grow up through the course of the story.

It was interesting to see the amount of criticism in that thread, so much so that it got locked after a week. I would say it was earned. FE7 isn't the pinnacle of storytelling in this franchise, but you could go through any story with a fine comb like that and make it look bad. I remember that when I was first starting to get into the broader fandom a few years ago, it was in fashion to act as though FE7 was the worst game in the series. I'm glad we're past that because the game isn't really that bad, but it's worth remembering that even in the past the fandom has had its warts.

---

On a broader note, I said that the post was obnoxious because I realize that it hits two pet peeves of mine which I see a lot. The first is that I see a lot of people robbing context from an argument and criticizing something because it looks bad without context. This happens in both story and gameplay arguments, but in story arguments I often see this manifest with the "plot holes mentality." By this, I mean the mentality that any sort of action that is not perfectly logical is a plot hole and a failing of the story. The problem is that if every character acted perfectly logically, the plot would be rather uninteresting. Also, I personally feel that even an actual plot hole (i.e., a part of the plot that directly contradicts the setting or facts established elsewhere) is not a big deal if the story is written well around it. But some people act like things like Eirika giving the stone to Lyon is the end of the world because they ignore the context that Eirika and Lyon were close friends and Formortiis/Lyon was manipulating her. It's so silly that people ignore context.

The second pet peeve is this style of argument where someone will go through every minor point in the piece they are criticizing and individually critique each piece. Oftentimes on Reddit, I'll see this style of post or comment reply where someone will literally blockquote every individual thought, write a block of text rebutting each thought, and then move on to the next thought. I frankly find this to be very obnoxious. This style of argument outright discourages me from reading through, firstly because it's kind of insulting to the person to comb through every word they said, secondly because it's so gigantic. Brevity is an undervalued skill. I will say, if you are tempted to write in this sort of way, just don't. Get to your main point(s) and be done with it. Nobody is going to give you a gold star because you did the most "comprehensive" rebuttal that was possible. Prioritize readability over "winning the argument."

[pushing-up-junipers]

Sayings & Slang of the Setting

Exactly what it says on the tin! Trying to find and keep collections of slang from the 1950s and also from Kansas. Also maybe the 20s-40s when i edit this later. ‘Cause that’s probably still being used by people, even if it’s not ~fresh.~ ‘Specially the older characters, moreso than the recent phrases. You know. Anyway here’s what I could find condensed into one biiiiig list so I can reference it easily when writing dialogue

1950s

Agitate the Gravel: To leave in a hurry. To run the fuck away, as it were.

Apple Butter: Smooth Talk & Flattery

Backseat Bingo: Car fuckin. unspeakable acts in backseats.

Bundie: Guy that needs a haircut

Classy Chassis: Attractive Body. usually female

Come on, snake! Let’s rattle!: Contextual. You’re either asking to dance or “dance” (as in Fight)

Cut the gas!: Be quiet!

Earth Pads: Shoes

Fuzzy Duck: Girl with especially short hair

Gringles: Worries

Lay dead: Wait a minute

Negative Perspiration: Easy

Panic and a Half: A funny joke

Put an egg in your shoe and beat it!: Fuck Off.

Razz my berries!: Impress me

That Razzes my berries: It’s exciting

Got the zorros: Feeling nervous

Bash ears: To talk too much

Bird dog: Someone that tries to steal girlfriends

Circled: Married

Papershaker: Cheerleader

Supermurgitroid: Cool, “With it.”

Cheaters, Peepers: spectacles

Horn: Telephone

Shiner: A black eye

Goose it: Accelerate a vehichle

Radioactive: Current trend. Popular and stylish. IN.

Real gone: Head over heels in love, or just unstable.

Made in the shade: An easy life - to be in a good situation.

That’s the living end!: Superlative. It’s very. The most extreme form of something. Used as an exclamation of pleasant shock or joy.

Everything’s Copacetic: Chillll. Under Control.

Are you writing a book?: You’re asking too many questions

Royal shaft: Poor or unfair treatment

What’s your tale, nightingale?: What’s up? What’s the story?

Blanket: sandwich : )

Chrome Plated: All dressed up and Snazzy!! Got the Sweetest Threads on

Fat City: A Great Place to Be

Have a cow: To get overly worked up

Kansas Specific

Caddy Corner: Kinda diagonally across the way

Ope: like oops

The Concrete: Some kind of custard based icecream

Yums: Treats

Sodbuster: Someone who breaks up the “sod” (farm soil) in order to plant crops, eliminating most of the weeds before they can become a problem in the process. Difficult, but worth it in the long run.

Cornhole: A family game involving the throwing of beanbags into a hole and not hitting the other beanbags I believe?

Reddit post about just common ways of phrasing things in general

Calling everything A Deal

Yeah, no & No, yeah

Caddywhumpus: Chaotic, disorderly, WAY off balance

it wouldn’t be bad if it wasn’t so windy...........

Good People: The highest of compliments...

Dollars to donuts!: To express that you’re DAMN sure of something. Swear to god

Saying ‘cut’ instead of turn or switch, like cut that off

A draw: Beer from the tap

Carbonated drinks are called pop - which is just as well bc it’s what we call it here too

Bit under the house is consistently called the Cellar, rather than basement or whatever

1940s

Anchor Clanker: Sailor

Dead Hoofer: A bad dancer

Dish: An attractive person

Doll Dizzy: Crazy about girls

Drip: Someone boring

Ducky Shincracker: A really good dancer

Fat head: An insulting term for someone you think is an idiot

Glitterati: Famous, wealthy people with a high profile

Jive Bomber: A regular good dancer

Khaki Wacky: Crazy about boys

Yuck: Another idiot

Jitterbug: Fast dancing to modern music

Killer Diller: The best! Amazing!

Natch: Of course. Certainly.

On the Beam: On the right track or course. Cool.

Take a Powder: To leave

What’s buzzin’ cousin?: How’s it going?

Bupkis: Nothing. When you receive fuck all for your efforts.

Crib Notes: A cheat sheet for a test, trying to get a good grade

Hairy: Outdated

Peanuts: A small, insufficient amount. Usually refers to money.

Snap your cap: Get angry

Whistling Dixie: Wasting your time

Armored Heifer: Canned milk

Hen Fruit: Eggs

Schnook: Gullible. A sucker.

Active Duty: A promiscuous male

Floy-floy: Nonsense

Gammin’: Showing off

Going fishing: Trying to get a date

Hey sugar, are you rationed?: Do you have a steady boyfriend?

Motorized Freckles: Insects

Mud: Coffee

Reet: Very

Share crop: A promiscuous female

Strictly from Dixie: Laaaaaaame

Admiral’s Watch: A good night’s sleep

Amscray: Get out, leave

Armchair General: Someone who gives his confident opinion on everything despite being totally uninformed

Barney: A fixed contest

Bilge: Bullshit

Blivet: Something unimportant

Boodling: Makin out

Buy the farm: To die

Chiseler: A petty swindler or cheat

Cloud Walker: A good dancer

Cold fish: An unresponsive person

Crab patch: A strict person

Cutting out paper dolls: Crazy, insane

Drive it in the hanger: Shut up

Earbanger: Kissup

Educated fox: A fast boy

General’s car: A wheelbarrow

Gladlad: A nice looking guy

Gooball: Girl who necks with everyone

Gripes my cookies: It irritates and disgusts me

Gripes my middle kidney: To give pain or irritate

Katzenjammers: The shakes after a day of heavy drinking

Lammister: A fugitive

O lord and butter!: An exclamation

Patsy: A scapegoat

Pennies from Heaven: Easy money

See the chaplain: Shut up, don’t tell me your troubles

Well cut off my leg and call me shorty: You’re kidding.

1930s

Abyssinia: Said fast it sounds like “I’ll be seein’ ya!”

Bumping Gums: Making conversation of little substance

Dog soup: A glass of water

Convincer/Gat/Heater/Rod: Gun

Butter and egg: An attractive woman

Cute as a bug’s ear: That’s very cute

Fel/Filly/Flame/Flirt/Fuss: When a guy has consistent girl companion, I guess just a girl he hangs out with too much, people might call her these things to him

Greaseball/Half portion/Wet sock/Jellybean: An unpopular person

Honey cooler: A kiss

Lunger: A person with tuberculosis

Make tracks/Dangle: To leave abruptly and/or in a hurry

Micky/Micky Finn: A drink spiked with knockout drugs. So a roofie basically.

Stool pigeon: A snitch

All six, hit on: To hit on all six cylinders. 100% performance

All wet: Describes how erroneous a person or idea is. It’s all wet.

And howl!: An emphatic response like you said it!

Baby Vamp/Angel/Thrill/Peach/Choice Bit of Calico/Sweet Patootie: An attractive woman. These terms are the realm of college boys.

Bank’s Closed: NO KISSING.

Bearcat: A hot blooded or firey girl

Bug-eyed Betty/Pig’s Coattail: Ways to insult girls for being unnattractive or unpopular. Used by college boys

Bunny: A term of sympathy for someone that seems lost and confused

Butterfly’s Boots: Great or Dreamy. Like the cat’s meow

Carry a torch/Stuck on: To have a crush on someone

Cast a Kitten: To have a fit

Dumb Dora: A way to call a woman Stupid

Fire Extinguisher: A chaperone

to Know One’s Onions: To know what you’re talking about

[pipermca]

My fic recs continued! Recommendations 5-10 are under the cut.

Please go see this post from @transformativeworks for more info about Feedback Fest and International Fanworks Day!

Audition by crabapplered (M, Jazz/Prowl). Summary: If one were to be delicate, one would say that Jazz and Prowl are incompatible. My comments: Way back when I entered the TF fandom, this was a) my first introduction to “plug and play interfacing,” and b) the first “smutty” story I read that involved an asexual character. Prowl’s efforts to win Jazz over - and the description of how he actually succeeds, and what it does for Jazz - is the hottest thing I’ve ever read that doesn’t actually involve humanized sexual organs. Reading and “seeing” Jazz finally let go and trust Prowl was so… Hnnnrgh. Love it.

Lab Partners by Celaeno (M, Portal crossover, GlaDOS/Shockwave). Summary: In which GLaDOS gets the best surprise ever, Shockwave gets a kick in the pants to solve the ‘whoops the AllSpark exploded and our species is going to die out' issue, and the Oracle Turret keeps being dead-on (but obtuse). My comments: So I saw this story get posted and thought, “Oh, a Portal/Transformers crossover fic. That sounds amazingly silly. I’ll give it a read.” Two and a half hours later, I was thinking, “That was freaking glorious!” Dudes, Shockwave and GlaDOS were made for each other, and it was great fun watching them grow to become friends. All the callbacks to the Portal games, Shockwave’s characterization, GlaDOS’ unique blend of psychopathy and curiosity, Shockwave’s reaction to Cave Johnson’s lemon rant (“bringing extinction’s champion down in a hail of fire and fruit”)… I sat on my couch randomly cackling and reading good bits out loud. Definitely worth a read!

Spec Ops Mission 98: Jazz's Interrogation at Soundwave's Pedes by @kc-anathema (T, Jazz/ProwlSoundwave and permutations). Summary: Surrounded by the torrid fiction of his fellow Autobots, Jazz uncovers a Decepticon plot hidden amidst their written fantasies. Can the Spec Ops commander turn this plot of high treason into a narrative…of love? OR Jazz is surrounded by a bunch of perverted writers, and wouldn't you know it, one of them is a Decepticon. My comments: This story left me stunned… in a good way. I started reading it as a WIP because the premise sounded hilarious (hahaha, the bots and cons are writing RPF fanfic about each other, hahaha). But as the story went on, it turned into a LOT more. It became a story about love and trust, and forgiveness and boundaries, set against the backdrop of a brutal war. And then when it ended and we got the wrap-up of all the threads that we hadn’t even known existed… Wow. This was an amazing story, and I will definitely read it again someday.

Playing the Long Oddsby @bibliotecaria-d (NR, Prowl/Smokescreen). Summary: A.k.a. the Curious Incident of Too Many Prowls. Starscream will never look at Prowl the same, but neither will Smokescreen. My comments: I love this story in so many ways. First, the author mades use of the fact that Prowl, Bluestreak and Smokescreen were basically just recolours of each other… So could they pass as each other to fool the Decepticons? Then, there’s Prowl’s shyness, and his cringe-worthy lack of social awareness or relationship skills. Finally, there’s the adorableness of Smokescreen finally letting Prowl into his orbit and learning how to like him… And then more. Love it. Note: The last chapter is mostly just sex, and the author notes that if you want to stop at chapter 6 for a nice fluffy, smut-free ending, that works too. (But hey - the alt-mode sex is pretty awesome!)

The Echo Garden by @altraviolet (E/X, Rodimus/Shockwave). Summary: Soundwave's banishment to the shadowzone has been bleak, uneventful and unending. He hasn't been able to contact Megatron or the Nemesis. He's low on fuel. If it weren't for the emotion-suppressing protocols he implemented before the war, he would be miserable. And then one day a dimension-hopping Rodimus falls into the shadowzone and offers him a way out. “You'll like the Lost Light,” said Rodimus. “Everyone gets a second chance, there. You wanna stay here forever?” My comments: This story had been ongoing for quite some time, and just recently was completed (so I can finally add it to my rec list!) Its popularity exploded last year sometime, and with good reason. The author took an odd pairing (Rodimus from the IDW1 comics and Soundwave from Transformers: Prime), threw them together using a conceit adapted from the end of the IDW1 comic run (trans-dimensional travel), and turned it into an absolutely lovely fix-it fic for the end of the More Than Meets the Eye/Lost Light comic run. It has an absolutely stunning and convincing redemption arc for Soundwave, excellent world building, sparkling dialogue, and all the emotional beats you'd want in an epic story. Oh, and an aching slow burn that has a super satisfying payoff.

Feedback Fest 2024

In honour of International Fanworks Day (today! February 15) I am posting some fic recommendations that I've made in the past. (I am super swamped at work and can't write up any new recs, but I previously rec'd these over on my main blog over the past few years. I'm collecting them together again here on my writing blog!)

These ten rec's are in no particular order, and all are in the Transformers fandom (with some crossovers). Ratings and pairings (if relevant) are noted.

(I also had to split this list into two parts because I waxed too poetic about these fics. See my reblog for the next part. 🙂)

Frivolities by @neveralarch (G, Megatron & Starscream). Summary: “My correct form of address is in my ID tag,” snapped Starscream. “Use it or lose your tongue.” My comments: I love this story. I love it so much I’ve recommended it to people who would ordinarily never read Transformers fanfic, simply because I think they’d appreciate what the author is doing. They took canon and fanon, and from it alchemized a story of dysphoria and wanting to be seen and acknowledged in a way the character wants, and wrapped it up in a tidy package that hits like a truck, and have I mentioned I love this story! (makes fists) Read it!

Working Through It by @trinarysuns (M, Skywarp/Thundercracker/Marissa Faireborn). Summary: “TC,” Skywarp says, “I’m, like, ninety percent sure that humans don’t have interface cables.” Thundercracker squawks and almost knocks him over trying to get the script out of his hands. My comments: I can’t say enough about this story. I love it and it pushed so many buttons for me. Not even smutty buttons, just interaction buttons: humans interacting with giant alien robots, old loves reuniting, logitical issues of interspecies getting it on… Tumblr deleted my review of this story, (SIGH) so I reposted my review on DW here. It says a lot more about this fic!

The Soft Rush of Black Static by Monstrosibee (NR, Bluestreak/Prowl). Summary: Prowl doesn’t know a lot of bots on this newly salvaged Cybertron, and he definitely doesn’t know the bot intruding on his construction site. My comments: While this fic is essentially a fix-it fic for a story from the Aligned continuity, it just destroyed me. You can read the basics of what happened between Bluestreak and Prowl on TFWiki (at the end of Chapter 7 of The Covenant of Primus) but it was devastating to actually read how upset Prowl was by what happened. This short little fix-it brought all those emotions back and then healed them. I loved this.

Someone You Might Have Been by @astolat (T, Megatron/Optimus Prime.) Summary: I didn’t love him because he wasn’t you. My comments: I'm rec'ing this because it's just pure "this is exactly what I want to read!" for me. This is a delightful mashup of the Shattered Glass universe and G1, in which the Optimus Primes from each universe get (temporarily) swapped. It’s an amazingly heartwrenching MegOP story.

Crash Site by Slyboots (G, Breakdown/Knock Out). Summary: June Darby does not believe in aliens, or in haunted highways, or in government conspiracies, or in any other small-town folklore. The new mechanics in town are uncanny, all the same. My comments: I am a sucker for Transformers: Prime fics, and one of the (it's canon! suck it Hasbro) ships from the show that I love is Knock Out/Breakdown. But besides that, I just love the vibe of this story. You can feel Knock Out and Breakdown in it, even if June doesn’t really see them, except out of the corner of her eye. And I am SO HERE for the idea that the two of them got some lovely downtime together before the events in TFP.

[sleepymccoy]

Hello! I wanted to ask you this bc I really admire your work and blog, and I get the sense that you're a person who can tackle nuance well (and I believe this topic deserves it). I've tried wording this as best as I could, and I'm sorry that it's very long.

I've started getting the impression that some parts of the Good Omens fanbase have been sort of contained, if that makes sense. I feel like small creators have a hard time getting attention to their work anymore. As if people are only looking at the same handful of established creators nowadays (and that those creators are only looking at one another). And by extension, content really only gets attention if it's liked/shared by certain people. And then on top of that, it really constricts a lot of topics in fic and art that get appreciated.

I know that the hype for Good Omens has died down in the past year and that explains a major dip in interest, but I still feel there's an imbalance. I see genuinely good work overlooked time and time again, and I worry that my own work has been looked over bc it simply hasn't been deemed a fan favorite. For a while it looked like there was an effort to boost smaller creators, but it's seems like it phased out pretty quickly. I will be honest, it's been a little discouraging. It feels like the Good Omens fanbase is a club a lot of us have been almost excluded from.

I wanted to know if I'm just imagining this whole scenario or if it's a thing others have noticed? If others have noticed, what can we do to spread some love?

I'm sorry if this came off the wrong way or like I'm scolding people. Or like I'm whinging like a needy child not getting enough attention. I'm curious and was wondering if it was worth asking someone else about. Thank you for reading! And thank you for responding if you do!

Hey! Thanks for all the compliments lol, that’s lovely of ya

I doubt i’ll be as succinct as you managed.

Overall, I agree. I don’t think you’re imagining things at all and I’ve certainly also noticed a decline in interest in my stuff since the start

This is a total theory, but I’m gonna put it forward cos it makes sense to me. When Good Omens started up everyone followed a load of people to get at the content and were reblogging and engaging all over the place. Spiderwebs of followers were formed. I think there are blogs who end up being more influential than others, it depends on what youre looking for in the fandom who that is for you, but there are always big sort of blogs that just reblog content to share it. I think they’re the things that change.

Cos what happens is interest wanes. Fans move on and go somewhere else. If you’re following and relying on a blog to show you lots of new art and they’re just not doing it any more, then you’re sort of left just seeing the popular stuff that gets cyclically reblogged.

For example, i was following, with notifications on, a blog that reblogged every bit of poc good omens fan art they came across. total mixed bag of quality, but it was fantastic and picked up blogs that were completely unknown to me. The person running it got tired and moved on, so i don’t have access to that any more. It’s a lost thread in my little spiderweb of access that cuts me off from so much and it’s a real loss

Alternatively, and this is the trap i fall into, you follow creators. Like what you said! So, when I see a post i like very much i go straight to OP and (after checking they’re not a terf or aphobic) i follow. This means i get new content from the source rather than relying on someone elses taste to have a chance of seeing it myself. However, it also means i’m not following many blogs that focus on reblogging a range of content, so i miss newcomers. I’m not ignoring newcomers, i simply don’t see them

Both approaches to who you follow come with the curse of as the fandom gets older, you don’t have a clear way to find new content or creators. There’s an early bird gets the worm element to it all

There’s also tumblr weird bad habit of not reblogging things. People who run personal blogs rather than themed blogs will like something and consider their work done, but that does nothing to help new art or new artists, cos it’s not permeated yet. That kills new content and content creators pretty thoroughly

So yeah, i think there’s a lot going on there, but you’re certainly not making it up and a lack of engagement on your posts isnt an indication that people don’t like it, it just means people haven’t seen it or have fallen for their habit of not reblogging things they really ought to share.

In terms of fixing this? That’s a toughie.

I don’t have a fix, but i agree the lethargy is tiresome. It’s a constant effort to get something to take off, i have to reblog stuff four or five times before it starts moving beyond my immediate sphere of influence. But it makes sense, there are less fans and the fans there are aren’t out looking for new people to follow.

but i don’t like ending on a negative, so i’ll talk about some options or ideas! even though i don’t have the kind of influence someone would need to be heard

In my perfect world (and i repeat this is my day dream, i do not pretend it is well thought out or fair for all) i would remove the like function; either reblog it or you don’t get to keep an access. I would see more blogs that reblog content to a theme. I would see blogs that search out new creators. I would see newsletters that name new creator blogs that have engaged recently. I would see blogs that make it a challenge to themselves to reblog art and fic that has less than 100 notes. I would see more low stress fan events, more prompt lists and less organised zines.

But that’s all a lot of work for individual people to take on (except the likes vs reblogs thing, but that a real personal dislike of mine). I’ve tried to take part, I run @goodomensevents which is a blog where i reblog any general community event on tumblr that doesn’t cost money to take part in. But i don’t really think it has much impact, cos i thought of it too late in the game and no one wants to follow new good omens blogs anymore.

which i understand. i’m happy with my dash, i don’t feel like it’s lacking. I love who i follow. my mutuals talk to me and aren’t cunts. And i have no idea how to find new creators even though i may want to.

But hey, if anyone’s running a blog like what i’ve described, please send me a link! Maybe i’ll make a rec list on good omens events lol, see what happens. I’ll definitely follow you

[theonceoverthinker]

I wish I could be happy, but I’m not

(I made a thread of this on Twitter this morning, but I’m going to elaborate on it here because as you’ll see in a different sense on this post, character limits are BS)

So I'm not gonna lie, I think the line about Clover that many in my neck of the fandom are getting excited over isn't the loving acknowledgment of how Qrow felt about Clover that many seem to think it is. 

Follow me on this one:

Is it good that Clover was finally explicitly brought up? Yes. 

Did they do it in a terrible way? YUP, and I'll explain how in just a moment. 

Am I surprised? Less than I ever wanted to be.

Actually, before I begin, because I KNOW people are gonna come after me for this post one way or another, I just want to ask those people if they think I LIKE being this negative? Do they think I LIKE being so cynical towards a show that I used to have so much fun with, a show that I was starting to trust? Don’t you think I want to be excited about Volume 8 with everyone else, and that prior to Volume 7, I wasn’t having the time of my life thinking about and enthusiastically waiting for the new episodes.

No, believe me, I’d be thrilled to enjoy this new volume with everyone else, but after the waking nightmare that was 7X12 (An episode that keeps getting worse and worse the more you look at it, as if an evil version of a Where’s Waldo artbook), CRWBY made it pretty apparent to not trust them as far as I can throw them, to guard my heart, and to temper any positive expectations I have for this show because they can and will likely let me down.

Full disclosure: I’m not watching the volume itself in the traditional sense: I’m having the context of the scenes explained to me by a wonderful friend, and seeing and reading the dialogue and facial expressions of the scenes through gifs, pictures, and the like on various Twitter and Tumblr blogs. That having been said, I take confidence that I am getting an accurate and complete understanding of the Qrow scenes.

Okay, let’s go...under the cut because this got LONG!

The line that starts with "The thing that really stings..." is the line in question, just in case there was any doubt since Qrow speaks a fair bit in this episode (Yes, I’ve read through the full line, but this post is already gonna be long enough without transcribing the whole thing, here it is if you haven’t checked it out yet). It comes up right after Qrow talks about Clover's death.

“The thing that really stings” is a crucial opening line. It implies that on a list of important matters pertaining to the given topic being touched upon, what he’s about to state is the most important of them.

And what does he go on to talk about after that opener? 

Semblances. Just semblances, or rather, just his semblance.

Qrow talks about how he was finally entertaining the notion that there was somebody he could be around without having to worry about his semblance complicating things, but that he now believes that possibility was nothing but a childish dream.

This line (which I HOPE is just accidentally clunky because I DO want the Staff Theory to be true so we can start to recover from all this BS in a way that lets me keep enjoying this series) is a lot more harmful to the Fair Game relationship than anyone in the Clover and Fair Game fandom seems to think it is. I genuinely don't want to rain on anyone's parade because I know a large part of my fandom is pretty excited about it, but I can't leave this alone. 

I'll be frank: This line implies that Clover's death on it's own (The act of the character of Clover dying, his entire being, personality and all) isn't as important to Qrow as what that death symbolizes. All it does is just talk about how Clover meant he could be around someone and not have his semblance mess things up.

It doesn't discuss the bond they formed over their time in Atlas together. It doesn't discuss how Clover was someone who was addressing his self-loathing and absence of a team or how they cared about each other. These things would imply that Clover meant something to him as a person outside of his semblance.

Now did the paragraph need to go into detail about or even discuss Clover and Qrow’s bond? Not necessarily, but with a line starting with "what really stings" that only on to talk about Clover as he relates to his semblance undercuts what made Clover's character so beloved in the first place.

Clover fans didn't fall in love with Clover because of his semblance. It was an interesting aspect of his character, sure, but it wasn’t the only one by a long shot.

We fell in love with Clover's unique personality, how he was cocky without the pompousness or bullying that tends to come with that cockiness, as well as his emotional softness and how it contrasted with our expectations at every turn, even extending to his support-suiting weapon.

We fell in love with how Clover, even dealing with people he was technically sort of opposed to like Robyn Hill, he made every effort to be diplomatic, careful towards her election, and sincere. 

We fell in love with how Clover, unlike the rest of his team, was the notable exception to the rule of the Ace Ops not being friends with their teammates.

We fell in love with the many, many interesting visual aspects of his character design, both individually as well as how closely they mirrored Qrow’s.

We fell in love with the concern he had for Qrow, someone who Qrow was finally on an equal playing field with and could grow to trust as well as willingly and happily team up with.

We fell in love with Clover’s persistence in getting close to him and having Qrow come to a place where he could acknowledge his own worth.

So understand that this line says that the thing about Clover that left the biggest impression on Qrow (And by extension in terms of the show’s meta narrative, the audience) was not that character that we cared for because of who he was, but instead that Qrow cares more about how Clover benefitted him personally on a strictly utilitarian level than the actual connection he and Clover shared as people.

That sentiment does an incredible disservice to Clover's character. Despite what those who defend 7X12 felt, Clover was a character with dimension (And by no means was an Adam, just to stop that garbage comparison in its tracks before it comes up again). What that line does is callously strips away that dimension to make Clover almost something closer to a one-note manic pixie dream boy, and only for the purposes of his semblance, at that. 

That’s not good writing, and it shouldn’t be as revered as it presently is (I know the episode’s only a few hours old at the time of writing this, but this seems to be the line’s perception by the Clover and Fair Game fandoms).

More than anything -- more than the possibility of Jailbirds becoming canon, or the lack of connecting Clover and the staff this volume -- this sentiment that Clover’s only worth came from his semblance said by Qrow himself (The character who spent a lot of time bonding with him) makes me worried about whether or not we will actually get a Clover revival. 

Again, I don't want to ruin anyone's fun (Though I know I risk it just by making this and will probably be subject to all manner of online torment as a result because that’s just the way things go around here), but I think we Clover fans need to acknowledge the dangerous wording of this line and temper our expectations accordingly.

Today's Clovember theme is 'wish.' I'm not gonna stop wishing for Clover's return. I'm not gonna stop hoping for Clover's return, either. 

However, I don't want another 7X12 to happen to myself or the various others in the fandom that I’ve grown to care about this past year again. I can’t ignore a bad sign when it’s staring me in the face, leaving such a foul taste in my mouth in the way that this is. Fair Game Buddies and Clover fans alike, please just be careful. I love you all.

[famedexclusivearchive]

[ARTICLE] CRUISE REALITY SHOW ANNOUNCED TO BE FILMED DURING HOLIDAY TRIPLE FANTASY TOUR

Representatives from BC Entertainment, Dimensions Entertainment, and Gold Star Media have confirmed that tickets have officially sold out for the upcoming previously announced Hallyu Triple Fantasy Asia Tour. The tour will include concerts in three cities featuring the entirety of both companies’ artist rosters and follows behind previous Hallyu Triple Fantasy concerts in Japan in 2017 and Jeju in 2018.

Additionally, it has been announced that the artists will take a cruise ship between cities and will be filming a reality show while on the cruise ship together. The reality show will be released exclusively through base Online for fans who purchase it.

The concerts will take place December 25, December 28, and December 31.

ADMIN NOTES:

Our latest event is a mix between a concert event and a variety show filming event. The idols under all three companies will be going on a three-city concert tour together and they will be traveling between each destination on a small ~300 guest capacity hybrid cruise ship. There’s a reason behind their odd method of travel, as they will be filming a cross-company reality show during their travels on the ship between ports. 

On the cruise ship, idols will be booked two to a room with roommates. They will be able to either submit their choice of roommate two weeks before the cruise or, if they do not, they will be paired randomly. Idols will be required to stay with idols that are, by the organizers’ assumption, of the same sex. Room layouts will vary slightly, but a general idea of suite layouts can be found here and visual references can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here. Additionally, the ship includes a bar, a beauty salon & spa, an indoor pool and hot tubs, a fitness center, an observation lounge, a small library, a card and game room, and a theatre. The cruise also includes four dining options: a combination American & Korean BBQ grill restaurant, an Italian restaurant, a French fine dining restaurant, and a sushi restaurant.

The general outline of the schedule of the event is as follows.

December 25: Hong Kong - Concert Day

December 26: At Sea

December 27: Taipei, Taiwan

December 28: Taipei, Taiwan - Concert

December 29: At Sea

December 30: At Sea

December 31: Busan, South Korea - Concert

January 1: Busan, South Korea

For more details on the full schedule, please see here.

Any promotional activities planned for the time from December 25 through January 1 will be pre-recorded before leaving (note that many music shows don’t air that week anyway).

Please keep in mind that while a significant portion of the time during the event, muses are being filmed for the reality show, nothing obviously scandalous would make the cut of the final show. On occasions where the crew is only following some idols, they will not follow those doing anything inappropriate for the light-hearted, clean tone of the show.

Please also note that on days at sea, everyone on board will have internet access limited to social media, news sites, and search engines. Idols will have to pay extra to access high bandwidth sites like YouTube and Netflix through the ship’s wifi while at sea. Phone calls and texting while at sea will result in high fees from service providers.

Overall:

In game, this event takes place from December 25 to January 1, but threads and other posts for this event may be started from Sunday, December 13 at 12pm EST / Monday, December 14 at 2am KST (the time this post goes up), to Saturday, January 9 at 11:59pm EST / Sunday, January 10 at 1:59pm KST.

Threads may be continued past the end date, but must be started before then. Non-event related interactions may be conducted during this time as well.

NOTE: All posts related to the event should be tagged #fmdfantasycruise. Remember to use #fmdcall if you want to post a plot or starter call for the event, which I encourage everyone to do!

POINTS AVAILABLE:

As with all events, there are special points up for grabs.

INTERACTIONS: Having an event thread with a starter and at least three replies (starter ▻ partner reply  ▻ op reply  ▻ partner reply) by the end of the event is worth 2 points. This is valid for up to ten threads per muse this time and the threads can take place during any part of the event.

INTERACTIONS: Having an event thread going with someone your muse has never had a thread with before is worth 1 additional point for each thread.

INTERACTIONS: Posting an open starter for the event is worth 2 points. This counts for up to one open thread starter (not a text/sms post) per character.

PROMPT: Posting a headcanon or self-para of 400 words or more of your muse’s New Year’s resolutions is worth 2 points that don’t count toward the month limit. This can be in-character if your muse would make a list of their own resolutions or an out-of-character look at what they might generally desire to do within the next year or so if they wouldn’t.

CHALLENGES & PROMPTS: Completing at least three of the six event writing challenges and prompts found here is worth four points. **Solos you may choose to do for this do count toward your monthly total. (This is an experimental addition to events to inspire threads and may or may not be used in future events.)

You can also earn the normal amount of points through writing self-paras, etc. related to the event!

If anything in this post is unclear or you have any questions, please feel free to contact the admin. Please like this post to let me know you read it.

[sibyl-of-space]

I’m on an adventure learning the basics of Nintendo DS ROM hacking/modding because there is a very stupid, very self-indulgent, very spoilery ROM hack/mod I want to implement for Ghost Trick. It has been a journey and I’m going to be recapping my adventures on here with the tag #leo-tries-modding-ghost-trick so it can be blocked as desired. Anything pertaining to the actual in-game spoilers down the line will be posted under a readmore.

Now.... for “progress” I’ve made so far, if you can call it that. The first thing I need to figure out is whether I can implement a talk sprite-swap. So I set out to try and isolate the talk sprites.

I started by checking out the Ultimate Nintendo DS ROM Hacking Guide, which seemed as good a starting place as any. I also downloaded the big zipped file with all the referenced programs, but as I found out later, some of the programs didn’t zip properly so I had to procure them elsewhere.

At any rate, I tried to open up the Ghost Trick .nds file in CrystalTile2, and that much was a success.... and just about that much only. Ghost Trick doesn’t use the file types referenced in the guide. There are .xml.lz files and .bin files. I didn’t know what to do with these yet, so I decided to just mess around in the tile viewer and see if I could find anything. After some aimless scrolling, I did find something that gave me hope that I was in fact looking at meaningful data:

(don’t mind the windows 7 and pesterchum and malwarebytes this is my old 2011 laptop from undergrad, it just so happens that a lot of tools for NDS hacking work great on windows 7 because shit’s old)

That right there is very unambiguously the Ghost Trick logo. It gave me a glimmer of hope. And CrystalTile lets you highlight a selection of tiles and export them as an image:

rearranged in mspaint to:

My rudimentary knowledge of How This Works tells me that it obviously needs to reference the right palette for the colors to be right, but whatever, this is CLEARLY IMAGE DATA so ALL IS NOT LOST.

...but, for a while, that was about as far as I got. Some googling brought me to this thread, where OP states that allegedly the “cpac_2d.bin” contains all of the sprite data in the game [this is Capcom standard, it seems?], but having trouble actually accessing said data. Viewed as-is it’s a jumbled mess, haven’t been able to make heads or tails of it in CrystalTile although this could certainly be because they’re out of order in a way that’s not obvious. It is really, really difficult to just parse like this.... it’s a massive portion of the ROM, too, so even figuring out what general area of this I should poke around in is quite an undertaking. [looking w/ tile form GBA 4bpp as that is the only tile form that gave me a visible image for the logo above]... although I found some things which look promisingly like visual patterns, and might help me figure out how to re-order these tiles so i can maybe see something approaching an image. I uh... haven’t figured out how to customize the tile ordering in CrystalTile (like column widths) very well, that’s next on my to-do list. This one in particular I may come back to later:

(^Viewed at offset 4AD9E0)

There are plenty of others but this is among the more promising as far as likely actually being uncompressed visual data. There’s so much besides just this one though that I would be here all day posting screenshots; At any rate, there are patterns that may be worth looking into, but the sheer volume of data corresponding to this “.bin” file is going to make that REALLY tedious to try and comb through with any sort of reasonable efficiency. This could also be a fool’s errand, as it could be the data is compressed or out of order somehow and it is necessary to extract the true files hidden within that “.bin” to actually make proper sense of them. I don’t know. If I haven't made it clear, I'm a newbie at this and don't really understand what I'm working with yet.

So I briefly tried another approach. I thought, heck, I have the dev version of DeSmuME on here, let’s boot that baby up.

(oh boy did it chug.)

I learned some neat stuff.

First, I learned that for most of the game, the “main screen” is the bottom screen as opposed to the top screen, which makes complete sense if you’ve played it. Just goes against convention which is interesting. Except for during the title screen, where it is the expected order, for... reasons?

Anyway, I first tried isolating what layer the talk sprites were on on the “main” screen, which was unsuccessful but interesting. This is with every other layer turned off on the bottom screen (tools -> view layers, toggled off all except for “Main BG 0″)...:

It looks like a lot of things are on that same layer. Now we know.

(Worth noting that if you isolate just the “Main BG 3″ layer you get a nice view of the backgrounds!)

My next task was fiddling around in the tile viewer in the *emulator* to see if that got me anywhere. And, well, it did... I think! I don’t know what it means just yet but launching the tile viewer (tools -> view tiles) and selecting “LCD - 0x6850000″, at the 0x140 tile there is a very clear image of the current talk sprite. And this image DOES update when the sprite changes, so whatever this tile is pulling from is where I want to be.

...Unfortunately, I’ve more or less hit a roadblock here and am calling it a night. I have absolutely no idea how to figure out where that tile is getting its information from, and I don’t understand enough about NDS files to know how to parse the information in CrystalTile any better at the moment. I tried using this tool by Luigi Auriemma to dive into the .bin file after exporting it but it spewed out a billion .dat files that are no easier to make heads or tails of than the original.

That's all I got for the time being. If anyone reading this happens to know any directions they can point me toward I am all ears, otherwise I will continue to just poke at this from various angles until it decides to succumb.

[natsspammityspamspamham]

Dino Watches Anime (Jan 13)

With the snow outside and cancellations everywhere, I have more time to kick back, relax, and not do anything. Seriously, playing out in the snow and being an absolute bum is my specialty.

Dropped

Darwin's Game 

It just seemed like Mirai Nikki but updated to smartphones instead of flip phones and with a new interface and system. Seriously, it’s like someone watched Mirai Nikki and went “I can remake this and rake in the money”. The animation wasn’t good (according to our local sakuga geek, there were less than 10 animators who worked on the 40 min premiere because of the inhumane conditions of the studio which adds to the yikes), the soundtrack was great (but I won’t watch a show just for the soundtrack/seiyuu cast), and overall, I felt like I didn’t want to put myself through a show like this.

Uta no Prince-sama

I couldn’t do it fam. I watched two episodes and nearly cried on the inside because it felt like Kiniro no Corda but with a new bland face with new bland characters. I never watched either of these fully. I tried to watch just for the seiyuu (*ahem* Miyuki Sawashiro), but imagine having your life hobbies made into an absolute joke by a character who can’t even read music and is in the composition department while her main song of choice is “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and the ikemen around her and swooning over it and writing their own songs for her. The guys all have the same faces too! They’re triangle heads that can only be differentiated by colour palette. I’m telling the difference based on voices at this point. I don’t want the ikemen, but I would like people to be into my music too ya know! You may think that I’m dropping this anime purely out of spite for the story and characters, and you’re damn right I am. 

Seasonal Stuff

Pet

This is this close to being dropped, and I don’t mean for the strong BL vibes. It’s a little cringy but not that bad (I’ve watched a lot of cringe straight romance and to me it’s all the same). It just feels so poorly constructed right now. The universe just hangs by a thread with characters I feel ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for. Everything in this anime feels so cheap. I’m giving this one more week before I give it the axe.

Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita 

Okay, this anime is stupid, but we all went in knowing it was going to be very stupid. You’ve seen the screencaps. You’ve seen the cliches. Now get ready to have a pretentious science spin on it as if you haven’t seen these scenes a million times before elsewhere, and the characters (at least one of them) know it. The art... it’s present. I mean, character designs are giving the guys of Reddit what they want (especially with Sora Amamiya being really popular and singing the OP along with voicing the main character). Yuuma Uchida is also there. Nothing really worth noting here except “stay in school kids so you can become a pretentious science kid with no people skills!”

Dorohedoro

I might just watch this anime in place of “Pet” because this anime has a much brighter outlook and despite being CG genuinely looks better anyway. It’s the horror that I wanted to fill the void with (since Pet genuinely isn’t scary or innovative). Everything was pretty good with the first episode! I’m looking forward to seeing more!

From here on out, the rest of the seasonal list are the ones I look forward to the most! Get that head lizardman!

Runway de Waratte 

At first, this doesn’t seem like something that would come out of Shonen Weekly, but it inspires a good message about being who you want to be even with limitations if front of you. You have a girl too short to be considered a model and a guy who designs fashion without having the money to pursue it further. I know nothing about style, but I do know things about being short! Maybe that’s why I have such a soft spot for it...

ID:Invaded

This anime gets more interesting as we go along. I’m all into murder mysteries and things like that, and with the sci-fi mixed it, I checked to make sure I was up-to-date with this one. Each episode gives a new mystery with more details outline our jaded and imprisoned detective’s motives and backstory. I wasn’t sold on the character designs at first, but once you get over that hurdle, it’s all good. I like the psychological aspects of it too!

Kyokou Suiri 

Ever wish you had a female protagonist who was upfront about her romantic motives? Ever wanted to watch a show involving youkai? Here’s the show for you! Plus, her character design is so cute. Mamo sang the ED for this anime too. The animation is great, the story looks amazing (read ahead a few chapters in the manga), and this is one of my most highest anticipated anime for the season!

Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun

Here’s one of my favourite pilot episodes! This anime left such a strong impression on me that I went straight to my non-otaku friends going, “You’ve gotta see this guys”. The art style is consistent with the manga, and according to the not-so-quiet manga readers, we’re in for a really good anime. 

All the characters in this anime are also adorable and really simple-minded on the surface. Hanako-kun being a boy is a really funny twist on the local urban legend (I’m one of those kids who never dared to say “Bloody Mary” in the washroom so what can I say?)

Recently Completed

Hana to Alice: Satsujin Jiken

Remember Aku no Hana? This is what happens when rotoscoping has a bit more budget. This anime was slow, a little cringy, but it felt really real. The voices felt real, the characters felt real, and the story felt... mostly real. I don’t regret watching this movie art style and all because I think it captures a bit of the exaggerations of being a teenager (rumours blow up like balloons)

Sennen Joyuu

Satoshi Kon really has a certain way of telling stories. I’ve watched Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent, and Tokyo Godfathers, and while this didn’t have as strong of a punch as the latter, this film was still strong. It shows a story of a young maiden’s resilience, perseverance, and undying love... all things I can’t relate to... but it was good!

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

This show was a trip. You thought it was a fanservice anime until things got really heavy. This anime was funny, it made me feel things with the themes it took on, and it made me remember that the best girl doesn’t always have to win to be a good anime. The art was cute and sweet, the voice acting was so fricking funny (according to the cast, the improv wasn’t always included but the ones that were left along with the dialogue were pure gold), and the story was exceptional for an anime which seemed to have no base whatsoever. And plus, this had something a lot of anime don’t... A CONCLUSIVE ENDING. Give this anime a watch if you haven’t. It’s melodramatic comedic romantic teen drama at its finest.

Orange

Speaking of melodramatic romantic teen dramas, here’s another one that fits that bill! Minus the comedy, more suicide, and far less cohesive plot. Imagine throwing letters into the Bermuda Triangle and having your 16-year-old selves really reading those letters. I was wondering how they were going to explain sending their letters to the past, but they should’ve come up with better BS than that. Aside from really bad plot holes, this anime was alright. It was slow... really slow. I finished this whole 13 episodes plus the movie in about 2.5 hours after trimming the slow recaps. 

The art was alright. The story was slow, but near the end (excluding the last episode and the movie) it got really heavy. It hit close to home. I struggled with suicide for years, and I felt what this character felt. Certain lines of that dialogue just hit hard. It was depicted in a way that didn’t feel as romanticized. He wasn’t saved by just one person, his trauma didn’t go away just like that, it took a group of friends and planning to help him realize that there was more to life then just regrets.

Would I recommend this? I mean, it was recommended to me, but I’m not forcing this anime on anyone... not because of the themes but because it was darn boring and cliche 70% of the time.

Still Watching

Darker than Black: Kuro no Keiyakusha

Same things apply as previous entries

Hunter x Hunter (2011)

My brother expected me to finish this a while ago but I put it on the back-burner because the number of episodes seemed daunting. Everything else is good though.

Sousei no Onmyouji

I only watched the first episode.

Boku no Hero Academia Season Four

Same things apply as previous entries. It seems like the Overhaul arc will end in the next episode or two (depending on how much they milk this).

Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu

Groundhog Day but isekai. Seriously, this is a pretty big staple in terms of big isekai. Everyone’s fighting over who’s the best girl meanwhile Subaru is trying his best not to die every five minutes. Seriously, Subaru is a champ and what I’d want out of a Mary Sue isekai protagonist. Get em Subaru. Prove to me you’re not a car.

This will be me for the next few days because it’s getting colder where I am so watch me slip on the ice and die!

[uozlulu]

manga spoilers

Some fic thoughts on the WIPs I have currently:

IzuOcha - Ochaco wrote a love letter to him in her notebook with no intent of showing it to him, he ends up seeing it when he borrows her notes and vows to help her get together with the unaddressed person because never once does it cross his mind that that person would be him (meanwhile the whole class knows and this is kind of free entertainment)

It petered out on me when we got the second year shift in the manga and now that I’m not sure when or how to set it (since it was originally going to be set in second year) I’m like ???? but I could just make it an AU or maybe set it in third year in a world in which post-war classes resume like usual or something. But then that goes in the face of wanting to see the hero society restructure and so forth and so idek. Could probably just set it towards the end of first year instead. Much to think about.

ES 21 wedding and flashback memory romance fic

I need a scene for Hiruma and  a scene for Mamori still before I can figure out how to thread the flashback memory stuff between wedding scenes

I think part of what the hold up is about is that while the other couples chose each other post-high school, I think Hiruma and Mamori actually chose each other during high school so I probably need to approach their scenes with that in mind because up to this point I was thinking about giving them post-canon scens like everyone else

BnHA does a Tenchi in Love kind of fic

The fic ground to a halt when I had Midoriya interact with Nana so I probably need to reevaluate that scene and if they should meet so quickly

I also need to come up with some more concrete scenes for everyone to fill in the gaps

I think if I figure out what I’m doing with the villain that will help

Also probably should decide how AFO fits into this because I don’t think I took him into account which is kind of silly because if they’re time traveling back to when Yagi was in high school then I should figure out what’s going on with AFO

Stone Ocean fic in which instead of Green Baby, Jonathan appears

Been thinking about this one since I read the manga

I have little confidence in my ability to write these characters however especially Jonathan

The general structure would be Jolyne, Foo Fighters, and Anasui find this guy in the middle of all the plant people. They’re not sure what to make of it but Jolyne notices that this guy has the same birthmark everyone in her family does

Things go from there. Pucci is in for a shock.

No clue how to end the fic

Black Clover ch 336 inspired One Piece cross over fic

I have a tentative idea of how the fic begins

I figured out why Zoro is there - he ended up immortal and BC is the OP universe decades or hundreds of years later but I have to like think about how that works for him as a character a bit more

Decide what to do about Luffy if anything - is he also immortal? Did that spoiler swallow him whole? Is he dead? Questions questions

How does Asta get back to Clover by the end of a week? Clearly by using some sort of dimensional rift. Maybe passing through the wege? Maybe through some magic rift that allowed Yami to arrive on Clover?

Do I want to include what the others have been up to in Asta’s absence?

I have some ideas about how post-Lucius defeat works out but I don’t really have a game plan for defeating Lucius, though I do have some vague thoughts

Is this fic worth it considering we’ll find out who shadow man is next wek? Although it’s already an AU by default so that might not matter

Clearly Hi no Kuni is what Wano became after all this long time so that helps some things maybe

Zoro of course travels with Asta because since Zoro’s sense of direction is alcohol based, the meade and wine are probably calling to him. This might help with finding the dimensional rift to Clover Kingdom

Ideally I’d like to get the ES 21 to a first draft and into the editing process before all the other fics since it’s the most put together in my head and also th one closest to having a finished first draft pretty much. Would also like to see the time travel BnHA fic get finished someday but that one might be too ambitious to pull off with limited free time. Would also like to put out the IzuOcha fic because I think it could be cute and well-received. The ch 336 fic will probably all depend on how inspiration solidifies my thoughts about it. Probably not going to write the JJBA fic but I’m still surprised no one’s written a variant on that theme before considering it’s not DIO’s bone but Jonathan’s bone technically

[ruffledplumage]

Helpful Tips and Tricks for Intersession Dating

(Archivist’s note: It’s been a while, so before I get the queue set up, here’s a little something something. 

Dating in the Game can be really fucking hard, but this ended up pretty useful. Originally posted as a bait thread on Pits by hypedRiposte, logs snagged by me. It’s probably since been buried or deleted.)

So you want to do the romance thing...

[hypedRiposte] : boy do i have some advice for you.

1) be prepared to run into aliens. also be prepared to get phished by aliens, because you never really know what’s what until you get a picture, and even then... rip, who knows if they’re real or not.

2) trolls can and will eat your fucking face off

3) other aliens make literally zero sense. don’t bother with any of them, honestly. romance in the game doesn’t work and especially not with people outside of your species.

4) it just doesn’t work, okay? the farther away you get from someone, the worse things become. you’re a whole universe away in a separate session. you’re not going to stay together and you’re never going to meet again. it’s garbage. people who try to date in this mess are idiots

[botanicalFantasy] : Who shat in your cereal dude

[berensteinParadox] : Probably got shafted by some troll and needs to vent. me too buddy, me too. don’t go into spades with a seadweller. just trust me, they’re high maintenance as fuck and rip your arms off.

[xoXo] : play nice. there’s actually a lot of ways for dating to work in the game!

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~yeah, there are so many ways things can work out. it just requires some actual thought, which hypRip obviously doesn’t seem capable of~

[xoXo] : no, no. they’ve just been hurt before. i can tell.

[aaaaaaAaaaaa] : Wow, what a bleeding heart :p

[hypedRiposte] : well what the fuck do you recommend tidmoo. there’s too much distance between us, you and me and everyone else. how are you supposed to  have a relationship knowing you’re never going to roll with that person you love again. 

and trolls are stupid. trolls are stupid and awful.

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~be careful who you say that to. you’re talking to one~

[hypedRiposte] : eugh, get off my thread

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~nope, get fucked. my thread now~

[asthmaticMatriarch] : Ooo mama, mutiny. *grabs some popcorn*

[xoXo] : actually this seems like a good idea. hypRip, i know things are hard and trolls are confusing sometimes, but there’s a lot of ways for things to work out. 

i know that it’s hard that you will probably never roll with the person you’re dating again, whether human or troll or something else entirely, but the game is founded in distance. you were always going to be apart from everyone else. the person you love is still there. you’re still connected. if you’re on a server, you can talk to them just fine. sometimes relationships don’t hold up under the distance, but more often than not they do.

we all know how it feels. we were all separated from our friends in the beginning, and more often than not we’re not going to see them again. ever. but does that make the memories less worth having? does that make the relationships moot? not seeing them is sad. not talking to them is worse.

dating is sort of similar. you just have to keep talking to them. i know not being able to see them is hard, but it would be worse if you just stopped trying. the person you love is still there. distant, unseen, but still there. please don’t give up. just talk to them.

as for trolls... they’re not all bad. they’re just like humans, different all the time. don’t lump them all together because you had a bad experience.

[aaaaaaAaaaaa] : Tfw xoXo gives you emotions. Wtf dude, this is a bait thread, why are you being so serious

[xoXo] : relationships are serious. they’re the only thing we’ve got.

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~well said. better than i could have done, but maybe that’s because i’m blinded by how fucking prejudiced op’s first post is~

[berensteinParadox] : I mean. trolls are kind of fuckered. they have an entire romance just based on hate.

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~oh great. another hideously prejudiced post~

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~sit down and shut up so i can learn you good~

~that’s not even close to the full extent of what a kis is. it’s not just about hate. it’s about driving each other to do better, be better. your kis is supposed to make you want to best them, and in doing so, be the best you possibly can.~

[berensteinParadox] : Sounds stupid to me. i got an arm ripped off dude. trolls are fucking savages.

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~ugh. then you were in an abusive spade. stop insulting my entire race~

[berensteinParadox] : What are you gonna do about it? ban me? this is an open thread.

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~no but i’m going to block you~

[xoXo] : that’s really nice tidmoo! thats a great way to describe a kis. i mean of course you’d know it better. i’m not a troll.

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~yeah, not that this sorry lot is going to learn anything from it~

[hypedRiposte] : i didn’t ask for your stupid advice! 

[asthmaticMatriarch] : Honey, you posted a public thread on Pits of all places. That’s asking for advice if I ever heard of it *munch munch*

[hypedRiposte] : ugh. fine, i shouldn’t have made this post. i didn’t mean to attract a bunch of naive morons who don’t know what they’re talking about. it’s stupid to date in sburb, okay? the relationship just stops working after you’re apart.

[xoXo] : i really, really disagree. there’s so many things you can do for your so over servers. link them things you know they’ll like. write them something. make them a meal and turn it into an .ali. sing for them! dance for them. just talk to them, let them know how things are going, and they should do the same for you. that’s the way it should work.

[hypedRiposte] : but that’s not the way it IS! what are you, native light?

[xoXo] : blood, actually. and that’s not the point. i’m sorry your relationships aren’t working out hypRip, and i’m sorry you were hurt. you just have to try. if you’re not trying to make it work, of course it’s not going to.

[tidelessMoonsoul] : ~yeah, basically. xoXo, we should talk more. i like the way you say things, and goddamn if you aren’t stupidly good at dealing with idiots~

[xoXo] : oh, sure, i’ll send you a pm.

[aaaaaaAaaaaa] : And then they started dating, and it was hilarious

[hypedRiposte] : UGH

[mad-about-cards]

Skill and Complexity in KFT - A Short Article

Hearthstone has had a troubled history with complexity and randomness. The game has been criticized countless times and by countless people for lacking a skill floor and being “too random” to be taken seriously. Criticisms at these criticisms has been leveled before, but the fact had always remained that the general skill level required to play and play around most cards is very low. 

With Knight of the Frozen Throne (Hearthstone’s newest expansion) it can be argued that the complexity of the game, and therefore the skill required to play it, is increasing. The new card type, Hero cards, is just one aspect of this. Hero cards are cards that change who your hero is within a game, which of course changes your Hero Power. These cards also have Battlecries and grant your hero some armor.

In Journey to Un’Goro the development added Quests, a new kind of spell that behaved almost like a secret, but would grant the controlling player a reward upon meeting certain criteria. Quest cards fundamentally change the way you can build a deck for a given class, but unlike Hero cards, you see them almost immediately. Hero cards are typically late-game cards that will change the way your deck plays after the fact. This introduces a problem for inattentive players, who might not see a Hero change coming, as it might not be as obvious as a Quest deck.

Beyond just Hero cards, we have cards that are simply more complex on average than almost anything we’ve seen before. Cards that require attention and counterplay while lacking excessive RNG that force you think critically about the game, regardless of the strategy you’re employing. Some examples of cards like this are Fatespinner, Bolvar Fireblood, Defile and Dead Man’s Hand. Using Fatespinner as an example first, it’s a card that requires you to correctly read your opponent’s board state, while also being aware of the fact that they may be bluffing. This is similar to how some secrets work, only it’s with a single card, instead of multiple spells.

Bolvar Fireblood might seem simple at first, but without silence it can become tricky to play against without a well established board. Turn 5 might be a very tricky turn to deal with a 7-health Divine Shielded minion, especially one that becomes a 3/7 once it loses its shield.In a different vein of complexity, Defile is a card that you must assume that all slow-playing Warlock decks run. Defile is a card that can devastate almost any large board, especially in conjunction with other cards that may weaken the board first. Dead Man’s Hand is a card that you may not even think about until you see it played twenty turns into the game. It’s a card that can give near infinite value, in a class that can acquire (theoretically) infinite amounts of health. The thread that connects these all together is of course the fact that they all must be played with a deal of skill, but must also be played around with a deal of skill.

The set isn’t even close to halfway revealed yet, so there’s going to be a lot more to talk about in the coming week, but for now it is worth noting that these sorts of complex cards have existed before, just not typically in these greater concentrations. Counterplay against decks like C’Thun, Mechs, Dragons and Deathrattle has typically been simple, because those types of decks are easy to analyze from their first few turns of play. The decks that these KFT cards seem to want to be a part of aren’t so cut and dry especially with the range of archetypes offered by cards from the diverse and impressive sets between 2016 and 2017. Personally, I hope for more complexity in cards on average going forward, and I hope that people who refused to give the game a fair shot on the bases of skill-less-ness and RNG dependant “OP” cards change their tune.

With that, I’ll thank you for reading and just a drop a link to my ko-fi page. If you want to support me, as well as see more articles from me in the future you could buy me a cup of coffee, or just share this article with your friends/reblog it. 

Don’t forget to join the discord server if you want to casually chat about Hearthstone, the link is at the bottom of any page on my blog (not mobile theme) or right here.

Thanks again, peace.

[gamerszone2019-blog]

Marvel's Avengers Hands-On: We Know a LOT More Now

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/marvels-avengers-hands-on-we-know-a-lot-more-now/

Marvel's Avengers Hands-On: We Know a LOT More Now

While the tutorial portion of Marvel’s The Avengers has been shown behind closed doors at both 2019’s E3 and Comic-Con, we’d been left curiously in the dark as to what the game actually is. The fluid frantic action of the front roster – Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, and Black Widow – was nice to look at, but Square Enix had given us little information beyond the team’s aesthetics and the basics of how they play in combat…until now.At Gamescom 2019, we not only went hands-on with that same tutorial to get a real feel for how it controlled, but we also learned a whole heap of new information that paints a picture of a deeply ambitious, ever-evolving experience that blends the loot-shooter hook of Destiny with the story-driven heart of the MCU. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s get started. It’s important to note that while we did go hands-on with the Marvel’s Avengers tutorial, it’s just that: a tutorial. It plays like some of the more cinematic sections of an Uncharted – QTEs and all – and aims to introduce you to the basics of each character’s combat style and abilities while breathlessly setting up the story before the experience begins in earnest.

With that said, I’ll offer my brief impressions of how each character feels to control. They all have the same basic set up, which will be familiar to anyone who’s played a superhero game since Batman: Arkham Asylum: each has a light and heavy melee attack that can be combined with their respective idiosyncratic abilities (Iron Man’s laser attack, Thor’s throwable hammer, Widow’s dual pistols and grappling hook etc). They also each have a special, devastating ‘heroic attack’, which has a cool-down.

Thor was my immediate favorite. Perhaps it’s that God of War’s main combat designer, Vince Napoli, is behind Marvel’s Avengers’ hero combat, but throwing his hammer just feels incredibly good; particularly when you boomerang it into the back of an enemy’s head and then collide it against parallel enemies as it’s on its way back to you. Iron Man was a close second, as his ability to aerial attack coupled with a more long-range ground attack made for more variety in combat. Widow felt the weakest, as guns and ninja antics just aren’t as fun as throwable shields and super strength, but that’s somewhat predictable for the least ‘powered’ hero in the team.

Importantly, though, each hero feels like they should; Marvel’s Avengers indulges our power fantasies. Thor’s hammer connects with a powerful thwack, Hulk feels like a rabid beast, and switching between Iron Man in the sky or on the ground never feels unwieldy. These are characters who are already very comfortable with their powers, and they’re all very easy to pick up and play.

Marvel’s Avengers Is Not Open-world, It’s an ‘Expansive World’

Our understanding of Marvel’s Avengers begins properly after the tutorial, which ends with a series of powerful story beats: the destruction of much of San Francisco, the loss of – mild spoiler alert for the beginning of the story – Captain America (look, he’ll be back), and the disbanding of the rest of the group after they are blamed for everything. Five years on and your goal is to reassemble the Avengers, who have all retreated into a state of depressive hiding, in order to face a new threat: AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics), the sinister science-based organization from Marvel comics who wants to “protect” the world from super-powered individuals.

Here, we are promised that Marvel’s Avengers’ world will open up; minus the QTEs. The term ‘open-world’ is not used, but ‘expansive world’ is. You will have a base of operations on a reclaimed helicarrier, where you can launch level-recommended single-player and co-op missions in hotspots around the world from the Destiny-esque “War Table” overworld map.

Marvel’s Avengers Single-player and Multiplayer Gameplay

Single-player missions in Marvel’s Avengers are called “Hero Missions,” and their purpose is to play out a main campaign as a particular hero in an environment that speaks to their strengths. Iron Man might be given a mission with a lot of wide-open space, for example, or Hulk might be the focus of a mission full of destructables. These Hero Missions are also story-heavy – they make up what is essentially Marvel’s Avengers’ main story campaign, and will, therefore, place a big focus on character development and backstory.

Elsewhere, “War Zone Missions” can be played either solo or with up to four players – not five, which was curiously unexplained – in co-op. The goal behind co-op in War Zone Missions is to have you working as a unified team with all your powers singing in harmony, so although it wasn’t 100% verified by Square Enix, don’t expect to have four Thors running around at once.

While Square didn’t go into too much detail around War Zone Missions, with the caveat that co-op was something it would talk about later, we did get confirmation that dynamic scaling will exist if you and your friends are at a different level, which also translates if you jump into a Hero Mission after leveling up in War Zone to a ridiculous degree, and vice versa.

Like Destiny, if you choose to spend a lot of time in War Zones, it won’t break the story told in Hero Missions. Everything is built to theoretically feel seamless as you jump back and forth in the narrative/mission pacing. And if you’re a completionist, you’ll want to jump back and forth – as you unlock different Avengers in Hero Missions, leveling them up in War Zones means by endgame you’ll have a relatively robust roster.

It’s worth noting that each War Zone and Hero Mission have a difficulty scale, too, so the option is there to play your way throughout, though of course, this will affect the rewards you pick up as you play.

Marvel’s Avengers Character Customization and Loot

Marvel’s Avengers will have a ton of cosmetic costumes. The team at Square is drawing on 80 years’ worth of Marvel history, so the focus on cosmetics is huge, particularly as additional heroes join the roster down the road. Square is quick to impress that, although you will be able to buy more cosmetic costumes from the marketplace, these won’t affect skill, and you can also be rewarded costumes for accomplishing certain missions or story threads.

But the level of customization goes much deeper than Hulk’s Joe Fixit. Gameplay-impacting gear is a big focus in Marvel’s Avengers, which you can earn in each mission, with rarer gear dropped in higher difficulty missions (and will likely be a fundamental drive throughout Marvel’s Avengers’ endgame). Gear is separated into the usual common/uncommon/rare/epic/legendary/secret ‘beyond legendary’ loot-shooter categories and is also character-specific, so you can tailor your character to your playstyle based on the gear you equip.

Of course, gear has perks, which will change the way your hero plays depending on what you equip; the higher the rarity of gear, the better perks. There’s also branded gear, like an entire set of a Stark Industries line, that have special builds for your heroes with stat bonuses and synergies.

Gear is in sympatico with character skill trees as you level up. These offer further customization options depending on how you want to play (we got a glimpse at Iron Man’s, which were separated into Melee, Rupulsor, Laser, and Rockets). You can switch between each of these skills mid-game on the D-pad once they’ve been unlocked, and again, the focus here is to not typecast any character into a specific “class,” rather a build that suits your playstyle. So you can have a Thor that acts as crowd-control with area of effect lightning attacks, or you can have a Thor that acts as a heavy, up-close-and-personal with upgraded melee power and health.

Marvel’s Avengers Story and Plot: The Endgame

Though there will still be much to discover upon Marvel’s Avengers’ debut on May 15, 2020, it’s planned to be ever-evolving, which means we naturally had questions around its endgame. Though loot is an important focus, Square is adamant that stories remain at its heart. Not only will new stories be told as heroes are added, but more stories centered on that original roster of heroes will also be told.

In fact, storytelling is a repeated mantra throughout our presentation of Marvel’s Avengers. Square tells us that although the team is under Marvel’s watchful eye to make sure their vision is consistently authentic, they’ve also been encouraged to push boundaries and uniquely add to the tapestry of its history.Lucy O’Brien is Executive Editor of Features at IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Source : IGN

[laughbreak6-blog]

Amazon Picks New York City, Northern Virginia for New HQ, Nashville Gets Ops Center - Investopedia

Amazon (AMZN) has selected New York City and Northern Virginia as sites for new headquarters. Amazon also announced it would open an Operations Center of Excellence in Nashville, Tennessee, according to a press release on Tuesday morning.

The Basics

The press release noted that Amazon is planning to invest $5 billion between the two headquarters and that the project would create more than 50,000 new jobs - more than 25,000 at each site.

The new metro D.C. headquarters will be located in Arlington, Virginia's Crystal City. The New York City headquarters will be located in Long Island City, Queens. 

The Nashville facility is expected to deal primarily with "customer fulfillment, transportation, supply chain, and other similar activities." Amazon is planning to invest $230 million in the the operations center, which is expected to create about 5,000 jobs.

Hiring for all three sites is slated to begin in 2019. 

The City's Side of the Deal

In each case, the deal is largely the same - Amazon has reached performance-based direct incentive agreements with each city. Amazon's payouts are dependent on the tech behemoth delivering on its promise of however many jobs, as well as its investments in local infrastructure. In Arlington, Amazon is in line to receive $573 million, in exchange for delivering 25,000+ jobs. In New York, the figure is $1.525 billion in exchange for the 25,000+ jobs. In Nashville, it's $102 million for 5,000 jobs. In each city, this agreement is only binding provided the average wage for jobs created is over $150,000.

What do the cities get in return for these payouts? Well, the jobs, for one thing. And then there's the money these jobs bring with them. 25,000 jobs, or even 5,000 jobs, with an average income pushing past $150,000, is no small thing. That's a significant influx of economic capital, and with it comes "all sorts of ripple effects beyond employing coders, sales executives, baristas, nannies and yoga instructors," according to New York Times' architecture critic Michael Kimmelman.  

Amazon estimates that over the next 20 years, these cities can expect to see a combined $14.2 billion in incremental tax revenues. 

Though the details vary in each deal, in all three cities, Amazon is planning to invest heavily in expansive, energy efficient office space. In different cities, Amazon has agreed to different things: to donate space for an incubator, space for a primary or intermediary public school, and to invest in infrastructure improvements.

What Does Amazon Get?

Amazon gets those incentive-based payments, totaling more than $2 billion over the next 12 years, acting essentially as tax-breaks for hiring needed staff in the area. 

Beyond that initial carrot, Amazon will also enjoy these cities investing heavily in making the tech giant as comfortable as possible. Investments from the cities in infrastructure, public transit and green spaces will serve to make commuting to and from, and traveling to and from Amazon's centers of business as pleasant as possible. 

In New York, Washington, D.C. and Nashville, it's likely Amazon is gaining access to a highly-educated, tech-savvy, young workforce. Also according to Kimmelman, tech workers, "increasingly...demanded the diversity and benefits of city life." In the press release, Bezos said Amazon was "excited" about the new headquarters, seeing as "these two locations will allow [Amazon] to attract a world-class talent pool."

Of course, these are just the benefits of the deals Amazon did sign. This decision comes after more than a year of Amazon playing the options game, hearing what pretty much every city in America was willing to offer, behind closed doors, protected by the confidentiality of non-disclosure agreements. Amazon has armed itself with unprecedented amounts of recon, data and insight on what these cities were willing to offer, and where these cities see themselves heading in the foreseeable future. 

Furthermore, it's more than likely that Amazon used its final bids from the competing cities as leverage in the deals it was most interested, thereby artificially inflating the worth of the deal. 

Amazon has done well, here, from the perspective of its shareholders. I wonder how their new neighbors feel. 

What Did Residents Get?

Yes, we're hearing about new infrastructure, and boatloads of money coming to the shores of each of these fair cities, in the form of six-figure salaries, and the economic ripple effect that will follow. But I don't know that I'd be sighing with relief upon hearing the news. It's likely that, along with this money comes gentrification, displacement, and an improvement in the quality of life for those who can afford to stay in the neighborhood.

In a tweet thread from Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose New York district will be neighbors with the HQ2 area, she called the Amazon announcement "extremely concerning." She went on to tweet, "Displacement is not community development. Investing in luxury condos is not the same thing as investing in people or families. Shuffling working class people out of a community does not improve their quality of life." In a following tweet, she wrote, "We need to focus on good healthcare, living wages, affordable rent. Corporations that offer none of those things should be met w/ skepticism. It's possible to establish economic partnerships w/ real opportunities for working families, instead of a race-to-the-bottom competition."

 In a press conference later in the day on Tuesday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo spoke about the opportunity the deal presents for the city.

Source: https://www.investopedia.com/news/amazon-announces-new-headquarters-new-york-city-northern-virginia-operations-center-nashville/

[famedexclusivearchive]

[ARTICLE] GOLD STAR MEDIA TO HOST HALLOWEEN PARTY FOR SECOND TIME

Following the media success of Gold Star Media’s Halloween party in 2018, fans and press alike waited for news of a followup in 2019, only for Gold Star to pass up hosting the event for a second year in a row.

Gold Star Media has now announced they will once again be hosting a Halloween party this year with attendees from their own company as well as BC Entertainment and Dimensions Entertainment and several other hot figures in the entertainment industry. According to industry insiders, an invite to the party was a hot ticket after Gold Star’s inaugural event saw such praise for attendees’ exciting Halloween looks.

This year, Gold Star has announced the party will have a theme beyond Halloween; it will be a masquerade ball with a “Modern Fairy Tale” theme. Media insiders suggest an even larger amount of attention will be showered on the event’s red carpet by media and fans this year.

The party will happen on Halloween night at an undisclosed venue.

ADMIN NOTES:

It’s time for a Halloween event! Gold Star Media has decided to follow up their successful 2018 Halloween party with another one two years later, this time themed as a masquerade ball. In addition to being a masquerade ball, the event is “Modern Fairy Tale” themed. All idols are expected to attend unless there are major extenuating circumstances such as illness or injury (which should be cleared with the admin, please!).

All attendees to the party are expected to adhere to a roughly creative black tie dress code and are required to bring a masquerade-style mask to accompany their outfit. They are also asked to keep in mind the fairy tale theme of the event, though they may interpret this as they wish; they may choose to dress up in a way that recalls a familiar fairy tale character or simply embody an elegant fairy tale-esque look, and they may choose to modernize it as little or as much as they want. A regular Halloween costume look isn’t expected or likely possible due to the dress code.

Idols will work with company stylists to choose their outfit. They’ll have more say in their look and more freedom than they normally do, but their outfit must still remain public-friendly and appropriate to their group or canon soloist image, i.e. a WISH or Lucid member won’t show up in a daring V-neck cutout dress.

Idol attendees will not be permitted a plus one and couple outfits must be avoided. Idols who serve as ambassadors of brands lending themselves to black tie attire at the time of the event may be encouraged or required within their deal to wear that brand in some way.

There will be a red carpet before entering the event for pictures that will be released as publicity. Group members will arrive at the event with their managers in vans and the rest of their group and photos on the red carpet will be taken in groups and then individually. Appointments at their regular salon will be made available for idols to schedule in advance if necessary. The red carpet will begin at 6pm, while the main event inside the venue will begin at 7pm.

The party will take place at a large modern ballroom-style event venue outside of Seoul proper, which will be decorated with modern, elegant decorations matching a typical modern masquerade ball look with a gold, white, and black color scheme.

Managers and other company employees, including CEO Bang Sunyoung herself for a period of time, will be present at this party, though press will not be allowed inside the venue beyond the red carpet.

Having a masquerade mask will be mandatory, and wearing it inside the venue is encouraged in the spirit of the event. 

Activities & Locations Overview:

The entrance lobby is where all attendees will congregate after exiting the red carpet to have their invitations and identities checked before being allowed into the event.

The main room of the event is a large ballroom set up with elegant decor in shades of gold, white, and black (decor examples: 1, 2, 3). Attendees are free to seat themselves as they wish at the tables places along the exterior of the ballroom, though they are reminded that staff is in attendance at the event and they must be on good behavior. Waiters and waitresses will still be present with trays of hors d'oeuvres such a gourmet cheeses, caviar, spiced walnuts, and crab and avocado toast and flutes of champagne, as well as sparkling mineral water for those who do not drink. A live string quartet has been hired for the evening and they will play a mix of classical favorites, songs from fairy tale media, and spooky classics such as horror movie themes. From 9pm onward, the string quartet will leave and be replaced by a DJ to end the night on a more high-energy note. At this point, the central dance floor of the ballroom is expected to become a central part of the event.

Escape room, a section of rooms of the venue have been set aside and taken over by a top escape room company, who has set up a personalized escape room situation within the venue created just for the event. They’ll allow in groups of six to eight people in at a time to solve the fairy tale-themed escape room. The escape room has a time limit of forty minutes with a predicted 60% success rate.

A lawn outside the back of the ballroom. At 10:30PM, there will be a viewing on the lawn of a scary movie on a large screen. Blankets will be laid out on the ground to keep attendees’ expensive outfits from getting dirtied and a smaller selection of small tables around the outskirts of the lawn will also be available.

A garden also outside the back of the ballroom. This features a walking path through a professionally-designed flower garden. Past the flower garden is a small hedge maze lit by lanterns to keep in the spirit of the event. 

Photo booths are set up throughout the venue which are free to use. The photo booths include a variety of Halloween- and fairy tale-themed props and offer the option to have the photos sent to your phone or printed off in a traditional photo booth manner.

A scavenger hunt will take place during the full duration of the event. A sign in the entrance lobby before entering the ballroom informs guests that there are six small white jack-o-lanterns hidden throughout the venue with numbers attached and guests that find all six numbers for a special code will win be entered into a lottery to win prizes such as tickets to Everland, a free stay at a resort on Jeju Island, etc. (The jack-o-lanterns can be found as follows: one in the ballroom on a table, one in the ballroom next to the stage with the string quartet, one in the entrance lobby on a white chair, one in the garden against the edge of a flower bed, one down an incorrect path in the maze, and one in a photo booth.) Winners of the lottery will be announced at the end of the event.

Timeline:

6pm-7pm: Red carpet for press photos.

7pm~12am: Masquerade ball main event.

7pm-9:25: String quartet as musical guest in ballroom.

9:25-9:30: Short speech by CEO Bang Sunyoung as a host representative before she leaves the event. The presence of staff members grows steadily more scarce after this point as they begin to leave for the night.

9:30pm~12am: DJ as musical guest in ballroom.

10:30pm~12am: Scary movie screening on back lawn (optional, guests may come and go).

Overall:

In game, this event takes place on the night of Saturday, October 31 from 6pm KST to shortly after midnight, but threads and other posts for this event may be started from Sunday, October 4 at 12am EDT / Sunday, October 4 at 1pm KST (the time this post goes up), to Saturday, October 31 at 11:59pm EDT / Sunday, November 1 at 12:59pm KST.

Threads may be continued past the end date, but must be started before then. Non-event related interactions may be conducted during this time as well.

NOTE: All posts related to the event should be tagged #fmdhalloween2020. Remember to use #fmdcall if you want to post a plot or starter call for the event, which I encourage everyone to do!

POINTS AVAILABLE:

As with all events, there are special points up for grabs.

INTERACTIONS: Having an event thread with a starter and at least three replies (starter ▻ partner reply  ▻ op reply  ▻ partner reply) by the end of the event is worth 2 points. This is valid for up to ten threads per muse this time and the threads can take place during any part of the event.

INTERACTIONS: Having an event thread going with someone your muse has never had a thread with before is worth 1 additional point for each thread.

INTERACTIONS: Posting an open starter for the event is worth 2 points. This counts for up to one open thread starter (not a text/sms post) per character.

CHALLENGES & PROMPTS: Completing at least three of the six event writing challenges and prompts found here is worth five points. **Solos you may choose to do for this do count toward your monthly total. (This is an experimental addition to events to inspire threads and may or may not be used in future events.)

MISCELLANEOUS: Posting an aesthetic or headcanon of your muse’s outfit and mask for the event is worth 2 points and does not count toward your monthly total.

You can also earn the normal amount of points through writing self-paras, etc. related to the event!

If anything in this post is unclear or you have any questions, please feel free to contact the admin. Please like this post to let me know you read it.